Two Hundred and Sixty Nine

To know myself and my limits, the limits of others, and of the world in which we live.  I am a part of that world, and can only be what it allows me to be.

To know that because we're limited, what we know is and always will be less than what we don't know.  What we call the truth can therefore be no more than a guess—hopefully one based on the best evidence available to us, but still only a guess, to be revised as more and/or better evidence becomes available.

To know that the best evidence available to us is not always the best evidence, and assuming it is may mislead us.

To know that what we call the truth is most useful because it enables us to act.  If we wait to act until we know the truth, we will never act.  But we must act.

Not because our cause is right, and we must fight for it even though we may fail.  We can’t know it’s right any more than we can know it will fail.  What we call right is usually no more than what we believe to be right for us—and we don’t know ourselves well enough to say, with certainty, what‘s right for us any more than we know our world well enough to say, with certainty, what’s right for it.

Not because we can trust ourselves to know what’s right, or even what’s right for us.  Certainly not because we can trust others to know what’s right, much less what’s right for us.  How many others agree with us and/or how many others we agree with isn't proof that either of us knows what’s right. 

We must act because only by acting on our beliefs can we know whether we're right.  We must act because not to act is not to be.  We must therefore persuade ourselves that although we don’t know everything, we know enough to act.  

But most of us don't.

Even if most other people agree with us, and/or we with them, that’s no guarantee that they will join us in doing what we both agree is right.  Most people find the struggle just to survive difficult enough. 

I no longer think about killing myself because I consider myself already dead in every way that matters.  I now exist as most people do, doing no more than is necessary to survive.

We know, as soon as we know we’re alive, that we’re part of something greater than ourselves—something we don’t understand, much less control, any more than we understand or control ourselves.  We also know it’s broken, therefore we are broken.

Our history is a record of our attempts to repair it, and ourselves.  Both have changed, but only in small ways.  Each revolution merely replaced one ruling class with another, equally parasitic. 

It may or may not be repairable; but as most of us no longer attempt to repair it—are, on the contrary, damaging it even more—there’s nothing fools like me can do to repair it. 

Only fools love others more than they love themselves.  We should let them die, if that’s the punishment they think they deserve, and accept that this life, in this broken world, is all we have.

Mine was the last generation that believed it was possible to repair this broken world.  When I was young, what struck me about my peers was not their optimism, but their naiveté.  They underestimated the magnitude of the task, so they declared victory and gave up.  

I try to be content with the world's ruins, and the ruin that I now am, without regretting what we could have been and done and resenting them for not being and doing what they could have been and done—accepting that they've given up, so I should, too.

I used to tell myself that I wanted to die with them, but that’s a lie; and my self—whatever that is—is tired of lies.  I want to live, but not in this world.  This isn't living. 

All our dreams are dying, as are those who preside over them.  Trump and Biden remind me of the senile old men who pretended to rule the USSR during its last days.  Everyone in the USA waited for them to die, knowing their empire would die with them, and imagining we and our empire would then be free to remake the world in our image.  But I knew that when their dream died, ours would follow. 

Americans endured Trump throughout the pandemic not despite his inaction, but because of it.  They saw that behind his painted clown's face was a death’s head skull.  With his pretense of youthful virility, Trump is the perfect figurehead for  a dying empire pretending it still rules the world.  Now one senile old man will succeed another, just as Chernenko succeeded Andropov.