A Reality Predicated on Myth
As you look around you, do you ever get the feeling that something is going on? Have you ever suspected that some gargantuan joke is being played, and that there are some people who are having a great laugh at our expense?
What if there was an artificial order imposed upon our random, chaotic existence? What if the architect of this order was not God, or Satan, for that matter? What if its creators were not Gods, or even Nietzschian supermen, but very ordinary human beings with a keen insight into the weaker side of human nature- people who were manipulators par excellence?
These rules form a matrix within which our world operated. It is resilient, having survived successive ages as the rise of one civilisation crowds out the decline and fall of another. Whatever external factors may occur, the matrix remains in place because it depends on three basic, innate and unchanging human traits.
The first is a primal need for authority. Though every human being is born with an innate capacity to think, thinking for ourselves is something we only do as an absolute last resort. Most of the decisions that we make day to day are nothing more than automatic responses. This relates to our morning bathroom routine, our selection of routes to take to work, the choices we make during the workday. It even relates to the way we interact with those around us.
Our lives take the form of a series of trance-states which occur in succession, one after another. How re respond to a new influenced is determined by our genetic programming and our societal conditioning. Only when we encounter a change in our surroundings – something unknown or unfamiliar – do we resort to independent thought. It is by understanding this reticence to engage our minds that the Players have been able to trap us exactly where they want us in their great Game.
In the absence of original and independent thought our minds have become empty, and the Players have taken advantage of this state by hypnotising us to think in a particular way. They have achieved this through the medium of suggestion, since any more direct assault on our minds would surely provoke a response. As it is, we have been lulled into a false sense of security which forces us to open our minds to their manipulations and accept their mythology for our reality. All the myths designed by the Players are bound together under the auspices of one great meta-myth: the Linearity myth. This prepares the ground for a mental takeover of society which has occurred on so fundamental a level that most people go about their lives having not the slightest inclination that it has taken place.
One great challenge in understanding this mountain of artifice is that it is so very, very dense. It is multi-layered and intricately interlaced. In this way it becomes exceedingly difficult for anyone to pull the strands apart and get at the truth hidden beneath.
As far as individual people are concerned, we exist in a kind of narcissistic trance which encourages us to think of ourselves as the focal point of the universe. Rather than see ourselves in the world, we view the world as revolving around us. Whereas the Players, who are narcissists through and through, really view the world in this way, the rest of us are only narcissistic to a limited extent, and the web of myths merely encourages us to think subliminally in such a way that this trait comes to the surface.
Today’s world is characterised more than ever by this trend towards narcissism. Whereas past generations are remembered by other traits – from bravery to cruelty – we are narcissists, and our world is conditioned accordingly. Narcissism exists across the spectrum of race, creed and colour, to the extent that we have come to accept it as the norm and never question its fundamental status as part of our society.
Moreover we have now reached the stage where narcissism itself is no longer seen as reprehensible, but as something to aspire it. It is the idol of the Players, and therefore serves as our idol too. We have become a community of idle idolaters, each aspiring to embody that “enlightened selfishness” which was the philosophy Adam Smith expounded as the justification for an acquisitive outlook in which greed has come to dominate over need.
Besides our individual tendency towards narcissism, we are also inclined towards tribal behaviour. How ever individual we may be, all human beings are essentially reliant on each other for social contact, and will naturally tend to gravitate towards one another. The groups to which we belong will exert considerable influence on how we think and on how we live our lives. If we are not careful we will be homogenized – trained to think and act like those around us.
The next level is the societal trance. This is a collection of related myths, which frame the worldview of society. Examples of this are the myth of scarcity, law and order, the sanctity of science, etc. Individually, these myths can be challenged, but taken together they are daunting.
The myth of linearity is the meta-myth, which supports all the others. It is the belief that sequential logic rules the world. That everything is related by interminable chains of cause and effect. Linearity is the wellspring from which all the other myths emanate and this myth is the glue that binds all others together.
We have been too long now in the dark; too long victims of these trance-states. It is time to case off the dominance of the myth-smiths and reclaim authority over our own destiny. What they will look like no one can know, but I for one am all for finding out!
John Berling Hardy reveals those critical truths which they will tell you at business school. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com
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