Idiocracy: Terrifyingly Accurate

crimson

After a long day of work, or even after returning from a nice vacation, my partner and I will sit down and turn on the television to watch a show. Our desire for the novel often finds us seeking out entertainment that we have not yet witnessed. Spectacle is certainly pervasive.

In seeking out our entertainment, we often take risks. The risk that a particular show or story will not be nearly as impressive or thought provoking as something we have seen in the past. Recently, our journey brought us to Snowflake Mountain.

Like any good train wreck, we had watched several episodes before my partner finally put her foot down. We simply could not watch this reality series any further after the disaster that ensued for the bit we did somehow tolerate. This show is so bad, we had to place it among such greats as Battlefield Earth.

Briefly, the show follows a group of rather entitled, very privileged, young adults who have been tricked into attending survival training in the wilderness. However, to say tricked may not entirely be accurate, as it seems clear after the opening episode, that these people are remaining entirely out of their own volition. In fact, it is almost as if they had decided to attend to try and better themselves.

Thus, the first major issue with this show is the inconsistent, often contradictory information the audience receives regarding the status of the contestants and what may or may not be going on. This is quickly followed up with the obvious issue with their alleged instructors, who themselves are equally entitled, privileged, and young. Of course, the instructors allegedly come from far more qualifying backgrounds, having allegedly served in the military.

I am by no means an expert at survival in the wilderness, but I confess an interest in such things. It started when my partner took a liking to the series Naked and Afraid. If you are not already aware, the level of fabrication in that show boggles the mind. When stacked against the likes of the History Channel’s Alone series, there is a great deal of wonder how inexperienced people with no clothing and the option of merely one object to take with them are able to survive longer than experienced survivalists with over 20 survival items as well as the clothes on their back.

The inconsistencies in Snowflake Mountain are hard enough to take, but the contestants themselves are somehow worse. Their inability to navigate basic social interactions with other people make me wonder how they have survived this long in an urban setting, never mind something more rustic. Are these people real? I am convinced they must be actors playing a part.

It is as if the definition the show offers, that a snowflake is “a young person who is considered overly emotional, easily offended, and dramatic,” was actually used in order to generate characters of appropriate stereotyping to meet the show’s requirements. If people like this actually exist in our modern world, God help us all.

Another noteworthy mention includes deciding that using a hachet to chop down a tree is reasonable (and safer) than using a proper axe. My god, the contestants hand is mere inches from the strike zone, and the instructors seem to find this acceptable. Of course, those with keen eyes may have noticed that the tree was prepared ahead of time, its upper trunk secured with ropes before they even begin. Whew, thank God they were keeping safety in mind for these poor snowflakes.

I am ranting. I apologize. Best to get to the point of all this.

There was a film that came out in 2006 entitled Idiocracy. It was a comedy, offering an extremely cynical view of what our future might hold. The premise is simple enough: consider that those in our society who seem to contribute the most are too busy to procreate, leaving those who are bleeding the social systems dry to fill the empty spaces with their offspring. Such a situation would seem to suggest that those genetically gifted with higher intelligence and greater innate abilities will be weeded out of the gene pool, given a sufficient amount of time, lowering the average global intelligence of all populations on this planet. Thus, the story spends most of its time about 500 years in our future, in a world that results from such circumstances.

When the audience is first introduced to one of these future people, we find him sitting in the laziest La-Z-Boy to have ever graced existence, complete with built in toilet, so one never has to miss their favorite show. And we find this person watching an incredibly large, 100 inch screen only a couple feet from his face. Sounds like at home IMAX, if not for the inhuman amount of advertising on the screen. There are so many ads surrounding the actual content, that the content itself is contained in a box smaller than most people’s modern laptop monitors.

And why stop there. The content is itself incredibly important. This man is watching his favorite show. It is actually most people’s favorite show we later find out. The title of this show is Ow! My Balls! A reality show where the protagonist is pummeled with an array of objects to his groin.

As the story progresses, the audience is provided many, many more examples of how the ethics and morality have degenerated over the centuries, suggesting that popular coffee shops, like Starbucks, now offer handjobs as part of their combination deals.

The show is meant to be funny. The story is entirely tongue in cheek. Anyone who thinks this show is even attempting to say anything serious ought to be drawn and quartered. And yet, here I am suggesting that it has something rather important to say.

When stacked up to the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even my dear Ghost in the Shell, it is immediately clear that the picture Idiocracy paints is far, far more likely to take place. In fact, as is indicated by the very title of the former, in 2001 we have barely left this planet, let alone colonized the moon or sent our first manned mission to Jupiter. In the latter, we are only a few years away from cyberbrains, allegedly to appear on the market as soon as 2029; that is less than 7 years from now.

I won’t go into the issues with mind/body dualism here. Only that I think Ghost in the Shell cannot be as a result of a misunderstanding regarding how human minds and bodies relate to one another. Nor will I dwell on the fact that many of the events taking place over the past two years would seem to suggest a complete reversal of the “progress” humans have achieve over the past hundred.

Were I to take a moment and try to predict the future as I think it would unfold, considering that I was a child during a time when there were no laptops, no cellular phones (never mind smartphones), no iPods, barely tone phones, no CDs, no DVDs, barely home computers, no Internet, etc… I would suggest that the next hundred years will look much like the previous, except for there being a much grander illusion of change. That is, human activity will, I think, continue to behave in much the same fashion as it has for the past two millennia, with the wealthy and powerful continuing to oppress and exploit the majority of people, utilizing the tools of mass manipulation (such as marketing and propaganda and religion and government), in order to get what they want. The technology will change, sure. It will appear that things get easier, though the reverse will be the case.

There is only one thing that I think can stop the engine of humanity dead in its tracks, and that will be the Earth itself. Mother Nature. Maybe. As we clearly do not understand it as well as we might like or think that we do, it is hard to say whether the world is really coming to an end right now. Hard to say whether the amount of damage we have caused will really end all life, or even simply human life, or whether the former or the latter will simply continue in some evolved form or another.

I am reminded of a book I read as a child: The Last Gasp. Trevor Hoyle suggests that when the end comes, though the Earth will be unable to sustain human life, and probably many others, life itself will find a way and another species better adapted to the new environment will gain dominance. As Charles Darwin suggested, it will truly be survival of the fittest.

Understanding the Ghost in the Shell

crimson

In the interests of transparency, while this post will be in part a review of the Netflix series Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, this post is going to go far and beyond the show into the philosophical concepts of mind/body dualism. In particular, an argument as to why mind/body dualism is nonsensical in the first place, much as the namesake was attempting to convey. That all said, this is your fair warning that there are likely to be spoilers ahead, for those who have not yet watched the show or the related films.

Let us begin with a brief history. The term “Ghost in the Machine” is credited to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle who was using the phrase in 1949 to describe Cartesian dualism, one of many interpretations of mind/body dualism. Ryle was arguing against dualism, his essay attempting to prove that dualism simply makes no logical sense. Later in 1967, the phrase would be popularized by the author Arthur Koestler in his book entitled The Ghost in the Machine, where like Ryle he would argue against mind/body dualsim.

If it is not already obvious, Masamune Shirow was inspired by the preceding and altered the title ever so slightly for his story. Thus, where we begin is that the phrase “Ghost in the Shell” is a literal and direct reference to mind/body dualism. The “Ghost” is the representation of the mind, whereas the “Shell” is the representation of the body. This is incredibly important to delineate right now, as there often seems to be a bit of misunderstanding by many that “Ghost” is instead referring to something like spirit or soul. Of course, that sort of misunderstanding may be understandable as the difference between these two ideas may itself not be clear. So let us clear that up.

What is the difference between “mind” and “soul?” The answer is rather simple: measurability. That is, things dealing with the mind are in some fashion measurable, whereas those things dealing with the soul are not. At least not directly. It can be argued that even the mind is strictly unmeasurable in a direct fashion, but that would require much more clarification on what “mind” means. If I assume that my mind is the part of me that relates to my conscious self, where activities like my thinking and my decision making take place, then it should be clear why these things are indeed measurable. After all, my mind’s activities manifest in reality through my actions, activities which are quite measurable in their nature.

My soul, on the other hand, is not measurable. There is even debate as to whether it exists at all. I am not convinced I have a soul of the sort most people have in mind. If I did, I would describe it specifically as “that part of me that is unmeasurable.” And then, as René Descartes quickly discovered, a lot of people would rightly beg the question of how something unmeasurable could possibly affect something measurable at all.

As I am fond of describing these things differently, I will now invoke determinism and talk of causes and effects. The body, then, is a thing that is rooted deeply in determinism. The body is affected by all sorts of things, and it causes all sorts of things as well, simply bumping into the atoms of the world at virtually every moment. The mind is a little more difficult to delineate. In a lot of ways, the mind is also rooted in determinism, being affected through sensory inputs and then causing through expression and manifestation of actions, typically through the body. However, if one is fond of ideas of freedom and free will, they might also suggest there is an element of the mind that is an uncaused cause. That is, a part of the mind that itself is not affected by the world, and yet is capable of affecting the world, through decision making for example.

The soul, using these sorts of descriptions, is a thing that is entirely outside determinism. That is, it is unaffected by the world, nor does it affect the world. Or, by some interpretations, perhaps it is affected by the world, but is left unable to affect the world. Like a caused uncause? The very idea is difficult to grasp as it is so far outside the realms I am familiar with.

Therefore, the term “Ghost” referring to mind as opposed to soul is a significant distinction. And so, it is with this distinction in mind that I now refer to the show Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. I found the series to be extremely entertaining. Especially visually and audibly. The closing song to the episodes of the second season, millennium parade‘s “No Time to Cast Anchor” is stuck in my head even now. As a fan of the original films, I found this representation of the familiar characters quite stunning.

But then we get to the story, and I am still not entirely sure how I feel about things. The first season brought the group back to Section 9 in order to deal with a new existential threat known as the “posthumans.” A posthuman, we are told initially, is an individual who has undergone a transformation or evolution, whereby their intellectual capacities appear to far exceed even the greatest supercomputers of the time. Even the use of three Tachikomas, sharing their collective processing and computational abilities, is still insufficient to really go against them.

Where the first season spends its time introducing all the players and setting up the threat, the second season is still a bit of a mystery. It is even suggested that perhaps the entire second season is essentially just a dream. Faced with an unreliable narrator throughout the second season, and even at the end, it is entirely unclear what happened and what did not. The finale seems to suggest that the antagonist, Takashi Shimamura, was busy infecting the world’s population in order to push humans to their next evolutionary stage through a process he refers to as “double think.” The concept itself is a bit confusing.

For those seeking out an explanation of this “double think” idea, here is how I understand it: through the hacking of an individual’s cyberbrain, they are placed into a state where they simultaneously exist in two realms. Saying exist is a bit suggestive though, so perhaps I might better describe it as like multithread programming. That is, in their minds, the individual is living two separate and mostly independent lives. One in the real world, and one in a virtual reality similar to a very immersive video game (as Purin Esaki tells us). Furthermore, the virtual reality is unique for each individual; a sort of solipsistic reality whereby the individual gets to live out their perfect, preferred existence allowing them to remain calm and happy.

Meanwhile, their real world selves get to continue doing whatever it is they are meant to do, benefiting from the calm and happy state received from the virtual aspect of their existence. We do not get too many examples of this to help us understand, only really seeing construction workers contentedly rebuilding Tokyo. So, at least for me, there is already a pretty big problem with this situation, and it stems once again in the ideas of mind/body dualism.

It is also important to point out that the reason Shimamura follows this course of action is that he is trying to eliminate conflict and war among his human brethren. His solution is derived from reading George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is also worth pointing out that the artificial intelligence that allows him to enact his ultimate plan is called 1A84, clearly a derivative of 1984. If you are not familiar with this incredibly influential novel, I suggest you read it or at least watch the film adaptation. It reveals a lot about what is happening in SAC_2045, and why it does not appear to be a happy ending at all.

Very briefly, Orwell’s novel is where the idea of “Big Brother” comes from. In that story, the world is overtaken by a rather overbearing government who watches and controls its citizens in such a way as to completely remove any possibility of freedom or free will. This should already start to sound like what happens in SAC_2045.

Putting aside the challenges in determining what does or does not happen in reality, the ending result of SAC_2045, that is referred fondly as a singularity that is the progression of the human species to their logical next level of their evolution, is that the freedom of every single human being across the entire planet is forcibly removed by the antagonist. There only appears to be two characters who are in some way immune to the affects. And one of those characters is outright dismissed because she doesn’t have a “ghost.”

As far as Esaki goes, if you take my interpretation of “ghost” at the outset, then it is suggested that she has no mind. This seems incredibly misguided as she clearly has some sort of intellect that she exercises throughout the latter half of the season. Which then forces viewers to start suggesting that “ghost” is instead referring to her soul. This too is incredibly misguided. Are we to believe that the only thing that differentiates Major Motoko Kusanagi and Esaki, the fact that Kusanagi has a human brain in her body, is the reason that one has a soul and one does not? If we follow this reasoning, then artificial intelligences (to use the terms in the show) cannot possibly ever have souls. Which is a bit presumptuous in my own opinion. Especially when there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise just a little later in the same episode.

And then there is the Major. Apparently she is the only human who is “romantic” enough to be immune. Only she has difficulty blurring the line between fantasy and reality enough to prevent her from being hacked and forced into “double think.” Out of nine billion souls across this planet, only she was able to resist. I guess that is why she is the protagonist. (Honestly, I do not buy it at all.)

Where I am left after watching the series is a bit annoyed actually. I do not like how the series ended. Do not misunderstand, I still liked the series overall. And I will still recommend it to other potential viewers. But I think the story has some rather significant issues. Maybe, with time, someone can enlighten me to what it was all about. I’m still “just trynna figure out what it’s about.”

Ultimately, I might suggest the best way to interpret the entire series is in the spirit of the ontology of its namesake. The show and the story are demonstrating to us the logical conclusions an individual might draw in a world where mind/body dualism is how it all works. That is, if it actually makes sense for the mind to exist without the body. Which leads us in very unexpected and terrifying directions.

The alternative is to suggest that mind/body dualism is not how it all works. That our minds are inexplicably linked to our bodies in a very, very intimate way. I am reminded of the thought experiment discussed in my Philosophy of Mind class where we asked the question of what would happen if you took my brain and placed it into someone else’s body. Who would awaken after that surgery? Me? The other person? Someone else entirely?

My answer was simple. What would awaken would be a new, unique individual who would bear some resemblance to me, and also some resemblance to the other person, but definitely not either of us. Of course, no one really knows the answer to this question because to perform such a surgery skirts the bounds of what is ethical in our world. So unless someone breaks all taboos and performs this illegal surgery, we may simply never know.

Asymmetry of Freedom

crimson

My posts are becoming more sporadic of late. Too much going on in my personal life. More getting out, as the pandemic is becoming less prevalent to the people around me. Not that the pandemic has left us; simply that people have decided to move on with their lives regardless.

Over the past few weeks, I have come to realize the significance of asymmetry. Specifically, I was considering the nature of freedom and how it is something that simply cannot exist for everyone. When the Freedom Convoy drove to Ottawa to fight for freedom, the question of who’s freedom stuck out in my mind. After much personal deliberation, I have come to realize that there is no scenario where everyone can be free. In fact, it seems to me that very few can ever truly be free.

The primary driving force in this though is the fact that when I express my freedom, I automatically remove the freedom of those around me in the process. Perhaps this is where Jean-Paul Sartre ended up in his own deliberations, resulting in his model of freedom as being adversarial. A war between individuals trying to dominate in order to practice their own freedom while removing the freedom of others.

This is not to say that I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir in her description. Honestly, I still side with her over him in this debate. I prefer to think about freedom as being something we cooperate with in order to practice. However, even in the act of cooperation, one or both parties must make concessions regarding their desires. At least one person will not entirely get what they want. In a true compromise, likely both parties will have given something up in order to gain a greater whole in the end.

Herein lies the asymmetry of everything. If I wish to express my freedom, others must give up their own freedom in some way, either voluntarily or by force. If I am not the one who is expressing my freedom in some unrestricted fashion, then I may be the one who is making the sacrifice. In fact, I know that I often make sacrifices during the exercising of my freedom. This observation is typically flowing from an acknowledgement of my empathy.

Empathy seems to me to be the primary motivator to resolving conflicts relating to expression of freedom. I recognize you as a free, autonomous entity, much as I see myself. I see you as thinking and feeling much as I do. I cannot know that you do, but I assume that you do. I am choosing to disagree with the likes of René Descartes; mine is not the only consciousness in existence; all of you are not merely very convincing robots.

This is itself an exercising of my freedom. The very act of deciding that there are other free beings around me, practicing their freedom and autonomy, is itself an expression of my own freedom. By deciding this, I am generating a foundation for my relations with those other entities. It flavours how I interact with other people. I am not interested in using others and disposing of them when I am finished, because I do not like it when others try to do this with me.

Thus, I try to be very careful in the practicing of freedom. I have my desires and projects, and I do try to complete those projects, but in my pursuit of progress I always consider how my progress will affect others. In many cases, I will adjust the particulars in my pursuit so as not to unduly affect the pursuit I see others making. As such, I also never truly express an unrestricted freedom either.

I also must acknowledge that in my pursuit there certainly exist cases where I did crush another’s freedom in the process. There have certainly been cases when I steam rolled over another’s practice, removing their freedom by force. Sometimes those other people have appreciated my efforts, adjusting their world views and deciding that my way is the better way. However, more often it has led to painful interactions and hate. After all, having one’s freedom undermined and outright removed is a painful experience itself. This is why there was a Freedom Convoy in the first place.

The model we see here is of a world with constantly shifting borders and boundaries. A world where there are many people attempting to realize projects, and most of those people failing in their attempts. Or perhaps it is better to say that they are not failing entirely; an individual can abandon their project, or they can chose to change and adjust it in order to realize a similar project in the end. This is the heart of compromise and collaboration.

All this said, there are still clearly cases whereby an individual (or group of individuals) have chosen to steam roll over many, many others’ freedoms in order to realize their own projects. We often refer to this as oppression, as in the case where the indigenous peoples of North America have been oppressed by the invading Europeans for many hundreds of years now. The indigenous peoples have been unable to practice their freedom for a long, long time. It may look like they are finally getting that chance, but upon closer inspection, it should be clear they are not. At best, they are pursuing highly adjusted projects that barely conform to the existing superstructure held in place by the settlers.

This is the way it must be. Not necessarily that the indigenous peoples must be the ones who suffer. But someone is going to suffer. A lot of people must necessarily suffer for the remaining few to be able to express their freedom.

Infinity and the MCU

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I recently had the opportunity to watch the film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It was good. Certainly the special effects were amazing to behold, and hence I would recommend watching this film in the theater if you are able to. But I admit, I was paying particular attention to something while watching: how they were planning to handle the idea of the multiverse.

As I previous discussed regarding the Marvel series Loki, what seems to be the most popular idea of the multiverse is tied tightly to the most popular idea of a free will. In Loki, what spawned a new universe within the multiverse was when an individual was faced with a choice that required that person to exercise their free will. Based on logistical issues I observed in the series, it seemed to me that these particular events that spawned a new universe were extremely rare, and hence free will itself was extremely rare (or perhaps the exercising of a free will is extremely rare). In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it is further established that dreams are also tied very closely with the multiverse. Warning for spoilers ahead.

In the new film, it is suggested that when a person dreams, their dreaming is really the individual experiencing an alternate version of themselves in some other universe. Doctor Strange, toward the beginning of the film, wakes up from a nightmare where he was attempting to rescue another character from a demon, and as it turns out, this was simply a different version of himself performing the very same activity. His dream was his experience of the alternate version of himself.

This is later emphasized by the character America Chavez, who suggests that because she happens to be unique in the entire multiverse, she does not dream. After all, for her to dream would be for her to experience an alternate version of herself in some other universe. As she never dreams, there must not be any other versions of herself in any other universes. Here begins the problem with an infinite multiverse.

In a previous post, I briefly raised the issue of “what infinity means.” I said, “infinity is NOT a number. Infinity is an idea regarding boundlessness. That is, to speak of infinity is to speak of something that is unbounded.” In the case of an infinite multiverse, this does not suggest that there is a countable number, or even an extremely large number, of universes in existence. It suggests that the multiverse itself is boundless. In the case of Loki’s free will spawning new universes, it would be suggesting that there is no limit to the number of universes that can be spawned. The number of universes would likely be vast and uncountable as a result of this boundlessness, but there is no way to really say.

This becomes even more complicated with the alleged occurrence of an individual who has no counterparts in ANY other universe, like Chavez. In the case of infinity, if something has even the remotest possibility of occurring once, it is guaranteed to occur many, many times. In a truly infinite multiverse, there would be NO singularities, no individuals. Putting this another way, while there is nothing that says every universe will have an occurrence of myself, the fact that I exist in this one guarantees that I will exist in others. As infinity is not a number, I cannot say precisely in how many I will exist and how many I will not exist, but it seems reasonable to conclude that the probability of my existence in any particular universe will approach about 50%. This can be said about any individual in fact.

For there to be only one single America Chavez in an infinite multiverse breaks the very idea of an infinite multiverse. Unless we are not dealing with an infinite multiverse…

Here it becomes time to raise Rick and Morty, and the “Central Finite Curve.” The idea is simple: apparently Rick Sanchez somehow segregated a portion of the multiverse (specifically selecting only universes where alternative versions of himself were the most intelligent entity within that universe) and restricted interdimensional travel to only those select universes. In other words, the reason the story can get away with suggesting (up to that point) that in every universe Rick was the most intelligent entity was because the audience (and most of the characters) were led to believe that they had access to all possible universes within the entire multiverse. In the season five finale, it was revealed that this was a lie, and the Evil Morty was able to break out of the confines of the segregation and enter the true, unrestricted multiverse. As there has yet to be any newer episodes or seasons of the show thus far, it is hard to say where they will take this idea.

The point here is that in the storyline of Rick and Morty, it is acknowledged (at least on some level) that in an infinite multiverse there can be no uniqueness. The main protagonist of the series is often referred to as “The Rickest Rick,” suggesting that there is something about this Rick that makes him unique in all of the multiverse; however, in the finale we realize that he was simply unique within the segregated portion of universes defined by the Central Finite Curve, which as the name itself tells us is finite and not infinite.

If the storyline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is to attempt to maintain any modicum of legitimacy in its exploration of infinity and an infinite multiverse, it will have to come up with a damned good explanation for how there could possibly be unique entities in a realm that can, by definition, not contain any unique entites.

Fantasy and Reality

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A past relationship partner I had once said I had a “rich fantasy life.” I think she was referring to the level of creativity and imagination I possessed. She suggested that I might be having issues separating what was fantasy from what was reality. That I spent too much time living in my own dream world. Today, I want to revisit what she was talking about, exploring more precisely what I think is going on.

What are “fantasy” and “reality?” It seems to me that reality is a term used to describe the way things are. Something that “matches up” with the way the world is, is reality. If I say that my glass is on my coffee table, I am describing reality because I am describing something that is the case of the world. At least, as far as I can tell, given that I could make mistakes and be in error.

Fantasy, it seems to me, is like a sort of opposite to reality. Fantasy is something that does not “match up” with the way the world is. If I say that my glass is under my coffee table, then I am not describing reality because it is not the case that my glass is under the table. Again, this is as far as I can tell, as I can always be mistaken about my observations of the world.

Fantasy and reality are certainly related to each other, especially in the examples I have given. In fact, it seems clear to me that fantasy can be turned into reality. I could physically take the glass from the table and place it underneath. Upon doing so, the fantasy has now become reality.

Does all fantasy have this quality? Can any fantasy be made reality through my efforts? This is a very difficult question to answer. I think that there are clear cases where this can be done, like my example of the glass under the table. But I also think there are seemingly clear cases where this cannot be done, like if I wanted to levitate or fly into the air. In the case of flying, I would have to further clarify that I’m talking about under my own efforts, because clearly I can board a plane or wear a jet pack and turn that fantasy into reality. In other words, the details matter.

If I had a fantasy that I could fly without outside assistance (without a vehicle or personal augmentation), that I could do so simply by thinking about it, then it seems much less likely to turn that fantasy into reality. I am sitting presently, thinking about and trying to will my body into the air, but it has yet to move. I am still stuck in my chair.

So there seems to be a range of fantasies, some of which can be made into realities, and some of which it seems incredibly unlikely that they will be made into reality. I think those things in the latter category are what my previous partner was thinking about when suggesting I had a “rich fantasy life.” For her, she was talking about things in my imagination that could never be realized in reality.

Why I have chosen to dwell on this distinction is that there are plenty of things that I call fantasy where the possibility of turning them into reality is quite unlikely. When the television series Star Trek first came out, introducing many people to the idea of a “communicator,” a wireless handheld device allowing nearly instantaneous communications between individuals at great distances from each other, it was clearly a fantasy as the time. Such things did not exist. But now, we have smartphones which connect to cellular towers and network to each other, allowing such wireless communications. That fantasy did become reality, it simply took a bit of time.

It is easy to suggest that the idea of a “communicator” could be made reality now, but I do not know if it was so easily perceived back then. There were no cellular phones when I was a child. Honestly, I was too young to consider these sorts of details. I dreamed of such communications devices, but I never really sat down and thought hard about whether those things might eventually become real. For me, it was simply a fantasy; clearly separated from my reality at the time.

Now, having lived as long as I have, my intellect having evolved and grown, I hold a stranger perspective on this topic. I recently had a fight/argument with my present partner about such things. I took a moment to describe to her what I believe: I believe that everything is possible, however, most things are incredibly unlikely, and improbable. That is, I believe that all fantasies can possibly be made into reality, but most fantasies will not.

To be more clear, my belief is that unicorns could exist. I believe it is possible that I could encounter one such fantastic creature when I leave my home later today. But I also believe the probability of such an event occurring is so incredibly improbable that I don’t expect it to occur. I do not make decisions in my day-to-day life expecting to encounter unicorns. I make decisions expecting that I will specifically never encounter unicorns. In other words, while I may believe something is possible, in the majority of cases those possibilities do not really affect how I live my day-to-day life.

Putting this another way, while I may have a “rich fantasy life,” I do not generally let my fantasies affect my reality. To be even more accurate, it isn’t that I don’t let my fantasies affect my reality, it is that I allow them to affect my reality based on how likely I consider them to be turned into reality. I see everything as a sort of probability matrix, where some events are incredibly likely, and others are incredibly unlikely. Those things that I consider to be likely to occur, I allow them to inform decision making and I prepare for them. Those things I consider unlikely to occur play very little role, if any, in my decisions and choices. I do not live my life expecting to encounter a unicorn.

In other words, for me, fantasy and reality are not as clearly cut as they seem to be for most people. For me, fantasy is something that describes how someone would like to see the world. In the case of the “communicator,” this is something people wanted to become true of our world. Those people spend a long time finding a way to make it into reality, and today we have smartphones. And I have no doubt there are people out there who truly wish unicorns were real; I suspect those people are honestly trying to make that a reality as well, though I expect them to be less successful.

For me, fantasy is a possible reality. Similar to the multiple timeline theory that is incredibly popular presently, especially in Marvel films. If there are infinite universes out there, then undoubtedly a fantasy in this universe will be a reality in another.

Perhaps more importantly, if a fantasy is a possible reality, then a fantasy is akin to an idea held by a person or people. As an idea, it is something that, given the right motivation, people might make efforts to turn into reality. The glass that sits upon my table can very easily be lifted and placed underneath the table, if I so wish it to be. My body is such that I am able to manipulate this reality in various ways as I desire. My body is a fantasy realizing machine. All it requires is for my mind to imagine a reality, and then my body can be utilized to turn that fantasy into a reality.

Seeing the world in this way, and especially seeing people in this way, really raises a lot of questions about what is going on. When Donald Trump says that the 2020 election was stolen, he has a fantasy he is trying to make into a reality. Clearly he has made a significant effort in this regard, with limited success. After all, there are plenty of other people out there who believe otherwise. Those other people resist changing reality into what Trump desires.

The fight I had with my partner specifically was whether the terrorist attacks of 911 were perpetrated by terrorists or by the American government. I recently watched a conspiracy theory video with a friend suggesting that it was the American government. I mentioned that I too believe it was orchestrated by the American government, though I came to this conclusion back in about 2002 based on my own observations at the time. This outraged my partner.

It wasn’t simply that I didn’t agree with her regarding this event. It was not like I didn’t like toast, when she did. A difference of opinion is one thing. She could not understand how I could possibly believe it was not terrorists. For her, I think, she could not (or perhaps would not) entertain the possibility that a group of people would organize themselves secretly in order to murder thousands of other people. Perhaps more specifically, that the American government would murder thousands of its own citizens for an economic or other goal. She just cannot see it. Honestly, I’m happy she cannot see such things.

Unfortunately, I can. And I can see much worse than that. I often struggle in this world because I see much worse happening all the time. Systemic prejudices and conditioning of masses of people. Why there are few women in engineering. Why industrial farming is considered acceptable. Why Donald Trump plays so much golf. My eyes are open to things I cannot close them from.

When I became aware of such things, I became paralyzed. I realized there was almost nothing I could do in this world without causing some kind of suffering. I was appalled with myself. I had to find a way to cope with it, lest I simply remove myself from the world. In a lot of ways, I should not be here at all.

But I found a coping mechanism. It is how I see the world. It is how my world view continues to evolve and grow. To see that everything is possible. To see that things can and do change. Over time. Sometimes it takes a long time.

I’m getting a bit ranty here. The point I wish to make is that I do not think fantasy and reality are as distant from each other as I used to. I no longer see them as being opposites, or part of some false dilemma. For me, fantasy is simply a way of expressing the ideas and desires I have about the world that are as yet unrealized. Through effort (sometimes great effort) I may be able to take fantasy and turn it into reality. I may be able to take my ideas and desires and reshape the world to match them. The world is the way it is, in part, because of me. And I can do something about it.

COVID-19

crimson

The pandemic is not over. I have had a very direct reminder of this fact; I tested positive for COVID-19. It is not pleasant. In my case, fatigue and chills have been the most severe. I did not need to go to the hospital. My partner is ever patient and caring to attend to me. We think perhaps she was infected previously…

At a time when virtually all restrictions are being lifted in my part of the world. Where those around me are behaving as though there is nothing happening. No pandemic at least. Trying desperately to return to “normal.” For them, I think “normal” means back to the way things were.

But not just prepandemic times; not just back to 2019. I think they are referring to some imagined glory days that supposedly existed in some indeterminate history, when men were men and woman were good wives. A time when wealthy, privileged, white men ruled over everything, and everyone else did as they were told.

I see glimpses of this mentality in the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. People who are unhappy with how things are in the world and wish them to be more hospitable to their own desires. To be able to play golf all day or ride horses. Not having to worry about where their next meal will come from, or whether they will have access to doctors should they be infected with some rampant disease. To be carefree and unaccountable to their own actions.

At least, this is what it looks like to me. From my vantage point, I can see very little. While I do believe there is something horrible happening in Ukraine presently, I cannot deny the possibility that it is all simply orchestrated for my benefit. The possibility exists, though the possibility seems incredibly remote.

I watch the world from my home. I watch the world through my television, both the broadcast shows and those streamed online. My television is my computer monitor. All that I see could be fabricated, as if I were Truman Burbank himself. The only things I can really be confident about are my partner and this room.

And this illness. I can have confidence that I feel like absolute crap.

The pandemic is not over. I’ve heard there may be a new variant on the horizon. Another disease trying to wipe us out. Perhaps it is time to stop being afraid and take our chances.

Falling Down

crimson

Today, I will talk about this Ukraine situation. I live in Canada, and so the predominant viewpoint of the situation is that it is a war. That Russia invaded Ukraine without any good reason and has been committing crimes against humanity. That it is up to us (the rest of the world) to step up and defend Ukraine and stop the evil Russian empire from continuing it’s reign of terror. Within this viewpoint it also is understood that the Russian people may not be directly responsible for what is going on; that it is their leader, Vladimir Putin, and his friends who should be held directly accountable for these heinous acts. This is why among the responses made thus far, sanctions have been placed upon Putin and the other oligarchs.

This is one viewpoint. It is extremely easy for me to learn and understand this viewpoint because it is held by those in my immediate vicinity. It is this viewpoint that is presented to me by almost all media sources I have access to. But this is simply one side of the story. It is the other side of the story, the side I have no access to, that I wish I could understand.

While I do not know the other side, I have a theory what it might look like. This viewpoint starts with the Soviet Union, and goes back to the end of World War I. After that worldwide war, the nations of the area were joined together through various contracts, agreements, and treaties to become a unified whole. As they say, many standing together are much stronger than individuals doing the same. The Soviet Union was something like the United States, in that it was a set of individual communities who agreed to work together and follow a singular leadership, particularly with regard to worldwide issues. Of course the Soviet Union did things a bit differently than the United States in this regard, and back in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight.

After that point, it seemed like those nations became their own independent entities, fighting for their own sovereignty and their own ideals. Unfortunately, no nation is an island. The affairs of each nation is influenced greatly by its neighbors. Simply take a look at the goings-ons in Afghanistan for the past 20 years.

There was not much press given to Ukraine over here in Canada until about 2014, when the government changed and the new president was someone whom Putin did not like so much. The new president was not so sympathetic to Russian ways. And so, around that time, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine deteriorated significantly and then steadily more until recent events. In other words, the conflict that is currently taking place in Ukraine is not some random, isolated incident. It is a conflict that has been brewing for at least the past 8 years, and likely much, much longer.

In truth, in Canada, there was not much attention paid to Ukraine since the events of 2014. For the most part, attention only was paid since the “war” began, about 3 weeks ago. This makes it very difficult for me to understand the other side.

I think the situation between Russia and Ukraine is much like the situation between a parent and their teenaged offspring. When a child is particularly young, parents have a great deal of influence and control over their actions and choices. If a young child behaves in a manner that the parent considers inappropriate, the parent takes actions to correct the behavior. Discipline and punishments of various types can occur; when I was a child, spanking was considered an appropriate punishment to correct behavior. However, as the child grows, the sorts of discipline and punishment that will successfully correct behavior changes. That which worked before no longer works. The teenager becomes better at resisting corrective action.

When the Soviet Union ceased to be, Russia acted much like a parent toward the other nations in the area. Russia set policy and guided how those other nations ought to behave. Unfortunately for Russia, over time those other nations grew and developed stronger self identities. Nations like Ukraine decided to follow a different path than the one Russia had set forth. Instead of a totalitarian style of government, ruled with an iron fist, Ukraine seemed to prefer a more democratic style of government. This is where the conflicts are rooted.

Russia wants Ukraine to behave more like Russia. Russia would like Ukraine to do things in ways that Russia considers appropriate. And when Ukraine does not agree, deciding to do things in different ways, Russia feels compelled to apply some sort of corrective action to get Ukraine back in line. As all the previous efforts in this regard continued to be met with limited success, Russia escalated their discipline and punishments.

It is believed, here in Canada, that Russia believed the invasion of Ukraine would have completed swiftly and with very little resistance. If this is true, then Russia must have believed that the government in Ukraine did not speak for the Ukrainian people. The Russians must have believed that the government in Ukraine was much like the government in Russia: totalitarian in nature. After all, the Russian government seems to make a great effort at controlling the people of Russia, instead of responding to and reflecting the will of those people.

In Russia, it seems like the nation is controlled by a select few atop a pyramid-like structure. The Russian government is run by a few people who make decisions based on their own interests. The remainder of the nation, all the rest of the people, are made to follow the desires of these few in the government. Propaganda and a strong police and military seem to be the tools utilized by the Russian government to maintain order.

In Ukraine, however, it seems like the nation was being controlled by the people. The Ukrainian government was elected by the people, and reflected the interests of the people as a whole. The government had no need of controlling the people, because the people were the one’s in charge. I admit this is speculative at best, but the severe resistance Russia has met when trying to quickly invade Ukraine would seem to support this conclusion. The people of Ukraine support the decisions of their government, and so were not willing to simply allow the Russian military to walk in and remove that government. Instead, the people fought hard to protect their government and their elected president.

I believe that Putin invaded Ukraine as an escalated effort to try and apply corrective action to the Ukrainian government. I believe Putin believed that the Ukrainian people were more like the Russian people, and that they would not fight to support their Ukrainian government. Clearly he was mistaken, if this is what he believed. But this further reveals a great problem for Russia as well. It suggests the Russian people do not support their Russian government. That if Putin ever released the heel of his boot from the neck of the Russian people, even just a little, the Russian people might rise up and remove him from power, much as the Russian people did to their Tsars back just before the creation of the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who is correct regarding the story of what is happening. Whether it is a war, or whether it is a parent disciplining their child, the situation has captured the attention of the world community as a whole now. Now, the nations of the world have decided to throw their opinions into the ring and influence the outcome of the event. Russia has, thus far, decided to continue to escalate their actions in their attempt to discipline Ukraine into submission. Unfortunately, the rest of the world no longer agrees that this is appropriate. Like the parent who decides to take their child over their knee in the middle of a public street, all the people around are now deciding to call the police about child abuse.

Apocalyptic Thoughts

crimson

It is hard not to think about the end of days with all that is going on. Just over a year ago, in the United States, there was an attempted coup. Just over a month ago, something similar happened here in Canada, in the guise of a protest in the capital. And then, hot on the heels, Russia invades Ukraine. Couple all this with a global pandemic and also the climate change crisis, both which have taken a back seat to these various more exciting events. It is like the world is out to get the human race, in some sense.

I have to acknowledge here that several of the things I’ve raised as being significant events are really only significant to people in my region of the world. The events of the United States and Canada are of particular interest to citizens of the United States and Canada, and not necessarily to others in the world. If an insurrection occurs in the Western countries, does anyone in China really worry about it? I truly cannot say; I do not live in those areas, nor do I know what those citizens think about. So, it might be more accurate to suggest that these thoughts that I am having are particular to my situation.

That in mind, it seems to me that the occurrences that ought to be getting the greatest amount of attention are those which truly affect the greatest number of humans. In other words, a global pandemic and the climate change crisis. Of those, the pandemic is not necessarily an extinction level event. Even if the virus happened to kill people with an efficiency unheard of, there would still be those who were resistant and even immune to its direct effects. And this particular virus seems to be peaking at around 5 to 10% at most. So a lot of people can and will die as a result of this disease, but far, far from eliminating the entire human species.

This leaves the climate change crisis. Here is an ongoing event that I personally have been aware of since my childhood in the mid 1980s. An early “book report” I did was on the hole in the ozone layer of the Earth, a topic that gets very little attention presently. Climate change affects every single living creature on this planet, not simply the humans. Climate change has been slowly causing catastrophic events to occur with increasing frequency over the past 20 years, at minimum. However, climate change doesn’t affect us all equally or directly. Climate change is the cause of strange and severe weather patterns and other occurrences.

In other words, like the wind, no one sees climate change itself, only the effects it has on the world around us. Do we doubt there is a wind because we cannot see it? It would be lunacy to suggest the wind does not exist; what else is causing all those trees to swing around so violently…

Despite the severity of the climate change crisis (or whatever other name one wishes to give to this ongoing event), it repeatedly gets a back seat to other “more pressing” concerns. It seems it is better to focus on something that might kill a few of us now, than something that will kill all of us later. After all, the thing killing some of us now is doing so right now, and we have barely any time to react. The thing killing us later is doing so later, so we still have time to do something about it, right?

Unfortunately, this is not how this particular event works. As I learned about the ozone layer issue, those choices we make today will manifest in changes to our world in the years to come. A reduction in chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) use today will be reflected in a reduced concentration of CFCs in the upper atmosphere years later. In other words, the choices we make today will not take effect for a while. When looking at climate change in general, the scales of time reflected in the cause/effect relationship are much, much greater.

It is likely too late to “fix” anything at this point. We are seeing the increasingly severe weather patterns presently, and still there are those in power who insist on no budging, claiming that climate change is simply a hoax. Denying the evidence that literally pounds them in their faces. Those who are in the position to possibly do something have instead decided to start wars with neighboring states and focus on economic solutions to the worlds problems.

As a species, we are under the delusion that if we can just do a little more, we can alleviate the situation. The fact is, the answer we need to follow is that we need to do less. We need to curb our activities. We need to reduce the things we do, including reducing the number of children we bring into this world. There are already far too many humans on this planet, and their increased activities simply further perpetuate the problems. The answer is less, not more. We need to change our collective culture to be about doing less.

Unfortunately, those who may heed my warning and attempt the strategy I propose will not survive. Those who have chosen the option to purposefully handicap themselves when faced against those who choose not to handicap themselves. Those who decide that climate change is a hoax, or perhaps they do believe but do not wish to allow it to unfocus them from “more important matters,” will very easily overcome those who believe. This isn’t really all that complicated an equation to see.

What this all distills down to is the very real fact that those who wish to attempt to rectify the situation will always be overwhelmed by those who simply don’t care. In the end, those who wish to sacrifice all of us for their petty interests will always win against those who try to make their impact less in an attempt to “save the world.” And so, unfortunately, as math simply does not lie, in the end, the human race is simply on a slow road to its own demise. And then I have to ask myself, as I’m sure so many already do, whether it is even worth bothering. Why chose to limit myself in a world where no one else seems to be limiting themselves. The end result isn’t going to change.

Domestic Terrorism

crimson

I’ve been struggling for weeks to describe and understand what has been happening in the country I live in, Canada. I live a mere two hours from the capital, where the “Freedom Convoy” has been allegedly protesting vaccine mandates. The convoy made a pit stop in my town on its way nearly a month ago, so I even had the opportunity to see and hear from them directly. My opinion here is not second hand at all.

It is not a protest. As Leah Gazan spelled it out recently through a twitter post, sharing her words from parliament, even the purpose and message touted by this movement is not what it seems to be. There is something deeper and more insidious taking place.

This pandemic has been challenging for me not because there is a new disease on the scene that can dish out severe suffering and death upon large amounts of the human population. It has been challenging because it has forced humans to look at things they have spent decades, centuries, even millennia avoiding and dismissing. Cultural and systemic problems that have been left to fester for ages. Worse yet, those problems have been encouraged.

The problem is of sophistry and rhetoric. It is of people manipulating other people. Those who have the skills and abilities to see and understand have, by and large, been manipulating those who cannot see or understand (or who chose not to) to perform functions and activities that are against the best interests of people, society, and the world as a whole. There are people in this world who seems to simply want to see the world burn.

The problem is the lack of a level playing field. We are not equal. We simply cannot be equal. There are things I am good at, and there are things I am not good at. Similarly, there are things you are good at, and there are things you are not good at. Given a particular situation, I may out perform you, but given a different situation you may out perform me. Neither particular situation suggests that you are better than I am, nor that I am better than you are. However, what should be taken from this knowledge is that we are different, and that there will be times one of us can leverage the situation to our own advantage.

The wealthy are wealthy for three reasons: their skills happen to be focused in an area that is conducive to the accumulation of wealth, they are a part of an inter-generational effort aimed at the generation of wealth, and they are lucky.

The first reason generally flows from the second reason, which in turn follows from the third. Their skills and abilities are conditioned and trained in them from their relatives and ancestors (with varying degrees of success I might add). Their parents understand that to be wealthy requires certain traits, and so their parents train them to develop those traits. Traits like viewing people through the lens of a class system, where not all humans should be treated equally. By convincing them that people who are not wealthy simply choose to be that way. They are definitely not trained to cook or to clean; after all, that is the work of the lesser classes.

The accumulation of wealth generally does not take place all at once, but over time. The more time one has to spend on the accumulation of wealth, the more they are able to do so. As is so often demonstrated in works of fiction, if an individual could be immortal, they could simply place their savings in the most basic financial institutions at virtually the lowest interest rates, and after several hundreds of years, a small amount will have become a large amount. Douglas Adams even jokes about this when suggesting that everyone can afford the insanely expensive restaurant at the end of the universe, because all they needed to do was to put aside mere pennies in their current time to do so.

While there are no immortal humans that I am aware of, there is another sort of immortality that exists to allow for such accumulation of wealth to take place: names. Family names to be precise. Blood lines. When a family works cooperatively over the course of many generations, they are able to save and invest for the future generations. The common term for this is “old money.” If a family has this sort of forethought, it will be important to train their offspring in such a manner to continue the future facing investment.

Finally, there needs to be luck. By luck, I mean that the situation and circumstances these people find themselves in must be such that they are able to continue their long ranged plan. Those in the front lines of war have a rather high risk of injury and death, regardless of their level of wealth. Thus, if one wants to ensure the continuance of their blood line, it would be helpful if they were able to somehow prevent their offspring from being selected to participate in such dangerous activities. Or, if they will be expected to participate, they should be given skills and abilities that allow for them to take jobs that could be a bit further away from all that danger.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about luck. Luck, to me, is simply a fancy way of describing how one has leveraged decisions in order to minimize the risk of detriment, and maximized the possibility of benefit. The common phrase of “being in the right place at the right time.” With practice and training, one is actually able to control their own luck, to some degree. I have witnessed this first hand in others, and have even figured out how to do this myself.

The point of all this is simply that those with power and influence and wealth have not gotten to where they are by magic or destiny. They have through hard work, patience, and luck. They have, over many generations, spent their time learning to manipulate and influence others in order to position themselves and their friends in such a way as to preserve their way of life. We have records of this going back to ancient Greece. This is precisely the concern raised by Socrates himself (of the problem of sophistry being used to push agendas without the support of evidence).

The “Freedom Convoy” is a well orchestrated movement created by those of wealth, manipulating those without wealth to push their agendas. What’s most disheartening is that the individuals who have (and continue to) participate in this movement do not realize they’ve been manipulated. They honestly seem to believe they are fighting for their own freedom, when they are in fact fighting for the freedom of the elite. You’d think that being charged criminally, their assets and personal wealth being confiscated, and their lives ruined would be enough to show them this.

It is not a protest at all.

We have a way of describing people who take other people, strap bombs to their chests, and instruct them to walk into heavily populated areas and detonate. The sacrificed individuals are told they will reap the greatest of all rewards in heaven, earning thousands of virgins and an afterlife of bliss.

The “Freedom Convoy” is a terrorist movement.

Understanding Democracy

crimson

I really have no idea what I should think or feel about everything going on. What I do feel is confused and lost. Particularly because I thought I understood what the state of things was. I thought I understood what the majority of people wanted. The “silent majority” as my father used to call them. Now, I’m not so sure.

Let’s start with the basics here; what is democracy? Well, the etymology can help us here. Democracy comes from the greek “dêmos” and “krátos.” “Dêmos” translates to people or citizens, while “krátos” translates to rule or strength. Putting them together, you get an idea of people ruling, or the strength of a community coming from the people. In these modern times, we have the idea of governing by the people or the citizens. That is, it is the people who collectively come together to decide the rules and laws that ought to govern the community as a whole.

So it seems to suggest that in democracy, you have a group of people who somehow come to agreement regarding the ways in which they coexist among one another. This in contrast to other situations where perhaps a small subsection of the group is in charge while the remainder simply submit to the subsection’s authority (oligarchy), or perhaps the subsection is simply a lone individual that everyone else submits to (dictatorship). In a democracy, everyone has a say in how things will be in the community as a whole.

In nations such as the United States or Canada, it is believed that the society is organized as a democracy. In Canada, individuals exercise their freedom by voting representatives, who in turn will vote other representatives, who will ultimately speak on behalf of all the people in Canada. Thus, in some ways it seems like an individual is making decisions while everyone else is expected to submit, but the manner in which the nation is organized, that top level representative has to be re-elected regularly in order to affirm that they are continuing to appropriately represent the people who elected them. In this way, it is understood that the representatives are always working in the interests of the people as a whole.

It is true that from time to time there will be representatives who abuse the power they are given by the people they are meant to represent. Sometimes with malicious intent. But that is supposed to be the exception, and not the rule. In general, representatives try to actually represent their constituents and further the constituents’ projects. But how can we be sure?

This is where an aspect of democracy is uncovered that I believe is not always recognized, especially by the very same people who are claiming to support democracy. In any democracy, there are many people with many differing opinions and ideas regarding how things should be done. There are many different projects that will be proposed, all with different priorities and different levels of importance. If I represent 100 people, then I have to somehow decide which of the 100 projects they all wish me to progress to actualize. I may be able to push forward several projects, but it is unlikely I can actualize all 100. Multiply this issue to the size of Canada, where there are about 38 million people, with 38 million different projects and ideas about what should be done.

Almost certainly you know how such things are decided: the majority rules. That is, those participants in the democratic process come together to vote on which projects ought to be undertaken. Those projects who have the greatest support are actualized. Those projects that are not supported sufficiently are not. If one person in 38 million wishes a particular project be undertaken, while the remainder do not, clearly the democratic group will decide against following through with such a project.

In these situations, where a minority of the population wishes a particular project be undertaken and are defeated by a vote from the majority, what ought the minority do? As one who often finds himself among the minority, it is my understanding that I have to simply suck it up and move on. That is, my desired projects are not to be undertaken. I may spend some time trying to convince others to take up my projects. I can use strategies such as protest to increase the awareness of my desired projects, utilizing appeals to emotion to try and sway others. But if, in the end, those who support my projects still only represent a minority, ultimately, I need to simply let it go and move on.

This is how I necessarily must behave. If I support the idea of democracy, I have to accept the fact that I will not always get what I want. In fact, as I am a part of a rather large community, it is very likely that I will rarely get what I want. Most of the time, I will have to simply accept the opinions of others and go along with them. As a single individual among millions, my opinions and desires do not count for very much.

This brings me to this whole “freedom convoy” business. The challenge I am having presently is that it is my understanding that the individuals who are participating in this so-called protest are representing a minority of the whole population. For example, their alleged primary point of concern is that they are against vaccine mandates, especially for truckers who are primarily responsible for maintaining the supply chains between Canada and the United States. If the information I have uncovered is to be believed, upwards of 90% of those truckers are fully vaccinated and continuing to (try to) do their jobs. Thus, the protesters, assuming they represent those truckers who do not support the vaccine mandate, are representing about 10% of the truckers in question. Basic math tells us that 10% is much, much less than 90%, and thus constitutes a minority.

Don’t get me wrong. As they represent a minority, within the laws and rules we have set out in our democratic society, they are definitely entitled to protest and attempt to sway to their side those who presently do not agree with them. The problem is that they have long since already made this point and presented their case (or at least had the opportunity to). So why are they still “protesting?” Worse, why have they escalated their “protest” to include further disruption of the very same supply chain that they claim the vaccine mandates are distrupting?

As anyone who has been following this story should already be aware, this “freedom convoy” is clearly about much, much more than simply vaccine mandates for truckers. In fact, it seems like the movement itself is distracted with hundreds, and possibly thousands, of other intentions and projects. When these “protesters” are waving American confederate flags, nazi flags, and banners supporting their desired candidate for the 2024 United States presidential election, putting aside my level of agreement or disagreement with them, this tells me that their intentions are far more diverse than simply concerns about vaccinating truckers.

This is where I would like to point out what I’ve been talking about regarding democracy and about accepting the decisions of the majority. In this case, it seems to me, the majority of people in Canada support vaccine mandates. It seems to me that the majority of Canadians recognize the significance of supporting their healthcare system in trying to keep as many people safe as possible during a pandemic. It seems to be that the majority support the idea that a vaccine mandate is probably a good thing. The “freedom convoy” has made their point, and they’ve presented their side of this issue. Why the hell are they still at it? And why are they escalating their disruptive behavior? Are they not actually in support of democracy, in contradiction to what they seem to be shouting about?

Many of them suggest their primary interest is in “freedom.” But who’s freedom? They are disrupting the freedoms of all sorts of other individuals with their actions. They are disrupting the supply chains and making it far more challenging for the rest of Canadians to go about their lives. I can promise that those who’s lives have been disrupted do not believe their freedom is being supported; I imagine they believe their freedom is being striped and infringed upon. Is it the “freedom” of the “protesters” that the “protesters” are concerned about? Once again, this will represent a minority, and once again this ought to be dropped.

I do NOT support the “freedom” of the “protesters” whatsoever, primarily as they have outright dismissed and attempted to crush my own. I support the authorities in doing whatever actions they deem necessary to put an end to this ridiculousness and allow the majority of Canadians to attempt to return to some semblance of normalcy.