Covid hysteria has sentenced us to psychological ruin – we must break free of its chains!

     

“Since we marched obediently into captivity last spring, we have turned servile. Look at us now, arguing about whether we should be in one tier of absurd limits on our lives, or another.”

Thus wrote Peter Hitchens in his characteristically excellent piece for the Mail On Sunday.

Reading those remarks reminded me of a scrawl that we saw plastered on a wall in our town centre when it opened after the first shutdown: “Covid is a psyop,” it read. This is a conspiracy that the Coronavirus pandemic is a ruse to inflict psychological harm on us.

Covid is no conspiracy, since not even the wildest conspiracist could concoct a faked situation as astonishing as the real deal, for in Covid’s name we are indeed witnessing nothing short of our complete psychological destruction.

They want to snuff music out of Christmas

This attempt to psychologically derange us was brought arrestingly home to me this week, when SAGE, the government’s crackpot committee of self-important scientists, decided to produce guidance for us on how we can have a Covid-safe Christmas. Among its recommendations were the avoidance of playing Monopoly and of rowdy singing.

It was, of course, met with a mixture of scorn and derision, with most people wondering whether SAGE has actually lost the plot. However, whilst it is entirely sensible to disregard this drivel, no one should fool themselves that any of the scientific advisors or government decision-makers have in any way lost sight of what they’re doing.

It may be laughable now to think that a government and its advisors can tell us not to sing along to Fairytale of New York or fight each other over toy hotels, but a year ago it was laughable to imagine we’d be forbidden from meeting more than 6 people or that church congregations, muzzled and socially distanced, would nonetheless be forbidden from singing.

IT is, quite simply, a mistake to think that this can all be laughed off.
 

Their manual of evil

 

The drip-drip effect of all this can be seen in what we are already accepting, as Mr Hitchens’s quote above powerfully illustrates.

This art of slow coercion has a sinister name: Behavioural Science. IT is the art of ‘nudging’ people to do what you want.

Scientific rigor is applied to the study of how to manipulate people to behave in your desired way. It recognises that rules alone don’t do the trick.

Indeed, SAGE has shown us the way, with striking clarity. It’s all there, for anyone to see, in a chilling paper published on 22 March, in which options for increasing adherence to general social distancing provide the pretext for outlining the approach to be taken.

Perverting the concept of education

 

To most, education is the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom. Persuasion is the deployment of argument and reason to convince others.

Not so, according to SAGE. Writing about using education to increase compliance, SAGE’s contempt for individuals receiving advice and intelligently applying it to their circumstances is clearly in evidence.

 The following withering complaint is made about government Coronavirus guidance:

“The guidance currently lacks clarity and specificity with regards to recommended behaviours. For example, instead of the phrase ‘try to’, it should just say ‘do’. Phrases such as ‘as much as is practicable’, ‘non-essential’, ‘significantly limit’, and ‘gathering’ are open to wide differences in interpretation. This can lead to confusion about exactly what people are being required to do.”

And there you have it! To be in any doubt, or to exercise any discretion, or grapple with any real-world ambiguity is chalked up to confusion. Education means learning a set of clear, uncompromising rules. We must be told what to do, or as they put it, have guidance “reformulated to be behaviourally specific.” IT’s good to see that, 8 months later as they micro-manage our festive celebrations, they are being true to their word.

Perverting the concept of persuasion

 

Yet they know we’re not going to stop doubting and questioning just like that.

So what do they have to say about persuasion? Do we encourage others to agree that we are correct by the merits of our case, the strength of our evidence and quality of our arguments?

Sadly not. Here we see government advice at its most bloodcurdling. In a now-infamous passage from the paper, SAGE writes: 

“The perceived level of personal threat must be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.”

It’s worth thinking about that in some detail. Why rely on emotional messaging if the argument itself is factually robust?

Why is the perceived level of threat by a large public worth less than that of an elite committee, solely focussed on health and not the wider societal considerations?

Again, SAGE outdoes itself in wickedness. “A substantial number of people,” it laments, “still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group, although levels of concern may be rising.”

Again, SAGE does not challenge the factual basis of such an assessment, for example by citing evidence that people understate the death rate and by how much, but simply finds it undesirable that people are making such a judgement.

And so the edict is clear: persuade by fear and terror. Do not speak truth but change perception. And the government bought it, almost certainly, it did so willingly.

This twisted technique paved the way for sensible people to abandon their relatives for months on end, believing they would kill Granny.

It has led to acts of basic humanity being perceived as acts of murder.

It has established the idea that such is our ability to control the world around us, that we must now apportion blame and guilt over sub-microscopic viruses, the likes of which we have lived with and adapted to since the dawn of time.

We must always doubt are basic awareness of whether we are well, however contrary to our instincts it makes us act.

If in doubt, fear of others will stop us speaking out, beefed up by a media only too happy to feed our crazed dependence on a daily soup of cases, deaths and consoling reassurances that the gods of the new scientific order are only a jab or two away from rescuing us from the drudgery of an existence we virtuously endure.

SAGE has more wise words here: “Social approval,” it informs us, “can be a powerful source of reward. Not only can this be provided directly by highlighting examples of good practice and providing strong social encouragement and approval in communications; members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other.”

Here we have the perfect pretext for outdoing each other in what we will sacrifice and who we will neglect to see at Christmas, all waiting to be told, undoubtedly with bereaved relatives exploited for a soundbite, what destruction we have created by our festivities in January.

The devious agenda is clear: make us all each other’s judge, remembering of course that we are not meant to doubt, question or reason but to learn, obey and be afraid – be very afraid!

So what’s the way out?

 

The captivity Mr Hitchens speaks of is one which exists in our minds. We are imprisoned by our own submission to the derailment of the collective psyche.

Yet the means of escape are simple. It is important, to start, that people actually believe that it is happening.

Consider this: a couple of generations back, it was normal for children to walk to school alone, play out and roam around fairly freely, without mobile phones, CCTV etc. This was despite the fact that terrible things, in the rarest of cases, happened – the names of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady have gone down in history for their depraved killings of innocent children.

Yet it took decades of growing public consciousness and the free flowing of information for the perception of danger to dramatically increase. The understandable desire to keep children safe has led, in consequence, to a far greater degree of restrictions to ward off a level of danger that is probably far lower than it was back then.

I give this example to demonstrate that society does not move equally in both directions. We get more risk-averse but rarely more risk-tolerant. The frontiers of the state get bigger but have never got smaller or been rolled back.

We may laugh and scoff now about the deadliness of a sing-song or game of Monopoly, or the absurdity of a tier system with 5 days off for good behaviour because it’s Christmas, but we are allowing a perception of danger to be slowly baked in to our consciousness and, if we don’t fight it now, it will change us forever.

Believe this is happening! Believe the clock is ticking! Believe that you have a profound responsibility to ask yourself if what you see around you now is a vision of the future that you want, probably forever.

 

If it isn’t, then you need to get passionate. You need to be angry that government advisors want not that you learn, but that you comply; that you are not persuaded but bullied in to submission; that they’re so scared of the weakness of their arguments that they want you to see yourself as a menace to everything and everyone you love.

Turn that anger in to a resolute determination to live your life by your own rules; to be responsible but to remember that living is about more than simply not dying. Don’t be persuaded by the relaxation over Christmas: that’s been done simply to allow us to do what we were going to anyway without the liberating realisation that it’s so easy to break the rules.

The tier system is breaking down. Restrictions by force are falling apart. It relies on your consent. Say no!

Say no to a world where to love is to abandon; to protect is to reject; to be kind is to be cruel; to live is simply to exist.

Say no to a world where perception is truth; fear is knowledge; despair is opportunity; compassion is crushing; hope is that the hopelessness won’t last forever.

Covid hysteria has sentenced us to psychological ruin – we must break free of its chains!