Covidian Cult Metaphysics

Disclaimer: I am neither a doctor, nor a nutritionist, but I do hold a certificate in plantbased nutrition from the T.Colin Campbell Institute for Nutrition Studies.

It is time to look at the Covid-developments from a metaphysical level. For most of my life, I have been interested in the metaphysics of health and healing, starting at the dining room table in the house I grew up in. My psychiatrist father managed to maintain a sort of a salon with frequent discussions at meal times, mostly dinner, but sometimes lunch or even breakfast, with a wide variety of medical colleagues and assorted other thinkers. The derailing of Western medicine with its unreserved embrace of allopathy and pharmaceuticals was a frequent topic, starting from the very notions of the Hippocratic oath. As a psychiatrist, he saw the onslaught of psychopharmaca, and he decided categorically at the outset to decline the offer and committed himself to talk therapy only. Needless to say, I am now a fan of the work of Dr. Peter Breggin and Dr. Peter Gøtzsche, who have been through the firestorm of psychopharmaca and are helping patients to come out safely. In spite of the fact that I did not follow my father’s wish of becoming a psychiatrist, I remained interested in the issues of the metaphysics and the ethics of health and healing. The last serious discussion I had with my father before his death was about the publication of Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis. Even in the 60’s and 70’s, when these conversations took place, the outline of what I now like to call pharmageddon became clear and some doctors felt it was undermining medicine and health. The focus was too often and too much on treating symptoms more than facilitating healing and health.

Some time ago, I published a guest article on the site of Bernardo Kastrup about the idea of a paradigm shift in medicine, which I see happening on many levels and which is essentially about a shift from a Newtonian materialism to a metaphysical idealism as Kastrup advocates. The whole Covid-episode we are still dealing with is rife with exactly the type of overreaction to symptoms that will obliterate any opportunity to really deal with a situation, but instead create a bigger crisis.

To me, the classical story illustrating this point is the story of Dr. Helen Schucman, who was the scribe of A Course in Miracles, who lived in an elevator-building in NYC at a time when these were still hand-operated. One day, she learned of an impending elevator strike and she panicked. She convinced her husband Louis to temporarily move into a nearby hotel, where, once settled in, they found out the strike had been called off. That story is typical of how we lose our senses when we act in fear. Up close, fear may be useful, like if you get out of the way of an oncoming truck — a basic fight or flight situation. But in the big picture, letting fear guide you never ends well. Unfortunately, we’ve had too much of that this year. Another way of putting it might be how a captain of a ship knows that in a shipwreck it’s women and children first, then everybody else, and the captain last. Our politicians seem to have first responded out of concern for their own skin, never mind how many others had to be sacrificed. In the process it got hilarious, such as when President Trump shut down air traffic with China, which really fit another agenda entirely, and later we found out the virus had already reached the East Coast via Europe.

The lockdowns then have become a massive symbol of a cure being worse than the disease — leaving aside for a moment the comical aspects of how the President was a first mover, but later shifted away as the facts became more evident, while the Democrats seemed to develop lockjaw once they weaponized the crisis and went on become the party of lockdowns, and human rights abuses, arm in arm with Fauci, Bill Gates and the whole pharmaceutical industry.

The Metaphysics of Viruses

From a metaphysical standpoint the source is one, regardless if you call it Brahman, God, or Source, and the idea of individuality is the denial of that oneness, it is the notion “I” could be separate from oneness, not realizing that this is now really a lower case “i” that is speaking, with the idea that it has a separate, limited mind that sees, in a typical case of projection, a whole world of separated selves, entities, individuals, and things. The typical dichotomy of individual psychology is “i” versus the world. We call part of the mind “my mind,” and accept its limitations, and everything else is stashed in the subconscious and it shows up on the radar screen of the senses as the world outside of me. And now, the fundamental mechanism of projection leads this “i” to seeing the attack on oneness, which is its fundamental concept of individuality, outside itself as threats in the world, and “i” lives in fear of these outside threats. Invisible enemies like a virus are a perfect expression of that fear. In short, on a symbolic level, a virus is a perfect representation of the threat of the world, which is a permanent feature of the notion of individual identity.

“I didn’t do it,” is one of the most fundamental defense mechanisms, and Trump could not resist, blaming China instead of focusing on solutions. The rest is history. With very few exceptions, the whole world got into lockdown mode, although happily Sweden, along with a very few others, set the now well-documented example with what looked like a tougher road initially, but now has been completely vindicated as the more rational course of action. The lockdown syndrome that caught on in most countries was really the historically unprecedented aberration. Democrats jumped on Trump’s uncertainties by weaponizing the issue almost immediately and the typical political blackjack game now caught on, complete with a media frenzy that was characterized mostly by a completely fact-free passing of the jack back and forth. Totally aside from the fact that lockdowns did not work, or lacked any scientific foundation, it felt good for politicians to be seen to “do something,” never mind it made things worse. The warnings were there all along, but they were inconvenient, and not relevant to the political exploitation of the issue. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the population felt somehow protected by the notion of “doing something,” never mind if that was counter productive. The fear pandemic took precedence over any attempt at rationality.

An Alternative Course of Action

The Great Barrington Declaration pointed the way to an alternative course of action that could have minimized damage. It has mostly not been well accepted, not to mention it has been vilified. Why? Again, I think mostly because of the kabuki-theater that “doing something,” was preferable to the alternative. The constant drumbeat of the very misleading “case-” count kept the fear alive. Clearly, the principles of the GBD are very cool and rational if you take the time to read them. However, I would like to suggest that it misses one thing: more of what we can do for ourselves. Overall, I would like to suggest that the sooner we make the principles of Great Barrington the foundation of our further course of action, the better off we will all be, but we can do even better than that.

At the end of October, I attended the 2020 Lifestyle Medicine Conference of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and some of the presentations touched on the topics of diet and lifestyle as fundamental factors in boosting our immune systems, along with the ability to prevent and/or reverse essentially all of the chronic conditions that have been fingered as comorbidities for Covid-19. The organization recently also put out a marvellous infographic for Covid-19. The bottom line is this, various lifestyle factors, from good sleep, to exercise, meditation and relaxation, but mostly diet, are directly responsible for boosting our immune system, and the results are fairly immediate, such as within days of starting with a whole foods, plant-based diet, which simply floods the body with anti-oxidants and nutrients, and avoids the unhealthy ingredients that are prevalent in animal proteins, and various oils and fats, sugar and salt. Making the switch provides and immediate and lasting boost. One of the presenters, Dr. Michael Greger even published a book on this recently, How to Survive a Pandemic, which was many years in the making as this just happened to be one of his driving concerns in public health.

Double Dividends

The notion of being able to take responsibility for our own health is either very empowering or very frightening. There is always a tendency (projection again) that makes it seemingly attractive to blame someone else, however, we should think again. The benefits are huge indeed. And it happens on multiple levels. Clearly, the lockdowns are leading to depression, substance abuse, and other psychological and social problems. They are also disempowering and as such a direct attack on the human immune system. We are dooming people by placing them in a position of forced powerlessness, and they are increasingly rebelling.

The message that diet and lifestyle are something you can directly do for yourself to boost your immune system thus pays a double dividend:

• It replaces the powerlessness of lockdowns by the empowerment of self-help.
• And it immediately floods the system with anti-oxidants and plentiful nutrients to build up your immune system. Little else is needed. Drink water, make sure you are getting adequate vitamin D and B12.

In short, our typical over-reliance on the pharmaceutical industry produced a moronic policy that did not start as such, but ended up becoming lockdowns until we have a vaccine, ignoring the natural potential for herd immunity with all the factors that go into that. All of this is focused on dealing with the symptoms and innately dealing with the things we cannot control.

Now we even have a new coronavirus task force that was established by President-elect Biden, which has the biologically idiotic goal of stopping or containing the virus. This is exactly the dysfunctional thinking the Great Barrington Declaration tried to prevent. Dr. Scott Atlas is trying to do his level best to steer in that direction, but it would appear that the new administration, if such it be, is gunning for repeating all the mistakes of the past first, before they (will have to) bow to the inevitable forces of nature. By that time it will be too late to limit the damage in the way GBD suggested. Regardless of any of that however, in our personal lives we can make better choices, not to mention being a beacon of calm in the choppy seas we are currently navigating. We can help our communities by doing so.

There used to be a sarcastic bumper sticker: “Stop continental drift,” which everyone understood to be a joke. The Biden task force now says: “Stop coronavirus,” except they don’t understand the joke is on them. Don’t let it fool you. Take care of business for yourself, and be as helpful as you can be for others, but don’t fall for the panic or these delusional stage props.