Do facts matter? Of course they do. But facts, alone, will not answer the questions we really care about. The real ammunition of the COVID war is not information. It’s not a battle over what is true, what counts as misinformation, what it means to #followthescience. It’s a battle over what our lives mean and, ultimately, whether we matter.
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.
We must judge the authorities all over the world who relentlessly pumped out panic-laden, often knowingly false propaganda during the past three years, in order to provoke fear and despair, while deliberately silencing and censoring all attempts at promoting a more balanced and healthy view; how they stifled critical thinking. And it is in this light that we must view the disastrous consequences of this conduct, and how it first and foremost harmed the young, the poor; our smallest brethren.
Vaccine mandates hit hard in the late summer and fall of 2021. Get the jab or lose your job. Health care workers and public sector employees had it especially bad. Somehow it seemed right. If you are interacting with the public in a health capacity, you need to be sure you won’t infect anyone. If you are a government employee, surely the government should be able to tell you what you have to take to make everyone else safe.
On January 25, 2023, Ghent University banned the use of my book The Psychology of Totalitarianism in the course “Critique of Society and Culture”. That happened in the aftermath of a media storm that erupted in September 2022 following my interviews with Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. I already wrote about that in a previous essay.
The scars that have been left on all of us by the response to COVID are incomprehensibly varied and deep. For most, there hasn’t been enough time to mentally process the significance of the initial lockdowns, let alone the years-long slog of mandates, terror, propaganda, social stigmatization and censorship that followed. And this psychological trauma affects us in myriad ways that leave us wondering what it is about life that just feels so off versus how it felt in 2019.
As Desmet explains in the book, every totalitarian regime begins with a period of mass formation. Into this tense and volatile mass steps an autocratic government and voilà, the totalitarian state clicks into place. The architects of the new regime don’t go around shouting, “I am evil.” They often believe, to the bitter end, they are doing the right thing.
When Covid-19 came along, Laura Dodsworth grew alarmed—not at the virus, but at the fear swirling around it. She watched the fear grow legs and wings and wrap itself around her country. What troubled her most was that her government, historically charged with keeping people calm during times of crisis, seemed to be amplifying the fear. The media, which she had expected to push back against government edicts, gave the fear train an extra shove.
Considering that Freud associates the life instinct (Eros) with the aggregation of families and communities, and with the panoply of creative endeavours comprising culture, and its antithesis, the death instinct (Thanatos), with decomposition, diverse kinds of destruction, and with aggressiveness, the current predominance of the latter – Thanatos – in the world should be obvious, if not conspicuous.
FUD first brought about by a crisis in health, cascaded into loss of faith in government, in the people around us and sometimes in ourselves. Three years is too long a time for FUD to be considered a crisis, but when a crisis is not resolved, loss of hope is the outcome. Many people have lost work, friends, health and even their lives as a result.
Humanity Must Move Beyond Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Read More
Freedom of expression is the ultimate test of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism begins in the psyche of the extremists. Then it appears in the willingness to take away people’s freedoms. It appears in contradictions and untruths. But the opposition to free speech is what ultimately exposes totalitarianism beyond any doubt.
Jordan Peterson Against the Spirit of Totalitarianism Read More
Love, kindness, honesty, respect, creativity and freedom are necessary for human flourishing. Sadly, many still embrace the mask as if it is the only truth that exists. If society is to change, all will need to see and peel away the polish. Then, we will have to work together to replace the emptiness it covers with a society rooted in genuine morality and positive human values.
