Religiotic

It's fine to use a known religion as your preferred ontological self-expression. I'm not against it. Unfortunately, more often than not, people get caught up in the semantics of their flowery words and concepts and lose track of the original intent in their "philosophy". Then it becomes a thing, a monster, a mob mentality that's bigger than its purveyors. Here you have Christianity, a concept whose very existence specifically sets out to contradict and confine its own semantics. It's like raping yourself. Judge not lest ye be judged? And the first thing, the most frequent thing, most Christians can do is start a war against those who would not fall prey to their witnessing. Paradoxical right? Jacque Lacan says that language, being a symbolic representation meant to approximate reality, creates a divide in the mind that separates us from fully understanding that reality. This chasm, if you will, is the hole that would be filled, or the anonymous desire that lives in everyone and drives us to question our existence. Thus the paradox; we can't fully understand our reality if we don't use language to define its components and once we've done that we'll never fully understand reality. Now consider atheists. I liken the self-professed atheist (which I spent the better part of my life being) to a counter-racist. They're so concerned in the belief of an absence of god that their personal philosophy becomes an attack on the belief in its presence. Both sides have made their decision about what the end result is, and so will go on choosing to ignore everything in the middle. Both are believers. And if either side had the least bit of ethical understanding, neither would know what to do with the foundation of lies they'd built. The proof and disproof of possible historical events is completely irrelevant when talking about the concept of an Unmoved Mover. So why are they so concerned with finding Noah's Ark or disproving the existence of Jesus? These efforts are futile. We must first start at the beginning and then start there again and again. Instead they start where the last generation left off, with no foundation for understanding the whys and hows. Start from the epistemology and work your way up. Then feel free to give your findings all the flowery absurd names you want. It's not like you're going to come to understand reality anyway. But at least there would be less confusion. For instance when a Pentecostal pastor I know asked "If God gave you permission to hate something what would you choose?" and then people answered it. Doesn't that imply that whatever your answer is probably something you already hate it? And what is hate anyway? I would've swore this was his idea of a trick question. Trap the sheep and show them the error of their ways sort of thing. Nope. Wasn't. Seems counter-intuitive as far as spirituality goes, right? But that's my point. Religion (or anti-religions which are religions in their own right) does not equal spirituality. Religion in and of itself is an institution. And institutions never get anything right.

Bow Wow Chicka Bow Wow Chicka Bow Wow

The Long Awaited Antichrist Review

First. My friends are pussies. Second. Great film, phenomenal directing and editing, a little weak on the story line. Over all I give this movie 4 out of 5 Netflix stars. For the most part, the more graphic scenes were done with exquisite taste in my opinion. Granted, full on mutilation without any pansy cutaways is my idea of a good time. In fact I might be the last person whose movie review you'd want to take seriously. Lets face it, I have a unique perspective. Also, I really enjoyed the more artistic symbolism going on in the film, even when it led down a dead end road. I would encourage you to see Antichrist without hesitation. Lars Von Trier is a mighty fine Danish filmmaker, and there are several other titles directed by him that I'd advise you to investigate. But today, dear Travelers, I'd like to address the real issue. What upset my grown male friends so much about this movie?

The film starts with our two main characters, a married couple played by Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, in the throws of wild love making as their infant child escapes his crib and crawls to a window, tumbling to his death. The remainder of the film depicts the two in their grieving process. Willem Dafoe's character is a psychologist who thinks he knows how to better care for his wife than an objective party. He takes her to their summer cabin to face her fears, and a psychological and metaphysical tale unfolds. The movie does create a reality that is disarming and unsettling by way of symbolic figures and images not necessarily integral to the plot. I believe these elements are meant to leave the common empathic viewer in a weakened state prior to the more violent scenes that occurr near the end of the film.

SPOILER ALERT: From this point forward I will discuss scenes in the movie you might not want to know about before seeing it, if you're into that kind of thing.

There are two said scenes that I will expound upon now. The first of which, and seemingly the more upsetting for my friends, is where after spiraling into a state of mental duress the woman lures her husband to a tool shed and they begin to get hot and heavy. She pushes him down and hammers him in the groin with a heavy log. Then she procedes to "finish him off" with her hand as he lies unconcious on the floor. When he climaxes, instead of a fount of pearly white semen, what emerges is blood. Gross? Sure. The second of the two scenes occurs after much more descension into the abyss of madness. The woman takes to her clitoris with a pair of scissors, cutting off the more important bits. It's clearly not real. My friends were convinced that a woman had actually done this to herself, which makes me question how many vaginas they've actually seen. Now I know these scenes are disturbing. I wasn't laughing through the movie. But traumatizing? I was so confused by my friends' reactions after having seen it for myself. I mean these guys have seen Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q, and those films were leaps and bounds worse in their uncut, never released to American audiences versions. So I thought and I thought and I thought. And the only thing I could come up with is that they were upset that this level of violence was committed by a woman. Where as in most very violent films the violence is committed by a man. Perhaps the sadism toward that which is sexual, not just sexual sadism but actual brutality against the very concept of sex, was alarming for them.

To take it a step further, this film focused heavily on some meta-ethical differences in men and women. Things like how men and women internalize guilt and what role women tend to assume when in the presence of men. It even broached the scary uncharted territory of what happens when the dynamic between man and woman no longer recognizes social norm, but becomes a nihilistic frenzy of action and despair. And, symbolically, what happens psychologically when you rid the two of their most basic defining elements: their genitals. While I doubt that the director really intended all of this commentary on the human condition, I found it very interesting to see how the core themes were in some ways manifested in audience reaction.

So I ask for your opinions dear Travelers.* If you've seen the flick, what was your take on it? What do you suppose would cause such contrasting response from males and females to this type of violence?

*Sparkles <3

Prometheus Luther King, Jr.

“You can’t change the world.”

I’m not sure why we hear this said, why we say it, or why we so often feel inclined to believe it.

First let me pause in order to point out that, although it is a common misconception, I’m not an optimist. Rather, what you might call me is “good-natured.”

I make the distinction, traveler, to give you the opportunity to dissuade yourself from tuning out what you might have regarded as the ravings of a rose-colored woman.

You’re actually influencing the world in every interaction you have, perhaps for the better, for the worse, or maybe neither. Truly, it would be difficult to say. Nonetheless, my approach will ever be to remain aware that just because I might not make a difference, or I might not be able to tell if I’ve made a difference, I desire to seek after that which is just.