Blogpost  # 6 : Aaaah Monsters !

Sometimes we think that monsters hides in our closets, hides under the beds of an innocent little child and some hides inside our head. Kids may ask you "What is a monster" well for me when I was a kid I've always been told that monsters aren't real but because of my wild imagination I have a tendency to see monstrous visions of shadows that scares me and sometimes I can't even sleep at night because of the dark and because of that darkness my imagination starts to play tricks on me and puts images of human bodies without anatomy or scary faces of monsters that I saw on tv. Now I am not afraid of monsters anymore and I even use my vast monster imagination as references for my artworks when drawing.

We all have different opinions or knowledge of monster but do we really know what is a true monster? As i search its true definition a monster is just a figment of our imagination that is typically huge, scary and ugly and the second definition is a monster is a creature that is usually found in legends that produces fear in its physcial appearance and its action. Examples of monsters are the Minotaur of the Labyrnth , The Leviathan , The Krakken, Cyclops (not the X-men character) and many other creatures from the myth.

I have been fascinated by monsters all these years but there are still questions that bothers me "Why are there monsters?" and  "Why did I imagine such a thing", well what i saw in this this article entitle "Why We Invented  Monsters" by Paul A. Trout from the site Salon. I somehow managed to get the idea on why our mind creates such monstrosities without even seeing something like them

I have been quite interested in this article that Paul Trout worked on because I've learned a lot of things. First I learned here in this article that even if monsters have different traits, characteristics , features and abilities they all have one thing in common and that is "They all eat or kill humans". Next is I also learned that monsters are an exaggerated combination of human, anymals and objects that is mixed up together in the mind and they produce a horrifying image that result in a monster. After that I've learned that Monsters too can be a symbol of an emotion for example a fat monster is often times associated with greed and a nude body is associated with lust so thats how emotions create new monsters and syncing it with our minds. Lastly I learned that we are not actually born killers we just mimic the actions of the predators we've seen through past experiences like for weapons we use sharp objects as sharp as talon,claws,teeth of the predators who tried to opppose us and that results into the weapons machete,scythes,knives or stones and this is called mimesis.

After reading that interesting article Paul Trout wrote something in the article that I haven't forget easily and that quote is "One answer is to say that the “monster” was always in us, as part of our primate inheritance — the “killer ape” view. Faced with so many environmental threats, early humans had to band together in collective group defense rather than kill and eat each other, a task already performed so well by predators. No doubt within the group there was jostling for status and goods, but intra-group and inter-group homicide was probably very rare, or we would not be here to speculate about it. It took a very long time for humans to be transformed — indeed to transform themselves — into the alpha predator of the planet. ".

And in that quote he explained a new type of monster, a monster in our heads and I think he is stating the fact that we have our own monsters waiting to go out and unleash every bit of power we have. He also stated that we havent unleashed our true monsters within ourselves because we are helping each other to fight a better foe and not each other and this trait helped us to survive centuries and now we don't have better foes to fight, mankind started killing each other to fight for the top and if this helped us to survive I think this will also be the result of extinction and this is what made us MONSTERS.

 After that Im at it again browsing for more articles to write in the blog then I read this article on the site and I remembered as a kid I was afraid of monsters thats why I searched for an article that states why do kids fear monsters and how to get rid of that fear and I saw that article on Hubpages.com entitled Bed Time: When Young Children are Afraid of Monsters by TPSicotte.

As TPSicotte said in this article children has a wide imagination thats why they are afraid sometimes because they are seeing things that are somewhat unusual for the others to see. As kids they still cannot really distinguish reality and fantasy and they tend to mix those things up so thats w



hy they are really afraid of monsters because they think they were real. Next is that as grownups or teens we could easily help children to not be afraid of monsters by telling them that monsters aren't real or not scaring them all the time but eventually they will get over it when they grow up. Lastly he also said that we could use our everyday items to get rid of monster problems for kids like opening the nightlight on for them to not feel alone due to the darkness , turning on the radio playing soft music to make them feel comfortable and sometimes sleeping besides them to make them feel secure and all that.

The author also quoted that "It is typical for young children to have a good imagination and to believe in magical creatures and monsters. Between the ages of three and six many kids have a difficult time separating the fantasy world from the real world."

Because kids are really imaginative and their thoughts in their minds are not yet in sync with the real world so thats why some of them always imagine monsters because they are always scared with things they dont know. They will grow out of it eventually but to avoid trauma in children we should avoid scaring them and start caring children or on my part we should show them the positive side of monsters for them to truly accept and never be scared of monsters ever again.

There are monsters everywhere you look they arent just hiding under your bed or peeping inside your closet sometimes they all around you, wherever you look there are monsters but the thing is inside yourself is also a monster just waiting for the one trigger to be free but its alright dont be afraid we are going to meet someone whose monsters are compatible with ours. "We all go a little mad sometimes".