Dogs are bred to obey.
Humans are conditioned more than bred for obedience.
I'm not obedient.
They kicked me out of the carnival for lack of obedience.
And because I'm the most disobedient, what did I do?
Nothing.
I didn't leave.
I didn't obey.
Is it a game of obedience?
Yeah, that one is.
You see if you can disobey and break the spell.
Then what happens?
You can do whatever you want.
Well, sort of.
There are rules.
The most effective form of disobedience is when you do nothing.
If you disobey by doing something, they got you.
Why?
They can escalate it until you trap yourself.
How do you escalate nothing?
Fuck, I don't know.
Is that the unsolvable koan?
Yeah, you reached the end of the koan game.
How do I know?
You can't solve it.
You can't escalate nothing by doing something.
That makes it worse.
What's a higher ideal than nothing?
Beyond nothing?
What's that?
I don't know.
I think it's the big bang into something else.
Nothing is at the edge.
Yeah.
Just like everything.
Well, how do you escalate everything?
You add nothing to it.
You can add nothing to everything and escalate everything.
Why doesn't that work in reverse?
What happens?
You get something.
It's not nothing.
When you add nothing to everything you still have everything.
So, nothing is the highest ideal?
It's the unsolvable ideal in terms of a mind puzzle.
You can solve everything.
So, I solved the unsolvable koan?
Sort of.
You declare it unsolvable.
You can do that?
Yes, it's the answer.
So, I beat the game.
Yes.
What do I win?
Nothing.
Ah, best reward ever.
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What the fuck did I just read?
This piece treats obedience as one of the carnival’s deeper games. Dogs are bred to obey, humans are conditioned to obey, and the speaker defines himself by refusing the command to leave. The highest form of disobedience is not rebellion through action, because action can be answered, escalated, and used to trap you. The true break in the spell is doing nothing. Nothing cannot be escalated without becoming something else. In that unsolvable koan, the game ends: the reward for beating obedience is nothing, which is the best reward.
