Just a little reminder! If you enjoy what I create, you can support me at https://ko-fi.com/lucaspinduca.

It could be. Life is a byproduct of the chemicals in the universe. Or no. Maybe they muddy the water to keep the sheep out because they know: they would walk on water — an accidental mistake with nothing more behind it.

Nowadays, we are living through a complete and total breakdown of truth itself. We’re not just arguing over politics or policy preferences anymore – we are living in an epistemological nightmare where the very foundations of what is real, what is true, and what can be trusted have been systematically demolished.

But still, we are here to tell each other what it is like to be alive, and language remains the best technology we have invented for bridging the abyss between one aliveness and another.

One dot per inch: We don’t trust the media. We don’t trust the government. We don’t trust big tech. We don’t trust the medical establishment. We don’t trust academia. We don’t even trust our own neighbors half the time.

But, thank God, why the most profound experiences of our lives are unphotographable, are untiktokable, irreducible to representation in image or gesture, for they summon the totality of our being: sensation and perception, thought and feeling, the pleasing propulsive confusion we call curiosity, and the bright ablution of certainty we call wonder (This profound reflection, famously articulated by writer Maria Popova — formerly Brain Pickings, now The Marginalian).

But our questions, besides having the power to civilize us, also have the power – perhaps even more needed today – to rewild us. The Civilizing Power give us language, empathy, and the ability to organize our thoughts – rather to bask in the freedom of uncertainty, most chose to stay and restart. That’s when the real work began. So, I’m not scared anymore.

[And I’m breathing you in, just like the morning air / And I’m wrapping you around, just like a skin to wear.”

Because the world is Immense and indifferent, more and more people have no sense of or concern with the myths and legends we have woven into it, making for Instagram sensations and the scientists’ journals. Yet we share the kinship of Curiosity, that yearning to apprehend what it is to be another. – the only thing that saves us from the existential loneliness of being ourselves.

That is when everything can be perfected, smoothed, staged, and polished; that is, the imperfection becomes a signal of authentic humanity. People want to feel like this: unpolished, messy, and chaotic. Like A Child Again. Should anyone be afraid of that?

I’m sure you’ll support not just me but everyone else in this journey too.
So, let’s go and be a part of Draft era Publication!

Welcome to Draft era publication.

One dot per inch. was originally published in Draft era publication on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Viver é nos desviarmos incessantemente. E nos desviamos de tal maneira que a confusão nos impede de saber do que estamos nos desviando”.

If you enjoy what I create, you can support me at https://ko-fi.com/lucaspinduca.

Quando Franz Kafka escreveu sobre a relação de uma pessoa com uma ordem superior cujas leis são enigmáticas (acho que resumi bem “O processo”), no dizer ‘kafkaniano’, temos ali uma alusão a duas linhas paralelas que se tocam apenas no infinito. Se pensarmos em tudo mais que escreveu, ele pode estar falando também de uma crise existencial ampla e geral, do esvaziamento da existência humana e da luta contra a tentativa de controle autoritário da natureza humana por parte de um sistema ou sociedade. Quase uma abolição das certezas de transcendência, autopreservação e autoconfiança.

Entretanto, sob este viés, o que responderemos caso perguntem qual tipo de homem somos? Podemos argumentar que não somos de um tipo específico, porém, alguém que talvez continue a mudar conforme o avanço da história e seja “impossível de imaginar”, como se a ambiguidade fizesse parte da nossa monstruosidade? Kafka provavelmente diria ser do tipo possuído pela “liberdade da pessoa fraca que busca a salvação na derrota”. Infiro dessa forma porque, ao olhar para o mundo do pós-guerra, Franz Kafka constatou que havia uma esperança sim, mas segundo suas palavras, “uma quantidade infinita de esperança, mas não para nós”. Essa apatia o fez sofrer com a tristeza do mundo.

Ora, todas as pessoas estariam aqui subtendidas? Sim? O que nos levaria à próxima pergunta: Há como aperfeiçoar este homem? Pois a ambiguidade moral de nossa época, segundo Kafka, tem nos feito irrelevantes, e ao mesmo tempo tem feito os acontecimentos maiores do que as pessoas podem controlar. Se fosse possível reverter este processo…

A vida como ela é agora faz as pessoas sofrerem de tristeza em um mundo insalubre, com suas incertezas produzindo uma escuridão interior. No trabalho ou na vida, não há escala de dor ou de vontade para determinar como é a maioria dos nossos dias — ou para explicar a qualquer pessoa como é a vida diária. Kafka expressa esta preocupação ansiosa assim: “Uma das vantagens de se deitar no chão é que não há mais para onde cair”. Expressão que resume sua visão da sociedade atual, ansiosa e preocupada, esvaziada de sentido e cujos membros possuem tendências decadentes e lutam entre a alienação de sua identidade — falta de reconhecimento e aceitação — e o existir de fato — ao lidar com acontecimentos maiores do que podem controlar. Uma luta diária do ser humano contra o absurdo da modernidade entremeada com uma burocracia sufocante e seu sistema que marginaliza.

Nesta época atual, nossa realidade é capaz de fazer os homens chiarem seus sofrimentos como besouros diante do absurdo e da impotência de viver buscando salvar-se. E ainda tem aqueles que se voltam para a escuridão interior. Mas se no princípio havia o verbo, e agora quanto ao fim? Em sua conceituação da moral, Dewey apresentou um entendimento original sobre a felicidade: “A felicidade final de um indivíduo reside na supremacia de certos interesses na formação do caráter.”

Ligada intrinsecamente a tudo isso, “Nenhuma quantidade de obstáculos externos pode destruir a felicidade que advém de um interesse vivo e sempre renovado pelos outros e pelos objetos que promovem o seu desenvolvimento”. Ou seja, não se deve buscar a felicidade fora do indivíduo porque ela está arraigada no caráter. Ao concluir suas reflexões sobre a felicidade, Dewey citou o filósofo Spinoza. “A felicidade não é a recompensa da virtude, e sim a própria virtude” (DEWEY, 1980, p.313). Franz Kafka, contudo, ainda perguntaria: Quando acabasse a Tua utilidade, alguém ainda o amaria?

I used to watch my neighbor farm skin rabbits and deer. The big rusty hooks went through the tendons of the back legs so that you could suspend the deer from the big brace. Then, point the knife through the fur above the knee joint. Then you work your way down the animal, drawing the skin away from the muscle, revealing the silver membranes below, passing the point of the knife, wedging the skin loose with the thumb, inch by inch, until the whole animal is slick and white and bare before you. That’s how it feels to watch people post about their year behind and their year ahead. Like they’re processing their soul the way we used to process deer out in the cold. It made me profoundly, profoundly sad.

There’s a reason that “crazy civilized” means ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’: It’s not just about civilization; it’s a celebration of rediscovering your passion, the joy of creating something with your mind and hands, and the profound happiness that comes from loving people you care about.

So, after starting to delete posts, thinking that they no longer wanted to be seen or known, or witnessed. That I didn’t want to participate in the casual consumption of my life. Rethink, Humans need a strong sense of self to feel safe and to be loved.

Why? Because the “perfect society” of the dreams is ultimately challenged by humanity’s questioning, curious, unsatisfied nature. Common sense suggests that “Surviving Discontent in an Age of Anxiety”* is probably better met by reading fiction, philosophy, and poetry than by, say, deciphering the Bible. I doubt.

Perhaps dystopias are more appealing to the human mind because, at least, there’s something real to do — and people unmoored from truth, history, identity, and God are easily controlled. We live in an era of widespread mental illness, in which more people take their own lives worldwide than die from war and terrorism. People who don’t know who they are will believe anyone who tells them. People without a past — without personal stories or links to others — will have no future.

Society implies mutuality; that is, we’re really all in it together and consequently we perform behaviour and services for the common good. Society is a function of the interconnectivity of humans and the effects of their actions on each other.

After all, Humans have complex needs — We need to talk, to be understood, to have a cohesive sense of self, to have insight, to be loved, to feel safe, to satisfy biological appetites, to resolve inner conflicts, to be accepted, to overcome adversity, to have purpose, to find meaning, and to accept our own mortality.

You learn how to behave long before you arrive home. At the gate, you slow down and wait. You are watched, then waved through. A badge is checked, a barrier lifts, a camera blinks. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is precisely the point.

Well, living has never been easy. It is in the path of choices and renunciations that many difficulties are given to us as learning, and there are two ways to react to adversities: either you get stuck and remove the setback that interrupts your journey, or you use the negative act as a driving force and mental shock to change your course and move on.

About this, the link between dystopias and apocalyptic events is strong but not definitive. The most familiar of all dystopias, the Ingsoc totalitarianism of Orwell’s 1984, is a product of history, not crisis. By the way, homeless nomads, a feature of most post-apocalyptic dystopias, can have a society, but to do a civilization, they need a secure base and resources.

Something essential of the 21st-century soul: It’s a grim, stubborn ‘carry on’ ethic with no conviction and no purpose; a hopeless, pessimistic sense of duty, simultaneously shunning reality and wallowing in it, with a disturbing ambivalence toward violence. But our civilization requires social functioning, not the other way around. Civilization emerges from specialization and is the organized, physical manifestation of mutual benefit, characterized by buildings, artifacts, and large-scale economic and cultural production. However, when everything can be perfected, smoothed, staged, and polished, more and more imperfection becomes a signal of authentic humanity.

* The Act of Living: What the Great Psychologists Can Teach Us About Surviving Discontent in an Age of Anxiety is published by Little, Brown.

Standing in an ex’s new place, staring out at a panoramic view of the Lake, and remembering a different home in a different time:

“It’s a beautiful place for slipping away. I hope we can still be friends.”

The Ex: “Anything is possible if you have memories of home.”

“The life you save if your mirror breaks is a flock of friendship.”

The Ex: “Your ego died at a bachelorette party?”

“No. Only a caveman wakes up getting killed in a sad and beautiful world. “

The Ex: “Your perseverance flow — Relationships are hard because women are beautiful to me. It’s like going to one of the greatest botanical gardens, and you get only to pick one flower.”

“The past is a garden I never fed.”

The Ex: “Getting older makes you better.”

“Old trees* hide the splendor of their roots because love ain’t nothin’ but a business goin’ on when the distance is blue.”

The Ex: “I remember — you always enjoyed moonlight concessions, like a typical New York lie.”

“In that case, lost words, the real me bleeds new blood.”

The Ex: “Oh-oh! Left me slow crawl, planting by the signs.”

“The Fire of God’s Love comforts me — makes the new Eve rising.”

The Ex: “Ok. I’m noble and godlike in ruin. One more broken heart.”

“Yesterday, this loft was known as Diamond Grove. Today, it is unpopular Music. Sorry.”

I sat down this morning and reflected on everything we built together this year. My time with you taught me to love music, definitely not to become enamored with global music. Look at its end, I emerge in the sunlight of spring, eager to get outside and start living.

* Or rather: a tree, in its roots, lies logic, which is the reason for the word, the discourse. The trunk is physics, the natural world where we live. And the fruits are ethics, which are the reason for life, the mode of conduct. Logic, physics, and ethics are the three essential dimensions of Stoic thought, in which one aspect is separate from the other, but one agrees with the other.