I began writing this as a personal thought experiment, never intending it for publication. The ideas emerged during moments of quiet observation, or was that desperation—when the structures that shape our daily existence revealed themselves with startling clarity.

“What the hell am I doing here?” a question that has haunted me since my earliest memory. Being human has never felt quite right. Something always seemed off about this ‘living’ thing. I suspect you've had similar thoughts, or at least you may have if you sat long enough to observe the absurdity of living in what we call our modern ‘civilised’ world. Much of our time, or so I have come to believe, is spent distracting ourselves from the ‘absurdity’ we call living on this planet.

So, what began as private consideration has now become an invitation to shared contemplation—not because I claim special insight, but because naming what we collectively experience yet rarely articulate might itself be a small act of resistance against the very constraints I describe.

We exist within a web of constraints that we neither chose nor fully perceive. From our unconsented arrival into consciousness (ah, the hard problem) to the elaborate systems that shape our movement, behaviour, and thought, we navigate limitations that present themselves as deliberate constructions, not as immutable features of reality itself. This illusory naturalisation of constraint constitutes perhaps the most profound dimension of our unfreedom—we accept as inevitable what are, in fact, contingent arrangements serving specific interests.

This illusory naturalisation of constraint constitutes perhaps the most profound dimension of our unfreedom—we accept as inevitable what are, in fact, contingent arrangements serving specific interests.

This series is my humble attempt to illuminate both the architecture of constraint that defines modern existence and the possibilities for meaningful agency that persist despite it. To be honest, I do this for my own healing. It does not offer escape or perfect transcendence, but invites a transformed relationship to limitation, neither unconscious submission nor futile rebellion, but conscious engagement with the conditions of our existence.

The darkness explored in these pages is real. The educational conditioning that suppresses authentic development, the economic imperatives that extract our life energy, the surveillance mechanisms that colonise our inner lives, our dis-ease—these systems generate genuine suffering that cannot be wished away through positive thinking or spiritual bypassing. Acknowledging this darkness is not pessimism, but the necessary foundation for any meaningful response to our condition.

Yet within this darkness, or so I have convinced myself, light emerges—not as a distant promise but as a present reality, however fragmentary and fleeting. Through creative defiance, we reclaim the capacity to determine what matters, regardless of institutional validation. Through authentic connection, we establish relationships characterised by genuine presence rather than strategic utility. Through embodied awareness, we recover direct physical experience as a source of knowledge and meaning. Through conscious participation, we engage with existing systems without becoming their unconscious instruments. Through transcendent purpose, we discover or create meaning that exists beyond conventional metrics of success.

Yet within this darkness, or so I have convinced myself, light emerges—not as a distant promise but as a present reality, however fragmentary and fleeting.

These practices do not eliminate constraints, but transform our relationship with them. They create spaces (psychological, relational, often embodied, dare I say spiritual) where different values operate, where worth is determined not by productivity or consumption capacity, but by the courage to be authentically present despite vulnerability. These spaces function as both refuge from and resistance to the systems that constrain us, containing the seeds of both personal liberation and collective transformation.

The ultimate paradox explored in these pages is that freedom may depend not on the absence of constraint but on our relationship to it. The constraints themselves—our mortality, our embodiment, our historical, cultural and societal situatedness—establish the conditions that make meaning possible. A being without limitation would exist in a state of pure abstraction, unable to engage with the specific, the particular, the imperfect experiences that constitute lived reality.

The ultimate paradox explored in these pages is that freedom may depend not on the absence of constraint but on our relationship to it.

This insight does not justify the artificial constraints imposed by unjust systems. Instead, it suggests that the path toward greater freedom involves the transformation of our relationship to necessary constraint, rather than the impossible elimination of all limitation. Between darkness and light lies this space of potential transformation—neither the unconscious acceptance of unjustified limitation nor the naive expectation of its complete transcendence—but the conscious navigation of constraint with clarity, intention, and discernment.

The journey begins not with escape but with seeing clearly what is. What follows is not meant to be a definitive answer to the absurdity of living in the modern world, but rather an opening, a door through which we might glimpse possibilities beyond the accepted parameters of our constrained existence.

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This series is an adaptation from Rodney King's essay collection, Living in the Absurd: Notes from the Modern World, in which he reflects on the silent dissonance of modern life and explores what it means to be human in a time that often feels anything but.