Ground Bogo

The end of the world as I know it

It’s late. I’m at the back of some bus again, alone. I’m headed home, provided that I got the bus number correctly of course. It doesn’t matter anyway. Just take me somewhere else, I’m pretty tired. Yet another time when I curse the fact that personal teleportation devices are not invented yet. Just another random thought, lot’s of bullshit, here and there…hop, a fake monkey got on the bus, hop, an empty shell and a horse got off. Are we people, or are we the shadows of people, the hint of people, the suggestion of people…or maybe we are just animals. We are animals, and we are taken out of our habitat, and we are tortured by problems that were never meant to be ours in the first place. We are tortured by externally imposed issues: solitude, anger, frustration, depravity, isolation, an invasion of our fucking minds…Were we ever meant for all this? Possibly, but certainly not to the extent that we are currently subjected to.

We are just too safe! I can feel your internal argument and your anticipation to just leap at me and tell me that I’m wrong, but I would advise you to suppress that initial reaction and to think about where we started from and where we are. There was a point in time when humans and animals were on (sort of) an equal footing. Our lives were constantly endangered, every minute of every day. Our basic physiological requirements as well as our safety were not guaranteed. We found ourselves at the bottom of Maslow’s classification of needs, much like all other living things in this world.

We were not special, but perhaps we were never designed to be special. Perhaps we were meant to stay there, at the bottom of that pyramid. Down there is the secret to our exhaustion as species, to our prolonged lethargy. You were never meant to enter the state where you could allow your heart to stop beating like mad. You were never meant to be sleeping unless your purpose was to be asleep, taking a chance against the possibility that you would not wake up due to…whatever. You had no choice whether to be alive or not, because not being alive meant that you were dead.

Spark. I had to move my leg. I have no idea why, just like I have no idea what I am doing or why I am doing it more than half the time. It doesn’t really matter. My bus stop is coming close now. 5 minutes away and then…I have no idea, nothing’s really gonna change. You are still thinking about the ending to the previous stream, thinking whether I made some logical mistake. I usually don’t make logical mistakes. Not being alive doesn’t imply that you are dead…just look at me now, sitting on the bus. My existence is not questionable (well, technically it is, but let’s not go there, shall we), but my living status is. We are too safe. Society has given us the bottom two bases of the pyramid for free. This thing which so many had to pursue at the risk of their lives is now within your reach at zero cost. Please don’t get technical, the very fact that you are reading this means that we are on the same page, and you are nowhere near suffering any lack of air or food. So, basics are covered, and we have no problem. Wrong. The fact that our safety is ensured means that our minds turn to other, more complex problems, and become lenient to the more primal ones. Lack of food is a simple problem, even if you have no solution for it. Lack of self-esteem, though, takes ages to rectify, and this is only one of them. Try and juggle in all the other ones, and you have such a mess that it will make your head spin. And so it does, every single day. The top of the pyramid weighs on our shoulders every day and crushes us as living beings. Yes, it is what separates us from animals, but it is also what makes us miserable and ultimately leads to our demise because of the stress we put on it.

Take a fucking chance, you say? You are both right, and reinforcing my point at the same time, which is pretty awesome to be honest. You can, by choice, shake the foundations of your pyramid in order to try and battle some of the problems that the top bombards you with. People do it all the time, they blow off steam by participating in clearly dangerous and risky behavior, or they willingly do extreme things. However, it is the fact that you, by choice, have to enforce some risk into your life, that is the ultimate irony in this picture. Most of the time, returning to the basics and compromising your own safety is a choice made by you. This is almost as bourgeoisie as the extremely rich Russian oligarchs that use a week of their vacation and live like  hobos, or fuck it, even vegetarians! Perhaps you don’t realize it now, but only a person who has their food secured can be picky about what they eat. Presented with the lack of food, a vegetarian will eat beef, a Muslim will eat pork, and even I will probably eat them motherfucking cockroaches, even though I find that shit disgusting. So, back to the point, no, taking a risk yourself and being naturally in danger are two very different things, the second one occurring way too rarely these days. Our ascension to the top of Maslow’s pyramid is likely to lead to our demise…