Anomaly - Glorious, or Horribilis?

Recently overheard at my local 

caffeine-imbibing establishment,

(slightly edited for content from "True Detective, S1") 

"I consider myself a realist, or in philosophical terms a pessimist - it means I'm bad at parties. I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in human evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature, but separate from itself. 

"We are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are "things" that labor under the illusion of having a "self", but it's really just a secretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each SOME-body, when in fact everybody is NO-body. 

"I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming, stop reproducing, and walk hand-in-hand into extinction. One last midnight - brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. (Obvious question then: what's the point of getting out of bed every morning?) I tell myself I bear witness. But, the real answer is that it's obviously my programming, and I lack the constitution for suicide."

The Speaker continues...

"The common good has got to make up fairy tales, and fairy tales are not good for anybody. (Referring to religion in general:) If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then that person is a piece of shit. What does it say about life, huh? You've got to get together, tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the day? (Obvious question: you figure it's all a scam right?) Yeah, it's been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey: (pointing up) 'He said... for You... to give me YOUR share.'"

"People. They're so frail they'd rather put a coin in a wishing well, rather than buy dinner! As for the preachers, it is all just the transference of fear and self-loathing to an Authoritarian Vessel - catharsis. The preacher absorbs their followers dread with his narrative, and because of this he is effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain, that dulls critical thinking. (But, having none,) at least I am not racing to a red light."

The Speaker continues...

"You see, we've been caught in what I call "a life trap", a gene-deep certainty that things will be different... that you'll move to another city and meet the people that'll be your friends for the rest of your life; that you'll fall in love and be fulfilled. Fuckin' fullfillment, and closure: just empty jars to hold this shit-storm. Nothing is ever fulfilled until the very end. And closure?...?...? No, no, no... nothing is ever over.

"The ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of a tunnel, that's what the preacher sells, same as a shrink. You see, the preacher encourages your capacity for illusion, and then he tells you it's a virtue. It's such a sense of entitlement, isn't it? "All of this is for me, Me, ME!" We are so fuckin' important, right, right? 

"People. I have seen the finale of thousands of lives, young, old, each one so sure of their realness, and that their sensory experience constituted a unique individual, with purpose and meaning, so certain that they were more than just a biological puppet. But... truth wills out, and everybody sees - once the strings are cut, all fall down. These still bodies each so certain they were more than the sum of their urges. All that useless spinning, tired mind collisions, so full of desire and ignorance."

The Speaker summarizes...

"This - THIS - is what I'm talking about: Time, and Death, and Futility. There are broader ideas at work here... in that last nanosecond before their inevitable death they saw what they were. That you, your self, it's all a big drama. It was never anything but a jury-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go, finally knowing that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that in all your life - all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain - it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream that you had inside that locked room up here, between the ears. Just a dream about being... a 'person'... a 'self'... a 'me'... an 'I'."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glorious or Horribilus or Both?