53 Comments

"Since when did it become available to human beings to know the final and definitive answer to every big question of science and history—and know it right now?"

The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,

All things to us, but in the course of time

Through seeking we may learn and know things better.

But as for certain truth, no man has known it,

Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods

Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.

For even if by chance he were to utter

The final truth, he would himself not know it:

For all is but a woven web of guesses.

-Xenophanes

Expand full comment

I was going to post the Michelle Wu video! Beat me to it. Comedy gold!

Expand full comment

I know!!! Amazing. :)

Expand full comment

I keep having an epiphany, or maybe a delusion; I'll call it a hypothesis, that our stories of how history happens and why, the mechanisms we hold responsible, are fabricated, just fabricated, before, during and after. That is a mundane statement about the general dishonesty in human civilizations, the cynical or sincere dishonesty which creates control-narratives that a society can agree to accept, so that it can work in-concert. "Noble Lie", Plato called it in "The Republic".

This creeping (mis?)understanding is that things happen. We have minds that seek meanings, and which seek the protection of predictive explanations of the world. When our predictive calculations are a little off, we may adjust our narrative or do nothing. When they are grossly wrong, and for a whole society, the story in retrospect becomes completely different than what it was projected to be, and portrayed to be during its unfolding. The losers don't write history.

That is still mundane, but it is getting closer to saying that "reality" is NOT what we expect it to be, or what we experience it AS, while we hold the models of the world which we have learned, the models which we believe from our experiences of life, as well as our childhood indoctrinations.

"Scientism" is a core component of most people's world-views these days, including immigrant workers who I have served medically in recent decades, but it was not the dominant worldview in the former plantation workers I served medically in North Kohala, Hawaii. I was frustrated in my attempts to explain medical diagnoses and treatments scientifically. It was a foreign tongue. What did work, and allowed me to provide good medical care, was my sincere connection, my efforts to connect and help, which were readily understood, but it took a long time each time.

My efforts to sustain the clinic finances failed, despite my giving up all other efforts on the island. I came back to "the mainland". I learned something, maybe, that there are societies which shop at Costco and drive Toyotas, work at the resorts, and enjoy a completely different worldview, within the world which I assumed to accept scientism.

I had not seen it quite the same when I worked on the Navajo Reservation. The Navajo people speak no more than necessary, tell me that "they do not think in words" They do appreciate sincere actions in service, and accept people who show them that. I know there is something very deep and strong and unspoken there, which I could see and engage, and which changed my life in the context of a Native American Church purification-sweat, in my benefit.

I also worked for it, but the mystery was wrought upon my being, reshaping my life by those spiritual practitioners.

Scientism is not science per se, but it is mostly a mechanistic interpretation of physical reality, which Isaac Newton described mathematically. Newton did not personally accept "mechanics" as being the dominant form in human life. Newton's mechanics was a tool he described for practical purposes, like understanding planetary motion, and building machines, and bridges. Isaac Newton was an alchemist, a spiritual metaphysics of his day. Natural-Philosophy carried broader existential concerns in that day than "science" does these days. It was philosophy, not technocracy.

"Scientism" is a faith-based religion as it is practiced. There is a hierarchy. There are compliant levels in the hierarchy.

The correctness of the dogma is not much questioned, but the focus is on compliance, so as to be without sin, without non-compliance. This can be all consuming.

I think this explains how good doctors and medical professionals have been turned to conformity with a system which results in harm to patients, not treating with antivirals for COVID, while experiencing all of the suffering in their compassionate hearts, serving long hours in a system, within which they sought devoutly to comply. Many of these dedicated medical professionals were becoming emotionally exhausted and overwhelmed in these long months of service.

I remember not questioning protocols when I was in training. I was learning and doing my best, and I did both. I remember volunteering as a subject for the AIDS-Vaccine trials around Y2k, without question, as soon as I heard that there was a trial site in Austin, and a doctor I knew was a co-investigator.

I was lucky, as it turns out. I recently learned that the trial was halted early, which I had been told at the time, because vaccine recipient gay men had a higher risk of contracting AIDS than the gay male control group. I was never told that.

I was not at that particular risk, and I had happened to be randomly assigned to a non-active-vaccine arm. I suspected that I might have been given adjuvant-without-vaccine, because I did have various symptoms, which I duly recorded. Maybe not, though.

AIDS was the disease of my medical school years, described the summer I started working in research at the med school, before starting fall classes. I learned hard. I saw a lot of strange hypotheses about the cause of AIDS rise and fall. I saw a lot of bad advice given. I saw a lot of people treated like lepers. I saw fear and disgust among some of my peers. I saw some of my peers in med school working as gay prostitutes in Houston. I never questioned the official narrative once it was formulated. I did my best to serve within that narrative. I took an elective with an AIDS specialist in residency.

Did I sometimes mistreat people based upon recommendations which would later change? Probably. I did my best, and that was always appreciated.

So I was trained as a scientist, beginning in engineering, and drifting into pre-med when I got a job in a hospital, working my way through college. I did well in scientific research in college and med school. I was suited to asking questions, finding potential answers, and testing whether they were actually right or not. I was good at that kind of scientific process, and good at working with lab animals (RIP), but I also accepted the hierarchy as being right most of the time, at least as my initial assumption. I did not really question the whole format, but I did learn that some of the better funded labs "always got the results that were expected" and were well funded with grants as a result. This was a subtle denigration, but I knew what it meant. They were scientific prostitutes for hire.

I was fortunate to work on NASA grants for weightlessness-deconditioning research. NASA wanted the truth. No inherent conflicts...

Scientism is prostituted, and that has been the advancing business model as corporate grants fund the parts of science which can justify the use of patents to make exclusive profits on scientifically-proven products, processes and drugs, to pay for more scientific studies to prove that profitable things are uniquely good.

When the same corporations "capture" their government regulatory bodies ("revolving door syndrome") and buy up the print and broadcast media after people quit buying subscriptions, and own the internet monopolies, the game can be played very hard, very fast and very loose. That's what we have been living through for 2 years.

https://www.johndayblog.com/2022/02/investigating-reality.html

Expand full comment

I think your theory has a lot of validity to it!!

Expand full comment

Reality is a philosophical construct. We perceive through our senses, through cognition; and our perception informs our perspective. There are as many 'realities' as there are sentient lifeforms, and perhaps more.

The limitations of science make it an insufficient toolkit to understand the experience we call "life".

Expand full comment

think absolutely we have ‘free will’ but sometimes delude ourselves due to underlying fear, greed and any sort of negative emotional rationale.

stumbled across and just started to read a great Substack on 5th dimension ‘Past, Present, Future Newsletter’... firsthand experience.

was trying to see your background photography... vegetable garden with drip irrigation? ... yum!🐱🙏🐱

off topic... my dad was a geologist and i remember one vacation we stopped by John Day in Oregon to look for fossils... my dad was always collecting rocks💕

Expand full comment

Oh, I'm not related to THAT John Day, and have not been there yet...

Expand full comment

Thanks Kitten. I am a vegetable gardener. There is a picture of our small town garden last October at this link. https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/again-why-shortages-are-permanent.html

The back-yard-now-garden in Austin (rented 1/2 duplex) is the blog background.

My 7/4/16 "Liberty Garden" post has my succession-rotation gardening protocols for climate zone 8a (Austin) https://www.johndayblog.com/2016/07/liberty-garden-central-texas-climate.html

Expand full comment

your veggie garden looks amazing... it’s really an ‘art’ doing it this way with rotation an replenishing the soil... am something of a soil connoisseur... for decades had a veggie garden but more recently it’s been too difficult because our water is extremely saline... and the stress of the restrictions was too much for me to invest the time and then possibly not be able to keep the plants alive so, other than my citrus trees, apple tree & cherimoya i now just stick to zucchini (& tomato’s in pots.)... now mainly grow my roses.

Expand full comment

Thanks Kitten. I have pretty good physical vigor, still, and am engaged with this life-stewardship project, mainly as an R&D guy, but I have to show how to grow your own food, so I have to do it. Yoakum has good "Blackland Prairie" "gumbo". Austin has some soil if you can get the rocks out of it. I took 3 truckloads of stones out of that pictured garden, birthed them all by hand. Slow... Sore-making...

Expand full comment

heard all about Austin’s rocky soil from a friend a long time ago... here the issue is dense alkaline clay... which I basically have been amending forever... but totally worth it... anything to make the plants happy!

Expand full comment

I wrote this at some point (before 2020) https://tessafightsrobots.com/tessa-lena/facts-soundbites-truth/

Expand full comment

It's long. What part(s).

:-}

Expand full comment

the last part.

thought, at first you were replying to my post on the ‘long’ tentacles of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Expand full comment

Yeah...The last part that shows is bad. Part 2 gets more uplifting eventually. this has been gestating in my consciousness and came out long.

Expand full comment

If somebody agreed with me 100% I would be very suspicious ;) The whole point is that because we DON'T know everything, we need to talk to one another to increase our understanding of what we don't know!

Expand full comment

Exactly. It's rare to agree with somebody on everything, and expecting it is an exercise in bitterness in practice. I mean yes, there are important things and it's natural for people to feel warm and fuzzy about those who agree on those important things, and not necessarily feel warm and fuzzy otherwise... but demanding total agreement? That's a bit immature!

Expand full comment

"if the goal is the truth..." - know that truths come from community. Stronger truths are found by building stronger, more inclusive communities. Excluding any community locks out important truths, limiting truths and truth values.

Expand full comment

<<focus on defending our dignity and helping each other without demanding or even expecting total agreement on every monumental mystery of life or postulate of science, this second, immediately, or else you are not on my team>>

Word. This vile tendency has been trained into people by social media's binary ecology of like/dislike.

Expand full comment

Ideology as a package deal. The world as black and white. Eclectics not allowed.

Expand full comment

Yes!! And thank you

Expand full comment

This is very good and needed now more than ever with the seemingly inevitable breakdown of views about ANYTHING into warring camps even if they're on the same side of truth... Viruses don't exist, viruses are real, Dr Fauci must be fired a s a p, getting rid of Fauci will do nothing, Klaus Schwab is the real threat, Klaus Scwab is insane...it goes on and on. THIS REMINDS ME, TESSA, of what the Greek gods had to say about humans: "They can only know half about anything. The moment they presume to know more they are trespassing on our territory and will be punished for their arrogance." We need some humility about the limits of our perception.

Expand full comment

I know!! That's what I was talking about! We can't decide the nature of viruses or what we know as viruses this second, with total and final certainty. It's okay to have different ideas and perceptions about it! It's fine!!! This whole things we are living through is an abusive scam regardless!

Expand full comment

Thank you for your wonderful work Tessa!

Expand full comment

Thank you Gary!

Expand full comment

Tessa, I so love where you are coming from. It resonates deeply!

Expand full comment

Thank you!!

Expand full comment

Honestly, Tessa, I had to read the first few paragraphs several times. At first read, I thought you had lost your mind! Surely, that was not Tessa speaking, telling me 'dogma.' Struggling to understand, I thought, irony?

I'm usually a careful reader, and now I think I understand what you were saying, after several readings, and that you were voicing the dogma of others, but to be frank, I'm still somewhat confused.

Still, I like you very much and am certain I'm on your team. Don't kick me off! I got your back.

Expand full comment

Tessa is saying that she doesn't accept dogma, even from herself. All of our knowledge and theories are tentative, not final. If you believe you have certain knowledge you will close your mind to any evidence or alternate explanations that contradict your certainties. Dogmatic faith in the certain truth of your beliefs closes your mind to new information, new knowledge that should induce you to "change your mind". Dogmatists refuse to change their minds, and instead cling to their certainties. Unfortunately dogmatism reigns in pretty much all realms of academia where "authoritative consensus belief" is assumed to be "certain knowledge" or "the facts". Max Planck put it like this, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Dogmatists go to their grave insisting that their false certainties are universal truths of reality. While they are alive their "authority" convinces many people to close their minds to evidence and believe in the false theories - like Darwinian evolution, CO2 driven climate change, the pandemic, standard model quantum physics and cosmology, and all the other great untruths of our time.

Expand full comment

Yes, thank you, that's what I concluded after I read it over several times.

Still, ironic to change "our" mind now, immediately, or off the team. Like the old saw about "all truth is relative," except, apparently, that truth.

Expand full comment

Dana, Darryl, thank you, yes, that's what I meant more or less, I will clarify more after I get back, speaking at a rally soon and out of the door!!

I was mainly talking about people fighting over germ vs terrain theory while so much is at stake and so many things that need to be dealt with immediately, and we can unite over it regardless of whether people believe in germ or terrain or both. But I'll say more later!! xo

Expand full comment

The very best to you at your rally. Exciting!!

Expand full comment

The soul is inclusive.

You are right 🙏

Expand full comment

Inspiring article that along with all your other articles, I enjoyed reading Tessa.

People need to have the freedom to be. Freedom to just be the way they are in any given moment. We can share and invite each other into communication - but our realities in this life of dualism are bound to differ from time to time. With total acknowledge of all aspects of each other, our reality will become ‘really real’ when the time is ripe. And that moment comes in its own way when we are most receptive to it, and not so stuck in any belief-system.

The Internet of Underwater Things... I don't see it as nuts. Many people think that I am nuts and it’s OK to be nuts – in fact it holds a fascination for me! I have ditched my smart phone for a standard dumb phone, it is turned on just for signing into things. I have read The Invisible Rainbow, and a lot rang true for me. I was diagnosed as EMF sensitive back in the early 90s by an 'alternative doctor', but didn't quite believe it - it was just battery wrist watches etc back then, that I stopped wearing and I regained some energy that I had lost from having M.E (myalgic encephalitis). I don't know what happened then, I started feeling much better and allowed myself get swept along with cell-phones etc, but back into bouts of extreme exhaustion.

I am retired now, so perhaps it's an easy enough thing for me to do. All my appliances at home are now wired and my dumb phone kept switched off if not needed and in a Faraday Box.

Expand full comment

Wow Derek, thank you for sharing your story! I think EMFs are really not great for us, with some people being affected more than others. But for now. it is being ignored, except by those affected!

Expand full comment

I think the problem is that people are hooked on smart technology. It holds a fascination I guess, that is something I know about having worked as a psychotherapists. Some fascinations are harmful and the world is hooked.

Expand full comment

Thank you Tessa for the 'softer notes'. This is a powerful compilation and I needed a touch of lightness to protect my heart. We need a little knowing that we are not alone from time to time. I have a personal testimony to add to your philosophising - I have been thinking a lot about truth and Truth. It has come to me that truth is a word I find harder and harder to use - there is 'judgement' attached to truth, a finality, and I definitely have come to understand that it is not our place to put a fullstop after any claimed truth. We may collect pieces of the puzzle, or dots that make up an image, on our path to understand the Truth, but we are to be satisfied that it is not for us to know, as you illuminate so well. I like more and more the word, Maybe...

Expand full comment

When they catch moderna CEO and the other criminals, their assets should be seized fully and their families given UBI instead.

Why the fuck do these criminals get to steal millions and then spend jail time without giving back what they fucking stole?

Anyway here's a funny study on the medical convid

https://viroliegy.com/2022/02/11/challenging-sars-cov-2/

Expand full comment

Hey Tessa, love your stuff. I'm working on a descriptive phrase for our current medical condition, here's the current version: "COVID-19: A pan-global mass media formation psychosis TwitFaceMaskedTubeGram propa-demic."

Expand full comment

Thank you Tracy!!

Expand full comment

Beautiful insights, quotes to keep safe and remember. Thank you.

Expand full comment