The nihilist society

Things have to get worse before they get better... It’s hard to see how much worse things can get on all levels. We’ve got to the stage where we no longer have any idea what it is we put in our mouth, but we carry on mindlessly courtesy of adaptation and, well, conditioning.

Take my case, for instance. I was born when supermarket giants were already the norm, just as banks, credit cards and the media were. I never stopped to wonder about the voices that came out from the radio or television sat in mum’s living room because I was born and grew up surrounded by these machines from the start. I took them for granted, as a normal occurrence of life. It’s hard to question what seems to always have been there. It’s even harder when the general consensus dictates that it is a good thing.

Isn’t it a shock to the system when you suddenly learn that what you always took for granted and safe turns out to be reckless and life-threatening, maybe to the point of being in fact evil? At this point, I no longer long for an escape into a fantasy world - it almost feels as though I’ve begun to drown in some dystopia. As Cara would have thought: “Of all the fantasies I’d longed to escape into, this one was not one of them.”

Everything is distorted, twisted according to some agenda, and though it appears almost impossible to spell out exactly what is going on, one thing emerges clear as a diluted, mid-summer blue sky: all that is done is done for profit.

Science is no longer a potential wonder for mankind, it is a weapon. You read of genetic manipulations under the guise of ‘human interest’. Where does one draw the line? The scary thing is that a majority in power, and even within scientific circles, don’t believe that any line should be drawn - ever. Why draw a line, they would smirk, when all a line does is limit you. So you hear of mice being grown a human ear on their backs and the justification for such gross barbary is simple: to further scientific and medical advances in the hope of 'saving' more human lives.


In one corner, you have pro-life folks storming against individuals who choose to abort their foetus or embryo. In another corner, you have a bunch of scientists planning to use embryos for experiments. Science has become another blanket word and anything goes under its guise. To live. To survive. To remain in this world for as long as possible. That excuse is enough to carry out the most perverse of actions.

Sure, on an individual level, one could not be blamed for wanting to live or survive... It is part of an instinct as old as the Earth itself - that of survival. But... No, we are not supposed to live forever, and no, we are not supposed to get our own way every time, and no we are not supposed to justify the means for an end. In every trauma, every terrible event or set of circumstances that befall us, there is something for the person to learn from - to grow. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, almost destructive at times, but it is the only way to grow as human beings.

Childhood is about learning boundaries, hence the constant breaching of such boundaries. Adults are meant to guide and teach, and make sure whatever boundary is breached, it isn’t one that is too horrendous or destructive. The aim would be that through the experiment of breaching boundaries and learning from early, basic experiences, one would reach the adult stage of life with at least a rough idea of which boundaries need to be respected. The rest of existence is spent refining such notions. In other words, we then spend the rest of our lives getting to understand better the ethical and moral side of existence as human beings with the unique ability to think and reason. Well, that’s what ought to be the case. Instead, we see adult life being squandered in futility where materiality and greed become the only purpose for mankind.

In the end, capitalism and consumerism are direct tenets of a nihilist society.
Greed leads to corruption; consumerism leads to want, which leads to greed, which eventually leads to corruption. Here is the pattern that defines what we call a capitalistic society. Profit becomes the beating heart of the system and under its umbrella greed, corruption, consumerism and wants are like arteries departing from it.

There is no such thing as a selfish trait or gene, it is a nurtured, grossly distorted consequence from all the above through conditioning and the need to adapt to survive.
Profit and its pulsing arteries such as greed, consumerism and corruption lead nowhere but to a nihilist conclusion. The process by which it destroys itself is akin to a cancer eating at a body from within. Everything else slowly withers and perishes until only the umbrella and its departing arteries remain, and when that happens, all else is destroyed, and even the umbrella begins to dissolve to nothingness to give way for chaos.

Reflexions

I’m amazed at one thing: how up to speed I am with current events, these days. Since the TV’s reception is bad, I’ve almost completely given up on watching any programme at all, but every time I sit in the living room to eat my meals, I switch on the news channel. That gives me a sum-up of what is ‘going on’ on the day, though of course I’m now amused at the fact that only about 5 things seem to happen in the world on any given day - but nothing much ever happens over the weekend, really, and it’s as though weekends were invented to give the world a rest: nothing major therefore happens, but comes Monday all the trouble kicks off again, right?...


Of course, this week I started buying newspapers again, because I get them half price at uni, and there is a more varied batch of news from around the world, and some writers do have interesting points to make.

“The European Union is kind of sinister...” said Tim last time I saw him. You can say that again.
At school, they teach you to embrace the ideals that the EU claims to embody, so that you are not afraid of what is potentially on the road to becoming a new super-state governed by an elite we, the people, have no control over. I remember how, when I was still in primary school, they would teach us the names and capitals of the countries that had joined the EU. At the time, there were only 15, but now we’re fast approaching the big 30. In 2008, Ireland’s referendum - that is the people’s vote on a specific question - rejected the treaty of Lisbon, you see. Fast forward to this month, and it seems the people need to vote again on the same question, and that makes it look like the power-that-be are really saying “okay, folks, we’re gonna make you vote again because let’s face it, you didn’t pick the right option.”

The piece of paper you vote on that gives you the option of a YES or NO really doesn’t have two options, only the one they want you to choose, which in the case of the Lisbon treaty means a big fat YES. So they’ll hassle people until they get what they want, especially now that the opposition is run-down and the media coerced to endorse the ‘necessity’ of a YES vote.

Oh, the EU is also paving the way for a mighty president, except there is no document whatsoever as to that president’s role, duties, let alone to explain what the position is for or what powers exactly he will have. Apparently, Tony Blair is tipped as one possible winner... I guess that says it all.



It’s all such a shamble... Too many things are happening at once in almost every single area, creating more confusion and chaos. They make you believe that the economy is going to hell, but even if this happens to be the case, it was willed to happened. Yes, they wanted the economy to crash, and in that sense, the crash becomes a very carefully crafted ploy with very intricate safeguards to ensure that while we see the economy crash, they really still have perfect control over it. In other words, they can make it crash, but they can make it go up again because they hold absolute control over the economy, much like a skilled rider spooking his mount but still able to calm it down. After all, banks are the owners of quite a big chunk of the world... They and any government under which you live, also like to think that they own you and all the children you may bear under their umbrella. Scary thought? A reality nonetheless.



Every time you get credit, it is from a bank, and every day you spend in credit makes you the bank’s pawn. Every time you accept government money or financial help of any kind, it doesn’t matter that the money comes from the tax payer’s pocket, you and your family become the government’s pawn. They see you as an asset or commodity which they OWN, therefore whatever bad thing they do to you means nothing to them. They’ve already bought you, and just like a toy that broke, they can always buy a new one. Even the good old worker cannot escape the harsh reality of ownership.
Because you live in cities or use commodities provided by a branch of the government, you become, just like the rest, a pawn, and you belong, like any object, to the state. You have to put yourself in the people in power’s shoes for a minute to grasp that concept of ownership, and when you do, you realise that whatever horror they spring on us makes sense in the light that they see things. What is a population to a handful of corrupted people in power living in mansions and spending millions mindlessly for their own little comfort? To them, we look like tiny little ants running about everywhere, so easily squashed under a boot, and still we reproduce endlessly so that no matter how many fall, the supply of ants never falters too dangerously.

The world never changed, only the words used and landscapes.



Being born in this world sucks if you happen to have a brain that allows you to think fairly and critically. It makes you wish at times that you were born a real ant, so that no matter what happened, at least you wouldn’t be conscious of any wrong-doing. You’d just happen to be squashed or exploited, without the shadow of a second thought.

They give you some comfort, coupled with the idea that money and success can allow you to get even more comfort and luxuries... Fair enough if that’s what one wants, but what about others who, like me, are looking for something more out of this one life we have?
Peace was never some unreachable ideal; peace was turned into that idealistic, naive notion to fit with the age old agenda to keep the world a breeding ground for conflict so that a few could get richer and above all else. I believe that peace is the easiest ideal to attain, but those in power are making sure to prevent it from ever happening. Of course, nowadays it’s hard to agree with such a statement, but that’s all part of the trick, isn’t it? Make people think and feel as though the world of human affairs is so complicated that they’ll end up believing the biggest sham of all times: that peace is a complex notion, that satisfaction and happiness is linked to wealth and success, that corruption and selfish ways are just something that always will be.

On the sense of Purpose

I like to imagine sometimes that whatever bad happens, there must be a bigger picture somewhere, and there must be something good to draw out of it. I even like to think of hardship as a helpful tool to grow as a person, or that it is one of life’s tests... That there is a reason behind everything that happens, if only we can recognise what it is, which means taking the time to understand every face of a situation.

Well, since about last night, I’ve never doubted such a theory more. It almost makes more sense to think we’re all random, just as this world is despite its inherent natural balance, and it just happens that most people are rotten, and you just have to live with it or drown. You drown, you die, end of. There’s nothing more to it, and everything that seems to make sense is part of human make-belief - the need to place a meaning on things for ourselves to make the randomness of life more bearable.

So the reason we invented work, for instance, is to give ourselves the shadow of some purpose in life, really, so we have something to do while alive. If we didn’t, then we’d just get bored, I suppose. Boredom can easily lead to depression, and most people would just end up killing themselves, one way or another. Without purpose, a thinking beast becomes a time bomb. There’s no telling when or how it’ll blow. It could wipe itself out, or it could take others down as well. And all that because of a lack of purpose, whose impact on us is named depression.

When I was little, my main purpose in life was simple, albeit impossible to achieve, but then kids tend to have great dreams that are only dashed later down the line. I lived to escape into a fantasy world. Failing this, I could see myself becoming an ‘actress’, so I would keep as close to the fantasy illusion as possible, you see. Life happened, of course, and with it waltzed in a set of unpredictable changes in circumstances. I didn’t get to die when I realised I would never escape reality, so for a long while I lost all sense of purpose. I got depressed. Surprise, surprise.

Then the writing kicked in, and I found myself a new purpose in life that allowed me to cope better with this reality for a while. If I didn’t have that delusion of a purpose in mind, then what would be the point in anything? This is a very serious issue, because it questions the core of what we are, as a species in this world, and it digs into the heart of the mind.

Thinking and reason coupled with the ability to feel emotions leads to the intrinsic need for a sense of purpose. This begs the question: are we doomed to live forever in a prison of delusions?

If you need to convince yourself that what you do fills a purpose in life, then it is a delusion, but only if the premise entails that we are all here by chance, down a chain of very natural events. The whole Darwin Theory, to put it simply, here.

On a Modern Sham

Yesterday I listened to Mozart all day. Today is Vivaldi’s turn. After that, I don’t know, because my classical playlist is on the poor side, I have to say. I might go down the library at some point and simply rent a few random CDs to add to the tiny collection of music I have in the genre.
Yeah... I no longer trust mainstream music, not to the point of feeling paranoid about it, but I’m really fed up with the general dumbing down of music where lyrics become repetitive “Oh baby, baby”... But I need music in my life just as I need air to breathe.

I have to say... I feel like I’ve suddenly lost much of my enthusiasm about writing any story at all. I keep wondering: but why? Why do I want to write anything at all, and why such and such stories when it seems that all that I come up with is already tainted by my social conditioning?

Am I really the writer, or am I but a mind under influence spitting out what it was instilled to spit? Who can even answer such questions?

I suppose it’s going to take a few days for the shock to dissipate. I certainly hope so. What shock? Well, the one that has everything to do with our reality.

Part of me - and I don’t know, still, how big that part is - doesn’t want to believe what my gut and brain keep taking for at least a glimpse of truth amidst the lies... That the whole world is being played by a handful of highly skilled manipulators who only deal in term of evil deeds.

Sounds much like any action movie would, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe all those movies full of apocalyptic symbolism have that secondary aim beside mere mind-numbing entertainment. To shape you into disbelieving certain things from the word go.

If something is too easily dismissed to the point that you will dismiss an idea before you can even evaluate it critically in your mind, then something must be amiss. Fact.

A true logical being should have the capacity to consider all arguments put before him, so that he can critically accept or dismiss them. If this stage doesn’t occur, then surely something isn’t working right in terms of mental processes.

Yet there are certain ‘taboo’ subjects which most people will refuse to dwell on; worse, still, they will simply appear to “switch off” at the mere mention of words, as though those words were but triggers telling the critical mind not to bother. I’m not immune to that, of course, but I’m trying to question my inability to be even remotely questioning as far as certain subjects are concerned. Something as silly-sounding as aliens, for instance, or many other topics which the majority is said to agree on as right or wrong and which we accept as the norm or "truth".

I can see how movies can act as “desensitivators” (Yes, I just made up the word, I think!) in the sense that for most people, movies represent the gateway to fantasy, or fiction.
Once such a link is created in the mind, once you get the automatic reflex to dismiss movies into the fiction category, all that is shown on screen is likely to end up in the fiction box of the mind. It makes sense. When you are inundated with sci-fi movies full of the most far-fetched ideas, it becomes easier and easier to stare at the screen blankly, while your mind just dismisses the whole thing as escapism. It isn’t real, mate.

What happens when a fact-based story is given the movie treatment? We might consciously know that it is based on truth, but the unconscious part of us is already wired to make the unbreakable link (movies equal fiction or fantasy), and so it must be that when movies have become a confusing mix of truth and fantasies, the mind is at loss. It is no longer about a blur between reality and illusion, or truth and falsehood, it is a giant void in the mind. A black hole full of noise.



Books are different. The act of reading doesn’t have the same impact as passively watching moving images. The brain gets that split second of respite between each word that is read by the person, and that split second allows for more time for critical reasoning to kick in. As such, when something is amiss while reading a page, one can go back and read the words again to make sense of them. You don’t get that in a movie. You only get to watch a very fast succession of actions, and even if you could pause the scene, your mind is too occupied with following many things happening at once and critical reasoning is forever impaired. There are, however, some people out there who appear immune to such a confusion- inducing effect, and those people are the ones who will point at disturbing things they can spot, or mistakes, or weird symbols, etc... Things that should be so obvious, and yet if they hadn’t pointed at it with a finger, you would never have noticed on your own. I’m in that category. Unless I am shown, I have no clue. I take it all in mindlessly.

It makes me wonder how come I can still find the strength to be critical at all, knowing how easily biased or dazzled I am by society’s sham. Surely, since I fall into almost every single trap, I should by now be a perfect little conformist. I should be one of those who nod with a smile at everything. I should be taking everything at face value, surely.


The aim is, and I suspect has been for quite a long time, to trigger as much division as possible among people. To that end, cities become the greatest symbol of division, albeit a subtle one.
By gathering us mostly in cities where space is stiffly limited, especially for the poorer majority, those in power ensure that they can keep better control over us.

Isn’t it easier to keep tabs on people if they’re all gathered within a well-defined area rather than having to scour miles of countryside across which people are scattered? The granting of technological comfort ensures the majority’s compliance, as comfort and promises of luxury act like a drug for the mind. The stage is already set: countrysides are being emptied, villages are left to die, so that people are forced, one way or another, to join bigger towns.

I'm beginning to think that living in cities goes against human nature. How easy it is to forget that despite our thinking brains, we remain quite biologically linked to nature! Each human being needs his proper personal space much akin to the notion of having your own territory. To each their land should not sound far-fetched, it should be a norm. The fact is that people strive better in smaller communities where they can grow meaningful social ties than in big cities where they are made to become faceless. The process of having us all divided works better in huge concentrations of numbers, ensuring that the lack of personal space and social ties nurtures a strong emergence of what we loosely call selfishness.

Some now like to parade the idea of a ‘selfish gene’ but they are confusing the natural survival instinct with a psychological trend that has been purposely left to grow by taking away from us what made us more human in the first place. In other words, selfishness is a trait that is being allowed to spread and amplify in strength. If that trait were a flower, in the modern day flower pot it would be one of the best cared-for and watered plant.


For people to find their own sense of harmony, it seems crucial that we should be allowed to live in small, tightly-knit communities, such as village-like structures not to be confused with the now mainstreamed idea of gettoisation that worked in demonizing the mere thought of ‘small’ community.

Some will counter, of course, that looking back at history alone, village life was often plagued with narrow-minded attitude, if not worse. They will say “but if that type of life was so great, then how come so many, espacially the young, long to leave it behind?”
Well, we are groomed to feel that way because wealth and comfort is attached to the idea of city life. It is more or less like the donkey going after the carrot being dangled in front of his unsuspecting nose.

Besides that point, there is the matter that villages are only the reflection of those in power instilling ideas and a narrow-minded attitude from bygone times. If small communities hadn’t been wired to be a certain way, then they woudn’t be that certain way, but different.

My thoughts on the subject wouldn’t feel so important to me if it wasn’t for the obvious effort put into emptying rural parts to have us all living on top of each other in grey, fuming cities where these days even work is lacking because - guess what!- those in power delocalized most of the jobs abroad for cheaper labour.

I mean... Even the loaf of bread you buy in the shop these days comes from some far away country, like India.

They make a little fuss about people being out of work and all that, but truly, isn’t the aim to have most of us on the dole, being given just enough to barely survive so that in the end we have no strength left to rebel? As for those who do get jobs... What kind of jobs are they? Sitting in front of a computer all day pushing buttons is not a job. It’s revolting.

At least when you were forced to work in some slimy factory all day for peanuts, you got angry enough to want to change things for the better. History is littered with examples of people who put up a good fight for better justice. What about today? Most jobs are still as mind-numbing, but you can sit in a cubicle all day without sweating, and you get just enough to buy a better car or TV screen than your neighbour. The impression of having it easy, or better than before, is enough to put out most people’s fire. And the majority becomes a passive herd, too afraid to lose the little comfort that was thrown at them to ultimately control them.

There Is No Truth Out There...

... Only convenient versions of it.



Can anything we say or write fit with such verbs as ‘to be’? To be, is, was, will be... The verb alludes to certainties or facts. I am me, I am a girl, I am a person, I am a grown-up... The sky is blue, the clouds are white, the house is big, the dog is barking, the cat is jumping, the weather is foul, etc... I wonder if all these shouldn’t in fact be replaced by a verb that would reflect our limited perception of reality.

Am I, or do I actually only seem to be?

It seems that I is me, and it seems that I is a girl, because of what the majority would say, what they all came to agree on as a crowd - or majority. The sky seems blue, because my eyes tell me that it resembles most the colour we all can see and agree to call ‘blue’. The grass seems green for the same reason, yet a horse could tell you it is red if it could talk (and that's according to the latest scientific research).

There are no certainties, only man-made agreements based on what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste and generally sense or experience in common as a species.
We know that senses are misleading. We smell a certain scent with our limited ability to smell, and a dog would smell something different because his sense of smell is so much more developed. We see the bricks that made up the house, but if our vision was stronger to a certain point, we wouldn’t see the bricks as such, we would see the particles and atoms that make up those bricks that make up that house. Reality would then look quite different at least in appearance.

I wonder where we are heading as a society. It frightens me no end, not because I just happen to see the worst in all technological advances, but because there is not enough time spent on dwelling on consequences. We move on according to our findings, and in that sense we cease to be the masters of our advances. We lose ourselves in a race against time, in a race that has no defined finishing line. Where do you stop, then? And would stopping ever matter, or only the pursuit of knowing more about the world and its neighbour? And can you really understand the world if you haven’t spent the time to know yourself?

Could you say that a ball is a ball if you had never seen one before? What if one explained to you that a ball in round and red or blue and that it bounces when you throw it? Would you then know what a ball is? Well, would you?

If you knew that a ball is round and red or blue and that it bounces when you throw it, you would be able to distinguish such an objects among others. You could point a finger at it and say “ball!”, but would you know what it is, or what it is for intrinsically? Chances are that even if you fail to understand what it is actually meant to do, you would give it your own purpose in mind. You might decide that it is an object to play with, to throw against a wall and play. You could also decide that it is a present from God fallen from the sky. Or a pretty ornament. Its purpose becomes a man-made concept, and it seems that beyond that silly example, most things around us are given the same treatment more or less.

It matters not that meaning eludes us, for we can always give our own meaning to everything.

In a world full of man-made beliefs, I ask one how it can ever be possible to find true meaning.
Are we doomed to only experience reality according to what people agree to perceive as reality, or is there a way beyond that?

Of course, the ball example is flawed in the sense that man invented such an object with some pre-defined purpose in mind. In a way, the guy who created that ball must have wanted to create it so he could play football with it, for instance. But then, if that purpose in mind isn’t explained to others, how are others supposed to know what that ball’s purpose is? They will either remain perplexed, or they will grant it a whole new meaning, hence purpose.

If we look at the advances in sciences, even, we see that men are now more capable than ever to understand the mechanics of a great deal of things that appeared a mystery to us not so long ago.


Whereas one might have once thought that the heart was merely an organ holding all the romantic feelings of the person, we now know that it is one of the main organs necessary to survival, that it acts like a pump to make the blood flow and all that. In that sense, sciences have managed to go beyond imaginary or limited means of understanding. They can tell you that the purpose of the heart is to act as a pump, for instance, and they could now tell you the purpose of various things with quite a lot of certainty.

What disturbs me is the illusionist base on which everything, absolutely everything, rests. We perceive reality in a limited way, in so far as we perceive it as a species and agree together on that vision or perception. What makes sense as purpose in our minds only happens to fit in with our perception. It might well be that the heart’s true purpose is quite different in truth, but we can only perceive a certain purpose for it according to our own limited perception of reality.

I am such a product of my own society, aren’t I? I look for true meaning and reality because I happen to be immersed in more illusions than ever. Removed too far from nature, one might begin a journey back to simplicity, only for the mind to find a remnant of a sound base on which to grow understanding away from too many false assumptions and mistaken conclusions.
In that sense, I am reluctant to put too much faith on granted knowledge, the one that allows a person to skip steps to understand only a certain portion of knowledge.

For instance, in my case, knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun is not true knowledge, it is granted knowledge. I do not know all the theories, calculations or means to get to that ‘fact’. I am merely told that it is so. Because it is a ‘fact’ most will agree on, it must be true, and therefore I ‘know’ that the Earth revolves around the sun. I keep in mind the historical factor that the person who one day told the world that ‘truth’ or discovery was put to death because back then people weren’t ready to accept that the Earth wasn’t in fact at the centre of the universe, or that it wasn’t flat. This mere historical event shows the crucial role social agreement plays in the way we shape our reality.

If anything, granted knowledge is to me nothing more than a risky potential shortcut to mistake. I would rather take the risk of wasting time doubting what is actually true as part of granted knowledge, than assume without truly knowing.

It matters not that in the end I should know very little, because as I wrote it before, I hope that what I do come to understand will at least be as close to true knowledge as humanly possible.
In an ideal world, there would be no mere scientists, there would only be philosophers who happen to be scientists.

There is no truth out there, only convenient versions of it.

Interlude

See that light,
At the end that flies,
Swells the heart and sighs,
Longings are the plight.

Steps in the doorway
Lead to marble skies
Stretching all the way
To hearts and sobbing eyes.

See that light,
At the end that flies,
Steps in the doorway
Lead to the freeway

Of gloom, of passions doomed,
Whispers of the heart
The mind which has fathomed
Is blind, is blind to depart!

The steps that crack
Along the black asphalt and past
Let whispers exhale at last
All the way to golden blossoms and back

But the flowers, dear,
Are like poison in the spleen,
The parched ground is the skin
Of a snake with no fear,

Slither, writhing, and grovel,
To the golden flower
Still, to reach the marvel
Of poison that becomes power.

Glimpses

I haven't written anything for a while, now. Sometimes I feel like thoughts in my head just keep repeating themselves over and over again and I don't see the point in rehashing the same old things. It doesn't make those thoughts any less relevant or perhaps even true, but it shows me that I lack answers, and still more questions in my head arise. It's tiring at times.

So I had a random read at my old writings, and I found this entry in one of my diaries which brought quite a few strange memories back to the fore, somehow. It happened sometime this year, between March and April.

"Last night was very strange and made me feel as though we were suddenly back a century or two in time, in the slums and glum of poverty in the dark entrails of London. Scenes from Dickens’ books kept popping in my mind... To give but an idea of the scene that played out before my eyes. Mum had just come back from a long day at work, and she had quickly prepared her dinner, a bowl of soup and some chicken, when the landlord finally came. He knocked on the door and we barely had time to clean the mess around us.

I hid the cat’s food away from sight, but the rest was as it stood: cluttered and messy because there is simply no room. I was still in my old pajama pants and wore that huge canary jumper (which I wear today, and almost every day because I get so freaking cold in here), my hair held back in a loose ponytail. He came into the room, wearing a black suit, and stood there like a lemon, really, for an awkward moment, not even daring much of a glance around him. He had a folder in his hands that contained the ‘contract’ and direct debit form, and asked for the rent, which is when it all kicked off with mum, of course.

She began to tell him how much money we spend on the electric just to keep the room warm... About 5 quid a day. She told him that it had now been 2 months we hadn’t been able to use the shower, let alone any hot water at all. He opened his eyes wide in fake surprise, muttering that we should have told him, even though we had. He said something like ‘English people always live in cold rooms anyway” in such a dismissive tone that mum just hit back with a “I’m not English so I don’t live like that”.

At some point mum began crying, saying something about living like pigs. I had to bite my lip not to laugh, really, because I knew she was playing with him. Dealing with ruthless, cold and heartless people who only live for profit on the back of more vulnerable people teaches you to play along just enough to survive. You can’t get angry at these people -not in their faces- and you can’t tell them the truth about their abject ways. You show them that you’re as vulnerable and weak as they like to think you are. The truth is that if you let out what you actually have a right to say - the truth of the matter- they would kick you out in the cold in a heartbeat. And then what? What do you do then?

As soon as mum started crying, the landlord seemed to lose his footing slightly.
“M’am, m’am, please, don’t cry,” he mumbled, taking a step forward and bumping into the things scattered in this tiny room, not knowing where to place himself. He looked at me and I simply shrugged, rolling my eyes in desperation. So he suddenly told us we could use the bathroom upstairs where the prostitute used to live - she moved out last week, you see- because there would be hot water there, and we wouldn’t have to pay for it. He says “come Aliska, come, I’ll show you, it’s a nice shower.” So I follow him upstairs, still in those dirty white and pink pants and bright yellow jumper, and I almost want to laugh at my appearance. I wonder for a second when it was exactly that we fell so low, and already we have stepped into the prostitute’s old little room. In a corner there is a shower room but when the landlord tries to turn on the light it doesn’t work, so he must show me the hot water in semi-darkness. I feel the warmth of the gushing water on my hand and I nod as he keeps saying “you see, you see, hot water! Ah, you see, it’s nice, it’s hot, you can shower now.”
I glance at the floor and see the streaks of grease and black dirt all over it and he sees it, too. He mumbles an excuse as to the dirty state of that wonderful shower, saying it will clean itself when we actually use it. I bite my tongue again not to express my disgust at him. I almost want to ask him if he would shower in that filth, but what’s the point when you already know the answer?...

We go back downstairs and mum hands him about half the rent money, and though he seems very hesitant and asks several times for the full amount, we promise to give him the rest as soon as we earn it. He leaves us at last and we are left hating the fact that we are now well and truly stuck in that shit hole. Yes, to move out we would need enough money for a deposit and first month rent, but we have barely enough to pay for this dump.

There are people out there who have known at some point in their lives what poverty was all about. Losing everything or rising from nothingness... One day it might well be that I won’t be poor anymore, or that I won’t have to be poor to follow my beliefs against corruption. I would never want to forget. I could never forget or pretend that these things never happened. They happened, one after the other, each worse than the previous, like a vicious circle. These are horrible times, they really are. They make you question if you are still human, or a poor excuse for a human life. They make you question the people out there feeding and building their wealth on people like us. They make you question the core of human existence, societies themselves and their ruthless order.

Poor people have to exist in order for the rich to be. If you want something, then something else has to give. If you already had a taste of getting what you want, then you might feel sad at the account of some poor sod’s struggles, but you will no longer be able to let go of your wants. That is corruption of the mind. Because of this, and because of the natural envy that grows in most people’s inner hearts, there must always be poor people to grant a wealthy status to a few.

I could die tomorrow and be safe in the knowledge that I lived a very human life in the end. I experienced a wide spectrum of what being human on this Earth really means. I pushed, and pushed against the boundaries of my own mind to try and make sense of what my eyes showed me. It started out like so many others out there, more or less shielded from pure reality thanks to the power of my imagination that fed constantly on a plethora of illusions, but in the end I had to face glimpses of our reality as it stands before us, far removed from any cushioning veil of delusions.

If I try, these days, to remember how it was like back home, when I was still so young and blissfully unaware of the realities of life... It feels like home, a bittersweet wave of wistful remembrance growing hazier as time goes by. It feels like another life, perhaps just a dream I once had."