This isn’t just the beginning.

Here, restrictions have been oddly kept at a bare minimum, it’s been almost as chill as Russia (not that it brings much consolation). Then again, it might be because we’re an unoptimal amount of poor to fuck with, and in the habit of toppling regimes so… The most salient threat lingering & looming about this whole period has been the anti-vaxx social stigma, but even that’s somewhat subjectable to temperance due to our eastern orthodox christian fueled reticence, matched only by our pervasive track record of dreadful political trade-offs. For better or worse, ours is a nation struck with a deep seated weariness towards cooperation, and it’s little to no wonder since all our attempts at crony alliances have left us exponentially crippled. Ours is a history of unbecoming, and it just might prove an ‘ideal fit’ for what’s to come, which seems to be a global consciousness catered to/for/by a leviathan of fractures upon fractures into our sense-making drives.

At any rate, it pays little to point the historical finger, as it’s clear to me that our collective past serves more as a weaponized euthanasia agent targeting our will to solidarity than as a means of resurrecting our defunct ethos of compassion. The trick would be to figure out a way to somehow recycle the poison of mistrust into an immune response to it, sort of like those industrially grown mushrooms that manage to suck up toxic waste while remaining edible. Such a feat would entail a willingness to let go of fear, and by that I mean precisely our fear of death, as it’s the ultimate invisible enemy we’re required to do battle with if we’re to save any grace before it’s too late.

Jacob’s Ladder came out the same year I was born, and I was conceived right ahead of the infamous ’89 revolution. These words taken from the film have always injected my heart with enough stamina and hope to keep moving forward whenever I ran the risk of discarding myself over to the comforts of oblivion:

“If you’re frightened of dying, and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.”

Now, under no circumstance am I advocating a rollover type of stance (be it personal or political), rather one of plasticity in the face of adversity, not dissimilar to ways in which I’ve seen a cuttlefish can mould (or even amputate) herself in subservient forms without this in any way compromising her intrinsic structure. In other words, we must retain our ontological integrity, safeguarding its unalienable legitimacy at all costs, all the while harvesting it to foster relationality as deeply as it’s capable of reaching down the graveyard of broken mirrors that has abruptly become our humanity’s nest. Seek hidden potential wherever it may lack. Know and embrace your destituent power, so that you may become Ungovernable. Remember the enemy is he who defines you.

We must never forget that true charity has nothing to do with scapegoating tactics or self-sacrifices in the name of abstract virtues, nor should we ever forgive this ever-asphyxiating encroachment upon our convivial sustenance (no matter the scope of its declaration, be it hijacked by a progressive or conservative agenda). Keep in mind that with the advent of the PoMo/idpol/psyop inquisition, binomials have ceased to be deployed as anything other than fodder for polarisation, for which there appears to be no escape on the horizon, & that trans-/posthumanist palliation in the guise of concern for others amounts to nothing more than an abject negation of life, a gangrene of hypocrisy, an empty and perfidious crucifixion meant to guarantee freedom of conscience solely for the upgraded. Don’t fall for their con game of hierarchy apologetics masquerading as moral hygiene. There’s no excuse for it, it’s not even subtle anymore, it’s gotten to a point where it’s hiding in plain sight, this specter of the all-too-near future, and the reason it’s able to keep taking such a relentless toll on all of us is because, amidst utter disarray, many of us have succumbed to a vile form of one-upmanship in enduring blatant systemic abuse, implicitly hoping it might earn us a better seat at the carnage. Once you transparently choose to hold that line of reasoning, you’re done for. Game over.

Expect anything, concede to nothing. As seclusion tears away at our spirit… we keep breaking limits.

This isn’t just the beginning.

It is our great pleasure to publish this first piece from a new contributor.

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