u/Senior_Library_1583

I am of the opinion that the most humiliating experience one can have on this planet is not only possessing a body but simultaneously being human. Unlike other animals, which depend on their species and possess a more limited consciousness that enables them to understand their situation and role in it, the human experience is invariably worse. This is due to the single fact that we possess a faculty of consciousness that is entirely in a league of its own compared to that of other animals on this planet.

We understand our needs and can perceive the changes occurring in our bodies in real time throughout the years. These changes are exemplified by the gradual loss of vision, muscle mass, back pain, chronic diseases, and tooth loss. Moreover, these afflictions are not even guaranteed to appear only in one’s later years of life, as many young people suffer from them as well.

If one wishes to secure some false sense of protection from them, one may attempt to adopt a healthier lifestyle and undergo periodic medical examinations. However, to afford this, one must work extremely hard and essentially suffer in the present so as to potentially avoid suffering in the future. Despite doing one’s utmost, it is still possible to end up soaked in one’s own urine and feces while confined to a wheelchair.

This is it. This is your very existence. This is your life. You are not some sort of omnipotent being that can bend the natural laws to suit its own needs and desires. You cannot do the impossible. You are but a microscopic organism living on the crust of a tiny pale blue dot floating in the endless expanse of space, without purpose, without meaning, and without a destination.

There is no grand plan here. There are no guaranteed promises of a transcendent existence beyond this. You are not better than those fragile slugs without shells that are trying to survive. You and your species are not the result of an intelligent, wise creator. You are a mere, unpleasant coincidence—an abomination.

You then proceeded to clone yourself over and over again, although you knew better. Yet you kept going in this futile endeavor, as if there were something here beyond consumption and reproduction: me, me, me. I am the center. I am the truth. It cannot be any other way.

You keep yourself hooked on your fragile little lies like a pathetic junkie in the back of a dead-end alley, praying to the void and fashioning from its glacial silence creeds of your own that feed your malnourished ego with self-importance.

In the country I come from, when people get crushed by life, and when the springs of hope they used to visit to keep their sanity intact run dry, the most common form of self annihilation is lighting themselves on fire in the middle of the streets or in front of institutions. This very act has a deep impact upon me, for I came to realize that it is not only an act of absolute despair within it resides much more than that. It is a symbolic critique of the pillars upon which what we call human civilization rises. They are not extinguishing themselves in that process; rather, they embody how we, as a collective species, are burning ourselves by the Promethean flame, running through the streets of history, suffering, looking to plunge ourselves back into the unfathomable depths of the primordial waters we abandoned long ago. And before we reach them, we will burn to dust and on those shores, that dust will scatter away, and from it, we shall wish that we never rise again.