Is our need for wholeness one of those things which makes us human? Isn't it the search for meaning rather than the meaning which matters? The androids in Bladerunner became human for us at the moment they began to photograph their world and then organize those pictures into a narrative.

There are a number of ways to feel as if our life stories are coherent and meaningful. We can look for meaning in others. We can look for it in the gods. We can also find meaning through building an illusion of wholeness in ourselves spiritually or physically.The smoother our skin, the more symmetrical our features, the more chiseled our limbs, the closer we are to divinity. Happiness is a whole mind and whole body.

That moment when people understand that wholeness is just an illusion is a traumatic one. And narrative reveals the many ways we learn to deal with that trauma. (Which finally leads me back to where I had wanted to begin. . . dismemberment). Among the healthiest ways (I think) to deal with the trauma of lost wholeness is through splatter gore. Being able to laugh at the human condition (the fact that we will never be whole) allows us to keep our sanity. Imagine how Peter Jackson would shoot the Saving Private Ryan scene of which Margaret writes?