Mark, I shared some of this on one of your other recent posts, will frame it a little differently for this comment.
I read this article in March-April of 2020 when I was trying to understand what was happening that didn't have any precedent. In the course of reading about China's pandemic protocols from their own official CCP media I also came across story in Foreign Affairs, an international affairs publication supported by and intended for the globalist audience, those who believe in one-world governance, varieties found both on the left and right. It is a highly influential publication in those circles:
"Diseases are everyday, ordinary occurrences intimately related to people’s daily lives. However, as the metaphor of the “Sick Man of East Asia” emerged against the backdrop of a weak modern China, health care and the curing of diseases were turned into grand state politics with far-reaching implications. This book, starting with the argument for diseases being metaphors, describes and interprets such incidents in China’s history as the Abolishment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Cooperative Medical Services. In an effort to reveal the internal logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship, the book analyzes key aspects including the politicization and inclusion of diseases in state governance, the double disciplining of hygiene, legitimacy construction of the state, the remaking of the nationals, and the expansion of the “publicness” of the state. The book argues that disease politics in modern China has developed following the path from nationals to the people, and then to citizens, or from crisis politics and mobilization politics to life politics. In addition, a marked change has occurred in China’s state building: increasingly standard, rationalized and institutionalized means have been employed while the non-standard means, such as large-scale mobilization and ideological coercion, had been historically used in China."
If there was both an agenda to apply the "logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship" from individual liberty values to collectivist authoritarian values, as the Foreign Affairs article and the CCP book chronicling the transformation of China in the same manner, would that not inform us that with the development of enough social-science research on how humans respond to massive, sophisticated perceptual and behavioral modification campaigns that authorities given license to embark on them would have a fair degree of confidence they could achieve their desired outcome? Just knowing how percentages of a population will respond to what behavioral modification strategies, not needing to know specifically who responds, would seem to be sufficient information to deduce an overall outcome. Which would tend to support those who say there is a bigger plan in action than what appears on the surface. What say you?
Sorry. Had read. Meant to reply. I don’t doubt that there are forces — many — trying to use their best understanding of psychology to coax things into their direction. Never imagine that they’re even 1% of the sophistication they think they are. Usually the most sophisticated at such things are those that just do it, and have developed artistic lore about how to best sway the public, but with no real scientific justification. But still pretty darn good, as it got selected for. But no level of sophistication can allow any of them to reliably engineer such events. That said, again, there are MANY forces trying. https://youtu.be/oniuMsl3kSI
I've long believed that it's always the arrogance of would-be gods that is their Achilles Heal. Their greatest weakness is believing their own BS makes them all-powerful.
Thing is, while I think we know how this ends, we don't know how much harm these MANY forces are willing to inflict on us before they come to the same understanding that they will inevitably fail. That in-between stage we find ourselves at today is the most perilous for humanity. Arrogance makes people in positions of power do some really horrible things as they flail around and blame the "lesser," bad, disobedient people for laying waste to their best-laid sophisticated plans.
Human beings potentially have "rule of law" whereas birds don't. Ergo, one can assign blame and suspect nefarious action where the rule of law has been grossly flouted. Granted that we don't have a very well functioning rule of law, but to the extent that they *say* that we do, then that statement implicates bad motives as well.
Mark, I shared some of this on one of your other recent posts, will frame it a little differently for this comment.
I read this article in March-April of 2020 when I was trying to understand what was happening that didn't have any precedent. In the course of reading about China's pandemic protocols from their own official CCP media I also came across story in Foreign Affairs, an international affairs publication supported by and intended for the globalist audience, those who believe in one-world governance, varieties found both on the left and right. It is a highly influential publication in those circles:
Past Pandemics Exposed China’s Weaknesses
The Current One Highlights Its Strengths
Foreign Affairs, March 27, 2020
https://web.archive.org/web/20200328050913/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-03-27/past-pandemics-exposed-chinas-weaknesses
In the article I found a link to a book:
Rural Health Care Delivery
Modern China from the Perspective of Disease Politics
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2013
http://library.lol/main/DB87C08A174B849E1EB0476138787AED
('Get' .pdf download)
From the book's official description:
"Diseases are everyday, ordinary occurrences intimately related to people’s daily lives. However, as the metaphor of the “Sick Man of East Asia” emerged against the backdrop of a weak modern China, health care and the curing of diseases were turned into grand state politics with far-reaching implications. This book, starting with the argument for diseases being metaphors, describes and interprets such incidents in China’s history as the Abolishment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Cooperative Medical Services. In an effort to reveal the internal logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship, the book analyzes key aspects including the politicization and inclusion of diseases in state governance, the double disciplining of hygiene, legitimacy construction of the state, the remaking of the nationals, and the expansion of the “publicness” of the state. The book argues that disease politics in modern China has developed following the path from nationals to the people, and then to citizens, or from crisis politics and mobilization politics to life politics. In addition, a marked change has occurred in China’s state building: increasingly standard, rationalized and institutionalized means have been employed while the non-standard means, such as large-scale mobilization and ideological coercion, had been historically used in China."
And my own brief overview of the book contents:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/the-devious-use-of-infectious-disease
If there was both an agenda to apply the "logic of disease politics in the transformation of the state-people relationship" from individual liberty values to collectivist authoritarian values, as the Foreign Affairs article and the CCP book chronicling the transformation of China in the same manner, would that not inform us that with the development of enough social-science research on how humans respond to massive, sophisticated perceptual and behavioral modification campaigns that authorities given license to embark on them would have a fair degree of confidence they could achieve their desired outcome? Just knowing how percentages of a population will respond to what behavioral modification strategies, not needing to know specifically who responds, would seem to be sufficient information to deduce an overall outcome. Which would tend to support those who say there is a bigger plan in action than what appears on the surface. What say you?
Sorry. Had read. Meant to reply. I don’t doubt that there are forces — many — trying to use their best understanding of psychology to coax things into their direction. Never imagine that they’re even 1% of the sophistication they think they are. Usually the most sophisticated at such things are those that just do it, and have developed artistic lore about how to best sway the public, but with no real scientific justification. But still pretty darn good, as it got selected for. But no level of sophistication can allow any of them to reliably engineer such events. That said, again, there are MANY forces trying. https://youtu.be/oniuMsl3kSI
I've long believed that it's always the arrogance of would-be gods that is their Achilles Heal. Their greatest weakness is believing their own BS makes them all-powerful.
Thing is, while I think we know how this ends, we don't know how much harm these MANY forces are willing to inflict on us before they come to the same understanding that they will inevitably fail. That in-between stage we find ourselves at today is the most perilous for humanity. Arrogance makes people in positions of power do some really horrible things as they flail around and blame the "lesser," bad, disobedient people for laying waste to their best-laid sophisticated plans.
As a reminder to those who didn't catch the previous comment, here's some of the book's section and chapter titles:
5.3 Discipline Imposed by Hygiene
8 State of “the People”
9.4 “To Combine Health Campaigns with Mass Movements”
10.3 The “Cleanness” of the State and Legitimacy Construction
11 The Patriotic Hygiene Campaign and the Construction of Clean New People
12 A Farewell to the “Sick Man of East Asia”: The Irony, Deconstruction, and Reshaping of the Metaphor
13.2 “The Higher the Education Level One Has, the Sillier He Is”
13.3 “Comments on Wearing a Medical Mask”
17.3 From “the Benevolent Medicine” to the “Formula for Money-Making”
17.4 One’s Life or Death Is Utterly Dependent on One’s Fate
19 A Public Country and Its Expansion
20 The Logic of Disease Politics
23 A Nation-State? A Democratic State?
This reminds me of a swarm of fish I encountered on a forty five foot dive off the Hawaiian islands. The fish behaved in a similar fashion. Amazing.
Human beings potentially have "rule of law" whereas birds don't. Ergo, one can assign blame and suspect nefarious action where the rule of law has been grossly flouted. Granted that we don't have a very well functioning rule of law, but to the extent that they *say* that we do, then that statement implicates bad motives as well.