explaining why I don’t intentionally cause catastrophic harm.

For context, I do not experience empathy. When a kid screams, my first instinct is to scream back and make it shut up. I am objectively selfish and can do awful things without feeling guilt. I generally do not like company. It is exhausting for me to be with most of my friends. My friendships are more like alliances than mutual affectionate connections. In general, I am only able to give anything adjacent to love to a few friends and some members of my family. I get irrationally angry at strangers just for existing. I am so, so empty. I am not boasting. I know this is not a superpower, to say the very least. 

However, I am not yet in prison for two reasons. The first is that I don’t want to be in prison. The second is that acting on my violent impulses would cause me to lose hope that there is any reason in the universe. When I tried to kill myself, it was because I wanted to be released from the mess of humanity. According to my emotions, humanity is a plague. We destroy our planet and the atmosphere around it. We destroy the animals on it that were here long before us. We destroy each other. According to my emotions, by realizing we exist and recognizing ourselves as separate and superior to the rocks and trees and stars around us, by evolving sentience, we began to uproot a beautiful system that had been running seamlessly for billions of years. 

I don’t believe in love or god or salvation. I believe in ecosystems. All I know is the peace and holiness I feel when I examine a pine cone. That is my Jesus. Here is where I encounter a gaping void below my perception of humanity as a parasite: I love nature, I am fulfilled by nature. Its innocence, mystery, and vastness is sublime to me. However, humans did not just collectively decide to become sentient. The process of natural selection that I admire so much molded the human mind to become sentient. The agony of complex self-awareness is as much a part of the natural world as the needles on a blue spruce. 

That’s what prevents me from cruelly hurting every person that irritates me and then killing myself to fertilize the moss. The earth, all her creatures (except humans) and the cosmos beyond give me a feeling I can only describe as sacred. In the most literal sense possible, I believe nature is divine.  But, inconveniently, the human society I despise so violently comes from the natural universe I adore. 

With this in mind, I have two choices. I can choose to follow my antisocial impulses, which will lead to me being imprisoned and unable to preserve or be present in nature. I will rot for the rest of my life knowing I betrayed the only force that I trust. I can also choose to treat other people with compassion, which will allow me to freely work in tandem with nature to support the sustainable, nature-loving development of my species. 

Obviously, I will choose to be compassionate. If I follow my impulses, I will lose my god. If I stay true to myself (to the best of my ability) I will only know Her better. In practice, it’s much harder than it sounds, but I suppose that only makes my struggle more meaningful.