Charles Eisenstein and the Delusion of Safety

I listen to a lot of podcasts lately. Today it’s Safety Mania: Charles Eisenstein Talks COVID Hysteria, Mob Dynamics, and How to Forge ‘Communities of Sanity’ on American Thought Leaders.

It’s a worthwhile listen if you have an hour.

Human beings are exquisitely attuned to reading the mood of the mob. It’s a survival mechanism. And in order to fit in, we instinctively adopt the “correct” opinions and profess those opinions. We signal the appropriate virtues. We respect the appropriate taboos that mark us as part of the “in” group and not part of the sacrificial subclass. That mark of belonging could be a mask, could be a vaccine, a vaccine card… And it doesn’t matter if the mask actually works of if the vaccine actually works. It doesn’t matter if the kid actually has cooties or not. This is an ancient, powerful psychological disposition that fascists and totalitarians exploit in order to control society.

This mania for safety, this obsession with risk minimization and this worship of control actually never succeeds. It always brings the opposite of what it intends. It brings less security. It brings less safety. It brings less health…

You think that, if only I could isolate myself from all germs then I would never get sick. But the more you isolate from germs the more vulnerable you become to whatever germs can get through your bubble, because your immune system gets weaker and weaker. Not to mention your body ecology deteriorates because your microbiome requires constant interchange with the outside world in order to thrive.

So this is an example of the paradox of control – that the greater the level of control, the more need your create for even more control.

Same pattern with agricultural chemicals. You spray Round-up and you get Round-up resistant weeds. And you spray for those and now you’ve destroyed the mycelia and the ability of plants to take minerals. So you add more minerals to the soil and that kills the earthworms. So you substitute on technology after another after another, each one addressing the consequences of previous technology. 

So this is a universal pattern. The world is not this reductive linear mechanism that we can control by controlling all of the parts. It’s nonlinear and subject to emergent phenomenon.  What would happen if we fully take in the truth of the fundamental dysfunction and illness of society and enter the space of “and we don’t know what to do about it”? The space of unknowing?

If you’re not familiar with Charles Eisenstein, I highly recommend his Substack, as well as his new book of essays, The Coronation.