18 Apr 2026: A Manifesto For Deranged Materialists: Or, So You Want To Worship Chaos

So! You want to worship the goddess CHAOS? Good news: It is actually quite simple. Bad news: It is the hardest thing you will ever do. Thankfully, you can do it in a countably infinite number of steps.

Step 1

First things first: You need to change. (A small change will do. You could start wearing the part in your hair on the other side, get into competitive international chess, or divorce your husband of several years. Anything really.) Have you changed? Are you different yet? Have you emerged/become/evolved/bloomed/withered/contracted/enervated/etc.? Very good. The next step is to do it again. Keep changing indefinitely. BASICally:

10    CHANGE
20    GOTO 10

See? Simple. But also difficult. I have kept my end of the bargain. That accounts for the steps in the set of natural numbers.

The next steps are in between the other ones. Don’t ask me to explain how. These kinds of mysteries will be revealed to you in time.

Step e

Remember that you are a living thing. What does it mean to be a living thing? You are the ongoing product and reagent of an ancient chemical reaction called Life. This is a beautiful and monstrous thing. This grand grotesque is a thing of monumental violence; all living things on some level struggle to survive. Even trees have to attack their neighbors with chemical warfare to ensure their saplings can grow. But what does it mean to struggle? It doesn’t always involve bloodshed. At the root, a struggle is a contradiction; it is the engine of change. (See Step 1.) Elements of the body that cannot coexist must change each other. (See Step π.) They change each other through struggle. In this garden of earthly delights, you must struggle; you must fight. That is what it means to be a living thing.

Step π

Remember that your body bleeds. You can feel pain. You will die. You are your desires and fears. You do not live in your body; you are your body. And your grasping, vulnerable, teetering body really only knows two things: hunger and satisfaction. Don’t split hairs. The mind is just an abstraction of the brain which is just the part of the body that lives in the head. On that note: The spirit or soul is just an abstraction of the heart which is the part of the body that lives in the chest. I keep trying to explain this to guys the running this coal train I’m stuck on, but they just won’t accept it. Something about an engine without an engineer. I figure they just don’t want to be out of a job.

I will now list the things that are not part of the body:

• -

Conclusion

This is all that needs to be said. You are an animal. You will die. Continue to change. Continue to want. Continue to struggle. Praise be to the primordial and protean CHAOS.