Photo from the Deseret NewsSo this week, I've been thinking more about violence than sex. For those of you outside of Zion, you may not completely understand how saturated the news media has been here in Utah on the Trolley Square shootings. Other blogs (1) (2) have talked about the shootings from different aspects, as has the news media. No one -- that I know of -- has talked about the connection with sex.
The personality and nature of the killer was so easily predictable. Immediately, before any information was available, you knew that he was a loner. Lonely teenage boys turn into killers. A total disconnect can occur between the adolescent male and the society that triggers homicidal rage. The rage is a desperate survival attempt to be noticed.
Mark Twain could have been writing for the Salt Lake papers in 2006, but was actually writing in the late 1800s about the assassination of the Empress of Austria by another young, foreign loner when he opined:
One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, [and bloggers, I might add] and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
Twain got it right. But why such a burning desire to be noticed?
I'm not playing psychologist here, but rather observer of the human condition. I remember being a teenager. I wanted to be noticed -- by girls. The desire to be noticed sexually in my adolescence superseded all other desires. My violent behavior invariably centered around attempts to impress women. For me, sports were the natural outlet. Some primal instinctual urge made me feel like if I could hit someone so hard in a football game that the opposing player had to be carried off the field, then I would impress the girls. These were actual thoughts and even though I knew they weren't quite rational, I can still feel them 25 years later and I know that the emotion is real and attractive. I can feel the exhilaration as I sprinted down the field, got my victim in my sites and hit him so hard that my entire body went numb as I watched him fly back unconscious to the ground. The exhilaration, the adulation of my team mates and the cheer of the crowd let me feel noticed. My difference from the teenage killer was that I did my violence in a socially accepted and controlled environment -- but I still didn't get the girl, so I kept playing and hoping.
It isn't just sports. We lionize the violent. Women go wet for men in uniform. How many women pulled out their vibrators for soft spoken, off-duty officer Ken Hammond, who whipped out his gun on a moment's notice to silence "the threat." Soldiers equal sex symbols. What are all the muscles for in the guys except for beating up other guys? I feel like an ape on a nature show, bustling for position with all of the other guy apes for some kind of pecking order in the mating game. I just have to bide my time until the Alpha Male gets too worn out from fucking, so that I can take him out. From such a Darwinian perspective, the real surprise is that we don't have more teenagers shooting up malls (credit is probably due to ubiquitous violent video games that provide yet another socially acceptable outlet for all that pent up testosterone).
The male energy is set to conquer. The female energy is to capture. The push and pull, the yin and yang, the in and out, the penetrative and the encompassing permeate sexuality. If Sulejman Talovic had a woman (or a man if his preference ran that way) who adored him and wanted him body and soul, no one would have died this week from the firing of his phallus' replacement -- the more potent and powerful shotgun.
Sex by its design is about creation out of opposites. Sex is destructive when it becomes one-sided or when the balance is skewed. Sex when it is working creates empathy out of the opposites interaction (empathy, being an anathema to violence). The battle between male and female energies is about achieving equilibrium. My Friday poem I dug up is all about that hunting male energy and the capturing female energy and the power when the game is played together. To lighten things up, and to show that sex doesn't just destroy, but can tame primal violent energy, I give you this weeks WTF Poetry:
The personality and nature of the killer was so easily predictable. Immediately, before any information was available, you knew that he was a loner. Lonely teenage boys turn into killers. A total disconnect can occur between the adolescent male and the society that triggers homicidal rage. The rage is a desperate survival attempt to be noticed.
Mark Twain could have been writing for the Salt Lake papers in 2006, but was actually writing in the late 1800s about the assassination of the Empress of Austria by another young, foreign loner when he opined:
One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of visitors; boys are always "showing off"; apparently all men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions, and banditti chiefs, [and bloggers, I might add] and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, "Look--there he goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
Twain got it right. But why such a burning desire to be noticed?
I'm not playing psychologist here, but rather observer of the human condition. I remember being a teenager. I wanted to be noticed -- by girls. The desire to be noticed sexually in my adolescence superseded all other desires. My violent behavior invariably centered around attempts to impress women. For me, sports were the natural outlet. Some primal instinctual urge made me feel like if I could hit someone so hard in a football game that the opposing player had to be carried off the field, then I would impress the girls. These were actual thoughts and even though I knew they weren't quite rational, I can still feel them 25 years later and I know that the emotion is real and attractive. I can feel the exhilaration as I sprinted down the field, got my victim in my sites and hit him so hard that my entire body went numb as I watched him fly back unconscious to the ground. The exhilaration, the adulation of my team mates and the cheer of the crowd let me feel noticed. My difference from the teenage killer was that I did my violence in a socially accepted and controlled environment -- but I still didn't get the girl, so I kept playing and hoping.
It isn't just sports. We lionize the violent. Women go wet for men in uniform. How many women pulled out their vibrators for soft spoken, off-duty officer Ken Hammond, who whipped out his gun on a moment's notice to silence "the threat." Soldiers equal sex symbols. What are all the muscles for in the guys except for beating up other guys? I feel like an ape on a nature show, bustling for position with all of the other guy apes for some kind of pecking order in the mating game. I just have to bide my time until the Alpha Male gets too worn out from fucking, so that I can take him out. From such a Darwinian perspective, the real surprise is that we don't have more teenagers shooting up malls (credit is probably due to ubiquitous violent video games that provide yet another socially acceptable outlet for all that pent up testosterone).
The male energy is set to conquer. The female energy is to capture. The push and pull, the yin and yang, the in and out, the penetrative and the encompassing permeate sexuality. If Sulejman Talovic had a woman (or a man if his preference ran that way) who adored him and wanted him body and soul, no one would have died this week from the firing of his phallus' replacement -- the more potent and powerful shotgun.
Sex by its design is about creation out of opposites. Sex is destructive when it becomes one-sided or when the balance is skewed. Sex when it is working creates empathy out of the opposites interaction (empathy, being an anathema to violence). The battle between male and female energies is about achieving equilibrium. My Friday poem I dug up is all about that hunting male energy and the capturing female energy and the power when the game is played together. To lighten things up, and to show that sex doesn't just destroy, but can tame primal violent energy, I give you this weeks WTF Poetry:
The Hunt
The hunt
Is no fun
If the prey is too easy to catch.
The symbiotic nature
of the hunt is a give and take
Between the hunter and the hunted.
Hunting cultures have always worshiped their prey as their Gods.
I guess that makes you my religion, my Goddess,
To thee my prey,
I pray,
I kneel
And lap at your clear sacramental wine.
To thee my queen
I pledge my sword
To ram it
Into thy heart.
The chase ensues,
And
At some point I will again have you hoisted on my spear –
It will be at that moment when you have me surrounded.
The hunt
Is no fun
If the prey is too easy to catch.
The symbiotic nature
of the hunt is a give and take
Between the hunter and the hunted.
Hunting cultures have always worshiped their prey as their Gods.
I guess that makes you my religion, my Goddess,
To thee my prey,
I pray,
I kneel
And lap at your clear sacramental wine.
To thee my queen
I pledge my sword
To ram it
Into thy heart.
The chase ensues,
And
At some point I will again have you hoisted on my spear –
It will be at that moment when you have me surrounded.
2 comments:
I like the poem. Love the imagery. For me, kneeling at the alter was always my favorite position--in regards to your footnote.
Kneeling, the ultimate obedience; no wonder Mormons do it so much. Lots easier to take it in the ass that way.
I guess I never needed sports to get noticed. It was the era of tight pants and I was hung like a horse. Believe me, I got noticed!
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