en 
For many years now, Ireland has been subject to a particularly intense cultural offensive. Why this should be so is an open question. It may be that Ireland is – or was, at least – more than usually culturally robust, an opportunity for the technocrats to really cut their teeth.
In sum, while the poisonous aspect of the media pharmakon has not nearly exhausted its toxic potency, the curative side has incrementally been gaining strength and therapeutic effectiveness, as reflected in the anxiety of the ‘Davos elites,’ detectable in their worry, that they no longer ‘own the news.’ They thought they had it all under control, but were caught unawares by the unexpected power of the alternative media – those ever-expanding digital spaces of the machine inhabited by the resistance.
The old distinction between civilization and barbarism has taken on a new form in the 21st century. It is from within our own “civilized” culture that emerges an inversion of the concepts of civility and savagery. It is our professionals, our academics, our political leaders, and our journalists who most ignore the standards of rational discourse, who institutionalize hatred and incite division. Today, it is the elites who are the true barbarians among us.
We forgot that we are going to die. We forgot that suffering is our lot in this lacrimarum valle. We forgot that how we approach the fact of our suffering and death is what gives our life meaning and what enables the hero to be heroic. Instead, we allowed ourselves to be trained to fear all emotional and physical pain, to catastrophize with implausible worst-case scenarios, and to demand solutions from the very elites and institutions who worked to ensure our forgetfulness.
The difference between the two is the impression of the intent of the group by those on the outside. Conspiracies are manifestly suspect and created out of nefarious motives to achieve a specific, most likely at least unethical, goal. Consensuses are seen as positive constructs, having been arrived at after open discussion, healthy debate, and a consideration of all relevant factors.
Progress involves improving on the past. Once, we used leeches to suck out an excess of cancer-causing humors, or just blamed them on the wrath of the gods. In modern hospitals, we now image such tumors deep within the body, target them with synthetic chemicals or narrow beams of radiation, or excise them with clinical precision.
They could always, of course, decide to opt out of the ‘system,’ if they are willing to be ‘excluded from society,’ as Bill Gates infamously said about those who would refuse the digital prison that the neo-fascists have built for the rest of humanity. I certainly would, but my guess is that most people are too immersed in social media and the technical means to sojourn there – usually a smartphone, and of course the internet – to take that drastic step.
Metaphorical mountains to climb abound in our senseless world these days. Everywhere one looks there are threats and injustices that need to be exposed, overcome, judged, and neutralised. No sooner is a peak crested than another, higher ridge appears in the distance.
Mountains to Climb, Civilization to Save Read Journal Article
Keeping it real thus also means making a conscious effort to find those spaces where the mediating practices of the elites are few and the chances for direct esthetic pleasure are many. And finally, and most importantly, keeping it real means ensuring that such mediation-free sanctuaries are readily available to children so that their personally constructed sense of beauty, with its wonderfully generative fantasies, is not canceled before it even has time to take flight.
My final rejection of ‘mainstream’ claims to authority happened during the Covid debacle. Whether a new, revitalised sense of legitimate authority could eventually be generated in the place of the spurious claims to authority on the part of those representatives of the supposed ‘New World Order’ who still wield power, only time will tell.
The transformation of the Air Force Academy (AFA) from a military institution to a progressive, liberal arts school has been incremental, relentless, and calculated. The goal to politicize the training and perspectives of cadets, who constitute about 20% of annual Air Force officer commissions, guarantees a source of influential officers who will apply and promote these ideas throughout their military and civilian careers.
The Hostile Takeover of the Air Force Academy Read Journal Article
As I write this, medicine is still “In the Wilderness,” but I can see a brightening horizon. We still need to formulate a counter to the nihilism of Postmodernism and Critical Theory. We still need to re-establish free speech and intellectual freedom in healthcare delivery and education. We still need to raise truth above ideology. But I now think that is a possibility.
The Complexity Science of Medicine Requires Freedom Read Journal Article
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