The word 'lockdown' has been frequently employed in the past two weeks to describe the circumstances the birdemic virus has triggered in the world. In our current situation, we have been instructed to interpret the term lockdown as a state of isolation or restricted access enacted as a security measure.
Appropriately enough, we have been, in effect, isolated and have seen our access to the most mundane of daily tasks severely curtailed. The justification for these draconian measures? A strain of flu virus that has been declared a pandemic and is apparently threatening the lives of millions.
The lockdown is working because it appeals to altruism. Governments around the world have isolated us and restricted our access to the daily routines of life under the pretext of disinterested and selfless concern for the welfare and well-being of others. We have been told that being locked down is the only way to save lives. Any objections to the implemented security and safety measures are treated as declarations of callous selfishness bordering on criminal recklessness. In some places non-compliance has indeed become a crime, punishable by fines and or jail time.
People have thus far accepted the lockdown without much of a fuss. To do otherwise would be to deem oneself selfish and uncaring. However, like nearly everything in our society, the psychology of the lockdown is saturated with the poison of inversion. It provides a perfect means through which people can appear to be self-sacrificing for the greater good while simultaneously fortifying themselves in selfishness and self-concern.
Let's face it, I imagine many people welcome the lockdown more as a means to protect themselves than as a means to protect others. After all, no one wants to become a victim of this terrible plague, do they? Nor do they want their families to fall ill. The self-centeredness beneath the altruistic syrup coating the lockdown measures also becomes evident through the empty shelves we find in grocery stores and pharmacies. This sort of thing would be rare or would simply not exist if the emotions supporting the apparent altruism were authentic.
The Establishment and the governments it controls are using altruism as a justification for the severe actions it has taken. They inform us they are doing this for our own good. The tell us they don't want to do any of it, but must in an effort to flatten curves and protect the populace from a mass death event. They are quick to point out their own selflessness and concern through their willingness to sacrifice their economies and societies in an effort to stem the tide of encroaching death. They eagerly parade a few of their infected own on the media to drive home the point that no one is safe.
Employment, taxes, debt, deficits, profits, markets, supply chains - none of that matters here and now. What matters here and now is isolating and restricting the general population to stop the spread of a killer disease that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems, thereby destroying the very foundation of civilization itself.
Yet, paradoxically, the altruistic actions the Establishment is taking, actions the general populace have thus far adhered to with practically little or no protest, also run the risk of destroying the very foundation of civilization.
As far as I can tell, a massive inversion of the old adage 'prevention is better than cure' is currently being played out. The Establishment seems intent on destroying the economy and society in its efforts to hinder the spread of a disease it claims will endanger civilization. I am certain the policies and regulations the Establishment has swiftly enacted around the world will soon show prevention to be far worse than cure in this case.
This brings us to possible underlying motivations behind the Establishment's current lockdown measures. As I mentioned above, we are being told to interpret the lockdown through the lens of altruism. We are being obliged to view the measures themselves as necessary means to achieve safety and security. Whatever freedom we enjoyed has been suspended in the name of welfare.
While this is happening, the other meaning of the word 'lockdown' - the one employed to describe prison conditions when prisoners are confined to their cells so the guards may prevent or control a riot - has been almost completely ignored.
How odd.
Official pundits and armchair pundits alike have argued against the foolishness of reading too much into our current lockdown situation. These pundits claim that the actions and measures we are currently experiencing are not unprecedented. On the contrary, history teems with examples of societies going into lockdown mode as a means to combat a terrible plague. Many have cited the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a notable, fairly recent example. Pundits are also quick to point out that life more or less returned to normal once the public health threat subsided in the various historical examples they point to.
Sounds reassuring, doesn't it?
I certainly hope the pundits are right. I really do. Because if they aren't, then we are likely living through what will one day be known as the biggest and, thus far, most successful totalitarian power grab ever attempted in the history of the world.
Sounds hyperbolic? Yes, it does, doesn't it? And perhaps it is hyperbolic. But being told you would not be allowed to gather in groups larger than five or take the family out to dinner would have sounded hyperbolic two weeks ago as well, wouldn't it have?
The truth is no one knows what the future will bring - but the present is displaying some pretty grim clues. We all live and breathe in the in the present, and this present has become totalitarian in nature. Whether it stays that way remains to be seen, but as of now we are little more than prisoners on lockdown.
This immediately raises a question. Why now?
I can't say with any certainty, but my intuition tells me it has something to do with the economy. The Establishment knew the economy would eventually implode. I am of the mind that it should have imploded back in 2008/2009, but that implosion was averted by ridiculous fiscal and financial stimulus actions and policies that managed to paper over the problem until now. Whatever the case, the Establishment appears quite intent on allowing the implosion to proceed now, and, to me at least, it appears to be using the birdemic virus as a both a shroud and an explanation for the cause of the ever-accelerating collapse.
Bad policies, rapacious greed, and criminal negligence won't be blamed for the collapse; a virus will. To top it all off, the Establishment gets a chance to prove their altruism and demonstrate their love of humanity. By destroying the economy to prevent the spread of virus, the Establishment can show that it loves human life more than it loves money. And as the collapse escalates, it will ask us all to adopt the same stance - all in the name of altruism.
Nevertheless, there is one thing the Establishment values far more than money or human life - and that one thing is power. Though the Establishment may appear to lose material wealth and comfort in the coming weeks and months, they have made and will continue to make vast gains in power during the lockdown. These gains in power will come at the expense of our personal freedoms and liberties. If we want to know what that will feel like, we need do no more than simply look around because, as of now, we're living it.
Of course, the pundits will argue this all temporary, but in my experience the Establishment rarely, if ever, walks back its encroachments on individual freedoms and liberties. Instead, they have tended to use each step forward as a launching pad for a future encroachment. Think Patriot Act and try to remember the last time you weren't asked to remove your belt or shoes or given a free body massage at an international airport. Or try to recall the last time you weren't asked to fill out intrusive forms in order to transfer larger amounts of money. Or the last time you felt well within your rights to call a man pretending to be a woman a man.
What has happened and is happening now makes the Patriot Act look like nothing more than a list of club rules a child would write in crayon and stick the wall of his backyard treehouse. Consider the following little news item from Israel that covers a proposal involving "A Total Suspension of Individual Freedom":
When MK Yoav Kish (Likud) sought to clarify whether she meant a total lockdown or curfew, Sadetsky replied: “A lockdown and personal monitoring of people, and a total halt to personal freedoms.”
Sadetsy and Moshe Bar Siman Tov, the Health Ministry’s director general, tried to persuade committee members to give the Shin Bet the go-ahead to use “special technological means” to detect where people diagnosed with the disease had been and the people they were exposed to while they were contagious, and to isolate them.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that such methods had been adopted, it provoked a strong public outcry due to the extraordinary loss of civil liberties by methods normally reserved for use in the war on terror.
These special means include gathering data about a person’s location via their cellphone and additional technological information using secret tools, and cross-referencing all of the data.
The process identifies all of the contacts coronavirus patients have had and the places they were, whether they are aware of it or not. A text message is then sent to any people who may have been affected, telling them to self-isolate.
The suspension of individual freedom. Micro-surveillance. Special technological means to detect movement and contacts.
I hate to say it, but Ahriman is cementing its grip on us. I hope the pundits are correct when they claim the isolation and restriction measures will be lifted once the virus fades, but I don't believe this will be the case. Even if the virus threat recedes, the economic fallout of the Establishment's policies will remain.
If this economic fallout turns out to be as bad as some suggest, lockdown measures will probably be maintained or increased in the name of protecting safety and order. Of course, neither of these will truly exist in any meaningful sense if the Establishment succeeds in tanking its own System, but that's very much beside the point.
The main point, as far as the Establishment is concerned, is to keep us isolated and restricted in our cells. We are all prisoners now. Prisoners in the name of the greater good. Locked down in the name of altruism.
Ahriman is stepping ever closer to a totalitarian world order, and it is wielding altruism as its weapon of choice in the achievement of this aim.
Appropriately enough, we have been, in effect, isolated and have seen our access to the most mundane of daily tasks severely curtailed. The justification for these draconian measures? A strain of flu virus that has been declared a pandemic and is apparently threatening the lives of millions.
The lockdown is working because it appeals to altruism. Governments around the world have isolated us and restricted our access to the daily routines of life under the pretext of disinterested and selfless concern for the welfare and well-being of others. We have been told that being locked down is the only way to save lives. Any objections to the implemented security and safety measures are treated as declarations of callous selfishness bordering on criminal recklessness. In some places non-compliance has indeed become a crime, punishable by fines and or jail time.
People have thus far accepted the lockdown without much of a fuss. To do otherwise would be to deem oneself selfish and uncaring. However, like nearly everything in our society, the psychology of the lockdown is saturated with the poison of inversion. It provides a perfect means through which people can appear to be self-sacrificing for the greater good while simultaneously fortifying themselves in selfishness and self-concern.
Let's face it, I imagine many people welcome the lockdown more as a means to protect themselves than as a means to protect others. After all, no one wants to become a victim of this terrible plague, do they? Nor do they want their families to fall ill. The self-centeredness beneath the altruistic syrup coating the lockdown measures also becomes evident through the empty shelves we find in grocery stores and pharmacies. This sort of thing would be rare or would simply not exist if the emotions supporting the apparent altruism were authentic.
The Establishment and the governments it controls are using altruism as a justification for the severe actions it has taken. They inform us they are doing this for our own good. The tell us they don't want to do any of it, but must in an effort to flatten curves and protect the populace from a mass death event. They are quick to point out their own selflessness and concern through their willingness to sacrifice their economies and societies in an effort to stem the tide of encroaching death. They eagerly parade a few of their infected own on the media to drive home the point that no one is safe.
Employment, taxes, debt, deficits, profits, markets, supply chains - none of that matters here and now. What matters here and now is isolating and restricting the general population to stop the spread of a killer disease that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems, thereby destroying the very foundation of civilization itself.
Yet, paradoxically, the altruistic actions the Establishment is taking, actions the general populace have thus far adhered to with practically little or no protest, also run the risk of destroying the very foundation of civilization.
As far as I can tell, a massive inversion of the old adage 'prevention is better than cure' is currently being played out. The Establishment seems intent on destroying the economy and society in its efforts to hinder the spread of a disease it claims will endanger civilization. I am certain the policies and regulations the Establishment has swiftly enacted around the world will soon show prevention to be far worse than cure in this case.
This brings us to possible underlying motivations behind the Establishment's current lockdown measures. As I mentioned above, we are being told to interpret the lockdown through the lens of altruism. We are being obliged to view the measures themselves as necessary means to achieve safety and security. Whatever freedom we enjoyed has been suspended in the name of welfare.
While this is happening, the other meaning of the word 'lockdown' - the one employed to describe prison conditions when prisoners are confined to their cells so the guards may prevent or control a riot - has been almost completely ignored.
How odd.
Official pundits and armchair pundits alike have argued against the foolishness of reading too much into our current lockdown situation. These pundits claim that the actions and measures we are currently experiencing are not unprecedented. On the contrary, history teems with examples of societies going into lockdown mode as a means to combat a terrible plague. Many have cited the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a notable, fairly recent example. Pundits are also quick to point out that life more or less returned to normal once the public health threat subsided in the various historical examples they point to.
Sounds reassuring, doesn't it?
I certainly hope the pundits are right. I really do. Because if they aren't, then we are likely living through what will one day be known as the biggest and, thus far, most successful totalitarian power grab ever attempted in the history of the world.
Sounds hyperbolic? Yes, it does, doesn't it? And perhaps it is hyperbolic. But being told you would not be allowed to gather in groups larger than five or take the family out to dinner would have sounded hyperbolic two weeks ago as well, wouldn't it have?
The truth is no one knows what the future will bring - but the present is displaying some pretty grim clues. We all live and breathe in the in the present, and this present has become totalitarian in nature. Whether it stays that way remains to be seen, but as of now we are little more than prisoners on lockdown.
This immediately raises a question. Why now?
I can't say with any certainty, but my intuition tells me it has something to do with the economy. The Establishment knew the economy would eventually implode. I am of the mind that it should have imploded back in 2008/2009, but that implosion was averted by ridiculous fiscal and financial stimulus actions and policies that managed to paper over the problem until now. Whatever the case, the Establishment appears quite intent on allowing the implosion to proceed now, and, to me at least, it appears to be using the birdemic virus as a both a shroud and an explanation for the cause of the ever-accelerating collapse.
Bad policies, rapacious greed, and criminal negligence won't be blamed for the collapse; a virus will. To top it all off, the Establishment gets a chance to prove their altruism and demonstrate their love of humanity. By destroying the economy to prevent the spread of virus, the Establishment can show that it loves human life more than it loves money. And as the collapse escalates, it will ask us all to adopt the same stance - all in the name of altruism.
Nevertheless, there is one thing the Establishment values far more than money or human life - and that one thing is power. Though the Establishment may appear to lose material wealth and comfort in the coming weeks and months, they have made and will continue to make vast gains in power during the lockdown. These gains in power will come at the expense of our personal freedoms and liberties. If we want to know what that will feel like, we need do no more than simply look around because, as of now, we're living it.
Of course, the pundits will argue this all temporary, but in my experience the Establishment rarely, if ever, walks back its encroachments on individual freedoms and liberties. Instead, they have tended to use each step forward as a launching pad for a future encroachment. Think Patriot Act and try to remember the last time you weren't asked to remove your belt or shoes or given a free body massage at an international airport. Or try to recall the last time you weren't asked to fill out intrusive forms in order to transfer larger amounts of money. Or the last time you felt well within your rights to call a man pretending to be a woman a man.
What has happened and is happening now makes the Patriot Act look like nothing more than a list of club rules a child would write in crayon and stick the wall of his backyard treehouse. Consider the following little news item from Israel that covers a proposal involving "A Total Suspension of Individual Freedom":
When MK Yoav Kish (Likud) sought to clarify whether she meant a total lockdown or curfew, Sadetsky replied: “A lockdown and personal monitoring of people, and a total halt to personal freedoms.”
Sadetsy and Moshe Bar Siman Tov, the Health Ministry’s director general, tried to persuade committee members to give the Shin Bet the go-ahead to use “special technological means” to detect where people diagnosed with the disease had been and the people they were exposed to while they were contagious, and to isolate them.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that such methods had been adopted, it provoked a strong public outcry due to the extraordinary loss of civil liberties by methods normally reserved for use in the war on terror.
These special means include gathering data about a person’s location via their cellphone and additional technological information using secret tools, and cross-referencing all of the data.
The process identifies all of the contacts coronavirus patients have had and the places they were, whether they are aware of it or not. A text message is then sent to any people who may have been affected, telling them to self-isolate.
The suspension of individual freedom. Micro-surveillance. Special technological means to detect movement and contacts.
I hate to say it, but Ahriman is cementing its grip on us. I hope the pundits are correct when they claim the isolation and restriction measures will be lifted once the virus fades, but I don't believe this will be the case. Even if the virus threat recedes, the economic fallout of the Establishment's policies will remain.
If this economic fallout turns out to be as bad as some suggest, lockdown measures will probably be maintained or increased in the name of protecting safety and order. Of course, neither of these will truly exist in any meaningful sense if the Establishment succeeds in tanking its own System, but that's very much beside the point.
The main point, as far as the Establishment is concerned, is to keep us isolated and restricted in our cells. We are all prisoners now. Prisoners in the name of the greater good. Locked down in the name of altruism.
Ahriman is stepping ever closer to a totalitarian world order, and it is wielding altruism as its weapon of choice in the achievement of this aim.
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