There’s this one scene in a Simpson’s episode that I’ve always loved. It features Snake, the stereotypical criminal, in the exercise yard at a minimum security prison. Homer drives by in Snake’s old sports-car, which he bought at a police auction, and which he’s now abusing quite badly. Hearing this, Snake decides to escape and rescue his car. He walks to the gate, and opens it and walks out. It’s unlocked. All it has was a sign that says “NO ESCAPING PLEASE” on it. Snake exclaims: “Screw the honor system! My car needs me!” and runs off. Kearney, who is working out nearby in the exercise yard sees this and yells out: “Hey, you’re ruining it for the rest of us!”

It’s one of those things that’s funny because it’s such a scathing commentary on how society functions. Not just in terms of prisons, but in terms of how control systems only have power over us because we essentially allow them to. More often than not though, it doesn’t seem that way at all. It seems like we are in a maximum security prison with guards and angry inmates on all sides. Jeremy wrote a nice piece on what Philip K. Dick called the Black Iron Prison. It’s a gnostic concept that goes something like this:

you are imprisoned for a crime you did not commit. You have no way to escape. You can decorate your cell in any way you choose; you can rail against the Authorities but will never overturn them; you can enmesh yourself in prison politics and join a gang; you can chart the routines of the guards and the schedules by which it’s determined when you get to go out into the yard for exercise. You can even make friends with the guards and wardens and work for the Authorities, thereby making your physical lot in life more comfortable and bearable. If any of this makes you feel better, well, great– go for it. In the end, however, you’re still in prison;

Gnosticism generally asserts that the archons (which means literally “authorities”) are the masters and architects of this prison, and that their goal is to control us completely. But in a way, I think we decide to let them. I was talking to my girlfriend recently about something similar. I was talking about a pet peeve of mine which is that tv documentaries on the paranormal, no matter how deep they go into the subject, always seem to come back and at the very end say: “But it’s all bullshit. It’s just a fun theory. Now come back to reality.” I said something about how it was a way to control people’s perceptions, or something equally conspiratorial. But she reminded me of something I always forget: people like to be titillated by far our paranormal shit, but at the end of the day, most people don’t want to have to “believe” it. If they did believe it, they’d have to rearrange their entire life and the underlying system of perceptions.

Instead when most of us see the sign that says “NO ESCAPING PLEASE” we are more than happy to obey it. What the hell would we do once we escaped? We’d have no idea how to survive outside the prison walls. That’s much scarier than the occasional whomping by an inmate or the stern reproval of a prison guard. Have you ever been to a bird house at the zoo? Some of them don’t have windows anymore separating you from the bird habitats. And yet the birds don’t escape. You’d think they would, but they find their prison environment much more interesting than the sterile hallways from which you peer in at them.

It’s kind of funny to look at what Kearney says in that Simpson’s episode mentioned above. It makes me wonder if occultists, conspiracy theorists and other counter-culturalists really are “ruining it for the rest of us”, so to speak. If you asked the common man on the street, I’m sure that’s not far from his opinion. Why do we feel like we can “screw the honor system” and run outside the prison walls? And what do we do once we get out there and find that the world is much more complex, scary and exciting than we could have ever possibly imagined? I know many people get a little ways outside the prison, and then run screaming home to Mommy’s waiting arms. Others of us have gone a little ways outside the wall and set up camp of our own - feeling greatly superior in our personally-designed and assembled mini prison. But there are others of us still who push beyond that, into the great unknown. How? Why? What drives us? What do we find? And how do we keep going? These are questions I’m always grappling with.