The 21st Century has devolved into a total mindfuck.
The schism between the mediated world and, for lack of a better term, the unmediated world continues to expand.
By “mediated world” I refer to the world as it appears in media. The “unmediated world” refers to the world that we use media to escape.
In the past, we recognized that the mediated world was simply an imitation, a fantasy for our entertainment.
Today, especially since the pandemic, people believe what they see on their screens more than the evidence of their own senses.
They trust the authorities in the media even when it stretches their own credulity and contradicts their personal experience.
Now that the mediated world has diverged so so profoundly from the unmediated world, a new phenomena emerges where people eagerly sacrifice their own unmediated reality in service of a media fiction completely lacking in credibility or consistency.
Paradoxically, the less consistent or credible the media fiction, the more people are willing to sacrifice to demonstrate their devotion to it.
This is neither healthy nor sustainable, but those concepts are of no concern to these devotees, because “health” and “sustainability” only apply to the unmediated world, which they all seem to eager to abandon.
It really disturbs me to watch my liberal and progressive friends goose-stepping into a digital concentration camp, while listening to them condemn and demonize anyone who doesn’t buy into the wholly fictitious narrative being crammed down their throats by every mainstream media outlet in the country, if not world.
Totalitarianism is a curious phenomena. I now understand why Hannah Arendt found it so fascinating.
It reveals something about the human character that we’d prefer not to see.
It’s been kind of a while since I’ve posted anything here. I guess I’ve just been having too much fun in real life to worry about what’s going on in VR. Also, most of my inspiration has been musical lately. Music is so much bigger than words, and any musical project demands much more energy than a simple essay. I’ve got a lot of musical projects in the works right now, so it’s a little overwhelming.
I’ve been brushing up my bass chops and learning a bunch of songs by Teri Smolens and Seabury Gould of The Control Group. We played out together for the first time last month at Siren’s Song, and we got a great response. We have another gig coming up Friday July 29th at the Mad River Brewery in Blue Lake. The Control Group plays topical songs that address current events. The show is called “The Pandemic Newsical” and includes songs like “Lockdown Blues,” “Walking Biohazard,” and “Fauci, He’s No Hero.” The Pandemic Newsical offers an entertaining, humorous, and educational take on the events that changed our lives so dramatically in the last couple of years.
Teri writes terrific songs in the tradition of classic Americana. She’s like the Tom Lehrer of Covid. Seabury Gould is a masterful multi-instrumentalist and it is a great pleasure to play with them. The music is so friendly, and these tunes so cleverly crafted and full of biting humor that it really feels great to be laying down basslines for them.
Of course I still play my didgeridoo, both as a solo artist, and with Sean Powers as the Hardin-Powers Act. Sean and I will play a SoHum gig on Saturday July 23rd at the Mateel Community Center in Redway. It’s the first time I’ve played in SoHum for many years, so I’m looking forward to playing for my neighbors.
Music has a power that transcends mere words, and live music in the real world has a magic that you will never find online. The online world is controlled, monitored and manipulated, but the real world is still free and life can still happen there, if you have the courage and make the effort to show up. I think live music matters now more than ever. If we are going to survive as a nation, as a culture, and as a community, it will only be because we got offline and started living in the real world again.
My liberal friends think they are smart because they think they understand the science used to justify lockdown measures, masking ordinances and vaccine mandates. They send me vapid little articles that dress government propaganda up with liberal guilt-tripping, insultingly sleazy arguments, and slanderous vilification of the opposition. These articles only make me wonder why they found them convincing in the first place, but for some reason it makes some people feel better to pretend like they know what is going on, no matter how ridiculous the explanation they believe.
In fact, none of the pandemic response measures make any sense from a scientific public health perspective. Quarantines, masking and social distancing have done orders of magnitude more harm than Covid-19. Covid vaccines kill far more people than they save, and the psychological harm of social isolation has driven people to the brink of madness. The “science” used to justify those measures was all bullshit. None of it ever made any sense from a public health perspective, and none of it calculated, let alone considered the side-effects.
On the other hand, from a global fascist coup perspective, the pandemic response was ruthlessly shrewd, and worked flawlessly to prevent people all over the world from opposing the overthrow of their elected governments and an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the middle-class, to the obscenely rich. From the perspective of a global technocratic takeover, the dissolution of representative democracy, and the abolition of civil rights, the pandemic response proved brilliant, perhaps the greatest single political achievement of any fascist regime ever.
Think about it. You just witnessed a global fascist coup, and instead of opposing it, you placed yourself under house arrest, did your level best to censor and bully your less gullible friends and neighbors, and then lined up for mass execution. They took over the whole world without firing a single bullet, and you cheered for them, took your shot, and turned on your friends who didn’t. That’s what just happened folks. None of it made sense, scientifically. None of it was necessary, and none of it was about protecting you. Quite the opposite.
So no, I’m not impressed by what you think you know about virology or medicine, even if you are a doctor. Most doctors don’t know much outside of their own narrow specialty, except that they will lose their license if they don’t repeat exactly what the AMA tells them to say. The doctors who specialize in treating people with Covid, and care more about their patients than their income, like Dr Peter McCollough, tell us that masks are useless, Covid vaccines kill people, and early treatment saves lives. Vaccine specialists like Dr. Robert Malone, who invented mRNA vaccines tell us these Covid shots are dangerous in both the short and long-term. Epidemiologists like Dr John Ioannidis tell us that quarantines killed far more people than the virus.
You don’t have to be a doctor to understand what just happened, because it was never about science, medicine or public health. This was all about stealth, deception and power. Billionaires used technology and information as weapons against the people of the world in a global fascist coup. As a result, the world’s power structure has changed, and the United States has been reduced to a banana republic. If you don’t recognize the political reality of what just happened, and you are not outraged, you an idiot, and if you don’t do something about it you are a coward. That’s my scientific analysis of our current predicament.
As Southern Humboldt’s most intrepid writer, I understand that this does not constitute a high honor. Here in Humboldt County, where “positivity” trumps reality, and we spend more time cultivating flattering lies about ourselves than looking at the truth. We’ve become exceptionally good at ignoring things like dead bodies, huge ripoffs, and widespread environmental destruction as “business as usual.” But, when a brand new elephant shows up and makes itself comfortable on our sofa, and no one else seems to see it, I recognize my responsibility to my community. I mostly stopped writing about life in SoHum a couple of years ago to focus on music. I have a lot more to say beyond words than I do with words these days, but times like these demand more from us, and clearly, SoHum needs my perspective now more than ever.
Besides that, the average American life expectancy dropped by 1.9 years during the pandemic, not because of Covid, most Covid deaths were among people who had already exceeded the average life expectancy. No, American life expectancy dropped because addiction, overdose, depression, alcoholism, suicide, anxiety, hunger, despair, unemployment, loneliness, isolation and fear all soared during the pandemic, greatly exacerbated by the draconian restrictions instituted in response to the pandemic. Those restrictions, and the social and economic consequences of them, killed millions of healthy Americans in the prime of their lives. We could hardly have done more damage to Americans’ health if we tried.
Again, why is that? Were these policies designed to harm us? I think that’s a fair question to ask, considering how successfully they disrupted our lives, ruined our businesses, overthrew our democracy and rescinded our civil rights, as opposed to how poorly their strategy worked to prevent deaths from Covid.
Here in Humboldt County we lost twice as many people to overdose in 2020 as we did to Covid, and I’ll bet that’s true in 2021 as well, but they don’t report about that epidemic anymore. Somehow they deem it appropriate to spare us that grim body count. Nor do we hear about the suicides, heart attacks, liver disease, etc. Unless you die of Covid, you don’t count. Our local media continues to ignore the damage wrought by draconian lockdown restrictions, but anyone who dares criticize these measures gets vilified mercilessly. What’s up with that?
During the War on Drugs, we used the term “Culture of Maximum Harm” to describe the perverse way in which efforts to curb drug abuse, by criminalizing drug users, caused far more harm than drug abuse itself. In fact, the War on Drugs strategy of arresting and incarcerating drug users and peddlers seems to have been devised so as to cause the maximum possible harm to society. When we saw how the culture of maximum harm used the pretense of addressing a public health crisis as cover for violence, human rights violations and political oppression, we saw the War on Drugs, not as an effort to curb drug use, but as a tool to invade privacy, incarcerate millions, and as a distraction from, and excuse for, crimes against humanity.
Ten years and 666+ posts later, SoHum still needs someone who isn’t afraid to confront the obvious, no matter how unpopular or inconvenient, and the obvious has never been more unpopular or inconvenient than it is right now. I wish it weren’t so, and that I didn’t have to do it, but no one else around here will. Like it or not, you need me right now, because there’s something you need to know, and it’s staring you in the face, but for some reason you just don’t see it yet. So welcome back.
I love science and have tremendous respect for scientific inquiry. I have studied science. I know a few scientists, and I generally like them. However, I know a few things about science, and scientists, that more people need to know, especially now. So today, I offer you a few really important things you need to know about science and scientists.
1. Scientists know almost everything about physics, and almost nothing about life. That’s why physicists can build a reliable nuclear weapon but doctors can’t cure the common cold. Objective science works well for calculating the trajectories and velocities of objects in space and time. Organisms, however, are not objects, and so objective science is completely inadequate for studying them.
Most scientists don’t know this, but it is true. Sadly, many scientists, especially in the US continue to study human beings as though we were objects, or piles of objects called atoms. This has led to a medical system that dehumanizes and objectifies us more effectively than it treats disease or promotes health. It also means that there’s a hell of a lot that doctors don’t know. One thing doctors do know, however, is how to talk down to you in such a way that you won’t question their bullshit.
Physicists know how to blow shit up, and they don’t argue about it. Physicians, on the other hand, barely know what they are looking at, and there’s a lot of disagreement among them about practically everything. Doctors don’t like to let on that they really don’t know what they are doing, so they formed the American Medical Association in order to put up a consistent front that makes it look like they have everything figured out and know what to do in every situation. They do this so that people will trust them, and unfortunately, it works entirely too well. The AMA works very hard to quell dissent within its ranks, and banishes doctors who refuse to tow the party line, but renegade doctors persist, and many of them have better success treating patients than doctors who follow AMA guidelines.
2. Almost everything we know about science, we learned from the pursuit of war. We learned physics in the development of ever more lethal weapons, and we learned medicine from patching up the survivors. Today our weapons kill people far more effectively than our doctors cure disease, and much of the advance in modern medicine has been in improving survival rates of people who suffer the kinds of traumatic injury that only technology can inflict.
3. Plebes worship “Science,” while scientists worship money. You can’t do science without money, and finding money to do science isn’t easy. Unless somebody thinks they can make a lot of money on it, or the military thinks they can kill people with it, you are probably going to have a hard time finding money to study it. On the other hand, if you don’t really care what you work on, as long as it pays well, your opportunities as a scientist multiply. Scientists spend a lot on their education, and they expect to be rewarded for that, so many scientists look for the higher paying jobs.
That’s why, when you need a scientist to do something really terrible, like design a nuclear weapon that kills all of the people in a city, but leaves the buildings standing, or turn a minor statistical anomaly into a smoke-screen argument against global warming, or bio-engineer a bat corona-virus so that it infects humans, you can always find a meek and obedient scientist who is happy to do it for you so long as you have the money.
Plebes, on the other hand, have disavowed the creation myth of their Judaeo-Christian heritage in favor of an even bigger pile of bullshit called the Big Bang Theory, and they now embrace “Science” the great spirit from whom all new technology flows, as a religion. They traded the clerical collar for the white lab-coat of scientific authority. Now they believe anything the doctor tells them, just like they used to believe the priest, and of course they take their vaccines as a sacrament to their faith in “Science.” I hope they’ve at least learned not to leave their kids alone with a scientist either.
People have always believed a lot of stupid stuff. As I’ve so eloquently said before, “Stupid and wrong is the natural human condition, and it has never stopped us before.” That said, the human body is smarter than science can comprehend, and its natural tendency to heal, especially when supported by good nutrition, proper exercise and a non-toxic environment, tends to make doctors look good, if they can somehow take credit for it, but the miracle is you, not the medicine, and your body knows more than your doctor.
That’s why you should be very careful about messing with that miracle, or trusting “Science.” Science is not some noble pursuit of the truth. Science is about warfare, money, power and greed, and any scraps of truth that emerge from it are purely coincidental. Science is a tool of exploitation and control. In fact, psychologists are studying you right now, and the people paying those psychologists intend to use the knowledge they gain to control and exploit you. That’s what you need to know about science.
This pandemic is a lot like a Grateful Dead concert in the ‘90s. You know that large sums of cash will change hands, a lot of people will take drugs, and sooner or later it’s going to kill the fat guy you love. You know that a Grateful Dead show will be a huge event. You know who will be there, and you know exactly what they sound like when they play together, no matter what song they play. This pandemic is the same way. We’ve heard this band before, and we didn’t like it at all.
This pandemic was brought to you by the same band who gave you the War in Afghanistan, both wars in Iraq, The War on Drugs, the War in Vietnam, and both world wars. Let’s call them “The Vanguard Group” because Vanguard is the largest privately held investment firm in the world, and they own everything. I mean everything.
A logo sign outside of the headquarters of the investment management company, The Vanguard Group in Malvern, Pennsylvania on May 24, 2015. Photo Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar/ Sipa USA
They own the media, all of it, including NPR and PBS, through their so-called “philanthropic foundations,” like The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They own Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Ag, and they buy up internet startups that serve their interests as soon as they look promising.
They’ve been around for a long time. Many generations of Rothschild, Rockefeller and DuPont have played in the Vanguard group, and Bill Gates is their new keyboard player. There are a few other players too, but they have a very distinctive sound that can instantly trigger PTSD reactions in millions of people all over the world who have experienced them before.
These are the people who sold diesel fuel, from American refineries, to Nazi U-Boats, so they could attack Allied supply convoys as soon as they left the East Coast of the US. The same people who made poison gas for Nazi death chambers AND explosives for Allied bombs, and the same people who financed Hitler’s Third Reich, as well as the millions of Allied troops who died fighting them. They didn’t care much who won that war. The fact that millions of people died, at a time when people were becoming unruly, is all that really mattered to them. That’s how they work and nobody but them can put on a show like that.
That’s the kind of show you get from the Vanguard group. They also did the War on Drugs, and I remember that show well. I remember the lies and the bogus science, the fear campaign, the full-court press in the media to turn neighbor against neighbor, and to turn children against their own parents. I remember the huge budgets for cops and prisons while they cut social programs, and I remember that the CIA financed dirty wars in Central and South America while they fostered violent gang wars in neighborhoods all over the US by trafficking tons of cocaine into US Cities. If you lived through it, you’ll never forget it.
This pandemic is just like the War On Drugs if you just make some substitutions:
1. Substitute Tony Fauci for Drug Czar Bill Bennett as the Designated Liar. So we have a new guy who tells lies designed to scare the shit out of you. Back then they wanted you to be afraid of drugs, today they want you to be afraid of the virus.
2. Substitute “Cases” for “Arrests.” They quote this meaningless statistic endlessly, and use it to justify draconian new policies that limit our freedom. Undercover cops and sting operations have now been replaced by a PCR test that produces a lot of false positives, proving only that if you look for trouble hard enough, you are bound to find it.
3. Substitute Deaths and Hospitalizations for Overdoses, Gang Murders, Crack Babies etc. Dead people. Deaths, in a Vanguard Group production, are like the notes of a Jerry Garcia guitar solo at a Grateful Dead concert. Death is the essence, the character, and the defining quality of the Vanguard Group experience. Death is what makes the Vanguard Group who they are, and these periodic demonstrations of their unparalleled flair for killing large numbers of people dramatically, and with complete impunity, is why people listen to them.
4. Substitute Covid-19 for Crack Cocaine Both cooked-up in a lab and dumped on innocent civilians by the CIA.
5. Substitute Mandatory Vaccines in the Workplace for Mandatory Drug-Testing in the Workplace. Both aimed at producing a more compliant workforce and marginalizing free-thinkers. They established these mandates as an emergency measure, even though they are nonsensical and unnecessary, but they will try to make them stick, permanently. They sure got away with it in the War on Drugs.
Thanks to drug testing in the workplace it is still legal to discriminate against cannabis consumers, and now we are getting ready to fire our best nurses because they know better than to take the jab. The Vanguard Group doesn’t like America’s best and brightest, because we see right through them. The Vanguard Group wants only America’s most compliant and cowardly as their minions, and so you can expect that if they get away with this, they will continue to jab you with poison from time to time, partially to remind you of who is boss, but also to insure that you don’t burden the Social Security system for long after you cease to be productive.
Yes, this is definitely a Vanguard Group show, and when the Vanguard Group puts on a show like this, you get to see who works for them. Just watch the way they make Biden dance. They own him. They own the whole Democratic Party, and the WHO, as well as world leaders all over the globe. The Vanguard Group owns them, and they dance when the Vanguard Group pulls their strings. I remember being amazed at how well the Vanguard Group choreographed the War on Drugs, but this pandemic shows that they haven’t lost their touch. Quite the contrary. I think we’re watching the greatest puppet show on Earth.
It’s been funny to watch the mainstream media downplay the “lab leak” theory of the origin of Covid-19. I mean, to me, this seems like a big story, right? “Sloppy Scientists Unleash Global Pandemic” I think that would sell some papers, or bait some clicks, or whatever it is people do to find out what someone else knows that they don’t these days, especially since Tony Fauci’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene, with the NIH funding some of the most dangerous (not to mention illegal, insane, and prohibited by international treaty) work with bat corona viruses remarkably similar to the one wrecking havoc all over the world right now.
Pretty much everyone has now admitted that the “lab leak” theory is at least plausibly, if not likely responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. It certainly makes sense to me. “Lab Leak” should be Tony Fauci’s middle name. Tony “Lab Leak” Fauci oversaw the bio-defense lab at Ft Detrick that leaked bio-hazards into the Frederick, MD water supply over one-hundred times between 2004 and 2012.
Fauci earned his reputation for doing very risky science, sloppily, at Ft Detrick, but even then, many questioned whether all of those releases were accidental. Many wondered whether Fauci’s crew at Ft Detrick were intentionally experimenting with bio-weapons on unsuspecting American civilians. Instead of getting to the bottom of of those questions, congress prohibited, so called, “gain of function” research, and closed the lab at Ft. Detrick.
Flash forward to today: What does it mean that Tony “Lab Leak” Fauci worked with the Chinese Communist Party, the Department of Defense, and the CIA, among others, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to genetically engineer bat corona viruses to infect humans? That seems like a pretty big story on its own, don’t you think? Don’t you want to know what’s up with that?
There’s something unreal about this whole pandemic. I’m not saying that the virus isn’t real, or that it isn’t killing people. I think the virus is real, I just don’t believe the story we are being told about it is true. I completely understand that they want me to be frightened of the virus. They want me to be so frightened of the virus that I run to the clinic for the experimental “vaccine.”
I also know that they want me to believe that the “vaccine” is “absolutely safe and effective.” I heard my County Health Officer say exactly that, and I practically choked. Nothing is absolutely safe and effective, nothing, so I knew that was a lie. It is certainly not true of these experimental new “vaccines,” which have already killed thousands of Americans, and crippled thousands more, but no one wants to cover that story either. Instead, they ask, “What do we have to say to get you to take the shot?”
Clearly, they’ll say anything, whether it is true or not, to get their poison in our arms. But some of us remain unconvinced. So, now the government has stepped-up the pressure with mandates for government workers to get “vaccinated”, and they’re encouraging all employers to follow suit. From now on, you will surrender sovereignty over your own body chemistry as a condition of employment. A lot of Americans will do it too, not because they think the vaccine will protect them, or because they think getting the shot is a good idea, but because the only thing that scares Americans more than Covid or the creepy new “vaccine” is unemployment.
I don’t pretend to know more than I do. I don’t know where Covid came from, but I know where Fauci came from. I know where Pfizer came from. I know where Biden came from, and I don’t like where they are taking us, and I sure the fuck don’t trust them enough to let them stick a needle in my arm.
I’m plenty frightened by what I see right now, but I think we should all be very careful about what we think we know, what is possible, and who we trust, because the stakes are very high for all of us, and the decisions we make right now, under duress, will set the course of history.
This old Pink Floyd song really captures the angst that I’m feeling at the moment. I remade Careful With That Axe Eugene with some of the instruments from the Orchestra of the Unwanted. This track features the Spring Bass, Tin Can Fiddle, and $20 Vocoder as well as Talking Drum and voice. I hope you like it.
Senator Rand Paul filed a criminal report with the US Justice Department last week, accusing Dr Anthony Fauci of lying to Congress about US taxpayer funded “gain of function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. Here’s what it looked like:
It sure looks to me like Fauci lied to Congress. And I’m guessing he lied because “gain of function” research on pathogenic viruses is not only insanely foolhardy, and extremely dangerous, it is a violation of federal law and international treaty. It also appears that Fauci, whether or not he funded the invention of this particular pandemic with our money, could have created a similar global pandemic, by accident, if some of the man-made viruses they created there in Wuhan, ever escaped. Incidentally, it also appears that this pandemic, that has so impacted all of us for the last 16 months or so, may have originated in that very lab.
I hope the Justice Department takes up this case and gets to the bottom of it, because we deserve to know the truth, but I think it informative to see how Fauci responded under pressure. “You don’t know what you are talking about… and I want to say that officially. You don’t know what you are talking about.” That’s how Fauci handles anyone who questions his judgment. He’s the Scientist, after all. How could we lay-people possibly fathom the infinite secrets of Science? See, when you are a Scientist you can revoke peoples civil rights, usurp their democracy, destroy their economy and order them around like children, because you are the only one who understands Science. Essentially, Fauci has declared himself the Pope of Science.
I know he looked smart next to Trump, but Paris Hilton’s dog looks smarter than Trump. Fauci lies. One week he says masks are useless, the next week he makes them mandatory. That’s not science, that’s Simon Says. The more you know about Fauci, the less you like him, and the less you trust him. He’s lead our germ-warfare program for as long as I can remember, and his top-secret lab at Ft Detrick leaked biohazards into the Frederick, MD water supply more than 100 times. When that information hit the papers, the public outrage got the lab closed down, but Fauci took the work over to Wuhan. It is also very curious how Fauci got the funding for the lab at Ft Detrick. That funding was prompted by the as yet unsolved Anthrax Letters Case. Someone should be looking for Fauci’s fingerprints there too. And I don’t think this woman is wrong about Fauci either:
Frankly, I pegged Fauci as the inventor of this disease from the beginning, and I don’t know why you didn’t too. I can’t understand why more people don’t see through the fear-mongering and purple rhetoric to the fact that we are being lied to. Covid is a lot more like the flu than it is like ebola, and we should treat it that way. The response to covid has done far more harm than the disease ever will. Yes, they lied to you about the pandemic, and they are lying to you about the vaccine. You don’t need to be a genius to figure that out. Hell, Rand Paul figured it out. The single most frightening thing about this whole experience, to me, is how few of the people I used to see as my political allies, can see it.
The real test of critical thinking is not whether or not you can see the little inconsistencies in new information that you are skeptical about. The real test of critical thinking lies in how well you see the big lies coming from respected authorities that are infinitely echoed in the culture and media. It takes more than reason and logic to see those lies; it also takes courage and conviction. Entirely too many people have failed that test, and I find that very discouraging.
Even though people continue to disappoint me, music never has. Music continues to sustain me through this entire ordeal. In fact I’ve been involved with my own “gain of function” research here in the solar-powered off-grid studios of Catlandia. Like Dr Fauci and his colleagues working in Wuhan, I think most people, if they saw what I was doing, would think me insane. Unlike Fauci, however, I’m not going to lie about it.
I found this toy drum machine in a thrift store in Arcata. I want you to know that I would never buy something like this new. I don’t want to support the mass produced electronic toy market in any way. These things are an affront to nature. They are full of toxins and heavy metals, they’ll never biodegrade, and they sound awful. In other words, they embody our modern, post-industrial high-tech culture perfectly. Like Fauci, when confronted with the perfection of life on Earth, I thought I could make some improvements.
As is often the case with thrift store electronics, this toy didn’t work when I bought it. I found the battery box full of leaking batteries and corroded contacts, so I had to clean up that mess before I got it to power up, and then discovered an intermittent short that caused the speaker volume to change dramatically and unpredictably. I traced the short to loose capacitor on the circuit board. When I re-soldered that, it worked like new.
Then, like Fauci, I went looking for trouble, and started messing with stuff I didn’t understand. I found a few spots on the circuit-board that, when connected with a bit of resistance, could speed-up, or slow-down the processor speed of the rhythm sample player. This allowed me to control the pitch and tempo of the rhythm patterns both more precisely, and over a much wider range than the manufacturer ever intended, by just adding a couple of knobs and switches. Like Fauci, I have no idea what I’ve done. I just know that it works differently now, and it can do more than it used to. Here’s a demonstration:
Fortunately for me, gain of function research on discarded electronic toys is not banned by an international treaty which the US has ratified, so I don’t have any reason to lie to congress about it. Unlike Fauci, my gain of function research hasn’t started a global pandemic or made me rich and famous, but hey, anything is possible. Here is a piece of music I composed for this modified drum toy, overtone flute, tin can violin and voice. You might not like it, but at least it won’t kill you.
(Introduction: I wrote this piece more than two years ago, before anyone ever heard of Covid-19. I didn’t publish it then because I didn’t want to broach the vaccine issue. I just didn’t have a dog in that race. Funny how some things change. Skeptics haven’t changed though. This loose association of intellectual bullies still spews the same pin-headed reductionist thinking laced with the same prejudices and privileged perspective that they’ve been spewing for years, so the piece remains relevant, regardless of how you feel about vaccines in general or the experimental new Covid-19 “vaccine.”)
Be careful of people who identify themselves as “Skeptics.” In the same way that the long history of religious violence spawned atheism, a movement which killed God in reaction to the undeniable corruption of the Church. The explosion of online disinformation has given rise to a reactionary movement known as “Skepticism” which views objective science as the ultimate authority on everything, including all of the stuff scientists know nothing about. The Skeptics movement presumes that objective science can, and will, lead to our complete understanding of the Universe, not to mention a technological utopia for all humanity. For all that scientists, especially biologists and ecologists refute this, “Skeptics” have bought into the “logic” of objective science and the predictability of physics and extrapolated them into a universal belief system.
Our culture reveres science and technology because of the everyday miracles they perform in our lives. From microwave ovens to smart phones, we give science and technology credit for all of the toys and tools that we use everyday, but have no idea how they work. Ever since Einstein foretold the invention of the nuclear bomb, we treat scientists, especially physicists (aka “rocket scientists”), as the ultimate authority on everything from the origin of the Universe to the mysteries of perception and the human mind. Many scientists eagerly embrace this view as well, which is why we see so many physicists, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Michio Kaku getting into showbiz to propagate this notion among people who would never take, let alone pass, the science courses they teach. As a result, we have elevated objective science from a method of inquiry, to a kind of religion.
Skeptics have become the Spanish Inquisition of this new Church of Sciencism, a religion that worships technology. In general, Skeptics believe in science more than they understand science, so they assume that scientists know more than they do, and they assume that what scientists believe, is true, even though most of what scientists believe, is their own assumptions. Skeptics believe they know more than they do, and of course, they always think they know more than you.
Skeptics used to tell us that environmentalists were just being emotional and alarmist when they warned of the consequences of climate disruption, not because they doubted the science of global warming, but because of their blind faith in, and love of, technology. As it turns out, climate disruption is even worse, and happening faster, than even those environmentalists predicted, driven by the technological innovations that Skeptics are so enamored with.
Now Skeptics tell us that if it weren’t for those emotional and alarmist environmentalists, we could build safe, new, nuclear power plants that would solve our carbon emission problem. Isn’t it funny how the same people who call you an idiot for visiting an acupuncturist, taking a homeopathic remedy, or reading a horoscope, somehow believe in the magic of a foolproof nuclear power plant, with immunity to natural disaster and impenetrable defenses against military attack, and have complete faith in our ability to safely store tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste for at least a quarter-of-a-million years, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
Skeptics love science, except when it reminds them that in our militaristic culture, we use science and technology to kill people, enslave them and make the planet uninhabitable. To Skeptics, this is a small price to pay in their ever-elusive quest for the complete understanding of the universe. They think it’s great to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for bigger and better atom-smashers, but scoff at mega-churches and their super-rich preachers. They revere people in lab-coats rather than clerical robes and say their prayers to Elon Musk’s rocket in lieu of a deity, but think you quaint for your archaic religious beliefs.
As an innocent word in the English language, “skepticism” denotes a good thing. Everyone says “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” but if anyone ever gives you a horse, say “thank you,” lead it away to someplace private, and take a damn good look inside that horses mouth before you take it back to the farm. That’s a healthy kind of skepticism. The Skeptics Movement on the other hand, promotes a very misguided brand of fundamentalism quite at odds with the evidence and the best science. As a movement, Skeptics differ little from flat-earthers in their zeal to oversimplify the universe.
In the same way that the Catholic Church empowered small vile men to indulge their sadistic tendencies on poor peasant women who practiced herbal medicine, showed a reverence for nature, or rejected church doctrine, the Skeptics movement empowers eggheads with a superiority complex to bully women who reject western medicine and ridicule them for refusing to vaccinate their children. Skeptics don’t lead the charge to stop the excessive use of antibiotics on livestock, which scientists tell us, breeds drug-resistant super-bugs that threaten us all, nor do Skeptics make noise about corporate ag practices that lead to widespread food contamination. In reality, kids today face a greater threat from their school lunches than they do from their unvaccinated classmates, but Skeptics, like the Inquisition, choose their victims for their vulnerability.
Whether it’s high-level nuclear waste, persistent bio-accumulative pesticides, microplastics or fracking fluids, Skeptics have never met a toxic pollutant they didn’t like, as long as it is “safely contained” or “below a certain threshold.” They are perfectly willing to accept human casualties, lots of them, in the pursuit of technological innovation, or as an “unexpected consequence” of it, but something must be done about these heretical women who refuse to submit to the authority of Science.
Beware of Skeptics. Skeptics believe themselves wise and capable of navigating our technological society through the current climate crisis, or any other cataclysm their unbridled technocracy may unleash, were they not hindered in their efforts by the large number of superstitious savages who surround them. In reality, that unfounded, and unwarranted belief in their own wisdom created the climate crisis, and the extinction crisis, not to mention the gross inequality we see in our technological society.
For Skeptics, human casualties are just statistics, and your life, merely anecdotal evidence. Skeptics enjoy this kind of separation from the hazards of a technological society, primarily by virtue of their privileged position within it. Skeptics are mostly white, middle-class, college-educated people, and as such, can use their economic clout to limit their exposure to environmental toxins and avoid the worst industrial hazards, while they marvel at the achievements of unbridled human ingenuity and enjoy all of the new toys technology has made available.
Capital “S” Skepticism reeks of chauvinism and white supremacy. Skeptics dismiss the collective wisdom of indigenous humanity as “superstition and folklore,” but they share the blind arrogance of privilege ,and the prejudices of a culture that denigrates nature, and they mistake that belligerent blindness, for intelligence. They ignore the grim consequences of our high-tech civilization, while they embrace a completely imaginary, sci-fi vision of a future technological utopia. Capital “S” Skepticism simply cloaks the overt racism of white supremacy behind a thin veil of “nature and nurture” intellectualism.
There’s no horror they can’t justify and no atrocity they can’t rationalize in their misguided quest to misunderstand the universe, because understanding nature was never the intention of science. The intention of science has always been to rule nature, including human nature, with technology. Skeptics expect to have power over others, and they expect to have a very abstract relationship to the consequences of their decisions. That’s why Skeptics feel so comfortable making decisions for other people based on their own, emotionally detached, logic. Skeptics expect to rule the world by virtue of their intellectual superiority, which, in their minds, is always beyond question. We need to be very careful of people who think like that.
So, I’m looking at a piece of junk mail I got the other day from AAA, encouraging me to reactivate my expired membership, and then something caught my eye from the bottom of the page. Two normal words juxtaposed as to form a sentence, but instead of a period at the end of it, there was a “™” indicating a trademark, but the message it conveyed just blew me away as the single most blasphemous, arrogant, irresponsible and stupid thing I ever read in my life. In fact, it so perfectly concentrated all those qualities in such purity, so concisely, that the profundity of it stunned me. This is what it said:
Outsmart Life™
If this ever sounds like a good idea to you, I suggest you take a good hard look at your life and what you are trying to accomplish, because you just might be completely nuts.
Personally, I take great comfort in the knowledge that life is far wiser than I, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore and appreciate as much of her as I can, but I dare not presume that I know better than she. After all, she’s been here at least 500 million years, eternity maybe, while I am, let’s just say, “considerably younger.” She’s been everything that ever was, and will be, and done everything that’s ever been done, or will ever happen. My life, on the other hand, has had a much narrower focus. No, I wouldn’t dream of trying to “Outsmart Life™,” and the one thing I have complete trust in, is that life knows what she is doing.
Drone music reminds us of the awesome power and infinite wisdom of life. That’s probably why there’s so little drone music in Western Culture. My drone music always begins with the didgeridoo, and it always feels like a prayer. By itself, the didgeridoo sounds very earthy, pure and spiritual. When I add the voices of some of my homemade instruments from the Orchestra of the Unwanted, the sound takes on a darker dimension.
I think my instruments reflect the trauma of being forged in the violence of consumer capitalism, and outliving their usefulness. They all sound as though they might be better at something else, but they add a certain Gothic, sci-fi quality that, I think, reflects the spirit of our age. I plan to release an album of drone music in the near future. Here’s a piece I recorded recently that might be on it.
Like You've Got Something Better To Do 