Nate Bear Profile picture
Mar 28, 2023 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Last week in the UK more than 600 people died of covid. Last week climate scientists warned that we're on the verge of ecological catastrophe. Nothing much happened in response. Why? Social constructions of reality are clashing with brute facts. A 🧵
The social construction of reality is an idea formulated by ancient Greek philosophers and popularised by sociologists Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann in the 1960s
The social construction of reality is the idea that people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced by those people as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful
This process helps create communities structured around norms. But this isn’t the only thing that exists. Alongside socially constructed realities there are natural realities, or brute facts. Things that you can’t socially construct your way out of. Gravity. Oxygen. CO2. Viruses
In recent years we’ve heard a lot about “post-truth,” most often in reference to the far right that deny factual things. But post-truthism is no longer confined to the far right. No longer a pejorative label to throw at Trumpers or Brexiteers. Post-truthism has gone mainstream
Despite death numbers being at levels that provoked lockdowns, despite record workforce sickness and despite record excess deaths, people from across the political spectrum agree: the pandemic is over. A socially constructed reality has been created to deny natural reality
Part of the process of creating a socially constructed reality, says sociologist Dennis Hiebert, is creating a cognitive and moral basis that will explain and justify behaviour necessary to maintain the reality. Hiebert says the most powerful form of legitimation is religion
God is the higher calling that justifies the behaviours necessary to construct the reality, he says. But this doesn’t apply to secular societies. We need another explanation, a new God to justify our behaviours. And that God is individuality. Which we might also label freedom
Not long into the pandemic, business interests, politicians and the media engineered a ‘freedom’ narrative to get everything back to normal as fast as possible for the sake of profits, regardless of the human cost. We saw 'freedom' marchers and the 'freedom' truckers
And then something strange happened. A far right narrative of 'freedom' that had been sneered at as dangerous and against public health, became, less than six months later, the majority, mainstream position
Few would disagree that freedom is worth aspiring to. Freedom from hunger, persecution and suffering has been the fuel of every revolution in history. But under consumer capitalism, freedom has been warped. The freedom we are sold today is not a freedom *from* but a freedom *to*
A hyper-individualised idea of freedom has become the God we need to justify the behaviours necessary to construct a social reality where there was no pandemic (or no climate crisis)
The mass media have been key agents in this social construction of reality, refusing to report the truth about ongoing high death numbers, refusing to report on the studies showing immune damage, or the harm from repeat covid infections
But natural reality will always and inevitably impinge upon our social constructions. We can continue to develop the Florida coast, but the water will rise. We can continue to burn fossil fuels, but the heat will build. We can continue to catch a Sars virus, but disease will come
Read more in the article:

donotpanic.substack.com/p/freedoom

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More from @NateB_Panic

Sep 18
A few weeks ago top US medicine man Anthony Fauci was in hospital with West Nile virus, saying he'd never been sicker. So I looked into West Nile virus and woah, did I find out some things. Not good things 🧵
The first astonishing thing I found out is how quickly this virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, has become a serious health threat in many parts of the world, especially Europe and North America, where a little over twenty years ago >it didn’t even exist<
The first North American (in fact Western hemisphere) detection was in New York City in 1999, where it infected 8,000 and killed seven. By 2002 it was all along the east coast, the US south by 2003, by 2012, just 13 years after its emergence, it was in all 48 continental states
Read 16 tweets
Sep 5
Study on 61 men MRI scanned pre and post *omicron* covid. "Decrease in gray matter thickness in the left precuneus and right lateral occipital regions of the brain. Ratio of the right hippocampus volume to total brain volume decreased." Omicron remains bad for brains. A list🧵 Gray matter thickness may be reduced in specific brain areas after SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection
Source. The average age of the men in this study was 43. psypost.org/gray-matter-th…
2. "The Omicron variant is distinguished by heightened neurotropism, penetrates the central nervous system via the olfactory bulb. This direct invasion induces inflammation and neuronal damage." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mc…
Read 6 tweets
Sep 2
The only age groups in the US registering excess death are ages 10-19 and ages 30-49. All those died young and suddenly anecdotes, while down from the heights of the pandemic, continue to tally with the data Chart shows excess mortality for all age groups in the US on a 2016/17-18/19 baseline
Baseline used is 16/17 - 18/19 to pick up health trends emerging right before the pandemic. Why these ages? Why a gap for ages 20-29? My guess is covid in school age children and parents of school age children + reflecting rise in young adult cancers + drugs overdoses
But it's very clear from the pre pandemic baseline that covid rather than cancer or drugs is doing the heavy lifting on these deaths. Source: mortality.watch/explorer/?c=US…
Read 4 tweets
Aug 30
Americans, particularly on the left, should pay close attention to what's happening in the UK. Democrats are modelling the Kamala Harris campaign on Keir Starmer's victory and we're now seeing the consequences of the Labour Party in power🧵 Politico headline can britain's labour party teach kamala harris how to win from immigration to housing and confronting the left the new PM Keir Starmer appears to offer a playbook for victory
This Politico article says that seven Labour MPs and strategists met with Kamala Harris's team at the DNC to discuss historically challenging issues like immigration and 'the challenge from the left on issues like Gaza'
This last item was a key item discussion, with the article noting that Starmer was convinced early on that he needed to 'sacrifice party unity to demoralize the left.' The article suggests Harris is learning from that experience, especially on Gaza
Read 18 tweets
Aug 13
Zionist trolls and other racists said this viral tweet is evidence Gaza wasn't an open air prison. Here are all the ways in which Gaza, despite the resilience and ingenuity of Palestinians which saw them build joyful lives, was an open air prison run on apartheid rules 🧵
With a population of 2 million in a space of just 141 square miles, Gaza was one of the most densely populated pieces of land on Earth, with a population density of over 500 people per 100 square meters. This is in fact more densely populated than many prisons
The Israeli military issues colour-coded identification for all Palestinians when they turn 16. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are given green IDs while Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Israel have blue IDs. You need an ID to move anywhere
Read 17 tweets
Jul 20
everyone getting covid in summer 2024 because covid is over and seasonal and getting it again builds your immunity so you won't get it again but you'll definitely get it again this winter and maybe next summer because it's seasonal and over but it'll be fine, honestly, it's fine
We The Governments Of The Capitalist World are at pains to reassure everyone that getting covid repeatedly forever is honestly going to be fine with ZERO long term consequences, ZERO, please remember this
Yes the President of the United States must isolate and not work and is put on a cocktail of antivirals immediately but you must not test or isolate or stop working when sick and look just forget the antivirals, they probably aren't needed, honestly, you're strong, you'll be fine
Read 8 tweets

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