When the teacher asks you to answer a question with a question, you realise the "class discussion" was going to turn into one big chain of questions, and almost inevitably, confusion. However, coming away from today's Socratic Seminar, I discover that I learned some new things that were posed by my classmates through questions, but at the same time added more questions to the ones that were answered.
One of the things that came up in our discussion was, perhaps, a solution to the overarching question of how to define and why we define things as monsters or monstrous. The main idea that the class seemed to agree upon was that it all came down to what kind of perspective you looked at it from, or what kind of "monster lens" as the instructor put it. The monster itself/himself/herself may actually think that what they're doing is the right thing. One of the examples to the "monster lens" idea that came up was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The Americans thought they were doing the right thing because, one, it would hopefully end the war quicker, and two, it was a sort of act of revenge for the Pearl Harbour bombings. In comparison, the Japanese thought they were doing the right thing by bombing Pearl Harbour because they wanted the oil embargo placed by the US to be lifted. They probably also thought that they were fighting for the correct ideologies. So this poses the question: who is the monster? Is the US the monster for killing thousands by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but ending the war? Or is it the Japanese who thought they were fighting for the right ideologies and a lifting of the oil embargo? Who is right and who is wrong? What is the criteria for this "monster lens"? Who is the monster?
Another thing that came up in our seminar was the misunderstood monster. Are monsters actually "good", but misunderstood so that they appear evil? Take the monster from the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. In the beginning, his intentions were good and didn't mean to hurt anyone, albeit for a short moment. However, since Victor Frankenstein, his own creator, shunned him, as well as the rest of society, the monster grew angry and decided to seek revenge against his creator, leading to the deaths of Frankenstein's family. This is a classic case of the misunderstood monster because the monster from Frankenstein only wanted to be loved by his creator and the rest of society, but that didn't work out. Thus, while the monster didn't want to become "evil" at first, society shaped him to become the monster that we know today. This is based on the perspective or lens that society views Frankenstein's monster. We return to the World War II America and Japan comparison. Who is the monster in this situation? Again, it depends on how you look through the lens. Is the monster from Frankenstein really a monster? Like Stephen T. Asma said in his book On Monsters, the monster may just be an "accidental monster", or one that is dangerous but not intentionally so. It all depends on context and perspective. Speaking of perspective, as I was looking through some blogs on perspectives, I came upon an interesting blog post from the blog Zsolt Fabók called "Context and Perspective". The author explains how context and perspective do matter and he poses some situations in which, while not exactly the same as being a monster, still makes me think about how a monster is labeled.
One final thing that we discussed in our seminar was how do people who label monsters benefit from it or justify their label? From Stephen T. Asma's book On Monsters, Asma says that his brother holds the view that those who label people as monsters stand to benefit from that kind of labelling. For example, political campaigns, especially modern ones, have some kind of mudslinging aspect to it, where candidates subtly comment on how their opposition is bad by listing some examples, and perhaps even exaggerating them, to attract an audience. While this is not the same thing as labelling someone as a monster, the candidates are still benefitting from this negative mudslinging in political campaigns.
So to put everything in perspective (haha see what I did there), I learned from our seminar that some monsters are misunderstood as evil, through the treatment that society gives them. Another thing is that there is a "monster lens" that we must look through to determine who is the monster and who is not. However, even that is subject to which perspectives you are looking through. Finally, the big theme of perspective. Context and perspective matter, as the Zsolt Fabók author says, and unless we can understand the context and perspective, we will never understand the full scale of the issue.
One final thing that we discussed in our seminar was how do people who label monsters benefit from it or justify their label? From Stephen T. Asma's book On Monsters, Asma says that his brother holds the view that those who label people as monsters stand to benefit from that kind of labelling. For example, political campaigns, especially modern ones, have some kind of mudslinging aspect to it, where candidates subtly comment on how their opposition is bad by listing some examples, and perhaps even exaggerating them, to attract an audience. While this is not the same thing as labelling someone as a monster, the candidates are still benefitting from this negative mudslinging in political campaigns.
So to put everything in perspective (haha see what I did there), I learned from our seminar that some monsters are misunderstood as evil, through the treatment that society gives them. Another thing is that there is a "monster lens" that we must look through to determine who is the monster and who is not. However, even that is subject to which perspectives you are looking through. Finally, the big theme of perspective. Context and perspective matter, as the Zsolt Fabók author says, and unless we can understand the context and perspective, we will never understand the full scale of the issue.
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