Darkover
Angelic
- Jul 29, 2021
- 4,736
Our society runs on hopium for a better future. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Never give up hope!". But why? Why am I not allowed to give up hope? Why is hopelessness a bad thing? Why is hallucinating a light at the end of an dark, endless tunnel viewed as good? Having a distorted reality is apparently a good thing in a dark, cold world, because it keeps your going, it makes your meaningless suffering meaningful. I think it makes it much easier for Sisyphus to roll the boulder up the hill for eternity. It keeps the slaves working repetitive, meaningless jobs until death.
It's like when I was a dumb little kid playing a racing videogame. In it, the world around the racetrack had a pretty convincing "skybox"; a two-dimensional scenery of mountains and forests surrounding, encompassing the three-dimensional world, the racetrack. I somehow managed to overcome a small barrier at the edge of the racetrack and there was just an open field with no further barrier in sight. There was nothing in between me and the convincing skybox, so I thought, why not try to reach the nice scenery of forests and mountains? I thought I could reach it in a given amount of time. Little did I know that the skybox always remained at the same distance relative to me, the player. After maybe a couple of hours driving I realized it was an illusion and I lost the hope to reach it. To have me kept going, I must've been dumber or the illusion must've been more convincing. I hypothesize that there is an illusion for every degree of intelligence. Luckily, our masters can never create an illusion that could trick themselves.
So, we all might not be able to see through the highest illusions of the universe, but some of us certainly see through the illusions created by our masters. An adult that knows a thing or two could have pointed out to me that I am driving towards an illusion, but that would not have been enough to convince me, even if he explained everything to me in detail.
From my perspective as a kid, I would feel motivated to convince the adult that I'm not driving towards an illusion and that he will see. People that see a light at the end of the tunnel would try to convince the people who don't that there is one and "you gotta keep moving!", "if you stop, you'll never reach the end", while the disillusioned person thinks "it doesn't matter what I do, I'll never reach the end, either way".
The problem is that the illusioned people try to pathologize the ones who see through all of the illusions created by man. "Hopelessness" is even listed as a symptom for depressive disorders in the DSM. If you don't believe in a better future, in general, or for yourself, you are apparently mentally ill and most probably a danger to yourself, because hopelessness predicts suicides.
It's like when I was a dumb little kid playing a racing videogame. In it, the world around the racetrack had a pretty convincing "skybox"; a two-dimensional scenery of mountains and forests surrounding, encompassing the three-dimensional world, the racetrack. I somehow managed to overcome a small barrier at the edge of the racetrack and there was just an open field with no further barrier in sight. There was nothing in between me and the convincing skybox, so I thought, why not try to reach the nice scenery of forests and mountains? I thought I could reach it in a given amount of time. Little did I know that the skybox always remained at the same distance relative to me, the player. After maybe a couple of hours driving I realized it was an illusion and I lost the hope to reach it. To have me kept going, I must've been dumber or the illusion must've been more convincing. I hypothesize that there is an illusion for every degree of intelligence. Luckily, our masters can never create an illusion that could trick themselves.
So, we all might not be able to see through the highest illusions of the universe, but some of us certainly see through the illusions created by our masters. An adult that knows a thing or two could have pointed out to me that I am driving towards an illusion, but that would not have been enough to convince me, even if he explained everything to me in detail.
From my perspective as a kid, I would feel motivated to convince the adult that I'm not driving towards an illusion and that he will see. People that see a light at the end of the tunnel would try to convince the people who don't that there is one and "you gotta keep moving!", "if you stop, you'll never reach the end", while the disillusioned person thinks "it doesn't matter what I do, I'll never reach the end, either way".
The problem is that the illusioned people try to pathologize the ones who see through all of the illusions created by man. "Hopelessness" is even listed as a symptom for depressive disorders in the DSM. If you don't believe in a better future, in general, or for yourself, you are apparently mentally ill and most probably a danger to yourself, because hopelessness predicts suicides.
