Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.
Category Archives: predators
On Koricancha
Koricancha, or the Incan Temple of the Sun in Cusco, Peru, or at least what was left of it after the Spanish built the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo on top of it, is a must stop if you have gone to the trouble of going all the way Cusco and Machu Picchu. Cusco was an original Inca city and a major axis within their empire during both the 14th and 15th centuries. Koricancha, or “Courtyard of Gold” was a major shrine within the Incan empire, and its walls were lined with gold, gold that was eventually looted by the Conquistadores, but not enough gold to save the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Only a few walls of the original temple are still left, but they do bear witness to the exquisite craftsmanship of the Incan masons whose elegant work far outstrips the clumsy common blocking of the Baroque style convent that rises above the ramparts of the original temple. The temple, or its remnants, is an icon of an empire that totally collapsed under the invasion of the Spanish. The scourge that is colonialism–invade, conquer, occupy as much space as possible, strip out everything of value, redefine language, laws, and religion, isolate the locals outside of the circles of power, redefine all cultural values–is only too obvious in the baroque church built on top of Koricancha, essentially putting it under erasure, shoving it out to the margins of history. I understand how offended my modern post-post-modern post-colonial sensibility is, but I don’t condemn the Spanish for doing any of what they did because they were doing to the Inca what the Inca had been doing to other cultures and societies up and down the Andes. Invade and conquer, it’s an old story in human history. The “Leyenda Negra” of the Spanish has long since been chucked on the ash heap of world history, but their colonial legacy as a fallen empire still echoes within Peruvian society, and the Conquistadores (i.e., white Europeans) are, with a few minor exceptions, still running the government in Peru, and the local indigenous people are marginalized into slums in the urban areas or super-marginalized in the rural highlands where modern social amenities–medicine, schools, housing, utilities–are rare, lacking, or non-existent. Indigenous incomes in the high mountain mesas are almost nothing at all. The role of indigenous people working in the numerous Peruvian mines is particularly troubling, boasting a horrific safety record of numerous deaths and injuries. Koricancha is a kind of synecdoche for the entire Spanish enterprise in the “New World.” Of course, the Spanish did the same thing in Iberia when they kicked the Muslims out of Córdoba, building a Gothic cathedral in the middle of the famous mosque. Carlos V actually built a palace in the middle of the Alhambra. The Visigoths built a church on top of a Roman temple in the same place. Invaders have always felt it necessary to exert their power over the conquered by building their own temple on top of the sacred space of those they have conquered. So when you go to Koricancha you will be assaulted by conflicting images of Incan art and architecture within the context of a Baroque Christian church. The conclusions that you draw about this odd juxtaposition of cultures and technologies will be your own. All of the involved parties have long since turned to dust, and the caretakers of the site today are only the genetic shadows of the movers and shakers of 16th century Cuzco. The important thing about Koricancha is to go there, see it, experience it, and be a witness, albeit four hundred years after the fact.
On the Spanish fighting bulls
There is no figure more iconic in Spanish culture than the fighting bull, all 1,400 pounds of him. When students ask me about Spain, they inevitably also ask if we will be going to a bull fight, the ritual slaughter of one of these brutal animals. Even though the bull is highly recognized, highly iconic, he occupies a very small part of real Spanish culture. Yet bullfighting is such an odd and outrageous spectacle that it has become one of the most recognizable parts of Spain’s image. The fighting bull, a rather savage and brutal species of cattle, are native to Spain and have been bred for centuries for this one purpose: to be killed by a “matador de toros” or torero, armed only with a very sharp sword and his cape. Given the ferocious nature of these animals, bullfighting is an extremely dangerous line of work, and many men have died because of it. The bulls are raised in the distant high pastures of the central, southern, and western mesas that cover most of Spain. Curiously, the cows of the same species are relatively tame in spite of their large fierce appearance. The ranchers that raise these animals begin to cull their herds to the “plaza” when the bulls reach about three years of age and weigh in at about 1,200 to 1,500 pounds. I will skip the exact details of the ritual killing of these animals, ritual slaughter because others have written about it before and done a much better job–Hemingway, for example, in Death in the Afternoon. One might make an argument for the art of bullfighting, the danger, the ballet, the pressure, but I’m not super-impressed. Raising a large animal in order to kill it with a sword seems like animal cruelty, I’m just saying. Others would disagree and say that this is tradition, culture, and passion, but I would suggest that not all traditions, not all bits of culture, are worth saving. I don’t think that Spanish culture is better because of bullfighting, and I don’t think Spanish culture would be missing a whole lot if bullfighting went the way of the Dodo bird. A few old cigar-smoking curmudgeons with raspy voices will be free at five o’clock on any given afternoon, ranchers will have to raise regular beef cattle, and a few skinny guys with good sword skills will have to get real jobs. Still others will argue that it is hypocritical to challenge or criticize bullfighting and then go eat a hamburger. Yes, we slaughter our beef cattle, but it takes but a moment, not the average fifteen minutes that a single bull might last.To idealize bullfighting seems disingenuous, if not outright reckless, turning the ritual slaughter of an animal into a spectacle and business. Since I am not really Spanish, (I hear the murmuring), I just don’t understand either the ritual or the tradition. Perhaps I am just a bleeding-heart, tree-hugging, granola eating liberal that has no guts for a little pain and suffering, and I don’t understand the beauty of the pageantry, the glory and art of the successful bullfighter who runs that sword into the bull’s back. Perhaps I just don’t understand the danger, the challenge, the pain, the athleticism of the entire dark scene–blood, sweat, sand, swords, pink socks, and guys with ponytails. The bull is at the center of an extremely bizarre happening that is almost impossible to describe to the uninitiated. The animals are huge, fast, and dangerous, and the guys trying to kill them are definitely risking their lives, but in the end, I might ask, what’s the point? Prove they are more macho than the animal?
On vampires
Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.
On vampires
Seriously? Vampires? The rational empiricist in me says this topic is dead even before it gets started. Some people are totally obsessed with the figure of the vampire, but the vampire only has life because people fear death, the dark, and premature burial. The “life” of a vampire is completely antithetical to the sun-loving, light-loving normal human being who wears a cross and eats garlic bread until it bleeds from their pores. People generally fear that which is completely unlike them. Unless we can see our mirror image, we are afraid of all “others”. The vampire couldn’t be more “other” because they don’t drink…wine. Vampires “live” at night, sleep in their coffin during the day, drink blood, simulate sex by biting their partner (okay, forget that, some people also bite, or so I’ve heard), cannot bear to be out in the daylight, don’t eat food, don’t age, and don’t die. A psychologist might suggest that humans construct the vampire in order to embody all of their own irrational fears about life. The very solitary nature of the vampire’s so-called existence is also antithetical to the gregarious nature of most humans. The thing is, vampires don’t exist, but human fears do. The vampire moves through the dark of night, inhabiting the shadows and corners of the human mind where fear dwells and the unknown makes its nest. With all the pressure of the modern industrial world, and let’s face it, the vampire is a product of modern industrialism, unbridled commerce, and uninhibited capitalism, human beings cannot for a minute pretend to cover all of their responsibilities brought on by work, school, marriage, children, church, and social organizations that pull on their time and energy. The vampire appears on the urban scene when time poverty is everywhere, sleep comes at a premium, and the pressure to succeed at all costs comes from every corner–business, home, society. The vampire is a cold, blood-thirsty primitive animal that arises out of that primordial mass of irrational thought that resides at the bottom of the brain, driven and fed by all of the really negative energy of emotion, fear, and hate. What makes the vampire particularly interesting is that it feeds by sinking its fangs into the throats of its victims and sucking out their life’s blood and recreating itself by killing its victim, engendering a new line of vampires, of the undead. Undead is neither alive nor dead, but something interminable between the two where life neither progresses nor ends. The undead are rejected by both Heaven and Hell, not fitting the criteria for either one. Why humans fear all of this is, of course, highly irrational because no such beast has ever existed, exists now, or will exist at some time in the future, but the strange erotic attraction people feel toward the figure of the vampire is real and creepy. Some goes as far as having actual fang dental work done, so they can more easily simulate the most notable characteristic of the vampire. The necro-erotic, homo-erotic, and hemo-erotic psycho-sexual undertones that run through all vampire literature only add to the global attraction that mortals feel toward this dangerous supernatural creature. It is weirdly ironic that it is usually a man of science a la Van Helsing that occupies itself with eradicating the menace. Vampires are a real physical manifestation of our irrational fears—creating a literal body upon which these fears are inscribed: undead, darkness, fear, violence, self-loathing, hate, ire, violence, death, and blood. The vampire is then, by default, us.
On horror stories
Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.
On horror stories
Human beings are fascinated by horror stories–obsessed, one might say. From our earliest times we have created narratives filled with monsters, ghouls, trolls, ghosts, and creatures whose only purpose seems to be threatening or killing people in out of the way places, dark houses, empty castles, lonely highways, cold mountain passes, haunted spaceships, lonely planets, and creepy little towns. The very space created within the horror narrative is menacing, ghastly, deserted, dusty, filled with cobwebs, forgotten spaces. Both attics and basements are particularly hazardous spaces, but empty jungles, strange swamps, and wind-swept mountains can also be problematic, especially if you are a scientist in an out of the way place such as Antarctica, a space ship on its way to Mars, an old freighter navigating a long way from its home port, at the bottom of the sea. All of these spaces are a long distance from a safe port and speak to the inherent danger of far away places, places that are unknown and unsafe. Strange beings–half man, half reptile–inhabit these places waiting for their next meal to come along. Most of these narratives begin innocently enough with calm seas and smooth sailing, blue skies and light winds, before things start to go wrong. A crisis ensues, a problem arises, a computer goes haywire, a storm blows up, somebody ignores a warning, and the bottom falls out–a ship sinks, a monster gets loose, communications break down, an earthquake occurs, a volcano erupts, a typhoon strikes, and the characters start to die in horrible and miserable ways. In the middle of these narratives, a hero arises who must fight to overcome the obstacles, monsters, and spaces that lie between him/her and safety. We consume these stories as if there were no tomorrow. They seem to reflect some of our darkest fears of abandonment, of the unknown, of the dark, of technology, of power, of the future, of change. We fear that we are poisoning our world, that technology is moving ahead too fast, that space is a dangerous place, that there are unexplainable supernatural things that are not dreamt of in our philosophy. The archetypal ghost stories seems to be a paradigm inherent in any serious discussion of the genre–a strange place, a vengeful ghost, isolation, mayhem. Perhaps horror stories haunt our collective psyche because the raise existential questions of the highest order: who are we, what is our purpose in life, what does all of this (life) mean? So we let the vampires, werewolves, and mummies run through our nightmares, hoping against hope that they will stay there.
On ants
I have an ant convention in my office. Apparently the things are running all over campus and have infected almost all of the older buildings. Since my building is over a hundred years, the ants have taken up residence in the walls. They aren’t fire ants, which is a blessing, but it is a huge distraction to have them running willy-nilly across my desk, papers, and books. Squishing ants is almost a sport, requiring agility, calm nerves, and a blood-thirsty soul. I meet all of the requirements, so I have been spending the past week rubbing out their advanced scouts. I am unsure as to whether they are looking for food or water, but their blind loyalty to their cause is admirable even in the face of certain death. If they were a political party, they would blindly vote for their leader even in the face of disaster and mayhem. I have no idea why they are interested in my note tablet where I write down the details of the latest fire I am trying to put out. They are red and easy pickings for my deadly right thumb. I know that my decision to kill is arbitrary and irrational, but I don’t like sharing with ants. Perhaps I am slightly xenophobic and have an irrational dislike of six-legged creatures (I killed a cockroach the other day, too), but their irrepressive energy is daunting and frightening. Aren’t we lucky that they are so small? These red ants are only a fraction of a gram, but what would happen if they weighed in at half a pound? I have put out baits–poison–to put an end to them, once and for all. I use both violence and poison to kill them, and they still keep coming. Their dedication to surviving long enough to provide for the next generation is admirable. They seem to have adapted to living with humans and their structures to such an extent that they are a kind of robo-ant that likes red bricks and mortar, that feeds off of dirty trash cans, spilled sodas, and half-eaten Pop-Tarts. I know they are attracted to electrical fields, but other than my computer, there are none in my office. What impresses me is their sheer numbers. I’ve killed over a hundred, and they just keep coming. The baits have had no effect on their determination, squishing has had no effect on their numbers, and I have had to sit back and admire their work. I saw them carrying off an apple core, three Oreos, and an entire to-go box from Chuy’s. I don’t leave food in my office, and their are no crumbs on my floor. I get the feeling that the ants don’t even notice me in their quest for survival. Whether I am there or not is irrevelant. I am the ant, and they are giants, and I suspect that long after humans are gone from the face of the Earth, the ants will be working tirelessly to find their next meal.
On ants
I have an ant convention in my office. Apparently the things are running all over campus and have infected almost all of the older buildings. Since my building is over a hundred years, the ants have taken up residence in the walls. They aren’t fire ants, which is a blessing, but it is a huge distraction to have them running willy-nilly across my desk, papers, and books. Squishing ants is almost a sport, requiring agility, calm nerves, and a blood-thirsty soul. I meet all of the requirements, so I have been spending the past week rubbing out their advanced scouts. I am unsure as to whether they are looking for food or water, but their blind loyalty to their cause is admirable even in the face of certain death. If they were a political party, they would blindly vote for their leader even in the face of disaster and mayhem. I have no idea why they are interested in my note tablet where I write down the details of the latest fire I am trying to put out. They are red and easy pickings for my deadly right thumb. I know that my decision to kill is arbitrary and irrational, but I don’t like sharing with ants. Perhaps I am slightly xenophobic and have an irrational dislike of six-legged creatures (I killed a cockroach the other day, too), but their irrepressive energy is daunting and frightening. Aren’t we lucky that they are so small? These red ants are only a fraction of a gram, but what would happen if they weighed in at half a pound? I have put out baits–poison–to put an end to them, once and for all. I use both violence and poison to kill them, and they still keep coming. Their dedication to surviving long enough to provide for the next generation is admirable. They seem to have adapted to living with humans and their structures to such an extent that they are a kind of robo-ant that likes red bricks and mortar, that feeds off of dirty trash cans, spilled sodas, and half-eaten Pop-Tarts. I know they are attracted to electrical fields, but other than my computer, there are none in my office. What impresses me is their sheer numbers. I’ve killed over a hundred, and they just keep coming. The baits have had no effect on their determination, squishing has had no effect on their numbers, and I have had to sit back and admire their work. I saw them carrying off an apple core, three Oreos, and an entire to-go box from Chuy’s. I don’t leave food in my office, and their are no crumbs on my floor. I get the feeling that the ants don’t even notice me in their quest for survival. Whether I am there or not is irrevelant. I am the ant, and they are giants, and I suspect that long after humans are gone from the face of the Earth, the ants will be working tirelessly to find their next meal.
On Jurassic Park
The entire premiss of Jurassic Park, either movie or novel, is that sometimes science develops faster than the ethics that might guide it. In other words, just because we can do a thing (i.e., bring back extinct dinosaurs), does that mean we should? I have no problem with unlimited research. This is the only way boundaries are broken and paradigms are rewritten. The ethical problem is hidden within the economic model that drives the developer and investors to recreate the animals of the Jurassic period: they can make a lot of money. One witnesses a similar problem in “Alien” where crew and cargo are expendable if they can bring back a secret weapon that will be priceless. The supposition made by the scientists is fundamentally incorrect: they think they can control the new creatures that they create because they are smarter than the animals and have better technology, ergo bringing dinosaurs back from extinction will be safe. The developers and scientists are in error because although they partially understand the mechanics of cloning, they do not fully understand the long-range implications of the chaotic nature or the animals which they create. They are applying their twentieth-century principles of zoology to creatures that lived seventy million years ago and that were highly dangerous even then. Since lizards and reptiles are mostly very small in their contemporary experience, they really have no idea how dangerous a reptile the size of man (the Alien) might be. Both the T-Rex and the Velociraptor are hunters and predators of the first order, and in their time, at the top of the food chain and willing to take advantage of their size and speed to kill and eat anything that might come their way such as a person, which did not exist in their Jurassic era. Neither the Alien nor the velociraptor are bounded by ethical considerations in their quest for survival. When things go wrong, such as losing power, and the animals escape their carefully constructed confinement areas, all hell breaks loose. It was never a question of if this might happen, it was always a question when it would happen. Man cannot construct a foolproof enclosure for nature. The chaotic nature of the world guarantees that the animals will escape, that they will reproduce, and that they will be hungry. The scientists in the novel (and the movie) approach the problem of cloning dinosaurs as if it were just another series of of experiments designed to resolve a question they had been given: can you clone dinosaurs from ancient DNA. Regardless of whether this can be answered or solved, no one seems to be bothered by the problem of what do we do with the adult animals if we are successful? This was the same problem posed by Mary Shelly over two hundred years ago in her novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, in which a scientist, experimenting on corpses, reanimates a dead person using bits and pieces of several dead bodies. The scientist is successful, but the result of his experiment is a hideously deformed and monstrous creature that bears a painful to those human creatures from which it (he) was built. The problem is the same: no measures have been taken to deal with the long-term results of the experiments, which are, for their creators, alive. Frankenstein’s monster had to deal with the existential problems of meaning and purpose with which all of us deal, but his existence was both tragic and problematic given his unique parentage and hideous appearance. The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park don’t suffer from this problem because they are not self-aware like the monster was self-aware (was the Alien self-aware?), but for the velociraptors, it is still the Jurassic era, and they are still hungry, and now the snacks are both trickier to catch and warm-blooded. In an era in which genetic manipulation is more prevalent, should we be asking harder questions concerning outcomes and possible unforeseen outcomes before they come looking for us as if we were just another snack?
