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Once there were these evil doctors that decided to fuck with mice because they were bored and speculating about the will to survive and shit. So they took a mouse and stuck it at one end of a plexi glass terrarium, on the other side they placed some food in a petri dish. The mouse ran back and forth in the terrarium, it ate the food; it shit on the floor it played in the food it was all good. Next ze evil doctors put in a plexi glass divider in the middle of the terrarium and separated the mouse from the food dish. It went up to the wall, scratched at it, looked for cracks, tried charging, teleporting, everything and kept trying to get through to the food but couldn’t. Then ze evil doctors took some electrically charged pads and put them on the plexi glass. The mouse ran into the pads and got zapped and burned and shrieked loudly, and repeated this process a few more times before cowering over to the corner of the terrarium and sitting there glumly.
 Ze evil doctors stuck the mouse in a small dark box, removed the electricity pads and the plexi glass divider and then put the mouse back in the terrarium. It sat there in the corner again shitting on itself for a few days and finally starved to death refusing to go past the middle of the tank where the plexi glass and electric pads were. They repeated this experiment many times killing several hundred mice, switched to monkeys for a while and then decided it was profitable to use on humans.Â
Culture deliberately or otherwise does this to suicide, to sex; it does it to drugs, to sincerity, to esoterism, to artistic expression, to financial security, to value itself, and worst of all to love.Â
What’s in your petri dish?
7 comments
My self esteem and life I suppose. What’s in yours?
That’s a cool story. What if the mouse hadn’t given up after being transferred from the small dark box back into the terrarium? If the mouse had found the courage to bravely face that which had previously hurt him, he could have gotten to the food in the petri dish.
If the mouse had just tried one more time….even after the painful electric pads, he would have prevailed. Never give up is the message I got from that. Thank you. Distrust authority, expect nothing & you’ll never be disappointed.
VERY GOOD!!
I’ll bet the mouse didn’t fantasize that the evil doctor loved him. Or maybe we could eat our own legs? I know, sick, but also so true.
Few flaws with this analogy: all those things: suicide, sex, drugs, sincerity, esoterism, artistic expression, financial security, love, they all FIGHT BACK against culture, in the way that the mouse did not, because the mouse operates purely on instinct and self preservation, and all the things you just described go beyond self preservation, ie. a higher purpose.
What’s in my petri dish? Hope.
All analogies end somewhere. Are these abstract things like higher meaning vital to something with one more brain than a mouse- I mean do they have the same relationship as self preservation does to something with only the copassity to process self preservation if they make existance coapable?
yes. humans are driven by more than instinct and self preservation, perhaps to our detriment. but you can’t change the way you’re wired, so you just have to go with it. My only point is, the mouse will die, but love, art, all those other things… they don’t always triumph, but they will never be wholely defeated, because some things are worth the sacrifice of the individual. In a sense, they are part and parcel of self preservation for humans because we need more than basic physical needs to live.