The *Apocalypse

I need you to listen to me, VERY CAREFULLY: Stop. Putting. Conceptual Weight. Behind. The IDEA. Of ZOMBIES.

Not only am I fucking bored with most popular explorations of the zombie trope, it's A) Making it really difficult for those of us who need to make use of the concept of the apocalypse-- that is, when I say "Apocalypse," I don't want the general fucking public automatically slotting "Zombie" in front of it-- and B) Bringing shit like This and This into the world.

The fact of the matter is that our perceptions of things shape and more to the point Are the contexts via which we view events in the world. If our preconceptions are that naked crazy people eating flesh are "Zombies," then when we see that, our collective imagination is going to go there, and inform our response.

Now we can talk all day about whether something is or is not being "Brought Into Existence" by our conceptual weight, but an indisputable fact is that of the aforementioned reaction: It IS brought about by our conceptual weight. What we think we're seeing changes how we react to that, and when what we think we're seeing has been slowly, every so slowly, insinuated into everything we know about outbreak scenarios, and epidemics, and ravening hordes, then that pattern is the context in which we'll be reacting.

We bring the accoutrement of our situational expectations into being, even as and because we use those situational expectations to frame the reality we are attempting to observe.

If you're trying to operate in media-- consuming or creating-- then you MUST study the theory of and learn to think About Hypersigils.

I'm Serious.