An essay by an anonymous author about existence.
During some years of my youth, I volunteered to help clean and rebuild a northern-central Apennine university struck by some terrible earthquake. There were not many casualties, but ample rubble. I was designated to the library. One day while working, an emaciated, strange-looking young man with greasy, long, black hair and big, thick glasses, whom I guessed was a student, asked to sell me one of his essays, and I obliged mostly because of his sorry appearance. I read it some days later while cleaning my living quarters, and was astonished by its content. Here it is:
Biological Warfare: the use of toxins of biological origin or microorganisms as weapons of war.
How wretched could be this flesh to warrant biological means of inhibitions to live? WWI never graced me with a death of glorious insignificance, nor did toxic life-long dependence on another organism, nor some crazy mutated virus. My biology was never blessed with such attention from anything else, even though I visited Chernobyl, had an STD scare, and constantly haggle down anything anyone ever offers me of any value whatsoever.
The war games with which I blitzkrieg life are always concerning others (or their lack of presence in my life), and always concerning the setting of seeds aimed at growing to all sorts of sizes; trees are for growth, bushes protection, sprouts everything else. There was one time I planted a thorn bush around one intimidating oppositional intellect and his bleeding fingers gave my thoughts an edge, another where I planted an aspen for one woman and created a garden. You see, a minute, microscopic process takes place here of infiltration, ingratiation, then disintegration of any future alternative to the power of linear time proceeding from the initial event.
But I personally am above those minute seeds, for I plant them in other places, not in my own place; I am simply the bank where these seeds live, in conditions unconducive to their hostile takeovers. I am so thoroughly immune to hostile seed’s taking over because I am a cataloguer. All I do is map their origins, photograph their organic appearances, and then plant them to see what happens (always the same things: growth or death and always the latter, eventually).
Once I planted an azalea bush, which bloomed spectacularly a sole time each year, flowers obscuring woody, brittle branches no thicker than a pencil but spanning over 2 meters in circumference. But every winter brought the cold and evoked yellow leaves, my theories of its death, and for weeks of every year, I considered cutting it down to avoid some slow and prolonged death. Yet every spring its rebirth brought about spectacular blooms and alleviation to my doubts.
Once I planted a great oak tree which grew immensely and
sprouted hundreds of acorns, and supplied many dozens of squirrels with sustenance. I studied the squirrels in turn too, because I could no longer tell the difference between them and my great tree. I understood their habits, got to notice the slight differences in behavior and pelts, and I always kept my distance in the true spirit of study. It was an ecosystem I created, felt personally responsible for.
Another time I planted several bean sprouts in an open field perfect for sunbathing and carelessly relaxing. The sprouts grew quickly and more numerously than clover and provided me accents to an otherwise dreary diet of mediocrity. But one day I invited a woman for picnicking, gave her my blanket to spread, and to my horror we sat on top of the sprouts. When I discovered the sprouts were no more, I banished the woman from my life in grief.
After my sprouts disappeared and I grew too lazy to tediously plant more, I turned again to cataloging. What I found was a new bush, prickly and thick. The bush produced more oxygen, absorbed more CO2, and even resisted garden sheers. I needed to share it, for I believed our climatological problems were solved. I planted it everywhere and soon forests returned, and climatological problems began to disappear; even tigers and jaguars and massive bears returned. But then humans began cloning my bush, and my bush began to outcompete humans all over the world. I went into hiding from the angry rabble for years, invisible to the public and championed against by the cutest of faces.
My bush quit spreading when a man by the name of Walter Dejaco concocted one ingenious, assembly line-style toxin designed to eradicate my bush’s genome. I came out of hiding after he eradicated my problem.
After I came out of hiding, I returned to observing; but I was not the same. I no longer cared much for the seeds of my youth which took such time to grow. I had learned that man and nature were diametrically opposed to one another, that natural life constantly jeered in our faces, mocked us for relying on natural life and others to create an illusion of stability, laughed at our relative powerlessness. What a sour revelation born from bitter circumstance!
My revelation came after experiencing a storm in the wilderness during my years of concealment; the wind blew down my walls, water put out my fire, and lightning set my forest ablaze. Pure terror. Since then I care not for seeds outside of caloric necessity. Anyways, my new microorganism is far greater.
I discovered after years of depression and rejection over the bush fiasco that I could manipulate seeds themselves, not like Mendel but like Herbert Boyer or Stanley Cohen. I no longer would discover plants and seeds, but create them, and create them in a better image.
I began creating seeds but wanted to remain true to my character and avoid public scrutiny, so I began with my dear, death-defying azalea. I modified it to never quit blooming and to grow quickly while resisting the cold, and I planted it next to the outdated one—a control group. My new azalea grew rapidly and consumed the old one, first starving its foundation then aggressively de-rooting it from underneath. And now with great pride, I present to you my incredible garden, always in bloom, never desolate, the best garden you can possibly imagine.
Next, I turned to the oak. I created a new oak tree, designed to mature exponentially faster than the original, and produce exponentially more acorns. But to make sure the power of my design, I needed a control group; I declared war on all biological disruptions to my control group and now all the squirrels are buried. But I was right again! My tree produced five acorns to each one of the other. With such bounty, I took my acorns, made flour, and fed a village.
Lastly, I created new bean sprouts, and that picnic field is now filled with bean sprouts resistant to crushing from blankets, bums, and feet. Now I can have a different picnic every day and never be irked by the repetitive planting of new bean sprouts. Now I can indulge whenever I fancy.
After years I finally live in the esteem I deserve for cataloging and creating whole ecosystems. I can save the world, I can save you, I can save humanity with my seeds.
My flowers will never exhaust your capacity for beauty, for beauty is not related to scarcity, only to color and pattern; one day my creations will occupy every garden, not restricted to azaleas, but also defeating the begonia’s death in the name of beauty. My trees will feed the world its calories, my sprouts their vitamins. I will lead us to win the long-waged war against hunger, I will defeat the biological war against you waged by the toxin of hunger.
In time you will see, my logic is a microorganism more powerful than anthrax, more contagious than black death, and it will conquer the world; the charge towards my victory began long ago and will soon break the lines of all oppositional, faulty thoughts which run contrary. And when it wins, it will propel you forward long after I decompose, give you an everlasting day, and banish the night.
My light will wash away shadows, and I cannot wait to share it with you.
The logically obvious truth is that you are in the midst of biological warfare now; they are out to reprogram you into what they want you to be, and they is everyone else. The Stoics thought virtue was the only peaceful resolution, Buddha thought cognitive recognition of life’s emptiness was peaceful resolution, Confucius thought amplifying your compassion was peaceful resolution. But they were all wrong, ignorant that curbing your thoughts and actions logically restricts your potential.
The only real peaceful resolution is to quit curbing yourself; let my logic wash you of any perception that the good life lies in some perfection of mind, body, or soul—for those thoughts are a pathogen implanted in you by them for pacification. Forget any notion that what you do is wrong and watch anxiety disappear; listen to my words and be the creator of your own seeds. There is no other way out of this biological warfare you are caught in, doomed to fall victim to.
I am not against virtue, nor against understanding the fundamental operations of the mind, nor am I against compassion. What I am against is your idea of control, your inane belief that some plan which marches towards perfection governs your and our path of development, the logic you MUST behave a certain way. The people who implanted this pathological idea in you are waging biological warfare, they are using pathogens to slay the behaviors which make you human in any definition contrary to their own.
I am no joker, I am no dog chasing cars without idea what to do upon their capture, I do not want to see the world burn or the seven horsemen descend or hell’s fires swallow us up; I simply hate biological warfare. I hate that they try to engineer me to be something I am not; I am not their seed.
They tried to take away my humanity, they used biological warfare specifically designed to silence my voice and replace it via their grotesque microorganism which tricks my brain into believing it talks of its own volition, and they are doing the same to you. Hear me.
When my solution was life, theirs was death; when I tried to save us, they manipulated my craft into genocide; when I cried out for help, their solution was to pin against me the most innocent faces of all society. I am a good person, I am a misunderstood person, I am a person who tried to show you beauty and was chewed up and spit out because of beauty abused. And I can stand little more of it.
The ugly truth of this biological warfare is its engineering makes it invisible to eyes and to minds, but not souls. When your soul cries out, sees how neighbors are not their brother’s keepers, how tyranny no longer lies solely in the sword or rifle or bomb but also in your perception of their use, sees how corporeal bounty and abundance reign more supreme today than at any other time yet your life’s value system is in complete disarray, then and only then, will you understand their biological warfare.
I am a planter, I plant plants and watch them grow; I am an engineer, I create and design things with an end-goal of functionality. I am no Johnny Appleseed; I am no DaVinci. What I am is pissed off about the assault on our humanity. We live in bounty, we live in prosperity, we are technologically advanced, we are pushing the limits of “progress” as far as they will go; but we are intoxicated by the plume of their biological warfare, and fat, and when the fire comes (and G.od willing it will not come in any near eon), will your legs be able to carry you to safety? Or will the microorganisms burrowed in your flesh and mind slow you, be the indirect causal source of your burning alive?
I cannot provide you with a cure, but I can provide you with an alternative. What if you stood staunchly against power, and staunchly for dispersal of power; what if you refused to bow down to hypocrisy which you are tricked into believing truth by their toxins, and only bowed down to the transcendent order of existence; what if you dashed all their plans, and took your own pen to the drawing board?
In the end, you are either an agent of or an agent against. For those of you to whom this is addressed, those of you who understand my message, this is a zero-sum game. Either push the pile or be pushed, either stop the inhumanity of biological warfare or believe that “progress” is its name.
You and only you can stop the war.
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