*Thank* you for writing this series, Brian. I feel like I’ve been spending more time arguing with virus deniers lately than Covidians! Seriously, I had three or four show up on my last post (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-the-new-normal-front), which was about the Ministry of Truth’s censorship of “misinformation” and didn’t even have anything to do with the topic 🤷♀️
I shared your article with one of them, although I hadn’t gotten a chance to read it yet, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it and asked if you didn’t believe in dinosaurs 😆
Thanks, I sometimes wonder if I am damaging my kids when we have dinner table discussions about why we don't know if dinosaurs are real. My kids definitely have the most cynical parents on the block, and that can dredge up emotional pain, why can't we just be easy going like the other adults? We put it like this, "Well kids, we just don't know HOW real dinosaurs really are."
They still love dinosaurs regardless. My husband will never concede a 'belief' in viruses, which is the way he has always viewed respiratory viruses. He has no scientific training, but is a critical thinker. For him contagion is null, he will never believe that he contracted something from someone, for him it is all about how symptoms manifest in the body. According to him, he can track his own behaviour (diet, habits, etc) and determine why he begins to present with symptoms (of a cold or flu). I always thought it a bit absurd, with my beginners course knowledge of pathology. The poor guy just doesn't know the right stuff, I would think. But as time goes on and I try to expand my mind to make room for more possibilities in life, how can I negate his own years of experience of getting sick? Now I am just fascinated by how these two opposite ideas can coexist. Is it one or the other? Is the 'virus' just a dream? He constantly reminds me of his friend who got Covid (pre vaccines) and was on the cusp of death who was in a coma, now a wheelchair because of the whole ordeal and not one other person in his TINY apartment household tested positive for Covid or even got sick (5 other people). Of course we will use our conventional scientific theories to explain how this can happen.... but maybe the entire game is bigger than the spike protein wars. If we already know the vaccine is a lose lose, testing is a lose lose, masking is a lose lose, lockdowns are a lose lose, These methods of containment are PILLARS of strategy that is how many years old? Like as old as the dinosaurs? Doesn't that mean we are just losing in our approach to this whole thing? Like we are talking about Covid, but honestly we don't even know what Covid is.
Jan 4, 2022·edited Jan 4, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
"Confusing universal negotiation for universal capitulation, only creates an inauthentic “ideal” of Belief that no one can actually practice. “Science,” in the end, is just other humans, and humans cheat and lie. Meanwhile the assorted fields of Science are rife with claims that cannot be substantiated by everyday observation, cannot be cross-checked by other fields, and thus can only be verified by the same humans who make them."
There is quite a lot to unpack in this wee paragraph.
Disclaimer... I came to a deep love of science, fostered in college (early 80's), and deep readings of biology theorists, such as Barbara McClintock and Lynn Margulis, and similar, from the believing evangelical home I was raised in. I used to think science was about breaking out of belief and convention, and that it adequately supplied the tools for doing so, which greatly aided my initial (40 years ago) crisis of belief in evangelical teachings. In more recent years I have observed the "shape" of belief and its accompanying commitments dominating science (perhaps via the organising mythos of "progress" - per commenter Markael Luterra - above)... and this "shape" (whatever it is) feels to me exactly similar to the "shape" of belief that I encountered early in life in evangelicalism, which also was/is a product of humans, and humans cheat and lie (and get trapped in the webs spun by those cheats and lies). Leading to my more recent (past 10 years or so) crisis of belief in "Science".
I, too, have also noticed the increasingly common affirmation by many that "viruses do NOT exist". Which is actually constructed exactly in the way that atheists construct the affirmation that "God(s) do(es) NOT exist". That is to say, "I have not found the evidence for the claim convincing, therefore the claim is untrue".
There is a great deal of room for a more cautious, agnostic approach, maybe as follows: "A virus is something that I cannot see or feel or know about within the capacities that I personally possess. I can read about those who profess to have seen or come to know about the existence of viruses and learn a great deal that is fascinating and potentially useful, while my actual lack of capacity to confirm any of this via my own experience, keeps the essence of a virus (from my point of view, and for all practical purposes) 'imaginary'. This element allows those who create and project power via narratives to append much to this '[for all practical purposes] imaginary' entity that is simply propaganda. (Very much in the way that, in war, the '[for all practical purposes] imaginary' enemy becomes embroidered into a fearful and demonic agent which all decent people must do everything to exterminate)."
Jan 4, 2022·edited Jan 4, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
To make sense of this craziness without resorting to absurd levels of conspiracy or malice, it is necessary to understand Science - or what I more often call Progress - as a religion. That is, a narrative about what the world is and what our role is within it, which (given our inability to fully perceive or understand the world even with the expanded toolkit of modern science) inevitably entails a measure of belief that is in many ways not markedly different from the faith-based assertions of traditional religions.
The word "vaccine" has a strong emotional meaning within this belief system. When believers in Progress hear "vaccine", their brain waves almost certainly echo those of Catholics hearing the words "baptism", "communion", or "rosary." Viruses are bad, and vaccines save us from them, as they have saved us from the great deadly terrors of the pretechnological past. That is the story, and the more strongly we believe it, the less we care to examine whether it is universally or even generally true.
Much of what we think of as science and its findings is nothing more than the transformation of an abundance of energy into something currently useful and possible, for humans, that is. Whether the story of the Big Bang or the dinosaur, they are basically like extra carbohydrates, but not essential for life as a whole. For millions of years, other living beings got along very well without science. They had no other choice, because they had, by nature, hardly an excess of energy at hand and claws and whatever and their brains were not ''lifted'' by fire food into other spheres. Spheres, in which all the stories romp, which humans tell themselves, because too much energy determines their existence. By nature no sunbeam remains somewhere unused, because so it is with energy - it wants to be changed and changed it is. This also applies to said excess, from which people with fired brains create stories and use possibilities which are by no means necessary for life.
While I had a difficult time navigating myself through this essay, perhaps due to being a non-native speaker, I still enjoyed it as I enjoy most of what you write. I also very much prefer this style of writing where the main goal of the writer is hidden for the reader to find on their own but I will make this small complaint that sometimes you are doing too good of a job hiding it.
Could be that the average person like me has been trained to be a lazy reader and my complaint is thus invalid, or perhaps you don't really target the average reader which makes my complaint invalid yet again.
Jan 3, 2022·edited Jan 3, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
So………having gotten a little lost after awhile, it appears you are addressing the subgroup of people who don’t believe that there IS a virus? Or are you asserting that people who refuse the injections are the same as people who deny the existence of a virus? Because I would say that most people believe there is a virus, but based on data, irrationality of policies, and general common sense, just don’t want to take an experimental non-vaccine. I admit that my limited attention span checked me out of careful reading of the Monty Hall treatise.
What is a virus in a Petri dish, under a microscope, in a vaccine? A word without grammar and context.
In other words, a virus is a virus when it encounters an immune system in the context of liveliness. Otherwise, it is just a bio-illogical possibility waiting for a bio-logical necessity.
*Thank* you for writing this series, Brian. I feel like I’ve been spending more time arguing with virus deniers lately than Covidians! Seriously, I had three or four show up on my last post (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-the-new-normal-front), which was about the Ministry of Truth’s censorship of “misinformation” and didn’t even have anything to do with the topic 🤷♀️
I shared your article with one of them, although I hadn’t gotten a chance to read it yet, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it and asked if you didn’t believe in dinosaurs 😆
You might be interested in reading through the exchanges (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-the-new-normal-front/comments) in case it gives you fodder for this series. I asked a couple dozen questions that blast holes in terrain theory, but I don’t think it will make a difference.
Thanks, I sometimes wonder if I am damaging my kids when we have dinner table discussions about why we don't know if dinosaurs are real. My kids definitely have the most cynical parents on the block, and that can dredge up emotional pain, why can't we just be easy going like the other adults? We put it like this, "Well kids, we just don't know HOW real dinosaurs really are."
They still love dinosaurs regardless. My husband will never concede a 'belief' in viruses, which is the way he has always viewed respiratory viruses. He has no scientific training, but is a critical thinker. For him contagion is null, he will never believe that he contracted something from someone, for him it is all about how symptoms manifest in the body. According to him, he can track his own behaviour (diet, habits, etc) and determine why he begins to present with symptoms (of a cold or flu). I always thought it a bit absurd, with my beginners course knowledge of pathology. The poor guy just doesn't know the right stuff, I would think. But as time goes on and I try to expand my mind to make room for more possibilities in life, how can I negate his own years of experience of getting sick? Now I am just fascinated by how these two opposite ideas can coexist. Is it one or the other? Is the 'virus' just a dream? He constantly reminds me of his friend who got Covid (pre vaccines) and was on the cusp of death who was in a coma, now a wheelchair because of the whole ordeal and not one other person in his TINY apartment household tested positive for Covid or even got sick (5 other people). Of course we will use our conventional scientific theories to explain how this can happen.... but maybe the entire game is bigger than the spike protein wars. If we already know the vaccine is a lose lose, testing is a lose lose, masking is a lose lose, lockdowns are a lose lose, These methods of containment are PILLARS of strategy that is how many years old? Like as old as the dinosaurs? Doesn't that mean we are just losing in our approach to this whole thing? Like we are talking about Covid, but honestly we don't even know what Covid is.
"Confusing universal negotiation for universal capitulation, only creates an inauthentic “ideal” of Belief that no one can actually practice. “Science,” in the end, is just other humans, and humans cheat and lie. Meanwhile the assorted fields of Science are rife with claims that cannot be substantiated by everyday observation, cannot be cross-checked by other fields, and thus can only be verified by the same humans who make them."
There is quite a lot to unpack in this wee paragraph.
Disclaimer... I came to a deep love of science, fostered in college (early 80's), and deep readings of biology theorists, such as Barbara McClintock and Lynn Margulis, and similar, from the believing evangelical home I was raised in. I used to think science was about breaking out of belief and convention, and that it adequately supplied the tools for doing so, which greatly aided my initial (40 years ago) crisis of belief in evangelical teachings. In more recent years I have observed the "shape" of belief and its accompanying commitments dominating science (perhaps via the organising mythos of "progress" - per commenter Markael Luterra - above)... and this "shape" (whatever it is) feels to me exactly similar to the "shape" of belief that I encountered early in life in evangelicalism, which also was/is a product of humans, and humans cheat and lie (and get trapped in the webs spun by those cheats and lies). Leading to my more recent (past 10 years or so) crisis of belief in "Science".
I, too, have also noticed the increasingly common affirmation by many that "viruses do NOT exist". Which is actually constructed exactly in the way that atheists construct the affirmation that "God(s) do(es) NOT exist". That is to say, "I have not found the evidence for the claim convincing, therefore the claim is untrue".
There is a great deal of room for a more cautious, agnostic approach, maybe as follows: "A virus is something that I cannot see or feel or know about within the capacities that I personally possess. I can read about those who profess to have seen or come to know about the existence of viruses and learn a great deal that is fascinating and potentially useful, while my actual lack of capacity to confirm any of this via my own experience, keeps the essence of a virus (from my point of view, and for all practical purposes) 'imaginary'. This element allows those who create and project power via narratives to append much to this '[for all practical purposes] imaginary' entity that is simply propaganda. (Very much in the way that, in war, the '[for all practical purposes] imaginary' enemy becomes embroidered into a fearful and demonic agent which all decent people must do everything to exterminate)."
Now COVID-19 is the substance of things hoped for (to introduce mRNA vaccines), the evidence of things (viruses / GoF research) not seen.
Fauci 11:1
To make sense of this craziness without resorting to absurd levels of conspiracy or malice, it is necessary to understand Science - or what I more often call Progress - as a religion. That is, a narrative about what the world is and what our role is within it, which (given our inability to fully perceive or understand the world even with the expanded toolkit of modern science) inevitably entails a measure of belief that is in many ways not markedly different from the faith-based assertions of traditional religions.
The word "vaccine" has a strong emotional meaning within this belief system. When believers in Progress hear "vaccine", their brain waves almost certainly echo those of Catholics hearing the words "baptism", "communion", or "rosary." Viruses are bad, and vaccines save us from them, as they have saved us from the great deadly terrors of the pretechnological past. That is the story, and the more strongly we believe it, the less we care to examine whether it is universally or even generally true.
I like where you're going with this...
Much of what we think of as science and its findings is nothing more than the transformation of an abundance of energy into something currently useful and possible, for humans, that is. Whether the story of the Big Bang or the dinosaur, they are basically like extra carbohydrates, but not essential for life as a whole. For millions of years, other living beings got along very well without science. They had no other choice, because they had, by nature, hardly an excess of energy at hand and claws and whatever and their brains were not ''lifted'' by fire food into other spheres. Spheres, in which all the stories romp, which humans tell themselves, because too much energy determines their existence. By nature no sunbeam remains somewhere unused, because so it is with energy - it wants to be changed and changed it is. This also applies to said excess, from which people with fired brains create stories and use possibilities which are by no means necessary for life.
While I had a difficult time navigating myself through this essay, perhaps due to being a non-native speaker, I still enjoyed it as I enjoy most of what you write. I also very much prefer this style of writing where the main goal of the writer is hidden for the reader to find on their own but I will make this small complaint that sometimes you are doing too good of a job hiding it.
Could be that the average person like me has been trained to be a lazy reader and my complaint is thus invalid, or perhaps you don't really target the average reader which makes my complaint invalid yet again.
So………having gotten a little lost after awhile, it appears you are addressing the subgroup of people who don’t believe that there IS a virus? Or are you asserting that people who refuse the injections are the same as people who deny the existence of a virus? Because I would say that most people believe there is a virus, but based on data, irrationality of policies, and general common sense, just don’t want to take an experimental non-vaccine. I admit that my limited attention span checked me out of careful reading of the Monty Hall treatise.
Spectacular writing. Right up there with kunstler but without the cussing.
What is a virus in a Petri dish, under a microscope, in a vaccine? A word without grammar and context.
In other words, a virus is a virus when it encounters an immune system in the context of liveliness. Otherwise, it is just a bio-illogical possibility waiting for a bio-logical necessity.
someone doth ramble a bit