Within the prolific but monotone hyperreality that we have inadvertently and unknowingly created for ourselves, all that exists are ‘strategic manoeuvres. It is simply not possible to engage in any activity that is not a strategic manoeuvre – which is to say, any activity is not directed towards purely towards obtaining a pre-specified outcome. Any activity that isn’t directed towards a known outcome does not exist within this realm.
From the rational perspective, which is our perspective, we wouldn’t value ‘non-strategic activity’ anyway; we refer to such activity as being purely random and from our point of view this translates as being nothing more than a meaningless blip. We see it as error and nothing more. We only value stuff when it has potential to help us fulfil our agenda, when we think that it could be useful in terms of us achieving our goals. Activity is seen only as ‘a means to an end’ and if there isn’t an end then this means that there is no value in it!
In the natural world non-strategic activity happens all the time however – it’s the dominant theme – but in this context we call it spontaneity rather than random error (or ‘noise’) and this is of course not such a dismissive way of talking about it. This is the difference between the formal and real-world systems – the former consists entirely of directed change whilst the latter is wholly spontaneous, spontaneous all the way. When we are adapted to a formal system (which is a world that is based entirely on who’s or concepts then this necessarily entails us being governed by those same rules, those same concepts, which means that we’re no longer spontaneous, can no longer act freely. Spontaneity equals freedom – it means that there aren’t any rules or preconceptions to constrain us.
It isn’t just the case that the Purposeful Self – the self which is adapted to the Mind-Created Virtual Reality – doesn’t value non-strategic activity, it’s incapable of it too. It’s not just that that PS prefers to live in the Directed Mode, or makes the choice to do so, but rather that it couldn’t be spontaneous if its life depended upon it. The PS especially couldn’t be spontaneous if its life depended on it – we can’t be spontaneous when we’re under pressure because spontaneity only happens when there is no pressure! Spontaneity only happens when there’s no pressure (or no constraint) and within the MCVR pressure is all there is. The MCVR is the Pressure World. As we have just said, spontaneity is simply another way of talking about freedom. We can’t be spontaneous just as long as we’re in Control Mode because Control Mode means that we have taken on personal responsibility for whatever is happening and the one thing spontaneity never can be is ‘our own responsibility’.
The purposeful or adapted self cannot engage in ‘non-strategic activity’ – it can only ever do things for a reason. As we’ve just said, we don’t generally worry about this unduly (if at all) since we don’t consider that there is anything else apart from ‘doing stuff on purpose’. We don’t feel that we have been constrained by our purposefulness, or that we’re missing out as a result of it. We believe tightly-focussed purposefulness to be the optimal approach. And yet we are missing out – we’re missing out big time! We need a reason to do anything, a reason to make any move at all, and this doesn’t sound strange to us because we are so very familiar with it. It is all the same a very peculiar thing – it’s truly bizarre and yet we absolutely can’t see it. We can’t see it because we are acting in Machine Mode and Machine Mode can’t acknowledge spontaneity, obviously enough.
All of our reasons are generated by the machine which is thought; they arise out of the logic of that machine, they are extensions (or projections) of it, and what this means is that our restriction to the Realm of Purposefulness would be more properly described as being in a state of total slavery to it. Absurdly, we can’t do anything unless we’re first told by the Thinking Machine to do it. When we see things like this it puts an entirely different complexion on things of course; it puts very disturbing complexion on things and for this reason we are not at all willing to entertain it. Nowhere is such an idea explored in contemporary psychology.
The PS is a projection of the machine which is thought and what this means is that as a projection of the machine it can’t be considered as being separate from the machine, or independent of it. We would be deluded if we thought this. And yet we absolutely do consider this construct of the machine to be separate and fully autonomous – such is the illusion that we are provided with by thought, as quantum physicist David Bohm has said. Thought tells us that we are in charge when the exact opposite is true. We believe that the ‘show’ that is being put on by thought is a true and authentic thing, is who we actually are. By the same token, we are of course infinitely loath to see things to be otherwise – that would be simply too big a shock to our established way of seeing things.
Being trapped in the construct which we believe to be us, and which we cannot see to be a construct, is a recipe for endless frustration and disappointment but for the most part the inevitable and irreducible suffering associated with this ongoing act of misidentification is effectively displaced and utilizing for the sake of driving the machinery. We hope to separate ourselves permanently from this pain and frustration, but rather than consciously seeing what is going on we separate ourselves from it in a purely ‘theatrical’ way by projecting everything outwards onto the external world. We then put all of our energy and attention into the task of avoiding the negative projections and securing the positive ones, and this jinxed task keeps us busy on a full-time basis. There is never any free time when we’re chasing or fleeing from our own projections.
This is what control is all about – separating the desired from the undesired outcome. When we slip into Control Mode all we know is controlling and all we can do is controlling; all we can do is engage in strategic activities of one sort or another. We imagine – in our bubble of illusion – that we’re doing the controlling, whilst actually the controlling is doing us. To insist on being controlled – because it feels frightening not to be – is to insist on being completely deluded therefore! The irony is perfect – we believe with absolute conviction that to be fully in control (which equals being a ‘master of strategy’) is to be fully autonomous when the exact opposite is true. We trumpet, in the most ridiculous way, about ‘the right to freedom’ but what we mean – in classic Orwellian doublespeak – is the exact reverse of this. The greatest prize in life – the prize we must all successfully strive for or be eternally branded a loser – is the prize of being a perfect unconscious slave.
The ideal that has such a magnetic hold on us is the ideal of being the perfect slave of thought, and part of this – the key part – is that we perceive this situation invertedly, in reverse aspect, as us being ‘the boss’, as us being ‘the one who isn’t controlled but who does the controlling’. This is how we conceive freedom – we see it as being that situation where we can realise our every goal and make all our wishes come true, when we can ‘get things to be the way we think they ought to be’, in other words. Freedom means ‘the freedom to do what we want’, only the problem here is that it’s not actually what we want at all – it’s what the machine wants, it’s what the rules governing our conditioned existence want. To say that the joke is on us doesn’t come close to it.
What we prize therefore is ‘successfully obeying the machine’, ‘successfully obeying the rules that are encoded in the simulation’, but this has nothing to do with life. This is a crude mechanical game and nothing more. Life itself is a spontaneous state of affairs and we simply can’t live it by via the tactic of following rules, much as we’d like to. We live the generic thought-created simulation of life by following rules, and that’s not the same thing. The generic thought-created simulation of life is a mockery of life. It’s a kind of horror show.
Our inverted conception of freedom something which we absolutely insist on (as much as we can, at any rate) it’s really the freedom that the machine has to enact its unquestionable rules. When the machine is ‘free to enact its rules’ the result is not freedom however but ‘freedom turned on its head’ – it is a state of slavery which is so complete that we don’t even stand a chance of seeing it for what it is. What good is a ‘strategic manoeuvre’ when the aim of the manoeuvre is something that has been imposed upon us from without? Obtaining the machine’s goals isn’t freedom and yet that’s all we can ever do when we’re operating on the basis of thought. True human beings are spontaneous and creative – two things we can never be when we are working in Machine Mode…
Image – wallpapercave.com
