genderphasing

this is not a eulogy.

cohost has, one last time, made me think, and made me want to write. as it comes to a close, i'm putting those thoughts to… paper? something like that. a fitting sendoff for a site that reminded me how to be inspired.

gather 'round. i'm gonna say something that no one's ever said before:

it really hurts to lose something you care about.

(but i'm sure no one reading this knows anything about that.)

those who know me personally know i've lost a lot recently. cohost is about to be another loss, and another change. i have plans and plans, but the question remains: why bother? it'll all just end again. nothing lasts forever.

this is, of course, not a new question. nihilism has been discussed far earlier than nietzsche's famous lament. in a world where god is dead – where meaning exists only as a figment of the imagination – where you are a pile of chemicals arrogant enough to think itself special – where all that is, means nothing – what use is there for anything? why bother?

the worst answer is: don't! this is where we get doomerism. it all sucks and nothing matters, so give up and accept that you'll survive until you don't. personally, i hate this answer. it feels nakedly self-serving. convenient, if you felt like not bothering to begin with – and most people like to talk more than they act. (i'm guilty of this as well, at times. pretty sure it's part of the human condition.)

the second-worst answer is how christians think atheists think. if no golden hand ordained laws of the world, then you can just do whatever you want! rape, murder, golf, it's all on the table, baybee! but hedonism rings hollow, too: when we can, most of us help, regardless of religiosity and even if it hurts us. neither is religion free of sin, even as they cast stones: the worst acts can be justified, even demanded, in the golden hand's human creators' rule book. no, that isn't the answer either.

then maybe we ought to deny the premise entirely: there is meaning, it is real. but i'm unconvinced: everything i see is compatible with a slew of random chance, only there because of a long sequence of coincidences, equally likely as what didn't make it. perhaps that compatibility's part of the point, and perhaps that's why they call it faith. but i find i'm short on that, these days.

albert camus posits: we are the point. we take up arms against the abyss and in so doing end it. only in this rebellion are we defined at all; if we don't, what distinguishes a man from a plucked chicken? if we don't demand and prove our freedom, are we even real?

here is a sort of truth: no thing is real. no ontology compatible with your perception accurately describes the world. chemical reactions complex enough for the arrogance of identity do not understand physics – we speak it as a second language, and poorly. this isolates us from reality, forces us to come up with abstractions, and these abstractions do not exist. they're inspired by reality, not components of it.

you, the self, exist in a world of things. a world where your pants are a gestalt, distinct from every other, fitting neatly into categorical hierarchies of purpose and construction and color and semantics. but the world of physics is a sea of stochastic particles experiencing no more than four forces. all that we see or seem is but emergent properties of simple systems.

so if meaning is constructed, an invention of all the minds that ever were… so what? welcome to the club. it's as fake as my cargo shorts. and you, dear reader, you delirious ape staring at tiny lights and understanding them as squiggles as words as thoughts, teasing coherence out of the dream, you are qualified to invent it.

you constructed yourself, after all. "you" is as much a figment of your imagination as pants or meaning. "you" is the name you've given an assemblage of nanomachines replaced daily driven by sloppy fat molded by every scrap of culture it's ever consumed and the vagaries of its internal machinery. you invented yourself: invent some meaning, too! who else can?

because god is dead! and we exult: with neither will to defy nor plan to follow, we define ourselves! in what act could there be greater joy? rebel against the abyss, demand everything! seven days is for cowards: spend a lifetime inventing and reinventing and watching it fall apart, and at the end, seeing that it was good.

and it's when we do this together that the strongest magic is cast. you built yourself from bricks of nothing; now build a city. behold a chemical reaction complex enough to behold you back and kiss her full on the god-killing mouth. you built yourself, now build yourselves. construct not one identity, not two, but three, and a million more besides. imagine a self for you-at-the-movies and you-at-that-new-italian-joint and you-in-bed. imagine a self that, too, is yuri.

culture and society and politics and love and every secret shared, all of this binds us together, and builds an identity encompassing us all. no one is an island, but even islands are connected, by ocean and seafloor. it permeates us and everything we think, even in rejecting it. it doesn't define you, but it is the lens through which you define yourself, especially to others. we express it in everything, from language to idiom to reference, in choice of word and form of thought and phrases' meter (good or not).

but as we're shaped by it, so do we shape it: molding, building, destroying, growing out what speaks to us most or cowering behind what seems sturdiest. we do this together, and in doing it we shape each other, every interaction leaving an indelible imprint on the world around us, physical or semiotic.

earlier, i implied a fib. "what greater joy"? doing it together. christians say god made the world, alone and sad, throwing a tantrum when other wills contested his. fuck that: build yours with others, a towering monument to the best of ourselves, and light your corner of this disaster a little brighter for a little while.

so what if it's temporary? we built it on a foundation of sand. when the river of time washes it away, proves it imaginary, renders it a lingering impression in a few slabs of meat and discarded silicon – it was there. it brought joy.

and that, to me, is why we bother.

good night, cohost.