Charcoal, 2020
My Name is Human
Mountains as dominant as nature herself push the boundaries of my little room. These books piled high were carved out of my unrelenting desire to know the truth.
I’ve traveled far and wide only to be left with even bigger questions than those I began with. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, going to school taught me how to listen and memorize but was always ineffective at calling for the true nature of learning, re-conceptualizing reality. The changes that occur within the psyche when the breadth of reality itself is warped, twisted, and crumbled can become electrical shocks vibrating throughout the brain. These shocks are shaped not out of pain, but out of the fabric of realization itself. And when the last shock fades, when you return to your calm self, reality has changed and you will never see it the same. That is when the new questions emerge.
This is a human experience school does not offer, for the structure of the institution is dependent on authority, an illusion it would never want you to shatter. That is why I left school for almost two years before starting college. I was determined to see the world for myself, to travel through the endless abyss of the cosmos with no restrictions on how and when I can think. These restrictions are cages imposed upon the self by teachers who are ultimately just as clueless about reality as you are.
Rather than going to college, I got a job so that I could save up money for future economic opportunities and then spent all of my free time engrossed in books so that every thousand pages culminated in another paradigm shift in the way I think. Every day, I spent anywhere between four to nine hours reading books ranging from linear algebra, to computer science, and to human history. These sessions would then commonly be followed by going into my five-p.m. busser shift at Outback Steakhouse. My job of cleaning and setting up the table after restaurant guests did not require me to talk to anyone, so I spent a lot of time in my head absorbing what I was learning.
During this time period the world surrounding consciousness began to transform. Humans talking in English became collectively functioning systems of cells engaging neuron circuits to choose the right vibrations to impose upon the atmosphere that will reach their target and enter complex data into that other brain. Reading a book became interpreting arbitrary opposing light data as entire edifices of meaning that could pierce the boundaries of my own awareness. Working at the restaurant became being a part of a network of human communication that served the sole purpose of getting humans to eat there. Driving became participating in the practice of using an engineering miracle, a feat of manipulating physics, to create an economic miracle, a feat of surrounding an individual with the resources they need and think they need to be satisfied in life. No matter where and what I looked at, the reality before me was being transformed with respect to a more scientifically accurate way of viewing it. Along with the emergence of these revelations came realizations of the illusions that had made up my reality, and in these realizations I became determined to tear down the illusions that might still lie before me so that I may get closer to the truth.
One day, while wiping down tables for guests and exploring the boundaries of my own consciousness, my physical being began to manifest some negative reaction, as if there was something to fear. Somewhere, something was pulsing below the Earth, and what was once a subtle rhythm in the background became thunder shattering the sky. Its lightning pierced my brain and I realized that the growing pulse was my heart crashing against my chest. As the blood cascaded throughout my body, my fingers began to tremble, and for a reason I could not understand they desired a surface to touch upon. Something, anything with any texture would be enough to calm the sudden storm.
“Are you okay?” My co-worker looked at me with genuine concern. “Your hands are shaking.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I pretended. Meanwhile I could feel my heart pounding harder and harder against my chest. Her question forced my mind’s attention on the fact that I did not understand why this was happening.
“You seem very anxious,” she said as she looked at me tenderly, her cute face wrought in curiosity. At this point I wanted to tell her what was going on, but I myself was incapable of understanding it.
“I am, but I don’t know why,” I replied, then went back to wiping down tables for guests.
These sudden episodes then became a regular occurrence plaguing my journey to understand the world. Weeks went on and on like this and I never understood why it was happening, I simply let the storm settle and moved on. But eventually I experienced an episode from which I have yet to recover, a moment I am still contending with by writing this.
My mind was still at day’s end. As I got out of the shower, turned off the lights, and went to bed, the Earth’s oceans flowed as steady as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, slowly rocking back and forth to the tune of the moon’s gravity. I could feel the night sky in the great beyond brimming with starlight from all over the milky way galaxy as I placed my back on the mattress. The walls around my bed became the coastline of my vision. As they rise up, they reach a point at which they close in with an inclined angle. That angle deepens until it has carved into the depth of my ceiling. As I looked up, that incline became the only distance between me and the abyss.
The scene was pitch black, with a lighter shade of black making out the shapes of my walls. Within that scene I saw the contents that make up our social “reality”. I saw the concepts of the law, the King, the president, currency, morality, time, family, friendship, jobs, education, and on and on, all fade away. They were diluted into the pitch black ocean before me, devoured by the fact that they are not absolute but objects, only imagined constructs.
I stared into that abyss but nothing stared back. I searched deep with the flame of my eyes for any source or reflection of light but the dark void remained. I listened intently, pouring all of my attention into sound, but the abyss produced none. I stuck my hand out into that wretched silent creature, maybe it would have some form or texture that I could grip. But no matter how much I forced my consciousness into my eyes, ears, or hands, the abyss gave no input. I looked up at the pitch black ocean before me, the life within me wanting nothing more than to believe that something of some significance lied beyond the black veil. I waited patiently for any form of data but the longer I waited the quieter it became, and in the deepening vacuum I became louder. Until the maddening silence drove my brain to rampantly and feebly attempt to fill the void. In the emptiness I searched and searched, looking for a logical explanation that could feed the flame of my existence. Across my own experiences I traveled, searching vigorously for something that could stand for meaning in the face of the abyss.
Then the abyss did something surprising. An infinitesimal
part of it took form in the shape of a droplet that permeated
the fabric of space-time. By the force of gravity, this droplet
accelerated and then collided onto my chest.
My body jolted back onto the mattress, a physical event which
the mattress reacted to by shattering into its trillions upon
trillions of constituent atoms. The atoms surrounded me in a
cloud, taking form in space much like the colorful nebulae that
give birth to stars. Within this nebula I entered a free fall with no
imminent end, only the infinite expanse of the abyss that was
devouring me.
The droplet settled into my chest, its black liquid making
its way through the space in between my atoms. It began
its journey by piercing my lungs, where it spread out in
the shape of the branches of a leafless tree, mutating the
color of each cell into a black and lifeless void. As the
black liquid engulfed more and more of my lungs it
became harder to breathe. The feeling of breath flowing
through the chest was being replaced by a vacuum within,
tightening everything around it and sending my body in a
panic.
Amongst the atoms surrounding me I searched for some form
of matter that I could hold onto. In desperation I waved my
hands around for any logical configuration of atoms that could
describe reality with a certainty that would return to me the
physical mattress that I could rest my soul on. I tried to grab at
the country I live in, at the restaurant I work at, at the language
I speak, at the money to my name, but as mere illusions and
arbitrary symbols they could not solidify in my hands, they
only drifted across my fingers like fluorescent gases in the
abyss.
The black liquid continued to spread and made its way to the
heart. It turned every instance of red and every other color
within me into that same devouring black, spreading across
my beating heart like a wildfire. By the force of the electrical
pulses of that so vital organ, the black liquid was channeled
through the arteries and its voyage across my body was
accelerated.
Eventually I saw a plethora of matter forming together,
like the birth of a red star, and it was made up of those
relationships that lie close to the door of my emotions.
It was made up by the significance in life felt by being
a good family member, a good friend, and even a good
stranger. Maybe pursuing happiness with those close to
me was the answer. So I reached my hand out to grab it,
but as my fingers wrapped around the forming heavenly
body it crumbled within moments, shedding its atoms
across space. Human relationships are not an experience
of absolute reality, they are an experience of sharing in
an illusory human world that contains its own illusory
meaning. And for that, its atoms could not survive in the
mouth of the abyss.
As my organs were increasingly morphed by the liquid, I was
being overtaken by a dreadful panic. My lungs felt as though
there were several tons crushing them, every breath was not
earned without an unrelenting force driven by the fear of death.
My heart sank, drowning in the black liquid, until the beat of
life within me approached the silence of the abyss. Then, as
every muscle in my body trembled fervently within the storm,
that wretched monster made its way into my brain through the
arteries, spreading outward and devouring the very neural
networks that make up my consciousness.
Frantically falling through the nebula, watching everything
I’ve ever known disintegrate before my eyes, there was only
one thing left for me to try to rest my existence upon. That
was the certainty that I exist, that I am a conscious being
endowed with free will. Before me, that brightly glowing blue
orb of a star lied and I so desperately reached out to hold
onto it for life. As I extended my arm a thought flashed through
my mind, that although I controlled my arms, legs, fingers,
and my entire muscular structure, I could not feel certain
that I controlled my thoughts. Realizing just how many of
them had been illusions forced me to lose trust in what
thoughts I believe are truly mine. In the midst of seeing
the absence of my own ego within many thoughts, I became
aware that many ideas appearing in my mind’s eye were
originating somewhere else, somewhere I didn’t exist.
And yet in the shattering panic I resolved to grab that
shining star. Then, at the instance at which my finger made
contact, it exploded in a supernova. I looked down and saw
that my own body was becoming a part of the nebula, the atoms
that made up my hands, arms, legs, and eventually my entire
body, were scattering across the aether. In the mouth of the
abyss, even my own ego, my concept of self, was exposed as
made up of illusions that lie in false and manipulated
memories. No matter how hard I searched, no sets of logical
atoms could weave together a significance to existence that
contained the certainty to survive the pitch black ocean that
drowned me.
The only option I had left was to forget. The only way to end the free fall, to calm the emotional storm, and to return the atomic cloud into a solid mattress, was to forget all about the illusionary walls within my brain and hence allow them to exist. Only then would I be able to sleep in the comfort of my bed.
To this day I relish in searching for the truth, but it has been a long time since that came without a fear rooted in the memory of my free fall. I cannot believe in the notion of a god or gods or in the sanctity of the words of any scripture for the required claim to certainty is one I cannot make. I cannot ascribe myself to be wholly devoted to a particular view of economics or politics for all I see is the uncertainty that any thought I may have must be accompanied by. I cannot even say that I fully understand myself without at least an infinitesimal neuron in the back of my mind seeing the lie. And yet, every night I must forget, I must allow the illusory walls to surround my vision so that I may sleep in the comfort of my bed.
That neurochemical reaction that forces me to accept the existence of the walls must, by virtue of me being a homo sapiens, be a result of millions of years of evolution. That conflict of interest between empirical analysis and the mind’s drive toward the comfort of an answer is a conflict between the rationalizing mind and the instinctive programming within our DNA.
This fundamental conflict drives many of the changes across human history. Societies are made up of the way that people within it think, the illusions their brains are wired to believe. Some may think polygamy is right by God, others may think monogamy is, but neither are empirically grounded in absolute reality. These illusions consist of many beliefs surrounding social functions, that may include the role of a government, the value of a tiny disc of gold, the value of a green piece of paper, the moral laws to abide by, the meaning of a configuration of letters, and the right to power. The ability of the human brain to occasionally see these concepts for their arbitrarity and imagine a new social reality is a driving force that turns the wheels of history. It has taken us from the Old Testament to the New Testament, from feudalism to capitalism, from divine right to democracy, and on and on throughout generations of homo sapiens.
I have spent a lot of time trying to find my place within this eternal battle, somewhere in between the truths about reality that can be divined with reason and the conclusions that my DNA is willing to accept. And forever will I remain contending with the abyss and the storm within me along with the rest of my species, damned to create truths without proofs. Is this what it means to be human?