The coercive Power of the State is the most deadly force in the human world.
Without coercive taxation, who would pay for aggressive wars?
Without coercive taxation, who would pay for the police state -- that fearsome, anti-life monstrosity which eventually becomes jailer and even mass-murderer of the people it supposedly protects?
Without coercive taxation, who would pay for all the other harmful actions of the state?
There is a reason Tolkien's Lord of the Rings revolves around a corrupting and fearsomely addicting Ring of Power, and that the ONLY remedy to protect against the evil of that Ring is to DESTROY the Ring forever.
We need Civil Society, not Statism. America's Founding Fathers made a strong attempt at creating a civil society, but, as the saying goes: Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades -- which is why the tiny federal government of the 1700s became the overbearing tyranny we live with today.
As many American patriots (and patriots of foreign lands as well) have told us, initiated coercion is a crime, not a viable or honest guiding principle for society.
I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. ~ Henry David Thoreau
"Taxation is theft."
That truth is why government NEVER provides decent customer satisfaction.
Don't like what we're producing? Don't wanna pay for aggressive war after war? Don't like massive corporate welfare? Don't like the Pay More / Get Less Obamacare we forced down your throat? Don't want your kids being taught to have sex with animals? Tough shit. Give us your money or we send the Big Men With Guns to your house.
Direct observation? No, and I don't expect to ever have such. Not of viruses, not of continental drift, not of the composition of Jupiter's atmosphere (or of the Earth's atmosphere, for that matter).
Plenty of good, scientific-level data about such things, though -- yes. Plenty of more than reasonable, well-supported theory about such things -- again, yes.
Direct observation about quite a lot of things is either impossible or hard to come by; doesn't mean they don't exist. I have no direct observation proving YOU exist, for instance, and with AI bots now a thing, your existence is, to me, probably less likely than the existence of viruses.
I will say this: EVERYTHING I know is provisional. Unexpected things are common, and if you browse scientific websites daily you know that almost every damn day something that "science" knew to be fact is proven wrong. Sometimes it's a big, long-held theory; sometimes it's just a seemingly small item that "everyone knew" was caused by X and instead it turns out to be caused by Y. So I'm open to the possibility that viruses don't exist, but as I said, not very concerned about the topic, both because I have high confidence in their existence and because it's not an issue that will change much that I presently care about. I'd still take supplements to help my immune system keep me healthy, because there's an OCEAN of evidence that they do so, including my own personal experience. I'd still exercise to help keep myself healthy, for the same reasons. And so on.
I know that you have not ever witnessed a video of a "virus" moving out from one host, . . .
True, and I've never seen a video of a brown recluse spider biting anyone, but I know it happens. I've also never seen a video or x-ray video showing the venom moving through the spider's fangs, but I don't doubt THAT happens either.
There is a century of evidence FOR the existence of viruses, and the theory that explains how (some) viruses cause disease explains the facts very well. The various theories that posit something ELSE causes, say, shingles or polio or COVID have far less explanatory power and physical evidence.
That's not to say that plenty of OTHER things don't impact health and make a person more likely to suffer symptoms, or to get worse symptoms, when infected by a virus. Stress, poor diet, pollution, lack of exercise, and many other things play a role in how the body handles parasites (which is what viruses and bacteria actually are).
I take a probiotic product that includes bacteriophages. As you probably know, bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria, and cultures of them have been used for decades as a form of antibiotic. They're making a comeback today because of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.
https://www.qwant.com/?q=bacteriophage
There are many listings in that search, the one below includes a lot of detail and even some photographs of viruses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage
I'm a paid subscriber to Steve Kirsch's substack, and he frequently offers to debate people about the efficacy and safety of the COVID "vaccines" -- with no takers, despite him offering $1 million for anyone who can show where he's actually wrong. He has done the same for the "viruses aren't real" crowd, and with the same results.
Lots of detail in the two pieces below:
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/if-viruses-dont-exist-then-how-can
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/1m-bet-rules
A snippet from the "if viruses don't exist" link above:
Why there aren’t “isolated” viruses available at ATCC (by their definition) Nobody does the isolation work today because nobody needs an “isolated virus” to develop assays. With the invention of genetic sequencing, the SARS-CoV-2 products from ATCC are more than adequate to meet all the needs of scientists around the world. It’s only Tom Cowan et al. who have a unique need for an “isolated virus” which is isolated to THEIR specifications.
Do they ever explain to you why ATCC only offers just 15 purified virus products? Here’s why:
Obtaining these essential materials can be challenging as the process for culturing, purifying, and titering a viral preparation can be time consuming and costly, requiring technical expertise, specialized equipment, and a broad range of supporting biomaterials and reagents.
Even if Cowan paid their expenses, ATCC wouldn’t get an ROI on the work, so it’s unlikely that they would do the work. Have they even asked? If not, why not?
Of course they haven’t asked ATCC. If they had, they’d publicize it! So since they won’t ask, I just sent in a quote request for a purified virus to ATCC.
This shows that they are disingenuous in their claims about wanting to isolate the virus. If they want it so badly, they should pay for it because nobody else needs it so nobody will pay for it.
If ATCC won’t do the work, I assure you that Kevin McCairn will do the work. Why aren’t they funding him or asking for a quote? Answer: because they know they are wrong.
Finally, did you notice that “they” aren’t offering to bet me or debate me? There’s a reason for that.
I’ve reached out to them, and all I get is silence. We are ready to go whenever they are.
I agree with you that we seem largely aligned philosophically, and it was probably a bit rude of me to use the term "trolls" regarding the "viruses don't exist" crowd, but I've dealt with a barrage of them and I have come to believe that most of those I've interacted with ARE trolls, and I'm tired of it. So let's agree to disagree on this topic -- one of the realizations I've come to about the topic is that it is a side-issue (at least for me) that doesn't really change anything I'm interested in right now. If something actually convinced me that viruses don't exist, that would be interesting -- I love learning new things and a LOT of Standard Beliefs are clearly wrong -- but there are other topics I'm far more focused on.
Ah. Yes, my bad. I was hurrying -- my wife was about to put dinner on the table -- and I didn't read your post with full comprehension. But your dismissal of physical things (b12, ivermectin, etc) as treatment for disease, along with "The lengths that a materialist will go to, to maintain their nonsensical world view, instead of just accepting that consciousness is a primary is great indeed" is what gave me the impression you were almost solipsistic in your view. (I actually agree with that sentence -- see below -- but "materialism" has several meanings and here it made me think again that you saw physical items as simply in mind). I apologize for posting a reply without having taken the time to read your post more carefully.
Your view that viruses are "fictious" reinforced my misconception, since van Leeuwenhoek we've known that microscopic life forms exist and that some DO affect our health; viruses are small enough (most of them, but not actually all) to require more than optical microscopes, but in an age of nano-tech, where individual atoms can be arranged to spell a word visible with a scanning tunneling microscope, there is really no good argument against the reality of viruses -- although there has been a concerted effort by trolls here to push the idea that viruses "don't exist." They do.
Materialism is a full-being negation of consciousness. It is a negation of self.
I agree with that whole-heartedly. I've never been able to make myself believe that consciousness can arise from some action of physical particles, no matter how they're arranged or what they're doing. It isn't called "the hard problem of consciousness" for nothing!
Kastrup's Idealism is the most compelling theory I've seen on the subject; he posits that matter is created by (or a component of) a universal consciousness, NOT that individual pieces of matter ARE conscious. Rocks and other non-living matter are not conscious, but brains of sufficient size and architecture basically snare and dissociate a bit of the universal consciousness, and that small bit of consciousness is the soul -- it is That Which Experiences, and is the reason we aren't just full-functioning Zombies.
I'm not saying Kastrup is completely right -- or right at all; I really don't know -- but it makes more sense to me than other theories I've seen, despite a few points that I disagree with or find unlikely.
And I fully agree with you that our consciousness impacts our health -- it's an important point -- but it is "primary" only in that all matter is created by universal consciousness. Your consciousness probably has nothing to do with an earthquake that drops a heavy piece of ceiling on your head. Physical things . . . are physical in life. Our feelings and conscious minds generally can play a big role in how we respond to what happens, but sometimes what happens is beyond anything consciousness can repair or even effect at all.
Any attempted treatment of their dis-ease with borax, vitamin b12, ivermectin, mRNA is pure falsehood and only maintains their biological "coping" state.
You're not quite over the target here, Logic20xx. The material world is a manifestation of the primary consciousness of the universe, and that material includes our bodies -- which is why getting hit with a rock hurts and causes physical damage, for one example of millions.
OUR own personal consciousness is (according to Kaplan, see my previous comment) a dissociated smidge of the universal consciousness; it is That Which Experiences and is why we aren't just zombies reacting to events (like, say, a thermostat) without experiencing anything.
Nutrients, vitamins, bacteria, and a zillion other physical things are REAL, because the universal consciousness creates physical reality. That means there IS a physical reality that we inhabit and must deal with.
I agree with you about conviction in your beliefs -- which I see as being supported most strongly and unshakably by healthy childhood experience, as Jesus made clear. Without love and freedom (which includes age-appropriate levels of responsibility for one's actions) in childhood, it is all-too-easy for an adult to be led astray.
McGilchrist is talking about the necessary supporting structure of any group, including the exclusion of non-group members (not socially; interaction with others isn't what he's talking about here); about what DEFINES a group and what happens when that structure begins dissolving. And he's speaking of the IMPORTANCE of groups in human life.
Two sources providing support for at least a part of your message:
Luke: 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. ~ Jesus of Nazareth, as quoted by the Apostle Luke and translated into English for the King James edition of the Bible
The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality by Bernardo Kastrup
From the book's Amazon page:
A rigorous case for the primacy of mind in nature, from philosophy to neuroscience, psychology and physics. The Idea of the World offers a grounded alternative to the frenzy of unrestrained abstractions and unexamined assumptions in philosophy and science today. This book examines what can be learned about the nature of reality based on conceptual parsimony, straightforward logic and empirical evidence from fields as diverse as physics and neuroscience. It compiles an overarching case for idealism - the notion that reality is essentially mental - from ten original articles the author has previously published in leading academic journals.
Iain McGilchrist on the importance of barriers in the protection of groups (bold added):
In a world without boundaries or patterns, although in one sense everything would be different, by the same token everything would be the same. We are what we are by virtue of our defining, delimiting (in each case, literally 'bounding') qualities, which nonetheless paradoxically liberate ('unbounding') us into being what we are: what we are is disclosed equally by what we are and are not. Which is why groups cease to cohere if they have no criteria of exclusion, one of the commonest observations in sociology. -- The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, by Iain McGilchrist, p. 1314
It is not just that, as human beings, our individuality takes its nature and meaning from the groups to which we belong, and that they take their nature and meaning from the individuals that belong to them, so that they are inextricably intertwined and reciprocally generative. It's true of the non-human world, too, and, indeed, of every aspect of experience. . . . A degree of generalisation makes differentiation -- types or species of beings or phenomema -- possible. The more we break down barriers, the less differentiation we have. Meaning derives from the existence of, and a proper delight in, recognisable patterns. -- ibid, p. 1314
This site is where the hard-core / leading edge of the Meme Army and Q Faithful congregate, our mission, as the sidebar points out, is to RED-PILL NORMIES.
The Awakening itself goes on mostly outside of this site, around the world; we help to broaden and encourage that Awakening, but are not home to most of the newly awakened. Most who are new to the Awakening are still not ready for this site, nor is it necessary that they arrive here, anymore than the fanbase of a particular author meet at his or her home.
Animals that prep for the future aren't (in my opinion, anyway) doing so because they are thinking OF the future; they are following instinct, just as they MATE not because the want offspring but because instinct pushes them to find a mate and copulate.
because they are are not selling you ANYTHING that is good for you.
Far more cynical than called for, Jacurutu99; altruism, fellow-feeling, and good will are natural components of human nature -- as Q suggests.
Yes, and surprisingly hard to do for most of us.
Animals are in the NOW nearly all the time; captured by it, imprisoned by it. Our hugely expanded upper brains bring a dramatically expanded ability for deep-time navigation (as Leonard Shlain puts it) -- among the most powerful advantages humans have. We can explore and learn from the past at our leisure and in detail, and experiment with different future paths in more depth than other species have the brainpower for.
With that ability, though, comes the tendency to somewhat lose touch with the NOW, to "be elsewhere" more often than optimal. Emotional damage is the biggest factor in creating an imbalance in that regard; another reason that compassionate treatment of children is important.
And sauce! Don't forget the sauce, if your meme includes any factual assertion.
If your meme leads the normie audience to dismiss the point ("Prove it!" or "Based on what evidence" or "Not true!) then sharing it only makes me look unreliable.
Bio-experiments, including chimeras, "super soldiers", bio-weapons, extreme life extension, and who knows what else. Biological material is also in cosmetics, medicines, and even industrial processes. Just guessing on all these, of course, but it wouldn't be a surprise if organ harvesting feeds into most or all of those.
On the other hand, there is always a SHORTAGE of organs for transplant, so maybe most or all of them actually ARE going to that purpose. Big money involved there.
Childhood has been ruined.