soteriology

In the zest of youth, we attach to ideas and argue them to the intellectual death. We become entrenched in our positions and shake our head at others' inability to see the truth. We are incredulous at the folly of humanity and seek out other like-minded souls who confirm we are correct and that the other side is nuts.

A great deal of the time there’s a generational divide which accounts for differences. My first exposure to this, along with many others, was in terms of religion. My elders held these irrational beliefs in God despite our current scientific knowledge and I assigned these beliefs to delusion. As all good atheists do, I engaged in debate with the believers and came away confounded by the fact I couldn’t change their minds and instead they scoffed at me and my lack of faith.

Their beliefs were childish and the stuff of fantasy. It was admirable how rock-solid faith was entrenched in their lives and it didn’t matter what evolutionary evidence I would show them in order to belittle their canon. Eventually, you give up and assign them to the category of wishful thinkers who can’t accept that when you are dead, you are dead, and that’s that.

I’m in my mid-50s now and my youthful ignorance has given way to experience buoyed by the adventures of life. I’m no longer an atheist and have my own ideas about divinity, free from culture. I love talking about them and will engage with whomever wants to discuss them.

There are no wise young people despite some claiming the title. They may be clever and smart but I’m now wise enough to realize without experience it means squat. You can read about life and talk a good game but until you walk through the fire it is just hollow words. The best thing about experience is seeing situations and events unfold and knowing you’ve seen them before, you can make a decent prediction about the outcome. In a trivial sense, I see this in professional baseball players. They remind me of players from my youth and I base my assessment of their skill level and career projections on what I have previously seen. It’s not foolproof however it is a good foundation on which to base evaluations.

So, what am I getting at? Covid-19 vaccination. Covid-19 is a religion and the vaccine is the god. When the vaccine came out we were told of its glory and how it will save all of humanity. The vaccine evangelists were out in full force. When the vaccine failed to deliver humanity to the promised land, the non-vaccinated were blamed. The non-vaccinated were soon cast out from participation in society, relegated to second class citizens. The non-vaccinated were coerced into accepting the vaccine into their lives in order to participate in society.

The vaccine god was found out to be not as advertised. It turns out he didn’t prevent infection or transmission.

Like I said, when I was a young atheist I’d shake my head at the staunch believers and couldn’t understand why when I told them the truth they wouldn’t accept it. Have you recently tried to talk to someone who is firmly ensconced in the narrative of the Covid-19 vaccine being the way out of the pandemic? Have you seen what our government leaders are doing?

The rational mind says the only assurance against transmission of the virus is through testing and isolation. It is clear it matters not whether you are vaccinated or not. That is a personal choice. Whether you want to believe the vaccine works is now a matter of faith. The problem is we now live in a sectarian society and they believe in the vaccine. Those who don’t believe, you know the heretics, are persecuted. So, when I point this out to previously sane people it does not compute. The dissonance hardens their beliefs. The vaccine is the way and the life. I am talking to a brick wall.

Hindsight and the study of history reveals all societies periodically purge the heretics. It’s a fascinating human psychic phenomenon. As long as we live in groups, the cyclical madness always will return. We are meant to be free and thus the choice becomes exercising that freedom or going mad. Freedom is a hardship and thus most welcome madness.

When the Catholic Church was all-powerful in the middle-ages they burned the heretics at the stake. This was done for two reasons. First of all, they were so sure of their beliefs and wanting to save all souls that they would go to this extreme measure in order to get the heretic to repent and thus save their soul. The other reason to put to death the heretic was to stop the spread of dissenting beliefs and ideas. Nowadays, we have online censorship that stays true to this tactic. The fact-checkers keep you away from and shun the information that goes against the establishment narrative.

For the majority of the population the psychological enforcement of groupthink is enough to get most to fall in line. Nobody wants to go against the hive mind. Humans are obedient and will do what they are told to do when it’s the voice of authority giving them orders. History and experiments in human behaviour confirm this is the case for the majority of the population. It’s why the comparison of humans to sheep is made in that we exhibit flock behaviour when grouped together. In a time of crisis, the duty to conform becomes second nature to most while others feel the crushing weight of compliance and acquiesce. It has been said by American essayist Randolph Bourne in the early 20th Century that, “War is the health of the State” and to this I’d add any national emergency is where the State comes to the fore. Psychologically, the authorities take on the role of the superego which fundamentally uses praise and blame as a means of control. We have been conditioned in this regard from birth where our parents were the authority. We went to school and the authority was transferred onto another entity for our education and then once we were deemed ready for the real world it became culture at large that subsumed the role of enforcer. Most of us don’t know what freedom is and love our slavery.

“You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape.”

― G.I. Gurdjieff

The homeless in our society have made a choice to be free. Freedom is full of hardship and suffering. We don't know what to do with them. We declare them mentally ill and develop treatments to keep those on the fringes in the game. We have pills to numb consciousness so we can continue to play the culture game. How do we know we aren't the ones who are mentally ill? Is the psychologist just a pusher and fixer of the prevailing culture while giving their patients strategies for fitting into the madness of their fellow game players?

Likewise, the domesticated dog thinks the wolf is mentally ill.

So, what to do? Personally, my life is fulfilling because of my contrarian nature and going against the grain. Succumbing to the demands of a culture I hold in contempt doesn’t seem like a good option. I see only pain and self-loathing if I followed that path. I do realize freedom isn’t free and brings with its exercise many challenges. So far things always work out in life and I see no reason why they wouldn’t continue in this regard. Onward ho!