Zhengzhou, CHINA
Joined October 16th 2006
I'm wild.
Recent PostsFriends as EnemiesOctober 25th 2006 05:17
Society is prone to treat its greatest friends as its enemies. Where would the world be without Jesus, Socrates, Ghandi, Martin Luther King? But the lives of all four of these were cut short two by judicial execution, two by assassins bullets. All four were considered enemies of the societies in which they lived.
 Social Conditioning, Part 2October 19th 2006 07:15
I am not an anarchist.
I'm not so concerned about society setting rules for us to follow (after all I'm a lawyer) as I am concerned about society trying to determine my identity as equivalent to my social roles, and teaching me to pretend that I'm who society expects me to be (whether I really am or not). We are taught from an early age to put up a socially acceptable facade and to pretend that it's not a facade; after long enough we begin to believe it's real. So I would encourage people to make their own choices, but the choices we make are often defined by who we think we are - so if we allow society to tell us who we are, then we allow society to determine the choces we make. For example: I'm a lawyer, but then again I'm not. That's just one of the roles I play, not my identity. I find my peers all tend to think alike (they "think like lawyers" because they've been subtly taught that "what you do for a living" = "who you are". They all drive the same cars, live in the same neighborhoods, vote for the same candidates, etc. Off-duty conversation revolves around fascinating topics like furniture, dog food, and drywalling one's basement. Ultimately, we made society; it didn't make us. Though we all have to follow certain rules in order to live together in peace, we should not treat society as if it were a god to whom we owe our identity. It's not either/or: it's just that the more we are conditioned to believe that we are nothing but a set of roles, the more we allow our roles to swallow us up, and the more plastic" and more dehumanized we become. Conversely, the more we exercise the courage to think for ourselves and rely on our own perceptions, the more of our original humanity we recapture. That is what I'm trying to encourage people to do. One of society's primary functions is to produce mediocrity. If one of its members slips from mediocity down into depravity (crime, mental illness, etc.), society will take corrective action - either to reform or treat the person, or to warehouse that person (as in a prison) so that he will no longer threaten others. Likewise, if a person tries to move up from mediocrity into greatness, society will move against him and attempt to either push him back down into mediocrity or get rid of him (or her). And by "greatness" I don't mean Bill Gates. I mean Jesus. I mean Nelson Mandela. I think that it's likely that more great men and women have been executed by society than have won Nobel prizes.
Social Conditioning: The Most Powerful Mind Altering Drug of AllOctober 18th 2006 06:26
It starts when were small children, about the time we first develop self-awareness. Society steps in first in the form of our parents, then out teachers, then the media, or bosses at work, our peers and tries to tell us who we are. Thats when we begin creating the false self, the self that is a response to the demands of the society around us. We begin managing other peoples impressions of us, we begin to lie, we begin to act like a reflection of what we think the world expects us to be. Before too long we can no longer see ourselves in the mirror we have stepped through the looking-glass. We forget that the false self is an artifice, and we begin to believe our own BS we begin to believe that the false self is the real self, and thus submerge our real selves inside the tomb that we have created to encase it. Indeed, social conditioning is the most powerful of all mind-altering drugs.
But what happens if you suddenly wake up and remember who you are? What happens if you try to reclaim your real self? You will find yourself besieged on all sides, surrounded by a society full of other false selves who are utterly hostile to what you are doing. A counterfeit HATES the presence of the genuine article because it reveals his own counterfeitness by comparison. Above all, it is the people closest to you your family and your closest friends who will oppose you the most vigorously, because they are the ones who have made the heaviest investment in thinking of you as you have always seemed to be. And once your true self comes out they will not recognize you, thus proving that they never knew you in the first place. They will, ironically, accuse you of having become phony because you wont think what they tell you to think anymore or say what they tell you to say. And they will do anything, ANYTHING, to beat you back into your tomb. For most people, complete authenticity is crazy. But what is crazy, really? My personal definition is any way of being or thinking that is inconsistent with the prevailing 21st century insanity; i.e., being normal. I thank God Im crazy. If I wasnt, Id probably go insane.
The Abuse of Psychiatric PowerOctober 17th 2006 08:12
A lot of people's definition of "crazy" seems to be "not being what I want you to be and refusing to think what I tell you to think".
When you are a small child your parents are your gods, and they know it. It is a struggle for every parent to give up this godlike status as the child grows up, and often they will fight to keep this status even after their offspring reaches adulthood. The interactions of many families are based on irrational belief systems and systems of manipulation and intimidation that preserve the authority of the parents through subtle psychological means long after the parents should have voluntarily relinquished their authority over their offspring. Like petty dictators, some parents simply do not want to let go of power
Introduction to the MatrixOctober 17th 2006 07:42
This blog is called "The Matrix" after the film of the same name. In that film, the protagonist Neo discovers that everything around him is an illusion, and that he is really a prisoner of a system that has enslaved his mind. So are we. It's not the Agents we have to fear, it's the lies that float along the breeze everywhere we go, that show up in unbelievably subtle ways to brainwash us and prevent us from seeing things as they really are. I am trying to machete my way through this jungle of falsehood, and I submit this blog as a sort of progress report.
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Comment by JakeDanger
on Social Conditioning, Part 2
The Matrix
of society himself, he knew nothing better than to define himself in terms of other products. Our
factories pump out nearly identical plastic Barbie dolls by the millions, and our families and schools
pump out nearly identical plastic people by the millions; when they grow up we house them in nearly
identical prefabricated cookie-cutter homes and provide them with prefabricated opinions ("choose
from among Opinions A, B, or C"). Everyone asks and answers the question "who am I?" one way or the
other. Not to dwell on the question is simply to answer it answer it by default - to let society answer
it for us. If we want to make a real contribution to the world we must be real people, not cheap, plastic,
mass-produced products. Some would call that "selfish" (those who stand to gain from the docility of
the masses), but it's not - I'm not a Barbie doll, but then again neither is anyone else. You can't love
or value someone who for all you know is nothing but a piece of plastic.
I like the line in Pink Floyd's "The Wall":
There must be some mistake I didn't mean to let them take away my soul
am I too old is it too late?