The chase is the point to life. But not idiots chasing after unrequited lust.
OOC: Crossposted from theatrical_muse today.
Prompt 368: "It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,-
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all."
--Life in a Love, Robert Browning
You know, I'd consider this a rare example of humans actually managing to say something profound if I hadn't read the whole poem.
Taken out of context, this quote suggests that the point to life is to keep striving, to keep chasing after something. It's a similar sentiment to another quote from a human: "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Given that we, ourselves, have spent a good bit of time in denial of this basic concept, it's rather amazing to me that a species as limited and pathetic as humans could realize it.
The point to life is the chase. To keep searching, to keep reaching for something new. To better yourself (which, unfortunately, gets exponentially harder the closer to perfection you get.) I, along with most of the Q, tried to pretend for millions of years that we *had* reached the pinnacle, that there was nothing more we needed to reach for... and I was miserable, and bored out of my mind, because stagnation is death and the Red Queen's Race applies to all sentient beings, not just the inferior ones. As soon as you stop running forward you slide backward. Even if you are immortal and omnipotent.
So this sounds like a great sentiment. Except that I've read the whole poem, and what it's actually about is some obnoxious human man gloating over how he's going to keep chasing some human woman who sounds like she probably doesn't want anything to do with him (it doesn't *have* to be a man and a woman, but since it was written by a man, in a time period of human history where it's highly unlikely he'd have admitted to writing about another man, and it fits into a whole nasty subsection of human culture about men chasing after women for the sake of lust... it's fairly obvious that it is), and that's incredibly irritating.
Much of older human literature, and their philosophies, and their homespun sayings, and their stereotypes, revolved around the concept that human females were never supposed to admit that they wanted to make the beast with two backs with human males. Admitting it, you see, would have been tantamount to admitting... I don't know. The very concept "women have sexual desires" seemed to connect in their heads to "women are inferior sub-animal creatures who deserve to be treated like cows if they don't want sex and insects if they do." Why any supposedly heterosexual-dominant, perpetually-sexually-receptive, perpetually-sexually-desiring species would *ever* do such a thing with their culture is beyond me, as it sets things up so that, if females can never admit they want sex, the males *always* have to struggle to get the females to mate with them. And would never end up knowing whether their success was due to the females reciprocating their interest or just being physically stronger. I mean, I have to admit, occasionally the Q have been known to, hmm, vigorously challenge one another, where the end result of the challenge would determine the dominant partner in a joining... but the thing is, the Q are as strong as they want to be, and you can't join with someone and not know exactly how they feel about it. It's not that it's impossible for the Q to rape each other, it's just impossible to do it by *accident.*
Telling someone "You can't escape me, eventually I will have you for my mate" could be exciting, if the person really wants to be with you and is just playing hard to get for amusement's sake. If they really, truly *don't* want you, though, it's rather appalling. And humans aren't telepaths, so this paean to human single-mindedness is being played out in an environment where we know nothing about how the object of his lust felt, except that we know he was not a telepath and didn't know either. If someone is bound by culture to reject you whether they want you or not, knocking down some of their barriers and persuading them that they may as well give in to their desires because you're not going to stop pestering them is a perfectly legitimate seduction technique *if* they really do want you, but if you can't read their mind, how would you know?
Now, if this was expressed as a naked celebration of power, that'd be one thing. Nature is red in tooth and claw, and reproduction can be a dark and dangerous thing. I'm fine with a poem saying "I'm going to defeat you and take what I want regardless of how you feel about it"... but not when it's masquerading as a *love* poem. And not when the person writing the poem is one of the very people responsible for the ridiculous notion held by human culture that love is ennobling, uplifting, wondrous, that all things are made better with love, that love is so splendid that anything in its name is justified... while at the same time making the argument that the statement "I will never stop chasing you until I have conquered you" is, in fact, an expression of this oh-so-noble emotion.
You cannot have it both ways. Either love is an uplifting and joyous thing that mutually benefits both parties, in which case, it needs to actually benefit both parties, and metaphors that describe it as conquest, or a pursuit, are out of place (and for that matter so is a philosophy that says that one party isn't actually allowed to tell you what she thinks of the idea or if it would actually be of benefit to her), or love is a rapacious and selfish commendeering of the physical and/or emotional resources of another being for one's own personal benefit, in which case, just admit that it's selfish and violent and not noble in the slightest.
(It's actually possible that the poet was well aware of the utter contradictions in the portrayal he was writing, but until I feel like going and asking him, which, to be honest, I simply don't care enough about the poem to bother with, I will continue to assume that like most humans, he was utterly ignorant of basic logic when it came smack up against his culturally induced prejudices.)
Prompt 368: "It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,-
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all."
--Life in a Love, Robert Browning
You know, I'd consider this a rare example of humans actually managing to say something profound if I hadn't read the whole poem.
Taken out of context, this quote suggests that the point to life is to keep striving, to keep chasing after something. It's a similar sentiment to another quote from a human: "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Given that we, ourselves, have spent a good bit of time in denial of this basic concept, it's rather amazing to me that a species as limited and pathetic as humans could realize it.
The point to life is the chase. To keep searching, to keep reaching for something new. To better yourself (which, unfortunately, gets exponentially harder the closer to perfection you get.) I, along with most of the Q, tried to pretend for millions of years that we *had* reached the pinnacle, that there was nothing more we needed to reach for... and I was miserable, and bored out of my mind, because stagnation is death and the Red Queen's Race applies to all sentient beings, not just the inferior ones. As soon as you stop running forward you slide backward. Even if you are immortal and omnipotent.
So this sounds like a great sentiment. Except that I've read the whole poem, and what it's actually about is some obnoxious human man gloating over how he's going to keep chasing some human woman who sounds like she probably doesn't want anything to do with him (it doesn't *have* to be a man and a woman, but since it was written by a man, in a time period of human history where it's highly unlikely he'd have admitted to writing about another man, and it fits into a whole nasty subsection of human culture about men chasing after women for the sake of lust... it's fairly obvious that it is), and that's incredibly irritating.
Much of older human literature, and their philosophies, and their homespun sayings, and their stereotypes, revolved around the concept that human females were never supposed to admit that they wanted to make the beast with two backs with human males. Admitting it, you see, would have been tantamount to admitting... I don't know. The very concept "women have sexual desires" seemed to connect in their heads to "women are inferior sub-animal creatures who deserve to be treated like cows if they don't want sex and insects if they do." Why any supposedly heterosexual-dominant, perpetually-sexually-receptive, perpetually-sexually-desiring species would *ever* do such a thing with their culture is beyond me, as it sets things up so that, if females can never admit they want sex, the males *always* have to struggle to get the females to mate with them. And would never end up knowing whether their success was due to the females reciprocating their interest or just being physically stronger. I mean, I have to admit, occasionally the Q have been known to, hmm, vigorously challenge one another, where the end result of the challenge would determine the dominant partner in a joining... but the thing is, the Q are as strong as they want to be, and you can't join with someone and not know exactly how they feel about it. It's not that it's impossible for the Q to rape each other, it's just impossible to do it by *accident.*
Telling someone "You can't escape me, eventually I will have you for my mate" could be exciting, if the person really wants to be with you and is just playing hard to get for amusement's sake. If they really, truly *don't* want you, though, it's rather appalling. And humans aren't telepaths, so this paean to human single-mindedness is being played out in an environment where we know nothing about how the object of his lust felt, except that we know he was not a telepath and didn't know either. If someone is bound by culture to reject you whether they want you or not, knocking down some of their barriers and persuading them that they may as well give in to their desires because you're not going to stop pestering them is a perfectly legitimate seduction technique *if* they really do want you, but if you can't read their mind, how would you know?
Now, if this was expressed as a naked celebration of power, that'd be one thing. Nature is red in tooth and claw, and reproduction can be a dark and dangerous thing. I'm fine with a poem saying "I'm going to defeat you and take what I want regardless of how you feel about it"... but not when it's masquerading as a *love* poem. And not when the person writing the poem is one of the very people responsible for the ridiculous notion held by human culture that love is ennobling, uplifting, wondrous, that all things are made better with love, that love is so splendid that anything in its name is justified... while at the same time making the argument that the statement "I will never stop chasing you until I have conquered you" is, in fact, an expression of this oh-so-noble emotion.
You cannot have it both ways. Either love is an uplifting and joyous thing that mutually benefits both parties, in which case, it needs to actually benefit both parties, and metaphors that describe it as conquest, or a pursuit, are out of place (and for that matter so is a philosophy that says that one party isn't actually allowed to tell you what she thinks of the idea or if it would actually be of benefit to her), or love is a rapacious and selfish commendeering of the physical and/or emotional resources of another being for one's own personal benefit, in which case, just admit that it's selfish and violent and not noble in the slightest.
(It's actually possible that the poet was well aware of the utter contradictions in the portrayal he was writing, but until I feel like going and asking him, which, to be honest, I simply don't care enough about the poem to bother with, I will continue to assume that like most humans, he was utterly ignorant of basic logic when it came smack up against his culturally induced prejudices.)