I recently submitted the following to the op-ed section of the NYT
Dear Editors,
If I were to tell you that I am The One, a real-life Neo, here to save humanity from The Matrix, you would take me for a nutter or a joker. Nutters don’t usually realise they are nutters, so perhaps that is what I am, but let’s assume, if you will bear with me, that I’m a joker, and that many a true word is sometimes spoken in jest.
The Matrix, as I see it, is not a near-future creation by intelligent machines, as it was in the film, but an ancient creation of man himself, which has developed over the centuries and long dominated the world. I am referring to civilisation itself, i.e. the STATES which comprise it, in their various forms, notwithstanding that relatively recent developments have given rise to a single, increasingly global, civilisation
We are all so immersed in, subjectively familiar with, and dependent on the state, i.e. the society it provides a distinctive framework for, that we fail to recognise it for what it is, just as we once failed to recognise the true nature of the material universe. I am referring especially to academics, who are generally seen as experts and authorities in their particular field of study. Today's social and political scientists, who are responsible for our understanding of society, the state and civilisation are still stuck in a pre-Copernican, i.e. pre-Darwinian, dark age, and mainstream society with them.
To make a historical, instead of a cinematic, analogy, one might see me as a modern-day Galileo, challenging the established world view. While Galileo challenged the Church's Earth-centred view of the universe with the more realistic Copernican view, I'm challenging modern academia's anti-Darwinian view of society with a pro-Darwinian view.
Pro-Darwinian, anti-Darwinian! What am I talking about? Perhaps I am a nutter.
In overreaction to the horrors and evil of Nazism (something the NYT itself warned its readers about in an editorial, The Price of Fear, following the Paris terrorist attack last November), which hijacked and abused the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism to justify its own insane racial ideology, ruthless eugenics and euthanasia programmes, and wars of aggression, a previous generation of academics made a taboo of the whole idea of applying Darwin's ideas to their own species, despite this being the only way to understand ourselves, human societies, the state and our situation.
What a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, perspective reveals is that the state conflates and confounds very different aspects of the original tribal environment in which human nature evolved, long before the first states and civilisations emerged from it, with the modern, deceptively named, "nation state" now deceitfully posing as our tribe or nation (intra- and inter-tribal environment) itself, while at the same time facilitating society’s SELF-exploitation (as an extra-tribal environment, on a par with the natural environment, which we are also exploiting to destruction) to the narrow and short-sighted personal advantage of its ruling elites and favoured (especially wealthy and academic/formerly priestly) clients, at the expense of society at large, which must ultimately lead to its self-destruction. Thus, the passing of all earlier civilisations, including those of ancient Greece and Rome, the precursors of modern European/western civilisation, which is now rapidly approaching its own self-demise.
The state is like an abusive step-parent which did away with our natural, loving parents (our original tribes and nations) before we had any contact with them (although we retain a race memory of what a genuine nation should be like), bringing us up to believe that it was our nation (our natural loving parents) with our, its citizens, best interests at heart, when in fact, its primary purpose is to facilitate our self-abuse and exploitation, playing us off one against the other in a self-harming and ultimately self-destructive fashion.
The state does serve us, of course, and we are all very dependent on it, but as a shepherd serves his flock, which is not for the flock's sake (notwithstanding any genuine concern he may feel for a lost of injured lamb), but for his own and/or his employer's sake, for the meat and wool the flock provides and can be exchanged at market for money.
Because of the taboo against viewing their own species from a Darwinian perspective (based on the fear of it leading down the same path the Nazis followed) academics fail to recognise the cycle of civilisational boom and bust that has thus far put an end to all civilisations, and will soon put an end to our own.
I don’t have Neo’s super powers to impress and convince others with. All I have are insights into the perverted Darwinian nature of the state and civilisation itself, which mainstream academics are loath to recognise, least it undermine their own status as favoured clients and employees of the state. They won't admit this, of course, even to themselves, preferring instead to demonise my ideas by associating them with Nazism, i.e. the Devil, just as their priestly predecessors once did with Galileo's ideas.
Those who want to free themselves from the Matrix of state power and delusion, I invite to test my ideas with their own reason. Many - initially, at least - will prefer to stay within the Matrix of their delusions about the state and status quo, so long as it seems to be working for them, which it may do for a while longer, but not for very much longer, because already we are exceeding the limits of our planet’s ability to support the grossly materialistic civilisation and economy on which we currently all depend.
If our civilisation is to survive and prosper, there must be rapid and radical change, i.e. revolution, which we have an understandable aversion to, our brain being wired to want to preserve the socio-economic environment on which it depends and has been successful in, as everyone who is anyone in society, with any power or influence, invariably has been. The thought of radical change scares the shit out of us, so that even as we recognise the urgent need for radical change, our brains rationalise and defend the status quo, thus preventing us from taking the necessary action.
So, I have now revealed myself to you as The One. The question is, will you pass this information on to your readers by publishing it in your op-ed section, so that they can decide for themselves whether I am a nutter, a joker or, perhaps, someone with the insights that will enable us to understand our situation and correct the self-destructive course our civilisation is on?
I can guess the answer to this question, which is both yes and no. You will publish it one day, I think, but not yet. In the meantime, I shall post it on my own blog, followed by subsequent posts in which I will elaborate on these ideas further.
