Here follows the imperfect expression of my feelings regarding our restraints. I recognise that I make points both for and against the Black Iron Prison metaphor, without resolving that conflict. I'm hoping there are ideas in here which others can work with and respond to which might aid my continuing with whatever inspired this. I'm sharing a space with a very loud television at present, so it's hard to form coherent thought on the topic, let alone translate it into text."You're locked in a prison", "restrained", "handcuffed", "you've carried this weight your whole life", "entangled in a web".
These are powerful images.
Emergency. Emergency. Initiate lockdown procedures.
The mind seizes up, reserving all of its processing power for survival-related functions. The Fear begins to creep into cracks in the mind. Into hollows which are vestigial remnants of a primitive intolerance to being trapped. We induce fight or flight when we frame the situation in this way. These images are more powerful because of their appeal to the animal within us... but neither fight not flight are useful ways of responding to The Prison.
The animal who chooses to fight wants to thrash around and tear it all down. The Discordian Abolitionist rebels against his self-imposed slavery.
"I will not be oppressed by mere concepts, by names, by categories, by biology. I refuse to play servant to societal expectations that I had no place in setting."
What does he want?
"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong."
Thus, he would tear down the walls in pursuit of freedom... but this freedom from The Prison is nihilism.
In portraying this as a prison, as restrictive and limiting, I fear we give some control over our reaction to it to our primitive mind.
The walls are not an obstacle to be removed from our path. They are experience, not just ours but that of our ancestors, who found that unconsciously learning and integrating the behaviour and beliefs of others was beneficial. Who didn't need to consciously understand this, but learned it by doing it and surviving where those without the predisposition towards recognising The Machine failed to continue their legacy.
The events that developed these walls are restricting us in the same way that all of the past is restricting us. From infinite possibilities they have selected one reality to be the current state of affairs and given us this to build upon. The Black Iron Prison isn't the enemy. What we need to attack is our ignorance of its topography.
Our biases: the tendency to force facts into narratives, reducing information for processing and disregarding the existence of lost data, consideration of information irrelevant to the subject at hand (previous belief, consideration of social influence, desirability of particular results), are not entirely without their merits. It might be foolish to exorcise these completely, but they need to recognised as tools for swift processing of information, rather than the default.
It takes a special kind of person to
want to turn against these, or even examine then in any depth. We Truth Seekers are made of different stuff. This can only mean that the Truth Seeker, he who is inclined to attempt a jail break, has the good fortune of being locked in a cell which encourages his escape.
What are we doing with our knowledge of these things, outside of our own personal intellectual evolution, if the only ones who can "wake up" are those who are very light sleepers?
Maybe we're just looking for company. I do not think we can say that we seek to enlighten anyone or change the world.
Nobody gave me my thoughts. I took them from everyone I ever encountered, as I took this understanding.
Sometimes I take the blinders off, and open myself to every possibility and other times I put them on so I can focus only on the road ahead.
