Doping and Disposing

I want to reinforce something that I have said repeatedly on this blog because if you forget this one principle you will miss most of what is happening in this world.  You will certainly not understand the phenomenon of modern addiction.

Here it is: addictions are the lubricant to the machine of modern society.

Our society is a giant machine.  Step back and look at the millions of people and their need to survive, then look at how little we here in the developed world even think about survival.  Why are we not constantly worried about starvation the way our forefathers did?  Because we know we are protected by the 'machine.'

We have technology run by technocrats, who are commanded by bureaucrats, who are authorized by politicians, who are elected by us... to take care of us.  Our survival is no longer about the weather or preventing a foreign invasion or even winning the favor of God (unless you've been diagnosed with Stage Four cancer, or realized that your next overdose may well be your last AND you are afraid to die), but rather who we put in charge of the machine that insulates us from threats.

The problems is that the machine itself needs to 'naturally select' who is useful to it and who is not.  A Communist machine is far more efficient at this process: it takes the less desirable people and puts them in camps.  Our 'neo-liberal' society has long ago realized such open acknowledgement of this process raises the hackles of the human instinct to survive and gets people to ask that pesky question, "Am I next?"

Of course you are, if you don't 'contribute.'

When you are no longer a contributor, the machine has to do something with you.  It has to either make you minimally useful (i.e. use your minimal worth as a 'voter' or a 'consumer' through which value can be passed from producer to producer), or it has to store you like a fat cell for use in emergency situations, like felons and welfare recipients.  You are kept alive, and are grateful to no one for it because you know that your life is largely meaningless to yourself.

And, it is this meaninglessness of life, how the machine takes away one's own sense of personal value and accomplishment, that is the 'squeak' of metal-on-metal that the machine desperately needs to keep quiet because the machine works best when no one realizes that it is a machine.  When you start realizing you are a cog, you may want to not be a cog, and then there will be problems.

Most of my life, I have struggled with employment in large part because I figured out the machine and decided at some point that I did not like playing the part that I was hired to play.  So, I would start talking about the machine (which annoys employers to no end) or change my part type, which then throws the machine into a malfunction mode.  So then I quit.  Being fired is so embarrassing.  You do that too much and the machine will label you defective and stick you in the fat cells of the unemployable support services.

The machine makes sure no one starves to death (that makes a different sound that awakens people), but it cannot help but grind people up slowly in its plodding.  Where is it going?  Utopia.  This is what we are promised: a day with no poverty and nothing difficult.  Like a long opium induced 'pipe dream' full of magical visions accompanied with a profound sense of well-being... kind of like that visualization class you took once with a middle aged woman yoga instructor who talked to you like you were a nursery school patient.

Yes, schools do not have students, they have patients.  They are working on those kids.  Parts have to be removed, and others installed.  They are being prepared to either produce or be shuffled off into the fat cells for eventual extinction.  The machine assigns us our roles and values, largely by an elaborate sales pitch to get us to automatically agree that a college education is the key to success, or something for someone else.  We are assigned our self-imposed racial stereotypes that confuse culture with DNA and a host of other stupidities that we never even think about.  It does not matter what is natural, but only what is believed.  And the beliefs come from 'above.'

Addiction is the lubricant that keeps us silent as we are ground up by the unnatural conditions to which we are subjected: the one-size-fits-all approach to human happiness and the definitions of success.  It is no accomplishment anymore to survive, the way it used to be.  We take it for granted.  Life has lost its savor because it has become utterly common.

This is why we abort babies and cry hysterically when a 'young' 65-year-old dies: we assume that life just goes on and on.  When life is meaningless, new life means nothing.  If we cannot talk to a fetus and see it, we are unable to 'bond' with it and assign our own personal value to it.  Yet, life is also taken for granted to the point that when it does end, we are shocked.  We assume everyone lives forever, because we don't take the dead home and prep the body on the kitchen table the way we used to.

The machine needs to occupy people, and people find the occupation of mortician as a wonderful way to occupy themselves until they become customers.

When the pain of your function in the machine begins to hurt, and you begin to see that you are being squeezed into a place you do not fit, then the dope of addiction is a perfect way of keeping you from making too much noise.

A 'dope' is a liquid used to fix a problem.  You dope up to fix the noise.

But, the dope does not fix the underlying problem, which is why addiction stunts human growth and ultimately leads to death.  The system is OK with either outcome, so long as the machine keeps operating.  Addiction treatment is not offered to really help people, because if it was it would be done differently.  Instead, it is an occupation for the system to put people in and provide the assurance to the rest of the parts that they will be maintained if they start to malfunction.

Yes, the system does care for the parts in a general sense.  The problem is that the parts assume the machine cares for them individually, when in fact the system will rip out and replace any part that is not useful.  That's when you become a fat cell or a corpse.

Don't expect the machine to fix your problems, because the lies of the machine are part of your problems.  You have to wake up and realize where you are and what is going on.  You will have to spend the rest of your life surviving by playing the part of a cog in the machine but knowing that there is more to life and even playing that part when your 'component' in the machine is not in use.

God is not in the machine.  He lets us build these machines, but He also lets us know that we are not the machine.  This is why the real solution is with God, not with more machine.  The system cannot fix us once we find ourselves not working out in our assigned position.  The system can only dope us up with free stuff and addiction until we die and get out of its way.

God never does that.  The system does not love you.  Society does not love you.

Only God does.