I wrote this essay years ago (unfinished and stupid)

the bleak journal

Section 1

The Problem of Humanity

The Idea of Evil

There is nothing redeemable about humanity.  It is a complete fallacy that God or nature has placed humans at the top of the hierarchy of animals.  True, we are the apex predator and we have put the entire natural world into submission with our magnificent “brains,” however to place us as the moral paragon of the universe is complete horseshit. 

I’ll use the metaphor of slavery.  Just because humans created slaves out of other humans, does not mean the slave makers are better than the slaves.  It just means that they are horrible humans.  And in the same way, making nature into our playthings is undoubtedly evil. 

In fact, nothing in the natural world is evil.  Good and evil are human constructs and therefore have no place in the animal kingdom or natural world.  A hurricane is not evil.  A hungry bear is not evil.  A black hole is not evil.  It would be nonsense to shoehorn human nonsensical ideology on nonhuman things.

The fact of the matter is, since we have created the idea of good and evil, have advanced human brains, and a conscience means we are inherently evil precisely because we understand our own actions and have choice.  No matter what, with choice, humankind is “different” than anything else within the world.  However, it does not make us better.  I would argue that human-beings are the most artificial and monstrous outcome of evolution.   We haven’t been created in the image of gods, but have created the idea of gods and assumed the role of gods.  Our elevated and entitled worldview is an automatic believe passed to children.  It is instilled into us.  Even religion justifies our higher place among all other things.

But this is just a mental construct just as every thought, word, and idea is nothing more than purely artificial drivel made by our ability to create complex systems of language.  Language is nothing but pure symbolical nonsense.  Most words have no actual physical meaning.  They are just abstractions and ideas.

I do not know why or how humans evolved.  Gods, aliens, or pure chance?  I do not know but will follow the only logical and scientific explanation which is evolution.  We evolved into modern humans just as everything else with no outside divine or alien help.  In other words, a series of events occurred starting from The Big Bang to now that simply cultivated the right circumstances for humankind to come into existence.  It was, undoubtedly, a very complex process.

What I'm more interested is the result.  Modern humans have claimed the throne with no real adversary to challenge us.  But instead of using our immense superior brains for the betterment of reality, we haven’t.  Essentially, a hugely powerful tool was latched onto a creature that is completely incapable of using it for good.  We are selfish, fiercely independent, and even self-destructive.  Our species has spent a good amount of time covering the earth like a plague.  At first we were in equilibrium with the ecology of the world.

Then within the last 6000 or so years, it all changed.  Of course, at first, it was novel.  The advancement of our species and our primary distinguishing feature, language, was a pretty progressive thing.  We managed so much and tamed the wild and chaotic forces as best we could.  We bent the world to our wills.

And we have committed horrors.  In the beginning, I would say we were nothing more than animals with this newly developed brain, so it is not primarily strange that we didn’t act according to moral principles.  I would excuse our ancestors for not realizing how our behavior inadvertently caused such destruction to other creatures and the environment.  The world was still fresh and our understanding was still limited.

However, now we are not ignorant.  We are fully aware of our effect.  We have moral codes and laws defining what is right and what is wrong.  We have evolved our understanding to the point of complete realization, to the point of understanding things so far beyond any other creatures ability to do so.  Physics, mathematics, art, and on and on, we have truly tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

And so, we are responsible for anything and everything our actions and behavior incur and that is why the cost of our “superior” brains far exceeds the benefits. 

We are Anti-nature.  We are a force for bad.  Capable of evil equals evil.  Knowing the secrets of gravity doesn’t change the fact that we have eradicated whole populations of species just so we can live in artificially created facades made out of decorative crap full of more crap to entertain us.  We are aware of pollution and how it effects the environment and having that knowledge and continuing the behavior is the definition of insanity.   Are we truly capable of caring about anything other than ourselves

Perhaps I’m making one mistake in assessing humankind.  I bunch humankind into a single lump as if we are a hive mind.  We are not.  In fact, we are the antithesis of a hive mind and is precisely why we are capable of maximizing knowledge and “progression.”   Our individual natures within an active dynamic system allows for quick advancement.  Just look at that advancements made in only 200 years.   Perhaps competition and collective learning allowed for such a fast progression that we literally went too far ahead too fast without truly understanding the consequences until it was too late.

Or perhaps our biases toward each other within our own species is so powerful that we can never function as one, but are always infighting instead of cooperating.  I don’t ever see the human race as uniting in a Utopian society like in so many fictions.  It just won’t ever happen and if it were to happen, for arguments sake, the society would more than likely be a Dystopia.  But it is impossible to have both a unified human race and a free, moral human race.  Some government or “Big Brother” figure would simply use methods of control to guide all under some convoluted ideology.

All these excuses aside, the present predicament is THE reality.  We have the opportunity to change with brilliant minds to assess the environmental situation and great spiritual minds to assess the moral situation.  And what is the situation?   A world full of selfish, monstrous humans obsessed with pleasure seeking, greed, and self-interests that supersede the well-being of other creatures and even other humans.

And so we have the average American as the perfect example of the immoral human.  It’s not even that other creatures are suffering for our “benefit,” but our own species, humans, with the same capacity who are striving for survival in a horrible world while we have so-called first world problems to deal with.  It hurts my brain to think on this.  The amount of suffering and blood that has been poured into maintaining my life.  The food I eat, the clothes I wear, the TV I watch, all is made out of the suffering of someone or something else.  And we are living these lives guilt-free since we avoid the burning reality that is so clearly laid out in front of us.  Even the suffering so plainly visible day to day is somehow avoided as we create some internal excuse for the truly horribleness that is the human race.

In other words, life is horrible.

The Solution

There is only one surefire method of freeing the universe of the human plague; that is complete and utter specicide.  To be truly moral and to recover sanity to the natural world we all need to commit suicide.  In fact, suicide is the only truly moral act a human can strive for.  We are artificial relative to the universe and cannot contribute to the prosperity of this reality no matter how hard we want to or try.  Our mere existence is a bane and an insult to nature.  We believe ourselves saints and create false monsters and demons and angels and myths when in the end to see the devil you only need to look in the mirror. 

This is a rather radical solution and this is a very bleak outlook that will result in absolutely nothing.  But any real investigation into the heart of humankind will reveal a darkness.  Perhaps there are those who are actually saints, wholeheartedly devoted to the betterment of the world, Bodhisattva’s of sorts, but in the end faith in humankind is devoid when considering the other 99.999999999999 percent of us.

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Section 2

Worldviews

The Absurdist Existential Nihilist

As such, I will not kill myself.  My death will account for a minimal change in the state of things, I still am a member of this infamous club of evolutionary disasters.  I am still a Human, and not a good one at that.  Besides, if every person doesn’t follow my lead, what is the point?

My self-awareness is special, but in the end it is a pointless attribute.  I continue like all others doing what humans do best, ignore the evil inherent in almost every action I take because...well because I can.  Denial is such a strong tool to live with yourself when you suddenly become aware of the terror of life and death and the horrors living everywhere.   We somehow can shield ourselves against the Truth, and see some sort of false light in our lives, some sort of beacon of hope and grace.  I am not religious, I am an atheist, and yet I can see the false light still.  Whatever it may be, I can name some but won’t, it keeps me going.

So than what kind of ideology do you have?  Everyone has some sort of belief system.  As an existentialist I make the assertion that we all have our own independent, albeit influenced, belief system.  Since we experience life within the microcosm of our own independent existences, we all have unique systems.  But we do not live in a vacuum, so all our thoughts and beliefs are influenced by other peoples thoughts and beliefs.   So, even if you are a Christian with a lawful nature, you still don’t have the same exact outlook as another Christian with a lawful nature.  You both see Christ, God, religion, the law in your own unique way regardless.  And of course humans are more complex than just religious and governing law beliefs.

Be it so, realizing that these systems of thought (and the very words that construct them) were undoubtedly created by others it is my assumption that there really is no inherent meaning in anything for we endow meaning on these words and thoughts which makes me an existential nihilist.  I will not make the sweeping statement that I know the true truth of the nature of the universe, for that would be absurd, I’m just stating what I have come to understand to be the most likely conclusion; that humans believe things! Not only that, but they believe things because they were guided to believe things either directly or indirectly.  However, I assume the position that those beliefs come from no actual place and therefore have no actual meaning other than whatever meaning you put on them.

And these are my beliefs, obviously, which under my own assumption means that they are actually meaningless so I should stop writing now and kill myself, right?  Well no, fuck that. 

I may be an existential nihilist but I obviously have further beliefs than “this is all meaningless and pointless” or else I wouldn’t be writing right now and would actually kill myself.  I mentioned the word absurd before.   It just so happened that this word incorporates an added aspect of my belief system.  I made it up all by myself too!  Okay, that is a lie.  Absurdism is not my invention, just as none of the words I used up until this point and onward are my invention (which clearly shows how uninventive and limited language is).  Absurdism is a philosophy by existentialists before me (and I don’t need to point out that neither existentialism nor nihilism are my actual ideas too, right?).

The conclusion of “nothing has meaning so you should just kill yourself” originated in The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus.  But so did the idea of the absurdist ideology.  Essentially, since life is meaningless (and humans suck(which includes myself)), one must embrace the absurdity of it all and by doing so can just smile instead of crying in the corner with a noose around your neck. 

Life is an absurd drama on God’s TV, where God is a douche-bag human with an incomprehensible life who is being watched by another God….and so on.  See, fuck it, its absurd, but no more absurd than Christianity, Buddhism, Science, or any -ism.  In fact, life itself in any capacity is pretty absurd.  I mean, why?  Hell, existence of any sort is absurd.  The universe is fucking absurd without any life in it.  The only thing that isn’t absurd is nothingness because it is nothing and incapable of being anything.  I’m flooded suddenly with a world shattering sense of WHAT THE FUCK! Are you?

And now its gone because fuckit, its absurd.

Solopsism

This naturally leads to what is known as metaphysical solipsism.  Yes, there is a concept that identifies the sense that life may be a complete farce, an illusion, a projection, or just the matrix.  Solopsism is the sense that nothing exists outside yourself and your very sense of reality is fake...so like the matrix, accept the other humans are fake and you’re alone.

Now I'm not exactly a solipsist, I do not proclaim everything to be some made up dream, but it is an inherent possibility.  Take one more step, and your very own sense of self could be a completely phony made-up artifice!

To put it more simply, imagine playing a game with NPC’s, Non Player Characters.  For those of who do not play videogames, an NPC is a character inhabiting the world that isn’t real ie. not another human player.  They are complete AI’s and even though they are getting more sophisticated with the progression of tech, they are still very basic avatars that you can interact with to a very simple extent.

Now imagine an NPC so sophisticated that it doesn’t know it is an NPC and thinks it actually exists and that their virtual world is the real world.  In this scenario, the NPC is an artificial intelligence that exists inside a computer.  Once again, its kinda like the matrix, a movie both incredibly deep and, well, not deep.  It is possible we are (or should I say I am? I don’t know anymore) just programs of AI inside a computer or some possible analogy that corresponds and amounts to about the same thing.  The point is, it could be possible that not only is your reality not real, but that you are not real. 

And this is the absolute most irreducible possibility of what your life could be.  Its fatalistic and deterministic, there is no choices because there is no you.  There is no time, no soul, there is nothing except the inevitability of the outcome which we all know is death.  So, perhaps you should just kill yourself then.  Or fuckit….absurdity.

The Ongoing Ghost and Hell Theory

I have also felt the possibility that I have already died and this “reality” is really my version of hell.  Now, this believe assumes that hell exists and every religion has a version of hell which are pretty typical.  Hell is usually portrayed as “unreal”, pits of fire, darkness, underground, demons, torture, etc. But I propose the theory that hell (only assuming it exists) is merely an echo of real life.  People experience hell and torture psychologically instead of physically by living a life that will not conform, that will always create problems.  A prison, but not made of fire and brimstone but of the worst possible reality possible.

Another thought occurs that I am a disillusioned ghost.  I’ve heard people having similar thoughts.

At my most delusional, during my first hospitalization I had strong thoughts like these because I was in a state of shock.  I don’t believe these things, but they do crop up sometimes when things just seem off, uncanny, unreal.  

Maybe the true horror is Niche’s Eternal Return, reliving your life over and over and over. 

Once again, I must declare that I DO NOT KNOW THE TRUTH.  This is not part of my believe system, it is just a passing thought I have sometimes.

The Insincerity Doctrine

There is yet another idea that has popped into my mind and I do not know if it is a unique thought (tough chance on that),  I do not know if I got it from somewhere else.  When I used to smoke weed, my paranoia would create this feeling and thought, that people are not sincere.  It goes further than that, but I shall call this the Insincerity Doctrine for the sake of simplicity.

Essentially, what I perceived (and have perceived sober as well) is that humans come off as being insincere and phony.  The ability to tell lies can be stretched to the ultimate conclusion; that everything humans say and feel are lies even if they do not realize it.  This once again fits into the idea that humankind is artificial.  I have thought this out further and even had beliefs that humans are merely robot-like beings functioning through the very basic tendency of neurotransmitter impulses. 

The metaphor is as such; a computer and AI systems function on simple on and off switches.  The most complicating computers are essentially Ones and Zeroes (or on and off switches).  The human brain is merely a very very complex system of brain tissue with neurons that either fire or do not fire.  The analogy is pretty simple, the all or nothing firing of neurons and the on and off switches of a computer are similar.

Perhaps a little simplistic in explanation, but surely the two can be seen as analogous.  If human brains are merely biological computers that function beyond our control than these neurons firing are simply deterministic.  In other words, we are not in control but are being controlled.  Science has even gone as far as saying such feelings as strong as love are chemicals in the brain and just neurons firing. 

So when in the heat of human interaction while I was high on weed, this thought entered my mind and I suddenly saw the responses of people as just biological impulses.  I no longer saw faces, but brain matter at work.  People became robots in my mind.  And I literally felt the lies and insensitivity in almost everything people said.  The roundabout nature of human interaction, saying things without saying, and just plain manipulation. 

Surely, I was fucking high on weed and that influenced my fragile mind.  Weed makes me overthink and become paranoid, and this was a really fucked up paranoid thought if I must say so myself.  And after the weed wore off, these thoughts did not solidify into a worldview.  However, it did make me think: What if humankind was truly deception machines?  What if everything they feel, say, and do is not actually real, but a result of the brain at work?

I mean, what is the difference between authenticity and mimicry?  We all learn through mimicking and practicing and listening and learning social norms.  We are all “programmed” by people and life events into believing things and acting in a certain way.  If so, what is authenticity?  Can we say we are authentically “enter label here” or are we just pretending to be until it becomes habit?

Autistic people have a hard time for this reason I think.  They cannot understand the “norms” of other people because these are not their “norms.”  They resist the programming and, as such, seem odd to the “normal” people who have been programmed successfully.  In fact, to be successful and have a normal life it is with absolute necessity to be programmed in the ways of norms and the better one is at it, the more they seem normal.  The more successful they will become.

So the question becomes, are we all really the people that we are or are we pretending to be what we are programmed to be? 

The Paradox of Me

I think the truth isn’t purely that black and white.  My observations combined with my suspicious skeptical demeanor makes judgment on other people in a rather stark way.  However, I have not taken into account my own self.  

This Doctrine is possibly best refuted by my own feelings, thoughts, and actions.  I have made some wild accusations and painted a very harsh picture of humankind, talking about others without comparing myself.  Now, assuming that solopsism is bullshit (as I do) and humans are real (which they are) and I am human (which I think I am) than they are like me or I am like them. 

No, I am not saying I am normal by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I am atypical. 

But, I am not a psychopath, I'm not autistic, and I do not have any (major at least) brain damage.  I may suffer from certain psychological disorders, but they are not the types that would skew my ability to feel normal emotions and have empathy.  I have Avoidant Personality Disorder, anxiety disorder, bi-polar disorder with sometimes psychotic features, but I do not suffer from dissociative disorders or stunted emotional disorders.  In fact, my emotions are pretty strong compared to most.  But, lets stick with the assertion that I am physiologically healthy and pretty “normal” all things considered.

The point i’m trying to make is, if my Insincerity Doctrine were true, than it would also apply to me.  This is where it begins to fall apart.  I feel like I have a soul, an individual self, an identity.  I cannot explain what emotions are accurately with words since they are things that are felt and words fall short.  The immensity of emotions is a profound thing and no matter how scientific and sterile of a shadow I cast on “humankind,” from my own personal experiences feeling something is a genuine thing.  Love is a thing that transcends all these other words and I would never call these feelings merely mimicry or inauthentic.  If I can feel this otherworldly “spirit” within me and act sincerely almost all the time, than how can I apply a different set of rules on others?  How can I remove the...humanity from humans when it is so very present inside myself?

Of course, it could all be part of the mechanisms within the biological makeup of a human’s body and brain.  The self or mind could just be a construct that the brain needs in order to function.  Emotions could just be evolutionary advantages to complete the two necessary functions of life: to reproduce and survive.

Or maybe it doesn’t make a difference: mimicry and authenticity could just be words trying to describe something that just is.

The Refutation of Theoretical Assertions

In the end it doesn’t matter if you exist or if reality exists, if you are authentically feeling things or just mimicking.  What matters is Occam’s Razor.  The simplest answer is the best.  Its a deep well of mind-fucks if you pursue these hard questions and really, whats the point?  I just assume my self and feelings and thoughts are my own and that reality is real as are other people and creatures and space and such. It’s just an interesting thought experiment.

So the conspiratorial theories of unreality are interesting to an extent and can create a dangerous person if they are so paranoid to actually believe these seriously.  Although I have thought of the possibility of these theories, I do not conform to them at all.  I do not live my life believing it is a dream, it is really hell, that I’m really a ghost, that I’m an NPC in a videogame, or in the Matrix, or that i’m a robot merely mimicking.  To live according to these beliefs would garner no benefit whatsoever because no matter what, the universe and society operates on Laws and Principles.  Life may be a game, but consequences still feel real so therefore they should be viewed as “real.” 

Than new definition becomes: reality is whatever I perceive it to be and the principles that control society and nature.

And just like that, I have demonstrated the utter pointlessness of this writing pursuit.  Oh well, its all absurd anyway, right!