From The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order 1905–1922, Edmond Taylor (Doubleday, 1963):
«Two world wars and a decade of cold war between the West and the Communist-bloc nations have made us all familiar with the miscellaneous manipulations and unpleasantnesses that for purposes of administrative or journalistic convenience are lumped under such headings as “psychological warfare” or “political warfare.” … The words are relatively new, and so of course are some of the techniquest, but the basic tactical patterns go back to the dawn of human history. …
«During the first world conflict, however, these black arts of war (and of diplomacy) were practiced so systematically and on such an unprecedented scale that they virtually constituted a new dimension of warfare. For the first time in history, elaborate specialized machinery was set up to furnish unorthodox support to the conventional operations of armies, foreign offices, and police departments. That peculiar modern phenomenon, the psychological (or political) warrior – the militarized version of the advertising man or public relations expert and the bureaucratic cousin of the professional revolutionary – was born.
«At the beginning of the war the emphasis, at least in the propaganda field, was defensive rather than offensive, and focused on the home front (in itself a new concept). … As Professor Harold A. Lasswell remarks in his classic work, Propaganda Technique in the World War, “propaganda is a concession to the willfullness of the age.” In the twentieth century – or at least in its first decade – men could no longer simply be ordered to give up their right to private happiness at a ruler’s whim; they had to be persuaded. The spread of literacy and the development of rapid mass means of communication facilitated the task of persuasion. Naturally – though at first glance paradoxically – the worst propaganda excesses were committed in the Western democracies, where the common man was, in Lasswell’s terminology, the most “willful.”
—————
«One type of Western morale-building propaganda which proved to be particularly self-defeating and even traumatic in the long view was the abusive appeal to the latent idealism of the masses through slogans such as The War to End War (originally inspired by H. G. Wells) and Make the World Safe for Democracy (derived from President Wilson’s message to Congress of April 2, 1917). No doubt the politicians who thus exploited the hopes of their peoples with these high-sounding but demagogic pledges of a better world were the first victims of their own propaganda; the unending wonder, when we look back upon it, is how intelligent and cultivated men – including a trained historian – could ever have deluded themselves into believing that prolonging the sordid massacre in Europe would make it possible to build a better world. The apathy and skepticism of the Western masses a generation later, when confronted with Hitler’s naked threat to the survival of their most elementary freedom, can be traced in good measure to the overdoses of war medicine that the new witch doctors had brewed for their fathers between 1914 and 1918.
«Even more deadly in its ultimate effects than the propaganda of misdirected idealism was the propaganda of hate. Again the democracies were the worst offenders. In France a kind of forgery mill, supported by secret government funds, ground out fake photographs of German atrocities to back up the no-less-cold-bloodedly fabricated news reports of Belgian babies with their hands wantonly hacked off, of women with their breasts cut off by German bayonets or sabers, of factories for making soap out of human corpses. The British were a trifle more subtle, but hardly more scrupulous in exposing the outrages of the savage “Hun” …. Twenty years later the scars left on the public mind by this wartime atrocity propaganda – which of course was speedily exposed after the fighting ended – were still so inflamed, that American newspaper correspondents in Europe had the greatest difficulty in persuading their editors to print authenticated reports of authentic Nazi atrocities.
«As the war advanced, the propaganda activity of the chief belligerent powers became increasingly intensive and organized. … In all the belligerent countries the propaganda bureaus worked more or less closely with the General Staff, with the military censors, with the secret police and intelligence services and with an extensive volunteer (sometimes covertly subsidized) network of journalists, writers and politicians. The end result was a series of what amounted to immense – and immensely powerful – lobbies with a vested interest in fighting the war to the bitter end; the remorseless pressure of these bellicose lobbies on both the German and the Entente governments seems to have been a substantive factor in blocking the movement for a compromise peace that was launched so promisingly by the [new] Emperor Karl in March 1917.
«The political warfare activities of the several belligerents, aimed at demoralizing or splitting up their enemies, were an even greater impediment to peace negotiations. … As the deadlock continued, each side became increasingly irresponsible and unscrupulous in attempting to foment revolution behind the enemy’s front. Every racial or religious minority, every disaffected social category became the target of subersive incitements and appeals. Every group hatred, fear, or greed was played upon; every irredentist ambition was encouraged. Generally, it was only the most extreme minority leaders who would accept to work for, or with, the enemies of their nominal fatherland. Sometimes, however, the heavy-handed repressiveness of the wartime dictatorships – or hatred of the war itself – drove previously responsible and moderate minority leadership into collaborating with the enemy; in such cases it inevitably turned extremist, and in the process sometimes succeeded in committing its new allies to more radical objectives than they had originally contemplated.
«The career of Thomas G. Masaryk, the son of a Bohemian coachman who became the founder and first President of the Czechoslovak Republic, was a case in point. …»
—————
“To the Bitter End”
«… For the Bolsheviks, the awakening was terrible. As a starter the Central Powers demanded that Russia cede Poland and the Baltic territories. Recognition of Finnish independence was soon added to the conditions. Then came the crusher: Russia must also recognize the independence of the Ukraine, which had been proclaimed by the anti-Bolshevik and pro-German local government in Kiev on January 1 [1918]. Some of the Austrian and even German delegates felt that the precarious Soviet regime was being strained to the breaking point, but this did not worry General Ludendorff, the occult dictator of Germany and the real author of the Brest-Litovsk diktat. “Paranoia had him in its grip,” declares John W. Wheeler-Bennett in his masterly Brest-Litovsk: The Forgotten Peace, and the diagnosis seems plausible. Ludendorff’s ultimate aim was the total dismemberment of Russia and though this objective implied the final liquidation of the Romanov dynasty it had seemingly been approved by the Kaiser. In fact, according to Wheeler-Bennett, a dangerous rivalry had developed among the minor German royal or princely houses over the distribution of the expected Eastern spoils …»
October 24, 2022
Militarized advertising and public relations and the imperative of war
September 7, 2022
Glenn Greenwald on the censorship regime
The regime of censorship being imposed on the internet – by a consortium of DC Dems, billionaire-funded "disinformation experts," the US Security State, and liberal employees of media corporations – is dangerously intensifying in ways I believe are not adequately understood.
A series of "crises" have been cynically and aggressively exploited to inexorably restrict the range of permitted views, and expand pretexts for online silencing and deplatforming. Trump's election, Russiagate, 1/6, COVID and war in Ukraine all fostered new methods of repression.
During the failed attempt in January to force Spotify to remove Joe Rogan, the country's most popular podcaster – remember that? – I wrote that the current religion of Western liberals in politics and media is censorship: their prime weapon of activism.
But that Rogan failure only strengthened their repressive campaigns. Dems routinely abuse their majoritarian power in DC to explicitly coerce Big Tech silencing of their opponents and dissent. This is *Govt censorship* disguised as corporate autonomy.
There's now an entire new industry, aligned with Dems, to pressure Big Tech to censor. Think tanks and self-proclaimed "disinformation experts" funded by Omidyar, Soros and the US/UK Security State use benign-sounding names to glorify ideological censorship as neutral expertise.
The worst, most vile arm of this regime are the censorship-mad liberal employees of big media corporations (@oneunderscore__, @BrandyZadrozny, @TaylorLorenz, NYT tech unit). Masquerading as "journalists," they align with the scummiest Dem groups (@mmfa) to silence and deplatform.
It is astonishing to watch Dems and their allies in media corporations posture as opponents of "fascism" - while their main goal is to *unite state and corporate power* to censor their critics and degrade the internet into an increasingly repressive weapon of information control.
A major myth that must be quickly dismantled: political censorship is not the by-product of autonomous choices of Big Tech companies. This is happening because DC Dems and the US Security State are threatening reprisals if they refuse. They're explicit: “The issue is not that the companies before us todayare taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567292638524571648
But the worst is watching people whose job title in corporate HR Departments is "journalist" take the lead in agitating for censorship. They exploit the platforms of corporate giants to pioneer increasingly dangerous means of banning dissenters. *These* are the authoritarians. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1567292900312064000
This is the frog-in-boiling-water problem: the increase in censorship is gradual but continuous, preventing recognition of how severe it's become. The EU now legally *mandates censorship of Russian news. They've made it *illegal* for companies to air it.
So many new tactics of censorship repression have emerged in the West: Trudeau freezing bank accounts of trucker-protesters; Paypal partnering with ADL to ban dissidents from the financial system; Big Tech platforms openly colluding in unison to de-person people from the internet.
All of this stems from the classic mentality of all would-be tyrants: our enemies are so dangerous, their views so threatening, that everything we do – lying, repression, censorship – is noble. That's what made the Sam Harris confession so vital: that's how liberal elites think.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567293629462372352
This is why I regard the Hunter Biden scandal as uniquely alarming. The media didn't just "bury" the archive. CIA concocted a lie about it (it's "Russian disinformation"); media outlets spread that lie; Big Tech censured it – because lying and repression to them is justified!
The authoritarian mentality that led CIA, corporate media and Big Tech to lie about the Biden archive before the election is the same driving this new censorship craze. It's the hallmark of all tyranny: "our enemies are so evil and dangerous, anything is justified to stop them."
How come **not one media outlet** that spread this CIA lie – the Hunter Biden archive was "Russian disinformation" – retracted or apologized? This is why: they believe they are so benevolent, their cause so just, that lying and censorship are benevolent.
The one encouraging aspect: as so often happens with despotic factions, they are triggering and fueling the backlash to their excesses. Sites devoted to free speech – led by Rumble, along with Substack, Callin, and others – are exploding in growth.
But as these free speech platforms grow and become a threat, the efforts to crush them also grow – exactly as @AOC, other Dems and their corporate media allies successfully demanded Google, Apple and Amazon destroy Parler when it became the single most-popular app in the country.
It is hard to overstate how much pressure is now brought to bear by liberal censors on these free speech platforms, especially Rumble. Their vendors are threatened. Their hosting companies targeted. They have accounts cancelled and firms refusing to deal with them. It's a regime.
In even the most despotic nations, the banal, conformist citizen thinks they're free. As Rosa Luxemburg said: "he who does not move, does not feel his chains." Of course the Chris Hayes's and Don Lemon's think this is all absurd: Good Liberals threaten nobody and thus flourish.
The measure of societal freedom is not how servants of power are treated: they're always left alone or rewarded. The key metric is how dissidents are treated. Now, they are imprisoned (Assange), exiled (Snowden) and, above all, silenced by corporate/state power (dissidents).
For more than a month, I've removed myself from the news cycle and The Discourse because my only priority right now is my family, my kids and my husband's health. But distance brings clarity.
This censorship mania consuming Western liberals is deeply dangerous – and growing.
As I've often said, the media outlets screaming most loudly about "disinformation" are the ones that spread it most frequently, casually and destructively (NBC/CNN/WPost, etc).
It's equally true of those now claiming to fight "fascism": real repression comes *from them.*
I'm going to remain detached until the health crisis in our family is resolved. But internet freedom and free speech are not ancillary causes. They are central. This was the core cause of the Snowden reporting.
Without a free internet and free speech, dissent is an illusion.
Above all, stay focused on who your real enemies are.
They're not your neighbors who have been deceived into supporting the wrong party or wrong ideology. They are victims of the repression, which is all about maintaining a closed system of propaganda that can't be challenged.
The worst of all - the most repugnant and despicable - are those calling themselves "journalists" while doing the opposite of what that term implies: they serve rather than challenge power, they deceive rather than inform, they demand censorship rather than free and open inquiry.
Heap scorn on the corporate outlets and their deceitful, pro-censorship employees abusing the "journalist" label. Read them with full skepticism, or just ignore them.
Support outlets and platforms that want to protect free inquiry and the right of dissent, not rob you of it.
Ivermectin doses
According to the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, the basic dose of ivermectin is 0.2 mg/kg/day. That is the usual dose of ivermectin for most parasitic infections, typically repeated the next day or the next week. It may also be taken prophylactically every month or so. The same dose (by weight) can be used in children weighing at least 15 kg, ie, 33 pounds. See the drug information at UpToDate.
Opinions differ on whether ivermectin should be taken on an empty stomach or with a meal, although some studies have shown that the latter increases its absorption.
Ivermectin comes in 3-mg pills and multiples (eg, 6 mg and 12 mg).
One kg is 2.2 pounds. So the basic dose of 0.2 mg/kg is 3 mg per 33 pounds body weight, ie:
- 9 mg for someone who weighs around 99 pounds
- 12 mg for someone around 132 pounds
- 15 mg for someone around 165 pounds, etc.
The dose can be repeated as often as weekly for prevention.
After exposure, the basic dose can be doubled, to 0.4 mg/kg, ie:
- 18 mg for someone who weighs around 99 pounds
- 24 mg for someone around 132 pounds
- 30 mg for someone around 165 pounds, etc.
This or the smaller dose is then repeated after 48 hours.
Either dose can also be used when sick, repeated after 48 hours or, if still sick, repeated daily for up to 7 days until symptoms subside.
The daily dose when sick can even be increased to 0.6 mg/kg, ie:
- 27 mg for someone who weighs around 99 pounds
- 36 mg for someone around 132 pounds
- 45 mg for someone around 165 pounds, etc.
For “long covid”, the FLCCCA-recommended dose is 0.2–0.3 mg/kg daily for 2–3 weeks, ie:
- 9–15 mg for someone who weighs around 99 pounds
- 12–18 mg for someone around 132 pounds
- 15–21 mg for someone around 165 pounds, etc.
That is also the FLCCCA-recommended dose for post–mRNA injection recovery, daily for up to 4–6 weeks.
As for cost, larger-dose pills are cheaper. For example, at the Indian supplier misleadingly called Canadian Pharmacy Online, 120 mg of ivermectin cost, at the time of writing, $87.60 as 40 3-mg pills, $61.80 as 20 6-mg pills, and $36.90 as 10 12-mg pills. Ivermectin.com, which claims to ship from the USA, sells only 12-mg pills: 50 (600 mg total) for $105, 100 (1,200 mg total) for $190.
And remember to make sure you get enough vitamin D!
August 26, 2022
Consent Factory: New Normal Fascism
13/01/2017: Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works
10/07/2019: The United States of Fascism Hysteria
08/08/2019: The War on White Supremacist Terror
20/08/2019: Manufacturing Mass Fascism Hysteria
03/09/2019: The Future of the Spectacle … or How the West Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Reality Police
04/10/2019: Trumpenstein Must Be Destroyed!
21/10/2019: The Putin-Nazis Are Coming (Again)!
05/11/2019: The Ministry of Wiki-Truth
19/11/2019: Reclaiming Your Inner Fascist
18/12/2019: The Year of Manufactured Hysteria
13/01/2020: World War III
27/01/2020: Dead President Walking
10/02/2020: Bernie Sanders’ Commie Kill Swarm
21/02/2020: Subcomandante Bloomberg
09/03/2020: The Great Chinese Bat Flu Panic of 2020
18/03/2020: Covid-19 Global Lockdown
26/03/2020: The War on Death
13/04/2020: Brave New Normal
04/05/2020: Virus of Mass Destruction
20/05/2020: Brave New Normal (Part 2)
01/06/2020: The Minneapolis Putsch
10/06/2020: The Worst Literal Hitler Ever
29/06/2020: The New (Pathologized) Totalitarianism
20/07/2020: GloboCap Über Alles
29/07/2020: The White Black Nationalist Color Revolution
09/08/2020: Invasion of the New Normals
02/09/2020: New Normal Gleichschaltung, or: The Storming of the Reichstag Building on 29 August, 2020
20/09/2020: The War on Populism: The Final Act
13/10/2020: The Covidian Cult
27/10/2020: The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich
10/11/2020: THE WAR IS OVER … GLOBOCAP TRIUMPHS!
22/11/2020: The Germans Are Back!
08/12/2020: Where’s the Hitler?
16/12/2020: Year Zero
11/01/2021: Are You Ready for Total (Ideological) War?
24/01/2021: That’s All Folks!
08/02/2021: The (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror
23/02/2021: The Vaccine (Dis)Information War
08/03/2021: The New Normal (Phase 2)
22/03/2021: The New Normal “Reality” Police
29/03/2021: The “Unvaccinated” Question
21/04/2021: The Covidian Cult (Part II)
03/05/2021: The Criminalization of Dissent
25/05/2021: Greetings from “New Normal” Germany!
20/06/2021: Manufacturing (New Normal) “Reality”
29/06/2021: The War on Reality
14/07/2021: The Approaching Storm
19/07/2021: The Propaganda War (And How to Fight It)
31/07/2021: The Road to Totalitarianism
13/08/2021: The Propaganda War (Part II)
02/09/2021: The Covidian Cult (Part III)
12/10/2021: The Great New Normal Purge
31/10/2021: (New Normal) Winter is Coming
22/11/2021: Pathologized Totalitarianism 101
16/12/2021: The Year of the New Normal Fascist
18/01/2022: The Last Days of the Covidian Cult
04/02/2022: Attack of the Transphobic Putin-Nazi Truckers!
20/02/2022: The Naked Face of New Normal Fascism
07/03/2022: Revenge of the Putin-Nazis!
27/03/2022: Springtime for GloboCap
09/05/2022: The Rise of the New Normal Reich
25/05/2022: Monkeypoxmania
20/06/2022: The Federal Republic of New Normal Germany
22/07/2022: The Normalization of The New Normal Reich
06/08/2022: The “Unvaccinated” Question (Revisited)
26/08/2022: New Normal Germany’s Geisterfahrer Geist
31/08/2022: The Rise of the New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III, banned in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands!
03/10/2022: The Morning After
16/10/2022: The Gaslighting of the Masses
13/11/2022: The Road to Totalitarianism (Revisited)
15/03/2024: Mistakes Were Made
A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century, by Jacob Siegel: «The crime is the information war itself, which was launched under false pretenses and by its nature destroys the essential boundaries between the public and private and between the foreign and domestic, on which peace and democracy depend. By conflating the anti-establishment politics of domestic populists with acts of war by foreign enemies, it justified turning weapons of war against Americans citizens. It turned the public arenas where social and political life take place into surveillance traps and targets for mass psychological operations.»
July 28, 2022
Agriculture (and Energy) Revolutions
The First, or Neolithic, Agricultural Revolution was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. [Also the beginning of centralized government and social hierarchy]
The Second, or British, Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labor and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the hundred-year period ending in 1770, and thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the world. This increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in England and Wales, from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million by 1801, though domestic production gave way increasingly to food imports in the nineteenth century as the population more than tripled to over 35 million.
The Third Agricultural, or Green, Revolution is the set of research technology transfer initiatives occurring between 1950 and the late 1960s that increased agricultural production in parts of the world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s. The initiatives resulted in the adoption of new technologies, including high-yielding varieties of cereals, agrochemicals, controlled water supply (usually involving irrigation), and newer methods of cultivation, including mechanization. … It contributed to widespread reduction of poverty, averted hunger for millions, raised incomes, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reduced land use for agriculture, and contributed to declines in infant mortality.
The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon-fueled irrigation.
(above from Wikipedia)
Obviously, there have been adverse consequences for the environment and other animals, but you can't just outlaw it without an alternative in place (and support for the transition, eg, to large-scale organic agriculture) that can sustain what it created. But that's what much of the new "green" agenda is doing, particularly in energy, pushing (much) less efficient technologies (requiring more resources – both materials and land – and infrastructure) that are therefore even more harmful to not only people but also the planet as a whole.
July 16, 2022
“Ethics” in a moral vacuum; or an hubristic pile of false premises and untested assumptions
Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert
Parker Crutchfield
Assistant professor in Medical Ethics, Humanities, and Law
Homer Stryker MD School of Medicine, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
Bioethics 2018;33:112–121
doi:10.1111/bioe.12496
. . . . .
. . . . .
Consider first the fact that as compared to a covert moral bioenhancement program that is blind to everyone except few, an overt program would reduce the expected utility of the program. This is because if people knew that they were being morally bioenhanced, at least some of them would fail to receive the bioenhancement. They would request exemptions from the policy on the grounds that it conflicts with their religion or their personal convictions, or they would falsely believe that the moral bioenhancement leads to various disorders or diseases unrelated to the intervention. People would slip through. Some would slip through because of failing to pay attention, while others would outright refuse the intervention. That this would happen is obvious when we consider policies on vaccination or quarantine: People refuse vaccines or otherwise fail to get them, and people slip through quarantines and other methods of isolation.
If the moral bioenhancement were overt, the expected utility would be less than it would be if it were covert. It’s not that the utility of preventing ultimate harm is less; it’s that the expectation that the moral bioenhancement will succeed in preventing it is lower. The more people that avoid the compulsory moral bioenhancement, the lower is the expectation that ultimate harm will be prevented. If the program were covert, people would be unaware of the intervention, and so would not be in a position to avoid it, resulting in many fewer people failing to receive the intervention.
Both overt as well as covert compulsory moral bioenhancement programs would restrict the range of moral attitudes, dispositions and behaviors of its participants. The range of moral attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors that would be restricted would be the same for both types of program, as it is the intervention upon these that is presumably necessary to prevent ultimate harm. So the extent to which the interventions themselves are liberty‐restricting, the liberty restrictions will be equal between a covert and an overt program. But for overt compulsory moral bioenhancement programs, participants would also know that their moral attitudes, dispositions, and behaviors are being intervened upon. Some of these people who know that their moral capacities are being restricted, will desire to not be so restricted. Thus, the desires of these people will be frustrated, which results in suffering.
If the program were covert, the people who desire to not have their moral capacities restricted wouldn’t be aware of any restriction, so, from their perspective, the desire to not be restricted wouldn’t be frustrated, which means they wouldn’t suffer from knowing that they are participating in a compulsory moral bioenhancement program.
… The same point could also apply to other public health programs, such as those that require people be vaccinated. Some people desire to not be vaccinated. When these people knowingly receive a vaccination — to attend school, for example — their desires are frustrated, and this frustration causes suffering. If it were possible to achieve all of the benefits of vaccination without having to cause the suffering that results from believing that one is vaccinated, then that would be preferable to actual vaccination procedures. … A covert compulsory moral bioenhancement program is less liberty‐restricting than a similar overt program is. …
Moreover, given that the expectation of preventing ultimate harm is lower for an overt program, the potential for more significant liberty restrictions is greater, as our liberties may be more likely to be restricted by our harsher environments that result from having undergone ultimate harm. And upon one’s death from ultimate harm, one’s liberties are fully restricted — dead people have no liberties.
… A covert program better promotes equality, because by keeping the program covert to everyone, the program ensures that all participants are treated equally. It is totally impartial. In an overt program, it would remain open that some populations are in a better position to avoid the intervention, such as those that could easily afford the penalties imposed for refusing, or those that do not rely on public health clinics.
Another potential source of unequal treatment is that likely many physicians would disagree with the policy, putting them in a better position to refuse to administer the moral bioenhancement. Based on this variance of attitudes within physicians, it is likely that the treatments would be administered unequally.
Similarly, a covert program would be fairer than an overt program. Because everyone would receive the moral bioenhancement, there is no population that would be forced to bear a disproportionate burden. … An overt program, however, may encourage others to find ways to avoid receiving the enhancement, meaning that they wouldn’t be required to bear any burden, which is unfair.
. . . . .
[A] compulsory moral bioenhancement program does violate autonomy, but only if the program is overt. If a person is compelled to participate in a moral bioenhancement program, and the person believes that the new moral capacities — including the new desires, values, and other attitudes — are caused by the enhancement, it is much more difficult to see how the person would embrace these capacities as their own. The knowledge that some of one’s moral capacities are the result of manipulation by another agent undermines trust in their authenticity. Thus, an overt program is likely to violate the authenticity condition. If the moral bioenhancement is covert, one is in a much better position to embrace the new capacities as one’s own. Though the new capacities are in fact not one’s own, there are fewer obstacles to embracing them as one’s own, such as the knowledge that they are not. … So, if a moral bioenhancement is compulsory, to best preserve authenticity, it is preferable for the program to be covert.
Even if a moral bioenhancement program does diminish a person’s autonomy, there is no implication that to do so is wrong.
July 6, 2022
The Battle Against the Bland
Paul Kingsnorth, Real England: The Battle Against The Bland (Portobello Books, 2008) (excerpts):
“Leaving things alone these days is a sign of failure. Control, utility, is all, and progress means having fewer and fewer places to hide.”
“This report [The State of the Countryside 2020, Countryside Agency, 2003] is worth remembering because it is an excellent reflection of how farming and rural life are viewed by the office-bound political and business classes who are deciding its future. The underlying assumptions of this report, and of this class, are so huge that they are, paradoxically, almost hard to see.
“They assume that the business ethos of the city is applicable to the country side. They assume that people are prepared to accept a countryside in which the barns are empty of cows but full of ‘choice managers’. Above all, they assume one huge and untrue thing: that, in essence, the countryside is the same as the town. It is a green business park, with the same pace of life, experiential framework, morality and ethos as the town. It is the city with more trees, less pollution and a lot more free parking, and anyone sufficiently sentimental to imagine otherwise is just not being competitive enough.”
“‘I’ll tell you what scares the shit out of Tesco,’ says Peter [Lundgren, Lincolnshire farmer]. ‘It’s not the farmers – they can squash us. It’s not the government – they’ve bought them. It’s the consumers. If they decide to go somewhere else, Tesco is stuffed, and they know it. That’s where the power is. I wish more people would realise it.’”
“I am told by those who want to improve me, and direct me, that my standard of living has increased in the last thirty years – I have the benefit of new roads, runways, street lights, wheelie bins, health centres, houses and cars, as well as access to more gadgets and electronic wonders than apples on a tree. But ironically, as my ‘standard of living’ has increased so the quality of my life has dramatically decreased because of noise pollution, light pollution, air pollution, traffic jams, no policemen, the disappearance of the family doctor, litter, agitation, regulation, speeding lorries, junk food, supermarkets, dumbed-down television, political correctness, mindless development, materialism out of control, and the number of career politicians who clearly have never done a proper day’s work in their lives.” [Robin Page, The Decline of an English Village (Bird’s Farm Books, 2004 (30-year edition))]
“‘There can’t be a rural culture without farming,’ [Page] says, decisively. ‘There would be culture, but it wouldn’t be a rural culture. It would be a suburban and an urban culture. I call it urban colonialism. We are having urban values imposed on us, which I don’t like at all. When white people go up to black people and impose their views on them, that is said to be not wanted and culturally and racially objectionable, and then you tell me that you’re doing me a favour by doing that to me. It’s a version of ethnic cleansing, is what it is. I think it’s a disgrace.’”
[Other groups – both rural and urban, and in between – fighting “regeneration” in the book also use the term “ethnic cleansing”: the erasure of everything outside of the homogenized money culture (run by a ministry).]
“… [M]ore and more people seem to feel themselves part of a minority. Some of them, like London’s Chinese community, or other ethnic minority communities, genuinely are. England’s traditional farmers are too. Yet your average white-skinned, mainstream English person often feels beleaguered too. …
“They can close down a hundred pubs, build on acres of green fields, destroy entire industries, raze meaning from the landscape and call it investment. We are in the grip of the tyranny of this minority [‘of the chain stores, the developers, the agri-businesses, the big landowners’]: not a minority defined by its race or religion, but by its power and wealth. They run the show, and their lack of accountability makes all those who don’t share their bounties feel discriminated against.”
”‘They're fucking gangsters in suits.’” [Danny Woodards, grocer, Queen’s Market, Upton Park, East London]
“Preserving these things, ensuring that they continue to live, would not help us in our slavish and unquestioning journey up the global economic ladder. None of them makes quick bucks, and some make no bucks at all. And when we finally become a nation in which that is reason enough to shrug our shoulders and let them all go … well, you decide whether that makes us a global success or a local failure, or whether the two are strangely interdependent.”
“Across the country, we are confining real life to the margins; pushing it beyond the balance sheet; dismissing it; destroying the valuable and the irreplaceable.
[cf. the unverified in Joanna Kavenna’s novel Zed (Faber & Faber, 2019)]
“We are doing so because we must grow. We must develop, and regenerate, and push forward. We must consume and profit and invest and the end goal, while unclear, must not be discussed, and must certainly not be questioned. We are in competition with other nations who must do the same things, and there is not time for questioning. We are UK plc, and we compete in a global marketplace. We are serious people now, with no time for whimsy. Whimsy does not pay, and never has.
“As we move forward in pursuit of the siren of growth, we unleash a flattening of our history, heritage, landscapes and cultures. We tear up our orchards, bulldoze our markets, sell off our farms and our public squares. Big government and big business combine to steamroller people and places, for the good of the country, and those who object are pushed out to the margins, to cling to what remains of colour and character. That character clings on where it is not, yet, worth the time and effort it would take to extinguish it. But its time will come. It will be regenerated, because there is no other way.
“As I pointed out in the first chapter, the changes that are affecting England are no accident, and neither are they anything unusual in global terms. Global consumer capitalism is unleashing the same forces on every nation on Earth, and each of them, in its own way, is experiencing the same sandblasting of the special, the same razing of the real.”
“Delhi, England, Beijing, Prague, Melbourne, anywhere else you care to look … this ‘development’ – this beast which crushes all before it and calls that crushing progress – is the real enemy now. It existed before Marx, before Adam Smith, before trades unions, before the stock market. Back in the 1830s, [William] Cobbett called it simply ‘the Thing’, but it was ancient even then.
“This is not about Left versus Right. This is about the individual versus the crushing, dehumanising machine, whether that machine is represented by the profit-hungry corporation, the edict-issuing state or – today’s global reality – a powerful alliance of the the two. The machine may come at us from ‘Left’ or ‘Right’; the twentieth century has given us many examples of both variants. But wherever it comes from, it always overshadows any mere individual who stands near it.”
“The Thing has dehumanised us, and we are all increasingly dependent on it for succour. We expect. We demand. We are like children.”