I wrote this piece while I was attempting to write for two hours per day, on anything. I remember it being extremely difficult to keep writing and unwilling to go back and revise (hence the speaker's final few lines), but having just gone through it, I am very happy. Nay, I am impressed. There are places this could be improved or clarified, but for a first draft...it makes for an interesting read.
It's about 3 and a half single spaced typed pages. 10-15 minute read. If you've got the stomach, take it on.
It is written as a fictitious future authority figure addressing an imaginary audience of the past.
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Whatever I say is true. There is no disputing it. When I speak, the words I choose are neither carefully chosen nor eloquent. I make no use of older persuasion techniques. I do not speak to you through a frame or attempt to correct my language and mask my intentions. I speak, and it is so.
I have authority.
I have heard of times past where authority was questionable; where a single dissenter could cause waves of disrupt powerful enough to unbalance any system. It is no longer so. And the process to make it so, to make things as they are and will be, has so long since finished that its beginnings are lost. I will make an effort to discover it, and by my effort, those lost facts will become reality.
Human beings were seen as vessels capable of perceiving the world and interpreting what they see. They were capable of abstract thought, of decision making, and in short, they were seen as conscious. The fundamental choice of a human being, which by definition of the time made them human, was to be conscious or not. The greatest failing of human beings, the greatest obstacle to consciousness as I shall define it, is the concept of effort.
In order to make a conscious decision, action, or even the simplest and most fundamental of all choices, the choice to be conscious, requires a force of effort. The choice of unconsciousness is automatic. It requires no expenditure of ‘effort.’ If one accepts by the traditional rules of economics that greater resources are superior to a resource deficit, and accepts further that ‘effort’ is a an expendable force and has limits, one reaches what could once have been called Original Sin. The sin is such that, in order to be conscious, one must incur a deficit of effort, a decline of the spirit and of enjoyment. The battle is between ease and effort, and is sinful in that there is a dissonance at all between happiness and achievement in the human mind. However, in order to be unconscious, one incurs no debt and experiences no unhappiness. The only requirement is that some men, and I of course refer to those men of authority such as myself, must take upon themselves the burden that is consciousness, and incur the debt of effort, in order for the unconscious to have a source of motive power – else they simply lie still.
By removing the burden of consciousness, effort expenditure ceases. Life becomes easy. Simply do. No choice, for choice requires effort. Even the concept of doing or not is irrelevant, as we have come so far as to correct the error of humanity, the original sin. The choice to be unconscious or not no longer exists. We make the decision before a man is born, whether or not he will be conscious.
I sense there will be an air of unacceptability to what I have said to any listener who has not experienced our way of life. They may question those truths that I utter (which is unheard of now, but even still) in favor of ‘their truth.’ Understand, that the human mind is a logical machine, and provided you give it proper logical fuel, that is to say arguments that follow a clear linear method, the mind gives the body permission by which to experience ‘truth.’
The miracle of truth is far from what some ancient men may have believed of it. By my understanding (and thus it is so) the concept of truth was unchangeable. Some ethereal idea that, once grasped, held the keys to existence. Men, gripped in original sin and unaware of the fundamental struggle to be conscious or not, sought out the truth in whatever way they might. There were those, the ancestors of the people, who moved toward whatever truth was most convincing, followed the straightest logical path (with logical inventions such as ‘faith’ which is a circumvention of logical fallacy, this became much easier). And there are those who chose consciousness, and learned to understand truth for what it is.
Through my choice of language you may have already understood one of the fallacies that gripped the ancient man. The idea of multiple truths, exemplified by the phrase popular at the time ‘my truth is not your truth’ which, if one applies the proper logic, one realizes that a statement of that nature is a negation of what truth represents. This is because the ancient peoples did not understand what the reality of ‘truth’ is, and so they believed in their gods and political systems, in order to discover ‘truth.’
The reality of truth, is emotional. Truth is a feeling that can be experienced by a man, provided his mind machine is fed the proper logic fuel. The earliest people experienced the world without the aid of science, and so created reason for it to be. Logical paths by which one can come to understanding, false or not, that is experienced as the emotion of truth. The Aborigines believed great canyon’s were carved by massive serpents, for this makes logical sense when the canyon’s resemble the patterns left by snakes in sand. The Greeks believed a multitude of gods controlled everything from childbirth to weather, for it can be made to make logical sense that there is a force outside ourselves which drives those things we cannot understand.
They did not tell these stories under the assumption that it was only a story for entertainment, to be corrected upon a better understanding. They created a logical fuel, fed it to their mind, experienced ‘truth’ and then further committed the error of identifying the emotion (and all emotions are fleeting and continually changing) with an empirical reality. Because I have felt and experienced ‘truth’ there is a body of ‘truth’ that can be discovered and lived continuously. Is there more beautiful logic than this?
Each belief system built upon older, less ‘true’ systems, each catering to different crowds, and each claiming to hold exclusive rights to the real estate of empirical ‘truth.’ It was often the case that even those with power and status within systems of truth-claim, did not hold stock in their truth-claim. They were conscious, or at least they were to a degree.
Consciousness, although it lies at the start with one choice (to be or not) is a continual choice, a forever struggle between conscious and unconscious. Because the struggle never ends, there are degrees of consciousness. A person who chooses to make conscious action, to expend effort only half the time, cannot be said to be fully conscious. And thus we have those men of whom I spoke, who can partake in a truth-claim, and simultaneously hold no regard for it as ‘truth.’
There is an old saying, popular among the unconscious as a defense of their unconsciousness, which has since become anachronous in the light of our world order. Saying is a misleading term for this thing, which is in reality a concept, however it gave birth to many sayings. The concept is that of difficulty or ‘hardness.’ Something can be ‘too hard’ and thus seemingly unachievable (but wait!). It can have a high degree of ‘difficulty’ and appear unapproachable. However, when one examines these terms closely, one comes to realize that beneath the contexts of this concept and these sayings is a line of fine print. Something that is too hard, is not necessarily unachievable, but is achievable only through a large expenditure of effort. Whether or not to expend this effort becomes a mathematical equation, and a person decides, because they have accepted that effort is an expendable commodity, whether or not an action is ‘worth it.’ Of course, if effort were not expendable, anything that could be seen as rewarding becomes worth it. A gain of a skill or an achievement at the cost of nothing but time, only if effort were seen as coming from an unlimited source. Because most ancient people’s accepted, without thought, and thus unconsciously, that effort is limited, even those who are making choices (conscious, and thus expending effort) to not do something, are doing so from a base position of unconsciousness. If one stays with the accepted idea of effort as expendable, and one experiences a moment of ‘truth’ that requires no effort, the logical conclusion is that truth is something that does not require much if any effort, and thus if you are ‘working too hard’ or expending too much effort, you are not moving in the direction of truth, and must choose another route.
The search for a way of doing without a large expenditure of effort is a journey into unconsciousness. The easiest way, is to be told. Older political ideologies and religious faiths gave a prescribed code of behavior, of living and morality, to those who could not (chose not to be conscious enough) discover for themselves what way to live.
Hold your thoughts, if you believe I have just contradicted myself, for to discover for oneself what way is best to live, is to go against the idea that there is only one truth, that truth has an empirical reality and can be discovered. It is indeed, but it is not a contradiction, for it comes back to the original choice of consciousness or unconsciousness. A conscious person, a person who takes upon himself the burden and responsibility of bearing that consciousness, does not hold with the idea of a single truth, or even the empirical reality of truth in the manner in which the unconscious speak of it. They have not bought into the notion of ‘truth’, but instead recognize it’s nature as a feeling.
To be unconscious in the old world was to be unhappy, and to be conscious was to live through ones own effort, but to be happy by it. This notion has changed by our effort, the new conscious. There was no system in place to keep the unconscious in a life that is fully unconscious, they had to deal with reality eventually, on their own, and it caused great pain. They had moments where consciousness was unavoidable, where their nature (the desire to be unconscious) clashed with what reality required, conscious effort and thought (the struggle of original sin).
Now, we allow men to experience full unconsciousness. Without any choice of whether or not to be conscious or unconscious, there is no dissonance in the premises that are accepted. A person that is semi conscious, who has accepted that effort may be expended and is not unlimited, will experience pain. We do not give the choice of what premise to accept in effort. Because there is no choice, there is no expenditure of effort in the traditional sense, and thus there is full happiness. Because we provide truth, in every word we utter, there is no search for truth. It is lived (in its truest sense, as a feeling, but also in it’s mythical sense as an empirical reality, because we are truth). A perfect society, with perfect happiness.
What of those of us who have been chosen to live consciously. How do we men of authority function in this world of the unconscious? We are the motive power of all men, the source of their achievement. We are the effort, mind and will, they are the body. Whatever we choose becomes a reality, whatever we decree becomes truth. Our existence is as happy as those who live under us, but with the burden of consciousness and effort. We move the world.
But what of you, who have come so far in reading this message. Surely the logic was pleasing to your mind, but how ‘hard pressed’ would you be to recall its exact line? I was misleading before when I said the body experiences truth when the mind follows the proper logical path. Yes, that is true, but the truth is most effective, most fully engrained, when the logic cannot be recalled, and the listener is unconscious to the point of accepting that first feeling of truth as reality. Once it is accepted, there is no further need to move back, to analyze. The answer is there, you ‘feel it’ but to go back and find it would require an expenditure of effort. Is it not more blissful to ‘take on faith’ that what you read was sound enough to justify your feeling of truth?
What I ask you now, is to go back to your fundamental choice. To be conscious or not. Will you accept my conclusion (which I assure you, is truth at its most pristine), or will you question it? I offer you this choice in full knowledge and confidence of what your answer will be. I am authority. You are not a threat.
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