CIVILIZATION HAS BECOME ONE GREAT INSANE KARAOKE & The Rebels Have Become A Demographic
- markthemysticactiv
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
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I
Madness and cruelty had long been popular -
from slavery to the inquisition, but
around the year 1800
civilization walked into a uniquely modern horror movie
(not into the cinema where the movie was showing,
but into the movie itself).
It was a movie of mass child lobotomies,
internal organs tumbling onto factory floors,
unforgiving efficiency, mad mocking advertising,
holidays in the sun
and blood in the sand.
Civilization walked slowly. So slowly
through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
that the collective mind hardly noticed
the horror of alarm clocks (not birds at dawn),
had somehow become the norm.
II
Freeways, like the tentacles of a galaxy-consuming octopus
tied the Earth in knots.
But the people just tightened their belts.
Roadsigns were erected everywhere -
“New York, 25 miles ahead”, “no overtaking”, “speed limit 70mph”.
But the people just drove safely.
Cities that fed to obesity
on electricty and gasoline
rose up screaming nonsense, proudly.
But the people just sang along.
Civilization had become one great insane karaoke.
Hell was not cauldrons of boiling oil,
it was shopping malls with marble floors.
There were no tortured cries,
only an eternity of special offers.
But the people loved their dystopia -
the way zombies like to picnic in graveyards.
III
Enhanced special effects span faster and faster
as the movie moved into the twenty-first century.
Some people bought T-shirts online -
“I am not a digital clone of myself”, “I am not a deep fake of myself”, “I am me”
they declared, rebelliously.
For there were still people who knew
that outside the movie, in the natural world,
there are no trees pretending to be trees,
or bees pretending to be wasps,
or plastic ants.
But the media attacked such anachronistic sentiments:
“are there not parks in our cities?
Does not the wind blow down our avenues?
Are there not pigeons and sparrows in our city squares?
Are we not ourselves “natural”?
Do we not have sex?
Are not babies born?
And is not even the largest, most intoxicated, narcissistic city
held in the embrace of the sky?”
But what with work, and shopping,
and evenings of Netflix to recover for more
work and shopping -
the rebels struggled to articulate their discontent.
“You can walk barefoot on the sidewalk.
You can paint the sidewalk green.
But it will never be the same!”
they protested, weakly.
“It´s different to look at a tree through a closed window,
than to look at a tree through an open window,
than to go outside and look!” they mumbled -
but they themselves were exhausted,
and anyway, they were only listening to each other.
An ancestral knowing moved within them.
They heard its echoes in moments between waking and sleep.
They could feel the land was alive -
and that roads and sidewalks and the floors of buildings were not.
They knew it was different to walk on the breathing earth,
the speaking earth -
or on asphalt that never even whispers.
But (truth be known)
they liked their switches and taps,
and toilets that flushed,
and washing machines and banks accounts and cars.
(Truth be known) they had become a demographic:
anti-authoritarian, ethnic lifestyle consumers,
attendees at mind-body-spirit festivals,
excellently equipped for glamping and trekking holidays.
Yes (truth be known)
the rebels were secretly comfy
being uncomfortable in dystopia.
But who are we to judge?!
Everyone needs an identity.
Everyone needs a hobby.
IV
However...
Meanwhile...
The angels who walk alongside us all
looked tenderly upon the rebels in hell.
It pained them to feel the rebels´s worry and stress.
It pained them that (under their uncomfortable comfort)
the rebels felt defeated.
It pained them to feel the rebels felt trapped.
And in those moments between waking and sleep
the angels would lift a radiant boot
and give them a divine, angelic kick
up their weary rebel arses -
whispering:
“My love, my love.
You are wonderful!
You are life
within life within life!
I know you know...
out beyond the urban
everything is alive –
everything!
Everything talking to everything:
the stars, the sunshine, the grass,
the insects, the birds, the moon...
I know you hear the conversation beyond definition,
the language without words,
the exchange of erotic gestures, branches in the wind -
the celebration of surrender.
You know - viscerally.
You know - inexplicably.
And you also know
that in the urban movie
brutal asphalt holds the earth down like a wrestler -
vicious street lights blind you all to the infinite -
and the metal and cement
are not in communication.
Like a movie set at night,
when the actors have gone home -
the environment is as silent as a graveyard.
And the silence isn´t even ominous.
It is the ultimate horror:
it is absence -
a nothingness to which you have become accustomed.
And just as parents who never touch their children
touch their children, deeply -
it has touched you.”
Sometimes the rebels would swoon deliciously
inside the angels´ love.
Sometimes they would sit up sharply, eyes wide, sweating -
full of clarity and fear.
“The colour is fading from our skin” they would tremble,
“we have started to like to eat unnatural things.
We enjoy horror movies
and violent thrillers.
We are the shocked children of dystopia.
Born in the movie, we die in the movie!
Oh my God:
the movie is the graveyard
where we love to dine in glamorous restaurants!” * Mark Josephs,
"Mark the Mystic Activist",
Aragon, Spain,
Summer 2025
"I feel Conscious Tribes are driven by something beautiful, profound, powerful and important.
I try to convey this in my articles, stories and poetry."
THE CONSCIOUS TRIBES PROJECT
Reinventing The Extended Family
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