>>4369487'Such as thou art, so once was I, such as I am, such shalt thou be. I little thought on the hour of death so long as I enjoyed breath.' Epitaph of the tomb of Edward the Black Prince, 1376.
Further: 'Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?' Tolkien, 'On Faerie Stories'.
I have come to accept that the world we live in is a prison. I have things in it I love, and which make me happy, and some things we have are marvelous, but the reality I know is one which I do not like on the whole. And the reality that I know in terms of individual existence is finite, mutable, and definite. It has been thought since antiquity that that which we are born from we return to at our end. Whether this implies a causal loop, reincarnation, the Eternal Return, or the like, I do not know, but there is absolutely a drive to return to that primordial existence in the living, at least insofar as I've experienced it.
That drive is the sense of being called home. By Rei, by God, by the Void --- call its agent what you will. And it is why I no longer fear death or being dead, but rather of not having lived to my fullest potential. And I despise being unable to do so. And so? I long for Instrumentality. I would wholeheartedly, enthusiastically accept it. I would miss some aspects of individual existence, but in a world where I cannot fulfill my desires and dreams, I could not decide otherwise but to accept it. And even if I could, the moral arguments towards it almost certainly outweigh those against it.
