Welcome to the Machine

Welcome to the Machine

a look at control, dominion, and taking

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~J. Krishnamurti

It's a matter of degree. We may deplore the results of excessive control, dominion, and taking when it is enough to offend us personally, or done by others, not by ourselves. But the issue is one of enlightenment: control, dominion, and taking is rooted in the great delusion; in perfect wisdom there is no grounds it. Following are examples of control, dominion, taking that will make you think it's "us against them," but the real question is to what degree we root out the delusion from ourselves in our daily actions, words, feelings, and thoughts. Are we trimming offending fruits, or have we laid the axe to the root of the tree?

Back in 1892, a man, W. A. Duncan, wrote in the Cherokee Advocate:

"Business knows no pity, and cares for justice only when justice is seen to be better policy. If it had power to control the elements, it would grasp in its iron clutches the waters, sunshine and air and resell them by measure, and at exorbitant prices to the millions of famished men, women and children."

This reminds me of a movie I saw recently called The Milagro Bean-field War, in which a town of simple farmers in New Mexico had the natural water supply (a creek) confiscated by the local government so the creek's water could be controlled and sold back to them. Irrigation trenches leading from the stream to the a small farm fields were shut down, and signs hung on them strictly prohibiting private use of the water as illegal, under penalty of law. The town's families were thereby impoverished; those who took and controlled the water were enriched. This kind of thing is accepted as normal and somehow necessary. But it seems to me a form of mental illness - declaring dominion over a natural resource in order to force your fellow man to pay you for it. Later, take a look at the essay by Peter Phillips, Ph.D. on the threat of the privatization of the earth's natural water supply for control, taking, and profit.

Near where I live there are small ranches or homes, some very modest, but on a few or several acres of land. The people living out there are told they own the land, but that the local water district owns the water under their land. They are not allowed to dig a well on their own land because that would be stealing the water which has somehow been claimed by a "water district." Instead, they have to buy their water from this self-proclaimed water authority. A little headway has been made by people in adjoining ranchlands who fought for the right to dig wells on their own properties. (They are in a different "water district" that was forcing them to pay more for the same region's water.) Their hard-won battle has gained them this: they can dig a well, and after their labor and personal expense is finished, the water district comes out and places a meter on their well and charges them for the water that comes out of it (but at a reduced rate!!)

My point is not to rant about water rights, but to discuss the whole concept of control, dominion, and taking. So it also struck me as weird that the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, USA - which was formed by the impact from a 300,000 ton meteor that smacked the Earth in excess of 40,000 miles per hour more than 49,000 years ago - is "owned." It is actually owned by descendents of Daniel Barringer, who acquired the site in 1902. Here is a huge pock mark in the planet formed 49,000 years ago, and one person "acquired" the site and can charge you to see it.
See it here for free

Reading about that, it suddenly occurred to me how the American Indians got screwed out of any land to live on freely - they made "deals" with this new race that came and wanted to acquire the land. For an American Indian this would mean this visitor wanted to live on it - no problem. You see, the Indian had no concept of "owning" land - it was as ridiculous a concept as fleas "owning" the dog they live on. We come from the earth, we live on the earth, we die on the earth and the earth goes on. We spring up for a time from this environment because we are this environment.

They could not believe anyone could be so arrogant (to the point of insanity, it must have seemed) as to mean one could "own" this environment. But Westernized societies have invented two notions that make this insanity, this delusion, seem utterly normal. The first is the notion that we are separate from our environment and somehow at odds with it, so we need to control it. Humph! What your body is, is an organism shaped by this environment to live it, experience it, survive by it. No other organisms, whether plants or animals, feel a neurotic need to assert dominance over their environment. Only humans feel apart from it. This is based on another ridiculous notion is that we "came into this world" as if we were previously alien souls popping in to earthly existence for a visit called "life." But in fact we do not come into this world, we come out of it, much like apples come from the apple tree. We are the fruit of this environment we call earth, and the fruit is the tree, it does not conquer the tree.

Well, the illusion of being separate organisms who need to control has prevailed. In this country, as in most or all so-called "civilized" countries, all land is owned. (But "civilized" seems for all purposes to be a euphemism for dominion by human intellect.) The fact of land ownership lends a great irony to most four-wheel drive vehicles. A person pays $30,000 for an off road vehicle because advertisements show a flannel-shirted adventurer enjoying the beautiful freedom available off road, driving over mountain tops to view the next horizon and its wide-open, breath-taking beauty. This lone sports-utility-vehicle driver splashes through creeks and drives over hills into the sunset. He is an explorer, a rugged and free individual who loves the earth and freedom enough to pay $30,000 for it. The tragic comedy that they never tell you is that he is not allowed to drive over those mountains. They are owned. The rugged and free explorer will be in reality trespassing on either 1) a rancher's private property, or 2) the government's land. There is almost nowhere he may go.

Its odd, but I haven't met anyone who knows when or how various state and federal governments acquired all the non-private lands. At some point, payments, agreements or votes must have been involved?? But, the fact is, there is no where one may go to live without going through the theater of "buying" it, that is, paying for the illusion of ownership of some land. If you weren't able to buy it for yourself, you are trespassing. In the U.S., the various governing authorities feel they ultimately "own" all lands in practicality, because if they want the rancher's land, they will take it. Protests, courts, threats notwithstanding, they will have it in the end if they want it. In the U.S.A. this is called the Law of Eminent Domain; it is deceptively subtitled "the greatest good for the greatest number." But, the ones who define "the greatest good" do so on their own scale of values, which are usually monetary.

Near the valley in which I live, a beautiful hill top forms an almost perfectly level high plain. Tens of thousands of families live close enough to appreciate the view of this undisturbed and natural environment. Well, the powers that be thought that hill top would be very suitable for an international airport, what with a little bull-dozing and taking and dominion over nature. Think of the dollars, er, um, the "good" that is to be made from such an enterprise. The project is presently disapproved, but we don't know for how long. If the greatest good is defined by those whose primary interest is commercial enterprise and economic gain, then a new airport or strip mining or whatever is a greater good than thousands of families who desire a healthy, beautiful, peaceful, or quiet environment.

An old Cree Indian Prophecy will apparently prove true in America. They said: "Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then you will find that money cannot be eaten."

Control, dominion, and taking occur and cause suffering at many levels. There are the thousands of acres of rain forest destroyed daily (the entire ecosystems, not just the trees) for timber industry monies. There are still grand-jury investigations (a one-sided system which most U.S. states have outlawed because there is no defense representation in the proceedings), in which lives are destroyed for the possibility of creating revenue from "fines and restitution." There are people all over the world who are imprisoned or tortured for resisting a state-controlled ideology. [I have heard that Gordon Sumner ("Sting") has been investigated and monitored by powers that be, because of all the money he has given to Amnesty International to help these people - only a sick system can see compassion as subversive.] There have been thousands of people murdered in countries for being a race or having a faith (Christian or otherwise) that is against the laws. Power, might, market shares, "Social Security" numbers, chemical weapons, bull-dozing, species extinctions, pumping toxic waste by the thousands of tons into air and water daily - all because we know best how to dominate the environment, other humans, and our even our thinking - for the good of the system.

The point of this essay is that the whole concept of dominion, controlling and taking is a mental illness, it is the same delusion for which we declare wars, cause unspeakable suffering, destroy the very environment which sustains our lives, and when all is said and done and acquired, find ourselves so out of touch with reality that we cannot be satisfied with what we have taken. For the delusion of Control, Dominion, and Taking to become a way of society, it is necessary that everyone, or at least a majority, accept it as true and good.

You would need to get most of the people to think they have part of the pie coming to them, that they want dominion and control, and are able to be good takers as well. The fact is, you or I or even the official does not really own anything at all and never have and never will. Unfortunately for most people this is only clear to them on their death-bed. But we need to think we do, or can, if we work harder, are cooperative with some Great Dominion Plan, and are willing to even kill or die for the great dream of control, dominion, and taking.

Welcome my son, welcome to the machine.
What did you dream? It's all right we told you what to dream...
--Roger Waters, Welcome to the Machine

We can go along with such delusion only when we feel that it is our choice, it is something that is under our control. In other words, we must think we have what we are voting for. We must feel that we citizens have chosen this path and are in cooperation with a wise and loving government that values the freedom of its citizens more than it's own power. We don't want to imagine that "the powers that be" don't have our best interests at heart, or would kick in our doors when they think we don't know what's best for ourselves.

I guess I should not have been startled to read what our previous president, Bill Clinton had said on MTV's "Enough is Enough." (Understand, this is not a political objection I am making; it could be just as easily said by any political party. But he apparently is the one who did say something that exposes the mental illness of control on a Federal level): "[W]hen we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." (Bill Clinton 3-22-94)

Likewise, in an issue of USA Today dated March 11, 1993, the president expressed a love of dominion, saying, "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans . . . ."

Again, this essay is NOT a political preference issue. All political systems, every political party is part of maya, the great illusion. This is to raise a big question mark against the whole notion of control, dominion, and taking. This has not to do with any one political personality; it has to do with the notion of any party thinking they have the wisdom for ruling others well or deciding what the common good is. The old Taoist sage, Lao Tzu, said you should rule a country as you would fry a small fish -- too much poking ruins it. But we have found ourselves to have made a system in which "the good" is defined by the corporations who produce and/or support a politician to best represent their interests. Historically, it is only after the corporations exhaust the resources of the society working for them (and then fail under this illusion of being a separate and higher entity) that "the Strong Leader" can appear and make political postures for his own aggrandizement and legacy. After economic collapse there is a Mussolini, and Hitler, a Chairman Mao to "take the public's best interests to heart" and provide the tyranny necessary for their own good.

I saw a quote from Michael Hoffman, who noted how often, "...tyranny comes in the name of 'public safety,' which just so happens to be the shibboleth of the 12 man junta who ruled France and instituted the Reign of Terror --they called themselves, "The Committee of Public Safety." It's always "for your own good."

But not in our time, not in our country, right? Really? Don't you think that the Powers That Be are already sure they know better than you? U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen was quoted as saying: "Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection." So who decides at what point that "more intrusive means" comes, and how intrusive? Do you think you will vote on it? The ones who define "the greatest good" will decide if, when, or how civil liberties need to be limited - or written away - for your protection.

"Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool." (Clinton presidential aide Paul Begala, July 1998)

If you have read this far, you may be thinking this is some kind of semi-anarchist rant, a poo-pooing of particular political parties. Not so. All I propose is that we look outside the lines, especially if the lines have been proscribed for us by our own mentally ill system. Yes, I keep using the phrase, "mentally ill." This sounds like a cheap-shot judgment, but it simply bespeaks the facts: humans have killed more than 100 million fellow humans in the twentieth century alone. Even aside from mental, emotional, and physical violence, and the poisoning of our own life-environment, and the deep unhappiness and fear that most people live in, there is the fact of control, dominion, and taking as "just good business" or a way of life (more accurately, a way of death.) All over the world people have been tortured or imprisoned for left unable to buy or sell for refusing some spreading system of control.

On a related note, why have so many people accepted the "red-herring" (something put out to deliberately mislead) that history is full of religious wars? Granted, religion has been a major tool for rulers to motivate their people into warfare, but the religions as such did not start the wars. There is nothing in Jesus' teaching that would allow for "the great crusades" as a means of spreading peace on earth and goodwill to all. And many associate Islam with the mental picture of sword-in-the-air "jihad" and cries of "kill the infidel," but these do not come from Mohammed or the Koran. It is ruling and governing authorities who war with each other and, and drag in people who would normally be buying each other drinks and declare them enemies to each other. Does anyone think the violence in Northern Ireland today has to do with disagreement over whether Mary should be adored, or any other issue of "catholic versus protestant?" Catholics and protestants do not disagree to so great a degree, and if they did, they would not kill each other over it. It's a war of governmental dominion, not a religious war.

Is there freedom from the illness of control, dominion, and taking?

At this point it is good to remember that it is not a case of us against them. The one's usurping control and dominion and taking are expressions - extensions - of our own delusions of control, dominion, and taking. A people gets the government and societal structure it deserves inasmuch as that government (or governing body, religious, political, or business) is the fruit of our own consciousness.

One major aspect of curing the delusion of control, dominion and taking is to stop identifying ourselves with it. If there is to be true virtue in a society, it will come from a true change of consciousness in the citizens. It will not, indeed cannot, be dictated by the very societal structure that needs the change. It is not voted in and does not come through new legislation or any political candidate. It is prior to that, deeper than that, more radical than that. The cure for the cultural mental illness is transformation of consciousness. Krishnamurti spoke truly about escaping the unconscious residue of race, culture, and our own motives and appetites, by no longer identifying ourselves with them:

This virtue has nothing to do with the social morality that we accept. Society has imposed a certain morality on us, but society is the product of every human being. Society with its morality says that you can be greedy; that you can kill another in the name of God, in the name of your country, in the name of an ideal; that you can be competitive, envious within the law. Such morality is no morality at all. You must totally deny that morality within yourself in order to be virtuous....There can be order only where there is total self-denial, when the "me" has no importance whatsoever....So dying is very important to understand. To die to everything that one knows. Have you ever tried it? To be free from the known, to be free from your memory, even for a few days; to be free from your pleasure without any argument, without any fear; to die to your family, to your house, to your name; to become completely anonymous. It is only the person who is completely anonymous who is in a state of non-violence, who has no violence. So die every day, not as an idea, but actually. Do it sometime....To do it psychologically - not giving up your wife, your clothes, your husband, your children or your house, but inwardly - is not to be attached to anything. In that there is great beauty. After all, that is love, isn't it? Love is not attachment. When there is attachment there is fear. And fear inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.
(From This Light in Oneself - True Meditation)

Krishnamurti was one example of going outside the box, outside the lines proscribed for us, and he urged a transformation in ourselves that could bring a broader transformation:

     War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarrelling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many 'brutalities that go to create organized murder.
     Education throughout the world has failed, it has produced mounting destruction and misery. Governments are training the young to be the efficient soldiers and technicians they need; regimentation and prejudice are being cultivated and enforced. Taking these facts into consideration, we have to inquire into the meaning of existence and the significance and purpose of our lives. We have to discover the beneficent ways of creating a new environment; for environment can make the child a brute, an unfeeling specialist, or help him to become a sensitive, intelligent human being. We have to create a world government which is radically different, which is not based on nationalism, on ideologies, on force.
     All this implies the understanding of our responsibility to one another in relationship; but to understand our responsibility, there must be love in our hearts, not mere learning or knowledge. The greater our love, the deeper will be its influence on society. But we are all brains and no heart; we cultivate the intellect and despise humility. If we really loved our children, we would want to save and protect them, we would not let them be sacrificed in wars.
     I think we really want arms; we like the show of military power, the uniforms, the rituals, the drinks, the noise, the violence. Our everyday life is a reflection in miniature of this same brutal superficiality, and we are destroying one another through envy and thoughtlessness.
     We want to be rich; and the richer we get, the more ruthless we become, even though we may contribute large sums to charity and education. Having robbed the victim, we return to him a little of the spoils, and this we call philanthropy. I do not think we realize what catastrophes we are preparing. Most of us live each day as rapidly and thoughtlessly as possible, and leave to the governments, to the cunning politicians, the direction of our lives.

Excepted from J. Krishnamurti, 1953. Education and the Significance of Life. New York: Harper Collins.

In our meditations and in our prayers, may we become more aware of our own participation in the destructive illusion of control, dominion, and taking, and may we become more liberated from that sickness, until our lives become a source of healing, peace, and liberation for all sentient beings.

Back to Essays

Legal Notices