Prioritising Discernment in Our Crazy World
July 1 2020
Can we say there has never been a more confusing time to be alive than now?
Now is not the time to be staying inside a comfortable intellectual or ideological thought bubble. If you are truly fighting for unity, then you are by default fighting against the increasing polarisation and division that our society is falling into. This, as I see it, must involve committing radical acts of seeking to understand contrary opinions. Can there be any other way?
But it’s not easy. It’s not easy taking in views that run counter to the worldview that you have long held.
As a personal example, I have been raised in a liberal family, with standard liberal views that racial injustice is rife in our society and has been one of the main barriers towards the empowerment and serenity of minority communities. That the responsibility was on me to do something to change this. But what surprised me about the situation unfolding in America was the massive pushback against this liberal narrative from large sections of the population, including sections of the black population.
It is worth noting that not all of these counter-arguments are about racism or the lack of it, although there are certainly black people (e.g. Candace Owens) who say that racism is far down on the list of problems now facing their communities. They are saying that it is self-defeating to put your hopes on empowerment and serenity on the actions of other groups of people, and self-defeating to insist on these groups of people that they should take on this responsibility. They draw on a quintessential conservative argument that the individual always has the power to overcome their surroundings, if they simply apply their own will to doing so.
I thought a lot about all of this — including the fact that I was spending too much time thinking about this instead of looking at racism in my own backyard of Australia. My conclusion is that in many ways, if not in most ways, both sides were right. At the same time, even though they are apparently in direct opposition to each other.
And this is the thing. I don’t know about you, but I have been finding that the more I look into an issue with the hope of understanding it, the more murky things end up becoming.
That maybe, instead of pointing the finger sideways to other fellow everyday citizens, we should be aiming further upwards to where the hidden source of this division is really coming from.
This pandemic, for example. It seemed like it was going to be bad. We were told it was going to be bad. In some places, it appears it has been bad. But how bad?
Did you know that as early as March, Dr Anthony Fauci, who has been one of the main authorities instructing us on how we should be dealing with this situation, co-authored an academic paper that contained the following conclusion: given the high rate of asymptomatic spread, “the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%”; followed by “This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza…”.
I would definitely encourage you to read that quote in its full context. Regardless, it appears that the people in charge of our global response to this virus have known for over 3 months that it could be best understood as a severe, extra-contagious influenza — something that is now suggested by studies to have a fatality rate per infection as low as 0.1%.
As I asked previously in this article: is such a risk grounds for the unprecedented social and economic lock-downs that we have seen implemented and often aggressively enforced around the world, and the mounting social and economic consequences it has resulted in? Is a world of indefinite social distancing and face coverings, both which run completely against our fundamental nature as social creatures, really a world we want to normalise for this risk?
These are a few other questions that I have come across in my investigation of this pandemic, one that has required delving into various alternative platforms and independent journalistic sources — something I would encourage everyone to do.
Did you know that the entire basis for how we understand and respond to this virus — the testing regime — may be flawed? That the typical PCR test has been argued to be inherently subject to false positives and was never designed to be used for diagnostic purposes? That Tanzania, in some much needed if slightly concerning comic relief, decided to test its testing kits on samples taken from paw paw and goats, both of which came back positive for COVID-19?
Did you know that even once we take into consideration any flaws in the testing system, the number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 is almost certainly inflated — and that it has been openly admitted by health officials that people are being recorded as having died from the virus simply due to a positive test regardless of other illnesses they had?
Why does there seem to be little mention of these issues in the mainstream coverage of the pandemic? That these things aren’t at least given to us as constant caveats to the doom-inducing column and line graphs that we are being subjected to on a daily basis? Why does the same fear driven, panic inducing tone still seem to be applied to the situation as it was several months ago, even though we now know so much more about the situation?
I have been increasingly following alternative health outlets as things have been unfolding, mainly because they are not getting sucked in to this fear-driven narrative. They understand the mental aspects of this situation: that at some stage, fear of catching an illness can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And this is what makes me really question the agenda of mainstream media outlets. Why do all roads still seem to lead to a vaccine, when the only real way to beat any virus is through a healthy and functioning immune system that — if you believe in some degree on intelligent design — was created whole, perfect and without the need for any external and unnatural assistance unless it really becomes compromised.
Leaving aside the heated debate about the efficacy of vaccines, why is the inherent strength of our immune systems (at least in the lucky amongst us) not the overwhelming narrative about human health: that the naturally immune-supporting factors of a healthy diet, outdoor exercise and a positive outlook on life are ultimately what determines our ability to overcome a virus, not a concoction of genetic material and mysterious adjuvants that has had little success in containing other flu-like illnesses in the majority of the population.
What about these protests that are occurring at the moment.
Did you find the sudden shift from pandemic lockdown to mass social protest a bit bewildering: that almost overnight — thanks to a shockingly brazen snuff film captured in real time that has traumatised large sections of the population — people were willingly and knowingly acting in direct contradiction to the social agreement that they had barely days ago been helping to enforce.
If we look past the organic uprising of righteous anti-racial outrage that provided the energy for this monumental (pun intended) event, can we discern broader agendas that may be trying to take advantage?
Surely you have heard by now about these mysterious pallets of bricks being left in strategic locations in the vicinity of protests. Who benefits from the escalation of these riots from peaceful to destructive? Who benefits from keeping us divided on racial lines full stop?
What about these rumours that Antifa is in fact funded by George Soros, the billionaire donor to essentially every major progressive cause and subject of the majority of world-encompassing conspiracy theories? Is this just a conspiracy, even though there is video evidence as far back as 3 years ago of Antifa protesters literally asking Soros where their money is?
But so what: he seems like a good guy, with all those worthy causes that he supports. Maybe. But this is also the same guy who is on video in this astonishing interview laughing about making his wealth from betting on the financial collapse of other countries, while openly admitting that he is simply in this to make money and gives no thought to the social consequences of his actions. And, slightly chillingly, having the moral scruples to avoid the fate of other Jews during the Holocaust by agreeing to participate in the destruction and theft of the property of his fellow Jews without any sense of moral conflict or guilt — basically on the rationale that if he didn’t do it, someone else would?
What about Black Lives Matter then? No, not the movement itself. The organisation Black Lives Matter, which emerged in response to the events in Ferguson, but has since been denounced by one of its founders Chaziel Sunz as an organisation infiltrated and compromised by the Democratic Party.
Regardless of your opinion on American politics, do you think it is appropriate for a grassroots civil rights movement to effectively be hijacked into a mobilising agent and money laundering front for a political party? Because this is what seems to be happening: if we believe these videos showing that money donated to BLM is actually being redirected via the charity ActBlue to Democrat political campaigns. What tangible improvements have the Democrats actually made for Black Americans that make them deserving of this money?
If you want to see something truly eye opening and a bit embarrassing, go to this ‘fact checking’ article claiming to debunk the BLM/ActBlue conspiracy. In reality, all the article does is include lots of very conclusive and authoritative looking ‘FALSE’ markings all over it, without actually making any attempt to factually dispute the link between BLM and ActBlue — that is, aside from naming it as the scourge that is a conspiracy theory and then linking it to those dastardly people on the political right. That is the sum total substance of the article — it’s like they weren’t even trying.
Seriously, read the article: there is no better example for how public discourse has been manipulated to an extent that an article can claim to fact check something without actually using facts that disprove it. And probably get away with it.
There is thus no better example for why we need to be using discernment — to seek truth and what is right, what is just, with our own eyes and not someone else’s — with the state of the world as it currently is.
You will notice a lot of questions and not a whole lot of answers there. That wasn’t a cop-out: that was the point.
The only advice I have for navigating this world is to ask more questions than you ever have before about the reality that is being presented to you.
Sure, it isn’t easy to have to question every institution, every source, every piece of information that crosses our path. But something not being easy is perhaps the best sign we have at the moment that we are on the right track.
