We are dissecting cats in biology and I positively HATE it. I feel like I am destroying something sacred. I really believe in the sanctity of life. I know that probably shouldn't have much to do with this, but those cats were alive once, and I feel like I am, without permission, destroying what little remnant of that life remains. It feels so wrong. I feel sick every time I look at them with those cuts down their bodies... not because I think it's gross, but because I feel horrified at the violence. I know it's carefuly, calculated cuts with a razorblade, but I hate every part of it. I hate the way that our first cut looked just like my arms do when I cut them, except with less blood. I hate probing into their bodies like no spirit was ever in them. I am so morally opposed to it that I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I can't drop the class. I can't refuse to help, or I'll forfeit my grade. I have to help. But how can I?
Right now we are skinning them, and looking at them, holding them open, I always feel tears burning at my eyes. I feel like there's something wrong with me. Nobody else is crying about these cats. Just me. Nobody else is freaking out. Nobody else can't handle it. Just me.
So my lab partner treats me like a fragile child. She does all of the difficult stuff for herself, tells me what to do, supervises all my actions. And I love it. Nobody has treated me like a child in a long, long time. And although I'm not sure my aversion to dissection is childlike, I know that I need guiding through this if I am to mentally survive. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
Another thing that has been bothering me lately is how relative everything is. I mean, we've managed to concretely define most nouns, although even those definitions are occasionally subjective, but adjectives have absolutely no basis in anything that is definable isolated of all other experience. What is 'high'? To me the Empire State Building is high. But what about to God, or to some huge alien on another planet? That may be short. It may be tiny. My definition of 'high' is totally relative. All adjectives are. I can't tell you what an adjective means without using it in reference to something. There can only be references, only proportionalities, nothing definite.
Isn't that alarming to you that a huge bulk of our language exists only in a web of words and cannot exist as a single entity? For some reason it really bothers me. I want to believe that my opinions of the world, shaped in adjectives, are true, not just relative or only true in context.
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4 comments:
I too have a problem with the relative and the "gray." I like clear cut answers, black and white.
I have no idea what I'd do if I had to dissect a cat. I know life is life, but I'd be fine cutting apart a frog or a fetal pig. But a cat, I could never do that.
A good example of relativity is the speed of light. Say you are on a train approaching the speed of light and you turn on a flashlight. Will the photons emitted from the bulb surpass the overall speed of the train?
I dont know about you, but I am an organ donor on my drivers license. My soul isn't this flesh I'm in now. After I leave it, I am thankful that it might save someone's life.
See if you can relate the cat to a textbook. Try to comprehend what it has to offer.
I was thinking about this some more...(good topic!) The only things that surpass relativity are those things that are eternal.
For example, the adjectives God uses to describe himself..."I AM"
The value of the eternal....very deep subject.
jennifer- exactly. why can't more be clear, and black and white? i'd love to pretend everything was, but that'd just be living a lie.
about the cat- yeah, i do want to try to view it as a learning experience. but i also want to stay horrified at the destruction of it... to grow used to the dissection feels to me like letting go of some value that is important to me. and on relativity- that's true. i would believe in the eternal. statements that exist on their own without context. absolutes. yes, I AM from an eternal being like God is definitely one of those blessed absolutes. that's an interesting concept i'll have to think about more.
shea- lol, could you be more of a linguistics geek? :-) but seriously, i'm not totally sure how that theory works with isolated words as well. but if you wrote a paper on it, hit me with it. i think that stuff's really interesting.
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