Mushrooms In The Dark

Mushrooms In The Dark
By Alfred Lehmberg

Is the Alien a rule-breaking villain—a black agent in the nameless dark? Is it an intellectual rapist, a serial abuser on a massive scale, or is it a singularly bizarre kidnapper criminally exacting an unknown ransom? Is the alien a being with no respect for humanity, raw disgust for humanity's sensibilities, and projects naught but disconnected indifference for humanity's creative attributes or individual quality of life?

Does the Alien use humanity as its lowly subordinate and reviled minimum wager; does it squander our savings, inflict disease and pestilence upon us, or does it put us out, homeless, into the streets? Does it shortchange and abuse our women, manufacture noneffective and dangerous drugs, equipment, and consumables; does it pollute the groundwater and needlessly despoil the environment with toxic waste and planned obsolescence?

Does the Alien spin our history—cook the very books of it—or corrupt accurate institutional memory for unjust advantage, only, facilitating the "textbook producing" class? Does it pasteurize, homogenize, and sterilize the accounting of history into boring, unrealistic, and untrue accounts of unjustified herofication to intimidate, manipulate, and depreciate the inventive minds of school children? Does it punish the critical thinker and reward the malleable wage-slave employee?

Does the Alien set up closed institutions operating contrary to the public good, stiff sick soldiers when they are maimed or contract strange and nebulous but debilitating diseases in foreign lands? Does the Alien install puppet governments to unethically expand a non-accountable and sociopathic corporate state? Does it allow more and more filth and fecal matter into our foods, titrate dangerous chemicals into our drinking water, and spray non-admitted substances into the air over our heads?

Does the Alien crush our dissent, suspend our rights, or assassinate our heroes? Does the Alien subject us to stark tyranny, badger us with its religion, or persecute us, individually, for the rational nonsupport of its corrosive, illogical, and defeatist party line? Does it make the rich richer and the poor poorer; does it compel more privilege for the already privileged... at the direct and unjustified (indeed unjustifiable!) expense of the too abundant "under-privileged." and far too many "non-" privileged?

Does the Alien compel us to overpopulate ourselves beyond the carrying capacity of the finite land supporting us? Does it teasingly push our sex in our faces on the one hand and then punish our indulgence in it on the other? Does it say one thing publicly and then do another privately! Does it piously and destructively accuse what it is itself guilty of? Does it frequently act beyond the bounds of reasonability and rational decency? Is it known as other but the fruit that it produces?

I think I've been abundantly clear.

It's not the Aliens, folks. It's us. We are the engineers of our own ignorance and denial. We are the builders and maintainers of the confined space to which we have consigned ourselves. We are our own tormentors and abusers. We are our own wardens and jailers. We are our own well of wretched and seemingly unending anguish!

Indeed, but good news! Yes!  Rejoice! We are all of these things only because we tolerate it so!  

Aliens, the future, the larger reality—that which makes its approach, regardless—tries to interact with us, still, though they are likely unendingly baffled (if not stridently repelled!) by our seeming willful insanity, obstinate denial, and obviously preferred ignorance regarding the larger sphere of that new reality... [resolving in acceleration as these words were written and are now being read]!

Convinced by those manipulating few: those who have the least concern for the value of the individual, that same individual is presently browbeaten into the erroneous conviction that what they think (and say and do) doesn't matter! Moreover, to continue their "crimes of thought" and "out of the box" interests is to court punishment in some extreme "John Ford-like" manner, or in a way not befitting their "crime" of critical thinking (or wanting to go where the data propitiously leads)! 

What a miserable, unvaried, and dry as chalk dust sub-reality we inflict upon one another... What a crippling lack of depth we instill! What a numbing loss of color we endure! What a stunning DEARTH of ideas we impose! What a soulless future of despairing futility we consign ourselves to! Verily.

Aliens abound! UFOs are real! Conspiracy to cover up these things (and more) is a likely reality! There is information we should have, fellow fezzy mook-oids and well-hammered fum-gudgelers! 

We are the mushrooms alluded to in much of my poetic commentary. We're fed a very thin (and toxic!) manure and kept as far from the light as possible... which would be fine if we actually were an insentient fungus, but we're not! 

It's getting harder for them all the time, though, and will continue to get even harder until they wise up and shut down the internet... 

They'll try... they'll have to play their true hand to do it, but they'll try.  I've a suspicion that they will be, and summarily vanquished... I digress.

As I have already said, "we are power we don't use." If we want change and expect change, we have to demand and support change. It's really as simple as that. "AlienViewGroup" aspires to have just that kind of effect and efficacious leverage. As our leaderless numbers grow, a force, imbued with the positive, will be generated in a wonderful synergy powered by our next-level civilization communication system: that same internet.  

Its base will be broad, its veracity will be solid, and its conviction formidable. We are not alone.  You are not alone!

You, specifically "you," reader, "make it so," or not! Just like Yoda said in response to Luke when the young Jedi whined that he would "try"...  

"Do! ...Or do -not-... there is no 'try'," Yoda said... 

If the reader wants her "X-wing fighter" of freedom and inventiveness out of "the bog" of ignorance and manipulation, if the reader wants to engage hyper-drive and accelerate to the more expansive destiny... if the reader wants to soar and cleave? The reader must only set their mind and heart, and then use their hands to make it so!  Mind over the consequences of matter. Setting that example, individually, works, or we wouldn't be where we are now!

Read on!