Death: A Simple Idea With A Powerful Punch

April 28, 2020 26 Comments

Since death is one idea that has no history except as an idea and not a reality any of us have experienced, it is the most frightening idea there is and also quite simple. It is the ultimate unknown. It has always haunted human beings, whether consciously or unconsciously. It lies at the root of war, violence, religion, art, love, and civilization. The good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, why we like to win and not lose, pass and not fail, “pass on” and not die. It is so funny and so sad.  We would be lost without it, even when we feel lost when thinking about it.  And it is fundamental for understanding the action and reaction to Covid-19.

Societies have always been people banded together in the face of death.  And since people are not just physical beings but symbolic creatures who can think and imagine the past and the future, societies are necessarily mythic symbol systems whose job is not only to protect people physically, but symbolically as well. Sometimes, however, the protection is a protection racket with racketeers holding people hostage to fabricated fears that keep them locked in a living-death.

Thus death, this most potent imaginative idea and reality that doesn’t exist except as a mystery about which anything we say is speculation, can be used for good and evil, depending on who controls society.  Death is the great fear, the human haunting that hangs by a thread over life like the sword of Damocles.

In 1944 in a newspaper column, George Orwell made an astute remark:

There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man’s feeling that life here and now is the only life there is.  If death ends everything, it becomes much harder to believe that you can be in the right even if you are defeated…. I would say that the decay in the belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization.

Beliefs, of course, like “personal immortality” and all others, such as the recent rise in the belief in atheism, which is as much a belief as belief in God, are, partially at least, relative to time and place, and develop out of social storytelling. The “hard facts” on which many feel their lives and security rest are themselves dependent upon the symbols which give them legitimacy.  Reality is indeed precarious with society suspended by a web of myths and symbols.  It is through cultural and social symbol systems that society’s meaning is transmitted to individuals, and it is within the symbol systems that the control and release of action resides.  In today’s electronic mass media world, those who control the mass media that control the narrative flow – the storytelling – control the majority’s beliefs and actions.

Since society is held together by this myth system – the beliefs and values people live for and live by – that sustains it, societies have always had to offer symbolic “answers” to death.  For without a meaningful symbolic for coming to terms with death, human action would be stymied and people would be reduced to what the psychiatrist Allan Wheelis termed “intense, preoccupying yearning.” Today we can hear such yearning everywhere.

Shortly after Orwell made his prescient comment in The Tribune, nuclear weapons were developed and used by the United States to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians.  With those weapons and their use, the ages-old symbolic narrative of life and death was transformed in a flash.  “The significance of the possibility of nuclear death is that it radically affects the meaning of death, of immortality, of life itself,” wrote Hans Morgenthau.  The traditional symbolic sources that once served to allow humans to transcend death were fundamentally undercut, and the search for new modes of death transcendence was carried on beneath the portentous covering of the nuclear umbrella.  A qualitative transformation in the meaning of human existence was thus brought about as humans, who had the weapons, replaced the belief in God as the holder of the power over life and death, since nuclear war could result in the extinction of human life, leaving no one left to die.

This is our world today, and it is where the Covid-19 story takes place.  A world not just of nuclear fear, but a host of other fears constantly inflamed by the mass media that hypnotize people through the conjuring of death-fear.

In his great work on group psychology, Freud showed us how it was not just mental contagion and the herd instinct that got people to join in group behavior.  People could be induced to become little children and obey their leaders because they have “an extreme passion for authority.” When leaders speak, the children hear the inner voices of their parents telling them to be careful, be very careful, the bogeyman is everywhere, so listen and obey.  Freud, the Jewish atheist, and Dostoevsky, the Russian Orthodox Christian, were in agreement about people’s desire to give up their freedom to authority figures who would allegedly shelter them within their warm embrace.

The easiest way to do this is to convince people that death is stalking them, for the bogeyman is always death in one form or another.

It works to get people to support the terrifying sadism of wars against fabricated “others,” who are always portrayed as aliens who are out to kill the good people.

It works to get people to give up their freedoms out of fear of “terrorists,” who are said to slide and hide in the interstices of everyday life, ready to pounce and kill at any moment.

And it works to get people to obey orders to protect themselves from terrifying viruses that are lying in wait everywhere to strike them dead.

In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky said that people want miracles, mystery, and authority, not freedom.  His Grand Inquisitor, while a fictional creation, lives on in reality.  For the Grand Inquisitor represents those power elites across the world who wish to cower people into accepting their dicta on Covid-19 as truth without questioning its logic or rationale.  To question has become an act of insubordination deserving death by censorship or the defiling of one’s name via the term “conspiracy theorist,” a name used by the CIA to dismiss anyone questioning its murder of President Kennedy.  Death comes in many forms, and the fear of it has always been used by the powerful to render the common people speechless and obedient.

How can any thinking person, anyone not totally crippled by fear, not question what is going on with the coronavirus disaster when reading what Peter Koenig, a thirty-year veteran economist of the World Bank and World Health Organization, writes in his article “The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of a ‘Universal Lockdown’”:

The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.

There is no coincidence. There were a number of preparatory events, all pointing into the direction of a worldwide monumental historic disaster. It started at least 10 years ago – probably considerably earlier – with the infamous 2010 Rockefeller Report, which painted the first phase of a monstrous Plan, called the “Lock Step” scenario. Among the last preparatory moves for the “pandemic” was Event 201, held in NYC on 18 October 2019.

The event was sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the club of the rich and powerful that meets every January in Davos, Switzerland. Participating were a number of pharmaceuticals (vaccine interest groups), as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s of the US and – of China.

One of the objectives of Event 201 was a computer simulation of a corona virus pandemic. The simulated virus was called SARS-2-nCoV, or later 2019-nCoV. The simulation results were disastrous, killing 65 million people in 18 months and plunging the stock market by more than 30% — causing untold unemployment and bankruptcies. Precisely the scenario of which we are now living the beginning.

The Lock Step scenario foresees a number of ghastly and disturbing events or components of The Plan to be implemented by the so called Agenda ID2020, a Bill Gates creation, fully integrated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – target date for completion – 2030 (also called Agenda 2030, the hidden agenda unknown to most of the UN members), the same target date for completion of the Agenda ID02020.

I ask the question but I am afraid I know the answer: miracle, mystery, and authority usually defeat evidence and simple logic.  Fear of death and free thought scare children. The Grand Inquisitor lives on:

But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshiped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it.

Death: A simple idea with such a powerful punch.

 

 

 

 

 

26 thoughts on “Death: A Simple Idea With A Powerful Punch”

  2. One great thing about a Curtin article/essay/poem/exposition/expedition is that one never knows where one is going, where one will wind up.

    And, so it is here–as one would expect, given the unwieldiness of a fathomless subject like DEATH itself–the great unknown, “without a history,” as Ed writes here.

    Along the way, we can nod at familiar signposts: ah, yes, “Death: Dangerous Curves Ahead,” or, “Death: RR Crossing,” with an “X” in a Circle and a fence coming down, and a whistle blowing and clattering tracks.

    It is difficult enough to grow up in this world where life is so uncertain, and Death is so certain but unknowable. It is inevitable that the Power Brokers who have managed our “coming in and our going out” since Day One of our individual and collective existence would make the best use of the hobgoblin of Death. They would drum on our fears, and chant songs–not only of its dark inevitability but also–just to keep us hopping at home, hopping in confinement–also of its imminence.

    And this is the journey for which we’ve signed up with Curtin here. He sows seeds of doubt–as all good thinkers, all good artists–should! Why shouldn’t we question the reputed “facts” that change with our morning coffee? Each day we wake to new realities, new “data” which only the “experts” can interpret for us. How did the world turn upside down in 2 months?–many more Americans dying than died in 10 years of the Vietnam War? Were there warning shots? (Ed provides a couple…and we should take heed!)

    Thanks for the cruise, Mr. Curtin. My passage on the luxury liner was cancelled…and I’d rather voyage thru shark-infested water in your rowboat any old day.

  3. Peter Koenig? You might as well have cited Alex Jones or Donald Trump. The guy is barking mad. But, then again, so are you.

    1. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dear Louis. Such a compliment just made my day and I am laughing madly like Joker. I am overjoyed that you read the scribbling of madmen. Such good taste!

  4. They are using fear in a culture that denies death.
    Fear . As the fear caused a freeze function in minds( freeze, flight or fight) that then does not question information.
    Fear of the loss of loved ones and fear of death.But fear was the base for psyop ” COVID19″ campaign.

    This death denying culture is one of believers.
    The religion of atheists is science, but the truth is its a worship of a pseudo science.
    Science was corrupted by those that bankroll it and the bankers bankrolled govt controls every sphere of our social development and life. Govt has been long controlled by a banking cabal’s govt.

  5. I read* that the next round of tyrants would come with medicine as the new religion. They would preach that micro-demons would try to corrupt us and only the holy folks in white frocks could save us.
    The new tyrants would have all the money in the world, data (“data is the new oil”), mass and individual psychology, the only megaphones, and most frightening of all- Public Relations- on their side.

    You’re right, Ed. We know where this is going.

    Smart phones. Dumb people.

    *Jon Rappoport’s interview with ex PR guy “Ellis Medavoy”).

      1. Hi Tom,

        Is it possible to be more dumbed down than we have been for the past 244 years? After 73 years on this planet, occasionally I think I know something. The truth is, I don’t know anything !

  6. A 4 year old just came up to me with great excitement and proclaimed “We’ve got 3 worms at home, but 2 of them aren’t alive yet!” – When I showed interest, she carried on, “Well, some of them are not dead yet!”,

  7. Pingback: Death: A Simple Idea With A Powerful Punch – The Chaos Cat

    1. I recall while in the navy in the South China Sea in the late ’60’s; we had mandatory vaccinations before we could go ashore anywhere. When asked what the vaccinations were for and what was in the vaccination, the answer to both questions was “don’t worry about it, just keep moving” I don’t doubt there are a number of sociopaths out there wanting to inject people with their words, O.S., and their poisons.

  9. Being a control freak – a very great failing, I admit – I have all my bases covered: I curse Caesar and God equally. Both he whose existence I can know and “He” whose existence I cannot know (but which is which?). Essentially an atheist, I agree wholeheartedly that atheism is every bit as much a religion as any acknowledged Orthodoxy. Until we attain omniscience, no construct we devise can ever be anything but a religion.

    BTW, a Dr Andrew Kaufman (who I only learned of yesterday) has suggested the Covid-19 might not even exist at all – this, because the tests designed to determine viral existence are so inaccurate as to be meaningless. If he’s correct, we are besieged by the most elusive bogeyman ever. If I could make a wish, it would be that Michael C Ruppert could be brought back to life long enough to relish the irony of it all.

    1. Its been removed..once again the arbiters of morality have decided what we need!

  11. People are being shot in the streets of certain countries throughout the world by their local officials. People are committing suicide at increasing rates and there has been a substantial increase in domestic violence throughout the world. Hunger has become not just a third world country’s issue. People aren’t just losing their lives by a virus. This virus is just the beginning of hidden agendas.

    The instigator is in sheep’s clothing. He will be the one who promises a way out of this fear with a gift of false freedom. He will claim to be our hero. But he is our Wolf in sheep’s clothing.

  12. This is a brilliant psyop. They have needed a global problem requiring a global solution, and the climate crisis hoax was not getting most people’s attention. The climate refused to cooperate, preferring to conform to the historical cycles of the sun and the solar system, and now in a Grand Solar Minimum portending a colder climate for some time.

    But death by an invisible and ubiquitous viral enemy, heralded by a shrieking media dialed up to 11 (a media in need of something to shriek about to continue to distract from the corruption of certain high level political front persons revealed by a certain jailed journalist) – now the sheep hear their master’s voice and will goose step in lock-step, the tax cattle will seek the immunity of the herd, stumbling over discarded masks and gloves toward the promised safety of the chute of economic disaster and despair labeled Security.

    And what future do they foresee (if they had eyes) that is worth more than liberty, worth more than sovereignty of their own soul? A few months or years of standing spaced out in scrubs in line for government largesse – until Bill Gates does a good enough job with health care and vaccines to reduce them all from the population.

  13. Ah I’ve been waiting for you to write another post! So thank you…!
    I’ve lived through at least one disaster–Hurricane Sandy, where, on my street in Staten Island, the water rose about 12 feet in 20 minutes (storm surge), covering the one story houses and forcing people to their roofs. When danger is that imminent, in general, humans aren’t paralyzed with fear. They act, and keep acting. After the water stopped rising, neighbors (NOT authorities) came out in plastic boats or whatever they had, rowing down the dark streets, calling out to the people trapped on the roofs, taking them to the shelter, or to higher ground.
    It was a couple days before we saw any real response from the city, and during that time, people helped each other and themselves. Otoh, when the police came striding into to the neighborhood after the water went down (firemen and sanitation workers had come first, to actually HELP), the cops did nothing but spread fear and issue baseless proclamations about the whole nabe being a “biohazard” and vulnerable to rampant looting (uh, neither was true). Thanks cops!
    So, real, imminent danger doesn’t seem to paralyze, until you get the official narrative coming at you after the fact.
    Covid-19 is full of official fear dealing narrative. It’s also not a storm surge. It’s lingering. It’s the “mystery.” I think this implicates not *just* fear of death, but more a fear of loss of control, of debilitating illness. Of contagion. The danger is unseen, unknowable. That’s what makes us cower.
    And NOW, add to that the fear of shaming if you voice any dissent. If you question the lethality of the virus you are a selfish, trump (or whatever) supporter who doesn’t care if old people die. And, that hurts. No matter how thick the skin.
    So yeah. Death, in all its forms.

  14. I won’t repeat names here; I am bothered by people who practice predatory capitalism; especially people who already have billions of dollars. Further I am bothered by people who aren’t satisfied from this profiteering, but they actually enjoy scamming or hurting people. Is that their real pleasure? The price goes up on the new operating system. It is very difficult for me to discuss any of this insanity in any terms besides 4 letter words that seem far more appropriate even though not as informative to the general masses of people perhaps.

    In the region I live in, if the authorities give the order to jump off the cliff, people will compete to get to the front of the line.

  15. Ed nails it on death being the universal great unknown, shaping, often unconsciously, both our personal and social lives. As for the pandemic/panic itself, feeding furiously off of that great unknown, here’s a damn good take IMHO on what we know right now, what we don’t, and how best to handle the uncertainty on a personal level. It’s interesting, is it not, that YouTube erased the Dr. Erickson video but left standing (at least for now) the two Dr. Ioannidis videos, all of which say much the same things. Perhaps one explanation is that it’s easier to silence two “average” doctors than to erase the message of Dr. Ioannidis and his Stanford research group, their work and reputation being of the highest caliber.

    https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/its-okay-to-be-uncertain-what-s-happening-and-where-this-is-all-going-aab5426e670f

    1. Thanks, Newton. I don’t agree with Caitlin Johnstone that we don’t know where it’s going. The signposts are up. Pax, Ed

  16. the terror of death and the coming to terms with our return to the unconscious void from which we came can be debilitating. it can also be freeing.

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