We are Human Beings



We are human beings. We are a species of animals just like any other, with no particular goal in life. We have an enormous, yet useless brain which is prone to having grand ideas when left to itself. These grand ideas, once implemented have given us what we love to call progress and a pseudo-evolution of lifestyle.

Over the past several hundred years, the human lifestyle has gone through such enormous change that we have forgotten that essentially we need to survive, and that even if we don’t, nothing in the universe will ever change.

But the lifestyle changes have brought changes to our expectations from life and have successfully instilled in us a false sense of self-importance which is nothing but a sugar-coated device of certain kinds of humans with more greed, to enable them to keep living their luxurious lives.

Thus, when the primitive side of us does occasionally rise up into our conscience, like a ghost, we simply deny its existence, scared to know what it might have to say. We are so far out in the sea that even though in our mind we have already understood the mindless excess which has taken us there, we can scarcely turn back now. The desire is fulfilled. But the matters of practicality are not embedded in the beautiful grandeur of our desires.

That is when we start to artificially try and excite our spirits, and light the burnt embers. The endorphins and serotonins have all come and gone, making us euphoric in the process, fuelling the belief that life is significant, which is false, but. Those little molecules are like the carrot dangling in front of the mule while life beats the shit out of it with its giant stick. We want that carrot, and we try a thousand different ways to make it come back, to give us that ‘peace on earth’ feeling in our mind, until we realize that that feeling was in our childhood and that we are never about to get it back.

We take to addiction. We curse the memories. We want to forget. We hope that the little drops of spirit from the glass or that whiff of smoke from the joint will keep them away. We hope they will never return again for the rest of our lives.

We can even go to great length and start breaking furniture, cutting wrists, destroying our beloved vocal chords, all in an effort to bring the misery to an end. Little do we know that the first mistake is the creating of the grand designs, which we then nurture carefully in our heads. Even worse is the realization that we don’t know how they came about, but know that they are there now, and that they weren’t put there by us.

So where does that bring us? It brings us to the start, where it all began, to our roots, to find all the answers at the root of the difficulties in our life.

For a long time, religion provided us with all the answers, and calmed us down. It acted as an ‘opiate’. But then came science, and turned itself into the new religion.

Scientific query, which used to be the fire sparked out of curiosity, now burns down forests out of vendetta. It is the free range of reckless egos. It is no longer a query, it is the Italian job, and to succeed in it we must fight against egos which are so huge that all they see is the shadow of darkness, which to them, becomes the ultimate truth, instead of the light of the Sun they are blocking. Thus, for a conscientious student of curiosity to see the light he must grow an ego bigger than before, and thus in the process risk that dangerous stoop of old age which will again help create that comfortable mind-numbing darkness of the shade.

What must we do then, except for walk away from such monstrosities, and hope in the process to minimize our miseries? But that will only mean cutting down another forest and killing another hundred species of animals. It will be a good idea, thus, to go back in history and appreciate the ethos of the caveman, and pay homage to the last truly independent and satisfied species of human beings.

Dwaipayan Adhya

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