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Ducklings in the road

To start of, I have a little story to tell about a man, driving in his car at dawn. He’s going down the road, minding his own business, listening to the bible on his mp3 player, and he sees a small figure waddling in the road not too far ahead of him. He’s cruising along at a good clip on the turnpike, and a duck is about half way into his lane up ahead.

It’s not just a duck. It’s a duck leading a procession of ducklings across the turnpike. Cars whizzing past her.

The man didn’t even think, didn’t give more than a cursory look. He just swerved. And he missed them all.

Those ducklings most likely got killed, and the duck with them. But at least the man didn’t kill them.

He could have caused an accident like that.

Dexter

I got home yesterday and I figured I’d sit down and watch some TV after checking my email and whatnot. I did some searching around for what’s good TV, and yet again Dexter came up. I was just like “whatever, I’ll watch the first episode and see what it’s like”. I tend to shy away from HBO and Showtime shows because they’re usually vulgar, full of profanity and nudity. Not all of them. I mean, Stargate SG-1 had nudity in it’s first episode, and not any more thereafter.

So anyway, I turn Dexter on and watch the first episode. And the second episode. And the third episode.

Yeah, I’m hooked.

What makes this show so great? It’s well written, and I love the internal monologue that Dexter maintains. He himself is a monster much like any other serial killer, only his father had a directing hand in trying to channel those urges. His father was a police detective, and taught him how to kill without being caught. Dexter will only murder those people who deserve it.

He asked his father if he’d ever shot anyone, and his father said “Yes, a few times”.
“Did any of them ever die?”
“One.”
“What did it feel like?”
And his father said something about killing and hurting people being bad, but sometimes you need to do it to stop an even greater harm or more deaths from occurring.

So now that’s how Dexter channels his urges to kill. He goes after the bad guys.

Dexter is a police expert in blood splatter analysis. His sister is a cop. He works at the precinct.

There’s this one guy who gives him a hard time, and acts really aggressively and is mean to Dexter, though Dexter is nice to him (and to everyone). Dexter fakes emotion so he can fit into society. But this one guy is pretty much the only one in a room full of cops, day by day, that “sees him for what he really is”.

Dexter is very detached from society and emotion. He describes himself as empty inside. He doesn’t understand emotion, or sexual urges. He found a girlfriend who is freaked out by sex from her past, and “isn’t ready yet” because she’s broken inside, and he likes that, because he doesn’t want sex from her.

I think one of the reasons I like the show is because I can relate, in some small way, to Dexter. I don’t have the urge to kill. I can totally understand the sex drive. I’m not empty inside.

Well, not completely. But that is where I find some similarity in myself with him. He doesn’t have emotions, and so he feels empty. I do have emotions, but they are suppressed most of the time. I think for me, emotions are a powerful, uncontrolled force, and so require a powerful controlled force to keep them in check. The force that I employ is suppression. And this leads to a similar experience to what Dexter experiences: a disassociation with culture, with other people who are “normal”, who express themselves in safe and minor ways. A lack of empathy. A worldview ruled not by emotion, but by reason.

I try and compensate for this in a few ways. I try and delve into my emotions at times, and see what is there. Most of the time, it is nothing =p

Sometimes though, my emotions overcome me. Occasionally there is this odd duality wherein I am emotional, yet also detached. Other times, I am fully in the moment.

One of the first times my daughter came to visit me, when I was driving her back to the airport I started crying in the car because I was going to miss her or something. She started crying as well. The next time, when we got to the gate, she asked me why I wasn’t crying even though she started crying. I was prepared for it, that next time, and I was not overcome or taken unawares by my emotions. I did not allow them to reign over me. It’s not always that simple.

So I enjoy watching Dexter in part because I learn a little bit about myself, and my interactions with the world, by listening to his internal dialog. It’s a similar kind of thing I get when I read an INTP profile and say “Yes, that is me too. I never thought of it before like that, but as you enumerate those properties, behaviours, and thought patterns, it is like me.”

I mean, even though Dexter is a serial killer, his detachment is simply a facet of who he is, and is not a driving force for his compulsion to kill. It does allow him to “do what needs to be done”.