Alone In The Machine

Empty Stomach

He carries the weight for me also. He is rivers of arteries and veins, oceans of cells, mountains of flesh. He allows me to taste, to touch, to exist. To walk around on this tiny blue marble spinning in the infinite dark.

Can the body feel pain? It has input, sensitivity, it is responsive to its environment, but it seems to send it all my way. It seeks to protect the order and the equilibrium it has built for itself, but it doesn't seem to feel anything. It merely sends an electrical signal that is interpreted by my brain. The brain interprets it, but one cannot even say that the brain feels anything.

It is my mind that discriminates, that feels pleasure and pain. It is my mind that opens up the doors to despair and love, that feels boredom and wishes to escape it. It is my mind that has sat alone and untouched in this room for years. That cannot foresee the possibility of making a meaningful connection with another human being. That worries how it will survive, that fears it will end up homeless and on the streets begging for change.

The body wants food, and the mind wants food. Feeding one is not always feeding the other, and this is how the great war unfolds. When i say 'my' mind, what do i mean by that? What do i mean when i say it is 'my' body?

As soon as you label a thing you separate yourself from it, and with this self there is separation and the possibility of violence, yet without this self there is no perception, there is no 'you'. The first option is more comforting to us than the latter, hence our reluctance to change. Hence, ego, status, the whole blood stained history of humanity.

This separation, this labeling of things as the result of memory is what makes us label a particular situation as negative, it gives us a comparison, thus creating discontent. Is there any objective boredom or sadness? Is there any objective happiness? Is there any sorrow or discontent now, apart from the remembrance of a yesterday or the speculation of a tomorrow, which makes the present moment unsatisfactory?

The meaning of life, life after death, these are all just entertainments and we have strayed from natures purpose. Our intellects are too big and with the comparison of memory and imagination we make the present moment unsatisfactory.

We are interested in something more, in a meaning of life because we have bigger brains and we are bored, but the animals are never bored. We ask for meanings because we have big ego's and we are miserable and terrified of death.

The problem is this, nature does not care for our meanings. It only cares for the survival and maintaining of the human organism. It does not care for anything we care for. It cares about the DNA, it cares about the hive mind or the species, and it is doubtful whether it even cares about that. It does not care for anything we care for, and so Bios has us.

Give a dog shelter and some food and it will be happy. Put a man in a palace, and he may still be miserable. Give him the best food, give him anything he desires, and he may not be satisfied still. Inside there is a gaping hole we try and fill with thoughts and meanings, but we mistake the cure for the cause. Thought itself is the enemy and the ailment masquerading as the friend and the cure. Without thought, without the abstract, suffering is confined entirely to the body and its pain responses.

We are constantly at odds with nature. With our bigger brains and our capacity to speculate and remember we feel life must have some sort of purpose. We feel that the maintaining of the human organism or the species, that the will to live, must have some direct meaning or purpose it confers upon us, but nature just cares for the promotion of life for life's sake, and we find ourselves completely at odds with it.

We look for meanings because we think whats the point in maintaining our lives if there is none, yet we do not eat because it is wise and because we see a point in living, we eat only to ease the pain of an empty stomach.