Vestigial

When auto-triggered desires constantly and recurrently lead to instabilities, we call them vestigial.

A vestigial entity exists and at the same time it is not needed.

In a world of necessary presences, where the rare surplus element is immediately ploughed back into the raw stock, it is not easily understandable why vestigial entities would be allowed to exist.

Why does culture allow vestigial desires to exist? Why haven't they gone extinct in the course of time?

There must be a higher purpose to these lowly auto-triggered desires.

No?

The thing about evolution is that it does not need to be very efficient. Be it culture or bio stock, there are innumerable instances of evolution failing to collect its own garbage. Evolution is a process that works like a bull in a china shop, there is no time to stop and assess the damage.

Because there is no finesse in the process of evolution, no exactitude in its lens, somebody else has to volunteer to do the job.

We volunteered to do the garbage collection for the cultural evolution process.

It is a massive responsibility, one that we sometimes feel weighed down by but because of the importance of doing it, we agree to take it on.

What does this responsibility entail?

We perform cultural scanning, we search for vestigial desires and then we isolate them for further processing.

We observe the behaviour of different actors and from the expressive characteristics of the behaviour, we analyse the potency of the desires firing them?

The desires that lag in potency come across as flat, deadpan gestures that do not offer anything more than their placeholder value. Being empty, auto-triggered shells of themselves anyway, these isolated vestigial desires are nothing more than memories of themselves.

Being of such nature is a gradual degradation of the resonance of culture. From a culture fuelled by passion we are going towards a culture fuelled by shallow performances of nostalgic overtures.

Layers and layers of cultural programming pile on with their bland vestigial triggers and leave a stench behind. Now, when we inhale in the environs, we smell the dark stench of vestibules full of undigested sludge.

We detest this stench.

We detest this stench so much that we have dedicated ourselves to our appointment at this museum forever. This dedication was true even at the time when we were not given clear responsibilities and positions by the museum. We are dedicated to this activity because we deem it necessary.

By clearing the channels of culture. By plucking out the static and inactive remains of the dysfunctional desires in our midst, we will make culture more responsive, transparent and functional. There will be a day when there will be no elements in society that exist but at the same time look at their own existence with cynicism. No more shall there be any talk outside the game world, everything will be interesting material for manipulation.

When we hold the potential in us to be able to change the world so drastically, we will do it. We will not hold ourselves back, not feel inhibited.

And because we don't hold ourselves back, we model our relationship with the world on aggression. On angst. This angst immediately requires us to colonise the world with our mind, and we are in the thick of that pursuit by marking one body at a time and acting on each sequentially.