(no subject)
I had to get out the house last night, so I decided to go watch "The Dark Knight Rises" alone. Which has been not such a bad thing, really. There's something to watching movies alone that in a great movie, I can totally become immersed and forget that I'm sitting in a theatre with 30 other people.
Nolan does something interesting with the dynamic of people however, and one that is apparent in a lot of movies. The chaos of a crowd's frenzy. The storyline was apt, though the timing could have been better met with the whole 99% movement that took place a few months ago.
There were several points that were brought up in the movie, that I'm sure many people didn't think into - but that's me, I think too much into things and it tends to get the better of me.
I am privileged to a point, I did not grow up entirely poor, despite the lack of money that was coming through. My father did his best to keep us comfortable and to provide us with more than just the basic needs one would need. In the end, these are physical, superficial items but the thought behind them was what made it justified and important. I was able to go to school without worries, and attend college. I had these inherent creative artistic abilities that allowed me to get to where I am today, with a good job. I worked for it, but this was also ingrained and I know much of my talent wasn't purely a product of my hard work.
But the aggression "under-privileged" people have towards those who are privileged is appalling. Granted, some people never understand true hardship, growing up less able to have those "nice things." But isn't that we all strive and desire, poor or rich, those fancy cars, that big house, the ability to not worry about money?
But the less privileged feel angry for this, that they do not have the luxuries that they cannot afford while the wealthy fill their lives with such decadence. But this is wrong, and isn't justified. Not everyone is born into a wealthy family, some have to work for it and actually attain it. But that's irrelevant. What matters to these people is attaining it, even if it means that they don't have to work for it. So people steal, they take, and they feel good about it. And somehow this is all okay.
It's not. There is a separation of the rich and the poor, and always has been historically, and without getting into the politics of this in terms of taxes and where the money actually goes, this has always been present. Here's the thing about life: not everyone can have what they want. That's the reality and no matter how much money you have, there will always be that which you cannot have. And perhaps that's part of god's great plan. But everyone cannot be privileged, and what is wealth when everyone has it? At least in the material sense.
To build a utopia, where everything is truly bliss, there has to be an ultimate balance of equality in which there is no balance. Everything must be neutral. In essence, a community where no one has more power than the other and no more resources than the other. But in a capitalist driven mindset of our society, what would be the point? There are those who strive to be great, and those who only wish to demolish it. Then there are the rest, who either through the inability or lack of care, who care for neither. There will always be those who want more power, more wealth, and just more. Some go the route of virtue by attaining these by working hard, and then there are those who attain this through deceit and misery.
I've always thought of life as that of balance. That in this world, there is good and evil in the most basic form of thought. This goes into everything that is basic, cold and hot, day and night. Sunrise and sunset. But isn't it true that this applies to everything else? Rich and poor. The beautiful and the not-so-beautiful. The intellects and scholars, the athletes and olympians. The superheroes who are only matched by their greatest villains. Life is a dichotomy, and that is the ultimate struggle in where you land in that scale.
Who doesn't want a life of privilege, to sit higher than others, to have more from life? Who honestly wants to be equal to everyone else, when they know they are capable of more? It's not the logic of someone being better than someone else, but there are certainly those who can become a doctor over someone else who is better at doing something considered more basic, say an electrician. But the doctor probably cannot do what the electrician can do, and neither can he do what the doctor does. An architect can design a home, a building, a grandeur example of human's achievements, but this cannot be achieved without the workers who can build it. But the architect is the mastermind behind it all, and the workers would not have something to build without the plans - nor would they be able to create the plans either.
My point is this, that life is fair in the sense of balance. It seems unfair in that usually we have little to no choice in where we fall in all of this. And that is the struggle. That is the struggle between those who can and those who can't.
A simple man strives to live a simple life where he can simply be happy. And that is enough for most. But in today's society it's difficult to achieve even that, and it's difficult to not always have a desire for more.
In the end, it's about your survival in whatever situation. You will live how you desire to live and what you think will allow you to feel fulfillment through it. And while we live in a world with monsters and those who truly wish to only harm others, we also have the caregivers and those who wish to make it better. We desire peace, while others only know of war.
Is it a choice? Possibly.
--
Perhaps I was jaded walking into that theater, as thoughts of who looked suspicious quickly came into mind. I wasn't afraid to go into a theatre, as some people commented on that they were fearful of going into a theatre so soon. But that basic animal instinct of survival is that, animal-like. When has this happened before? I could only look at these people with a blank stare as they were being honest about this fear for a possible situation. Which is just as logical as getting in your car every day.
The whole tragedy of the Aurora shooting was terrible, but seeing it plastered all over the major news sites daily for the couple of weeks following the event was abhorring. The media may be a perpetuator of the stories, but it's also directly fed by the demand. I've stop reading the news and never watch it anymore for this reason: it's all about misery. Who can say they can sit through an entire newscast and not feel overwhelmed or depressed by what's going on daily? Someone is murdered, there is a shooting, an act of violence here, there, and overseas. But yet this event commanded the world's attention, and for all the wrong reasons. But people love this, in some sycophantic way. We love gossip, and we love to see others suffer because well, it's not happening to them.
Life is a wonderful thing, and we all take it for granted. But maybe, we all make it more than what it is. We're animals, too, but with motives, hate, love, creativity, and the desire for destruction. But take that all away and we're nothing more than the animals that also share this planet with us. Our abilities to out-think and out-manuever other animals is what makes us omnipotent on this planet, but we use these abilities against and for each other.
Here we have a seemingly normal, individual. Intelligent, on the path that most of us cannot do in terms of high-level academics, and he planned a complex plan to destroy lives. The realization I made while sitting in that theatre, watching people creating chaos purely for the evil itself, both the murderers and the people of Gotham, I realized that is exactly how people are. That in a small way I could see into this man's mind and how he viewed the people in the theatre that night. Nothing more than primitive animals. After all, we do it everyday. We kill masses of livestock for the purpose of feeding the country, and even that isn't simple. In order to meet demand and make profit, we inject the animals with drugs, force them into habitats that make us cringe when we see it. But it's okay, because they're just regular animals. People are murdered every day, and that doesn't account for the amount of violence that happens daily. People getting stabbed over car payments, road rage from driving, and yet through it all, we feign ignorance and act shocked when 12 people die. We treat those situations the same as the animals we eat, and it's only until it's forced in our faces we react.
It's purely about the act, and we view the killer as a monster. There are monsters in this world, and they take on different forms, not just murderers. But this man, wasn't a monster. He was mentally unwell and I question his true desire from this event, outside of what everyone sees it as, as him simply wanting to murder as many people as possible.
There were the shining examples of what gives us inspiration to live in that theatre, boyfriends protecting their loved ones using their bodies as shields, others able to gain the courage to keep others alive and provide some sense of security in that situation. But I can only imagine the rest - screaming and scrambling to escape, so they can survive with their own lives regardless of anyone else around them. The basic primitive instinct of flight and fight, where they chose to flee. (Think back to the Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart where a woman was trampled...to death.)
But the whole event and the perpetrator was only met with reciprocated hate and disgust. Instead of finding ways to heal, forgive, and ways of peace, we did the opposite in fueling the event. Did we create this so called "monster" or was he simply born into this man whose fate was to end this night? Either way, "monsters" are not simply born and it's a truly sad thing. And we have groups like the Westboro group who are just as mentally unwell, a perception of reality so skewed yet they are allowed to spread their vile and disgusting behavior. Creating hate in times of grief.
In 9/11, all we could do is react in equal hate, and forgetting to question why, why are there people that hate so much? So we bombed them. And we watched it on the news. And we felt "proud to be American." Only in times of war, are we "united." When we are too distracted with hating an external source, we forget that we hate each other. There has always been that group of people that society outcasts and condemns, it was only several decades ago that the Japanese were placed into internment camps. A few more decades and women and blacks were segregated and treated differently. Now it's homosexuals and a little bit of everyone else.
I don't know what I would have done myself in that theatre that night, or any situation where lives are in danger and the threat of death is so present. If anything, I am sure that I would have frozen up by the hundreds of thoughts that would have been racing through my head in how to possibly take down the killer. Or maybe I would have simply ducked and tried to preserve my own miserable life.
--
My depression does not stem from personal reasons (though isn't it always personal?), but from life itself. That we live in this world of love and hate, and that hate is all we can focus on. I guess I am the same way however, by only focusing on the negatives of the world. But that is my struggle, and that is my way of suffering. That we live in this world so full of sadness, hate, and those who steal, destroy, and hurt. That there is so much suffering around us and that most of us can go about our daily lives and not give it a second thought, or even a thought at all. That there are those whose biggest fear and concern is not being accepted by others. And maybe that's all it is for certain people, and they are able to live in a seemingly ignorant or naïve way of life.
I find myself thinking negative thoughts and it disgusts me, and I feel terrible about feeling such ways. Even going out, enjoying myself with friends, can be a futile thing - it's only a distraction. But why can an individual not do so? To me it seems like such a selfish act.
I certainly cannot change how people are, or how they think. And despite living my life and to be a good person, to possibly help out when I can and do my part, it doesn't seem hardly enough. And the efforts seem wasted to that it seems pointless to even try. That my efforts not go unnoticed, but rather with no effect. I used to think that is enough, to do what I can and do my part. That my small efforts would help to the greater cause. But in the end, I know this cannot change. Because it never has.
But perhaps that's all we can hope for, to be simple men, who do the best they can, to be good, and strive for personal happiness. But it's hard to live that way when there's so much hate in the world and when for others that simply is not enough, and I struggle with the point of it all.
Maybe that's why we need superheroes, because we cannot save ourselves.
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
- "Much Madness is Divinest Sense" / Emily Dickinson
Nolan does something interesting with the dynamic of people however, and one that is apparent in a lot of movies. The chaos of a crowd's frenzy. The storyline was apt, though the timing could have been better met with the whole 99% movement that took place a few months ago.
There were several points that were brought up in the movie, that I'm sure many people didn't think into - but that's me, I think too much into things and it tends to get the better of me.
I am privileged to a point, I did not grow up entirely poor, despite the lack of money that was coming through. My father did his best to keep us comfortable and to provide us with more than just the basic needs one would need. In the end, these are physical, superficial items but the thought behind them was what made it justified and important. I was able to go to school without worries, and attend college. I had these inherent creative artistic abilities that allowed me to get to where I am today, with a good job. I worked for it, but this was also ingrained and I know much of my talent wasn't purely a product of my hard work.
But the aggression "under-privileged" people have towards those who are privileged is appalling. Granted, some people never understand true hardship, growing up less able to have those "nice things." But isn't that we all strive and desire, poor or rich, those fancy cars, that big house, the ability to not worry about money?
But the less privileged feel angry for this, that they do not have the luxuries that they cannot afford while the wealthy fill their lives with such decadence. But this is wrong, and isn't justified. Not everyone is born into a wealthy family, some have to work for it and actually attain it. But that's irrelevant. What matters to these people is attaining it, even if it means that they don't have to work for it. So people steal, they take, and they feel good about it. And somehow this is all okay.
It's not. There is a separation of the rich and the poor, and always has been historically, and without getting into the politics of this in terms of taxes and where the money actually goes, this has always been present. Here's the thing about life: not everyone can have what they want. That's the reality and no matter how much money you have, there will always be that which you cannot have. And perhaps that's part of god's great plan. But everyone cannot be privileged, and what is wealth when everyone has it? At least in the material sense.
To build a utopia, where everything is truly bliss, there has to be an ultimate balance of equality in which there is no balance. Everything must be neutral. In essence, a community where no one has more power than the other and no more resources than the other. But in a capitalist driven mindset of our society, what would be the point? There are those who strive to be great, and those who only wish to demolish it. Then there are the rest, who either through the inability or lack of care, who care for neither. There will always be those who want more power, more wealth, and just more. Some go the route of virtue by attaining these by working hard, and then there are those who attain this through deceit and misery.
I've always thought of life as that of balance. That in this world, there is good and evil in the most basic form of thought. This goes into everything that is basic, cold and hot, day and night. Sunrise and sunset. But isn't it true that this applies to everything else? Rich and poor. The beautiful and the not-so-beautiful. The intellects and scholars, the athletes and olympians. The superheroes who are only matched by their greatest villains. Life is a dichotomy, and that is the ultimate struggle in where you land in that scale.
Who doesn't want a life of privilege, to sit higher than others, to have more from life? Who honestly wants to be equal to everyone else, when they know they are capable of more? It's not the logic of someone being better than someone else, but there are certainly those who can become a doctor over someone else who is better at doing something considered more basic, say an electrician. But the doctor probably cannot do what the electrician can do, and neither can he do what the doctor does. An architect can design a home, a building, a grandeur example of human's achievements, but this cannot be achieved without the workers who can build it. But the architect is the mastermind behind it all, and the workers would not have something to build without the plans - nor would they be able to create the plans either.
My point is this, that life is fair in the sense of balance. It seems unfair in that usually we have little to no choice in where we fall in all of this. And that is the struggle. That is the struggle between those who can and those who can't.
A simple man strives to live a simple life where he can simply be happy. And that is enough for most. But in today's society it's difficult to achieve even that, and it's difficult to not always have a desire for more.
In the end, it's about your survival in whatever situation. You will live how you desire to live and what you think will allow you to feel fulfillment through it. And while we live in a world with monsters and those who truly wish to only harm others, we also have the caregivers and those who wish to make it better. We desire peace, while others only know of war.
Is it a choice? Possibly.
--
Perhaps I was jaded walking into that theater, as thoughts of who looked suspicious quickly came into mind. I wasn't afraid to go into a theatre, as some people commented on that they were fearful of going into a theatre so soon. But that basic animal instinct of survival is that, animal-like. When has this happened before? I could only look at these people with a blank stare as they were being honest about this fear for a possible situation. Which is just as logical as getting in your car every day.
The whole tragedy of the Aurora shooting was terrible, but seeing it plastered all over the major news sites daily for the couple of weeks following the event was abhorring. The media may be a perpetuator of the stories, but it's also directly fed by the demand. I've stop reading the news and never watch it anymore for this reason: it's all about misery. Who can say they can sit through an entire newscast and not feel overwhelmed or depressed by what's going on daily? Someone is murdered, there is a shooting, an act of violence here, there, and overseas. But yet this event commanded the world's attention, and for all the wrong reasons. But people love this, in some sycophantic way. We love gossip, and we love to see others suffer because well, it's not happening to them.
Life is a wonderful thing, and we all take it for granted. But maybe, we all make it more than what it is. We're animals, too, but with motives, hate, love, creativity, and the desire for destruction. But take that all away and we're nothing more than the animals that also share this planet with us. Our abilities to out-think and out-manuever other animals is what makes us omnipotent on this planet, but we use these abilities against and for each other.
Here we have a seemingly normal, individual. Intelligent, on the path that most of us cannot do in terms of high-level academics, and he planned a complex plan to destroy lives. The realization I made while sitting in that theatre, watching people creating chaos purely for the evil itself, both the murderers and the people of Gotham, I realized that is exactly how people are. That in a small way I could see into this man's mind and how he viewed the people in the theatre that night. Nothing more than primitive animals. After all, we do it everyday. We kill masses of livestock for the purpose of feeding the country, and even that isn't simple. In order to meet demand and make profit, we inject the animals with drugs, force them into habitats that make us cringe when we see it. But it's okay, because they're just regular animals. People are murdered every day, and that doesn't account for the amount of violence that happens daily. People getting stabbed over car payments, road rage from driving, and yet through it all, we feign ignorance and act shocked when 12 people die. We treat those situations the same as the animals we eat, and it's only until it's forced in our faces we react.
It's purely about the act, and we view the killer as a monster. There are monsters in this world, and they take on different forms, not just murderers. But this man, wasn't a monster. He was mentally unwell and I question his true desire from this event, outside of what everyone sees it as, as him simply wanting to murder as many people as possible.
There were the shining examples of what gives us inspiration to live in that theatre, boyfriends protecting their loved ones using their bodies as shields, others able to gain the courage to keep others alive and provide some sense of security in that situation. But I can only imagine the rest - screaming and scrambling to escape, so they can survive with their own lives regardless of anyone else around them. The basic primitive instinct of flight and fight, where they chose to flee. (Think back to the Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart where a woman was trampled...to death.)
But the whole event and the perpetrator was only met with reciprocated hate and disgust. Instead of finding ways to heal, forgive, and ways of peace, we did the opposite in fueling the event. Did we create this so called "monster" or was he simply born into this man whose fate was to end this night? Either way, "monsters" are not simply born and it's a truly sad thing. And we have groups like the Westboro group who are just as mentally unwell, a perception of reality so skewed yet they are allowed to spread their vile and disgusting behavior. Creating hate in times of grief.
In 9/11, all we could do is react in equal hate, and forgetting to question why, why are there people that hate so much? So we bombed them. And we watched it on the news. And we felt "proud to be American." Only in times of war, are we "united." When we are too distracted with hating an external source, we forget that we hate each other. There has always been that group of people that society outcasts and condemns, it was only several decades ago that the Japanese were placed into internment camps. A few more decades and women and blacks were segregated and treated differently. Now it's homosexuals and a little bit of everyone else.
I don't know what I would have done myself in that theatre that night, or any situation where lives are in danger and the threat of death is so present. If anything, I am sure that I would have frozen up by the hundreds of thoughts that would have been racing through my head in how to possibly take down the killer. Or maybe I would have simply ducked and tried to preserve my own miserable life.
--
My depression does not stem from personal reasons (though isn't it always personal?), but from life itself. That we live in this world of love and hate, and that hate is all we can focus on. I guess I am the same way however, by only focusing on the negatives of the world. But that is my struggle, and that is my way of suffering. That we live in this world so full of sadness, hate, and those who steal, destroy, and hurt. That there is so much suffering around us and that most of us can go about our daily lives and not give it a second thought, or even a thought at all. That there are those whose biggest fear and concern is not being accepted by others. And maybe that's all it is for certain people, and they are able to live in a seemingly ignorant or naïve way of life.
I find myself thinking negative thoughts and it disgusts me, and I feel terrible about feeling such ways. Even going out, enjoying myself with friends, can be a futile thing - it's only a distraction. But why can an individual not do so? To me it seems like such a selfish act.
I certainly cannot change how people are, or how they think. And despite living my life and to be a good person, to possibly help out when I can and do my part, it doesn't seem hardly enough. And the efforts seem wasted to that it seems pointless to even try. That my efforts not go unnoticed, but rather with no effect. I used to think that is enough, to do what I can and do my part. That my small efforts would help to the greater cause. But in the end, I know this cannot change. Because it never has.
But perhaps that's all we can hope for, to be simple men, who do the best they can, to be good, and strive for personal happiness. But it's hard to live that way when there's so much hate in the world and when for others that simply is not enough, and I struggle with the point of it all.
Maybe that's why we need superheroes, because we cannot save ourselves.
Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -
- "Much Madness is Divinest Sense" / Emily Dickinson