As not a white man, I would say that one way to help fix the problems this group has contributed to is to support the middle and working class now, not at some time in the hypothetical future. New York City workers have been informed they will be fired on February 11th if unvaccinated.
That is, if they do not take a shot that has been shown in multiple studies not to prevent transmission (even Fauci said this on national TV). Bear in mind facts like not so long ago Pfizer paid what at the time was the largest fine in Pharma history for fraud (2.3 billion), has zero liability for these shots which have no long term safety testing, and recently sought via the FDA to have licensing/safety data sealed for 75 years. Anyone who does not speak up now has lost my respect. Whatever complicated intellectual arguments you may have about society, ceding control of what is injected into your body to a group with a documented criminal history and no liability for its products is a problem. Abandoning those who seek choice at this moment is either stupidity or cowardice. Sure, you may like a vaccine or three. But what about two or three years on when you have no choice and your kid can’t go to school or a museum until you obey Pfizer?
Hi Lisa, When you say "this group has contributed to," I don't really know what you mean. I have written a lot about the value of RFK's perspective, among others, and my concerns about the underlying agenda of the vaccines. You can go through my past posts and you will see. I agree with you about this situation and I didn't know about the Feb 11 deadline, so I will look into it.
so i see here it is: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/termination-date-set-for-unvaccinated-nypd-officers-union/3524922/ . I honestly don't know what I can do to help this situation. I agree it is wrong, particularly as the vaccines seem to have little efficacy when it comes to Omnicron. I follow Berenson, Malone, etc, and I understand their concern that the vaccine itself may create new variants or make people more likely to get serious infections down the line. Unfortunately the data still seems ambiguous or perhaps under-reported. If it is true that countries like Israel show a longer-term negative result from the mass vaccinations, then perhaps the world will begin to give up on this. It seems like England has begun to reverse its position, which is a good sign.
Hi Lisa, I agree with you, but my take on it is that what you're talking about are merely symptoms of a disease. Symptom suppression is somewhat hopeless and pointless, since it's really just playing whack-a-mole. The GameB crowd is trying to figure out how to address the disease itself. My sense is that they see that chasing/fighting symptoms is relatively impossible, at this point, and their strategies are therefore more of a "triage" dynamic that doesn't spend/'waste' time on BATTLES that can't be won, for the sake of saving energy/efforts for trying to still win the WAR. That's a miserable notion, but it seems to me that our predicament is actually that miserable. The GameB people, like Schmachtenberger, are addressing that misery as best they can. It's a nightmare. But also notice how horrible the 'divide and conquer' is, even in this community. Most people here HATE Donald Trump (look at Daniel's petulant insults about Steve Bannon in this article, for example...one step away from 'poo-poo head!') but Trump was and is anti-mandate. But "Trump is a FASCIST!!!!" right? So everyone in the progressive save-the-world community 'RESISTS' Trump and instead we have Biden, who is utterly authoritarian about insisting on putting these poisons into you body and your children's bodies. How creepy is that?? But that's where we are as a community. We have no decent sense-making and we are lost in a maze of lesser-evils.
I am not sure why liberals can’t just read and report on scientific papers, I don’t care about their views of Trump, tirelessly, endlessly expressed. He is history. Vitamin D levels over a certain measurable blood level have been shown to drastically decrease severity of Covid and death. Why isn’t that on the front page of the New York Times? I think the Lancet or Johns Hopkins just published about how ineffective and destructive lockdowns proved to be. When I see a Rachel Maddow or the like reporting on that instead of moaning about Trunp non stop, I will revise my opinion. Even as I remain nominally a Democrat, I can’t co-sign their crazy. Get real already. Stop the arrogant whining baby performance. It ain’t news and ain’t interesting.
Have you seen anything in the DR discourse you find troubling? For some reason I don’t trust them. I like the project, too. They seem to be rooted in Ken Wilbur, Camille Paglia and they obviously overemphasize Hegel. It’s fun and a little sexy even. But I was put off by the gender essentialism. Too simplistic. I trust you so if you think they’re on the level I might be inclined to dig deeper.
"If we were walking past a Kindergarten that was on fire, we would probably run inside and tell (even yell or order) the kids to line up so they could get out the door safely and survive."
True, but not sure this is the correct metaphor - who are the kids and who are the adults in this scenario, and who gets to decide which is which? Are the adults the government? JP Morgan and co.? Big tech? 'We' the enlightened ones who know best? Who are the kids?
I totally share your frustration and I am often pondering this dilemma. But not sure there ever is a right moment to use coercion on other adults. Or maybe there is and there needs to be a decision made on who gets to do it.
As for the 'white dude' part (yes I am one as well), it's a bit of a double bind. If we just carry on as normal and make the most of our privilege then we are (rightly) condemned. But if we use the education and advantages privilege has given us to try to make a change for the better (as we see it, for all and not just for ourselves) we are also condemned for our immutable characteristics and our motives are questioned.
Understandable given history, but to me the Game B people (and there are some women and non-white people involved) have their hearts in the right place. Everything can be criticised, and should be, but I think we need to separate good and bad faith actors.
Hi Guy, that is a great question: Who are the children? I think we all are, human beings in total remain immature, adolescent. Some of us see certain aspects of reality more clearly, care about certain things more, while others don't or prefer not to - or choose to remain asleep. I would say the artist making the cube, the art historian giving the speech, the investment banker next to me, and so on, are all like children - perhaps even spoiled children. They are perpetuating the strategies for success taught to them at younger ages, which no longer make sense or only make sense if your goal is hyper-short-term. While I would not consider myself above or better than anyone, I think I forced myself to at least explore and reckon with the meta-crisis internally. As I told Jamie Wheal in a talk, I am ready to forego travel, eat very low on the food chain, etc, for the rest of my life, if I felt my actions would have any sort of impact or influence on the larger dynamics. But if I pursue that course of action, I only seem more dismissible to the children-in-charge. Hence I toggle back to the idea that what needs to happen is some infrastructure or movement that supports a collective realization of consciousness, that somehow supports people from shifting into a more mature level of responsibility, but also offers them new (utopian, mystical, communal) possibilities as they make this shift - myself included.
I agree, I think we all are, which is why we can't really accept the authority of anyone who tries to line us all up and tell us what to do. That is here and it's coming, even more than now, the 'green totalitarianism', which will be supported by many as our options diminish. And it may in fact end up being the only way for a small number of humans to survive. Maybe we are not there yet though. Obviously it's an unprecedented situation so hard to know, but the signs are that we are approaching some sort of tipping point and it will be all downhill from there with no way back.
So I think at this point it may be too late to inspire people out of this rather than coercing them, but maybe we do have one more shot at it with some sort of federation of movements aiming towards taking more responsibility and making a real positive impact.
The tricky thing is that the more one wakes up to what is going on, the more the grief and fear become apparently too much to bear, so the inspiration to change is overwhelmed and people want to regress once more.
I personally think we can thread the eye of the needle, yes it is and will become much more of a disaster, but simultaneously I think sufficient people will wake up and discover their inner heroism to mean that the disaster is not all-consuming. And anyway we have to try, how could we not...
Yes it is definitely a lot of white dudes. I just joined so I am still learning the terrain. I noted that the Game B crowd (Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall, etc) seemed entirely homogenous in terms of race and gender also, which made me feel suspicious toward their project. I will consider who else can be added to the group to mix it up.
As not a white man, I would say that one way to help fix the problems this group has contributed to is to support the middle and working class now, not at some time in the hypothetical future. New York City workers have been informed they will be fired on February 11th if unvaccinated.
That is, if they do not take a shot that has been shown in multiple studies not to prevent transmission (even Fauci said this on national TV). Bear in mind facts like not so long ago Pfizer paid what at the time was the largest fine in Pharma history for fraud (2.3 billion), has zero liability for these shots which have no long term safety testing, and recently sought via the FDA to have licensing/safety data sealed for 75 years. Anyone who does not speak up now has lost my respect. Whatever complicated intellectual arguments you may have about society, ceding control of what is injected into your body to a group with a documented criminal history and no liability for its products is a problem. Abandoning those who seek choice at this moment is either stupidity or cowardice. Sure, you may like a vaccine or three. But what about two or three years on when you have no choice and your kid can’t go to school or a museum until you obey Pfizer?
Hi Lisa, When you say "this group has contributed to," I don't really know what you mean. I have written a lot about the value of RFK's perspective, among others, and my concerns about the underlying agenda of the vaccines. You can go through my past posts and you will see. I agree with you about this situation and I didn't know about the Feb 11 deadline, so I will look into it.
so i see here it is: https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/termination-date-set-for-unvaccinated-nypd-officers-union/3524922/ . I honestly don't know what I can do to help this situation. I agree it is wrong, particularly as the vaccines seem to have little efficacy when it comes to Omnicron. I follow Berenson, Malone, etc, and I understand their concern that the vaccine itself may create new variants or make people more likely to get serious infections down the line. Unfortunately the data still seems ambiguous or perhaps under-reported. If it is true that countries like Israel show a longer-term negative result from the mass vaccinations, then perhaps the world will begin to give up on this. It seems like England has begun to reverse its position, which is a good sign.
Hi Lisa, I agree with you, but my take on it is that what you're talking about are merely symptoms of a disease. Symptom suppression is somewhat hopeless and pointless, since it's really just playing whack-a-mole. The GameB crowd is trying to figure out how to address the disease itself. My sense is that they see that chasing/fighting symptoms is relatively impossible, at this point, and their strategies are therefore more of a "triage" dynamic that doesn't spend/'waste' time on BATTLES that can't be won, for the sake of saving energy/efforts for trying to still win the WAR. That's a miserable notion, but it seems to me that our predicament is actually that miserable. The GameB people, like Schmachtenberger, are addressing that misery as best they can. It's a nightmare. But also notice how horrible the 'divide and conquer' is, even in this community. Most people here HATE Donald Trump (look at Daniel's petulant insults about Steve Bannon in this article, for example...one step away from 'poo-poo head!') but Trump was and is anti-mandate. But "Trump is a FASCIST!!!!" right? So everyone in the progressive save-the-world community 'RESISTS' Trump and instead we have Biden, who is utterly authoritarian about insisting on putting these poisons into you body and your children's bodies. How creepy is that?? But that's where we are as a community. We have no decent sense-making and we are lost in a maze of lesser-evils.
"Nasty disgusting" Bannon was intentionally meant to be exaggerated / funny. He is those things however.
I am not sure why liberals can’t just read and report on scientific papers, I don’t care about their views of Trump, tirelessly, endlessly expressed. He is history. Vitamin D levels over a certain measurable blood level have been shown to drastically decrease severity of Covid and death. Why isn’t that on the front page of the New York Times? I think the Lancet or Johns Hopkins just published about how ineffective and destructive lockdowns proved to be. When I see a Rachel Maddow or the like reporting on that instead of moaning about Trunp non stop, I will revise my opinion. Even as I remain nominally a Democrat, I can’t co-sign their crazy. Get real already. Stop the arrogant whining baby performance. It ain’t news and ain’t interesting.
Have you seen anything in the DR discourse you find troubling? For some reason I don’t trust them. I like the project, too. They seem to be rooted in Ken Wilbur, Camille Paglia and they obviously overemphasize Hegel. It’s fun and a little sexy even. But I was put off by the gender essentialism. Too simplistic. I trust you so if you think they’re on the level I might be inclined to dig deeper.
"If we were walking past a Kindergarten that was on fire, we would probably run inside and tell (even yell or order) the kids to line up so they could get out the door safely and survive."
True, but not sure this is the correct metaphor - who are the kids and who are the adults in this scenario, and who gets to decide which is which? Are the adults the government? JP Morgan and co.? Big tech? 'We' the enlightened ones who know best? Who are the kids?
I totally share your frustration and I am often pondering this dilemma. But not sure there ever is a right moment to use coercion on other adults. Or maybe there is and there needs to be a decision made on who gets to do it.
As for the 'white dude' part (yes I am one as well), it's a bit of a double bind. If we just carry on as normal and make the most of our privilege then we are (rightly) condemned. But if we use the education and advantages privilege has given us to try to make a change for the better (as we see it, for all and not just for ourselves) we are also condemned for our immutable characteristics and our motives are questioned.
Understandable given history, but to me the Game B people (and there are some women and non-white people involved) have their hearts in the right place. Everything can be criticised, and should be, but I think we need to separate good and bad faith actors.
Hi Guy, that is a great question: Who are the children? I think we all are, human beings in total remain immature, adolescent. Some of us see certain aspects of reality more clearly, care about certain things more, while others don't or prefer not to - or choose to remain asleep. I would say the artist making the cube, the art historian giving the speech, the investment banker next to me, and so on, are all like children - perhaps even spoiled children. They are perpetuating the strategies for success taught to them at younger ages, which no longer make sense or only make sense if your goal is hyper-short-term. While I would not consider myself above or better than anyone, I think I forced myself to at least explore and reckon with the meta-crisis internally. As I told Jamie Wheal in a talk, I am ready to forego travel, eat very low on the food chain, etc, for the rest of my life, if I felt my actions would have any sort of impact or influence on the larger dynamics. But if I pursue that course of action, I only seem more dismissible to the children-in-charge. Hence I toggle back to the idea that what needs to happen is some infrastructure or movement that supports a collective realization of consciousness, that somehow supports people from shifting into a more mature level of responsibility, but also offers them new (utopian, mystical, communal) possibilities as they make this shift - myself included.
I agree, I think we all are, which is why we can't really accept the authority of anyone who tries to line us all up and tell us what to do. That is here and it's coming, even more than now, the 'green totalitarianism', which will be supported by many as our options diminish. And it may in fact end up being the only way for a small number of humans to survive. Maybe we are not there yet though. Obviously it's an unprecedented situation so hard to know, but the signs are that we are approaching some sort of tipping point and it will be all downhill from there with no way back.
So I think at this point it may be too late to inspire people out of this rather than coercing them, but maybe we do have one more shot at it with some sort of federation of movements aiming towards taking more responsibility and making a real positive impact.
The tricky thing is that the more one wakes up to what is going on, the more the grief and fear become apparently too much to bear, so the inspiration to change is overwhelmed and people want to regress once more.
I personally think we can thread the eye of the needle, yes it is and will become much more of a disaster, but simultaneously I think sufficient people will wake up and discover their inner heroism to mean that the disaster is not all-consuming. And anyway we have to try, how could we not...
Yes it is definitely a lot of white dudes. I just joined so I am still learning the terrain. I noted that the Game B crowd (Schmachtenberger, Jordan Hall, etc) seemed entirely homogenous in terms of race and gender also, which made me feel suspicious toward their project. I will consider who else can be added to the group to mix it up.
yes there are plenty... Vandana Shiva, Bayo Akomolafe ( https://www.bayoakomolafe.net ), Arundhati Roy, Nafeez Ahmed, Alnoor Ladha, Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, etc etc