I feel bad for Bruce Banner, but at least he gets to be big
and strong when he gets angry. I just get the bloodlust and the blackouts. He
gets to smash the heads of super villains while I mostly kick inanimate objects
and hope nothing expensive gets in the way.
I don’t like emotional filters. They are to life as those
bulky, optometrist sunglasses are to sunsets. That being said, I understand
their purpose. Like any other drug, emotions and the indulgence in them can
really wake you up, really make you feel alive. But they can give you a heart
attack. They can also kill you.
I think I can be redeemed as a human being, if my life is
ever worth examining by future human beings, for my philosophy, for example my
insistence on not filtering or constraining the pure human experience. Love,
compassion and happiness, when unfettered and unfiltered, are some of the most
powerful fuels on the planet.
I guess my problem is that every time I go drilling for some
of my pure human soul, I only find a spurting geyser of black bile. Hate is one
of the words I use most. It’s laughable, especially given how much I laugh and enjoy,
how much I seek out pleasurable experiences, I listen to hours of comedy
podcasts a week, watch hours of comedy programming on YouTube and Netflix each
day and spend bunches of time making jokes with friends or thinking of jokes to
tell friends.
I realize that I’m just building a buffer. And I realize
that I may be wrong, which is disappointing. The hulk, the anger and the
hatred, could they really be the building blocks of the human soul? Are love
and compassion the man-made blankets with which we’ve shrouded these more
terrible emotions? Or am I alone here in being mostly hateful?
I hope not. Or maybe I don’t. What if the Hulk is some sort
of Christ figure?[1] He
takes on the anger of the world and uses it to rid the world of evil or
something like that. That would be an acceptable rationalization for Bruce
Banner, I think. Or maybe it wouldn’t.
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