Beauty of destruction

I thought this went well with the post about what is enticing about cruelty or destroying things. From the Tor Blog:

Do not let Martin Klimas near your grandmother’s china cabinet. The German artist “explores the beauty that comes out of chaos” by using a strobe light and a single camera frame to photograph the moment of impact when a porcelain figure drops. He wants to “explore relationships with time, beauty and destruction,” and apparently also explore the relationship between a dragon and the floor. You can see the entire set here, and check out some of his other work here.

Cruelty

A reader asked me, "what's with the cruelty?" I responded:

A good question. Have you never felt the urge to destroy? You probably have, but didn't think of it that way. Let's say there is a piece of cake sitting out on a counter -- perfect little piece of cake. What do you feel like doing to that cake? Isn't that destruction?

If it were possible to both have our cake and eat it too, then things might have worked out differently between you and your socio. Because that isn't possible and because your socio chose one way and not the other, you perceive/experience cruelty. But what is the use of a perfect little piece of cake that just sits out there forever on the counter, never to be eaten?

More on cruelty

Keeping in line with yesterday's post, from The American Conservative, "The Walking Boy", a true story about one man's experience being a boy-racist because he hung out with racist friends and he couldn't help himself?:

All I can say in my defense is that I never hurled a stone at him, or shouted abuse. But I stood by, many a time, as others did those things, and I neither walked away nor averted my eyes. I never held anyone’s cloak, but then I was never asked to. I watched it all, gripping a rock in my hand as though I were preparing to use it — so that no one would turn on me with anger or contempt — and I always stood a little behind them so they couldn’t see that I wasn’t throwing anything. I was smaller and younger than the rest of them, and they were smaller and younger than him. In my memory he seems almost a full-grown man; I suppose he was eleven or twelve. 

We called him Nigger Jeff. I have never doubted that Jeff was indeed his name, though as I write this account I find myself asking, for the first time, how we could have known: I never heard any of the boys speak to him except in cries of hatred, and I never knew anyone else who knew him. It occurs to me now that, if his name was Jeff, there had to have been at least a brief moment of human contact and exchange — perhaps not even involving Jeff, perhaps one of the boys’ mothers talked to Jeff’s mother. But we grasp what’s available for support or stability. It’s bad to call a boy Nigger Jeff, but worse still to call him just Nigger. A name counts for something.
***
Sometimes I would be playing alone in my yard, and would look up to see Jeff walking by. My heart would then buck in my chest, but he never turned his head to acknowledge my presence. At the time I wondered if he knew that I never threw rocks at him, that I didn’t curse him — for, if my memory is not appeasing my conscience, I avoided that crime as well. But now I realize that he neither knew nor cared about the individual members of our cruel impromptu assembly: with rocks in our hands we were just mobile, noisy impediments to his enjoyment of some of the blessings of life — friendship, comfort, safety — but when unarmed and solitary we posed no threat and therefore, for Jeff, lacked significant substance. He kept his eyes on that day’s small but valued prize, and kept on walking. 

Why didn’t I throw rocks at him? Why didn’t I curse him? Well, obviously, because I felt sorry for him. But not sorry enough to walk away, or to turn my back on the scene; and not nearly sorry enough to stay a friend’s hand or demand his silence. I was young, and small, and timid. I saw one valid option: to stand as a member of the chorus, grasping the rock that was the badge of our common identity. There’s no point now in trying to distinguish myself from the others. But I can’t help it.

First, is it really true that "Nigger Jeff" is better than "nigger"? Arguably worse, right? Because it's both acknowledging his humanity (that he is a human boy with a name) and in the same breath saying that he is a lesser form of humanity. I myself prefer less personal, nameless insults, but maybe I'm not typical that way.

This sort of bullying is not unique to just children, but adults can be equally childish about it. Mainstream media trades in it, despite all of their recent anti bullying talk. One of my friends was recently remarking at how it's amazing that Lindsay Lohan has put up with all of the abuse -- for the past 10 years or so there have probably been no fewer than five negative articles/posts/tweets per day about her. And Lindsay Lohan is not even the most hated human alive, not by a landslide, but apparently she just happens to have a particular suite of personality characteristics that make her a perfect storm for gossip? Bullying, really. But let's argue for a second that she brought it on herself (should that matter?). But when do you finally leave someone alone? Does that give people moral carte blanche to engage in shaming and other ugly behavior about her personal life? But no one really questions their right to do so, I hadn't even noticed it myself until my friend mentioned it. And why are people so eager to engage in ugly behavior in the first place that they're looking for socially "legitimate" opportunities to throw stones?

The American Conservative story reminded of the creepy Shirley Jackson short (fictional but not so far-fetched) story, "The Lottery." Someone gets chosen completely randomly to get stoned, but that doesn't matter -- once the person became marked, everything was fair game because they had the sanction of the group.

Children = creepy monsters

I have often said that sociopaths are not difficult to understand, they're basically four year olds in an adult's body. They manipulate like four year olds. The world revolves around them like four year olds, but they can also be genuinely interested/curious about the people and things around them like four year olds. They can be surprisingly naive about certain things and tactlessly blunt. They don't have a great understanding of their own emotional worlds or the emotional worlds of others, nor do they have great emotional regulation. They will throw tantrums, sometimes violent, and they can sometimes be hard to reason with, but they still rationally respond to incentives. Four year olds can be incredibly cruel and devious. They can also be very creepy, as illustrated by this BuzzFeed article, "The 13 Creepiest Things A Child Has Ever Said To A Parent," from a longer reddit thread.

Worth reading in their entirety, some of my favorites include:

• "I'm imagining the waves of blood rushing over me."
• "I was tucking in my two year old. He said "Good bye dad." I said, "No, we say good night." He said "I know. But this time its good bye.""
• "My 3 year old daughter stood next to her new born brother and looked at him for awhile then turned and looked at me and said, "Daddy its a monster..we should bury it.""
• "Death is the poor man's doctor."

Scientology: L. Ron Hubbard

From Medusa (a reader):

Not sure if you have ever covered Scientology, but now's a good time as any.

I found this 1983 Penthouse interview with L. Ron Hubbard's son to be extremely fitting to the blog.

Here's a little taste:

"Hubbard: Well, he didn't really want people killed, because how could you really destroy them if you just killed them? What he wanted to do was to destroy their lives, their families, their reputations, their jobs, their money, everything. My father was the type of person who, when it came to destruction, wanted to keep you alive for as long as possible, to torture you, punish you. If he chose to destroy you, he would love to see you lying in the gutter, strung out on booze and drugs, rolling in your own vomit, with your wife and children gone forever: no job, no money. He'd enjoy walking by and kicking you and saying to other people, "Look what I did to this man!" He's the kind of man who would pull the wings off flies and watch them stumble around. You see, this fits in with his Scientology beliefs, also. He felt that if you just died, your spirit would go out and get another body to live in. By destroying an enemy that way, you'd be doing him a favor. You were letting him out from under the thumb of L. Ron. Hubbard, you see?"

Many other quotes just as good, worth the read.

Sociopaths in literature: Our lady of pain

This is quoted in Hervey Cleckley's "Mask of Sanity" (available in full here), in reference to a woman who manages to cause pain and destruction wherever she goes without ever seeming touched by it herself:


She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
She hath hidden and marred and made sad
The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
Of gods that were goodly and glad.
She slays, and her hands are not bloody;
She moves as a moon in the wane,
White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
Our Lady of Pain.

A. C. Swinburne
"Dolores"