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共时性,神话,与新世界秩序

August 10, 2015 by Charles Eisenstein

August 2015
English Version: https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/synchronicity-myth-and-the-new-world-order/


 

尽管大多数人怀有善心好意,但当目睹自己对地球所造成的满目疮痍之时,我们便不难得出结论:某种邪恶力量已经劫持了人类文明,正将其推向无益于任何人的深渊。

倘若我们迈向的未来是任何人都不会有意选择的未来,那就意味着并非我们在选择,而是无益于人类福祉的某种东西在选择我们,这是顺理成章的,有人如是说。

对历史上某些重大事件的深入研究也加强了这一结论。肯尼迪总统暗杀事件和9.11事件的官方解释都充斥着难以解释的矛盾。不祥的巧合事件层出不穷,逐渐形成了一种模式,而其背后是一个为达邪恶目的而精心策划这些事件的意识机构。

另外一种历史则认为世界事件起因于一种强大黑暗的秘密政治集团的阴谋诡计,该集团由全球精英组成,包括银行、像洛克菲勒和罗特希尔德那样的富裕家族、像彼尔德博格委员会(Bilderburg Council)那样的非官方组织、集团犯罪、政府内部的神秘机构、像“骷髅”(Skull and Bones)和“共济会”(Feeemasons)那样的秘密协会。在这一切的背后是一个更加秘密的集团,该集团由地球真正的统治者组成,甚至包括成为他们傀儡的国家首相和总统。有些理论家说这些执掌大权的光照派(Illuninati)是凡人,有些理论家说他们有外星同盟或者他们由外星人控制或组成。据说,他们的目标是强加一种“新的世界秩序”(New World Order), 实现他们的全面统治。

此外,据称该黑暗的政治团体拥有可自行支配的强大秘密技术。天气控制、意念控制、能源武器、像莱姆关节炎(Lyme)和禽流感那样的人造疾病、以及其他近乎神奇的技术使他们可以摧毁任何抵抗,神不知鬼不觉地将我们控制。从始至终,他们都在企图强加新形式的暴政,以便既能统治物质又能统治意识。

本文的目的并不在于揭露阴谋论或者支持主流的历史叙事。相反,我要提出尊重同时又超越前两种解释的第三种解释。阴谋论的大多数批评质疑作者的证据、逻辑和来源,怀疑作者的理智、智力或正直。我不会这样做。尽管这些批评时常言之有理,但是它们往往追求一些唾手可得的东西:最马虎的作者、论点中最大的弱点、最容易解释的证据。然而,即使是写得最好的批评文章,公正的读者只要好好读一读,就会意识到其中有些莫名其妙。

而且,新世界秩序阴谋论,无论有着什么样的缺陷,都包含着一些重要真相。首先,它向我们指出在我们的世界中有些大错特错的东西,有些正确的东西虽然就摆在我们面前但我们却视而不见。新世界秩序假说让人觉得具有一定的合理性和解放性。然而,最终许多人发现它会使人丧失力量。在我看来,新世界秩序假说在它渴望改变的相同情况背后微妙地注入了这种心态。它剥夺了我们的力量,从而使得现状得以维持。这种情况是如何发生的,新世界秩序的解放潜力该如何才能实现?要回答这一问题,我们要从对新世界秩序这一论点及整个阴谋主义的原始批评开始——这一批评会打开将新世界秩序和主流叙事结合为一个更大框架的大门。

无效的控制

天上真的有一些超智慧、超能力的人可以凭借他们的计划和技术来成功地把世界塑造成他们想要的摸样吗?抑或人类文明的精英和我们其他人一样迷惑恐惧,仅仅是在对动辄便关系到他们自己生命的事件作出回应?无效的控制编制在现实世界中。复杂的非线性系统,比如团体或社会,本来就是无法预测的。当然,掌权者试图保持控制,经常在这个过程中会造成严重的破坏,但总体说来,其实是事件控制了他们,而非他们控制了事件。

阴谋论将一定程度的能力、远见和效率归功于和人类机构格格不入的控制机构。我们生活在基于控制的文明中,误以为我们可以通过物质和社会技术来命令世界,一旦我完善了这些技术便可以战胜自然、战胜混乱、战胜不确定性。而事实上,世界是杂乱无章的、无法预测的,无论我们多么精心地策划事件都无济于事,就像是拳头握得再紧也无法控制掌中泥沙的流失一样。我们沉湎于这样一种意识形态之中:等到下一次技术革命、下一次医学创新或者下一套综合性规章,我们终将能够控制所有杂乱的可变因素,生活在一个安全有序的世界中。

阴谋主义者赞同我们文明的一条显著准则:世界从根本上来说是易于控制的。他们认为这种控制力量已经走向邪恶,但并不否认技术治国的信条,即认为社会和物质材料可以通过科学方法不断改善,包括收集信息、制定计划、消除变量、施行武力等等。承认新世界秩序阴谋的可能性就意味着认同集权主义背后最具动机性和理据性的信条之一。新世界秩序的信仰者并没有他们想象得那么极端。

我们被出卖了。在技术发展的祭坛上若干世纪的献祭之后,我们心怀深深的失望和愤怒。我们将这种愤怒转嫁到光明派身上,或者任何剥夺我们“未来”的人的身上。这种乌托邦式的技术理想当然存在——只是我们被拒之门外了,天堂的技术转向了险恶的目的。但真正的问题比此还要更加深刻。正是控制模式本身造成了我们宁愿牺牲一切去追求海市蜃楼。

命令的动力

阴谋论的核心观点是“奥巴马总统是傀儡”或者“甚至连大卫·洛克菲勒也是接受来自上面的命令”。那就让我们来看一下等级机构的社会动力。若要一个人服从命令,要么发出命令者的权力必须直接高于下属,要么发出命令者和接受命令者必须根植于一种使命令合法化并得以执行的社会机构。后者的一个明显例子就是军队。当上校向少校发布命令时,上校服从命令并非是因为他害怕自己如果拒绝会遭到上校痛打,而是因为他们两者都是(大多数是含蓄的)“协议之网”的一部分。最终,如果他不遵守命令,有人(比如宪兵队)可能会痛打他或者监禁他,但这样的结果同时也是因为“协议之网”包括了违反协议的后果。我们可以说,上校、少校、宪兵队及其他人都享有一个共同的“军队故事”(story of the army)。

全球阴谋又是什么情况呢?什么样的社会机构能够将发布给大卫·洛克菲勒或者巴拉克·奥巴马的命令合法化呢?这种情况下的“军队故事”根植于更大的“合法性故事”(legitimizing stories)中,这种故事最终包括政府的合法性、金钱的价值、对历史的阐释、价值与道德体系等等。什么样的基础设施可以允许对奥巴马或洛克菲勒的直接等级控制呢?等级结构无法存在于社会真空之中,它们需要一种配有许多支撑机构的思想灌输和文化同化系统。

比如,考虑一下世贸中心因为政府特务放置在其内部的爆破炸药(demolition charges)而倒塌这种想法。若要他们愿意这样做,除非他们生活在一个完全不同的社会宇宙中,被灌输了和我们社会大相径庭的价值观。和好莱坞电影里所呈现的印象相反,人们不会出于完全缺乏理智的邪恶而做出类似这样的事情,因为他们要遵循一种根植于文化的世界观。我能够明白为何伊斯兰武装分子(Islamic Jihadists)会因为激进的伊玛目(imam)和美帝国主义对他们的社会所造成的破坏而怒不可遏,进而密谋对这些“大魔头”(Great Satan)给予打击。但是,什么会促使美国爆破专家对他们自己的同胞进行大规模谋杀呢?亲爱的读者,什么又会促使你这样做呢?你需要受过什么样的另类教育、文化同化和思想灌输才会做出这种事情并守口如瓶呢?大楼保安处的低收入员工或者中央情报局、国家安全局的大部分体面人士也会这样做吗?从根本上来说,这种大规模的阴谋若要存在,必须要在我们自己的社会内部有一个完整的平行社会,并配有一整套平行机构,来去创造和我们的文化完全不同的人。

从隐喻的视角重读上边的最后一句话,它会暗示你本文的主旨走向。

心理上瘾

我注意到阴谋论有一种很强的情感吸引力——至少对有些人而言。相信阴谋论的人喜欢认为他们对信仰的选择是公正合理的,因为相对于外面那些愚昧迷惘的“羔羊”来说他们更加理性、更加聪慧、更加开明。同样的事实,两个人从不同的角度去看便得出了不同的结论。这种选择是因为智慧或者理性的作用吗?抑或我们所选则的阐释不过是为了满足我们的心理和情感需求?

阴谋论情感吸引力的一个表现就是它的心里上瘾性。不久前当我查询阴谋论存在状态之时,我发现自己在不断地检索一些网站,每当发现某种新形式的暴行时便有一种满足感。除此之外,阴谋论的存在状态也是黑暗而沉重的,充满了悲观的愤世嫉俗和一种连我自己都愚弄不了的肤浅优越感。我听说有人因此而完全上瘾了。他们每天花数小时的时间阅读新世界秩序的种种密谋策划,每当遇到解决不了的问题时便会经历剧烈的脱瘾过程。

阴谋论的信仰者花费大量时间使自己“信息灵通”,但他们真的会按照那些信息而行动吗?我想,有些人确实会那样做——他们搬到爱达荷州的一个武装场地或者将金币藏于地下室之中。但是大多数人依然像平常一样继续生活。他们与自己的邻居又有何不同呢?他们的眼球徘徊于艾莱克斯·琼斯网站(Alex Jones’website)而非国内公用无线电台(NPR)网站,但目的何在呢?他们也许认为自己是精明正义的少数人,代表无知的百姓与邪恶作斗争,但大多数情况下他们都是无所作为的。就像是任何类型的上瘾一样,对阴谋论或与之密切相关的世界末日网站的上瘾使人们失去了力量,其实只是帮助了维持现状。

对阴谋论的信仰并非是在情感上相互平等的世界观的替代选择,它是情感、心里和精神状态的核心成分。这种状态是一种受害者的状态。认为事件由一些比我们更为强大的恶毒之人控制,面对针对我们的强大力量任何改变的尝试都是徒劳无益的这种看法,使得我们走投无路,只能去开拓一个私下反叛(rebellion-in-private)的安全小王国。如果确实存在全球阴谋,这样的结果倒也令人欢喜。然而,矛盾的是,我们也可以说存在全球阴谋的想法本身就是全球阴谋所宣传的一个谎言。

无法证伪性

阴谋论最常遭受的批评是它的无法证伪性,因为任何矛盾性的证据都可以被归结为捏造、错误路径等等。而且,阴谋必须要非常隐秘——缺乏证据本身就是证据!不太经常被承认的另外一点是,阴谋论的替代性选择几乎也是无法证伪的。任何站出来要揭露阴谋的人都可能会被贴上骗子或疯子的标签,几乎任何事情都可以归结为巧合。生活中我们常常面临着两种叙事(narrative),或许稍加延伸,便都可以解释所有事实,就像我们现在所面临的情况一样。那么我们该如何选择呢?

虽然我们不愿承认,但证据和逻辑的确无法给我们带来确定无疑。正如诸多社会心理实验所证明的那样,证据和逻辑也不是我们做出判断和选择的首要决定因素。尽管来来回回的措辞不同,但阴谋论的双方,比如9.11阴谋问题的双方,都不是傻瓜。阴谋论的批评者指责阴谋论的支持者天真简单、带有明显的筛选偏见、犯了诸多基本的研究和逻辑错误。我觉得这些批评难以令人满意。它们当然适用于最糟糕的阴谋论,但并非总是适用于最优秀的阴谋论。

理性的人能够根据自己的所处位置和人生境遇来审视同样的事件,从而形成不同的人生信念。这些信念然后会变成他们所看之物及所寻之物的过滤器。恰似它们进入了相互分离却又彼此平行的现实之中。正如我们将会看到的那样,呈现在我们眼前的远远不止于这种表象。

对抗邪恶的战争

阴谋主义给人们提供了心理报偿,使其可以去责备、去憎恨、或者去为了一个充满正义和远离恐惧的世界而战。矛盾的是,尽管阴谋主义把我们当作超强阴谋家的受害者,但同时它也提供了一种控制。毕竟,如若当今世界的邪恶根源是这些阴谋家,那么解决办法就显而易见了:揭露他们并铲除他们。如果没有阴谋——如果,比如说,邪恶在世界上普遍存在或者只是组织的一个新兴特征——那么我们就更加无助了。即使是作为一个实际问题,我们也不能希望击败阴谋,至少我们明白事情的来龙去脉。我们知道解决办法,即使它遥不可及。

简而言之,解决办法就是战胜邪恶。阴谋主义提供了一种外在的邪恶,从而使我们可以为自己开脱罪责,原谅自己在对当今地球所造成的种种伤害过程中的合谋串通。我们可能会想:“若是由我来负责,我办事的方式会大大不同于新世界秩序的光明派,因为我是一个体面之人,不像他们那么邪恶。”

把人类活动甚至宇宙过程看成是善恶之战的模式有着深刻的根源,其源头要追溯到第一批农业文明。正是在那一时期才产生了邪恶的概念,映射着和自然界日益增加的对立关系,这一点在驯化野生生物的过程中是含蓄隐晦的。像杂草、狼、蝗虫这样的生物不是被看成整体的一部分,而是被看成人类安康的威胁和清除运动的目标——时至今日这样的运动仍伴我们左右。自然的混乱力量被等同于邪恶,而善意逐渐和保持自然和人类活动的秩序相关联。按照这样思维逻辑,若是有一天我们能够完全控制自然和社会该多好啊,那样善意便会在地球盛行,苦难便会大大缩减,纳米技术和神经工程会被消除。最终邪恶将会被彻底战胜。

新的政治运动掌权之时,常常带有铲除邪恶的想法。无论是纳粹大屠杀(Nazi Holocaust)还是苏联肃反运动(Stalinist purges),其结果往往都是血腥的,无论邪恶的识别过程是怎样的。换句话说,是邪恶的想法产生了邪恶。我们可以说,相对于全球阴谋的矛盾来说这是第二个矛盾。在善恶之战中,邪恶力量的一大武器便是认为存在善恶之战的观念。

阴谋主义给一种已经过时的古老思想形式穿上了新装,这种思想形式认为我们世界的恐惧是由邪恶力量造成的。我们可以看到其过时性是显而易见的,因为我们对自然的态度已经发生转变,不再将其看成是征服和剥削的对象;同时也是因为我们越来越推崇新兴的精神信仰,即强调二重性(dualities)的综合和超越。在社会心里学中,一种被称为“环境决定论”(situationism)的新兴运动也声称决定我们选择的不是对善或恶的某种倾向,而是我们所处的外在环境和内在环境的总体

在物理学、心理学、生态学和精神性这些迥然不同的领域,人们明白外界所发生的一切和内心世界是紧密关联的;自我与世界是相互依存和相互共建的。控制世界事件的黑暗阴谋映射了我们同样的内心世界。当我说“我们”之时,我指的并不是一些人、其他人、当然也不是我们这些好人。我指的是你、我和每一个人。

这里可能隐藏着阴谋论中的一条重要真相:不是事实真相而是神话真相。我的心灵中似乎的确运行着一种阴谋,它使我被恐惧和贪婪所奴役;它将整个世界以过滤谎言的方式呈现出来;它似乎和我大脑中卑鄙的一面相联系;它似乎操纵着我去破坏我真正的幸福。

光照派被声称对世界所做的一切,我们也在自己身上进行实践。会不会当我们看到邪恶的政治集团控制世界之时,我们实际上看到的只是我们自我的映射呢?

由于我们的集体机构反映了我们时代盛行的心理动力因素,新世界秩序阴谋的故事,尽管有它的瑕疵,会不会为我们了解我们社会的一些重要真相提供一个窗口呢?

共时性矩阵

上述新世界秩序假说的种种缺陷并非是其不值一提的原因,因为缺陷的本质指向一些深刻的真相。阴谋家掌握着一些重要的东西,一些比他们想象的其实更加激进、更加充满希望的东西。让我们考虑一个谜题:如果没有正常意义上的阴谋,那么该如何解释指向阴谋的证据呢?让我们先不要全盘否定(throw out the baby with the bathwater)。当你调查肯尼迪总动谋杀事件、或者非传统能源技术的压迫历史、或者癌症产业及替代治疗的非法化,或者任何其他的类似事件时,当然它们看起来像是一场阴谋。如若没有阴谋的话,那么我们必须要找到不会对一些不协调事件视而不见的第三种解释。

你可能认为没有这种证据。你可能认为在证据充分的人类能力中,不论是理解意义还是识别模式,没有一项能力足以解释阴谋家的结论。在怀着开放的心态阅读过大量的相关文献后,我很快对这种解释嗤之以鼻。即使忽略阴谋书籍中过滤证据的大量筛选偏见,许多的巧合仍然是非常显著的。而且,某些易于和阴谋阴谋假说联系在一起的事件也显得异乎寻常。好像是这些事件在全力乞求阴谋一样。例如,杰克·鲁比(Jack Ruby)杀害李·哈维·奥斯瓦尔德(Lee Harvey Oswald)后在法庭上谈论奥斯瓦尔德刺杀肯尼迪总统的动机。这看似一场阴谋,闻起来也像一种阴谋,但这真是一场阴谋吗?

在上一部分中,我提出或许当我们看到阴谋时,我们看到的只是自己内心世界的映射,只是在编造各种故事并将模式强加于现实。但或许我们可以看到更多:如果,除了使我们看到并不存在的模式,我们的感情和信仰其实是吸引了和它们相吻合的经验数据,那将会怎么样呢?比如,如果阴谋主义背后的精神能量对事件进行组织以便使其适应某种阴谋模式,使其看起来像是一场阴谋,即使并不存在真实的阴谋家,那又将会怎么样呢?

考虑一下和9.11相关的一些事件:那一天的众多军事演习阻碍并混淆了军事回应;事后余波中自相矛盾的官方报道,航空交通管制对飞行记录的压制;对相互矛盾的新闻广播的压制以及对新闻网站档案的清除;虽然劫机者的名字从未出现在乘客名单中(至少某些网站上是这样说的)但他们的名字却被奇迹般地迅速确定;后来使用来自政府生物武器实验室的炭疽所发动的炭疽袭击;9.12“箱子空运”(Bin Laden Airlift)疏散美国的家庭成员,等等。

上面的每个事件自身,孤立解释的时候都显得很无辜。但要说它们的交汇仅仅是出于偶然又让人难以置信。人们很容易去断定这些事件肯定是以某种方式精心策划的。

但如果它们真的是纯属巧合,只不过不是我们认为的那种巧合呢?或许巧合并不是任意的,而是被精心策划的(并非是被有意识的人类机构所策划的),所形成的模式符合了某种信仰系统、满足了某种心理需求。正如前文所述,有着某种情感或心理需求的人会被阴谋论所吸引。然而,反过来可能也是一样:看起来像阴谋的事件模式也会被存在于人类社会的需求所吸引。二者合在一起便形成了我们所谓的“共时性矩阵”(matrix of synchronicity),这对阴谋来说是大有裨益的。

然而,这种可能性揭开了更为深刻的问题。首先,它颠倒了因果关系的传统科学观念,完全是处于亚里士多德的“终极因”(final cause)王国中,是对“它的发生是为了…”的目的论解释。一大堆事件可以毫无目的的发生而同时又可以达成一些似乎有目的的事情,这种现象使热衷于简化主义(reductionism)的人心烦意乱。若要有目的,我们认为,必须要先有一个怀有目的的人。从这个角度看说,阴谋主义其实一点都不激进。阴谋论的信仰者虽然在意见上似乎大相径庭,但是他们在一个更加深层问题上和传统信仰者的意见却是一致的,即认为阴谋的大量证据意味着很有可能的确存在阴谋。他们只是在这种证据是否存在这一问题上意见相左。我和阴谋主义意见相左的地方有些不同。我接受(至少比怀疑主义者更加接受)他们的大部分证据,我也接受似乎事件是由阴谋精心策划的。但是,对于给出的原因,我发现新世界秩序的神话和传统观点一样令人不满,它只不过是从随机的噪音中提取了一些似是而非的信号而已。

我想强调“共时性矩阵”的解释真的是多么让人思想扭曲。我要说的是:“这些事件模式被拉进历史是因为我们需要它们来充实阴谋论,来表达驱动阴谋论的心理能量。”事件的自我组织方式似乎围绕着某种领域,使其产生了因果联系,即使这种联系并不存在。

影子现实

“共时性矩阵”揭开的第二个相关问题,更为深刻地挑战了我们的思维方式。因为怀疑主义者和阴谋主义者在另外一点上也是心照不宣的,即关于阴谋是否存在这一问题存在着客观事实。一方认为阴谋存在,而另一方则认为不存在。换言之,双方在客观性信条这方面的意见是一致的:一定存在着现实,一系列事件确实发生了;尽管我们对它们的知识尚不完整,但这些事件自身发生还是不发生是独立于我们对它们的知识之外的。然后,就只是寻找真相、寻找事实的事情了。

阴谋论的怀疑主义者和信仰者在客观性这方面意见一致,这一点并不奇怪,因为客观性是科学方法的根基。我们尽力去发现事物真正的本来面目,真正发生了什么。这样的措辞揭示了不容置疑的客观性假设。但是,如果这种假设是假的,又会怎么样呢?假如根本就没有独立存在的现实,假如现实只是自我和他人之间的对话观念(dialgoic construct),结果又会如何呢?我不想深入讨论这种想法的哲学历史,只能说我并非提倡唯我论(solipsism),也非常熟悉对它的经典驳斥。目前,只需要说阴谋或许处于本体论的中间状态,我们可以称其为“影子现实”(shadow reality)。它们所存在的王国不比美国国会那么真实 ,但却要比蝙蝠侠或者圣诞老人更加真实。*

新世界秩序阴谋存在的王国有其自己的历史、自己的逻辑、自己的情感情结、自己的经验。一个人越是深入这种信仰体系,就会发现越多可以证实这一点的经历。这种证实可能是非常真实的:因化学凝结尾(chemtrails)而产生的疾病、看见黑色无标记直升飞机、发现不明移植、匿名死亡威胁等等。

我曾经和一位9.11真相运动的领导者谈过一次话,她情绪稳定、大方可信、脚踏实地、宽宏大量、聪慧幽默。她讲述了在其行动主义顶峰时期所发生的几件怪事。她曾在高速公路上被一个七辆警车的小分队拦下、接着被拘役、几个小时后被释放,没有任何指控、没有任何解释、因此也没人承认曾经发生过的一切。她还收到过装满俄国文件的奇怪邮寄包裹。我们会认为,要么新世界秩序特务们精心策划了这些事件以示警告,要么她是在瞎编乱造或者有意撒谎。然而,在这里我想说的是,或许这些事件被吸引到她的身上是因为她已经深深地进入这种事情发生的现实之中。

让我们更进一步:秘密特务是什么情况?他存在还是不存在?或许他的存在也属于影子存在:他存在于新世界秩序的影子现实之中,而不是最广泛的共识现实之中。如果这个特务是一个保险代理人,他有时会暂时失忆,或者完全表现出另一种个性,从而做出无法解释的事情,比如将其祖父的俄国文件从其阁楼里带出并邮寄给任意一个地址,而这个地址碰巧是我朋友的,那结果会如何呢?大卫·艾克这位首要的阴谋论作家,在陈述下边这句话的时候也表达了类似的想法:“光照派最重要的特务经常躲藏在表面上‘普普通通’的生活之后,同时又主导着他的日程、出席着人类的献祭仪式。”这些特务会不会被他们的普通生活所隐藏,甚至连他们自己都没有发现呢?

如若你去询问那些把她拉走的警官,而他们表面上非常真诚地宣称自己不记得了,那会怎么样呢?但假如有个人说:“有意思,你说的听起来很熟悉——我想我曾做过类似的梦。”然后,在催眠回归(hypnotic regression)的情况下,他回忆起那位女士所描述的事件。这是一种“真实”的记忆吗?你进一步询问后发现其中的几个警官那一天有一段“时间缺失”(missing time)。似乎他们把那位女士拉走了而后又忘记了。是否有一些意识机构迫使他们这样做呢?抑或这也只是上述“共时性矩阵”的一个片段?

沿着这些问题,我们可能最终会对“我的朋友‘真的’被七辆警车拉走”这句话的意思表示怀疑。我们可以去查看警察记录——这件事发生过吗?我们找不到到任何记录,当然找不到——记录已经被抹去了。但或许我们的确找到了记录,而第二次去核实的时候它又消失了。或许我们,作为调查者,像被吸进了兔子洞(rabbit hole)一样:我们调查的越多,发现的证据越多,但证据的充分性只是对我们自己而言,而非对他人而言。当我们尽力去说服他人之时,我们所需要的文件得不到了,关键来源神秘消失或者改头换面了…… 我们开始怀疑自己的理性。我们似乎生活在一个阴谋的世界里,这阴谋为我们而存在而不是为大部分其他人而存在。然而,这并非全部存在于我们的头脑之中——真实的事情也发生在我们身上。

似乎事件是为你而发生,而非为我而发生。在一个宇宙中,警察袭击确有发生;而在另一个宇宙中却不会发生——且这两个宇宙共存于地球上。沉浸于客观性的信条中,我们会认为存在着一种“事实”,一种独立于我们知识之外的或发生或没发生的绝对现实。但或许现实并非如此,或许现实是相关的、共生的、从来不是“凭空存在”的。

这些“钻兔洞”(down-the-rabbit-hole)现实的影子性质在某些阴谋主义作品中浮现了出来,这些作品谈到了卑鄙的外星种族,真正的傀儡主人,他们从第四维度控制着照明派。“第四维度”(fourth dimension)的提出等于含蓄地承认这些生物并不“存在”于我们基于客观性世界观的三维笛卡尔矩阵(Cartesian matrix)。他们位于中间状态,位于麦克·乔丹和圣诞老人中间的某个地方。

新世界秩序普遍信仰的另外一条线索是在我们的地下存在着一个由隧道、秘密基地和整个城市构成的巨大网络,那是一个完整的类似世界。他们真是存在于地下吗,还是存在于我们的下意识之中?还是两者都不是或者两者都是呢?当你去寻找他们时,你会找到他们,或者当你处于合适的心里状态时他们会来找你。你从退休的能源部官员那里找到了神秘的地图、不祥的参照、诡异的故事。但是,如果你以不同的心态和不同的状态去研究它们,你会发现没有什么是无法解释的。地图可以有其他的解释,前任官员似乎并不可信。对你而言,你找不到任何东西。矛盾的是,阴谋主义者和怀疑主义者都是对的。

在我所遇到的大部分机构中,有一种沉默阴谋隐藏了机构的真正目标。这种秘密的阴影机构和其看见成分几乎是共同延伸的(coextensive),这就意味着我们每个人都是奴役人类的阴谋成员。我们是受害者,同时也是施害者。我们所有人都曾为将权力和控制最大化的“卑鄙日程”(reptilian agenda)贡献过力量。这个日程有个人的作用也有集体的作用。从个人的角度来说,那是因为自负甚至变态行为被投射到世界的秘密统治者身上。从集体的角度来说,那是因为机构,甚至包括那些曾经理想远大的机构,容易最终屈服于为求生存的既得利益。它们的使命陈述变成了马后炮,变成了自我保护这一秘密目的的理由。当然,从隐喻的角度来说,新世界秩序假说是正确的。沿着“钻兔洞”的思维逻辑,它不仅是正确是,而且也是真实的。

对于沉浸于客观性的人来说,现实和真相的分歧是令人迷惑的。影子现实又可以相互影响,这就让他们更加迷惑了。就像是在量子实验中,粒子的每一种可能状态都会对可观测系统产生影响,即使进行测量的时候,我们发现粒子只是占据了其中一种状态。换句话说,仅仅是粒子占据某种状态的可能性产生了物理影响。

与之类似,或许我们的世界占据着一种叠加状态,其中之一便是新世界秩序状态,我们可以看到这种状态甚至在不“真实”的情况下所产生的干扰影响。新世界秩序的现实,以及传统解释的现实,都是不确定的。只有当我们开始去调查它的时候,我们才能攻克这一波函数(wave function),进入一种或者另外一种影子现实。

新世界秩序的神话真相

无论我们把自己想象得多么理性、多么证据确凿,最终我们的信念都是基于我们的信仰。大卫·艾克的读者实际上很少去做跑腿工作以核实其来源,以及来源的来源,它们中的许多其实已经消失了。如果新世界秩序阴谋家是正确的,那么我们所被告知的一切就都是错误的。对有些人而言,这一点非常具有解放性;而对另一些人而言,这一点却令人非常不安。前者倾向于相信;后者倾向于拒绝;这种倾向然后用事实和证据将自己包裹。因此,事实和证据很少会改变任何人的想法——它们只是外在的症状而非我们信念的原因。只有当改变生活的事件改变了一个人的倾向时,接纳新信念的空间才被腾了出来。

我们的信念以及信念之下的状态的确会不断演化,有时还会发生巨变,特别是当一个人的世界由于某种原因崩溃瓦解之时。因为我们生活在一个危机四伏的时代,越来越多人的世界正在瓦解,对古老确定性的破解在未来只会与日俱增。在这样的时代,我们偶尔会面临选择的时刻,我们可以决定自己相信什么。但是,单单认识到这一证据是不足以指导信念的,我们该如何选择呢?

我建议我们选择一种信念以及与之相伴的对应心里状态,这种选择要基于它在多么程度上能够和我们真实的自己及想要成为的自己相契合。这并不意味着要忽略证据,因为相当多的异常事件向我们表明我们的个人神话正在瓦解,我们即将铩羽而归。但这却意味着要考虑每种信念状态的感觉如何,关于世界、关于人类、关于自己它暗示了什么。它会如何影响下列问题的答案:“我是谁?它满足了什么需求?它如何造成伤害?它会引发何种情感?”你可以抽出一点时间看看阴谋网站上的文章,像卡米洛特项目(Project Camelot)网站或者9.11真相网站,然后再读一读来自“超自然现象科学调查委员会”(CSICOP)的揭露文章,注意一下其中每个人的不同感受方式:或感到满意或感到反感、或感到安心或感到威胁。接下来,我想请你用我在本文中所提出的第三种选择重新感受一遍。

第三种选择保留了新世界秩序假说的神话真相,以及其阐释框架之外的真相。其中的两个真相如下:

(1)一种有害于人类福祉的邪恶力量从幕后操作 着人类事件的进程,寻求对每个人的完全控制。

除了邪恶的光照派,那种力量会不会是金钱呢?有人说全球精英通过金钱系统控制着人类,但会不会是金钱系统在控制着全球精英呢?我相信你们中的许多人都懂得被金钱奴役的感觉。富人也无法幸免,他们拥有的金钱越多就越会被金钱逻辑所奴役。金钱真的是一只“隐形的手”,一种“使世界转动”的力量。而且,金钱迫使我们走向的尽头充满了痛苦和丑陋:破坏自然与文化、破坏社会与健康、破坏地球上的一切美好。

甚至是那些我们可能认为最应该为我们世界的不公平和掠夺受到责备的人,他们在行动的时候也几乎意识不到自己的所作所为会产生什么样的影响。无论他们是寻求数字(利润)最大化的对冲基金(hedge fund)经理还是寻求增加“美国利益”的政治领导人,对他们来说这些符号背后的现实是模糊的。他们是自我宣传的受害者,作恶的同时却真诚地认为自己是在行善。金字塔中部和底部的人,无知和受骗的人,很容易这样认为。更难以理解的是,为何这也适用于金字塔顶部的人,然而事实却是这同样适用于,甚至更适用于,他们。他们才是所有受骗者中最无可救药的。

金钱并非是邪恶控制力量的唯一代表。各种意识形态以及它们的对应存在状态,特别是我称为“分离与上升”(Separation and Ascent)的那些,会产生更为强大的邪恶控制力量。它们创造了一种文化、一种自我,试图将安全、可预测性与控制最大化;试图测量和量化世界;试图消除风险、建立责任;试图将财产权和法律规范延伸到生活的各个角落;试图监控每个人、追踪每件事。这种计划的目标正是阴谋主义者最为恐惧的:极权主义的“一个世界政府”(one world government)。

然而,我们可能会说,并非是金字塔顶部的人控制了其他人,而是金字塔本身控制了所有人。但是,这个金字塔,这个建立在我们文明界定性神话(defining myths)之上的塔,现在正在我们眼前土崩瓦解。

“我并非是说: 不是残酷的种族,而是金钱系统(或者分离神话)。”相反,它们指的是同样的东西,只是看待的角度不同。在一种现实中,它是金钱;在另一种现实中,它是外星人。

(2)我们受制于奴役我们的意念控制技术。

新世界秩序阴谋主义者假定了未来主义意念控制的存在,这种意念控制基于外星技术,由通讯设施发射,通过手机、电视等进行传播,或者通过玄奥的符号系统、潜意识信息及神经语言编程技术进行传播。这种想法有一定的真相,但其中的真相要比阴谋主义者意识到的更加深刻。电视不仅是通过其内容使我们变傻,而且通过媒介本身的能力,即夺取我们大脑构建图像的能力并创造知识依赖(intellectual dependency)。更加微妙的是,广告这种大众媒体叙事,影响了我们的思想和欲望,结果导致我们害怕自由但又几乎不能反抗。但相比于我们的文化机构在逻辑上对我们思维范围和思维方式的限制,这些技术就显得相当笨拙与明显。教育、科学、宗教、医学、养育子女、法律系统,这一切都会对我们的思维方式产生影响。但最为普遍强大以致处处可见的意念控制技术,无疑是语言背身。

当我们的语言充满了二元论(dualsim),我们能否克服二元论?当我们的语言在其本的结构中就假定了分离(separation),我们能否超越分离?确实存在一些词会限制我们微妙地服务于现状的思想。比如,当我说现实并不是我想的那样,通过使用“是”这个词,我强化了自己在尽力否认的独立存在的现实。 更加普遍的是,作为一种符号系统,语言使我们与其应该代表的现实相脱离,使我们更容易以其他方式来对待世界。有时,在冥想或神秘经历中,语言的面纱被掀开,直接世界的丰富被暴露,与之相伴的是我们被奴役的深度。

即使意念控制的系统已经达到极致,它也仍在土崩瓦解之中。我在“无处不在的谎言矩阵”(The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies)所谈到的语言贬值引发了普遍的愤世嫉俗、对所有言论的不相信,使得意念控制的工具日趋无效。我们如此习惯于一个充满图像和大肆宣传的世界,以致于我们很少相信我们被告知的一切。从新世界秩序的角度,我么可以说光照派正惊慌失措,迫不及待地加强他们意念控制的努力,但成效却越来越少。

一个新故事

还有很多其他的神话真相及其变体可以增加到这一列表。对我而言,它们会产生超越解释的共鸣。下边的一些可供大家玩味:“权力机构正将我们带向一个秘密恐怖的目的地。”“我们中的许多人通过创伤被编程,以实现这一目的。”“阴谋的仆人外表和行为都和普通人一样——你永远无法辨别他们。”(或许你就是其中之一却浑然不知。)“我们信以为真的东西都是幻觉。”“无形的影子机构隐藏于有形机构之后,实现着和其所述目的相异甚至相反的目的。”新世界秩序的故事用自己的语言为这些神话真相穿上了新装,这样一来便提供了一种宝贵的服务,供人们享用。

然而,在某些方面,曾经具有启发性的故事却变得具有限制性。正如我已经解释过的那样,阴谋论最终会使大部分人陷入一种绝望,甚至瘫痪。当这种情况发生之时,当新世界秩序的故事发挥完其有用性之时,它将步入一个更大的新故事之中。

这个新故事说,或许你一生怀有并最终将你吸引到阴谋主义的持久直觉是真的。世界被一种秘密力量所统治,这种力量将我们奴役却不带任何善意的目的。但阴谋者不是他人,正是我们、你、我和每一个人。控制和统治的秘密行程已经存在于我们每个人身上,一个体现这一行程的世界已经在我们周围形成,被我们所怀有的阴暗、卑鄙能量所吸引。就像伏地魔(Voldemort)因为无法容忍哈利波特心中的爱而无法拥有他一样,世界的统治力量也无法容忍我们对关联性(connectedness)与日俱增的认识。随着分离之墙的坍塌,爱,这种合为一体的感觉体验,在扩散。分离之墙从来都不是牢不可破的。今天,甚至是那些受到最大欺骗的人——权力精英——也开始认识到这一点。光照派的统治已经油尽灯枯了。其统治似乎已经达到了史无前例的高度,而这恰恰表明了它的死亡将近,阳极必阴。

善恶之战只不过是个谎言而已。恶的概念或许正是恶最大的仆人。“有恶这种东西吗?”,有人曾经问我。“在你问之前,答案是否定的;在你问之后,答案是肯定的。”但最终,恶及其新世界秩序的表达形式,或者我所称的分离过程,其目的和宇宙中的其他事物是类似的。我们开始了一段各种形式的分离旅程,我们到达了它的极端,回到我们的联盟(Union)后,因为旅程的丰富我们到达了更高层次的复杂性。最后一次使用新世界秩序神话这个词,我们可能会说那些卑鄙的最高统治者或者光照派已经实现了他们的目的。尽管有些人试图抓住它不放,但迟早他们都会接受他们的时代已经结束,他们将退出历史舞台。

然而,更大的真相(包含却又不驳斥次要真相)是光照派,卑鄙者就是你和我。在这一点上,我说的也是真实的。你难道感觉不到你身上过时的那一部分,无穷尽地试图控制世界、主导他人、最大化个人利益的那一部分吗?你的努力所带来的只有痛苦,这难道不是越来越明显吗?无论你试图怎样通过加强努力来消除失败,最终的结果还是注定要失败,这难道还不够明显吗?对于我们所有人而言,剔除我们自己身上那一部分的时候到了,这样我们就能步入服务、步入信任、共同步入更加美好的世界,我们心里清楚这是完全有可能的。

*致圣诞老人及斗篷十字军(Caped Crusader):请不要生气。我援引你们的名字只是出于修辞效果,而非因为我真的怀疑你们的存在。

 



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Love-gift to the Future

The Paradox of Busy

On the Great Green Wall, And Being Useful

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Division, Reunion, and some other stuff

Volatility

Into the Space Between

Wanna Join Me in a News Fast?

And the Music Played the Band

Comet of Deliverance

Divide, Conquer; Unite, Heal

A Path Will Rise to Meet Us

A Gathering of the Tribe

The True Story of the Sith

The Human Family

Elements of Refusal

The America that Almost Was and Yet May Be

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Time to Push

Some Stuff I’m Reading

The Rehearsal is Over

Beyond Industrial Medicine

A Temple of this Earth

The Sacrificial King

How It Is Going to Be

Charles Eisenstein, Antisemite

Mob Morality and the Unvaxxed

Fascism and the Antifestival

The Death of the Festival

Source Temple and the Great Reset

To Reason with a Madman

From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope

World on Fire

We Can Do Better Than This

The Banquet of Whiteness

The Cure of the Earth

Numb

The Conspiracy Myth

The Coronation

Extinction and the Revolution of Love

The Amazon: How do we heal a burning heart?

Building a Peace Narrative

Xylella: Supervillain or Symptom

Making the Universe Great Again

Every Act a Ceremony

The Polarization Trap

I, Orc

Living in the Gift

A Little Heartbreak

Initiation into a Living Planet

Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling

Olive Trees and the Cry of the Land

Our New, Happy Life? The Ideology of Development

Opposition to GMOs is Neither Unscientific nor Immoral

The Age of We Need Each Other

Institutes for Technologies of Reunion

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This Is How War Begins

The Lid is Off

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Scaling Down

The Fertile Ground of Bewilderment

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Psychedelics and Systems Change

Mutiny of the Soul Revisited

Why I Don’t Do Internet Marketing

Zika and the Mentality of Control

In a Rhino, Everything

Grief and Carbon Reductionism

The Revolution is Love

Kind is the New Cool

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves

From Nonviolence to Service

An Experiment in Gift Economics

Misogyny and the Healing of the Masculine

Sustainable Development: Something New or More of the Same?

The Need for Venture Science

The EcoSexual Awakening

“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.”

Harder to Hide

Reflections on Damanhur

On Immigration

The Humbler Realms, Part 2

The Humbler Realms

A Shift in Values Everywhere

Letter to my Younger Self

Aluna: A Message to Little Brother

Raising My Children in Trust

Qualitative Dimensions of Collective Intelligence: Subjectivity, Consciousness, and Soul

The Woman Who Chose to Plant Corn

The Oceans are Not Worth $24 trillion

The Baby in the Playpen

What Are We Greedy For?

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The Cynic and the Boatbuilder, Revisited

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What is Action?

Wasting Time

The Space Between Stories

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At This Moment, I Feel Held

A Roundabout Endorsement

Imagine a 3-D World

Presentation to Uplift Festival, 12.14.2014

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A Neat Inversion

The Waters of Heterodoxy

Employment in Gift Culture

Localization Beyond Economics

Discipline on the Bus

We Don’t Know: Reflections on the New Story Summit

A Miracle in Scientific American

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Why Another Conference?

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How to Bore the Children

Post-Capitalism

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The End of War

The Birds are Sad

A Slice of Humble Pie

Bending Reality: But who is the Bender?

The Mysterious Paths by Which Intentions Bear Fruit

The Little Things that Get Under My Skin

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Climate Change: The Bigger Picture

Development in the Ecological Age

The campaign against Drax aims to reveal the perverse effects of biofuels

Gateway drug, to what?

Concern about Overpopulation is a Red Herring; Consumption’s the Problem

Imperialism and Ceremony in Bali

Let’s be Honest: Real Sustainability may not make Business Sense

Vivienne Westwood is Right: We Need a Law against Ecocide

2013: Hope or Despair?

2013: A Year that Pierced Me

Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order

Fear of a Living Planet

Pyramid Schemes and the Monetization of Everything

The Next Step for Digital Currency

The Cycle of Terror

TED: A Choice Point

The Cynic and the Boatbuilder

Latent Healing

2013: The Space between Stories

We Are Unlimited Potential: A Talk with Joseph Chilton Pearce

Why Occupy’s plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent

Genetically Modifying and Patenting Seeds isn’t the Answer

The Lovely Lady from Nestle

An Alien at the Tech Conference

We Can’t Grow Ourselves out of Debt

Money and the Divine Masculine

Naivete, and the Light in their Eyes

The Healing of Congo

Why Rio +20 Failed

Permaculture and the Myth of Scarcity

For Facebook, A Modest Proposal

A Coal Pile in the Ballroom

A Review of Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years

Gift Economics Resurgent

The Way up is Down

Sacred Economics: Money, the Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Design and Strategy Principles for Local Currency

The Lost Marble

To Bear Witness and to Speak the Truth

Thrive: The Story is Wrong but the Spirit is Right

Occupy Wall Street: No Demand is Big Enough

Elephants: Please Don’t Go

Why the Age of the Guru is Over

Gift Economics and Reunion in the Digital Age

A Circle of Gifts

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Truth and Magic in the Third Dimension

Rituals for Lover Earth

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A Gathering of the Tribe

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Waiting on the Big One

In the Miracle

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Mutiny of the Soul

The Age of Water

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Pain: A Call for Attention

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The Testicular Age

Who Will Collect the Garbage?

The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies

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A 28-year Lie: The Wrong Lesson

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All Hallows’ Eve

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Grades: A Gun to Your Head

Human Nature Denied

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Humanity Grows Up

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Charles Eisenstein

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The Coronation

For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous. Likewise for the radical changes we are making in our social behavior, economy, and the role of government in our lives. Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important. What else might we achieve, in coherency? What do we want to achieve, and what world shall we create? That is always the next question when anyone awakens to their power.

Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether there might be something we’ve seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future. We might ask, after so many have lost their jobs, whether all of them are the jobs the world most needs, and whether our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now – civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life – might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore?

For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the collapse, the break was imminent, just around the bend, but it didn’t come and it didn’t come. Imagine walking a road, and up ahead you see it, you see the crossroads. It’s just over the hill, around the bend, past the woods. Cresting the hill, you see you were mistaken, it was a mirage, it was farther away than you thought. You keep walking. Sometimes it comes into view, sometimes it disappears from sight and it seems like this road goes on forever. Maybe there isn’t a crossroads. No, there it is again! Always it is almost here. Never is it here.

Now, all of a sudden, we go around a bend and here it is. We stop, hardly able to believe that now it is happening, hardly able to believe, after years of confinement to the road of our predecessors, that now we finally have a choice. We are right to stop, stunned at the newness of our situation. Because of the hundred paths that radiate out in front of us, some lead in the same direction we’ve already been headed. Some lead to hell on earth. And some lead to a world more healed and more beautiful than we ever dared believe to be possible.

I write these words with the aim of standing here with you – bewildered, scared maybe, yet also with a sense of new possibility – at this point of diverging paths. Let us gaze down some of them and see where they lead.

* * *

I heard this story last week from a friend. She was in a grocery store and saw a woman sobbing in the aisle. Flouting social distancing rules, she went to the woman and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” the woman said, “that is the first time anyone has hugged me for ten days.”

Going without hugs for a few weeks seems a small price to pay if it will stem an epidemic that could take millions of lives. There is a strong argument for social distancing in the near term: to prevent a sudden surge of Covid cases from overwhelming the medical system. I would like to put that argument in a larger context, especially as we look to the long term. Lest we institutionalize distancing and reengineer society around it, let us be aware of what choice we are making and why.

The same goes for the other changes happening around the coronavirus epidemic. Some commentators have observed how it plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control. A frightened public accepts abridgments of civil liberties that are otherwise hard to justify, such as the tracking of everyone’s movements at all times, forcible medical treatment, involuntary quarantine, restrictions on travel and the freedom of assembly, censorship of what the authorities deem to be disinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, and military policing of civilians. Many of these were underway before Covid-19; since its advent, they have been irresistible. The same goes for the automation of commerce; the transition from participation in sports and entertainment to remote viewing; the migration of life from public to private spaces; the transition away from place-based schools toward online education, the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, and the movement of human work and leisure onto screens. Covid-19 is accelerating preexisting trends, political, economic, and social.

While all the above are, in the short term, justified on the grounds of flattening the curve (the epidemiological growth curve), we are also hearing a lot about a “new normal”; that is to say, the changes may not be temporary at all. Since the threat of infectious disease, like the threat of terrorism, never goes away, control measures can easily become permanent. If we were going in this direction anyway, the current justification must be part of a deeper impulse. I will analyze this impulse in two parts: the reflex of control, and the war on death. Thus understood, an initiatory opportunity emerges, one that we are seeing already in the form of the solidarity, compassion, and care that Covid-19 has inspired.

The Reflex of Control

At the current writing, official statistics say that about 25,000 people have died from Covid-19. By the time it runs its course, the death toll could be ten times or a hundred times bigger, or even, if the most alarming guesses are right, a thousand times bigger. Each one of these people has loved ones, family and friends. Compassion and conscience call us to do what we can to avert unnecessary tragedy. This is personal for me: my own infinitely dear but frail mother is among the most vulnerable to a disease that kills mostly the aged and the infirm.

What will the final numbers be? That question is impossible to answer at the time of this writing. Early reports were alarming; for weeks the official number from Wuhan, circulated endlessly in the media, was a shocking 3.4%. That, coupled with its highly contagious nature, pointed to tens of millions of deaths worldwide, or even as many as 100 million. More recently, estimates have plunged as it has become apparent that most cases are mild or asymptomatic. Since testing has been skewed towards the seriously ill, the death rate has looked artificially high. In South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people with mild symptoms have been tested, the reported case fatality rate is around 1%. In Germany, whose testing also extends to many with mild symptoms, the fatality rate is 0.4%. A recent paper in the journal Science argues that 86% of infections have been undocumented, which points to a much lower mortality rate than the current case fatality rate would indicate.

The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship bolsters this view. Of the 3,711 people on board, about 20% have tested positive for the virus; less than half of those had symptoms, and eight have died. A cruise ship is a perfect setting for contagion, and there was plenty of time for the virus to spread on board before anyone did anything about it, yet only a fifth were infected. Furthermore, the cruise ship’s population was heavily skewed (as are most cruise ships) toward the elderly: nearly a third of the passengers were over age 70, and more than half were over age 60. A research team concluded from the large number of asymptomatic cases that the true fatality rate in China is around 0.5%. That is still five times higher than flu. Based on the above (and adjusting for much younger demographics in Africa and South and Southeast Asia) my guess is about 200,000-300,000 deaths in the US – more if the medical system is overwhelmed, less if infections are spread out over time – and 3 million globally. Those are serious numbers. Not since the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968/9 has the world experienced anything like it.

My guesses could easily be off by an order of magnitude. Every day the media reports the total number of Covid-19 cases, but no one has any idea what the true number is, because only a tiny proportion of the population has been tested. If tens of millions have the virus, asymptomatically, we would not know it. Further complicating the matter is the high rate of false positives for existing testing, possibly as high as 80%. (And see here for even more alarming uncertainties about test accuracy.) Let me repeat: no one knows what is really happening, including me. Let us be aware of two contradictory tendencies in human affairs. The first is the tendency for hysteria to feed on itself, to exclude data points that don’t play into the fear, and to create the world in its image. The second is denial, the irrational rejection of information that might disrupt normalcy and comfort. As Daniel Schmactenberger asks, How do you know what you believe is true?

In the face of the uncertainty, I’d like to make a prediction: The crisis will play out so that we never will know. If the final death tally, which will itself be the subject of dispute, is lower than feared, some will say that is because the controls worked. Others will say it is because the disease wasn’t as dangerous as we were told.

To me, the most baffling puzzle is why at the present writing there seem to be no new cases in China. The government didn’t initiate its lockdown until well after the virus was established. It should have spread widely during Chinese New Year, when every plane, train, and bus is packed with people traveling all over the country. What is going on here? Again, I don’t know, and neither do you.

Whether the final global death toll is 50,000 or 500,000 or 5 million, let’s look at some other numbers to get some perspective. My point is NOT that Covid isn’t so bad and we shouldn’t do anything. Bear with me. Last year, according to the FAO, five million children worldwide died of hunger (among 162 million who are stunted and 51 million who are wasted). That is 200 times more people than have died so far from Covid-19, yet no government has declared a state of emergency or asked that we radically alter our way of life to save them. Nor do we see a comparable level of alarm and action around suicide – the mere tip of an iceberg of despair and depression – which kills over a million people a year globally and 50,000 in the USA. Or drug overdoses, which kill 70,000 in the USA, the autoimmunity epidemic, which affects 23.5 million (NIH figure) to 50 million (AARDA), or obesity, which afflicts well over 100 million. Why, for that matter, are we not in a frenzy about averting nuclear armageddon or ecological collapse, but, to the contrary, pursue choices that magnify those very dangers?

Please, the point here is not that we haven’t changed our ways to stop children from starving, so we shouldn’t change them for Covid either. It is the contrary: If we can change so radically for Covid-19, we can do it for these other conditions too. Let us ask why are we able to unify our collective will to stem this virus, but not to address other grave threats to humanity. Why, until now, has society been so frozen in its existing trajectory?

The answer is revealing. Simply, in the face of world hunger, addiction, autoimmunity, suicide, or ecological collapse, we as a society do not know what to do. Our go-to crisis responses, all of which are some version of control, aren’t very effective in addressing these conditions. Now along comes a contagious epidemic, and finally we can spring into action. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies. That makes Covid a convenient receptacle for our inchoate fears, a place to channel our growing sense of helplessness in the face of the changes overtaking the world. Covid-19 is a threat that we know how to meet. Unlike so many of our other fears, Covid-19 offers a plan.

Our civilization’s established institutions are increasingly helpless to meet the challenges of our time. How they welcome a challenge that they finally can meet. How eager they are to embrace it as a paramount crisis. How naturally their systems of information management select for the most alarming portrayals of it. How easily the public joins the panic, embracing a threat that the authorities can handle as a proxy for the various unspeakable threats that they cannot.

Today, most of our challenges no longer succumb to force. Our antibiotics and surgery fail to meet the surging health crises of autoimmunity, addiction, and obesity. Our guns and bombs, built to conquer armies, are useless to erase hatred abroad or keep domestic violence out of our homes. Our police and prisons cannot heal the breeding conditions of crime. Our pesticides cannot restore ruined soil. Covid-19 recalls the good old days when the challenges of infectious diseases succumbed to modern medicine and hygiene, at the same time as the Nazis succumbed to the war machine, and nature itself succumbed, or so it seemed, to technological conquest and improvement. It recalls the days when our weapons worked and the world seemed indeed to be improving with each technology of control.

What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outside, something Other. When the cause of the problem is something intimate to ourselves, like homelessness or inequality, addiction or obesity, there is nothing to war against. We may try to install an enemy, blaming, for example, the billionaires, Vladimir Putin, or the Devil, but then we miss key information, such as the ground conditions that allow billionaires (or viruses) to replicate in the first place.

If there is one thing our civilization is good at, it is fighting an enemy. We welcome opportunities to do what we are good at, which prove the validity of our technologies, systems, and worldview. And so, we manufacture enemies, cast problems like crime, terrorism, and disease into us-versus-them terms, and mobilize our collective energies toward those endeavors that can be seen that way. Thus, we single out Covid-19 as a call to arms, reorganizing society as if for a war effort, while treating as normal the possibility of nuclear armageddon, ecological collapse, and five million children starving.

The Conspiracy Narrative

Because Covid-19 seems to justify so many items on the totalitarian wish list, there are those who believe it to be a deliberate power play. It is not my purpose to advance that theory nor to debunk it, although I will offer some meta-level comments. First a brief overview.

The theories (there are many variants) talk about Event 201 (sponsored by the Gates Foundation, CIA, etc. last September), and a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation white paper detailing a scenario called “Lockstep,” both of which lay out the authoritarian response to a hypothetical pandemic. They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years. All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that has come. Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for:

  • • The tracking of people’s movements at all times (because coronavirus)
  • • The suspension of freedom of assembly (because coronavirus)
  • • The military policing of civilians (because coronavirus)
  • • Extrajudicial, indefinite detention (quarantine, because coronavirus)
  • • The banning of cash (because coronavirus)
  • • Censorship of the Internet (to combat disinformation, because coronavirus)
  • • Compulsory vaccination and other medical treatment, establishing the state’s sovereignty over our bodies (because coronavirus)
  • • The classification of all activities and destinations into the expressly permitted and the expressly forbidden (you can leave your house for this, but not that), eliminating the un-policed, non-juridical gray zone. That totality is the very essence of totalitarianism. Necessary now though, because, well, coronavirus.

This is juicy material for conspiracy theories. For all I know, one of those theories could be true; however, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control. Where does this tilt come from? It is woven into civilization’s DNA. For millennia, civilization (as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures) has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world: domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason. The ascent of control accelerated with the Scientific Revolution, which launched “progress” to new heights: the ordering of reality into objective categories and quantities, and the mastering of materiality with technology. Finally, the social sciences promised to use the same means and methods to fulfill the ambition (which goes back to Plato and Confucius) to engineer a perfect society.

Those who administer civilization will therefore welcome any opportunity to strengthen their control, for after all, it is in service to a grand vision of human destiny: the perfectly ordered world, in which disease, crime, poverty, and perhaps suffering itself can be engineered out of existence. No nefarious motives are necessary. Of course they would like to keep track of everyone – all the better to ensure the common good. For them, Covid-19 shows how necessary that is. “Can we afford democratic freedoms in light of the coronavirus?” they ask. “Must we now, out of necessity, sacrifice those for our own safety?” It is a familiar refrain, for it has accompanied other crises in the past, like 9/11.

To rework a common metaphor, imagine a man with a hammer, stalking around looking for a reason to use it. Suddenly he sees a nail sticking out. He’s been looking for a nail for a long time, pounding on screws and bolts and not accomplishing much. He inhabits a worldview in which hammers are the best tools, and the world can be made better by pounding in the nails. And here is a nail! We might suspect that in his eagerness he has placed the nail there himself, but it hardly matters. Maybe it isn’t even a nail that’s sticking out, but it resembles one enough to start pounding. When the tool is at the ready, an opportunity will arise to use it.

And I will add, for those inclined to doubt the authorities, maybe this time it really is a nail. In that case, the hammer is the right tool – and the principle of the hammer will emerge the stronger, ready for the screw, the button, the clip, and the tear.

Either way, the problem we deal with here is much deeper than that of overthrowing an evil coterie of Illuminati. Even if they do exist, given the tilt of civilization, the same trend would persist without them, or a new Illuminati would arise to assume the functions of the old.

True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen. It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question.

What I will say next is relevant whether or not SARS-CoV2 is a genetically engineered bioweapon, is related to 5G rollout, is being used to prevent “disclosure,” is a Trojan horse for totalitarian world government, is more deadly than we’ve been told, is less deadly than we’ve been told, originated in a Wuhan biolab, originated at Fort Detrick, or is exactly as the CDC and WHO have been telling us. It applies even if everyone is totally wrong about the role of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the current epidemic. I have my opinions, but if there is one thing I have learned through the course of this emergency is that I don’t really know what is happening. I don’t see how anyone can, amidst the seething farrago of news, fake news, rumors, suppressed information, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and politicized narratives that fill the Internet. I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints? Let’s be humble in our beliefs: it is a matter of life and death.

The War on Death

My 7-year-old son hasn’t seen or played with another child for two weeks. Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save 100,000 lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values.

Let’s replace the foregoing questions with something more personal, that pierces the inhuman utilitarian thinking that turns people into statistics and sacrifices some of them for something else. The relevant question for me is, Would I ask all the nation’s children to forego play for a season, if it would reduce my mother’s risk of dying, or for that matter, my own risk? Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? This is not to devalue Mom’s life or my own, both of which are precious. I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues. What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die?

The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom. There is no easy formula to balance these values.

Over my lifetime I’ve seen society place more and more emphasis on safety, security, and risk reduction. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised – behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on. Writ large, it takes the form of the security state.

The mantra “safety first” comes from a value system that makes survival top priority, and that depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of limits. Other cultures had different priorities. For instance, many traditional and indigenous cultures are much less protective of children, as documented in Jean Liedloff’s classic, The Continuum Concept. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement. I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Thus we have a medical system in which most decisions are based on calculations of risk, and in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician’s ultimate failure, is death. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed.

The ultimate fulfillment of civilization’s program of control would be to triumph over death itself. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. Even its obsession with money and property – extensions of the self, as the word “mine” indicates – expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made permanent through its attachments. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other. Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which (in the story of separation) is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.

I asked a friend, a medical doctor who has spent time with the Q’ero on Peru, whether the Q’ero would (if they could) intubate someone to prolong their life. “Of course not,” she said. “They would summon the shaman to help him die well.” Dying well (which isn’t necessarily the same as dying painlessly) is not much in today’s medical vocabulary. No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well. That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe.

But is it? Consider this perspective from Dr. Lissa Rankin: “Not all of us would want to be in an ICU, isolated from loved ones with a machine breathing for us, at risk of dying alone- even if it means they might increase their chance of survival. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come…. Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home.”

When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self. Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships. The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe?

Totalitarianism – the perfection of control – is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control? Thus Orwell identified perpetual war as a crucial component of the Party’s rule.

Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc. are subordinate. Covid-19 offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever. Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are. And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully.

Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it. Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid-19 has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it. On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits. Some of these may die too.

What world shall we live in?

How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate? Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities (as selected by political ones)? Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear?

Covid-19 will eventually subside, but the threat of infectious disease is permanent. Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations. Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?

It is not hard to imagine, especially if social distancing is successful, that Covid-19 persists beyond the 18 months we are being told to expect for it to run its course. It is not hard to imagine that new viruses will emerge during that time. It is not hard to imagine that emergency measures will become normal (so as to forestall the possibility of another outbreak), just as the state of emergency declared after 9/11 is still in effect today. It is not hard to imagine that (as we are being told), reinfection is possible, so that the disease will never run its course. That means that the temporary changes in our way of life may become permanent.

To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more? Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress? Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future?

The same question applies to the administrative tools required to control the movement of people and the flow of information. At the present writing, the entire country is moving toward lockdown. In some countries, one must print out a form from a government website in order to leave the house. It reminds me of school, where one’s location must be authorized at all times. Or of prison. Do we envision a future of electronic hall passes, a system where freedom of movement is governed by state administrators and their software at all times, permanently? Where every movement is tracked, either permitted or prohibited? And, for our protection, where information that threatens our health (as decided, again, by various authorities) is censored for our own good? In the face of an emergency, like unto a state of war, we accept such restrictions and temporarily surrender our freedoms. Similar to 9/11, Covid-19 trumps all objections.

For the first time in history, the technological means exist to realize such a vision, at least in the developed world (for example, using cellphone location data to enforce social distancing; see also here). After a bumpy transition, we could live in a society where nearly all of life happens online: shopping, meeting, entertainment, socializing, working, even dating. Is that what we want? How many lives saved is that worth?

I am sure that many of the controls in effect today will be partially relaxed in a few months. Partially relaxed, but at the ready. As long as infectious disease remains with us, they are likely to be reimposed, again and again, in the future, or be self-imposed in the form of habits. As Deborah Tannen says, contributing to a Politico article on how coronavirus will change the world permanently, ‘We know now that touching things, being with other people and breathing the air in an enclosed space can be risky…. It could become second nature to recoil from shaking hands or touching our faces—and we may all fall heir to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands.” After thousands of years, millions of years, of touch, contact, and togetherness, is the pinnacle of human progress to be that we cease such activities because they are too risky?

Life is Community

The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Despite security systems in almost every upper middle-class home, people are no less anxious or insecure than they were a generation ago. Despite elaborate security measures, the schools are not seeing fewer mass shootings. Despite phenomenal progress in medical technology, people have if anything become less healthy over the past thirty years, as chronic disease has proliferated and life expectancy stagnated and, in the USA and Britain, started to decline.

The measures being instituted to control Covid-19, likewise, may end up causing more suffering and death than they prevent. Minimizing deaths means minimizing the deaths that we know how to predict and measure. It is impossible to measure the added deaths that might come from isolation-induced depression, for instance, or the despair caused by unemployment, or the lowered immunity and deterioration in health that chronic fear can cause. Loneliness and lack of social contact has been shown to increase inflammation, depression, and dementia. According to Lissa Rankin, M.D., air pollution increases risk of dying by 6%, obesity by 23%, alcohol abuse by 37%, and loneliness by 45%.

Another danger that is off the ledger is the deterioration in immunity caused by excessive hygiene and distancing. It is not only social contact that is necessary for health, it is also contact with the microbial world. Generally speaking, microbes are not our enemies, they are our allies in health. A diverse gut biome, comprising bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, is essential for a well-functioning immune system, and its diversity is maintained through contact with other people and with the world of life. Excessive hand-washing, overuse of antibiotics, aseptic cleanliness, and lack of human contact might do more harm than good. The resulting allergies and autoimmune disorders might be worse than the infectious disease they replace. Socially and biologically, health comes from community. Life does not thrive in isolation.

Seeing the world in us-versus-them terms blinds us to the reality that life and health happen in community. To take the example of infectious diseases, we fail to look beyond the evil pathogen and ask, What is the role of viruses in the microbiome? (See also here.) What are the body conditions under which harmful viruses proliferate? Why do some people have mild symptoms and others severe ones (besides the catch-all non-explanation of “low resistance”)? What positive role might flus, colds, and other non-lethal diseases play in the maintenance of health?

War-on-germs thinking brings results akin to those of the War on Terror, War on Crime, War on Weeds, and the endless wars we fight politically and interpersonally. First, it generates endless war; second, it diverts attention from the ground conditions that breed illness, terrorism, crime, weeds, and the rest.

Despite politicians’ perennial claim that they pursue war for the sake of peace, war inevitably breeds more war. Bombing countries to kill terrorists not only ignores the ground conditions of terrorism, it exacerbates those conditions. Locking up criminals not only ignores the conditions that breed crime, it creates those conditions when it breaks up families and communities and acculturates the incarcerated to criminality. And regimes of antibiotics, vaccines, antivirals, and other medicines wreak havoc on body ecology, which is the foundation of strong immunity. Outside the body, the massive spraying campaigns sparked by Zika, Dengue Fever, and now Covid-19 will visit untold damage upon nature’s ecology. Has anyone considered what the effects on the ecosystem will be when we douse it with antiviral compounds? Such a policy (which has been implemented in various places in China and India) is only thinkable from the mindset of separation, which does not understand that viruses are integral to the web of life.

To understand the point about ground conditions, consider some mortality statistics from Italy (from its National Health Institute), based on an analysis of hundreds of Covid-19 fatalities. Of those analyzed, less than 1% were free of serious chronic health conditions. Some 75% suffered from hypertension, 35% from diabetes, 33% from cardiac ischemia, 24% from atrial fibrillation, 18% from low renal function, along with other conditions that I couldn’t decipher from the Italian report. Nearly half the deceased had three or more of these serious pathologies. Americans, beset by obesity, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, are at least as vulnerable as Italians. Should we blame the virus then (which killed few otherwise healthy people), or shall we blame underlying poor health? Here again the analogy of the taut rope applies. Millions of people in the modern world are in a precarious state of health, just waiting for something that would normally be trivial to send them over the edge. Of course, in the short term we want to save their lives; the danger is that we lose ourselves in an endless succession of short terms, fighting one infectious disease after another, and never engage the ground conditions that make people so vulnerable. That is a much harder problem, because these ground conditions will not change via fighting. There is no pathogen that causes diabetes or obesity, addiction, depression, or PTSD. Their causes are not an Other, not some virus separate from ourselves, and we its victims.

Even in diseases like Covid-19, in which we can name a pathogenic virus, matters are not so simple as a war between virus and victim. There is an alternative to the germ theory of disease that holds germs to be part of a larger process. When conditions are right, they multiply in the body, sometimes killing the host, but also, potentially, improving the conditions that accommodated them to begin with, for example by cleaning out accumulated toxic debris via mucus discharge, or (metaphorically speaking) burning them up with fever. Sometimes called “terrain theory,” it says that germs are more symptom than cause of disease. As one meme explains it: “Your fish is sick. Germ theory: isolate the fish. Terrain theory: clean the tank.”

A certain schizophrenia afflicts the modern culture of health. On the one hand, there is a burgeoning wellness movement that embraces alternative and holistic medicine. It advocates herbs, meditation, and yoga to boost immunity. It validates the emotional and spiritual dimensions of health, such as the power of attitudes and beliefs to sicken or to heal. All of this seems to have disappeared under the Covid tsunami, as society defaults to the old orthodoxy.

Case in point: California acupuncturists have been forced to shut down, having been deemed “non-essential.” This is perfectly understandable from the perspective of conventional virology. But as one acupuncturist on Facebook observed, “What about my patient who I’m working with to get off opioids for his back pain? He’s going to have to start using them again.” From the worldview of medical authority, alternative modalities, social interaction, yoga classes, supplements, and so on are frivolous when it comes to real diseases caused by real viruses. They are relegated to an etheric realm of “wellness” in the face of a crisis. The resurgence of orthodoxy under Covid-19 is so intense that anything remotely unconventional, such as intravenous vitamin C, was completely off the table in the United States until two days ago (articles still abound “debunking” the “myth” that vitamin C can help fight Covid-19). Nor have I heard the CDC evangelize the benefits of elderberry extract, medicinal mushrooms, cutting sugar intake, NAC (N-acetyl L-cysteine), astragalus, or vitamin D. These are not just mushy speculation about “wellness,” but are supported by extensive research and physiological explanations. For example, NAC (general info, double-blind placebo-controlled study) has been shown to radically reduce incidence and severity of symptoms in flu-like illnesses.

As the statistics I offered earlier on autoimmunity, obesity, etc. indicate, America and the modern world in general are facing a health crisis. Is the answer to do what we’ve been doing, only more thoroughly? The response so far to Covid has been to double down on the orthodoxy and sweep unconventional practices and dissenting viewpoints aside. Another response would be to widen our lens and examine the entire system, including who pays for it, how access is granted, and how research is funded, but also expanding out to include marginal fields like herbal medicine, functional medicine, and energy medicine. Perhaps we can take this opportunity to reevaluate prevailing theories of illness, health, and the body. Yes, let’s protect the sickened fish as best we can right now, but maybe next time we won’t have to isolate and drug so many fish, if we can clean the tank.

I’m not telling you to run out right now and buy NAC or any other supplement, nor that we as a society should abruptly shift our response, cease social distancing immediately, and start taking supplements instead. But we can use the break in normal, this pause at a crossroads, to consciously choose what path we shall follow moving forward: what kind of healthcare system, what paradigm of health, what kind of society. This reevaluation is already happening, as ideas like universal free healthcare in the USA gain new momentum. And that path leads to forks as well. What kind of healthcare will be universalized? Will it be merely available to all, or mandatory for all – each citizen a patient, perhaps with an invisible ink barcode tattoo certifying one is up to date on all compulsory vaccines and check-ups. Then you can go to school, board a plane, or enter a restaurant. This is one path to the future that is available to us.

Another option is available now too. Instead of doubling down on control, we could finally embrace the holistic paradigms and practices that have been waiting on the margins, waiting for the center to dissolve so that, in our humbled state, we can bring them into the center and build a new system around them.

The Coronation

There is an alternative to the paradise of perfect control that our civilization has so long pursued, and that recedes as fast as our progress, like a mirage on the horizon. Yes, we can proceed as before down the path toward greater insulation, isolation, domination, and separation. We can normalize heightened levels of separation and control, believe that they are necessary to keep us safe, and accept a world in which we are afraid to be near each other. Or we can take advantage of this pause, this break in normal, to turn onto a path of reunion, of holism, of the restoring of lost connections, of the repair of community and the rejoining of the web of life.

Do we double down on protecting the separate self, or do we accept the invitation into a world where all of us are in this together? It isn’t just in medicine we encounter this question: it visits us politically, economically, and in our personal lives as well. Take for example the issue of hoarding, which embodies the idea, “There won’t be enough for everyone, so I am going to make sure there is enough for me.” Another response might be, “Some don’t have enough, so I will share what I have with them.” Are we to be survivalists or helpers? What is life for?

On a larger scale, people are asking questions that have until now lurked on activist margins. What should we do about the homeless? What should we do about the people in prisons? In Third World slums? What should we do about the unemployed? What about all the hotel maids, the Uber drivers, the plumbers and janitors and bus drivers and cashiers who cannot work from home? And so now, finally, ideas like student debt relief and universal basic income are blossoming. “How do we protect those susceptible to Covid?” invites us into “How do we care for vulnerable people in general?”

That is the impulse that stirs in us, regardless of the superficialities of our opinions about Covid’s severity, origin, or best policy to address it. It is saying, let’s get serious about taking care of each other. Let’s remember how precious we all are and how precious life is. Let’s take inventory of our civilization, strip it down to its studs, and see if we can build one more beautiful.

As Covid stirs our compassion, more and more of us realize that we don’t want to go back to a normal so sorely lacking it. We have the opportunity now to forge a new, more compassionate normal.

Hopeful signs abound that this is happening. The United States government, which has long seemed the captive of heartless corporate interests, has unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars in direct payments to families. Donald Trump, not known as a paragon of compassion, has put a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Certainly one can take a cynical view of both these developments; nonetheless, they embody the principle of caring for the vulnerable.

From all over the world we hear stories of solidarity and healing. One friend described sending $100 each to ten strangers who were in dire need. My son, who until a few days ago worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, said people were tipping at five times the normal rate – and these are working class people, many of them Hispanic truck drivers, who are economically insecure themselves. Doctors, nurses, and “essential workers” in other professions risk their lives to serve the public. Here are some more examples of the love and kindness eruption, courtesy of ServiceSpace:

Perhaps we’re in the middle of living into that new story. Imagine Italian airforce using Pavoratti, Spanish military doing acts of service, and street police playing guitars — to *inspire*. Corporations giving unexpected wage hikes. Canadians starting “Kindness Mongering.” Six year old in Australia adorably gifting her tooth fairy money, an 8th grader in Japan making 612 masks, and college kids everywhere buying groceries for elders. Cuba sending an army in “white robes” (doctors) to help Italy. A landlord allowing tenants to stay without rent, an Irish priest’s poem going viral, disabled activitists producing hand sanitizer. Imagine. Sometimes a crisis mirrors our deepest impulse — that we can always respond with compassion.

As Rebecca Solnit describes in her marvelous book, A Paradise Built in Hell, disaster often liberates solidarity. A more beautiful world shimmers just beneath the surface, bobbing up whenever the systems that hold it underwater loosen their grip.

For a long time we, as a collective, have stood helpless in the face of an ever-sickening society. Whether it is declining health, decaying infrastructure, depression, suicide, addiction, ecological degradation, or concentration of wealth, the symptoms of civilizational malaise in the developed world are plain to see, but we have been stuck in the systems and patterns that cause them. Now, Covid has gifted us a reset.

A million forking paths lie before us. Universal basic income could mean an end to economic insecurity and the flowering of creativity as millions are freed from the work that Covid has shown us is less necessary than we thought. Or it could mean, with the decimation of small businesses, dependency on the state for a stipend that comes with strict conditions. The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.

What can guide us, as individuals and as a society, as we walk the garden of forking paths? At each junction, we can be aware of what we follow: fear or love, self-preservation or generosity. Shall we live in fear and build a society based on it? Shall we live to preserve our separate selves? Shall we use the crisis as a weapon against our political enemies? These are not all-or-nothing questions, all fear or all love. It is that a next step into love lies before us. It feels daring, but not reckless. It treasures life, while accepting death. And it trusts that with each step, the next will become visible.

Please don’t think that choosing love over fear can be accomplished solely through an act of will, and that fear too can be conquered like a virus. The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain. Fear, along with addiction, depression, and a host of physical ills, flourishes in a terrain of separation and trauma: inherited trauma, childhood trauma, violence, war, abuse, neglect, shame, punishment, poverty, and the muted, normalized trauma that affects nearly everyone who lives in a monetized economy, undergoes modern schooling, or lives without community or connection to place. This terrain can be changed, by trauma healing on a personal level, by systemic change toward a more compassionate society, and by transforming the basic narrative of separation: the separate self in a world of other, me separate from you, humanity separate from nature. To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone. But the time of Reunion is here. Every act of compassion, kindness, courage, or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because it assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.

I will conclude by invoking one more dimension of the relationship between humans and viruses. Viruses are integral to evolution, not just of humans but of all eukaryotes. Viruses can transfer DNA from organism to organism, sometimes inserting it into the germline (where it becomes heritable). Known as horizontal gene transfer, this is a primary mechanism of evolution, allowing life to evolve together much faster than is possible through random mutation. As Lynn Margulis once put it, we are our viruses.

And now let me venture into speculative territory. Perhaps the great diseases of civilization have quickened our biological and cultural evolution, bestowing key genetic information and offering both individual and collective initiation. Could the current pandemic be just that? Novel RNA codes are spreading from human to human, imbuing us with new genetic information; at the same time, we are receiving other, esoteric, “codes” that ride the back of the biological ones, disrupting our narratives and systems in the same way that an illness disrupts bodily physiology. The phenomenon follows the template of initiation: separation from normality, followed by a dilemma, breakdown, or ordeal, followed (if it is to be complete) by reintegration and celebration.

Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation?The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. “Novel coronavirus pandemic” means “a new coronation for all.”

Already we can feel the power of who we might become. A true sovereign does not run in fear from life or from death. A true sovereign does not dominate and conquer (that is a shadow archetype, the Tyrant). The true sovereign serves the people, serves life, and respects the sovereignty of all people. The coronation marks the emergence of the unconscious into consciousness, the crystallization of chaos into order, the transcendence of compulsion into choice. We become the rulers of that which had ruled us. The New World Order that the conspiracy theorists fear is a shadow of the glorious possibility available to sovereign beings. No longer the vassals of fear, we can bring order to the kingdom and build an intentional society on the love already shining through the cracks of the world of separation.

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