Having just finished this fucking philosophy thesis that has been keeping me from loving the internet like I should, a friend recommended me a recent horror film called The Ruins. And it wasn’t bad. To start with, it had that guy from 100 Girls, which is favourite b-grade, pseudo-intellectual teen comedy of all time. I mean, that’s good, but it’s not very scary. And including people from the cast of Pulse was never, ever, ever going to help the success of the movie.

But how many times do we have to sift through the same story in a different setting? The past 20 years of horror movies haven’t seen too much innovation in the genre (disregarding, of course Scream and it’s partner in crime, Scary Movie 1). Apart from an intensification of gore, the storylines consist of ‘regular’ people (just like you and me!) that somehow end up in bizarre situations where their reasonable beliefs are devoured by some supernatural or currently-unexplainable-by-our-science creature that has somehow managed to evade not only scientists but batshit insane cryptozoologists for centuries. This supernatural mystification, that giant Other lurking in the background - and it has to be the background, for how else would it be unexplainable?? - is pretty much essential as a plot device. Otherwise, how can we get scared?? How many Saw-esque movies based entirely on gritty special effects and gore scenes are we gunna have to watch before we get bored? Looking at the imdb database of top rated horror movies, the most recent horror film that sits in the top 50 seems to be Evil Dead II, the other two notable exceptions being Grindhouse and Sean of the Dead, which are both parodies of the genre in a sense. This is surely saying something. But what????

The first answer that comes from the lips of many friends: aren’t you just fucked up? This shit is brutal, man. But you’ve spent so much time on the internet and researching strange social fetish groups (religion included, of course) that you’ve become desensitized to the brutality! But the words just make me think of Metalocalypse and how funny death by metal can be. Is parody all that’s left here? We all laugh at Nazi jokes, even if the methodological slaughtering of Jews was the worst tragedy of the reasonable and industrial modern world. If parody is all that’s left, this cynical, jaded apathist won’t be disappointed - it may even be worthwhile.

But a man like myself who so often falls into inconsistent banter cannot rest content at this though - why do I keep watching if every story has been told over and over in the back of my mind? It is not true that every supposed horror film I’ve witnessed in the past few years has been full of crap. Of course it’s not. But when I think to the ones I hold in esteem, what is the link? Audition was the most recent addition to my favourites collection, and among recent non-parodical horror Cannibal Holocaust and Devil’s Rejects sits up there too, despite my not liking it at all at first. Takashi Mike has given me a few good cringes and laughs, to be honest. But it’s hardly fair to group him with other western gore/horror directors.

There’s a decent theory spinning around my mind about this: we educated westerners have forgotten how to be scared. We’ve grown so accustoms to the clichés of genre that we can predict every movement that is made on the screen. Of course the critical girl is going to die. Of course there’s going to be a male who scarifies himself in hope that some weaker character can escape, and of course there’s going to be that shot that so obviously hints that this redemptive hope can never be realised. Either that, or like the fucking bastardization of I am Legend we are presented with some ridiculous eutpoian religious salvation. And this deluded hope is obviously enough to tide over most of the people who watch movies like this. The money makers are the films that play on many people’s greatest fear: that we will not be saved from death, that there is no salvation for any of us. A few may offer a happy conclusion in some redemptive state, but the horror has been looked into; the temporary status of life, the futility of redemption. But for us educated bunch, believing something in spite of evidence is more than a little silly. Hence, our horror films are parodies of the great alien invasions or supernatural travesties of decades past.

But does this mean that there is no redemption for horror?? Are we condemned to be the reclusive ironists of the film industry? I think not. And the reason I think this is that what we know is a hell of a lot scarier than what we do not know. The recent success of the prominent new-atheist movement attest to this: the fact that there are a billion people out there who would kill you for their gods is fucking scary. The Dionysian brutality of human nature will always be scarier than whatever bullshit ’supernatural’ theme that the modern monotheistic majority can throw at us. And if this is too ‘brutal’, too fucked up for your liking, than maybe you should stick to reading your bible than watching these shitty, repetitive and unconvincing horror films.

I grew up listening to cynical pop punk and shit like that, so I was a big Blink 182 fan-boy. But some of their lyrics used to annoy me with their religious connotations - only occasionally, but enough to stop me getting my lip pierced and hair dyed in worship. Going back over some older music the other day and I’ve learned why I was always slightly concerned, and I’m kinda surprised as to how I didn’t notice it when I was a big’ol rebellious 15 year old… former Blink182 guitarist, Tom DeLonge, is completely insane.

For starters, it seems he believes in the existence of aliens and their coinciding government conspiracy theories. The song ‘Aliens Exist’ is probably where I should have noticed this. He also seems to think that the whole ‘anarchy’ thing is cool and awesome while at the same time criticizing the ‘government’ and ‘corporate leaders’ for corrupting them into it. And in his recent band, he seems to have adopted a 9/11 conspiracy. Wow.

Surprisingly enough, he’s a Christian. Imagine my shock when I found out one of my favourite songs off the Take of Your Pants and Jacket album is just a plea to Jesus. His solo album had a song titled ‘Letters to God’.

Luckily, former Blink 182 bassist Mark Hoppus has saved me from condemning the entirety of my teenage years. His new band, (+44), has convincingly shown that there had to be some reason why I liked most Blink 182 songs. Take the lines from the opening song, ‘Lycanthrope’:

And we’ll be beaten down without mercy or meaning
I turn my face to a careless skyline
I’m searching hard for a sign from heaven
But they’ve forgotten me here

And even more when we get to the third song, ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’:

I’ll be there when your last breath’s taken away
In the dark when there’s no one listening

Ah! The refreshing sound of real world activity, no transcendental bitching or hoping! It’s getting easier to die every day and at least some pop-culture realizes it. Perhaps there is some alchemical purpose or Aristotelean telos floating around this world; but with the plurality of contradictory answers given throughout history, it is quite silly to assume that anyone could find it. How should we begin extracting purpose from a tree? Perhaps the new age movement can answer us. Perhaps if we squeeze a cross hard enough we can extract some. Where have we come since Aristotle but to the realization that (contra Newton) there are only discernible material causes, mechanical causes and indeterminate probability? Newton the alchemist was as mad as the metaphysicians that he was otherwise criticizing for spinning a web out of their own substance with a priorisms and pure reason.

Another point to be made in the song ‘Little Death’:

Please sleep, my darling, sleep
Your cry for inspiration
Never reaches ears on distant stars
And every night our lonely planet
Slides across the universe
And I won’t pretend I understand

Please sleep, my darling, sleep
Your death by information
Won’t disturb the peace on distant stars
And even when you lock the doors
And slide behind the unlit shades
None of us are strangers anymore

Fall asleep with the windows open
Come to me with the worst you’ve said and done
You’ll close your eyes and see me
A little death makes life more meaningful
I stand no chance at all

David Hume would certainly agree. Our lives are only meaningful in that they are finite; otherwise every one of our actions that we make in this life is meaningless in-itself, just waiting around on the front porch to be let in the house. Pretending that large scale natural disasters, our inevitable deaths and the overall futility of civilization is all part of some loving and meaningful design is delusional and relegates any responsibility from ourselves. The fact that I’m not going to be here in a few decades just can’t stop my present meal from being tasty, and the fact that breakfast doesn’t last the day won’t stop me preparing for and planning my dinner. Lucretius said ‘Where death is I am not’, although I can’t remember where.

So congratulations to Mark Hoppus after such an embarrassingly idiotic partnership. To spend over a decade with someone like Tom DeLonge and still come out of it writing clever pop-punk songs is just astounding.

Oh, and this is the first post that I’ve written this year where I haven’t been drunk.

/end monthly rant

     This blog is not coincidentally about religion and the media. I was originally majoring in both Media Studies and Philosophy before my philosophical urges won out and I realised that I would have to drop media if I wished to achieve more in philosophy. While media was more enjoyable, philosophy was more rewarding. When I decided to put all my efforts into philosophy I started this blog to keep up my role as an active consumer of media.

     The methodology that I try to work within is that of semiotics. Semiotics or semiology is merely the study of signs, or the manner in which we infer meaning from actions or objects, sounds or ideas. At the heart of semiotics is the assumption that there can be different readings of the same object by different subjects and meaning is not inherently contained; meaning is socially constructed, whether through conscious decision or ideological causation or a mixture both. Sitting in front of the television can invoke a multitude of responses from acceptance, disgust, indifference, etc. So I try to be cautious in saying that particular line in song x objectively means a particular thing.

      Of course, while readings and meaning may be ambiguous, certain readings are going to be more plausible than others. So picking out different parts of a Futurama episode relevant to reading x makes it more plausible that x will be the meaning taken from a majority of viewers. A cross does not necessarily signify Christ but in the context of a horror movie it would be more plausibly connoted than in a documentary about ninjas. Meanings develop in complex webs, and it is our job as active consumers to analyse the webs of meaning being sold to us.

      I’m not interested in merely showing the assumptions made. People “suspend disbelief” all the time to involve themselves in fantasy and escapism and quite often have no trouble telling the difference between reality and fiction. Media texts rarely offer us analytical arguments, but premises are often signified and conclusions assumed. What I’m attempting to do here is to extend on what the texts signify and then critically assess the philosophy behind it.

      For example: a couple of posts back I noted a particularly faith-friendly Futurama episode. A viewer could let their imagination run wild while watching and think ‘Bender is talking to God’ (reading a). There are assumptions here that need to be analysed. For example, what reasons does the show in its entirety give to argue that this being is really representing the theistic god? There are generally arguments floating around the text somewhere to detail this reasoning. Cumulative aspects of a text will generally signify one particular argumentative direction if the text is aiming to be coherent. Sceptics like me may imagine the same scene in a different way: it will be more like “what reasons does Bender have to think that he is talking to a theistic god?” (reading b). In reading b one can identify the reasoning connoted by the text that lead people to accepting reading a. I argue that the show is trying to signify things entailed in reading a, yet does not succeed in presenting an argument that this state of affairs could happen in reality.

Just a little detour from my original ranting. Sorry for any inconvenience!

Yes, lame post title. It’s how I roll baby. But holidays mean mindless TV, mindless TV means being annoyed at stupid religious propaganda, and stupid religious propaganda means venting in blogs. Oh, and blogs mean puns. To me anyway.

The Futurama episode titled ‘Godfellas’ has bending unit Bender shot out into space accidentally, apparently leaving him alone for the rest of eternity. During his voyage he runs through an asteroid belt and a small asteroid gets lodged in his casing. The asteroid is home to little living thingies who happen to think that Bender is god, and well, he orders them around and tries to help and ends up making things worse before they eventually blow each other up. Fair enough.

After all of this happens, a mourning Bender manages to crash into the actual theistic god who has somehow taken material form (I’m sure the dualists will make up some unconvincing argument as to how this is possible) and learned binary along the way. Bender shares his experience as ‘being god’; how it was so damn demanding and how it was so difficult to manage their society. Those who had faith in Bender the god believed that he would smite the unbelievers after listening to their prayers, leading them to victory, while the unbelievers for some reason were immoral bastards trying to bomb the religious, apparently because they’d ‘lost hope’ and were jealous or something. God tells Bender that it’s a balancing act and for some reason thinks this gem is relevant:

“When you do things right, people won’t be sure that you’ve done anything at all.”

According to this supposed god, people shouldn’t be able to know for certain if he exists or not because they will assume that he will always come to their rescue and do the good for them. Subjects are supposed to gain their own moral awareness, shown in the fact that by the end of the episode Bender is unknowingly led to do the good by something that this supposed god has told him. This also seems to involve knowing which prayers to answer and which not; leaving this balance so faith can work is supposed to justify leaving some prayers unanswered.

Picking on this is too easy. Perhaps I should have found something different to write about. But it was there, so what the hell.

It’s pretty obvious for starters that there are people out there who claim that they “know” that god exists. A majority of the world, in fact, despite them all meaning different things when they say it. Most notably we have the dramatic rise in fundamentalism world-wide. The funny (or perhaps scary) thing is that this conviction does not lead to passivity one bit; it leads to passionate action. Instead of (logically) assuming that an all powerful being can sort out his own problems, people feel the need to do things for him. Hence we have Osamas, Bushes and Robertsons.

Secondly, there are people who firmly deny the existence of god (even if only probabilistically like myself in a weak atheism) that haven’t ‘lost hope’, so to speak, of living a meaningful life; these people seem to be the majority of the unbelieving population (from personal experiences, being involved in atheistic communities). Not only this, but finitude is arguably more desirable than infinite consciousness - and the episode even offers similar arguments!! Bender’s drifting through space for all eternity is seen as meaningless because he will eventually become infinitely bored as less things come to entertain him. Imagine existing for all eternity, doing all the things that you have always wanted to do. Assuming that one has conscious thought capable of change, one will eventually do everything there is to do, know everything there is to know, perfected every attribute of ones being to the extent that one is capable of. While one may dream of living forever as a child (when the religious dogma is seeded), growing old leads to different attitudes towards death. Finitude is not necessarily an evil.

So the justification for faith (reasonless belief) is misleading. Which leads us back to the question: why should one believe that all events are working towards the greater good when it is not very probable at all that they are?

While Futurama and the Simpsons may be commended for their light-hearted stabs at organised religion, their depiction of the universal acceptance of a god is downright disgusting and incorrect.

This post is opening up, becoming lost in terminology and trendy language, in an attempt to show where my concerns lie. Why I bother opening my mind each day and the meaning of my life. Questions that give me meaning in my asking them and yet ultimately make me concede defeat.

The second question that I posed in my last blog was discarded rather gratuitously. To say that atheism does not entail any position on morality prevents progress on the important question: (even if and especially if we find our own lives meaningful - ) How do we bring meaning to the lives of those who feel as if they have no meaning? This can in turn be taken in two ways: How can we qua individuals bring meaning to another’s life? - Or the question which I feel is more important: How can we make others realise that their lives are meaningful?

Whether or not you are inclined towards an objective morality the problem is clearly a social one. The breaking down of spatial and temporal relations due to the rapid increase in technological advances leads to not only the pluralisation of culture but the pluralisation of meanings. To say that the meaning of Greek philosophy was to examine the self and discover the nature of the world (Platonic or non-Platonic) is uncontroversial. To say that the meaning of the Renaissance was to rebel against dogmatic religious and philosophic doctrines is equally so. But the western person of today is plagued by multiple systems of meaning, each offering its own potential truths and potential falsities, forever offering improvements on potential certainties and forever recognizing their impossibility: the world of the every-day exists as a site of constant realignment. The tag ‘information society’ is understood by the sheer scope of what we can and cannot believe. Assume that bringing meaning to our lives is like writing an essay. We are given the potential sources for our essays but not the knowledge as to which to reference and and which to ignore, with no time to include a comprehensive comparison of them all. Never before have so many arguments existed in the same place; to survey them all would be futile, to judge them all would be arrogant and naive.

The question then becomes one of how to make another person’s life meaningful (or one’s own, something I have never had to deal with) when the available options for the subject to choose from are almost endless within the period of any given lifetime. If someone only sees the end, how can we make them see the inevitable beginning? And if one is to see only beginnings, how can we show them the temporal nature of their aims? How can people live and give meaning to their lives, but at the same time find collective meaning in subjective analysis?

In my brief existence I have had to learn just how temporary these brief connections with each other are. People who I love more than anything have tried to destroy themselves with blades, nails and ropes. My world has been moved by these people despite my will to keep them around. People who I once worked closely with are dead due such actions. Others are merely changed, forever scarred physically and emotionally.

To some this might be a never-ending defeat (like Camus), but for myself in this moment, like many other moments in the last three years, this is an area that drastically needs my systematic and analytic deconstruction - even if all I can manage at the moment is a brief intoxicated summary of what’s been said before.

Next year, in my honours year, I believe I should be directing philosophy towards areas applicable to real-life. Making sense of the shit that I just dribbled.