De-humanising Trump is a trap.


Deliberate de-humanisation is a psychosocial and political dynamic, a tactic and outcome of oppression.

Understanding this is key to avoiding being triggered or manipulated into internal conflict among those of us who seek to liberate ourselves and our communities from oppression. The struggle for freedom from oppression is not equivalent to the taking of liberty that Libertarianism promotes.

This is a critically important dynamic to be aware of as the embers of hatred are, on all sides, are being deliberately stoked and fuelled by online political grooming operations, public News and Press media that plays to the biases and vulnerabilities of people, that seeks to exploited the reactions of triggered folk.

The people who are being triggered, by intentional action, on all sides, are vulnerable. They are all being exploited.

It is not that people are pulling the triggers, in the sense it is their fault or that it is somehow a flaw in their character - it is that their vulnerability is being studied and targeted - they are being victimised by others who know exactly what they are doing.

We have to seek to protect all, or the project to humanise our social power structures is doomed to failure. 

The consumer driven 'New Age' tends to reduce the project of liberation to a work of self interest. 

Admonitions to alter individual behaviour, such as recycling, do less shopping, buy electric cars, stop eating meat etc whilst those who produce the things we need to recycle, who reap vast profits from stimulating our consumerism by offering  easy credit make no effort to pay the externalised costs of their profit making is a sleight of hand. 

The term 'consumer' to describe a human being is as dehumanising a term as is 'consumer responsibility' without the necessary equivalents of 'producer responsibility' or 'extractor responsibility' or 'mining responsibility'.

The sales pitch is that if only the ordinary person who has no real traction on the action and behaviour of the larger institutional powers that drive environmental degradation and air pollution could do their bit, then improvements would naturally occur and save us all. That is a lie.

Hence the rapidity with which the various streams of consumer pop psychology have become
weaponised to support that lie, to normalise it so that ordinary folk cannot see the lie, cannot see the wood for the trees. The deployment of pop psychology to that end is a dehumanising act/

Paolo Friere

Paolo Friere's practical work, among the poor and indigenous of South America stands as testimony to the accuracy of his insight, the practicality of his approach, the humility of his perception.



Paolo Friere 

I first read his work in the mid 1990s, and it was, to me at least, a revelation and a reassurance... That said it has taken me decades to integrate.

Freire believed education could not be divorced from politics; the act of teaching and learning are considered political acts in and of themselves. Freire defined this connection as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the politics that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions they bring into the classroom. Freire believed that :

Education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing—of knowing that they know and knowing that they don't know.

I offer my readers this link to one of his works, Pedagogy of The Oppressed, as a source of insight, reassurance and focus as we face the wide spread shouting match that is disrupting rational, deliberative discourse on matters that must concern us all - our very survival is on the line, and we need to envision a future not of mere survival rather a future of collective thrivival. 

The opening lines of this book are a clear and succinct description of a problem we face, right now.

This link below is to an online version of his book.

The website History Is A Weapon (HIAW) holds a lot of really good practical information and insight for all of us. It has as it's cultural locus a focus on The America's and their Histories. That said, the information is useful to everyone concerned with a healthy future for our cultures.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/hiawsitemap.html - sitemap, a quick way to see what is available.

Dehumanisation and the struggle to resist and prevent oppression.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/pedagogy/pedagogychapter1.html

"While the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern.

Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality. And as an individual perceives the extent of dehumanization, he or she may ask if humanization is a viable possibility. Within history, in concrete, objective contexts, both humanization and dehumanization are possibilities for a person as an uncompleted being conscious of their incompletion."

In other words, the possibility of becoming more human - that is to say to become more humane, more empathic, kinder and thus stronger and clearer in understanding how best to resist and then prevent oppression is real. Another world is indeed possible.

"But while both humanization and dehumanization are real alternatives, only the first is the people's vocation. This vocation is constantly negated, yet it is affirmed by that very negation. It is thwarted by injustice, exploitation, oppression, and the violence of the oppressors; it is affirmed by the yearning of the oppressed for freedom and justice, and by their struggle to recover their lost humanity."

Here is makes clear that those who seek freedom from oppression must be aware that their task includes avoiding becoming dehumanisers themselves in their struggle.

"Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human. This distortion occurs within history; but it is not an historical vocation. Indeed, to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair. "

This is the root of all dystopian thinking, the acceptance of a falsified given concerning our nature as human social creatures and cultures.

"The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labour, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed."

In other words, if for example, one holds to the Christian worldview of Original Sin as a given, or that Humanity itself is destroying the Earth, (it's not, it's the culture of extractive wealth creation) then the struggle is inevitably undermined at source. That view makes the future appear hopeless.

"Because it (oppression, the entitlement to Rule and dominate - my added comment) is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so."

The use of unjust power over another always creates resistance.

"In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both."

This is the central thread of the hate we see being fuelled as Donald Trump cedes power, yet resists, and quite clearly, deliberately uses dehumanisation as a weapon. It is also the same thread of hate being funnelled back at those people who have been groomed to support Trump, even as they do not understand that Trump is backed by the Oligarchy and he will not, and cannot 'drain the swamp'.

I urge caution to all of us to take these thoughts into consideration, to tone up the accurate analysis, and to tone down the dehumanisation. I need to learn and practice this as much as anyone else.

If we do not do this, we will be enrolled in war fare we are unable to counter.

This is not to make excuses for anyone's abusive behaviour, it is to approach the problem from a stronger, grass roots permeating comprehensive and collective awareness of what we are really dealing with, when we face our oppressors, so that we are not so readily led astray, on all sides.

Trump has a following of people who do feel some degrees of oppression - poverty, loss of income and status, fear for the future, exposure to systemic scapegoating, dehumanisation by those on the Left who claim to be seeking freedom from liberation....

It's easy to look at other ordinary people whose views, attitudes and behaviour challenges us,  and it is easy to use them as whipping boys for our rage, on both sides.

Antifa and Racists shouting at each other, threat and counter threats of violence, insult and spittle exchanged to lead towards more violence. Christians at war with Muslims. Older voters voting for Brexit 'betraying' younger voters. Younger voters 'ignoring' the problems of the older voters. 

These memes are fully weaponised and are driving social and emotional divisions that undermine potential resolution of problems, the boat we are all in is rocking and cannot make head way to a safe port. We have to counter that. 

Not so easy is the task of humanising the situation, of understanding enough to build the bridges that will connect our humanity - the less easy task is the one most critical to our children's children's futures.

I find this song, by comedian Katie Goodman, very humanising, heart warming and reassuring - please enjoy, and take on some of the gentle yet fierce wisdom of it. I like to imagine a large crowd outside a political administration building singing this, with joy and with sorrow, with humility and determination..


Free Speech

Free Speech is a responsibility, it is neither an automatic right nor is it an entitlement or privilege.

The responsibility inherent in Free Speech into the public domain is that one must speak honestly, one must be, as far as possible, evidence based.

The responsibility inherent in Free Speech is to be as good a listener as a speaker and to acknowledge what is verified, reliable and true as such, and to also acknowledge beliefs as made up, as guess-work at the very best.

Free Speech is not a right to promote beliefs over evidence in action on matters concerning the shared commons, the welfare of people and their lives.

Free Speech is not a right to groom, manipulate or exploit others through use of language and various logical fallacies.

Lots of very clever abusive people hide behind Free Speech - the correct way to deal with that is to identify what is being done, name it and do so in full transparency.

This blog by Kitty Jones, is really, really useful in helping with this. How bullying operates within the political and media sphere..




Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received



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ConTheory - The thing is a con, and it's quasi theoretical, logical fallacy and biased assumption


   The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerabilities is one of the vilest things people can do to each other.

Image - i am aware of the spelling error on neighbours, and I can't be arsed, it is as it is, lol. soz.
 I sometimes use and abuse the labels commonly applied to describe current events.

I created ConTheory as a precise variation of conspiracy theory.

The thing is a con, and it's theoretical in the sense of purely imaginative make believe.

That's the point.

Protocols of Zion is a conTheory.

Masturbation makes you blind is a conTheory.

The Bible is a massive conTheory.



Free speech is not a social permission to lie. manipulate, gaslight or deflect, evade or avoid accountability - such activity should be jumped on as soon as someone opens their mouth with it or publishes such content with such intent. Like immediately.

However it takes healthy emotional intelligence and a robust sense of self to do that.

If anyone ever tries to manipulate, gaslight or deflect, evade or avoid accountability to me my learned response is immediate - How dare you! - That is the correct first response, the second is to move away. Permanently. There's little point in explaining exactly what the other person is doing, because they already know. There is some utility in marking out the tactic, the technique when the behaviour is happening in a public forum. That may help some other folk avoid the trap, and it might work as an act of loving education - one does need to know what one is talking about and be relatively impervious to being deliberately triggered by the defence mechanisms that will be deployed in reaction to your challenge.

I had to learn the hard way, as I grew up being bullied and groomed, and I became a bully, and consequently reaching mental breakdown 20 years later - I had to be ruthlessly honest, there was no alternative, if I wanted to recover.

For me there is only one group, and that is the human species as a part of Earths biota. The Species is not a cult. There are many cultures within the species. I sing my song 'We are all Family' and I quote every nation listed in the UN.

The divisions of Nations are all manufactured. There are no Irish Foetuses distinguishable from Lithuanian Foetuses.
Left vs Right is manufactured, all institutional religions and cults are entirely manufactured. None of these are naturally emergent.

Bullies have to groom to any population they bully. It's a behaviour pattern well studied by the bullies - how to 'persuade', how to indoctrinate, how and who to trigger to disrupt honest discourse.

I can feel when bullies operate in part because I feel the old dynamics within me still, as a memory, like a immune memory. I bristle and then I want to dig in and root what ever is there. That's when I start to apply my mind to the problem. Feel, then think. An embodied response followed by a focused mind examining the situation.

Reading as a mindful practice is a discipline that is not part of the educational curriculum - they teach us to read to be able to repeat what we have read, we are never taught to subject it to a well informed, tested critical analysis - were any student to do that, they would have to leave the building in utter disgust at the hierarch, inherent in current schooling dynamics. I have been involved in a number of cults during my first 35 years of life.
I am currently spending a few days going over every cult I have been hooked into...
The issue of psychological wounding and vulnerability is core to this dynamic.
The followers are not the main problem, though their behaviour may become a serious problem.
Hence my renewed desire to avoid dehumanisation as a reaction to the activities of cult members.
I read Alice Millers book on Nazi Germany's cult, rooted in the behavioural dynamic of cultural childhood adversity, in 1986, in which she pointed out that the attractions of Leaders is similar to the patterns of addiction, adult criminal behaviour and child sexual exploitation.
She warned of everything that is occurring today in the USA and elsewhere..
It's a very challenging book, and it has taken a long time to integrate her knowledge, and there are many miles ahead, some steep hills to climb. Be kind out there, avoid dehumanisation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received
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Cosmologies and the social material reality - a conflict of interest


On Cosmology in the context of these difficult times, all difficult times.

"The grooming (gaslighting) of human vulnerability is one of most vile things any human being can do to another."


The Garden Path

I hold the view that every person has the ability, and thus the natural right, to craft their own Cosmology. We are all imaginers even as we imagine entirely different things...

After all, that is a function of autonomy, as a living human being, as a person, within a family or community. One's own imagination is both tool and gift, and a pleasure - and yet if it is distorted, it can become a trap. cPTSD reveals to us some of the ways that the imagination can become distorted. 

Thus it follows that no person has the right to extend their cosmology to others, beyond themselves as an imposition. We can share our imaginings, explore their ways out of interest and variety and at the same time there is no  natural right to indoctrinate others, no right to demand resources or money for 'lessons' in any given cosmology, and certainly no right to create, maintain a following of believers.

All of that is manipulation, it is exploitative. These are all ways of accruing power over others.

I set that in the context of the shared space between us, the Common.

This is the ground upon which we walk, it includes the air we all breath, the water cycle pathways from which we drink, which water our foods,

The Commons is shared by and includes all creatures as neighbours, even the ones hunted for food.

And of course, the Commons includes the psycho-social material space between us as biologically aware intelligent social organisms and that requires an evidence based approach on all matters that affect that shared spaced. 

There's a fundamental balance in this. This is the space within which entire forests thrive. It is how complex ecosystems function - accurate information flowing through the commons. The Oceans are another commons.

In matters of the shared commons, I respectfully suggest that nothing less than all the evidence available can stand as the basis for action. 

Where we don't know, we must acknowledge that and then we study to know honestly, for only then can we answer those questions and take appropriate action. Which can include doing nothing at all. Leaving a forest to it's peoples is a way of doing something genuinely nurturing by doing nothing.

Therefore I suggest that belief and personal cosmology are inappropriate and unsafe a foundation in the domain of action within any  shared space, within the commons - a belief might pose a question:  even so, that can only be answered by direct evidence.  Until then, it remains an unknown.

I suggest then, that we keep our personal cosmologies as part of our art-imagination-play, a colourful hue, a filter if you will allow, within the white light of the whole - the family, community, culture, our shared environment.

That is the Egalitarian way. 

Personal Autonomy, Collective Evidence based action.

We now understand that a large part of the continuity of this balance is, in social bio-behavioural terms,  maintained primarily out of the conditions of parenting - from conception then birth through the first 18 -24 months of  life, where the fundamentals of emotional self regulation are formed and learned, in the brain to brain relationship between infant, toddler and primary care givers. 

Under what conditions, social and material, is early years care conducted?  Do they distort the default states that our biology clearly mandates for healthy behavioural learning and personal growth towards self mastery?

These are cultural behavioural markers, bench marks if you will of the prevailing relationship dynamics.

What are the cultural relationship dynamics and how do those reflect knowledge or belief - in essence, the question is do they conflict with biological defaults.?

The new brain meets a mature brain which nurtures and protects the new brain until that brain is ready for wider associations and participation. That is a default, a biologically mandated process.

We see the body, we do not see the internal organs, we do not see the inner workings of the clock. 

Allan Schore's work, following on from Prescott and Bowlby, with much improved scientific tools, and a vast body of work, describes the biology of emotional development, of self regulation and mastery of one's self - these are essential for autonomy and effective community 



He describes the carer brain to infant brain dynamics that we do not see :  what happens neurologically, what hormones, what cascades of proteins, what linkages are growing within both carer and cared for - all mediated by the security of the shared space between them.

Robert Sapolsky describes the wider unseen biology, beyond the carer to cared for, the world of truama, stress, hierarchy, 'human' behaviour and culture.

A baby that is set aside, crying itself to sleep, as a regular occurrence will develop and habituate a neurology and endocrine state as if that trauma state of feeling abandoned is normal - over a lifetime that distortion creates stresses on the body, that emerge as disease.



This is, of course, a simplification of the work of these intelligent, diligent Scientists and writers. Their work is, to a degree, a simplification of the carefully, honestly observed biological level complexity of how we develop into healthy mature organisms or not - they describe that level of biology in order that we see the evidence, that it informs us more accurately.

Knowledge is the base from which accurate intuition emerges. 

With all that in mind I wrote a short piece in 2017, when I was hoping for a shift in parliamentary power from the Oligarchs to the people via Momentum, Corbyn with what I believed the large sector of the electorate being decent human beings would want

What are the metrics of healthy Governance?

https://dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-metric-for-governance-uk-election-2017.html

In this piece I lay out some very simple principles, which are the requirement for an evidence based policy formulation by any group of people concerned with the shared commons, the spaces between us.
 

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe, in a Buckie sort of way....  you know what I mean."
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Zero Community Transmission - a better way forwards.

I have been promoting the Zero Community Transmission strategy since I caught ill in early March 2020. From the very start. 

Why?

Because it works.

Because it was clear, from my extensive reading, listening to proven expertise, that New Zealand looked at what had happened in China and the East Asian States, and took that lived experience, clinical experience and social experience and they learned from the errors the Chinese made, in Wuhan during the first month, and they learned from the successes of the Chinese. Humility and kindness.

The USUK on the other hand did not do that.

The results thus far are more than clear, unfortunately for all those harmed by the disease itself, and  for all those whose work and incomes have been undermined, and for the failures of bad policy that cannot be undone, yet which deserve redress. Hubris and arrogance.

Zero Community Transmission

So this is www.zerocovid.uk :




Instead of living alongside this deadly virus with repeated on-off lockdowns, there is an alternative: scientists call it the Zero Covid Strategy.

Many other countries have adopted the Zero Covid approach. Britain could too.

If we’d done this in the spring, by now we’d be living without the virus – visiting family and friends, travelling without fear, drinking and eating out, going to live events, just like people in New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and China.

The Independent SAGE committee of scientists has been arguing for a Zero Covid UK since the summer. This approach is also supported by the Hazards Campaign for workplace safety.

What is the Zero Covid Strategy? 

It means eliminating the spread of infection between people in the UK and putting in place measures to prevent or quickly staunch any further imported cases. Today that means four key steps:

  • A full UK-wide lockdown until new cases in the community have been reduced close to zero
  • An effective find, test, trace, isolate and support (FTTIS) system, run locally in the public sector, to quickly squash any further outbreaks
  • Covid screening, and where necessary quarantine, at all ports of entry to the UK
  • Guarantee the livelihood of everyone who loses money because of the pandemic

Independent SAGE and Zero Covid Strategy.

A better way to go - towards zero community transmission.

  • The prospect of many thousands of further deaths from COVID-19 over the next nine months is unacceptable
  • The UK government must propose and share with the public a strategic plan on how the pandemic is going to be managed in the next 12 months and of how the various measures against the pandemic fit together in an integrated plan.
  • Independent SAGE believes that this strategy should have as its prime objective the achievement of a Zero COVID Britain and Ireland
  • It will require the government in Whitehall to replace their failing NHS Test and Trace System with a fully-fledged and locally controlled system of Find, Test, Trace, Isolate, Support (FTTIS)
  • The Republic of Ireland, Scotland and Northern Ireland already have very few deaths and very small numbers of new positive cases. They have the virus under control and are well placed to achieve elimination of the virus
  • England and Wales will need to make the necessary efforts as soon as possible to achieve the same position
  • Achieving elimination would allow all social distancing measures to be lifted, schools to be fully open, the hospitality and entertainment industries to reopen fully, revitalisation of the economy and a sense of much needed normality for the population.
Following The Science - this links to their full report, a .pdf file

I have been writing about ZCT since the start. 

It IS the correct approach. We must start as soon as possible. It can be done.

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

 "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
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Belief vs Evidence, Nurture and Zero Community Transmission

I stopped writing about the USUK Governments approach to SARSCOV-2, and the disease COVID19, and I stopped writing about reaching for a zero transmission status as the basis of correct strategic approach, back in June. 

I felt had written everything that I felt that needed to said about the issue. The scale of dishonesty in Government, in Parliament, in News Media mirrors that found in ConTheory's funded by billionaires and others, and is a narrative so deeply embedded that it cannot be spoken too clearly in any area where ordinary people can regulate political and legislative and economic power.

"Shhhhh...! We're trying our best, in difficult circumstances!"

What? A series of contracts rushed out to 'friendly' private contractors, without an open bid process, quite often cutting out the pre-existing suppliers of what ever was being contracted, from PPE to Contact Tracing, from full body bag storage to Ventilator Machines (which are not as efficacious as CPAP) being reinvented by a Hoover Company. The PR folly of Nightingale Hospitals which were designed to house serious cases, with ventilators for every bed, a deliberate choice, instead of Fever Hospitals to feed symptomatic cases at the earliest stage, where they can be treated and monitored away from the community and away from General Hospitals.

"Fancang shelter hospitals were developed and used for the first time in China to tackle the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.
 The term Fangang, which sounds similar to Noah's Ark in Chinese, was borrowed from military field hospitals,
,  
 but it refers to a novel concept: large, temporary hospitals built by converting public venues, such as stadiums and exhibition centres, into health-care facilities to isolate patients with mild to moderate symptoms of an infectious disease from their families and communities, while providing medical care, disease monitoring, food, shelter, and social activities."

Source : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30744-3/fulltext?from=singlemessage

That choice coincided with the choice to return elderly patients from Hospitals where the virus was know to be present, without testing them, back to their care homes, to make space in Hospitals for what was expected to happen. Both choices increased likelihood of spread of the infection. I have written about this previously.

Many people were making big fees in all of this, others banking huge profits, for what appears to me to be getting in the way of the proven and known efficacious responses that were  need. 

New Zealand's government acted on the data, the evidence and the lived experience and lessons learned by the East Asian countries.

The UK Government had the same data, the same evidence, and outside of advisors who are in reality political appointments, Epidemiologists and Public Health expertise were shouting the alarm. The experts were  ignored, some Government appointed experts in SAGE touting 'Herd Immunity' as the final solution.

"The only way to stop this epidemic is indeed through achieving Herd Immunity." Professor John Edmunds.

source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcmHsxz6y00

I could go on. We all need to log all of this, to know what is being done, and to find ways to reduce harms across the board, and not accept the false narrative set up of The Economy vs The Welfare of the People, as a dichotomy/

I don't like to think in terms of 'masses', demographics, nationalities or large group labels.

People are persons, human beings, each and every one is precious, unique, important.

I don't subscribe to terms of superior or inferior, primitive or civilised, or to terms that caricature whole groups of people. 

"All Women are......", or "Men are all alike..." are caricatures and they obliviate important meaningful detail. Indeed avoiding those human details is the curse of national policy protocols designed by ideologues. They assume an aggregate, and design policy on that basis, quite often with thought to the detail variations of each persons life and experience.

Life is way too detailed and personal for each of us, only to be blotted out by averaging, finding a mean, creating a label, imposing a caricature.

Detail matters,

Thus the Good Law Project looks at specifics, the detail. News Media tends to headline and sub-edit much of the available information.  One needs to check it oneself....

I had been quite feverish in my interest, having spent 5 weeks in bed, more or less, going through this strange 'flu'. I have not yet been tested so I cannot say 100% that those 5 weeks were due to COVID-19. It was certainly worse than any previous viral infection I have had. Being feverishly ill at that time focused my mind a bit,

Me, and COVID19, maybe.

I have to say that I was very worried, and that I was frightened when symptoms started taking hold. I knew very little about this. I had not been paying attention to what had been happening in China, East Asia etc, largely because I do not watch News.

I was also unaware of the 2001 SARS outbreak and containment. I think 9/11 pushed that off the front pages. Just as the Invasion of Iraq pushed awareness of MERS in 2003. Two previous outbreaks, which were successfully contained,  by breaking community transmission, using contact tracing, quarantine, isolation treatment, social support. A fact that most East Asians were well aware of.

Nobody I know  in London or anywhere else knew anything about either at the time I was falling ill.  It was my daughter who alerted me to the situation, in that I demonstrated the arrogance of my ignorance enough for her to comment on it. I realised I knew nothing about this SARSCOV2/COVID19

That there was already a history to this story became clearer over the next few weeks, as I learned more.

Give  me Fever!

Fever is part of the bodies natural anti-viral response, and I learned this from Dr. John Campbell, whose videos I found in late March. Vitamin C and D, fluids, rest, keeping warm, enduring headaches, aches, (avoiding Ibuprofen and others like it) confusion, weakened breathing, sweats in waves of intensity and hoping everything I was doing was helping my body deal with the infection. 

One of his videos suggested that learning from the experience, the errors and corrections of the  East Asian approach to the epidemic might be a good move. There's so much valuable detail in those errors and learnings that ought to be informing USUK collective action on this epidemic nationally and globally the pandemic.

All the while I was reading, sweating, coughing, studying, watching news reports, reading specialist blogs, looking to see what I could find out that was reliable evidenced nuanced descriptions of what was really happening. 

In mid March I read the WHO final report on Wuhan from February 23rd.

I read a lot more.

I even looked for and found a CoViD-19 anti-gen testing kit that one could buy online - the East Asians already had them before the European stage of Pandemic - and found one that could deliver a reading within 30 minutes, based on a pin prick blood sample. As to it's efficacy,  it is still available on the market. 

Learning refused. 

And yet the Western States decided to create their own new tools, from scratch, as local and national epidemics were emerging. Rather than hit the track running, they hit the track of infection control stumbling, and have continued to refuse to learn how to run in this particular challenge. That said, they have disbursed a lot of cash, tax payers cash, in failing to learn - or perhaps it is intentional, and Herd Immunity is the price of Hoard Immunity in the eyes of the Establishment,

This was mostly via private sector contracts with political supporters rather than National Health and University systems. I watched in horror as USUK ignored the experience of the East Asians in order.  It just did not make any sense. I could see what New Zealand and Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore and many others had done and were doing, and it was working.

My mind boggled when it was explained away by 'well they are compliant populations in authoritarian states'.... what? There's no way to reach that level of stupid, that internalised caricatured delusion. 

Then in April I was shown Johnson's February 3rd Speech in Greenwich where he says : 

""And in that context, we are starting to hear some bizarre autarkic rhetoric, when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.

And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role.

We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century.".

Really?

worried that others "go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage."

https://youtu.be/baWbWpOtJnc?t=536 - watch Johnson take off his suit, and his spectacles to emerge as Economic Superman!

On February 3rd?

And the result?

Medically irrational policies, one after the other. 

Policies that make no Epidemiological or Public Health sense at all.

"Empty the pubs at 10pm? "

Ludicrous! 

There is no scientific evidence to support that policy.

"Groups limited to 6 people at 6 feet distance, 1 metre if wearing masks."

"Masks are ineffective."

Masks slow down spread, reduce viral loads.

"Masks are an imposition upon our God given freedoms."

Lunacy on all sides.

Contact Tracing is is a core capability needed to track where the virus is, and to identify cases to be treated, contacts to be alerted, quarantined and underpinned with economic or financial support for people to stay indoors, until the community transmission drops to zero. It is not test dependent.

Testing enhances the precision of contact tracing, yet testing does not replace that basic task - with every identified case of illness, that cases contacts are reached and supported fully to enter a two week quarantine.

If, during that time, they develop symptoms, they are moved to a Fever Hospital for immediate treatments support, designed to prevent escalation of the disease, to provide support to all mild cases to recover, and then return to the community, more or less immune, feeling looked after. If they do not develop symptoms they return to the community, and the community adopts zero community transmission as their collective strategic approach, supported by the State. It's not complicated, it is complex, and it is a person to person job at the point where contacts are being met and supported....

China's Central State Government, Universities, Corporations and Military collectively ramped such a system system up within weeks, deploying 18,000 contact tracers,  in the middle of an uncontrolled infection transmission in a city of 11 million people. And it worked, even before testing was widely available.

We in the UK after 8 months have a bunch of privatised provisions with none of that efficacy, with a Tax Payer bill for £12 billion for the basic tools, which are not functional.

£12 billion of which a substantial portion has been gouged out as profit, fees, commissions and so forth, all of which add no social material value or efficiency to the privatised test and trace system.  Quite a few new millionaires have been created. Small, inactive companies with no previous experience are  afforded multi million pound PPE supply contracts. If a paper company with £130,000 assets gets a no bid contract for £108 million, someone has made a 10% cut on that deal. 

Other examples of grift abound  - Contact Trace Staff are paid basic wage, yet the company charges the government more than twice that amount. Meanwhile the workers are not so busy, and their systems are inefficient.

If those workers were integrated into local NHS and Council provision, with the funding to go with it.... that's more effective systems, more integrated systems, local knowledge and understanding, community cohesion, and thus better roll out, better outcomes for the community and no one needs to be making a vast profit..

Seeking power to make more profit makes everything complicated.

We are where we are.

As I have already told you, I starting back in end of March I read a lot, thought some more and wrote about this experience as it seemed to me then. My blog went from average 800 hits a month to 14,000 hits per month. And nothing changed. The irresponsible insanity continued. I realised that I am such a small teenie little being in all of this. Barely a ripple in the water, and with water this choppy what's a ripple worth - the ripple of an empty life jacket floating on the surface whilst the person who wore it sinks and drowns? My trade has disappeared. No more sound engineering, no more event hosting, no more live gigs, and when the 'economy was reopened' we had to host small events that never even broke even. The Music Industry is quiet on Zero Community Transmission. Who will help us?

Impotence 

I gave up on the writing about it all for a while. I decided to stop, to watch and to be - to protect myself, my state of mind, to avoid burn out or worse, I chose to relax as much as possible throughout the summer, outdoors as much as I could be, getting the sun shine, feeling the nurture of a fertile spring and summer in the vegetation. I let go in the hope that something would change, and in order to give me time to assimilate my newly re-discovered impotence.  I am tiny. Really feeling that right now. I have always been well aware of it.

We are, as individuals, impotent by comparison to the institutions of State. That is why collective organisation and action is so important. The emergence of workers organisations in the 19th Century is meaningful.

When the institutions of State fail to address the needs of the people, unless the people are united we cannot act in ways to correct the problem. 

It can be done.

It has been done. 

It is a process, an incomplete and imperfect work, that will require constant attention over generations.

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

"....countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. 

They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. 

When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. 

Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. 

Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living."

It was not easy.

Strikes, deeper poverty, state violence, an economic depression, mortgage failures, unemployment.... over two decades of effort by the lower income sector until economics undermined the middle class too, and they participated in the shift, consciously.

Consciously. 

The Norwegian grass roots had the evidence, the lived experience and thus a fuller collective understanding of the specific issues confronting them. 

The material truth will set us free, always, whereas 'The Truth' as an ideological stance or religious belief is always a prison.

Belief as a weapon system.

Belief and custom are relative, what is true is universal. A table is a table, yet some make tables for sitting on the floor with, others for sitting at the table with chairs.

Invoking 'The Truth' is usually an attempt to avoid or negate the universally experienced by claiming an idealised specific is universal, and the lived experience ought then to conform to that, and where it does not, it must be corrected.

Belief in a God of Wrath, a Loving Bully, reflects a belief about the righteousness of Hierarchy and the justification of violence utilised to protect Hierarchy. Both God and Natural Hierarchy of Power are belief system concepts, and are made materially real by institutionalisation and by the people operating within those institutions who tend to assume the power of the institution is theirs, personally.

Internalised values, those values absorbed by being inducted into an institution - military training internalises the Military ethic into the infantry fighter and the officer alike. Obey orders, with commitment, protect your team mates, conquer the enemy.

Passive aggressive management and behavioural nudge non-science.

The deliberate mismanagement of their local epidemics by USUK Governments (their scapegoating, their misinformation and the public narrative gas lighting are all deeply, profoundly dishonest and they are using confusion as a shield, and that much at least is deliberate, as in deliberate avoidance of duty of care and responsibility)  and the scope and spread of viral ConTheory has  ensured that there are enough people who are misled, misinformed and vocal about it as to be able to 'report' and thus market the confusion of conTheory to make it look bigger than it really is, big enough to mask the deliberate mismanagement.

Passive aggressive management techniques include giving targets vague sets of instructions, which require them to take decisions the manager ought take responsibility for.

The passive aggressive manager neglects to provide full support to the targets, and thus sets the target up for taking the fall. If things go wrong, blame the actions of the target.

The passive aggressive manager is a politician seeking power.

Making mountains of mole hills.

In populations of many tens of millions a one day protest of 30,000 people is a minute event.   A small football stadium. Everyone there thought it was huge. It was not huge.

Put it on the News, and it's hit!

Even getting a million hits on an online video is no longer truly huge. A politician speaking at a conference is a small event. Put it on the news, it becomes something else. Reality and myth making. 

Put the conTheory protesters on the News to castigate or 'censor' them, and they look much, much bigger than they really are. Justin Beiber. Madonna. Fame mechanics. Making conTheory Famous Already. 

Cult Bands

A band with a following of 30,000 is a small cult band. But if I am one of the cult, I think we are bigger than we really are, and more special than we really are.

That is a key to the manipulative 'magic' of marketing, the Oz factor - magnifying any given subject by repetitive exposure and suitable props. Theatre.

I might occasionally read of a terrible crime, and then in a sudden news surge I hear of five such incidents in a day, for a week throughout the News cycle and even though I have no direct experience, nothing in my life or community that reflects that kind of criminality I am worried. 

My emotional state has been affected. Worry hormone cascades occur. If that surge persists, then what it triggers becomes my habituated state. It is also possible that I have unresolved trauma, and that some of my reactivity is embedded in that experience, my woundedness, my protectiveness.

And I don't really notice this is actually happening. I notice what the News media train me to notice, and I internalise it. Daily habituation. What I might not know is that there are hundreds of such crimes daily across a population as the average, and that average has dropped over the decades, and that the real risk of contact with such crimes is growing less and less with each passing day, that I am in real terms pretty safe. The Cult of Law and Order that Right Wing politicians deploy is rooted in the narrative that this is not so.

Fear of The Immigrant is a Xenophobic Cult Belief.

You do know that Capitalism is a cult, right?

Idealised beliefs opposing or denying any part of the whole of the evidence held by any group of people, that also includes othering those who do not subscribe to the same sets of idealised beliefs.

I was born into a cults and went through a number of cults throughout my childhood, teens and into my thirties. You were too, most likely. Cults are everywhere.

What I was doing was swapping one set of beliefs for another, like a download, without any integration or real understanding, and sad to say, it was only because that was going nowhere for me, I was not feeling any better about myself or my life that I asked myself "what was the point? "

Why swap one set of beliefs for another? Why belief?

On the positive side - and this is just a personal assessment, and in no way condones the practice - the variety of cults exposed me to many different ideas, practices, pragmatics, ways of seeing and thinking, ways of cooking and composting poop. On the negative side was the insistence on attaching to The Belief and The Mission - the two operate together. A sense of purpose. and yet the same psychological and emotional issues emerging, time and time again. No real growth. No wisdom. Nothing gets dome.

The Mission.

The Mission is to spread The Belief.

Believers know the value of their belief for everyone else! lol. The Believer feels more secure when more people share The Belief and when they can gather together, the social bond of The Shared Belief deepens. Thus they always want more people to join in The Belief.

Maintaining The Belief becomes a central activity - exposure to any evidence that undermines The Belief initiates fight or flight reactions because The Belief is internalised. Thus the mission becomes a personal matter, a question of identity. I am The Mission, I am The Belief. And therein lies the hook. As long as I remain on The Mission I must maintain The Belief. I must never look for and the real me.

If I maintain The Belief I must carry out The Mission. Even if I only convert one person over a life time, that would be considered a victory. If I question The Belief, then The Mission fails. If I question the tactics of The Mission, then The Belief is brought into question. And so forth. A bit like co-dependent 'intimate' relationships. 

These are all lessons I learned in the slow process of becoming consciously observant of myself....

The Mission is a fake. The Belief is a fake. The Work is a Fake. Civilisation as we know it is a fake. The Space Mission to fly to the stars is a fake. War is a fake.

Any policy other than Zero Community Transmission is fake.

The purpose of being alive, as far as I can tell, in biologically meaningful terms is to live well,

To live well is to behave in ways that nurture the habitat and the community.

It is to live with much loving attention across one's entire community, to care for the young and watch over them as they learn how to live, knowing they will learn everything they need, in good time. a healthy community understands that the children are to be trusted in this, and never forced. 


That is it. Thrive, and do not harm the children, your own or any others. In terms of physical fitness, emotional balance, psychological groundedness and general sociability, these are biological health benchmarks of the egalitarian human being.

With that in place, then the natural creativity of us humans expresses itself in a myriad of languages and cultures, practices and ways of living with very specific habitats, from Ice and Ocean, to Land and Forest. Diversity is our natural state, homogeneity is not our natural state - we vary because we are sensitive to the habitat and to one another. 
Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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