Wednesday, May 9, 2007

थे उर्गे तो देस्त्रोय

The title of this entry happens to be "the urge to destroy" but of course with the amazing world of blogs, I have the ability to write something in English and have it instantly change into Hindi. This is of course pointless because I do not think that anyone that may be reading this will be able to read Hindi, nor is anything of any consequence written in Hindi within this blog, but hey, it looks neat so I'm leaving it.

All of that being said, I am writing this on the topic of the human urge to destroy, my musings on the topic and perhaps where it came from and why it exists. First of all I suppose I should specify what I mean by destroy as I'm sure it could be interpreted in different ways. When I say destroy I am going to be specifically talking about the destruction of objects, whether physical or not, for no inherent gain or purpose other than the destruction itself. The use of the word destruction in my definition of destruction is sloppy, so I will define the word destroy as a mode of changing something to an all new form which is first of all very little to nothing like the way it was and secondly altogether useless as compared to it's previous functionality and purpose. Also in my definition I talked about two different types of objects, those being physical and non-physical objects. Physical objects as a concept is not that hard to grasp, anything containing matter, made up of molecules and atoms and just being generally solid, liquid or (i suppose) gas. Non-physical objects are still nouns, but in the sense that a noun is a person, place, thing or idea, these objects are ideas. So how does one destroy an idea? Well of course I will say that it is near impossible to expect to destroy an idea on a whole, however for the destruction which I am talking about, it's more the idea that can be held by one or a few (or perhaps many depending on your power position), that can be exploited or denied. An example of these ideas I will say would be like the belief of Santa Claus that a young person may hold, or to become more complex, a relationship between two or more people. Of course by telling the young child that there is no Santa, and proving to him/her beyond a reasonable doubt that this is so, would be the destruction of that idea. There would be many ways to destroy a relationship, as a person who is involved you could change yourself to a point of disgust to the other(s) and as an outsider it is always possible to twist the image of those involved.

Karl Marx had an opinion about the need of humans to alter their surroundings to reflect themselves in order to find fulfilment. This was his way of saying how we as humans could avoid the feeling of alienation (which was a sort of notion that we felt like we didn't belong on our own earth through the taking away of the product of our labor, leaving us with processed goods from other factories). By changing our surroundings to reflect one's wants, needs, beliefs and ideas then the world became a familiar place that accepted us. In today's world however (especially in America, and mostly in Urban or Suburban places) this is next to impossible. We inhabit houses and apartment buildings that had nothing to do with ourselves, we are too busy to use interior decoration and we work on things that we cannot see ourselves in. So we are alienated, but alienation doesn't necessarily lead to destruction, but I will say that the feeling of alienation is one necessary part to the equation.

The other part, I believe, comes out of nihilism. Nihilism is the belief that nothing matters, the universe is void of all or any intrinsic meaning. This nihilism stems from many things, but Nietzsche saw nihilism as coming out of the slow but steady rise of science disproving religious standards causing the notion that if there is no god and no greater purpose, then there is no purpose to anything whatsoever. When a nihilist looks into themselves they see nothing, and when they look outside of themselves they see nothing.

Now since I have said that the urge to destroy came out of parts of alienation and nihilism. So as we grow, so does our feeling of alienation, that the world is not our own and we as a human being do not belong in nature, and nature is all that belongs on earth. Then our beliefs are challenged and our morals are pushed aside and we begin to think ourselves nihilists. Now then our alienation makes us want to fight against our not fitting in by transforming our surroundings, and our nihilism makes it so when we look inside we see no intrinsic meaning. But the world still tries to convince us that there is meaning, every institution has it's morals, every school it's teachings, every vein of art work it's techniques, and we grow to hate this unequivity. So there is one logical conclusion, to make the world fit ourselves we must destroy, and destroy without prejudice. Everything must be reduced to nothingness as we think that we are nothingness.

No comments: