What is ‘the Rubbish World’? What exactly do we mean when we talk about ‘the Trash-O-Sphere’? What are the most important points to take note of when we are considering – as we are here – ‘the Degenerate (or ‘Lower’) Analogue of Reality’? What is it that makes the RW be so rubbish? Why does the Trash-O-Sphere have to be so terribly, awfully, diabolically trashy?

 

 

 

 

These are all excellent questions for sure, but no one’s ever going to answer them! Not in a million years is anyone ever going to answer them – not so long as it’s the Rubbish World we’re talking about. No one ever answers a question honestly in the RW. You’ll never get a straight answer to anything you ask in the Lower Analogue of Reality. There’s no such thing as ‘a reliable source of information’ in the Trash-O-Sphere…

 

 

 

 

The Rubbish World wouldn’t be the Rubbish World if there was any honesty in it. The whole point of the Trash-O-Sphere is that integrity (or truth) is a stranger here. This is in fact what we might call the chief characteristic of the Lower or Degenerate Analogue of Reality – the complete and utter absence of anything genuine, the utter and complete absence of anything of actual substance, the complete and utter absence of anything honest. There is no content in the Trash-O-Sphere, only the pretence of it, only the sham appearance of it, only the insincere promise of it. The Trash-O-Sphere is only skin deep in other words, and if we happen to be looking for substance or depth in it then we’re going to be very disappointed. We’re going to be left high and dry. Instead of depth what we have to settle for instead is new and better promises, new and improved lies. To make up for there being no such thing as ‘depth’ or ‘content’ in the RW we are constantly being fed stories of ‘a better tomorrow’. Hype takes the place of content.

 

 

 

 

The old lies quickly tarnish and become stale to us, repugnant to us, but shiny new lies appear straightaway to take their place. This is how the Garbage World works, this is how it keeps going. This is the only way it can keep going, the only way it can continue operating – by continually refreshing its false promises. This trick is eminently successful (it’s never failed yet) but it can only work in conjunction with a particular type of amnesia – the type of amnesia that means we cannot recollect all the other times that we have been duped, all the other times that these promises have been made and then immediately broken. It is ‘the Power of Amnesia’ that guarantees the deception-spewing tyrant his continued (mis)rule.

 

 

 

 

In this, the Garbage World is particularly similar to the world of politics – there is a similarity here that can’t be ignored. There’s a deep sense of familiarity that can’t be denied. The everyday self-serving ego is a skilled and highly experienced politician. The very same principle is used – the Principle of Deception which is the Principle of Mara, the Principle of Ahriman, which is also the Principle of Satan (or Shaitan)… The ego and the politician are of one and the same ilk and this is the ilk of Mara, Lord of illusion, the ilk of Ahriman, the Father of Lies, the ilk of Yaldabaoth, Cunning Constructor of False Realities…

 

 

 

No matter how fast the illusions become stale, flavourless, and eventually deeply repugnant, new ones spring up that are just as potent as ever, just as intoxicating as ever. Fentanyl has nothing on it. We get sold a pup one day, and we’re right back the next day to buy another. We get stung once and the next thing is we’re queuing up eagerly to get stung again all over again! We get burnt in a deal with a con man and before you can say Jack Robinson we’ve been hoodwinked again by the very same guy. This process goes on forever – never has the adage ‘A fool and his money are easily parted’ more apt. A fool can’t help spending his gold on whatever comes along. This is the life of the fool therefore – to be made a mug of by the forces of darkness, to be endlessly conned out of their precious savings and yet keep on coming back for more (as reliably as the moon keeps revolving around the earth, as reliably as the sun keeps tracking daily across the sky).

 

 

 

 

These are the Mechanics of Samsara laid bare and it is this mechanism that gives rise to the Rubbish World, in all its rotting glory. Everything that happens here obeys the rules of the mechanism, with the result that nothing ever happens to us, despite the fact that we are constantly thinking that it will (that’s what we are being promised, after all). There is the convincing illusion of movement but really we’re just ‘jogging on the spot’. We are on an exercise bike watching a screen that shows the countryside rushing by and we never spot that we’re ‘trapped in a tape-loop’. Nothing new or different ever happens to us despite us having been solidly convinced to the contrary, and this is the Curse of Self-Nullification (which is the dismal fate that inevitably befalls all dwellers of the Rubbish World). That’s why we call it the Rubbish World, that’s why we call it the Trash-O-Sphere…

 

 

 

 

No one ever emerges from the Garbage World with an advantage, with an improved position. No one ever comes out of Samsara with a net profit under their belt (despite the fact that ‘turning a profit’ is our only motivation for entering Samsara in the first place). ‘Profit’ is the hook – we’re only there because we wish to benefit ourselves! The Garbage World – which is ‘the Inferior (and therefore entrapping) ‘Copy of the Original’ – is ‘the Abode of Fools’, we might say. It’s where fools live and go about their daily business, never learning what they would be better off learning. When we are ‘psychologically unconscious’ – which is to say, when we are in ‘the state of passive identification with thought’s objects’ – then this is always where we are going to end up – there’s nowhere else we could end up, given this as our starting-off point. To be passively identified with ‘this, that or the other’ (whatever it is that thought puts in front of us) is to live a life of utterly banal illusion.

 

 

 

 

The only way we are ever going to get ‘released’ from this odious Sham Reality (which is a mockery of everything that is genuinely true and wholesome) is when we stop constantly looking to gain, when we stop constantly looking for the advantage, and we’re not about to give up our heedless goal-orientatedness (which equals ‘self-obsession’) anytime soon. We’re convinced – on a very deep level – that this is where the good stuff is going to come from, that this is the key to us finally getting our hands on it. This is the belief that is behind capitalism – the belief that the grotty illusion we call ‘the self’ must be benefitted at the expense of all else. As long we as the self-concept is the only important thing in my life I am going to be looking for the advantage and as long as I’m ‘looking for the advantage’ I’m going to be a permanent inhabitant of the Rubbish World,  a life-time resident of the Lower (which is to say, ‘diabolical’) Analogue of Reality…

 

 

 

 

 

Image credit – inspiringcity.com