O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
"I love thee true."

She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

 

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." 

- Edgar Allan Poe

 

"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

 No purpose here, no grand design, Just entropy and slow decline, As echoes fade in silent halls, And emptiness engulfs it all.

Antinatalism: A Thoughtful Reevaluation of Parenthood

 In a world where parenthood is often glorified as life's greatest achievement, a growing chorus of voices challenges this conventional wisdom. Antinatalism, a philosophy gaining traction in contemporary discourse, urges us to pause and reconsider the ethical implications of bringing new life into the world. Led by prominent thinkers like David Benatar, antinatalists argue persuasively that the act of procreation carries with it a profound moral responsibility—one that deserves our utmost scrutiny.

David Benatar, in his seminal work "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence," presents a compelling thesis: life, with its inevitable hardships and sufferings, may not always be worth the gamble. Benatar posits that the presence of pain outweighs the absence of pleasure, leading us to question whether it is morally justifiable to subject new individuals to a world fraught with uncertainty and adversity. This foundational argument forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about the nature of existence and the responsibilities we bear as potential parents.

Moreover, the non-identity problem, as elucidated by thinkers like Rivka Weinberg and Laura Purdy, adds another layer of complexity to the ethical quandary of procreation. This philosophical puzzle challenges our assumptions about harm and responsibility, highlighting the inherent risk of subjecting potential future beings to lives marked by suffering. By reframing the debate in terms of the interests of those yet to exist, antinatalists compel us to consider the far-reaching consequences of our reproductive choices.

Beyond the individual level, antinatalism raises profound ecological and societal concerns. As our planet grapples with overpopulation, resource depletion, and environmental degradation, the ethics of bringing new life into an already strained world come sharply into focus. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement offers a radical yet thought-provoking proposition: by voluntarily choosing not to reproduce, we can mitigate the ecological footprint of humanity and alleviate the burdens placed on future generations.

While the idea of abstaining from procreation may initially seem radical or extreme, a closer examination reveals its profound ethical implications. Antinatalism challenges us to reassess our priorities, question societal norms, and act with compassion and foresight. It urges us to consider the long-term well-being of individuals, communities, and the planet as a whole.

In conclusion, antinatalism presents a persuasive argument for reevaluating our attitudes towards parenthood and reproductive decision-making. By engaging with the insights of thinkers like David Benatar, Rivka Weinberg, and Laura Purdy, we are compelled to confront the ethical complexities inherent in bringing new life into the world. As we navigate an increasingly uncertain future, embracing a more nuanced understanding of parenthood may be the key to building a more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate world for generations to come.

Challenging Prosperity Theology: A Biblical Argument for Christian Anarchism

In today's world, the allure of prosperity theology often permeates religious discourse, promising material wealth and success as signs of divine favor. Yet, amidst the clamor of prosperity preachers and the pursuit of worldly riches, there exists a counternarrative rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ—a narrative of Christian anarchism that challenges the status quo and advocates for a radical reimagining of society.

Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher, and Leo Tolstoy, a Russian writer and thinker, offer compelling insights into this alternative vision of Christianity. Drawing from biblical principles and their own reflections, they present a profound critique of prosperity theology and its emphasis on material wealth over spiritual values.

Ellul, in his seminal work "The Subversion of Christianity," delves into the tension between the teachings of Jesus and the structures of power within society. He argues that true Christianity challenges worldly authority and calls for radical obedience to God alone. This resonates with the biblical passage in Matthew 6:24, where Jesus declares, "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Ellul emphasizes the need to prioritize spiritual values and communal solidarity over the pursuit of wealth and success—an ethos diametrically opposed to the materialistic underpinnings of prosperity theology.

Tolstoy, deeply influenced by his Christian faith, echoes this sentiment in his writings. He rejects the alliance between the church and the state, arguing that it compromises the integrity of Christian ethics. Tolstoy's interpretation of Christianity emphasizes the principles of love, compassion, and nonresistance to evil—a stark departure from the self-serving doctrines espoused by proponents of prosperity theology. He challenges believers to embody the spirit of humility and service exemplified by Jesus, urging them to seek the Kingdom of God above all else.

In embracing Christian anarchism, both Ellul and Tolstoy advocate for a way of life characterized by voluntary poverty, nonviolent resistance to injustice, and a commitment to communal living and mutual aid. Their vision aligns with the biblical injunction in 1 Timothy 6:10, which warns, "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." Instead of chasing after fleeting riches, they call believers to embrace the values of simplicity, solidarity, and sacrificial love—a radical departure from the values propagated by prosperity theology.

In conclusion, the teachings of Jesus Christ offer a powerful critique of prosperity theology and a compelling vision for Christian anarchism. Through the insights of thinkers like Jacques Ellul and Leo Tolstoy, we are reminded of the transformative potential of a faith grounded in humility, compassion, and social justice. As we navigate the complexities of modernity, may we heed the call to prioritize spiritual values over material wealth and to pursue a vision of society that reflects the radical love and justice of the Gospel.

The Quicksand Mirage: How Pop Culture Distracts Us from Wealth Inequality and Class Warfare

 “Imagine if you will, another dimension a place not of sight or sound but of mind, there’s the signpost up ahead your next stop­­—“

A young woman maybe 20 she’s alone reclining in bed, the white-blue glow of her cell phone illuminates her has to guide her through the darkness of her life, she’s alone, but the phones light tells her she is not, the light is a lie, it’s the light at the end of a black tunnel that turns out to be an oncoming train.”

You’re scrolling through Instagram, jealously swiping away, everybody seems so happy, their lives so much better than your own. Now you’ve clicked a link, you know its late and your eyes are tired but you’re curious, you just want to know where it goes, nothing. it’s getting light out now  morning and despite the dawns glow pushing on the drapes, you have so many replies to answer. Still the feed is there more tantalizing than the coffee or eggs of dawn. it promises new and wonderful information and you don’t have to look, it’s not like you really care but just for fun, I mean really, it’s no worse than scanning the tabloids at the supermarket checkout lane, sure you’ll glance but not pick it up, you’re too good for that, seriously, who buys those things? But now no one will know it’s just you and the screen in your hands and its ok , so you ingest some of the latest celebrity gossip, with your breakfast, what’s the harm really, it’s just a few minutes of your time to check out the clickbait, there’s  no harm. Maybe you don’t go in for all that TMZ style mumbojumbo, you’re too smart for that BuzzFedd nonsense, no you’d rather get the real news, what’s that? The news the feed forces on you, it knows what you like it gives it to you, outrage, disgust anger intermingled with the cute. Now It’s time for work “did you see” “Have you watched” everyone wants to talk about that thing they saw last night; the show, the game, the big whatever, anything not to do with work, because no one wants to say it but everyone is there just for the paycheck and no one cares about the work, so they distract themselves. You’re finally home having fought endless morons and idiots in cars who have no right to be driving, and you have food, bought from the local Jack-in-the-Crack because who has the energy to make a meal after all you’ve been sucked dry by the monotony of the day and the sheer sense that this is it, this is what life is and will continue to be, so you watch something, escapism, maybe your favorite hate-watch series, “my god these people are horrible” you think, or it’s something so good and you want to be there if only for a little while. But the feed calls you, pings, chimes, calls “have you seen,” “did you know” gotta  keep up with the newest shows, heaven forbid you don’t know what your cubicle neighbor is talking about. It's like a whole other world, right? But here's the thing: after we are mentally and emotionally drained, while we're at our weakest, that’s where we get got. there's a whole industry of distraction going on, it as a name we do not know, brilliant minds, psychologists, and scientists, that have sold out and now prey on our weaknesses

You see, pop culture isn't just about entertainment—it's a whole system designed to keep us distracted and compliant. Think of it like this: Slavoj Žižek (the Elvis of cultural criticism) wonderfully explains the concept of "ideological interpellation," which basically means that pop culture isn't just mindless fun—it's a way for the ruling class to control our thoughts and desires without us even realizing it.

Take celebrity culture, for example. We put the rich and famous up on a pedestal, worshiping them like they're some kind of modern-day gods. But what we don't see is the massive gap between their lavish lifestyles and the everyday struggles of the working class. That's where Jacques Lacan comes in—he talks about the "imaginary" aspect of our desires, how we're constantly chasing after these idealized fantasies of wealth and success that pop culture feeds us.

And let's not forget about Freud. He's the guy who really dug into our subconscious motivations and desires. In the world of pop culture, we're bombarded with images and messages that play on our deepest fears and desires, keeping us hooked and coming back for more.

But here's the kicker: behind all the glitz and glamour, there's a harsh reality. While we're busy living vicariously through our favorite celebrities, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting shafted. It's like Mark Fisher said: "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." But we can't let ourselves get sucked into this endless cycle of distraction and despair.

We must wake up and smell the coffee, people. We need to recognize that the spectacle of pop culture is just a smokescreen, a distraction from the real issues like wealth inequality and class warfare. We need to reclaim our agency and start fighting for a better world—one where justice, equality, and dignity aren't just pipe dreams, but real possibilities.

So the next time you find yourself getting lost in the world of pop culture, take a step back and ask yourself: who's really benefiting from all this? And what can we do to break free from the chains of capitalist spectacle and build a future that works for everyone?

The Joyous Defunct — Charles Bauldelaire

Where snails abound—in a juicy soil,

I will dig for myself a fathomless grave,

Where at leisure mine ancient bones I can coil,

And sleep—quite forgotten—like a shark 'neath the wave.

I hate every tomb—I abominate wills,

And rather than tears from the world to implore,

I would ask of the crows with their vampire bills

To devour every bit of my carcass impure.

Oh worms, without eyes, without ears, black friends!

To you a defunct-one, rejoicing, descends,

Enlivened Philosophers—offspring of Dung!

Without any qualms, o'er my wreckage spread,

And tell if some torment there still can be wrung

For this soul-less old frame that is dead 'midst the dead! 

People will notice higher tides that roll in more and more frequently. Water will pool longer in streets and parking lots. Trees will turn brown and die as they suck up salt water.” We will retreat to higher ground, cover our roofs with solar panels, finally stop using plastic, and go vegan, but it will be too late. As he writes, “even in rich neighborhoods, abandoned houses will linger like ghosts, filling with feral cats and other refugees looking for their own higher ground.

—Jeff Goodell

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.

—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism 

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to  deny the fact of death….  

—James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

I was cleaning a room and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn’t remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious, I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember… if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.

—Leo Tolstoy

Whoever says salvation exists is a slave, because he keeps weighing each of his words and deeds at every moment. ‘Will I be saved or damned?’ he tremblingly asks.… Salvation means deliverance from all saviours … now you understand who is the perfect Saviour.… It is the Saviour who shall deliver mankind from salvation.

—Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twin-kling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history’, but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. – One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illus-trated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened. 

—Nietzsche (1873)

When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it. . . . There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness. . . . For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. Its suffering inevitably becomes theirs.

—ÉMILE DURKHEIM, On Suicide

Hard as it may be for a state so framed to be shaken, yet, since all that comes into being must decay, even a fabric like this will not endure forever, but will suffer dissolution. 

—PLATO, The Republic 

Sweeney Todd (2007) Epiphany (With Lirycs)

“I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.” 

—F. W. Thurston

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

—H.P. Lovecraft Call of Cuthulu 

Television amounts only to a series of cruel plays about people with purpose; she even envies characters who are killed on screen or doomed to die during a commercial. If faced with her own imminent death, she could at least release the relentless anxiety of futility. A suicide though, even one portrayed ineptly on a daytime drama, fills her with vexation, makes her feel alien to a species that can produce such options. Rejecting the contradiction, afraid of pursuing the logic, she has never pondered the line that runs between death and death at one’s own hands. It is a non-question, irrelevant. It is one of those tricks of reasoning that can only be seen on an abstract level, for brought to terms with bread and water, it comes undone.

—John O'Brien, Leaving Las Vegas

Vita nostra brevis est 

Brevi finietur. 

Venit mors velociter 

Rapit nos atrociter 

Nemini parcetur. 

Our life is brief Soon it will end. 

Death comes quickly 

Snatches us cruelly 

To nobody shall it be spared. 

—De Brevitate Vitae (Gaudeamus igitur)

Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives—families, countries, gods—the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom—when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications—the self. However, this hierarchy may change in time as science makes inroads regarding the question of selfhood, which, if the findings are negative, could reverse the progression, with the extinction of the self foretelling that of families, national and ethnic affiliations, and gods. After all, the quintessential sequence by which we free ourselves from our selves and our institutions is still that depicted in the Buddha legend. Born a prince, so the story goes, the nascent Enlightened One, Siddhartha Gautama, embarked on a quest to neutralize his ego by first leaving behind his family, gods, and sociopolitical station—all  in one stroke.

—Thomas Ligotti

Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this globe to destroy it, as it often has been and will be destroyed, men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass?—and then we shall have traditions of Titans again, and of wars with Heaven. 

—Lord Byron

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 

Schopenhauer

"[L]ife presents itself by no means as a gift for enjoyment, but as a task, a drudgery to be performed; and in accordance with this we see, in great and small, universal need, ceaseless cares, constant pressure, endless strife, compulsory activity, with extreme exertion of all the powers of body and mind. Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good, each individual on account of his own; but many thousands fall as a sacrifice for it. Now senseless delusions, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with each other; then the sweat and the blood of the great multitude must flow, to carry out the ideas of  individuals, or to expiate their faults. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all ends of the world, the waves engulf thousands. All push and drive, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But the ultimate aim of it all, what is it? To sustain ephemeral and tormented individuals through a short span of time in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative freedom from pain, which, however, is at once attended with ennui; then the reproduction of this race and its striving. In this evident disproportion between the trouble and the reward, the will to live appears to us from this point of view, if taken objectively, as a fool, or subjectively, as a delusion, seized by which everything living works with the utmost exertion of its strength for some thing that is of no value. But when we consider it more closely, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind pressure, a tendency entirely without ground or motive."

—Arthur schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, translation by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp

Emerson

“We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

An insomniacs dreams

My sleep, when it comes, is tormented—filled with demons—

I could handle my grandmother eating out of an ashtray and my father screaming obscenities as he drove a rocket propelled flamingo into my childhood home. But my dreams are too real, no longer fun flights of fancy,  they're full of uncomfortable moments—eating beans with my roommate who keeps berating me for not doing the dishes, and wants to cut my hair or else sad long attempts at writing the great American novel that just dissolves in my hands as soon as it starts to get good...boring shit that for whatever reason embeds itself into my mind like a freeloading tick, so I have to question myself, dreams have taken up valuable space, like, I remember this happening, right now, yes, Bob you are going to call me while I'm eating chips and tell me my teeth are going to fall out but its ok because the whales are dying—and for some reason I can't stop remembering you mentioning the whales and the teeth. Why am I using up valuable brain harddrive space with crazy nonsense that my brain came up with due to some random firing of synaptic bio-neuro-chemical-whatevers that occured while I was in a state of comotose-insanity called sleep?

A tale told by an idiot

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

—By William Shakespeare (from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth)

A Toad

Il en est pour qui la vie est chose simple,
chose facile et de tous les jours;
on fait sa correspondance, on « fait l’amour »,
on fait, avant tout, « ses affaires »
et puis on recommence encore le lendemain
avec seulement la même règle que la veille
et qui est d’éviter les grandes joies barbares
de même que les grandes douleurs
comme un crapaud contourne une pierre sur son chemin.

There are those for whom life is a simple thing,
an easy thing, an everyday thing:
you write your letters, you “make love”,
you do, first of all, “your business”,
and then you start again tomorrow
with just the same rule as yesterday,
which is to avoid great savage joys
as well as great sorrows
like a toad avoids a pebble in its path.

_{Guy-Charles Cros (1912). Les fêtes quotidiennes, pp. 9–10}

Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

 —VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Speak, Memory: A Memoir

However much we’d prefer it otherwise, to achieve “I think, therefore I am” is to run headlong into the rejoinder “I am, therefore I will die.”

The Morbid Man

Isolation, mental strain, emotional exertions, visionary infatuations, well-executed fevers, repudiations of well-being: only a few of the many exercises practiced by that specimen we shall call the “morbid man.” And our subject of supernatural horror is a vital part of his program. Retreating from a world of heath and sanity, or at least one that daily invests in such commodities, the morbid man seeks the shadows behind the scenes of life. He backs himself into a corner alive with cool drafts and fragrant with centuries of must. It is in that corner that he builds a world of ruins out of the battered stones of his  imagination, a rancid world rife with things smelling of the crypt. But this world is not all a romantic sanctum for the dark in spirit. So let us condemn it for a moment, this deep-end of dejection. Although there is no name for what might be called the morbid man’s “sin,” it still seems in violation of some deeply ingrained morality. The morbid man does not appear to be doing himself or others any good. And while we all know that melancholic moping and lugubrious ruminating are quite palatable as side-dishes of existence, he has turned them into a house specialty! Ultimately, however, he may meet this charge of wrongdoing with a simple “What of it?” Now, such a response assumes morbidity to be a certain class of vice, one to be pursued without apology, and one whose advantages and disadvantages must be enjoyed or endured  outside the law . But as a sower of vice, if only in his own soul, the morbid man incurs the following censure: that he is a symptom or a cause of decay within both individual and collective spheres of being. And decay, like every other process of becoming, hurts everybody. “Good!” shouts the morbid man. “Not good!” counters the crowd. Both positions betray dubious origins: one in resentment, the other in fear. And when the moral debate on this issue eventually reaches an impasse or becomes too tangled for truth, then psychological polemics can begin. Later on we will find other angles from which this problem may be attacked, enough to keep us occupied for the rest of our lives. Meanwhile, the morbid man keeps putting his  time on earth  to no good use, until in the end—amidst mad winds, wan moonlight, and pasty specters—he uses his exactly like everyone else uses theirs: all up.

—Professor Nobody 

Reality and Subjugation

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exists.

—HANNAH ARENDT, The Origins of Totalitarianism

The Human Predicament

"All things being equal, the poor and destitute are worse off than those who are economically more privileged; the sick are worse off than the healthy; the ugly are worse off than the attractive; and the gloomiest pessimists are worse off than others..."

—David Benatar 

A Welcome Anonymity

"The melancholic beauty of the empty avenues of Shanghai or Hong Kong remind me of some old post-apocalyptic movies like On the Beach, which shows a city with most of its population wiped out—no big spectacular destruction, just the world out there no longer ready-at-hand, awaiting us, looking at us and for us. Even the white masks worn by the few people walking around provide a welcome anonymity and liberation from the social pressure of recognition."

—Slavoj Žižek, COVID-19 Shakes the World

This pessimism entails a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the disorientation of deep space and deep time, all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s happenstance existence – all that remains is the desiderata of impersonal affects – agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art (though what usually results is slapstick).

The Last Messiah

Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself.

The Indoor Swamp by Jon Padgett

"On later visits to the Indoor Swamp you might find yourself staring through the greenhouse windows with longing. Those buildings and those slivers of sky around you look so bright. The busy, outside world seems so engaging. What a relief it would be, you might think, to be anywhere else beyond these glass walls. But you’re filing back onto the long, flat boat. Making your way down the artificial lagoon. Skimming through the crummy flea market. Creeping along the trailer-hallway, viewing one disturbing mise en scène after another on your heavy way to that final abyss."

This Party's Dead: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World’s Death Festivals by Erica Buist

What if we responded to death... by throwing a party?

By the time Erica Buist’s father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies.

While her husband maintained a semblance of grace and poise, Erica found herself consumed by her grief, descending into a bout of pyjama-clad agoraphobia, stalking friends online to ascertain whether any of them had also dropped dead without warning, unable to extract herself from the spiral of death anxiety… until one day she decided to reclaim control.

With Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world – one for every day they didn’t find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan, and finally Indonesia – with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one – Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety.

This Party’s Dead is the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.

We did not make ourselves

We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along—a world where all organisms are inexorably pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves.

—Thomas Ligotti

To Understand

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them.

—Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 1676

Infinite Resignation

Futility is different from fatality, and different again from simple failure (though failure is never simple). The chain of cause and effect may be hidden from us, but that’s just because disorder is the order we don’t yet see; it’s just complex, distributed, and requires advanced mathematics. Fatality still clings to the sufficiency of everything that exists… When fatality relinquishes even this idea, it becomes futility. Futility arises out of the grim suspicion that, behind the shroud of causality we drape over the world, there is only the indifference of what exists or what doesn’t exist; sense and non-sense eclipse each other, and whatever you do ultimately leads to an irrevocable chasm between thought and world. Futility transforms the act of thinking into a zero-sum game.

—Eugene Thacker

Lines Written During a Period of Insanity by William Cowper

Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion,

Scarce can endure delay of execution:--

Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my

Soul in a moment.

Damn'd below Judas; more abhorr'd than he was,

Who, for a few pence, sold his holy master.

Twice betray'd, Jesus me, the last delinquent,

Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, the Deity disowns me.

Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;

Therefore hell keeps her everhungry mouths all

Bolted against me.

Hard lot! Encompass'd with a thousand dangers,

Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,

Fall'n, and if vanquish'd, to receive a sentence

Worse than Abiram's:

Him, the vindictive rod of angry justice

Sent, quick and howling, to the centre headlong;

I, fed with judgements, in a fleshy tomb, am

Buried above ground.

 Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.
—The Dhammapada