Morality In Crisis - Quareness Series 148th "Lecture".

We have several examples from the Jim Crow era in Deep South USA where the judge, jury and prosecutor all well knew that an accused black man was innocent of the charge of raping a white woman, but was convicted and executed anyway. And the underlying reason would likely have been that the surrounding white supremacist social order at the time saw itself as threatened by consensual interracial intercourse. Given such a dominant cultural environment it's quite easy to believe that had the accused not been promptly executed, there likely would have been a swift mob lynching anyway. Killing an innocent victim could have seemed justified to the majority perhaps partly in order to set an example and terrify the minority black population but also because in the majority view "something had to be done". 

Fast forward to more recent times and we can see that it mattered little to majorities that say ordinary Afghanis or Iraqis had no culpability for 9/11 when it came to bombing them anyway. Although the US, UK and other "Coalition States" were clearly using 9/11 as a pretext to accomplish larger geopolitical aims, it was only because of the sufficiently broad public agreement within those countries on "something had to be done" that the pretext worked. And the world once again got to witness the enacting of that age-old pattern...find some target of unifying violence that cannot effectively retaliate...another clear example of a triggering event resuscitating dissensions, jealousies, quarrels and rivalries leading on to a sacrificial crisis. Of course in some (most?) scenarios of such "enemy" targetting, the victims must be seen as "in, but not of" the surrounding society. Again history provides us with many such instances e.g. mobs roaming around murdering Jews for "poisoning the wells" during the Black Plague in Europe of old, not solely because of inherent hatred but rather because near-to-hand victims (the "outsiders" within) were needed to release social tension. 

Most (all?) of the time combatting hatred is combatting a symbol. Generally scapegoats don't have to be guilty, but they must be tagged as infidels, heretics, marginal, outcasts of one kind or another without being too "alien" (lest they be unsuitable as transfer objects of in-group aggression). Neither can they be accepted as full members of society lest cycles of vengeance ensue. If not already marginalised they must be made so. We have a very recent example of this dynamic playing out in the ritual importance of that policeman in the George Floyd murder case being cast as a racist and white supremacist so that his removal from society could serve symbolically as the removal of racism itself. Justice may not have been the only thing carried out? 

Today civil strife without the broad consensus necessary to transform it into unifying violence is rife in many parts. This is currently most on open public display in USA where for those on the right it's the likes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters, critical race theory academics and undocumented immigrants that are seen to represent social chaos and the breakdown of values whereas for those on the left it's such as Capitol rioters, Proud Boys, right wing militias, white supremacists and a growing cohort of "domestic extremists". And defying any left-right categorisation we're also now seeing the emergence of a more readily identifiable subpopulation of ideal candidates for scapegoating...the "vaccine hesitant" new heretics of our time. Whether any of these are blameworthy or not, or indeed pose any real threat to society, is irrelevant to the project of restoring order through scapegoat sacrificing via targetted aggression, incarceration, "cancelling", etc. It's only necessary for the dehumanised class to arouse sufficient blind indignation and rage in order to incite a paroxysm of unifying violence. Totalitarians of all stripes can easily invoke such emotional storms when they speak of ethnic cleansing, purges, racial purity and "traitors" in our midst. And this primal mob energy can easily be harnessed towards fascistic political ends. Invariably of course sacrificial subjects get tarred with the brush of contagion/pollution and their removal/silencing comes to be seen as cleansing society. Ready acceptance of the now widespread blatant censorship can serve as a red flag here in that the public (rather than believing the pretext of "controlling misinformation" as the sole excuse) deep down recognises and conforms to the age-old program of investing a pariah subclass with the symbology of pollution.  

The covid-unvaxxed among us are now increasingly being portrayed as walking germbags capable of ongoing contamination of those already jabbed, even as the science behind this portrayal remains dubious. On the contrary it may be more likely that it is the vaccinated that mostly come to drive mutant variants through selection pressure (as some experts contend). In the same way that say deploying antibiotics can result in higher mutation rates and adaptive evolution in bacteria (leading on to antibiotic resistance) so may vaccines push viruses to mutate...and push a need for "booster shots" against new variants. This phenomenon has been studied for decades i.e. that the mutant variants tend to evade vaccine-induced antibodies, in contrast to what some scientists see as the more robust immunity against all variants in those who have already been infected. 

Whatever about the current differing views of the science involved here, it seems that those dissenting from the "demonisation" of the unvaxxed may be facing more ancient and powerful psycho-social forces. History has given us the stark example of the Nazis who did invoke science in their extermination campaigns when it served as a cloak for something more primal. Official sacrificial violence easily swept aside the minority of German scientists who contested the science of eugenics...and it didn't really count whether the dissidents were right or wrong. It's looking increasingly like we're facing a similar type situation today. The pro-vaccine camp in the covid debate has a powerful ally in the collective id being expressed through various mechanisms of ostracism, shaming, economic and social pressure, etc. Censorship awaits many of the "oddballs" and loss of livelihood or reputation or even worse awaits some. And it's rarely just the dissidents themselves who find themselves "in the firing line" during such periods of induced social distress. To defend the pariahs or even to fail to display sufficient enthusiasm in attacking them marks one with suspicion...perhaps leading on to excess discretion and self-censorship and thereby contributing all the more to the illusion of unanimity.    

Of course the mechanisms that generate the illusion of unanimity among the general public also operate within science, medicine and journalism. Some readily (even enthusiastically) conform to the orthodoxy whilst others complain in whispers to sympathetic colleagues. Those who publicly dissent get to be shunned by colleagues who must "distance themselves" from the "excommunicated" and the ridiculed ones. And all this "othering" serves to silence other potential dissidents who then get to prudently keeping their views to themselves. 

It's likely the case for many people that they firmly believe they are contributing to herd immunity and protecting others when they take the covid vaccine. However, this perceived admirable altruisitic civil spirit can tempt a perception that those who refuse the vaccine are shirking their civic duty...thereby becoming the identifiable representatives of social decay, ripe for surgical removal from the body politic. It's true of course that social stability depends on rewarding altruism and deterring antisocial behaviour. Such ethics are embedded in our morality and when we conform to the resulting societal notions of norms and taboos, we get to feel safe as part of the moral majority fully belonging in our society rather than part of the sacrificial minority i.e. we are a "good person". Our fear of nonconformity (born of ancient experience) seems so deeply ingrained that it has become an instinct hard to distinguish from morality. And rather than a fear of disease, our current fear of the unvaxxed could be more one of association with outcasts coded as moral indignation.   

In any society some people are more zealous in enforcing group norms, rituals, taboos and values. Whether they are inherently controlling types or simply care about the common good, they may well serve an important function when such control measures are aligned with real social and ecological health. However, when corrupt forces hijack the norms through propaganda and the control of information, these well intentioned people can quickly become instruments of totalitarianism. Fervently believing a narrative say of "the unvaccinated endanger others" leaves little or no room for reasoned dialogue. Fully trusting only the official sources of information necessarily means trusting their exclusion of "heretical" information and when official sources exclude all dissent, all such becomes a priori invalid for the "believers". Whether the "unbelievers" are right or wrong, innocent or guilty, is not the real issue here...rather what needs looking into are the potentially deadly social impulses cloaking the "science" involved when the mechanisms for controlling misinformation work equally well to control true information that contradicts the official line.   

Whilst the theory that the covid vaccination agenda is a covert totalitarian conspiracy to surveil, track and control every individual may be somewhat fanciful at this stage, it does seem evident that some kind of totalitarian "evolution" is now underway. The trend has been moving in this direction for quite some time given our reigning medical paradigms that see health as a matter of winning a war against germs, along with a general increasing social climate of fear, obsession with safety, the phobic denial/dread of death, and the prevalent ongoing disempowerment of individuals to manage their own health and wellbeing. 

The impetus for any major social change tends to originate with small (and in many cases elite) groups managing to move the great mass of humanity by aggravating and exploiting deep psycho-social patterns. Ideology is relevant here but may be secondary in that it simply facilitates the creation of impending violent unanimity. On an individual level, most (if not all) of us at some stage operating from largely unconscious shadow motivations would have created elaborate enabling justifications and post facto rationalisations of actions that harm others. Again the rise of fascism presents an enigmatic example as we may wonder why it's so commonly associated with genocide when as a political philosophy it is all about unity in nationalism and the merger of corporate and state power. The unavoidable reason is because it needs a unifying force powerful enough to sweep aside all resistance. Wherever it is established we tend to see the civic-minded moral majority willingly participating, assured it's for the greater good that "something must be done" about the nonconformists. And most of the doubters go along with the program too...for their own safety. Fascism taps into that dark deep human instinct to whip up hysteria toward any newly minted class of deplorables and dehumanise any targetted group. Over time this emerges again and again under all political systems, and in our present time we can see the signs of channelling such an ancient brutal impulse in campaigns against the unvaccinated dressed in the white lab coat of "science", munitioned with dodgy data, and waving the flag of altruism.       

Energies invoked by any scapegoating or dehumanising campaign can be readily applied to gain public acceptance of coercive policies, particularly any that fit with a narrative of removing pollution. With an "internet of things" where everything is under central control, such would be easily enforceable and the flimsiest pretext would suffice once that ancient template of sacrificial victim as repository of the pollution has been established. It's very important for us to recognise the patterns at play so we can at least identify their operation within ourselves. We need to be clear that any movement (whether within mainstream or dissident communities) that leverages contempt in its rhetoric fits tightly with this base impulse for scapegoating, dehumanising, rumour-mongering, stereotyping, punishment-as-justice and mob mentality. And any who ride such powers to victory will likely create a new tyranny no better than that previous.   

To end on a brighter note...surely our best hope for the future can rest in the transcendent potential of our human nature when vengeance gives way to forgiveness, enmity to reconciliation, blame to compassion, judgment to understanding, punishment to justice, rivalry to synergy, and suspicion to laughter? 

Amen.

Sean.

Dean of Quareness.

August, 2021.

"Morality" can be a cover for something more primal.