Make sure to read Part 1 wherein we studied mental programming from the family fire to the smartphone.
The mass-man (who we now know as an NPC — a Non-player Character) doesn’t create, he repeats. He doesn’t originate. He is a vector for whatever virus he is meant to spread. His opinions are given to him daily, and to him, those opinions are as much his as his breath is his. The meme-mills, the propaganda factories, and the change agents have for centuries taught him that he is the center of the universe, the raison d’être (reason for existence.) All concepts of a higher law outside of himself have been blunted, blurred, marred. Even his god is created in his own image. If the past condemns him, it is because the past is an asshole and is being obliterated.
Logic, which once was a science, doesn’t exist. It is alchemy or witchcraft.
Get this:
Ethics was the science and process of understanding the Ethos.
Logic (once called ‘logics’ in the plural) was the science and process of understanding the Logos.
Logos is the Word, the Truth, the Law. What is. (More on this to come.)
For most of the mass-men, there is no religion outside of the centrality of the self but when he does accept religion, it is one that bends to him, requires him, elevates him, depends on him. It tells him he is in his own self valuable, worthy, loved, forgiven — but only based on his will. He is the touchstone of all of history and creation. His will is what appropriates these things to himself. The law is abrogated for him. God bends the knee to him and stands or fails on what man does.
Regardless of whether he accepts some form of religion or not, the mass-man’s ethics are now situational. There is no past, no history but what he is told by the same people who give him his opinions.
An apologetic is provided to him for any behavior, any absurdity, any aberration.
She is a cardboard cutout, but she thinks she is a special and unique flower. There is a reason that memes find universal resonance — because they are designed for the universal mass-man. And every NPC looks at one and says “THIS!”
The only sins now are these: non-compliance, originality, critical thinking, and any concept that is contra mundum is heresy. The mass-man thinks he can fix the world but cannot fix himself. He can terraform mars but the earth is beyond repair. Everyone is dumb, can’t drive, and is an idiot. He’s a rebel but he rebels exactly like everyone else.
He is the plumb line and the canon but cannot disconnect from the outside source of his opinions lest he die. He does not produce anything and when he receives his opinions from outside himself, he finds that packaged along with those ideas comes an apologetic for any consequences associated with them. Remember this from the last part… any form of anti-virus (the family, kinship, moral law, shame, etc.) has been systematically removed over generations. There is now no resistance.
Listen to how this works: Step 1: Eliminate the influence of the ancestors and the landmarks. Step 2: Blame the ancestors and the landmarks. Step 3: Remove the ancestors and the landmarks.
Now, every day is year zero. The system is sterilized of all tradition and resistance. Programming begins anew. Does the NPC know any of this? No. He feels like an original. Like a real boy. He feels like he has ancestors, but he doesn’t know them. He’s cut adrift from any unmovable point, but he feels what he is told to feel and eats and drinks and watches that new show and when the narrative of the day arrives, he imbibes his new opinion and spreads it without doubt. In the span of one generation, his thinking and processes are absolutely foreign to anything that has gone before — but he is prepped with a narrative and has an answer for this.
Everything before now was wrong. Simple. Yesterday was wrong, but today is perfect. And today is tomorrow’s yesterday and we’ll start this all again.
Everything his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents believed is a myth. All of it. They all lived in poverty and squalor and rape and genocide and destruction. We’re better now, thank you very much. Ask him about the 80s. “The 80s is a myth.” Ask him about the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1890s. All myths. He has a pre-programmed response to all of that. Keep going back and asking him questions: It is all a myth, written by myth-makers to excuse their crimes. The past is a myth, believe your new gods only. They never lie.
At each step, programmers have built up the self and made it impervious to shame, correction, remorse, or self-examination. The mass-man is an echo-bot. A non-conformist who relentlessly conforms. He adopts whatever flavor of the narrative appeals to him, but it is all the same narrative. He is weak and he is strong. He needs nothing and everyone better provide it for him.
She is told contradictory things, and she believes them all. She is fierce. She is weak. She is a Queen. She is wounded. She is triumphant. She is crippled. She is busy. She is bored. She is way, way, way too busy and sad and a badass and flawed and perfect. Nobody understands. She is a hero. She needs saving. She never fell and never needed saving. Once this circular mantra of self-help, self-adulation, and perpetual wound-licking is installed, reason and logic have no perch.
He curates his news to fit his tastes. So his news says: “XYZ”
He is asked his opinion: “XYZ.”
His comfort is the final arbiter of his life. His opinions sit well because he just unwrapped them today.
Are all opinions the same? No. But all lead to the same place because they are all (even some that seem to be contradictory) designed to move the mass in the same direction. Never backward and away from danger. Always forward.
“What have you learned from the mistakes of history?”
“History was a mistake. Onward.”
The NPC is real. The mass-man for the AI/VR/post-logic world. They are everywhere. They are Legion.
In the next part: Self-centrism and the man as law. Direct Action!
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