I laud your approach and totally agree with your eloquent identification of the main problem, but the main problem I see and have with that main problem/these people is that the people I know personally who swallowed these lies, actively discriminated against the unvaxxed or never and still don't raise a peep about it, are people who are well educated professionals, deem themselves to be either progressive or conservative but always liberal and very tolerant, were raised with knowledge and conscience about their own country's history and atrocities and continuously blurped 'my body, my choice' or 'never again' or 'could not have happened here' or 'I would have been in the resistance'.
And I see absolutely no personal admission of their errors, let alone apologies, self-criticism, shame or guilt with them.
To the contrary, they are either doubling down on their self-righteousness and vileness, like all their high-priests do, or they are staying apathetic.
So, needless to say, it is more difficult for me than for you to prevent my anger from becoming hate, although my primary feeling and action towards them really is 'just' contempt, and I am much more sceptical than you about a positive development or solution and about preventing a repeat.
My focus is therefore just on getting closer to like-minded people and on living my life so that I am least impacted by them and by businesses and the state's restrictions, primarily hoping for niches of freedom and sanity to remain, live in and support. In short:
Thanks. I appreciate the essay. I suspect much of the critical feedback you receive has a lot to do with the rawness of all things Covid and so depending on who and where one is in grasping the last couple years - piggybacked on decades leading up to it - is fully related to what degree have you been red pilled so it's hard to focus on elements of the story and attempt rational analysis. It's still ongoing, it's disorienting and traumatizing and those behind it are not done. So, my point is, it's gonna trigger. For some time. And we still don't know enough. So balanced and sane in the midst of upside-down, inside-out, feels... maybe too soon. Too polite. Outrage still feels more appropriate to me, but you can't do that all day. I don't know. I appreciate the thoughtfulness.
I got together with our friends Madhava Setty and Josh Mitteldorf yesterday for a lively and wide ranging chat. Madhava mentioned that one of his pieces for CHD that was gently and factually critical of a popular alternative health expert was among the most commented upon pieces he’d posted. 90% negative. His point in the article was that our counterclaims to the deceits being foisted upon us by the CDC need to be strong and grounded in fact. Stronger, actually, because we are the dissenting voices.
I appreciate so much the work you both are doing. We will need voices of peace more than ever in the coming days. I suspect we all feel the groundswell coming. Sri Lanka... Netherlands... people anchored in material reality are pushing back now en masse. The container has become too tight. We need bridge builders and weavers now more than ever.
IMHO it's never going to stop. They've cashed in on something so powerful - even the threat of a nuclear bomb will not return people to reality. The cause? The cell phones. Every single person is addicted to them. It's worse and more lethal than every other addition combined. That's how they got away with all of it. Not only is it a deliberate an intentional diversion, it's an dumbing down of the entire world. One has to assume this can be easily solidified where cell phones don't exist.
People now live in a world completely devoid of all reality! Just walk the streets and look how people are dressed and NOT THINK to yourself - you can't possibly, possibly be serious? It's not about lack of class or intelligence but rather a taking over of society! Worse than a plague. The fact of the matter is everyone suffers from addiction! People think drugs and alcohol - food and gambling. The entire time they can't LIVE without their phones. They spend more time with them then they they do working!
They now live in a world of delusion! It worked - it was deliberate. You can't bring these people back. The only way possible is to destroy the cell phones. Everywhere you go they have them in their hand. Politicians, celebrities everyone!! They won there's no coming back from this - the force is to strong. The narcissism is epidemic.
There is no denying the injections are killing more people than covid ever did or will and still NOTHING! Parents grandparents husbands and wives were brutally murdered by denying them early treatment and lying to them and still no outrage! How is it possible? What could possibly take precedence or be more important? That would be narcissism fueled by the phones and of course social media. It's truly sad what's going to happen all because of it. Thinking it's going to change or stop is a pipe dream. You can't beat this. I think that's that's why there's never been a cyber attack.
Catherine Austin Fitts has quite a following of intellectuals. She too concurs the cell phones are causing the destruction and added only 10% of her audience watches TV!
I just want to say I appreciate and support your allowing yourself to stay "centered" (or "present") in the manner in which you describe, especially in the face of any criticism you may receive. Your posts ALWAYS cause me to think, feel, and re-evaluate and expand my perspectives. While I don't always entirely agree with your reasoning and or conclusions, I respect your intellect, honesty, and compassion. I have made great strides in giving up "hate." While I agree that "anger" can be a sacred force, a response to boundary violation, it serves me well to always examine the anger and the part in it that my own biases may play. Feeling violated is not always the same as being violated. Being lied to is, of course, a violation of the boundary of trust. The most difficult struggle for me is sifting through all of the data, determining what I believe to be true, and then asking the right questions to clarify what indeed may be true or not. This requires much thought and effort. Discernment is a tricky business. What is the motivation of someone who seems to be lying? What is it like to be that person? All of these along with other questions and insights you have shared belong in the mix.
My own journey throughout the COVID pandemic has been just part of an overall fully "letting go" of trust in institutions that I always believed were there to serve us all. It has required me to go inward and examine who I am, why I am here, and what I want to manifest as reality in this world. While I believe Compassion is the key ingredient, I am learning the hard work and continued re-evaluation of "reality" as I see it that is required.
The current paradigm of how we relate to one another in society clearly is not mitigating most of the conflicts we face. As you have said many times in many ways, the model of "us" or "them" that is exacerbated by some individuals and by much of the media does not serve the collective very well.
One of my favorite quotes from BF -
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
Thank you again, for all your efforts to raise human consciousness and facilitate what we all wish to manifest as "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible." And thank you for continuing to share new tools for my personal expansion of perspective and reality.
This is a beautiful and awful understanding: “A population dispossessed of its spiritual sovereignty can be made to believe any absurdity.”
I am so grateful that the inversion of reality in late winter of 2020 forced me to reckon with the resource anchor, to use Tara Brach’s phrase, of my own intuition.
But help me understand a question that troubles me: Can a spiritual sovereign being enjoy dark humor? This sounds trite, but it’s not, to me. The art that vibrates the deepest chords of my soul is dark, aching, ironic, and absurd (not all at the same time:) I often find that people who are on this journey to transcend the “menu,” and who are cognizant of the programming, don’t enjoy dark music and humor. Did the British wit come from the loss of belief, and is it possible to retain the wit while regaining the belief? Can God listen to Gillian Welch and laugh at Ricky Gervais? I think of Townes Van Zandt saying, “there are two kinds of music: the blues, and zippadeedoodah.”
Where does irreverence belong in a joyful and reverent world?
For myself Charles , what have I learned ? I described to you in the last post how difficult my choices were . Certainly I was very much convinced by the science , if I’m honest it’s because when your son has a machine in his chest that keeps him alive you tend to have to have “ a rock to cling to “ . However what has been revealed in the Pandemic is the somewhat clumsy and not so “ deviously clever “ manipulations of the characters you mentioned ie Swabb , Gates , Biden and co . This is the difficulty and useful “ non - cohesion “ that a nefarious cabal displays , at the end of the day each of them is scrambling for the bigger cut or “ big dog” , the behaviour of a uncooperative pack
. I asked you also in one of my responses how we discern truth ,? indeed I do find some of the science from an anti vaxx perspective to be crowd sourced and I’m also shudder at the nomination through the term sheep . As a clinician it is important for me to have good data but also that I remain open minded in how I work with articles papers etc . Flexible and open is a true path of science . Indeed however as these global characters peel away their disguises , one can’t help but see the “ gargoyles “ that emerge so one is directed to find truth . The data sets are getting larger and certainly more representative of global nuance in terms of geography , however like a child with a lost parent I see now we cannot trust the intentions of these global planners , this is not limited to the Pandemic , there’s the War ,the food crisis and I guess more to come . So part of truth is -“ who is telling you the story “ not necessarily what they are saying .
When I spent some serious time last summer meditating on just why I was so opposed to getting any CV19 vaccine, I surprised myself when I went to record my answer for my podcast and began pondering "the ends justify the means" and that iconic phrase supposedly from a Vietnam War era military commander, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Thus, I was very pleased to learn this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin---indeed, we never do reach those ends, do we? These ends are always the Promised Land, just around the bend... I believe one of our psychological invitations from the leap into the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is to recognize that the means create the ends, that HOW we live and behave determines what kind of society we live in.
This is as eloquent, balanced, thorough, and (dare I say 'forgiving') a peek down the rabbit hole as I have read, and especially over the last couple of years, I've read a lot. Bravo Charles. More than a cut above my pay grade.
I began reading philosophy of science, and then philosophy 'proper' back in the mid 70's as an undergrad to find my own personal ground of sanity to stand on. Like the wild side of a mandelbrot set gone mad, I'm seeing in your essay, Charles, a fractal of myself, and something I once read by Gandhi ... education (as opposed to job training) as the constant process of discovering what it means to be human.
But as much as I admire Ursula K. Le Guin (big influence on the Studio Ghibli brand over here in Japan), there is something troubling about that opening quote ... ''The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end?''
Metaphysically, I can fully agree with the quote. T.S. Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' lays out a very good argument that contrary to Bertrand Russell's flippant dismissal of traditional religion as 'turtles, all the way down' ... it is probably true for even the mathematical rigor of physics. Mathematical models, though sometimes predictive, are also either provisional or parochial metaphors. If we live long enough as a species, I can imagine a future generation looking back on us and our 'planck unit' or 'spooky action at a distances' as quaint metaphors, similar to the way we might judge the 1803 Dalton model of the atom.
But no end to human nature? Maybe because my undergrad was in biology, I try my best to avoid a reductionist view of human nature. And maybe being the permanent outsider, the 'professional foreigner' in Japan Inc. for 40 years has colored my opinion of what it means to be human. I'm certain it has. But with one foot in the Far East, one in the West, one in the natural sciences, one in the liberal arts ... I can't help but to see something (or maybe 'sense' is a better word?) fundamental to human nature, something that does have an end. It might be as simple as Schopenhauer's 'will to power', or more profanely 'the law of the jungle'.
By temperament, I want to believe in the Platonic ideals of 'the good', 'the true', and 'the beautiful' as something we are all capable of finding on the altruistic end our moral bell curve. But persistence of dark-triad behavior traits at every level of social organization, from the nuclear family to a new world order, whispers to me that collectively, we may be incapable of learning from the past. Those dark-triads, Susan Sontag's 'cruel 10%' — the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us — will, as you point out, arise to replace the Gates, Schwabs, and Zuckerbergs of this world.
But what if there is no system or sustainable heuristics that will allow us to prevent these destructive behaviors from periodically rising to sociopathic levels? What if self-destruction is built into the advantages of scale? Maybe there is something to that quote ... 'Quantity has a quality all its own.' But what if that quality expands so far away from the empathetic roots of our morality, that it is self-destructively 'bad'?
Exploring the moral implications of exceeding Dunbar's number, or by-passing our mirror neurons through the Trolley Car problem are good openings into questions without end. I don't have good answers to those questions. There might not even be good answers or solutions. But from experience and observation, I suspect there is an 'end', or rather a 'constraint' on what it means to be human ... some kind of existential limit grounded in our biology.
Perhaps the collective failure to learn from the past is what drives us to imaginative worlds without end. But the time and resources to dream, and share those dreams, or even take the time to understand them ... are limited to those who have the luxury of freedom from living at the edge as a wage-slave.
Will end my own navel gazing for the moment with another familiar quote regarding ends. ''Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?' — Robert Browning.
No answers here Charles, but gratitude for your craftsmanship of thought, and your moral thrust. I will be passing your essay on to a few friends who I'm sure will likewise be inspired and motivated by your essay.
I think that stopping people (or statistics) from lying is unlikely, at least not anytime soon. And I’m not convinced that’s even a good thing. If people stop lying, we’d never have the opportunity to learn inner discernment. Plus, relying on others to change their behavior puts us in the position of victim as we project our power outwards onto them, rather than empowering outselves.
How about using our own inner guidance to discern truth, to know when a person or document is lying? Isn’t that part of the whole Cosmic Covid Experiment, to encourage people to withdraw a little from the outer world in order to find the Truth within?
We certainly have some examples… How do mothers know when their kids are lying? Even though we don’t have the best vocabulary to explain this, it clearly happens, as moms and kids are well aware. Some call it “women’s intuition” as if that is a mystical phenomenon…but it actually is just about being in touch with one’s subtle inner guidance in order to discern the vibration of Truth. Mostly, at least for me, this inner guidance doesn’t come in words, but in feelings - a sensing in the gut, or in the heart. Practices like yoga or meditation can help people be more consciously receptive of their own deeper knowledge.
I think I read between your lines that our innate guidance system is the most effective way “to immunize we the people against future fascistic exploitation” or any kind of personal or societal exploitation, and is the antidote to “a population dispossessed of its spiritual sovereignty"...
It occurs to me that this journey to understanding the more subtle Truths within might be the next step in evolution.
I continue to marvel at how clear and soulful your perception and insights continue to be in the face of the atrocities unfolding. My tendency to become numb and shut down is challenged whenever I read your posts. You are regularly able to reawaken my humanity, compassion and intellect so that I can survive to fight another day. You are such a pure enlightened wise man who, more than any other person, somehow gives me hope, against all my cynicism and despair. Now, to act on what you are sharing.
When they first started talking about the new MRNA COVID shots (they are not vaccines, as we later found out), and then got emergency authority from FDA to start jabbing everyone, I did all the research I could to find out what was in them, whether they were actually effective, and whether they were safe. It quickly became clear that: 1) safety was not known, as the clinical trials most vaccines have to go through were completely bypassed; 2) no real data on effectiveness, either (in terms of preventing infection with COVID, and preventing vaccinated individuals from transmitting COVID. The only thing they said they "knew" was that the shot could reduce severity of symptoms in some individuals, particularly those with comorbidities; and 3) the whole notion that, through use of messenger RNA we could teach our bodies to produce a protein that would trigger an immune response, was completely unproven and experimental. With this information, NOT getting the shot quickly became a no-brainer for me. I do not authorize any medical procedure on my body until I fully understand both the (potential) benefits and the risks. Since there was no solid information on potential benefits (particularly for someone like me, who is in good health, with no comorbidities), and there CLEARLY WERE BIG RISKS in taking the shot, I knew I did not want it. Fortunately, I had retired from my job (federal govt) a few years before COVID came along. Had I still been working, I would have been FORCED to get the shot, against my will, or resign (after 20-some years of service). That is an absolute outrage. I still cannot believe all of the (supposedly intelligent) people I know that all lined up like sheep to get their shots, without hesitation. By the way, I did come down with COVID, later in 2020. Had a relatively mild sickness for 5-6 days, then recovered. Based on the reputable studies I have read (dozens of them), I now have natural immunity that is very likely to be long-lasting. The CDC keeps warning me that I need the shot, because natural immunity is not as good as the shot. That was when I knew they were absolutely LYING. I am not aware of any viral disease in history where a vaccine was superior to natural immunity from a prior infection. CDC cited one flawed study (from Kentucky, as I recall), with just a few participants, to support their claim, which was laughable. Clearly, CDC and the other public health authorities are being controlled by outside forces here..........most likely Big Pharma. Money and the drive for profits drives everything in America, and the OBSCENE profits that Big Pharma has made from these shots is enough to make me sick. And they have complete protection from liability, should anyone get sick and/or die from the shots (and many clearly have). What a great deal for them! My eyes have been opened as a result of this whole outrageous experience with COVID and the shots. Any trust I had in the health authorities (and most govt. officials) is gone, and cannot be restored easily. I'm just glad I was skeptical enough at the beginning to do my own research, and hold off on having anything done to my body until I understood what was going on here.
I've been wondering if it's possible to re-frame the narrative, in a way that accurately depicts the main transgressions (which is putting it mildly) by the authorities, without letting cognitive dissonance and knee-jerk denialism take root. I'm thinking of this specifically in terms of the general populace who will often (privately) acknowledge something is not right, but have a firm desire to not look deeper into the problem. I can understand that mentality, but it's unacceptable at this point in the saga, and I feel like a solution (other than exiting and building parallel societies) needs to still be pursued. I would view this attempted re-frame as a gentle push, rather than coddling a willful ignorance. But I'm also not sure this re-framing is even possible, given the scope of the deceit you eloquently laid out.
Thank you for staying grounded in the center, Charles. And for pointing out the "avatar" status of figureheads like Klaus and Gates. Removing them from position of authority will not simply remove the root of the problem, rather only obfuscate it even more.
If anyone wants an eye and mind-opening read check out Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World and Dispelling Wetiko: Dispelling The Curse of Evil both by Paul Levy. Finished the first book in three days and am blazing through the second book now. I think what Charles is really getting at in these essays is that each one of us needs to do our shadow work. When we take responsibility for our ability to perpetrate evil (and I am speaking of anything that comes from a place of separation: of an ego island that is not connected to others and life), then we can better discern the evil out in the world. But until we are fully aware of our shadow, we will be projecting it onto others which makes us very susceptible to fear, propaganda, lies, and mind control. Instead of othering people, it really is time for each of us to understand the role we are playing in the perpetuation of this evil in the first place. How did humanity attract this evil? How did our world get to this point of multiple crises? If we don't get to the root of the problem, we will just re-create more of the same (what we have been doing for thousands of years), but we don't have thousands of years to raise our consciousness now. We have mere decades...maybe...if we don't nuke ourselves first.
I laud your approach and totally agree with your eloquent identification of the main problem, but the main problem I see and have with that main problem/these people is that the people I know personally who swallowed these lies, actively discriminated against the unvaxxed or never and still don't raise a peep about it, are people who are well educated professionals, deem themselves to be either progressive or conservative but always liberal and very tolerant, were raised with knowledge and conscience about their own country's history and atrocities and continuously blurped 'my body, my choice' or 'never again' or 'could not have happened here' or 'I would have been in the resistance'.
And I see absolutely no personal admission of their errors, let alone apologies, self-criticism, shame or guilt with them.
To the contrary, they are either doubling down on their self-righteousness and vileness, like all their high-priests do, or they are staying apathetic.
So, needless to say, it is more difficult for me than for you to prevent my anger from becoming hate, although my primary feeling and action towards them really is 'just' contempt, and I am much more sceptical than you about a positive development or solution and about preventing a repeat.
My focus is therefore just on getting closer to like-minded people and on living my life so that I am least impacted by them and by businesses and the state's restrictions, primarily hoping for niches of freedom and sanity to remain, live in and support. In short:
"May the bridges I burn light the way."
Thanks. I appreciate the essay. I suspect much of the critical feedback you receive has a lot to do with the rawness of all things Covid and so depending on who and where one is in grasping the last couple years - piggybacked on decades leading up to it - is fully related to what degree have you been red pilled so it's hard to focus on elements of the story and attempt rational analysis. It's still ongoing, it's disorienting and traumatizing and those behind it are not done. So, my point is, it's gonna trigger. For some time. And we still don't know enough. So balanced and sane in the midst of upside-down, inside-out, feels... maybe too soon. Too polite. Outrage still feels more appropriate to me, but you can't do that all day. I don't know. I appreciate the thoughtfulness.
I got together with our friends Madhava Setty and Josh Mitteldorf yesterday for a lively and wide ranging chat. Madhava mentioned that one of his pieces for CHD that was gently and factually critical of a popular alternative health expert was among the most commented upon pieces he’d posted. 90% negative. His point in the article was that our counterclaims to the deceits being foisted upon us by the CDC need to be strong and grounded in fact. Stronger, actually, because we are the dissenting voices.
I appreciate so much the work you both are doing. We will need voices of peace more than ever in the coming days. I suspect we all feel the groundswell coming. Sri Lanka... Netherlands... people anchored in material reality are pushing back now en masse. The container has become too tight. We need bridge builders and weavers now more than ever.
IMHO it's never going to stop. They've cashed in on something so powerful - even the threat of a nuclear bomb will not return people to reality. The cause? The cell phones. Every single person is addicted to them. It's worse and more lethal than every other addition combined. That's how they got away with all of it. Not only is it a deliberate an intentional diversion, it's an dumbing down of the entire world. One has to assume this can be easily solidified where cell phones don't exist.
People now live in a world completely devoid of all reality! Just walk the streets and look how people are dressed and NOT THINK to yourself - you can't possibly, possibly be serious? It's not about lack of class or intelligence but rather a taking over of society! Worse than a plague. The fact of the matter is everyone suffers from addiction! People think drugs and alcohol - food and gambling. The entire time they can't LIVE without their phones. They spend more time with them then they they do working!
They now live in a world of delusion! It worked - it was deliberate. You can't bring these people back. The only way possible is to destroy the cell phones. Everywhere you go they have them in their hand. Politicians, celebrities everyone!! They won there's no coming back from this - the force is to strong. The narcissism is epidemic.
There is no denying the injections are killing more people than covid ever did or will and still NOTHING! Parents grandparents husbands and wives were brutally murdered by denying them early treatment and lying to them and still no outrage! How is it possible? What could possibly take precedence or be more important? That would be narcissism fueled by the phones and of course social media. It's truly sad what's going to happen all because of it. Thinking it's going to change or stop is a pipe dream. You can't beat this. I think that's that's why there's never been a cyber attack.
Catherine Austin Fitts has quite a following of intellectuals. She too concurs the cell phones are causing the destruction and added only 10% of her audience watches TV!
Thanks Charles.
I just want to say I appreciate and support your allowing yourself to stay "centered" (or "present") in the manner in which you describe, especially in the face of any criticism you may receive. Your posts ALWAYS cause me to think, feel, and re-evaluate and expand my perspectives. While I don't always entirely agree with your reasoning and or conclusions, I respect your intellect, honesty, and compassion. I have made great strides in giving up "hate." While I agree that "anger" can be a sacred force, a response to boundary violation, it serves me well to always examine the anger and the part in it that my own biases may play. Feeling violated is not always the same as being violated. Being lied to is, of course, a violation of the boundary of trust. The most difficult struggle for me is sifting through all of the data, determining what I believe to be true, and then asking the right questions to clarify what indeed may be true or not. This requires much thought and effort. Discernment is a tricky business. What is the motivation of someone who seems to be lying? What is it like to be that person? All of these along with other questions and insights you have shared belong in the mix.
My own journey throughout the COVID pandemic has been just part of an overall fully "letting go" of trust in institutions that I always believed were there to serve us all. It has required me to go inward and examine who I am, why I am here, and what I want to manifest as reality in this world. While I believe Compassion is the key ingredient, I am learning the hard work and continued re-evaluation of "reality" as I see it that is required.
The current paradigm of how we relate to one another in society clearly is not mitigating most of the conflicts we face. As you have said many times in many ways, the model of "us" or "them" that is exacerbated by some individuals and by much of the media does not serve the collective very well.
One of my favorite quotes from BF -
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
Thank you again, for all your efforts to raise human consciousness and facilitate what we all wish to manifest as "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible." And thank you for continuing to share new tools for my personal expansion of perspective and reality.
This is a beautiful and awful understanding: “A population dispossessed of its spiritual sovereignty can be made to believe any absurdity.”
I am so grateful that the inversion of reality in late winter of 2020 forced me to reckon with the resource anchor, to use Tara Brach’s phrase, of my own intuition.
But help me understand a question that troubles me: Can a spiritual sovereign being enjoy dark humor? This sounds trite, but it’s not, to me. The art that vibrates the deepest chords of my soul is dark, aching, ironic, and absurd (not all at the same time:) I often find that people who are on this journey to transcend the “menu,” and who are cognizant of the programming, don’t enjoy dark music and humor. Did the British wit come from the loss of belief, and is it possible to retain the wit while regaining the belief? Can God listen to Gillian Welch and laugh at Ricky Gervais? I think of Townes Van Zandt saying, “there are two kinds of music: the blues, and zippadeedoodah.”
Where does irreverence belong in a joyful and reverent world?
For myself Charles , what have I learned ? I described to you in the last post how difficult my choices were . Certainly I was very much convinced by the science , if I’m honest it’s because when your son has a machine in his chest that keeps him alive you tend to have to have “ a rock to cling to “ . However what has been revealed in the Pandemic is the somewhat clumsy and not so “ deviously clever “ manipulations of the characters you mentioned ie Swabb , Gates , Biden and co . This is the difficulty and useful “ non - cohesion “ that a nefarious cabal displays , at the end of the day each of them is scrambling for the bigger cut or “ big dog” , the behaviour of a uncooperative pack
. I asked you also in one of my responses how we discern truth ,? indeed I do find some of the science from an anti vaxx perspective to be crowd sourced and I’m also shudder at the nomination through the term sheep . As a clinician it is important for me to have good data but also that I remain open minded in how I work with articles papers etc . Flexible and open is a true path of science . Indeed however as these global characters peel away their disguises , one can’t help but see the “ gargoyles “ that emerge so one is directed to find truth . The data sets are getting larger and certainly more representative of global nuance in terms of geography , however like a child with a lost parent I see now we cannot trust the intentions of these global planners , this is not limited to the Pandemic , there’s the War ,the food crisis and I guess more to come . So part of truth is -“ who is telling you the story “ not necessarily what they are saying .
When I spent some serious time last summer meditating on just why I was so opposed to getting any CV19 vaccine, I surprised myself when I went to record my answer for my podcast and began pondering "the ends justify the means" and that iconic phrase supposedly from a Vietnam War era military commander, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Thus, I was very pleased to learn this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin---indeed, we never do reach those ends, do we? These ends are always the Promised Land, just around the bend... I believe one of our psychological invitations from the leap into the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible is to recognize that the means create the ends, that HOW we live and behave determines what kind of society we live in.
This is as eloquent, balanced, thorough, and (dare I say 'forgiving') a peek down the rabbit hole as I have read, and especially over the last couple of years, I've read a lot. Bravo Charles. More than a cut above my pay grade.
I began reading philosophy of science, and then philosophy 'proper' back in the mid 70's as an undergrad to find my own personal ground of sanity to stand on. Like the wild side of a mandelbrot set gone mad, I'm seeing in your essay, Charles, a fractal of myself, and something I once read by Gandhi ... education (as opposed to job training) as the constant process of discovering what it means to be human.
But as much as I admire Ursula K. Le Guin (big influence on the Studio Ghibli brand over here in Japan), there is something troubling about that opening quote ... ''The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end?''
Metaphysically, I can fully agree with the quote. T.S. Kuhn's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' lays out a very good argument that contrary to Bertrand Russell's flippant dismissal of traditional religion as 'turtles, all the way down' ... it is probably true for even the mathematical rigor of physics. Mathematical models, though sometimes predictive, are also either provisional or parochial metaphors. If we live long enough as a species, I can imagine a future generation looking back on us and our 'planck unit' or 'spooky action at a distances' as quaint metaphors, similar to the way we might judge the 1803 Dalton model of the atom.
But no end to human nature? Maybe because my undergrad was in biology, I try my best to avoid a reductionist view of human nature. And maybe being the permanent outsider, the 'professional foreigner' in Japan Inc. for 40 years has colored my opinion of what it means to be human. I'm certain it has. But with one foot in the Far East, one in the West, one in the natural sciences, one in the liberal arts ... I can't help but to see something (or maybe 'sense' is a better word?) fundamental to human nature, something that does have an end. It might be as simple as Schopenhauer's 'will to power', or more profanely 'the law of the jungle'.
By temperament, I want to believe in the Platonic ideals of 'the good', 'the true', and 'the beautiful' as something we are all capable of finding on the altruistic end our moral bell curve. But persistence of dark-triad behavior traits at every level of social organization, from the nuclear family to a new world order, whispers to me that collectively, we may be incapable of learning from the past. Those dark-triads, Susan Sontag's 'cruel 10%' — the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us — will, as you point out, arise to replace the Gates, Schwabs, and Zuckerbergs of this world.
But what if there is no system or sustainable heuristics that will allow us to prevent these destructive behaviors from periodically rising to sociopathic levels? What if self-destruction is built into the advantages of scale? Maybe there is something to that quote ... 'Quantity has a quality all its own.' But what if that quality expands so far away from the empathetic roots of our morality, that it is self-destructively 'bad'?
Exploring the moral implications of exceeding Dunbar's number, or by-passing our mirror neurons through the Trolley Car problem are good openings into questions without end. I don't have good answers to those questions. There might not even be good answers or solutions. But from experience and observation, I suspect there is an 'end', or rather a 'constraint' on what it means to be human ... some kind of existential limit grounded in our biology.
Perhaps the collective failure to learn from the past is what drives us to imaginative worlds without end. But the time and resources to dream, and share those dreams, or even take the time to understand them ... are limited to those who have the luxury of freedom from living at the edge as a wage-slave.
Will end my own navel gazing for the moment with another familiar quote regarding ends. ''Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?' — Robert Browning.
No answers here Charles, but gratitude for your craftsmanship of thought, and your moral thrust. I will be passing your essay on to a few friends who I'm sure will likewise be inspired and motivated by your essay.
Cheers from Japan, and again, thank you.
Thank you again, I always appreciate your words!
I think that stopping people (or statistics) from lying is unlikely, at least not anytime soon. And I’m not convinced that’s even a good thing. If people stop lying, we’d never have the opportunity to learn inner discernment. Plus, relying on others to change their behavior puts us in the position of victim as we project our power outwards onto them, rather than empowering outselves.
How about using our own inner guidance to discern truth, to know when a person or document is lying? Isn’t that part of the whole Cosmic Covid Experiment, to encourage people to withdraw a little from the outer world in order to find the Truth within?
We certainly have some examples… How do mothers know when their kids are lying? Even though we don’t have the best vocabulary to explain this, it clearly happens, as moms and kids are well aware. Some call it “women’s intuition” as if that is a mystical phenomenon…but it actually is just about being in touch with one’s subtle inner guidance in order to discern the vibration of Truth. Mostly, at least for me, this inner guidance doesn’t come in words, but in feelings - a sensing in the gut, or in the heart. Practices like yoga or meditation can help people be more consciously receptive of their own deeper knowledge.
I think I read between your lines that our innate guidance system is the most effective way “to immunize we the people against future fascistic exploitation” or any kind of personal or societal exploitation, and is the antidote to “a population dispossessed of its spiritual sovereignty"...
It occurs to me that this journey to understanding the more subtle Truths within might be the next step in evolution.
I continue to marvel at how clear and soulful your perception and insights continue to be in the face of the atrocities unfolding. My tendency to become numb and shut down is challenged whenever I read your posts. You are regularly able to reawaken my humanity, compassion and intellect so that I can survive to fight another day. You are such a pure enlightened wise man who, more than any other person, somehow gives me hope, against all my cynicism and despair. Now, to act on what you are sharing.
Thank you for your sane and balanced writing.
When they first started talking about the new MRNA COVID shots (they are not vaccines, as we later found out), and then got emergency authority from FDA to start jabbing everyone, I did all the research I could to find out what was in them, whether they were actually effective, and whether they were safe. It quickly became clear that: 1) safety was not known, as the clinical trials most vaccines have to go through were completely bypassed; 2) no real data on effectiveness, either (in terms of preventing infection with COVID, and preventing vaccinated individuals from transmitting COVID. The only thing they said they "knew" was that the shot could reduce severity of symptoms in some individuals, particularly those with comorbidities; and 3) the whole notion that, through use of messenger RNA we could teach our bodies to produce a protein that would trigger an immune response, was completely unproven and experimental. With this information, NOT getting the shot quickly became a no-brainer for me. I do not authorize any medical procedure on my body until I fully understand both the (potential) benefits and the risks. Since there was no solid information on potential benefits (particularly for someone like me, who is in good health, with no comorbidities), and there CLEARLY WERE BIG RISKS in taking the shot, I knew I did not want it. Fortunately, I had retired from my job (federal govt) a few years before COVID came along. Had I still been working, I would have been FORCED to get the shot, against my will, or resign (after 20-some years of service). That is an absolute outrage. I still cannot believe all of the (supposedly intelligent) people I know that all lined up like sheep to get their shots, without hesitation. By the way, I did come down with COVID, later in 2020. Had a relatively mild sickness for 5-6 days, then recovered. Based on the reputable studies I have read (dozens of them), I now have natural immunity that is very likely to be long-lasting. The CDC keeps warning me that I need the shot, because natural immunity is not as good as the shot. That was when I knew they were absolutely LYING. I am not aware of any viral disease in history where a vaccine was superior to natural immunity from a prior infection. CDC cited one flawed study (from Kentucky, as I recall), with just a few participants, to support their claim, which was laughable. Clearly, CDC and the other public health authorities are being controlled by outside forces here..........most likely Big Pharma. Money and the drive for profits drives everything in America, and the OBSCENE profits that Big Pharma has made from these shots is enough to make me sick. And they have complete protection from liability, should anyone get sick and/or die from the shots (and many clearly have). What a great deal for them! My eyes have been opened as a result of this whole outrageous experience with COVID and the shots. Any trust I had in the health authorities (and most govt. officials) is gone, and cannot be restored easily. I'm just glad I was skeptical enough at the beginning to do my own research, and hold off on having anything done to my body until I understood what was going on here.
Deep bow Charles
Deep gratitude for your voice.
I've been wondering if it's possible to re-frame the narrative, in a way that accurately depicts the main transgressions (which is putting it mildly) by the authorities, without letting cognitive dissonance and knee-jerk denialism take root. I'm thinking of this specifically in terms of the general populace who will often (privately) acknowledge something is not right, but have a firm desire to not look deeper into the problem. I can understand that mentality, but it's unacceptable at this point in the saga, and I feel like a solution (other than exiting and building parallel societies) needs to still be pursued. I would view this attempted re-frame as a gentle push, rather than coddling a willful ignorance. But I'm also not sure this re-framing is even possible, given the scope of the deceit you eloquently laid out.
Thank you for staying grounded in the center, Charles. And for pointing out the "avatar" status of figureheads like Klaus and Gates. Removing them from position of authority will not simply remove the root of the problem, rather only obfuscate it even more.
If anyone wants an eye and mind-opening read check out Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World and Dispelling Wetiko: Dispelling The Curse of Evil both by Paul Levy. Finished the first book in three days and am blazing through the second book now. I think what Charles is really getting at in these essays is that each one of us needs to do our shadow work. When we take responsibility for our ability to perpetrate evil (and I am speaking of anything that comes from a place of separation: of an ego island that is not connected to others and life), then we can better discern the evil out in the world. But until we are fully aware of our shadow, we will be projecting it onto others which makes us very susceptible to fear, propaganda, lies, and mind control. Instead of othering people, it really is time for each of us to understand the role we are playing in the perpetuation of this evil in the first place. How did humanity attract this evil? How did our world get to this point of multiple crises? If we don't get to the root of the problem, we will just re-create more of the same (what we have been doing for thousands of years), but we don't have thousands of years to raise our consciousness now. We have mere decades...maybe...if we don't nuke ourselves first.