Thank you for this post. i am a veterinarian and highly trained in biological sciences, immunology, vaccines, etc. i immediately fell back on my knowledge base and began questioning the vaccine issue. To see intelligent people fall into total compliance has been so difficult to wrap my head around. Now I am facing another similar issue with a genetically engineered product released on the market to treat arthritis in cats and dogs. My entire profession nearly, colleagues who I highly respected, have once again, believed Pharma when they say their are no side effects, even as their patients are collapsing with sudden paralysis, dementia, multiorgan failure and immune mediated melt down. Man this is so tough to witness. I try to open the discussion and they look at me like Im a monster with 3 heads.
Thank you for sharing this. Your veterinary perspective adds a fascinating layer to this discussion. It's wild to see how the same pattern repeats across fields – once a narrative gets locked in, questioning it makes you the problem, not the substance of your concerns.
The social pressure to conform is powerful, especially among professionals who've built identities around institutional trust. Your colleagues who witness adverse events firsthand and still dismiss them are exactly the people I am writing about.
Thanks for being on the right side of this. I'm a longtime pet owner and hope my vet is as thoughtful as you.
It was extremely difficult for us when our vet, who is extremely competent, completely did not "fall back" on their knowledge base. Both myself and spouse are scientists. Their entire staff had cv early on. Then got the shots. No one was allowed in the building until vaxed. Then it was vaxed or pcr tested. Masks - always. She was stunned knowing our background that we weren't shot up. As time went on, we were offered convenient pcr tests in the office in order to enter. We declined. I hope now some reflection has taken place.
I'm an old retired plumber not a "scientists" but I knew and my family stocked up on "Horse-Past" / Ivermectin at the start of pharma's [man made] Cv-19 scam, Me and my non-scientist family all knew 3 micron dust masks don't stop 1 & 2 micron virus! None of my 20+ member family got the non-FDA/ toxic/ experimental fear based jab, (1 member with lung problems got pharma’s Co-V 19) & hospatilized and survived i.e. wasn’t murdered, for money, as the book, What the Nursed Saw documented!
Glad you're family member survived the hospital! You're fortunate the majority of your family didn't get the shots. No one would listen to me. Spouse's dad injured by them - fine before. Spouse's mom finally gets it as evidenced by a comment to my spouse and recently told medical staff the mess they're in now was caused by the shots. She hasn't said anything to me yet.
Hang tight! Thank you so much for your honesty and uncompromising integrity. Precious animals depend upon their people who depend upon you for Truth and Healing!
@Dr. Beug; I ask my G.P. [& you,] "How can you Trust any information from our 60 billion in fraud fines/ Big Pharma's? He with a confused kook on his face answered, "That’s not a lot of money for them." I.e. revealing what pharma medicine was all about! Money.
Scinece has been bought off entirely. They jave infoltrated the schools, labs, journals, all of it. It is so sad. Veterinarians are no longer being taugh to reason through cases using differential lists. They only plug clinical signs into algorithms so the computer can spit out the name of the drug.
Thanks so much, Meryl... coming from you, that means a great deal to me.
Of course, I have my own biases and tendencies like everyone else - sometimes I want to breathe fire (and worse) when I see what's happening. But when I zoom out, I remember that most people caught in these narratives are simply victims of incredibly sophisticated manipulation.
Wonderful reading. I am always looking forward to Mr. Stylman's new stuff! :-)
Wondering, though, if focusing on fixing "them" is not the wrong tree to bark at. Safe spaces?! Argh.
I am more and more coming to a place where I think we should focus on what "we" did right, and amplifying it. Making it understandable. Making it seductive. Making it stronger. Making it infectious.
FWIW, I spent a couple years trying to convince people in my orbit about covid stuff - some came around, but more often than not, those relationships just ended. At this point, I'm less interested in trying to persuade people who aren't open to new ideas.
If we're in a world full of sheep (which I believe we are), I'd rather use my time and energy finding the other lions. Building something better rather than endlessly explaining what's wrong might be the way forward - especially once you understand the depth and depravity of the deception.
"If human psychology creates such powerful resistance to changing beliefs, how can we ever hope to break through? The first step is compassion – understanding that these mechanisms aren't signs of stupidity but of being human."
My suspicion is that the first step is studying those humans who are good at reevaluating and changing their beliefs, rather than analyzing those who aren't. (After all, some of us find new unexpected information exiciting and invigorating!:) What do you think?
I suspect it has something to do with intellectual humility and curiosity overriding ego protection. Some people derive identity from being *right* while others derive it from learning and growth.
I suspect the key difference between lions and sheep - not intelligence or possibly not even courage, but rather the capacity to find joy in revising one's understanding of the world.
I often think that the enlightenment people threw the baby out with the bathwater when they dumped the medieval "we are all sinners" point of view. On one hand, they were right in objecting to the interpretation that we are all horribly deficient and ought to self-berate and be ashamed. But on the other they lost sight of the fact that the awareness of "we are all fallible and limited" is something fundamental, linked to humility and ready recognition of error, and essential to always keep in mind.
I am thinking... what I am curious about is how you, Josh, came to be a person who welcomes "revising one's understanding of the world." What steps did you go through? What aha moments did you have? How did it actually happen, to the best of your recollection?
The only finger pointing that's useful is to themselves. Like an abused person, we need to realize things that we ignored and shut down to. The truth is liberating.
Wow. You have hit THE NAIL and wrote the essence. Let me share something. The worst moment in my life included an epiphany. It happened when I pushed the life envelope to as far as I could in the order to reinforce certain ambitions in accord with a PERCEIVED world view. And it was so hard, with consequences to realize that one was wrong. There is pride in the mind of a human and nobody likes to come to conclusion that one was / is a Jackass. Now, extrapolate this to the level of systems, organizations and whole societies. Nobody likes and many are totally incapable to take the loss that comes from the real realization. This is why I mentioned before the 5 Stages of Grief. He who can master the 5 stages of grief quickly, gets time for another shot at something else. And those who stay too long in any of the first 4 stages of Grief, unfortunately never get any new chance, because there is no more time. Perhaps one of your best articles so far. Of course, this is just a subjective view at things. Kind regards and thank you for your writing.
Thank you for this profound reflection. Personally, I realized I was a jackass a few years ago, haha. That moment when you see how wrong you've been is brutally humbling. You're right about grief being the key process here, both individually and collectively. Those who can move through it gain a chance to rebuild with clearer vision.
Anyway, I appreciate your kind words and this thoughtful addition.
I like the way you frame that. Maybe jackasses are underrated - stubborn enough to resist the herd. I'll take more jackasses and less sheep these days.
"When I suggested he look at some evidence questioning the official 9/11 narrative, he shut down immediately - not because he's unintelligent or incurious, but because "he lost a friend that day." His emotional connection to the event has created a psychological fortress that no evidence can penetrate. "
A real friend would want to know why their friend actually died, not accept a totally ludicrous story. It takes a 5 minute read of the NIST FAQ on the 9/11 tower collapse to realize the entire story is preposterous. Ergo, not really a friend.
If you haven't come across Judy Wood, this might be interesting.
At 31:45 they talk about Hurricane Erin that was right off the coast of NYC on the morning of 9/11. I'm a NY'er who lived in Manhattan at the time and didn't know anything about that.
Thanks for another useful thought piece. Your brief reminder to use the Socratic method of asking questions rather than directly challenging someone who disagrees with you is helpful.
One other aspect, probably aimed at educated people more than others, whether learning in universities or apprenticeship programs. If you want your credentials to be respected, you need to respect the credentials of others. Otherwise, the mental doors close on both sides and we remain in "The Prison of Certainty". Credentials will never mean you know everything and those without credentials are deplorable.
Finally, I stumbled into a somewhat related Solzhenitsyn quote again today. "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."
It's becoming more glaring that credentials don't equate to education - in fact, in my world, the most credentialed people seem to be the least capable of critical thinking.
So much wisdom from Solzhenitsyn. I'm going to think about that one for a while.
I have to point out that I think what has to be addressed is the sheer hubris of people who brazenly embraced Jim Crow and the imposition of mandates; their fellow citizens and even family members were to be expelled from everyday life unless they agreed to be jabbed with an inadequately-tested and irreversible shot.
These people weren't simply wrong; they were wrong in what appears to be, for many, a life or death decision. And while it's true that they were wrong to the extent that they may have caused grave harm (or even death) to their loved ones or to themselves, they were still willing to use the strongest coercion against their fellow citizens in an area in which they knew little or nothing about.
I think this is more than about being simply wrong; it's about being wrong on a subject in which the stakes were the highest and in which history will hold them in absolute contempt for getting it wrong.
You've hit on the key most may still refuse to acknowledge: the willingness to enforce medical decisions through coercion wasn't just morally questionable - it revealed how easily ordinary people will embrace authoritarian measures when convinced they're "protecting" others. Ugh.
Recommend Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things for a deep understanding of fragmentation vs. integration in our brains. Once you get your head around what he's discovered it becomes easier to let go of delusions and embrace uncertainty. One of the great works of the ages in my humble opinion. Highly recommend to you Josh and to all your readers if you haven't encountered it yet. It reveals another layer of reality in all you so rightly say about the world we live in.
Everyone keeps recommending McGilchrist to me. I've only dabbled and know I need to go deeper. His work on the divided brain seems directly relevant to my area of study. I have a friend who's been obsessed with Joyce and his notion of the bicameral mind theories - sounds like it might be related. Either way, I appreciate the nudge - bumping it up my reading list.
Fabulous post of a truly profound nature. This is so true and I believe it is the reason that many who have had problems since taking the v@((*ne or the alleged "nasopharyngeal swab," which is actually a biopsy, simply will not consider that those new health issues were caused by the V@((*ne or the "swab."
This also gives my ego a boost because since I was a medical student virology never made good sense to me. How could anyone claim that a shot without a placebo control could be declared 90% or more effective. I also could not figure out how AIDS could be caused by a virus and if so why did the wives of hemophiliacs not get AIDS via sexual transmission. Much of it did not add up. Now after reading this and "Inventing the AIDS virus" I realize that the advice given to me by my psychiatry teacher during med school was 100% correct when he told me, after interviewing a schizophrenic patient and I asked him "How do we know there are not voices out there? Who is to say one person is insane and the rest of us are not?" He replied, "Congratulations, you have just confirmed that you are rational and NOT insane because whenever a normal person encounters an insane person the first thing that s/he does is to question their own sanity. In the future whenever you find yourself wondering "Am I crazy?" just remember that you are not crazy. It's the other guy who is crazy.
I'm not a virologist - a lot of the technical arguments go over my head though I have some friends with big science brains that I often confer with. I'm more of a heuristic thinker and try to spot patterns - that's the core nature of my exploration into all these ideas.
Your psychiatry professor's insight is brilliant. That questioning of one's own sanity when confronted with contradictory narratives is exactly the mechanism that keeps many people trapped in the official framework.
BTW, if you're exploring AIDS territory, I'd recommend checking out Emerging Viruses by Leonard Horowitz and Celia Farber's work - mindblowing stuff.
Great comment! I’ve recently learned that at least one psychotherapist (Jerry Marzinsky) is now considering the idea that schizophrenics may be possessed by demons. Some of the evidence in other directions just doesn’t add up in his estimation.
RE: the COVID vax, what got me was the insistence on vaxxing **pregnant & nursing women, and children**! I’m just a mom, but there’s no way that made sense in a billion years, just from the previous advice and precautions the medical institutions had given out.
I’ve since reevaluated the cries of *many* parents that their suddenly autistic children were injured by vaccinations. I’m extremely wary of all vaccinations now and would have to do vigorous research on each one to make a determination to accept it.
Just started reading Groupthink : A Study In Self Delusion by Christopher Booker, this from the introduction.
Groupthink is an easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity over-ride their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.
It is only by obtaining some sort of insight in the psychology of crowds that it can be understood… how powerless they are to hold any opinions other that those which are imposed upon them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd
And a quote by Le Bon along the lines of Mark Twain’s, The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
LeBon is indeed an eye-opener, a must read, understand and practice.
The book was recommended to me decades a go by a top fund manager with the remark that it was his favorite book on the financial markets, although they aren't even mentioned in it once...
Groupthink is the safest career path in them though. And even more so in and for the PMC in large cos, academia&co and above all in the civil service and the Deep State- see Ian Davis latest at offguardian.
I didn't read Le Bon until 2021 myself - just wow. His insights from the 1890s feel eerily prophetic today. That quote about masses "preferring to deify error, if error seduce them" perfectly captures what we've witnessed these past few years.
Excellent explanations. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force that causes people to defend beliefs. I learned about it over 30 years ago when studying NLP. Maybe it’s why i suspected narrative manipulation early on in the CV situation. I still marvel at how far people will go to defend their wrongly held beliefs.
Your essay brings to mind a statement I encountered years ago. The sign of true intelligence is being able to hold two or more disparate viewpoints within our consideration until further evidence or proof arises.
Covid provides a quintessential example. Numerous vials of "vaccines" have been analyzed with various contents noted. Different methods and procedures have revealed more dimensions to the problem than first thought: different microscopes provide different results according to their parameters.
People have argued and demanded agreement with their positions; yet, each position rests upon "a fact." Because the mind cannot, at this time, understand the deeper underlying rationale which ties together these disparate "facts," people leap to conclusions where only their "facts" are "true."
In fact, we just don't know. We have facts and, if honest with ourselves, conflicting "facts." We simply don't have the paradigm which ties them together, but the facts, whoever's they are, are valid and true.
Great insight about holding multiple viewpoints simultaneously. I think you've identified something crucial - our minds crave certainty, for sure. Candidly, at this stage, the only thing I'm sure of is: I DON'T KNOW.
I'd also add that it's important to be able to consider an idea without actually believing it - when we can do that, the possibilities expand dramatically.
To your point about "facts" - being able to objectively arbitrate between competing facts is perhaps the key intellectual challenge of our time.
Thank you for this post. i am a veterinarian and highly trained in biological sciences, immunology, vaccines, etc. i immediately fell back on my knowledge base and began questioning the vaccine issue. To see intelligent people fall into total compliance has been so difficult to wrap my head around. Now I am facing another similar issue with a genetically engineered product released on the market to treat arthritis in cats and dogs. My entire profession nearly, colleagues who I highly respected, have once again, believed Pharma when they say their are no side effects, even as their patients are collapsing with sudden paralysis, dementia, multiorgan failure and immune mediated melt down. Man this is so tough to witness. I try to open the discussion and they look at me like Im a monster with 3 heads.
Thank you for sharing this. Your veterinary perspective adds a fascinating layer to this discussion. It's wild to see how the same pattern repeats across fields – once a narrative gets locked in, questioning it makes you the problem, not the substance of your concerns.
The social pressure to conform is powerful, especially among professionals who've built identities around institutional trust. Your colleagues who witness adverse events firsthand and still dismiss them are exactly the people I am writing about.
Thanks for being on the right side of this. I'm a longtime pet owner and hope my vet is as thoughtful as you.
It was extremely difficult for us when our vet, who is extremely competent, completely did not "fall back" on their knowledge base. Both myself and spouse are scientists. Their entire staff had cv early on. Then got the shots. No one was allowed in the building until vaxed. Then it was vaxed or pcr tested. Masks - always. She was stunned knowing our background that we weren't shot up. As time went on, we were offered convenient pcr tests in the office in order to enter. We declined. I hope now some reflection has taken place.
I'm an old retired plumber not a "scientists" but I knew and my family stocked up on "Horse-Past" / Ivermectin at the start of pharma's [man made] Cv-19 scam, Me and my non-scientist family all knew 3 micron dust masks don't stop 1 & 2 micron virus! None of my 20+ member family got the non-FDA/ toxic/ experimental fear based jab, (1 member with lung problems got pharma’s Co-V 19) & hospatilized and survived i.e. wasn’t murdered, for money, as the book, What the Nursed Saw documented!
Glad you're family member survived the hospital! You're fortunate the majority of your family didn't get the shots. No one would listen to me. Spouse's dad injured by them - fine before. Spouse's mom finally gets it as evidenced by a comment to my spouse and recently told medical staff the mess they're in now was caused by the shots. She hasn't said anything to me yet.
Thanks, but my Dad, Wife & best frind were all killed by iatrigenic medicine!
I'm so sorry, Steve.
Hang tight! Thank you so much for your honesty and uncompromising integrity. Precious animals depend upon their people who depend upon you for Truth and Healing!
@Dr. Beug; I ask my G.P. [& you,] "How can you Trust any information from our 60 billion in fraud fines/ Big Pharma's? He with a confused kook on his face answered, "That’s not a lot of money for them." I.e. revealing what pharma medicine was all about! Money.
Scinece has been bought off entirely. They jave infoltrated the schools, labs, journals, all of it. It is so sad. Veterinarians are no longer being taugh to reason through cases using differential lists. They only plug clinical signs into algorithms so the computer can spit out the name of the drug.
It is good to know that I am not alone.
Wow! Just Wow. What an incredibly insightful, well-written piece to help us understand the mire we are in. And no finger-pointing! I am so impressed.
Thanks so much, Meryl... coming from you, that means a great deal to me.
Of course, I have my own biases and tendencies like everyone else - sometimes I want to breathe fire (and worse) when I see what's happening. But when I zoom out, I remember that most people caught in these narratives are simply victims of incredibly sophisticated manipulation.
Exactly - we need to be blaming those that curated the narrative, not those who were victims of the dirty tricks.
True but the sad truth is they never would have gotten away with it if (pretty much) everyone didn’t buy into it.
Wonderful reading. I am always looking forward to Mr. Stylman's new stuff! :-)
Wondering, though, if focusing on fixing "them" is not the wrong tree to bark at. Safe spaces?! Argh.
I am more and more coming to a place where I think we should focus on what "we" did right, and amplifying it. Making it understandable. Making it seductive. Making it stronger. Making it infectious.
Thanks Erin. And, you can call me Josh :-)
FWIW, I spent a couple years trying to convince people in my orbit about covid stuff - some came around, but more often than not, those relationships just ended. At this point, I'm less interested in trying to persuade people who aren't open to new ideas.
If we're in a world full of sheep (which I believe we are), I'd rather use my time and energy finding the other lions. Building something better rather than endlessly explaining what's wrong might be the way forward - especially once you understand the depth and depravity of the deception.
:-) Will do.
"If human psychology creates such powerful resistance to changing beliefs, how can we ever hope to break through? The first step is compassion – understanding that these mechanisms aren't signs of stupidity but of being human."
My suspicion is that the first step is studying those humans who are good at reevaluating and changing their beliefs, rather than analyzing those who aren't. (After all, some of us find new unexpected information exiciting and invigorating!:) What do you think?
Makes sense to me.
I suspect it has something to do with intellectual humility and curiosity overriding ego protection. Some people derive identity from being *right* while others derive it from learning and growth.
I suspect the key difference between lions and sheep - not intelligence or possibly not even courage, but rather the capacity to find joy in revising one's understanding of the world.
Yup. Exactly.
I often think that the enlightenment people threw the baby out with the bathwater when they dumped the medieval "we are all sinners" point of view. On one hand, they were right in objecting to the interpretation that we are all horribly deficient and ought to self-berate and be ashamed. But on the other they lost sight of the fact that the awareness of "we are all fallible and limited" is something fundamental, linked to humility and ready recognition of error, and essential to always keep in mind.
On rereading it again... :-)
I am thinking... what I am curious about is how you, Josh, came to be a person who welcomes "revising one's understanding of the world." What steps did you go through? What aha moments did you have? How did it actually happen, to the best of your recollection?
The only finger pointing that's useful is to themselves. Like an abused person, we need to realize things that we ignored and shut down to. The truth is liberating.
https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/reactions-to-meryl-nasss-perspective
Good analysis. You can also view these psychological tendencies through the lens of confirmation/dis-confirmation bias.
Thank you for this so helpful réflexion
Wow. You have hit THE NAIL and wrote the essence. Let me share something. The worst moment in my life included an epiphany. It happened when I pushed the life envelope to as far as I could in the order to reinforce certain ambitions in accord with a PERCEIVED world view. And it was so hard, with consequences to realize that one was wrong. There is pride in the mind of a human and nobody likes to come to conclusion that one was / is a Jackass. Now, extrapolate this to the level of systems, organizations and whole societies. Nobody likes and many are totally incapable to take the loss that comes from the real realization. This is why I mentioned before the 5 Stages of Grief. He who can master the 5 stages of grief quickly, gets time for another shot at something else. And those who stay too long in any of the first 4 stages of Grief, unfortunately never get any new chance, because there is no more time. Perhaps one of your best articles so far. Of course, this is just a subjective view at things. Kind regards and thank you for your writing.
Thank you for this profound reflection. Personally, I realized I was a jackass a few years ago, haha. That moment when you see how wrong you've been is brutally humbling. You're right about grief being the key process here, both individually and collectively. Those who can move through it gain a chance to rebuild with clearer vision.
Anyway, I appreciate your kind words and this thoughtful addition.
A Jackass is not at all a bad thing to be. A Jackass has a mind of his own, not understood by others, but it does serve some healthy self-interest.
I like the way you frame that. Maybe jackasses are underrated - stubborn enough to resist the herd. I'll take more jackasses and less sheep these days.
Second the recommendation for 5 Stages of Grief. Am reading right now and it is quite profound and liberating.
Outstanding article - thank you!
"When I suggested he look at some evidence questioning the official 9/11 narrative, he shut down immediately - not because he's unintelligent or incurious, but because "he lost a friend that day." His emotional connection to the event has created a psychological fortress that no evidence can penetrate. "
A real friend would want to know why their friend actually died, not accept a totally ludicrous story. It takes a 5 minute read of the NIST FAQ on the 9/11 tower collapse to realize the entire story is preposterous. Ergo, not really a friend.
What’s NIST?
https://www.nist.gov/world-trade-center-investigation/study-faqs/wtc-towers-investigation
Thank you!
If you haven't come across Judy Wood, this might be interesting.
At 31:45 they talk about Hurricane Erin that was right off the coast of NYC on the morning of 9/11. I'm a NY'er who lived in Manhattan at the time and didn't know anything about that.
https://youtu.be/N6_aQQLYNw8
Wholly appreciate this piece.
In the end you're talking about "adding the missing conversation" ..making it safe to speak into the doubt.
https://addingthemissingconversation.org/
Thanks for another useful thought piece. Your brief reminder to use the Socratic method of asking questions rather than directly challenging someone who disagrees with you is helpful.
One other aspect, probably aimed at educated people more than others, whether learning in universities or apprenticeship programs. If you want your credentials to be respected, you need to respect the credentials of others. Otherwise, the mental doors close on both sides and we remain in "The Prison of Certainty". Credentials will never mean you know everything and those without credentials are deplorable.
Finally, I stumbled into a somewhat related Solzhenitsyn quote again today. "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."
It's becoming more glaring that credentials don't equate to education - in fact, in my world, the most credentialed people seem to be the least capable of critical thinking.
So much wisdom from Solzhenitsyn. I'm going to think about that one for a while.
https://open.substack.com/pub/beyondcertainty/p/never-pretend-to-know-what-you-dont?r=j4u5j&utm_medium=ios
This is a well-written piece.
I have to point out that I think what has to be addressed is the sheer hubris of people who brazenly embraced Jim Crow and the imposition of mandates; their fellow citizens and even family members were to be expelled from everyday life unless they agreed to be jabbed with an inadequately-tested and irreversible shot.
These people weren't simply wrong; they were wrong in what appears to be, for many, a life or death decision. And while it's true that they were wrong to the extent that they may have caused grave harm (or even death) to their loved ones or to themselves, they were still willing to use the strongest coercion against their fellow citizens in an area in which they knew little or nothing about.
I think this is more than about being simply wrong; it's about being wrong on a subject in which the stakes were the highest and in which history will hold them in absolute contempt for getting it wrong.
Funny you mention Jim Crow. This is the thread that made me a supervillain in my community:
https://x.com/jstylman/status/1490056217661779973
You've hit on the key most may still refuse to acknowledge: the willingness to enforce medical decisions through coercion wasn't just morally questionable - it revealed how easily ordinary people will embrace authoritarian measures when convinced they're "protecting" others. Ugh.
You called it three years ago.
IIRC, Naomi Wolf has used this term herself.
Recommend Iain McGilchrist's The Matter With Things for a deep understanding of fragmentation vs. integration in our brains. Once you get your head around what he's discovered it becomes easier to let go of delusions and embrace uncertainty. One of the great works of the ages in my humble opinion. Highly recommend to you Josh and to all your readers if you haven't encountered it yet. It reveals another layer of reality in all you so rightly say about the world we live in.
Everyone keeps recommending McGilchrist to me. I've only dabbled and know I need to go deeper. His work on the divided brain seems directly relevant to my area of study. I have a friend who's been obsessed with Joyce and his notion of the bicameral mind theories - sounds like it might be related. Either way, I appreciate the nudge - bumping it up my reading list.
Fabulous post of a truly profound nature. This is so true and I believe it is the reason that many who have had problems since taking the v@((*ne or the alleged "nasopharyngeal swab," which is actually a biopsy, simply will not consider that those new health issues were caused by the V@((*ne or the "swab."
This also gives my ego a boost because since I was a medical student virology never made good sense to me. How could anyone claim that a shot without a placebo control could be declared 90% or more effective. I also could not figure out how AIDS could be caused by a virus and if so why did the wives of hemophiliacs not get AIDS via sexual transmission. Much of it did not add up. Now after reading this and "Inventing the AIDS virus" I realize that the advice given to me by my psychiatry teacher during med school was 100% correct when he told me, after interviewing a schizophrenic patient and I asked him "How do we know there are not voices out there? Who is to say one person is insane and the rest of us are not?" He replied, "Congratulations, you have just confirmed that you are rational and NOT insane because whenever a normal person encounters an insane person the first thing that s/he does is to question their own sanity. In the future whenever you find yourself wondering "Am I crazy?" just remember that you are not crazy. It's the other guy who is crazy.
Thanks for the kind response.
I'm not a virologist - a lot of the technical arguments go over my head though I have some friends with big science brains that I often confer with. I'm more of a heuristic thinker and try to spot patterns - that's the core nature of my exploration into all these ideas.
Your psychiatry professor's insight is brilliant. That questioning of one's own sanity when confronted with contradictory narratives is exactly the mechanism that keeps many people trapped in the official framework.
BTW, if you're exploring AIDS territory, I'd recommend checking out Emerging Viruses by Leonard Horowitz and Celia Farber's work - mindblowing stuff.
Thanks for the reply AND yes I have always considered my psych profs advice as brilliant and now after 50 years I am convinced he was 100% on target.
Great comment! I’ve recently learned that at least one psychotherapist (Jerry Marzinsky) is now considering the idea that schizophrenics may be possessed by demons. Some of the evidence in other directions just doesn’t add up in his estimation.
RE: the COVID vax, what got me was the insistence on vaxxing **pregnant & nursing women, and children**! I’m just a mom, but there’s no way that made sense in a billion years, just from the previous advice and precautions the medical institutions had given out.
I’ve since reevaluated the cries of *many* parents that their suddenly autistic children were injured by vaccinations. I’m extremely wary of all vaccinations now and would have to do vigorous research on each one to make a determination to accept it.
Just started reading Groupthink : A Study In Self Delusion by Christopher Booker, this from the introduction.
Groupthink is an easy way to refer to a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ striving for unanimity over-ride their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.
It is only by obtaining some sort of insight in the psychology of crowds that it can be understood… how powerless they are to hold any opinions other that those which are imposed upon them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd
And a quote by Le Bon along the lines of Mark Twain’s, The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
LeBon is indeed an eye-opener, a must read, understand and practice.
The book was recommended to me decades a go by a top fund manager with the remark that it was his favorite book on the financial markets, although they aren't even mentioned in it once...
Groupthink is the safest career path in them though. And even more so in and for the PMC in large cos, academia&co and above all in the civil service and the Deep State- see Ian Davis latest at offguardian.
I didn't read Le Bon until 2021 myself - just wow. His insights from the 1890s feel eerily prophetic today. That quote about masses "preferring to deify error, if error seduce them" perfectly captures what we've witnessed these past few years.
Excellent explanations. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force that causes people to defend beliefs. I learned about it over 30 years ago when studying NLP. Maybe it’s why i suspected narrative manipulation early on in the CV situation. I still marvel at how far people will go to defend their wrongly held beliefs.
Your essay brings to mind a statement I encountered years ago. The sign of true intelligence is being able to hold two or more disparate viewpoints within our consideration until further evidence or proof arises.
Covid provides a quintessential example. Numerous vials of "vaccines" have been analyzed with various contents noted. Different methods and procedures have revealed more dimensions to the problem than first thought: different microscopes provide different results according to their parameters.
People have argued and demanded agreement with their positions; yet, each position rests upon "a fact." Because the mind cannot, at this time, understand the deeper underlying rationale which ties together these disparate "facts," people leap to conclusions where only their "facts" are "true."
In fact, we just don't know. We have facts and, if honest with ourselves, conflicting "facts." We simply don't have the paradigm which ties them together, but the facts, whoever's they are, are valid and true.
Great insight about holding multiple viewpoints simultaneously. I think you've identified something crucial - our minds crave certainty, for sure. Candidly, at this stage, the only thing I'm sure of is: I DON'T KNOW.
I'd also add that it's important to be able to consider an idea without actually believing it - when we can do that, the possibilities expand dramatically.
To your point about "facts" - being able to objectively arbitrate between competing facts is perhaps the key intellectual challenge of our time.
Exactly, Josh. You phrased my point so well: "to consider an idea without actually believing it...."