Coincidance - Principia Discordia

COINCIDANCE 113
does, indeed, belong to the carnivores.
Shortly after Sebastian's death, two loathsome relatives turn up to
attempt to scavenge as much of his clothing and other possessions as they
can get their hands on. (This type of emotional cannibalism also appears in
Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)
Sebastian's homosexuality, we eventually learn, had resulted from his
mother's attempts to enforce the neurotic condition she calls "chastity" upon
him. (This type of cannibalism by parents upon children is, of course, the
chief feature of organized religion, and the principle theme of most of
Williams' works.)
Cannibalism is even a characteristic of societies, as well as individuals—
the deplorable conditions of the hospital where Dr. Sugar treats Cathy are
depicted unblinkingly by Williams; and anybody at all aware of the
treatment of the psychotic in this great, rich nation knows that the best that
most states do for these unfortunates is precisely as inadequate and horrible
as this movie indicates. Some state hospitals are even worse than Lion's View.
The only literary work to confront these issues as boldly as Suddenly, Last
Summer is Melville's Moby Dick. The classic description of a sea-battle—"men
cannibally carving each other's live meat on deck" while the sharks "carve
the dead meat" of the bodies thrown overboard—would be just the same if
you turned it upside down and put the men in the water and the sharks on
the deck, "a shockingly sharkish business enough for all parties." Ishmael,
reflecting on this, considers "the propriety of devil-worship," just as
Williams' Sebastian does.
While the sharks eat a whale in the water, Stubb eats steak off the same
whale in his cabin. "Go to the meat-market," Melville tells the reader:
"Cannibal! Who isn't a cannibal?"
The all-time classic in this chain of thought also occurs in Moby Dick, in the
great scene where the "grandfather whale" is harpooned and killed. Melville
writes:
From the points where the whale's eyes had once been, now protruded
blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see. But pity there was none. For all his old
age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be
murdered ... to light the gay bridals of men, and also to illuminate the
solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
We begin to realize that, once these issues are raised, it doesn't really
matter whether a man "believes in God" or not. "God," after all, is just a
short-nand symbol for our attitude toward the nature of the universe.
Most soi-disant "freethinkers" and "atheists" can't accept the notion that
Ultimate Reality is really this sharkish, anymore than religionists can accept it.