After scrolling past my thirtieth dead person of the day, I have to ask myself? Am I fucked up now? Is this getting to me? Seven (7) months of nonstop genocide, four (4) years of nonstop plague, plus just being fortysomething (41). At some point it adds up, but where is that point? How would I even know? If the world around you keeps getting worse, what does getting better even mean?

Krishna And The Taoists

We're supposed to feel pain when it hurts. The fear of death is the seed of survival. It has been this way since time immemorial. Ever since the first amoeba started moving away from trouble, and the billionth bacteria started moving towards the sun. Of course it feels fucked up during a mass extinction event, I should really know better. Including rebirths, this is my fifth mass extinction. But it smarts every time.

As Krishna the charioteer told Prince Arjuna, “For, of one that is born, death is certain; and of one that is dead, birth is certain. Therefore it behoveth thee not to mourn in a matter that is unavoidable. All beings (before birth) were unmanifest. Only during an interval (between birth and death), O Bharata, are they manifest; and then again, when death comes, they become (once more) unmanifest. What grief then is there in this?” For Prince Arjuna, however, there was a lot of grief in this, just as there is for me, Prince Consort of Nugegoda. When the planet hurts, the people hurt, and when Palestine burns the fire rises in all our hearts.

I'm not talking about mental health, which is really the commodification of consciousness. I'm talking about multi-dimensional trauma, on different planes of existence, from your gut bacteria to you to your family to your nation to your sports team. Then onwards and outwards to our living relatives, to the animals, the plants, the viruses, to the rocks, to energy, to Allah Themself. There are higher selves than the Cartesian self (I think therefore I am) and higher planes than the Cartesian plane. You are not your government name, as Lloyd Banks said, you are myriad, as the first chapter of the Daodejing says:

A Way that can be followed is not a constant Way.
A name that can be named is not a constant name.
Nameless, it is the beginning of Heaven and Earth;
Named, it is the mother of the myriad creatures.
And so,
Always eliminate desires in order to observe its mysteries;
Always have desires in order to observe its manifestations.
These two come forth in unity but diverge in name.
Their unity is known as an enigma.
Within this enigma is yet a deeper enigma.
The gate of all mysteries!

Note the distrust of names from the Daoists. The act of naming something destroys its other identities, which are myriad. The naming of an individual destroys other levels of consciousness, thus most cultures don't even have 'one' name, this is a modern, bureaucratic contrivance. The apartheid of passports, and the tyranny of forms. As I've written:

This reality is somewhat obvious in Asian cultures, where people have many names, most of them relative. I have five names that I go by on a regular basis—Appa (father), Patiya (child), Jit (nickname), Indi (nickname), or Indrajit. I have a dozen more names I go by infrequently, and these only increase as more children are born. In this context, it is somewhat obvious that there is no fixed self because, I mean, which one?

Through these multi-dimensional serves (if the one self is illusory, every other illusion is equally valid), you can of course feel pain in other bodies. This is obvious when it comes to your nearest and dearest, but it is also possible to feel simpatico pain across a screen. The nature of perception is that we can feel pain in other people's bodies. No man is an island, as John Dunne said.

Aaron Bushnell

So I ask myself, I ask my myriad selves, am I fucked up now? Might as well ask you the same question, since my voice is in your head and we're briefly sharing consciousness. We are all bearing witness to mass murdering events—both COVID and Gaza—and it's unbearable. To add insult to injury, we have to hear every talking head in the western world talk out of their ass for seven months now.

The mainstream media (just privatized propaganda) is inflicting meta-trauma upon trauma. We have to experience not just the traumatic event itself, but then we have to fight to mourn, to avenge, or to even use words correctly. They kill a person and then assault their funeral, quite literally.

Palestinians witnessed this when 'Israel' assassinated Shireen Abu Akleh and then beat up mourners at her funeral. I experienced this personally when a corrupt Minister killed our uncle and then tried to frame him for his own murder. They kill you twice, the powerful. First they attack your body, then they attack the people that remember you, and keep you alive in their hearts. When higher beings attack, they cause multi-dimensional trauma.

Hence I'm not talking about individual pain. I'm not talking about inexplicably feeling bad, I'm talking about accurately feeling what's going on, and feeling appropriately bad about it. As the martyr Aaron Bushnell said, “this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” And then he lit himself on fire. I don't understand where he went with it, but I get where he's coming from. The world is truly on fire. Aaron just matched his internal state to the external. Rest in power to all the martyrs. I am just a humble messenger.

The Lord Buddha

I, personally process things by trying to understand them. By trying to fit external events into my internal philosophy. I may not be able to change the world, but I can at least say ‘I told you so!’ This sounds stupid when you say it, but this is the vanity of all philosophers. The vanity that A) you know something and B) that anyone gives a fuck. Bushnell chose the bonfire, and I've chosen the bonfire of the vanities. Philosophy.

I'm like Virgil in Dante's Inferno, a tour guide stuck in hell. Dante describes how I feel upon opening Twitter in this Year of Our Fall, 2024:

Here, as far as I could tell by listening,
was no lamentation other than the sighs
that kept the air forever trembling.

These came from grief without torment
borne by vast crowds
of men, and women, and little children.

My master began: ‘You do not ask about
the souls you see? I want you to know,
before you venture farther,

‘they did not sin. Though they have merit,
that is not enough, for they were unbaptized,
denied the gateway to the faith that you profess.

‘And if they lived before the Christians lived,
they did not worship God aright.
And among these I am one.’

Since I probably won't live to see next prophet (she's due this millennia), I'm probably as fucked as Virgil was. Giving tour guides of this hell to people who will live after me, but never being able to leave it myself. Am I fucked up by what I see? Yes, but, as any Sri Lankan auntie will tell you, what to do? This is the nature of existence, this is the nature of art, this is the nature of nature. As the Buddha said, life is suffering. As Ja Rule said, pain is love.

You can't see thirty dead people a day without dying a little bit inside. Especially because of the children, who our hearts just leap to, instinctive and unbidden. We are all connected in life and when that connection is severed in death it hurts. It hurts all the way across the world. As Allah said, “That is why We ordained for the Children of Israel that whoever takes a life—unless as a punishment for murder or mischief in the land—it will be as if they killed all of humanity; and whoever saves a life, it will be as if they saved all of humanity.” Ain't it the truth. The children of 'Israel' taken so many lives, and, God knows, it feels as if they're killing us all.