False Heroes
What if pretending to "reform" evil systems is a way of perpetuating them, and of keeping you mindlessly feeding your power into them?
I started writing a piece in October about despair, which I perceived to be rampant at the time, and which I reasoned comes from a kind of wilful mindlessness about the world.
Essentially, gouging out your own eyes so will not see possibilities, even if they’re staring you right in the face.
Which, of course, serves the anti-human forces nicely, since despair makes you cower, and cowering means you’re controlled.
Then, the mother of all mindless acts happened: a U.S. election, and suddenly half the mindless despair turned into mindless hope.
As if mindlessness were the only thing we could all get down with.
The pendulum will no doubt swing and we’ll talk about despair again at some point.
But for now, let’s consider mindlessness in the form of hero worship, because that’s where we are.
Consider… evil is no less pleased when we surrender our power to a false hero. This also serves its plans nicely. It’s an alternate way of being controlled.
Just like despair, when you mindlessly worship a hero you’re gouging out your eyes to a part of reality, namely the part where you are responsible for the state of the world, and you have a difficult path ahead.
It’s tempting to believe that someone called “Hero” will do this for you. Someone to “represent” you? To do all the fighting for you? To “drain the swamp” for you?
The first question any thinking person should be asking: what if this “Hero”’s job—his real job, in service to his real masters—is seeming?
Seeming to care. Seeming to represent. Seeming to fight on your behalf.
And in so doing, take the fight right out of you.
If you know anything about about politics you know that seeming is the job. It’s an entire industry, and to rise to the top you need not possess any special skill other than seeming.
Intelligence? Nope. Experience? Nope. Business accumen? Nope. Principles? Nope. Morals? Please. Knowledge? Fuhgeddaboudit.
The ability to seem so like a savior figure that people fall into frenzy of worship so deep that they forget basic facts of reality?
Welcome, sir, right this way… your throne and scepter await.
The Seeming Industrial Complex has one product: your unwitting adoration. Adoration means more consumption. It means the whole pageant gets to keep on going, with your support. It means behavior modification, which means manipulation, which means control.
Will a single election, public office holder, or a single apointee, bring down an invested, entrenched, global slavery machine which is *that* close to achieving its dream of New World Order?
The machine would love for you to think so.
Don’t worry, kids, there is someone standing up for YOU. Honest. Just keep your head down and keep being a good consumer. Go on participating in all our wonderful institutions. No need to tear them down. Yes, they’re corrupt, but we can REFORM them...yeah! We’ll fire some people. Things will get better now, we swear.
Imagine I propose a game to you… we’re gonna play soccer. Fun, right? But special soccer. The rules of our soccer game are only I can score goals, and only you can get called for penalties. “What?!” you cry, “That’s not fair! It’s rigged against me! There’s no way for me to win!” “Oh, don’t worry about that,” I say, “because we’re gonna change the referees after every game.”
Would anyone agree to play such a game? At least, anyone in their right mind?
Another question we should all be asking: is it even possible to change the system from within when that system is designed to be shallow—to be an impenetrable barrier for the deeper interests that it serves?
Preserve the system—including all the currently operative rules, profits, incentives, and lack of disincentives, i.e., lack of punishments—but change the surface personnel.
That’ll fix everything, right?
Take note that while your hero is supposedly “fixing” everything, or seeming to, you will be required to ignore even more things, namely, all the details which will look an awful lot like he’s compromising to the dark forces he’s supposedly fighting on your behalf.
In fact, you’re going to have to ignore that fighting those forces looks exactly like serving them.
So, where does that leave the rest of us, who neither want to surrender to mindless despair, nor mindlessly (blindly) following pre-packaged heroes?
Well, for starters, look around you. Not at the cast of characters portrayed on the screen, but the real folk doing real things—the people doing the work of making your household and your community and your society go. Real heroes.
And ask yourself what your own part is. Am I supporting the real heroes? Or the false ones? Or perhaps even, unwittingly, the villains?
And work to fix it. Withdraw your participation in evil systems. Often, this is as simple as saying “Nope” and leaving the room. Even better is withdrawing your dollar.
Evil systems require two things to keep functioning: your participation and your ignorance. It’s the fuel mixture that in the right ratio keeps the whole machine humming. As in The Matrix, those systems require your unwitting bioenergy.
Think about the pharmasick system masquerading as “healthcare”, i.e., “an expert class who care deeply about your health, with specialized knowledge that you cannot access”. The whole thing operates because people go on believing it. They believe they are too ignorant to learn what healthy means (not true), and that a specialized, ordained sect of humans are the only ones capable of accessing this knowledge (not true), that those experts care deeply (not true), and that “medicines” (drugs) are the only thing keeping them alive and healthy (not true). So, they line up dutifully at the pharmacy believing themselves to be doing what is best.
In other words, they keep consuming. Which represents demand. Which the suppliers are all too happy to keep on supplying. And the whole system gets to live another day.
It doesn’t matter what corrupted system you’re talking about—pharmasick, banking, academia, Hollweird, ESG corporations, legacy media, and yes, elected (and unelected) office holders—you and your society withdraw your consumption, which is your energy, and see what happens to that system.
The thing is, opting out means taking on difficulty. It means doing your own research. It means becoming your own doctor, teacher, banker, lawyer, grocer, farmer, thought leader. It means sourcing people you trust to trade with, rather than nipping into to the convenient corporate one-stop shop. This will be too much effort for some, and they will go on consuming what is easy, injecting more demand into the corrupt system and praying (every four years or so) for a hero to save them from it.
Economics: if you keep consuming, the suppliers will keep supplying. It never stops, ever, until you withdraw your demand.
As one of my favorite punk bands from my youth put it:
Never mind what’s been selling. It’s what you’re buying. (Fugazi - Blueprint)
We don’t need a hero to close down the shop for us. All we need to do is stop going into the shop and purchasing things.
I don’t even think it’s necessary for every person to withdraw their demand. All that is required is a tipping point where enough people become aware of the evil and cause a massive withdrawal of consumption (meaning power) from that system, and the suddenly heavy supply side of the equation shakes the whole corrupt system to pieces like an imbalanced front load washing machine committing spectacular suicide.
Therein lies hope.
(It’s already happening. Look at the flight away from woke corporations and from legacy media.)
So no, mindless despair and mindless hope are not exhaustive choices.
There is also keeping your bloody wits about you.
There is examining your own part in making the world what it is.
There is refusing to be a consumer-participant. Withdrawing your demand.
There is acknowledging the good when all seems lost, but also acknowledging the bad when all seems too perfectly, conveniently, rosy.
There is being wary of the heroes and villains beckoning you into various antechambers to keep you from journeying out of the cave, and staying the path.
In other words, thinking for yourself.
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Excellent 👌! The other thing the enemy loves is apathy. It's why the Bread and Circuses strategy is so successful. The modern addiction to dopamine distracts, dumbs, and diseases us.
Enjoyed this, James. Thank you.
"So, where does that leave the rest of us, who neither want to surrender to mindless despair, nor mindlessly (blindly) following pre-packaged heroes?"
That is the nut of it.
I would imagine it leaves us in a process of discovery. A sometimes uncomfortable flow of dropping what we relied on, assumed and believed, as we plunge ourselves into the unknown, including unknown iterations of our very selves.
It's a revelation when the world has trained you to obey and comply. It's a revelation to remember and claim one's innate. freedom. What an amazing time.
I would even suggest, the shit-show collapse happening is all designed to bring us to that realization: Oh right, I am here and not as an automaton. I am able to think and decide for myself. I actually matter. (Oh, shit!)
Best.