Disasters are the most perfect thing of all
After spending yesterday thinking about the beautiful potential of a world molded in the image of your own mind, perhaps it's not surprising that today I am thinking about megalomania.
As anyone will know who has glanced at the front page of the New York Times, one Mr. Nuon Chea has been arrested under "suspicion" of being a high-ranking official in the Khmer Rouge. According to a source of the Times, Nuon Chea was a man of strictest and most disinterested brutality, telling those who worked for him to kill even useful prisoners since "[They could] always get more." On another occasion he told the same source to burn a pile of bodies in a pile of tires and, most ominously, to "leave no bones."
Now that he has been arrested, he told his wife not to visit him in prison or memorialize him when he dies. "When I die," he said, "all will be finished."
I don't want to regurgitate any more of the article, since I can't convey the depth of suffering that was experienced during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. But what could he have meant when he said "When I die all will be finished"? Indeed, two questions come to mind to answer that question: Could he possibly believe that when he dies, all is finished, and Does anyone not, in some way, think the same of themselves?
I think that most human minds, fragile and vainglorious as they are, tend to believe that they are at the center of something. Indeed, they believe that what they make, want, and see is the true weaving of the world, and that human creation - especially their own creation - is a manifestation of true reality. Or at least, of the best reality.
But I also think that most people are able to reserve this belief for their own private universes. Most people, whether they are prideful, kind, modest, or even cruel, manage to temper their narcissism with reason and account for forces stronger than themselves.
Maybe I'm reacting theatrically, but Nuon Chea's statement to his wife makes me feel as though he stopped tempering his beliefs. Looking at his words feels a little like staring into a scary darkness, the end of which cannot be seen.
But I still believe, somehow, that beauty can save the world.
As anyone will know who has glanced at the front page of the New York Times, one Mr. Nuon Chea has been arrested under "suspicion" of being a high-ranking official in the Khmer Rouge. According to a source of the Times, Nuon Chea was a man of strictest and most disinterested brutality, telling those who worked for him to kill even useful prisoners since "[They could] always get more." On another occasion he told the same source to burn a pile of bodies in a pile of tires and, most ominously, to "leave no bones."
Now that he has been arrested, he told his wife not to visit him in prison or memorialize him when he dies. "When I die," he said, "all will be finished."
I don't want to regurgitate any more of the article, since I can't convey the depth of suffering that was experienced during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. But what could he have meant when he said "When I die all will be finished"? Indeed, two questions come to mind to answer that question: Could he possibly believe that when he dies, all is finished, and Does anyone not, in some way, think the same of themselves?
I think that most human minds, fragile and vainglorious as they are, tend to believe that they are at the center of something. Indeed, they believe that what they make, want, and see is the true weaving of the world, and that human creation - especially their own creation - is a manifestation of true reality. Or at least, of the best reality.
But I also think that most people are able to reserve this belief for their own private universes. Most people, whether they are prideful, kind, modest, or even cruel, manage to temper their narcissism with reason and account for forces stronger than themselves.
Maybe I'm reacting theatrically, but Nuon Chea's statement to his wife makes me feel as though he stopped tempering his beliefs. Looking at his words feels a little like staring into a scary darkness, the end of which cannot be seen.
But I still believe, somehow, that beauty can save the world.
Labels: a little dostoevsky, histrionics, khmer rouge, narcissism
posted by Adrienne Celt at 10:22 AM
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