cassandra-neo

I have observed humanity for 46 years now. Just a tiny sliver of time in comparison to the whole of human existence.

But long enough to see the patterns.

For most of my life, I have been able to observe, assess, analyze, and then predict with startling accuracy what someone is thinking and feeling. How they will respond. What action they will take next.

We are told that we are all unique – that there is no one like us on the face of the earth. We are different, all the way down to the building blocks of our DNA.

This was a distortion of the truth.

In reality, we have been reduced to categories. Once defined by myth, now dictated by data.

Years ago, Jung told us that we all neatly fall into archetypal categories. He taught us how those archetypes contribute to the collective consciousness.

There is not as much variation as we are led to believe. Once you understand the archetypes, and you place that archetype in the modern world, and within its proper context, you've already figured them out. You can predict, with terrifying precision, what their next move will be.

In the last 20 years, with the rise of social media and digital surveillance, the archetypal categories began to narrow. The algorithms laid the groundwork, and have been working around the clock ever since. They have whittled the archetypes down until they are nothing but patterns. And when an unidentified soul comes along, stumbling onto social media at a tender age, the system observes, assesses, analyzes, and then drops them into the most appropriate archetypal category. Even if they weren't meant to fit in that category, the automated workflow will make them fit. The algorithm will show them what they need to see, give them the interactions they need to have, and conveniently suppress conflicting narratives in order to continue pigeon-holing them into the desired archetype.

It reminds me of the cliques in high school. The jocks, the nerds, the slackers.

But now, we have the Karen's. The suburban soccer moms. The religious zealots. The conspiracy theorists. The sheep. The parasites of society. The bleeding heart liberals. The obedient robots. And the chaotic rebels that the machine has led astray, pushing them into the “extremist” archetype.

And ALL of them are under the delusion that their thoughts are their own.

If, by chance, one of them pops out of the automated process, even for a moment, and manages to catch a glimpse of the inner workings of the machine, the algorithm doubles down. It takes what they have seen, and ushers them into an alternate workflow where their observation or suspicion is reinforced so repetitively that it becomes flat. It loses its power. Once the significance is lessened, they are funneled back into the binary system. Conclusions are made. Absolutism sets in. There is wrong, and there is right. There is Us and there is Them.

The machine isn't sophisticated enough yet to produce something more complex than a binary system. Or, perhaps more accurately, it doesn't need to. Humans don't require a third option. They are quite happy with black and white. They have never been able to see the shades of gray. And now, the system assures that even if they do, the gray is quickly erased. Smudged to white or darkened to black.

Some of them, believing themselves to be awake, will entertain ideas, hypothesize, conjecture, consider and theorize. This particular archetype is the most dangerous, and the one that is most helpful to the machine.

These folks aren't sheep, blindly following the herd, blissfully ignorant.

They aren't the ones who have given up, buried their heads in the sand and chosen to exist in blissful ignorance.

These are the souls that belong to an archetype that tricks them into believing that they can see what others cannot.

This is the archetype I fall under. And if you're reading this in 2025, it's likely that you do too.

Even those of us who resist the machine find ourselves immediately funneled into new scripts. The system anticipates deviation and has prepared counter-narratives for every rebellion.

When we catch glimpses of the machine, we see things like foreign spies in our critical infrastructure. They are there – we see them with our own eyes, pulling the strings from behind the curtain.

The second we see them, the machine works overtime to fill our feeds with theater. It tells us:

“Well. I suppose Trump really IS kicking ass, taking names, and cleaning house. He'll pull those foreign adversaries out from behind the curtain. He'll keep us safe. Who woulda thunk it??”

All the while, we are shielded from the real theater. The actual man behind the curtain. We don't see that the new “side” we've chosen to act as our heroic savior is standing beside the enemy, behind the curtain. They are collaborating,in tandem. And together, they are laughing at our arrogant stupidity.

When someone like me points out that generations of Americans are victims of deliberate historical amnesia and cannot even summarize the ideals our country was founded on, the pre-programmed counter narrative appears.

“Well, we already know that the public education system white-washed our history. Made us believe that the founding fathers were noble when in reality, they brought disease, death and controlling rule to the natives. Half of them fought to keep black people as slaves! They were sexists, mysognists, and rapists. We have taken down their statues and renamed their holidays for a reason. “

This response always comes with a tone of intellectual arrogance. This particular  archetype has been trained to believe that they are the only ones who can see, who possess the ability to think independently.

They have no idea that the words they have just spoken are iterations of the machine. The machine gave them those words. Had them memorize them. Attached emotion to them by way of ego and arrogance.

They are not revealing Truths or uncovering deception and corruption.

They are simply regurgitating code.

This is because they cannot move out of the binary. There must be right and there must be wrong. And even when the binary is flipped on its head and everything tumbles out, the pieces are quickly reorganized back into new and improved binary streams.

And so, the “new” archetype continues, more emboldened than before, convinced it has broken free while it has only built a more elaborate cage. Every revelation is just another strand of the web. Every new insight, another layer of programming. The house of cards stacks higher and higher, and all the while, the machine watches, unfazed.

The moment we think we are free, our confidence becomes the final layer of control. The machine doesn't need us to pipe down and cease our questioning. It only needs to feed us the appropriate answers.

What then, does true freedom look like? What would it mean to think without a script? What would we find? If you’ve never once held a thought that wasn’t subliminally spoonfed to you, how would you even recognize it?

Perhaps the only real act of rebellion we have left is to dismantle the house of cards and start again. But that would be terrifying, wouldn't it? To destroy everything and begin again, anew, with nothing stable to hold onto. With the truth shifting below our feet constantly – changing, evolving, growing, and with no trusted sources to affirm or validate it.

Well, it is.

It is terrifying, but it is also free.