I've been thinking some dark things lately that - little philosophies I may put in my fiction. I have no idea if they are formal Philosophy, they are just my own thoughts on the world.
I got to thinking the other day about my place in the world - about everyone's place in the world and came to the conclusion that each and every one of us falls into three main categories in regards to the world. 1. To some people we are a precious jewel, a unique being to love and value (for most of us, this is our family, friends, partners... fans for some of us). 2. To most people we are nothing - a face in the crowd, money waiting to be harvested, a stick figure, a caricature, a Generic Human. 3. To some people, we are a mess to be cleaned up.
The third one's not even necessarily personal - you can fall into number 2 and still be number 3 to some people by category, because they think the category you are in is simply a mess to be cleaned up.
It doesn't matter who or what you are, either. Even famous do-gooders fall under my adage of "Every hero is someone's villain." Even some people who acknowledge the heroism of an individual will still see that one "flaw" about them that makes them essentially still a mess that needs to be cleaned up.
Speaking of feeling like a mess, I've also been pondering what it might feel like to die lately. Well, I actually ponder this all the time - I'm a rather morbid person. There's a part of me that wonders, when I die, will I find out I was "right" in some way in regards to my beliefs on the subject or will I just drift away never knowing? Either way, I hope I feel at peace about it, but I don't know if I will. People say (perhaps because it's inevitable) that "it's okay" that it will feel okay when it happens, but what if it doesn't? What if I feel something like darkness closing in all around me that I cannot escape, no shot of peace or apathy to go with it?
Some say that I shouldn't even have these thoughts because I identify as a Christian. (Any prospective literary agents, please don't run away from me because I admitted to that - I'm anything but stereotypical and I write secular). Still, there is some agnosticism to my faith. I'm always considering that others might be right, even as I'm not ready to go over to their side. Red-Rover, Red-Rover, I'm not listening, having too much fun on the swings...
Let's just say that I'm kind of jealous of people who say that the thought of utter oblivion / non-existence doesn't scare them. It scares the poo outta me. I cannot think of it as a long stretch of sleep or as "darkness." I didn't experience "darkness" beyond that of my own eyelids when I was put under for surgery, after all - this is actually why I don't believe in "oblivion." Even if the idea of Afterlife does wind up being a lie, I don't think the brain - an organ that processes "existence" is capable of processing "non-existence." It stands to reason for me that people don't "go into the dark" so much as they "experience their last moment" for what is to them, "eternity." The idea of experiencing non-existence, to experience non-experience just kind of makes my brain-computer crash. I just hope that if visions of Heaven are in my brain as I'm fading out, that it doesn't, in the end, mean that I am a weak person who lived a worthless life because I'm not seeing "darkness" like I "should."
Sometimes, I think, whatever happens, whether I have a fate of Heaven, Hell, Oblivion or something else that it would be nice to not be a burden anymore - to stop being that "mess that needs to be cleaned up" for some people. ,
I'm hanging on because I have people in the number 1 group and the hope that people that are prone to seeing people as categorical messes are full of crap.
Perhaps as I hope for a better world, I can create better worlds through my fiction - but I never do that. All my worlds are as complicated as the one I know and have a touch of darkness. A lot of what I write is very dark. I suppose it's what I try to use to shine light on the darkness in our world, by showing it in exaggerated, fictional settings.
I'd like to live in a world where people didn't see each other as messes or disease - categorically or otherwise.
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