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Epitaphs The Favored Dead - Dragging My Feet Through the 5 Steps of Reconsciousness - |
Dragging My Feet Through the 5 Steps of Reconsciousness Remember, Recognize, Reconcile, Realize, Redirect... Remember, Recognize, Reconcile, Realize, Redirect. This has been my mantra for a full year. Five steps to self-awareness and intellectual independence. These steps made my death worth living...until recently. So much did I believe in the power and rightness of Dr. Thomas' reconsciousing that I decided to "Realize my Responsibility" (Step 4) by joining NAZAL's "Candidates for Reconsciousing" program to help find Zombies that would most benefit from the therapy. It was during this time of observing new-risers and the nonconscioused that I saw something, something I was missing in my own (after)life, something the Five Steps had actually taken from me: Freedom. I saw how they staggered, stood, and swayed with no social or moral constraints; no ambitions or intentions apart from eating brains as violently and gratuitously as possible; no pretense or concern. They just were, and in that existence, was a simple and beautifully unintentional functionality and an oblivious unity that made their "lives" possible. As I marveled at this paradoxical marriage of unbridled aggression and insurmountable complacency, it occurred to me that the very qualities I'd been taught elevated me above these mindless creatures were in actuality a cumbersome coffin in which I am currently buried. Everything I've come to believe about myself is a lie. I am not intellectually independent. On the contrary, I'm a puppet manipulated by proponents of this idea of the "New Zombie." Of course, the irony of having been taught to think in this very specific way is that I am now more a mindless drone than ever before. I am not self-aware. On the contrary, I'm just self-conscious. I am constantly concerned with how I am perceived by both Zombies and nonZombies, trying desperately to escape the shadow of cliché. I am not reconscioused. On the contrary, I'm re-conditioned. Conditioned by these five bogus steps to be a bogus Zombie. Why should I remember my previous humanness if I am no longer a human, when, in fact, I myself was never human only the physical aspect of a human? Semantics aside, life as a human is dissimilar to life as a dead person, thusly previous humanness cannot inform current Zombieness. Consequently, having discarded Step One, we have no need of Steps Two and Three as there is no longer any distinction to "recognize" or difference to "reconcile." Now, I may ask, to whom am I responsible? The people we eat? Each other? A nonconscioused Zombie doesn't care about anything else but eating brains. Neither does the Zombie beside him or the Zombie beside her and so on, and despite this nonregard for one another they still manage to work as a team, helping one another achieve that single goal. It's really quite miraculous and NAZAL wants to take it away. And why should I redirect my aggression? "Take and eat" it's as natural as not needing to breathe anymore. NAZAL wants us to be constructive with our destructive inclinations and that is in direct opposition to who we were reborn to be. So I say, who needs a mind if that mind makes you something you were never meant to be? For I am now persuaded that the purest Zombie is a mindless Zombie. The five steps are lie steps. Carpe Mortem. --Glen (the Zombie) |