Bridging the Politically-Manufactured Covid Divide with Differing Family Members and Friends at Christmas
Calvin Mulligan, Futurescapes.ca Jan 13, 2023
Calvin Mulligan, Futurescapes21C December 30-22 © All rights reserved
Like so many of you, I’m a member of a “Covid-divided” family. My wife and adult children embraced the official Pharma Covaxx narrative and seemingly assigned me to the category of the mentally- confused. Like so many of you, I’ve struggled in my attempts to bridge that divide and get it right. Getting it right means figuring out how to reconcile some powerful competing pulls. On the one hand, I’m a retired futurist with a deep-seated inclination to forewarn others regarding imminent threats. I’m also a father and grandfather with an equally deep-seated protective instinct. And on the other hand, I respect the right of every adult to make his or her own medical decisions. This has double-pronged implications of course in the case of my two adult offspring who, as parents, also make decisions for four young grandchildren.
Knowing my kids or grandkids could be damaged for life or worse by the vaxx, it’s been difficult to exercise polite restraint. I told my Covid- convinced son that it’s the equivalent of expecting him to exercise restrain if his three year old daughter casually walked into a busy street to play. I’m not aware of any handbook that instructs us on how to graciously straddle this chasm. How do you simultaneously operate in a “hard” reality with real world consequences and a fuzzy fabricated illusion to the satisfaction of the latter’s captives?
In the absence of such a handbook, I’ve been improvising as I go. For the most part, my tone has been relatively calm — even matter-of- fact while my adult kids play a medical version of Russian Roulette. The two of my three children who are parents are well-educated sharing about five degrees between them. So, I initially thought they would be moved by hard evidence regarding the Scamdemic. Accordingly, in early 2021, I shared with them two heavily-referenced research papers that I had drafted on the Covid-vaxx campaign.
As the months turned into years, I concluded their was no point in hiding my outrage regarding the soulless criminality of the Scamdemic. I told the parents that my grandkids aren’t Pfizer’s guinea pigs. And to reinforce the point, I added that if either of the parents authorized any additional vaxx injections for their kids, the parents would get no consideration in my will. (I decided that when God renders his judgment on my conduct, I would rather be found as having been overly-protective versus unduly detached.) Beyond this, I said my home would be open to family displaced from theirs and repeatedly assured my kids of my love and prayers.
So far, my approach has elicited chilly, angry reactions, emotional distancing and threats to completely sever communication with
me. While things may be occurring beneath the surface, there are no visible signs of a crack in my offspring’s defenses. I’m not tormented by it; I can sleep at night. But to some degree, I still ponder my moral dilemma. The recurring question is, how do I fulfill my obligations to loved ones while respecting the right of adults to make their own decisions, particularly as it relates to our grandchildren.
Martin Geddes, a young author, former IT programmer and blogger, writes with real empathy for those caught up in the moral maelstrom. He is one of “us” having experienced Covid-related alienation and hostility from family, friends and former colleagues. And because he has a public profile as an author, his buffeting has been even more intense. Geddes has discovered the intellectual approach is ineffective when it comes to reaching those on the other side of a debate. He puts it succinctly in the title of a recent blog: “Intellectual answers don’t fix spiritual problems: Throwing facts and logic at people working from a limiting paradigm just divides us.” (I’ll return to the concept of a “limiting paradigm” later.) Geddes quotes Jacques Ellul regarding the relationship between education and propaganda and receptivity to propaganda.
Central in Ellul’s thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls “pre-propaganda”— the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes and posing as “facts” and as “education.”
Well, so much for what’s often thought of as a “good education.” It’s an issue for another day, but in my view, a good education would have majored in how to think, how to investigate reality, how to weigh critical questions and how to discern between truth and lies. It would have produced relentless seekers of enduring knowledge and wisdom. I’m not laying the entire burden at the feet of formal educational systems as I may have come up short as a parent. Ellul’s critique of education and Geddes’s insights provide additional perspective on the persuasion challenge.
Geddes concludes:
“If we seek to persuade others that they may have bought into popular lies, then it has to come from a humble spiritual place, and not an intellectually overpowering one.
So what might it mean to “come from a humble spiritual place”? The following self-prescriptions come to mind.
Engage at a human level, and let the facts follow: During my career days, I sometimes facilitated group seminars. That’s when I encountered the axiom that, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. It’s a good reminder thatour “mandate” as truth tellers isn’t about impressing with our knowledge. So why are we sharing our understanding of Covid-vaxx realities with others? The only good reason is that we care about them at a personal level.
Admit you’ve been fooled in the past. Places could have been reversed and I could have been standing in the shoes of the person opposite. My grandmother used to say, “But for the grace of God, there go I.” The Golden Rule applies. Before I finished high school, I’d already consumed the JFK “lone shooter” government story line and the official 1969 US moon landing narrative. In the case of the latter, I had also dismissed the sole dissenting voice in my circle. When my best friend, “Hank” told me that his uncle, a retired Navy man, told him the moon landing had been filmed in a studio, I didn’t pause. My smug conclusion as a teenager regarding Hank’s uncle was basically, “I guess the poor guy just can’t keep up with the rapid pace of technological progress.” Oops!
A month or so ago, I read an account of a “deathbed confession” of sorts by the father of a member of the US military. According to the son, his dad was a member of the military security staff at the airport where the moon landing was staged… in New Mexico if I recall correctly. His dad described a scene of trucks hauling tons of sand into a hanger to be used in creating an artificial moonscape. (I have a lot more respect for dissenting opinions today.)
Consider that each of us has a “limiting paradigm” or worldview that is blind to some aspects of the larger reality. We truly don’t know what we don’t know. German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer once said: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” Candidly, I fall into this trap on a regular basis. Thus, we often find ourselves “blind-sided” by unanticipated developments taking shape beyond our line of sight.
Acknowledge that none of us “owns” the truth. All genuine and thus enduring truth is God’s truth. If this is the case, we night view our job as that of responsible stewards or conveyers of particular knowledge or truth at particular times as a sacred trust.
Remember that all human understanding is flawed. Thus, the unspoken disclaimer is: “This information is subject to change.” As
we have seen, this also applies to some aspects of our understanding of the Scamdemic deception. So, it means dealing graciously with each other as we work through the haze.
Recognize that Covid Scamdemic truth isn’t your ordinary
garden variety stuff. It’s explosive and for most people potentially worldview-shattering. If the persons opposite accept my version of Covid reality, they will never view complicit politicians, government authorities, the medical–pharma industry, corporate media and many of their favourite politicians business leaders and cultural influences the same again.
There will be no going back. Their world will have changed forever. Even more unnerving is the question of what moral decisions this knowledge will require of them. They may have to resign their jobs and risk loss of financial independence, valued relationships and cherished lifestyles. Given that, it’s not surprising that many individuals avert their eyes and cover their ears when told the vaxx is injuring and killing millions of people. The truth is a massive disruptor.
Accept that whether someone changes their personal conviction on a matter like the Covid-Vaxx phenomenon is ultimately a spiritual matter. There’s always some mystery as to how things work in the spiritual realm. I was reminded of this by a story of how a Christmas carolling campaign at abortion facilities in the US had changed some mothers’ minds about aborting their babies. The members ofthe carolling project tell of how particular women have responded to their presence and singing by turning around and walking out of an abortion clinic. It’s described as a “change of heart” because it involves communication and connection on a spiritual frequency.
The Christmas Truce tells the story of another Christmas carol breakthrough and the bridging of differences at Christmas in WWI in 1914.
The Germans began by placing candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were excursions across No Man’s Land, where small gifts were exchanged, such as food, tobacco and alcohol, and souvenirs such as buttons and hats. The artillery in the region fell silent. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently killed soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Joint [religious] services were held.
I’m not one to suggest one sugar coat or compromise the truth to make it more palatable to resistant minds. And I may never fully resolve my moral dilemma regarding my competing obligations to family. But, a hard “just-the-facts” intellectual approach
to persuasion regarding Covid and the vaxx, or concerning any number of other big subjects, will likely be unproductive. Geddes’ recommendation that we come from “a humble spiritual place” is an important prerequisite. To me, that means acting on the highest of motives (love for others) and acknowledging our own humanity — to ourselves at least — before beginning the conversation. It can also mean accepting the idea that convincing others is beyond us and ultimately lies in God’s domain. That takes a load off.
At a most difficult time in our history, I pray that the members of the freedom movement will be a powerful uplifting and unifying force in a fractured world. Christmas time is as good a time as any to rise above differences and reach across divides (Covid or otherwise) in the spirit of the season.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. —Peaceful Warrior
Endnotes:
Intellectual answers don’t fix spiritual problems: Throwing facts and logic at people working from a limiting paradigm just divides us: https://newsletter.martingeddes.com/p/intellectual-answers-dont-fix- spiritual?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Saving babies through song: Christmas carols at abortion mills are changing mothers’ hearts https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/saving-babies-through-song-christmas-carols-at- abortion-mills-are-changing-mothers-hearts/
Goodreads -Arthur Schopenhauer https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2194-every-man- takes-the-limits-of-his-own-field-of
The Christmas Truce: https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2021/12/24/joyeux-no%d1%91l-the-beginnings- of-wwi-and-the-christmas-truce-of-1914/