Extreme Action
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."
It is a grand ideal.
It is the paradox of humanity that we can espouse such ideals while having no intention of enforcing them. It is the kind of hypocrisy that makes me ashamed to be human.
It is the kind of hypocrisy that drives so many of us to extreme action.
It is almost idiotic to say such a thing, but, if the world was fair, there would be no need of extreme acts of violence.
Or for American workers to go postal.
But why is it always just the one who sees the evil lurking in full view? This being the X Files, we fully expect Mulder to be able to perceive a side of reality beyond our line of sight, but, him aside, generally, why is it so few of us are able to catch a whiff of the humiliation and servitude the modern work place subjects us to? Is it really just a case of the masses not caring enough, willing to prostitute their dignity to the pay slip?
He who does see, what is his responsibility? Should he put himself in the way of danger as he struggles to waken the slumbering masses? Mulder obviously is so willing but, as an FBI agent he’s expected to. What about Gary Lambert? Is it his responsibility to warn his co-workers of their danger, his community, of the danger?
And are Americans really so addicted to the idea that every problem can be solved with gun violence?
Even in the movies, guns are rarely effective against the supernatural yet, time after time, a character – even Mulder – will try to ward off evil through the barrel of a gun. Are Americans so entrenched in a single idea that alternatives simply don’t register?
It would explain how they can be so quick to judge others. How many times does Mulder have to prove his whacked-out theories are not as insane as those around him would wish? In ‘Kitsunegari' he is stripped of his badge and weapon and, here, in 'Folie a Deux', he is committed to an insane asylum. Why are even those who know him best always so ready to disarm him and incarcerate him? What danger does he pose?
What is it about Mulder and his ideas that is read as a threat by others?
I came across the following at PsychiatricTimes.com:
Just such is the type of control that his superiors have always sought to have over Mulder – it is the reason Scully was assigned to the X Files, after all!
The insane instill fear – a fear of contagion and a fear of the total negation of all that forces the world to make some kind of sense. For only if the world makes sense are we able to have any level of control over it. This is the very essence of the scientific endeavor – to understand so as to gain control over the physical realm. By ‘control’ we really mean to ‘bend to our will’. The insane are beyond such control.
The visionary, the seer of things of which others are blind, may not be as far gone as the insane, but often it is easy or easier to think of them as if they were. As we fear the insane, so we fear the “dialectical and rhetorical genius” and absolutely do not wish to be convinced by his outlandish ideas.
It isn’t what we might see if we were to see as Gary Lambert or Mulder sees, it is the very act of seeing that frightens us so, for seeing, besides believing, forces us to know and knowing requires action we are not prepared to take.
It is a grand ideal.
It is the paradox of humanity that we can espouse such ideals while having no intention of enforcing them. It is the kind of hypocrisy that makes me ashamed to be human.
It is the kind of hypocrisy that drives so many of us to extreme action.
It is almost idiotic to say such a thing, but, if the world was fair, there would be no need of extreme acts of violence.
Or for American workers to go postal.
But why is it always just the one who sees the evil lurking in full view? This being the X Files, we fully expect Mulder to be able to perceive a side of reality beyond our line of sight, but, him aside, generally, why is it so few of us are able to catch a whiff of the humiliation and servitude the modern work place subjects us to? Is it really just a case of the masses not caring enough, willing to prostitute their dignity to the pay slip?
He who does see, what is his responsibility? Should he put himself in the way of danger as he struggles to waken the slumbering masses? Mulder obviously is so willing but, as an FBI agent he’s expected to. What about Gary Lambert? Is it his responsibility to warn his co-workers of their danger, his community, of the danger?
And are Americans really so addicted to the idea that every problem can be solved with gun violence?
Even in the movies, guns are rarely effective against the supernatural yet, time after time, a character – even Mulder – will try to ward off evil through the barrel of a gun. Are Americans so entrenched in a single idea that alternatives simply don’t register?
It would explain how they can be so quick to judge others. How many times does Mulder have to prove his whacked-out theories are not as insane as those around him would wish? In ‘Kitsunegari' he is stripped of his badge and weapon and, here, in 'Folie a Deux', he is committed to an insane asylum. Why are even those who know him best always so ready to disarm him and incarcerate him? What danger does he pose?
What is it about Mulder and his ideas that is read as a threat by others?
I came across the following at PsychiatricTimes.com:
Who could seriously promote such a perverse idea? Only someone with an intuitive sympathy for the most abased and marginal members of society and with a violent contempt for science, medicine, and authority in general. And, if he were to convince anyone else of his outlandish views, he would be a dialectical and rhetorical genius.
Though it could apply just as well to Mulder, this is actually a description of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The article is a review of Foucault’s "Madness and Civilization" in which he charts the history of the incarceration of the mentally ill and the moment when the old penal type institutions gave way to more understanding and kinder asylums. Foucault derides this development as merely replacing "crude force with more subtle, intimate, and pervasive means of control."Just such is the type of control that his superiors have always sought to have over Mulder – it is the reason Scully was assigned to the X Files, after all!
The insane instill fear – a fear of contagion and a fear of the total negation of all that forces the world to make some kind of sense. For only if the world makes sense are we able to have any level of control over it. This is the very essence of the scientific endeavor – to understand so as to gain control over the physical realm. By ‘control’ we really mean to ‘bend to our will’. The insane are beyond such control.
The visionary, the seer of things of which others are blind, may not be as far gone as the insane, but often it is easy or easier to think of them as if they were. As we fear the insane, so we fear the “dialectical and rhetorical genius” and absolutely do not wish to be convinced by his outlandish ideas.
It isn’t what we might see if we were to see as Gary Lambert or Mulder sees, it is the very act of seeing that frightens us so, for seeing, besides believing, forces us to know and knowing requires action we are not prepared to take.
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