Who are monsters and mortals?
The children disfigured with burns from chemical showers sprayed from the sky; cities and entire generations of people decimated by nuclear bombs; suicide bombing of a church full of people during their Easter Sunday service; invasion and genocide in pursuit of power and creating mass exodus of citizenry. All this makes me think who the monsters are, and who the mortals might be.
Today is a world far apart from the monsters in our folklores and Grimm’s fairy tales. Today, looking at the topsy-turvy world where ‘alternate facts’ and ‘delusional megalomania’ remain prevalent, monsters cease to be those repulsive creatures from the mythical past, but an embodiment of all antithetical behaviors and beliefs that threaten ‘humanity and its ethical workings’ everywhere in the world. Geocidal wars and promotion of mass murder to secure power, use of chemical warfare and nuclear weaponization, proselytizing hatred and intolerance with little regard for humanity, perpetuate all the time almost as a matter of routine. This new monster has risen like a large elusive predator, mutating and corroding without mercy. The stark realization so disheartening is that monsters are never created by themselves but come into being through our own imagination and actions. This is not merely a psychological entity anymore but remains rooted in the quotidian physical realm threatening the normal order of things, humanity’s way of life, and the familiar - turning all these upside down; creating a reeling world and abyss of vertigo.
