Monthly Archives: May 2020

The “New Normal” is a Euphemism for Indefinite Lockdown: Why the lockdown will never end

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Determinism, Ethics, forced compliance, government, government violence, individualism vs collectivism, Metaphysics, tyranny, Violence, Voluntarism, , , ,

If you have spent any time reading this blog, it is likely that you have an understanding of the nature of government, and by that I mean: the metaphysical foundations upon which government is built. If you are new to this blog, you may not yet grasp these foundations, so I will summarize them for you now. This will not be a detailed examination of the metaphysics of the State, but for the purposes of this post, it will give you a basic framework as context:

There are basically two kinds of metaphysical archetypes, Individualist and Collectivist. Individualist metaphysics allow for few if any variations of political iterations beyond the type which is pretty well obviously implied by the archetype itself. Almost exclusively Individualist metaphysics imply categorical voluntarism as the political iteration. Individualist metaphysics presume that man is ultimately a function of Himself…that is, His own ability to exist as Self, which implies Self-ownership (one’s body is owned by one’s Self, and therefore so is one’s labor), thus individualist metaphysics simply do not and cannot accommodate the existence of Coercive Authority as a means to organize humanity sociopolitically. There is no such thing as Government or the State within the politics which proceed from individualist metaphysics. All interaction and all value exchange are done ONLY at the level of the individual, and thus categorically voluntary value exchange is the only possible means of ANY value exchange of ANY kind whatsoever. The use of coercive violence to compel behavior does not exist in Individualist philosophy…at least, not a rationally consistent individualist philosophy. Coercive violence IS permitted in the case of preventing or mediating direct violations of individuals, but due to the nature of individualist ethics, this does not constitute a violation of the Self of the one violating his fellow man, and thus it is not a violation of voluntarism. I will not describe the full complexities of individualist ethics here, for obvious reasons.

Collectivist metaphysics on the other hand not only allow for the existence of governments and states but necessitate them, because the politics implied by collectivist metaphysics are rooted in violence (force) in order to compel behavior. In collectivist metaphysics a human being is not a function of himself—his own ability to exist as Self—but is instead a function of some essentially ethereal, fundamentally indescribable, inscrutable determinative force, which ultimately defies human understanding, because its infinite nature is is perfect and absolute whilst man’s is vulgar in comparison…graceless, rudimentary, and starkly finite. This determinative force can come in many iterations, an almost infinite variety or combination of them, really, from a deity, to deities, to mathematical or natural law, to evolutionary forces, biological forces, cosmological forces, ideals based on race, or culture, or national identity, tribalism, social class, economic class, mystical caste systems, etc., etc. It can even come in the guise of individualism, such as the Ideal of The People we see in the United States, where “People” is ostensibly meant to be the collection of INDIVIDUAL citizens, but, due to the a-priori presence of the State, really amounts to nothing more than another collective ideal into which individuals must be compelled by State violence.

Collectivist metaphysics, because they reject the efficacious existence of the individual, necessarily reject the efficacious existence of individual consciousness, and thus they reject the idea that the individual is fundamentally capable of making efficacious use of his volition and choice. Therefore has no ability to behave ethically as ethics are defined according to collectivist metaphysics, and thus he must be compelled by law—where the law is merely the sublimation of State violence…that is, the law gives ethical legitimacy to the State as it commits violations of individuals in the interest of the collective Ideal. Now, in the same way, the collective Ideal is the sublimation of the State, meaning that the Ideal, such as “The People” here in the U.S., doesn’t exist in any real way except as manifest by the State, itself. So the State IS the very tangible existence of the Ideal on earth. Thus, politically, the real point is to SACRIFICE the individual to the State, in service to the collective Ideal (the ideal being the determinative force which created all people and all things in the first place). And this is NEVER seen as some kind of ethical violation on the part of the State against the individual because in collectivist metaphysics, the individual doesn’t actually exist at all, remember? Consciousness, the Self, Will, Choice…these are all illusions at best, products of the unenlightened barbarian who is simply unable to grasp the truth that he is not actually HIMSELF at all. The “sinful nature” of the individual which is his fundamental existential core is his insistence that he EXISTS. Law and the State violence which accompanies and is corollary to Law is used as a means to ultimately eradicate the Self and bring the physical body into line with the Truth, which is the collective Ideal. Once a State is established, the State is all that matters because, metaphysically, the State is all that can be said to actually MEAN anything, BE anything, or DO anything of any practical value because the State is the ONLY legitimate incarnation/representation of the collective Ideal which is a function of the Determinative Force which created everything in the first place.

So what in the hell does any of this have to do with the current lockdown?

I’m glad you asked.

First, let me say that the reason I expend so much blog real estate on discussing the metaphysical roots of the State—the nature of the State—when discussing the coronavirus situation and the lockdown is that these roots of the State are where one shall find a truly meaningful explanation for what is going on in this ostensibly irrational lockdown situation. IF you understand the philosophical fundamentals upon which the State is established, then you can see that what is happening is not merely insanity run amok, or western narcissism and societal fracturing manifesting itself in response to some perceived global existential threat, or even simple political corruption perpetrated by the large number of “bad seeds” we’ve unfortunately elected to represent us. In short, if you understand the true and irreducible WHY, which is the philosophical WHY, then you can truly understand not merely what is happening now, but what will happen next—at least generally. Though what specifically will come next may reveal itself in an unforeseen way, you will readily perceive it as a necessary effect of what came before. And furthermore you will understand what is happening now in the overall context of not only the existence of the State under whose authority you find yourself at present, but the existence of the State since its inception, and indeed, the existence of ALL States. You may not be happy with what is happening, but at least you need not be confounded and frustrated at what seems like rank madness. You will see that all the “madness” actually makes sense, and you will understand that what is happening is really the only thing that could have ever happened.

Now, referring back to the metaphysical roots of government, we now know that based upon how the State defines individuals (as not fundamentally being themSelves and having no legitimate individual existence), that the State cannot actually do anything FOR people, but only TO them. The purpose of the People—the individual people that make up a given nation’s citizenry—is to be subordinated to the collective Ideal, and this means, in practicality, to the State. This is the whole point of law. Individual choice and volition is bypassed and obedience instead is the means by which the ethics of society shall be ultimately realized. What you want is irrelevant; that you OBEY is what matters to government. We can distract ourselves from the truth of our place and purpose with the bromide of rights and liberty and representative government and free elections, but since an option in any election is NEVER “no government”, then all elections are merely a reinforcement of the right of the State to exist. And the right of the State to exist implies the right of the State to pursue its purpose. And its purpose is to COMPEL individual behavior into collective action by force. Period. As a philosopher named John Immel once put it, “government is force”, and that is all you really need to know to understand government in its entirety. Thus, the only thing we are ever really voting for is the right of the State to rule us. Which makes voting itself an arrant rejection of our own volition and the efficacy of our own choices, and thus our own existence, making voting an exercise in abject Self-nullification. And we wonder why we have a deep State. Voting, ironically, implies the existence of a deep state (an unelected group of rulers who govern absolutely and indefinitely). The deep state does not exist to subvert voting; it exists as voting’s most perfect and rational conclusion.

This brings us to the salient question of this article: Why will the lockdown never end?

At this point, I’m sure you, being astute, have already discovered the answer, but I will give it here in the interest of rounding out my thoughts. The lockdown was instituted in service to the one thing that ultimately matters to the State, and represents its most basic and salient purpose:

Control.

The lockdown was applied as a means to exercise State control over the masses, which makes the fundamental reason for it the same as the reason for every other regulation. Control. Certainly the ostensible rationale was to protect public health, but this is merely a superficial apologetic for the underlying tyrannical interests of government. All State regulations have a veneer of “public interest” which is meant to imply that they are FOR the citizen, but when we remember that the term “public” is always in reference to the collective Ideal and that the State IS that Ideal incarnate, whatever is done for the public is really done FOR the State, and thus is done TO the citizen…that is, at the citizen’s expense.

Why could citizens not be left alone to deal with pandemic in their own way? Why was it assumed that the State MUST intervene with rule, regulation, and decree? Well, the reason is fundamentally found in the metaphysics. The reason man NEEDS government in the first place is that he is entirely insufficient to his own existence. The individual functions from a frame of reference of Self, of I, and instantiates this via volition and choice. But the Self is an imposter to reality according to collectivist metaphysics. Choice and Will and Self are sinful and wrong in that they contradict the State, and the State is rooted in the collective Ideal, and the collective Ideal is the Determinative Force, and THAT is what is the essence of reality is. Not the Self…not the individual. The citizens, left to themselves, will always fail, because they cannot understand reality, because they see if from an infinitely flawed frame of reference.

The reason for the lockdown, again, is control, as control is the reason for everything the State does TO the people it rules. Thus, if we ask the question “When will the lockdown end”, the answer is that it will only end when the end represents a greater measure of control. The government cannot relinquish control any more than the viper can stop slithering on the ground and begin to fly. It simply isn’t its nature. You will notice that every seeming compromise of the State with the people is merely an expression of government power…it is in the interest of power that the State makes any concessions, which makes “concession” merely a manifestation of power. Whenever the State relents here, it inevitably doubles down over there. The State never relinquishes control because control is what it IS, and it cannot BY itself DENY itself. Even if the lockdown were to be ended, what has happened? Wrecked economy, shattered societal cohesion, health crisis in every medical arena in addition to the coronavirus, explosions of alcoholism, drug use, suicide, domestic abuse, gutted lower classes, atomized populace, inner city chaos, all of which the government will predictably move in to manage, thus exponentially raising the level of State control to atmospheric heights. Add to that, we have set an irreversible precedent of plenary government control of everything and everyone in response to a crisis, which will be defined by the State, of course. Our government, in response to situations IT decides are sufficiently threatening, now openly presumes the right to dictate religion, social interaction, association, travel, commerce, business, and property ownership.

So when will the lockdown end?

At this point we can see that this question is entirely meaningless, and was always going to be meaningless. We could answer “never”, but that simply doesn’t do the profound backdrop of such a question any justice. It’s a facile answer…it’s dust. The lockdown is control, and control is the State. The lockdown is simply a necessary manifestation of existence as it is defined by collectivist metaphysics.

In other words, lockdown isn’t a lockdown, per se…

The lockdown simply is.

END

Lockdown Hell: Altruism Instantiated (Part TWO)

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, forced compliance, government, government violence, individualism vs collectivism, tyranny, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , ,

So, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which one are you, “privileged” or “unprivileged”? Are you the sacrificed-to or the sacrificed?

Like I sad in part one of this article series, the answer when examined in the meta is: both and neither, meaning that at any give time, depending on the whims of the ruling class and on general political expediency, you could be the perfidious, mendacious, exploitative, oppressive, naturally and institutionally privileged one, who became privileged off the backs of the unprivileged which you exploit, and this according to your nature (you could never have chosen to be anything other than the oppressive monster you were born to be), and thus your property and your body shall be processed and commodified and sent as spoils to the “unprivileged” in the name of “social justice”; or you could be be the innocent victim, whose misfortune to have been born a certain way and into a specific collective identity determines that you shall ever be the unprivileged prey of the rapacious and dead-eyed privileged class. But never fear, the State shall swoop in on your behalf with its bristling guns, anxious bombs, and itchy trigger fingers to seized the collars of the petulant privileged, flip them upside down and empty their pockets straight into your gaping mouths.

But in the specific context of the coronavirus, the answer as to who is “privileged” and who is “unprivileged” is simple: If you are not in the at-risk group (elderly and/or with a comorbidity) then you are “privileged”. If you are, then you are “unprivileged”.

Notice the altruistic mantra of those vacant souls who defend the lockdown as necessary and justifiable—we can’t allow people to put other people at risk. Just because YOU may not suffer any significant effects of the coronavirus, doesn’t mean that we can allow you to infect those who might. This is markedly different from what we were first told, which was that this was an extremely deadly and dangerous virus that does not discriminate between men, women, or children, and we were regaled endlessly in the earlier days of the lockdown with horror stories of all manner of young and middle-aged people who were suddenly finding their birth date no hedge against the tiny, invisible enemy. Yet now the REAL data is in, and has managed to circumvent the editors of the Department of Propaganda and Psy-Ops, otherwise known as the mainstream media, and the findings of rational, objective, non-partisan experts are proving this pandemic to be nothing more than a relatively harmless influenza-like illness with mortality rates on par or even lower than that of the flu, and which not only DOES INDEED discriminate between the elderly and the young, but discriminates so severely that virtually no one under the age of 21 will even notice that they have it should they catch it, and anyone under 65 will almost certainly recover fully, with symptoms more likely to be mild than not. In the face of REAL facts and REAl data, which reveal that there is simply nothing to panic about, let alone worth destroying the economy and the lives of millions along with it through the seizure of all manner of life and property by the executives of the states who think that the best thing for them to do in service to public health is to channel Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the narrative has shifted from “we are all in this together, because we are all at risk”, to “we cannot allow YOU to put at risk those who are not so privileged as you to be young and healthy”. In other words, we have gone from “we all benefit from the lockdown” to the idea that the “privileged” must be rendered  ‘unprivileged’ so that we can all be equal and social justice satisfied. And since the State, being purely an agent of violence, coercion, and thus destruction, and is completely incapable by nature of fundamentally doing anything FOR man but only TO him, the only way to achieve equality is for the State to wreck life to the point where it is miserable for EVERYONE (except the ruling class, of course) EQUALLY, regardless of one’s choices or one’s particular natural circumstance.

In summary, as it pertains to the faux exigency in which we find ourselves, the socialist altruistic platitude has gone from “We are all in this together,” to “You must be sacrificed for the common good.”

END part TWO

 

“Freedom is the absence of risk.” -Tyrant

Authority, forced compliance, government, law, Violence, Voluntarism, , , , ,

The government is not in the business of risk-management. This is an institution whose only real function and purpose is to extort behavior and money by means of its superior violence. This means that government represents the greatest risk to man on earth. The irony then that we task the government to keep us safe by managing our level of risk!

The State passes a child seat law,  but legalizes abortion, which destroys thousands of children every year. It demands that our children wear helmets when riding bicycles, then indebts our nation to the tune of trillions of dollars off the backs of the young who will be fleeced and extorted to pay that debt. It passes seatbelt laws and laws forbidding the sale of soft drinks of a certain size, then mass murders whole generations of men on battlefields in pointless foreign wars fought to preserve the financial interests of the plutocratic financiers. You can’t yell “fire!” In a crowded theatre, but you can run rank and object fear-mongering propaganda pieces about everything from a pandemic to presidential treason to the biological-based racism of the white man. The State can crown itself the sage and savior of civil rights while we all conveniently forget that this is the same State that upheld the interests of slave-holders and flesh-merchants for generations and legally enforced unholy segregation laws for generations after those slaves were finally free…but free only after a million men who never owned slaves and never profited financially or politically from slavery were maimed or murdered on battlefields over which the vast majority of politicians never shed a single tear.

Government risk-management? It would be the world’s funniest joke if it weren’t already the world’s most tragic tragedy.

The State’s ONLY  legitimate task, and even this fundamentally is quite specious, is to nurture a geopolitical context in which men are free from coercive force. Where they are free to conduct voluntary value exchange with one another without facing direct violations of person or property. The government can only be of any amount of benefit when its ONLY task is to discourage DIRECT violations of citizens—murder, theft, fraud, and invasion. Period. That’s it. It is a roaring lion; a blazing furnace; a hissing viper; a chained demon, which must be carefully watched with an ever vigilant and suspicious eye, and with hands on a whip which shall strike hard and fast at the first sign of  threat…at the mere hint of movement in the wrong direction. The monster can NEVER, EVER, under any circumstances be allowed to wander into our lives by some unconstitutional conveyance like “risk management”. That is a slippery slope which can only lead to tyranny. Think about it. If it’s the government’s job to keep you from getting sick, to keep you safe, then what part of your life are they not then entitled to have a primary say? What you eat; where you go; who you talk to; what you do for a living; how you travel; what groups you join…do you see how dangerous this is? Certainly isolating and sequestering at-risk populations is a good idea, but isolating the entire nation is NOT making a distinction between those at risk and those not. Everyone is a potential carrier and a potential victim at the same time. Which means that the government, in order to keep us “safe”, must control all of us. This is not public health, it is public slavery. The government has no constitutional right to prevent citizens from attending church, running their private businesses, patronizing businesses, going to parks, going to the beach, going to concerts, or traveling to other countries. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, privacy, property, and association. There is no disclaimer which says “except in case of public health crisis”.

Lockdown Hell: Altruism Instantiated (Part ONE)

Authority, collectivism, collectivist metaphysics, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, Man's Ability, Metaphysics, morality, Violence, , , , , , ,

One of the many interesting aspects of the unprecedented and disturbingly open, unabashed, and undisguised unconstitutionality being foisted upon the American public during the fabricated coronavirus crisis, is the novel iteration of the western sociopolitical zeitgeist, altruism. Altruism, in a nutshell, in its sociopolitical context, is the State-forced sacrifice of those deemed “privileged” to those who are deemed “under…or un-privileged”. This of course contradicts the very notion of “privilege” in that it by definition makes the “unprivileged” the greatest beneficiaries of the State’s coercive power, and the “privileged” the greatest victims…which renders the categories quite ironic, in that they are, in actuality, opposite. The ‘unprivileged” are significantly luckier than their privileged counterparts. But don’t strain your mind or credulity by attempting to square that circle. It cannot be done. The ethics of altruism are based on collectivist and determinist metaphysics which are by nature utterly irrational, and therefore in actuality inscrutable, which is why under the authority of the government agents of altruism you are not called to understand anything they say, but to simply obey. They are the enlightened philosopher kings, you are the unwashed barbarian masses. Comply or die. That’s the sum and substance of your usefulness to them and the total value of your existence, period.

When interpreting the categories of “privileged” and “unprivileged” according to our State overlords, we must understand that these, again, are ideas which are rooted in the inscrutable metaphysics of determinist collectivism, and consequently are interpreted according to mystical and thus fundamentally obscure notions, yet paradoxically they are quite  hyper-specific when physically dictated. At any rate, the general description is that being “privileged” or “underprivileged” has absolutely nothing to do with the “why” but only the “what” of human existence. In other words, WHY someone is categorized as “privileged” or “unprivileged” is simply “because they are”.  And by this I mean that it has nothing at all to do with the volitional choices and subsequent actions of the individuals so classified, or those related to the individuals so classified, such as parents or friends, with whom the “privileged” or “unprivileged” individuals may have been in some manner meaningfully related and thus so influenced. It has everything to do with one’s root existential state. That is, if you are “unprivileged” it is because you were born that way, and vice versa. “Privileged” and “unprivileged” is a product of your nature. That’s it. Thus, there isn’t anything you can do to manifest or could have done to prevent or ensure this natural condition. This is precisely why the State must implement equality and equity by force (legalized violence), and cannot rely upon citizens to work out their differences by their own choices and actions. No action or choice can change one’s very nature, for all actions and choices are a product of that nature, and thus all actions necessarily affirm and reinforce one’s “privileged” or “unprivileged” status. At the same time, ironically, or perhaps contradictorily, there is a sense of absolutist ethics which are secondary to the ethical primary of altruism, and these ethics are known as “social justice”, which is imbued and implied by one’s existential status as either “privileged” or “unprivileged”. The “unprivileged” are victims of some great and terrible injustice which though could not have been avoided as it is a function of their nature and not of any volitional action or consequence on the part of themselves or others nevertheless entitles them to ALL the legal benefits the State has the violent power to grant them in the interest of “social justice”, which again is the notion of existential and universal equality, which of course can never be achieved because the distinction between “privileged” and “unprivileged” is ALREADY, a-priori, itself existential and universal. Now, concordantly, the “privileged” are the evil perpetrators of all the injustice to which the “unprivileged” are so tragically subjected, and thus must be “held-accountable” and forced at State-gunpoint to “pay their fair share” in the interests of universal equality, despite the fact that there is no choice nor action which could have prevented the “privileged” from exploiting those who are “unprivileged”, or which could have prevented the “unprivileged” from actually becoming “unprivileged”, or themselves from becoming “privileged” in the first place…because, again, both groups are simply born that way.

And here again we see the inscrutable nature of collectivist metaphysics roaring to the forefront today with predictably disastrous consequences…those disastrous consequences being the complete undermining of the American Republic and the plenary and indefinite suspension of constitutional law, not to mention the irreversible and alarmingly substantial diminishing of the economy and faith in the nation on the whole in service to the “protection” of the public from the latest contrived boogeyman, but this one a phantom, which is supposed to be even more scary, called coronavirus. Once again do not try to apprehend the reasons, do not try to interpret or discern the meaning behind the actions of your government overlords, for it is not yours to know, because it is not you who has been given the “grace to perceive”. For that is reserved for those who have been called to rule. For you, on the other hand, it is forever a cloud of steam in your fist. The metaphysics of collectivism and the concordant ethics of altruism require only your submission. The “unprivileged” are required only to receive, the “privileged”, to sacrifice.

But which one are you?

Now that is a very interesting question. And the answer is predictably enigmatic, as I’m sure you understand: it depends. In the meta, you are both and neither…it is subjective, it is fluid. In context however it is terrifyingly empirical, objective, and corporeal.  And as we are talking about the manufactured coronavirus crisis, here I can provide a much more specific answer. Which I will do in part two.

END part ONE

The Trinity of Viruses: The State, the Citizen, the Coronavirus

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Let’s say we give a pass to the blatantly tyrannical approach the United States government and state governments have taken in dealing with the coronavirus “crisis” in the early stages. Not that I would, personally, give any such pass. As far as I understand it, there is no asterisk at the bottom of the Constitution which allows for the wanton disregard of foundational liberties in response to a misunderstood and misrepresented respiratory ailment. But I suppose I understand the panic. After all, we in the United States are a narcissistic society of navel gazing cowards and altruistic fantasy-dwellers who are politically represented  by septuagenarian baby boomers who think they are entitled to eternal politcal power and eternal life, and who, like most baby boomers, are terrified of their own mortality, and who have become so drunk on the ever more potent twin fixes of coercive authority and unfathomable wealth that they are almost entirely unqualified for…well, anything.

So, we drink the elixir of mass panic and ignorance, rush from our homes screaming that the sky is falling, run back inside to our beds and pull up our blankies  and whimper and simper like children in a thunderstorm, and wait for the government to do what it does best—tyranny—to save us from the Chinese sniffles. Of course, there was much we could have done on our own without any of this overt government intrusion in our lives and businesses and families, but the only thing Americans are more afraid of than the coronavirus is personal responsibility and self-discipline.

Anyway, we might forgive the State for its rash, uninformed action seven weeks ago. There was only preliminary information about this virus, some very bad numbers and very inept and silly predictions from the Imperial College in London, along with the natural inclination of the State to shoot first an and ask questions later. But now we have the science…it has spoken. We have the testing, we have the data, we have OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE that the coronaviru simply does NOT represent any credible mass medical threat to the United States, and that the vast majority of people in our nation will experience symptoms so mild that they will never, and have never, sought any formal medical treatment for them. In other words, anyone not over the age of 65 or with some immunocompromising chronic health condition(s) has about as much chance of dying from SARS COV-2 as they do in a car accident on their way to a jelly bean factory. OBJECTIVELY there is NO MEDICAL reason for the ongoing social and economic lockdown in our nation. None. Medically speaking, the lockdown should end immediately.

In case you don’t want to take my word for it, here is a list of some of the experts I have researched in drawing my conclusions on this matter. I suggest you do a simple YouTube search and see for yourself. Each of of these men is literally among the most awarded, experienced, and successful in their field. There are no ringers here:

Dr. Michael Levitt, Professor of Computer Science and Structural Biology, Stanford University Medical School; 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for designing a computer model for complex chemical interactions

Dr. John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University

Dr. John Giesecke, former State Epidemiologist for Sweden; Chief Scientist for the European Center for Disease Control; currently advising Swedish Agency for Public Health; currently advising Director General of the World Health Organization

Dr. Knut Wittkowski, former Head of the Department of Biolstatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design, Rockefeller University

Dr. David Katz, Founder and Director of Yale University’s Yale Group and Prevention Research Center

All of these experts agree on four basic premises, I have found. 1. That the widescale and indiscrimate lockdown measures were neither particularly effective nor reasonable  2. That these measures will most likely do much more harm in the long run than the virus ever will or can. 3. The lockdown will ultimately not have contributed much if anything at all to stopping the spread and evolution of the virus, and will almost certainly prolong the inevitable infection numbers and postpone herd immunity. 4. That the lockdown should be eased immediately because it represents an ACTUAL existential threat to public health

So, when I say that the lockdown measures are NOT medically necessary and that the coronavirus is not a credible threat to public health and that all politcal and media assertions that the lockdown measures are in the best interest of the citizen are complete lies, this is not my opinion. This is objective fact as stated by unrivaled experts in virology, epidemiology, mathematics, and chemistry, who have examined this virus from the point of view of years and years of experience and knowledges in dealing with just this kind of thing. In other words, it is settled science. You no longer have to convince anyone that the lockdown measures are a waste of time, are much more dangerous than the virus itself, and that it is little more than irrational paranoia and/or gullibility at this point which drives citizens to accept this tyranny and economic looting masquerading as public health policy.

So why are the lockdown measures still happening? Why are they not lifted now that we know that the reasons for them are no longer valid?

The answer is that the reason for thei lockdown was NEVER the virus, and so whatever science is saying about he virus has nothing at all to do with how the State is going to deal with it. At least, not THAT virus. You see, every law, act, regulaion, or decree which precedes from the State is NEVER ultimately designed to protect you from some danger or threat, be it a foreign enemy, or a neighborhood criminal, or a virus. Rather, these things are designed to protect the State from YOU. YOU are the disease it does not want ot contract. The lockdown is the mask IT dons to shield itself from the contagion known as the indivdivual citizen.

The virus arrived and It was advertised as an existential threat, based upon completely erroneous numbers along with general, plenary ignorance. The government, not an institution of reasoned action but of disproportionate overreaction, predictably burned the Constitution and then urinated on the fire, took out a sledgehammer and proceed to pound indiscriminately away at the econmomy and our civil rights. And we were okay with this because we were convinced that we would die…or, at least, would run out of toilet paper. Which, granted, is almost as bad. You see, people who are in fear for their lives will do things and allow things to be done to them which otherwise they would never fathom and never tolerate. Our politicians didn’t want us getting angry at their lack of action with respect this fake towering colossus of ravenous disease. You see, the rancher doesn’t try to speak rationally to the cattle when they become startled and threaten to stampede. Harvesting the brutes for meat and milk and leather is what keeps him rich and comfortable, and he does whatever it takes, sans actually speaking to the herd with words and ideas. Ideas and reason and recommendation are beyond the ability of dumb animals, but they do understand electric fences, and barbed wire, barking and snarling dogs, and gunshots. And ultimately the cattle are settled down…made passive. They are no longer a threat, and somehow, they feel more secure. In this way, with respect to the coronavirus and the unsettled simpering masses of human cattle, liberty was summarily sacrificed on the alter of political expediency. And the nation thanked them for it.

But now that thanks is wearing off, and the cattle are getting restless again. The lockdown measures continue, the almost overnight the collapse of the economy and the summary denial of basic rights of freedom of movement, association, and private property has led to skyrocking unemployment, business closures, a deluge of welfare applicants, drug overdose, sucide, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, panic disorders, heart disease, cancer, child abuse, healthcare industry collapse, restaurant industry collapse, travel and tourism industry collapse, arrant cessation of life saving check-ups and medical procedures, criminality, and educational implosion, to name but a few. Allowing this to continue threatens the power and position of countless politicians. No one in government is safe. Trump’s reelection chances diminish with every passing day, lawsuits are being threatened and filed against government for civil liberty violations, and so to protect their status, politicians are being forced to make overtures towards ending the lockdown.

On the other hand, every epidemiologist and virologist worth a damn is predicting an increase in coronavirus cases and more deaths once people are allowed to reintegrate back into society. This has to do with the nature of such a virus, which must acquire a certain number of hosts before it tapers off and blends into the background haze of common viruses with which man must coexist during the winter months. The lockdown, instead of halting the virus, has simply postponed the inevitable. Politicians are hoping and praying for the miracle of a quick vaccine, and we should all be extremely wary of any vaccine which is rushed into service before the requisite time of 18 months to two years, which is the usual amount of time it takes to produce and research a vaccine for his kind of illness. Any vaccine which appears sooner is almost certainly spurious at best, and possibly dangerous, and is the result of nothing more than profit mongering and political expediency.

So the gonverment has a conundrum on their hands. How do you reintegrate society whilst keeping a virus which MUST inexorably spread from spreading.

The answer is: you don’t.

But if you are the government the answer is to walk the line of contradiction and hope that the American public is too stupid or too scared or too propaganzized (preferably all three) to notice that they are being played for fools. This nonsense about opening the economy “slowly” and “in stages” and “seeing what happens” and maybe “pulling back if we have to” and “opening business only if they comply with CDC regulations” and by color coding counties like they are doing here in Pennsylvania is NOT a medical strategy. I repeat, it is NOT A MEDICAL strategy. It is a political one. And moreover, it is a continuation of the unconstitutional revocation of basic American freedoms that has been occurring for the past seven weeks. The State wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want you breathing a sigh of relief with the idea of “returning to normal”, whilst NOT actually returning to normal becasue “normal” will be, in the words of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, the “new normal”. Which means that the economy and society will reopen but not ACTUALLY reopen. These “strategies” are politcal theater; an illusion, designed to keep you both calm and in a state of fear…to create a dissonance in your emotions and psyche. The State does not care about you, only about itself. And this psy-ops game they are playing now with “reopening the economy” in baby steps is an indulgent massaging of their vanity. They are hoping against all reality that they can open the economy whilst keeping coronavirus cases on the decline. But this cannot be done, and so they must hope that somehow you will belive that that which cannot be done is nevertheless being done by your government. The govenrment for its own sake must open the economy, but for its own sake it ALSO must not. So this is what we get. An opening of the economy which is not really an opening.

Let us open our eyes and see clearly the trinity of viruses at play here: the virus of the State to you and me, the virus of me and you to the State, and the coronavirus to all of us. And let us understand that only one of these viruses is truly a threat to humanity.

END

Coronavirus Conundrum: The futility of ethics by means of mathematics

Authority, collectivism, Ethics, forced compliance, government, individualism vs collectivism, morality, , , ,

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, there is a scene where Spock tells Kirk, who is struggling with an ethical dilemma, that “Logic dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”.

For many years this never sat well with me, for reasons that I could not quite articulate. I was unsettled. I had a suspicion that the claim was not logical at all. I mean, I suppose it was logical mathematically, but still something seemed off.

Years later I realized the specific problem. Spock is confusing ethical consistency with mathematical logic. Ethics are not mathematics, and the logic which governs the premises and conclusions of the two isn’t necessarily interchangeable. Philosophical logic, or what is better termed “rational consistency”, or “reason”, does not assert mathematical logic as axiomatic. This is because mathematics is wholly abstract, where philosophy is meta, incorporating both the abstract and the concrete. Philosophy, of which ethics is a major category, concerns the nature of existence, itself, not merely the abstract measurement and categorization of it.

Since the dilemma facing Kirk is an ethical one, and ethics are not mathematics, Spock’s claim that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one” is entirely meaningless with respect to the problem at hand. It was a pointless and decidedly ILLOGICAL waste of time and breath. Ethically, the needs of the many DO NOT outweigh the needs of the few or the one. This is because there is no rational ethical comparison between “many” and “one” when considering individual human beings. Each person is an utterly singular observer. There is no such thing as deriving an objective “us” or “we” or “many” from an absolutely singular conscious agent. There is SELF, and there is OTHER, where both are singular agents, fundamentally, but the combination of SElf and OTHER into “we” or “us” or “many” is an entirely abstract notion. “We” does not exist, fundamentally, at all. “We” is an abstract concept which combines individuals for purely practical, mutable purposes, never for root ETHICAL ones. Therefore, it is a failure of reason to claim that it is somehow better for, say, one to die than one million. The individual, at the level of SELF, is absolute…he or she IS THE OBSERVER, and he or she is CONSTANT. This is why the individual is so ineluctably necessary to existence and reality. Axiomatically, absent the frame of reference of one’s singular and constant absolute SELF, no claim can be made about anything…nothing known, nothing claimed, nothing verified, and thus nothing can exist, because an existence which cannot be known and thus cannot be valued and thus serve no purpose is a categorically IRRELEVANT existence. And irrelevant existence cannot actually exist, because it can never meaningfully DO anything, including EXIST.

So, that in mind, Spock is really attempting to assert that the needs of the many ABSOLUTES outweigh the needs of a few or one ABSOLUTE. Do you see the paucity of logic here? Spock implies that the death of one person is better than the death of a million, but there is no such thing as a comparison between a single Absolute, and a million Absolutes. “A million absolutes” is no more a quantity of absolutes than a single absolute. There is no AMOUNT of absolute SELF. There is ONLY SELF. Any quantification of individuals then is purely abstract. It is of practical use, but NOT of ethical use. When God says “thou shalt not kill” he doesn’t qualify that command by quantifying it. One death is as equally tragic as a million.

Moving on to the cornonvirus. Today I saw a Vox headline from April 1 which read “The Coronavirus is NOT the FLu. It’s Worse.” I didn’t read the article, because I didn’t have to. The title alone told me that reading the article would be a waste of time, because as far as I was concerned, this isn’t and never has been the issue. Comparisons between the coronavirus and the flu are not the fundamental point anyone should be making.

First of all, the title itself is massively subjective, as “worse” can be defined in multiple ways, and easily manipulated to bolster one’s own personal opinion, no matter what that opinion is. And even if we go with the ostensible meaning of the word—that by “worse” we mean “more dangerous, and with a higher mortality rate”—a month later from when the article was written, incidence testing around the world has proved that the coronavirus is NOT worse than the flu, and may in fact be LESS dangerous.

But who cares about this…this is incidental to anything involving the coronavirus insofar as society and public health is concerned. It’s not about how dangerous the coronavirus is or is not relative to the flu, or any other virus. We live in a context where, under the auspices of State Authority, we exist first and foremost as members of a collective. This makes any crisis, even a pandemic, not an ethical problem, but an examination of probability, and this implies the enumeration of the people. The people become numbers, and these numbers are then plugged into a much larger and more fundamental equation, which is this: What course of action best promotes and preserves the position and power of the State? And this is why government can react so differently to similar crises (eg swine flu vs coronavirus), and why its methods and actions are often so incongruent with emprical data (eg the ongoing lockdown despite evidence that the coronavirus is not a significant threat to the nation). The crises are similar, but the policies which best promote State power can widely vary from situation to situation.

And it is here were we get to the root of it all.

The biggest mistake we who are suspicious and critical of government interference make with respect to interpreting government response to crisis is that we confuse government, which is an institution of object violence, with an ethical entity…and more precisely, a MORALLY ethical entity. It is not. Its only purpose is to compel the collective masses into a particular abstract ideological standard that it alone legitimizes, no matter what appeals are made to individual rights or freedom, etc. Government, itself, not you or me or our neighbors, our businesses, our money, our health, our jobs…nothing matters besides that which affirms the State, and promotes the collective Ideal which legitimizes it (in the case of the US, where I am, this Ideal is the very nebulous “the People”). The government IS the nation…to save the government IS to save YOU and ME, so the “logic” goes. We are the State, the State is us. There is no individual to consider in the equation, and THIS is why the coronavirus is not a true ethical dilemma.

Those who are decrying the government’s draconian measures to control the virus are citing the numbers in an attempt to win the ethical debate. They are claiming that many, many more people will die in the long run from the severe economic catastrophe that the unconstitutional lockdown orders are inflicting. I, myself, have asserted this, and will continue to do so. After all the truth is the truth—if you look at the data gathered by highly competent and established epidemiologists and virologists there is simply no way a rational person can conclude that this virus is paticularly dangerous for the VAST majority of human beings, And if you look at the economic data, there is no way a rational person can deny that the measures taken to control the pandemic will kill many more people than the virus ever will. However, as this is not a specifically ethical argument, it will fail thus when employed as one. ETHICALLY, those who would rather doom a billion people via the government’s orders to lockdown society in order to save a few thousand people who might otherwise die from the virus are NOT wrong. It is NOT ETHICALLY (specifically, it is not not morally) wrong to suggest that the smaller number of lives saved by government are EQUALLY and possibly MORE important than the billions who will be destroyed by the ongoing lockdown. Why? Because, as I said, this is NOT an ethical dillema. You cannot make an ethical comparison of the importance of one life over another, so to persist in the fallacious idea that you can possess moral and rational superiority by simply appealing to the math is ludicrous. IF the government wants to kill a billion in order to save a few thousand, an ethical argument about the value of this many lives versus that many is NOT an effective argument because the situational context has nothing to do with the value of individual life.

But, you might say, why not then simply appeal to the mathematical logic? You might say that it doesn’t make sense, numerically, for the governemnt to doom a billion to save a few thousand. Surely it is in the best interest of the State to rule over many than a few, right?

The answer, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is: not necessarily. It might, but it might not. The bottom line is that IF the State feels that it is in its best interest to destroy the many in order to save the few then this is the course of action it WILL pursue. If you think that the power and position of those in goverment are not the supreme consideration in dealing with any and all issues related to a nation, be it a pandemic or any other thing, then you simply do not understand the true and root nature of the State and the nature of your position under its authority. And there is no ethical argument you can bring to bear which will alter the course of government action. You can quote numbers all day long, and conflate mathematics with ethics all day long, but it will do you no good. It is an exercise in futility and will only serve to exasperate, frustrate, and disappoint you. The only way you will ever get the State to change its course is to somehow convince it, or hope that it will at some point be convinced, that it is in ITS, not YOUR, best interest to choose a different direction.

And here we DO actually get a glimps of the ethics of government. What is “good” for the State is technically an ethical question. Yet we must make a distinction between MORAL ethics and LEGAL ethics. In this article, for semantic’s sake, I used “ethical” as a synonym for “moral”, which I’m sure you understood. After all, any discussion of ethics as it involves human beings may typically be seen as a discussion of morality. But moral ethics are not the same as legal ethics, and I have several articles on this blog where I deal specifically with the difference, so I will not do that here. The point I want to make is that in order to convince the government to change its course, one must convince it that such a change is first and foremost GOOD for the STATE. What is good for the person, for you and me, for the individual, for the human being, is entirely irrelevant, and will never prove efficacious in persuading the government to do anything.

END