Just Some Place

I sit here on a Saturday pre-afternoon, it's not really morning and it's certainly not noon nor is it after noon, so I call it pre-afternoon.

Language is a funny thing.

I have a habit of listening to the local npr station during the morning, as well as any time that I'm in the car. Used to be a time when I listened to music, but about a decade ago I got tired and burned out on commercial radio. It was all the same crap and I decided that I'd rather know more about what was going on in the world than listen to the dregs of whatever the next "big thing" was. If anyone had told younger me that I'd prefer public radio and the bbc World News to listening to tunes, well, I'd call you crazy. But there we are.

The other day I was listening to an interview that was being done with Marlon James, which was mainly about a new book that he has coming out (The Disappearers, should you be curious), but there was a section of the interview that touched on another book that Marlon had been invited to write a forward for. I believe that the title was Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. During this portion, there was one quote that really stood out to me - which, I am ashamed to admit that it's something that has never, not once, occurred to me:

...Because the - one of the things that people use to justify liking it [violence] is saying that the violence isn't gratuitous. And I recount arguing - this is one of the most gratuitous, violent novels ever written, and that's the point. All violence is gratuitous. If you're saying there's such a thing as too much violence, then you're automatically saying there is such a thing as just enough, you know?

The emphasis is mine.

The statement completely blows my mind - it's absolutely correct, and it had never entered my thought process as truth. He also included rape, and there could absolutely be more included there as well. It reflects very much on where we are as a society. As a people. As humans.

Any how. Food for thought.