Dr Charlton, an excellent piece as usual. I was having similar thoughts about the 'mass-masking' of those in terror from the birdemic just last night. The wife and I visited a busy supermarket, in which almost everybody was masked, I went unmasked. As did a few other reckless, souless, Godless virus-taunters...
Yet at no point did anyone do anything about my heresy; or that of the other men. And I've seen this now over the last week in banks, other supermarkets, coffee shops. Nobody says anything. It didn't quite sink in until recently just how voluntarily the subservience is, not that I ought to be surprised. And I'd wager easily that fifty-percent of those masked clearly think the thing ridiculous, yet they still do it.
That's why it's important to have Faith in higher things, I suppose. Because seeing this submissive display is disgusting and demoralizing.
23 December 2021 at 15:23
Skarphedin said...
Great stuff. Thanks. I especially liked this bit:
"Thus, Not wearing a mask can make the OCD-birdemic sufferer feel naked, exposed - feel as if he was pride-fully taunting the birdemic: just asking for trouble."
I have no access to the internal experience of birdemic sufferers they seem like robots or people suffering delusions to me.
Which is strange and amusing because prior to the birdemic I would have placed myself on the neurotic and maybe even hypochodriac end of the spectrum. I seemed to worry about things like infections and environmental hazards etc and think about my health far more than others.
Yet the birdemic had no effect on my baseline concerns. And I absolutely and instictively rejected the psychological bait.
"I'm neurotic but these people are actually crazy."
After reading your post, I appreciate more how this was never about physical health. Because that is what must have sensed.
23 December 2021 at 16:01
Todd said...
Thank you for this Dr. C!
Psychological theories of what is going on are often interesting and seem like very good explanations of what we are seeing.
Why do you believe that everything going on can't be explained by psychological or economic or political theories, and that the supernatural and such must be involved?
I also don't think it can be explained by purely materialistic or psychological theories, because there is too much coordination over time and space for mere men and women to accomplish it.
@T - "Why do you believe that everything going on can't be explained by psychological or economic or political theories"
I do not believe that. Experience shows that even the simplest and most incoherent theory can explain anything that happens - by the prevailing standards of 'explain'. Public discourse would not be possible otherwise.
The proper question is to ask Not 'what can't be explained' but what is True.
God is Not an ad hoc explanation to fill-in (current) gaps in science/ psychology. God is either true, real, the creator - or not.
If not then it is necessary to dig down to ultimate metaphysical assumptions without God and evaluate whether these are believed. (Not believe-able - but actually believed - 'by me, now' as it were.)
For example, and one really thinks about the meaning of no God - then there is no knowable coherence (i.e. no science). If no God, obviously no morality, and indeed no meaning or purpose to life - at least none outside my current notions.
The question to ask is whether this is *really* true - i.e. whether *fundamentally* one believes this is true.
Of course, extremely few people are honest, rigorous about such matters. Extremely few have thought it through, or are prepared to make the effort, or live in accordance with their stated beliefs - or try to do so, or will admit that they do not do so.
But then I'm afraid most people's opinion on most matters has zero value. We need to think for ourselves about matters we regard as of prime importance.
23 December 2021 at 16:58
Todd said...
Dr. C, Thank you for correcting me. That was an important error in my question, which revealed an important error in my reasoning. I think that I perhaps had the proper understanding unconsciously, but hadn't clarified that important, fundamental assumption:
"Experience shows that even the simplest and most incoherent theory can explain anything that happens - by the prevailing standards of 'explain'."
That is a very important statement to understand, and not just understand, but to internalize. Thank you!!
That would explain (I see the irony in saying that here) why, if you point out to a Birdemic True Believer, that he got the infamous illness despite being triple-jabbed, he will just say, "My illness would have been much worse without my triple jabs!"
He has a working theory in his mind that works for him, no matter how incoherent or weird it seems to us. Thus, any new data that comes his way about pecked people getting ill, or his unpecked friends being fine, can be explained away without effort.
What matters is Truth. I think I unconsciously knew what you clarified. And that is why I can sense when a friend or acquaintance is not engaging in honesty about these matters, and when it would be futile to address the issue in a systematic, or even just an honest dialectical sort of way. One can sense the actual fear of investigation with honesty and bravery. It's actually uncanny. God bless you, and Merry Christmas.
A few days ago, I entered a Walmart (a big-box retailer called 'Mall Wart' by the Spoonerism- addled) without a mask figuring I'd wait to see if anyone would point it out during shopping or checkout. Not a peep.
Likewise, the next day when I shopped at a Ralphs Super Market. Many are just keeping up appearances, I guess.
Another odd thing. I don't think I've had a single sick day since this all started, not so much as a cold. Sometimes I'll wake up in the morning feeling that a sore throat might be coming on but apparently it's just dry mouth, as it fades away by breakfast.
@Zeno : "Someone who was so afraid of spiders that, in order to kill one, burned down his own house."
A parable for these times indeed!
25 December 2021 at 07:25
After nearly two years of birdemic scamming, the mass population now has a very high prevalence of anxiety neuroses - among which but few apparently have any desire to recover. Many, indeed, regard their illnesses as valuable (albeit sometimes unconscious) excuses for malingering and avoidance of responsibilities. Neuroses are inducible, in a large minority of the population: for instance they increase in prevalence when encouraged and rewarded; and conversely, when they are penalized (eg during a war), neuroses became rare. Phobias are increased in severity and duration by avoidance; therefore agoraphobia has been triggered in those susceptible, and exaggerated in those with a prior tendency, by lockdowns (which, of course, provide ready excuses, and indeed enable an agoraphobic to assert the moral high ground). There is also, naturally, a specific phobia relating to the presumed birdemic germ. Like other phobias, this has a massively distorting effect on the perception of risk. Just as the spider phobic may fear the imaginary danger of cobwebs more than the real danger of (say) road traffic accidents; likewise birdemic-phobia has substantially destroyed general medical services by - on the one hand - focusing them almost exclusively on (supposed) birdemic-avoidance... While simultaneously - on the other hand - the mandatory 'response' to the birdemic has crippled health services by unnecessary and ineffective procedures of disinfecting, masking, gowning, distancing, 'testing' etc. Consequently, only around half the previous number of patients can be diagnosed and treated per unit time. Even worse, the fake-testing and stupid-quarantining measures greatly reduces, unpredictably, medical staff availability on any given day. The high prevalence and severity of birdemic-phobia is also seen in the way that so many people treat other human beings - even outdoors in the open air! - as rabid-leper-zombies - lurching away, jumping backwards, skirting yards around the path of anyone approaching. Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCDs) seem to interact with evolutionary novelties - such as germs. Because germs are invisible and undetectable in everyday life, we cannot know when we are safe from them - or when genuinely endangered. Consequently, the threat of germs is experienced as purely theoretical andsubjective - and once OCD is established, an OCD individual can never be reassured that a risk is absent. Like the phobic, OCD attention is focused on just the single feared-danger, so that even the slightest hypothetical risk is regarded as intolerable, and leads to high levels of anxiety. Because germs are undetectable by human perception, the birdemic-OCD suffer cannot be confident that his here-and-now avoidance has been effective; so the unavoidable anxious ruminations (intrusive and dysphoric thoughts) are dealt with 'magically' - by the performance of anxiety-soothing rituals. In effect, the sufferer seems to 'make a bargain with nature' that if he performs some rituals correctly, then he will be safe. At any rate; he finds that the performance of certain rituals - which may be purely hypothetical or even arbitrary (such as enacting some-thing a specified number of repetitions) will in practice allay anxiety. This seems to be the best way of regarding the remarkable phenomenon of voluntary self-masking (or, more exactly, face-covering); despite there being no coherent rationale for prevention; yet many solid reasons why masking will lead to physical, psychological and spiritual damage. That is; the health benefits of face-covering are entirely conjectural and undetectable; while their discomfort, inconvenience, estranging and dehumanizing effects are obvious to anyone from direct personal experience and common sense. However, face-covering functions as an officially-endorsed ritual for the management of Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms relating to the birdemic; consequently people do it outdoors, alone in a car, even when isolated alone in remote countryside. The masking ritual makes them feel less dread. And conversely, and more potently, failure to observe the ritual invites retribution from the unseen, undetectable, but malign micro-organism. Thus, Not wearing a mask can make the OCD-birdemic sufferer feel naked, exposed - feel as if he was pride-fully taunting the birdemic: just asking for trouble. Thus we have a severely damaged neurotic mass population - this damage having been quite deliberately inflicted by government, corporations, institutions and the media; and sustained against all reason, evidence, common sense - and basic humanity (if indeed such exists in 2021). All, as with many neuroses; the neurotics all-too-often do not even want to be cured; partly because their disorder is convenient; and partly because the cure (i.e. doing what is feared, until you get used to it) will cause more suffering over the short term. Consequently, the world is destroying itself acutely and incrementally, with the approval of a large segment of the now-behaviorally-disabled population whose attention is focused entirely on an existentially-trivial - or non-existent - hypothetical threat. The truth about the birdemic germ (even whether it exists as a specific and defined entity) is indeed unknowable - in a world of deliberate and pervasive official lies, disinformation, manipulation - but we do know for sure that the germ in itself is undetectably rare by personal experience (i.e. against the normal, fluctuating background of seasonal influenza). The harms from the birdemic-response are, by contrast, there for everybody in the world to perceive, by direct personal experience; and inflicted upon every single person on the planet. Mediating this mismatch between the harms of 'the germ' and the enforced 'response' in daily discourse and behaviour; are the vast masses of neurotic individuals who are now - more or less - permanently crippled by birdemic-phobias and birdemic-OCD. Permanently crippled because not wanting a cure; crippled and wanting everybody else in the world to become emotionally-damaged just as badly they themselves are.
"PSYOPS - Birdemic-response-induced mass anxiety neurosis"
8 Comments -
Dr Charlton, an excellent piece as usual. I was having similar thoughts about the 'mass-masking' of those in terror from the birdemic just last night. The wife and I visited a busy supermarket, in which almost everybody was masked, I went unmasked. As did a few other reckless, souless, Godless virus-taunters...
Yet at no point did anyone do anything about my heresy; or that of the other men. And I've seen this now over the last week in banks, other supermarkets, coffee shops. Nobody says anything. It didn't quite sink in until recently just how voluntarily the subservience is, not that I ought to be surprised. And I'd wager easily that fifty-percent of those masked clearly think the thing ridiculous, yet they still do it.
That's why it's important to have Faith in higher things, I suppose. Because seeing this submissive display is disgusting and demoralizing.
23 December 2021 at 15:23
Great stuff. Thanks. I especially liked this bit:
"Thus, Not wearing a mask can make the OCD-birdemic sufferer feel naked, exposed - feel as if he was pride-fully taunting the birdemic: just asking for trouble."
I have no access to the internal experience of birdemic sufferers they seem like robots or people suffering delusions to me.
Which is strange and amusing because prior to the birdemic I would have placed myself on the neurotic and maybe even hypochodriac end of the spectrum. I seemed to worry about things like infections and environmental hazards etc and think about my health far more than others.
Yet the birdemic had no effect on my baseline concerns. And I absolutely and instictively rejected the psychological bait.
"I'm neurotic but these people are actually crazy."
After reading your post, I appreciate more how this was never about physical health. Because that is what must have sensed.
23 December 2021 at 16:01
Thank you for this Dr. C!
Psychological theories of what is going on are often interesting and seem like very good explanations of what we are seeing.
Why do you believe that everything going on can't be explained by psychological or economic or political theories, and that the supernatural and such must be involved?
I also don't think it can be explained by purely materialistic or psychological theories, because there is too much coordination over time and space for mere men and women to accomplish it.
23 December 2021 at 16:47
@T - "Why do you believe that everything going on can't be explained by psychological or economic or political theories"
I do not believe that. Experience shows that even the simplest and most incoherent theory can explain anything that happens - by the prevailing standards of 'explain'. Public discourse would not be possible otherwise.
The proper question is to ask Not 'what can't be explained' but what is True.
God is Not an ad hoc explanation to fill-in (current) gaps in science/ psychology. God is either true, real, the creator - or not.
If not then it is necessary to dig down to ultimate metaphysical assumptions without God and evaluate whether these are believed. (Not believe-able - but actually believed - 'by me, now' as it were.)
For example, and one really thinks about the meaning of no God - then there is no knowable coherence (i.e. no science). If no God, obviously no morality, and indeed no meaning or purpose to life - at least none outside my current notions.
The question to ask is whether this is *really* true - i.e. whether *fundamentally* one believes this is true.
Of course, extremely few people are honest, rigorous about such matters. Extremely few have thought it through, or are prepared to make the effort, or live in accordance with their stated beliefs - or try to do so, or will admit that they do not do so.
But then I'm afraid most people's opinion on most matters has zero value. We need to think for ourselves about matters we regard as of prime importance.
23 December 2021 at 16:58
Dr. C,
Thank you for correcting me. That was an important error in my question, which revealed an important error in my reasoning. I think that I perhaps had the proper understanding unconsciously, but hadn't clarified that important, fundamental assumption:
"Experience shows that even the simplest and most incoherent theory can explain anything that happens - by the prevailing standards of 'explain'."
That is a very important statement to understand, and not just understand, but to internalize. Thank you!!
That would explain (I see the irony in saying that here) why, if you point out to a Birdemic True Believer, that he got the infamous illness despite being triple-jabbed, he will just say, "My illness would have been much worse without my triple jabs!"
He has a working theory in his mind that works for him, no matter how incoherent or weird it seems to us. Thus, any new data that comes his way about pecked people getting ill, or his unpecked friends being fine, can be explained away without effort.
What matters is Truth. I think I unconsciously knew what you clarified. And that is why I can sense when a friend or acquaintance is not engaging in honesty about these matters, and when it would be futile to address the issue in a systematic, or even just an honest dialectical sort of way. One can sense the actual fear of investigation with honesty and bravery. It's actually uncanny.
God bless you, and Merry Christmas.
23 December 2021 at 17:14
A few days ago, I entered a Walmart (a big-box retailer called 'Mall Wart' by the Spoonerism- addled) without a mask figuring I'd wait to see if anyone would point it out during shopping or checkout. Not a peep.
Likewise, the next day when I shopped at a Ralphs Super Market. Many are just keeping up appearances, I guess.
Another odd thing. I don't think I've had a single sick day since this all started, not so much as a cold. Sometimes I'll wake up in the morning feeling that a sore throat might be coming on but apparently it's just dry mouth, as it fades away by breakfast.
24 December 2021 at 09:22
I once read a news story about someone who was so afraid of spiders that, in order to kill one, burned down his own house.
This seems more or less the story of governments/people vs the birdemic.
Merry Christmas!
25 December 2021 at 06:52
@Zeno : "Someone who was so afraid of spiders that, in order to kill one, burned down his own house."
A parable for these times indeed!
25 December 2021 at 07:25