This article deserves its own post. And I'll do that and break it down when I have some time again. But for now it provides a fascinating insight to the field of science under Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin that draws a frightening number of parallels to what we are experiencing today. It's deja vu, all over again.
"The totalitarian conception of the relation of science to the state is remarkably elastic. When political expediency so determines, the whole concept is modified. "
"This Nazi and Soviet pursuit of "rebels" may seem absurd, but actually it is logical. An artist or a scientist in Germany and in Russia serves the state. He therefore cannot separate his politics from his strictly professional activities. If he departs from the prevailing official ideology he automatically becomes an anti-Nazi in Germany and a counter-revolutionary in the Soviet Union."
"It was also charged that Soviet materialistic works on cosmology "have been suppressed by the enemies of the people." In other words, because Marx and Engels were saturated in Victorian materialism, which followed Newton in picturing the universe as a colossal machine instead of a problem in higher geometry, all the experimental and observational evidence that supports relativity must be rejected.
How does science like this tyranny? A few bold spirits still survive in Germany and Russia, but, on the whole, there is a remarkable pliancy of the scientific mind in both countries."
"The Russian gift of recantation, which marked the trials of Party members accused of adherence to Trotsky, manifests itself in science as well as in politics.
Back of the ideologies of the dictators, back of the professional pliancy, is something more than political expediency, something more than blind obedience. Long before the world ever heard of Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler it was in a state of social unrest. The revolutions that overthrew the Romanoffs and the Hohenzollerns, the upheavals that gave British labor new rights and privileges, were expressions of dissatisfaction with the social structure. To say that the dictators emerged because science and technology had taken possession of society and stamped it with a pattern utterly different from that which the égalitarians of the eighteenth century knew is an over-simplification. There are psychic factors that cannot be ignored -- inner drives, national traditions, habits of life. Yet if the dictators are to be overthrown, if democracy is to be preserved, the part that science and technology played in the rise of democracy cannot be ignored. Research produces not only change within science itself but social change. The democratic method is to adapt social change to technological change. The dictators are trying to do the contrary.
In considering the relation of science to the dictators we must bear in mind that the human mind is intrinsically no better than it was 10,000 years ago. It simply has acquired new interests under social tension. In the Middle Ages social tension expressed itself so strongly in religion that there were 110 holy days in the year; a new ecclesiastical architecture was evolved; all Europe rose to the spiritual need of wresting Jerusalem from the "infidel." Today, however, it means more to our society to discover how the atom is constituted than that a new ecclesiastical architecture is developed, more that the mechanism of heredity is revealed than that savages in Africa are converted to Christianity. Perhaps its pragmatic attitude has led science to ignore essential ethical values. But the point is that science dominates our society, and that if our society wants science it must choose between totalitarianism and democracy. There can be no compromise."
"When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
"Often enough we hear it said that mechanical invention has outstripped social invention -- that new social forms must be devised if we are to forestall the economic crises that are brought about by what is called the "impact of science" on society. Communism and Fascism are social inventions, intended among other things to solve the economic problems created by technological change under the influence of capitalism. They attempt to answer a question: Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy."
"An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static."
One of the most impressive Covid documents I’ve read to date got me to thinking about the tsunami of unexposed Covid scandals. By my count, there are at least 10 … and they are all massive.
Indeed it is a great compilation of information I've followed in real time since 2020. Because of my familiarity with most of it, even compiling economic data for other projects and applications, it didn't take 70 minutes. I appreciated the history of Mao's Sparrow and Leap, pieces I explore in my Devious Use of Infectious disease post. It's a great repository of information for me that will be helpful to use as a resource to information I have scattered about or read and forgotten. Thank you for sharing!
May 25, 2023·edited May 25, 2023Liked by Freedom Fox
Any fox in the woods knows - you ain't gonna restrain me....and then the fox goes on its way and hopes the wolf is not nearby. If the wolf is nearby, when the fox makes its claim, then I guess it just depends on the kind of wolf nearby.
At the end of the day, I think Kropotkin was closest to understand the species that survive - Mutual Aid is powerful force.
Seriously, Kropotkin was around at the same time as Darwin and he called things out in the moment that now are so telling and I suspect even Darwin if he was animate would agree - so probably, the foxes already know that is what I think.
As for wolves, I'd just assume be in the pack, but if forced to choose I know what I am. My spirit guide is a Buffalo - an american bison to be precise. I respect foxes and wolves alike - I like bears...I don't mess with them, but in the day, when there was a herd of "us" on the plains natural - we were a force to be reckoned with and the spirit remains.
I agree that more needed to resist early on. I was almost the only one on an Upper New York State Facebook page saying the evidence for masking the public wasn’t there and the actual science showed harm. Those people wanted the masks and wanted to believe they would “scientifically” protect them. They were easily fooled, didn’t care to look up the truth and adapted a herd mentality and mantra that masks save lives. The medical establishment played along. I guess they were paid off early because it’s hard for me to believe they went along with it so easily without looking at the studies. The studies for masks were there. OSHA had to change, lower their standards in order to not be in conflict with the CDC. OSHA had standards in place for many years on acceptable carbon dioxide levels and the n95’s failed within minutes of being on. Everyone rebreathing their own respiratory waste, some for hours on end was not at all healthy. Maybe that was the plan? Lower people’s immunity so they would be more susceptible to germs and catch Covid and flu. They would be in less healthy state by the time the shots came from stress, lack of exercise, lowered immunity and overeating and drinking. That would put them in a worsened condition to fight off the spike protein, LNP and resulting inflammation. It’s a shame people took such pride in not thinking as their actions really hurt us all.
Why did the medical establishment play along? I've asked myself that same question for more than three years now. There's a lot of pieces written about that I've come across that delve into the mindset of those professionals. And the comment I just shared as a pinned post on top of this comment thread is from an article published in 1941 that describes the same phenomenon coming into being in Germany and the USSR that I've read elsewhere about why they played along and continue to play along today. Suggested reading.
Fallen man remains fallen man. Even after the publication of so much knowledge that we are supposed to learn from so we don't become doomed by repeating past mistakes. Even with all of this knowledge, the knowledge of all of history at our fingertips in devices we hold in our hands. Not because we couldn't learn. But because we chose not to. Most. But some did. And more are beginning to. And we will multiply. Ultimately, we will prevail. God has final say. Not fallen men.
Your last two sentences reminded me of a song I wrote years ago, the last part of the chorus “you do what you must, but in God I put my trust, to keep my spirit free and deliver me. God, deliver me.” In this case, deliver us. I will read your pinned post now.
I do think the idea was to hurt us all. In as many ways as they could get away with.
Interestingly, and relevantly, here in Seriously Woke WA State, it's only been a few weeks ago that the last vestiges of mask mandates finally were lifted from the last two remaining areas: MEDICAL offices and clinics, hospitals, etc (even eyeglasses purveyors), and COURTROOMS... telling, wouldn't you say? I am nauseated by the entire thing.
As long as we're going hellbent towards totalitarianism, I propose we enact a full and total ban on all smart phone use by anyone under 18. And while we're at it, let's ban social media in its entirety. But we know that would be impossible, as the smart phones are chains of velvet and social media is one of the biggest driving forces behind the insanity we are seeing.
When the first lockdowns for everyone came, even though enough information had already come out that the obese and diabetic along with the elderly in poor health were at the greatest risk of severe illness and death - and then sections of stores were roped off from purchases of "nonessential" items and the entire notion of "nonessential" offended my very being I indulged and shared thoughts along those same lines as what you say tongue-and-cheek.
Reasoning that if authorities were going to unconstitutionally deprive us of our rights at all they would at least be helpful if they roped off the soda, snacks, candy and junk food aisles and closed fast food eateries. I even offered up Mayor Bloomberg's "Big Gulp Ban" that I had mocked and opposed for being unconstitutional (it was) as being preferable and *less* unconstitutional than society-wide lockdowns. and restrictions on our rights. That would've been more closely following the science of reducing severe illness and death resulting from infectious disease.
And when that didn't happen my Foxy Senses that the pandemic public policies that were being adopted were never about protecting our health and lives were confirmed. They were obviously about imposing authoritarianism, control. At least to those of us who were curious enough to learn more before we consented to the demands being made of us.
Seriously! And those phones are more than chains of velvet, they're tracking devices, spying devices, and radiation emitters...
I once heard a young man say he'd rather have CANCER than give up his phone... Now that is junkie talk, in my way of thinking! The kids are all ADDICTS. Think that's an accident? No, I didn't think you did... Sigh. How to wean them off?
Agree with you 100% about addicts. And it's not just the kids.
That's a startling admission from the kid about cancer but it doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen two videos in the last week where a teacher was assaulted by a teenager for taking away their phone in class. These kids can be like feral animals, especially when it comes to having their precious phones taken away. Truly, it's like they're living in an alternate fantasy world ....and they're winning the culture wars. Astounding ...
A 20-something working in the ATT store I was in for some tech help with my *gasp* flip phone, all but laughed out loud at me when he saw my phone. He did his best to get me to *upgrade* to a smart phone, proclaiming how my life would be "exponentially better!" once I had a smart phone in my pocket. I let him expound on the glories of a smart phone and then I said "I don't want to live in that world." .....his mouth dropped open in disbelief. I guess at that moment he felt like he was looking at a genuine dinosaur. I know he thinks I am the one missing out ...but he will probably never realize how much of a chain around his neck that smartphone really is, and how much better his life would be (exponentially!) without it. He might find out the sky is blue, and there is joy to be found in nature and one-on-one relationships with real live people.
That's the strongest prison of all. Stronger than any configuration of concrete and steel. And why the Information War attacks the defenses of our minds so incessantly, so insidiously, so relentlessly. Behavioral Science, Psychology, Neurological Programming, Linguistics, Semiology, etc. And why I decided to fortify my mind's defenses by deep study of the fields that have been weaponized against us. And try to share what I've learned as best I'm able. When our minds are strong we learn that germs and terrorism aren't as fearful. And the diamonds aren't stolen.
I've started paying more attention to the Tik Tok reels that are cross posted on my facebook feed. (Please forgive me.)
I don't even know who these "people" are anymore; it's as though I'm peering through the window at a different species than myself. Considering what we've all lived through the last three years, I never once felt the level of fear I now feel as I see what has happened to humanity. There are just no words to describe what I view in these short videos. All sanity is gone. All civility, kindness, manners, decency, morality (again, now a dirty word) ...nowhere to be found. And my facebook feed is primarily filled with rare plant discussions, gardening, literature, wilderness cams, outdoor life, homesteading, naturopathic advice, etc. I can't imagine what's directed at the average Gen X or Z, or millennial's feed.
"And why I decided to fortify my mind's defenses by deep study of the fields that have been weaponized against us." Me too.
I haven't been on Fb since the end of 2020. Your description of it now is actually hopeful. All information that's useful to survive in a future that current policies will make necessary to know. So, there is some modicum of intelligence left on there!
As to TikTok, it really is a weapon our main adversary, China, has deployed against the minds of the young in this nation. The algorithms on it for the US and western nations reward and induce insanity, depravity, mediocrity. TikTok algorithms for China reward and induce study, knowledge, excellence.
May 23, 2023·edited May 23, 2023Liked by Freedom Fox
In general being I belong to camp Bechamp, I don't give germs much heed.
Frankly, I'm sick of germs and the virus of fear especially in that regard.
It is nothing but imagination, but no denying the power of fear upon the masses confused.
So, I'm not scared of terrorism nor germs - I consider them both to be fabrications in the mind of others intent upon harming innocence and I don't know about you - but tis time for them to get some justified retribution. I think it is on the way as I type this.
Constantly changing the "rules" in an unpredictable manner is a method that malignant narcissists use to exploit their victims by attempting to keep them off balance. It also serves to disempower people psychologically. People who want to peacefully protest cannot effectively articulate resistance if there is an ever-changing paradigm.
This article deserves its own post. And I'll do that and break it down when I have some time again. But for now it provides a fascinating insight to the field of science under Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin that draws a frightening number of parallels to what we are experiencing today. It's deja vu, all over again.
Science in the Totalitarian State
Foreign Affairs, January, 1941
https://web.archive.org/web/20181125112623/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1941-01-01/science-totalitarian-state
"The totalitarian conception of the relation of science to the state is remarkably elastic. When political expediency so determines, the whole concept is modified. "
"This Nazi and Soviet pursuit of "rebels" may seem absurd, but actually it is logical. An artist or a scientist in Germany and in Russia serves the state. He therefore cannot separate his politics from his strictly professional activities. If he departs from the prevailing official ideology he automatically becomes an anti-Nazi in Germany and a counter-revolutionary in the Soviet Union."
"It was also charged that Soviet materialistic works on cosmology "have been suppressed by the enemies of the people." In other words, because Marx and Engels were saturated in Victorian materialism, which followed Newton in picturing the universe as a colossal machine instead of a problem in higher geometry, all the experimental and observational evidence that supports relativity must be rejected.
How does science like this tyranny? A few bold spirits still survive in Germany and Russia, but, on the whole, there is a remarkable pliancy of the scientific mind in both countries."
"The Russian gift of recantation, which marked the trials of Party members accused of adherence to Trotsky, manifests itself in science as well as in politics.
Back of the ideologies of the dictators, back of the professional pliancy, is something more than political expediency, something more than blind obedience. Long before the world ever heard of Mussolini and Stalin and Hitler it was in a state of social unrest. The revolutions that overthrew the Romanoffs and the Hohenzollerns, the upheavals that gave British labor new rights and privileges, were expressions of dissatisfaction with the social structure. To say that the dictators emerged because science and technology had taken possession of society and stamped it with a pattern utterly different from that which the égalitarians of the eighteenth century knew is an over-simplification. There are psychic factors that cannot be ignored -- inner drives, national traditions, habits of life. Yet if the dictators are to be overthrown, if democracy is to be preserved, the part that science and technology played in the rise of democracy cannot be ignored. Research produces not only change within science itself but social change. The democratic method is to adapt social change to technological change. The dictators are trying to do the contrary.
In considering the relation of science to the dictators we must bear in mind that the human mind is intrinsically no better than it was 10,000 years ago. It simply has acquired new interests under social tension. In the Middle Ages social tension expressed itself so strongly in religion that there were 110 holy days in the year; a new ecclesiastical architecture was evolved; all Europe rose to the spiritual need of wresting Jerusalem from the "infidel." Today, however, it means more to our society to discover how the atom is constituted than that a new ecclesiastical architecture is developed, more that the mechanism of heredity is revealed than that savages in Africa are converted to Christianity. Perhaps its pragmatic attitude has led science to ignore essential ethical values. But the point is that science dominates our society, and that if our society wants science it must choose between totalitarianism and democracy. There can be no compromise."
"When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
"Often enough we hear it said that mechanical invention has outstripped social invention -- that new social forms must be devised if we are to forestall the economic crises that are brought about by what is called the "impact of science" on society. Communism and Fascism are social inventions, intended among other things to solve the economic problems created by technological change under the influence of capitalism. They attempt to answer a question: Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy."
"An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static."
One of the most impressive Covid documents I’ve read to date got me to thinking about the tsunami of unexposed Covid scandals. By my count, there are at least 10 … and they are all massive.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/cataloging-a-tsunami-of-covid-scandals
Nice work!
Thanks, Fox! Hope you can find 70 minutes to read that document.
Indeed it is a great compilation of information I've followed in real time since 2020. Because of my familiarity with most of it, even compiling economic data for other projects and applications, it didn't take 70 minutes. I appreciated the history of Mao's Sparrow and Leap, pieces I explore in my Devious Use of Infectious disease post. It's a great repository of information for me that will be helpful to use as a resource to information I have scattered about or read and forgotten. Thank you for sharing!
Great summary of the summary. The story about the sparrows did make the authors' point. I also like the story about the danger of the red balloons.
Any fox in the woods knows - you ain't gonna restrain me....and then the fox goes on its way and hopes the wolf is not nearby. If the wolf is nearby, when the fox makes its claim, then I guess it just depends on the kind of wolf nearby.
At the end of the day, I think Kropotkin was closest to understand the species that survive - Mutual Aid is powerful force.
Seriously, Kropotkin was around at the same time as Darwin and he called things out in the moment that now are so telling and I suspect even Darwin if he was animate would agree - so probably, the foxes already know that is what I think.
As for wolves, I'd just assume be in the pack, but if forced to choose I know what I am. My spirit guide is a Buffalo - an american bison to be precise. I respect foxes and wolves alike - I like bears...I don't mess with them, but in the day, when there was a herd of "us" on the plains natural - we were a force to be reckoned with and the spirit remains.
I agree that more needed to resist early on. I was almost the only one on an Upper New York State Facebook page saying the evidence for masking the public wasn’t there and the actual science showed harm. Those people wanted the masks and wanted to believe they would “scientifically” protect them. They were easily fooled, didn’t care to look up the truth and adapted a herd mentality and mantra that masks save lives. The medical establishment played along. I guess they were paid off early because it’s hard for me to believe they went along with it so easily without looking at the studies. The studies for masks were there. OSHA had to change, lower their standards in order to not be in conflict with the CDC. OSHA had standards in place for many years on acceptable carbon dioxide levels and the n95’s failed within minutes of being on. Everyone rebreathing their own respiratory waste, some for hours on end was not at all healthy. Maybe that was the plan? Lower people’s immunity so they would be more susceptible to germs and catch Covid and flu. They would be in less healthy state by the time the shots came from stress, lack of exercise, lowered immunity and overeating and drinking. That would put them in a worsened condition to fight off the spike protein, LNP and resulting inflammation. It’s a shame people took such pride in not thinking as their actions really hurt us all.
All true. Tragically.
Why did the medical establishment play along? I've asked myself that same question for more than three years now. There's a lot of pieces written about that I've come across that delve into the mindset of those professionals. And the comment I just shared as a pinned post on top of this comment thread is from an article published in 1941 that describes the same phenomenon coming into being in Germany and the USSR that I've read elsewhere about why they played along and continue to play along today. Suggested reading.
Fallen man remains fallen man. Even after the publication of so much knowledge that we are supposed to learn from so we don't become doomed by repeating past mistakes. Even with all of this knowledge, the knowledge of all of history at our fingertips in devices we hold in our hands. Not because we couldn't learn. But because we chose not to. Most. But some did. And more are beginning to. And we will multiply. Ultimately, we will prevail. God has final say. Not fallen men.
Your last two sentences reminded me of a song I wrote years ago, the last part of the chorus “you do what you must, but in God I put my trust, to keep my spirit free and deliver me. God, deliver me.” In this case, deliver us. I will read your pinned post now.
I do think the idea was to hurt us all. In as many ways as they could get away with.
Interestingly, and relevantly, here in Seriously Woke WA State, it's only been a few weeks ago that the last vestiges of mask mandates finally were lifted from the last two remaining areas: MEDICAL offices and clinics, hospitals, etc (even eyeglasses purveyors), and COURTROOMS... telling, wouldn't you say? I am nauseated by the entire thing.
As long as we're going hellbent towards totalitarianism, I propose we enact a full and total ban on all smart phone use by anyone under 18. And while we're at it, let's ban social media in its entirety. But we know that would be impossible, as the smart phones are chains of velvet and social media is one of the biggest driving forces behind the insanity we are seeing.
Crazy ideas, right?
Right?
When the first lockdowns for everyone came, even though enough information had already come out that the obese and diabetic along with the elderly in poor health were at the greatest risk of severe illness and death - and then sections of stores were roped off from purchases of "nonessential" items and the entire notion of "nonessential" offended my very being I indulged and shared thoughts along those same lines as what you say tongue-and-cheek.
Reasoning that if authorities were going to unconstitutionally deprive us of our rights at all they would at least be helpful if they roped off the soda, snacks, candy and junk food aisles and closed fast food eateries. I even offered up Mayor Bloomberg's "Big Gulp Ban" that I had mocked and opposed for being unconstitutional (it was) as being preferable and *less* unconstitutional than society-wide lockdowns. and restrictions on our rights. That would've been more closely following the science of reducing severe illness and death resulting from infectious disease.
https://ideas.time.com/2012/06/04/why-americans-need-bloombergs-big-gulp-ban/
And when that didn't happen my Foxy Senses that the pandemic public policies that were being adopted were never about protecting our health and lives were confirmed. They were obviously about imposing authoritarianism, control. At least to those of us who were curious enough to learn more before we consented to the demands being made of us.
Seriously! And those phones are more than chains of velvet, they're tracking devices, spying devices, and radiation emitters...
I once heard a young man say he'd rather have CANCER than give up his phone... Now that is junkie talk, in my way of thinking! The kids are all ADDICTS. Think that's an accident? No, I didn't think you did... Sigh. How to wean them off?
Agree with you 100% about addicts. And it's not just the kids.
That's a startling admission from the kid about cancer but it doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen two videos in the last week where a teacher was assaulted by a teenager for taking away their phone in class. These kids can be like feral animals, especially when it comes to having their precious phones taken away. Truly, it's like they're living in an alternate fantasy world ....and they're winning the culture wars. Astounding ...
A 20-something working in the ATT store I was in for some tech help with my *gasp* flip phone, all but laughed out loud at me when he saw my phone. He did his best to get me to *upgrade* to a smart phone, proclaiming how my life would be "exponentially better!" once I had a smart phone in my pocket. I let him expound on the glories of a smart phone and then I said "I don't want to live in that world." .....his mouth dropped open in disbelief. I guess at that moment he felt like he was looking at a genuine dinosaur. I know he thinks I am the one missing out ...but he will probably never realize how much of a chain around his neck that smartphone really is, and how much better his life would be (exponentially!) without it. He might find out the sky is blue, and there is joy to be found in nature and one-on-one relationships with real live people.
The fox seems to be posting rapidly - typically that is not advisable, but I suppose the fox knows best?
I liked the last post - not so sure about this one, but maybe I ought read it in full?
Sometimes foxes can outsmart their own selves I think.....that is the easiest way to catch a fox I reckon!
I guess it depends on whether you are more scared of terrorism, or germs. For now, the germs are winning, so are the burglars at the diamond store.
The most important battlefield of all is for the Mindspace.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/MINDSPACE.pdf
That's the strongest prison of all. Stronger than any configuration of concrete and steel. And why the Information War attacks the defenses of our minds so incessantly, so insidiously, so relentlessly. Behavioral Science, Psychology, Neurological Programming, Linguistics, Semiology, etc. And why I decided to fortify my mind's defenses by deep study of the fields that have been weaponized against us. And try to share what I've learned as best I'm able. When our minds are strong we learn that germs and terrorism aren't as fearful. And the diamonds aren't stolen.
I've started paying more attention to the Tik Tok reels that are cross posted on my facebook feed. (Please forgive me.)
I don't even know who these "people" are anymore; it's as though I'm peering through the window at a different species than myself. Considering what we've all lived through the last three years, I never once felt the level of fear I now feel as I see what has happened to humanity. There are just no words to describe what I view in these short videos. All sanity is gone. All civility, kindness, manners, decency, morality (again, now a dirty word) ...nowhere to be found. And my facebook feed is primarily filled with rare plant discussions, gardening, literature, wilderness cams, outdoor life, homesteading, naturopathic advice, etc. I can't imagine what's directed at the average Gen X or Z, or millennial's feed.
"And why I decided to fortify my mind's defenses by deep study of the fields that have been weaponized against us." Me too.
I haven't been on Fb since the end of 2020. Your description of it now is actually hopeful. All information that's useful to survive in a future that current policies will make necessary to know. So, there is some modicum of intelligence left on there!
As to TikTok, it really is a weapon our main adversary, China, has deployed against the minds of the young in this nation. The algorithms on it for the US and western nations reward and induce insanity, depravity, mediocrity. TikTok algorithms for China reward and induce study, knowledge, excellence.
In general being I belong to camp Bechamp, I don't give germs much heed.
Frankly, I'm sick of germs and the virus of fear especially in that regard.
It is nothing but imagination, but no denying the power of fear upon the masses confused.
So, I'm not scared of terrorism nor germs - I consider them both to be fabrications in the mind of others intent upon harming innocence and I don't know about you - but tis time for them to get some justified retribution. I think it is on the way as I type this.
Constantly changing the "rules" in an unpredictable manner is a method that malignant narcissists use to exploit their victims by attempting to keep them off balance. It also serves to disempower people psychologically. People who want to peacefully protest cannot effectively articulate resistance if there is an ever-changing paradigm.