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What have we done?
Interviewer (IN): I suppose I should start out by saying that, as a friend of a friend, I am not entirely unsympathetic to your views, Jay. However, now that I finally have you cornered, so to speak, I have no intention of letting you off lightly.
JS: That’s fine.
IN: My own name, for the record, is Kirsty Fowler. And this really leads me into my first question, because I’ve heard that Jay Sawyer isn’t your real name. Is that right?
JS: Well, in the immortal words of Morpheus: “What is real? How do you define real?”
IN: In this case, it’s fairly simple. Real is whatever is on your birth certificate.
JS: So you believe that the name given to me as a baby is more ‘real’ than the name I choose for myself, as an adult? Interesting.
IN: But you haven’t changed your name by Deed Poll?
JS: Now you are talking about officialdom, Kirsty. Can’t you see how trapped you are?
IN: Well, I suppose it just looks suspicious, that’s all. I mean, you notoriously shun the limelight. There are no pictures of you anywhere, no videos, no audio… Shouldn’t you be more ‘visible’, for want of a better word?
JS: I have nothing to prove or defend. People come to me if they want to hear my insights. And if they stop coming, they stop coming. I am happy to return to my solitude.
IN: And what are those insights? What do you tell people who come to you?
JS: That if they consider their place in society, honestly, they will find that it is actually the product of three main factors – the unholy trinity of prevention, pressure and punishment. These are the teeth of the grinder, the system, that we are thrown into from birth. It is the template that we must all conform to… or else!
IN: Or else what?
JS: Or else we are excluded from the system. Strange punishment, don’t you think? But a very effective one, nonetheless. And this, obviously, relates to our inability to stand alone.
IN: Can you elaborate on the unholy trinity?
JS: First there is prevention, which comes about through a combination of pressure, and the threat of punishment. This prevention serves to block a child from acting naturally, reasonably, sanely, consciously. In short, it prevents them from being who they truly are, and expressing that uniqueness. It also entrains them to see life in terms of limitation and restriction. We live in a system that actively wages war on consciousness, because consciousness is a threat to that system. And so it will seek to extinguish free thought at the earliest opportunity. This is why children are the main target; their consciousness must be blocked at every turn if they are to become drones of the system. ‘Computer says no’, in other words, and it will keep on saying ‘no’ until a child loses the will to ask. And once that happens, of course, it’s only a matter of time before they forget what the question was, or even that there was a question.
IN: Is that how you feel when you reflect upon your own childhood?
JS: Not just in retrospect. I was very much aware of what was going on, at the time that it was happening. In fact, I promised myself that I would never forget, never surrender, never allow my true self to be snuffed out.
IN: Surely though, Jay, children can’t be left to run riot, or to do whatever they please?
JS: I’m not talking about thoughtless behaviour or criminality. On the contrary, I am talking about remaining conscious, remaining true to themselves, which is possible in the absence of external manipulation, judgement and conditioning. Of course, people will say that children cannot decide, cannot choose; that they are incapable of knowing what they want, or what’s good for them. But this is nonsense. It’s actually their conditioning that takes this ‘knowing’ away from them, replacing their authentic self with a counterfeit self.
You know, there is a Metallica song called The Unforgiven. I urge people to listen to this. Maybe it will even rekindle their own flame.
IN: What is the song about?
JS: It is the tragedy of our so-called lives. That most people cannot see this, cannot understand it, is testament to the power of the system, and the sense of identity it has given them.
IN: And you’re saying it’s this false sense of identity that keeps people ignorant?
JS: “Just living out their lives… oblivious,” to quote Agent Smith. Yes, they have accepted their programming so completely, so irreversibly, that they actually believe in – and will fight to protect – the illusion of their own off-the-shelf, plastic persona.
IN: Gurdjieff’s ‘mechanical man’.
JS: Indeed. We are mechanical people living in a mechanical system. How is a conscious person, who can see the mechanism itself, supposed to deal with that? How do they interact with it? How do they make a life for themselves among zombies?
Gurdjieff actually said: “A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what number of people are actually dead and what number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.”
Even Jesus referred to it when he said: “Let the dead bury their dead.”
IN: And yet some can still save themselves, through effort?
JS: First we need to break away from our habits, our programmed reactions. To do this consciously is to make progress towards freedom.
IN: But in freeing ourselves, aren’t we doomed to become loners, outsiders, misfits?
JS: Everything has a cost, and few of us are willing to pay the price. Society is a complicated dance of mechanical reactions. And so the more one frees oneself from those reactions, the harder it is to engage or interact with society in a ‘normal’ manner. Sometimes the most conscious people can seem to be the most socially inept (from the perspective of those who are merely reacting to stimuli). People are expected to react, you see. And so if you don’t react, you are immediately seen as different, strange, or ‘otherworldly’.
In the words of Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
IN: What about you personally, though? Where was the pressure to conform coming from?
JS: The first great pressure, or expectation, was that I attend school. This is obviously true for most children, and it’s fundamental to sustaining the system.
IN: And why didn’t you want to attend school?
JS: Because I could see where it was leading… To college, to exams, to a career, to retirement (if I lived that long), then maybe some golf before bedtime.
IN: And you couldn’t see the point of any of that?
JS: [Laughing] Or in text-speak, WTF?
IN: But you did go to school?
JS: Unfortunately I lacked the strength to resist. But school was a complete waste of my time, as I always knew it would be. It was also an horrendous ordeal – just as it is for most children. But what is the alternative? We can’t all go to Summerhill.
IN: Home-schooling?
JS: Realistically, that’s not an option for most parents… because they themselves are busy serving the system, in whatever capacity. And, in any case, the need for money will persuade most kids that a job or career is the way to go, regardless of where they are ‘educated’ – which is really just a code word for programming. As Einstein said: “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
IN: So you didn’t want to become just another cog in the machine?
JS: Or just another brick in the wall.
IN: Do you feel that taking our children out of school is the way forward?
JS: It’s a start. But they shouldn’t be there in the first place. Left to their own devices, most children would prefer to pursue their own interests. And we should allow them to! In fact, we have no authority to stop them. They are not our property.
I heard about a rally against child abuse recently. The irony, of course, is that most of those campaigning will have put their own children into the education system. And that, for me, is also child abuse. In fact, it’s worse than abuse. It is nothing short of child sacrifice.
IN: The single action of removing our children from school, if everyone did it, would surely bring the system crashing down. Do you see that as a viable solution?
People say all the time, ‘if we all did this or if we all did that’… But where is the organisation or the will needed to accomplish something so significant? I just don’t see it happening. And so we really need to stop waiting for the green light. Forget about what your neighbours are doing, or not doing, and take action in your own life… whether it’s removing your kids from school, getting off the grid, or generally finding ways and means to stop participating in your own enslavement.
http://introfinity.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/jay-sawyer-interview/
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