I hate musicals, they make me want to find a long pointy thing to pierce my eardrums and poke my eyes out. It's not the case with Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, a masterpiece of atmosphere and animation. What makes Nightmare Before Christmas so revealing to me is the way it shows people inside out, with the monsters outside and the goodness inside. While our society advertises good looking Botox® faces, big silicone boobs and perfect white teeth, what makes the news are the monsters inside, when they come out and commit weirdness or atrocities.
Being born with the social Kryptonite called "Sensitivity", I can tell it comes along with a special X-Ray vision allowing me to see the monster inside people - even inside myself, much like everyone can see them in Tim Burton's masterpiece. Some of these hideous selves, we soon will have to face them in crowds, either in malls, office parties or family gatherings, while trying to go through the most pressuring, expensive period of the year.
For sensitive people, Christmas is way more frightening than Halloween. During that Christmas rush, give people your best smile, give them a little bit of your time or even just some more breathing space, so they feel that even the most estranged freaks are worth of attention.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Euthanasium
From the all too real Japanese 'Seppuku' ritual to the futuristic 'Suicide Booth' Futurama fans learned about in the very first episode of the series, suicide always was a hot topic that leaves almost no one indifferent. Suicide is seen, after all, as murder's lil' sister.
The rituals surrounding someone's death are not news. We humans give the death of other beings significance. It is a way for us to express, to channel out our deepest when pitted at the hardest fact of life: it ends. Failing to grasp what it is to be no more, humans pictured it glorious and even made up stories and Gods, so we do not feel so bad about it. Dead people are most of the time way greater than they were when alive.
I, for one, chose a long time ago to focus on my life instead of my death. To the question "Is life worth it?", my answer is "Only if I can make it worth living.". It is my own responsibility to give my existence meanings. If I were to let others do that, I would be, I believe, powerless and living a lie. What if I cannot make my life worth living anymore?
Suffering happens. Inner agony. Detachment. The reasons for an individual to lose interest in the pursuit of life are too numerous and personal to start listing them here. Since it is my opinion that nobody should endure suffering they do not consent to, I consider suicide as a worthy and natural choice.
"Oh", some will say, "you have no heart, no soul! What about those left behind to mourn?". First, one day or the other, every human dies. If you happen to know them, chances are you will mourn them anyway. Also, if you love them and you have just a bit of common sense, how can you be so egoist, to rather have them living in pain for your own comfort?
What I do not agree with is, people committing suicide in their homes, where their family will have to cope with the gruesome sight and removal of the mortal remains. It is a cruel thing to do. It has potential life shattering consequences. Go ahead, people, end your own life if you think it is best for you. Please, help the others keep going. You feel like having a revenge? Write a mean letter to them, it will do more than enough.
What I do not agree with, also, is that so many people have not the means to commit suicide in a clean, sure way. Physicians and nurses are forbidden to assist suicide and many countries forbid it to all. Short of options, many suicides involve social costs statistics cannot cover. A policeman once told me that many accidents were in fact suicides. Car accident with no skid marks leading to frontal collision with either a solid landmark or an incoming truck is the most common plausible scenario.
The movie 'Soylent Green' features what I would call an Euthanasium, a place where a human being could end one's life with as much dignity and comfort as possible. What prevents us from offering such an option to everyone? Possible mistakes? Abuses? They happen anyway with everything else we have invented, including religion. The only reason I can see that prevents us to fully embrace death as a part of life is our own immaturity, our teenish dream to live forever.
The rituals surrounding someone's death are not news. We humans give the death of other beings significance. It is a way for us to express, to channel out our deepest when pitted at the hardest fact of life: it ends. Failing to grasp what it is to be no more, humans pictured it glorious and even made up stories and Gods, so we do not feel so bad about it. Dead people are most of the time way greater than they were when alive.
I, for one, chose a long time ago to focus on my life instead of my death. To the question "Is life worth it?", my answer is "Only if I can make it worth living.". It is my own responsibility to give my existence meanings. If I were to let others do that, I would be, I believe, powerless and living a lie. What if I cannot make my life worth living anymore?
Suffering happens. Inner agony. Detachment. The reasons for an individual to lose interest in the pursuit of life are too numerous and personal to start listing them here. Since it is my opinion that nobody should endure suffering they do not consent to, I consider suicide as a worthy and natural choice.
"Oh", some will say, "you have no heart, no soul! What about those left behind to mourn?". First, one day or the other, every human dies. If you happen to know them, chances are you will mourn them anyway. Also, if you love them and you have just a bit of common sense, how can you be so egoist, to rather have them living in pain for your own comfort?
What I do not agree with is, people committing suicide in their homes, where their family will have to cope with the gruesome sight and removal of the mortal remains. It is a cruel thing to do. It has potential life shattering consequences. Go ahead, people, end your own life if you think it is best for you. Please, help the others keep going. You feel like having a revenge? Write a mean letter to them, it will do more than enough.
What I do not agree with, also, is that so many people have not the means to commit suicide in a clean, sure way. Physicians and nurses are forbidden to assist suicide and many countries forbid it to all. Short of options, many suicides involve social costs statistics cannot cover. A policeman once told me that many accidents were in fact suicides. Car accident with no skid marks leading to frontal collision with either a solid landmark or an incoming truck is the most common plausible scenario.
The movie 'Soylent Green' features what I would call an Euthanasium, a place where a human being could end one's life with as much dignity and comfort as possible. What prevents us from offering such an option to everyone? Possible mistakes? Abuses? They happen anyway with everything else we have invented, including religion. The only reason I can see that prevents us to fully embrace death as a part of life is our own immaturity, our teenish dream to live forever.
Friday, November 7, 2008
The oldest game
Was life simpler when you were a child? Maybe it looked like it. I would be surprised if you told me that your life before and your life today look the same to you. What changed? Some say adulthood begins with the arrival of real responsibilities. There may be another explanation.
According to the Uncommon Knowledge psychology discussion forum, dissociation is
In my search for greater understanding, many sources indicated that dissociation does not have to be unconscious or used as a mean of self defense against heavy traumas. Children are known to use dissociation freely through their creativity. Good actors, also, use dissociation to enter their characters' skin.
A way simpler word encompasses this phenomenon: pretend. What a wonderful tool pretending is! In fact, if kids allow themselves to pretend freely through their games (tea party with Teddy!), we adults also pretend on a daily basis, in a more covert fashion. Adults are just a bit pickier, is all, because they cling harder to their own and hard earned identity. Identity is a frame of reference that defines the relation of the me with reality.
Whenever you read a good book or enjoy watching a movie, even when you do the lightsaber's sound, a part of you is pretending. Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games is also a superb example of adults pretending, though many find this antic extreme and childish. Extreme and less childish are the games of pretend some adults revel into, in relation with sex: bondage, domination/submission, cross dressing, erotic hypnosis, role playing (not the same as 'roleplaying'), etc.
Some also refer to this behavior as escape, as it allows individuals to retreat from the daily stress and enjoy life through a less rigid persona. Systematically escaping through an activity can itself become problematic, as it leaves the source of stress untouched, unsolved. Workaholics come to mind.
Use of recreational drugs procures a way to alter perceptions of self and the world around, becoming a great facilitator for dissociation. That facilitation is part of the psychological addiction to mind altering substances. Hardcore alcoholics and addicts who live their lives under effect may be in fact altering their personality, even splitting it from their unwanted sober self, in an attempt to find either confidence or shelter from life's duress, imaginary or real. Not that it brings happiness to anyone, usually.
Can dissociation help to reach happiness? As all parts of a whole individual, it can, given one was to understand it, exercise it and use it wisely. Go ahead, break the mold of your own identity, grow wings and fly! Dare to meditate, dream, create. Step aside of yourself and see the world differently, renewed, even if only for a short moment. The world is a stage where you have the power to write parts of your own script.
According to the Uncommon Knowledge psychology discussion forum, dissociation is
"the unconscious process of separating certain thoughts or behaviours from a person's identity or belief system."What does that mean? In less complicated words, it means that the human mind is able to develop at sets of separate beliefs, memories and behaviours. Critical examples of that are split personalities.
In my search for greater understanding, many sources indicated that dissociation does not have to be unconscious or used as a mean of self defense against heavy traumas. Children are known to use dissociation freely through their creativity. Good actors, also, use dissociation to enter their characters' skin.
A way simpler word encompasses this phenomenon: pretend. What a wonderful tool pretending is! In fact, if kids allow themselves to pretend freely through their games (tea party with Teddy!), we adults also pretend on a daily basis, in a more covert fashion. Adults are just a bit pickier, is all, because they cling harder to their own and hard earned identity. Identity is a frame of reference that defines the relation of the me with reality.
Whenever you read a good book or enjoy watching a movie, even when you do the lightsaber's sound, a part of you is pretending. Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games is also a superb example of adults pretending, though many find this antic extreme and childish. Extreme and less childish are the games of pretend some adults revel into, in relation with sex: bondage, domination/submission, cross dressing, erotic hypnosis, role playing (not the same as 'roleplaying'), etc.
Some also refer to this behavior as escape, as it allows individuals to retreat from the daily stress and enjoy life through a less rigid persona. Systematically escaping through an activity can itself become problematic, as it leaves the source of stress untouched, unsolved. Workaholics come to mind.
Use of recreational drugs procures a way to alter perceptions of self and the world around, becoming a great facilitator for dissociation. That facilitation is part of the psychological addiction to mind altering substances. Hardcore alcoholics and addicts who live their lives under effect may be in fact altering their personality, even splitting it from their unwanted sober self, in an attempt to find either confidence or shelter from life's duress, imaginary or real. Not that it brings happiness to anyone, usually.
Can dissociation help to reach happiness? As all parts of a whole individual, it can, given one was to understand it, exercise it and use it wisely. Go ahead, break the mold of your own identity, grow wings and fly! Dare to meditate, dream, create. Step aside of yourself and see the world differently, renewed, even if only for a short moment. The world is a stage where you have the power to write parts of your own script.
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