How solid is this system? Is the system really all there is, like she says? Throughout the Filth I was unsure about whether the Hand was good or bad. As a reader I obviously identified with Feely/Slade, so when he realized he used to be one of the rebels and then started questioning the Hand, so did I. But now it's all unclear. Is the Hand a necessity that fairly regulates good and bad, clean and dirty? Or was Feely and his gang onto something by trying to undermine the Hand? What would have happened if they succeeded?
I feel like this connects to real life in a lot of ways. There are a lot of "systems" that are "necessary" and that we are oftentimes forced to adhere to, even if that means changing ourselves. There are also rebel groups that oppose these systems. So I suppose the question is, is the system just the way it is and we just have to make the best of it, or should we be shaking things up more and breaking free of the system? The plot line about the Libertania makes me think that even if we did upset the system, a new system would just end up forming out of the dust and we'd be right back where we started. So maybe Miami had a point about the inevitability of the system. We're all just doing our part in the system and when we're done someone else exactly like us will just take our place, so it's pointless to resist.
This is no way to look at life though. Most of us don't really want our life to add up to being a blind sheep just working as a part in the machine. But making everyone into "a world of Buddhas" or "self-made super heroes set loose on the world's problems" like Max Thunderstone's ideas doesn't seem like the best way to go about changing the system. Maybe we need to start with smaller things to break down the system a bit. We were talking in class about how gender-specific language is and how trapped we are in a 2 gender system because of this. I hadn't really thought in detail about this until then. From a very young age we are taught to think in terms of 2 genders, and that the male gender is the normative (due to all the words that label generalized groups as male: mankind, etc). This is one of the many systems we are stuck in. Breaking down this system by refraining from using so many pronouns, or coming up with gender-neutral terms might be a start.
Another interesting part from the quote from the Filth is that "attacking the Hand is like fighting your own immune system." If the Hand is like our 'immune system', it probably shouldn't be drugging it's 'body parts' with para personalities and misleading and using those body parts. But when I think about it... This is kind of what an immune system does. It labels the anti-person, or the virus or bacteria or whatever that doesn't belong in the body and then it attacks those bad cells and converts them into just another normal part of the body. Which is kind of like how the Hand recycles people. The Hand is sort of like a massive immune system for all of humanity, but when we think of each cell as a person, a character in this book, we see both sides of things and we see the sacrifices that sometimes have to be made. When our body is fighting off a sickness, we ourselves have to suffer and feel sick in order for our body to fight it off and win. Feely was a sacrifice in order for the Hand to do it's job and keep it's body (humanity) healthy and that's just the way it is from their perspective.
So is the system good or bad? I suppose it's all about which side you look at it from.
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