Structures. What are they for? Population control? Self-identification?
Most feel more comfortable with the latter explanation. It gives them a sense of control.Â
The common man has no control when they see the very structures theyâve grown so accustomed and have abided by are not their own choice. Time allowed the lines of free will to be blurred. Am I drinking this tea because Iâm thirsty or someone told me to? Who told me to? Was it me or someone else? How could I know Iâm not being watched by someone I canât see the very same way I do on a television. Watching a character, whoâs been given lines of what to say from the minute they were born out of the creativity of someone elseâs mind. The character itself was born into a structure. Everything for that character was decided for them; the setting, plot, their dreams, goals and desires. From start to finish, the character has already gotten a fate thatâs been decided. In the creative medium, that character thinks all its choices are freewill⊠not knowing theyâre actually a script. When you look at film and media from the lenses of blurred reality, it opens the door for comparisons to our own real life experiences.
From the day you are born, you are given a series of labels, followed by structures you will have to grow to mold yourself in. From day one, you are told your name, that you must live up to the actions of those bearing the same name, and fixated to a cult of family known as a bloodline and further fixated into a religion or lack thereof. You are decided to be poor, or rich. If youâre on the inside or outside of the socio-economic barriers called class. Youâre given choices to make with consequences, whether they be dire or not. You grow to find people are easily manipulated, that you can commit acts of dishonesty and theyâre none-the-wiser without proof other than your hearsay. It becomes easy to you. Youâve learned how certain people think. You are able to predict how they react in certain scenarios and then begin to craft scenarios for your benefit, hoping to get their reaction to go according to your plan. Youâve now eliminated them of freewill. They think their choices are their own. On a smaller scale, this type of manipulation is harmless. âA little white lieâ. But on a gargantuan scale, this small like can grow from harmless to devastating.Â
Unbeknownst to them that you have been feeding them the very information they believed to have come up with on their own. You allow them to feel that sense of power while simultaneously stripping them of it. You are in control of what they say or do because you have an understanding of structure. How itâs not real. Itâs only information youâve been feeding them and theyâre expected to conform because that goes with your plan. Youâve used the very structures that were given to you to keep you in line to keep the ones whoâve structured you in line. Act accordingly while simultaneously observing their nature. If I am dishonest about this and i am not caught, I have outsmarted the system because now, only I know the truth. Have you ever noticed what happens when you hide the truth from someone? Theyâre blissful until that truth has been unveiled. If you can keep the veil on, there is no other truth to their knowledge.Â
Maintaining that hidden truth proves difficult to do amongst a small group of people. They begin to talk and find inconsistencies with one another due to perspective. Oneâs own perspective influences their interpretation of the truth. Perspective allows for a system of belief. In other words. âIâve seen this with my own two eyes, it must be true.â But if theyâve been seeing an illusion for most of their lives, theyâve attached themselves to their beliefs rather than their rationality. They become synonymous with the truth theyâve been fed. Reminding the control of this only reinforces the strength of the veil. Any moment they began to question if the information theyâve been fed is the only truth has been erased because theyâre now self-righteous and belief oriented. Humans are very stubborn beings. Once their belief is challenged, they will do anything to convince others of their correctness. Why? The short answer is fear.
Fear of what would happen if they were wrong. That means having to confront a truth theyâve spent so long in the dark about. Not knowing whatâs on the other side of that truth theyâve been fed. To question one believe opens another door to question everything youâve been told and have taken as fact. It destroys all your structures. Whatâs real and whatâs not real? You come into this world belonging to someone or something. A structure has been made for you when you are born.Â
As Iâve grown older, the lines between fiction and reality become harder and harder to see. I notice the patterns in nearly everything. I try to ignore them and stay blissfully ignorant, but thereâs no denying that some things are just⊠weird.
Some phrases repeated a few too many times, some shapes look a bit too familiar. Deja-vu over and over. I know Iâve been here before. Have i visited it in a dream? Have I been here in a different timeline and my consciousness is being shared with someone else? Is it narcissistic to think that said consciousness is an alternate version of me? What if itâs a completely different person born to a completely different structure and we synced because of our position under the stars or some bullshit like that. I could never be sure without allowing myself to give up this reality and explore endless possibilities and theories.
It started after I was addicted to playing games that allowed me to be fully in control.Prime example; Sims 4 I was the god in their world. I birthed these characters. Decided what I wanted them to look like, how I wanted them to act how I wanted them to be. Decided personality traits, where they would live, what kind of job they would have. How much money theyâd make. Everything they ever did, I was in control of. I told them when to shit, when to eat, when to fuck. Everything. That kind of power allowed me to step outside of being myself and to be someone else. God. I didnât understand why that felt so freeing. It wasnât until I began to question my own sanity outside the game. What if I donât actually want to play this game? What if Iâm the actual Sim thinking iâve got free will and someone else is controlling what I do or say? Then what? My power diminished. I was nothing more than a vessel.
Iâd never know unless I sought out the truth past the structures Iâve been given to live in.
Blurring those lines prove dangerous to me. Iâm a black woman. A gay black woman.
These structures iâve been confined within make it difficult to leave this vessel. They hold weight. Iâm expected to live out past my structures. To make something great of myself despite the labels Iâve been given. These labels are âself empoweredâ we always hear about a struggle behind these labels. How hard it is to live within them because I live in a system designed not for my socio-economic benefit. An apologetic system that wants to allow a certain percentage of people from my sort of background to be the âtokenâ of businesses. To demand they show a fair balance between me and that of my possibly Caucasian counterparts. Affirmative action-y type of thing. Itâs not winning if itâs handed to you, right? But everything has been handed to me. And I donât mean that in a âmy life is super silver-spoonedâ type way. I mean that in, these cards were not my dealings. I didnât sit at this table to talk about why I am what I am. Who I am.
I was told this was my name, this was my class, this was my gender, this was my struggle, do something about it.Â
Itâs almost as is my life is one big test and Iâm being monitored by someone i canât see. Someone who constantly is scripting my movie, making changes to parts of my life. And flashbacks and deja-vu are scenes Iâve filmed already as this character that are part of the deleted scenes.
The only escape is through dreams. And even then, those contain a whole new take on what reality actually is. Iâve had recurring dreams littered with signs or allusions to my life outside of that realm. Iâve felt the most free in my dreams. I struggle to remember them when i wake up but i always seem to remember the point of them. How theyâre messages or sometimes, often times, escapes.Â
Then it hit me. I felt free when I was God in that game, not because of that sense of power. But because I could spend time not being binded to these structures that I live in everyday. I could spend time being someone else.
And thatâs why writing in first person these stories about Korean performers was so liberating. I was writing as If i was really a Nam Joon or Ji Min. Exploring and observing their personalities on camera and alluding to what it would be like to reduce their existence to characters in a story where I could make them do what I wanted. Feed my own emotions into the piece at the time and make them react to real life situations I dealt with as themselves and instead of me. It fucks with you when you stop writing and you have to go back to being confined in your structures. But it fucks with you more when you work a 9-5 like a zombie knowing this is nothing but another structure where your creative outlet is being muted so you can make time to be someone you are not.Â
But is that really any different than sitting at a computer for 7 hours concocting a tale of lust, angst and drama. Pretending to be someone you are not. I am the god in my stories. I am the god in my video games. I am not the god in my present day life.Â
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