Dave – the editor
Preamble
This is yet another attempt to look at the increasingly dystopian weirdness we’re in, do what we can to understand it and suggest some ways of dealing with it. We’ve already posted up a couple of pieces looking at a few ways we can start to break out of the dehumanising high tech matrix that’s threatening to swallow us up, diminishing our humanity in the process. Here they are: Working out an escape plan 19.4.22 and: Breaking free 17.4.22. More posts will follow as and when workable ideas for breaking out of the matrix come to us.
We’ve made no secret of the fact that the Covid crisis was leveraged to accelerate the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). We’ve written a fair bit about how a number of the currents resisting the lockdowns and the vaccine passports we were being threatened with, are also opposed in various ways to the imposition of the 4IR. That informs some of the suggestions we make at the end of this piece.
Back in February, as soon as Putin sent his troops into parts of Ukraine in a ‘special operation’, Covid seemed to magically disappear from the headlines. It felt as if one crisis was being wheeled off to be replaced by another one. With Covid and the measures brought in to supposedly control it pushed lower down the news agenda, it was inevitable that the various currents opposed to lockdowns, vaccine mandates and the rest of the shite that was being inflicted upon us to push the 4IR agenda would lose a degree of momentum. If we’re being honest, having a bit of a breather from it was welcome but we realise that the 4IR agenda has absolutely not gone away and needs to be resisted. The problem is that with people’s attention being diverted by other issues such as the cost of living crisis as well as the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it’s a bit of a struggle to get the focus back on the 4IR.
In some ways, this is understandable because if you’re faced with having to survive the consequences of the cost of living crisis, many aspects of the 4IR can seem a bit esoteric and abstract by comparison. It should however be noted at this point that the concept of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one aspect of the 4IR with the insidious threat of control over what you can and can’t buy being a condition of being in receipt of this ‘benefit’. Given that those who presume to rule over us can’t resist the temptation to use a crisis to further their nefarious agendas and suck us ever further into their poxy control matrix, it wouldn’t come as any surprise to see the cost of living crisis being used as a justification for the implementation of UBI. All ‘for our own good’ of course but anyone who has been paying any attention for the last few years will realise that it will be anything but that.
The point about the 4IR is, as you can gather from the graphic we’ve used at the top of tis piece, is that it’s an all encompassing, multi-faceted assault on what it means to be truly human. It’s intended to change what we are as humans and turn us into more malleable, easy to manipulate and easy to control subjects of what will be a techno-fascist dystopia. Because the imposition of this agenda is multi-faceted, it’s incredibly difficult to get an overview, let alone develop the strategy and tactics needed to slay this monstrous beast once and for all. All we’ve managed so far are some piecemeal critiques and equally piecemeal suggestions as to how we can start fighting back against what’s being done to us. Crude and indeed rude though it might be, we hope the graphic at the top of this piece brings together many of the challenges we face. It’s designed to jolt people into thinking about what’s being done to all of us and more importantly, why it’s being done to us.
Disassociation
One of the key aspects of the 4IR that we’re dealing with is that of disassociation… That’s disassociation from nature which we’re supposed to be a part of but instead, have exploited to the point where it may not be able to properly sustain us in the future. It’s disassociation from our bodies and our instincts for what should make us healthy and instead, allowing ourselves to be over-dependent on a medical-industrial complex that’s geared for profit as opposed to our wellbeing. It’s disassociation from the process of sourcing our food. Then there’s the disassociation from each other which massively increased during the lockdowns of 2020/2021 when communication by various forms of technology became a very poor substitute for meaningful face to face contact.
Disassociation from nature
This disassociation has been going on since the Industrial Revolution. At various points there has been resistance to this with various movements, social and artistic, seeking a more organic relationship with nature and a simpler, more wholesome life. The Luddites, the Captain Swing Riots amongst others were some of the social movements that emerged in response to the deadening, alienating toil that was the hallmark of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. William Morris was one of a number of of thinkers and artists who sought and worked towards ways of returning to a materially simpler but more spiritually rewarding life. These trends have continued for as long as we’ve had industrialism, albeit with some ups and downs.
One of the very, very few benefits of the lockdowns of 2020 and the restrictions on travel that came with them was a noticeable increase in the number of people getting out and about in their local parks or if they were lucky, their local countryside. When we were having our walks over the local marshes in the spring and summer of 2020, we noticed a big increase in the number of people out and about seeing what was on their doorstep for the first time. We can only hope that some of this remains and that there is a permanent increase in the number of people starting to notice and appreciate what nature has to offer them pretty much on their doorstep.
The powers that be have a problem with us mere plebs getting out in nature and getting away from the distractions of modern life. The problem they have is that when we’re chilling out in a meadow, by a river, over the marshes or on the seashore, we slow down and have time to think. That’s looking at and thinking about nature and using that experience to take stock of our lives. It’s when we’re out in nature, taking stock of our lives and thinking about what really matters that conclusions are drawn. The conclusions being that society as we know it is crap and that collectively at a local level, we can do a lot better. That’s why the bastards want to keep us so distracted by digital crap and in the not too distant future, their poxy metaverse, so we don’t come up with subversive thoughts that would threaten their hold over us.
Disassociation from our bodies and our instincts for what should make us healthy…
This follows on from our disassociation with nature. Most of us are living lives that are stressful and as a consequence, unhealthy. Living a simpler life closer to nature in a settlement with a strong sense of community is a key factor in living a healthier life. Very few of us have the opportunity for that and have little or no alternative to leading lives that are a mix of rushing hither and thither and stress inducing distractions. As a result of not being able to follow a healthier lifestyle, we end up contracting out responsibility for our health to the medical profession and the medical industrial complex it’s intertwined with. Harsh though it may sound to some people but all the medical industrial complex is really interested in is selling us a repeat prescription of ‘cures’ rather than doing what they can to make us fully healthy again.
Obviously, how anyone views their health system, depends on their personal experience of it and that of their loved ones and friends. The phrase ‘postcode lottery’ is not a lazy cliché – the quality of medical treatment and advice will fluctuate depending on where you live. This will leave some people worshipping the NHS while others will be bitterly cursing it. Disclaimer time – my experience of the NHS taking in their interventions into health issues I’ve had along with how family and loved ones have been dealt with has left me feeling somewhat cynical about the unthinking worship of this institution.
Changing tack a bit, how far do we go in terms of medical interventions and accessories, plus enhancements to the body before we can say, this is transhumanist and utterly wrong? Obviously at one end of the scale, things such as glasses, artificial limbs, stents in hearts and the like are relatively unproblematic. The same applies to a number of tried, properly tested and continually monitored medications. We’re not complete Luddites when it comes to the application of a range of medical interventions if that’s the only route back to health and functioning as normally as possible. However, at the other end of the scale we have talk of developing babies outside of the womb and neuralink technology that ‘digitally enhances’ the human brain. Hopefully we can all agree that these developments are dystopian, go beyond what we understand as being fully human and as such, will get stopped in their tracks.
In between these two poles there are a lot of grey areas to be discussed and debated. That includes the medications and body modifications that some see are necessary in helping someone to ‘realise their true gender identity’. We have our views on this, other people in the anarchist movement and other radical currents have theirs and suffice to say, we’re not in agreement – let’s just leave it there because the whole issue is one massive minefield we want to stay out of!
Disassociation from sourcing our own food…
This has been happening since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. While we’re not advocating a full return to a localised peasant economy, there’s a lot that could be done to localise our food production so there’s more transparency in how it’s produced and distributed. It also allows for more grassroots control over how our food is sourced. Rather than re-hash the arguments in favour of localising food production, we’ll refer you to a number of pieces we’ve written for our sister blog, Grassroots Alternatives:
A few thoughts on food (in)security 15.3.22
As we were saying… 5.2.22
Seed banks – gaining control… 3.2.22
Food deserts, food supply and taking back control 1.2.22
Another reason to grow our own food:) 1.2.22
Now more than ever, we need to grow our own food 1.2.22
Disassociation from each other…
Modern life has been getting more atomised and individualised for decades. The rot had already well and truly set in before the Covid crisis and the subsequent lockdowns, restrictions, working from home, studying from home and all the other shite we had to endure massively exacerbated already existing trends. That the bastards who presume to rule over us, want us isolated, scared of each other and divided in order to make it easier to control and manipulate us was an open secret before Covid. So when the crisis broke, it was no surprise that they leveraged it in order to try and isolate us further. The fallout from the psychological trauma caused by lockdown isolation is now slowly starting to come to the surface and be talked about – along with a fair bit of cynical, self serving backtracking from some of those who were enthusiastic backers of lockdown and in many cases, were calling for harsher restrictions. Those people will not be forgotten or forgiven…ever…
Lockdown saw an explosion in working and studying from home, aided (and hindered when the bandwidth couldn’t cope) by an array of communications technologies. While there has been an almost full return to face to face learning, it looks as though there’s always going to be an element of work from home by what have been described as the laptop classes. The lockdowns were a test bed for an array of communications technologies to see if they could be a permanent substitute for a range of interactions currently carried out face to face. From our experience of having to participate in a few online meeting with comrades based on both sides of the Atlantic, let’s just say that these technologies have a fair way to so before they can even be considered serviceable, let alone a serious contender as a substitute for real life face to face interaction! Mind you, that doesn’t mean to say that the bastards aren’t beavering away in the background doing what they can to improve and enhance those technologies so they can entice more people into their matrix.
For sure, a number of people have brought into the option of using technology to communicate with each other as a substitute for real life face to face contact. There are a number of explanations for this, some of which for mental health reasons may be considered valid, so it’s not really appropriate for us to make a judgement on this. The point is now that the lockdowns and the restrictions are, for the moment anyway, a thing of the past, it’s all too obvious that the human spirit cannot be crushed. Most people are back getting out and about, meeting up and socialising with each other, making up for many lost months in the process. If the intention of the bastards was to set us on the road to being increasingly isolated from each other, they have failed.
However, there is a legacy that will take time to heal, if such healing is actually possible. It doesn’t take much observation to see how friends, families, associates and comrades have fallen out with each other over differences about their attitudes towards the lockdowns, restrictions, the vaccines and the vaccine mandates. People who know us will be only too well aware that over the last couple of years, our circle of trusted comrades has experienced a certain amount of shrinkage!
Some of the rest of what they’re doing or trying to do to us…
Disassociation is a pretty big deal and poses a lot of questions. However, it’s not just the big things like this that are relentlessly driving us further into the control matrix of the 4IR… There are many, seemingly small but incremental developments driving us inexorably in the wrong direction. When you take one of the myriad elements that comprise the 4IR and examine it without any reference to what else is being done, it just looks like yet another incremental development in modern life. The problem is that it isn’t – it’s part of something a lot bigger and insidious. The key is to try as best we can to put all of these incremental developments into a broader context so that we can build as full a picture as possible of what’s being done to us.
As an aside, I’m now the wrong side of 65 so I’ve come to expect my observations on modern life to be dismissed as little more than the ramblings of a grumpy old git! My attitude towards the way the world seems to be going cashless could be dismissed as the reaction of someone who refuses to keep up with modern technology and that I need to adapt or (metaphorically) die… Such is life but, bear in mind that I’ve reached the point in my life where these barbs have less and less of an impact:)
Going cashless and controlled spending
Let’s have a look at the accelerated trend to a cashless society and try to put it in some kind of context. This trend was in play well before anyone had ever heard of Covid. Back in 2019, we had a few interesting ‘exchanges’ with snotty serving staff in eating establishments who turned up their noses at our attempts to pay in physical cash. However, Covid and the fears that handling physical cash would be a transmission vector resulted in an instant acceleration of the drive to remove the use of physical cash from the economy. Pretty much every establishment that switched to only accepting payment by card or phone app and refused to accept cash has remained as such, even though Covid is now becoming a background memory. This is a classic example of not letting a crisis go to waste and using it to accelerate an agenda that was already in play.
As mentioned back in the Preamble, if the cost of living crisis worsens, there’s an increasing chance of some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) being introduced. Unsurprisingly, it will be paid digitally. Other forms of government backed digital currency are also under consideration. So if you’re in receipt of UBI or using a government backed digital currency, you’re going to be in a very different world to the one where you can still use physical cash. Spending using digital cash is spending that can be tracked. Spending that can be tracked can also be controlled. As UBI is to all intents and purposes a benefit, it will be issued with conditions. Namely that you behave yourself or else! If you try to buy one too many bottles of booze, the system will tell you that’s unacceptable and your payment will be declined. If you’re putting up social media posts that are critical of the government or even your local council, that will be noted and when you overstep the mark, hey presto, your digital cash will stop dead! So, just in order to survive, you’ll be reining things in and keeping your head down. That’s not a life, that’s just an existence and a miserable, constrained one at that…
An app for f**king everything!
We’re old enough to remember when tickets were physical things you could hold in your hands. Increasingly they’re digital and downloadable to your phone. So if you want to attend an event at a venue that has fully embraced digital ticketing and the only phone you have – and most likely want – is a dumbphone, you ain’t getting in! From event tickets through NHS apps and onto increasingly paying for everything with your smartphone, you’re becoming ever more reliant on digital technology just to get by in life. The world is no longer a welcome place for Luddites who want to stick to dumbphones, carry on using desktops and laptops, want physical tickets and want to speak to a real human being at the end of a phone:(
This is how the bastards suck us into their digital control matrix. They do so by not just making everything digital but doing so in such a way that you’re more or less obliged to own a smartphone if you want to take part in everyday life. Bear in mind that all of this is traceable, controllable and if you’re deemed to not be the perfect ‘citizen’, it can shut you out at any time. All of which is highly discriminatory when you take into consideration that those of us over the age of 65 are not always enthusiastic adopters of new technology, particularly when we can see the potential for it to be used for nefarious ends. In an age where the values of so called ‘social justice’ are supposed to be paramount, it beggars belief that the implementation/imposition of digital technologies that effectively exclude a significant number of older people from an increasing number of aspects of daily life is tolerated. The thing is, it’s not just being tolerated – it’s being actively encouraged and us Luddite oldies are just collateral damage. Well, we’ll see how that one works out, won’t we?
Last but by no means least…
There’s the pandemic treaty which the World Health Organisation want to impose upon us:
- The World Health Organization has started drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more
- The WHO is not qualified to make global health decisions. As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021, yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared. The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission
- More importantly, a one-size-fits-all approach to pandemic response simply does not work, because pandemic threats are not identical in all parts of the world. Even people in the same region do not have identical risk and may not need or benefit from identical treatment
- The WHO will accept two more days of public comment on the treaty, June 16 and 17, 2022, so prepare your statements now. The World Health Assembly will also vote on amendments to the International Health Regulations, May 22-28, 2022, which may also strip away more individual rights and liberties
You can read the full analysis of what the WHO has in store for us here: What You Need to Know About the WHO Pandemic Treaty – Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola | May 11, 2022.
Conspiracy theory? Here are some readings which suggest otherwise…
Cashless economy
‘You can’t pay cash here’: how our newly cashless society harms the most vulnerable – Sirin Kale – The Guardian – 24.06.20
Britain sleepwalking into a cashless society – Warnings as notes and coins near end – David Williamson – Daily Express – 28.11.20
‘Programmable’ digital cash
Bank of England tells ministers to intervene on digital currency ‘programming’ – Tim Wallace – The Telegraph – 21.06.21
Programmable Digital Currencies Are Coming – Here’s What That Means – TradeSmith – Nasdaq – 18.08.20
“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal? – Kit Knightly – Off Guardian – 01.10.21
Social credits
We need to act now to block Britain’s social credit system – Ross Clark – The Spectator – 27.07.21
Why a social credit system is so scary – Tutanota
COULD YOU SURVIVE THE SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE? – Gary Hemming – ABC Finance
So how the heck do we start fighting back against all of this shite?
As stated in the Preamble, the imposition of the 4IR is a complex, multi-faceted beast. As such, building a fully united movement against it would not only be impossible, it would be undesirable and ultimately, counterproductive. There’s already opposition and more will develop as the anti-human agenda of the 4IR becomes more obvious to a growing number of people. As a fair bit, though not all of the opposition to the 4IR comes from people who were involved in the protests against the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates, it’s worth revisiting them.
I attended three anti-lockdown/anti-vaccine passport marches plus one rally in 2021 and another march in January of this year. Apart from one march where I went along with the intention of creating a photo essay, the vehicle I used to engage with people was handing out printed copies of The Stirrer. If you want to see PDFs of what I handed out, you’ll find them here: Papers. Suffice to say what I saw and engaged with on these protests was a range of currents with differing perspectives on what was being done to us and differing ideas on how to deal with it, coming together every month or so on the streets of London. Some of which you would definitely want to engage with, some you would want to take a more cautious approach with and a few who are best avoided! There’s no way that these currents could in any way be described as a cohesive movement, despite the attempts by some elements with disingenuous, bad faith motives to do just that.
One of the strengths of the multi-faceted approach of the opponents of lockdowns and vaccine mandates was that unlike more cohesive movements, the cops and the state found it hard to pin down the different currents, let alone do anything to seriously suppress them. Which given what was, and still is at stake for the powers that be, must be incredibly frustrating for them. Which is why, as opposition to the 4IR grows, rather than attempting the impossible task of trying to hammer it into a cohesive movement, it’s better to simply accept its variety, its decentralised nature and the diversity of strategies and tactics that are and will be coming into play. For sure, there will be questionable elements attempting to worm their way in to exploit people’s concerns and anger but if there are many other elements and strands with compelling arguments and above all, a positive vision, things will work out.
As I’ve mentioned before, having been an activist for more decades than I care to remember, I’ve never known a situation like the one we’re in at present. It’s unique, challenging, potentially very scary but is also the best opportunity there’s been for decades to start bringing about real change. While it means my hopes of a quiet retirement will end up on the back burner, for the sake of my grandchildren and future generations, I’m willing to do what I can to make a stand, albeit it may be my last one…
