Dreams in a cockroach prison
“The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.”
— Piri Thomas
I’ve been a little absent from Substack, as you may (or may not) have noticed.
Nor have I been able to keep up with its other idiosyncrasies, because my mental energies like everyone else’s has a limit. It’s nothing these days to have over 300+ unread emails in my inbox from talented writers, whom I greatly enjoy.
I’ve come to learn first hand that the most valuable asset of all is not gold, food or cryptographic keys, but actually time. And despite my dereliction of Substack, what time remains is stretched fairly thin, even to complete my day-to-day tasks.
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
— Jim Rohn
Oh, how time slips by. A few years ago I made a fairly significant relocate after the COVID gauntlet. Naturally like every living adult, I too have to make a living. And amongst the evident lack of opportunity in the area, I somehow ended up in education, which I find truly bizarre since I’m somehow qualified enough to teach workers but not qualified enough to become one of these workers.
The coincidence of life altering events is mystery that never ceases to amaze me.
Although I love our rural acreage, my temporary residence is a bit of a mess as it was recently infested by a few hundred cockroaches. And yes, they’re far more disgusting than I ever could have imagined. I’ve broken dishes moving things around for the exterminators, and broken several nice drinking glasses after a few decided to “shinto” me while doing dishes. In case you were wondering, cockroaches love cat food and I’m told they can be processed into a milk substitute to help combat climate change.
If anyone needs some cockroaches I’d be glad to lend a few.
Although they’re mostly all dead now from a healthy volume of poison.
It’s a fair assumption that these friendly cat food feeding friends have been imported from elsewhere, and then brought into the building because of poor behaviours. Sadly as a precaution, I’ve started to sleep surrounded by a ring of diatomaceous earth. It’s as if I’m possessed and exorcising a malevolent parasitic entity, which is just in case there’s other little friends hiding in the baseboards waiting to have a taste.
I spend almost $1,300 / mo on rent for a single bedroom in a city of about 30k.
You’d think this place would be half decent…
But the problem I suspect stems from its newer residents who have brought in various diverse practices, like running through the halls with open flame requiring polite signage to kindly remind these underinformed residents about the risks of open flame inside. And even some of my friends back home have to be mindful of where they walk whilst picking up the mail, because “unhoused individuals” have decided to enrich the floor with modest amounts of urine.
Fortunately I’m not the only one enjoying this socialized enrichment, I guess.
But still it surprises me how many people in day-to-day life go on as if everything is “back to normal,” and would rather reserve these types conversations to just barely above a whisper in private. “Thou shalt not make the unpleasantries of the world public,” seems to be some unspoken law in some secret book.
Now everyone knows the school system is in shambles. And although common knowledge, it too must be kept in secret as there’s a tension brewing between the diploma mill philosophy and the tradition of producing skilled laborers.
When does a diploma cease to carry the same weight it once did?
How much water can be added?
Frankly I can only see so much first hand, and there are talented students who still blossom into young professionals, ready to be ravaged like the rest of us by the burdens of taxes and inflation, but also those who strategically game the system. Unfortunately there’s no uniformity between teachers or programs, and it’s ultimately up to each individual student who must now make an extra effort to improve their credibility, which is quite the challenge in a world where entry level positions expect 5 years experience along with numerous certifications, while contending with discriminatory hiring practices that favour race over reputation.
Again, this too must only be discussed in secret.
I never thought I’d ever become a teacher.
From what I’ve learned, a teacher must become an astute student of psychology and a diligent observer of human behaviour, else suffer the consequences of disarray, confusion and at worst mutiny, which has not directly happened to me but I have unexcitedly witnessed myself. It’s an extraordinary amount of work, planning and careful on-the-spot curation, and far more stressful than I initially imagined. Admittedly so my stress is self-induced, possibly because I care about the quality of education which, believe me, many do not and would quickly replace hand-on in-person learning with easy online modules that, mind you, no one particularly likes…
There are some digital tools that work, and far too many that don’t.
Yet what I have found a little unsettling, and this is probably because I haven’t experienced this prior, is that students will do exactly what you tell them to do. Their resulting behaviour is usually a consequence of the quality of your exactness, specificity or your understanding of their psychology. Of course this “exactness” is only partially true as many don’t bother to read instructions, or are easily swept up by simple vices like sloth or pride, especially if the task seems unimportant.
But again, that comes down to properly understanding the student.
We are all human after all.
This direct experience has given me a deeper understanding as to why so many with a college education are indoctrinated into fervent ideologies which mistake man as some kind of divine being. The stress, and cyclic conditioning using marks as the proverbial carrot and stick, does in fact constitute the control flow of a literal program implanted in young, impressionable and fatigued minds. Which is much like the initiation rituals of Mystery Babylon, leading the neophyte through dark caves and nameless horrors in the ancient grove of Osiris to reveal the hidden secrets.
Interestingly both systems, education and occult, worship the intellect as the divine.
As stressful as it’s been, this teaching experience has been revealing. Since the era of the COVID gauntlet I’ve been on a quest to understand how mass hypnosis, a once profane and ridiculous concept as we supposedly live in an enlightened era of astute science, ethics and historical document, could even be possible.
Should you ever suggest that mind control were a topic worthy of hours of study, one might expect many trivialized eye rolls unless told through the anecdotes of a witty joke, because that topic too must only be spoken about in secret.
However despite its verbose social repugnance, mind control is often gleefully discussed, right out in the open, through various euphemisms like learning strategies, thought leadership, collaborative unification, and of course brazenly as social engineering. After much study, I’ve come to recognize the day-to-day desire for man to use his hidden powers of the mind to control matter, and others, which stems from an ancient occult belief that accumulates in apotheosis; man becoming god.
Each level of this control eerily corresponds to The Three Temptations.
I find it difficult not to see these themes smeared throughout entertainment, political discourse and directly in my day-to-day activities in education. Controlling matter through technology, controlling the minds of others through self-sacrificing delusional altruism, and becoming or bowing down to an artificial source of absolute truth, which seems to come in two flavours: worship of the intellect and worship of emotion. Both at the alter of some insane ideology to create a perfect global utopia.
I will forever be a student.
But I know my time in education is limited, whether it be through the consequence of my unsecret opinions, or through the psychological limit of working in a crumbling system of ever growing insanity; although the experience has so far been interesting. Sadly people still remain stifled by what is and is not socially acceptable, and are easily controlled through authoritative instruction or other persuasive measures. Somehow even after the gauntlet years of the COVID era, people still manage to delude themselves with images of nonsense from credulous authoritative opinion.
There’s been a lot of new crazy things going on in the past few months, but interestingly not much has fundamentally changed.
Our sovereign future is as murky as it’s ever been. Currency creation from endless debt still relentlessly inflates away our purchasing power, which is also inflamed by the massive “influx” of supply-side demand, all while new “crises” are floated out on an almost daily basis. Will the public again succumb to these distortions of reality and facilitate some dark secretive agenda to consolidate absolute power?
Although my recent time spent has been stressful, it’s been rather refreshing because I haven’t had much extra energy to lament about these ominous horrors.
I think that’s a good takeaway. Just because we’re being drawn into a nightmarish world, veiled through hyperbolic good intentions, doesn’t mean we need to relinquish our sanity and throw ourselves down in wails of ecstasy like foolish members of a doomsday cult. There’s still lots more to think about and ponder, and write about when time permits, which also means there’s still so much more to do.
Hope is most certainly not lost.
Because fortunately I still control my mind, and I can still think for myself.
Always great texts. Always. They always hit the center. And that's why it doesn't matter how much time passes. It is important that you are continue to stay our Last Sage. Wish you all well, Mr Atkinson. God bless you.
great article. dunno how the hell i got it, but thank you