Who am I and what can I do?
In the first place, let me acknowledge: I am a human being and I have no rights. That in the face of every declaration to the contrary, national and international, governmental and otherwise. A thing like a government cannot grant me on a whim that which can be so easily snatched away by another. A group of governments is equally powerless, or somehow, more so. And so I am a human being, so far as I know, so far as I understand, and I have no rights. What do I have?
I certainly haven't the right to write this or to post this, to think or to breathe this these thoughts. So this is anarchy or the internet, this is rebellion or establishment, this is what I will do because this has occurred to me and because the only mandate that exists is the mandate of the moment. It's the mandate that can keep me abed in the late afternoon drinking wine and the one that forces me up to the toilet to relieve myself.
The moment.
And so I have no rights and my actions are dictated by the moment. Dictated? Am I subject then to the moment? I am subject surely to the amount of wine left in the bottle, to the amount of sunlight leaking through my curtains, and to gravity. I suppose I could skip the toilet, but then I would be subject to discomfort. I can almost choose my masters, but it is written and it is read: we will have masters. I can be compelled, I think, to do almost anything by almost any individual, association of individuals, government, or group of governments. I breathe no free breath because I cannot choose to be and not to breathe. I am not free.
I am a human being and I have no rights. I am not free, but I still have wine.
But what, again, am I? I am a continuous skin sack, with an inner and an outer. The skin runs along fingertips and up fingers. It crosses the wrist and continues up the arm. It wraps the skeleton and, well, also around some other things--I'm no anatomist, after all--and it connects, continuously (barring some calamity) to itself in all cases, crossing a rib cage and a sternum, a clavicle and a trachea, some lips and a. . .
Bits of my skeleton stick out of the continuous sack into my mouth. There are thirty-two bits of skeleton exposed in the average adult human mouth. I have no right to these bits of bone and someone could take them from me, with or without my permission, at any time. I don't own my body, my continuous skin sack, and I don't own those thirty-two bits of bone.
In which case I am not my skin sack. I am a human being, separate from, but inside of, a continuous human skin sack with thirty-two bits of exposed skeleton, and no rights, no freedom, and no idea what I am to do here in this bed.
Except to drink wine.
I certainly haven't the right to write this or to post this, to think or to breathe this these thoughts. So this is anarchy or the internet, this is rebellion or establishment, this is what I will do because this has occurred to me and because the only mandate that exists is the mandate of the moment. It's the mandate that can keep me abed in the late afternoon drinking wine and the one that forces me up to the toilet to relieve myself.
The moment.
And so I have no rights and my actions are dictated by the moment. Dictated? Am I subject then to the moment? I am subject surely to the amount of wine left in the bottle, to the amount of sunlight leaking through my curtains, and to gravity. I suppose I could skip the toilet, but then I would be subject to discomfort. I can almost choose my masters, but it is written and it is read: we will have masters. I can be compelled, I think, to do almost anything by almost any individual, association of individuals, government, or group of governments. I breathe no free breath because I cannot choose to be and not to breathe. I am not free.
I am a human being and I have no rights. I am not free, but I still have wine.
But what, again, am I? I am a continuous skin sack, with an inner and an outer. The skin runs along fingertips and up fingers. It crosses the wrist and continues up the arm. It wraps the skeleton and, well, also around some other things--I'm no anatomist, after all--and it connects, continuously (barring some calamity) to itself in all cases, crossing a rib cage and a sternum, a clavicle and a trachea, some lips and a. . .
Bits of my skeleton stick out of the continuous sack into my mouth. There are thirty-two bits of skeleton exposed in the average adult human mouth. I have no right to these bits of bone and someone could take them from me, with or without my permission, at any time. I don't own my body, my continuous skin sack, and I don't own those thirty-two bits of bone.
In which case I am not my skin sack. I am a human being, separate from, but inside of, a continuous human skin sack with thirty-two bits of exposed skeleton, and no rights, no freedom, and no idea what I am to do here in this bed.
Except to drink wine.
posted by jw at
3:35 PM
0 Comments
