Deceived by the smiling kill-bots

Awhile back I wrote a short article about a silent war waged between schizos and psychos.

 

It wasn’t an entirely serious article, what with the rough concept borrowed from a 4chan post.

 

The idea was solid enough to get me thinking, though, and it clicked with an essay by Philip K. Dick which I’d been chewing on.

 

One symptom of schizophrenia is pattern matching. They’ll connect dots that ordinary minds would never think to connect.

 

On the one hand, this leads to lots of false positives as they hallucinate conspiracies that don’t exist.

 

On the other hand, sometimes they strike dirt.

 

Not all patterns are easy to see. Not all of them want to be seen.

 

It’s easy to hide patterns in plain sight when the world is a ceaseless scream of multi-sensory “content” forcibly injected into consciousness.

 

How much do you really know about the world? That’s a thought that can keep you up for hours.

 

It’s easier not to ask questions. Most of us are good tame animals, agreeing to the consensus reality and playing by the rules of the world we’re “supposed” to see. If you live a repetitive routine day after day and believe that the TV shows you how the world really is, chances are you won’t notice the hissing tentacles slithering under the floorboards.

 

There aren’t always tentacles.

 

But sometimes, there’s tentacles.

 

Sometimes, there’s killer androids.

 

For this reason I don’t dismiss conspiracy theories outright.

 

Many of them are lies and illusions. Maybe most of them are.

 

But some of them land.

 

You may not want to hear this, but socially-accepted reality is NOT benign. Governments, media conglomerates, politicians, public servants, and popular celebrities are not your friends. They may not be your enemies, but they act for their interests, not yours.

 

Charisma and friendliness are easily weaponized by manipulators.

 

All the “Nice Guy” traits on the personality checklists work like a virus infecting a host organism. Drop your defenses and invite the invader right inside.

 

Even morality becomes a tool of exploitation. Nietzsche was on to it when he called out the burning envy and resentment that motivates the Do-Gooders preaching altruism and tolerance.

 

The more they signal their moral goodness, the deeper the mass grave in the closet.

 

That’s the paradox of morals. The best people don’t exploit their virtues of character as a marketing campaign.

 

The schizo sees beneath the smile and friendly words and the sermons about kindness, unmasking the cold machine within.

 

Psychopaths don’t care about what’s right or wrong.

 

They aren’t even interested in what’s true or false.

 

They care about their interests.

 

I’ve always been suspicious of the personality cults that spring up around gurus. Once a soul falls under the spell of the Master, thinking switches off. Their opinions are given to them by the Tribe. What the Tribe believes is right and true. Anyone not in the Tribe is the Enemy.

 

Truth and goodness are no defense against the charismatic psychopath.

 

For that reason you can’t help the victims. They have to snap out of it themselves. That doesn’t always happen for them before something nasty and brutal.

 

Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov that people do not truly want freedom. They say they want freedom, maybe. But freedom is a burden. Freedom is hard work. Freedom is loneliness, commitment to choices, taking responsibility, being in charge.

 

Everybody wants that gig until they get it.

 

The reality of freedom is a painful exile from the unthinking bliss of the herd.

 

You don’t have to think for yourself and stand by your convictions.

 

What people really want is a strong authority to guide them, take care of them, and tell them what’s best. They’ll sacrifice all of that freedom if it brings them easy comfort.

 

You’d best believe that this environment selects for manipulative power-thirsty predators.

 

There are benign gurus. Leadership roles can be taken by genuinely good people, who act from a place of care and guidance and help everyone on the journey.

 

The ordinary folks walking the path of least resistance have a real hard time telling the difference between Mister Miyagi and Patrick Bateman.

 

It’s the same with morality, by the way. There are moral facts and there are moral falsehoods.

 

You’ll find that the people most invested in telling you otherwise, screeching the loudest about “tolerance” and “not judging”, are most likely to turn up with seriously messed up behaviors.

 

This isn’t a warning against trusting people. It’s about asking WHY you trust them.

 

If you want to know more about this weird and common phenomenon…

 

You could read Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky for some truly deep insights.

 

But for my money, this book is the best resource on the topic.

 

 

Matt Perryman
https://matts.email