Humans enjoy being cruel. Not just the ones who create the framework, gather the implements and set to torturing souls, for the… fun of it? There’s a whole field of villagers who show up, buy a corn dog and wait for the show. Those with atavistic eyes, who notice when the witch really begins to burn. As we gear up for our next epoch of sacking, tearing down, pillaging and so forth, I find myself paying more attention than usual to people around me.
I see a lady walking her dog and wonder if having a pet she cares about means she might not buy a ticket to my disembowelment. Or at the very least, might wince as they carve me up, because she saw a play I wrote once and as she recalls, I was a funny bitch. We seem hardwired for this. Hate has been with us since the first two leggeds bowed to one specific two legged. His certainty was probably a heady thing. Once he’d made a few decisions, he started thinking he was pretty good at being the leader. Until a pterodactyl popped his head like a grape. But then maybe he had a son who looked a little like him…
Either way, it’s our story. Power is there to be grabbed, while most of us are trying to feed our kids. It happens everywhere, all the time. The things they take can’t be returned. Your confidence. Your autonomy. Your sense of who you are. You protect where you can, and grow around the incursions. The rape, the fear and the degradation may not define you, but they inform you. They shape you and what you learn to expect from this world. If I could, I would become a house cat. Left alone, and subject to adoration. Well, I’d be a cat in my house. Which cancels it out. Like my small musty Maple cat, I’d smell like butthole and bite as often as I purred. I want to be a crow, flying with my crew and trash talking everyone beneath me. Which is everyone.
Being human is excruciating. There’s an expectation of civility and a veneer of ignoring the base and the indelicate. As a technique, it’s worked quite well. Aspirational Control is a great tool. As long as you could be better than someone else, there’s hope for you! It covers for those times when the Worthy get you between their teeth and shake you so hard you lose sight of your soul. Smile, nod and then go to your cave and process. If you can.
I am tired of veneers. Of nips and tucks and what the fucks. I’m sick of smiling and nodding and pretending later that it was defiance. When they go low, where do you go? What line are you holding in the dark that makes it possible for you to connect with your ancestors? Your line stretches back as far as people go. How did they strive, survive and thrive? When They Go Low, what do you do? When they go low, I will wait until we have tipped over into chaos, and then I’ll join all the other soft creatures fighting for their lives, disemboweling as many as I can until they end me. I will double down on what I’ve been pushed into. And then I’ll fly away.