Letter 21
Life is more suffering than joy, and I resent that I was thrust into existence without my permission, and treated with scant regard for my wishes for decades thereafter. But here we are. It seems cowardly not to make something of our situation, regardless of how badly the deck is stacked against us.
I have been looking for the most effective means of revolt against the malicious folly of it all for many years. Competing within the system is only to serve and perpetuate the machine that grinds us and all we love to scraps. Trying to reform the game is to face the enmity and power of those whose relentless greed feeds upon the suffering of the willfully oblivious, who will not welcome your efforts on their behalf. You cannot call them to anything better as long as the afternoon slop arrives on time.
After so much pain and effort, I can only conclude that the best revolt that a short-lived, powerless mortal can make is to take possession of their days and thoughts, free of the valuations of the self-serving, the vain and powerful, and the ignorantly conforming. There is no revolt more effective, from the point of view of the individual than to lay in the sun with a glass of wine while the master's fields lie fallow; to leave the gold of the greedy uncounted, their paper unpushed, their orders unenforced.
Life, as it stands, is a laughably crooked casino. It is a painted fraud. A sham. It pretends to solemnity and importance like a pedophile priest elevating the host above the heads of an ignorant flock. What is success to a pig or a parasite? Why would we give our precious, irreplaceable hours to such a thing as what they call life?
In an instant, it will be over. You will return to the great nothing from which you came, and be forgotten. Do no harm to others, do good when you can because good is good to do. You need no other warrant. So what if none of it matters, so long as it matters to you?