life!
1. I have a vague desire to see "The Strangers." The film has been panned by critics, but I think that horror films--unlike, say, dramas--don't need to be particularly well made in order to be gratifying. It's like pizza and steak: bad steak is bad, but bad pizza is still good. You know?
Movies like "The Strangers" present an interesting question: Why should it be that perhaps the scariest sight of all is a human face? (Deformed, masked, appearing suddenly at a dark window, etc.) It may seem ironic that we can be so deeply frightened by, well, ourselves.
On a basic level, anything which frightens us probably implies some sort of threat. Yet the stimulus needn't represent the threat itself; it may instead point to the threat indirectly. For instance, I think that a blood-curdling scream is scary, not because we are afraid of the person doing the screaming, but because her scream is a signal which says that there is something else to be frightened of. The same is true of, say, a pool of blood: We're not frightened of the blood, obviously, but the fact that there is spilled blood suggests that there's something dangerous about.
The question is: Are human faces scary directly or indirectly? Are we afraid of the person with the deformed expression, or is it that such expressions, like screams, are a signal which humans use to communicate the presence of danger?
You can thank the consideration I have for one Barb Q. Hirsch that I've not affixed a certain shot from "The Ring" to this entry.
2. Sometimes when I've contemplated suicide, the thought has struck me that God might actually exist and that if I killed myself I would by sent to hell--a huge miscalculation on my part. Now, I'm as strong an atheist as I know, and this worry doesn't last long and isn't particularly distressing; but the fact it occurs to me at all is something I wonder about.
What I want to ask is: Does the fact that I have worries like this--however minute they may be--imply that I am actually not completely atheistic?
I think that most people would reply, "no." This ephemeral thought doesn't mean that I am not ultimately a full atheist. Yet I can't help but feel that my passing concern about god marks my (anti-)religious views as less solid than those I have in regard to other irrational fears. Take this example for contrast: I absolutely never worry at all that I will attacked by a tiger while fetching the mail. It never even comes up. And the fact that my paranoia about god's existence--again, however brief or ultimately unimportant--is noticeably more tangible than my paranoia about tigers suggests to me that I actually disbelieve the dangers of tigers in suburban America more fully than I disbelieve the existence of god. But that implies that I am not entirely atheist. Does that make sense?
Movies like "The Strangers" present an interesting question: Why should it be that perhaps the scariest sight of all is a human face? (Deformed, masked, appearing suddenly at a dark window, etc.) It may seem ironic that we can be so deeply frightened by, well, ourselves.
On a basic level, anything which frightens us probably implies some sort of threat. Yet the stimulus needn't represent the threat itself; it may instead point to the threat indirectly. For instance, I think that a blood-curdling scream is scary, not because we are afraid of the person doing the screaming, but because her scream is a signal which says that there is something else to be frightened of. The same is true of, say, a pool of blood: We're not frightened of the blood, obviously, but the fact that there is spilled blood suggests that there's something dangerous about.
The question is: Are human faces scary directly or indirectly? Are we afraid of the person with the deformed expression, or is it that such expressions, like screams, are a signal which humans use to communicate the presence of danger?
You can thank the consideration I have for one Barb Q. Hirsch that I've not affixed a certain shot from "The Ring" to this entry.
2. Sometimes when I've contemplated suicide, the thought has struck me that God might actually exist and that if I killed myself I would by sent to hell--a huge miscalculation on my part. Now, I'm as strong an atheist as I know, and this worry doesn't last long and isn't particularly distressing; but the fact it occurs to me at all is something I wonder about.
What I want to ask is: Does the fact that I have worries like this--however minute they may be--imply that I am actually not completely atheistic?
I think that most people would reply, "no." This ephemeral thought doesn't mean that I am not ultimately a full atheist. Yet I can't help but feel that my passing concern about god marks my (anti-)religious views as less solid than those I have in regard to other irrational fears. Take this example for contrast: I absolutely never worry at all that I will attacked by a tiger while fetching the mail. It never even comes up. And the fact that my paranoia about god's existence--again, however brief or ultimately unimportant--is noticeably more tangible than my paranoia about tigers suggests to me that I actually disbelieve the dangers of tigers in suburban America more fully than I disbelieve the existence of god. But that implies that I am not entirely atheist. Does that make sense?