The Mountain in the Sea

by Ray Nayler

“But what we did not render obsolete was the fear humans have of other minds. This society—what we call modern society, what we always think of as the most important time the world has ever known, simply because we are in it—is just the sausage made by grinding up history. Humanity is still afraid the minds we make to do our dirty work for us—our killing, our tearing of minerals from the earth, our raking of the seas for more protein, our smelting of more metal, the collection of our trash, and the fighting of our wars—will rise up against us and take over. That is, humanity calls it fear. But it isn’t fear. It’s guilt.” “Guilt?” “Yes, guilt. It’s a revenge fantasy. We are so ashamed of what we have done as a species that we have made up a monster to destroy ourselves with. We aren’t afraid it will happen: We hope it will. We long for it. Someone needs to make us pay the price for what we have done. Someone needs to take this planet away from us before we destroy it once and for all.

A few days before, he was on a crowded tram. A young woman sat down next to him, on the edge of his coat. And as he readjusted to remove it, and she apologized, he looked at her face and became aware, in that moment, of the fact that everyone—everyone—on that tram with him was alive. As alive as him. That all of them were living lives as important to them as his was to him, with worries and goals and connections to others as valuable as he felt his own were. And he was filled, in that moment, with a wonderful sense of belonging. He felt that warmth in him that sometimes came from a good conversation. This is the truth of the world. And none of us sees it, because we must ignore it in order to live within our shallow system.