What can we say about this human life that already hasn’t been beaten to death by cliche and nonsense?
First we must get rid of the notion that our life is special. It is, but perhaps not in the same way we are accustomed to thinking. Often we shield ourselves from psychic pain when we look our imminent death squarely and say that we only have this one so make it a good one. I suppose that is satisfactory. I don’t have the time left here to answer the questions I’d like answered. I think the human race will burn before it learns. It is late.
Life is brought to us by the female, the norm for most species. But I want to understand why this meatbag full of salts, electricity and ATP keeps going for as long as it does. We can reasonably say that there is no repeating this process. Once that precious blood cord is severed, the time starts ticking on your life even though it looks as though it is increasing itself. We reproduce against all odds in our youth and we really don’t know why, and we are glad for it regardless of the situation the child is born into. Perhaps that is the reason for continuing, making whoopee until we copy ourselves. We sort of “win” when we propagate.
Still, why do so many believe you come back from this after your best years are done? What more do you want? I’m 51 and I am tired. I’m already complaining about all kinds of things that are going on in my body. Two more decades of this and I will want to die. I don’t feel like repeating this again. I got real fucking lucky when I met my cuddly wife in the idyll of youth but all of my choices have been suspect otherwise. Unless I get a completely new personality or an extra decade of mindless youth wasted, I’d rather skip reincarnation.
Reincarnation. How dumb is that? What a Hail Mary pass in hoping for more fucking life. Equally questionable is the desire for eternal life somewhere beyond this. This is for people who believe in an immortal soul that is housed within our electric meatbag. There is, currently, no proof of a soul save for what religious texts tell you. Centuries of internal medicine and surgery tell us otherwise. I’d love to be religious. It all sounds grand, this higher purpose. But sometimes life can be just a grind. I’m your average American with five-figure debt, cats and dogs and an affinity for beer and coffee. My kids have become young men who are very skeptical about making babies in a world that is hostile. What I can say that is good is that I have a faithful friend ’til the end in my wife. That’s something a lot of people won’t have. It’s a pretty good household still.
Here I sit, asking the same shopworn questions that I guess I do know the answers to. I must rely on evidence, and a capital-W “why” isn’t forthcoming. We are high functioning apes, high above the food chain, doing the rat race like any other species. We gather in bands and we kill and throw shit at each other. We think we are special because we know how to do so many truly amazing things. This fucking keyboard will send my words to you when I finish this bull session on invisible waves. It looks like we’ve been favored, and that is what religion teaches us. Mostly it appears to be a lie passed down. In fact, the lion’s share of ontologies do not stand up to scrutiny. There is a veil to be pierced, do not be fooled by what seems to be order. That’s just your senses talking shit. This keyboard is here to quiet me while the masters of war and actual elites do other things with these toys all around the world. I’m entertaining myself to death, and I have the streaming subscriptions to prove it. So worship until you expire. I certainly don’t care. You’re marking time just like me. It’s your lifespan and you should believe in the things that make you happy and give you peace. And you libertines-do whatever the loophole in the law says to do and raise the hell that I can’t, just don’t hurt innocents, should you come upon some.
I plan to tell my family jokes as I leave them. I assume I’ll go first, males seem to have a propensity to go earlier. They’ll be there until it is time to leave. Just like we all were there to let my German Shepherd pass, so too will they comfort me while I tell them how it feels. Being the first atheist in my family, I figure I ought to give them tips on having a good die as my bulb burns out, never to return to brilliance.
same.