In the face of cosmological
time – an estimated 14 billion years since the universe
began – a 70-year lifespan is but a speck of dust billowing in the crosswinds
of eternity. The fact that you or I are even here at all owes itself to an
infinite number of variables and conditions. To alter any one of these could
literally erase us from existence.
It’s sad to consider how so many take this gift, this
momentary sensory experience, this brief expression of conscious awareness, and
allow it to be subjugated by systems, schemes, and dogma.
For those who spend their lives servicing empty institutions
and for those who spend their spare time wading through the “apps” and icons of
our fetid culture – mental obedience and subjugation are sadly the most
comfortable of fits.
If it were called something trendy like “e-slave” and the
proper celebrity endorsement were secured, Beyonce perhaps, many of the enraptured masses
would pay for the lash and shackles themselves.
Our very culture has become the greatest barrier to individual
awareness and enlightenment. The monuments of our ingenuity and tradition have become
alters of sacrifice – offerings to the demiurge of distraction,
decadence, and conformity.
We have become infected by the Cult of Personality and actually
call our bureaucrats “rock stars” and “cowboys” and “mavericks”. We actually believe
the Madison Avenue spin, the contrived photo ops, the tele-prompter-reading
“reporters” and politicians selling the illusion like Vegas con men. We continue to allow the least enlightened and the least
visionary to sit in positions of power as we passively bear witness to the
systematic advancement of authoritarian control.
An occasional Tea Party or Occupy movement aside, there is
very little indication of resistance. You can hardly hear the rumbling beneath
the den of iPods and Plasma television sets.
Why?
Distraction certainly plays a role. But I think that there’s
something much deeper and more primal being used to direct the actions of the enculturated:
Fear
Fear
Sadly, it seems to be the driving force and most necessary
variable in shaping this complex topography of ritual self-destruction. Those
who seek to rule and dominate have long understood the power of fear in coercing
the opinions and actions of the masses.
Whether the crisis be real or manufactured, it is certainly never wasted.
A cursory glimpse at the American landscape today reveals a
clutter of surveillance cameras, threat fusion centers, TSA checkpoints, terror
alert levels, manufactured crises, paramilitary police, riot gear, tear gas,
tasers, chem trails, GMO foods, fluoridated water, BPA, tainted vaccines, endless
warfare, propaganda, corporate corruption, government waste, financial
collapse, derivative schemes, covert operations, ever-expanding prison
populations, assassinations and kill-lists, suspicious “suicides”, enemy
combatants, rendition – a literal hellscape,
a soulless pathological playground of regression and repression – and fear.
A state of fear traps consciousness within the primal
aspects of our reptilian hardware – our base cognitive core born of animal
instincts and survival. This hardware can only sustain the lowest level of
awareness.
Manifesting in denial, we seek escapism and distraction,
routine and ritual, hierarchies and rulers, order and authority.
As goes the famous Litany:
“Fear is the little death that brings TOTAL obliteration”- FRANK HERBERT, DUNE
And unfortunately, fear shapes the landscape of today’s culture.
It obliterates that spark of divine light and transforms life into a faint
flicker of ritual, repetition, and redundancy – then the void.
The landscape of fear bends toward the point of ultimate
density like a spiraling black hole collapses into its singularity. The level
of fear when confronting the endless unknown is inversely proportional to
awareness. As such, the only way to combat this form of
manipulation is through individual awareness and awakening – the basis of true
spirituality.
From the moveable type of Gutenberg’s imagination was born
an entire revolution of awareness. The ripples of that single moment of
invention radiate outward from the Renaissance and Reformation through the Age
of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. By making print ubiquitous, the
common man was granted access to knowledge never before imagined.
Culture generated by the grass-roots can bypass the institutions
and monuments of control much as the pervasive jungle swallows the pyramids and
cities of the Aztec.
The revolution is ultimately a reclamation. A return to awareness and reality.
In this age of technology and connectivity, we can either be
enslaved by the cultural monuments of distraction and celebrity or we can go
around them and create new culture.
The individual moving towards enlightenment, maturity,
wisdom necessarily seeks a life free of constraint. A life based in liberty. A
self-directed form of existence.
The unaware, the uninformed, the ignorant, and the slothful –
these fall victim to the manufactured lies of the state and believe only the
shadows upon the walls.
The age of the internet has the potential to usher in a new
revolution of awareness as monumental as Gutenberg’s machine. Though the oligarchs
seek to inundate this technological marvel with mindless distraction and
celebrity narcissism, many have begun the historical process of awakening. Soon the “shams and delusions” of modern
culture will dissolve along with the framework of lies upon which the scenery
is arranged.
Dissent is the byproduct of the creative consciousness –
born of awareness and enslaved by none. AWAKE. ALIVE. EMPOWERED.
“…You don’t have to
stick a flower in your hair and go to San Francisco. You just go to the Web.
Find the others. We all need to create affinity groups which are subsets of the
much larger community that we are part of. And then, using this technology,
which was designed to keep track of us, to pick our pockets, and to sell us
junk we don’t want, use this technology
to produce art, massive amounts of subversive art. And all art is subversive… All truth that springs from the individual
is subversive...” –Terence Mckenna, 1996
The culture of rebellion is the culture of creativity.
Any time we control and
direct our own attention toward the fulfillment of our own unique and
personal inner-convictions, we are engaged in the creative process. As
such, one’s own life becomes the work of art.
It is necessarily subversive to modes of control and manipulation.
We cannot solve the many problems of the world, but we can work to free our consciousness from
the dungeons of ignorance and the unexamined life.
A new Age of Enlightenment begins and ends with the
enlightenment and awareness of the individual.
So go meditate! Paint a picture! Plant a
garden! Write a book! Build a cabinet! Compose a song! Direct a
documentary! Choreograph a Dance! Bring forth from the imagination! Bypass the system! Turn off the TV! Begin anew!
The time is now.
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