Continued

Which gives that the act that goes through the path of least resistance is an act performed out of pressure. We have to carefully define things. The path of least resistance, as an idea, is not really the path of least resistance. It is the wishful path of least resistance, usually one that is not available. In Lolita, there is a moment where Humbert Humbert finds the perfect opportunity to murder his wife, yet he circles the idea time and again, and accepts the conclusion: he doesn't have the guts to do it, couldn't live with the guilt. That's the wishful path of least resistance, “I could do this thing, it would be beneficial for me”. You spot it when you have to think about it. Logic is the arch-enemy of least resistance, by definition. No act is rational. Even those who, and especially those who survive scrutiny, “My calculations tell me this is the only way left”, that's coping, you don't call a person rational for choosing to kill themselves by crashing their car instead of by throwing themselves off the bridge. Pressure makes rationality obsolete. Absence of pressure signals lack of actual need, cosplay, a farce. Absence of pressure equals absence of action. That's death.

Let's treat the term pressure with care. Pressure is waves of society. People are on the verge all the time—financially, sentimentally, aspirationally. Whatever they've been stripped of, they seek to reclaim it, to grab the easiest prospect and claim it their own. A family friend recently lost their child out of negligence, then adopted one months later. The thought of adoption may have been a stupidity before the accident: too much paperwork, which child to adopt?, let's just have one of our own, who wants to raise something free of one's genes? The logical brain fights the thought, it can afford to, there is no need to adopt. But once the child dies, a new pressure emerges, one dense and haunting, and unforgiving, sadistic almost. “I want my child back”. The child is dead and they want it back. This will go on until they too die, or until the child is replaced. Adoption and its burdens become trivial now, and whatever pain bureaucracy may cause, it is not thought of, at all. If you'd just joined the case, you'd think it's hypocritical, “What happened to 'I rather have one of my own'?”. And the answer is: “Shut up. Stop talking. Don't open your mouth. I repudiate logical thought. I won't stare at anything, won't contemplate anything with thought or care or reason, until my pain is over”. And pain is never over. It just happens the orphan capitalizes on the heightened crisis.

A situation free of pressure is a taste of death. Let them then come to life, the built-in pressures, the primal ones, invoke them with spell, bring them to the surface, “this you can't look back, you can't afford to”, let the pressure be felt in skin and in bone, let it become existential angst, you don't push the rock to the cliff, you let it grow denser, oneself is one's top enemy, the disastrous ending coded in one's DNA, you cast the spell, let them come back from the safe trance, let them bleed and let the rock be its own end. “You don't have to jump”, and behold the rock throwing itself anyway, against reason, against its own conviction, because what are convictions if not paths of least effort, rationalized. (Convictions: bah! Never trust a rational man's claims. He's just too comfortable with himself. He: a result of least resistance. As he'll begin, “You wouldn't believe the years of work...”. The S-21 survivor will never understand the awful luck of his guard. It is easier for him not to.)