Those familiar with the Tarot will know that card number XV, The Devil, is not always indicative of the presence of evil. It is, rather, a warning about enslavement. A message that life has reached a dead end for you, and you face nothing now other than perpetually serving a master that will have you in chains. For some, that can indicate addiction, or a toxic relationship, or a pattern of behaviour that will lead to nothing but destruction and misery. You get the idea.
I watched a TV programme recently about the internet, and it was the usual self-serving trash about how it has de-sensitised us and allowed faceless abuse to become routine, simultaneously reducing the level of human respect in the process… and I have some sympathy with that view.. but, ironically, being perhaps already de-sensitised to these arguments, (after all, what exactly are we going to do about it because we certainly can’t get the internet genie back into its bottle), I simply turned the sound off, leaving the pictures on the screen whilst I unashamedly turned to my lap-top and logged on to relax amid the good people of Goodreads and any other sources of attraction the internet might offer.
And then it struck me. Each time I looked up from my lap-top screen to the TV screen I saw people on the TV screen looking at their lap-top screens… and it just looked like we were all enslaved. Keep in mind there was no sound. I wasn’t listening to anything. I was lost in my own thoughts, as were the other people I was watching, and there it was: Absolutely no human interaction whatsoever – just a collection of human faces staring, detached and ignorant of their surroundings, into an hypnotic abyss. It doesn’t matter whether it’s gaming, pornography, social media, unseen TV programmes, or whatever – there is a silent mass of billions who are unable to go a single day without first placating their master, sometimes for hours on end. I don’t care how you want to dress it up, that is nothing but enslavement. Simple, unblemished and perfectly executed enslavement.
If the definition of Hell is enslavement, and the Devil’s work hides inside the constriction and restriction of human love and kinship…. well, Hell on Earth is already here, working quietly and lethally in the fabric of our lives. I, for one, will still not turn off or avoid my internet connection this weekend despite this blog entry, such is the strength of the enslavement. It will be the same for you. The only way to break it is if we all did it – and that means that the Slaves of Hell would need to rise in revolt together. Based on what I have seen this week, they are all too busy, lost in their own tiny world locked inside a cage without bars, the irony being, of course, that if they were all to rise up they would have to use their master himself to co-ordinate them, and even if they achieved this they would need to use their master again to check that the mass revolt had worked thereby ensuring that, in reality, it never would. Clever. Certainly worthy of the Devil himself.
No more bets, ladies and gentlemen. The Devil is now at the table…
For a chance at redemption I would recommend you use your internet connection to check out a link sent to me this week by a very good friend of mine, a friend who embodies the qualities which keep us human. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I watched a TV programme recently about the internet, and it was the usual self-serving trash about how it has de-sensitised us and allowed faceless abuse to become routine, simultaneously reducing the level of human respect in the process… and I have some sympathy with that view.. but, ironically, being perhaps already de-sensitised to these arguments, (after all, what exactly are we going to do about it because we certainly can’t get the internet genie back into its bottle), I simply turned the sound off, leaving the pictures on the screen whilst I unashamedly turned to my lap-top and logged on to relax amid the good people of Goodreads and any other sources of attraction the internet might offer.
And then it struck me. Each time I looked up from my lap-top screen to the TV screen I saw people on the TV screen looking at their lap-top screens… and it just looked like we were all enslaved. Keep in mind there was no sound. I wasn’t listening to anything. I was lost in my own thoughts, as were the other people I was watching, and there it was: Absolutely no human interaction whatsoever – just a collection of human faces staring, detached and ignorant of their surroundings, into an hypnotic abyss. It doesn’t matter whether it’s gaming, pornography, social media, unseen TV programmes, or whatever – there is a silent mass of billions who are unable to go a single day without first placating their master, sometimes for hours on end. I don’t care how you want to dress it up, that is nothing but enslavement. Simple, unblemished and perfectly executed enslavement.
If the definition of Hell is enslavement, and the Devil’s work hides inside the constriction and restriction of human love and kinship…. well, Hell on Earth is already here, working quietly and lethally in the fabric of our lives. I, for one, will still not turn off or avoid my internet connection this weekend despite this blog entry, such is the strength of the enslavement. It will be the same for you. The only way to break it is if we all did it – and that means that the Slaves of Hell would need to rise in revolt together. Based on what I have seen this week, they are all too busy, lost in their own tiny world locked inside a cage without bars, the irony being, of course, that if they were all to rise up they would have to use their master himself to co-ordinate them, and even if they achieved this they would need to use their master again to check that the mass revolt had worked thereby ensuring that, in reality, it never would. Clever. Certainly worthy of the Devil himself.
No more bets, ladies and gentlemen. The Devil is now at the table…
For a chance at redemption I would recommend you use your internet connection to check out a link sent to me this week by a very good friend of mine, a friend who embodies the qualities which keep us human. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
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