2020.09 Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
My "Unconscious Suffocation" Goodreads description + links to places selling the book:
At the beginning of March, 2020, the author noticed a dramatically increased degree of paranoia in the general populace engendered by highly sensational fear-mongering in the mass media. Commenting on this on social media lead to an astonishing amount of groupthink mob bullying. The author sought kindred spirits and formed a small email group eventually called the HERETICS. These HERETICS proceeded to share research, observations, philosophical writings, and artworks of their own and others that addressed the situation. The HERETICS are located in 3 countries and 5 cities. After 5 months of intensive exchanges, Amir-ul Kafirs decided to release a heavily edited document reflecting their investigation. This book is it. Health and economic issues are both discussed as well as more social issues such as manipulation of popular opinion. While there is no closure on a situation still in-progress, the HERETICS' general consensus is that the 'pandemic' as a health concern has been grossly exaggerated as an excuse for global economic restructuring and as a distraction from the profound effects of this restructuring.
Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unconscious-Suffocation-Personal-Journey-PANDEMIC/dp/0578743590/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Unconscious+Suffocation+-+A+Personal+Journey+through+the+PANDEMIC+PANIC&qid=1601247036&s=books&sr=1-1h+the+PANDEMIC+PANIC&qid=1601247036&s=books&sr=1-1
Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/Unconscious-Suffocation-Personal-Journey-PANDEMIC/dp/0578774062
Barnes & Noble:
Also on Amazon Spain:
https://www.amazon.es/Unconscious-Suffocation-Personal-Journey-PANDEMIC/dp/0578743590
& Amazon Japan:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Amir-Ul-Kafirs/dp/0578743590
& on Booktopia Australia:
& in the Netherlands:
&, um, wherever this is:
& in India:
review of
Amir-ul Kafirs & fellow HERETICS'
"Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through th PANDEMIC PANIC"
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 24, 2020
This is a 'review' of my own book since Amir-ul Kafirs = tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE. Like my other 'reviews' of my own books, this isn't really a 'review', it's just a brief description meant to point you in the book's direction. That said, I will indulge myself & make the claim that this book is bound to be one of the most detailed looks at the various mind control ramifications of using an invisible threat as a way of severely dividing the world into opposing camps & keeping these camps distracted while a 2nd Industrial Revolution occurs that's bound to be just as destructive as the 1st one for everyone except for the greedy few who're manipulating the masses. Read it and weep, as the expression goes - but the struggle isn't over yet & while a vast majority of humans seem to've become hopelessly brainwashed there're still many of us for whom RESISTANCE IS FERTILE and, importantly, we are neither left or right, Republican or Democrat; we're FREE THINKERS, the ultimate enemy of GROUPTHINK, bound to be hated but also bound to be more alive. Anti-Globalization Activists, such as myself, would do well to consider current events in the light of previous resistance to the IMF & the WEF & the World Bank because it's these folks & the billionaires that they represent who're up to their old tricks.
Dick Turner's review of
Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
Dick Turner rated it 5 stars
it was amazing
Let me first say that I am one of the authors of this book.
Thus this review will not be qualitative but descriptive.
Allow me however to say that I recommend it strongly. I don't hesitate to say that it is unique.
Let me reiterate that I am a participant in this book but, having said that, I will add that I don't know of another text like it. It is at once a sort of technical manual, resource book, collection of essays, detective novel-thriller, confessional, psychological record and exposé.
It didn't start out that way -it didn't start out to be a book at all, it was just an exchange of emails between people who had some doubts and didn't know who they could share their feelings with. Little by little it transformed into a sort of voyage of discovery through unknown territory.
The book is made up of three basic types of material:
1) an exchange of emails which took place between several sceptics of the official narrative of the Covid-19 event over several months
2) the texts of articles and official statistics shared among the participants (and links towards many others)
and
3) personal essays by the participants.
There are also graphics and other materials.
Personal Note: I have known Almir-ul Kafirs for around 35 years, perhaps a bit longer. We exchange emails, usually on subjects dealing with art or music, from time to time. Anyway, just before the lockdown began here (in Paris where I live) I casually mentioned to him that something seemed odd in the official narrative that was forcing us into isolation. I noticed some strange things in how the information about the "pandemic" was being presented. Something just wasn't gelling. (These I cover in one of my essays in the book). He said that a couple of his other friends had said similar things and shortly thereafter the group was formed to share experiences, articles and observations.
What followed constitutes the book. It is the "story" (in quotes because the book isn't a narrative in the traditional sense) of the gradual awakening to a hidden narrative which, as time went by and the facts accrued, became, in my mind, unquestionable. Every aspect of the "crises" is treated as the events happened, from the estimates of deaths, to the use of publicity firms by the WHO, to the Covid simulations- all of it.
Allow me to say that it all took place before any mention was made of "conspiracy", we just noticed things on our own. It's strange to read some of it now - now that the official narrative has "forgotten" so much of its earlier declarations.
That's all I need say here - everything that needs to be said is in the book. It is 1,200 pages long and every page deals with the reality of this moment in time. It deals with what we are, collectively as human beings, living through and what I hope we will surmount as humans together.
For me it is essential reading.
Thank you.
2020.12.08 Eddie Watkins's review of "Unconscious Suffocation" & tENT's & Eddie's comment exchanges
Eddie Watkins has reviewed Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC and rated it This book helped me to after-the-fact navigate my own Covid summer. tENT and a few friends spontaneously connected when it all started, drawn to each other by their own questions and suspicions about what was happening. They proceeded to discuss the events from their different vantages - New Orleans and Pittsburgh, Paris and The Netherlands - and to share observations and opinions and articles, which eventually evolved into a conscious project that was then (superbly) edited to become this big book. It has the immediacy and sometimes randomness and excessive sharing of online interactions, but is deftly organized into a natural narrative of individual responses to real time real life events. The responses are decidedly against the majority grain, and evolve over the course of the summer into at times full blown speculations about local and global conspiracies. Toward the end of the book, or maybe even from the mid-point on, as many of the speculations got too out there for my deep consideration - I do not think Bill Gates or Anthony Fauci are co-conspirators in a global control project, and if they are then we are living in a dystopia so ingrained and powerful that there's little point in resisting it - I lost more personal interest in their sharings, but even then I found their interactions enthralling and even practically useful, as it offered context and background discussion and thus illuminated some of my interactions over the summer with friends who would have fit right in with the contributors to this book. This aspect of the book also shed light on how people can step by step become enveloped by conspiracy theories and possibly even lose touch with reality. One contributor in particular highlighted this journey and by the end I was concerned for her eventual well being, which of course enhanced the drama of my reading experience as it bled from one real life into my own. Not that any firm group conclusions were come to regarding the conspiracies, and there is a strain of a middle of the road practical approach running throughout the book, where simply reasonable caution and thinking for one's self is espoused. But then the book is not meant to be a how to guide on how to navigate the pandemic. Instead it is a record of individual responses to it, and given the inherent weirdness of it all I understand and appreciate going down back alleys of speculation that can lead to some very unsavory and sinister conclusions. Individual responses to weird events based on individual research are far more interesting to me than mass responses based on imposed narratives. This has been in a way a test of our abilities to think for ourselves, after all, since there really has been no consistent directive "from above". But too often conspiratorial speculations swing way too far from reasonableness, and become something like mental quicksand, favoring the opinions of fringe figures because they are fringe and not part of the establishment, as per the Plandemic narrative or Plague of Corruption with Fauci as the boogeyman. Yes, I think some people and organizations very quickly stepped in to shape the narrative to their own benefit, and yes we as a culture rely too heavily on science to solve our ills, even as the science contradicts itself from day to day; but overall I think the pandemic hit us as we had become too abstracted from real natural life, thanks mainly to online narratives we are fed and adopt even though they more often than not do not coincide with our actual individual experience, which tENT calls "mediated non-experience", and so collectively we have responded stupidly and inconsistently and exaggeratedly to an admitted real world threat that has been blown out of all proportion by fear, as we sit around waiting for science to save us. Meanwhile I navigate my way through all this by my own compass, walking for miles every day without a mask, while masking up to buy butter and beer.
Here's a film by tENT that I found to be a perfect companion to the book, as it features the voices of a few of its contributors, and offers a personal, emotional record of tENT's quarantyranny experience with humor and beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYm6B....Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANICby Amir-ul KafirsAt the beginning of March, 2020, the author noticed a dramatically increased degree of paranoia in the general populace engendered by highly sensational fear-mongering in the mass media.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
Eddie! Thanks ever-so-much for tackling the daunting task of actually reading this from cover-to-cover & digesting it in a personal way!! Not many people are ever likely to do that so you are, once again, distinguished as a rare individual. As the main author & editor of "Unconscious Suffocation" I'm bound to have a more complex read of it so forgive me for seeming to quibble:
One person's 'Conspiracy Theory' is another person's Business Model Analysis. Not many people of practical experience in the world would call it a 'Conspiracy Theory' to say that the lower level Mafia operatives known as pimps use heroin addiction to keep prostitutes enslaved to their function as ambulatory ATMs & that this methodology is unethical & unconcerned with the well-being of the people so-used. That, too, is a global conspiracy. Why would I exempt any billionaire, Bill Gates included, from possibly following a similar MO for financial advancement? I don't mean to say Gates is a pimp, I just mean to say that the ultra-rich become so by making decisions that 1st & foremost benefit their bank accounts & that ethics are often not allowed to interfere.
As for the well-being of one of the co-authors? I think that they did what the rest of the authors did: namely try to clarify & keep intact their own personality & philosophy by deeply researching the positions available for scrutiny that most jived with their own perceptions. It's my wish that more people would do this instead of just docilely accepting the dogma provided.
Thanks also for linking to "Like a Decoy out of Water"! It's a considerably more gentle & compressed take on living-in-these-trying-times so I do hope people will check it out since it's much easier to absorb. It's, as you know, less than a half-hour long &, therefore, doesn't require the major investment of time that "Unconscious Suffocation" does in order to be truly appreciated.
THANK YOU AGAIN!! YOU'RE A WONDER!!
Eddie posted a new comment on Eddie's review of Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
Didn't intend to disparage Inquiring Librarian's path through the course of the book, just wanted to say I feared for her a bit, which is a good thing for a reader in that I got emotionally involved in her journey. Yes, she remained intact through her investigations, but her investigations led her through more profound changes than the other participants, from what I could infer from what I learned about the participants from my reading, and where I saw her heading by the end left me a bit concerned for her. Here I am talking about the participants almost as characters in a book, but hey that's how I read it.
I should also say that I don't think the pandemic is a plot by pimps like Gates to subjugate people, but that it might nevertheless have that effect because so many people are fearful and thoughtlessly following guidelines that often don't make sense, and so they might slowly lose whatever abilities they had to think for themselves. I do see this partly as a test for us to think our own ways through it, and obviously many are failing. But then this has to be balanced with concern and compassion for people who are having a hard time thinking their ways through it, which for me is part of my own way of thinking my way through it.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
I'm less concerned with the "pandemic", as I hope "Unconscious Suffocation" makes clear, than I am with what's happening to society with it as an excuse. I do think that the pandemic has been grossly exaggerated through the usual mass media fear-mongering that helps keep people glued to the boob tube &, hence, makes them a better source of advertising revenues.
As for Gates & his fellow travelers: it's all in the language. Billionaires may not want to "subjugate" people per se, they may just want to create a monopolized market. A vaccine that's pumped into 7.5 billion people is the biggest market ever. It's the purpose of advertising to create a feeling of a need in people for something that they might not really 'need' after all.
I don't watch TV but in my few glimpses of it from time-to-time I see advertising for mood elevation drugs that wouldn't have been there 50 years ago. SO, consider this possibility: Big Pharma heavily invests in psychologically manipulating people to think that if they're unhappy it's because they're mentally ill & to then offer to sell them the 'solution' for that 'illness': namely, a mood elevating drug. An advertisement might show a person brooding, but then smiling & playing with their grandkids out in the sun after taking WHATEVER.
That, to me, signifies a shift in society. There once was a time when a person coped & got on with their life, they didn't 'need' drugs. But Big Pharma is Big Business & they have money to make. Is their psychological manipulation "subjugation"? Some might answer yes - but from Big Pharma's PR perspective they're 'helping people', for a fee, of course. I think we're mostly better off without their help. At a minimum I prefer that their psychological manipulation be curbed by ethics.
I suggest reading Marcia Angell, M.D.'s "The Truth About the Drug Companies - How They Deceive Us and What to do About It". She's the "Former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and now a member of Harvard Medical School's Department of Social Medicine." (to quote the book 's bio) So for those who want the science, there it is.
But it's not just about Big Pharma (although they are a pet peeve of mine). It's about what people in power will do & how they justify it. To some, Governor Wolf is a dictator. His own justification for imposing draconian laws in Pennsylvania is that he's stepping up to deal with a crisis. I don't know what he believes. I am sure that such reasoning has served the current more-exaggerated-than-usual conflict between the Democratic Party & the Republican Party in the US by creating a ridiculous 'good guys vs bad guys' argument in which "All's fair in love & war." The problem with "all's fair with love & war" is that war is never fair & love rarely enters into it.
But, of course, this isn't confined to the US. It's a global situation & the oppression in other countries is more exaggerated than it is here. People in Paris have to have forms to show the police if they leave their domicile. Some may find that justifiable. I don't. Furthermore, there's now a law that French people can face a 5 year prison sentence IF THEY PHOTOGRAPH THE POLICE. That would've been 'unthinkable' before the conditions created by the PANDEMIC PANIC.
Eddie posted a new comment on Eddie's review of Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
Yes, I wouldn't want people to think the book is all about conspiracy theories. The main title sums it up -- Unconscious Suffocation. It's about staying alert and discerning agents of manipulation and control, and maintaining individual thought processes that keep those agents at bay. And, yes, I have no doubt Big Pharma would stop at nothing to get more profit; but when thought processes turn toward vast scenarios of coordinated efforts from on high to manufacture a crisis out of nothing for the purposes of injecting us with mind control chemicals, then things have gone too far. If we are being manipulated by a network of government officials, billionaires, scientists, and the media, to the point where we're all essentially living in a fictional world devised by evil others, what can we do? Really, what can we do? I am all for trying to wake people up from sleepwalking induced by force fed misinformation from others intent on using us for their profit, but if this whole pandemic was concocted from the get go for the express purpose of controlling us, and 95% of us have fallen for it, then I'd say the game is up; we're living in a matrix world and there's no getting out. Again, not that that's your book's "message", but parts of the book do entertain such a scenario.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
1st, thanks for keeping our exchange here lively (& polite). One experience that I've had throughout this time is that of being attacked for simply suggesting things - in fact that's the move across the board with censorship: there seems to be a huge fear that even discussion is dangerous. In other words, THOUGHT CRIMES. I'd be the 1st to admit that I'm a Thought Criminal.
I can understand that some scenarios would seem TOO diabolical & TOO Machiavellian to be considered seriously. On the other hand, I think it's important to keep an open mind about any speculation in order to pick & choose what fits in with one's own personal experience. You ask: "If we are being manipulated by a network of government officials, billionaires, scientists, and the media, to the point where we're all essentially living in a fictional world devised by evil others, what can we do?" For me, it's not so much a matter of a collusion between all possible forces involved as it is a systemic normalization of internalized behaviors that then become unquestioned. Personally, I don't even feel that even if it were the 'worst possible scenario' as you express it above that there would be nothing to do about it. I, as you know, am interested in Paradigm Shifts & I think these Paradigm Shifts are often brought about by individuals. That potentially gives an individual the ability to counterbalance something systemic.
An example of the above that I often refer to is Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell's "Principia Mathematica". In 1910, when they 1st wrote it, they, if I understand correctly, were confident that mathematics could describe all physical reality. That was conceptually very important & was bound to have extremely wide-ranging effects on things both philosophical & practical in society. Then along came Kurt Gödel's "Incompleteness Theorem" which put an end to Whitehead & Russell's position. One person managed to disprove what might very well have turned out to be a profound basis for society.
Another example is Aristotle's view of the world as the center of the universe, with humanity being fashioned in God's image &, therefore, the center of the center of the universe. The Catholic Church perpetuated this view for centuries. When Galileo & Giordano Bruno & others pointed out that the Earth goes around the Sun & not vice-versa they were branded as heretics & Bruno was imprisoned, tortured, & burned at the stake. But no-one in the church is likely to espouse the view that the Earth is the center of the universe anymore. Bruno & Galileo won out.
SO, my point here is that I don't think of the problems of the PANDEMIC PANIC as being a matter of "vast scenarios of coordinated efforts from on high to manufacture a crisis out of nothing for the purposes of injecting us with mind control chemicals" as much as it is societal norms enabling forces to coalesce in ways potentially negative to the majority simply because there's entirely too little of a societal norm that recognizes & questions this negativity.
But, of course, there are vast scenarios too: after all, the WEF (World Economic Forum) & such events as the G20 that happened in Pittsburgh in 2009 & all such other events that've happened elsewhere have all involved vast cooperation between international political & economic forces to meet to discuss matters of global economic importance in non-transparent meetings that are protected by literally armies of police. One ignores the significance of such events at one's own peril.
The problem, for me, is largely that people DO live in largely fictionalized worlds that they don't question because the propaganda is so pervasive that it becomes too familiar to not seem like reality anymore. How many Americans really believed that the USA was threatened by Communism because a small country halfway around the world was trying it on for size as a political system? I'd say the majority of Americans were believers.. but gradually enough didn't believe & protested & resisted & the US lost the war, thank goodness. Did the USA then become Communist when Vietnam went its own way? Not that I've noticed.
Eddie posted a new comment on Eddie's review of Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
Yes, there are vast scenarios, involving people and groups with lots of power and money who strategize on how to gain more power and money at the expense, or at least in total disregard, of the "average" person. This is by definition a conspiracy, in that it involves a pre-planned coordinated effort by a group of people, and is not a conspiracy THEORY in that as far as I'm concerned it is a fact. The larger alternate reality created by these vast scenarios does trickle down to everyone else through various media, and does end up altering some of the basic assumptions of the thought processes of people, who then just accept that what their leaders are putting forth is for the larger good, or is at least inevitable, and so just go along, and thus the larger alternate reality becomes THE reality, where the groups and people in power maintain power and everyone else either adjusts or falls away.
The book explores such a dynamic in the context of Covid, and I think puts forward very convincingly that this kind of (power) dynamic naturally and almost effortlessly subjugates people, and that the unquestioning nature of the majority of people toward the official Covid narrative (though there have many narratives, some even contradicting others), opens them up to manipulation in other realms that are perhaps not even directly related to Covid. It has created obedient subjects, so to speak, and these subjects will continue to be obedient even after Covid passes.
So I wholeheartedly agree that we should be thinking for ourselves at this time, and coming to our own conclusions about what is safe and unsafe behavior. But when thinking for ourselves becomes doubting the very reality of Covid, then that thinking is itself aberrant and becomes as dangerous as, or even more so, than the official narrative. And I think parts of your book went down these paths.
Saying that Covid deaths are wildly exaggerated because hospitals check the Covid box on the death chart because they'll get more money from a Covid death rather than a regular old death is one example. I'm not saying that this did not happen. I'm just saying that it did not happen on a scale large enough to wildly inflate the actual deaths due to Covid. If one's independent thinking leads them down this path, and they start suspecting all numbers and all hospitals and hospital workers, then they are more prone to believe more allegations, and before one knows it one's independent thinking has led them to believe a host of seriously debatable accusations, and so become not just free of the "official" narrative but free of any sense of reality, even though they are now armed with an arsenal of arguments to support their loss of reality.
I also happen to think that masks do indeed save lives (even though I like your Wearing Masks Saves Lives film very much!). But because I think this does not mean that not wearing masks kills people, at least not in all scenarios. If I know that I have Covid and I do not wear a mask in a crowded room then I could potentially be responsible for someone's death. Did I kill them? No. Or maybe if I locked my face to theirs and licked them all over I did. On the other hand if I wear a mask at 5am on an empty street I am not saving lives; in fact I could be endangering my own health because I do not think wearing a mask is healthy if no dangers are present. But it's simply easier to assume danger is everywhere and to submit to the official narrative, where thinking for yourself can kill you and others too!
I would rather advocate for a stance of general unspecified suspicion, supported by an awareness that there are many forces out there attempting to take advantage of me, rather than a stance composed of too many certainties that too often coalesce into wild theories that then end up taking us for a ride.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
Ah, well, I find what you're saying here to be generally reasonable. The areas in which, perhaps, we diverge the most are how-many-people-have-died-specifically-from-COVID-19 & how-desirable-are-masks? It's never been my position that viruses, e.g., don't exist & that some people don't die who get them. For me, it's more a matter of to what extent is a specific virus proveable as the cause for a specific number of deaths. It's my opinion, & perhaps you didn't find this to be the case (which is fair enough), that I present enough evidence in "Unconscious Suffocation" to call the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 to be suspect. The people & sources quoted are the CDC's own statistics which, at least at the beginning, lumped COVID-19 together with pneumonia & the flu. As such, one of the basises I used was comparisons between 'pandemic' statistics & previous years' statistics. Furthermore, I presented statements from nurses & doctors about statistics being manipulated. They, of course, don't represent all doctors & all nurses but they also don't represent, at least to me, a dismissable 'lunatic fringe'. Senator/Doctor Scott Jensen, e.g., struck me as very credible. There are certainly other dissenting doctors out there, Dr. Kelly Victory is another good example. Something that very few people seem to be calling attention to is that no-one seems to have a flu or the cold anymore. That's strange to me insofar as there's been a flu/cold season during cold weather throughout my entire life. That suggests to me that any symptoms that would've been previously attributable to something that people weren't particularly afraid of are now immediately suspect of being COVID-19.
As for the masks? I think an argument could be made that it would be healthy to wear masks from now on in. In other words, there's always the possibility that we might breathe out something that could be harmful to another person. We could also breathe in something harmful to ourselves. I, however, prefer to think that the more natural mask-free lifestyle that I've had for the 1st 67 years of my life has more to be said for it than the pro-mask arguments. Things being what they are at the moment, I wear a mask when I go shopping. I don't wear one when I'm around friends who are comfortable with that. Most of the time I'm alone so it's not an issue then.
Eddie posted a new comment on Eddie's review of Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
I would admit I am very reluctant to live in a world where healthcare workers manipulate data, or politicized scientists lie in support of a an agenda of manipulation and control, etc. I know that both happen to a degree, but I don't think (or just don't want) the degree to which this happens to be a dominating influence. Nearly everyone I know believes, to varying degrees, what they are being told about the pandemic - the risks, the precautions necessary, the numbers, etc. - so that is my world, and I want it to continue to cohere, so I continue to have some degree of trust in what we are being told, even as I consider my independence of thought to be intact. I still think that a majority of people, even public officials, are acting in good faith (however sometimes misguided).
As for covid deaths, I understand how the numbers could be manipulated initially, but now that it is active all across the country, in cities and small towns, how could every big and little hospital be cooking the numbers. Who is controlling that? Has everyone secretly been told to attribute any questionable death to covid? I think it's just hard to know exactly what is actually killing people.
There was a case in my parents small town church. An old man got sick and was dead two weeks later. He had tested negative for covid three times, and never tested positive, yet the doctor informed the church that he had died of covid because of how quickly his oxygen levels bottomed out, and how quickly he died. I trust this doctor's professional opinion, but still this would have to be considered a questionable data point among millions of data points across the country. There's no exactitude. In this case I would say the tests are faulty and the doctor was right. Others might think the opposite. But it all adds up to a hazy graph that nevertheless has some accuracy, and when it comes to life and death I side with the people I know and live with, friends and family, who are understandably cautious and protective of their health, because some do have preexisting conditions that might make them more susceptible, even if I'm really not scared at all.
As for no, or very few, cases of the flu and colds I'd say it's simply due to all the covid precautions and the empty office buildings and schools.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
Ah, well, isn't part of what you wrote above the "crux of the biscuit" (to, perhaps, misquote Frank Zappa)? People live within worldviews that they don't want destabilized because the implications of the destabilization are too profound. Many of us have our comfort niche, myself included, that we're more or less happy to exist in & having that destroyed is terrifying. I actually prefer a society in which people are able to be sheltered, to eat, to procreate, to have creative moments, etc - a society in which there's not a constant fear of death. The life I lead wouldn't be possible if I were in a war-torn country. I don't want to be reduced to only a suvivalist, my purpose in life is much more centered around higher cognitive processes that would become superfluous & subserviant to back-brain functions in immediately life-threatening circumstances. What this brings me to is the question: Are people jumping in the water to save themselves from a ship that may not be sinking only to grab for a hologram of a lifeboat?
The thing that I think is important is that the dysfunctionality doesn't have to be conspiratorial, it can just be a factor of limits to systems. No-one has to be "controlling this" or "cooking the numbers" even if some are. An unusual health threat is said to exist, procedures are attempted to be established to report on it & otherwise deal with it. These procedures aren't likely to be perfect, people are going to choose to "err on the side of caution". A Governor, e.g., isn't going to want to take the risk of going down in history as the 'Pandemic Denier whose irresponsibility caused the death of millions in their state'. As such, the extraordinary circumstances create side-effects that critics try to bring to people's attention. Have you ever read Stanislav Lem's "Chain of Chance"? It's a detective story in which there's an attempt to solve a series of apparent murders. It's eventually unraveled that a series of 'random' circumstances led to the deaths that were difficult to track.
I may have different ideas than most people about what's protective of one's health. That's something I tried to address the basis for in my chapter about personal backstory. In my opinion, what's being imposed on us 'for our own good' is not healthy. Don't forget, I'm 67, I've had pneumonia twice, I was diagnosed as a diabetic type 2 fifteen+ months ago & told that I had to IMMEDIATELY start injecting insulin. I told the doctor that I planned to change my diet & exercise to try to solve the problem & she told me that was IMPOSSIBLE. I did it anyway &, hey!, I'm in excellent health. In fact, I'm in such excellent health that I've been working on a slanted roof in 29 degree weather & doing fine. Maybe I'll die soon, I'm not that concerned.
Most people I know are BELIEVERS in our health system & in the mass media, I'm not. As such, I don't think it's exactly conceited of me to question other people's wisdom when I see myself in better health than they are - even when they're younger.
At any rate, my purpose, in connection to the 'pandemic' & in relation to just about everything else, is to encourage critical reading. In other words, I hope that people won't just accept any old story that's given to them without at least comparing it to their own experience. Not doing so is to be gullible. The problem with mass media is that it's so blanketing that it creates the appearance of 'reality' because it's so omnipresent. When I stayed in motels & turned on the TV it amazed me to see how much everything reinforced a mainstream narrative.
As for people "who are understandably cautious and protective of their health"? Does that mean that they've stopped eating sugar? Or stopped being alcoholics? Or stopped overeating? What I find is that people are much more willing to make symbolic gestures than they are to break self-destructive habits. Surely you've seen people in cars wearing masks that they pull down so they can take a drag on their cigarette?
Eddie posted a new comment on Eddie's review of Unconscious Suffocation - A Personal Journey through the PANDEMIC PANIC
Well, your comment seems as close to a perfect summation of your stance as I need, so I'm not sure I need to go on. I actually think we are coming from roughly the same quadrant of thought, though you are more radical/extreme (of course not a criticism).
The second paragraph kind of sums it up, but also bolsters my opinion that most of the restrictions are due to fear - fear of sickness/death, fear of not following the official line, etc. - rather than a nefarious plot amongst power mongers.
And, yes, I am admitting I am not qualified to be one of your Heretics, in that I live in a world of mostly non-heretics and want that world to remain intact; but then again maybe I have expressed enough somewhat heretical opinions in word and action, that my non-heretical friends and family have adjusted to allow my contrariness to co-exist with their non-contrariness.
I was referring primarily to family members in the 80-year old range being protective of their health simply because of their age. My dad who is 83, and who is very healthy, though has had lung issues, does not want to be taken down by Covid; and so for his sake, and for others, I maintain what I consider to be reasonable caution in my daily life so that I can continue to visit them and not be the one who carries the virus into their lives. Does this mean I have been caught in the media trap? I don't think so, but I'm sure some would.
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE's comment:
I was going to leave Eddie's last comment as the end of this thread so that he could have the last word & we could both get closure since I feel that the current quarantine situation is something that we need closure to in order to feel psychologically at peace. Alas, there are a few points that I think are important to address so that interested readers of "Unconscious Suffocation" will better understand my positions.
1st, Eddie refers to me as "radical/extreme": many words these days are 'loaded' with meanings not necessarily intrinsic to them that're put into place by Spin Doctors. At one time, let's say during the time of American resistance to the Vietnam War, the term "student radical" was commonly meant to be someone who opposed that war; these days "radical" is often used to refer to Islamic fundamentalists. I find those 2 uses to be almost diametrically opposed. Ignoring those spins, as I understand it, "radical" means to return to roots. The word, as applied to myself, is perhaps most appropriate in relation to the afore-metioned "student radical" spin, without the "student".
As for "extreme"? I don't really think of "Unconscious Suffocation" or my philosophy in writing it as extremist. Instead, I suggest this analogy, which some might prefer as a metaphor: I'm walking down the street without headphones on or glasses & I see almost everyone around me wearing Virtual Reality headsets. Each headset is bringing them a doomsday scenario of some sort. One person rushes up to me & says: 'What are you doing? Hide! Don't you see the terrorists ready to kill you at any second?' I say: "No, I don't, maybe you should take off your VR headset & then you'll see that, while there are no doubt terrorists in the world, they're not threatening you here, at this moment." Another person rushes up to me with a different terror & gets mad at me for not acting with what they consider to be the appropriate fear. Once again, I suggest that they take off their VR headset. Is such an act of mine "extreme"? I think it's pragmatic & sensible. It only seems "extreme" in a world of people immersed to VR.
Then we come to the idea of 'Conspiracy Theories': so much spin has been put on this that it's almost impossible these days for most people to not recoil in repulsion from any informed observation that is in conflict with the mainstream narrative - &, of course, it's the job of the spin doctors to make sure that most people close their minds off completely from any critical perspective.
If I even so much as mention the WTO (World Trade Organization) or the WEF (World Economic Forum) or the IMF (International Monetary Fund) it's as if I'm saying that Santa Claus has a pedophile slave factory at the North Pole. For people who consider the WTO, the WEF, & the IMF's economic ambitions 'Conspiracy Theories' I counter with saying that if you don't think large international economic organizations have non-transparent motives than to me that's like being in denial of the existence of the American military or the Catholic church because they're as much 'Conspiracy Theories' as anything relating to other powerful global institutions. Consider that when the WTO was founded in 1995 one of its requirements for membership was that member countries had to honor pharmaceutical company patents. Whose interests did this serve? The pharmaceutical companies, certainly, but not necessarily the health & welfare of the poorer member countries whose people could never afford the high prices of the exclusive pharma markets.
"Unconscious Suffocation" includes a variety of perspectives. Some of them might be considered more 'extreme' than others. Again, the spin doctors are hard at work: any criticism of the push for worldwide vaccination is commonly dismissed by the pejorative "anti-vaxxer". I strongly disagree with this dismissal. As far as I can recall, I haven't personally had any vaccinations since one was imposed on me by my junior high school back in 1967 or 1968. While I've had the flu or colds from time-to-time I haven't really been bothered by them much & don't get them every year. As such, for me personally, I have no need for or desire for any vaccinations. If other people want them that's their business, my business is MY body & I completely disagree that other people have the right to impose any kind of medical intrusion on me without my consent.
"Unconscious Suffocation" provides dialog between 6 people
in 3 countries & 5 cities. We're friends but we're not identical to
each other. As such, we didn't always agree on everything. A part of the
purpose of the book is that it present a somewhat broader spectrum of ideas
than would usually be available within one framework - including ideas that
might be more generally dismissed. The idea is to put those ideas out there
for the reader to become aware of, we aren't claiming to absolutely represent
objective truth & we aren't demanding of the reader that they agree
with everything we present. It seems to me that a healthy discussion of
any subject shouldn't be hemmed in by fear of mob bullying or by the dubious
ulterior motives of censors.
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