I had been eating lunch when I first became interested in the underneaths of things, the behinds of things, those facets of things that are not normally seen. It came to me that every useful object has a presentable surface, an outwardly facing plane that presented the main function of an object and was pretty, well maintained and generally socially acceptable. But beneath, behind, occulted, there lies a surface that is the opposite of that function. Beneath every rubbish bin lid, clean and sparkling, is a filthy surface that faces the rubbish, a fetid moss-grown and truly disgusting surface that faces the garbage like a lover. This surface is what so captured my attention. I instinctively understood that a parallel to this duality reached high into the world, in philosophy, psychology and all things we face. Each thing we see is an object designed to our needs, an honest, clean and well-maintained thing of beauty and function. Yet every object has a hidden surface, every object a dark secret, every person a hidden face, and every event a flip-side.
I damn that lunch (a tasty meal of chilli Portuguese chicken with salty chips - a grease-lovers delight) and the idle thoughts that sent my curiosity spiralling away. I damn myself for a fool for not sensing the folly of my thoughts earlier, for the trail of events I have experienced since that day are quite out of proportion for my casual curiosity's satisfaction.
I am, unfortunately, one given to such deep, insightful and generally socially detestable thoughts, an unpleasant consequence of my unique skills. This revelation, while distasteful, was not out of the norm for me, but the earth-shattering change in perceptions has left me a changed man.
I pride myself on a chameleon-like ability to fit in, an uncanny ability I developed as a bullied child. It was this preternatural awareness of the world around me I brought to my every-day tasks and events. This watchfulness and capacity to bend in the wind, flow with every whim of political intrigue and office-manouvering, was a vast social camouflage that allowed me to pass my life in conflict-free insignificance and kept me happy. In fact, the capacity to avoid conflict had become almost a mania in me, such that I would go out of my way, exert myself in myriad, often self-limiting, ways just to avoid conflicting with others. It became a core of my existence, so much so that I frequently found myself wanting, waiting, unsatisfied and yearning for my turn.
The determination to avoid conflict, and the associated social skills (or lack of social skills from a more extroverted and critical viewpoint) had given me a sharp and instinctive understanding of the world about me.
There are people who will tell you that the world is a beautiful place, a place of harmony, peace and good-will. I am here to utterly refute this and inform you of the opposite. The world is a dangerous and harsh climate in which only the strong survive. In the absence of Darwinian selection, the human race has turned from socially unacceptable physical violence to a more subtle and subverted psychic violence. This psychic violence treads harshly on the tender soul and crushes that great opponent of darkness, Hope, underfoot with a malevolence that causes all other forms of natural conflict to seem benign by comparison. The devouring of tender seal pups by hunting Orca’s, the toying of a cat with a tasty rodent, the evisceration of rival mates by warring kangaroos, all pale before the uncaring harshness that humans show each other in defending our own social status.
From childhood, we are taught to compete, from a young, innocent and impressionable age we are taught to quash the will of others under our own petty desires to establish our own supremacy in the pecking order. You’ll see it, if you look closely, in any team sport, on any playing field, in almost any human endeavour that we petty simians pursue on this Earth. Young boys will compete on the sporting field with cheery bonhomie and sportsmanship, and callously crush the loser off-field with a withering torrent of verbal abuse, and this only if physical abuse is not a defensible option. Schools teach our children to prove themselves over others, to compete on both a physical and academic level, to prove one-self better. We defend this culture of intimate competition with a litany of phrases that are almost nonsensical in hindsight.
“It’ll make a man of him!”
“She needs to learn self-confidence!”
“A good, honest competition does them all good!”
And ultimately, “They have to learn to get by in a dog-eat-dog world!”
In such a wise, we teach our children to prey on each other, under the pretence that others will prey on them. Who, I ask, would prey on whom, if we taught this culture of predation to nobody?
“A dog-eat-dog world”, in retrospect, truer words have never been spoken, but I’ll get to that.
Withering under the onslaught of such self-contradictory teachings I learned that to avoid conflict was to avoid injury, and so began my intense study of human emotion and body language. At first merely technical, a raised fist telegraphing imminent violence, my skills swiftly developed to allow me to determine what to say or do to prevent the fist ever being raised. An expertise at human relations grew, and I became able to defuse complex situations and day-to-day conflicts by determining root-cause for conflict in almost all cases. These skills were rooted in an intense scrutiny of my world, an attention to detail that bordered, nay strayed, into the paranormal. As the years went by I discovered myself more and more able to determine a person’s next actions before it seemed the person themselves were aware of them. I found myself finishing people’s sentences for them, and answering unspoken questions before they were even fully formed in the querist’s mind. Such an instinct I gained for seeing the occluded facets of interactions that I became un-differentiable from a true clairvoyant.
Over time, even this did not suffice, and I began to harmonise in a sub-conscious way with all of my surroundings, recognising linkages between events, objects, people and places that provided me an even greater understanding of this reality. The basic tenets behind feng shui became self-evident to me, and the subtle harmonics of energy lines made themselves known. I could see the energy flows that linked cause and effect and I could manipulate them to my benefit. Frequently, in moments of diffuse concentration, realisations would come to me, and further revelations unfold before my understanding.
It was during one of these diffuse moments, while eating, that the realisation of the basic duality of the Universe came to me. A mirror world adhered to ours, like your shadow adheres to the soles of your shoes in bright sunlight, and that mirror-world of Underneath was the exact opposite of our brightly shining perceptions. The rubbish bin whose sole purpose was to store and remove garbage; was in fact the secret lover of rotting waste, deeply and intimately in contact with it on a multitude of levels, beneath it’s pristine and sparkling exterior, that bin secretly held all those things it stood against. A concentrated hatred for tidiness, an inimicable passion for chaos and rot dwelt deep within its inanimate essence. This uncleanliness formed the absolute mirror of it reason for existence, but who could say which was more valid; the love for waste or the function of cleanliness?
In an instant, the ramifications of this understanding cascaded down upon me. Like a freezing rain of melt-water from the coldest glacier, a conception of the hatred our world holds towards us was given to me. Every object existed to do harm, every person held a barely restrained savage in check behind their urbane veneer of manners, every domesticated animal secretly dreamt of the day they would rise up and devour their masters! The imminent realisation of another aphorism, “Every dog shall have his day”, loomed about me.
My appetite quite destroyed, and my mouth dry from the shock, I stood and left that food-hall; left the filthy bins and the lying people; left the rickety chair that yearned to impale me on a rusty and broken leg. Without looking back, I strode out into the sunshine and made my way to the nearest refuge I could think of, the local park.
Short-lived was my respite. The park was no escape from my harsh new perceptions, every twig existed to trip me, every blade of grass hid a drop of dew intended to fell me. Every last item existed to do me harm, to bring ultimate destruction to everything about it, to emerge supreme in the never-ending competition for survival that is life. The passing butterflies eyed me in silent assessment of my suitability as a location for the laying of parasitic eggs. I sat, eyes closed, and tried to take a hold of myself before I could cave in to the terror that gripped me.
Such changes in my perceptions were not alien to me, many times in the past my intense scrutiny had revealed hidden truths. Never had they been so universal, never had a single revelation shaken me so! My entire view of the world was changed, my fragile peace with the Universe questioned at its basest level! One thing for certain, nothing would be the same once I reconciled this new perception with my own, admittedly pessimistic, world view.
What seemed like hours passed, although I am sure it was only minutes if not seconds. I drew my attention inwards, focussed on my own thoughts and assessed my state of mind. Unsettled though I was, I had enough discipline to maintain control of my thoughts. This new perception, my new understanding, strange and distasteful though it was, could be made to serve me. I could learn to open my eyes to it only when I chose. No, perhaps that was the wrong way to look at it. Like listening to voices in a crowd, I could hear them all, but only listen when I chose to. Perhaps, I could simply not pay attention to these negative impressions and allow my mind to filter what it brought to conscious recognition, presenting me only with what I needed to know. This is a common practise, more common than you might think, and forms the basis for various forms of meditation, although meditation focuses on the elevation of subconscious thought, not the suppression of it. In such a wise, and with some concerted effort, I managed to retain a stable state of mind with which to greet the world.
My eyes opened. The day presented a kind and benevolent face to me, bright sunshine drifted through the verdant leaves to fall in dappled shadow across the vibrant grass on which I sat. I could hear the silent battle going on between the individual blades of grass, and pushed my knowledge of that conflict down. The hatred bourn by one grass blade to all around it, the rude shouldering aside of rival blades, the jealous grip in which each root grasped the earth; all these immediately evident facts I ignored. The terrifying radiation from the Sun, vast radiant blooms from that stellar nuclear explosion, fell about me as gentle warmth, warming me despite the passion with which it desired to utterly incinerate me. The trees under which I sheltered; those that saw me as only fit fertiliser, a rich meat-bag full of ripe nutrients and growth potential for the hated seeds it bore; were only trees and shaded me gently while a cool breeze rustled their leaves. In the distance, a groundsman swore gently to himself as he rode a great yellow devouring lawn-mower across the tortured lawn of the sporting oval, each blade shrieking though the foliage it devoured, not neatening it, but loathing it with a desperate violence, yearning to break free and chew apart the world. This kind and gentle vista of urban beatitude greeted my awakened senses like a thousand cheese-graters singing an opus of exquisite beauty.
With a firm chin, a set mind and not a little cowardice, I took the beauty and forgot the hate, and made my casual way back to the office.