Speed Pollution
Reality is being overcome by 'information'.
From News24:
Since South Africa was placed under lockdown four days ago, police officers are facing three counts of murder and other serious charges as a result of their alleged use of excessive force.
The number of deaths, allegedly at the hands of a metro police officer and at least two police officers, is equal to that of people who have died from the novel coronavirus.
When it comes to counting deaths, nobody is facing the truth. Take the US. Daily, on average, more than a thousand people die of heart disease. Why don’t we quarantine sugar? Or reduce the speed limit to 40 km/hr?
We also know that deaths due to other causes, in which the virus is present, are being listed as deaths caused by the virus. We have already seen that in South Africa.
This feels similar to the War on Terror. We now have the War on Death. Anything - soldiers on the street beating people; economic depression - is justified to save a hypothetical life.
And the people are acquiescent in this. They WANT the military on the streets. A New Zealand website for citizens to report on their neighbours who break the lockdown has crashed because of how many people are logging on to snitch.
I can think of another historical period, in a country called Russia, in which something similar happened.
Perhaps you saw this analysis on Sky News of the impact of the 2008 recession in terms of increased mortality:
We must even start to question the images we see in the media.
The below is truly shocking:
How many other images are getting past critique?
What we are experiencing is what French author Paul Virilio named in 1996 - before the advent of social media - as ‘speed pollution’:
I think that the infosphere - the sphere of information - is going to impose itself on the geosphere. We are going to be living in a reduced world. The capacity of interactivity is going to reduce the world to nearly nothing. In fact, there is already a speed pollution, which reduces the world to nothing. In the near future, people will feel enclosed in a small environment. They will have a feeling of confinement in the world, which will certainly be at the limit of tolerability, by virtue of the speed of information. If I were to offer you a last thought - interactivity is to real space what radioactivity is to the atmosphere.
We don’t live in a world in which we see concrete things - we bounce around in information. And so we lose a grip on what is truly happening.
Meanwhile wet markets have re-opened in Wuhan. See below.
But who cares? The real solution is martial law in the west!
I wanted to move on from this story. But I am not sure many people are taking note of the problems surrounding this narrative. I have to continue.
I still think we need to talk about the media suppression of a seemingly effective treatment; the problems with the ‘flatten the curve’ meme; and lessons from history regarding pandemics.
All of the above will open your eyes.
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