Regressive Revolution

Regressive Revolution

Samuel Bird

“I don’t know Samuel, I just can’t keep on like this.” 

“How so?” 

“There is something so wrong with me.” 

“What do you see that as being?” 

“I don’t want to live anymore.” 

“Well, that is a dramatic effect that is down the line from many causes. What do you think some of those causes could have been?” 

“There is something wrong with me. I must be ill, defective, contaminated.” 

“In what way?” 

“I just don’t feel like life is worth living.” 

“In all ways?” 

“What do you mean Samuel?” 

“When you say life is not worth living, is it not worth living as it is, or in any way it could be?”

“For example, what?” 

“Can you imagine some iteration of your life being worth living?” 

“Yes, I could.” 

“Okay, so you are at least not completely defective. There is at least one way that your life would be worth living. Can you think of multiple ways?” 

“Yes, I can think of a few.” 

“Oh, then it sounds like you are a sort of thing that could thrive in some circumstances, but not others. Don’t feel bad about that. It is typical. The real question is what about your life is so awry from what you neccesiate that it is causing this? Then, we would have to ask if that is a reasonable way to ask our lives to be.” 

“No, there is something wrong with me. I was seven years old when I first wanted to kill myself.” 

“Why?” 

“Why... well I guess I am not sure.” 

“Let me ask you this, how many people do you know that have desired to kill themselves?” 

“Quite a few.” 

“Perhaps there is some bias on the sample because you may have been their friend because they were similar. However, do you find it odd that there were so many people available to befriend in your small town who felt life was not worth living?” 

“Now that I think about it, that is sad.” 

“I have a guess as to why. Your being is violently at odds with the new world around you.” 

“Why is that?” 

“Before I get to it, let us ask who is really following the inevitable conclusions of this modern world. What do you hear are the most important goals to our society?” 

“To achieve pleasure.” 

“So then, wouldn’t the dying drug addict whose living body rots from underneath him be the inevitable conclusion? What else is the goal?” 

“To succeed and grow.” 

“Then, wouldn’t the oppressive elite bureaucrat or business person succeed with all the value they steal from others? What is one last goal?” 

“To minimize suffering.” 

“Don’t you think this pain you are feeling that drives you to this damaging and permanent choice is just that?” 

“So, I should do it?” 

“Should? What a word. I will say given the world you find yourself in, it makes sense that are able to feel this way. Finally, the beliefs your society gave you made it necessary. At the end of a rainbow is only tired legs and finding one far from home. I think we can assume for a minute that the assumptions of this modern world are problematic. Not morally, because that can be self-referential, but they are inconsistent. Have you ever fought very hard to love someone?” 

“Yes, I have!” 

“Did that relationship work out?” 

“Not the one I have in mind.” 

“Yes, the best way to stop a waterfall is not at the bottom, but a dam upriver. If you seek happiness, happiness is a terrible goal. Something better and higher before that would lead more to that thing we denied. Now, let’s pretend my hunch is right. Let’s say that you are not ill in the sense you are defective. You don’t throw up these toxins because you are allergic and pathological, but because there was no possible world that you could have done well.” 

“But my doctor said...” 

“Let me stop that thought. I am tired of hearing how damaged and broken great and wonderful people are. Do you think that doctor saw his thousands of patients and ever wondered anything but what he was trained to look for? You are sick because you are in a sick world. Now, follow these thoughts upstream. What makes your life not worth living?” 

“Well, I don’t know.” 

“Please, take your time. You are unpacking a lot of programming and propaganda.” 

“I just hate my life!” 

“I am so sorry. I wish better for you, but what do you hate about it?” 

“It doesn’t mean anything!” 

“Why is that?” 

“I am so lonely Samuel, so lonely. No one loves me. I have no one to talk to or hold me.” 

“I am so sorry.” 

“Nothing I do seems to fix the problems in my life. I feel powerless and pathetic. My life wears me out, and I have to handle it alone. It's bad, and I don’t see it getting better.” 

“What do you foresee?” 

“I work both of these stupid jobs more hours than I can handle, to rent an apartment I hate, to eat food that is killing me. You want to know the worst of it Samuel, I eat that toxic meal in that awful place alone!” 

“What have you already done to combat this?” 

“I worked hard and got my master’s degree, but it is now only a bill I am behind on paying. It didn’t help my job. I try to date, but there is nowhere to find people. I try to exercise and meditate, but I always go back to that stupid apartment.” 

“What do you do to fill your time?” 

“I hop on my technological device and spend hours wasting away my limited life. Then, when I turn off the screen, I see the reflection of a stranger that I hate.” 

“So far, how you feel makes tons of sense given the facts.” 

“So then, should I do it?” 

“Not necessarily. Sometimes we can change our behavior by making a choice. Other times, especially in terms of addictions, we are wise to change our world so we have access to a different range of choices. I try to lock up my device, but in the end, it calls me and I get it back. When I have had the most self-control, then I have no way to connect with people.” 

“You are finding our new world is built on addiction. The mind was never meant to say no to easy sex, sweets, and bright colors. It is unfair you are put in a position where you have to constantly deny these things because of easy access. What else about your life makes it so?” 

“Even if I fixed these issues somehow. I just don’t see a reason to keep living. I am living for anything. I am detached from the world and completely alone.” 

“I have a theory, can I share it?” 

“Go ahead.” 

“I think that the mind’s possession and evaluation of different sorts of things ends up with different values. From the facts we get the truth, the actions the good, the being the beauty, and the totality, and what is called emergent properties give us meaning. Now, that last word, where does it strike you?” 

“Like a fever dream that would curse me to know it was there and I didn’t have it.” 

“And you yet you know it is. The totality of the separate values and facts of your life does not cumulate in something that you find distinct, exclusive, and meaningful, does it?” 

“No.” 

“There are two ways to handle this. The first is to alter our values, but based on what you said about your life, perhaps the second is a better start. We do that by changing the facts we have access to. Do you remember when I told you about Esse Maxim?” “Yes, I still have mine.” 

“Perfect! It is a tool for making meaning of our lives, but it does so only with the facts we get from the world. In your instance, I think we can agree that they are not opportune for such.” 

“That is true.” 

“So, what things would be different about your life that would make it more meaningful?” 

“Well, I would have a family. I don’t mind working, but I would need to see that it paid off and I was doing better. I just want to be a part of something.” 

“Okay, I think that makes sense. Now, I am usually a fan of changing oneself, but the world we find ourselves in is so corrupt, that I find it is unfair of me to ask the victim to smile. Rather, you need change. Later, we will make an action plan that will allow us to address what we can do on a micro level to respond to the issue. For now, I want to remove any sense that you are contaminated in soul and mind such that you would do us a favor of self-selecting yourself out of the world. It is a vicious lie pedaled by the implicit assumptions of our world. There will be few times you hear me say someone else is to blame when we can assume responsibility and control, however in this case, we were always doomed in a hellish place.” 

“What are you saying?” 

“You deserve better, so much better than what you are offered. I don’t know how to say this and you are the first I have told, but I am planning a revolution.” 

“Like a war or politically?” 

“It could develop into that, but that is not the start or the focus. Our enemy is an idea and our ally another. People can choose which they yoke themselves to and which side they find themselves.” 

“What is the enemy?” 

“Progress.” 

“How could you say that?” 

“My mouth.” 

“No, I mean why do you say that?” 

“Because I mean it. I have critiqued progress before and everyone acts like I blaspheme which only locates to me, their new gods.” 

“We are so much more wealthy than our ancestors.” 

“Yes, we have more worthless paper, twice as much bread with half the nutrients, more clothing that falls apart faster, more relationships that don’t truly know us, larger houses to be empty and made of chaff, more ideas than ever and none worth believing, and more faces to behold, not a one to look on us with love. We have fallen for the fallacy that toddlers must overcome. Is the playing with a stick better if we have two or it is twice as big? There is an equilibrium of stick size that makes it wieldable and a number of sticks worth managing.” 

“But our ancestors lived short and brutal lives.” 

“Yes, but that was not the problem, was it? It was never pain or death that was the enemy. It is that we find our pain and death not culminating in something we value. Think of the aggressive social engineering that has damaged families via the alleged sexual liberation of their parents?” 

“We don’t have to have nuclear families, don’t be so traditional.” 

“You are right. We can choose how we structure families. Perhaps we all live with our grandparents in tribes. However, it is necessary that we make a choice and that it makes it so the strengths of the parents and rearing family members are centered on the children. It takes a lot of work to create and care for a child. Think of it, I know you are haunted by your childhood. It wasn’t because the house or food wasn’t to your liking. Your father should have never left you to run around doing whatever he wanted.” 

“Women have been liberated with progress.” 

“All the ways they could have progressed could also happen in a primitive society. Their sex is still sold, just not to their loving spouse. They still work for someone, just not their family. If I may be so blunt, you are an instance of the modern world failing them, while doing fantastical lipservice.” 

“But they were treated like slaves.” 

“All people are now treated like slaves. Nothing buys our resources but a subscription to labor. There was no perfect time for them, but it certainly isn’t now either.” 

“Technology has improved our lives.” 

“How so?” It can help with gathering information, medical advancements, and communication.” 

“Some good here and there doesn’t net out well to the atom bomb, psychological operations, or the dramatic centralization of power.” 

“To billionaires or the government?” 

“One party will pick their powerful foe and so will the other. However, at some point, we must realize the powerful have either had ill will, or failed, and we have no ally there. They sell out the world for their money or power, and then give us skewed graphs as to why we should be grateful.” 

“So you are conservative?” 

“In the party sense, no. In the idealogy sense, sort of no. I saw a poll recently where an overwhelming number of people were unhappy with the direction of the world. How can most people not like the direction when most people are who choose who directs the world? We have been sold progression as if it is some good for its own sake. However, let us consider an exponential curve. If we watch the curve progress forever, it eventually begins to go from horizontal to more vertical until it is not at all the same shape as before. And what if we were to stop? Or social systems were to collapse. And what if we continued? Our world would fall apart.”

“I remember you mentioning that, but we just can’t go back?” 

“Why?” 

“How would we make it happen? What evil could come from it?” 

“Yes! You are asking the right questions. First off, some evil from any choice is expected. The point is if the net evil is less than our current our alternative state of net evil. I have made a rough case for that. On the other, there will be some issues. To one, there will be some complex game theory between the adopters of regressivism and the detractors.” 

“Regressivism?” 

“Yes, a revolution needs a name. I haven’t worked out the details, but valuing human life as arbitrarily as I do, I would want to win them over.” 

“And if you failed?” 

“Then I think we will learn why history is filled with ideas people thought worth dying for.” 

“Are you mad? You are calling for war and even death?” 

“Blood will be spilled in this world too, just from innocent and trying people like you.” 

“How does this relate to Esse Maxim?” 

“I will be honest, I don’t know. It doesn’t necessarily follow from it, but it certainly could help me with a framework to make regressivism complete.” 

“I don’t think you can stand for both.” 

“I worry you are right. Two distinct facts sit in my mind and need reconciliation. Originally, I didn’t want to share either. I wanted to be a content little cowboy off on my way. However, my private issues made me have to answer the void as Esse Maxim. The larger and systematic issues have forced me to respond as regressivism. I don’t think heading a revolution would be fun for me. However, I looked around and repeatedly saw that no one was doing anything, and I was left as the only person I could choose their actions. People are welcome to ignore me, but they will then have to make sense of all the symptoms left in their lives.” 

“I guess I am still not sure what you are fighting for.” 

“In short, Esse Maxim makes room for the soul and prepares one for death by engaging one to their existence via one properly basic assumption. Regressivism would allow for the harmony of the human being and their world via a focus on allowing for them to fight for their social, emotional, and sacred needs. We are one sort of being. We are in one sort of world. If we change either too much, we can’t be wiser than the mystery that made both and make something dissonant and damaging. Every mind deserves its right to engage with the world around it as it sees fit and as that thing that sprung up in that same world.” 

“What if you fail?” 

“I will, I just hope I do a little bit of succeeding along the way.” 

“I guess I still don’t understand why.” 

“Because I never again want to have to help excuse a loved one for why they should stay in that world. I love you.”