Qualification, That War You're In

Nobody needs to remind me that life is as much about compromise and collaboration as it is about conflict and competition.

You see animals helping each other, or at least not fucking with each other, all the time in the woods. And the notion that social animals learn true assistance from humans keeping them in cages is absurd. Let me put it this way: every time a mother gorilla doesn't eat her baby in a zoo, I figure that as a triumph of compassion and decency (albeit motivated by selfishness) in a cruel world.

This is a war of all against all. It can also be a struggle among all, and some of the way we cope is to collaborate, to communicate, to trust.

Just because we're on a field with no rules doesn't mean we set rules.

Just because the universe doesn't care doesn't mean we can't.

I can talk about morality, just don't talk about it without an unspoken or spoken "my." Because that's all there is. Personal morality.

And if you think that anarchy's going to bring about a goddamned Ewok celebration, you're a fucking idiot. Plain and simple.

I'm not saying it couldn't bring about far more peace. It may. My concern is freedom. My concern is bringing things back within our control, to the extent you can ever control anything in your own life. If it is peaceful, so be it. But when I talk about devolution and home rule, I prepare for the dark side, because promising anything better is a fucking sales pitch unless you can tell me how we make things free and peaceful. "People are basically good, so..." BULLSHIT! People are basically animals! That's not an insult. It's a moral neutral. But I don't go expecting a wolf to respect my imaginary rights. And I don't expect other people to unless they have a reason.

Life is suffering, but there's no escape from samsara. Life is anarchic and chaotic but the Leviathan doesn't cure a goddamned bit of it. This is what there is. Anybody who thinks the rebellion ends in song and peace for a thousand years is a fucking moral criminal for ignoring the role of the imperial citizen in creating the nightmare in the first place.

Wait--you don't think this tyranny fell from the sky, did you? Well, I'm no dualist, as I've recently said, so maybe that's why I can see the utility even in empire and I see soot smudging the surface of the beautiful white utopia some like to imagine. And I think people do a hell of a lot to maintain the suffering they, from time to time, dare to critique and foreign and other and alien. That's just self-serving moral distance, and that's not a problem with the external political landscape. It's a problem with psyche and personal style.