Authoritarianism Is the Threat -Not the Virus
When most politicians talk about the implementation of restrictions, it is usually framed as if our hand is being forced by the virus. This is not only false, but also a convenient bedrock for authoritarianism. Here’s why.
Fear has a way of limiting our ability to think, and have us focus only on survival. It is no wonder then, that for every way authoritarianism manifests itself in the world, the consistent element is that it is framed as the solution to our fears.
The current virus has now been the main fear of many for more than a year, and governments around the world have hardly hesitated in implementing severe restrictions in order to “combat” the virus.
And this is almost a perfect narrative: “The dangerous virus is here, no one is safe, only we (your government) can save you”.
Combine this with the consistent efforts of mainstream media in maintaining fear in the population, and it is hardly a wonder that seemingly a majority is willing to mandate vaccination and further restrictions.
Yet, having endured restrictions for more than a year, it is more than appropriate to challenge the official narrative, which quite clearly shows us that it isn’t the virus itself, but the response to it which is the danger.
For while we have been told to fear viruses, this fear seems severely misplaced when we consider the context. Viruses after all, are elements which we have coexisted with as long as we have existed on this planet. They exist in unfathomable numbers, in our water, air, earth, and even in us. Intuitively, it makes sense that the more we expose ourselves to them, the more robust our immune systems become.
Nonetheless, it is understandable that many of us fear viruses, as there is no shortage of events where people have seemingly died because of them. Yet, there is a factor that is consistently missing in debates on this topic: The environment.
We all too often make the mistake of narrowing the scope of the debate to the given virus and its direct impact on us. And this causes us to miss a critical understanding, which is that the virus causing damage is merely a symptom of our own decreasing health.
After all, the fact that a person with severely decreased immunity is at risk of death from the common flu, is neither particularly fear-inducing or baffling. The person’s immunity is low, and thus an otherwise benign virus is a danger to them. Yet, what we fail to recognise, is how our modern agricultural and industrial structures are setting us up for severely decreased overall health, and thus susceptibility to viruses.
During The Black Plague in Europe, centuries ago, we saw just how food-scarcity, living in close confinement with other animals, and lacking sanitation made the population particularly susceptible to the plague.
Ever since the commencement of the industrialisation, we have set ourselves up for calamity in a different manner. Chemical warfare, nuclear radiation, pollution, and having created an agricultural system based on genetic modification and heavy chemical usage, are all factors that have severely damaged our health. We recognise that statistics for chronic disease in general show increases, yet we fail to recognise the causality of this.
We imagine that our ailments are genetic and that we are powerless to change them, when in reality we ourselves have created them, both collectively and individually.
What all this means for us, is that the current virus should not be viewed as some kind of hostile force, but instead as a symptom alerting us that the way we are living is decreasing our health, and thus our immunity.
Understanding this, it becomes clear that what is needed most of all is a restoration of health, calling us to eat healthier, be more social, exercise, engage with nature, get enough sunlight, etc. As a rule, none of this has been recommended to us. What is usually told is that we need to stay home, stay apart from others, wear masks, take vaccines — Seemingly the opposite of what would make sense to do.
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” -Noam Chomsky
Perhaps, even the insinuation that we can mostly determine our own health, and thus our relationship with the virome, is too disruptive to what seems to be the actual intention behind the virus-policies:
An authoritarian centralisation of wealth and power.
The Shock Doctrine, as defined by Naomi Klein, has been seen in effect to a degree that even exceeds the years after the attack of September 11, 2001. The virus has consistently and aggressively been sold as an existential threat, that justifies any means necessary in order to be defeated. This is the standard way of how authoritarianism sets its roots in a society.
The effects have largely worked, as millions of people have lost their way of making a living, while the same handful of billionaires have increased their wealth dramatically. Furthermore, civil liberties have faced an immense attack, as we have not only faced confinement, having to wear masks, and now face the mandating of vaccines. These policies may have been normalised, but in effect we have allowed ourselves to be kept confined, cover our faces, and now be injected with an experimental vaccine. There is simply no way of downplaying the extremity of these policies.
Perhaps worst of all, is that the goalpost is being endlessly moved further away, always in the horizon yet never reached. It is clear by now that the governments implementing the restrictions have little intention of allowing civil liberties to be restored.
What is interesting is also how the fear has blinded us from realising how ineffective the restrictions have been. Sweden has been criticised heavily for its more liberal approach, yet has nonetheless seen better outcomes than countries such as Belgium, France, Spain, where the some of the most draconian measures where enacted early on.
The virus has seemingly spread globally, irrespective of whatever policies have been enacted, likely due to the virus being airborne. In particular the realisation that the virus binds itself to the small dense particles which are created in burning fuel, and it has even been clearly shown that areas with higher air-pollution have been more affected by the virus, e. g. (Y. Ogen 2020 “Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality”):
“These results indicate that the long-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus in these regions and maybe across the whole world.”
The virus itself is not the problem, but an alert to the fact that we are in several ways decimating our own health. The narrative that frames it as some kind of hostile force, merely serves for governments and large corporations to further centralise wealth and power. Masks, lockdowns, vaccines are not solutions. Taking responsibility for our health is.
For how could we ever solve a problem by trying to treat symptoms, and not address the root-cause? Are we going to cover our faces and isolate ourselves forever, while vaccinating ourselves for every possible virus?
That is dystopia, not life.
As disheartening as this might feel, this understanding also opens the door for actual improvement, and can hopefully help us shift our focus towards creating and preserving freedom, health, and alignment with nature.
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