Everything is Fake

Gempix

In the late 1960's, Philip K. Dick's life was plagued with tax audits from the IRS. Looking back on this period through his writings in the Exegesis, Dick believed that these audits were a result not only from his anti-war stance publicly displayed by signing a petition to end the Vietnam war which was published in Ramparts magazine in 1968, but also possibly from information exacted directly from his writings.

"The Ramparts petition was not Phil's only source of anxiety. He would speculate that somehow, by accident, he had depicted a vital, classified secret in his SF (science fiction) - and had aroused the government's suspicion. The two works Phil most often suspected, in this regard, were The Penultimate Truth (1964) and "Faith of Our Fathers," a story written for Harlan Ellison's SF anthology Dangerous Visions (1967)."
                                                            - Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin

This is extremely interesting as PKD often thought and stated that instead of having the ability to see into the future, he was actually seeing the now of other parallel universes. With that in mind, what exactly were these two works about that had him believing that the government was harassing him.

Both works dealt with fake worlds, fake government/leaders, in short, fake everything - a simulated reality perpetrated on the populace.

Penultimate Truth, Philip K. Dick, 1st edition

The Penultimate Truth deals with a U.S. President that is actually a computer generated simulcrum. The simulation is programmed by "Yance-men", elite controllers who conspire to keep the earth's wealth for themselves meanwhile cordoning off the general populace in underground shelters living in fear of perpetual war above ground.

In "Faith of Our Fathers", PKD writes about a U.S. now in a Chinese type communist government with the population kept docile by hallucinogenic drugs added to the water supply. The protagonist, Chien, buys an illegal drug which is actually an anti-hallucinogen (stealazine) and after ingesting it, can then see a completely horrific reality - one in which the government leader is actually a godlike, alien demiurge that preys on all living things.

This story was published in 1967 and predates both "They Live" and "The Matrix" and also predates PKD's involvement in gnosticism. The gnostics believed this world to be a fake world ruled not by the true God but by a demiurge or evil low life force which drains and cannibalizes all living things. 

Of course, Plato had a similar idea in his Allegory of the Caves with which PKD was most likely familiar and now some scientists contend that the universe is most likely a computer generated simulation. 

Is Our Universe Fake?


Still with a majority of PKD's writings to be about fake worlds, it is mind-blowing that he firmly believed that the government was harrassing him possibly because of one or both of these two works. With that thought I will leave you with a video which, IMHO, is really about a man who is trying to prove that another man is a fake (most likely a hologram - notice how the man in white never even turns his head - hmmmm). Take from it what you will....