I believe this is one of the few articles I have ever read with my mouth increasingly agape from beginning to end.
How could the person who articulated the mechanisms of the sinister Cathedral then become its most ardent spokesperson? How could he have fallen for the shamefully contrived propaganda he once saw through like gauze? How could someone with such a potent intellect be so implacably dense?
This is the first time I’ve considered the possibility that he’s controlled opposition, but given that he’s arguing for a totalitarian panopticon over a manufactured permanent crisis makes me question both his integrity and his intelligence.
Yarvin’s arrogant mess of an essay brings to mind a favorite quote from Twain: “Some conclusions are so stupid, only the most intelligent would ever believe them.”
I truly hope you’re joking, Barry! If not, stop everything you’re doing this instant and go watch it (https://smile.amazon.com/1984-John-Hurt/dp/B07GT4D32H/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=1984&qid=1639049976&sr=8-3) RIGHT NOW. Then pick up the book immediately and read every line as soon as humanly possible :-) There is no better book in existence for understanding what is happening at this moment in history.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
This is not a fair or reasonable reading. Most of Yarvin's article is about how the measures advocated by the cathedral are pointless and abusive.
I have thought quite a bit about why Yarvin won't let this one go. Part of it is just not admitting he is wrong, but actually quite a lot of the dissident right was pro-lockdown 22 months ago and has wriggled out of it by now with varying degrees of candour. My explanation is twofold:
1) Personal reasons. I believe it is indelicate to talk about this explicitly, but perhaps eventually someone will have to in order to snap him out of it.
2) One of the nagging concerns with Neocameralism is essentially 'what's to stop the sovereign deciding large swathes of the population have negative value and just killing them?'. Yarvin never really solved this and part of the way he patches it up is an unwritten rule that you're just not allowed to be chill about human life. Now apply that principle to the virus and hey presto. The problem is that, actually, dying from disease and dying from someone killing you are just not the same thing morally. We all know that at some level, but I don't think anyone has ever really spelled out why, and until 2020 no-one really had to. Probing our moral assumptions is a dangerous thing with risks up to and including societal collapse.
Please. The dissident right was in favour of excessive caution for *a month or two* whilst the true mortality rate was bottomed out, as is sensible.
And then when it became apparent it wasn't they bad, the stance changed to "we don't need these draconian measures, let's get on with life", which again is sensible.
Is it sensible to react to new diseases with unprecedented lockdowns before you know their severity? Seems like in retrospect it was not very sensible.
Truth is that advocating lockdowns was edgy and based until people actually did them and they turned out to be cringe. A warning for us all.
The populace was terrorized into this lunatic reaction by the volume of video and photos "leaking" from China of citizens dropping dead in the streets with blood pouring from their faces.
Given at the time the CFR looked to be 5-10%, and at that time the evidence coming out of China seemed to indicate it was possible to contain it with lockdowns - yes.
Absolutely it is. With small amounts of information, you SHOULD overreact with caution. This is based in decision theory. You want to minimize the worst possible outcome. Imagine that corona had a 20% mortality rate plus we did nothing, for example.
Also, let's remember that people in the deep state, knew the vast majority of people dying in Italy, we'er the old and sick. Yet, they propped up the lie that most anybody could die, to rid themselves, of Trump. Full Stop!
“The problem is that, actually, dying from disease and dying from someone killing you are just not the same thing morally. We all know that at some level, but I don't think anyone has ever really spelled out why, and until 2020 no-one really had to.”
It was spelled out before 2020. There were prophets warning against the medical war on natural death and illness, especially Illich.
To be fair, I haven’t had a chance to read the original article in its entirety, but the excerpts eugyppius cited are more than damning enough evidence in and of themselves, and I find it difficult to believe any context would mitigate his advocacy for tyrannical measures unless they were written as satire.
Haha, okay, I must be missing the nuance then because I’m not sure how what I said is unfair given that I only asked questions and shared my own speculations based on what eugyppius relayed.
That's a very insightful analysis. To be fair, I too was pro-extreme containment beginning in December 2019. I warned my coworkers, took kids out of school, bought heavy duty masks, and began disinfecting on my way out and in the house. Once I saw a close family member, of boomer age, with a terrible fever for a few days, then survive, I figured we were all infected already, and it was back to normal. Cognitive dissonance and the curve of awareness are implicated in the insanity still going on. We humans have a strong response to plagues: fleeing for the hills, self-isolating, etc. But we also come out of hiding once the threat is passed, spurred by necessity. Like Emerson said, the need for too much consistency is a bugbear for little men.
On the second point, that's a sad fact of neocameralism. It's the hatred of liberal democracy and individualism as such that prompted such a stance. The problem is that the tyrant is only ever an individual, himself, and large systems are rarely better than people or small tribes at adapting to reality. Neocameralism really isn't required for the substance of their critique. Merely removing the things that loosen feedback loops in society is good enough.
Curtis Yarvin was married to a woman with chronic illness who passed way this April. She was certainly among the rare people for whom Covid was a very serious health risk. I think we should be judicious in judging someone who is in such a position. I have a son who is celiac and suffers from rare and severe symptoms that at times have made both his and all of our family's lives intensely miserable for certain periods. I have felt personally rage at the sight of a child munching on cookies in a playground, because I know that this is the reason I have to wage a constant propaganda campaign on my son never to put his fingers in his mouth. I know it makes no sense, and I try to fight it, but who knows what kind of crazy policies I might advocate if I had millions of people who shared the same fears.
I hadn’t heard about the loss of his wife. I am certainly sorry for that and understand how it could have clouded his judgment. Sadly, her death—like nearly every death “from” COVID—was likely avoidable had the very BigPharma propagandists whose messaging he has fallen for not 1) smeared and prohibited early treatment protocols; 2) advocated killing treatments like Remdesivir (“Rundeathisnear” or “Remdeathivir,” take your pick) and ventilation/intubation, among other lethal interventions; and 3) discouraged healthy practices like enjoying fresh air and sunshine, exercising, and supplementing with vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, quercetin, etc.
He needs to redirect his acerbic intellect at the Cathedral rather than becoming a cheerleader for their authoritarian policies.
oh, I see. thank you for explaining. he's no doubt going through a lot of emotions as well. I'm sorry about your son -- chronic illnesses are very hard. My mother was ill with various conditions most of the time that I knew her -- that is I never remember her as a healthy, happy person who could take a walk or even leave the house after a while. I only really remember sickness and hospitals. She died in 2007 and the worst thing for me now is the guilt and shame I feel over the profound sense of relief I felt after she died.
I was just thinking the same thing. Hopefully Nick Land and the other Dark Enlightenment folks haven't been brewing and drinking their own ultra-containment Kool-Aid during all this isolation and hysteria. I, for one, took the chance to get more physically fit than ever before, read a number of new books, and pick up new skills. Sad day for old Moldbug.
Better part of him died with his wife, the benevolent explanation. Objectively most of his ideas are mix of missintegrative/disintegrative modes of thought that fall apart in contact with reality as they are explained in "The DIM Hypothesis". Great readable guide through modern philosophical swamp
Yes, the delivery drivers produce them by magic on their trucks that are powered by unicorn farts and maintained by pixies. No farmers or supply chain necessary. Or is it that the slaves are disposable?
That anyone would listen to a person with such an infantile view of the world is sad commentary in itself.
Reminds me of Clarke's 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
It seems that a corollary to that is that the more advanced a society becomes, the more detached from reality we become.
It is clear people do not understand how things work.
How a supply chain works, how an electrical grid works, even as obvious as how food is produced, how a vaccine works (or doesn't) might as well be magic.
Don't be silly, all those "supplies" will be planted, tended and harvested by magical robots using advanced "AI" and "machine learning", and then processed in robotic factories and delivered by autonomous robotic drones and land vehicles - all powered by unicorn farts and maintained by ... uhh... robots. Real soon now. Real soon.
I understand that this will land with a thud for many here--or worse--but this is a truth-telling space, no? None of this surprises me. Yarvin spinning off into the wilds of insanity is typical of any staunch atheist. It's the price one pays for living unmoored from primary reality. It's the reason men like Sartre, who could write "L'Etre et le neant : Essai d'ontologie phenomenologique", did ultimately turn to God after all -- to avoid a fate of stark insanity. Some here understand this. Some will come to understand it. Alas some will suffer a similar fate when their delicately balanced intellectual faculties become suddenly unstable when it is revealed in some Yarvinesque manner that they are ultimately supported by literally nothing.
While I hope and plan to stay sane, productive, happy and "moored to primary reality" without recourse to any sky gods, I enjoyed the tone and frankness of your truth-telling.
The only thing better than eugyppius' essays are the threads that follow. Zounds, I blame you all for sending me down rabbit holes of delighted reading instead of rendering onto Caesar. I pop in only to say Steve - for the win. Best truth-telling re: Sky Dad award of the day.
It’s not so much the lack of religious belief. Scientism and wokeness are religions, and they have plenty of believers. Naturism (in the form of nature worship) is another one.
The problem with them all is that the various “supreme values” held by their adherents fail spiritual tests — they don’t lead to the embracing of truth, beauty and goodness as a fundamental way of living; they fail in a true recognition of our spiritual interrelationship (called the “Brotherhood of Man” by Jesus of Nazareth) because they don’t see the reality of the very source of mind, body and spirit and indeed of personal individuality: the Heavenly Father, the Absolute Reality.
I initially withheld my usual up vote of eugyppius' excellent articles for this post, not because I disagree with the content, but I prefer to avoid flame wars unless they're imposed on me. But upon reflection, I considered these insults to be like cage fights, which I enjoy -- meaningless conflict but good entertainment. And the combative tone is likely to attract more readers than it discourages. And ridicule can be a powerful weapon. We need all the firepower we can find.
I do suggest that the age discussions are a distraction. There doesn't appear to be anything related to aging that enhances infection, other than time to accumulate bad decisions that diminish immune health. The virus doesn't check IDs, just goes where the immune systems allow it. The greatest scandal in this self-induced disaster has been the failure of the medical guilds to emphasize the importance of, and to teach the maintenance of, healthy immune systems.
"Containment doesn't scale" is correct, but in the case of an airborne virus, it doesn't work even on small scales, unless the isolation is total. Like hermetically sealed. The high risk labs don't isolate, they don space suits. Anything less assures infection. Masks don't prevent contamination, for the wearer or for others. "Distancing" is ludicrous, unless it's to a mountaintop in Wyoming, in which case you'll still get infected by whatever pathogens reside there, including coronaviruses.
The irrational demands are accepted by terrified populations who are ignorant of the virus and their own immunity, and driven by government bureaucrats who know better but are enjoying their temporary control over the terrified population. They will be punished when enough of the population learns how badly they've been misled.
"The greatest scandal in this self-induced disaster has been the failure of the medical guilds to emphasize the importance of, and to teach the maintenance of, healthy immune systems."
First, the medical guilds need to learn *how* to maintain healthy immune systems. Their focus in recent history has mainly been on treatment of symptoms using profitable pharmaceuticals, not helping people to be healthy as a preventive strategy.
As one bit of evidence, I offer the fact that American doctors receive one semester, if that, of training in nutrition. (Leaving aside the fact that what they learn is probably mostly incorrect anyway.)
If they have to learn something, they will. For nutrition, they don't. It's detrimental to their business model of selling us pills and procedures. They're not interested in our health, only our sickness.
California legislature wrote a bill years ago requiring nutrition training in med schools, but AMA cooperated with pharma and junk food lobbyists to kill it.
They don't know how because they choose not to know. Those who are interested might enjoy The 21 Day Immunity Plan. Or my substack (link beside my name, above, look for Zen and the Art of Immune Maintenance in the "see all" archive).
As far as I can tell, Covid is primarily a disease of obesity. Peter McCullough early on (before he was banned from everything) noted obesity as a "super risk factor." I suspect that has much to do with the reason it is far less deadly in East Asia. The only fat Asians I have met were born and reared in the US
From all the people I know who got it (over 30) only 2 were overweight. They were both already hospitalized for other causes. Both died. All the others recovered.
Obesity is just one symptom of metabolic dysfunction. This is caused by our crappy modern lifestyle, especially diet. People on the metabolic dysfunction spectrum (obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and more) are the ones who fare poorly from Covid, in addition to the very sick elderly.
I read somewhere that there are genetic reasons Asians are less susceptible than Europeans, it’s not just age and obesity. Which could lend credence to the “Chinese bio weapon” theory.
Yeah, that would be interesting. I remember reading at Ron Unz that Ashkenzi jews and the Amish (!) are less susceptible. I would be interested to know more.
I know at top doc at a top hospital who said all the people dying of Covid had horrible comorbidities. That was quite some time ago.
Hold on. What if there was some kind of “virus detecting technology” that you could put inside the human body? Like, a “cell technology” that could actually detect a virus, and suppress it before it killed you? Maybe they could even get better at the job the second time around, by using some type of “memory” technology? Someone should work on this. Would be epic.
"a deep, personal fear of infection." -- The primary cause of the mass hysteria is this fear replicated in hundreds of millions of weak minded fools in the West.
I think you touched upon a critical point, is that people like this are ruled by their own fear of infection. I actually extend that belief to all who have descended into psychopathy over the pandemic; the wellspring of their insanity is debilitating fear of getting infected. Fauci is a great example
I'm somewhat ruled by fear of infection. I got the flu in '18 in the middle of a month of -20F daily lows. Living alone. With just 1 dog & 6 birds to care for would have been easy cuz main symptom was exhaustion, weakness. But add in 2 horses & 8 bunnies, & it was a nightmare. Lugging 2 buckets & 4 bottles of hot water plus 2 buckets of hot mash, 3x day, plus cleaning barn & cages. I left the cleaning for daily high of -1, lol. Spent afternoons chilled to bone shivering. Didn't think I'd make it. Then prayed to God to take me now. Dreamed Jesus paid a visit. I begged him to bring me home. He laughed at me.
So what have I done these last 2 years? 1st & foremost: my homework. Know the enemy. Avoid crowds, which is normal. And starting back in September, Z protocol. Not worried.
It is no wonder that those who emerged from the mists of fear first (if ever they were in them), were all of the people on the ground who got infected and came through. The ones who had to work and carry on, regardless. Who didn't have the luxury of sheltering in place. The people in the one-roomed shacks. The ones who got it through chance encounters. These have been forced to become informed, double-quick, as we are the ones who are now being rounded upon to take the shots - and for no good health reasons at all. We are the "alternative escape route" which cannot bear thinking about, so must be eliminated altogether as an option. We have become the pink elephants in the room. And one must never, ever admit to pink elephants.
Oh, make no mistake - I was one, too, initially. I had, admittedly, always hoped to get it over and done with so I could carry on with my life, as am a firm proponent of battling illness out with my own natural defences, if possible. My short-lived relief and joy in my recovery have now been firmly shattered. My only recourse has been to try and educate myself, as hard and as fast as possible, in order to try and defend myself against those who will harm me. I submitted to the first injection under extreme duress. I will not permit it again.
His work on political theory and philosophy is undeniably brilliant. He has written plenty of valuable pieces on the illusion of democratic supremacy and the ways in which liberalism feeds off the narrative control of history. But his intelligence seems to stop there.
He's gone down the same route as Scott Adams, Sam Harris, Claire Lehmann, and others who have lost all credibility they may have otherwise had for their inability to make sense of Covid.
He has written a lot of interesting ideas in the past. If his old ideas were totally unique his new stuff would make me question everything he's ever written. Thankfully, they're not.
That's plain stupid. While you can't completely separate a person from the ideas, to a large extent you can. Also keep in mind that people change with time and life circumstances.
you are welcome to care about what he thinks. I couldn't care less about how you spend your time. You are also welcome to keep your opinions about what I write to your stupid self ;)
It took a few paragraphs of reading to get to where Yarvin approves of China. I stopped reading right there. I didn't need any other information to know his true intent.
I applaud your patience in rationally dissecting his drivel. One false assertion after another is not a wise foundation for expressing anything. I tired leaving a comment but it's only for his paid subscribers. He has quite the legion of paid subscribers for pumping out such lazy nonsense.
There's a deep overlap between OCD and murderous psychopaths. Not entirely the same personality type, but both have a burning need to be the sole occupant of the universe. OCD focuses on exterminating microscopic vermin, while typical psychopaths focus on exterminating large bipedal vermin.
Public health has joined the two tendencies for more than a century. Ibsen depicted the Nazi impulse of Public Health back in 1900, in his play 'An Enemy of Society'.
Note that phrase 'whole of society', which appears constantly among the Bioterror practitioners who are running the current cleansing and disinfecting project.
"Why it is a good strategy to remain immunologically naive to a pervasive respiratory virus while the rest of the world develops antibodies, nobody has yet explained." This should be yelled from rooftops. Preferably with littler words. And maybe pictures. Because I am starting to despair that even the experts now only read in pictures and write with crayons.
Oh, how the old and ignorant and afraid have bought into the lie of eradication and containment!
With a cell phone in every paw and delivery trucks to every door, we shall overcome!
But doesn't Sinovac help with that? Surely they don't want to leave their nation vulnerable to germ warfare and other future pandemics any more than we do.
The technology we have now (that we didn't have in 1889) has made those who pretend to understand it more stupid. Technology is what created SARS-CoV-2 and now it's making it worse. Mr. Yarvin will go down in history (along with many others) as a buffoon.
Great stuff as always. On the topic of Asian corona: are you familiar with the work of The Ethical Skeptic, and specifically his theory on corona circulating in Asia as early as 2018? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Yes, he’s an interesting and original thinker and he’s raised very interesting points.
I think that some kind of cross immunity in the Asia-Pacific is the most likely theory, but it probably wouldn’t have to have been SARS-2 exactly. A similar, less pathogenic betacoronavirus may be all it was. It seems before Fall 2019, nobody can find hard evidence of SARS-2, either in stored sewage samples, or in antibodies.
I think your interesting theory about omicron having been released by a third party, possibly to help us out of this mess, segues nicely into Ethical Skeptics theory about omicron being related only to the grandmother of alpha. Meaning, it did literally come out of nowhere and wasn’t a natural mutation. Independent thinkers will get to the bottom of this eventually!
Someday we will probably have more direct insight into the exact research procedures and programs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It may turn out that more than one SARS-related coronavirus leaked, or that their crazy plans to vaccinate bats with aerosolised vaccine were actually carried out and had unexpected but unrealised consequences- both of which might explain how immunity came to exist in this region of the world.
"Independent thinkers will get to the bottom of this eventually!"
Any thinker, upon hearing that the OhMyGod variant is 'closest related to the original flu' smiled, and said: "Wow, imagine effing that" and ignored it just like the rest of the BS...
If we take ES theory of a 2018 release and a spread pattern like earlier flu waves, evidence of prior circulation would be found in a constrained geographical area (Pacific nations like Japan, South Korea, Singapore etc) and East/Central Africa.
Have such studies actually taken place covering the proposed time frame?
Also, is it known whether samples taken in conjunction with EVALI cases and events like the mystery infection that hit Brescia in 2018 have been tested for possible connections to SARS2?
I believe this is one of the few articles I have ever read with my mouth increasingly agape from beginning to end.
How could the person who articulated the mechanisms of the sinister Cathedral then become its most ardent spokesperson? How could he have fallen for the shamefully contrived propaganda he once saw through like gauze? How could someone with such a potent intellect be so implacably dense?
This is the first time I’ve considered the possibility that he’s controlled opposition, but given that he’s arguing for a totalitarian panopticon over a manufactured permanent crisis makes me question both his integrity and his intelligence.
Yarvin’s arrogant mess of an essay brings to mind a favorite quote from Twain: “Some conclusions are so stupid, only the most intelligent would ever believe them.”
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
― George Orwell
Leave it to Orwell to come up with a more concise version!
I've never read 1984. That is history.....We are in 2021.
I truly hope you’re joking, Barry! If not, stop everything you’re doing this instant and go watch it (https://smile.amazon.com/1984-John-Hurt/dp/B07GT4D32H/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=1984&qid=1639049976&sr=8-3) RIGHT NOW. Then pick up the book immediately and read every line as soon as humanly possible :-) There is no better book in existence for understanding what is happening at this moment in history.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
👏 How did I live all these years without having such a valuable quote available for dispensation? 😆
This is not a fair or reasonable reading. Most of Yarvin's article is about how the measures advocated by the cathedral are pointless and abusive.
I have thought quite a bit about why Yarvin won't let this one go. Part of it is just not admitting he is wrong, but actually quite a lot of the dissident right was pro-lockdown 22 months ago and has wriggled out of it by now with varying degrees of candour. My explanation is twofold:
1) Personal reasons. I believe it is indelicate to talk about this explicitly, but perhaps eventually someone will have to in order to snap him out of it.
2) One of the nagging concerns with Neocameralism is essentially 'what's to stop the sovereign deciding large swathes of the population have negative value and just killing them?'. Yarvin never really solved this and part of the way he patches it up is an unwritten rule that you're just not allowed to be chill about human life. Now apply that principle to the virus and hey presto. The problem is that, actually, dying from disease and dying from someone killing you are just not the same thing morally. We all know that at some level, but I don't think anyone has ever really spelled out why, and until 2020 no-one really had to. Probing our moral assumptions is a dangerous thing with risks up to and including societal collapse.
Please. The dissident right was in favour of excessive caution for *a month or two* whilst the true mortality rate was bottomed out, as is sensible.
And then when it became apparent it wasn't they bad, the stance changed to "we don't need these draconian measures, let's get on with life", which again is sensible.
Is it sensible to react to new diseases with unprecedented lockdowns before you know their severity? Seems like in retrospect it was not very sensible.
Truth is that advocating lockdowns was edgy and based until people actually did them and they turned out to be cringe. A warning for us all.
The populace was terrorized into this lunatic reaction by the volume of video and photos "leaking" from China of citizens dropping dead in the streets with blood pouring from their faces.
Given at the time the CFR looked to be 5-10%, and at that time the evidence coming out of China seemed to indicate it was possible to contain it with lockdowns - yes.
Everyone is wise in hindsight.
Absolutely it is. With small amounts of information, you SHOULD overreact with caution. This is based in decision theory. You want to minimize the worst possible outcome. Imagine that corona had a 20% mortality rate plus we did nothing, for example.
Also, let's remember that people in the deep state, knew the vast majority of people dying in Italy, we'er the old and sick. Yet, they propped up the lie that most anybody could die, to rid themselves, of Trump. Full Stop!
“The problem is that, actually, dying from disease and dying from someone killing you are just not the same thing morally. We all know that at some level, but I don't think anyone has ever really spelled out why, and until 2020 no-one really had to.”
It was spelled out before 2020. There were prophets warning against the medical war on natural death and illness, especially Illich.
I didn't literally mean 'no-one', but thankyou for pointing me towards Ivan Illich.
To be fair, I haven’t had a chance to read the original article in its entirety, but the excerpts eugyppius cited are more than damning enough evidence in and of themselves, and I find it difficult to believe any context would mitigate his advocacy for tyrannical measures unless they were written as satire.
It is fair to say that Yarvin's ideal plan is stupid, insane, evil even. It is not fair to say what you said.
Haha, okay, I must be missing the nuance then because I’m not sure how what I said is unfair given that I only asked questions and shared my own speculations based on what eugyppius relayed.
That's a very insightful analysis. To be fair, I too was pro-extreme containment beginning in December 2019. I warned my coworkers, took kids out of school, bought heavy duty masks, and began disinfecting on my way out and in the house. Once I saw a close family member, of boomer age, with a terrible fever for a few days, then survive, I figured we were all infected already, and it was back to normal. Cognitive dissonance and the curve of awareness are implicated in the insanity still going on. We humans have a strong response to plagues: fleeing for the hills, self-isolating, etc. But we also come out of hiding once the threat is passed, spurred by necessity. Like Emerson said, the need for too much consistency is a bugbear for little men.
On the second point, that's a sad fact of neocameralism. It's the hatred of liberal democracy and individualism as such that prompted such a stance. The problem is that the tyrant is only ever an individual, himself, and large systems are rarely better than people or small tribes at adapting to reality. Neocameralism really isn't required for the substance of their critique. Merely removing the things that loosen feedback loops in society is good enough.
Personal reasons?
Curtis Yarvin was married to a woman with chronic illness who passed way this April. She was certainly among the rare people for whom Covid was a very serious health risk. I think we should be judicious in judging someone who is in such a position. I have a son who is celiac and suffers from rare and severe symptoms that at times have made both his and all of our family's lives intensely miserable for certain periods. I have felt personally rage at the sight of a child munching on cookies in a playground, because I know that this is the reason I have to wage a constant propaganda campaign on my son never to put his fingers in his mouth. I know it makes no sense, and I try to fight it, but who knows what kind of crazy policies I might advocate if I had millions of people who shared the same fears.
I hadn’t heard about the loss of his wife. I am certainly sorry for that and understand how it could have clouded his judgment. Sadly, her death—like nearly every death “from” COVID—was likely avoidable had the very BigPharma propagandists whose messaging he has fallen for not 1) smeared and prohibited early treatment protocols; 2) advocated killing treatments like Remdesivir (“Rundeathisnear” or “Remdeathivir,” take your pick) and ventilation/intubation, among other lethal interventions; and 3) discouraged healthy practices like enjoying fresh air and sunshine, exercising, and supplementing with vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, quercetin, etc.
He needs to redirect his acerbic intellect at the Cathedral rather than becoming a cheerleader for their authoritarian policies.
Recognizing a potentially devastating flaw in humanity's response to a personal issue is the first step to dealing with it.
oh, I see. thank you for explaining. he's no doubt going through a lot of emotions as well. I'm sorry about your son -- chronic illnesses are very hard. My mother was ill with various conditions most of the time that I knew her -- that is I never remember her as a healthy, happy person who could take a walk or even leave the house after a while. I only really remember sickness and hospitals. She died in 2007 and the worst thing for me now is the guilt and shame I feel over the profound sense of relief I felt after she died.
This is a valuable perspective. I'm sorry to hear about your son, it looks like your vigilance is very helpful in managing his disease.
Not being in a position of power whilst being a 'neoreactionary' must be a tough pill to swallow.
I second the mouth increasingly agape. Seems like he stopped himself, just short of daily rectal probes administered by the DMV
OMG, we must stop giving them ideas! 😂
How? Fear x $
He lost his wife and touched the mainstream. Simple as.
I was just thinking the same thing. Hopefully Nick Land and the other Dark Enlightenment folks haven't been brewing and drinking their own ultra-containment Kool-Aid during all this isolation and hysteria. I, for one, took the chance to get more physically fit than ever before, read a number of new books, and pick up new skills. Sad day for old Moldbug.
Better part of him died with his wife, the benevolent explanation. Objectively most of his ideas are mix of missintegrative/disintegrative modes of thought that fall apart in contact with reality as they are explained in "The DIM Hypothesis". Great readable guide through modern philosophical swamp
“Supplies are delivered.”
Yes, the delivery drivers produce them by magic on their trucks that are powered by unicorn farts and maintained by pixies. No farmers or supply chain necessary. Or is it that the slaves are disposable?
That anyone would listen to a person with such an infantile view of the world is sad commentary in itself.
passive voice is a sign of rhetorical crime in progress
Reminds me of Clarke's 3rd law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
It seems that a corollary to that is that the more advanced a society becomes, the more detached from reality we become.
It is clear people do not understand how things work.
How a supply chain works, how an electrical grid works, even as obvious as how food is produced, how a vaccine works (or doesn't) might as well be magic.
If the public were properly educated, so that they could tell how these systems work, they wouldn't be so easy to panic, suppress and control.
That's a great argument for the more equal distribution of labor and goods.
Don't be silly, all those "supplies" will be planted, tended and harvested by magical robots using advanced "AI" and "machine learning", and then processed in robotic factories and delivered by autonomous robotic drones and land vehicles - all powered by unicorn farts and maintained by ... uhh... robots. Real soon now. Real soon.
I understand that this will land with a thud for many here--or worse--but this is a truth-telling space, no? None of this surprises me. Yarvin spinning off into the wilds of insanity is typical of any staunch atheist. It's the price one pays for living unmoored from primary reality. It's the reason men like Sartre, who could write "L'Etre et le neant : Essai d'ontologie phenomenologique", did ultimately turn to God after all -- to avoid a fate of stark insanity. Some here understand this. Some will come to understand it. Alas some will suffer a similar fate when their delicately balanced intellectual faculties become suddenly unstable when it is revealed in some Yarvinesque manner that they are ultimately supported by literally nothing.
Nietzsche explained this in 1882.
While I hope and plan to stay sane, productive, happy and "moored to primary reality" without recourse to any sky gods, I enjoyed the tone and frankness of your truth-telling.
"...spinning off into the wilds of insanity is typical of any staunch atheist. It's the price one pays for living unmoored from primary reality."
As a staunch atheist, I find your statement to be oxymoronic.
Of course. I believe your concept of primary reality excludes God, Creation and the Natural Law. But we can still share this truth-telling space.
Very well observed and said.
The only thing better than eugyppius' essays are the threads that follow. Zounds, I blame you all for sending me down rabbit holes of delighted reading instead of rendering onto Caesar. I pop in only to say Steve - for the win. Best truth-telling re: Sky Dad award of the day.
I agree, the lack of religious belief is doing no favors to anyone.
Respectfully, that is something only a religious person would say.
It’s not so much the lack of religious belief. Scientism and wokeness are religions, and they have plenty of believers. Naturism (in the form of nature worship) is another one.
The problem with them all is that the various “supreme values” held by their adherents fail spiritual tests — they don’t lead to the embracing of truth, beauty and goodness as a fundamental way of living; they fail in a true recognition of our spiritual interrelationship (called the “Brotherhood of Man” by Jesus of Nazareth) because they don’t see the reality of the very source of mind, body and spirit and indeed of personal individuality: the Heavenly Father, the Absolute Reality.
Ever get the impression that someone else's paranoia is dictating what you can and can't do?
I initially withheld my usual up vote of eugyppius' excellent articles for this post, not because I disagree with the content, but I prefer to avoid flame wars unless they're imposed on me. But upon reflection, I considered these insults to be like cage fights, which I enjoy -- meaningless conflict but good entertainment. And the combative tone is likely to attract more readers than it discourages. And ridicule can be a powerful weapon. We need all the firepower we can find.
I do suggest that the age discussions are a distraction. There doesn't appear to be anything related to aging that enhances infection, other than time to accumulate bad decisions that diminish immune health. The virus doesn't check IDs, just goes where the immune systems allow it. The greatest scandal in this self-induced disaster has been the failure of the medical guilds to emphasize the importance of, and to teach the maintenance of, healthy immune systems.
"Containment doesn't scale" is correct, but in the case of an airborne virus, it doesn't work even on small scales, unless the isolation is total. Like hermetically sealed. The high risk labs don't isolate, they don space suits. Anything less assures infection. Masks don't prevent contamination, for the wearer or for others. "Distancing" is ludicrous, unless it's to a mountaintop in Wyoming, in which case you'll still get infected by whatever pathogens reside there, including coronaviruses.
The irrational demands are accepted by terrified populations who are ignorant of the virus and their own immunity, and driven by government bureaucrats who know better but are enjoying their temporary control over the terrified population. They will be punished when enough of the population learns how badly they've been misled.
"The greatest scandal in this self-induced disaster has been the failure of the medical guilds to emphasize the importance of, and to teach the maintenance of, healthy immune systems."
First, the medical guilds need to learn *how* to maintain healthy immune systems. Their focus in recent history has mainly been on treatment of symptoms using profitable pharmaceuticals, not helping people to be healthy as a preventive strategy.
As one bit of evidence, I offer the fact that American doctors receive one semester, if that, of training in nutrition. (Leaving aside the fact that what they learn is probably mostly incorrect anyway.)
If they have to learn something, they will. For nutrition, they don't. It's detrimental to their business model of selling us pills and procedures. They're not interested in our health, only our sickness.
California legislature wrote a bill years ago requiring nutrition training in med schools, but AMA cooperated with pharma and junk food lobbyists to kill it.
They don't know how because they choose not to know. Those who are interested might enjoy The 21 Day Immunity Plan. Or my substack (link beside my name, above, look for Zen and the Art of Immune Maintenance in the "see all" archive).
I sincerely hope your last sentence is prescient.
I am not holding my breath... They never really punished anybody for the financial crisis of 2008
As far as I can tell, Covid is primarily a disease of obesity. Peter McCullough early on (before he was banned from everything) noted obesity as a "super risk factor." I suspect that has much to do with the reason it is far less deadly in East Asia. The only fat Asians I have met were born and reared in the US
From all the people I know who got it (over 30) only 2 were overweight. They were both already hospitalized for other causes. Both died. All the others recovered.
Obesity is just one symptom of metabolic dysfunction. This is caused by our crappy modern lifestyle, especially diet. People on the metabolic dysfunction spectrum (obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, and more) are the ones who fare poorly from Covid, in addition to the very sick elderly.
I read somewhere that there are genetic reasons Asians are less susceptible than Europeans, it’s not just age and obesity. Which could lend credence to the “Chinese bio weapon” theory.
I think it's mainly because prior SARS exposure grants some cross-immunity.
Yeah, that would be interesting. I remember reading at Ron Unz that Ashkenzi jews and the Amish (!) are less susceptible. I would be interested to know more.
I know at top doc at a top hospital who said all the people dying of Covid had horrible comorbidities. That was quite some time ago.
“PCR amplification is an epic technology”
Hold on. What if there was some kind of “virus detecting technology” that you could put inside the human body? Like, a “cell technology” that could actually detect a virus, and suppress it before it killed you? Maybe they could even get better at the job the second time around, by using some type of “memory” technology? Someone should work on this. Would be epic.
That's called Natural Immunity..
Our bodies are Awesome!
Surely you know, and actually sound like Bill Gates. Of course he already has this planned & has discussed the technology.
Is this you Bill?
This is just another plan from the evil people to put stuff in you to monitor you better.
This would be better for them
than their digital vaccine passport. Carefu what you wish for.
Do NOT be afraid anymore!!
"a deep, personal fear of infection." -- The primary cause of the mass hysteria is this fear replicated in hundreds of millions of weak minded fools in the West.
"hundreds of millions of weak minded fools" aka normal human beings
I think you touched upon a critical point, is that people like this are ruled by their own fear of infection. I actually extend that belief to all who have descended into psychopathy over the pandemic; the wellspring of their insanity is debilitating fear of getting infected. Fauci is a great example
I'm somewhat ruled by fear of infection. I got the flu in '18 in the middle of a month of -20F daily lows. Living alone. With just 1 dog & 6 birds to care for would have been easy cuz main symptom was exhaustion, weakness. But add in 2 horses & 8 bunnies, & it was a nightmare. Lugging 2 buckets & 4 bottles of hot water plus 2 buckets of hot mash, 3x day, plus cleaning barn & cages. I left the cleaning for daily high of -1, lol. Spent afternoons chilled to bone shivering. Didn't think I'd make it. Then prayed to God to take me now. Dreamed Jesus paid a visit. I begged him to bring me home. He laughed at me.
So what have I done these last 2 years? 1st & foremost: my homework. Know the enemy. Avoid crowds, which is normal. And starting back in September, Z protocol. Not worried.
It is no wonder that those who emerged from the mists of fear first (if ever they were in them), were all of the people on the ground who got infected and came through. The ones who had to work and carry on, regardless. Who didn't have the luxury of sheltering in place. The people in the one-roomed shacks. The ones who got it through chance encounters. These have been forced to become informed, double-quick, as we are the ones who are now being rounded upon to take the shots - and for no good health reasons at all. We are the "alternative escape route" which cannot bear thinking about, so must be eliminated altogether as an option. We have become the pink elephants in the room. And one must never, ever admit to pink elephants.
I was one of the fearful, I admit. But when the spell broke, it was the beginning of the end
Actually, now that I think about it - the single best thing we can do for our fellow man is to help them to stop being afraid. The rest will follow.
Oh, make no mistake - I was one, too, initially. I had, admittedly, always hoped to get it over and done with so I could carry on with my life, as am a firm proponent of battling illness out with my own natural defences, if possible. My short-lived relief and joy in my recovery have now been firmly shattered. My only recourse has been to try and educate myself, as hard and as fast as possible, in order to try and defend myself against those who will harm me. I submitted to the first injection under extreme duress. I will not permit it again.
Amen. Still feeding the animals, I hope.
The yarvin guy is an idiot. Never knew who that was. Dont want to know now.
Apparently he's quite the intellectual, within certain circles.
Glad I didn't kill brain cells in That circle!
His work on political theory and philosophy is undeniably brilliant. He has written plenty of valuable pieces on the illusion of democratic supremacy and the ways in which liberalism feeds off the narrative control of history. But his intelligence seems to stop there.
He's gone down the same route as Scott Adams, Sam Harris, Claire Lehmann, and others who have lost all credibility they may have otherwise had for their inability to make sense of Covid.
>But his intelligence seems to stop there.
intelligence is overrated
He is certainly not an idiot.
He has written a lot of interesting ideas in the past. If his old ideas were totally unique his new stuff would make me question everything he's ever written. Thankfully, they're not.
>Dont want to know now.
That's plain stupid. While you can't completely separate a person from the ideas, to a large extent you can. Also keep in mind that people change with time and life circumstances.
you are welcome to care about what he thinks. I couldn't care less about how you spend your time. You are also welcome to keep your opinions about what I write to your stupid self ;)
Ditto
It took a few paragraphs of reading to get to where Yarvin approves of China. I stopped reading right there. I didn't need any other information to know his true intent.
I applaud your patience in rationally dissecting his drivel. One false assertion after another is not a wise foundation for expressing anything. I tired leaving a comment but it's only for his paid subscribers. He has quite the legion of paid subscribers for pumping out such lazy nonsense.
Perhaps one of his paid subscribers could leave a link in his comments to this piece?
he’ll see it one way or the other.
He might read it, but I'm not sure he'll 'see' it.
You have been mentioned in his comments. Not sure it matters once a mind gets closed.
I have duly done so
There's a deep overlap between OCD and murderous psychopaths. Not entirely the same personality type, but both have a burning need to be the sole occupant of the universe. OCD focuses on exterminating microscopic vermin, while typical psychopaths focus on exterminating large bipedal vermin.
Public health has joined the two tendencies for more than a century. Ibsen depicted the Nazi impulse of Public Health back in 1900, in his play 'An Enemy of Society'.
https://books.google.com/books?id=P2QqAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false
Note that phrase 'whole of society', which appears constantly among the Bioterror practitioners who are running the current cleansing and disinfecting project.
"Why it is a good strategy to remain immunologically naive to a pervasive respiratory virus while the rest of the world develops antibodies, nobody has yet explained." This should be yelled from rooftops. Preferably with littler words. And maybe pictures. Because I am starting to despair that even the experts now only read in pictures and write with crayons.
Oh, how the old and ignorant and afraid have bought into the lie of eradication and containment!
With a cell phone in every paw and delivery trucks to every door, we shall overcome!
But doesn't Sinovac help with that? Surely they don't want to leave their nation vulnerable to germ warfare and other future pandemics any more than we do.
I'm not sure that I understand, Julia?
The technology we have now (that we didn't have in 1889) has made those who pretend to understand it more stupid. Technology is what created SARS-CoV-2 and now it's making it worse. Mr. Yarvin will go down in history (along with many others) as a buffoon.
The buffoon container ship seems to be one that has no trouble getting to the dock.
Great stuff as always. On the topic of Asian corona: are you familiar with the work of The Ethical Skeptic, and specifically his theory on corona circulating in Asia as early as 2018? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Yes, he’s an interesting and original thinker and he’s raised very interesting points.
I think that some kind of cross immunity in the Asia-Pacific is the most likely theory, but it probably wouldn’t have to have been SARS-2 exactly. A similar, less pathogenic betacoronavirus may be all it was. It seems before Fall 2019, nobody can find hard evidence of SARS-2, either in stored sewage samples, or in antibodies.
I think your interesting theory about omicron having been released by a third party, possibly to help us out of this mess, segues nicely into Ethical Skeptics theory about omicron being related only to the grandmother of alpha. Meaning, it did literally come out of nowhere and wasn’t a natural mutation. Independent thinkers will get to the bottom of this eventually!
Someday we will probably have more direct insight into the exact research procedures and programs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It may turn out that more than one SARS-related coronavirus leaked, or that their crazy plans to vaccinate bats with aerosolised vaccine were actually carried out and had unexpected but unrealised consequences- both of which might explain how immunity came to exist in this region of the world.
"Independent thinkers will get to the bottom of this eventually!"
Any thinker, upon hearing that the OhMyGod variant is 'closest related to the original flu' smiled, and said: "Wow, imagine effing that" and ignored it just like the rest of the BS...
If we take ES theory of a 2018 release and a spread pattern like earlier flu waves, evidence of prior circulation would be found in a constrained geographical area (Pacific nations like Japan, South Korea, Singapore etc) and East/Central Africa.
Have such studies actually taken place covering the proposed time frame?
Also, is it known whether samples taken in conjunction with EVALI cases and events like the mystery infection that hit Brescia in 2018 have been tested for possible connections to SARS2?