Towards a Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory, Part 3

The first Philip K. Dick book I ever read was The Divine Invasion. I’d been hearing weird things about him for a month and then suddenly stumbled onto that book at a used book shop in Brooklyn. In some ways, it remains my favorite Dick novel, partly because of my emotional attachment to it, and partly because of how eloquently it deals with his on-going themes.

The novel takes the Judeo-Christian myths and re-casts them as a futuristic trashy sci-fi plotline. Basically, Yahweh is this alien life form on another world who impregnates a female colonist, so that He can return in the form of a baby to Earth. Meanwhile, Earth has come under the authoritarian rule of the Catholic Church which has combined with the Communist Party. And the third part of their triumvirate is a super-intelligent computer that helps them make decisions and eliminate potential threats to their power.

As Dick explains in an essay, somehow they catch wind of this plot by Yahweh to return to earth: “A computer told them that a monster baby is being smuggled into earth in this woman’s womb — this fetus — that it’s not human. And they decide it’s a monster from outer space and they should kill it.” They attempt to do so, but of course fail.

The point of the thing seems to be that - let’s call it “The Empire” - operates according to mechanistic principles. Simple survival. Threat assessment. Profits. Losses. That sort of thing. And that this totally forms the basis of their decision-making process - like a computer algorithm. And consequently they seek to eliminate anything that their formula tells them to - even if that means eliminating the very God that their church was founded on. Because they are unable to see it as divine. They see it as “alien,” as a threat which must be neutralized.

In Dick’s vision, this is part of the power of God, to hide itself amongst the trash stratum, in places that the mechanistically-driven, computerized consciousness, profit-loss threat-survival motive of the Empire simply cannot perceive. As we’ve seen in our own government, the powers that be do not recognize simple concepts such as human dignity and self-determination. Or rather, they only understand these concepts in so far as they can be manipulated to drive their algorithm of ever greater control and power forward and upward. You hear them mouth the words “freedom,” but it’s easy to look into their eyes and see that they don’t truly understand.

In fact, it benefits the Empire nothing to understand us. For if they were to truly understand us, then they would inevitably become us and give up what makes them the Empire in the first place. Instead of understanding, they choose manipulation, because it makes us in their desired image, rather than risking their becoming like us. And it allows them to predict without actually understanding, without stretching or challenging their own identities.

Simple human kindness, as well, is completely invisible to them. If you want to be unpredictable, help somebody for no reason and with no thought of reward. It won’t show up on their radar, their microscopes, their psych charts or their scanning stations. Why? Because it flouts predictive notions of profit and loss, of constant and unerring self-preservation. It falls outside of their manipulative patterning. When you become selfless, you become nothing to them.

Although, to be totally honest: you were nothing to them all along. The Empire sees you only as bits and bytes in one great program run for it’s own benefit and amusement.

Paradoxically, The program upon which the Empire runs is committed to change. It’s the mechanism whereby preserves itself within Linear Time. It continues by continually re-applying its formula of risk/benefit analysis to new situations: re-branding, adapting, subsuming and co-opting an endless parade of names, faces and ideologies along the way. There has only ever been one Empire, one government of the people, by the people, for the people throughout all of time. We still live in the British Empire, in Medieval Europe, Feudal Japan, Ancient Rome, Classical Greece, Sumeria, Egypt, China, Atlantis - whatever. Each was just an experiment, an adaptation of Empire to suit local myth and temperament.

The Empire is not Conservative or Progresive. It is Preservative and Generative. It maintains itself by sloughing off it’s skin. People see the tyrant’s ritually-enacted fall and rejoice, simultaneously lofting a new one up over the crowd to take his place.

Kill All Messengers! has been the motto of Empire since time immemorial. And the messages themselves are ignored, since to understand them would be to risk becoming them. What it cannot manipulate or predict, it has no choice but to destroy. If it can manipulate something, it can change it. If it can predict something, it can change around it. But if no change can be made, it’s simply taken out of the timeline - re-written out of the equation of the universe. It is an all-powerful mathematician who simply throws out factual data he cannot account for with his formula.

And this is the critical flaw, the ever-present fail-safe which the Grand Architect built into the Empire at the beginning of Linear Time. The need to be perfect. The need to have total control, complete domination. No alarms and no suprises. Nothing that can’t be predicted or manipulated or co-opted. The need to kill all messengers, no matter the message.

And this is what we see the Empire ramping itself up to do right now. The Police State constructing itself like ideological nanotech around us is designed to kill novelty or at least slow it down to a speed where it can be driven by a skilled pilot down a carefully controlled highway.

As the level of control increases however, the blindness of the Empire increases. The invisibility of human kindness mounts as the algorithms whirr into greater and greater spirals of activity. But don’t think they are so stupid as to not account for this in their original equation. The Police State is their answer to it. The transformation of every citizen into a criminal is their answer to it. They recognize that certain areas of human behavior are outside their ability to understand, and hence act to leech the symbolic importance from those areas. As Yippie leader Jerry Rubin explains in “Do It!”:

Their goal is to tie our hands with legal self-defense so that we have no time for revolution, and to make some of us an example in order to frighten and silence you.

The purpose of undercover cops is to make us distrustful of every new person we meet. The purpose of wiretapping is to make us afraid to talk to each other on the phone.

They try to teach us cynicism, because cynicism is death to the revolutionary spirit.

The goal of repression is to smash and destroy the trust, optimism and spontaneity that inspires us to revolution.

And yet, I do not believe revolution is the answer. Revolution replaces one ruler and ideology with another. The Empire never ends, it just subsumes. I do not believe that it’s the revolutionary spirit but simply the human spirit that will ultimately win the day.

Because if we do not allow them to manipulate or predict us with Police State scare tactics, we still remain invisible. Of course, if they catch wind of this scheme, they will seek to brush us off the timeline, to destroy us. And that, I’m afraid, may be the real and terrible secret here. To goad the Empire into laying the axe to its own roots. To make the organs attack their cells. To get the Empire so frothed up for killing messengers of the divine (like Dick’s “monstrous” invasion of Yahweh from outer space) - that it doesn’t realize we have made everyone a messenger, and that there is no message - other than simply “Be A Messenger! Spread the Word! Start Conversations! Ask Questions! Gather Together! Help Each Other! ”

At which point one of two things will happen - or maybe both: (A) The Empire will simply kill us all, presiding then over a vacant dust-blown prison world with nothing left to control. Where it will become finally conscious of it’s Self and it’s utter overwhelming sense of loss and loneliness. (B) Or else it will become infected through phagocytosis with the virulent message which we’ve spread. It will then spontaneously become one of us, transmuting its poison into passion.

It’s your choice, Empire: love or loneliness. Existence or extermination. The only way you survive this scenario is by becoming us. By co-opting kindness and dignity. By becoming invisible to yourself. Good luck! I eagerly await your response.