The Heart of Ram's Head

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a novel about the evil that lurks inside of all of humanity; when pushed close enough to the breaking points, primal actions emerge in primal situations. Conrad alludes to Nietzche's quote: "when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."

I have found a modern setting for this novel to replace the African Congo: my university's dining hall during finals week.

Every student is on campus; there is no going home during finals. Every student also emerges from their studying cocoons composed of flash cards, crumpled notes, highlighters, and tears at the same time to eat from communal vats of cheap food.

Just as the characters in Heart of Darkness fight for survival in a world with no rules, students fight for an empty table. The idlers stare at their stacks of plates adorned with used napkins and empty glasses with melting ice as they complain to one another about this test and that. Those without tables stalk the lucky few, pacing around and around, stomachs growling and minds imagining the moment they forcefully swipe the dirty dishes from the tables and throw a jacket onto the chair, like the Belgians taking the Congo, claiming the table for their own.

After twenty minutes of stalking the tables and a few minutes before cannibalization seems viable, finally one opens up! One of your pack approaches the table, but a swifter student seizes with a maniacal victory laugh. Death glares ensue as your group returns to pacing in circles in the increasingly frustrated throng.

Eventually, you ecstatically seize a table for your very own with just enough seats to accommodate your numbers. Heading out into the abyss, you seek to win yourself a plate of warm nourishment. But alas! all the stations are out of food and the lines waiting for the disgruntled workers to replenish their stocks extend agonizingly far. From a distance, you spot a pizza about to be removed from its fiery shelf and thrown to the masses for consumption. You elbow your way to the front of the crowd to ensure a good spot to pounce upon the fresh, cheesy goodness.

Ducking and spinning and fighting all the way, you manage to claim a slice for yourself. Still riding the high from your victory, you go for a glass to obtain a drink to augment your recently acquired food. There are none. You seek a fork and knife. There are none.

Frustrated, you stalk back to your table to sit down, prepared to choke down food with your fingers and no liquid accompaniment.

Your chair is gone.

You slam your plate down on the table, causing the grease bubbling in the pizza to splatter into the air. "Where is my chair??" you announce to the patrons eating all around you, silent and ignore your plight.

In your mind, you are ripping the chairs from underneath their smug butts, separating their heads from their bodies and skewering them on sticks around your table to serve as examples for further people who want to steal your chairs. Gathering the chairs from under the decapitated bodies, you stack them up and sit high up in the air, shouting "the horror, the horror!" over the whole scene as people cry in the floor, clutching their plates and murmuring, "I just want a seat...a glass... a fork."

But instead you share a chair with your friend, squashed tightly together as you silently eat and then surrender your table to the next group to set the cycle anew.

As you exit the double doors into the cold world, hardly full and satisfied, you think how when they swiped your card, the dining hall staff also swiped a little piece of your soul. A little of your faith in humanity.

But you have survived. You have stared into the apocalypse and won.

Help! I Need Somebody...

What makes some people more helpful than others? Why do some people hold open the door, volunteer their time, or just provide kind words at will, without even thinking about it. It seems almost as second nature to them.

Others appear not to care, and go through life concerned only with their own needs.

Perhaps we all fall somewhere in between on this spectrum. I know I am both at different times. But overall, there people who can be counted on and those who simply cannot.

Are the helpful people influenced by somebody who helped them in the past? Did they make a subconscious decision that they would spend their lives helping others because somebody helped them once.

Many people say they won't be happy unless they're doing some sort of service work. Is this born of the selfish need to feel good about ourselves? The idea that there is no truly selfless act is a common one. We get something for ourselves when we help others- an alleviation of guilt, special recognition, or help in return.

I don't think this is necessary a bad thing. Who cares what the motivation was if the hungry are fed, the needy are attended, and the sick are healed? Just means to an end. If other people are helped in the process, then shouldn't that just be gravy?

Why should we make ourselves feel guilty for wanting to help people because it helps us?

Even on a grand scale, like stopping genocide, the same rule seems to apply. People attend rallies (which don't help much, coincidentally, but that's another blog entirely) to make themselves feel better about caring about the issue. They feel like they've done something. Perhaps it results in a few more people gaining awareness, or a meager sum donated and lost in the bureaucracy that surrounds altruistic organizations, but ultimately, the goal is to make people feel like they've helped. Their guilt for being on the favorable end of the need spectrum is temporarily alleviated by wearing a "Save Darfur" tshirt.

I suppose I've strayed quite drastically from my original musings, but the whole concept of volunteering and the psychology behind it intrigues me so much. There are so many factors.

But again, who cares? It's a means to an end. People still get helped, even if it never seems like quite enough. Humanity would simply collapse if we didn't help each other out occasionally. But it's so uneven and, usually, unfair.

I don't even know what I'm saying here. Humans are complex? Nothing is simple? Charity is a sham? Only the bottom line counts?

I don't know.

A Load of Cliches and a Silly Commentary on Humanity

It's easy to be cynical and write everyone off as all the same, or simple. But what is easiest is not always right. Rarely, really.

It seems like, with people, there's always a little something you don't know about them that makes you see everything else in a different light. It's surprising how much everything really does have a reason, even if it's sometimes hard to see. Buried way down deep inside is a motivation for every behavior, no matter how absurd.

Generally, I do think people can be placed into categories, but we don't recognize just how many categories there are. There are a bunch of different traits, disorders, tendencies, whatever that we can have, but there's just so many combinations possible that it creates the everybody-is-a-unique-snowflake allusion.

There's a billion paths our lives can take and all these small, varied circumstances mold people into the complex creatures they are. Unless we follow a person around every second of every day, we'll never completely understand what, to use a cliche, makes them tick.

I guess my point is that we shouldn't judge people, but that's stupid because we are always going to judge people. It cannot be helped. Plus it sounds dreadfully after school specialish. I guess, then, that my point is we should keep an open mind about people and allow the inevitable judgments to be altered by inevitable developments as you get to know a person.

After all, who wants to be over-simplified?