Untitled Monologue

A dystopian novel which intends to dissect the effect of the information has done to humanity.

*Prometheus, the main character, finally meets the societal overseer, his exact reach of power is unspecified, but Prometheus has reason to believe he has been spying on citizen's every public move and has been brainwashing them into submission. The overseer, addresses Prometheus by James for an unspecified reason*

"James let me affirm this to you, I am not the one who is ‘violating’ your privacy, if you ever had a sense of it in the first place."

"It’s obviously you, who else would do this?"

"James, I believe you’re extremely confused, I do not care about you. I do not care about any individual citizen. I care about the collective, I care about people. My duty is to the majority, I do not care about your individual ongoings. I do not care about what you buy, what you read, who your friends are, I do not care James. I have no reason to care about any singular citizen. Do you know who does James?"

"…"

"That’s right James, your fellow citizens. People have always been intrusive. There are many causes, many ideals to shroud the probing nature of it, but people like to invade James, it's in our blood. The insatiable curiosity to know, even if it's trivial, even if it hurts us, we must know. Ought we James? That’s what you came here for, truly, not to persuade me like some foolish child, but you came here to learn James. You came here to hear my speech unravel, came here to prove to yourself that I was every bit evil as you had imagined, to know I was evil, right James?"

"…"

"Your silence only affirms my suspicions. You thought I was a cartoonish man, someone drunk off power, came to rule with an iron first. Maybe that’s why you thought you would be forgiven for committing crimes against an evil man, because you’re not a cartoon. You’re imperfect, you’re no hero of justice, you’re simply human. Your youth has damaged your reasoning James. Neither of us is a cartoon. We’re two stand in metaphors, I’m the author’s argument, and you’re supposed to be the ideal human, the Messiah. You are to fail, show the world that we could not be redeemed even by the Lord’s light. That’s why your name was Prometheus, you were to descend from the Heavens to part upon man flame, intelligence. Take him out of the darkness were you James? It’s not so, we are not man who lacks the flame, we are man controlled by flame. The flames casts shadows across the wall, and we watch them dance. Do you know what I refer to?"

"…"

"Very good, Plato’s Cave. Let me ask you James, how do you think Prometheus would help man in his cave? Do you think Prometheus would help man? He would not, his love of man is cut short in the face of such ignorance. We have lived in the shadows far too long James, all of us, we’re all mad, psychotic with no understanding. Even as we build more and more pyres, cast less shadows, we do not question. Our society is aflame with such fire, but we have not breathed the air of truth is so long, we are chocked on the ash. Prometheus love is only permitted so far, and we have failed him. So you are not Prometheus, you are James now. Tell me James, still feel like you have an identity worth saving?"

"…"

"Of course not, what possible use could there be of self, much less privacy, when you live in a cave burning with flame. Flame being the half truth, it has the light of truth, but it lacks the immortality of the sun. We are so deeply bathed in the flames that even our previous shadows are wiped away from the world, nothing but ash. Nothing but man’s pyre. Concepts like privacy and individuality are shadows. They are shadows of truth, and they have been wiped by the absolute, uncontainable, presence of flame. Our flame was once tempered and contextualized by long years and generations of scholars. But now James, we have all been given a torch, we all are permitted to cast as many distorted shadows as we should wish. How does anyone make sense of this manic state?"

"…"

"The answer is they don’t James. They go some sort of crazy, often never ending despair, as ignorance so often inflicts. We are in a never ending state of casting new shadows, often as fast as the eye can observe. Truth has become entirely meaningless, there is nothing to even understand the truth with. Not even the shadow of truth is left, so life, as a dizzying array of shadows, has no use for truth. So allow me to ask James, how do you fix this state?"

"…"

"I’m disappointed, you have been ascribed some amount of intelligence before, I pray you should show it now, in your tribunal against man. Allow me to finish to our State. The cave receives heralds, men who have ventured above, and come below again. How do they help? They cannot. No truth can be shared in the smoldering chaos. The supposed heralds add only more flame to the mix, or snuff out their torch, and await the time that it should all end. Outcasts in thought, because the collective has cast off intelligence. They carry a simply unneeded burden, the truth has no use, and so what is the point of it? So people carry more flame, carry more ashes, carry more choked lungs on them. Do you know what they see in the flames?"

"…"

"Their shadow, cast a one hundred billion times across the wall, they see their only concept of self splashed across a billion walls. They inhale, shocked, what a violation of their privacy! They are outraged, they have been made naked for the whole world to see. But really James, we know better, that’s not them, that’s their shadow. Could you imagine being angry that everyone had seen a shadow of yourself? That’s not you, obviously, but to the citizens of caves, it’s their whole existence. Their whole entire being is their shadow, they lack the truth of themselves, and so their privacy has been so grievously violated. And they’re not entirely wrong either."

"…"

"They have been violated, violated by each other. They lack any kind of insight into themselves, the unknowing of themselves is a denial self cast violation that is a hundred times more hurtful than what other person could do. So let me ask you James, still feel like your privacy has been violated?"

"…"

"James your silence is no longer permitted, you must speak."

“My name is not James.”

“Of course it’s not, its your shadow’s name.”

“So what am I supposed to do, submit myself to the madness you described?”

“I’m sad to see you weren’t listening James, I clearly described a solution. This is a not a work of fiction, though we might be fictional. The answer is insight James. You must learn temper your flame, you will not suffer any of the so called violations of privacy that plagued you. Though I warn you, living among madman becomes far more tiresome than the pretense of any other actions they intend to suffer. This of course solves it at a individual level. The community still suffers and dies.”

“Why does man even have this problem? Why don’t we naturally temper our flame?”

“Actually man does in the natural ways. All men eventually arrived to wisdom through some path or another. It’s that man’s concept of knowledge has been tainted by outside collectives. Conspiracies for any reason really, their purpose is relatively unimportant, but what is, is that they obscure the truth. They form together and cast some twisted form of a shadow to form their point. Man’s understanding is interfered with, you can’t expect one to navigate out a maze when it's always shifting, Daedalus’s string would be snipped at the bud. So man grows ignorant of any type of wisdom because he’s staring at something totally untrue formed by half truths.

Now this happens in any small variety, but it has within recent years evolved to immense proportions. Wars are planned, proposed and executed totally outside the bounds of the government. Visual stimuli are being constantly shoved into your mind, you instantly absorb any of that information, and build an unconscious reaction to it. This is mostly done by greed of such conspiracies. The desire to expand and consume, to mark the earth with their name. You can of course, sight such instances, but their actual presence has already accomplished what they sought at, the loss of truth. It is all moved by greed, for the same goal of stupefying man. It occurs at such a malicious rate, but one could hardly blame it on a cartoonishly evil cooperation plotting to trick young children into buying their product.

Rather that this is a natural human function, to share ‘information’ or rather their information. So they do a ‘service’ to the community, and they receive a small compensation. That’s a just affair correct? But rather it is a completely injust affair. They make produce a lie, abuse the mind, and then demand also the material. Both the mind and body are stolen from him.”

----End of monologue