Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 145

[ecosophia]

We are now in the third year of these open posts. As the phrase "died suddenly" repeats in the mass media like a mantra, statistics for work days lost to illness and all-cause mortality mount up in heavily vaccinated nations, and more and more ugly facts about the official response to Covid spill out into public, we are entering what may well turn out to be the most difficult period of the Covid disaster -- the phase in which denial rises in lockstep with the death rate, and a great many people try not to admit what has been done to them by the people and institutions they trusted. It could get ugly, folks.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before: 

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here. 
 
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue. 

4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules. 

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Comments

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[ecosophia]

Granted -- but I think it's worse than that. The people I've known who lived in a bubble of wealth and privilege and were shielded from pain weren't happy. They were bored, dissatisfied, and generally pretty miserable, and they spent their time chasing temporary pleasures to try to fill the void. I've come to think that your capacity to experience joy is measured by your experience of pain.

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[robertmathiesen]

That's been my experience of them, too. (And there were a great many of them at my university.) The bubble of wealth and privilege is its own special kind of hell.

And I really like what you said at the end: "your capacity to experience joy is measured by your experience of pain." Wise words!

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[(Anonymous)]

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet “for sale”, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence – briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing – cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his “normal” contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society.”
Erich Fromm

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[(Anonymous)]

Quite insightful. Yes. Thank you.

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[jdecandia]

I recognized this as Erich Fromm within the first few sentences: he was an especially sensitive soul who sought to put into words the ineffable human spirit.

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[(Anonymous)]

When young I volunteered for the Eugene McCarthy presidential campaign. I recall hearing a 'philosopher' of some sort, from the street, predict that IF McCarthy won the presidential election (by some miracle) and IF he took down the White House fences for a picnic (as promised) by then his followers would be so disillusioned with him they would tear him limb from limb. It was one of the most graphic descriptions of emotional betrayal I had ever read or heard. I had it in my mind it was Erich Fromm but searching Erich Fromm + Eugene McCarthy I find it is not so. Somebody smarter than me would say, 'Of course not.'

I came across Erich Fromm's discussion of 'Hope' for the human being. Which is relevant to today. Though now we are far beyond any scope of crazy-level CODE RED that might have existed during the Vietnam War era but believe me it was at that time most certainly crazy-level CODE RED. I found this beautiful, even if about loss, with how it speaks to hope. I wonder if we can or if we will be able to apply such thoughts to what we are experiencing now:

A man who was hardly known before, one who is the opposite of the typical politician, averse to appealing on the basis of sentimentality or demagoguery, truly opposed to the Vietnam War, succeeded in winning the approval and even the most enthusiastic acclaim of a large segment of the population, reaching from the radical youth, hippies, intellectuals, to liberals of the upper middle classes. This was a crusade without precedent in America, and it was something short of a miracle that this professor-Senator, a devotee of poetry and philosophy, could become a serious contender for the Presidency. It proved that a large segment of the American population is ready and eager for Humanization… indicating that hope and the will for change are alive.

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[adara9]

Context: I grew up lower middle class, and now am closer to the upper middle class. A few thoughts:

1. From my time among upper middle class folks, I've come to think that each person has a sort of worry / stress / anxiety set point. If the amount of actual difficulty in one's life, especially that one can do something about, approximately matches that set point, then the worry can be used productively to motivate action to fix things. But for the folks around me, there is way less real difficulty than most folks' set points, so we've got all this free floating worry that wants to earth out in stressing way more than is necessary, helpful, or productive about random minor issues in life.

2. Something that crops up for me, and I suspect other folks, is that I'm well aware my life is good. I have plenty of everything I need, my kids are growing up healthy, my husband and I have a good relationship and good jobs, but somehow I'm still anxious, depressed, and stressed for no good reason. My work with the CGD has been very helpful in improving that, thank goodness, but most people don't have that. And even so, it feels absurd and ungrateful to still be discontented.

3. Perhaps related to 1: when I was younger and less well off, there was always something I was working towards. Paying off debt, losing weight, getting fit, finding a mate, etc. And many of those goals benefitted from pouring in willpower and energy. But now I'm in a place in my life where most of my goals are about maintaining position, or work better if I don't try to pour in lots of effort. So I end up feeling a bit at sea, while at the same time rarely getting that good feeling of achieving a goal that I worked hard towards.

4. Re JMG's suggestion of joy measured by pain, I found the book "Dopamine Nation" quite interesting reading. It appears that our brains do pursue a sort of balance of good feelings and bad feelings, such that giving in to the temptation of all the dopamine hits on the Internet can increase our unhappiness otherwise / overall.

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[(Anonymous)]

I don't listen to Bob Dylan much anymore but once I sure did and recall a phrase, 'Helpless like a rich man's son....'

Re: Nobody cares any more about death rates or vax deaths

[(Anonymous)]

In the past 5 years, I went through the most painful experiences of my life, and my childhood was none to easy either (father who provided well but was an addict, etc.). The family breakup, due to strange and almost supernatural circumstances, being "swatted" by my straying, borderline ex, losing our house, job, etc. Wow.

Strangely, that forced me to really take spirituality seriously. And to take the divine seriously, and approach it, think about it, experience it. I feel, in many ways, far more robust and "anti-fragile" than I was before. And able to experience the sense that the world is alive, and that there are some (a minority) of real souls out there, worth spending time or energy with. But yes - pain seems to be sort of a forge that either destroys the metals put in it, or refines them.
Only my 3rd post on this forum. It's a great alternative to social media. Seems like good souls.
-Tides of Truth