[thoughts from ~burning woman~ by Sha’Tara]
In a finite environment where there’s birth, there has to be death. There’s no way around that one. We know that, we accept that. Just like everything else here: it ages and sooner or later, it dies. This is a “pay to play” world. We pay the price of admission (pain) to enter, hang out for the time allotted by paying a steep rent, then when we can no longer pay, we have to leave. If not perfect – and it certainly isn’t – it’s a system for all of that, and it seems that whatever life expresses here, it has accepted the situation and is making the best or the worst of it. At least that’s how I feel at the moment, subject to change without notice. That’s how it is with feelings.
Have you ever felt incredibly sad for no apparent reason? I would imagine everyone experiences that. Sadly, in this artificial, drug-crazed, noise-drenched, emotionally charged barbaric society such a state should be recognizable as a sign of some mental condition. If I dug deep enough I might to discover I had incurred some fictional trauma and I could tentatively label it PTSD, and if I had a doctor, I would be diagnosed accordingly and handed a prescription for a bottle of very expensive poison pills which would then change my “condition” to a worsened condition to be diagnosed later by a “specialist,” given a new acronym malady and “managed” with more bottles of poison pills, some added shrinkology, more acronymed maladies, more pills, perhaps even a week or two in a psych ward.
I’ve never taken those pills myself since I took the red pill before I became a teenager, but I’ve seen a great many of them and when I looked at them a certain way, they all looked blue. Of course I’m referring to the red pill/blue pill concept made famous by the first Matrix movie.
I live my life in the Rabbit Hole, you see, but I do come out time and again to see how things are going here. They’re not, but hardly anyone notices, so I guess it’s all good – for them.
Just because I took the red pill and live my “real” life in the Rabbit Hole doesn’t mean I can’t relate to life on the surface. I can. In fact, having been changed by the red pill, I realize my place “here” is to practice and develop my RH (Rabbit Hole) empathetic nature. In the RH we control events so that when something begins to go askew, we can change it at will. But here, on the Surface, the sentient life doesn’t have control. It doesn’t know where the controls are located and it would rather trust those who claim to have the controls than try to find them for themselves. That causes serious problems because as most are aware, those who have the controls can decide where the ship sails to, or what the torpedo hits or putting it more bluntly, who lives and who dies before her time.
I find that incredibly sad. Why have intelligence if it’s not going to be used? Or worse, used wrongly, to support and encourage lies? The worst kinds of lies? Surface intelligence relies on Systems to make its life possible. Its three main systems seem to be Religion, Politics and Money. What is truly unbelievable is that Surface Intelligence is fully aware that all three Systems are corrupt and rotten to their very core. But somehow this SI (Surface or Sentient Intelligence) manages to convince parts of itself that despite all the overt corruption, there are some parts that can be tolerated. Lesser of evils and all that – that line is much used and abused at “election” time.
That’s called living in Denial, and it’s a formally accepted part of Surface Life. Denial is a favourite surface recreational resort and you are forcefully encouraged to spend most of your life in Denial . When living in Denial ultimately fails, Hope comes forth, looking Bugs Bunny fashion coy, even charming in a sense, “Eh, what’s up doc? Need some reassurances?” and seduces SI with various believable arguments that with persistence and dedication whatever is wrong with the System can – “of course!” – be fixed. A favourite lately is the voting thing. It used to be going to church and lighting candles… or going to war, basically it’s all the same thing because none of it changes anything, but don’t tell the SI that, they would get “vewy angwy… vewy angwy indeed” and you may find yourself chased by a silly looking little guy in a funny hat and a not-so-funny shotgun.
SI likes to believe (Yes, SI is all about belief) that it’s totally sane in its one and only reality. It’s Rabbit Hole (RH)Intelligence that’s crazy. According to SI, any world that can be controlled by its Intelligences; that can be righted if it goes off the rails, can’t be a real world. Or it’s totalitarianism. According to SI, individuals should be taught that they have power but contrariwise should never be given any. If by accident some SI’s discover they have bits of power, they can talk, or write, about it but most indubitably cannot use it without violating some SI rule or law. SI controllers would burn people to death for that not so long ago. Now they use drugs to counteract the effect of empowerment. They also use executions and torture, but they have standard explanations for that. SI’s accept the explanations as a matter of course. The greatest necessity in an SI world is to believe. The SI world’s innate insanity is always determined by the intensity of its beliefs.
The problem isn’t all due to ignorance and stupidity and selfishness. It also stems from the fact that the inventors and enforcers (of the Belief Systems) are faced with an infinite number of arbitrary laws, rules, and regulations, most of which they can’t keep track of. This gives rise to ridiculous performances, especially in the Religious, financial and legal system. It’s called interpretation. On the legal side, SI’s have high priests of Interpretation which they call Supreme Court Judges. These high priests have the last word on how certain rules are to be enforced. This isn’t justice, of course, but cheap drama, replete with laughable powdered wigs in some places, ridiculous robes and wooden mallets, a lot of bowing, standing and sitting and calls of “order or I’ll clear the court” dramatic utterances. Substance? Why? It’s just another “controlled substance” that’s all about control.
Rabbit Hole Intelligences, (that’s me, in case you forgot) don’t have long lists of laws and rules, they make them up as they see fit, and drop them as soon as their need is over. They’re called “Common Sense Rules.” Let me point out one instance of Common Sense Rule. It has to do with clothing. Much of the world is quite temperate and in those areas the wearing of clothes is optional at all times. Ah but wouldn’t you know it, there are “taboos” on nudity and because of that – and who cares what prompted the taboo in the first place, no one remembers – it is necessary to dutifully feel incensed and “report” anyone daring enough to show too much skin, especially to the “public.” An RH, of course, would naturally and happily go naked when the weather doesn’t mandate the wearing of clothing. The point would be to live frugally on one point (clothes aren’t cheap for those who can’t afford them) and not suffer hypothermia on the other. That’s called Common Sense. Contrary to popular “public” belief, Common Sense is not a drug.
Other CSR rules? There’s the sort of rule against stealing but if “stuff” was shared by all and made available to all, that rule would be rather redundant, wouldn’t it. And no one could feel self righteous by punishing another for taking something needed because no one could lay any special claim to any of it. Where everything belongs to everyone and no one, theft is not possible. By the same token, neither is hoarding. But what an insane idea: imagine where that would leave that special class, the 1% of world-class hoarders?
One of the really big rules laid upon the SI’s of Earth is against murder. Thou shalt not kill is a seriously main rule, and if violated, the perpetrator can be given a life sentence, even be executed. But again as the RH (remember, that’s the Rabbit Hole denizen here) observes, murder is only murder when done one-on-one. When it is done with weapons of mass destruction because a member of the 1% hoarding class wants control of a specific resource, or a piece of property called a nation, then it’s totally justifiable, and often praised. Those who do the killing, well some anyway, are sometimes rewarded with medals and bits of coloured cloth. If they are dead, their nearest of kin is given a flag and the victims of the dead person are further demonized, especially if they lost the war.
When a RH resident comes up among its ancient relatives, among SI’s, it’s natural that it will feel a terrible depth of sadness. Only by returning to its RH world can the sadness be relieved. There are no cures for such sadness (it’s now called depression and yes there are drugs and “treatments” for that) among SI’s whatever the claims of its high priests of System Interpretation. There’s anger and violence or suicide, that’s about it.
And in case you’re still wondering: there are no drugs, no doctors in the Rabbit Hole. Come to think, I don’t remember seeing any politicians, police “men,” business “men” or clergy “men” and I never saw any money changing hands, just stuff being exchanged with smiles and laughter.
How corny. Doesn’t it make you want to lob a grenade in there? But you have to find it first.
here’s an early scene in Terrence Malik’s masterful new film – what I would call a moving painting – where the central character Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer from an isolated small mountainous village who refuses to take an oath to Hitler and fight in the German army, is talking to an older man who is restoring paintings in the local Catholic church.
~Burning Woman~ 