Is it possible for one to have a conspiracy within oneself? I do not mean some kind of external conspiracy, although I will not rule one out--I simply mean that there is a part of the brain, or an unconscious part of oneself that steers one toward some kind of end that one is not aware of. It could feed the conscious mind with a random thought, or a strange inclination to do something that one did not previously have the desire to do. It could put subtexts into one's writing, or cause one to add little embellishments to one's writing that one had no conscious thought of adding. Perhaps it is a conspiracy in the brain perpetuated by one's true desires.

There is a video game that is considered one of the greatest video games of all time by many called Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The main enemy that one faces is Dracula, a character who is based upon the legends and fiction that cropped up around a human being named Vlad Tepes Dracula, who commited murder and sadistic acts on levels that are so unbelievable that his fictional demeanor as a vampire is completely tame compared to his actual, historical actions (which included lining up and impaling thousands of people along a roadside, and that is only one of many atrocities he is known for).

However, there is a quote by him in the English version (lifted from French writer André Malraux) which has been mocked by the type of gamers who seem reluctant to find anything intellectually edifying in a video game, where he says:


Is this mocked because it is true, and there is some sort of conspiracy against introspection about the secrets that may dwell within oneself? One can dismiss it as trite, but if one cringes at it, does one know why one cringes? If one does not know why one cringes, is one perhaps confirming the quote? It seems like the kind of thing that one would dismiss as pseudo-intellectual, if one did not like it. Is the conspiracy deep within oneself causing one to laugh, so as to hide itself?

Surely, the voice acting in the scene is bad. The presentation is off. But what the quote actually says about the shadowy reasons we come to do what we do, think what we think, and say what we say means that for those who are unaware of how little they know about themselves, it must be endlessly mocked, and must ever be dismissed as unbefitting of the supposedly kitsch medium it's presented in, with nary an iota of introspection given to determine if there is truth in it.

When one gazes into oneself, does one see nothing? A blackness? A black idol that blots out the light of understanding? What is in that darkness? Is it nothingness, or simply a veil that obscures what's hidden in the true self? Can one do anything to overcome said blackness, or is it forever destined to envelop one like a blindfold that one can not take off?

Could the fact that the line is delivered by Dracula, who is considered to be the embodiment of evil in the game, make one wonder if the people who are considered to be the most evil know something about what motivates both themselves and other humans that those who purport to be good do not know? Are there some things lost within oneself, some tendencies hidden from the conscious mind, their loss caused by a pretense of goodness?

Perhaps, when something about oneself is considered unacceptable, one piles a lie or a darkness upon it, and then when this ceases to be sufficient to hide the truth, a bigger lie is piled upon the first, and at some point one has so many lies piled up about oneself in one's mind that one has forgotten who they truly are.

Perhaps, those who are considered to be the most evil, the most monstrous people that the human race has produced, do not have this pile of secrets, and even though we associate them with darkness, it is because if we find these tendencies within ourselves, we blot them out with some kind of black ink of the soul, when the most monstrous see themselves with a certain pernicious light.

So, what piles lie upon lie within ourselves? What blots out the beast within, the animal that desires to do what is considered wrong? Perhaps, it is the belief that we are good that causes us to act without indulging these tendencies, when nothing could be further from the truth.