Let me put last nights thought this way: the idea that life has meaning and purpose is a conspiracy theory, in large measure. Our dominant culture tells us our purpose in life is to work, have sex, buy and use and throw away lots of things, engage in superficial sentimentality–not infrequently through ridiculous political ideas and following actions–think as little as possible, and to die. If this is dominant, if this is the latent and in many cases explicit message of our “leaders”, then any alternative is by definition “conspiracy”. It is out of the mainstream. It is “dangerous”. It is TRULY counter-cultural.
And on that last term, I would submit the goal is not to create an alternative culture, but to create new ideas and practices WITHIN our culture, to evolve.
A metaphor I used some time ago is that the hippies, and Beats before them (about whom some things later today) were like a pack of bikers in a long race who tried to get ahead of the pack to try and “win” the race of life. To be better than the rest of us. To live more useful, more meaningful, more exciting lives. By and large, in my view, most of them failed terribly. They lived selfish, narcissistic, futile, and ultimately somewhat pathetic if not outright contemptible lives. To the extent they lived good lives, they returned to values which were already latent in our culture, like compassion.
Ram Dass, to take one example, seems to not be the fuckup he once was. In my curmudgeonly world, that is high praise, and sincere. But he is not “counterculture” in my view. He has learned to express the best that was already IN our culture. In his work, he might appeal to Hindu ideals, but ideals of compassion are also very Christian. He would no doubt disagree, but in my view he could have reached his current station in life without going to India. It may well be the case that all his drugs helped him. Well, let’s mainstream drugs. Let’s integrate them, so you don’t have to leave our culture at all in order to experience induced transcendental states. Let’s build public temples to them. Maybe we can use city money to buy up all the Masonic lodges in every major city in America and convert them to Ayahuasca or mushroom temples.
I think one of my jobs–I continue to think of myself roughly as an irritable senior NCO with a spear and a job–is to open up holes in GroupThink, in the collective hypnosis which lies over so much of humankind. And “conspiracy theories” are the way. It was a conspiracy theory in the Matrix that they were all living in pods. But they were all living in pods. My job is Red Pills. Everyone else, the whole system by and large, is dishing out Blue Pills. The Democrats as they exist today, cannot BUT consist entirely in people consuming and enjoying Blue Pills. They have made Hitler of JFK, in public view, simply through constant repetition of the Big Lie. It’s obscene. It’s unbelievable.
If you have been thinking about thinking, now is a good time. If you are a Muslim, Christianity is a conspiracy theory. If you are a Christian, Buddhism is conspiracy theory. If you are an atheist, any form of theism is conspiracy theory. And if you are a socialist, the POSSIBILITY that conservatives are not evil is also conspiracy theory.
Sometimes, when you are in the darkness, the truth seems even darker. This is because it seems impossible, unappealing. But on the other side is the light. And those who would keep you in darkness can be counted on pointing out that life is dimmer “over there”, so even if you are miserable here, it MUST be much worse over there. They themselves fear all of that.
The world we see is covered in varying degrees of shadow. It is fascinating to contemplate.
“Darkness within darkness: the gateway to all mystery”. (Lao Tzu)