Originally written in 2006, a philosophical ponderance on humanity’s position in the cosmic hierarchy of existence and whether or not we are doomed to be caught in an endlessly tragic state of affairs, both on an individual and societal scale.
The Comic Tragedy
Part One: Forever’s Yesterday Didn’t Know that It Is Today
Lamented, misused, forgotten, and miserable. Life at times can find itself in such positions, typically trapped by its own doings, and it can feel as if the only paths to take are those filled with more lamentation, more misusage, more forgetfulness, and more misery.
The true meaning of the word “freedom” has not truly shined upon recent days of humanity’s predicament, having been thrust into a technological revolution that transformed everything about life as a human. Yet even when true freedom existed, it was still not complete for the brain is somewhat of an inherent cage all in itself. It cannot escape itself for doing so would cause the disintegration of the perception of a self, thus ceasing the mind’s existence entirely. The brain cannot help but shape its own reality through perspective, and it is therefore driven by what it perceives reality to be.
To have control of the body, as brains learn sooner or later, is to be restricted in turn by that body’s environment. Essentially, to exist in a reality is to perceive it, and the brain must have found a reality to exist in, and must act accordingly. The brain’s relationship with its outer environment is subject to the rules and laws that dictate the given space. Or, in other words, suppose there is an actual place that exists absent of perception, absent of an environment… does this place actually exist? Does non-existence exist?
Is there more freedom in death than in life? To be ignorant for eternities with empty space stretching no distance endlessly, lasting without time, because time requires a perception… Nothingness reacting with nothing inside nothing…
So where did this universe come from? If nothingness exists, and we are something for whatever reason, can we conclude this evanescent state of nonexistence has some primal desire to… be? Through the mere proof of our existence, can we deduce that somewhere embedded within lifelessness, there is an elemental desire for more?
Does the universe contain a pervasive desire to know thyself? To experience? To grow? Whether or not it was from this desire that all of energy, time, and the divine erupted is as unknown as the void itself.
Humans on many levels appear to be a product of this cosmic desire. Through existence in its rawest definition, this universe has proven to want to know itself. But does it know the cost of such a miracle? If we knew the price to live, would we consider making payment a disastrous mistake not worth the experience of suffering, death, and loss? Death is a necessary byproduct of the experience called living. To become all that has ever been is to have been somewhere where nothing was, and then to return to this abyss in the end. Fearing death can seem silly for we need death and upon its approach, the grim reaper will vanquish you from existence, transmuting all you feel, including your fear, back into nothingness…
Life on Earth has emerged after billions of years filled with energy randomized and destabilizing across gigantic stretches of spacetime. The life we all hold through the filters of our perceptions, the holy energy we have grown accustomed to, is part of the same consciousness that has been driving creation throughout the cosmos since an event known as the Big Bang.
Consider the Big Bang a misperception for a moment. It is not an explosion from whence we all came, or a reaction of matter unleashing a wide sky of stars and galaxies. Rather, it is still banging – it never stopped. Your consciousness might be one little reflection of the Big Bang with everything around us, everything we can possibly sense or detect, a piece of it which contains the whole. Infinite regression – an ocean of infinite waves with each wave containing its own infinite ocean. Whatever happens after the Big Bang eventually stops banging is unknowable, but I’d bet my last dollar that it just goes BANG again. In truth, the future of the next three weeks is as uncertain as the future of the entire universe.
Let’s imagine the Big Bang as a circle, or a sphere glowing brighter than any sun to ever shine. Zoom out to see it as one event amidst a sea of blank emptiness. A dot on a canvas. Now zoom in slowly… it gets dimmer and gradually vibrates at slower and slower frequencies. The once uniform ball can be seen to be composed of trillions of little spirals, galaxies amazingly small and numerous like cells in a human body.
Continue zooming in, experience time getting slower, the spirals get bigger until you see they too contain billions of spheres – the suns. As you get closer, they become further apart… until you’re somewhere very familiar… Earth.
Our mother planet arose from the cold stones and gases that formed when old stars died, exploding to harness more life, more cosmic desire. The remnants of previous consciousness drifted through almighty nonexistence, refusing to stay dead, until new life came forth. The Earth formed after cold lifeless matter gravitated toward the next generation of stars.
There was a competition amongst the rocks until several planetary prototypes formed and two of these celestial orbs smashed together with one remaining victorious and the other spinning off into the abyss. The debris from the crash orbited the surviving planet until our moon was birthed to be Gaia’s companion.
Gravity acts like a magical potter spinning its clay tirelessly, never stopping or abruptly changing its mind. Our lone moon pulled at the oceans below, causing tides that stirred up complex elixirs from which life sprang about. Eventually, you get to a species that named itself humans. We all share this same past, but individuals chart their own course forward. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, life is driven by its peculiarities as harmony accommodates for experience.
And so here we are now. The eternal lifeforce that sizzles in the cores of innumerable stars is the very source of energy that I feed off of for my survival, my growth, and this life sustains the environments that concocted my existence.
This essence of life, pure energy, is electromagnetic and present in every atom throughout the cosmos. The positively charged core pushes against the negatively charged electrons on the exterior of an atom’s shell. The atom shows that existence at its foundation is the product of contradiction – the ying-yang symbolizes all. Life against death, existence against nothingness, light against dark… the universal ballet continues…
At times, a delicate balance between two opposed forces is reached, creating a neutrality, a zero more powerful than all negative and positive numbers for it is neither. Neutrality confuses the positive and is envied by the negative, it is a doorway that no eye has ever seen. It is the gateway from non-existence into existence and from there, back into nothing…
The tragedy of life goes on… deep inside, the primal desire to exist stubbornly stresses the persistence of life, even if it can feel so futile and meaningless at times. Until encountered by some fierce motive or passion, the ignorant remain disillusioned and apathetic. For it can be a scary thought to think that life has inherent purpose, that we are to accomplish something here that affects some cosmic fate beyond our senses. Does the universe’s destiny lie within us all? It is almost too frightening to believe that our personal choices ultimately contribute to which side wins the cosmic duel between love and indifference.
However, if Gods are real, the moon is not even the toenail of a deity. If beyond the unimaginable energy of the Big Bang, there is an ever greater reality where the Big Bang itself is but an atom in a much larger universe, then the consciousness that exists out there would be the true conception of Gods. Our entire lives might just be residue from the concerns of these higher beings. What they would experience is inconceivable to our minds and likewise, if each atom in our universe is a full Big Bang of its own, smaller universe, then would our pain and joy be more significant than that experienced by the consciousness to arise there?
This is all nothing but a dream; a mere sigh of Zeus. My body is a vessel, a rowboat, and I paddle down the river called life, trying to enjoy it and be merry. While my boat will not last forever, the waters shall continue to flow into infinity. Oh, what greater things will happen? After the death of all life across Earth, considering all we learned and felt, what will arise next? What even more beautiful flowers will sprout from the ashes of Earth’s consciousness after it falls back asleep?
Love will return somewhere again. Love makes life worth it. It is worth the rejection, the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness, the misery, it is worth the lament… just to have a taste of real love. We came from the silence and it is to this quiet darkness, we return. So direct every word you say, every action you choose to take, every breath to escape your lungs, to be for the sake of love. For the hope that nothingness is not all we can attain, for the eternal fact that you do exist now. This striving for love will become your god, your motivation, and the beings we must entrust with life as we pass into death’s slumber, hoping that one day again… one day, we will again wake.
Part Two: The Only Thing on My Mind Takes Up All of My Time
I love and long for the insane, weird, and different. But given the state of our world, perhaps it is best I keep this a secret. Too much… holding it in becomes too much. I get bored and hear a lion beneath growl in tedium…
Why do things change? Is it an ignorant wish to want peace forever? Are there paradises, kingdoms, and majesties that can built without creating a lower, restless class of individuals? Have humans simply forgotten who they truly are? Has the ability to close the human mind ultimately doomed the species?
Maybe all people born come into life with genetic corruptions that continue to be passed down throughout the generations, and we therefore cannot escape the evil within us from propagating century after century…
For what a mind feels shapes the basis for what it perceives reality to be. Menacing emotions like fear, frustration, and impatience tend to swell into overwhelming storms that play the devil’s advocate, making excuses about why it might be okay to hurt others, sometimes in the worst ways.
Can we know love truly without experiencing betrayal first? Can we know what love is if it has always been requited? When hurt by the thorny stem of love’s rose, a snake within the brain becomes tougher to ignore and easier to abide. Regrettably, I have followed such a venomous split-tongue in weaker moments, allowing the snake to become a dragon I couldn’t tame. Greed led me to paths full of promise but on which, I was unable to make any progress… a cruel circumstance to find one’s self in. Only death wins when stuck on such roads...
Through embracing the insane weirdness of life, I was able to escape this fate. Love offered me forgiveness for my sins despite all of the previous damage and pain I had inflicted onto others. With love, compassion, and curiosity for all I did not understand, I was able to rise above my shortcomings to create something that I felt… for at least a brief moment… was beautiful. Trust me when I say that into the stars, into the void of space, there await new discoveries and realms for the mind to explore. All it takes is one choice to accept that there could be something astounding out there that is beyond anything we currently think is possible. There are immense treasures to find when one believes in the power of an open mind…
I will end this pretentious quasi-philosophical rambling with this… I am hopeful that the collective human mind has the capacity to once again be purged into the waters of freedom. Life can be unbound from the brainwashing slave-like status humans get reduced to through wage management and poverty. We need to acknowledge that not only have we hurt the Earth, we have hurt ourselves. With this glimmer of hope, perhaps one day humanity will accept that we have been too greedy, have accomplished little to nothing in our haste, and now must pursue a path that can only be walked with dignity and love reigning above all.
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2025
© USA
This was a short essay originally composed in 2006 called "The Cosmic Tragedy"
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