We're Gonna Die So What the Fuck... Existence in Chaos, by ElRat

We're Gonna Die So What the Fuck, We're Only Here Through Sheer Dumb Luck ~ Kristin Hersh

Quote from "Between Piety and Desire" by Kristin Hersh
Wyatt at the Coyote Palace (2016)

That's my tattoo. Handwritten by Kristin Hersh. And it's the most perfect statement of truth I've ever heard.

I've been wanting to write this for a while - to get these thoughts out in the open. I'm not a reader, and I presume other people have written these ideas better than I could. But even so, I feel like I need to say how I feel about the existential question. I have spent a lot of my life mulling these thoughts, not in a depressing way... but just... they are important questions right? Death and existence and life... and... to a lot of people.... that means god, or fate or some sort of "spiritual" connection with nature... but these all just feel so completely wrong to me... not just wrong... but... intrinsically harmful.

Because they all to a greater or lesser degree... are about human exceptionalism.... about humanity being above nature... when we are anything but, we are nature... as much as apes, or dogs, or beetles.... all connected... not by something intangible but by our very DNA, the building blocks of all that we are. We are related to every other living thing on the planet, as my kid loves to tell people... we are related to the planet, and the stars... to everything and everyone. That is something incredible when you think about it, and once you accept it, you completely negate the need for supernatural beings, the hand of fate or some airily described "spirit"... we are animal, amazing animals, but only equally amazing as all the others.

My Friend Jason (10thChurchOfTheLivingMuse ) - who died suddenly last year - told me about a month before he died that most people just can't see the world how I do. They need something else to hold on to. It's just too much for most humans.

He was right. Most people soften the truth because they can't face it head-on. They invent stories of order... gods, fate, destiny... to make existence feel less fragile... and... I guess in some ways I can understand why they do.... but I don't understand how they do... and.... the real truth is so much more amazing than any of those things... so much more... beautiful... I don't want to live the lie.... I want my eyes open... death is scary... but without it there is no life...

The Beauty of Chaos, and why its important to understand it

If you stop to consider all the things that had to happen, had to line up for us to be here... billions of years of universe expanding, planets forming just right, life in its single cells.... the evolution from there.... those first cells that all of us came from, every living thing, and every incidental connection that happened to make each and every creature on the planet be alive today. trillions of tiny coincidences, in the history of each and every one of us (and when I say us, I mean all of nature, every part of it, my dog had luck in the chaos just as much as I did)

It's a stroke of luck so unbelievably unlikely that it boggles the mind to think about. But it's perfect truth... and once you accept that as truth, everything else must be chaos too...

Everything is an accident of Chaos

People see patterns in chaos that they shouldn't...

I am an accident of nature. Any breath inside could be my last - not because of fate or god, but because of luck.

And I think it's crazy that people look for and see "signs" or whatever... fate. They say "how can (whatever) happen by accident?"

• I was thinking of a song and it came on the radio.
• I was thinking of my friend and they rang me.

So this must mean something.

When all it means is that chaos sometimes lines up, as much as it sometimes fucks us up. And mostly it's something in between.

In a world of infinite chaos, infinite chance is the only possible result.

Steering chaos... is still chaos

but just because its chaos, that doesn't mean we don't have the power to steer it... even just a little bit... we see it all the time... not just with humans, evolution has given nature the power to steer chaos... when animals hunt in packs, they are steering chaos, they are using the things they have to make catching prey more likely than just simple chaos would allow.... and not just mammals... I read an article recently about "Snakes hunting in packs " and it talked about how Cuban boas have developed a method to catch more prey by positioning themselves in relation to other snakes at cave entrance when bats fly in and out, thus giving themselves a better chance to catch bats than by acting alone... animal instinct and cognition, manipulating the world around them to improve their chances in the chaos... proving what should already be clear... that just because we don't understand the things that are happening around us, it doesn't mean they are supernatural, or exceptional to humans.... and it doesn't mean they are less amazing...

and... in the same way, when we pull ourselves towards something, we make it more likely that we will bump off other people steering towards the same thing. I drew a picture to try to visualise this idea, because I see Hersh's music as a prime example, her music gives its own kind of gravity in the chaos, and I held on to that for a long time, and this made it far more likely that I will interact with other people who feel in some ways similarly to me... and eventually it brought me to a place where I could create ElRat Designs... not fate... not destiny... my own need to keep orbit with that music, and find other people to talk with about it, and eventually I found myself bumping off Hersh herself, and finding this chance to help her, and to help other Hersh people who are pulled by this gravity to support her Studio time... and in doing all of that I found a way to help myself.

Religion as the single biggest obstacle to real social change

I say this, not because I don't believe in any of it, not because its contradictory and nonsensical, not to be offensive and not to attack people who believe in God. I say it because I wholeheartedly believe it to be true....

Religion gives people an out.... it allows people to feel better about things they have absolutely no right to feel better about.

People don't get their rewards after. Kids living and dying in shit and misery aren't going to be saved in paradise. God isn't punishing you, or saving you, or any of the other shit people tell themselves.

Whenever I say this to people, they tend to say things along the lines of, church groups, religious organisations and individuals do great work across the world because of their religious moral code

and... I don't deny that it's true, that there are millions of people across the world who do really great charity work in the name of God... but... I would argue that those people aren't doing those things because a "holy" book told them to, its ridiculous to think empathy begins with an instruction from "God"...

and an insult to those people to suggest that they wouldn't be doing the same thing without that instruction. Those people would still be feeding the hungry, and helping homeless people and all the other millions of things that religious groups do to help people... not because of God, but because of their innate empathy, we can look around us and see for absolute fact, that so called "belief in God" is no indicator of empathy....

and maybe the world would treat the horror with more urgency, if they didn't give themselves the ability to gloss over it with lies.

If this kid lives their life on the streets and dies from drugs, or violence, or just the grinding misery of poverty... whatever the story might be. They will not have any kind of reward or be resurrected and taken to heaven.... they are just dead, all that they are gone from existence... having lived a life of misery.... the trillions of random events that happened, snuffed out because the world doesn't care enough to stop it.... and in large part, the world doesn't care because its convinced itself of this lie, to make it ok, when its not ok

• Children dying in war? - "They're with God now."
• Generations living in poverty? - "They'll be rewarded in heaven."
• Victims of oppression? - "Turn the other cheek, your reward is in the next world."

It's moral anaesthetic dressed up as moral superiority. Instead of being outraged enough to demand change, people soothe themselves with the idea that cosmic justice will balance the books later.

But meanwhile, the suffering is real, here, and often preventable.

You don't need miracles, or fate, or meaning. You just need to accept that we're all here by accident, by millions upon millions of accidents... and if you believe that.... then how can you not want everyone's life to be decent?

Religion removes impetus to demand real social change, because it outsources the responsibility. It allows people to:

• Excuse injustice
• Avoid action
• Soothe guilt instead of fixing harm
• Pretend suffering has a cosmic purpose
• Avoid facing the reality of death

So they allow the world to be like it is and make excuses to make themselves feel better. Because the idea that everything will undoubtedly end, is too difficult for them to contemplate.

Religion, at its core, is accepting misery in others, out of fear of death for yourself.... and it's a fucking travesty that people can pass off the misery of others with some bullshit idea of a supernatural being. All because they're frightened of death. Because they need to believe that it isn't the end.

Humans as a part of nature, not above it

Once you accept that you are here by pure random chance, a lot of things kind of fall in behind... religion or astrology or fate absolutely fall flat because they reinforce the idea of human exceptionalism, and that is why the planet is as fucked as it is. Humans are not exceptional, every animal on the planet is connected by the fact that they all came from the same place. But also they're all here by the same (completely different) chaotic series of accidents. Nature created balance through evolution

That means a beetle had the exact same luck and evolutionary imperative that I had to be here in the first place. Dogs, mice, birds... all of them, every individual... equally amazing in the chaos. But even among people who err towards this position, I still often hear use of the word "spiritual"... and I really don't like that either. I would never use that word to describe anything, and I certainly wouldn't use it to describe anything about myself.

"Spiritual" is just more Human Exceptionalism

People often use the word "spiritual" to describe music, or connections to music I guess. I know they don't mean it in the religious sense... they mean (I think) deeply moved by art, the strong emotional ties we have to our family or... seeing life as alive and wanting to do good, distinguishing meaning from meaninglessness. (I may be wrong about what people mean by this, I am never really sure what people are saying when they say spiritual...)

The definition for me of "spiritual" is the human spirit or soul... And I genuinely don't think either of those things exist in reality...

words are important, and I think when people say "Spiritual" it's always a suggestion of human exceptionalism.... and I think what they really mean animal. That part of us that we really have no control over, the raw animal emotion/instinct that has kept us living/evolving for millions of years. Nobody would ever look at a chimp mother - or any other non-human animal - and how she feels about her family, and use the word "spiritual." They would likely say something like "animal instinct,"

So when I hear "spiritual," though I don't necessarily think "god," I hear "human exceptionalism." This idea that we are more, that somehow our connection to everything makes us more.

But it doesn't. It just makes us the same as everything else.

If we accept evolution, and we accept the accidental nature of our existence, then there can't possibly be anything "spiritual." We are just animals doing our thing. That some of us choose to empathize with the rest of life, while some choose to stomp on it for their own ends, is just how our species evolved.

All the good stuff, and all the bad stuff - not spiritual, not divine, not evil. There is no meaning to any of it. It's just people. Humans.

The word "spiritual" creates hierarchy even when people don't mean it to. It implies human experience is elevated, transcendent. It suggests there's something non-physical happening. It separates us from nature instead of recognizing we're part of it.

Better words: profound, intense, overwhelming, connected, alive, present. Words that describe the experience without implying metaphysical specialness.

I have ASD. I take things literally. So I don't use terminology that can be misconstrued. I want language that means exactly what it says.

Why Do We Need "Meaning" Necessarily?

When my kid was maybe 6 or 7, she told me she knew the meaning of life. And when I asked her what it was, she said:

"It's to do the things you enjoy doing while you're here."

She has embraced the chaos theory.

That's not childish. it's profoundly simple and accurate. The beauty of this position is that you don't need an abstract "meaning." Living fully in chaos is enough.

Meaning doesn't vanish because you reject God/fate/spiritual, it becomes part of you, part of what you do, the things you create, or the commitments you choose, the way you treat people, projects, art, family, political struggle... actions judged by impact, not by cosmic mandate

Morality From Awe

If you understand how amazing it is that any of us are here... how could you possibly not want equal rights and equal treatment for everyone?

Not because of god, but because if we don't take care of each other what else is there?

If life is finite, chaotic, and fragile, then equality and compassion matter more, not less. It's not about "divine reward" - it's about the exact opposite... if there is no reward, then what happens here really matters.

That's solid ethical ground, there are plenty of ways to argue for rights, justice, and compassion without quoting scripture. If an argument can't be made using words and ideas.... then its not an argument at all. We should not accept God as an argument for or against anything.

Living in the chaos

Accepting a life with a final death at the end doesn't make life smaller. It makes it sharper. Realising the precarious nature of our existence, accepting the sheer dumb luck - it's freeing.

When you understand that the only breath guaranteed is the one in your lungs right now, you stop waiting. You stop making excuses. You stop pretending that justice will happen later, or that someone else will fix things, or that there's some cosmic plan that makes suffering okay.

You act. You build. You grab the things that matter while you can... Not tomorrow, not next week. Now. In this moment.

Because if we're here through a chain of impossible accidents, then:

• Nothing is guaranteed
• Nothing is owed
• Nothing is coming later to fix what we ignore now
• Meaning is something we make, not something we wait for

That's not bleak, its empowering

That's why I took my kid to 8 gigs in 8 days, camping in a van. That's why I offered to make totes for Hersh in 2023. That's why I built ElRat Designs even though I was terrified of the realities of running a business. That's why I print shirts at 2am while the rest of the house sleeps.

Because we're gonna die... and we're only here through sheer dumb luck.

So what the fuck are we waiting for?

Life is short, unfair, chaotic - so you might as well do something real with it.

You might as well stand up for what's right. You might as well help the people you care about. You might as well build something that matters to you. You might as well refuse to bend to bullshit.

You might as well be the real you that you are, not hiding/masking because the world doesn't fit you, but changing your bit of the world so that it does, and inviting others into that world

You might as well Be the Strange.

Kristin Hersh performing "Between Piety and Desire" - work in progress Demo version (2012)