Machine Matters

Leaps of Faith and Logic

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio..."

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to the vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter." - Max Planck, Nobel Prize winner and founder of Quantum Theory

Illusions

Choices

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." - Henry David Thoreau

Hmmm

Wisdom Transcends Life

"You may be 38 years-old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, for some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid... You refuse to do it because you want to live longer... You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose popularity, or you're afraid that someone will stab you or shoot you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. 

Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of the earlier death of the spirit." - Martin Luther King Jr. 

Slogans for the Dead

Our existence on planet earth is a momentary flash of light in the enveloping abyss of an infinite mystery.

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

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.