Sphagnum

We are seeing truly impressive institutional rot, almost everywhere in the world. The woke are conquering everything, and there seems little effective resistance.

I contend that the idea that there is a planed movement behind this takeover is dubious, simply because of how organic and well oiled this machinery works. If you compare with how well climate change advocacy works (which has an honest, sizeable activist core but beyond that is staged to a large extent) then the woke clearly play in a different league. They are a much more effective group, with excellent recruiting capabilities. They are very disciplined and pursue highly developed end effective strategies. That is what one observes.

Looking at the kind of soldier this army recruits, though, I can't but wonder if this could be really true. These aren't highly trained professional subversion soldiers. Rather, the opposite. They don't look like the crowd that can keep things secret at scale, and when they ramble they seem pretty sincere in their strange, to me frankly psychotic, beliefs. For a while I've been thinking, what if it the woke takeover is really a completely emergent behavior? And the idea that this is a coordinated attack just our minds making up an explanation that we can tolerate?

If you watch the documentary on the Evergreen college takeover, then one thing that emerges is that there is virtually no resistance to any of this. Very few professors object (Bret Weinstein and his wife, basically) but if we are honest, not even that is real resistance. Prof. Weinstein wants to discuss with the crowd and reach an agreement, which seems pretty accommodating to me. Clearly the dean of the college is not against the takeover, but doesn't really seem to be in to the party. He gets humiliated and pummeled around, and it seems to me he would have to be a really good actor if he had an agenda and all of this was theater. He seems sincere to me.

The reality of the matter seems to be that the college was overrun simply because it wasn't able to mount an effective defense. The first reason was that it had already let in the blight through hiring, so the enemy was already within the institution. The second reason was that nobody was prepared to risk a hair to mount an effective defense. Except Brett Weinstein. And obviously he could not stop the phenomenon alone.

What I think is happening is that these institutions are rotten in the very specific sense that very few in their staffs have any loyalty to them beyond what is legally required, in the sense that they are not willing to risk much to defend it. For them, it's just a job. The Woke, instead, have a lot of loyalty to their own, at least in an institutional setting, so they can simply displace or coerce to submission what is left. No long term plans are needed, no complex strategy. Just bullying. It looks advanced from outside because the bullying progresses along the structure of the existing institution like water through canals.

Another hint at the fact that this 'takeover' is not much planed is the fact that the thus captured institutions become dysfunctional and ruin their reputation to the non-Woke by engaging in demented shenanigans, like calling rational thought white supremacy.

The motivation for the woke takeover is, if my thoughts are correct, monetary interests on the part of the participants. Getting a cozy job at university for example. They probably really believe what they profess, so they feel they deserve it.

The motivations of those who fail to defend the institutions is, I suspect, firstly, general disinterest in anything that is not themselves. I once worked for a professor who didn't let anyone fail unless the student was really completely bad, because it was too much of a hassle. Even when he did let someone fail he did it to avoid the embarrassment that he did let anyone pass, even this person. He was a completely selfish person, did not see himself as a defender of academia or anything of that sort. And secondly, those who are not like that are completely outgunned and outnumbered, so it is completely rational to either fold or move on. A sizeable proportion of those that do not fold or move on seem enthralled to the faith of Progress, so they believe it will all sort itself out, and engage in ineffective, bland strategies.

So to me the woke take over looks like the landslide chapter of an erosion process that has been going on for decades.

This sounds like a childish question. Of course they are humans like the rest of us, not lizard people (although sometimes I really wonder). However, it is also true that whenever you see a politician for the first time in an important role, it is almost always the case that he has had a long career before him or her preparing her for this moment. Understanding this process, and understanding the implications, is of fundamental importance for regular folks that want to become politically active, but who are not in such a career path.

The truth is that many politicians have been scouted at a young age and went through specialized courses, received grants, were offered vita-building stints (like an internship at this or that institution) that also generate vital network connections. Beyond these networks, the professional politician also has access to a lot of resources like marketing intelligence, professional public relations expertise, speech writing, and other things. There are on this planet organizations with very long time horizons willing to build political power over the course of decades, and with the deep pockets to do this.

When you talk to a politician of this type, you are in a way not talking to the human being in front of you, you are talking with an avatar of an institution that has a certain position it wants to impose on the world, for one reason or another. To put it bluntly, this human being doesn't hear your arguments as arguments, but as challenges to be overcome in an elegant way. And, incidentally, if you get to talk to a politician of this sort, the whole situation will always be staged, because what matters is how this looks to other people. Talking to a politician of this type is at best a completely futile exercise unless you manage to turn the theater around, to make him or her look bad. You will never convince them of anything.

If you ever wondered why some politicians sometimes look like they are possessed, now you know why. They are possessed. In a mundane, profane way, but possessed they are.

If you look at political discourse over the last few years, you will see this phenomenon everywhere. All this manipulative, facetious and twisted rhetoric comes from the same source: the fact that your opinion only matters in so far as that you are a field to be conquered in a game in which your humanity only plays a secondary role, if at all. That is what you have to understand when you read absurdist logic like the one in which the vaccinated have to be protected from the unvaccinated. It's a numbers game. If they convince enough people then progress was made.

Originally, the type of institution that had such long term goals, and was willing to put up with a very long game is an institution like the catholic church, which had such strategies for centuries (so the phenomenon is actually very old). The original motivation is not only power but the preservation of civilizatory substance in a barbaric world, which, frankly, I do not think of as a sinister motive. Similar motivations led to many modern states to do that, which is where the elite colleges of many nations come in. The idea is that the politicians which were to hold power on a later date should be acquainted with the substance of the state and were selected for compatibility with it.

But nowadays it is not only the state that is engaging in political class building (arguably, the state has stopped doing this in many places) but instead a bunch of billionaires through their various NGOs and the corresponding NGO network. If you want to get an idea of how this works, I recommend to you this harrowing article that shows you in detail some of the mechanisms.

There is no reason to get despondent over that terrifying landscape of oligarch power. On the contrary, now that you know what is being played you can understand the news better and also plan better for actions, which might be more effective now than they were before. I hope it also convinces the motivated activist to understand better the world around him or her, to study political theory, and to build networks. Such a framework for understanding politics also helps to see what the pain points are in the behemoths.

And it seems to me that there is a lot of pain going around. The absurdist rhetoric, the constant changes of mind, the moving of goal posts, the lying, the bullying - these are in a way displays of power, but they are also politically very expensive, in the sense that with every lie they lose people, and, remember, it's a numbers game. They also are humans, and there is shame in being caught telling lies. Additionally, in the modern era it is all recorded and documented and every momentarily successful talking point can be used to humiliate them at a later point.

And if you read the linked article carefully, you will see that the goals of these institutions is not actually that well defined, which is another way of saying that they don't necessarily know what they are doing. The money flowing into climate change public relations, for instance, is probably in part doing so just as a novelty for the billionaire who, able to own whatever he or she wants, also wants to be a saint. Which is why, I think, so much of it looks so self defeating and suicidal.

In principle, and arguing as is usually done, from the point of view biology, the mutants arise because of evolution and errors in copying the mRNA.

Fine. There are enough smart people thinking and writing about that, so I'm going to remark that there is a different process which gives us the Mu, Delta, etc. variants. And that that process is entirely human.

There are a few components in this process, and the first one is the current state of science as an institution. Science as an institution lives through universities, research centers, etc. which are filled with very motivated and competitive people who can't do anything else, and, incidentally, have a mortgage to pay. Competition is very intense, and if you are a virologist then, let's face it, finding a new scary mutant will be quite an asset in your CV. If you can publish the finding in a prestigious journal called Nature, even some form of tenure might be possible. I hope you understand that in a situation like this articles about scary mutants will be a regular feature in Nature, simply because the motivation structure is so damn strong.

In my experience this is not simply corruption or baldfaced fraud, but instead comes from a culture in which cavalier attitudes towards data integrity meet an eagerness to jump to conclusions, all in an environment where everybody does the same so nobody can see a problem with it. Add to this a bit of wishful thinking and there you go, no fraud committed! You see, the careful thinkers all end up publishing too little and leaving academia early.

Once a new scary mutant has been found, the next step in the mutant's journey is the press release. Universities and research institutes need publicity, so the scary mutant now lands on the desks of the PR department, in front of the people who like to work on the message. So, for example, things like disclaimers on page 18 of the supplementary material of the original article do not make it to the press release. It would just distract from the message which, hilariously, is not that the mutant is scary, no, but that the great scientists of this great institution contributed to the well-being of the planet. Now that we know that this mutant is here we can be super careful and not leave the basement for a few months just in case.

The next step of the journey is through mass media. These companies live from people looking at ads, and you get them to look at ads by scaring and worrying them, so at this point scary mutant mutates into doomsday mutant. If things go well then the link gets shared widely and a very large number of people looks at the ads.

The public that consumes this material can be roughly divided along whether they believe #Science (which is not the same thing as plain old science) or think that this is Klaus' and Billy's shenanigans. This type of content is hugely successful because both the skeptics and the believers share this like crazy for totally different reasons, but it doesn't matter at all because the clicks keep coming. Especially once the tribes of twitter and facebook use the content to attack and smear each other. Lots and lots of clicks are generated by this huge saloon brawl of people very worried about this side or that side of the issue, sharing this stuff with abandon and calling each other names, all to feel themselves online bastions of reason and virtue.

I could go on with politics but I think at this point you get the idea. The mutants will keep coming because, well, how could they not?

How can you stop something like this? I believe that the smart folks at the WHO have come up with a very sneaky and smart idea which will stop this in its tracks some day: they decided to name the variants after constellations. I'm absolutely convinced that their cunning plan is that, at some point, some scientist will find a new scary mutant and call it the Andromeda strain. And then hopefully everybody at once realizes how painfully ridiculous all of this is and the madness finally stops.

"Down the centuries it has been happening again and again. People have been tortured for their own sake, killed for their own sake, destroyed for their own sake. The do-gooders have been one of the greatest calamities upon humanity. They have proved the most mischievous of people. The world would have been far better without them." -- Osho

A question that often arises is: how to cope with the madness? How to cope with the coming years? Obviously I can't give a definitive answer but want to give some advice that helps me.
The first thing that helps me is going for a walk. And make a point of listening and watching the surroundings. This way you can look past the clot of madness blocking your sight and have it dissolve. There is still a life to live, there are still swans in the pond, the birds don't give a damn as ever, the trees rock in the wind. The world keeps spinning and on we go.

Another thing that helps is to remember that most of what men of power attempt turns out differently than planned, if it does not end in defeat. Even the Soviet Union fell appart, even the American Army got handed a humiliating defeat by a bunch of medieval war lords, etc. When you see things progressing a given direction, yes, it's worth of notice but at the end something completely different might actually happen.

Then there are the cracks in the system. The world is vast and complex, it is not trivial but not that hard either to find a niche of one's own where you and your loved ones can sit out the storm. Or find an arrangement with the local powers that amounts to a cludge but gives you freedom. Your space can be kept.

And then: try to understand the mechanics of what is happening. Everybody is either looking at the numbers or engaging in the morality play. Take a step back and try to understand what is happening as if this was a novel and you a literary critic. The baddies are about as deluded and lost as they always are, and unfortunately the good are also deluded and lost. And all of them are humans trying to do good and being deluded about what it means.

The world in ten years will not look like it did two years ago, that is at this point certain. What is also certain to me is that it won't look like the visionaries want it to look like either.

I believe the human face to be holy. I believe that children's smiles are sacred. It is deeply, deeply sinful to even consider their marginal value in any calculation of practical advantage.

My position is this: If not masking children increases risk for those around them then shame on you for even wasting a thought on that. The effectiveness of masks is a completely moot point. A masked world is a lost world, a dead, soulless world.

I am quite sure most people believe the same in the bottom of their hearths. But this is not how they talk.

The whole discussion about masks is instead dominated by utilitarian calculations. What this shows is that the vast majority of people on the planet have completely accepted as gospel (no metaphor here) the idea that everything should be ruled by practical considerations and science. This is absolutely amazing and terrifying for me, because it means that the human experience and poetry has been erased from wide areas of public awareness.

When I hear arguments against masking children made on the basis of the psychological effects on them I hear deep disorientation. That is as if you would argue against slavery by insisting that keeping it would be a burden to the welfare state. I hope you understand that this is not the point. When I hear arguments against masks on the basis of aerosols and nanowhateverness I can't but notice the absence of the human soul from the negotiation. I notice that people using these arguments often do not understand that arguing this way buys the form of the argument: if you contend that masks should not be mandated because they are ineffective, you accept that they should be mandated if they are. I don't think that this is an accident. It is a deeply ingrained way of looking at the world.

I wish mask opponents would stop to use such so called "factual" arguments and go back to the principled position. Arguing from this position is easy, short, and the right thing to do. The argument is unassailable. The opponent either quickly understands the wrongness of his position or, alternatively, quickly understands that there is no way that you will fold. Sure, this can lead to a situation where this becomes about overpowering you, but at least now it is about fellow human beings, and not something abstract any more. It becomes again about human beings, and that is progress.

Human faces are holy. Children's smiles are sacred. The holy and the sacred admit no compromise.

I have a technique of thought that I use to gain insight into that which is hidden in plain sight. That, which we all have a hard time seeing because we are embedded in it, the fabric of the canvas on which the world we live in is painted.

I don't know where I learned it, but I am sure it is not an original invention by me.

First step: take something that has attracted your attention as strange or bewildering, and take some time to contemplate on it on its own merits. Use your conscience to sense it, as blind man would sense an object unknown to him, get aware of the texture, the sound, the temperature, so to speak. Note that this is not analysis, as logic is not the point of this exercise.

At the point your thoughts start to meander away from the phenomenon, just take a break.

Second step: return to the phenomenon with the following questions: If instead of real this would be fictional, what would the author be trying to tell me? If I found this in a movie or a novel, what would be the point for the plot?

Of course the point of the technique is not to follow it blindly by the letter. The point of the technique is to learn to view things from outside, to put them in perspective, to find the strange and important things that are hiding in plain sight. To become aware of the transactions, of the emotional meanings of things. That which you see with this technique is not guaranteed to be real, which is something you should be aware of at all times.

This technique can be applied to many different things. You can contemplate in this way on a discussion with an acquaintance on some divisive topic. If this would have been a dialog in a novel, why would it be like that? But it could be something completely different. You could go to the home page of reddit (logging out first if you have an account). If this were a scene from a science fiction novel, what would it mean that it looked like this?

After the sky had been falling for a while and things started to really look bleak I did what a citizen is supposed to do: I went out to do political work. I joined a party of dissidents and we tried to build an alternative political force that could stand up to the powers that be. In the country where I live this is actually possible, quite unlike in the US or the UK, where this is made essentially impossible by electoral law. Two parties in our parliament came to be this way, so why not another one?

And this is a no-brainer. Say no to lockdowns, keep schools open, say no to mask mandates and other authoritarian and ridiculous stuff. Let's just get back to where the world was 2019. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but so much better than now. I figured that "get back to the world of 2019" would be something simple we could all rally around and be super successful.

How naïve of me. The truth is that almost nobody wanted that. That idea of using the current crisis to reorder the world turns out to be extremely popular among the militant lockdown opponents. They just have different goals than the folks from the WEF.

I noticed that first when the party was drawing up a program. The first version, which was written by the members in an egalitarian participative process was a hard money, bank reforming, Montessori/Waldorff and alternative medicine extravaganza that stood exactly zero chance to fly among normies. To my horror, opposing the lockdown measures wasn't even much of a priority.

Talking with potential voters and members of the party, and even with parents opposed to the measures at my kids' school, I saw the same pattern everywhere. A massive majority of the citizens of this country is and was longing for the great collapse from which a better society will emerge. The interesting question seems to be the looks of that new society.

And so here it is, the Great Reset. The old order had fewer adherents that I thought.

One of the most salient features of this Covid crisis is rampant irrationality. But what worries me most is that some of those giving in to the irrationality suddenly seem transformed, liberated, righteous, all the while saying absurd things. It is as if they feel liberated by ditching the burden of rational thought and honest discourse.

Where I live, a justice minister said last week sternly that discriminating the unvaccinated would be illegal, but just five days later said exactly the opposite, with a bright smile, almost giggling. Intelligent people are saying that not being allowed to do anything unvaccinated does not amount to it being mandated, no. You see, it's your choice if you want to starve because you can't get into the supermarket unvaccinated. After all, you could just vaccinate. Some of the people saying such things are even professors for "Ethics". A president of a large country just said that the vaccinated have to be protected from the unvaccinated.

None of them seems to worry at all about losing credibility and trust. Quite the opposite, the look to me as chanting to themselves, neener neener, I can say whatever I want and you can do nothing about it.

They look like mad people to me, blindly destroying something very precious that won't be easy to get back. Something that is indeed the fabric of the west. And that is happening everywhere at every level.