The complex mind and the turning of the earth

Unlike the mass-man, who glides through life as if it was a tranquil sea, the complex man seeks to touch the dark, violent, and stormy oceans for themselves.

 ‘I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is spinning at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny world, and if we let go… that’s who I am.’

-          Doctor Who

A few days ago, my Bournbrook colleague and soon-to-be best-selling author S.D. Wickett, penned an eye-opening analysis of the political-knowledge caste system that segregates society between those with their finger on the pulse of the world as opposed to those who are sailing aimlessly through its blood vessels.

The mass-man, colloquially known as the NPC, is the day-time Thomas Anderson described by Agent Smith in the Matrix: he works for a corporate behemoth, pays his taxes, and helps the landlady take out her garbage. He is committed to preserving his hold on the first three rungs on the Maslow pyramid, such as raising a family and participating in social networks based on mutual interests, which are very admirable goals and do bring contentment to the NPC, but the mass-man has no aspiration of ascending further up the mountain.

The complex mind, on the other hand, is what Agent Smith is ordered to hunt and destroy without mercy. Leading a double-life under the cover of darkness, Thomas Anderson senses that something is wrong with the world, and desperately seeks in search of the truth in order to extract the ‘splinter in the mind’, leading him to the red-pill.

The red pill is another cliché of terminally online social media circles, and it does have an ounce of truth to it - to break free from the societal superstructure of mainstream news, culture, and customs, for the complex mind has grown wary of its intoxicating, nihilistic enslavement. Equipped with a new framework for his life, the complex mind embarks on a journey, advancing past the red pill stage, for not even that pseudo-existence will bring him satisfaction.

It is a common misconception that to be red-pilled is to be intelligent, strategic, and spiritually complete, but a quick browse through Twitter proves this to be folly. Everyone is susceptible to groupthink, confirmation bias, purity spiralling, blind-faith, and paranoia regardless of which political tent they dwell within. The red pill simply delineates which camp you belong to, which is why the complex mind yearns for something greater.

He does not have time for petty pixelated scraps with strangers, or indulge in the red-pilled’s own brand of virtue signalling. He has far greater adventures than flesh-and-blood politics on his mind. He desires to delve deeper into the fabric of the universe; to open it up as if it was a clock in order to study how the gears interact with each other.

The complex mind makes it his life’s journey to wrestle with the human soul as the angel did to Israel, and none more so than his own – to pick his own brain apart so to speak. Of course he is concerned about council tax and whether deteriorating geopolitical conditions in Europe will bite his wallet at Tesco’s garage any further, but being a member of 21st Century society is nothing but an unavoidable means to an end.

The complex mind’s focus on human nature, history, literature, and art, is what drives him forward in life. The complex mind’s instinct is to create culture, not just for the purpose of educating the consumer or making a quick quid out of their dopamine, but for the creator’s own educational needs as well. No author writes a novel and doesn’t learn anything new about themselves or the world around them.

Unlike the mass-man, who glides through life as if it was a tranquil sea, the complex man seeks to touch the dark, violent, and stormy oceans for themselves. To wrap his simian brain around its complexities and malevolence, and he will not rest until he is dead. This is his calling; there is nothing else that will satiate his appetite. That is a man we should all strive to be.