By Junior Novelist Levi Kassinove
Years ago, universities asked applicants to role play they’d written a novel of their life and to open up that hypothetical novel to p. 246 and to share it with the admissions committee. I asked the same of the Blog Staff. This is Levi’s p. 246.
Blog Advisor Zachik
This is a chapter from my teenage years.
…with a look of horror painted across their faces. I had realized at that point that anything was possible. Upon asking this utterly ridiculous request, there was a hint in the eyes of my peers that said yes. Yet another obsession had successfully scratched the itch in my brain that would otherwise leave me endlessly bored. Passion only ultimately leaves me hungry for more.
That is why I am against the advancement of knowledge.
A million billion years from now, when the last optimization for society has been implemented, when we have understood the last concept, and when we have found a cure for the last disease, only then will we realize that our quality of life hasn’t improved. Are things really any different now? Will they be different then? People want to live longer just so they can live longer. What then when we die? Is there really so much of a difference between living 50, 100, or 1000 years? No matter how much we “improve,” the hedonic treadmill will pull our happiness back to its baseline. 2000 years ago, if someone broke their leg, they would probably die or live pretty uncomfortably for a while, but they would adapt before they die. Nowadays, we get a cast and heal, and, still, we adapt all the same. Humans adapt to their situations as a coping mechanism. There is no such thing as improvement. Only the desire for advancement, which boils down to greed. Understanding the universe is for the sole purpose of understanding the universe. Science is an addiction, perhaps one that has short term and foreseeable benefits, but ultimately it becomes an addiction given enough time. I’d say enough time has passed for us to see that science will eventually lead to our doom.
Note: I didn’t start this in medias res because I’m pretentious; I did it to protect myself–from Indy. Here, I don’t have to reveal everything. At some point, depending on the life you choose, you get so paranoid that you end up destroying all of your work out of fear of not being accepted. And the constant jokes get annoying as well.
Levi Kassinove
People want knowledge because they want power, and people want power because they like having dominion. It is in our blood to strive for control. But, it is unfair. Inherently there are always people being controlled. The people in power believe that they can mold us to do anything. They think they can make us think any way. They think they can make us behave any way. But, we are not characterized by tabula rasa. Freedom is the essence of life. Animals, with their animalistic behavior, have total freedom over what they do. The people who want power think of humanity as beyond animals, and therefore beyond freedom. They think we are too civilized for freedom. We are not above animals. To be humble is to live in harmony. It is to be free. This was my request to my family.
I wanted to contribute to the global effort to free ourselves from tyranny. I wanted to be Neo from The Matrix. And, that’s exactly what I did. During the birth of my obsession, people obviously got tired of it. They got tired of my inability to talk about something other than this. But, when they started to see results, they started to get interested. They started supporting me. They did not regret their decision to let me essentially…be free. My goal is not to grow so big in my personal effort that I single-handedly change the world. My goal is to plant the seeds, so that others may water them.
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