EPISODE TWO:
DEALING WITH THE LIE
The question at the end of Episode ONE is : “Has the System that’s been running your life been lying to you?” Ask yourself: “What if my society, the one I am living in right now, has lied to me and my fellow human beings? How would/could I ever discover it? And if I discovered it, what would/could I do about it?”
LOGAN’S RUN is a great framework for asking and answering this question.
Let me tell you a bit about my amazing relationship with LOGAN’S RUN.
I first saw LOGAN’S RUN in 1976, when I was 28 years old. By that time, I had already done a considerable amount of seeking. By seeking I mean, looking for the ultimate truth about life— why am I here? where did I come from? where am I going? What’s the purpose for existence?
This is what I really needed to know from the start, but what I got instead was a whole lot of geography, biology, mathematics, history and suchlike. All good stuff— mostly about the HOW— but what I needed the most was the WHY.
These “WHY” questions bothered me for years. After I saw LOGAN’S RUN, I was even more concerned. What if MY “System” was purposely keeping me from discovering the real reasons why?
What if the reason they had never told me the reasons WHY is because they didn’t know them themselves? What if they were keeping them a secret? After all, the System in LOGAN’S RUN had kept him on the hook for years. What if they were doing the same to me?
The reason I was so suspicious is because other people in my life were asking the same questions. Seekers just sort of recognize other seekers. As far as I’m concerned, the world is full of seekers. I’ve known it all my life. I’ve been comparing notes with other seekers, and I’ve discovered I’m not the only one who feels this same way about life. To me, life is about finding ultimate answers to ultimate questions.
For instance, when I was a boy, it bothered me when Dorothy sang in the movie The Wizard of Oz, “Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly …if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow why, oh why, can’t I?” The grownups in my life never took a cue from that to ask me, “Do you think there’s another life over the rainbow?”
Even earlier in my life than OZ was Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. Here is evidence from my own life of the obvious fact that even as children we ask deep questions— (or we have crickets ask them for us.) When I heard Jiminy Cricket sing, “when you wish upon a star, doesn’t matter who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you…” I remember wishing , “I wish we could all live forever!”
Silly boy! Wishing such impossible things!
Was I really wishing something impossible? Yes, under the System rules I was being childish for believing in eternity. I would have that taught out of me in high school!
You see, I grew up in an existential vacuum. Did you? Do you even remember?
As a child I had no way to find out if others felt the same way. I didn’t even have the words to ask the deep questions. But in my teens, I started to read for myself, and reach out to others, and when I began to listen to others, I found that many others were seeking too— there were other seekers just like me who were asking the same questions!
Of course, they didn’t have any answers either. But I figured, if they at least had the same questions, then they were at least on the same track—you’ve at least got to be seeking if you ever expect to get an answer! Life is supposed to be a road to finding out the answers to the big questions! (Like Cat Steven’s sang, “On the Road to Find Out”[1]). You’ll never find an answer to a question you’ve never even asked!
What I found amazing is that young people in my own generation (the teenagers and the under-thirties) were asking what I thought were the right questions— whereas the “adults” invariably pretended they had already found out all the right answers.
Of course, as teenagers we all knew it wasn’t socially acceptable to raise such questions in public— so you know what we did? We had our recording artists and filmmakers raise them for us! For example, I still remember the day when Grace Slick let the cat out of the bag by singing White Rabbit. I thought: now this girl is on to something!
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you’re going to fall
Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head
(LISTEN TO IT HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8LFNUr3vw)
I thought, “What do you suppose she means by the phrases, “the men on the chessboard” and “feed your head?””
Of course I didn’t know for sure what she meant when I first heard it, but I now know from bitter experience that “the men on the chessboard” are the people in the System who play their positions[2]. What do I mean by this? I mean the teachers and professors and “professionals” who are hired by the System to teach the system agenda— and who never for a moment think to reach across the great “existential divide” to bring a struggling seeker to the real truth.
And what does “feed your head mean”? At the time we thought it was to drop acid— “turn on, tune in, and drop out”. Since we couldn’t find the answers in the System, we felt compelled to seek answers outside the System— and since the System had supposedly introduced us to all the right books— from Shakespeare to Socrates to Sartre— we felt that if the books didn’t have the answers perhaps we’d find the answers by “expanding our consciousness”.[3] So we interpreted “feed your head” as a call to expand our minds beyond the Program we’d been fed all of our lives— beyond the System— especially the system of public education that had stuffed “facts” into us like ground meat into sausages. (Don’t get the wrong idea here— I’m definitely not against education— but I am against the systematic indoctrination of the kind I will demonstrate in the next few episodes!)
Unfortunately, because the Program wouldn’t answer, (let alone ask) the most important questions— but just kept stuffing me full of education— I got sidetracked for many years by the likes of Timothy Leary and his ill-conceived advice to expand my mind by drugs. (Kids taking drugs is always interpreted as rebelliousness— it is rarely interpreted as desperation.) It was only years later, when I discovered that drugs led nowhere (except to broken dreams or madness) that I realized that to feed your head really means to keep looking, keep asking questions, follow up on everything, don’t take NO for an answer— and especially read those things which the System has pre-programmed you to avoid. Search for the TRUTH, not just facts, figures, information— but truth!
Information alone cannot set you free— only truth c an set you free! Never give up the search until you find the ultimate answers for yourself!
Because deep down inside, young seekers suspect something is definitely wrong. And the subculture I was in— back in the 60’s, in the heyday of the Beatles, The Stones, the Doors, Genesis, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and later Pink Floyd and Supertramp etc— the media was full of songs, full of lyrics, full of movies, full of ideas, prompting us to dig deeper. For instance:
When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.
There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.
From Supertramp:The Logical Song; from the album Breakfast in America
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.”
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.
“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
From: Bob Dylan: All Along the Watchtower © 1968,1985 Dwarf Music
(LISTEN TO IT HERE, by Jimi Hendrix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY)
What do these words mean?
“Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned?”
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.”
Why did Supertramp rail against the cold hard logic of the men in the white coats? Because such types surrounded us in High School and pretended to have all the answers— yet they couldn’t answer the most important questions like
Why are we here?
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?
Who am I and what does it matter?
All the science in the world can’t seem to adequately answer these questions— and for scientists to pretend that science has found all the answers in materialism[4] is a crime against humanity. [For more information on this, read my tract, CRIME OF THE CENTURY]
Unless we are allowed to factor in the spiritual dimension of existence, we cannot ever find the answers to the deepest questions. The emphasis on the material and suppression of the spiritual has effectively nailed shut the only door of escape for an entire generation. “There must be some way out of here” (Bob Dylan) and “they’ve taken the key from the door” (Cat Stevens) are only two of the many voices who were desperately calling out for somebody to show us all an exit. [5]
Science can’t take us where science hasn’t gone. Science has never found a way out of here. And there is no scientific, linear prescription for the problem. But art can take us there, because ART has been there from the beginning, because art takes the lateral road. (More about this later!) The problem seems to be that we have separated art from science. We have gotten so used to equating science with TRUTH and art with FICTION that we believe only what can be substantiated by detailed “scientific analysis and scientific proof”. My question is, how do you quantify the promptings of the human heart? Can we let science dismiss the “premonitions”— that there’s something out there bigger than all of us, something that the men in the white coats can’t explain and quantify— just because there’s not enough physical evidence?
We must never forget that when we set out to discover ultimate truths, it’s not just a matter of a lack of information. Certainly it’s wise to assume that those truths may be difficult to find. It seems that the whole history of mankind has been one long search for ultimate truths. That’s why we seekers read history and poetry and religious and philosophical books— hoping to find ultimate truths. (For example, as a young man I read THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD— do you think I read it for entertainment? I read it find the answer which the Egyptians pretended to have. You recall the ankh symbol Logan was shown? Do you know what the ankh symbol was called? The ankh was known as the key of life, the key of the Nile or crux ansata (Latin meaning “cross with a handle”), it was the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic character for “eternal life”. Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest. The question is, did the Egyptians really have the truth about eternal life? No, they didn’t. How do I know? Because I tried the Egyptian way and it didn’t work— in fact I tried a dozen other different ways and they didn’t work either. (It was only the last one I tried that worked.)
What I’m trying to say, however hard it is to find the Ultimate Truth, it is worth the search. But what is most difficult to understand is how such a truth could ever be lost— and most appalling of all is how that it could purposely be suppressed and denied and disparaged. What kind of a monster would suppress the ultimate truth?
Well, we have a hint of it here in LOGAN’S RUN. The System has knowingly been enticing its citizens into committing what amounts to public suicide in Carrousel. The System knows Carrousel is a lie. And yet when it discovers that runners have found another way out— the way to Sanctuary— the System demands that Logan find Sanctuary and destroy it.
Does that offend you?
Does that make you angry?
You ought to be angry. The System which oversees and controls your life here in the 21st Century modern world has done the same thing to you. But to try to convince you of this with science, philosophy, ethics, religion, theology— all the linear ways— would take forever. But the lateral path— using the analogy of LOGAN’S RUN as our template— will take you there by the end of this short series of episodes. So read on!
NEXT: LIFE BEYOND THE WALL
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ–odAAA1A “Yes the answer lies within/So why not take a look now/Kick out the devils sin/Pickup, pickup the good book now” Stevens was CLOSE, but later was led to believe the Good Book was the Koran— which is not close enough.
[2] People who have never thought through the implications that any System could possibly be controlling them are simply pawns. If we are going to escape the errors of our System we will need to think beyond the public mindset— but most people are so satisfied with their perks they do exactly as they are told, never thinking for themselves . The “men on the chessboard” are a personification of all those on the playing field unaware they are being manipulated. The antithesis of this attitude is suggested in the YES song “I’ve seen All Good People/Your Move”— we must be aware and awake and make our moves judiciously and purposefully.
[3] I remember still the lyrics to the SmallFaces song “Itchycoo Park”— “ You can miss out school—why go to learn the words of fools?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ViwvgtvbA
[4] (matter and energy is all there is, there is no spiritual, supernatural dimension)
[5][5] Read the blog WOODSTOCK and consider those lyrics carefully in this context.