Category: perception

A New Season

Spring is here. The season of renewal, of starting life anew. How poetic for me. I feel like I just woke up from a bad dream, and suddenly five years have gone by. Trying to get my health in order has been no simple task. I had been telling myself to not worry about how long it takes, as long as I manage to come out healthy on the other side. Yet, now I look around and realize how fast time has gone by while I’ve been taking it slow. I can’t shake the feeling that I have to somehow make up for lost time. No matter what I’m doing, I constantly get the feeling I should be doing something else.

Then I realize that this is all somehow familiar. Maybe not as strongly as now, but I’ve felt this way before. It’s as though I need to learn the same lesson over and over again. As if I was forgetting something I knew before. Somewhere along the way I had forgotten difficult lessons of the past. Somewhere along the way I had lost my way again.

I find myself at a crossroads. What now?

“Where are you supposed to be?” “Are you where you’re supposed to be?” I find myself asking these questions. When I stop and think about it, the closest I’ve ever been to having a satisfying answer was in Japan. But even then, I had doubts. I would sometimes ask myself, “is this really where I’m supposed to be? Am I really doing what I should be doing?” The world is such a big place – I could be doing so many different things. Maybe it’s only natural as humans to constantly search for greener pastures. And the grass is always greener on the other side. It’s so easy to take what we have for granted. The search for a better and better paradise is always ongoing. Perhaps the only solution is to become paradise. They say the home is where the heart is, and if that is true, then my true home is right here, with me always, beating inside my chest. My problem isn’t the place I’m in. It is me.

At least now I know this from before: It is always worth it to start over. Always. Even when in the depths of despair, choose rebirth.

It’s time to build myself back up from nothing again. How many times have I done this before? It should be nothing new, but it never gets easier. It’s time to choose a direction. It’s time to choose who to be.

Spring has come once again,
I think about you now and then.

Cloudy skies, bleeding heart,
Wish we never had to part.
Muddy paths, icy streets,
Where is really home for me?
I walk this path on my own,
Feeling somewhere far from home,

Did I leave my heart somewhere?
This burden is so much to bear,
Holding onto something of some kind,
In my head, on my mind,
Maybe I can leave it all behind,
And return to you someday.
Become strong and walk away,
From all I know, once again.
I think about you now and then.

Gloomy days, and cloudy skies,
Anxious thoughts and teary eyes,
Dirty roads and melting snow,
On this path, I walk alone.

Starting over one more time,
Leaving everything behind.
I do it all with you in mind.
Home is where the heart is,
but where is mine?

In front of me, two paths to choose,
Time is short, but I’ll wait for you.
The lake reflects the trees above,
Will you ever know my love?
Renewal blooms from those trees,
Could that be the same for me?

Rainy weather, lonely hikes,
Longer days and shorter nights,
I dream of seeing you again,
I think about you now and then.

Where am I supposed to be?
I think it’s time for me to leave.
I close my eyes, and make believe,
The truth is that you’re all I see.

Has it all been too long?
All this time, have I been wrong?
Places to be, places to go,
Calm yourself down, try taking it slow,
Just one step at a time,
But no matter what, time still flies.

Will this weight ever get lighter?
I miss those days that were brighter,
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye,
But now begin a new chapter in life.

Spring has come once again,
But ultimately, in the end,
I still think about you now and then.

Divide and Conquer: How Propaganda Shapes Perception in Society

Propaganda thrives on negative emotion.

Do you believe in magic? Have you ever been hypnotized? What if I told you that in this day and age, regardless of what you may believe, the real answer is most likely yes.

In both subtle and obvious ways, throughout our entire lives we are conditioned. Our personalities are molded in a myriad of ways, from the meal training given in early childhood, to the steadiness or chaos of our upbringing; from the reservedness of our friends to the discipline of our schools and the competitiveness of our clubs1; from the advertisements in your periphery to the movies you watch; from social media, to the news media. Everything in your environment is going to influence you. For good or bad, there’s no way around it. But – and this is especially so with modern technology – many of these influences can be deliberately manufactured and manipulated to affect your beliefs and behaviour. The modern means of mass communication bring the entire world daily into each and everyone’s hands; the techniques of propaganda have been refined and systematized; and there is scarcely any hiding place from the constant visual and verbal assault on the mind¹. Through systematized suggestion, subtle propaganda, and more overt mass hypnosis, the human mind in its expressions is changed daily in any society¹. You are unwittingly controlled by the magician, the hypnotist, the propagandist.

Propaganda thrives on negative emotion. It stirs up powerful emotions: outrage, anger, hatred. It takes your anxieties, your frustrations, and directs them at an intended target. It subtly changes your thought patterns. It manipulates your beliefs and behaviour. All without you ever realizing – as if it were a magic trick, or hypnosis. But how does it do this?

People are not the rational creatures they think they are. Most believe that their opinions, ideas, and conclusions are all made consciously, when in actuality, 95% of human thinking is subconscious – and is a response to accustomed patterns2. Only the remaining 5% is conscious thought, and of that, only a part is a consequence of reason². And underneath it all, in the unconscious, lies a storehouse of deeply buried memories, emotion, and strivings, including many infantile and irrational yearnings, which constantly influence the conscious acts¹. Humans do not construct their beliefs and attitudes by reason. We are primarily emotional creatures that operate largely via subconscious pattern recognition. There are plenty of times when we think we’ve reached a conclusion based on logic and reasoning, but we are in fact just rationalizing an emotional reaction.

Effective propaganda (and what is now called Psychological Operations or PsyOp) therefore targets this kind of thinking. It plays on emotion, memories, desires and attempts to stimulate the subject (ie. you) into interpreting patterns in the desired way. It targets your thoughts, not at their expression, but at their construction. This subsequently shifts beliefs and behaviours.

In fact, “reality” itself hinges on one’s cultural indoctrination, education, experiences, prejudices, desires, and emotions². The sum total of all of this serves as the lens through which it is “perceived as reality”². This means, by altering these things, we may alter one’s perception of reality. Think of them as knobs or dials that can be used to tune in to, or fine-tune, one’s reality. This “reality” also includes assumptions concerning the population, both individually and as a whole, of which some are politically and culturally acceptable and others are not². For instance race, religion, sex, the role of the genders, slavery, economic systems, and political ideologies are all factors with extremely powerful influence².

So what does this propaganda look like? Let’s start with a simple, ancient technique: Divide and conquer. This strategy breaks down groups (typically opposition) into smaller parts, weakening them by preventing their unity, and allowing the divider to gain or maintain power and control. Ideally, they can then additionally use these smaller parts to impede and attack the remaining opposition. Nowadays, it commonly takes the form of one of the following: left vs right, republican vs democrat, liberal vs conservative, identity group vs identity group. These false dialectics are all a big political melodrama that play out across mainstream and social media. It’s kabuki theatre. It is the misdirection in the magician’s trick: it grabs your attention, it conjures emotional outrage, and leaves you believing in the magic show.

The target audience is identified, then fed carefully selected information, and emotions are prodded and pushed until behaviour changes. The goal here is to isolate the target audience, pump them full of outrage, and ultimately create a tribal us versus them mentality. This tribal thinking will result in such a strong in-group preference, and such a strong out-group devaluation that people will believe any lie about the other side, cheer when people suffer, and excuse things they would never excuse if it were happening in their own neighbourhood. This is the playbook for how to get otherwise decent, kind people applauding for and laughing at violence and murder on the internet. It is how a country is radicalized without firing a shot.

Identity groups are commonly used and pitted against each other for this purpose – especially in Canada. Canada is uniquely situated for this to be particularly effective, as it has a philosophy of being a “cultural mosaic,” as opposed to something like the U.S. philosophy of the “melting pot.” The melting pot means that people of different cultures and backgrounds entering the U.S. should all melt together, and become American first and foremost, prioritizing American values over any previous ones. It is a cultural philosophy of assimilation: American culture comes first in America. The cultural mosaic, on the other hand, is a philosophy where people of different cultures and backgrounds get to keep their culture and their values, and fit together like a mosaic inside of Canada (and thus Canadian culture is not prioritized – which is a large factor in why it is dying out). This has made Canada an ideal playground for divide and conquer tactics. Not all cultures are equal, and many of them have incompatible views and values. This makes it easy to pin them against each other. Canada offers plenty of identity groups to pick and choose from – to grandstand for, and to demonize. It’s no wonder that this is a go-to strategy for the Canadian government. Justin Trudeau loved to do this, invoking the LGBT community as a political shield to deflect, calling unvaccinated people racists and misogynists, or ironically calling his political opposition divisive. The Canadian government and the media apparatus that supports them largely use this technique to obfuscate problems, corruption, and crimes; and to insulate and protect themselves from accountability. Recently, the tribal mentality of Liberal versus Conservative resulted in people harassing and review bombing a restaurant in western Canada, simply for hosting Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.

But this can be taken even further. What do you think happens when the media portrays the people that disagree with you, not as your fellow citizens or your neighbours, but as an enemy or a threat that needs to be destroyed? As a danger to society? What if they suggest that violence against them may be justified? Or even necessary?

Consider the Two Minutes Hate in George Orwell’s 1984. Citizens were forced to participate in a daily, mandatory ritual of expressing rage and hatred against a manufactured enemy on a telescreen. Collective negative emotion was thus directed away from the ruling Party and toward a scapegoat, while those participating learned to deny any counternarrative, any semblance of truth that disagreed with the Party, by hating the person speaking it:

The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching…

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party – an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought…

And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army – row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice…

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen… In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

(Orwell, 14-17)3

There are a couple of important points in this passage that I would like to cover. First is another common technique that is readily apparent: Pavlovian conditioning. In this technique, the propagandist ties two things together in a way that makes the audience create an association between them in their mind. This is typically done in such a way as to elicit a desired emotional reaction from the target audience. Remember: what’s important here is not for the audience to consciously connect these things, but for them to do so subconsciously, and therefore eventually transplant their thoughts and emotions tied to one thing onto the other. In this case in 1984, the target of hate, Goldstein, is shown on the telescreen with enemy soldiers marching in the background. This creates the association of Goldstein with the enemy, and whatever thoughts and feelings the audience has for this enemy will end up also being connected to Goldstein. When this conditioning eventually sets in and is successful, the affected audience will have an involuntary emotional response to Goldstein, the same as they would have to enemy soldiers, but without the need for the military imagery.

Another important takeaway from this is the mob mentality – the inability to resist joining in. This can act like a sort of group hypnosis, where the individual loses their individuality, rationality, and moral compass. The more the individual feels himself to be part of the group, the more easily he can become the victim of mass suggestion¹. Since the society in 1984 is totalitarian, this group psychology dynamic gets into Mass Formation (which I will discuss more in-depth in a later post). This is a form of group hypnosis that destroys the individual’s ethical self-awareness and robs them of their ability to think critically4. George Orwell’s Two Minutes Hate touches on this hypnotic effect, and reveals the destruction of ethics via the “desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer [that] seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current”³.

Thank God that was only fiction. In the real world, Two Minutes Hate is actually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is accessible at any time, from anywhere, via your favourite device – TV, computer, smart phone. Through the media, you are deliberately shown what makes you angry and hateful. They’ll show you the worst of the other side: the extreme, the fringe; the loud, the dumb; the professional lunatics. The more enraged you are, the more you will stay hooked on the narrative.

Before we get into specific real-world examples of these principles and techniques in action, let’s go over Chase Hughes’ three step formula5 for radicalization through divide and conquer tactics:

  1. Isolation: the goal here is to isolate the target audience so that they do not interact with people who disagree; they don’t date them, they don’t work with them; they cut anyone who disagrees out of their lives. (This is also step 1 of joining a cult)
  2. Echo Chambers: the goal here is to have the target audience surround themselves only with opinions that sound the same. Social media can make sure of this with its algorithms. As Yuval Noah Harari has said, “power is in the hands of those who control the algorithms.” And the algorithms serve you more of what already stirs up negative emotion like anger, outrage, and frustration. The echo chambers ensure that rage gets recycled and concentrated. (This is also step 2 of joining a cult)
  3. Tribal Script: this is the creation of the us versus them narrative. The goal is for the target audience to view themselves as righteous, while the other side is evil. Every issue is framed like a holy war – it doesn’t matter if it’s education, taxes, or healthcare; they are all treated as life or death, good versus evil. With outrage and righteous superiority, people will feel morally justified in hating the other side, silencing them, and celebrating violence. This is true radicalization.

So what does this look like in the real world? For this example, we turn to the United States of America. Let’s take a look at the following clips from the media leading up to Trump’s second term:

Notice anything familiar? These are just a few examples of the media shaping the political climate in the years leading up to where we are now. But how does this affect public behaviour?

For that, let’s turn to the recent events involving ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). ICE has been at the center of controversy since Donald Trump took office last year. In sanctuary cities, law enforcement at the local levels have been ordered not to cooperate with ICE. Local police do not hand over criminals in their custody to ICE; instead, they let them go free. This has forced ICE to go out into the streets to hunt down criminal illegal aliens. And, in turn, it has given politicians and the media the opportunity to spin the story: ICE is like the Gestapo – the secret police of Nazi Germany. Here we see the media continuing the narrative of fascist, Nazi, authoritarian symbolism and linking that to the current Trump administration. We know this is Pavlovian conditioning, but let’s examine it further.

Let’s look at immigration before Trump versus immigration after Trump. Below is a compilation of politicians speaking about illegal immigration and deportations before Trump’s Presidency, juxtaposed with politicians after Trump took office:

Unsurprisingly, tensions have been rising over the past year. Time, fear and continual pressure are known to create a menticidal hypnosis¹. As such, a radicalized fringe minority has taken to the streets. Protesters have been clashing with federal agents at various ICE facilities for months. Then, in September 2025, an anti-ICE shooter opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas from a nearby rooftop, killing two detained illegal immigrants, and injuring a third. But it doesn’t end there.

To get a good look at how this really affects public behaviour, let’s talk about Minnesota. Tensions rose to a boiling point when an anti-ICE protester taunted ICE officers, ignored their commands, and then drove her vehicle at one of them. She was shot and killed. And the media finally got what it had been pushing for: a catalyst for outrage against ICE.

Below are a number of videos following this event that show mobs in the grip of propaganda’s magic, hypnotic effect. Take a look at where we are now:

Throughout these clips, we see the repetition of words like racist, Nazi, and fascist. Didn’t we hear those somewhere before? But, what do they mean? The truth is, these words have lost their communicative function – they no longer have intrinsic meaning. They have been turned into conditioners, emotional triggers, serving to imprint the desired reaction patterns onto their hearers¹. They are battle cries and Pavlovian signals¹. Just like in the passage from 1984, Pavlovian conditioning to these special words forces people into an automatic thinking that is tied to them¹. Catchwords like these help the individual to rationalize immorality and evil into morality and good¹. They are a suggestive intrusion masquerading under the name of justice or some morally righteous cause. What do you do when a fascist, or a Nazi is right in front of you? What is the correct course of action when this person is a threat to your society? To your existence? These questions, and the answers to them are all tied to these catchwords. The meaning of these words no longer matters – it is the emotions evoked by them that holds weight. The individual citizen becomes a parrot, repeating ready-made slogans and propaganda catchwords without understanding what they really mean, or what forces stand behind them¹.

Here’s another question to think about: what do you think happens when anyone and everyone who disagrees with this radicalized fringe population is called a racist, a Nazi, a fascist? These words end up losing all meaning in the common discourse as well. People stop caring about racists and fascists, because those words don’t mean anything anymore. And then there are some who will embrace the new identity given to them. They get caught up in the drama and theatrics, and feel pushed into the opposite fringe side. This polarization effectively radicalizes both sides.

To this end, the media are not showing you reality of any kind, but a narrative designed to put you on a side, keep you in a loyal tribal mindset, and addicted to their twisted version of reality. What is happening in Minnesota isn’t some side effect or byproduct of politics or the media – it is deliberate. And the outcome predictable. They show you the fringe lunatics on one side screaming about how “you’re either with us or against us,” and create a false dichotomy, pitting different groups against each other. When this inevitably escalates to a breaking point, debate breaks down, negotiations become impossible, and violence ensues.

Chase Hughes talks about the “concrete law of history”⁵: The moment your ideas require violence to enforce or spread, they are already completely bankrupt. Every tyrant, failed ideology, social collapse starts the same way: the debate dies, then violence takes the place of debate, and you can’t argue with a gun⁵.

But consider for a moment, what isn’t the media showing you? They will never show you how much you have in common with people who vote differently than you. If you strip away all the talking points, what do regular people actually want? We want safety, stability, a roof over our heads, a partner, kids, and some food to feed them – and we want some honesty from the people who claim to represent us. You have more in common with your neighbour, with the people across the political aisle that may disagree with you, than you have with media CEOs and politicians – with psychopaths and profiteers – with those parading their narrative over the media.

I bring attention to the ICE situation just as an example of how this can manifest in the real world. The goal is to look at this as a phenomena. Did you feel any outrage? There are a few questions like this we should be asking ourselves when we see things like this in the media: How does it make you feel? Are you angry? Outraged? Recognize the emotions that are being stimulated. Why does it make you feel that way? Is it the way it’s being framed? How is it being framed? Notice the choice of words being used. Is there anything missing? Think of a few questions about it. And ask yourself, who benefits from this?

The battlefield is not some far away place. It is in your living room, your bedroom, your office; on your phone, your TV, your computer screen. There is an ongoing war for your mind. So how can you best prepare and defend yourself? I think a good starting point is to follow Chase Hughes’ suggestion to pledge to yourself the following⁵:

  • Do not let the media decide for you who your neighbour is.
  • Do not let propaganda tell you who to hate.
  • Do not let political violence become normal.
  • Do not cheer for blood.
  • Choose sanity, unity, and to see the humanity in people before their politics.
  • And finally, I would like to add one more: Do not allow yourself to live in a world where there is no room for love.

Being aware of these techniques and tactics, and how this all really works will also help you recognize when this is playing out in the real world, right before your eyes. There’s still a lot more still to come on topics like this, so don’t forget to follow the blog via email or Facebook. You can also help get the word out by sharing this via the social media links below. As always, I thank you for your support.

  1. Meerloo, Joost. The Rape of the Mind. Martino Publishing, 2015. ↩︎
  2. Aquino, Michael A. MindWar. Barony of Rachane, 2013. ↩︎
  3. Orwell, George. 1984. Penguin Group, 2000. ↩︎
  4. Desmet, Mattias. The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2022. ↩︎
  5. Chase Hughes: https://www.youtube.com/@chasehughesofficial ↩︎

Home

Everything back home looks pretty much the same, but at the same time, this place is unrecognizable.

I’ve finally arrived back home. It feels strange to be back. Everything is the same but oddly different. There’s an ominous tension in the air that wasn’t there before. I feel like I’ve stepped into some kind of mental institution.

I’ve been wondering why I’ve felt this way, and I’m confident it’s because of the rules and restrictions surrounding COVID. They were – and are – baffling. I can’t find any logic behind most of them, and none of these things were necessary in Japan. And then I looked at the narrative of the media in Canada, and it started making sense. The propaganda here is incredibly strong. I didn’t expect that this would ever happen in this country. I watched a video of Trudeau stating, “we will get out of this pandemic by vaccination,” and I thought, ‘wow. That didn’t age well.’ And then I realized that clip was from only a few days prior. What? Is it not common knowledge that the vaccinated are still spreading the disease? I thought we’d known this for over a year now. The vaccinated can contract the virus. They can transmit the virus. And they have the same viral load as the unvaccinated. How is it even conceivable that the vaccine could stop anything? Especially in the face of Omicron.

But the thing about propaganda is that it’s like an illusion. If you’re standing where intended, you’re under the spell. For me, not being in Canada for all that time meant I was not standing in that intended spot. I’m a fresh frog who’s been tossed into a Canada-sized pot of boiling water, while the other frogs haven’t taken notice of the drastic change in temperature. And what I was witnessing was unbelievable.

And there’s an explanation as to why: Astroturfing, censorship, and the merger of state, media and tech. Astroturfing is a relatively new method that the establishment uses to carefully construct a narrative designed to manipulate people’s opinions. This is when political, corporate and special interests disguise themselves to publish comments, reviews, ads, and articles to elevate their own agenda, and smear or “debunk” anyone who disagrees with them. Their goal is to convince people that there’s widespread support for, or against, an agenda when there isn’t. It’s a type of artificial reality they construct around you. Sometimes Astroturfers intentionally shove out so much confusing and conflicting information as to make it nigh impossible to tell what’s true. A few easy identifiers for astroturfing include when the terms crank, quack, nutty, lies, paranoid, pseudo, and conspiracy are used. They claim to “debunk” myths that aren’t myths at all. In our current climate, they repetitively use the term “anti-vaxxer.” Seeing any of these terms should be a red flag to think twice about what’s being presented. I highly recommend watching this video for more information. In it, Sharyl Attkisson states that these methods are “now more important to [special] interests than the traditional lobbying of congress. There’s an entire industry built around it in Washington.” And this was in 2015.

Next, let’s look at the Trusted News Initiative. The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) began in 2019 when the BBC brought together Big Tech and other large media companies including Facebook/Instagram, Google/Youtube, Twitter, Microsoft, Reuters, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Washington Post, just to name a few. People were losing trust in established mainstream news sources (after realizing they were being lied to repeatedly), and the TNI wanted to bring corporations together and rectify the situation globally. The original goal of the TNI was to stop “disinformation which threatens human life or disrupts democracy during elections.” On the surface, this doesn’t necessarily seem nefarious, but there are major conflicts of interest at play here. Government tax money (ie. YOUR money) is given to Big Pharma, which spends a massive amount advertising with TNI corporations, who, as it so happens, also have investments in Big Pharma, and some of that money eventually makes it back to select politicians. Even before the pandemic, they had reported that anti-vaxxers were gaining traction on social media as part of a “fake news” movement that was spreading “misleading and dangerous information”. Then, after the pandemic began, that turned into stopping so-called “disinformation” about the vaccine. They went on to disseminate massive amounts of pro-vaccine messages, while demonizing the unvaccinated to force compliance.

TNI corporations cleverly pretend to be giving you the news – the truth – but in actuality it’s essentially just a disguised advertisement – that isn’t actually concerned about the truth at all. Its purpose is to promote specific narratives and to silence any dissenting voices – by censoring, demeaning, de-platforming, delegitimizing, and de-licensing them. They became even more heavy handed in their approach when they decided that stopping so-called “disinformation” about the vaccine would include censoring any content that promoted “vaccine hesitancy.” And what might that mean? Anything that would make one hesitant to take the vaccine – any information, no matter how factual, was and is, to be quashed, silenced, “debunked,” de-legitimized, etc. What about adverse events? Not allowed to talk about them. People across social media have been demonized for even bringing up their experiences. At best, adverse events will be played down – the severity underreported, and language twisted to highlight positives and sweep negatives under the rug (as seen with myocarditis, when a number of publications tried to claim that it was mild and temporary – when this affects children, and young males in particular, at an alarming rate, can permanently damage the heart muscle, and is hospitalizing over 80% of those that have this adverse reaction (additional related video here)). This is a huge problem. How are people supposed to make informed decisions if they are being fed such heavily biased information? In Canada, by law, a healthcare professional is required to inform patients of the risks and benefits of each treatment option as well as the probabilities of success and failure. This is called informed consent, and it is actively being blocked by the TNI in regards to the vaccine.

The TNI also pays for “fact checkers” to run false fact checks and hit pieces on doctors, scientists and journalists who contradict the official narrative. Fact checkers may sound authoritative, but they often only have a bachelor’s degree, and can sometimes just be an intern with a high school diploma. Let that sink in for a moment. These people are fact checking doctors and scientists. And I have seen a number of doctors and scientists frustrated that fact checkers didn’t understand the literature on what they were “fact checking.” Two good examples are this article by Heather Heying, and Part III of this post by Joomi Kim. When Facebook was sued over their fact checks by John Stossel, they admitted in court that the fact checks were merely opinions (and therefore immune from defamation). And yet these opinions are presented in a misleading way, so that they are thought of as fact – why else call them fact checkers? Not only that, they argued that they should be able to do so because of freedom of speech. Imagine that. They get to curate and infringe upon the freedom of speech of others, and that should be protected by freedom of speech. Do I really need to point out that freedom of speech, by nature, isn’t supposed to be one-sided?

Remember when prominent biologists and doctors hypothesized that COVID-19 may have come from a lab? I do. I also remember when those people were smeared across the state/corporate press and Big Tech platforms for it. Now this is accepted as the most plausible explanation for the origin of SARS-CoV-2. This exemplifies how no one is not allowed to think or discuss ideas outside of the carefully constructed narrative. Only when something is brought into the fold of the narrative by Big Tech and the state/corporate news entities is it an acceptable topic. And when, or if, they do reluctantly bring something like this into the fold, it’s usually months or years behind the doctors and scientists who have been fighting to get the message out, or at the very least, just have a discussion. This isn’t news. It’s a façade. It’s global information control. They’ve stopped scientific discussion and debate. Doctors, who spend their time literally saving lives, are not and have not been permitted to even discuss the best way forward on how to continue to save lives. How can they possibly practice the most effective way to do so under such circumstances? The answer is obvious: They can’t. The TNI is forcing us to shoot ourselves in the foot. With a cannon. During a global pandemic.

Also in 2019, $600 million of taxpayer money was given by the Trudeau government to select Canadian news outlets. Select outlets, meaning whoever was in the position to choose the outlets had the power to pick the ones that would do exactly what they wanted. And the Trudeau Liberals were in that position. Instead of being able to choose which media companies to support, Canadians were forced to bail out media of the government’s choosing. And during this pandemic we’ve seen certain Canadian publications in lockstep with the narrative, doing the exact same thing as the TNI. They are easy enough to spot, if you keep an eye out for them.

One additional thing I’d like to point out is how many logical fallacies are used to prop up the validity of the constructed narrative. Just as Dr. John Campbell points out in his Ivermectin debunking video, people are taking the word of reporters and politicians rather than listening to doctors presenting data. This is an appeal to (false) authority. The media has been rife with pushing logical fallacies such as this. Appeals to authority, appeals to emotion, ad hominem attacks, false equivalencies, red herrings, poisoning the well, sweeping generalizations, post hoc ergo proptor hoc, are just some of the first that come to mind. It is important to keep these in mind when considering the validity of an argument. This is especially so with everything going on right now.

From studying propaganda in university, there is one rule that has always stuck in my mind: Everything in this world is neither good nor evil, but public opinion makes it so. That is to say, no matter what good or evil you wish to accomplish, warping public opinion makes it possible. You can convince them evil is good, or vice versa, through propaganda. You just need to nudge them psychologically until they’re standing in the right spot.

Now let’s get back to being in Canada. Everything back home looks pretty much the same, but at the same time, this place is unrecognizable. The values that Canadians held fundamentally dear to them have begun to dissolve, and sadly, for many, they have dissolved.

The Canadian “leaders” have circumvented parliament to enact policies and regulations that break multiple parts of our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, effectively acting like some kind of dictatorship. Not only did they skirt the democratic process, but they also did not follow any of the other stringent rules set in place for overriding any part of the Charter. For example, no cost-benefit analysis was done for anything put in place at all. Our freedom of movement; freedom of conscience; freedom of assembly; freedom of association; freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression; right to life, liberty and security of person (including our freedom of bodily autonomy and right to informed consent) have all eroded or have been discarded completely. This is illegal. What our government has done, and is doing, is illegal. And yet the media is in lockstep with the government on this. It’s insane. But luckily for Canadians, there may still be hope. The last surviving first minister to help write the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 is suing the federal government because of this. Our rights as Canadian citizens are not being upheld. They are being trampled upon by our so-called “leaders,” who are not being held accountable for any of their actions. Here is a video with Brian Peckford explaining his lawsuit and the situation in general. Every Canadian should watch that video. If our rights continue to erode, before we know it, we won’t have any. We will be subject to the whims of whoever is in power, no matter their wish. The Charter expresses our fundamental values – the values our country is based on. Human rights. And they are undemocratically being abandoned.

This is not the Canada that I once knew. I used to be proud to be Canadian. Life here now is a spinning circus. Democracy in this country has been revoked, in favor of a dictatorial regime. Scientific data, as well as our values, have been discarded for the whims of our “leaders.” And the media has convinced Canadians this is in their own best interest, when it could not be more the opposite. Is there truly no hope for our future?

Enter the truckers:

Perhaps I wasn’t the only frog noticing the hot water.

After Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau agreed to mandate all truckers be vaccinated to cross the border, the truckers responded, “no.” They decided to drive to Ottawa in protest of our current government’s overreach. They state, “To our Fellow Canadians, the time for political overreach is over.  Our current government is implementing rules and mandates that are destroying the foundation of our businesses, industries and livelihoods.” From the very beginning they have emphasized that this was a peaceful protest, and their rules for the protest include not entering any government building or property under any circumstances, treating all police officers with respect, keeping calm and not getting baited into conflict, and not making any type of threats.

Their Facebook group has been quickly growing since its inception. It’s over 760 000 users at the time of writing*. Not only that, the Gofundme has raised over $7 million. It’s difficult to pin down the actual number of truckers involved. Corporate media is downplaying the numbers, stating a few hundred or low thousands, while Trudeau has called them a “fringe minority.” The actual number is probably somewhere in the tens of thousands, with some in the group saying upwards of 50 000. There are American truckers joining in too, planning to cross the border to join their Canadian brothers and sisters in Ottawa. And let’s not forget all of the Canadians that are supporting the convoy, that have been greeting them from the side of the road, or from overpasses. Here’s a video with some highlights of the trip, and here’s another good one taken in Toronto. It is clearly far, far from a “fringe minority.” Nothing has unified Canadians like the Freedom Convoy has, at least in recent history, and most certainly not for the past two years. In fact, I can’t seem to remember a time where people seemed to be this united. I don’t think there has been an event in my lifetime as significant. It marks a chance for all Canadians to come together and voice their concerns, which have, for the past two years, been quashed into near silence. It’s the chance for Canadians of all walks of life to come together and stand up for their rights and freedoms.

Predictably, the state/corporate news is smearing them however they can. CityNews even reported that they were protesting unsafe road conditions, before facing a backlash from the public and having to edit the (written) story to specify that this was a separate protest from the gigantic one involving tens of thousands of truckers that they just so happened to miss. Then, when finally deciding to cover the actual story, they decided to broadcast that there would be “death and destruction” and likened it to the January 6th United States Capitol riot. They then went on to accuse the Gofundme of money laundering. There are also plenty of state/corporate news outlets that have claimed these are anti-vaccination protests, which is misleading. The vaccine is not the focal point of the protest – it’s the policies and regulations that have diminished the freedoms of Canadians that are the focal point. Framing the story in such a way is dishonest, and it mischaracterizes the movement. The CBC said there were protestors with confederate flags, and suggested that they were Nazis, but only moments later claimed that Russia may be instigating the protest. Maybe they’re Russian Nazis who want to restore the Confederacy? The story (which is quite comical) can be found here – and this video is also a great example of the TNI in action – reaffirming the narrative while pushing the vaccine. The conspiracy theories surrounding this protest put forward by the state/corporate media have been astounding. Any of this sound like an attempt to de-legitimize to you? Any of it sound like flooding people with tons of confusing and contradictory stories? Given what I discussed earlier, none of this should be surprising – but somehow it still shocks me. It’s uncanny to watch them try to create their own parallel, separate reality in real time. If you watch any footage of the convoy at all, the message is clear: Freedom for all Canadians. Restoration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (This was a great livestream showing a bit of the first day in Ottawa.) I wish the truckers and everyone in Ottawa the best, and I hope this helps more and more people come to their senses and unite for our rights.

From video footage shot by a protestor, it appeared that this provocateur with the flag was pressured to leave by those in the trucker convoy, as he did not reflect, nor respect, the values of the movement. It’s rumored that, after the photo was taken, these two left together.

In conclusion, I’d like to be clear: my message is not no vaccination. It is that the policies, restrictions and regulations and the way they are enforced are far more harmful than the thing they claim to be protecting us from. It is that the corporate media and Big Tech companies have pretended to inform people while propagating and perpetuating madness instead. They have driven a wedge between the people of this country, isolated them, and battered them with disinformation. They have manipulated Canadians into blaming each other instead of blaming those responsible. The common scapegoat used everywhere is obvious: it’s the fault of the unvaccinated. Trudeau even stated that, “they don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynist, often racist.” Scapegoating such a diverse group of people with this inflammatory language is not only divisive and hateful; it’s dangerous. A leader shouldn’t be directing a nation’s anxiety, anger, fear and frustrations towards a particular population of its people. One needs only look back at the history of the 20th century to see why. Not only that, but those in positions of power who are making these policies aren’t even following them. As Thomas Sowell said, “it’s hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” The “news” media, politicians, as well as anyone else involved in this insanity need to be held accountable. In a court of law where applicable. And they should never be allowed in a position of power over anything ever again.

*the Facebook group has been deleted multiple times since I wrote this section. Videos of the convoy have been removed. This movement has been heavily censored by Facebook (and Instagram).


A Warrior Dies to Learn Who He Is

We’re all warriors; fighting our own battles.

You’ve come so far. Built yourself up, atop of your ideals of how things should be and ideas of how the world works. Then something happens. Everything shudders, shakes, and when you look down, you realize. It’s as if you’ve awoken from a dream. Your eyes widen. You’re not on a solid foundation. This isn’t bedrock. It never was. You’re skating on thin ice. You’re treading water. Trying to stay afloat and keep your head from going under.

What you thought you knew is on a collision course with another world. A completely different world. At first, you only see the surface. It’s all so foreign and intriguing. It excites you, exhilarates you, as some kind of exotic theme park might. And for a time you are content with things being like this, although you sense something deeper lurking below. And it’s coming closer. When you eventually penetrate the surface, the sensation is entirely overwhelming. From your fingertips to your chest, from the crown of your head to the bottom of your feet, you’re left in a shaking anxiety. Everything falls apart. Everything you were, everything that was, everything you thought you were, everything you thought that was – everything you thought. You don’t know anymore. What did you just crash into? Where even were you before? What were you? You can finally grasp the ends of whatever lurks in the depths. Somewhere in the abyss dwells the answer. You feel you can never make it there. It’s as though, at least for the time being, it repels you. You can’t understand why. It’s a different world with a different structure. It’s all too complex to wrap your head around. You notice you’re still holding on to the driftwood of old ideas, as you attempt to tread water. You can’t help it. You’re not very good at this whole treading water thing. You fear these pieces of driftwood are actually holding you back from doing this effectively. They have great big holes in them. But you don’t know how to let go.

Those ends you could grasp – those tendrils of truth – they’ve finally led you to what you think is the core of this world. The secret lies within. The answer you seek. Could you really be almost there? You peel back layer after layer trying to get to it. With each one you pull on, your aching body increases in desperation, and the prospect of this endeavour bearing fruit seems more and more futile. You grow weary. There’s no end to the layers. It’s a puzzle on a scale you’ve never even witnessed, let alone imagined before.

Whether you were to wake up and realize it or not, life always was and always will be this way. Ideas are nothing solid, after all. You can only pretend to stand on them. The whole universe is maddeningly complex, and it’s under no obligation to make any sense to us. It’s best to learn to tread water, lest you drown trying to stand, or drown holding onto something that will pull you under.

The water begins moving. Quicker and quicker, it pulls you along with it. You’re sent down the rapids in a big yellow raft. As much as you think to yourself, “I don’t want to go down here,” it doesn’t matter: That’s where you’re headed. You can try to paddle back or close your eyes and make believe, but you’re powerless within the forces of nature. Maybe the whole situation scares you so much that you panic and flip your raft, and get helplessly sucked down into the bottomless depths. Yet another sure way to drown. Alternatively, you can brace yourself, and learn to navigate the rapids, steering yourself toward better waters. Maybe it turns out to be fun. Or at least enjoyable. You can’t stop life. But you can make it better.

This all comes with the realization that there are a seemingly infinite number of ways one can live out their life. And they can be so bafflingly vast in their differences. All of them are valid. Life can truly be whatever we want it to be. Why do we settle for this?

When Everything Changed

There was a certain point during all of this that I will always remember…

A major turning point in my life happened in my early 20s. I was suddenly having abdominal pains and feeling sick to my stomach. And it kept happening more and more frequently. Doctors were no help. I was pushed through their revolving doors as fast as possible, while they brushed off my complaints. I was told it was just this or just that, which always conflicted with what other doctors had said. I didn’t know what to eat anymore. It always made me sick. Even sleeping was a hassle. Any sort of pressure near my abdomen was either uncomfortable or downright painful. It was a confusing time, to say the least. I stopped going to class at university. And I lost about 20 lbs.

At a culminating point of frustration, my sister took me to the hospital in hopes of getting to the bottom of this. By the end of a long wait and a few tests I was referred to a specialist. It was at this specialist that I was finally able to begin to make sense of things. More tests led him to believe that this was 99% Crohn’s disease. From this information, I was able to develop a plan. I began eating again on a very limited diet, though the specialist advised me that diet would not help. But I started to feel better and put on a bit of weight again. I was able to go back to class again. My aunt, who was a nutritionist, helped me along. Diet definitely played a key role.

After a couple of months, someone told me I could broaden my diet. It was true, that I could probably eat a bigger variety than I was currently eating, though I was hesitant to try. But after a bit of coaxing, I was convinced. I went to their place, where they had a number of things they wanted me to try. A word of advice to anyone with Crohn’s, or something similar: never try introducing multiple things at the same time. If you are going to try something new, try some of it (not too much) and see how you feel over the course of the next day or two. I learned this the hard way. I believe it was chocolate that did me in (which also happens to be my favourite – and which I still cannot eat). By the end of the day I felt absolutely terrible. My insides churned and moaned painfully. When I finally made it home and got it out of my system, I thought that would be the end of it. I just had to be wary of chocolate from here on out.

It was nearing the end of the term at school and I still had a couple of final projects to do. I spent the next three days in my room working relentlessly. But over those three days, I gradually became more and more sick. This wasn’t the regular Crohn’s kind of sickness, either. No flare up was ever like this. I had a worsening fever, coupled with headaches. By the end of the third day, there were even more alarming symptoms. Although it was more difficult than it should have been, I finished all of my final projects and was thankful. I turned my focus to my health and scoured the internet for what could possibly be happening to me. I came to the conclusion that what I had ingested punched a hole through my intestine, and was now causing an infection. The solution was surgery. It was worrying, but I made the trip to the emergency room at the hospital.

I knew things would suck after surgery, but I also knew it was something I had to get through. I hadn’t come this far just to come this far. I thought there would probably be some pain, and a small amount of recovery time before everything was back to normal and I never made this stupid mistake again. Nothing could have been further from the truth; and it devastated me. The next month was excruciating. And it seemed like it would never end.

I wasn’t given anything to help with the pain. No painkillers; nothing. On top of that, a visiting nurse poked around my wound every day for the next few weeks to ensure that there was no infection. Moving around was difficult and painful. Sitting up was the same. I was essentially bedridden for that first month, which is Hell in itself.

There was a certain point during all of this that I think I will always remember. One day, getting dressed, I found myself feeling particularly cheerful. Since I had not felt happy in some time, it came as a bit of a shock. My immediate reaction was to stop this, to get rid of this feeling. I felt I didn’t deserve it because this was not over yet. But then I had a thought. Why should I ever stop myself from feeling happy? If I were to apply that mindset to life, I would be forever miserable. Life always involves suffering, and if I only allow myself to be happy when the suffering is over, when am I ever happy? At the end of my life? Would I even be able to feel it then? It makes no sense. I could sit around wishing for the day of liberation from this pain, or I could actively make today better than yesterday. This phrase became my maxim: You can wish away forever, but you’ll never find a day like today.

As soon as I could walk, I was outside. I walked every day until I could run. And then every day I ran. It was a new freedom, and I owed it to myself. My health improved. I had a better grasp on my diet. I was finally in control of the situation, and this is critical for anyone with Crohn’s. If you are not on top of things, you will easily be overwhelmed. It is extremely easy to fall into poor health, and a lot of work to stay in control.

After this whole ordeal, my specialist hit me with an ultimatum. Either I took whatever drugs he was selling, or he couldn’t help me. He then got angry with me for asking for information on the drugs. I did a good amount of research before coming to the conclusion that these were not necessary for me. Not only did they increase my chances of cancer by a lot, but I would have to go to a facility to get them injected through an IV every week for a month or two, and then every two weeks for the rest of my life. I refuse to live like that. And this isn’t even to mention that approximately half of the people that were vocal online about their experience with these drugs got much worse as a result of taking them. It seemed like such an extreme solution for something I finally had a grasp on. I’ve never been back to that specialist since, and though I’ve had my ups and downs, I’ve never regretted my choice.

Every day life can make you bitter or better, so they say. Choose the better gamble. Every single day is a choice. Life is difficult, and sometimes it can seem like there’s no way out of your situation. But it’s always worth it to try again. It’s always worth it to start over. Always. You can wish away forever, but you’ll never find a day like today.

The World as We Know It

Nothing is as it seems; nor is it otherwise.

What is perception? How are you making sense of the world around you? Is that reality? Is it all really there? There is an ancient Indian parable that helps to shed light on this matter:

Long ago, six old men lived in a village in India. Each was born blind… They listened carefully to the stories told by travelers to learn what they could about life outside the village.

The men were curious about many of the stories they heard, but they were most curious about elephants. They were told that elephants could trample forests, carry huge burdens, and frighten young and old with their loud trumpet calls. But they also knew that the Rajah’s daughter rode an elephant when she traveled in her father’s kingdom. Would the Rajah let his daughter get near such a dangerous creature?

The old men argued day and night about elephants. “An elephant must be a powerful giant,” claimed the first blind man. He had heard stories about elephants being used to clear forests and build roads.

“No, you must be wrong,” argued the second blind man. “An elephant must be graceful and gentle if a princess is to ride on its back.”

“You’re wrong! I have heard that an elephant can pierce a man’s heart with its terrible horn,” said the third blind man.

“Please,” said the fourth blind man. “You are all mistaken. An elephant is nothing more than a large sort of cow. You know how people exaggerate.”

“I am sure that an elephant is something magical,” said the fifth blind man. “That would explain why the Rajah’s daughter can travel safely throughout the kingdom.”

“I don’t believe elephants exist at all,” declared the sixth blind man. “I think we are the victims of a cruel joke.”

Finally, the villagers grew tired of all the arguments, and they arranged for the curious men to visit the palace of the Rajah to learn the truth about elephants…

When the blind men reached the palace, they were greeted by an old friend from their village who worked as a gardener on the palace grounds. Their friend led them to the courtyard. There stood an elephant. The blind men stepped forward to touch the creature that was the subject of so many arguments.

The first blind man reached out and touched the side of the huge animal. “An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall!” he declared. “It must be very powerful.”

The second blind man put his hand on the elephant’s limber trunk. “An elephant is like a giant snake,” he announced.

The third blind man felt the elephant’s pointed tusk. “I was right,” he decided. “This creature is as sharp and deadly as a spear.”

The fourth blind man touched one of the elephant’s four legs. “What we have here,” he said, “is an extremely large cow.”

The fifth blind man felt the elephant’s giant ear. “I believe an elephant is like a huge fan or maybe a magic carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops,” he said.

The sixth blind man gave a tug on the elephant’s coarse tail. “Why, this is nothing more than a piece of old rope. Dangerous, indeed,” he scoffed.

The gardener led his friends to the shade of a tree. “Sit here and rest for the long journey home,” he said. “I will bring you some water to drink.”

While they waited, the six blind men talked about the elephant.

“An elephant is like a wall,” said the first blind man. “Surely we can finally agree on that.”

“A wall? An elephant is a giant snake!” answered the second blind man.

“It’s a spear, I tell you,” insisted the third blind man.

“I’m certain it’s a giant cow,” said the fourth blind man.

“Magic carpet. There’s no doubt,” said the fifth blind man.

“Don’t you see?” pleaded the sixth blind man. “Someone used a rope to trick us.”

Their argument continued and their shouts grew louder and louder.

“Wall!” “Snake!” “Spear!” “Cow!” “Carpet!” “Rope!”

“Stop shouting!” called [an] angry voice.

It was the Rajah, awakened from his nap by the noisy argument.

“How can each of you be so certain you are right?” asked the ruler.

The six blind men considered the question. And then, knowing the Rajah to be a very wise man, they decided to say nothing at all.

“The elephant is a very large animal,” said the Rajah kindly. “Each man touched only one part. Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth. Now, let me finish my nap in peace.”

(Peace Corps, https://www.peacecorps.gov/educators/resources/story-blind-men-and-elephant/)

Perception, in short, is figuring out what’s there. It is the way in which we make sense of the world around us. It is the interpretation of our senses, and as such, it is fundamental to our understanding of anything. Thus, life is fundamentally defined by our perception of it, and we ultimately control whether our experiences have a positive or negative effect on us.

The story of the blind men and the elephant helps illuminate two things that perception is ultimately dependent on. First, it is clear that our sensory organs are imperative to this process. From the total input that goes into these sensory organs, we select only a small fraction of what is noticeably significant to focus on. We end up ignoring virtually everything else (and if we can’t ignore enough, we suffer from sensory overload). Second, it is not only our senses that influence our perception. The preconceived ideas that the blind men had about the elephant greatly impacted how they deduced what the creature really was. The importance of this can hardly be overstated. Your ideas are the lens through which you view the world; and this lens is essential to the whole process. Contrary to what some may think, perception can never be completely stripped of the influence of ideas. This is because things aren’t understood first objectively (as things or objects), and then personified. We don’t perceive objective reality first, and then infer intent and purpose. We see what things mean just as fast, or faster than we see what they are¹. “Perception of things as tools, for example, occurs before or in concert with perception of things as objects¹.” This means that if you were to find an object that is used as a tool, you would immediately see it as a tool, and not just as an object – because we interpret the world as something to utilize and navigate through, and not as something that merely exists. We see meaning, purpose and value in things intrinsically. The objects we perceive are not simply there, in the world, for our direct perceiving¹. They exist in a complex relationship to one another and to us, not as self-evidently separate, independent objects. “This is true even for our perceptions of ourselves, of our individual persons. We assume that we end at the surface of our skin… [but] even when we do something as apparently simple as picking up a screwdriver, our brain automatically adjusts what it considers body to include the tool¹.”

 The brain combines sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is, in order to form its best guess of what caused those signals. The brain relies just as much, if not more, on ideas about the world than it does on the information coming in through our sensory organs. We don’t passively perceive the world – we actively generate it. Everything you are experiencing is what the inside of your mind is like. And thus, every being creates the world in its own image.

Sources:

¹ Peterson, Jordan. 12 Rules for Life.

Piercing the Veil

We have all sorts of ideas built into us, which seem unquestioned and obvious. Going forward, it is necessary for us to reexamine common sense. Our ideologies greatly influence our perception.

As I said previously, I had been thinking that there was so much to explain before I would get to delve into what I wanted to. I was going around in circles, wondering how I got into each of these subjects, and how to start explicating them; perception, consciousness, psychology, religion, culture, history, perception again. All of these things are inextricably interconnected with one another, but where I’ve decided to begin is here:

When I learned about history growing up, I used to think about how stupid people once were to make such grave mistakes, to allow certain things to happen, to kill and die in such ways. After years of studying, I have come to realize that we are not any wiser now than we were before. What I’ve learned from history is that nobody ever learns from history. But maybe I can give you something to think about. Just as in our past, today there are misconceptions underlying a lot of our thinking. The behaviour that we were brought up to believe is acceptable isn’t necessarily sane, rational, or what’s best for us. Once an ideology is accepted, new observations are seen through the lens of that ideology – everything becomes perceived in its imagery and articulated in its vocabulary. None of these new observations can undermine the belief system, and new “facts” generated by the ideology constantly lend further support to it¹. For those believers, the world becomes shaped by the ideology and their perception of it. Thus, in both the past and present, it is through certain ideologies that we humans have vehemently suppressed the truth and oppressed those who seek it – in the name of another “truth.” Part of the problem lies within thinking that the truth is something that we can cling to, as if it were some unique material object; as though it were something that you could obtain and then hold onto forever. We are all (and have always been) products of our time; different periods of time come with their own dominant modes of thinking, their own vices, virtues, and unique cultural atmosphere. The problem is that the misconceptions in our current time period are harder to spot, because being involved in the cultural atmosphere can be blinding, deafening, and numbing. The phrase “hindsight is 20/20” also comes to mind. Looking back is much different than being there. It is therefore easier if I start with an example from the past.

Let’s begin by briefly looking at the life of Galileo Galilei. Galileo was a mathematician that also made inventions and discoveries in physics and astronomy. He created a telescope that could see farther than anything people could get their hands on at the time and with it, as well as with his expertise, he discovered ironclad evidence that the Earth revolved around the Sun (as Copernicus had previously theorized). This had big implications for the knowledge and beliefs of people at the time. Everyone believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun revolved around it. As far as they were concerned, the Bible proved it in Genesis, chapter 1, verses 17-18, which said unequivocally of the Sun, Moon and stars that: “God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness”². There was not a single word about the Earth revolving around the Sun to make day and night. Galileo was mindful of the Church and the consequences of going against it, at least for a while. The discovery didn’t come back to haunt him until he was an old sickly man. At this point, he was taken in by the Inquisition and, as with all cases of heresy, his only lifeline was to abjure. Anyone who refused to do so when accused of heresy would be confirming their heresy and the only solution left was burning at the stake. In order to be given the opportunity to save oneself by rescinding, the court had to be satisfied that the defendant wished to make good his errors with all his body and soul². Torture was often used for this purpose. The only reason Galileo was not subjected to the regular cruelties of the Inquisition was because of the people he knew and the fact that he was old and ill. After he renounced his findings, he was confined to house arrest, and his book (as well as others on the same topic) was banned. The Inquisition stopped Galileo from spreading his ideas for ever. The world stood steadfast in its belief that the Earth stood still and the Sun moved around it.

Galileo was lucky in his exchange with the Inquisition. Others were not so fortunate. You see, the theologians of the Church in those days were accorded the same respect that we now accord scientists, professors, and doctors. We think that they are the real authorities; they’ve learned, they’ve experimented, they have knowledge; they’re the wisest people in our society! A few hundred years ago, so were the theologians, and they had the same sense of responsibility toward the community as our great scientists and physicians have today³. For them, the perceived problem of the time was heresy, which would damn you to hell forever and ever, all eternity, where the most unimaginable horrors would torture you without end. On top of that, it was like a contagious disease; if someone were to come down with heresy, it would soon spread to others. And so, they had to act quickly and decisively in order for this disease not to spread. Thus, the humanitarian and merciful church fathers got together to decide how to stop this. They knew there was an eternal life beyond the grave, and so perhaps, just like a cancer before it spreads and destroys the whole body, it might have to be cut out (or even burnt out). The pain on the part of the patients would be a small price to pay for having gotten rid of it. The body was thought of as only a temporary vessel for the soul, which lasted forever. If you could save the soul, what happened to the body didn’t matter. So they decided that they had to torture these people, because they might, in the middle of this extreme experience, recant. And if they didn’t recant, then they should be burned at the stake, because there’s a chance that in the agony of burning, they will finally ask God for forgiveness and everything will be alright³. They will thus be saved.

Now realize that the intentions of the perfectly responsible inquisitors was to be merciful, as they were acting on the best knowledge they had in their day³. The ostensible aim of the Inquisition was to protect society from harm, and while it flourished, it didn’t offend the sensibilities of most people¹. Don’t you see how this could happen at any time? What happened to Galileo can happen at any time. The inquisition can happen at any time. Genocide can happen at any time. These are things we humans are capable of. Each of us. These problems are an occurrence in human behaviour. It just takes the right parameters: a certain attitude, thought process and environment.

To help illuminate this next point, I wish to share with you a quote from C. G. Jung:

…if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is. And he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life, it requires the greatest art to be simple. And so, acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem, and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar – that I forgive an insult – that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all – the poorest of all beggars – the most impudent of all offenders – yea the very fiend himself – that these are within me? And that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness. That I myself am the enemy that must be loved. What then?

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. There is then no more talk of love and long suffering. We say to the brother within us: Raca, and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world. We deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves. And had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.

The problem is that there is this dark side within all of us, and within the current dominant culture, nobody is willing to accept it. With our attitudes and the ways we’ve been thinking, we have this need to separate the Self (viewed as good) from the Other (viewed as evil), but what we don’t realize is that they are actually the same thing; and they are within us all. We have become divided against ourselves – in an inner conflict paralleling the conception of a cosmic conflict between an absolute good and an absolute evil³. We think we can be all positive with no negative. We deny and reject what we believe is the evil part of ourselves, and then project it onto others. And then someone arises who says, “aha! Look! I have found the bad, the evil. It is over there, in them!” and they point to a scapegoat. Then everyone, trying to rid themselves of evil, works to destroy the scapegoat without realizing their folly. And afterwards, we look back on those people as the ones having done evil the entire time. But no one learns anything.

We cannot fight this other side of ourselves. Pitting yourself against yourself creates an irresolvable problem. Attempting to remove the negative from the positive is an insoluble task. There cannot ever be only positive. How do you know positive without knowing negative? Or negative without positive? Good without evil? They are both a part of the same thing, like the two poles of a magnet. Even if you cut a magnet in half, it still has both poles. In the same way, we cannot remove the side of us responsible for what we consider evil. We have this mindset where we feel that having a war against something is a way to solve a problem. It is completely erroneous thinking, but through our culture, this is the way it’s come to be. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on Christmas, the war on the police – we’ve been bombarded with this language in the news over and over and over again. So we end up declaring war on everything; but all we’ve done is created an insoluble problem and further complicated it with poor solutions. These “wars” can’t be won; they can only be perpetual. And thus there is a war within ourselves, which we think is justified. We deny the evil within us – the part capable of the things we fear- and then we project it outwards onto others until we, ourselves, become that which we fear most. What we need to realize is that as humans, we are all capable of this, and if we don’t come to terms with it, these are the actions we will keep repeating time and time again. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions – especially when those good intentions come from a self-righteous entity. But all conflict has its resolution in an underlying unity. The one most in need of your love, kindness and acceptance is you. Unify yourself. We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

We have all sorts of ideas built into us, which seem unquestioned and obvious. Going forward, it is necessary for us to reexamine common sense. Our ideologies greatly influence our perception, and we must accept ourselves and what we are capable of wholly. In our current state, wherein we are divided against ourselves, the suppression of truth (or at least of better ideas) can happen at any time. Galileo brought forth fresh observation and reasoning, but was oppressed for it. Likewise, the Inquisition can happen at any time. Those accorded with a certain respect and prestige with regard to their knowledge can be horribly erroneous in their thinking and solutions for perceived problems. Finally, and most importantly of all, – I repeat – the one most in need of your love, kindness and acceptance is you.

yin_and_yang

Sources:

¹ Szasz, Thomas. The Manufacture of Madness.

² Næss, Atle. Galileo Galilei, When the World Stood Still.

³ Watts, Alan. Various lectures.

Jung, Carl Gustav.