Erratum

I figured out that the previous post was a falsehood yesterday about an hour after clicking publish, but I totally forgot to post it. I swear, really.

The awesome idea I had this morning

“The Parental as Alien” (Cool, right?)

I was thinking about cults, ideologies and other hegemonizing discourses; and how the creepy people who are into them can seem, from outside, like an alien force. And obviously the intense effort that is spent on the collaborative psychoses, like ufology and similar pursuits, is indicative of what kind of need it is that can drive people to those extremes of belief.
There’s an almost essential similarity between the feeling that people who believe have, about why they have to believe. Of course, I think those kinds of drives and needs are ultimately daddy/mommy-issues.

And honestly, I can’t remember how my brrrain managed to invert this whole clotted tangle of orphaned memes. But somehow I imagined a flip of perspective: from the usual one, where a person is obliged to work himself to death in order to please daddy/mommy enough so that He/She will keep the scary aliens (who want to eat me) away from me; to a new one where it feels as if the dysfunctional power dynamic between the parental and me forces me to become an alien, which through the feedback loop is encouraged by the parental, and therefore, after making me wonder why it is that the parental wants me to be an alien leads me to conclude that the parental is itself the alien. QED (har). So anyway from that perspective it makes some sense that people who feel they truly believe look like aliens, and to regard the images of whoever it is that serves as the father figure for their particular creed, be it religious, political or economical, as images of the Alien. Not that those dudes were aliens IRL of course.

[sorry for not making any fucking sense. this flu seems to be haunting me again. inquire within comments.]

Braid

Interview with the developers of the most anticipated game of this morning.

[via RPS]

Note on humility

Humility is a confusing virtue, and easily misunderstood because so many people are doing it wrong (sorry). The public face of humility is humility towards that which is bigger; which is obvious and easy because it is crushingly ingrained in anybody who was raised by another being who is bigger than they are. I’d be interested to know if there’s an argument that can convince me that this kind of humility is free, and freely expressible, ’cause I don’t think it is.

Humility gets more interesting if you discover that you can be humble towards whatever and whoever is the same size as you; and even more so when you extend this to whatever is smaller than you. That’s something that I think Laozi talked a bit about. It’s still confusing, because it’s so tiny, and you become quite tiny with it; but I think it’s quite powerful, for some understanding of power at least.

Doug Loves Movies Again.

Finally!

So then.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that this blog will start here, and that the proximate cause of this is the performance I saw tonight, ‘The autopsy project’ by André Gingras.

I’m trying to remain resolutely indifferent towards the coming struggle with my committee of inner editors, so much so I don’t seem to have much resolve left. Let’s just say this’ll probably turn out for the best, or at least the bearable.