TURNING THE HISTORICAL CORNER TOWARD A NEW TOMORROW

Understanding this global phenomenon, call it the “viral effect,” is not about some sort of self-evident factualities versus conspiracy theory, as if these are the only two possible perspectives of thought.  The former reifies “factuality” and becomes a mythic “factualism.”  The later reifies the source of action, control and intent and imagines some “big brother” in cyberspace or nefarious bad-guy Illuminati in smoke-filled back rooms planning to orchestrate world change.  Get real.  The ‘viral effect’ is a mass mediated idea that is historically catalyzing global trends of divergence away from the Universalism or globalism, empire building, civilizational homogenization, totalitarian one-dimensionality, etc., etc.  No medical facts will clarify what is happening at this historical turning point.  We must rethink the whole of contemporary life and the parts of that whole in particular.  We all can play a part in this or turn it over to the self-appointed emperors of existence.  It’s time to re-appropriate one’s self in the deepest and broadest existential and spiritual sense.  It’s the opportunity for every individual to become a player and not a pawn.  One can be at play passionately in the fields of the Lord; or a minion worker bee passively responding to the “expert authorities” when they tell you to “believe,” “feel,” “act” as they see fit.  The ‘viral effect’ is the opportunity to fully become a human being in thought, feeling and spirit and re-appropriate the living Self whose experience creates the real, constitutes the real and decides upon the reality to be created.

One aspect of this possibly emerging ‘new normal’ is the recognition of the institutional force or ideological force of official, ‘mass mediated’ authority/expertise/specialization.  The medical aspect of the ‘viral effect’ is what we see in a few official experts such as Fauci, Birx and Gates commandeering the reality of what is going on and attempting to force or suggest universal political solutions: masking, social isolation, socio-economic shutdown.  These actions are the result of a Liberal/Enlightenment psychology (become ideology) that imagines a universal solution to a health problem.  Bill Gates states this most ludicrously when he claims that nothing can return to normal until there is universal global vaccination.  This is the delusion of all delusions.  This is a rich boy playing with his money and consequent power trying to make his vacuous existence meaningful and undoubtedly also enrich his bank account beyond all dreams. 

But in keeping with the medical issue, what is at stake here in the face of the official authority/experts influencing health policy and socio-political action is the question of the locus of control of one’s health and the locus of control of one’s identity and self-understanding even and especially at the personal, subjective and spiritual level.  In short the authentic ownership of one’s own body, mind and soul is at stake. 

If for example, I make any comment on Facebook regarding the medical knowledge around the ‘viral effect’ someone will inevitably respond with a comment like “what medical school did you go to?”  The challenge here is to prove my “expertise” in terms of institutional norms, traditions and practices.  So I’m not allowed an informed opinion unless I am an “expert” whose authority comes from a recognized institution.  Even though I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, have taught for 30 plus years at a college level, read constantly, think and write about politics, spirituality, culture, etc., my opinion means literally nothing unless I have been sanctified by the powers that be. This attitude and article of faith would mean the end of public discourse, critical thinking and democratic association.  It means the end of any belief that public education prepares one and authorizes one to effectively and competently participate in public, political discourse.  This worship of the “expert authorities” de-subjectivizes the individual, expropriates one’s mind and displaces one’s capacity for self-determination to the one’s “supposed to know,” the one’s who are allowed to claim to “know,” the Fauci’s, Birx’s, Gate’s, or, God forbid the Kanye West’s or Kim Kardashians!  Knowledge and truth becomes specialized, institutionalized, compartmentalized.  The “expert authorities” will tell you what is believable, what you can or should think, want and do; even what you should feel and therefore whether you are healthy or not. 

But who is it that has achieved the “authority,” “expertise,” or “specialization” that legitimately allows one to think or re-think the “real,” the global situation politically and economically, the nature of goodness, health or well-being.  Are there any “expert authorities” of life?  Who is the “expert authority” who has the right or knowledge to tell you how you feel or what you should feel; how you should think or what you should think?   These questions are nothing new.  In fact these are the questions Socrates was asking some 2500 years ago, when he pondered the nature of the “Greatest Good.”  What does it mean to be a “good person.”  Not just morally good but spiritually good, healthy, happy, robustly passionately living life to the fullest.  That is, what now does it mean to be a human being, to be an individual, to be oneself, psychologically, socially, politically and spiritually.

Within the context of the “viral effect,” one has the opportunity to ask the big question, “Who am I?” in all of this.  Am I healthy?  How do I feel?  Am I really thinking about this global phenomenon or am I just mouthing opinions or preferences because I don’t know how to think about this?  Or am I too afraid to think about how I really feel regarding my health, my life, my purpose. 

Is my identity as a human being, personally, socially and existentially been expropriated by external forces of authority, power, influence, expertise, specializations?  Or am I in charge of determining my identity, coherently and convincingly within myself, personally communally, spiritually, globally.  Am I being controlled by fear or love, in the extreme?  Am I thinking or merely opining thoughtlessly.  Am I feeling or collapsing into the control of externally generated emotionality, subject to fears and hysterias that guarantee my de-centering, my loss of personal control and felt sense of self?

What exactly is it that’s going “viral?”  Is it a thing called a virus which in this case has never been empirically located as a singular entity with powers to cause a specific identifiably discrete disease?  Or is it the breakdown of the “idea” of “one world,” a one-dimensional world controlled from above, from without, from some predetermined standpoint of unknown origins?  Does the fear of the “invisible power” called the virus allow us to raise the existential question about fear itself, about control of my life, destiny, personal power, confidence and competence.  Is some invisible force going to determine the feeling and force of my life, energy and will to be.  Is the will to truth going to be expropriated by the imagined authorities, experts, specialists, professionals, gurus and priests who presume to know what only you can know?  Jesus says, “Physician heal thyself.”  The Buddha says, “Be a light unto one’s self.”

Should we myopically focus on the proposed or imagined “evil force” of the “virus,” which in fact may not exist as such according to all scientific evidence?  Should we focus on the the Fauci types espousing pseudo-scientific claims that are in fact now scientifically grounded or even provable such as the “virus” is going to be with us for 4-5 years or maybe “forever!”  Maybe “the virus” will be a way of life and vaccines the only solution.  Your officially determined and certified health will thereby and accordingly decide upon your right to education, to travel, to social participation, your right to your civil rights. 

Or shall we not take “science” back from the “official guardians” of knowledge, truth, experience and feeling?  “Science” means the ‘practice and experience of “knowing.”  “Science” as it has been expropriated, distorted and mis-used in the modern era at the hands of capital, business, advertising, manufacturing is now itself a deleterious virus which must be re-appropriated by the people, by individuals with the courage to think, feel, let go of beliefs generated out of fear, hysteria, laziness, addiction to pleasure, conformism, cynicism, indifference, regression to animal-existence, matrix-like movements in pre-determined paths of consumption and ritualized, compulsive and obsessive action or habituality.