Fire in the hole - A review of the novel The Iron Cage by Amos Keppler

   The Janus Clan series of novels starts off in The Defenseless as a fairly ordinary story about a seemingly all-American family. It changes slowly from that, turning into blood and strife, ghosts and shadows.

  There are several images of symbolic nature in the series. There is the river, the desert, the shadow and the fire, all important throughout the series.

  The Iron Cage is the tenth book. It is the last being published, but there are three more books that have already been released. This one is still an ending of sorts.

  Don’t expect anything even remotely mainstream here. Some mainstream people will be scared out of their wits if they should stumble upon this book. Seekers and open-minded people and those wanting a true description of the ongoing modern inhuman society will love it.

  Amos Keppler’s books can’t really be categorized, no matter how hard you try. They are far beyond any average attempt at doing that. Perhaps the entire Janus Clan series can be said to lean towards science fiction, but even that is a stretch. Each of the novels can touch anything, any genre, really.

  Most of all they are both a grim and optimistic tale about the modern world and those not fitting in there.

  The is about a different world in the late eighties, with both similarities and notable differences from our world. Ronald Reagan has become downright unpopular. The entire idea of neoliberalism and western establishment society have been seriously questioned by many people, not merely those walking in the Janus Clan’s tracks.

  The story follows the clan of warriors and subversives at various squatted buildings across the United States, in Miami, Chicago, and eventually Las Vegas, where everything crashes and burns, exploding both literally and metaphorically. A parallel story follows Mike and Linda, as they gather their other group of subversives and warriors. Those two groups have much in common, but not everything. The differences seem bigger than the similarities.

  Everyone should write about what Amos Keppler is writing about. The stories are so potent and powerful, so well describing human existence. This book is no exception in that regard.

  The last four chapters taking place in Las Vegas are a pleasure to read. An event that has been hinted at in several other books is finally happening. The payoff is amazing, the final chapter impossible to give proper praise. My advice is to read all the books in the series. The long story told in thirteen books is a modern classic transcending all genres and expectations, an epic story, in the true sense of the word.

  This is my first blog post in almost eight years, but the book is an event, so the occasion fits well with that.

The ruse of elections

  Some friends of mine, both US citizens and not take comfort in demographics showing that the age of old, white men are over in US politics, but they shouldn't, really. Whether that’s true or not is rather unimportant because elections are ultimately unimportant. They are a ruse, designed by those in power to draw attention away from the real issues.

  Both main candidates this year, like all other years were/are stooges of those white, old men and other wealthy and powerful people ruling by proxy in today’s world.

  Anybody looking at Obama and seeing something different isn’t only blind but dangerously deluded.

  I shrug over Obama’s victory, like I would have shrugged over Romney’s. The tyranny lives on.
  For every Obama-supporter approaching me bragging about his "accomplishments" I just want to say: «You're kidding, right»?

  People need to free themselves from the stranglehold of government and corporations, religion, nationalism and capitalism, from the system’s propaganda and start making their own decisions independently of the massive tyranny we all suffer.

Priorities

I overheard the following in a music and video store recently:


- Mom, I gotta have this one, gotta have it NOW.

The teenage girl had picked up the recent season collection of one of the most mindless current TV-series, one of those filled with pretty young people and made to celebrate the empty mind, form without content.

- I don’t know if we can afford that right now, honey, the mother said. – We hardly have money for food and won’t get more until next Monday.

- I must have it, the girl whimpered, - must watch it today.

- It costs almost everything we have left, honey, the mother persisted, somewhat patient, but almost as whiny as her daughter. – We won’t have anything to eat for five days.

- I don’t need food, the girl snapped sullenly.


I left. I just couldn’t listen anymore. If I had stayed there a second longer I might have offed both the daughter and her relenting mother.

Case closed. Further comments unnecessary.

The language of oppression

Ways to dissuade children’s interest in science, technology, engineering and math

There are several children in our squatted house. Some of them have also reached the time where they would start school if they were a part of established society, and we also have teenagers. We keep them away as much as we can from that, of course, not letting that society teach them its language, the language of the oppressor.

That language is many things.

Children are taught greed from an early age. They learn how to place value on things, on trinkets and baubles. But most of all they learn a language alienating them, both from their own instincts and from nature, from Earth and life on it.

That language is science. Science has long since become the new religion, and among its many bad qualities is the fact that it teaches that the world and life on it is a Petri dish, one where an aloof humanity may poke and hurt any creature, including other humans for the sake of «knowledge», money and power.

We, the adults of the squatted house, being quite the resourceful bunch in many ways teach them differently, teach them about ancient humanity, about the value of life and unspoiled nature, how we hardly had any footprints then, and how we for countless generations left the Earth pretty much as it was when we were born. We tell them about the language of the oppressor, of civilization, but we certainly don’t teach it.

Civilization is many things, also about the insane need to build, to construct and destroy. We teach unschooling, deconstruction, independence and a diversity that is very far from the narrow chinks of civilization. Advanced technology is uncool, we tell them. Civilization is a Machine, forming all humans in its own image. We tell them how to avoid the pitfalls during adolescence, how to avoid being drawn into the maelstrom of society, how not to be dumbed down by a system of government doing its best to educate people to dependency and stupidity. They know, from an early age that science and advanced technology, engineering and math are inherently bad for us all, a part of an artificial construct destroying everything making life worth living.

We instruct them in ways to recognize the signs of brainwashing in the other children they interact with, an interaction we encourage, and give them feedback, in turn teach them the alternative to civilization, something that has yielded quite remarkable results. Other people’s children are visibly happier among us than they are among their own parents.

Civilization is a construct, we tell them, a Machine, and the Machine wants everybody to be its servants, its wheels within wheels. Science is about taking a tiny piece of reality and present it as all of it, a lie, a deception of the worst order. Building and expanding cities, constructing giant buildings of concrete, metal, glass and plastic is killing us all. Studying the language of death isn’t a noble pursuit. Rebelling against the Machine and all its works is.

Tyranny isn’t really about letting uniformed thugs loose on protesters, isn’t about making ever more oppressive laws. That is just the end product, the final touch when everything else is already in place. The main token of a successful tyranny is its language, something integrated into society’s foundation. Children today are tricked, more or less forced to give up a piece of themselves, one piece at the time. By the time they reach adulthood there is very little left of their humanity, and they are fooled into policing themselves, making the magistrates’ job fairly easy, a mere formality. It is practically a miracle if any of us, living today reach adulthood with any true cognitive thought left. The language of civilization shunts nature and all reality outside human perception and builds an ivory tower where almost all of us reside.

We simply teach children about the vast reality outside the tiny construct, that’s all, teach them how insignificant the construct truly is, and how glorious is the Universe outside the construct’s bubble.