{"id":146720,"date":"2014-07-29T15:11:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T15:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecactusland.com\/2014\/07\/the-seven-pillars-of-matrix.html"},"modified":"2014-07-29T15:11:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T15:11:00","slug":"the-seven-pillars-of-the-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/the-seven-pillars-of-the-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Seven Pillars of the Matrix"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cNone are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\u00e2\u20ac\u2022 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<\/div>\n
\n
\nContemporary
\nbaptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to
\nquestion his identity, and when he does a typical response might be, \u201cI am product
\nmanager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran.\u201d<\/div>\n
\nHis answers
\nimply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities,
\nrules and restrictions he is subjected to. \u00a0Few if any of these were
\never negotiated- \u00a0they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBut is free the
\nright adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt? \u00a0He has been told what to do, believe, think and
\nfeel since he can remember. \u00a0A very clever rancher has bred billions of
\nthese creatures around the globe and created the most profitable livestock
\nimaginable. \u00a0They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his
\nwildest tales, laugh at his jokes and rarely get out of line. \u00a0When domesticated
\nman does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats
\nprepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.<\/span>

<\/div>\n
\nOne of the
\nmost fascinating aspects of domesticated man\u2019s predicament is that he never
\nlooks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who wind up on his plate and make the very
\nsimple deduction that he is just a
\ntalking version of them, corralled and shepherded through his entire life. \u00a0<\/span>How is this
\naccomplished? \u00a0Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be
\ndominated by man. The trick is to fool the animal into believing that the
\nleader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them.
\n\u00a0Once this is accomplished the animal is under full control of its homo
\nsapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally
\norganized in groups with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of\u00a0<\/span>150<\/span><\/a>– \u00a0it was easy to replace the leader of
\nthese smaller groups with one overarching figure such as God, King, President,
\nCEO etc. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe
\nmethodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed,
\nhomo domesticus, can be described as having seven pillars from which an immense
\nmatrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them
\ninto a complex mesh from which few ever escape. \u00a0The system is so advanced
\nthat those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are
\nimmediately branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can\u2019t
\naccept the \u2018complexity of modern life\u2019, i.e. conspiracy nuts.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nPlato
\ndescribed this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave<\/i>, where people only see
\nman made shadows of objects, institutions, Gods and ideas:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n\u00a0\u201c–Behold! human beings living in an underground cave…here they have been from their childhood…necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance…the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets… and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall…\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIt began
\nwith the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each
\nother. \u00a0Before language, every sensation was directly felt through the
\nsenses without the filter of words. \u00a0But somewhere around\u00a0<\/span>50,000 years ago<\/span><\/a>\u00a0language began to replace reality and the first pieces of code were put in place for
\nthe creation of the Matrix. \u00a0As soon as the words began to flow the world
\nwas split, and from that fracturing was
\nborn man\u2019s angst and slavery. \u00a0The words separated us from who we really
\nwere, creating the first screen onto which the images from Plato\u2019s cave were
\ncast. \u00a0Gurdjieff said it well, \u201cIdentifying is the chief obstacle to
\nself-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to
\nremember himself.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIt\u2019s no
\naccident that in Hesiod\u2019s ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture,
\nwhich appeared in the Silver age, and by the time we reach the Bronze age the
\ndominant theme is toil and strife. \u00a0<\/span>The two key elements to the
\nenslavement of man were clearly language and agriculture. \u00a0In the hunter
\ngatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball to the head. \u00a0Only since the advent of farming was the
\npossibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible,
\nand hence enslavement inevitable.<\/div>\n
\nThe search
\nfor enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our
\nschools and universities.
\n\u00a0Almost all traditions point to isolation and silence as the only
\npaths to awakening; \u00a0they are the true antidotes to modern slavery. As Aristotle wrote, \u201cWhosoever is delighted
\nin solitude is either a wild beast or a god.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
\nSo from the
\ninstitution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to
\ntime, we begin our descent through the seven layers of the Matrix.<\/span>

<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nEducation<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n


<\/span>
\n
\nThere are
\nthings we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we
\npick up without much of an effort such as walking, speaking and fighting, but
\nwithout strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become
\na functioning member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix
\nboot camp, which of course is school. \u00a0How else could you take a hunter
\nand turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses,
\nmonotony and uniformity?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Children
\nnaturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools
\nimmediately begin driving home the point of schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students
\nto the concept of who they aren’t. \u00a0We drill the little ones until they
\nlearn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line,
\nkeep silent and endure submission. \u00a0They learn they aren’t free and they
\nare separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides,
\nnames and languages.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nIt can\u2019t be
\nstressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock
\nand the idea of a forced identity. \u00a0What child when she first goes to school
\nisn’t taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nIt\u2019s not as
\nif language itself isn’t sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without
\na category. \u00a0Suzy can\u2019t just be
\nSuzy- \u00a0she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a
\ncivilization, many of which have flags, mascots, armies, uniforms, currencies
\nand languages. \u00a0Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are
\nlearned, then history can begin to be taught. \u00a0The great epic myths
\ninvented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down
\nthrough the ages cement this matrix into the child\u2019s mind.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nEven the
\nlanguage that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her. \u00a0An
\napple will never again be just an apple- \u00a0it will become a noun, a subject, or
\nan object. \u00a0Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and
\nexplained back to the child in Matrixese.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nWe are
\ntaught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not how to cook, farm, hunt,
\nbuild, gather, laugh or play. \u00a0We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>
\n
\n
\n<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nGovernment<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n


\n<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In the
\ncountries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created
\nto serve the people is often espoused. \u00a0Government, and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized
\nsocial control for the benefit of those who have seized power. \u00a0This has
\nalways been the case and always will be. \u00a0In the pre-democratic era it was much
\nclearer to recognize who had power, but the genius of massive democratic states are the
\nlayers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly
\nconceal the identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe
\nfunctions of the state are so well ensconced in dogmatic versions of history
\ntaught in schools that almost no one questions why we need anything beyond the
\nbare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age. \u00a0The
\nhistory classes never point the finger at the governments themselves
\nas the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption. \u00a0In Hollywood’s version of history, the one most people absorb, ‘good’ governments are always portrayed as fighting ‘bad’ ones. \u00a0We have yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span>
\nThe
\nstate apparatus is based on law, which
\nis a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common
\nnecessities- an exchange of sovereignty
\nbetween the people and the state. This sounds
\nreasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of the 20th<\/sup> century, almost without
\nexception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe loss of
\nhuman freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern
\nnation.\u00a0 There is never a choice. \u00a0It is spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls it.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

Patriotism
\nis pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control. \u00a0People are taught to value their
\ncompatriots above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or
\nreligion. \u00a0The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great
\ncorporate state. \u00a0From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov\u2019s
\ndogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical demigod.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nWhat is a
\ncountry? Using the United States as
\nexample, what actually is this entity? Is
\nit the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA? \u00a0Does loving one’s country mean one should love
\nthe IRS and the NSA? \u00a0Should we feel differently
\nabout someone if they are from Vancouver instead of Seattle? Loving a state is the same as loving a
\ncorporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached to
\nnot showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the
\nmoment, we are not obligated at birth to pay them for a lifetime of services,
\nmost of which we neither need nor want.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nFlags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the ‘other’ and force the ‘foreigner\/terrorist\/extremist’ to wear the stigma of our projections. \u00a0The archaic tribal energy
\nthat united small bands and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hoards
\nhas been converted into a magic wand for
\nthe masters of the matrix. Flags are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses. \u00a0Sentimental statist propaganda is simply the mouthguard used to soften the
\njolt of our collective electroshock therapy.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\nReligion<\/span><\/h3>\n


<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher. Religion comes from the Latin ‘re-ligare’ and it means to reconnect. \u00a0But reconnect to what? \u00a0The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from? \u00a0The indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost; \u00a0the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots. \u00a0No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul. \u00a0The flags and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that’s why the priests are needed.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions. \u00a0Faith in the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else’s ability to connect. \u00a0Of course the liturgies of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix. \u00a0A brief perusal of the news will clearly show that their ‘God’ seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved. \u00a0He is also jealous of the other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him. \u00a0He wipes out his enemies with floods and angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm. \u00a0Their anthem is, “Love your country, it\u2019s flag, its history, and the God who created it all”- \u00a0an ethos force fed to each new generation.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nCircus<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n
\n

The sad
\nthing about circus is that it’s generally not even entertaining. \u00a0The
\nslaves are told it’s time for some fun and they move in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their
\nelectrical devices believing that they are are being entertained by vulgar propaganda.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nAs long as
\nhomo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having fun, than she is a good slave worthy
\nof her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm
\nwhere she is milked of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year.
\n\u00a0Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are\u00a0<\/span>strategically placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball
\ninto them.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn a daily
\nbasis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given the
\nMatrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours
\nbefore starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid anyone ever took a
\nhallucinogen and had an original thought. \u00a0We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually
\nwake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze.\u00a0\u00a0
\nThe matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and
\nnever an authentic thought in between.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn a more
\nprimal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream
\nof \u2018perfect love\u2019, where our days will be filled with soft caresses, sweet words
\nand Hollywood drama.\u00a0 This is maybe the
\nmost sublime of the Matrix\u2019s snares, as Venus\u2019s charms can be so convincing one
\nwillingly abandons all for her devious promise. Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism.\u00a0<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nMoney<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n


<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nMoney is
\ntheir most brilliant accomplishment. \u00a0Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending it without ever understanding what it actually is. \u00a0In this hologram of a world, the only thing
\none can do without money is breath. \u00a0For almost every other human activity
\nthey want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion
\ncame from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented
\nthemselves- \u00a0the most fantastic and effective of all their tools of
\ndomestication.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThey have
\nconvinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some
\npoint in the past it actually did. \u00a0Once they were finally able to
\ndisconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally
\ntook complete control, locked the last gate and electrified all the fences. \u00a0They ingeniously print it up out of the
\nnothing and loan it with interest in order for 18-year-olds to spend four years
\ndrinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that\u00a0<\/span>will most likely never end. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the time
\nthe typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any
\nhope of ever being free of it and embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student
\nloans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy. \u00a0What they rarely asks themselves is why they must
\nwork to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes. \u00a0If they printed out notes on their HP’s and loaned
\nthem with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but
\nnot our friends on Wall Street- \u00a0they do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House. \u00a0The genius of the money scam is how obvious it
\nis. \u00a0When people are told that banks
\ncreate money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous. \u00a0\u201cIt can’t be that simple!” \u00a0And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been\u00a0<\/span><\/span>enslaved\u00a0<\/span>so easily .<\/div>\n
\n

\u201cCulture is
\nthe effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nAs Terence
\nloved to say, \u201cCulture is not your friend.\u201d \u00a0It exists as a buffer to
\nauthentic experience. \u00a0As they created larger and larger communities, they
\nreplaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly
\nreligion. Drum beats and sweat were exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise.\u00a0
\nLocal tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking
\nwith academic dogma.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf money is
\nthe shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system. \u00a0Filtered,
\ncentralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues all their myths together into
\none massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls
\never try to escape. It’s relatively
\nsimple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or
\nmoney. But when taken as a whole, our culture seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our
\nself conception it is often hard to see where we individually finish and our culture begins.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\nEscaping the Grip of Control<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Some might
\nask why this all-pervasive network of control isn’t talked about or discussed
\nby our \u2018great minds\u2019. \u00a0Pre-Socratic scholar Peter Kingsley explains it
\nwell:<\/p><\/div>\n

\n\u201cEverything
\nbecomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not
\nconcerned with finding, or even looking for, the truth. That\u2019s just a
\ndecorative appearance. \u00a0It\u2019s simply concerned with protecting us from
\ntruths that might endanger our security; and it does so by perpetuating our
\ncollective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware
\nof.\u201d<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nWhoever
\ndiscovered water, it certainly wasn’t a fish. \u00a0To leave the \u2018water\u2019, or Plato’s cave takes courage and the knowledge that there is something beyond the web of control. \u00a0<\/span><\/span>Over 2,300 hundred years ago Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix in the Allegory of the Cave<\/i> as a slow, excruciating process akin to walking out onto a sunny beach after spending years in a basement watching Kabuki.

<\/span><\/span>
\nHow can this awakening be explained? \u00a0<\/span><\/span>How do you describe the feeling of swimming in the ocean at dusk to someone who has never even seen the sea? \u00a0You can’t, but what you can do is crack open a window for them and if enough windows are opened, the illusion begins to lose its luster.\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/span>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”<\/p><\/div>\n

\n― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<\/div>\n
\n
\nContemporary
\nbaptized, corporatized and sanitized man rarely has the occasion to
\nquestion his identity, and when he does a typical response might be, “I am product
\nmanager for a large retail chain, married to Betty, father of Johnny, a Democrat, Steelers fan and a Lutheran.”<\/div>\n
\nHis answers
\nimply not only his beliefs but the many responsibilities,
\nrules and restrictions he is subjected to.  Few if any of these were
\never negotiated-  they were imposed on him yet he still considers himself free.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nBut is free the
\nright adjective for him, or would modern domesticated simian be more apt?  He has been told what to do, believe, think and
\nfeel since he can remember.  A very clever rancher has bred billions of
\nthese creatures around the globe and created the most profitable livestock
\nimaginable.  They work for him, fight for him, die for him, believe his
\nwildest tales, laugh at his jokes and rarely get out of line.  When domesticated
\nman does break one of the rules there are armies, jailers, psychiatrists and bureaucrats
\nprepared to kill, incarcerate, drug or hound the transgressor into submission.<\/span>
<\/span>
<\/a><\/div>\n
\nOne of the
\nmost fascinating aspects of domesticated man’s predicament is that he never
\nlooks at the cattle, sheep and pigs who wind up on his plate and make the very
\nsimple deduction that he is just a
\ntalking version of them, corralled and shepherded through his entire life.  <\/span>How is this
\naccomplished?  Only animals that live in hierarchical groups can be
\ndominated by man. The trick is to fool the animal into believing that the
\nleader of the pack or herd is the person who is domesticating them.
\n Once this is accomplished the animal is under full control of its homo
\nsapien master. The domesticated man is no different, originally
\norganized in groups with a clear hierarchy and maximum size of <\/span>150<\/span><\/a>–  it was easy to replace the leader of
\nthese smaller groups with one overarching figure such as God, King, President,
\nCEO etc.  <\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe
\nmethodology for creating this exceptionally loyal and obedient modern breed,
\nhomo domesticus, can be described as having seven pillars from which an immense
\nmatrix captures the talking simians and their conscious minds and hooks them
\ninto a complex mesh from which few ever escape.  The system is so advanced
\nthat those who do untangle themselves and cut their way out of the net are
\nimmediately branded as mentally ill, anti-social, or simply losers who can’t
\naccept the ‘complexity of modern life’, i.e. conspiracy nuts.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nPlato
\ndescribed this brilliantly in his Allegory of the Cave<\/i>, where people only see
\nman made shadows of objects, institutions, Gods and ideas:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n “–Behold! human beings living in an underground cave…here they have been from their childhood…necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance…the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets… and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall…”<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIt began
\nwith the word, which forever changed the ability of men to manipulate each
\nother.  Before language, every sensation was directly felt through the
\nsenses without the filter of words.  But somewhere around <\/span>50,000 years ago<\/span><\/a> language began to replace reality and the first pieces of code were put in place for
\nthe creation of the Matrix.  As soon as the words began to flow the world
\nwas split, and from that fracturing was
\nborn man’s angst and slavery.  The words separated us from who we really
\nwere, creating the first screen onto which the images from Plato’s cave were
\ncast.  Gurdjieff said it well, “Identifying is the chief obstacle to
\nself-remembering. A man who identifies with anything is unable to
\nremember himself.”<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIt’s no
\naccident that in Hesiod’s ages of man the Golden Age knew no agriculture,
\nwhich appeared in the Silver age, and by the time we reach the Bronze age the
\ndominant theme is toil and strife.  <\/span>The two key elements to the
\nenslavement of man were clearly language and agriculture.  In the hunter
\ngatherer society, taking out the boss was no more complicated than landing a well placed fastball to the head.  Only since the advent of farming was the
\npossibility of creating full time enforcers and propagandists made possible,
\nand hence enslavement inevitable.<\/div>\n
\nThe search
\nfor enlightenment rarely if ever bears fruits in those temples of words, our
\nschools and universities.
\n Almost all traditions point to isolation and silence as the only
\npaths to awakening;  they are the true antidotes to modern slavery.  As Aristotle wrote, “Whosoever is delighted
\nin solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”<\/span><\/div>\n
\nSo from the
\ninstitution from which we are mercilessly bombarded with words and enslaved to
\ntime, we begin our descent through the seven layers of the Matrix.<\/span>

<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nEducation<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n


<\/span>
\n
There are
\nthings we are born able to do like eating, laughing and crying and others we
\npick up without much of an effort such as walking, speaking and fighting, but
\nwithout strict institutional education there is no way that we can ever become
\na functioning member of the Matrix. We must be indoctrinated, sent to Matrix
\nboot camp, which of course is school.  How else could you take a hunter
\nand turn him into a corporate slave, submissive to clocks, countless bosses,
\nmonotony and uniformity?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Children
\nnaturally know who they are, they have no existential angst, but schools
\nimmediately begin driving home the point of schedules, rules, lists and grades which inevitably lead the students
\nto the concept of who they aren’t.  We drill the little ones until they
\nlearn to count money, tell time, measure progress, stand in line,
\nkeep silent and endure submission.  They learn they aren’t free and they
\nare separated from everyone else and the world itself by a myriad of divides,
\nnames and languages.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nIt can’t be
\nstressed enough how much education is simply inculcating people with the clock
\nand the idea of a forced identity.  What child when she first goes to school
\nisn’t taken back to hear herself referred to by her full name?<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nIt’s not as
\nif language itself isn’t sufficiently abstract- nothing must be left without
\na category.  Suzy can’t just be
\nSuzy-  she is a citizen of a country and a state, a member of a religion and a product of a
\ncivilization, many of which have flags, mascots, armies, uniforms, currencies
\nand languages.  Once all the mascots, tag lines and corporate creeds are
\nlearned, then history can begin to be taught.  The great epic myths
\ninvented and conveniently woven into the archetypes which have come down
\nthrough the ages cement this matrix into the child’s mind.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nEven the
\nlanguage that she speaks without effort must be deconstructed for her.  An
\napple will never again be just an apple-  it will become a noun, a subject, or
\nan object.  Nothing will be left untouched, all must be ripped apart and
\nexplained back to the child in Matrixese.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\nWe are
\ntaught almost nothing useful during the twelve or so years that we are institutionalized and conditioned for slavery- not how to cook, farm, hunt,
\nbuild, gather, laugh or play.  We are only taught how to live by a clock and conform to institutionalized behaviors that make for solid careers as slaveocrats. <\/span><\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>
\n

\n<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nGovernment<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n


\n<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

In the
\ncountries that claim to be democratic the concept of a government created
\nto serve the people is often espoused.  Government, and the laws they create and enforce are institutionalized
\nsocial control for the benefit of those who have seized power.  This has
\nalways been the case and always will be.  In the pre-democratic era it was much
\nclearer to recognize who had power, but the genius of massive democratic states are the
\nlayers upon layers of corporatocracy and special interests which so brilliantly
\nconceal the identify of those who really manage the massive apparatus of control.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe
\nfunctions of the state are so well ensconced in dogmatic versions of history
\ntaught in schools that almost no one questions why we need anything beyond the
\nbare essentials of government to maintain order in the post-industrial age.  The
\nhistory classes never point the finger at the governments themselves
\nas the propagators and instigators of war, genocide, starvation and corruption.  In Hollywood’s version of history, the one most people absorb, ‘good’ governments are always portrayed as fighting ‘bad’ ones.  We have yet to see a film where all the people on both sides simply disengage from their governments and ignore the calls to violence.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span>
\nThe
\nstate apparatus is based on law, which
\nis a contract between the people and an organism created to administer common
\nnecessities- an exchange of sovereignty
\nbetween the people and the state.  This sounds
\nreasonable, but when one looks at the mass slaughters of the 20th<\/sup> century, almost without
\nexception, the perpetrators are the states themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nThe loss of
\nhuman freedom is the only birthright offered to the citizens of the modern
\nnation.   There is never a choice.  It is spun as a freedom and a privilege when it is in fact indentured servitude to the state apparatus and the corporatocracy that controls it.<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n

Patriotism
\nis pure abstraction, a completely artificial mechanism of social control.  People are taught to value their
\ncompatriots above and beyond those of their own ethnic background, race or
\nreligion.  The organic bonds are to be shed in favor of the great
\ncorporate state.  From infancy children are indoctrinated like Pavlov’s
\ndogs to worship the paraphernalia of the state and see it as a mystical demigod.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nWhat is a
\ncountry?  Using the United States as
\nexample, what actually is this entity?  Is
\nit the USPS, the FDA, or the CIA?  Does loving one’s country mean one should love
\nthe IRS and the NSA?  Should we feel differently
\nabout someone if they are from Vancouver instead of Seattle?  Loving a state is the same as loving a
\ncorporation, except with the corporations there is still no stigma attached to
\nnot showing overt sentimental devotion to their brands and fortunately, at least for the
\nmoment, we are not obligated at birth to pay them for a lifetime of services,
\nmost of which we neither need nor want.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nFlags, the Hollywood version of history and presidential worship are drilled into us to maintain the illusion of the ‘other’ and force the ‘foreigner\/terrorist\/extremist’ to wear the stigma of our projections.  The archaic tribal energy
\nthat united small bands and helped them to fend off wild beasts and hungry hoards
\nhas been converted into a magic wand for
\nthe masters of the matrix.  Flags are waved, and we respond like hungry Labradors jumping at a juicy prime rib swinging before our noses.  Sentimental statist propaganda is simply the mouthguard used to soften the
\njolt of our collective electroshock therapy. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\nReligion<\/span><\/h3>\n

<\/span>
<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

As powerful as the patriotic sects are, there has always been a need for something higher.  Religion comes from the Latin ‘re-ligare’ and it means to reconnect.  But reconnect to what?  The question before all religions is, what have we been disconnected from?  The indoctrination and alienation of becoming a card carrying slave has a cost;  the level of abstraction and the disconnect from any semblance of humanity converts people into nihilistic robots.  No amount of patriotic fervor can replace having a soul.  The flags and history lessons can only give a momentary reprieve to the emptiness of the Matrix and that’s why the priests are needed.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThe original spiritual connection man had with the universe began to dissolve into duality with the onset of language, and by the time cities and standing armies arrived he was in need of a reconnection, and thus we get our faith based religions.  Faith in the religious experiences of sages, or as William James put it, faith in someone else’s ability to connect.  Of course the liturgies of our mainstream religions offer some solace and connection, but in general they simply provide the glue for the Matrix.  A brief perusal of the news will clearly show that their ‘God’ seems most comfortable amidst the killing fields. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf we focus on the Abrahamic religions, we have a god much like the state, one who needs to be loved.  He is also jealous of the other supposedly non-existent gods and is as sociopathic as the governments who adore him.  He wipes out his enemies with floods and angels of death just as the governments who pander to him annihilate us with cultural revolutions, atom bombs, television and napalm.  Their anthem is, “Love your country, it’s flag, its history, and the God who created it all”-  an ethos force fed to each new generation. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nCircus<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n
\n

The sad
\nthing about circus is that it’s generally not even entertaining.  The
\nslaves are told it’s time for some fun and they move in hordes to fill stadiums, clubs, cinemas or simply to stare into their
\nelectrical devices believing that they are are being entertained by vulgar propaganda.   <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nAs long as
\nhomo domesticus goes into the appropriate corral, jumps when she is told to and agrees wholeheartedly that she is having fun, than she is a good slave worthy
\nof her two days off a week and fifteen days vacation at the designated farm
\nwhere she is milked of any excess gold she might have accumulated during the year.
\n Once she is too old to work and put to pasture, holes are <\/span>strategically placed in her vicinity so she and her husband can spend their last few dollars trying to get a small white ball
\ninto them.<\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn a daily
\nbasis, after the caffeinated maximum effort has been squeezed out of her, she is placed in front of a screen, given the
\nMatrix approved beverage (alcohol), and re-indoctrinated for several hours
\nbefore starting the whole cycle over again. God forbid anyone ever took a
\nhallucinogen and had an original thought.  We are, thankfully, protected from any substances that might actually
\nwake us up and are encouraged stick to the booze.  
\nThe matrix loves coffee in the morning, alcohol in the evening and
\nnever an authentic thought in between.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn a more
\nprimal level we are entranced with the contours of the perfect body and dream
\nof ‘perfect love’, where our days will be filled with soft caresses, sweet words
\nand Hollywood drama.   This is maybe the
\nmost sublime of the Matrix’s snares, as Venus’s charms can be so convincing one
\nwillingly abandons all for her devious promise.  Romantic love is dangled like bait, selling us down the path of sentimentally coated lies and mindless consumerism. <\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\nMoney<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n


<\/span><\/span>
\n
Money is
\ntheir most brilliant accomplishment.  Billions of people spend most of their waking lives either acquiring it or spending it without ever understanding what it actually is.  In this hologram of a world, the only thing
\none can do without money is breath.  For almost every other human activity
\nthey want currency, from eating and drinking to clothing oneself and finding a partner. Religion
\ncame from innate spirituality and patriotism from the tribe, but money they invented
\nthemselves-  the most fantastic and effective of all their tools of
\ndomestication.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nThey have
\nconvinced the slaves that money actually has some intrinsic value, since at some
\npoint in the past it actually did.  Once they were finally able to
\ndisconnect money completely from anything other than their computers, they finally
\ntook complete control, locked the last gate and electrified all the fences.  They ingeniously print it up out of the
\nnothing and loan it with interest in order for 18-year-olds to spend four years
\ndrinking and memorizing propaganda as they begin a financial indebtedness that <\/span>will most likely never end.  <\/span><\/div>\n
\nBy the time
\nthe typical American is thirty the debt is mounted so high that they abandon any
\nhope of ever being free of it and embrace their mortgages, credit cards, student
\nloans and car loans as gifts from a sugar daddy.  What they rarely asks themselves is why they must
\nwork to make money while banks can simply create it with a few key strokes.  If they printed out notes on their HP’s and loaned
\nthem with interest to their neighbors, they would wind up in a penitentiary, but
\nnot our friends on Wall Street-  they do just that and wind up pulling the strings in the White House.  The  genius of the money scam is how obvious it
\nis.  When people are told that banks
\ncreate money out of nothing and are paid interest for it the good folks are left incredulous.  “It can’t be that simple!”  And therein lies the rub- no one wants to believe that they have been <\/span><\/span>enslaved <\/span>so easily .<\/div>\n
\n

“Culture is
\nthe effort to hold back the mystery, and replace it with a mythology.”<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\nAs Terence
\nloved to say, “Culture is not your friend.”  It exists as a buffer to
\nauthentic experience.  As they created larger and larger communities, they
\nreplaced the direct spiritual experience of the shaman with priestly
\nreligion.  Drum beats and sweat were exchanged for digitized, corporatized noise. 
\nLocal tales got replaced by Hollywood blockbusters, critical thinking
\nwith academic dogma.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nIf money is
\nthe shackles of the matrix, culture is its operating system.  Filtered,
\ncentralized, incredibly manipulative, it glues all their myths together into
\none massive narrative of social control from which only the bravest of souls
\never try to escape.  It’s relatively
\nsimple to see the manipulation when one looks at patriotism, religion or
\nmoney.  But when taken as a whole, our culture seems as natural and timeless as the air we breathe, so intertwined with our
\nself conception it is often hard to see where we individually finish and our culture begins.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

\nEscaping the Grip of Control<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Some might
\nask why this all-pervasive network of control isn’t talked about or discussed
\nby our ‘great minds’.  Pre-Socratic scholar Peter Kingsley explains it
\nwell:<\/p><\/div>\n

\n“Everything
\nbecomes clear once we accept the fact that scholarship as a whole is not
\nconcerned with finding, or even looking for, the truth. That’s just a
\ndecorative appearance.  It’s simply concerned with protecting us from
\ntruths that might endanger our security; and it does so by perpetuating our
\ncollective illusions on a much deeper level than individual scholars are aware
\nof.”<\/span><\/span>

<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\nWhoever
\ndiscovered water, it certainly wasn’t a fish.  To leave the ‘water’, or Plato’s cave takes courage and the knowledge that there is something beyond the web of control.  <\/span><\/span>Over 2,300 hundred years ago Plato described the process of leaving the Matrix in the Allegory of the Cave<\/i> as a slow, excruciating process akin to walking out onto a sunny beach after spending years in a basement watching Kabuki.

<\/span><\/span>
\nHow can this awakening be explained?  <\/span><\/span>How do you describe the feeling of swimming in the ocean at dusk to someone who has never even seen the sea?  You can’t, but what you can do is crack open a window for them and if enough windows are opened, the illusion begins to lose its luster. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


\n<\/span>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-146720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}