mercilessness

mercilessness is therefore the basis of our bodily being.  body's going to eat, someone's going to die.  two approaches to that basic principle: feeling good about it or feeling not good about it.  the ones that have mercy develop culture, the merciless like to kill and eat so that's what they do.  violence and death appreciated for their delicious connotations, most basic desire.  let me tell you about that wild pig someone killed last year.  taste of fear.  taste of blood.  taste of triumph.  taste of pain.  taste of death.  taste of regret.  taste of food unroll in the mouth & fill the entire head & then the body so that it all disappears into the moving of the jaw, the flavors & textures of the victuals banging like bells in the mouth.

once inside the big dumb slow low metabolism cell the scheming mitochondrion divided until there were a bunch of them.  cell's going nuts, grown to twice the size, zipping all over the place looking for phosphorus.  cell can't imagine life without those little juice baby mitochondria tickling its tubes from the inside. 

of course all over the place there are cells without mitochondria hanging around, getting old, grumbling about the hyped up new cells with their superchargers, kids these days.

mitochondria found an alternative to death by eating, a cooperative venture that bumped up resource use and expanded the scope of mercilessness.  gigantic cell with all those hungry mitochondria, has to all the time hunt up food to feed them, they make that juice, it feels so good, i don't mind going out and hunting up someone and killing and eating it, it feels so good when i'm not hungry.  mercilessness.  some love it and parade it around, others feel shame and want to hide or abolish it, everybody does it if they want their body to survive.  the married bliss of the cell & the mitochondria harem requires way more input, the cell has to go out and work all day every day.  they make it feel so good, its worth it.

the esthetic appreciation of mercilessness leads to the roman games & all sorts of other public killing rituals, to various half-measure practices in which punishment is inflicted rather than death, thefts of various kinds, all subjects of possible study, systematization, critique.  someone make a museum of meanness.  do anything to them you want, bad as you treat them they're still better off than if you ate them, right?  you can't make me stop treating you bad its your problem not mine, better still its your fault.  its your fault you can't stop me.  i'm going to do what i want to do.  you don't like it security will escort you off the premises.