![]() ![]() Let's be clear I'm not saying that we should allow monstrous thoughts to go unchecked or that that we should somehow find cruel, murderous, behaviour normal. But for us, we see ourselves as ‘monsters’. We don't see animals as vicious instinctive killers, as ‘monsters’. But if, myself, as a human, has a cruel or murderous thought, then I see myself as evil, rather than just an instinctive thought that no longer serves me. We don't see their murderous traits as evil. We see animals as a functioning part of nature. If I can't admit that I'm an animal then I cannot admit that I share those traits. They see themselves as something 'other’. The men running things do not see themselves as an integral part of nature. And I think that's one of the big problems we're having as a world right now. When I'm not an animal then I'm no longer part of nature. When I can't associate with something then I separate myself from that something. ![]() That we still have the instinct of animals. Only when I look at my darkness, only when I look at the monstrous part of me, the part that can kill, that wants to have this power over you, that does want to take everything and keep it to myself, only then can I take that poison and start to turn it into medicine.Īs humans, I judge, one of the hardest things for us to admit is that we're still animals. I won't see it, but you will, because it will come out in my actions, it will still be there. I can't control a part of myself that I hide, repress and deny. We know that we have to go in and look at it and try and understand it to make it better, to get some control over it. So, does it help us to just pretend it isn't? We know it doesn't. Right now, somewhere in this country some of the worst things you can imagine are taking place. If we look at our society now, which on the surface is presented as a civilised, privileged, modern place, we don't have to scratch much below the surface to see that every hideous act that we can think of, has been done, or is being done. Our society shows us that what isn't in the light still exists in the darkness. I believe that what isn't in the light grows in the shadows and spills out whether we want to see it or not. Now we have a choice to do something different, but that doesn't mean that it goes away. This darkness, this will to control, and to have power over, in many ways, got us where we are now. We lock away a force that kept us going for 100,000 years, that, one way or another, kept our bloodline moving forward, that forced innovation and creativity. When we hide our monsters, when we try to hide, repress and deny, we lock away a very powerful tool. “For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.” ![]() Well, as Herman Hesse said in his classic book on the subject of the monstrous side of humanity, Steppenwolf: Why do I believe we should embrace it rather than lock it away? It's a theme that I've been interested in most of my life, in fact I even wrote and directed a film about it nearly 20 years ago called 'Monster' which was based on the story of Frankenstein. I believe it's better to embrace it rather than lock it away. Well, I believe it's better to acknowledge the malicious part of me. We've long since known that we have this monstrous part of us but what do we do with it. So we hide, repress and deny them, but when we do that they become the stuff of myth, they become the stuff of legend, they become the part of us that we don't want to see but project everywhere. So it's no wonder, as we've evolved, that as we tried to move into being more civilised beings, that we have found it hard to come to terms with this darkness, these murderous, animalistic, instinctive parts of us. ![]() Our humanity has endured and thrived in brutal times. That’s really no surprise when you think of our history, when you think of our roots and origins, when you think of the animalistic elements we had to exhibit and embrace merely to survive. "That's why they're monsters.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Laneįrom the earliest myths such as werewolves through to works of fiction like Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde and up to more modern classic stories like Star Wars and Batman, we've been interested in that monstrous part of us that lurks within the darkness of our own humanity. ![]()
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