What If There Was No Heaven Matrix?

This Must Be Heaven

The cover of Newsweek, shown to the left, engendered some energy that led to a respectable volume of keyboard stroking and even some keyboard thumping

The "reality" thingy has many applications, one of which is the moral application ... I mean ... where the mystery is dealt with in a moral sense.

With a yardstick of sorts that determines our moral worth, based upon how well we grasp and explain "reality."

If we express a view of reality that is not acceptable then we may find ourselves at "the funny farm" for an amount of time "to be determined later" ... like the kid who was facing some prison time so he tricked the psychiatrist into an observational stay at a mental institution, but was still there almost two decades later  (The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises - 2).

Any matrix concept also has a scientific aspect to it, in the sense that an answer is sought by scientific rather than by mystical means, but some of that science is hokey:

Tantalizingly, just weeks before The Matrix came out in 1999, astronomers analyzing the light from distant galaxies published hints that the universe’s “constants” might not be so constant. Specifically, they found that the value of the fine-structure constant — which determines how the galaxies’ light should appear — is one thousandth of a percent bigger

They usually keep this door locked.

today than it was 10 billion years ago.

Glitches caused by our simulation being patched up could also be at the root of truly bizarre results that defy the normal rules of physics. One such possible effect appeared in 2011, when physicists working on the OPERA experiment in Europe made headlines as they claimed to have measured subatomic particles called neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, considered the universal speed limit.

Unfortunately, neither case proved a slam-dunk for a virtual universe. Independent tests could not back up the fine-structure constant data, and the speedy neutrinos turned out to be due to a faulty experimental setup. But there is a more fantastical explanation: These inconstant-constants may have instead been simulation glitches, glimpsed just before our programmers fixed them.

(Do We Live in the Matrix?). Not a mention of software in the article, which is a fatal mistake for that hypothesis IMO, because a computer is comatose or catatonic without its software.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog sees the more important way to look for "the matrix" ("a matrix" is a better way to put it).

Which is to study propaganda, psychological operations, mind control concepts, and psychological trances of cultures (e.g. The Matriarch of The Matrix, 2, 3; Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala).

The propaganda matrix is not science fiction.

It is reality --to the point that we will not have a firm enough grasp of American reality if we do not understand the matrix factory around us:

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political,

economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays -- widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995 -- played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.

(Father of Spin, PR Watch Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 2, p. 11, 1999, emphasis added). After reading that quote, if you are getting "how can that be?" signals of serious doubt from your cultural amygdala matrix, consider this writing in a book by Bernays:

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Edward L. Bernays

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
...
It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

(A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4, quoting from his book "Propaganda"). BTW Neo, there is a link in that post to his book, in PDF format, which can be downloaded for no cost.

There are many ways to experience a matrix.

For example, the movie "Awakenings" (1990 - Robin Williams) touches upon the issue.

The bottom line is that we do not have to use computers to attempt the very unlikely-to-be-successful task of discovering a boundless matrix.

The more important task for serious adults is to free ourselves from the propaganda / PR matrix which we really do live in.

---

---