The Self-Destruct Button

          [thoughts in the night, by Sha’Tara]

Oh hell! I  cried out loud to no one, in my small basement apartment and long after darkness had fallen accompanied by persistent clouds that dutifully hid moon and stars.

At least the orangy street lamp is working, casting a pale glow upon wet pavement and small pools. It’s the normal for this place, at this time of year – but it’s not what made me cry out.

What did make me cry out? A feeling, or a series of feelings feeding upon each other.

What sort of feeling/feelings? The sort you’re not supposed to have. The ones that want to probe the darkness and expose its lurid underbelly. The ones not politically correct. The ones that, upon reeling themselves back into the mind say, ah, screw it – everything is going to hell and none of it is fixable.

Let me explain myself to myself, and you can listen in. There is no philosophy grand enough to turn a people away from their fixation with the auto-destruct button once pointed in that direction, and let me tell you this: man’s current leadership has mastered the art of pointing: it’s called propaganda, only people call it news.

People are running, laughing, screaming, cursing, waving flags, cheering and booing their corrupt, psychopathic, perverted, misogynist, racist, elitist presidential and prime ministerial fodder to their destruction. They’re ready to maul and kill anyone who would stand in the way of their choice and they will most certainly destroy their living environment just to get to mash that shiny red button clearly marked “Self Destruct.”   

I took a break, it lasted a wee bit longer than anticipated, twenty four hours, in fact, but you never know with breaks, and now it’s over.

My feelings aren’t quite as raw as last night’s but I have no trouble getting them back. The world I’ve become aware of guarantees that.

 They say, and it’s a truism, that we are born to die. I’ve always been aware of that, the one thing we know for sure isn’t fake news. Our body gives us so many years to play at being alive then it conks out, or peters out…

 Thing is, unless we’re suicidal we don’t have much control over the “when” of death. That means I can’t just decide, today, to call it quits, to say ‘enough is enough’ and walk away. I mean I could, it’s called losing interest in everything, but I don’t think I’m made that way. The awake mind is a curious thing, a questing thing, the puzzle solver, the riddle master. For every answer it will throw up a dozen more questions and the rabbit hole only gets deeper.  

 To the question then, why are people in general so eager to test the apocalypse switch? Why the general group think to end it all? Just to see the fireworks? Or, as some claim, is it that at the heart of every Earthian is the false hope, belief, or faith, that it only happens to the other and “I” will remain alive to watch the horror show from the comfort of my Lazy-boy chair or leaning on the railing of the patio of my friend’s 8^th floor apartment?

 “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Could it be that the vast majority of Earthians,  believers or not, actually ascribe to this patently false biblical claim? Could this false reality exist as a necessary part of the programming?

I – Don’t – Know! I don’t have an answer to that one.

 But that takes me back to my desire to scream. Personally, I don’t want to see, or experience, any sort of apocalypse. It’s a truly dumb idea. Do you want to participate in one? Do you believe the fairy tale that “you” can survive it? If you did, what would be the point? Alone on a devastated world, what sort of end could you imagine for yourself in the aftermath? Or are you of those benighted who believe some god is going to see to it personally that you are spared the gruesome aspects and install you on your own private cloud space to watch the horror show and “REJOICE!” even at the bloodbath put on for your own entertainment?

          I believe we, as relatively intelligent creatures, can not only switch from apocalyptic thinking but change the world to become an unrecognizable reality: literally a paradise. People who think like this are usually called naïve, utopians, dreamers. Again, the group think is, “can’t happen so forget it.”  The same individuals who believe in survival also believe an apocalypse is inevitable and often do all in their power to bring it about. 

What does that say about that sort of thinking? What do you call someone desperate to survive, to live as long as physically possible, yet nurturing apocalyptic thinking, of total decimation of a world? Doublethink or cognitive dissonance? Either way, not logical.

Could we have a utopia on Earth? Of course. Not only that but bringing about a utopia is a much easier task than bringing about an apocalypse. Apocalypses are costly, complex, messy, bloody and ultimately pointless affairs. All a utopia needs is for individuals, of their own free will, to become compassionate then let compassion demonstrate the way out of all the violence, the greed, the lust, the infamy, the corruption, the innate selfishness that are now growing together like dark storm clouds to pave the way for the apocalypse, for the end.

It’s simple enough, too simple maybe. 

and… PS, not a great piece of writing but food for thought, perhaps?