Do you ever get the feeling that something is not right with the world? That somehow we are all caught up in some universal joke for the benefit of persons unseen and unknown?

Do you ever get the feeling that something is not right with the world? That somehow we are all caught up in some universal joke for the benefit of persons unseen and unknown?

What if there was an artificial order imposed upon our random, chaotic existence? What if the architect of this order was not God, or Satan, for that matter? What if its creators were not Gods, or even Nietzschian supermen, but very ordinary human beings with a keen insight into the weaker side of human nature- people who were manipulators par excellence?

We exist within a matrix, a structure which encompasses and gives shape to all our lives. What is remarkable is not so much that such a structure can exist, but that it has existed for thousands of years, surviving the rise and fall of many a civilisation and the seemingly unstoppable advance of technology and discovery down the years. How is this possible? Because the matrix in question relies on three basic aspects of human nature which have always been with us.

Firstly, it feeds on our need for authority. Although we all make pretence to free thought and free will, the truth is that we reserve the need to use them wherever possible. Mankind is a lazy species, preferring to let his life be governed by a chain of automatically generated responses to his surroundings. The reason why our day-to-day lives follow a constant pattern is that we are comforted by experiencing the familiar. It saves us from the trouble of having to think for ourselves.

Our lives take the form of a series of trance-states which occur in succession, one after another. How re respond to a new influenced is determined by our genetic programming and our societal conditioning. Only when we encounter a change in our surroundings - something unknown or unfamiliar - do we resort to independent thought. It is by understanding this reticence to engage our minds that the Players have been able to trap us exactly where they want us in their great Game.

In short they fill a vacuum - doing our thinking for us. Naturally they must conceal what they are doing, or we would resist the idea of someone else controlling our minds. The deception they use to circumvent this problem involves an elaborate version of reality constructed from a series of inter-connected myths. These myths form the constituent part of an overarching meta-myth: the Linearity myth. This prepares our minds to accept the many minor myths propounded by the Players. So intricate is this system, and so well-concealed, that we simply accept it as the norm.

One great challenge in understanding this mountain of artifice is that it is so very, very dense. It is multi-layered and intricately interlaced. In this way it becomes exceedingly difficult for anyone to pull the strands apart and get at the truth hidden beneath.

As far as individual people are concerned, we exist in a kind of narcissistic trance which encourages us to think of ourselves as the focal point of the universe. Rather than see ourselves in the world, we view the world as revolving around us. Whereas the Players, who are narcissists through and through, really view the world in this way, the rest of us are only narcissistic to a limited extent, and the web of myths merely encourages us to think subliminally in such a way that this trait comes to the surface.

The zeitgeist of this century is narcissism. The world as it is today is not merely narcissistic; narcissism has become its defining feature. It captures the very essence of twentieth century man; the way we think, the way we relate to each other, the way we see the world. Ubiquitous, it has been integrated into our reality to such an extent that most of us are completely blind to the degree to which it permeates our lives. It has become the background to our existence.

We may go further. Where in the past narcissism was rejected as a failing, today it is almost venerated to the status of an ideal. Adam Smith the celebrated philosopher and economist wrote of an "enlightened selfishness", and this same philosophy is now used to justify a society built on greed and ambition.

The next layer is the group, or tribal, level of trance. Human beings, being social animals, have a natural need to organize into groups. Even the most individualistic among us begins to suffer withdrawal symptoms if we are separated from human contact for too long. Each group exerts influence on its members. Even in the absence of a defined set of rules the members of the group must abide by, over time the group will exert a homogenizing influence on those within it. This will impact how those within the group will see the world, and their place in it.

Finally we are all caught up in a societal trance, conditioned by a series of myths such as the myth of scarcity, law and order and the sanctity of science. Whereas we might challenge any one of these myths in isolation, the truth is that together they represent a daunting phenomenon.

The myth of linearity is the meta-myth, which supports all the others. It is the belief that sequential logic rules the world. That everything is related by interminable chains of cause and effect. Linearity is the wellspring from which all the other myths emanate and this myth is the glue that binds all others together.

We have been too long now in the dark; too long victims of these trance-states. It is time to case off the dominance of the myth-smiths and reclaim authority over our own destiny. What they will look like no one can know, but I for one am all for finding out!