Dear Amritsar,
Last week, you wrote a column about a girl whose family objected to her love for a genetically modified boy who looked like a bullet with butterfly wings; you cautioned her not to do anything rash (without a large supply of talcum powder on hand) because as she got older, these things would mean less to her. Fair enough.
Except, it reminded me about a column you wrote three months ago about a girl whose family objected to her love for a genetically modified boy who looked like a cross between a shih tzu puppy and a cement mixer. You advised her not to do anything rash (after all, the diaper can be changed easily enough) because when she was older, this wouldn’t have the same emotional importance for her. Hmm.
Then, there was the column six months before that about the girl whose family objected to her love for a genetically modified boy who looked like a mop with a head full of crabgrass. A column three years ago was about a girl whose family objected to her love for a boy with bionic fingertips. A column 12 years before that was about a girl whose family objected to her love for a boy who had been injected with firefly genes that made him glow in the dark. I thought that one was rather sweet, actually. In any case, your advice was always the same: don’t be rash (because the star of Sledge Hammer is 70 years old, and his gun isn’t as big as it used to be), time will blunt the sharp ache in your heart.
Thinking back on these, and other things that you had written, an obvious question occurred to me.
Is this an example of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence?
Riota Invocation
Hey, Babe,
Well. Somebody has a long memory. A loooooooong memory. That or mad search engine skillz. (And, if you are, indeed, a longtime reader, you will know that I use the hip zed with disdain and a hint of lavender.)
Ignoring the screams of the field’s professors everywhere, I would suggest that this is not a philosophical problem, so much as one of a lack of imagination. Human beings simply cannot help but make the same mistakes over and over and over again. And, over again for good measure. And, over once again just to drive the point. And, over again because they just don’t know any better…which finally brings me back to the point. Phew!
We were promised, back in the early days of computer networking, that the technology would allow human beings to make newer, better mistakes. That proved to be an illusion. The Internet allowed us to make mistakes at the speed of light, but humanity has squandered that potential by using it to make the same damn mistakes it has always made (with the possible exception of the selfie). Genetic and cybernetic enhancements to the human body were seen as exciting new frontiers for human error, but, so far, they have not lived up to their hype.
You know what they say: never attribute to Nietzsche what can be explained by stupidity. Or, ah, Nietzsche is too important to be left to the Manicheans. Or, is it Nietzsche is peachy but Wittgenstein is mighty fine? As I get older, I find that my context gland doesn’t secrete as much meaning as it used to. Context to taste.
Dear Amritsar,
I’m in love with the most amazing boy! Loosely defined. He’s been genetically engineered to have the face of an alarm clock, the hands of a tramp steamer and the body of a 69 Chevy. Of course, my parents object – they’re in their forties! What do they know about love?
What should I do?
Bella Bubbly
Hey, Babe,
To avoid repeating myself, I’m going to refer you to Riota Invocation on this one…
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: I would like to welcome Dawn Wells to the rough and tumble world of professional advice giving. No woman is a dessert island, though, even if there are six other castaways on it, some of whom look quite tasty. A word of advice, babe: folksiness only gets you so far: the true test of the value of your advice (okay, that’s a second word of – oh, no, no, no, you’re not going to get me involved in that ugly form of regression!) lies in how many of your Farcebook fiends offer suggestions for actresses to play you when your columns are adapted into a TV series!