Undead: My Story, a New Type, and a Complete Directory
Updated: Sep 16
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(Note: This was originally written in 2018, and by "Rubinshteinic/Rubinshteinian" I refer to a type of undead I made, and not to Rubinshteinic Individualism, nor to Political Rubinshteinism).
(Note 2: In 2023, I now earn my keep as a philosopher).
It can be argued that everyone has a background story that made them the person they are today. Hereby the story that made me a partially ascetic, partially solitary, philosopher and "undead". Metaphorically, of course. Click here for a suitable background music, composed and played by yours truly in 2014.
Onwards with the show!
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I am my own type of undead, a hybrid of a lich and a revenant, a Rubinshteinian, a product of intellect combined with asceticism, or simply a lich revenant. Let me tell you my story, traveler.
There once was a child who spent his entire childhood playing video games. Whether the sky was sunny and bright or cloudy and windy, that child kept playing video games day and night after school and after homework. He was offered other opportunities to spend his childhood, but no, video games were just too addicting and fulfilling. This was until he was exposed to the Philosophical Realm of the universe by a dear person.
When philosophy took hold of his mind and he invested himself in it for long periods of time, the child lost his innocence and began to think about how much he had wasted his entire childhood playing video games instead of doing other things that were considered more worthwhile and productive.
He realized that he had missed out on so much by spending all of his time playing video games. He had never learned how to interact with the world in a meaningful way. He was ashamed of himself for wasting so much time, and he vowed to make up for it.
As he entered his teenage years, the boy was offered many other things, but they no longer mattered to him because philosophy had replaced video games. Beyond doing what was necessary to grant time for self-actualization, isn't everything else that is unnecessary but has the potential for fun like a "video game"? Isn't society a stimulation programmed by norms, just as a video game is a stimulation programmed by its developers?
When I control the character in a video game, I am not really that character; it is simply a puppet created by people I don't really know or care about. The same goes for the "character" in society - they are merely a product of norms which are external to you and which do not care about you personally.
Rather, they care mostly, if not only, about the "character" you are controlling, the one that many are convinced is themselves because that's how the norms have made them think. The social ego is just a creation of norms and traditions that don't care about you and don't care if you care about them, just like the developers of a video game!
This is a very alienating insight, and this is why I conclude with much eccentricity that video games and life in the external world are fake realities; masks that we put on ourselves or that are put on us by others that teach us these masks are our true faces. We may gain pleasure and entertainment from playing a character in a video game, like playing a role in society, but ultimately all of this fun, drama, and entertainment is derived from faking, from delusion, from acting. We just learn to believe that we are the role we play in society, just like we refer the actions of our video game characters to ourselves (Shoot him! Shoot that! But wait, the character has the weapon, not me).
This is what led me to ponder during my first years as a self-made philosopher: is there anything more to life than the “video game” that is society and societal life?
I realized that there is. There is a life of relative solitude, fortified from the fakeness and absurdity of the theater we call “real life.” It is a life with plenty of free time that one can domesticate to live a life of fulfillment, self-actualization, and independent thought. It is a perfect life for an ex-gamer who wishes to explore the world after years of not discovering it.
Based on my previous insights, I have discovered the following: not only is there more freedom in solitude, but there is also more objectivity. Simply immersing oneself completely in the theater of life could only corrupt my perspective, which I wish to become more wholesome rather than specific. And how can I do that if not through observation from afar, rather than getting involved?
That’s how I became not only a philosopher, but an ascetic, while atheist (for the concept of gods is a societal concept, and therefore a part of the whole theatre we call “real life” but is merely a stimulation programmed by the norms and foreign authorities). Through solitude, one can have much time for philosophizing, which is a tool for discovering possible truths through the combination of logic and evidence.
But through solitude AND asceticism, traveler, one can philosophize all the time there is between work and sleep, which in turn greatly increases one’s way of understanding existence in a more objective and a potentially more-sober way!
And this is why, traveler, I see no need to follow the typical life trajectory of an average person: you are born, you study, you get a job and possibly a degree, you get a partner, you have a family, you raise them, and then you die. For a Rubinshteinian, however, it is that you are born, you work and study at the same time, and then you die! So much potential for discovering more and more insights about things and beings is much more valuable for a Rubinshteinian than living a life that is scripted like a video game.
Who cares, after all, who is the external scripter, when you can script your own life and break free of the normative authority of external scripting? What you see in the life beyond the windows of your home is merely a globalized theater that limits one's thoughts in the name of conformity and obedience; the path to authenticity lies within a more extensive and voluntary solitude. This realization kills you and resurrects you from the death in the depths of existential despair.
And why experience this "full" and "vivid" script of living when you can obtain knowledge and wisdom through study and intensive philosophizing? I can tell you that as a 20-year-old, I think like a person who has reached old age (or at least middle age). There is literally no need to experience the "full" script of life when you can obtain its rewards by being an intellectual "undead"—by using "death" as free time to contemplate and research. In today's world, for a question that already has a possibly valid answer on the internet, you don't need to ask others when you can simply Google it in the world's biggest library of human-created and human-discovered information.
That's a Rubinshteinian for you, traveler—a hybrid of a lich, an undead intellectual, and a revenant—one that abstains from the full life, but remains among the living nonetheless, through labor. I am one, and I shall grant this new type of undead to the world for all to use both as a lifestyle and as a source of knowledge and insight. I am a Rubinshteinian who offers his services to the world. None could now go and tell me that I am a waste of space when I am using my solitude to contribute to the people around the world in my own individual way—the way of the ascetic philosopher, the Rubinshteinian!
Should you wish for insight, summon me, and I will come to your aid after a day where I have earned my bread.
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