The line that most frequently comes to mind these days is this: “It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” Some have tried to say C. S. Lewis only intended that to apply to atomic bombs and that it is wholly unsuited to our current situation, but I disagree.
He went on: “This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies [a microbe can do that] but they need not dominate our minds.”
Wow, this is so good. I’m going to add Munchausen and raise you Stockholm Syndrome and Sunk Cost Fallacy. Added together they are likely inescapable....
Have been doing all or most of those things from the get-go because I QUESTIONED the this "crisis" being presented, mostly as a muliti-media, phrase-driven ("We are all in this together!" etc.) complete with already-built websites, people to input the skewed "data" and constant lack of real information when I wanted it. Yet, I was/am ostracized by friends and family still for maybe being "right" all along....? Got my ukulele group together for the first time in over a year as the prior leader is still playing the "victim" and "listen to the experts" game even though she has been vaccinated. hmmm...but know she knows that 20 of us got together, sang, laughed and played a bunch of music together and had FUN! Some people just "can't" and never will have fun again as they are used to getting attention for "living through a pandemic" and can't drop that topic of conversation...as if it ever was!
I have volunteered at a recurring Red Cross blood drive since Feb 21. Red Cross requires masks, we have distanced seating and limits on wait, with no walk ins. Today I will be there from 1 PM to about 8p when we finish putting chairs away etc.
The donors, RC workers and volunteers are apostate on the faith-fear things. Most of us are retired, mostly men.
We are doing good, the personal risk is so small, beside the blood for those needing it is so large.
I am retired military of the "cold war" specialties, we did risk assessment all the time! This faith-fear doctrine scares me a lot less than living 1 mile from a ground zero ICBM target with my family.
Living under mask and social distancing mandates for a year, through two total lockdowns spanning over six months, I've muzzled myself for exactly 4 hours, during a short court appointment.
The fear level I've sensed from all my social contacts throughout this timespan followed a definite pattern: the longer someone, as fearful as it may be from the start, interacts with an interlocutor displaying no figment of fear the more dissipated becomes their tension and fearfulness.
The reactions range from forgetting social distancing to dropping masks altogether.
But the minute the interaction ends, as they reemerge from that sudden bubble of sanity, seeing them sailing back to the scare shallows from where their course momentarily strayed, it's almost as if one can hear the sirens wails swooning their doom.
So following the wise feline advice is, from my experience, the best antidote at hand to keep alive and expanding that bubble of sanity, welcoming to that lifeboat as many castaways as we can rescue, for as long as possible.
But as Kafka made clear, beware of the siren's last resort and inescapable lure, their silence, from which Odysseus alone broke free, or after all from its illusion, under which we are every day closer to our own shipwreck.
There has been deliberate deception here. Perhaps the most salient fact about this virus is that it is far less dangerous to the young than to the elderly. The median age of death is ~80. But Tony Fauci does not want to talk about that, and his misinformation has had the desired effect on the public:
“When asked to estimate the share of deaths by age group, the average American dramatically overestimates the share of COVID-19 deaths from people aged 24 and younger, putting it around 8%, when in fact it was 0.1%.”
It’s hard to see how this is any kind of crisis any more when the most vulnerable are already vaccinated and everyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Yet Fauci, indeed like some deranged and ghoulish cult leader, continues to insist on vaccinating the young, by force or by fraud, even two year olds, to stave off an imaginary apocalypse.
While your analysis of the fearful is spot on, as a calvinist I must say your analogy to calvinism is way, way off base.
Calvinism doesn't say there is no redemption. It says you are dead in your sin and only the Holy Spirit's act of regeneration can bring you to repentance, which leads to forgiveness. Only God can redeem the human soul. There is no, "I repented so hard and God still condemns me;" rather, those who are unrepentant are unregenerated, and those who do repent and fall on Christ as their savior are regenerated. In Christ there is endless grace for the redeemed, and those who are redeemed are truly free.
This does not resemble the faith of the covidians, where there is no redemption or grace at all, just endless fear and condemnation. It's much more like the social justice ideology.
Munchhausen by proxy. Brilliant, man. I would add that the "unsuspecting public" is more like the media-lobotomized public. Not a fan of M. Night Shalman, but his movie The Village comes to mind as an apt image of where we are now in terms of totalitarian social control.
The line that most frequently comes to mind these days is this: “It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” Some have tried to say C. S. Lewis only intended that to apply to atomic bombs and that it is wholly unsuited to our current situation, but I disagree.
He went on: “This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies [a microbe can do that] but they need not dominate our minds.”
Wow, this is so good. I’m going to add Munchausen and raise you Stockholm Syndrome and Sunk Cost Fallacy. Added together they are likely inescapable....
Have been doing all or most of those things from the get-go because I QUESTIONED the this "crisis" being presented, mostly as a muliti-media, phrase-driven ("We are all in this together!" etc.) complete with already-built websites, people to input the skewed "data" and constant lack of real information when I wanted it. Yet, I was/am ostracized by friends and family still for maybe being "right" all along....? Got my ukulele group together for the first time in over a year as the prior leader is still playing the "victim" and "listen to the experts" game even though she has been vaccinated. hmmm...but know she knows that 20 of us got together, sang, laughed and played a bunch of music together and had FUN! Some people just "can't" and never will have fun again as they are used to getting attention for "living through a pandemic" and can't drop that topic of conversation...as if it ever was!
I have volunteered at a recurring Red Cross blood drive since Feb 21. Red Cross requires masks, we have distanced seating and limits on wait, with no walk ins. Today I will be there from 1 PM to about 8p when we finish putting chairs away etc.
The donors, RC workers and volunteers are apostate on the faith-fear things. Most of us are retired, mostly men.
We are doing good, the personal risk is so small, beside the blood for those needing it is so large.
I am retired military of the "cold war" specialties, we did risk assessment all the time! This faith-fear doctrine scares me a lot less than living 1 mile from a ground zero ICBM target with my family.
Branch covidians is an apt appellation.
Living under mask and social distancing mandates for a year, through two total lockdowns spanning over six months, I've muzzled myself for exactly 4 hours, during a short court appointment.
The fear level I've sensed from all my social contacts throughout this timespan followed a definite pattern: the longer someone, as fearful as it may be from the start, interacts with an interlocutor displaying no figment of fear the more dissipated becomes their tension and fearfulness.
The reactions range from forgetting social distancing to dropping masks altogether.
But the minute the interaction ends, as they reemerge from that sudden bubble of sanity, seeing them sailing back to the scare shallows from where their course momentarily strayed, it's almost as if one can hear the sirens wails swooning their doom.
So following the wise feline advice is, from my experience, the best antidote at hand to keep alive and expanding that bubble of sanity, welcoming to that lifeboat as many castaways as we can rescue, for as long as possible.
But as Kafka made clear, beware of the siren's last resort and inescapable lure, their silence, from which Odysseus alone broke free, or after all from its illusion, under which we are every day closer to our own shipwreck.
https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/rodriguezannotation/?page_id=17
There has been deliberate deception here. Perhaps the most salient fact about this virus is that it is far less dangerous to the young than to the elderly. The median age of death is ~80. But Tony Fauci does not want to talk about that, and his misinformation has had the desired effect on the public:
“When asked to estimate the share of deaths by age group, the average American dramatically overestimates the share of COVID-19 deaths from people aged 24 and younger, putting it around 8%, when in fact it was 0.1%.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/how-misinformation-is-distorting-covid-policies-and-behaviors/%3famp
It’s hard to see how this is any kind of crisis any more when the most vulnerable are already vaccinated and everyone who wants a vaccine can get one. Yet Fauci, indeed like some deranged and ghoulish cult leader, continues to insist on vaccinating the young, by force or by fraud, even two year olds, to stave off an imaginary apocalypse.
That is both irrational and depraved.
I see these people burning some of us at the stake for not going along.
yip
While your analysis of the fearful is spot on, as a calvinist I must say your analogy to calvinism is way, way off base.
Calvinism doesn't say there is no redemption. It says you are dead in your sin and only the Holy Spirit's act of regeneration can bring you to repentance, which leads to forgiveness. Only God can redeem the human soul. There is no, "I repented so hard and God still condemns me;" rather, those who are unrepentant are unregenerated, and those who do repent and fall on Christ as their savior are regenerated. In Christ there is endless grace for the redeemed, and those who are redeemed are truly free.
This does not resemble the faith of the covidians, where there is no redemption or grace at all, just endless fear and condemnation. It's much more like the social justice ideology.
Perhaps we’ll see selection pressure favoring a generation less fearful.
Well said. And fear is addicting. Thank you for your clear thinking.
Munchhausen by proxy. Brilliant, man. I would add that the "unsuspecting public" is more like the media-lobotomized public. Not a fan of M. Night Shalman, but his movie The Village comes to mind as an apt image of where we are now in terms of totalitarian social control.