North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?
?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?
US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent Evaluating Semantic Reasoning Capability of AI Chatbot on Ontologically Deep Abstract (bias neutral) Thought
I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed. The Saker >>
News Round-Up Tue Sep 23, 2025 01:12 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Hamas Executes ?Israeli Collaborators? in Streets of Gaza Mon Sep 22, 2025 19:30 | Will Jones Hamas?has executed three Palestinians accused of "collaborating" with Israel on the streets of Gaza, just hours after the UK, Australia and Canada announced their?recognition of a Palestinian state.
The post Hamas Executes “Israeli Collaborators” in Streets of Gaza appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
The Covid Response Was Not a Mistake ? It Was Just Wrong Mon Sep 22, 2025 17:35 | Dr David Bell The Covid response was not an error, and it was not the result of rushing to counter an unknown pathogen. It was a lot of people, mostly professionals, systematically doing what they knew was wrong, says Dr David Bell.
The post The Covid Response Was Not a Mistake ? It Was Just Wrong appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
School Accused of ?Brainwashing? Children After 14 Year-Olds Told to Read Book ?Blaming Them for The... Mon Sep 22, 2025 15:11 | Will Jones A parent has accused a secondary school of "brainwashing" after?he learned that 14 year-old pupils were told to read a book that "blames them for their white skin" ? and his daughter was forced to read it out loud.
The post School Accused of “Brainwashing” Children After 14 Year-Olds Told to Read Book “Blaming Them for Their White Skin” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
No Benefits for Foreigners Under Reform, Says Nigel Farage: Stricter Visa Tests and Deportation for ... Mon Sep 22, 2025 13:00 | Will Jones Nigel Farage?today vowed to block foreign nationals from getting benefits, slashing the welfare bill "by ?234bn", and to deport hundreds of thousands of migrants with 'settled status' by bringing in stricter visa tests.
The post No Benefits for Foreigners Under Reform, Says Nigel Farage: Stricter Visa Tests and Deportation for Those Who Fail Under Crackdown on ‘Settled Status’ Migrants appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en Voltaire Network >>
|
Escaping From The Matrix
international |
anti-capitalism |
opinion/analysis
Sunday September 15, 2013 22:36 by Luke Eastwood

On why it is so difficult to break away from the established social order Like many people today I am strongly aware that the way that we live, in modern societies, is more than a little flawed; the problem for me and countless others is how to escape from the ties that bind us to the system, so that we can be free to live another life.
I remember that at the age of 12 I had an argument with my parents, on a long car journey, about what life is about. I mentioned that it seemed a bit strange to spend more than half our lives working in often horrible jobs just for a little house and an average car, I asked surely there has to be more? My parents’ reaction was to chastise me for being so dismissive of all the people who work so hard to achieve these things, although some thirty years later I suspect they now have a different perspective.
Generation after generation is conditioned by parents, peers, school and the media into accepting the status-quo. Often by the time that we can question our position in the world we are already deeply embroiled in the system. However, at the end of the day a car is just a metal box with wheels for travelling, a house is another box in which we spend most of our time sleeping. These are just functional objects, like so many of our other possessions, but these days they seem to have so much emotional value attached to them.
It appears to me that we place great value on acquiring and possessing stuff, but at the same time we are equally happy to jettison much of this stuff for newer or better stuff – most unlike many of our not so recent ancestors. Modern living is all about lifestyle – a concept that is nothing but a tissue of lies designed to make us insecure about ourselves and thereby cause us to carry on consuming in pursuit of the unobtainable goal of contentment.
From the day that we are born we are socialised to be part of a version of reality that we call civilisation. Those that live a naturalistic life are called savage or uncivilised, although they don’t seem to suffer many of the mental aberrations that afflict western minds. This civilised life perhaps has its origins in ancient Sumer, Egypt or maybe earlier still. What we now have in European influenced societies is a direct descendant of the Greco-Roman civilisation that swept from Western Asia to the Atlantic coast and into North Africa. Gradually this way of living has been exported all around the world (mostly by force).
This way of living is not reality, it is simply one version reality out of many possibilities for human existence. Modern perception is inflicted on us to the exclusion of all other modes of thinking so that we are completely trained to experience and accept this worldview by the time we become adults.
The only remnant of a pre-civilised worldview that seems to have been permissible is that of religion, although in general, success within the civilised system relies on merely paying lip-service to such religious ideas as morality, freedom, fairness, integrity, honesty etc. Despite the inevitable corruption that has occurred in ancient religions we are still left the core teachings of the likes of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Moses, Zarathustra etc, if we can be bothered to read them, although it is near impossible to truly follow their teachings within our system of living.
Perhaps as a result of these fundamental values of religion or perhaps because of a growing awareness of the weakness inherent in a system (that essentially cannibalises the planet and weaker human societies) we have now arrived at a point where a huge proportion of people alive today wish to escape from it.
Like most other westerners I have grown up within the Matrix, a version of reality that is focussed on acquisition, greed, exploitation and a self-centred way of living – what many might call self-actualisation. Our desires are used to ensnare us in the system so deeply that we cannot possibly escape and in many cases will have little desire to escape, even despite the inevitable failure to fulfil all of our desires.
At some stage I woke up, like many others, realising that this is not reality – it is just a game that I have been forced to participate in. In reality we can all do whatever we choose. For instance I could go to the Venezuelan embassy and get a travel visa; I could then sell everything I own and get on the next available plane to Caracas and start a new life if I so wanted.
I am extremely unlikely to take the above course of action, but that option is available to me if I so choose. In the system we have limited choices, in reality we have choices limited only by our imagination and what is physically achievable. In civilised society, our way of life is policed largely by ourselves - due to our conditioning. We in effect become our own jailors, like the Indian elephants that are tethered to stakes from infancy but no longer try to run away as adults, even though they have long since remained untethered.
Like many other people I know of, I have become increasingly unwilling to comply with the requirements of the system. I am free to refuse to conform to all aspects of the western model of life if I wish, although I generally do not because of the cost to myself of doing so. The two main reasons that I do not simply break away and live a life without all of the social norms imposed on me are 1. The difficulty of uncoupling myself from the system and 2. The conditioning I received to be fearful of leaving the system.
Like most people I still drive a car, although I’ve made attempts to run cars on renewable fuels and cut down on journeys. I still shop in supermarkets although I do my best to support local businesses and local producers. I still buy clothes instead of making them, even though I am aware that most of them are made in Asian sweat-shops. I buy food, some of which is processed, although I do grow some of my own food. I owe a debt on my house and also loans I took out, although I am doing my best to eliminate all debt (which will take years) and I will never borrow money again. I work in a job that I do enjoy, but I would prefer to work in position that is more directly beneficial to the environment and human society.
So, as you can see, I am hardly in a position to be preaching about other peoples’ failure to create an alternative life for themselves. The fact is though that it is hard to leave the system, it’s designed that way to discourage us from thinking for ourselves and more importantly, to discourage us from enacting alternative methods of living.
Brave people such as Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, show us that living outside of the system is not impossible, but to most he would appear an extremist and even most who are sympathetic would not be able to just jettison their lives and embrace a completely new way of living. For most people, myself included, who wish to live a different life, it is a case of making small and gradual changes over time.
A gradual shift in lifestyle is far less painful and less challenging, however it does not break the fundamental ties to a destructive, wasteful and controlled way of living. In addition to this there is the constant threat of backsliding offered by the security and physical comforts that are there to lure us back or keep us sedated.
In truth there is a war going on, a war of consciousness – between an old and outmoded system and a realisation that a quantum shift in human life is required. The truth is that humanity faces the possibility of extinction, planetary ruin brought about by a malfunctioning system for living. Exponents of the current system who benefit from it or are fearful of change are doing everything they can to eliminate alternative choices. Because our system is so flawed it cannot really co-exist alongside a system that is fair, vibrant or harmonious, as this would expose the lie that our ‘civilisation’ truly is.
So, what is currently happening is a war for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the human race – the desire for change versus desire for the status quo (underpinned by a combination of fear and bribery) . I believe that this war is one that those desiring change must win – I would say that the truth is that we have no realistic options other than change.
As with all manifestations of change, it begins from the inside with the way we think. As we begin to fully understand our predicament our desire to change increases. As we educate ourselves intellectually, spiritually and emotionally this provides the opportunity to make real and lasting changes in how we relate to the world around us and also what we do in the physical world.
In the early years of this century we have seen tremendous upheaval, uncertainty and a growing dissatisfaction with the pillars of our civilisation, which appear to be largely corrupted and dysfunctional. As the system attempts to prevent the rats leaving a sinking ship our freedoms are curtailed, austerity is imposed and through propaganda and restrictions the emerging movements for change are stilted if at all possible.
As history has shown us (the Indian non-violent revolution being a great example), if people work together to overcome oppression then major changes can be achieved. Now is the time to switch off your TV set and your radio, cancel your subscriptions to newspapers and start speaking to real people about what is happening and what you’d like to see happen.
Now is our great opportunity and perhaps our last to overthrow a system of governance that favours the greedy at the expense of all else – human or otherwise. While social media, telecommunications and transport is still widely available to almost everyone it is important to seize the day. Time is running out, not just in terms of environmental destruction but also in terms of our liberty to make decisions for our own future. The only way that the current civilisation can guarantee its future is to become a technological totalitarian society where no alternative is possible. I believe that corporate and government interests are already aware of this and are working as fast as they can to ensnare us in a future where all dissent can be quickly eliminated through constant scrutiny of every aspect of our lives.
For our own sakes and for the sake of future generations I hope that the rising tide for change will become exponential so quickly that it will be unstoppable, the alternative does not bare thinking about.
|
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Well written piece Luke , I get where you're coming from. My perspective is esoteric as opposed to exoteric first and foremost but even a lot of open minded , aware people seem to lack any spiritual awareness. They'll discuss politics , economics , social issues etc but shut down with any mention of spiritual subjects. There's issues surrounding anger with organised religion and the 'system' as a whole there which is often times justified but it still seems like a lot of people are 'pointing at the moon and staring at their fingers'. Our technology is progressing at an astounding rate , yet there is very little if any focus shown to the 'Noetic' sciences and the process of inner discovery.
There are people who are truly spiritually aware but they seem to be the minority , I'm not talking about middle class new age types sitting cross legged and mistaking being elated in their own smugness for enlightenment , I mean people who are really switched on. The 'when we die we're worm food' attitude doesn't cut it with me not scientifically or intuitively. Granted some of these people can be the nicest people you'll ever meet and I get the impression that some are hiding the fact that they do actually have very deep spiritual leanings and have experienced psychic phenomena but do not want to discuss it and are placing a shield around themselves. We're living in an intense crucial moment in our journey and there are powerful changes happening in the fabric of our reality , some are genuinely too shut down and invested in the system to open up to it and some though aware are resisting it. Either you're interested or your not , I'm not going to try and convert anybody.
waffling about gods and enlightenment is a cul de sac. Religion is another control harness and a tool of our oppressors.
To leave the matrix we need to jettison ALL shackles designed to oppress us and open our eyes fully. That includes all religion and superstitions that cloud our thinking.
Good thought provoking article luke!
Caption: Video Id: 9Lfb8mlIe9I Type: Youtube Video
In Praise of Idleness - Bertrand Russell
All you need is love. Love your neighbour as you love yourself. It is better to give than to receive. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Make sure you can, with others, make enough money and possibly grow enough food to live on while trying to put your ideals into practical action. And many of us grow old and rueful, so brace yourself for mental and physical changes in your pilgrimage through life.
I don't subscribe to religion Fred , don't have much truck with gods either , if you want to live in a nuts and bolts perspective of reality then that's your choice , enjoy. I agree with you religion while offering comfort to some decent people is used as a control tool. Like I said I'm not trying to convert anybody either you're feeling the changes and doing the work or you're not.