I. Anatomy as Ontology
Perhaps structure does not belong to reality itself, but arises as a biological imperative – a way to organize experience so that it does not crush the bearer with its raw, unarticulated volume. What we are accustomed to calling metaphysical necessity actually outlines only the boundary of our ability to think otherwise. After a catastrophe, structure invariably looks like a refuge, but the very fact of our need for shelter proves nothing regarding the architecture of the universe itself.
A fundamental suspicion arises: our Vertical is a direct consequence of bipedalism (upright walking). This is a specific configuration of the skeleton and the vestibular apparatus, which gradually, over millennia of culture, acquired a high ontological status. The brain is forced to reduce the complexity of the environment, gravitating toward symmetries, binary oppositions, and repetitions to ensure survival.
In this perspective:
- The disappearance of the bearer means not a tragedy of being, but a simple cessation of a specific realization.
- Silence captures only the absence of a signal in a given range, not a sacred metaphysical boundary.
- The Fall appears not as a Fall of Man, but as a change in the geometric configuration of matter in space.
Together with the point of observation, the structure itself disappears. Tragedy loses its dramatic contour, becoming a dry part of the reconfiguration of the general system, where the subject was merely a temporary node of tension.
II. The limit of dismantling
However, the dismantling of structure reaches a certain limit. Absolute chaos, devoid of any regularity, is incapable of generating stable forms – neither biological nor mental. The very stability of our organism testifies to a certain agreement of the environment. The spine is possible only in a world where gravity and space maintain relative constancy over billions of years. Anatomy fixes this constancy of the universe in the material of bones and fasciae.
The efficiency of our thinking also presupposes order. Even the most radical assertion about the illusory nature of any Axis is forced to rely on logical distinction, sequence, and hierarchy of meanings. An attempt to think without an axis still unfolds as an architecturally built argument. We cannot deny structure without using its toolkit.
Thus, structure appears as an event horizon that accompanies any experience. It arises neither from above nor from within, but at the moment of the organism and the world tuning into each other – in that dynamic stability which allows interaction to continue.
III. Tragedy as a technical rupture
Tragedy in this context does not disappear, but it radically changes its meaning. It ceases to be punishment or a trial. Falling becomes possible only where there is high tension capable of being interrupted. Death in this coordinate system signifies the completion of a certain algorithm’s realization, leaving behind only a technical rupture in the sequence of signals.
Pain is not “cruel fate,” but an intense testimony of the system that the structure has reached the limit of its strength. It is a signal of the deformation of the Axis, which can no longer withstand the pressure of reality.
IV. The conditional vertical
The question ultimately shifts: it is no longer about proving the existence of an axis “in itself” as an external object. It is about the capacity of our structure to endure the realization of its own contingency.
The Vertical is not revealed to us as revealed truth. It manifests as the extreme tension of our way of being and thinking. It is an effort that accompanies every act of distinguishing between oneself and the noise. We hold the axis not because it “is,” but because holding it is the only way we are capable of perceiving reality without dissolving into it completely.
Honesty consists in admitting: we build our refuge ourselves from the wreckage of our own anatomy, and it holds as long as we are capable of enduring the tension of our own presence.