In my book, The Devouring Mother, I noted that one of the main properties of that archetype is what is called enabling. Enabling is the tacit or active encouragement of behaviours that are destructive to the individual being enabled. Enabling can only be carried out by a person in a position of authority, such as a parent, because the assumption is that the authority should be preventing said behaviour, not encouraging it. A classic example is drug use. A parent who either directly facilitates or tacitly allows drug use by their child is engaging in enabling behaviour. Most people would agree they are harming the child they should be caring for.
We can extrapolate the Devouring Mother archetype to the societal level precisely because every society has groups of people who are in positions of authority relative to the general public. We even sometimes call those groups “the authorities.” Just like with parents, we expect the authorities to act in the interests of the general public and not to encourage the general public to engage in harmful behaviour.
Modern western society has a peculiar blind spot in this respect because, even though we have a dazzling array of authorities, far more than any other society in history, we also have democracy, and we tell ourselves that this gives us freedom. However, even if we believe that democracy removes us from government authority, it’s still a fact that many of the authorities that exist today are outside of government control in a practical sense. Their authority over us exists above and beyond politics.
The scientific establishment is a classic example. In theory, the government can regulate science and technology. In practice, the government doffs its cap and tugs the forelock to institutional science. How many times have you heard a politician say, “I’m just following the science”.
What this means is that institutional science has authority. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that science, and especially medicine, have become major practitioners of enabling behaviour at the societal level and key planks in the overall archetypal dynamic that I have been calling the Devouring Mother.
But authority is only one of the prerequisites for enabling behaviour. In fact, there are three pillars of enabling behaviour at the societal level in the modern West.
Pillar 1 is the one just discussed: the authority of one individual or group over others.
Pillar 2 is the aforementioned notion of “freedom” that has become the foundational myth of the modern West since the United States became hegemon. This is the freedom of the individual from the authority of government.
Pillar 3 also arrived with US hegemony: consumer capitalism.
Now that we know what the three pillars are, let’s look at some examples of the societal-level enabling that is going on these days.
Example 1: the encouragement of addiction
Remember that enabling is about encouraging behaviour that is harmful to the person doing it. We know that most things in life are harmful when carried out in excess. We also know that there are certain activities that are more likely to be carried out to excess because they are addictive. Among these are pornography, drugs, alcohol, and gambling. To encourage people to partake of these activities is therefore a form of enabling behaviour.
But this is precisely what most western societies have done in recent decades. We live in a time of unlimited porn, instantaneous online gambling, and the increasing legalisation or decriminalisation of drugs. All of this is indicative of enabling behaviour, and if we drill down further, we see that the three pillars outlined above are all present.
Pillar 3, consumer capitalism, is the most obvious since somebody is making a lot of money out of selling online porn, gambling and drugs. The government itself takes a cut of that money via tax and so the government is arguably also included in Pillar 3.
Pillar 2 is about freedom. When it comes to porn, gambling, and drugs, it is always the libertarians who are ready to jump out of the bushes and tell you that people should be “free” to do these things since they don’t hurt anybody else. That may be true, but enabling is about the damage done to the person being enabled. Thus, the question resolves down to whether we think society should allow individuals to harm themselves through addiction.
Everybody will have different opinions on this, but I think it should be uncontroversial that some individuals do, in fact, harm themselves with drugs and gambling at least (the consequences of porn are less obvious). I personally know several people in that category, and I’m sure most readers would too.
Does the allowing of porn, gamling and drugs count as enabling behaviour or is it just the necessary price of “freedom” as the libertarians would say?
To my mind, the libertarian position was valid three hundred years ago precisely because modern consumer capitalism did not exist at that time. Wanna smoke pot in 1750? You’ll have to grow it yourself or find a friend who does. Wanna gamble or watch porn? You’ll have to take the time, trouble, and risk of going to a place of ill repute. In a world without consumer capitalism, it was really difficult for the average person to consume things to excess. That’s why most of the stories of debauchery from that era come from the aristocracy, who had the time and money to spare.
Modern consumer capitalism has elevated society in general to a level of wealth where we can now also destroy ourselves through excess. In fact, consumer capitalism makes it really, really easy to do so. Once you make porn, gambling, and drugs legal, companies will compete against each other to make those things as easy as possible to consume. The most successful companies will be the ones who make it the easiest. In fact, it is in those companies’ interest to create addicts.
Thus, in relation to porn, gambling, and drugs, it’s the combination of libertarian politics (Pillar 2) and consumer capitalism (Pillar 3) that creates enabling behaviour at the societal level. All that is required is for the government to relinquish its authority (Pillar 1) in favour of the free market. This is a passive form of enabling.
Note that passive enabling is predicated on allowing predatory behaviour to occur. If a drug dealer is hanging around a drug addict all the time, asking if they want to buy drugs, that doesn’t count as enabling behaviour because the drug dealer has no authority over or duty of care towards the addict (at least not legally). The drug dealer is engaging in predatory behaviour. However, the person who has a duty of care but allows predatory behaviour to occur is an enabler. One could argue that the government has become a passive enabler by allowing corporations to engage in predatory behaviour towards the general public.
Example 2: human trafficking
The same assertion can be made about a second form of enabling behaviour going on these days: the massive movement of people into western nations. This is especially stark in the United States with the huge influx of illegal immigrants that is going on. This form of enabling fits better with the Devouring Mother archetype since it comes under the guise of care and/or safety. The people arriving in the US must claim asylum, meaning they ask to be taken into the care of the US government.
Governments have authority over and a duty of care to their citizens. The idea that governments also have a duty of care to non-citizens was born out of the abuses of governments towards non-citizens that happened in the 20th century in Europe. This gives us Pillar 2 of enabling since everybody now has the “freedom” to claim asylum in a neutral country.
Pillar 3 is also clearly present. You don’t have to scratch the surface too much to see that enormous amounts of money are changing hands in relation to the movements of people that are going on. Much of that money is, in fact, coming from governments themselves, either directly or indirectly. But there are certainly a great many “entrepreneurs” who are earning that money by facilitating the trade.
Once again, the pattern we see is that the official authority of government (Pillar 1) is being bypassed or relinquished in the name of the freedom (Pillar 2) of people to claim asylum, with a great deal of money (Pillar 3) changing hands. All three elements of enabling behaviour are present.
On the surface, this might not seem like enabling behaviour since asylum seekers are being “protected” rather than harmed. But it is surely the case that at least some of the people being trafficked are being harmed by the incredibly risky journey they must take at the end of which they receive zero certainty about their status in the country they arrive in. Given that their journey is predicated on the deliberate removal of government authority, they must face the constant threat of deportation if the political winds change in the future and Pillar 1 is re-established.
Example 3: the medical-pharma industries
There are other examples of enabling behaviour we could go into, but the one I want to spend the rest of the post on is the one that got me thinking about this issue again, and that’s the enabling behaviour specific to the modern medical industry. Here, once again, we have the classic form of Devouring Mother enabling done under the guise of “protection” and “care”, which means authority (Pillar 1). We also know that enormous amounts of money are made in the modern medical industry (Pillar 3). Less obvious, and therefore most interesting, is the role that Pillar 2 (freedom) plays. As we will see, modern medical enabling is done in the name of freedom.
Now, I’m not quite old enough to have experienced the AIDS hysteria in full flight, but I did grow up in the world that followed that hysteria. I’d never questioned the official narrative until the COVID debacle made me realise how weak the science of virology is, and that got me looking back to AIDS, which was, in most respects, a practice run for COVID.
It’s one of the ironies of COVID that the man who invented the technology (PCR) that made it possible, Kary Mullis, had already been an “AIDS denier” back in the 80s. Mullis wrote the forward to what is perhaps the definitive book on the subject, which is Peter Duesberg’s “Inventing the AIDS Virus”.
Bear in mind that Duesberg was himself a virologist, and his initial argument against the HIV-causes-AIDS hypothesis was a technical one aimed at his colleagues. What began as the honest questioning of the science around the HIV virus ended up with Duesberg’s career being systematically destroyed by the virology establishment. That’s why the story of Duesberg is a perfect example of the corruption of institutional science these days.
What Duesberg had realised was that the so-called disease of “AIDS” never behaved as if it were caused by a virus. One of the main pieces of evidence for that was that over 90% of AIDS patients were men. As Duesberg looked into it more, he realised that it wasn’t just that AIDS sufferers were men; they were a very specific demographic of men, namely, homosexual men.
Nowadays, we are used to the idea of homosexual couples living in the suburbs and holding down respectable careers. But in the late 70s and 80s, the homosexual culture was dominated by a lifestyle that could only be called sex, drugs, and disco. Much like rock’n’roll, it was a lifestyle that could only ever be lived by young men because any other demographic would be physiologically incapable of continuing it for any length of time. Imagine taking multiple different drugs, spending an entire night drinking, dancing and having sex with multiple strangers, taking more drugs to be able to go to sleep, and then getting up and doing it again the next day and the day after that.
What Duesberg realised was that the disease profile for “AIDS” did not match the pattern that would be expected for a viral disease but absolutely did match the profile for a lifestyle disease based around endless partying, casual sex, and heavy drug use. (He also made a number of technical arguments outlining problems with the specific association of the HIV virus with “AIDS”.)
Pillar 3 of enabling is about money. Well, hundreds of billions of dollars have been pumped into the virology and medical industries to combat the AIDS “crisis”. To put that into context, about as much has been spent on AIDS as on the Apollo space program. The big difference, of course, is that the Apollo space program actually achieved its mission, while the AIDS program was a complete failure. This explains why Duesberg was targeted. He was threatening to kill the goose that laid the golden egg and he was pointing out quite specifically why the AIDS program was failing: it wasn’t addressing the actual problem.
We can also see with AIDS that the authority of the government (Pillar 1) was once again handed over, this time to the authority of the “experts.” Then, as now, the scientific and medical establishments were blindly trusted by the general public, even despite the obvious failure of the AIDS program. Because of this, politicians faced no political consequences for continuing to fork over taxpayer money and leave the “experts” to take care of it.
That gives us Pillars 1 and 3. But it’s arguably Pillar 2 (freedom) that is the most interesting here because what Duesberg’s theory about the real cause of AIDS highlighted was that it was a lifestyle problem. But it was a lifestyle that was the direct result of the freedom movement of the 60s. That freedom movement had already given rise to sex, drugs, rock’n’roll. The homosexual lifestyle of the 70s and 80s was arguably just a more extreme version of what the hippies had already dabbled with.
Because the freedom to be homosexual was tied up with the more general freedom movement of the time, nobody wanted to admit that “AIDS” could be the result of that freedom. Especially in the United States, to acknowledge that would have provided ample political ammunition for the Christian conservatives. Having fought so hard for freedom, nobody wanted to admit that it could have downsides. Almost certainly, this played a major role in why nobody wanted to hear Duesberg’s arguments.
When we put all this together, what we see with the AIDS hysteria is that the scientific and medical establishments had actually become part of an enabling dynamic that encouraged a harmful lifestyle choice. This enabling went beyond purely passive forms. As Duesberg noted, doctors were providing antibiotics to gay men under the table. Many gay men were taking antibiotics on a daily basis to fend off the bacterial diseases arising from their sexual practices.
When used for short periods of time, antibiotics help to eliminate a specific pathogen. However, they also kill healthy bacteria, and so long-term daily use is harmful because it throws out the balance of the microbiome. Thus, the prescription of antibiotics by the medical industry was harmful in itself and also indirectly harmful by enabling a destructive lifestyle. That’s true even before we get into the sordid story of the prescription of AZT and other harmful pharmaceuticals prescribed as treatment for so-called “AIDS”.
When we stand back from all this, what we can see is that the medical industry was implicitly promising to “protect” the men who were engaging in a destructive lifestyle. We might go further and say they were trying to protect those men from the consequences of their actions. That is a fake kind of “freedom” (Pillar 2) that involves putting your trust in an authority (Pillar 1) which is financially incentivised (Pillar 3) to keep you dependent. Nobody sees it, of course, because the government is not involved and, in the United States, freedom is always freedom from government.
AIDS might have been the first example of this pattern of enabling, but it has not been the last. We saw a repetition with the COVID hysteria. We also see it in the trans issue as it has evolved in recent years. Just as homosexual men had to be “free” to live as they wanted, now we are told that children and teenagers must be “free” to choose their own sex. The extreme homosexual lifestyle was only ever possible with a variety of licit and illicit drugs. The same is true of the trans lifestyle choice which is fundamentally predicated on surgical and pharmaceutical interventions. Once more, we can see that this ticks all the boxes for enabling behaviour.
Pillar 1 is about authority, and here we see not just the authority of the scientific and medical industries but also the authority of teachers and other school staff who are pushing the trans ideology. Since this authority is in direct conflict with the authority of parents, the trans battle increasingly revolves around who has the right of authority over the child.
Pillar 3 of enabling—money—is also present in the trans issue, not just in the medical industry revenue from the various surgical interventions, not just in the pharmaceutical industry revenue from puberty blockers and hormonal treatments, but perhaps more importantly, in the army of teachers, administrative, and psychological workers whose jobs rely on their being something to counsel children and teenagers about. We shouldn’t underestimate the lengths people will go to ensure they have a reason to justify their paycheque.
Finally, we have Pillar 2: freedom.
With the AIDS issue, the freedom was that of consenting adults to have sex with whoever they chose. Since homosexuality has been around since time immemorial, this request is something with a long and understandable history to it. The freedom proposed by trans ideology, however, is a very different thing that has perhaps no historical precedent. It is a “freedom” entirely predicated on the ability of modern science and medicine to surgically and pharmaceutically manipulate sex characteristics. Therefore, it is a freedom that could never have been offered before. It’s also a freedom that can only ever be offered by “experts” with the authority implied by the title.
All of which is to say that the trans issue is a classic case of enabling behaviour with the same cluster of elements that gave us the AIDS and Corona hysterias.
Conclusion
What’s particularly interesting is how all three pillars of enabling map to different default political ideologies. The second pillar of “freedom” is primarily associated with libertarianism. The third pillar, capitalism, is supported by the right side of modern politics. The first pillar, the authority of the state, is mostly associated with the left wing.
Thus enabling, and the Devouring Mother phenomenon more generally, do not fit neatly into any modern political category. That’s why no political party has an answer to it. The right wing is coming closest, but its obsession with the “free market” and money (Pillar 3) means that it can’t object too hard. Meanwhile, left wingers will eagerly jump on board issues that earn enormous sums of money for multi-national corporations as long as “freedom” is promised in return.
Enabling is, in fact, a manifestation of the status quo of the modern West. That status quo combines the free market, individual freedom, and administrative and scientific authority. All of this is predicated on the refutation of the authority of government. Enabling requires the deliberate deprecation of (national democratic) governmental authority in favour of the market, the bureaucracy and the various globalist institutions. The winners, at least from a financial and political point of view, are the capitalists, the bureaucrats and the experts. The losers are pretty much everybody else.
Modern medicine seems to behave a lot like the mediaeval and early modern western churches, even so far as mutilating people for their own salvation, and doctors are treated like priests. Its rise along with science in general as this sort of transnational subversive institution of questionable loyalty matches pretty well with the decline of organised religion in the west.
The both sides of politics is interesting because in some ways both sides support the atomisation and alienation of people from their family and home area, which is the freedom we talk of but that itself is predicated on technological and sociological means that are quite novel. Being an individual in a massive industrial urban society is a very powerless position, so in many ways it’s just the freedom to choose ones method of dependence. Its probably impossible to think of something less free than our modern Condtion, as most people have no idea how to do anything that would provide their daily needs without the system.
Even in the 19th century I remember reading early settler accounts of aboriginal people laughing at them because they couldn’t make the guns, boots and clothes they used.
Yep. Remember that both capitalists and socialists wanted internationalisation. It was merely a question of who controlled it. In the end, the capitalists and socialists have teamed up together with the former still owning all the capital and the latter being in charge of the bureaucracy. Governments are pincered between both sides and the voting public has been rendered powerless.
Your three pillars and their alignment with political perspectives reminds me of the three roles in the rescue game – Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer. The only way to resolve the game is not to play – switching sides won’t help.
>That’s why most of the stories of debauchery from that era come from the aristocracy, who had the time and money to spare.
It is interesting that standard western lifestyle is absurdly rich in comparison to historical norms. Buckminster Fuller’s concept of energy slaves is a good descriptor; we each live with the energy equivalent of a hundred or so personal staff members which is not dissimilar to a high ranking aristocrat of old. Perhaps the debauchery is simply one of the symptoms that arises when so much energy needs outlets to dissipate. The issue with oil is that it tends to burn everything indiscriminately when set alight, and the problem gets worse the more it is refined. Managed combustion is very difficult problem.
Daniel – the analogy with managed combustion is very appropriate. What do you need to ensure you don’t get runaway combustion? A governor. What role did the British create to keep the East India Company in line? The GOVERNOR General. So, if you look at the history of capitalism, it really is a lot like a engine. You let the capitalists go in and “disrupt”, then the government follows to clean up the mess. Rinse and repeat.
That’s pretty much how we run the pharmaceutical and medical industries, too. Do some minimal amount of testing to ensure not everybody dies, then release the product to market and find out about all the edge cases. In that respect, the way the corona vaccines were released to market wasn’t that different from the way any other pharmaceutical is.
I hadn’t actually thought about it before, but I wonder if anybody has tried to adapt Eric Berne’s “Games People Play” to political analysis? With any political system, you rarely have a single entity operating but an equilibrium of different entities eg. the three pillars.
The mechanical metaphor is certainly a suitable model for how western civilisation sees itself (and also the model on which it tries to govern itself as you note). The issue is that as a model it is just plain incorrect – human society is an ecosystem and it really needs to be managed more like a garden than a machine.
Such an approach comes with certain expectations, like weeds and pests being an inherent and integral part of the system that you cannot eliminate and only at best contain. All the carbon zero nonsense is like that, as if you could somehow perfectly balance the machine. Did you know our last (NZ) government was close to reducing the national speed limited to 80 kmph (from 100 kmph) as part of a zero road toll initiative? It’s the same pathological view that the machine can be perfected. Enabling behaviours are similar in that you cannot ‘fix’ them, they’re symptoms of inappropriate planting, or simply invasive species filling gaps.
I should stop before I poison the metaphor. And I do appreciate the archetypal analysis of the subject for my personal sanity, even if I don’t believe in a direct cure.
Relatedly I’ve found people management to much more enjoyable since I’ve started approaching it in a similar manner, ‘planting’ people around the place and seeing how they grow, even ignoring getting involved with the games they play as much as possible. I do drive the company owner a little nuts, but it is so much more satisfying (for everyone) than a cog into machine mindset. Maybe one day I’ll write a book on the gardening organisation, but I’m clueless how you teach it without first teaching actual gardening (over many years). I grew up with farming and horticulture, so have an unfair advantage in that respect.
Didn’t know that about the NZ gov but it’s a common error of linear thinking. For most systems, irrespective of what the system is, getting from 99% efficiency to 99.9% efficiency on any metric is as costly as getting the first 99%. So, yes, getting to a zero road toll would be enormously expensive. The same goes for the “net zero” carbon nonsense. I used to believe politicians came up with such slogans for propaganda purposes. But these days I’m not so sure. It does seem that politicians really do believe their own BS now and they really think you can get to “zero” with no cost even as the obvious cost is already here right in front of our faces. I suppose the AIDS hysteria was not that much different. That went of for years and years despite the fact that no progress was made even by the terms of the official narrative (which was BS).
They have reasonably effective treatments for AIDS now, don’t they? I know they have some nasty side-effects. Also, a lot of people in Africa are dying of AIDS, and they are heterosexual for the most part. (I remember an African professor of mine – this was at an American college – telling us that three of his cousins had died of AIDS. That’s a lot of cousins.)
That’s secondary, though. Your Pillar 3 (“consumer capitalism”) is probably the most important feature in the enabling story. As it happens, I’ve been binge-watching (yes, I know) compilations of Hoarders on YouTube over the weekend. You know the show? These people acquired perfectly normal things, the kinds that everyone has (clothes, furniture, decorations…), but in absolutely absurd quantities. As a purely practical matter, this would have been quite difficult for an ordinary medieval baron to accomplish, though I suppose a king would have been able to pull it off if he put his mind to it. And so, you get one Canadian woman sleeping in a tent outside because her (quite sizable) house is too full of stuff for anyone to actually sleep in it, and an American woman sleeping in a homeless shelter for an analogous reason. And neither of those ladies is/was a queen.
What makes me uncomfortable is that reining in Pillar 3 may require some pretty draconian policies. For instance: you hang anyone who gets caught trafficking pot, as Singapore does. Personally, I’d rather deal with potheads than with pot hangings.
P.S.
Off topic, but it appears that Joe Biden has been neutralized (politically) by corona. Hahaha! Do you think he really did test positive? Or it’s just a cover? The fact that he withdrew from the election *over Twitter* is also really odd. Makes you wonder if they’ve actually informed him that he’s withdrawn. 😛
Irena – are they dying of “AIDS” or are they dying with a positive test for HIV? “AIDS” only began to be found in heterosexuals once the medical profession starting testing for HIV (what a coincidence). There really is a peculiar unwillingness of people to be able to reason back to first principles when it comes to viral disease. I’ve tried to walk through it with friends of mine who are otherwise willing to believe all kinds of quirky ideas about the world but they just blank out when it comes to viruses. There is a religious aspect to it. In any case, I recommend reading Duesberg’s book and if you still believe the official narrative then at least you’ve heard the best counter argument – https://archive.org/details/inventingaidsvir00dues
Yeah, Biden just happens to get covid right at a time when he needs to be taken out of the spotlight since he was clearly refusing to step aside. Just goes to show that the narrative can be weaponised against anybody. Who can forget when Trump got “covid” and clearly wasn’t sick.
I hadn’t heard of Hoarders. But those stories don’t surprise me too much. Modern advertising is a form of magic. So, it’s not an exaggeration to think of consumers as being under a spell where they unconsciously must buy things. If that’s true, then behaviour like you mention makes some sense.
Simon I’ve found the found religious reaction from almost everyone regarding viruses, even from those who question most things. Its really strange, and it seems to me to take someone who is verging on the spectrum a bit (which includes me) to actually look at it clearly from first principles. The only people I’ve found who can talk about it are Chinese medicine practitioners who come from a different metaphysical background.
So many agricultural scientists I respect and read get so close to the conclusion but then veer away from it at the last minute, even those who clearly lay out that ‘disease’ in plants and animals is caused by either malnutrition or toxicity.
The history of the idea would be worth researching, because it certainly seems to be dripping with metaphysical loading. Contagion has a long history, but I’m not sure about viruses themselves.
Skip – it seems impossibly coincidental that the virus concept arrived at almost exactly the same time as the meme idea. I think the politics of “viruses” is crucial. Corona pops up during the presidency of Trump who had won the presidency by “going viral” especially using the ultimate viral transmission technology of social media. Spanish Flu arrives when the power of the elites in Europe was seriously under threat from the viral meme of communism. I suspect that one of the main drivers of the virus idea is the horror of the elites at the coordination of the masses around an idea that is not generated from the elites themselves. It’s a nice side effect that “pandemics” gives the elites a perfect excuse to reassert their authority.
I don’t think that’s the whole story but I suspect it’s a very important part of it.
As the currents of karma (or fate, or destiny) shift around us immense changes in prosperity ( health) and consciousness occur without any materially visible cause. The virus narrative conveniently explains the inexplicable, without which one would be be forced to fall back to the discussing the will of the gods (or of God). Thus the reason it is a fundamentally religious term; because without it the world doesn’t make any sense. The fact that a virus itself is invisible; knowable only in allegory is the clincher – interpreting the will of the gods is much the same.
Daniel – that makes sense. It also fits with my point about the politics of viruses since politics and religion have always gone together and viruses arrived at a time of not just political but religious crisis, as the elites no longer supported the church. Then there’s the fact that testing and vaccinations have the form of religious rites of passage.
Thinking about it, it’s probably just another form of the western tendency for abstract classification and universalism, along with the old religious fight against the forces of the devil in so called secular terms.
Like science and jurisprudence, viral disease (and disease in general) is taking a number of ‘cases’ with superficially similar features and creating a universally applicable classification.
It does away with the individual and doesn’t even bother trying to treat them, rather it wants to wage war against an enemy. That enemy is everywhere and can ‘infect’ anyone, and must be fought with the weapons of the medical inquisition for the good of all. Witches are now ‘anti vaxxers’, which is interesting because the anti vaxx movement was started by concerned mothers and had a feminine element.
It would be funny if it didn’t have such damaging effects.
I think those are two separate things. The virus concept can definitely be critiqued on strictly logical grounds. That’s what Mullis and Duesberg did with HIV/AIDS. In a functioning system, their arguments would at least have been refuted properly. That was not a failure of science but a corruption of it from the inside.
As for waging war against an enemy, that’s another weird socio-political correspondence since viruses pop up at the exact same time as nationalism. So, you’ve got new states like Germany which are already built on weak foundations and which immediately start finding all kinds of “internal enemies” like communists, anarchists, capitalists or just people who don’t speak the newly-defined official state language. What did states start doing with such people? Quarantine them i.e. treat them as if they had contagious disease which, from the state’s point of view was sort of true since they were “ideologically infected”. We’re seeing the exact same battle play out on the internet now with all the “disinformation” garbage.
@Simon
Re: viruses
Nah, sorry, can’t follow you into the “no such thing as a virus territory.” I see no reason to doubt the existence of viruses any more than to doubt the existence of (say) atoms and molecules. Both (viruses and atoms/molecules) are too small to see, and presumably, they are really just abstractions that help us make sense of the world that we actually do perceive with our senses. Take the AIDS cocktail. How did they come up with it? In part, by relying on what they knew about the HIV virus (an abstraction). And the cocktail does actually work. Perfectly? No. But it results in people living quite a bit longer.
But sure, it’s possible that it’s still early days in our understanding of viruses. Schools still teach that “solar system” model of atoms to students (protons and neutrons in the middle, electrons orbiting around the center), even though physicists would tell you it’s not how it actually works, and you really have some sort of probability space, and blah-blah-blah. Much harder to understand, though if you’re a physicist (or chemist), then it’s your job to understand it. And they may eventually come up with a better model than that. (Or maybe our whole civilization will collapse, and no-one will learn about the fancy model anymore, and will only dimly remember the solar system model, maybe.) The old model is still useful for all sorts of things. It’s possible that our current understanding of viruses is at a solar-system-model stage, and will (hopefully) improve with time.
Re: hoarding
I’ve been thinking about this some more. Overshopping is certainly a factor in hoarding (especially the kind of hoarding that they bother to turn into a TV show), but more ordinary kinds of hoarding are often a kind of opposite: frugality gone awry. People buy stuff that they need, but then refuse to throw them away because they might still be usable (even though they’re not actually using them). For instance: you buy a jar of tomato sauce, eat the sauce, and refuse to throw the jar away because it can be reused. If jars are in short supply, it makes sense to hang on to any that you do acquire, because you might be able to reuse them. But if you keep acquiring new jars without throwing away the old ones, then pretty soon, your living space is taken over by piles of jars. (A variation on the theme: you do throw some old jars away, but you have a dozen or so empty ones on hand at any time, just in case, as if you couldn’t just buy them “in case” you unexpectedly needed them.) So, wealth turns some old virtues (such as frugality) into vices (hoarding). Minimalism is in a way the opposite: you turn a vice (wastefulness) into a virtue (anti-clutter). Take the minimalist advice to get rid of any clothes that you haven’t worn in six months. “Oh, yeah? So, you expect me to buy a whole new set of winter clothes every single year, when my winter coat is still in perfectly good condition?” But it’s true, it’ll make your living space less cluttered, and if you have a lot of money, then why not, I suppose?
Irena – fair enough. Bear in mind, Duesberg was not denying that viruses exist. He was a virologist after all.
As for the frugality idea, that sounds plausible. Actually, I am something of a bricolage practitioner myself and there is definitely an art to knowing what kinds of “junk” can come in randomly useful in the future. Two of my favourite creations are a work bench made out of old bird cage frame and a discarded metal door and a seed propagation chamber also made out of old bird cage frame and leftover plastic sheeting.
I think most of us would have experienced the annoyance of having thrown something away and then realised a few months later that it was exactly what we needed for some new enterprise we were carrying out. Maybe the hoarders are particularly sensitive to that annoyance and decide never to let it happen again!
What is called trans now is not really new. Trends come and go in both the east and the west. Using your 3 pillars analysis
Eunuchs
1 authorities – needed reliable men to guard females, and bureaucrats who would not establish dynasty’s. Also of course as punishment.
2 freedom – most were slaves, captives of war etc but some choose it to have better opportunities in life. Some choose it over dying. Some rose to be generals and leaders.
3 economic – for the individual there could be opportunities for advancement. Obviously in china for example they were used as bureaucrats because men were though to favour their family over the state. Whereas eunuchs depended on the state.
Castrati
1 authority – in the west castrati were highly sort after by church and musical societies for there singing ability. Parents and guardians of the boys, especially from poor families encouraged it.
2 freedom – boys had little freedom but were encouraged to believe they could be the next superstar.
3 economic reasons – for the most successful castrati the sky was the limit. Like today’s superstars. However most never succeeded in being superstars but went into the church choirs if lucky.
Sue – good points. The ideology changes but the underlying pattern remains the same. I think the ideology in the case of the modern trans movement is very similar to that which is tied up with the sexual freedom of the 60s and also covid, which is why virology is directly relevant. It’s the ideology that says that science and technology can “free” us from biology i.e. transhumanism.
Hi Simon. Really enjoyed this essay. Your connection between the 3 pillars and the various political persuasions is very interesting. Do you think the movement (in Australia) towards minor political parties will have any impact on this arrangement? Sandra
Sandra – interesting question. If we define the following categories:-
– Politician (leader)
– Bureaucrat
– Expert
– Capitalist
– General Public
Currently, I would say that Bureaucrats and Experts are actually running the show. This includes most modern politicians who are not real leaders. ScoMo was an ex-marketing bureaucrat, for example.
So, would a movement towards minor parties empower either the General Public or (real) Leaders at the expense of Bureaucrats and Experts? I don’t see that happening in Australia but it’s a real possibility in the USA and that’s why the Bureaucrats and Experts are terrified of Trump. In Australia, it seems real leadership will have to come through a strong-willed politician working within the major parties.
Hi Simon
I thought that you might find this article interesting as it seems to me to be an excellent example of Pillar 3. Trust the science! https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/paris-olympics-boxer-quits-mid-fight-amidst-gender-arguments/104173584 Regards, Sandra
Sandra – yes, we now need scientists to tell us who is a man or woman, if we have a cold/flu and if the weather is especially bad or good!
God died. Eventually parenting died with him. So we get a society of spoilt brats, absent Dad’s and anxiously devouring Mums.
I like your description of parents failing their responsibility to protect their kids from predator of consumer capitalism.
Spiritually, it’s always been a case of individuate or die. Physically, you can kick the can though. But not forever.
I recall back in my varsity day’s seeing a newspaper article announcing that scientific research had shown that good looking people are more likely to get hired. So glad that one got funded.
Jinasiri – it’s a very tough battle even for parents who deliberately try to avoid it. How to get your kid not to want an iphone/ipad/computer game console when all their friends have one?
My Dad used to ask me whether I’d jump off the harbour bridge just coz all my friends are.
I think a better analogy is smoking, especially since tobacco, like technology, can be a stimulating and beneficial thing when used properly but quickly turns addictive and destructive when not.
Yeps. The problem isn’t the phone but how we underestimate how much training and mentoring it takes to use it harmlessly. Simply turning 18 doesn’t make us adults. I abstained from having a phone for 13 years on that point – I’m a slow learner though.
The reference is too old for kids today, but Luke’s loss of his right hand due to wielding that light-saber too early is a good one. I don’t watch movies anymore. Can you suggest something that’s still inside it’s used-by-date?
Sorry for bombarding you with comments. I’m killing time at a transit lounge 🤗
I think that’s a common theme that’s especially suited to wizard stories. The best example in my opinion is A Wizard of Earthsea where Ged both unleashes his shadow and causes the death of one of his teachers by misusing his power during his apprenticeship. That seems to be an inevitability and I think the story captures well the idea that it is the Elder’s job to keep their apprentice from causing too much trouble.