There is something corrupt in this world, something repulsive, no matter how much we try to confine it to a particular corner or give it a name that lessens its weight. We may try to suppress it, but it breathes through people and events, and appears from time to time despite all attempts at concealment. It is enough for a person to examine some of the terrible experiences lived by others, particularly the experiences of prisoners and victims of violence and crime, to realize the magnitude of the horror that can hide behind the calm appearance we see in everyday life.
There is no end to descent, for the human being possesses an astonishing capacity for transgression: crimes, killing, blood, humiliation, defilement, corruption, and then behaves as though nothing had happened. We continually turn a blind eye and construct for ourselves a general narrative saying that the sun is beautiful, the weather is refreshing, and the world is proceeding normally, while things that cannot be imagined are taking place in its corners.
But the smell appears in the end.
No matter how much we try to suppress decay, it will find its way outward. And no matter how much we try to conceal corruption, it will manifest itself in one way or another. The evidence is that when a person moves away from the general narrative and looks into the corners of life that do not appear in the public scene, they will find something decayed almost everywhere: in states and governments, in markets, in schools of thought and sects, and in the various structures through which human beings organize their lives.
The problem is not always the crime itself, but rather the swamp that makes the crime possible. For it is the swamp that attracts insects. A person who is not affected by this swamp may appear to be living in a natural world, but in reality they are sitting on the margins; because any movement toward depth, and any attempt to examine things more deeply, reveals something concealed behind the lie and the narrative we attempt to believe.
This discourse may appear pessimistic, but in essence it is not pessimism so much as an attempt to look at reality as it is.
Take the body itself as an example. When a human being eats and drinks, the digestive process ends with waste remaining inside them for a period of time. The human being carries something decayed within, just as animals carry their waste with them. And if you delve deeply into anything, you will often find something unpleasant, something old and accumulated, corrupting the condition in which it exists.
For this reason, the ruling elites, or those who manage this swamp, are not necessarily separate from the decay we see; rather, those who manage the swamp may be even more decayed than it itself. Just as, when you dig a deep hole and approach a buried corpse, the smell becomes stronger as you approach its source, delving into the system ultimately reveals the source of the smell. The corpse is the source of the foul odor, and whoever manages the swamp is the source of the corruption and criminality from which those dreadful odors emanate.
Your not knowing something or not seeing it does not mean that it did not happen. You simply did not see it. And if you were to see the reality of what is happening, your view of many things would change automatically.
It is as though the entire world has become a sewage-disposal system. If you want evidence of this, look at the way human beings establish a sewage system in their homes: pipes carry out what they do not wish to retain toward the outside. It is as though the outside is the place where the things that a person does not want to smell or see are discarded.
For this reason, whoever wants to live in this world needs, in one way or another, to overlook things and turn a blind eye. A person with a strong sense of smell cannot easily live amid foul odors, and a person who possesses taste and sensitivity toward humiliation cannot perform many of the things that others perform ordinarily.
Most of the jobs and tasks practiced by human beings carry, to varying degrees, a form of humiliation. There may be occupations that, if offered to a person possessing sensitivity, taste, and a strong sense of dignity, they would be unable to perform regardless of the financial compensation. The matter here is not about money, salary, or reward; rather, it is the feeling that the work itself crushes something within the human being and humiliates their existence.
Nevertheless, we find most people doing almost everything. They work even in occupations that increase decay upon decay, because they have become accustomed to the swamp or have lost the ability to perceive its smell.
Here I arrive at the method of thinking that I have followed throughout. I did not build this idea upon a single principle and then attempt to prove it; rather, I thought about the thing and its opposite, and constructed something while attempting to criticize it at the same time. This method sometimes led me to conclusions that I did not originally want to reach. I could see certain points from afar and sense them, but I would turn away from them and avoid looking beyond them.
Then I continued to focus and delve deeper, until I began to approach the source of the decay I am speaking about.
The veil that conceals the truth can be regarded as a garbage bag placed over something so that we do not see it. And I will say this clearly: if the matter were commendable in itself, there would have been no need for all this veiling. The less commendable and the more ugly the thing is, the greater the need to cover it, until the veil itself becomes black like a garbage bag.
I did not want to believe that the matter reached this conclusion, for many considerations. Among them is that reaching it makes the matter definitive; once a person reaches this truth, there is little left to beautify or improve. Therefore, throughout history, human beings have attempted the impossible in order not to utter the definitive truth. They like to patch things up, justify them, reformulate them, and place another layer of interpretation over them.
And I did that as well.
I tried to cover, replace, improve, and patch. Whenever a flaw appeared, I would say that perhaps it could be repaired, perhaps it could be patched. I patched things by many means, tying them with wire, thread, glue, and whatever could be used to bind a broken thing. But after all these patches, I return to the same point:
The body.
The body is, in this perspective, the origin of the problem.
The body is what makes all these problems possible; and from it the question of injustice begins. How can a human being digest the fact that one person is born disabled, another weak, another considered ugly by people, and another ill throughout their life, while someone else is born healthy, strong, beautiful, and sound? There are those who hardly ever become ill throughout their lives, and there are those who spend their entire lives sick. How can this reality be digested and then one say that everything is just?
The human being must here begin to lie to themselves in order to continue. They must cover the bare truth, because there is injustice in the matter, whether we like it or not.
I am not speaking from a position in which I did not attempt justification. I spent a long time patching, interpreting, and attempting to improve the image. But I reached a conclusion that I consider clear: the body is a place of humiliation, and embodiment itself carries the meaning of humiliation, falling, and descent.
To understand this, we must return to the subject of sensation, feeling, taste, and smell. I tried to disable my sensitivity, to pretend that I neither smelled nor tasted nor felt, so that I could digest what I was seeing. But if a human being is transparent with themselves, they cannot ignore what they feel.
This feeling continued to crystallize within me for a long time. I would say: be patient, let us patch it once again; perhaps the matter will be repaired. But every patch led to another patch, until the patches themselves became larger than the thing itself. In the end, the truth remained before me: the body is a place of humiliation, of falling, and of descent.
Thus, simply by existing in this body, the human being becomes exposed to all the negative and harmful things, like industrial waste produced by the very process of existence.
What is even stranger is that the human being sees in the place where decay exists a source of life. Place a rotten fish on the road, and insects, spiders, reptiles, birds, and every creature capable of feeding upon it will come to it. It is as though lower life exists only upon the remains of another life.
We ourselves feed upon the remains of life: the remains of animal life, the remains of the life of a tree, the remains of remains of remains. We live from the waste of creation, and in turn produce new waste. In this sense, bodily existence becomes a very fitting expression of the environment in which we live.
If a human being is transparent with themselves, their bodily existence may appear to be a tremendous punishment. But this is felt only by one who has become capable of sensing, feeling, being conscious, perceiving, and reasoning about what human beings do and what surrounds them.
For this reason, I personally feel deeply embarrassed about getting up in the morning when I contemplate what I see in the world. Many human activities appear to me to be a clear form of humiliation. Systems, methodologies, governments, and political systems themselves appear to me, from this perspective, to be a great humiliation of the human being.
And the question that imposes itself is: When did all this begin? And when were we compelled to accept it? When did the one who considers himself superior become superior to us? And when did the one who thinks he rules for our sake come to rule us?
For me, the human system, and even the cosmic system as it appears to us, can seem like a great humiliation if we look at it from this perspective. I had kept this idea inside me for a long time, and I was afraid to say it, because it contains something of belittlement, trivialization, and harshness at the same time.
But a human being who possesses sensitivity cannot easily submit. Submission, kneeling, belittlement, and humiliation become repulsive matters to them.
I have seen, examined, and read, and I have repeatedly attempted to calm myself. I was told, directly or indirectly, to seek forgiveness and move beyond the matter. I did so for years. But seeking forgiveness, in this case, did not eliminate the question.
By what right is this one a king and that one a slave?
By what authority does this one become higher than that one?
By what criterion is one person's body healthy, while another works under conditions that destroy their body and bring illness upon them? Then someone comes along and attempts to justify all of this in the name of merit.
Here I see one of the most humiliating ideas as being the reversal of the entire matter, by saying that the person who possesses more deserves more, and that the one who serves them deserves their lower position. According to what? According to what merit?
If a person's merit is to possess wealth, why do they need safes, guards, and protection? And if wealth is truly their right, why are they afraid of it? If what they possess is naturally deserved by them, why do they need all these means to protect it?
The same applies to power. Whoever rises to power and arms their palace with weapons and guards knows, in one way or another, that their arrival was not merely the result of peaceful merit, but rather of struggle and conflict. If they were to sleep for a single day without protection, they might lose what they believe they deserve.
This places the idea of justice and merit under question.
We are told: There is justice, and there is equality of opportunity. But what equality of opportunity are we talking about? How can there be equality of opportunity between a disabled person and an able-bodied person? Between a strong person and a weak person? Between someone who possesses physical traits that make them socially desirable and someone who does not? And how can we speak of social justice while there are people excluded from the mating market because of their appearance, weakness, or circumstances?
Even relationships between males and females are not separate from strength, beauty, status, and physical, social, and biological characteristics. Then the discourse comes and tells the human being: develop yourself.
But what does that mean in the face of realities that the human being did not choose in the first place?
It is an attempt to cover an unjust reality with language that appears just.
I see no justice in a world in which one person is born with a short nose and another with a long nose, one sees well and another does not see well, one is strong and another weak, one is healthy and another ill. The world is a mixture, a hybrid, domesticated, and an organized chaos; it is not the clean image presented to us by social narratives.
And the language is almost the same in all fields: we have a program, we have a project, we have a plan, we will employ the unemployed, we will help the poor, we will achieve justice, we will provide equality of opportunity. Then the program becomes a means of obtaining votes, exercising control, or maintaining the system itself.
Here the discourse turns into a sword over the neck:
Will you pledge allegiance? Do you believe us? Do you believe what we say? If you do not, we may punish you, imprison you, expel you, deprive you of food, or do whatever we want to you.
In this case, a person's conviction becomes conditioned by the sword. And afterward it is said that people are convinced.
How can conviction be free while a sword is held over the neck?
Remove the sword first, and then see what remains of the conviction.
Much of what we call convictions may merely be the result of threat: pay or do not eat, obey or be expelled, comply or be imprisoned, submit or be killed. This is the policy of the killer, the thinking of the killer, and the world of the killer: either you live humiliated, or you are killed.
From this perspective, killing may sometimes appear less painful than keeping a human being in a state of continuous suffering, humiliation, and conditioning. For keeping a person alive while subjecting and humiliating them can be a form of slow killing.
Here the greater question emerges: Why do you want to condition me?
I am free, so why do you condition me?
By what right do you interfere in my affairs if I do not interfere in yours?
If my existence does not harm you, what gives you the right to subject me, exploit me, or compel me to speak, obey, and beg?
I do not want to endure humiliation in order to acquire the right to humiliate others. I do not want to become part of the swamp and then demand that others descend into it with me.
Because this is the plan in the end: the more humiliation a person endures, the more they are told that this grants them a higher entitlement to humiliate others. The victim becomes the executioner, and the one who suffered under the system becomes its defender as soon as they obtain a higher rank within it.
Thus, the swamp becomes an interconnected gang of exploitation. One kills for the sake of another, one steals for the sake of another, and one harms another in order to serve a third, with each person justifying their action in the name of the system, society, or necessity.
The philosophy of highway robbers is the simplest explanation of this image: blocking the path of others, robbing them, torturing them, humiliating them, and then giving all of that more elegant names.
The color, appearance, clothing, and titles of highway robbers may change, but the act remains the same if its essence is forcing a human being to choose between humiliation and death.
Then fools come to defend this structure in the name of society, telling the human being: if you want to benefit others, allow them to exploit you.
As though accepting exploitation has become a virtue.
As though submission has become evidence of morality.
As though a human being cannot be useful unless they accept being humiliated.
But what happens when we remove all these layers of names, ranks, ownership, classes, and administrative hierarchies? What remains?
The body and its needs remain.
I want to eat, I want to drink, I want to dress, I want to continue, I want to have sex and transmit my genes.
Here another deception appears: the body itself drives the human being to believe that they want immortality, whereas what actually happens is that the mechanism of the body seeks its own continuation through the transmission of genes. There is a form of immortality, but it is not necessarily your immortality. It is the continuation of the mechanism.
And the human being confuses the two.
The body wants continuation; it eats, drinks, and reproduces, and then builds enormous layers of illusions, competition, ranks, money, work, and status above these needs.
We work in order to eat, then we need a car in order to go to work, and we need money in order to buy food, and we work more in order to own the car, then we work more in order to buy other things, and in the end we return to the same point.
Food.
And reproduction.
Everything else may, to a large extent, be social attachments and deceptions.
We see people competing in work, salaries, and money, and an employee praises their superior in the hope of becoming a superior themselves. People praise one another so that they may obtain higher positions. Then they compete over cars, houses, and appearances, because each person is impressed by what the other possesses.
But what have we actually done?
One person's salary is greater than another's, not necessarily because they are more valuable, but perhaps because they possess certain administrative skills: they know how to lie more, how to market, how to falsify facts, how to deceive the customer, how to present a convincing image, and how to manage others.
As for the fundamental work, the work that actually preserves life, it is something much simpler.
We eat and drink.
And this is the fundamental work of the body.
As for much of what was added above it—ranks, degrees, positions, cars, advertisements, decorations, and titles—it has become a vast network that makes the human being believe that there is something magnificent behind it.
A person travels to discover the world, but they may be deceived by advertisements, decorations, the coloring of streets, and the images that present the world to them in an artificial manner. And if you remove all these layers, what remains?
People in all cities and countries search for food.
They eat.
They excrete waste.
And they reproduce.
This is the minimum upon which bodily life is based.
Everything else may be secondary attachments, regardless of how much they expand and regardless of how much human beings attempt to make them appear magnificent.
A person may sell an agricultural crop in order to buy a television, then sit before the television to watch the world, while the crop was originally part of their food.
And so the cycle continues: we work in order to eat, we eat in order to continue, we continue in order to reproduce, and then we build above this simple process a vast system of money, ranks, power, status, competition, advertisements, and illusions.
In the end, all of this may be nothing more than mutual deception among beings driven by bodily needs, who then convinced themselves that what they are doing is far greater than mere survival, nourishment, and reproduction.
And here the question returns once again:
If you remove all the names, all the ranks, all the appearances, all the protocols, all the slogans, all the discourses, all the veils, and all the patches, what remains?
The body remains.
And its needs remain.
And the swamp that arose around these needs remains.
Perhaps this is the very thing that human beings have tried throughout their history not to see: that much of their proclaimed greatness may be nothing more than enormous layers of fabrication built over a very simple mechanism, and that what we call system, justice, merit, advancement, and status may conceal behind them an ongoing struggle over food, the body, resources, and reproduction. Human beings then add beautiful names to all of this so that they can live with it without smelling its odor.
But the smell, no matter how much we cover it, will appear in the end.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment