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TL;DR: To aDon't want to get burned? Then don't play with fire.
Twilight of the Apes
Our brains, for better and worse, are pattern recognition bio-machines prone to erring on the side of varying degrees and areas of caution. Some are afraid of the virus, some are afraid of the vaccine, others are afraid of caring all together. It's a brain thing, but humans have arguably taken the mammalian and reptilian structures to new heights (and possibly also lows). The same reasons people are afraid of the dark are the same reasons why knees jerk in a reflex, which are the same reasons why people like or don't like flavors of ice cream, and the same reasons we root for certain teams over others or vie for certain politics. Transcending these basal instincts in our own humanity is one of the hardest things you can do as a person, because it makes you cutting edge as an organism, and cutting edge in our society. Without some training and without being exposed to the patterns of the patterns (which yes, are themselves patterns...), our brains will make stuff up that seems right, and if not there's plenty of stuff to randomly plug in the gaps. We can't win for losing, but we are more often wrong than right. Error prone brains and humanity are prone to error, it's as simple as that, but it's gets very interesting as to why and how.
If someone loses their job, there's often some Southparkian skapegoat placeholder that "terk er jerbs," projected symbols of the things we don't like to begin with, and thus blob together to represent all the things we fear. They're not only terkin er jerbs, but they're also evil, satanic, and out to get us. The reality is that these things are just a coalesced rounding error of all the other errors, all the short cuts that were taken in the logic. (Reminiscent of the Architect dialogue scene in Matrix Reloaded, want to learn some philosophy? Haha, no, you probably don't, I promise).
To some degree, we really are on our own to interpret everything ourselves, not exactly brains in vats, but there's at least clear glass and wiring to the outside of ourselves, through our senses, and today with our phones and internet in a way too. We're like blocks in the blockchain, which in theory we're supposed to have the consensus mechanism to keep us in check. Interesting, if you think about it. Wouldn't it be nice if people respected consensus? Kind of concerning question, isn't it?
Every time you read a book or watch a movie, a mutable shorthand copy of it is downloaded into your head, it is not the exact same as the medium, it's in fact not even close. But at the end of the day it's all we really have to work with and usually all we need to now it and enjoy it, and we have each other (consensus mechanism?) Truth, as a consequence of all these fascinating advents of understanding and insight, isn't divinely dictated or absolute, it's immersed in shadows and mists, with fuzzy outlines, and rumors of rumors. So much for the now very old paradigms of divine rationalism in our heads illuminating everything as it literally is, when the right answers were always right in front of the thinker, or in the mind of the thinker, depending on which thinker you asked. Now the things illuminate in our minds and in reality and there's a relationship between them but its an abstract reality that is very human, at all times it is our best possible approximations, often the best, at least (some people don't even try, have to admit).
These things might mean nothing unless we hodl them to be true, but so 2+2 really is 4, unless we really really don't want it to be, we can call it 5 but it will always be 4 no matter what we call it. It's 4 in our heads, not in whatever reality is outside of us. Thus, 4 and 5 can mean the same thing, but there's a reason we have the basic rules in place to not violate that and why it's used as an example. It's more than likely numbers and language, are innately part of our evolution now, built with genes for the brains to keep going with that tradition. That's how powerful these seemingly made-up things are, the numbers are part of us as much as they are part of the universe, even though the universe didn't make them or name them.
Math is an abstraction, much like language itself; we can't use them to justify themselves or their existence, we count and give the numbers names and meanings, but the universe does not, at least not in a rational and conscious sense. The numbers exist, but not in the way that they do in our minds, in our minds and in our math books they are abstractions of the things themselves. Not unlike the mutable copies of the books, but like truth, 4 might be fuzzy around the edges, but we can still appreciate it for what it is, just because its edges are in a quantum flux. These abstractions and the ability to conjure such things seemingly from nothing is itself some where at the root of humanity, for better or worse. Are we the wisest apes? Or are we still in our most primordial and savage human forms that our descendants won't recognize within themselves? It doesn't exactly matter because we are here and we have to deal with it.
In the modern age that is now in flux and passing into the post-modern because of these very notions of fuzziness around the edges of everything, we've since learned that rationalism has its pitfalls, and while it's still a powerful tool, we are left adrift without the hitherto regarded as inherently authoritative and divinely natural process of rationalism and logic revealing absolute truth. It is thus a skill to be cultivated, but also a perilous path. You can either not try at all and risk being right on accident (like most people), or pour all your effort in and risk being wrong. That's how we think in a fundamental way. We can examine at our peril, but to not examine is even more perilous.
In our time, our age on earth, we are faced with these crises like none before us ever have, at least not in the same manner and not to the same degree, and arguably not as much at stake. Is truth really real, and are our forefathers and founders, and all the giants who's shoulders we stand on, whom erected the pillars of our societies over millennia; were they all wrong? Was literally everything they stood for and everything we are supposed to still stand for all for naught?
The answer is, don't lose your sleep over it. 2+2 really is 4, unless there's a gun to your head. So don't put it there.
If you missed the point of all that, I'm trying to say there is error and 5's coming out of the 4's all around us, and that carried over exception of error is reinforcing itself and creating a critical mass. If this were the Matrix, Neo would be put into the system to account for the error and correct it by resetting the system. Yikes, we just need to reset the error, not the whole system. I'm also covering my ass in case I'm objectively wrong in 2k years when our apelike descendants dig this out of a data center ruin hard drive. It doesn't matter because at least I am in the tradition that admits that, camp Socrates. There's a method to knowing things, it's not all gut feelings. But isn't it interesting? All of this stuff is the reason why nothing is financial advice and no one ever knows what they're talking about. Which is why Wittgenstein basically went crazy and advised silence, because nothing can be said perfectly. Error everywhere, stuff outside the fuzzy boundaries making everything fuzzier. Be careful, be very careful when you touch the righteous flames to things you have not appreciated and poured your life into understanding.
Age of the Raging Apes
Pandemic is an emergency, not a normal circumstance. Not acknowledging the pandemic and all the things that come with it sets yourself up for missing the point, and thus failure in the pandemic, and as an informed citizen missing the opportunity to make better decisions for yourself and society. Want pandemic and restrictions to end? Then protest to the virus and be a real patriotic hero and get the shot or go find another job and wait it out like everyone else. Other less privileged people in worse places would beg to have what too many of the privileged in our societies have elected to throw away, amongst other things, like their sanity. This isn't being imposed by governments, it's being imposed by the authoritarian nature of nature itself, by the pathogen and by human nature. So you're faced with a choice, be oppressed by nature and your own principles based in human nature (like fear of the unknown, the literal fear within yourself to know and find out very benign things, like how the vaccine works); or you can transcend nature, take the shot for democracy and humanity, and you're free from the oppression nature has imposed on us and yourself without even having to think about it. It's as simple as that, all they have to do is change their minds and this whole fabricated and self imposed crisis in Canada is over. Canada, a place on earth that's expected to be reasonable and sensible, that's what's really shocking about all this tbh, the fact that Canada is attached at the hip with the States and is in fact subject to the same vulnerabilities in its privilege.
We should worry less about Canada, of all places, being authoritarian, and worry more about the fire-stoked authoritarian idiots in our own heads and in our ears dictating our science and civics illiteracy into active movements, attempting to throw ourselves and our societies into the dust of history "because freedumb." Don't lose your head in your own revolution! These are self inflicted failures of these truckers upon themselves, you don't have to live like animals but that's what you're choosing when you turn your back on humanity (Aristotle...). Why don't they take some self responsibility? Instead they're out there blocking international commerce like spoiled children thinking they have a right to do anything. They don't. And the government has the right to impose restrictions. Grow up and get over it. The adult children need to be spanked apparently.
What's the difference between freedom and liberty? Go look it up! Sorry, but democracy doesn't work on freedom, it works on liberty, especially not in an emergency when YOU are responsible for being sensible, and if you are not, then you will be asked, and when that doesn't work, you will be compelled away from the matches and gas. The truckers need to grow up and so should all the people that support them. Maybe some jail time and self sacrificing their own livelihoods for a reckless cause will bring them some self reflection on how privileged they were to have the choice to throw it all away in the first place. Now THAT is freedom. Freedom to be wrong, the freedom to have natural consequences for your actions, not a privileged god-like status above everything. The virus doesn't care about your freedom though (and if it did it would want you to be as free as possible), and neither does the rest of nature. Use the front of your mind instead of your jaded gut and you would see that. Don't be babies. Get the shot, hodl your crypto.
Don't worry about Canada being authoritarian. We should be more worried about billionaire coopted reckless minoritarian idiot movements activated as light-terrorists threatening and undermining our democracies to make our democracies look more undermined than they are. They ran headlong into a fight with the rule of law and lost, like idiots. We shouldn't be surprised either, because that *IS* how things work. Don't like it? Well, it's not the wild West anymore and you can't get away with Bob Marley-ing the sherriff. You can get in line for the shot and sort yourself out or be forced to reflect on what you've done wrong or double down on being wrong and over throw your government with your privilege, which in vogue lately.
They lost the fight and everything, and they're more than likely going to lose that crypto too, boo hoo, more self inflicted harm, just like the crypto community is inflicting on itself with this too. There's consequences for your actions when you do stupid things, like support stupid criminals and their stupid anti-patriotic and anti-civic movements. Want crypto to succeed? Then don't throw it away and beg for the government to take it. Apparently you weren't that serious about hodl anyway. Hodl, indeed. Hodl your tongues, traitors!
As crypto people, we should be more careful where we put our cryptos where our mouths are, if we are indeed worried about regulations and surveillance. Digital surveillance which has been around over 20 years (it's not new and emerging), and its analog forms as far back as antiquity. You were even watched carefully as far back as when you popped out your mother; being mindfully watched so you don't do stupid and self destructive things. It's arguably a feature of humanity that is not going to go away just because you bought crypto and have inherited backward ideal from the 1810's that failed because it blew itself up. I wish Satoshi were around to facepalm at you. If you want crypto to get banned as far as it can be banned, then by all means, support domestic terrorism and the undermining of our societies and systems of law.
The truckers aren't thinking about the rights of the vast majorities they are against, or the rights of the government to enforce those. And those of the persuasion are not thinking at all about what comes after the freedom-without-consequences revolution, except for the explicit purpose of there being nothing to replace what we have besides having the right to do anything you want. That's not an improvement! That's anarchy. Too many crypto people with this right now are virtue signaling a failed, radio-reactive, resurrected and rebranded political philosophy (libertarianism, aka anarchists too cowardly to be anarchists) and leaping onto history's swords, into the fires of self inflicted oppression.
Don't want the government to oppress you? Well then maybe stop trying to set off ideological bombs on it. Don't want to get called out? Then don't ask me to hodl your beer as you make your way to the border crossing into lunacy to jump off the bridge of common sense and decency. Have some uncommon sense and come to your senses. You're on your way to throw away all we hold dear and true and should stand for as citizens in liberal democratic societies and for crypto nation. You're rug pulling democracy and crypto mass adoption right out from under yourselves. Do you want crypto mass adoption or do you want your own integrity intact and keep it as a dark virtually worthless internet crime money? The choice is yours, you're on team humanity and team crypto, or you can be "right."
Figure it out and stop being wrong, if not for Canada, then at least for crypto's sake. Don't join or support bad movements that are objectively wrong on 18-wheels, and throw your crypto away for it. Have some sense and decency and the ability to self reflect and learn from your mistakes, the mistakes of others, and the mistakes of history. Google all of it, go back to school and un-fail civics and history, and stop crying wolf when YOU ARE THE WOLF
Feel free to respond, but after a lifetime of listening and a decade of writing, I don't dialogue anymore, because people don't listen. It's long been time to listen, but you're at liberty to waste your breath if you think I've wasted mine. Such is the nature of liberty. This movement against western governments is being called what it is and it's time to listen, this stuff has gone too far. Mmmkay? Or throw away your crypto continue to plunge the world into more anarchy, go ahead, whatever. The federales will come knocking if you ask for them hard enough. Being cowards about the covid shot isn't a noble stand, it's backward privilege, which is not what our liberties were ever meant for to abuse.
