The decision to begin this series of musings was largely driven by my personal observations of a crisis among humanity that appeared to be occurring at that time, primarily revolving around reactivity related to the presidential election and the ongoing Covid fiasco. In the months that have followed, it appears that the crisis has now been amplified further. The manifestations are everywhere. The global population is increasing in polarization daily, and it's blindingly obvious to me that the collective obsession with opposing worldviews engaging in intellectual exercises to arrive at solutions to perceived issues has resulted in the near total abandonment of wisdom on a global scale. It's difficult to see this ending well at the moment. Those who currently possess and exercise power are as removed from the lives of the common citizen as the nobility was from the serfs several centuries ago. At least we're in good company; Plato would find all of this quite familiar.
The original series of posts here were written over the early months of the pandemic. Once I decided to actually publish them, I did sense an urgency to do so at a sort of furious pace. In the introductory posts, I mentioned that my intention was to provide a measure of hope at a time when it appeared that hopelessness was accelerating. I also intended to continue these commentaries as time went on. That's still my intention, lengthy hiatus notwithstanding. Since last December, I haven't posted a thing, as I've been busy with salvage efforts revolving around the state-mandated destruction of my “non-essential” business, and have also been exploring (mostly on YouTube), assorted ongoing discussions regarding current events. As I've found the rise of extreme authoritarianism throughout Western society to be deeply disturbing, most of the perspectives I've explored have been speaking out against the actions that have been - and continue to be - taken. Of course, most (all?) of these voices have been assaulted by the advocates of authoritarianism, from the authoritarians themselves currently in power, to the legacy media outlets that present a single uniform perspective while disparaging all other perspectives, to the social media monopolies furiously censoring all but “approved speech”, to massive corporate interests such as Apple, Google and Amazon partnering to eliminate entire social media platforms (Parler) that dared to allow open discourse, to the thoroughly indoctrinated “woke” mob, mindlessly contributing to the relentless assaults on individual liberty across all social media platforms.
It is interesting, and oddly hopeful at the same time, that the most recent targets include some fairly prominent people. Joe Rogan, host of the most popular podcast in the world, was recently maligned for pursuing an “unapproved” treatment for his Covid infection. The “approved” narrative presented in unison by the legacy media was that Joe Rogan “took horse medicine” as treatment. The approved narrative failed to mention that Rogan experienced no severe symptoms and recovered within days. This is of course terribly inconvenient, as the approved narrative has categorized any mention of the potential efficacy of that particular treatment as “medical misinformation”, as Bret Weinstein violently discovered. Weinstein also had the temerity to question the efficacy of the vaccines, which the approved narrative finds heretical. (As an aside, Joe Rogan himself recently provided a very intriguing series of calm, measured questions in a recent discussion with a prominent vaccine proponent). I digress. The vaccines are to be regarded as universally safe and effective, and any questioning of that narrative is engaging in medical misinformation. Those who question that narrative, pursue due diligence, and conclude that the potential for adverse reactions and/or undesirable long term effects resulting from a revolutionary approach to viral vaccination that has not been in existence for any significant amount of time may exceed the benefits provided, are now vilified as well. The approved narrative requires global vaccination, and the rush to mandates are also not to be questioned. It's also probably for the best that voices such as Geert Vanden Bossche have been marginalized The approved narrative has no room for any suggestion that “mass infection prevention and mass vaccination with leaky Covid-19 vaccines in the midst of the pandemic can only breed highly infectious variants”. The approved narrative acknowledges absolutely no correlation between the sudden rise of variants and mass vaccination, and while nearly everyone worldwide is now aware that the CDC declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” in July of this year, long before enough time had passed to evaluate relevant data, there's oddly little mention in the approved narrative of the CDC's most recent publication, nor is there much mention of the recent Israeli data regarding hospitalizations and deaths among the fully vaccinated. As I'm editing this post, the news has arrived that YouTube has moved to ban all anti-vaccine content on their site, which the legacy media helpfully reminds us applies only to videos promoting anti-vaccine “misinformation”.
There was a time when the United States was the global champion of free speech. A few decades ago, we began to accept that certain speech was “politically incorrect”, and many began to self censor. Today, we have an approved narrative, and questioning that narrative involves the risk of absolute personal destruction for most. Tens of millions engage in silent opposition as a result.
I'm not able to clearly articulate at the moment why I find all of this so troubling. My overriding interest is in helping others realize the true nature of reality, and to hopefully arrive at an elevated level of consciousness, a perspective beyond that which they currently regard as “normal”. I sense that individual liberty is an important component to that end, but I may be wrong. It's entirely possible that the advent of global totalitarianism, overseen by an elite oligarchy that enjoys personal freedoms while the serfs toil on their behalf will inadvertently lead to dramatic elevations of consciousness among the serf class. It also may be that it just leads to a dramatic elevation in suicides.
In the end, it really doesn't matter. Everyone is destined to realize their own immortality, and most will not do so until they arrive at physical death. I do sometimes wonder what that realization entails for the most misguided among us. Stalin, Mao and Hitler all intended to help, you know. All were advocates of socialism, and pursued their policies for the benefit of the collective, to enhance the “greater good”. That tens of millions of “the others” had to be exterminated to achieve their goals was just a necessary inconvenience, all of which could have been avoided if only “the others” refrained from disseminating what the authorities decried as misinformation. I can't help but wonder how the realization of immortality is perceived for those who inflict so much pain on others over the course of their lives on earth. Numerous NDE accounts report a life review that involves experiencing all of your actions from the perspective of those who were affected by them, for good or ill. If you're Mao, responsible for ending some 50 million lives, that would foretell a somewhat interesting experience, wouldn't it? Does the same question apply to Mao's, Stalin's or Hitler's supporters, enablers and foot soldiers?
Those among us cheering authoritarian mandates, or who consider the deaths of the unvaccinated appropriate fodder for their comedy routines, or eagerly condemn the unvaccinated as “plague rats” to accumulate “likes” on their social media pages today may choose to take a quiet moment to reflect on that question as well. Few will do so.
So it goes.