Things The Coronavirus Has Already Proven

The Great Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 is only just beginning. Although it is already dominating the headlines, most of the suffering is still to come. Exactly how much suffering there will be – and who will suffer it – is still unknown, as are most outcomes of this rapidly-unfolding drama. However, there are some things that this pandemic, and the response to it, have already proven. This essay explains.

Many people, mostly for egotistical reasons, believe that human beings are categorically superior to other animals. The usual belief is that our high brain volume to body volume ratio has granted us an unmatched degree of intelligence, if not spiritual insight. Therefore, we’re above “animal behaviour”.

The ongoing panic buying that has seen supermarkets in the West stripped bare is stark evidence against this. Human beings are another kind of primate, only narrowly less impulsive and aggressive than the others. The “monkey see, monkey do” logic that causes juvenile primates to imitate their peers is on vivid display in the now numerous videos of people fighting over water and toilet paper.

In reality, humans are just as prone to panic-fuelled acts of selfish aggression as any “lower” animal. All we need is enough fear to cause a limbic hijack and we’re operating on raw animal instinct again. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has proven that we’re as susceptible to that panicky fear as any flock of sheep.

A second thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has proven is that borders are good. Because the West has been so wealthy for so long, we have developed a kind of tameness. We forgot that the world is dangerous, and that much of that danger comes in human form. We started to believe the fatal delusion that all human groups are the same.

The pandemic caused us to remember that borders are there for a reason – the same reason why you have a fence around your property and skin around your body. It’s to keep bad things out. Esoterically speaking, a border is just a hard masculine line that protects a softer, feminine core, like a skull, a ribcage, a door or a fence.

We have now remembered that borders are good because they keep bad things out. Whether people infected with viruses or people infected with hate-filled ideologies, borders serve to keep us safe from danger. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that having open borders makes as much sense as leaving your front door open at night.

A corollary to this is that the pandemic has proven that the Government can stop mass immigration if they want to.

For the past few decades, neoliberals have screamed that everything would collapse if we stopped the mass importation of cheap labour – our fruit and vegetables would go unpicked, our garbage would go uncollected and our elderly would go without care. Western Governments have closed the borders anyway, reasoning that, absent cheap labour imports, wages will rise to the point where these jobs can be filled by natives.

More worryingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that our dependence on offshore supply chains for some basic goods and medicines has made us not only economically vulnerable, but also strategically vulnerable.

Many industries are running into procurement difficulties, because China shut down so many of its factories and docks that the flow of exports has been throttled. Many Western manufacturers are just learning that, because so much has been outsourced there, when China shuts down the world shuts down. It has become common to hear a person exclaim their recent realisation that X% of a vital industrial widget is produced in China and so, without Chinese production, no-one can get hold of it.

Our exposure to medical shortages threatens to be much worse than our exposure to industrial shortages.

Two weeks ago, India, the world’s leading producer of generic drugs, instituted export restrictions on 26 of them. Because the coronavirus pandemic has impacted pharmaceutical factories in China, many Indian drug manufacturers can no longer acquire precursor ingredients. The panic buying has already shown how close we are to chimpout – once people start being told that the pharmacies can’t supply their psychiatric medicines there could be riots.

Perhaps more fundamental than any of these things is that COVID-19 has proven that the Government doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing. This was already widely understood by most intelligent people, but by now most poeple have had the nauseating realisation that the Government is made up of people who are good at winning elections and not people who are good at governing. All around the world, they are panicking.

One of the main things that Western authorities now have to concern themselves with is civil unrest. It’s slowly dawning on people that this pandemic has the potential to disrupt life as we know it for a significant length of time. As this realisation spreads, all kinds of negative sentiments will grow. Anger, fear, vengeance and short-term thinking will all increase – and they won’t be rational.

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that our society is on much shakier foundations than it used to be, and shakier foundations than many had realised. The bonds of solidarity that comprise every community are much fewer and much weaker. The potential for chimpouts at any time have never been greater.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Diversity Is A Strength In Times Of Plenty, And A Weakness In Times Of Shortage

The Establishment and the mainstream media like to say that diversity is a strength. This opinion is aggressively rejected by most of the working class, who consider it a great weakness. The reality, as this essay will discuss, is that both sides are right – but only in the appropriate context.

Since the end of World War II, the West has enjoyed great prosperity. Our stockmarkets, factories, airports and seaports have all boomed from the ever-increasing demand. Most people felt like they were getting a good deal, or that, if they weren’t, they soon would. During this great age of plenty, diversity has generally caused more pleasure than pain.

In times of plenty, diversity is a strength. When the economy is growing, and no-one has to worry about competing with each other, then diversity means an enrichment of the everyday experience of life. It means new foods, new cultural displays, new ideas. It means an exciting, vibrant increase in novelty.

In times of shortage, however, diversity means something else.

Every community is divided along fracture lines – lines of race, gender, religion, age, education and cultural affinity. In good times, these fracture lines are papered over by wealth – people don’t need to fight if everyone has enough to meet their own needs. In bad times, these fracture lines are exposed and aggravated.

When times are tough, the community needs to pull together. A given community’s ability to pull together depends mostly on its level of solidarity, and that in turn depends mostly on the number and degree of commonalities that members of the community have with each other. After all, ‘commonality’ and ‘community’ have a similar etymology.

The presence of commonality means co-operation. Where commonalities exist, people are happy to help each other, because they know that this help will benefit a person like them. This knowledge assures them that the help will be reciprocated, and not just taken. They can count on getting helped in the future, and so feel like part of a society, a wider kinship group.

A lack of commonality means exploitation. The rule is that people are willing to exploit others to the degree that those others are different from them. The greater the number of fracture lines in a community or society, the greater the degree of exploitation that exists. As mentioned above, this is no big deal when the economy is expanding, because this means new niches open up for people to move into.

In times of shortage, however, diversity means that helping other people is helping people who aren’t your kin. The natural inclination, then, is to keep for yourself, to not share. The problem here is that people get desperate in times of shortage. When people are desperate, a refusal to share with them often leads to violence.

Diversity makes it much harder to settle the tensions that arise from shortages. Two people of the same culture can use their shared moral values to come to a mutual agreement. If they have a common language, they can talk their way to a mutual understanding. Absent these things, misunderstandings lead to flaring tempers.

Arriving at a mutual agreement in times of scarcity is much easier between two natives than between a native and an immigrant. Between two immigrants, as we see in the Woolworths toilet paper fight video linked above, there is a minimum of commonality, and this regularly ends in actions that are not made from a place of empathy.

If the COVID-19 pandemic does have a severe enough economic impact to cause widespread shortages, some people are going to be forced into making some terrible decisions – and much more terrible than what brand of toilet paper to buy because their preferred one is sold out.

Faced with two patients who can’t breathe, and only one ventilator, the medical staff dealing with the pandemic are going to be forced to make decisions as to who lives and who dies. There are already reports that Italian doctors have been forced to leave old people to die on account of that there aren’t enough beds in intensive care units. Increasing diversity means that some Italian doctors will have to decide whether an elderly native Italian or a younger immigrant gets the ICU bed.

More relevant to the average person are the hundreds of small decisions that they will have to make about questions that test their loyalties. Some people have been stockpiling hand sanitiser on account of that the sudden shortage of it has spiked the price. These price gouging actions have been heavily criticised, on the grounds that not only are they shamelessly opportunistic but they also prevent needy people from getting supplies.

But in a highly diverse society, the balance of rewards is different to what it would be in a more homogenous one. The more diverse society is, the less likely such actions are to harm a person who has something in common with you. All the profit from such actions, however, you keep for yourself. So why not use a pandemic as an opportunity to price gouge? If no-one from your kin group loses out, you might as well take advantage.

Proof for these suppositions come from the fact that neither supermarket fighting nor price-gouging is happening in nations with low levels of diversity. There are no videos of people fighting over toilet paper in places like South Korea, Taiwan or Japan – and there may never be. The absence of diversity in these places means they have enough in common for people to work together instead of chimping out.

All of these problems are just part of the regular course of empires. Empires burgeon, rise, stagnate, decay and fall. The increase in diversity usually comes after the stagnation phase, as the ruling class tries to squeeze out the maximum possible expansion by opening the borders. The current iteration of the West is somewhere between the decay and the fall stages. The nations to successfully respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, like South Korea and Japan, will be the leading nations of this century.

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Why I Don’t Believe In Climate Change Alarmism

I don’t have a qualification in Climatology, and am therefore not an expert on the subject. I do, however, have a couple of Psychology degrees, and so have a claim to expertise there. When it comes to understanding issues like climate change, I can’t use Climatology knowledge; I have to use Psychology knowledge. This is how I do it.

Like anyone else who understands general science, I can try to understand the basics of climate change. I can go to Google Scholar, type in “climate change predictions” and then limit the search to papers from 2019 onwards, as I did here. This would give me a general overview of the current state of the science. There’s one minor problem – such a search query returns over 20,000 hits.

Realistically, becoming an expert on climate change would require reading at least a hundred of these papers, as well as at least a hundred published before 2019. This would total several years of study – a time investment that I’m neither able nor willing to make. Therefore, like any other layman, I’m reduced to making a judgment based on whether I believe the people taking about climate change are credible.

If the people talking about it seem trustworthy, then I will be inclined to believe what they say. If they seem untrustworthy, then I will be disinclined to believe what they say. This is how it works with every other political issue, from cannabis law reform to immigration to abortion to euthanasia to taxes. Once the subject of discussion moves out of Psychology, I’m operating on trust and not my own expertise.

As it turns out, the people pushing climate change strike me as grossly untrustworthy, for three major reasons: they seem insincere, irrational and dishonest.

If the politicians pushing climate change alarmism were sincere, they would not also be buying beachfront properties. Yet Barack Obama, one of the world’s foremost harbingers of climate doom, recently bought 29 acres of it. Why would Obama, privy to the world’s most advanced scientific research when American President, buy beachfront property, unless he expects the sea level to remain the same?

The market shows that seaside property is still highly valued. Waterfront property in Sydney, extremely vulnerable to rising oceans, still sells for eight-figure sums. How could a property doomed to be wiped out by rising sea levels sell for over ten million dollars? The only answer is that no-one cares about rising sea levels. The claims of those like Obama cannot be sincere.

On top of this, the people pushing climate alarmism seem irrational. On the one hand, they claim that CO2 emissions are making a major contribution to global warming, such that every one of us has the moral imperative to minimise our CO2 emissions insofar as we are able. But then these same people turn around and argue for an increase in the refugee quota, in some cases tripling it or even more.

New Zealanders consume resources at many times the rate of the average Third World resident. Where is the sense in taking 5,000 people every year (as the Greens propose) from low-emissions parts of the world, and flying them at great expense to a high-emissions part of the world, where they and their numerous descendants will consume future resources at many times the rate they would have done otherwise?

The only logical explanation for the Greens’ refugee policy is that the entire concept of CO2 emissions being bad is horseshit. Either the Greens are lying about the imperative to minimise CO2 emissions, or they don’t understand the relevant science (a closer look shows that not a single one of New Zealand’s current Green MPs has a tertiary science qualification – the closest is James Shaw with an M.Sc from a business school).

If the Greens would say that CO2 emissions were bad and, therefore, we will close the borders to immigration from low-emission areas, then the threat of climate change would appear to make rational sense. But they do the exact opposite of that. Therefore, I can conclude that those promoting climate change are irrational, and so the truth value of their pronouncements can be discounted.

The real showstopper for me though, as a psychologist, is that one of the people fronting the climate charge alarmist movement in New Zealand is a convicted fraudster. This is no less a dignitary than the Maori Climate Commissioner herself, Donna Awatere Huata.

In 2005, Huata was found guilty of fraud and of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The money that she defrauded from a foundation set up to help underprivileged kids learn to read was used on a stomach stapling operation. What sort of malignant narcissist would steal money from children to fund cosmetic surgery for herself? A Climate Commissioner, that’s who.

In the same way that I wouldn’t buy a used car off convicted ponzi schemer David Ross, I wouldn’t buy one off Donna Awatere Huata either. So why on Earth would I listen to her pronouncements about climate change? The smart thing to do would be to believe the exact opposite of whatever Huata says.

In summary, I don’t believe in climate change alarmism because the people pushing it are crooked, insane and unqualified to make scientific pronouncements. These people seem every bit the shameless grifters that have pushed every other kind of alarmism to make a quick buck out of the ensuing hysteria.

I’m willing to be corrected, but do note that you will have to have a qualification in a relevant science from a proper university, and you will have to cite peer-reviewed journal articles in relevant disciplines, for me to take you seriously on this matter.

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Understanding The “Justice” System

Judicial verdicts frequently provoke confusion among observers. In some cases it’s extremely difficult to understand why judgments are handed down, as punishment seems so random and arbitrary. As this essay will explain, understanding our “Justice” System is literally as simple as ABC.

In this context, ‘ABC’ refers to an algebraic formula that could also be expressed a*b*c = x, where x is the severity of the punishment.

a is the degree of inconvenience caused by the offence. The greater the inconvenience, the greater the punishment.

Murder causes a great deal of inconvenience, not least to the person killed. The family and friends of murder victims are also greatly impacted. It is for this reason that murder is also referred to as “the ultimate crime”. Other crimes like manslaughter, rape and kidnapping also cause great inconvenience, and these also carry heavy punishment.

Lesser crimes are things like theft and assault. Neither of these crimes kill anyone, and neither do they regularly cause long-standing psychological damage. Consequently, such crimes carry light punishments. Note that a equals the amount of inconvenience caused, not the amount of suffering caused, because an offence does not have to cause suffering in order to attract judicial punishment (growing medicinal cannabis is one such example).

All this seems very straightforward, and it would be, if the formula didn’t have b and c. The sad reality is that the amount of suffering caused by an offender is not the only factor that the “Justice” System takes into account. Far from it.

b is the social status of the person impacted by the offence. The higher the social status, the greater the punishment.

The highest social status is that of the Crown (or the Government). Therefore, offences that impact the Crown are punished the most severely. This is why offences that cause a minimum of suffering, but which inconvenience the Government, are punished heavily. Julian Assange is the foremost example of this today, as are the aforementioned cannabis users.

If the person impacted by the offence is of a low social status, the punishment will be low. It might be difficult to secure a conviction, because a complainant with low social status might not be considered a trustworthy witness in court. The case might not even go that far. It’s common for the Police to refuse to hear complaints from working-class people, giving them an excuse such as that they don’t have enough evidence to pursue a complaint.

Despite the bleating of social justice warriors, social status is a far more important factor than race. A case in New Zealand last year saw a man sentenced to a mere eight months’ home detention for killing a white man – a verdict easily understood once it’s realised that the victim was homeless. It can be guaranteed that if a Member of Parliament had been beaten to death in similar circumstances, the punishment would have been life imprisonment.

c is the social status of the person who committed the offence. The higher the social status, the lower the punishment.

If the person committing the offence is of a high enough social status, they simply won’t be charged for it. Jimmy Savile is the best example of this. If you can get to a high enough social status, you can rape hundreds of children and the “Justice” System simply won’t charge you. Likewise, Mike Sabin in New Zealand got off scot-free with what he did.

As David Icke has extensively written, the Western Establishment is full of pedophiles – and their high social status prevents the Police from charging or investigating them. Lesser members of the Establishment might not be able to avoid being charged or convicted, but they will nevertheless get a much lighter punishment than a working-class person would for the same offence.

Further examples are the high-profile sportsmen who are given name suppression and who avoid criminal convictions because of “promising rugby careers” or similar. The New Zealand Herald even managed to compile a playing XV of rugby players who had escaped conviction after committing a criminal offence. One player even did so despite breaking another man’s jaw.

A person of a low social status, by contrast, will get smashed for even the most minor infringement. If you’re working-class, you can expect to get a year in prison for stealing a few dozen trout. Middle-class people, like Phil Goff’s daughter, can get away with being found in possession of ecstasy, while working-class people get nailed to the wall for sharing videos, provided it inconveniences the Government enough.

The basic formula, then, for determining the severity of a judicial punishment is as follows: take the total inconvenience caused by the offence, multiply it by the social status of the person inconvenienced, and multiply this by the inverse of the social status of the person committing the offence.

The maximum theoretical punishment would come, according to this formula, from a common working-class man killing the Queen, President or Prime Minister of their political system. Whether legal or not, such an act is almost bound to result in the death penalty, and will at the least incur life imprisonment.

The minimum theoretical punishment would come from an act taken by the Government to inconvenience a common citizen. It is all but certain that no member of the Establishment will ever have to pay for the crime of conducting a War on Drugs against their own people, even though the people did not consent to it. Likewise, an immigration official allowing a murderer into the country who then murders someone will not be punished.

What best explains all of this is the fact that the ruling class ultimately invented the Justice System to protect their position. Therefore, the point of it is to smash down challengers to the ruling class and to their interests. That’s why the Justice System hardly cares at all when the Government commits crimes against its own people, or when members of the working class harm each other.

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