By JP MALIG

"The world is a vampire." – Smashing Pumpkins

DO not attempt to understand manic-depressive people. We have become enlightened to the fact that the whole world is a blood-sucking parasite that feeds on people’s lives.

Knowing this, our normal reaction would be to either explode in uncontrolled rage or curl up in our own private world, safe from scumbags, idiots, morons and parasites that society prefers to nurture instead.

I felt better the other day, when I was on my way to an Internet café to check my e-mail and work on my web site. Floods have made the highway that passes across our town impassable for small vehicles, so I was left with no other choice but to hitch a ride at the back of a large freight truck.

It was quietness, except for the humming of the truck engine and the serene lapping of waves that rolled for miles in the wake of the vehicle’s passage.

No noise. No corp-synched pre-packaged pseudo-realities, which the world still tries to shove, down my throat.

The world does not revolve around an individual, despite the philosophical Illusion of Central Position that is being continuously peddled as the birthright of every human individual.

A baby enters an unknown world. He or she lies on a basket, or a cradle, or a clutch of straw. The baby’s eyesight is vague. Bright objects appear for his or her amusement, bottle and breasts for comfort. The baby’s groping consciousness finds no reason at all to doubt the world’s consecration to his or her needs and purposes. The baby’s Illusion of Central Position is perfect.

Time and growth, however, unfold experience and most experience disillusionment. The baby wakes up in the midst of an impenetrable night and his or her wails command companionship and attention. But weary parents sleep unheeding.

The baby has encountered neglect. Or in the bright, cheerful morning sun, the inexplicable cat may scratch him. The baby has encountered hostility.

In a year or so, a baby sister may arrive. Now, the laughter and breasts and bright objects are showered on another.

Self-awareness is a human attribute; and central position, so the theory states, is its primary assumption. But every human being throughout his or her entire life span face an unending series of experiences each of which is disillusionment affecting the primary assumption.

We may accept the blow, reintegrate our personality to include it, and proceed with our illusion of central position slightly dented – in that case, we escape the disillusionment and proceed with our primary assumption about the world intact. In this case, of course, we fail to mature.

The theory states that maturity is achieved by the acceptance of reality and the capacity to absorb each disillusionment and still keep on going.

Do not even attempt to suggest at the moment that I splurge on a barrage of self-help psychology books that fill the shelves of most bookstores today. They are not even worth the paper they are printed on. Only fools listen to that scripted late night problem advice program on radio.

Back to my digression. The theory of central position also grants that should an individual ever attain a state of total maturity – ever come to see himself in other words, in perfect mathematical relationship to the several other billion members of the human race; and the human race in perfect mathematical relationship to the tide of tumultuous life which has risen upon the earth and in which we represent but a single swell; and furthermore come to see our earth as but opportunity for life among uncounted millions of planets in our galaxy alone, and our galaxy as but one statistical improbability in the silent mathematics of all things – should an individual achieve the final, total and truthful Disillusionment of Central Position, then in all likelihood he or she would no longer keep on going but would simply lie down and return to the nothingness from which the individual arose from.

Schopenhauer once wrote of how a state of non-existence is really man’s more natural condition, given that we spend so many billions of millennia in this state; and of how life is a little more than an unnatural blip on the supra-millennial screen.

It’s a blow that should be given to everyone.

"Pity this busy monster, manunkind," poet e.e. cummings once wrote. I do not pity scum, idiots, morons and parasites. I delightfully squish them to pulp under my boots.

Enough said.

JPM/14 July 2000