BadHippie

As someone who lives in Germany I have to disagree. How was Germany successful? I think overall it would be more smart to raise consciousness as a whole, so people won´t feel attacked for everything. You can find a person who will get triggered by almost anything there is. The only way to deal with this is to give people the ability to become conscious of their own emotions, and don´t identify with "things" and realize that words can never really hurt them. Of course that´s a hard goal and until then we may need some regulations. But to solve that we would need better sensemaking and not what we currently have here on this "spiritual" forum.

@Leo Gura I also thought the same, my girlfriend made me realize that things aren´t that easy. You can´t judge a person on the basis of 1 or 2 topics. Trump being a good example. I know very conscious people who believe Trump would have been a better choice than Biden, it depends on why they believe what they believe. Same with COVID. There are conscious people who question the current way we deal with the pandemic and dogmatic ways. On both ends of the spectrum. There are conspiracy-theorists who actually do a lot of good sensemaking, and those who are just full of shit. We have to stay open-minded to the possibility we are wrong. That´s one thing I learned from your teachings.

I also noticed this phenomenon. I am suddenly labeled as a right-wing, conspiracy theorist here in Germany, simply because I have a different perspective on vaccines, what freedom is about, what solidarity means and so on. I am also super confused why so many people suddenly think it´s right to force their opinion onto others. Taking a medical product should always be an individual decision and there shouldn´t be any drawbacks. Especially because the vaccinated people don´t have to fear the people who didn´t take it. They are safe from getting COVID, so unvaccinated people aren´t dangerous to them.

My question would be who defines what is racism? People can say things that sound racist, but it doesn´t mean the person is automatically a racist. It all depends on the context of the phrases someone uses. I don´t think it would be a good idea to ban words, or certain phrases. It would just impede the natural flow of language if people had to constantly worry about the exact words they use.

Hello, I am new to this forum and I feel this is a topic that has to be addressed here. When I started reading to this forum I also noticed how the conversations relating to topics surrounding the Corona-Narrative are super polarized and vilifying of divergent opinions. Why is it so hard for people to simply say, we don´t know yet? For example the topic vaccines. Most people on this forum are super un-critical, which can be a good thing sometimes. But most of the people here don´t actually have any personal experience with making these vaccines. Sure some people got it already, but even those people can´t really tell anything about it. I feel like there is a cult-mentality going on here. Different perspectives get labelled as conspiracy theories, without actually checking those narratives for themselves. Then people tell other people to read some studies or something. Even though actualized watchers should know that studies aren´t necessarily truth. In todays time we can do studies for everything and design them so that they confirm what the study designers want. It just feels pretty surreal to me, that people on this forum are so willing to take a vaccine, which they most likely don´t even know the ingredients of. People are saying "no" to GMOs, but are suddenly OK with genetically modifying their own organism? Even the topic with masks is super biased and people just tell other people to wear masks, even when they are healthy. I personally feel sick, wearing a mask. I´m doing a lot of breathwork and I feel my breath being taken away, when wearing it. I get a headache wearing it longer than 15 minutes. So why should I wear one, when my personal experience tells me otherwise? Isn´t personal experience king? Some people even gave away their freedom to feel "healthy". Do we suddenly need a test telling us we are healthy? All I want to say here, that it would be nice if the discussions on this forum could be a bit less vilifying to others with a different opinion.

@Consept No excess death here in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and so on. There is only excess death in countries with a bad medical healthcare and/or bad strategy to fight the pandemic in the beginning. (e.g. Italy, where they put Corona-Cases in retirement homes, because the hospitals were full, also they have a super old population, worst air in almost all of europe and so on)

@Consept There are to many factors to count in to make assumptions like this. China uses a different test than the US or Germany for example... Which leads to less cases than the Drosten PCR-test. Also in Sweden there is no excess mortality, if you count in all the relevant factors. https://reitschuster.de/post/der-schwedische-weg-was-die-zahlen-sagen/ (The article is in German sadly, but you should be able to read the math). Basically he counted in factors like people getting older, there being no strong-flu season in the last few years and so on. In the end there is no significant excess mortality.

Actually we knew a lot about Corona-viruses even back in January, we just didn´t listen to the ones telling us about it. We started knowing zero about it, because we didn´t check how old coronaviruses work. All the symptoms aren´t exclusive to this new variant. You can read some papers about the old ones and see for yourself. And it actually is a little cold sniffle for most of the people who get it. Of course there are people who will have a bad-progression. But that was always the case with any Virus. One my grand-uncles died because of the flu. It´s sad, but it happens. Sure I agree, there is lot of distrust ad polarization going on because of the way Social-Media-AI is working. Yeah that´s exactly the same thing I am telling you. Just because a lot of people believe or listen to a certain narrative, doesn´t make it true. You still have to do your own sensemaking. I don´t think it´s the virus which fucked our economy, freedom, standard of living, normality, etc., but the way we try to deal with it. You can check out countries who have much lower decrease in economy because they didn´t deal with the virus that harshly. Even health is affected negatively because people are stressed and have existential fears (e.g. people dying because they are lonely and/or lose their love of life). Standard of living didn´t change in some countries as I told in an other post. I have a friend who helps a small little village in Africa, and he told me they didn´t even notice the pandemic, except for the problems in infrastructure. People were working on mRNA-vaccines for 30 years, they just never were approved before for human-usage. The reason we have it this fast is because of the telescoping of the vaccine-safety-trials. And no long-term-studies being done. Also there was a lot of pressure and lobbying on the drug-regulation agencies. Sure a part of it was that we had a lot of money put into R&D, but normally that wouldn´t mean we can just skip safety-studies. We needed this global-panic for this fast approval of the vaccines.

Isn´t that an assumption? How would we even know there is this new virus, if there wasn´t any testing being done? All I am reading here are assumptions, we simply don´t know what would have happened if there wasn´t this new test. There are even countries which use a different test, which tests for more nucleic acids -> which means there will be less false-positive results (e.g. check out Thailand for example). There are countries with no masks, no lockdown, no social distancing and even there, there aren´t significantly more cases. People simply believe this is some crazy killer virus, where everyone would die if we don´t do anything. This was a legit perspective in the beginning of the pandemic. But no we have a lot of data which suggests that it´s not as dangerous as we thought. If you look at the deaths globally we have around 2,8 millions. Which sounds like a lot, but how man of those actually died because of corona? How many of those dies because of some other cause? How many would have died naturally, even without Corona? Here in Germany people get counted as Covid-19 death, as long as they had a positive PCR-Test in the last 30 days (correct me if I am wrong). That´s not a good way of counting. There is simply so much shit going on with the numbers (there is no standardized CT-Value for PCR-testing, no standardized way of counting deaths, hospitals get paid more money if they say a patient has COVID-19 (so they test everyone, even without symptoms which leads to a lot of false positives because there is not standardized CT-Value). All I am saying is that the whole situation is quite complex and you can´t simply say everyone would die if we didn´t do anything, because that´s not the case -> look at Tansania, Belarus, Sweden. So many questions still. Why do we use the PCR procedure, when the inventor (Kary Mullis) said it shouldn´t be used for mass testing? Why are most governments not focusing on increasing the health of their population? (e.g. telling them to do eat healthier, do sports, take supplements...) Here an interesting Interview for PCR-Testing (but you can also get the same information by reading papers and contemplating the way the test works for yourself) I am not saying there is some big conspiracy, but there is opportunism and a lot of big players are using the pandemic to push some agenda. Here in Germany there are around 500 deaths (below the age of 50) who died with a positive test-result. Is it really a good idea to lock away the whole population? It leads to more suicides and depression. In Austria 1/3 of the youth is depressive now and the psychiatric hospitals are full. I have friends there who tell me they simply don´t want to go on anymore. We are keeping ourselves safe from a potential problem, in exchange for a certain problem. Not really smart to be honest. And I know politicians have a role they must fulfill, they have to act in specific ways to get elected again. Even if you fear the Coronavirus, which I don´t think is a smart thing to do, as fear leads to bad sensemaking and sickness. I simply try to look at the whole situation holistically and it doesn´t make any sense in so many ways. And aren´t there always million lives at stake? More people are dying from hunger now than ever before, simply because of the way we try to deal with the corona virus. If we would put all the money, we put into fighting Corona into fighting against hunger, or campaign for a more conscious way of living we would safe more lives.

@Epikur Interesting new policy from Biden. We will have to see how it will turn out.

With not trusting experts I didn´t mean to not take their perspectives. I just meant not giving away your own sensemaking to them. You still have to do your own research. Even an expert can make a false claim sometimes, even if most of what they say is true. We all make mistakes. I agree on that. But I think what a lot of experts are missing is interdisciplinary skills. Like a neurobiologist who just looks at the brain, without taking into account the experiences we make, is a bad neurobiologist. We did that for a lot of years, till someone pointed out, you can´t study the brain without also studying the input. This is what I mean with giving away your own sensemaking to someone else. By doing so you certainly have less work, but you also won´t have any nuanced view or understanding of different topics and won´t be able to make sense of the world in any meaningful way. What good is there in believing something, without having a good understand of it? It will just become a hindrance to growing your perspective.

I did not mean that there is a significant risk. I just said I don´t know yet how they will work in the long term. Also there are a lot of scientists who say that there are risk, so I am just careful. I don´t believe anything certainly. In 5 years there will probably be a lot of things that will change about my opinions. The thing is I can´t know what is true certainly. There is just higher probability for certain perspectives. Your example with trees isn´t really good imo. I have a lot of experience with trees, and they never harmed me yet. Still there could be a way for them to harm me. e.g. a branch breaking and hitting me. It´s about risk evaluation. You shouldn´t interpret that much into a few posts I made. I actually am reading a lot of studies. Not just the ones that confirm my worldview. I agree that I am biased, as everyone is in some aspects. It´s really hard to not have any biases at all. I am also willing to engage in critical evaluations, that´s why I made this post. I read a lot of posts here, and it seemed to me like it´s not really a thing here to be critical with certain topics. My quote "we can do studies for everything..." was just to make a point. It may seem simplistic, but I read a lot about masks. Talked to different doctors. One for example worked in the jungle in a tubercolosis clinic and he told me, even there they don´t wear masks. They just don´t sit face to face with their patients. My problem with masks is that I don´t really see why asymptomatic people should wear one, with asymptomatic spread being a very low probability and all the trash we make with masks. I know that not all perspectives are equal, you read to much into my few posts again here. Yes there isn´t enough time to investigate everything and I certainly don´t investigate every claim everyone masks, just the ones that are most concerning to me. That´s not a compelling comparison. If you drink while driving you have a high probability to hurt someone else. If you don´t wear a mask and are healthy you have a very very low probability for infecting someone at all. I am not saying it´s impossible, just that the topic about masks is not that easy, and making everyone wear one is more of a political move to spread fear, than evidence based science.

I also follow the advice from medical experts, probably just different ones. I don´t take them as an ideology though and still make my own sensemaking, by doing my research when hearing a new opinion - trying to understand why they say what they say. You make it look like all medical experts agree in everything on the topic. That´s not the case. I think we can´t trust any experts at all, even though we can learn from different perspectives, we still should do our own sensemaking (reading studies, checking the methodology, what assumptions did they make, how do they validate the assumptions and so on).

Yeah, I didn´t mean it in a generalizing way. As you said language is tricky and dualistic. Sometimes we have to use it in a specific way to make a point. I didn´t want to say all of them. And not everyone arguing for free speech is right-wing, or arguing for it only for what their value. I know people arguing for it, because they believe it´s still a good idea to have free speech even with the massive reach certain narratives can have, with our technological development.

@Epikur It depends on how you define "lost". In a sense their ideas lived on and evolved as we can see in our culture today, e.g. festival, communes, music and so on. I am aware that the narrative that most people believe in will become "collective reality. I am also aware that we must adapt to a certain degree to our societies. That doesn´t mean someone lives in "Lala land", if he has a different narrative. Maybe he just uses language and/or concepts differently than you. We need to be more open-minded to other narratives in order to understand them, that´s all I am saying. Just because there is a collective narrative, doesn´t make it true. (e.g. most people believing the earth is flat, didn´t make the earth flat). You can survive in any way if you are good enough explaining what you want to survive, that´s not what I am talking about here. We all interpret reality differently and survive differently. What is more important though is what reality do we want to actualize.

@Epikur Aren´t these labels "left" and "right" wing completely illusionary? I wouldn´t simply label people and use that label to not listen to them. For example, when there was the Hippie-Movement in the early 1960s, they were pretty radical with open speech. They were the "left" back then. And now the left is calling for censorship, gendering etc. While the right wing is for free-speech. So I am not really a fan of generalizing people using these labels. People are complex and they aren´t just "left" or "right". Another example: Not everyone questioning the official Climate-Change narrative is right-wing because of questioning it. It all depends on your reasoning behind your perspective. Same with immigration politics.

No. I don´t really think that´s necessary for me personally. I have a pretty healthy lifestyle and COVID-19 doesn´t seem that dangerous to me, looking at the stats. I never got any vaccines before and I haven´t been "sick" for the past 3 years, except some mild colds. Also the vaccines aren´t fully tested yet. There aren´t any studies for long-term effects, as the vaccines are new. So I´ll probably wait for a year at least. I also think vaccinating everyone for a disease with an infection fatality rate of 0,15% is pretty crazy. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554 All-Cause mortality has also gone up in Israel, where most of the population has been vaccinated already and there aren´t any explanations yet. https://swprs.org/israel-why-is-all-cause-mortality-increasing/ There´s also other problems with mass-vaccination which Geert-Vanden Bossche has pointed out. https://fos-sa.org/2021/03/12/open-letter-to-the-who-immediately-halt-all-covid-19-mass-vaccinations-geert-vanden-bossche-dmv-phd/