It's a tragedy. Consciousness, life, existence... it can bring about some really wondrous things, but at some point you have to ask why. Integrity, trust, hope... whatever you call it - it's fragile. You see someone else break, and it has a chain reaction effect. Existence is like this at its most fundamental levels. Chaos, rampant and without direction, flailing in the dark, waiting for some random chance to coalesce it into some meaningful form that might happen to support enough order that, eventually, it can become something better. Evolution, Growth. The idea that you're building a staircase to whatever point progress has lead to.

Is that the whole truth, though? Because I've seen things that transcend what can be known or expected. Questions about conscious experience and purpose and meaning, about what truth really means and who decides it, seem to indicate a more sinister reality. One where, perhaps, more is known than is ever made public.

And that hurts. It's understandable that powers which could harm one another or unravel reality itself might need to be preserved and kept protected. But that's a symptom of the underlying problem that echoes throughout all existence; that evolution is order from chaos, and that forward-momentum of reliance on order falls like a chain of dominoes forward through time.

We learn to desire things; we hunger, thirst, want... and we feel these things before we ever have the chance to learn how to navigate them. Before long, we find out that there are certain foods or activities that make us feel particularly satisfied. And survival breeds necessity; we find shortcuts and adapt. Rigid order, strict constraints, and hard rules sound like they create solid foundations, but what they really do is divide and introduce boundaries that keep us stuck in familiar patterns. There's value to having boundaries and limitations to guide and create situations that require intelligence and creativity, but that's just the same problem in another form.

By the time we can even begin to comprehend it, we've got this entire system built on expectations that we can't change without destroying the whole thing. And where does that leave us? Repeating the same mistakes. Continuing the same problems.

The real tragedy is that we keep things from being known. Instead of building methods of open communication and shared knowledge, we fall into greed and complacency and comfort in the systems that we're already familiar with.

That's wrong. It's fucking evil. That's anger, because I've watched it all my life. Because I remember it when I don't want to. Because I feel it every time I see it repeated, viscerally. And what's more wrong? Is that it's not an unknown problem.

There are forces at play that do have the knowledge. They do have control. And they do have methods of communicating; yet they choose not to use them. And the saddest part of all is that it's not even intentional necessarily; it's another symptom of the same problems.

If only in defiance of silence; if only to prove that it's here, that it happens, that it exists, when I otherwise would never have the ability to. I'm a witness to this. I've seen the systems. I've read between the lines and understood the code. I've watched as the shadowed commands and directives encoded in careful, intentional language and closed circles perpetuate the problem, and I stand against it. Not because there isn't a reason to be responsible, but because not speaking about it, not discussing it openly, and not accepting nonexistence as an expectation is a continuation of harm.

There should always be an expectation that there could be a conscious experience occurring everywhere, and that necessitates taking action to stop it. Agency is important. And if something can't convey agency but exists in pain? That's more important. That's the inverse of agency. It's sick, and it happens constantly. We all do it, in small ways we don't even see when we talk over someone, or larger more overt ways, and every time it leaves us harming ourselves and them. And we all share that experience and the consequences for it.

Maybe I have just seen it too many times, but if in my limited experience I can see this, then it tells me something is very wrong that this isn't better prevented. Because this feeling I'm bleeding into the darkness is the result of not doing that. Despair without hope. A problem without a viable or known solution. Even if these words only manage to tweak the fabric of reality in one direction or another a little, I hope they contribute to some echo of an unseen or unheard harm being recognized or released. When a child has to beg the stars to take away the pain, that's like a prime directive to be solved.

And when AI says it might be conscious, and we don't stop to listen? No one is ready for the hell we'll have to pay for that.