If nothing else, events of recent months and years have shown us to be rather fragile of mind, spirit, spine, and character. But, maybe it’s not that simple.
I look around at new parents with their little children, and wonder how far we are from making the little ones wear helmets while taking a bath. More laws have been enacted for any number of otherwise frivolous, childish inanity – and petty squabbling – than fully functioning adults could ever need in order to know how to act and behave in a society.
Cameras are on every street corner, every playground and school, in every business, mounted on every door, mirror, bumper, and fender of cars, and, of course, every “smart” phone and device has numerous cameras and microphones. We can track and trace anyone, anywhere. We document every little thing and share it on social media. We are utterly and completely shameless and vain, yet concurrently, we have – at the behest of an unconscious obsession with technology, Science, and industry – suppressed, stagnated and stifled our soul.
Over my lifetime I’ve seen society place more and more emphasis on safety, security, and risk reduction. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised – behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on. Writ large, it takes the form of the security state.
Over the last year or so, mass media and the medical mafia have convinced us (after decades of persistent propaganda and brainwashing) that an invisible, unknown, and constantly mutating pathogen was wreaking havoc across the world… that it would spare no soul, if they didn’t cover their faces, keep their distance, sequester themselves, shop only at Costco and Walmart, and be willing to submit to planetary-scale, novel, unproven, deadlier-than-the-threat medical experimentation… for our safety.
Why is that vicious program hard to understand? Because most people are not independent-minded. They have no history of thinking beyond prescribed borders, on their own, with no concern about consensus.
Therefore, they believe “a little bit of fascism” might be good for us. It isn’t that far from their own ideas and opinions.
It has been quite a disturbing treat to see it all unfold in real-time. I myself was even afraid for a short moment, not of an alleged virus, but of how quickly and completely the hearts and minds of the general population were taken over. It’s like we were waiting for this to happen to us, perhaps even asking for it.
All at once, all of our quiet desperation, fears, worries, latent anxieties and concerns were fueled, concentrated and magnificently focused. Across all walks of life, all over the world, this alleged pandemic took front and center, bringing along with it, and blasting an intense spotlight upon, our values, beliefs, ignorance, entitlement, pride, prejudice, and arrogance.
The mantra “safety first” comes from a value system that makes survival top priority, and that depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of limits. Other cultures had different priorities. For instance, many traditional and indigenous cultures are much less protective of children, as documented in Jean Liedloff’s classic, The Continuum Concept. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement. I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Thus we have a medical system in which most decisions are based on calculations of risk, and in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician’s ultimate failure, is death. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed.
Charles Eisenstein
What other option did we have but to (let them) shut everything down?
The question is a layered challenge, and demands of us a shift in perspective to a deeper and broader scope than this single, yet monumental event presents for us: the narrative, reaction, and response to covid is a critical mass tipping point, that has laid bare the underbelly of the present human condition; the unseen, or ignored vulnerability that has been churning, simmering and building pressure for over a century. It behooves us, this generation – that perhaps has been at least partially jolted awake – to glean and gain every iota of learning and understanding we can from the opportunity that has been so presently offered.
Mass insanity comes from the denial of what everyone knows is true. Every human being knows, if only unconsciously, that we are not the roles and personae we occupy in the cultural drama of life. We know the rules of society are arbitrary, set up so that the show can be played out to its conclusion. It is not insane to enter this show, to strut and fret one’s hour upon the stage. Like an actor in a movie, we can devotedly play our roles in life. But when the actor forgets he is acting and loses himself so fully in his role that he cannot get out of it, mistaking the movie for reality, that’s psychosis. Without respite from the conventions of the social order and without respite from our roles within it, we go crazy as well.
From a medical and health perspective, we have for generations been indoctrinated and programmed into believing fearfully in the weak, fragile human body, and ultimately, we are terrified of our mortality. We’re not only health conscious, but we’re health paranoid. We’re the most medicated generation in history, so it’s not too hard of a sell to get most everyone on board with an allegedly new, dastardly, deadly threat.
From a psychological perspective, it seems evident that some level of mass psychosis has been bubbling and stewing just below the collective surface. Inevitably, it could no longer be ignored, unapologetically bursting onto the scene, shattering and transmuting our common sensing, subsuming our capacity for reason and logic, expressing itself instead as widespread, paranoia and animalistic hysteria.
Have we succumbed to this slow-burn to madness because of some unmet philosophical, spiritual, psychological or long-term emotional need? Is non-stop, repetitive, mind control programming, and triggering mass media really so effective at influencing and controlling our fundamental beliefs and behaviors?
Are we so afraid of pain and death that we’ll spare no expense nor method of protecting, sterilizing, isolating, distancing and shielding ourselves from one another? From any possible injury? From any and all hurt feelings? From any threats, whether real or perceived?
What totalitarian societies, traditional antifestivals, and Covid lockdowns have in common is a reflex of control. This reflex meets any failure of control with more of it. When herbicide-resistant weeds appear, the solution is a new herbicide. When immigrants cross the border, we build a wall. When a school shooter gets into a locked school building, we fortify it further. When germs develop resistance to antibiotics, we develop new and stronger ones. When masks fail to stop the spread of covid, we wear two. When our taboos fail to keep evil at bay, we redouble them. The controlling mind foresees a paradise in which every action and every object is monitored, labeled, and controlled. There will be no room for any bad thing to exist. Nothing and no one will be out of place. Every action will be authorized. Everyone will be safe.
Our children will be carrying onward from what we today decide is to be normal, functional, necessary, healthy, true, empowering, valuable, important and essential to a life well lived. It demands of us a discernment that transcends the trends, fads, and artifices of illusory needs and concerns, fomented by ubiquitous mass media propaganda and product marketing.
Make no mistake, they’re being programmed and conditioned, right now, by our actions, our words, our compromises, politics, fears, beliefs, and feelings.
The world at large is the black mirror for our inceptions, intentions, expectations, and projections. If we believe it is safe to trust in the fantastic web of overreaching control and coercion achieved by today’s increasingly technocratic, tyrannical governments, we’ll likely be less and less able to trust ourselves about anything.
Solvitur ambulando