A few months after the lifting of any requirement to wear the infamous ‘personal protective equipment for respiratory protection’ outdoors, you can still see people wearing masks while walking alone in nature, or alone in a car.
Faced with such scenes, it cannot be denied that, for those who realise the folly of certain behaviours – devoid of any logic or reason – it is a very difficult trial to keep their anger at bay.
These are hypochondriac and psychopathic behaviours – a bit like walking around with an open umbrella without a cloud in the sky because it might rain – that ruthlessly expose the magnitude of the media manipulation exercised on the masses.
I have always wondered over the past two years how it was possible for cognitive dissonance of this magnitude to occur and, above all, on a global level.
Just as in the past many have wondered how the German people never realised what was happening with Nazism.
The answer is twofold and simple in its dramatic nature:
on the one hand, the facts were officially interpreted in a unilateral and authoritarian manner with an almost total control of information, and on the other hand the cognitive dissonance of the masses made the success of the manipulative operation possible.
By now, we know everything or almost everything about the global deception; for those who have ‘lost their innocence’ by having begun to exercise critical thinking with regard to the official narratives, it is superfluous to continue talking about it.
The sight of the extent of the systematic lie that was proposed – if not imposed – on the vast majority of the population undoubtedly gives rise to great anger and indignation towards those who have executed and made all this possible through action or inaction.
Because the responsibility of those who slavishly accepted all this, the indifferent, is not secondary.
Let us recall the words of Liliana Segre, an Italian Holocaust survivor:
On your monuments to the Shoah, do not write violence, racism, dictatorship and other obvious words, write ‘indifference’: because in the days when we were rounded up, more than the violence of the SS and their fascist torturers, it was the half-closed windows of the neighbourhood, the silences of those who could have shouted instead of eavesdropping through the doors, that killed us before the death camps.
It is impossible not to feel anger and indignation at this, of course, but there is more.
Let us try to go a little deeper into these feelings.
If we do, if we really go deep, we feel pain because this is an age of universality and, darkly within us, we all feel part of the same humanity.
To understand why, one only has to look at our recent history: since the middle of the last century, the pacifist, feminist, for the rights of those who re different, the spiritual, ecological, environmentalist, vegetarian and vegan, and animal rights movements, albeit with all their limitations, have clearly indicated that 20th century man no longer had an exclusive bond with his own nation, people or race, as had always been the case in humanity’s past.
From ’68 onwards, the cause of renewal manifested; it was a fundamental anthropological transition – a paradigm shift – that changed the face of humanity.
Just as the human individual has peculiar characteristics at every age – we have different worldviews and needs if we are adults than when we were teenagers or children – why should not humanity as a whole, given that it is essentially made up of individuals, not do the same?
Thus, an attempt was made at that time – and it was only a handful of years after the two world wars – to achieve the element of freedom at the basis of every man’s thinking and action.
Perhaps even going too far the other way, but it was nevertheless an important historical symptom to think about.
A little over half a century later, today we are faced with a new paradigm shift, but one that is diametrically opposite, why?
Certainly because the demands of 50/60 years ago have been betrayed, sold out, debased.
Or rather, because all those libertarian drives have been taken over by the forces of power and money, betraying the ideal element that motivated them.
By diverting their ideal charge towards political or potential economic subjects.
The betrayal of that drive towards awareness of freedom as a substantial element of the human being took place in three stages:
In the first stage – thanks to the invention of Islamic terrorism and the globalisation of anxiety and fear – an increasing number of people were ready to trade freedom for security were obtained.
The second stage was directly consequential to the first; if you want security, you have to give up your privacy.
We control you for your own good.
Edward Snowden’s resigned – and prophetic – words in 2013 after revealing to the world the system of global monitoring by the NSA come to mind:
‘My greatest fear about the consequences of this, the outcome of these revelations for the United States is that none of this will change. People will hear about all these revelations from the media, they will know that the government seizes power and is able to keep American and world society under control, but they will not be willing to take the risk necessary to stand up united and fight to change things, to force their representatives to take a stand for their interests, the interests of the people.’
But it is the third stage that is the real masterpiece of the formatting of consciences: the oxymoron of ‘permitted’ freedom.
In other words, the overturning of the concept of freedom as a fundamental characteristic of every human being into a benefit granted only under certain conditions has been pushed through.
In the confinement or lockdown – in its institution and in its ‘benevolent‘ revocation – we could fully understand the monstrosity of this manipulative operation that has pushed through the idea of ‘permitted’ freedom.
Now if we consider that freedom is the fundamental element that differentiates us – together with conscious thought – from the other kingdoms of nature, which are determined by constitution, we can realise that ‘allowing’ or not ‘allowing’ freedom represents the same hubris as ‘allowing’ or not ‘allowing’ thinking.
Oh yes, I forgot, it has also come to this.
In Rudolf Steiner‘s prophetic words spoken in 1916:
‘It will not be long after the year 2000 will have passed on the calendar, that a prohibition will manifest itself – starting in America – a prohibition, not a direct one, but nevertheless a prohibition of all thinking, a law that will aim to stifle all individual thinking. From a certain point of view, the beginning of this can be seen in what purely materialistic medicine does today, where the soul no longer has a place, where man is treated as a machine only on the basis of external experiments. (G.A. 167)
Now, returning to the fundamental element of universality, the sentiment that must follow from these considerations is, in my opinion, not only the judgement of condemnation – which is necessary – but that of shared responsibility.
I mean that on a certain level we are all jointly responsible since we are part of the same humanity, even if today some of us have woken up and are fighting against Leviathan, as my friend Giulietto Chiesa called it.
We are, in fact, all in the same boat; if it sinks, the just and the unjust, the awake and the sleeping, will all drown.
As I have already noted in several talks, for those who had begun the process of awakening a few years ago, the crisis had been widely foreseen. Just as we cannot think that our actions are without consequences in our own lives, so we cannot think that the actions of humanity as a whole are without consequences.
How, then, could the devastation of the planet, unbridled liberalism, all-pervasive materialism, an endemic lack of ideals, the destruction of art, the destruction of philosophy, the destruction of history, money and power as the only goals – such are the characteristics of our current culture – not produce devastating results?
The demise of philosophy, once a tool for knowing the world, first degraded to a mere servant of science and now dismissed as a redundant tool, constitutes the mark of post-modern civilisation.
But it is not the only one to have received this treatment: we have helplessly and incredulously witnessed the destruction of art, beauty, culture, education, and spirituality.
We have witnessed the triumph of materialism and science, auctioned off to the highest bidder and bought by economic and political power.
True, the picture is terrifying, but as we know, every crisis brings with it a potential change of pace, which is why this moment in history also represents an extraordinary opportunity.
If these are apocalyptic times and Apocalypse means manifestation, it means that today evil is manifesting itself to more and more people.
Indeed, we are witnessing the manifestation of lies in every sphere of social life.
In the prophetic words of Rudolf Steiner, spoken exactly 100 years ago in 1922:
‘Never before has there been in the world such a powerful authority as that exercised today by (official materialistic) science almost comparable to the papal authority (of old). Just think of the fact that even the most stupid individual can take the upper hand by saying: “Science has proved it!” Think of how men are silenced by ‘science’, even when they assert true things. In the evolution of mankind, there has never been a more totalitarian power than that of ‘science’ today.’ (G.A.217)
We are thus witnessing a well-developed plan – certainly a long-since prepared one – aimed at eliminating Spirit from human consciousness.
Materialism has deeply pervaded the world and human consciousness, reversing, as we have said, spiritual impulses into their opposite.
Thus beauty has become ugliness, culture has become superficiality and coarseness, art has become commercialism and dissonance, creation destruction, life death, light darkness, justice prevarication, and truth lies.
Freedom has become slavery.
As stated in one of the three Party slogans well summarised in George Orwell‘s ‘1984’:
War is peace
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
How, indeed, could we define a context in which freedom is ‘granted’ if not slavery?
If this is the picture, what do we do?
Well, it is up to those who have understood the signs of the times to think and work to establish a new humanity.
For this is what we are speaking of.
With our thoughts we create our future.
Let us start from our own shared responsibility to create the preconditions for a different world.
In the meantime, if they want to alienate us with social distancing, we will respond with social rapprochement, if they try to gag us with censorship, we will speak louder, if they try to take away the element of empathy and beauty, we will use every opportunity to develop them, if they impose unjust laws on us, we will resist in every way, if they try to impose new confinements on us, we will continue our lives as if nothing had happened.
It is a new world that must be born.
It is a new man.
Man is not just a physical being in search of a spiritual dimension, he is a spiritual being momentarily existing on the physical plane.
If we manage to realise even minimally in our own circles this new humanity, it will be – in a certain sense – also thanks to those who with their masquerades and their liberticidal laws have caused so many people to wake up, to inform themselves, and to understand.
Maybe one day we will even have to thank them.
Because as Someone said 2000 years ago, only the truth will set us free.
Piero Cammerinesi
Translated from Italian by Mark Willan for LiberoPensare
