OUR LAST INNOCENT MOMENT

Julie Ponesse is a Canadian with a PhD in Ethics and Ancient Philosophy from Western University, a Masters in Philosophy with Collaborative Specialisation in Bioethics from the University of Toronto, and a Diploma in Ethics from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. She was a 2023 Fellow of the Brownstone Institute – see note at end. She taught ethics to undergraduates, and in September 2021 she was dismissed from her teaching position at Huron College at the University of Western Ontario after 20 years on the job for opposing university vaccination mandates on the ethical grounds of informed consent about which she had been lecturing – Dr Aaron Kheriaty lost his position at the University of California for similar reasons – see my review of this book The New Abnormal in PE 140, p. 44. Only a handful of ethicists worldwide took an ethical stand. Ponesse produced a short video for her students, which went viral as she shared both her thoughts and feelings (p. 35). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uVHeZg9oz0

In December 2021, Ponesse released a book, published by The Democracy Fund, titled My Choice: The Ethical Case Against Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates. Her new book takes a wider lens and is in my view essential reading for our time. She is surely right to argue that many of our core beliefs – ‘that medicine is a patient-focused institution, that journalists pursue truth, that the courts track justice, and that our friends would behave in certain predictable ways – started to unravel.’ This represented ‘a paradigm shift in how we live and relate to each other, a shift in attitude, a shift in trust.’ Fundamentally - and this the strong message from the Brownstone Institute – ‘We have set ourselves adrift from life framed by core Western liberal values – liberty, equality, and autonomy, most fundamentally – and we find ourselves broken and unrecognisable without them. And, most treacherously, we seem to be tinkering with the fundamental principles of civility: toleration, patience, respect, and kindness.’ (p. 2) I was particularly struck by these remarks on civility, with which I’m sure many readers will concur. The predominant atmosphere is one of intolerance, disrespect, distrust and even demonisation. No society can thrive without civility - Edward Gibbon attributed the collapse of the Roman Empire as due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens (p. 154).

Correspondingly, ‘we have a crisis of trust, a crisis of personal identity, a crisis of community, and a crisis of hope.’ It is now emerging from parliamentary briefings in both Holland and Germany that Covid policies were essentially a coercive military and intelligence psychological operation as the largest ever compliance test as prefigured in Event 201 in October – ‘a test we failed on a global scale.’ Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand – all with leaders affiliated with the World Economic Forum – imposed the most extreme measures, Canada even going as far as shutting down the bank accounts of those opposing its measures.

Ponesse poses the deeper question about why most people were so compliant – what broader historical, cultural and psychological forces were in play? We are in danger of abandoning our civilisation and our humanity, she argues. Social and professional pressures were exerted through propaganda campaigns underpinned by sophisticated behavioural psychology. Interestingly, in the light of Avigail Abarbanel’s recent lecture on the relationship between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, the techniques deployed successfully engaged the limbic system’s survival, safety and fear mechanisms with deliberate intent. Another angle on this comes from the distinction between internal and external loci of authority and control, where externally-focused people are more susceptible to manipulation demanding conformity and compliance.

Another factor is the outsourcing of independent thinking to experts and the use of authoritative experts to create the impression of a seamless scientific consensus. Many of these experts had (frequently unacknowledged) conflicts of interest, and, in the case of Covid, close ties with the pharmaceutical industry. The freedom of information act unearthed many significant internal email threads, for instance between Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins in their attempts to conceal the role of the Wuhan Lab in gain of function research and the origins of the virus – these are published for all to see and draw their own conclusions.

Along with the work of Mattias Desmet, who spoke with our recent event on the future of humanity, the author identifies scientism as a further key ideological factor related on the one hand to a stripping out of meaning and value, and on the other to the need for certainty and the utopian striving towards perfection - often, ironically, bringing dystopia in its wake. As Mary Midgley also observed, not all questions are scientific questions. Jason Blakely identifies scientism as an overextension of scientific authority, and even as a new form of fundamentalism. This encourages deference to establishment pro-narrative experts as holding the correct or sanctioned view; hence, dissenters have to be censored as misleading purveyors of disinformation, even if they have a sound and peer-reviewed evidence base for their views. The author could have added further background about the rise of technocracy with its hubristic social engineering vocabulary based on a mechanistic understanding of the human being. In the recent election, both Republicans and Democrats voted against the perceived authoritarianism of the other party, as Charles Eisenstein observed. I do think that there is rising pushback against authoritarianism and in favour of freedom of speech and conscience.

Historians have often observed – like Sir John Glubb (p. 69) – that civilisations decay from within. If civilisation is collapsing, it is because something is collapsing within us as we lose our inherent and intrinsic connections with the divine, nature and each other. Ponesse’s knowledge of Greek philosophy and tragedy enables her to identify our perennial arrogance that leads to our downfall and can only be worked through by means of catharsis as a healing process. She makes the point that our lives are largely framed by the stories we tell ourselves, and these stories need to include uncertainty, finitude, fragility and imperfection. She suggests that our new story should be about ‘becoming wise and curious in our thinking, brave and generous in our actions, and patient and observant in all the little moments of our lives…. The only way to perfect ourselves, the only way to become truly useful to others, is to live within ourselves first. (p. 178)

Then there is the moral injury of the last four years, as the author herself has experienced. Her colleagues, far from being supportive when she was dismissed by her university, shamed her further for her non-compliance, aided and abetted by negative media coverage. Countless physicians were cancelled and de-platformed, losing their positions in the process; only the compliant will now become chiefs of staff and full professors. However, as the author asserts, ‘we need our scientists to cling fearlessly to independence, curiosity, and uncertainty… we need our physicians to rise above their culture of compliance and to protect their patients whatever the costs to their reputation or bank account… we need journalists to report facts, and not feed the narrative spin machine.’ (p. 169)

Ironically, the dissenters are now being proved largely right as the larger picture emerges, including the extensive data about the vaccine trials now documented in new books by Naomi Wolf using analysis from over 3,000 scientists (p. 132). Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had the nerve to state on a university campus that he had never forced anyone to get vaccinated; and governments around the world continue to ignore data on excess deaths without even considering the possible role of ‘safe and effective’ vaccines, despite extensive scientific and clinical documentation – see Dr John Campbell’s briefings on YouTube and the population analysis of Prof Denis Rancourt (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373989367_COVID-19_vaccine-associated_mortality_in_the_Southern_Hemisphere)

The final chapter asks how our story will end in terms of our deep social pathologies and self-destructive patterns. Each of us has a role to play through our own choices and in balancing individual and community interests, local, national and global perspectives. It requires courage to take an ethical stand, to go against the grain, the consensus, but it is a matter of integrity and principle. As the author notes, ‘It matters that we remained silent when we should have spoken up. It matters that we thought we could comply our way out of control, just as it matters that some of us made eye contact when it would have been easier to look away. The devil may be in the details but so, too, is our truth and humanity’ (p. 175). We can decide not to let dignity be stripped from our lives, we can choose truth in a world of lies, we can choose a meaningful rather than an easy life –and the high stakes are the very quality of the lives of future generations. A wise, compassionate and courageous book.

Brownstone Institute looks to influence a post-lockdown world by generating new ideas in public health, philosophy, scientific discourse, economics, and social theory. It hopes to enlighten and mobilise public life to defend and promote the liberty that is critical for an enlightened society from which everyone benefits. The purpose is to point the way toward a better understanding of essential freedoms – including intellectual freedom and free speech – and the proper means to preserve essential rights even in times of crisis. https://brownstone.org