Category: Vignettes

VIN 13- Monsters (Retribution Is Not Justice)

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

We have to stop looking at the people damaging our society as parts of our species. They are, but simultaneously, are not. They are aberrant. Anomalous. Evolutionary Fraknestein-monsters so hideous and frightening to look upon them is to vomit blood in repulsion. Not from any physical malady, but rather psycho-social and emotional ones– because the reality of their personalities and effect make them dangerously caustic.

But what to do once we’ve identified them, revealed their madness, located and cast them into light? How then do we seek retribution?

Simply? We do not.

Consider that idea, just for a moment; do nothing in retribution.

Why? Despite the damage and needless suffering, why do we not retaliate?

Why need we? The system these creatures have exploited is damaged and tearing itself apart. Thus, we need only push back where desired to bulwark what needs remain. Meanwhile, others of us can begin making repairs and changes to the new boundaries where required– at least until our society has reiterated, re-stabilized.

Huh? Exactly. This is why we seek no recompense.

So few people would understand these ideas, yet all of us exist via their principles– the mutational ones that dictate the simplest organisms survive. Also known as the path of least resistance, it is more than that; the shortest distance between two points, conceptually, of change in a system.

Society is a system. Change is the constant. For change to assert itself, its effected system must fracture, mutate, then reform having cast out its refuse and damage in the meantime. Again, in our case, these are concepts; ideologies, ideas, philosophies, ways of living incapable of coexistence between the two groups of Human and Mutant, “man” and “monster.”

But why do nothing, again?

Herein lies the point; not seeking revenge is not the act of a coward. Rather, it is the act of one whose mind and heart conflict with their nature. In essence, it is the benevolence of turning thyne other cheek, even if one knows it will be struck in turn.

Consider those monstrous aberrations for what they truly are; genetic mishaps.

We should neither fear nor hate them, but disallow them to possess the power they currently do. Not for any prejudicial reason, but because of the inherent, emotional instability at their own differences from the majority.

Ultimately, inside all of these Cronenbergs is an ugly child acting out from sadness and fear. Never having been loved nor sated, they simply grew bigger, uglier, and louder. Therefore, seeking retribution is engaging in that which perpetuates the cycle that has formed them.

Justice, on the other hand, will always be served. Swiftly. For life is much harder than death, and punishment need not be violent; only transforming, lasting. One need only find the perpetrator’s deepest weaknesses and pains, and strengthen or heal them.

Only then can Humans truly begin to heal themselves and their damaged kin.

VIN 12- Women Are Killers (A Small Bit of Advice for Idiots)

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

A small bit of advice to idiots; Women are killers.

Think of the Lioness: a sleek, silent, and lethal predator that has evolved and adapted, honing itself into a perfect machine of hunting and rearing through the duality of huntress and mother, murderer and lover.

That result, compared to a male, whose role is largely to intimidate and maintain order, shows where real power lies.

Real power. The mental-kind– imagination-power.

Though this is not to say the males of the species are not also accomplished hunters, and thinkers, they lack the duality of the role nature has charged their females with. It is the Male’s mate, whom once he has frightened you into flight, closes for the kill. His mate who is lighter, stronger, faster, sleeker, and just as lethal– if not more, by virtue of motherhood. Her face is the last thing you see before your throat is gored.

Brutal. Visceral.

Now recognize she’s done infinitely more and worse to survive, to feed her cubs, Pride, and wards to ensure their total survival. She has likely seen death on equally as many faces.

Remember that fact.

Then recall this is ubiquitous to most females– mammals especially– and that predators most often prey upon the elderly, juvenile, weak, and wounded. Remember, most of all, this has been going on for millennia and has desensitized enough females to death to ensure their species’ survival.

Remember all of that next time you fuck with women or their rights; mated or not, you’re fucked.

VIN 11: Postdigital Unity

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

As you age, you begin to see trends. Not the fads you saw in youth, but actual trends. They’re like fads but over long spans and incorporating them as well. They’re longer-form gravitations toward ideals. Cyclical recurrences of formerly-existent-but-now-refined ideas.

And the fact is, the vast majority of the first-gen postdigital kids (millennials?) are a bunch of weird creatures.

That’s not to say bad. Never mistake weird for bad. Gates was weird. Think he had it easy before he was making money? No way, man. He was fucking weird. Jobs was weird until he died. It was why he died; rejecting medical treatment in place of home-remedies and warm thoughts.

Fucking weird.

And it doesn’t just extend to intelligence types– though some call Jobs a con-artist before an innovator. That he was likely both is neither here nor there, as everyone’s the same in most ways. It’s merely context that changes. Humans have to be to survive. That’s Humanity. It’s adaptation. It’s Evolution; finding ways to thrive despite extreme, organic adversity.

Do not deny it’s truth. Rather, revel in it; first-gen postdigital kids, (millennials) are the weird generation.

Probably ‘cause we’re all prototypes raised dyslexic on television-frames and text flashing by at light-speed. By the time we’d finally taken our Ritalin and calmed down, it was lunch time and recess. After that, we came in exhausted, completely unaware of the world we were actually experiencing.

Once we came of age, we decided to slow down. Entirely.

Our generation has come to a screeching halt. Not only because of the economy, and external factors, which press in at us with each moment; but because of the sheer want to finally experience something without being forced through it.

This will hit deeper for some than others, but all of you know what I mean:

I recall being educated, but I do not recall my education.

A simple, yet resonant sentiment.

Thousands of years ago, when humans were first socializing into groups more complex than tribes, education was imparted through the same trial-error-observation platform used by all of science today. It was interpersonal in nature, but it was the same, conceptual idea.

Science as it is known today did not exist then. It could not. Not enough reference of civilization– or history– existed yet to be acted on by the call-function.

But now, times have changed. Technology has hurled us headlong. At speeds even we can’t comprehend. The issue is one of grasp; having any on the matters at-hand. As a civilization, Humanity is completely unprepared for the social requirements of a next-level society.

This is bad. Potentially, catastrophically so.

Historically, the less socially-prepared a civilization is to endure a change, the more likely it is to utterly collapse. Ultimately, Rome’s collapse was seeded by its inability to get anything done. Its politics and civics, until then its greatest strengths, began to collapse under the weight of their maintainers’ ignorance.

An innocent ignorance, to be certain, but one all the same. Worse, one no less harmful for it.

Likewise, the same is evident in Central and South Americas cultures whose great achievements rival that of the Pyramids. Ultimately, their culture died from failing to accept the very people they bled for the gods were the ones building their temples.

Eventually, something had to give. So it did. Simple as that.

Unfortunately, it also took with it much collected knowledge in the crossfire. Of all ancient cultures only the Egyptian knowledge is best kept, but notice their name absent above. Though the aforementioned are hardly the extent of cases, they are ideologically different. Egypt did not fall. It ceded its cultural prowess to Rome.

True, it did so largely as a result of decline, one culture’s decline is eternally another’s rise. A sentient species cannot exist culture-less. As postdigital humans can no longer exist information-less. Thus, culture moves always. And like all things, along paths of least resistance– and much too fast for any pre-digital age record-keeping methods.

It is only the postdigital world that can reconcile this; by becoming one culture, unified and constantly changing together.

VIN9- Digital Souls

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Our world, and our people, are dying.

We have no place for Seers now. No place for Shamans or thinkers. We have only shackled slaves and the chains that bind them. Their masters, whom blind us with lies, propaganda, and misinformation.

Our psyches are batter and bruised by advertisements and media– by Humans, yes. Yet simultaneously, not; for these masters are wealthy beyond remaining society combined; ignorant beyond capable for Human-kind. And they are something more and less as a result; an avaricious blob-monster collectively formed of each individuals impressive atavism and hate.

Bound and blind, the rest of us are their slaves and cattle. Force-fed only the choicest cuts of corruption that invade and liquefy our minds and bodies, we suffer eternally for but the momentary hint of flavor on our consumers tongue.

Step back a moment and consider that again:

Humans are stuffed full of poison their whole lives. Then battered, basted, cooked, and digested. Their existence, nothing but suffering; only to serve the momentarily vain and futile hope of satisfaction– elusive and illusive as it is– to some amorphous, Cthulian-scale Great Oz.

But in the end, the creatures behind the curtain are men, women. Human. They bleed. They burn. They breathe and die. Somewhere, at even the very heart of their total corruption, they remain but frightened children forced to cope with changing realities.

Ultimately, they’ve failed, yes. But there are many paths to success. None exclude failure. The aforementioned creatures are ignorant to this, but ignorance is cause for neither ridicule nor alarm. It is, in fact, wholly human.

But so is knowledge. Its power, eternal. With proper application, it can foretell the eternally distant future.

And yet, we’ve no place for Seers anymore. No place for Shamans, or Mystics, or creatures part-Human and part Universal-conduit. There is no excuse for this.

The digiverse– that metaphysical hallucination of postdigital civilization we inhabit, has room for everything, every one. Big and small. Bad and good. So long as a thing, or its concepts can be digitized, it can exist in that realm in harmony.

But we need Digital Seers, Digital Mystics; people understanding not only code, but the spirits inhabiting it. If only those conceptual ones, dictating via the force exerted on the system as a whole. Humans require digital-to-analog converters for their souls.

Only then can the Seers emerge and guide us. After all, what good is technology– a thing meant to ease Human burdens, when a burden itself? Whatever the answer, certain rules are clear: do not poison the well, lest you harm your own. We are doing one or the other, but allowing both.

It must end.