DIG
SETTING THE SCENE: The malaise feels like it may have gone malignant. At the very least it has seeped into your bones. You’ve followed the rules but the comfortable life is still out of reach; in reality, you’re working just to stay afloat. How much longer can you keep up the charade that everything is under control? People say they're fine but isn't that the socially conditioned response? In those quiet, dark moments before the torture of a new day begins, you wonder what happened to the promise of generational progress…
THE CURE
SETTING THE SCENE: The dominant narrative is a lie: the deck is stacked, and you and everyone you know are the permanent underclass in a new Gilded Age. The masses have allowed themselves to be duped, surreptitiously distracted by bright lights and incessant chatter. The kool-aid has become the beverage of choice. This is an epiphany of desolation; the unconscious civilization indeed....
JOKE'S ON US
SETTING THE SCENE: You've taken the metaphorical red pill. The romanticized myths meant to ensure servile complicity in service to the puppet masters have fallen away. Now you need a hell of a lot more of those anti-Potemkin village reds because: (1) you aren't Neo; (2) if it takes a village to raise a child, how many people does it take to change an entrenched and morally corrupt system? Regardless of how it turns out, at least you can say you met the future with your eyes open.