All systems are the same system, just as all bullies are the same bully, just as all abusers are the same abuser. If you know one, then you know them all; if you have ever had insight into how one system works, then you’ve had insight into them all. Systems are ‘a great big nothing’ – to see into them is to see that everything about them is a hoax or bluff (a ‘Big Lie’). This is where the aggression of the bully comes from – it’s a ‘cover up’, it’s comes from the need to cover up the truth (the truth which will show up the bully’s inner ‘vacuity, the frighteningly painful hollowness that lies inside them). A system is just like a ‘regular run-of-the mill bully’ in the way that it needs to control or regulate us every inch of the way so as to prevent us seeing that there’s actually nothing behind it, so as to conceal the fact that it’s actually only ‘a hollow show of force’. The system never tires of a validating itself by telling us that ‘it’s ‘all for our own good’ whilst in reality the very reverse of this is true. This is Orwellian ‘double-speak’ in its most essential form. The absence of truth (the absence of anything) protects itself by violence and yet at the same time this limitless violence and cruelty gets twisted around so that the the frighteningly callous brutality which is the system’s stock in trade presents as 100% ‘righteous wrath’. The cold and heartless way in which the rules and protocols that make up the system are enforced is more than justified by the greatness of the ‘Great Value’ which is being served by those rules – the super-important end that justifies the filthy means, in other words. All of this is a transparently hollow sham however – the system serves itself and the way it serves itself is by constantly lying, by constantly distracting attention away from the truth (which is – as we keep saying – that the system is a sham, a hoax, a bluff, a lie, etc). The end is used to justify the means every time but this is of course the easiest trick in the book – it’s a pragmatically effective way to shut people down that works every time. ‘Shutting down people’ is what the machine does the best, after all…
Systems are based on rules – rules are the basic building block of all systems and so everything that we’ve just said is also true for rules. A rule is a system in a nutshell. If you have crossed ever obeyed one rule then you have obeyed them all! How is there any difference? From the point of view of the physical world, and the process is that occur in it (for example, the way rivers flow downhill and not uphill); from a psychological POV it’s a different story however – in the psychological sphere rules are conventions that we agree with, that we agree to be there. We agree to the rules, to the dictator, without paying any attention to the fact that we are doing so, and when we do that – when we agree to it and then forget that we have agreed – we end up in what we might call the ‘Mind-Created Simulation of Reality’, which then becomes the basis for our whole lives. It becomes our platform for interacting with the world, even though it isn’t true, even though it’s created by ‘us seeing everything through a distorted viewpoint’. A rule – psychologically speaking – is a bias, it is ‘an arbitrary preference for seeing the world in the one way rather than the other’. Seeing reality in a rule-based way is like being in the Hall of Mirrors in a fairground – we can have lots of ‘fun’ looking at distorted images of the world! Every day ‘thought-mediated consciousness’ is just like the Hall of Mirrors in one way, but not at all like it in another – we can step into the Distortion Zone any time we want and then step out again just as freely (and we know of course that it’s just a wheeze), but when it’s a conditioned or mind-created reality we’re talking about then whatever distortion we’re introduced to (like a lamb being introduced to a ravenous wolf) sticks like glue and then that becomes the reality which we’re stuck in. It becomes the beginning and the end of our experience of life.
Just to hammer the point home, if every time we enter entered the mirror room (so that the first distorted image that we see sticks and we get to spend the rest of our lives as this painfully distorted version of who we are) we wouldn’t be so cavalier about it. We’d have the wits to be afraid in this case. If however the situation were that no sooner had we been exposed to the distortion-field we instantly become fully amnesiac about who we used to be and become convinced – as if by some dreadful dark magic – that this is who we are and that there are (and never could be) any other possibilities for us, then that would of course be another story entirely. The instant onset of amnesia means that we have zero insight into what is really going on and so in this case the process would make complete fools of us. We’d be like lambs to the slaughter – all innocent and helpless and trusting with no other future ahead of us other than the High Street kebab house. The logical system will eat us alive in this case; it will eat us alive just like awesomely efficient super-predator it is and the reason it (the logical mind) functions as a predator (which we don’t get at all) is because it very persuasively sells us a limited version of reality that we can’t see beyond. This sounds like science fiction to us, but it’s a science fiction / horror scenario that just happens to be true – there’s isn’t anyone who ever ‘opened their eyes’ who didn’t have to take on board this grim spectacle. Consciousness – if and when it ever dawns – inevitably shows us a forbiddingly sombre view of reality, just as Carlos Castaneda says…
This analogy makes clearer why it is that we are insisting on talking about ‘rule-based systems’ and ‘abuse’ in the same breath, as if they were one and the same thing. Whenever we make a system our boss – whenever we place precedence above ourselves as ‘the authority’ – then this is then this always translates into an abusive situation for us! That’s guaranteed, it happens every time. It can’t not do. It’s the story of our lives (even if we don’t ever pick up on it). Authority – as Krishnamurti never tires of saying – destroys all freedom, destroys all autonomy and for this reason it can never be anything other than abusive. Authority is abuse, control is abuse, the use of societal power is abuse. Whenever we make a system our boss, our master, this always translates into an abusive situation for us! It’s guaranteed; it happens every time. What we’re looking at here is the archetype of the Dark Father (or Malign Patriarch). The system of logic (which is what we have handed over our responsibility to) is like a ‘father’ because of the way in which it implicitly passes itself off as being all-knowing and all-powerful – we’re not just invited to accept it as the ‘Ultimate Authority’, we are obliged to. We are obliged to defer to it in all matters and be grateful to it into the bargain; if we don’t then we’re automatically ‘the worst in the world’ – no punishment will be too harsh for us. Despite this background menace the Tyrant Father still presents itself as being benign – its wrath is always justified – what’s not to understand about that? The System is right and we are automatically wrong if we go against it. We nevertheless believe our Ruler to be benign; we could argue that this is pure blind naivety on our part but there is clearly more to the ‘inability to recognize evil’ than simple naivety – recognizing implacable malignancy demands great courage, a courage that very few of us possess. To fearlessly recognize evil when we come across it is to take on responsibility for it; we can no longer plead ignorance, we can no longer enjoy the fantasy of ‘everything being ok’ (or ‘everything being as it should be’). When we’re dealing with an All-Powerful, All-Knowing Authority then this is only going to work out well for us if the authority in question is All-Good as well as being All-Powerful – otherwise our situation is not so great, obviously! Otherwise our situation is not so good at all. If the government is protecting us (and looking after everything) then we can relax, we can ‘hand over responsibility’ with a good conscience; if our masters are on the other hand – monstrously and irredeemable malign in their nature then that’s another matter entirely and this therefore is why there is such a highly developed tendency to ‘turn a blind eye to evil’. We insist on believing that the system is working for us because to see otherwise is just too much hard work…
Systems work by rewarding us when successfully obey their instructions and punishing us when we don’t. They work by controlling us, in other words. There is more to logical systems than just this, however – a system is an analogue of reality, which is to say, it analogizes the ‘non-rule-based world’ as an unambiguous (i.e., black-and-white) function of logic. It analogizes the world as a machine, in other words. This understanding is the key to the whole thing – by analogizing reality ‘in its own image’ the system gains an absolute authority that it would not otherwise possess. It gains the authority of truth itself. In this way, therefore, we’re not just being controlled, we are being controlled so thoroughly that we are as a result functionally incapable of knowing anything about the fact, no matter how many times we are presented with the information. This – we might say – is the Demiurgic Fiat. We could say that the ‘analogue world of our thoughts’ takes upon itself the authority of the true or authentic article and that that this is why we are functionally incapable of questioning it – when it comes to reality itself all we can do is adapt ourselves to it. To fly in the face of reality is non-adaptive pathology – if God really is what He says He is then what choice do we have but to obey him? Our best option is just to ‘get on with it’, our best option is to wise up and see what side of our bread has the butter on it..
We could say this but that would be missing the point. Only positive statements have authority and yet reality itself isn’t a positive statement. Reality is negative! We can illustrate this in terms of space and the objects (or events) which exist within it: the things that exist in space are assertions whilst space itself is not something that is asserted, not something that can be definitively stated. We can only be aware of space when we stop mechanically ‘asserting’, when we stop dogmatically ‘stating what is’. Trying to assert space is like trying to assert silence – the very act of ‘asserting’ is guaranteed to wipe out silence immediately. Assertions and asserted things are positive whilst silence – on the other hand – is negative – silence is negative and sound is positive. Positive statements need the megaphone of authority to carry them, silence doesn’t. Positive statements need authority because they’re not actually true – they are ‘only true on their own terms’, which is of course a cheat. The lie always needs to be promoted because it’s a lie and this is where this business of ‘fake authority’ comes – it’s ‘fake authority’ because there’s nothing at all behind it – the truth doesn’t need authority. Or, as we could also say, space isn’t insecure, it isn’t ‘continually seeking validation’…
The reason positive assertions (such as the ego, such as our beliefs) need an environment that will validate them every turn is because there is no solid ground behind them – they’re ‘groundless’ and the one thing a groundless assertion needs is something that looks like ground, something that gives the impression of being a solid basis, something that will ‘do the job’ just as long as we don’t examine it too closely. I could make such and such an assertion, or I could make a totally different one (since there are an infinite number of possibilities possible assertions out there) and so I need to find some way of proving that the particular ‘tack’ I took is the right one (even though there is no ‘right one’). The Conditioned World is a highly competitive (or ‘dog-eat-dog’) one and this is the reason; just as none of the distorted images in the fairground Hall of Mirrors are ‘true images’, so too can we say that none of the mind-moderated statements of fact (of which we are so fond) are ‘true’ statements. There are no true statements, only statements that are true because we have arranged for them to be so. If we want to ‘get ahead’ then we are obliged to shout everyone else down before they get the chance to do the same to us. It’s not that any one particular disordered image is more representative of the truth than any other one but rather that all distortions are equally misrepresentative; what’s happened is that we’ve been put under a spell – the ‘Spell of Identification’ – and this spell causes us to believe that ‘This is us’, that ‘This is who we are’ (and that we shouldn’t therefore look for any more than this). We have in other words lost something very important – we’ve lost mobility, we’ve have lost the freedom to be ‘otherwise than what we have been falsely declared to be’. We’re ‘trapped in the script that has been handed to us’, we have become ‘slaves of the false narrative’.
If there is ‘an External Authority that must be unconditionally yielded to’ then there is abuse – abuse is the cost of security and – generally speaking – we’re more than happy to pay it. Generally speaking, we are prepared to pay any price for this security – that’s how important it is to us. We want to be shielded from ‘the need to grow’, we want to be protected from the need to ‘experience relative first hand’, and this is exactly what the system will do for us. There are various ways in which we can talk about this Systemic Abuse (this ‘abuse at the hands of the system’) – we could say for example that we’re being sold a solution or package that doesn’t actually work (and which keeps becoming more and more dysfunctional as time goes on) and that the ‘abuse’ comes in because of the way we are gaslit to believe that is us that’s at fault and not the system that has been foisted upon us. It’s not that the abstract system of rules is gaslighting us but rather it is us abusing ourselves under the influence of this malign mechanical way of living life. We ‘do it to ourselves’, other words (and we put an impressive amount of effort into it into the bargain).
The more essential way of explaining this this is to say that the pattern which we are made by fear to conform to abuses us by telling us that we are who we aren’t common by providing us with an identity that has been created by itself common identity which is its own device. Living on a mechanical basis, (living as we as who we aren’t and could never be) inducts us into a world of infinite suffering – we’re not doing the one thing we need to do (which is be ‘true to ourselves’, as Shakespeare puts it) but rather we have become invaded by the system, colonised by the system, turned by the system so that we are now its ‘creatures’ and it is as a result our lot to betray ourselves every day of our lives, just as PKD says. That’s what we are required to do. This suffering gets cleverly weaponized by the collective of us, it gets used against us to make us feel ‘at fault’. We’re morally culpable for suffering, and we are made to know it… Our pain is interpreted as ‘our own failing’; it is seen as a thing to be ashamed of. In reality of course it’s actually a sign of health, it’s the sign (as Henri Bergson tells us) of a healthy immune system which has recognised a threat. The unfixable suffering of conditioned existence is the one thing that can help us – it’s the one thing that could birth consciousness, yet – perversely – we bring the technology we possibly can to the task of repressing it. We utilize all the available resources to enable us in the task of ‘blocking the signal’ – our society sees the ability to successfully repress our legitimate suffering as mental health and it won’t let anyone argue otherwise.
Image credit – reelstart.org
