Tonight I wondered which one of our natural rights is civilization's most proud theft. I think it might be this: our right to die with dignity, with our humanity intact. We no longer get to die, alone, quietly, modestly, in our favorite far corner of nature's nowhere. We no longer even have the option; even if there were still quiet corners and nowheres left in this world, we would drag into them those burdens of modern existence which drove us there in frustration. We would ultimately contaminate them and definitively destroy our last hope for any return to our naturalistic roots.
Instead, we have hospices and death beds and funerals and wakes and parades and dirges and candle-light fucking vigils, and in our final moments—when we should be left to meditate harmoniously on the peace inherent in our complete self knowledge and in the realization of a life lived honestly and with deliberation—we are surrounded by those social balls and chains responsible for creating and habituating our worst traits and encouraging our most ignorant and disappointing behaviors. There is no peace, no quiet, no respect for the dying - only the masturbation of selfishness and insecurity and fear of loss that's been hammered into the souls of those spectating.
Instead, we have hospices and death beds and funerals and wakes and parades and dirges and candle-light fucking vigils, and in our final moments—when we should be left to meditate harmoniously on the peace inherent in our complete self knowledge and in the realization of a life lived honestly and with deliberation—we are surrounded by those social balls and chains responsible for creating and habituating our worst traits and encouraging our most ignorant and disappointing behaviors. There is no peace, no quiet, no respect for the dying - only the masturbation of selfishness and insecurity and fear of loss that's been hammered into the souls of those spectating.
Even as our loved ones believe they return us to the dirt from which we once came, they imprison us in treated wood and toxic plastic and forged metal and ceramic, and then they close the man-made lid on us forever: airtight, antiseptic, impermeable effigies to their denial and hypocrisy – sold to family, friends and passers-by alike in the palatable form of a tasteful lie on a grave marker.
Personally, I want to be erased forever when I die. In death, I don't want to be responsible for bearing even a faint remembrance of this tainted legacy of human society into any future that might ever be. I will consider it a perfect final act to die without any chance of perpetuating any of the falseness and soullessness clinging to everyone's heels throughout their so-called lives.
When I die, I want to be forgotten completely – and indefinitely.
When I die, I want to be forgotten completely – and indefinitely.
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