[For the obligatory image, here’s a napkin.]
Dear diary,
Why would you talk to anyone? You already know what they’re about. They don’t share your interests, and they’re heading toward doom. In the time they have till the end, they will spend their energy in ways that will make the world less and less accommodating to those of your type; and this they shall effect not as one bent on opposing you but rather instinctively, in innocence – they’re unintentionally antagonistic.
So your default stance toward anyone is to minimize your time spent with them. It’s different from holding one as an enemy; for you’re not saying “I want you gone,” but rather “Exist as long as you will, but at a distance from me.”
This next paragraph that I shall write will be a repeat of what I’ve said here before, but I need to get it out of my system again: too often I witness scenes in daily life that invoke it, therefore it’s a recurring thought.
I love animals. Wild or tame. Dogs, cats, or any type of beasts that people tend to keep as pets, as well as the creatures that are usually seen living on their own, self-reliantly, in the great outdoors: squirrels, crows, deer, bears. Our next-door neighbor used to scatter cereal and bread on the lawn in front of his house and then go back indoors and watch from his kitchen window as the local wildlife would approach and eat the offering. And I know many people who keep animals as house-pets. These people all claim to love their pets or the wildlife, but how they treat these creatures from an aim of affection ends up harming them. The best thing that you as a human can do for other animals is avoid them: let them be. The food that our neighbor fed to the local beasts was harmful to them – it was designed for human consumption and not part of what would be, for each type of animal, a healthy diet – and these free meals lured the creatures into a dependence on human charity which resulted in more suffering when, at my neighbor’s moving away, their food source vanished. And household pets are kept on chains and leashes as slaves, and they are given treatment that might appeal to a fellow human but which is torment for a beast. And all from love.
Is God our pet, or more like a wild creature that we feed? Or are we God’s pets? Or are we the wildlife bordering heaven? It’s strange that any of these ideas seem to fit. When people pray as a group, they sometimes say “O God, you are great, you did thus and so for us: we thank you and praise you,” as if they’re rewarding a dog for its good behavior. Is God some big dumb furry being in the sky, breathing hard with mouth agape?
And other times, people pray saying “O God, we need X; therefore, if it is thy will, please give us X; nevertheless, act thou in accordance with thy perfect plan,” as if God is our master who knows better than we ever could about what we need, and who may be half-listening and willing to pour a little more food in our dish, at a time earlier than he had planned, on account of our reminding him.
Whether God is our pet or our owner, it seems right that, if our relationship is to be one of love, then God should let us be; and we should let God be. No interference. Keep our distance from each other.
I hate all talk of purpose in this world. In my optimism, I hope for aimlessness; for, if there’s any purpose at all, it seems that it’s wretched. Generation after generation, over thousands and thousands of years, it has been the same old song: the majority are oppressed, and a few hideous figures botch everything. And every grand system is designed to protect what is ugliest.
The only glimmer of promise that I see here is this: Since ugliness requires protection, especially on such a grand scale, this indicates fragility: so maybe ugliness is inherently prone to fail. Why don’t we let it!?
The best people are gullible. It is better to work together than to struggle alone; and, to cooperate, one must trust. This makes it easy for any deceiver to ruin a bond: one simply takes advantage of the trust. Modernity is replete with advanced technologies, but deception remains the same and uses the same old tool: the lie.
All of human history is a record of the way that lying has morphed. And yet I hate even mentioning this, because the lie is at once the root of the highest beauty.
It’s like strife, warfare: the lie is desirable or undesirable, depending on how it’s employed. Never cease the mental fight; and stop forever the physical fight: eternal peace for reality requires perpetual warfare in the mind. Likewise, let lying endlessly energize the dimension of poetry while enduring extinction in the world of pragmatism.
Why am I speaking so grimly? Who cares about any of this?
What happens is that infants are born every instant, and the world is weird to them. It will take children more than half their life to realize that their whole culture is a sham, one great big waste of energy. At the point when they learn this, in hopes of enlightening others, they can attempt to communicate the incommunicable. Die trying: it always works.
Do we need to nail down this idea about whether God is for or against worldly success? I read in certain religious scriptures that a righteous man shall be blessed by God with a good life. And then I read elsewhere in those same scriptures that God chastens who he loves. And I was born in the cult of Saint Paul, who devised Christianity to lure minds away from the teachings of Jesus; so I was taught that the best way to succeed in this life is to fail: let the Powers that Be vouchsafe you capital punishment.
So what is it? Did God create the world and then hand it off to a flunkey deity, telling him to run the thing? Did God outsource providence?
Why create a world and fill it with creatures that feel positive and negative reactions to it, and then tell those creatures to pursue only the negative? Did God install the positive aspects of the world as a ruse, for punishment, or simply to tease us? On the other hand, if God created the world and populated it with the aim of making its inhabitants happy, then how DOES one explain the massive slaughters that have never stopped since before the World Wars? And the rampant poverty that has always existed – is that a mistake on God’s behalf?
The fact that mass-farmed meat does not taste awful is a proof that there is no benevolent God. If God possessed even the lowest level of compassion, he would make it naturally unpleasant to eat the flesh of any creature that had been abused to death.
Consider that no rotting corpse smells attractive. Did this happen by accident? Why is the phenomenon of sensory disgust not more consistent in its application?
What desensitized us? Why is it not more of a scandal, the fact that we cannot trust pleasure and pain? Are our basic senses part of the lie that fuels the horror show? Who or what is doing the lying? Is God the culprit or another lie?
Why is intoxication the only state worth living for? (I don’t mean exclusively that which is caused by drugs – one can transcend existence’s prison by other means; I myself prefer doodling.) Why is overdosing the best act that a human being can perform and the most blissful way to escape the torments of sainthood?
I like the speech that Aristotle was supposed to have uttered on his deathbed: “I entered this world in disgrace; I lived anxiously; I am leaving disturbed.”
I also like “the words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him,” which is preserved in the Bible:
Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. (Proverbs 31:6-7)
Yet did you notice that everyone likes flowers? Even mobsters like flowers. There’s something about their straightforward, cheerful bounty that melts the toughest disposition. Speaking as a hardened soul myself, I strive earnestly to subdue their influence and resist their charm, but flowers always win me over.
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