Something Incomprehensible

[Plaid Adder]

I wanted to direct people's attention to this episode of a cartoon? comic strip? panel? called "Tom the Dancing Bug" which responds to the Virginia Tech massacre. I found it n2doc's Tuesday TOON thread, which I urge you all to check out and kick. Here's a direct link (which I hope works) to the cartoon itself:

One morning, something incomprehensible showed up

It struck me because it is a much clearer explanation of what I was getting at in my initial response to the massacre. In the cartoon, the protagonist is oppressed by the "incomprehensible" quasi-being generated by the massacre, which follows him everywhere until he finally figures out how to put it in a box with a definite ideological position written on the outside. Then he goes out for a walk and everyone else is carrying a similar-sized box, each with a different ideological position written on it.

Putting It--the "something incomprehensible"--into the Box Of Explanation is necessary in order to be able to do anything with It--or even to get on with life. But It doesn't go just into one box. It's simultaneously present in all the boxes, and while It is now comfortably contained, its glowing, oppressive malevolence is still pulsing away in there, unresolved and ready to burst out as soon as the box is damaged. All the boxes work--all the explanations may be true, all the ideological recommendations in some sense valid--but while each box remains closed, the number of boxes containing It can multiply infinitely.

There are explanations; of course there will always be explanations, and it is our job as rational beings to look for them. Some of them may even produce results that might reduce the chances of this happening again. But for me, no matter how the boxes multiply, It will always retain its awful incomprehensibility.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[swimboy]

1. I saw that.

and it struck me that even though we feel better once we label and categorize it, we are still carrying the same load.

The strip is often brilliant.

[tomreedtoon]

2. I don't think it's that incomprehensible.

I think it's an explanation that people don't really like to think about, and in fact actively deny (which I'm sure someone will do to this post). People are basically evil.

This isn't an Original Sin thing, and it isn't a plea for any kind of religion to cure it, because religion can't do that. It's based on decades of observing the human race. It is, in fact, when people try to deny their evil nature - when they insist they are "basically good" - that causes trouble.

Over on Salon, in a discussion of the Kennedy assassination, there's the conspiracy theorists who are still convinced in fixing blame. They think it's impossible that a "basically good" man could be killed by a normal human; there must be an Illuminati conspiracy behind it all. They invest a lot of emotional agony and specious proofs to deny that it was ordinary human viciousness, 'cause that would mess up their little minds.

(Incidentally, the article is about Robert F. Kennedy, a man who in many lights would have been a better President than JFK. There is no debate about who killed him. It was a basically evil terrorist, who is still a worshipped martyr throughout the Middle East. But nobody cares, because to note this observation - or Sirhan Sirhan's continuing fame - would show the cruelty of man too clearly.)

[bryant69]

3. I agree - People are basically assholes

I sometimes wonder about whether or not there's any point to trying to fix the world; or whether or not the more humane thing would be to support the Bushgang and even worse types in hopes of putting us all out of our misery.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[blogslut]

4. Good Toon

There was another one, posted last week in reference to Virginia Tech, that got to me. I can't find it now. It was a game board shaped in the form of a skull. I wish I could find it.

[n2doc]

5. This one?

[mojowork_n]

6. If you think that's incomprehensible...

...how do you suppose the people on the streets in Baghdad feel? Or those in Darfur, trying to keep one step ahead of the Janjaweed militias?

Only 30 some people killed? That's not such a horrible day, it may be less horrible than any day of the past week, or month. In the Gulags in the Soviet Union, I think the joke went, 'anything that does not kill you ... will ... probably kill you next week.'

I don't mean to downplay the tragedy, or diminish it, or marginalize it. I'm just trying to step out of the box, with comparisons to different contexts. Americans are just too spoiled. Our primary societal role -- consumer cattle -- makes us over-prone to look for simply packaged solutions/answers. Add several layers of media over-saturation on top of that expectation, in a context that questions personal safety, and people's first instinct is to run for cover. (Or in this case, a "box".)

[John Gauger]

7. That's very interesting.

I have always liked the way you frame issues. You have an insight that is very hard to come by.