Here's my Lesson 16: Our state schooling system is a complete and total failure, churning out automatons who are incapable of critical thinking. I fell like vomiting when I see healthy teenagers and young adults walking outside wearing masks. What the hell has happened to these kids' brains?
As a former high school teacher (Maths and English) in the public system (back in the early 1980s), if we'd tried to get our students to wear the wretched things, their innate rebelliousness and capacity for independent thought, or at least contrarian thinking, would have made short shrift of that.
Truly it saddens me to see them robotically wearing the face-nappies because Authority tells them to. They will make fine, obedient citizen-slaves in the New Normal. Well done, education Experts!
I can't imagine my classmates in the late 1980s going along with it either. Especially the boys, who would have been mortified about looking like sissies.
Good article. Quite optimistic. Perhaps summarised as 'Government sucks"
Not quite sure who you mean by "we" as in who have learned these lessons, but I jest somewhat. Some unfortunately have only been learned too well. Recent SA law changes
Lesson 11: I dunno if the (contemporary) left is finished, the recent elections sort of prove otherwise. Though I understand that it was only preferences that got them in, but there seems to be a yearning for the nanny state.
Lesson 16: I don't believe a lot of what I used to believe and still less of anything government says. Eg Are any vaccines really necessary or effective ? Is Russia bad ? Is climate change an existential threat ? The shriller the message, the more my "bullshit detector" triggers.
Lesson 17: Don't plan too far ahead. The borders might close any time.
Lesson 18: Facts don't matter and perhaps the judiciary is not as impartial as we would expect.
Lesson 19: Just because you think it could never come to that (because you don't want it to) it could. eg nuclear war, war with China.
“Quite optimistic”, you write about my post. Well, I was fighting an internal battle between optimism and pessimism and perhaps the resulting tone may have been overly optimistic because the alternative – a pettifogging but soul-destroying medical authoritarianism dragging on ‘til he crack of doom was too awful to contemplate.
So a triumph of hope over expectation, perhaps, as indeed a recent survey by the University of Tasmania shows. Lockdown hegemony in the Land of Oz is, alas, alive and well – the survey (Your money or your life? Public support for health initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported by the Daily Mail) makes for depressing reading - two-thirds of Australians felt the severity and duration of Covid lockdowns and other restrictions were “just right” whilst barely 8% thought they were “definitely too restrictive” and 11% thought they were “probably” too restrictive. So, the large majority of Australians thought all the lockdowns, masks and vaxx mandates/passports were just tickety-boo and kept us all safe. The state propagandists won that one, although whether all of the lockdown-lovers would want to go to the lockdown well again in a hurry remains unknown.
And, yes, the Labor/Green left triumphed in the federal election and that was a win for the nannying state thanks to Covid. The freedom-friendly parties underperformed hoovering up only 12% of the first preference vote but that’s here our hope must lie.
Your Lesson 16 (“I don't believe a lot of what I used to believe and still less of anything government says. Eg Are any vaccines really necessary or effective ? Is Russia bad ? Is climate change an existential threat ? The shriller the message, the more my "bullshit detector" triggers”) is spot on and deserves a guernsey. That has been my response, as well – a lot of what I have taken for granted has come under serious review thanks to 'Covid'.
Lesson 18 (“Facts don't matter and perhaps the judiciary is not as impartial as we would expect”) is also true – the justices proved not to be as learned or objective and dispassionate as they like to think.
Lesson 19 (“Just because you think it could never come to that because you don't want it to, it could. eg nuclear war, war with China”). I’m not ruling out anything now after the dangerous nonsense of Covid that overwhelmed us.
Here's my Lesson 16: Our state schooling system is a complete and total failure, churning out automatons who are incapable of critical thinking. I fell like vomiting when I see healthy teenagers and young adults walking outside wearing masks. What the hell has happened to these kids' brains?
I'm with you, Robyn.
As a former high school teacher (Maths and English) in the public system (back in the early 1980s), if we'd tried to get our students to wear the wretched things, their innate rebelliousness and capacity for independent thought, or at least contrarian thinking, would have made short shrift of that.
Truly it saddens me to see them robotically wearing the face-nappies because Authority tells them to. They will make fine, obedient citizen-slaves in the New Normal. Well done, education Experts!
I can't imagine my classmates in the late 1980s going along with it either. Especially the boys, who would have been mortified about looking like sissies.
Good article. Quite optimistic. Perhaps summarised as 'Government sucks"
Not quite sure who you mean by "we" as in who have learned these lessons, but I jest somewhat. Some unfortunately have only been learned too well. Recent SA law changes
Lesson 11: I dunno if the (contemporary) left is finished, the recent elections sort of prove otherwise. Though I understand that it was only preferences that got them in, but there seems to be a yearning for the nanny state.
Lesson 16: I don't believe a lot of what I used to believe and still less of anything government says. Eg Are any vaccines really necessary or effective ? Is Russia bad ? Is climate change an existential threat ? The shriller the message, the more my "bullshit detector" triggers.
Lesson 17: Don't plan too far ahead. The borders might close any time.
Lesson 18: Facts don't matter and perhaps the judiciary is not as impartial as we would expect.
Lesson 19: Just because you think it could never come to that (because you don't want it to) it could. eg nuclear war, war with China.
Thanks, Christian,
“Quite optimistic”, you write about my post. Well, I was fighting an internal battle between optimism and pessimism and perhaps the resulting tone may have been overly optimistic because the alternative – a pettifogging but soul-destroying medical authoritarianism dragging on ‘til he crack of doom was too awful to contemplate.
So a triumph of hope over expectation, perhaps, as indeed a recent survey by the University of Tasmania shows. Lockdown hegemony in the Land of Oz is, alas, alive and well – the survey (Your money or your life? Public support for health initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic and reported by the Daily Mail) makes for depressing reading - two-thirds of Australians felt the severity and duration of Covid lockdowns and other restrictions were “just right” whilst barely 8% thought they were “definitely too restrictive” and 11% thought they were “probably” too restrictive. So, the large majority of Australians thought all the lockdowns, masks and vaxx mandates/passports were just tickety-boo and kept us all safe. The state propagandists won that one, although whether all of the lockdown-lovers would want to go to the lockdown well again in a hurry remains unknown.
And, yes, the Labor/Green left triumphed in the federal election and that was a win for the nannying state thanks to Covid. The freedom-friendly parties underperformed hoovering up only 12% of the first preference vote but that’s here our hope must lie.
Your Lesson 16 (“I don't believe a lot of what I used to believe and still less of anything government says. Eg Are any vaccines really necessary or effective ? Is Russia bad ? Is climate change an existential threat ? The shriller the message, the more my "bullshit detector" triggers”) is spot on and deserves a guernsey. That has been my response, as well – a lot of what I have taken for granted has come under serious review thanks to 'Covid'.
Lesson 18 (“Facts don't matter and perhaps the judiciary is not as impartial as we would expect”) is also true – the justices proved not to be as learned or objective and dispassionate as they like to think.
Lesson 19 (“Just because you think it could never come to that because you don't want it to, it could. eg nuclear war, war with China”). I’m not ruling out anything now after the dangerous nonsense of Covid that overwhelmed us.
I would like to think that perhaps “they” can no longer afford further lockdowns. Perhaps the silver lining