Dehumanisation.

Demoralisation. Degeneration. Despair.

25th January - Celebrate Scottish Culture

We have planned a Burns’ Night. Join us for talk, readings, recitals, dance and haggis. Tickets (£10) can be bought here.

8th February - Podcaster, blogger and truth-teller, Mark Attwood, is coming to Edinburgh and you can see him with this ticket here (cost £10). We look forward to a night of unrivalled revelations and insights.

I met one of my work colleagues by the photocopier the other day. She had been a real Covidian back in the day (2020 to 2022). One of my abiding memories of that unhappy time was the look of terror continuously contorted on her face.

She was very scared of dying and believed that each person who came close to her carried with them the reaper of death, intended for her specifically. She was not alone in that, but she was one of the more acute cases in my day to day life of the impact of the government’s fear propaganda.

Although, in truth, she was not seen too often as she spent most of those two years absent, working from home, having requested and been granted a release from a ‘dangerous’ environment, only coming into the workplace briefly when there were less people around. The strain on her face endured throughout that time during my brief glimpses of her, indeed, it can still be seen.

Nowadays, as things for most people have settled, she is feeling dejected. Her colleagues have become ruder, flatter and lack any spark. Surprisingly, she blames Covid. The wearing of masks for two years had ‘dehumanised’ people, in her words. ‘All you could see were their eyes,’ she said. ‘It changed things.’

It did change things. Even for the people who partook in the madness, who wore a mask, rolled-up their sleeve and mouthed like demonic choristers the fears scribed on the song sheet by government propaganda, at a subconscious level, they were drained by the pretence.

At work people seem smaller. Their lack of self-esteem in the face of reality is more apparent. Their confidence was founded on them living in a very constrained world and knowing what to do within it. When the rules change, they clung tighter to any form of authority, offering succour with apparent sympathy, and its dictates, regardless of whether they made sense or not.

This self-wounding has caused a slow bleeding out of the personality in many. There is very little initiative left in the work environment I share with my colleague; there’s a lot of complaining and self-pity, which, given the fortunate position most in this country enjoy, seems self-indulgent and narcissistic. But not surprising, as it was these traits that cleared the path to the situation we’re now in.

If we face a collapse in the near future, then I would expect the majority of my colleagues to be reduced to a state of dereliction, similar to the noble families of the Russian Revolution, who, after a few months without servants, lived soiled and helpless, degenerate, scrabbling to survive. Whether most people will stay in this condition, who can say, however, it would be fair to assume a significant number will.

If an economic and social tearing of the fabric is avoided, it is probably likely we will, as far as the ‘Elite’ can manage it, take the slow, grinding process of increased austerity, greater control and live in a more spiritless society than hitherto. It will feel like communism with glitter: a sparkling, neo-feudal ‘Elite’ will parade their wealth across screens and magazines, for their own amusement and ours, dazzling the masses, with an unmistakeably clear subliminal message: ‘This is our world, not yours. We are in our place, you are in yours.’

In the days of a more visible aristocracy, its members used to change their clothes up to seven times a day. The were always smartly dressed, always clean and fresh. It was another psychological trick to dupe the people who perhaps had no shoes or could only afford one set of clothes; this sartorial deprivation in comparison impressed on the populace their own inferiority. It deflated the citizenry’s self-worth, their hopes and spread despondence about a more equitable political change.

The same settings are trying to be fixed right now. Can you really believe in your values, your consequence after dehumanising yourself with a mask for two years? Walking around in closed spaces believing that a piece of cloth is reducing the possibility of infection, taking masks off at the restaurant table, but putting them on at the bar, being made a fool of over a prolonged irrational period of time, will it not gravely erode self-confidence?

To say that to someone who did such things, every aggressive defensive mechanism will erupt. Justifications, accusations, denunciations, you name it, it’ll come out. Nevertheless, as much as people might attack you, or lie to themselves, they cannot deceive the subconscious or the heart which carries with it the resonance of truth. Therefore, they will continue to bleed until they have divested themselves of all of their life-force or until they honestly face themselves, accept their disingenuousness, their gullibility, their fear, and, as the Chinese philosopher Mencius observed, use their shame to regenerate themselves.

Unpleasant as it shall be, the Days of Dehumanisation can only be atoned for and redeemed by Days of Shame, if individuals want to be fully, authentically human again.

Support Common Knowledge

We have now moved to a paid subscription model for the Common Knowledge Blog. Most of the posts will remain free, but we are hoping that people who share the values of a free, pro-human future will support us. All the money we receive goes to our campaign for that free, human future. You can contribute by a paid subscription to this substack of £10 a month or a £100 annual membership.