The Dope

 

What is the Dope? Some might conclude that the Dope is some kind of drug. Drugs are certainly part of the equation, but the Dope is not a drug. At least not in any conventional sense.

The Dope is all around us. The Dope is society. The Dope is conventional wisdom. The Dope is social convention. It is money and medicine, and the spaces where the two meet. Most of the world is on the Dope.

If you're not already on the Dope, then you had better get on it and quick. Why, one simply can not live in today's world without the Dope.

The Dope has many ingredients. It's sort of a stew, really. Most of the ingredients are lies, but they are all sugar-coated, so that most never really notice. These lies are so easy to swallow that they are practically ingested by rote, the damage already done before anyone has a clue.

It begins with the schooling. Schooling is a critical component of the Dope. The Dope can only work with a people who are docile. The first lesson of school is that you MUST ALWAYS respect authority. Questioning authority can ONLY lead to trouble.

These are the metrics. You must achieve the metrics according to a timetable.

You must achieve high marks.

You must select courses to prepare you for a specific discipline, one which is in high demand and commands a high salary.

You must also engage in many extracurricular activities and volunteerism. Because colleges love that shit. (That last part, at least, is true)

YES!! Because you simply must go to college. Because that piece of paper confers legitimacy. You are nothing without it.

Public (state) school education. Check

University indoctrination. Check

There are many who will feed you these lines. Some of them are just useful idiots, repeating something that someone else said. Because it sounded smart. There are others who perpetuate these lies because it serves them personally. Or their "pet" agenda. That's a polite way of saying grift. The credentialist class; the street level retailers of the Dope. They give you that first taste. 

Then they turn you on to the bankers. Next vital ingredient in the Dope: credit.  It seems so benign. There is another word for it that they shush-shush until later: debt.

You simply have to take on debt! Unless you are a trust fund baby, there is simply no other way! Think of it as an investment. In yourself! The banks are there to help you get started.

Now, that last line is kind of tricky. It's not an outright lie, just a shading of the truth. The banks are there to help you get started. Started on a lifetime path of servitude. To them, the banks. The banks figure prominently in the composition of the Dope. Bankers are the underwriters of the Dope.

Establishing credit (accumulating debt). Check

There is a certain amount of theatre to the Dope. Even your narcotic varieties of dope (lower case) require something more than just the intoxicant. It's gotta have vibe, I guess is how they would put it today. In order that the Dope actually be the Dope, there has to be a buzz to it and a buzz around it. The buzz around the Dope is what helps draw others into it's clutches. Conformity is a potent weapon to wield, especially when one considers how easily it can be manipulated. In order for this to work, people have to be talking about the Dope.

The Dope is the narrative. The script that everyone is supposed to follow. It's the continuation of a script, the foundation of which was put down in school. It doesn't have to be true because the truth is not it's purpose. It's purpose is only that the script be heard and repeated by as many as possible. Create the buzz. Get people talking about the Dope. How good the Dope is. How easy the Dope is. How natural the Dope is. It's just... what you do. Enter here, that next vital component to the Dope: the media.

The media, in all of it's numerous and ugly permutations, is a digestive system for the Dope. It assimilates all of the disparate parts into it's gaping maw; swallowing them whole to work out all of the contradictions, breaking them down to conform to the narrative. It absorbs what it needs to, and then excretes all the rest into a common, brown paste that all can recognize. An adjunct to the media, advertising, plays a vital role in the process. They are not just buying ad time; they're also buying the content. This assures the perfectly balanced texture for a stool that is easily passed. Every time.

These steaming coils are plated up and sold as filet mignon and most never notice. They have been conditioned not to ask questions. They have been numbed by the Dope. The media's presentation of reality becomes a wallpaper; a backdrop mural against which daily life plays in the foreground. It's just a part of the scenery, a set in a play titled The Asch Conformity Experiments. Validating the Experiment's findings, they answer the question: If one can get these results from only eight, imagine if eight thousand? Or million? 

Full immersion into monolithic media messaging. Check

The schools, primary, secondary and colleges, have physical facilities. Yet as an institution, they are not a concrete entity.  As an institution, we refer to these collectively as education. Education is an abstraction.

Banks often have impressive buildings, though not always. Whether ostentatious or nondescript, there are walls, a roof, doors that lock and a secure vault. But that is not where the banks do what they do. Banking, as an institution, is likewise an abstraction.

The media has many houses. From towering Manhattan office buildings to basement "studios", and various iterations between the two. These are physical locations that provide a "platform" for the message. The platform, like the institution of media itself, is that intangible cloud where words and ideas dwell. It too is only an abstraction. 

None of this is to say that abstractions are of no value; they indeed have their place, but they can not serve as a foundation for anything solid. Abstractions are incapable of supporting physicality. The Dope is an abstraction. 

The only thing that an abstraction can support is illusion. The greatest abstraction of all is the State. When we refer to "the State" that means ALL of it. Federal, state, county, municipal and township; all of these are man's pathetic attempt at supplanting the natural law. The State has no physicality. It has no eyes nor ears with which to see or hear; no hands to set upon it's charges; no mind or will of it's own. The State is a vessel created and occupied by those who wish to impose their will upon others, an act that would be physically impossible to perform on their own. They hide behind the protections accorded to themselves within their laws, while employing force doctrine upon those that they "rule". As the State has no corporeal being, it must hire muscle to act in it's stead. They call these people regulators, or prosecutors, or inspectors. Most of all they are referred to as police. Broadly speaking, the entire regime is categorized as law enforcement. It is easier and more accurate to just call them what they are: hired thugs. Every last one. And they are all on the Dope.

The State can not exist without the Dope. The Dope keeps the subjects of the State convinced that the State is necessary, benign and working in their favor. The Dope keeps a fresh crop of subjects always convinced that donning a uniform and a badge in service of the State is a noble and virtuous endeavor. This belief, over time, evolves into a siege mentality; that it is a contest of "us versus them". Thus is the hammerhead created, one of the ugliest unintended consequences of the Dope.

The hammerhead is, at heart, a closeted uniform fetishist. Their lives have been deliberately choreographed in one form of cosplay or another. They are fertile ground for the Dope. Once they have been conferred the authority that comes with a rank or a badge, and of course lethal weapons, they are transformed into hammers. You know the old saying: when a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This became an old saying, like most old sayings, because it is true.

There are some other old sayings that would seem apropos to this discussion. "If you pass enough laws, then all are made a criminal." That one is most often attributed to the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, though like most Soviet ideas, it probably wasn't original. Maybe it isn't really old enough to qualify for the category of "old sayings"; it nevertheless applies to our current condition.

There are precious few places remaining in America where one might go and not be snared in a web of competing jurisdictions. I would be willing to wager that, in some locations which historically have been more authoritarian in nature, if one were to print out every single applicable legal code in force at the given set of coordinates, then there would be enough paper to circle the globe. Maybe twice. Compile the entire list, descending in rank from federal, state, county, municipal and township, one is then confronted with a legal monolith for which there can be no other intent, but to bludgeon their citizens into meek submission. The smug expression that comes with a certain knowledge that, no matter what, we're going to get you, is not worn upon the face of the State; rather, it is worn upon the faces of the people who pass and "enforce" these laws. The State has no face of it's own.

Lest I be accused of hyperbole, I will concede one point. The existence of these multiple, competing and often contradictory legal jeopardies, do not actually entail significant risk of jail time. There is the humane and merciful alternative of fines. Penalties. You know, a strongarm tax. Let's just call it what it is. More laws = mo' money! Why else have such superfluous authority with random, if not selective, enforcement? And every single party to this massive fraud enjoy what is called "qualified immunity". Could you just imagine abuses to occur with a system like that? It does, in fact, virtually assure that it does. This is what they call the Law. The Law is that final, lethal speedball shot of the Dope.

Utter submission to all law, no matter how unjust or absurd. Check

You're all being herded into their cities, to live like rats in cages. Railroaded into an existence designed for perpetual indebtedness and servitude, while they insult you with their perverted acclamations for "Equity". They cry crocodile tears for democracy, yet blatantly thwart it's will whenever it should raise it's ugly head against them. And you, John Q. Citizen? You actually get the privilege of voting for this. Doesn't really matter what you vote for anyway: this is still what you're gonna get, friend.

Did you spend your teens/early twenties living a life calibrated to a GPA and/or semester schedule? Yes? Your Dope journey begins here.

Have you lived your entire adult life calibrated to a credit score? The Dope.

Hold a mortgage? The Dope.

How many car loans/leases? The Dope.

Any other installment loans? Credit card debt? The Dope, and again, the Dope.

Do you know how many dollars in interest you paid last year? You don't, do you? You, my friend, are almost certainly on the Dope.

Have you thrown yourself all in with a political party? Do you still hold faith in the institutions of this society? If yes to either or both of these, you are definitely on the Dope.

Not all are ready, but we extend the invitation to those who may be: Are you ready to get off the Dope? It is surprisingly simple. You don't have to surrender civilization. You just have to separate yourself from this society. Civilization is the hardware. It has physicality. You can build upon it. Society is just the software. It's an operating system. It is an abstraction supporting only what abstractions can support: an illusion. This society has nothing for you to build upon. The lesson of your life is simply this: you're going to have to figure it out for yourself. That, my friends, is your undilutable slang truth for the day.