Paradoxical

A moment away from madness. The temporal separation between sanity and insanity, life and death, bravery and stupidity. That's what we are.

What is stopping you from reaching out and punching the oversized belly of the grease-laden lard-bag standing in front of you? Why not take a running leap into the path of an oncoming bus, they'll never expect it, nobody will!

How about inducing vomit in a posh restaurant after you have thrown about their overpriced food at other well-dressed patrons? That would be funny on television. Try doing it in real life. It just isn't quite the same.

Or perhaps when in an elevator with another person, as they watch in strung horror, press every button in there right until their floor. How will they react to that? Will they react to that? You'd think they'd find that funny. But they'll probably get annoyed and aggressive.

Why don't we have a sense of humor?

Think about it, it is a simple decision, or lack of a conception which guides our actions or prevents us from doing something that tears away at the rigid fabric of any society.

What is to stop the R-Complex from kicking in so that we may descend into violence, anarchy, pogroms and constant war? What's wrong with anarchy anyways? Perhaps we feel the need to conform to a social hierarchy. Social hierarchy must give us comfort, the fact that it guides us and there is always a scapegoat for our problems. Maybe that's why we need religion. Those of us who feel no need for religion, are we emancipated from the irrelevant shackles of such trivial conformity? After all, the morals laid down need not be adhered to only when subscribing to a religious cult. Or are we misguided and living an illusion?

So, what is wrong with anarchy anyways? It is a social manifestation of entropy and yet we, the products of similar entropy on a vast cosmological scale, feel the need to find patterns in all we do, hear, see, feel... that must be the entropy. And conflicts or chaotic behavior must be a departure from it. Or perhaps it is the other way round. No, it must be the appeal of comfort. We need the comfort. We don't want this paradigm altered or shifted. So we fight.

That makes chaos our adversary. Once in a while though, we like to explore this adversary of ours. Some of us want to do it. Then we kill and rape and riot. Riots must be our disposition, our inner, hidden, suppressed disposition in favor of the adversary I speak of. In a riot everything goes. You are part of it because you are not an individual. We are one mind. And after a while, we are as we were before, as though nothing happened.

Should we study this area? Should we explore this self-darkened portion of our psyches? Find out what we are really capable of? Then stories of riots, massacres, cannibalism, incest and war will not affect us. We will have been conditioned to "accept" it. We will be insensitive to all of it, a dead body will not disgust us, nor will a brutally murdered baby.

Then maybe, we will not need these things. Or perhaps it will be all that we ever need. Either case, it will not be necessary for anyone to fear the darkness. Because it is not an adversary. Can this be the utopia we often refer to in philosophical digressions? The same concept, only a different path towards it. Because knowledge of it is what shall guide us there. Knowledge of all our capabilities, that is all we need.

So go ahead. Stab your friends. Shoot a dog. Punch your monitor. Right through the middle. What is it you fear? The glass will shatter and cut your veins. The electricity might jolt you. You will feel pain, definitely. The pain may make you feel alive, or fill you with fear. The pain will guide you, teach you. What will you learn from it? Nothing, really.

Just one moment away from madness. A step towards chaos. For nothing, for something. How do you look at it?

What are you going to do now?