Ribofunkalicious

First let me just say that I have SO many thoughts about Ribofunk. This is going to be a scattered blog but I would rather spew now and cover everything then wait to organize my thoughts and leave something out.

First of all, on finishing the work, which I thought was brilliant, I could not help but see some form of "God" in the Urb. I was raised Catholic and maybe it's 13 years of Catholic education that has burned that into my psyche and the way in which I read things but I couldn't help but correlate an omnipresent being of divine power and almost humble intentions to the idea of a Catholic God.God is supposed to be everywhere and a part of everything and is this not what we see in the Urb? It took over at such a rate, waiting until it had the power to take the characters completely by surprise until it struck, leaving them unable to defy it or even think about whether or not they wanted it. So it seems our society, or at least the one I grew up in, treats religion. Thrown at you at such a speed you have no choice but to live it and accept it and it becomes a part of you and you, it. Pay close attention to "have no choice"...not like you want something else but are forbidden to have it, but rather you actually have no choice, you have no clue of what it is to live without...

Next let me draw on the one quote that has been haunting me throughout this quarter thus far: "Curiosity killed the cat". In ribofunk we see this strain of the human race to constantly fix what has gone wrong. We see it in "Big Eater" "Blankie" "Up the Lazy River" and ultimately in "Distributed Mind", these being the first that came to mind. Humans have reached a state of technology where virtually anything is possible and in that possibility we see the danger of such unlimited power. In "Up the Lazy River" we see a man swallowed by his own river. The river and the silicrobes were acting in ways they weren't programmed to. This is a classic case of technology taking over and becoming smarter than those who discovered and forged it. Then we are finally released into a world where technology has been all we know and have known b/c it has completely taken over: the Urb.

It is then through our curiosity and our drive to progress that we force ourselves into our own destruction. Only when we are swallowed by a river or our friends sent back to their planets or our loved ones turned to ghosts do we beg the question have we gone too far? By then it's too late and we are left wanting to find a new technology that will reverse what we've done.

Only when we are personally subjected to the wrath of our curiosity and invention do we have call into question the beauty and eloquence of Philip Sydney's quote.

So then where is the line? Was it Mendel manipulating the peas? But they're only peas...but they're only rats (I draw attention to the nude mouse)...but they're only sheep, but they're only monkeys, but they're only the old and the dying, but they're only jews, or blondes, or Cubans. Of course now i bring myself back to the idea of competition and my blog about the Post Modern Fable.

We have blown past the line. I don't know where it was but I can say with confidence that we will never find it. It has been covered by the dust of our progress.

Then isn't our progress an off-shoot of our creativity? We spoke of living as an art-form. Living our lives to be art. To me this means living in a full awareness of oneself. Knowing what one desires and enjoys and is capable of. But in knowing what we are capable of we know what we are incapable of and our want of progress and our curiosity coupled with our creativity drives us forward into the unknown. So then it can be argued that our destruction, this utter loss of control we see in Ribofunk is the offspring of out creativity and the art form that science has become.

So there you have it. The thoughts and continuous spewing of my mind in the aftermath of Ribofunk. Which, as I said before, was brilliant.