What I fear the most in other people

Tereus, by Peter Paul Rubens

I fear for the well-being of any sane person who has to live around those who think it's morally wrong for a terminally ill person who suffers horribly to seek assisted dying. The reason why is because I don't trust suffering-loving sons of bitches. Simple. It might be a harsh thing to say, but that's just reality. But that is only one particular aspect of my biggest fear when it comes to other people. I felt like starting this text talking about this aspect because I discussed the subject of assisted dying on my last essay and got some flak for doing so. However, what I fear the most from other people is actually this: I am terrified of the absolutist life affirming cult that permeates the human race. We hope too much, and through our excess hope we work dark miracles by pulling millions of sentient beings from nothingness every day, giving them decaying meat suits filled with nerve endings that equip these new creatures with the amazing ability to feel all the horrors that only existence can provide. Things might seem fine if you are someone who happens to not reflect on what it means to be alive and the value of existence itself, but they only seem that way. You suffer a lot, still, and are likely more resentful and sad about it than one who's honest about reality.

If you're a sheltered enough person that doesn't care about reflecting deeply on our predicament, believe me when I say that things are way worse than you think. Sure, you may think they might be better for you right now, but eventually, when it's too late, they'll get worse for you, too. But by then, you'll might have had a few kids to pass on the curse of life onto them, and let the ball roll down the next generation — which wouldn't be so fucking bad if it weren't for the selective blindness life-affirming cultists like yourself insist everyone must have. You refer to every worldview that doesn't conform to the adage that life needs to be put on a pedestal regardless of how horrific it gets as "mental illness," "depression," etc. You truly believe that by taking a magic pill, by going outside, by having friends, a partner, a family, everyone can love life as much as you pretend to love. I have done and still do all of that, and it doesn't change my view that it would have been better if I was never born in the first place. No amount of laughter or happiness can change that conclusion, I'm afraid. Of course, laughter and brief moments of happiness help. But then, if it weren't for those moments, I think all life affirming optimist would be seen as the charlatan he or she probably is. If we didn't have the respite of those good moments, life affirmers would be beaten and defenestrated by the angry mobs of victims of existence.

Also, it's important to note that when I say that things are worse than what one might think, I don't mean things are worse now than they were in the past, as idiotic reactionaries believe when they're nostalgic about a past that was never that good. What I mean is that things are always worse than what life-affirming optimists think, regardless of the historical period one might live. I'm not making a comparison of certain specific points regarding the quality of life in different historical moments and different geographical locations. Sure certain times and places are less bad than others. I don't dispute that. But things are never truly good, because life is never truly good. Regardless of how better things might get, the fact still remains that life will always be a pointless affair filled to the brim with horrors, not to mention the fact that conscious existence means forever chasing after things only to realize that you're never really going to be satisfied. Even when you think you are finally satisfied, your body will make you understand pretty quickly that no, you're not. You'll need food again, you'll need to piss and shit again, your body will tell you that your back hurts, or that your neighbor (who secretly hates your guts) just randomly shot a bullet through your window and now you're bleeding to death on the kitchen floor.

Mind you, you thought you worshiped life because life is deserving of worship, but so did your neighbor who just shot you. That is what I fear the most about the absolutist life affirming cult that permeates the human race. The criminals who dismember people every other day in the favelas a couple of streets down from where I live here in Rio de Janeiro love life just like you. Almost all of them are God fearing Christians that get blessed by their preachers before killing their victims and selling the hard drugs which will get people addicted and killed, either because of the effects of the drugs themselves, or because the addicted eventually won't be able to pay and will be dismembered. Almost all of these victims are life affirming, God fearing Christians as well. See, what I fear the most is you lot who love life so much. You affirm your own life to the point of dismembering others alive, or at the very least, you affirm your own life so much so to the point of creating babies in an existence that allows such a thing to take place, effectively exposing them to the possibility of being dismembered alive one day. But don't worry, most likely they won't be dismembered in a favela. Most likely they'll have regular depressing lives, where they'll face diseases, accidents, and ultimately death like everyone else, including you and me.

And through all of that, your sons and daughters will have to constantly create positive values in order to cope with ever corrosive winds of existence. Congratulations, that's what our parents did, and that's what we did to our children: we created ephemeral beings who must at all times invent and maintain positive values that justify all of this pointless, painful crap. "Don't worry, just take a magic pill, it's all in your mind," some idiot will say. It is all your mind, it's true, but not in the way you think. What is in your mind, as in an illusion, is mostly the positive stuff, the good stuff. What is mostly real is pain, degradation, meaninglessness, and death. But it's alright. Have children, keep living. My problem isn't with life so much as it is with this fucking life affirming cult, which is a cult of suffering above all else. And you don't have to be a religious bumpkin to be a part of the life affirming cult who worships suffering. You can fashion yourself as a Nietzschean Übermensch, as someone who believes to be above the belief in gods, above pain and above the weak. Either way, you will still be crazily and irrationally affirming life. But what's worse, you will think of yourself as someone who does it in a way that's completely different and superior to those who are religious, who you believe to be life deniers like Nietzsche said, not understanding that, in reality, they aren't life deniers at all, but people who worship life so much that they want life eternal after death.

There's nothing I fear more in other people than the irrational cult of life. People who worship life even while gutted and chest deep in excrement will forbid terminally ill patients from seeking assisted dying while at the same time celebrate the cruel murder of children from a rival tribe. Every soulless technocratic private or public decision maker who make people end up homeless do what they do in the name of life: balancing a company or a city budget is only a means to preserve life at an efficient rate. Every totalitarian regime of the 20th century that committed genocide did so because they affirmed life above all else, and believed they had the perfect worldview to sustain the best kind of life. Shit, every genocide being committed right now in the 21st century is done so in by people who love life above all else. They're committed by people who affirm their lives above all others, sure, but they're affirm life nonetheless. For instance, it's a complete lie that regimes such as Nazi Germany did what they did because they were nihilistic. That's a bullshit hypothesis propagated by grifters who lied their way to their PhDs, people like Jordan Peterson and Jason Jorjani. Those 20th century totalitarian regimes had an ethos, as Walter from The Big Lebowski hilariously says.

Their ethos was shitty, yes, but it wasn't nihilistic. If anything, their beliefs were so deeply ingrained in their minds that the thought of living without them was impossible, which is why so many took their own lives when they failed. Like Emil Cioran says, paraphrasing: "only optimists take their own lives." It's an exaggeration, sure, but it's mostly true. It's mostly life affirming cultists, life worshipers, who are open to falling into this deep kind of despair. This happens because they barely reflect on anything other than their physiological and material needs (and when it comes to their metaphysical needs, they buy their religion in bulk from charlatan preachers). So when push comes to shove, when life gets too unbearable, these life affirming cultists are prone to exiting life by their own hands, something they condemn in others, something they actively try to forbid terminal ill patients from doing in a comfortable way. In the end, not only are life affirming cultists sadists, they're also hypocrites.

And we don't have to discuss extreme examples of 20th century totalitarianism to show just how egregious the life affirming cult can get. Like I said before, just look at the criminals dismembering people just a few blocks from where I am writing right now. Look at the benevolent bureaucrats in private companies and government offices whose decisions impoverish tens of thousands overnight. Look at your neighbor, who hates your guts and shot you over nothing. Life affirming sons of bitches, all of them. Disgusting life affirming cultists who will readily (and literally) sacrifice children for the sake of a good harvest, a harvest that will keep the whole of life going. Hey, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, am I right? People talk about how Jeffrey Epstein sacrificed kids to feed their blood to Moloch. They get angry thinking about it. Meanwhile, they are creating more and more sentient creatures to feed the world, which is indeed a vampire. The truth is that they secretly wish they were able to be a part of the cabal that they believe runs the world. And then these sons of bitches have the gall to come to me and vomit platitudes about life being the greatest thing since slice bread. Get the fuck out of here. You are a bunch of potential torturers and murderers, if you aren't literal torturers and murderers already.

That's it. That's my pessimist rant for the day.

by Fernando Olszewski