Contexts and Assholes: The Paradoxes of Porterism …

Contexts and Assholes: The Paradoxes of Porterism

When someone asks me if I really believe that chainsaw fights will aid in saving humanity, I tell them that yes, it is something that I truly believe. When people question my sanity, I question theirs. What is the difference, I ask them, between pitting people against each other with chainsaws, then say, driving pollution-spewing vehicles that run on a dwindling supply of fossil fuels that are the basis of a major war halfway around the world? One of those scenarios, they reply, have a practical purpose. Vehicles transport people and goods around. Chainsaw fights have no practical purpose other than entertainment.

But, I reply, if the end result for the first scenario is global warming, unbreathable air, worldwide economic collapse, famine, disease and war, how is my vision of the world any more vitriolic? If you divorce yourself from the planet entirely and look at things objectively, how sound is the course we are currently following? All I am saying that there is no difference between my vision of the world that I am open and honest about, and the current course of human events that most people simply choose not to see.

I truly want to save humanity, since I am human and all, and I think the best place to start with that is to be open and honest when it comes to our most basest of desires. Chainsaw fights are horrific. But they are something that people would watch. Why would I want to showcase them? Because it is an extreme way of showing ourselves what we do to each other already, if not in the actual physical sense, then in spirit. What is the difference between hacking someone to death with a chainsaw and rendering his environment uninhabitable with our behaviour? In the long run, nothing. The fellow is just as dead as he would have been by plunging a chainsaw blade into his neck. The only difference is that the other way is bloodless and distant, and therefore, more dishonest.

People often ask me what I hope to achieve with Porterism. The answer is I don’t know really. But if I had to give an answer, it is just to get people to see both the larger picture and the details of life. I’m not all hung up on rules. It pained me to write the three laws of Porterism. In the human being exists both the killer and the healer. Instead of denying one and embracing the other, I think it is time to figure out how to use both to our best advantage. When I am asked what is a Porterist, I have to answer is being a Porterist is working with everything that makes you who you are. It is a process that I am working on, and I think ultimately everyone is, but we constantly lose sight of ourselves and our place in the world. One of the methods is exaggerated humour. Other times I am more objective and analytical.

I love it when people preach to me. They talk about Jesus or Save the Whales or hundreds of other things. I smirk a little and tell them that merely existing oppresses many other people and unless we are ready to abandon progress and return to nature’s womb we are a species of users. But it is not the manifest destiny of mankind to return to nature (at least not by conscious choice). Mankind is blessed/cursed to walk the perilous lip between enlightenment and doom. It is doubtful that mankind will succumb to either fate, but will keep plodding along staying one step ahead of doom and one step behind enlightenment. I could even argue that enlightenment would only result in our doom anyway, since I believe that mankind’s ultimate purpose is in the actual solving of the problem, not in the solved problem itself.

Ah, what a cursed fate for our species.

~ by porterism on August 21, 2006.