justice and the incurable cycles of nature

See justice. Imagine it in your mind. In whatever form you see it, there it is. See now how it manifests itself, how it becomes something more, since justice itself is not a living thing or a thing with form, like a book or a mountain or an orange. Watch justice long enough and you see how it shrivels on the vine from vast nothingness to a tiny, desiccated kernel of the concept. Watch yet a while longer and see this kernel is gradually held in higher regard than ever the justice was in its full bloom. It can now be seen and so it seems to many to be more holy: A relic, a revered artifact worthy of a marble temple, a crystal display case and visiting hours. But it is no longer justice, for the desire to be right and just, the very act of seeking it and, once holding on to it, protecting it, upholding it…eventually becomes an injustice. We do things that are unjust in order to preserve it, making complicated speeches with clever turns of phrase that rationalize the actions of death and betrayal as necessary, crucial choices in an increasingly ‘evil’ world in order to protect and preserve some higher justice that is important enough to warrant such violence.

Here we have but one accuracy: the world does increase in darkness, and the justice higher but only in that it has again risen above our reach. The darkness grows as we delude ourselves that we seek or assure justice by spilling blood and hoarding wealth, by dividing spirits and making promises to gods, oaths that require the unendurable weight of absolute loyalty. Only by curbing our lust for the kernel, the relic, will justice once again diffuse into an all-embracing abstract that is far more true than any skeleton or dead seed could be.

This is the cruelest act of nature, by which she both dooms and guarantees the world she embraces. She has also doomed and perpetuated herself in so doing. That all things cannot ever be still, that no darkness or light will ever long endure but be corrupted by its own seed until night comes again, as the son grows strong and supplants his father, a place where only his own decline awaits, to be supplanted by his child; ­another seed breaks open with the coming of day. That the sun and moon take turns as lamps for the world, that we eat and yet grow hungry again with absolute predictability. That we are born and cannot avoid death, but watch other life begin knowing that it will die too. It is difficult to imagine that this self-defeating sequence was ever designed to make any sense. Because quite frankly it makes no sense to me whatsoever. I do not call it evil, but I do not call it goodness either, it just is. Some say it depends on one’s perspective, but death and birth happen at the same instant across the universe, neither can come before the other, except within the puny boundaries of our own, individual lives. They are all short stories fated to a quick end. How can we celebrate the ‘circle of life’ when all that it is, or ever will be, is a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth for its own sake? It would seem to teach that nothing can last, that no effort can create anything which lasts. That all things made or born will become dust once more, and from this doom there is no escape. There is nothing but to revel in the brief time we have, and not to crave any boon from phantom gods for yet more life, or a better life than this.

Call me gloomy if you like, but I can hardly think of a better argument to enjoy the life we have here, and now, moment to moment. That’s the way I see it, anyway.