We Are Murderous Thugs. In Our Heads, Anyway.
It remained subliminal as a child. During my hale youth, relatively wonderful by comparison and full of boredom and excitement, learning and dumbing as all good childhoods are, it never occurred to me. I played videogames like a madman, from Mario to Street Fighter to eventually Goldeneye (still one of the best games ever), and from mushrooms to headshots it never became clear.
It hinted at itself the moment I was gay-bashed, the summer before 8th grade when I didn't actually know what 'gay' meant or what a bundle of sticks had to do with that. Thankfully this entry isn't about my bullshit coming-out story or my exciting first love (partly since the latter hasn't actually happened). But the anger I felt in that moment, when long-story-short rocks pinged perfectly past, skipping on sand and my shoe and my leg - the fear and loathing were as crystalline as the reasons behind them were mud. There was the urge to hurt. To dismantle. To eradicate. Save for the presence of many others, I would have become a momentary disciple of that fire. I would've burned, been burned, that silly mutual destruction that comes from all violence, from within. I didn't. I kicked a wall later. Walls don't bleed.
The callousness of that feeling on my part, though, and the passivity with which we express the urge to let loose on someone - that's what I'm getting at. We are by nature violent and deceptively angry animals. From what little reading I've done on the matter, our lizard brain is at fault. The amygdala not only twinges with the sick drip of fear, loathing, and neanderthal hyperstimulation (see also exhibit A, George W. Bush), but it scramjets those chemical contrails all throughout the brain and body - including to the locus ceruleus, the part in the brain that initiates what we know as the "fight-or-flight" response.
And is it not obvious to all of us just how much overtime the average person's lizard brain and fight-or-flight response put in nowadays? Not just from the imaginary War on Terror and Drugs and Unicorns; everything, from grocery shopping to playing video games to getting into a fucking parking lot, has become a place for many otherwise entirely-normal people to evacuate into a strange and terrifying headspace in which everyone else is at best an innocent bystander and at worst an oblivious target. An Asian woman clearly wanted to kill me tonight as she exited the Trader Joe's parking lot on La Brea. She pulled her immense black SUV into well over 2/3rds of the entire "enter/exit" ramp onto the street. I attempted to pull in but couldn't because of how inappropriately she drove her inappropriate vehicle. She proceeded to accost me, even feigning that my car was 'touching' hers, then eventually sped off and away as cars on La Brea honked at me unaware. I wonder how many people in that moment envisioned my death. How many pianos fell on my head? How many Acme brand anvils?
We never know, but that's kinda the point. These overripe chemical daydreams are our sole domain and our sole escape for bloodsport aside from casual entertainments. And oh, if nothing represents the state of America's need for violent output, it is our entertainment. Torture porn in the movie theater. The fetishization and essentializing of entirely mediocre candidates for national office, and the transmutation of their boring stories into enticing Sweeney Todd-esque narratives for public consumption. These siphon the syrup from our bloodlust from us for pennies on the dollar, but what is the true cost? Doesn't it also occur to you that none of these outlets, none of these vicious hypotheticals require or allow for critical thinking?
In fact, it's become clear to me only tonight that we exercise this kind of animal drudgery and hunting instinct as a sort of diversion from critical thinking. A chance to not examine who's actually at fault, but to retain our egocentric domination of our universe and the shittily-driving pawns therein.
What really drove this home first today was reading an article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, essentially a 3-page fluff piece for Lucasarts' new Star Wars game. Far more amazing and revealing to me than the game - which introduces physics and modelling systems that allow individual 'enemies' to have "simulated" "real" responses to different attacks rather than one programmed response - were the reactions of the white, male 20-something (straight) audience watching the demonstration. I'll quote the last paragraph or so, courtesy of Vanity Fair:
Whenever Piper dispatches a Wookiee in a particularly inspired way, an excited "Whoa!" or a satisfied "Sweet!" erupts from the half-dozen or so men who are watching this scene of bloodless carnage with me. "Impale him," shouts out Blackman, and Piper responds by pushing the appropriate buttons. Darth Vader's red-bladed lightsaber powers up with a familiar hum, and he hurls it hilt over blade at a Wookiee. The weapon embeds itself in the chest of the ill-fated creature and then returns to Vader's hand as his victim crumples. Blackman chuckles mirthfully along with some of the other men. "Best move in the game," he says.
In their hoodies and lanyards and baseball caps, they do not look like gods, but after what I have just seen, it is hard not to think in those terms.
Shitty writing aside, this is a character study in exactly what I discussed earlier. What I purposely haven't mentioned thus far are two things. First, there is no actual blood for purposes of being able to market this game to teenagers. Second and especially for this game, all moral rules regarding the use of "The Force" are thrown away. It was in fact the dissolution of this ethical compass that sold George Lucas on the idea of this game in the first place! These people are witnessing a demonstration of a part in the game starring Darth Vader, and the audience's greatest joy is the ability of this game to 'realistically' impale the pugnacious-but-peaceloving Wookiees. The art of the simulated death has been honed, and refined, and now evolved. And the path of its character and the player behind him requires our upper brain functions to give way to animal panic and murder.
This, the parking lot scenario, and my experience all have another thread in common. They all rely on other people to come to pass. A man driving alone on an empty freeway with no major car problems and a steady food and water supply has little to worry about aside from musical selection and where to stop to piss. Any man driving on the 405 at any time, ever, is a diseased maniac shouting at the top of his lungs at everything in sight including his own frothing reflection in the rear view. This is an anti-social phenomenon revealed in public, and anything we perceive to be a) alive and b) in our way is able to trigger it. And like a video game, this a passive entertainment that requires an active choice to disengage rational thought, engage the imagination, and dismantle the world. It's only a hilarious added irony that the author sells these men as being empowered by this, forming their own socialized bond out of what is in essence an utter middle finger to civilized rational behavior. In other words, the person playing the game tosses out logic and physics to use mythical powers to dismantle worlds and civilizations - but the game becomes a "realistic" and "social" activity! This is exactly the pack mentality that takes hold in spectator sports, but that's for another day.
In the videogame, the requirement that you use moral discretion in wielding a boundless supernatural power has been dislodged - rather, your mission is to in fact wield it in the most destructive way possible for maximum entertainment. We now employ technology to act more like witless animals than ever before. In a torture porn flick like Saw, the main characters' very survival (and thus yours as the viewer immersed) relies upon you hurting someone else and being hurt yourself. Road rage, even, relies upon the rager faulting someone in particular for a grander problem that target has little or no sway over.
Now, imagine that detachment from critical thinking led to a spontaneous constructive instinct in the imagination. That we would push our idle or active creative thoughts away from death and to peace. Or at least to catch ourselves in the act, drop the knife, and scrub our minds harder than Lady Macbeth in a return to critical thinking. Imaginary blood, it seems, can only hurt the person drawing it. Dismantling the instantaneous pathways of the lizard brain could free us from this slavery to sadomasochism, but barring my Mad Brain Scientist degree arriving in the mail, we're left only to ponder the damages of these damages.
What I wonder is: do these passive crimes of mental passion dull our ability to think critically about real situations in life? Are they a mere outlet, or do they serve to fray a dull nerve already rubbed raw by monsters in elected office and monsters on television screens? And do these feelings of ours stem from a survival instinct blunted within civilization, or are they a conscious manifestation of our desire to see that civilization torn entirely apart?