Well maybe not "us", but to a large enough chunk of the bell curve we call humanity.
"We" gave up our responsibilities of decision making, and amplified a self perpetuating dependency, to a pack of hyenas waiting just long enough for the soft underbelly to be exposed.
We're not out of kilter by accident, though I do think the hidden hand behind the attempt to control the planet make many mistakes. When you allow yourself to imagine there may be forces intent on killing, harming and controlling humans, much of what's transpired makes perfect sense.
My heart and thoughts go out to you about the death of your dad. 💕
It's interesting... When you ask what happened to us, my first answer is the most sophisticated propaganda campaign used on the broadest scale that the world has ever seen. Information manipulation, and manipulation of populations via information and media, has been used for decades. Usually it's been targeted to a smaller group of people, for example advertising, military psyops during war, messaging of political parties. If you've been a targeted population in the US, as black people historically have been, they know very well how information has been used to define them, and crimes of the police state in the past against them hidden and distorted. If you aren't black, this hasn't affected you. I'm white, and I feel like this is the first time I've been targeted in the same way.
I also think our population has been ignorant of or have ignored the corruption in the United States government for way too long. The people didn't insist on changes when changes could have been made.
I noticed my second answer is the "us" in what happened to us. Our perception of what happened to us occurs through media and government policies, but how much do we get it through our actual interactions with a majority of others that makes up "us"? For the policies and the media narrative to hold up as long as it did, I think the majority of "us" either had to believe the pharma- corporate media-government narrative, or simply have to be silent about it.
By the way, I'm confident that Katanji Brown Jackson knows how to define a woman. She is smart to not answer that question directly. Supreme Court nominees have learned not to directly give their opinion on the inflammatory cultural or legal issues of the day because it would be used against them in the nomination process. Someone may not like it with this nominee because of what's being dodge happens to be an issue they care about, but it's been happening for a long time. Whatever answer she gave was going to be used against her. And what matters to her nominating process is the legal definition of a man and woman, and she wasn't asked to clarify her understanding of the legal definition of a woman.
I'm sure KBJ was indeed trying to avoid problems. Maybe she would admit what most of us know to be true, in the privacy of her own home. On the public stage, as things stand right now, it is dangerous to state certain things - even if those things are entirely factual and correct. That we have come to such a ludicrous position is interesting in and of itself.
Maybe technically it's all about legal definitions for her - but I kind of think that top judges must have *some* appreciation of a few things outside this constrictive framework!
What kind of a world are we building for ourselves when answering the question "what is a woman?" becomes such a contentious and dangerous thing?
Even someone of KBJ's obvious ability and competence could not avoid causing *some* problem whatever answer she gave - and her answer is definitely entertainingly bizarre in context - but that in itself is a serious, serious issue.
How could we have possibly arrived at this stage? She's not being asked about some legal principle, but about what is a woman (or man, presumably). The notion of man and woman is not some abstract, or difficult, legal thing but something that is built into the heart of our species and societies. Indeed, it is this dimorphism and the evolutionary consequences thereof that have greatly shaped those societal structures.
Yes, I totally agree with you, it's not good we've come to this place where we can't say what a woman or a man is from a biological standpoint. You don't have to be a biologist to say a woman has a vagina, a clitoris and breasts that produce milk and other secondary sex characteristics. It's ridiculous. Cultural definitions and roles of what it is to be a woman have changed, and I hope cultural definitions of men and women continue to expand so people are free to develop and express whatever qualities are natural to them, like strength, power, compassion, love, nurturing, etc.
I can see that the severe cancel culture and attacks around gender definitions is a problem, and is part of the danger of fascism where truth is defined by whatever beliefs serve power. I personally feel at this point it's a more minor problem in the collapse of corrupt institutions. I think a thread of these gender breakdowns is challenging where a male dominated world - a world where men have had the most significant positions of power - have taken us as a species. Many good things, and at this point many bad things. I think gender issues and challenges are trying to get some balance, more feminine nurturing caring aspects to the Earth and others, to help steer us out of the bad things.
For example, of the most dark potentials of this vaccination campaign, I imagine there are very few women at the root of that. Women absolutely have the ability to wield power ruthlessly and cruelly. But biologically, women also have more estrogen and grow human beings within their very bodies, and I think this generally tilts them towards less inclination of dominance over other human beings.
It's funny-- recently I was looking for a book to explain the facts of life to my children, and I came to the conclusion that I need to just woman up and tell them (or get a few farm animals), because somehow "the experts" have turned very basic and simple information into OMG TMI OH HELL NO WTF "EXPERTS" I DID NOT MEAN THAT WHEN I SUGGESTED GETTING FARM ANIMALS?!?!?!
"Trust the experts"ism has hit a new low when the new standard of intelligence and test of credentials is unwillingness to speak plain, basic truths. Those, I s'pose, are for the hoi polloi. How utterly low class to suggest that womanhood is related to one's basic anatomy, or that being in a certain body (say, that of a healthy 5 year old vs. an obese, diabetic 85 year old) alters one's risk of suffering severe Covid-related illness.
This might help. I think you might like this chap, Iain McGilchrist. Listen to the first 12 mins, he touches on the covid debacle around 11:13. But covid is not what the video is about. It’s about something much deeper, something we’re all trying to get our heads around at the present time. https://youtu.be/CQ0iA98OhFo
"Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Intentions aside, with that Voltaire correctly identified the power of propaganda.
As a logical thinker I have been skeptical of many conspiracy theories throughout my life, and have been proven correct so many times that I'm not willing to just believe anything. However, I'm beginning to believe there might be something to the "New World Order" theory.
I love conspiracy theories - they're imaginative, fun, and a lot of the fiction I read (thriller stuff etc) is based on extrapolating from a few truths and weaving a magnificent (but fictitious) tapestry from it. I hate that the goons at YouTube etc feel the need to suppress these things.
But, as you say, more often than not they are just flights of fancy - and maybe some of them contain glimmers of truth too. With covid I've had such a hard time constructing a plausible, rational, non-conspiratorial, explanation for what happened in terms of government responses that it's hard not to "fill the gap" with some supposed darker agenda.
When I was a child a line from Star Trek by Spock struck a cord with me. "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I later learned the inspiration for that line Occam's Razor.
Like you and many others I've been violating the law of parsimony by trying to add entities to somehow determine some explanation other than a worldwide conspiracy of governments which seems not only improbable, but impossible.
Yet I can find no other theory to explain the absolute lunacy of the last two years.
"I have several golden investment opportunities to discuss with you. Available, only through me, at a very affordable price." --Rudolph Rigger, the people who believe in all the lunacy are so gullible, you can ramp up your prices way beyond afforable and they'll still buy it.
(All my financial advice is freely given. No need to send a check.)
What happened to us?
Well maybe not "us", but to a large enough chunk of the bell curve we call humanity.
"We" gave up our responsibilities of decision making, and amplified a self perpetuating dependency, to a pack of hyenas waiting just long enough for the soft underbelly to be exposed.
Pharmaceutical corporations are common to both the idiocies that you describe. But it's more than that too.
We're not out of kilter by accident, though I do think the hidden hand behind the attempt to control the planet make many mistakes. When you allow yourself to imagine there may be forces intent on killing, harming and controlling humans, much of what's transpired makes perfect sense.
My heart and thoughts go out to you about the death of your dad. 💕
It's interesting... When you ask what happened to us, my first answer is the most sophisticated propaganda campaign used on the broadest scale that the world has ever seen. Information manipulation, and manipulation of populations via information and media, has been used for decades. Usually it's been targeted to a smaller group of people, for example advertising, military psyops during war, messaging of political parties. If you've been a targeted population in the US, as black people historically have been, they know very well how information has been used to define them, and crimes of the police state in the past against them hidden and distorted. If you aren't black, this hasn't affected you. I'm white, and I feel like this is the first time I've been targeted in the same way.
I also think our population has been ignorant of or have ignored the corruption in the United States government for way too long. The people didn't insist on changes when changes could have been made.
I noticed my second answer is the "us" in what happened to us. Our perception of what happened to us occurs through media and government policies, but how much do we get it through our actual interactions with a majority of others that makes up "us"? For the policies and the media narrative to hold up as long as it did, I think the majority of "us" either had to believe the pharma- corporate media-government narrative, or simply have to be silent about it.
By the way, I'm confident that Katanji Brown Jackson knows how to define a woman. She is smart to not answer that question directly. Supreme Court nominees have learned not to directly give their opinion on the inflammatory cultural or legal issues of the day because it would be used against them in the nomination process. Someone may not like it with this nominee because of what's being dodge happens to be an issue they care about, but it's been happening for a long time. Whatever answer she gave was going to be used against her. And what matters to her nominating process is the legal definition of a man and woman, and she wasn't asked to clarify her understanding of the legal definition of a woman.
Thanks Nova
I'm sure KBJ was indeed trying to avoid problems. Maybe she would admit what most of us know to be true, in the privacy of her own home. On the public stage, as things stand right now, it is dangerous to state certain things - even if those things are entirely factual and correct. That we have come to such a ludicrous position is interesting in and of itself.
Maybe technically it's all about legal definitions for her - but I kind of think that top judges must have *some* appreciation of a few things outside this constrictive framework!
What kind of a world are we building for ourselves when answering the question "what is a woman?" becomes such a contentious and dangerous thing?
Even someone of KBJ's obvious ability and competence could not avoid causing *some* problem whatever answer she gave - and her answer is definitely entertainingly bizarre in context - but that in itself is a serious, serious issue.
How could we have possibly arrived at this stage? She's not being asked about some legal principle, but about what is a woman (or man, presumably). The notion of man and woman is not some abstract, or difficult, legal thing but something that is built into the heart of our species and societies. Indeed, it is this dimorphism and the evolutionary consequences thereof that have greatly shaped those societal structures.
Yes, I totally agree with you, it's not good we've come to this place where we can't say what a woman or a man is from a biological standpoint. You don't have to be a biologist to say a woman has a vagina, a clitoris and breasts that produce milk and other secondary sex characteristics. It's ridiculous. Cultural definitions and roles of what it is to be a woman have changed, and I hope cultural definitions of men and women continue to expand so people are free to develop and express whatever qualities are natural to them, like strength, power, compassion, love, nurturing, etc.
I can see that the severe cancel culture and attacks around gender definitions is a problem, and is part of the danger of fascism where truth is defined by whatever beliefs serve power. I personally feel at this point it's a more minor problem in the collapse of corrupt institutions. I think a thread of these gender breakdowns is challenging where a male dominated world - a world where men have had the most significant positions of power - have taken us as a species. Many good things, and at this point many bad things. I think gender issues and challenges are trying to get some balance, more feminine nurturing caring aspects to the Earth and others, to help steer us out of the bad things.
For example, of the most dark potentials of this vaccination campaign, I imagine there are very few women at the root of that. Women absolutely have the ability to wield power ruthlessly and cruelly. But biologically, women also have more estrogen and grow human beings within their very bodies, and I think this generally tilts them towards less inclination of dominance over other human beings.
It's funny-- recently I was looking for a book to explain the facts of life to my children, and I came to the conclusion that I need to just woman up and tell them (or get a few farm animals), because somehow "the experts" have turned very basic and simple information into OMG TMI OH HELL NO WTF "EXPERTS" I DID NOT MEAN THAT WHEN I SUGGESTED GETTING FARM ANIMALS?!?!?!
"Trust the experts"ism has hit a new low when the new standard of intelligence and test of credentials is unwillingness to speak plain, basic truths. Those, I s'pose, are for the hoi polloi. How utterly low class to suggest that womanhood is related to one's basic anatomy, or that being in a certain body (say, that of a healthy 5 year old vs. an obese, diabetic 85 year old) alters one's risk of suffering severe Covid-related illness.
This might help. I think you might like this chap, Iain McGilchrist. Listen to the first 12 mins, he touches on the covid debacle around 11:13. But covid is not what the video is about. It’s about something much deeper, something we’re all trying to get our heads around at the present time. https://youtu.be/CQ0iA98OhFo
fabulous interview
thanks very much for posting the link
Thank you for the link! McGilchrist immediately made the top of my reading list.
What an excellent discussion - thank you for sharing. We need more of this, don't we?
"Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Intentions aside, with that Voltaire correctly identified the power of propaganda.
As a logical thinker I have been skeptical of many conspiracy theories throughout my life, and have been proven correct so many times that I'm not willing to just believe anything. However, I'm beginning to believe there might be something to the "New World Order" theory.
I love conspiracy theories - they're imaginative, fun, and a lot of the fiction I read (thriller stuff etc) is based on extrapolating from a few truths and weaving a magnificent (but fictitious) tapestry from it. I hate that the goons at YouTube etc feel the need to suppress these things.
But, as you say, more often than not they are just flights of fancy - and maybe some of them contain glimmers of truth too. With covid I've had such a hard time constructing a plausible, rational, non-conspiratorial, explanation for what happened in terms of government responses that it's hard not to "fill the gap" with some supposed darker agenda.
When I was a child a line from Star Trek by Spock struck a cord with me. "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I later learned the inspiration for that line Occam's Razor.
Like you and many others I've been violating the law of parsimony by trying to add entities to somehow determine some explanation other than a worldwide conspiracy of governments which seems not only improbable, but impossible.
Yet I can find no other theory to explain the absolute lunacy of the last two years.
And I'd thought it was Sherlock Holmes who came up with that gem. The Law of Parsimony.
"I have several golden investment opportunities to discuss with you. Available, only through me, at a very affordable price." --Rudolph Rigger, the people who believe in all the lunacy are so gullible, you can ramp up your prices way beyond afforable and they'll still buy it.
(All my financial advice is freely given. No need to send a check.)
My own version of the "can you define what a woman is?" meme:
Senator: "Madam, are you sane?"
Judge Jackson: "I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist."