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 19^th 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.