Dare to Dwell

"Chronic remorse... is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.... Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behaviour. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth-- all this is surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to rewrite the book-- and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else." ~Huxley

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Part 1: The World is Biology

First, you must exist, and then you're placed in the circle of life.

The mother gives birth to a baby boy. He cries. That is all he knows how to do, what else do you expect? But believe me, it is far more than that. If you really contemplate this through, dive deep into his world, the baby is surely perplexed. However, he is also sending a message, as if it were speaking in esoteric acronyms. The baby is not making these screeching and raucous screams because his body asks for sleep, or else they would not have four to six hours to kill. They make your head spin because they are in pain. Who wants to go through another lifetime of suffering? If the life expectancy is eighty years, well, this baby most definitely wants out as soon as possible.

Sure, heaven, nirvana, enlightenment, being rid of oneself, nothingness, whatever the ultimate destination you prefer, is the path we all strive to create for ourselves. But the baby wants it done in the least amount of time. If it can avoid another language, another enigmatic presence on mother earth, then why not?


When the baby grows up, he becomes just like all of us, with so many questions, an insatiable curiosity, an unpredictable mind, and a niche inside a conditioned and perhaps a corrupted and chaotic society. And like all of us, those questions are unanswered, that curiosity is put on hold, his niche becomes nomadic, and he no longer remembers what he wants, or if he has what he wants, he doesn't know where else to make his mark. Like all of us, that first baby cry was because it hurt being clueless, it hurt being small, it hurt being small in a small world. He's only here because suicide is sinful. He's only here because he has to be, to live life to the fullest, whatever that means. Together, we make up this world, and now we must morph into something we can't exactly identify.

Don't be fooled by the cuteness of the baby, he is crying for your help.
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