A Little More about That War You're In

See the hierarchies and domination swiftly forming and being undone all around you. If you don't see them, walk a couple feet.

Man puts pavement down. Grass breaks it up. Tree roots are frustrated. Can't you tell? Furtive little buggers pushing up like passive aggressive plant jerks steadily putting the stones out of place.

Branches spread, shading plants that might replace them. Elsewhere parent trees make it impossible for their children to grow around them.

Strong get viruses and die. Weak get eaten. Strong run too fast, fuck up, fall, unable to feed self. Go mad. Die. Strong finds place where she becomes weak. Slow and dumb moves to water; now he looks pretty damn strong.

Strong's only as strong as the last victory.

And nobody ends on a victory. All assured at least one fall.

Except institutions, but they're only theoretically immortal.

Nothing pure. All adulterated. Chaos contains within it order and organization, because people collude and collide and even for an hour we can forget we hate each other. Even for a moment, especially with a loose tongue, we can forget we love each other too. And order? HA. It's men playing God, and we come damn close. For a hundred years and more we can play musical chairs and trade faces keeping the same drabby antique alive but the fact is that it will fall, too. All of order possesses in it chaos, because you have subgroups. Individuals are the magic here. We're the mix, so all we make reflects it.

So when I talk about a state of nature, it's not to praise or damn anything. It's just that we ought not let ourselves think we're really so much more than growth and fallback, mold and worms, pavement and tree trunks, native bacteria bubbling in your belly, local staph that could overwhelm you if other organelles weren't so numerous or functional or strong. Even your body fights against itself. Muscles growing, pushing others out of alignment if you're not balanced in your activities.

See how even the individual is a multitude! An institution of changing staff and cells and further subparts, each of which have their own story, their own narrative, apart from what it forms with billions of others!

It's a motherfucking fractal, and you doubt that you are and will always be in a state of nature? Morals exist only in the mind! The fox with heartworms doesn't take time to argue Hobbes! War of all against all is not my opinion, folks. It is natural law. The existence of truces and alliance do not change that you are on a goddamned battlefield.