Dexter – Symptoms of Sickness

Little more than one year ago, started on the American's TV, in the Showtime channel, the Dexter’s series. The idea is, at least, creative and this calls the attention and curiosity of a lot of people, mostly the ones who were influenced by the new wave of series that surprised the public by it’s originality like, Lost, 24 Hours and Desperate Housewives.

Dexter, is a series for people who have no stomach. In fact, you need to don’t have another stuff too, like for example, critical sense, common sense, and other abilities common in the mind and social faculties. I know that some fans will want to rip me apart, but that’s just because they are fans. They already bought the craziness of this entertainment. However, you just need to analyze shortly some arguments and you won’t gonna be able to avoid the sensation of puke (sorry for the lack of euphemism). Dexter is one irresponsible entertainment.

Dexter works in the Police Department, doing the blood analyses in crime scenes. But he is a killer that should be arrested or even executed, depending on some American laws. He follow his victims, always with the Maquiavel argument of have a reason to do it, cause he just kill criminals. He prepare his crime scene, tie people naked using some kind of tape, makes he’s own show, given arguments to the victim and the expectator, choose the knife or any perforation object and initiate what he calls “ritual”. Executing with sadism the victim. That always leave the scene inside of black bags. That said, consider, he is the hero of the plot.

Some of the terrible details that I would like to share: He’s first victim, is the nurse that was treating his father in the hospital. His father told him that she was drugging he and others, and people were getting worst and passing out. He gives to his psycho son the mission to get rid of her. Good excuse, right? Wrong! Well, he get’s the old woman, put her naked into his ritual table, make her beg for her life, then stab her until the blood spills all over him. Another interesting scene is when he almost kills a boy that wasn’t a Serial Killer but a boy, who was violated. If the boy hadn’t talked about this, the “Justice” of Dexter would be a great mistake. The last scene that I want to comment is the “coyotes” couple. They killed the Cubans that didn’t pay the fee to be released into US soil. Dexter, kill them both one in front of the other, with screams of “I love you” one to another, without any ceremony. He passes all night killing the man, with the wife watching everything. Just to remember, this guy is the Hero!

If that wasn’t enough, Dexter’s father teaches him to develop his furtiveness with the excuse of teach him to survive the electric chair. In summary, the father’s value code say that if he’s son is a monster, even killing a lot of people should survive. He irresponsibly creates a monster and release it in society. Dexter excuse him self saying that can’t help him self from the kill urgency. He also thanks a shrink that treated him, for help him to accept who he really are, ripping he apart next. Do you think a sociopath should accept his situation? Dexter also obstructs justice, making serious crimes inside the police corporation, like planting evidences. And he awaits sincerely that one other Serial Killer continue free killing more people, so he can continue with he’s fetish for morbid competition. The glamorization is so high that in the last death there I watched, was listening to a music in off. Then happens the banalization of death. The American philosopher Sissela Bok, from Harvard, names this circumstance “compassion’s fatigue”, “an state of spirit that makes possible witness the brutality with distance, without involvement” (Translated from a Brazilian Magazine. Super Interessante, June of 1999, p.p. 21).

In the end, I ask my self, why the American society allow this kind of entertainment? Why in a place where people get guns and start a shooting hell, entertainment like this are produced? Why in the land of Serial Killers, this kind o entertainment is promoted? What will guarantee that repressed psychopaths won’t come out of the closet with good excuses to canalize theirs impulses? With such a glamorization of the sociopaths what gonna stop them? Maybe the one who didn’t knew his problem could recognize it in the screen, and instead of search for help, try to solve it like Dexter does. Without professional help and perpetrating revolting crimes. In the same way that normal people is influenced by media’s glamour, maybe, I’m almost sure, sleeping psychopaths would press a button that will destiny then to live the “adventures” of Dexter. Cause also, the character is evidently ruled by challenges. It’s easy to ask: “Who will be the best Serial Killer?” You can see in this series that they love competition. In a competition of Serial Killers, who do you think is going to loose? Funny, if not tragically sick. I already watched more then I should, for me it’s enough!

Richard Dawkins Stumped by Question

This is one of the most viewed Richard Dawkins video on You Tube. However, there is no comment for it, you'll understand why as soon as you watch...

Modern Science, Old Faith

I’ve been present in the I International Seminar of the Historical Jesus in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in the last 3 days. The main character present was nobody less then John Dominic Crossan, founder of the Jesus Seminar and a famous scholar in the Historical Jesus studies. He is criticized by many other scholars that argue against he’s method, what is the Achilles Tendon of his conclusions.

The seminar was enricher and frightening. Frightening because I discovered something that I didn’t imagined that had came to that point. The science is losing it’s criteria. In the search of a less dogmatic discourse two devastate implications are rising against the scientific method. 3 were the cases analyzed.

1 – Some researchers choose to quote Jesus texts like historical and other texts of the same Jesus were throwing off based in the actual common sense. What makes no sense cause the gospel text was written for the audience of the I and II century a.D. In another words, what Christ said that affirm the main ideas of the researcher sustains itself through the Historic-Critical Method, but the irrelevant texts for the main ideas of the researcher, or even the texts that oppose his ideas, are thrown out without any criteria.

2 – Other researchers based their allegations and “scientific discoveries” in completely hypothetic factors. And at least, responsibly, admitted such dependency of hypothesis build upon not enough evidences. So, they establish a whole research in a unstable basis (by the inexistence of the basic hypothesis validation) to conclude, in the end, what just could be proven if the basis hypothesis of the research were proven. That’s scarily speculative.

3 – The last, worst and more frightening argument in the scientific method that I saw in the event was: More than one of the scholars who showed their researches, made allusions to the pluralism of ideas, the inexistence of absolute truths, but subjective ones. The maximum materialization of the anti-dogmatic discourse. “The science can’t be dogmatic”, they say. However this is a great postmodern illusion. Cause in the end, when is Said that science can’t be dogmatic, or there are no absolute truths, or that all truths are subjective, then, we are dogmatizing and establishing the plurality of ideas as an absolute truth (what is extremely contradicting to the pluralist proposal). In another words, there is no anti-dogmatisms, but the opposition to the disagreeable dogmas. The pluralist argument don’t sustain itself. A river must always have banks never more.

What bring us to the last implications of this discourse, the science is loosing it’s criteria by the denial of absolute truth. Although this discourse is based on the constant evolution of knowledge and the scientific truths in the elapse of time (something true 50 years ago, today can be a reason of jokes). That’s also a fallacy, cause we can’t deny lies if they don’t position itself as truths. The pluralism doctrine condemns good ideas to mix if bad ideas that will never be unmasked cause don’t figure as absolute truths. It’s part of the process of discovering and scientific evolution that one truth rises as absolute to be putted under prove and, if possible, proven or replaced.

There are another problematic factor in the question of putting speculations in position of scientific truths to be proved. Cause of the inconsistent basis, even resisting for years, will be product of studies that we don’t know, maybe never, the relevancy of the time dispend in this research. So, a great, and irrational, loss of time.

In the end, this is one problem find in the human’s ego that don’t like to be find oppositions, and prefer to admit other’s people truths as validate since won’t invalidate his own. But leaving a side this philosophic deepness, see how science is becoming exactly what it most hated since his born. The blind faith. Blind faith in science. The same blind faith that disconnected it definitely from religion. Scientific declarations are made based in weak speculations, with no prove, and so relative that makes me ask what is the relevancy of it? What’s the relevancy of scientific researches if the absolute truth don’t exist? If what is going to be the conclusion is just the product of the subjective mind of the researcher? What’s the science objective? When science sees the hole that is digging down will start to make this same questions, who knows if won’t gonna live a discredit crises like religion lives today?

Who knows it self-destructs? I hope not. But I don’t see any relevancy in the subjective and speculative arguments, do you see?

Richard Dawkins is SO right!

Analyzing Dawkin’s most famous work, The Selfish Gene, we can see the systematization of a reality known a thousand hundred years ago, the human being is selfish by nature. The irony of that rests in the fact that the result of Dawkin’s research completely agree with the book that he most condemns. The Bible.

Yeah, Dawkin’s conclusion is no news to the Bible’s scripture, in fact is one of the main thoughts in a lot of the teachings in this book. And we must praise the zoology teacher for his effort, that in the end, was capable to prove a biblical truth that says that human nature is essentially evil (Jeremy 17:9; Romans 3:10).

In another words, the science in favor of faith. Dawkins in favor of Bible. Very Ironic. It’s a shame that for sustains his intransigent point of view, that God don’t exist, he had to pass trough situations like this. I don’t see any problem with his denial of God, the problem in my opinion is that old cliché: “The worst kind of blind is the one that don’t want to see” (proverb commonly used in Brazil, I don’t know the English version of it). Don’t change his opinion it’s not an indication of intransigency, but don’t judge all information available (what science demands) is cover the eyes to see, that’s intransigency. I don’t want to prove anything, or convert Dawkins, or he’s followers with this text, but lead to a simple observation that things aren’t so simple.

To tell the truth, there is the complication, ‘cause makes no sense at all for a selfish organism to perpetrate acts of altruism. And that’s the great problem in the moment for the evolution theory, that can’t explain the presence of altruism. That little act of self donation without wait for anything in exchange. Or even the simple honesty ethics, that make you alone in a dark room don’t dare to cheat in your income declaration. Or maybe you do, than that annoying feeling of guilty appears, from where, if the gene is selfish and just cares with his own success? As they keep trying with no success, to solve this problem, the most obvious is silenced by will reasons and not rational ones. The same will that he condemns in religion, the auto-blind(if I can say this) one. What’s so obvious? Oh, I don’t even need to say, you know it, even if you deny.