fuckphilosophy.com

I’m wondering what it takes to overcome very strong taboos, and what is the experience once you’ve crossed them. I’m not going to get into how taboos are formed, and whether they are natural or social or whatever. The fact remains that we have taboos and people find a way past them. Zoophilia for modest example. Murder is taboo, rape seems even worse, I guess it is because murder isn’t necessarily painful, but rape victims presumably never forget (or get over) the pain. Pedophilia probably tops the list, and the reasons for that are obvious. Zoophilia, at least in the case portrayed in the movie Zoo (Dir: Robinson Devor), being on the receiving end of the act, is a little different. Rush Limbaugh is heard in the movie arguing, “how could a horse not consent?” How do you rape yourself with a horse? That came out wrong. Rather, how do you rape a horse into administering…you get the point. Enough of that. It doesn’t seem very clear.

These people who were involved in this situation in the movie, presumably they didn’t just stumble upon this one day and thought “oh what the hell” or something, except that one of the guys in the movie puts it that “for some reason it just happened one day”, but there is no way that that can be taken seriously. So, from whatever cause (and there must be a cause: trauma, bad genes, etc), these people had a desire for animals, and as one guy says “the horse is the biggest thing on the internet”. (I guess he is referring to the zoo circles that he frequents.) Finding that you have desires such as these, one can’t but know very well that this is seriously taboo. Presumably this taboo has some affect on the individuals, but obviously some people aren’t deterred by taboos. I’m assuming then that it is either a kind of compulsion (or a REALLY strong desire, and whether there is any difference I don’t claim to know) or that they just don’t give a shit somehow (sociopathic or something). Anyways, here is my thesis: there is degree of “taking the plunge” when you get into something like zoophilia; there is no going back.

A taboo as strong as the one that keeps us from having sexual intercourse with animals would have to require some considerable force or something to be overcome. Assuming that these people wrestled with this desire of theirs (as is talked about in the movie too), I’m thinking that there must be a discontinuous point where one just “takes the plunge”. Like I said, I don’t think this is something you just find your self doing one day; one doesn’t just fall into it. At this moment of taking the plunge, one would be transformed. And when I say “transformed” I mean in the sense of taking on a new role/avatar (as the guys in the movie all had). But not just taking on a name, but starting from year 1 and living an enchanted life from then on. By “enchanted”, I mean that your life would have a purpose and orientation, as in being reborn. There is a scene in the movie seen from the front seat of a cop car, and the gang of zoophiles walks across the street in front of this cop car, and one guy with a gesture halts this cop car without hesitation as they cross in front of it. This is a gang of like 8 people, and I’m thinking that part of the reason why he had the power to halt this cop car is that they have been having sex with horses. This is where the ass-pennies comes in.

These guys had a secret. And for some weird reason, secrets can be powerful. Even if the secret is that you have the nerve to withstand a horse. You would walk around knowing this fact (like knowing that everyone has handled your ass-pennies) and it would give you an edge.

Everyone has had this experience of cognitive dissonance where you feel a very deep emotional conflict, “what have I done!!!???” that must be repelled because it is so disturbing. With Zoo-people, I’m guessing it is magnitudes stronger. Once you have “taken the plunge” and this dissonance sets in, I’m thinking there aren’t too many ways of coping with this (unless you are a sociopath): one would be to cave in and try to find salvation in order to cope with what you have experienced, another would be to kind of throw caution to the wind and embrace (or try to out-run) this dissonance. The latter would be easier to do if you had a support group like these guys did.But at the same time it is a bubble, and this is why I said it may be something like “out-running” the eventual collapse of this bubble. This is what made me think of serial-killers. Serial-killers know that their time is limited and short work must be made of it. Like Bonny and Clyde, it would have to exhilirating, enchanting, etc. while it lasted. I’m not saying that it would be great fun to be on a killing spree, but that I’m guessing that for a serial killer the most enchanted and engaged time of their life. But once the CNN helicopter is hovering over your house and there is a cavalcade of cop cars coming down the road, you don’t feel so cool. That is when the enchantment ends. That is when the real dissonance begins (unless you are a sociopath).

i admit that sometimes i have these weird paranoid pangs of guilt for being so unreligious (more like sacrilegious). In a kind of reality-check, I worry that I’ve just been treating this like some kind of puzzle that I have outwitted, when in reality the situation is much more grave, and what a fool I’ve been for taking it so lightly. But what makes me feel better is just thinking that there are so many different religions in the world, religions that have less blood on their hands, the fact that there are people that are born and die without ever even hearing of Jesus, forget about the millennia before Jesus ever arrived and all the people that were born, suffered, and died. What good did all that do? Presumably that could’ve been avoided and we could’ve just started with Jesus. Were all the aeons and aeons and aeons of gas and dust and fireballs necessary?

There aren’t many ways to reconcile these contradictions. One is that it doesn’t matter when or where you are born; you will be saved since it doesn’t exactly seem fair that words of Jesus have only been around part of the time. But then why did Jesus have to come down at all? Is there more of a culpability upon us who have lived within earshot of the words of Jesus? But still, why then? Why not before? Why not just leave some invincible son of god down here to keep reminding us? Why all the stupid games of time and distance, life and death, natural causes hiding the divine causes, creating creatures that depend on their senses and who reason, etc.? Why not do something a bit more convincing like place identical sons with identical teachings in every village around the world at the same time? Why just one location back when people got around on horseback and ship, and nobody wrote much, communication was limited, etc.?

Another possibility is that there might be some way to retroactively save people, which I think the Mormons do or something. But this still seems ridiculous. Why put all those thousands upon thousands of generations through all that, if you are going to have someone wish them up into heaven later. And presumably god could’ve done something about those souls during those millennia in limbo until Jesus showed up, thereby eliminating the need to go back and save them. It’s kinda like being trapped in a mineshaft, people going nuts trying to dig their way out, thinking they are going to die, clawing at each other for no reason, just because they have no hope, and then in walks Jesus and says, “Sorry I’m late guys! I see a bunch of you have died already. Well, I’ll just bring those guys back to life real quick and we’ll get outta here.”

Another possibility is that those people that weren’t in earshot are screwed, but that doesn’t seem like something that god would do.

So if one of these possibilities is the case, that still doesn’t eliminate the fact that the only interpretation in light of all that has been said is that this must be some kind of puzzle or game. But why in the hell does god need to put us all through this puzzle? The most plausible way of looking at this to me is that, since it is such a test for every single individual, then this must be some kind of endurance test, training camp/boot camp, the purpose being to bang out the best of the best, more of a statistical outcome/dialectical process. Leaving it all up to us to achieve what god has planned as the ultimate end/good. So this is some kind of proving ground. But why did god feel it was necessary to put us through this proving ground? What did we do to deserve this (forget about Adam and Eve)? Or what did putting us all through this acheive that couldn’t have been achieved otherwise through god limitless powers? Presumably there must be some reason. And that is where the only answer is: what the fuck ever. If there is a god, then the above can’t be what he is up to unless this world is just some lab experiment in higher dimensions. And if that is the case, then whoever the creator is, it certainly isn’t what everyone thinks they are worshiping.

There must either be other reasons/shapes/integrities in those higher dimensions that cause this world to have the shape that it does (like a pool of water on top of your tent while you are inside), or this is just some bubble. Either way, you’ve got to admit this place is pretty darn strange.