Is it all fiction?

[LawnLover]

I've recently started watching a BBC television series on Netflix called Spooks or MI-5.

I know the show is fiction, but it's so well written and plays out in such a realistic fashion that I've come away wondering if the basic premise of the show is true: that pretty much everything we see in our world is manufactured bullshit and behind the scenes there's a constant war waging between those who are hungry for power and those who want to stop them from gaining it, and elections and democracy and Prime Ministers and politicians don't have much effect on the outcome. The world is ruled by shadowy men making shadowy deals and we're simply pawns in their game.

The two words constantly hammering inside my head as I watch the show are: believe nothing.

A scary, scary thought.

So what do you think? Is it all fiction?

[madmax]

1. You mean like this?

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." Frank Zappa

[LawnLover]

4. Gotta love Francesco!

Freak out...

[BrklynLiberal]

8. A brilliant man...in all ways.

[HereSince1628]

2. Dunder Mifflin is REAL and so is Dwight's Beet Field!!!!!!!!!!!

And not'n you write is gonna convince me they aren't.

[ananda]

3. Spooks (MI-5) is a fantastic show!

I think there is some underlying truth in it, but it IS fiction.

It is one of the best running shows on tv, bar none. The only problem
is that it's always getting rid of my favorite characters. People don't
seem to last long in the tense, thrilling world of fictional British espionage.

This business with Assange reads like Spooks fiction too. He's even in
England, for godssake, with all the huggermugger and his imminent arrest.
Too bad Hitchcock isn't alive to film it.

[LawnLover]

5. Agreed. I love the show.

I actually like the idea that they kill off the characters now and again. It heightens the suspense, because, unlike other shows, you never know if your favorites will survive the episode.

[RandomThoughts]

6. Here is the thing.

They can't make you do anything, and here is one of the many errors in the highlander movie doctrine. You don't get someones skill when you defeat them, if they try to use that trick on you then you learn it.

I know 1000s of delusions and tricks, and I rarely use any of them, except with explanation when I see people in those traps.

They all have a way out of them, they have to trick you if you are a pretty decent person, and most people are, to get you to hurt people.

I found it is best being nice, and trying to appreciate all the lovely works of so many people, and do what you think and feel is best, then every time they try to use a delusion on you, you learn the counter. So after decades, I am basically trying to show all the different tricks they got.

I also found that it is not their fault, since most of them really become nice and loving after a short time, or they are replaced by loving and kindness, not sure exactly, but the bad stuff, when you don't do what it says, and try not to be mean, and try not to be in despair, it either leaves or changes to be nice also, like it can learn, but so can you, so you have to choose what you want to learn and why. Although I actually believe they really deep down are nice, and just under oppression, so it is not really teaching as much as in some way, them becoming what they already are, or becoming what they were again. But that's just a feeling also.

Hence why ignoring the stuff that really doesn't do much good, and appreciating the beauty is so joyful and makes sense.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Don't believe anything you read, and only half of what you see...

Benjamin Franklin...

[Javaman]

10. So should I believe what Franklin wrote?

My head hurts.

[patrice]

9. I think The Matrix and Animatrix, both were valid metaphors for how "our" lives work. The battle

isn't as overt as those two movies portray it, but it's real, perhaps more real than we are, none the less.