ataraxion | ( 005 ) anonymous text; forward dated to tomorrow evening.

We're so terribly pathetic, aren't we? All the time that some of us have spent here, and all we can do is form our sad little allegiances, hoping that our perceived solidarity will save us from some invisible monster - but not the one you might be thinking of. The monster in question is our own painful insignificance. What are we upon this ship? We are nothing. We are a speck amongst a cluster of stars and universes so far flung from our own, with nothing to our names but our few possessions and the memory of what we might have been in our own worlds. We are a joke to existence, plucked from our homes to be deposited in a mire of stupidity and games and misfortune, and someone is watching over us, laughing. Look at these creatures. Did they ever think they had any purpose except to be a toy for some higher power? Months upon months and we find no solutions, no answers to our questions, just death and danger, and the allure of survival isn't much when survival means returning to this cycle of nothingness over and over. You say, perhaps we return to our friends, our loved ones. A valid point, I suppose - but not really. The relationships we make here are worthless. They have no means to last, for eventually we shall all die, or we shall be taken from here, replaced by other versions of ourselves we never could have dreamed of. One day perhaps we shall all wake in our own beds and this won't even be a forgotten dream, it will be wiped from us, clean. Bonds made from experiences of chaos and turmoil will dissolve like sugar in water. Insignificance. That is all we wish to alleviate by making friends, people who we keep at arms length - we all talk about secrets here, but how often do we share our own? I can't imagine us as an honest collective; not for a moment. We are all full of little things that shame us, or would put us in less than favourable positions, if everyone else knew, but we like to maintain a pretence of clarity, or at least a desire for it. I wonder how many of us have taken a life? How many of us have advantages over others in unnatural ways? How many of us talk about it? Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun, Which was my sin though it were done before? Wilt thou forgive that sin through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore? When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more. We have more. Tell me, does anyone here pray to a god, or perhaps gods? Do you speak to them in times of fear, hoping that they will send you a blessing? Do you think they can hear you? Universes and worlds away, you have been forgotten. Abandoned. Your gods, your existence, they don't care or matter. What empty, pointless entities they are, sitting on pedestals we make for them when we never even knew the vast, godless spaces out there that existed. Thou has made me, and shall Thy work decay? No, thou shalt not, for I am no longer under your jurisdiction, like a criminal dancing on the border and making faces at authorities that can only wade through bureaucratic idiocy in order to have any power over me once again. When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For we have more.

( ooc: particularly skilled hackers should be able to trace this post back to oxford, except that cambridge will be blocking attempts to do so as soon as he figures out the post is oxford's.

the verse included here is from a hymn to god the father by john donne, while the line embedded in the text is from john donne's first holy sonnet.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

fuck do you EVER shut up?

Profanity isn't necessary, young man.

it's called prose, dickweed.

That didn't make any sense.

yes it did you're just an IDIOT

god have you even read anything that isn't a law text in your life?

[Not...recently...]

Of course I have; how is that remotely relevant?

holy crap
are you serious right now

Yes I am serious; you are not communicating clearly.

THE POST YOU TOOL

it doesn't have a reason because they're MAKING A COMMENT

they're not PICKING ON ANYONE

did you TOTALLY MISS THE VERSES IN THERE

it's called PHILOSOPHY

is that CLEAR ENOUGH

Oh, naturally. And the part where they talk about how it's pointless to socialize aboard the Tranquility because everyone will die is lifted straight from one of Plato's dialogues, is it?

Very charming. Yes, I recognize that he copied lines from works of philosophy. However, placing borrowed wisdom against original idiocy does not somehow transfer the merit from the one to the other.

stiiiiill missing the point

and it's not Plato

it's Jacobi

The point-missing is mutual, it seems

no, no it really isn't

Yes, it is.

uh no? you're saying this guy is fearmongering and that he's somehow attacking people by writing about it and showing it to us? which is not what it is??

Yes, which is a prior assumption which I am already addressing with him. Forgive me; I didn't realize quite how many steps behind you were.

and you still think philosphy and prose isn't connected
so really, i'm not that far behind, you just didn't get it from the start

Yes, see, that was where I was originally baffled, and I remain yet baffled. What on earth are you even trying to say? Yes, philosophical tracts are often written in prose; is this your observation?

nihilism

look it up

I know what nihilism is. I did read Crime and Punishment when I was a child.

[When he was six, in point of fact; he thought it was a legal book. :( ]

Edited 2012-11-04 19:01 (UTC)

okay now use your problem solving skills

Young man, I'm perfectly aware that he is borrowing from other philosophies. That, again, doesn't make this remotely profound or, indeed, remotely correct. And it doesn't make it something that will not assail the spirits of the passengers aboard the ship.

if you don't like it then

shut your eyes

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