At War With The Sun

It's us versus them. Isn't it?

This piece was inspired by a friend who does great work getting people fitter and healthier, but certain work environments have toxins that are hard to avoid.

This is intended to shine light on the importance of our beliefs.

Light in, light out.

---

For as long as I can remember, information has been distributed by a Great And Powerful Source that was beyond question, and, save for a few philosophers, nobody questioned it. Book, teacher, government, or religion: the who or what doesn’t matter.

But the internet, and the pandemic, especially, changed that. People are no longer happy to accept what they hear if it doesn’t align with their views. The consequences are a rapidly fragmenting society and distrust in all the Great And Powerful Sources of information, as we prefer to ‘inform’ ourselves.

It could be argued that society has always been this split, we just haven’t been able to see it as clearly because we didn’t all have a phone to communicate our opinions into the ether. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, though I suspect it may be, but it’s not the point I’m looking to discuss.

I want to talk about the importance of determining our desired worldview first, and aligning our beliefs, thoughts, and actions with that worldview, rather than allowing our beliefs, thoughts, and actions to inform our worldview. Because, for better or worse, humans have an incredible ability to be informed (and manipulated) by what we hear and see on a regular basis.

Conspiracy Theorists And The Age Of Information.

Before writing was discovered (first in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, roughly 5,000 years ago) humans had created a system of transferring knowledge and information through time - language.

Because of language, I can accept a truth thousands of years old as my own truth today, because a story or expression has survived the test of time. And, according to the Lindy Effect, if it has survived thousands of years, there’s a good chance it’ll survive thousands more. The visceral weight of story carries through time.

Science and facts, by contrast, are largely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is our experience. Show me a thousand, gold standard, scientific journals proving that sun exposure causes cancer, and is going to kill me, and I’ll still ignore it. Because, when I bathe in sunlight (that doesn’t burn me) I feel good, both in the moment and immediately afterwards. Conversely, when I don’t spend time in the sun I feel bad.

Today science and ‘facts’ are being updated at lightspeed, limited only by our technological progress. Today’s truth was absurd 50 years ago, and may be absurd again 20 years later. Why should anyone believe it? They shouldn’t. Not because it’s false, but because they’ve not seen and felt it to be true for themselves.

The placebo effect works beyond simply medicine, and in both directions. I can live under the belief that something is working for or against me, and until disproven by life, I will live under this illusion.

We have the unique ability to choose which placebo effects we apply to our lives. I prefer to err on the side of time rather than modern developments (to an extent). By looking at cultural behaviours, I gather important information about what has been true to these people over time.

Continuing with sunlight as my demonstrative point, I like to soak up the morning and late afternoon Vietnamese sunlight, but I cover right the fuck up in the middle of the day and, whenever possible, simply avoid too much sunlight between 10:00 and 15:00. When the majority of the locals are covered from head to toe, I assume that they know something I don’t, and I listen to that assumption.

On my first day here, 23 degrees, grey, and dreary, I took a long, relaxing walk. The preceding two weeks in Chiang Mai were consistently 37 and sunny, and I knew to avoid the sun. But grey weather? Amazing! The result: I got gently sunburnt.

The lesson was learnt, directly, and now I know what locals know. I’ve not yet bought a top-to-bottom Gucci-patterned onesie, but I move through the sunlight swiftly when I’m uncovered, and I cover up when it’s not an option.

But, according to some groups of people, we are caught in A War Against Sunlight, and They Are Trying To Control Us by depriving us of natural light. Big Pharma, Big Tech, Big Government, Big Agribusiness, Big Finance, put Big in front of it and you’ve got the outlines of who They are.

But who are They individually, and why do they want to kill us?

They Want to Control (And Kill) You

An important note before I continue: geo-engineering is an established fact and is being used to decrease the amount of sunlight that reaches earth. Do I think this is absolutely fucking mental? Yes. But my agreement with The War On Sunlight position ends there.

A conspiracy theory favourite, ‘They’ are always rich, nefarious, and work from the shadows. Which is ironic because if They keep us out of the sunlight for too long, we’re going to find them in the shadows. They are a demonic force working together for the mutual destruction of mankind, and if you don’t acknowledge Their existence you are: a) asleep b) a sheep, or c) one of Them.

While I believe there are evil people in the world and They love to fuck with things whenever they can, I don’t believe They are all working together. The nature of evil is divisive, greedy, disruptive, destructive, interested only in furthering its own means.

Imagine I’m a cafe owner with staff, a stable business in a physical location, and you are too. We’ll likely make similar decisions in life and business. We want taxes on payroll kept low, we support anything that increases profits, and we dislike anything that disrupts our supply chains or decreases profits.

But we are competitors. Nobody would say we’re working together. We’re in the same industry, but that’s not the same as working together.

Now extrapolate this to the filthy rich of the world. We’re both multi-billionaires, and we’re both going to behave similarly in matters of finance; happily supporting the existence and creation of tax havens, investing in dirty industries if there’s money to be made, and railing against governmental regulation if it may result in us losing money. But we are not working together, rather preserving our individual interests, which happens to be billions of dollars.

If we’re both evil, interested only in destruction, we desire the destruction of the other, because only our individual goals matter. Divide and conquer is the tactic, and it works incredibly, but it divides itself too.

It’s never about evil winning, it’s about infinite division. Evil follows a predictable plan, like a cancer.

That’s Them. Who Are We?

That’s The Evil Rich Overlords. What about us?

We are the underlings, the oppressed, the masses, the workers, the slaves, the drones, the serfs, nothing but food for the machine. Our purpose is to have every ounce of profit extracted from our existence, which should be a minimal one. We are allowed nothing, and should be grateful for every bit of nothing we have.

It’s a war, and one we’re unlikely to win.

Now back to the placebo effect: how do you feel operating under this belief? Crushed? Oppressed? Abused? Worthless? That’s the pill you’ve chosen and the life you’ll live.

Are our Evil Rich Overlords atop these Evil Pyramids free? Surrounded by friends, family, loved ones, driven by a wholesome sense of purpose? Do they sleep peacefully every night? Are they healthy?

My guess is no. They just have fuckloads of money and power. But they’ll still need someone who cares enough to wipe their arse in old age when they shit themselves.

It seems that the higher up the pyramid of success (not the Evil Pyramid, but perhaps related) one climbs, the more isolated and defensive one becomes. This seems to hold true for both individuals and nations. Comparing society in Vietnam with Germany, I have to pause. The houses are comparatively small, the quality of construction is comparatively poor, the material value of objects is comparatively low, but these aren’t the things that make a society good, or healthy.

So what does?

What Makes A Society Healthy?

In Da Nang, before 6:00, the beach is packed with people training, dancing, peeling shrimp, and selling fish together.

Before 9:00 every coffee shop is buzzing with life, the community ties so strong you can almost touch them.

From 9:00 until 16:00 the city empties as everyone works and avoids the sun. But as soon as it weakens they come out en masse to swim, play volleyball, practice acroyoga, and walk together.

The masses then descend on restaurants with tables set for dozens of people. Food and drink is raucously shared together, before the karaoke machines are dusted off and everyone sings and drinks together until bed time.

Community, community, community; togetherness, togetherness, togetherness.

What did I see in Germany? Houses hiding families, comprising full-time employed individuals, ‘enjoying’ work-from-home arrangements, for better or worse.

Quality of life is comparatively higher. Length of life is comparatively higher. But for every casual smile on a German face, I’ll show you a hundred smiling Vietnamese faces. Surely the weather plays a part, but there’s something deeper at play, and it’s about community and togetherness.

When I look at the state of the world like this, it’s easy to agree that They want to a) divide us, b) get us into full-time, desk-based work (out of the sunlight and into blue-light filled environments), and c) make us easier to control (wages).

With ease They have crushed the life out of us while we work from a computer in our home, ordering shit from Amazon and paying with a digital currency that we never once touched.

What are we to do?

Take The Blue Pill, Take The Red Pill

Inevitably, we face a choice. Do you live in fear of the bogeyman, convinced They’re out to get you, or accept the fact that everyone is looking out for themselves, and you’ve got to do the same?

Do you want to be a sleeper, an Evil One, or awoken? If you choose sleep, enjoy your dreams; if you choose Evil, I hope you find a lovely evil sidepiece to wipe your arse; but if you take the path of awakening I’ve a challenge for you.

Division is the tool of evil. What are you doing to reunite us all, sleepers, awoken, and evil? By painting Big [insert ‘industry’ here] as the bogeyman, you’re supporting division, and helping evil reach its goals.

Rather than framing geoengineering as another control tactic, show people how good you feel when you spend time in the sun, and what it does for you. If you want to use science to spread your message, try not to make people feel worse by giving them an impossible enemy to rally against.

As the lucky ones who have ‘woken up’, we should be mindful not to rip people out of a dream and throw them into a nightmare. A really nice line from the Shaolin Temple Abbot was ‘The truth should be wrapped around people's shoulders like a blanket, not slapped across their face’.

When the message we are trying to distribute is one of light, be it sunlight or otherwise, our message and communication also needs to be one light. So many people feel hopeless, beaten, and oppressed. We can do better to transcend that hopeless, beaten, oppressed state through community and togetherness.

If you’re not adding light to the discourse, challenge yourself to do better.