Today is my first cognizant May Day.
References and allusions to the Matrix are cheap and easy for me and those in my position, as are any strings drawn to Lewis Carollās world of Alice. The concept of being awake and earnest in a new world that shows its horrific insanity to those who can think and see is one that I believe we can all resonate with. Yet even these poignant analogies fall short, or perhaps are indicative themselves of our dependence on such allusions.
The power of a metaphor is undeniable. Great writers, powerful speakers, and influential people from all walks of life make wide and varied use of metaphor. Emerson drew his inspiration from Nature, and Goldman from her life experiences. Yet when we look at so much of our own lives, where do we take our metaphors from? If we look inward in an honest manner, how often do our own references draw from the Media Machine, the Carnival of lights and sounds that disgorge from every television, every radio, every webpage?
āReligious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.Ā Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.ā ā Karl Marx,1844
As I reflect on my own life and my own journey through the Carnival, I cannot help but think back to this very well known quote by Karl Marx. Often slung around by anti-religious evangelists and burnt-out former Catholics or Christians, the true impact of this is often forgotten, it seems, because of a simple misunderstanding of both context and definition of a religion. The first lines of the preceding paragraph read as follows:
āThe foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man ā state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world.ā
When we look further at this, I believe that we can widen the use of the word religion to more than just a house of gods worship or a set of rites from ancient days. It goes far beyond the world of Christianity, Buddhism or Islam, past Hinduism or Catholicism. Religion is the product of man, and according to Marx, the āself-consciousness and self-esteem of manā. So how far can we extend this perspective on religion?
When looking around the Carnival that we live in, I see a great deal of Religion but never more than when I, like so many others, consume Media. The Media Machine has become the almighty Religion, the not-quite-deified creation of Man that feeds our ego and our debilitating self-love. It is so often a form of self-serving intellectual masturbation as we sit and surf channels that never question our perceptions, that push us to never question our ground or our principles.
So little of what we do ever incites doubt because doubt terrifies man; it makes him wonder whether his house his built on stone or sand. But whereas the first questions are only the beginning of a long journey to understanding the Carnival for what it is, few even question enough to see the Carnival for the damaging entity that it is, let alone go far enough to see why the Carnival is what it is.
The Media Machine is the Religion for every religious doctrine. The Media Machine is the opiate of the people, of every people for every day. Controlled by money-obsessed filth, the true extent of the damage caused by our Media Machine is almost overwhelming.
And so on May Day, for those of us who are new or unsure, who question but still lack the most apposite or poignant vocabulary for this journey, I call for one small action. Consider the role of Media in your life as a drug, as a substance fed to you by the Filth that run OUR world, a substance meant to dull and tranquilize you while they steal and lie and violate the human rights of millions and billions of our brethren.
Consider, for a few moments, how dangerous this drug is. Consider your slow conversion to the Media Machine and what you can do to wean yourself off of this deadly cocktail of lies and distraction. The suffocating power of such a monolithic entity is nearly incomprehensible. Yet, it is not hopeless, for the hope of the human soul and the power within each of us is enough to take back our own.
That is the power of the human spirit, the potential of man and woman. It begins with a only few questions: let us ask them to ourselves beginning today.
