The Paradox of Waking Up — Mr. ROBOT
The more you try to wake up, the cloudier the world seems to become
[This post is somewhat of a continuation of my original post about Mr. Robot and it’s beautiful use of dream as a literary device]
Upon further reflection on the use of dreams as a metaphor for the blended reality we all live in (the blended reality of our physical world and that of our human cultural creations and our own inner world and past experiences), there seems to be yet another level this metaphor works on.
Although, in the moment, dreams feel very real, at times we do sense there is something not quite right when we are in a dream. We all have had those experiences where we realize that we’re dreaming (or in the case of being under the influence, that we are fully aware we are high, yet proceed to enjoy the effects, suspending disbelief).
Depending on the tone of the dream, these states can produce a sense of loss of control, disorientation, fuzziness, and mental fog: say when you’re trying to run in your dream, but seem frozen in time or when you’re trying to not let a particularly imaginative hallucination scare you during a trip, but you are unable to control yourself. When the brain becomes particularly prolific in its manifestations of blended realities, the feelings of loss of control and mental fog sometimes cannot fully be shrugged off and ignored.
It is the feeling, that of mental fog of dream states, that serves as an additional layer in the grand metaphor of Mr. Robot.
The fictional world of capitalism and money we’ve created and partake in causes dizzying contradictions and leaves its subjects in a daze. It promises us self actualization through hard work, yet the harder we work, the more unfulfilled we feel. To make us feel better, it offers us a dizzying array of merchandise, toys and shiny objects to take our minds off of our discontent. It causes severe loneliness as it tears our social fabric apart though its compartmentalizations of society via private homes, private cars, and cubicles. Capitalism, although mostly feeling completely normal to us as most dreams do, does induce confusion and mental fog as other dreams do.
The ultimate paradox though is this. When you begin to suspect the causes of your unhappiness and begin to educate yourself in an attempt to wake yourself up from these capitalistic delusions, to shake off the fog, the feelings that can follow are not mental clarity, but even more mental clouds.
I’ve noticed this disorientation in my own life. I’ve been very interested in the work of David Graeber, many of whose advocacies are echoed in Mr. Robot. He promotes a return to true democracy. He discusses forms of human organization whose legitimate do not ultimately stem from coercion and violence. He critiques capitalism, full time work, the moral stranglehold of debt, and so on. I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with many of his ideas and advocacies. When I listen to his lectures, I’m fully engrossed in his way of thinking, his world-views. I even try to think about how to design my own life to be more in line with these views.
Yet I find myself constantly living in two realities. One where I am aware that my actions help pay for inhumane government policies and exploitative corporate behavior via my taxes and purchases and the other where I find myself in political discussions, reflexive arguing for tax increases for more government spending and discussions about the best ways to increase GDP growth. I find myself one moment being engrossed by electric cars, cheering on Elon Musk, listening to his talks, and the next moment wishing cities were car free. On some days I’ll ask a younger cousin what college they’re applying to, what degree they’d like to pursue, and what career they aspire to, and on other days I see them struggling with their college applications and wonder just how much student debt they will incur and what flavor their desk-bound future slavery will be. And sometimes these two worlds collide, moments where I ask a young person what schools they got accepted to and then realize that that my simple question is part of the problem, that a question from an older person with a “successful career” is implicitly a validation of the current world order, something to aspire to. It isn’t simply my purchasing decisions that support the system, but even something as simple as an innocuous question is what makes the current state of affairs appear perfectly normal.
Such cognitive dissonance can be quite jarring, and the more I try to wake myself up, the more I try to distinguish fact from fiction, the more the fog seems to get thicker.
Will it eventually get better…?
Is that what the detox episode was all about? It was clear that Elliot’s addiction was a metaphor for our addiction to capitalism and consumerism. But was the detox episode an extension of that metaphor, the writers warning to us that things will get worse for those trying to wake up, trying to quit cold turkey before they get better?
