For and Against

It’s thrown about now as a response to any argument, any disagreement, or when someone shows valid concern or personal dislike for things or concepts. You are ANTI-something, is the response. Which seems rather lazy as a first thought, to give no thought whatsoever to why they do not, but rather just focus on the fact they do not. But let’s look at Anti and what it represents. I thought it meant to be against something, vehemently. Like in the past we have had people being Anti-war and Anti-establishment pushing back, and on the flipside there would be the Pro people, the ones pushing for the action. And in the middle, the majority it seems who aren’t much of either, because although the problem is understood, taking sides and pushing any agenda usually leads to competition and ego, often losing sight of the problem or moral dilemma being presented. It becomes about wanting to win and be the one who can say they were right, not about doing what is right.

So to the ones who want everything to be black and white, it suits a purpose for people to be either herded or placed into the Anti or Pro camp. The for and against, a crafty and efficient form of division. You are one or the other, you must decide! Or at least that is how it is painted. Using opinions and feelings, and occasionally facts to further their side, which isn’t content on just being, it seems to need to eliminate the other side. As the film Highlander put it, ‘There can be only one’. But there isn’t, there are many. In between the scale of for and against, there are those who are undecided, or who have leanings towards both arguments so they do not ‘take sides’ or commit to a position. I understand why these people are referred to sometimes as ‘on the fence’. But look at it like this, if you were on the fence in between two enclosures, and one has crocodiles in it, and the other some hippos and you are being given a choice of being in either one, or staying where you are for now, suddenly that fence doesn’t seem so ‘indecisive’ does it. But that’s me personally, because when I have been told I am on the fence about something, I don’t believe it’s because I am indecisive on a subject. I think it is because I have looked at all the information being presented, how it is being presented and what it is trying to achieve, and if it doesn’t quite stack up. I will wait. For more information, or to see what happens to then take a course of action. I call that patience, others may call it indecision or see it as a non-action, as others will always perceive things differently to you, even if it seems like are on the same page, or saying the same things. They will have had a different thought process to get there, and as we know, just because we are talking the same language doesn’t always mean we understand what each other is saying.

We have had the pro and anti-abortion laws debated fiercely in American states, whipping up a frenzy of divide there over the decades, as well as their gun laws and segregation laws of the last century. It seems they were the most split country, for and against, red and blue, north and south. But we do have the same here in the UK, just further along perhaps, and for different issues. Having a class system changes the playing field a bit, or at least it did. But in the last few years, we have a new kid on the block to enter the arena. Well, I say new, because until recently it was believed that it was a mostly new argument of yay or nay. Being Pro Vax or Anti Vax. And it is only after you look into that argument, you can see it is certainly not new by any means, and in fact has been with us as long as said vaccines. It was by virtue of belief we have been lining up for decades already and handing over our health systems to the state, belief that everyone had just been doing the same for the longest time. And as the argument goes ‘they have saved millions of lives’, and on the face of it yes, they have. If you look a little deeper into the entire history of them, then you may change your view slightly. But we will go with the belief that it is true, they did work as told and were there to help people to avoid tragic and debilitating illnesses and even death.

However, within those decades and times, it would appear that not everyone carried that belief with them, but the ones who are most interesting in this, are those were who for them, and then changed their mind after first-hand experience of one. And when you start to pull at that thread, It all starts to unravel. Many people over the years have tried to speak up about harms and issues, concerns and things that often get swept aside, ignored or covered up. And I know people cite this point a lot to go with medical harms, but that’s because it is so important, Thalidomide. Now, it may well be that they ‘didn’t know’ before they distributed the drug and actively encouraged pregnant women to take it. But the concept that it took them five years to notice something wasn’t right and take it off the market is the hard one to understand. Unless you see it that the whole episode was another of their ‘trials’ they like to run on populations. Some of those other experiments that have been run covered in my article An experiment, but a big one. To not notice something like that, where it wasn’t before, and the only new thing introduced is ignored extensively. I sometimes wonder about hearing that the prosthetics industry boomed after WWI, after using lots of injured and disfigured soldiers as subjects – painted as though the industry grew to be there after the fact. I wonder now, did they decide on the next industry as they do, and then need test subjects and customers to roll it out to, as has been done time and time again. And it may seem like a tangent, but my cynical mind wondered if they decided they needed to move into prosthetics for children, but you can’t just send them war to cripple them, and they already had experiments underway for children taken from orphanages and care homes. They probably required these children to be in the community, as this needed to be seen by people and they wanted to see how it played out in a ‘normal setting’. The ‘Zika outbreak’ in South America has a few markings of something similar, but it’s hard to tell at this stage.

But those things are very visible, and it couldn’t be hidden for too long that something tragic had occurred, but they tried. Now, it seems further along a bit in the enterprise of medicine, a few people started to report some not so visible differences happening. Then some more, and so on. But not enough for it to cause concern amongst those who make money from it. And not noticeable enough that people couldn’t function, just affected in some manner. Reminding me of reading Brave New World, where they explain how to create the lower levels of society, by hampering their brain development in the growing process, to slow down their cognitive abilities so that they can still perform menial tasks and function, but cannot think beyond their status as it were. And although it may have been a fictional setting for that story, I did take it out of that context and thought about what process you might use if you wanted to achieve the same result. You cannot grow them in pods as they did in the book (although that’s coming apparently so get ready – Pod life 2), so you would need a way to get to the child in the womb, or shortly out of it, and during their childhood to create and maintain what you are after. Flooding communities with alcohol and drugs is a start, followed by bad nutrition and a different education standard. But medicine it seems may have been a rather crafty cover for quite some time to be very intimately involved with communities and people’s lives, and has been a global operation for over a century. And this is where the Anti argument has reared its ugly head and taken centre stage.

But really isn’t as clear cut as it may seem, because many who are ‘Anti Vax’ as they call it on this issue, didn’t start that way. In fact, I know very few people who throughout my life have even said a bad word against them, quite the contrary, as with myself. I have extolled the virtues of medical science many times in the past, seeing the patterns they wanted me to see and thinking no further. Taking it all at face value, until there was reason to think a little harder and start to dig a little deeper. But many didn’t, and followed their belief that it was for their good. So, there’s no way they could be anti, right? They went along with it all and did as they were told and when they raised concerns suddenly they were the ‘other side’. Well, that’s the twist isn’t it, that it’s not there to represent you being on one side of an argument at all. It appears to be there to shut down and discredit there being an argument or debate on it at all, which in itself becomes very telling. If someone gets bitten by a dog, and is then weary or scared of dogs, people don’t have a go at that person and start calling them anti-dog. Often they will appreciate that it can happen, and it doesn’t mean you should be afraid of all dogs but a fear of it thereafter can seem logical. However, in that example it also needs to be understood, all dogs have the potential to bite, so being wary of something that can cause harm is very logical. And we take steps in all aspects of our life to minimise risk, and to assess situations for safety and if they pose a threat to us. From animal, human and plant alike. So, medicine should be treated no differently to those other three when it comes to knowing your environment and surroundings and what we put into our body. A risk assessment of sorts should be employed at all times, but with animal and plant there is only a certain angle to think of it from, they aren’t psychologically calculated, or money motivated. So, when it comes to people being involved there is an extra level of thought you should give to that assessment, because you never really know what is motivating a person…

(c) K Wicks

Filtering

It seems the human body, as well as the overall ecosystem we live within, is a filtering system.

It’s quite terrifying when you look at how much we knowingly (or rather unknowingly in some cases), apply to our own skin and bodies. You know, like in Silence of the Lambs, ‘it rubs the lotion on its skin’ – like our sick industry officials like to see us apply our own toxins and ingest our own poison. And then to level up that demented process, they get our own to do it to each other through ‘professionals’ who get elevated above everyone else, a uniform, well paid, letters after their name. Suddenly they are ‘experts’ and you believe they want what is best for you. Quite ridiculous when you look at it now, but I too for the longest time, believed the lie that they were there to help us.

But women were the ones who took to it first, and I can see that vanity was used as a weapon, for many purposes. There must have been a time when people didn’t care for too much make-up, or a multitude of products, so I’m sure the marketers would have gone to town on changing that, as my article The First Fad goes into. It would have been sold as beauty, and as a standard society wanted. making men see women differently, and more importantly, making women see themselves and each other differently. Judging people on those new standards, and creating an entire ‘beauty’ market based on consumption of products. Shampoo, hairspray, lipstick, nail polish, nail polish remover, moisturiser, concealer, foundation, eye shadow, eye liner and so on. And within each category there are many more for various other things. Someone could put all of that on their body in one day. One day! And even though they could be completely harmless on their own, and may indeed have passed the safety tests as they are, how does anyone know how they react when combined with another product? And then exposed to high temperatures, either through working conditions, or weather? Chemical reactions are not always visible so it’s hard to say they would have been able to test for all conditions and possible combinations, and why should they? They just design something to do what it says on the tin, and that’s where it ends. It’s down to people to pay attention of what is in it, what is it for, what are the main active ingredients and more importantly, do they react with anything else I am taking or applying? We think of those things when it comes to medical products (well, we used to), but not so much for things that we ingest, or apply to ourselves at least daily, if not multiple times a day with various things.

Given the right conditions though and a bit of time, we know that we are able to filter our systems and ‘detoxify’ as they call it. I wonder if that’s what it is that’s so despised by the powers that be. That many have worked out they can fix themselves, with a bit of help from nature, and even nature itself fixes itself. But, as I said, only with the right conditions. If you go out of your way to deliberately poison the system, and terrain, then it has to work harder and may not do as well. That’s why if you just had bad food and drink, you might be ok, or just lots of cosmetic products, or just lots of medicine, it could still possibly manage to do its thing, to regenerate the system and recalibrate as needed. But when it’s a triple pronged attack, a pincer movement of social conditions set up to make sure that many are caught in the toxic triangle of things that were made to be viewed as normal. Food, Beauty and Medicine. And in recent years men too have been sucked into the world of cosmetics and extra products, not even counting the latest debacle involving men and make-up. They had been captured way before that to primp and preen themselves, to buy as much as women and add to the intake of chemicals.

There is also a matter of what else is going in, psychologically. How they also mentally get to us through media, education and conditioning that has infiltrated every area of life. We also need to filter what goes in there and detoxify ourselves from that too, because it all goes in, and for some, may well go straight back out again, or simply go over their head. But often things are taken in subconsciously, and integrated into people’s state of mind or being without it even being noticed sometimes. I like to think that the body and mind has adapted though, evolved even in the midst of all those assaults on our senses and sensibility. As a plant would, to filter out all the crap that it is surrounded by, so while it appears to have been grown with poisons and fed polluted water, the sunshine and energy give it extra life to shed those representatives of industry. Maybe that’s why they would prefer factory grown plants and lab grown meat, because it has no soul and no real nutritional value, to sustain the factory grown next generation they plan for, who will have no need of soul or sunlight. I guess my articles You are what you eat, and Pod life 2 cover that aspect of a possible future that awaits for some. But for where we are now, we can only do our best to avert the strange tapestry being stitched around us and try and protect nature as we know it, and ourselves, because those are the two things that seem very much on the hit list these days. Stay sharp and be mindful of your thoughts.

(c) K Wicks

With purpose, or just folly?

Apparently they are just there to look pretty. With no purpose at all, apart from as a looking tower they say for this one in Worcester. But Folly’s are said to just be there, because someone thought it was a good idea to build something quite elaborate and imposing for no real reason other than they could. And for this one, you can see quite far from the top of that hill anyway, so what were they looking for? Good views obviously.

Broadway Tower, Worcester

They have a very similar look in my mind to Victorian water towers. Which also look a bit over the top for their purpose, but at least they gave them one to all intents and purposes. Only 5 of these are water towers, I’ve thrown in another folly there if you can spot it.

Maybe it is out of place or stands out to our eyes sometimes, because they are built to a standard and aesthetic we appreciate, but are no longer capable of building. Instead we get used to the grey concrete soulless architecture we now have, and just accept the bland. The times of great are past, it is now Grey Britain, with even the sky struggling to show its true blue nature. But sunnier times will come again, and these dark days were are in now will also become times of old, and long lost tales of the past. I wonder if anything will still be standing from now to show we were ever here…

(c) K Wicks

If Truth Be Told

It’s not a popular subject these days, telling the truth. We seem in a time when telling the biggest lie and running with it has become a game, a competition of sorts. And the twist to the game is that while the lies are out there, there is a mechanism quickly trying to swallow the truth. Like the game Hungry Hippos, and the hippos are the deceivers, big and bulky at all corners of the board. And the truth gets fired around the board from all angles. With the purpose then to gobble up the truth, to make it disappear and then ‘win’.

But there are various reasons people hide from the truth, or try to deny it and some who will even just plain rewrite it. But now, when it is more important than ever, we find a myriad of lies and deception spanning decades. An intricate tapestry of deals and forecasts, models and a plan to engineer society towards a ‘common goal’.

And in that pursuit, the truth seems to be a consistent they would rather not have, not at our level anyway. Confusion and mystery helps to create an instability, lack of grounding and feeling of no roots. Waiting for someone else (who lies for purpose), to tell you your history, your background, to give you mental grounding. But they don’t. They feed you what they have now termed ‘misinformation’.

Within truth, there are two types in my view, personal truth and the overall truth. One is subjective, and one is absolute. The personal subjective one, takes thought to deliver usually, or should. Taking into account what that truth means to that person, and whether they will perceive it in the same way, accept it or deal with it. And as we know, honesty doesn’t win you any friends they say, so there are small things along the way to let you know how important it is, but they don’t teach you how to navigate it, chose when it’s appropriate, or how to deal with the fallout from it.

The overall truth can be a bit blunter, because it is not personal, it just is. You may be personally affected by it, but that doesn’t change it. And that’s why they say the truth can be ugly, or the truth hurts. You’d think those two would be associated with lies, wouldn’t you? But no, the most shocking thing these days appears to be honesty and being observant of reality. To stand up and admit you are wrong, and actually be sorry for it and try to make amends is a long-lost attribute. At least for most in the public eye. Busy moving onto the next lie before the fallout from the first is even felt. Despite the amount of time spent watching these people in your living room on TV or on your phone, once you find out what type of people they are, ask yourself, if they weren’t a ‘celebrity’ would you have someone like that as a friend? Would you have them in your living room in real life taking up your thoughts and time?

Truth is always there though, solid and consistent. Because the lies do not remove it, or change it, they just cover it for a bit and gradually wear thin around it, often needing further lies to try and keep it at bay. Even though some may try to paint over it to hide the shining brightness of truth from getting through. Seems like painting a solid gold bar with crappy black paint, with it beginning to chip, crack and peel back as soon as it starts to dry. The current black paint seemingly being the media and governments, all branches of it. Desperately trying to stem the real information being shared and digested, and the misinformation from being discovered and revealed. Trying to build barriers and boundaries to herd you through the lies, trying to make people ignore the truth as it is, and believe a different version they would prefer to be real. Like a dark covered motorway of lies with billboards, barriers and false lights shining in your face. But just beyond it are the trees, fields and truth. The good, the bad and the ugly truth that is needed to be able to move forward and accept what is wrong to be able to change it. That’s why they want to steer everyone into the dark covered tunnel…

(c) K Wicks

Monopoly

The game and corporations. Not everyone played, or enjoyed monopoly the board game in their childhood. The game that could last for days, needed strategy and a want for money and property, a proper primer for the ‘game of life’ you would have to play in later years. A banker in charge of all the money, they get to be the controller, the one who holds it all. How many of you liked being the banker? Did you also make a play for the high-end properties? Mayfair and Park Lane were the rich and luxury purples in the UK version. Bringing in the most revenue if you were then lucky enough to be able to build your houses and hotels. But what the game doesn’t teach you, obviously, is any shred of reality about how it actually works in the real world. And why should it, it’s just a game after all.

Maybe it would help people to understand how strange it gets in the real world though if it was closer to the truth. When at first it seems like a normal set up, with normal rules, like in the game. But if the banker half way through the game suddenly decided you owed loads in interest and they could decide the rate of that interest, it would change the game a bit wouldn’t it. And that they were going to charge you for just passing their coloured square, not even landing on it, you wouldn’t want to play, would you? Because it would become obvious that the banker, or your opponent was in fact doing everything they could think of to make sure they take more from you than you can make. In real life, the systems in place are just obstacles that your opponent has placed there to hold you up, slow you down, and side-track you altogether. As we are seeing now in the economic landscape, they found a way to do a power move. I’ll explain the chain as I see it, as I believe it’s been with us for a while, but stepped up a gear when the ‘pandemic’ rolled out. The first lockdown targeted small and family businesses, allowing franchises and corporation chains to remain open. Then dishing out loads of money in loans, which would be payable, with interest, that would help later when they need to move things along, either to tie people into new rules, or to take them out of the equation. Changes in other local and national rules within the lockdown also screwed many. Having to prepare for business, then be told at the last minute the rules had changed, allowing more cost and expenditure before they pulled the plug. Coming down heavy handed on those who tried to take a stand, imposing fees and fines.

So much money being made from the misery of the country, and being funnelled where? Not back into the country, by any means. It would seem to have been a grand money laundering scheme, to take out as much wealth, savings, stability, community and future prospects that they can. And still it continues. Travel being disrupted still while they drag the Brexit drama along still, adding more time and money to processes that have been mastered for as long as we could trade, but clogged up now with red tape, and opportunists forever trying to get their piece, rather than make it work for all. And within the travel industry, we have a completely failing tourist industry, by design too of course. Although most of the hotels who were bought in the early days by government, whether they were just worried because they thought they would go down, and took the bait, or they want the country to fail, who knows for sure. But they are just there for current purpose, as I believe there will be no need for hotels with the future plan they have for this island. So it won’t save them, just temporarily give them an income, while allowing the drain of the country’s finances to continue. People shouldn’t understate how important the hotels have been in this, as they have facilitated the rather large daily bill the government is covering. Putting the debt further onto the people they are bleeding dry.

The utility companies stepped up next to play their part. In a stunning display of greed, we get our household utilities increased at a stupid rate for no good reason. Cue the desperate business owners with bills higher than their entire turnover. Next wave of small businesses started to close shop, with stress after stress and with no end in sight, I can see why some threw in the towel.

Then we get to the interest rates, a deliberate and steady increase in those too, helping anyone with savings, and damaging those with interest-based loans and variable mortgages on the ground. Now after years of uncertainty, possibly grief and loss, losing your business and being unemployed, you then have to contend with losing your home, or at least having the thought of that being thrust at you constantly. And in case you might have had a few spare pounds still, no fear, they increased all the other bills too, and fuel to really make you feel the squeeze.

Supermarkets came forth next to show it was going to be a coordinated effort. Price gouging and taking advantage of people when they are at a weak point economically, being quite the opportunist. All of them from what I can gather. Still sort of competing with each other, but really it seems more about how much they can add to the label before people stop buying the product. They also have played a key role in this, being able to dictate and control people in the early days of this, stickers on the floor, plastic screens, washing down trollies, heavy handed security, counting people in and restricting access. And even now they quietly install their barriers, monitors, self-service tills and screens to watch you while you do your shopping, and to help be a part of the digital lives they want us all to lead. So, you can scan into the supermarket, just like all the other products in there.

And politicians. Who could overlook their role in all this. It is now out there for everyone to see how self-serving they really are. Athough having an allegiance to something, it is not the country they purport to serve. We have all been terribly misled over the years, and duped into believing the set-up, in democracy and the rule of law. It’s become starkly obvious that the set-up was there to make them rich, democracy was a cover to pretend they would agree to order, and the rule of law serves them and if it turns out there is a way to turn one to our advantage, they make efforts to change it. Again to be in their favour. How can you get justice when they own the courts and the judges and write the laws?

What we are subject to is a stunning display of grotesque corporate obesity, where they have gourged themselves on us for so long, that they have lost sight of their toes and what is even real. No longer able to function properly, or move, instead trying to consume more and more to sustain the morbid overload that is out of control. Each department of it acting as a distorted limb that can’t hold up anymore under its own weight, grabbing at anything it can as a crutch, which too ends up being crushed under its enormous greedy mass. We would do well to try and remove ourselves from its reach or grasp, and stop feeding it as best we can. I get the feeling it’s reaching a critical mass at this point, for their greed, and our awareness, so it will be an interesting time ahead…

Spirited Away (2001)

(c) K Wicks