Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 11:17 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 6:38 pmSo you have looked in the back issues of your own sources, you say? And you remain unconvinced? Then either they did not join the other major news outlets in their common mendacity, or you cannot be convinced, perhaps.

Lockdown was fairly strict in the UK, so I had a lot of time to do a great deal of reading. I saw everything that you are talking about, so we can assume we have pretty much the same data set.

I didn't read the Guardian or watch the Beebs much. But if you saw what I saw, you know I'm telling the truth...

If it matters to you whether I think you are telling the truth, you could direct me to what you saw.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pmI ask again: where is your COVID mask? Are you social distancing? Are your shops and schools closed down? When did you get your last injection? Are you hoarding toilet paper still? Are you afraid to visit elderly relatives? All those things were recommended to us as "the science" by the media and the government. Have you got an up-to-date 'vaccine' passport?

And they all lied (or were grossly incompetent, if you prefer). And you know it. What you are doing today shows you realize they lied.

Can I just check that we have the same understanding of the verb 'to lie'? Do you mean something like 'say something you know is not true'? If so, is that what you believe all the journalists involved were doing? And if that is the case, what are your unimpeachably honest sources that told you so?

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:20 pm…

If I may interject in response to your question …

If you were paying attention you could know our world is on the brink of dramatic changes involving population control. Technology, governing systems, so-called globalization, and indeed low-level wars (economic, ideological, propaganda) define the time we are in.

If you had greater awareness of the increase in the dangers associated with these trends, and the use of technologies in population control and management, you would know something of the origins and ends of totalitarian-oriented power-systems.

If you had the ability and the background for historical analysis — you seem to have none and literally zero interest — the use of a pandemic scare; the employment of extra-legal dictates; the use of fear-based propaganda as a social control mechanism would seem conceivable to you as something to be concerned about.

And if you had even minimal concern you could then — you might even be impelled — to examine the perspectives of theorists who write on the topics.

Those who have such concerns attempt interpretation of these events (pandemic scare and social manipulation) but also connect dots between these and other issues. Simply put, you are nearly thoroughly on the outside of even basic concern and familiarity.

And — if I may proceed further — one very important thing that cannot appear on your mental radar is that the philosophy of Christianity, and the Christian conception of Man, is in our culture and civilization one of the main areas where actual freedom is defined and defended. To know this you’d have to have studied the issues in some depth. Therefore the Christian opposition to Marxist inspired totalitarian projects and outcomes has relevancy in our present (and is gathering steam). There is a deep link between our concepts of political freedom and Christian anthropology.

There you have a brief outline that points to the relevancy of getting a message out.

A great deal more can be said about the issue.

It is true though that there is a gread deal of confusion about what is to be messaged, and many different interpretations. There are careful, articulate positions and there are outrageously embellished narratives. Sorting things out is difficult.

I offer this compassionate alternative to having to think about any of this here.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:03 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:20 pm…

If I may interject in response to your question …

If you were paying attention you could know our world is on the brink of dramatic changes involving population control. Technology, governing systems, so-called globalization, and indeed low-level wars (economic, ideological, propaganda) define the time we are in.

If you had greater awareness of the increase in the dangers associated with these trends, and the use of technologies in population control and management, you would know something of the origins and ends of totalitarian-oriented power-systems.

If you had the ability and the background for historical analysis — you seem to have none and literally zero interest — the use of a pandemic scare; the employment of extra-legal dictates; the use of fear-based propaganda as a social control mechanism would seem conceivable to you as something to be concerned about.

And if you had even minimal concern you could then — you might even be impelled — to examine the perspectives of theorists who write on the topics.

Those who have such concerns attempt interpretation of these events (pandemic scare and social manipulation) but also connect dots between these and other issues. Simply put, you are nearly thoroughly on the outside of even basic concern and familiarity.

And — if I may proceed further — one very important thing that cannot appear on your mental radar is that the philosophy of Christianity, and the Christian conception of Man, is in our culture and civilization one of the main areas where actual freedom is defined and defended. To know this you’d have to have studied the issues in some depth. Therefore the Christian opposition to Marxist inspired totalitarian projects and outcomes has relevancy in our present (and is gathering steam). There is a deep link between our concepts of political freedom and Christian anthropology.

There you have a brief outline that points to the relevancy of getting a message out.

A great deal more can be said about the issue.

It is true though that there is a gread deal of confusion about what is to be messaged, and many different interpretations. There are careful, articulate positions and there are outrageously embellished narratives. Sorting things out is difficult.

I offer this compassionate alternative to having to think about any of this here.

I can't decide if you are deliberately scaremongering, or just plain stupid, Alexis, so I'll keep an open mind on that.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:20 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pm
I ask again: where is your COVID mask? Are you social distancing? Are your shops and schools closed down? When did you get your last injection? Are you hoarding toilet paper still? Are you afraid to visit elderly relatives? All those things were recommended to us as "the science" by the media and the government. Have you got an up-to-date 'vaccine' passport?

And they all lied (or were grossly incompetent, if you prefer). And you know it. What you are doing today shows you realize they lied.

I'm very puzzled about why it is so important to you to get this message out. I wonder what you hope the outcome would be if everyone believed it.

You can't not-believe it. Unless, as I say, you're still masking, "vaxxing," hoarding loo paper, and avoiding grandma for fear of killing her.

You're not. So you know I'm right. Your actions confirm it.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:39 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 11:17 am Lockdown was fairly strict in the UK, so I had a lot of time to do a great deal of reading. I saw everything that you are talking about, so we can assume we have pretty much the same data set.

I didn't read the Guardian or watch the Beebs much. But if you saw what I saw, you know I'm telling the truth...

If it matters to you whether I think you are telling the truth, you could direct me to what you saw.

It's not about what I saw. It's about what you will believe...which appears to be...nothing. So you must go on your own search. That's my final word on that.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pmI ask again: where is your COVID mask? Are you social distancing? Are your shops and schools closed down? When did you get your last injection? Are you hoarding toilet paper still? Are you afraid to visit elderly relatives? All those things were recommended to us as "the science" by the media and the government. Have you got an up-to-date 'vaccine' passport?

And they all lied (or were grossly incompetent, if you prefer). And you know it. What you are doing today shows you realize they lied.

Can I just check that we have the same understanding of the verb 'to lie'?

No. Completely unnecessary.

But you can recognize you were wrong, if you are willing to.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:20 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 12:46 pm
I ask again: where is your COVID mask? Are you social distancing? Are your shops and schools closed down? When did you get your last injection? Are you hoarding toilet paper still? Are you afraid to visit elderly relatives? All those things were recommended to us as "the science" by the media and the government. Have you got an up-to-date 'vaccine' passport?

And they all lied (or were grossly incompetent, if you prefer). And you know it. What you are doing today shows you realize they lied.

I'm very puzzled about why it is so important to you to get this message out. I wonder what you hope the outcome would be if everyone believed it.

You can't not-believe it. Unless, as I say, you're still masking, "vaxxing," hoarding loo paper, and avoiding grandma for fear of killing her.

You're not. So you know I'm right. Your actions confirm it.

What, exactly, can't I not believe?

Alexis Jacobi:
If I may interject in response to your question …

If you were paying attention you could know our world is on the brink of dramatic changes involving population control. Technology, governing systems, so-called globalization, and indeed low-level wars (economic, ideological, propaganda) define the time we are in.

K: indeed, and what is, and as defined below, what is the Christian response?
the pretend ''Christian philosophy/freedom'' to put the 10 commandments
into schools? As the American right wants to do....well, of course,
that will solve every single problem you listed... the growing problem
of technology, and globalization and low level wars... economic, ideological
and propaganda wars.... why didn't we think of this before?

AJ: And — if I may proceed further — one very important thing that cannot appear on your mental radar is that the philosophy of Christianity, and the Christian conception of Man, is in our culture and civilization one of the main areas where actual freedom is defined and defended. To know this you’d have to have studied the issues in some depth. Therefore the Christian opposition to Marxist inspired totalitarian projects and outcomes has relevancy in our present (and is gathering steam). There is a deep link between our concepts of political freedom and Christian anthropology.

K: the freedom you talk about is engaging in one of two choices...
one: accept the word of god and go to heaven...
Two: deny the world of god and go to hell.....

those are the Christian choices.... to be a Christian is to
accept being the property of god.... there is no other way to
understand Christianity.... to accept Christianity is to become a slave...
nothing more.... if god has, as Christians claimed, to have set very aspect
of your life on ''autopilot'', then what freedom do we have, exactly?
Sic et Non......

Now the defenders of the faith will claim that I have a limited if any
knowledge of Christianity... and that is certainly their right to say so.....
if however god is, as Christians say he is, Omnipotent, where is your freedom?
if god is Omniscient, where is your freedom? if god is Omnipresent, then
where is your freedom? If god is perfect, then where is your freedom?

of course, the defenders of the faith will accuse me of all kinds of ignorance...
and then fail to answer the questions....

a simple way to know god is this... someone who always, ALWAYS takes
the credit, but, won't take any blame... even about evil.....

Kropotkin

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm I can't decide if you are deliberately scaremongering, or just plain stupid, Alexis, so I'll keep an open mind on that.

You could decide to look upon what I outlined in that light. But that might amount to a tactic of dismissal. And yes, you can do that.

But my main suggestion remains the same: if you want to arrive at a genuine understanding of what is going on today in our culture you will need to better understand what people are thinking and speculating in a group of different areas.

I cannot be rightfully accused of scaremongering because I am not the author of the larger part of these views. I am not trying to scare but rather to inform.

The Internet and a very different and new means of sharing and interpreting information has significantly affected what people know about the world they live in.

My contention is that there are careful, sober analyses … and there are also views involving paranoid projection and fantasy-based views. Sorting them out is not easy.

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 3:24 pm The freedom you talk about is engaging in one of two choices. One: accept the word of god and go to heaven. Two: deny the world of god and go to hell.

My view of the Christian paradigm or model is far more expansive and inclusive.

The freedom I would talk about is not located rigidly and exclusively within those two poles.

The best representatives of the sort of Christian person or intellect are men with a wide and deep understanding. (Basil Willey, not very well known, is one of my exemplars).

The issue of metaphysical restrictiveness (extreme, fanatical and rigid parameters in religious life) is an issue that I personally struggle with (to use that cliche word). I gravitate toward it in a philosophical sense, but at the same time do not benefit from such tight restrictiveness.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 3:36 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm I can't decide if you are deliberately scaremongering, or just plain stupid, Alexis, so I'll keep an open mind on that.

You could decide to look upon what I outlined in that light. But that might amount to a tactic of dismissal. And yes, you can do that.

But my main suggestion remains the same: if you want to arrive at a genuine understanding of what is going on today in our culture you will need to better understand what people are thinking and speculating in a group of different areas.

I cannot be rightfully accused of scaremongering because I am not the author of the larger part of these views. I am not trying to scare but rather to inform.

The Internet and a very different and new means of sharing and interpreting information has significantly affected what people know about the world they live in.

My contention is that there are careful, sober analyses … and there are also views involving paranoid projection and fantasy-based views. Sorting them out is not easy.

Well, in the course of your analysis, I urge you to apply some degree of common sense.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:45 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 1:20 pm
I'm very puzzled about why it is so important to you to get this message out. I wonder what you hope the outcome would be if everyone believed it.

You can't not-believe it. Unless, as I say, you're still masking, "vaxxing," hoarding loo paper, and avoiding grandma for fear of killing her.

You're not. So you know I'm right. Your actions confirm it.

What, exactly, can't I not believe?

That everything they said about COVID, practically, was a lie. (Or, a gross, inept, incompetent, absurd, wasteful, harmful mess by idiots who had everything wrong...take your pick of which narrative you prefer.)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:25 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:45 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm
You can't not-believe it. Unless, as I say, you're still masking, "vaxxing," hoarding loo paper, and avoiding grandma for fear of killing her.

You're not. So you know I'm right. Your actions confirm it.

What, exactly, can't I not believe?

That everything they said about COVID, practically, was a lie. (Or, a gross, inept, incompetent, absurd, wasteful, harmful mess by idiots who had everything wrong...take your pick of which narrative you prefer.)

I don't doubt there was incompetence, but there is some degree of that in everything governments do. The situation had to be handled somehow, and I see no reason to think that most countries did not act in a way they believed to be in the best interests of their populations. Just thinking about what happened in my own country; I don't see how they could have done anything other than what they did.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 11:08 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 6:34 am"Livestock"? Sounds a little melodramatic.

Is serf better? Cog? How about slave?

I'm pretty sure life in the 21st century is not quite that bad.

Sez the guy who complains endlessly about how terrible his life is.

Look on the bright side, you're not locked up in a mental hospital with psychoses. You're out free and about and have enough spare time to spend it on the Internet.

Yep, the accommodations in Black Iron Prison, for some, are generous.

But, you know, a cage is still a cage no matter how well appointed.

Anyway: if you like it (the cage), or can't recognize it as a cage, then keep doin' what you've been doin' and avoid the malcontents and mayhemers.

Do you have any health issues, Henry? If so, then you have something to complain about.

Are you a "slave"? In what way are you a slave? You can't move freely from one place to the next? Do you have a master who tells you what to do? Do you really have it all that bad?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:25 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:45 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:40 pm
You can't not-believe it. Unless, as I say, you're still masking, "vaxxing," hoarding loo paper, and avoiding grandma for fear of killing her.

You're not. So you know I'm right. Your actions confirm it.

What, exactly, can't I not believe?

That everything they said about COVID, practically, was a lie. (Or, a gross, inept, incompetent, absurd, wasteful, harmful mess by idiots who had everything wrong...take your pick of which narrative you prefer.)

K: so, over 7 million people didn't die from Covid or that over 700,00 in
the U.S died, those are lies?

what I find most interesting here is that people will pick and choose the
''facts'' that most confirm their already held beliefs....

in believing in conspiracy theories, you hold to there being a god,
that is practically halfway to being able to believe in such conspiracy
theories such as Covid and lasers causing wildfires...
why not go all the way and claim that Lizard people control
the governments of the world? there is no difference in
believing in Lizard people running the world and belief
in god or in the Covid conspiracy.... just the scale changes...

Kropotkin

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:57 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 4:25 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Jun 24, 2024 2:45 pm

What, exactly, can't I not believe?

That everything they said about COVID, practically, was a lie. (Or, a gross, inept, incompetent, absurd, wasteful, harmful mess by idiots who had everything wrong...take your pick of which narrative you prefer.)

I don't doubt there was incompetence, but there is some degree of that in everything governments do.

Lots. And waste. But the Wuhan Lab was known to our government. And the fact that it was coming from China was known to them, and to their operatives, since they caused it. The fact that the "vaccines" were untested, they knew. That the "vaccines" did not prevent spread was known to them, as well. They gratuitiously simultaneous suppressed all alternate treatments. They, and the media, also knew that the masks would not protect people, that they were not going to lock down for a mere 14 days, that children were not at risk, and that they were inflating the numbers of dead by including not just people who died OF COVID, but all people who died WITH COVID, even if their real cause of death was something other than COVID. They knew a whole lot they did not tell us, and they outright lied about how much certainty they had on all accounts.

You might like to imagine they were looking out for us, and doing the best they could; but the number of lies they told, and their reluctance to retract them when caught, surely tells you that more was going on than "the best science we have." There was "spin" and manipulation going on, on an international scale. And people like the WEF were rubbing their hands together and drooling over how this crisis might give them the opportunity to seize power from ordinary folks, and engineer their new "plans for Nigel." (See the WEF's own publication, COVID 19: The Great Reset).

As for politicians at the national level, and as for their minions in the mass media, without seven having to speculate on what they were really doing (and there are good speculations on that, given their own declarations), we know that at the least they lied over, and over, and over again, and that whatever they were doing was not admitting what they did not know, or providing the public with information as it came in. They made a whole lot of stuff up.