[UA] Murikami's Underground

[Greg Stolze]

Since I slammed on "House of Leaves," I'll throw out a recommendation for
"Underground" by Haruki Murikami.  Murikami wrote "South of the Border,
West of the Sun," which is (so far) the best novel -- hell, bext book --
I've read this millennium.  When I saw that he'd doen a book about the
Tokyo gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo, I was hooked.

"Underground" is actually a collection of two books, both of which consist
of a interviews.  The first book is interviews with survivors of the Tokyo
sarin gas attack.  Just ordinary folks who were taking the subway to work
when they got hit by poison gas.

The second book is interviews with members (or ex-members) of the Aum
Shinrikyo cult -- some of whom are still in it, even though its highest
authorities are in jail for comitting mass murder.  "Yeah, well, the gas
attack was WRONG, but that doesn't mean all of Aum is wrong" is a
surprising lietmotif.

What disturbed me most about this book, I think, is the particular way the
two groups seem different.  The victims all seem like conventional thinkers
-- concrete materialists whose strongest drive is to get to work and
maintain their salaries.  (There's one guy who KNEW he'd been hit with
nerve gas and who was blind for a WEEK -- he still went to work every day.
What's up with THAT?)  The cultists, on the other hand, are abstract
thinkers concerned with the larger issues.

Now, guess what camp I'd probably find myself in?  In fact, many gamers
would (I suspect) have more psychological elements in common with Aum than
with the gas victims.  Now, admittedly a lot of this may come from the
differences in the direction of the questions.  Murikami is (presumably)
asking the victims about the concrete elements of their experiences in the
subway, and discussing the abstract motives that led the cultists into Aum.
But still: Food for thought.

I think it's a very UAble book for two reasons.  It gives a good indication
of how people react to a deadly crisis.  Interestingly, there was NO PANIC
-- not because the situation wasn't horrible and deadly (if I've done the
math right, 12 dead and 1,596 seriously injured*) but because it came on
gradually.  There was no "boom."  There was no single second where people
all said "Holy shit!  I've just been hit with nerve gas!"  Rather, the
symptoms -- runny nose and gradually dimming vision -- came on slowly, so
people didn't know what was going on until it was too late.

Secondly, it provides some interesting (and scary) insight into the mindset
of cult members and operations.  The people in Aum aren't cackling
masterminds.  Even the triggermen -- the guys who dropped the packets of
sarin in the subways and stabbed them with sharpened umbrella tips to
release the liquid -- often fell back on the old Nazi defense "It's not my
fault!  The Master told me to do it!"

"There aren't a ton of details about the initiations, but what is there is
plenty creepy, given that it's ALL TRUE.

"Our training started to inclued being hung upside down.  Anyone breaking
commandments had their legs tied up in chans and they were hung upside
down.  It doesn't sound like much if you just describe it, but it's
torture, plain and simple.  The blood drains from your legs and it feels
like they're about to be torn off.  By breaking commandments I mean
anything from breaking the vow of chastity by having relations with a girl,
or being suspected of being a spy, or having comic books in your
possession... The room where I worked at the time was directly below the
Fuji dojo and I could hear these loud screams from above, real shrieks,
people yelling, 'Kill me! Put me out of my misery!" -- the kind of barely
human voice wrung out of someone in excruciating pain.  Pitiful screams, as
if the space there itself was warped and twisted: 'Master!  Master!  Help
me! -- I'll never do it again!'  When I heard them I just shuddered.

"I couldn't work out what possible point it could have.  But what's weird
is that many of the people who were hung upside down like that are still in
Aum.  They'd suffer, be taken to the edge of death, and then be kindly told
'You did well.'  And they'd think, 'I was able to overcome the trials given
to me.  Thank you, O Guru!'"

-G.

* From what I've gathered from the book, a good percentage of that 1500+ is
going to suffer permanent effects like blindness and impaired memory.



_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua