Are you a glass half empty, or half full type of person? I suppose that could really depend on how long you've been around the place, and how long you've had to observe life and form an opinion. And maybe that opinion has often been coloured by the time of year, whether you've eaten that day, or a simple mood swing.
There's a lot of good in the world (so people tell me), but there's also plenty of the other stuff. Try watching the first five minutes of a news bulletin and you'll see. The news is obviously prioritised from the worst atrocity to the least, gradually moving down the scale to a possible thirty seconds of fluffiness at the end of the show. You know the thing: a dog that collapses in ecstasy after seeing its master again for the first time in months.
Man creates. And then there's a planet we call home that always seems to be fighting against us. It's covered mostly in water; an environment totally hostile to humans (without the use of special equipment). Parts of the earth rumble in anger, collapse, erupt, get blown to hell. And all the while, many people choose a path that will either end in the grisly destruction of another person, or themselves, as well as the other person. I'm no psychologist, but these experts must surely ponder this mystery. Just what is it drives us to destruction? There are more subtle killing methods too . . .
It doesn't take a super intelligent being to work out that we often forge our own pathway to oblivion. Obesity, cancer, heart disease, and the rest are at epidemic levels if you take the statistics head on. Yet, the shelves are constantly restocked with the chemically infused, processed crap that will help to accelerate our demise. Paste an attractive photo on the package and we'll take it - or just a plain box if the price is right. I don't think an alien would see our predicament as a beautiful sight. The world may look exquisite from space, quiet and peaceful. But that view serves as a very effective mask.
And therefore I say, a hearty hurrah for the monsters. Yes, we have created them. But there has to be an argument for their pure integrity. What was it space freighter 'Nostromo' science officer Ash said about the deadly Alien roaming loose around the ship? 'I admire it's purity'. True enough, for the creature clearly had no moral compass to consider. Not in the way we might understand it. You wonder of it's motive within the violence - and then discover the effort is simply to expand the species - and eradicate potential aggressors. Basically, it's motive is to survive.
We can only boast such drive at various points in our own history. All too often the reason for our violence is darker, more self gratifying, and certainly less noble. We have a claim to some land, and so fight for it. A skewed religious view becomes a reason for genocide. Dependence upon an injected stimulus leads to another soul fighting for their life after being mercilessly robbed to provide the finance for a fix. Look deeper, and you see the truly monstrous is inside us. Those who create fantastic fictions, who populate their worlds with the hideous and otherworldly, may know just a little more about what force drives the entity we call 'Monster'. Definitions are varied, but in essence the description of fictional monster is 'a mythical beast' or something that may have human characteristics but is clearly not human in appearance or general behaviour.
The list of our likely 'heroes' is endless: Wolfman, Frankenstein, Alien . . .
There are many monsters - formed to entertain us, to disturb, to educate. Educate? Why not. The behavioural traits of the movie monster are often more noble than those of the human beings trapped inside the story with him. Seldom will a monster covet the riches that might motivate a man to darker deeds. It will kill of course, without mercy or compassion, but I can't help thinking its motive is always primarily one of self preservation.
Don't berate those of us who boast a 'friendship' with the macabre, or prefer to dwell in the fictional lands of the strange. Real life 'monsters' are with us in abundance, stripped of the behavioural compass they might have possessed on the printed page. They have no scales, or hairy hide; their motives are completely powered by self gratification and self promotion. They kill without reason, steal and maim, satisfy their sexual lust on the young and helpless, whilst carrying an illusion of respectability Oh yes, make no mistake, we certainly dwell in a land of real evil, with real 'human' monsters. And so, let's look a little deeper on those misunderstood creatures of horror fiction; learn from them. They seek neither our sympathy or understanding. They stand ever nobly upon page and screen. They are who they are.
And maybe sadly, so are we.
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