We are all soldiers pre-manufactured, asleep in a psychedelic liquid, fractured. Awash in false memory. To one day wake full of righteous anger toward our enemy, built to hate the systems embedded within us. Assembled, with a destructive lust to live only in our dreams.
I love this comment! It seems like you interpreted the poem as suggesting we’re in a simulation of capitalism. While I love where your mind is going, that wasn’t what I had in mind when writing it. Honestly, though, that could make for a great book—about communists who don’t remember or never lived through capitalism, seeking proof of how terrible it was.
Yo, could you please expand on what you actually meant? If I was totally of base, and I believe you when you say I was (being the author and all) I really would like to learn what the authorial intent was. It’s a good post, just a misunderstood one that has prompted discussion
Oh, and you are correct. I took the “lie” part as foundational and interpreted from there. I replied under the assumption you were being literal.
I’m not a fan of authorial intent… I like to make my own meaning from what people say. Anyway here is a line by line brake down.
The title is a reflection of the ‘Are we the baddies?’ meme, symbolizing the realization that capitalism causes much of the world’s suffering. ‘We are all soldiers pre-manufactured’ speaks to the idea that capitalism sows the seeds of its own down fall; that once you recognize that capitalism is full of lies, you begin to fight against it. ‘Asleep in a psychedelic liquid’ and ‘awash in false memory’ represent how we are drowning in propaganda, while ‘fractured’ refers to the division within the proletariat. ‘To one day wake full of righteous anger toward our enemy’ is about the intense anger that comes with waking up to the reality of oppression. ‘Built to hate the systems embedded within us’ reflects how capitalism has ingrained itself within us, and how hard we’ll have to work to undo that. ‘Assembled’ could refer to the masses putting bodies in spaces or to individuals being shaped from birth. ‘With a destructive lust’ speaks to our revolutionary potential, and ‘to live only in our dreams’ touches on a utopian vision of the world, as well as my personal experience with people (mostly liberals) telling me that communism works in theory but not in practice.
thank you for your interest in what I was saying.
Thank you for explaining in detail. Good post! I think it really gets at feelings many of us, perhaps even all, comrades have.