Thread by @sunnshiiny

Hope is a double edged sword. We need hope tempered with reality. False hope is just unrealized despair.

Personally I find reality, as difficult as it can be sometimes, is a better gauge of hope. When I see people are engaged and aware of facts, I have hope.

When I see people organizing to remove destructive governments, that brings me hope.

I prefer to search for and inspire available actions. I prefer to be an agent of change, not a helpless victim. Pleading for forgiveness is infinitely easier than asking for permission.

Waiting for deliverance or a saviour is a victim’s stance. Yet so many just continue to obey an illegitimate power and surrender their own power.

I’m not very good at surrender or obedience to oppressive expectations.

Honour and integrity are only valuable to survivors.

Survival is not that difficult if that’s your goal. Group survival is the same.

Having the capacity to compartmentalize issues and situations is essential. That’s what allows you to apply different principles to different situations. And that’s what we need to do currently.

I continue to see people attempting to right the ship by adhering to norms and principles only useful in peaceful coexistence. Shame, humiliation and public pressure are used as primary choices, even though they’ve been mostly neutered of their usefulness by the removal of norms.

What many are refusing to accept is that we are no longer able to use the familiar democratic tools to maintain peaceful coexistence in a pluralist society. We don’t live in peaceful coexistence.

Yet they keep trying. That creates despair, helplessness and hopelessness.

To murder another person is morally and ethically wrong and criminal. But when nations go to war, killing the enemy becomes patriotic, permitted and morally acceptable.

We are at war. This war is asymmetrical warfare. Not killing with weapons. But it’s still war.

That means we must shift our paradigm.

We cannot view what’s happening through the lens of democracy and peaceful coexistence. Because we don’t live in that reality anymore.

The far right and a few on the far left have abandoned democracy. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t.

The far right has clearly identified their intolerance for peace and preference for autocracy.

We cannot expect to use democratic methods of behaviour modification to win this battle. We must adjust our paradigm and principles to adapt to the current reality.

A team building exercise I participated in a long time ago revealed typical human nature to me.

By the time I was in my early 20’s I had survived a couple existential threats.

Most do NOT realize how ethics and morals disappear when your existence is in question.

Survival mode takes over. You preserve your own life and the lives of the people you love. That’s it. You don’t have time, capacity, resources or the mental faculty to protect others. Unless you’re a real hero. And most of us are not altruistic heroes. We just think we are.

Our team was divided into groups of five & asked to discuss what we would do if a boat we were in capsized and we had one less life preserver than required. Someone was going to die. Who would that be and how would we make that decision? No exceptions.

That’s when I learned true human nature.

I knew what would happen in a real situation. People would panic. The strongest and smartest would grab a life preserver and leave the rest to fight over the remaining life preservers. That’s reality. We forget ethics and save ourselves.

Everyone else in my group discussed ways to save all five. Put the life preservers together and all hold on, rotate treading water while four others conserved energy to survive, righting the boat. Everything was discussed and explored. Completely ignoring the fictional reality.

But the instructor had been clear. Someone had to die. There was no tricks or procedures to prevent one of our group from dying. Who would it be?

What happened in every group was the refusal to accept one person was going to die. Everyone made elaborate plans to save everyone.

People like to think they are principled & moral. But commitment to principled and moral decision making evaporates when we are facing death or serious harm.

We are currently facing death and serious financial and physical harm by the policies of UCP & other far right govts.

The public is completely ignoring reality. Refusing to see what’s happening in global politics and keeping themselves oblivious to the danger.

That is human nature. We don’t want to face bitter reality. We avoid it like the plague.

Until trouble directly affects us, we ignore the suffering of others.

It’s uncomfortable, unpleasant and frightening to consider our own mortality and vulnerability.

That is human nature. Not heroism or adaptability to danger. Apathy.

We require time to process the loss of democracy and move through the stages of grief:
1. Anger
2. Denial
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance.

That’s typical human behaviour to society wide existential danger.

How many of us are angry, or in denial that anything has really changed, looking for ways to negotiate, cooperate, compromise to return to a sense of normalcy?

How many have given up on voting and ignore politics? How many just carry on as if nothing will ever change?

We are all stuck in a state of grief and shock that the far right and a few complicit lefties have destroyed Canadian peaceful coexistence (not that every special interest or cultural group experienced that peace or coexistence).

We are immobilized by grief.

So snap out of it!

Stop lamenting the loss and unite to protect and restore peace and coexistence of a plural society.

We can remove the threat to our existence if we work together to identify & push back on what’s being done to our way of life.

But only if we shift our paradigm to recognize the threat, unite to push back on that threat, will we survive as a society.

Right now it’s the most vulnerable who are being attacked. And they are dying or in a serious state of suffering.

We can no longer ignore this.

We can see clearly the boat carrying the vulnerable has been tipped over. And there aren’t any life preservers. The far right has removed them. Strategically.

We can no longer turn a blind eye and hope our boat is safe, so not our problem. We must do more than think or pray.

We offer encouragement. Maybe we shout and point that people are dying. But we have done NOTHING to remove the threat or save the victims.

We expect that those governing will do the right thing.

Well guess what? They aren’t and have no plans to help the vulnerable. Ever.

Those governing our lives either don’t have the purview or legal authority to intervene or the ethical and moral integrity to challenge what’s being done. Words, letters, thoughts and prayers are not going to stop those who are intentionally harming the vulnerable.

It’s left up to us to intervene and demand a change in governance. No one else is coming and we will all be treading water if we wait two more years for an election.

We need to be loud, single minded in purpose and we cannot take no for an answer.

The goal: restore democracy.

Remove the political parties and governments that are refusing to take COVID seriously.

We MUST be peaceful and we must act very soon.

The new deadlier variants are already spreading in the community. If those take over, we are all in the water treading to survive.

Hope is a double edged sword. False hope is just despair. Delusion and denial keeps us from recognizing the danger.

When we are hit with disaster, our focus is on preserving our own life.

The only way to stop complete disaster is when we unite and beat back the threat.

There is no other way.

Stop bargaining and searching for easier solutions. There aren’t any. Nations are falling into autocracy because people keep looking for easy solutions.

We need to stop appeasing like Neville Chamberlain and start out sitting the threat like Churchill.

And the reference is intentional. Fascism was never defeated. It just slinked back into the sewer. These are the same forces attempting global domination and mass extermination. They are just using a convenient pandemic rather than just withdrawing the social contract.

Our existence is being threatened.

The question to ask is what are you going to do about it. Grieve the loss of democracy? Or fight to re-establish democracy and banish and prosecute those who abandoned it?

In order re-establish democracy we:
1. Have to recognize the nature and reality of the threat.
2. Save the most vulnerable now. They are dying. &
3. Put aside our principles of tolerance to beat back those who would destroy us.

That’s how you survive as a society.

In case this allegory isn’t clear, most of Canada’s population is still in boats, and some have recognized there are limited life preservers. We see a few capsized boats, but haven’t started to panic yet. Because our boat seems secure.

It’s not. That’s false hope.

The US has many many capsized boats. People are drowning in droves. A madman tried to tip the new leaders boat. And the threat remains very high. Many of the people who united are treading water while trying to support those who can’t swim. With no life preservers.

Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and North Korea have thrown their entire populations in the water and individual survival is the only priority. Occasionally the strongest swimmers attempt to unite. And they are imprisoned, killed or disappeared.

That’s what happens if we ignore what’s happening now. We are on the same path as the US was 4 years ago.

An effective counter resistance comes before you’re pushed into the water and forced to struggle to survive.

The boats are being rocked. We unite or fall further into chaos.

The time is now to speak up in unison.

#NeverAgainIsNow

Demand Zero Covid measures.

#ZeroCovid

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