I finished the book this morning after increasingly non-stop reading.
Harry
Reflecting on him a bit, Harry strikes me as a Gollum-like character. He is torn between peace and war internally and externally. By the point we are let into his life, Harry is increasingly using his own cynicism to justify and rationalize what could be interpreted as committing aggressive "war crimes" externally, rather than Geneva-approved acts. He has begun committing what he condemns, or would condemn if it was done to him. But whereas Gollum was first driven to that by stumbling on something he was not aware of before and now wishes to keep, Harry is driven to it by what he was always looking for and is intensely aware that he misses. Gollum has "forgotten the taste of bread" and "the softness of the wind" whereas Harry is tortured by his spots of remembrance of tasting and touching a woman. Both of them are recluses, "bugs in the system" that do not socialize evenly with others. They are both increasingly deranged by the fear, hate and despair they experience in and outside of themselves. We are told that, as Gollum used to be Smeagol, Harry did not always use to feel the aggressive way he now increasingly does.
It pained me to read many things that Harry went through and noted, because they struck me as so familiar. One of those notations brings me to another point. Harry rages against the conformity of the system. But maybe part of that conformity is the marketing and belief that we are all supposed to be unique? There are billions of people in the world, all sharing the same basic genetics and environments. They have the same basic needs and desires for food, shelter, sex, affection, health and selfesteem. How many ways are there to be "unique"? is it intrinsically satisfying, or is it the system saying that you should find it so? if happiness or any achievement is made out to be a relative value requiring others to be less than you, rather than an intrinsic absolute value, aren't we choosing to create a perpetual lack, a forever futile zero sum rat race?
The narcissistic treatment Harry experiences from those he wants to make it work with reflects my own experience the one time I did let my own hands go of my course and exposed myself to fate. When it came time for action she did a 180 turn and treated me like a chewing gum she'd spit out and now found stuck on her shoe. I was dismissed and disregarded, despite my evident sincerity and the small intimacy and history we'd already shared. This was not a girl who you would see on the outside and think that she was obvious trouble, and I was a fool, either. The worst may or may not be that I actually expected it to go wrong. I had just not anticipated the precise magnitude of it - but for all my hurt, I could not feel too disappointed, because I had not been surprised. How many public social justice warriors have privately crushed sincere men with no remorse and toy with them for a hobby?
Yet sometimes Harry notes the presence of men who are seemingly not too much unlike himself, accompanied by women Harry may himself desire, who at least seem to desire that man. Is it a trick of Harry's perception, and he does not know it is merely their own episode with a giraffe? Is it a proof that Harry is a maladaptive organism, an error in the code? Or is it the system mocking him with its survivor bias to his face?
Harry
Reflecting on him a bit, Harry strikes me as a Gollum-like character. He is torn between peace and war internally and externally. By the point we are let into his life, Harry is increasingly using his own cynicism to justify and rationalize what could be interpreted as committing aggressive "war crimes" externally, rather than Geneva-approved acts. He has begun committing what he condemns, or would condemn if it was done to him. But whereas Gollum was first driven to that by stumbling on something he was not aware of before and now wishes to keep, Harry is driven to it by what he was always looking for and is intensely aware that he misses. Gollum has "forgotten the taste of bread" and "the softness of the wind" whereas Harry is tortured by his spots of remembrance of tasting and touching a woman. Both of them are recluses, "bugs in the system" that do not socialize evenly with others. They are both increasingly deranged by the fear, hate and despair they experience in and outside of themselves. We are told that, as Gollum used to be Smeagol, Harry did not always use to feel the aggressive way he now increasingly does.
It pained me to read many things that Harry went through and noted, because they struck me as so familiar. One of those notations brings me to another point. Harry rages against the conformity of the system. But maybe part of that conformity is the marketing and belief that we are all supposed to be unique? There are billions of people in the world, all sharing the same basic genetics and environments. They have the same basic needs and desires for food, shelter, sex, affection, health and selfesteem. How many ways are there to be "unique"? is it intrinsically satisfying, or is it the system saying that you should find it so? if happiness or any achievement is made out to be a relative value requiring others to be less than you, rather than an intrinsic absolute value, aren't we choosing to create a perpetual lack, a forever futile zero sum rat race?
The narcissistic treatment Harry experiences from those he wants to make it work with reflects my own experience the one time I did let my own hands go of my course and exposed myself to fate. When it came time for action she did a 180 turn and treated me like a chewing gum she'd spit out and now found stuck on her shoe. I was dismissed and disregarded, despite my evident sincerity and the small intimacy and history we'd already shared. This was not a girl who you would see on the outside and think that she was obvious trouble, and I was a fool, either. The worst may or may not be that I actually expected it to go wrong. I had just not anticipated the precise magnitude of it - but for all my hurt, I could not feel too disappointed, because I had not been surprised. How many public social justice warriors have privately crushed sincere men with no remorse and toy with them for a hobby?
Yet sometimes Harry notes the presence of men who are seemingly not too much unlike himself, accompanied by women Harry may himself desire, who at least seem to desire that man. Is it a trick of Harry's perception, and he does not know it is merely their own episode with a giraffe? Is it a proof that Harry is a maladaptive organism, an error in the code? Or is it the system mocking him with its survivor bias to his face?