Thank you for this promising post! I will come back to read more carefully and comment more fully later, but I want to pop in right now after skimming and mention that my "dumbphone" is produced by a Mennonite company, which sure does feel right! https://sunbeamwireless.com/the-story-behind-sunbeam-phones/
others have pointed to Sunbeam phones, but i knew nothing about the invention and investment, and was on the fence in the middle of the overgrown pasture of phone options. 🤠
I've been happy with it! I also really like that the OS is not based in/controlled by a foreign country (I try not to freak out about potentialities, but I do think it is wiser to keep these things domestic due to the potential for cyberterrorisim and cyberwarfare).
I'm mainly paranoid about the capture of endless data and the power grab to use that info against free speech. I make choices i shouldn't have to worry about (I'm not subversive or criminal, but apparently we are all deviant from SOME in power) I've seen clearly that some voices and causes are more equal than others!
Very well articulated. Is there a new technology which hasn't made things better and worse? I think the Plain People understand that and try to make choices that maximize utility while minimizing distractions from what is important. We could learn from that.
"We can’t entirely set those horses free any more than a wagon driver can release the reins and expect to stay on the path."
Perhaps the most enlightening article I have ever read! The picture of human life as a carriage being pulled by potentially wild horses reverberates as true. The driver and the horses have to be trained to the task of controlling the speed and direction to harness the potential for disaster into productive motion.
Grateful to you for this exquisite post! Knowing that writers can still be found who help us all with our "mirrors" is why I subscribe to Substack. This is an excellent piece and should be widely read. Thank you with the greatest appreciation!
Boy, did I need this today. Over the past two years I have uprooted myself from the city in order to escape the Machine. I moved to a place where I believed (passionately) that I had escaped. Less than one year after my move, I noticed some unusual activity around a telephone line by my home….to shorten the story….it had been selected as the ONLY possible location for a 5G antenna. I managed to hold them off for 12 months. I am currently out of the country, and my neighbor sent me a photo of this monstrosity that now looks down over my bedroom and living room. I’ve been feeling broken hearted. Your article helped a lot although I will need to read it again. I love your writing.
Peco, Thank you for this beautiful work. I've just been re-reading Robert Bly's Sibling Society. Do you know it? He brilliantly describes the relationship between the absence of initiation, culture loss, the approach of technology and computers, and the turn toward self-concern. Thanks again, Adam
Firstly, I would like to say that I respect and admire your endeavor to help people to find a compass that points to a true north where embodied humans matter, the natural world matters, love and sacrifice matter and the working of our hands matters.
While I admire your noble goals I have several concerns about shaky assumptions that are built into the tools, institutions and frameworks you highlight as viable to enable people to build a compass which can help them to pierce through the foggy realms of “cognitive distortions” to perceive objective facts about reality.
The first aspect I see as problematic and potentially capable of becoming detrimental/dangerous is the premise of CBT therapy itself.
If the therapists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and councilors etc that are administering something like CBT were omniscient, uniformly benevolent, and incorruptibly objective than I think that process (at least, as you describe it here) would work for the benefit of the one receiving the therapy 100%.
However, our psychiatrists, psychologists and councilors are human beings. Many of those human beings are being targeted by corrupt institutions and corporations by indoctrination, bribery, blackmail and weaponized mob mentality (Ashe conformity experiment) dynamics and they each have varying degrees of mental, emotional and spiritual maturity, resilience, integrity and courage (and thus are impacted by said indoctrination campaigns to varying degrees and with varying results).
The stated goals of the CBT procedure sound benign and beneficial at first glance, however, when one takes a closer look at the inherent corruptibility of that system it actually has the potential to become a weapon rather than a pathway to healing.
We live in the era of “trust The Science” corporate slogans (pushed by corrupt and subservient governments and academic institutions) which have been used to gaslight (and/or coerce) billions of human beings into allowing experimental, toxic, ineffective, gene based injectable pharmaceutical products (which were manufactured by corporations with repeat felony fraud criminal track records) to be put into their bodies.
The propaganda that was (and is still being) disseminated about said injectable products was so prolific, so ubiquitous and projected through so many institutions we have been raised to trust and respect, that many people that were typically critically thinking individuals capitulated and conformed to the irrational, unscientific and irresponsible corporate slogans, simultaneous government propaganda and government edicts/coercion tactics (internalizing the propaganda even though everything about it represents a radical departure from critical thinking into a sort of dogmatic belief system or cult).
Doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and councilors were not immune to this propaganda and psychological warfare campaign of unprecedented proportions, in fact, people in those professions were targeted with coercion and gaslighting campaigns by big pharma corporations and complicit governments in a much more concerted and relentless way than the general populace.
While some courageous individuals resisted that coordinated premeditated attack on their hearts, minds, bodies, financial security, social status and professional standing and chose to remain true to their convictions , ethics, integrity and critical thinking capacities, many (understandably) folded, capitulated, fell in line and then having internalized the dogmas disseminated by said corporations and governments, began attention to indoctrinate others into joining their new found religion/cult.
In the minds of most of these indoctrinated medical and mental health professionals they were now making choices (and encouraging others to make choices) based on their rock solid assessment of objective evidence (which was and actually is fallacious big pharma propaganda) and observations of the “real world” (the story of how statist institutions are inherently trustworthy and what they mandate should be obeyed without question).
Here in Canada that resulted in millions of everyday citizens going to the doctor and asking them for advice on what course of action they should take with regards to deciding if they should allow a product (manufactured by a corporation with a felony track record of fraud) to be injected into their bodies as their government was strongly suggesting, financially pressuring and attempting to coerce them into taking. Many of those medical health professionals told people that the experimental injections were “safe and effective” (as their cult leader’s propaganda had indoctrinated them to parrot) and these millions of people followed the advice of those doctors in deciding to inject themselves and their children with these big pharma products (resulting in thousands of unnecessary fatalities and the maiming of people of all ages and massive profits for corporations like Pfizer).
Despite the observable (directly attributable) death of children (and people of all ages, including many doctors) due to receiving these synthetic mRNA gene based injections, there were medical professional organizations and institutions that declared the deaths and permanent injuries being incurred by healthy individuals receiving said injections were “rare” and that the real problem doctors needed to be focusing on was “vaccine hesitancy”.
Here in Ontario, On October 5, 2022, the CPSO (College of Physicians and Surgeons Ontario) updated their website page Covid-19 FAQS for Physicians in regards to providing Covid care to patients, specifically in the area of vaccination hesitancy and alternative treatment. The following are two paragraphs (questions and answers) copied from their guideline: (See cpso.on.ca for full report)
Patients are asking me to write notes supporting a medical exemption from COVID-19 vaccines — what do I need to know?
It is also important that physicians work with their patients to manage anxieties related to the vaccine and not enable avoidance behavior. For example, for extreme fear of needles (trypanophobia) or other cases of serious concern, responsible use of prescription medications and/ or referral to psychotherapy may be available options. Overall, physicians have a responsibility to inform their patients about vaccines and not have those anxieties empowered by an exemption.
I’ve read about some drugs that might prove beneficial in treating COVID-19: Should I be prescribing these drugs as a precautionary measure? Can I prescribe them for myself or family?
No. Many of these drugs have an intended use and prescribing them as a precautionary measure has or may contribute to drug shortages, compromising care for others. Should these or other drugs prove useful in combating COVID-19, their use will need to be carefully managed to support those who need them the most.
So, in examining these two answers, it is important to read critically. We must pay attention to key words and phrases woven into the guidelines such as, “anxieties” “not enable avoidance behavior” “not have those anxieties empowered” “serious concern” “contribute to drug shortages” “compromising care for others”.
According to this guideline, resisting being vaccinated is deemed to be an “avoidance behavior” rather than an informed choice. This so called behavior now allows doctors to prescribe medication to their resistive patients, providing a more comfortable means to sway them to the guide’s suggested ‘yes’ behavior. Further, if the prescribed medication does not result in the required outcome of a ‘yes’ behaviour, doctors can then refer their patients to a psycho-therapist for the ultimate persuasion.
How will they distinguish “serious concern” from unwilling patients in the future? Can you read between the lines? The meticulous and careful wording of legal documents often allows for an unseen, underlying power in favor of the (big pharma dominated and beholden) rule makers.
Even though most folk are aware of the scientific data and research on alternative medicines that work to ease the effects of Covid, the CPSO is still saying no to administering anything but the vaccine. It is hard to believe this when scientific evidence proves the benefits of both Ivermectin and many naturally occurring substances in medicinal foods through the voice of many doctors who have prescribed such. It is also hard to believe that the use of alternative medicine will create shortages. Really? There is certainly no shortage of a worldwide profit-making vaccine made for billions of non-suspecting people who may not even be ill.
The article linked above provides some extremely important and relevant historical examples of the weaponization of psychiatry and the pathologization of dissent.
This is not just some theoretical topic, but rather something that is being weaponized here and now in Canada (and all over the world). I touched on one aspect of that above with regards to “vaccine hesitancy” being deemed as “avoidance behavior” by the missionaries of big pharma that now dominate the industrial medical industry but this is not the only instance of entities like the pharmaceutical racketeering cartel weaponizing psychiatry and pathologizing of dissent.
For instance, have you ever heard of the story of the Forced Hospitalization of Dr. Mel Bruchet?
He was a family doctor that was grabbed from his home by RCMP, dragged off to the psyche ward of Lion’s Gate Hospital then locked up and drugged for 25 days (after he spoke out publicly to voice the concerns of his medical colleagues that were observing an inordinate increase in stillbirths occurring in women that had received the 'safe and effective' genetic slurry injections.)
When I take a step back from just recent history and take the act of “pathologizing” dissenting voices out of the institutionally defined box of psychiatry I start to realize how this method has been used to lock up, silence, drug and kill free thinkers, outsiders and non-conformists all through the centuries.
Religious institutions were (and still are) particularly adept at pathologizing dissent. They used different words, but their meaning, implications and the consequences were very similar (or often even more severe than the consequences faced by those that dare to oppose the priests of modern day statism).
Just look at what they did to Galileo, or the many medicine women, healers and people who dared to share their non-state sanctioned knowledge, plant medicines or animate worldviews in early American history. They were declared as “heathens”, "savages", "uncivilized" (words for those that did not conform to anthropocentric and statist world views). Others were labelled as “witches” and being “in league with the devil” and were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Those words that were used to dehumanize those people are just older (and more blunt) versions of the fancy new words used by the priests of psychiatry today.. and for the same purpose. They sought (and are seeking to) to pathologize dissent, to silence alternative views and to stampede the population to conform to an ideology.
Today the words intended to dehumanize, delegitimize and silence those that refuse to conform to the religion of technocracy, statism and scientism are "conspiracy theorist", "anti-science" and those that are described as a "fringe minority" holding "unacceptable views".
Pathologizing dissent has a long history here in Canada. Since the arrival of the settlers until quite recently (up to the 90's in some places) the church and the state worked in conjunction to pathologize dissent in the form of creating Residential Schools. After all, the torture chambers, brainwashing facilities and death camps referred to as “residential schools” were really just a physical expression of a statist and dogmatic religious institution worldview that pathologized an entire culture as “savage” and “uncivilized”.
The mindset of the indigenous peoples (who viewed nature as being filled with animate beings, each possessing a spirit and deserving of our respect, people who had no prisons, no money and did not recognize nationalist statist puppets as their leaders) was seen as a form of dissent that had to be smashed, silenced and beaten out of them. The residential schools were the physical manifestation of that attempt of the church and the state to pathologize dissent.
Interestingly, that attempt to pathologize the dissenting voices of the people who lived on this land before the Europeans arrived is apparently still a psychological weapon being utilized today.
I was recently researching and reaching out to those in northern Ontario about the proposed lithium mines. One Cree Elder described how not only have the mining corporations sent in teams to speak at their town meetings and use what seems like “The Delphi Technique” (a psychological warfare tactic designed to manufacture consent through weaponizing the Ashe Experiment) but they have also (and perhaps more disturbingly) started having local government officials and mining “experts” that visit their community try and convince them the lithium mines will be good for their psychological and physical health. They have tried to tell the people that live there that the Cree are sick because of their lack of access to technology and infrastructure, describing them as “disorganized and dysfunctional” because they see the trees as alive, the Sturgeon as their relatives and the rivers and lakes as having a spirit.
The reason I say their attempts to pathologize the worldviews and ways of living of the indigenous peoples living up north is disturbing (beyond the obvious) becomes clear when you look at an example such as how since mining operations have begun extracting in the “Ring Of Fire” places like the Neskantaga Ojibwe community have now been living with water contamination for over 25 years. They lived in one of the most healthful and abundant places on Earth (Surrounded by healthy boreal forest, eskers mostly untouched for thousands of years, and a labyrinth of fresh water as far as the eye can see) for millennia and the way they lived kept it that way until the mining corporations showed up. Now the government psyop goons and mining propaganda teams are trying to convince people in communities like theirs in Northern Ontario that the reason they are getting sick in the last few decades is because of their lack of technological infrastructure! That is some next level hubristic Orwellian doublespeak!
Now the mining corporations sneakily portray the people living how their ancestors did up north as backwards and uncivilized (arriving with smiles on their faces, bearing gifts and asking the indigenous people to sign contracts) sound familiar? Nothing has changed but the tactics and terminology, the colonial statists (and their corporate friends) are still weaponizing psychiatry, pathologizing dissent and using those psychological weapons to achieve their goals. They may use words like “sustainable development”, “inclusiveness” and “reconciliation”, but what they really mean is Boreal Forest clear cutting, open pit lithium mines, poisoning the water supply even more, bribing anyone who gets in a way and silencing or demonizing anyone who refuses to be bought.
Now, considering all of that, lets go back to the concept of CBT given the trends and recent developments I have highlighted as a prominent aspect of our industrial allopathic medical system.
In your post you stated “In actual CBT therapy, distorted beliefs are corrected by finding objective evidence that contradicts those beliefs based on observations of the real world... …we might think we can’t cope with our anxiety, until we confront the anxious situation and discover it isn’t as bad as we imagined… … It’s only by connecting to objective reference points outside the self that we can correct the distorted perceptions within the self.”
Professionals in the medical field (whether mental or physiological health professionals) are just as susceptible (in not more susceptible) to corporate propaganda, government funded psychological warfare operations and group-think indoctrination campaigns pushed forward by racketeering interests as the rest of us. Considering that fact, it becomes clear that depending on such individuals as the sole authority capable of declaring what “distorted beliefs” are, and what “objective evidence” or “objective reference points” are is an extremely risky proposition.
Someone feeling anxious or depressed, having concerns about certain products, the corporations that manufacture them, government/tax payer funded mass murder programs or globalized racketeering operations might seek mental health help and find themselves in the care of a highly discerning, courageous, ethically grounded and well informed (self-educated) individual (or group of individuals) which would do a great job of providing support to the individual, but they could also find themselves in the crosshairs of covidian cultists that could knowingly (or unknowingly) use a framework like CBT to engage in the pathologizing of dissent.
Now lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I would like to address this part of your post:
“Attempting to correct our distorted cognitions without an objective reference point leaves us at the mercy of being trapped inside ourselves, within our own cognitions and feelings, and potentially in an endless loop of distortions.”
Who exactly are you suggesting we should look to in defining what “an objective reference point” is?
And why do you not seem to recognize the innate capacity that exists within every human being (independently of religious dogmas or positive role models) to discern what is true and what is not that is the divine birth right of all conscious beings (the soul)?
Without acknowledging the capability that exists within all conscious beings to use their heart as an organ of perception and their innate intuitive capacities that arise from their eternal spirit as a means to see where true north lies (in any and all situations) one is always looking outside of themselves for other people, institutions (religious, statist/governance based, academic or otherwise) to tell them what is “objectively true” and what is not. That ubiquitous phenomenon in modern society that involves people always looking for gurus, politicians, rebel leaders, professors, doctors and priests, in my opinion, is one of the main sources of suffering, moral degeneration, ecological devastation and the perpetuation of an exploitative consumeristic civilization in the west.
I explore why I see this to be the case in further detail in an essay I will link below and I would appreciate your feed back when you get a chance to read it.
"The horses of our nature can be overwhelming, and sometimes we think, “Just let them run free, they’ll be okay”.
That might work if we were only horses, or only wolves, birds, or fish, purely natural. But human beings are not like other animals. We are not purely natural, but uber-natural, beyond natural, half horse and half wagon driver."
This statement seems to me to hold a sort of hubris based in human-exceptionalism and anthropocentrism.
I explore the detriments of the rise of anthropocentric thinking in this essay:
I would value hearing your thoughts on what is presented in a book called THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING: A NEW HISTORY OF HUMANITY" by DAVID GRAEBER and DAVID WENGROW
Thank you for this framing. I read about a dozen books on Amish education, socialization, etc. when I was a teenager and was struck when I first learned that the Amish are not so much anti-technology as they are pro-discernment. They are hesitant to adopt new technologies simply as the way things are -- they resist the inevitability narrative as well as a few others of the mistaken cognitions that you identify. They make deliberate, deliberative decisions.
We have a lot to learn from this, even if we do not make the same decisions as an Amish community might. Are we making decisions about tech, or are we letting tech be the tracks we ride on?
Dixie—very much the same! I was also highly influenced by the series of articles published by Eric Brende in the late journal Caelum et Terra (RIP) which point out that it’s not that the Amish are not intrinsically Luddite—they just chose to get off the technology train when they saw it was affecting their sense of community. Neil Postman makes the same points about being pro-discernment, without reference to the Amish.
How interesting that we share this influence, Regina!
I think we have a tendency to think of the Amish as very other-wordly (or at least, those of us without personal contact with them do), as if they are somehow exempt from temptation or the usual rules don't apply to them. This absolves us from any little interior nags or niggles that make us wonder whether we, too, could live differently. If we think of the Amish as all-or-nothing people, we relieve ourselves of many possibilities. We look at them without seeing them, and so we don't learn from them.
But we could learn! I'd like to think about this more.
This quote from St. Porohyrios comes to mind in thinking about the battle with the passions:
“Do not fight to expel darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear. Attack your passion head on, and you’ll see how strongly it will entwine you and grip you and you won’t be able to do anything…Let all your strength be turned to love for God, worship of God, and adhesion to God. In this way your release from evil and from your weaknesses will happen in a mystical manner, without you being aware of it and without exertion.
A person can become a saint anywhere…Look on all things as opportunities to be sanctified.”
As so say, it's not in pitched battle and pure resistance that we overcome, but in turning our attention on the Good, True and Beautiful - namely, on the Holy Trinity.
Thank you for this promising post! I will come back to read more carefully and comment more fully later, but I want to pop in right now after skimming and mention that my "dumbphone" is produced by a Mennonite company, which sure does feel right! https://sunbeamwireless.com/the-story-behind-sunbeam-phones/
i am grateful for the link!!
others have pointed to Sunbeam phones, but i knew nothing about the invention and investment, and was on the fence in the middle of the overgrown pasture of phone options. 🤠
I've been happy with it! I also really like that the OS is not based in/controlled by a foreign country (I try not to freak out about potentialities, but I do think it is wiser to keep these things domestic due to the potential for cyberterrorisim and cyberwarfare).
I'm mainly paranoid about the capture of endless data and the power grab to use that info against free speech. I make choices i shouldn't have to worry about (I'm not subversive or criminal, but apparently we are all deviant from SOME in power) I've seen clearly that some voices and causes are more equal than others!
Very well articulated. Is there a new technology which hasn't made things better and worse? I think the Plain People understand that and try to make choices that maximize utility while minimizing distractions from what is important. We could learn from that.
Excellent. So much to think about here!
"We can’t entirely set those horses free any more than a wagon driver can release the reins and expect to stay on the path."
Perhaps the most enlightening article I have ever read! The picture of human life as a carriage being pulled by potentially wild horses reverberates as true. The driver and the horses have to be trained to the task of controlling the speed and direction to harness the potential for disaster into productive motion.
Grateful to you for this exquisite post! Knowing that writers can still be found who help us all with our "mirrors" is why I subscribe to Substack. This is an excellent piece and should be widely read. Thank you with the greatest appreciation!
Thanks so much, Oma, for your encouragement!
Boy, did I need this today. Over the past two years I have uprooted myself from the city in order to escape the Machine. I moved to a place where I believed (passionately) that I had escaped. Less than one year after my move, I noticed some unusual activity around a telephone line by my home….to shorten the story….it had been selected as the ONLY possible location for a 5G antenna. I managed to hold them off for 12 months. I am currently out of the country, and my neighbor sent me a photo of this monstrosity that now looks down over my bedroom and living room. I’ve been feeling broken hearted. Your article helped a lot although I will need to read it again. I love your writing.
Sorry to hear about the 5G! Not a pleasant sight at all.
I’m glad the essay speaks to you. Thanks for reading!
What great images, metaphors and arguments to meditate on! Love the CS Lewis quote to tie it together. I feel inspired to do some writing.
Peco, Thank you for this beautiful work. I've just been re-reading Robert Bly's Sibling Society. Do you know it? He brilliantly describes the relationship between the absence of initiation, culture loss, the approach of technology and computers, and the turn toward self-concern. Thanks again, Adam
I have heard about Bly for years, but have never managed to get around to him. Thanks for the reference!
Well thought out! I loved the quotes from Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.
Firstly, I would like to say that I respect and admire your endeavor to help people to find a compass that points to a true north where embodied humans matter, the natural world matters, love and sacrifice matter and the working of our hands matters.
While I admire your noble goals I have several concerns about shaky assumptions that are built into the tools, institutions and frameworks you highlight as viable to enable people to build a compass which can help them to pierce through the foggy realms of “cognitive distortions” to perceive objective facts about reality.
The first aspect I see as problematic and potentially capable of becoming detrimental/dangerous is the premise of CBT therapy itself.
If the therapists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and councilors etc that are administering something like CBT were omniscient, uniformly benevolent, and incorruptibly objective than I think that process (at least, as you describe it here) would work for the benefit of the one receiving the therapy 100%.
However, our psychiatrists, psychologists and councilors are human beings. Many of those human beings are being targeted by corrupt institutions and corporations by indoctrination, bribery, blackmail and weaponized mob mentality (Ashe conformity experiment) dynamics and they each have varying degrees of mental, emotional and spiritual maturity, resilience, integrity and courage (and thus are impacted by said indoctrination campaigns to varying degrees and with varying results).
The stated goals of the CBT procedure sound benign and beneficial at first glance, however, when one takes a closer look at the inherent corruptibility of that system it actually has the potential to become a weapon rather than a pathway to healing.
We live in the era of “trust The Science” corporate slogans (pushed by corrupt and subservient governments and academic institutions) which have been used to gaslight (and/or coerce) billions of human beings into allowing experimental, toxic, ineffective, gene based injectable pharmaceutical products (which were manufactured by corporations with repeat felony fraud criminal track records) to be put into their bodies.
The propaganda that was (and is still being) disseminated about said injectable products was so prolific, so ubiquitous and projected through so many institutions we have been raised to trust and respect, that many people that were typically critically thinking individuals capitulated and conformed to the irrational, unscientific and irresponsible corporate slogans, simultaneous government propaganda and government edicts/coercion tactics (internalizing the propaganda even though everything about it represents a radical departure from critical thinking into a sort of dogmatic belief system or cult).
Doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and councilors were not immune to this propaganda and psychological warfare campaign of unprecedented proportions, in fact, people in those professions were targeted with coercion and gaslighting campaigns by big pharma corporations and complicit governments in a much more concerted and relentless way than the general populace.
While some courageous individuals resisted that coordinated premeditated attack on their hearts, minds, bodies, financial security, social status and professional standing and chose to remain true to their convictions , ethics, integrity and critical thinking capacities, many (understandably) folded, capitulated, fell in line and then having internalized the dogmas disseminated by said corporations and governments, began attention to indoctrinate others into joining their new found religion/cult.
In the minds of most of these indoctrinated medical and mental health professionals they were now making choices (and encouraging others to make choices) based on their rock solid assessment of objective evidence (which was and actually is fallacious big pharma propaganda) and observations of the “real world” (the story of how statist institutions are inherently trustworthy and what they mandate should be obeyed without question).
Here in Canada that resulted in millions of everyday citizens going to the doctor and asking them for advice on what course of action they should take with regards to deciding if they should allow a product (manufactured by a corporation with a felony track record of fraud) to be injected into their bodies as their government was strongly suggesting, financially pressuring and attempting to coerce them into taking. Many of those medical health professionals told people that the experimental injections were “safe and effective” (as their cult leader’s propaganda had indoctrinated them to parrot) and these millions of people followed the advice of those doctors in deciding to inject themselves and their children with these big pharma products (resulting in thousands of unnecessary fatalities and the maiming of people of all ages and massive profits for corporations like Pfizer).
Many allopathic medical professionals in Canada paid the ultimate price for conforming to the irrational corporate and government propaganda: https://druthers.ca/wp-content/uploads/druthers-november-2022-resized.pdf
Despite the observable (directly attributable) death of children (and people of all ages, including many doctors) due to receiving these synthetic mRNA gene based injections, there were medical professional organizations and institutions that declared the deaths and permanent injuries being incurred by healthy individuals receiving said injections were “rare” and that the real problem doctors needed to be focusing on was “vaccine hesitancy”.
Here in Ontario, On October 5, 2022, the CPSO (College of Physicians and Surgeons Ontario) updated their website page Covid-19 FAQS for Physicians in regards to providing Covid care to patients, specifically in the area of vaccination hesitancy and alternative treatment. The following are two paragraphs (questions and answers) copied from their guideline: (See cpso.on.ca for full report)
Patients are asking me to write notes supporting a medical exemption from COVID-19 vaccines — what do I need to know?
It is also important that physicians work with their patients to manage anxieties related to the vaccine and not enable avoidance behavior. For example, for extreme fear of needles (trypanophobia) or other cases of serious concern, responsible use of prescription medications and/ or referral to psychotherapy may be available options. Overall, physicians have a responsibility to inform their patients about vaccines and not have those anxieties empowered by an exemption.
I’ve read about some drugs that might prove beneficial in treating COVID-19: Should I be prescribing these drugs as a precautionary measure? Can I prescribe them for myself or family?
No. Many of these drugs have an intended use and prescribing them as a precautionary measure has or may contribute to drug shortages, compromising care for others. Should these or other drugs prove useful in combating COVID-19, their use will need to be carefully managed to support those who need them the most.
So, in examining these two answers, it is important to read critically. We must pay attention to key words and phrases woven into the guidelines such as, “anxieties” “not enable avoidance behavior” “not have those anxieties empowered” “serious concern” “contribute to drug shortages” “compromising care for others”.
According to this guideline, resisting being vaccinated is deemed to be an “avoidance behavior” rather than an informed choice. This so called behavior now allows doctors to prescribe medication to their resistive patients, providing a more comfortable means to sway them to the guide’s suggested ‘yes’ behavior. Further, if the prescribed medication does not result in the required outcome of a ‘yes’ behaviour, doctors can then refer their patients to a psycho-therapist for the ultimate persuasion.
How will they distinguish “serious concern” from unwilling patients in the future? Can you read between the lines? The meticulous and careful wording of legal documents often allows for an unseen, underlying power in favor of the (big pharma dominated and beholden) rule makers.
Even though most folk are aware of the scientific data and research on alternative medicines that work to ease the effects of Covid, the CPSO is still saying no to administering anything but the vaccine. It is hard to believe this when scientific evidence proves the benefits of both Ivermectin and many naturally occurring substances in medicinal foods through the voice of many doctors who have prescribed such. It is also hard to believe that the use of alternative medicine will create shortages. Really? There is certainly no shortage of a worldwide profit-making vaccine made for billions of non-suspecting people who may not even be ill.
(continued..)
(..continued from comment above)
James Corbett offers some important insights, historical facts and present day observations that relate to the phenomena I outlined above in this series: https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/dissent-into-madness-the-weaponization?
The article linked above provides some extremely important and relevant historical examples of the weaponization of psychiatry and the pathologization of dissent.
This is not just some theoretical topic, but rather something that is being weaponized here and now in Canada (and all over the world). I touched on one aspect of that above with regards to “vaccine hesitancy” being deemed as “avoidance behavior” by the missionaries of big pharma that now dominate the industrial medical industry but this is not the only instance of entities like the pharmaceutical racketeering cartel weaponizing psychiatry and pathologizing of dissent.
For instance, have you ever heard of the story of the Forced Hospitalization of Dr. Mel Bruchet?
https://tessa.substack.com/p/forced-hospitalization-dr-bruchet?
He was a family doctor that was grabbed from his home by RCMP, dragged off to the psyche ward of Lion’s Gate Hospital then locked up and drugged for 25 days (after he spoke out publicly to voice the concerns of his medical colleagues that were observing an inordinate increase in stillbirths occurring in women that had received the 'safe and effective' genetic slurry injections.)
When I take a step back from just recent history and take the act of “pathologizing” dissenting voices out of the institutionally defined box of psychiatry I start to realize how this method has been used to lock up, silence, drug and kill free thinkers, outsiders and non-conformists all through the centuries.
Religious institutions were (and still are) particularly adept at pathologizing dissent. They used different words, but their meaning, implications and the consequences were very similar (or often even more severe than the consequences faced by those that dare to oppose the priests of modern day statism).
Just look at what they did to Galileo, or the many medicine women, healers and people who dared to share their non-state sanctioned knowledge, plant medicines or animate worldviews in early American history. They were declared as “heathens”, "savages", "uncivilized" (words for those that did not conform to anthropocentric and statist world views). Others were labelled as “witches” and being “in league with the devil” and were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Those words that were used to dehumanize those people are just older (and more blunt) versions of the fancy new words used by the priests of psychiatry today.. and for the same purpose. They sought (and are seeking to) to pathologize dissent, to silence alternative views and to stampede the population to conform to an ideology.
Today the words intended to dehumanize, delegitimize and silence those that refuse to conform to the religion of technocracy, statism and scientism are "conspiracy theorist", "anti-science" and those that are described as a "fringe minority" holding "unacceptable views".
Pathologizing dissent has a long history here in Canada. Since the arrival of the settlers until quite recently (up to the 90's in some places) the church and the state worked in conjunction to pathologize dissent in the form of creating Residential Schools. After all, the torture chambers, brainwashing facilities and death camps referred to as “residential schools” were really just a physical expression of a statist and dogmatic religious institution worldview that pathologized an entire culture as “savage” and “uncivilized”.
The mindset of the indigenous peoples (who viewed nature as being filled with animate beings, each possessing a spirit and deserving of our respect, people who had no prisons, no money and did not recognize nationalist statist puppets as their leaders) was seen as a form of dissent that had to be smashed, silenced and beaten out of them. The residential schools were the physical manifestation of that attempt of the church and the state to pathologize dissent.
Interestingly, that attempt to pathologize the dissenting voices of the people who lived on this land before the Europeans arrived is apparently still a psychological weapon being utilized today.
I was recently researching and reaching out to those in northern Ontario about the proposed lithium mines. One Cree Elder described how not only have the mining corporations sent in teams to speak at their town meetings and use what seems like “The Delphi Technique” (a psychological warfare tactic designed to manufacture consent through weaponizing the Ashe Experiment) but they have also (and perhaps more disturbingly) started having local government officials and mining “experts” that visit their community try and convince them the lithium mines will be good for their psychological and physical health. They have tried to tell the people that live there that the Cree are sick because of their lack of access to technology and infrastructure, describing them as “disorganized and dysfunctional” because they see the trees as alive, the Sturgeon as their relatives and the rivers and lakes as having a spirit.
The reason I say their attempts to pathologize the worldviews and ways of living of the indigenous peoples living up north is disturbing (beyond the obvious) becomes clear when you look at an example such as how since mining operations have begun extracting in the “Ring Of Fire” places like the Neskantaga Ojibwe community have now been living with water contamination for over 25 years. They lived in one of the most healthful and abundant places on Earth (Surrounded by healthy boreal forest, eskers mostly untouched for thousands of years, and a labyrinth of fresh water as far as the eye can see) for millennia and the way they lived kept it that way until the mining corporations showed up. Now the government psyop goons and mining propaganda teams are trying to convince people in communities like theirs in Northern Ontario that the reason they are getting sick in the last few decades is because of their lack of technological infrastructure! That is some next level hubristic Orwellian doublespeak!
Now the mining corporations sneakily portray the people living how their ancestors did up north as backwards and uncivilized (arriving with smiles on their faces, bearing gifts and asking the indigenous people to sign contracts) sound familiar? Nothing has changed but the tactics and terminology, the colonial statists (and their corporate friends) are still weaponizing psychiatry, pathologizing dissent and using those psychological weapons to achieve their goals. They may use words like “sustainable development”, “inclusiveness” and “reconciliation”, but what they really mean is Boreal Forest clear cutting, open pit lithium mines, poisoning the water supply even more, bribing anyone who gets in a way and silencing or demonizing anyone who refuses to be bought.
(for more info on the lithium mines: https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/an-introduction-to-a-new-series-befriending )
Now, considering all of that, lets go back to the concept of CBT given the trends and recent developments I have highlighted as a prominent aspect of our industrial allopathic medical system.
In your post you stated “In actual CBT therapy, distorted beliefs are corrected by finding objective evidence that contradicts those beliefs based on observations of the real world... …we might think we can’t cope with our anxiety, until we confront the anxious situation and discover it isn’t as bad as we imagined… … It’s only by connecting to objective reference points outside the self that we can correct the distorted perceptions within the self.”
Professionals in the medical field (whether mental or physiological health professionals) are just as susceptible (in not more susceptible) to corporate propaganda, government funded psychological warfare operations and group-think indoctrination campaigns pushed forward by racketeering interests as the rest of us. Considering that fact, it becomes clear that depending on such individuals as the sole authority capable of declaring what “distorted beliefs” are, and what “objective evidence” or “objective reference points” are is an extremely risky proposition.
Someone feeling anxious or depressed, having concerns about certain products, the corporations that manufacture them, government/tax payer funded mass murder programs or globalized racketeering operations might seek mental health help and find themselves in the care of a highly discerning, courageous, ethically grounded and well informed (self-educated) individual (or group of individuals) which would do a great job of providing support to the individual, but they could also find themselves in the crosshairs of covidian cultists that could knowingly (or unknowingly) use a framework like CBT to engage in the pathologizing of dissent.
(continued..)
(..continued from comment above)
Now lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I would like to address this part of your post:
“Attempting to correct our distorted cognitions without an objective reference point leaves us at the mercy of being trapped inside ourselves, within our own cognitions and feelings, and potentially in an endless loop of distortions.”
Who exactly are you suggesting we should look to in defining what “an objective reference point” is?
And why do you not seem to recognize the innate capacity that exists within every human being (independently of religious dogmas or positive role models) to discern what is true and what is not that is the divine birth right of all conscious beings (the soul)?
Without acknowledging the capability that exists within all conscious beings to use their heart as an organ of perception and their innate intuitive capacities that arise from their eternal spirit as a means to see where true north lies (in any and all situations) one is always looking outside of themselves for other people, institutions (religious, statist/governance based, academic or otherwise) to tell them what is “objectively true” and what is not. That ubiquitous phenomenon in modern society that involves people always looking for gurus, politicians, rebel leaders, professors, doctors and priests, in my opinion, is one of the main sources of suffering, moral degeneration, ecological devastation and the perpetuation of an exploitative consumeristic civilization in the west.
I explore why I see this to be the case in further detail in an essay I will link below and I would appreciate your feed back when you get a chance to read it.
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/dispelling-the-most-detrimental-myth
"The horses of our nature can be overwhelming, and sometimes we think, “Just let them run free, they’ll be okay”.
That might work if we were only horses, or only wolves, birds, or fish, purely natural. But human beings are not like other animals. We are not purely natural, but uber-natural, beyond natural, half horse and half wagon driver."
This statement seems to me to hold a sort of hubris based in human-exceptionalism and anthropocentrism.
I explore the detriments of the rise of anthropocentric thinking in this essay:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-anthropocentrism-bright
I would value hearing your thoughts on what is presented in a book called THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING: A NEW HISTORY OF HUMANITY" by DAVID GRAEBER and DAVID WENGROW
You will find the full book here:
This the full PDF of the book: https://archive.org/stream/graeber-wengrow-dawn/The%20Dawn%20of%20Everything%20-%20David%20Graeber%20%26%20David%20Wengrow_djvu.txt
I especially recommend chapter 2 titled “Wicked Liberty”.
Perhaps I misread the intent of the content I quoted above and I would like to learn more about what was meant if that is the case.
Well put, thank you! I love the idea of creating a positive vision “for” instead of just a vision “against.”
It reminds me of the advice about avoiding potholes when biking: look where you want to go, not where you don’t.
Thank you for this framing. I read about a dozen books on Amish education, socialization, etc. when I was a teenager and was struck when I first learned that the Amish are not so much anti-technology as they are pro-discernment. They are hesitant to adopt new technologies simply as the way things are -- they resist the inevitability narrative as well as a few others of the mistaken cognitions that you identify. They make deliberate, deliberative decisions.
We have a lot to learn from this, even if we do not make the same decisions as an Amish community might. Are we making decisions about tech, or are we letting tech be the tracks we ride on?
"Pro-discernment" -- well said!
Dixie—very much the same! I was also highly influenced by the series of articles published by Eric Brende in the late journal Caelum et Terra (RIP) which point out that it’s not that the Amish are not intrinsically Luddite—they just chose to get off the technology train when they saw it was affecting their sense of community. Neil Postman makes the same points about being pro-discernment, without reference to the Amish.
How interesting that we share this influence, Regina!
I think we have a tendency to think of the Amish as very other-wordly (or at least, those of us without personal contact with them do), as if they are somehow exempt from temptation or the usual rules don't apply to them. This absolves us from any little interior nags or niggles that make us wonder whether we, too, could live differently. If we think of the Amish as all-or-nothing people, we relieve ourselves of many possibilities. We look at them without seeing them, and so we don't learn from them.
But we could learn! I'd like to think about this more.
This quote from St. Porohyrios comes to mind in thinking about the battle with the passions:
“Do not fight to expel darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear. Attack your passion head on, and you’ll see how strongly it will entwine you and grip you and you won’t be able to do anything…Let all your strength be turned to love for God, worship of God, and adhesion to God. In this way your release from evil and from your weaknesses will happen in a mystical manner, without you being aware of it and without exertion.
A person can become a saint anywhere…Look on all things as opportunities to be sanctified.”
As so say, it's not in pitched battle and pure resistance that we overcome, but in turning our attention on the Good, True and Beautiful - namely, on the Holy Trinity.
Thank you for that excellent quote!