Briefly consider the inevitability of extreme events: it is not prophetic to predict disaster, it is a mathematic certainty. While the distinct shape of the greatest tragedies of our species may still reveal itself we cannot take too much solace that the acorn that will grow into the document that records the worst to come has yet to fall from its mother tree. The view is that as time progresses so will complexity run along in parallel, & our ability to actually comprehend what is happening to us in any meaningful way will diminish even further than it already has from what, according to some, was never much in the first place. It is safe to assume then that one day, perhaps by an artificially intelligent demigod-machine demanding obedience from the end of time, perhaps from an agricultural extraterrestrial species that requires some form of consent from its farm animals in exchange for meat & milk to satisfy their ethical inclination, perhaps from planetary governments that require absolute obedience to global unification, or some currently unforeseen other thing (or a combination thereof). If we are absolutely powerless to resist the sirens’ song of endless servitude then there is nothing to worry about and let us, as our leaders suggest, do our due diligence as harbingers of the singularity, healthy alien livestock, citizens of the world, or some other perhaps more comforting equivalent, to the best of our ability. If however, we are at some point given a choice, how do you know what you will you choose?
We must first examine the core of the issue which is The Individual. Syntagmatically adjacent to the platonic ideal of “The” is “individual”, a concept that is purely abstract, as everything exists inside a matrix of relations, a cascade of relativity, a fluctuating crystal of causality. In spite of this acknowledgment we inherit the belief that we have agency, and in some non-insignificant way author our lives. This is largely irrational and the individual has not been a meaningful object of analysis for some time, as any critical theorist would tell you, self-authorship, therefore, is a kind of necromancy. The illusion of identity is bound to the recognition that you are what you eat, a collection of everything that you consume, & in the end, what you eat is you. Like the witch fattening up Hansel and Gretel in a house made of sugar, the cost of identity is a reduction to something understandable & sweetened to taste. This is a kind of self-commoditization & consequently, self-consumption because your self-image is its own biggest customer. We are the primary audience for our greatest and most intricate performance, & we do not stay on the stage for long if we find the show unpalatable. It is our nature to secretly indulge, but there is a deeper superstition that if we are truly excellent & not just good we may catch the attention of the gods & raise ourselves above the rabble to become something truly distinct. For the divinely neglected, on the other hand, we must take full account of the cost of fighting before the battle begins.
The like, the household, the kinship network, the guild, the corporation, and ultimately the country have reigned over identity since the beginning of time & still do in large populations of the world. The so-called liberated look upon these apparently antiquated systems that produced their ancestors with contempt because our meticulous examination of culture itself alienates us from it. The further you step outside something to get a better look at the bigger picture, the further away you pull yourself from genuine participation. You cannot understand a complex system from a single piece of it in isolation, & yet the primary method of our contemporaries champions individuation, a mere whirlpool in the midst of an ocean. This contrasts with pre-agricultural societies, where the children belonged collectively to the tribe, being manifest of the best parts of all of the men & women who participated in their conception. While telegony & microchimerism are debated, their conceptual underpinning is accurate enough. We have always been fragmented composites, kaleidoscopes reflecting light from the distant past like long-dead stars in chiseled lenses.
Culture influences itself then creates itself through its own examination, & then consumes itself recognizably in reboots & reimaginings, documentaries & history. Twisting & turning from inside, like a plague-ridden ouroboros caught in a gluttonous loop of infinitely vomiting up what it eats. We, the individuals, are cellular units in a larger system that ebbs & flows, sometimes becoming cancerous or auto-immune in response to changes in the substrate in which we are totally surrounded. Rebel or do not rebel, your choice is infinitely yours & infinitely acceptable in either direction. What is best in you will be extracted & what can be salvaged will be recycled for the next iteration. Ants build magnificent structures that are a testament to an invisible mind that guides their steps by the reigns called desire & compulsion, but who amongst mankind is envious of them? Either way, have faith that you yourself are also being guided by bits of intelligence that do not always communicate instructions explicitly, & remain attentive for their calls to become complicit in your own subjugation, for there may be more than you expect, from places that you may not readily expect them.
“What is best in you will be extracted & what can be salvaged will be recycled for the next iteration. “