Words, boredom and the Matrix.

[Guest guest]

I have just about finished reading the Snakebite Letters and found it as interesting and thought provoking as the Screwtape Letters. Rather than give a chapter by chapter overview, I will simply do as the author did and focus on the key point.

The crux of the matter was that boredom is a key weapon of the demons and clouding the language is another. Both go hand in hand and feed off of each other. As such, it is hard to decide which one to start with.

"Idle hands are the devil's plaything". Why are hands idle? Because they are bored. Boredom is intolerable, almost as bad as pain, and people will try to find something to alleviate it. If they are bored enough, then they will be more easily seduced into doing bad things. How to make sure they don't turn to good things instead? By making good things boring, of course!

How is that achieved? It is done by language on many fronts. First of all, good things and good behavior are given negative lables. Words like old fashioned, tired, uncool, fascist and of course, boring are attatched to them. On the other hand, positive words are associated with bad things: cool, hip, in, fresh, haute couture, etc. So good is made boring and bad made exciting.

The meanings of words are also used. Meanings are changed, twisted, corrupted. Those that cannot be so handled are shunned and made into negatives or purjoratives. Some people complain that the Matrix was full of way out and hard to understand theories. Call me strange but I understood what they meant. Recall in the subway station when the programs were sending their child away, they explained that "love" was just a word that lablled a feeling. That much is true. Now, the word is more than a mere lable. It describes a concept which resides in the brain. That is to say, the word "love" is a placeholder in the brain that ties together all the brain knows about love.

What happens if the placeholder is corrupted or removed? It can easily be corrupted by bad relationships. The good connotation is tainted by the bad. With the vagaries of the English language, in that there is only one word for love, ALL feelings of love will be tainted from then on. It may not be pronounced, but there will be some nagging doubt in the back of the mind chewing away on the concept.

Removing the placeholder of love altogether would be difficult since our culture is so saturated with it. But imagine that it was. Does than mean that person would be incapable of feeling love? Perhaps not, but it would not be in the same way as before the placeholder was destroyed. Perhaps a better example would be if compassion, in its true sense, were removed. Then you could end up with people from Jeffry Daumer to Hitler.

The point being, that words are more than just labels of things. They have a power as they represent things in our minds and spirits. This is especially for intangibles like love, honr and duty.

Now, how to make people bored with words? Easily, by making them dry and meaningless. This can be seen in super politically correct speech. That is increasing as more and more people fear being sued for merely speaking a single "bad" word. It is also happening in the way that today's youth know fewer and fewer words. Not only is their vocabulary being restricted, but so is their ability to think. One needs a certain level of vocabularly in order to convserse on things, especially to deeper more important thing. "Dude" just doesn't cut it.

Speech of today's teens is headed in the direction of Orwell's 1984. The other night on cartoon network or maybe Nickelodeon, they had a guy on this short spot talking about how you can use the word "dude" in so many different situations. That is exactly what was going on in 1984: the minimization of the language down to just a few words. The result: a langauge incapable of supporting great thoughts and concepts, like freedom and justice; and language with no soul and no poetry.

So, with language out and boredom in, what is left? Images of course. Images are also "great" because the mind generally doesn't filter them, at least not at first, but lets them in and exposes the conscious mind to them before it can react. That might not be so bad except for the content of the images. As stated by some elsewhere, so much of what is on TV and the movies these days is all sex and violence. Indeed it seems that way. And what better way to take advantage of the above situation than to relieve boredom with two of humanity's most base instincts?

Protest has been raised about such things, but those tend to miss the point. Last year there was an outcry about Janet 's breast. The brest was not the real issue, just the distraction. The real issue was whole performance. Remember how they danced together, the words of the song? The issue was that the media thought THAT was appropriate for what was essentially a family program. The media proved that they knew this to be the case when they trotted out the wardrobe malfunction bit. Now, they said that that had not happened in rehersal, which means they knew and approved the whole smutty performance! They also prove it when they decry how opressed they feel and that this Superbowl will be boring. Why will it be boring? Isn't the sporting event enough or do they think it will only be good if the whole halftime show is nothing but sex acts?

There you see another factor: misdirection. Let the people see the tree but not the forest. Let them pick trivial symptoms while the disease continues to spread.

The other two key points were elitism and tolerance. The point to them: make people think they aren't when they are. Make them smug and snobbish in the superiority of themselves and their ideas so that they sneer at others. Make them accepting of everything and refuse the judge anything and call it tolerance. Have them tolerate anything but a dissenting opinion. Then the elitism and snobbery kicks in, as do arguments, violence and division.

This is all rather paraphrased and I hope it makes sense. I would say reading both books I have mentioned might not be a bad idea. Even if you aren't a believer, they will give you a new way of looking at the world.