What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

I have never had a blog before, but I feel like there are some aspects that I understand about it. I feel like the point of blogs are to display your thoughts, so, as so many people have done so before me, I will do the same. Recently, my girlfriend and I broke up. It was not over a fight, or because of someone cheating on the other, we mutually broke up because we both felt that it was the right thing for us to do at the time. I will admit that it was not easy as we do care for each other very much and our attraction and compatibility came very naturally as well. However, she was willing to put more into the relationship than I was, because I simply do not understand the concept of love. It seems very robotic, I know, but I guess it started when my parents started fighting and there was a divorce scare when I was 17. Everything that I thought love was kind of came tumbling down as every fight grew worse and worse. It just was not a good time for me to be in the relationship, and she very much understood that. She is very special, so I am thankful that when we get time alone from each other to get ourselves back on our own feet, we will still try to be friends.

It's weird, but thinking about all this breaking up stuff sparked an idea in my brain. This idea of parasites connecting to our lives has driven me through a loop inside our classroom. We are parasites. We feed off situations and we react accordingly. Of course, there are thousands of different reactions. What I am saying is that our emotion, our instincts, our plan of action, all falls upon what happens next. If we hear music, we dance or tap out feet. If someone says something funny, we laugh or giggle. If someone dies, we are sad and maybe cry. If we lose a game or are called a bad name, we get upset or angry…maybe furious. We react to situations, and our reactions spark other reactions. We are a never-ending chain of constant action to reaction, situations sparking our emotions.

When my girlfriend and I broke up, I was upset because we both cared for each other but we also knew it was for the best. The situation called for me to be upset therefore I reacted to the situation, as a parasite would react to its host. The parasite feeds off the situation at hand. And it is not only verbal communication of the reaction, it could also be body language, facial expressions, any form of expression the body is able to produce.

Tonight at rugby practice, I was mentally distraught because of the break up and with issues between my parents; yet, I focused my energies into anger, aggression, and energy for the practice. I was focused on what I was doing because my anger was fueling my body to perform well. This situation can call for this reaction or different ones. In class, we viewed the beginning clip from a film called Slackers where a man speaks about how in his dreams, he can see the realities of the paths in life that he did not choose. He explained it like when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. The Scarecrow points in multiple directions, but they choose one specific path. The man was stating how in his dreams he could see the outcomes of the other paths he did not choose in his life. I focused the way I did because, in my life, I have chosen and built my personality around focusing all my bad energies and using them in the situation that they can properly be applied to. Anger  Rugby. On the other hand, someone different could have just been distraught, losing focus, and thus having a bad practice.

We are all very different in that all our past situations and reactions in life, whether they be sharing your snack during lunch with someone without food, or being the class bully, or beating up the class bully, or learning valuable lessons, shape who we are today. We are all parasites in the sense that we have grown up reacting and learning from our environment and situations. I hope that we will learn to look at the world through different eyes. Sometimes we need to take a step back and look at the paths that are laid before us. We can be so easily manipulated by television, social networking sites, politics, that we react at first emotion. Let us begin to analyze the world around us and learn from our past.

Religion vs. Faith vs. Parasites

I have had this issue with religion and faith come into my life for the past year and it has helped me to realize that, and I fear to say it, everything can be considered a parasite. At least almost everything. Religion is a huge parasite as well. This topic has broken down into several different topics that can spread into their own blog posts, but for this one, I will try my best to contain my thoughts into one.

History:
Since I was little, I almost spent every Sunday at church with my mother. It was not until about senior year of high school when attending church every Sunday was not pushed so often. I always considered myself a Roman Catholic. When I was around 12-15 years old, I would not go to bed without praying to God first. It usually was a random 5-minute conversation to myself, but I did it every night. My ex-girlfriend asked me one day why I am Catholic. I had no real answer. I first said because it was what my family expected of me and it was normal within my family so that's it. However, I realized that that answer did not explain why I was Catholic. She kept pushing it and pushing it and it made me feel uncomfortable, closed, in a tight space, to the point where I began to get frustrated for not having a ready answer. The question itself was good and needed, but the method in which she pushed to get an answer was not. It ended with me hearing a lot of shit come out of her mouth and me storming out the room. That relationship did not end well…but I did receive a lot after it was over. I questioned why I was Catholic. What are my reasons for being Catholic? When was it ever my decision to be Catholic or not? And from all the questioning and trying to answer, I found out that I have no answer for why I'm Catholic although I do believe in a God, in Jesus, in La Virgen de Guadalupe, and that will take me into the following.

Religion vs. Faith:
I believe having faith in a God is completely different from having religion. Who said you had to be a dedicated Catholic in order to believe in God, right? Well…I am sure someone has said that but I do not believe it. Religion is a fucked up parasite, let us be honest. It has killed and been the excuse to take over more and more land, or territory, for power. It is a manipulative tool that will benefit some and not others. Although religion has been a beneficial tool for followers, it has also caused a lot of damage. I do not comprehend than why we must have something so corrupted at times in order to believe in a higher power that is supposedly forgiving and understanding. I believe in some things that are incorporated in Catholicism: the Bible, the saints, Jesus, and God. I do not need to attend an institution such as Church to believe in thus things. That is my faith. I believe in a God. I believe God is fucked up too, a person or thing that does not explain why things happen to us, but I believe parts of the world have benefited from a God as well. Complicated subject.

Blogging:
Being so connected to the online world and displaying my thoughts on religion and my past life has made me think how trusting I am of the digital world. Occurrences that have happened because of my ex-girlfriend are things I would not want many people to know about. Nevertheless, in order for the reader to understand what I am writing or why I think the way I do, it seems somewhat crucial to know what happened. Maybe I am not so trustworthy. I would not display such a story that is so private to my family and I on something called the World Wide Web. The idea is tempting but it is now when I ask, 'why is it so tempting to display something so private for the world to see?' Hmmm…I really do not know.

Now:
I never fully recovered in the past year from what happened between my ex and I and the aftermath, however, the recovery process has thickened my usage of critical analysis and strengthened my mind. I have questioned the existence of God and his purpose. I have gone from once asking for help, to cursing the idea of a God, to believing in a God and hating it, to believing and at a 'now what?' stage. It has put my family through struggle, especially with my mother, the upholder of religion and God in the family. We have had conversations filled with tears and all the "good" stuff. Religion and faith are parasites...so what? (…to be continued…)

THE PARASITES VS. BIOSHOCK

The end.
I am somewhat drawing a blank for this week's blog honestly. I do not know whether it is me trying to avoid it, or me just not producing good thoughts at the moment, but the blog is due in 3 hours and a half so might as well try to carve up some masterpiece in the time being.
For our class we are reading Michel Serres The Parasite, and I have found several ties to it lately. The book itself is rather a unusual read for me, but I can see in the direction that Serres is trying to portray humanity as its own parasite, feeding off the environment and others.
The first connection I want to make relating to some of Serres quotes about the parasite to comes from a video game I recently finished named Bioshock. The game has you play as a man who discovers an underwater city once filled with geniuses and scientists, now going crazy because of corruption and super-powered drugs. A man named Andrew Ryan, who wanted to avoid the control of government, industry, and religion and let people have their liberty when it came to the things they built and invented, built the city called Rapture. However, smugglers and a con artist who wanted to take advantage of the inventions and sell them for money corrupted the city. Some smugglers wanted to incorporate religion into the city as well, Andrew Ryan was not a fan of this idea and neither were some of the people of Rapture. You try to fight your way through the crazy inhabitants of Rapture and machines they have invented. Of course, the plot and enemies you face are a lot more various and descriptive than I can portray, but that is the plain jist of it. The point of me bringing this up was because of the quotes Andrew Ryan states throughout the game according to his definition of a parasite. Both Serres and Ryan sound very similar in their language of describing their definitions of the parasite.
For example:
Andrew Ryan: On the surface, the Parasite expects the doctor to heal them for free, the farmer to feed them out of charity. How little they differ from the pervert who prowls the streets, looking for a victim he can ravish for his grotesque amusement.
Michael Serres: The flow goes one way, never the other. I call this semiconduction, this valve, this single arrow, this relation without a reversal of direction, "parasitic." If the "guest" is a farmer, I consider him to be a parasite in the economic sense. La Fontaine explains this to me further on. What does man give to the cow, to the tree, to the steer, who give him milk, warmth, shelter, work, and food? What does he give? Death.
Andrew Ryan: What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks 'Where is my share?' A man creates. A parasite says, 'What will the neighbors think?' A man invents. A parasite says, 'Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of God... '
Michael Serres: His objection, it seems to me, is the following: every parasitic animal lives, eats, and multiplies within the body of its host. Men, whom I call parasites, are never, as far as we know, inside another animal. Except the great beast, the 666, the Leviathan. Back to beasts of prey, back to hunting, and so forth.
Their vocabulary and ideas toward parasites, although different perspectives, relate when it comes to their ideas of man, and as you can notice about the last two quotes, relate to religious beings as well. It was interesting to see the ties in both contexts. What was also interesting was the game's character named Fontaine who was someone who came to Rapture to build his own industry. The Parasite shows traces of Serres' connections with La Fontaine. It was a coincidental relevance to the contexts.
Too really sidetrack, there's something else on my mind. It's funny. I had a rugby game this weekend in which I got cleated across the face…and now have a scar. I have noticed that this has been really distracting in my life because of all the attention the scar is receiving. It is a parasite on its own, and its popularity is growing and growing as people are starting to pay less and less attention to me. Funny right? But it's not all bad. I have a wicked story to tell, and if it does scar, I get a lot of attention. Kind of like it actually…so does that mean I'm a parasite enjoying the attention? Maybe. What makes me so different than the scar on my face?