ATTENTION: Thanks to the mass abandonment of responsibility for personal and collective imagination, the vast majority of human beings on this planet are living in a bad movie.
Specifically, they (and to varying degrees, we) are smack dab in the guts of a situation that can best be described as a cosmic horror trilogy. The inspiration for this lies in allowing the most satirical aspects of apocalypse culture to fester in our back-brains marinating in a broth of cynicism and denial until, decades of fermentation later, our incredible creative powers (temporarily hijacked by those who know the way) have birthed forces to undo all that we have wrought and accelerate the slide into a solid silicon surveillance state.
We really love to feel smarter than the rubes we often are. The plain truth is that human psychology is a territory that is more fully mapped every day, and for longer than we'd like to admit, enough of it has been mapped to make steering societies a pretty basic process. The machine puts out what the people’s collective dreaming puts in. All one needs to create virtual realities that taste like the real thing is access to the control panels of media and a population weary enough to accept whatever it's damn well told. We’re all wearing masks over our masks, and some folks just got a sudden taste for bleach.
Now, don't get me wrong, it isn’t all farce and no fear. The dangers are real. Different parts of the population are being groomed and pushed for different purposes. Some have been trained to do literally anything this President tells them to, right up to ignoring protection measures and ingesting poison as a cure, because they have fully embraced the delusion that he is "their" President, leading them away from “THEM” (those poor, deluded fools who speak in opposition to Dear Leader). There are also those at the other extreme, getting us used to ideas like forced innoculation, permanent furlough, and being tracked cradle-to-grave. For some of us, these ideas are almost nostalgic, because 20 years ago, they were just ideas. Now, these things are being run as drills, pitched on the news, and sold to the public. Even the most paranoid conspiracy theorists of the last century didn't imagine things would actually get this close to their nightmares.
Like any good predator, the control system presents itself as a necessary evil, a savior, or just part of the scenery to be ignored, shifting shapes as needed to preserve its authority and encroaching dominion over the future of this world. The neighborhood child molester hangs out online pretending to be a peer, and the government hangs out on TV, pretending to be either the voice of reason or the most audacious parody of itself possible. As above, so below. The end is the same, regardless of the scale.
The virus is real, the deaths are real, and the insanity of ignoring the contagion are real. The permanent or semi-permanent shifts in economy are real. The opportunistic infection of government overreach is also quite real, and darker than the worst visions of straight-to-video science fiction. Things are being discussed on mainstream television that used to be reserved for the yellowing journals of schizophrenics.
How did we get here? Well, one can speculate. Starting in the late 40’s, the shock of Auschwitz and the guilt of Hiroshima inspired a deep dread of the future. Drastic changes were made in the way we did everything, with every generation born so far from the last that hardly anybody carries the memory of what worked before we handed the keys to Daddy Warbucks. I fear, often, that when the bottom does fall out, we will have no idea how to rebuild, if indeed we even should. Our digital records won't last beyond the first big solar flare. We abandoned the spiritual for the material, now our entire world is built on the virtual and the ephemeral. We have lost our story and our storytellers. Our myths come to us from those who need us to make the world for them. One way or another, it's fair to say that our most feared enemies have bested us in the balance of history, for we are becoming them. On some level, it must be hilarious, but from here, it's heavy, draining, and anything but funny for most of us.
Now here's the good news: This machinery, this madness, this matrix only works if we cooperate with it! We have been trained from birth to look at government as a surrogate parent, the abusive stepdad we're stuck with for life because they protect us from whispered terrors and creeping death. The truth is, we adopted them, not the other way around. In a crisis, most of us come together in ways that are far superior to any system of forced harmonization. The same goes for the various aspects that cooperate to form what we call ourselves. So within, so without. The drive to coerce others to do what we think is in the interest of greater good is tireless but also fruitless. The real work is inside, and if it works, it makes ripples. Ripples become waves, and waves move things across oceans. Our problem is we keep trying to throw people into our lifeboats. Not everyone wants to go where you're going, or even wants to be saved! Some people just like to flop around in the water, sharks or not. You cannot persuade madness. This is where, and why, government always fails. We aren't a herd animal, just a bunch of sovereign beings who traded freedom for convenience so long ago it almost feels natural.
You are a part of a Grand Pause, the first of its kind. Maybe you lost your job, and that could be a death or a victory for you. Maybe your job goes on but in a form that gives you new slack and turns down the burnout. Maybe you found a new job, born of the chaos. Maybe you’re at ground zero filling up the makeshift morgues while the rest of us have the luxury of pondering. Maybe you found yourself with "time enough at last" for the passions that you let rot on the vine out of some martyr complex. Well, good news, martyrs die. You're the ghost with the most now, friend. Let the old you die, and let that give way to new life.
Maybe this is a time of real panic and struggle for you, and maybe it's the first time. Be not afraid. Many, many others surround you who cut their teeth in the last collapse and have the tools to help you, if you can but ask. Maybe you've waited half your life for a chance to be of service. Here it is. Take this moment, this gift, and see what part of the Great Redemption you can play. The Tired Old New World Order is dying and it KNOWS. It's dusting off the jackboot playbook, pulling out all the stops, playing all 23 volumes of Now That's What I Call Dystopia!
But then again, this is 2020 where every month is a 100 years so maybe this was just April. And perhaps, your very own individual May Day can usher in a time of true fertility, if you will but till the garden of your mind, ground your weary feet in the good earth, and see what comes to meet the sunshine. Step one: Unsubscribe to the death-spam. Unplug as able, and definitely steer clear of the idiot box. Go outside. Talk to people, be alive. Redefine your own humanity, right now, while the Adversary is busy daydreaming nightmares, before the hack writers running this place while we all sleep on the job decide to do it for you. A Way Better World needs your permission and cooperation to exist. Thanks in advance for your service! .