Dedicated to lykos (and some other overthinkers)
Being a headologic-stoic tale, as found in the cookbook of the reclusive and mysterious warlock (male witch) Avechuchus Anbari
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” Seneca the Younger
“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine” REM
Ever since the beginning of the world, humans and other beings have been talking the end of the world. Well, not quite what you’d call “beginning”, since humans were not there at the time… You know the world took a while to cook the cosmic soup, the first minestrone soup, if you like, from which organic beings emerged, and, millions of years later, hairless apes. In Colombia and other places of Latin America it is said that certain soups have the magical power for such prodigies as raising the dead and even curing hangover. Did you really think that was a coincidence?
But what about those “other beings”?, you may rightfully ask. Perhaps they did start at the same time with the world, and perhaps it was them who put that most terrifying idea into the human minds. Never mind, they were sent into exile centuries ago, and the status of their relations with humanity remains in the shadow as of the present day. For them the whole “end of the world” business may well have been either dead serious or just a joke out of bafflement.
It is unclear when the first exact date of the fateful day was predicted, let alone the first idling Neanderthal having done the math. As to whoever came up with the idea for the very first time, it’s a matter of mystery. How on earth did they even conceive it? Yeah, of course, creatures come and go all the time, even whole species perish, they may have somehow found out about the dinosaurs, but as for the watery rock itself… Now, the very idea of the cosmos disappearing is unthinkable. The notion of a Big Crunch that would doom all that is to vanish into sudden nothingness is just outrageous mythology, incomprehensible superstition, actually a variation of the “end of the world” theme gone full-blown, hyper-narcissistic baroque.
Whatever the case may have been, in the blink of an eye you had all sorts of mythologies —and their corresponding religious faiths— announcing the eventual and unavoidable end of the world. And with certain gods drowning pretty much everyone in a flood or burning whole cities to the ground while turning people into stone or chaining and torturing relatives in revenge for petty transgressions, well, it was not hard to believe the prophecies. We’ll come back to fits of rage later, since they’re a common element in the “end of the world” theme.
For medieval catholics it become sort of a fad, even a hobby. Through a detailed enough research you’re likely to find prophecies of the impending end of the world in any century of the period. Those people really loved life! It could’ve been the excitement of catastrophe but it still makes you wonder. Of course, when very real tragedies, such as the Black Death, struck, only dangerous, deranged fanatics remained excited: Yes, yes, my Lord, plague this world goodbye!
The advent of The Age of Reason raised the hopes of the most sensible souls that the end of a nonsensical myth was nigh, had they only known that the age of reason itself is one of the most intricate, abstract, and irrational superstitions humanity has come up with yet. I mean, had you challenged ancient peoples to imagine a mythology with no supernatural beings whatsoever, in which magic is the product of mathematical calculations, logical demonstrations, and the lame inertia of inanimate, soulless matter, they would’ve thought you bananas. But we humans are magical nonsense all the same, in and of ourselves, it’s not like we have a choice. Leave it to atheists to believe we’re in control of rational, predictable behaviors and outcomes.
So, the end of the world not only stuck with us through rational, modern times, but it thrived in unexpected, wicked and dark ways. No longer are we at the mercy of overwhelming natural forces or whimsical, vengeful gods; now the threat and the prophecies and the horror stem from a far more unpredictable, long unexplored[1], treacherous place. Well, actually, not so much a place as an entity, a conscious something, the most powerful supernatural being in this and a good many other universes: the human mind. Not brain, mind, which is an entirely different business.
In a sense you could say it has always been the mind, as ancient magicians would have it. All immaterial beings, places, times, and whatnot seem to have always been born there. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist on their own, just as you can perfectly exist outside your mother’s womb. Most importantly, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist at all. It ends up becoming just a matter of interpretation: “part of” and “apart from” are just different seats in the theater, or better still, different sides of the stage.
But with the octarine bridge[2] severed and everything and everyone immaterial sent into exile, even deemed non-existent, the spawn of the mind became literally unnamable (ask Lord Voldemort), unspeakable (ask Cthulhu), unthinkable, incomprehensible (ask… well, pretty much every monster? H.P. Lovecraft came up with…). As for horrors that even in ancient times were already abstract, such as the end of the world, they became fortuitous, illogical, inexplicable. That’s what you get with Miss Fortune and Destiny, her son, out of the way: pointless stories that confuse description with reason and rave themselves capital T Truths.
It is not that people don’t imagine anymore, though; it’s that they do it unwillingly, unknowingly, randomly. As for what they imagine, they’re likewise wild surges of randomness, massive magical potential that never settles into something defined. Never have humans been more overpowered by the invisible. The end of the world has become an imminence of everyday life, with self-fulfilled prophecies issuing themselves and multiplying constantly, rapidly, indiscriminately, like cancer, like capital, like litter.
Someone loses their job, it’s the end of the world; someone breaks up with their sweetheart, it’s the end of the world; someone loses a close one to Mother Death, it’s the end of the world; someone says or does something horrible in a fit of rage, it’s the end of the world; someone fails an exam, it’s the end of the world; a child makes a childish mistake —instead of behaving like an adult— in the place where children go to learn from their mistakes, it’s the end of the world; someone struggles to find their destiny (no wonder!), it’s the end of the world; someone can’t even see the path beneath their own feet (no wonder times two!), it’s the end of the world.
This may sound like careless mockery at this point, but it’s dead serious. All of the aforementioned are true ends of the world because they feel like it. And one human heart, in one human life, can only take so many. After that the end of the world becomes a mood in which, sadly, millions of people are already trapped. Everything becomes what the heck, what for, what’s the point, what if I die, what if I don’t? Just leave me alone! For those already trapped, these words may rightfully seem hopeless. May the gods find you and help you. If your thoughts have been tampered with enough for you to loathe fantasy, seek them in the arts. They may likely be the only place to find them in this day and age.
The rest of you, whose world ends now and then, no matter how frequently, don’t despair: there is no such thing as the end of the world. It’s just tomfoolery! Yes, of course, you will die someday, but now you can literally become the soil for new life to spring (being worm food was already noble enough, but this is sublime!). I for one want to follow on my beautiful mom’s afterlife and reincarnate in a flower. As for humanity, we’ll have to wait and see, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we manage to move elsewhere, to many different places, before our sun goes out. And even if we don’t, even if our species dies with it, life won’t necessarily have the same fate. Remember “world” is just a narcissistic, egotistic, species-centered word for “a form of life”. Heck, even if all minestrone soups in the multiverse ceased to exist, and with them all organic life, and with it life as we know it… we just never know! We never truly know, we just pretend we do because we can add things up and harness a few natural phenomena. If that’s not pathetic pretentiousness, I don’t know what is. We’re just hairless apes!
But beware: now that imagination is forbidden and the human mind is as good as unknown, disregarded even, unless you purposefully engage with them (magic and monsters, respectively)[3] they may indeed be very dangerous. Idle minds will inevitably wander, whether you want them to or not. And don’t ever even consider the possibility of controlling them, not for a second. They detest such arrogance and you will regret it. Best anyone will ever manage is befriend them, learn to live with them. Whenever you’re overcome by end-of-the-world prophecies, do something with your hands. There’s an evolutionary reason why opposable thumbs are the material equivalents to imagination: they keep you grounded, lest you get kidnapped by a power you don’t know how to use (does overthinking ring a bell?).
I suppose using our hands (or our bodies, for that matter) takes us back to that paradise lost when life seemed much simpler, in other words, it’s the closest we’ll ever actually get to #returntomonke. For whatever reason, it boosts our “happiness hormones”, as any decent brain scientist will attest. Perhaps it is because whatever tasks are performed in such manner are indeed simple, and many a time also fun; perhaps because most of them involve some sort of creativity, even if at an apparently basic level. Here we inevitably get tangled in paradoxes only headology-experienced fools comprehend: these simple tasks are not irrelevant, yet they are luckily unimportant; they literally keep us alive (think cooking), yet they don’t carry the world upon their shoulders; they are meaningful, yet they are non-serious; they are deeply transcendent, yet they are transitory. In short, they embody (quite literally also) the indispensable playfulness of life (the gods’ dark humor), a healthy cynicism (or IDGAF-ism, if you like) of sorts, and have been recorded in such popular sayings as “life is too important to be taken seriously”, by the genius-poet-dandy-degenerate Oscar Wilde or “life is just a ride in an amusement park” by the great wise fool Bill Hicks. Have you noticed how people with miserable lives usually have forsaken play and/or act as if the fate of the world rested upon them? Both cases have something in common: they are too serious and too self-important.
So, make your bed, wash the dishes, do other chores, play with legos, build plasticine dollies, create something, whatever suits you. Or if you’re the sporting/physical activity type, that’s great too! Move your booty, run, dance, sweat rivers. Sooner or later it will dawn on you that the world didn’t end after all. And after every misfortune until the very last day of your mischievous but also miraculous mind, you will see how the next morning the sun still rises up in the sky.
Postscript
My beloved, beautiful artists: Don’t let ANYONE suffocate the wonderful octarine flame that burns in your hearts. People don’t eat success, but they do endure the best and the worst of life, and are able to always hold on to hope, thanks to the dreams you create. YOU are the stuff of dreams.
[1] To the point of having gone back to being, for all practical purposes, unknown.
[2] The bridge that connects the material and immaterial dimensions of existence. Some say it’s the same faculty we call “imagination” but the matter has not been settled. It is also unclear if this bridge may lead to yet other dimensions of existence. Octarine is the eighth color of the rainbow in some universes. It is the color of magic.
[3] Master Alan Moore defines magic as “the purposeful engagement with the phenomena and possibilities of consciousness”. I prefer to give it a little twist and change the word “consciousness” for “imagination” to avoid pointless debates with materialist philosophers and scientists deluded by the fanatic fumes of scientism. Let them discover, in their own time, that the physical study of the brain has nothing to do with imagination. It only teaches us how to turn it off.