The Lake of Honey

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Lara was aware she was doomscrolling. Part of her wanted to throw her phone away, but she couldn’t stop watching those short videos that were made to grab her attention and keep her wanting more. Her eyes were stuck to the screen, and her thumb was programmed to ceaselessly swipe up. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she wanted to cry. “Why can’t I do anything about it?”

It was 1:04 AM. She was in her spacious, fashionably furnished bedroom, sunk in a plush velvet sofa by the window. The sheer alabaster linen curtains were open, allowing the moonlight to invade her bedroom unimpeded. Everything in the bedroom seemed to be in its rightful place, except her. She was lying on the sofa when she should have been in bed, sleeping, dreaming, resting.

The more she scrolled, the angrier she became at herself, but every video postponed that anger another minute. Every last video she planned to watch was followed by another video, each more unfulfilling than the last. She kept wanting to watch one more, and she did. She scrolled.

Then, in the split second between the video she had just watched and the video she was about to watch, she imagined herself drowning in a lake of honey. The new video started playing, but her attention had now turned inward, and she saw herself sinking deeper into honey, and she wondered whether she could swim in honey if she were ever thrown in such a lake. She then thought, “Are the videos I’m watching supposed to be the honey I’m drowning in? I’m more like a fly stuck to a sticky flypaper.” But that thought was short-lived. She started imagining pulling herself out of the lake thanks to a rope that a good-looking stranger threw her way. The stranger looked like he was in his mid-twenties, five or so years younger than her. He was a muscular man with broad shoulders, wearing only swimming shorts. Thick veins ran down from his biceps and forearms and disappeared only when they reached his wrists. His whole body shone in the moonlight. And in that darkness, he was like the light a dying person saw at the end of the tunnel. Lara held on to the rope he threw and pulled herself out of the lake. When she reached the lakeshore, the sun replaced the moon in the sky. The moon seamlessly faded out as a hot Mediterranean summer sun faded in. The good-looking stranger extended his hand to help her stand up. “Thanks,” she said. “Welcome,” he said. She gazed into his ice-blue eyes. His face… she did not know what face to give him yet. But standing there in front of him, she felt the honey trickle down her body, and she realized she was naked, and she was naked because at that moment she desired to be… She made the man with the ice-blue eyes fulfill her wish. Her lust was the puppet master. She made him pull her towards him, made him lick all of the honey off her, and then she made him… Her phone rang, and she was pulled back into the real world where she was lying on the sofa by the window with her phone, which was now vibrating, in her right hand. Her left hand was in her underwear. The call was from an unknown number, and it was 1:09 AM, which meant it was either someone calling a wrong number or a call she did not want to answer. She wanted to return to the arms of the stranger with ice-blue eyes. She longed to go back. Before declining the call, she wondered whom it could be. She waited a minute to see if the same number would call again, but no call came. So, she allowed herself to drift back into her fantasies, and this time she gave the young man a face, the face of the bartender with the nice smile and ice-blue eyes who served her drinks two nights ago.

A Real Philosopher

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

I’m a campfire waiting
for the right wind to
grow
into a wildfire.

I’m a real philosopher,
a true lover of wisdom,
worthy of hemlock,
and deserving the hate of
certified philosophers
whose minds are as tamed as
cattle.

In their caves, they remain
studying shadows,
fearing shadows,
obeying shadows.

Now, I come,
and the sun sets into the sea,
and the night kills all shadows,
even the shadow
that always strode beside me.

The light of the moon makes
a silhouette out of me.

I become the shadow they
study, fear, and obey.

Powerful and Thought-Provoking Quotes from Chomsky's Anarchism

Quotes from Noam Chomsky’s On Anarchism

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In this post, I’m sharing powerful, thought-provoking quotes from Noam Chomsky’s On Anarchism. I will start with one that feels compatible with the concept of ungorvenment I discussed in a previous post, where I argue that “we need something we’ll call ungovernment (for now), which is an institution (or a yet undefined thing) whose role is to remove unnecessary control and restore agency, responsibility, and decision-making to individuals.”

… at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute to — rather than alleviate — material and cultural deficit.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

The second quote is a rewording by Chomsky of Kant’s defense of the French Revolution:

Freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved.

The third quote is on wage slavery.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, “they rent themselves freely, it’s a free contract” — but that’s a joke. If your choice is, “do what I tell you or starve,” that’s not a choice — it’s in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

(Later in the book, we read the shorter version of the above. Chomsky says, “I think wage slavery is an attack on fundamental human rights.”)

Now, the fourth quote. And I think this can be an add-on to the concept of ungovernment that I’m building. The government has to justify why constraints are in place, and the people must have the right to question it and the right to request amendments.

People have the right to be free, and if there are constraints on that freedom then you’ve got to justify them.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism

And the last one, which reminds us of what Herbert Marcuse says in One-Dimensional Man.

Remember, there are all kinds of ways of thinking that are cut off from us in our society — not because we’re incapable of them, but because various blockages have been developed and imposed to prevent people from thinking in those ways.

– Noam Chomsky, On Anarchism