Something or Nothing

This one might be a little different, but like I always say: it’s my website and there ain’t no rules around these parts. This one isn’t so much an essay, but more of a question about something, if that makes sense. Sometimes I find the structure of essays limiting because I don’t always set out to “prove” something, I just like writing about thoughts in general. (One must remember: MM is partly a philosophy website, and I don’t have the answers, Sway! I sometimes just enjoy asking questions).

Before I get into the idea behind this one in greater detail I want to share a couple different things that thematically capture what I’m talking about perfectly. The first and second things are two poems I wrote awhile ago called Dust and Astronaut. They were both intended for the Meaningless Magazine book I keep saying I’ll make one day if I get around to it.

And the third thing related to this idea is from Cioran’s book On the Heights of Despair. It’s the “Nothing Matters” passage. I’ve included the image in this post and won’t include the text here.

Dust

We are just dust.

No point in being happy.

Worrying, or angry.

Feeling down.

Because we’re just dust.

On the ground.

Time is an invisible broom,

coming for all of us dust.

All our personalities, beliefs, opinions.

All our big ideas, all our little things.

That we think matter.

But we’re just matter.

Just dust.

Astronaut

I want to go to the moon

And tiptoe around there for a little while

Maybe forever, maybe until I’m bored

I wanna stick my boot in a moon hole

Squish it around, make a firm print

Tell that crater I’ll see ya later

But thing is,

if I do it I’ll finally know what it’s like

And that’ll ruin it

So I kinda don’t wanna do it

As much as I do wanna do it

So I think I just like to think about it

I get the feeling in life that there are no real right answers. I first encountered that Cioran passage when I was 22, and it really resonated with me. I’ve never been able to forget it, and now that it’s been almost a decade I feel it rings even truer now.

The past couple of years in particular has been filled with so much disappointment, death, and mourning for everyone. I’m sure everyone has different levels of disappointment, and some have bounced back a lot faster than other people, but I will make a generalization here and say that, for the most part, covid threw a real wrench into everyone’s plans. Not to mention our impending doom regarding the climate emergency thawing out AIDS from a million years ago in soil, and civilizational decline/collapse; even if you’re doing alright currently, we still have a hell of a lot to worry about.

All of that being said, I’ve been thinking of this Cioran passage a lot the past couple of years. It serves as a healthy reminder and a somewhat positive assurance: even when everything is going wrong, nothing fucking matters anyway. We are merely in one long river, heading towards an inevitable death. What does it matter if one part of the journey didn’t go right? Or shit, even if the whole journey went wrong, who gives a shit? We all die and whatever happened while we were alive won’t even matter.

To put it another way: I often think to myself about this in terms of love and relationships. And finding the “right girl,” and all that horseshit. The adage is, “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I’d argue that even this quote is inaccurate. Is it really better to have loved? Why is it better? I don’t think one man’s life or experience is any better than another’s, and sometimes I sincerely feel that it’s actually better in some ways to be in the group perceived to be “unluckier,” and never having loved at all. That way you can constantly dream and fantasize about what it’d be like to get what you want someday.

It’s like the difference between retaining one’s virginity, and having carnal knowledge. When you’re a virgin, it’s a bummer because it’s all you think about. You want to know what it’s like, and you feel like you’re missing out on some big human experience that everyone’s always talking about. Your entire lifetime you’ve been hearing about it, there’s media propaganda out there to make you feel like shit about it, and you have a poor self-image because of movies like 40 Year Old Virgin making you think that you’ll only be a complete human being unless you achieve the loss of your virginity.

And then when you finally do it, what happens? It’s just another dumb moment in your past. Like going to Wonderland, or visiting that place in Europe you always wanted to go to. It’s really not a big deal, it’s the same as anything else in your dumb life. What does it mean to be in one room and have a feeling of certain sensations, etc, versus being in another and closing your eyes and imagining it? There is really no qualitative difference, it’s the same shit.

To give you another example: I always talk about how I like blonde hair, and anyone that knows me is well aware. I always reference Farrah Fawcett and it’s a whole thing with me. But to be perfectly honest with you: it’s all a big joke. It’s true, but it’s also exaggerated to an extraordinary degree. There is no such thing as “gentlemen prefer blondes” or any one type of girl being better than another. I’ve been with pretty women that were awful to be around, and awful looking women that were pretty nice to be around. It’s all a mess. The first time I was ever with a blonde girl it was cool, but it wasn’t like it was the greatest moment of my life and I’ve been chasing it ever since. It was just a tame, “Oh…that’s what that is like. Cool.” And the second time I was with a blonde girl (different one), was very much the same. My reaction was just, “Oh cool. That was fun. What now?” It’s not like it’s some grand prize where your desire magically ends and all your constant searching and yearning dissipates, etc. What happens is it just goes on and on and it never really quite ends. 

That’s all life is, on a larger scale. There’s no difference between here and there or good and bad, in some ways. Of course I’m wrong and there is definitely a difference between being rich and poor and not being able to have access to food and water and things like that, but if you know what I mean you just know. It’s a very strange concept to describe to someone, but it’s one of those things that you either get or you don’t. It has to be experienced and internalized before you can agree with this one.

The only other example that comes to mind right now is the feeling of being an introvert, having a big thing to go to one night, and then realizing it has been cancelled at the last minute. The wave of relief you feel in that one moment is precisely what I am trying to describe here: you were just about to go out a second ago, and now you’re about to do the exact opposite and still somehow just as happy. That’s what I mean by Something or Nothing: there is a very razor-thin line between things that seem like worlds apart and super big deals to you. To get pussy or not get pussy is the exact same. To do heroin or to remain sober is the same. To sleep in all day or to get out of bed and have ambition and do things….both are exactly the same.