Thursday, 27 October 2022

Emotional Logic

 

Earlier this year I read Ayn Rand’s classic novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and I’ve just started reading ‘Fountainhead’. Both books are excellent. The heroes and heroines – John Galt, Dagny Taggart, Hank Reardon, Howard Roark etc are exquisitely developed and totally engaging. Rand tells a ripping yarn. A common factor among them is a commitment to self-reliance in a world of scheming parasites and stifling tradition. Everywhere detractors criticise them for their independence and seek to ruin them for the benefit of the collective. How prescient were Rand’s stories for the events of 2022.

The human brain has two hemispheres, which control the motor functions of opposite sides of the body. It is also commonly given that ‘Left is for Logic and Right for Emotion’. it seems reasonable then that these faculties should be balanced to ensure optimum engagement with the world. Since 2020 however we’ve been rewriting the rules.

In Hitler’s Germany it was well understood that if you repeated big lies often enough they would be accepted as truth.  Our modern equivalent is the statement that ‘vaccines are safe and effective’. As nephrologist Suzanne Humphries and many others have pointed out, the data tells a different story. Most of the diseases of the 19th century were eliminated by the introduction of clean water, fresh food and decent sanitation. Perhaps in some cases the premise can be defended – that vaccines can prevent us getting a disease or of transmitting it further, but not in the case of a gene modifying therapy that does neither.  A simple appraisal of absolute vs relative effectiveness (<1% vs >95%) should at least give pause to anyone considering the administration of an experimental biologic that will alter their DNA forever.

As a child I played Cowboys and Indians and trivialised the brutality involved in the domination of America. Later I watched John Wayne and Elvis Presley go to war in the Pacific adorned with flower garlands when they weren’t involved with the slaughter. As the years unfold the technology of war changes, the carnage increases yet we seem ever more distant from it. The ‘Shock and Awe’ attack on Baghdad was viewed with the same detachment as a video game and now whole populations are divided against each other so that our latest war is fighting itself – ‘Have you had your jabs? – Well I’m disgusted that you would come out and put vulnerable people at risk’. There’s never a thought about why someone is vulnerable nor of their responsibility to protect themselves. Why should I have to stay home? Oh, I forgot. It’s just another expression of the idea ‘My seatbelt doesn’t work unless you’re wearing yours’. Emotion has trumped logic for sure.

What happens when someone’s right hemisphere dominates? Do they start walking around in circles? If they did would they ever accept that they’d been lied to when they couldn’t see the evidence? – ‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see’. Josef Goebbels would certainly be impressed. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong et al might be embarrassed at how ineffective their slaughter campaigns were by comparison to present day methods.

So let us all wake up to the threat now facing humanity – tyrannical control by a cabal of monsters. The captured regulation agencies and corrupted media would have us believe that we must comply with crazy edicts or die from a bogeyman disease caused by a virus that has never been isolated. Yes, by all means let us build heart-based communities that care for everyone in society. But let us also use basic logic to discern fact from fiction so that we are not swept along on a wave of hysteria and controlled by fear. Let’s balance and use our brains to walk straight and protect this beautiful lifeform we call mankind.

Sunday, 9 October 2022

Punch and Judy

This title brings back memories of seaside holidays where children would start to gather in the 30 minutes leading up to the afternoon show. Then great excitement would spill over into enthusiastic support for the extreme violence meted out by PC Plod on the hapless villain. With hindsight it was the perfect preparation for acceptance of policing in the UK, and around the world, today. But the protagonists have morphed from the Dixon of Dock Green Peace Constable type to the stab vested, taser wielding Policy Enforcement Officers of today. Whereas we learned from our earliest days that policemen protected the community, today policemen protect the government. All sense of fair play seems to have been trained out of them along with the ability to think for themselves.

Similarly the statement ‘Vaccines are Safe and Effective’ has been repeated constantly for over four decades. After hearing it a thousand times it must be true – right? Parents everywhere want to do the best for their children and have unquestioningly brought their infants for their paediatric shots. Doctor knows best and she’s trained to know these things – right? Here there’s no need for parents to think for themselves and any attempt to do so marks them out as oddballs spreading misinformation. After over 50 years of preparation along comes a new technology that breaks the mould in that it neither prevents recipients from catching the disease nor stops them from spreading it. Still, it’s given a name that means it’s Safe and Effective, so it must be – right? Month after month the number of injuries escalates and even those suffering are banned from sharing their stories on social media support groups. The fact that a 30 year old in the prime of life developed uncontrollable tremors within 48 hours or a 15 year old develops life-threatening myocarditis or a professional athlete drops dead on the pitch is downplayed by the introduction of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Everyone knows it’s normal for the young to suddenly drop dead – right?               No, Wrong!

Satirists everywhere are drooling as much as the Spitting Image puppets of long ago. Back in the day they lampooned Reagan with the weekly update of ‘The President’s brain is missing’. It prepared them perfectly for Biden’s America in 2022. Next summer, if we’re allowed onto the beach to make some immune enhancing Vitamin D, we could be treated to an updated P&J show where militarised enforcement officers smash the eggheads of Vallance, Whitty and Javid. However entertaining it might be to see justice meted out with extreme prejudice it serves only to perpetuate the cycle of violence that could lock another generation into hatred and ignorance. An alternative is to step away from the fray altogether and begin the process of regeneration, as we build the future we want – free of the parasitic corporations aiming to destroy us. Instead boys and girls might just paddle in the shallows collecting crabs and building castles while the P&J glove puppeteer organises a talent show. After all, there’s no show without Punch.