Confronted with ultimate death, the resulting dichotomous fate: either nihilism or futility (Buster Friendly or Wilbur Mercer).
How far, how far removed from real life? Dusty apartment, mediated experience of the world. I read articles about things that happen all over the planet, which I can prove no more than I can prove the existence of black holes. All taken on trust. A gigantic base of knowledge built on the flimsiest veil of real experience. Absurd! And yet I could fly all around the world and experience these things for myself, but what would I choose? In this life we only ever scratch the surface, so much must be taken on faith. (Comforted by memories of magic; thank you psilocybin for this island of sanity)
This apparatus of which The I has been given control- built to adapt, as capable of loving and caring and peace as it is of brutal and unrepentant slaughter. And why? Biological imperatives, nothing better to do, one has a self and he can either express it or die alone (cf. story from Dostoevsky’s devil in Brothers, the soul doomed to walk for millions of miles before he was allowed into heaven; he rebelled, decided he would just lay down forever. But he got up (after millenia), walked, and rejoiced upon his entry into paradise).
And so this social meat machine, the human, can take a keyboard and write a blog and share ideas. Is there any one human who could carry the information of the whole hive? More and more in common with insects, a fact which has either gone unnoticed or has been accepted by the greater majority. But this strange hairless ape is not an ant, it has a nature, and that nature yearns to break through the modern veneer like tufts of grass cracking suburban pavement.
Existed outside for a while, in the world of ideas, which against all logic seem more real than anything else (intuition so much more dependable than logic). No back to the indoors of the soul; there’s work to do and external demands to satisfy.