Cruel Text written by Clyde. Reformatted by Casey Stone. Public domain. I hold that, on a detached level, all my perceptions and sensations are part of a cruel joke, even my notion of "cruel joke" is part of this cruel joke. While you may have come to similar conclusions, in this article this statement takes on many dimensions and goes much deeper than a typical complaint. Life Most people consistently make zombie-like choices and statements, whereas the human brain is capable of doing better. Here "zombie-like" refers to mindlessly following established customs, even if their relevance that led them to be formed at some point i n history, has lost. However, for unknown reasons, humans that are not zombie-like still exist, even if they're in great minority, and they're bound to a life of unusual suffering. Often they also cause extra suffering for other humans, due largely to the other humans' stupid ity and zombie- like properties, but it's still a sad fact. I'm largely not zombie- like, although I'm born to zombie-like parents. My residual zombie-like properties, however, cause personality faults like inconfidence and cognitive-behavioral faults like depression. Even when I learnt to recognize and control my residual zombie-like properties, I only came to the realization that there's hardly no business for me to stay in this world. Then, I interpret my existence and life so far as a cruel joke. I attempt to interpret it in a different way, but keep failing, leading me to interpret my inability to reinterpret this cruel joke thought as part of the cruel joke. These two interpretations are presented to me by my `a[intuition]intuition.html. I have no control of this process. My brain looks for patterns in things automatically. When I examine the two interpretations by exercising `a[rationality]rationality.html, I find that the logic of the latter is unassailable, so I swallow it even if it's a bitter one. There is no other way, short of invoking the supernatural, to interpret m y existence, but interpretations involving the supernatural have little force for me (except `a[divinity]divinity.html perhaps, but it's uninvolved here). My cognitive capabilities torments the consciousness linked to it. For a long time, I fail to recognize the source of this torment. As a result, I often feel annoyed for no reason. leading to agitated mood, in which I get annoyed at things for seemingly no reason. Is it the Ressentiment? I used to think so, but now I kno w it's not. Even after I recognize the source of this torment, it continues to trouble me. For example, I have difficulty accepting that my cognitive capabilities may torment myself, leading to a fragmentation of the concept of `a[self]self.html. At this point, I'm indistinguishable from being mad. Purpose of Life My conclusion is that cognition, in particular the ability of forming a concept of self, is a shitty trait for life to have. From an external point of view, the purpose of life is to perpetuate. This is manifest in the instincts to steer one away from potential harm, for example. However, from the point of view of a human, the purpose of life is formed through a combination of social opinions and internal evaluation. For some humans, the external purpose is internalized, and they consider making and raising children to be their pu rpose. For many others, some social opinion is internalized, and they delude themselves to think this socially-sanctioned act is their external purpose. For others, there is an internal purpose that is driven by a passion or desire that is separate from the biological purpose of reproduction. The internal purpose may be mostly innate or mostly acquired, but exactly what internal purpose one perceives in h imself is ultimately determined by his disposition. When the external purpose and the internal purpose conflicts, the human undergoes intense conflict with himself, but eventually leans to children and responsibilities and social approval, or a lonely lifelong pursuit to the exclusion of having children. Therefore, most humans have been and will be "replicators" that engages in "irregulation" of themselves by exercising a castrated variant of rationality. But the human brain (from which rationality derives) is capable of doing better, namely to regulate r ather than "irregulate". Only humans who make children are most effective in spreading their thoughts, because they not only spread thoughts but also the patterns of forming thought processes by being imitated, partly genetics partly upbringing. The truth, however, is not lost and only awaits a suitable individual to re-discover it, because when a rational path is followed and socially learned nonsense is shed, all roads lead to the truth. Therefore, the truth is continuously re-discovered and denied. This is part of the cruel joke, but it is still not the full picture. The Cruel Joke When I look back on my life, I form the opinion that it is part of a cruel joke. At the same time, I feel it's inescapable metaphysically, because even the notion of "cruel" or "a joke" are part of this cruel joke; indeed, even my ability to reason and co mprehend is part of this cruel joke. This self-reference leads to several problems. It is like a cylindrical shell enclosing me in the metaphysical space, and I have no way to break out of it. Why it is Cruel The notion of "cruel" is part of the cruel joke, because it is purely up to human perception whether something is cruel or not. But humans are the only animals that purposefully resist the cruelty of nature. Natural processes like evolution give rise to l ife that kill each other in order to survive, species of spiders in which spiderings eat their mother, zombie-like humans when they have the capacity to resist this quality, and the human perception that all the above are cruel. There are two solutions for the apparent conflict. One is to propose that humans perceive the world in a inconsistent manner, influenced by for example the impossibility of clear separation between animalistic drives that bring about cruelty and benevole nt choices that reduce it. The other is to propose that the notion of cruelty does not exist. Both solutions lead to numerous dead-ends, all of which contribute to part of the cruel joke. Why it is a Joke The cruelty concerned here refers to not only the counntless forms of pain and transience of pleasure and inevitable decay, but also the paradoxes that arise when one realizes these and attempts to cope. A modern human's typical response to the cruelty of life are entertainment and identity-seeking. These two responses are often intertwined, e.g. he joins a false rebellion group and chats with others about fashionable techniques at the moment. These two responses are eventually inadequate. The amount of entertainment that bombard the senses of a modern human leads to densensitization and ever more demand for entertainment, which coincides with the time when most forms of entertainment have beco me put-it-out-and-make-money products. The sense of belonging of identity-seeking rests on creation of nonexistent problems, for example fabricating rivalship that is ultimately pointless. I theorize that the modern human knows of the inadequacy of his responses at the back of his head. Sometimes, it manifests as feelings of emptiness and asking for meaning, but he suppresses these feelings and thoughts by distracting himself with entertain ment. A small subset of humans consciously accepts the inadequacy of the above responses. Every one of these humans experiences an enlightenment of some sorts which push them to seek deeper meanings. He follows the well-trodden path of art for art's sake. He reads, experiments, engages in discussions, and most importantly, observes the world around him. He finds a better form of entertainment, but is still prone to identity- seeking, which for him indi cates the partial inactivation of independent thinking and shoehorning his observations into models and theories. He already feels the pressure of loneliness, but he is unable to join the masses of modern humans, because their thoughts are already too different. He is concerned with value-making, for he needs to see value in his own artistic endeavor to persist upon it. He has three commonly taken paths. The first is to create an imaginary world (or similar) and adjust his own values that matters in the imaginary world hold at least the same importance as those in the real world. This path does not necessitate him to confront the evil that he observes. The other two paths both do. The second is to rationalize the evil that he observes. This is often done through a existing model or theory, which often leads to identity-seeking again. However, compared to the modern human, he is more knowledgeable and skeptical. He still has to do s ome bending of words to curb his doubts of the model or theory he believes in, but this state is relatively stable. The third path is to acknowledge the evil that he observes as evil, which irreversibly isolates him and chains him to loneliness. Often through another enlightenment, he starts to question everything, and acknowledgement of modern evil is a self-catalyzin g process. This process catalyzes itself (up to a point when all observed evils have been made sense of) because it builds a more coherent picture of the world, as one lie after another is revealed. A lie that is made to cover up evil is always less coherent than th e truth. A very small subset of humans reach here, due to their inborn superior pattern finding abilities. At this point, however, they often end up in "local maxima" of perceived logical coherence like the notion of a cruel joke. For those familiar with potential energies of conformers of chemical compounds, think of valleys (local minima this time) in which the "conformation" of thoughts tend to get stuck in and require a large activation energy to get to the global minimum or maximal stability, as in Jesus or t he Buddha. In the end, enlightenments (plural) start to feel pointless, and the value of truth degrades. Such is a joke of chasing what eventually is revealed to be valueless. But for religious leaders like Buddha and Jesus, it's also difficult to say they find the finality of good as enjoyable in and of itself. They are able to reach spiritual peace, because they stand on top of a hierarchy, made up of "teachers" and "disciple s". A man who gets to the top of a hierarchy experiences changes in his brain by activating mechanisms that come from evolution . A man who doesn't get there may feel despair, or indignation that they ought to be appreciated, which is a expression of this internal drive for social status. Once this kind of thinking begins, it perpetuates itself. Luckily, there are still holes in this and similar evolution-related reasonings, which is the reason why I don't seem mad yet. Ending I know that this article probably sounds damn funny to you. If that is so, please do laugh at my suffering, because it is so ridiculous a case of over-thinking that my rationality somehows finds completely normal. This is the true reason why I used to be self-destructive. This reason is still impossible to resolve to me today, but I've more or less accepted it. It should be an amazing (or awful) thing of nature that a bunch of inorganic molecules shall come together to form an object that harbors such properties as I do. But keep in mind, even the feeling of amazement is part of the cruel joke. .