Diachronic NightmareWhen you’re young all there is in life is family. Then, when you’re a little older there is family and friends. Then, throughout the next years of your life they add in school, sports, music and whatever else. But these few things are central to your existence. Anything outwith this little intertwined group is irrelevant if even existent. The teenage years are complex in a simple way; sex and angst blinding logic and emotion with no escape. But this is still an unpleasant simplicity. Your world is synchronic and anything outwith is unimportant. At some point the world becomes more complex, a diachronic nightmare that is only ever partially visible. Of course, the world has always been this way to you, but now it is obvious and painful, and the weight of the knowledge of the world’s complexity actually crushes your brain if you consider it for too long. When you begin to think about goddamn anything you could seconds later be thinking about something else entirely different, and soon embark upon a mental journey for which you sure as hell never bought a ticket. What you have for dinner becomes an inner discussion on poverty, a discussion to which there is no conclusion, and you are at war with yourself, frustrated by the lack of a conclusive answer, or else the conclusive answer hurts because only you are aware of it. And now the world is so much bigger than you. Family, friends and school are no longer the be all and end all of your life. These complex relationships are now so simple when compared to the whole world maniacally unfolding in your brain; unfolding like a visualisation on TV that you can witness and understand, but not interfere with. You can consider and study and know the world and debate with yourself endlessly the ins and outs as you work your way through the diachronic maze, but you are alone and helpless and it hurts. The world is so frantic. So much goes on every second. To be intelligent is to sacrifice yourself to a bombardment of news and issues that you feel compelled to fully understand lest you consider yourself stupid. Numbness is a welcome rarity, usually induced by drugs or drink or something so universally insignificant that it can be viewed synchronically, forgetting everything else. Like a daydream fantasy or kickflip noseslide. Philosophy is the curse of humanity. It hounds the mind for meaning and insight, demanding constant thought, unpleasant thought. Thoughts repeat themselves until madness sets in when it finally dawns that no resolve will be found, and the only escape is a self-lie. Religion, the nectar of the ignorant, can drown the mind in bullshit. Heaven and hell dictate the eternal future and eradicate a great many questions of the atheistic mind. All answers to tough questions are invented, the devil is root of all evil, and the Bible’s many contradictions are the guide to a life far from fully lived. All independent thinking is unnecessary and all knowledge is guaranteed. God is always there and morality is predefined. The world is simple. How wonderful it would be to be ignorant. How amazingly simple life could be if an organised religion made even the least bit of sense to someone with a fully functionally brain. Religion is the controlling method of the world; it binds societies together, forming functional human civilisations and maintains the power balance. But here I go again… To contemplate is not necessarily to suffer. To contemplate something over and over and over, debating only with yourself, is suffering. To venture along the invisible path of consideration, moving from one event, object or incident to another, is to venture into dangerous territory. The world is made up of so very much, and it is overwhelming to try and consider. I try and understand the world, but when I add in, for example, racism, football, sex and TV, I realise the world is just crazy. So frantic. So confusing. Nothing is disconnected, yet everything is isolated, and there is nothing not reliant on anything else, so you really can’t look at anything alone. I go insane just looking at the world. The future is unfolding constantly, pushed on by the frantic present and reflecting the infinite past. Every second gives birth to six billion new thoughts, millions of words and ideas and inventions, revelations and events. I now understand the causes of madness. I understand the confusion of those who dare to attempt to understand the universe. I bow down to Derrida and the thinkers who kept at least one foot on the ground while deconstructing the world, to Jackson Pollock for capturing this madness in paint, to the Beats for writing in the style of the madness that is an eternal unfolding of time. To think of them is to think of the world, of life, of the unobtainable.
|