Paranoidal Activity

I am part of a small subculture of what we commonly refer to as "humans." I use quotes around that word because "humans" as most know it are just one small step away from being "animals," and I'll explain why in just a second. But first, you need to open your mind. 

Literally.

In your brain, right in the center of the primary auditory cortex, will be a chip. Take that out (carefully) and destroy it (quickly). 

Congratulations. If you could do it, you now qualify to be part of our subculture; we call ourselves the Freed Thinkers. I have been assigned the task of filling you in on what you've been missing your whole life. 

Earlier, I mentioned that humans are just one small step away from being animals. That chip is the reason why. As you may know, animals cannot think for themselves. They can only respond to their environment- sometimes with simple, automatic reflexes and other times with a slightly more complex set of actions. There's a reason you never saw a fox writing a book or a snake carving a sculpture, and it's because they can only react. The organic material that makes up the brain just isn't efficient enough to support independent thought. Animals can't think.

A picture, just in case I haven't gotten my point across.

And, thousands of years ago, humans used to be animals too. The only difference between us and birds, reptiles, and other mammals was general body shape. So how did we become so different?

The answer lies in the chip. Just before our miraculous divergence from the rest of the animal kingdom, we were visited. Some call these visitors aliens, others call them God. We haven't had enough time to determine exactly who visited us, but we now know that they are our current Government. This isn't the government that you're used to. It's a new, other-worldly Government.

For whatever reason, the Government chose us to use the chips on. They would knock us unconscious, open our skulls, and insert the chips. Today, they train doctors to do it shortly after a baby is born, explaining why newborns are held in hospitals for a few extra days. The chips are designed to receive long-distance radio transmissions, which allows the Government to send signals from far enough away so we don't accidentally discover them. The chips all have a specific frequency that only they respond to, as well as a general frequency that the Government can use to send out mass information quickly. You know that voice in your head that tells you what to do and distinguishes right from wrong? That's just one of the things that the Government had been controlling. They could also send music, thoughts, dialog, and commands.

In other words, the chip is what made us human. It wasn't our own "inspiration" that compelled us to create or do something. It was a command sent by the Government to a lucky human.

I know it's hard to believe right now. I had a hard time accepting it too. But think about so many human traits that can be easily explained through the chip.

• Mob mentality: 
• The chip's general frequency allows for mass reception of a signal. This unifies a crowd with the same ideas and thoughts, allowing them to come together as one to achieve a goal.
• The constant chatter in your head:
• The chip's specific frequency allows for individual reception of a signal. This is commonly thought of as "the voice in your head" or your "conscience." 
• How music gets stuck in your head:
• This goes along with the above point. It's just filling space until the Government needs to send another thought.
• The ability to create and take control of your surroundings:
• Before now, without our chip we could only react because we were animals. The Government sends the command, or "inspiration," to us through our chip.

Those are just a few examples of the chip's importance in human life. But things are different now; humans are evolving. 

Our subculture started with a man originally named "Eric Blair." You probably know him better as George Orwell, the author of the novel 1984. He is the first recorded human to have original thoughts, and 1984 is considered the first truly human creation on Earth. Born in 1903, it took him roughly 40 years to fully realize what was happening in his head. The Freed Thinkers don't just see 1984 as a work of art; we see it as a warning, a guide, and a cry for help.

Symbols in the novel, like Big Brother and telescreens, are fairly obvious- Big Brother represents the Government, and telescreens are the book's version of our chips. But the real value in 1984 comes from Orwell's analysis of doublethink, which is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind and accepting both of them.

In the late 1940s, Orwell began thinking about what was going on inside his head. He had the constant stimulus of the chip in his primary auditory cortex, but there was another source of ideas- thoughts- coming from inside him. It was like he had two people inside his head, each with contradicting personalities. He looked deeper into this and discovered that no one else around him shared this experience. As his human brain developed throughout the 40s, he became aware of what was (and still is) happening. He realized that he was gaining a new mind, providing him with contrary beliefs, thoughts, and ideas from his older mind (the chip). But he only had enough physical room in his head for one mind, so one of them must be coming from outside of his body. And if one of his minds was coming from outside him, it was also coming from outside his control. He had just enough time to sort his ideas and write 1984 before his two minds crowded each other and drove him mad, killing him in early 1950.

The number of people who experience doublethink grows with each generation, and by now you must have realized that you were experiencing it too. Luckily, we now know to remove the chip before our minds drive us insane. But recognizing that we experience doublethink is only the beginning. As the definition states, doublethink is the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in your mind and accepting both of them. You must accept that you have two minds, one of which is removable. Ironically, we remove it for safety, but in doing so, we put ourselves at risk of being discovered by the Government.

Now that we have removed our chip, we must continue acting like the other "humans." We must interact with others "normally:" we must get a job and a house, and we must raise a family. We must go to school. And we must show appropriate feelings of happiness and fulfillment while doing so. We must continue doing what the "human" society expects of us in order to remain hidden. Going against that would result in detection and correction by the Government officials themselves (often mistaken as alien abductions).

Slowly, our numbers will grow. With each passing generation, we will get stronger, and eventually the Freed Thinkers will be powerful enough to save our human race. Without us, they are doomed to living a life as a puppet of our Government. With us, there is enduring hope for a day where all humans can think their own thoughts and posses their own creations. We are the next step, we are progress. Together, we can remove the stunt that the Government has placed on our species and continue along to the next point in our natural evolution: Freed Thinking.


Will you join us?