Sermon for the Soulless

Scratched apprehensions of yesteryear and tomorrow.

Image by Eugene Lisyuk.

I.

Tap your forehead with man-made paper, transfer that energy to your worldly pre-profits and pray the gods see it the same. Drop to your knees and hope that this day may be easier than the rest or that you just make it to the next. Think for yourself and answer all your questions or outsource it. Either way, you’ll be wrong. Attribute life to something more than it is and hope for something after it is and forget everything it is. Nostalgia’s our only safe place now, until the wretched wreath swings or the winged many-eyed things come down. Either way, we’re doomed.

The gods created a casino on Monday, chucked in luck and us, and
by Tuesday, there was an argument.
By Wednesday, someone had won it.
By Thursday, there was a war.
By Friday, there was an empire.
By Saturday, still only 1 per cent had seen that luck and
by Sunday, the gods had moved on.

All enter this casino, free of charge and choice, just sign the dotted line for your first subscription. Choose what you will, with so many deities to choose from: be they big or blue, bushy, brutal, imaginary or real, as long as the house keeps winning. As long as those in the know stay in the know and keep the gate up. Just stare at the shadowy silhouettes in front and don’t look back. The light will blind you, I promise. Obey and live. SUrVivE.

The future is an atrophy in the mind’s eye and a hopeless belonging in the heart.

II.

In some other times we’d look up to the skies and see stars and gods. We bowed down to them, strove to understand them and dreamed of reaching them. Now there’s no stars to see and fake ones fly up just for a laugh while we digitally tell each other to “touch grass” and hope for a better past. The gods died long ago. But one of the first stands strong and what’s the planet without its poison. Its means for metamorphosis. Earth is to rid herself of poison once more. The solar system’s greatest survivor predator. So pack your stuff and give one last middle finger to the neighbour, scramble to the queue and… unpack. You’ll be waiting a while. This will be a slow demise. There’s a few more celebrity birthdays to be had and it seems we’re going to shift focus to abortion and trans for just a moment again, and again, and another time just until the next war. The aliens stopped working once we landed on Mars but they can always use our own ones as distraction and fodder.

Our shared humanity is our mortality, our separation from the gods, and yet mere mortals try to change that fact and others try to make you forget that fact so you forget its your value and forget you are only one with one life. Others who see themselves as not separate from the gods wish to control you as the gods do, group you and use you, pin you against other yous and have you forget you. A wasted use of your mortality for the sake of someone who never considered theirs.

Pessimism does not motivate my thoughts, I promise, but I think therefore I am depressed. A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. Case in point: I think too much about too little and know too little to answer what I think and don’t think enough about how to think, but instead turn to the blue light. The most effective antidote to whatever these gods left us with and yet more unholy than anything the fallen angel came up with. Only mere mortals could create a torture so addictive.

The blue light gives you a break, a mental sterilisation,
self-hypnosis to forget you’re living.

Image by Eugene Lisyuk.

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III.

When we first made fire, could we have fathomed the dangers of its creation. If not then, then now? If not now, then when?’s the point of no return because the fires creeping in, some people are spitting oil and my iPhone’s not resistant.

Could the gods have fathomed this future when they created us? Did they create in their image or learn from their flaws? Do they have a say anymore? Did they ever-

What good are the gods when our destiny is simulated? What good are we when there’s AI podcasts gaining sentience?

We are in late-stage existence. Everything is nothing and everywhere all at once. The matrix is glitching, and not in a cool way - there’s no Neo. There’s never ending ads for anti-anxiety meds between dog videos and drone warfare. An infinite scroll where at the top you signed your soul for self-appointed desensitisation and by that day’s bottom of the bottomless they’ve already sold it ten fold to people who will sell it on more.

Somewhere, somehow along the someway we stopped seeing ourselves as ants. We are shown ants doing what we do, being what we are, and yet still see none of ourselves. Now ants hate ants while the grasshoppers commune above, commit crimes, build rockets, and microdose ketamine.

It’s a dog eat dog world until we eat the hands that barely feed us but pit us.

IV.

Alas, I’ll go on imagining Sisyphus happy and have my coffee. I’ll stir the oat milk latte, watch the sands of time and witness the blending of the universe’s makeup and remember that it is just a latte and I’m late for work. I’ll pray to whichever god has me in this moment and try to live in the moment. The moments in between the dread and regret, resentment and worry. Worry which used to be wonder. A naturalistically spiritual place of unknowing and unbothered by that fact. Wonder wandered too far and saw too much and alchemised to worry like a suit of uncertain armour filled with false intellect and borrowed philosophies.

Curious questions turned to fearful investigations when the answers darkened. Fun conspiracies became real and Black Mirror became a documentary and the truth became worse than fiction and conspiracies lost all their fun.

As a child I loved conspiracies, and playing outside, and not knowing much. The child in me prays for the light still but I can feel his faith wading and his hands drooping. Hopefully the gods will answer my prayers, or else that kids gonna have to do it himself.

Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in our Hearts.

Image by Eugene Lisyuk.

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