/lit/ - Literature

>>12455829
this isn't the worst possible segue either into how i wanted to respond to >>12453923, either. because rather than make a pitch for Nondualism, i think it's actually more in my wheelhouse to start from the dystopian perspective, put on my Tyrant Hat, and tell you exactly what would irritate me the most about nondualism, the monastic life, or wisdom in general from that perspective.

suppose that the year is 21XX, and the world has been destroyed in nuclear war, or by a zombie plague, or whatever. maybe both. being me, i have resolved to take care of this situation - i've disastrously talked my way somehow into a position of authority, playing on my fears of capitalism to become a minister of propaganda. i've even drawn up a political model of governance called Not Sparta, which is here to Help. i want the Spice to Flow, but i realize that achieving the Golden Path is a difficult prospect. my basic job, as ideologue, is to persuade you that the State has your best interests at heart, knows you better than you know yourself, and ultimately can gently enfold you in a trap that conflates freedom with servitude to your illusions, mainly through the use of irony, ignorance, and semantic bludgeons.

the first thing about Not Sparta (really, we are Ironic Stalinism, but calling us by our True Names will make us wither and die, so this is forbidden) are the philosophical foundations - namely, the appearance of technological revolution, when what we actually deliver is pleasure. call it Anarcho-Crusaderism, or Imperial Feudalism. the crucial technology on which we depend is actually borrowed from Ender's Game: namely, a simulation of war that hides the presence of the others being destroyed. our fundamental task is basically to entrench a moral division in the apparatus of the state: that life is good at the top, and never stops getting better. but i have to sell you on this vision, on behalf of my masters, who are a bunch of decadent and drug-addicted aristocrats that i secretly loathe, and yet also envy. i want to keep them Very Happy, for two reasons: primarily, because i am depending on a certain vision of their happiness to sell to everyone else, and second of all, because i basically need them to stay addicted to having everything that they desire, because that gives me the opportunity to Defend Camelot.

i surveil them constantly, and i have also created a reality TV show to surround them. it's part Jersey Shore, part Pride and Prejudice. it's very meta, and you can tune in at any part of the day to watch them doing Rich People things. that all of this becomes in the end stultifyingly boring is fine, by the way. if ultimately you feel too bored or numbed by this to care, that works for me just as well.