Dec 2016
The people who, on their birthdays, are eclipsed by the humor and wit of their guests and end up feeling even more alienated than before. And when flies descend on the party, and one lands on you, does it think you smell like **** - or that you are dying?
There's endless suffering. Yet, most of it exists outside us. Think of the gurgling bellies of tens of millions of ant colonies on the brink of starvation. Those tiny, long-suffering vermin. Plants, after dealing with parasites, drilling insects, grawing rodents that sever their finger-y leaves and chew them to smithereens - all without painkillers - decided to do away with their nervous system long ago because the pain was too great. The confined chickens to lay the eggs we eat. Those that lay the eggs to hatch into the chickens we eat, starved and pecking incessantly. The recently bloodied in war, and the decades of PTSD that follow the lucky. This is but a dip in the suffering around us, and yet we don't r e a l l y feel it. I don't feel it at all, in fact. Empathy is only a sad, intellectual game. I feel a tearful sort of pride that I can take on this vast amount of suffering and hold it in my head. How wretched, pretending to feel when permeable with thoughts and I bring pain upon me. Truly, my best friend and mother could be murdered in front of me and physically it would be the same as if she were making a sandwich, looking in the freezer for more ice cream. Humans are able to open up their minds and feel - intellectually. I languish my time, arguing whether black or gray or purple is the sadder color. Or why second degree burns are maddening while third and fourth are painless.
Imagine a jellyfish entity that could move through the world and feel everything it enveloped - it would get into the minds and nervous systems and be those things, and feel the wholeness of their sorrow. This metaphysical jellyfish would shift and compare one area of dismal bleakness with another. Consciousness is but an illusion, a fake pretense that there are independent minds in locked off vaults, walled off from others. In reality everything is happening right now. All the suffering is happening right now. All the joy, too, but who remembers joy? I'm not joyful to have a working leg until I break my leg. I don't value my ribs until I crack them, lose my ability to breathe, and shallowly moan for a month.
There's endless suffering. Yet, most of it exists outside us. Think of the gurgling bellies of tens of millions of ant colonies on the brink of starvation. Those tiny, long-suffering vermin. Plants, after dealing with parasites, drilling insects, grawing rodents that sever their finger-y leaves and chew them to smithereens - all without painkillers - decided to do away with their nervous system long ago because the pain was too great. The confined chickens to lay the eggs we eat. Those that lay the eggs to hatch into the chickens we eat, starved and pecking incessantly. The recently bloodied in war, and the decades of PTSD that follow the lucky. This is but a dip in the suffering around us, and yet we don't r e a l l y feel it. I don't feel it at all, in fact. Empathy is only a sad, intellectual game. I feel a tearful sort of pride that I can take on this vast amount of suffering and hold it in my head. How wretched, pretending to feel when permeable with thoughts and I bring pain upon me. Truly, my best friend and mother could be murdered in front of me and physically it would be the same as if she were making a sandwich, looking in the freezer for more ice cream. Humans are able to open up their minds and feel - intellectually. I languish my time, arguing whether black or gray or purple is the sadder color. Or why second degree burns are maddening while third and fourth are painless.
Imagine a jellyfish entity that could move through the world and feel everything it enveloped - it would get into the minds and nervous systems and be those things, and feel the wholeness of their sorrow. This metaphysical jellyfish would shift and compare one area of dismal bleakness with another. Consciousness is but an illusion, a fake pretense that there are independent minds in locked off vaults, walled off from others. In reality everything is happening right now. All the suffering is happening right now. All the joy, too, but who remembers joy? I'm not joyful to have a working leg until I break my leg. I don't value my ribs until I crack them, lose my ability to breathe, and shallowly moan for a month.
