Something Terrible Is About To Happen

The algorithm doesn't care about your feelings

Photo by Jaclyn Moy on Unsplash

Life as a samurai was no picnic.

I mean, sure, there was the fancy armour and the social status and the cool swords, but there was also the ever-present threat of battle and the obligation to slice open your belly at the slightest hint of dishonour. There was the knowledge that, as Katō Kiyomasa put it, your sole intention should be to “grasp the long and the short swords and to die.”

In order to achieve the state of mind required to cope with all this, the samurai practised a form of meditation known as Maranasati or “death awareness” in which they kept death at the forefront of their minds. Fixating on every form of anguish and torture they could imagine:

Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day, when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day, without fail, one should consider himself as dead.

Yikes.

But as morose as this sounds, for the samurai, it was simply facing up to reality. By accepting that something terrible might happen at any moment, they were able to act without fear or hesitation.

They could go into battle with their minds clear.

In 2022, we have our own version of death awareness. It’s called the news.

Every day, when our bodies and minds should at least be trying to find peace, we’re invited to meditate upon an endless timeline of death, disease, and suffering.

Worried about yourself or your loved ones catching coronavirus? Here’s your daily dose of poorly contextualised case numbers, ludicrous conspiracy theories, and interviews with footage of cemeteries spliced into them (guess what we’re oh-so-subtly trying to make you think of).

We’re willing to risk leaving you completely confused about what information to trust because news that doesn’t…