The masks we wear

The prisoner's dilemma

''Lies... This loud, clumsy, stupid thing -- this is the weapon of the enemy. ... We will not use it.''

 The other day I was out for a cup of coffee and on my way home I found a book on the bus stop. Noone was around so I guessed that someone caught the bus and left it behind. I took a look at it, it was an elementary book for writing essays, this one was focused on interpertation of key terms, how and when we use them. It was quite interesting. Well to be honest, there was a spefic term that it really caught my attention.

popularism: - the existance of simplifying partitionist discrimination, deifying the black-and-white logic

                    - the view of the people as incorruptible, inpeccable, innocent and uninvolved in any wrong desisions and failures

                    -the existance of a gifted leader

 Well, that sure rings a bell. With the awful financial state we currently are, and the elections coming on in a few days, all I see is people blaming everyone but themselves for our misery, waiting to idolize our new savior, our new hero who will bring the days of prosperity back, and make it all  like the way they were.

 That's not how it works and I hope people will get to know it before it's too late - as if it already isn't. We took it to the point of no return, misleading our own selves. Life is not a fairytale. There is no white knight in a shining armor coming to save us. Everyone is busy trying to find the someone who will do something different, not knowing that someone is noone but ourselves.

 I've always wondered, if there weren't the media to manipulate the mob's thoughts, what would they think of? Would anyone be brave? Or even more mislead? Knowning only everything what the media provides us, we only get a tiny part of the picture. It seems that our world is a lot like Skynet. The system spreads to the whole planet, it's learning from it's mistakes and it's evolving constantly. Even if the evolution of one species means the exctinction of another.

For this world to dictate our deaths

 ''Their morals, their "code"... it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other.''

  The other day I went to my parents' house to pay them a visit. It's been a while since the last time I saw them. My father was at work again so I hang out just with my mother. She told me that earlier that day an old man, almost 80 years old, commited suicide at the town's central plaza. He was motivated by the awful financial situation the goverment brought him due to the extreme measurements they took to repay the country's debts. In his suicidal note he wrote that he didn't want to feed himself of the trash.

 I was pretty shocked by this end of course I was not the only one. The next morning the media, necrophilic as always, they fed on his death, idolizing him and making him a martyr. Although, not everyone held the same perspective. Some people believe that this was pretty disgusting and shameful act, doing it in public.

Well, I don't believe he was disgraced, but he was not a hero either. This has to be something else. He wasn't a thirty year-old drug-addicted rockstar, he was a family man in his old age living on his pension. It was something like scorpions do. When they are surrounded by their enemies and there is no escape, they would rather sting their own body than to be eaten alive. I guess, this is something like that. Making full use of your free will. Dying on your feet than living on your knees.

 But they got it wrong. It's living on your feet than dying on your knees...