Category: Digging for Courage

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New Friends

I sat at my dining room table with three new friends today. These were home educating moms who had brought their children over to build in our Lego workshop.

We didn’t talk politics, Covid, nor any of the mainstream narratives. We discussed unschooling and our greatly varying paths to a similar mindset.

I don’t know if I would have met these amazing women if not for the Lockdown and happy coincidence. In the chaos of the new social divisions, I have sought out those who would think for themselves and be willing to meet and connect in honest exchange.

That has meant forming new groups and opening my home when so many doors are closed.

I am grateful for these opportunities to connect. I am more a social creature than most. These connections are lifeblood.

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100% Compliance?

If there hasn’t been full compliance (With what exactly? Guidance has been shifting, they lied about masks, restrictions are confusing and sometimes contradictory, and the “laws” are ad hoc and unenforceable), what rational mind would expect 100% compliance to occur?

Without the compliance you call for, our numbers are magnitudes below the predictions. The noncompliant have been reinforced in their beliefs by results.

How is calling them stupid going to get your desired results?

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I’ll Take the Freedom, If You Please

The Lockdown is killing untold numbers. Many sources have numbers already beyond covid deaths. The years of life lost due to the economic restrictions are outweighing the likely years lost by covid deaths.

I don’t think it’s a close call. But if it is, if more freedom will equal approximately as many deaths as less freedom, then YES give me more freedom and allow me to use my own capabilities of risk assessment.

I don’t take any of this lightly. My seemingly healthy wife died from complications arising from influenza. Did somebody go to work when they shouldn’t have? Did somebody not wash their hands? Should she have skipped a hug? A party? A homeschool field trip?

Would she have lived a smaller life knowing she might die in her 40s? Or a larger one?

I’m opting for a large life because I don’t know how long it’ll be. That includes doing the only thing I can do to combat any pathogen: make healthier choices.

Suffering is essential to life. But when it is imposed by a government that has no concern for my wellbeing, then I will fight against it through civil disobedience, sharing information, and applauding those who do the same.

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Digging for Courage, Part II

I started this blog category near the beginning of the Covid Lockdown. I used this space to explore the gut-level intuition that the popular narrative was wrong and dangerous. I felt powerless and confused. Little information was available and huge things were happening. I was reading and searching and fighting for a truth that wasn’t clear.

I found clarity through writing, praying, and living by the principles that had ushered me through dark times. It was like becoming a widower again: easier in that I had done that before, harder in that the whole world was experiencing the trauma collectively. There was no one with an outside perspective.

I don’t know how I moved through the malaise exactly, there are many movements to the process and they’re complicated by past traumas and assumptions. But I did move through it into a place of meaning and happiness. As tribes collapsed, I found the individuals who shared my journey and new bonds formed. I saw a rebuilding of community out of the wreckage of government restrictions on assembly. I found my place and purpose.

Part II: Weariness, accumulation of pain, old trauma back for healing, another business shutting down, self doubt, looming threat of increased restrictions, and a salad bowl of shit storms are riding me again.

It’s easier this time. Second rodeo and all that rot. I know there’s a stronger Jason waiting for me at the end of the day. Heck, I know there’s a stronger Jason at the end of this post (’cause the end of the day might not come).

So, back to it. I’ve got a fantastic life that’s only going to get better. I’m grateful to God for the strange miracle gift of language and for this crazy brain of mine that will not accept defeat.

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The Safety of Schools Reopening

My fears are no higher than those due to influenza. Influenza appears to be more prevalent among, and more dangerous to, school children.

I have the choice to keep my children out of those institutions. I do not have the choice to keep anyone else out, so we maximize our health and engage freely with anyone who respects our choices.

Lots of schools around the world are open, many never closed. Between suicide, depression, abuse, and delayed care, it seems those societies that chose lighter restrictions have come out ahead.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-19/covid-s-spread-in-schools-is-questioned-in-latest-nordic-study

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Honor Your Body

This’ll sound simplistic to many, but maybe it is this simple:

Most people survived the virus with no masks in November to April. The answer then is still the answer: Healthier people are more capable of surviving pathogens.

Every person can be healthier, whether immunocompromised or in seemingly peak health.

The answer is better choices for yourself, because health is individual. Only you can know your body and what it needs. Educate yourself about yourself, then learn what you can do to better honor your body, then do ONE THING better.

Once you see results from that one thing, you will be hungry for the next thing. Then you will be as powerful in the world as you should be.

Hold on, I gotta take this call from Jocko…

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Today, Choose Life

If more people aren’t vocal against the Lockdown, we’re going to see more devastation done to our lives.

Whatever version of “life” the technocrats and experts feel we’re allowed to have is not enough. You choose the size of your life, not the length.

If you want to avoid a public you see as dangerous, no one is stopping you. Wear your mask, get your vaccine, stay away from whomever you want, and protect your values.

The rest of us want to rebuild the damage done. The only time is the present. Act today because there may not be a tomorrow.

I’ve been inspired to be a pain in the ass by Tom Woods and Dr. Scott Atlas.

“I am angry at the people who were wrong and who insist on prolonging these policies that are killing people, particularly people who are not in their socioeconomic class. It’s no problem for a person who has a high-level job in government, or an academic job, to sit there and pontificate when the average guy is being destroyed. That I am angry about and I think history will record these people very harshly — it is an epic failure of massive proportion that they have abandoned regular people here with their own hubris and political agenda. In that sense, yeah, I’m angry.”

“All of these harms are massive for the working class and the lower socioeconomic groups. The people who are upper class, who can work from home, the people who can sip their latte and complain that their children are underfoot or that they have to come up with extra money to hire a tutor privately — these are people who are not impacted by the lockdowns.”

Scott Atlas, by way of Tom Woods’s newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/atlasyetagain?e=f29701e15a

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Imposter Syndrome

A few days ago I saw myself in a mirror. I looked strong. I felt strong and happy. I was between soccer games, cleaning out the garage, gardening, and enjoying a sunny afternoon with my girlfriend.
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Strangers, friends, and family have told me I’m strong in a number of ways.
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I looked down at my legs today and they looked frail. A couple rough days of parenting, someone dear to me reaching out for help in tears, news of another community broken apart by varying approaches to the Lockdowns, and a wellspring of insecurities have transformed the image of my body. I don’t know what good I am to the world in this moment.
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Searching for a positive turn to this post…not there yet.

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Is “Lockdown” Appropriate?

Delaware wasn’t the worst, but this was the official headline on March 22: Governor Carney Issues Stay-at-Home Order for Delawareans https://news.delaware.gov/2020/03/22/governor-carney-issues-stay-at-home-order-for-delawareans/

Yes, the details permitted limited access to the outdoors, but the list of what was deemed “essential” was nonsensical from the start. And the message was clear: “Stay-At-Home.” Government has no idea how to, nor the right to, define what is “essential.”

The economy is people and their decisions. The government restrictions have ruined some businesses already. Others will be failing soon. Excess deaths due to the Lockdown of medical services (I would expect that measures so extreme that people die would constitute the use of the term “Lockdown”) are criminal and that fallout continues.

Lockdown

A friend of mine in Germany was not allowed out of her apartment for more than an hour per day with her two sons. She’s a single, widowed mom. That’s the government acting like an abusive partner, “I know what’s best for you.”

Melbourne is under Lockdown: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/melbourne-australia-covid-lockdown-dan-andrews.html

Lockdowns in Hawaii are devastating the economy: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hawaii-loses-half-of-economic-recovery-amid-second-covid-lockdown-as-cases-spike/ar-BB196Wxt

Thirteen people died in a Lockdown raid in Peru: “The club held an illegal Saturday night party that was raided by the police. There was panic. Thirteen people died in the ensuing stampede. Officials later revealed that 11 of the dead tested positive for the coronavirus.”
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/907084962/peru-locked-down-early-now-it-battles-one-of-the-worst-coronavirus-outbreaks

Many businesses were locked down, unable to open. Most are still locked down in capacity, unable to sustain their already slim margins. Each of the individuals running these businesses were locked down in their ability to provide for themselves, their family, and the community.

Have we been put into cages? No. Are there tanks with loudspeakers keeping us in our homes? No. That’s all, “It could be worse” bullshit. It can always be worse. We’re a nation that went to war over much lighter restrictions dictated by a faraway government. The government that now imposes an economy (read: people and their decisions)-killing Lockdown is insulated from those restrictions. They are far away from our lives and their disregard for human flourishing is inexcusable.

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This one is not for Doomers.

One of the reasons I have trouble thinking COVID-19 is a global conspiracy is what is happening in the public school system.

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Caveats:

1. I listen to conspiracy theorists, they often share information that injures the gatekeepers of knowledge (government, corporate media); and therefore, will not make it into “reputable” sources.

2. I don’t need a conspiracy to know that government will take every opportunity to assume more power. This is a basic human desire and when alternative incentives are reduced, it is driven by the survival instinct.
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At the very least, this is a terribly thought out conspiracy.

With school shutdowns, many people are being forced to consider homeschooling. This has never been the case before. Almost every pre-COVID discussion I’ve had with parents who have chosen public/private school starts with a remedial course on homeschooling.

Now, people are being exposed to the principles every day. Some are engaging to varying degrees and many more are seeing their friends and family try a different educational path.

Ultimately, fewer children will be returning to the classroom. Whether it’s those who love virtual/remote learning, radical unschoolers, or the infinite rainbow between, schools will look differently.

I’ve been concerned with what that will mean for the home education community, but as our ranks grow, we are sure to gain strong champions for the cause of educational freedom.

This postive change of perspective was inspired by the following conversation:

Tom Woods Interviews Jeff Deist on Silver Linings from the COVID Dystopia