And the guilty shall hang

"What I mean is that if all this power really is in the hands of just a few stinking-rich, power-hungry, unscrupulous bastards who don't give a toss about anything but their own little fucked-up ‘elite’ of likeminded arseholes, then it doesn't really look very good for the rest of us, does it?"
Vix was almost shouting, and could see heads turning inside the coffee-shop. He lowered his voice a little, leaned over and looked Mr. Friend straight in the eye with the most intense look he could manage, and said: ”They know what they’re doing, don't they?”
Mr. Friend slowly sipped his coffee, and then replied calmly:
”Well, of course they do. What did you expect?”
Mr. Friend was sitting at the usual window table at the coffee-shop when Vix had arrived.
Vix realised that it must have been several months since they last met, but when he walked over to the table to make his presence known, Mr. Friend had simply glanced up from his paper and said: “What? You’re not having any coffee?”, whereby Vix cancelled his line of ‘hello, long time’ and walked over to the counter to order.
As he returned with the coffee in hand, Mr. Friend had looked up at him briefly, and said: “Quite chilly draft in the air. Bit early, don’t you think?”, and just continued to read.
It didn't take long before they were getting to the point of dismantling the workings of the world, and they were now deep into a heated discussion on one of their favourite topics:
”But if it's all true, then the game has already been lost by anyone who would wish to oppose these fuckers,” Vix said in an almost desperate tone.
”It could well be so, but remember one thing; if you play a game of poker, you don’t win by having the best cards on your hands."
"No?" Vix shrieked.
"No. You win by convincing your opponent that you have the best hand. This is the true tactics of every ’closed’ scenario - it can’t withstand the exposure of daylight.”
"Are you insinuating that 'they' don't have any real power?"
"Of course they have real power. They have all the power you and everybody else on this planet have given them. And all the power that most breathing men and women throughout history have sacrificed to them by believing in their lies," Mr. Friend stated matter-of-factly.
"Oh yeah? You're blaming the victims for making this mess now?"
Mr. Friend narrowed his eyes at Vix, resembling some kind of pointy-faced bird: "If you choose to let yourself be controlled, it's your choice, your responsibility. And your own mess to clean up."
"That's quite stale, if you ask me," Vix replied.
"So is Nature."
He had to think for a second. Things were being said that collided heavily with his whole view of the world, or at least the view of the world he’d always wanted to have, but still he found it very hard to argue against the logic of what Mr. Friend said.
But his emotions were working in overdrive to try and find a way to oppose the old man’s sickening confidence in his own insight.
"Listen! How the hell can people even know about this? They don’t know that they’re being controlled. Therefore, it leaves them no choice. The authorities of all nations are all keeping the lid tightly screwed-on as always, and trying to oppose anything in a more active way either gets you locked up in jail, or will get you parked in the fringes of society – stowed away like a freak at a sideshow - way outside the whole system. And that just leaves you free to be poor and have no influence whatsoever."
"Now that's a thinking man speaking! More of this, please." Mr. Friend smiled and gestured as to give Vix a round of applause, to yet another large portion of irritation.
But Vix swallowed and continued: "Without any political, spiritual or financial influence, you are by society's standards a nobody, and nobodies don't change the world. Or am I wrong?"
"No, you're not wrong, Victor.” Mr. Friend looked him straight in the eye. “You are, in fact, very right.”
Vix felt confused, and somehow empty, now suddenly being right.
Mr. Friend continued:
“’Illuminated’ outcasts have never really stood a chance at saving either humanity or the planet, have they? More often than not they haven’t even been able to save themselves - no names mentioned, no offence taken.”
“So, no Saviours, then.”
“I strongly doubt it. For anything to change in this world on any scale of significance, it seems to require vast collective efforts. Only when new ideas start to move the masses do such ideas become important, and only then do they have any lasting effect.”
“But that leaves us truly fucked in all orifices. The masses have long since proved that as long as they’ve got their trash televisions and their bellies stuffed with cheap beer and drive-by junk food the last thing they need is new ideas for the world.”
“Ah, the language!” Mr. Friend pretended to be offended.
“But seriously. It’s a lost game, this one. People are so immersed in their cultural prisons that even though they were about to recognize and act on the notion they have deep inside, that everything is simply wrong, and start searching for a way out, they will have nowhere to turn. It’s no point changing your mental diet if the whole forest is poisoned.”
Vix felt defeated by his own arguments.
Mr. Friend quietly scratched his moustache as he sat looking very calmly at Vix. His eyes had lost some of their usual darting quality and had some kind of unfamiliar warmth in them.
Almost a kind of softness.
“But you have forgotten one aspect, Victor,” he finally said, after a sip of the now lukewarm coffee. “It’s something we’ve discussed many times before. A place where all information - ‘secret’ or not - can be found for anyone who bothers to take a closer look."
"What? The Internet is gonna save the world now?"
“No, no, no. Not your beloved Internet. As such,” Mr. Friend shook his head. "History!” Mr. Friend shouted, in a hissing, whispery voice, like in a movie containing at least one dwarf. “History is the key! Knowledge of history is the real power.”
He tapped the table with his now rolled-up newspaper as he said this, as if to make Vix feel that these words were of the greatest importance possible.
“But I take it most people think that money is the real power,” Vix suggested.
“I’ve hinted quite strongly that the power gained from controlling history by far transcends that of controlling money. But also knowing your history will get you much further than the worldly riches any person without the right heritage can ever expect to accumulate. That said, most people can't resist a bribe the moment the size of the bribe size exceeds their personal threshold - usually situated somewhere just above mid-way between their moral and their greed – so it’s a tough one, I agree. But it’s a way out.”
Vix didn’t consider Mr. Friend’s solution a genial one, but decided to follow the line of thought for a bit.
"So you mean that if people knew their history, they would have a chance at withstanding the power of the world’s false authorities?"
"Yes I do! If people knew the real story, and had some light shed on what's been going on throughout the years, they would probably understand that there really wasn't much to fear to begin with, and would ask more questions instead of following the whims of charlatans."
"We should all just turn on the lights, you mean?"
”Exactly! That’s when you’ll realise that the monster growling beneath your bed at night really is just a mouse with a megaphone.”
This made Vix smile, and gave him a slight feeling of relief.
He sipped his coffee.
”So that’s the whole game, then? Distracting people from the real knowledge that lies within history. I guess it’s simply a question of hiding a couple of fruitful trees in the forest?”
”Absolutely,” Mr. Friend looked content.
“But in a way it’s still quite similar to the hiding of spiritual knowledge in the darkness of occultism, only this time there’s nothing being covered up, it’s just a foggy mass of information if you don’t know what to look for,” Vix suggested, knowing that this would trigger Mr. Friend on the subject of people’s spiritual health once more.
“Quite so, Victor. If you want to take away people’s spirituality you have to make sure to hide it very well and make it look threatening enough to scare them away from trying to get it back. It's amazing what torturing, hanging or burning a few thousand mothers, sisters and daughters on stakes can do to an onlooker. Especially to a child. I guess seeing someone you love burn to death in front of your very eyes has an immense impact on your future willingness to dwell in "witchery" yourself. And you might not be so keen on advising your own children to touch on the subject either when the time comes for you to raise kids of your own."
“An overly effective cure for eradicating all future generations' spiritual heritage, in other words."
Mr. Friend seemed too happy with the lack of resistance in the conversation, but Vix decided to let him go on undisturbed:
”But it’s not just in the area of people's spiritual health these muddling techniques are at work. The same mechanism lies behind all the secrecy of military and government 'intelligence' matters, or even in so called 'National Security'. Make it seem dangerous enough to oppose the System, and soon you'll have people eating any lie you give them, in fear of the punishment they would face by seeking the truth."
”But then there really is a big, global conspiracy going on. Like the really crazy people discuss on the Internet; in which those who seem to be fighting the big wars on opposite sides are secretly meeting in darkened rooms, comparing notes and making decisions to make each other even more wealthy through arms sales and other forms of war-profiteering. You mean I shouldn’t trust the ’official’ version of anything at all, refuse vaccinations and watch out for reptilian-looking politicians?”
Mr. Friend laughed.
”All of your paranoid fears are probably quite true – if you want them to be. But let's put this a bit differently: There’s nothing in this so-called civilization of ours that hasn’t been planned by human minds in one way or other. From roads to commercial campaigns to the price of sugar to the distribution system of ’illegal’ drugs to the banking pyramid to...”
”What’s the banking pyramid?”
”The world's financial system. But you'll soon understand this." Mr. Friend went on: "So. From the banking pyramid to the voting system of Florida to the road systems of the world – well probably not the road system of London Town, but you get my point.”
”But, Banking Py...”
”All of these things can be perceived as conspiracies as long as you’re not aware of the fact that they’re simply the results of the human will at work to begin with, but instead realize it slowly over time.”
”What? That we’re being tricked all the time without realizing, but that some have started seeing the truth? Sounds a bit too close to 'The Matrix'.”
”No. I mean that most are being ignorant and lazy most of the time. There really are not that many areas in which anyone cares to cover up their underlying motives anymore. They just trust this human laziness and the fact that people won’t use their brains unless they absolutely have to.”
”Yeah, right. For example?”
”Shopping mall psychologists.”
”What, shrinks who have their offices located inside shopping malls? Big deal. I’d go crazy myself by spending a whole day in such a place.”
”No, I’m talking about psychologists hired to assist architects behind designing shopping malls, and who later assist the stores to arrange their stock in such a manner that their customers react in a certain pattern and consume more goods. And obviously far more than they actually need in life.”
”Aha. Come to think of it, I think I saw a documentary on a bloke whose job was something along these lines on Discovery Channel once. He made sure the colour of the carpet on the floor inside the store didn’t differ from the one in the corridor outside, as people unconsciously would perceive it as a psychological barrier, which prevented them from walking into the store. And that men's clothes weren’t hung on tall racks, as women often do the shopping for their men and are statistically shorter.”
”Now did you? And what did you do about it? Did you rush out into the streets and scream ’conspiracy!’, standing outside your local mall in the rain with a megaphone, handing out leaflets, warning every poor soul who passed through the doors? Or did you set up your own internet site to end this evil conspiring shopping empire?”
”Well, no. I considered blowing myself up at the premises of the newsagent down the road, but then I strongly doubted that old Ali had the turnover to employ such conspiring services and decided to let it rest.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“Well, he does keep his fags just in head-height behind the counter, though. Makes it really hard not to pick up a packet as you pay…”
”Hmm. You’re a wise little snot, aren’t you?” Mr. Friend all too-transparently enjoyed the direction this discussion was taking again.
Vix didn’t let the opportunity lie.
”Ok. So modern shopping malls are cunningly designed so that people are being manipulated further into consumerism, which in turn holds up the unjust trade-balance of the world, so that the capital powers further cement their position. I see that. But what are you getting at?” he said in a slow, stoned voice that he thought would have suited such a statement.
Mr. Friend fired back:
”I’m simply pointing out that before you start screaming about a global conspiracy of enormous dimensions and want to reveal to the world who’s really behind the 9/11 attacks, or who actually killed JFK, or question why the privately-owned central bank of the United States can call itself the ’Federal’ Reserve bank and continue inventing more money at will - you should simply try and do something about the matters that actually are within your own reach. Otherwise you’ll end up feeling like total failure, as you’ll be engaging your mind in something the body instinctively knows it can do nothing about.”
”Ahh. Great solution. To stay passive on every level of resistance towards the corrupted System. Now, that’s the way to go.”
”No, no, no. Take action against manipulation, for goodness sake. But do it on your own level. Then you might be more successful. And if you’re really serious about wanting to do something about the big stuff; sell your car and start walking, or get a bike. Then you won’t need any oil at least in your own life.”
”I don’t have a car”
”See. You’re already saving the world!”
Vix had to take a deep breath, but continued talking as he did:
”Anyway I believe most people don’t have any confidence left in ’small protests’.”
His lungs were all empty when he reached “-tests”, and he couldn’t fit another word.
Mr. Friend grabbed the opportunity:
”Of course you don’t. That’s how it should be. Otherwise the whole thing wouldn’t have worked. As I have tried to explain to you on more than one occasion, the system of global hypnosis functions in a most excellent way. I take great pride in being involved in its architecture.”
”You do?”
Vix had planned to hit back, offended as he was to have been included in ‘most people’, but was surprised at Mr. Friend’s sudden revelation.
”Well, of course. I would have hated to think that I’d spent the large part of my life wasting my time,” Mr. Friend said, then went silent.
Vix looked out the window for a while. He took a sip of his coffee, and also said nothing for a while.
Then he said:
”But why would you tell me all this if you’re happy about how things work?”
”I didn’t say I was happy with the way things work. I said I was proud of the work I put into it. That’s two quite different things, I believe.”
”Yeah, but you seem mostly unaffected by the horrors of this world – horrors that you now claim to be partly responsible for.”
Mr. Friend firmly put his cup down on the table with a sharp noise. His eyes glinted with something Vix decided was a tiny fraction of a lost temper.
”Let me put this straight, Victor. None of the inner mechanisms that lead the people of this planet to act as they do are particularly ’innocent’ in nature. Being a so-called ‘victim of circumstance’ is nothing but a chosen condition. It requires that you refuse to take responsibility for your own actions, and – listen to what I’m telling you here – to actually make the decision to abandon your natural responsibilities takes a lot of conscious willpower.”
Whatever he was on about seemed very important to Mr. Friend.
Almost personal.
Vix chose to shut up and let him go on:
“You can spend most of your early grown-up life working hard on escaping your natural childhood sensibilities, especially in the field of your sense of responsibility and consequences from the use of your free willpower. Eventually you can manage to escape yourself through deceiving yourself, and the reason people are willing to do so is that they can finally get a personal excuse to act as a victim - and never really have to face any consequences of their own choices, as they are not really ‘their own’ anymore.”
Vix had enough of the monologue at this point.
”So you’re telling me that humans who suffer do so out of their own choice? That’s a truckload of crap if you ask me.”
”Of course people don’t choose to suffer – on a conscious level. People are far too greedy by nature to choose things that aren’t good for themselves. They are simply suffering because they have made the wrong choice of trying to escape the consequence of free will, and deep down they instinctively know that the mess they’re in is their own doing.”
”Yeah, right …”
Was all Vix managed to say, as it made his thoughts wander.
Mr. Friend didn’t stop:
”There is one widespread popular myth when it comes to hypnosis; the one that you can’t hypnotise someone who doesn’t want to become hypnotised.”
”And that’s also just a lie, of course?”
”No. That’s the truth. Very much the truth.”
”So you say that all these people sleepwalking the planet, letting themselves be screwed-over by the power-hungry, harassed by the unjust money-system, and caught up in the modern slavery that is consumerism. You’re saying that they chose to do so by their own free will? Humbug!”
”The free will is a scary tool, my friend. Using it means that all your choices can be blamed on yourself, and no-one else. No parent, no God, no ‘System’, and certainly no politician. How many people in your neighbourhood would you guess would be willing to give up all these excuses for their own misery?”
”Well, putting it like that...”
”Have you never wondered why children who are in the process of becoming teenagers almost always end up in constant conflict with their parents?”
”I wouldn’t know. I left.”
”And maybe that was the right choice. It certainly might seem so from where I’m sitting, watching the result.”
”Get to the point, please,” Vix snapped. He could feel the usual unpleasant feelings rise as they touched in on the subject of his own family background.
”Every human being who enters into adolescence from childhood, instinctively experience a phase of their decision-making skills and sense of responsibility awakening inside. From the careless life of childhood - if you should be so lucky to be allowed one in your early years - you suddenly feel that you have to face yourself and start testing these new abilities of yours.”
”And if you don’t?”
”Don’t what? Face them?”
”I mean, what if you haven’t had a playful childhood to look back at?”
”Unfortunately, you are at the mercy of your parents’ ability to make the right choices for you until you develop these skills yourself. That’s probably the worst consequence of letting people choose to become parents without first having reached a certain personal maturity to make important choices for themselves. Which has very little to do with their age. Just a most unlucky side-effect of the combination of free will and the mammalian reproductive system.”
”It probably would’ve worked better to combine free will with automitosis?”
”Probably. Why weren’t you working on the team of Mother Nature’s original architects when this whole thing was designed?”
”The pay was too shitty.”
”Right. But back to the inner workings of a troubled teen.”
”You realise you’ll win the Nobel price if you manage to come up with an explanation of this?”
”I wouldn’t need one, but thank you very much in advance. How about I’ll give you one if you stop interrupting me?”
”As you’re really on a roll today: shoot.”
”As you begin trying-out your skills of decision-making and responsibility, you also start realising that most of the people surrounding you - people that you have trusted all your life - don’t use them at all, or at least to a very small extent. That’s usually when you discover your first ’conspiracy’.”
”And then they just keep coming?”
”If you choose to look at such revelations that way, yes. If you on the other hand just shake them off, and continue the process of developing your skills the way you should, you’re most likely to find yourself in a lot of trouble.”
”Tell me about it.”
”That’s what I’m doing.”
”And that’s probably why I’m still listening...”
”Firstly, you are committing the crime of reminding the ’superiors’ around you that they’ve chosen not to use their skills, and that is considered treason of the highest degree. The whole illusion is dependent upon everyone participating in the drama. The first repercussions are therefore most likely to be attempts from your surroundings to make you feel guilty for stepping out of the ’victim’ pattern.”
”And that certainly works.”
”Yes, it is a simple form of suggestion, and it works. But as the guilt starts building inside you - at the same time your feelings tell you that it’s not real guilt, but guilt imposed by others. And as you know deep within that you’ve done nothing wrong, you end up in a conflict inside yourself between the ’real’ feelings of the right to exercise your birthright, and the ’fake’ guilt invoked by those who want to stop you from doing so. You can then choose to get very angry, and take that anger out on your surroundings, or you can turn it inwards and start blaming yourself and get very self-destructive and depressed about your own situation. Either way, that’s usually when the real trouble starts.”
”Not bad.”
”If you can stand having all the people you looked up to and loved throughout your whole childhood being angry with you for a prolonged period of time, you can persist and get out on the other side a stronger and perfectly healthy person. If you don’t, you’re most likely to give in and just accept things ’the way they are’, and carry the whole scenario on to the next generation.”
Vix paused to try and take some of this in, the conversation had suddenly started getting personal for him, too.
After a short break, he said:
”Put this way, it could be far worse having people you love around you as you grow up than not having any. Then at least you don’t have that many to feel guilty about.”
He could feel a sting inside.
Mr. Friend looked as if he sensed the change of mood, and continued with a lowered voice:
”If the disappointment of not being given your rightful share of love and support in your early years doesn’t overshadow the sense of freedom attained by not having lots of unhealthy relations, then the answer is yes. That might be why orphans who make it through to adulthood without losing track are usually set for great things.”
Vix smiled, and said:
”Makes you wonder. Sometimes I don’t know what might be the worst, nuclear war or the nuclear family.”
Mr. Friend laughed aloud with his short, combusting laughter. He patted Vix lightly two times at the tip of his shoulder with the palm of his hand.
”That’s why I put my faith in you, Victor,” he said, and then he leaned back in his chair and stared into the distance out through the café window.
Vix could see the distance in Mr. Friend’s eyes growing, and said nothing.
They just sat like that for a while, and soon Vix reckoned it was time to make a move before the evening crept in and left him with the night bus from the station as the only option to get back to The Shelter.
He said goodbye to Mr. Friend, who smiled back in an unfamiliar fashion. He almost seemed vulnerable as he sat there watching the afternoon slowly giving in to the creeping evening darkness.
Vix thought to himself that Mr. Friend was a great man, and that after all, he was genuinely very happy to know him.
Then he left.

The driver on the bus back from the station kept his little FM radio as loud as practically possible, for the convenience or despair of his tired late-night passengers.
The metal-sounding, tinny voices went on overdrive about the great crisis that had hit the world’s financial system.
Vix couldn't escape the repeated disinformation, and soon found himself getting severely wound-up over the whole thing.
When would people learn?
He spent the entire journey fuming and raging, and knew he had to do something about it.

Back at The Shelter, he stormed in, put on the kettle, and sat down by the computer.
He hesitated to log into the blog. Something felt not quite right about it. Like having a little rant wouldn’t be enough on a night like this.
After a day like this.
Vix had never thought he would go to this step, but something inside him almost made him want to reach out to the world.
It could even be that he felt just a tad invincible this evening.
He knew he had to do something outrageous – something daring.
He almost closed his eyes as he typed the home URL to Facebook, as if his mind was looking the other way from what his hands were doing.
He quickly hit the 'sign up'-button, and filled in his email address, a ‘weak’ password, and – much to his own surprise - his full name.
His own, real name.
As if afraid of suddenly changing his mind, he checked and answered the confirmation email at record speed, and after another mouseclick, Vix had an account at one of the world's largest social networks.
He skipped filling in any more info about himself, except 'religious views' and 'relationship status', and then he created an open group, naming it 'Save the rich'.
He quickly wrote from the top of his head:

People!
We have a crisis spreading like wildfire across the planet these days.
This time, we're not talking a mere 'minor accident', like a trillion billion people dying of hunger in Africa, or thousands losing their lives in the flooding of Bangladesh, or even thousands more being slaughtered in Darfur with weapons produced and sold from our own country, while we all look the other way.
No, this time REAL disaster has struck.
You see, those of us, those very few of us, who can afford to play the big money games; the stock market, the moving around of imaginary money for the gain of real profit, have been so unlucky to have gone and overspent their cash.
Of course, it's not really their cash in the first place, but a loss is a loss, and we are now in danger of having people who matter lose their silver-lined jobs.
In other words, salaries in the hundredfold of what a simple hard-working cleaning assistant or bus driver can expect in a lifetime are threatened.
If this cancer isn't stopped, it can all end with the financial system of the world collapsing, and what then? We might face the horror of creating a new, more fair system of sharing our assets on a global level. The terror!
WE MIGHT EVEN END UP HAVING TO CONSUME LESS!
So, to stop this frightening scenario, join us in our new campaign:
I appeal to you, people of the Earth; bend down once again and let your aching backs carry the richer man, so he won't fall and get dirt on his suit, or lose the champagne glass he's carefully balancing in his hand.
Join our slogan with your voices raised to the full:

SAVE THE RICH!

LET'S UPHOLD THE GREAT PYRAMID

AT ANY PRICE!

Then he did a quick Google image search, and downloaded three different pictures that he opened and edited in his cracked copy of Photoshop.
The pictures were portraits of the top 3 billionaires from the Forbes' Top 100 list, and each portrait had the text 'save the rich' written underneath in the simplest font he could find.
Then he wrote an appeal to people to download and print the pictures onto self-adhesive paper and stick them up around their neighbourhood.
He decided to do the very same thing himself the next day, and put the stickers all over town - if this sudden courage was still there by morning.
He logged out, and felt fantastic about the whole thing.
As he walked over to make a cup of tea, he said out loud to himself:
”I am a virus. A social virus.”
It made him feel even better.
He logged onto his blog, and uploaded the track "Sleepwalker" by the Norwegian electronic band Frost.
The song title nicely summed-up the present state of people in general, he concluded - especially after today's conversation with Mr. Friend.
Then he wrote once again:

SAVE THE RICH!

LET'S UPHOLD THE GREAT PYRAMID

AT ANY PRICE!

He logged-out, noted down the events of the day in his log, and had his tea while surfing the web for any crucial updates.
Shortly, Vix fell asleep on the chair in front of his desk.
He somehow expected his dreams to become sweet, now that he had filed his protest.
Soon he slept.
Happily unaware that nobody noticed his actions.
After all, he had no friends on Facebook.