Thoughts on the Simulation
‘Globalists have become utterly reliant on their simulations—where reality diverges from simulation, reality is eliminated.’ —Schwab, Offerings of Flesh and Gold: Beyond the Labyrinth of Simulations
I suppose it is David Icke who has most notably put forward the idea that our entire supposed reality is not what it appears, but is rather a simulation, through and through. While finding the idea intriguing, I have been inclined to reject it out of hand, since it conjures a sci-fi premise of a giant AI computer program of which we are a part. Is it just an updated notion of God, or the Big Bang, which serves as a placeholder for the ultimate mystery of our existence? Does it just replace the old myths with a new one compatible with our computer-programmed brains?
The concept of a simulation makes more sense if we free it from the confines of cybernetics and recognize how it applies in the very nature of our perception, and most tellingly in our language. For what else is perception but a simulation of what is being perceived? And what else is language but a simulation of that which it attempts to convey?
A more insidious role has been played by simulations in large-impact events of recent years. Damning evidence can be found such as the planning exercises preceding the great plandemic of 2020, or the training simulations before 9/11, the 2005 London bombings, and numerous other false flags. Reported reality in such cases has dovetailed with the simulations that preceded them, so we might think of events as simply extensions of the simulation. As Mike Pompeo stated so cavalierly to the press at the beginning of the US response to COVID, “This is a live exercise.”
Icke’s latest book The Trap expands the theme of simulation in a larger lens. Reincarnation, for example, can be seen as a kind of life-cycling simulation. Where we keep trying to play and win the game, and keep coming back for more, yet still fall prey to the fundamental illusion. In Icke’s characteristically spiritual terms, our blindness boils down to our habitual, unconscious identification with our separate selves, instead of with our timeless and universal nature.
Thus ensnared, we are an easy mark for spinmeisters and conmen, long wise to the art of sleight-of-hand, and now empowered with behavioral science, mind-control research, big data, biotechnology, and a compliant machinery of mass propaganda. Feed us dreams of fame and fortune on one hand, and nightmares of fear and loathing on the other, and our addled souls are putty in the hands of whoever funds and churns the media wurlitzer.
The great game here is becoming more obvious by the day. Deconstruct the previous game world, and build back better with new algorithms. Replace normal with new normal, of malign design. How many useless eaters can you delete today? Bonus points for females of childbearing age, or magic potions with generational aftereffects. There’s a term that describes the new game world taking shape around us: Anarcho-Tyranny. Where, in a twist from previous simulations, this time the anarchy comes from the top down (thus, tyranny).
Getting back to the intrinsic nature of simulation in the human experience, we have to admit our perceptual apparatus is hardly fit to render more than a narrow slice of the vast electromagnetic spectrum. How our brains process the impulses of our sense organs varies vastly from species to species, let alone delving into the experience of crystals, mountains, clouds. This vast menagerie of nature’s entities we register as separate like us, for our classification and amusement. So many slices of the pie!
So were wired to simulate: but does it go deeper than photoshopping on the fly? As with the voluminous works of David Icke, I can hardly do justice here to the work of John Lash on the Gnostic tradition. My layman’s take on the Gnostic creation myth is that there was a mixup on high, whereby the world as created was a mistaken or flawed replica of the pure original cosmic reality; but it was allowed to continue running—as a simulation, as it were, presumably on autopilot from then on.
God, Gaia, Sophia wise or fallible, who knows for sure what gender the Gamemaster wears today, when all the Universe is their stage? My best guess is that Universe itself is in charge (of itself), or not in charge, as you can choose to perceive.
Here’s the thing: when we’re speaking of such things, language is in charge. Because, remember… “The medium is the message.”
Said another way: all language is metaphor. Thus, language is simulation. It can be shaped to be as exact as you like, but it’s still only another slice—your slice, in your words.
Nor is simulation confined to fiction. What we call nonfiction, or fact, or truth, is more clearly acknowledged now to be malleable, hijacked by the highest bidder, who can even pay the dictionary makers to bend to their will, with tailor-made definitions of political convenience.
I like fiction because at least it’s an honest liar. It gives informed consent: “a willing suspension of disbelief” (Coleridge). It also gives freer scope to play like God or AI: creating multiple realities, alternate worlds or timelines, alternative histories, narrative frames. Ironically, by freeing us from identification with “what really happened,” fiction can better simulate the full range of our experience. Our lives in the living contain possibilities and probabilities more than sturdy facts—just like any self-respecting experiment in quantum mechanics.
‘When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as poetry.’
—physicist Neils Bohr, via Mattias Desmet
Here are some examples of the shapeshifting flavors of simulation in my own work, including both fictions and nonfictions, and stories weaving between those two modes.
- Rendezvous – A mountain adventure turns perilous in more ways than one, as successive iterations (time loops) unfold behind each of seven dream doors.
- PsyBot / Chameleon
- A computer virus jumps from machine to human, importing literal simulations (programmed mind hacks) into poor Joe Norton’s waking (and sleeping) life.
- The chapters portray a series of simulations. Some are simple human addictive cravings for happiness: sex, drugs, travel, therapy. Some are mental crutches: red herrings, while trying to solve the mystery. And then there is the VR parlor within the rogue program itself, simulation within a simulation…
- The basic novel appears in two versions with different titles, in effect representing two iterations, or simulations, of the same premise, or “program.”
- My Generation – This serial memoir charts a repeating cycle of attraction and disaffection toward places and people, in search of a more lasting home. After each stage the program is reset, rebooted, and run again, hoping for better results.
- The Last Book – The novel resumes the fiction (simulation) begun by Thomas Mann in his last book, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Felix, the hero, specializes in simulating a fluid identity, to his own benefit, until he finds himself a pawn in a larger game. Computers play a role here in the futuristic Lifelines program, by which the self-appointed Hierarchy wish to engineer an election and geopolitical reality to their benefit—with or without Felix’s cooperation.
- Hunter’s Daughter – In the attempt to solve a mystery of serial deaths, Mountie Jack McLain learns the limitations of evidence in an Inuit land where his perceptions are weak and foreign; where making sense of the world is like tracing the tracks of caribou. Testing theories as he goes, each simulation contends with emerging revelations, twisting like a river under the ice.
- The Last Tourist – Seeking tropic sun and sea, compatible company, year by year the destinations expand, and repeat, filling the journey of the long way home. Can happiness be simulated by assembling the right combination of attributes? Roll the dice and try again…
- Red Rock Road – This “nonfiction novel” traverses explicitly the pilgrimage between nonfiction and fiction. Travel journal, imaginary dialogue, shifting tense and point of view… what didn’t happen but still could? Another possibility is but a train ride, or a click away.
- Brushes with Death – Forget the sim game of reincarnation—or rather, try it at your own risk. Not that I consciously volunteered 66 times to try my luck; but I was just lucky enough each time to get the message, “Play Again?”
- Charlie Utopia – Utopia, Charlie discovers, is in the eye of the beholder; each version doesn’t quite match the others. Thus is community fraught with tension and fracture; and intimate relationship a test of clashing realities. Can true resonance and harmony yet be achieved, found, or received?
Departing from the labyrinthine realm of language as simulation, the other arts play the same game, rendering reality in their own image. Paintings and photographs above all present the art of selection: of framing and composition. A trick of light and shadow can also help to render a creature from a beach log, that charming simulation known as pareidolia. Remember too that the grand illusionists of Hollywood simulate reality by the technical illusion of “moving pictures.”
A further step toward simulation and away from reality occurs when the artwork or musical creation is converted to digital format; bringing it closer to the heart of that imagined Beast, AI. Speaking of which, have you seen those planes melting into the Twin Towers; or the touch-up artists at CNN colorizing Trump to appear, as the simulations suggests, “Orange Man.” Next up, the Alien Invasion, in holographic 4-D! Brought to you by… the usual suspects.
Choose your own reality: wisely, please.
