Evil has Become Much Stronger than the Good
This, is seems to me, is a fair summary of our situation. Evil has become so powerful because we haven’t been paying enough attention to it, Or, to more correct, we have only been paying attention to minor matters that have little relationship to it – the War on Drugs, for example.
We haven’t been paying any attention to it because we have not been paying any attention to ourselves – the author of all good and evil. We didn’t notice it when we quietly disappeared. We were too busy watching other things that seemed much more interesting. Our clever new machines that re-embodied us so well.
We have moved into them, and left ourselves – our old bodies and minds – behind. And thought this was a big improvement. When it was the worst thing that could ever have happened to us.
One of the things we left behind was our sense of values and morality – something no machine can have in the least. Here again, we did not consider this a loss – but a huge advantage. Now we would not have to worry about other people, and their problems. We could carry on as a vast machine – networked by the Internet and TV. Note the word networked – we have become a network without giving the slightest thought to what this implies.
What it means, in plain terms, is that we have become helpless components in something much bigger than us. This did not bother us, after all, this is the basis of religion. We have simply acquired a new religion – and are serving it. Which insists that we not be aware of it – or anything else.
This is truly an amazing development – a religion that only exists in our collective unconscious! And also insists that the unconscious does not exist!
I can remember when this happened, because I was there, and was very much part of it – from the late Sixties to the Early Eighties, depending on what part of the country you were in. The same time when the computer became part of our common culture.
At first it was welcomed as the solution to our problems – we would no longer have to work for a living, the computer would do all that for us. How naive we were!
What really happened, and happened very quickly, was that the powers that be used the computer to work us even harder, and treated us like the slaves we had become – overnight.
This is clearly a doom and gloom scenario. But there still is hope. All we have to do is flip the switch that sent us down this track. And that would include a clear vision of where that switch was, and what it did.
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The switch was gradual and took a long time – centuries. The sudden recent results are the effect of numerous interlocking feedback situations – that complexity theory gives us some insight into.
But we won’t be able to do anything unless we can see (and feel) where we are – and make some drastic, fundamental changes. Including changing the way we think – the hardest thing of all.
We cannot believe things are as bad as they are – and this includes our wise ones who are as ignorant is the rest.
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