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The October Star [1]
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Date: 2022-11-09
What follows is an approximate description of what should perhaps be regarded as a bad joke with a very long setup. Literally over a hundred million people died to tell this joke.
Late at night on November 6, at the exact moment of the clock change, a dialog opened on my computer notifying me of a firmware update. Without giving it a second thought, I clicked the "restart" button, which, due to the interaction of the update with the changing clock, resulted in a spectacular crash requiring a full system reinstall.
It should be noted that, at this very time, I was partaking of a significant amount of LSD, and the effect of the substance was reaching its peak at that very same moment.
While attempting to sort out the consequences of the crash and preserve at least some of the work that I had saved on that computer, a strange thought occurred to me. I suddenly realized that this was the day before November 7 and recovered an old memory, perhaps the first memory that I have retained, likely from around age two.
I remembered being outside, red flags, people celebrating, some kind of parade probably. I asked someone, not sure who but perhaps my grandmother, why this was happening. She answered, "because it's November 7", and I asked, "what's November 7?" She said, "the day of the October Revolution." When I asked the obvious follow-up question, "why is the October revolution in November?" she just looked at me like I was stupid and talking nonsense, but also seemed strangely afraid; in retrospect, one could plainly sense all the signs of a person who had spent her formative years in the times of Stalin.
Now, this does seem a bit stupid, and of course this absurdity has the most trivial and commonplace explanation, but, under the combined influence of me having been two years old at the time, and having had 1600 micrograms of acid at the other time, I said quietly (in the present moment, hopefully not in the past), "what kind of sick joker starts a revolution in a country that's in the middle of a calendar change?!"
And then it seemed like it was literally the realization of this absurdity many years ago that had sparked my consciousness into existence and set it on its questionable path, and that in fact the experience was so simple and independent of conditions that perhaps some or all of humanity (and perhaps all living things) have had (or will have, tense is misleading here) literally the same moment of consciousness that is shattered by an absurd joke of a contradiction. Once this joke is seen, it cannot be unseen: the impression was as if all the differing individual reference frames had aligned for a single moment outside of the conditions of time, and a certain indescribable light shone through.
From the circumstances surrounding this experience, it should be obvious that it should not be taken seriously, and no practical conclusions or metaphysical (or, God forbid, religious) interpretations whatsoever should be attached to it. The only sound practical realization I got from it is that I should stop trying to fix my computer right now and wait for the next day, and I think that was a relatively reasonable decision.
Moreover, I saw clearly that many people from certain parts of the world carry this fucking Soviet trauma, which can perhaps be inadequately symbolized by the simple childhood memory of being repeatedly told that November 7 is the day of the October Revolution, without a coherent explanation. Some choose to acknowledge it and move on, others lock it within themselves and deny it, lashing out at others for reasons that they themselves do not comprehend.
In the light of this, the obviously idiotic, meaningless and purely one-sided conflict between Russia and Ukraine resembles the tragedy of a mental patient who had recovered and is checking out of the insane asylum, but then, on the way out, is viciously attacked by another mental patient who is still far from recovery, and, not realizing it themselves, subconsciously fears that they may never recover and may be destined to die in there.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/9/2134822/-The-October-Star
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