"Yes," the Head agreed. "At the bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherf******s in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago." - Quote from Cell, pg. 206
I was just curious to see what others thought about this statement. Obviously it's not completely true for everyone, but I can definitely see some truth in it. Can you?
I searched around for a thread on this but I couldn't find anything. Forgive me if this is a duplicate topic.
I think that the Head has a theory. A theory borne of the trauma that the world has endured. And I tend to agree... to a point. An example: I'm not the most aggressive fellow in the world. But a couple of years ago, I was cycling home from my job and I got knocked off my bike by someone who missed a red light. I wasn't hurt at all. His car wasn't hurt. My bike wasn't hurt.
But I bounced up off the ground and stomped to his car ready to ... I wasn't sure what. I was shouting, I know that -- "WHAT THE F*** WERE YOU DOING, YOU F****NG IDIOT?" -- stuff like that. But thank God, it almost felt out-of-body and part of me started to self-talk, saying "calm down. Just caaaalllmmm down."
It was an old guy who was taking his wife home from hospital where she'd had a broken leg set or something like that. He was upset, he knew he'd screwed up. And I have never felt rage / violence so clearly before or since.
So I can't dismiss the Head out of hand. But I think that Clay, and Tom, and Alice, demonstrate another desire, another basic aspect of humanity that the Head misses. Altruism.
I know what you mean bobledrew. I'm a very laid back person and there isn't very much that gets to me. But I have had moments where I've gone into a blind rage and had no idea what I was saying or doing. And those instances are exactly what I thought of when I read that quote.
I agree with you about Clay, Tom and Alice. But, even though their lives were flipped upside down and were pretty much stripped to the basics they weren't wiped completely out like the Phoners.
The head i feel is right in the basic idea of his theory its the single driving force yet it is strengthened and limited by others aspects of humans ie. compassion understanding etc
I read Cell a few years ago, but still remember that quote. I have a couple of thoughts on it. Not that it is a deep thought, but I thought of a shark as the most pure killing machine. Swim and eat with ferocity. As far as being able to "channel" your "inner crazy", I thnk that can be a good thing for certain situations, and probably is some deep down survival coding/programming similar to fight/flight reactions. Just like machines and computers that loose their programming, human programming seems to have issues at time.
I can also remember thinking about this in realtionship to sports. Many many moons ago, when playing offense in high school, it was more about strategy and willpower to make something happen. When playing defense there was some strategy, but some of my best plays were channeling my "inner crazy" with a goal of nothing more than to destroy whatever I could hit. And although the show was off the air by that time except some re-runs, some of us on defense adopted the repeated phrase of the "bad robot" on Lost In Space as our motto, "Kill, Crush, Destroy". Not very mature, or nice, or humane, or an example of sportsmanship; but for the age and environment, very accepted, and even bragged upon.
the prime directive *spoilers*
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