In the Pursuit of the Unattainable

The saga of a species that knows not its place.

1 — Spring

A species is born. The year begins in festivities.

Bands of monkeys with brains adapting in reinforcing cycles to the complexity of social arrangement; signals flashing, forging pathways. Hierarchy and infighting complement cooperative affection. Growing brains, unprecedented in relation to overall physique. The monkey descends the tree, grasping the flaking bark, leaving the womb for new perspectives; towering above the grassy plains now, processing a commanding view.

A revelation of a hostile yet knowable world. The constant threat of death — injury, sickness, predation — supplemented by the unrememberable. We like to imagine rudimentary content. The same way packs of wolves, prowling the frozen, desolate taiga, might appear in bliss, in accord. Or deer ghosting the forests and grasslands of a warm blue marble floating in cold perpetuity. Bears lamenting primal commands, protecting — loving? — their cubs. Primed to kill and die for the continuity of abstract lines. Happiness absent cognition, existence absent dread.

Then, sapiens. Awareness a veiled rising moon in the black night.

One cannot comprehend the sensation of lacking that. Do infants feel? What do they recognize of their world? New research emerging, demonstrating that animals — the great other — are more aware than we ever thought. There is a spark in their eyes and cattle is not cattle. It sheds harrowing lights on the industrial slaughterhouses of this world.

The curious species surveys their surroundings and finds nothing. Strategy and tools first supplement, then replace instinct as we begin to wonder: What is this world? What sense is there in existence? What lurks in the constant, ever-tangible darkness beyond? The fire merely serves to substantiate the shadows. Texture arises where there was none. A rock is not a mere prop in the background radiation of the universe, torn apart by fallible senses, but now shimmers into cognition. It becomes object and reality.

We invent gods.

For there must be someone, anyone who knows. There must be principle in all this — in the happiness and love as well as the toil and suffering. The finality of death is obliterated by the knowledge of beyond, while the absurdity of non-purpose ceases to terrify. Universal laws govern our world with absolute indifference. Our purpose is to discover and assign meaning. This is where our pursuit begins.

2 — Summer

The species conquers the world. The sun at its peak. Midsummer.

A lethal concoction of perception, unrivaled endurance, and cooperation proves an evolutionary advantage of exceptional scale. Soon, we subjugate. All that is living and unliving turned, step-by-step, slave to the species — flickering duality out of concord, a new order, the pinnacle taking its place on the throne. We form and change and kill and propagate and love and cherish and still die. We populate every corner and niche, every climate, every valley and desert and mountain and steppe and still we die. We divert rivers to feed our masses but it is never enough. We breed and make new species on the decayed compost of the old, tame wilderness, lose our minds.

We defy the universe’s entropy by creating, never realizing there is nothing we can halt.

Our social arrangements escalate. First, tribes and bands, then villages of hundreds, then cities of thousands, then nations of millions, then planetary uniformity. In the beginning, there remains freedom — always can one choose to walk away. The world is large. There are forests and valleys that offer solace, unpolluted by obligation. One cannot be subjugated if one can run, run, run, and seek the other. Solitude is an option. Forming novel social orders and disorders is an option. All is possible, freedom cannot be taken bar explicit violence.

Then, the invention of gods turns a haunting specter. A subset of the species cannot accept egality — priests elevate themselves for they are carriers of divine message, tamers of absurdity; they keep our vices and the darkness at bay, so they claim. Then, merchants and warlords join. Together, they expand and expand and expand, claiming monotony in mind, demanding subservience. All of humankind falls under the occult order. All of non-humankind is obliterated.

The search for meaning devolves into materiality. If purpose is not possible, then hedonism is. If hedonism is not possible, then false purpose becomes solace. Welcome to the church. Gods walk among us now. Our pursuit is diverted.

3 — Autumn

Religion proves a shapeshifter. Decline and rot set in. The trees are dying.

Gods, god, angels, demons, aristocracy and birthright, pharaohs and shahs, kings and queens, commanders and generals, dictators and presidents and senators, enlightenment, the scientific method, rational determinism, gods again, race and tribe and nation and class, flags and colors imbued with artificial meaning, strips of paper that make you god, symbols all the way down and nothing real — arrive in the present, submit to capital.

A status quo post factum appears inevitable, as if divined from the ascent of the species. We dismounted, then fell the trees to make the corporation and ally it to the state, never expecting our magnum opus to hold us prisoner.

A subset of the species revolts, always, thus magnifying the misery of the rest. Appalled, the masses, the billions, turn their heads in the face of realization, finding dopamine. A chasm between cultures and geographies, one founded upon the other while waging war upon itself. The niche has become all-encompassing, bacteria shattering its boundaries of glass, and devouring, devouring, devouring — aimless, purposeless, erratic. One must imagine Sisyphus happily gorging upon his mountain, digesting his reason.

Toxics become ubiquitous at this stage; they poison the air, the water, the earth, the unborn, brains and blood vessels. They alter the atmosphere, melting, changing structures that have withstood eons. Unparalleled destruction and the demise of the wild’s last refuge. Options become scarce, walls of white stone to all sides. In the north, the corporation. In the south, surviving the corporation.

The annihilation of the species’ world is paralleled in the annihilation of its self. Richness in experience parts for the tide of homogeneity, the glorification of the individual straining against servitude to the collective. Both cannot exist. Our pursuit is broken; none are left who pursue. All are one, and the one forms a swaying house of cards, building and fortifying itself as if by divine hands. The snake devours its tail.

4 — Winter

The lies become unbearable; the cognitive dissonance, no longer held at bay, shatters all illusion. The species fails to support itself; nature returning in a despairing shriek of fury and justice, an onslaught of catastrophe, a sudden release of pent up energy, zetta- upon zettajoules of dense black liquid from the depths of the earth, dams breaking in a violence that burns the air. A frozen desert signifies rebirth, and the end of the pursuit.

It is a particularly grueling winter this year.

Wars, endless wars, accompany the decline. Hunger and misery sustain it. Sickness hastens it. What the species calls civilization represents to the other only death, and, then, the living world rejoices for it is over. One by one, nations collapse; they bury their flags and empty symbols and hollow words in shame. One by one, the religions empty and their crosses burn oh-so-brightly. No matter, we make new ones.

Structures fall, ideologies cease, the pinnacle jumps from his high-rise, plunging toward the primal, again, meeting the hard concrete of the sustainable. Beneath the pavement lies a beach of terrifying possibility. Parallel universes, uncountable, open up to welcome the explorer. From the cul-de-sac onto the roundabout, and, now, which exit to take?

Together, alone, collective, individual, order, anarchy, hierarchy, liberty, gods and masters, nature, money, community, duality, harmony — choose your weapon. You can choose again. Choice. The freedom to choose. The freedom to live. The freedom to not live. Walk away, into the forest, by yourself; do not search for what you cannot find. Or stay, and celebrate. Midsummer will come again.

The species rises again and again, for it is the pinnacle in the one-dimensional sense. And, one day, before it is all over, it will have to choose again: devour the world, over and over, or pursue what cannot be grasped — the absurd, the nothingness that calls from the void, the untexture. Time is on its side. Before the great burning star — a true god — swallows up the world, before the last atom disintegrates, the last black hole evaporates, millions, trillions of generations might attempt. What will they uncover? How many times will they leave the caves, descend the trees, in this cycle of birth, conquest, rebirth? Why must we do this? Must we?

The unknown calls to us, so very vigorously. We cannot escape this siren. Still, we find nothing.