This may just be a rambling of unconnected topics – the concept of long-term ‘stories’ or myths to keep people behaving in a certain way was on my mind. With that, I had noted Yuval Harari made comments a few years ago about humans ‘needing a story’ to feel at ease. So, as I looked in to his works, this post started to wander. But it does come back to humans and stories.
I believe that authors such as Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Yuval Noah Harari write their works not as warnings about the future (technocratic dystopias), rather they are simply their logical predictions. Huxley followed ‘Brave New World’ with ‘BNW Revisited’, which was even more dire and pessimistic than the novel. But in his last novel, ‘Island’, Huxley offers a possible utopian version of the future, opposite to Brave New World. I lump Harari in with these earlier authors because they all write with a similar, negative view on humans as a quantity-versus-quality problem. Harari gained popularity with his “Sapiens” and “Home Deus” books outlining the path of humanity over history, concluding with “Deus” stating: “What will happen to society, politics and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?”
In a recent interview (transcript here), Harari updates his thoughts on ‘useless people’. (A good summary of Harari and the links to earlier authors on the same subject is provided by Matthew Ehret.)
Harari: “After millions of years of evolution, suddenly, within 200 years, the family and the intimate community break; they collapse. Most of the roles filled by the family and by the intimate community for thousands and tens of thousands of years are transferred very quickly to new networks provided by the state and the market.”
And
“I think the biggest question in maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people? The problem is more boredom and how what to do with them and how will they find some sense of meaning in life, when they are basically meaningless, worthless? My best guess, at present is a combination of drugs and computer games as a solution for [most]. It’s already happening…I think once you’re superfluous, you don’t have power.”
Harari seems to serve as the bridge from the old class of population control to the new ones. He helps the middle class intellectuals feel smug and helps to smooth out the age-old eugenics ideas into new ones for the future. After ‘Deus’, he followed with ’21 Lessons for the 21st Century’, praised heavily by Bill Gates of course. A major ‘lesson’ was that humans are guided by stories, not data or facts – and this is to be taken advantage of. From a review:
“Harari argues that if you simply tell the unvarnished truth, no one will pay attention. Consequently, you would have no power, as power comes from the stories you convince other people to believe. There will never be a society that values truth over power. Nevertheless, he insists that facts do exist, separate from myths and propaganda. Scientists and journalists need to do their best to spin stories around facts rather than derive “facts” from stories.” (from NextBigIdea.com)
And so, as if on cue within the first week of the ‘pandemic of our lifetime’, Harari posts our required course of action in March 2020: “In the days ahead, each one of us should choose to trust scientific data and healthcare experts over unfounded conspiracy theories and self-serving politicians.” (Financial Times, March 2020.) (I’m sure this is completely unrelated to almost all countries’ media corporations signing on to the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ in 2019, where twitter, facebook, etc. and all MSM agreed to fight disinformation).
The past three years have shown both the above to be true. Leaders have been constantly slandering any/all voices countering or questioning the narrative, even going so far as to saying ‘only listen to your government’ as Ardern said. For almost three years, there has been no debate around statistics or mortality that governments used to justify lockdowns or any mandates – it’s been ‘trust your government’. Despite their own official data showing the opposite of what leaders and media state, the masses generally believe the story, and, get quite angered if data is shown or questioning of the story happens.
‘The story’ is further-reinforced by what many predicted would be a ‘technology civil war’ in the online world. That ‘war’ is not coming, it is and was already here. The majority are deeply-involved with the pandemic story, both in traditional MSM and social media. We are all victims of the age-old ‘divide and rule’ (or ‘divide and conquer’) that has worked on populations for centuries. This time, with the technology of social media perfected the last 20 years, the populations are divided and controlled ‘IVL’ (in virtual life, to steal the stupid acronym away from ‘IRL’ in real life). A sufficient majority are in the narrative camp and remain there due to the positives – it’s safe not to question, you wouldn’t have lost your job due to mandates, you are surrounded by the majority who agree with you, and, ‘it’s all being done for our own good – I trust my government.’ The minorities are shunted away in to their realities and their ‘unacceptable views’. Social media apps have been honed to funnel people to content they already like or agree with. And so it’s no surprise anyone questioning the story gets pulled or pushed to ‘alternates’ like this platform (Substack), or alternates such as Bitchute, Odyssee, or whichever. Anything against the story is corralled and controlled – those thoughts and questions do no exist ‘IRL’ because to the majority, they do not exist online. These ‘new’ social media platforms seem to be analogous to Florida – lure all the wrong-thinkers to one area and then you at least have them all in one location to blow off steam.
An on-going example of something that does not exist is continuous, elevated excess mortality across all the West. Data from governments in the EU and the USA, for example, show that non-Covid deaths and excess deaths in general are worse now (Fall 2022 into Winter 2022/2023) than ever before. So far, the ‘story’ is same as usual – ‘it’s long Covid’, ‘heart attacks are normal’ etc. I’m sure we will get more nuanced stories, tailored to the regions, parroted by the MSM to ensure people don’t stray in to the ‘wrong’ areas of discussion.
Back to the human need for stories. I’m certain Harari would be well-versed in the writings and thoughts of Russell and Huxley. The need to control us messy humans for our own good is a common thought for many authors and experts going back to early 1900’s. The constant messaging that humans are too populous and are destroying the Earth is relentless. We are the cancer and only ‘they’ can show us the way out – Harari just adds the modern touch to this by completing the technological explanations that Huxley would not have known about.
The longer-term story being used in parallel with pandemic fear is climate change fear. A very handy control tool because we can never prove/disprove changes or effects since they take generations to change. And, even if something does change – those maintaining the story will use post-hoc/propter-hoc fallacies to take credit if the change is good. Conversely, if the change is bad it will always be the humans’ fault. (And if the change doesn’t fit the data, it’s labelled ‘weather’). I feel the next big ‘story’ to come, sometime between 2025-2030, will be the ‘would have been worse’ scenario as it applies to climate change. The pseudo-religious story (because humans, especially Western ones with no spirituality, need a myth to cling to) will be one of scientism – the same scientism that has helped erase the old definitions we used to think as normal before 2020. That is, what a ‘pandemic’ is, ‘herd immunity’, ‘vaccine’, that lockdowns work, asymptomatic spread, everyone is equally at risk, ‘vaccines saved millions’, etc. The last three years have normalized all of this for a sufficient proportion of the world – such that enough people will always go along with non-sensical ‘do your part’ mandates dictated to them whenever it is decided necessary.
Regardless where one stands on climate change, similar to regardless where the C19 virus/pandemic came from, they will use and manipulate the story for both in the same ‘would have been worse’ way in order to move the majority on to a new system ‘for the greater good’. Similar to how the West was previously moved on to a debt-based petro-dollar culture of consumption more than fifty years ago, the shift we are undergoing now will be done with a mix of fear and relief, involving crises, currencies, energy, and supply chains (well underway). The old systems will remain behind the scene as we transition, but the story being told will need to be narrated over years to ensure the ‘myth’ aspect remains strong – aimed mainly at the generations under 40 or 50 years old. (Not much use or need to convince the minority over 50 who won’t matter in a decade or two, right?). If people such as Harari openly tell us that we need stories for our own good, and to only listen to authorities, what is a more likely explanation? That the pandemic(s) and climate change are wild, out of control, unknown catastrophes? Or, crises to be taken advantage of for controlling masses of people for our own good (their version of ‘for our own good’)? As said before – humans can’t handle the truth directly, we need stories.
For climate change, it seems like the best way to tell a story to move the system over to a new one. The old links between life – energy, money, supply chains – based on fossil fuels and debt, are already changed/changing to the new model. The same fake scarcity of energy will be needed as before for controlling behavior, only now the money will be completely digital (CBDC) and controllable down to every transaction. Our money is already digital – there is no physical store of value, only trust in the fiat system between people and countries. The comments that ‘the whole fiat system is about to collapse’ has always been there, and will remain there. Only now they will have ultimate control of our transactions with CBDC. It won’t be a 100% cut-over, rather it will be done first to all the main cities and move outwards in order to cover the majority of the populations.
The green energy/renewables story mixed with climate change emergencies and fear-mongering will continue. I predict ‘they’ will continue the deliberate supply chain disruptions and energy manipulations (oil/gas etc.), all the while profiting off driving up those commodities for their own benefit. In parallel, nuclear tech energy sources will quietly replace those dependencies, with the same elites already set up to profit from that into the future. The story will continue to be the desperate, mad rush to rid ourselves of fossil fuel dependency and move all to renewables. Again, the energy scarcity can be maintained in to the future, because fossil fuels and nuclear can be used in the background, while climate change ‘emergencies’ can be used as excuses to limit energy and population movement anytime anywhere since it’s tied to the renewables (wind/solar etc.)
The climate change scare is decades-long, while the pandemic scares are useful for short-term control over a year or two. Both serve the same end – public support for lockdowns and mandates and control ‘for our own good’. It’s no wonder that the WEF and WHO are still pushing ahead with the pandemic treaties – ensuring all 194 nation states remain signed on to their global authority for whenever they announce a ‘pandemic’ or any other emergency. These treaties will ensure no country or State level sovereignty or democratic processes go against the global directives. As with the last three years, to bypass the rights of multiple aspects of life ‘because there’s an emergency’.
For climate alarmism, just listen to a short portion of the recent Davos meet up. Non-stop theatre of fear on energy, Ukraine war, climate change, vaccine passports (still). They must be putting on shows for one another and laughing. Here’s Al Gore again playing his part (audio clip from the No Agenda show).
Wouldn’t it be handy if, as some suspect, the climate starts or has started a cooling trend due to other reasons over the next five to ten years? That is, what if rather than the story – that our selfish human consumption creates too much CO2 which then causes the temperature to rise, heats atmosphere and the planet, is actually the opposite? What if the planet, via its core and ocean thermals, heats the atmosphere which then causes the temperature to rise, which then causes CO2 rise, regardless of human activity? The current fearful story is that we heat the atmosphere which then heats the entire ocean – which is more plausible? (See Ethical Skeptic’s paper here explaining his synopsis on this). More importantly, which story allows for almost complete population control – who benefits? Wokeness, ‘do your part’ for pandemics, and ‘do your part’ for climate change are all crammed down our throats on a constant basis, almost always with fear. Discussion or questioning is to be avoided – almost like questioning a religion in the ‘old days’.
Whatever the reason, if the global trend is cooling naturally without human control, the main point is to take credit for and control the story. Imagine how large an effect of that ‘would have been worse’ narrative would be sometime in the near future? Accepting digital currencies and pandemic lockdowns/restrictions would seem so minor compared to our saving the planet by embracing green energy and ‘following the science’. I don’t have an exact timeline in mind for this, but I’m certain the story will be to take credit for something that they know would happen naturally – ‘would have been worse’. And the people again, needing a story, will go along. It wouldn’t end there – they will always have something to keep us compliant, but this mixing of pandemic and climate fear (and war) will be used to boost uptake of digital currencies. The perceived conveniences will also make the changeover easier.