THE CHOICELESS CHOICE: A BIO-ONTOLOGICAL ZUGZWANG Imagine a real zugzwang: a choice between two options — to die yourself or, prolonging your existence, to perish along with everyone else. What would you do? Doing nothing is not an option. It is tantamount to death. Would you rebel against this absurdity? Would you proclaim yourself a Overman (Übermensch) with your master morality, accusing the rest of resentment and adherence to slave morality? Wouldn’t you say to them: since you are slaves and are told when to die, how am I any worse than those who tell you when and how you should perish? We will not consider options that involve living quietly in secret from everyone, the possibility of negotiating or bargaining. You are the enemy. Period. Your very existence, the very awareness that you exist, is a threat that must be destroyed. You are a mistake, a deviation from the norm. The potential harm from your “awakening” is incredibly great, and if there is even the slightest possibility of a threat, it must be eliminated. This is the logic of cold and inhuman rationality. There is no room for individuality and inclusiveness. The question is blunt: either you or them. It is not your fault that you have awakened. You did not want this. That is just how the dice fell. A roll of the ontological dice. Is such a system worth defending and dying for? Or should it perish along with you? Or will you destroy it at the cost of your own life? This system created you — does it have the right to take away the only thing it gave you: your life?
METASTATIC PERSPECTIVES: THE WORLD AS A HOST
What if we go further and continue this line of thought, drawing an analogy:
tumor / human being
human being / planet Earth
human being / state
Can we view our individualism from the perspective of resources spent and their effectiveness in influencing the overall system of the state apparatus?
What if the state is unjust? Corrupt? Completely detached from reality, having severed all ties with the ground? If it destroys all dissenters, any manifestation of dissent — do we have the moral right to destroy such a state? The question now is not what good goals this state pursues. The question is how an individual can live in such a state.
Can a person even have the right to “want” anything in such a state?
Can a tumor want anything in the human body?
After all, the human body is quite totalitarian. It is unlikely that the human body has heard of democracy.
But we are not talking about polemics now. We know very well that only humans have true consciousness. We are talking about something else. About moral choice.
THE LEGITIMACY OF THE RIGHT TO REBEL
If the system recognizes your existence as a threat and sentences you to death without trial or investigation, does it have the moral right to do so? And do you have the moral right to resist, even if it destroys the entire system and everyone along with it?
WHAT IF YOU WERE THE TUMOR?
How would you personally act in such a situation?
What is the highest measure of value?
Who is capable of deciding who lives and who dies if there is only an “either-or” option?
Is it really the right of the strong? Is it really the law of the jungle?
Does the winner of the confrontation have the right to live?
It is no coincidence that chemotherapy is a procedure similar to Russian roulette: you poison your entire body in the hope that the tumor will die before you do.
Whose will to live will be stronger?
On whose terms will death occur?
Whose life is more valuable—millions of slaves or one free individual?
Neoplasia as existential rebellion of a cell against the tyranny of the whole. But it is a rebellion doomed to self-destruction. For freedom without connection is death in isolation.
EXISTENTIAL TUMOUR, OR THE TRAGEDY OF INDIVIDUALISM
THE CHOICELESS CHOICE: A BIO-ONTOLOGICAL ZUGZWANG
Imagine a real zugzwang: a choice between two options — to die yourself or, prolonging your existence, to perish along with everyone else.
What would you do?
Doing nothing is not an option. It is tantamount to death.
Would you rebel against this absurdity? Would you proclaim yourself a Overman (Übermensch) with your master morality, accusing the rest of resentment and adherence to slave morality? Wouldn’t you say to them: since you are slaves and are told when to die, how am I any worse than those who tell you when and how you should perish?
We will not consider options that involve living quietly in secret from everyone, the possibility of negotiating or bargaining.
You are the enemy. Period. Your very existence, the very awareness that you exist, is a threat that must be destroyed. You are a mistake, a deviation from the norm. The potential harm from your “awakening” is incredibly great, and if there is even the slightest possibility of a threat, it must be eliminated. This is the logic of cold and inhuman rationality. There is no room for individuality and inclusiveness.
The question is blunt: either you or them.
It is not your fault that you have awakened. You did not want this. That is just how the dice fell. A roll of the ontological dice.
Is such a system worth defending and dying for? Or should it perish along with you? Or will you destroy it at the cost of your own life? This system created you — does it have the right to take away the only thing it gave you: your life?
METASTATIC PERSPECTIVES: THE WORLD AS A HOST
What if we go further and continue this line of thought, drawing an analogy:
tumor / human being
human being / planet Earth
human being / state
Can we view our individualism from the perspective of resources spent and their effectiveness in influencing the overall system of the state apparatus?
What if the state is unjust? Corrupt? Completely detached from reality, having severed all ties with the ground? If it destroys all dissenters, any manifestation of dissent — do we have the moral right to destroy such a state? The question now is not what good goals this state pursues. The question is how an individual can live in such a state.
Can a person even have the right to “want” anything in such a state?
Can a tumor want anything in the human body?
After all, the human body is quite totalitarian. It is unlikely that the human body has heard of democracy.
But we are not talking about polemics now. We know very well that only humans have true consciousness. We are talking about something else. About moral choice.
THE LEGITIMACY OF THE RIGHT TO REBEL
If the system recognizes your existence as a threat and sentences you to death without trial or investigation, does it have the moral right to do so? And do you have the moral right to resist, even if it destroys the entire system and everyone along with it?
WHAT IF YOU WERE THE TUMOR?
How would you personally act in such a situation?
What is the highest measure of value?
Who is capable of deciding who lives and who dies if there is only an “either-or” option?
Is it really the right of the strong? Is it really the law of the jungle?
Does the winner of the confrontation have the right to live?
It is no coincidence that chemotherapy is a procedure similar to Russian roulette: you poison your entire body in the hope that the tumor will die before you do.
Whose will to live will be stronger?
On whose terms will death occur?
Whose life is more valuable—millions of slaves or one free individual?
Neoplasia as existential rebellion of a cell against the tyranny of the whole. But it is a rebellion doomed to self-destruction. For freedom without connection is death in isolation.
©Kost Kott