Reap3r

by Eliot Peper

Most people thought of disease as a biological problem. If the right doctors and scientists tried hard enough, they could fix the body like a programmer debugged code. But epidemiologists knew firsthand that social dynamics often trumped microbiological dynamics. A society was only as strong as its systems were resilient.

Neuroscience showed that your conscious mind didn’t make decisions, but rationalized decisions your brain had already made. The voice in your head was really a sports announcer narrating the action, not the athlete. Did that mean Luki harbored an unconscious death wish he was unknowingly working to fulfill? Unintentional martyrdom seemed a sad fate.

Sometimes monsters were real, and were also profoundly, tragically human.

Isabella didn’t like liars. Politicians who promised the world even as they pocketed it. Lovers who cheated. Bags of Tostitos that contained more air than chips. Her own work might be violent, but it was honest.

Novels were printed, bound invitations to asynchronously participate in collective dreams that depended more on what the reader brought to the story than the words on the page.

the most common misconception of government was that it was a cohesive whole, that you could ascribe sensible agency to an organization that large. In reality, human institutions weren’t unitary rational actors but complex and often incomprehensible systems of warring, collaborating, contradictory factions of gifted, asinine, courageous, fearful, generous, greedy, ambitious, dependable, maddening, inspiring, flawed people.

People seeking the meaning of life got it backward. You didn’t ask life for an answer. Life asked you.

The thing you think you want is rarely the thing you need. Letting go of the former to embrace the latter is how you grow.