I should go. Everyone should go. Because we are not afraid of ourselves. We should refuse to sing. We should also be afraid of others, that's a given, but I don't render that specific fear right now. Because I really don't know what's stopping us from doing all sorts of colossal metabreaker acts. Like, 100 million people simultaneously grabbing a knife and simply shoving it through the heart of someone nearby. I don't want to do it, I don't even know why I would do it, but I also don't know why not. Punishment, retaliation, humiliation, consciousness, ethics... These mean very little when it comes to our unstoppable trains of thought, and a mind has the power to ignore its own antics. It's not all destroying things, obviously. I also don't know why my brain doesn't push itself into a state of bliss, shut every other thing out, and live inside this newfound catatonic but euphoric state until it perishes. Because it can. Instead, my brain gives itself anxiety, depression and weird impulses, but it definitely can. Our minds torture themselves to see us, as a whole, burn. That, right there, is frightening. We might believe that we have to be a part of this world, we have to have friends, a functioning family, a job... but our mind as a concept, don't give a shit about these stuff. That soft machine we call a head can literally make everything and anything %1000 more wonderful, since it's all about perception, but it just doesn't.
If you think, "Well, what separates 'us' from a brain?" a brain makes your heart beat, forces your lungs to keep doing what they do when you are unconscious or asleep, regulates your internal temperature, keeps your reflexes and instincts on, stores every partial or complete visual/sound/feeling/smell you experience, throws you into a giant stream of chaos that might turn up pretty nice, or have you wake up in tears/sweat when inside a dream state, also creates the dream state, makes you fall in love or hate people, and you don't do shit. Other than answering trivial questions like "What the hell am I gonna eat tonight?" or "Do I keep smoking, drinking, eating shitty but tasty food, not exercising and indirectly-effectively killing myself, or give up on those and have a potentially long but meaningless life?" That's what you do. And if you think you are free when it comes to answering those, just don't. When you spend shitload of money on pointless stuff and come to regret it, or spill that "I love you" too soon or too late, that's you. When you exercise caution on doing pointless stuff, or don't confess your love to anyone so that your life stays not completely fucked up, that's the brain.
Very, very suspicious though. There are people funding all sorts of shit, but nothing at all when it comes to this. Someone thought attempting to create a two headed dog (Russia, man...) was a good idea. Someone went out there to investigate if fruit bats gave BJs to each other. However, going scientifically all in about an organic and pretty experimentable subject, which can potentially have all the answers to everything, or eliminate the need for answers altogether, can be left for another day. Yeah. We should definitely ignore it and go check if sunlight can be harvested in such a specific way that our eardrums turn pink. Well excuse me, but I wish to learn the limits -if there is any- of this thing inside my skull. I also wish to learn if I would wake up one day, and not feel like a colossal piece of shit. I bet someone would finance the latter if those two were the only options. Not sure if it's about "fearing what might come after". Those morons cloned a living thing and crossed a giant line, pretty sure they would be up for working on some unstable goo. Not to go full Illuminati, never go full Illuminati, but there is definitely something blocking the path.
Maybe it's our own brains telling us not to mess with them. Brains having full sentience, but making us believe they are a part of us, complying, bowing to every whim? Wouldn't that mean we are metaphorically asleep, or at least in a never-ending state of being fooled, and it is we who comply? Like, we know that Negasonic Teenage Warhead is not literally a warhead, producers and writers know Negasonic Teenage Warhead is not literally a warhead, but we accept it being so, because it looked cool in the movie. Frankly though, the original NTW died like ten times during two pages of comics, so that wasn't really a step back.
There is also this energy, produced by our consciousness/subconsciousness. Pulsating, searching. Which is practically useless, since it's just there, not doing anything. I always thought, all the secrets we keep, they resonate. Like our mortality. We all know we'll die one day. Car crash, brain aneurism, cyanide, old age, a prank, doesn't matter how. But there is this state of mind shared by the entire human population of our world. Carpe Diem, live the day, #yolo, gather ye rosebuds while ye may... Well I'm terribly sorry to say, although ye entirely have the right to gather rosebuds while ye may, that doesn't justify our stratospheric act of ignorance. We die, our friends die, our parents die, teachers, lovers, puppies, turtles, even the postman dies. And while I can understand celebrating events like marriages, birthdays, anniversaries; since celebration and having nice things are okay, I simply can't wrap my head around funerals. Death means something living is completely, totally, ultimately gone forever. So, when someone you love dies, you may very well mourn, the carcass is there, but the essence, the mind, everything makes a human being is over. The body is simply a vessel, technically nothing more than an organic piece of clothing, except we can't leave it behind or put it inside a closet without ourselves in it.
Let's say you lost an arm. Horrible thing, -2/10 wouldn't recommend, but let's say something chopped it off. Did you lose a part of yourself, or did you lose a piece of flesh that enabled a part of yourself come alive, and would evolving beyond it scare us? We are technologically advanced enough to do stuff with our brains only. Not that much stuff, but some basics. Remember that House M.D. episode, young man losing control of his body, causing him to crash his bicycle, declared brain dead, eventually communicating with only his brain, connected to a screen, arrow up and down? Yeah, that exists. Not sure if that "making others' dreams reflect on a computer screen, because it might hold the key to her illness" thing was real, but brain-AI/CI is happening. On a very experimental level, I have to admit. However, we will get there. To the point of connecting our brains with interfaces so well that we will be able to do everything we can do, instead with an electronic model, a metal-silicon husk, just by thinking about it. I wonder if that will be the point where we begin looking for ways to immortalize a brain. Because if we can keep a brain active, responsive and conscious without the need of an organic body, in perpetuum, it can potentially be implemented to a carcass of our own make. Though I also wonder if we would lose every single aspect of our humanity, except hate and greed, by doing so.
Maybe that's why we create fantasy worlds. To keep our humanity barely alive. From books to movies, illustrations to games, music to architecture, we are perfectly surrounded with another world, created by thousands of shards, which lulls us to sleep. Or, to our awakening. All these worlds, they might make us close eyes to one reality, but they also give us glimpses, flashes of another. Does that really mean we are reaching for painkillers, or is it a yearning to be awakened from a chaotic dream? Valinor, Amalur, Cthol Murgos, Morrowind, Gallifrey, Narnia, Asgard, Gotham, Neverland, Panem, Hyrule, Runeterra, Hogwarts, Rivia, Pandora, Estheria, Ravnica, Westeros...
What do they have in common? Look at them, try to remember the ones you know, with every little detail, every flicker of emotion you felt witnessing them. Now look at our world. Valinor has everything beautiful, our world has lawyers, Amalur has Fateweavers, our world has pop culture, Cthol Murgos has weird sacrificing rituals, our world has moronic superstitions, Morrowind has levitation magic (banned actually), our world has creepy hipsters, Gallifrey, well, you know what Gallifrey has. See, our world is utter shit compared to almost any other world, even imaginary ones. Especially imaginary ones. Take away everything from them, epic wars, magic, prophecies, heroes, more magic, revenge, justice. Strip fantasy from its wings, and leave just one thing, leave love, and they will still stand taller than ours. As our understanding of love is corrupted to its core.
Ginny and Harry, Sparhawk and Ehlana, Aragorn and Arwen, The Doctor and Rose, Geralt and Yennefer, all icons of love. And who ever wished for something like that? Sure, you all looked at a screen, or a page, sighed with tears in your eyes. How nice of you. Then plucked your phone off and went straight to any social media shitsite to tell people about your glorious feelings #sadface. We so zealously yearn for depth, devotion, trust and complexity that, we don't even try to understand what they are. Like a cat chasing a bird with a broken wing. (Yeah, a shallow metaphor, deal with it.) We reach for it to destroy, to tear it into tiny little disgusting pieces until there are only feathers to tell what it once was. That's why we need the goddamn Middle-Earth, to remind us birds actually have the ability to fly, that's what they do, when they are not dismembered and consumed. Something similar applies to death. When it comes to Westeros, where brutal and usually pointless murders happen a little too much, we glorify the dead. Because characters forged from a mind have values, virtues, potential, something to be remembered by. When it comes to our world, we glorify death, not the departed. Not because we don't care for them, because as I mentioned before, mortality is not a concept we came to terms with. There are three choices when faced with something greater: Run away, fight, or worship. We cannot possibly run away from death, since it doesn't have corporeal form, and although we can act like fighting it, the winner is predetermined. So we worship, glorify, objectify.
That stupid, stupid idea. "Maybe our bodies perish, but things we do live forever?" Unadultered crap. So you read about Joan of Arc, looked thoughtfully at works of Picasso, listened to Wagner and what they did years ago touched your fragile, sensual soul. Is that it? Something happened/existed a while ago, you learned about it, and this alone makes it alive, immortal? I really don't believe so. I mean, yes, as long as you are completely focused on a past event, a memory, they can be metaphorically considered resurrected. Our attention span is not very long though, and the moment you turn your head, it becomes even more inanimate than before. Because that experience brings back something else, not the maker. You are not bringing Monet back to life, you are enjoying art, as unbelievable as it sounds. Nothing lives forever, and I doubt if anything wants to live forever. Just because death is hard to accept, doesn't mean living until our sun explodes would be wonderful.
Can you even imagine living for a couple hundred years, let alone eternally? We, as species, are bored to death already, even with a lifespan of just a few decades. Functionality, the very thing which made our kind survive and evolve, is shattered into billions of pieces. A phone, enables you to communicate with others. Smartphones are able to bring you very important stuff though, like Twitter, like Flappy Bird. So you buy a phone. Flappy Bird is there, you can also communicate with others. Nice. Someone produces another phone. He tells you it's way better. You buy it. Flappy Bird is still there, you can also still communicate with others. Your mind can't even figure how awesome your cool new phone is. All for the sake of not falling behind other idiots. Natural selection is dead. Wait, no. Reversed. Morons get fantastic ignorant lives, people who can think are left to rot while masses chew and spit them out. There is this new thing called "democracy" and "freedom", and apparently it means you can do whatever the hell you want, as long as you get flocks of imbeciles to believe in it. And flocks of imbeciles can do whatever the hell they want, as long as they support a very particular imbecile. What a time to be alive.
I mentioned love before. So, where does it fit in... this? Where does it take part, considering we apparently believe it still carries power? Here's where love fits in: A grave. Did you ever believe what we have today is actually love? What we have is manipulation, an unsatiable lust for devouring another, collapsing on them, destroying them. When our corrupted bellies become filled with attention, glorification, conflict and clashes, we move on to another. And we even refer to the break between two prey, as grief. Some people don't even have that, and outright chase rebound interactions.
Doesn't matter what we think, really. That two sides of the coin, two different pieces of the puzzle thing, for example. The tale of two very different beings completing each other, living in harmony. There is a reason why it's only a tale, because we are not made of cupcakes and crayons. When it comes to us, you don't get blue when you mix yellow and green together, you get fucking carnage. We don't want different, we actually hate change and instinctively chase what we already are inside. Monkeys don't go for elephants. If you ever said "Why do I always fall in love with idiots/sluts/vipers?" or "Why do boring/stupid/weak people always find their way to me?" it's because you are also an idiot/slut/viper, or boring/stupid/weak. Hard to do this math for me though. I fell in love with a psycho first, dated a slut a year after, a treacherous snake after that, had a relationship with the dullest girl ever, someone with daddy issues after that, eventually to find myself near someone with very serious psychological problems. So either I am a retarded whore, who also happens to be a cunning betrayer, and a very boring person with daddy issues, all at the same time. Or I have chaotic tendencies and this explains the rest.
So few things explain the rest. Everyone has wishes, desires. Mine is, this. I want something to explain the rest. One theory to explain why we murder, trick, lie, rage, lust and betray. To explain after all these years, why do I still have trouble sleeping. To explain innocence.
Innocence. Such an intriguing concept. A rabbit inside the wolf's den. Not to be confused with gullibility, innocence is why we still didn't fuck up permanently. Why we still have a faint chance at fixing things. With pretty much everything in this world seeking tenderness with a dagger, it fascinates me to see people with untainted kindness in their hearts. Maybe it's because I lost mine, we all seek what we don't have. Maybe innocence is our self produced mental anesthetic. Maybe it's because some can't live with the cold, unforgiving truth. Truth is overrated anyway. What would a lone man with nothing to know, carry on his shoulders? What would an unburdened shoulder carry, besides salt? Would oceans have more salt, if lacrima found a way to it? Where would storms go, if oceans turned a deaf ear?
I should go. Everyone should go. We should all deform to form something else. We should all, not be.
I choose not to be.
May God have mercy upon the storm, for it corrodes without malice.