Crash by J.G. Ballard
I finally got to finishing Crash by J.G. Ballard this morning. Whether or not you’re a fan of Cronenberg (though I certainly am) I highly reading it. All said I think it is a marvelous work and definitely recommend reading it. Ballard spins a wonderful tale about the transformation of humankind, both mind and body, at the hands of some of our most prevalent technology: the automobile. At the end I now see his point, how we have been transformed not by the majesty of our creations but by mutilation…mentally, sexually, and physically. Our new beings have healed together to fit a new way, new possibilities, new fantasies. Looking at the Internet I find myself thinking of how it hasn’t benefited our world in the way anyone had thought. Well, to be fair in many ways it has, but it is the unforeseen side effects that have ultimately truly changed us and given us a view inside the guts of humanity that we couldn’t see before accelerating our birth into something else.
For all the beautiful information the Internet has to provide, for all of the wonders I have seen because of it I realize that such things as Goatse and 4chan have truly had the most impact. They are horrors played upon the mind causing me adjust around them so my mind can work within the mangled cabin of modern human thought: revolution in its highest form.
I’m also reminded of my knee, functioning as it is - a collection of scar tissue, relocated connective tissue, manually carved cartilage, and metal. Destroyed from what it once was, but reborn into something else at the hands of a skilled surgeon through the violent transformation of an accident on the gym room floor. It is a knee in much the same sense that we are all still human: in function perhaps, but not entirely in form.