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?