Modern "thought-kennelling": an anological story to describe it

[hummingwird]

The Tale of an Insane Man in a Red House

Chapter 2:  The Warring Powers of the Evil Portal:  

You didn’t miss any pages here (and neither did I).  Our story, or at least the way that I will tell this story, for all its intents and purposes, starts most appropriately in chapter 2.  We won’t even do chapter 1.  But let me give you a brief introduction by first describing chapter 1, which exists in the story, but isn’t written in the story.  Like our beloved movie-friend Neo, by reading this story, you will be choosing to take the “red” pill, and you will begin to see for yourself what “the Matrix” is.  Yes, this is the story of a battle between a virtual world and the real world.  And by “the real world” I mean the real real world. 

The story that you are about to read is based upon the concept that if a person were to stare at a red wall long enough, a slightly less red wall will appear to be white to him, and a slightly darker red wall will appear black, to him.  Like Neo was given riddles to solve, let me give you a riddle.  Perhaps you have heard this one before.  Let me add a little twist to it.  What is black, white, and will soon be red?  Answer?  The story below.  The page is black, the font is white, and the story will soon be “read”.  But this riddle is only true if you keep reading.    So let’s get into the story.      

We begin with a man who sadly got locked inside of a red house.  Random, I know.  Read on.  Now this house was completely red.  Not the outside, just the inside.  Everything in it was red and there was nothing in it that wasn’t the color red.  Though the house wasn’t large, there tended to be a sense of delirium that came over the man due to over-exposure to red rays.   The more the man became confused within the house, the more it began to feel like a large house full of hallways and rooms and twisting changing passageways that he’s never seen before (although he goes there several times a day).  Somewhere in his subconscious thoughts he began to realize that the only way he could go insane was if he remembered how vast, colorful, and beautiful was the world he now only had distant memories of… the world outside… if they weren’t just figments of his overly active imagination.  So he got rid of all of his clothing that wasn’t red, and he began to forget.  Such preposterous notions of a world so dangerous were simply unacceptable.  After all, this isn’t such a bad place to live.  People in red suits bring food (soaked in red food-colouring) into his home through a portal in the living room.  The more he forgot about the world he once knew, the less chance there was of feeling the pain of remembering.  And so this is how our poor man had begun to grow insane.  But he never knew he was insane.  Because as he could see on the portal-outlet in his red living room, the whole world was red and everyone in it was red.  And they all loved red and wanted more red.  “How insane would it be to consider that there could be anything different,” he thought to himself.  After all, even his skin is now turning red.  As it was becoming clear to him, though they would never say it in direct words, the world considered anyone to be insane who might dare put a shirt on that had a non-red thread in it.  In fact, as the years went on and on, words were completely lost from his memory.  There was no longer such thing as “non-red”.  There was no longer such thing as “red”.  Have you ever tried to explain a color to someone who was born color blind and has never seen a color?  That is what this poor man became like – he lost all concept of other colors.  Yet, he became happier as this happened.  Or perhaps the right word isn’t “happier”, but “more comfortable”.  In his comfort he felt no pain.  Neither was he happy anymore, but that didn’t matter anymore.  The man was becoming insane… with the rest of the world. 

Meanwhile, outside of this house was the long forgotten outdoor neighborhood.  The house wasn’t necessarily red on the outside the same way that it was on the inside.  Red existed in the outside world, but as a normal part of a full range spectrum of color which was the norm out there.  Grass and trees gave off a stunning green splash, puddles of clear rain water from the night before reflected light blue sky with whisps of white.  Even the weather would change out here (Not to mention that day and night were distinguishable, and that the people out here could see enough to know whether it was day or night.  For those in the locked houses, everything is night of course.  But they can’t tell, for they can’t see the thick dark cloud enveloping their houses that the outside-people can see.)  The gravel road contained fixtures of all colors of stone.  Houses were painted many manners of colors.  Roofs even varied in shade, even giving off a subtle lustre of sparkle.  If there were people out here their skin would be anywhere from deep brown to pale white, and all tints and hues in between.  Their clothing would be the stuff of dreams.  However, sadly, people have slowly been disappearing from the outside world, as they have each been locked inside of their red-interiored houses.  Much could be said about this outside world which we don’t have time for; what happens to people here who are discovered by the inner portals (the portals inside the houses).  How some of the people have gotten smart and have found each other and have learned how to escape the evil portals.  How some of them are even designing magnificent ways to paint new colors, and even ways of making permanent colors that cannot be covered or coated by the red paint that the portal outlets spew.

You see, it was the portal that drew the man into the red house in the first place.  The portal in this story is more than a thing that is in the red house.  That thing was only an outlet of the Portal.  There is one Portal, with many outlets.  So here I will begin to use a capital P on the word “Portal”.  One of the Portal’s most powerful kind of outlets is the kind that this poor insane man was taken in by.  It is the common outlet that has proven to be a powerful tool for the Portal for turning once-colorful houses into red prisons that lock people inside of them.  The outlet is a tool for the Portal.  The outlet itself is neutral; it could be used by anything.  But for the most part the Portal has by far been the most intent, skillful, and successful user of the outlet.  The Portal has been strategically acquiring more and more outlets to successfully carry out its agenda.  Besides the outlets in the red living rooms of the houses it also has many many different kinds of outlets.  The Portal itself is a whole way of thinking, it is a power, it is an agenda, it is a way of viewing things.  The problem is, it’s evil, and it has sinister plots.  But it doesn’t want anyone to know that.

Now, the people who are drawn in and locked inside of the red houses through the deceptive powers of the evil Portal are left with an empty longing lurking deep inside of them that wants to be connected with the world.  Now that the outer-world has been shut off from them their favorite way to feel connected is through the Portal, through the outlets.  Indeed, that is the only way to recover any sense of connection… unless the person tries to escape the house, which they could do if they really wanted.  However, the Portal does everything it can to keep people from seeking to get out of their red houses.  The Portal even tells the people that they are doing the right thing by trying to stay connected to the world through the Portal.  It tells them that that is the only way to truly stay connected.  The more that the people believe this, the redder that their houses become.  Even their skin begins to turn red after becoming “connected” long enough.  Once their skin gets red enough the Portal can suck some of them right into itself, and then they actually become part of the power of the Portal. 

Let’s return to the story of the insane man in his house of red.  One day, long before his skin began to turn red, haunting memories of another color began to disturb him.  He could not seem to shake it off.  He felt deeply disturbed about it, like it was wrong to look for something like that, much less believe in it.  Yet at the same time, in another part of him, it felt right to not only believe in it but also look for it.  As the thoughts and feelings grew bigger inside of him an image flashed across the screen of his mind – something he hadn’t seen in a long time, something he even forgot that houses should have; he saw a window!  He began to get desperate and he immediately got up and began trying to find his way around the confusing red walls to find the outer walls.  All at once the outlet started going crazy!  It kept flashing red flashes and throwing something like red paint into the house.  People appearing inside the outlet kept chanting “Red! Red! Red! Red!”.  It kept growing louder and louder.  The man was becoming dizzy as he panicked and smashed from one wall to another wall desperately looking for the window.  Something deep inside of him kept whispering in a perfectly calm tone, “keep seeking, just keep seeking…”  He even swore that he heard his name called… and in that moment he began to realize he almost forgot that he even had a name.  Out of nowhere all kinds of people somehow appeared in his house.  They were coming around the corners, coming up and down from the staircases, and they were all walking right across his path and in front of him as if to block his progress.  He began to feel as if he was completely going against a current in the house heading the opposite direction.  He looked behind him to see where they were going, and to his surprise the Portal outlet was there behind him some ways away, and it had grown much bigger than he remembered, as if it was opening its mouth wide.  All the people were walking straight into it as the chants grew louder and louder until he began to feel nauseous.  But he found that as he looked at the Portal he began to forget what he was doing or why he was doing it.  But then the window flashed through his mind again.  So he quickly turned around and kept moving through the hallways to find the last wall where he was sure he would find a window.  The stream of people began to howl, and he began to see many faces on them.  Some were family members he knew, some were old friends, some were kids from his school when he was a child, some he liked, some he didn’t.  Some were teachers, some were people from his church, some were icons that he looked up to at different times in his life, and some were complete strangers.  Then some of them even began to look at him and talk to him.  They laughed and said “what are you looking for?  There’s nothing out there!”, or “Don’t go that way!  Go this way silly man!  Everyone is going to think you’re a nut!”, or “Your friend needs you right now!”, or “It’s time to do laundry!”  Sometimes he even heard strange sentences that didn’t make any sense to him.

Now, pause for a second.  The point of this story is not to disappoint you.  Many many people in this position make it back out to the real world (the Portal has its own definition of “the real world” which many follow).  But for the sake of this story, this man didn’t.  You see, he turned around one more time to look at his best friend heading toward the Portal.  His friend looked so hollow.  So hauntingly empty, entering the Portal like a zombie with no free will left.  He was completely deceived.  He watched his friend enter into the Portal.  First the figure of his dear friend disappeared into the red flame-like substance of the Portal, but a second later his face appeared in the Portal, with black undertones of burning ash acting as the contours and form of his face.  “This is the real world, friend”, said his best friend, “you will be safe, you will find life.  Here, look what I have!”  Just then beautiful images began to fill the Portal (as beautiful as you can get when everything is in red).  Images of things that looked so close to what he was beginning to remember – the things that haunted his shallower parts and made him desperate to discover and satisfy his deeper parts.  He could see them now, in the Portal.  He didn’t need a window.  This was his window.  Maybe even if he entered it he would be entering the real world.  And he would find his friend there, not to mention most of everyone else in his life.  I mean everything looked exactly as his distant memory haunted him with.  Well, it was virtually the same, except that it was all red.  All he knew is that he no longer felt desperate.  He felt a kind of peace come, a numb kind of peace.  This would be enough.  Why bother with things that cause so much tension around him?  So he stepped in to the Portal.

He immediately found himself sitting in his red living room gazing into the Portal outlet.  This is the first time he noticed that his skin was not contrasting so much with the rest of his environment.  That felt good to him.  Safe.  He couldn’t remember what just happened.  He kind of sensed that something just happened, but… he didn’t really care now.  He feels connected as he stares into this portal through the outlet in his red living room.  How dare anyone ever try to pull him away from this – why, they would be insane!  What right do they have to keep him from being connected to the real world?!  In fact, he decided right then and there that he would also work along with everyone else for the agendas of the Portal.  He would work to keep others in their red houses. 

Our poor insane man began to gaze more and more into the Portal.  The portal was filled with nothing but pure redness of the reddest reds, swimming and splashing around in nothing but more red redness. 

 

Chapter 3:  A Million Shades of Red:  The Deceptive Prison

This is where things really got bad for the insane man.  Unless you ask him.  He thinks that this is when things started getting good.  Actually he doesn’t even remember anything else now.  But what happened is that he began to see red for so long, and so frequently did he feast his eyes upon the reddest of reds in the Portal outlet, that when he left his outlet to take care of other less important matters, such as eating or sleeping (exercise isn’t encouraged by the Portal), all of the slightly varying shades of red in his house would now by contrast appear to be a much more vivid and wider spectrum of color.  A slightly thinner red was white.  An even more slightly thinner red was pink.  A slightly darker red was black.  An even more slightly darker red was brown or purple.  Slightly duller reds were blue to green.  Slightly brighter or richer reds were orange or yellow.  This effect in its initial stages would eventually start to wear off.  But over time the effects became permanent. 

Some of the shades even came to be identified as “alternative” in order to give the people the impression that those who wore those colors were extreme, creative, daring, “pushing the envelope”, rebellious, or even “outside of the box”.  Certain shades – only certain shades – were carefully selected to be called “controversial”.  The term “controversial” served to replace any sense of absolutes with an intentionally-confusing relativism.  This “floorless”, foundationless concept of relativism was backed by another concept called “political correctness” to reinforce its strength.   Now any new movements that might arise against any new levels of indoctrination could be quickly deferred into a negative light, and labelled with negative-connotative terms such as “old fashioned”, or “staunch fundamentalist” or “phobic”.  Not only this, but with the right combination of shades labelled as “controversial”, the general popular opinion and collective-thought could be nudged in a certain direction to reinforce the red agenda.

This poor insane man began to receive some of the seedlings of an illusion that the more connected with the real world that he was (and by “the real world” I mean the fake real world), the more creative and diverse the world seemed to him.  It was in a completely different nature than in those days outside of the house - days which he doesn’t even remember any more.  Creativity, diversity, and variety were more about celebration, joy, sharing, love, community, blessing, and enjoyment with thankfulness.  And the creativity was free to grow and go in all directions.  Now it’s more about the pride of man and the accomplishments of independent man.  For as he had kept gazing into the Portal all his years it had been continuously feeding into his mind certain concepts, ideas, paradigms, and ways of thinking and feeling and seeing everything.  There was a host of key-words used by the Portal that somehow were power-points for the new ways of thinking.  These words were the best words specifically ascribed to encapsulate the movements, paradigms, and agendas of the Portal.  These words served to further convince the insane man (whom everybody now liked and thought was the most sanest of men) that he was living in a world of increasing creativity.  Words like “progress”.  “Advanced”.  “Mankind”.  “Technology”.  “Evolve”.  The Portal successfully created a paradigm where all the people locked in red houses listened with an eerily twisted form of a childlike trust to “professionals” and “experts”, thereby ascribing much power and faith over to names, institutes, and organizations of men that they knew nothing about.  This “childlike trust” in man-made institutes and man-made solutions went unchecked and unquestioned among the red-house masses.  And so these sinister organizations (sinister by virtue of nothing more than the fact that they are mere sinful men prone to do evil) which were far-developed in the ways of the Portal grew big and powerful (but only over those who gave their power to them).  They began to provide the unquestioning masses with further evidence of “progress” and of the illusion of a growing creativity among “humanity”, using words like “ingenuity” and “innovation” and pointing out all of the “inventions” that “mankind” still continues to invent ever since the “enlightenment”.  The unquestioning red-house prisoners however (who had by this time long forgotten that they were even inside of anything, much less locked in and deceived) failed to realize that in the forgotten outer-world creativity was essentially owned by anybody and could be claimed and produced by anybody and everybody, and was as free as anyone’s flourishing excitement wanted to take it.  More profoundly, creativity in the outer-world could be taken as far down (or up) any direction that anyone wanted to take it, and it was not hindered or subtly resisted in any kind of crafty way.  But in the Portal’s paradigm, where sinister organizations grew into formidable forces in the control of things, and where the rest of the red-house masses believed and ate up every paradigm-producing word that these powerful agencies fed them, creativity was only available to those who had the power in their hands.  Not only this, but, as the red-house masses were failing to realize, all of the “creativity” and “innovation” of “mankind” was all being made and built in one direction – and it wasn’t about flourishing and life and joy and love and celebration and heart and people and relationship (like in the outer-world).  It was about control.  It was about fear.  It was about maintaining power and riches.  It was only about the agendas of the Portal.  The Portal began to place into effect very crafty, sly and “under-the-public-radar” ways of resisting free-thought among the red-house masses.  If a creative work was made that supported their agenda, it would be magnified in the Portal and through the outlets into the red-house masses in order to thicken the illusionary world.  If a creative work was so not in tandem with the Portal’s agendas and it could be a threat to those agendas then somehow these inventions (and their public knowledge) was either thwarted, or the Portal aimed it’s forces at sucking the inventor and the invention into the Portal to either destroy the invention or work it into its own agenda somehow. 

The more that the people in the red-houses believed that creativity was expanding among them, the more that they became blind to the narrowness of the streamlined direction of development and advancement.  The more that they forgot about other possibilities (and truly no longer believed that these would-be ideas were even on the radar for possibilities), the less room they had to be creative.  The smaller their field of options became.  This caused them to adjust what they called “creative” (and all the other related words) to a much narrower field of options.  To make up for the smaller field of options and creativity, they kept listening and looking at the inventions that the organizations in power were showing them as evidence of mankind’s increase in creativity.  While doing this, they failed to realize that those inventions (made by those in power) were strictly kept in the vein of a certain paradigm that fit the agendas of the Portal.

The house of red was a much smaller playing field than the outer-world.  But as the man became overly accustomed to red, and as he forgot about any other possibilities, central perfect red essentially became default to him.  And all other shades of red became to him as good as other colors.  Being in a much smaller playing field now, and having forgotten about any other colors, varying degrees of shades of red became to him a world of variety and creativity.  He could be convinced of creativity inside of this small red house.  Is this where we are right now in “the west”?  Coupled with the paradigm created by those in power who kept showing more and more inventions of “mankind”, the illusion of creativity grew even stronger.  The man now had confidence in where mankind was, and in where he believed mankind was going.  Mankind was evolving.  Now that the man adopted this belief-system, the agenda of controlling mankind through the use of technology could become a twistedly attractive idea to him, as it seemed to support the ideology that mankind is reaching a new stage of evolution where he can now take control of himself and the earth.  Little did he know that the Portal also had plans to make the red-houses a place of terror so that those in power can show their irresistibly attractive inventions to the desperate red-house masses of people – inventions and solutions that will end terror in the earth and bring peace and safety to all those who surrender complete control to those with the power who are handing out the new inventions for protection.  Meanwhile the people in the outer-world who successfully made it to the end without falling into the deception of the Portal will see the total uprooting and defeat of this whole plot and agenda and system.  Then they will be given the earth for their true childlike trust in the Source of all true heart and creativity.   

[Sinclair]

Great analogy. I was locked in a red room for a long time myself, completely feeling I had a better grasp on the whole colour scheme than the average guy. My variety of shades might have even been more limited than the rest of the blind people out there.

Now I've a new colour that described how I feel about the deception as a whole. White hot fury. I despise the system of deception in a deeply personal way. Hard to even be the one to try to wake others up because my anger towards the blindness is just that great.

I'm glad there are some out there with more objectivity and patience than I have. Thanks for sharing that.