Beyond Dimming Horizons: Philosophy of Light and Dark

"A thinking man is a depraved animal" -Rousseau

You know, people like to think they’re in control. Like their choices mean something. Like there’s a logic to it all, some grand design, a purpose. But if you really dig down—strip away all the niceties and illusions we’ve wrapped ourselves in—you find it’s not control. It’s just the illusion of it. We’re passengers on a ride that doesn’t care what we want. See, we all got what I call a Life Trap. Well, sometimes, I also do think that human consciousness is a tragedy, but that’s a story for another time, maybe. (And I am one of the few cursed with some)

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about time. Time’s not linear, not the way we like to think it is. We build our days around the idea of moving forward—past, present, future (If you ever watch Interstellar, or Tenet, you'd have an idea of what I mean here). But that’s just how we make sense of it, like drawing lines in the dirt. Really, it’s all happening at once. Every mistake, every regret, every brief flash of happiness, it’s all still there, sitting in some corner of your mind, waiting for you to notice it again. You ever hear something like M-brain theory? It’s like, in this universe we process time linearly, forward (as I was proposing some moments ago). But outside our space time, from what would be the fourth-dimensional perspective, time wouldn't exist. And from that vantage, could we attain it?

We'd see our space time would look flattened, like a single sculpture with matter in a superposition of every place it ever occupied, our sentience just cycling through our lives with carts on a track. See, everything outside our dimension, that's eternity. Eternity looking down on us. Now, to us, that's fear, but to them, it's a CIRCLE. In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow, nothing. So, DEATH CREATED TIME, to grow things that it would kill and you are born into this same life that you were born into. I mean, you would not be able to tell how many times you have read this exact extract, till you were conscious that you've read this thing before. Do you see it now? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your life. And that is a terrible and secret fate of all life. You are trapped, like a nightmare you keep waking up into.

"I think, therefore I am" -René Descartes

Ever hear of eternal recurrence? Nietzsche, I think (Also, maybe Karmic Retribution from Buddhism). He said, what if you had to live the same life over and over again? Every pain, every mistake—repeat it endlessly. Most people can’t stomach the thought. They want life to mean something, some final resolution, a clean ending. But what if there isn’t one? What if all we are is echoes, shadows on a loop, playing out the same old tragedies because we’re too scared to see the bigger picture? Sure, hope the old folks are wrong about it all, about death being the end of it!

You look at the stars, and people love to talk about how it makes them feel small. Insignificant. Like they’re just a speck in the universe. But they miss the point. It’s not just that you’re small—it’s that everything you are, everything you’ve ever been, is a chemical accident, a byproduct of chaos. Beautiful chaos, maybe, but chaos all the same. People like to think they are something, something one of a kind (Hahaha, a divine comedy indeed). They think the most important thing in the world is ME. For sure, for sure, in YOUR dreams! Each person in this world is so sure of their realness, that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual with PURPOSE (Hahaha, divine comedy again!) and MEANING (This is getting hilarious now), so certain that they are more than a biological puppet. Well, when the truth wills out, everybody will see. All falls down once the strings are cut, my friend!

I’ve seen things that’ll stick with me until the day I die. Things that would make most people turn away or pretend they didn’t see. I won't lie when I say I've seen the worst that humanity ever has to offer, trust me on this. Living life, I have seen the end. I've seen the finale of hundreds of lives. But the thing is, the more you stare into the abyss, the more you realize the abyss isn’t staring back. It doesn’t care about you. Doesn’t hate you. Doesn’t even acknowledge you. And maybe that’s the hardest thing for people to accept. It’s not the darkness that scares them. It’s the indifference. 

A man confronted with his never-ending imaginations

I have spent a considerate amount of my time thinking about death. In my early days, I wouldn't even care if I die right away, I would just not. Well, that changed, as the fabric of time continued, undisturbed. It's is exactly the same, as Heraclitus said, no man EVER steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he is not the same man (Change is real, folks. Whether you believe it or not!). Now, when I think about death, I am more troubled with the concept than the thought in question! When I am talking about time and death and futility, there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us a society for our mutual illusions. 

A dying person, if you observe, the look in their eyes, even in a picture (doesn't matter if they are dead or alive), they welcome it. Not at first, but right there at the last instant. It is an unmistakable relief, see, because they were afraid and now, they saw for the very first time how easy it was to let go! And in that last nanosecond, that they saw exactly what they were, that you, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never anything but a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will and you could just let go. Finally, now that you didn't have to hold on so tight to realize that all your life, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain, IT WAS ALL JUST THE SAME THING. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had, inside a locked room. A dream about being a person! RELIEF, at last?

A better way of life!

But here’s the rub, the cosmic punchline: even knowing all this, even knowing how small, how meaningless it all is, we still try. We love. We hurt. We fight. Like moths flying into a flame, knowing full well it’ll burn them. Maybe that’s most cruel joke of all. Or maybe… maybe that’s what makes us human. Just observation and deduction. I see propensity for trouble, poverty, a yen for fairy tales, folks putting what few bucks they do have. People so frail, they will put a coin in a wishing well than buy dinner! Negative capability. I mean, it’s a skill. You just look people in their eyes and the whole story is right there. Everybody wears their hunger and their haunts! (Even then, I am terrible at cards)

So, yeah, I’ll keep going. I’ll keep showing up, even though I know how this ends. Because maybe it’s not about winning. Maybe it’s just about being here, in the thick of it. Watching the sun rise, even if you know it’ll set again. That’s the thing about life—it’s messy, it’s painful, and it’s fleeting. But for a brief, shining moment, it’s real.

And maybe… just maybe, that’s enough.