RE: (TFT) Marginalia

[David Michael Grouchy II <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

> From: maou_tsaou1@netzero.net> > An aggressive animal with humanoid
intelligence, or exceeding it, is a monster.

Jay,
   I find a diferent take.  While the sentence above may be true enough it may
hide two seperate ideas that have been more useful to me seperate.  First off,
allow me to submit my counter thesis.

   A monster is an intelligent creature that can't hold a job.

   Now as to your sentence, an aggressive animal is prefaced by you as
operating on instinct.  This seems to be in direct contradiction with the
phraze "humanoid intelligence".  While this works with your follow up specific
examples like serial killers and real life canibals who may, in fact, be
driven by instinct I don't think that is enough to cover the entire field of
what can be, or is usually, considered a monster.  Simply stated in the old
Greek logical reversal.  While all aggressive animals with humanoid
intelligence can be considered a monster, not all monsters are aggressive
animals with humanoid intelligence.

   The descriptions of monsters, their stories, and some of the legends from
mythology seem to portray monsters as something that either can't, or has
great difficulty assimilating culturally.  Man, or civilized man as the
ancients might define it, is a social animal.  A creature of the herd.  A
monster is an antithesis to that.  Something that either tests the herd,
defies it, or subjugates it.  It is in this last case that a hyperly
aggressive instinct drivin creature seems unlikely to succeed.

David Michael Grouchy II

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