Neil deGrasse Tyson’s catch-phrase bids us to, “Keep looking up.” On a planet that feels like it is losing its charm, if not its habitability, the heavens can occupy every waking moment of an intrigued and adventurous yet lowly mammal like the human. We’ve dozens of movies about meeting new life forms or books on the priorities of advanced civilizations. We dream of the technology that might have us existing in some form or another until we either answer every Ultimate Question or reach the end of the universe.
I understand that any and all anxiety that I ever feel is bred from ego. I get that, whether I like it or not, whether I want to be alive today or not, I’m built to be up my ass and keep it protected. Literally every day I can bring my perspective closer towards someone who has it dramatically worse, and my nervous system doesn’t care. I’m arrested by me. I go as far as my genes and my environment and a fledgling desire to believe in the veracity of my will in making choices.
It seems that in order to get along in this world, you have to learn to perpetually let go. You have to let go of your false friends. You have to let go of your poor language that divided them up as such. You have to let go of every naïve assumption that, even if it at some level seems to be keeping you alive or well-adjusted, is wrong and isn’t yours. This means letting go of every animal that’s gone extinct. It’s letting go of ideas that you can protect your health. It’s letting go of everything but the utter burden of your inured existence and experience.
Here’s the important part. You let go not because you should, but because you don’t matter.
Take this blog. Whether you conceive of it as a persuasive argument, an incoherent ramble in the dark, or something in between, whatever your response, it’s not because you should respond that way, it’s that it doesn’t matter. It exists in spite of you. It exists in spite of me. I can’t tell if it’s “good” or “bad.” I won’t know if I’ll like it years from now. The prevailing reason for its existence is because I couldn’t help myself. “My” thoughts, provoked by science fiction and an obsessive brain sought relief so I could go back to watching movies. It’s not that I should write this; it’s that it doesn’t matter.
The tendency is to always scream from our assholes though. You may like this, so you’ll press the button. You may hate it, and tell me to kill myself. Both are a struggle to matter in vain. Because whether I live or die, the words will still be there. Your reaction will have had nothing to do with “me” specifically, as much as it will speak to your poor conception of both me and you in the scheme of things.
Now, I know this liberation of your ego from any responsibility to the world around you is dealt with in different religions. Where they go wrong is in then suggesting what should be done. Giving it up to your god is just a roundabout way of protecting your fragile and naïve ego. In fact, every transfer of individual perspective to a “higher power” suffices as the same thing. Oh humble academic or middle manager whose hands have ever been tied! It’s not that you should spend an hour arguing about a discount code, it’s that neither of you matter.
The true irony of embodying this idea is that we’re angry getting exactly what we ask for. We’re finally getting to die and silence our egos from insisting we should be afraid and sad. Who wants to be 117? Let the cancer take me at 65. Who needs clean air? I’ve been smoking since I was 14. Who gives a shit about polar bears? There’s starving kids in Africa I didn’t give a shit about first. Who needs the oceans? I don’t even like to swim and fish is disgusting. Who needs books? Wait until you see this dude get totally pwned and you won’t believe what this cat did. Who needs elitist politicking and 5 dollar words? We get by just fine on our own.
Deep down we know we don’t matter, so our mass suicide is taking shape in the form of arbitrary violence and nonsense words. We don’t want to live, how could you expect us to believe in someone else’s “right” to? We have nothing to say, so who gives a shit if you end up in prison for using your voice? Oh you think you’re scared? Let me show you my advanced weaponry and rain hellfire down upon you. What to make of democracy? We don’t want to learn or make decisions, Heil Hitler 2! Again, this isn’t how things should go, it’s because it doesn’t matter.
You may want to invoke the children, but the children will die every day like the 107 billion people that have ever lived have died. We’re just a species who got a little too big for its habitat and ran up against its limits. Should you care for your children? If you’re being honest, that wasn’t really your concern before you brought them here. You were just the unlucky end of an unconscious biological imperative that mindlessly played on your fears and disposition. Then all sorts of cultural forces, sometimes literally, forced you to adopt the obligated language and time.
I wish I could tell you what to do, but it doesn’t matter. Donate, or don’t. Escape to the woods, or don’t. Watch television and play video games or climb mountains and pray. It doesn’t matter. Sooner than later you’ll get to shake off all the anxieties about the world you live in, because even if you can’t face it right now, it’ll catch up. Even if you think your plans mean shit, your humanitarian soul will reach just one person, your passion for some activity keeps you afloat, you don’t matter. The universe cares nothing about you. Your god couldn’t save if it switched to Geico.
I’m not saying you should believe anything I’ve said. It just doesn’t matter.
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