Monsters of the World

By Antti Louhenkilpi

Monsters of the World is a 2016 novel by Finnish author Antti Louhenkilpi. It deals with several themes ranging from analysis of the modern society to complex issues such as identity, morality, perception of the world, and the difference between good and bad.

The novel revolves around a few days in the life of Max Turner, the protagonist, who lives in Southampton, England, trying to make sense both of himself and of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9789523304857

Antti Louhenkilpi

Antti Louhenkilpi is a first-time novelist writing in English language instead of his native Finnish because he feels he's more genuine and to-the-point in expressing himself in English. He just feels that English language is more profound and far-reaching than Finnish. He was born in 1986, and has since traveled the world a lot. He's been especially diligent in visiting Cambodia, where he's been ten times for a duration of more than 24 months. He's longest trip to Cambodia was in 2012 when he spent 10 months there. In Cambodia, Antti has taught English in the capital Phnom Penh, researched in a small village in the Kandal province for his Master's Thesis (he graduated from the University of Helsinki in 2014 majoring in Social & Cultural Anthropology), has helped to found a small English language school in Kandal province, and has volunteered for the Gender and Development for Cambodia (GAD/C) non-government organization, to name but a few of his activities in the Kingdom.

Book preview

Table Of Contents

Nimiösivu

Monsters of the World

Monsters of the World           

a novel by

Antti Louhenkilpi

Prelude

Friday

Saturday

Saturday (Still)

Sunday

Monday

Coda

Copyright

Monsters of the World

Monsters of the World

a novel by

Antti Louhenkilpi

To all of my friends with whom I spent my childhood and my youth, with whom I was lucky enough to share great experiences,

which in time have become even greater memories.

No, I'm not afraid of death. I'm afraid of never having existed.

- J. Sibelius -

How wonderful it is that nobody need to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

- A. Frank -

Prelude

The world of today is not the same world I was born into. That, however, has a whole lot to do with me, and in turn a whole lot less with the world itself.

You see, when I was born, my father thought I was the single most important thing in the whole wide world, and so when I was just a child, I was taken well care of. Consequently, as a child I lived in a world that was gentle, benevolent, and compassionate. Or that's how I perceived it.

But my perception of the world was but one of millions, and as I grew, I slowly but steadily got increasingly inclined to see it. And so the world changed before my eyes, as the wind of change tickled my comprehension. I traveled, and I attained an education, and my perception of the world got shaped and reformed, restored to the purity of existence of a guileless mind, like a play dough in the hands of a child.

When I started to be of age, not least in the eyes of my father, I started to realize I was often disagreeing with other people. And there was no one I could disagree with as easily as I could with my father. We had great differences of opinion, of ways in which we construed the world. He was of a different generation, for sure, and that was one thing. But even though generations do differ, I believe individuals do so even more. And I believe our disagreements could be accounted for through the latter. We had different lenses through which we perceived the world. He was my fallible scapegoat in overlooking the richness of the diversity of humanly opinions, and I was his.

I especially remember this one time, the first time I ever embellished my comprehension of the world, when there was a school shooting in Southampton. There was a teenage boy, a school boy, who somehow had managed to get a hold of a gun, to bring the gun to his school, and end up killing nine people including himself. Five pupils of the school were shot to death, and in addition three teachers and the headmaster. And, lastly, the gunner had brought down himself, apparently sufficing in taking away eight lives. Or whatever.

The incident was obviously horrendous, the first such carnage that had happened in my life in the humdrum town of Southampton, where nothing bad ever happens. And the fact that it involved school children, people who both need and convey feelings of safety and security, rendered it even more horrendous. But, on that night when I was watching the news on the telly with my father, and they broke the news of the shooting, my father told me it was the most sinister and malign incident he'd ever heard of.

That is just plain evil. Absolutely evil. How can someone do something like that. I have never heard of such a horrible carnage he'd said.

Yeah... I'd replied rather phlegmatically.

What's that, son, you don't seem to be too moved about the shooting. Innocent people have died...

It's not that bad.

    Excuse me? You seem to be lacking a sense of relativity, boy... Something bad like that happens all the time all over the world. People die every day in horrible accidents and disasters and so on. Last week thousands of people died in China in a horrible landslide. I didn't see you sobbing about that last week. And thousands hardly compare with nine! I believe you're the one who lacks a sense of relativity, I'd said very seriously.

Is that so, boy? You don't seem to be getting the point...

You don't seem to be getting the point, though. Or are you saying that nine British lives are worth more than thousands of Chinese lives. And it's not just the Chinese. People die all over the world, it's just that they perhaps make smaller headlines than a shooting in your backyard. That's the problem of nationalism for you. Thousands die in far-away countries and you're rather untouched by that, but when nine people die in your own country, it's the most horrendous thing you've ever heard of.

And that was it. I can't remember how it went on from there. I just remember being rather confused at that point. Who was right, and who was wrong? I thought I have no option but to follow my own head, follow my own instincts at that moment. And so I did. And so I have ever since.

Us human beings always have to be at one place at a time, doing one thing at a time. But, I have never been able to decide where I want to be or what I want to do. Because there are so many options. How could I justify being there doing that when there'd be thousands of alternatives that I'd have to overlook at the same time. That's the greatest misfortune of men, not being able to be at two places at the same time. To be chained and restricted to only one existence.

Well, once I actually bumped into a man who told me that to be existent, to really feel it, you need to love life. But that didn't really help me as his definition just jumped from one ambiguous word to another. What was love then?

If I'd have to tell you what love is, to describe to you my perception of it, I'd have to say I don't have the faintest idea. That doesn't mean I have never been in love. I might have been in love. It's just that I wouldn't know it, whether I have ever been in love or not, 'cause I don't know the properties of love, the signs of its beginning and ending. I wouldn't be able to recognize when love happens. Indeed, I have, for so long now, thought that it actually doesn't happen at all. I have been under the impression that love doesn't exist.

Nostalgia, on the other hand, is a wholly different concept. Nostalgia brings back memories. And memories are people's most golden possessions, because no one can steal them away from us. As they say, the memories you treasure will always be yours.

Nostalgia differs from love in one paramount sense. It's irreversible, and immutable, even omnipotently truthful. 'Cause it can't be wrong. It's always right. And it cannot be changed because it lies, fatefully if you will, in the past. It fundamentally relates to the past, as it relates to history. You feel nostalgic about things that happened before, but do not happen any more. I have always been a sucker for memories, but I'll tell you more about those later.

   Love, as it happens, fundamentally relates to the future instead. At least as far as I'm concerned, from what I have heard from my friends and people I have discussed with in my life, love creates future plans. When people fall in love, they usually soon after move to live together, get married, and, to put it real simple, organize their whole lives according to that love. Together. And that's it! The future becomes all planned for.

And so the love grows, goes on, develops, increases, and what have you. It's always dynamic, it's always evolving. And the focal point of that love, people living, being, and loving together, is always in the future. Love means that we go on loving, we go on doing the things we do. Tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and on and on it goes.

  Helping a person once, as strangers might do to each other on the streets, picking up a ball that a girl has dropped and giving it back to her, would be a happenstance. Doing it twice would be a coincidence. But doing it every day, on and on and on, is love. If you'd be committed to helping a stranger for the rest of your life, she'd be your wife and you'd be in love with her. And that's why love fundamentally relates to the future. 'Cause it unravels forever. At least, forever, until the love dies. But that's another thing completely. And I'm not too concerned with that now.

I think I have never really understood how, or why, for that matter, this world we're living in is so tough and so cruel place. I mean, people are supposed to be sympathetic and empathetic. At least that's what most of us homo sapiens, the sapient men, are valuing and holding as ideal in our every day lives. We speak of equality, and we advocate fairness. Yet we are, through evolution and through our biology, our brain chemistry, most fundamentally and most naturally selfish animals who prioritize their own well-being over others', their own children over others' children, and so on. What exactly is so empathetic or, more saliently, so equal about that? People are prioritizing themselves over the overall humanity.

There is a paramount difference in friends and strangers, for instance. And one's friends enjoy more rights, more appreciation, and more stature than one's strangers. And one's strangers are the rest of the world's population; quite overwhelmingly, the ultimate majority of human beings in the world. I bet one would always prioritize one's friends over one's strangers, or, again, the vast majority of the people in the world. I used to be rather overwhelmed about it. I used to ponder on the fact that at any given time, there are loads of people looking at the sun, the same sun I was looking at, even though we had no idea of the existence of each other and, further, we were very very far away from each other. The only association between us was the sun, the same hot and burning sun, that rejoiced in the morning and got to sleep in the evening.

  The same sun sustained us, made our lives possible, and perhaps brought some joy into our lives. I know it brought a lot of joy into my life. But outside the perspective of the sun, outside of its realm, we were nothing but strangers to each other. On the surface of the earth, we were as good as dead to each other. 'Cause if you don't know about the life and existence of someone, then he's – or she's – most likely as good as non-existent to you. His or her life touches yours in absolutely no way. And I thought, how can we be equal to each other, how can we help each other and be supportive and empathetic, if we don't even exist?

One way of looking at the juxtaposition of friends and strangers is the way some people talk about dogs. It's true! I've noticed that some people think of dogs as their friends, and, by doing so, performatively give them higher regard than to strangers. I mean stranger people. They hold dogs in higher esteem than they hold people. Well, some people that is.

I once heard a lady talking in the radio, saying that she helps stray dogs in Bulgaria. She ran a dog-care shelter there and, whenever she found people who would adopt a stray dog, she'd arrange to ship the dog to England. And I thought, I can't believe this, there are stray people in the world. The term just hasn't been coined by anyone yet. There are loads of poor countries in the world in which poor people live in the streets, just like stray dogs do. I couldn't believe someone would be helping stray dogs in Bulgaria, but not stray people or homeless people all over the world. How could anyone prioritize dogs over people?

She went on and on about how stray dogs are being molested in Bulgaria and how no one there really cares for them. She said that even though animals are not as wise or as clever as humans are, it shouldn't mean that they don't deserve the same rights we do. And that completely took me over. I thought, how can someone talk about animals having the same rights as us people have, when all of the people of the world do not enjoy the same rights. She was living in a Western welfare state bubble, and she confused well-endowed Westerners with people. When she uttered the word people, she meant all the people she'd ever met, and having never traveled to the poorer corners of the world, she'd only met people who had human rights.

I mean, all this fuss about animal's rights and people being desperate to help or save animals really comes down to whether helping animals and helping other human beings are mutually exclusive or not. I love animals, dogs in particular, but I love human beings even more – if such generalization is allowed. If helping dogs, for instance, means that I don't have enough time, or energy, or resources, or money, or whatever, to help the people in need of help, stray people, for instance, then the two are mutually exclusive and it's wrong, in my opinion, to help dogs. If they're not, then helping dogs, or animals in general, is very important.

The sad thing here is that, I believe the two are very much mutually exclusive. If you're in Bulgaria helping stray dogs, and going on and on about it on the radio, then you're not in Cambodia helping stray people. Time is very limited, as is money, our energy, and our resources. In a word, the human capacity to make a change is scarce. You can only change so much. So it goes.

I remember this one time I saw a dog contest on YouTube, I can't remember which country it took place in, but anyway I was utterly stomped about the reaction of the crowd. You see, there was this track that the dogs had to accomplish, and whoever got to the finish line the fastest was the winner. But there were, of course, dog treats along the track to distract the dogs, and obviously if a dog stopped to eat a treat it wasn't going forward very fast. So the logic seemed to be that if the dogs could restrain their craving for the treats, 'cause it's clear that it's in the dogs nature to be gluttonous, then they're very clever dogs and thus are able to complete the track faster. And thus deserve to win a medal.

But there was this one dog who didn't complete the track at all, and instead just ate all the treats along the way, and the crowd just cracked up in laughter. They obviously thought that the dog wasn't very clever. Well, I was stomped about that because in my opinion, the dog who ate all the treats was actually the most clever of them all. Because that dog was the only one who just did what he wanted to do, just ate the treats 'cause it wanted to, 'cause it's clever for a dog to eat, and didn't complete some stupid track set by a somewhat paternalistic human being for its own amusement. All the other dogs submitted to their masters, but that one dog didn't, and that dog was by far the most clever and the most independent of the bunch.

So I guess I always was a bit different. I always felt that way, anyway. I felt like the world was out there for me to go out and repurpose it. To express my interpretation of it.

But that often entailed comparisons with myself to other people. And it wasn't until I was a lot older that I realized that the less I compared myself to others the better – for my mental health. 'Cause I felt the others were merely strangers, strangers that remained strangers due to such comparisons. And that wasn't good because, to me, strangers were always friends I just hadn't met yet.

"So long as we