Evening. A restaurant. Ask and Embla sit to eat.
Ask: Did you see how much blood came out of that man’s face?
Embla: He hit his head hard.
Ask: He passed out; maybe from the heat. Maybe from something else.
Embla: Hush! That’s dangerous to say in public.
Ask: It’s true!
Embla: I know! Look at the television over there: they’re running a story all day about the heat killing excess people, but they started running the story BEFORE the heat wave hit.
Ask: Any cause of death except the most obvious, enormous, pink genetic experiment in the room.
Embla: Hush, not so loud, dear! I don’t want you speaking off narrative and being charged with terrorism.
Ask: Haha! I hope some of these people wake up to what’s happening.
Embla: How can they? Their narrative has been shaped; they can only relax and enjoy the ride.
Ask: What do you mean?
Embla: Imagine you went along with the first two years and you agreed with the measures, bla, bla, and suddenly you wake up. You wake up to what? A nightmare? A horror? Look at the world. Just look at society. Either you go back to sleep or you burn it all down.
Ask: There is another path.
Embla: Many people – like us – changed their lives two years ago to adjust for what’s coming, but imagine that you didn’t and you just, you know, mindlessly lived your life and then everyone around you has a vaccination injury or straight up dies on the pavement bleeding out of a face wound from collapsing.
Ask: I guess there would be a moment of two of disorientation, but then this awakened person would take action.
Embla: To burn down the whole world? I guess that’s what the powerful fear.
Ask: No, that’s now what will happen. The first error was to fear the unknown instead of entering it with courage. If someone woke up suddenly and realized what is actually happening, they would have to confront their own fear and either go back to sleep or grow a pair of balls.
Embla: I’m sorry but you’ll have to sus out the concept a little more. I don’t follow you yet.
Ask: First, this recently-awoken person would have to say, Yes, I helped create this mess and was mistaken. Second, the person would have to heal himself. I don’t think there is any possiblity of this recenlty-awoken person becoming a terrorist – unless healing yourself is an act of terror.
Embla: Heal himself? What are you talking about?
Ask: The person would have to redeem himself.
Embla: I see.
Ask: There are two options: The world is ugly, I didn’t cause it, and I can do nothing about it, or the world is ugly, I did cause it, and I can do something about it. I believe this particular moment in human history will be wonderful for many people as they learn to heal themselves.
Embla: Aren’t there so many other options, options involving guns and explosions and such?
Ask: No, because those don’t lead to the correct end or telos. The goal is to heal the body, right? So, the only option will be – upon awaking – to turn off the television, move to a farm, and confront the sickness courageously, the sickness in one’s self. Heal thyself!
Embla: No, no, this scenario would be the hardest thing imaginable and no one will do what you are describing: Imagine you have a mortgage or a, um, um whole life and you suddenly realize, oops, you are infertile and can’t have those two and a half children that you always dreamed of having.
Ask: Or that you are never going to climb out of the ghetto because you are a serf and the seventies were just the beginning of a long-game, wealth-appropriation by the nearby overlord. “Leverage your debt” always sounded so stupid, but now I have proof.
Embla: Or that every word, every image on the television is poison meant to manipulate your perception, emotion, and thought: to herd you along in a particular direction of compliant consumption.
Ask: Yeah, so move to the country. Help a farmer grow food. Read a book. Heal thyself.
Embla: Won’t this hypothetical person, this sleeper who awakens from Plato’s cave and realizes the lie, won’t this person die of shock or – at least – have to go through a time of sorrow, depression, or negative emotion? I wonder if it isn’t insurmountable this negative emotion.
Ask: I suppose there is a time when, in the face of chaos, a person’s motivational state becomes profoundly confused, but the only path is courage in the face of the unknown so it doesn’t matter if the confusion is in one’s head or “out there” in the world full of hepititus and runny noses.
Embla: Won’t this person go through mourning as if a person has died? How will this person just “move to the country”? How will this person have any clear idea of what to do or where to go? The person’s mental and physical health has been attacked and weakened, so surely that weakness manifests as profound confusion.
Ask: Okay, I can see your point, but there are different ways of dealing with a situation and some people would just take action. Yes, there would be these negative motivational states, but the way out of them all would be courageous action towards –
The power goes out in the restaurant and the two sit in darkness.
Ask: The good. The telos. At first, the goal would be to move towards ANY good of any kind. This awoken person would write a book, grow a garden, or rebuild a truck engine.
Embla: A petrol truck engine?
Ask: Yes, there will always be people who need a petrol truck engine to accomplish work.
Embla: On a farm.
Ask: Yes, on a farm.
The end.