Is Manipulation Right?

In Momento, it’s revealed that Teddy manipulates Lenny in order to kill people that he was looking into for cases. However, in order to exact revenge for being used, Lenny manipulates himself into believing that Teddy is the killer, knowing that he would have no other memory of the event. The manipulations continue to be added on, as Nathalie also takes advantage of Lenny’s condition and gets him to go after someone who will kill her. All of them revolve around Lenny’s inability to create and store new long term memories, which forces him to rely on pictures and notes that he makes for himself. Each of them is aware of the power that these objects have over him. The manipulations of using these things against Lenny make up the plot of the movie.

So were any of them justified?

With Teddy, we find that he is a corrupted cop who uses Teddy’s ability to kill and then forget afterwards as a way to scam money and give himself an alibi. However, as he does mention at the end of the movie, part of the reason for why he does it is because Lenny appears to have no other reason to live beyond punishing John G.s over and over. It can be argued that Teddy has been directing Lenny to people who deserve to die because they are big time criminals. His manipulations keeps Lenny “happy” as it continues to give Lenny a goal in life as well as small opportunities for Lenny to feel extremely happy when his “revenge” is extracted. Teddy’s main personality trait of greed, however, prevents us from saying that his manipulations were justified. He had many opportunities to get Lenny professional help or, at the very least, end the killings. But he decides not to, leaving viewers with very little sympathy for him.

Nathalie is a bit harder to place. In the order of the memories that the movie presents us with, we first believe that she loves Lenny. It’s only late into the movie that we discover that she was not a love interest but rather a manipulator. Her circumstances, however, are quite different. She knows that her boyfriend/lover has suddenly disappeared, most likely died, and that her life is in danger. Nathalie understands that out of the two of them, Lenny probably stands a better chance against Dodd than she does. By manipulating Lenny into confronting Dodd, she plays the chances for both of their survival to be greater. However, she manipulates one life to be risked instead of her own without the other person’s permission or full understanding of the situation. Her manipulation, which places lives in danger that aren’t even aware of the full events, is what marks her actions as wrong.

But what about Lenny? He walked away from the scene, knowing that he’ll forget that he is a killer and that Teddy has been using him. He knew that he was angry at the moment, and that Teddy might get away with using Lenny. In order to exact retaliation that he wanted from that one moment, Lenny set himself up so that his mind would end up killing Teddy. Did he have a right to do that? Is manipulating oneself to kill someone for reason long lost okay? Unlike the other two, Lenny knows that he is putting himself at risk and he’s okay with that. He’s assuring his own happiness. But is manipulating himself really alright?

In many cases, when evaluating ourselves, we find that we can manipulate our own thoughts with perception or exaggeration. Don’t like something? Exaggerate how badly it went and eventually you’ll think it’s worse off than it actually was. If you saw things happen in a certain way, then you convince yourself that what you think happened is true.

Are we capable to manipulate ourselves into murdering? Well, that depends. Are you ready to convince yourself to go against morals that society set out and kill someone?

(Yeah, I hope not too.)

So is Lenny excused? It really depends on your point of view. He knew he was going to exact revenge during the moment and that he’ll be in a state of peace relative to him. Yet he also knows that this adds to the amount of people that he killed that weren’t his wife’s attackers. So where do the morals of manipulation lie?

Last Saturday Nite

It all started with this idea, “What if right now, at this very moment, a nuclear bomb went off and brought about the apocalypse? What would we do if we were trapped in this small room in KJ with no access to the outside world? How would we survive?”

It was Saturday night and after a fun filled day of procrastinating and doing work (mostly the former) a group of four of us decided to go on a walk through KJ to clear our minds. We stumbled upon a friend in a small study room that seemed secluded from the rest of the world. We went in to talk to her and before we knew it, we suddenly felt isolated from everyone outside of that little room. We all felt as if the world could end at that very moment and that we would be left untouched, left to deal with a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Needless to say, the conversation quickly went to that concept. My friend, Lily, asked us what we would do if we were trapped in that room. How would we get help? How would we survive without food or water? We decided to search the room to see if we would be able to get by on the supplies currently there. Someone found peanut butter crackers in a cubby and someone else had a few bananas with them. We then began discussing how we would divide up the food to help us survive as long as possible. Unfortunately, I am allergic to peanut butter. Therefore, Lily and Sabrina decided that in the event that we ran out of food they should consume me because I would be the easiest to kill (and I also would have pretty much nothing to eat so I would die the fastest anyway).

But then I presented to them my skills that would be potentially useful in the event of nuclear fallout. My many hours of playing the game Fallout 3 could finally come in handy. It was then unanimously decided that I could be extremely helpful if we were able to escape the confines of the room and therefore they decided that they probably shouldn’t kill me.

This whole time we were totally engrossed in the conversation and the idea that the apocalypse could happen at any moment seemed eerily real. It may sound silly just by reading my abbreviated account of the events, but we really felt that what we were talking about could have been the “truth.” As we learned in this class, reality is perception. Last night, our reality was transformed by our perception of the possibility of the apocalypse actually occurring.

In short, thanks to this class, Sabrina and I are prepared for impending doom.

An Inconvenient Truth

Watching Memento made me think of this phrase, and I then started to realize how this has been a recurring theme in the course. Cat’s Cradle is a perfect place to start. The dismal state of their nation was an inconvenient truth to San Lorenzans given the crashing economy, the general discord and failed attempts to salvage San Lorenzans out of their misery. In The Things They Carried, the inconvenient truth was the inability of the “happening truths,” the naked facts of O’Brien’s time served in Vietnam to convey the emotional truth of his war experience, and thus make the readers’ “stomach believe.”

The Man in the High Castle was an uncomfortable text to read too. The inconvenient truth was the very possibility of an alternative reality and the shifting notions of what’s authentic and what’s fake. Similarly, Kindred was unsettling because of the loss of linearity in time and the process of making uncomfortable discoveries about one’s roots. In Aura, Consuelo faced the inconvenient truth of losing her youth and reconciling with her inability to procreate while Felipe faced that of finding that Aura was merely an illusion. Through House of Danger, well, we ourselves started being aware of the inconvenient truth that we are constantly exposed to manipulations in our daily lives.

On that note, it seems relevant to notice that we are also exposed to several inconvenient truths in our daily lives. The phrase ‘an inconvenient truth’ itself was popularized by Al Gore’s documentary about global warming, the truth that is closing in on all inhabitants of this planet. In the various texts and movies we came across this semester, we saw the protagonists use lies, makeshift truths and illusions to reconcile with their inconvenient truths. What do we do? There are those of us who try to look for a remedy. There are campaigns being initiated and documentaries being made to hopefully find a way out. And then there are also those of us who choose not to believe it at all. If we Google ‘global warming,’ the first thing on ‘related searches’ list that comes up is the phrase ‘global warming hoax.’ There was one theory that claimed that man could maybe change the local climate, but that he’s not capable of changing the global climate as a whole, which sounds reasonable as well. It’s an ongoing debate and everyone must choose to independently prioritize the facts we have at hand. We could be like Leonard and pick the facts that give us a purpose in life. But it might as well be just an illusion of purpose. We could also be like San Lorenzans and live by harmless untruths that keep us happy. But then again not all untruths are harmless.

That being said, my biggest conclusion from the class is that everything is ultimately subject to our freewill. And the optimal use of freewill comes from being aware of our surrounding and our history and knowing that they’re all subject to manipulations.

Dear Blog

I am in the process of defending my blog grade and rereading all of my blog posts has been a trip down digital memory lane. I would like to think that my perspective hasn't been completely overturned, but a change has subtly occurred. For instance, my first blog post focused on how my sense of morality was derived from my mother's. Now, I find myself pausing and questioning the development of trust. I'm not retracting my words; I still very much believe that the majority of my ideals have been shaped by my mother, who has been the most influential person in my life thus far.

BUT why is it that I can trust her so blindly and comfortably? Why don't I try to push the boundaries of what I am familiar with? Why do I take so much for face value? Perhaps, I am internalizing Leonard and Dana's conflicts: I want to believe in the intrinsic bond and trust of kinship; I want to believe that my truths are true, that reality is reality, that life will be forever as I know it.

... and living like that would make me blissfully ignorant of what I've learned this semester from grappling with all of those mental knot and twists, a labyrinth of lies (untruths, half-truths, gradients of Truth), and don't stop me while I'm on a dramatic roll. For every "why," there seems to be another "why" waiting to be asked. It's a never-ending cycle of trying to look past another illusion.

Ironically, as Janelle has pointed out time and time again, why did I have to be taught this? Why did I lack the ability to critique my own perspective and the influences imposed on me? Why do I take the words of someone who is practically a stranger to heart? The "healthy dose of skepticism" was much more than I had expected. Instead of typical college student worries like finding a job or declaring a major, my mind was plagued by existentialism and reality. Why am I even here? Even basic questions of identity have to be reassessed. In the end, we know so little of what we think we know.

To discover myself, I'll have to do away with the misconceptions accrued over eighteen years of life.

What a terrifying thought.

It's as they say, college is all about taking risks. Who would have known that they came in the form of classes like these?