Malo Periculosam, Libertatem Quam Quietam Servitutem

Abner! There are people outside! Congregating!
Having fun! They're not wearing masks!
And they're not six feet apart! Do they want people to die?
Call the police!

It surprises me that even here in conservative rural Idaho, people are giving in to the hysteria. At the local Walmart, all the employees are wearing masks and gloves, and benches have been removed so that people -- apparently even family members that live together -- are forced to "social distance." Other stores are putting up plastic sheets and plexiglass barriers and using masking tape to mark the magical 72-inch barrier on the floors with an X. One store in our town that recently reopened won't let you enter without a mask (which, as a reminder, does nothing if it's not an N-95) and gloves. A little playground the next town over is taped off, with a notice posted outlining the governor's C-19 orders -- one of which says that outside recreation near your home is encouraged.

A few heroic local businesses have defied the orders and remained open. I won't name them, because I'm not going to give the Stasi snitches any ammunition.

Those business owners are heroic because they thought for themselves. They didn't let their fear-driven lizard brains hijack their critical thinking process. They didn't choose the economic suicide that our authoritarian leaders wanted to force them into.

And now those of us who were skeptical of this massive overreach all along are being proved right. With tests rolling out in New York, we're finding that millions have C-19 antibodies, which means that millions had the disease with no symptoms. That means the vast majority of people who get the virus recover from it completely or never get sick at all. That also means the mortality rate will drop dramatically.

The sky was never falling. This was never the black plague -- just another seasonal viral outbreak no worse than the flu. None of the draconian shutdowns and house arrests were ever necessary. If anything, they made the situation worse by slowing the spread of herd immunity.

Moreover, we continue to see that a drug cocktail containing hydroxychloroquine works. The media has only downplayed and demonized it because Donald Trump suggested it as a potential treatment. The New York Times and other "respected" media outlets went out of their way to find people who suffered severe side effects (this just in -- all drugs have side effects) when they just as easily could have examined why the FDA was approving the drug's use on an experimental basis for hospitalized patients. They went out of their way to speculate that Trump was making loads of money from a stock holding by pushing the drug, when the tiniest bit of research would have shown (1) that Trump held a stock indirectly through a fund valued at a grand total of $1,500 or less, and (2) that the drug is a generic that's been around for decades, which means there's virtually no money to be made from it.

This is the mindset of those with Trump Derangement Syndrome. They'd rather politicize a virus than let people get better. These are people who, if Trump told them breathing is good for you, would hold their breath until they pass out. That is the utter spiteful childishness we're dealing with here.

And we know that the numbers have been inflated, to the point that almost any death could be attributed to C-19. The vast majority of the dead have been elderly and had co-morbidities.

But if you tell people any of this, they treat you like you're Satan. And that's probably because they don't want to be made to feel like a fool for having panicked in the first place.

But then there are the safety Nazis who would cower in fear no matter what you told them, and all the Gladys Kravitzes of the world who peer out their window just looking for a neighbor to snitch on. These are the people making 2020 look like a rerun of 2001. Better safe than sorry, they said back then when the Patriot Act was enacted, "Homeland" Security was created, and the TSA was put in place to molest children in wheelchairs and old people with prosthetic limbs. This is the price we have to pay to be safe. Do you want the terrorists to kill us? Even if it saves one life, it's worth it.  

Home of the brave, my ass.

The only thing that's changed between 2001 and 2020 is what the lizard-brains use for their emotional blackmail. Now the same old baby boomers that so many millennials wanted dead are the reason we have to remain locked down in our homes. The same Grandma you couldn't be bothered to call three months ago is now your justification for making everyone on the planet a prisoner over a bug that's not even going to harm most people. If it saves one elderly person, it's worth it. Do you want them all to die?

Well, here's the thing. People die every day. More people die of heart disease and cancer than they do C-19. More people have died from the common flu than from C-19. Are you going to shut down the planet over the flu? Are you going to go out in your hazmat suit every time a bug is going around?

I admit, I already knew the overwhelming majority of people were idiotic sheep who do what TV and their leaders tell them to do. It was only an annoyance before. Now they've destroyed the economy and handed over our freedoms that we're not likely to ever get back. When you have to get your temperature scanned every time you enter a public place, it's the sheeple who will say it's for the good of everyone. When the government can track your every move to see if you've come in contact with an infected person and then put you in an involuntary quarantine, it's the sheeple who will say do you want people to die? When vaccines become mandatory, under penalty of house arrest, fines, or imprisonment, it's the sheeple who will say do you want to get everyone sick? And don't think it won't happen, because this is exactly how we ended up with the Patriot Act, "Homeland" Security, and the TSA. All because a bunch of terrified sheep were propagandized into accepting encroachments on their liberties for the sake of safety.

Well, a wise man a few centuries ago had something to say about that mindset.

America was not founded by a bunch of terrified sheep. It was founded by people who preferred the inherent unknown dangers of liberty over the slavery of guaranteed security. As Thomas Jefferson put it:

Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem.

From people swarming to the beaches to pastors holding church services to organized protests aimed at overreaching elected leaders, Americans are beginning to push back against the lockdowns -- and that's a good thing. Notice, though, that in every story that deals with those pushing back against the lockdowns, we're reminded that they're doing so "despite coronavirus concerns." Or the media will point out that the protesters are being called "morons" and "covidiots," which is your cue to do the same. Because if you're no longer scared out of your wits, the media's narrative can no longer control you. Think about it. The media could just as well frame these articles by pointing out that some are thankful for the pushback. It could serve as an opportunity to have a discussion about how these lockdowns have gone way too far. But no. That's not part of the agenda. The agenda is to keep you afraid, to point fingers at the current administration, and to get you to support petty, power-tripping tyrants who dump tons of sand in a skate park to stop kids from having fun, or who ban the sale of seeds (because seeds carry Cooties-19?). Government knows best. Don't you dare think for yourself.

Rebellion against tyranny is the spirit that created America. So you can go out and live your life and accept the risks that come with living that life, or you can hide inside your house forever and demand that others do the same because you're afraid, all while you repeat your mantra of what about Grandma? to try to shame others into compliance.

We all have a choice to make. Which will it be?

The Easter That Wasn't

You can really tell a lot about a society by what it considers "essential." Like how liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries are considered essential businesses and are allowed to remain open -- while churches are shut down as tight as a drum. Heck, even abortion clinics remain open. But your local church? Forget about it.

One good thing about our current global psychosis is that it's really showing what people and institutions are made of. When bishops were shutting down churches before the lockdowns even came into place, they were telling their flocks loud and clear, "We don't need you." Oh, sure, you can watch the priests and their servers give each other communion every day on some webcast, but you can't come to church and have it yourself.

You can go buy vodka and weed, but you can't have the Body and Blood of Christ.

You can crowd into a supermarket, where everybody has touched everything, but you can't go into a church that almost by definition is going to be more sanitary than the local Walmart.

Nor can you go to confession because of the magical six-foot barrier.

Some bishops are even denying priests the ability to give dying people last rites. And when local and state governments ban priests from doing so, the bishops never push back.

The bishops haven't pushed back against anything. They could argue that church is essential for the salvation of souls, or even just for offering people comfort and hope in a time of crisis. They could do all that. Instead, they lock down their churches, deny the sacraments, and tell their priests to avoid meeting with anyone.

It's like they never believed anything they said, in countless sermons and books and talks over the centuries. Because if they did, they would have fought tooth and nail to keep themselves available to the people they serve. They didn't. They folded like a house of cards as they told people to stay away. And now, practically every Catholic church in the world will be shut down and empty during Easter, the most important celebration on the Christian calendar.

One of the most unfortunately humorous things I've seen during this mess is a YouTube video with a Catholic priest responding to people despondent that they can't get to confession. His reply was that you can go directly to God with your confession and receive forgiveness. This is exactly what Protestants have been saying for 500 years. He admitted that priests, and by extension the church, aren't necessary.

Well, plenty of us will remember that. We'll remember how easily we were locked out and abandoned by our "shepherds," with no attempt to even try to welcome the faithful in for Easter celebrations.

No one anywhere in the church is pushing back against the police roadblocks that were already being set up last week so people wouldn't dare go to an Easter celebration. No one anywhere in the church is saying it's wrong to tell people who want to celebrate Easter that you need to stay home or be arrested. No one. Instead, our "shepherds" meekly go along with whatever the political tyrants in charge tell them to do -- even in the face of authoritarian fascists like Kentucky's Democratic governor, who, being so drunk on power that he mandated ankle bracelets for noncompliant people infected with the virus, is now ordering the police to photograph the license plates of any cars gathered for Easter services -- and then serve them with a 14-day house arrest at their homes.

The planet has been turned into a prison ostensibly for our physical well-being. Well, what about our spiritual well-being? That's what our priests and bishops are supposed to be concerned with, not with following what our secular leaders do. They're supposed to be in this world but not of this world. They're supposed to be the front-line medics in the field hospitals for our souls. Instead, they just parrot secular blather about social distancing and "flattening the curve."

So why even bother being a clergyman if you sound and act no differently from an elected bureaucrat? Why bother even having a church if you shut people out when they want and need you the most?

One thing's for sure: We now know that when the going gets tough, the church will abandon you faster than the disciples abandoned Christ after his arrest. Then as now, saving their own hides and cowering in fear won out over remaining faithful to the end.

I almost left the church after the last round of abuse stories made headlines. I gave the church the benefit of the doubt. No more. I will never darken the doorstep of a church again. Fool me once, and all that.

At first, realizing my return to the church was over made me sad. After all, my family was going to church with me, I enjoyed the ritual and familiarity of the Mass, and my daughter was on track to be baptized and receive her first communion. Her baptism, in fact, would have been this weekend.

But now I can also see how I let the allure of the familiar draw me in. The Mass was a mainstay of my life growing up. Coming back to it was like finding an old security blanket.

Eventually, though, you have to give up the security blanket and grow up. You have to put away childish things, to use Paul's words against him.

So for me, all this has been something of a blessing in disguise. I tried to believe. I tried to rationalize the dogmas and doctrines. But I just can't fake it, and I don't think I was ever very good at faking it.

That has allowed me to reflect on what I really wanted out of my spiritual life. I was focused on the Sermon on the Mount and the Sacred Feminine, and I think my focus on the former just left me angry that so much of the world -- and in particular Christians who should know better -- couldn't see the wisdom in the teachings. My focus on the latter, meanwhile, had waned.

I was prepared to chuck it all in the trash. But I'm not an atheist. I've been down that road, and it never felt right. I've always believed in some kind of higher creative power. In particular, uniting the creation of the world with the feminine has always been simple for me. The Tao, after all, is the Great Mother, the grand cosmic womb from which all life arises. And we see that same creating, nurturing, and sustaining power manifested in every woman. For life to begin, the male has to enter her and give her a seed to plant. For new life to be born, it must emerge from her nourishing womb. The feminine is the gateway for all life. How could we not revere it?

Thinking about all that led me back to where I'd left off with my focus on the Goddess, before I found my way back to the institutional church. So I resumed my former journey by going back to the East, where I began by examining Shaktism and the possibility of yoni worship and tantra. That, in turn, led to a rediscovery of esoteric spiritual paths, such as Gnosticism, and into previously unexplored areas, such as spiritual alchemy. The deeper I went, the more I saw the dots connecting between things like astrology, tarot, Freemasonry, Hermeticism, Grail lore, the Rosicrucians, Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, druidry, Kabbalah, and more.

And all of that ended up revealing a path back toward esoteric Christianity, especially with regard to how the alchemists weaved Christian symbolism into their complex writings and illustrations, while overlaying them with concepts of the union of male and female, in the form of sun and moon -- shades of pagan imagery and the yin-yang of Taoism -- to promote an inner change and a union of the human and the divine that's not all that dissimilar from the Orthodox concept of theosis and the musings of the Christian mystics, like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Hildegard of Bingen.

I have lots of reading to do now, as I delve deeper and try to synthesize these views into something workable. Happily, they all leave room for the Sacred Feminine, and for me, the image of Mary as the feminine archetype, the nurturing and protective mother, still has room to exist there.

However, the image of the Black Madonna now holds some intrigue as well, in terms of how she reflects the darkness of the primordial universe, the black soil of the earth, and the darkness within ourselves that she can help us root out. The church's sanitized Mary has her place, but so does the dark Mary, the one who was present as Tao or Sophia at the creation, the one who roots us in Mother Earth, and the one who, like Hecate and the other dark forms of the Goddess, sometimes gives us tough love to help us wade through our own crap so we can heal.

And I think that's the major difference so far. Instead of being focused on ethical teachings that I expect everyone else to live by, this path focuses on getting my own house in order first. Which, in the end, ought to be far more healthy. After all, our current global psychosis only serves to remind me of my contempt for 99% of human beings and their utter stupidity. Why would I ever expect them to follow a way that would better the world in the first place? That's just setting myself up for disappointment and failure.

There's no reward -- secular or spiritual -- for being a good boy anyway, nor is there any deity that's going to act like a genie and wipe away our messes for us. Any deity worth her salt will make us clean our messes up ourselves. The deities may offer us moral support and guide us, but they're going to leave the dirty work to us. That's their job.

One might argue that a loving god wouldn't do that to us, letting us twist in the wind in times of need. But that's really just a corner that Judeo-Christian theologians have painted themselves into as they try to reconcile "God is love" with human suffering and the tyrannical God of the Old Testament. Other deities carry around no such weight. They could help, but no one expects them to, because everyone knows they're just as capricious as most humans. They might guide us if they feel like it or we flatter them enough, but in the end they're not to be relied on.

And there's something comforting about that. It's certainly less disappointing than pinning your hopes on a supposedly benevolent "ask and you shall receive" God who then ignores you in your time of need. Hmmm, just like the priests and bishops of today's church.

And so this is the path I'll embark on. Call it mysticism. Call it the occult. I just call it a path toward personal healing and transformation, so that I can ultimately be a better person for those in my orbit. The rest of the world can take a flying leap.

On this holiday when we celebrate rebirth, new life, and new beginnings, I say farewell to the institutional church, and hello to this new/old path. May it be a fruitful adventure. 

What Are You Afraid Of?

Must I fear what others fear?
What nonsense!
~ Lao-tzu, 2,500 years ago

In this time of mass psychosis, where we've handed over our freedoms to power-hungry tyrants more than willing to take what we're giving, ask yourself one basic question.

What am I afraid of?

Are you afraid of catching a bug that most people will completely recover from? That will give most people mild symptoms at worst? That won't even kill as many people as the annual flu?

Do you worry as much about getting the flu? Or getting in a car crash? Or dying of heart disease or cancer? Because you have a much better chance of having any of those things happen to you.

Are you willing to risk giving up your freedom of movement and association forever, because someone told you to be afraid of a bug?

Are you going to snitch out your neighbor because he's not obeying and conforming like you are? Does his refusal to conform make you uncomfortable about your own lack of reflection and your submission to peer pressure?

Are you OK with curfews? (Not like the virus works on a time schedule.)

Are you OK with arresting a father and daughter playing tee-ball in an empty park (which actually happened in Colorado)?

Are you OK with politicians telling you where you can go and what you can do, what stores are allowed to be open, and what you can and can't buy when you get there?

Are you OK that in some communities you can now be fined and imprisoned for not wearing a mask outdoors (even though non-surgical masks do nothing to protect you from the virus)?

Are you OK with killing the global economy to stop a bug? With putting millions out of work? Is it worth it?

Do you realize that hiding in your house will only prolong this madness, because it makes it far more likely that infections will spike again since we'll have established no herd immunity against the virus?

Do you realize that there's nothing magical about six feet? That a virus can travel farther than that, and that it can survive on surfaces other people touch at the grocery store?

Do you realize that the number of dead worldwide is still a vanishingly small fraction of a percent?

Are you tired of living in a media-induced panic? One that elected leaders who love power are all too happy to cash in on?

Do you realize you are being played? Manipulated? Controlled?

When are you going to stop? What will it take?

"But people are dying!"

Of course they are. People die every day. And they die in far greater numbers of other incidents and diseases than they do from C-19.

As a reminder, here's where things stand today:

0.001%: The number of C-19 deaths worldwide. One one-thousandth of one percent of the world population.

0.006%: The number of C-19 deaths in the United States. Six one-thousandths of one percent of the U.S. population.

That's what you're terrified of. That's what you're Covid-shaming people for when they dare to go about their lives. That's what you're handing over your freedoms and your economic security for.

You've been propagandized into thinking that if you let life go on as normal, everyone will die. They won't. It's a respiratory virus with a 95%-plus recovery rate. It's not the black plague. You let the media tell you every day about new cases and more deaths. You've let them condition you into seeing those who question the insanity as dangerous, reckless, irresponsible "Covidiots" who want to kill everyone. You don't stop to think that maybe they've taken the time to think through the official narrative and have found it lacking, rather than obeying like mindless sheep.

Every time you hear about someone going out and actually living life, and your response is "Do they want everyone to die?" -- then you can be sure you're being controlled by others telling you what to think. If you have a "Stay Home Save Lives" motto on your Facebook profile, or you go out of your way to announce that you're practicing "social distancing" and scolding anyone who doesn't, then  congratulations -- you're a good, obedient little citizen who's dutifully fallen in line and doing what you've been told to do, with a little virtue-signaling thrown in for good measure so that the herd will pat you on the back for conforming, just like they have.

And if the solution to what terrifies everyone is to turn the world into a giant prison, then is the "cure" really worth it? If your fear has you handing over your freedoms, then what have you gained? You may have avoided catching a bug, but at what cost to your liberties and your quality of life? Is avoiding a bug really worth it if it means 24/7 tracking of your movements for the rest of your life, mandatory vaccinations, or being put under house arrest every time you have a sniffle? Is your safety, your fear of death, really worth the trade-off?

Our lives will never go back to the way they were, all because terrified humans allowed politicians drunk on power to prey on their fears.

One good thing about a situation like this is that you really get to see what people are made of. You can see how most people are truly brainwashed sheep, easy as pie to control when you fill them with fear. And the rest of us suffer for it. As my wife likes to say, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Look, I know all about fear. I've always been an anxious person. A lot of it stems from early childhood trauma. Everybody's afraid of something. My point is, in this current environment, the thing to fear is not some bug that won't kill most of the people it infects, but rather the people fanning the fear, and the citizens who are willingly letting the government turn us into a Soviet police state out of that same fear.

The herd mentality, the pressure to conform, the unthinking reflection -- these are the things to guard against. Not a bug that will run its course, as all bugs do.

Must you fear what others fear?

What nonsense.

Groupthink Always Wins

Panic. Obey. Conform.

That's the pattern that has emerged out of our global mass psychosis. "Social distancing" and "flatten the curve" have become the equivalent of religious mantras. When masked consumers lean back while they pass you in the aisle and others stand halfway back the store from you in the checkout line, they're doing what they've been told, like good, obedient dogs, to maintain the magical 72-inch barrier around other human beings that will protect them from catching the New Black Plague.

Groupthink has one again prevailed, just like it always does.

Asch and Milgram would never have needed to run lab experiments if they were alive today. All they'd need to do is look around the entire planet to see how easily conditioned, easily propagandized, and easily controlled the overwhelming majority of human beings are. In no time during my life has that been more evident than now. Authority figures in the media whip the masses into a panic, so the masses turn to authority figures in the government to tell them what to do and how to act. Shut down your mom-and-pop and commit economic suicide, because we have to flatten the curve. Maintain a magical 72-inch barrier around yourself and all other human beings, because social distancing will remind all viruses that they aren't allowed to cross that magical barrier. Sure, the virus might be on the door handle you touched when you walked in the store, or on all the merchandise other human beings handled before you did, but that's OK, because the magical 72-inch barrier will save you. Five-foot-eleven? Nope, the virus knows you're too close. Step one more inch away and the force field will be activated. The woman on TV and the man from the government said so.

Better yet, let's just lock people in their houses and let unemployment skyrocket, while we create mass anxiety as human beings -- social animals that they are -- are reprogrammed to remember that merely touching other human beings will kill us all. Don't give a hug or a handshake, you social deviant. Do you want to kill Grandma?

Remember that authority figures always have your best interests in mind. They wouldn't lie to you. They wouldn't pump you daily with fear over numbers of new cases and deaths just to get you to obey them. They don't want you to beg them to please lock you up, take away your freedom of movement, in fact take away all your liberties, so you can be protected from a mutation of a virus that goes around every year, that most people will completely recover from, and that so far has killed 0.002% of the U.S. population and 0.0007% of the world population, while the flu has killed exponentially more.

Nope. Nothing to see here. Move along and "stay home, save lives." And if we see you outside your house, we'll snitch you out to the cops and make sure you're fined or jailed. Because that's how you virtue-signal like a good, compliant citizen in a time of mass hysteria.

Panic. Obey. Conform. Lather, rinse, repeat.