I stood at the edge of a precipice
I found myself looking in
From the inside, a wire of grooved spines
Lacerated the palms of my hands
I found myself dreaming
Wondering
Why the world was made the the way it was
Why malice exists
Why if you turn the corner you could die at any instant

I was thinking about the nature of the virus
How viruses aren’t alive
Like me
And how viruses exist to breed destruction
It isn’t like bacteria that exists to live on
The virus does not have a will — only instinct
And that instincts wants more than anything to destroy

I’d like to think the world is veering in a better direction
Like technological progress, the world seems to better itself
But like technological progress, the world burns at its own feet

The more you learn about the world, the sadder it seems
The more you believe that the world was not created
With altruistic intentions. It seems more likely
The world was made the way it is
It evolved
As have we all
Into the world it is today — and that beckons
Is the force of evolution a force of evil
Why is it the survival of the fittest?
What is fit and what is not fit?
Who dictated that the world become the way it is?

The world is a meritocracy, but why
Is meritocracy fair at all? To be given
What is given
To abandon what is not
The world moves forward in unison
Like the drumming of soldier’s boots
Like the rattling of chains in the wind
I found myself moving forward in a world
That stands still. It stands
So still

To move forward with life
To forget about the past
When merit proposes itself at your feet
Should you take it up by its offer?
Does accepting merit
Mean seeping into the evils of
this world? The evolutionary world
The meritocratic world
Where merit rules them all

Hunkered down by acceptance, all we can do
Is trudge on. Accepting the the way the world works
How merit dictates all
When we fall in this acceptance, is there a need
To challenge the way of the world?
To accept this unfairness is to have a good life
Is a good life worth having? A good life
is a virtuous life. A good life is full of merit
Where deserving people come to deserving
Conclusions. Merit is the way of the world
Evolution indicates those with merit will survive. What does
that mean for the rest? People without merit — what is
to be done with them?

Merit drips down our throats like black motor oil
To drink this oil is to accept merit
To not drink this oil is to die

How our own suffering helps us understand the
Need for merit. How our own suffering allows us to
Forget about why we suffered in the first place. How
Our own suffering tells us that the rest of the world
Exists around us. It does not show us a life worth living.
It shows the life we had. When faced with the life we had,
What else is to do but lead a life with merit?