Post Three: The War of Us Versus Them
Posted: December 4, 2011 Filed under: Editorial, The Human within the Stranger | Tags: cheif bromden, freedom, media, one-flew-over-the-cuckoo's-nest, philosophy, Rudy Strangers, the human within the stranger, the-human-within-the-stranger, war, war-on-the-mind 1 Comment »This Human within the Stranger post is unlike the first two. My apologies for the wait, I’ve been rather busy playing the role of a busy body. Nevertheless, here it is…
The mind that knows, controls the body that feels, is that not right? Now I ask you, can you feel the ground quaking at your feet? Can you see the dogfights overhead? Can you see the explosions in the distance? Can you see the tanks mauling down the dusty streets? Can you see the muzzles flaring off between huts? Can you see perspired lovers shivering behind cover? Can you feel the desert heat? It’s burning, isn’t it? Not like the city. Indeed, far from the city. Now, I ask you, can you remember? Do you even remember how you got here? The scissors, and the new garments that lay on your back at this very instance, do you remember anything about them?
Look behind you, Can you see them? The army that marches. Armaments pointed towards the heavens, boots crunching in the rubble between each step, adorned by desert camouflage so that they appear almost stitched into the setting they’re in. Now look closely. You must be able to see something shimmering above them all, something reflecting light. Lines that run from their necks, backs, arms and legs; tell me, you see that! It all traces back to the sky- to the overseers. They think I don’t know. They think it’s impossible to know. For all I know, I can be Chief Bromden to you, but how will that change the fact that now that I pointed it out, you can see it too. Listen! They grow closer to us. I already knew they were coming for me, but now they’re coming for us.
Now they surround us. They all point at us, ridicule us, and convict us. As if we even did deserve a fair trial. Look at all we’ve done. We are criminals! Can you see the looks on their faces? So fired up, they all are. See them all, not a single one misses the boat. Now, one aligns his rifle with our skulls. The last thing we hear is a “click”. Then everything turns red, then monochrome, then red again. But you can still hear me, right?
Feel the wind that blows through the hole in your head as they kick sand on the corpse of your existence. Let You be proof that this world is unforgiving to those that refuse be to tamed. Cut the strings of media, and refuse to be their slave, then you will see the war that rages on at your doorstep, then you will see how they battle to maintain control over your mind, then you will realize the Human within the Stranger, and then and only then, must you turn back to save those who are still tangled in their webs.
Post Two: Death and all his Friends
Posted: October 15, 2011 Filed under: Editorial, The Human within the Stranger | Tags: death, death-and-all-his-friends, Fountain-of-youth, knowledge, philosophy, Rudy Strangers, the-human-within-the-stranger, time Leave a comment »
Philosophy often surfaces the shallow waters of those that repress the thoughts and deny their existence when a death arises that affects them. Often this is the time when those people watch a huge door slam and lock them inside a dusty classroom. Trapped they become, and forced they are, to do independent study. There, there is no windows, no light besides that from a flickering desk lamp that illuminates only to reveal the hundreds of thousands of thoughts flying above a broken swivel chair, anxiously awaiting the day of someone’s arrival. And here you finally are, and it only took a death to get you here.
We are all searching for truth; sacred knowledge that is irrefutable. As we try are best to secure our hands around that of which is the sand that falls through the cracks of our palms, we think not of our imminent deaths. You see, we each have a clock inside us that is constantly ticking away, a calendar that is constantly shaving days, and an antique hourglass that is constantly reminding us that we are running out. Yet we live our lives thinking not of death, but throwing the very notion of “death” in the deepest chasms of our minds, hoping it’s calloused hands never climb it’s relentless being out of the shadows and into the light. And when it does- oh when it does, we are reminded of just how shallow the waters of the Fountain of Youth are.
With all that said, however, we do live out lives, unconsciously, learning how to die. Odd as it may seem, we are fixated on what it means to truly venture beyond that of which is this life. We spend our lives trying to figure it out, but until we start hearing the sickle sharpening-and by then it’s all but too soon, do we even comprehend what it means to live. I feel that we can never understand what it means to die until we understand what it means to live…
In the spirit of Socrates; “The unexamined life is not worth living.”, hence death shouldn’t be the only thing that beckons thoughts from within. I say, summon those thoughts, wield those thoughts, and relinquish those thoughts because only through the use of the mind can we truly see.
Post One: Universals
Posted: October 2, 2011 Filed under: Editorial, The Human within the Stranger | Tags: allegory-of-the-cave, existence, human, nothing, Pete Strangers, philosophy, plato, Rudy Strangers, sense-perception, sheep, Socrates, Stranger, the-human-within-the-stranger, truth 1 Comment »
The Human within the Stranger is a philosophical examination on the only thing that makes us strangers human; our consciousness, our curiosity about our existence, and our undying need to uncover the truth in all that surrounds us.
Now, shall we jump in…
I’ve been wrestling with the idea that everything our ordinary sense-perception is exposed to are questionable. Moreover, how are we able to see truth and understand that it should not to be doubted? When I read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, in which an individual exposed to the truth tried to reveal it to his comrades and was killed, I kept thinking about the World we live in today. We are all hypnotized by what society wants us to believe so well that when something aries, and challenges that of which we know to be normal-or should I say the “truth”, we almost automatically disregard it and regulate it false rather than even considering it’s plausibility. We forget that Socrates was killed because he tried to preach the truth by telling people to question that of which they were being told. I believe our minds are not free. I believe no matter how much we think we are, we are not free. In fact, I believe that we know not of what it actually means to truly be free.
With that said, I’ll say this: I, like you am apart of the herd of sheep oblivious to what actually going on around us. But, unlike you, and much like Socrates, I now know one thing, and that is that I know nothing at all.
This is all I know, and this is nothing…
Rudy Strangers
Pete
Seventy Seven Strangers
Melrose Strangers
