A Clockwork Orange

I wonder if a parasite has to be a physical object. Say a tick or a tapeworm, or even toxoplasmosis. Watching the movie “A Clockwork Orange” the narrator Alex is cured of his violent past times. He is forced to watch movies that show violence while under a drug that makes him feel sick.When he is released every show of violence makes him gag and feel a terrible sickness. Does he contain a parasite? Is this involuntary reaction considered a parasite? Maybe a mentally learned parasite? Could brainwash be considered a parasite? This “parasite” even made Alex jump out the window of a second story building because he felt so sick. The symptoms are similar to a parasite but only if exposed to a specific stimulus.

Serres speaks of energy to information relationship between host and parasite. “He obtains energy and pays for it in information” (36). It seems to me like this only works with the cripple and the blind man example. For any other parasite and host relationship I see no information being passed to the host. If I were to implant a hookworm into my foot he would help me cure my hay-fever but would he tell me what bus to take to get to Fred Meyers? Could my little hookworm buddy conjugate verbs for me? Or is the simple fact that he can cure my allergies a type of information?

At the end of “A Clockwork Orange” we hear our humble narrator Alex talk about some dreams that he had been having about doctors opening his head and messing around with his brain. Eventually we figure out that this was all real and they were busy undoing his brainwashing and turning him back to his “normal” self, the same self that raped and beat innocent people in the streets. Does the definition of a parasite have to have certain moment of insertion? The moment I walk around in poop and a hook worm crawls into my foot is the moment that I have obtained this parasite. The minute a wasp inserts his babies into an aphid is when that aphid has acquired that parasite. How about music and mashups like we talked about today? The moment I put the beat to Girls by Beastie Boys in Frooty loops and make Busta Rhymes rap over it is when the acapella becomes or parasite or maybe it’s the host, I’m not sure. “Man milks the cow, makes the steer work, makes a roof from the tree; they have all decided who the parasite is. It is man” (24). The instant man was created, were we parasites? Or did this definition of a parasite evolve with our history and society. Through industrialization and the need
for more food and resources did we start to milk nature dry?

Well since I’m tired of asking questions I want to try and answer some. Here is what I think. A parasite can be acquired gradually or instantaneously. We used to live in harmony with nature. A symbiotic relationship if you may. We ate berries and nomadically traveled and pooped out those seeds to spread that species. We cut down trees to make our houses, but maybe in that process we provided light for a new sprout that would have died if that tree had been there. Maybe I’m starting to stretch this a little thin. Maybe humans were created as parasites to leech off of the land provided. Anyone have an opinion?

By the end of this blog I wanted to make an attempt at putting together a definition of a parasite. A broad definition that can cover all of the things we have talked about in class, including all of our obscure examples and not just the creepy crawlies that we think about.



Parasite- Anything that uses a host for a personal gain.

or

Anything that takes information, ideas or energy from a source to use as their own.

I think I made a little progress.

If anybody else has definitions of their own feel free to share.

Parasites. Mississippi

After listening to the radio show on parasites, I’ve wondered how our lives could be completely different if we continued living like we did hundreds of years ago. If small quantities of hookworm can cure hay fever and whipworm can cure chron’s disease, what else is out there that can be cured with seemingly invisible parasites.

Shivers displayed a more frightening kind of loss of… priorities? I’m not sure what else to call it. But instead of cohabitating with the body and helping one another (I’ll feed you while you stop making my cells kill each other relationship) the parasites inside of the zombies were just using the body as a container, or vessel for spreading the disease. Much like the nematode eggs made their way into the bird, and the bird distributed the eggs all over the ground.

At first I was confused when I saw that the zombies in shivers weren’t concerned about food. When I think of an animal, I feel food and reproduction are the top priorities. The goal of the Dr. when he created this parasite was to bring humanity back to their roots. The zombies only thought about sex, which was their mode of transporting the parasite. Now I realize that the human body was the food for the parasite and that’s why the Dr. came back to try and kill the parasite before it spread. The Dr. needed to create a parasite that behaved more like hookworm or whipworm.

The Mississippi River has changed five times throughout the course of history, always seeking the fastest way to the Gulf of Mexico. The next change of course is due right now but with all the levies and dams in the river, it cannot change course. Every year the river is supposed to flood, this natural cycle deposits sediment onto the ground, which in turn builds up more earth. Due to our levies the Mississippi cannot flood and the sediment ends up being thrown out into the deep Gulf of Mexico. Ultimately this has caused New Orleans and other southern cities to keep sinking and helped Hurricane Katrina become so powerful.

Were the Dr’s motives so bad? Maybe he just wanted us to stop building levies and to let the river flood. Maybe he was just trying to get the human race to interact with nature and get us back into the cycle where humankind could thrive with nature instead of trying to fight against it.

The J.L. Austin text reminded me of something that we were talking about in philosophy on Friday. I guess part of the course is to learn about arguments and how to decide if they are valid or not. Well the first thing you do is to try and define truth. How do we know what is true if we don’t have a definition for truth? Well, I’m not sure. The answer or most widely accepted answer went like this.

A statement is true if and only if things are the way the statement says that they are.

So, I guess if you were to say, “I have a nickel in my pocket.” Would only be true if indeed you had a nickel in your pocket. But then what tells you that you actually have that nickel in your pocket? Your senses?

That would then bring us back to people with phantom limbs still feeling their left arm even after it’s been amputated. Your eyes tell you that indeed your arm is missing but your sense of touch thinks your left wrist itches. So who knows if we’ll answer the question of what is truth.

J.L. Austin speaks of Hippolytus and how his tongue swore but his heart did not. This quote seems to me the definition of lying. To say one thing and but feel another is being dishonest in every way. “The promise here is not even void, though it is given in bad faith.” I can accept that making a promise is making a promise, whether or not it is true but I would also consider that promise to be a lie. Not lying about making a promise, but lying about the contents of that promise.

Can saying make it so?

Possibly?

In terms of marriage, I think the right when the “I do’s” are spoken, you could say that saying that made it so. Or saying your vows or receiving your legal marriage certificates. But what really matters is following through. Things are expected of you as a husband/wife. You could go out the next night and have sex with another woman. You aren’t supposed to, but you certainly could. You would still be married because you said you are and your wife says you are. You could also then sign some papers and say that you are divorced. So maybe saying can make it so.

Testing

testing, testing, 1 2 3