20 Rapper Wisdoms: Thoughts on a pandemic
Thank you Zuby
I had no idea who Zuby was, and historically haven’t been a fan of rap, although I did watch the Wu Tang Clan documentary with my son and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I am taking a shine to rap though; its anti-authoritarian streak is where I am it in my life at the moment.
Sticking it to The Man is my current orientation in the world.
Anyway, Tom Woods brought this Zuby Tweet thread to my attention.
But first a word on Tom Woods.
Sign up for his newsletter and more importantly sign up for his eBook:
COVID Charts CNN Forgot
He has been one of the early and consistent fighters against the madness and has produced a ton of great and useful material to help people dial down their fear and understand what is really going on.
If you want to beak free of The MGM Triad (see I can just link to it now!) then accessing Tom Woods material is part of that process.
He also put together this great COVID Quiz to help people see and understand the pointlessness of lockdowns and everything else. Just destruction, no benefit.
Now, back to Zuby. I have taken his 20 wisdoms thread and will add any thoughts that I have.
20 Things I've Learned (Or Had Confirmed) About Humanity During The "Pandemic"
1. Most people would rather be in the majority, than be right.
The emotions involved in being in the minority are very real and very uncomfortable. Humans have huge psychological incentive to rationalise being in the majority.
A common rationalisation I see in Australia at the moment is when someone says, “I got the jab” my mate has made it a habit to ask “Why?” and very often they will say, “because I want to travel” which is when my mate asks, “Where are you going?”. The only answer to that question in Australia at the moment is “Nowhere”. There is a complete travel ban (with limited exceptions). So, people are rushing to get a jab so that they can travel, but they cannot travel. Go figure. But that rationalisation will put them within the sweet comforting bosom of the majority.
In 2020 I came across the story of August Landmesser
August Landmesser, The Story Of The Man Who Refused To Salute Hitler
What I story it is. The photo is a classic, and I’ve got a shirt at home with this shot on it. Holding strong when all around you have lost their mind would have to be one of the hardest things a human can do. We are social creatures and have an evolutionary instinct to conform and belong.
The world around us is conforming to vaccination, and beliefs are forming to rationalise that behaviour. Those beliefs are resistant to logic and slow thinking.
I think Seinfeld said that “rationalisation is better than sex”, but only recently have I discovered another depth to that truism. To belong you need to believe what the others believe, the pathway to “believing” is rationalisation. So, our logical mind will find a way of “believing” and engaging the emotional part of our being in order that our beliefs map over the beliefs of broader society.
2. At least 20% of the population has strong authoritarian tendencies, which will emerge under the right conditions.
See the photo above again for this one.
I have been stunned to see what has happened to many prominent Australians who I wouldn’t have guessed had authoritarian streaks. I can see it happening all over the world, entertainers, historians, philosophers, journalists, doctors. Personalities from all walks of life, building a cultural grid of authoritarian ideas that “other” the non-jabbed and bring in a two-tier society. I would never have believed it possible but that’s what is happening.
3. Fear of death is only rivalled by the fear of social disapproval. The latter could be stronger.
Well, they say that the fear of public speaking ranks higher than the fear of death. Public speaking is simply an exercise in risking public disapproval. I think Zuby is right, the latter.
Who wants to walk around with the yellow star of “unvaccinated” stuck to their chest?
4. Propaganda is just as effective in the modern day as it was 100 years ago. Access to limitless information has not made the average person any wiser.
The basic point is right. Humans are still humans and can be manipulated today as they were 100 years ago. The tools available today are far more numerous and far more powerful. The smartphone is a propagandist wet dream. The algorithms of Google and Facebook have created echo chambers that most people can not break out of. Most don’t know how.
I have come to think of these echo chambers as gulags of the mind. The Russian gulag system was a physical one, but we now have a global information and “thought grid” that has partitioned the world population into sub-groups. These gulags of the mind are where most people spend their time.
5. Anything and everything can and will be politicized by the media, government, and those who trust them.
The centralisation of the flow of information is also the centralisation of the flow of thought.
What we think, leads to what we feel which leads to what we do.
And what we think starts with an idea and an idea starts with a word.
“In the beginning was the word…”
If you control the Word, you control the world.
Ask yourself, who controls the Word today?
A very small group of people in Silicon Valley. They are more powerful than governments and most if not all governments (and their politicians) are terrified of what Facebook or Google might do to them if they are on the wrong side of a narrative.
They control the flow of thought and behaviour.
6. Many politicians and large corporations will gladly sacrifice human lives if it is conducive to their political and financial aspirations.
The pathway to being able to do this is the “greater good”. This is a wonder video from Academy of Ideas on how the greater good has been used to “rationalise” the greatest evils in the history of the world. That collectivist idea has been engaged again today with vaccination.
How the “Greater Good” is Used as a Tool of Social Control (academyofideas.com)
7. Most people believe the government acts in the best interests of the people. Even many who are vocal critics of the government.
This is true and truer for some cultures over others. If you have lived in the Middle East, you know that the government does NOT have your interest at heart, but if you grew up in Holland you absolutely believe (in your bones) that the government has your interest at heart.
My observation is that the “trusting” cultures have fallen especially easily to The MGM Triad because they didn’t think for a moment that it was possible that their government could do this to them.
It is happening here in Australia also, overwhelmingly the population is a trusting one and they are being taken advantage of.
8. Once they have made up their mind, most people would rather to commit to being wrong, than admit they were wrong.
This is what is happening with the vaccinated. They have made their mind up and committed to a course of action. Their beliefs will now form and coagulate around that action. As a group they will be very resistant to any information that says that the jab is not effective, it does not prevent disease and it does not prevent transmission.
The narrative that will form to rationalise this away is that “off course it doesn’t prevent Covid, but it does reduce symptoms”. It doesn’t matter that that was never the deal, but the mind has an amazing way of “forgetting” anything that gets in the way of today’s rationalisation.
This is a good example though of someone waking up after the fact to realise he was lied to. There will be many more like him.
9. Humans can be trained and conditioned quickly and relatively easily to significantly alter their behaviors -- for better or worse.
I wouldn’t have believed it could happen this quickly, but it has. Lots of fear and small incentives can make humans do anything to alleviate the fear and conform.
In Australia the fear around Covid has been dialled up about 250x from where it should be. I wrote about it hear.
Shark Attacks and 38% Infection Fatality Rate
It is the equivalent of thinking there are 12 shark attack deaths per week when in reality there are 2.5 per year. That is what a 250x amplification of fear and distortion of reality looks like. In that climate of terror, who in their right mind would go to the beach and get into the water?
The MGM Triad has abused (and continues to abuse) the Australian population until it gets its jab targets and jab passport.
10. When sufficiently frightened, most people will not only accept authoritarianism, but demand it.
Yes, I can see that on Twitter especially. People wanting the government to “keep them safe” and what they really mean is to get on with the job of making everyone get the jab, by coercion and mandates if necessary.
A culture of entitlement breeds people who now feel entitled to safety and concerned about “others” being “free” to “harm” them.
Only a year ago, they wouldn’t have thought it was the governments job to force someone to get the flu vaccine to protect them from the flu and they certainly didn’t think that jabs should be mandatory to protect all the small kids that died each year from the flu (let alone the old and frail). But today, they have been “nudged” to a place of societal and individual psychosis.
11. People who are dismissed as "conspiracy theorists" are often well researched and simply ahead of the mainstream narrative.
As Bill Murray said: Me, me, me…
12. Most people value safety and security more than freedom and liberty, even if said "safety" is merely an illusion.
It’s a cliché by now but this is a Benjamin Franklin moment again:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I think that most people don’t have a firm grasp of the meaning of “freedom”.
You have to have lived without it to really grasp its meaning. If you grew up with it them, how would you know what it really meant.
How would a fish know what “Wet” means?
13. Hedonic adaptation occurs in both directions, and once inertia sets in, it is difficult to get people back to "normal."
I guess this is the Boiling Frog story:
The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
“Normal” is now in the rear-view mirror. The goal at this point is damage minimisation to one self, one’s family and as much of one’s community and society as possible.
But make no mistake about it, this is a war, and its going to be a long one.
If you have any doubt at all that this is war, take a moment to look at what’s happening in France.
14. A significant % of people thoroughly enjoy being subjugated.
If you dial up fear and dial up confusion you can manufacture a population that just wants to be told what to do and how to stay safe. If you are not equipped to keep your fear in check, which most people do not seem to be able to do, then being enslaved to a state solution is inevitable.
15. "The Science" has evolved into a secular pseudo-religion for millions of people in the West. This religion has little to do with science itself.
Not even sure it’s “pseudo”.
“The Science” has replaced Science.
“The Science” has replaced God.
16. Most people care more about looking like they are doing the right thing, rather than actually doing the right thing.
Masks as a Virtue Signal.
Vaccination as a Virtue Signal.
Working from Home and happy with it as a Virtue Signal. Certainly a “luxury belief” that says “look at me, I can afford to be under house arrest and still survive OK, and order everything online and have it shipped to me. It’s not that bad.”
This is a fantastic piece on Luxury Beliefs
Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update – Quillette
Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.
17. Politics, the media, science, and the healthcare industries are all corrupt, to varying degrees. Scientists and doctors can be bought as easily as politicians.
Ok, I can simply refer again to The MGM Triad here.
11 Insights into The Medical-Government-Media (MGM) Triad
18. If you make people comfortable enough, they will not revolt. You can keep millions docile as you strip their rights, by giving them money, food, and entertainment.
And Zoom.
We are SOOOO comfortable in the West that taking some or plenty of those comforts away still leaves us with plenty of comforts.
So, why would you revolt if you still have plenty of comforts even after losing plenty of comforts.
19. Modern people are overly complacent and lack vigilance when it comes to defending their own freedoms from government overreach.
You have to value something first to then think of even protecting it.
We do not value freedom.
That which you do not understand you cannot value.
That which you haven’t earned you cannot value.
20. It's easier to fool a person than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Initially sure. But give it a bit of time and those that realise they have been fooled will reach a critical mass.
See Michael Rapaport at Wisdom no. 8