The Sadness of Phil Collins

Exasperated, Croesus demands that Solon explain to him why he has not deigned to put him, great king, owner of unimaginable riches, even on the same level as these ordinary folk.

Solon replies that human life is so unpredictable, we are so at the mercy of fate, that until we are safely dead, no one can say whether we are happy or fortunate as we do not know what calamities might befall us from one day to the next. No one can truly be called happy until they are dead.

— Herodotus The Histories (1.29-.33) and (1.85-.89) trans Aubrey de Selincourt

According to Rolling Stone, Phil Collins was the second biggest pop star of the 1980s (after Michael Jackson).

Many of his hits — most powerfully “In the Air Tonight” — defined the decade. The man sold 150 million records. His songs endure.

You’d think that’s a pretty good life legacy — a decent roll of the dice, as it were.

But twenty years later, a bitter and melancholy Phil Collins has asked that people start calling him “Phillip.” He hates what the old Phil has become.

Via Rolling Stone:

The Eighties ended and the Nineties began in a whole different mood, with Nirvana and other punk-influenced bands establishing grunge as the dominant musical force. In many ways, grunge’s threadbare, garage-rock sound was a direct reaction to the overblown, synth-heavy bombast of the previous decade — and no one typified those excesses more than Collins. In the summer of 1994, reports began circulating that Collins had informed his (second) wife that he wanted a divorce — via fax. He denied it vehemently, and the fax itself was never produced, but no matter: Suddenly it was open season on the guy. Oasis’ Noel Gallagher started hammering on him any time he could, to uproarious effect. Among his choicest bon mots: “You don’t have to be great to be successful. Look at Phil Collins” and “People hate fucking cunts like Phil Collins, and if they don’t, they fucking should.” And so it’s gone, especially on the internet, where I Hate Phil Collins sites have flourished. He gets criticized for everything. For his hair, for his height, for his shirts (tucks them in), for being a “shameless, smirking show hog.”

“I don’t understand it,” he says, looking pained. “I’ve become a target for no apparent reason. I only make the records once; it’s the radio that plays them all the time. I mean, the Antichrist? But it’s too late. The die is cast as to what I am.”

Now we see the downside of being a pop superstar. Had Collins’ songs not been popular enough to get regular rotation on soft rock radio stations to this day, he never would have become a target for point-scoring assholes like Noel Gallagher. The proliferation of “I Hate Phil Collins” sentiment is a hipster-grunge reaction to Collins’ extreme outlier of commercial success — and in its own way, further validation of the outsized impact he has had.

And yet, for the man himself to say “The die is cast as to who I am” is just sad — a form of tragicomedy. Fate does not decide who a person is, much less the snarking of random trolls on the internet. Except in this case, Collins the man has chosen to let his detractors define him… and thus made it so.

Collins is wealthy but not healthy. The hearing in his left ear is gone. A vertebrae injury in his neck has oddly affected his ability to grip things: He is unable to hold drumsticks, or even write his own name with a pen.

Moderate physical ailments are hardly an impediment to a happy life. What haunts Collins, cruelly, is his inability to let go of a caricature that others have crudely drawn:

He pauses, and then he goes on. “I have had suicidal thoughts. I wouldn’t blow my head off. I’d overdose or do something that didn’t hurt. But I wouldn’t do that to the children. A comedian who committed suicide in the Sixties left a note saying, “Too many things went wrong too often.” I often think about that.”

His manner when he says these things is straightforward. He betrays no emotion. The second-biggest pop star of the Eighties (after Michael Jackson) just sits there, seeming like he maybe wished he could blink it all away.

“Everything has added up to a load that I’m getting tired of carrying,” he continues. “It’s gotten so complicated. It’s the three failed marriages, and having kids that grew up without me, and it’s the personal criticism, of being Mr. Nice Guy, or of divorcing my wife by fax, all that stuff, the journalism, some of which I find insulting. I wouldn’t say that I have suicidal tendencies over my career or bad press. They’re just another chink in the wall. It’s cumulative. You can say, ‘Grow up, man, everybody gets criticism.’ I know that. And I’ve philosophically adjusted to it. But does that make it any more pleasurable? No.” And that’s the trouble with wishing you were somebody else. As much as you may want it, you know it’ll never happen, at least not in this lifetime.

Wishing you were someone else? You are fucking Phil Collins, man! Those were (and are) some GREAT fucking songs!

And here we cycle back around to “Solon’s Wisdom,” as referenced in the opening quote.

The gist of Solon’s wisdom — as referenced by Croesus as a prisoner on a pyre — is that you don’t know how life will turn out, and thus until it is over, you cannot speak with finality of another man’s happiness or another man’s full life.

Modern culture treats pop stars like royalty, and assumes a glorious inner life to match the outer one.  Yet we know how Michael Jackson turned out, and now we see the self-imposed burden Collins must bear.

Do we really want to envy these people? Do we really want to envy anyone?

Fame, money, accolades, recognition from one’s peers… these things have their place, but in and of themselves they guarantee nothing. Sometimes (often times?) they are more pain than pleasure — more trouble than they are worth.

The point here, though, is not to have sympathy for poor Phil Collins. In many ways the man is trapped in a prison of his own making. Nor is the point to take comfort in one’s lack of fame. Saying “wow, I’m glad I’m not famous” is just smug self-rationalization — another version of “my situation is better than so and so’s.”

Instead, the point (at least for yours truly) is to recognize that the conventional wisdom as to what makes us happy — and as to WHO is happy — is all too often laughably, utterly wrong.

So is it better to be a pop star or a postal clerk? Not so easy to answer now eh?

Whose life is filled with laughter and love and great sex and fulfilling moments and personal epiphanies from end to end — the famously successful person envied (and hated) by so many, or the quietly content individual who outwardly displays no grandiose signs? Maybe it’s one, maybe the other. Maybe neither, maybe both. From the outside, can you really know?

And if conventional trappings aren’t the answer… if all the popular delusions are merely airbrushed lies… if incredibly wonderful, fulfilling and experience-enriched lives are open to anyone (including pop stars), wholly independent of who or what they achieve in the jaded eyes of the world… then what excuse does that leave for you, for me, for all of us?

Truth as Satire, Courtesy of The Onion

Sartre or Camus would surely have laughed at this (or at least cracked a smile).

p.s. There is, of course, a more enlightened option when it comes to contemplating one’s demise…

Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

The Fun Race

Why does it have to be “the rat race?” Why can’t it be the fun race instead?

Idea being: What if, instead of seeking to impress the most people, accumulate the biggest pile, or score the most guilt-driven brownie points etcetera, one’s life goal was to simply have as much fun as possible (over the full spread of a life well lived)?

When you think about it, a lot of people’s supposedly sober and respectable goals are downright idiotic trivial. Beyond a certain threshold of comfort, does making lots of money really have any more merit than, say, trying to accumulate the greatest number of Facebook friends? (And don’t even get Jack started on how pathetic it is for people to live out their entire lives in thrall to the judgments and opinions of others they don’t even like!)

Admittedly, to make life a pursuit of pleasure (i.e. “fun”) could be considered a selfish thing. And in that respect, Jack is glad that many think differently. He observes with gratitude that plenty of  others are willing — eager, even — to prostrate themselves at great personal cost before the feet of their fellow men. In pure economic terms,  light-hearted selfishness is all too rare a commodity. Pious sacrifice is in no short supply.

Does living to have fun mean wasting one’s life then? Not necessarily. And even if it did, what of it? In matters of ultimate meaning, Jack is inspired by the great Diogenes of Sinope:

When asked how he wished to be buried, [Diogenes] left instructions to be thrown outside the city wall so wild animals could feast on his body. When asked if he minded this, he said, “Not at all, as long as you provide me with a stick to chase the creatures away!” When asked how he could use the stick since he would lack awareness, he replied “If I lack awareness, then why should I care what happens to me when I am dead?”

One might object that living for fun means destroying one’s body with drugs, drink and the like. But if such temptations do not strike you as fun, then why indulge in them? Some people’s idea of fun might be solving complex mathematical equations, translating philosophical texts from the original Greek, or tracking the mating habits of Himalayan blue sheep.The point is to find and embrace what floats your own boat, not someone else’s boat.

But to pursue fun as a sole objective is not rational, still others might object. Well why the hell not? In fact, what could be more rational in the face of ultimate futility? Consider this cheery bit from Bertrand Russell:

“…All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins…”

Oh, how deeply depressing — for the poor silly sod who shoulders the heavy burden of purpose that is. It is all rather amusing to Jack.

And speaking of “rationality” as juxtaposed with “fun” — can a sufficiently motivated individual not apply rational means to even the happy task of having a damn good time?

A maximally lived life is one that embraces a diverse mix of pursuits (i.e. not all steak, not all chocolate cake). Figuring out the right mix requires discipline, concentration, creativity and forethought.

We are used to casting aspersions on those who make fun their life goal because such individuals are typically loosely disciplined at best and bad at life management on the whole. But the chips need not fall this way. The sufficiently enlightened individual can recognize that sacrifice and planning are required over the course of a well balanced life — even in pursuit of fun.

From the vantage point of respectable society, Jack intuits a knee-jerk aversion to this idea. Why might this be? To hazard a guess, because society wants something from you. Society wants your allegiance… your obeisance… your submissive acceptance of the established ways. The great herds of sheep do not like the contrarian-minded fellow who dares wander off on his own. They squint in suspicion and suspect him a wolf. Self-righteousness and unhappiness, insecurity and suspicion — these things go hand in hand.

You mean to say I can chuck all that societally imposed bullshit and just… live life the way I want to?

Well, Jack would argue, it depends on what you genuinely believe. If you firmly believe the answer is no, then you are correct — the answer is no. Self-imposed limitation equals self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s practically axiomatic.

But if you believe the answer is yes — that yes, you can be free — then once again the truth becomes what you make it. No one and nothing beyond or outside ourselves has the power to dictate who and what we live for… unless we hand that power over, by accident or on purpose.

Sunshine Bob

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
– Henry David Thoreau

Presented without comment (other than Thoreau’s):

Eric Hoffer on Meddlesome Holy Causes

Jack spent Christmas week with family back east. During that cheery time, a common tradition was observed: The designation of “grown-ups table” (in the dining room) and “kids table” (in the kitchen) at meal times.

There weren’t enough seats for all the grown-ups; a good thing, as Jack much preferred sitting with the kids. Not just because his nephews, a 3-year-old and an 18-month-old, are adorable, but because the conversation was much more enlightened among the toddler set.

The “grown-ups table,” dominated as it was by a paleo-conservative streak, was filled each night with talk of the deplorable state of the world, and the manner in which things should supposedly be fixed.

One relative in particular (by accident of marriage) seemed to have a loud, and unapologetically bitter, opinion on most all matters national and political… the vehemence of such opinion matched only by the utter vacuousness of the hand-waving remedies prescribed.

In choosing whether to smile politely at such head-splitting doggerel (while trying not to grimace) versus hearing all about Curious George and Clifford the big red dog, Jack was more than happy to take the monkey and the dog.

It was a wonderful holiday – especially by the precarious standard of family get-togethers – with annoyances mostly avoided or ignored.

Jack had all but forgotten about the incessant blather of the grown-ups table until the flight home, when he cracked open “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements” by Eric Hoffer.

Reading Hoffer, a light bulb clicked on:

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.

This minding of other people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

Why Tiger Did It – A Theory

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

– Plato

Why does Jack surmise Tiger did it? In a word: Pressure. By deliberately (if subconsciously) self-sabotaging his career, Tiger Woods was at last able to escape from prison… a prison of worldly expectations, by way of which a mere mortal was forced to shoulder the daily burdens of a god.

Consider the anecdotal evidence. Tiger, the “man who had everything” to an almost cartoonish degree, chose to throw it all away on a series of flings with forgettable, fame-hungry women of questionable moral fiber… most of them nowhere near as attractive as his wife.

In so doing, Tiger put everything — his reputation, his fortune, and even his sexual health, not to mention the well being of his family — at risk.

Tiger was, in fact, so reckless in his pursuit of extracurricular activity, he even reportedly hooked up with a waitress at a favored restaurant within driving distance of his home. Not even Al Bundy is that dumb. There are countless ways Tiger could have been more discreet. But he chose, almost deliberately it seems, to be the utter, mind-blowing opposite of discreet.

Surely it had to occur to him at some point: “You know, this might not end well.”

Tiger went to Stanford. That does not preclude him from being a damned fool, but it at least suggests a lack of brains was not the problem here. So what gives?

For Jack, the most curious aspect of the Tiger Woods affair (no pun intended) was the self-destructive nature of the decisions made. One could almost say Tiger was attracted to fame whores by type — pun loosely intended this time — even given all the career risks that such dalliances would imply.

Again, it is hard to believe a man with that much at stake could be so casually reckless for the sake of libido alone. Tiger had to know having sex with that many women – and the ones he chose in particular – was akin to juggling live hand grenades.

The mind boggles. Why?

The Great Escape

Well, what if, beneath all that exterior veneer of the world’s greatest athletic badass… the ultimate performer under pressure, the cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce… what if the pressure was actually killing Tiger? What if the pressure had been killing him for years?

In other words, what if Tiger was so wrapped up in perceptions of performance-based acceptance – from family, friends, colleagues, fans, and most of all himself – that the day-to-day burden of expectation was crushing him like a grape?

Might such a level of persistent unrelenting pressure cause a man to seek change by any means — to cast about for ways of subconsciously torpedoing one’s career in a blatant act of forced self awareness? If so, such a wildly irrational act (or string of irrational acts rather) might actually, when viewed in an alternative light, look like a premeditated release valve of sorts… a kind of desperate bid to make the pressure stop.

After all, now that the deity-like image of perfect Tiger, ultra-cool Tiger, consummate champion Tiger, is shattered into a million irreparable pieces, to some extent the Tiger that remains can just be a dude… a regular guy… an imperfect human being with flaws and foibles and feet of clay, to be seen that way for the rest of his days.

Maybe that is what Tiger desperately sought all along, but could never admit to consciously. Thus his potential bid to free himself subconsciously, in a manner that did not challenge his iron-clad surface level notions of “winner” and “perfectionist” and “champion.” (Note, too, the bizarrely superficial aspects of barbie-like beauty in the women Tiger picked – almost as if he were vetting them for later tabloid coverage and sought a certain standard in the back of his mind.)

Dunno. This is all conjecture and could well be wrong of course… the theory makes more sense to Jack, though, than just writing Tiger off as the sporting world’s biggest dumbass (next to Michael “Bad Newz” Vick).

On Inner Strength

If the theory is correct or anywhere near it — or, heck, even if it just stands as plausible — it brings to mind the question “What is real inner strength?” And what does it mean to have it?

Because, when you think about it, if Tiger was that crushed by the world’s expectations of him, perhaps he himself was not possessed of true inner strength after all.

Or rather, to be fair, maybe Tiger had a heaping helping of inner strength, but it didn’t turn out to be enough for the intense pressure he faced. Like a man who can bench press a thousand pounds, when the world routinely asks him to bench press two thousand.

Jack looks at the type of pressure that Tiger appeared to be under and says “no thanks.” Not in respect to external expectations, mind you, but rather internal ones.

That is to say, there is nothing wrong with being a competitor and a fighter… a hard charger who can make a hell of a play for the brass ring in the arena of one’s competitive choosing.

But the folly seems to be in defining one’s self by a measure of what others think, or otherwise predicating the ups and downs of one’s existence on a tally of wins and losses. Play for keeps on the world stage, yes. Go to bed at night worrying about what the world thinks, no. A thousand times no.

Tiger Woods, then, seems a cautionary tale in light of all that’s happened… an example of letting external pressure translate into internal pressure to far too great a degree. If Woods has fallen short of true greatness in his self-sabotaging transgressions – and they were certainly self-sabotaging, whether intended as much or not – then perhaps true greatness is the ability to successfully handle intense external pressure… going for the gusto in the face of it…  while yet letting go of that pressure in the very same breath.

The truly “great” competitor, in other words, is the one who has the tenacity and drive to go for champion-caliber results — perhaps in front of a crowd — while yet coupling that with the cool detachment and quiet self-regard that allows for calm reflection on the inevitable occasions of coming up short. Let the crowd roar… or let them boo… but never let them disturb what is truly important.

Through a mix of looking beyond and letting go, then, the balanced individual should be able to compete under the pressure of high stakes without resorting to self-destructive escape tendencies of the sort that brought Tiger down. (Again assuming that this episode was not merely the most tragicomic example of massive blood flow redirection in all of recorded sporting history.)

Could anything have been done differently? Who knows. Maybe the seeds of destruction were planted at too early an age; maybe there are factors we can never truly know. But maybe, too, Tiger could have been better served in his quest by the words of Teddy Roosevelt:

‘It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.’

Raising 2012

Were the end of the world to actually occur — on either a global or personal level — such a soundtrack might come in handy.

Hold on tightly, let go lightly… “Things are hopeless but not serious” and all that. The ninth symphony bit at the end is particularly gratifying.

p.s. if you don’t recognize the musical reference, this might help…

Why the World Wags and What Wags It

Last post for the weekend… the next ‘big daddy’ piece is still in incubation mode.

In keeping with recent themes, here is one of Jack’s all time favorite passages:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, “…is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

— T.H. White, The Once and Future King

There Will Always Be Beauty

Jack had lunch with an old friend on the north shore of Lake Tahoe today.

The friend will be leaving the Reno / Tahoe area in a few weeks – moving to Southern California – and she wanted to see the crystalline blue waters up close one last time.

Conditions were perfect. A near cloudless sky, breeze ever so slight. A dusting of snow on the mountains, still visible in the higher elevations – thick enough to play in around the Mount Rose Sierra Pass. T-shirt weather in the warm October sunshine. Crisp air free of chill, even as late afternoon crept in.

A gorgeous day, and a bitter sweet day. It’s hard to see a close friend go… even when they go to new adventures and aren’t really traveling all that far.

Revisiting memories against the backdrop of Tahoe, Jack reflected back to 1998 – eleven years gone, soon to be twelve – when he first laid eyes on that vast expanse of blue. In that moment of reflection, ‘98 felt like an eternity ago… and yet it felt like yesterday.

On the short drive home, it occurred to Jack how life could be compared to a book with twenty chapters, each four to five years long. (Assuming one is fortunate, that is. Then again, perhaps modern medicine will soon enable longer tales to be told… who knows.)

At any rate, if life is like a book, then the past decade could count as, at minimum, two more chapters written down in permanent indelible ink. They were good chapters, at least for Jack. Full of laughter and joy and experience, yet not untouched by trials and hardship and pain. Character development was very much part of the script.

“You know, we came out pretty good,” Jack said to the departing friend. She wholly agreed. So now, for each of us, the story continues and the plot thickens. What happens next? The crescendo may yet be eight or nine chapters away.

In contemplating the future (and assuming there will be one – you never know), the peaceful vastness of the lake gave Jack a comforting realization. Tahoe was here a thousand years before we were born, he thought to himself. It will most likely still be here a thousand years after we die. Maybe even ten thousand…

That calming realization in turn led to another: There will always be beauty.

In many respects the world is a dark and ugly place. Brimming with capricious tragicomedy, weighed down by crushing mediocrity, stained by dark and senseless deeds. “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

And thus we can watch seas rise and wars mount and societies crumble and decay, one noble species after another crashing down into extinction, and we can lament our utter inability to do much about it at all.

Or we can choose to take it all in stride, recall that things are “hopeless but not serious” as Karl Kraus cheekily observed, and remember that there will always be beauty. Somewhere, someplace, tucked away in some quiet corner of the world, there will always be a Lake Tahoe (or some idyllic equivalent), even if the original is one day drained or polluted or destroyed.

Beauty stays, no matter what. We can lament that which is lost, or we can celebrate that which remains.

And, too, for the individual rich in relationships and life experiences, there will always be the beauty of memories.

Days like the one Jack had today, and the long string of memories shared with a friend, are like pages waiting to be read (and later reread) at some point down the road. In this a permanent store of beauty is always there, always accessible in the present moment… because cherished memories are treasures that can never be taken away.

p.s. To be more scientifically precise, estimates place Tahoe’s age at some 2 million years old, with a bit of sculpting from the last ice age. Permanence all the more…

Basterds and the Beast Within

The beast in me
is caged by frail and fragile bonds…
– Nick Lowe

As Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) said to Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) upon capture, “You’ve had a good run.” Quentin Tarantino, too, has had a good run. But has QT finally jumped the shark?

The thought crossed Jack’s mind as he left the theater this weekend. Jack, being more or less a QT fan, was expecting a good romp based on widespread critical acclaim (and repeated assertions that Basterds was QT’s “best work yet”).

And yet, rather than feeling satisfied, Jack detected a distinct aftertaste of disappointment and ennui as the Basterds end credits rolled.

The film did show numerous flashes of the old Tarantino brilliance. A number of dialogue exchanges — most of them involving Colonel Hans Landa, the cheery SS psychopath — could be considered superb. Melanie Laurent was captivating as Shosanna Dreyfus. Many of the smaller roles were carefully and meticulously crafted. In fact, nearly all Jack’s favorite moments in Basterds could be considered the very parts that blood-and-guts fanboys dismissed as “slow.”

And perhaps that speaks to the problem — the stale blood and guts. When it comes to “a bit of the old ultraviolence,” few package it and deliver it better than Quentin Tarantino. But this time around, the violence felt perfunctory and uninspired. It was almost as if the violence in QT’s other films had a certain sort of noirish appeal by way of embracing the superfical and trivial, the almost comical. Here, with a deeply emotional motive added to the mix — Jewish revenge for Nazi atrocities — the head-smashing and scalp-taking and forehead-carving seemed a go-through-the-motions exercise… a banal parody of true human feeling.

Then again, maybe QT is bigger and badder than ever and Basterds really is his best work… and thus maybe the problem simply resides within Jack. A parting of the ways as a one-time fan moves on, philosophically and aesthetically speaking? Perhaps.

The final scene felt so randomly garish, so mindlessly plodding, Jack was forced to ask himself: “Is that all?”

But perhaps “Is that all?” was not directed at QT or the movie itself, but the whole cycle of vengeance and revenge that, suddenly, seemed so empty and pointless from a more cosmic perspective…

Why do we love it so?

These thoughts fuel a deeper inquiry. Why is violence such a hardy staple of cinema culture — or at least of American cinema culture? When it comes to blood, we are drenched in it. We swim in it.

And not just in terms of Tarantino style over-the-top shoot ’em ups and cut ’em ups. Think of the endless outpouring of hard-boiled cop dramas, psychopath mass murder hunts, rambo-style military operas, ruthless gangster flicks… on and on it goes. The collective “we” loves violence. It’s our milkshake — we drink it up.

Jack has a few nascent theories on why this is so.

For one thing, it is only natural that sex and death would be perennial mainstays of human interest. Why? Because the primacy of procreation and the dominance of death account for two of the most powerful animal drives in existence.

Most every mammal on this planet, if not every reptile and bug, is born with a built-in desire to 1) stay alive as long as possible, and 2) nurture offspring (spread the genes) along the way. It is only natural that the survival and procreation instincts would dominate, by dint of the fact that “winners” in the great evolutionary shoot-out will be the ones possessed with “winning” traits. A species that did NOT place intensely high interest on procreation and survival would have been wiped out a long time ago.

And so we, as remarkably sheltered  Western World 20th and 21st century humans, find ourselves exploring our insatiable sex and death preoccupations through movies and TV shows and airport novels and religious narratives. Our day-to-day lives are buffered with protection like a padded cell, but in the back of our minds (and sometimes in the forefront) we remain aware that death, the violent reality of death and tragedy and struggle for survival, is still real. And so we find ourselves fascinated by it… seeking to explore that taboo edge of violence and struggle and death in culturally acceptable ways… and envelope-pushers like QT come along and oblige us with a sugar high.

(This theory, too, might explain why violence is more popular than sex in cinema and film culture. In modern society, most everyone is violence-starved on a personal experience level… those one might consider “violence-sated” are pretty much in jail. Not everyone is sex starved, though — having a fulfilling sex life is not a crime — and so the fan base for excessive sex in film will be a smaller one, largely skewed towards youngish adolescents. It will be interesting to see if the widespread availability of sex on the internet further reduces the demand for gratuitous sex in film over time.)

Beasts We Be

Make no mistake — man is an astonishingly violent animal. Humanity did not gush forth from some edenic utopian spring and then slide downward from there. We have been all about “nature red in tooth and claw” from the very start.

In his book “Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of our Ancestors,” Nicholas Wade notes research proving that early man was incredibly warlike — far more so than his 20th and 21st century counterpart.

Language and cognition expert Steven Pinker further underscores the bloody nature of man’s roots in this TED talk on the myth of violence — highly worth watching. The “myth” Pinker refers to is the incorrect notion that man has somehow grown more violent in recent years. His toys have become more powerful, to be sure, but in general man has grown more peaceful, not more bloodthirsty.

The cliff’s notes to the Pinker presentation could arguably be summed up in these two points:

1) We are actually in a period of extreme peace now relative to our ancestry, and

2) Human history — very recent human history in biological terms — is far, far more violent than we realize.

Predators at Play

Let us not mince words…  man is a predator, at least in terms of origin. To call someone a “predator” today is highly pejorative in societal terms. It is to suggest that they are a monster, an exploiter, a ravager of innocents or something worse. But the overwhelming preponderance of evidence (historical, biological, archaeological) shows the following: In society’s attempt to demonize predatorial instincts, society also seeks to leave behind a defining element of man’s past… and a deeply felt influence on his present, which we deny at our peril.

Furthermore, just look at man’s position on the food chain… and look at how we play. The great cats engage in a form of play that essentially serves as practice for the kill. When leopard cubs joyfully wrestle and nip and bat each other with their paws, they are gearing up for the day when it is time to take down a gazelle or a kudu. Their play is oriented towards a sort of bloody survival.

And are little boys so different when they play cops and robbers… cowboys and indians… or Nazis and allied forces, as WWII era kids surely did? (Little girls may have a different style of play — one oriented more to psychological warfare and cruel social exclusion — but the sweetly serious undertone is there just the same.)

For those who would reject this legacy, take note… other “noble” animals romanticized by man are just as prone to disappointment for the hopelessly idealistic.

How many green-loving pacifists are aware of the fact that dolphins are violent killers, for example… or that chimpanzees routinely go to war? If dolphins had courts and laws, rape (yes, rape) and first degree murder would be common jury deliberations. And if there were a sort of simian International War Crimes Tribunal for chimpanzees in the wild, many a Bozo and Mr. Bubbles would be tried for atrocities as senseless and brutal as those the Nazis committed. Man is not different in kind, but only in efficiency and degree.

Familiarity and Excessive Force

As a realist when it comes to primal human instincts, Jack is a fan of the “getting in touch” school. It is better, Jack would argue, that we understand our dark urges — familiarize ourselves with them even — than to pretend they are not there.

Consider the pacifist police officer with inadequate training in firearm use or close combat. When the time comes to actually make use of force on a criminal suspect — when the use of force is required as a matter of safety and sound judgment — the untrained, unfamiliar officer is more than likely to overdo it. Studies have shown that police personnel without extensive training in the use of force are statistically the most likely to push too far under pressure… and to be a danger to themselves and others in result.

A more humorous example of denial and its dangers can be found in the classic 1991 Bill Murray flick, “What about Bob.” In the movie, Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) flatly states, “I don’t get angry.” But of course, the good-naturedly obsessive Bob Wiley (Bill Murray) eventually stirs up so much repressed anger in Leo Marvin that it drives the poor doc insane.

This, too, is a recurring pattern that Jack has noticed over the years. The person most irrationally committed to “keeping the peace” when it comes to human communication — or, more commonly, the person most deathly afraid of confrontation — turns out to be the one most likely to “lose their shit” (to use a highly technical term) under real pressure. Passive aggressive types tend to blow up when backed into a corner, as do those who pretend the dark places do not exist.

Better to know the beast within, in Jack’s view… to harness it and tame it, with a realistic sense of where it came from and what it can do.  Our hunger for films like Basterds, then, whether they please us or bore us in the end, could ultimately be considered a safety-valve exploratory effort.

p.s. Leave it to the Onion to get the shark-jumping sarcasm just right…