Cold World: Axioms of Life
Another day, another Cold World extract…
What are the axioms of life? They are those which are verified by existing society, the society administered by one’s parents and teachers and inhabited by one’s peers and siblings. These are, firstly, that life is unfair: that existence is a struggle, at every level, between unequally matched forces; that there are winners and losers; that the prizes to be won are status and material wealth, and the forfeits deprivation and bitter humiliation. Secondly, that life goes on: that there is an everlasting continuity between life as it is now and, mutatis mutandis, life as it has always been; that life will at best ignore and at worst contemptuously obliterate any attempt to live otherwise than in the self-interested service of a limited set of goods. Life “goes on” because it is essentially homeostatic, a self-sustaining and self-correcting order. It is not building inexorably towards a moment of ultimate crisis when its contradictions will shake it to pieces. None of life’s little disasters – or even its appalling, exorbitant horrors – has ever managed to put a stop to all of this. Maybe one day, an asteroid; but it won’t come with a hammer and sickle painted on the side.