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An essay by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.
The Question of the Day: Am I a Skeptic?
[thoughts ~from burning woman~ by Sha'Tara]
(pre-PS: before you jump on me for spelling sceptic as skeptic, truth is, it's six of one, seven of the other. In this case, the Uncle Sam spelling makes more sense to me. And now, on with the show...)
I don't like labels but sometimes you need a label, a sort of identifying tag, just for this world. This world, or I should say, the people in this world, are in love with labels. I think that labels are the means by which they navigate their social cesspool, or perhaps in the spirit of misplaced charity, I should say milieu... I've gone through a whole slough of labels over time but just as I thought I was done with them there is still one that may fit, however loosely: skeptic. I think that I may be a skeptic. Believe all things, believe in nothing and all of that. Seems to fit the concept of skepticism fairly accurately. But I remain skeptical about that, of course.
Not too long ago I wrote about loyalty, having concluded that man is a loyal creature, even if such loyalty doesn't bear much scrutiny and is readily changeable. And if memory serves I concluded that man's need for loyalty is based on his existential fear of death, which means fear of life's vagaries, the fear that he may not get his greedy little hands on all that he wants out of his little life before it is snatched from him.
How does man maintain this loyalty, even when it is full of contradiction and ridiculous, un-provable assertions? By living in denial. As someone said, man's life switch default position is denial. That means living in conscious and unconscious self-delusion. Believing when there is nothing to hold the belief together except more self-delusion based on philosophies cooked up by "ancient, safely dead, smart guys," con men and (in)famous people. Most people's philosophies (and they'd probably get quite upset if they were accused of having any philosophy at all) are simply based on hearsay, what they've been taught, what they've read and mostly, on what they've been told, brainwashed, programmed, conditioned, brow-beaten to believe. Very little if any ever arises from their own mind, as in having even a hint of newly minted thought sloshing around up there. I have yet to be surprised.
Ever since the incarnation of man's new-found god of biological science, meaning Darwin the Divine, "Denial Man" has been increasingly pushed away from his sky god religions into a new pattern of non-thought religion called the philosophy of determinism. Man, so it goes, has no free thought, never had any. It was all a delusion. Reasoning, understanding, making up one's mind about anything had always been simply the random movements of particles in motion. A push-pull reciprocal motion circulating energy in propitious fashion to form collections and collectives. No such thing as a mind; no such thing as taking responsibility for anything: it's simply not possible, nor, claims modern science with increasing tempo, is it needed or desirable. Man's brain must be re-programmed so that he will, once and for all, stop thinking that he has the ability to think.
Interesting process. Even under the most dire, fiery and torturous moments of Iron Age Religious totalitarianism, man was still allowed to think, to reason, if within strict boundaries. But under the ultimate totalitarianism of New World Order Scientific dictatorship over mind, such futile efforts must be eradicated, erased, wiped clean, from man's brain. He must be brought to his proper place where he will follow orders, not by choice nor force but simply because he will not be capable of doing anything else but follow orders, in happy blank-and-bland-ness.
In Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" this new man was engineered in pre-determined social classes within "hatcheries" and taught to love his place in society through conditioning centers. From there, the new man's docility was maintained with calculated doses of the soma drug. Thus were they kept as good and happy members of society. Doubtless Huxley was a prophet. That is exactly what modern Neo-Darwinist scientists are busy accomplishing by spreading their concept of a totally rational, materialistic universe throughout the entire spectrum of public and private education. Do they care whether they be right or wrong? Well, since there is no such thing as right, wrong or caring, how can that possibly matter? They get to play with their toys and they, and others, get to garner more power over the self-deluded masses. Win-win situation.
As a skeptic (the more I use that term, the more I like how it feels!) I sit back and laugh at these fools. Intuitively, subjectively, I know that the more they screw with peoples' brains, the farther from their goal of controlling an (however skewed and messed with) intelligent species, becomes. Oh, sure, they will probably gain more control with probes and implants and lobotomies than the commercial media does now with advertising and religion with its tarnished pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by approaches, but they will soon come against the proverbial brick wall; encountering that non-material thing that will hover around their computers and microscopes and refuse to lie gently upon the glass slide to be analyzed and catalogued. No matter what they do, some "crazy" will paint a picture of something that defies their reality; some "abnormal" type will write a poem, or a song that mocks their designer normality and legislated normalcy. Some round pegs will simply not fit in their neatly pigeon-holed empty square receptacles. And since their self-delusion exceeds that of all the rest, they won't be able to explain it with their materialistic theories of "all that is and all that can be" and they won't be able to stop it or kill it. It will drive them mad and they will turn to violence to "prove" such a thing cannot be. Anyone exhibiting any sign of non-material "something" will be slated for elimination for the good of the majority. And, since no matter how implanted, programmed and conditioned people will be they will still possess consciousness, that ultimate bogey man of modern science, any thinking person can see where this is going to go.
Move over, Tomas de Torquemada, Hitler, Stalin, you pussies. Here come the Darwinist Judges, the self-appointed final arbiters over whether a man, woman or child is exhibiting, or has exhibited, any signs of consciousness. If found guilty, well, ever heard of soylent green?* Be happy and honored that you may redeem yourselves by becoming food for the acquiescent and quiescent masses.
Before I sign off, "they" say that skeptics are people who take away the carrot and stick and offer nothing in return. Well, before I'm accused of standing at the door to the theatre convincing people that the show is a fake and causing them to throw away expensive tickets, here's the deal: I am not, not offering anything in return. I'm saying, once again, that to understand what's going on, one needs to become self-empowered. I know, that's a downer: can't be bought; can't be found in a book or a lifetime of specialized study; can't be fabricated from recycled plastic in China; doesn't come from prayer or from attending church - need I go on? It's free because it's inside you. You were born with it and promptly trained and taught never, ever, to exhibit such an anti-social tendency. But considering where that society is heading for, now is as good a time as any to take out the little casket and force open the lock. Let the genie out for a breath of fresh air. Who knows but she may be so thankful, she'll grant you your life's wish, or show you why it was a really stupid wish and you can do so much better.
*NOTE: Soylent Green: 70's movie about global warming, endemic pollution and overcrowding world wide. In 2022, the "Soylent Green" corporation is exposed for using human remains to make their food wafers which it claims it made from plankton. Someone with a brain finally figured it out: the oceans were dead, they was no plankton to harvest, hence the food wafer was made from something else, something actually quite abundant and easily harvested... and you'll never guess who were in on this "development."
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I guess I must be a skeptic to because I keep finding myself debunking ridiculous theories and beliefs. Yet I've functioned and played "roles" in the matrix in the process. Of all the theories out there, Darwinism seems to be the most possible, although I have decried the "watering down" of the gene pool by our dependence on technology for everything. As I watch the Naked and Afraid utterly fail at trying to live like our ancestors as little as 10,000 years ago, I fear we are becoming as bland as soylent green as we strap jet packs on our backs and fly like Icarus.
Ron
~W~