Parrot People

In the movie, What Dreams May Come, there is a scene in which a mul­ti­tude of peo­ple are all lined up in rows with just their heads above the sur­face of some dark sub­stance. All they do is repeat each other’s pat phrases. They are in hell for giv­ing their real­ity away to every­day pro­pa­ganda. Their pun­ish­ment is just to go on doing what they have always done: par­rot­ing the same infor­ma­tion to each other mind­lessly. In the movie, I found that to be the most dis­turb­ing scene (and there are lots of dis­turb­ing scenes in that movie).

Movies are our mod­ern mytholo­gies about every­thing from outer space to the after­life. I do not agree with many things in the movie, but it hit a few things right on the head. This was one of them. When peo­ple mind­lessly give their real­ity away to pro­pa­ganda (polit­i­cal, pro­fes­sional, reli­gious, etc.) they lose their authen­tic­ity. (An insult to the poten­tials of life)

I can tell by what peo­ple say which pop mythol­ogy they have cho­sen. It is not all that hard to fig­ure out where they get their “news” and points of view. Their voice tone is that of an Orwellian mantra. They have given their God-given real­ity away as a sort of life-shorthand. Pick and “author­ity” and let them do the work. Hav­ing some­one else pull the strings is an easy way to go through life. If your friends all share the same trance, there is no con­flict, nor thought, nor aware­ness — just the same end­less echo of an unaware state.

Jesus quoted oth­ers, but in orig­i­nal ways. He did much of what other did, but with his own unique style. He did not have to rein­vent every wheel. He had a way of show­ing an eter­nal life qual­ity avail­able to all who are open to True Being. (“Being in the world but not of it”)

Accord­ing to the movie, there is one hell of a com­fort to mind­less conformity.