The mind is firmly rooted in the body so that there is no flicker of thought that is not also a flutter of the body, and no ripple in the body that is not also echoed in the mind in a purely ideal context where the body-image serves as a loose proxy for the self. This leads to a false sense that the body shares the mind's preoccupations, that a success for the mind is a strengthening of the body and that the anxiety felt on becoming aware of a change in the body is the body's own shrinking from its destiny. This illusion is fed by the fact that the words that denote mental states and modes are usually descriptions of bodily states, vaguely meant to be understood metaphorically. If the body does in fact have any feelings in regard to itself, and if the vegetative soul could speak them, these would express its purely material solidarity, its belonging, its fundamental loyalty to the great democracy of the material. No molecule or chemical or thermodynamic or electric or informational system would be or could be in any way privileged over any other; they have no strict boundaries and no limitations on freedom of association. The body, indeed all of life, is perfectly fine with death; it does not distinguish itself from death and every system of life, viewed from the perspective of matter, is also a system of death - as ought to evident whenever we eat or even breathe. So what we experience in suffering, in the craving for life, for the sovereignty of life over death, is nothing but a form of hegemony. As psychological beings, that is as psycho-physical selves, we are the privileged beneficiaries of this hegemony and contemplation of its inevitable downfall should inspire a ruthless recension of our ontological presuppositions.