An Article Found in a Volcano

Reading this will make you insane.  It worked for me!
  August 18, 2002

Jeff Mangum, the singer for Neutral Milk Hotel, concludes his song In the Aeroplane Over the Sea with the words “How strange it is to be anything at all.”

He cut unusually close to the truth with this one, but his fellow inhabitants of the circle Terra, the self-styled “humans,” ignored the worthy insight, as is their wont.  To us this is a great relief: we can rest assured that humans aren’t escaping the trammels of ignorance any time soon.

Many human writers, poets and thinkers-at-large have undertaken the exposition, or at least the documentation, of a transitory quality they call the “human condition.”  Theirs is a most peculiar and comical pursuit.  The absurdity of trying to pin down the definition and principles of the condition of creatures that have merely paused in a random world along the road of infinite changes should be self-evident to all who are privy to cosmic knowledge.  Nevertheless, the human quest merits close attention because its hold on people’s minds is universal and relentless.

Not surprisingly, humans’ descriptions of their “condition” are nebulous.  Most agree, however, that suffering is a major part of it.  Their view of suffering is primitively one-sided; they regard is as a negative factor and try to avoid it at all costs.  For fairness’ sake, we should note that some of them have recognized the possible pleasures of certain forms of suffering (c.f. Marquis de Sade, Hellraiser).  Few, however, made the final breakthrough to the realization that suffering, like anything else, isn’t good or bad but mostly neutral with an occasional streak of mauve.

Jeff Mangum’s insight on being could resolve humans’ many confusions, had they the brains to grasp its importance.  Humans have no idea that they don’t have to exist at all, nor that their existence, such as it is, occurs in a world which isn’t the worst among the circles of Hell by far.  We would particularly like to see them squirm once they got a taste of Tlön, where mind prevails over matter and as a result quite literally no one knows what the hell is going on.  Or the first hell of failed happiness, where the Demiurge’s interdiction of strife forced universal sameness of opinion and consequently, terminal boredom.  Or the second hell of failed happiness, where every opinion was allowed to prevail and as a result reality fell apart at the seams, making for a rather maddening universe.  (Our Assistant Editor likes it for what he calls “orgasmic sensory overloads”; I say, to each his own.)

We can see that humans are hopelessly deluded.  It is not entirely their fault because their cognitive and reasoning abilities are so limited that they have no choice but to resort to flawed metaphysics.  Some even pray to god to deliver them from suffering and allow them to bypass the worst aspects of the “human condition.”  However, we all know that god is an all-inclusive, incomprehensible, and completely indifferent entity.  People’s prayers fall on ears that are not deaf but apathetic.  People, however, have no idea about any of this, guaranteeing us an eternity of fun at their expense.

Azazello

Azazello’s weekly column is a syndicated feature © Hella Cool Science, a division of Chthonic Press.  All rights reserved.  Steal from us, and we will swallow your soul.

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