C:\>A Necessary Definition
11/11/24
(This diatribe was originally written the day after the 2024 election)
Now isn't this fun? We are conducting this experiment to determine the psychological effect of fucking about. As we speak, this beautiful, repugnant nation of ours is cementing its legacy as the bilge-waste reclamation facility of the world. Where else could one so gallantly, so brazenly, seep their reek into every facet of civilized society and, instead of getting spritzed with Clorox and disposed of, be heralded as just a really very great guy?
Thus is the state of things as we currently have the privilege to observe them. If, like me, you're not exactly creaming yourself at the prospect of living in this Brave New World of manure made animate, then I have bad news. I can't fix that, not for all the duct tape in the world. But I can offer you something. It isn't much, but it's all I've got, and I want you to have it too.
I can offer you a shift of perspective- something I have become quite skilled at cultivating, both due to natural temperament and the external necessity forced upon me by the aforementioned shit world we all live in. This is not my first rodeo when it comes to coping with the mental chafe one can experience when it seems as though we are collectively determined to make everything worse for ourselves and each-other. The bar, as they say, is quite low. And yet we continue to stretch up on our tippy toes, failing to reach it. I think the thing I'd first like to bring attention to is that, irrespective of some localized oscillations in this time period or that, we always have.
Did we forget that we're the fuckers who burned witches? Did we forget that we're the fuckers who enslaved millions of literal human beings for centuries under moral certainty so absolute we wrote it into the fucking constitution? Did we forget that we're the fuckers who trashed the fucking planet, choking the air with coal ash then smog then CO2, consuming or decimating every lifeform we came across like a fucking plague of self-fellating locusts? Manifest destiny. White man's burden. Burn the heretics. Conquer, consume, murder, and multiply. We are the single most successful invasive species this planet has ever seen, ecosystem engineers so bafflingly successful that we have ourselves convinced that we do not even belong to the ecosystems we inhabit, that we somehow exist outside of them. We are vicious little apes, hellbent on taking. And that is all we have ever been.
Acknowledging and internalizing this is the first step to understanding where we are and why. It's a steep hill to climb, one that requires a near-herculean dismantling of the ego. And it certainly isn't necessary in order to survive and even thrive in this world, either. I fully acknowledge that it is even disadvantageous, that being one of the takers would be nothing but rewarding, both materially and psychologically. But if you were capable of becoming a taker, you wouldn't be here...would you?
Because you feel the chafe.
Because you have a conscience.
That pesky little nag tumored into the back of your skull.
Maybe you're abnormally principled. Maybe you were bullied, victimized, or abused. Maybe you're neurodivergent. Maybe you were simply actually raised right, by people who themselves were raised right (a statistical anomaly, I know). For whatever reason, the exaltation of these degenerate masses before us leaves you sickened and weak. Just like me. Just as it should.
I have a word for this state of distress. As a matter of fact, I invented it. I offer it to you in the hope that having a word for it may at least help you to be able sit with the pain you're feeling, even if fixing it isn't an option.
BESCROTTLEMENT:
The deep, hollowing disappointment one feels when confronted with the limitations of mankind. The fatigue of seeing a thousand million opportunities to be better cast aside with a smile. The fractured coexistence of bitter resentment and battered resignation inspired within us by our own conspecifics.
To be bescrottled is to exist fully in such a state, to be present in it as a default. Many may brush against the borders of this realm, becoming briefly aware of the reality of our core nature and the uncountable ramifications of it. Most do not. And most that do reject it almost immediately, descending back into whatever delusions they depend on to continue functioning adequately. Hence how we got to where we are. It's only human. But if you're like me, you lost the potential for that years ago, if you ever even had it to begin with.
This blog is dedicated to you, the bescrottled. To the worn hearts, to the ones who care. To the ones in need of a psychic hymen, so that they may only go mostly insane rather than totally. I can't fix everything else, but maybe I can help with that.
-Thorne