To exist is to be plagued with preferences
Inherent in existence is the preference to go on existing.
This becomes the fear of death, and the motivation to flee death’s embrace at every turn even when intimately aware that death comes for us all.
Inherent in existence is the limitation that gives rise to preference. I don’t only want to go on existing, I want that to be relatively pleasant, from my own point of view.
To take a position of belonging in the orchestra of all things is to be subject to an order which includes allies, collaborators, pests, and predators, interdependence that degrades on a subtle spectrum from mutually beneficial to extractive to predatory.
Certain things will get things from others and leave them better off for that.
Certain things will get things from others and leave them slightly worse off.
Certain things will take things from others and destroy them completely, like that fungus, so hungry for chestnuts, we never get to have them again.
Nature’s experts thrive on being used and taken advantage of.
Sickle cell anemia, untreated, offers one a death sentence at 30 years old, yet prevents malaria that might take one much younger than 30. Does sickle cell anemia WANT something from us that it gives in order to have life? We could see it that way. But we could also see that it simply IS. People who live till 30 with a genetic condition can reproduce wherease people who die at 10 from a contagious disease cannot. Thus, the genetic disease lives on.
Nature’s most pathetic flailers try to stop others from taking advantage of them or extracting from them or preying on them.
The prey is subject to pests and predators.
The apex predators are subject to pests and forces of nature.
Destruction is assured. Pestilence is assured. Extraction and predation are ensured along the happy way to destruction.
This is true of biological life as it is true of mental and emotional life.
Pests and predators exist on every fractal of existence, like anything that is possible will iterate itself into every possible place it’s possible. What exists proliferates—it exists because it’s possible, and if it’s possible, it’s possible on a variety of levels; this is why metaphors work.
The existence of predators, pests, and preferences commands a balance of protection and safekeeping and curation of my experience. This balance itself, which only I can curate within me, can also be a pest, a predator, and a violation of my preferences.
A balance which is balanced, a balance which I prefer, has a certain savage acceptance for the harms that will certainly befall me *as a result of my belonging* in the world. A violation of my preferences is not unbelonging; to experience harm, violation, inconvenience, pain, is part of what it means to firmly occupy a stance of belonging in the larger scheme.
Part of my balance is having protection dialed all the way back and retribution off the table entirely. I do not prefer the ontology of being at war—I would rather not blame and fight and whyne about things.
Part of curating for my preferences means curating how I will opt-in to the violation of my preferences which is guaranteed by existence. Part of Opt-In is opting-in to receiving violence.
Learn more on tonight’s Radical Responsibility call at 7pm PST.
