Quasi-Indefatigable Xenolith

Assorted Essays

Shutting Down...

We have been experiencing something that is unprecendented. I am not talking about a pandemic, we have had those before. I am talking about decision-making begin made globally. This is really the first time that "globalist" organizations and leaders have exercised so much control over so much of the world's people. Never before has there been a media reach during a pandemic where a lack of information and knowledge has caused, either "innocently" or intentionally, so much panic for so many.

I live in a relatively isolated place. As of the middle of April 2020, there is a handful of people who "tested positive" for our current virus and I hear no reports that anyone nearby has died directly from it, though there is plenty of inertia for attributing every death, even from "natural causes", to coVid-19. Besides a manifestation of the US nationwide toilet paper hoarding, there was not much of the panic that widespread media stoked early on. Basically, there was no reason for my little town and probably the vast majority of rural America to "shut down" at all. As usual, we mimic regulations and actions designed for and by larger and more congested areas that are completely unwarranted for local situations.

We have strict building codes designed for the most earthquake-prone areas. We have heavily regulated schools against guns and drugs that never had problems with either issue. We now have local authorities that shut down all activity in places that are not really threatened at all. This all comes because some global authority (or national or state one) chooses to make decisions centrally and forces everyone to comply. There is some evidence that we are experiencing more of a "catastrophic opportunity" for globalizing authority than anything else. The pandemic will abate but the power over others that was seized will likely never be returned. The "local control" of your public school (a facade at best) has been usurped more completely by state and federal over-seers; your local governments are even moreso just enforcers of (unelected) regional planning boards.

It is heartening for me to think that parents are unintentionally "homeschooling" their children during the school shutdowns and might see the possibility of not sending their kids back to the vaunted halls of globalist endoctrination when the over-seers instruct them to do so. This would turn a powerful corner on the previously undetered march of world-wide domination by the "expert" class, freeing our children to view reality in ways not dictated by their global masters. Such children will lead the rest of us in forging lives that make sense where we live and promulgate local and family cultures that have meaning to each of us. That would be a far better world than the globalized one we were marching toward before coVid-19.

We are seeing that the "experts" are just as likley to give bad advice and demand that all of us obey their mis-informed dictums under threat of force. For my part, what little trust I had of the intellegencia is now completely gone. They have little idea what is happening and much of their "educated" decision-making is politicized and ignores any common sense. There is more of "scare-mongering" than anything else in the media, very few facts and much of speculation and ignorant scolding.

We need to trust ourselves more. We need to look to our own friends and family for advice in child-rearing, jobs and careers, and how to conduct yourself in potential disasters. We don't need to simply do what remote "leaders" tell us to do in every aspect of our lives - we need to run our own lives! We will likely do a better job of it. If we are unhappy under our own power, it will be our own responsilibility to make alterations and even large course-corrections to put things right for ourselves. Our neighborhoods and communities should listen less to regional and national voices and far more to each other and the Golder Rule (you know, "do unto others..."). We need to listen far less to far-away voices, celebrities, and "experts" while listening far more to trustworthy and experienced family and friends that care about us and know our individual and neighborhood situations.

We will get through this and will likely get a bit wiser for it. Let's better trust our hard-won new wisdom!