Artificial Eden: Superficial Kingdoms

PROLOGUE - Dropped from the eternal realms, submitted to time and death, human beings continue to believe in their own separateness and in the present. Modern life seems to nourish and inflate the spectacular; distracting us from developing ourselves emotionally and spiritually. Only by means of great suffering can we, as individuals, liberate ourselves from the control of time and return to eternity, leave darkness and return to light. SUPERFICIAL KINGDOMS ' Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions (The Bible) So many distractions; More Idols than Realities. Diminished awareness More illusions than allusions To symbols and archetypes From a vast, cultural past; Which seems to have been forgotten Which seems to have been replaced By endless sounds and images Crammed full of tension, conflict and fear Colourful but caustic; Loud, diffuse and bright. Behind this shrieking of image and sound A stark, empty silence Is all that remains Of a cultural past Imperious perhaps, But organic, rich And expansive. From African origins To Ancient Greece and Rome; From the Eastern wisdom Of Tibetan monks To Sufi mystics Transcending space and time; From great biblical scribes To prophets and priests; From lofty Renaissance To Romantic ideal. Claustrophobic culture; Cracked up creeds and rank confusion. Iconic Christ is purely a cipher; For current market needs and false desires. Little better than a bride stripped bare; Little better than a cartoon character; Little better than, ' Reality T.V' Crudely sponsored by Coca Cola Claustrophobic culture; No time to pause or catch one's breath The chaos is all around; Of images: Images recycled and repeated. Give us our daily bread, we pray; Fast food (KFC) : Nike trainers MP3 players; DVDS Big Macs; 7UP; Starbucks: ' Share coffee, community, camaraderie; connection! ' Rolex watches; computer games high tech gadgets and designer jeans; A plethora of God and Shopping channels An advertiser's glimpse of Heaven. What's the ‘genuine' article? What's real or make believe? Interactive TV; phone in surveys; Songs, ads and self help manuals Which implore us to find ourselves; To unlock the door to ‘ perfect' peace. The real is no longer what it used to be; The image now exceeds the reality; The real is now an official fiction; The real has disappeared from view. Txt culture of interruption; Human dialogue defunct. It's like the last crazed act Of a malnourished tribe. ' Txt me; txt me; please txt me I'm independent Yet always in demand Busy but not tied down So txt me; please txt me; And I'll get back to you later.' Corporate interest culture Of rampant materialism; Born without conscience Driven by the American Dream Look at all the phony people! Where do they all come from? Look at all the phony people! Where do they all belong? These days Beauty is created by prosthetics Urban beauty by landscape surgery Opinion by opinion poll surgery. Genetic research offers a perverse kind of progress; Plastic surgery for the whole human species. And the birth of purified ‘ brave new' beings Like designer brands made to impress: Cute carbon copy; blue print babies. An unrelenting hedonism Comes sweeping into view: The cult of vain celebrity Of cut price kings & anorexic queens. Fake plastic trees and De rigueur designs adorn The palatial ‘ pleasure domes' Of the nouveau riche. Their status assumes A warped normality As they seem to embody Everything we'd like to be Our fascination With their lifestyles May sell millions of magazines But it expresses A deep sense of absence As they seem to live out A thousand dreams for us Superficial saturation of T.V; Private lives going public In titillating talk shows; Horrors are regurgitated And sanitised in 24 hour News programmes & documentaries. Forced extroversion of our interior lives: No halo of private protection surrounds us. The end of intimacy and inner growth Does it also mark the death of love? A creed of profiteering Is driven like a callous nail Through the heart land Of this Artificial Eden, With its vast, sprawling kingdoms Superficial and insidious Built on the Puritan work ethic To improve each shining hour Still falls the cold, stinging rain On the columns of the stock exchange Where slick, deranged financiers Are out of their minds on cocaine Maggot infested heart Of the famed 'Big Apple': Rotten to the core. Corporate run culture Air brushed dreams and desires; Commodity signs abound; The logo symbolises status; The divine Logos is now defunct; The Artificial rules over the Real Consumers not true citizens, Only desiring machines.