Saturday 8 May 2010

Opium for you and mud for me

So it's a hung parliament, huh?

You know what’s really funny about it all? It is the fact that news agencies have to spend ages trying to explain what it means to people. Can it get any more ludicrous? The UK has a system so unnecessarily complex that most of its own people don’t understand how it actually works - or what it means. And they still call it a democracy? Personally, if it hadn’t been for that soporific Structure of Government module I had to take in second year, I would not have a clue either.

When I tried to explain to my mum what it meant, she just shook her head and stopped listening. So the Tories are leading, but they failed to reach a majority, which means... It’s a hung parliament.

What disturbed me is how certain people who DO have brains (for the most part) got completely sucked in the illusion of having a say in the matter because their skulls have been drilled with the idea that votes count. What use is a vote when all you can vote for is rotten to the core? I suppose they don’t realise that all they’re casting votes for is just about the same as being granted the right to choose between a rotten apple - and another rotten apple. I fail to see how one could be enthralled by the idea. Unless you’re blind and cannot see for yourself that everything is really controlled from the top and that unless the power that be stop imposing their own pawns for us to choose from... Anything called ‘change’ is nothing but a sham.

But I know why even intelligent, well-learned people fall for it. If they didn’t, if they truly faced the farce, they would be just as deeply depressed as I am, perhaps worse. You could actually lose your mind, even the will to live, just trying to face the reality removed from illusions and lies. It’s easier, and ironically better for your sanity, to embrace the lie. In that sense, I’m starting to understand the deeply sarcastic ending of 1984. Orwell knew exactly what he was talking about, and Winston’s fate was sealed the moment he woke up from his lifelong inner coma.

What was Big Brother but an allegory for the machine we are all trapped in? Did it ever matter in the story whether the face of Big Brother was that of a real man, or of someone that actually still existed? No, it didn’t. It didn’t because Big Brother represented the ideal imposed on the world, and it transcended man. Big Brother was the machine, the face was only part of the illusion to make people feel more at ease.

Does it matter that the Deepwater Horizon blew up in the middle of the Atlantic, spewing millions of tons of crude petrol in the water everyday since then? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t because we are not the ones in charge, we only hold the illusion of being so. So now I wonder what the point is in even knowing about it. It only serves to feed the illusion that we have a say, when it is painfully clear we don’t. I am literally condemned to sit at this desk and watch others destroy the world I am obligated to live in. And when I say ‘others’, I really mean the few in power - the ones with the money and connections that put them in high positions.

The UK system is really just a good reflection of how everything in life has been purposely made more complicated that was ever needed. The more complex it looks, the better, it seems. Yet such areas ought to have been very simple to grasp.

Thursday 6 May 2010

That heavy load of clutter called thoughts won’t shift... My head is in a terrible fog right now. Is there no end to that feeling of intense confusion?... I crave a mere moment of clarity that never seems to come my way. Everything is always like an endless whirlwind of chaotic thoughts and I’m exhausted.

I guess it was good that today happened to be a busy day. I had to leave the house early for some meeting and then had four hours to kill before the next lecture. I spent it with a girl in my year and together we did some revisions. What struck me is how peaceful it felt to be sitting next to somebody who didn’t expect you to pretend to be something you’re not. She’s the quiet type who never boasts about anything in particular as so many people I know like to do.

The thing is... I don’t know how I got to the point where I feel like my head is about to crack open like an egg. The only thing that keeps me going, it seems, is the thought that it will soon be over. Once I’m done with all my exams, I keep deluding myself that I will finally be free, but what really weighs on me like a ton of lead is the gut feeling I have that I’ll always be a prisoner of the machine.
I was reading 1984 the other day instead of reading stuff for my exams. The end of that book left me with a profound feeling of dejection. Not even Winston could beat the machine, and that thought keeps dancing in my head.

Another thing that makes me sad, in a way, is the inner knowledge I have that I have reached the end of the road as far as the Dive is concerned. I have written everything that mattered to me in all the possible ways I could think of and yet words are only what they are: words.
Carrying on would make no sense because there is one thing I’ve noticed, and it’s that I keep going around in circles. Until I break that cycle, I can’t see a point in adding any more thoughts.
People don’t understand what it means to think too much, but I do. I really do, to the point where I sometimes question my sanity. Not being able to stop questioning every single thing, always having your mind buzzing with thoughts when in reality the whole of this world is built on delusions and lies. I keep seeing past the veil of delusions, but I’m trapped. What good is it to be able to see when you can’t change a thing? All it does is make you more depressed. In that sense, the machine wins again.