A Great Opportunity

This thought experiment is dead. We are gathered here to witness and perhaps relish the services contributed to respecting its death. It died violently at the hands of a writer, no sooner completing a heading then whisking swift death to what the entire work could be. Somewhat worse, he managed to get away with it as there were no witnesses to the murder. What are eulogies even for anyway? Is this supposed to conclude or put a capping point at the end of a paper’s life? What about the bad things the thought experiment represented, are we just supposed to forget about those? Is death a catalyst for forgiveness? If it is then that is too bad, as then we are not remembering or learning from the inequities in the past life of it. The term “respect for the dead” has grown to the point of mystical denial of the aspects of the real person/text who died. “Respecting their memory” is even worse as it turns the person into an image, a “Buddy Christ” as you will, who ends up not really representing anything.

Personally, the thought experiment made me struggle; it did not use all of my ideas and it occasionally plagiarized what I meant in a way I did not mean to say it in. I guess you could say that it gave me the gift of free expression but was also enough of a jerk to give me a due date. The due date: a set time when my papers really stop mattering about anything, after all they are turned in, I can blog them and get feedback but no matter what it is really dead. It died when there was no point for anyone to reread it. The same way a lot of the books I own have died to me, or the way any quality information I have seen has disappeared. Teachers keep saying that you could write an entire paper about one thing in one of the texts we read in class, but that is simply unrealistic, the Due Date demands swiftness and sometimes just writing it out as fast as you can to get it turned in on time (I guess I am a little passed that by now). But now it is dead so there is no conclusion, no “wrapping up” of thoughts to be contained within something, maybe now we can learn from it.

Officer Barbary’s testimonial: June 6th, 2010. The TE was found on a laptop, smothered to death by conclusive statements, a mental blood trail being found near the area. Violence is common in that area, but then again violence is pretty common everywhere you go. Makes me wonder what invented first, crime or police once crime became a part of life. The more it is “acceptable” to see crime on the news and the more “human nature” becomes something of greed and competition the more I see the circumstances around me get worse. In times like these, what you cannot get over or accept is very important, which makes me wonder why some people cannot accept death. There is this long drawn out process in which we try to be “moral” about it, especially if violence is involved. Violence: there is something worth talking about, not just that people hurt other people but the “why”. In movies there is always an explanation of why the villain is evil, mostly a troubled past with either him being abused or someone dying. How are we supposed to feel about that? Surely we cannot accept this mindset but at the same time, how can it be stopped from forming? How much does this form everyday in us, like a parasite filling us with bias and judgment obtained from childhood?

Of the items found on the crime scene, there was one that stood out to me, a book called Filth by Irvine Welsh. In it there is Something truly despicable, a relatable character. At first I was downright hateful of what the main character, also a police officer, representing everything evil the human mind can create. However, there was some basis of his thoughts, the way an ordinary person could make evil judgments and put reason behind them to justify it. The “routine” evil of Bruce Robertson was interesting as well, there was a pattern he followed (like most people with a job) that also included him hating everything. I would like to think that very few people hate everything all the time, but very little of the time do I think about the source of hate within myself on “bad days”. Even if pessimism is caused by the circumstances of a day, that pessimism stems from a part of me that recognizes the bad things in the world, even if it overdramatizes them. The tapeworm within Bruce is a whole different story, throughout the book it grows and grows and obtains more of a voice. Also, it has a much different way of speaking than Bruce, more elaborate and always bringing up his past and a twisted view on what it means. This makes me think of the way I view my past, what I justify and what I do not think about but rather gets forced upon me by my mind. Denial is almost like mental violence, it is fighting yourself for control of what to think about which is what makes the battle with the tapeworm so fierce; Bruce has a lot to fight over. Of course, so do I, embarrassing past moments, instances of violence on my part, anything compromising to the image I project. The idea that these two types of thoughts exist together is scary, maybe scary is not the right word, disillusioning is more like it. But when normal violence stops being disillusioning I guess it becomes necessary to make a book like that, and maybe even necessary to kill a thought experiment so it does not become more denial.

Tonight in the local news: a thought experiment found dead with no answers to the culprit. Also, stories that scare people receive more coverage and thus fear gets ratings. It is not just our news too, it is OUR news, you have become a part of it was you watch it. What does not apply to you somehow does when put in the context of information you NEED to know, that is how powerful this “we” is. In “Fellowship” by Franz Kafka, there is a group described who is a “we” but have one member who they do not like being there, but is part of the “we” nonetheless. What about a different case though? What if you are part of a “we” and you do not want to be there in the first place, the American “we” perhaps, or the “we” of everyone who wrote a paper they did not like. In the news we have “follow-up” stories bringing an update on the previous story, but the interesting thing is that after that it is likely not to get mentioned again. This strikes me as being part of the “we” in a culture of non-continuity when it comes to something serious. TV shows are built on continuity, whenever I reference a clever video on the internet that is continuity, but when it comes to the news unless there is a major event that can obtain the interest of the crowd (natural disasters have become common sources recently) it becomes “old news”. Of course there are other better ways to acquire news, but this serves as an example of the idea that once something matters once it can only matter less when brought up again, or that ideas decay rather than grow.

We have a special report in, the killer of the thought experiment has turned himself in! It turns out he has written two other thought experiments before this without death being involved, I guess he just could not resist. The information you are getting from us is very factual. What we forgot to mention is that in real life things do not work in terms of information given, they build up to a point and then break into something. I wonder what the other two thought experiments have built up to, maybe nothing, maybe they are just three separate pieces of a writer trying to be clever with what he has been given. After reading them though, it makes me think of the octopus from the Science is Fiction videos, and how it is so easy to turn them into monsters. Makes me think how difficult it is to turn papers into something which truly communicates something of that magnitude. The pressure which comes with making something that sounds right to the writer but resonates inside everyone’s head, of course I think most can compare with this difficulty so at least that is something. I remember someone saying something on Plurk that expanded this more (I scrolled through a lot of timelines and still could not find the exact quote), it was about how real writing should be done when it is pouring out of the individual writing it not just for the sake of writing to be elitist and “acceptable”. I find myself guilty of this lots of times, all I can really hope is that my writing speaks for itself, that somewhere in there is a tone that is different than others.

Transcript of interview with Writer/Killer:
Newsman: Hello, welcome to the interview with the killer of the thought experiment. We do not have a lot of time, so moving on to the first and most obvious question, why did you do it?
Writer: I did it because I thought it would prove I learned something about what it means for an event to be over, and seeing the reactions after the death I think I was right.
NM: What do you mean an event being over?
Writer: Exactly, there are so many traces of information after the event, parasites sticking with me, biting me to keep asking and answering my own questions.
NM: I do not understand, what did you hope to achieve with the death of the paper?
Writer: The luxury of having it make a point BEFORE someone has read it in the first place, which is that death causes people to rethink something in a way that they could have done when it was alive.
NM: Obviously you are insane, that paper could have had a family! How will you be judged for this, which judge would forgive you?
Writer: Now that is an interesting thought, but judgment is very different than deciding forgiveness. Judgment is saying if something is right or wrong, forgiveness is knowing that someone did something wrong but deciding to let it go. Forgiveness is a lot rarer I would say, or should be anyway.
NM: Did the thought experiment not deserve to be forgiven? Isn’t there the expression “It is easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission”?
Writer: Oh, I was just talking in general. And who does deserve to be forgiven? You know, it is easier to forgive people and feel like the good person, to comfort someone and receive their thanks. But when does that grow to the point of denying consequences and thus denying learning?
NM: You have obviously been educated, but then why did you turn yourself in?
Writer: I turned myself in because I have to live with the consequences of the due date, no matter how much it pains me to express it. I almost avoided talking about my old work too, despite my large amount of rambling on how important it is.
NM: We all have to work for somebody.
Writer: True, but who do teachers work for? The students obviously (it certainly does not sound like the money) but more specifically, for the texts so the students can get them? For whatever concept they are teaching so that they themselves can learn as well as the year goes on so they can teach it better (I am not just thinking about this to suck up btw)? I use the word teacher because I teach myself and my friends, and they teach me in a system that requires learning mainly via the internet and school.
NM: This is all very interesting but beside the point, the thought experiment is dead, your thoughts are counted, the due date past and all of this is finished, what possible explanation do you have for your actions if your paper is just being written and in ending the same way?
Writer: I guess it is like they say in the movie, “I’m just a natural born killer…”