Israel Centeno

(and other modern superstitions)

You don’t want renunciation.

You cultivate reluctance.

You take pride in being a sack of chemicals filled with instincts—a creature aware of its own unconsciousness. You love to repeat that you have no soul, that everything is structure, impulse, survival, genetic code. You strut about your refined animality like someone flaunting an open wound, and at the same time demand to be treated with the dignity that would only make sense if there were something more than flesh.

You pretend you’re worth more than the deer you kill, the agouti you hunt, the pig you slaughter, or the ant you crush without a second thought. Why? Because you can write about your pain in the first person? Because of your biological metaphors? Because of that inner twitch that leads you to declare everything is random while making your bed as if something still meant something?

Nature—the biodegradable plastic goddess you’ve raised to replace transcendence—does not choose, does not honor, does not bless. It devours. Everything. The animal, the plant, the stone, the river, the species, the emotion. It makes no distinction between algae and emperors. It doesn’t know what a child is. It remembers nothing. It promises nothing. It forgives nothing. So if you’ve chosen to live without God, don’t expect cosmic compassion: there is none.

Still, there are those who go on quoting Nietzsche like they’re dropping bombs. But what was once a hammer is now a souvenir. What once was rebellion is now sold on t-shirts. Those who once stood at the edge of the abyss are now emotional productivity coaches. And the Übermensch—if he ever existed—now looks like a nihilist influencer muttering “nothing matters” while charging for keynotes. What remains is the smoke of a transgression that became décor.

These same people cry over evil, feel indignation at injustice, and ask why God allows this or that, as if they still expect an answer. They forget—or pretend to forget—that if everything is chance and biology, then everything is permitted, and nothing requires an explanation. If there is no soul, there is no duty. If there is no eternity, there is no guilt. If there is no God, there is no meaning. So why cry?

What hurts is not the injustice. It’s the awareness that, by their own creed, that injustice shouldn’t hurt. Their pain is a trap. A remnant of something they deny. And yet they wail. Like someone tossing a message in a bottle—without an ocean.

The biosphere, by the way—lest we forget—is an accident of chance. Or so they claim. We could wrap that “chance” in many quotation marks, but they don’t believe in quotation marks either. They see them as weakness. They prefer to assert everything with brutal scientific certainty. Very well. Let them own their chance. Let them play their lottery. Let them live each day as if it were their last—not as motivational fluff, but with the full weight of their creed: tomorrow isn’t when the light goes out. It’s when no one is left to turn it back on.

And no, this isn’t a threat.

It isn’t blackmail.

It’s a choice.

Each one chooses: transcendence or decomposition.

But let no one come begging for comfort.

If you’ve cut yourself off from all that makes you eternal,

embrace your sack of chemicals.

And chew it raw.