_The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'Person with head in a cage colorful.'_
It's been twenty years since the US destroyed Iraq. While that disastrous invasion was unfolding on the other side of the world, I was fighting a different kind of war entirely. I was 21, a series of unfortunate events had befallen me, and I ended up hospitalized in a secure facility. Sitting there, surrounded by doctors who misdiagnosed me and considered opposition to the war to be a symptom of mental illness, I became acutely aware of how alone I was in the world.
The first thing I did when I got out was to report abuses I'd experienced as a teenager at the hands of a prominent community member. This guy had for decades been a member of an international pedophile network based in Germany. He was interviewed by investigators and didn't deny the abuse. Although the investigation substantiated rumors that everyone in that small town had long been hearing, criminal prosecution wasn't possible because too much time had passed. And initiating the investigation made me a pariah.
After that, I was totally done with the status quo world. The world where wars were started on false pretenses and pedophile networks preyed on children with the tacit support of the communities they operated in. Wanting nothing to do with this status quo, I lived in alternative communities on the fringes of society. I did that for years, until I got too sick to keep surviving in those chaotic environments.
## Freedom from the Cage
My life is in most ways better these days. I have steady work and my medical issues are carefully managed. There are even a few people who care about me. Yet as good as things are, my life often feels like a cage. A cage made of cluster headaches and low income and other people who seem constitutionally incapable of understanding me, however far I might move to understand them. A cage made of systems that make everything worse.
Bringing this stuff up in conversation rarely goes well. Nearly everyone has more than me. More money. More time, since I have to sleep 10-12 hours a night for medical reasons. More social support. When I bring my problems up with those who have more, they can't relate, even if they imagine that they're relating. The underlying issue is simply that I have low status and they unconsciously reinforce my lowly position in accordance with their programming. This unconscious programming is the sturdiest cage of them all.
When I started writing seriously ten or fifteen years ago, I initially felt like I was doing it for other people. But I soon realized that the process of writing inevitably revealed my own unconscious programming, laying bare the psychological machinery underneath my habits and motivations. Over the course of years, by painstaking procedures, I modified this machinery to bring my unconscious behavior into better alignment with my conscious aspirations.
After a long time writing for these personal reasons, I started playing around more with writing that was actually for other people. While the topics I covered and the stories I told were varietal, they all contained perspectives that readers were unlikely to have encountered elsewhere. Eventually, as my voice developed, what I intended to use this voice for became more clear. I intended to use it in service to freedom.
That can mean a lot of things. At my news job, it means exposing corruption, freeing readers from mistaken assumptions about how the world works. In my science fiction, it means using storytelling to challenge dominant cultural narratives that keep people trapped in repeating cycles of nonsense. And in general blogging, I demonstrate the exercise of intellectual freedom, even when the result conflicts with the stories that we're told by mainstream press.
Put simply, I write to free us from the cages in our minds. Many other people also write for this purpose, and I'd like to think that all of us together are making a difference. Even if we're not, there's something about the writing process that's inherently freeing. At least, that's been my experience.
___
**Read my novels:**
- **Small Gods of Time Travel** is available as a [web book on IPFS](https://rstory.mypinata.cloud/ipfs/QmVt9kp8CJKwUm2cvD1mhMVtswsdFh3iEH8AFGEUxnrMu1/) and as a 41 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1TJEWFRDcudZYwPVfm2j1HAANen3TL7fof).
- **The Paradise Anomaly** is available in [print via Blurb](https://www.blurb.com/b/10994168-the-paradise-anomaly) and [for Kindle on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NLB95NZ).
- **Psychic Avalanche** is available in [print via Blurb](https://www.blurb.com/b/10891426-psychic-avalanche) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JS6CV9X).
- **One Man Embassy** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9876573-one-man-embassy) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/One-Man-Embassy-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B0836SRC8K).
- **Flying Saucer Shenanigans** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/10002213-flying-saucer-shenanigans) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Flying-Saucer-Shenanigans-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B0863FRJN2).
- **Rainbow Lullaby** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9330918-rainbow-lullaby) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Rainbow-Lullaby-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B07P4MYTGT).
- **The Ostermann Method** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/9660167-the-ostermann-method) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Ostermann-Method-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B07Y6RDTJF).
- **Blue Dragon Mississippi** is available in [print via Blurb](https://blurb.com/b/10192086-blue-dragon-mississippi) and for [Kindle on Amazon](https://amazon.com/Blue-Dragon-Mississippi-Mark-Bailey-ebook/dp/B08C54F99R).
**See my NFTs:**
- **Small Gods of Time Travel** is a 41 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1TJEWFRDcudZYwPVfm2j1HAANen3TL7fof) that goes with my book by the same name.
- **History and the Machine** is a 20 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1KmnSSXykx4SA6pdVVh9PweSqK5tkDRsLX) based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- **Artifacts of Mind Control** is a 15 piece Tezos [NFT collection on Objkt](https://objkt.com/collection/KT1Fc7naXm8XApN1EHoJXkC1Tggv2jK9eeZK) based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
hiveblocks