Friday, June 15, 2007
Tending to a lazy and distanced skepticism from Sci-Fi movies, I was, somehow, intrigued by this plot-device : You take away the desire and/or compulsion to be aggressive from an arbitrary community of a species / humans in hope of eradicating violence, you find that it loses the will to live; the animals/people withdraw from each other and let themselves die.
Isn't the pleasure mechanism wired, permanently and reinforcingly, to that which relentlessly propagates itself - life? And do we not derive pleasure from the prey of our predation? Who was it who said that Nature has organised itself "naturally" into cycles of predation?
Why the shock, horror, dismay and despair at seeing yourself as you are? We would like to see ourselves, being capable somehow of acting through what seems our own agency, to alter this law unto our singular benefit. Are we so assured that there is nothing preying on our minds?
Isn't the pleasure mechanism wired, permanently and reinforcingly, to that which relentlessly propagates itself - life? And do we not derive pleasure from the prey of our predation? Who was it who said that Nature has organised itself "naturally" into cycles of predation?
Why the shock, horror, dismay and despair at seeing yourself as you are? We would like to see ourselves, being capable somehow of acting through what seems our own agency, to alter this law unto our singular benefit. Are we so assured that there is nothing preying on our minds?
