The Vaccine Debate As A Look At Intellectual Paralysis

Dryvaxby Jordan Everest, contributor

These days, it seems that it’s becoming more and more difficult to make a properly informed choice about whether or not to vaccinate our children. If you’re paying attention, you’ve probably read or heard of the horror stories by parents claiming that their children have been injured by the vaccines given to them by our “trusted” medical establishments; most commonly we hear about the autism injury. Then a little more digging reveals medical professionals and other academics dismissing these claims as unsupported, biased, debunked, outright false or symptoms of conspiratorial and delusional thinking.

Again, if you’re paying attention, you will come across many more sorts of conspiracy theories which will have other experts and generally the same academics coming along and using the same arguments and the same terms to describe and discredit those ideas as well: unsupported, debunked, false, or symptoms of conspiratorial and delusional thinking. Most notable in all of this is the word “conspiracy”. It is used within a limited and specified context which ends up biasing its meaning for us. That bias stems from the media suggestions we receive and the subliminal conditionings we undergo as a consequence of those messages.

We do indeed, all of us, suffer from disordered thinking to one degree or another. The sheer volume of information (let alone misinformation and disinformation), the distractions of low-quality entertainment or the personal struggles and pressures we face in our everyday lives, makes it very easy for us to be led astray by any and all messages conforming to our individual tastes and beliefs; this is called cognitive dissonance and it plays a huge role in whether or not we will accept any piece of information as “rational” or not, much less true.

This is an important consideration when discussing any important issue, whether social, political, economic or health related such as vaccines. These are issues which have reverberating effects through society as a whole and they always affect you. It is important for you to be curious and to ask questions if you’re unsure about something, especially the horrifying possibility that you may be putting your child’s health at risk with vaccines. I’m not saying that this is the case but simply that it is not a bad thing to inquire and open your mind to new possibilities.

But you may find that once you do this, you end up even more confused about what’s real or what’s true. We all have something of a nonsense detector and we are capable of using reason and logic in order to evaluate what is happening around us, but that sense of logic and reasonable evaluation has been rendered impotent because of how abundant and sometimes complex all the information out there can be. Then, there is our willingness to believe certain ideas we find in the information universe; ideas we find attractive because they conform to our internal model of reality.

Once we’ve assembled enough of these ideas during the course of our lives, that model, or framework, becomes the basis on which we interpret everything. As different as our individual frameworks can be however, there is one common information-based thread which may be capable of uniting our conflicting perspectives. That thread is the unquestioned understanding we all have of the existence of major corruption in the halls of power.

This is an idea that most of us just take for granted, as a given. We rarely hear debates about whether or not the people running our formal institutions are corrupt or not. We generally accept that many of them simply are, whether they embezzle money, take bribes, sign laws or bills which favor corporate interests as opposed to the interests of the people, or break the public trust by making promises they don’t intend to keep in order to be voted into office; things like that.

It is this which is usually responsible for why most conspiratorial thinking exists to begin with. Before some people get to the more extreme ideas like extra-terrestrials and alien origins or the illuminati and secret agendas or any of that stuff, they always have, integrated within them the more basic, non-debatable and thoroughly authenticated examples of money and power being abused for personal gain.

How many stories do we hear of politicians being lobbied by big oil or big tobacco, bankers

 controlling and manipulating money supplies, oil interests shutting down development of electric vehicles or more efficient and renewable energy technologies? Or maybe you’re more familiar with the scandals and controveries surrounding the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry; how they influence the way that medicine is practiced in North-America by persistently encouraging a drug-based medical philosophy.

Or yet again, maybe you’ve heard stories about how actual cures for cancer are suppressed by these same industries who’s profits depend on you believing their rhetoric and legally backed half-truths about drugs and chemo. Have you heard about GMO’s? Have you heard about fluroide? Monosodium Glutamate? Aspartame? What about fracking? Have you paid at least some attention about why the US economy imploded because of illegal and immoral banking practices? How about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq which turned out to be a complete fiction? Or a little oil spill disaster in the gulf of mexico, which still hasn’t been properly dealt with? What do you think about how lawyers operate?

Do you see where this is going? For the most part, more of us than not have an integrated understanding that these products and circumstances are very real and that they are toxic and destructive to both the environment as well as our physical and mental health. So now, amidst the sheer volume of lies found-out, corruptions exposed, deceits revealed and other things which don’t quite add up to a complete answer (I’m looking at you, 9/11), is it really any wonder that the common human being has an instinctive distrust of our social/political/economic system? Are we really going to look all of this in the face and then say to ourselves, “Yes but they wouldn’t lie to us about vaccines.”?

Let’s take a moment here and assume that maybe we’re not being lied to. There is in fact reason to believe that vaccines do have their place in health care. But here it’s important to be able to distinguish a lie from a half-truth. It’s the difference between asking “Are vaccines safe?” and “Are we perhaps over-vaccinating?” The EPA, CDC, and the FDA have formally established a limit to the amount of ethylmercury which children and adults may be “safely” exposed to in any one day. There are many documented cases which reveal that this limit is rarely adhered to.

1 – But is it the vaccines alone which cause injury to children or is it the total net amount of toxins going into their bodies because of the rising toxicity levels in the mothers carrying and nursing them? Have you heard or read about the controversial health hazards of store-bought infant formula?

2 – Could that be a concern, adding more complexity to the issue?

Nothing happens in isolation and there are always subtle and complex interrelations between every action and every circumstance in this world. But what overshadows everything is our implicit understanding that the corrupting tentacles of wealth and power-fixation among the financial-elites is everywhere. Our literature, history, current affairs, legal domains, as well as corporate and political proceedings are saturated by corruption and parasitic practices; and this is where our vaccines come from.

But is there actually some sinsiter intent harbored by the money-interested ruling class of our civilization to keep us sick and enslaved, or is the interest in money so strong that our culture actually associates a sense of morality towards it; a morality which outweighs and downplays the value of health for the planet and the people? Would you be surprised to discover that there is in fact a rich repertoire of literature and philosophy out there which does advocate the “morality” of profit and selfishness?

3 – Could it be that this “morality” is but another form of cognitive dissonance for all of those who do enjoy major wealth in the world as it is? Could this “morality” be a form of relativism much like the differences of morality seen across contrasting cultures like North America and the Middle East?

Considering this pro-money/pro-capitalism moral philosophy, we might ask ourselves: “Is the increased distribution of vaccines, the inclusion of toxic chemicals in our food and water, or the refusal to make right all the major man-made environmental catastrophes nothing more than just business as usual? Is our victimization merely a by-product?”

In short, is our collective sickness part of an agenda to rule the world or is it all just an accident of fate? Who the hell knows? But we are witnessing the exact same results either way: sickness and decay. The only reason why people are beginning to question the safety of vaccines is because all of the formal institutions which govern and regulate our lives in this civilization have effectively forfeited their credibility. The people within those institutions are repeatedly caught in a never-ending series of lies and they demonstrate again and again, deceits and immoral practices. Why wouldn’t they lack credibility with us?

The vaccine debate is only a symptom of a much larger problem where the agendas of financial interests completely undermine not only health but clarity and sense. When we humble tax-paying, working-class citizens begin to take to take an interest in all the issues and discover so much corruption, obfuscation and ulterior motives, suspicion is a natural human reaction which can easily escalate to outright conspiracy theory, whether the conspiracies exist or not.

It is our innate psychological tendency to look for patterns and fill in the blanks if information is missing for our internal model of reality. Instead of debasing and condescending those individuals who’s mental model differs from our own, we should try to appreciate that it is our sick and broken system, hijacked by irrational elitist philosophies, which cultivates and encourages confusion and combative thinking. Whether it is deliberate or inadvertant is secondary to the importance of how we might overcome this intellectual paralysis.

Open your mind and stay patient with others. Your willingness to learn also opens the door for your opportunity to teach. We’re all in this together.

References:

1 : Congressional Record: Mercury in Medicine Report 

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2003-05-21/pdf/CREC-2003-05-21-pt1-PgE1011-3.pdf

2:  Health hazards of store-bought infant formula 

http://www.waba.org.my/whatwedo/advocacy/pdf/21dangers.pdf

http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/02/spinning-suspect-ingredients-in-baby-formula/?gclid=COvAreKzsb0CFYY7MgodcjoAKw

http://www.bellybelly.com.au/pregnancy/baby-formula#.UzNo5s9OXVI

3:  Objectivism and rational self-interest 

http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-works/the-virtue-of-selfishness.html

The morality of capitalism:

http://studentsforliberty.org/morality-of-capitalism/

Author bio:

My name is Jordan Everest. I have spent many excruciating years in indentured slavery and have struggled hard to find my way and my purpose in this universe. I must admit that in many ways I am still asleep and ignorant of life’s true beauty and joy. Philosophy and writing are my passions and through these things, I seek my path. I have much to share and even more to learn. Thank You!

Image Credit

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Source Article from http://truththeory.com/2014/03/29/the-vaccine-debate-as-a-look-at-intellectual-paralysis/

Views: 0

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress | Designed by: Premium WordPress Themes | Thanks to Themes Gallery, Bromoney and Wordpress Themes