That which lies beyond point zero.

There are moments in life when you can no longer avoid the unavoidable. When imagination collides with reality, releasing all anxieties and fears out into the open like a jar of spilled jelly beans. A rainbow of colours below, tempting you with their nostalgic fruit-like textures, yet also warning of the impending sickness that will come with consuming them all in one single trail.

The sense of awakening I am currently experiencing can be likened to nothing other than nausea. This is the true Heiddegarian angst - the moment when the truth is peeled back and I am left staring into its deepest core.

This moment - like other moments profound existential moments I have experienced in life - was the narrative climax of a long winding process. An intricate web of experiences, personal thoughts, literary inspirations and finally memory. At this moment I am being reminded of the true concerns and liabilities that lie within me, but now the incurring is problem arises: what do I do next?

My fear is that struggle with stalling panic. The desire to run is unleashed, but without a place to run to I am stuck treading in my own anxieties. In thoughts like these, thought truly does stall action as I fondly recall the words of Sartre, however in this instance I refuse to become immobilized.

This current sense of anxeity has been accumulating for some time now - months perhaps - yet I must congradulate myself on doing a fine job of ignoring the details. However, after reading Chris Hedges article "The Zero Point of Systemic Collapse" - published in adbusters - I was fully awakened to the truths I have been hiding my sensitive mind from for so many months now. I don't want to run any further - and can no longer run - but instead am ready to face the necessity for action and a motion to move forward into a new unknown territory.

While Hedges article - so poignantly encompassing the sentiment of collapse that is presently consuming me - can be held responsible for this blog post, there are several other incidences that are worth recounting, such as yesterday's ride in transit where I finished Yann Martel's new novel "Beatrice and Virgil." Charmingly titled to encompass the central compassion of the story, Martel's novel is a brilliant attempt to take yet another attempt at explaining the ultimate form of the unexplainable - the Holocaust. However, rather than simply attempting yet another single person narrative, Martel uses his form to explain the absurdity in any attempt to unlock the secrets behind mankind's greatest and most horrifying mystery.

In reading and finishing Beatrice and Virgil - I was left feeling with my own curiosity as to why any human being full of sense even attempts to grapple with these horrors. Through these shamed curiosities (for, as one who is living in the century beyond this time of evil what right do I have to even try to understand?), I recalled some non-fiction encounters I had with the holocaust, notably with those of Bruno Bettelheim whose own work brought me to tears through a true understanding of suicide. While some may view suicide as the ultimate renunciation of hope for humanity, his interpretation brought light to the power of suicide to act as one great last action of self determination, one final moment of glory in which one displays the ultimate form of resistance, a resistance against life itself.

Resistance is at the core of Hedges' article. Though this is not a resistance against life, but rather a resistance against the systematic life we are told to live - the life we are sold and the life we willingly consume.

Systemic living - this is the life I run from, and the one I fear will consume me against my will. The life I try to resist, yet often find myself gravitating towards through fear. Fear of not belonging, fear of never knowing "happiness," fear of failure.

And yes, failure is possible - this is a reality I must learn to confront, though Hughes' realism reminds use that "we must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime." The real fear lies in not knowing - not knowing whether what you are doing has true value or not. In a hyper-material culture all we know is what we see, though resistance is the ultimate form of alienation, all we know is who we are without the mirror of society to view our reflection in.

On the verge of hopelessness, Hughes does end with a moral compass that redirects us towards the invaluable hope of a moral intellectualism: "to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others who we may never meet to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them."

And with these words of I will sleep tonight. It may not be a peaceful sleep, but it will be a hopeful one wherein lies hope for a de-systematized world where we are free to uncover our humanity, not buy it; where a sense of spiritual intellectualism reigns free as the highest order, not capitalism; and finally one where we are taught to value that internal truths are what define us, not our ability to give into the systemic powers that enslave us.