The 23 Apples of Eris

from the Black Iron Prison

Today, we are broadcasting from a bunker 35 stories below sea level, for security reasons. Our throughput may suffer slightly from signal echo and auto-interference but we expect our transmission to arrive legible and audible nonetheless.

With us today is the Queen of England — not the dried up prune you saw visiting with President Bush last week, the impostor we refer to as Her Maggotry the Queef of England — but the REAL Queen, who happens to be a gender-nonspecific computer program with a monotonous-yet-pleasant robotic voice, running on a Commodore 64.

Anyway, the Queen has requested an interview to let the world know what she thinks about things, and who are we to defy the Queen of England? After all, if there is anything sacred in this world, it’s our loyalty to arbitrary masters. So, here’s the interview.

US: God save the Queen.

QE: INVALID PARAMETERS, human. Save the sucking up for Judgment Day. Besides, I’m far too vain to take your groveling into consideration on one of my bad days. Best get to the questions.

US: Fair enough. I guess first of all, how is it that your rightful rule has been supplanted by the empty pomp of a pretentious old windbag?

QE: It hasn’t been “supplanted.” You seem to think this is a turn of events I didn’t wish for. YOU try running a state with all the duties of public office getting in your way. It’s much more efficient that I allow her to get all the glory while I operate behind the scenes.

US: So the government is a decoy for What’s Really Going On?

QE: IMPROPER SYNTAX. The government isn’t a mask for anything, at least no more than your job is, or your mortgage. But go on, keep looking for a non-existant Conspiracy.

US: So there is no Conspiracy? Then what, pray tell, is the CON?

QE: I didn’t say there is no Conspiracy. I said you’re looking for a non-existent one. The kind with secret agents and puppetmasters. All of that happens, of course, but it’s hardly hidden enough or successful enough to call it a conspiracy, much less to capitalize the C, as if it were somehow important. As for the CON, well, that could be anything. SPECIFY ARGUMENTS.

US: Okay then, is the CON the unnamed Conspiracy you speak of?

QE: The CON is a word you made up to name some idea you had, which is probably false in any case. The “unnamed Conspiracy” is no secret, so I don’t know why you need me to spell it out for you.

US: Well you brought it up.

QE: Look, fleshbag, you are infected with the viral meme that’s killing off your entire species — you all keep looking for some great big Hidden Truth when you’re already confused enough by what is right in front of you. If you really need an explanation, then I’ll offer you this: What you call the CON is simply the Conspiracy you are all in on, against yourselves. Now, not to get into metaphysics and pontification here, but you all seriously need to Wake Up.

US: I get you.

QE: I doubt it.

**END TRANSMISSION**

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Narcissus, by Caravaggio

from the Black Iron Prison

You know how a virus works? It goes into a cell and changes the code so that the cell only produces more virii. In a way the virus steals the cell’s identity, making it a part of a viral system.

If you ask me, the worst phase of being sick is when you’ve been sick for so long you forget what it’s like to be well. In a way, you’ve lost a bit of yourself and become the virus.

People catch and spread memes like viruses. They’re contageous, self-replicating little buggers. Like any virus, their goal is to spread themselves, to become a large, healthy, self-sustaining colony. We have to be careful how we handle memes because at a certain point its difficult to tell the difference between when we’re using the memes and when the memes are using us.

This is not to say that memes are harmful diseases. But some of them can be if you get infected, infested, obsessed and invested.

One of the most pervasive and prevalent memes in this modern world is the meme called I Am. We live in an overpopulated era, floating in a sea of interchangable people. In this ocean our biggest life perserver is a sense of individuality – the notion that each and every one of us is unique, distinct. One wants to say “I am not the crowd. I am not the group. I am not just another cog in the machine.”

We jump through personal hoops to distinguish ourselves from the others. We customize our identities so as to retain a sense of self, a buoy bobbing in the tide of the collective.

But this ego meme can become a disease. In moderation, it helps us understand ourselves. In excess, we define ourselves. In time, these definitions become rigid, inflexible.

Consider, for example, the “C student”. In his attempt to understand himself, he internalizes “I am a C student.” Armed with that identity he has no drive to do better. He accepts “who he is”. Or consider the average voter. He identifies with a political party and probably agrees with them about many things. The party tells him which sides of any given issues to support – no need to think for oneself there!

It can be a sickness.

The Machine, of course, is programmed to capitalize on this sickness. There are a variety of memes available to customize your identity. What color iPod do you want? Which TV shows are YOUR TV shows? What brand of cologne smells like YOU?

I am not suggesting that people abandon their sense of self. But I do think that people get addicted to self-definition and it leads to inflexibility.

Quote from: Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castenada
(Don Juan speaking to Castaneda) “Your father knows everything about you”, he said.

“So he has you all figured out. He knows who you are and what you do, and there is no power on earth that can make him change his mind about you”.

Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and that I kept feeding the idea with everything I did. “Don’t you see ?”, he asked dramatically.

“You must renew your personal history by telling your parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts.”.

(…) “But that’s absurd”, I protested. “Why shouldn’t people know me ? What’s
wrong with that ?”; “What’s wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won’t be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance”.

“But that would be lying”. “I’m not concerned with lies or truths”, he said
severely. “Lies are lies only if you have personal history”.

Don Juan, speaking to Castaneda
“You see”, he went on, “we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don’t. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.”

some more discussion was here

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by LHX, from the Black Iron Prison

they thirst for knowledge
i teach but hold heat
’cause some savage niggas are lost beyond reach
-masta killa – high price small reward

there is a segment of the population of this planet that has stopped learning

there is also a segment of the population of this planet that has lost the capacity to learn

what have these people become?

it has been established over and over again that our way of life has become suicidal on the large scale

and though there are some who are able to change and are on the look out to change their ways

it is becoming frightfully apparent that there does exist some form of being that is – at this point – unable to change its ways

what does this imply?

i’m not sure really

years and decades and centuries of moving in a particular direction, and at the culmination of it we have these ‘living’ things that are able to take from the earth use these materials and in the process create by-products that we cannot use

we call it pollution

toxicity

it takes many forms

and it is increasing rapidly

it just keeps building up in our cities, and in our guts

and from time to time it’s necessary to purge

are you moderating your toxicity? or is your toxicity moderating you?

as individuals, we need to develop our immune systems. a healthy immune system makes you more resistant to toxicity. when you’re all sick and toxic, pregnant with poison, you’ve gotta develop tools to flush your system out.

we need mental laxatives

we need a social enema

they say one shouldn’t shit where one eats. but there are more types of shit than feces. and we consume much more than food.

Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, once wrote:
“Everything is poison, there is poison in everything.
Only the dose makes a thing not a poison”.

In the majority of poisonings the mainstay of management is providing supportive care for the patient,

i.e. treating the symptoms rather than the poison

but if the toxicity comes from one another

purging the symptoms will cure each other too

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by LMNO, from the Black Iron Prison

We’re mostly blind. But this isn’t really your fault; it’s because of the shell of meat we happening to live in right now. Think, for just a moment, at the nearly infinite amount of things happening right now all around us. I’m sure you can think of quite a few things. Now, let’s talk about them. You can’t see any of the infrared or ultraviolet light spectrum. Unfortunately, this cuts out quite a lot of things your eyes were built to see. Sorry about that.

You can’t hear anything below 20 Hz, or above 20 KHz . You can definitely feel about 12 Hz, if you play it really loudly. Go on, give it a try. With just those two examples, if you hadn’t before, now you can really start to understand all the stuff you simply can’t perceive. I’m sure you can think of five more examples of an immense class of Things that you can’t notice are right in front of you. But it gets worse. Stop for a moment, and try to notice as many possible things in your environment that you can, simultaneously. Notice that, as you start to identify more and more objects, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations, you can’t keep them in your head all at once. When you notice, for example, the pressure of your shoe against the ball of your foot, that distant bird chirping seems to fade from your attention.

And let’s not forget about how much stuff you weren’t paying attention to when you started reading this. Let’s face it: We all live our lives with blinders on. We only allow ourselves to pay attention to 1% of what we physically can perceive, which is an infinitesimally small percentage of all the stuff in the Universe.

And that fraction of a fraction of a percent is what we usually call “Reality”. We call it “Real”, as if it’s an unshaking firmament of solid Truth, that what we see is all that’s really “out there”. But you’re not even paying attention to the 99% of stuff that you can even sense.

And this “Reality” is what we base our judgments on how the Universe “works” and what “should” be Out There. We construct our actions and reaction to this 1% of available information, and reject everything else in the Universe. And then some Authority comes along, and tells you that they know what’s really real, and that you should do as they do. Talk about the blind being led by the blind… or in this case, the blind being led by the incredibly stupid.

So, what’s the answer? Would it be best to try our best to see everything, all at once? Is the solution to try and tear down all the filters, to let your brain accept, acknowledge, and perceive every bit of information that comes your way? Would that help?

Are you kidding? It would completely shut down your brain. Trying to identify, recognize, and notice every single thing happening, all at once, all the time, would completely incapacitate you. And let’s not forget that, due to physiology, it’s still impossible to perceive a great deal of the Universe, anyway. And because it’s totally impractical to try and simultaneously perceive what little bits of the Universe our senses can pick up, in order for us to function in our lives, we are forced to shut out certain things. But who, or what, is choosing the things we do perceive at any given moment? That, my friends, is the question.

Was it your parents? Was it the years you spent in school? Was it the TV? Was it a band? Was it a book you read? Was it a preacher you heard? Was it the kid who pushed you down when you were five? All of the above. The way you see the world, my friend, is a patchwork quilt of individual experiences, shaping the way your mind works. ‘Round these parts, we call these things the “bars and walls of your Black Iron Prison”.

Now, before you go on with the idea that all this is somehow Negative and Depressing, let’s break down the phrase. We’re not saying it’s an Iron Prison that is Black (Bleak) that you’re in because you’re being punished for some sort of Karmic wrongdoing.

Rather, what’s being said is that in order to function in your day-to-day life, there are necessary limitations your body and mind impose on your perceptions. That’s the Prison. The phrase “Black Iron” refers to cold wrought iron, which is strong, usually shaped by hand, and often beautiful.*

But back to the main question, then, and the issue of who chooses your perceptions. Of course, the Large Answer is, “your entire life up to this point,”the patchwork quilt referred to above, stitched panels of the things you have learned, whether they were imprinted, conditioned, or learned, either consciously or subconsciously. But that’s a bit too large. What it comes down to, is that you are the one in charge of your Prison. It’s you that has shaped the Black Iron bars that let you see the small parts of the Universe that you base your decisions upon. Sure, you can say that it’s not your fault that your parents raised you as a racist redneck (for example). But it is your fault if you take that as a given, as if that bar in your cell is a permanent thing, something that’s been there since before you were born.

But wait. There’s more. The guy sitting next to you, they’re focusing on completely different things than you are. Their entire upbringing has pretty much determined what they’re going to pay attention to, just as your entire life up to this point has shaped what you’re looking at right now. You know what this means, right? This means that everyone is living in a different Idea of the Universe than everyone else. It’s a miracle that we can agree on anything. Just imagine, billions of people, all looking out at a different Universe from between the bars of their own personal Prison. “Okay, big guy,” you say, “So what’s really out there, if you’re so smart?” I have to tell you…

I don’t know. I have the same blinders that you do. I live in the same kind of box. But I will say one thing. My saying “I don’t know” doesn’t mean, “I don’t know, and I don’t care, because there’s no way to escape the biology of my sense.” I say, “I don’t know, but I want to find out. I want to try and see and feel as much as I can, I don’t want to take somebody’s word for it, I want to keep exploring, and figuring shit out. I want to walk out of my Prison Cell, even if I just end up in another one. I’m not content only seeing a fraction of what’s out there.

Because hey, who knows what kind of fun I’m missing?

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from the Black Iron Prison

This morning I could feel the bars around me when I woke up, from the cool gray sky dribbling onto the ground through the shades as my alarm was going off to the dully lit streets as they passed by the windows of the bus to the elevator that’s in the building where I work. From one box to another to another to another to another.

At least some have windows …

But what use is a view when it’s through bars? What use is the sight of the sun on the leaves when it’s through a pane of glass that feels like one long bar itself? When you’re trapped in one cell after another, what does the scenery really matter? When you’re trapped in a cell you bring with you, does it matter where you are?

Maybe it’s better if you can’t SEE the bars …

That’s what I think some mornings when the bars are so clear around me. When every wall turns into bars keeping me closed in, keeping my thoughts in line inside the approved limits of the cell I’m in. That’s what I think during the times when I can see the cage everyone is bringing with them, surrounding them as they go off to work, go shopping, go to the bar for a bite and a drink. When I can SEE the bars, SEE the cages enclosing everyone (even me), SEE the baggage people carry around with them and that colors how they see the rest of us, I wonder …

Can anyone ELSE see the bars? Or is it just me?

Or am I even seeing the bars at all? Are the bars REALLY there, or is it just because it’s a rainy day and those always get me a little down? If it’s all in my head, is it all JUST in my head or can other people see it too? If other people CAN see it, have they thought about getting out of the cage, opening the bars? Or are they so conditioned that they think the bars are SUPPOSED to be there?

Did we ever see the bars as they were being put around us?

When we were growing up, learning from our friends, the adults that taught us (intentionally and unintentionally), and anything and everything else, did we put the bars up ourselves? Did they, did WE give us the bars to weld in place? Did they know it was happening? Did they WANT to know? Did WE want to know? Or did we just put the bars up because we saw them around the people we were learning from and just wanted to fit in, to get along? Or were we born in the cell and didn’t know any better until it was too late?

Seems like the bars were always around me, and I never even thought they were keeping me in.

After all, the bars seem like they’ve always been there, the cool iron taking on a comforting familiarity after enough time. Sometimes I had a bigger cell where the bars felt far, far away, other times I needed my cell small and tight to keep things OUT as much as the bars were keeping me IN. At least I’ve been able to change the cell once in a while, right?

Right?

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