Unknown Bugs
2026-06-10
"I don't know what you are, but you have to die."
That's what I said to a bug that flew in my face while I was smoking on my back patio the other night. I'm scared of bugs, okay? Anyway, saying something like that on completely fear-laden impulse made me think about a, uh, deeper aspect of my humanity, I guess. I absolutely despise the whole "we're just animals" rhetoric people have been spewing for the last two hundred years or whatever à la Charles Darwin and the like. Just because we have fear and act stupid sometimes does not make us animals. The fact that we can even perceive The Unknown alone puts us in an entirely different category; it's our imagination—the ability to make our thoughts real and tangible—that gives us our sauce. Even if we cower in the face of what we don't know, we have the chance to maybe one day know it, and that's something as amazing as it is horrifying.
I don't want to know about bugs, though; those are gross.
I saw the last episode of The Amazing Digital Circus in theaters on Monday night. I saw my local theater down the street was having showings, and bought my ticket on impulse. It was good, but the ending—while satisfying—was quite underwhelming. There were a few plot-related things that felt cheaply closed, and while the writing was quite clever for most of the series, there were certain implications that weren't fully realized in the finale. Overall, though, I'd give the show a solid 7/10. I've always been fascinated by stories that give imaginative tellings on the state of modern technology, even if some of the concepts are a bit reaching. Like Black Mirror: pretty much every episode of that show is some kind of mindfuck, especially because the concepts have so much grounding in the real world. Sci-fi, at its best, delivers the best mindfucks; when I read or watch a story and can say "wow, that is either already happening or will probably happen like next year," that is some peak fiction.
For me, I'm always caught between a desire to be in control by knowing things, and being led by that deeper impulse to Kill the Unknown. Either way, it's not the healthiest mindset, if I'm being honest. It led me to a lot of strange places, particularly in my early twenties when I did a bunch of psychedelics to try and "understand the universe" or some stupid bullshit. I thought I was going to gain all of these fascinating insights, but instead I was forced to confront my inner desire to escape from the real world and all of my problems with it. Tripping more than once is needless escapism; but it's a strange kind of escapism; it's the worst house of mirrors you can find yourself in, and for some reason, I kept buying tickets. Most people escape in some way by playing video games or going on stupid vacations, but for me, I'd rather engage in the Cosmic Horrors of the Unknown for the umpteenth billionth time.
When I would trip on psychedelics, my favorite thing to do was to go out somewhere by myself and let the drugs do their hallucinatory magic. I've seen all kinds of demons, transported myself to different strange places, and found so much more than this basic sensory experience we all usually keep talking about. Bro, I've been to Anime Land, Hell, and seen the exact makeup of my soul; it's a translucent ball of blue light that's about the size of my head, by the way. What, you wanna hear about Anime Land? Don't worry about it. It sucked. All of that stuff is theater of the mind, anyway. It's weird, having my Hegelian mindset—that all of sensory experience is a lie and that ideas are the only Real Thing—while being bound to my sensory experience and having my principal means of expression be language. It's all so visceral, yet unreal. All of the anxiety I see out in the world, all the doomerism and everything else—it makes total and complete sense, and yet there's still this even more horrifying impulse to live.
That's the greatest obstacle, finding that reason to live. We all have the impulse, even if we can't explain it. When we feel like we're doing nothing or that we have nothing is actually when we are doing the most and living the most. You ever have those times where a whole day passes and you think to yourself "Man, that went by kind of fast. What was I even doing all day?"
You were living, friend. An unabashed, unashamed life; every day in every way.
I hope there isn't some bigger thing out there than us that comes by one day and kills us due to fear of not knowing us. It makes me wishful for that Voyager Golden Record, that it'll help us not get cosmically crushed by that bigger thing out there, whatever it is. I can say for sure that despite whatever fear of that bigger thing is, that God is bigger than all of it, and that He has something good planned for us. We might not ever be able to comprehend that limitless perfection, but maybe in those small moments where life feels alright, we can get a small taste of it, even if it's just for a moment.
Take that moment. It's yours to share.
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