In recent months, my imagination has been fogged over by dragons. In fact, ever since I saw THE HOBBIT: DESOLATION OF SMAUG, I have been thinking about dragons. I thoroughly enjoyed Smaug's monologue under the Lonely Mountain.
Mr. Cumberbatch's personification of the mythical winged beast was nothing short of spectacular. Although there were a few elements of the last two Hobbit films that did not align with the book, if Stephen Colbert is okay with it - so am I.
This movie got me thinking about everything that I know about dragons. I know that the origination of the dragon tale evolved in seperate areas of the earth independently of each other.
But my various sources of dragon knowledge sometimes give me conflicting information. For example; Skyrim and the Hobbit both say that dragons are intelligent creatures that can speak, but Game of Thrones and Harry Potter both tell me that they can't.
Perhaps these are simply different species of dragon?
WHY DO WE BUILD SKYSCRAPERS?
It seems that everywhere I look in this world - people are building up.
Higher. Higher. Higher.
Constantly building onward and upward.
They are reaching up and clawing at the sky with fingernails like talons. As if there is something at the end of their journey - a Babylonian prophecy guiding their every move.
I won't lie, I'm much more attracted to city life after growing up in a rural island county. I think it might be the fact that my hometown is so far away from everything and anything of value or importance to me - except for absolute silence.
Every city has its own unique character - a soul, a spirit - that is unique to that city alone. This phenomenon is explained extremely well in the comic book series The Spirit.
The Spirit of any particular city is not readily definable with words. It is the feeling that you get in your bones when you first see a city from the airplane window. It is the feeling when you are on a twilight parajump and you see a city basked in the glorious wonder of the setting sun. That is the Spirit of a city. That is the soul of a place.
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revellphotography.com[/caption]We live in a capitalist nation.
That should come as no surprise to anyone.
Capitalism exists communally with individualism. The individual will succeed if he works hard and saves his money. The individual will fit in if he buys the right things when he's told to.
The war for our minds as consumers has long been lost to our corporate overlords. There is no use in fighting it. The influence of consumerism is felt around the world - it is no more prevalent in Belltown, Seattle than it is in Bakara Market, Mogadishu. On both sides of the North-South divide, capitalism reigns king.
I have nothing wrong with that, either. A single and international economic platform makes it much easier for a nation to win wars without firing a single bullet. If a nation controls the wax and wane of the world's economic tides, it controls the outcome of any situation. Although, I dare say, a solitary individual with a calculator, a laptop, and a lot of spare time can be just as easily poised to be king of the world - if only for a moment.
Consumerism makes people to want for and to long for material possessions.
Capitalism justifies this behavior as rational, and explains a concept called the "American Dream."
But advertisements, marketing campaigns, and public service announcements do not create a need from nothing. They tap into the unconscious psyche of a human being - the core of a man's identity.
Freud had this cousin - his name was Edward Bernays.
That's another story.
It's my personal understanding that human beings have underlying needs and desires. But I - and the entire scientific community - think Freud may have have been quite askew on a few tidbits.
I think that a majority of what drives certain people to madness and certain people to success might possibly have to do with whether of not a person is
DRAGONBORN.
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Willie Strausser[/caption]I think that the Elder Scrolls series might just actually be on to a major scientific breakthrough.
If only they were a legitimate science lab instead of a video game.
Let me extrapolate: in the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a medieval kingdom on another planet much like Earth is faced with a terrible and treacherous enemy: a dragon that will bring fire and destruction. It is prophesied that a warrior endowed with dragon's blood will defeat this dragon and send him into a stasis field via an Elder Scroll.
Didn't catch that? That's okay, what you need to know is that the hero is called the "Dragonborn," and it is believed that the hero carries the blood of a dragon.
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Smaug is brought alive by Weta.[/caption]So, there I am
sitting on some random-ass couch watching the every exhalation of breath, tweak of jaw, and clamp of claw that is made by this amazing and ferocious creature on screen before me.
His hunger. His greed. His vanity. His illusion of power.
These things could possibly be metaphors of humanity. But they could also mean something so much more...
So, what do I really know about dragons?
- Dragons like mountains.
- Dragons like to covet fortunes.
- Dragons usually live near, in, or on the tallest mountain they can find.
- Dragons are extremely territorial.
- Dragons are hunted by people who don't understand them.
AND IT HITS ME...
What do I know about people who build skyscrapers to live and/or work in?
- Rich people like skyscrapers.
- Once you're rich, you're usually staying that way.
- Chicago and New York city are locked in a heated debate over which is taller: ONE-WTC, or Sears (Willis) Tower.
- Rich people usually name buildings after themselves and live in the Penthouse.
- Rich people are widely misunderstood human beings.
Woah.
Not all rich people are assholes. And certainly not all people endowed with the desire to dominate everything the eye can see - which is a lot more from a penthouse than behind the dumpster in the alley - are rich. I am quite fairly certain that I have had the want, the desire to live in a penthouse apartment and own half of Seattle. It's only human to want that, right? Or is it something more?
Perhaps this world is truly becoming overrun by people with dragon's blood - and they're not all using their powers for good. There are a lot of evil people in the world. They seem to have been coming out of the woodwork recently. Joseph Kony, FOX NEWS, the Koch Brothers, and Donald Trump.
These rich bastards are out for blood - and, if my hypothesis is correct - they will not rest until the world is in ashes, at least the parts that don't already belong to them.
Damnit, maybe those truthers are on to something after all...
or not.
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