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Reality and Escapism
Discussing Herd Immunity to Reality in the Science-Fiction Setting with Electric Dan
© 2021 James LaFond
MAR/21/21
Antivaxxer Found Dead
She was apparently aware of the threat to her life and tried to make contingencies but that didn’t stop them. I think they know nothing will happen to them when they take people out and any inquiries will be dismissed as conspiracy. 
-Electric Dan
The device I am using does not permit me to access this link or view a video.
In the context of writing science-fiction, it is extremely unusual—since science-fiction focuses on reality and not our operational delusion—for a character who points at the delusion and insists on uncovering the underlying reality that the master class has masked in delusion, to survive. For a person doing a simple writing exercise in which we attempt to suspend disbelief within the mind of a reader who knows going into the story that it is pretend, we ironically must depend on the reality sensory of the reader. If we were to take the story in the direction where some non-combatant, with no army, no secret police affiliation or super-spy virtuosity and no hereditary or elected position called out against the delusion promoted by the oligarchy and survived, even triumphed, the reader would close the book with a scoff. You see, while consuming fiction, the reader is as often as not—I do not know the proportions—able to discern reality and unreality.
However, while consuming nonfiction, one is operating under the delusion that it is honest: that the historian is not a scribe owned by the masterclass and inducted in the gaslit halls of academia, that the news reporter is not a government stooge, that the war correspondent is not serving the merchants of war, that the doctor is a healer, that the policeman is your friend. This is why we only find truth often—and not always—in fiction. Even when dealing with futuristic fantasy, the writer is trying in some way to address reality to keep the reader engaged. Escapist fiction reading is the process by which we exit the field of interest of our evil masters and read in a venue they care little for.
If I am writing a story in which some person who believes that the most powerful nation in the world was founded to protect her unborn rights, to uphold liberty for all, to uphold the insane notion that all of us are created equal, that armies and navies beyond the imagination of Alexander, Caesar or Napoleon exist to protect our ability to live and breathe and do good for our fellow man, than that dumb bitch has to die.
Yet, the very person who would scoff at such a character prevailing against the mighty machine in fiction, out of the sure knowledge that it would crush her, are afraid to apply a realistic interpretation to our shared experience. You see, we have been terrorized. We are afraid to look at white and say it is white, because the Church has declared it black and nothing may be as it is in something as duplicitous as modern western civilization. We are sheep afraid to admit that sheep dogs kill more than wolves though we know it in our shivering wool to be true. What is more, the fiction that the shepherd is our protector when it is he who takes our lambs and leads us to slaughter, is necessary to prevent us from realizing that life kills us all and keep us shivering in our flocks hoping for immortality to be created for us, here, on this 100% lethal earth.
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