Pathogen Path to Power?

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I wanted to share this video before it was removed for possible copyright infingement (is about an hour long):

While I dont think any definitive conclusions can be made at this point, I think the topics do raise some important questions that are in need of honest unbiased investigations and truthful answers.

I post this becuase I had a similar thought that this pandemic may have been greatly exploited in many ways for political purposes. And I hate to say it but as time wore on, there were striking parallels to this Wachowski Sisters gem:

Dont want to jump to any conclusions prematurely, I think it can sometimes take years or decades for the truth to come out, if it ever does. But I am old enough to remember being lied to about Sadam having weapons of mass destruction, and politicians manipulating the anger of a nation to launch us into the longest war in history. So it would not shock me if people with power crafted a nightmare in order to achieve more power.

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Not a scholarly source, but I think it brings up some thought provocing parallels:

"## There’s something vaguely familiar about how the coronavirus has unfolded. Watching the narrative play out over the past year, I can’t help but be reminded of the virus story in the graphic novel and 2004 dystopia film “V for Vendetta.”

The Pathogen Path to Power

In V for Vendetta, the United Kingdom has fallen into a totalitarian police state under the rule of a political party called Norsefire, which rules by force and exerts total control over its citizens. One man, known only as V, was the victim of government imprisonment and experimentation and swears vengeance against the ruling party. The movie chronicles his efforts to reveal the corruption and evilness of the government to the people of the United Kingdom. (The ethics of how he goes about this would require another essay!)

Norsefire’s main weapons of control is a virus (“The most terrifying virus you can imagine,” V describes), which the government has developed to use as a weapon against their own citizens.

“If your ultimate goal is power, how best to use such a weapon?” V asks.

The government intentionally implants the virus in three locations to maximize the deadly effects in the public: a school, a metro station, and a water treatment plant. After several hundred die within the first few weeks, the media creates a narrative of hysteria and panic, fueling the public’s fear.

The fear and panic ramped up by the media’s language fractures and divides the citizens of the country, and tensions start to escalate, leading to riots. Hmm, sounds familiar.

A Political Pathogen

As the virus is unleashed and fear spreads, an election is taking place. “No one could have predicted the results of the election that year,” says V. The tyrannical Norsefire party surprisingly wins that year in a landslide that takes everyone by surprise, even though the party was very unpopular among the populace.

As the virus is unleashed and fear spreads, an election is taking place.

After Norsefire wins the election, “Lo and behold, a miracle!” says V. A cure for the virus is released by a pharmaceutical company with close connections to the government. Norsefire party members get extremely wealthy from the virus cure.

Fear and Politics

“The true genius of the plan was the fear,” says V, emphasizing the last word. The fear created by the virus was the tool the government used to implant the Norsefire leader they wanted in the highest position of power, regardless of the wishes of the people.

V for Vendetta is a fictional story, but the last year has some interesting parallels. Media sensationalism around coronavirus stoked public fear instead of offering us reason and calm. The hysterics justified the government forcing small businesses to shut down (while megacorporations were allowed to remain open, no less). Restricting the travel of citizens and forcing them to stay in their homes without human contact was also justified. People were not allowed to go to church, and the government told people not to have more than a dictated number of guests in their own private homes.

“The true genius of the plan was the fear."

To top off the parallels, people were encouraged to vote in the presidential election by mail instead of in person. We’re told Joe Biden is the most popular president in all of American history, even though he barely campaigned at all in the year leading up to election. Now, days after the inauguration, we’re being told by government officials that the virus is plateauing.

Maybe it’s all a coincidence. But the reality of the last year has some very eerie similarities to the fictional story about controlling, totalitarian governments.

Closing Thoughts

In V for Vendetta, the character Evey says, “Artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use them to cover the truth up.” It’s a very apt statement for a society gone tyrannical over a virus that kills fewer people than tobacco use does.

“Life imitates art” goes the saying, and it’s true that art may affect the way we look at the world. Watching the film, it leads one to wonder about who might benefit from wielding the fear about coronavirus like a weapon""

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What is this post‘s relevance to either Lucid Dreaming or Dream Yoga?

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What has this to do with spiritual practice? I can tell from the sources you shared and the general trend of your thoughts here that you are the opposite of me on the political spectrum (I’m non-binary after all and people like Tucker Carlson think I shouldn’t exist). That doesn’t matter to me. You are a fellow spiritual practioner and because of that like with other spiritual practioners I feel an amount of kinship with you. I can also tell from our interactions here that you are a good person. So I think I’m fortunate that I don’t get into the “because you believe this you are a bad person” headspace that many people get into when interacting with people on the opposite of the political spectrum from them. But I have to say: I think it’s important to recognize that us unenlightened folk have a lot of aversions and using a space for people to come together and talk about the dharma to discuss controversial political opinions can have a deleterious effect on the sangha and cause unnecessary conflict. I think in the current political climate it is useful to table political stuff when we enter communities like this and only discuss it if and when it becomes relevant. After all politics is just mind stuff, it is irrelevant to the spiritual path where we want to move beyond mind and it’s thoughts, opinions, aversions and attractions.

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More than it may appear to at first glance. The pandemic forced by policitcal decree many temples, mosques, churches, meditation centers, and many other spiritual places to close their doors. Some of these places were hurt serverely from this, some of them never recovered and had to close for good.

I think one of the many things that makes our country so great is the First Amendment, and the ability to peacefully gather, speak yoir mind, and freely practice your faith. I know this right was unlawfully violated, was it done so maliciously or for the sole purpose of obtaining power, that I dont know. But I think Mr. Musks twitter files show there was government involvement to supress and combat free speach during the pandemic.

Its always better to ask questions first, rather than jump to conclusions :wink: I will vote for the best horse, or the political party I think thats best for ‘The Realm’. I have voted for both parties in the past, and probably will do so in the future. I am a Libertairan, we are the ‘Middle Way’ of political parties. TC is a Libertarian too, but his views skew more conservative at times.

This is what I like about you, you have an open mind and are deeply conscious, and I think you have a great heart. In regards to the kinship, the feeling is mutual :slightly_smiling_face:

It is very difficult, and I think it is a sign of higher thinking. Deeply unconscious people demonize those who

I would push back on the validity of this statement. I think the belief that he thinks non-binary people should not exist is propaganda peddled by his opposition. I am not a TC fanatic, but I do repect his intellect and journalism and appetite for turth. I think his ego is somewhat abrasive though, and it took a while for me to be able to stomach his personality, no doubt he can be childish and even bitchy at times. That being said, I really respect his courgae to call out both Republicans and Democrats on their bullshit. Something I think few journalist these days do.

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I think it is more tied to the practice of Illusory Form, which I think is somewhat relevant to Dream Yoga.

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Freedom of speech/written opinion is appropriate on the NC site and I am free not to read any of the above posts, as well. Though the original posted topic may not be not within the parameters of sleep or dream yoga, not everything at the 'Club falls in either of those categories. Given the recent pandemic and how it affected us all, including leading to the creation of Andrew’s Virtual Hangouts (now called the Q&A), this subject does address issues that may be of interest to some Night Clubbers.

Andrew describes himself as a “Liberal Democrat” and has used examples from that perspective to illustrate a few points, in a very limited way, over the years that I’ve been here. He doesn’t beat participants over the head with his politics, and will take the high road by not putting anyone down, and indeed owns what he says.

Right on @Bucket!

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I think you may be projecting :wink: :innocent:

I would say that one of the most important parts of the spiritual path is seeking truth. And I believe that involves asking questions both internally about yourself, but also about the ‘reality’ that you find yourself living in.

2 great lines from Andrew are “No one has a monopoly on truth” and “I will take truth wherever I can get it”. I think they are words to live by.

I think the most evolved Spirtitual people like Buddha and Christ and Muhammad, all developed siddhis and the ability to see truth, where others were blind to it. Not just in the Absolute sense, but relatively as well.

I think another very importantant aspect of the spiritual path is to take the truth and use it to combat and prevent suffering.

I am by no means all knowing, nor do I have any siddhis, nor am I trying to jump to any conclusions with the OP. But I do think its important to ask questions and critically interrogate narratives, especially ones that have hurt a lot of people.

I think he is one of the most Conserative “Liberal Democrats” I have ever known. :upside_down_face: :wink:

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@NightHawk999 Perhaps, but the near enemy of Illusory Form practice is trading-in one narrative for another narrative, isn’t it?

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@_Barry Sure, but every forum, like this one, reddit and others has a main theme around which the posts usually orbit. For Nightclub I thought it would be Lucid Dreaming and Dream Yoga.

I have no particular problem with this post, although imo it does flirt with a certain political narrative used in certain circles where the real danger of the coronavirus (talking of the more dangerous “Delta-Variant” of the virus, not the follow-on variants) was being belittled and used for their own political purposes. That narrative not only belittled the virus but portrayed it as only “a common flue” and postulated a conspiracy of the “elite”, mocking the deaths of millions who died of the delta-variant.
Drawing a parallel to the movie “V for Vendetta” in which the government does exactly what is being echoed in this narrative, is for my personal taste too close to conspiracy theories.
And yes, of course big pharma profited by the corona-crisis…

I am personally more concered of other posts where propaganda like Russia Today is being linked and other conspiracy theories like “Great Reset”.

If stuff like that starts dominating this forum, we’ll be seeing each other on another forum, then.

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I share a concern over sources, but don’t think it’s either now, or soon becoming, a preponderance of sources for NC posts.

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That is a really good point. This is why in the OP I noted that it was to early to cling to or reify an alternative narrative.

I think if you want to destabilize the current narritive, first you have to prove that its foundations are weak or non existant. And to do that you have to start asking a lot of hard questions, often times to people that are notorious for being really good at evading interrogations or spinning ‘truth’.

But I do believe getting people to testify under oath to questions is a good start at illuminating truth.

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Freedom of speech is good, but it has a lot of near enemies, most of which are all too evident nowadays in our polarized political landscape. People use their freedom of speech to incite hatred against certain groups of people, to lie about other people or groups of people, to create “fake news”, to stoke peoples fears and hate just to get some votes, to undermine what used to be shared public consensus on certain things, etc etc. Freedom of speech, like anything, has both its positive and its toxic sides. And I’m afraid right now we are mostly seeing its toxic side.

Also I have to add that when you came onto this forum and signed the TOS in order to join, you voluntarily acceded to have your right to free speech curtailed to a certain extent by the moderators here in order to foster a wholesome, supportive community here. According to the rules, for example, we are not free to call each other names, or engage in ad hominem attacks. Nor are we free to post sexually explicit material here. Nor engage in hate speech. Nor doxx other people. If we do so, the moderators are empowered to eject us from this community.

This is common among places like this. Even larger places, like Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, etc have rules that you have to abide by in order to engage on that platform. If you don’t follow the rules, you will be kicked off the platform.

I myself run a recovery community- moderating a forum much larger than this forum as well as facilitating support calls for people in our community. I won’t tell you which one because I want to keep my work separate from this. We’ve found that we’ve had to curtail political discussion entirely on our forums because people would forget the purpose of the forums- to allow addicts to come together to find comradery, support, healing and encouragement in their recovery journeys. Instead discussions were devolving into flame wars with people calling each other names, reporting each other for trivial stuff just to try to get other people they don’t like banned from the forum, etc.

While freedom of speech may be absolute in the broader public arena, it is relative and often curtailed in order online in order to foster a basic level of civility so that people can gather together and interact with each other without being at each other’s throats. And we readily accept when we join online communities like this.

I don’t want to get into it. I have very pointed views about Tucker Carlson and the people at Fox. I’m sure you can guess what they are. I don’t think it’s useful to express those opinions here though. Again because it’s irrelevant. I don’t see how engaging in such a conversation would be helpful for myself, for you, for the other members of our sangha here. It would just introduce controversy into our community here, maybe lead to bad feelings between us, and make other people uncomfortable. It would be counterproductive to the reason we are all here- as a spiritual sangha to support and encourage each other on the spiritual path.

Whose to say what “truth” is? The right has their own version of the truth. The left has theirs. They are mutually exclusive. How then are we to find truth in these politically divided times we live in? Are there any authorities we can appeal to? Journalism used to be one… not so much any more. It’s become as polarized as the politics. Science? Science can be manipulated, as when cigarette companies paid for studies that say that cigarettes do not cause cancer, or Coca Cola pays for studies that say that sugar does not cause dental decay. And even if scientists largely agree on a certain fact or set of facts, their conclusions are often downplayed or downright denied when their conclusions point to an issue that we need to address that would take a lot of change (either publicly or in our private lives) in order to address. Government? Please. Most of the people in government are too interested in power and you can’t trust people who are interested in power. Religion then? There are rightist and leftist version of all the world religions now… so that doesn’t help.

I think if anything the current times and the political polarization and vitriol between people of different political persuasions shows that these “truths” are impermanent, fickle, not anything to build any lasting hope for life or for society on. I’m thinking of the Buddha’s story here. If you get shot by an arrow and go to the doctor and the doctor wants to take the arrow out, will you say “Stop! Before you treat me I want to know who shot me, what caste did they come from, what village do they live in, who are their parents, what wood did they use to make the arrow, who taught them to make arrows, etc…”? That’d be ridiculous of course. What’s important is treating the wound. Well we all have existential wounds that can only be treated by the dharma. Are we going to spend our time pursing these relative “truths” or go to root of the issue and get our existential wound treated?

This is all to say I think we would better serve our sangha to avoid political discussion- which all too often devolves into vitriol today- and focus on what we are here to do, to open to that Absolute truth beyond all relative truths, the only cure for our existential wounds.

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If you are interested in seeking truth to prevent suffering, then that’s a very noble thing to do. That’s the boddhisattva vow. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Ghosananda did that work. However I think especially today it’s very important to be very discerning when you engage in this work. People’s suffering is just another token used by politicians for political power. Sometimes when you think you may be serving other people you are just supporting a narrative that a politician or some partisan person has created in order to further a political agenda or increase a party or person’s political power. When helping people it’s always useful to start at the bottom with the people who are actually suffering and see their view of things about how best their suffering can be addressed. Starting at the top with some person’s view of how to alleviate people’s suffering, suffering many times that doesn’t even exist, just opens you up to be manipulated for someone else’s political agenda. For example, the narrative that the current US administration is totalitarian and may have used COVID to increase their power- while it may be trying to address perceived suffering caused by this administration- all too easily supports the political agenda of Republican politicians.

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I think that is very noble work, soumds like youmare definitely doing Gods work.

I respect you not wanting to discuss that. I wont try to guess, I dont think thats productive.

I would push back on the validity of this statement as well. I think discussions on truth are vital to the spiritual path, especially when they illuminate prejudices. If TC really does not think non-binary people should esist, and is possibly calling for an extermination, I think that is vital information for me. It would drastically change my opinion on him. When people start calling for genocide, thats kind of a deal breaker in my book.

Just becuase it is difficult to do, does not mean it is impossible or should be avoided. I dont think finding truth, or the spiritual path, were designed to be easy. I do believe if you want to kill off truth, the best way to do that is to not talk about it.

I think you deserve an award for this statement, its spot on! The spin doctors are hard at work, one might even argue in todays world, finding truth is harder than it has ever been in human history. So many manipulators trying to seduce whoever they can of their intricately crafted dreams that do no justice to the truth.

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I think you,are getting caught up in hometown politics. If you look at it from a global perspective, were there conservative governments around the world that used misinformation about the virus to increase their political powers?

I think there were governments accross the polictical spectrum that did this all over the globe. I dont believe its simply a right verse left issue. I think its a human nature issue, that people will see opportunity in crisis, often exploiting it for their personal gain at the expense of others loss.

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That is kind of an extreme understatment. The kids down the street profited from doing a lemonade stand, Pfiser (along with other big phrama companies), raped pillaged and plundered the wallets of consumers around the world. I think it was one of the few drugs in history, that had vast mandates by the government for people to take. Many people I know were forced to take it, in order to keep their jobs, or stay in school. Others who did not take it, were fired.

The covid vaccine profits where basically bigger the profits of the next top 9 other drugs COMBINED. Thats big $$$$

It may very well go down as one of the most profitable drugs in the company’s history, given that other drugs did not have the zero liability sheild that covid vaccines had.

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Thats a great point, and I think its a really good thing that some rules are in place that prevent memebers from attacking one and other, or posting child pornography.

Twitter had no problem censoring truthful news stroies, while child pornography flurished on the platform. I think that goes to show how content moderation, just like like free speach, also can be a double edged sword, and used incompetenly or for toxic purposes.

I think this view is a bit prejudiced. I dont believe all forums or the minds they attract are the same. I think a forum catering to elementary school students would require far more censorship (and justifiably so) than one that is devoted to the higher education of PhD students or doctors. I have spent enough time in AA groups to know that you have to tread on egg shells with what you say. I think the minds of recovering addicts can be very sensitive, as consciousness is coming back online, reality can feel like being hit by a stampede, along with the many (distasteful) egos encountered, and hat can case people to lash out unonsciously. I think this community by its nature cateers too minds that are little more conscious. The homepage says this is where meditators and lucid dreamers come together, along with people wanting to know the true nature of reality. I think all three of these spiritual pursuits require a more evolved level of consciousness, more openness, and a mind that likes to question things.

Call me crazy, but its my understanding that controversy, bad feelings, and discomfort are all very important aspects of the spiritual path. I respect you not wanting to share your opinions, but I think it would very helpful to know your views and possible prejudices (for me and possibly for others). I am not advocating for a flame war, but I will admit that flame wars have a unique ability to reveal peoples prejudices and Shadows, and can be a great opportunity for spirtual growth if the participants are opn minded enough and willing to shine the light of awareness on these darker aspects of mind. In room full of recovering addicts, its probably not a good idea, but here, I think questioning prejudices and opinons can be remarkabley beneficial to spirtual growth. (I will add though that the addicts who I have seen make strong recoveries, were the ones who were able to question their strongly held (prejudiced) beliefs that drug use or alcohol abuse was profitable to their wellbeing). I will also add that Andrew has said multiple times, that if you see yourself as spiritually evolved, and are a conservative, go and watch MSNBC or Rachel Madoff, or if you are liberal, go and watch Sean Hannity on fox news, and watch and see how your mind reacts. Not saying that is a reverse meditation that is for everyone, but I do think for more advanced spiritual practitioners or people who are looking for enlightenment, I think this practice can be very powerful, and incredibly illuminating.

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That script scounds like a Nightmare