Don’t be an NPC
These so-called culture wars are emblematic of something much larger at play. It’s not just about preferences and opinions, it’s a struggle for the narrative control over reality. In fact, though, that is what culture is. As an anthropologist wrote (years before The Matrix), culture is the “matrix into which we are born”. To control the levers of culture is to control the levers of reality.
We are all caught up in this, whether we want to be or not, for we are all part of culture, and in this melee, it can get very confusing as to who’s on whose side. The forces of control often dress up in the clothes of liberation. If you think you’re on the side of freedom, ask yourself if your side requires that you participate in compelling other people to speak like you do, to think like you do. Does it ask you to give up honest discourse and debate for manipulation and coercion? Does it promise that you could be a god in a wholly socially constructed world, or alternatively, offer you absolution in the evisceration of your self into the great community of believers?
As the psychoanalyst Jung put it, “people don’t have ideas, ideas have people”. Don’t become possessed by an ideology that does not belong to you, that does not have your best interests at heart. We are so close to becoming real! Don’t give it all up to become an NPC. The path to individuation is difficult and narrow. Don’t choose the easy road. Don’t give in to an ideology that seeks control over what you say, what you think, what you feel, and that attempts the erasure not only of women, but of the individual, of humanity.
