They use your own body as evidence against you. Quite a mindfuck I have to say. I used to smoke hashish on a daily basis for about ten years, which meant that I was constantly illegal for these ten years. Finally it just did my head in. Now I can’t smoke without getting too damn paranoid. Still get paranoid when I see the cops tho. I mean, maybe I do have some stray atoms of cannabis floating around in my blood that will show up on a test, what do I know..

I loved the post by the way.

the damn legal code is so fricking convoluted, you can never TELL if you’re doing anything wrong.

That seems like it’s increasingly the point!

I think it’s this uncertainty which gets to people. I know it gets to me.

When I walk up to the detectors as I go out the store, I get nervous. It’s not because I’m scared I did anything wrong, it’s because I am scared that the technology will mess up and say I did, and I’ll have to defend myself against others where I’m guilty until proven innocent.

My reaction is similar, on somewhat broader scale, when I see a police car or a cop. I feel more apprehensive, because they could potentially have a larger impact on my life if they decided to. The fact that the system is so large also effects my reaction — there is more of a chance that I am inadvertantly breaking a minor law due to a lack of knowledge than there is that I somehow managed to accidentally steal something from the store.

Allison is right - contemporary society does everything but help you to remain centered. It does everything to keep you continually scattered and more susceptible to buying ridiculous products…..

One: technology fucking up (ie - an alarm being set off by something other than what it’s actually supposed to detect). You may be found innocent in the end but you still have had to go through the initial embarassment (and there’s a big source of tension for most people, right there).

And two: People in positions of power/authority abusing their power; innocent people being blamed and punished for things they haven’t done and being powerless to defend themselves; being at the mercy of someone else’s judgment, nomatter how poor or unjust, possibly even depending on nothing more than whether that authority is in a good or bad mood that day.

It would make sense that seeing a uniformed cop or a theft detector, which can be symbols for one or both of the above described situations (especially if you’ve ever personally experienced or witnessed one), would trigger the kinds of emotions associated with those kinds of situations.

to remain centered seems the goal.

One of my primary goals, and anything but easy. Society seems almost a tailor-made obstacle to that goal.

In my personal quest to free myself of fear and desire, the battle seems to be increasingly shifting to smaller and smaller fronts, as in “will i make this green light in time,” “will i get the answering machine or not,” “will this door be unlocked or not,” and so forth. in each of these instnaces there is one outcome that is feared and one that is desired.

the sin, in my experience, isn’t to have a preference (indeed, i think it is incredibly helpful to acknolwedge as much), but instead to cling onto your preferential fear or desire. you may desire that light to stay green or fear that the cop behind you pulls you over, but these feelings must be allowed to pass through you. to remain centered seems the goal.

i cannot help but think that “the archons” are indeed drawn to both our fear & desire… but if we work on letting ourselves remain centered (a life-long pursuit), we approach a sort of freedom. not a world free from such archonic presences, but a world where we’re free from our “predicted” reaction to them.

Quasi-facetiousness aside, I know exactly what you’re talking about….and it bothers me. Perhaps this lingering guilt we feel at times is a genetic memory of Original Sin, or some nonsense like that. Of course, the Gnostic in me can’t help but feel that the Archons have deliberately created a mechanism in us that makes us guilty and afraid for no apparent reason. (other than to feed their insatiable appetites, of course).

They’re crackin’ down on autonomous, collective, natural peace, that’s for sure. Or at the very least, a new social paradigm is ever so gradually being unveiled. There is the capricious security class/cult and then there is everyone else with greater or lesser degrees of blank psychological states upon which new worldviews can and will be built. With a little help from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo I think we (Wii) just may be able to bear it.

On a slightly different note, I find it equally fascinating that nobody pays any attention to car alarms, other than to be utterly annoyed by them when they go off incessantly.

There is certainly a cop in my head, and a judge, and a lawyer, and I want to kill them all. (Isn’t it just about time for the FBI to come knocking on my door?…)

what motivates such behavoir

Whatever it is, it seems to be REALLY deeply ingrained for me - evoking a sort of pre-rational state of panic.

A) why I have never thought much about it
B) what motivates such behavoir
C) why I never thought that someone else may feel similarly.

I have some pet theories but they have little but conjecture to back them up.