#it could do with less anthropocentric hubris

[probablyasocialecologist]

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[vyctoyr]

Have you ever had a dream like this? I was taking an elevator Elevator of the most regular kind A heavy rectangular box Standing on its less stable side People were still approaching, yet I rushed closed the door I could almost hear their grump Of missing an almost empty hence supposedly enjoyable ride

As the door shuts in front of my face We started going down! Yes, down it went, though I distinctly remembered it’s some higher floors I’m destined to arrive It was an weird feeling Because the elevator seemed to be made of glass, that I could see what a beautiful, beautiful day it was out there The sunlight, people thronging and stuff I wanted to go up, all the way up To see this paradise from above

But instead it was going down!

It wasn’t going down without a struggle, no After a series of futile gestures, much like the heart beat of a dying man at his last five seconds The elevator made its attempts, nothing more than some upward bumps that really concern than promise After which down the shaft we went Sliding down as darkness closed up on me Blocking all fake illusions of such paradise Engulfing me, into the boundless, the everflowing

The elevator was made of glass Or at least some transparent material that granted me a vision However, it was also quite oppressive So it could also be just the regular kind: metal floor, metal ceiling, metal walls Heavy and impenetrable, surrounded me, along with my claustrophobic soul Wishing to escape, but confined permanently in a descending cage

Everything it’s just like Laure’s tunnel In fact I would argue that the very fact I have listened to that two-minute track of recitation is the only reason I was having this rather stupid dream I remembered closing my eyes, picturing what it would be like to spend seventy-two hours without talking And now, I’m living the dream, the nightmare, actually, to be precise Except for her, the tunnel wasn’t moving It was very much stable and in place Her darkness was also healing and would eventually lead to profound revelation Which granted her an extraordinary vision, calmness and catharsis From which she eventually was elevated

For me, there was only descent The perpetual motion that brought me closer to the core by the minute A perpetual nightmare from which no escape is granted While the young kamikaze pilot plummets to his death

An overwhelming panic overtook my entire body Naturally, I was terrified Being the only person on that damned elevator I experienced intense shock, anger, suffocation, agitation As if refusal would somehow magically resolve the doomed situation But only giving way to fatigue and resignation The only things that would last, forever

It was not like I saw nothing, no There was some lighting, though far from ample or warm So under such flickering light sufficient to ward of the swallowing darkness I thought of how bizarre it was, everything in the now upper world Where fairness is nothing more than a poorly fabricated fairytale What did I do to deserve this torture? Why am I the only one going down, at thankfully not a plummeting speed Into whatever god-forbidden crevice the shaft is lodged? How come that I ended up so miserably?

In fact how “unfair” is everything, I wondered? When some die almost immediately after taking their first breath fresh out of their mother’s womb, emanciated by malaria While others were born free and equal, on the land of democracy, destined to become the president who turned out to be a giant incompetent hoax and would fuck everybody in the ass Why do people think we’re getting more and more socialist, an absurd term in itself, when we are at a spot where everything is swamped with consumerism, when everything is more capitalist than we’ve ever seen? What is my place in this world? Do I have a place at all, or is everything just pure chance: the unbearable lightness of being!

After the most exhausting inquiry came a moment of repose Or again, of fatigue and of resignation, I should say My mind was going everywhere, as you can probably tell There wasn’t much to be done in such a pathetically small space I wondered whether it was what these orcas at sea world felt like

The thing was still going down Its motion is quite independent from my feeling Just like the rest of the world, never acting according to our will I thought about bigotry, hubris, and all kinds of blind confidence that are actually various kinds of arrogance as a result of anthropocentric thinking We are not the center of universe, and the universe, she doesn’t care!

It was in this descending box that I first tasted despair Or was it despair? I find it hard to recall What remained is more like the numbness of despair, or again, the fatigue and the resignation that ensued Which, oddly enough, tasted somewhat like hope and love All of them share some defining yet indistinguishable flavors

Yea, you’re right, hope and love were what it was Cuz what else was there to feel on that great spectrum of emotions? The elevator put me in perspective Sometimes the abolishment of false hopes is the only way to true ones One can only find love after the rejection of unctuous mimicry We need to accept what it is, and make the best out of it How pathetically ridiculous is it when some people try to defend their hollow positivism when Camus is the only one standing up agains the eternal lawlessness? How stupidly stubborn, those who turn their back on the suffering, just to protect the scientism and fragile religiosity of justice in which they seek solace? How incredibly selfish, and again, blindly arrogant, for anybody who could simply become this part of collective illusion and self-willing unconsciousness, just that they could feel better, and commit philosophical suicide? They don’t realize that their fabrication, while potent enough to intoxicate themselves, is the sole source of pain Again, the universe does not care

I could only hope, in the descending elevator That we see the world for what it is Just like the little prison that keeps going down Its motion never succumbing to any individual will Following Camus’ advocacy There’s a chance to revolution Or just to make it slightly better, just slightly better is all I’m asking The collapse of utopia, the memory still fresh, like it all happened yesterday

Suddenly, I sensed a radical change of course Instead of going downward, the elevator starts to move to the side Just when I thought it couldn’t get anymore surreal I found that I was finally able to zoom out, literally To see the fast-moving elevator on from afar Suddenly, I saw a city, just its buildings actually, as I’m moving at a frantic speed in a building too Turns out that I had been traveling in thin air The cityscape at night was not exactly beautiful But it was the first thing I had witnessed, after the fatigue and the resignation So without hesitation I basked in serenity Though I cannot forget

The elevator did not stop, nor did I expect it to Maybe it would stop at some point, maybe it would explode and destroy the entire city, killing every life bold enough to live there Maybe it simply wouldn’t stop till the end of the world Or was there an end or a world at all? Regardless, the elevator flies forward Somehow, I could still see everything from afar: the motion, the city, the blurring night sky, the lights in thousands of soulless, identical households, and the silent, colossal concrete structure in which the elevator careens fearlessly ahead Till it’s time for you to ask: what nonsensical nonsense is all this BS? To that I offer no answer, cuz I don’t want to, and I can’t: It was just a stupid and chimerical dream

Have you ever had a dream like this? I bet not, cuz you can’t

- Sep 2, 2020

Based on an old dream that was brought back by another horrifying dream I had at five o’clock in the morning.