Zombie Planet

“The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.” — Colin Wilson.

Society, it seems, has become less filled with life. Humanity as a whole is becoming more impotent and brain-dead by the minute, people finding meaning only in the most trivial and mundane tasks, spending countless hours behind their desks, pushing papers and calling various people on the phone.

We are dead — an entire race consisting of nothing but zombies, all under the illusion of being alive. The more society progresses, the more robotic we become, repeating a single day over and over for the rest of our lives — doing the exact same monotone thing, responding in the exact same manner, and spending our weekends doing the same things as the weekend before (watching TV).

Making accurate predictions of the future is quite possible since everyday is basically the same. What is progress but a dead life? “Security, safety, and comfort”, they call it. “Predictable, dull, and life draining”, I say.

Natural life has ceased to exist; our biology has been replaced by laws and moral dogma that moves us further and further away from a free and happy life.

Governments say that we have become “civilized”, that we have law and order, but this is just their way of covering up the fact that we have become machines, all having the same mechanical thought processes. Anxiety and stress have replaced playfulness and peace of mind, morality has replaced freethinking and the collective mind of society has replaced individuality.

An interesting way to show you just how programmed we humans have become is to analyze our predictability — how likely we are to respond to a situation in a certain way.

For example: if you take a single step out of socially acceptable manners, those around you will exclude and avoid you. If a human is socially accepted by the herd, however, it doesn’t matter if he is a mass murderer — they will still praise him for being such charmer. If you don’t believe me, just watch one of those politicians with plastic smiles who always shakes hands with everyone.

If you decide to become a porn actor, your entire family will freeze you out from all of the family gatherings. If a group of elderly people get together, they will talk about nothing but disease and pain. They can sit for hours and talk about who suffers the most or who have has had the most terrible sickness. A group of teenagers talk about sex, even though none of them are getting laid. And a group of middle aged business men will talk about work and money, since these are the only things that they value.

Like robots, they are all programmed to respond in a certain way to whatever they see on their “computer screens”. In their minds, their response is rational, normal, and justified, simply because they are trained to think that way. Explaining to any of them that they act just like a program is futile since they are completely convinced that their feelings and thoughts are 100% accurate, relevant, and real. How marvelous it would be if your parents would praise you for failing all of your tests in school, or if a politician would fart on national television.

Those who lose their jobs often become depressed and even suicidal. If I lost my job (assuming that I had one), I would be happier than ever! I would rather die than become a slave for the system!

One man’s dream is another’s nightmare, but, as a general rule, most humans are very predictable and act in the same dopey manner. This is not because we are born to be so similar, but rather because society has created values for things that really shouldn’t matter, and then trained us to take these values seriously.

In school, at home, and at work we are constantly programmed to value — no worship — certain things — things that are not natural. We are all programmed to follow the same predictable thought and even life patterns.

“All the world’s a stage,” said Shakespeare, and yet no one seems to bother with this accurate observation. We all take our roles seriously and never see them for what they truly are — roles.

We marry, get kids, work at some deadend job, watch TV, and repeat this process until the day we die. And we don’t complain since we are taught that this is the way it’s supposed to be. We experience this cycle as special and unique, like it has never been done before. Apart from our line of work, our lives have become so similar that it is hard to tell anyone apart.

Average Joe struggles with an education he hates but eventually graduates, gets a job, a car, a wife who squeezes out some kids, a mortgage, and a house. He works eight to ten hours a day at a job he hates in order to pay for the mortgage and the family. He gets home, watches TV, sleeps, then works eight to ten hours again. At the weekend he spends quality time with his TV, watching reruns of Cops.

Average Joe has anxiety about Monday and therefore tries to make the most of his weekend by watching as many TV shows as possible in his tightly scheduled time. He always complains about his job but never makes any effort to change the situation. Yet, at the same time, he teaches his kids the value of doing the exact same thing daddy does — be good in school, get a job, a house, a mortgage, and a big-ass TV!

“Must work! Must keep up with the Joneses!” says Average Joe as he drives of to work. “Must become successful! Must increase size of TV,” he insists when he gets home. But sometimes he feels a deep sense of patriotism, especially when he votes or when the dude he voted for says something really smart about how other nations suck. These are the moments Average Joe lives for.

“Progress”, they call it when yet another meaningless invention is brought to our homes. “Becoming civilized”, they say when yet another life-crippling law is legislated to restrict our lives even more. In the eyes of governments, becoming civilized simply means that they get more power and influence over our lives. War, for example, doesn’t seem like a good example of being civilized, and yet governments both prepare for them and start them.

Instead of finding real happiness, we numb ourselves by becoming consumers — buying the newest cars, biggest TVs, and tons of crap we don’t need or really want. Consumerism gives us the illusion that we can buy happiness. And in order to keep buying this happiness, we must keep working our asses off.

By owning “the best there is”, we as consumers get the impression that we are unique and happy. But the shine of a new product soon wears off and has to be replaced with a newer and even better product that does pretty much the same thing. The pain of not owning the latest and greatest soon gets overwhelming and the consumer is once again in need of a fix.

Buying the biggest and best also has an obvious envy factor: if you have a bigger house and a faster car than your neighbors, they will think of you as happier and more successful than they are. Thus, their envy becomes your happiness. It is not really about the satisfaction of having the fastest car in the neighborhood, but rather the satisfaction of knowing that others don’t have the fastest car in the neighborhood. They must truly be the ones who are missing out on life.

Humans in industrialized nations are living vicarious lives, feeding on those who appear on the red carpet in the media or even on the B-celebrities from some shitty reality show who eat maggots while jumping out of an airplane. Like parasites we live through the experiences of other human beings, pretending that we are living, or at least taking part in, their lives. We become involved with them, identify with them, and try to copy their clouded beliefs and values. We watch them in movies, on the internet, and in magazines, following their every move like a shadow.

The purpose of all modern entertainment is to convince us to accept our lot in life as it is. By taking the part of someone who supposedly lives a good life — a life in the spotlight — we become content with our restrictions.

When we get tired of the celebrities, there’s always the news channels filled with religious fanatics blowing themselves up, earthquakes, tornados, and a war somewhere in a sandy place.

Advertisers send home flyers giving us the opportunity to order hundreds of TV channels, equipment that can record TV shows in case we might miss any of our beloved shows, and DVD players so that we can take a break from watching TV shows and instead watch an equally mind-numbing, Hollywood-produced movie. It’s even possible to watch TV from our cell phones in case the abstinence should be too great when we leave our homes.

We live through the tube — we are the tube. The tube has become more real than the reality in which we live. It is the ultimate escape from reality… No! It is the reality! This, my friend, is what we believe to be the truth.

TV has replaced ordinary interactions, constantly displaying pictures and sounds, colors and plastic stimuli, day in and day out, telling us what to buy, what to like, what to think, who to be, and what to value.

Even though it can’t honestly qualify as a real drug, television certainly has the same addictive qualities. Like an addict, those who watch TV always need a daily fix. Have you ever gone a single day without watching the tube? As an experiment, remove the TV from someone you know and watch his reactions. Then compare the results with a heroine addict trying to get clean.

Unlike those who use drugs such as heroine and LSD, TV addicts more or less accept whatever the TV tells them as being the truth. At least those under the influence of LSD or heroine know that their reality has been altered. The TV addicts, however, absorb everything the TV says without displaying any critical thinking. They accept everything at face value, swallowing vast amounts of useless information.

Whatever the TV says is true often becomes true by self-fulfilling prophesy. If not, the majority of people would still much rather believe in an easy-to-understand lie than a well-research truth simply because of apathy. Television is very likely the most mind-numbing and dangerous of all drugs. Should it be legal? Hell yes, but this doesn’t invalidate the fact that it is the perfect tool for breeding zombies. We should all have the liberty to surrender our minds to the propaganda-filled box, just like we should have the freedom to use whatever drug we feel like, whether it is LSD or alcohol.

Apart from religion, nothing beats mass manipulation like the good old TV. It is opium for the masses. Think of it: millions of people watching the same shows, experiencing the same stimuli day in and day out throughout their entire lives. You don’t even have to think! Turn the TV on and the brain off and you are good to go. It even tells you when to laugh, when to cry, when to be happy, and when to be sad. All this is masterfully orchestrated with music, pictures, and recorded laughter; everything to keep your brain hijacked and open to propaganda.

The recorded laughter is my favorite. Don’t mind if you don’t understand the jokes (they probably weren’t that funny anyway), when the recorded background laughter starts, that’s your queue: go ahead and laugh.

With TV being the perfect tool for propaganda, no wonder governments approve of it. Expanding one’s consciousness with LSD, or getting some blissful peace of mind from marijuana, however, is strictly against the law. Why? Because illegal drugs keep us from taking things seriously, and seriousness is needed in order to make a society work the way governments want it to work.

The main purpose of the television, however, is to generate apathy and fear — fear of disasters, fear of violence, fear of money, fear of being robbed, feared of using public toilets, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of life, fear of death, fear of calories, fear of a so-called God, and fear of poverty.

Being constantly bombarded by fear attacks, we begin to believe that the world really is a scary place. Even though we only experience a microscopic minority of all the dangers the TV warns us about, we still expect it all to come crashing down on us some day. The world suddenly becomes a small and frightening place, and we stick to what we know best (work and TV) so that we do not upset the universe any further. People are building underground bunkers in their backyards and wrapping their houses with aluminum and plastic foil in case of a nuclear holocaust or an alien invasion — and this isn’t even a joke!

News brings us death and decay several times each day. And having it repeated over and over again to the point of utter numbness doesn’t quite seem like a healthy way to live. On some channels you can even watch it 24/7. Are we so obsessed with the misery of others that we constantly need to be observers of a dying world?

It is important to realize that it is human beings that are behind the news reports. Therefore, no matter what is being reported, it can never be completely objective; it can never represent the whole truth, only a reality filtered through journalists, bureaucracies, news anchors, and those who watch it. Hence — we are all fed a version of reality and not the complete truth.

To a certain degree it is important to be informed, but most of what we are shown is not news at all; it is repetition on repetition on repetition. (There is a reason why those who follow the news several times a day are called news-junkies.) There is no necessity to watch all the bloodshed the news brings us. If the world comes to an end — you will know.

If everyone received a morning paper that was a couple of years old, a large majority wouldn’t notice any difference. Accidents, suicide bombers, wars, pointless articles with pointless opinions, and governmental propaganda — it’s all the same as the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that, and so on. If the news editors run out of ideas to print, all they have to do is recycle some of their old articles or, better yet, make something up. No one would be the wiser!

If I am right, that would mean that the news we constantly are being fed doesn’t serve the purpose of informing us, but rather serves to produce an emotional response in us — fear.

With enough fear being generated, we slowly start to believe that we are powerless, and weak, and that we need someone to take care of us. These subtle mental changes make us want a government to protect us from all the dangers in world.

Governments are, of course, responsible for most of the miserable events that take place, but this we also fail to see. Who starts the wars? Who creates the criminal underclasses and black markets by passing laws that don’t make sense?

Turn on a news channel and within minutes you will hear the words terrorist, car bomb, war, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists, terrorist, terrorist. I have never met a terrorist in my entire life, but they still scare the shit out of me.

This is manufactured fear, created to keep us in a constant state of conformity. If we knew the reality, that we in fact are strong and independent, and that the government is fragile and weak, we would realize that we don’t need it. This realization is the fear of every government, and that is why they are doing such a great job at keeping us ignorant and robotized.

Work! The plague of mankind

“I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.” — Emile Henry Gauvreau.

Hedonistic libertarians believe that work is slavery as long as we live in a totalitarian state with restrictions on individual liberty, with an oppressive tax system, with low wages, and with so repetitive sub-human jobs that our brains implode from boredom. To work in a totalitarian state is to support one’s own oppression.

This does not mean that all hedonistic libertarians have to refuse to work. If the money is good, and/or if the line of work is enjoyable, one should naturally work if he/she wants to do so. It does, however, mean that if we cannot find a job that is good enough, we will — without shame, as a protest against the oppressive government — not work. We will take whatever money we can get from social welfare and laugh at the poor bastards who receive the same amount of money for working forty hours a week. Out of rage, the minimum-wage-slaves will join the nonworkers on social welfare until the tax-system finally collapses on itself.

If we lived in a world free from government oppression, it would actually make sense to work. But as it is now, work is nothing but disguised slavery, keeping people in invisible chains.

When we hear of entire nations that were built by slaves, we frown and pity those who had to work under such conditions. Those who built Rome, for example, were forced into long and hard days of labor. But is there really such a difference between those slaves and us? Are we not forced into the same drudgery of work by the fear of not having enough money? So I ask: what is the difference between a slave and a wage-slave? The answer: the wage slave lives under the illusion that he is free.

The mere idea of work is nauseating and utterly insane, and it should come as no surprise that pharmacies are making millions and millions of dollars selling antidepressants. A prescription for Prozac numbs our feelings of hopelessness and makes us content over our situation, no matter how depressing our line of work is.

From society’s perspective, we have been cured because they can send us back to the very place which made us depressed in the first place. Inside our bubble of manufactured happiness, work has suddenly become more tolerable. Those so-called psychologists and doctors are nothing but government agents — giving us a pill, a pat on the back, then sending us right back to the factories. Madness, I say!

On most jobs, we rise inhumanly early in the morning, drive to a distant place, and become wage-slaves for eight to twelve hours a day, doing repetitive, mind-numbing tasks we despise, while people tell us what to do and what not to do and even when we can have our lunch. Our job — as a matter of fact — replaces our earlier authority figures: parents, teachers, etc.

Life is nothing but an obligation to suffer. We work because we have to work, not because we want to, and the worst part is that this process of boredom is repeated throughout our entire lives, day after day, month after month, and year after year.

Ah, the good life! It seems that we exist to serve society and society only acts as an illusion: of being the one who serves us. Is there really any point in living a life where we are completely occupied doing something we hate?

What little vacation we have can hardly be qualified as a real vacation, since it’s mostly spent worrying about all the catching up we will have to do. Our minds are occupied with thoughts of board meetings, accounting, filing, how to increase productivity without increasing anyone’s salary, and why Bill went postal the other day.

During the entire vacation there is a certain dread that doesn’t seem to go away — the dread of returning, the fact that the vacation only lasts for a very short period of time and then we will have to return to yet another year of wage-slavery before our next vacation. Our minds are so filled with guilt for not being productive that the vacation is not enjoyed; it is endured.

Spending forty to sixty hours a week at some dreadfully repetitive, boring, pointless, life-draining, unappreciated, dull job doesn’t quite seem like an ideal life. If slavery is the price of prosperity, I would much rather live in a cave!

What’s the point of an increased living standard, if we don’t have the time to enjoy it? Is this supposed to be what is called freedom? Nay, I say, it is slavery! We have ceased to live — we exist!

Authorities want us to take everything deadly seriously — from passing tests in school to serving the demands of society like cogs in a machine. “Everything in life can’t be fun and games”, they say. But on what evidence do they base this assumption? What law says that everything we do can’t be fun? At what point did it seem like a good idea to include boredom in our lives?

Work is like a disease or a cancer that must be cut out at all cost. Man was not born to become a slave. The idea of creating a society with higher and higher living standards has failed — there is no one left to enjoy the standard we have reached.

We work so that we can buy a higher living standard, and when that living standard is reached, we have to work even more in order to reach an even higher standard. What is the difference between a man in jail and a man who works? The answer: the man in jail has a lot more free time.

The worst part is probably that we are hypnotized into believing that work is good, something to be proud of, and that everybody is obligated to contribute to society. Revealing that your leisure plan consists of spending your entire life working as little as possible, and sleeping past noon, will immediately provoke the response that such nonsense is the worst kind of nonsense there is, and that you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking such vile thoughts. For work is, after all, the sole purpose and the chief aim of life.

“Work till you drop dead of a heart attack”, is the motto. “No one will thank you for it, but do it nonetheless! It’s your duty as a good citizen”.

Duty, yes, in the eyes of society, and in the eyes of those who are far too brainwashed to believe anything else. But what is your duty toward yourself? To have a meaningless existence filled with repetitive boredom?

It is a commonly-believed lie that hard work will pay off, and that being a lawful and good citizen will be rewarded. Those who are brainwashed into believing such lies are in for a big surprise. There is no salvation, no happy ending after you have put thirty or forty years into a job you hate — and no one to thank you. You might get a pat on the back, maybe even a cake from your co-workers, but this and no more is what you will receive.

Of course, the big problem here is that money is needed in order to pay for rent and food. And furthermore, someone is needed to supply us with the food and build houses to live in, right? So it is understandable to criticize my work ethics, or should I say lack of work ethics. But as long as I live in an oppressive totalitarian state, I will protest by refusing to work.

There is, of course, always the possibility that you can get a job that you actually like, even love. In a perfect world everybody would be doing what they love to do, but this is an impossible utopia — a daydream. The chances that we find a job we love are very slim, simply because of the lack of pleasant jobs. As a rule, as long as the job isn’t enjoyable, it is to be avoided at all cost. There is no point whatsoever in spending a lifetime doing something you absolutely hate.

The best solution would be to start your own company and be your own boss. This, however, might be difficult, mainly due to the heavy taxation laws which most countries have.

Another choice for those who do not want to work is, as I mentioned previously, social welfare. Living on social welfare is commonly seen as a lowlife choice, something close to being a bum, but in reality all the worker drones envy those who are bold enough not to give a damn.

The fact is that those who work for a minimum wage only make a few hundred dollars extra each month after taxes have been paid, compared to those who live on social welfare. To slave forty hours a week for a few hundred dollars, when you can pretty much get the same amount from doing nothing at all, doesn’t make any sense.

Thanks to the tax-system, it doesn’t pay to work. If you make below the poverty line, the state will give you enough money to reach just above that poverty line, but if you don’t work at all, the state will give you all the money that you need to get above the poverty line. And if you make a few hundred dollars more than the poverty line, you will receive no social welfare at all. Therefore, society actually rewards those who do not work!

The heavy taxation and the immense restrictions the state puts on our lives completely abolish any reason to work. Now, this all sounds great to a hedonist, except for the fact there won’t be enough money for hedonistic activities such as traveling to tropical paradises and visiting friendly neighborhood brothels.

Therefore, a hedonistic libertarian does not support social welfare per se, but uses the system for his own benefit if there are no good jobs or if governmental oppression is too noticeable. Without the taxation, and with complete individual liberty, it would make a lot of sense to work — even I wouldn’t mind. But right now, this twisted form of Robin Hood mentality is counterproductive.

The wage-slaves dream of a stress-free life without work and worries, but they have a deep-rooted sense of responsibility towards society that has been implanted in them at an early age. Without having a job to go to, they would most likely lose their sense of identity, become depressed, and feel useless.

On the one hand, they want the money and security that a job brings; on the other, they know deep down that they are wasting their lives doing something they hate; they can’t escape since it would mean loss of both security and money. It doesn’t matter how much they despise their jobs, their love-hate relationship will always keep them trapped.

Society wants us to feel guilty as soon as we are not productive or taking orders from an authority. Therefore, most people find it difficult to find a way out of their misery. The liberated individual realizes that others will work in his place out of guilt, and therefore will also pay for those who do not want to work through taxes. The oppressive tax system is there to be used and exploited!

The state gladly steals your hard-earned money through taxes anyway, so this is your chance to take it back. If you are not satisfied with the rules and laws your government has, break them. Make up your own rules, and then use the system as much as you can, without any guilt. As long as the totalitarian state is there to oppress your life with taxes and restrictions, the system should be used to your own advantage!

Guess what? The world will still “evolve”, with or without you participating in the madness. Here’s a hint: let go, stop caring and worrying. Become detached toward all of society’s false values. Refuse to work, refuse to obey, and refuse to follow the brain-dead herd. Not caring about the herd mentality is the perfect way of giving the finger to a society that doesn’t even give you the proper motivation to work.

If the social welfare agent tells you to find a job, nod your head enthusiastically and tell him or her with as much fake honesty as you can that you would much rather flip burgers at McDonalds than sleep past noon. Then fill out applications for a number of jobs, making sure to include as many grammatical errors as you can muster. Tell the employer that you usually spend your time watching pornography and eating bananas. Tell them you will not work for less than one million dollars a year, and that you need at least four months off as paid vacation each year.

The main point here is that the purpose of life can’t be found behind an office desk or in some factory. The expectations society has, and the restrictions it imposes on us, prohibit us from gaining the freedom we need in order live out our true hedonistic lives.

We are surrounded by grey concrete buildings and factories stretching to the horizon — everything needed to make depression flourish. An educated guess was made that only about 25% of all the work that’s being done is needed in order to make society function. The rest is just fluff, producing commerce that keeps our brains hijacked.

Refuse to work with anything that has even a hint of boredom or stress. Live like a minimalist, buying crap won’t make you happy anyway; it will only drag you further down the spiral of consumerism insanity. Stay on social welfare until you have found something you enjoy doing that you can also make money with.

Working with the same boring, life-draining job day in and day out isn’t living. It is as simple as that.

We owe nothing to society. It is not our duty to work.

I’m not going to work a single day in my life again unless the papers on my desk turn into strippers. No more! I have not created the society which I live in, so why should I accept it as it is?

Life is supposed to be fun, and those who tell you otherwise deserve a thousand years of hard labor!