My War Is Personal

To whom it may concern:

I am busy. I am writing to you from a crowded elevator…and from a subway car…and now from the middle of a heavily trafficked intersection. I write to you by way of the wireless PDA issued to me by the corporation I work for. Since they rob so much of my time, I try to compensate the loss using their materials. Because I am a good soldier. I constantly battle, and I fight hard for their world order. And because I know they will never stop taking, and I realize the battle will never wane until I am through on this planet. A few generations ago my ancestors fought different battles. They fought a war of survival. They fought by any means necessary to sustain their own lives and the lives of their family. They farmed land, labored in factories, hustled, robbed, and scammed. For me, survival is not an issue because I've never been hungry. What I battle for is not my life but my mind. I fight to control the uncontrollable and dominate the indomitable. The human campaign of the 21st century is a war against Chaos; however, the fight is in vain because we battle the culture we evolved into. We the battle the God that made us, and we battle the plan that has been handed down.

I usually read about 5 books at a time. Right now all 5 are explicitly concerned with the same conflict: Order versus Chaos. The coincidence has made me think hard about the timeless duality. And what has made me think even harder is the fact that of these five books, three are fiction, and the same three ally Order with the Protagonists. And of these five books, two are non-fiction, and the same two argue Order always comes to be an oppressive quality of the Human Condition. I read comic books, science fiction, and fantasy novels; so it makes sense that a belief in Order as Salvation is a fantasy. This belief comes from a cultural drama that will never be resolved because the real-world reflection of the cultural production never has and never will exist. However, I have bought into the fantasy, and I believe chaos to be my enemy. I am engrossed in the domination of my environment, and I have had few thrills like discovering how to correctly use indents and tabs in Microsoft Word. And I am counting the days until I can move into my new apartment, where I will create a structured environment from scratch. And I avoid drugs and alcohol because I don't fully trust my mind in an altered state.  I have enlisted myself on the front line of the campaign for Order, but with one prerequisite: my war is personal.

I feel myself changing.  I am becoming fully aware of grids and containers and systems. New York City, made of containers, built on a grid, and filled with millions of interconnected systems is particularly attractive. Except New York is a city of chaos. Madness thrives in The Grid, and nothing is more attractive in the external world, outside my mind and outside my office, than an environment defined by an extreme abundance of irrationality, and therefore, I thrive. And that is the key to sustaining myself in this war. Order becomes Oppression at the point where it is extended beyond the Self. As I control my mind, my space, and the systems I am paid to maintain, I observe, appreciate, and become one with the inexplicable lack of system that exists outside my control. Alternatively, Robert Moses, the 20th century “Master Builder” of New York City, dominated, shaped, and oppressed to a degree rarely achieved in a place so large. However, the Planner died discontent because he could not defeat the chaos infused into this place. He only thought in artificial systems, he underestimated the efficacy of individuals, and he misunderstood the ultimate organizational scheme.

Chaos, properly applied, is a perfect system. It is natural, and we are born from a natural place. As we fight to control the insides of our minds, we should learn to wonder at all that is on the outside. Because it is beautiful, and it is powerful, and it will never make any sense.