Afterword—Till Death, or Life, Us Do Part

We're often told things like “Love is war." Things which imply that “the very act of living is fighting.” Honestly, though, life doesn't necessarily have such clear-cut goals for winning or losing. It’s an extreme example, but take people being conscripted for war who don't know what tomorrow will bring. Even in their lives, the most important thing for them isn’t defeating the enemy—it’s stuff like what they can do to stop the chafing after they got sores from their ill-fitting boots.

The natural world is romanticized as the survival of the fittest, a place where life and death hangs in the balance, but in real nature there’s a more realistic thing called habitat isolation, which operates on the principle that conflict is best avoided. We profess that humans’ true nature becomes apparent in extreme situations, with stories told by people on the brink of death, and these stories are a possible facet of the human self, but the truth is neither singular nor extreme. It’s simply one side of it. There's no denying that the bravery of such people in that moment is touching, but after they've survived, even these people have to face the far more common problems of everyday life, like, “Hmm, now what should I have for dinner tonight?”

Incidentally, I heard that my favorite mangaka, Araki Hirohiko-sensei, likes Westerns. When you think Westerns, you’ve got to picture some showdown scene, right? Two outlaws facing each other. The wind blowing through the wilderness. An arm whips up, there's the sudden bang of a gunshot… and then eventually, one of them falls. Well, something along those lines.

These kinds of things have an immediate thrill to them, but put up against life's difficulties I mentioned earlier, they’re really sort of trivial. Still, it has a certain something that stirs the heart. It doesn't have to be deadly duels, either. You get the same feeling when the sports team you're rooting for is playing well. Why is that? Wasn't battle something we were meant to avoid? Are we just trying to compensate?

No, that’s probably where we're mistaken. You can argue that battles take place in everyday life, but you’re overthinking it if you believe that means you have to kick people down and lord it over others. That’s not it. You’d be losing sight of the pure, unadulterated contest between you and your opponent, where nothing else exists. I can’t help but feel that way. If you really did consider facing off with someone in a duel and you happened to lose, there probably wouldn’t be any reason left for the two of you to fight. Take some ethnic conflict, for instance. That sort of thing seems to get so horribly confused; they don’t even attempt to see who they’re fighting. I believe that they merely smash their own turmoil against their opponent in plain anger. That’s because for just about all problems, if you just stopped for a moment to clearly think about why it ever became a problem in the first place, about eighty percent of the time you’ll have already resolved the matter. The reason why people can’t do that is essentially because their grounds for fighting are poorly defined and they’re disregarding what it is that needs to be resolved. Too many of the world’s problems are little more than this, I feel.

And that is why we still long for the fight. What’s stopping us from making it a part of us? This is the way I find myself thinking. And hey, above all, it’s cool. On the moor, the dense pampas grass swaying in the wind, two warriors brandishing their swords, neither making the slightest movement… That stuff. Yeah, that “Holy crap, that’s awesome!” feeling you get has to be something good. It’s because you dismiss that as a “childish way of thinking,” and always think about what’s realistic. Maybe that’s what’s making the world such a boring place, huh? Well then, why don’t you challenge that thought process to a battle, dude? It’ll be tough! As I, too, battle my inner voice saying all this, unsurprisingly, my commentary ends here partway through, inconclusively. The end.

(But come on man, at least give us some advice for these “confrontational” problems in daily life.)

(Eh, whatever. Just do what you think best. See ya.)

BGM  “WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER”
by NINE INCH NAILS