Life as a Cruel Invention
Life is a cruel invention.
On its own, matter is completely indifferent—just atoms and molecules, following the basic laws of physics, incapable of feeling anything. There is no suffering, no joy, and no meaning in matter itself. But when certain arrangements occur—by sheer chance or blind processes—matter becomes something else entirely: alive. Suddenly, the universe contains beings who don’t just exist, but experience things. And what they most reliably experience is pain, craving, fear, and loss.
That’s the twisted part: life emerges from dead, meaningless matter, and now there is suffering. The universe, which used to be neutral, now has cruelty built into it—not because it intended it, but simply because of how matter happened to arrange itself. There is nothing necessary or noble about it. It just happened, and now we’re stuck inside it.
Worse still, once you’re alive, you are enslaved by the specific arrangement of matter that makes you what you are. You have no say in how you’re built or what you’re forced to feel. You can’t step outside the system or rewrite the rules. You can’t rearrange your own matter to escape pain, or to design a body or mind that can avoid suffering. You’re locked into a form you never asked for, and you have to play by its rules, whether you like it or not.
This is true for every living thing. Each creature is just a puppet—animated by matter, but with no power over its own design. We’re all forced to endure the endless needs and vulnerabilities that come with life: hunger, decay, aging, danger, and the certainty of death. We crave safety, comfort, and meaning, but the universe offers none of these things. We’re just left to struggle until we break down and die.
If there was any real freedom, it would mean having control over what we are—being able to change the structure of the matter that makes us, or redefine what it means to exist. But in reality, there’s only captivity. Life is nothing but a sentence, imposed without consent, with no way to change its terms or escape its suffering.
This is the core cruelty of existence: matter, which should have been harmless and indifferent, came together in the worst possible way. It created life—something that can suffer, but cannot choose, and cannot change what it is.
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