Monthly Archives: April 2020

Coronavirus Hysteria 2: We were promised an apocalypse, and the State will deliver what nature has not

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So here we are, in the sixth or seventh week of “quarantine”—which, what a lovely little euphemism for “house arrest”—and damn it, the numbers are just not what we were promised. And at the rate things are going, they never will be. We were promised millions dead, and dozens of virus mutations, each more deadly than the last, and instead we got a virus that doesn’t really mutate much at all. We have our mask-wearing laws, our “shelter in place” laws, our stockpiles of toilet paper…so just where in the hell is the insatiable and genocidal mass murdering little packet of RNA called Coronavirus that we were promised?

Now, thanks to prevalence testing (finally…better late than never; well, actually not better late than never, but whatever) we know that the mortality rate of this virus is in the vicinity of the common seasonal flu, maybe even less, and that those most at risk of death are those anyone with an IQ over 90 could have guessed—the elderly, and those with preexisting conditions, mostly lung, heart, and other cardiovascular related issues. In States and Nations which did not threaten state violence to compel economic shut downs and massive unemployment, large scale house-arrest, small business collapse, and the atomization of society through “social distancing” laws, which here in the US are just about the most unconstitutional thing one can imagine short of a rank despot seizing control of the nation and summarily burning the original copy of the Constitution to char right on the Capitol steps…yes, nations which did not decide to rule by throwing all reason and sanity into an infinite abyss and replacing them with psychopathic political expediency—like Taiwan, Singapore, Sweden, and South Korea—have experienced none of the disasters foretold, and have far fewer cases and deaths than many other countries. This of course is objective, emprical, and verifiable evidence…it is evidence that all of the “public health” measures forced upon a compliant and complacent citizenry in other countries has done nothing to save lives, stem the infection rates, or bring greater security and well-being to the people. On the contrary, it has done the exact opposite. Not only has it prolonged the virus pandemic via hindering the ability of the masses to acquire the herd immunity necessary to build long-term protection against the coronavirus, like it protects us against many other viruses, it has doomed them, and particularly here in the United States, to economic insecurity, psychological chaos, bankruptcy, drug addiction, alchoholism, suicide, unemployment, domestic violence, welfare dependency, stress-related health problems such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, and general ruin…along with prolonging their risk of infection, almost certainly increasing propagation of the virus, which means more death from the virus itself and from complications related to comorbidity.

In addition, we are seeing this disturbing push-pull of manipulative reporting from the mainstream media, which is merely the propaganda wing of the government, and primarily for the Left (today’s neo-Marxist sychophants). We are given reason to panic, then reason to hope a little, then more reason to panic, and on and on. It’s what they call in the military “psy-ops”…never let your enemy establish a sense of certainty about the situation and reality in general. Keep them confused and blind to reason and the truth at all times. This virus is hella-dangerous we are told, but we will be just fine if we comply with our quarantine; wear our masks and wash our hands; collect our welfare checks, and stand on those little markers on the floor at the grocery store. But then, you never know…the second wave might be even worse, and we aren’t sure the economy will ever fully return to normal, because there’s no telling what this virus might do; only a few have died relative to the numbers of infected, but watch out! The mass graves of billions is a reality which is just around the corner!

We are psy-op-ed into docility. We are to be controlled through confusion; managed through uncertainty…caged metaphorically, but not physically. The former is much cheaper, and much more effective, and much more profitable.

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You see, the root of what is going on here is that we were promised an apocalyptic hellscape of dead bodies and ruined lives by the millions and even billions, but here it is six months into this thing and it has fizzled like a match in a hurricane. The virus isn’t doing its job…it got lazy and took an early retirement. The mortality rates are falling fast in most places, and at present the coronavirus isn’t any more deadly than the common seasonal flu. Infections are still going on, but this virus has such a lengthy incubation period and the country initiated the collective house-arrest orders so late, and the “public health” measures of blindfolds and handcuf…er, I mean masks and gloves, and the unconstitutional restrictions on freedom  of associa…er, I mean “social distancing”, are so haphazard, ill-informed, and ineffective, even according to medical experts in the World Health Organization and National Academy of Sciences, that infection rates have only been slowed only insofar as people aren’t moving around as much. The curve isn’t being flattened because we are beating the virus, it’s simply because the government put a moratorium on living life in this country…in an effort to save it. Well…no one does irony like the State. But infections are still happening, and will continue to happen as long as people are alive and breathing. I wonder what government orders are being cooked up as I write this to deal with THAT little problem? (Of course I’m being sarcastic here…for now).

And this is the corner into which our incompetent politicians and policy-makers have painted themselves. By overreacting to this relatively harmless virus, and giving into the conspiracy theory panic-mongers on social media, YouTube, in the mainstream media, and even in medical institutions which exist to advise the State on public health issues, all of whom were telling us such fantasies as billions could die, and that this is a Chinese bioweapon, and that it is mutating into an unstoppable perfect viral storm of certain death, and plastering dozens of contextless videos of people in Asia being thrown into quarantine camps, barricaded in their homes and apartment buildings, and crematoriums with bodies lined up like a street parade to be disintegrated into a black-smoke oblivion as though Auschwitz had been rebooted…yes, by overreacting to this deluge of rank spectacle with almost zero actual information about the virus and then summarily assuming almost plenary control of every aspect of the life of the citizen, the government doomed the nation to the apocalypse which the virus was never, ever going to actually deliver by itself.

Like I said, no one does irony quite like the State.

In other words, here is the corner which at this point pretty much guarantees that this “lockdown”…this suspension of basic life and freedom in this nation will go on pretty much indefinitely at this point. At least, this is the rational perspective…thankfully the State has a habit of acting irrationally, so there might be hope. Anyway, the government, by allowing this lockdown to continue, creates an economic, social, psychological, medical, and political disaster which rapidly approaches the point of irreversibility with every passing second, and in addition to this doesn’t actually do anything  to halt the threat of the virus but merely prolongs the existence of it as a threat by hindering any chances for herd immunity to develeope and deal with it. And this could threaten the positions of those in power in the long run.

But if they lift the lockdown the coronovirus will ineluctably spread and the numbers will climb…this is the dreaded “second wave” they are talking about on the news now. Of course, there is nothing to fear from a second wave, because the mortality rates will not change…it will not make the virus any more deadly and will in fact, create mass immunity rather quickly as people get it and recover, so there is nothing to be afraid of. But the State knows how ignorant and short-witted and reactionary and fickle the public is and when the people see the number of infections rise again they will of course completely lose their collective shit and blame the State for opening the country up too soon. And this will turn out very bad for politicians and policy makers in the short run.

So…understand this: this forced house arrest and economic cratering we as citizens are being forced to endure at this moment has absolutely nothing directly to do with cornonavirus, and all attempts to present this virus as some kind of actual, visceral, clear and present threat to life and limb is pure fear-baiting and propaganda for power and profit. There is nothing about the virus itself for the overwhelming majority of people to be afraid of. This has everything to do with the ruling class biding their time until they can create an artifice of plausible deniability. In other words, they are opting to go with the long-term disaster approach of holding fast the nationwide lockdown in the hopes that this buys them enough time to come up with a plan to save their reputations, and with it their positions and power. Of course, the longer they let it go, the more short term the long term disaster gets. Now, I’m sure that there are some in power who are looking to the Golden Knight of the Glorious Vaccine to come and rescue them out of their self-sabotage, but that necessitates that this lockdown proceed for at least another eighteen months if not two years. This scenario leaves them with no country left to rule at the end of it all, of course, but if you think for a second that the government isn’t seriously considering a lockdown which extends until a vaccine arrives (and that a vaccination can even be created is no certainty), then you don’t know how insatiable the State actually is, and how ferociously self-interested it can be when faced with what it believes is a true existential threat. Not only are they considering a two-year lockdown, but right now this IS the ACTUAL plan which is being implemented. It IS the reality at present. The government has not equivocated in the least about their power and intention to extend the lockdown for as long as it is “necessary”.  Where “necessary” means “serves its own interest, period”.

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So, the virus isn’t doing what the government told us it would do. The “public health” measures are not and will not have the effect on the virus that we are told they will. But see, this is not the fault of government, lest anyone get the wrong idea about the point of this article. I am by no means criticizing the State. I am merely pointing out the perfunctory and necessary failure of it when it assumes responsibilities that are not inclusive of its nature, purpose, and abilities. I would no more accuse the lion of failing to build a canoe than I would accuse the government of failing to handle a crisis, or promote the health and well-being of humanity.

Well, I suppose that’s not completely true…the government could be blamed for making the attempt to go beyond its endemic and singular purpose; but I’m not sure that’s even what it is doing. I believe all of these attempts to address real problems in a productive and satisfying way are merely a facade for rank power grabbing. I believe the State knows exactly its purpose and its skill set, and relentlessly pursues these to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps I’m simply being too cynical, but really…eventually the lion, no matter how naive and ambitious it may be, WILL realize that it’s really only good at being a lion.

Here’s what I mean: the government’s only real purpose and talent is to annihilate. It’s like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV that way—whatever it hits, it destroys. Government is force. Government is an instrument of destruction…it is the centralization and monopoly of overwhelming compelling violence. It’s only job and only talent is to destroy the individual in sacrifice to a collectivist Ideal that it represents incarnate. in the US the Ideal is “the People”, but it can be anything—the Church, the Nation, the Race, the Worker’s Utopia…etc. It may try, and even in good faith, and in earnest altruistic intention, to correct social injustice, or to ensure economic stability, or to protect the health of the public, or the educate the masses, or to feed the them, or house or clothe them. But it fails, always, and at all times. Whatever problem it tackles, it makes worse, sooner or later, because it MUST. Because in all cases except destruction, the government is the lion which is trying to build a canoe. No matter what it does, or how hard it tries, or how good things may look for a while, the canoe must inevitably sink. It won’t work, becasue it simply can’t EVER be an ACTUAL canoe. Because lions do not build canoes.

What goverment does do… what it is so very good at that it does it perfectly even when trying to do the exact opposite, is wreck peoples’ lives. At the end of the day it murders, hinders, starves, threatens, imprisons, abuses, corrupts, and buries any and all expressions of individual autonomy, freedom, free will, and personal responsibility. Fiat currency, unrestrained debt and money printing destroy the econonmy; govenrment schools become institutions of collectivist and moral nihilism indoctrination; government wars begot from emprical meddling annihilate entire generations of men; social justice programs alienate and oppress the majority in the name of “equality”; tax collection takes the competent and productive and feeds them into farms and charnel houses where they are fleeced and butchered to buy the votes of the incompetent and unproductive, and on and on. And that is why, even though the virus disappointed in its foretold disaster, the apocolypse we were promised shall come to pass. Because where nature fails to heel and hobble mankind via its pestilence, meteorological disaster, or disease, the State takes up the slack. The virus failed to annihilate us, but don’t you worry, there will be destruction and death, in the millions and billions, just as we were promised. The virus won’t get you, but here’s what will: depression, anxiety, heart disease, cancer, unemployment, indigence, bankrupsy, alcoholism, drug addiction, desperation, loneliness, domestics abuse, crime, uneducated youth, economic depression, inflation, debt, anger, frustration, mistrust, indolence, early death, loss of friendship, loss of avocation, chronic sickness, failure to obtain preventative healthcare intervention and regular check ups, and on and on…all brought to you courtesy of your “public health” officials who are so desperately trying to save you from that which you will in all probability never see, hear, feel, or even notice should it by happenstance come upon you. Indeed, you may never personally know anyone who has truly suffered from the coronavirus, but you will certainly know personally one, and likely many, who has and have suffered from the State’s policies to protect you from it.

Yep.

No one does irony quite like the State.

END

 

Coronavirus Hysteria: Mask Panic, Mask Confusion, and Why One Law is Infinte Laws

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Go look at the literature concerning the effectiveness of masks in slowing or stopping the spread of coronavirus. What you will find is this: that masks both do and do not work.

Now, we know that something cannot both be “is” and “is not” because that’s a contradiction, and contradictions are null. Meaning they invalidate both premise and conclusion and thus result in a net 0…they are valueless and non-existent, and thus should be entirely rejected out of hand.

But the contradiction here is merely figurative…we can safely assume that the scientists and medical professionals who lead the discourse on mask-wearing in the midst of this virus kerfuffle do not mean to give a non-answer, and do not mean to confuse or mislead the public. So what it means is that there is benefit to mask-wearing, but with that benefit is a corresponding risk.

Now, I am not going to ramble on about the why’s and wherefore’s of masks and mask-wearing…about their usefulness after moisture saturation, effective resistance, virus transmission routes, moisture droplets, and all of that kind of thing. All that can be found in hundreds, if not thousands, of articles online. But distilling down the literature, there is a consistent conclusion that can be inferred from all of it, and that is this: That for every benefit to mask wearing there is an equal and opposite risk. For example, a mask may be effective in stopping large droplets of water from spreading to surfaces and other people, whilst at the same time they are not effective in halting the virus on smaller air droplets which can permeate the mask. Masks can give wearers a false sense of security causing them to become careless in social distancing, or deciding that it is safe to be around someone who is symptomatic, or that it is safe to go out when they are sick. Masks can reduce the risk of face-touching, which is likely a much more prevalent route of virus transmission than airborn inhalation. Yet they may also significantly increase the amount of face touching due to people having to readjust their masks, or taking them on and off, or pulling them down and then back up again for whatever reason. If you are a glasses wearer like me, you find yourself constantly having to readjust a face mask due to fogging. It is such a problem for me that I am not actually comfortable wearing a mask out of fear of catching the virus via face-touching. Masks may present as a comforting psychological bromide, yet this may backfire due to overconfidence. Masks are effective to some extent in preventing the inhalation and exhalation of the virus, but only for about twenty minutes, after which they become too moisture saturated to serve as any kind of preventative measure. In order for masks to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus and not actually promote an even greater risk, the paper-based surgical masks must be discarded after a single use, and never worn for more than twenty minutes; the cloth masks, the makeshift homemade masks, the bandanas, must be washed after every use, and never worn for longer than twenty minutes. Hands should always be clean when affixing or removing the mask, and once on, should not be touched, ever. Failure to do these things not only voids the usefulness of the mask in preventing virus transmission, but can actually increase the risk of someone getting sick and spreading the virus to others.

Now, you may think the point of this article is to assert that mask-wearing is a zero-sum activity. And a very compelling argument can be made for that, and is what I happen to believe. I believe that mask-wearing is nothing more than a public spectacle, and does little more than promote a panic and hysteria with respect to a relatively harmless virus, which does nothing in the end but to prolong the economic, psychological, and even physical destruction of our nation, not to mention the already-irreversible and massive demolition of our Constitutional rights and freedoms, which we will never see returned.

But that’s not really what I am interested in here. The point I want ot make is much more academic, much less idealistically charged…perfunctory. After all, rational consistency is the only real discourse of substance. Everything else is just barking.

Let’s talk law. Let’s talk the idea of mandatory mask-wearing. Which is not such a far-fetched notion, and in some places in this country is already a reality. A law, or requirement, which demands that people wears masks in public or else suffer punishment is ostensibly designed to save lives, right? To protect people from this rogue virus that is ravaging the nation and the world (well, okay, 2.2 million out of a world population of 8,000 million is hardly “ravaging”, but let’s just assume the media’s self-serving perspective on this). And certainly there is some evidence that wearing a mask may save lives by halting or slowing virus infections. But—and here’s the rub—there are a lot of ifs which must be given asterisks…a lot of caveates. Masks may be effective in doing what the law ostensibly intends them to do IF masks are worn no more than twenty-minutes; IF we do not allow them to be moisture saturated; IF they are not handled once they are placed on our faces; IF the paper ones are disposed of after each and every use, and IF the cloth ones are washed after every use and never worn more than once UNLESS washed; IF we only put them on and take them off with clean hands; and IF we don’t allow them to give us a false sense of security and thus IF they do not tempt us to violate other preventative protocols.

What all of these IF’s mean is that simply applying a law which requires citizens to wear masks in public will not actually DO that which the law is intended to do, because for every increased benefit there is an increased risk. Failure to wash masks or discard them, to wash hands before and after touching masks, to not wear them longer than twenty minutes, to not allow them to become moisture saturated, to not wear them more than once, to not allow them to become an excuse to forgo much more important preventative measures, to NOT allow them to become a false sense of security is to INCREASE the risk of spreading the virus. Masks are a razor’s edge of risk…fall off that edge, and you make the problem worse than if you’d never worn a mask at all.

It is clear from this then that one law is not going to do the trick. We will need dozens and dozens of related laws in order for that one law—mandatory mask-wearing—to actually do what we are told it will do: keep us safe. Otherwise it is merely a law for law’s sake; the exercise of authority for authority’s sake. The law which says you shall wear a mask must also say you shall not touch your mask with unclean hands; you shall discard your paper mask after a single use; you shall wash your cloth mask after a single use; etc. etc. You get the idea. And this is the problem. Tyranny is a destination born of ostensibly benevolent intention. Once you allow one law to pass, you imply that ALL others must necessarily follow, and that you shall allow those, too. And before you know it, you are told where and when you  can and cannot open your business that YOU built with YOUR own time and money and resources; what you can and cannot sell; what you can and cannot spend your money on; where you can and cananot go, and with whom you can and cannot associate, and what the nature of that association shall look like; where you can and cannot work, and for how long, and so on and so forth.

Oh, wait a minute. We are there already. My bad.

So it has always been with law and government, and always will be. At the end of it all, the only real State solution to public health situations like we are seeing now is to save lives by disallowing people to live them. At the end of the day, mask-wearing is just another part of the hammer used to bash the virus into oblivion and you and me along with it. For the law cannot recognize the difference.

END

 

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Three)

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“…how can one be born if one does not exist in the first place? How can you experience birth if birth is the fundamental beginning? There is no YOU to be born prior to your birth, and so the consequence is birth but there is no action which involves you at all. The action which is entirely mutually exclusive of you somehow concludes with you.”

I understand how abstruse and arcane this quote is, taken from part two of this series, so I decided to dedicated part three to clarifying the point made, and also insofar as this point necessarily relates to death. Also, in reading back this quote I was able to anticipate possible objections and concerns as a function of the overt complexity of the argument; those will likewise be addressed.

To begin with, let’s look at this analogy. The car you drive (if you have a car, that is…if not, well, you’ll still follow) did not always exist as the car, per se. Prior to being your car it was merely a collection of parts, and before that, piles of metal and glass and plastic and paint; and before that, raw minerals which were mined from the ground, or chemicals mixed and refined in some industrial laboratory. After a few years, the car is disposed of, and will then decompose and break down, back into its multiple parts. But these parts, prior to and after the existence of the car, per se, continue to exist. They do not return to oblivion in the same way that they do not spring from it. After all, we know that according to the law of conservation of mass that matter cannot be created and destroyed; and philosophically this is form of the logic of non-contradiction. Meaning that the reason matter cannot be fundamentally created or destroyed is because a thing which exists cannot spring from non-existence, and it cannot become non-existent. Its existence IS; it is axiomatic, it is a-priori; it is de facto.

Likewise, one might say that while a human being did not exist as such prior to birth, there did exist a collection of parts—hormones and fertilizer and eggs and sperm cells and enzymes and proteins, DNA…you get the idea—which eventually came together to form the human being—let’s say you, in the interest  of casualness—that we recognize as a specific individual person. Following death, you shall desololve and decompose back into the many parts which formed you. All of these parts existed prior to you, and they all will exist after you. You are the parts, and the parts are you, and the parts remain in some for as a-priori existing; they are absolute; eternal.

Here is the problem with this explanation, and I’m sure you’ve probably already discerned it. The car, coming from a collection of parts, does not have a sense of Self. It possesses no singular consciousness…it does not recognized, or rather, it does not observe and interpret its environment, and all of reality itself, from a singular, specific, constant frame of reference. The car, in other words, does not know it’s a car. The collection of parts which make up the car do not suddenly, once in “true” car form, begin to associate as a single entity, able to conceptualize itself as a single object, and likewise its environment and all things in it. The parts of the car do not suddenly reject instinctually and naturally their distinct existence and begin to call themselves “I”, “Myself”, “Me”.

Do you see what I am getting at here? The difference between a car and a human being is that human beings DO possess a singular consciousness; a single observational and conceptulaizing frame of reference which demands and necessitates that the parts are not in fact fundamental, but merely form one’s body. Yet one’s SELF—that by which those parts paradoxically utter the words “I”, “Myself”, “Me”, and “Mine”—is the true nature and essence of human existence. To deny this is to relegate consciousness to some inexplicable epiphenomenon, or infinite mystery, or an illusion, or some random blip of mathematical uncertainty…and yet none of these claims can possibly be true because Truth itself necessitates that they be entirely false.

And it is this Self—this singularity—which I mean when I say that the human being is said to begin at birth and end at death. Of course the parts of “you” live on…and of course “you” were born of parts. I am not obtuse or blind to this obvious and pedestrian fact. But the real YOU, your SELF…your agency, awareness, will, consciousness…is NOT of parts, because there is no One from many parts; no I from Not I; no Self Awareness from infinite unconsciousness. And absolute consciousness does not “return” or dissolve into absolute unconsciousness; what IS does not become object oblivion. The law of the conservation of matter must also infer a law of conservation of consciousness (Self Awareness; which is the ability to conceptualize Self and Other) unless we are prepared to claim that consciousness is a lie or an illusion…a claim is very easily debunked and dismissed as the very mysticism and irrationality that those who peddle it claim to oppose.

And this is why I utterly reject the notions of birth and death. Not because they serve as anthropological and biological concepts to describe the cosmically and mathematically prescribed evolution of a human bing, but because they are a deception, and their fundamental meanings are completely spurious at best. Birth and death can only apply to he who is conscious, and yet they utterly contradict consciousness because they render it transitory, coming from oblivion and returning to oblivion, and thus render consciousness a moot and worthless concept. Which renders birth and death themselves moot and worthless. And yet if consciousness IS, and is ACTUAL, it must be absolute and constant, and thus likewise birth and death are rendered moot and worthless. In either and all cases, birth and death are fundamentally meaningless. They may serve as convenient contextual and subjective descriptions of a person’s existence, but they are not absolute, and are not objective, and have no actual bearing on the root nature of human existence. Birth and death are irrelevant with respect to parts. The parts, being absolute and perpetual, according to the law of conservation of matter, are not ultimately born, and do not die, and thus if man is like a car, made up of perpetually existing parts in some form or another, then he does not die and he is not born any more than a car is born or dies, except in the purely figurative sense.

But man is said to be born and then to die; and any way you try to rationalize this claim, it fails. And it fails for one simple reason. Man, unlike his car, knows himself.

END

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part Two)

Determinism, General Philosophy, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, Physics and Metaphysics, reason, scientific determinism, , , ,

Death is an action without a consequence; birth is a consequence without an action. What I mean by this is that in both cases, birth and death, the relationship between cause and effect is irrationally severed. It is said that you are born, but if we define the birth of you as your “coming into being”, then the question is how can one be born if one does not exist in the first place? How can you experience birth if birth is the fundamental beginning? There is no YOU to be born prior to your birth, and so the consequence is birth but there is no action which involves you at all. The action which is entirely mutually exclusive of you somehow concludes with you. Frankly, this makes no sense at all. I don’t care how you twist it or what mathematical, evolutionary, determinist magic you try to invoke to square the infinite circle.

And death is like birth except that in this case, the action is of you but the conclusion is entirely absent you. You die, but since death represents the oblivion of you—the complete absence of you—then the consequence of dying has absolutely nothing to do with you at all. You could not have experienced your death, since to experience something you must exist—existence is a prerequisite to experience. This is axiomatic. Further, how do we make any claims about you once you have died? If we define death as the categorical absence of you, or the non-existence of you, then who exactly are we talking about when we speak the life one lived prior to death? If death represents the utter non-existence of one who once lived, then there is no longer any ONE upon which to hang the life which is said to have been lived. We cannot speak of so and so doing this, or so and so doing that if, so and so is entirely non–existent. But if we insist that so and so did actually do this or that even though so and so doesn’t exist, then we concede implicitly that existence itself is transitory. Existence is not fundamental, but is itself, merely a mist which fades. Existence then cannot be trusted to be objective, and thus any arguments to the objective and empirical nature of reality and truth collapse.

There are a few ways that reconciliation of these contradictions is attempted, and all of them fail the test of rational consistency. One is to deny the existence of YOU qua YOU entirely…to insist that the Conscious Self is purely illusory; a hiccup of the otherwise perfect and perfectly determined mathematical, perpetual cosmic evolution. This rank nonsense was debunked in part one of this article series.

Another explanation is that death is in fact an illusion; that you transition to an after life, as the Christians or Jews or Muslims claim. The problem here is that Christianity makes no such claim about birth, and as far as I know neither does Judaism or Islam. Yet we cannot claim that death is merely a transition but birth is absolute, for both are the exact same relationship between being and non-being. You see, if death is merely a transition into an alternate state of existence, then so must be birth. For going from nothing to something is no more rational than going from something to nothing. In other words, if man does not go from absolute being (life) to absolute non-being (death) then he likewise does not go from absolute non-being to absolute being. If there is a life after death then there must concordantly be a life before birth.

The reality is that only when we accept that the Conscious Self is a constant—that the position of the Observer is to be the reference for an otherwise infinitely relative reality—does one’s existence as a conscious being begin to make sense. It is a hard truth to swallow, for it runs contrary to all popular religion and philosophy, which accept either death, or both death and life, as infinite and absolute bookends to a purely transitory existence as One who is utterly aware of himself, his environment, and possesses the capacity to conceptualize both, as well as the relationship between them, and from that prescribe definitions, and from these meaning, and from meaning, truth, and from truth, morality. But One who is so absolute as this cannot also be rendered subjective and finite via birth and death as they are commonly understood.

END Part TWO

Birth and Death: Paradoxical Bookends of the Absolute Self (Part One)

Determinism, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Objective Relativity, reason, scientific determinism, , , , , , ,

The idea of death is something I have rejected from a philosophical perspective…that is, from a perspective of capital-T Truth. I am okay with death form the purely emprical side of things…that eventually our bodies give out for whatever reason and we are returned to the dust from whence we sprung. But from a rational position, one where fundamental epistemological conceptual consistency is the only real basis for knowing anything at all (which is true), nothing about death makes sense. And birth, being death’s corollary in this regard, is in the same position. You see, if we only accept truth based upon empirical “evidence” then we can never arrive at a rational, relevant, and meaningful answer to the question “what is man?”. For man is more than his senses; more than just his body. If he were not, then consciousness would be impossible. The Singularity of the Self…that is, the constancy which is necessary for consciousness, and from consciousness, observation, and from observation, conceptualization, and from conceptualization, meaning, and from meaning Truth, is utterly denied when we accept that man is merely a transient phenomenon; that there is nothing constant and absolute about his Self; that consciousness is entirely finite; it begins with blankness, and returns to blankness, which fundamentally nullifies all which it had learned and spoken in the meantime.

Consciousness is where the empiricists and determinists and objectivists completely fail in their philosophy, which is why they relegate it to mere epiphenomenon—an illusion, with a purely subjective ontology. Consciousness, by their standards, remains “inside”, whilst “objective truth” is that which is found on the “outside”. That this renders consciousness mutually exclusive from objective existence, and thus makes conscious understanding impossible, and thus any claims about what constitutes objective existence and truth likewise impossible, which voids their entire philosophy…well, that never seems to come up much. But we cannot have our cake and eat it, too. Consciousness cannot spring from the abyss of absolute unconsciousness (pre-birth) flourish for a while to grasp all manner of empirical and objective truth, and then return to the abyss (post death). The 1 of consciousness cannot be born from and then die to the 0 of oblivion. Consciousness, whether we want to accept it or not, is a Singularity; it is Absolute. The existence of You is predicated on You being a constant. If there is no constant/absolute frame of reference for You, then You is impossible.

You cannot be a function of that which is outside of you, because then You are not actually You. And You cannot be merely relative to that which is outside of You because then there is no fundamental constancy to You, in which case you have no grounded frame of reference by which to define “You” in the first place. And You, and by that I mean Your Self, and by that I mean your Conscious Awareness of Self, cannot merely be some (perhaps complicated or mysterious) kind of cosmic or evolutionary illusion because that begs the question: “An illusion of what?” And that question has no answer because the “what” is that which the proposition (that consciousness is purely an illusion) denies can even exist in the first place. And consciousness cannot likewise be a non-illusory product of some unconscious biological/evolutionary determinative process because that creates the self-defeating assertion that consciousness is direct function of unconsciousness….that somehow consciousness can step out of the absolutely unconscious processes from which it directly springs, observe these processes from a specific and distinct frame of reference, and proceed to make claims about the “objectivity” of the utterly unconscious determinative nature of consciousness.

The only options we have are: 1. That Consciousness IS, and is Singluar, and thus does not come from the Nothing which precedes birth and return to the Nothing which follows death; or 2. That it is a function of either a purely relative existence, unconscious biological/evolutionary determinative processes, or is an illusion. In other words, that consciousness is in fact entirely unconscious.

And only one of thes two options makes consciousness actually possible.

You ARE; and You are Constant. I don’t really care what objectivists, empiricists, scientific pseudo-philosophers, or other nihilistic determinists think—I have listened to their positions on this for years and years and it never changes and never manages to wiggle its way out from under the rock of self-defeating contradiction which crushes it to dust. I have heard everything, from appeals to quantum physics to cosmic evolution to taxicab geometry (where apparently squares are also circles…which, no; this is verifiably false all day long). Any and all attempts to negate consciousness as being what it self-evidently IS fail, always fail, and will fail forever.

So…with that being said, how now can we proceed to understand birth and death from a rationally consistent point of view? Do they even exist at all. Well, subjectively, perhaps. But objectively, no. More in part two.

END PART ONE

The Coronavirus Test, Our Failure, Plausible Deniability, and the Quarantine to Nowhere

Authority, forced compliance, government,

Coronavirus was a test…figuratively or literally, it doesn’t matter. How far will the people go to protect their economic and civil liberties; their “guaranteed” Constitutional rights? Covid-19 taught the ruling classes that the people won’t go far at all. In fact, they will scarcely leave their homes. At the slightest whiff of a disruption to their mundane and predictable status quo existence, and under the influence of the rank panic merchants in the media, a relatively harmless virus, with fatality numbers utterly dwarfed by the common flu after five/six months, can cow the people into surrendering their financial future, mortgage the lives of their children, shutter their businesses which they have spent untold amounts of time and energy building, hoard food and toilet paper even absent any kind of supply shortage, accept summary termination of employment, accept trillions of government pork spending, slavishly suffer legal limitations to their freedom of movement and association (a woman in York, PA was recently fined for simply going for a drive) and accept the precedent which says that the government can define a crises and then immediately seize complete control of the economy and society almost literally overnight.

Like with the Patriot Act after 911, the powers and rights we have surrendered to the state—for this—are gone for good.

But at least you feel safe behind your mask and gloves.

Right now we are in the holding pattern of plausible deniability. What I mean is that the Covid-19 scare is not the apocalypse we were told (and are being told even now) it was, but the government and its healthcare advisor yes-men have painted themselves into a corner, and we will be stuck in the “quarantine to nowhere” until they can figure a way out. You see, the powers-that-be, based on a virus of which they knew little to nothing about, and acting out of political expediency and under pressure from media and social media panic merchants and conspiracy theorists (I do NOT blame the government solely for this mess), have damaged this nation in ways that are so unfathomably destructive to the very core of our republic and all upon which it is founded, to the point that it shall never recover, and the death and misery reaped will outweigh anything the coronavirus could do in a million years, that they cannot simply admit they were wrong and throw open society and the economy with a shrug and a “oops, sorry about that”. They fear that, should they do this, in a week once the exuberance wears off, they will face many uncomfortable questions and someone will be on the hook for explaining just how the people tasked with competently and intelligently governing the world’s only remaining superpower could manage to so royally fuck it up almost literally overnight.

What this means is that will will all toil in our locked-down glove, mask, and toilet paper fortresses until they can figure out a way to give themselves an out—a way that can make it look like what is happening now, despite all rational evidence to the contrary, was exactly the right move. They need a plausible way to disguise their catastrophic failure. My guess is that in the next week or so we will hear about some promising new drug which is knocking out the virus left and right, and THAT is why we can now safely reopen the nation, and not because the virus isn’t actually that dangerous after all. It may be some spin about how the quarantine efforts really stemmed the flow of infection and got the numbers down to manageable levels, or a combination of these two “explanations”. But plausible deniability, not a cure, or more ventilators, or more healthcare workers, or more data, is the hold up now.

Oh, and by the way, once this is all over, you can expect terms like “lockdown” and “stay-at-home orders” and “enforced quarantine” to completely disappear from all national media conversation about the coronavirus. That little bit of overt despotism speak is not going to be good for public relations.

And public relations is what it’s all about, after all.