“Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?”
Because I choose to……
The Matrix
About the author: Carmen, an independent writer, amateur model, painter, performance artist, courtesan. Living in London.
Flicking through sixteen news channels trying to find something to watch, I realise there are many truths all playing out concurrently. The opinion that prevails is the one that broadcasts the loudest and has the greatest following. The religion that triumphs is the most dictatorial, has the highest visibility or exerts the greatest force. Many worlds, many ideas, many interpretations of the same reality and many, many “choices”.
The hollow rhetoric these channels expound all chime to the same simplistic tune…. Ultimately, this is a game of numbers and has precious little to do with individual choice. Am I a conspiracy theorist? No. Are there people attempting to perpetrate a conspiracy? Yes. Will they succeed? No. Why won’t they succeed? Because…… even though humanity seeks order, seeks a majority and seeks control, these are fundamentally only human traits. Outside of our meagre existence the laws of physics and chaos will always win. We can only attempt to control a brief space in time, but ultimately time confines and controls us. It may be an illusion, however time is a necessary construct for a carbon based world.
Hostages of mass, bound by our biological frailties. We humans are just clever creatures that have exceeded the parameters of our own intelligence with an illusion of individual identity. Yet if individual identity exists within your own reality then it is a reality in its own right. It is not possible to escape the decay of our physical organism but it is possible for an idea to surpass time and if an idea can be allowed to survive and evolve through many realities then an idea can in effect become real and in so doing, it can become the truth if you choose it.
Humanity is confronted with many choices to be made daily….. Which channel to watch? Which car to drive? What food to eat? What meetings to attend? What house to live in? Which God to worship? What stock to buy? This continuous chain reaction of yes\no choices leads us to believe that we are in control of our own destiny and making our own choices yet all of these choices were carefully laid out for us to make. Some people are perfectly happy to exist within this consumerist reality without ever questioning what exists outside of it. Some people define themselves by their car, their house, their job title, their religion, their stock portfolio but none of these things will transcend time. Identity is vain, it wants to exist forever and therefore many people preoccupy themselves with improving health, extending lifespan, and preserving youth whilst ignoring the fact that the world is overpopulated and there is no space for a vain individual to live an extended lifespan. Some of us will have to starve; there simply is not enough food and shelter to go around.
The competition for survival is confined to the “have nots” and the competition for ideology is confined to the “haves”. One owns the gene pool and the other owns the “system”. The two are inextricably linked and mutually dependant on each other for survival and therefore the need for control. Nobody likes to be controlled, hence the need to construct the illusion of individual identity, to create the delusion of free will. I chose my Mercedes Benz, I chose my Louis Vuitton, I chose Meryl Lynch to manage my stock portfolio but no, this is an illusion – they chose you. Years and years of careful and directed advertising, herding, and gentle nudging has been pushing you in the direction of making that acquisition and the flow of currency around the world is being carefully manipulated for control. The powers of good and evil are no longer battling for your soul, they’re battling for your cash and you need to be conscious of how you spend it because credit cards are the new electronic voting system.
The only value you can extract from life is what you can take away from it. What you can preserve in your own mind and heart. Happiness must be stolen from the day to day, the mundane and stockpiled like gold. The only reality you can actualise is the one that you want. It is the only real choice that you have in your lifetime and if you do not exert this will over your own life then you have no appreciation or understanding of the gift that you have been given. With so much choice and so much opportunity we have no excuse to all be variations of the same unconscious vanilla flavour anymore. It is our duty to our species to engage life and create the world that we want. If a chemical based punishment and reward system such as love can evolve into an ideal, then it can indeed pervade and surpass time. If seven billion people can experience love and the concept can exist concurrently in seven billion different realities then it is one of the most common underlying realities that exists and is in effect a truth because a majority is always right.
Scientists estimate that in fourty five years’ time it is likely that wealthy humans will be able to download their brains (poorer humans will have access to the technology after sixty to eighty years when it becomes more affordable). It will be possible for the human consciousness to gain immortality. It is imperative that we begin to commit the unconscious realm of emotion to the conscious realm of memory. Make it a habit, make it a thought. Choose love. Choose life. Choose happiness. We are in a position to create our own reality and in fourty five years we will be able to impart that reality with others. If it is possible to download a single brain then it will be possible to download a collective brain. It will be possible to put that brain on a rocket ship and send it to other parts of the universe. We may ultimately destroy ourselves but it is possible to share our humanity with the universe before we do. We have an opportunity to transcend time.
There is no longer an excuse to live a half existence. We have a responsibility to become our own individuals and to be ourselves one hundred percent of the time. If you don’t know what you like or want from life, then you should spend time getting to know yourself. Instead of writing a thesis or dissertation about other people’s opinions, write your own. It’s about looking at all sixteen channels and knowing that it’s all bollocks because the only channel that is relevant is yours. We can imbue life with meaning. We can give our existence a purpose. We are capable of going beyond being an organism if we choose to raise our consciousness above being an organism.
Upload brain – makes me think about “Ghost in the shell”
I get so disappointed when I encounter brain dead, expressionless people. Please folks, catch a wake up. Get a personality before it’s too late. If you can’t do it for yourself, if it’s too much for you to consciously engage in life then please do it for humanity because the “Smith Program” is getting too strong. Discover yourself and don’t forget to share it with the rest of the world because you are unique. You may have discovered something that nobody else knows. If you don’t share your contents with the world, then you are selfish. You may be depriving your fellow humans of an inimitable gift. Be bold, be adventurous, be out there and choose your news channel carefully.
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche