The Curse of Narcissus
By: C.A. Martinez
Tags: Existentialism, Life, Death, Perspective, Philosophy

The beauty of the world can hold us closer than any lover; we can see ourselves within the chittering birds, playing within their leafy cages, singing or fighting or laughing — such a mirror, a splendid reflection of the spirit that we battle with day to day, year to year. And as if some confusion could lead us astray! It is that delirium which infuses our souls with a sort of full plate armor. It allows us to exist in this world, with our five senses, and not be in a constant state of existential dread — staring into the pinnacle of circulatory life — of that which diminishes the grandeur and righteousness of living.

How could this connection ever be emulated? As we program a being made of silicon and copper traces, would it awaken, in its functions and variables, feeling the breeze of a factory’s chemical winds upon its artifice flesh? For, as base and raw as this comparison is, are we not both then, at that very moment, two creatures moved by the currents of electricity and nodes? Ah, it is too much to contemplate! Is this what God thinks? That he could never hope to instill the full and complete experience of true and unfiltered life? Unabashed perfection!

Yes, the birds bring these qualms to fruit, and as the birds peck and leave a half rotted carcass upon the grass, to be eaten by different creatures, we too must peck at that fruit of understanding and allow the unanswered questions to be taken in by posterity. Our perspectives, from up so high, among twisting, swaying branches; among the nests of our kin; among the netting rains diving from the greenest fronds; we are too concise a being to our environs. For we humans cannot live as birds! So how to solve a bird’s queries?

That is our kind’s greatest weakness. We attempt to answer questions that we simply lack the understanding for; not for lack of intellect, but for lack of design. We are cursed by our cousin Narcissus; we think ourselves all knowing — and if not omniscient now, then surely at some time soon — upon the branches of the only tree we have ever perched within. But no! No! you say, we have been to the moon! We have sent our metals to Mars, Jupiter, the edge of our Solar System! We have created language, we have discovered math! Our animals have been cloned through our efforts — we are truly Victor Frankenstein, we have conquered that very dance of inception! Through the power of science have we bred our children from glass phials; we can control what they look like, no longer are we slaves to our nature!

And pray! We still fear death, and to that great void we sweat a vicious cold sweat, of salt and anguish! We cannot save those whom we love when they become emaciated through disease, or disheartened through their own minds, or through victimhood of another’s hatred! What have we solved? How have we ascended, when that so many a boon cannot be fathomed by our brothers and sisters who still die to their only drinking water, to their lack of food, to their misuse of our manufacturing? No, we have misinterpreted a distraction for an evolution. Drawn and quartered no more, now we inject upon the veins of those we deem evil — but it is the same, save that we can record a hateful murder in the clearest resolutions.

It is a farce, and it is why we must always look inward, and always understand that our perspective limits us, that we have only ever lived as people, and we forget that we share this existence with countless other breathing creatures. We are but civilians within the Kingdom that our Mother Earth has birthed through her monarchical destiny! And for those things we do not understand — those grey, blank, mystic visages — we simply stare into the zenith, and think to a god of our own creation, as if our mind is not our own; as if our brave new world has solved naught.

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