Monday, March 11, 2024

THE GRAMMAR OF OPPRESSION


To protect itself against dissent in the ranks authority applies a universal “grammar”. It goes as follows – 

• Clandestinely threaten the accuser. That failing – 
• Create an expedient “case”, turning the accuser into the accused, and initiate legal proceedings. 
• Cast doubt on the accused’s sanity, “sanity” being conformity to norms defined by the authorities. 
• Suspend the accused from participation in the organization. 
• Demand a full recantation. 
• Charge the accused with confusing the membership with misinformation. 
• Charge the accused with fomenting revolt, or revolution. 
• Convict, expel, and silence the accused. 

The on-going case against Father Jesusmary Missigbètò illustrates this invariable chain of events. The Vatican and Opus Dei have begun “a canonical process” to “expel” him from the priesthood, in official response to his theological objections to the novel doctrines of Pope Francis. He writes that he is seeking support “to continue defending the truth of traditional Catholic teaching against the moral and doctrinal errors that Pope Francis has inserted into it.”

He further reports that he has had five death threats, presumably for criticizing the Pope.

Father Fernando Ocáriz Braña, the Prelate of Opus Dei, has stated various reasons for opening a canonical case against Missigbètò: his unwillingness either to see a psychiatrist or to request a “dispensation” (i.e. exemption) from his priestly duties, persisting “in the conduct that led to his resignation from the Prelature [of Opus Dei],” confusing the faithful, and through his conduct perhaps “promoting aversion and disobedience to the Holy See.” 

We see this pattern unfold wherever high authority is challenged. It signals one of two situations: either a community member is behaving heretically, i.e. questioning or disobeying fundamental community principles and thereby threatening the integrity of the organization, or the community leadership is itself violating in word or deed those same principles to which the membership was previously pledged. In outcome, either the accused member will recant or be caused to depart the organization, or (more rarely) the leadership may be forced or voted out of office. Leadership recantation, significantly, is not an option; leaders cancel themselves by admitting wrongdoing. But upon the departure or recantation of the accused member, or replacement of the leader, those principles will be reestablished, or reconfirmed. 

If, on the other hand, the accusation is an objection to a deliberate change of principles (an accusation which can only be brought by a member or subordinate against the leadership), then for the preexisting principles to be upheld or restored requires the replacement of the leadership that made the changes. Otherwise, departure of or retraction by the subordinate signals the establishment of those changes in an essentially transformed organization. A redefinition of sanity then automatically occurs, realigning it with the new norms. 

What you may have noticed is the dishonesty that inevitably accompanies an attempt to change the underlying principles of a given community system without admitting its resultant moral transformation. Hence the necessary departure of the accusing member, absent recantation, when the accusation is inevitably rebuffed. Charter Change in the Philippines, and alteration of the American Constitution are two current examples. The amendments to the International Heath Regulations being engineered by the WHO are another particularly egregious example. The realignment of the Catholic Church with the principles of wokism, alluded to above, is another. The Great Reset being imposed on the human population by the WEF and its sister organizations is yet another – though in this case Klaus Schwab has warned us that the belief that we can go back to the way things were before the plandemic “is, you might say, a fiction”. He can afford to admit this because he knows that wholesale changes made to the terms of human existence itself will not be believed, let alone agreed to, and can only be accomplished by the imposition of totalitarian “governance” and the iron fist that finally dispenses with our permissions altogether. 

The involvement of psychiatry in this process is inevitable, involving the undeclared canceling of preexisting definitions of sanity on the invidious pretext that the new conditions self-evidently override the old: they are, declare the authorities, self-referentially good. Protesters are therefore judged as if the changes authority is introducing are already in effect, and the old principles guiding the morality of the protester no longer apply. Moral certainty is replaced by moral ambiguity, and might becomes right.

Pablo

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

New and Damning Evidence


The tribal thinking that holds us together as a society is nowhere more in evidence than in political institutions like the British House of Commons. Political parties everywhere think and act as one. While there is a consensual component to this synergy, what ultimately holds a political party together is its leadership. US President Harry S. Truman, you will recall, enshrined this principle in the sign he kept on his desk: "The buck stops here."  This reassuringly paternal statement has a dark side, articulated in another aphorism, attributed to Lord Acton*: "Power devolves to whomever is prepared to take responsibility"*. 

Responsibility for what, you may ask? Ah! That's the  question! You and I are who we are and where we are because we lack the stomach - or perhaps the opportunity - to make decisions and give orders that may terminate the lives of thousands, millions...or billions. But there are always individuals prepared to make just those decisions and give those orders, and they are accordingly handed - or seize - the reins of power (think Boris Johnson, persuading Volodymyr Zelenskyi to continue the butchery of young, Ukrainian men - not to mention Zelenskyi himself. Zelenskyi could not say 'No' to Boris. So to whom was Boris reporting?).  And so down the chain of command the directives go, each recipient guiltlessly becoming the willing minion of those above, with the tribal justification "I was just following orders".  And the alternative? There is only one: to be a traitor to the herd, and face the punishment meted out to those who fail to toe the party line: excommunication (e.g. Andrew Bridgen), or worse (name your martyr). ln exactly this way the herd perpetuates itself. This process is amply documented. It's called "history".  

The task for the vast majority is to go along to get along. This is the social contract. There's only one potential problem, from the perspective of those nearer the bottom of the heap: they (we) have no control. And today they (we) are becoming "useless eaters". They (we) are no longer inside the tribal tent. They (we) are now, unfamiliarly, among the thousands, or millions...or billions. Resist, and we will be labeled traitors - "terrorists" is I think the current term. So - continue to go along to get along?  The twenty individuals named in Bridgen's request to Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (see the link, below), have, like Bridgen himself, chosen the path less traveled. If we can't be heroes and heretics like them, should we at least be starting to reexamine our bread, to determine on which side it is buttered?  



Pablo
* I've been unable to track this to its alleged source, but its validity - its logic - is, I think, self-evident. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

The Climate Agenda and Climate Science

 

Whether true or false, there's obviously an agenda behind the relentless climate change alarmism we're being subjected to by our leaders both elected and un-. It's aimed at justifying a radical alteration of human consumption patterns. 


Heretofore loyalty to our Establishment had proven survival value. Censorship of alternative views was self-evidently justified, coming as it did from our trusted authorities. They were honorable; they had our best interests at heart; they accordingly acquired our trust, and with it our loyalty. Those outside the fold of our beliefs (recognized by us as "the facts") were, simply, wrong - hence  censorship of alternative views was not merely justified, it was a manifestation of natural order: the proof was that the social contract worked to our benefit.

But trust in government is now at an all-time low. We are coming to the uncomfortable realization that we are superfluous to the long-term goals of our leaders. We are, increasingly, no longer productive. We are becoming "useless eaters". We are polluting . There are too many of us. AI and robots are replacing us. And we are being told all this. It is not a secret! But because we depend, more than those who lead us, on the social contract, we can't afford not to trust it, or them. And so we're continuing to run on automatic, clinging to the underlying assumptions of a belief system that has served us so well.  But are they still valid? Do they apply to present circumstances? 

To increasing numbers of us, once-agreeable censorship of anything that contradicted the government narrative now feels oppressive, unprecedented, alien. What has changed is not censorship per se. That was always there. What has changed is that the pyramid of value intertwined with authority that justified it is unraveling. Value and authority in a healthy society are inseparable. The two are mutually supportive; the one justifies the other. We submit voluntarily to authority that supports our values. But when the two diverge, as now, and authority alone comprises the pyramid, then it ceases to be a voluntary arrangement. It becomes coercive. This signals the elimination of mutual honesty as the guiding principle of the social contract, and the censorship we once embraced becomes a very tangible imposition, a mental prison.

Loyally swallowing political rhetoric dubbed, with post-religious conviction, "the science", is no longer a good survival strategy. We have to start thinking outside the box of our beliefs. 

The anthropogenic warming argument is politically driven, like everything else. This authority pyramid was once, as I say, to our apparent benefit, reflecting a value pyramid culminating in God, the source of all value as of all authority. Today its coercive political nature is hidden behind a new facade of supposed infallibility - "the science". But what are the scientific data that support the new climate agenda? If I say there's mounting expert opinion questioning it, then on what basis - what authority - are we to trust these contrarian, maverick experts over those endorsed by our government? 

We urgently need to reassess our credibility criteria. "Independent fact checkers" is an oxymoron. On what basis is the source supposedly independent? Where's the funding coming from? Does the "expert" have respectable credentials? Respected by whom? On what basis do we assess the expert as honorable?

A revolution of belief is required. We have come to believe that science can be a substitute for religion; that is, that science can direct values. It can't. The situation is exactly the other way around, and when we invert the order we stand our world of values (what we affirmingly call "facts") on its head. Everything becomes its opposite. The result is a world not of truths - i.e. stuff we honestly believe to be the case, regardless of our own desires, but of propaganda - stuff we want others to believe, guided by our will to power. When propaganda replaces truth, then we're in a different political landscape, one in which ends justify means. Call it Communism; call it Fascism, but that's exactly where we are now. 



Pablo