We, the Sheeple
(Up to: Society And Control Music And Progress On Debt An Asexual Culture Of Sexuality Terrorism Is Communism On Fear )
Is this you?
[Citizens] too terrorized, too successfully propagandized, too willing to live vicariously through the ostenisbly functional relationships on TV, and don't forget just too damned tired to give a crap about anything but trying to get a decent night's sleep when possible, and make it safely to the grave without becoming homeless in the process...
Most of us live and die within boundaries. We are put through a world in which we love to pretend we have some element of control over what we do. But in reality, our actions are, on the whole, influenced far more by external forces than our own individualism, and that which we think of as individualism is nothing more than romanticism and folly. These pummelling forces that shape us take form in the range from fear to habit,and their illusiveness and inherentness mean that we rarely know the difference between one, the other, or our own mind. Some things we consciously carry out due to a perceived disadvantage, a fear of inferiority should we not, and other things we merely do without thinking, because it is the way we have been brought up, and there is no real need to change this, at least from our point of view. There is, in fact, so very, very little that we do for our own reason, or that we can say we do because it is truly what we have decided to do.
It is a mixture of these two poles, fear and habit, that effectively makes up our functioning in society. Or rather, it is society that decides the nature of these norms, and not the other way around. This must be a natural progression of any kind of naturally hierarchical society, i.e. one that has arisen from a desire to organise a massive set of bodies, without much form of scientific or thoroughly rational reasoning with regards the society as a whole. I count current democracies as an example of this "organic" organisation, infrastructures that place a small selection of actors above all else, generally our of convencience than for any other purpose. However, without further thought and analysis as to the purposefulness of such a system, this structure is wide open to forms of abuse that steer it towards a maintenance, and an increase, of power at the top of this hierarchy. The rush to produce a system that manages resources results in one that places governance above rationality.
The majority of us, however, never reach a position in which the amount of power we hold is greater than the amount of power held over us. While this by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it's coupling with an amorphous ruling level that does hold this ability means that an imbalance is created that is ultimately self-perpetuating. This means that the vast majority of a population are subject to the whims of those above them in the hierarchy.
It is these whims that manifest themselves as norms, and it is these that we then take for granted. Once the motivation to reflexively study our own constituency is removed, so the ability to influence our own lives is effectively abolished. In other words, by blinding a population as to its own potential, everything else becomes a matter of subtlety and persuasion. Thus. this blinkeredness and overall apathy is the first norm that needs to be put into place within a society in order to allow any other methods of control to be implemented with relative simplicity.
So, in opposition to this, it follows that the first point in realising oneself, as a separate entity to the containing structure, is the realisation of what is individual thought, and what is merely influence and instilled habitualism. This is the start of a long and twisted unravelling of what we think for ourselves and what others tell us to believe.
The world that most of us see is one of continuous overcoming. We face a constant struggle purely for survival, all set within an artificial culture. We proclaim that we are the most advanced, most civilised culture ever to grace the Earth's surface, and yet at the end of the day if we do not strive for achievement within our system, we literally die. It is our culture that tells us this, whether it be true or not. We worry about obtaining food, and about having a place to live, and if we do not constantly acquire a means of securing this, then all is lost. For most of us, daily struggle is a form of comfort, a means towards an end, of knowing that we will not drop out of the life that we know. At our most fundamental, we are driven by a fear that we will lose everything that we consider necessary.
Once we have obtained a sense of this security, then we feel free to indulge. Indeed, it is inflicted upon us like some sort of duty. We would rather have a job than a good job, as the imperative is on income, and once we have that then we can concentrate on enjoyment. This plunges us into a never-ending conflict between avoiding the bottom line of poverty, and the constant attaination of some kind of pleasure, something that justifies the work that we put in to simply avoiding fear. We acquire goods, we seek entertainment, and distractions. And all the time we are told that our jobs depend upon the economy, upon our ability to spend.
And so we bathe in distractions for all of the time that we can, as if it makes up for our enslavement to our own unconscious shying away from reaching a state of lacking what other have.
We adorn ourselves with items that we attach emotion to, goods that tell us how we should feel. Clothes, cosmetics, jewellery, all ways of pretending that we are someone we want to be, without even considering exactly who we are. We strive for recognition based on products that other people dream up, that other people even make. And we judge people based on their appearance, on their peacock-like display of "status". We reinforce our own needs.
We surround ourselves with artificial emotions. Music, stories, pictures that tell us how to feel. We take delight in the way we can experience true feelings without even leaving the room, and all for the price of a few hours' labour. All this experience, and no sacrifice.
Even that which we believe to be more real, all the extreme experiences, the vacational excursions into "reality" or into "fulfillment", all come about through a desire for variety and distraction and reward, and at the end of the day just give us pleasure in the form of memories rather than any real enrichment or enlightenment.
We live in a world constructed purely artificially. Not in terms of geology, or architecture, but in terms of motivation, expression, emotion and belief. We are told what we should buy, when we should have done things, how to love, what to look like, what truth is. And we accept all of it, following the path we are driven along like a flock of sheep. Even in our quest for alternatives we live in hypocritical path-following, as we search for some kind of uniqueness amongst the same shelves in the same grounds as those we wish to leave behind.
And all the time, the more we strive for distraction, the more we search for difference and some sort of meaning or justification, so the more we pander to the blindness cast upon us, the hand-me-down blanketing from those truly above the system, that decide the system. Feeding like pirhanas off each other, we remain embedded in our trodden state, chasing the scraps we are given, following orders without even realising it. We may whinge about it, but we never question it. The sheeple truly are too afraid to take their own future into their own hands.
(See also: Language To Control Fears )
