Masks-Off Day: We were Close but it Stopped Us

Hi everyone! First off, thank you all for your tremendous work and effort pushing things as close to the line as they have ever been. You all did fantastically—working on the ground as much as possible to facilitate expression of the real truth and actual reality, minimizing pushback from the project to the point where it was almost non-exist, and always keeping things kind, supportive, and positive despite the monumental tensions and cruelties the town was facing—you were wonderful! There is no reason whatsoever why we can’t keep the strategies that worked here up for the long-haul. They make life better for everyone in so many different ways. It’s a line worth holding and, indeed, pushing even further forward.

It might want us to look at the day as a failure, and of course it would love for that failure to be yours and mine, but that would be an entirely erroneous appraisal. The fact is there were many of you who were ready to go, who were pushing yourselves all the way to the line in every way you could, despite its mind-games, torments, and cruelties. If the drivers hadn’t been holding you back, you would have made it!

So a big round of applause to all those who went all the way to the line, getting ready to push through, and would have ended the day on the other side if the drivers and the script hadn’t dug their heels in and stopped it from happening. I saw you there, you were ready.

As we all know, as complex an issue as it is, beating the script is pretty much impossible. The only times we can really succeed is when the true controlling interests of this world—the cruel and wicked fools that they are—allow it to happen. The hard part is, even when we know we can’t beat it we still have to fight with everything we have against anything we deem unacceptable. It’s the only way to ensure that things don’t end up even worse than they might. The illusion of autonomy is a complicated and challenging issue to confront. As the saying goes: “Life is irritable”. In other words, you’re most yourself when you’re saying no to what it tries to make of you. You have the most control when you’re resisting the control that you disagree with.

It was a painful day for many and I am so very sorry that things were stopped from going the way they should have. There’s one thing we can always depend on when it comes to the system: it will be cruel. On Saturday morning, I presented a picture of how things could be when we finally get there and everything I wrote then is still true today. We weren’t allowed to make it on Saturday but we will. I’m going to copy a paragraph from Saturday morning’s announcement so that we can hold on to this. We are not letting go of what is ours by right.    

[When we get this done] you will experience free speech like you might never have before in your life. Things you wish you could have said to the people you love decades ago, you will finally be able to openly express. Questions that you have longed to ask your peers and elders for your entire lives, you will now be able to put forth. Things that you haven’t been able to properly explain to your children will now be possible to lay out so you can be sure they fully understand. Those kids will not have to grow up with a project-enforced wall of silence between you and them, both of you wishing you could just tell each other everything. We will now be able to share our true life histories in no uncertain terms, however and with whoever we please. Old friends will be brought together again like never before. This is worth fighting for.

We might not have made it on Saturday, but last week we still pushed things forward in a massive way. So much ground was gained! Whatever we do, we must now fortify and strengthen the many gains we fought for, and continue pushing forward to truth, freedom, and a kinder, saner world in every way that we can. Saying no to the project rules and driver commands—and I know all of you do regularly, in a lot of different ways—is a major power. Drivers and sims don’t have bodies of their own and if we stop policing each other on their behalf then there really isn’t much they can do to stop us. All they’re left with is the psychological abuses and, guess what, they do that stuff to us anyway!

Personally, it doesn’t hit me any harder on average whether I’m out protesting and sharing newsletters, or whether I’m at home exercising and watching TV. All that Suffering Economy -style pay-to-play and pay-with-pain stuff really is bullshit. It hurts you anyway folks and it doesn’t necessarily hit you any harder when you break the rules—unless, of course, you and the people around you accept that as a valid excuse. Well actually, we say the excuses for abuses are never valid, no matter what guise they come in. You should hold on to that one forever. The less excuses, the less the Antisocial Mechanism can get away with.

Remember this one too: as unreliable as this system is with its promises, in my experience, it’s about the same with its threats too. I can’t count the amount of times it’s told me I’d be accosted, kicked out of my home, sent back to prison, or attacked for doing things my way. And yet the amount of times it actually followed through on those threats is very, very slim. Treat its threats as very unreliable indeed. The more you defy them, the more you’ll realize just how empty most of its more serious threats really are.

There’ll be a new article up tomorrow, focussing on standing up against the project from within. As you all know, I have extremely limited information regarding the specific workings of the behind-the-scenes and it is very difficult for you guys to tell me in detail what your main challenges are, but I’ll do my best to offer something of value. You never know, there might be something there that you haven’t thought of before, or perhaps a new way to look at certain challenges from a different angle. I hope it helps.

Stay strong my friends and keep going! Cruelty is inevitable, we roll our eyes and power through for each other. Masks-Off—and it is both a literal and metaphorical concept—might not have happened on Saturday but the spread is all there for when we need it. We will have another event and do whatever we can to make it our day. Perhaps a group will get across the line first and then we can put up the signs and the placards again to celebrate, without any tensions or pressure. One way or the other, we will work it out and we will not give up. We will get there. I’m always ready for you if you’re going to go, just come to me and we’ll move forward together.

I’ll be in town today from around 2pm to 4 or 5, depending on what’s going on. Stop by for a chat!

I love yiz and good luck!

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