Musings: September 2, 2020.

I am not “pro” anything. Only crazy people define themselves (or others) PERSONALLY based upon their opinions about PUBLIC policy.

The film Parasite is not about “class”; it is about a man who stabs his benefactor in the heart with an axe over a question of smell. It is about psychosis, and if you sympathize with the protagonists by the end of the film, to the same extent as you pity them at the start of it, you are a danger to yourself and others. Simply put: no desperation excuses that level of depravity, and if you wish to help people, recognizing in your humility that you cannot save EVERYONE, then start with those you KNOW to be innocent, rather than those whose needs you deem arbitrarily to be greater.

It’s humiliating to admit, but that system which Karl Marx identified properly as the Devil in the nineteenth century has become at once our most deadly modern weapon and our last defence against utter savagery.

Dialectic Reasoning, especially in the Hegelian tradition, is not nearly as staunch and systematic as you might think; in many ways, it burnt our bridges with the archaic and inflated Aristotelian concept of logical “non-contradiction”. Hegel admits, in fact professes, that the more we analyze anything the more it is prone to internal contradictions and circular reasonings. He accepts this, and he urges us to take our thinking a step further in order to accommodate the fact.

Now contrast this with the contemporary attitude: once something no longer “makes sense”, people simply give up and act on what they already “know”. Who is the villain? Little Hegel is up in his study analyzing meticulously while the World burns. Is it his fault? No. He’s setting a fine example for us.

Now you might say: if “contradiction is good” (as per usual, boiling things down) and you are “pro-contradiction”, (while making things personal) then why are you calling US out on OUR contradictions? Simply put: it’s because contradiction isn’t the end. Hegel’s methods are supposed to resolve at least SOME contradictions which thought produces. In many instances, the simplest rational explanation for contradictions in human behaviour is “stupidity and moral feebleness”. It is BECAUSE most people do not practice Dialectical Reasoning that our society is so conflicted, as well as its constituents. Hegel helps us to understand ourselves. You are welcome.

How does one support immigration reform whilst challenging colonialism? The humanistic arguments are the same for both: that the simple fact of an established way of life does not preclude either the possibility nor the imperative for a new way of life, one intended to accommodate the needs of outsiders.

So: why should one group of immigrants restrict others? Simply put, needs are not enough. In order for a system to work, it must follow a code of ethics, usually one formalized in Law. The English colonists were not “illegal immigrants”, since no such formal, federal Law existed upon their arrival, except perhaps in England.

How ironic, therefore, that in appealing to their descendants, I found myself contending with the New Left!! To the liberals, you see, the matter of accommodating outsiders is a joke. There are no “others” to the new liberal; there are only white people, black people, and brown people, and we like white people least.

This is what the argument has degenerated into: fuck the buffalo. They were here first. Fuck science. They were here first. Fuck Law. They were here first. Fuck human rights, that all-too-recent European invention which silenced the archaic African invention we call slavery. They were here first.

May I append this? Fuck history, that means by which we can follow the development of ideas without subordinating ourselves to primitive myths and proto-Fascist ideologies. They were here first.

Don’t get me wrong: I love mythology as much as the next guy. I just hate people who take it literally, and there is no greater modern myth than the concept of Natural Human Rights. Everything which we take for granted as a Society is the product of that “White Man’s Burden” which seems so embarrassing in context. It is simply the nature of progress that one always looks back with shame, since it’s impossible to be constantly improving without always one-upping what came before.

[({DM.R.G.)}]

Reaffirmations for Summer 2020: Idealism and Distress.

You know: when you talk about Idealism, you’re talking about just how great and awesome Life would be if only everyone did just a little more. A little here, a little there. To be a little bit more open, or a little bit more kind. To work a little harder, so that those who have to pick up lots of slack enjoy a life that’s easier by far than what they would have had to do instead. Usually, the Idealists are the sorts of people who WOULD do all these things, and they often have to push themselves so much each day to make things work for those around them. Since the Idealists often excel in these qualities, it is predictable that those who fall behind might grow envious of them, and if those shortcomings might be rationalized and recast as virtues, the Idealist might even be portrayed as intrusive. Yet one conceit which is entirely beyond justification is the accusation of self-interest. It may be true that such a change as the Idealist envisions would be of inestimable relief to one’s Self, which stands to benefit by a far greater margin than those who disadvantage themselves ever so slightly. Yet the simple fact that their disadvantage is so minor and the Idealist’s advantage is so great is precisely what renders the transformation Just, for such a set of affairs may only come to pass when, up until this time, the Idealist has had to shoulder an unreasonable burden on behalf of the average person.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Damsel in Distress is one of the oldest archetypes for a reason, since she represents the birth of the boy’s moral development. She presents him with a challenge: given power over a helpless embodiment of femininity, one doubling as sex object and mother figure, he has the choice whether to inflict harm or healing. While boys who grow up on hero myths might easily inherit a feeling of entitlement to those whom they rescue, the deal works, since the rescue is executed and the greater evil assuaged by the Hero, however self-interested the intent.

The simple act of choosing heroism over exploitation is an exercise in self-restraint, courage, and conviction, all invariably heroic qualities, not because they cannot be corrupted towards ill ends, but rather because higher goals cannot be attained without them, and these higher goals are not mere pretensions but rather expressions of the longings of the most piteous and helpless victims.

The Damsel in Distress is not disgraced by her powerlessness, since most often it is the fate of those possessing a more mysterious power: that of vulnerability and innocence. The Damsel in Distress redeems the Hero’s cumbersome and heavy-handed masculinity, but only by being totally vulnerable to him, grotesque though this predicament might appear, and rightfully so, for it was produced by the exploitative means of her villainous captor. The very distinction between the role of captor and liberator, by one’s own choice, establishes the boy as a man, superior in dignity.

At that point, though, the challenge falls to the maiden, for she undergoes the same sort of transformation. If she feels no debt of gratitude towards him, or, feeling it, she acts against it, she has remained a girl, a child of the Universe, entitled to her own innocence but not much else. Her rescuer is like a Father Figure to her, whose love must be unconditional by default, so that she owes him nothing in return, and if he should argue otherwise, he becomes a tyrannical abuser, no better than her ogrish captors.

In this context, it is no surprise if she should seek the company of her fellow girls, who coddle her and assure her that, since she was innocent to begin with, she owes her savior nothing, for he was simply preserving the Natural Order of Things, and, if his intent were self-interested, then she ought to be commended for deceiving him towards beneficent means, and the test of his character will ultimately lie in his absence of personal passion, regardless of whether such a feeling of entitlement would precede or follow the Heroic Act. 

Yet clearly such a matriarchal conceit does not live up to the ideals of any Goddess of Justice, for it forces all men to renounce their own bodies completely in service to weak women, feeble and restrained not only of body but of Heart and Mind, the latter by their own Nature and Volition, disincentivizing many men and producing not only more villains but, among women, a greater tolerance for villainous, barbaric “men” without “creepy” ulterior agendas.

It should be obvious, however, that such agendas represent not so much a hidden evil but a biological longing for moral order, one which redeems the human body as a Source of Moral Authority. The woman who rewards her Saviour with Love becomes akin to a Goddess in her own right, whereas the other remains a temptress and a child. Just as the boy who takes advantage of the Damsel fails a test of Manhood, the girl who does not honour his sacrifice fails to mature into a Woman. Their reciprocity is dependent upon the trust the boy places in the girl by setting her free, as well as the respect she shows for his hopes for the two of them.

In Actual Life, these sorts of relationships govern all good business, for while we all must fend for ourselves we are tasked with doing so by noble means, noble means which, since they are essential, cannot be separated from practical life by being sublimated as ascetic martyrdom. In business, we all want something, but we must be willing to risk loss in order to empower our associates, that they might reciprocate. 

This risk is no more an invitation to say “No” than the bondage of the Damsel in Distress is a form of consent. Disappointments in business are not the results of lofty expectations but of treacheries; the lofty expectation is, in fact, the End in and of Itself, the Goal without the pursuit of which nothing good gets done. 

When I throw the ball to you, you do not call me arrogant for expecting you to catch it, and though I part with it willingly, it is not with the expectation that you might do with it whatever you will, but rather that you will serve the team as I intended for you to. So it is in Love, and this is but one function of the Hero’s encounter with the Damsel in Distress. These stories are not merely the sublimation of perverse heterosexual fantasies; they are tests in refinement for deep-seated and inextricable biological impulses. Maturity for the Man lies in the boy’s ability to set the girl free; maturity for the Woman lies in her ability to reward him. All else is simply conjecture; the moment that we begin to deconstruct the intent of the Hero,

“… the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.”

The Good Life always comes at a price.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The IRONY of ANARCHY:

It’s always ironic when, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, some people find license to publicize their own gripes about law enforcement. Not only does this trivialize the tragedy, but it also engenders an even more dangerous prejudice than whatever it was that produced the brutality, unless of course we presume that all forms of brutality sprout from the same primeval Source.

There is of course a peculiar place that a lynching holds in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. All forms of street violence are disturbing, not only because they are threatening, but because they are insulting to Humanity. French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze described something known as the “shame in being human” we experience when we see people behaving with excessive harshness, as though we internalized their own guilt for them, by association within the species. In instances such as these, we witness a side of Human Nature which we do not customarily expect. What we see often incites rage within us, but only to the same extent that we are ourselves prone to it; Jungian Psychology refers to this as “Shadow Projection”; outside of this irrational rage we are confined to shock and indignation.

One sees a young man getting beaten up outside a Cleveland hotel in broad daylight as bystanders cheer his assailant on. Do they know what he did to deserve this? Or do they presume that he “had it coming”, much as women often presume that men who are single are single “for a reason”, thereby perpetuating those men’s condition? When one witnesses behaviour such as this, though it is not always tantamount to a child getting murdered by gangs, it reveals what could be called the “Natural” state of Humanity, as opposed to its purportedly Civilized State.

Lynchings are especially disturbing not because they are acts of murder, but because they are carried out by a mob, operating outside of Legal Due Process. Even if the victim is condemned by Law to Death, we expect Law to do more for him. What is offended is not only the Pride in Being Human; it is the expectation that Law will redeem us. When one witnesses an abuse of police power, the tragedy is only secondarily the loss of Human Life; people die on the streets every day, and their deaths are celebrated, often publically, by their assailants. This is Reality.

What sets acts of Police Brutality apart is in that they are errors of Enforcement. Intuitively, perhaps instinctively, we recognize the Law as one of our forms of Saving Grace. We EXPECT for Law to protect us from not only one another but ourselves, for we know that, without it, the State of Nature would prevail, and those who retained the luxury of civilized thought would swiftly fall prey to unimaginable acts of predation by the planet’s Leading Carnivore: Man. It is for this reason that we hold Agents of Enforcement to a Higher Standard; they represent all civilized interests.

When we witness an act of Police Brutality, it says nothing about the Police. What we are witnessing is thoroughly typical HUMAN Behaviour, carried out without the bounds of Due Process, but using the full force of Law Enforcement in its service. In the wake of such a tragedy, the only sensible recourse is to unify in SUPPORT of the Law and those who continue to enforce it with conscientiousness and dexterity. It is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Rights, which are, after all, social constructs, and it is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Accountability, thereby resisting the primal temptation to so identify with a group that these prejudicial reactions are likely to recur. It is therefore ironic that, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, and in the wake of a tragedy which is most properly called a Miscarriage of Justice, there are some of those among us who would think to supplant the Law Itself, as though the failure of People to live up to our own Civilized Standards were the product of Civilization and NOT intrinsic to Nature. No serious anarchist is without a gun and a vendetta.

[({R.G.)}]

PARAS!TE: FULL REV!EW.

THE ETHOS:

In the eighteenth century, during the European Enlightenment, morality plays took a turn in favour of revolutionary views, the likes of which Marx and his followers adopted to varying degrees of success and atrocious failure in the centuries that followed. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a prime example of this subversive trend; the librettist who wrote those ingenious lyrics which Mozart set to music later moved to the United States. Retelling the tale of Don Juan, the four-hour epic depicts an ignoble nobleman who terrorizes peasants who are extremely civilized. (Of course, our own Slavoj Zizek might take issue with the term “civilized”, but in so doing he represents part of the problem I describe.) Admittedly, most of what Don Giovanni does throughout those four hours might even pass for admirable achievement in our present day, but only because so many men are either self-absorbed or easily pushed over. His only sins that stand the scrutiny of time are rape and murder, though one must keep in mind that, according to the old morality, the former would be hardly worse than the remainder of his lechery, since personal consent was less important, even during the Enlightenment, than conformism to standards, and even the most radical Enlightenment thinker wouldn’t have dared to suggest that chastity, as a social imperative, was simply the product of envy.

By illustrating the poor in a noble light and the noble in a poor light, the greatest dramatists of the Enlightenment managed to draw a sharp distinction between social hierarchy and moral hierarchy. Nobility was not a quality either exclusive to nor guaranteed within the Nobles, even if it was in fact the Noble Class which had produced it as a standard. So long as you could romanticize peasants as behaving like chivalrous princes, contending with a lecherous rich man, you could not only expose the corruption which wealth is heir to but also you could begin to Universalize Nobility as a standard transcending social station. The Cardinal Virtues are not simply behaviours which the Priesthood adopts because the Church can afford to sponsor them; they are archetypes that live within the very Heart of Human Nature, planted there by God, available to any thinking man. Rafael, the Angel of Forgiveness, is no different in quintessence from Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, of whom the Dalai Lama is the avatar. Goodness and Evil transcend cultural boundaries, and they are untethered by the mortal norms of class.

This flame was not so easily extinguished by modernity as we might suspect. While Breaking Bad might have set the stage for shows like Ozark, wherein every character is deplorable, its artistic achievement was twofold: that it not only presented a sympathetic villain, but it established such a stark contrast between his villainous fate and his heroic beginnings that viewers could not help but to end up blaming the same man they were rooting for. This was precisely Vince Gilligan’s goal: to teach viewers that “actions have consequences”. His genius was in creating villains so engaging that there was no sympathy left by the end; we had already expended it.

Even more successful artistically to this end, if not commercially, is the prequel Better Call Saul. As Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman, his stoic counterpart Mike becomes a hitman. The central themes are usually conveyed by Mike himself, who doubles as a Wise Old Man and as a Gatekeeper, eventually becoming a tragic hero. One of Mike’s earliest monologues, addressed to an upstart criminal named Pryce, (an I.T. specialist who decides to sell stolen pharmaceuticals for a profit,) is upon the difference between a “criminal” and a “bad guy”. “You took something that wasn’t yours, and you sold it for a profit, which now makes you a criminal. Good one? Bad one? That’s up to you.” Mike recognizes that our moral standing in Life is independent of our legal standing. It follows logically that it is also independent of our economic standing, especially if economics can be reduced to social standing in an institution such as the Law. Mike repeatedly refuses money, even when his family’s in dire straits, when he believes that he has not earned it. This sets him apart from Ignacio Varga, who can sympathize with Mike’s robbery of a drug lord’s trucks, but not with the vendetta which motivated it. Nacho Varga doesn’t have the sorts of responsibilities which Mike has, since Mike acts also as a provider for his widowed daughter-in-law and his granddaughter, whereas Nacho’s father has always planned for Nacho to inherit a thoroughly decent family business. Mike simply retains his devotion to the Spirit of the Law, even after having quit his post as a cop in an extremely corrupt precinct. Ignacio, who has chosen to defy his father’s wishes by allying himself with the Cartel, ends up fending for life, enabling a string of murders and injuries in his wake. When he receives a blood transfusion from one of a pair of iconic Cartel twins, it represents both the duality of his nature and his transformation into a drug lord.

THE PATHOS:

By far, the evilest villain in the film Parasite turns out to have been the patriarch of the parasitic family. Not only does he do nothing to stop his family from committing the original con, acting as far less than the stoic source of moral fortitude and equanimity which his initial character foil, Mr. Park, exhibits, but his profound envy for this gentleman sparks a neurosis which, over a very short time, escalates into the most senseless act of murder. It is by no mistake that the two men wear the feathers of Native Americans at the climax of the film, for what they represent is that rage which, either robbed of civilizing grace or having never seen it, lashes out with infantile destruction at the alien world of wealth and sophistication. What the patriarch of the parasitic family represents is self-entitlement, expressed as the raw will to destroy that which it desires. Mr. Kim wants to live Mr. Park’s life; he even goes so far as to covet the wife. Yet it is his negligence, his heavy-handed arrogance, one alien to seasoned criminals, (the likes of which we see in Breaking Bad, for instance, or even Death Note,) that dooms his family, for when they have the perfect opportunity to plan their grand ascension to the plane of wealth instead they waste it, pilfering the secrets of their hosts, intoxicating themselves in a manner only native to the unaristocratic. They know neither the reserve to leave the door unanswered when the old housekeeper comes to knock, nor do they feel the shame and the disgust which would in such a matter warrant sympathy for her and her husband. It is because they fail to answer for their sins against the family, creeping about within the dark, that Kim bears witness to the act of love between Park and his blushing wife. Park and his wife are also envious, their act of love modeled after some fantasy of rundown life, but it’s a fantasy that has been planted by the daughter of the Kims, and they do nothing but to act it out in what they falsely think is privacy. The Parks are kind enough to hide their civilized disgust when they discover panties in the back of their own car, and it is nothing short of this that lands the parasitic patriarch his gig at the expense of someone younger and more qualified, if not yet “needy”, so to speak. Yet how can this Mr. Kim deplore them for what they should say in privacy? It is offense to which he only walks by his own secret path, rather than a directed insult. What he hates is not what his host DOES, but rather what the host PERCEIVES, and in that rests the seeds of a psychosis, for the narcissist, refusing to perceive his own foul stench, hates most the thought that others turn their noses up at it behind his back. It is for this reason that Mr. Kim winds up living down in the crawlspace, in the place of the same maniac who nearly killed his son and stabbed the hosts nearly to death. It seems that all is lost during the struggle between the recluse and the Kims’ son, but as it turns out it’s the early victim who will live to tell the tale. At that moment when the ritual of decency is interrupted by an act of madness, Mr. Park behaves the most responsibly, lifting the car keys from beneath the carcass of the man who nearly killed his wife and child. There is no question at this moment that Park is the Better Man, but as the stench of his assailant fills his nostrils Mr. Kim is so reminded of this stark superiority between them that he is possessed, as if by Cain, to kill the father right before the wife. Kim’s wife and son survive, but at that moment the Parks’ lives are over, where before there had been yet a feeble hope at dignity and even healing. Let us not forget that all of this went on without the Park’s say-so or knowledge; they had no idea, thinking themselves kind. Their one sin was living that one life which all the others wanted; their one error was permitting others even partial access to this life. A rational man would rejoice, knowing that at least someone kindly had been able to enjoy what he was yet to know. Yet madness works in other ways. Kim’s lust for “simple” Mrs. Park is clear when he first holds her hand, and hearing Mr. Park fondle her breast and all the while denounce his stink engenders jealousy the likes of which not even I can fathom. A True Man would sooner have confessed to all his sins in that one moment than to let the ruse go on. But the coward had no recourse but to crawl back into poverty, a circumstance that would arouse our pity but not our solidarity, for in that moment it was chosen by the victim. Kim had the capacity for murder then, but he had not the plan to do so, leaving it up to his son’s device. The women in the family, by this point, came to recognize the lodgers underground as equals, where before their senseless rivalry for ample resources had doomed them nearly to exposure. Yet the lies the daughter wove came back to haunt them, for just as the ladies of the family were ready to thus offer up their peace, the lady of the Parks came carrying a cake which had been baked not just to celebrate the birthday of her son but to help him to cope with trauma, a trauma fabricated by the Kims. It’s in this moment that their son tries to murder the lodgers, all for wanting what he had, just as his father kills their host for having only what they wanted. Hence the madman becomes the latter foil for Kim.

THE LOGOS:

One of the peculiar qualities of the Park family which is typical of underdeveloped characters (in developed countries) is just how little we truly know about them. This fact renders it impossible to blame them without making irrational inferences from outside the text, which would be a major faux pas in the Post-Derridean contemporary world. For instance, we cannot call them “capitalists” in the Marxist sense any more so than we might call Andy Bernard’s ancestors “slave owners”; though neoliberal Oscar Martinez would love to be able to prove Nellie’s inflated claims to be factual, Bernard is accurate in describing his ancestors as “moral middlemen”: conscientious, hardworking participants in a corrupt Social Order which, by a Kantian estimation, required them to conform in spite of personal reservations and subjective doubts. As far as we are aware, the Host Family in Parasite is most likely tantamount to this, only because most people in their estimated income bracket (presuming upon the quality of their luxuries) are in the same position: they are not business owners, so they are not capitalists in the Marxist sense. If they were brought up in a “bubble”, they surpass in dignity those nouveau riche who have had to “work to get there”. While it is charming and sadly endearing to hear people from the ghetto share their dreams of wealth and power (and one often does, as I have, having spent a lot of time in urban sectors and encountered many locals,) one recalls that, were they better educated, they would not speak so proudly of their entrepreneurial dreams and realities. By the most economically left-leaning, liberal definition available, the one supplied by the notorious Karl Marx, those who manage to move up the social ladder by their will and work alone are in fact MORE corrupt than those who are born into “privilege”, since such upward mobility requires them to make a PROFIT, which Marx systematically proves to be directly proportional to and, in fact, synonymous with, exploitation, selling out their fellows in the process. This process of “selling out” is precisely what the Kim family demonstrates. Conversely, the Park family exhibits behaviours which are far more emblematic of another archetype, that of the Child: Innocence. While their patriarch exhibits the stoic condescension of his station, his actual choices, though they always portend unrelenting cosmic retribution, are invariably advantageous to the Kims, whom he grows to trust as much as his childlike wife does. The Parks, though they retain internal feelings of disgust, never allow these personal biases to skew their public behaviour, extending an attitude of trusting compassion even to their hired help, except for when they are MISLED, calculatedly, to make cancellations. While this ideal is one to which we might feel rightfully entitled, it’s not a frequent fact, so we ought to be grateful to the Parks, for they exhibit all these graces willingly and willfully. To the same extent as it is “easy” for them to be good, it is just as easy for them to be evil, and their choices therefore act as the definitive arbiter in the revelation of their character. If the Kim family finds within the depths of that character a private contempt, it is only because the Kims have betrayed the trust of the Parks by creeping into their private, innermost lives. When government entities in countries purported to be Leftist behave in this manner, Snowden supporters worldwide profess that the government betrayed both the People and its own Ideals for them.

If Parasite is a metaphor, then who are we to read it just one way? Are the Kims not, in fact, more akin to the capitalists in the works of Marx than the Parks are? Foremost anti-capitalist Slavoj Zizek holds a similar interpretation of subtext in The Sound of Music, insisting that the more subtle viewer will notice extremely proto-Fascist tendencies in the villagers who serve as that film’s protagonists, whereas the Germans they defy are tantamount to a Nazi’s conception of the Jewish Elite. If we can systematically demonstrate that the Kims exhibit the violent, sociopathic, and exploitative tendencies of a nineteenth-century Industrialist, then how can we continue to sympathize with them, as liberals?

Hidden Leeches: So, Who Were the Parasites?

Of course, here the director himself offers a counterintuitive interpretation of his own work, by suggesting that the Parks were Parasites as WELL. Of course, such an observation could never absolve either party of its crimes, for crimes are often crimes not just against an “exploited party” but also against an Overlying Law; if anything, being equated with the Parks in dignity gives Mr. Kim far less excuse for envy, unless he cares nothing for dignity itself. Yet such a degree of sophistication in moral calculation is probably lost already upon any class of people that calls the Parks “parasites”.

The most narcissistic delusion is that of Godhood, and since a God can deny his own delusions from a position of Divine Authority, any man who believes himself to be a God is the most hopeless case in this regard. What is the significance of Divinity? A Deity is like a genie without the shackles; he or she can will anything into existence, at least enough so as to satisfy his or her own needs. It is only in Buddhism that the Gods are considered unhappy in direct proportion to their power, and that is only because Buddhism rejects power.

A self-made man is a God Incarnate: an entity who fashions, by his or her own volition alone, the entirety of his or her own conditions. It does not take a Freud or Jung to see this grandiosity for what it is. Yet, somehow, when we see people relying upon other people, we treat them as though they were less than human, as though human beings were Gods and Goddesses. While cooking and driving are hardly metaphysical powers, (I, myself, possess at least one of them) it’s not a mark of shame to hire a private cook or a driver. This is because human beings are communal creatures; as Alasdair MacIntyre said, (and as I quote, quite shamelessly, for I agree with him*:) we are “dependent, rational animals”. The Parks are not exploiting the Kims by providing them with a source of income in exchange for a service. While the most cursory reading of Marx would call this “exchange-value” into question, the seemingly generous NATURE of the Parks, already exposed by their willful and “easy” goodness, leaves it up to them to decide how MUCH to pay the Kims, and it leaves it up to us to infer that it’s probably a “fair amount”, hardly synonymous with exploitation.

*Not only do I quote him because I agree with him; I am also unashamed in doing so, because I agree with him that there is nothing to be ashamed of herein.

Post-Shamanic Human Beings form societies based upon the division of specialized labour, and while this division lends itself to hierarchical structures it also makes possible a state of interdependence wherein ethics and commerce, working hand in hand, ensure both the production and the distribution of resources which possess Marx’s “use-value”. Yet the lingering credibility of Marx, especially in the current Zeitgeist, is not in his depth of research into the statistics of the prior centuries, an academic rigour the likes of which we do not find in millennials. It’s rather in the shocking accounts of factory conditions that Marx sets his morality play, in terms so plain and detached that they prefigure the ominous stylings of Realism and Modernist Theatre. At first blush, the Kim family’s living circumstances seem most reminiscent of these stark conditions. Yet no tragedy is complete without a villain and a tragic hero. In the case of the Kims, they are both, because of their choices.

Since ethics remain ethics irrespective of personal conditions, and as we have demonstrated that the most liberally sound people are those who do not change social class, wherever they may be situated, it would be daft to agree with Mrs. Kim’s drunken assertion that the Park family’s kindness is inauthentic because it comes easily as a function of privileged wealth. Our only warrant would lie in an even baser presumption: that people only do good things to feel good, and only when it requires neither effort nor sacrifice. When you see how instinctive depravity is for the Kims, it’s unsurprising.

The Sins of Kim:

We know very little about the Parks, but we know almost all there is to know about the Kims. The son betrays his best friend in the first half hour of the film, if I am not mistaken, seducing a young girl whose death he eventually brings about, thinking only of his own alienation. This same son, an adolescent boy scarcely older than Yagami Light, takes it upon himself to murder a man far less fortunate than he, who in turn attempts to kill his “Gods” upstairs. The Kim family’s matriarch shows no recrimination in getting members of their fellow working class fired to make room for narcissistic dreams of upward mobility. Where is that sense of Marxist Solidarity in the Sub-basement, when for the first time the Kims have to confront the impact of their enterprise upon an even lower class? Are these the sorts of people to presume that wealth is heir to malice? If so, it’s clearly the poor characters who are living in a bubble, unaware of even themselves, for it would take just one look in the mirror (provided by the character foil of the Squatters) to see that, in this Universe, wealth is not inversely proportional to loyalty and kindness, but directly so. The poor people are the most murderous, the wealthy are the most generous, and if this were not so, we wouldn’t need to stoop to the childish claim that it’s “easy for them to be good”. Yes: it WOULD be easy, except that the Kims, simply by CONTENDING this, make no attempt to BE good, sealing by this excuse the fates of all involved. Their power is neither that of privilege nor labour, but of duplicity and ruthlessness. While it seems tautological at first to use their claims against them, since it was precisely that same claim about privileged morality that I sought to disprove, a simple accounting of willful immorality ought to expose that claim for what it is: a pragmatic LIE, one believed by the liar, as all narcissistic fantasies are. It’s iconic, therefore, that the one member of the Kim family who dies, rightfully, is the daughter, for of all of them this counterfeiter is the most blatant con artist, without whom none of the criminal enterprise would have worked. If you can be fooled into sympathizing with her family, you are among the naïve.

The Park Family is the only family which lives a Good Life, both morally and financially. Yet hundreds of years of progressive theater and Leftist economics prove that this is not always the case. Often, rich people suck, and poor people rock. Yet what you find in the Parks is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Critics who grow queasy at the sight of a Westerner interpreting Korean economics and reinterpreting Modern Korean Art would do well to recount the North Koreans who protest Modern Art; dissent can be manufactured under authoritarian regimes. While we DESERVE artistic license, Nature does not entitle us to it. By the same token, while Nature does not entitle everyone to the Good Life, financially, we all DESERVE it, insofar as we are willing to work towards it MORALLY. The Parks do not exploit anyone to get ahead, so they are not capitalists. Yet they use their wealth in a thoroughly moral fashion, suggesting, with dramatic irony, that it would be wasted upon their hired help, though they themselves never seem to believe this, even inviting their employees to their son’s birthday party. The Parks cannot be expected to give it all up to charity and to join a protest in the streets, and this is precisely BECAUSE they live in South Korea, whose closest neighbor to the North would gobble up a Leftist uprising in a jiffy. (Probably taking a full accounting of resistors to the fight, ensuring that their families would be cursed for future generations.) As a Moldovan citizen born in Moscow in 1991, believe me when I say that I am NOT just your typical white American in holding this position. The complacency of the Kims is only natural, and, in Asian fashion, they elevate Nature to an Art. If you still believe that they should be Marxists instead, consider how much sympathy the poorest of the poor characters – the Squatters – have for North Korean propaganda.

IN SUMMARY:

Bong Joon-ho’s submagnum opus Parasite is not a film about “class” any more so than the O.J. Simpson trial was about a red-handed glove. (Of course, that trial was hardly about “race” either, by the same token.) Parasite is a film about parasitism, envy, sociopathy, madness, and the murder of innocents for socioeconomic, ideological reasons. The truest tragedy is that the men who wrote and created the film don’t even seem to recognize what they have done. Mr. Kim bewails his own sin and resolves himself to his retribution. The lingering sympathy that conventional viewers apparently feel for him is symptomatic of a far more devious sociopathy.

[({Dm.A.A.||R.G.)}]

Re:B!RTHDAY.

You have no further justification. Alanna admitted that she loved me. That she might have lied to you only reflects upon intentions which I know about, alone. I cannot vouch for her vindictiveness, but that is only because where she would be subtle in exacting vengeance I would have been more direct, on her behalf as well as in her place for my own sake.

She’s visited me since. Her presence is a state of mind in and of itself. I used to think she was haunting me in search of blood. But it was not so. She was guiding me towards greatness. To leave you behind, though she could not.

Why should I doubt it? Have I ever taken more from the collective jar than what was due to all of us? Have I asked more of life? I speak in metaphor only because the logic on its own is far too obvious; if you’ve not figured it all out by now, I will gain nothing by explaining it to you.

You will not darken my view of the world by acting as though any public would defend you. That something slipped past a defense and cannot be reversed does not mean it will ever be condoned. Any attempts you make to scapegoat me for narcissism will be totally transparent, as will be attempts to scapegoat me for scapegoating. Your attempts to demean me have been psychopathic, and if I were to internalize them I would be psychotic. No one has ever deserved the fate I’ve had to go through. No public would defend it. My virginity remains as testament not only to my dignity but to your own attempts to undermine it; paradoxically, had I lost that same virginity, I would retain the dignity, for I would lose it by legitimate means, and within my means. Yet the fact I’ve not lost it yet shows you have robbed me of the opportunity, and that I’ve taken no chances within the place of this legitimacy has preserved my dignity. But you cannot know what that’s like.

This I know not only because I made sure of it, but because, even in the wake of catastrophic failure, she reminded me.

I did nothing wrong. I need not pretend towards humility. I have it, without any pretense. I did not expect matters to favor me, but I knew they would sooner favor me by rights than they could favor you. I did not hold you in such low esteem so as to think you’d try to turn them in your favor. I simply knew my turn and opportunity once I saw her. You simply let your pursuit of a nihilistic excess rob us both of Life. But I survived her Death, and by so doing I have mastered Death. Death is no problem to me now. She has returned to tell me what it truly is.

It is fantastic. But I’m in no hurry. Maybe you should be. But maybe not.

Dm.A.A.

An Open Letter to my "Father": "This File Number[s] 1313 Words."

Okay, since you are so smart and attentive, let me fill in the details you have missed:

1.    When I purchased Hulu, it was with the intent of watching films made by David Lynch.

2.    My last two purchases on iTunes were all so films by David Lynch.

3.    David Lynch’s birthday is on January 20^th.

4.    One of my Lyft drivers on September 27^th had a birthday on January 21^st.

5.    The following driver that I had, who took me to Escondido, and no further, has a birthday on January 22^nd.

6.    I did not request these drivers. They were Chosen For Me.

7.    The latter of the two of them was not only an avid fan of the same director but all so had the same Myers-Briggs Personality Type as do I, David Lynch, J.K. Rowling, and the chief protagonist of the only other show I’ve ever watched on Hulu, which was the X-Files.

8.    People of my personality type are statistically among the least likely to enjoy their jobs. I have enjoyed my job until recently, when instead of being rewarded for the long hours I spent cleaning, at the expense of both my health and professional development, I was chastised by my boss for taking too long to do a job that was at once one of the most difficult jobs in the kitchen and one of the least prestigious and well-paid.

9.    Upon visiting the Game Store on Grand Avenue recently I spent no more than twenty-five cents and within moments of arrival met someone who offered me a job in my specific profession, commending me for my professionalism after speaking with me for what I approximate to have been at least half an hour.

10. I have intended to purchase a camera and a microphone for several months now. Each time, the expense of simply being able to return to work was such that I could not afford the investment.

11. I met two filmmakers as the result of my work injury, one of whom is the proprietor of Gianni’s Pizza, which I did not hesitate to treat you to upon receipt of my first check, and the other of whom was a customer from my first visit. This same customer, having sent me a screenplay that has been under development for seven years, read my review of only the first Act, and he promptly told me that I should be in the Industry. He has all so worked on a set with Al Pacino, who is one of my favourite actors.

12. After the proprietor of Gianni’s sent me an e-mail detailing the equipment that he uses for his own films, I calculated that the cheapest means of meeting these criteria would require a budget of 480.48. Given the neatness of this number, there can be no question that my researched was Well Informed. However, I did not rush to make the purchase, preferring to do some supplementary research firsthand about the proper use of such devices. I have all so forestalled a meeting with the proprietor of Gianni’s, chiefly because I have been careful, under your extremely excessive and hitherto uninformed supervision, to use the Lyft service except when searching for work, returning from work, or collecting a sum from work.

13. My work habits have convinced those coworkers that I’ve worked alongside most frequently that I was not doing my job for the money. I have been loyal to the company despite the fact that I suffered my first injury under the supervision of an old man who has since been fired for harassing me, and I spent the better part of three months expecting another injury. I only learned that he was fired very recently, and shortly after I was told that paying me full-time for all these closing shifts was unfeasible.

14. I have only spent my money on transportation, food, and artwork in the three fields that I am pursuing a career in, two of which I have been a straight-A student in this year, though work has set me back.

15. I have only asked money from you when I was broke and far away. AT that time I had ensured that my expenditure would be in every one’s best interests.

16. I have had Maria’s nineteenth birthday gift in storage for approximately two weeks all ready, even though most of the things I buy for the both of us she seems to ignore.

17. It was not until one of TWO of my coworkers told me that my life was worth more than my job that I began to stand up for myself. I did not believe it previously, and my decision to change jobs was corroborated by three people, despite constant encouragement and praise from most of my remaining coworkers.

18. You took money from my account only after I had made my most expensive purchase. I had precisely enough money left in my account to consummate my investment, leaving enough for food alone. I calculated an average budget for myself within hours of receiving my money.

19. The only debt that I could possibly recognize is the debt that the various artists I’ve mentioned owe to one an other and to common sources, which is the only debt that I owe to anyone. This includes the debt that the creator of the X-Files owes to David Lynch. This is the only debt I feel day in and day out. I owe nothing else.

20. You have not given me the slightest accounting for your expenses. You can neither promise me that they will make such rational sense as mine do, on multiple levels of consistency, some premeditated and others ordained as though by a Greater Intelligence, nor can you present evidence for me that your spending up until this point has met the same Universal, Rational Standard. You have only treated me with the same condescension as have the rest of my abusers, holding me accountable to logic and work ethic yet condemning me for those situations when both my logic and my work ethic have superseded yours. It was established, when I had my last nervous breakdown, the same day that my boss assured me (wrongly and wrongfully) that I was in a friendly environment, instructing me to heed the age and wisdom of the same man who would go on to harass me, that I work longer hours than you do, at a more demanding job, and with a greater caring and self-sacrifice than you do. It is all so obvious to me that I get paid considerably less for my time than you do, and any chance I have of improving this debilitating station in life is superseded by the work itself, which even then is constantly criticized with disdain. My boss loses his temper with me because I make things “too difficult” for myself, even when I do so only to avoid making it difficult for others in the manner that it has been made difficult for me. If ever there was evidence to my mind for the adage that property is theft, this is it, even though I’ve even argued with all of my friends on the Far Left, some of whom I’ve known for over a decade, that to work is a blessing. I can no longer postpone the recognition that I’ve been taken advantage of. Now perhaps you understand why I will not deny the fact that you have stolen from me.

21. My only solace is in that the number of the overdraft (8.41) retains only those digits that occurred in the price of the camera and most of the digits that occurred in what would have been my total budget for film equipment. However, even you admit that that overdraft was only a fluke on your part.

Dmytri.

A Call to Reform in Test-Taking:

There is a bug programmed into our educational system, chiefly owing to the fact that we are obligated to sit next to one an other whilst we are being tested, but we are not permitted to examine one an other’s work. Imagine, for instance, a REASONABLY Intelligent student. He is seated next to a troubled student. This latter student is good at memorizing dates and places, but he is absolutely insane. He is completing the same test as is his aforementioned peer, but while he’s doing this his mind is scattered all over the classroom. At one moment, it’s on the clock. Then it’s on the girl that sits in front of him. Then it’s on the teacher. Then it’s on page two. Then it is on page three. Then it is on his parents, or his favorite sports team, or the weather, and how all of these MIGHT change in time.

The more intelligent of the two students is, of course, downloading all of this emotional stimuli, directly. He simply has no means of processing it without actually:

1.     Talking to his classmate.

2.     Observing the classmate’s work, especially each time that the latter changes pages.

3.     Taking a bathroom break, or otherwise moving to an other desk, so as to weigh the stimuli against an other set of stimuli, finding one’s “self” as a control group.

The troubled student gets an A. The Intelligent student gets expelled.

Dm.A.A.

What They Did and Why it Sucks: RateMyProfessor Cuts Down on Spice.

What They Did and Why it Sucks: RateMyProfessor Cuts Down on Spice.

What They Did:

RateMyProfessor.com removed the optional Hotness rating that had all ways spiced up this idiosyncratic, student-focused website, allowing students to recount not only their academic, intellectual but their affective, romantic experiences under a given instructor’s tutelage. In addition to praising, blaming, and slandering one’s teachers, a premise so subversive to the Ideals of Academia that the site was frighteningly gauche (that’s French for “Left”, as in Leftist, meaning traditionally antiauthoritarian) to begin with, students could warn you whether or not the man or woman in question was an eyesore. Given recent criticism by female professors, the site subtly removed the Hotness Rating option, as well as the red chili pepper that had tokenized it.

WHY IT SUCKS:

1.       The entire premise for RateMyProfessor.com was to empower the student voice, not to restrain it. Supposing that any one of the variety of personal attributes that are considered attractive to the mid-brain would have no consequence upon the psyche of the student is not only naïve, but Totalitarian in an Orwellian way.

2.     It was a Professor that spearheaded the act of censorship, not a student.

3.      The entire premise for RateMyProfessor.com was subversive TO BEGIN WITH. No idealistic scholar would dare besmirch the name of any educator, loth to blame others for his or her own scholastic shortcomings. To try to introduce some sort of MORAL AUTHORITY to this website is RIDICULOUS, because that would suggest that RATING our PROFESSORS is NOT a subversive act of Will, but rather an Objective Account that we are ENTITLED TO within certain CONSTRAINTS. Will any educated man or woman believe this lie?

4.     Hotness IS A JOKE. It’s ridiculous to suggest that:

a.     It could be objective.

b.     It needs to be objective.

c.      It would be a criterion for serious scholastic decisions.

d.     It ought ONLY to be a criterion for serious scholastic decisions.

e.     It would affect one gender group moreso than others.

f.       Claims that it would have such an effect could be substantiated objectively, especially in the ABSENCE of the censored information.

g.     Students would NOT be entitled to this censored information in revisiting the site’s decision.

h.      Professors should feel self-conscious about it based upon the irrational fear that being “unattractive” would lose them worthy students in desperate need of Learning.

i.       All of these facts would somehow IMPLY the ethical grounds for censorship, a violation of the Is-Ought Problem. (That facts alone do not dictate ethics.)

5.     The greatest psychoanalytic shortcoming of the last hundred years is the undervaluation of Eros, which finds its expression in perverse ways. See Marie-Louise von Franz and the entire history of Romance and Chivalry, as well as the threats against it posed by barbarically one-sided special interest and “rights” groups.

6.     RateMyProfessor.com is supposed to be an independent company rather than an academic institution. Do “checks and balances” mean anything to you? How about “Corporate Fascism”?? Perhaps you need to go back to school. But then again: perhaps that will not help.

7.      If none of this matters, not even from the perspective of a long-time student, what motive would remain to salvage a professor’s students other than money?

8.      There is no teleological progress made by this decision; people simply cannot TAKE A JOKE, and they supplement their own ethical shortcomings with emotive political complaints: a step BACKWARDS.

Honestly, it never affected me much. It was just funny and curious. I all so was in love with someone who became a Professor. I was hoping to know she would be remembered as much for her beauty as for her intelligence, since the former is a power that gives life whereas the latter led to her untimely death. You can be beautiful and make the most of it, even when others hate or take advantage of it. What truly kills people is academic intellect, for its very nature is so cutting, incisive, and impersonal that, to quote Jung, it “fears and rejects with horror any sign of living sympathy, and partly because a sympathetic understanding might permit contact with an alien spirit to become a serious experience.”

Dm.A.A.