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Explaining the past two years

The bully doesn’t want the victim to do X, Y, and Z for their own sake. He wants to establish the principle that the victim will do X, Y, Z, or A, B, or C, on demand. That’s why arbitrary, unreasonable, ever-shifting demands are characteristic of an abusive relationship. The more irrational the demand, the better. The controllers find it satisfying to see everyone dutifully wearing their masks. As with O’Brien, it is power, not actual public safety, that inspires them. That is why they roundly ignore science casting doubt on masks, lockdowns, and social distancing. Effectiveness was never the root motivation for those policies to begin with.

I learned about this too in school. In the senseless, degrading busy work and the arbitrary rules, I detected a hidden curriculum: a curriculum of submission.3 The principal issued a series of trivial rules under the pretext of “maintaining a positive learning environment.” Neither the students nor the administration actually believed that wearing hats or chewing gum impeded learning, but that didn’t matter. Punishments were not actually for the infraction itself; the real infraction was disobedience. That is the chief crime in a dominance/submission relationship. Thus, when German police patrol the square with meter sticks to enforce social distancing, no one need believe that the enforcement will actually stop anyone from getting sick. The offense they are patrolling against is disobedience. Disobedience is indeed offensive to the abusive party, and to anyone who fully accepts a submissive role in relation to it. When “Karens” report on their neighbors for having more than the permitted number of guests, is it a civic-minded desire to slow the spread that motivates them? Or are they offended that someone is breaking the rules?

Charles Eisenstein

21 comments to Explaining the past two years

  • Mr Ecks

    The virus/vax bullshit has been a powergrab all along. Disobey every bit of Johnsons bollocks and shove your defiance in his face. If we can get enough mugs to see the Agenda the good guys win.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    The same abusive relationship dynamic is involved in the Net Zero obsession.

  • Paul Marks

    I think Charles Eisentein is correct here – the restrictions (the orders and edicts) are not about health, they are about establishing the principle of “compliance” submissions to orders – regardless of what those orders are. And it is certainly not just Germany.

    To take my own “blood line” – both Israeli Jews (apart from the hard core Orthodox) and the Irish have mostly obeyed the edicts – no matter how obviously irrational the edicts (fiats – orders) are.

    The principle of compliance (submission) is being established around the world – the various international organisations (both government and corporate) who have worked for this for many years (for example Agenda 21 goes back to the early 1990s) must be delighted.

    Interestingly it is the “rebels” (self proclaimed “rebels” and “resistance”) who have been the MOST conformist, in Britain and elsewhere. Indeed they are the “Karens” (such as the Blue Check Marks on Twitter) who scream for even more tyranny – and fantasise about punishing people for such “crimes” as not wearing a mask.

    Since at least the 1960s the institutions (both public and private – corporate) have been increasingly dominated by these people. This is what they have always wanted – themselves in control of the population, a population reduced to the status of CATTLE.

    The institutions (including the “health” and “scientific” institutions) have been utterly corrupted – and establishment conservatives and liberals who still put their faith in the institutions (in “the system”) are quite mistaken.

    The institutional framework (government and private – corporate), “the system”, is now the enemy of both liberty and of reason – the international system is now both evil and (I suspect) insane.

  • John B

    They do not want this to end.

    The primary drive was get one jab. When many had their one jab, the drive was to be ‘fully’ vaccinated.

    The carrot being dangled was ‘fully’ vaccinated = back to normal.

    But when compliance and ‘fully’ vaccinated approaches 90%, what does the bully/power & control freak do then, reach for the stick?

    Masks and restrictions until everyone is vaccinated some more – boosted, the carrot being removal of masks and restrictions.

    But what will happen when 90% boosted?

    Back to the stick… masks and restrictions until everyone is double-boosted.

    In music there is a term Da capo al fine = back to the beginning until the end. It is an instruction to repeat a passage. Taken literally the passage would be repeated endlessly, as at its end is Da capo al fine – but in music it just means repeat once.

    But in our ‘Panicdemic’, it means eternal repetition, because we are in a no-win situation. There will be continual ‘variants’, continual need for boosters. The virulence of the virus is not the issue, just its presence alone – it will always be present.

  • Paul Marks

    John B – I think we are all waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the “Covid lockdowns” to somehow change into “Climate Change Emergency lockdowns”.

    The point is compliance – submission.

  • Stonyground

    “…Or are they offended that someone is breaking the rules?”

    At the swimming pool the space is divided into three broad lanes with a sign at the top of each marked slow, medium and fast, with arrows showing that swimmers should go around in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction. It was a quiet time and I am alone in my lane so I’m just swimming up and down next to the rope. A woman jumps in and starts swimming in the direction of the arrows, almost crashes into me and is outraged that I am going in the wrong direction. Is this the mentality that you mean?

  • John

    No discussion about abusive relationships would be complete without reference to the early morning of Wednesday 4 November 2020 when the remaining key states, thanks to late voting patterns beyond the realms of improbability, swung to Biden with the media, legislature and judiciary all uniting to defend the statistically near impossible. As they can and did get away with that nothing is off the table in future.

  • SteveD

    ‘The virulence of the virus is not the issue’

    Covid19 has an average global IFR of 0.15%. Previously, it was higher but has been dropping since the beginning of the pandemic (to a level presumably much lower than 0.15% now). It has a highly defined target demographic. For the majority of the US population it is simply not a major issue. Far too many other things need greater attention.

    In most places in the US, people get this.

  • mardybum

    I am contrary by nature and resist rules that seem arbitrary, but I will fight him over the part about gum chewing. It may not affect the ability of the chewer to learn, but if I have to listen to someone chomping, popping, and snapping, I am filled with rage. (I know it’s not rational and I don’t act on the rage. Other noises like pen-clicking or similar fidgetiness are also distracting to me and I have a lot of trouble blocking it out.)

  • NickM

    OK, this is gonna maybe sound OT but bear with me…

    Why the frankly insane pushing of transgender “rights” including the Scottish Government’s absurd idea that a rapist isn’t a rapist if, despite having a penis s/he claims to be female. It says a lot that the abuse of actuality. It says that reality is sub-ordinate to ideology. I’m a physics grad. I was taught to respect reality as the ultimate truth which it of course is unless you studied the anti-social “sciences” which is about the creation of reality to meet your pig-ignorant brain’s need for intellectual gratification without doing anything actually difficult like vector analysis. We are ruled by fuckwits who have studied courses where inteligence is way less important than the rote learning of group-think.

  • Paul Marks

    NickM – you sound like that dangerous right winger J.K. Rowling (J.K. Rowling is a life long supporter of the Labour Party – for people who can not spot my sarcasm).

    Yes basic biology is now “right wing”, or even a “conspiracy theory” (anything true is denounced as a “conspiracy theory” by the establishment – whilst they push their insane agitprop which is collection of actual conspiracy theories). Being a man or a woman is a “social construct” and if anyone objects to sex changes for eight year olds (supported by Mr Biden in 2020 – I watched say it at a televised “town hall”) they must be PUNISHED (not the people giving such “treatment” to children – no anyone, such as the parents, objecting to it).

    Talking of Mr Biden…

    Yes John – the 2020 United States Presidential Election was blatantly rigged. It was not even done very well – it was almost as if the leftist establishment WANTED everyone to know they were rigging the election, in order to provoke a violent response (and thus have an excuse for a crack down).

    The fact that we are not allowed to point out that the 2020 United States Presidential Election was rigged (this is a “conspiracy theory” – hardly a conspiracy as it was done so openly), and that governments (and corporations) of the world pretend that Mr Joseph Biden (a senile puppet) is the legitimately elected President of the United States, shows where we are.

    People freezing to death = Global Warming caused by human emissions of C02. The C02 that makes the air dirty and kills plants – according to a speech delivered by Sir David Attenborough, a speech wildly applauded by audience of politicians, officials, corporate “leaders”, and SCIENTISTS (yes – scientists applauded claims that C02 made the air dirty and killed plants).

    Joseph Biden – President of the United State and K. Harris Vice President of the United States. Supposedly more than 80 million people voted for them. And if you question that – you are a “conspiracy theorist”.

    And Covid 19 – for which there has been Early Treatment from the start. But to point that out is yet another “Conspiracy Theory”. People must NOT be given Early Treatment – because it is “harmful” those medical experts, the government and corporate bureaucrats (especially in the media and social media) say so. Medical doctors who have successfully treated many thousands of patients? Do NOT listen to them – they are “conspiracy theorists”.

    The international establishment (government and corporate) allowed vast numbers of people to die of a horrible disease – they did everything they could to DISCOURAGE and to SMEAR the Early Treatment that would have saved most of these people.

    If they are prepared to do that (and that they have just done it) they will do anything.

    Sadly not a conspiracy theory – just a fact.

  • NickM

    Paul,
    I think the left scored a massive own-goal over J K Rowling. She made a couple statements which were (to any normal person – I’m including most trans people here) so obvious as to be almost banal. And then she gets virtually crucified for it including by people who basically owe their star staus to her. I’m looking very specificlly at you Rupert Grint (aka Ron Weasley). I mean seriously could the little ginger git ever have become a movie star without Rowling?

    Essentially what happened strikes me as showing-up the Stalinist/Orwellian core for what they are – so utterly lacking in genuine core beliefs that they can make it up on the fly because that means nobody is ever safe. And that is what they want – rule by fiat whim. That they chose to take out their inchoate rage against probably the World’s most loved living author shows two things about them – their staggering arrogance and also their tactical ineptitude.

  • Paul Marks

    NickM – “yes but”.

    The but is all the scientists (yes scientists) who are not parroting the “social construct” line.

    Sadly the physical sciences have not proved proof against political and cultural agendas. Even things such as changing the data (such as temperature data) to fit a theory, are now normal.

    Once the principle of objective moral truth is abandoned, why not? Why not change the data to fit a political agenda? Or pretend that a physical fact is a “social construct”? If there is no objective moral right or moral wrong – then objective physical science eventually goes as well.

    Thomas Reid (a physical scientist as well as a moral philosopher) understood this – David Hume did not.

    The “Logical Positivists” (who loved Hume) claimed that physical science was the only objective truth – they failed to see that by denying the existence of moral truth they were undercutting the very foundations of physical science.

    For there to be physical science there must be honourable people of science (real scientists) – people who make that series of moral choices.

  • Paul Marks

    Remember that till January 20 2025 the “leader of Western world” will be someone, Joseph Biden or K. Harris, who believes in “Trans Rights” for eight-year-old-children.

    This is a bit more than a few nutters on Twitter.

  • it was almost as if the leftist establishment WANTED everyone to know they were rigging the election (Paul Marks, December 19, 2021 at 12:06 pm)

    I certainly took the style as well as the substance of the ‘Time’ (to neutralise the truth) article as warning supporters not to dispute the stealing of the election by attempting to disprove it, no “let’s examine in detail so you will see…”-style denials:

    * calling themselves a ‘cabal’ – the article could have chosen a term more appropriate to its denial than to a group doing what it denied they had;

    * telling us the cabal ‘fortified’ the election – almost any synonym would have been less of a homonym to what they actually did.

    My take is they did not want people to know it – but they did want people on their side to know that ignoring, not examining, was how to direct the masses not to think it.

  • Paul Marks

    Also remember the establishment “studies” against Early Treatment for Covid 19 – there was a person on this very site who used to quote from them.

    The establishment “studies”, such as that in the Lancet (once a medical journal – but now with rather “broader” concerns) were LIES – and they got lots of people killed, people who could have been saved.

    But why not? If there is no moral right or moral wrong, why not lie in scientific studies and get people killed?

  • Katy Hibbert

    The face-nappy thing is key, just like everyone wearing black in Cambodia. It turns people into robots. The Left loves it.

  • Paul Marks

    Katy Hibbert – yes, and very well put.

  • Paul Marks

    “David Hume never denied the existence of moral right and moral wrong” – in case anyone tries that line, Mr Hume expressed scepticism (in his gentle, but patronising, tone) about both the physical universe (how can one have physical science – if there is no objective physical universe) and (even more) about the very existence of the moral agent (the free will reasoning “I”).

    It is a straight line from there to denying the existence of objective moral right and moral wrong.

    “If I refuse to change these temperature data figures then I will be out on the street – and, besides, the overall objective is to create a vastly better society – surely that is worth a bit of playing with the numbers. So I had better adjust the data”.

    or…..

    “For the good of collective Public Health, creating a new and vastly superior society, some individuals have to be sacrificed – by our denying that effective Early Treatment for this virus is effective”.

    A person of honour would not go down this road – but personal honour has been mocked by the “educated” for a very long time now.