COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone
Awakening from the propaganda matrix is like being a conservative: you’re frequently disgusted with society and where it appears to be headed. But unlike a conservative, you’re disgusted by actual problems instead of imaginary nonsense.
Also unlike a conservative, your problem is not with relatively new societal developments like recent immigration waves and LGBTQ acceptance; your problem is with abusive dynamics which have been plaguing civilization for centuries. Capitalism. Imperialism. Militarism. Settler-colonialism. Genocide. Plutocracy. Exploitation. Consumerism.
Many rightists warn urgently that our society is on the verge of plunging into a nightmarish authoritarian dystopia, but if you’re truly unplugged from the indoctrination of the empire you understand that the dystopia is already here, and has been for a long time.
The overwhelming majority of the people in our society are already thinking, speaking, working, shopping, spending, voting and behaving pretty much exactly how the ruling class wants them to. If they put microchips in our brains which allowed them to fully control our minds, they’d have us moving around in more or less the same way we’ve been moving for generations.
We are seeing increases in authoritarianism as our rulers tighten their grip on power, but those measures are being rolled out to keep the current system in place, not to create a new one. They’re not changing anything about the prison, they’re just installing better locks on the doors.
Until you’ve fully liberated yourself from the indoctrination of the mainstream imperial worldview, you don’t truly understand that this is dystopia. You don’t understand how nightmarish it is to live in a society where everyone is marching to the relentless drumbeat of profit and domination.
You think it’s fine and normal for people to go their whole lives with their entire identities wrapped around their careers and the goals that they have accomplished within them. You don’t notice anything amiss with the way human lives are being psychologically shaped by propaganda and advertising to make them identify primarily as workers and consumers, and for them to be imprisoned or made homeless if they can’t or won’t be hammered into those shapes.
We live in a nightmare. Video: Caitlin Johnstone
When you’re still plugged into the imperial worldview, you don’t think much about the horrors your government is unleashing upon people in other countries. If you think about politics at all, “foreign policy” is just one of many issues of consideration, and is much less worthy of your attention than whatever hot partisan topic is being pushed in mainstream discourse on any given day.
When you take the blinders off, you’re not able to ignore that stuff anymore. You’re acutely aware that unfathomable suffering is always being unleashed by your rulers upon foreigners whose lives matter just as much as yours does, and that atrocities are being inflicted in your name which are just as horrific as they would be if they were happening in your neighborhood.
These things disgust and outrage you. This whole dystopia does.
The way people in your life mindlessly regurgitate war propaganda about this or that empire-targeted nation. The way movies and TV shows manufacture consent for this hellscape. The way almost every product you interact with came into your life through depraved acts of international exploitation.
The way none of the artists you’ve admired seem remotely interested in truth or justice, serving up nothing but vapid distraction in pretty shapes. The elections. The advertising. The phoniness. The way everyone’s always running around in circles frenetically trying to avoid experiencing even one single moment of true sincerity.
It looks more and more unwholesome the more lucid you become. You look at a US presidential debate, or MrBeast, or Jake Paul staging a glitzy exhibition match with an ancient Mike Tyson, or the way people are using all kinds of exploitative gig economy apps to sell off more and more of their time, labour and dignity in order to survive, and you just want to howl like a wounded animal. Some primordial eruption at this twisted thing our species has become.
This doesn’t mean you become bitter and jaded — at least not if you remain dedicated to the experience of truth. All it means is you stop looking for joy and satisfaction in the places this perverse civilization tells you to look for it.
Instead of chasing after this dystopia’s warped definitions of success and trying to look like what you’ve been told a well-adjusted member of society ought to look like, you begin finding enjoyment in real things. Love. Real human connection. The thunderous beauty of the natural world.
The crackling delight of the raw sights, sounds, smells and sensations which come with living a human life on this planet — even in the thickest manifestations of our madness. True romance, if you dare.
And as trying as it can be, it’s the only path toward real happiness. None of the people who are plugged into the matrix are really enjoying themselves, as hard as some of them try to pretend otherwise. How could they be?
It’s impossible to be truly happy when deep down you know something’s profoundly wrong. That’s why antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds are being shoveled out like Halloween candy. Everyone’s getting more and more miserable, because you can’t build real lasting happiness on a foundation of propaganda and lies.
The products never satisfy, the false definitions of success never deliver fulfillment, the toil never ends, and the cognitive dissonance grows stronger and stronger.
A devotion to truth can get ugly. It can get uncomfortable. It’s sometimes downright agonising. But it’s the only path toward a healthy world. We can only begin moving toward health by facing the truth, as unpleasant as it might be.
Our future as a conscious species lies on the other side of some confrontations that take us way outside our comfort zones. We come to nirvana by way of samsara.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.
