Covidism and wokeness are one and the same. I'm not entirely sure why, but power, control, and absolute risk avoidance are some things they have in common. Inevitably, the most woke are also the most terrified of covid and the strictest adherents to containment policies. I am not entirely sure of the reason for the link, but it's something I have often pondered.
I have lived in San Francisco for many years and I think much of it has to do with a distorted sense of being an "environmentalist". If one is truly enlightened , one acknowledges how toxic the environment is and so masks etc. become a badge of honor, of being "in the know". Also a heightened sense of one's fragility where for decades it was admonished "no scents no perfumes" in order to attend an event. A mix of a sense of superiority and fragility.
i've been thinking about getting a t-shirt that just has a photo of all the disposable masks in a dump pile floating in the ocean. or something to that effect. something to act as a mirror to those who need the hypocrisy to be put in front of their faces
Somewhere I saw a photo of some sort of seashore bird with the straps of a mask entangled around its neck. This photo should be emblematic of the stupid fake environmentalists who go on and on about plastic straws and bags and how they endanger sea critters. Nope, that was all phony compassion.
Of course most masks are useless .For a mask to be effective against the virus it must have long twisted goat horns on top .Big micky mouse sears may also work .
The environment is just another wedge issue constructed to sow fear and boost their power. None but the dumbest believes the environment is a significant risk. We have always had occasional weather extremes, and all but the dumbest have adapted. Part of the problem is the same Marxists screeching about the weather have also been cultivating dumbness with the failed education system. So, society will continue to degrade, but the weather will continue to be nice.
It's not about the weather. The problem is that bona fide environmentalism (like opposing pollution and cutting power of corporations like Monsanto) was replaced by climate change zombies and related corporate interests. Perhaps, through social engineering.
I think people in San Fransicko are mentally ill, personally (not you of course-lol). I’m a third generation SFer. I won’t step foot in that psych ward. People look different, act differently, it’s just a really BAD vibe.
If you look into those scents, many are poisonous, cancer causing and narcotic (!) giving some users an emotional lift that they need to replicate and increase. The artficial scents in perfumes and laundry stuff is insidious poison.
There are now 'scent boosters' for laundry, for when plain old "Tide" just isn't doing it for your blunted sensorium...
I feel this is a similar bifurcation effect to the very elite who have historically been crafting the institutions and policy. Which is to say: insulation from the reality the rest of us share. Things seem to be fracturing into very insulating echo chambers, and the wokeism/covidism is the most visible at the moment (especially because it is effecting everyone else's lives).
and I would attribute the absolute risk avoidance component to living a very anti-nature lifestyle, which makes all aspects outside the realm of human control tantamount to chaos. This is of course an impossible quest, but self-awareness is not a prominent component to the ideology.
Interesting perspective. There definitely seems to be an idealistic, utopian nature to both ideologies - we can eliminate all inequality, we can eliminate a respiratory virus. Leftists very often seem to be living in fantasy worlds where with enough effort they believe they can overturn reality itself.
Agreed. The most covidian people I know, also seem to be the ones most disconnected from (and fearful of) nature.... even as they espouse "environmentalism". It's been quite disconcerting for me to note the disconnect.... why can't they see it? Fear, insecurity, totally out of touch with their authentic selves... sad.
Centralized global control. The wokesters have embraced Covid because it is about instituting technocratic control. The wokesters love the idea of enforcing that control. They are the equivalent potentially of the students who raged through China in the cultural revolution, deciding who would be purged.
What Eugyppius says is true. Wokism, Covidism all come from the same place, a desire to advocate for marginalized people. The irony is in the end they are very condescending and officious to the very people they claim to help. Images of a white antifa member yelling at a black cop and calling them racist come to mind.
C.S. Lewis spoke of the tyranny of caring, and that enters into the fold as well. Nothing will motivate people more than the fear of dying alongside the belief that they are doing something for the benefit of others, but in truth only further serves their narcissism.
There is a lot of irony here.
The irony of in the name of the marginalized, marginalizing others.
In the name of doing something out of caring for other people, actually doing something that harms and damages them (isolated them and prevents them from seeing one another).
This is absolutely correct. I got run out of a job a couple years ago for objecting to a woke takeover. They did not care that I was one of the supposed "marginalized" people they were supposed to be "helping" (a woman in tech), nor about my explaining to them that my background of trauma made me unable to tolerate being bullied, which is essentially what they were doing. All that mattered is that I didn't conform to their ideology, so: burn the witch.
"Wokism, Covidism all come from the same place, a desire to advocate for marginalized people."
I disagree. The desire to advocate for marginalized people is the pretense - the virtue signaling part. The true desire is to normalize harmful/destructive behavior. This has been a characteristic of the Left for decades. The difference between Wokism and true charity is 1) how you define a victim. In general, someone is a victim if their circumstances are beyond their control. Even if it is within their control, it is recognized that the victim is flawed. Wokesters view victimhood as a type of sanctfication. 2) how the victimization is addressed. Simply put, the Good Samaritan wants to lift the victim up within society, addressing flaws if they are critically damaging (think alcohol or drug addiction), while the Wokester wants society to lower itself to the level of the victim by accepting the victim's circumstances as a "societal norm".
The wokes - and the Establishment - do not want the victims (and "victims") to get out of their lane, and they get either very creative in sabotaging or very violent.
Whether it is a pretense or an actual belief is hard for me to say. I think for some it is a pretense, and others they may believe their motives are pure. I did mention in the context of my comments that these people are often narcissistic and one thing narcissists are good at is self delusion. They see themselves as the protagonist in the movie of their life.
Another problem is that I don't believe they necessarily think what they are doing is harmful or destructive and this comes back to the whole "constrained" and "unconstrained" view of the world.
People with the unconstrained view believe that society can do anything, and that it can be done without any thoughts regarding trade offs or consequences. So, in the case of Covid, all measures must be taken to eradicate the disease. Let's lockdown, mask, isolate, socially distance, hand-wash, and vaccinate this disease out of existence and consequences be damned. Let businesses fold, mental illness and disease fester, and mitigate communication between people and see where that leads. Nevermind the fact that no similar disease has been eradicated. The common cold and flu are expected to come around seasonally, and yet we had the hubris to think we'd beat this one.
In the case of Wokism, all measures must be taken to be the voice for those who have no voice. So representation is much more important than getting the job done effectively. Merit is seen as a vice to these people, and they cannot see the consequences of incompetence because all they care about is a sea of variety of representation in a company photo.
The unconstrained wokist just doesn't realize they are merely supplanting one form of favoritism for another. They have merely imbued new criteria for their favoritism is dependent upon. In the end though, what is true is that a company will hire who they want to hire, and will use whatever means they can to rationalize their choice.
I do agree that those with more noble aspirations towards victims want to raise them up into society. Whereas the Wokester often sees society as the ill that needs to be transformed to accommodate those who have been victimized by it. I do believe that structure needs to be questioned, and the system needs continued examination and at times modified, but all this must be done while keeping in mind human nature, and the knowledge that even the most noble intentions will run into the limitation of human nature, and that is both good and bad.
I agree with most of what you said, but I still think it's a pretense and not an actual belief, at least not one that can withstand scrutiny. In these cases the "actual belief" is just positive emotions. "I do it because it makes me feel good about myself". This is emotion mislabeled as virtue. Real virtue is not easy. It takes work and sacrifice, and one does not usually recieve instant emotional gratification. Sadly, few know the difference these days.
The unconstrained view of society is of course a false one. You said this yourself, society being constrained by human nature. We can never create a society that overcomes the failings of human nature, unless we are ruled over by some form of non-human. Even then, our human nature would not allow us to live up to these non-human standards. The best we can do is create a society that recognizes human nature and makes allowances for it. Anything beyond this is doomed to ultimate failure.
I think a great many impulses we have that are altruistic in nature ultimately make us feel good about ourselves. If we let somebody into our lane while driving, open the door for someone, give a big tip, offer to help someone with their groceries, help a handicapped person enter a building, the list goes on. The great thing about doing the right thing is it feels right. It is also very easy to accomplish when it doesn't cost nearly as much.
And then there are the virtue signallers. I think it is better, for instance, to not do the self congratulatory thing of publishing and sharing our "virtue" like those people that had the Facebook badges about how they vaccinated or how they were part of the "stay home/stay safe" crew. It's like wearing a BLM t-shirt, or wearing a mask...all these are great virtue signallers.
But I feel good when I do things that I think are good. I also feel good about things that delay gratification, which I admit I am not all that great at doing. As of late I have felt good about things that I didn't think that I was all that good at, and so, regardless of the ultimate consequences of my actions, I still see a net gain emotionally and mentally from doing great things, especially hard ones that involve sacrifice.
I know people are pretentious. That they are waiting to feign care, when in reality they hope to revel in the misery of those who don't comply. Think of all those who loved hearing about it when someone who spoke against Covid got Covid. They felt even better when that person was hospitalized...and probably threw a party if they died. They also enjoyed secretly the stories of those who died of Covid without any comorbidities and who were in their 30's or 40's. It was all good times for them. But show me an outlier who got Covid and experienced difficulties and I will show you an outlier who had comorbidities and did not experience severe symptoms from the disease.
It's nice to feel good about doing good. This is natural if your value system is properly developed. Notice that in all of your examples you sacrificed something for someone else's benefit, such as giving up your place in line. The virtue signaller makes no such sacrifice. A person who believes getting a Covid shot is virtuous doesn't believe they are making a sacrifice. Their virtue comes at YOUR expense. If everyone got the shot, there would be no virtue in it for them. How would they claim moral superiority? This is one reason why these types of people go to extremes. If wearing a mask and getting vaxxed is virtuous, then double masking at all times, and getting four Moderna shots must be extremely virtuous, since very few would go so far.
This secret delight in other people's misery (schadenfreude) is driven by insecurity and doubt about moral choices. If your value syatem is skewed or is subject to inner conflicts, your moral choice drives a need for external reinforcement. This is the same kind of reinforcement that Narcissists need to support the fake self, except in this case it's the "fake vitue" that needs support.
The common thread is collectivism, ideology that prioritizes the group over the individual. Covidism is clearly a demand or hunger for collectivism. Wokeness is the formation of the doctrine of the collective, the secular "church". I suspect collectivism is the "spirit of the church", corrupted of course.
"Woke" is a canard. It's not real. It represents a philosophy of conformity. The popular philosophy is currently to defeat their opposition by forcing adoption of bizarre ideas, producing dissonance and confusion, thus facilitating their victory. The aggressors aren't terrified of covid (some of the really dumb ones might be), but they're terrified of those who disagree they should be terrified. The masks and vax are just badges of their loyalty to their cause.
Fear is entirely in the mind. Seems real to the fearful, but can't be observed or measured or cured, except by the mind. The reactions to fear are real, but the fear itself is imaginary. The important consideration is fear results from ignorance. Learning about that which we fear turns panic into constructive action.
> "Woke" is a canard. It's not real. It represents a philosophy of conformity.
The majority of people are always and everywhere conformists. That is not interesting. What's interesting is what they're conforming to, and why those particular ideas.
Yep, most just follow the crowd. Somebody comes up with the next insane idea, posts it to twit, and it takes off. Shut down twit and most of it would stop.
While the statements themselves are canards, it is real. just as the fiction and stories written about Santa Claus are real while Santa as a person is not real.
Reality is not entirely defined by our perceptions. Regardless if I can see or not, when it is night, it is night.
The man in the mall that says he is Santa, is not Santa. But the reality of someone dressed as Santa is true.
There were many people walking around living under the false assumption that the world was flat or that it was the center of the universe. Neither of these ideas were true, but the ideas did exist.
If you believe it, it's true -- for you. Many people are over confident about their beliefs. When the they change those beliefs, as often happens, they become just as zealous of their new beliefs. When they encounter people just as zealous of contrary beliefs, conflict ensues. Good entertainment for non zealots.
That just is not true. I can believe today and twice on Sundays that I can fly like Superman, but if I act on that belief I am about to be learn the truth. I can believe that the world is flat, and a plane ride around the globe will show the reality of it. It just is not true. This whole idea of "living my truth." is predicated on a false notion, that to believe something makes it true. I can believe all day that I am a woman, but my chromosomes reveal the reality. I am a man. It is empirical, not theoretical.
What I see, is that you are mistaking real and true. Something can be real without being true. For instance, there is a man dressed as Santa...that is real, but he is not Santa. He can believe he is Santa, but that would be false.
The philosophy of wokism is real, but it too is false.
I think it's as simple as the desire to be part of a group. The reasons for the group existing don't have to make any sense; they can even be contradictory. Just the security of being part of the group is needed. It gives them purpose while relieving them of the need to think.
But it's not just any group. They despise groups of badwhites and football fans. It's a certain type of amour propre-driven, Guardian- (or New York Times or Süddeutsche Zeitung) reading, latte-sipping group they like.
The link is the WEF. Biden, France's Macron, Canada's Trudeau - all attendees. CA Gov. Newsom is a 2005 Graduate of their "leader" program. A peek at the WEF web pages will prove they are pushing the following: LGBTQ, LGBTQ training for children, CRT, digital currency, "green" meaning it's a climate "crisis" (Klaus Schwab's term), numbered chips to be inserted into humans to control our behavior, racial division, dividing people by party affiliation, dismantling the family. Everything "wrong" with the United States is all there.
As for the "chips" to be implanted in us - Schwab's advisor, Yuval Noah Harari is a proponent of this. He's Jewish, yet he seems to think it's acceptable for a numbered chip to be implanted in someone "for their health" and apparently, doesn't think it's anything like numbered tattoos or colored stars in Nazi Germany. His videos have been posted on Rumble. Of course, they are also on YT.
Our Congress, sadly, is comprised of people who value power and control and money over us. Vote them all OUT unless they are "America first" or your "State first." This corruption is at all levels of government in California. Could very well be your State, also. This "Covid" was the key, if you will, to start the engine to implement Socialism world-wide. ALL countries are at one stage or another over this. Find "EU Roadmap" on a non-Google search engine.
Whistleblowers were posting about this 2 years ago, on Rumble. At first, I thought it was people who needed to wear tinfoil hats. It isn't.
You can't really blame WEF. They can't force anyone. Zero power. The problem is the people who do have power who follow their suggestions. They were despots before, just found kindred spirits to reinforce them. It's long been said, all politics is local. If you're being abused, it's much closer to home.
It's all levels of government, especially in California. These ideas weren't in our politicians heads if it weren't for the WEF, though. Starting with Kissinger and Klaus Schwab being BFFs.
Despotism is innate human behavior. They don't need WEF to motivate them, just a compliant population. We're voluntary victims. Klaus can't make us submit. Joe can't make us submit. It's entirely up to us to submit to WEF or not. So far, we're eager to submit.
It is because the lust for power is found mainly in parasites, who are the most frightened by reality and the most in need of controlling the productive.
Most seculars prefer not to think about the inevitability of their deaths. When something happens that forces them to think about the possibility of their deaths, it causes them extreme emotional pain and so they grasp for anything that lets them stop thinking about it.
Okay, that's hysterical. Full disclosure: the last time I wore make-up was something like a decade ago for some job interview. I don't even own any. I don't need any excuses: I don't want to wear make-up, and so I don't wear make-up, no masks required. :-)
Irene since the PLANdemic started, I haven’t worn makeup in about three years. On my walk the other day, I actually pondered that-lol! I think about what a “Barbie” I was just a decade ago! I wear no makeup now (I’m 59). I don’t miss it one bit! And it’s very liberating, to say the least. Here’s a great makeup tip! SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! The world needs more of them. (No one in leftist areas smile, and I’m in one.)
The Japanese have always worn masks when they are sick, outside and inside, and people I know there with pollen allergies also wear a mask during pollen season.
During the cold season as in winter ,large numbers of people have a runny nose. That is also the time when our masters insist we wear masks .'' snot pouches'''. I notice some masks seam to have extra space for the run off from the nose ,like a bulge .I surmise that often when the pouch gets full ,it gets dumped out in a washroom and than back on the face again .
This might explain Hollywood's behavior. They get heaps of adulation and attention, but I think realize they don't provide much value to the average person. So they take up political or charitable causes. I have often said if you have a rare disease it will get more attention and eventually money if a famous person is inflicted with that same disease.
Narcissists in general understand that thier actions are performance art. The real problems start when the performance art is mistaken for reality. There is always the temptation during times of great stress for the liars to believe their own lies. At this point the mask must NEVER come off, no matter what illogical and destructive actions result. Think of all the trans people who will not rest until all of us are trans, just so that they will never have to face their own insecurity.
One thing you don't mention is the idea put forward that masking has zero cost. If you genuinely believe this then it does follow that some degree of masking always make sense even if there is only a tiny chance of some benefit.
To defeat ideas like this I think people need to be convinced that there is a cost to masking and that it is not trivial. This at least opens the door to conversations about effectiveness. If you persist with the idea of zero cost then effectiveness is almost irrelevant.
But masks do not have "zero cost", that's impossible to believe.
Apart from the obvious developmental costs for children, what I find most ironic is that the maskers tend to be the same environmental extremists who believe that using a plastic bag is a cardinal sin worthy of instant pariahdom, while each mask they throw away has something like 70 times the environmental “cost” of a plastic bag -- 10 times the weight and (at least according to what I have read) seven times longer to decompose.
Unfortunately it is possible to believe for many people who have written it down or I have heard say it. And absolutely agree on the irony regarding environmental issues around masks, one of a great many in the thinking of people during the last two and a half years.
There is always a cost. At the very least there is opportunity cost.
A podcaster once spoke about this idea of "it's only a small ask" to wear a mask. But he mentioned that there are a lot of things in life that cost nothing. Like any time you encounter a fire hydrant, you circle around it three times and continue walking. Or you hold a banana up to your ear to keep the alligators away. All these things don't cost much, but they do add up.
Masks even more so.
I was on an Uber ride the other day, and the driver had a lucite divider between the back and front seat and wore a mask. I decided to start off with small talk about the weather, then I went into an old bit about how it would be great to have a job where you could be wrong 50% of the time as weatherman do. The witty banter encountered the obstacle of the barrier and mask, I could barely hear him.
The cost of this is immeasurable. The reason being is so much between us is gained by communication. Think of those great times in your life. Someone says something complimentary and you are on Cloud Nine. A smile at the right moment can bring light to an otherwise gloomy moment. I wax poetic some, but it is true. An this is the cost of wearing a mask, and one of many costs.
YOU MADE THE PERFECT POINT! That’s exactly what people are missing and they don’t even realize it. I DO! I ignore people with masks on. Their mask tells me all I need to know about them as people. Sorry...not after 3 years! Just leave the children ALONE!
Masking or not masking is another means to divide the people .As for me I want nothing to do with certified retards and I want to be separate from them ,but that is often not possible ,as in interactions in office settings .Hospitals seem to be the worst ,forcing masking .I know masks are harmful ,but the ones doing so called ''health ''care don't know that ?
My kid's school (private, Christian) started a new policy this year; anyone wearing a mask in class must pull it down below their chin when speaking. Exceptions require a note from a doctor or psychologist explaining why covering one's mouth at all times is medically required. It's a great idea.
Probably fewer that 20% of the kids wear masks anyways despite the fact we're in Los Angeles County. That being said, the principal is fed up and can see the harm being caused to these kids. He's pushing back and making clear the "no questions asked" approach regarding masking is over.
I'm 86 and did not much dating lately,but I do wonder how the young manage to make dating a success wearing masks ,or wearing masks on their honey moon .?As a true virus cultist ,these rules must be observed or you are a fake cultist .
As a 58 year old widow, I have no idea where to start looking for an unvaxxed man who isn't swayed by this cult. This has effed up dating for everyone.
I took a class once on de-escalation. At the end of the course, the instructor invited a student up to the front to play a game of tic-tac-toe on the board. Every time the student tried to engage in the game, the instructor cheated. He’d fill in all the squares with X or O, he’d take the student’s turn or erase their markings. His point was that the student will never win the game because he always cheats them out of it. The only way to win is to not play. That exercise has always stuck with me.
This isn't unique to COVID, it's a fundamental part of the defective understanding of reality that drives leftism in general. The book "Conflict of Visions" does a great job of neutrally describing the underlying assumptions that drive ideology. Eugyppius should read it, he'd find it fascinating I'm sure.
The book describes a tension between two competing "visions", the "constrained" and the "unconstrained". The author defines his own terminology and doesn't really talk about left vs right because those terms have become polluted and confused.
There's a lot to his theory, but tl;dr - people with the constrained vision tend to think in terms of tradeoffs and view human nature as fundamentally flawed yet consistent. We are all limited, can only perceive tiny fractions of reality, and are all subject to vices and other flaws at around the same rate. People with the unconstrained vision on the other hand believe the span of human nature is very wide. There is a big difference between the best of us and the worst of us. People with the unconstrained vision tend to think in terms of solutions, and despise tradeoffs. They elevate (perceived) intellectuals because, they think, these people are high up on the spectrum of human nature and can use their superior wisdom to achieve solutions where lesser beings might be tempted to settle for a mere compromise.
This pattern crops up everywhere, both centuries ago and today. Masks: a solution, not a tradeoff. Lockdowns: a solution, not a tradeoff. Vaccines: the same. Wind energy: same. Communism: a solution to poverty without tradeoffs. Etc. What all these things have in common is they are simple, easy to understand ideas that claim to completely solve their target problem with no downsides, and they are all enthusiastically adopted by those of the unconstrained vision (who are usually found on the left).
The problem of course is that this is child-like thinking. There are always downsides. The reason public health people come across as deranged is that public health is more or less a constant stream of trolly problems representing tradeoffs in which some may die so others may live. But public health is a form of collectivism that only appeals to the left, so they ideologically can't accept that solutions don't exist, only tradeoffs do. Thus they must pretend that whatever policy they advocate has zero costs, because that converts it into a solution.
Ultimately there's no fix for this except the total abolition of public health as a concept, along with releasing all the people in it into the private sector.
Thomas Sewell is such a clear thinker, writer and speaker. An additional factor is that those of the unconstrained vision are convinced that their way is the morally right way and so even if there IS a huge cost, it doesn't matter because it's the what 'good' would people want and should do. If you don't agree you are not just wrong but an evil person for wanting to kill granny etc. The Labour Party (In power in NZ) are a perfect example of this. They are currently ramming through huge changes in health, education and how business can run with shambolic results but they only care when their polls go down. They are always right and the opposition is always wrong.
I agree; people need to understand the costs. I’ve tried that locally though and am just ignored. It’s another of the “belief” systems that might be hard to stop.
Yeah. I think the people who love masks actually hate other people and would love to never be “exposed” to them. That’s why arguments about societal happiness and communication and relationships go nowhere with them: they hate society and people and relationships.
The "costs of masking" question is difficult to answer in a straightforward way. Obviously everything has a cost, what is it? I think in the case of masks, it's that you are granting the myriad hidden premises latent in the idea that we ought to mask, premises which work their way through our thinking over time and work to collectively push our thinking in a certain direction.
One specific premise is that covid is such a serious threat to our health (to our civilization!) that masking is rational. But this is not the case, and refusing to wear a mask is to refuse to grant that covid is the threat it's made out to be.
Put differently, I agree that there is a cost to masking, but it is not a narrow "bodily health" cost that can be compared apples-to-apples with the "threat" of covid. The costs are many but diffuse and not easy to articulate.
I think everyone who believes this should have a filter applied to all their streaming services so every character in everything they watch is always wearing a mask.
Watching Terminator 2? Arnold walks into the bar, scanning all the bikers and waitresses, who of course are masked, when he finds his .999 match he utters the iconic phrase
"I need your clothes, your boots, your mask, and your motorcycle".
Absolutely. The reason I don't wear a mask is because I don't want to wear a mask, period. The issue of vaccines may be argued around cost/benefit analysis - one of the universities here in Ontatio, Canada just had a mass student demonstration because of booster requirements, and many of the students ( a lot of whom were apparently already double vaxxed) didn't see the benefit of getting one. But with masking, I think it is really is more of a symbolic, visible, dominance / submission dynamic. It doesn't need to be debated, simply ignored and resisted.
Absolutely agree. The most fundamental response is simply noncompliance and mockery at the individual level (which is what I have practiced myself last winter). But if you hold any hope of rational discourse and persuasion at the policy-level (and it may be a vain hope), then emphasising the costs is important.
I spoke with a lady recently who was supposedly sick with "covid". She told me she had two shots, two boosters, wears her mask religiously and disinfects everything all the time. I wasn't surprised by what she told me, or the fact that she was ill, what surprised me is when she said she's been spending a lot of time trying to narrow down exactly "where or who she "caught " the "virus " from. I was awestruck. These people's brains have been changed or something over the last couple of years. I don't ever remember a time when people with a cold went about trying to figure out how they got the cold. I was unable to say what I wanted to say to this lady because of the nature of my business but what I desperately wanted to ask was, "wouldn't your time be better spent finding out why all of the things you did to supposedly keep from getting sick didn't work????"
the "othering" effect has been profound. this really feels like a priming to turn all the division into a purging. i really hope that's not an underlying goal for all this fuckery.
Early on the media did their best to make people feel genuinely guilty for catching covid. It was evidence you weren't locking down hard enough or perhaps you weren't wearing your two masks like our covid priests recommended. Even when people realized the shots didn't prevent infection like promised, they still added "well were you vaxxed?" to the mix.
I would bet that lady has some lingering damage from that psyop campaign, and she was just trying to make sure you don't think she's a bad person for catching it. They deserve pity more than anything else.
One of my coworkers, who has contact with customers in homes for sales and installation came down with covid then got jumped on by a number of his customers for 'having given it to them'. I was like WTF people, we all live in the same area, shop at the same stores, etc, how could you know if you got it from him or the lady in line in front of you at Costco last week? There is a total search for 'typhoid marys' to accuse and scapegoat here.
I picked up my son from Berkeley High yesterday after school. It’s 80% masked. My hypothesis is the only unmasked kids are the unvaccinated from covid. If the school district here implements the flu shot policy we are leaving the district that day.
If I go to any coffee shop in town right now it will be 80-90% masked for those in line and 100% unmasked for those sitting at tables. It is impossibly stupid here. I am living in an open air asylum.
Dan,f you keep going there you may lose your sanity .Too bad I did not hear much about the monkey boxers having to wear diapers outside their pants ,as a first defense ,besides the mandatory rubber plug in the but under the pants .ANY NEWS??
funny story about that! Berkeley had a handful of the monkey pox vaccine. They were distributing them at a gay bath house here in town. The gay bath house go the brilliant idea that they could take the "free" vaccines and help increase their membership by allowing new members to cut the line creating a "Monkeypox vaccine with new gay bath house membership" promotion. This was reported as a rumor, but I have confirmed it to be true. It is a Babylon Bee article. Actually, most of Berkeley news could be a Babylon Bee article.
I think Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance explains a lot of this. In his original study, his team infiltrated a UFO doom group who thought the world would end sometime in 1954. It didn't, so they concocted a narrative that the world had been saved by their ardent prayers and general awesomeness. Importantly, prior to the non-event of the world ending, they were a private and somewhat furtive group, but when the world didn't end they began to proselytise. Festinger explained this as them seeking social approval for their beliefs to relieve the discomfort of the dissonance, and this is where the forever mandates come in, I think. By insisting on them, the adherents of this barking-mad practice guarantee that there will be at least the appearance of social support from their coevals. This helps them to relieve the cognitive dissonance they feel by all of the evidence showing that their facemasks don't work. It's either that or because they are all ugly as trolls.
The flu vax does not prevent transmission, and in fact there is some data to indicate that transmission is higher for people who have received the vax. The same is true of the COVID vaxes. This vitiates any justification that the University might have had for their decision.
So theoretically I can be walking around campus healthy, without symptoms of any respiratory illness and because I'm not vaxxed and maskless I get kicked out of school? And if I've had the flu shot but have a fever, and coughing I'm good to go without masking because I've had my shot?
Argos, you walk around confused outside a place of science and don't know ? If possible get yourself the Bill Gates Manifest about eugenics .You will learn that health is the enemy and sickness is the final solution with shots .
Containment is almost ideal as the basis for a crackpot ideology. There's nothing to be said in favour of it. It's useless, burdensome, cruel and stupid. The believers are trapped by that. They've committed to the indefensible, with perfect midwit stubbornness. Now they can't back away—unless they're willing to lose social standing, friends, jobs, etc. Cults work on the same basis, as do gangs.
If these draconian, scientifically baseless mandates happened to Berkeley during the 60's, the campus would have been fire bombed. Where are the rebels? Taking gender studies classes?
Not just a deep ideological commitment, but a deep seated psychological commitment. Even now I daily observe mostly young, mostly men, walking alone down deserted suburban sidewalks with masks on. It is beyond me what the goal is. I think the pandemicists have managed to utterly break the people in our society who are the most psychologically vulnerable.
I am wondering if enough students left Berkeley to attend other universities, would Berkeley magically change the mask policy? Nothing grabs people’s attention like the withdrawal of funding. So many universities in the USA. Why waste time at one so obviously ill informed about public health measures and the complete and utter failure of masks to prevent transmission of a scariant. What else are they I’ll informed about? This is just one obvious concern.
It's all part of forcing conformity to an ideology. Students and professors already are forced to conform to wokeness in order to retain their jobs and graduate, this is just one more layer of the nasty cake.
Where would they go? Harvard and MIT require all students to get flu shots. You cannot avoid them even if you wear a mask. Berkeley's policy is, believe it or not, less restrictive.
That's three among thousands. It's too small to establish if this is a trend among universities, and even if it was, it is doubtful that it afflicts every single one of them.
None of the people saying "It's common courtesy to wear a mask, why are you so selfish?" were forced to wear it all day every day for a year and a half, do manual labor in a mask, then get done with work and go to the gym in a mask. They didn't experience first-hand the idiocy of eating lunch bare-faced with work colleagues before dutifully masking up to protect the same colleagues. Beyond the discomfort of wearing one, they don't understand how depressing it is to see everyone else in a face diaper, a constant and never-ending reminder of fear and compliance.
That’s EXACTLY how I feel! I’m so SICK of looking at these masked idiots after three years! I honestly thought people as a whole, were more intelligent. What does this say for other aspects of life? I’ve come to the conclusion, I don’t want to be around these kind of people. They’re dangerous.
It does appear that repeated vaccination for the flu - furthermore- reduces it's efficacy even further... I think Ethical Skeptic has a chart somewhere showing that since the advent of the flu shot, flu cases have soared higher than ever before...
These evil creatures really are focusing on all education. Their purpose is obviously control and brainwashing at a very young age. This is undercover video of an assistant Principal in my town- he openly discriminates against conservatives, Catholics and people over 30. Openly discusses how he needs to have the young teachers malleable to his views.
The long march through the institutions has succeeded in infesting them at all levels with mindless zombie drones perpetrating these ideologies. I can basically no longer get a job in my field because all companies force compliance to DEI, which has nothing to do with work and everything to do with perpetrating a marxist agenda that they have come to believe makes them good people if it is their mission.
I read the UCB page you pointed at, and followed a link to a FAQ on masks. It appears from what's said there that the "requirements" aren't actually *required*.
It's as if there's a policy for enunciating to a fearful subset of the public, and another one that recognizes reality. Which I guess is at least partly encouraging.
what I get from the faq page, is that profs can’t impose their own classroom-exclusive mask mandates, but they can enforce broader campus-wide mask mandates. but, they also can’t check vaccination credentials, so they could theoretically compel unvaxxed students to mask, but they have no way of determining the students are unvaccinated.
Yes, the key word there is "theoretically." If I say I'm vaxed, then given these rules, I'm indistinguishable from a vaxed person. Except that I'm less likely to be sick, but who's being catty?
Covidism and wokeness are one and the same. I'm not entirely sure why, but power, control, and absolute risk avoidance are some things they have in common. Inevitably, the most woke are also the most terrified of covid and the strictest adherents to containment policies. I am not entirely sure of the reason for the link, but it's something I have often pondered.
I have lived in San Francisco for many years and I think much of it has to do with a distorted sense of being an "environmentalist". If one is truly enlightened , one acknowledges how toxic the environment is and so masks etc. become a badge of honor, of being "in the know". Also a heightened sense of one's fragility where for decades it was admonished "no scents no perfumes" in order to attend an event. A mix of a sense of superiority and fragility.
i've been thinking about getting a t-shirt that just has a photo of all the disposable masks in a dump pile floating in the ocean. or something to that effect. something to act as a mirror to those who need the hypocrisy to be put in front of their faces
Owl-eyed App., if you had that shirt made I would buy several. No words, just the image!
gotta find that perfect image ... i know it must exist ...
if i do find one, i'll set it up online for sale at cost ;)
make sure the photo isn't copyrighted, or just take your own
Will your shirt have the toxic blue masks or the True-Believer black masks, or a medley?
How about a seabird with a discarded mask wrapped and twisted around its neck and legs.
Somewhere I saw a photo of some sort of seashore bird with the straps of a mask entangled around its neck. This photo should be emblematic of the stupid fake environmentalists who go on and on about plastic straws and bags and how they endanger sea critters. Nope, that was all phony compassion.
I knew there would be one, the damn things are ubiquitous.
Show some dead dolphins on top of the pile.
Or a dolphin underneath, saying “I can’t breathe!”
Great idea!
if i am ever in a situation where i'll be required to wear one on a regular basis, i want something akin to this:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/mask/Underwear-can-t-stop-a-fart-and-you-think-a-mask-works-by-Goshat/53882685.9G0D8
Of course most masks are useless .For a mask to be effective against the virus it must have long twisted goat horns on top .Big micky mouse sears may also work .
I always recommend people augment their mask with a bulb of garlic and a crucifix
The environment is just another wedge issue constructed to sow fear and boost their power. None but the dumbest believes the environment is a significant risk. We have always had occasional weather extremes, and all but the dumbest have adapted. Part of the problem is the same Marxists screeching about the weather have also been cultivating dumbness with the failed education system. So, society will continue to degrade, but the weather will continue to be nice.
It's not about the weather. The problem is that bona fide environmentalism (like opposing pollution and cutting power of corporations like Monsanto) was replaced by climate change zombies and related corporate interests. Perhaps, through social engineering.
Virtue signaling
I think people in San Fransicko are mentally ill, personally (not you of course-lol). I’m a third generation SFer. I won’t step foot in that psych ward. People look different, act differently, it’s just a really BAD vibe.
I will NEVER go to SF again.
If you look into those scents, many are poisonous, cancer causing and narcotic (!) giving some users an emotional lift that they need to replicate and increase. The artficial scents in perfumes and laundry stuff is insidious poison.
There are now 'scent boosters' for laundry, for when plain old "Tide" just isn't doing it for your blunted sensorium...
I feel this is a similar bifurcation effect to the very elite who have historically been crafting the institutions and policy. Which is to say: insulation from the reality the rest of us share. Things seem to be fracturing into very insulating echo chambers, and the wokeism/covidism is the most visible at the moment (especially because it is effecting everyone else's lives).
and I would attribute the absolute risk avoidance component to living a very anti-nature lifestyle, which makes all aspects outside the realm of human control tantamount to chaos. This is of course an impossible quest, but self-awareness is not a prominent component to the ideology.
Interesting perspective. There definitely seems to be an idealistic, utopian nature to both ideologies - we can eliminate all inequality, we can eliminate a respiratory virus. Leftists very often seem to be living in fantasy worlds where with enough effort they believe they can overturn reality itself.
Agreed. The most covidian people I know, also seem to be the ones most disconnected from (and fearful of) nature.... even as they espouse "environmentalism". It's been quite disconcerting for me to note the disconnect.... why can't they see it? Fear, insecurity, totally out of touch with their authentic selves... sad.
Centralized global control. The wokesters have embraced Covid because it is about instituting technocratic control. The wokesters love the idea of enforcing that control. They are the equivalent potentially of the students who raged through China in the cultural revolution, deciding who would be purged.
What Eugyppius says is true. Wokism, Covidism all come from the same place, a desire to advocate for marginalized people. The irony is in the end they are very condescending and officious to the very people they claim to help. Images of a white antifa member yelling at a black cop and calling them racist come to mind.
C.S. Lewis spoke of the tyranny of caring, and that enters into the fold as well. Nothing will motivate people more than the fear of dying alongside the belief that they are doing something for the benefit of others, but in truth only further serves their narcissism.
There is a lot of irony here.
The irony of in the name of the marginalized, marginalizing others.
In the name of doing something out of caring for other people, actually doing something that harms and damages them (isolated them and prevents them from seeing one another).
This is absolutely correct. I got run out of a job a couple years ago for objecting to a woke takeover. They did not care that I was one of the supposed "marginalized" people they were supposed to be "helping" (a woman in tech), nor about my explaining to them that my background of trauma made me unable to tolerate being bullied, which is essentially what they were doing. All that mattered is that I didn't conform to their ideology, so: burn the witch.
"Wokism, Covidism all come from the same place, a desire to advocate for marginalized people."
I disagree. The desire to advocate for marginalized people is the pretense - the virtue signaling part. The true desire is to normalize harmful/destructive behavior. This has been a characteristic of the Left for decades. The difference between Wokism and true charity is 1) how you define a victim. In general, someone is a victim if their circumstances are beyond their control. Even if it is within their control, it is recognized that the victim is flawed. Wokesters view victimhood as a type of sanctfication. 2) how the victimization is addressed. Simply put, the Good Samaritan wants to lift the victim up within society, addressing flaws if they are critically damaging (think alcohol or drug addiction), while the Wokester wants society to lower itself to the level of the victim by accepting the victim's circumstances as a "societal norm".
Hmmm
The wokes - and the Establishment - do not want the victims (and "victims") to get out of their lane, and they get either very creative in sabotaging or very violent.
Whether it is a pretense or an actual belief is hard for me to say. I think for some it is a pretense, and others they may believe their motives are pure. I did mention in the context of my comments that these people are often narcissistic and one thing narcissists are good at is self delusion. They see themselves as the protagonist in the movie of their life.
Another problem is that I don't believe they necessarily think what they are doing is harmful or destructive and this comes back to the whole "constrained" and "unconstrained" view of the world.
People with the unconstrained view believe that society can do anything, and that it can be done without any thoughts regarding trade offs or consequences. So, in the case of Covid, all measures must be taken to eradicate the disease. Let's lockdown, mask, isolate, socially distance, hand-wash, and vaccinate this disease out of existence and consequences be damned. Let businesses fold, mental illness and disease fester, and mitigate communication between people and see where that leads. Nevermind the fact that no similar disease has been eradicated. The common cold and flu are expected to come around seasonally, and yet we had the hubris to think we'd beat this one.
In the case of Wokism, all measures must be taken to be the voice for those who have no voice. So representation is much more important than getting the job done effectively. Merit is seen as a vice to these people, and they cannot see the consequences of incompetence because all they care about is a sea of variety of representation in a company photo.
The unconstrained wokist just doesn't realize they are merely supplanting one form of favoritism for another. They have merely imbued new criteria for their favoritism is dependent upon. In the end though, what is true is that a company will hire who they want to hire, and will use whatever means they can to rationalize their choice.
I do agree that those with more noble aspirations towards victims want to raise them up into society. Whereas the Wokester often sees society as the ill that needs to be transformed to accommodate those who have been victimized by it. I do believe that structure needs to be questioned, and the system needs continued examination and at times modified, but all this must be done while keeping in mind human nature, and the knowledge that even the most noble intentions will run into the limitation of human nature, and that is both good and bad.
I agree with most of what you said, but I still think it's a pretense and not an actual belief, at least not one that can withstand scrutiny. In these cases the "actual belief" is just positive emotions. "I do it because it makes me feel good about myself". This is emotion mislabeled as virtue. Real virtue is not easy. It takes work and sacrifice, and one does not usually recieve instant emotional gratification. Sadly, few know the difference these days.
The unconstrained view of society is of course a false one. You said this yourself, society being constrained by human nature. We can never create a society that overcomes the failings of human nature, unless we are ruled over by some form of non-human. Even then, our human nature would not allow us to live up to these non-human standards. The best we can do is create a society that recognizes human nature and makes allowances for it. Anything beyond this is doomed to ultimate failure.
I think a great many impulses we have that are altruistic in nature ultimately make us feel good about ourselves. If we let somebody into our lane while driving, open the door for someone, give a big tip, offer to help someone with their groceries, help a handicapped person enter a building, the list goes on. The great thing about doing the right thing is it feels right. It is also very easy to accomplish when it doesn't cost nearly as much.
And then there are the virtue signallers. I think it is better, for instance, to not do the self congratulatory thing of publishing and sharing our "virtue" like those people that had the Facebook badges about how they vaccinated or how they were part of the "stay home/stay safe" crew. It's like wearing a BLM t-shirt, or wearing a mask...all these are great virtue signallers.
But I feel good when I do things that I think are good. I also feel good about things that delay gratification, which I admit I am not all that great at doing. As of late I have felt good about things that I didn't think that I was all that good at, and so, regardless of the ultimate consequences of my actions, I still see a net gain emotionally and mentally from doing great things, especially hard ones that involve sacrifice.
I know people are pretentious. That they are waiting to feign care, when in reality they hope to revel in the misery of those who don't comply. Think of all those who loved hearing about it when someone who spoke against Covid got Covid. They felt even better when that person was hospitalized...and probably threw a party if they died. They also enjoyed secretly the stories of those who died of Covid without any comorbidities and who were in their 30's or 40's. It was all good times for them. But show me an outlier who got Covid and experienced difficulties and I will show you an outlier who had comorbidities and did not experience severe symptoms from the disease.
It's nice to feel good about doing good. This is natural if your value system is properly developed. Notice that in all of your examples you sacrificed something for someone else's benefit, such as giving up your place in line. The virtue signaller makes no such sacrifice. A person who believes getting a Covid shot is virtuous doesn't believe they are making a sacrifice. Their virtue comes at YOUR expense. If everyone got the shot, there would be no virtue in it for them. How would they claim moral superiority? This is one reason why these types of people go to extremes. If wearing a mask and getting vaxxed is virtuous, then double masking at all times, and getting four Moderna shots must be extremely virtuous, since very few would go so far.
This secret delight in other people's misery (schadenfreude) is driven by insecurity and doubt about moral choices. If your value syatem is skewed or is subject to inner conflicts, your moral choice drives a need for external reinforcement. This is the same kind of reinforcement that Narcissists need to support the fake self, except in this case it's the "fake vitue" that needs support.
The common thread is collectivism, ideology that prioritizes the group over the individual. Covidism is clearly a demand or hunger for collectivism. Wokeness is the formation of the doctrine of the collective, the secular "church". I suspect collectivism is the "spirit of the church", corrupted of course.
"Woke" is a canard. It's not real. It represents a philosophy of conformity. The popular philosophy is currently to defeat their opposition by forcing adoption of bizarre ideas, producing dissonance and confusion, thus facilitating their victory. The aggressors aren't terrified of covid (some of the really dumb ones might be), but they're terrified of those who disagree they should be terrified. The masks and vax are just badges of their loyalty to their cause.
Hmm I disagree, I think the fear is very real - I've observed it turning into a pathological phobia in many of the wokest people I know.
Fear is entirely in the mind. Seems real to the fearful, but can't be observed or measured or cured, except by the mind. The reactions to fear are real, but the fear itself is imaginary. The important consideration is fear results from ignorance. Learning about that which we fear turns panic into constructive action.
> "Woke" is a canard. It's not real. It represents a philosophy of conformity.
The majority of people are always and everywhere conformists. That is not interesting. What's interesting is what they're conforming to, and why those particular ideas.
Yep, most just follow the crowd. Somebody comes up with the next insane idea, posts it to twit, and it takes off. Shut down twit and most of it would stop.
These insane ideas were spreading long before twitter existed.
Another good question to ask is why some insane ideas spread, but not others.
But they didn't spread as fast. Harder to kill bad ideas when they spread that fast.
While the statements themselves are canards, it is real. just as the fiction and stories written about Santa Claus are real while Santa as a person is not real.
Reality is entirely defined by our perceptions. If you perceive woke to be real, it's real for you. I don't.
I saw Santa at the mall occasionally, before the panic. Or at least he identified as Santa.
Reality is not entirely defined by our perceptions. Regardless if I can see or not, when it is night, it is night.
The man in the mall that says he is Santa, is not Santa. But the reality of someone dressed as Santa is true.
There were many people walking around living under the false assumption that the world was flat or that it was the center of the universe. Neither of these ideas were true, but the ideas did exist.
If you believe it, it's true -- for you. Many people are over confident about their beliefs. When the they change those beliefs, as often happens, they become just as zealous of their new beliefs. When they encounter people just as zealous of contrary beliefs, conflict ensues. Good entertainment for non zealots.
That just is not true. I can believe today and twice on Sundays that I can fly like Superman, but if I act on that belief I am about to be learn the truth. I can believe that the world is flat, and a plane ride around the globe will show the reality of it. It just is not true. This whole idea of "living my truth." is predicated on a false notion, that to believe something makes it true. I can believe all day that I am a woman, but my chromosomes reveal the reality. I am a man. It is empirical, not theoretical.
What I see, is that you are mistaking real and true. Something can be real without being true. For instance, there is a man dressed as Santa...that is real, but he is not Santa. He can believe he is Santa, but that would be false.
The philosophy of wokism is real, but it too is false.
I think it's as simple as the desire to be part of a group. The reasons for the group existing don't have to make any sense; they can even be contradictory. Just the security of being part of the group is needed. It gives them purpose while relieving them of the need to think.
But it's not just any group. They despise groups of badwhites and football fans. It's a certain type of amour propre-driven, Guardian- (or New York Times or Süddeutsche Zeitung) reading, latte-sipping group they like.
Indeed.
Asche Experiments - they found that 2 out of 3 people would state wrong answers if a roomful of well-dressed people all said that same answer.
🤡
The link is the WEF. Biden, France's Macron, Canada's Trudeau - all attendees. CA Gov. Newsom is a 2005 Graduate of their "leader" program. A peek at the WEF web pages will prove they are pushing the following: LGBTQ, LGBTQ training for children, CRT, digital currency, "green" meaning it's a climate "crisis" (Klaus Schwab's term), numbered chips to be inserted into humans to control our behavior, racial division, dividing people by party affiliation, dismantling the family. Everything "wrong" with the United States is all there.
As for the "chips" to be implanted in us - Schwab's advisor, Yuval Noah Harari is a proponent of this. He's Jewish, yet he seems to think it's acceptable for a numbered chip to be implanted in someone "for their health" and apparently, doesn't think it's anything like numbered tattoos or colored stars in Nazi Germany. His videos have been posted on Rumble. Of course, they are also on YT.
Our Congress, sadly, is comprised of people who value power and control and money over us. Vote them all OUT unless they are "America first" or your "State first." This corruption is at all levels of government in California. Could very well be your State, also. This "Covid" was the key, if you will, to start the engine to implement Socialism world-wide. ALL countries are at one stage or another over this. Find "EU Roadmap" on a non-Google search engine.
Whistleblowers were posting about this 2 years ago, on Rumble. At first, I thought it was people who needed to wear tinfoil hats. It isn't.
You can't really blame WEF. They can't force anyone. Zero power. The problem is the people who do have power who follow their suggestions. They were despots before, just found kindred spirits to reinforce them. It's long been said, all politics is local. If you're being abused, it's much closer to home.
It's all levels of government, especially in California. These ideas weren't in our politicians heads if it weren't for the WEF, though. Starting with Kissinger and Klaus Schwab being BFFs.
Despotism is innate human behavior. They don't need WEF to motivate them, just a compliant population. We're voluntary victims. Klaus can't make us submit. Joe can't make us submit. It's entirely up to us to submit to WEF or not. So far, we're eager to submit.
Using communist tactics. I won't stop exposing the WEF.
They keep exposing themselves. Better to expose the politicians hiding in their shadows.
Everything is correlated but that's not saying anything other than two or more things are roughly related in time.
Covidism and wokeness are definitely not the same, regardless of what they have in common.
They're both programmed by the same source.
It's the way the signal their superiority to others and segregate people into groups.
It is because the lust for power is found mainly in parasites, who are the most frightened by reality and the most in need of controlling the productive.
Most seculars prefer not to think about the inevitability of their deaths. When something happens that forces them to think about the possibility of their deaths, it causes them extreme emotional pain and so they grasp for anything that lets them stop thinking about it.
Absolutely. Their superficial, spiritually empty lives make their fear of death even more extreme.
Absolutely! It is a sad and terrible substitute for Christianity.
Good points but it could also be that wearing masks improves their appearance.
LOL!
Okay, that's hysterical. Full disclosure: the last time I wore make-up was something like a decade ago for some job interview. I don't even own any. I don't need any excuses: I don't want to wear make-up, and so I don't wear make-up, no masks required. :-)
Irene since the PLANdemic started, I haven’t worn makeup in about three years. On my walk the other day, I actually pondered that-lol! I think about what a “Barbie” I was just a decade ago! I wear no makeup now (I’m 59). I don’t miss it one bit! And it’s very liberating, to say the least. Here’s a great makeup tip! SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! The world needs more of them. (No one in leftist areas smile, and I’m in one.)
I normally don't use makeup. But I wore hot pink lipstick (when I didn't forget) as an opposition for masking.
And I'm for equality! If men don't have to wear make-up, then neither do I. :-)
my S-I-L used to wear makeup, and still occasionally wears black nail polish
The Japanese have always worn masks when they are sick, outside and inside, and people I know there with pollen allergies also wear a mask during pollen season.
Interesting perspective, thanks. And I think this fits with Owl-Eyed Apprentice's comment, the denial of reality common to leftist ideologies.
During the cold season as in winter ,large numbers of people have a runny nose. That is also the time when our masters insist we wear masks .'' snot pouches'''. I notice some masks seam to have extra space for the run off from the nose ,like a bulge .I surmise that often when the pouch gets full ,it gets dumped out in a washroom and than back on the face again .
This might explain Hollywood's behavior. They get heaps of adulation and attention, but I think realize they don't provide much value to the average person. So they take up political or charitable causes. I have often said if you have a rare disease it will get more attention and eventually money if a famous person is inflicted with that same disease.
Narcissists in general understand that thier actions are performance art. The real problems start when the performance art is mistaken for reality. There is always the temptation during times of great stress for the liars to believe their own lies. At this point the mask must NEVER come off, no matter what illogical and destructive actions result. Think of all the trans people who will not rest until all of us are trans, just so that they will never have to face their own insecurity.
One thing you don't mention is the idea put forward that masking has zero cost. If you genuinely believe this then it does follow that some degree of masking always make sense even if there is only a tiny chance of some benefit.
To defeat ideas like this I think people need to be convinced that there is a cost to masking and that it is not trivial. This at least opens the door to conversations about effectiveness. If you persist with the idea of zero cost then effectiveness is almost irrelevant.
But masks do not have "zero cost", that's impossible to believe.
Apart from the obvious developmental costs for children, what I find most ironic is that the maskers tend to be the same environmental extremists who believe that using a plastic bag is a cardinal sin worthy of instant pariahdom, while each mask they throw away has something like 70 times the environmental “cost” of a plastic bag -- 10 times the weight and (at least according to what I have read) seven times longer to decompose.
Unfortunately it is possible to believe for many people who have written it down or I have heard say it. And absolutely agree on the irony regarding environmental issues around masks, one of a great many in the thinking of people during the last two and a half years.
There is always a cost. At the very least there is opportunity cost.
A podcaster once spoke about this idea of "it's only a small ask" to wear a mask. But he mentioned that there are a lot of things in life that cost nothing. Like any time you encounter a fire hydrant, you circle around it three times and continue walking. Or you hold a banana up to your ear to keep the alligators away. All these things don't cost much, but they do add up.
Masks even more so.
I was on an Uber ride the other day, and the driver had a lucite divider between the back and front seat and wore a mask. I decided to start off with small talk about the weather, then I went into an old bit about how it would be great to have a job where you could be wrong 50% of the time as weatherman do. The witty banter encountered the obstacle of the barrier and mask, I could barely hear him.
The cost of this is immeasurable. The reason being is so much between us is gained by communication. Think of those great times in your life. Someone says something complimentary and you are on Cloud Nine. A smile at the right moment can bring light to an otherwise gloomy moment. I wax poetic some, but it is true. An this is the cost of wearing a mask, and one of many costs.
YOU MADE THE PERFECT POINT! That’s exactly what people are missing and they don’t even realize it. I DO! I ignore people with masks on. Their mask tells me all I need to know about them as people. Sorry...not after 3 years! Just leave the children ALONE!
Masking or not masking is another means to divide the people .As for me I want nothing to do with certified retards and I want to be separate from them ,but that is often not possible ,as in interactions in office settings .Hospitals seem to be the worst ,forcing masking .I know masks are harmful ,but the ones doing so called ''health ''care don't know that ?
Very well said. No smiles no laughs, every person a disease — that’s no way to live.
My kid's school (private, Christian) started a new policy this year; anyone wearing a mask in class must pull it down below their chin when speaking. Exceptions require a note from a doctor or psychologist explaining why covering one's mouth at all times is medically required. It's a great idea.
Probably fewer that 20% of the kids wear masks anyways despite the fact we're in Los Angeles County. That being said, the principal is fed up and can see the harm being caused to these kids. He's pushing back and making clear the "no questions asked" approach regarding masking is over.
Pediatric studies now claim children don't need to see faces when learning to communicate. There is no developmental cost.
The absolute state of Science.
I'm 86 and did not much dating lately,but I do wonder how the young manage to make dating a success wearing masks ,or wearing masks on their honey moon .?As a true virus cultist ,these rules must be observed or you are a fake cultist .
As a 58 year old widow, I have no idea where to start looking for an unvaxxed man who isn't swayed by this cult. This has effed up dating for everyone.
I took a class once on de-escalation. At the end of the course, the instructor invited a student up to the front to play a game of tic-tac-toe on the board. Every time the student tried to engage in the game, the instructor cheated. He’d fill in all the squares with X or O, he’d take the student’s turn or erase their markings. His point was that the student will never win the game because he always cheats them out of it. The only way to win is to not play. That exercise has always stuck with me.
Well said. Once you accept the frame, you've lost the game.
The only winning move is not to play.
Exactly. Do not participate.
This isn't unique to COVID, it's a fundamental part of the defective understanding of reality that drives leftism in general. The book "Conflict of Visions" does a great job of neutrally describing the underlying assumptions that drive ideology. Eugyppius should read it, he'd find it fascinating I'm sure.
The book describes a tension between two competing "visions", the "constrained" and the "unconstrained". The author defines his own terminology and doesn't really talk about left vs right because those terms have become polluted and confused.
There's a lot to his theory, but tl;dr - people with the constrained vision tend to think in terms of tradeoffs and view human nature as fundamentally flawed yet consistent. We are all limited, can only perceive tiny fractions of reality, and are all subject to vices and other flaws at around the same rate. People with the unconstrained vision on the other hand believe the span of human nature is very wide. There is a big difference between the best of us and the worst of us. People with the unconstrained vision tend to think in terms of solutions, and despise tradeoffs. They elevate (perceived) intellectuals because, they think, these people are high up on the spectrum of human nature and can use their superior wisdom to achieve solutions where lesser beings might be tempted to settle for a mere compromise.
This pattern crops up everywhere, both centuries ago and today. Masks: a solution, not a tradeoff. Lockdowns: a solution, not a tradeoff. Vaccines: the same. Wind energy: same. Communism: a solution to poverty without tradeoffs. Etc. What all these things have in common is they are simple, easy to understand ideas that claim to completely solve their target problem with no downsides, and they are all enthusiastically adopted by those of the unconstrained vision (who are usually found on the left).
The problem of course is that this is child-like thinking. There are always downsides. The reason public health people come across as deranged is that public health is more or less a constant stream of trolly problems representing tradeoffs in which some may die so others may live. But public health is a form of collectivism that only appeals to the left, so they ideologically can't accept that solutions don't exist, only tradeoffs do. Thus they must pretend that whatever policy they advocate has zero costs, because that converts it into a solution.
Ultimately there's no fix for this except the total abolition of public health as a concept, along with releasing all the people in it into the private sector.
Thomas Sewell is such a clear thinker, writer and speaker. An additional factor is that those of the unconstrained vision are convinced that their way is the morally right way and so even if there IS a huge cost, it doesn't matter because it's the what 'good' would people want and should do. If you don't agree you are not just wrong but an evil person for wanting to kill granny etc. The Labour Party (In power in NZ) are a perfect example of this. They are currently ramming through huge changes in health, education and how business can run with shambolic results but they only care when their polls go down. They are always right and the opposition is always wrong.
Yeah I don’t know how to fight the zero cost idea. The cost to me is that masks ruin everything but they don’t get it.
I agree; people need to understand the costs. I’ve tried that locally though and am just ignored. It’s another of the “belief” systems that might be hard to stop.
Try this:
"Do you avoid using plastic shopping bags to help save the environment?"
"Yes?"
"Then how come you think all these masks have zero cost to the environment?"
>syntax error<
Yeah. I think the people who love masks actually hate other people and would love to never be “exposed” to them. That’s why arguments about societal happiness and communication and relationships go nowhere with them: they hate society and people and relationships.
The "costs of masking" question is difficult to answer in a straightforward way. Obviously everything has a cost, what is it? I think in the case of masks, it's that you are granting the myriad hidden premises latent in the idea that we ought to mask, premises which work their way through our thinking over time and work to collectively push our thinking in a certain direction.
One specific premise is that covid is such a serious threat to our health (to our civilization!) that masking is rational. But this is not the case, and refusing to wear a mask is to refuse to grant that covid is the threat it's made out to be.
Put differently, I agree that there is a cost to masking, but it is not a narrow "bodily health" cost that can be compared apples-to-apples with the "threat" of covid. The costs are many but diffuse and not easy to articulate.
Zero cost? Not really. It creates huge negative health impact on wearers!
I think everyone who believes this should have a filter applied to all their streaming services so every character in everything they watch is always wearing a mask.
Watching Terminator 2? Arnold walks into the bar, scanning all the bikers and waitresses, who of course are masked, when he finds his .999 match he utters the iconic phrase
"I need your clothes, your boots, your mask, and your motorcycle".
Absolutely. The reason I don't wear a mask is because I don't want to wear a mask, period. The issue of vaccines may be argued around cost/benefit analysis - one of the universities here in Ontatio, Canada just had a mass student demonstration because of booster requirements, and many of the students ( a lot of whom were apparently already double vaxxed) didn't see the benefit of getting one. But with masking, I think it is really is more of a symbolic, visible, dominance / submission dynamic. It doesn't need to be debated, simply ignored and resisted.
Absolutely agree. The most fundamental response is simply noncompliance and mockery at the individual level (which is what I have practiced myself last winter). But if you hold any hope of rational discourse and persuasion at the policy-level (and it may be a vain hope), then emphasising the costs is important.
If I can ask Hunter to help us out here,
there are different ways to load up on Biolab Spike. You can inject it, you can snort it.
Some people don't want to inject Biolab toxins to mess with their genetic heritage, lifespan, vital organ health, and reproductive family future.
Some people also don't want to snort it.
I spoke with a lady recently who was supposedly sick with "covid". She told me she had two shots, two boosters, wears her mask religiously and disinfects everything all the time. I wasn't surprised by what she told me, or the fact that she was ill, what surprised me is when she said she's been spending a lot of time trying to narrow down exactly "where or who she "caught " the "virus " from. I was awestruck. These people's brains have been changed or something over the last couple of years. I don't ever remember a time when people with a cold went about trying to figure out how they got the cold. I was unable to say what I wanted to say to this lady because of the nature of my business but what I desperately wanted to ask was, "wouldn't your time be better spent finding out why all of the things you did to supposedly keep from getting sick didn't work????"
the "othering" effect has been profound. this really feels like a priming to turn all the division into a purging. i really hope that's not an underlying goal for all this fuckery.
Some of the speeches by Trudeau and Biden seemed like that was a consideration. We really should be grateful the shots are such an obvious failure.
If it happened at this stage of the game, we would probably be okay, which is why it isn't happening yet.
They need to fully capture the military and replace the police first.
A more logical first step would be to develop a shot that isn't a danger to whoever follows their orders.
I'm responding to OEA's statement about division becoming a purge.
I don't understand how your reply connects.
Early on the media did their best to make people feel genuinely guilty for catching covid. It was evidence you weren't locking down hard enough or perhaps you weren't wearing your two masks like our covid priests recommended. Even when people realized the shots didn't prevent infection like promised, they still added "well were you vaxxed?" to the mix.
I would bet that lady has some lingering damage from that psyop campaign, and she was just trying to make sure you don't think she's a bad person for catching it. They deserve pity more than anything else.
I’m sorry, I can’t give most of these people pity. I look at them as weak links in the game of life. I find them pathetic and moronic.
Yes sir!
In nature misfits get eliminated ,maskers are misfits . Nature will take care of them .
One of my coworkers, who has contact with customers in homes for sales and installation came down with covid then got jumped on by a number of his customers for 'having given it to them'. I was like WTF people, we all live in the same area, shop at the same stores, etc, how could you know if you got it from him or the lady in line in front of you at Costco last week? There is a total search for 'typhoid marys' to accuse and scapegoat here.
Gotta blame somebody, she is officially a victim now and probably always will be, but not for the reason of the "unvaccinated" like she thinks.
I picked up my son from Berkeley High yesterday after school. It’s 80% masked. My hypothesis is the only unmasked kids are the unvaccinated from covid. If the school district here implements the flu shot policy we are leaving the district that day.
If I go to any coffee shop in town right now it will be 80-90% masked for those in line and 100% unmasked for those sitting at tables. It is impossibly stupid here. I am living in an open air asylum.
I'm so sorry...
Dan,f you keep going there you may lose your sanity .Too bad I did not hear much about the monkey boxers having to wear diapers outside their pants ,as a first defense ,besides the mandatory rubber plug in the but under the pants .ANY NEWS??
funny story about that! Berkeley had a handful of the monkey pox vaccine. They were distributing them at a gay bath house here in town. The gay bath house go the brilliant idea that they could take the "free" vaccines and help increase their membership by allowing new members to cut the line creating a "Monkeypox vaccine with new gay bath house membership" promotion. This was reported as a rumor, but I have confirmed it to be true. It is a Babylon Bee article. Actually, most of Berkeley news could be a Babylon Bee article.
I'm in San Francisco and it's getting better slowly.
San Francisco is a wrap. Do you know Chinese? That might help.
No real need to know Chinese here.
I think Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance explains a lot of this. In his original study, his team infiltrated a UFO doom group who thought the world would end sometime in 1954. It didn't, so they concocted a narrative that the world had been saved by their ardent prayers and general awesomeness. Importantly, prior to the non-event of the world ending, they were a private and somewhat furtive group, but when the world didn't end they began to proselytise. Festinger explained this as them seeking social approval for their beliefs to relieve the discomfort of the dissonance, and this is where the forever mandates come in, I think. By insisting on them, the adherents of this barking-mad practice guarantee that there will be at least the appearance of social support from their coevals. This helps them to relieve the cognitive dissonance they feel by all of the evidence showing that their facemasks don't work. It's either that or because they are all ugly as trolls.
belief disconfirmation is also very important, I totally agree
But Eugy ... YOU COULD SAVE LIVES!!!!!
The flu vax does not prevent transmission, and in fact there is some data to indicate that transmission is higher for people who have received the vax. The same is true of the COVID vaxes. This vitiates any justification that the University might have had for their decision.
I've never had a flu shot, maybe I got the flu some 25 years ago. I've heard the shots are only about 30% effective anyway.
So theoretically I can be walking around campus healthy, without symptoms of any respiratory illness and because I'm not vaxxed and maskless I get kicked out of school? And if I've had the flu shot but have a fever, and coughing I'm good to go without masking because I've had my shot?
Argos, you walk around confused outside a place of science and don't know ? If possible get yourself the Bill Gates Manifest about eugenics .You will learn that health is the enemy and sickness is the final solution with shots .
No ,no they will know you are not vonomized because you are not sick .
Cochrane library reviews of flu vaccines states that it actually increases your chances of contracting and spreading other URIs.
From my 38 years in community pharmacies, yes, the group that got flu vax shots were always more likely to get the flu, some flu, a flu.
Containment is almost ideal as the basis for a crackpot ideology. There's nothing to be said in favour of it. It's useless, burdensome, cruel and stupid. The believers are trapped by that. They've committed to the indefensible, with perfect midwit stubbornness. Now they can't back away—unless they're willing to lose social standing, friends, jobs, etc. Cults work on the same basis, as do gangs.
If these draconian, scientifically baseless mandates happened to Berkeley during the 60's, the campus would have been fire bombed. Where are the rebels? Taking gender studies classes?
Teaching it.
Touché Geen Hornet!
Reading this substack
Not just a deep ideological commitment, but a deep seated psychological commitment. Even now I daily observe mostly young, mostly men, walking alone down deserted suburban sidewalks with masks on. It is beyond me what the goal is. I think the pandemicists have managed to utterly break the people in our society who are the most psychologically vulnerable.
I see more women wearing these silly things.
I am wondering if enough students left Berkeley to attend other universities, would Berkeley magically change the mask policy? Nothing grabs people’s attention like the withdrawal of funding. So many universities in the USA. Why waste time at one so obviously ill informed about public health measures and the complete and utter failure of masks to prevent transmission of a scariant. What else are they I’ll informed about? This is just one obvious concern.
It's all part of forcing conformity to an ideology. Students and professors already are forced to conform to wokeness in order to retain their jobs and graduate, this is just one more layer of the nasty cake.
Where would they go? Harvard and MIT require all students to get flu shots. You cannot avoid them even if you wear a mask. Berkeley's policy is, believe it or not, less restrictive.
You could go and be a stone mason ,than if you wear a mask it makes sense.
That's three among thousands. It's too small to establish if this is a trend among universities, and even if it was, it is doubtful that it afflicts every single one of them.
It doesn’t take much. Remember, most of these kids have been indoctrinated since kindergarten.
They have been "denormalized" and now they are being "normalized."
There is no going back for them, they can never see "objectively" now or ever.
A few will. Most? I agree.
None of the people saying "It's common courtesy to wear a mask, why are you so selfish?" were forced to wear it all day every day for a year and a half, do manual labor in a mask, then get done with work and go to the gym in a mask. They didn't experience first-hand the idiocy of eating lunch bare-faced with work colleagues before dutifully masking up to protect the same colleagues. Beyond the discomfort of wearing one, they don't understand how depressing it is to see everyone else in a face diaper, a constant and never-ending reminder of fear and compliance.
That’s EXACTLY how I feel! I’m so SICK of looking at these masked idiots after three years! I honestly thought people as a whole, were more intelligent. What does this say for other aspects of life? I’ve come to the conclusion, I don’t want to be around these kind of people. They’re dangerous.
Is the flu vaccine a fully sterilizing vaccine? If not, then why an exemption for vaccinees?
merely one in a very, very long list of things that uni administrators insist upon and that make absolutely no sense.
Here's the thing about the flu vaxx:
They literally guess what strain is going to be dominant. They have no idea. Really. They GUESS.
And then they make the vaxxes and roll them out before flu season hits.
Maybe they're right about the strain. Maybe they're not. Many times they're not.
Yep. That's the process as I understand it.
It does appear that repeated vaccination for the flu - furthermore- reduces it's efficacy even further... I think Ethical Skeptic has a chart somewhere showing that since the advent of the flu shot, flu cases have soared higher than ever before...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7953658/
These evil creatures really are focusing on all education. Their purpose is obviously control and brainwashing at a very young age. This is undercover video of an assistant Principal in my town- he openly discriminates against conservatives, Catholics and people over 30. Openly discusses how he needs to have the young teachers malleable to his views.
https://www.projectveritas.com/news/exposed-greenwich-ct-assistant-principals-hiring-discrimination-ensures/
The long march through the institutions has succeeded in infesting them at all levels with mindless zombie drones perpetrating these ideologies. I can basically no longer get a job in my field because all companies force compliance to DEI, which has nothing to do with work and everything to do with perpetrating a marxist agenda that they have come to believe makes them good people if it is their mission.
I read the UCB page you pointed at, and followed a link to a FAQ on masks. It appears from what's said there that the "requirements" aren't actually *required*.
https://coronavirus.berkeley.edu/faq-page
It's as if there's a policy for enunciating to a fearful subset of the public, and another one that recognizes reality. Which I guess is at least partly encouraging.
what I get from the faq page, is that profs can’t impose their own classroom-exclusive mask mandates, but they can enforce broader campus-wide mask mandates. but, they also can’t check vaccination credentials, so they could theoretically compel unvaxxed students to mask, but they have no way of determining the students are unvaccinated.
Yes, the key word there is "theoretically." If I say I'm vaxed, then given these rules, I'm indistinguishable from a vaxed person. Except that I'm less likely to be sick, but who's being catty?
These people are insane. Period