Norman Doidge, a psychiatrist who has written beautiful books on neuroscience, recently published a scientifically serious and gently balanced introduction to the major Covid questions in the Tablet (complete version here). Highly recommended.
Doidge refers to the "behavioral immune system" and the "crystallization" that happens after a major dispute, as factors in the hardening divisions that are tearing apart our societies. The poet T.S. Eliot put it baldly: mankind cannot bear very much reality. We are not very well made for the continual work of revision and self-critique that could lead us to change our minds.
Yet change our minds we must, and we need tools to do so. If the jabs have not solved the problem, this would be a great time to have a frank, open discussion among the best educated professionals, with access to as much of the relevant data as possible. Instead, prominent scientists, doctors, and honestly curious laymen are being censored every day.
Instead of releasing the data and crowdsourcing sophisticated intelligence about its meaning, which affects everyone, Pfizer and US government regulators look very much as if they are colluding in a bid to stonewall, and not release the data for decades: much too late to be of any use to the double, triple, and quadruple-jabbed who have a legitimate interest in knowing the full truth about the safety profile of the products they are being injected with.
The "hesitant," as they are termed, are told to shut up, get in line and obey. With every trick in the book, everyone from the president to the Pope have cajoled, threatened, fined, and shamed them into compliance. Obedience is a question of public health, they are told, even though research is consistently showing that the jabs make no significant difference to transmission within the "herd," and we know infinitely more today about how to care for Covid patients than we did in the uncertain days of March 2020.
The hysteria resulting from crude rules motivated by the government's desire to get everyone jabbed are leading to horrific outcomes. Just a few weeks ago in the beautiful, gentle country I live in, Italy, a young mother lost her child after being turned away from the hospital in Sassari. Without a PCR test, she could not enter; and thus her child died.
Think of that woman, and her husband standing helplessly by, and tell me these rules are just and humane if you dare.
Let me not be misunderstood: obedience is sometimes vital. Without it, there is no cohesion, no identity, no ability to stand as a group and work for a common goal. Armies are successful because their members follow orders. Obedience is also pedagogically useful: by paying close attention to the ideas and experiences of those wiser than one's self, one can presumably chart a better course through life. Don't touch the stove, it will burn you.
But along with obedience, we also need an education in disobedience. The young mother in labor was met at the hospital door by other human beings. One of them should have seen through the rules and realized that this was the time for an exception. Instead, they were unthinking drones. A bit like Eichmann.
We have been told that truth will win out, if the playing field is level. That might be the case, if a level playing field could be found. Liberal democracy has been described as just such a public square, in which the marketplace of ideas will produce the most reasonable outcome, a sort of "price discovery" leading to the One Best Truth about things public and private. This belief is a child of Adam Smith's idea that the homo economicus will act out of enlightened self-interest.
However, as is well known today through the work of Tversky and Kahneman, the actual behavior of the homo economicus is highly irrational, even when manipulation and outright lying are not part of the equation. And only the naive or the blind could think that they are not: our experts are as easily bought as our journalists and politicians.
Therefore, in order to push the good and the true back into the center of the field where they belong, every generation has needed its Socrates, its Thomas More, its Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Some of the heroically disobedient of our own time are Canadian and drive big trucks.
If all we had to do to guarantee the victory of the Good and the True was to enunciate them in the free market of ideas, we might be able to get away with having a highly compliant population, and outsource the idea-repository to places like Wikipedia and a few elite universities. The experts would sift through the ideas, tell us what to think and what to do, and the greater good would come about by just obeying.
The trouble is that such a marketplace does not exist. Along with enunciating our ideas about the good and the true, we also have to defend them. And we have to worry about discovery, the generation of new ideas, and the correction of the bad ideas in the remote and recent past.
One example: currently, a vocal group of scholars are engaged in revising racial history and teaching the point of view of those who were oppressed in the past. If we think this activity is important, we must also be concerned with teaching people to have the ability to revise the history books and propose a more honest reading of the facts. That implies that they have the freedom and the courage to criticize even their own teachers.
The issue is far broader than the academy. We must also be concerned with teaching people to have the ability to challenge the press and the government. We need free-thinking women and men able to take government bureaucrats, whether they be in the White House or at the CDC, the FDA, or anywhere else, only as seriously as they deserve, and to ask hard questions of them both in the media and in court.
To work together for the greater good, which is never fully known by anyone, and to counteract the liars among our rulers and their journalistic mouthpieces, well-intentioned or otherwise, we need an education in disobedience. A merely obedient population might be easy to govern in the short term, but it will be tragically unable to change course when the data shows that the greater good lies elsewhere than we had previously thought.
About the Author:
Jonah Lynch has a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome, an M.Ed. in education from The George Washington University, and a B.Sc. in physics from McGill. He conducts research in digital humanities and lives in Italy.
Reader Comments
Already the world is Hellish and Comical to anyone evolved past cave man stage. We try to keep it comical because it certainly is a big joke.
Perhaps I play the contrarian to much, perhaps it's a balance against the lack thereof in a world of free floating anxiety in denial encouraging social life by validating each other no matter the stance, in order to sustain the hypnosis of 'everything is alright, no problems for us to deal with'.
But it's never healthy to keep denying hell by making fun of it.
I agree with you that the world is increasingly hellish.Often to the extent that it's insanely ludicrous, demonically slapstick. But it's never comical. IMHO.
No one should have to live life just chronically coping. It's mind-bending and profoundly dishonest.
It's easier to intellectualise suffering - in those as well as one's own. It's often an escape. A way of trying to achieve balance in order to live. It's not the coherent whole though.
I'd like to hear you talk about the reasons and the issues that plague you, in clear, straightforward words that come from your emotions, your spirit and your body as well as your mind.
I've made myself somewhat notorious[Link] it seems, to the point whomever I meet these days will pretend to not know me but then slip in all kinds of references to things of my past, some partly based on truth, others I can only reduce to the delusions of others taken as gospel. Endless attempts to get me to say something stupid that can then be used to score some social attention in combination with moralization for the intensely border breaking privacy breaching backstabbing I've had to incur. For what? That's a battle i'm waging for over 2 years now, and yet not a single person has been able to justify anything in more than 3 words full of steamy hysteria and unable to respond to my follow up answer of question.. A madhouse when it comes to personal interactions. Social justice gone way of the rails?
Obviously I've been trying to find the reasons.. intense internal persecution voices I still deal with, taking things I read online rather personally.. yet nothing I can remember bears any justification to the proportion of it all. Perhaps not without coincidence this started at the same time as the disproportionate 'virus' response, not completely unrelated either (hence it being an obsession to figure out wtf is going on there).
It ends up with the feeling of being massively listened to (bizar form of gang stalking) while at the same time being isolated from any real people connection as no-one has managed to simply have a calm talk about any of this face to face. Lonely yet connected to the many. Just I don't control the connection and don't know what you hear or see. Responses come in facial expressions and reaction on the street but without me ever knowing what it was about? Did I really say/do something upsetting or did you get another twisty end fed? Never in a position to really ask the question either because it's in passing and the few times I did, no response. It's incredibly tiring, I can tell you that much. Some days I wonder if we already ended up into the totalitarian fantasy of communism and all have been convinced that the truth may never be spoken again, and I'm the last hero resisting. Some days I think It's all my hallucination and I just got to pick a movie to make real (We got harry potter & voldemort leading the corona bs in NL these days, but if harry potter is already taken??) - Some days I think I just ended up in a real f&d up situation that when understood properly would wipe the entire castle floor clean of this corrupted nonsense- and that's why there's been so much effort to make sure folks don't explain me nothing? There's this little tiny light of hope that when one.. just one person realizes that not going for their way but a real way.. will mean it is in fact possible to not lose to their games, else, I have very little hope, but I'll keep trying.
It's not clear how you think you've made yourself 'notorious'.
For doing what exactly?
In one word what is the battle you're fighting?
Feeling persecuted can grow into seeing persecution everywhere.
It sounds to me like you're having to 'cope' with a lot of stuff, tobi. It seems like it could be a good plan to talk through all this stuff with someone you trust .
Do you have someone you can talk with about all this?
A friend? Parent? Sibling? Doctor? Counsellor?
.
I don't know but it could be very helpful and may bring some relief to separate what's actually happening from whatever thinking stuff is cluttering up your head.
If I may, I'll tell you something I learned for sure though: the vast majority of people don't give a damn about anyone else, they don't care about me or you, they're just not interested in anything you say or ask of them.
So it's not worth trying to find out anything from them - they're too busy thinking about what to have for lunch and watching the game on tv tonight or the sore ankle they got running for the bus this morning.
I made myself notorious for 'sleeping' through a rather crazy relationship that has an insane background story. I was green.. kind of brain damaged to not understand it.. yet since I haven't found anyone else who seems to understand (some claim they do but of course never explain), I don't blame myself anymore. Too crazy is hard to understand.
I've been talking with people, haven't found anyone who talks freely though or will explain anything and I can therefor trust. The quote that popped up yesterday I took as a message to myself, then I applied it to others..
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.-George Orwell
When applied to myself, there's been quite a few times people have mentioned something about me not listening, and sure plenty has been said that I could apply to understanding what's going on, I didn't arrive at a 95% bullshit factor of the stories that go around for no reason. Have I done things wrong? sure.. I've spoken about everything I can remember or even guess at. I suppose the conversation breaks when one must realize it's all been quite a multi-person problem of large dimensions and the proportion at which I get the bad end of it is absolutely ridiculous.
I also apply it to the 'others' and yes that then makes quite a bit of sense, and I'm fine to leave 'them' alone if they can stop considering being borderline stalkers 'watching a game' of no consequence. It's not exactly a virtue to adopt a delusional personality disorder persona in my opinion.. The fooler fools himself - the crazy maker makes themselves crazy.. It's sad to see. For me, for them, for us all.
A rather large group of people is watching tv, perhaps one of the most insidious backward abusive shows ever aired, but it makes people feel better about themselves, so they keep watching. Main character.. a lonely guy who's been haunted by the nastiest deep state through endless manipulation I cannot begin to go into. Other character, a severely abused person who's trying to make the most of it with all the troubles one might expect.. also a result of that deep state. I tried to be a good partner to her..
Behind the people.. the producers of this show and their gang, with large knives ready to strike. All the people need to do is turn around and see. But they'd rather keep watching the show, feeling good about themselves, they love it. Entertainment through the kind of sick abuse you've been accusing me of, the lonely guy says sometimes, but all they can do is listen to the deep state and the other character continue to project all their abuse onto him. The people's own presence is leaving them, they have no more concept of reality. The people shout, be a beast! fight them! and I shake my head in sorrow for their loss.
To become sane, we must talk, straight, in conversation. If there's a God making humans special, that's the most important gift he gave us on which we build entire societies, cities and all progress.
... that's just my gut feeling; if anyone wants to read Brownstone's about page here's the link: [Link]
cheerio.