The End Poem
I’ve wanted to make this post for years now.
My name is Iris, I’ve been raised in an environment full of hate. My father was a neofascist as I was growing up, when I was 2 he went to a “Forza Nuova” rally to which some people protested by throwing eggs at everyone. Father was and still is kind of a xenophobe, he’s racist, and he’s sexist, heavily. Throughout 2016 my parents had a lot of discussions, and as they did I sunk my time deeper and deeper into Minecraft Xbox One edition. They were fighting, on the brink of divorce, living in separate houses, and all I had was Minecraft. A game that I experienced fully offline and alone. From 2010 when I first played it on my 360 to this day, Minecraft has been by my side more than any friend, relative or pet. It shaped me. It made me who I am.
And this brings us to what I really wanted to talk about…
This is a deeply personal post and I expect the maximum level of respect from all of you. Soundtrack: https://nkrichronos.bandcamp.com/track/biome-fest-2
I consider myself an atheist, yet I’ve always felt that things happen for a reason, like if there was something pulling the string, some kind of universal intention. I believe The End Poem to have some kind of intrinsic power over people, I do not consider its contents to have literal meaning, it is like a parable. It’s text written for a block game. Of course it’s not meant to have any special spiritual meaning, right? Hell, the author got the text for it through a shroom trip! There’s different levels of believing in the poem, I’ll start off with stuff most of us can get behind. You can read The End Poem for yourself at https://archive.org/details/the-end-poem-release The gist of it is that two supernatural entities manifest themselves as text on a screen at the end of the long dream of Minecraft.
I will now start quoting and dissecting the poem. I will highlight the lime entity in bold text and the cyan entity in normal text.
Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.
These entities talk about how the player has played in worlds of their own creation that caused them pain and suffering, we can interpret this to mean the existence of any kind of evil in the universe.
They go on and say that the sorrow is part of the player’s growth and story, that it is an essential part of life, and that a life without suffering cannot possibly exist without totally obliterating the properties that make the player themselves. As we read the poem we understand that the player is one with the universe, that everything that exists is the universe. We learn that the pain the player fights is something that comes from within, that the player is love.
In the order these facts are presented we’re told that the player is the universe, that the universe loves the player and that the player is love.
This means that the player’s life purpose is to love, to spread love, to love itself, to love everything and everyone. That’s the philosophical message of the poem.
Let’s get to the theological part.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
This tells us two things: - The entities we are reading are supernatural, they are the rest of the universe. - The universe functions to grow and nurture the player.
In a certain sense, what this overall means is that we are our own. We’re our galaxies, our lives, our planets, our stories, music, foods, smells. We’re on earth to live, for purposes unknown, told to us through:
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely ⊢⊣⊩⊣⊣ and ⊣⊮⊭⊬⊪, I wish to tell them that they are ⊩⊬⊬⊨⊥ in the ⊮⊤⊨⊫⊣. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.
This means that reality itself is a dream, made to grow each and every single player, that the hardships are a test made to grow us, that’s what it means to be a player, to play the game of life, to grind, to pass the hardships, to slay the bosses.
In this sense, everything happens for growth, every single person is of immense value, a value that is enriched only by loving others and experiencing as much of the universe as possible.
These last two behaviours are common in most religions and personal beliefs of people, it’s like if they were innate desires of mankind, to live life and improve life for others, to wish for nothing but happiness. What I’ve said so far can be confirmed with the last 3 lines:
And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love. You are the player. Wake up.
Thank you for reading. I believe I’ve never been so vulnerable before. This… this is my religion I think… Sometimes the notes that are not played matter just as much as the ones that are being played. If loving is what makes someone a good player, that must mean hate is the wrong way to live life, no matter what or who you hate. This aligns with the fact that hate is the easiest and weakest feeling to have. It’s the innate reaction when presented with something we cannot relate to or do not understand. Hating is easy, loving hurts. To love is to make yourself vulnerable. Nobody likes to be vulnerable. Loving is innate. Hatred is something humans learn. On that note, by love I mean interpersonal affection: Romance is something humans learn too
Kids do not discriminate until someone in their life shows bias and they appropriate that behaviour. Humans started hating when concepts like money, ownership of territory and or things, monogamy and such arose.
Humans are inherently social, yet those conflicts that split us are also defining of humanity. We all wish for a better world and the poem implies it is not possible to eradicate hate, but that we must make our best effort to tolerate life, only through restraint and love. One thing I seem to have glossed over is, the entities that speak to you imply that they are the universe, that you are the universe, that they are not separate from you, that you are talking to itself. I am currently correcting myself explaining myself the poem I told myself if we go through this line of thinking.
Everything is you, everything means literally everything, even everyone.