Thank you, Paul. I am a care home manager and this morning I received a message from the Department of Health & Social Care, sent by the Care Quality Commission, to tell me that I and my staff have to have both jabs by 11th November or we will lose our jobs. Enforcing vaccination through threats to one's job seems to me to be against international human rights law which outlaws coerced medication - yet this is now UK government policy and they are bringing in a law to make vaccinations mandatory for care home staff. This is state tyranny and I have written about it here on my blog: https://anthropopper.com/2021/07/26/freefall-to-tyranny/
With several dear relatives in care homes here in the US, I sincerely hope we adopt this wise policy of requiring care-givers to be vaccinated. I would like to spare my relatives the ravages of this deadly and horrible disease.
You certainly have the right to infest your body with vermin and to spew them out, just not at me and my family, thank you very much.
I am a scientist, but one who is highly sympathetic to its inability to function as a spiritual core for the vast majority of people (me excepted).
But now Paul has gone much too far for me.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, fine, but stay the fuck away from me and my family.
I'm glad to hear it. But thank you for leaving behind an excellent example of just the kind of angry intolerance I was talking about, before you go.
What disturbs me about this kind of thing is the irrationality. This poster is not going to come anywhere near 'you and your family.' Besides which, if you are vaccinated, and the vaccine is so efficacious - how would this in any case be a threat? And the swearing and the reference to 'vermin' indicate mob behaviour: intolerance and violence, dressed up as public service.
First, your claim that "this poster is not going to come anywhere near 'you and your family'" is technically true, because we are in different countries. But, as I wrote, I have several family members in care homes, and the poster is a care home manager. In my experience, care home managers are in frequent close contact with care home residents. Do I want an unvaccinated manager at one of the care homes of my relatives? No, I most definitely do not! And yet without government vaccination mandates, that is exactly what will happen.
And it is a threat because some people (including my dear wife and one of the relatives in a care home) are immunocompromised, the vaccine does not train their immune systems properly.
And the vaccine is not 100% effective. My fully vaccinated nephew was diagnosed with covid-19 two days ago, and is suffering from it as I type this.
And you call me irrational for wanting to keep my family safe from a deadly disease!
Yes, something about this post, and your response, pushed me over the edge into intolerance. You think it's just fine for unvaccinated health-care workers to treat their hapless and helpless paitents. I say no!!! Keep away from me and mine!!!
You are aware, aren't you, that these vaccines do not actually prevent vaccinated people from hosting the virus? What the vaccines do, in most cases - though it would seem only for a few months - is prevent vaccinated people from contracting the disease itself.
You could be surrounded by 100% vaccinated people, and they could still be carrying the virus.
You say tyourself that the vaccine is 'not 100% effective.' Figures (official ones) from the UK last week show that it is barely 60% effective, and effectiveness appears to be in decline. This, plus the lack of studies of long-term effects, are what make people cautious about taking it.
And yet you are certain as can be. Your last email talked about unvaccinated people 'spewing vermin' (what kind of vermin? Rats?) over good people like yourself who have been vaccinated. You told someone on the other side of the world to 'stay the fuck away from my family.' Now you're back again, defending your behaviour, and repeating your desire for authoritarian responses to those who disagree with you. What next? Yellow stars?
You claim to be a 'scientist.' If that's true, everything you are doing here is precisely proving the point I was making in this essay.
And then there is the practice, in effect since the first days of Covid in the UK, Ireland and the US, among other places, that Covid patients who are in recovery but still too ill to manage on their own are transferred from hospitals to care homes. Why do I never hear anyone express concern about the danger of transmission from Covid patients to the most vulnerable people in our society?
Yep. Difficult time, indeed. I've run into more than a few folks like this. I've been wading my way through Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin and I've shivered in response to his accounts of how easily otherwise decent people were manipulated using fear into spying on their neighbors and reporting what they considered bad behavior to the authorities. Never mind that that was often a death sentence for their neighbors. We're in trouble when you put the power of the state and corporations on steroids behind the kind of social engineering we're seeing now, and penalize, shout down, and/or suppress those reasonable people who raise their hands and say, "hey, just because the CDC, WHO, <INSERT LETTERS HERE> say that all good citizens should do X, is that really accurate or just the spin of the moment?" What still has me shaking my head - among other things - is how little discussion there is about reasonable risk and what levels of infection and death rate should be expected going forward. San Francisco, for example, had three times as many deaths attributed to drug overdose as COVID last year, but you don't hear much at the moment about the raging drug pandemic. The idea that the infection and death rates for this virus can be reduced to zero is no more reasonable than expecting that this upcoming winter we'll see no one dying from the flu, or pneumonia, or . . . It's all so annoying. Makes me want to find a cave somewhere and avoid people completely. But, I suppose, that too is what The Machine might like, isolate us all from each other, and make us even more dependent on it and its minions. And with that depressing thought, it is now time to go pick some green beans and watch the hummingbirds around the sweet peas.
What disturbs me most is this sense that now we are primarily disease carriers. Every time I see someone wearing a mask in a deserted street I get a sense of foreboding.
Hi everyone, new subscriber, just joined. I've been aware of Paul's work for some time but after watching some of his recent interviews on YouTube and reading the free essays here on the Abbey, we seem to share the same concerns and are coming at things from roughly the same angle, so...here I am!
I thought I'd reply to Jeremy's post as I am, currently at least, a Support Worker who works with people with autism and learning disabilities. I have not had the dreaded 'jab', so was recently informed that if I do not have the 'vaccine' by 16 September, and thus not be able to have my required second jab by 11 November, I will be sacked.
Well, I would hope most people here will be pleased to hear that I have no intention of having the jab. I would have thought 'MarkS' was in the minority here, but one thing I've noticed is that, for some reason, people who are generally against 'the Machine', the technocracy etc., suddenly became full-on advocates of the Establishment's patently preposterous narrative on COVID, for some bizarre reason. Perhaps it's because it's fine to be a rebel theoretically but when it's in your face, right here, right now, people sadly revert to form and simply follow the herd for an easy life.
What I find interesting about the mandatory vaccine for care home workers is that if you mention it, people automatically assume that you work with elderly people. They don't seem to know that the law also affects people who work with learning disabilities, irrespective of age. The eldest person in my service is 33. I'm actually the oldest person working there! Yet for some reason, I'm designated as a threat because I don't like the idea of having a government that deems it acceptable to inject people with an experimental medicine that patently doesn't work for no actual discernible reason. Call me old-fashioned...
There is only one of our residents who is vaccinated. He has been deemed to have the legal capacity to make decisions as to his own welfare, so that’s fine. We did have some residents move out recently who were also deemed to have mental capacity, who have declined the jab and would definitely continue to decline it. We have other residents who do not have capacity that have not had the jab, as this would, in effect, entail holding them down against their will and injecting them or giving them anaesthetic and giving them the jab that way.
All of our residents go out into the wider world, shopping, cafes etc. and most of them don’t wear masks, because of the issues outlined above. So, in regards to our residents that don’t have capacity, if this really was a deadly pandemic, wouldn’t you think, ugly as it may sound, they should be put under and vaccinated, as the risks are so great to their lives that this is the preferred option?
And for those who do have legal capacity, yet still decline the vaccine, surely they should be held responsible for their ‘irresponsible’ actions? They are, per narrative, putting not only themselves but the public and fellow residents at risk, to say nothing of the staff members who provide care for them.
Strange how it’s only staff who can legally spread this deadly disease…!
It's also brought home to me how the coming tyranny will work: the government will pass legislation and then expect business and corporations to carry it out. In this way, they can't be blamed or held responsible; people can protest against the government but they can't really protest when their livelihoods are on the line, they’re being sacked and the sorry state of the unions means that they no longer have any representation and the nebulous nature of the legislation means that any legal action will take years.
It was instructive too to see how my fellow workers who didn't want the jab reacted when the pressure was applied. One decided to have it because, and I quote, 'the missus was giving me earache' whilst the other potential refusenik, who would happily quote all the latest David Icke videos on how creeping 'fascism' (don't get me started on people who use this term as a synonym for totalitarianism...) was threatening to engulf us all, but completely capitulated at the first hurdle.
I'm not trying to make myself out to be some sort of martyr but I do feel that everyone needs to face up to the reality of the situation. We really have only two choices: you either jettison your principles, which means you WILL be materially worse off, and go along with an agenda that you know is misguided at best, metaphysically evil at worst, or you decide to stand firm and not simply bow down to the first bit of tyranny that comes your way. You WILL be materially worse off but it all comes down to whether you can look yourself in the mirror in the mornings.
None of us wanted this but we can't hide from it. As Paul said, we are in for difficult times. Our enemies are, again, at best self-serving politicians, at worse literally Satan! But anyone who is being realistic about the situation knows that those who don’t kowtow will, at some point, come up against the baddies. When, and how much, we can stand against this is down to every individual but we must be aware that if we just leave it to others, and don’t follow through on our convictions, we WILL lose.
However, on a more cheerful note…! I do actually have a conviction that humanity, perhaps with a little bit of divine providence, or as a kickback response by Nature, will prevail. But we need to look out for each other and support each other in these unprecedented times. This is the most important thing we can do at present.
Enjoyed that very much in common with your other ways despite the alarming revelations ! Stilling the mind and “thy will be done” have been my life for some years and continue to be so.
Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin puts it this way: the way of the modern world is the way of reason is the way of dehumanization. So what we must do is cultivate not the mind, but the heart. For him, that was a complete life mission, a way of being. It was theological, of course, but it was also practical. It meant things like telling fairy tales and playing with your children and looking at ants carefully as they go about their work. We could all use a lot more of that kind of heart-cultivation, I think.
hey, it sounds like refusal of this vaccine could become the new monastic movement that's been called for. Your own property will be your cell. The practical question is how to pay bills, even just property taxes, under these circumstances.
Thank you Paul for at last identifying the Elephant in the room. I've been waiting for you to come to the topic of Covid over the past few months. I agree with everything you say, and I too felt we crossed a Rubicon, when our government introduced health Apartheid, last week. It appears to be widely supported as are all the other measures. Here is just an example: Last weekend in Leitrim, a small group of musicians were playing music at an outdoor venue. Apparently, a call was soon made to Shannonside, the local radio station by a "concerned " member of the public. The law was enforced and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.
Well, I was always planning to build up to it over time - it is such an obvious, and clarifying, example of where the Machine is headed. But sometimes events force your hand.
The Leitrim story is appalling. Since when was it illegal to play music outside, anyway?
These are amongst the wrongest words I've ever heard — 'and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.'
Paul, you will find a kindred spirit, and great intellect, in El Gato Malo, whose blog Bad Cattitude catalogues the intensifying irrationality of the "science" surrounding covid and vaccines. Here is one brilliant example: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/science-is-a-process-not-an-institution. A recent post sums up the disingenuity surrounding the official stance toward vaccines vs. other cheaper, safer and more effective treatments: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-covid-study-i-would-like-to-see. There is a dark cloud passing over the land, leaving suffering and death in its wake, and I'm not talking about a virus. This trio of essays by Connor Kelly lays out the situation with absolute clarity: https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-1-our-brand-new-shiny-fascist-state/. Your writing, like these others', is absolutely vital to the maintain of our societies' bearings in this difficult time. It is through our connections with and validation from one another that we can sustain the bright light of clarity, honesty, reason and compassion that define our common humanity. THANK YOU
As the crisis continues ( or is continued?), I think we're seeing more clearly what's at stake - and it's much more than public health, or even freedom of association. The Republic's ban on baptisms has been one of the most chilling aspects of its pandemic response.
Very thought provoking Paul. I am thankful for your articulation of this crisis, your vulnerability in sharing your new social status of 'leper'. A bell is being tied to the necks of the unwilling, marking them as unclean, marking them as sacrificial targets for our despair.... and the ancient drama repeats itself again and again. When will be learn?
My graduate work and practice as a therapist has been at the intersection of the non-religious and spiritual/religious impulses, and it has been powerful to see the trends we were watching 10 years ago come into full bloom now. There is a new priesthood, a new sense of taboo, a whole new super-structure emerging, all of it to fill the vacuum left by the old pieties.
When I personally sit back and observe nature I do see one consistent pattern: it always moves forward, evolving and adapting. My hunch, my sense, is that there is no way back to the old motto, the old 'Thy will be done'. What is emerging now is an anti-thesis to the old thesis. What will be the new synthesis?
I don't know. I don't think I will ever know. I have grieved that I will live a life witnessing a painful decline, and have accepted that my lot is to till the field for the emergence of a future synthesis. Our geological record and ancient myths tells the story clearly. The coming devastation will open space for the redemption to emerge from within the wound.
That's a very interesting perspective: the new structures which are rising up to replace the old. It's some of what I've been trying to reach towards here. You're right, the shape of the flower is coming into focus now.
We're certainly not going back to anything; not any form of human society anyway. The changes I think will be overwhelming. Yes, tilling the field is the way, I think. It can be very painful. But then the future was never as sold as we hoped, I suppose.
On an optimistic note the Machine has revealed its next move! The line of resistance is showing ever clearer beyond the fog. Maybe the space for resilience and adaptation exists in the smaller places? The places where neighborliness is still practiced, if even awkwardly.
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings." - Wendell Berry
With the public so willing, I'm convinced there will be no need for a Secret Police. Add in, Fr. Tony Flannery's comments this week to the bishops, and his choice of the words " playing into the hands of extreme anti vaxers", for those of us who will not subject our bodies to an experimental treatment, is another sign of where we're at . This from a so called liberal member of the Catholic church.
Paul, Your way of connecting the dots is unsettling (not least to you) but so very helpful. The only way back to deep truth is by telling the obvious pieces of it in front of us -- despite offical denials and media fog. You comparison of Science and "Magic" was most helpful. Like all forms idolatry, such things offer the illusion of control or safety at the cost of deforming if not killing what we say we love (people, families, communities, much less the natural world), the very opposite of what should happen in the worship of and trust in the life-giving God of creation and resurrection. Victories of technical reason and control inevitalbly yeild "unanticipated" consequences which should precipitate fear of the true God (not a candidate for manipulation, flattery or lies) that is the beginning of wisdom. But repentance is not on the Faustian menu. More's the pity. So your Abby sightings are a light and testify to life and love the darkness has not and cannot overcome. Yet. Take heart.
"In the realm of facts science reigns supreme, in the realm of values we have to look elsewhere" J B Peterson
Science, with help from it's media bag carriers and expedient politicians, does us, and itself, no favours by conflating theory and modelling with scientific fact. A theory and the modelling derived from it are not "The Science" they purport to be. Maybe they're the best we've got, the best guess under the circumstances but to then shut down any attempt at questioning, never mind actual dissent, is rank totalitarianism.
Despite our faith in science it seems to me that we live in a dream, a narrative about meaning and value. But absent science, how far do you go with "other ways of knowing". You see the danger? Are we seriously expected to believe, to submit, to something as completely insane as a bloke in a dress is a woman?
"language and meaning are deeply networked, deeply public, and held in place by things like history, collective knowledge, linguistic precedent, logical consistency, and the contours of the objective world (i.e., truth). To claim total control over one proposition within such a network is therefore to control them all. For the state to attempt to grant monopolistic control over both the analytic and synthetic definitions of terms like “he” and “she,” to a privileged and exclusive class of language-users, terms perhaps no more fundamental to the human condition, would be, in essence, to attempt to grant control over truth itself."
I'm not sure Peterson is right about that. Can we divide 'facts' and 'values' so cleanly? And does science really reign supreme in the factual realm? In theory it should, but in practice, because it is an ideology, there are plenty of facts it leaves out of its worldview due to their inconvenient shape.
In the case of something like this virus, it seems to me that a real science, allied with an honest public polity, would be doing all the work and modelling you speak of, opening up its methodology and results for public scrutiny, and working with the public realm to facilitate an open conversation about what we know and don't know, and what your choices are. That's almost the opposite of what's happening at present.
As for the gender narrative - which I'll be writing about in future - I don't see scientific voices really challenging it. Why are men competing in women's weightlifting contests at the Olympics? I'm not seeing the Royal Society offering any comments.
Thank you Paul, there is no clear division, no distinct realms; our values are informed but not dictated by objective reality (science?) and the direction of our quest for objective truth is lead by our values. Our aim should be to become a person of sufficient moral character to manage the distinction.
Science has allowed itself to become corrupted, a servant of lies so we end up in the worst possible worlds; the stabilising and questioning role of science now slave to a rootless, fabricated, imposed and totalitarian morality. Without a commitment to objective truth primitive man lived with superstition and in fear of a pantheon of invisible ghosts and goblins. That's where we're headed.
Perhaps I am just a hopeless optimist but I think it is possible that what you're "feeling" -- and many have sensed such a shift in the metaphysical seasons -- is the looming collapse of the "Enlightenment order" (or, better, the crude spiritual pornography of the "American order") which is an unassailably good thing. I don't think the beast is as strong as it pretends to be, and I think that it is aware of this (happy to us) fact. The thrashings of its tail amid the death-rattles are dangerous but not completely deadly, and there remain many places where its writ doesn't run.
Thanks again and what was striking for me is how you end on “Do what thou wilt” and “Thy will be done”. As Bacon et al also felt, science was so glorious because it was doing both: restoring the lost Eden through the dominion also given to humankind in Genesis (and I believe the Hebrew for “dominion” in Gen 1:26 is quite masterly). In short, science was devised as a divinely sanctioned means of redemption, which I suspect is why its progressivism still has a powerfully religious feel. (I’m drawing here on Peter Harrison’s fascinating, The Territories of Science and Religion, Chicago University Press).
The plot thickens because the two imperatives of “thou wilt” and “thy will” rightly coincide in what you might call the divinised mind. “Love and do what thou wilt” was Augustine’s way of expressing it. There is a true perception here, for all that it is rarely truly perceived. Such is God’s reckless gratuity.
What goes wrong, I think, is that the scientific mind ceases to know that heaven is not a place on earth. It forgets the bigger, original story of life found on the other side of death, an end to history (as in direction and conclusion), we are sown a natural body raised a spiritual body, old things pass away and the new comes, as Paul wrote.
This amnesia is frightening because when human longing and desire, rightly for divine life, forgets it is for divine life, it throws its considerable powers into finding happiness on a material flatland that, in fact, it slowly, steadily consumes.
I think we're already on the wrong track if we see science as a means of redemption. I don't think "science" and "redemption" have any business being in the same sentence. For Bacon to perceive the Fall as the loss of man's dominion over nature is to miss the wood for the trees. Surely the main point when it comes to the Fall was man's separation from God as a consequence of his desire to take disobediently that for which he was not yet ready. Everything else flows from that, including man's loss of dominion. The way back therefore can surely have nothing to do with reacquiring dominion by technical means. Whatever good science may give us, in terms of relieving physical suffering or otherwise, it cannot give us anything redemptive in the spiritual sense (not to get into the whole topic of how suffering can paradoxically be redemptive). One of the great and obvious truths throughout history is the existence of evil men of great knowledge/intellect and holy men of poor learning and simplicity.
Interestingly I recently watched an interview which was conducted by AI researcher Lex Fridman. In it he preposterously states that he believes that there is a negative correlation between evil and competence. His powers of self delusion are so great that he even states that history bears this out! The context was that he was trying to comfort himself that science could not be harnessed by evil people for evil means because evil people are not capable of great scientific prowess. I presume that by implication he believes that those with great scientific prowess, such as himself, must have an innate moral goodness. I'm seeing more and more of this cognitive bias with prominent scientists. Their identity is so wrapped up in science that its no longer a technical tool for them. It's a moral good and those that are better at it than others are also better than others, and therefore have the obligation to tell others what to do.
Yes, I'm sure separation is the main issue. It's also interesting that you notice the identification between science as a moral good and the scientist as morally good, in so far as they are doing "good science", as it's often said. There's that prelapsarian fantasy unconsciously playing out again...
As I've read, I'm reminded of 7 Daniel and Revelation 13: beasts rising from the sea - and those beasts seem to represent different superpowers when each one dominated the whole world, only to be overthrown by the next one that rises.
This leads me to think, since Babel, God seems to keep the machine at bay with other machines (or beasts). I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I grew up in a culture in which many people saw the anti-christ rising everywhere and expected his mark to be some sort of tattoo or chip (or now, vaccine passports). What we are experiencing has an apocalyptic feel, certainly!
Thank you, Paul. I am a care home manager and this morning I received a message from the Department of Health & Social Care, sent by the Care Quality Commission, to tell me that I and my staff have to have both jabs by 11th November or we will lose our jobs. Enforcing vaccination through threats to one's job seems to me to be against international human rights law which outlaws coerced medication - yet this is now UK government policy and they are bringing in a law to make vaccinations mandatory for care home staff. This is state tyranny and I have written about it here on my blog: https://anthropopper.com/2021/07/26/freefall-to-tyranny/
I'm very sorry to hear it. I wish I could say I was surprised. Keep writing.
With several dear relatives in care homes here in the US, I sincerely hope we adopt this wise policy of requiring care-givers to be vaccinated. I would like to spare my relatives the ravages of this deadly and horrible disease.
You certainly have the right to infest your body with vermin and to spew them out, just not at me and my family, thank you very much.
I am a scientist, but one who is highly sympathetic to its inability to function as a spiritual core for the vast majority of people (me excepted).
But now Paul has gone much too far for me.
If you don't want to get vaccinated, fine, but stay the fuck away from me and my family.
Unsubscribing now.
I'm glad to hear it. But thank you for leaving behind an excellent example of just the kind of angry intolerance I was talking about, before you go.
What disturbs me about this kind of thing is the irrationality. This poster is not going to come anywhere near 'you and your family.' Besides which, if you are vaccinated, and the vaccine is so efficacious - how would this in any case be a threat? And the swearing and the reference to 'vermin' indicate mob behaviour: intolerance and violence, dressed up as public service.
Phew. We are in for a difficult time.
We are indeed Paul. There are too many closed minds who just long for the state to provide all the answers for their fears and anxieties.
Indeed we are.
First, your claim that "this poster is not going to come anywhere near 'you and your family'" is technically true, because we are in different countries. But, as I wrote, I have several family members in care homes, and the poster is a care home manager. In my experience, care home managers are in frequent close contact with care home residents. Do I want an unvaccinated manager at one of the care homes of my relatives? No, I most definitely do not! And yet without government vaccination mandates, that is exactly what will happen.
And it is a threat because some people (including my dear wife and one of the relatives in a care home) are immunocompromised, the vaccine does not train their immune systems properly.
And the vaccine is not 100% effective. My fully vaccinated nephew was diagnosed with covid-19 two days ago, and is suffering from it as I type this.
And you call me irrational for wanting to keep my family safe from a deadly disease!
Yes, something about this post, and your response, pushed me over the edge into intolerance. You think it's just fine for unvaccinated health-care workers to treat their hapless and helpless paitents. I say no!!! Keep away from me and mine!!!
I thought you were leaving us, Mark?
You are aware, aren't you, that these vaccines do not actually prevent vaccinated people from hosting the virus? What the vaccines do, in most cases - though it would seem only for a few months - is prevent vaccinated people from contracting the disease itself.
You could be surrounded by 100% vaccinated people, and they could still be carrying the virus.
You say tyourself that the vaccine is 'not 100% effective.' Figures (official ones) from the UK last week show that it is barely 60% effective, and effectiveness appears to be in decline. This, plus the lack of studies of long-term effects, are what make people cautious about taking it.
And yet you are certain as can be. Your last email talked about unvaccinated people 'spewing vermin' (what kind of vermin? Rats?) over good people like yourself who have been vaccinated. You told someone on the other side of the world to 'stay the fuck away from my family.' Now you're back again, defending your behaviour, and repeating your desire for authoritarian responses to those who disagree with you. What next? Yellow stars?
You claim to be a 'scientist.' If that's true, everything you are doing here is precisely proving the point I was making in this essay.
My wife, a medic, told me that a normal flu vaccine is 60% effective. My parents were doing such vaccines each autumn…
However, the vaccine seems to give more chances to avoid crowding the hospitals.
And I am speaking as a Romanian expat whose home country currently requires international assistance to deal with the 4th wave…
And then there is the practice, in effect since the first days of Covid in the UK, Ireland and the US, among other places, that Covid patients who are in recovery but still too ill to manage on their own are transferred from hospitals to care homes. Why do I never hear anyone express concern about the danger of transmission from Covid patients to the most vulnerable people in our society?
This was bad enough when it was originally posted but certainly hasn’t aged well
Yep. Difficult time, indeed. I've run into more than a few folks like this. I've been wading my way through Stephen Kotkin's books on Stalin and I've shivered in response to his accounts of how easily otherwise decent people were manipulated using fear into spying on their neighbors and reporting what they considered bad behavior to the authorities. Never mind that that was often a death sentence for their neighbors. We're in trouble when you put the power of the state and corporations on steroids behind the kind of social engineering we're seeing now, and penalize, shout down, and/or suppress those reasonable people who raise their hands and say, "hey, just because the CDC, WHO, <INSERT LETTERS HERE> say that all good citizens should do X, is that really accurate or just the spin of the moment?" What still has me shaking my head - among other things - is how little discussion there is about reasonable risk and what levels of infection and death rate should be expected going forward. San Francisco, for example, had three times as many deaths attributed to drug overdose as COVID last year, but you don't hear much at the moment about the raging drug pandemic. The idea that the infection and death rates for this virus can be reduced to zero is no more reasonable than expecting that this upcoming winter we'll see no one dying from the flu, or pneumonia, or . . . It's all so annoying. Makes me want to find a cave somewhere and avoid people completely. But, I suppose, that too is what The Machine might like, isolate us all from each other, and make us even more dependent on it and its minions. And with that depressing thought, it is now time to go pick some green beans and watch the hummingbirds around the sweet peas.
What disturbs me most is this sense that now we are primarily disease carriers. Every time I see someone wearing a mask in a deserted street I get a sense of foreboding.
Hi everyone, new subscriber, just joined. I've been aware of Paul's work for some time but after watching some of his recent interviews on YouTube and reading the free essays here on the Abbey, we seem to share the same concerns and are coming at things from roughly the same angle, so...here I am!
I thought I'd reply to Jeremy's post as I am, currently at least, a Support Worker who works with people with autism and learning disabilities. I have not had the dreaded 'jab', so was recently informed that if I do not have the 'vaccine' by 16 September, and thus not be able to have my required second jab by 11 November, I will be sacked.
Well, I would hope most people here will be pleased to hear that I have no intention of having the jab. I would have thought 'MarkS' was in the minority here, but one thing I've noticed is that, for some reason, people who are generally against 'the Machine', the technocracy etc., suddenly became full-on advocates of the Establishment's patently preposterous narrative on COVID, for some bizarre reason. Perhaps it's because it's fine to be a rebel theoretically but when it's in your face, right here, right now, people sadly revert to form and simply follow the herd for an easy life.
What I find interesting about the mandatory vaccine for care home workers is that if you mention it, people automatically assume that you work with elderly people. They don't seem to know that the law also affects people who work with learning disabilities, irrespective of age. The eldest person in my service is 33. I'm actually the oldest person working there! Yet for some reason, I'm designated as a threat because I don't like the idea of having a government that deems it acceptable to inject people with an experimental medicine that patently doesn't work for no actual discernible reason. Call me old-fashioned...
There is only one of our residents who is vaccinated. He has been deemed to have the legal capacity to make decisions as to his own welfare, so that’s fine. We did have some residents move out recently who were also deemed to have mental capacity, who have declined the jab and would definitely continue to decline it. We have other residents who do not have capacity that have not had the jab, as this would, in effect, entail holding them down against their will and injecting them or giving them anaesthetic and giving them the jab that way.
All of our residents go out into the wider world, shopping, cafes etc. and most of them don’t wear masks, because of the issues outlined above. So, in regards to our residents that don’t have capacity, if this really was a deadly pandemic, wouldn’t you think, ugly as it may sound, they should be put under and vaccinated, as the risks are so great to their lives that this is the preferred option?
And for those who do have legal capacity, yet still decline the vaccine, surely they should be held responsible for their ‘irresponsible’ actions? They are, per narrative, putting not only themselves but the public and fellow residents at risk, to say nothing of the staff members who provide care for them.
Strange how it’s only staff who can legally spread this deadly disease…!
It's also brought home to me how the coming tyranny will work: the government will pass legislation and then expect business and corporations to carry it out. In this way, they can't be blamed or held responsible; people can protest against the government but they can't really protest when their livelihoods are on the line, they’re being sacked and the sorry state of the unions means that they no longer have any representation and the nebulous nature of the legislation means that any legal action will take years.
It was instructive too to see how my fellow workers who didn't want the jab reacted when the pressure was applied. One decided to have it because, and I quote, 'the missus was giving me earache' whilst the other potential refusenik, who would happily quote all the latest David Icke videos on how creeping 'fascism' (don't get me started on people who use this term as a synonym for totalitarianism...) was threatening to engulf us all, but completely capitulated at the first hurdle.
I'm not trying to make myself out to be some sort of martyr but I do feel that everyone needs to face up to the reality of the situation. We really have only two choices: you either jettison your principles, which means you WILL be materially worse off, and go along with an agenda that you know is misguided at best, metaphysically evil at worst, or you decide to stand firm and not simply bow down to the first bit of tyranny that comes your way. You WILL be materially worse off but it all comes down to whether you can look yourself in the mirror in the mornings.
None of us wanted this but we can't hide from it. As Paul said, we are in for difficult times. Our enemies are, again, at best self-serving politicians, at worse literally Satan! But anyone who is being realistic about the situation knows that those who don’t kowtow will, at some point, come up against the baddies. When, and how much, we can stand against this is down to every individual but we must be aware that if we just leave it to others, and don’t follow through on our convictions, we WILL lose.
However, on a more cheerful note…! I do actually have a conviction that humanity, perhaps with a little bit of divine providence, or as a kickback response by Nature, will prevail. But we need to look out for each other and support each other in these unprecedented times. This is the most important thing we can do at present.
Enjoyed that very much in common with your other ways despite the alarming revelations ! Stilling the mind and “thy will be done” have been my life for some years and continue to be so.
Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin puts it this way: the way of the modern world is the way of reason is the way of dehumanization. So what we must do is cultivate not the mind, but the heart. For him, that was a complete life mission, a way of being. It was theological, of course, but it was also practical. It meant things like telling fairy tales and playing with your children and looking at ants carefully as they go about their work. We could all use a lot more of that kind of heart-cultivation, I think.
That's the work.
hey, it sounds like refusal of this vaccine could become the new monastic movement that's been called for. Your own property will be your cell. The practical question is how to pay bills, even just property taxes, under these circumstances.
Thank you Paul for at last identifying the Elephant in the room. I've been waiting for you to come to the topic of Covid over the past few months. I agree with everything you say, and I too felt we crossed a Rubicon, when our government introduced health Apartheid, last week. It appears to be widely supported as are all the other measures. Here is just an example: Last weekend in Leitrim, a small group of musicians were playing music at an outdoor venue. Apparently, a call was soon made to Shannonside, the local radio station by a "concerned " member of the public. The law was enforced and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.
Well, I was always planning to build up to it over time - it is such an obvious, and clarifying, example of where the Machine is headed. But sometimes events force your hand.
The Leitrim story is appalling. Since when was it illegal to play music outside, anyway?
These are amongst the wrongest words I've ever heard — 'and music was no longer heard on a street in Leitrim and probably won't be for a long time to come.'
Paul, you will find a kindred spirit, and great intellect, in El Gato Malo, whose blog Bad Cattitude catalogues the intensifying irrationality of the "science" surrounding covid and vaccines. Here is one brilliant example: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/science-is-a-process-not-an-institution. A recent post sums up the disingenuity surrounding the official stance toward vaccines vs. other cheaper, safer and more effective treatments: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-covid-study-i-would-like-to-see. There is a dark cloud passing over the land, leaving suffering and death in its wake, and I'm not talking about a virus. This trio of essays by Connor Kelly lays out the situation with absolute clarity: https://leftlockdownsceptics.com/2021/07/collaboration-or-resistance-part-1-our-brand-new-shiny-fascist-state/. Your writing, like these others', is absolutely vital to the maintain of our societies' bearings in this difficult time. It is through our connections with and validation from one another that we can sustain the bright light of clarity, honesty, reason and compassion that define our common humanity. THANK YOU
As the crisis continues ( or is continued?), I think we're seeing more clearly what's at stake - and it's much more than public health, or even freedom of association. The Republic's ban on baptisms has been one of the most chilling aspects of its pandemic response.
Greetings from another family of refuseniks.
Very thought provoking Paul. I am thankful for your articulation of this crisis, your vulnerability in sharing your new social status of 'leper'. A bell is being tied to the necks of the unwilling, marking them as unclean, marking them as sacrificial targets for our despair.... and the ancient drama repeats itself again and again. When will be learn?
My graduate work and practice as a therapist has been at the intersection of the non-religious and spiritual/religious impulses, and it has been powerful to see the trends we were watching 10 years ago come into full bloom now. There is a new priesthood, a new sense of taboo, a whole new super-structure emerging, all of it to fill the vacuum left by the old pieties.
When I personally sit back and observe nature I do see one consistent pattern: it always moves forward, evolving and adapting. My hunch, my sense, is that there is no way back to the old motto, the old 'Thy will be done'. What is emerging now is an anti-thesis to the old thesis. What will be the new synthesis?
I don't know. I don't think I will ever know. I have grieved that I will live a life witnessing a painful decline, and have accepted that my lot is to till the field for the emergence of a future synthesis. Our geological record and ancient myths tells the story clearly. The coming devastation will open space for the redemption to emerge from within the wound.
That's a very interesting perspective: the new structures which are rising up to replace the old. It's some of what I've been trying to reach towards here. You're right, the shape of the flower is coming into focus now.
We're certainly not going back to anything; not any form of human society anyway. The changes I think will be overwhelming. Yes, tilling the field is the way, I think. It can be very painful. But then the future was never as sold as we hoped, I suppose.
On an optimistic note the Machine has revealed its next move! The line of resistance is showing ever clearer beyond the fog. Maybe the space for resilience and adaptation exists in the smaller places? The places where neighborliness is still practiced, if even awkwardly.
"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings." - Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry. Another important voice for these times.
With the public so willing, I'm convinced there will be no need for a Secret Police. Add in, Fr. Tony Flannery's comments this week to the bishops, and his choice of the words " playing into the hands of extreme anti vaxers", for those of us who will not subject our bodies to an experimental treatment, is another sign of where we're at . This from a so called liberal member of the Catholic church.
Paul, Your way of connecting the dots is unsettling (not least to you) but so very helpful. The only way back to deep truth is by telling the obvious pieces of it in front of us -- despite offical denials and media fog. You comparison of Science and "Magic" was most helpful. Like all forms idolatry, such things offer the illusion of control or safety at the cost of deforming if not killing what we say we love (people, families, communities, much less the natural world), the very opposite of what should happen in the worship of and trust in the life-giving God of creation and resurrection. Victories of technical reason and control inevitalbly yeild "unanticipated" consequences which should precipitate fear of the true God (not a candidate for manipulation, flattery or lies) that is the beginning of wisdom. But repentance is not on the Faustian menu. More's the pity. So your Abby sightings are a light and testify to life and love the darkness has not and cannot overcome. Yet. Take heart.
Thank you, Paul. Once again, every word resonates so strongly and makes such sense.
"In the realm of facts science reigns supreme, in the realm of values we have to look elsewhere" J B Peterson
Science, with help from it's media bag carriers and expedient politicians, does us, and itself, no favours by conflating theory and modelling with scientific fact. A theory and the modelling derived from it are not "The Science" they purport to be. Maybe they're the best we've got, the best guess under the circumstances but to then shut down any attempt at questioning, never mind actual dissent, is rank totalitarianism.
Despite our faith in science it seems to me that we live in a dream, a narrative about meaning and value. But absent science, how far do you go with "other ways of knowing". You see the danger? Are we seriously expected to believe, to submit, to something as completely insane as a bloke in a dress is a woman?
"language and meaning are deeply networked, deeply public, and held in place by things like history, collective knowledge, linguistic precedent, logical consistency, and the contours of the objective world (i.e., truth). To claim total control over one proposition within such a network is therefore to control them all. For the state to attempt to grant monopolistic control over both the analytic and synthetic definitions of terms like “he” and “she,” to a privileged and exclusive class of language-users, terms perhaps no more fundamental to the human condition, would be, in essence, to attempt to grant control over truth itself."
https://quillette.com/2021/08/04/the-incoherence-of-gender-ideology/
I'm not sure Peterson is right about that. Can we divide 'facts' and 'values' so cleanly? And does science really reign supreme in the factual realm? In theory it should, but in practice, because it is an ideology, there are plenty of facts it leaves out of its worldview due to their inconvenient shape.
In the case of something like this virus, it seems to me that a real science, allied with an honest public polity, would be doing all the work and modelling you speak of, opening up its methodology and results for public scrutiny, and working with the public realm to facilitate an open conversation about what we know and don't know, and what your choices are. That's almost the opposite of what's happening at present.
As for the gender narrative - which I'll be writing about in future - I don't see scientific voices really challenging it. Why are men competing in women's weightlifting contests at the Olympics? I'm not seeing the Royal Society offering any comments.
Thank you Paul, there is no clear division, no distinct realms; our values are informed but not dictated by objective reality (science?) and the direction of our quest for objective truth is lead by our values. Our aim should be to become a person of sufficient moral character to manage the distinction.
Science has allowed itself to become corrupted, a servant of lies so we end up in the worst possible worlds; the stabilising and questioning role of science now slave to a rootless, fabricated, imposed and totalitarian morality. Without a commitment to objective truth primitive man lived with superstition and in fear of a pantheon of invisible ghosts and goblins. That's where we're headed.
I think that in many cases 'primitive man' had a much clearer sense of objective truth than we do. Evidence is all around us!
Perhaps I am just a hopeless optimist but I think it is possible that what you're "feeling" -- and many have sensed such a shift in the metaphysical seasons -- is the looming collapse of the "Enlightenment order" (or, better, the crude spiritual pornography of the "American order") which is an unassailably good thing. I don't think the beast is as strong as it pretends to be, and I think that it is aware of this (happy to us) fact. The thrashings of its tail amid the death-rattles are dangerous but not completely deadly, and there remain many places where its writ doesn't run.
It will make me enormously happy if you turn out to be right!
Thanks again and what was striking for me is how you end on “Do what thou wilt” and “Thy will be done”. As Bacon et al also felt, science was so glorious because it was doing both: restoring the lost Eden through the dominion also given to humankind in Genesis (and I believe the Hebrew for “dominion” in Gen 1:26 is quite masterly). In short, science was devised as a divinely sanctioned means of redemption, which I suspect is why its progressivism still has a powerfully religious feel. (I’m drawing here on Peter Harrison’s fascinating, The Territories of Science and Religion, Chicago University Press).
The plot thickens because the two imperatives of “thou wilt” and “thy will” rightly coincide in what you might call the divinised mind. “Love and do what thou wilt” was Augustine’s way of expressing it. There is a true perception here, for all that it is rarely truly perceived. Such is God’s reckless gratuity.
What goes wrong, I think, is that the scientific mind ceases to know that heaven is not a place on earth. It forgets the bigger, original story of life found on the other side of death, an end to history (as in direction and conclusion), we are sown a natural body raised a spiritual body, old things pass away and the new comes, as Paul wrote.
This amnesia is frightening because when human longing and desire, rightly for divine life, forgets it is for divine life, it throws its considerable powers into finding happiness on a material flatland that, in fact, it slowly, steadily consumes.
I think we're already on the wrong track if we see science as a means of redemption. I don't think "science" and "redemption" have any business being in the same sentence. For Bacon to perceive the Fall as the loss of man's dominion over nature is to miss the wood for the trees. Surely the main point when it comes to the Fall was man's separation from God as a consequence of his desire to take disobediently that for which he was not yet ready. Everything else flows from that, including man's loss of dominion. The way back therefore can surely have nothing to do with reacquiring dominion by technical means. Whatever good science may give us, in terms of relieving physical suffering or otherwise, it cannot give us anything redemptive in the spiritual sense (not to get into the whole topic of how suffering can paradoxically be redemptive). One of the great and obvious truths throughout history is the existence of evil men of great knowledge/intellect and holy men of poor learning and simplicity.
Interestingly I recently watched an interview which was conducted by AI researcher Lex Fridman. In it he preposterously states that he believes that there is a negative correlation between evil and competence. His powers of self delusion are so great that he even states that history bears this out! The context was that he was trying to comfort himself that science could not be harnessed by evil people for evil means because evil people are not capable of great scientific prowess. I presume that by implication he believes that those with great scientific prowess, such as himself, must have an innate moral goodness. I'm seeing more and more of this cognitive bias with prominent scientists. Their identity is so wrapped up in science that its no longer a technical tool for them. It's a moral good and those that are better at it than others are also better than others, and therefore have the obligation to tell others what to do.
Yes, I'm sure separation is the main issue. It's also interesting that you notice the identification between science as a moral good and the scientist as morally good, in so far as they are doing "good science", as it's often said. There's that prelapsarian fantasy unconsciously playing out again...
I've enjoyed your writings, Paul!
As I've read, I'm reminded of 7 Daniel and Revelation 13: beasts rising from the sea - and those beasts seem to represent different superpowers when each one dominated the whole world, only to be overthrown by the next one that rises.
This leads me to think, since Babel, God seems to keep the machine at bay with other machines (or beasts). I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I grew up in a culture in which many people saw the anti-christ rising everywhere and expected his mark to be some sort of tattoo or chip (or now, vaccine passports). What we are experiencing has an apocalyptic feel, certainly!