Remote Control
Sitting as I am, at a distance from the continuing psychosis in Canada and Toronto in particular, I am seeing a distillation of the last two years emerging. In the end, this thing seems to come down to CONTROL of OTHERS.
History shows us that controlling impulses, obsessions, thoughts, behaviours and actions are the cause for much of the evil in the world.
However, let’s be clear, this is not related to self-control, which is a matter of personal freedom. The right to exercise self control is fundamental, and obviously a necessary component of living in society. The ‘right to lose self control ‘ is not a logical corollary. Lack of self control exhibited in criminal behaviour is but one example of the clear boundary it presents. The need to to set some of these boundaries for people who lack such self-control is self evident.
The issue at hand here is the impulse I have seen from Governments, institutions and many many individuals to control others. At no time in my life have I seen this to the pathological degree it has shown itself over the past two years. Even the post 9/11 paranoia and fear did not result in the carnage we have witnessed with Covid Psychosis.
On a macro level the desire by Governments to control their populations is easy to understand, however reprehensible it has become in its overreach. Put simply, a compliant populace is less stress for a Government who can then govern by fiat and technocratic decree, thus bypassing the democratic process. No muss, no fuss.
The more puzzling aspect is to be seen in the micro level. Why is it that some people have such a compulsion to control other people while others do not? Why is it that those same controlling people tend to be people who have a dystopian view of the world even in the face of statistics that prove they are wrong? People who complain of the coming doom because of such things as contagion, overpopulation, climate change, starvation, lack of water, etc etc are generally people who have an overwhelming urge to control other people.
During this ‘pandemic’, the control freaks have been on a rampage. Suddenly they have felt empowered by the State. This toxic symbiosis has led to the proliferation of mental illness we see in Canada especially, but also elsewhere.
We see controlling people in marriages, where one partner is obsessed with controlling the other. We see it in the workplace, with some colleagues trying to game the system in order to control their peers. We see it in schools, with some teachers lording it over their students in trying to control their thoughts. Doctors, media personalities, politicians, so-called artists - the list is endless.
People who want to control other people pose as the ‘know it alls’ - the people who pretend that they are confident. They want you to believe that they know better than you what is good for you. The fact is clear that the opposite is true. They are, by and large, deeply insecure and fearful people who are trying to comfort themselves by externalizing this anxiety and projecting their own black hole of terror on to others. They are moral and intellectual children posing as adults and hoping nobody notices. They want you to make things better for them because they feel incapable of making things better for themselves. they want the Government to be their Nanny in perpetuity.
Their fears are abundant - fear of death for starters. Fear of themselves, fear of intimacy, fear of honesty, fear of dissent, fear of not knowing.
The list is long.
The big question is how to deal with these people, not just in our marriages and workplace, but in a society where they have been accorded far more agency than they should. Panic has led too many otherwise reasonable people to submit, to give in to this controlling wave.
Like in a marriage where one just goes along to get along, the weaker people who still see the idiocy have been giving in - going along to get along and hoping they will be left alone. Unfortunately they have not been left alone at all. Rather, it has emboldened the controlling people, and thereby the institutions, Governments and corporations who are run by them.
Compliance to unreasonable infringement on our freedoms - whether on a micro or macro level - never works in the long run, and we are now into the long run. It is high time to NOT go along and NOT get along. Only by saying NO, rejecting control and facing the bully do we conquer this evil part of humanity.