The Idiocy of Xenophobic Ideology linked to Serious Tasks

[Asher Kelman]

Your beliefs may ultimately determine whether you live or die from the coronavirus. Let me explain: not to disrespect Steve Jobs but to use him to make a point, I'll use him as an example; if he had not been a difficult cancer patient, had he believed in alternative treatments, he may still be alive today.

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If you truly believe that alternative treatments can in fact heal you when you are sick, you will be interested in the following post:

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DELETED LINK PER TOS and poster BANNED

It’s not respectful to come into a community without introducing yourself!
1. The secret, first, is to use your real name or you get deleted!

2. Second, you can’t be a guru here as we don’t have gurus, except for engineering and then that place is reserved for a doug Kerr!

3. Masks work

4. We have experts to rely on!

5. You can quote anyone from a major British, UK, Australian, USA or equivalent academic or Virology institution.

6. Alternative treatments without evidence based studies are not entertained.

7. Show photographs and we’ll get along well and enjoy your company!


Asher

 

[Tom Dinning]

We’re not buying what he has to sell, Ash.
He’ll be gone soon.

 

[Jerome Marot]

Your beliefs may ultimately determine whether you live or die from the coronavirus. Let me explain: not to disrespect Steve Jobs but to use him to make a point, I'll use him as an example; if he had not been a difficult cancer patient, had he believed in alternative treatments, he may still be alive today.

Steve Jobs tried alternative treatments at the beginning of his illness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4924574/

 

[Asher Kelman]

Unfortunately, Jobs did use alternative therapy and that killed him!

I happen to be

1. A cancer specialist
2. A Professor of Microbiology, (Virology)

So I know enough to know what is and isn’t plausible!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Unfortunately, Jobs did use alternative therapy and that killed him!

He certainly is dead.

 

[James Lemon]

I had a friend once who believed he could live longer by changing his life style. So he quit smoking,started exercising,and became a vegetarian. While riding his bicycle one day he got run over by a train and died instantly.

 

[Asher Kelman]

The point of this thread existing and not having been deleted instantly was to show the existence of extreme ideological delusions

..... that are not merely self-instructing, like “it’s safer to choose blue shirts” or “a donkey on the dark side of the moon protects me”

But are used to classify the worth or status of others

.....or by stubborn superstitions and resolute belief in the authority of gurus or religious leaders such as pastors, endanger the lives of others.

My argument is that such ideologies, (whether or not are stitched to a nation state or color of skin) are “fascist” and need to be isolated battered and destroyed.

Otherwise

• Women can’t have reproductive rights
• The Rohinga are massacred
• The Homosexuals are humiliated
• The Darfur and Yazidi massacred or raped
• Brown “Hispanic” children and pregnant women are lying on the concrete floor of border jails in the USA while we are short of 3,000,000 babies a year to maintain our future workforce!
• In time of a pandemic, the Pastor or priest has their flock gather in tens or thousands to pray, “protected by the blood of Jesus” and insanely threaten the lives of others by spreading contagion!

 

[Jerome Marot]

And all this because some bloke seeks to make a few bucks selling mushrooms as a cure to anything?

 

[Asher Kelman]

I don’t mind him selling the mushrooms, LOL!

It’s that such men, if popular destroy societies.

• Hitler
• Mohammed

As the worst examples

But today we have a President who is xenophobic and racist!

Hungary is that way too!

When they are little and seem trivial we dismiss them, that’s all.

I just wanted to put a spotlight on this piece of trash that blew in!

Let him make a few bucks, I don’t mind, but the conviction he has to unneeded poisonous ideology is contagious

.....and one of these myriads of powerless trash will become the next tyrant!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Congratulations for the Godwin point. Asher, I understand the outrage, but the demonstration is off the point. You can't compare snake oil (or rather mushroom oil) sellers and elected presidents implementing xenophobic policies.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Congratulations for the Godwin point. Asher, I understand the outrage, but the demonstration is off the point. You can't compare snake oil (or rather mushroom oil) sellers and elected presidents implementing xenophobic policies.

But to me, unlike Godwin’s point that discussion eventually evolves to this point, mine is far different.

To me fascism’s is a “seed” that starts with ideology that “finds its moment”.

The very failure ultimately, in fact, of powerful Hitler was rooted in his ideology. His lockstep to his narrow “rules of virtue”, his commitment to Mein Kampf and his rally rhetoric, caused his armies to be defeated, when logic would have expected otherwise.

No, for me, Jérôme, fascism” is a “fulcrum” for both it’s evil success and paradoxically its often remarkable failures to self-sustain.

It’s a built in “faulty-engineering-lever” on people’s minds that ultimately discards logic!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Congratulations for the Godwin point. Asher, I understand the outrage, but the demonstration is off the point. You can't compare snake oil (or rather mushroom oil) sellers and elected presidents implementing xenophobic policies.

The “mushroom sellers” manifestos should be read!

Eventually one of these trivial flakes of nothing can speak and attract followers.

That’s how they all start, so brooms are needed, LOL.

Did you read his epistles on homosexuality?

Look at the distance between “selling mushrooms and meditation”, (both pretty harmless on the scale of things) and then him seriously classifying gays as major deviants caked with opprobrium!

Asher

 

[nicolas claris]

Asher, you succeeded! Now is the time to ban the OP (he still has no name despite our TOS and your request) and delete the unuseful but dangerous link.
Thank you!

 

[Asher Kelman]

Agreed, Nicolas!

Just my parting link. How a fulcrum of bad ideology can defeat the worker’s tasks at hand!

...and thanks my dear friends for your extraordinary patience!


I am impressed by Richard hunter’s book on the “Storms of War” arguing how Hitler could have succeeded time and again had his decision not been degraded by his tenacious loyalty to his ideology as spouted in his mass rallies.

Haven’t most most xenophobic or doomsday leaders started out as dismissible nobodies!

Asher

 

[Tom Dinning]

Agreed, Nicolas!

Just my parting link. How a fulcrum of bad ideology can defeat the worker’s tasks at hand!

...and thanks my dear friends for your extraordinary patience!


I am impressed by Richard hunter’s book on the “Storms of War” arguing how Hitler could have succeeded time and again had his decision not been degraded by his tenacious loyalty to his ideology as spouted in his mass rallies.

Haven’t most most xenophobic or doomsday leaders started out as dismissible nobodies!

Asher

Richard Hunter is just stating the bleeding obvious. I learned that in grade 10 history.

I didn’t write a book about it but I did write a short essay on it. I got a B+ if I remember rightly.

At that early and most vulnerable age I was fascinated with such people. Not just the dictators, fascists and xenophobia but the other obsessives like Gandhi, Churchill, Sun Yat Sen; idealistic and determined people who ‘saw’ a future and went for it.

The path to victory is scattered with decisions, Ash. Not all work out the way we want.
I doubt if Hitler, just before he topped himself, would have thought about his mistaken pathway. He’d have been blaming everyone else.

My point is; there is always a point to be made. It’s just not always your point or mine.

I passed a family selling mangos on the side of the road yesterday. $10 a bag. A real bargain. Such initiative, I thought.

Later I read an article in the news of people spitting and coughing on Asian looking people and blaming them for bringing coronavirus to our shores.

Which seed do I water, Ash?

Do I go back and buy some mangoes or spit in the face of the seller?

And even if I don’t act, what do I dwell on? What do I believe?
You might say a reasonable person would buy some mangoes.

But you continue to spit in the face of those that appear to meet your own criteria for criticism.

Not all dismissible nobodies along the side of your road will become Hitler clones.
Some are just passing the time while selling mangoes.

If you see fuel for your fire, don’t light a match.

 

[Asher Kelman]

He just seemed to me to be Donald Trump who hasn’t made it yet!

Good think he didn’t inherit a fortune!

Asher

 

[Jerome Marot]

Let me explain how I see this. In this thread we had a person who is using recent events to try to frighten us into buying a mushroom concoction. There is a hint of "us against them" argument when that person writes we should "believe", as this implies some sort of conspiracy for us not to use mushroom concoctions. Amusingly, I happen to know that some mushrooms indeed boost our immune system, but this is beyond the point.

Then we have Asher making a parallel with nazism (I'll leave aside the reference to a prophet, I hope Asher will eventually come to his senses and correct that himself).

In my opinion, we actually have a better example in this thread: https://openphotographyforums.com/forums/threads/tracking-down-the-wuhan-virus.23925/

In that thread, we have the "New Tang Dynasty Television" (please look it up by clicking on the link), which seeks to convince us that the virus called COVID-19 is a creation of the Communist Party of China. Indeed the means used to try to convince us are the same: fear and a "us against them" argument. Yet the "us against them" argument is much stronger because the enemy is clearly designed (Communist China), there is manipulation of xenophobic feelings (against the Chinese) and the purpose is clearly political.

Earlier on this forum, we also had a discussion about "Obtaining reliable news": https://openphotographyforums.com/forums/threads/obtaining-news-sources-and-reliability.23883/

Unreliable news are actually relatively easy to recognise as they all use the same trick: they try to manipulate our emotions. They have no other means at their disposal, because they cannot use rational arguments: therefore they must rely on manipulation of our feelings. In the case of the present epidemic: fear at the very least. Often also: xenophobia, because fear is easier to manipulate and turn to action if a human enemy can be designated. It is much easier to motivate people against "communists" or "the Chinese" than against something abstract like an exponential curve. And, unfortunately, being human we all come with a collection of automatic brain circuits that respond to being primed that way.

But it is easy to recognise: if you feel an emotion, if you feel irate, if your pulse is elevating and you start to be furious about "them" (whomever "them" is), then you are being manipulated. Calm down, switch off the news, do a little google search on the words you just heard (after resetting your browser, maybe...) to get some other info.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks, Jérôme,

Great tools: realize the emotional triggers added!

Asher