Patterns of Soul

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. I think that people, especially powerful people, are way too selfish and contentious to ever conspire together on anything like the scale that many conspiracy theories require. Not to mention that I don't think they are bright enough to pull it off without anyone knowing.

I am a believer in unconscious conspiracies. To put it perhaps a little more clearly, tell me a person's worldview and cosmology, their fundamental understanding of things, and their behavior in particular situations can fairly well be predicted. And everyone who shares fundaments of the same worldview will tend to react the same.

The interesting twist is that worldview for probably most people is invisible: to them and to others. Unless you are somehow brought to a radically divergent worldview from the norm, most people unconsciously assume there is one worldview. That they and everyone else see things more or less the same, which is mostly true. You can't even truly see that worldview unless you do not belong to it. To someone outside that worldview, the behavior of those inside it can be predictable, whereas your own behavior is more unpredictable to them.

Lets look at the sudden departure from the Presidential race of Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Klobuchar. This was so completely in unison that my initial thought was, "they all got the memo where they were told that they either quit and endorse Biden or else Hillary was going to give them suicide counseling." ;)

But in fact it is completely understandable. The one unacceptable outcome is not them losing the race or Biden winning it. The unacceptable outcome was their party losing power, losing control, utterly and completely.

An uncontrollable, unknowable factor sitting fat and happy right there at 1600 Pennsylvania. An orange-haired enigma. Sweeping in a Congress full of people willing to do his bidding and afraid not to.

THAT IS THE ULTIMATE LOSS OF CONTROL.

Fear of a total loss of control was more powerful to these three than any other possible fate. Contrast that with Tulsi Gabbard who is still in it despite having no electoral points on the board. Despite the "D" next to her title, she is not a Democrat in the same way that these three are. Gabbard embraces disruption. Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Klobuchar are paranoid about maintaining control over their world, even if it means thwarting their own personal ambitions for a time.

Faith in control, faith in human power, faith in the State, is a big part of the prevailing paradigm. We can see this in China's response to the coronavirus, and also the responses of US Democrats and liberals to it. US liberals are not critical of Trump's response to the coronavirus just because they hate Trump. It is because they believe that it is possible for GOVERNMENT to CONTROL it, and thus it must. In truth government cannot control it, and that is what scares them the most. And there is something about not believing in G-d or an afterlife that adds a certain urgency to this idea of control.

There is an argument to be made that what the Chinese government should have done about the coronavirus is absolutely nothing. The sooner coronavirus gets out there and takes its inevitable toll, the sooner our bodies can develop immunity to it and the less likely that some new worse mutation can erupt that will kill far more people. Viruses are like wildfires, they burn themselves out in time. Once the body is exposed it can develop resistance. So the virus runs out of food.

A virus like this in the modern interconnected world is functionally impossible for human beings to control. That is a word that people of a certain worldview will refuse to hear. Certainly the rulers of China will refuse to hear it. What did they do the minute they realized what they had on their hands? Turn 11 million people into prisoners in their own cities. Can you imagine the response in the US if the entire city of New York were absolutely shut off from the outside world? The entire city quarantined?

And yet based on the worldview, the internal operating system of China's leadership (and not only them,) that was the only thing they COULD do. They had to shut down Wuhan, even if it led to more suffering in the long run than leaving it be. The one unacceptable option, the one great boogey-man of people of a certain worldview, is the idea that we are not in control. That Government is not in control. That there are certain things that are beyond human power.

IF they acknowledge that, that they CANNOT stop the coronavirus and that NO ONE COULD, what else can they not control? Why are they even in charge at all? This would challenge the people's faith in government and the government's faith in itself. So they had to come down on the coronavirus like a ton of bricks, even if it screws us all in the end. The deified State cannot be found to be wrong, or far worse, to be powerless.

Getting back to where I started, unconscious conspiracies. These worldviews, patterns of soul, will compel action with a grip that is both ironclad and invisible. Because of course, within the prevailing paradigm, its reactions are only reactions to reality. They are the rational choice. To behave otherwise would be crazy. The non-rational underpinnings, the faith that justifies the rationale, is invisible. The atheist leaders of China are adherents to a faith, as are the Democratic establishment, as indeed is everyone.

And so it is no surprise that people act in such a way that it looks sometimes like there is a conspiracy when in fact the only conspiracy is their shared worldview. I forget the title and author of the book but there was this book written in the 50's or 60's that predicted many of the events that subsequently happened, and that this was going to all be a part of a "world communist conspiracy." In fact many of the predictions made absolutely came true, but that doesn't mean that there was any communist conspiracy. The Soviet Union is long dead. Rather, the prevalence and popularity of certain fundamental worldviews compel human society in particular directions. This author simply understood unconsciously that a certain worldview would have those consequences. From removing prayer in school to the sexual promiscuity of the late Sixties and after, the normalization of abortion, and ultimately the normalization of homosexuality and many other such things is rationally implied from the worldview.

It was not a conspiracy. It was the logical consequence of worldview, and that worldview is now the dominant one. That worldview also implies the functional deification of the State and the absolute priority of human external control over everything. To this worldview, the idea of a problem beyond human rational control is the great yawning chasm that looms beneath the foundations of their world.

What do I think about the coronavirus? I think we are all in G-d's hands. I am in G-d's hands. I certainly do not want to get the virus, and I do not want to die any more than anyone else does. I take sensible precautions. But my worldview dictates that in the final analysis I don't get to decide. I am not in control beyond a tiny sphere of influence. G-d is in control. And I am more than okay with that.

I die, I live, it is in G-d's hands.

Just as the fact that I am even here now despite nearly dying many times in my life; that I am here now and actually not in bad shape for an old man, was in G-d's hands

Just as whether or not I even take my next breath is in G-d's hands

And when my time comes, it will be time. That's okay. I hope that won't be for a long time yet, but I don't know. He knows.