The Sweet Nectar of Denial

I went out to dinner last night to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving with my 25-year-old stepson and his girlfriend, her parents, and my wife. All presumably of the sheep persuasion (I don’t ask), except me, of course. They are all very nice people, and it was a very pleasant time. My stepson and his girlfriend are pretty close, we all know what is inevitable for them in the future, and everyone is very happy about it. We are all getting to know one another better, and as was mentioned several times, “we are all family here!”

It was nice. Too nice, one might say, but so what. The sweet nectar of denial.

Or is it? Is this healthy denial? Every time we step into a car, we deny the danger and risk we face. Any time we fly in a plane, any time we live through a day without worrying about our demise, is a form of denial. We live with denial every day in order to live a decent life. So why not?

I ask myself this question quite a bit.

A perfect example of this phenomenon (living in denial) is presented in the movie The Matrix. Reality is stark, limiting, unpleasant, dirty, and life in the matrix is bright, pleasant, and replete with nice juicy steaks. In fact, that is just what I was eating last night—a nice juicy steak. Not once did I think of the factory farm where that steak more than likely came from, or the mRNA that may have at one time been injected into the animal that originally owned the meat I was chewing on. None of these things crossed my mind. I, nor anyone else at the table, thought of the implications of a nuclear war in Europe, or the conflict in Israel. It crossed no one’s mind how much the world was in peril, even if we stuck with only mainstream issues, not a worry in the world entered into our sublime moment.

In moments like these I do get confused. I wonder if I have lived my whole life playing in the sun shining on an imaginary landscape while just below the skin of my illusion was a rotting mess of disgust, a world filled with the crawling worms of putrid agony, suffering, and despair. Drugs, starvation, corruption, violence, murder, rape, mayhem and destruction. And I never knew it. Or only peeked at it for fleeting moments before turning my head back to my illusion.

Isn’t this the way we are supposed to live? Isn’t it really the only way we can live? Denying reality? Humans, in the beginning, did not have to worry about things over the hill and far enough away that they had no impact on their daily lives. Sure, we fought tribes that were out of sight, but they affected us directly. They stole our food, raped our women, poisoned our water. If they didn’t do any of these things, we wouldn’t bother to mess with them. It wasn’t until we started to think that we devised ways to take things from others and gain wealth and power, then we started looking for trouble. But only some tribes did this. The victim tribes just sat around and did nothing until the marauders showed up and started their butchering. As we became more and more sophisticated, the marauders learned the best way to get something from the passive folks was to make them think all was ok, life was sweet as nectar, and then rather than attack, rape and pillage, they slowly drained the life blood from the masses they drew wealth and power from. As long as the victims didn’t notice, all was good.

Why don’t we notice? Metaphorically (I doubt if such an objective experiment has been attempted) you can slowly insert a dagger into someone’s flesh with them unaware of the fact. If you are slow enough, they won’t even notice. Once it is so far inserted to become potentially lethal, it can be left there. A very simple tap on the blade will cause pain. With such power over them, the victim can be trained to do just about anything. The pain usually comes in the form of fear—the fear of suffering or of death—and the victim will do anything to avoid more pain. Once the blade is no longer tapped (temporarily), the victim can calm down, and go out and have a nice juicy steak with friends and family and be no worse for wear.

Considering the possibility that my life may have been lived in denial of the seething ugliness slithering underneath the surface, and although I may have a dagger inserted deeply into my flesh which gets tapped once in a while to cause me to comply to our masters, why wouldn’t I choose to continue to live in denial?

I am reminded of Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. The differences in these two dystopian approaches is notable. One being a world filled with drug induced pleasures and ignorance, and the other filled with darkness, hate, and despair. I have often commented how one is “how it begins” and the other is “how it ends.” Obviously, we are currently in Huxley’s world. We are drugged to believe all is fine, but whenever we need to stand rigid and walk the puppeteer’s path, a tap on the inserted dagger’s handle is all that is needed. We then are quick to comply and do what the masters say. It stands to reason that eventually we will move into Orwell’s world, where the dagger tapping becomes excessive due the master’s greed and obsessive need for more power, and we start to march, incessantly, to his maniacal drum.

What drugs take the place of Huxley’s soma? That’s easy, materialism, consumerism, cell phones, AI, computers, all technology, anti-depressants, junk food, GMOs, vaccines, comfort, pornography, sexual obsession and deviation, ease, instant gratification, and sometimes, juicy steaks. Some pleasures in this world are genuine, but most have a string attached. What does all this result in? Well, primarily denial.

The conversation at our dinner party was typical. No one contemplated on what was going on beneath the surface. No one talked about anything beyond the matrix. In fact, most of these folks (me being the only one who has been to the “other side”) didn’t even know they were in the matrix, let alone know anything beyond its illusion. Is this OK? I do sometimes wonder if eating the steak, like Cypher did in The Matrix, is really the best way to go.

You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.

~Cypher, The Matrix