The social impact of Covid

As Omicron moves in to become the dominant variant, what has been the social impact of the increasingly authoritarian measures being taken, even in the face of mounting evidence that the new strain may be much milder…

Here are some recent interviews and articles that focus as much on the social aspects of authoritarian lockdown of the unvaccinated and the segregation that is dividing us rapidly.

Dark Mountain Project founder Paul Kingsnorth has written two essays that outline his take on the societal implications:

“The divisions that have opened up in society about the covid vaccines are not really about the covid vaccines at all: they are about what vaccination symbolises in this moment. What it means to be ‘vaxxed’ or ‘unvaxxed’, safe or dangerous, clean or dirty, sensible or irresponsible, compliant or independent: these are questions about what it means to be a good member of society, and what society even is, and they are detonating like depth charges beneath the surface of the culture.”

Part One and Part Two

I will start by saying that this is the most important video interview I have seen in recent weeks.

It’s Paul Kingsnorth, writer, poet, environmental activist who I posted an article by recently. People were very divided but I have never receibed so many personal messages of support for sharing any article before.

Kingsnorth has an insightful sense of the two groups, on the surface quite they seem quite apart from one another, and how we might better understand them, looking under the hood in terms of what these ‘wars’ might be symbolising.

“The decision about whether to be vaccinated Is becoming a proxy for something much bigger which is the kind of society we want to live in. And a conversation about the authoritarianism that is rising very very fast.

There are two conversation you can have

1 Is the vaccine safe and should you have it? That conversation which has been going on for a long time and will go on and on…

2 Whether your vaccine status should be used to demonstrate your acceptable position in society? That is something radically new. We are creating a society where you can only access many of its services with a digital passport that shows whether you have had a particular medication. This is a Rubicon. We’ve never had anything like this before. We’ve never had the technology.

So what we’ve got is a kind of proxy discussion. People are arguing about the vaccines but really under the surface they’re arguing about what of person you are, if you’ve taken these things, if you’re a good or bad person, or a clean or an unclean one.

My personal ‘rubicon’ was watching what happened in Austria, where it suddenly became acceptable to move on from vaccine passports which were bad enough already, but suddenly we have mandatory medication. Mandatory vaccinations. In the USA, already people have been walking out of their jobs in huge numbers because of this enforcement.

I didn’t think I’d be living in a time where we had to have arguments about tyranny, which is actually what’s going on, kind of biomedical tyranny is possible. And I’m not talking about lockdowns or masks or whatever, I’m talking about where we could be going with this kind of technological division of society. That’s all on the table now.

There has to be another way of doing society. We don’t have the spiritual or cultural language to talk about what’s going in under the surface, so we just argue about the science. There’s something much bigger, much deeper going on, this is what I mean about Covid being a revelation, it’s showing us something that’s really missing, a spiritual void a cultural void at the heart of a culture. We don’t even know how to talk about it yet.

Who is qualified to argue about the efficacy of a vaccine? Very few people actually. We all pretend we are but we’re not. If you are challenging the authoritarian system, the technological system, the system of scientistic progress and control that is manifesting around Covid and where Covid is being used as an excuse to create, then you have to argue with it on those terms.

You also have to recognise that there are legitimate medical approaches to try to tackle the virus and not getting into pretending the virus doesn’t even exist and that it’s not very dangerous to some people… that’s also self-defeating.

Can you not see that this attempt at defeating a virus is creating a society that’s looking increasingly terrible? And we don’t how long that’s going to last and we don’t know whether it’s ever going to go away.

I’m drawing a line at certain things that I’m not going to go along with and even though you are going get monstered by sticking your head above the parapet, you have to stick it up, if you’re concerned about that, whether or not you’re vaccinated. That’s irrelevant

The control systems are separate from your opinion about particular technologies.

What are the values that need to be talked about? You could make a valid argument that freedom is one the things that has made society disintegrate over the past 50- years, this constant obsession with freedom in all areas, whether it’s economic or cultural.

It’s unfashionable but I like to talk about spiritual values, because I like to talk about what the higher meaning of society is, what a culture is and what it regards as its god. What is the purpose of being here? What are we here for as humans? What sort of a culture do we want to live in? At the moment we’ve come to a society, and again something else that Covid has revealed, that doesn’t really have any meaning at all except on a material level.”

Have a listen. Nothing really matters much more than this stuff at the moment and Paul explains it very eloquently..

In this podcast, Chris Martenson interviews Professor Mattias Desmet who discusses his work that connects past historical episodes of what is called “Mass Formation” (aka Mass Psychosis) and current events.

Martenson says “We are on a dark path, fueled by dim actors who are pulling on our emotional strings to create fear and isolation in order to push their agenda of technocratic control of our lives, dreams of transhumanism, and using vaccine passports as a first step on a path to overt totalitarianism.

“The risks are as grave as they come. Unless a few brave and courageous people are willing to stand up and say “I don’t agree!” history suggests that we will end up somewhere we deeply regret.

“We’re on a dark path. One that historially has lead to human misery and mass atrocities. Eventually all totalitarian systems end in their own destruction.

“My position is “it doesn’t have to be this way.” We can do better. Let’s avoid a future of atrocities and the complete destruction of our way of life. Unfortunately, those caught up in the Mass Formation event cannot see the larger or wider implications of their actions. They are very much like a hypnotized person with their field of view narrowed down to a singular threat or risk they have been told is the one-and-only threat they must conquer.

“So all of their attention goes there. It focusses down. Nothing else matters. Eventually they transfer their anger and rage at that enemy – which is Covid today – upon a more relatable a nearby object. Perhaps their neighbor. Perhaps the unvaccinated. Perhaps immigrants who are stealing their jobs, or those who aren’t taking Climate Change seriously enough.

With that transference, the path has been laid to re-trod some of the most awful and inhumane periods of history. We’re there again and our own integrity demands that we do what we can to avoid going any further down that path.

“In this episode Mattias tells us what can be done. We must never resort to violence. We must be courageous and speak up. We must hold everyone with compassion. But most of all, we must speak up.”

Essential viewing (also available in podcast here)

In this Aubrey Marcus podcast we hear Charles Eisenstein interviewed:

“We are in the midst of powerful and unprecedented times. In this epic sequel to my favorite podcast of all time, Charles and I map out how to embody the revolution of reunion that we are currently undergoing.

A reunion of people with each other, their culture, their governments, and the Earth. But sometimes before things get better, the old structures must dissolve.

One of the highlights of this episode was the discussion about the first moment that Americans lost trust in our government, and how the poison pill of this tragedy has metastasized in our collective psyche. And of course, how the courage of community can help to drive out the poison of institutionalized manipulation.”

Philosophers (and best friends) Bayo Akomolafe and Charles Eisenstein (one of Campfire’s syndicated writers) tell the story of how our world cracked open—and elaborate on what we can do about it. Bayo and Charles’ conversation was recorded as part of Concrete Love, the signature gathering of House of Beautiful Business that took place on October 29–November 26, 2021, in Lisbon and online. It’s a talk rich in sparkling metaphoric framework.. “The way we respond to the crisis is often the crisis”… “In order to find your way, you must become lost” “children bring infinity into our finite categories” “We’re still in spaceship” “We need to stay with the trouble” “We need places of surrender”

One to consider for those who are wondering how to talk to ‘Vax-Hesitant’ people….

A simple solution to vaccine hesitancy that “costs nothing to implement, it is non-coercive; it will unify the people rather than divide us, and it respects the cherished values of a free society, including the rights to speech, privacy, bodily autonomy, and freedom from discrimination…

Stop using the terms vaccine hesitant and vaccine hesitancy entirely.”

“The phenomenal power to alter reality through language is captured in the concept of “spell words.” These are words which cast a spell on the mind, shutting down the process of critical thinking and activating a conditioned behavioral response and belief system. Vaccine hesitancy is a spell word that accomplishes the objectives outlined above. Anti-vax is also a spell word. By casting the spell of “anti-vaxxer” on someone, that person loses their humanity. They become some kind of goblin or bugbear—a noxious vermin to be eradicated. When the words “anti-vax” enter one’s ears, it is automatically understood that the anti-vaxxer is not to be listened to, understood, considered, or in any way engaged with. The only appropriate response is to shun, banish, excommunicate, and cancel the offending enemy. As Joseph Campbell eloquently described it, when war is declared it becomes the task of the propagandists to convert members of the opposing side from a “thou” into an “it.” In the history of my country, the United States, we can observe the lamentable record of such terms from previous wars: redcoats, rebs, yankees, krauts, japs, reds, commies, pinkos, gooks, and towelheads: spell words all.”

Latest post from Chris Martenson yesterday. “Omicron is looking like a very positive development” at a time when high levels of floating anxiety are mounting, even as the data starts to come through. Certainly early signs for cautious optimism. Trend-spotter Chris Martenson analyses and concludes “unequivocally, it’s mild. There’s really nothing to worry about”

Though it is still too early to tell in Britain. Different population demographics to South Africa, different previous exposure to earlier variants.

And lastly, CJ Hopkins on the Covidian Cult

He’s written brilliantly and with no shortage of positive appraisal on The Road To Totalitarianism