Penguinic Attack
Song of the Hour: Tower of Song
I took Joss to see March of the Penguins last night, which turned out to be 84 minutes packed with suprises. A) Joss wasn’t bored. 2) Penguins live miserable lives. 3) I never knew how anxiety ridden I could grow when forced by penguin lovin’ to contemplate having to explain the penguins and the bees to Joss (he asked me what was going on and I shrugged. I’m a horrible prude). and D) there really is no god.
I’d slammed the breaks on my last semester downward spiral into nihilism shortly into my decline. Frankly I didn’t have time for a whole paradigm breakdown. I toyed with the idea and shadowy truth of life without inherent meaning during my commute and occasional procrastination breaks (aka coffee with Marco), but otherwise have tried to leave it to those who had actually read Nietzsche. I had other things to do.
goddamn penguins. that was some heartbreaking shit. yeah yeah, love survives. But when penguin mother #67 dropped her egg and stood around staring at the cracked frozen thing that was to be her offspring, she had no idea what to do anymore. tragic. So of course, trying to overlook the blinding sympathy pains coursing through my head, I chalked the whole scene up to our human prediliction to personify animals with human emotions, and tried to get over it. Then the damn bird tried to steal another mother’s chick. That really happens- people, I mean. With breaking heart I explained it to an outraged then sympathetic Joss, but somewhere in the translation, in my head god really died and natural selection triumphed and everything really does suck. If you haven’t seen the film, I’m sorry. I won’t rant too much. They really do live miserable lives. Every step of the marching, breeding, hatching, feeding, leaving, these birds keep dying. Dead mothers in the water. Dead fathers starved to death waiting for the mothers. Chicks freezing in the blizzard. Coming back after a 140 mile hike on tiny feet to find your family gone…. what the fuck "intelligent design" is that?
My psycho-analytic tendencies recognize both the illogic of an imaginary god, and my ulterior motive of being too damn sensitive and just not wanting to care anymore because it hurts so damn much to care. I know this may seem incredibly stupid in the context of penguin reproduction, but its also a lot more than that, and if you haven’t been along for the ride I know I sound nuts. Point is, there’s too disproportionate misery in this world for me to justify an actual purpose for it. Nothing but a genetic drive and inherent behaviors could explain such purposeful misery in the penguin life, and I suspect, our lives too.
Did you know that as soon as a cuckoo egg hatches, the first thing it does, eyes still shut, is nose the other eggs/hatchlings out of the nest? First thing. What does that say?
Enough doom and gloom for now. Next time, I aim for clowns. I’m not fishing for god/athiest arguments, sorry if I offend. This is just what I’ve found to be an inevitable conclusion. Not only is there no god, everything else that an athiest defines as morality or ethics in lieu of a creator, I also find to be a lie. Integrity, community, sacrifice, love- all exist to enforce the survival of our species but holds no intrinsic truth. Sure, we feel it. Chemicals in synapsis released by electric currents. Chemicals like penguin chemicals, nothing more.
On the other hand, it’s a really good movie and you should see it. If an 8 year old that tends to only like movies with dinosaurs or lightsabers likes it, you probably will too.
Meanwhile, I’ll search for a happier note…
"love."
January 9th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
You know, the presence of suffering in the universe really isn’t a valid reason to dismiss the idea of some kind of divinity. All religions start with suffering as the groundwork, and respond to it. Becoming an atheist is just lazy.
Also, you have to remember, that movie was made by the French. The French, I tell you!
January 9th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Jenny has always been too smart for her own good. I could tell the story about how in high school, Jenny singlehandedly just about shook my faith in everything, and how her second blog entry today threatened to do so again. I disagree deeply, but to do so makes me think, maybe I am being as blind as a bible thumping Pentecostal minister. But serously, how can you shake the feeling that someone is watching you? I guess maybe it’s just me and it is just the synapses firing in my head. Or just a false perception. Maybe. But who cares anyway? So maybe you’re right, Jenny. What then? If we are nothing, and that’s reality, do I have to lay down in it and wait for death?
Maybe I can’t understand because I am a writer and I make up my own realites anyway, especially when I don’t like my own. What I have created in my head has often seemed more real, more my own, then real life and I like it that way. If this is all a sham anyway, is that any less real? Or maybe I hate it because every day I am more like my WWII era grandmother who chooses only to see the positive, but even if life means nothing, sometimes it feels so godammned good, who cares if we’re just trembling piles or cells hell bent on reproduction then avoiding an inevitbale death. There is love in that life. Tomatoe, tomah-toe. God, I hate philosophy.
January 11th, 2006 at 12:15 am
I’m gonna have to go with Sara here…I wake up every day so happy to be alive that sometimes I feel like I’ll bust with the simplicity and perfection of being. I love having a consciousness and making choices and living through the wonderful and terrible, learning voraciously and living as true as I can. True to what, well…that’s another question entirely. Alls I’m sayin is, it’s good to be alive…there is so much beauty everywhere, if to live just to view it and absorb it, I think I’d chug along forever with my eyes wide open.