History is the Present in the Age of Broken Hearts

[tagonist]

I'm rewatching the X-Files. On VHS tapes, which means that instead of a complete season, have a set of selected episodes "chosen by fans" most of which have to do with the larger story arc- government collaboration with aliens to create a hybrid species (or, later, humans immune to the black oil) that can survive colonization. The house only has

Comments

Re: Aaron

[sophiism]

1.) Violence has a language. It matters how it is performed, and in what context. (This is why I tend to take notice of political assassinations.)

2.) "We live as if other people matter. There are a lot of ways to lose touch with that besides shooting up your employers."

Sometimes I wonder if some of this has to do with the souring of the myth of the self-made man. It's an impossible standard in which to live.

3.) Just in general, whether or not we choose to act out our disappointment, there is a malaise in our country. 9/11 did seem to set it off. But I think the potential had been there all along. Part of it does seem to be economic in origin. We work too much. We spend too much time in valueless escapism. And we console ourselves with gadgets and cheap goods. Our profound sense of individualism doesn't seem to have made us very happy.

4.) I think you are correct. We have lost our narrative. The stories we tell about ourselves matter. And nobody is prepared to hear that bad things sometimes happen to good people. No, because we are told just the opposite, that we get what we deserve. And it allows us to accept what we've done to the rest of the world, but not what we've done to ourselves.

Re: Aaron

[tagonist]

In re #4 (the rest will have to wait for chores)- Part of why this entry is so obtusely written is that I couldn't actually decide where I fell on this question. One possibility is what you say. The other, though, is that we have a strong, potent, and possibly explosive narrative, which is this: "we have no narrative; we lost it through diffidence, and our own weakness in the face of active subversion." That there is an internal contradiction in this story makes it all the more dangerous. What you say- cheap goods and escapism- are the scourges with which the penitent have flogged themselves since anyone started writing things down, certainly the

Re: Aaron

[tagonist]

This Mara, by the way (I had no idea there were so many):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_(demon)