The Silence of the Lambs, Covid-19 Version, Part 6
I was able to fit in my annual physical this past Wednesday, and a young intern did the preliminary portion of the exam. He was maybe in his early-30s, bright, intelligent, sharing some very good things with me, but then I asked him the question. You know what it was.
"What do you think of this coronavirus situation?"
He said he was all in favor of all the lockdowns and precautions, and the reason he gave made me think. It is not a reason that isn't prominent among the rationalizations for having all this. His reason:
"Keeping the spread of the virus down keeps the hospitals and medical facilities from being overrun. It means there won't be an overload of patients that forces any one of us to have to make a life-or-death decision about who we should treat. You know, we're doctors, Hippocratic oath and all that. We don't want to feel we can't save someone." (Emphasis mine.)
I am someone who has to think about these things for a while, and I do wish I could have had my thoughts more readily available, because after leaving the office and thinking it through, I thought, wow, it was a really well-intentioned response, but still...
This intern is just like most everyone else. They've drunk the Kool-Aid.
This is because the being-overrun thing could only happen in special circumstances, and while it has in some measure in New York, it simply hasn't in any part of the rest of the country. There are reasons it can happen like did in New York.
One of which is that there was a critical mass of people who got ill who were simply liable to get it because of the number of risk factors involved. One those critical ones is they've discovered most victims (besides the very elderly) are those suffering from morbid obesity and exceptionally poor diet and hygiene.
This is why I wish I could have responded to this doctor right at that moment, "Wait a minute. Your sentiment isn't a statement about them, it is a statement about you. Just because someone suffers from something and you've done the best you can with the resources you have doesn't mean you are to blame."
Thing is, doctors everywhere are hypnotized to believe that they are. It doesn't mean they don't try to do their best. But damn, look what we've done with doctors. We've made our healths such idols that we've turned medical personnel into idols as well. What a horribly high expectation to have to maintain.
See, the obesity thing and the lifestyle thing is important! If the patient didn't do what he was supposed to do with his life, and they made it harder for doctors to treat them, then whose fault is that? And diet, exercise, and just plain being responsible isn't that hard to take ownership of. Problem is, in today's humanist materialist socialist racialist Epicureanist World, people are told they can always blame someone else for their problems, and today it is so much easier to get away with it -- what with all those white-privileged old males running the oppressive hegemony, the Frankfurt School is reeeally angry with them so we should too -- errrrrrgh...
This is the essence of codependency. Respectable people are expected to cure or rescue or protect or salvage or enliven or dignify people who don't give a shit about caring for themselves. And as I thought about it, codependency is a bitch of a job for Caesar. How difficult this job is, especially in light of how many people he's gotten to want him to care for them. He's only following his heart in addictively wanting "to be his brother's keeper." Millions of people are out there asking him to keep them safe from some baaad thing that may very well be their doing to begin with.
This is why I think some of why Caesar ordered this lockdown business is because, very simply, it is a much easier way to control this reprobate population.
How many of us are criminals? Well, hate to say it, but the Bible very clearly says each and every one of us is. Each one of us does the most horrific things to one another, and the only deliverance from that is not Caesar but Christ. Please know Caesar does what Christ has him as a footstool to do -- manage the sin of those who don't acknowledge God. If he can do that as proficiently as he can, then the more power to him. This is why while the lockdown is tremendously destructive -- about as good a human sacrifice program as you'll see -- it is a quite necessary evil and those who screech and holler about its tyrannical nature may certainly be pointing out a truth, but they can't argue against it.
I think about C.S. Lewis' first book of his Chronicles of Narnia series when talking beavers speak to the newly-arrived children about the Lord of Narnia, a lion named Aslan. One of the children asks, "Is he safe?"
One of the beavers replies, "Oh no, he is not safe. But he is good."
This is a commonly cited passage from Narnia, and for good reason. I'm a school teacher and before they closed our school the principal bleated something you'd hear from all of these kinds of people all the time. You know what it is. Please read it in that rote staccato as if you'd heard it for the 857th time:
"The safety of your children is our number one priority."
It sounds so good, so wholesome. But when you think about it, it is just more of the same kind of virtue-signaling you'd hear from anyone who wants your vote. For one, no one doesn't want safety, and it is a noble thing to make better and stronger seat belts. But again, the question arises, if someone dies in an auto accident while wearing the seat belt that worked perfectly fine as far as it goes, is that the seat belt maker's fault?
The second thing hits even harder: Is there nothing that is more important than safety? Already we've mentioned one thing that is far more important than safety: Goodness. Even better: Righteousness -- that even if one is to die, that he or she is a righteous person. How about this one: Charity. And I'm talking biblical charity, meaning you'd die for a beloved friend, that's how much you love him or her. How about others? Like wisdom, character, virtue, humility, sacrifice, courage, community, responsibility, beauty, wonder, justice, mercy, faithfulness -- and yes I'm going to add a really good one in my view: spiritual intelligence.
In a sense this is just the opposite of the whole idea of the first verse in the 14th Psalm: "The fool says in his or her heart, 'There is no God.'" These are the spiritually foolish, and when their ideas get streamed so profoundly into the mainstream psyche as they are with this coronavirus thing, my heart breaks.
Yes, the idea of codependent administration is now so prominent that its destructive ends may indeed be reaching critical mass. This lockdown thing really is just a test-run to see how far Caesar can go to shut us down so we can't go out and commit crime after crime after crime. It is ingenious really, until it gets to a point where it could ultimately be, really...
I've shared this with my students, what this lockdown thing would be if we as a society just went all the way. It is my idea for the latest Black Mirror episode -- this is a television show that showcases the worst things that advanced technology could do to a society. My new idea for an episode would only be a few minutes long however, unless there were some plot twists in there, perhaps of someone trying to escape -- and yes things like this have been done in Hollywood productions before, I know.
But mine is just a bit more frightening because of how likely it could be.
It is when all of us are sealed into our 7'x7' room cubicle and we just sit there with monitors all around to have human interaction with one another. Why even get physically close to anyone else? Hasn't this coronavirus lockdown proven we could just interact online? Our room would have a slot through which our choice of food would arrive, and we could certainly have dinner with others as we interact through the video screens -- I mean hey, we could have dinner with however many family or friends we want! We could even dine with our favorite movie stars! A hole would open in the seat for our bathroom duties, the seat would recline into a bed for sleep, and bicycle pedals would appear at our feet for exercise. We could lift barbells for strength training.
"Oh come on don't be so melodramatic, please." But really, let's be honest, why is this present lockdown any less harrowing than that situation?
After all, keeping us in real lockdown boxes ensures we're all perfectly, perfectly safe, right?
Then I just think, why even stop there. Why not just put us in artificial cocoons plugged into feeding tubes and wires filling our brains with happy thoughts? Remember The Matrix?
Then we'd be very very perfectly perfectly safe.
This is why I chafe at giving any attention to any mention of the present lockdown situation, because it reminds me of the abject stupidity that went into starting it to begin with and is still going into sustaining it indefinitely. My wife showed me a video she found on Facebook of a 6th grade teacher trying to Zoom-teach her class. I can see how it was considered funny, but I did not laugh. It was monumentally stupid, and not funny-stupid. It was stupid-stupid because it reflects a wretchedly lethal situation that doesn't have to be. That teacher should never have to be there doing that to begin with.
When I was a dumb punky 15-year-old I invited three or four friends over to watch films I'd checked out from the library of Hitler at the time of World War II. I showed them on a projector in my living room (this was back in, the early 70s) for the purpose of matching up what we saw with goofy things we could put on audio tape or something of that nature to make fun of Hitler. No longer than five minutes into the film were images of Holocaust victims, both barely alive or dead in ditches, and one of my friends very rightly and very somberly said, "This isn't something we can make fun of." I was wholly, completely, utterly embarrassed, as I should have been.
Yeah, I didn't know.
But then, so many out there wearing masks and freaking out about distancing and staying cowering in their closets all day... Do they know?
It is why I am aghast at the pervasiveness of this kind of insidious talk: "We should be able to do all our work and live our lives from home now that we have such advanced web technology." That kind of stuff is just plain demonic, no matter how much the purveyors snidely remark "Wull ya better get used to it."
As a school teacher I am absolutely mortified that many are indeed talking about dialing back classroom anything, never mind that the best way to learn is active, vibrant conversation in physical proximity with a teacher, and yes, this is my main form of instruction summarily taken away from me and simply cannot rival the online version, it just can't. I am now working like crazy to do a good job with my online platforms, but it simply cannot replace the classroom.
Maybe many teachers think they'll do just fine with it, but I know many, many students will not learn the same, and that in turn means a worse future for all of us. Already students are checking out from formal learning all together, especially when the education poobahs do stultifyingly idiotic things like they did in San Francisco, awarding every student an "A" grade effectively yanking an entire half a semester of productive knowledge and skill acquisition from thousands of students.
Or, hmm, did it matter anyway? How many of these teachers were actually teaching students anything worthwhile to begin with, knowing they could just be proudly socialist and racialist and sodomist and tell young people they could pretty much do whatever they wanted and if things went sideways they could just blame the white-privileged oppressive hegemony?
Wait until the results of this experiment reaches its critical mass.
Sealed room living cubicles for everyone, anyone?
___
I have to add that the evening of putting up this post we visited a wonderful beach town that is always hopping. It wasn't as hopping this night, yet still there were dozens of people out and about walking through town and near the beach (that the city had closed off even though the county did declare it could be open), most of them without masks. It is another evidence that more and more people are realizing what's actually happening with the coronavirus hysteria decision-making.
The picture above was taken there. I can't neglect to add that it was a very clear, warm day, except when we got to the beach town where there was such a thick marine layer it was hard to see 100 feet ahead through the fog. Just a symbol of the real meaning of what this marquee is saying.
___
"What do you think of this coronavirus situation?"
He said he was all in favor of all the lockdowns and precautions, and the reason he gave made me think. It is not a reason that isn't prominent among the rationalizations for having all this. His reason:
"Keeping the spread of the virus down keeps the hospitals and medical facilities from being overrun. It means there won't be an overload of patients that forces any one of us to have to make a life-or-death decision about who we should treat. You know, we're doctors, Hippocratic oath and all that. We don't want to feel we can't save someone." (Emphasis mine.)
I am someone who has to think about these things for a while, and I do wish I could have had my thoughts more readily available, because after leaving the office and thinking it through, I thought, wow, it was a really well-intentioned response, but still...
This intern is just like most everyone else. They've drunk the Kool-Aid.
This is because the being-overrun thing could only happen in special circumstances, and while it has in some measure in New York, it simply hasn't in any part of the rest of the country. There are reasons it can happen like did in New York.
One of which is that there was a critical mass of people who got ill who were simply liable to get it because of the number of risk factors involved. One those critical ones is they've discovered most victims (besides the very elderly) are those suffering from morbid obesity and exceptionally poor diet and hygiene.
This is why I wish I could have responded to this doctor right at that moment, "Wait a minute. Your sentiment isn't a statement about them, it is a statement about you. Just because someone suffers from something and you've done the best you can with the resources you have doesn't mean you are to blame."
Thing is, doctors everywhere are hypnotized to believe that they are. It doesn't mean they don't try to do their best. But damn, look what we've done with doctors. We've made our healths such idols that we've turned medical personnel into idols as well. What a horribly high expectation to have to maintain.
See, the obesity thing and the lifestyle thing is important! If the patient didn't do what he was supposed to do with his life, and they made it harder for doctors to treat them, then whose fault is that? And diet, exercise, and just plain being responsible isn't that hard to take ownership of. Problem is, in today's humanist materialist socialist racialist Epicureanist World, people are told they can always blame someone else for their problems, and today it is so much easier to get away with it -- what with all those white-privileged old males running the oppressive hegemony, the Frankfurt School is reeeally angry with them so we should too -- errrrrrgh...
This is the essence of codependency. Respectable people are expected to cure or rescue or protect or salvage or enliven or dignify people who don't give a shit about caring for themselves. And as I thought about it, codependency is a bitch of a job for Caesar. How difficult this job is, especially in light of how many people he's gotten to want him to care for them. He's only following his heart in addictively wanting "to be his brother's keeper." Millions of people are out there asking him to keep them safe from some baaad thing that may very well be their doing to begin with.
This is why I think some of why Caesar ordered this lockdown business is because, very simply, it is a much easier way to control this reprobate population.
How many of us are criminals? Well, hate to say it, but the Bible very clearly says each and every one of us is. Each one of us does the most horrific things to one another, and the only deliverance from that is not Caesar but Christ. Please know Caesar does what Christ has him as a footstool to do -- manage the sin of those who don't acknowledge God. If he can do that as proficiently as he can, then the more power to him. This is why while the lockdown is tremendously destructive -- about as good a human sacrifice program as you'll see -- it is a quite necessary evil and those who screech and holler about its tyrannical nature may certainly be pointing out a truth, but they can't argue against it.
I think about C.S. Lewis' first book of his Chronicles of Narnia series when talking beavers speak to the newly-arrived children about the Lord of Narnia, a lion named Aslan. One of the children asks, "Is he safe?"
One of the beavers replies, "Oh no, he is not safe. But he is good."
This is a commonly cited passage from Narnia, and for good reason. I'm a school teacher and before they closed our school the principal bleated something you'd hear from all of these kinds of people all the time. You know what it is. Please read it in that rote staccato as if you'd heard it for the 857th time:
"The safety of your children is our number one priority."
It sounds so good, so wholesome. But when you think about it, it is just more of the same kind of virtue-signaling you'd hear from anyone who wants your vote. For one, no one doesn't want safety, and it is a noble thing to make better and stronger seat belts. But again, the question arises, if someone dies in an auto accident while wearing the seat belt that worked perfectly fine as far as it goes, is that the seat belt maker's fault?
The second thing hits even harder: Is there nothing that is more important than safety? Already we've mentioned one thing that is far more important than safety: Goodness. Even better: Righteousness -- that even if one is to die, that he or she is a righteous person. How about this one: Charity. And I'm talking biblical charity, meaning you'd die for a beloved friend, that's how much you love him or her. How about others? Like wisdom, character, virtue, humility, sacrifice, courage, community, responsibility, beauty, wonder, justice, mercy, faithfulness -- and yes I'm going to add a really good one in my view: spiritual intelligence.
In a sense this is just the opposite of the whole idea of the first verse in the 14th Psalm: "The fool says in his or her heart, 'There is no God.'" These are the spiritually foolish, and when their ideas get streamed so profoundly into the mainstream psyche as they are with this coronavirus thing, my heart breaks.
Yes, the idea of codependent administration is now so prominent that its destructive ends may indeed be reaching critical mass. This lockdown thing really is just a test-run to see how far Caesar can go to shut us down so we can't go out and commit crime after crime after crime. It is ingenious really, until it gets to a point where it could ultimately be, really...
I've shared this with my students, what this lockdown thing would be if we as a society just went all the way. It is my idea for the latest Black Mirror episode -- this is a television show that showcases the worst things that advanced technology could do to a society. My new idea for an episode would only be a few minutes long however, unless there were some plot twists in there, perhaps of someone trying to escape -- and yes things like this have been done in Hollywood productions before, I know.
But mine is just a bit more frightening because of how likely it could be.
It is when all of us are sealed into our 7'x7' room cubicle and we just sit there with monitors all around to have human interaction with one another. Why even get physically close to anyone else? Hasn't this coronavirus lockdown proven we could just interact online? Our room would have a slot through which our choice of food would arrive, and we could certainly have dinner with others as we interact through the video screens -- I mean hey, we could have dinner with however many family or friends we want! We could even dine with our favorite movie stars! A hole would open in the seat for our bathroom duties, the seat would recline into a bed for sleep, and bicycle pedals would appear at our feet for exercise. We could lift barbells for strength training.
"Oh come on don't be so melodramatic, please." But really, let's be honest, why is this present lockdown any less harrowing than that situation?
After all, keeping us in real lockdown boxes ensures we're all perfectly, perfectly safe, right?
Then we'd be very very perfectly perfectly safe.
This is why I chafe at giving any attention to any mention of the present lockdown situation, because it reminds me of the abject stupidity that went into starting it to begin with and is still going into sustaining it indefinitely. My wife showed me a video she found on Facebook of a 6th grade teacher trying to Zoom-teach her class. I can see how it was considered funny, but I did not laugh. It was monumentally stupid, and not funny-stupid. It was stupid-stupid because it reflects a wretchedly lethal situation that doesn't have to be. That teacher should never have to be there doing that to begin with.
When I was a dumb punky 15-year-old I invited three or four friends over to watch films I'd checked out from the library of Hitler at the time of World War II. I showed them on a projector in my living room (this was back in, the early 70s) for the purpose of matching up what we saw with goofy things we could put on audio tape or something of that nature to make fun of Hitler. No longer than five minutes into the film were images of Holocaust victims, both barely alive or dead in ditches, and one of my friends very rightly and very somberly said, "This isn't something we can make fun of." I was wholly, completely, utterly embarrassed, as I should have been.
Yeah, I didn't know.
But then, so many out there wearing masks and freaking out about distancing and staying cowering in their closets all day... Do they know?
It is why I am aghast at the pervasiveness of this kind of insidious talk: "We should be able to do all our work and live our lives from home now that we have such advanced web technology." That kind of stuff is just plain demonic, no matter how much the purveyors snidely remark "Wull ya better get used to it."
As a school teacher I am absolutely mortified that many are indeed talking about dialing back classroom anything, never mind that the best way to learn is active, vibrant conversation in physical proximity with a teacher, and yes, this is my main form of instruction summarily taken away from me and simply cannot rival the online version, it just can't. I am now working like crazy to do a good job with my online platforms, but it simply cannot replace the classroom.
Maybe many teachers think they'll do just fine with it, but I know many, many students will not learn the same, and that in turn means a worse future for all of us. Already students are checking out from formal learning all together, especially when the education poobahs do stultifyingly idiotic things like they did in San Francisco, awarding every student an "A" grade effectively yanking an entire half a semester of productive knowledge and skill acquisition from thousands of students.
Or, hmm, did it matter anyway? How many of these teachers were actually teaching students anything worthwhile to begin with, knowing they could just be proudly socialist and racialist and sodomist and tell young people they could pretty much do whatever they wanted and if things went sideways they could just blame the white-privileged oppressive hegemony?
Wait until the results of this experiment reaches its critical mass.
Sealed room living cubicles for everyone, anyone?
___
I have to add that the evening of putting up this post we visited a wonderful beach town that is always hopping. It wasn't as hopping this night, yet still there were dozens of people out and about walking through town and near the beach (that the city had closed off even though the county did declare it could be open), most of them without masks. It is another evidence that more and more people are realizing what's actually happening with the coronavirus hysteria decision-making.
The picture above was taken there. I can't neglect to add that it was a very clear, warm day, except when we got to the beach town where there was such a thick marine layer it was hard to see 100 feet ahead through the fog. Just a symbol of the real meaning of what this marquee is saying.
___
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