Mark Gowan's Blog, page 4

The Spectacle

The mind falls prey to the trinkets and baubles that amaze babes in cradles; the spectacle begins.  Hungry for knowledge, driven by curiosity, desiring understanding, a black box of entertainment must be given to them instead.  It must contain nonsensical ideologies wrapped in tradition and empty answers concealed in thinly vailed hatred of “the other”.  The box must have ready-made games to keep these babes in arms occupied.

The hypnotized must be made to believe that these things, these ideas are important but we know that they are not.  They are arbitrary.  And technology will help.  It used to be that propaganda was important, but now propaganda is ready-made and drips into the minds of everyone; everyone must “keep up” and be “in-the-know”.

We can let technology do for us what in times of want took mass amount of rhetoric and upheaval.  And to those few that complain, that point out the spectacle that we have created we can ask: “Where would we be without it?!  Hasn’t it given us progress?  Hasn’t it made us happy!?”

But there is no room for doubters in this world of make-believe.  Let them scream, I say!  They will scream to deaf ears because we will live in a spectacle of life created by us.  We can smile as those doubters scream.  We can smile because those that walk away do so without their minds.  I know this because they have sold them to us.

Remember One Thing

“You need to remember one thing.”

“And what’s that?!”  The Leader asked lackadaisically.

“There’s always a weakest link and that link will define us in the end.  And the fact is these people, these weakest links, never think that it is them.  They are certain they are progressive and understand the circumstances.  They don’t.  They are looking for solutions but we are looking for answers to a specific question.  What they don’t understand is that solutions are easy, answers are not.  These elites’ solutions are based on the promise of good, virtue.  We have to promise victimhood.  We have to point out conniving, scheming, evil, these elites are.  We have to remind these followers of ours how the weak hold the strong down.  What those who are looking for solutions don’t realize is that it is ego and arrogance not thoughtful analysis that wins the day.  We have that on our side.”

The Advisor and the New Politic

“This shit doesn’t matter.  It’s a game but it’s a game that we have to win.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that religion just pumps out stupidity.  Yes!  The masses are stupidly religious, but they don’t matter.  They don’t have any say.  They, and always remember this, don’t have money.  They’ll do what these, who are these…”

“The FOF.”  The Leader answered, “They love me.  I know they do.  They love me almost as much as their god.”

“Yea, OK…the FOF.” The advisor interrupted.

He went on.

“It matters what they believe because what they believe will create and shape what we say and how we do what we will do.  Our fates, not just theirs, are determined by them and not us.  We’ll speak but we will have to believe what we say.  This is imperative.  We have to be dogmatic because otherwise they’ll start thinking for themselves.  Remember, we’re talking about a bunch of morons.  These people only matter because they matter to us.

Don’t think of this as being false.  Think of it as being necessary.  We have to test, test the limits if there are even any.  It’s important to realize that we live in a perpetual situation between conversation and violence.  We have to make sure that the conversation is about violence.  Remember, there are only three things that the public understands: guns, god, and greed.  And we have to represent all three.  Otherwise, well we all know the ‘otherwise’.”

The Recipe

The recipe for dismantling the system was simple.

1) Create your base: cut up entertainment, misinformation, lack of education, apathy, tribal motivation, selfishness and pour these into the public.  Add technology and stir.

2) Let it simmer.

3) Take your laisse faire capitalism, some pure greed and oligarchic tendencies and marinate them into a concentrated mixture of deregulation. 

4) Boil down political corruption and kleptocratic lobbyists and mix this with unadulterated religious fanaticism until the mixture begins to darken.

5) Take your public and mix it with your mixture of deregulation and technology until the public is soft and subtle, adding uncontrolled technology as the mixture heats up.

6) Afterwards add more of the religious fanaticism and technology as well as ignorance to taste.

7) Cook these ingredients down.

8) Add kleptocratic billionaires and the mixture simmer.  Options also include world dictators, authoritarianism and fascism for a spicier recipe. 

Serve with environmental catastrophes and atomic sauce.

Guns, God, and Greed: From Chp. 2: God’s Children

The Leader sat and listened to religious and voting statistics, how the religious of the country needed a strong-man leader, how the government had stood in the way of God’s work, of the FOF, and how, if he followed their plan, he could bring about a new world order, one not tainted by heathen-ideas or ‘progressive’ thought.  He sat and for once he listened.  While the delegates from the FOF rambled he thought about God.  He didn’t understand there God.  He was their god, if they knew it or not.

Like guns, god is the ultimate fear and the answer, the salve to the fact of life that most do not want to face: we die.  But god is more than that.  Much like a gun, god mirrors that arrogance of mankind; god is an excuse and a hiding place; god is the ultimate ideal and as such an answer to all things.

God is not only the best of mankind but the ideal of all ideals, both virtuous and despicable.  God is an old idea created by even older sages and philosophers.  God is set and defined in thousands of ways, each according to the inventor.  God ‘wants’, god ‘demands’, god ‘will punish’.  God can do many things but one thing in particular that god lacks is empathy.  You cannot have empathy with a gun in your hand.  But you can feign empathy with god.

We can create a god and god is the best we can do.  It is not wonder that we spend the greater part of our time killing one another and even the planet we live on.  God is indeed the best that mankind is capable of and we are proud of our God.

In one sense these people were no different than him.  It seemed to him that they wanted the same thing: to get rich.  On the other hand, he didn’t hide it and they did.  All of their talk about “God and Jesus” was, to him, just a ruse to justify their greed.  The only difference was that he didn’t lie about it.  In fact, he had four of the richest men in the world in his cabinet.

Guns, God, and Greed: From Chp. 2: The Plan

The Leader opened the large black, plastic binder and flipped through page after page of print.

“We know it’s a lot and so we also have a synopsis.”

The man nodded and one his assistants handed The Leader a small, white book.  The Leader put the burdensome binder down and opened the book.  On the first page was the title “DAY 1” and under the title were bullet-pointed orders.

“This synopsis has a one year, day by day, plan that if implemented can bring this country back to its original glory and greatness.  Sir, this country has a manifest destiny to be the great country that it once was but we must act swiftly and succinctly in order to undermine the powers that have been working tirelessly against our destiny; your destiny, sir.”

The room was silent and the leader lay the book in his lap.  He looked around at the faces staring at him.

“Well…” he began.

No one said anything.

“I know what’s in it for you.  But…” he paused, “what’s in it for me?

Guns, God, Greed: From Chapter 2: God’s Plan

He hated sitting through the meetings with these bible-thumpers, not because they didn’t adore him, they did.  He had bought some of their adoration.  But because he couldn’t trust them.  He couldn’t trust them because these people really believed what they said.  For this reason they were dangerous to him as The Leader.  He accepted them out of necessity.  They were a business deal.  They didn’t seem to understand that he didn’t answer to them, but he did.  It was this that bothered him so much.  And so, as they rambled on he acted interested.

“Sir.  It is truly a sign that the end-times are here, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  Sir you are in the service of God and Jesus Christ himself.  We have worked hard in a world which is dead-set against the Lord’s followers.  And now it will all change.  The wicked shall weep, sir, and the Lord’s children will reap their righteous place in heaven.  All because of you, sir, all because of you…”

The Leader sat soaking in the diatribes against modern society.  He heard them but he didn’t listen to them.  He found them pathetic and they didn’t seem to notice.  This irritated him further.  One after another leader spoke.  The Catholics were worried about the abortion issue.  The protestants were angry at the secularization of society.  The Foundation for Our Father leaders, though, they had a plan.  He was interested.

“Sir.  We are from The Foundation for Our Father or ‘FOF’ for short.”  The well-dressed, oddly calm man handed The Leader a large folder.  It was very neat and organized.

“We at FOF have watched as this country has been overrun with secular ideologies and…let’s say ‘those without Christ’.  And we have watched as our founding father’s intentions have been infested with so-called progressive thought that has no other intention but to undermine this country’s founding religion, Christianity.  Sir, this country is sliding into an immoral, pluralistic ethic that has been weakening the very pillars of our democracy. Sir, what I’m trying to say is, that we have a plan that we have spent the past nine years working on and we believe we can win our country back.  But we need your help.”

Guns, God, And Greed: From Chapter 1: Guns

His minions would always lower their heads and slink back to their slimy, dark corners.  That’s where he like them best.  He realized something that the rest of them didn’t.  He was their weapon.  Without them they were defenseless, useless.  And he realized that a weapon is more than a tool to kill.  It represented more than death.  It was a principle. 

Guns are mankind’s fears materialized.  A gun can give a man the feeling of power but in reality a gun is a weakness.  A gun will make a coward feel courageous.  They are said to be a practical necessity but they create the impractical reality of violence.

A gun is far and beyond its grey, cold exterior, its butt-handle and reinforced barrel.  It is more than its trigger assembly or its pin mechanism.  A gun is the culmination of man’s imagination coupled with his weaknesses.  It is a dangerous mechanism that brings man’s first enemy, death while the very same man argues that it is life-saving, security-making.  A gun is the lowest commonality of man coupled with his gravest desires for power.

Although he had never held a gun in his hand he imagined that the feeling would be easily addictive.  He imagined that it would feel good because deep down inside everyone knows what it is capable of; what it is made for.  A gun is a hand-held atom bomb made by monkeys cowering behind rocks.  He was always amazed at the ingenuity but was more amazed at humanity’s commitment to our own suicide.  But he was willing to accept suicide as long as it paid.

“I am your weapon.  I am their doom.  Don’t ever forget that.” He reminded his minions, and paused before turning and walking out of the room.

He walked down the corridor to his room and turned on the T.V. where he would sit for the next four hours.

Guns, God, and Greed: From Chapter 1, The Leader

The speech began as all speeches that The Leader gave began.  It began with cheers and waving red, white, and blue signs as he walked out on stage.  American flags fluttered in a cloud of mob-mentality.  The leader loved these times.  His minions were always nervous because he never followed their meticulously written out speeches.  He stood with a slight smile on his face and even though it was a blustery day his hair was as stiff as cardboard.  The smile was not noticed by anyone.  It was never noticed because it was almost not a smile, but just a slight upward tilt of one side of his flat, colorless lips.  He was smiling because he knew this was where he shined: giving a show for the mud-eaters.  But these were his people, his…“followers”; he had his group of followers in the palm of his hand.  He began to speak.

“They say that we are delusional, wrong-headed, and that we wish for nothing more than more; that we are greedy.  That’s what they say!  They say that people like us come and go, that we come and go, that we wreak havoc on people, that we are self-promoting.  That’s what they say.  They say we are a scourge.  But we have to remember that only some of that is true.  I say that we live in a world as it is and to do so differently is insanity.  I say that we do not come and go, but that we never leave.  I say that we don’t ‘wreak havoc’ but we have accepted that only the strong survive and in today’s world (make no mistake about it), the strong are the rich.

We are not a scourge, we are the people.  And  I am your savior!  We are not delusional, but are destined.  I am your destiny!  We don’t wishfully think, we act and we act without mercy because that my friends, that IS the world.  And the world, if I’m not mistaken, belongs to us but it has been taken away from us by the weak.  We have made it in our image and we can take it away from anyone who disagrees.  That is who we are.  We are gods of greed and greed is not just good: it is necessary.”

The crowd cheered loudly. 

A Grinding Start

This is the start of writing about the future while watching the present roll to a grinding start. Over the horizon there are the hoards and behind them walking away is their leader. He, and they, will never be mine. The future is binary now. Stay here and fight or move away and be forced to watch. Actions cease to have impact.

We have landed where we land; it is what we do.

And while life will go on those majority will be forced (have forced themselves) to accept the unadulterated humanity that will now stand erect with pride; a pride that stems from rank ignorance and arrogance of being so.

They do not understand that it is they that cause history to repeat itself. And if they did they would call it progress. Now we must live in a world where we don’t belong. We have to watch as we sink back into the muck of evil and greed while the dazed and confused watch monkeys dance on the fire of their own destruction.