Death: A Simple Idea with a Powerful Punch
Edward Curtin
Since death is one idea that has no history except as an idea and not a reality any of us have experienced, it is the most frightening idea there is and also quite simple. It is the ultimate unknown. It has always haunted human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously.
It lies at the root of war, violence, religion, art, love, and civilization. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, why we like to win and not lose, pass and not fail, “pass on” and not die. It is so funny and so sad. We would be lost without it, even when we feel lost when thinking about it. And it is fundamental for understanding the action and reaction to Covid-19.
Societies have always been people banded together in the face of death. And since people are not just physical beings but symbolic creatures who can think and imagine the past and the future, societies are necessarily mythic symbol systems whose job is not only to protect people physically, but symbolically as well.
Sometimes, however, the protection is a protection racket with racketeers holding people hostage to fabricated fears that keep them locked in a living-death.
Thus death, this most potent imaginative idea and reality that doesn’t exist except as a mystery about which anything we say is speculation, can be used for good and evil, depending on who controls society.
Death is the great fear, the human haunting that hangs by a thread over life like the sword of Damocles.
In 1944 in a newspaper column, George Orwell made an astute remark:
There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man’s feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you are defeated…. I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization.
Beliefs, of course, like “personal immortality” and all others, such as the recent rise in the belief in atheism, which is as much a belief as belief in God, are, partially at least, relative to time and place, and develop out of social storytelling. The “hard facts” on which many feel their lives and security rest are themselves dependent upon the symbols which give them legitimacy.
Reality is indeed precarious with society suspended by a web of myths and symbols. It is through cultural and social symbol systems that society’s meaning is transmitted to individuals, and it is within the symbol systems that the control and release of action resides.
In today’s electronic mass media world, those who control the mass media that control the narrative flow – the storytelling – control the majority’s beliefs and actions.
Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it, societies have always had to offer symbolic “answers” to death. For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death, human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed “intense, preoccupying yearning.”
Today we can hear such yearning everywhere.
Shortly after Orwell made his prescient comment in The Tribune, nuclear weapons were developed and used by the United States to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians. With those weapons and their use, the ages-old symbolic narrative of life and death was transformed in a flash.
“The significance of the possibility of nuclear death is that it radically affects the meaning of death, of immortality, of life itself,” wrote Hans Morgenthau.
The traditional symbolic sources that once served to allow humans to transcend death were fundamentally undercut, and the search for new modes of death transcendence was carried on beneath the portentous covering of the nuclear umbrella.
A qualitative transformation in the meaning of human existence was thus brought about as humans, who had the weapons, replaced the belief in God as the holder of the power over life and death, since nuclear war could result in the extinction of human life, leaving no one left to die.
This is our world today, and it is where the Covid-19 story takes place. A world not just of nuclear fear, but a host of other fears constantly inflamed by the mass media that hypnotize people through the conjuring of death-fear.
In his great work on group psychology, Freud showed us how it was not just mental contagion and the herd instinct that got people to join in group behavior. People could be induced to become little children and obey their leaders because they have “an extreme passion for authority.”
When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman is everywhere, so listen and obey. Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about people’s desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace.
The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form or another.
It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated “others,” who are always portrayed as aliens who are out to kill the good people.
It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of “terrorists,” who are said to slide and hide in the interstices of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment.
And it works to get people to obey orders to protect themselves from terrifying viruses that are lying in wait everywhere to strike them dead.
In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky said that people want miracles, mystery, and authority, not freedom. His Grand Inquisitor, while a fictional creation, lives on in reality.
For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale.
To question has become an act of insubordination deserving death by censorship or the defiling of one’s name via the term “conspiracy theorist,” a name used by the CIA to dismiss anyone questioning its murder of President Kennedy. Death comes in many forms, and the fear of it has always been used by the powerful to render the common people speechless and obedient.
How can any thinking person, anyone not totally crippled by fear, not question what is going on with the coronavirus disaster when reading what Peter Koenig, a thirty-year veteran economist of the World Bank and World Health Organization, writes in his article The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of a ‘Universal Lockdown’:
The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.
There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of a worldwide monumental historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report, which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the “Lock Step” scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the “pandemic” was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.
The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s of the US and – of China.
One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called SARS-2-nCoV, or later 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market by more than 30% — causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.
The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion of the Agenda ID02020.
I ask the question but I am afraid I know the answer: miracle, mystery, and authority usually defeat evidence and simple logic. Fear of death and free thought scare children. The Grand Inquisitor lives on:
But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it.
Death: A simple idea with such a powerful punch.
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Yes, yes and yes. The author echoes many of the observations I have made surrounding the irrational fear that surrounds this virus outbreak. In recent times, the peoples of the developed world in particular have been infected with the fear of death. This has been made possible by carefully crafted narratives drawn from concepts that have been refined for millennia.
We have healthy, comfortable lives nowadays. Death and life threatening illness happens in hospitals or other institutions, unlike in earlier times when the sick and dying were still cared for within the community. Death puts things in perspective, something our tormentors do not want to happen. It is hidden from us, effectively denying us the chance to contemplate it’s sobering truth.
This is done purposely, to divert our minds towards the more mundane aspects of life and the consumerist values that are relentlessly promoted. It also infantilises our minds, making us easier to manipulate when confronted with existential threats, real or manufactured.
However, unlike the author I would argue that it was not always like this.
It seems evident from studies of isolated hunter-gatherer communities still remaining in the 20th Century that the development of the personal ego is a phenomena that has occurred since the rise of the agrarian/Big Man culture of the Neolithic.
These so-called “undeveloped” hunter-gatherer societies were found to have much less egotistical traits among their members and their leaders were always chosen collectively by the tribe. The tribe always made collective decisions on the more important questions of their society. They managed their land and natural resources in a sustainable manner, for the collective good of the tribe and to eventually pass on to their children. Their creation myths all saw their Creator as a benign figure who they would join when leaving this world.
This came to an end in the developed world when the agrarian revolution introduced the concept of land ownership for the individual, and the opportunity for the accumulation of personal wealth and power. The rise of the personal ego thus began.
For those of a religious persuasion it appears this was the event known as The Fall, when Mankind thought they knew better than they had been taught. Cain slew Abel because he was jealous his sacrifice had not been accepted, but Abel’s had. Cain’s sacrifice was grain, a produce of the agrarian revolution. It seems that the pre-agrarian society was still fondly remembered as the golden age when Genesis was later compiled. It was written in the times of wars of annihilation, precipitated by raging egos as discussed above by the author. It was also when the Creator became a vengeful figure who would punish the wicked, i.e. the proud and vain egotists.
The modern fear of death should be better understood as the fear of death of the ego. It seems that the rise of the ego is a psychopathology that has grown more prevalent and destructive as the millennia have passed. Public relations and advertising are the modern face of the carefully crafted narratives mentioned above, they constantly inflate our egos, “Because you’re worth it!”. It is no accident that so much effort has also been invested into undermining religions of all persuasions, none of their creeds find pride acceptable, or materialism for that matter.
The mental illness of the narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths that have risen to the top of our social structures are all characterised by overdeveloped egos. They crave power as a defence for their fragile sense of self. If you want to be free of fear and truly live, you must work hard to diminish your ego. This is something the sages, philosophers and religious figures have been teaching since the dawn of societies, societies which have their roots in Paleolithic times.
It also helps if you spend a considerable amount of time with the sick and dying, something most religions prescribe and, in my own experience, does work.
Fantastic comment. And a true conclusion.
yes, the sign of the new slavocracy is death
Death is just a change of Cosmic address.
Brilliant.My favourite read on here for a long time.Got myself preparing for the 2030 now , I will be wiser , I hope we are all still here.Or on Mars.Looking forward to the big J’s Witnesses knocking on my door.They gonna have a lot of stuff to say to us after preparing for the end of the world , then getting let out.They will probably tell us to prepare for the end of the world and I might just do it this time and buy a deep fat fryer because I can live on chips and be thin.
J
the beginning dawn awakens life – the setting end puts death to rest….on it sails, to the Fields of Asphodel, where this all encompassing world of decay, ceases its hold over us…..is only the fake revelation of scientific creation, inventions of medical alleviation – pedestals of “protective” postulation and thought supplanting inculcation – that tempt a march back to the dark sleep of Abaddon.
I think the premise that death is the most frightening idea there is, should be challenged, as it is not universal.
For many people, there are many more frightening ideas: living in pain or fear, or both; living in slavery….the horror of not being able to help those who are suffering; it’s quite a long list, as long as your own perceptions or experiences really.
Death, if you mean, no longer existing, is fine, for me, and I know for others. The real issue is quality of life in all it’s respects and the fact that life, rather than death has become consumerised, people want more of it and better. Well that’s my take on it.
PS Atheism isn’t a belief, it’s freedom from such a burden.
PPS It isn’t fear of death that’s at work in all this bloody “lockdown” (damned US word) but the fear of not conforming. Altogether more powerful IMHO than any fear of death.
Great article. I would take exception with the use of some of the words. Death exists, the same way the 2024 Olympics exist or the equilateral triangle or, of course, God (and it’s current epiphany, Money). ‘Exist’, the verb, according to a philologist and thinker that I admire (meaning this is not something I’ve researched myself, nor would be able to do based on direct sources), was actually coined by Middle-Age Escolastics (the Scientists of their time) to mean the type of being in this world which God is engaged in (‘God is’ was not enough for them). Nice trick, because people entertain themselves in vain discussions around whether or not God exists, instead of being able to focus on the really interesting question: whether He is bad. Whether we can identify where He is in our society. Under which new masks It presents itself in our days of progressed progress. Which ideas fulfill those same goals in our world. Which currently in force mega-idea has the same status and functions as that old fashioned bearded one history tells us about. In other words, in the name of what are “necessary sacrifices” demanded here and now.
The same philologist and thinker that I mentioned before speaks about to types of death. One of them he writes with a capital initial, Death, and it means the idea of death, Death-always-future. Promised to me more or less form the moment I was received inside my parents’ linguistic community. I was told (or I learned): “tomorrow (in a distant tomorrow, ok) you will die”. And therefrom started my personality building (there can be no beginning without an end). We are therefore very literally constituted by the idea of our own death. And the same way our burocratic powers of the soul (personality, ego, call it as you wish) are constituted by this Death, so is, of course, the mirroring burocratic powers of the world out there, the State, or to use a more updated, encompasing term State-Capital.
There is not State-Capital, there’s no megamachine Lewis Mumford) without this idea of Death. There is no Power (be it inside my scull, or outside), without lies.
Because of course, the idea of Death has to be a lie, a falsification of true dying. I will never experience my Death, because it is never here now. If everything which happens, happens now, of course, I have to be able to say that death has to be happening now too. I am dying now, which the I guess is the same thing as saying I am living, now.
One thing is for sure: the bigger the sacrifice that Power demands as necessary to placate Gods anger, the bigger the lie justifying it has to be.
Does the virus exist? Of course, but it’s bound to be a lie or a half-truth.
My warmest thanks to those who explore different faces of the lie.
(* Some people, some good people and thinkers and truth and beauty lovers, still use the word God as something dear and vague that somehow alludes to the unknown and their trust on it. Please be aware that that’s precisely not the ‘God’ I was talking about, and cannot be the one in the name of which blood sacrifices are demanded and celebrated since the beginning of History (Civilization, the mega-machine…).)
Fear is such a basic animal instinct, and in fact it’s the default state of “being” for most creatures on this planet. For humans, fear of our environment and fear of outsiders has been a requirement for survival up until very recently. Out modern day fat, dumb, and happy western civilization still has this fear “programmed” in, but we have no real use for it as we’re not actually fighting for survival, were mostly just doing the same mundane bullshit day after day. So for some people, this innate fear manifests itself as fear of death, or as a fear of different people and ideas. Other people, myself included, aren’t necessarily scared of death or differences, so we climb mountains and ride fast motorcycles to scare ourselves occasionally. But either way, fear is a very powerful and necessary emotion and we all find ways to let it out once in a while since we aren’t actually struggling to survive these days.
I’d also like to touch on the Stephen Hawking Big Bang nonsense that was mentioned in the comments. The Big Bang is just religion disguised as science. It’s a creation myth. Human bodies have beginnings and ends, therefore we deduce that the universe must have a beginning and end. It’s a logical fallacy and there is absolutely no requirement that space or time must have beginnings and ends. In fact, it’s far more likely that space and time are infinite in all directions, although this is admittedly a tough concept for our pea brains to comprehend.
Anyway, this life is all we know and all we have, so it would behoove you to start treating it like heaven. Indeed, it’s probably the closest we’ll ever get. And fear is fun!
Thanks for reading, don’t forget to enjoy your little slice of heaven today.
Blane, I really like what you wrote cos it resonates with me
As regards the fear thing and fast motorcycles, well I was born a few years after the end of WW11. I was my parent’s last mistake (catholic). My Mum and Dad, and my two brothers and two sisters, all road motorcycles. All my family had survived WW11 including My Dad. So I had no fear (well except I simply could not ask the most beautiful girl in my class for a date, cos I didn’t fancy the idea of suicide cos she would inevitably have turned me down). As regards riding motorcycles to the limit, and joining several gliding clubs to learn to fly gliders solo – no problem whatsoever. I couldn’t play guitar, nor sing, and unlike my brothers I didn’t fancy joining the Territorial Army.
Fear was not a problem, until I was about 45. I used to ride and fly like a loony, but now I was in a race – a Go Kart race, with my work colleagues, most of who’m were much younger than me. I realised, I had lost it, If I was 20, I would scream through them all at the first bend. Now I was next to the end. It was tremenous good fun though. So I took up diving instead. I still wanted to move in 3D.
As regards “Stephen Hawking Big Bang nonsense”, well my friend Paul and I, had already discredited that load of crap at the age of 16, studying physics, maths, chemistry, and a girl who was way above our class.
Our theory, even now, 50 years later, makes far more logical sense, but almost no one likes it. Many years later, I found out that our theory, had been endemic in most cultures and religions, before Christianity 2000 years ago, for thousands of years before.
It is the opposite of a straight line, with a start and then a finish.
More circular, and global and in multiple dimensions we cannot yet perceive, as if we are the goldfish in a goldfish bowl . Until the cat fishes you out, you didn’t know there was an outside.
Tony
the infinite is difficult to grasp in the mind. But it is possible. And of course I enjoy my little slice of heaven right now.
Very deep philosophical thoughts, thank you.
are you confusing freud and reich. cause reich wrote a book about the mass psychology of fascism, and freud enabled child abuse/ers.
What sources can call out Freud’s pedo facilitating?
The Monty Python team said that the end of their “Life of Brian” movie (the little whistling sing-a-long “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”) caused an outcry NOT because of the “blasphemy” angle (mockery of the Crucifixion) but because it didn’t show the “proper respect” for death. Interesting. It’s as if death is something everyone must be shielded from – thus guaranteeing an exaggerated fear of death.
the way our society deals with death is indeed problematic. We can see it at this time again. Thank you for the hint.
The Fear of Death is with us….
“Having provoked extensive existential angst and worry through a Covid-19 Project Fear, governments are now faced with societies that are petrified of normal life and are pushing back against any easing of the lockdown.
A new poll by Opinium in the UK reveals that the vast majority of Britons remain strongly opposed to lifting the coronavirus lockdown; just one in five want schools, pubs and restaurants to be reopened.”
In the current climate would it not be naive to assume this is reliable information and not spin?
Judging by my own day to day experience of the town I live in it would come as no surprise to me that a majority are indeed living under fear of this “deadly virus” and are fearful of the outcome as to deviating from this “new normal”. As we know our corrupt MSM have the upper hand when it comes to terrifying the population and the Opinium poll whatever that was is just another example of their handiwork.
I don’t doubt you are right, but if the govt. said its all clear, the dutifully fearful public will chuck the masks and carry on as before I am sure.
it is a spin. I can’t tell you how it is where I live (mountain area). If I could tell, people have respect, as usual, but when there is an encounter, no fear at all. We don’t have to go through this mass psychosis. I’m really happy to have chosen the right environment 20 years ago.
Anecdotally I can say that, particularly the young, are not just questioning the evil ‘lockdown’, but are openly mocking the barmy unworkability of ‘social distancing’ in pubs, etc when (if) it is lifted.
Rather than admit they were wrong in following the media lead, instead of their experts in the NHS and others who downgraded the ‘virus’ on the 19th March, the government are changing their target week to week, and losing ever more credibility in the process.
The government is in ‘lockstep’ with the MSM as both are owned and operated by the Grand Inquisitor.
I guess that the young are our hope in this so-called crisis, because they generally do not accept restrictions that don’t make sense. They first have to do their own experiences, until they can balance the value of any kind of information. They are free of concepts. The old are caged in concepts. Which may be very wrong. The young can wipe the odd paradigms away. It just takes time.
I do not see the point of this article.
“I did not ask to be born, yet I live; I do not ask to die, yet death is inevitable.”
Death, like s**t, happens.
I have relatives who were killed in both world wars, one who did not even get to have even a girlfriend, he died so young.
Just get the hell on with the job of living.
psychology is the point of the article. the root of everything that humans do, one way , or another.
unconsciousness leads to bad things.
I have a high-level question for anyone in the know here:
I take the view that the IFR of this pandemic was over-estimated. I think that much is clear already. Santa Clara, the Diamond Princess, the US navel ship, and countries that have tested more broadly.
However, I wanted to see whether anyone has any data / view on the next big fear; the long term effects of the virus. It’s almost as if now the original fear-mongering narrative is no longer valid, the long-term effects of the virus may be the next thing the MSM and fear-mongers latch on to.
What I want to know is; what % of people are coming down with lasting issues from this? I’m assuming its severe cases, those who have been in ICU only?
I am not trying to rubbish the idea that this could be a real and significant issue, but merely trying to get a grasp of this from a maco viewpoint. Is this something we all have to worry about or will this only be for a small number? Once again, these new stories about long-term effects don’t generally place it in context, so we have little idea of the real risk of this and it creates an amplification effect, where the implication is that ALL who get the virus will be walking zombies after this.
I wonder what the estimated % is, and average age is of those coming down with ‘lasting effects’, plus obesity / comorbidity. At this stage its hard to tell if these may be a factor, but logic tells me they probably are. If there is anyone that has a rational of this in context, it would be really helpful to know your views..
As Marie Curie said “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Sorry Geo, nowt from me.
Imho, it’s not about the virus, it’s about the tyranny.
And discussing ‘estimated percentages’, methods of undoing the lockup, and the availability of loo roll, ventilators, or ‘ppe’, are diversions/distractions intended to refocus people’s attention on less important stuff.
Actually death is now called covid.
There are recent reports covid has learned how to crash cars. Scientists are working hard to explain how this can happen. “The virus acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen” a scientist is quoted as saying.
That certainly seems to be true. This virus seems to be more capable of shape-shifting than any number of Ickean lizard people.
I gave my cat covid
I shot it in the face out of respect for covid.
The questions you want answering are ONLY legitimately answered at the end of the journey.
We are just a few months into this – it takes slow meticulous research and large amounts of data to get a large enough picture to make such guesstimates better.
However, the efforts and resource being put in on this is the largest ever joint human enterprise across all nations and peoples EVER.
It has already therefore changed the human trajectory and hopefuly the Human Condition to a more civilised one than a born slave forever of a born slave owner.
So we have taken a road towards a hopefully better destination and asking unhelpful childish questions every minute – are we there yet – is not going to get us there any faster.
Then you’d better let us know what we get “there” – assuming communication will be at all possible by then.
Exactly, because it’s clear the tossers at Whitehall haven’t got a clue.
The spaff guzzlers of Whitehall, the conultants and special appointees and un contested contract awardees know exactly where THEY are taking us.
They have used the real virus, to exarcebate the epidemic and accelerate towards their goals. Killing many more than would have died.
It is first degree murder.
The false under reporting and fake NHS loving is the greater bit of gaslighting than any ever perpetrated in a country with a supposed ‘free media’ including alt- media. It is a simple conspiracy by all these, including their army of troll bots.
It is a Joint Enterprise in that heinous cold blooded murder.
There will be a reckoning.
Haha, Dungroanin, I had to laugh at your last turn of phrase.
Your point is valid. But that doesn’t stop me from being an impatient bastard.
I want to know the data to be able to contextualise the problem. Without data, there is no understanding of how big of a problem it actually is. And believe me, the data is already out there. I’m just a lazy and impatient bastard.
There has been very real data – the raw total number of daily deaths. There’s more tomorrow morning.
Total excess deaths will hopefully have topped out for w/e 24/4. Being a full month after the basic self quarantine. I still expect it to be in the order of 10k.
The only other raw data will come from randomized door to door testing on a daily basis to cover all areas. That is still in a woeful early stages with no reliable testing regime – a single swab, self administered by poking yourself in the back of the throat followed by sticking it up both your nostrils – unsupervised! A pathetic excuse for ‘testing’. The only benefit being that enough people may be recruited to carry out more and better tests come the second wave.
In the meantime its ONLY the total excess deaths to guide us.
You presuppose that there is a destination to be reached, and we’re not being driven round the houses by a cabby running the meter up, feeding us half-baked reassurances over his shoulder.
2,
Exactly, there is a destination the cabby wants to take us to whether we like it or not. And the half backed assurances of the hotel he claims is better, mixed with the half backed lies about the hotel we want to go to, is what we are hearing and reading from ALL the media coming through his speaker.
Oh so clever. They think they are and untouchable.
Their names will be forever mudd, the kiddies are cleverer daily and they will not forgive the cruelty suffered by their elders in this cataclysm. A reversal of the norms of previous wars.
History will be written by their hands. Not the media muppets and bought academics.
Exactly. The more we learn about this pathogen, the more sinister it appears.
We don’t ‘learn’, we are told, by those putting a political spin on very speculative and often fact-free theorising.
Oh, ‘Santa Clara’, right…
I had to read it twice; first time it looked like ‘Santa Claus.’
Good article about death and CV19 here:
======
We Need to Talk About Death
Zachary Karabell
On 4/21/20 at 5:14 AM EDT
At many of his press conferences, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York—who has rightly emerged as a prominent and cogent voice of leadership—reflects, as he announces the grim daily death toll that of all the challenges of COVID-19, there is nothing worse than death. Such sentiments are understandable, and may be necessary just now for a public official. But, in truth, there are things much worse than death. There always have been. Death is as much a part of the human condition as birth, love, sex, hunger, community, war, family. It is a natural part of the cycle of life, however challenging that is for most of us.
The modern world has been erected on an edifice of death denial. In 1973, the psychologist Ernest Becker penned The Denial of Death, a sweeping, not always easy to read, jargon-filled tome about the modern world and its complicated relationship to mortality. It touched a chord and won the Pulitzer Prize, but it is little read now. If you can wade through turgid passages on Freud and obscure philosophers, you will find much that is relevant for today, and nothing more than the central message: that one of the bulwarks of Western civilization in particular is the fraught relationship to death, our paralyzing fear of it and the immense efforts we have taken to delay it and make it as unseen as possible.
…
https://www.newsweek.com/we-need-talk-about-death-resilience-1499131
‘Finally out of reach –
No bondage, no dependency
How calm the ocean
Towering the void’
Tessho
Thank you Edward for another thought provoking peice. And its only just beginning, indeed.
That so many have fallen under the wicked spell of the MSM, and willingly given up their ‘freedom’ without question, and, pounced on anyone daring question the ‘new normal’ has greatly baffled and infuriated me.
And then I read your remark about Freud and Dostoevsky both agreeing that people would be willing to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them in a warm embrace. Sigh.
‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference’.
I used to recite that prayer many many times, seemingly in another lifetime to the present. Even though I don’t believe in a Christian God, per se.
Can I alone as one person change what is being done by the 0.01% and their apparatchiks? No. And how many individuals make up the population of the planet compared to the 0.01% psychopaths pulling the strings?
I havn’t looked at Global Research for a few days, and missed that article by Peter Koenig. It, too, was very powerful:
“broken families, foreclosures, families expulsed from rental apartments because they can no longer pay their rents.
Street begging becomes normal, except their is nobody left to spare a dime”
This is going to be the ‘reality’ and ‘normal’ for tens of millions of people.
Yet, in the shantytowns of Lima and Soweto and Port Au Prince and Lagos, its been their reality since they were born.
I reckon Tessho might say you could. But that’s just me. 🙂
When I read your reply – my immediate response was… Aye? My next thought was about the stone thrown in a pond. What happens? It creates ripples.
Hope your day is well✌️
Likewise Gezzah. 🙂
I liked the haiku (?) so much, felt the need to post.
Gezzah,
I know what you mean about the god bit, but otherwise, perfect sense.
Maybe try saying ‘let me find’ the serenity and so on….. As an adage, good for all. I find the god concept difficult.
I struggle with the god concept as well Watt…. had a Catholic upbringing – church and schooling, until I was 18, so that may explain why.
I still think it’s important to have faith of some kind, in something, and it doesn’t have to be based on a (organised) religion, cheers.
Rejecting ideas about God is not the same as rejecting God, as a philosophical point can we accept or reject something unless we first know what it is ? For example, can I see there is or is not a ” soul ” unless I understand what I mean by that term ?! And, if you have neither proof for nor against God then wouldn’t it be more scientific to be agnostic, neither accepting nor rejecting God, unless you feel you have evidence to say either way
Keep it simple. Death is the alternative for living forever. No choice is nature on his best. Coming to all of us is a certainly with one scary item we call pain. All life forms, known to us humans, have in common to be eaten or eat. Not known is hidden by nature but around us and proving existence in our mind. Giving birth to believing in after life places named heaven. Life we call animals never show signs of getting the that message. The past 2000 years of believing have seen unbelievable crimes committed in name of other heavenly life. One day coming,the unknown will come, and eat.
The early social narratives of hunters gatherers equating collective interest of community with individual interest dealt with existential fear by defining meaning of life as not determined by an individual choice but determined collectively in early in life by egalitarian community considered best contributing to survival and development of community itself and by that harmonizing biological and social life cycle later de-harmonized by so called agrarian civilization.
Such arrangement within egalitarian self-governed societies prevented permanent social infantilization rampant among caste or class societies controlled by propaganda of fear. And such social, political , legal economic infantilism imposed on people is a fundamental feature of elitarian societies and becomes core of social narratives constructed by ruling elites applying certain, fitted their particular epochal interests, philosophical bent. Today it is phony democracy and empty liberalism promoting rampant individualism.
Fear of Coronavirus today represents just different content of the same controlling population fear message previously containing wrath of god threat, Black Death or other plague threats, nuclear war threat or terrorist threat or economic and financial ruin threat or nationalistic or communist threat or Global warming threat etc. The real or made up all such narratives were aimed at population control and defending of ruling elites.
Coronavirus threat narrative serves the same purpose of social control using entrenched fear of death among unhealthy collapsing capitalist society dependent on unstable and collapsing economy under extreme exploitation and greed, unprecedented measures aimed solely to protect ruling elites regardless of cost to society at large.
As usual Ed has a way of getting to the true heart of matters, rather than remaining at the more easily observable surface where easy answers that only scratch that surface exist. Ernest Becker’s brilliant book “The Denial of Death” is the work of a master synthesizer who mined the territory of our fear of death. Becker was someone who could wed in his thought such disparate thinkers as Otto Rank, Freud, Kierkegaard, Normal O. Brown and others into a deeply penetrating look into human cultural myths and their function and their prophylactic function in “warding off” our fear of death.
As the great Native American activist John Trudell put the challenge to Euro-American audiences, “you were all tribal once, learn how they “civilized you.” Once we were all tribal. We were all part of the circle. All part of the endless replay here on earth of birth, life, death and rebirth. We knew who we were and death was not something to fear, but another passage in the mythic beliefs of Indigenous peoples around the globe.
The patriarchal, vengeful sky god that emerged from the desert could not tolerate the circle, replacing it with a straight line, history not as rebirth and renewal, but as “progress.” We in the West are the children of that sky god and thus the inheritors and propagators of that tearing asunder of the fabric that was the circle of life. We burned our midwives and herbalists to eradicate “the circle” and were quite effective in our use of mass violence used to instill new mythic narratives.
The consequence is that the fear of death now stalks us through the emptiness of our spiritually bankrupt material world of “progress.” Each new car, new clothes, new hair style, new stereo, new whatever, are simply modern talismans to ward off our fear of death and act to briefly counteract our lack of any sense of true cultural mythic connection to life, meaning, and to regeneration and to the circle that sustained we humans for thousands of years.
After reading Becker’s book at age 30 back in 1982, I found myself coming away with this thought, which I keep recycling in my mind decade after decade. It is that we desperately collectively – “need a new myth” – adequate to our ever more dire situation. And yet over time I have come to think that it is perhaps the “old myths” that show the way – the myths of circle, of the interconnection of all of us and of everything, of regeneration, of death as intrinsically part of life, and of a reverence for the earth as living and as spirit, rather than as dead material to be molded into our dead and dying materialist delusions. Today even our “science” betrays us and daily finds “new evidence” that supports those old mythic models of the interconnection of all things.
I think Ed is right on the money in positing the fear of death as central and intrinsic in this culture and our madness; and as playing a huge role in our endless efforts to somehow “create more life” more “sense of security” by ironically creating – “more death.” Death in the personages of literally endless manifestations of – “the evil other” – constantly paraded in series before our eyes and psyches by MSM acting as the mouthpieces of our corrupt violent and endlessly greedy elites. Aztec – “human sacrifices” – updated with cruise missiles and drones. The death of “others” so that we may “feel more life” – less aware of our ever approaching death.
We are controlled by our largely unconscious fears of death today to such an extent that we are willing to engage in both “self-arrest” and “self-incarceration” – (no need for the truncheon apparently) – rather than be able to consciously acknowledge that at the heart of our modern “paradise” we are in fact left alone and rudderless though our completely empty, completely vacuous mythic narratives of – “endless human progress.”
“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness or he spends his time shopping which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget.”
Ernest Becker
(The Denial of Death)
Excellent post Gary. Made me ponder. (I am attempting to add/expand here, not to nit-pick or argue, honest. 🙂 ).
I’ve not read it. If it is as described above –
then I probably won’t despite people ‘up-voting’ it. There are many books out there that can discuss complex multi-discipline issues in a clear, concise, and non-turgid style.
This is an area around which I would be wary of having scholars/academics advise. To properly address it, I would venture, requires pretty deep spiritual ‘awareness’ (for want of a better word).
Yes and no. Our fore-fathers, and we ourselves, have existed under the voice of ‘organised religion’ – the Inquisition and other associated nightmares. But in reality we are the children of the “primal will to good, which eternally creates and sustains the universe”. More shades of grey, rather than absolute.
We were the midwives and herbalists.
My car hasn’t been charged as a talisman of any sort. Except possibly as a vehicle (ho ho ) for expressing support for the best team ever to play the football. 🙂 If anything, when I drive it, I become closer to death. Whether that is my fault, or the fault of others on the rush hour M25, is a moot point. 🙂
The things themselves have no intrinsic talismanic quality – people can invest them with such, for sure.
Yep. They survive because they are true and very useful.
Cannot disagree with this. Fear is always failure.
There are, and always have been, though, other voices showing us the way out of, over, above, underneath, or around, society’s errors.
The Bible is pretty helpful –
Death is the last enemy to be overcome. | Love thine enemies.
Agreed, but ‘lots of people’ rather than ‘We’.
Aaaargh – apologies, I missed a . 🙁
Ooh, ‘awaiting moderation’. Never had that before. Have I been bad, admins ? 🙂
No, it just happens sometimes at random. 🤷🏻♀️
But, as you acknowledge, Indigenous People DID have to come up with myths in order to make the idea of DEATH tolerable….I would guess, they were no more joyful about DEATH than we are….DEATH is just the nasty fate of humankind no matter how you look at it.
Watch this!!
WHY THEY ARE LYING US ? – People Need To Know The Truth !! – Dr. Andrew Kaufman
“The RNA used in the PCR test is 80% identical with existing SARS. On that basis they claim it is viral RNA. But between humans & chimpanzees there is 96% sequence homology!!”
Death of the body is a certainty, but am I somebody or do I have some body ? Are we just a materialist biological entity ? Food for mother nature, destined for decomposition ? Are we just a mechanical thing, as many science fiction films speculate ? I think many of us would feel our essence is something else, a soul perhaps, a spirit, even a ghost in a machine, something that can’t be described or known fully, that we are learning to comprehend. We are emotional beings, we feel pride and shame, fear and bravery, joy and sadness, contentment and anger, we have an emotional dimension that we live within, that we struggle with.
To question what death is is also to question what life is, what is the right way to live / die ?! Am I really living / dying ?! What does it really mean to live / die ?!
Living for others can also mean dying to your self, that is death of the ego, surrendering out selfish desire to always put ourselves and our desires first. There are, then 3 different kinds of death, it’s confusing if we don’t distinguish between those, as if it were all one : there is the biological death, of the body, there is death of the ego, and death of the soul, which would be living in way that we know is wrong, embracing a falsehood when we know it’s a lie, like selling or giving up your soul for something, but what is it to gain the world but lose ones Soul ?! We must be cautious what we give our soul to, and how we treat all Souls
What people want is directly related to their emotional brain states, how mature they are, what blockages they have etc. You can create totally different societies depending on how you manage the Bell-shaped curve of emotional maturity.
The love of fantasy is that of the young child or the escaping adolescent.
The love of rules is the 8 year old.
As for deferring to ‘authority’, more often than not that is not a yearning it is a response to psychopathic bullying thuggery. It is a defence mechanism, not a wish and desire.
I have been stalked by MI5 and it is a very depressing reality. I did not find it scary, I found it outraged my sense of boundaries. It left me with a complete contempt for their value system and the sorts of people they use as the useful idiots. In fact, it meant that any last vestiges of respect for ‘authority’ were blown asunder.
I now assume all authority figures are control-freak psychopaths until proven otherwise. Regularly it is proven otherwise, but I no longer take the risk of assume any decency in leaders, since damage accrues by not being on your guard when malevolence is afoot under the guise of ‘we care about you’.
The reality is that life nowadays in the UK is one long knife-fight. You may be trying to genuinely improve human health, but your daily reality is more likely to be punctuated by psychotic thuggery from above. You will be put under surveillance because they are psychotic psychopaths. You will have every aspect of life undermined because they are psychopaths. They have the power, they will use it and they use it not to do good but to get all the loot for themselves.
Mr Curtin should go try behaving with empowered respect, but never subservience, toward authority and see how long it takes before the psychotic knife-wielding thugs come out from under the carpet. If it takes longer than 3 months, I would be extremely surprised.
The Peter Koenig article referred to mentions Bill Gates saying: “if we are doing a real good job vaccinating, we may reduce the world population by 10% to 15%”. See “Innovating to Zero!”, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010).
I could not stomach watching the video, but in the transcript this sentence is not to be found. Edited out, perhaps?
It isn’t just about the fear of death. It’s also the fear of being responsible for the death of others. It’s no accident that they’ve chosen a contagion as our imaginary enemy. We become the visible enemy if we refuse to wear face masks, abide social distance, wash our hands every 30 seconds or refuse a vaccine when it comes to it etc etc. Hence the laws that will follow. We will soon be public enemy number one. The new terrorists. I’m not scared of dying but I’m petrified of being persecuted for not believing this shit. What sort of life is that?
It’s hard, fear of other men, of false accusation, of ridicule, of prison and punishments are very real, fear of monstrous behaviours too, but wisdom begins with the fear of God, who can create or destroy any soul, and whose powers have no limit, but fortunately has mercy for those who are remorseful, the karmic cycle is frightening in the sense that we reap what we sow, we must carry the burden of knowing we will face judgement for our actions, unless one takes Pascal’s wager
Yeah, I’d be afraid of your god too….With all his/her power, he could have done a MUCH better job down here, don’t you think?
I am fairly confident, that our Street Party will happen on Friday Afternoon. basically you just take a table and a few chairs, outside your front door, and look around if any of your neighbours are doing the same thing (or thinking about it) you get to, well just beyond your front garden, and look around, and then you put your tables and chairs in the middle of the Street…
And you get chatting – what number do you come from…etc…
I reckon there are about 400 people who live in our road, many quite elderley. Over 100 of them, have joined our whatsapp street group – nowt to do with me – though my wife thinks she knows the bloke who is running it, so I asked her to describe him – still none the wiser – but he is doing a great job.
Everyone so far as I know in our road, believes the Official Story.
So I may ask – did you know her?
She is the only person we know, who has died this year in our road, and she was very old, and as a mark of respect, we were silent, but there, when the hearse passed our homes. They had a man in the Street leading one funeral car, with no cars behind in a procession.
So it seems to me that the Death Rate, in our street, has already gone down significantly from normal.
So Party on Friday.
Tony
Death is the same ‘place’ our Being was before it was born:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yr7pqQvVQ
Atheism by definition, simply means no god , which does not require a belief. The author adds his on baggage to an otherwise lucid article, which rather diminishes the other truths he mentions ?
Atheism is a belief in not believing.
It is a form of philosophical or scientific arrogance.
Science and philosophy have a low threshold of tolerance for mystery.
Everything can/must be explained by logic or mathematics.
Funny isn’t it?
Love, the greatest Power in the Universe, remains unquantifiable.
I think atheists believe there is no God as opposed to theists, not having any belief for or against God would be the agnostic position, would it not ?!
Atheism is a belief that there is no God. Agnosticism is the absence of a belief on the issue.
Excellent stuff, with plenty to think about as usual. As a proviso: Ed’s sociology and ethnography needs tightening up though.
The big cultural repertoire of myths and symbols has a name; several names actually …nomos, Weltanschauung, Weltansicht (cosmographic worldview or wide world sight), and *sensus communis* (the consensual common sense). Which is the consensus of views everyone shares.
The last is from Giambattista Vico: who also said: “Verum esse ipsum factum” (“What is true is precisely what is made [up]”). Which is the verum-factum principle of worldviews. The ideal eternal cosmological history is subjectively made up, culturally constructed, as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining mythological storytelling.
To which the individual is socialised not once – from birth through education – not twice – in the workforce – but continually as a process of cultural individuality making. Which is not all one way, top-down traffic of obedience and control – but a reflexive and causal circularity. The big bunch of historically specific myths and symbols make and maintain the person: just as the person makes and maintains the big bunch of historically specific myths …as a consensually maintained worldbuilding and world-maintaining mythological storytelling. The individual self is itself a cultural constructivism.
It cannot be any other way: otherwise there can be no common ground for communication …and there is only communication. Or participatory sense-making: no one can have their own language or behavioural repertoire maintained far from the socially regulated consensus and continue to make sense. Maintaining the dictionary definition of words (intension) and the encyclopaedic repertoire of social norms and modes of behaviour is critical to the meaning of the overall order. And there is only the order. Very uneasy order.
The individual finds themselves historically situated in the ordinate nexus of thinking, speaking, and acting in a constrained, shared, and lawfully regulated landscape of language, culture, society, state and market economy. There is no ‘outside’: except for the retreat into solipsism and ahistoric flights of imagination. We make our own history: but not autonomously and not in circumstances of our own choosing.
Cultural construction and reproduction – and the worldview maintainence of socially constructed reality – is a permanent process. Following the basic processes of social constructivism – as laid out by Berger and Luckman. Which are: habitualisation by subjectivated externalisation and reification by objectivated internalisation …as a recurrent, resonant, and reflexive lifelong process.
We are part of the tissue and fabric of socially constructed reality. And socially constructed reality is part of the tissue and fabric of us: the flesh of the cultural worldview.
http://perflensburg.se/Berger%20social-construction-of-reality.pdf
Of course: the biggest lie of the principle of cultural constructivist storytelling is that what is told is naturally objective, true, and real. And some of it is lawfully authoritative (like this old computer epidemiology model I had lying around). Which is what gives the story its universal regulative ordinate control and constative overpower.
I mean, who would want to self-admit they were regurgitating institutionalised and habitualised false beliefs and mistaken abstractive assumptions about the objective nature of things …that were just a bunch of made up and recycled socialisation and pacification rites of a cultural constructivist performance?
Truth, self, and social reality itself is constructed by such rites.
And what if the nomos – the ordered and naturalised ordinate principle – which is a cultures own talisman against chaos, indiscipline, and made up shite about virology …turns out to be chaotic, restrictive, petrifying and rapidly fossilising as a permanent order of fascising bollox and corporatist control?
If the fossilising order is worse than the disorder it symbolically wards off and guards against: and the culturally created fear of death worse than the natural process of dying …then what?
Is it better that the institutionalised and institutionalising lawful ordering is in principle false and an unjust draconian social realism? Or that it is objective, rational, and scientifically real? And eternally and universally valid?
What if a society had been rationalised and institutionalised into a universal analytical reasoning, an empiric objectivity, a historically contingent subjectivity, and a nomological scientific principle that were in fact falsely constructed? And just habitually and consensually maintained as a lawful, juridical, and regulatory idealism of an eternally natural cosmological order? Which just happened to turn out to be totalitarian fascistic co-participatory dumbfuckerry?
That culture would find itself in a headfuck situation of a nomological breakdown of its worldview and its interwoven individual identities …most of which would want to shelter in the pretence of being ahistorically situated outside of language, culture, and thought …in a nomological no mans land. Which is exactly the abnegation of cultural creativity that precipitated the meaning crisis and breakdown of order.
I’m so glad I do not live in such a culture. That would indeed be terrifying.
😱 😱 😱 😱 😱
An interesting article that reminds me of the difference between westerners and the mainland Chinese whom I believe are the model that will used to create the future world.
I am not talking about communism, the Chinese gave up communism ages ago, they are now the world’s premier imperialists, using capitalism to drive their influence across the globe. But their control over people is surely the model aspired to by any person wanting to rule the world.
The use of technology to control behaviour by denying holidays to people, denying promotions etc all based on credit scores and similar monitoring has to be seen by the wealthy as a model of what can be achieved by the combination of ruthless force and control over information.
The response of the Chinese to the virus – the lockdown – was seen in the west as China caring for its people, but here in HK it is still commonly seen as China panicking because it thought that the people would be afraid and would turn on the government for not protecting them. It was riot control, not virus control, hence the arrest of people spreading virus rumours.
Cobblers. The Chinese are NOT Imperialists-that is just Western projection of their own crimes onto others. The Chinese social credit scheme is mostly used to help people recognise which companies are trustworthy, and which individuals are shonks, spivs and parasites. Good social behaviour can be recognised. As for ‘…here in HK’, your arrogance in speaking for all HKers is typical, and the rest is just racist and ideological invention.
Richard, your comprehension of China is zero. But good to see you are still defending them, they certainly need more friends these days, although your response is still as naively as it ever was, the same old “USA=Bad, China=Good” without any room for shades of grey. If you knew anything about what you write, I would take pleasure in thinking that your response means I am over the target, unfortunately that is not the case, but I hope you do not now feel ignored.
I salute your hypocrisy, the Manichean pot calling the pristine kettle black. I know a very great deal about China, and Western Sinophobes.
Richard
“Good social behaviour.”
As defined by some faceless bureaucrat, or worse, a police state?
Scary.
Have you heard of the concepts ‘morality’ and ‘basic decency’? In any context but an ad campaign I mean. The Chinese value social harmony, funnily enough.
Interesting, and certainly a timely piece. Thanks Edward.
The ultimate unknown, however ? Hmmm. Sounds a bit like asserting a negative.
My mum and dad explained to me many years ago that one laughs at farces. 🙂 Don’t think the horned one likes to get mocked much.
Highly recommended – Through the Gates of Death: Dion Fortune.
Sometimes farces are too daft to laugh at and we squirm uncomfortably instead.
Edward Curtin, what you wrote is completely brilliant, in the few minutes it took me to read it, you took me through the vastness of time, and my entire physical and spiritual existence. thank you. tony
Another thought-provoking article, Ed. I was reminded of four quotes:
1. G.K. Chesterton: “When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing; he believes in anything”
2. On the dropping of the first atomic bomb, Oppenheimer quoted from Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”
3. JFK’s favourite poem was Alan Seeger’s “I have a rendezvous with death”. Seeger died in 1916…
4. Whatever the merits of the poem, JFK was no stranger to death. Likewise, he had adopted Lincoln’s prayer: “I know there is a God – and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.”
When a man ceases to believe in God, he believes in everything.
Richard, it seems you may have a point because the source of the quote is a misquotation from one of the Father Brown novels (https://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/ )
In your version, it wold imply extreme gullibility which happily does not apply to Off-G.
Everything that exists must be true, in some form of the concept. Otherwise it would not exist, or our senses would not perceive it.
Edward, how people can be so easily fooled is an age old question. One hundred years ago they queued up to be slaughtered in the trenches. It was all so senseless it was beyond belief.
“Over the top lads, for King and Country” (the Black Adder comedy programme really captured this).
I’m not sure what else I can say about the stupidity of the human race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3-Gt7mgyM
We are at this point again, and people need to fecking wake-up.
People in the West are brainwashed from birth. They have NO idea that the capitalist system is incompatible with Life on Earth, that it is a form of cancer, that the USA is the greatest force for Evil in history and that businessmen, politicians, MSM presstitutes are psychopaths at best, dullards and ignoramuses at best. And the worst are those that deny death in belief in various ‘Gods’ who all hate each other and compel them to kill and destroy in his name. The system is collapsing, and that is finally dawning on the brain-dead ‘consumers’, who will now proceed to consume one another.
All are brainwashed from birth.
Its not “capitalism” its is a parasitic banking cabals economy .
Its a monopoly you’ve just always believed as a debt slave its capitalism and you’re free.
They are resetting it, those that understand the minds of the manchild.
We are having a STREET PARTY
FRIDAY 8th MAY 2020
4 to 6pm
VE DAY
The response so far has been overwhelming…
My whatsapp is going mad.
We joined a street group at the start of all this.
Everyone has been great, though we haven’t met most of them, since the last one.
Tony
Nice one Tony.
Interesting that you’re having a lockdown party to celebrate the victory for freedom in Europe.
Thank you.
best book on life i’ve read https://www.amazon.co.uk/Denial-Death-Ernest-Becker/dp/0285638971
Crass stupidity is a more prosaic answer.
Atheism isn’t a belief, it’s a lack of belief. A lack of a belief in a god or gods.
… which is believed with considerable fervor in some circles.
Theism isn’t a belief, it’s a lack of belief. A lack of belief in the nonexistence of God.
Agnosticism is more honest, less didactic.
Beautifully put Richard.
To deny the Mystery is to deny Life itself.
lol, it is a belief in nogod
Good stuff Edward,
Most of the ‘plan’ has been on these boards for months- the one missing is Whitney Webbs latest which exposes the dumb fucks plan to close the ‘AI Gap with China’.
‘THEY’ have never let a good crises go to waste to further their agenda and plans.
Another old adage is about not being able to fool all of the people all of the time.
Death and politicians and media narrative control can also lose their grip. It starts by laughing at them. It’s started:
https://twitter.com/altmann_tim/status/1256690738294857731?s=20
THEY will not succeed this time – the narrative is a shattering mirror, that reveals their plans – the BS isn’t sticking any more.
China has gotten away. This Fort Detrick virus was the last shot at ‘bringing China down’ short of war, so war it will be. At least it will get things over with quickly.
This comment on the Twitter thread is a cracker –
“Carrie Symonds and Boris Johnson have named their baby son Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson.
‘Will Law Nick Johnson ?’ Paging Dr. Freud.”.
I was not paranoid before I read this:
https://www.biometricupdate.com/201909/id2020-and-partners-launch-program-to-provide-digital-id-with-vaccines
Just browse that site to scare yourself to “death”.
This virus scare is a preamble to total surveillance.
There is more to fear in a life of suffering than there is in death.
Never heard of suicide? (and the living will envy the dead!)
“Dostoevsky said that people want miracles, mystery, and authority, not freedom”.
Most people just want security, that is the majority of the world’s population who live with the fear of starvation.
The Pathocracy invented ‘god’ to invest themselves with ‘god like’ and ‘god given’ powers over their fellow humans.
It has always been so – heresy has been a crime for ever. Denial of god meant denial of gods representatives on earth.
Omnipresence and omnipotence have always been practiced through spies in our house and mind as well as the community.
Tech is jus another extension.
It doesn’t matter if you are ‘not paranoid – that doesn’t guarantee they are not ‘really out to get you’!
Lol. Let them play their mind games and pretend they are ‘special’. Remember every one of these bastards started out as a dumb helpless baby – just like all of us.
They are not ‘immune’ from reality smacking them in the face like a wet fish! No mattet how much they demand “Don’t you know who I am?”
Laugh at them, stare, point and laugh at their self delusion of being your god! That really gets their goat 🐐
😆😛
You’re not paranoid now, Wombat, you’re rationally appalled by their plan.
Which has been described many times over the past 30-odd years.
Fuck ’em !
Trouble with the commenters under the video pane, is most still buy into the hoax, and seem unaware that the government is ‘cooking the books’ to make it seem real.
The issue people need to get upset about is that neglect in ‘care’ (sic) homes is the real epidemic since the ‘lockdown’:
Quote from the link below
“The number of OVERALL DEATHS IN CARE HOMES FOR WEEK 16 was 7,316; this is 2,389 higher than Week 15, almost double the number in Week 14 and ALMOST TRIPLE THE NUMBER IN WEEK 13.”
Something is wrong here. Covid is not mentioned. Are the poor buggers dying of neglect because of hysterical carers staying at home?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending17april2020
These numbers are real and yes a proportion will be related to the atrocious lock down of these facilities and hospital wards to visitors, who would have ensured that at least basic dehydration would have been avoided and human contact never mind adequate eating and medication regime.
The under povisioned, underpaid, under supported staff – mostly not trained nurses and at geater risk to themselves left in the trenches.
Many discharged from hospitals there, and none admitted back to hospital care as needed – all added to actual virus infected deaths – form these excess deaths less than 3,000 of the total 12,000 excess deaths from elsewhere.
Let’s see what w/e 24/7 looks like in the morning.
When I was a student one day during a big get-together, we all got talking about death. The people there
were all English, except for some British of Indian origin. Well the latter said they had no fear of death, while all the English feared it. The current reaction of Indian society shows that Indians now fear death. This is possibly a result of the increasing distortion of Indian philosophies into rituals worship of this or that god and the introduction of the idea of heaven and all that. Its also very interesting that according to studies in the West, atheists are less fearful of death than Christians are because of the fear of punishment in particular, even though each individual may try to convince themselves they’re not the ones that will be punished. Also deep down, short of being nearly dysfunctional in your fears, you must have doubts about something which you can only hold on to through pure belief. And indeed the only two persons I know with no doubts whatever, both have become manic-depressive and I think there is some part of them that knows its all belief, not certainty, but the fear is so huge that they cannot face those doubts.
Rather the fear of death may be surmountable through experience that takes you beyond your own ego. For thats I think the main fear: the loss of our individual selves (at least for those who dont have this fear of eternal punishment). Thats what some philosophies say, like Vedanta, not to take anything on faith, but try and experience for yourself. Hence the many techniques of meditation that were developed. But I think you dont necessarily need to meditate, anyone who does something creative, the moments when they are deeply absorbed takes them beyond their ego, they have for a while no conscious of “I”. The same with people who lose themselves in service to others or what is called love for all. Indeed those moments when the “I” is no more are extraordinarily peaceful, and then you stop fearing death. For whatever it is, whatever there may or may be after life, you realise it is a peace of such a nature that is unattainable fully in this life.
Also the more one’s connection with life is unhealthy, the less one truly loves life, that is every instant of it, rather than living in some future, because always wanting something, the greater is the fear of death.
The more you try to hide death as modern societies do by sending the elderly away to hospices, by making death impersonal in hospitals, and so on, the greater will be the fear. Instead, children should be made to discuss death and learn to live with the inherent tragedies and uncertainties of life. Only someone who can can live life intensely.
sorry meant to say only then will they have a chance to live life intensely.
Confronting our exaggerated fear of dying is the only way out of this prison.
Thanks for this article Edward.
I feel a balanced approach must be our goal, neither to exaggerate fears of deaths, nor to be too reckless
When the education system has been designed to eliminate the use of critical thinking and the purveyors of propaganda control the vast majority of the MSM, academia plus the creation of a veneer of democracy, it is little wonder so many people have swallowed this lie.
Worth remembering that a key propaganda items is ‘Everyone has swallowed this whole !” Or words/pictures/tales to that effect.
Whereas this site, lockdownsceptics.org, and others, Dolan’s judicial review project, and > 1MM people (allegedly) watching Icke this evening, all suggest this is perhaps not quite the case.
They ruling class made a mistake by allowing the internet to flourish hence why they are so busy trying to correct it.
They are using fear in a culture that denies death.
Fear . As the fear caused a freeze function in minds( freeze, flight or fight) that then does not question information.
Fear of the loss of loved ones and fear of death.But fear was the base for psyop ” COVID19″ campaign.
This death denying culture is one of believers.
The religion of atheists is science, but the truth is its a worship of a pseudo science.
Science was corrupted by those that bankroll it and the bankers bankrolled govt controls every sphere of our social development and life. Govt has been long controlled by a banking cabal’s govt.
Yikes, not sure what happened with the coding up there. My apologies.
They are so disconnected from who they are, they are believers in a fake authority and in whatever their egos tell them from lifelong mind conditioning .
The egomind is terrified of ” not knowing” and thinks it knows everything ( the human where knowing theories and information can make for oneself a godcomplex).
Science theory( academics)said God doesn’t exist.
The media celeb academic Stephen Hawking allegedly argues there’s no possibility of God existing because time didn’t exist before the Big Bang.
As though the Supreme would need to exist ( “stand out” ) or need “time” to do so before the Big Bang( which is just a science theory). Hahaha… it seems the more they think they know the less they know.
Now how does Hawkins know there was no (illusion of) time before ” Big Bang” and that God needs it.
To rehash the old joke, I think God has decided Stephen Hawking no longer exists.
I would hardly think that an ineffable creator force/consciousness/entity only dimly comprehensible by mortal beings would be bound by any ‘rules’ perceived by said beings. *shrugs* I don’t claim to have the answers but, when it comes to humans grasping the Infinite, I’ve always been put in mind of Flatland. Two dimensional creatures trying to comprehend one that exists in three dimensions (or more).
It seems to me, as well, that many of these champions of science spend a lot of time addressing something that they don’t believe exists. They don’t put the same amount of effort into denying the existence of unicorns or mermaids. 😉
I think what was intended was “comfortable” rather than “comforting” and “Life” instead of “Live”. Those two words would make it make perfect sense because that is exactly what a hospice is for – to provide a place where you can have medication to relieve pain and be relieved of other discomforts as you’re approaching death. In my view no need to spell it out though because that is the purpose of a hospice.
The ‘live’ should have been ‘life’– that was a typo on my end. My point was that ‘end of life experience’ is a rather long way around to avoid the word ‘death’. Your experience having a loved one in hospice may be completely different from mine and, if so, I’m happy for you. But what I watched was one of the most degrading things I have ever had the misfortune to witness, especially considering what a proud and dignified man my grandfather was. He was going to die, that was inevitable (not just as a human eventuality, but in a very immediate sense because his body was failing him). My issues lies in the way he was treated as he was dying which seemed, at least to me, largely a symptom of the fact our society can no longer cope with death directly.
Your mileage may vary. I don’t know what the answers are, or should be.
I haven’t known anyone die in a hospice but I used to visit a friend who died in a nursing home and it was not a very nice experience. I wouldn’t say she was treated badly but it was still pretty awful so if your grandfather was suffering and was treated badly I think I can have some idea of how bad that was. I’m sorry that you and he and the rest of your family had to experience that.
I have to say while I find the taboos around death most annoying and the use of “pass away” and similar drives me nuts I think “end of life experience” is not avoiding the word death. Approaching death there is a period that I think it’s reasonable to refer to as “end of life”.
What the answers should be. I’m a great believer in euthanasia although I respect other people’s different attitudes on the subject. I want my glass of Nembutal when the time comes, I really do. I simply do not understand extending life when the quality is so poor but other people are good with it. I have a friend whose mother had Alzheimer’s for about 15 years, I’d say 10 of them very severe, but neither she nor her brothers wanted her death to hasten and she would visit her mother regularly although she didn’t recognise her and could barely function at all. I simply do not understand it.
I’ll drink to that! I always have concerns about state involvement and eugenics when it comes to euthanasia but, as you said, I know what I want for myself: quality over quantity.
Indeed, every one of us should have access to Nembutal the moment we want it….Not just to end physical pain but also to end mental pain….too often the pro-euthenasia group ignore the latter.
The cabal beleives that the truth is irelevant and that whatever appears to you as truth is what is true to you and the only truth. This is false. The truth is not relative. Einstein knew this and said, time is an illusion albeit a persistent one. If you propagate the idea of atheism and science what you are actually doing is you are relinquishing any responsibility/accountability.
I don’t think so Doug . The ideas of ” atheism and science ” are out there.
But what has happened is that many who call themselves atheists worship science( but not science as knowledge as it originally meant) so its mostly theories taken a facts, pseudoscience.
Agree though that time is an illusion.
The cabal wants only their narrative( lies as the truth) they want the truth of who we are and that we are co creators in this world unknown to us .
Out of interest when you were co-creating the world how did you decide what to put the different star constellations ?! I’m sorry to be facetious, but you’re not really claiming to have co created the world, are you ? I can’t claim any rights to it, except that I do believe we all have a right and purpose to be here, but I neither know how the world began nor how it will end, it’s a mystery I live with
To be fair to Calam, she did say co creators in this world. Not of it.
If the current “consensus reality” isn’t a example of a created world, I don’t know what is. Very poor quality, though. F-, thumbs down, will not buy from again. 😉
I’m not sure if the Peter Koenig article from Global Research is consistent. Take this bit about the global north:
How are people supposed to create new jobs when the indefinitely prolonged lockdown bars them from doing so?
And as for the global south – and perhaps eventually the north too? – how can all those millions be expected to quietly stay in their homes and die? There will inevitably be an uprising – inevitable because the inhabitants of this hell hole will have no choice. Koenig seems to envisage some “kick back” but assumes that the military will be able to stifle it. But when ALL the people are reduced to this certain death, I don’t see how they can be contained.
I never thought I’d be standing up for an optimistic point of view but I think it is vital never to lose sight of the fact that no matter how powerful these megalomaniacal rulers are, they are neither omnipotent nor omniscient.
Even if lockdown ended today intellectual property law has grown(by design) to the point where “constantly creating – working ingeniously inventing -moving forward flowing like a river towards new horizons, creating new dynamics, new jobs” is hardly possible anymore.
What was it Spike Milligan said/ had as his epitaph – “I told you I was Ill”
There’s nothing to worry about – dying is part of life – I’m not living in fear of it!!
Birth and death ( *its not life).
Death is natural but we don’t even contemplate it and as part of our cultural denial we hide away the dying and ill .
Death IS natural but “natural” is often hideous.
However, the Spike story is more complicated, and more interesting than that:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/3742443.stm
Yes that’s a great Epitaph.
People in general are not afraid of Death – they are afraid of THEIR death and if someone close dies they are not grieving for the dead person – they are grieving for themselves.
Due to the fact ( no symbolism there ) that they are still alive and the dead person isn’t.
When The Grim Reaper is Reaping in Africa or South America among the poor, then it’s seen on TV and heads are shaken in agreement that something should be done.
A cup of tea or a beer later and it’s forgotten.
Now – when the reaper appears close to your door ( say Milan or Madrid ) then you need
more than tea or beer to cope with it.
This is after all very close and not faraway on televison.
This in my view is the tale of these days.
To Westerners death is far away and fleetingly thought about.
Today it is right in our face.
This explains the sheer panic of the Western world.
Death really makes politics personal.
Politics doesn’t get anymore personal than death.
People don’t want to die – despite the chance being pretty small.
They want saving but unfortunately their saviours have no answers.
Capitalism is a bout selfishness – not saving and Trump just blurts out
the truth every now and then like a confessing child.