On 'Mastering Chaotic Nature'.

 ‘Vaccinations are the high point of human reason. Devised under clinical conditions by scientists interested only in what works, they represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature; and also, of course, they save lives.’ 

     Thus the Guardian columnist, Ms Zoe Williams, launches a hymn to vaccinations (o2/09). Was she being ironical? Alas, no, despite a spot of mixed messaging later on in the same piece, when she writes of a Cornish festival'- ‘The festival organisers already had a Covid-status check in place, with every ticketholder aged over 11 required to show either a recent negative test result or a vaccination status. It must have been a disappointment to everyone concerned, that those two failsafes – the open air, and the vaccine – did, in 4,700 cases, fail.’  It appears to have escaped her attention that in all probability the coronvirus was produced in the first place by scientists in a laboratory. What works there is determined less by the personal disposition of the scientists than by whoever is funding them. 

      On another page in the same revered Guardian, one may read:- ‘Even as evidence of a crisis grew and doctors witnessing the devastation sounded warnings, the din of corporate money drowned them out. The quarter of a billion dollars a year the drug industry spends on lobbying bought the complicity of politicians, influenced regulators, weakened investigations by the justice department and stalled action by the Drug Enforcement Administration.’ - Chris McGreal, 05/09. He happened to be writing about the opioid crisis. How can anyone possibly be sure that we will not be reading similar words about the vaccines in five or ten years’ time?

  

       Evidently it is a mistake to look for much coherence about this particular ‘high point of human reason’, despite the many proclamations along the lines of that of Dr Philip Hyland, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University, (RTE 04/09); lamenting the ‘faith-based belief system’ of anti-vaxxers,  he proclaims that they 'hold a rigid belief and engage in motivated reasoning to dismiss all evidence or reason contrary to their belief,...but  focus selectively on information that supports their belief, and distort information so that it fits with their belief'.  ‘Despite constant public service announcements and messages about the benefits of being inoculated there are still people who are vaccine hesitant if not completely vaccine resistant.’  All one can say is, to an ordinary observer it seems strange that deaths seem to be rising everywhere with the roll-out of vaccines!

From Edwin Hayward @uk_domain_names

  

      This is from the UK, but it is a similar story in all highly vaccinated countries. Liberal Ireland is supposed to be proud of being ‘one of the most vaccinated nations in the world with close to 90% of the adult population now having got at least one jab against the coronavirus.’ (Prof Hyland again). The likes of myself are left scratching our heads, while ‘In its latest report, the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) found Ireland has the highest incidence of Covid-19 in the European Union.’ How we respond to such information is indeed bound to depend on our 'belief system', and one might ask, upon what does one base a 'belief system' unless it be some kind of faith? 

      One must assume that Dr Hyland is convinced that whereas his beliefs are based strictly upon reason, others are irrational, and really only professors of psychology should be allowed such lofty notions. Indeed I have found that it is those who have taken the vaccinations who are the hardest to engage in rational conversation about them. Mostly, when scratched, they will admit that they took it more for practical reasons like ease of travel rather than on account of any hard conviction, and often feel dubious about it. Never have I met anyone who has seriously engaged with the many reservations that I have spelt out in this blog. Beyond the blatant and repetitive propaganda,  belief in vaccines functions on just the one level of argument, namely that the risks of getting the disease outweigh those of the vaccine.

      

     To dress such a contention up in the language of 'objective' scientific statistics is nonsense. For one thing, the long-term damage that the vaccines will inflict has to be a completely unknown quantity at present. For another, actual individuals obviously vary enormously both in the risks they run of dying from covid and from the vaccine itself. Here we are in messy, problematic territory, not understood properly, as unamenable to statistical quantification as it is to sloganeering politics; however, it is clear that persons who mind themselves properly and have the good fortune to live in a healthy environment are much less at risk than those who do not, and that’s before we consider the possibilities of genuine ‘faith-based' defences, from homeopathy to prayer and belief in God, whose faithfulness is buckler and shield (Ps 91). Pace Professor Hyland and his ilk, such defences have their own inconvenient way of sometimes actually working!

     Unfortunately we do not have to be in a communist country to be subject to  manipulation and horrendous propaganda. Liberals are inclined to be the worst when it comes to being completely unaware when they engage in it. Conservatives of course are expected to, so the famous Zoe could go out of her way to acknowledge the honesty of Dominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, in being clear on the point that ‘vaccine certificates were aimed more at human behaviour than viral load, to "coax and cajole” young people into getting jabbed’. She did not, however, appear to have any problem with that! The trouble with liberals is that they are inclined to be more self-righteous and less self-aware than propagandists on the political right or left, though whether it is better to be merely cynical is a moot point! Meanwhile we ‘anti-vaxxers’ are being lined up for being the fall-guys, the scape-goats to blame when the narrative that vaccinations constitute the way out eventually falls to bits.  

      The apparent alternative is a system of global apartheid, in which the rich, multiply vaccinated world is hermetically sealed off from those poor, largely ill-nourished populations with scant health-care!  On behalf of Anti-vaxxers United, I propose an alternative deal, here and now. Suppose we were to allow the possibility that in some places vaccinations may be the lesser evil? We know that the poor are most at risk. Instead of dishing out the second, third and fourth shots in rich countries, should these not be sent off to those most in need, while those of us who are willing to take our chances without them should be encouraged to do so?

 

     However the global apartheid set-up appears more and more probable. Does it not provide a good template for our response to climate change? The battle lines are being drawn up!  Meanwhile we are all going to be subject to a great deal of coaxing and cajoling, at the behest no doubt of more scientists ‘only interested in what works,’ who like to think that they merely ‘represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature’.  It is but a small step onwards to the mastery of certain inferior populations! When it comes down to what works, could these not do with being thinned out anyway? We urgently need the scientists and everyone else to learn to respect Nature, putting an end to mankind’s pretentious and arrogant campaign to master and plunder it, while also sharpening their sense of justice!

From the 12th C Liber Floridus.

      Here we may be getting near the heart of our problem. We are dealing with an aberration and an abuse of science, which however have become deeply entrenched in the dominant Western and now global culture of the last few centuries. Perhaps it is yet more primordial, being a distortion of something good, like all evil things. Deprived of the headship of Christ, our wonderful technological civilisation is resembling some horrendous Leviathan more and more, flailing around with everything it does bringing it nearer to its own destruction! We Catholic Christians do indeed believe in the mastery of Christ, but it is a kindly mastery. We judge things strictly by their fruits! But we do not deny the value of science itself. 

      A scientist should not think of his work as mastering chaotic nature! I would like to think of him or her that the more he learns, the more he stands in awe at the complexity, the beauty and mysterious coherence of which he is uncovering a small corner, and realising  how far beyond our understanding nature - our mother, our whole support system, our home and our health - remains. Until and unless we learn such humility and the sense of justice that goes with it, we haven’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of learning to live in harmony with our amazing world!

      Let those 'masterers of nature' only go to sea in a small sailing boat, says I, ideally without any electronic navigation aids, and they may begin to get things right! Hopefully they may also realise that the wise navigator will not depend on the data from one bit of technology, however wonderful it may or may not be. He should watch out and listen every which way he can, and listen especially to those poor voices with a different take on things to himself, who rely primarily on their own perceptions rather than any technology, and do not allow themselves to be coaxed and cajoled  by anyone!

We'll get there again!