Three years ago I felt the depth of the darkness which had entered the world, and I was moved to choose defiance in favor of the light. This brought my path to be part of the good work being done here at Brownstone. A Happy Easter to all, and let us continue the good fight against weaponized fear which seeks to prevent us from experiencing our highest goods.
Reflections on the Triduum: Can the Darkness Turn to Light? Continue Reading
If it turns out that the population is not so vulnerable after all, and men, women and families can improve themselves and their communities without the aid of the state, then the entire structure upon which the edifice of raison d’État rests becomes radically unstable. This is at least part of the reason why these movements are so frequently smeared and traduced by the chattering classes which are so reliant themselves upon the state and its largesse.
Machiavelli and the Globalists: Why the Elites Despise Independent Thought Continue Reading
Many of us can recognize the results of evil intuitively: evil causes vast human suffering; revokes our sense of human dignity; creates an ugly, dystopian, or disharmonic world; destroys beauty and poetry; perpetuates fear, anger, distress and terror; causes torture and bloodshed. Nevertheless, there are always some people who seem to remain ignorant of its presence — or, incredibly, see specific visceral atrocities as justified and even good.
We need to hear from the victims of Covid Hysteria if we seek real change. If we believe in freedom, we will start listening to those who have cried in the wilderness, walked in the darkness, and suffered in silence. The rest is background noise.
They have little interest in traditional liberal values such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of conscience, and in fact are often implicitly contemptuous of those values and think them to be dangerous. And they are fairly comfortable with the idea of the authorities bossing people around so long as it is for their own (purported) benefit. They, in other words, see themselves as being something like Plato’s class of ‘guardians’, who possess the wisdom to coordinate society as they see fit.
The dominant Western culture of the modern era will not relinquish its ingrained deceitfulness without first going through a nasty and lengthy transformation in which we are acutely reminded that life is risky and humans are imperfect. It is conceivable that long-run side effects of the covid vaccines will help to remind us of this. The best we can hope for in the longer run is to design our institutions to lead the population gradually into a mindset of comfort with human limitations.
There is a lesson in this as far as the ineluctable need for action is concerned when rational argument with would-be oppressors gets one nowhere. This is especially the case when it becomes obvious that these oppressors are not remotely interested in a reasonable exchange of ideas, but summarily resort to the current unreasonable incarnation of technical rationality, namely AI-controlled mass surveillance, with the purpose of subjugating entire populations.
We recall those days now and wonder how and why this all happened. Not one minute has passed since that day when I’ve rested from asking that question. Every day it feels like we get closer to knowing. And yet the truth keeps being ever more elusive with every revelation of the depths of the conspiracy, the range of the players, the interests at work, and the forever toggle between fear, plot, ignorance and malice.
The overwhelming majority in all age groups in Japan got caught up in the panic generated by government officials, mainstream news media, and the medical community. For three years now masks have been worn continuously everywhere, including mountain trails and public parks. The widespread use of brainwashing here has been especially disheartening to me, since I have spent much of my time and effort over the last thirty years teaching, researching, and writing about critical thinking education in Japan.
Brainwashing Versus Critical Thinking in Japan Continue Reading
Orwell argues that these language patterns destroy truth and beauty and clarity; they cloud thinking and collapse culture with their obfuscations. When reading or listening to such speech, we find ourselves mired in the muck of sloppy language that confuses, disorients, and depresses, and in the extreme, such language gets people killed, because if we don’t question it, allow it to frustrate and anger us, it lulls and numbs our minds.
Bureaucratic Doublespeak Gets People Killed Continue Reading
When the facts are not with them, they have few options other than resorting to ad hominem attacks – and no such attack better fits the false inference of ill-intended opposition to state action than “far-right.” By the same token, no attack better fits the purposes of state actors with an interest in containing a minority opinion that threatens to expose their designs.
With the flip of a switch, the real world they knew ended. When they were confined to their rooms and houses, friends and music, color and life, humor and competition, all lived inside screens. Why wouldn’t they turn there to those worlds when this world could collapse in an instant? No wonder screen worlds seem better than this one. Are fake worlds better? How will we repair this one?
