kimberlysteele | Entries tagged with fear of death

True confessions: I still have Netflix. To be specific, my husband still subscribes to Netflix and I occasionally watch a movie or a television show on my computer from it as I do not own an actual TV. At any given moment, Netflix has at least fifty zombie-themed shows on it. If I subscribed to other streaming services, I’d have my choice of several hundred zombie movies and television series with which to waste a chunk of my time, and this is to say nothing about the plethora of zombie novels I could be reading or the zombie video games I could be playing. Zombies are such a dominating theme in our culture that it begs the question: Why is our culture so obsessed with the undead? What are we trying to work out of our collective system?

Fear of Death

I state the obvious (plus I sound like a broken record) when I say our culture suffers from an excessive fear of death. The reason most people cannot calmly and rationally process natural death and become complete emotional basket cases when presented with random or unnatural death is twofold: there is a general disbelief in reincarnation and because of it, most people have many dramatic misconceptions about the afterlife.

I didn’t believe in reincarnation myself until five years ago. It’s only due to my study of occultism that I’ve arrived at my current set of beliefs. When I was raised as a casual Christian, I held the equally casual belief that a life of good works would mean my immortal soul would spend an eternity in heaven and a life of debasement would mean an eternity in hell; a binary. I didn’t honestly believe in either one despite having an extremely vivid imagination. By the time I reached my late teens, it was obvious that hell was immediate and all around me in the form of severe depression, night terrors, and suicidal ideations. Christians and Christianity had zero remedies for my depression or nocturnal attacks from the creatures of my “imagination”, which of course I was told to dismiss as my own brain playing tricks on me. Imagine if I had been shown how to pray by an actual devotee of the Lord Jesus instead of being feared and hated for dabbling in witchcraft in a desperate bid for magical defense. Alas, it was not to be, and there were no competent witches leading the way either. By age twenty, I threw the baby out with the bathwater and became an atheist out of disgust and frustration. As an atheist, I faced the idea of death as an eternal void. From nothing I came and to nothing I would return. I was not bothered by such an idea, in fact, I welcomed it. No pain, no joy, just nonexistence on all levels.

The zombie’s dead-but-not-really-dead state reveals confusion about what happens after death. Instead of letting go of a deceased person’s mortal shell so their higher bodies can rest before reincarnating into new material selves, there is a fear that their spirits will become wraiths clinging to the mortal form shortly before being returned to the endless atheist’s void that lurks behind the Christian’s binary belief in eternal heaven or hell. The real death of Christianity happened when Christians began questioning eternal heaven and hell: to do so was a tacit acknowledgment of the potential superiority of Buddhism and Hinduism, at least in regards to beliefs about the afterlife.

Profit and Loss

Somewhere along the way, western culture lost the plot and let stigma about death run wild. The Irish wake and sitting Shiva were antiquated customs before the salary class lost its damn mind over Covid 19, nowadays, the suggestion of such practices as good ways of processing grief would get you laughed out of the socially-distanced Zoom room. Speaking of manufactured isolation, it’s no surprise that doctors and nurses who should have known better than to fiddle while Rome burned expressed their pathological need for peer approval by using their copious free time to choreograph complex dance routines in empty hospital wards, especially when said hospital wards were allegedly overburdened with Corona patients. At this very day and hour, medical professionals continue to make money hand over fist for each new patient admitted with the label Covid 19 victim stamped on his paperwork. The unaddressed stigma surrounding death has become so acute, much of the world has allowed the travesty of forcing those who are close to death to face it alone, or worse, surrounded by forcibly-vaccinated strangers who may or may not look after their needs between TikTok twerking parades.

Pod People

Scratch the surface of Resident Evil or The Walking Dead and the truth bubbles to the surface: hell is other people. The zombie trope comes from the fear that other people cannot be reasoned or empathized with and that the only remedy for their kind of stupid is an axe between the eyes. Atheism was satisfying to me because it engaged my inner serial-killer misanthropy. I wasn’t worried about being judged for what I felt, said, and did because there were no judges. It’s incredibly easy to feel like one of the smartest people on Earth as an atheist. The atheist is the ultimate Libertarian. Zombie movies are scary because they are reliably about mass infestations. The whole world of doofus poop-for-brains goes against the hero and her band of plucky survivors.

The above is why I say leftists are playing with fire as they try to usher in communism. They have given the average casual Christian and atheist every reason to believe himself a plucky survivor on an onrushing zombification of his part of the world. Leftists, in their Piscean fashion, are struggling to instill a hive mind, hegemonic, unified way of life. They are doing this utilizing most of the key features of National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism. In the eyes of the right, they are communist zombies: unthinking, dangerous, and diseased. I personally maintain that Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, the Clinton family, and various other rich leftist figureheads will go to the modern equivalent of the guillotine in my lifetime. I don’t wish for this to happen because I don’t do that anymore. It’s just what I see as the logical progression of events when you inflame a bunch of average people to imagine themselves as heroic defenders against the zombie horde.

The Boy Who Cried Apocalypse

Another trope getting an ample workout these days is the Apocalypse narrative. In both the film and the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, the world has become a hellish battle for survival for a seemingly-chosen few who have kept their souls and morality intact. Everyone else in the nearly lifeless hellscape of (possible) nuclear winter does things like rape little boys and eat newly delivered babies. The Road is not a story for those with weak stomachs!

It’s much easier to see one’s enemies as slavering, cannibalistic villains instead of considering them as flawed human beings capable of a spectrum of goods and evils. The Apocalypse narrative frames existence as Us Vs. Them, the Saved Vs. the Zombie Horde that’s headed to hell quite soon.

Enter a little boy born in 1983 named Vyacheslav Krasheninnikov, who died at age 11 from leukemia and prophesied the zombie apocalypse. The child, who was nearly canonized for his powers of prophecy and healing, said there would be:

global passports for the population, which will look like little grey plastic cards; in order to obtain this card, people will have to subject their right hand and forehead under machines which will mark them with the number (666). This was a warning that under no circumstances should anyone accept this number or mark, because this act will never be forgiven by God.

I have mentioned before that Christianity in its death throes is using Pedogate and the globalist conspiracy concept to use as a much needed adversary with which to strengthen itself. The leftist powers that be are not doing themselves any favors by calling their newest injectable enzymes “Luciferase”, despite their bioluminescent properties.

Only time will tell how the zombie trope will continue to act itself out in real life. Surely it’s a case of art imitating life at this point and not the other way around.

Once upon a time, my husband and I were yuppies with yuppie aspirations. He had an executive job and spent his weekends golfing. I planned on owning a large house and going full throttle entrepreneur. Meanwhile, at my husband's work, there was a mentally handicapped guy who my husband's evil coworkers liked to torment. Let's call him Mikey. Mikey was a janitor. My husband was the only male person in the place who refrained from grade-school level bullying of Mikey. The cretins and literal whoremongers (while married with children) my husband worked with played pranks on Mikey, for instance, by glueing coins to the floor.

If there is a hell, my husband's coworkers will be burning in it for a not-short amount of time, and I don't think this is a simple matter of me being humorless. They also liked to torture Mikey by accusing him in a roundabout fashion of "funny" habits, such as compulsive masturbation. Mikey's odd reply to their taunts was "I don't do that anymore." This, of course, was as good as an admission of guilt in their small minds, and would set them into hysterical laughter.

My husband's executive job went away through no fault of his own -- the company went under because of bad business decisions and two or three terrible managers. My aspirations to own a large house and expand my business became deflated by reality as I struggled to support us during nearly three years of my mate's intermittent unemployment. The phrase "I don't do that anymore", however, stuck in my mind as something important.

The Trouble With Christian Repentance

The problem I have always had with the Christian notion of repentance is this idea of living a wholly awful life, perhaps one similar to the pathetic managers and salesmen at my husband's former job, and then being able to suddenly repent at the end of one's life and go to heaven. The concept of Christian repentance was repugnant enough to make me an atheist for many years, as other religions were just as baffling in different ways. Christians like my in-laws (RIP) were brimming with hatred and fear. The Apocalypse for them was always two weeks off into the future. God would come and sweep them away to a bliss they had done nothing to earn while on this plane. My in-laws were Bible bangers who believed the Earth was created in one short week around six thousand years ago. My father-in-law's Biblical literalism, his misogyny, death fetish, plus the unfortunate time when he openly tried to hex my husband's car tires so they would blow out on the road and force us to believe in his God, motivated me to completely avoid him for the last five years of his life. He convinced himself he was going to heaven because he was right with God. His life wasn't easy, but in my opinion, it wasn't an excuse for the way he treated others. It struck me that if those were the people who were convinced they would go to heaven, it made perfect sense that heaven did not exist.

I always was a bit of a freak: long before I believed in reincarnation, I stopped fearing death. I have imagined myself dead, thought about the ways it could happen, plus I love horror movies. As an atheist, I imagined being swallowed into the great black void of space from whence I had come. I never imagined an entire spiritual ecosystem where my current incarnation as Kimberly Steele was one of many. I never anticipated past life memories of being a widow on a yacht or a singing court jester. Yet the funny thing is I had these memories long before I dived into the occult four years ago. I had memories of the yacht when I was a suicidally depressed twelve year old and the court jester came to me at age fifteen. I didn't know who these people were at the time. Now I know.

There is no black void. There is an ecosystem, and because our human brains are not that big or great, we barely have the faintest clue about how it all works. No wonder it seems unfair! The one thing I have gleaned is that it is a great big school or testing ground, and at every single moment we are being proofed. Every second of our lives on the material plane is an opportunity to make the best out of what we are given, and no, I don't mean taking all of our energy and dumping it into getting a bigger house. To a huge degree, spending one's time chasing the McMansion lifestyle equals failure.

The cold fires of my depression were fueled by regret. My young life was filled with regret and guilt for the stupid and awful things I had done, yet it rarely helped me to become a better person. Instead, I wallowed in my misery.

To pull myself out, I had to do a few things. One was ceasing to care what others thought of me. Another was learning to be kind and gentle with myself -- I am the sort who gladly works herself to death and nearly died at the age of 27 because of it. The third, and arguably the most important of all, was to say "I don't do that anymore" when confronted with a regret.

Christian repentance is hollow because the resolution to be a better person is weak. Christianity has been plagued with this issue almost since it began. Martin Luther's Reformation had its roots in outrage over the Catholic doctrine of Indulgences, which was a way of buying one's way out of being punished for one's sins. Protestant hypocrisy one-upped its Catholic counterpart in the form of Calvinism, which pushed that certain people were chosen by God to be saved and the rest were damned if they did, damned if they didn't. In far too many stripes of Christianity, there was every reason to go back to one's old ways. The rich could buy their way out of hell and anyone who subscribed to Calvin's way of thinking didn't have a choice one way or the other. This, plus a convenient Satan readily available to blame for one's own mischief, began the legacy of slipping and sliding around the heavy, onerous burden of responsibility for one's sins.

To make amends, Christian repentance involves plenty of beating oneself up for being such a stupid sinner; the Flagellants spring to mind. There's lots of room for self-harm and self-destruction as one grovels in front of an angry God. What is missing is responsibility and being willing to accept the consequences of one's actions. Repentance without responsibility isn't repentance at all. It's a temporary distraction so the sinner can go back to sinning and still believe she will win whatever game she thinks she's playing in the bitter end.

No More Games

"I don't do that anymore" is far more potent because it isn't an excuse. Instead, "I don't do that anymore" is an affirmation. It does not wallow in regret. It makes a bold statement: I did that behavior, I am sorry I did it, but I will never do it again because I DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE. It creates a new track in space. Though it acknowledges the old one, it does not return to it, because it burns the path of a new and better trajectory. Instead of backsliding and expecting rewards despite continuing an unexamined life of bad behavior, it wholly rejects bad behavior and moves on towards the path of goodness. "I don't do that anymore" is true repentance. It takes Occam's razor to the faux repentances of various religions and strips away the bullcrap of ego-stroking and wish fulfillment. It forces one to keep the original promise.

I used to spend a decent chunk of my time marinating in hatred over real and imagined wrongs people did to me. Years ago, I had a boss who did a bunch of stupid, unjust things as bosses tend to do. Being fairly stupid myself, I threw a curse at this person. I have always been good enough at cursing that if the government had somehow been able to find out how successful I was, they would have sent CIA goons to my door in order to kidnap me and enslave me as their political weapon. Bad things reliably happened to the boss as they often did when I threw curses. I did not put together my own life disasters and misery at the time (blowback) with the hexes I threw at other people, all the while being atheist and a non-believer in the entities behind curses. Here is the secret I learned about curses when I was actively throwing them: for some of us, they are easy. They work. Stuff you would not believe is possible happens to your enemies. Cursing people in this way is the way to commit the perfect crime: no fingerprints, no hired guns, just ice-cold revenge. The problem with curses is their cost. I thought I could throw a curse without suffering for it, but that isn't how it works. Many would be witches and mages think they can throw a curse (usually against Trump and his followers) and come away with their hands clean. Nope. They can carry on with their curses and as long as they believe they are free from karma, they hilariously don't connect their depression, health problems, and the disasters that befall their families as related to their Nightly Hex Amateur Hour.

The reason cursing doesn't help the curser is because it places the curser on a lower realm of the astral plane. Cursing demotes you by a few astral neighborhoods every time you do it even if you live in Chelsea or Echo Park on the material plane. When I was cursing and hexing on a regular basis, my dreams were plagued by entities that chased and harassed me. What did I expect? There's an old Chinese proverb about going to bed with dogs and waking up with fleas...

Only now that I don't do that anymore am I happy and free, because I don't wish for my enemies to be cursed. I wish for them to be blessed, because not only do I want the good to ricochet back in my direction... they need it!

Dear Coronavirus: First they ignored you, then they laughed at you, then they fought you, then you won.

Coronavirus’s power was not in its ability to shut down schools (hilariously, when the kids in my local schools got the news school would be closed for three weeks starting March 16, the cheers were deafening) and it wasn’t in its ability to ruin small businesses. Its true power was much more occult: it brought our culture face to face with the one thing it is far too afraid to talk about: the fear of death.

Simply put, the people on this planet in the current era are afraid of aging and dying. For this reason, it is perfectly normal for a modern human to put herself or others through the worst forms of degradation, torture, and pain in order to extend time spent alive a few more precious days, months, or years. Even those armed with living wills and embossed DNR jewelry easily find themselves on the business end of a feeding tube or an iron lung because that’s the mandate of modern times. Forcing someone to live has become so fashionable that it’s fine to keep hydrocephalic babies alive despite the torture of living with deformity and disease. The pro-life movement does not stop at the fetus. In our culture, keeping someone alive through pain you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy is a way of screaming “I LOVE YOU!” to all and sundry. Because there are a few Stage 4 cancer victims who cling to eking out a few more years at all costs, the culture has presumed every Stage 4 cancer victim feels the same way. Because an Indian woman from the untouchable caste eats her own vomit in an attempt to survive, or because the Donner Party ate its own dead, it’s assumed that the killer instinct to survive becomes universally active when a threshold is reached. I am aware that I will trigger lots of sensitive souls by saying the above out loud, however, if you are triggered by what is no more than an honest opinion from a silly individual like me, perhaps it would behoove you to ask yourself "Why?" before coming down like a load of bricks.

One of the reasons I admire the Samurai of medieval Japan was the notion of Bushido: honor until death. A Samurai was disciplined, dutiful, and willing to kill himself for the honor of his lord. If necessary, a Samurai would commit ritual suicide, and he would vastly prefer a noble, self-imposed death to an ignoble, sniveling, fearful one.

What Corona brought out, except in a few rare and shining cases, were the snivelers and the cowards. It takes a special kind of stupid to visit a bunch of stores in order to hoard toilet paper, and despite my better self’s admonitions, I found myself hoping police would find a TP hoarder accidentally mummified in the stuff, having starved to death cocooned for warmth in his doom bunker because he forgot a can opener. Other dingbats are still acting out a contemporary version of the Masque of the Red Death, licking toilet seats and aluminum anti-perspirants for Instagram clicks. If this made you think of the phrase Darwin Awards, you’re not alone, but since I’ve mentioned Darwin, I’d like to point out the staggering irony of a leonine, solar-named virus stalking and killing the weakest, oldest, and sickest of the human herd. Nature is cruel and her limits are harsh. Why is this a reason to freak out?

When this thing began, I thought, “Oh no, all of the sad sacks who lust after the Apocalypse are going to try to DIY one out of this.” That’s exactly what they did. Coronavirus, no matter what anyone wants to make out of it, is not a heinous child-killer/disfigurer like polio, measles, or mumps. I live by a graveyard that is full of little gravestones of babies and kids who died of past epidemics, and not once did the Victorians shut down the entire world economy because of it. Young people do catch the virus, especially when they party on beaches and lick toilet seats, but when we’re honest, COVID targets Boomers. Boomers who have a sense of proportion would have insisted on triage, not the closure of every tiny mom & pop restaurant. The old and comfortable classes weren’t in the front lines of COVID; no. Millennial grocery store workers and Gen X small business owners are the ones paying for Boomers to luxuriate in their terror, in blood when necessary. Nurses and elder care assistants haven’t had a single day off lately, and nobody seems particularly concerned about their welfare.

One trend I’ve found unappealing to watch is the tendency for members of the upper middle class and their aspirants to use Coronavirus to virtue and fragility signal for themselves and their families. By constantly chattering about their own fragile condition, or that of a relative who will surely die if they catch Corona, they can do double-duty political correctness policing and virtue signaling if anyone has the audacity to question government lockdown. If the Left wants a docile, welfare-dependent state and is using the Coronapocalypse to get it, they messed up bad by accidentally shutting off the flow of illegal labor and by almost utterly ruining the tax base they wanted to extort. As popcorn-worthy as it was to watch the Left shoot itself in both feet via a suspiciously bio-tinkered looking virus from a fishy Chinese lab, I’m anxious to try get the business I built from scratch 23 years ago back on its feet. Wish me luck, because like every other working class person in the US, I’ll need it.