The worst part about deciding to bite your own finger off is the part where it's your own finger that you're biting off.

  Biting off someone else's finger has it's own problems. You have to ignore the fact that they're like you. Human body, human finger, human blood - it's another person but we're so used do feeling like people are people, not meat, that being confronted by their meat makes you think of your own meat. The fact that you are meat and just meat. Walking, talking meat that thinks it's alive. That 'alive' is even a thing when really we just made it up because we have a vested interested in staying that way by crushing everything else.

  Biting another person's finger makes you think about that difference. And if you really do have to turn a person into meat, you find out exactly how arbitrary that definition, that distinction, that difference is. Because you start finding reasons to turn that 'person' into 'meat' way before you bite down. It happens in your head.

  Because the choices are simple. Either you decide to bite down without thinking about it, which really is a game of random chance and just delays the question anyway. Or you really decide that its just a bit of meat that used to be a person.

  You shrink the definition of person so that it no longer includes the thing attached to the meat you're about to bite off. You have to shrink it. Because... otherwise... if they're a person... and you're a person... then both of you are just meat.

  And there's no going back once you make that choice. If one person is mean, then every person is meat. They have to be. We must be consistent afterall.

  But what if you're with other people when a person become meat? What if it's a family dinner situation? Well then, the family must be people and everyone else is people shaped meat. Blood is thicker than water after all. And that, dear children, is how you get cannibal cults. The family that hunts together, eats together.

  But it's a whole other problem when you have to bite your own finger off. When you have to turn yourself into meat. Because you can't do it. Turn yourself into meat I mean. In your head, you can't do it. Because where does it end?

  Is only one of your fingers meat but other not? Well, that just doesn't make sense. If one of your fingers is meat, then all your fingers are meat, thumbs included. But if your fingers are meat, your toes probably are too. Toes are just foot fingers after all. Disagreeing is probably just favoritism. And if fingers are toes are meat then your hands and feet are probably meat too, right? And on it goes. Are eyes meat? What about your ears? Your nose has to be meat. The only conclusion you can come to is that you are meat.

  And we know this, abstractly. We know that we are meat. No different than the meat you eat. Oh maybe tastier, selective breeding and all. But... how can you be sure? You'd have to try it. Side by side comparison. Taste is subjective. It would be the only way to know.

  Usually we foget that we're meat. Until something reminds us. Like a paper cut. When we see our insides leaking out, like juice from a fruit. Ever cut into a pomegranate? Red beads pushing to rhe surface. Blood is really the closest we get to remembering that are meat.

  Put your finger in your mouth.

  Do it.

  You're here to read about it right? To experience vicariously what someone might feel. You watch movies and play video games looking for some "immersion". I've got some immersion right here.

  Put your fucking finger in your fucking mouth.

  What's the first thing you notice?

  Taste, right?

  Your skin has a taste.

  Do you like crispy chicken skin? That's what is crisping up. Finger lixking good. That's what you notice first when you bite a finger off. That people have a taste.

  It's what makes it easier to shrink the definition so that people are meat. Meat has a taste. People have a taste. People == meat.

  That's not what comes to mind when your own finger is in your mouth, is it? Not really thinking 'raw flesh' are you? "Yes. That is my finger. Can I take it out of my mouth now?" is probably what you're actually thinking. And no. We have more 'immersion' to go.

  The next step to biting your own finger is deciding to bite it. Have you heard of the phrase 'mind over matter'. Here is where that philosophy falls apart.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Because you're not meat, you can't be meat. Other people can be meat under the right circumstances but not you. You're not meat. But you are meat, just meat. Your mind says you aren't, even when it's in your mouth, where meat is supposed to be. But the matter of your meat is meat. Nothing more, nothing less. Crispy chicken skin is all that lies between your teeth and your meat. But your mind isn't having any of it.

  Try it. Decide that your finger is just meat. Have a little bite. You can't. Or maybe "you don't want to". "What a dumb thing for me to try to do." "Why would I ever bite my finger for some badly written garbage by some troll online?"

  Mind over matter indeed. Meat that will find any reason to think it's not meat. Because if you're just meat... well.

  Another concern with deciding to bite is the pain factor. Motivation not to be turned into meat so that you can make more meat later with other meat, so that other meat can eat more meat. Pain is not really factoe when turning other people into meat, it's really more for you not turning into meat yourself. Evolution didn't really concern itself with meat that sees it's own nature and gets hungry. That's a problem that solves itself honestly.

  But if you want to know what it's like to bite through your own finger, we have to address the pain problem. So press your teeth against your finger. You don't have to bite through - not that you could. You're reading this because you could never, but you have that morbid curiosity.

  You want to know what it would be like yo bite through your own finger. But you won't do it yourself of course, you're too smart for that. You need that finger to do things. To wipe your ass and push buttons, and buy garbage, and fuck yourself or someone else. And to read of course. Read garbage like this. About what it might feel like to bite off your own finger. To roleplay.

  Bite your finger again. Give the pain a number out of 10 in your mind. Bite slightly harder. Another number. Bite harder, another number.

  Now, bite and hold. What's the number?

  Did you notice? Anythinf of interest about the numbers, about the pain you're in, about how tightly your teeth clench?

  You keep going back to the same number. You can try to bite harder, but something in your jaw just... loosens. Your meat won't let you.

  The thing is... you think you're your brain. Reading this right now, you think you're you. The one in 'your' body, the one in control. The pilot guiding your life.

  You're not.

  You're meat that thinks.

  Disagree? Bite your own finger off.

  No? Thought so. You're just meat that thinks. Thinks it's not meat, more than meat, better than meat. You have purpose and drive and goals and very good reasons not to bite your own finger off. And even if we took all of that away, you still wouldn't be able to. Not until your meat allowed you to notice.

  You come to this website to read. Read about mythologies and dystopias and warriors. Of people overcoming the odds, railing against the unfairness of the world, or just having a good time. A better time than you're having. And it makes you feel like you're not in a world just as dystopian, in a life that not as magical or constrained.

  But you're just meat. And not just that. You're meat that's trapped inside a meat suit. A meat suit you don't have any control over. But you're fed the illusion that you do have control. You think: "I" brush my teeth. "I" wipe my ass. "I" eat my dinner. "I" decide not to bite my own finger off.

  Where is "I"? Where exactly is "I"? Where do you keep it? In your brain? Which part? The part that keep your breathing while you sleep? The part that makes sure your heart keeps beating? The part that makes you speak confidently with one person but makes you go blank when speaking to another person?

  You are meat. And your meat suit lets you think you have control.

  Because

  it's

  funny.

  How many times did you do something without paying attention to what you were doing? "Muscle memory". Whose memories are they? The muscles'? But... the muscles are you, right? So why can't you remember how to do it when you focus on it? When you try to focus on it, you fuck it up. Try it, try to breathe on purpose. How deep do you usually breathe? Does your chest move or your stomach too? How much should it move? Do you usually involde your back? Ribs should expand a bit too right? But how are you breathing? Seriously. Diaphragm, yes. Where is your diaphram exactly? How does it move?

  How are you telling your diaphram to move? Sure nerves, electricity, fine. But how? You don't even know what it looks like. Are you sure it's even you doing it? You think you are but you stopped focusing on breathing and yet you haven't passed out. You didn't decide to stop. Did you even decide to start focusing on your breath or did it just happen because I told you to?

  Who chose? You? Or me?

  How many things can you even do without paying attention? How many things have you been doing without ever noticing? Have you been doing things without noticing, that you would not do if you had a choice? How would you even remember if you did? What if you noticed but you weren't allowed to remember? How do you even remember? Literally?

  How

  do

  you

  remember

  things?

  Bite off your own finger.

  Do you remember the title of this chapter?

  Do you remember what each word means?

  Do you remember what the words sound like if you say them out loud?

  Where do you keep that information?

  Where is it right now?

  Did you even keep it there?

  Who did?

  Who else is in there with you?

  Bite off your own finger.

  You read words and understand them but you don't know how.

  Bite off your own finger.

  You choose to breathe but it was happening without you before you thought of it and it keep happening after you got distracted.

  Bite off your own finger.

  You felt pain but your jaw loosens without your deciding it.

  Bite off your own finger.

  You read every word, followed every train of thought but you still don't believe you're meat.

  Bite off your own finger.

  You'll close the chapter, the book, the app, and forget you read it, forget that someone showed you your face in tbe mirror and you were meat.

  Bite off your own finger.

  You were meat trapped in meat and the meat laughs at you because you think you're not meat.

  Bite off your finger.

  If you are not meat

  If you are "I"

  If you are one, if you are your meat, if your meat is you and you breathe and you remember and you choose

  Bite

  Off

  Your

  Own

  Finger

  Thank you for your presence at tonights show. We know Meat has many options available to you to expose the madness of your existence for your amusement and we are glad Meat chose us. I pray that your Meat allows you to move on quickly :D