QUESTION

Surely one of the most effective ways to covertly control a population would be to make the game so fucking obvious that eventually the population refuses to play it at all?

Bear with me. My brain is wandering.

Covid did something strange to us collectively.

Forget, for a moment, the arguments about where it came from, what governments knew, what pharmaceutical companies knew, whether every measure was justified, whether none of them were, or somewhere in the enormous grey swamp in between.

Look at what it did to people.

There was compliance on one side and a mass awakening to questions of authority on the other.

And then we divided ourselves accordingly.

Jabbed or unjabbed.

Awake or asleep.

Sheep.

Conspiracy theorist.

And now I've even seen "pure blood" thrown around, which, frankly, I think is dangerous territory in itself.

I was jabbed twice.

And actually, looking back, that period contained an awakening that I largely ignored.

Not because I was stupid. Not because I blindly trusted anybody. Because I loved my family.

I'd been diagnosed with MS. I had a full-time job. Three children. Homeschooling. Life was fucking enormous, and I needed my mum.

Her husband was extremely strict about Covid and vaccination. His fear filtered outward and affected the people around him. So I made a decision based on the circumstances I was living in at the time.

That's the bit we sometimes erase when we divide humanity neatly into people who "saw it" and people who didn't.

Human beings don't make decisions inside laboratories.

We make them while frightened, exhausted, responsible for other people, desperate to see our families, trying to keep our jobs and attempting to work out what the fuck is true while everyone is shouting contradictory information at us.

Clever, right?

But my brain wandered today.

Since Covid, how many disease headlines have we seen?

Monkeypox. Hantavirus. Ebola. New strains of this. Outbreaks of that. Now stories about severe respiratory illness and pneumonia and the word 'plague'.

Again, clever... for the shock factor.

And increasingly, my instinctive response is basically:

Nope.

Don't consent.

Fuck off.

Whatever dark forces may be operating behind the curtain, I am not participating in this particular episode.

But then I caught myself.

Because what happens if we become too good at that?

What happens when scepticism becomes every bit as automatic as compliance?

What if you frighten people repeatedly, exaggerate enough things, sensationalise enough headlines and destroy enough institutional trust that eventually millions of people become absolutely convinced that every warning is bullshit?

And then something genuinely dangerous happens.

You wouldn't need to hide it.

You could put it directly in front of everybody.

And half the population would laugh.

That's an uncomfortable thought.

Because suddenly we're back in the same place I seem to end up whenever I follow one of these rabbit holes far enough:

Balance.

Discernment.

Not believing everything.

But not automatically disbelieving everything either.

Question authority, absolutely.

Question governments.

Question corporations.

Question pharmaceutical companies.

Question journalists.

Question algorithms.

Question alternative media.

Question the person with three million followers telling you they've uncovered "the truth."

Question me.

And, perhaps most importantly, question the part of yourself that desperately wants the next piece of information to confirm what you've already decided.

Because compliance can become an identity.

But resistance can become one too.

And once either becomes part of who we think we are, we're no longer evaluating the information in front of us.

We're defending ourselves.

Awakening isn't reaching the point where you automatically reject the official story.

It isn't reaching the point where you automatically accept the alternative one either.

It's becoming comfortable enough in the middle to say:

I don't know yet.

Show me.

And I'll decide for myself.

Discernment and questions. They're your arsenal.