Down the Rabbit Hole and Into Reality (originally published on inteldaily.com and druidschool.com May 2011)
The rabbit hole is an analogy that has been used many times, an obvious reference
to the extreme shift of perspective experienced by Alice, equally applicable
to any earth-shattering change in understanding or perspective.
As someone reading this article or articles on similar websites you have probably
reached a certain level of realization about the state of things, the falsehood
of our media and the less than benign aspects of the moulding of modern society,
rape of our planet etc. So welcome to the club, like an increasingly large minority
of people, you have woken up from the saccharine dreams of well-behaved and
dutiful citizen.
Perhaps you check in on these sites daily or several times a week, like I used
to? I’d have to say I became almost addicted to finding out the ‘real
news’ and seeing the lies of the mainstream media exposed. All this is
well and good, but after a while I began to realize that although my knowledge
and understanding of the world had changed, this had little bearing on my own
life. In fact, the deluge of negative stories and the depressing hard truth
actually tended to make me feel slightly depressed and powerless.
Eventually, I began to realize that after finding out that our governments lie
constantly, the financial system is designed to cheat us, ordinary people like
me or you are expendable etc etc, there wasn’t really anything else I
needed to know – more of the same was just turning me into an internet
bad news junkie.
It is rather ironic that the internet, this amazing tool of knowledge proliferation
and empowerment, is ultimately part of the problem of how we now live. It is
switching people on to hidden truths, despicable lies and thousands of other
like-minded individuals, but it is also a portal into virtual living, a digital
non-reality that is exacerbating out detachment from the real physical world.
I have email, a facebook page, admin. on a couple of websites but I’ve
made a decision to step it all down to a minimum. I don’t check my email
daily, my friends on facebook are only people I actually have met and know,
I call people instead of texting if I need to write more than 10 words, I spend
as much time outside as I possibly can.
I realized that it is in the real physical world that we need to make the changes
– it’s great being a super buff ninja in cyberspace, but not so
great when in reality you are really a 300 pound bald man with a screen tan
and no actual physical skills. More and more I see people who have no ‘real
life’ skills, their abilities are all virtual – even down to the
ability to hold a conversation with another human being.
I find this trend rather worrying and if the various doom-mongers are correct,
these virtual skills will be worth little or nothing when we eventually crash
into the horrors of a physical resource collapse. In reality there is no restart
button, in reality ‘gameover’ really is the end – a concept
that many technophiles seeming to be losing touch with.
I’m not suggesting that you smash your laptop and your TV – these
things have their uses, but they must be kept in their proper perspective as
tools. There are far better tools that we can be utilizing for our own mental
and physical health, happiness and survival – face to face communication,
practical knowledge and skill acquisition, physical manual tools, space to live
in and grow food in, a network of like-minded individuals to share and avail
of etc.
We have a chance to change the future, the internet is definitely part of that
change, however it is in our own lives and lifestyles that the changes are most
urgent and essential. Having woken up to the truth of the nightmare that has
been arranged for us modern serfs, it is up to each individual to get up out
of the chair and begin physically re-moulding their whole lives; only when this
happens will our ideas and dreams of a better life manifest in the real world.