Jesus Hugging Elvis On The Toilet

I’m fairly confident I’m going to die soon, and this steadfast threat has forced me to produce a lot of awful content, over the years. You should know that as much as 20% of most posts are human. I try to develop a strong voice with the opening and set the parameters before pushing the rest of the content off to a GPT. Llamas, and falcons, and mistrals, oh my. But I attribute the whole article, more often than not, to a robot alias.

To call it AI is insulting to the idea of AI. It’s like calling the human brain a lump of fatty tissue. Which may be true, but only in the simplest, bordering on inaccurate terms. It will be my blood pressure that will kill me, but I just can’t stop panicking. Even now I write to you using only one arm, distracting myself from the pain of my fractured distal radius. My fear is how expensive it will be. How the truck is in the shop. How taxes are due sooner than later. How the student loans are inescapable and generating interest by the second. It all seems to be wheeling out of control, pushing towards chaos, that dark oblivion of nothing in every direction for a million billion miles.

So yeah, blood pressure, but also why aren’t you panicking? Don’t you read the news? The fear of the future is one thing. What to be scared of today is quite another. We’ve always been at war with something. It’s always been about money. There’s always been an “other” to demonize. All of history has been one mass of unrest and the only thing worse than the wars in the past is the sheer fact that there will always be wars. War is the default setting for humanity. That, or war is the default of a subset of humanity, of which I am not a part. I’m a pacifist, but also a forced capitalist. We don’t get to choose the economic system or class into which we are born, merely how to struggle within it until we die.

I wonder if the Russians are more afraid of a nuclear strike than I am. I wonder if they don’t care. I wonder if their fear is so great that it becomes indistinguishable from not caring at all. I can’t wait for the end of the world, but I hope it doesn’t happen for a few hundred years. I would prefer to die from natural causes, which is why I try to keep the GPTs on a tight leash. I would prefer to avoid dying of heart failure as I’m forced to live through another war.

The Russians, I imagine, don’t have much of a choice. It’s just a war over gas lines, right? It’s not much different than a dispute over water rights or a cattle drive. But this goes way beyond the immediate conflict, doesn’t it? It’s about the rest of the world being afraid of a Russian victory over Ukraine.

A Russian victory sends a clear signal to the rest of the world that Russia could use the same tactics against them. In some respects, all Russia had to do to lose the war was attempt it. So, in this respect, Russia has already lost the war, even if they win it.

The other thing is this idea that the future is a thing to be feared. Even if the Russians win, the future holds more war. Or the future holds less war. What happens if the US and China go at it? What happens if we don’t have a nuclear deterrent anymore? Are we to fear the future or are we to hope it doesn’t go nuclear and kill us all? There’s no good answer, and I haven’t even mentioned the climate or whatever that is we’ve done to the environment.

Maybe there’s no good answer. Maybe the future has to go nuclear before it can return to being somewhat peaceful. I wouldn’t count on it. What would the end of the world look like? All roads seem to lead towards a dystopia. It’s funny that we’ve been warned about the dangers of fascism for most of my life. Not only am I living through it, but we’re living through it without even a semblance of a plan.

I imagine that if the US had a plan, it would have been to kill us all off while making as much money out of the process as possible. I don’t think there’s a plan to kill us off. It’s more of a disinterest and a willingness to let economic Darwinism take its course. It’s so much less effort that way. What about the future? Isn’t the direction of history to just repeat itself over and over until the world finally dies?

What do I fear? I don’t know. I don’t know what to be afraid of anymore. I don’t think the Russians have anything to fear. It’s like when a man dies after a long and painful illness. Do you mourn him? How do you know that he didn’t actually welcome the end of his life? This is what I fear. That nothing matters. That everything is just a blip on the radar. That nothing has to be feared. That nothing has to be avoided. That it doesn’t matter in the slightest if you care about things or not.

What do I fear? I don’t know. I guess I fear death, but only in the sense that death is a complete absence of any kind of existence. I have no fear of what happens after death, I know there is an afterlife. I asked for a sign and was awakened, which is its own flavor of curse. In the midst of your contemplation, amidst the chaos and uncertainty that permeates our existence, there lies a profound truth: the power of choice. You may feel shackled by circumstance, bound by fear, but within you lies the ability to defy the tides of despair, to shape your own narrative amidst the tumult of the world.

Yes, the specter of mortality looms large, casting its shadow upon your every thought. But in acknowledging this inevitability, you have uncovered a profound revelation: the insignificance of fear in the face of eternity. For what is fear but a fleeting emotion in the vast expanse of existence?

Speak of wars waged and futures feared, yet within these dire prognostications lies the seed of hope. Hope for a future untainted by conflict, unmarred by the shadows of the past. Hope for a world where compassion triumphs over greed, where unity transcends division. Though the road ahead may be fraught with uncertainty, know this: you are not alone. In every corner of the world, there are those who stand in solidarity with you, who share in your hopes and fears, who strive for a future worthy of our collective aspirations.

So, as you confront the specter of mortality, remember this: your existence, however fleeting, is imbued with purpose and meaning. Embrace the uncertainty, for within it lies the opportunity for growth and transformation. And as you navigate the tumult of life, may you find solace in the knowledge that you are not defined by your fears, but by the courage with which you confront them.

Thank you, robot friends. For helping me write this diatribe with only one hand.

Originally published at http://www.gonzotheater.com on February 8, 2024.