"Me? The Chosen One? I didn't even graduate fucking high school."

Sometimes I wonder whether, ever since at least January, I haven't been reposting exactly the same information on here, in different words. Or perhaps it's like a sculpture, and every time I rephrase I'm chipping away a little bit of marble that doesn't look like Michaelangelo's David. In any case, listen up and listen good:

Most people do not base their actions on rational thought related to material reality. They base their action on stories which they partly pick up from their culture and partly make up themselves. Depending on whether the culture is in a death spiral or not, these stories might actually be helpful or might actually systematically break down consciousness. In whatever case, basing your life on images and narratives rather than the hard facts of material existence is much, much, much easier. And will virtually ensure that you don't ever change anything. This is fine if nothing needs to be changed - perhaps problematic if the planet or human civilisation is at risk, and if you give a shit about human civilisation and/or life on earth, which I assume most of you do.

(Palestinian accent:) "Zis side of ze revolution, ze revolutionaries are a minority."

One of the most common media narratives is actually the one which scoops up the people who don't fall for the mainstream ones. It's the one embodied in virtually every popular fantasy or speculative-fiction work today. What it says is: YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE. There is something special about you and you alone which means that you are destined to eventually find Your People who will help you in your noble quest, and who will probably be your cabinet ministers once you've conquered Earth or whatever. Let the friendly trolls at ED comment further:

The purpose of the Harry Potter books is to create the illusion that losers succeed in the end and that the outcasts and misfits are the real winners of society, similar to internet favourites like Donnie Darko. Their massive success is instrumental in preserving the status quo in western society: while basement-dwelling goths and mousy teenage girls read the Harry Potter books, jocks and teen-queens alike get laid and start real careers.

In other words, the myth is designed to stop you working, and introduce you to a lifetime of masturbating to your own coolness, and never learning the skills which might bring you success - either on the terms of the Prince of This World, or any better terms which you might think up for yourself. Never forget that - The Devil (however defined) owns this world. It's his. You can either sell your soul, fight the power, or be irrelevant. The choice is yours, but happiness is guaranteed no matter which way.

For those who want to fight the power - as the commies have been telling you since 1848, the world will change only at the point where a huge majority of people decide that it needs changing. Just because you're a "brilliant" outsider doesn't mean the system owes you jack, or the masses will ever realise your brilliance - until, of course, you give the system something it wants in return, or you learn to package your brilliance in such a way that people who work in supermarkets and don't spent 16 hours a day on teh intarwebz will find it useful. Also: the world will not just magically collapse, somehow leaving you and your buddies unscathed so you can turn your clique into an independent anarcho-syndicalist commune.

Of course, the flipside of this is: because you are not guaranteed a noble destiny, if you haven't met a noble destiny it doesn't mean you suck. You have absolute and horrible free will. You are guaranteed neither success nor failure. Use this power wisely. Learn to see social and material reality, not pictures in your head derived from pictures from TV or from books, and learn to work in accordance with it.

As far as magick goes: it consists in not only learning what is underneath the Veil of Illusion, subjecting your perceptions to the most merciless objective scepticism, but also firmly conditioning yourself and your buddies never to forget it no matter how deep the swamp of the Real World of Horrible Jobs gets. Then, you must be be able to talk about it with sufficient conviction and eloquence that the ordinary people you meet are jolted into seeing it for themselves. Remember the logic of the Transitional Programme - the idea is to describe something that is close enough to consensus reality that it doesn't get rejected straight off, but which points the way towards enlightenment.

On a lighter note, again courtesy of ED - take a look at those Iraqi resistance music vids that I mentioned below.