Sovereignty of Individuals During Crisis

Whether or not I will wear a mask is my right to decide. My face, and everything under that umbrella that wearing a mask directly affects, including the quality of my respiration, my overall comfort, my visibility, both physical and emotional, to the world around me, what I can/cannot smell, and the health of the skin on my face, belong to me, after all, and not to anyone else. Those things are aspects of my experience of life, and not of anyone else’s. I therefore ought to possess the final say regarding what will affect all of those things. People decry my sentiment on this score, contending that mask-wearing is a duty right now, an act that serves the greater good. Whether or not it does, however (and there is increasing reason to believe that it may not), cannot compete with the fact of my sovereignty. I, Sha’Kim Bush, am sovereign. I have ownership over myself. You don’t own me. And I don’t own you. If we, the people of the world, don’t become cognizant of this essential reality, we will one day find ourselves in a closed, lockdown society, where human rights are an antiquated ideal. More dangerous than any virus, the popular view of which can, in light of certain, unappreciated science, be properly questioned in the case of COVID-19, is our forgetting of what it means to be free. This threat, this virus if you will, looms greater now than it ever has.

Good ideas don’t require coercion to be implemented. The necessity of wearing a mask is a matter that must be left to individuals to decide. Or, perhaps our governments do not have that kind of faith in us. Do individuals lack the wisdom required to do what will most benefit them? Here’s something to ask yourself. If the people cannot be trusted to make the right decisions for their own health, why should they be allowed to decide anything for themselves? Remember that you are one of the people. Why should you have any liberty, in any sphere of life? Maybe it would be best to just let the “experts,” that is to say, in the case of COVID-19, those people who keep on changing their tune regarding the nature and behavior of this virus, dictate our every last move in this life.

Personally, I’d rather not live in that world. I’d rather call home a world in which people have the liberty to live as they see fit according to their own assessment of the available facts that are relevant to any given situation, so long as they are not harming others. That is what ought to determine whether or not someone puts a mask on. Their own justly arrived at understanding of the risks and rewards, of the likely costs and benefits, of doing so. Can people not be trusted to do that for themselves? Can you not be trusted?

As it turns out, in the case of wearing a mask to protect against contracting SARS-CoV-2, there is more than one conclusion that might be arrived at regarding those costs and benefits.

 

 

By Sha’Kim Bush

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A Criticism of Masks, For What It’s Worth

The new policy in Massachusetts requiring people to wear face coverings while they exercise in a hot gym environment is the height of absurdity, in my opinion. Indeed, that people can tolerate this affront to their personal liberty without objection is in and of itself quite discomforting. Intense exercise requires, in order to be performed properly, and benefited from maximally, unobstructed pathways for oxygen to enter, and for carbon dioxide to exit, the body, and face coverings are known to obstruct this vital process.

Furthermore, facemasks are a massive culprit for unsightly blemishes on the face. This is a problem that can only be exacerbated by the profuse sweat that our faces excrete during intense exercise. Such skin problems can even become painful.

In other words, facemasks harm your health!

Although, I think that I’d be just as ready as many others seem to be to demonstrate such self-sacrifice if I believed that “germs” expelled from the human nose and mouth were the problem, and that I was carrying those germs all the time. In my defense, it isn’t like there aren’t any opposing theories out there regarding the mechanism for transmission of disease in the case of SARS-CoV-2, better known as “coronavirus”. There are several, including what is known as “terrain theory,” which essentially points to the general level of toxicity in the environment (terrain) that cells inhabit as the primary determinant of a person’s susceptibility to illness. If someone lives in an environment (their body) that is very low in toxicity, then they are likely to be very healthy. But as the toxicity of the environment rises, so too does a person’s chances of falling sick. This toxicity can come from rotten food, stress, and even EMFs, among many other things of course. Thus, much less maleficence is ascribed to germs in terrain theory than in germ theory. Some, like Dr. Andrew Kaufman, will even go so far as to say that germ theory itself may be wrong, an argument that he  has unpacked in compelling detail in his many YouTube interviews as of lately.

Believe it or not, there are many health professionals who believe in the primacy of the terrain that our cells inhabit. If they’re correct, and there is evidence that they are, then what are people doing wearing masks? They should be cleaning up their bodies, and their lifestyles.

Ironically enough, frequent, quality exercise is a very important part of that cleanup process.

 

By Sha’Kim Bush

 

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Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and Especially YouTube). Part 2.3: Improvements – Increased Interest In Reading

One more time for the people in the back…

This subject is one that is best appreciated on an individual-to-individual basis. In other words, it is important to continually think critically about the ideas and anecdotes that I present here. Ultimately, these are just observations that I have made, and you should take your own experiences, circumstances, and needs into account when considering them and when attempting to replicate them.

Where it all began: Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and especially YouTube). Part 1: Introduction

Part 2.1: Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and Especially From YouTube). Part 2.1: Improvements—Productivity    

Part 2.2: Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and Especially Youtube). Part 2.2: Improvements– Increased Ardor for Music

Alrighty then, moving on…

In depriving myself of internet content (and chiefly frivolous/ineffectual YouTube videos), I became far more sensitive to the lure of books, from both the fiction as well as the nonfiction varieties. But before I delve into this, I should make it clear that, in my estimation, this elevated interest in the written word likely came about, at least in part, as a result of my making it come about, that is to say, through my choosing, for lack of a better word, to imagine that I might be taken on a journey as it were, or that I would learn something really neat or useful, upon scouring the pages of whatever literary works I could find. As such, my imagination acted as a sort of kindling for the effect. It wasn’t the act of abstaining alone that did it.

That doesn’t take away from the crucial role that the abstention itself played, however. The act of abstaining, of not going on distracting websites like YouTube, is what forced me, in a way, to participate in the generation of my own interest in things that weren’t web-based, to think about what could be derived from other forms of media, and thus ultimately to actually seek out those alternative sources of entertainment, pleasure, and education, believing that they would give me things that YouTube and the like simply could not replicate.

EDIT: Here I removed a paragraph in which I alluded to what some of my motivation has been in doing these streaks. In the interest of focus, I will exclude any such allusion from this particular post, and instead will save the subject of motivation for a future post, where it will be done its due justice. Thanks.

And, indeed, I often was taken on a journey, and would learn some really interesting and/or potentially useful things in the books that I would read during these brief streaks of non-usage. My mind needed content in some form, and two of the only things better in that regard than hours spent on YouTube, apart from television perhaps, were the depth of focused elaboration provided by nonfiction books, and the beautiful, provocative narratives woven by authors in their novels.

Most people these days, I would surmise, are functionally illiterate. I myself didn’t realize how bad at reading I was until I really started trying to get into it, trying to gain knowledge that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to gain. The jargon liberally thrown about by historians and scientists in their books was something that I had to learn and get used to. The medium itself requires a different eye, so to speak, and different mental skills from those which we use while indulging in the more ordinary screen-facilitated entertainment, in order to be enjoyed and appreciated. And I suppose you have to actually engage in the activity of reading in order to develop these capacities.

Just as with any other skill or set of skills, reading skills can only be developed through practice. And you can rest assured that the endeavor to acquire those skills is a worthwhile one, for there is so much information that is exclusively found in text form as to render those who have not made a habit of reading pitifully unable to achieve certain valuable things on their own, like an improved diet for example, because a certain quantity of knowledge must be accrued before such a change in lifestyle can be made properly. Indeed, the amount of detail that, more so than of any other medium, is the mainstay of literature, is often what imparts the clarity that you need to have in order to navigate your way through this or that domain confidently and intelligently. So when you make books a more frequently used source for information in your life, it becomes more likely that you will get to where you want to go, on time and in one piece, wherever, in your personal, unique case, that happens to be.

 

By Sha’Kim Bush

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Send me an email at bushshakim@gmail.com for anything you’d like. I very much look forward to connecting with you.

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Take care 🙂

Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and Especially Youtube). Part 2.2: Improvements– Increased Ardor for Music

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, I recommend you check it out:

https://shakimsblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/experiences-with-abstaining-from-the-internet-and-especially-youtube-part-1-introduction/

Here’s Part 2.1:

https://shakimsblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/experiences-with-abstaining-from-the-internet-and-especially-from-youtube-part-2-1-improvements-productivity/

I must also explain here that this subject is one that is best appreciated on an individual-to-individual basis. In other words, it is important to continually think critically about the ideas and anecdotes that I present here. At the end of the day, these are just observations that I have made, and you should take your own experiences, circumstances, and needs into account when considering them and when attempting to replicate them.

Now then, what does music have to do with staying off of the internet?

Increased Ardor for Music  

This is something that I notice occur frequently when I take some time off of the internet. A song will suddenly begin to play in my head, and it will fill me with more joy and wonder than it ever had prior to the non-usage streak’s commencing. This effect usually occurs early in the non-usage streak, within the first day to two or three days of its commencement. It also seems to largely have been a morning phenomenon, something that occurs upon waking or, at least, before I get out of bed, so it is a companion of earliness or beginning on two accounts. It may be a result of getting a fresh start, or of resetting the mind. It isn’t rare for me to find songs playing in my head that match my intent or sentiment at the moment, streak or not, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this particular effect was just another example of that. However, I’m not sure that the variety of this non-usage streak music ends at that category of songs which reflect the feeling of having a fresh start. The songs have mostly, perhaps even exclusively, been those which I already love, just having a richer and more vibrant quality to them.

I personally suspect a tight affiliation between this effect and freedom from the artificial, pre-constructed world of the internet. Think about it. Suddenly, the being that you are has dislodged itself from that controlled and often vacuous space, and has returned to a realm which is far more replete with possibility as it pertains to how a day might be spent, as well to how one might improve one’s lot in life. Maybe the dramatic surge of musical sound in one’s mind is a celebratory response to that suddenly enhanced range of possibility. It may be a celebratory response to the initiation of such a great experiment in living, to the embarking upon an attempt at a lifestyle which gleams with promise and worthy challenge.

 

By Sha’Kim Bush

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Interested in getting in touch with me? Email me at bushshakim@gmail.com.

Check out my website here: https://shakimsblogdotnet.wordpress.com/

Otherwise, just keep doing you 🙂

Remote Viewing: A Tentative Endorsement

Without postulating the application of advanced, arcane forms of suggestion, or the usage of some sort of technology that enables literal beaming of specific, tailor-made information into people’s heads, it is very hard, at least for me, to outright dismiss the findings regularly made at the Farsight Institute. What is the Farsight Institute? Well, the Farsight Institute might be looked at as many things, but what it chiefly functions and presents itself as, primarily through its prolific YouTube channel, is a team of investigators. Although, Farsight is no conventional investigative enterprise. No, not in the least. Because what the team at Farsight utilizes to produce leads is no less than a little thing called remote-viewing.

Perhaps many of you are not familiar with what remote-viewing, or RV, is, however. The term might elicit little interest before you learn what it refers to. Remote-viewing is the uncovering of details from past, present, or even future events, using the illuminating power of consciousness, as it were, alone. Indeed, we are talking about a form of ESP, or extrasensory perception, when we talk about RV. Remote-viewing enables an individual using it to “view” events unfolding at a location at which they themselves are not physically present, and at which there is absent any assistant technological apparatus, like a satellite, for example. Events that have come and gone, or even that have yet to come to pass, can also be learned about, or at least investigated, with the use of remote-viewing. And history books aren’t used to guide this process either, in the case of remote-viewing the past.

The Farsight Institute has chiseled out a unique place for itself in the fringe entertainment world, largely through its YouTube channel, Farsight Press. There, a virtual library of remote-viewing data is available to any who seek it, in video form. Each of the major videos on Farsight Press pertains to a particular “project”, which is in turn constituted by the participating remote-viewers’ combined efforts to view a particular “target,” i.e. the mysterious event, phenomenon, or person that those administrating the remote-viewing project are interested in learning about. Speaking of administrating, the whole operation that is Farsight is directed by one Courtney Brown, who is to be found at the very beginning of every video providing a brief introduction, immediately following with an enumeration of all the projects and events that he and his team at Farsight are concurrently busy with. After that, all of the participating team members’ filmed sessions of engagement with the remote-viewing “target” are played in succession. And boy, does each video make for an interesting experience!

In every project undertaken by the Farsight Institute, remote-viewers are told, prior to performing the RV, only that “there is a target,” and that they “should attempt to view it.” In other words, the remote-viewers know nothing at all about their target before trying to view it. Quite the stringent protocol, and it ensures validity during experimentation, which is what the remote-viewing forays done under Courtney Brown’s supervision do constitute in part. Experiments. It is a pre-condition they call “working blind.” Thus, when the remote-viewers do come back from their remote- viewing with information that is corroborated afterward, all of those involved can be reasonably certain that the information that was gathered during the remote-viewing was real, and that RV is therefore a real phenomenon. Knowing nothing about the target also denies the intractable “skeptics” who follow the work of researchers like Brown any of the convenient scientific sloppiness that they might like to use as cannon-fire against Farsight. It is solely those who have commissioned the remote-viewing project that know anything at all about the target, which, even then, is only a question, that is, the specific question to which answers are being sought for that project. Everyone involved, however, is dark on what those answers are at each respective project’s outset. The questions that Courtney Brown and his colleagues seek answers to are usually questions that cannot be answered using ordinary methods, and cannot, or, Brown and company suspect, will not, be answered completely or honestly by the official, trusted, establishment sources of information, i.e. established academia and the “mainstream” media. The otherwise inaccessible status of sought-after information is what makes remote-viewing so useful.

Content produced by the Farsight Institute is a consistent source of fascination, and that’s putting it mildly. The very mechanism by which the Farsight Institute obtains its data, remote-viewing, seems to fly in the face of conventional physics, and corroborates those things which have been spoken of by mystics, outsiders, and the like from all around the world, throughout human history. If Farsight’s remote-viewers can produce anything constituting a solid lead, or can uncover hitherto unknown details about an event, location, phenomenon, or person which come to be discovered as true at some point, then Farsight is part of the beginning of a profound reconstruction of our outlook on the universe, and on human potential. What could be more fascinating than that?

 

By Sha’Kim Bush

Thank you for reading!

 

Email: bushshakim@gmail.com  

Instagram: shakimbush624 

Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and Especially From YouTube). Part 2.1: Improvements—Productivity

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, I recommend you check it out:

https://shakimsblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/experiences-with-abstaining-from-the-internet-and-especially-youtube-part-1-introduction/

I must also explain here that this subject is one that is best appreciated on an individual-to-individual basis. In other words, it is important to continually think critically about the ideas and anecdotes that I present here. Ultimately, these are just observations that I have made, and you should take your own experiences, circumstances, and needs into account when considering them and when attempting to replicate them.

Now then, for the improvements.

Increase in General Productivity

Lacking access to the distractions that the internet, and especially YouTube, is all too happy to whirl you in, you are left with what you would otherwise be doing: the things that you were trying to distract yourself from. These are usually tasks that you need to complete and problems that you need to solve. Of course, it’s not like you’ve been distracting yourself from these tasks and problems for no reason—they’re difficult to confront. They are, at least, things that don’t cough up gratification to you with a few simple swipes/pokes against a screen that’s three inches wide. But they are endeavors far more worthwhile than that of lying in a bed for several hours straight consuming content that most assuredly is not going to bring you where you know deep down you want to be in life. Or, worse, perhaps the things that you watch, or the amount of time that you spend watching those things, not only don’t bring you where you would really like to be at in life, but, on top of that, actively take you farther away from said places, and entrench you deeper in the circumstances that you would really rather not have to continue enduring. Taking time away from aimless internet usage and putting it towards truly worthwhile endeavors will assist you in not going down that ugly path.

Your life becomes so much more pristine after you pull yourself out of all of that digital junk. You will see how spacious your schedule becomes, and with that, new life possibilities will dawn unto you spectacularly. Your time and your attention have been freed up to explore and conquer that new and exciting territory. Take to it with an adventurous spirit.

Alternatively, you could think about what you are doing not so much as abstaining from the internet, but, rather, as filling the time that each day allots to you with a greater number of worthwhile pursuits. After all, the ultimate goal of spending less time on YouTube isn’t to just not be on YouTube, a feat that, in and of itself, may only amount to one of asceticism. The ultimate goal is to pursue and obtain the things in life that you know deep down you would really like to have, and to become the person that you would really like to be. Spending less time on the internet is only a means of facilitating and accelerating that process. One of many, in fact. And, if you’re occupied with such worthwhile activities, then, guess what…you’re probably not on the internet; at least, not aimlessly. So make a list of things that you’d like to do with your life. Is there something you’ve been really wishing you had the time to do? Is there a talent that you’d like to develop? A particular experience that you’d like to have? A cause that you’d really like to get behind? A book that you’d really like to read? All of these and many, many more are worthwhile pursuits. What you choose to do with all of the time and attention that you salvage as a result of your efforts is a decision that only you as the unique individual that you are, with all of your tendencies and peculiarities and deviation from the average, and destiny, can make.

By Sha’Kim Bush

Thank you for reading!

Experiences With Abstaining From the Internet (and especially YouTube). Part 1: Introduction

They have said that the internet is inseparable from our way of life these days. Were this truly the case, however, I never would have been able to conduct so many fruitful experiments in going without its usage, or, at least, in going without its abuse. Of course, it is the abuse of the internet which is so problematic, especially for the world’s young people, that is, the people who grew up during the most significant segment in the internet’s span of development. We, the young people, are the ones who have gained the most, and also, simultaneously, the ones who have lost the most from the wide issuance of easy access to the internet. What the older generations lack in competence with today’s tech advents, they make up for in freedom from them.

For years, I had made attempts at distancing myself from this most difficult-to-avoid thing we call the internet, but it wasn’t until recently that these bouts of foregoing hours on the web proved to be worth the effort. I’ve finally begun to see some desirable results come out of it.

Before I go on though, I should make it known to you, the reader, that I am by no means a rabid opponent of the internet in general. In fact, it isn’t even the internet as such that I have a problem with. It is certain websites and applications whose usage I have been interested in addressing, not simply the internet itself. Although, there are some things that are worth addressing in that department as well. Chiefly, my experiments have targeted my abuse of YouTube.

There is a reason why, when people think of the internet, images of the YouTube play screen will often be the first thing to come into their minds. It’s because that is the application that most people are using when they are using the internet, so much so that YouTube might be best conceived not as a mere website, but as an institution in and of itself, one that has been the very birthplace of thousands of culturally significant phenomena over the past decade or so. There is nothing quite like YouTube, certainly nothing that offers the same accessibility and range of entertainment. Not even other websites of a similar nature. In fact, YouTube is so good, it has actually seduced many of us into forgoing real-life engagement and participation in group activities in exchange for the safe, endless, and omni-directional entertainment that it offers us all. And that’s the problem.

Of course, that is a worst case scenario, and I will admit that most people probably know where to draw the line when it comes to their usage of this institution of sorts. I, however, was not one of those people. Without getting too personal, I’ve sort of had a bad habit of playing in the deep end, if you will, with regard to both the duration and the variety of my viewing on YouTube. So, when I say that changes do occur when you slow down your usage, and realize all the other things you could be doing with your life (and not just with your time), I really do speak from experience. And in Part 2 of this analysis, I will enumerate in detail those changes.  See you there.

The Bottom Line

While the instances of multi-casualty violence that have swept the United States within the last decade or so are indeed very horrible, I don’t think that fanatical gun control would solve the problem. I imagine that it would, if we are not careful, create another, even less savory problem: tyranny.

Tyranny exists whenever the State has more power than the People. It follows, then, that in order to preclude the introduction of tyranny, the power of the People must either equal or exceed that of the State. Well then, how do you equalize power between the State and the People? How do you equalize power between any two groups? You give them the same level of strength, so that neither one can get out of hand. Well, in what form does strength come in this instance? Ultimately, the State doesn’t have any strength unless it has military strength. That is, the ability to use deadly force.

Deadly force, in today’s day and age, comes most saliently in the form of firearms. More specifically, it comes in the form of rifles. Therefore, if the People are limited in their ability to possess firearms, and rifles specifically (which is what the gun control movement aims to do), they will have less strength than the State, and the conditions of tyranny will have the opportunity to grow, for the State has nothing to keep it in check under such circumstances. I believe that the banning of any single kind of rifle sets a dangerous precedent, sows an insidious seed, to this end. Because such a ban, if successfully made law, would represent in our collective consciousness a disengagement from our commitment in this country to an unviolated freedom to be armed. The Second Amendment would lose its luster, and from there, who knows what else we’d be willing to let go of.

We could look at the issue in more detail. Tyranny isn’t likely to emerge in a land where the People are well-armed. That is, a land where the People are equal in military strength to their government. The government is either not willing to risk the kind of loss that would occur as a result of trying to become tyrannical over such a people, or, in the event that it does try to become tyrannical, finds itself well-matched or exceeded in strength by the People. At the very least, such a people stand a good chance at keeping the liberties that they have enjoyed, despite having had to shed blood in order to do so. At best, the government doesn’t even think about trying to run roughshod over such a people, and so neither tyranny nor warfare between State and People is ever able to manifest. Conversely, a people who are not well-armed, and therefore lack the ability to use deadly force, would be completely weak and daunted upon being faced with a strong, well-armed, governmental tyranny, unequipped to stem its evil, and therefore would find themselves at the utter mercy of it should it decide to rear its head in their day. An armed people, I reiterate, find themselves in no such dilemma.

See, the problem is that Americans today seem to see tyranny as a scenario so unlikely as to be practically impossible. They think that we are far too sophisticated these days to devolve into that barbaric condition. I would ask them all, what makes today’s humans any more naturally virtuous than those who facilitated totalitarianism in the past? Are the servants of the State today infallible, insusceptible to the kinds of brutal passions that might have impelled, say, a Nazi, to participate in atrocity? Always when a totalitarian regime has acquired power, it has then sought to become the sole possessor of military might in the land over which it has gained power. This accomplishment is the very thing that enables the regime to become a totalitarian one. It is standard procedure in the totalitarian playbook to confiscate from the People their precious ability to wage a contest in arms against a tyrannical state. Because once that is accomplished, those tyrants are free to do as they please with those people, whatever that happens to be. Usually it’s not good. Would today’s American government refrain from committing atrocity if given the chance to do so with a poorly armed or unarmed populace? The likelihood that they would, according to the history books, and to current events, is low enough, and the stakes high enough, to warrant a dogged fight against gun control.

My fellow youth and everyone else reading this need to understand the importance of the Second Amendment. If we continue to trash it, by advocating for stricter and stricter gun laws, we may just end up the very victims of such laws, that is, the victims of bloodthirsty tyrants who are only willing to pick a fight with the defenseless, with those who have been disarmed. So, remember what I have explained here, and talk about it with others too if you yourself have understood it to be true. And remember, any state that wants you to be less powerful than it is an unfriendly state.