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from The Matrix
Español
September 7, 2025
by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher
The Matrix, introduced many of us to Gnosticism, an ancient philosophy. Gnosticism holds that we are trapped in a nightmarish dream, a pseudo-reality, while our actual being remains unknown to us.
Complexity is one of the tricks that keep us trapped. So, let's make it simple.
I am a community organizer. You know Lokkal as a local online event calendar and magazine. But Lokkal's larger platform and purpose is as an online digital town square: a local social network (like Facebook) and a local search engine (like Google) just for San Miguel.
As a community organizer, creating a non-profit, local internet channel, I reach out to a lot of people who are also serving the local community. My pitch is togetherness, strength in numbers. If all the residents of San Miguel make our own publicity platform, we can all get more for less, and keep a huge amount of money circulating locally instead of letting globalists (Facebook, Google...) extract this wealth from our community: It's an information economy; let's control our information.
from The Matrix
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It seems simple enough to me, but, as I say, apparent complexity keeps us trapped.
One of my difficulties in communicating Lokkal's vision is that I am talking about something that does not yet exist (or exists only skeletally, only here in San Miguel). Such breakthrough projects have a name, Blue Ocean Strategies. The name refers to the ocean before it turns red, with sharks drawing blood while fighting each other for the same market.
PayPal, the first online payment platform, was a Blue Ocean Strategy. Cirque du Soleil, combining theater and circus under a big top was another. JetBlue was another, allowing corporations to rent a private jet to save the time and money (hotel rentals, meals, etc.) involved with commercial flights.
Lokkal; local, public internet; crowd-sourcing, Collective Human Intelligence, is another breakthrough project. "Thank you, Big Tech, but we don't need your algorithm. We will present our own city to the planet" ...and we will do it better than you can remotely, even with all your AI and money.
Cirque du Soleil
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Lokkal's event calendar and magazine are flying along, higher and faster. However, my quest to get the larger platform (local social network, local search engine) off the ground is another story.
I have been especially frustrated by my inability to convince one particular community organizer to come aboard. This person, a Mexican man we'll call G, has extensive connections in the community, and really needs to change his life. Facing a series of personal difficulties and in the midst of delivering a major project, he told me a few weeks ago that he was having a very bad episode of colitis. I wrote back:
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I have a homeopathic remedy for you- "Nux vomica individuals may exhibit a driven, ambitious nature. They may have a tendency to work long hours and experience stress-related symptoms... especially digestive."
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Ha, ha, ha! That is a picture of me! You just described me to a T!
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I had a patient who sold furniture. He was such a good salesman that they made him a partner in the business. The stress got to him, and he developed pain in his abdomen. Irritable bowel, colitis, Crohn's disease, they give it a lot of names. But whatever you call it, symptomatically it all presents much the same way.
He had been treated with oral steroids for years. A year and a half before he came to see me, the oral steroids weren't enough. Things got worse, and they began using intravenous steroids. Things improved for a while and then got worse. They operated and cut out a section of his intestine.
Shortly before he came to see me the same thing happened again: he got worse; they went to intravenous steroids; things improved for a while and then got worse. The doctors scheduled another surgery. While waiting for that surgery, he came to see me.
I gave him Nux vomica. The abdominal pain went away, almost immediately. When he went in for his preoperative colonoscopy the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. He didn't have the operation. I practiced for many years after that, and I never heard from him again.
That was my most dramatic such case, but it is just one case. Nux vomica is famous. Every homeopath has got many stories about Nux vomica curing irritable bowel, colitis, Crohn's and many other milder digestive upsets, especially when associated with stress.
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In the same chat, I told G where he could get some Nux vomica. And that, I thought, was that. But some time later, when I asked G how he was doing, he wrote back:
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Unfortunately, I am not doing better, but neither have I done anything much about it. I never got the Nux vomica. I'm terrible at taking care of myself. I can't go on living like this.
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Getting back to the Matrix, even if it is difficult to imagine the whole of life as a Gnostic nightmare, we can concede that in some specific regards we might be trapped by limited thinking.
I wrote back to G:
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If we were working together, and you invested into Lokkal one quarter the amount of energy you're putting into developing your project, you would get four times as much money and 20 times the amount of goodwill and prestige in the community. But until you learn to take better care of yourself, that won't happen. And that's funny because learning to take better care of yourself is the easiest thing in the world.
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Cirque du Soleil
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Now, I must confess that I also have trouble taking care of myself. For instance, I need to take more breaks while I am working (and I am working all the time), to get up from the computer more: to drink when I am thirsty, to eat when I am hungry, to stretch my body and rest my eyes. Just now I did, and while I was eating the grapes I brought back from the kitchen it occurred to me, once again, that we notice most what applies to our own situation: I experience and am frustrated by G not taking care of himself (not taking the opportunity I am offering him) because I need to be more open to taking better care of myself.
And that's another Gnostic truth: there is, beyond this false world, a benevolent divine force giving us clues to help us wake up from the Matrix. In some very real sense, whether we like it or not, the Universe gives us what we need.
When I am more open to taking better care of myself, G or someone with G's skill set will arrive to help. Then a critical mass (3.5%) of us will come together, merging the community online and off. Then we will exit the Matrix, turning this Gnostic hellscape of poverty, fear, ignorance and violence towards abundance, love, wisdom and peace.
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"In the film The Matrix, the main character Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill by rebel leader Morpheus (played by Laurence Fishburne). Morpheus says 'You take the blue pill... the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill... you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.'"
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Lokkal, a healthier, community-based, public internet is the medicine. Take the red pill.
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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, public internet, building community, strengthening the local economy. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.
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