One of the scariest things of the last 3 years is seeing people that I previously thought were critical thinkers mindlessly parrot the lasting talking points from tv that to any logical thinking person makes no sense (e.g. "the unvaccinated are responsible for the covid infections of the vaccinated")
One of the scariest things of the last 3 years is seeing people that I previously thought were critical thinkers mindlessly parrot the lasting talking points from tv that to any logical thinking person makes no sense (e.g. "the unvaccinated are responsible for the covid infections of the vaccinated")
I have thought long about why I did not get vaccinated/trust the whole covid narrative after the vaccines came out and have come to the following conclusions:
-I had already lost trust in the mainstream-media and politicians long before
-I have an exceptionally good memory (I frequently get comments on that from family/friends and especially colleagues), so I could remember the changes to the story
-I do not go to church, but I believe in God and am a spiritual person. It is my observation that religious people did not succumb to the story to the same extent as nonreligious
-I am a logically thinking person (I studied Mathematics in college. It is my observation both from Germany and the US that so-called "nerds" were skeptical a lot sooner, because the numbers just did not add up. There was a person in Germany (Marcel Barz) who became famous in alternative media, who at first believed the narrative, but then became a skeptic, when he tried to prove that there was a pandemic to his skeptical friend, but the official numbers just did not indicate a pandemic, since Germany had BELOW AVERAGE mortality in 2020)
-My specialty in college was "Modelling and Scientific Computing", so I was deeply skeptical of the modelling of the case-counts, since I knew, that one could basically produce ANY result by tweaking a few parameters. I especially got suspicious, since the case-modellings did not improve over time, which would have gotten me into a lot of trouble if I had done the same work in my job.
-I want to get to the bottom of things and therefore try to inform myself
-and the last and I think one of the most important things: I do not crave social approval. It is my observation that a large segment of the population can be made to express the most ridiculous things, if they think, that this is the only "socially approved" talking points These people spend a large amount of their time reading the most important newspaper/watch the most important news-segment not in order to get informed but in order to know what the current socially approved attitude is. This is IMO especially prevalent with college-educated people, since a lot of them have a high status they want to preserve in any case. A youtuber I used to watch regularly used to call these people "cold-blooded-animals", not because they were heartless, but because they need validation from other people instead of getting it out of themselves like "warm-blooded-animals"
I've kind of gotten used to people doing that, so I didn't have that many expectations be broken. It's just that the lies the media got them to believe were less overt in the past so it was harder to see this was happening.
Carolin, I wholly concur that, as you say, "One of the scariest things of the last 3 years is seeing people that I previously thought were critical thinkers mindlessly parrot the lasting talking points from tv that to any logical thinking person makes no sense (e.g. "the unvaccinated are responsible for the covid infections of the vaccinated"). Everything you have written here makes sense to me, and is also quite close to my own experience.
As for the religious, alas, many in my family and social circles are devout Catholics and they did what the Pope told them they should do "for love." I also have, or I should say, had, some church-going mainline Protestants in my family and, with counted exceptions, they ingested gallons of the Kool-Aid-- even the kids have now had multiple jabs. But of course, attending church isn't the litmus test for genuine spirituality, never was.
In my experience, resisting the jabbing had more to do with social status than any other factor, and after that, independent of social status, it was the inclination and confidence to think for oneself, and after that, the ability to withstand the pressure in 2021 and 2022. Interestingly, what I observed was that education wasn't much of a factor-- although in my own case I will say that my education gave me confidence in my ability to be discerning, and to see where things were just, well, loony.
I still marvel at the sight at a funeral of an employer of mine who died in 2020 and with whom I had kept in contact. There were his brother-in-law and sister-in-law wearing what looked like tree surgeon helmets/visors.
I tried hard not to laugh. At the wake afterwards though I did say they looked rather silly (I had met the brother-in-law). I think they got the point.
The list we could all write of the insane things we have seen...
I too have a scientific bent and a fair IQ. I tend not to follow the herd or seek intellectual approval, but go my own way. In my darker moments, I admit to myself that what saved me was probably just arrogance.
In my own case, it felt at times akin to arrogance, and undoubtedly the covidians who were aware of my stance saw me that way, however, looking back I would say that actually my refusal to get on board the covid train was not arrogance, but simply self-respect, together with sincere gratitude for my health, undergirded by common sense. To begin with-- just to begin-- the lockdowns did not make sense. I would say that the truly arrogant people were the ones insisting everyone else do what they wanted: shut up, stay home, mask up, get jabbed, or else. Was it not arrogance that they would openly smear and ridicule those who did not agree with them? And stomp down on those who might merely venture a question, a mild objection? Now, now that such characters as I am familiar with all had covid anyway, and they don't exactly hanker for their 7th injection... they don't want to talk about it. Huh.
For me it stemmed from my scepticism. I am of average intelligence but from the beginning all of the covid debacle played out like we were all in a bad movie. We had the “deadly disease” ravaging humanity then stepped in our politicians, scientists and medics to bring aid to the populations. Along comes our hero “the vaccine” that will save mankind and return us to health and normality, The End. Except it did not!
I am still astounded that people I thought were very intelligent and highly educated, friends I have known all my life totally bought into the vaccine propaganda. One of them, upon everyone in the family getting covid a second time after being jabbed and boosted, even said that old chestnut, oh but so glad we got the vaccine so we didn't end up in the hospital. !!! Even after sending some of them info from highly knowledgeable sources who were speaking out real facts that disproved so much of the main stream lies, they preferred to consider that non credible info and believe the BS. Which leads me to believe the following statement from Dr. Malone is true. "Cognitive psychology studies, clearly demonstrate that the human mind will reject sensory data that are inconsistent with its internal model of reality. In other words, if our internal models (which can be considered as"paradigms") are inconsistent with some external sensory reality, we will typically reject the true objective reality and force the incoming sensory data to fit our internal cognitive models." Due to their psychological conditioning, world view or however you want to put it, people cannot and will not understand the incredible gas lighting that has occurred. It's the only way I can understand how so many otherwise smart people are not able to think critically.
The gem "oh, it would have been so much worse if I hadn't been vaccinated" was an idiotic statement from the get-go. How can you possibly know that? You don't get a do-over to compare the two.
Great post Carolin, I agree on every point. I'm also math-educated, my favorite subject was "Probability and Statistics". Not that you need such training to see through the BS, it was obvious to me as a teenager in the 60's that authorities can't be trusted, and are the last who should have any authority. Then Vietnam came along to validate that, not that such validation was needed. When your first sentence included "people that I PREVIOUSLY thought were critical thinkers" I figured this would be a comment worth reading. I hate it when people who fell for the obvious scams are described as "intelligent".
They (people you previously thought were critical thinkers) watch (as in look at; not just listen to) HDTV. Quite a few of them also habitually use egregorial THC.
One of the scariest things of the last 3 years is seeing people that I previously thought were critical thinkers mindlessly parrot the lasting talking points from tv that to any logical thinking person makes no sense (e.g. "the unvaccinated are responsible for the covid infections of the vaccinated")
I have thought long about why I did not get vaccinated/trust the whole covid narrative after the vaccines came out and have come to the following conclusions:
-I had already lost trust in the mainstream-media and politicians long before
-I have an exceptionally good memory (I frequently get comments on that from family/friends and especially colleagues), so I could remember the changes to the story
-I do not go to church, but I believe in God and am a spiritual person. It is my observation that religious people did not succumb to the story to the same extent as nonreligious
-I am a logically thinking person (I studied Mathematics in college. It is my observation both from Germany and the US that so-called "nerds" were skeptical a lot sooner, because the numbers just did not add up. There was a person in Germany (Marcel Barz) who became famous in alternative media, who at first believed the narrative, but then became a skeptic, when he tried to prove that there was a pandemic to his skeptical friend, but the official numbers just did not indicate a pandemic, since Germany had BELOW AVERAGE mortality in 2020)
-My specialty in college was "Modelling and Scientific Computing", so I was deeply skeptical of the modelling of the case-counts, since I knew, that one could basically produce ANY result by tweaking a few parameters. I especially got suspicious, since the case-modellings did not improve over time, which would have gotten me into a lot of trouble if I had done the same work in my job.
-I want to get to the bottom of things and therefore try to inform myself
-and the last and I think one of the most important things: I do not crave social approval. It is my observation that a large segment of the population can be made to express the most ridiculous things, if they think, that this is the only "socially approved" talking points These people spend a large amount of their time reading the most important newspaper/watch the most important news-segment not in order to get informed but in order to know what the current socially approved attitude is. This is IMO especially prevalent with college-educated people, since a lot of them have a high status they want to preserve in any case. A youtuber I used to watch regularly used to call these people "cold-blooded-animals", not because they were heartless, but because they need validation from other people instead of getting it out of themselves like "warm-blooded-animals"
I've kind of gotten used to people doing that, so I didn't have that many expectations be broken. It's just that the lies the media got them to believe were less overt in the past so it was harder to see this was happening.
Carolin, I wholly concur that, as you say, "One of the scariest things of the last 3 years is seeing people that I previously thought were critical thinkers mindlessly parrot the lasting talking points from tv that to any logical thinking person makes no sense (e.g. "the unvaccinated are responsible for the covid infections of the vaccinated"). Everything you have written here makes sense to me, and is also quite close to my own experience.
As for the religious, alas, many in my family and social circles are devout Catholics and they did what the Pope told them they should do "for love." I also have, or I should say, had, some church-going mainline Protestants in my family and, with counted exceptions, they ingested gallons of the Kool-Aid-- even the kids have now had multiple jabs. But of course, attending church isn't the litmus test for genuine spirituality, never was.
In my experience, resisting the jabbing had more to do with social status than any other factor, and after that, independent of social status, it was the inclination and confidence to think for oneself, and after that, the ability to withstand the pressure in 2021 and 2022. Interestingly, what I observed was that education wasn't much of a factor-- although in my own case I will say that my education gave me confidence in my ability to be discerning, and to see where things were just, well, loony.
B, as a lifelong devout Catholic I can attest to the fact that Catholics often make the mistake of listening to the Pope rather than to the Lord.
"...just, well, looney." Quite!
I still marvel at the sight at a funeral of an employer of mine who died in 2020 and with whom I had kept in contact. There were his brother-in-law and sister-in-law wearing what looked like tree surgeon helmets/visors.
I tried hard not to laugh. At the wake afterwards though I did say they looked rather silly (I had met the brother-in-law). I think they got the point.
The list we could all write of the insane things we have seen...
I too have a scientific bent and a fair IQ. I tend not to follow the herd or seek intellectual approval, but go my own way. In my darker moments, I admit to myself that what saved me was probably just arrogance.
In my own case, it felt at times akin to arrogance, and undoubtedly the covidians who were aware of my stance saw me that way, however, looking back I would say that actually my refusal to get on board the covid train was not arrogance, but simply self-respect, together with sincere gratitude for my health, undergirded by common sense. To begin with-- just to begin-- the lockdowns did not make sense. I would say that the truly arrogant people were the ones insisting everyone else do what they wanted: shut up, stay home, mask up, get jabbed, or else. Was it not arrogance that they would openly smear and ridicule those who did not agree with them? And stomp down on those who might merely venture a question, a mild objection? Now, now that such characters as I am familiar with all had covid anyway, and they don't exactly hanker for their 7th injection... they don't want to talk about it. Huh.
For me it stemmed from my scepticism. I am of average intelligence but from the beginning all of the covid debacle played out like we were all in a bad movie. We had the “deadly disease” ravaging humanity then stepped in our politicians, scientists and medics to bring aid to the populations. Along comes our hero “the vaccine” that will save mankind and return us to health and normality, The End. Except it did not!
I am still astounded that people I thought were very intelligent and highly educated, friends I have known all my life totally bought into the vaccine propaganda. One of them, upon everyone in the family getting covid a second time after being jabbed and boosted, even said that old chestnut, oh but so glad we got the vaccine so we didn't end up in the hospital. !!! Even after sending some of them info from highly knowledgeable sources who were speaking out real facts that disproved so much of the main stream lies, they preferred to consider that non credible info and believe the BS. Which leads me to believe the following statement from Dr. Malone is true. "Cognitive psychology studies, clearly demonstrate that the human mind will reject sensory data that are inconsistent with its internal model of reality. In other words, if our internal models (which can be considered as"paradigms") are inconsistent with some external sensory reality, we will typically reject the true objective reality and force the incoming sensory data to fit our internal cognitive models." Due to their psychological conditioning, world view or however you want to put it, people cannot and will not understand the incredible gas lighting that has occurred. It's the only way I can understand how so many otherwise smart people are not able to think critically.
The gem "oh, it would have been so much worse if I hadn't been vaccinated" was an idiotic statement from the get-go. How can you possibly know that? You don't get a do-over to compare the two.
Great post Carolin, I agree on every point. I'm also math-educated, my favorite subject was "Probability and Statistics". Not that you need such training to see through the BS, it was obvious to me as a teenager in the 60's that authorities can't be trusted, and are the last who should have any authority. Then Vietnam came along to validate that, not that such validation was needed. When your first sentence included "people that I PREVIOUSLY thought were critical thinkers" I figured this would be a comment worth reading. I hate it when people who fell for the obvious scams are described as "intelligent".
Excellent! I especially like (and agree with) the last two! Thank you.
They (people you previously thought were critical thinkers) watch (as in look at; not just listen to) HDTV. Quite a few of them also habitually use egregorial THC.