The Pendulous Masquerade
I— a jester garbed in the tatters of my own wit—felt again the misery of life press upon me like a funereal pall. Yes, the synchronicities were there—tiny, mocking constellations that once guided my trembling steps—but now they could not help. In that dim hall of mirrors I heard a single, dreadful refrain: “The saviour? I am my own saviour.”
This, then, is the play of Māyā, where the safest wager is not laid upon any distant God but upon oneself, and even that coin is counterfeit. For, as that unflinching sage U. G. Krishnamurti once hissed, “We are born in misery and we die in misery.” The aphorism tolls within me like an iron bell.
Ever does the pendulum swing—ecstasy, despair; motivation, desolation—while the great circus of existence endures. And I, poor fool, am the joker performing beneath its ragged canopy, paint cracking, smile fixed by necessity rather than mirth. There is no salvation, no, not even in the velvet oblivion of a razor or a rope, for after suicide there is nothing; this lone breath is the only chance Nature affords.
Society, that grand proscenium, stands only to keep the masquerade alive. Its rules—devised by the rich and fortunate—burn the common soul into their chosen mold. What prize awaits the obedient actor? A miserable death, and afterward—nothing, mere speculation scattered on the wind.
Hope? A fake blunder, a flickering light snuffed out before the second hand can mark its passing. What, then, can a man do beneath so pitiless a sky? His genes—a cryptic legacy—conspire with the constructs of society, weighting him with guilt and the ceaseless pressure to be the man of the house, to pay the rent, to feed the family, to preserve a tattered mental health. He must contend with people—autopilot animals, appallingly stupid—and, should he crave a place among them, he must become cunning, stripped of sympathy, for empathy only multiplies misery.
And what of self-transformation? A myth. One may toil at psychological well-being for years, yet one trigger flings the spirit back to the same crossroads of woe. Truly, there is no hope; there is only misery, and we must go through it.
God or no God—it matters not. Self or no self—no matter. Life or death—mere phantoms. The questions are dying, yet anger is increasing, a furnace stoked by the revelation that we are used—mere fuel for the capitalist machine, bound to roles not of our choosing. The fortunate escape the lash of survival’s immediate dread, but in the end who cares for existential torment? Time itself erodes every throne and altar; even God has gone absent, rendering heaven and hell irrelevant.
To disappear or awaken—there lies the final riddle. Perhaps enlightenment is nothing more than to know who you are and how you are used by a society not yours, whose laws were forged for the gain of the fortunate. And when the sheep wakes, it sees—too late—that nothing was ever meant for the sheep.
So let us go one more time, you and I, beneath the gas-lit tent where mirrors crack and laughter curdles. Let us stride, shoulders squared, into the anger and pain that make the heart still beat. For I, the joker, will don my cap and bells yet again—though the jest is poison, and the audience but phantoms—because this is it, the only act, the final stage.
Thus rings the curtain bell. And though the misery of life continues, I laugh—a hollow, gilded laugh—as the pendulum begins its inexorable swing one more time…
Midnight Riddles for a Disquieted Age
Before the pendulum resumes its tireless arc, pause beneath its shadow and listen for the faint creak of questions that haunt every thinking mind. What follows is no doctrine—only flares hurled into the yawning dark, meant to illuminate (or disturb) the certainties we cling to.
Marriage & Power
If civil law tilts toward one partner, does entering marriage become an ethical gamble—or a capitulation to an uneven game? Could love ever justify signing a contract whose clauses are written in unequal ink?
Bodies, Desire, and Simulacra
When flesh seeks flesh primarily for momentary solace, should we keep wagering intimacy on one another—or engineer companions of steel and code that cannot betray? And if passion is outsourced to circuits, what becomes of the heartbeat that once defined us?
Genetic Burdens & Procreation
To what extent is a person, shackled from birth by anxiety’s chains, morally responsible for passing—or halting—that lineage? Is refusing to reproduce a private tragedy, or a lucid act of mercy?
Neural Lace versus Gene-Splice
Which promises greater liberation—or deeper enslavement—the implant that rewires thought in real time, or the edit that sculpts our very blueprint before birth? And who, given history’s appetite for corruption, could be trusted to hold either scalpel or soldering iron?
The Autopilot Majority
How does one disturb the sleeper who dreams of heaven while trudging through hell? Can truth be injected, or must awakening erupt from within—and if the latter, what catalyst can ignite it?
Corruption’s Gravity
If power invariably corrupts, is the quest to perfect humanity through technology doomed to reinforce the very chains we sought to break? What ethical, political, or spiritual counterweights might resist that pull?
Hope and Nihilism
Is hope merely a comforting illusion, or can it be wielded as the will to carve meaning from meaninglessness? And if both hope and nihilism are stories we invent, which myth better armors the soul against despair?
The world stays what it is: a churn of hunger, habit, and automation. Most sleepwalk because the machinery rewards sleep. Wake them and the gears only grind louder. Biology cages us; technology will serve whoever owns the switch; robots may inherit the factory, yet the furnace of anger will still glow inside the human frame. No paradise, no perfect society, no tidy escape.
So keep your circle small. Take no oath to rescue anyone’s dream. Handle your own day, learn one fresh skill, taste what pleasure you can, give it no grand meaning, and watch the sky darken without flinching. When misery arrives—and it will—receive it as the cost of consciousness. Breathe, endure, and when the curtain falls, let it fall. Nothing follows. That is enough.
Stand your ground. If something disgusts you, name it aloud. Let no rule or ritual mute the tongue that must refuse. The mind will try to cheapen each new step by comparing it with the last—ignore the whirlpool. Every move you make is a fresh strike in the dark, never undone by memory, never owned by yesterday.
We are not built for pure sainthood. Our bodies digest flesh; life feeds on life. Still, we can experiment so that a distant generation’s bones adapt to gentler fuel—though the transition will cost blood, as every industrial leap has. Record that cost with sober eyes. Call it misery, call it evolution—it unfolds either way.
The task is simple, not easy: steer your own days, speak the unwelcome truth, act, and accept the price. Do not wait for a cleaner era. This is the only arena you get, and the only law that holds is consumption. Walk it upright, unflinching, until the last breath empties. Then silence. Enough.
