Well, not so much Vagina Dentata; I think that my second favorite Dread Cephalopod will have written quite enough about that by the time this is read. Instead, I want to talk about the phallic mirror to Vagina Dentata (that is, having teeth in your vagina). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it's a largely untouched subject, but I'm also hoping that it's a subject that is worth touching:
So
For me, Vagina Dentata is symbolically important due to the mythology surrounding it: Kai touches on this here It is also fascinating when you begin to look at real life mirrors of the concept of teeth, consumption, castration. So what of penises? What concept might match the castration fear of men, in women? Rape seems a very likely candidate, where men lose their ability to procreate, to parasite, to vamp, rape costs women their choice of mate (biologically of great significance), and, although more briefly, women their ability to procreate (for procreation has been forced and cannot be held simultaneously). I feel like castration is feared more, taboo'd further, but I'll leave that for Kai to talk about. For my interests, rape and castration will be drawn parallel.
I jokingly considered a toothed penis, or a penis endowed with some other sense, when starting to think about this topic. This was the wrong approach. The phallus is already fanged, it needs no second row of teeth. The penetrative symbolism of the penis mirrors the vampires bite perfectly- a necessary connection in trying to understand the inherant sexuality of vampires. The penis infests, parasites; like the fang that turns a vampires victim, like the mosquito's needle which spreads malaria, men must infect others to prolong their survival (genetic). This simple fact is displayed brilliantly in numerous species, the most appropriate being that of the flatworm. Certain species of hermaphroditic flatworms compete in penis fencing, the loser is penetrated and forced to bear the child. In a sense, the loser is both made female and raped simultaneously, the victor becomes the father. I say the "loser" because child-bearing is a remarkable strain on the body, and requires a great deal of resources- the parasitism of a child on any body is harsh. As much as all men may subconsciously fear Vagina Dentata, of castration amidst ecstasy (natures cruelest switcheroo?), all women may just as easily fear the fanged touch of the phallic, perhaps should. Then, like men, women have cause to fear what we most desire, in fact, far MORE justification. In my experience, this is true.
/Main idea
So it comes to a wash. The fear goes both ways.
In that sense we (men) are all parasites- castration is our greatest fear because it robs us of our sole PURPOSE. But one other possibility has occurred to me as far as phobias so I want to start a thread: not to be crude, but things should leave the penis, not the other way around. The reverse is uncanny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candiru
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Non-Parasite Divergance two: What a nice day for a depressing poem
We are fragments of a shattered mirror
Rusted too long in a walled off room
We are the screws that hold the creaking floorboards
This house is our body, and we have become it's veins
Youth can only be seen from the corner of your eye
In dusty plastics and awful flower patterns
With sepia-drenched smiles, the frozen look out through a pinhole.
I find myself wistful of the days of simple blurs and vibrant colors
When I was so eager. to. be. and existence! was limitless
But now it seems to me that this is only an imitation
A wooden mask of some great hero, where only flecks of paint retain their splendor
As the crescent mouth creaks, years to scream, smiles perfectly.
Maybe I was just unlucky. Maybe other children knew to stay.
But there are no heroes here, no glory, significance, or reason
Only absurdity, and well-hid hints of inspiration.
How is it that I, who was never old, feel so removed from my youth?
Longing to forget all the causes that led to fights, to battle, to war
Wonder and abandon worn down by relentless clarity-
and heavy-ing step as the world comes into focus, dulled by itself
And with only itself to blame.
The dead stare off into a dark room with only questions
Always dieing, never reborn the same, they wake and never mourn themselves
Always dieing, and reborn
never themselves.
Rusted too long in a walled off room
We are the screws that hold the creaking floorboards
This house is our body, and we have become it's veins
Youth can only be seen from the corner of your eye
In dusty plastics and awful flower patterns
With sepia-drenched smiles, the frozen look out through a pinhole.
I find myself wistful of the days of simple blurs and vibrant colors
When I was so eager. to. be. and existence! was limitless
But now it seems to me that this is only an imitation
A wooden mask of some great hero, where only flecks of paint retain their splendor
As the crescent mouth creaks, years to scream, smiles perfectly.
Maybe I was just unlucky. Maybe other children knew to stay.
But there are no heroes here, no glory, significance, or reason
Only absurdity, and well-hid hints of inspiration.
How is it that I, who was never old, feel so removed from my youth?
Longing to forget all the causes that led to fights, to battle, to war
Wonder and abandon worn down by relentless clarity-
and heavy-ing step as the world comes into focus, dulled by itself
And with only itself to blame.
The dead stare off into a dark room with only questions
Always dieing, never reborn the same, they wake and never mourn themselves
Always dieing, and reborn
never themselves.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Parasites: Thought Experiment 2 Rough
Ian Terada
Thought Experiment 2
I wrote a rather long rough draft for this thought experiment, to which my friend Spencer posed the innocent enough question... “Why are vampires worth talking about?” Why indeed. Vampires aren't real (let's not go into what is “real” at this point, and take the phrase for it's conversational value). Unlike their superstitious creators, I know that vampires are the product of humanity, inspiration, imagination- that concept will increase in significance, hopefully, throughout this experiment. Naturally, this leads to some problems with discussing vampires, for one, imaginary things have no parameters (these we must enforce!) so to discuss them is futile, or at least circular, until you examine how they have been defined culturally, historically. From that it is possible to uncover something concrete- the imagination leaks, pools, seeps through the cracks into a measurable reality- and at that point the not real, the vampire in this case, is often much more influential than...well you or me. So, why are vampires worth talking about? Simple, and complex. Simply put, vampires are the parasite monster. More complexly, the vampire, as the parasite monster, is also the most disturbingly human, and for this reason understanding vampirism is essential in understanding humanity. We discuss the vampiric because the means to insight is a roundabout path.
So let's discuss vampires.
Human fear always manifests itself, courtesy of our boundless imaginations. This is the concept of the monstrous- always metamorphosing, custom fit to our unheimlich. Zombies, for example, maintain little resemblance to their voodoo origins, now the result of the super-virus plague that mimics chemical warfare or unstoppable STI's. Vampires have changed as well, the unchecked duality of sex and fear, of life and death (for the two are forever linked). Historically, vampires were linked to plague, death, reanimation, denial of heaven. Following this, victimization of virginity, purity, in a puritanical time. And now, we clearly see the trend of, as Rickel's points out, vampires becoming less gender specific (targets). Simultaneously, they are sexualized, hyper-masculine/feminine. Yes, I'm talking about Twilight. This is a cultural trend. Regrettable? Yes. Fascinating? Also a yes:
One of the prevalent themes of the earlier Vampire Lectures is that a true vampire must be invited in; that is, “there can be no vampirism without the desire to be vampirised.” This can be seen in most incarnations of vampirism, early novels almost uniformally speak of the doorway as a threshold which cannot be crossed by the dead. Even Stephanie Meyer's bastardization of vampire mythology gets this idea right, Bella invites her parasite in repeatedly before he finally gives her what she wants. Aside from that, of course, Twilight is such a vile misapplication of vampire lore that it won't be mentioned again anywhere in this experiment... (that's probably untrue, there can't be misapplications, only lazy thinking, so ignore what I said).
Anyway. This trait of parasitism, this restriction, is entirely unique to vampires. No other infection relies on the host for an invitation, no parasite knocks politely on the door. As much as vampires represent unstoppable plague, death of the other (doubling for death of the self?), and the uncanny, they are only a threat if allowed to be. Which begs the question, who would allow vampirism in? Who would see the shadowed figure on their doorstep and invite them inside? To put it another way, what human would willingly inflict themselves with the flu? Of course, we do this with vaccines all the time, inviting in a small (or dead) infection to strengthen our bodies against future threat. But vampirism is a one-way street, and the host gains nothing by having it's blood removed, to the great benefit of the parasite. Then consider it another way? What human being wouldn't willingly infect themselves with the flu, if it gave them eternal life. Again, this is too black and white: vampirism is a curse, not a blessing. At least, it is a curse according to any lore which is worth mention, and which has more or less defined vampirism in a historical sense. The new wave of vampirism, as featured in certain books, seems to view the state of living death as mildly uncomfortable; this makes the line between parasite and host incredibly thin, and the two sides a lot more transient. Vampirism becomes like a game of blob tag, in which each host, when infested, turns over to the parasite side and in turn works to infest more hosts. At the end of the game, however, the distinction is more or less unimportant. This is especially clear by how the sexuality of vampirism is over-exaggerated while the aspects of necrophilia that this would entail are minimized or completely ignored. The unsavory qualities of the Vampire distract from their re-tooling as glorified sex-symbols, so they have been trimmed down. This, quite frankly, is bullshit.
Without being not only dead, but death, a representation of mortality itself, a “vampire” is no longer a vampire. The true vampire is a parasite, needing life not only to survive, but also, like the phantasms, to make an impact. If drinking blood grants the dead the ability to speak, what does having blood, producing blood, entitle us too? We as living hosts are the creator of existence for the dead, but this forces us to place ourselves in the greater scheme of things. We, the living, borne from the living, supply for the once-alive. In this way, we pay our toll. And once we die, will we become the next to parasite? If vampires were real, they would become the final stage of life, as death itself; eternally parasitic, alive in a way that we are not (that is, endlessly), but dead in a way that everything alive must become. In this way, Vampires are uncanny because they force us to see “the dead and missing other” as ourselves. The vampire model assumes one very important thing: everything wants to be alive. Subconsciously, unconsciously, or blatantly conscious of it, life is something that the world gravitates to and around. The living want to stay living, the dead want to take life from the living. Even the non-living, what was never alive, and therefore not dead, non-consciously wants to be alive (I'm borrowing heavily from Bruno Schultz' Street of Crocodiles here, the concept itself is so drenched in polish lore that translation has proven problematic). If this simple fact is true, we return full circle to the all-important question: why would anyone invite a vampire in (or into themselves, sexually or otherwise). If vampires are not only dead but death, then invitation would seem to be counter-intuitive to human nature. Unnatural. Uncanny. Suicidal. All the traits which historically led to rebirth as a vampire in the first place. This would seem to indicate an insular nature to the un-dead (as opposed to the dead-dead, the non-animated), with the dead preying on the abnormal, willing living. This puts vampires at a direct opposition to Nancy's interrupter, who is endlessly a stranger, uninvited, unapologetically invasive. That doesn't make sense to me, placing such similar parasites at opposing ends based on such a technicality. I think vampires pose a much more interesting threat to the living, if we scrap that model and instead view vampires as interrupters by virtue of deceit. No one would invite a blood covered man with sharp fangs into their house, but most would accept a well-groomed, handsome (or at least charismatic) man inside. And who wouldn't respond to an invitation from a rich prince, where the invitation is reversed but acceptance seals the deal. When vampires can be anyone, they become just as deadly as a virus; after all, if we knew what air to breathe we wouldn't contract nearly as many illnesses. Like the serial killers and psychotics that many vampire myths probably originated from, a vampire in the midst is undetectable. Endlessly a parasite amidst the larger host body, already stuck in the matrix, and waiting.
Thought Experiment 2
I wrote a rather long rough draft for this thought experiment, to which my friend Spencer posed the innocent enough question... “Why are vampires worth talking about?” Why indeed. Vampires aren't real (let's not go into what is “real” at this point, and take the phrase for it's conversational value). Unlike their superstitious creators, I know that vampires are the product of humanity, inspiration, imagination- that concept will increase in significance, hopefully, throughout this experiment. Naturally, this leads to some problems with discussing vampires, for one, imaginary things have no parameters (these we must enforce!) so to discuss them is futile, or at least circular, until you examine how they have been defined culturally, historically. From that it is possible to uncover something concrete- the imagination leaks, pools, seeps through the cracks into a measurable reality- and at that point the not real, the vampire in this case, is often much more influential than...well you or me. So, why are vampires worth talking about? Simple, and complex. Simply put, vampires are the parasite monster. More complexly, the vampire, as the parasite monster, is also the most disturbingly human, and for this reason understanding vampirism is essential in understanding humanity. We discuss the vampiric because the means to insight is a roundabout path.
So let's discuss vampires.
Human fear always manifests itself, courtesy of our boundless imaginations. This is the concept of the monstrous- always metamorphosing, custom fit to our unheimlich. Zombies, for example, maintain little resemblance to their voodoo origins, now the result of the super-virus plague that mimics chemical warfare or unstoppable STI's. Vampires have changed as well, the unchecked duality of sex and fear, of life and death (for the two are forever linked). Historically, vampires were linked to plague, death, reanimation, denial of heaven. Following this, victimization of virginity, purity, in a puritanical time. And now, we clearly see the trend of, as Rickel's points out, vampires becoming less gender specific (targets). Simultaneously, they are sexualized, hyper-masculine/feminine. Yes, I'm talking about Twilight. This is a cultural trend. Regrettable? Yes. Fascinating? Also a yes:
One of the prevalent themes of the earlier Vampire Lectures is that a true vampire must be invited in; that is, “there can be no vampirism without the desire to be vampirised.” This can be seen in most incarnations of vampirism, early novels almost uniformally speak of the doorway as a threshold which cannot be crossed by the dead. Even Stephanie Meyer's bastardization of vampire mythology gets this idea right, Bella invites her parasite in repeatedly before he finally gives her what she wants. Aside from that, of course, Twilight is such a vile misapplication of vampire lore that it won't be mentioned again anywhere in this experiment... (that's probably untrue, there can't be misapplications, only lazy thinking, so ignore what I said).
Anyway. This trait of parasitism, this restriction, is entirely unique to vampires. No other infection relies on the host for an invitation, no parasite knocks politely on the door. As much as vampires represent unstoppable plague, death of the other (doubling for death of the self?), and the uncanny, they are only a threat if allowed to be. Which begs the question, who would allow vampirism in? Who would see the shadowed figure on their doorstep and invite them inside? To put it another way, what human would willingly inflict themselves with the flu? Of course, we do this with vaccines all the time, inviting in a small (or dead) infection to strengthen our bodies against future threat. But vampirism is a one-way street, and the host gains nothing by having it's blood removed, to the great benefit of the parasite. Then consider it another way? What human being wouldn't willingly infect themselves with the flu, if it gave them eternal life. Again, this is too black and white: vampirism is a curse, not a blessing. At least, it is a curse according to any lore which is worth mention, and which has more or less defined vampirism in a historical sense. The new wave of vampirism, as featured in certain books, seems to view the state of living death as mildly uncomfortable; this makes the line between parasite and host incredibly thin, and the two sides a lot more transient. Vampirism becomes like a game of blob tag, in which each host, when infested, turns over to the parasite side and in turn works to infest more hosts. At the end of the game, however, the distinction is more or less unimportant. This is especially clear by how the sexuality of vampirism is over-exaggerated while the aspects of necrophilia that this would entail are minimized or completely ignored. The unsavory qualities of the Vampire distract from their re-tooling as glorified sex-symbols, so they have been trimmed down. This, quite frankly, is bullshit.
Without being not only dead, but death, a representation of mortality itself, a “vampire” is no longer a vampire. The true vampire is a parasite, needing life not only to survive, but also, like the phantasms, to make an impact. If drinking blood grants the dead the ability to speak, what does having blood, producing blood, entitle us too? We as living hosts are the creator of existence for the dead, but this forces us to place ourselves in the greater scheme of things. We, the living, borne from the living, supply for the once-alive. In this way, we pay our toll. And once we die, will we become the next to parasite? If vampires were real, they would become the final stage of life, as death itself; eternally parasitic, alive in a way that we are not (that is, endlessly), but dead in a way that everything alive must become. In this way, Vampires are uncanny because they force us to see “the dead and missing other” as ourselves. The vampire model assumes one very important thing: everything wants to be alive. Subconsciously, unconsciously, or blatantly conscious of it, life is something that the world gravitates to and around. The living want to stay living, the dead want to take life from the living. Even the non-living, what was never alive, and therefore not dead, non-consciously wants to be alive (I'm borrowing heavily from Bruno Schultz' Street of Crocodiles here, the concept itself is so drenched in polish lore that translation has proven problematic). If this simple fact is true, we return full circle to the all-important question: why would anyone invite a vampire in (or into themselves, sexually or otherwise). If vampires are not only dead but death, then invitation would seem to be counter-intuitive to human nature. Unnatural. Uncanny. Suicidal. All the traits which historically led to rebirth as a vampire in the first place. This would seem to indicate an insular nature to the un-dead (as opposed to the dead-dead, the non-animated), with the dead preying on the abnormal, willing living. This puts vampires at a direct opposition to Nancy's interrupter, who is endlessly a stranger, uninvited, unapologetically invasive. That doesn't make sense to me, placing such similar parasites at opposing ends based on such a technicality. I think vampires pose a much more interesting threat to the living, if we scrap that model and instead view vampires as interrupters by virtue of deceit. No one would invite a blood covered man with sharp fangs into their house, but most would accept a well-groomed, handsome (or at least charismatic) man inside. And who wouldn't respond to an invitation from a rich prince, where the invitation is reversed but acceptance seals the deal. When vampires can be anyone, they become just as deadly as a virus; after all, if we knew what air to breathe we wouldn't contract nearly as many illnesses. Like the serial killers and psychotics that many vampire myths probably originated from, a vampire in the midst is undetectable. Endlessly a parasite amidst the larger host body, already stuck in the matrix, and waiting.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Non-Parasite Divergance 1: I'm getting very drunk this weekend
Routine will destroy us, if we let it.
The days speed by until they blur completely
And not one is distinguishable from the last.
These are the Tuesdays and the Wednesdays of life
Relegated to the past before they can happen,
Buffer space for when you can actually feel alive.
We all kill time waiting for a weekend to come
For the end, when we can die and be reborn.
They say we spend a third of our lives sleeping,
But I say we spend our whole lives struggling to wake up
Self-destruction is the only way we feel, anymore.
Mortality confirmed,
My fear of death gives way to a fear of living.
Why do I only feel
When I can no longer think?
The days speed by until they blur completely
And not one is distinguishable from the last.
These are the Tuesdays and the Wednesdays of life
Relegated to the past before they can happen,
Buffer space for when you can actually feel alive.
We all kill time waiting for a weekend to come
For the end, when we can die and be reborn.
They say we spend a third of our lives sleeping,
But I say we spend our whole lives struggling to wake up
Self-destruction is the only way we feel, anymore.
Mortality confirmed,
My fear of death gives way to a fear of living.
Why do I only feel
When I can no longer think?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Parasites; What is, like, reality, man?
In class, we've spent a lot of time discussing technology, and the ways in which it is changing, taking over, intruding, metamorpho-sizing us. The subject I want to discuss today is... a popular internet acronym, one that now seems to prevalent that I almost have to confer backronym status to it to remember what it actually stands for.
"AFK"
Technically it stands for Away From Keyboard, but AFK by itself pretty much just means away. Out. Not in the computer world, not in the internet. In reality. And that means that the "AFK"-er has become separated from the "AFK"-ee, disconnected. This raises a question for me: is there an outside, or is there just an "AFK"? And if there still is an outside, as a concept, how long will it be until "AFK" replaces it, where the reality of the internet and of technology actually supersedes the non-computer world?
I think that time is coming. Right now, I'm sitting on my bed, typing on my laptop. I can see everything in my room as I type this, but I'm interacting with none of it. Once I shift away from this keyboard, however, I feel part of the outside again. But to even call it outside supports the idea that technology is somehow the inside, the focus. The world is apocrypha, the computer is central. The change from computer to outside is very similar to another experience I frequently have, but for some reason I never connected the two until today... as a fairly introverted person, I spend a lot of time in my head, but am forced to put on airs of extroversion when other people intrude on my solitary nature (not to sound melodramatic here, I enjoy the intrusions most of the time). The shift in perception is similar. On the internet, I'm entirely in my head, in a way all internet persona's are an extension of my introverted mind. Not that I don't socialize and make use of the Internets social networking capabilities, far from it. Still, it's a very comfortable way to relax and recharge. Then something actually comes up, something intrudes, and I have to go AFK, and the world pushes in on me with things. With outside, with reality.
I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. AFK is an interruption, but it's an extremely organic one, as it serves as the transition between two mental states...
I have more, maybe. I'm not sure. For now my friend is here, and I have to work out.
AFK
"AFK"
Technically it stands for Away From Keyboard, but AFK by itself pretty much just means away. Out. Not in the computer world, not in the internet. In reality. And that means that the "AFK"-er has become separated from the "AFK"-ee, disconnected. This raises a question for me: is there an outside, or is there just an "AFK"? And if there still is an outside, as a concept, how long will it be until "AFK" replaces it, where the reality of the internet and of technology actually supersedes the non-computer world?
I think that time is coming. Right now, I'm sitting on my bed, typing on my laptop. I can see everything in my room as I type this, but I'm interacting with none of it. Once I shift away from this keyboard, however, I feel part of the outside again. But to even call it outside supports the idea that technology is somehow the inside, the focus. The world is apocrypha, the computer is central. The change from computer to outside is very similar to another experience I frequently have, but for some reason I never connected the two until today... as a fairly introverted person, I spend a lot of time in my head, but am forced to put on airs of extroversion when other people intrude on my solitary nature (not to sound melodramatic here, I enjoy the intrusions most of the time). The shift in perception is similar. On the internet, I'm entirely in my head, in a way all internet persona's are an extension of my introverted mind. Not that I don't socialize and make use of the Internets social networking capabilities, far from it. Still, it's a very comfortable way to relax and recharge. Then something actually comes up, something intrudes, and I have to go AFK, and the world pushes in on me with things. With outside, with reality.
I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. AFK is an interruption, but it's an extremely organic one, as it serves as the transition between two mental states...
I have more, maybe. I'm not sure. For now my friend is here, and I have to work out.
AFK
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Parasites Blog: Google! (SUper Short Updates)
Before- well not before Google but before internet search databases, knowledge was a lot more powerful. This was solely due to the fact that it was expensive and time consuming- books, higher education, etc. Now, knowledge only requires internet, a computer, and the ability to read (and perhaps think?). I feel like this changes a lot, some things for the better, some for the worse.
I can learn how to cook a turkey, salsa dance, drive a car, make explosives. I can read Serres, or Milton, or whoever, and I can translate them into any language I want. I can shop for food, for clothes, and I can find out exactly what's in style second to second. I can learn about kangaroos, the many uses of paprika, the medical benefits of Marijuana.
Google, in a way, challenges us to learn as much as possible. And we should. But, most of us use this new opportunity to satisfy idle curiosity, or to put on an act of intellect (after all, searching google takes seconds). I know I do.
Google has made tinkerers of us all.
I can learn how to cook a turkey, salsa dance, drive a car, make explosives. I can read Serres, or Milton, or whoever, and I can translate them into any language I want. I can shop for food, for clothes, and I can find out exactly what's in style second to second. I can learn about kangaroos, the many uses of paprika, the medical benefits of Marijuana.
Google, in a way, challenges us to learn as much as possible. And we should. But, most of us use this new opportunity to satisfy idle curiosity, or to put on an act of intellect (after all, searching google takes seconds). I know I do.
Google has made tinkerers of us all.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Thought Experiment 1 (sans WC)
Words, words, words (to quote a famous Danish prince).
Words, Intrusions, and Parasites.
This work is a manifesto of intrusion, because declaring my ideas boldly is decidedly uncomfortable. Since it is easier to challenge a work which has been laid out in clear-cut conception, I hope that others will take the opportunity to edit the ideas I'm outlining below.
First, words can be parasites. This may sound incredibly self-evident, but the word can is what requires emphasis and examination. Second, intrusion (interruption, thought, pure idea) is positive, and not only positive, it is necessary. I mean to explore these ideas through examining the vast pool of interruptions that have niggled into my brain over the last few weeks, Austin, Nancy, and the writings/lectures of Susan Blackmore. I'm also fairly certain that the influence of the Tomcat Murr is lurking somewhere in the sooty stove of my mind, ready to interrupt my own interruptive musings at moments notice.
Words can be parasites. All words have the potential to be parasites, because as conveyors of IDEA they are ways in which we infect others with our basic thoughts, our world-views, even our lies and mistakes. When we phrase an idea we force it into the guidelines of the tool of language, and in doing so we create an impact on the recipient. But do all words live up to that potential? It's a tricky subject to judge, as what constitutes effective parasitism is a rather slippery and elusive thing to come to consensus on. Since I believe words have much more of a chance to be parasitic in nature than not, perhaps the best place to start is looking at what words wouldn't be parasitic. In many ways the value of words seems to be the impact they have, no doubt why certain phrases are recorded and, irritatingly, quoted on a semi-daily basis as clichéd aphorisms.
Several problems exist here, however, despite the fact that these phrases stem from the very value of words themselves. Once words have become clichés, they lose their meaning beyond the very first exposure of the recipient to them. Phrases come to replace thought, and when that happens there is no thought being transmitted, only words, words, words. There is no infection happening, the host has already been infected long ago, and no longer can be influenced by the fact that the speaker has “let the cat out of the bag,” or finally placed the “straw that broke the camel's back.“ Memetically, words lose a lot of their power to infest. If the common cold always attacked our bodies with the same makeup, our bodies would remain unphased (as well as unchallenged). Likewise, words must attempt to convey real thought, new thought, any thought at all, or else we as infecter waste our words, and our parasites die with us.
That said, memetic intrusion is one of the most prevalent in society. We are all the products of our environment, whether or not you side with Nature or Nurture philosophically, it's impossible to ignore the fact that we are the products of the books we read, the conversations we take part in, the movies we watch, the ads that surround us, the people we let in and get close to, even the graffiti that we cannot help but read, cannot help but become infected by. Our minds are perfect hosts because they are, in a sense, sticky, and all passing stimuli collects and infects in one way or another. It's hard to delve into memetics without bringing up the work of Susan Blackmore, and her work will be talked about at greater depth later, but I think it necessary to rebuke her conclusions of memetics at this point. In her essay The Evolution of Meme Mechanics, she claims that “we are meme machines, created by and for the selfish replicators,” and that it's possible to “drop the idea of an inner self” completely. This makes some sense, given the huge impact of memes on all aspects of our lives, but while memes build up momentum I believe that they all require an origin, and are limited by the fact that, as old thought, they degrade in their ability to infect and generate new thought. If Blackmore wants to suggest that memes are the totality of our selves, then she begs the question of what the difference is between memes and ideas. If one and the same, why call them memes? If not, what room is there for ideas generated by the self?
Intrusions are positive. Parasitism and intrusions both have an incredibly bad reputation as words, and by extension as ideas. While parasitism is by definition detrimental to the host, at least scientifically, (and by no means does that need to impact our concept of parasites for an English class) intrusions are, I think, uniformally positive where words and thought are concerned. In The Intruder, Jean-Luc Nancy's introduction invaded my mind and planted the idea for this whole thought experiment. He starts out quite simply: “ The intruder makes his way in by force, surprise, or cunning, in any case without any right to do so and without invitation. There must be an element of the intruder in the stranger, otherwise he loses his strangeness.” I was surprised to find that, try as I might, I could not now unread or unthink those words. They made an impact on my mind for their eloquent simplicity, and the more I thought about it the more connections started to get made. Words were the ultimate intruders, as Nancy so deftly proved. They were not simply parasites, jumping from host to host and altering thoughts and behavior. Instead, words were intruders by the benefit of their strangeness, their incomprehensible other-ness; as wonderfully complex as language is in conveying ideas, it can never make up for the loss in translation which occurs from host to host. Like we discussed in class, until telepathy, or mind melding, there will always be the need for a “jk” or a repetitive E. Nancy goes further in saying that:
Once he is in, if he remains a stranger, and for all the time he remains, instead of “naturalizing himself”, his arrival does not cease: he continues to come and he never stops being an intrusion; he continues to be without right and familiarity and habits, but he remains a disturbance, a turbulence amidst the intimacy.
What a perfect description of the foreign idea, the complex question, the difficult issue. Nancy has summed up the intrusive idea spectacularly, as a stranger which the host cannot find comfort with yet, out of an inability to understand or connect with it, but which nonetheless obsesses the mind. These ideas exist as constant disturbance, “amidst the intimacy.” Parasitism, interruptions, things you can do with words, these are all vast, complex subjects that we as a class, we as people, could never grasp through normal lecture or conjecture. Rather, once introduced, with Tony or Nanotext or whichever moniker was used, they arrive like strangers to us and never cease to arrive, at every new reading, every instance of example. Like _stephen said on Plurk, he was “beginning to see parasitism everywhere” (http://www.plurk.com/p/3addk0). Plurk, googlewave, blogspot, and the various readings we have done are all designed to familiarize us with the stranger who disturbs us always from the back of our minds. And so, as a class, we struggle with familiarizing ourselves with the otherness around us.
Susan Blackmore's equation is applicable at this point: “any information that is varied and selected can bring design.” This seems to suggest that all information, however varied and new, will eventually become memetic, will eventually cease to be varied and new, and will instead become a part of the larger body of thought called the common. While this may seem rather fatalistic, it's a hardcoded aspect of evolution; we as humans must evolve to survive as well, and thus our best ideas must evolve and improve to keep us from stagnation, or worse, ruin. So information exchange, in it's highest form, can only be intrusive, parasitic, interrupting. If ones words are NOT intrusions, NOT parasites, then one has failed to make an impact. Failed to create, inspire, or force new thought. It's clear, then, that if you go away from this experiment without having been infected by my words, that I have failed; in fact failed quite literally, as the grading rubric is designed to give low marks to a student who doesn't “engage in the production of knowledge.” And what is the production of knowledge but an interruption on the status quo, whether on a larger intellectual scale or simply on a personal level.
Intrusions are necessary. What does not intrude is not a stranger. And what is not a stranger is not strange. And what is not strange is familiar. What is familiar is safe. And what is safe is of no consequence to anyone.
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