We’re publishing a guest essay today by Nick Comilla, a writer based in New York, about why so many apparently sensible, intelligent people have embraced the restrictions on their freedoms that states have imposed the world over. He thinks a clue may be found in the work of psychologist Sarah Schulman, who writes about why students seek emotional safety rather than stimulating debate on campus and why victimhood has become so appealing. In a nutshell, this is Nick’s hypothesis: “Quite simply, it seems to me that the Covid hysterics are taking up the mantle of victimhood and then construing any resistance to their pathology as abuse, when really it’s the opposite.” Here is an extract:
Last winter, a familiar refrain I noticed in New York amongst myself and many others was “stay safe”. It became the new “have a good night”, it was instinctual and communal. I even started saying it without realising it. It is meant as a compassionate slogan, but it’s also an imperative. You’re being told to do something: stay safe, which suggests the possibility of danger or threat. But why were we suddenly all saying that to each other? I chalked it up to the strangeness of those times: a new ‘Covid wave’, extreme uncertainty, the city still felt emptied out, and crime was up. “Stay safe” and the little things we could do for each other were like linguistic pacifiers, offering us a reprieve from the endless media reminder that we were in ‘unprecedented’ and ‘uncertain times’ and that, despite this, we were ‘all in this together‘.
I started to think about the other phrases that encapsulate an overabundance of caution which masquerades as compassion. And at what point does overemphasising caution become its own form of harassment? Certainly, we are seeing rising incidents of shunning and neuroticism since the start of the pandemic. These are notions favoured by the laptop-class: people who want to live in March 2020 in perpetuity, clamouring for more lockdowns and ‘stimulus’. Some people in the United States seem convinced – quite literally – that they are going to die. This is a problem. They perceive themselves as being in great danger when they aren’t, and view others as a threat in an overstated way. This is dangerous. I noticed that they also seem to take a strange sort of glee in telling others what to do – adult hallway monitors run amok. There was something fundamentally pathological about the sheer pleasure people – usually women and men who seemed off the deep end into over-socialisation – took in events being cancelled for ‘the greater good’. When LCD Soundsystem announced, due to public pressure, that they were abruptly cancelling the last three shows of their reunion performance here in NYC everyone started talking about ‘the greater good’. Those who voiced their disappointment in various comment sections were ostracised, while those who were sanctimoniously, righteously having their ‘concern for safety’ met seemed pleased to have their virtue reaffirmed. To be clear, I don’t necessarily think they enjoy the ongoing restrictions: I think they enjoy the righteousness of their perceived sacrifice.
The chorus they kept repeating was ‘this was a tough call, but it’s the right thing to do!’ and ‘see you when it’s safe’. The issue is that for these people, it will never be safe. And they are holding the rest of us hostage in the meantime. What struck me as odd was that if anyone dared to complain about this over-zealous and overstated concept of risk, if anyone pointed out that these people were beginning to make life seriously miserable, the neurotics would double down and accuse us of that which they were guilty of: ‘Stop throwing a fit’, ‘Oh poor you, little baby, you can’t go to a concert’. Sadomasochistic glee. Anyone who has spoken out against restrictions knows that the social ostracising is rampant: you’re either accused of ‘lacking empathy’ or of actively ‘wanting people to die’. It is bizarre to me that a civil conversation can’t be entered into under the shared assumption that neither of us want people to die and that you can be simultaneously against lockdowns and in favour of reducing suffering in general.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
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The ‘Precautionary Principle’ is the most dangerous thing in the world. I acts on emotion and belief, not rationality and evidence.
Having spent several hours with my 20-year-old student nephew, I worry about the future. We disagreed on just about everything, but most alarming was his comment that he’s prepared to lose his personal freedoms and allow the state to make decisions on his behalf for the ‘greater good’. What hope do we have.
I once had a friend that used to sign emails “Stay Safe” I would always reply and sign off with “Cry Freedom”. We are no longer friends.
COVID like Brexit has been divisive, and I’ve lost a few friends and family over our irreconcilable differences of opinion.
Badly written but spot-on.
Looking at it, the real risk is that the seat will collapse under his weight!
Finally got round to reading this in it’s entirety. Excellent, intelligent and spot on I thought!
Thank you so much for posting this essay. It captures the essence of what has been going on and helps to explain why so many intelligent people have been caught up in what Peter McCullough recently described on the Joe Rogan podcast as “mass psychosis”. Many read out loud insightful lines. This deserves a wide audience. Great share Toby and team.
This excellent essay explains why so many people get satisfaction from being “more virtuous than thou” … When in fact they have no clue the harm these “mitigation measures” are causing” (or if they do have a clue, they don’t even care).
A+ effort.
My response to the catch phrase ‘stay safe’ – itsaloadabollox!
Yesterday the Daily Mail ran an article (which didn’t stay up long) about how the “vaccines” have altered women’s menstrual cycle. Here’s a link to it
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10380181/COVID-vaccines-prolong-menstrual-cycles-19-hours-study-reveals.html
My sister is fully wrapped up in the cult and we are also on the US East coast. Every time I’ve tried to talk her down, she becomes enraged and says, “What about the 40,000/100,000/500,000/800,000 dead?!” Or whatever the current relatively arbitrary number of deaths might be. She has somehow managed to personalize Covid deaths as a form of trauma to herself.
The sense of wonderment people have when they discover someone “has covid!” Hub’s family all triple jabbed, all shoving tests into their faces everyday (I kid you not) had a get together at Christmas (we were the only ones not invited) and they all tested before and after, and now one has tested positive but of course it’s definitely covid! Now they aren’t going out, and if they have to visit one another they sit out in the freezing cold. And of course, they gone all cold turkey because they can’t get hold of any tests now…But apparently WE’RE the ones that have changed!🙄🤦
We didn’t get here by staying safe. You don’t wrestle a woolly mammoth (or whatever) to the ground, domesticate a wild buffalo, or even cut down a tree with hand tools by staying safe. At a dinner party last summer I was ambushed by a group of friends about my views on covid and vaccines. A group of male friends I had made during my rugby playing twenties, two of whom were keen seagoing yachtsmen and windsurfers, still braving the icy waters of the North Atlantic clad in thick neoprene to feed their craving for the thrills of speed, skilful sailing and harnessing the elements by pushing the envelope. Presumably their partners were attracted in some way to their men’s interest in team sports and sailing. Anyway once my views became apparent by my lack of acquiescent to the establishment narrative I was quizzed and challenged. My (mostly) public sector friends were solidly behind every aspect of the received wisdom of the covid strategy, apparently without much nudging. The host even wheeled in his bright and articulate 14 year old daughter to give her (unarguable, I didn’t want to offend her) opinion. It was quite ugly, and not something I… Read more »
It’s not the “tyranny of the risk averse” It’s the tyranny of the GPPP, the purveyors of imminent neo-feudalism! ALL government’s are singing from the same hymn sheet. This is planned and premeditated, starting with the Club of Rome’s “Limit’s to growth” in 1973, via the Rockefeller “Dark Winter”, Anthropomorphic climate change bollox, UN agenda 21/30 the WHO, WEF, GAVI, GATES, BLACKROCK AND VANGUARD etc etc! All done in plain sight over many decades…A conspiracy theory or fact?
We’re about to find out.
I seem to be in a minority here in that I thought the article was good (and actually “worth reading in full”). Did a good job of skewering the irrationality, selfishness and general bloody awfulness of Covidian hysterics.
Me too. I think Dr Desmet’s description of Mass Formation as providing the umbrella under which several other strands have quickly developed. The manipulation of a virus to create an ‘enemy’ and conditioning of humanity to accept even embrace a biosecurity totalitarian system. Opportunistic use of these conditions to further several nefarious ambitions.
This article describes an important subset of the effect on the crowd of these influences.
The point Desmet makes is that people want to believe it – it’s a drama (centred around an enemy virus, real or imaginary, it doesn’t matter which) that they are ready for, as it suddenly provides meaning and a sort of comradeship, otherwise lacking in present-day society. I’ve long ceased getting angry with people for their apparently irrational behavoir (mask wearing in cars etc) and now see it all as part of the ‘great play’ that is life. The spiritual teachers all tell us to ‘know thyself’ and in so doing we understand others. There are a number of commentators on this site who seem to be standing on soapboxes – they need a bit more understanding and compassion for others and to ‘beware the mote in thy own eye’.
Yes, I thought it was good too.
Have you heard the one about the man looking for this spectacles, while wearing them?
Shortsightedly ‘avoiding covid’ more than worse or more immediate or long term risks just to obey ‘gov orders’. Babies and bathwaters.
As the whole narrative falls apart its going to be very hard to convince people that they’ve been fooled, and that their actions did not save the world. so be it
Didn’t Mark Twain say something like < it is easier to fool people than convince them they’ve been fooled>.
That’s clearly true. Look at those on line romance scams, where people give vast sums to those they have never met, and can’t believe they don’t exist even when it is explained to them, because they longed to be loved. Maybe this has been a fantasy about safety, about caring father figure Governments, about people coming together” to “protect others”.
Great article, thank you Nick Comilla.
Hmm, yes but … there is at least a touch of ursine excretory domains about the article!
I used to watch a number of YT channels covering a range of interests that I have. Then, when they actively started to sanctimoniously embrace the covid cult, wearing masks, telling me to be kind and “stay saaafe!” to earn “aren’t we good?” points, I unsubscribed from them.
I was quite interested to hear Dr. Mattias Desmet touching on complex dynamic systems in relation to Mass Formation.
That’s a much better framework for me to consider how we end up in this crazy world where none of the narrative or interventions make any sense than just looking at in a simplistic binary fashion of is this cock-up or conspiracy.
There are a series of magnifying feedback loops between amongst others, the pharmaceutical companies, super wealthy foundations and people, the media, the conflicted scientific and medical researchers, the politicians, the doctors and academics and others who won’t speak out for fear of their jobs, and the people who are influenced by all of these things who then influence other people.
It’s not surprising that some of the emergent phenomena that come out of this complex adaptive system are quite extreme. For example the completely nonsensical narrative and almost complete absence of evidence based measures or evidence based medicine, and the appalling hatred aimed at those who dare question what is going on.
For the greater good means surrender.
Ever think of starting a business? Don’t. Get a secure job working for the state. Enjoy creating hurdles and hoops and punishing people with impunity………
‘The State, it only makes sense when your part of it’
“When we are triggered, we have unresolved pain from the past that is expressed in the present.”
You know this is one of the theories in post abortion survivor syndrome, that people have repressed, unresolved pain after these tragic deaths.
See here:
Post-Abortion_Survivor_Syndrome.pdf (heartbeatservices.org)
Note particularly the conclusion. Needless to say, you’ll never hear about this on Radio 4.
I suspect that a large proportion of the population have been victims of half a century of liberal policies including those related to “PASS” that have been a disaster for the working class and paved the way for the current mass psychosis.
And let’s face it, it’s been obvious for at least two decades that things are going seriously wrong in society.
Group think and hysteria doesnt appear hard to do. Watching ‘a very british scandal’ the crowd outside the court in the 60’s were hysterical and out of control against a woman who they neither knew and who didn’t affect their own life at all, all down to msm hysteria.
That works two ways. In the 60s the members of the northern grooming gangs might have been made aware of the natives’ anger once they came out of the courtroom. ‘Ordinary’ people then would have shown it in no uncertain terms. Not now – we’ve become a nation of pygmies, frightened by our overlords to express ourselves.
‘Stay safe’, so fake, i always respond with ‘stay dangerous’.
I’ve been looking for an appropriate riposte. I think I’ve found it. Thank you.
I’m not a religious person at all but it’s quite clear the decline of religion has played a huge part in this.
From an evolutionary point of view, religion is really a safety mechanism for an animal with advanced self-awareness. The power of ritual, sacrifice and collective surrender to a higher power are necessary processes in order to give us a sense of control over the uncontrollable- harvests, the cycle of the sun, weather etc in the past; death now. Without it, our minds would be preoccupied with a sense of danger and mortality that would impact our effectiveness as a species.
You can’t take that instinct away because it is fundamental to existing with an advanced consciousness. So what has happened is that people have had to find a replacement. They always will, because it is as much a part of being human as breathing.
We are incapable of accepting mortality at a subconscious level, even if we think we do at a conscious level. Religion allowed us to believe we didn’t have to. Now something else has had to fulfil that role. The whole safetyism/scientism cult is awash with ritual (masks, sanitising); prayer (stay safe); sacrifice (it’s tough… Read more »
Would like to give this comment many upticks, you’re so right. Covidism is a new religion, sadly practised with devotion by “religious” people too. What has been most disappointing to me is that not one religious leader has spoken out on this.
My bil is a non stipendiary vicar having previously worked as a scientist in the chemical industry for many years.
Recently my daughter asked him if he thought we are in the ‘end times’ he arranged a zoom meeting with her as he felt it too important to discuss over the phone, when she explained her concerns and views (having recently ‘awoken’) his whole impart was “we must all be unselfish and act for the good of all” in other words – have the vaccine.
His wife is so self righteous and has ‘cancelled’ me so often in our ‘family group chats’ for expressing a differing opinion that I no longer communicate with her, but hey she attends church every sunday so is a much better person than me.
Sums up my experiences too. In the covid world, Jesus would not have come near a leper, much less touched one!
In time, some will see the error of their ways, but not all.
Interesting point that. My first inkling that this was all a collective madness was when some young chap walked around me and into the road – I instinctively shouted at him ‘I’m not a leper.’ As for Jesus (or the Jesus ‘godman’ figure), he shows the transcendence of fear through a non-identification with the dualistic mind. Going to the lepers would have been natural to one who expressed compassion in action and words. It’s sad that the modern figures in the church seem to have lost sight of Christianity’s deeper meaning and just toe the party line.
You should be able to have a lot of fun winding this pair up.
“Do you think the unvaccinated are a specific category of sinners?”
“Should they be banned from church?”
“Only allowed via Zoom?”
One of my pet theories is that man is a religious animal, ie, that religion, the worship of powerful, invented entities in order to placate one’s fear of the unknown, is an instinctive survival mechanism. Thus, if some very sophisticated, philosophical religion (like Christanity, for instance) is abandoned, people will instinctively flock to its more primitive predecessors. In the most original form, this were various weather deities associated with powerful natural events well capable of killing people and large-scale destruction of property who had to be placated with sacrifices and rituals in order to prevent $really_bad_stuff from happening.
The most popular present one is really more of a beast god than principally human-like deity open to reason and it’s called climate.
In the last two years I have seen two phrases appear on emails:
Dear X, I hope you are well
And at the end:
Stay safe
I generally ignore the first though have been tempted to give a detailed account of the illnesses I have had since my single “vaccine” dose.
I think the stay safe mantra has given some people an opportunity to virtue-signal, more than anything else. By using it they identify themselves with the majority covid cult and (a) state that it is a killer disease as per propaganda and (b) that there is a way to prevent getting it, by following the”rules”. This makes them feel better as they try to avoid the thought that they too will die some day.
I did find an effective weapon against this: tell them that by saying/writing this, they may trigger anxiety in others, especially those who may have had a close relative die of covid and of which that may be unaware. This ties them in knots of self-righteousness and tends to stop it.
“Stay Safe” is a very low key way of acknowledging adherence to the covid cult but it is exactly the same as saying “Seig Heil” at every opportunity during the nazi regime.
I reply with ‘stay sane.’
Excellent piece. Covers pretty much all the things I have been saying on my local rag’s comment pages over almost 2 years, but far more eloquently put and backed up.
So good to see Bobs cartoon …. nail on the head, as usual. The DT was mad to sack him; his replacement couldn’t hit a 10 inch nail.
Too true. Today’s Sunday Telegraph’s cartoon by ‘Davey’ is pathetic. It tries to poke fun at Putin and the Russiian navy but totally lacks sense or gravitas. I can only wonder what Garland thinks of the new guy.
What the author does not seem to understand is that the only “safety” at stake here is the kind of safety provided by mafia: you are safe and protected from us bashing in your skull – as long as you do as we tell you.
Exactly.
The reason so many of the population surrender to the tyranny is they are suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome.
They have lost the ability to relate what they see and hear with reality. In the blink of an eye they have lost touch with past lives when they would have scoffed at the lies by politicians. Now they act like zombies accepting that black is white and up is down.
Perhaps it would be best to let them take the vaxxes, succumb and pass away, leaving us in peace.
“But why were we suddenly all saying ‘Stay Safe’ to each other?” The trouble is Nick, we weren’t. Only those gullible fools who were fully immersed into the covid cult adopted this speech pattern. People aware of Nudge Unit control mechanisms (like banging pots and pans on the doorstep at 8pm) avoided it like the plague.
This is because use of such terms are outward symbols of submission and conformity, much like mask wearing.
When people say ‘Stay Safe’ to others, it carries a shed load of connotations. Yes, it is a display of virtual signalling. But it is also a demonstration of allegiance to the cult and, depending on the tone, a directive that you should follow the cults commands.
This is why those who REALLY want others to be safe from harm would never use such a vacuous term.
I spent years working singlehanded in the inshore fishing industry, which is rather a dangerous job, if you let it be. If sensible, you took all possible steps to ensure your own safety, as did most of your fellow-fishermen, and we all kept an eye open for each other. Never, in all that time, did I hear the expression “Stay Safe”, and even when our “older men” age exemptions were removed, and we had to do survival and other courses, no instructor ever used it to us.
It really is a fatuous expression.
I’ve never used “stay safe”, can’t recall anyone saying it to me despite getting up close and and personal with approx 10k people while out and about as a ‘key worker’ in the 12 months following the start of lockdown one.
Neither have I seen the preposterous “elbow bump” so popular with politicians on TV even if they are clearly embarrassed using it.
I have shaken hands numerous times with fellow covid sceptics although I did have to end one recent conversation with
“I’d like to shake your hand Dr. but we don’t do that anymore . . .”
The glance he gave me assured me that he understood my meaning completely.
And also avoid the phrases “your vaccine” “your booster” … pick those up every time they are used – and “social distancing” … all of them. Keep challenging.