I wanted throw in a quick disclaimer. From this point onwards in this series of posts, we are moving firmly into speculation and guesswork. It may later turn out that I am in over my head having jumped in the deep end later to be found to have been swimming naked when the tide goes out. If so, I will take solace in having just won the gold medal for the most number of swimming metaphors in a single paragraph.
Here’s a lightning summary of how I got here. While trying to make sense of the corona hysteria, I found that Jungian archetypal analysis (The Devouring Mother – The Orphan) provided an elegant and effective explanation not just of the events of the last two years but going back at least to Trump – Brexit. Like most people, I had previously been looking for explanations using cause and effect analysis. However, my two main conclusions, The Plague Story and The Devouring Mother, are based on formal analysis. This is the kind of analysis used by Oswald Spengler and it goes back to Goethe. It’s no coincidence that this way of thinking is tied in with the German tradition. As Spengler noted back at the start of the twentieth century, it was a major difference between the English and German traditions at that time. After the Anglosphere won the wars and become the hegemon of the West, the error of analysing everything as cause and effect has come to predominate. I think this is partly what Gregory Bateson set out to rectify in some of his works. He was re-introducing Goetheian science to the Anglosphere and, by extension, the West.
Although I hadn’t thought about it before, this kind of analysis is exactly what I had been trained in during my linguistics degree. Linguistics looks for patterns. It is concerned primarily with morphological analysis i.e. form. So is Jungian psychology. So is Spenglerian history. I think this is why I was able to adapt to Jung’s thinking relatively easily.
The English language is not “causing” me to write these words. It is the form through which the thoughts express themselves. Given an energy source provided by a full pantry, a supply of leisure time and a “will-to-knowledge”, the form gets manifested. In the same way, the growth of a tree is formal. The branches and trunk grow in iterative units that form a pattern as long as there is enough input of resources and the constraints of the environment allow it. Jungian archetypes are forms manifested by the psychic energy of human beings. My analysis states that the forms of The Devouring Mother and The Orphan were already dominant in the West and became massively energised by the hysteria at the start of corona. That’s why all kinds of phenomena that were completely unrelated in terms of cause and effect fitted into the pattern. Most recently we saw the Australian and Canadian governments manifesting The Devouring Mother pattern at the same time that the pandemic is over in many countries. It had nothing to do with cause and effect or practical considerations (and sure as hell nothing to do with public health) and everything to do with the psychic energy, unleashed by Novak Djokovic and the Canadian truckers, channeled into the archetype.
Now that corona is wrapping up and governments around the world are dropping restrictions faster than the English cricket team drops catches, it’s tempting to say that this was another mass hysteria that followed the form of an archetype and that’s that. However, as part of my analysis, I realised that the pattern went back at least to Trump and Brexit. Since then I have been reading Stephen Jenkinson who has a program entitled Orphan Wisdom and who writes on the absence of elders in the modern West. This got me thinking more about the other half of The Devouring Mother dynamic: The Orphans. As I studied the archetype more closely I realised what Jenkinson had intuited which is that The Orphans and The Elders are key parts of the story. Within the archetype, the lack of elders prevents the form from manifesting. This is analogous to an electrical circuit where all the components are there but one is faulty or missing. In that case the circuit will not complete and energy cannot flow. That seems to me to be a good explanation of the current state of Western society and a quick survey of the post war years seems to bear this out.
In the next post, we’ll use the archetype of The Orphan to analyse the post war years with a particular focus on the generation that most explicitly rejected their elders: the baby boomers. We’ll see that the failure of the archetypal mission appears to be due to that rejection of elderhood. From there we can start to ponder what might happen if conditions arise to activate the archetype to achieve its mission and what might happen if they don’t. (As an interesting aside, this would imply that archetypes manifest their shadow forms when the components of the archetype are “faulty”).
Is any of this valid? I’m still not 100% sure. I consider this series of posts a bit like trying on a new suit. Maybe it’ll fit well. Maybe it’ll need some extra tailoring. Maybe it’ll need to be discarded. It may also be that Spengler had already anticipated this analysis. It looks as though the archetypal analysis will lead to the same conclusion as Spengler which that we are well into the “civilisational” phase of the lifecycle of our culture. It may be that the absence of elderhood and the subsequent failure of new generations to individuate is because of this. In that case, the archetypal analysis would be a way of framing the same notions but through a psychological lens. Even if that’s true, it will still make for an interesting journey.
All posts in this series:
The Age of The Orphan Part 1: The Path of Learning
The Age of The Orphan Part 2: Defining the Archetype
The Age of The Orphan Part 3: A Short Theoretical Introduction
The Age of The Orphan Part 4: Initiation, culture and civilisation
The Age of The Orphan Part 5: Ok, boomer
The Age of The Orphan Part 6: The Spirit of the Depths
The Age of The Orphan Part 7: The Metaphysics of Archetypes
The Age of The Orphan Part 8: The Current State of Play
The Age of The Orphan Part 9: How to learn to stop worrying and love The Matrix
The Age of The Orphan Part 10: Work is our religion
Simon, this is all fascinating. I wish I could keep up! E.g., am lacking background re Spengler. But if Western civilisation is indeed dying (it’s certainly senile), our death phobia, hence age phobia, makes sense as denial. Jenkinson’s perspective offered sanity during the years I had to deal w/ the craziness of the aged-care industry. Our society fetishises & sentimentalises youth (though it’s ‘false praise’; the young now are more disadvantaged w/ debt, unaffordable rents etc. than any generation since WWII), while the old cop discrimination & then, if/when they start to lose their memory &/or balance, get herded into facilities (akin to factory farming, but w/ a soft-focus veneer of pretend safety to free us of a sense of guilt or responsibility) where cognitive loss accelerates due to lack of social richness/stimulus & the risk of falls is mitigated by restraint (if at all). Essentially they go into aged care to die (if not before they benefit the pharmaceutical industry by being helplessly administered often useless & pointless medications), but whereas the product that emerges from the abattoir feeds society at large, the product that emerges from the nursing home feeds the funeral industry, the legal industry, the financial products industry etc., while society/community is progressively diminished.
That the psychological lens re archetypes seems readily adaptable from the collective to the personal scale, & vice versa, makes it worth pursuing, surely…?
Could you frame formal analysis as the recognition that the future causes the present, the destiny idea, rather than the causality idea of the past causes the present? I remember Spengler noting that causality takes over in the civilisation phase whereas the destiny idea dominates in the early cultural phases.
Spengler’s lens is so all-encompassing that I must admit I struggle not to see everything through his comparative analysis. It’s paralysing but the bloke was so spot on its hard not to treat him as all seeing. I can see people everywhere in the western world starting to look for spiritual solace and turning their backs on completely material views of the world. This does excite me for a better relation to the world, but I know that this is just the beginnings of the second religiosity, predicted and analysed by Spengler.
The funniest thing about him to me is that he even talked about himself through the analysis, and said if you agree with what I say it’s merely because you belong to Faustian culture in it’s civilisation stage, and it is only the historically focused Faustian culture that would even attempt such an analysis as his – you cannot escape. To get really meta, how would someone from another culture critique Spengler? Perhaps more importantly would they even find historical analysis meaningful or important? China and Egypt perhaps yes, Rome and India perhaps no. But there I go again doing his analysis.
I think a project those of us Australian’s who have read Spengler could attempt is to dive into what the underlying cultural patterns of Australia are, in terms of the indigenous way of viewing the world combined with the last 200 years, and how this island is shaping us while under the Faustian psuedomorphisis. Can we identify what cultural patterns will emerge here in the coming centuries? Perhaps more controversially, can we find evidence that fits in with a sort of Lemurian civilisation concept that could have been here in Sundar and Sahul during the last Ice Ages?
Anyway I look forward to your series, it is very lonely in Australia trying to talk about these things.
Shane – the denial of death seems tied in with the distinction between formal analysis vs cause and effect. As a society, we labelled all those deaths “by corona”. In other words, we said corona was the cause even though nobody even bothered to investigate the cause via autopsy. When you look at the pattern (there’s that word again) of death, you see it’s old people with co-morbidities dying. That is the normal pattern of death in a wealthy society. So, corona itself was the mistake of looking for cause and effect instead of pattern and form. To make matters even worse, cause and effect was never even proven. It was assumed. So, we can’t even do our own “science” properly. I think that also explains why we cannot age properly. We actually deny the two major coming-of-age phases of life: the one from childhood into adulthood and the one from middle age into what Jenkinson would call elderhood. We reject the form and pattern of life in favour of what? Eternal childhood?
Skip – Spengler said that the civlisational phase is actually no different from the pre-cultural phase. Thus, at the moment, we are not even living in a culture according to him because a culture is all about ideas. There was an idea implied by corona which was the idea that we could stop a pandemic from happening. That never made sense even from a lay perspective and there were plenty of real experts who dismissed it right at the start. Nevertheless, you can still hear people like Pinker and Dawkins talk as if the idea was valid but got derailed by “anti-vaxxers”. If we were living in a culture, it would be a matter of prime importance to discuss and determine what happened to that idea and why it failed. But we are not in a culture. Therefore, we won’t learn anything from the failure of that idea and the damage done will just become part of the background of life raising the noise floor on what is left of the civilisation.
As for what other cultures would think about our culture (if we had one), they would think it’s just magic. Which is also what most of the people who live in our society think too. They don’t really understand “science”. It is just magic for them.
Simon – in your previous post you mention Neo as an example of the Orphan archetype. Apparently Neo is 37 in The Matrix, which would put him close to midlife. And yet his character arc follows the individuation path you describe. So, Neo aside, do you think that the midlife ‘crisis’ so common in our culture is due to arrested development, a failure to grow up during young adulthood?
Shane – wow. That’s a surprise. Based on the personality of the character I wouldn’t have picked that. But then again Keanu Reeves is kind of ageless. That makes sense about the midlife crisis. If you follow the normal script and end up with a job and a family without ever really knowing why, that’s the age when your kids don’t really need you much anymore and you have time to start thinking about things.
I’m curious if you’ve ever read Guénon’s ‘Reign of Quantity’. I think it helps makes sense of current events in a big-picture way…
Simon – I find the whole series fascinating, it really wants me to read C.G. Jung´s take on the archetypes. As of now, I have only read his Wotan essay about Nazi Germany. I found it pretty convincing, but unfortunately I don´t remember any details.
I also have Spengler´s “The Decline of the West” in my book case, still waiting to be read. Here in Germany, he still has this aura of being a trailblazer for the Nazis, as he briefly sympathized with them (as a lot of interesting German intellectuals of the time did). JMG has mentioned the concept of the second religiosity quite some time, so at least I am familiar with that. Interestingly, quite a few bloggers of interest have turned to some kind of religion (mainly Christianity) in the last 2-3 years, so this seems to be a trend.
The lack of elders in our society is pretty glaring. In the self-help scene, there are quite a few books who propose to look for some kind of mentor. Do you think that this is somehow interrelated with the lack of elders, that we have to give advice for this instead of mentoring being a normal part of our society?
Austin – I hadn’t read that or even heard about it but it does sound very interesting. Thanks. I’ll add it to my to-read list.
Secretface – I hadn’t thought of the mentor correlation but that does make some sense. However, I think a mentor is going to help you succeed in some pursuit while an elder is going to recommend you give up all pursuits until you have individuated and therefore know why you want to pursue it at all. Elders are more like religious roles in that sense, although not tied to any particular religion (hence they are often magicians when represented in fiction).
Simon – Your separation somehow makes sense, but is the recommendation to individuate before you succeed in some pursuits not also some kind of (religious) mentoring?
Simon – you’ve got my interest in Jenkinson peaked. He lives very close to me and I am acquaintances with several of his formal acolytes who left the Orphan Wisdom property in the past few years, ostensibly due to Covid-narrative reasons and divides within the community. He is quite the controversial figure locally with about an equal share of followers and detractors. I look forward to learning more of his philosophy while reading your Orphan series.
One aspect of our current generation of old non-elders in this country is that they set out after the war to be everything their parents weren’t, and now that they themselves are old all they’ve achieved is to become just like them – but only with regards to their shadow.
They’ve retained nothing of the wisdom of how to survive in trying times, not even of how to face the prospect of hardship.
Interesting to think about the confluence of civilization and pre-culture.
It helps to tighten the circle.
Secretface – yes. Although it’s not a “recommendation”, it’s real teaching. A pathway to individuation. Maybe teacher is the better word. But a teacher who is not collecting a pay cheque but transmitting a culture.
Cub – He’s an excellent writer. His broader points about history are completely consonant with Spengler but I assume Jenkinson hasn’t read Spengler as he’s lamenting for a time of real culture when the conditions (per Spengler) are simply unavailable.
Michael – if you look at the US, Fauci and Pelosi are 81, Sanders is 80, Biden is 78 and Trump is 75. These people need to get out of the way and let young blood take over. That’s what an elder would do. But the boomers want to be eternally young.
Gday mate,
seems to me a good approach to put culture upstream of society and politics. For as far as I can think back we had nothing but technology driven “No Alternative” policies. All very pragmatic and hard nosed and perfectly insane, as we can clearly see now. Immaterial concepts like the collective unconscious were not even mentioned.
I wonder if this is boomer thing too. The material world is all there is. Although it seems now that they are getting close to knocking on heavens door, some of them seem to get religion and become even more obnoxious.
Looking forward to this series and wonder where it will take us.
@Skip
I am an Australian and I have read Spengler. I am also Bavarian and have lived in a few different countries. I am also a musician and have observed the Australian music scene for the last few decades. This has given me opinions about Australian culture that are, to be polite, somewhat unflattering.
It would certainly be interesting to have a discussion about Australian culture, but I am afraid Greer might have had a point when he said an original Australian culture is still a long way off.
I’d be interested to participate in a project like the one you envisage, but my contributions might occasionally be confrontational. As a Bavarian, i have none of the australian inhibitions when it comes to being disagreeable.
And yes you are correct. Australia is a lonely place for those who think for themselves, but i think that applies to other countries as well. It is our own fault. We place ourselves outside the herd. Finding or creating a somewhat better and smarter herd is no solution.
Our language gives us an advantage here: English speakers can choose solitude over loneliness.
Roland – which would tie in with the lack of elders since elders are, almost by definition, concerned with immaterial matters if for no other reason than when you get to that age there’s nothing much left to be done in the material world.
@ Roland
I don’t disagree, there isn’t really an Australia culture. What I was saying is it possible to identify themes from indigenous culture that are also at play in modern Australia that give clues to the underlying influences of this place, and how it shapes culture. For example the tall poppy syndrome exists both in indigenous cultures and modern Australia, and as Simon has said we are far more communitarian (to our detriment in the last two years) here than the USA. Whether or not a Spenglerian great culture develops isn’t really what interests me, as one (or many) may have already existed over the enormous period of time people have been here.
Another interesting time period to look at is from about 1830 to the first world war. That’s where most of the people on our currency’s notes come from, as well as all the folk heroes and songs, and even the potential seeds of revolutions and rebellions (see Queensland in the 1890’s). It all got blown apart by federation,the wars, globalisation and the US imperialism, but don’t assume the cultural wasteland of modern Australia is indicative of the entire history since colonisation.
Simon – technically, those dinosaurs you mention, except for Trump, slightly predate the boomer era. But is it just the boomers & the so-called silent generation (born during or prior to WWII) who want eternal youth? You refer to midlife as a time when the kids of parents who’ve followed the normal script are reaching independence, but it’s also when plenty of Gen Xers become first-time parents, whether because they’ve fulfilled career goals but still feel unfulfilled, &/or thanks to the very expensive option of IVF. Longing & striving to become a mum in the lead-up to menopause seems like a bias towards youth to me.
As for giving up all pursuits until you’ve individuated… doesn’t it make sense in a secular society to gain as much experience through worldly pursuits as possible so the process of individuation, which Jung saw as a goal for the second half of life, has something meaty to work on?
@Roland – re boomers & materialism, they seem to comprise a sizeable proportion of the Jungian community in Sydney. And weren’t a fair few of them ’60s flower children? 🙂 If younger generations seem to have dialled back the materialism, is that because they’ve been forced into debt & locked out of the housing market etc.?
Shane – fair point. I’m lumping pretty much everybody in the post WW2 timeframe together for the purposes of this theory but it’s fun to pick on the boomers. As for individuation, it’s an analytical issue I’m still working through. There’s the psychological aspect which actually occurred to Jung when he was middle aged. Then there’s the story of The Orphan which almost always takes place in late teens. That matches with initiation rites of hunter gatherer tribes. So, a question is: were the initiation rites of hunter gatherer tribes individuation in the Jungian sense? I think a strong argument can be made that they were. If that’s true, then the hunter gatherer tribes were already practicing individuation guided by elders and that’s what is implied by Jenkinson. That raises the further question: are there any societies that we call “civilised” that practiced individuation in the way hunter gatherers did? The answer seems to be mostly no. The closest we get are religious rites which mostly don’t include rites of passage although apparently some anabaptists do it. There’s also the mystery cults and occult groups which do have an initiation. Lots to work through 😉
@Simon
Everything has to be black and white these days. There is no middle ground. You are with us or you are against us. There is no middle ground and debate is not possible. This seems to be almost a defining feature of our time. Do you see this as part of the orphan archetype.
@skip
there might have been some indigenous civilisation in Australia. 50000+ years is a long time. Not sure how we could ever find out. We know next to nothing about what happened 5000 years ago.
Your timeline of the decline of Australian culture ties in nicely with Spenglers timeline of the decline of the west. Espectially the transition from culture to civilisation. And indigenous history notwithstanding, Australia is a part of the west. So maybe we are the canary in the coalmine. And it seems to me that pretty much most of the west is a cultural wasteland these days.
@Shane
With materialism i meant the metaphysical position, not the gimmemorestuff one. And yes there were the flower children in the 60s, but i dont think it is a good idea to judge someone by something they did for a year or two in their late teens. Certainly would not make me look too good.
And I don’t know about the Sydney boomers. Most boomers I know are long term residents of North Coast NSW and musicians with all the usual mental issues.
And I am not sure if the younger generations have less of the gimmemorestuff mentality. They just happen to be a lot poorer than their parents.
What I meant was that the boomers generally seem to have the attitude “the material world is all there is”. This attitude seems to be fading these days.
And to all the boomers here: You were not really that bad. You had some great music. There were just too many of you and you had that crazy idea, that you can reinvent the world from scratch and all previous generations had no clue.
The mess we have been slipping into for two years (probably a lot longer) now is not so much of your making. This was brought to us mainly by gen X/Y/Z.
So compared to the following generations you look pretty good.
This might all just be part of the decline of the west. And the fact that every generation blames the previous one for all that is wrong in the world.
Roland – I think that’s related to the distinction between good vs bad and good vs evil. Good vs bad was the morality of the nobility, which includes all the peasants and basically anybody tied to the land. Under that morality, nobody is evil, they are just more or less good exemplars of what is good for the community. Thus, the village idiot and the town drunk are “bad” but not “evil” and they are tolerated. Good vs evil is tied in with religiousness and that has, ever since Paul in the West, had its seat of power in the cities. So, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the post war years we’ve seen the massive increase in the number of people living in cities and the associated rise of a religious vibe. It’s ironic that this has happened while the role of institutional religion has faded. But consider just the past several years. Trump, corona and now Putin. They are not “bad” but the evilest of evily evil. Psychologically, that attitude does match up to The Child archetype.
P.S. I think the attitude of the boomers that they could “start from scratch” is crucial to an understanding of them.
For those who haven’t seen it, the movie Walkabout is worth a look – https://archive.org/details/walkabout1971
The premise is directly relevant to the theme of these posts. Two orphaned English schoolchildren (inexplicably in school uniform for the whole movie) find themselves in the outback and face certain death but they run into a young aboriginal man who is on walkabout (the initiation rite for aboriginal men) and he guides them home. It’s a classic 60’s psychedelia movie. There are plot holes bigger than Uluru. I’m pretty sure everybody involved was on way too much acid. But it has a certain charm.
@Simon – happy to pick on the boomers. I dare say WWII babies & those born just prior did it tough in the womb/infancy/childhood. Really good question re hunter-gatherer tribes. Given their embeddedness in nature – in total contrast to our civilisation – & the different type of consciousness implied, how would modern psychology, including the most basic concepts like ego etc., apply?
What I perceived as part of an occult group in my youth was that initiation supported psychic vs. psychological development. You could, for instance, see auras but you might still be a raging sex addict. But maybe hunter-gatherers didn’t have to learn to see auras etc.? What we can deduce about them, even those surviving today, is no doubt subject to our culture’s cognitive & perceptual biases/limitations.
@Roland – I take your point re boomers. Most of those I know seem invested in both some non-materialist philosophy like Buddhism & in, say, real estate, & yet their philosophies don’t appear to mitigate their fears re ageing & death (they put their deepest faith in Western medicine).
BTW, Gen X had some great music too!
Re the delusion that you can reinvent the world from scratch, which seems to me to sum up the New Age & much of the personal development market not to mention the marketplace in general, many boomers grew up in relative plenty & prosperity, pampered by parents who’d survived the Depression & WWII, which might account for a sense of entitlement.
Shane – I’ve opened a very interesting can of worms here. So, the Orphan story is the story of real world initiation into hunter gatherer tribes but also matches the pattern for cults. Cults have a bad rep these days but in one form or another they used to be very common. Pythagoras was the leader of a cult, for example. The cult was a way of life which included intitiation/education. The word “cult” is related to “culture” and meant worship and reverence. So, the movement from cult to religion and then to education (education used to be done by religion before the state took over the role) mirrors Spengler’s idea of culture turning into civilisation. Thus, my initial guess about learning and knowing is also relevant. Individuation fits that story very well but I’m still working through the details.
If you don’t mind me asking, what occult group were you a part of?
@shane
Being involved in buddhism is nice, but i think for most people in the west it does not run very deep. The traditional religions are a package deal. This is the bit a lot of people don’t understand. I grew up in a part of the world that is deeply catholic and I know many people who are devout believers. My grandmother for instance is not the slightest bit afraid of death. Actually she welcomes it. She is healthy, not senile at all and not suicidal. She simply says she has no business in this world anymore. She has a firm belief in another world after this one and an understanding that she is not in control. This seems to be unattainable for many people today.
I think the causality goes “I am not afraid because I believe” not “I believe in order to mitigate my fear”.
Problem is that the package deals require you to believe a lot of things that are probably rubbish and maybe even harmful.
Not sure how to square this circle…
@Simon
Viewing the world as black and white is certainly an childish attitude, so I guess that fits nicely with The Child archetype. Just one of the many signs of the infantilisation of society. I wonder if that is par for the course in declining civilisations.
There is another thing about the last few decades. A steady build up ot fear without obvious cause or target. People are afraid without being able to say what they are afraid of. I am talking pre-covidiocy here. Covid was just a convenient crystallisation seed.
Is this free floating fear consistent with the Orphan?
Roland – exactly. But there is a key difference between The Orphan and The Innocent. The Innocent seeks immediate safety. The Orphan needs to push through the fear of the lack of safety in order to individuate and come to adulthood. So, I think what has happened in the post war years is that we have actually regressed from The Orphan to The Innocent. My analysis is that the boomers, for all their faults, were trying to individuate but failed. They caved in and sold out. Ever since then we have regressed to The Innocent archetype of which anxiety and free-floating fear are prime attributes.
@Simon – the group was a small non-hierarchical pagan cult, possibly over 400 members but dispersed, that mixed Western-style cabalistic magic & Eastern-style healing modalities, w/ a focus on self-responsibility. You could leave any time. 🙂
Education, as practised in our tertiary institutions, seems insanely neurotic by comparison. Very interesting can of worms indeed!
@Roland – when you say fear w/o obvious cause, I’m not so sure. Seems to me that news (via TV & internet) contributes hugely to free-floating anxiety & fear by bombarding people at an increasingly fast rate w/ more sensationalised bad news than their brains, let alone emotions, can process. As a random example, I once saw an ophthalmologist who took my eye pressure & said I had early glaucoma & needed to get my eyes tested by a machine every six weeks, no bulk billing. I think he was trying to pay off his new technology. The thing was, the TV in his waiting room was blasting patients w/ mainstream news at high volume. Apparently, stress increases eye pressure: something people who take their own eye pressure readings soon learn. I got a second opinion & more tests, but the only other time I had a high reading was when I was in physical pain due to the test. Around then I started exploring DIY natural vision improvement, which another ophthalmologist warned me was ‘dangerous’. But that’s all about experts trying to make & keep us dependent on them: the Devouring Mother w/ her Münchausen by proxy.
Shane – So, it wasn’t the Hotel California then 🙂
@Roland
Do you think that this steady built-up of fear is somehow related to a subconscious feeling that or excessive lifestlye could be over soon due to ressource depletion and changing climate? I would agree with Shane, that the news definitely are responsible for a lot of fear and anxienty, but maybe there is something going on on a deeper level.
@Shane
Quite possible that the media is to a large extent responsible. I have not had a tv in 15 years so I am not in a good position to judge. But i noticed those of my friends without TV were less susceptible to covid mania.
@secretface
That’s a good question. I don’t really know, but it sounds plausible.
I guess there might be some kind of antifragility at work here.
@everyone And here’s a funny off topic one.
We just had the worst flood in recorded history. It is bad. People have died, some have lost everything, many settlements are still cut off, many towns without power, many people homeless.
This is a all hands on deck scenario one might think.
One might have to think again. Only vaccinated hands are allowed to help.
I have been with the rural fire service for 10 years, have a truck licence and experience driving trucks off road, plenty of experience in flood and emergency response, but being unvaxxed means my help is not wanted. At least not from the SES.
Australia 2022….
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/mullumbimby-saves-itself-while-ses-continue-with-vaccine-mandates/
Roland – there’s a lesson for the future in there. Community is going to be worth ten times more than imbecilic government bureaucrats in the difficult years ahead.
I can also confirm that my friends without a TV seem to be the ones more resitant to Covid mania, but these people were also critical of the pharma industry before Covid, as they are part of esoteric antroposophical circles. In the past I would have thought these people were crazy, nowadays I’m not so sure anymore.
@Roland
We also had a major flooding in Germany last summer with quite a few dead people. I´m not sure whether they also had something stupid in place like your restriction of only vaccinated helpers but the handling of the catastrophy was disastrous. One of our chancellor candidates was filmed laughing at one of the flooded towns, which cost him quite a lot of sympathy. The local TV station sent out a warning about the oncoming flood way too late, even though it had received a warning from weather experts early on. In addition, reports of gangs of looters in the flooded region were supressed as the nationality of the looters did not fit with the multicultural agenda of the government. Fortunately for government, the media coverage of the whole event was soon replaced by more Covid hysteria.
To add one more detail to the story of the flooding in Germany:
I happened to catch an article by Der Spiegel, a formerly renowned weekly, describing the columns of farmers on their tractors, bringing much-needed horsepower way ahead of the convoluted rescue efforts the state mounted – it called them the worst thing they seemed to be able to think of: preppers.
Michael – that’s funny. Presumably the writers at Der Spiegel think Santa Claus provides the food at the local supermarket.
Simon – That is definitely a possibility. I was once an avid reader of the online format of Der Spiegel. At some point I recognized that their articles have 0% overlap with what was really going on in the world. They were not the last German magazine that I left for the same reason.
Michael – That is also something that I don‘t understand at all. On the one side, the government advices to have enough food and water at home in case of an emergency, on the other side they denounce people following this advice as „preppers“. How can you make sense of such a behaviour?
Secretface – it is quite extraordinary to realise how delusional our media is. Of course, they are serving a public most of whom have no problem with what gets written. Although, viewership and readership numbers of the MSM do seem to be cratering which is a positive sign.
Simon – The Covid mania showed me that still too many people are mesmerized by the mainstream media but I see their shrinking revenue also as a positive sign. In Germany, the printing press is already in panic mode, trying to lure you into subscriptions with a lot of free newspaper issues. There are some ideas to keep them alive by letting the state finance them, which I consider to be really critical.