Despite trying to be careful with my argument, and despite trying hard to find a common ground and reducing my argument to a very basic, hopefully agreeable level, some of my closest friends will still call me a conspiracist. It hurts. It’s the feeling that you share so many common things with your friend, you have many good laughs together. But when it comes to a heated topic like the second lockdown, your friends will fall back to commonplaces that they heard elsewhere, noting that they spent a lot of time of their own reading about the topic. Your friends and family have made an investment. But that investment of time was bad. Now they’re too embarrassed to say that they may have been wrong. And they will rather cling to that commonplace and decide to not listen to you. Even call you a conspiracist. Which is probably a painful position for them to be in, but also not so painful because it’s a seemingly shared position with people out there.

I get angry when my friends say that I’m on Facebook too much. They are the first ones in the argument to talk about my possibly personal psychological deficiencies. I’m too easily influenced by the lunatics. I hang out in the wrong online communities. The fact of the matter is though that my own sources may not be theirs, but that they’re diverse. And I rarely hang out on Facebook, and never to read about politics or the pandemic. What I do read occasionally is news about these topics and others from sources like RT or tweets from people like Michael Tracey. But I also read a lot of Guardian, and NYT. Every time trying to stay skeptical and aware of the agendas that each one of these sources may have.

But this blog shouldn’t be about my disappointment with my friends or family. I have come to make peace with this. They’re still my friends and I love them. They’re just misguided, and to be fair, they will most of the time be happy to listen to me, as long as I approach them with a good mood. It just can be frustrating at times and I’m not resistant to emotions either, and sometimes I do get upset and angry during our arguments. I am trying to work on this, and it’s okay. I love my friends and family. And again, there’s luckily many that will listen to me with an open mind, and without much prejudice.

Of course some people actually fall for the malicious kind of conspiracy theories. And they may not be few. When talking about topics such as the lockdown, in everyday situations, with people, be it in the office or during transport, I believe I’m broadly recognizing three kinds of positions: 1) Those that generally believe in the good of human and believe that everyone’s doing their best including politicians and newspapers. 2) Those that believe that generally most politicians are against them or against their group, and that there’s likely a conspiracy going on against them. 3) Those that are trying to find a middle ground.

I believe that most people will fall in the first two categories, not listening to each other, which is a problem. Both group 1 and 2 will tend to be stubborn in their opinion, which is why group 3 will sometimes be struggling. Being in a larger group of people in terms of beliefs or opinions tends to be a mentally easier position to be in. And human nature has a tendency to stay aligned with their peers. Which is a natural force against having a good old argument and being open to it. Furthermore, groups 1 and 2 will have a concept of the opposite group and they will tend to not believe that there’s a group 3, instead putting people from group 3 into the opposite group. Such that the maybe conservative group 1 will say that people who oppose their position are conspiracists or too radical. And people from the group 2 will tend to say that opposing opinions are reactionary.

Here's the main point I want to make: Let’s all try to be open to argument, even if you’ve heard it before, even if you feel exhausted. It’s always worthwhile listening to other people, even if you have a strong hunch that they’re wrong. Keep listening to them, keep talking. It’s good for you and it’s good for everyone else. We’re all friends. We’re all in the same boat. No one benefits from silos.

The best way to get out of this mess is to seek our ties to friends and families, despite the social distancing and because days are getting shorter. And if those ties are emotional, the better. In these times, people are more isolated than usual, and yet it’s so important the we stay in touch and we keep talking to each other.

PS: You may be interested in reading this article: It’s time for an alternative to lockdown.

While reading Erich Fromm's Escape From Freedom, I came across this passage from English economic historian R. H. Tawney's book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, which elaborates the medieval view on economic activities:

Material riches are necessary; they have secondary importance, since without them men cannot support themselves and help one another [...] But economic motives are suspect. Because they are powerful appetites, men fear them, but they are not mean enough to applaud them [...] There is no place in medieval theory for economic activity which is not related to a moral end, and to found a science of society upon the assumption that the appetite for economic gain is a constant and measurable force, to be accepted like other natural forces, as an inevitable and self-evident datum, would have appeared to the medieval thinker as hardly less irrational and less immoral than to make the premise of social philosophy the unrestrained operation of such necessary human attributes as pugnacity and the sexual instinct [...] Riches, as St. Antonio says, exist for man, not man for riches [...] At every turn therefore, there are limits, restrictions, warnings against allowing economic interests to interfere with serious affairs. It is right for a man to seek such wealth as is necessary for a livelihood in his station. To seek more is not enterprise, but avarice, and avarice is a deadly sin. Trade is legitimate; the different resources of different countries show that it was intended by Providence. But it is a dangerous business. A man must be sure that he carries it on for the public benefit, and that the profits which he takes are no more than the wages of his labour. Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are common. But it is to be tolerated as a concession to human frailty, not applauded as desirable in itself; the ideal—if only man's nature could rise to it—is communism. "Communis enim," wrote Gratian in his decretum, "usus omnium quae sunt in hoc mundo, omnibus hominibus esse debuit." [1] At best, indeed, the estate is somewhat encumbered. It must be legitimately acquired. It must be in the largest possible number of hands. It must provide for the support of the poor. Its use must as far as practicable be common. Its owners must be ready to share it with those who need, even if they are not in actual destitution.

(My emphasis)

According to Tawney, the basic medieval assumptions concerning economic life were two: "That economic interests are subordinate to the real business of life, which is salvation, and that economic conduct is one aspect of personal conduct, upon which as on other parts of it, the rules of morality are binding."

Today, it seems that people often assume that the free market is a natural force and that other apects of human life, out of necessity, have to be subordinate to it. It turns out that in the Middle Ages, the opposite was expressed in the doctrines of the Catholic Church, and in secular law.

To constantly portray the capitalist market as a natural force, as the corporate media does, is to help sustain these avaricious economic interests that threaten to destroy our planet, and that are a direct cause of immense human suffering around the world.

The following is an excerpt from the book Newspeak in the 21st Century by David Edwards and David Cromwell of Media Lens published in 2009 by Pluto Press. You can find out more about the book and buy it here.

In 2006, an explosive front-page article in the Independent was titled: "Earth's ecological debt crisis: mankind's 'borrowing' from nature hits new record." Martin Hickman, the newspaper's consumer affairs correspondent, explained the results of a study featured in the story:

Evidence is mounting that rapid population growth and rising living standards among the Earth's six billion inhabitants are putting an intolerable strain on nature. For the first time an organisation — a British think-tank — has sought to pinpoint how quickly man is using the global resources of farming land, forests, fish, air and energy.

By analysing data from the US academic group Global Footprint Network, the think-tank has worked out the day each year when "humanity starts eating the planet". Just like a company bound for bankruptcy, the world started falling into ecological debt on October 9 that year. Hickman explained: "Problems, affecting everything from the seabed to the stratosphere, range from carbon dioxide emissions to the destruction of rainforests to the intensification of agriculture". The crisis Hickman was describing could hardly be more serious: humanity really is devouring the planet's life-support systems. And yet, typically for mainstream reporting, Hickman's analysis of the causes behind the crisis was lost in unsupported, clichéd assertions about "rapid population growth" and global "rising living standards". It is not just that "mankind" is "'borrowing' from nature", as Hickman claimed — the problem is rooted in a particular form of politics controlled by wealthy elites.

Consider some of the key issues that should be at the heart of any analysis of the looming catastrophe under discussion. And consider how inclusion of these issues is all but inconceivable in any corporate newspaper. These issues include:

1. The inherently biocidal, indeed psychopathic, logic of corporate capitalism, structurally locked into generating maximised revenues in minimum time at minimum cost. As corporations are legally obliged to maximise profits for shareholders, it is in fact illegal for corporations to prioritise the welfare of people and planet above private profits. How can this simple fact of entrenched corporate immorality not be front and centre in any discussion of the industrial destruction of global life-support systems?
2. The proven track record of big business in promoting catastrophic consumption regardless of the consequences for human and environmental health. Whether disregarding the links between smoke and cancer, junk food and obesity, Third World exploitation and human suffering, oil exploration and lethal climate change, factory farming and animal suffering, high salt consumption and illness, corporations have consistently subordinated human and animal welfare to short-term profits.
3. The relentless corporate lobbying of government to shape policies to promote and protect private power.
4. The billions spent by the advertising industry to promote consumer products and services, creating artificial 'needs', with children an increasing target.
5. The collusion between powerful companies, investors and state planners to install compliant dictators in client states around the world.
6. The extensive use of loans and tied aid that ensnare poor nations in webs of debt, ensuring that the West retains control of their resources, markets and development.
7. The deployment of threats, bribery and armed force against countries that attempt to pursue self-development, rather than economic or strategic planning sanctioned by 'the international community'.
8. The lethal role of the corporate media in promoting the planet-devouring aims of private power.

In a powerful book titled The Decline of Capitalism, economist Harry Shutt explains how the current system ensures "the wasteful diversion of economic value added into the pockets of the small minority who also (through their disproportionate wealth) exercise largely unaccountable political power". As Shutt rightly concludes, global capitalism is "too dysfunctional to be tolerable in a civilised society". Forty years ago, Martin Luther King called for "a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society". He observed: "Global capitalism is much more concerned with expanding the domain of market relations than with, say, establishing democracy, expanding elementary education, or enhancing the social opportunities of society's underdogs." Indeed, King increasingly questioned capitalism towards the end of his life: an aspect of his inspirational speeches that tends to be ignored by establishment commentators who are otherwise keen to praise him. He associated domestic racial and social inequality with US imperialism and social disparity abroad, denouncing what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated": "racism, economic exploitation, and war". In one speech, he said:

A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will 'thingify' them - make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

King decried the "evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of society" which had "systematic rather than superficial flaws". He concluded that "radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced". But this deep problem, facing anyone hoping for genuine action to combat the environmental crisis, is beyond the pale of mainstream thought and public debate.

Ecologist Franz Broswimmer put it this way: "At its very core, the prevailing capitalist ethos and liberal word view of the modern industrial era remain expansionary and imperial, involving a calculated form of indifference to the social and ecological order." The social insanity of this capitalist-fuelled expansionism leads to 'inverted priorities', to adopt the phrase used by the social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein. Hence, dominant features of the economy include a trillion-dollar global arms budget, depletion of the planet's natural resources and a deepening economic apartheid between rich and poor. These features are, in the words of eco-feminist Mary Mellor: "not the neutral decisions of a market; they are the priorities of powerful people in powerful nations, mostly men whose gender, race, and class interests drive the capitalist political economic system and its worldwide system of accumulation and deprivation". It is simply not possible to understand, far less to address, the crises facing us without understanding these issues. But, of course, they are simply "not of this world" from the perspective of mainstream corporate news reporting and commentary.

These are compelling, evidence-based arguments that are buried beneath the complacent clichés favoured by even the best newspapers. We have sketched them only in the briefest detail here - the point is they are hardly ever discussed at all.