.. a sucker born every minute, or so they claim ..
.. so just don't be one of 'em, I say ..
"You know what freedom is? No fear .. "
- from One Battle After Another
Why is it that whenever I look at a screen, I
am filled with dread. What is it about this machine that makes it feel
to me as if my soul is being sucked away?
Money lives inside the computer - and at least that's how it used to be, and still yet is, even at this early stage in the introduction, the insertion (penetration), of artificial intelligence into our daily lives: computer (brain/mind) workers are/were more favored with wealth than those capable of physical labour.
They get paid more, but maybe they have always been that little bit closer to the cold empty heart of the machine, so it is deserving that they are rewarded more by that great god Mammon.
And,
even the ostensibly Christian throngs, disregarding the act, yet alone
even considering the reason, of Yeshua throwing the money changers out
of the temple, parade material wealth as holiness.
Here we (some of us [if you're reading this: YOU included]) are in what has been called late stage capitalism: the logic of profit and loss, at the end of the day a zero-sum game of predation, has not exactly metastasized as much as become the entirety of the social organism. And, what do we get of all that?
A PT Barnum economy, where the ringleaders
are a bunch of sociopathic clowns and we're all the mimes that no-one
can hear during the show: we have no money megaphone and our livelihood
depends on us being quiet. But we rail into the digital abyss.
People seem to be letting reality slip away in favour of a digital fiction; they're chasing after it, in fact. There is more activity there, more happening; hell, you can see sex scenes and people getting killed within a few seconds of each other.
The big screen scream. Natural reality is slow
and (maybe not) boring, nervous activity is at a minimum - what do
people hear in silence that makes them want to drown it out with
stimulation. But then, maybe I like doing nothing too much.
Walking the thin line between waking and sleep, slumber, the deathless dream - but, then, who are those people out there and what do they have to do with me? Why do we find it more comfortable to be looking inwards at our humanity than to peer out into the dark expanse of an "empty" natural world of the other: the uninhabited.
People
congregate and bump about, maybe rubbing each other the wrong way,
building up some friction that's got but to lead to a spark - in the
right circumstances, one that will catch.
BURN BABY BURN [disco inferno]
.. some have said the world today has come to resemble a hyperpoliticized hellscape with false profits peddling slopaganda at every virtual street corner .. but isn't this, after all, how it's always been ..?.. surely the art of the con is the world's second oldest profession ..
.. maybe what marks this historical moment even more that that is our excessive collective self-obsession .. we see spooks, as Max Stirner would call them; ideas in our head we tend to prioritize over the "business" of actually living & experiencing the world, wherever our awareness turns, even if there's nothing there ..
.. Stirner, unlike his contemporary & fellow Hegelian, Karl Marx, was way ahead of his time & perhaps still is today .. maybe that explains why so many are seemingly obsessed with
turning this world into an actual hellscape of war & pollution in pursuit of some lines on a balance sheet & words on a screen ..
.. when did we forget that we're @LL con nected .. that the world's flourishing can't be achieved in the absence of world peace .. that degrading the environment degrades us, too, both on the inner & the outer .. & that none of this is possible if we don't start from a foundation of inner serenity ..
..
it could be said that the issue now, the single biggest change & therefore, surely, the underlying cause that's behind
all of this is that the so-called "elites" ( .. for one thing, in what sense,
specifically, are they actually elite ..? ) have become virulently
parasitic ..
.. moreover, they seem determined to bring about the kind of world where the running man remake would be a documentary ..
.. such challenges must surely seem daunting, & it's certainly understandable in this light that a certain disquiet, dejection, & even despair become more or less endemic, like static in the background ..
.. but the esoteric practitioner doesn't simply take their chances; rather, they engage in 'insider trading', but in an esoteric sense .. read esoterically, this simply means developing the inner wisdom, strength & perseverance to get through anything .. for, surely, one who gnows the inner will have a leg up on the outer ..
.. & for the low, low price of 0.00 + the time & effort it takes to set up your own regular esoteric practice, you too could easily become an 'inside trader' yourself; hell, we're franchising ..
HODL
.. everyone makes mistakes ..
.. the challenge is to catch & correct them ..
.. without making many more along the Way ..
