existentialism – Penfluky

Condemned to live together!

A criticism of my early views that laws are a common compromise of people who can take responsibility for their acts: To explain this better, I’ll explain my early views on morality and human freedom. I believed that they don’t co-exist. A moral judgement is a judgement of an act. An act done by a human in any emotional state is done with a rush to do it. Is it justified then? No! Does it need to be judged? Of course! But why? Why do actions of other people bother us? Why should we even live together?

Humans are condemned to be free. There is no way out. Is there a common essence for all of us? No. Is there a common purpose? No. Can we have objective morals? No. But we have understood that we can survive if we lived in groups. And it worked. Thus, we built civilizations, kingdoms, states and now nations. Now, do we need objective rules that repress us?

We need to understand that there is no supernatural judgement waiting to judge our actions. If we have to survive better, living in groups is the better way. And for that, we do need rules that don’t destroy society. We need society alive and functioning. So regardless of our opinion towards it, there is a forced common goal for all of us. That is to maintain harmony to live together intending no harm. Thus, we need objective rules that will however cause repression, but it should be a common compromise. “Humans are condemned to live together”

These rules should be applied in the best interest of maintaining harmony. Anarchy is amazing? Of course, it is. Imagine being able to live your own life independently, governing yourselves. But humans are beasts in nature; like any other animal. We have tried to refuse our true nature for a long time now. We have to accept that we all are predators, hunters, killers and thieves. Given certain pressure, everyone can break the threshold and can commit any treacherous act just to survive. It is there in all of us. That is our true nature, the true essence — we are animals.

Rather than judging our true nature to be filthy from the fixed-moral perspective, we should accept it. We should embrace the fact that we are all by birth predators and contribute to the common goal of harmony voluntarily. If it’s a rule book of God that condemns us to act accordingly to the rules, it causes repression. If it’s a spiritual guide, it causes repression too. You are suppressing your true nature rather than embracing it.

End of the day, rules, morals and laws only exist to maintain harmony. Why don’t we all contribute to it voluntarily? Rather than being suppressed by an unknown or a third-party-source (government), we can do it on our own. And the only third-party judge, the law should indeed exist, even though it suppresses our true nature, it is the necessary suppression we need to balance the harmony.

It won’t work if we ask people to create morals themselves. We can not blame the irresponsible for not taking the responsibility of creating their values. Again, it is natural. We are the beasts that we need to tame. And the taming; not because of a holy purpose. Or a moral judgement of a good/bad. But just what needs for society to exist. There is no objective good/bad, but just accepted/not accepted. Killing is not bad, it is just not acceptable. It is still natural for humans to kill, but we don’t need it now if we want to exist together.

I had this view that people who took responsibility to create their own values to not harm the other have compromised to create laws to control the irresponsible. I saw it in two perspectives. One being an unselfish contribution to the society. That is, that the law exists because the irresponsible cannot create their own values. The other being, a selfish act to preserve oneself. That is, that the responsible understand that we need harmony and thus to protect themselves from the irresponsible they have created these rules.

On further introspection, that might sound true, but such is not the case. There exists some common and objectively accepted thing in all of us. That is the idea of living together. This idea is the agent that causes morals, laws and values. People who don’t have these ideas of harmony are called ‘anti-social’ or sociopaths. According to what is not-accepted (bad) by all of us (those who wish harmony), a sociopath is bad (not-accepted), because a sociopath destroys the fundamentals of living together.

What is objectively bad is that which does not value or disregards the balance of the society. What is objectively good is that which does add to or does not break the fundamentals of society, at least. Thus, even though objectivity is a human construct, that is much needed. And as ironic as it may sound, it takes a person who is individual and independent to form a better society — so independent that one’s growth does not even depend on the decline of other people.

Mama, What’s Happening?

He woke up to the smell of coconut oil. “Mama” he yelled in his sleep. His eyes are still shut but he feels irritated. He wants to sleep more but the coconut smell is irritating him. “Mama, stop” he yelled as he opened his eyes. There stood a beautiful lady who looked similar to his mother. But he doesn’t know who she is. He doesn’t understand what she is doing in his room with his mother’s looks and his mother’s oil. “Where is my mama?” he asked her. He feels invaded in his space. And he only wants to see his mother right when he wakes up. “Shhh” she patted his head. “Sleep, daddy,” the woman said as he went back into the slumber.

He woke up again and he was in a different room. His father was smoking a cigar, it was his study room. He walked up to his daddy. “Father, when did you come?” he asked eagerly. His father brushed the kid’s hair. “Right when you fell asleep on my desk, slugger” he tickled the kid in the tummy. The kid ran into the hallway screaming “Mamaa” and his mother answered from the garden. He rushed to the garden and he saw his mom plucking the weeds out of the bushes. “What is it Krishna?” she asks annoyed. “Mama, did you know papa is back?” he asked curiously. “Yes, I know my dear, why don’t you show papa your new toy you bought?” she brushed him away. Krishna rushed to his room and kept searching for his new toy.

After a lot of throwing the things around, he finally found the airplane toy that he was looking for. He held it in hands with pride and ran to his father’s study. He saw his mother weeping, a bit older than she was supposed to be, and holding his father’s hands. “Mama, what happened?” he asked as his mother pointed to Krishna and said “Why don’t you think about him?”. Krishna’s father stood from the chair “You can’t use him as defense every time, Sarala! He will be 21 this year!” he yelled. “Dad, I’m eleven” Krishna defends, but his voice came out rather coarse. He doesn’t understand how his voice is so coarse. He looked in the mirror that is beside him. And he had a moustache and a goatee. “But, I was just eleven a few moments ago” he said and turned back towards his parents.

His mother looked rather old, like she was 60 all of a sudden. “Mama, what’s happening?” he asked as she looked at him with despair in her eyes. “The dementors are coming” she said pointing to the window. Krishna moves to the window. He sees scary shadows filling his garden. He sees his own reflection in the windows and he is back 11 again. A dementor knocks on his window and he closes his eyes screaming loudly. He turns back screaming to see his mother and father quarrelling. “Mama there is a ghost outside” he shouts pointing at the window. “You are too old to be scared of imaginary things, Krishna” his father sighs. Krishna turns back to the window only to stare at his 21-year-old’s reflection.

He turns back to his father and is taken back looking at a black coffin and his old mother sitting beside. “What happened, mama?” he asked, trembling with fear. Random people in army uniforms entered the room and covered the coffin with a flag. The soldiers stood in a line in the room and they shot their guns in the air to pay respects to Krishna’s father. Krishna worried about the roof and looked above. It was blue sky and he turned down to realise that he had mud under his feet. He was standing in his garden where the rites of his father are taking place. The soldiers were going away and he followed them. “Don’t Krishna”, his mother yelled. But something pulled him with the soldiers. The soldiers rallied outside their gate and it was mayhem out there.

The planes were bombing around and the soldiers were camping, unloading guns from the crates. “Here” a soldier threw a rifle at Krishna. Krishna caught the rifle and took cover. “Charge!” the major yelled. “But, I’m just 21,” Complained Krishna. “You are 32 now, Captain Krishna” a soldier patted his back. “Krishna” his mother called him from behind. Krishna turned back and his mother was standing at the gate, and he ran to his mother and hugged her tight. His arms wrapped her legs. She lifted him up and threw him in the air and caught him again. “Coochie Coochie” Sarala chuckled and kissed Krishna on his cheek. His father, rather young, took Krishna into his hands and pointed towards the flag. “That’s the nation you will serve after me, Son” he said.

But the flag started turning black, like there is a black fire on the flag. The flag started vanishing into nothingness. “It is not fire” Baby Krishna yelled to his father. “Krishna” his mother called him from behind and he turned back. “The dementors, Krishna!” she screamed as she caught black fire on her. Krishna started running towards her but his knees started aching. His voice started trembling. He kept running towards her as she kept burning in the black fire. “Daddy” a voice called Krishna from behind. He turned back to see a young lady resembling his mother. “Daddy, let’s go” she yelled at Krishna. “My mother, she is being taken away into the void. I need to save her” Krishna yelled.

“Don’t embarrass me in front of my friends, papa” she shouted angrily. There were a lot of kids laughing at Krishna standing beside his daughter. “Why are you laughing at me? My mother is going into the void, everything is going into the void!” he yells. “Papa!” the lady yelled. “You are not my daughter, I’m still eleven, how can I have a daughter” he yelled at her as he fell down. The lady came running and lifted Krishna. Krishna felt a piercing pain in his knees. In her eyes he saw his own reflection. His wrinkled skin and shaking face. He couldn’t accept it, he screamed hard. He stood up and started running. His body turned into an eleven-year-old boy. His daughter and her friends kept chasing him but they are old, they are twenty somethings. Can they outrun an eleven-year-old boy?

Krishna ran on the streets and entered into a building he found familiar. His old mother sat on the couch when he entered the door. “I was waiting for you, Krishna,” his mother opened her arms. Krishna hugged her tight. “Stay here, with me” mother said embracing him proudly. He felt as if the hug was squeezing him. Soon he feels choked. “Mama, leave me alone” he yelled and frees himself from her. There was a gigantic thud and he rushed to the window. The world is filled with dementors. They are putting up the black fire. And the black fire is sucking everything. “Mama, what is happening?” he yells. “They are eating your memories, Krishna! Please stay with me, I can’t move. Stay with me and accept the void” his mother opened her arms again.

But the ghastly creatures have bashed the door open. They sucked his mother into the void and pounced upon Krishna. They started sucking the life out of him. And they took breaks for each inhalation. And with each inhalation, they took things into the void. Krishna was holding the carpet hard, he doesn’t want to go to the void. The dementor inhaled him. But he was strong. With first inhalation, Krishna turned 15 and his eleven year old self went into the void. With the second inhalation, the 15 year old went in and Krishna turned 21. “No, Please. I want to remain young! I belong here!” Krishna yelled as his 21 year old got sucked in too. They kept on sucking the life out of Krishna till he turned 83. There was nothing left anymore. They sucked everything in the room.

They began with sucking the wallpaper. As they suck, there appears a black fire around the objects and the objects go into the void. The wallpaper went into the void and turned white. The inhalations of dementors grew and the room looked like a hospital room. And after everything went into the void, the coconut smell, it still exists. He couldn’t open his eyes anymore, he hadn’t got the power to keep them open. He closed his eyes as his daughter stood by him crying touching his forehead. “Stay, Daddy” she said. He overheard someone talking, maybe her husband. He closed his eyes, his hearing was going weak, sucked into the void. “Dementia, Dude.. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s for a long time. It doesn’t look like he is going to make it” he heard it faintly and he couldn’t hear anything anymore. And there was nothing, the void!

Nausea of Jean-Paul Sartre

I have been reading this book, nausea, for quite a long time. No matter how short this book is, don’t fall for the less number of pages, it is a lot of content that exhausts an average mind. When I began this book, I read 85 pages in a single go. But then, I didn’t dare touch it for two months. It is not that I didn’t want to open the book; there was never a moment that I didn’t think about it.

Everything I look reminds of “nausea”. The way Jean-Paul Satre wrote the book, he takes time to explain everything around the character. The character hits an existential crisis and begins to observe everything around him keenly. He begins to explain everything to us in a detailed manner. We are reading his journal, the pages left from his diary. His name is Antoine Roquentin, and his dairy explains all his thoughts and feelings about everything.

There is a page where Antoine explains how he felt anxious when he thought about his existence. He keeps reminding himself that he exists. And he keeps repeating “I think therefore I exist” in his mind numerous times and at the end, says, “I think therefore I am moustache” and loses it! He begins to question everything since he picks up a rock to skip it in a river; begins to question the essence of stone, and since then, he asks the nature of everything.

He begins to contemplate people, their actions, lifestyles; doesn’t see meaning in doing whatever it is. And he questions everything in a rather radical manner by drowning in absurd imaginations. Jean-Paul Sartre has carefully written the thoughts of Antoin in a way that while reading the pages that consist of anxious thoughts, we feel nervous too. I found myself observing everything in a more detailed manner and started describing things around me after reading 85 pages in a single go. I’m like Antoin too, and this book acted like the rock for him in his story.

Ever since I have read those pages, I became sensitive to smell. I began keen on observing the smells of everything. I even had a vomiting sensation, literal Nausea after sniffing certain smells. All the world is smells, visuals, audio, touch and taste. And there is nothing more to it; I feared reading this book any more. I needed time to continue reading this gem. And I have overloaded myself with it. After this overdose, something continued its journey with me—the meaning of this particular book.

Even though I have more 80 pages to read, I somehow knew where he was leading with the rest of the book. The effect that the 85 pages have done to my mind, I had the thoughts of Antoin for next 80 pages. I understood Antoin, and I suffered from similar views. I knew where Jean-Paul would lead me next. And I had existential crisis myself at the age of 19, and it was four years ago on 21st September that I first this ‘nausea’ that Sartre calls.

This Nausea bothered me, and I had cried multiple nights because I didn’t know anything anymore. Everything seemed false because nothing had any meaning. I don’t know if this is how it feels for everyone, but the way Sartre had written it down, I could relate to it. I resumed reading the remaining pages to see if I was right and yes, I was. And I predicted right, and it went over like I thought it would. But it was more beautiful than the first half of the book. He did not just raise multiple existential questions; he tried to resolve it.

Even though the resolution is not correctly baked, even Sartre knows that. He didn’t claim to have answers for the problems. Instead, he ended with a note of temporary patches that Antoin would do to avoid Nausea. It is a significant literary work as its style is new, post-modern and unique. Not only for its academic brilliance, but it is also philosophically sound. Unlike other books which claim to be resolutions of your life and offer fake solutions through influence, Nausea is pretty much straight forward and asks you questions. It is up to you to resolve those questions, or you can choose to embrace them.

Delusion of free life.

How free are you? Free enough to piss on any road we want. But free enough to get away to someplace and spend some time alone? If we are rich, we have to make sure we stay rich, and if we are not, then we should make sure to get rich. The delusion is to get rich so that one can achieve a stature where they can finally be free. But looking it from an outsiders perspective, it is a circle. We begin at some point, dreaming of an endpoint, but it never ends. The quest of life is to finally be free, but when?

If we look at this circle of the chase of life, we can call it a spiral. We begin at some point, and we realise we are not free, we understand that we have to run in the line to be free finally and reach our destination, but that point never comes. If the starting point is ‘existence’ and the endpoint is ‘death’, all that happens in between is a spiral. It is never a straight line; it is always a loop! We chase money instead of an object.

No matter how evil that may sound, we all are material beings. It is material that we desire. We work, or we put some labour to gain some fruit. But the fruit of our labour is snatched away from us, and we get a paper called money. The concept is to exchange this paper to buy some material that brings us joy. But our desire to work has not become some object, but our passion is on the very paper, money!

We have begun to buy objects not to satisfy our needs and feel joyous but to live up to the standards of everyone around us. There is nothing wrong with buying what you love. If your target is to enjoy a holiday in GOA and you have worked six months to earn enough money to do that, do that! People make you guilty for buying something for yourself. But there is nothing wrong in purchasing a fleshlight for yourself if you want it.

But if you buy a car just because you have to buy it to create a social identity, you are lost in the spiral of forever chase and EMI! EMI is not dividing your money into specific months; it is dividing your labour too. In the delusion of buying anything you want, you choose EMI. And when you realise that you are drowned in debts, it is too late. It eats your entire salary and salary is not a gift, it is a fruit of your labour!

The only way to be a hacker in this spiral life is to use the money to do what you want. Buy whatever you want. Save just enough for you to live till you get the next job if you are fired, or you left. Utilise the gaps in jobs. Go freelancing if you want and enjoy your own life in the way you want. You have a choice right in front of you. You can either delude yourself in this meaningless existence that you are going to be free some day.
Or you can start living your life in the way you want and embracing the nothingness!

I Exist in a dog’s mouth

I was sitting in a cafe, sipping a cold drink. The drink passed in my throat, I can feel it going down my throat and falling into my belly. Right when it hit the bottom of my stomach, I couldn’t feel it anymore. This thought struck my mind, and it made e forget that I’m sitting in a cafe. I was lost in my thoughts. This drink, when mixed with all the half-digested junk in my tummy, becomes something else. It isn’t the soda that I drank anymore. It’s some dude’s half-digested stomach acid. So, the soda doesn’t exist now. It existed a while ago till it was in the throat. But now, it doesn’t, and you can’t turn me upside down and get it back. If you try that, you might get that semi-digested white puke that is not the soda anymore.

So, is this what happens to me? What A I? I’m a skeletal structure, and above that, a muscular one fit with all the organs in a way that I have consciousness. I’m me, till I am conscious. So, if I’m not conscious, aware and awake, am I non-existent? I lost in dreaming about ‘nothing’. I could see something black everywhere. But I know that ‘nothing’ would not be black, because black is something, for it to be nothing, I have to imagine a blank space. I realised that it is humanly impossible to imagine nothingness as we have something or the other to always think about. We can not really think nothing like those meditation fantasisers claim. The close one to nothing that I could think was everything!

I imagined everything instead of nothing but excluded me out of the picture; I imagined the world as it is, full of splendour and horror. And I imaged the dog sniffing in garbage and perverts sniffing thrown panties. The world is the same, the mixture of every opinion it contains. Just one difference; I don’t exist anymore. This thought struck me from the back like an ice pick with full of snow on it. I felt breathless like, Jean-Paul Sartre; nausea. Nothing mattered anymore. I can see my reflection in the empty bottle on the table in front of me. It exists, it is a plastic bottle designed to contain a liquid that people consume; It has a purpose that’s solved, and I trash it. And it goes into the dump and from there it recycles. It’s molten and becomes some other product, or ironically the same bottle again.

But this one, this new transformation is different from the older bottle. Even though it is the same bottle, it is different. It is not the old bottle now, it changed. As per our understanding, its existence has not ceased but transformed into something else or the same thing again. But it is not exact, it is different. Maybe there was an imperfection in the bottle somewhere, perhaps it had an extra plastic layer on it, but it has some new flaws now. It is not the same bottle even if it looks like it. This made me realised how objectified are religious people. Maybe they don’t voluntarily do that, but they compare themselves with objects. They think like this bottle even they are made by some external being, filled with some purpose, and after the fulfilment of that purpose they believe they are re-used.

I think I know how they came to this conclusion. The religious people are just like me, just like how I felt about this soda bottle, they thought about it too, looking at the mirror. They compare themselves with the things that they see because these things are what immediate to our sense and intellect. We can see them, think them. But we can’t think about what is not there. We can’t think about the things that happened before us that connect to us. We don’t know what our parents were thinking about before conceiving us. Or we don’t know what happens in the baby-making factory of God. We don’t even know if God is a dude or an animal. What we speak about or think about God or anything that we haven’t seen by comparing it with things that we have seen and try to make it sense.

But we haven’t seen them, we are not capable of thinking about something before or after our existence. But I have successfully done that. I have thought about the world where I don’t exist. I ceased to exist. I’m lying in the ground, six feet under. Years have passed, and my descendants don’t even know that it is me that brought them into existence. The graveyard has been destroyed, and now the land is a real-estate venture. The tractors moved the soil. My fragile bones broke because of the pressure, and now they got jumbled; My favourite face, the beautiful face that I apply moisturiser every day is now a skull with no features half-cracked inside the ground. And my flesh in the tummies of maggots long back now. My energy drained in the soil went into the roots of a plant. It sucked me with its rots from the humus. And my jaw, my beautiful jaw broken because of the soil-digging, has now surfaced. My jawless skeleton lay underground.

This spectacular jaw attracted the skinny stray dog. It found a play toy in this calcium deposit that I once wielded a majestic beard; It held the jaw in its mouth and ran all over the venture. And It played with my jaw, and the tooth that was stuck on it fell on the ground. My sharp-canine got into a car tyre, made it flat. This angry driver threw my tooth out of this tyre on the filth beside the road. I exist! I exist in the plant’s body, I exist in the maggots that have eaten me, I exist in the dog’s mouth and car’s tyre. But it is not me, it was me, but not me now. Now it is a mere veil that had held me like the empty bottle with no soda. My muscles, my organs, my brain and my functions and my user-interface, the mind, they don’t exist. I transform into a plant, my cells live.

I existed even before I was born, like the stardust. We all don’t cease to exist, we transform. And we change from a being sitting in a cafe sipping a cold drink to dog’s play-bone and a maggot’s midday meal. We are eternal. It is just our consciousness that is not. It is a limited offer which is a result of evolution by natural selection. The cell in evolution had thought it’s best if this ape gets consciousness. Thus, the mind, and existence of consciousness. And here I exist. As a memory in the mind of myself writing this in the future after my cafe episode. Then the regular diversion have started. I have crossed all these thoughts off my brain; I wanted to close my eyes for a while and when I open it, I don’t want to picture my death anymore. And I want to delude myself into believing that I have a purpose like that plastic bottle.

I have lot of things to do, it is time to work, I thought. I stood-up walked away and looked all these people in the cafe, not knowing what happens to them after dying. They think they will transport to heaven or some think they stop existing. No, they exist, in a different form. A form that we don’t want to imagine. We turn in to the half-digested juice of this world’s other beings. But no, why should we think about it, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just look at that toe massager, dream of buying it. Let’s chase a paper print called money. Because I think any diversion is better than thinking about this. Or maybe we can embrace it, by calling it a random event that we had no say.

Our purpose, or to be precise, the purpose for us to have consciousness is to make these cells replicate and live long. Thus our purpose ends as other beings in the world use our energy, cells and etc. Hence our purpose solves. We transform! We exist, not same, but different!

Waste of sperm!

By the – Übermensch

It was 23 years ago when that one sperm hit that one egg and a fusion of 23 x 23 chromosomes that had fertilised me. The journey was unbelievably painful. The questions I had in mind were always unanswerable. I remember asking why women have holes and men have poles. I remember asking where does god live and how come he’s able to see and be everywhere—the answers to those questions that I did get, but the satisfaction I did not. But I did nod, I did pretend like I found closure. Because all around me, every one of my age was satisfied with the answers, they were told. These unanswered questions started bulking up in the warehouse of my mind. Soon the storage was filled, and I had to let go of some. To do that, I had to accept a few norms and let the questions be unanswered forever, like the origin of the universe, I just left the scientists to fill it.

As far as I know, just like me being born in a stream of million sperm, the universe was created by accident. That’s how random this universe is. The things that occur; occur randomly, and it is us who give them meaning. We somehow hate random things is what I had answered for the question of why we want to believe in god. Because we hate our existence to be meaningless and a co-incidence; we created a creator who had then created a destiny for us. We want to believe it so hard because, without it, we are nothing. But after the thought of the possibility of creating the creator, can I ever force myself to believe something fictional to be true? No, I can’t go back! And that had made me the black sheep!

I was curious to know how I became me and not an ape! How am I a human? How did my ancestors evolve? While the people of my age were busy watching and playing sports. I hated the very notion of hitting a rubber ball with a wooden bat and then people running to catch it and the guy with wood in his hand running. I never wanted to afford such leisure. What a waste of time? I could find answers, meanwhile! But then, why are people tend to afford such leisures? I had a new question. It took ages for me to figure out that it was a way of passing the time. Leisures exist to pass the time without thinking about factual things. Like why a round ball rolls and why not a square piece? It took me a thousand questions to realise that I should not close the questions to invite new questions. I should upgrade the warehouse! I should broaden the range and encourage more new questions. That was the moment I started being a critic of everything life throws at me. I see a puzzle in everything. Why did my girlfriend happen to be my girlfriend? If I had a different set of clothing, with a taste of what she repels, would she still be? Isn’t that random? If a thing as small as it can be is changed, maybe Hitler would end up being a great artist, we would have his works in our galleries. The chaos is what exists. There is no pattern in anything. We think we have everything in control, but no. It is just like destiny, but the idea of predestination is false. Our fate is not predetermined. Instead, it always remains unpredictable, depending on random interlinked events.

With that worm of thought, can I live among the flock that is not concerned about eating the worm? I see emotions as pretend, a user-interface. They are beautiful and uncontrollable; I can’t control my tears at the climax of Interstellar. I can’t help falling in love with things and people I find lovely. It’s up to my body chemistry to react upon them, to give my character depth, and that makes me human. Can I be normal when I’m voluntarily leaving a few things for my irrational part of the brain to run its course? Like when I made my first film! It rained that day when it was screened in our school. It rained because some drainage got evaporated? I could have crossed it off for precipitation, but I let my irrational mind to run its course. I gave it a meaning, knowingly that it is false. I took it as a cosmic gift; an appreciation. It is fun to think like that. When you are happy, everything looks happy; you begin to notice lotuses in the swamp.

It is not superior, neither is it inferior to have these endless questions and my eternal struggle to answer them. I happened to be this way because of the random events that had occurred around me. Had I not studied the origin of species, I would have concluded that a creator made us. It just happened! All the events; tragic and beautiful had made me what I’m, and made me this annoyingly questioning-everything-being! All world: the system and the pursuit of happiness seems a deception for me—a deviation from the chase of finding answers. Or a mere mask to cover the chaos.

I see my parents not as completely-figured-out people, but just as people; just like me. They are growing with me, and I’m just a few decades slow in progress. Other than that, we are equals, we are only human. The system we built is like a hamster’s wheel. The system that encourages us to “settle down” is a pretend, for me. It means no value. These emotions, my choices, my love and my dreams are all ties that I have which keeps me running in the wheel. After all this understanding, I still choose to keep running rather than chewing this cage off. But for you, it’s a dream, an endless path you chase. For me, it’s a wall with no way. But I’m tied, and I fear to sever the ties. These emotional ties are the only warm embrace that gives me a purpose. They fill my void. I can choose to sever them and explore what lies beneath the cage. But I’m afraid that I will find nothing because of the knowledge that I have of the chaos. And my last refuge and comfort lie within the ties!

Knowing that it is endless, I choose to run in the wheel!

Chasing nothing, just giving my comrades a company in their chase.

I’m running holding hands of the people who believe in the chase.

I’m guiding them towards their closure which I know doesn’t exist.

In this world that doesn’t entertain me, What I am but a wasted sperm?

The call for chaos! – Anarchism as a civilized ideology!

By – Manoj Sri Harsha

The word Anarchy derives from the Greek words ‘an’ and ‘arkhos’, meaning ‘without a leader/ruler’. The word Anarchy is frequently abused, and the abuse is evident throughout the history of rulers and governments. It’s looked upon as chaos! A state with no rulers, no law and order are usually called Anarchy. But that’s not what it is! Anarchy doesn’t mean the absence of law; it just means the absence of a ruler.

Anarchism as an ideology is that we don’t need an authority to govern over us. It is the recognition of each individual’s right to govern themselves without having any masters over them. Law exists in Anarchy, and the judicial system exists; it’s just the government that is being opposed by the anarchists. Most of the philosophers since the 20th century have reached a point where it’s now clear that humans can’t be generalised. The essence of one human cannot be the essence of the other. Each human has their own essence created through experience and intuition. One cannot give a set of rules or morals that will be universally accepted by everyone equally. The idea that a group of people can have the same opinions is just a myth. Every one of us differ in perception. Then what’s the point of having the same rules and same rulers?

One might hate marriage, and one might hate the idea of pre-marital sex, can you collectively pass a moral upon them satisfying both of them? Given a thought, why should you meet them if your ideology differs from both of them? Maybe you are celibate! It’s almost a fact that no one agrees. We are different! And that’s precisely where socialism and even democracy fail. In a democracy, only the person elected by the majority of people is a leader of all the people. Then how is democracy respecting the opinion of others who voted for someone else? It’s erroneous!

But if someone tells you that Anarchism is the resolution, it is not! But it is the utopia we can imagine. It is something we can consider to create a society. Socialism failed to be a society, but without socialism, we would never have many of the human rights and worker rights. Similarly, Anarchism if established, it assumes all the people to be aware of their freedom and create their own set of morals and live individually without causing any harm to the lives of others. It’s naive to assume that everyone will be willing to create their own morals. It’s also too dumb to believe there won’t be any crime and people will behave responsibly. We have come too far and have already complicated our lives. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre calls the people who use religious and other excuses for not creating their own morals as “Bastards!”. But in reality, we do surrender ourselves to ideologies and religions and use them as excuses for not being moral. We can’t presume everyone to be accountable for themselves. Hence, the requirement of law and order is even more significant in an anarchist society.

Our history tells us how societies were formed and then rebelled against, destroyed, and upon the graveyard of dead civilisations, rose new rule. Monarchy failed, imperialism failed, socialism failed, and now democracy is at its verge of being a total disaster. All the systems that failed were because of a rebellion by people that got suppressed. Democracy too, is containing the rights and opinions of people. Foundation of democracy is to generalise some ideology followed by the majority of its people. Suppressing natural drives of humans has never been a good idea. Generalising morals suppress the very natural instincts of humans and make them feel squeezed in a tight box. Now we don’t need new pillars on the broken foundation called democracy. We need no pillars at all! They are proven to be fallible however! The fundamental human nature, chaos is what we need. All these years and sometimes we wonder we were better in a cave with no consciousness. But we are conscious, evolved, and civilised! We can still be owners of ourselves and be moral, accountable and responsible for our lives.

Democracy has never been a people’s rule. Who have we been ruling? Our dogs and cats? Not even them! Democracy is a bitter gourd that has heavily been sugar-coated. The reek of this failed social construct calls for chaos!