I recall Terry Gilliam saying (on a Criterion or Blu Ray or some shit) that the premise for Brazil is that for one man to pull himself free of the Machine of Society is to lose his mind.

The film presents us with a Society filled with meaningless, time-consuming jobs and meaningless rules and bureaucracy, a soulless inhuman cage of mazes in which people simply fill the time hoping to avoid attention or notice because attention or notice causes the System to squash you like a bug.

So much of what we do for money is ultimately the ouroboros - the snake eating its own tail - as we get up and shower, travel to a place of business that exists solely to make profit, drudge through our day (or actively engage in the corporate ladder opportunities as they become available) only to make enough money to pay rent on property owned by someone else, eat food at inflated prices filled with crap, and then watch shows designed almost entirely to run advertisements in order to sell you more shit you do not need. Yeah. Long fucking sentence. And it IS a sentence we are enduring.

What does it take to lose one's mind?

What does it take to wake up from the stupor?

How do you pull yourself free from the Machine and still manage to survive?

No. I'm not suggesting that anyone necessarily runs off into the desert and live off of dead scorpions and cactus juice. I'm not suggesting that because the Catch-22 to this odd Society we live in is that I like running water available on demand, I like the internet and having that apartment that I pay too much for, I like Hot Pockets and Macaroni and Cheese and beer. The cheese at the end of the maze is still fucking cheese, yes?

I suppose I am suggesting that instead of losing one's mind, one needs to erase the indoctrination that dictates that most of the beauracracy and rules and constructs of this Society are necessary or for our best interest. Erase the ideas that race is a divisive element. Eliminate the stained ideals of religion and fear and the the completely bankrupt concept that anything in this life is permanent.

I'm suggesting that most people don't give a shit about anything about you except for what you can DO for them. That DOING for other people is a strange key that unlocks your insanity.

The past 2,000 years or so has systematically taught us to be afraid to live - to be ashamed of our bodies, to avoid any possible danger, to put helmets on our kids and not let them talk to strangers, to be afraid of sex, to fear our police and military, to fear other countries, to buy lots of duct tape and sunblock and run from bees.  We are taught to fear each other.  That we need to get into the maze and compete with each other for that one fucking piece of cheese.  But there is cheese for everyone.

When you can see that there is reward for every human on the planet, that no one earns what was already right there, that no one deserves more or less than anyone else, then you will have pulled yourself free of the Machine and like Neo in the Matrix, work within to change the rules.

There is cheese for everyone.