TranceFiction

War on Terra.

This opinion piece juxtaposes chronological media footage and technology, to portray how modern media spoon-feeds us violence, generationally, throughout our entire consumer lives.

Media, in all its forms, continually promotes, celebrates, romanticises, fetishises and champions violence, maintaining a deep duality and disharmony between our selves, and the planet, which is passed on and accepted as the cultural norm.

Enter babies with machine guns, and a hypnotic spiral.

Sigmund Freud postulated that humanity developed its ego (and this subsequent duality consciousness) in its primordial origins. He described it as when the most simplified organism becomes aware and therefore susceptible to its external stimulation and influence, and thereby develops a protective ‘shield’ out of fear of death, a very deliberate separation to the ‘other’. This of course developed over time and was ingrained in a ‘fight or flight’ consciousness, most powerfully active when we were still vulnerable to external forces (ie being eaten alive at any time).

In 2014, humanity, being the dominant species, has evolved physically, mentally and communally to a point where no real rational fear of external forces is actually necessary any more…yet we still live and breathe a culture of separation, competition and fear. Why?

Our species has enough resources and technology to be beyond the physical need to rely on fighting the external forces and our kin for survival. And we are still emotionally and spiritually stunted so as to be unaware of the irony of wars built on the belief that ‘my god is better than your god’.

Freud’s other hypotheses suggested that “the aim of all life is death”, or “that the fundamental instinct of all life is to return to a safer previous state (that; for a conscious organism is to return to an inanimate chemical composition swimming in an ego-less and playful balance with all matter)”.

So then, are we just playing out an embedded primordial pattern, which we cannot unchain from our DNA? Are we consciously continually obsessing over death (or forced separation) so as to subconsciously reach closer to it (a disembodied unity state)? Or is this behavior more like one step on our evolutionary path, and are we yet to evolve above and beyond it, step forward and grow, acting like a spoilt child unaware of our true place in the cosmos...uncomfortable with ourselves? 
I prefer to think the latter.

The modern media communication construct and societal systems we consciously conform to have many ways of controlling this theme of war and separation, in fact, the system seems to have sheer delight in sustaining it, through propaganda on news, in consumerism, entertainment and in even in law. We eat it up. Language too, is responsible for keeping these concepts strong amongst our species through everyday metaphors, like “Price War” or “Dressed to kill” or “Battling the traffic”.
The ridiculous notion of a war on cancer, a war on drugs, a war on crime, a war on terrorism, a war on poverty, is ultimately destructive, as it continually re-asserts the perception we are at war with each other and all that surrounds us. This is a LIE. And we simply are just used to it. We sit, reflect and think, “Why are they still doing that and fighting them?” We know something is wrong, but tend to just accept this behaviour as a human failure, blame it as ‘their’ (read- someone else’s) fault, and watch the next reality contest show to forget about it.

Deceased comedian Bill Hicks had an inkling of the truth: ”I’ll tell you why there’s a war on drugs...it’s because I had mushrooms once and lay in a field for four hours thinking, my god, I LOVE EVERYTHING!”

I believe the greatest thing halting our species’ evolutionary development is our hypnotic perverse addiction to unnecessary media violence, and our submissive and sanctioned perpetuation of it as a product that we consume, and which we continue to accept and pass on generationally. 

Until we snap out of this hypnosis of duality consciousness, the Petro Chemical Industrial Military Complex will hold us under their spell.

With this in mind, I present ‘Trance-Fiction’.

Peace
 

Software used was Adobe Photoshop and After Effects, plus Audacity to reverse the soundtrack (The Beatles’ ‘All you need is love’- used to help enhance the theme). Assets were all sourced online, then manipulated for use with the techniques of masking, green screen and compositing. This is a non-commercial project and made purely personal purposes (as well as social commentary). 
Apologies must go to HiPP Organic Baby Food for stealing and sabotaging their cute and innocent baby footage, I’m sure my project was NOT what they had in mind when they produced their footage!