Chapter 9: Existential Joy
We all are born and raised under a history that confines our belief of who we are as a people and as individuals. The trappings that should have died with men so long ago are still palpable to those who are seeking meaningful purpose and soulful connection within their lifetime. Consequentially, we identify with the external cultures, systems and barriers that work to limit and control our potential understanding of self. Once the personal work has been done and a person becomes aware of themselves, the only true thing that will continue to stand against them is that reflecting, external world. Luckily, the external and its many parts can be made inconsequential, offering ease for the pressures of being swallowed back into unawareness and confinement.
The systems that oppress you are typically the first wars a person born in the modern age consciously has to exist through. Referencing chapter 2, these systems will paint you the victim and the justified, reinforcing you to succumb to an ego-centered life. The racial system, patriarchal system, economic systems, societal systems, governmental systems, education systems and more, all occupy the same tier in the rankings of existence. However, they do not exist as the reigning factor for your suppression. Systems themselves are directly beneath culture, as the overlying culture of a people is what allows each system to create its effects and outcomes. War culture dominates humanity. These systems are culturally influenced to mass replicate this dominating culture.
War culture supersedes the global patriarchy despite most likely being created from it. It is the child that has replaced its parent in power. War is the product of the continued cultivation of an ego-rich humanity, chasing domination over what is viewed as inferior or threatening. It transcends something like white supremacy although it has never quite been seen on such a scale as white supremacy. It precedes written history and continues to evolve into new levels of destruction for all people. War culture fuels the enforcement of colourism, classism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobic, misogyny and misandry. It exists within the marginalized communities and causes further internal conflict based on egoic identity. While conflict is a natural occurrence, this war culture is a man-made conflict machine. It is taught and it is embodied in everything it reigns over.
Above war culture is love culture. Love transcends the conditional nature of conflict by offering an unconditional solution in continued life. Love on its own can be permanent, while conflict serves as a period absent of true love. Can there be world peace if all good people had the power to keep all bad people away? Or would the good people be in conflict with their abuse of power in the place of what should be forgiveness? Would it not be a true exercise of love to seek the route of acceptance rather than persecution of the human who struggles to love themselves and therefore humanity? But should everyone suffer as a result of one person’s ineptitude? Can you kill someone who you claim to love unconditionally? The answer to these questions are unclear as you transcend the grip of war culture.
Above love is life, love culture and war culture coalesced into one. This world would not exist without its ‘love’ for continued existence but you would not exist without the ‘war’ of survival. In a way, perhaps humanity would be better off not existing, but we do and therefore that love for life that made us exist must persist through you. All life is at war with itself while being fueled by a love of existence. All things are born nonconsensually and we all live in non-consensual agreement to war, in pursuit of experience. The cyclical existence is both meaningful and meaningless, but it is in our conscious responsibility to decide to see if it is or is not. The idea of being everything, a piece of something and nothing at all is the reigning culture that life teaches in its controlled chaos.
If one searches for an answer to chaos, death provides its consistency. Death does reign over everything but is not quite supreme, because what death takes, life creates. In your final moments you decide if your life was meaningful or meaningless. There is no need to rush to the answer while you’re alive. In the grand scheme of what you experience, the treatment of you as a child becomes a speck in time. In your own personal world, a piece of a system and culture that you uncovered and cultivated over your lifetime becomes obsolete and unsustainable. But your relationships will serve as proof of humanity’s wisdom and ties to love or humanity’s savagery and ties to war. In spite of death, we continue being, in search of this conclusion.
The concept of being has lost meaning in this world because meaning has lost consistency in this world. If no one recognizes meaning itself, will it matter when one person does? Life and its lack of meaning is a beautiful absence of expectation. All you’ve done is a gift in the presence of a world where there is everything yet nothing. Within humanity, meaningless evil wants to be seen, and meaningless good resides in obscurity. But life itself does not see the meaning in humans living well or dying poorly. Life does not explain, justify or try to understand being.
Life is not human, humanity is a product of life’s persistence. Life only connects to time and death. The only true way to surpass all systems and cultures, to exist in unconditional love through all conflict, is to fully accept the one thing that can be placed above death; gratitude for time and acceptance of your end for its continuation. A love for the levels of existence.