Knowing, Scepticism, Happiness

Only I know what I am going to write next here. Though that’s not actually true. Why? Do others know also? No, the truth is, never mind anyone else, I didn’t even know myself what I was going to write next. It might have sounded confident, and if examined maybe it’s even some kind of a defence of oneself, of the sacredness of one’s inner domains that no one else has access to, but, like I said, I was in a state of ignorance. Which is maybe a very good thing - I was even free of the tyranny of myself!

 

But, in response, someone might argue, we will agree you were in a state of ignorance, but that ignorance was really only a lack of knowledge. If we possessed sufficient knowledge about the brain and how it functions, then allied with the totality of your personal history, then we would indeed know all things, secret, hidden and future. But our knowledge multiplies by the day, and then with all this knowledge, to quote Josef Stalin, we will become true engineers of the soul. All falsehoods of thought, deeds and future deeds will be rooted out, and we will all rest happily as satisfied and obedient slaves of freedom. And there will be no question of any kind of revolt - for how, and why, would anyone try to revolt against  enlightened reality? For this is this future we are progressing towards: the full enlightenment of material reality.

And, on this question of revolt, why, regarding these ‘sacred inner domains’, unless one’s inner thoughts were somehow in violation of and out of sync with society, things to be ashamed of, would one need one’s inner thoughts to be private? Society is material reality allied to authority, and all this shouting about individuality is really just a revolt against this authority. It is an attempt to say there is some divide between society and its citizens’ thoughts, that they are two separate domains. This is blasphemous and dangerous. Degenerate thoughts must lead to degenerate actions, and it is society’s duty to protect itself and its citizens. It is its duty to know all these thoughts.

I’m not sure how I feel about all that. Something feels off, but maybe it’s just me. There must be some fatal scepticism within me that sabotages my alignment with all this happiness and obedience? Come to think of it though, I once knew someone who said she would feel uncomfortable even passing within the gaze of security cameras, say simply walking by some pub with a camera over its entrance. All this yearning for privacy - how unhealthy!