The ability to perceive and organize reality suddenly becomes a prison: The Idea becomes ideology. We are trapped in schemas, in patterns of “yes” or “no”, “black” or “white”, “good” or “bad.” The world becomes dichotomous. The action is limited to a predetermined perimeter. Thought pierces ideas, dismembers values, posts signs.

A disconnect forms between man and the Idea, echoing isolation and existential loneliness, helplessness in the face of the regulating systems that govern life. And yet, more often than not we imprison ourselves, “diving” deep to avoid getting hurt. Seeking protection, safety, and comfort. Willingly embracing control and oppression (hegemony).

Fear is paralyzing and confining. Guilt becomes a means of control and supervision. The moral question – about the action’s value – becomes a political question about the power relations that facilitate it. We are standing at the gates of the “society of the spectacle,” under the gaze of the masses, under the phallic watchtower that organizes a consumerist existence within systems of seduction and attraction. In the age of fear and “political correctness,” thought itself – as a mechanism of regulation and control – is our “prison.”

The very notion that one can “escape” prison, that there is a “real” external reality that one should and can reach, shackles us to the separation and the disconnect. To the need to tell a story. There is no actual prison and you do not need to escape.

Where does one go from here? What can one hope for?