On kindness and compassion for the misled.
“So, my husband and I started trying to trial sharing bits of the Senate and FDA testimony videos and transcripts to family and friends in the True Believer camp...
It did not go well. They were not angry, or disbelieving or shocked. They immediately began shutting down - and I mean immediately - and complaining of heart pains or faintness. Panic attacks.
I was completely surprised. They already know inside, even here where there is no strong counter narrative on the news or in their social bubbles. So now I can see why governments might be concerned to let it out too fast. Some people will straight up die of the fear... Again.”
John Michael Greer:
“If this matches other people's experiences, we may be very close to a tipping point. I've thought for some time that the rage and hatred being flung by the vaccinated against the unvaccinated was at least in part driven by fear -- it's a common human habit to get angry when you can't admit that you're frightened. If people are starting to go straight to fear, the terror is very, very close to the surface.
A good solid helping of kindness is called for at this point. A great many of these people did what they truly believed was the right thing, they haven't felt healthy since they got the jab, they've begun to hear about people getting sick with the coronavirus even though they're vaccinated, and it's begun to sink in that the authorities they trusted may just have convinced them to make the worst decision of their lives. That's a traumatic thing to go through, and compassion and a willingness to listen would be worth cultivating when dealing with them.”
If we truly are at a tipping point back toward truth over propaganda and censorshop, and toward liberty, freedom of speech and informed consent, over unquestioning compliance with repressive authorities, then I agree with that kindness admonition.
I don’t quite know how to implement it in my own life, because I no longer have much direct contact with most of my former friends, family and acquaintances.
If given an opportunity to listen with kindness and compassion, I’ll try to take it up.
And if we’re not truly at a tipping point, or we’re at a different kind of tipping point, and the coercion and divide-and-conquer intensify, then it’s too soon to shift focus to kindness and compassion, because the vaccinated will be attacking the unvaccinated with even more vitriol and aggression than they have been already.
I also believe that there’s a difference in culpability and participation in evil, between the least-culpable who have been so disastrously and cruelly misled, and the most-culpable leaders, who actively, willfully, deliberately did the misleading in government, pharmaceutical and tech corporations, medicine, academia and media.
To me, it’s important that the perpetrators — the authorities who have imposed the fraud and fear and psychological abuse on the world’s people — be brought to justice, somehow, at some point in time.
Mercy and compassion for them, uncoupled with justice, will only encourage other evil tyrants to follow the same playbook in the future.