THE TRUTH WE CAN'T FACE ABOUT THE WORLD WE LIVE IN NOW

Fata Morgana, c. 1572. Giambologna

I’ll start with my own. The truth I don’t want to face. I don’t write much these days. Sorry about that. I try to. I can’t. It suffuses me with dread. I feel a lurching nauseousness, just thinking about…writing…yet another…fucking…paragraph…sentence…word…about…

I can’t face it. Word after word. Don’t waste your life like I did. What was it all for?

The world we live in now. It works like this. The “average person” is history’s greatest idiot. They’re unrivaled, unequalled, in the sheer monstrous colossal power of their staggering stupidity. And I know how that sounds. But I mean it. We’re not just living among mere idiots anymore. Our destinies are now controlled by people who’ve squandered everything that five, ten, millennia of human civilization offered them as a gift.

Science, art, literature, truth, justice, reason, democracy. All of it. This “average person” could care less about them. They spit on them every single day. They spit on you and me. They spit on human history itself. They’re unworthy of the inheritance they were left. I’d bet that they could name five influencers, billionaires, or celebrities, but not scientists, great books, or works of art. Fuck that, just five even bad books. This is where we are.

This “average person,” and I put that in quotes precisely to convey my utter scorn, lives a life like this at the moment. They might ever rail against AI and billionaires etcetera. But their lives are absolutely algorithmically controlled. Every last decision they make, from what to eat, to who to date, to where to go, is deterministic. They don’t make any choices. Algorithms make all the choices for them. And pretty soon, AI will handle this job of offering barely-living people a non-life, the clone of a life, the simulation of one, whatever you want to call it. Or they regret voting for some demagogue, or giving all the power in their lives to fascists, or turning their economies over to crooks, and on and on and on in an endless downwards fractal spiral of gut-churning nightmarish sheer stupidity.

Perhaps you see the paradox I’m trying to point out.

Or not. Does it matter? Nothing does anymore. You know it and I know it. But it’s not about them anymore. It’s about us.

You and I were the different ones. From the day we were born. We knew. We were put here to be scientists, artists, writers, thinkers, truth-tellers, journalists, poets, musicians. We were the ones bearing the gifts of this project called civilization to the others. And it was never easy for us to begin with. To be such things doesn’t come with great financial rewards, or fortunes, or even security. We devoted our lives to these endeavors precisely because it is what we were called to do.

And it’s what we were encouraged to do, too. By those who came before us. You see, these were noble pursuits. To be a scientist, a thinker, a writer, an artist, and so on. This was to mean something. To have lived a life in pursuit of a higher good.

But now we’re the useless ones. We mean less than nothing to a world like this. It hates us, even more than it hates itself. We represent everything that it despises, fears. We’re the demons it must exorcise. The ghosts in its machine. We’re the ones who wanted liberation for the rest.

The truth that we can’t face about the world now goes like this. The average person doesn’t want liberation. They do not want to be freed from the bondage of the systems and institutions which enslave and ensnare them. They may say they do, but their actions betray them at every turn. Hardly does much good to rail against billionaires and then be glued to your phone living an algorithmic life, does it?

And this leaves people like you and I in a terrible place. A place of nothingness. Our task, challenge, calling, purpose, was this. To enlighten. And I mean that in a profound and deep and beautiful way. To spark the divine light in the human soul, to create a supernova in human consciousness itself. This is what every masterpiece, whether it’s an equation, painting, song, or poem, does.

But the average person has done something terrible. Unforgivable. Unthinkable. They’ve turned down five millennia of enlightenment, and again, I mean that in a deep way, not a superficial one, not just “the enlightenment,” but the project of the expansion of human consciousness itself. Into a place of love, whose names are both holy and infinite, from mercy to grace to justice to beauty to truth to goodness.

The average person does not want any of that. They have chosen to make a demonic bargain, and I mean that, emphatically, in the sense of Thanatos, the death force, standing against, raping, destroying, ruining, tearing apart, Eros, the life force. These are the two great instincts in existence. And the average person, whoever this motherfucker is, this poor, deluded, weakling, is saying: I only want to hate. I only want something to fuck. I only want someone to kill.

I could care less about the light. The truth. The eternal message. The holy names. Fuck love, beauty, truth, goodness. Damn them, curse them, I spit on them. I piss on their graves. I will murder them and throw them into the ditch of my own fury and ignorance and greed and violence.

But won’t you go with them, too, my friend, we ask gently?

It’s become a genre all its own. The “people who regret voting for Trump and can’t quite believe what’s happening to them” kind of article, segment, whatever. LOL. Am I supposed to…what the fuck…are you fucking serious…have sympathy for people this stupid? Just fucking take a razor blade and cut my throat open. Let my blood pour into the soil and sanctify it with the sweet despair of a wasted life.

At least I tried.

I don’t regret wasting my life. That was my job. The fates took me in their arms and whispered to me: you are called. And no mortal soul can disobey their wish. I know that you’ve heard it, too, if you’re like me. A wasted life isn’t the worst thing in the world. You know what is? A fucking stupid one. One that was never really lived at all.

Where does this leave us? You see, we’re the last of our kind. There won’t be any more after us. Not for some time to come now. Scientists. Writers. Thinkers. Artists. Scholars. Poets. Musicians. Yes, there will be people who call themselves those things, in the same way that billionaires call themselves geniuses, LOL. And yes, there’ll be people who do those things. But those roles in society will no longer exist. They are already disappearing.

We often talk about the impending disappearance of the white collar class. It’s going to happen, and if that’s you, you’re fucked. You’ll never have an income, career, profession again. Sorry about that. Like I said, these pathetic idiots fucked us all. But the truth is that above and beyond lies the disappearance of the…I don’t know what to call it. The class or group of people that orient, guide, teach a civilization. Who to be, what to be, how to be, why to be.

Remember civilizational hyperspace, the space of all possible civilizations? It’s the thinkers, scientists, artists, writers, teachers, scholars, poets, musicians, and that’s not an exhaustive list, you get my drift, who pull a civilization forwards and upwards in this hyperspace. Who guide past local maxima and towards higher and higher peaks. Of human possibility, of prosperity, of discovery, of human consciousness itself.

We will not exist anymore. We are now entering a dark age. You know it and I know it. Maybe in a few generations, a few decades, all these things will make some kind of resurgence. Democracy, truth, justice, reason, science, art, etcetera, you know the list by now. But we will not exist anymore.

And we have to face that. This fire in this torch dies with us. It will die with us. It is dying with us. Think of the last dark age. The fire of human knowledge burned out, and only embers were kept alive, by the “barbarians,” in that case, Arab scholars, who retained antiquity’s lessons and manuscripts etcetera. What use do you think these dumb fucks are going to have for scientists over the next few decades? Smoke’s billowing into America from climate change, and Trump’s answer is…LOL…tariffs on China. You voted for him morons. What use do you think these motherfucking idiots are going to have for writers? They can barely read a sentence anymore anyways.

The fire dies with us.

In our future, there are no more of us. Scientists, artists, thinkers, scholars, etcetera. There are influencers, grifters, hustlers, people who love demagogues so much they’ll die for them, morons, idiots, self-immolators, people who don’t know what a book is, people who think a song is AI tokens strung together, people who'll give you a blank, baffled look if you tell them about something called a “poem” or a “theorem.” There are no more of us. The world has no use for us, because it’s decided that it doesn’t want to have a mind, soul, conscience. It just wants to feast on the blood and flesh of its own suicide.

How do we face that? I don’t know. I can’t. That’s why writing another word makes me feel nauseous. I know that I’ve wasted my life trying to teach the world why democracy, truth, reason, justice, decency, equality, etcetera matter. And that’s OK. There are worse ways to waste a life, like I said. What makes me feel soul-sick is that the fire will die with us. That the average person is really willing to throw it all away, all five, ten, millennia of the sum total of human knowledge, just to have someone to hate, something to fuck, someone to kill, just for violence, greed, rage, death.

And I don’t know how to bear that.

That’s the truth I can’t face. Maybe it’s the one you can’t face, either. I don’t know. I don’t think I have anything left to write about. Maybe I’ll write more about that. How long are people like you and me supposed to try and the rest of these motherfucking idiots that yes, things like democracy and science and art and and and…matter? For their own fucking sake, not ours?

The fates took me in their arms and whispered: my child, the night is an endless sea of stars. We put you here in the eternal name of love. And never must you betray it. I knelt, when I was just a boy, and accepted the curse.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)