About Parrhesia

This excerpt is from Thoughts of the Human Mammal, Substack Website of Dan Palmer.

Question by Dan Palmer: "What advice would you give your younger self?"

Peter Bogossian:

One word, “parrhesia.”

Always speak openly and honestly, especially in the face of adversity. As Hitchens wrote, “Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity… the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”

If you want to have a life worth living, work to make relationships worth having. The only way to do that is through parrhesia. Be honest. Be open. Have unwavering integrity. Never be sneaky or false. Don’t lie. Be more concerned with what is true and less concerned with what people think of you. Know that every time you’re not forthright you’re committing an injustice by bringing yourself and those you love further from the good life. Only if you say what you mean will people know what you mean. And only if others say what they mean will you know what they mean. You cannot have an authentic relationship unless someone knows what you mean and you know what they mean. And if you don’t have authentic relationships, you’ll never be truly happy or truly in love because other people won’t know you for who you are but for who they think you are. Parrhesia cuts through all of this. It’s an indispensable condition for a good life and a prophylactic against most sorrows.

Additional note from Wikipedia:

Parrhesia was a fundamental component of the democracy of Classical Athens. In assemblies and the courts Athenians were free to say almost anything, and in the theatre, playwrights such as Aristophanes made full use of the right to ridicule whomever they chose.Elsewhere there were limits to what might be said; freedom to discuss politics, morals, religion, or to criticize people would depend on context: by whom it was made, and when, and how, and where.

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Happy Update on COVID Risk and Left-Wing Media Suppression of the Good News

Today's comments by the CDC's Director Rochelle Walensky suggest that there is very little risk vaccinated people, and that there is not a good reason to keep worrying about serious illness or death from COVID if one is vaccinated. You can watch her make these comments at this video. Here is an excerpt:

ABC "GOOD MORNING AMERICA" HOST: I want to ask you about the encouraging headlines we're talking about this morning, a new studying talking about just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness. Given that, is it time to rethink how we're living with this virus if it is potentially here to stay?

CDC DIRECTOR ROCHELLE WALENSKY: A really important study if I may summarize it, a study of 1.2 million people who are vaccinated between December and October demonstrated that severe disease occurred 0.015% of the people who receive their primary series. And death in 0.003% of those people.

The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities.

So really these are people who were unwell to begin with.

To put these number in perspective, here are these two risk numbers converted to x out of 100,000:

10/100,000 vaccinated people will experience "severe disease" as a result of COVID.

3/100,000 vaccinated people will die of COVID. This website lists 50 maladies more likely to kill a vaccinated person than COVID.

Did major media outlets report this good news?  I suspected that left-wing media would suppress these statistics and I was correct.

The New York Times has not mentioned Walensky's comments. Instead, here's today's NYT headline: "Covid Live Updates: U.S. Hospitalizations Break Record as Omicron Surges U.S. insurers must cover eight at-home tests each month, the Biden administration says. Chicago’s public schools canceled Monday’s classes."

NPR also fails to mention Walensky's comments. Instead, today's headline are: "How to get insurance to pay for at-home COVID tests, according to the White House."

The Washington Post has not mentioned Walensky's comments either, except in a story that buries the lede, titled: "Rochelle Walensky is not good at this." Today's other WP headline: "U.S. poised to break record 142,000 covid-19 hospitalizations: But it may get much worse. Already struggling hospitals could house about 300,000 covid patients later this month if models are correct."

MSNBC did not report on Walensky's comments either. Instead, here is the MSNBC COVID headline: "Supreme Court killing Covid vaccine mandates leaves Biden with (some) options."

Walensky's comments have been widely published in other publications, none of them known as left-wing sources. For now, I will spare you my highly cynical thoughts about why this good COVID news is not being reported by left-wing media, but it didn't surprise me in the least.

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John McWhorter: Beware “Anti-Racism” Programs that do not Diminish Racism

John McWhorter urges all of us to do real work instead following the suggestions of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi to lower standards, which has the effect of infantilizing those who have fallen behind. Just because someone calls a program "anti-racism" does not mean that it actually helps to eliminate racism.

The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity. McWhorter is one of the many dedicated people serving on the FAIR Board of Advisors.

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The Woking Class

I know this sounds overbroad and over-ambitious, but I would like to know what the loudest members of the Woke have ever done in their lives to alleviate suffering of others. I know people who actually pour their life energies into helping desperate people survive. I don't see any such benefit resulting from Woke ideology. I see a lot of young people with lots of energy and frustration. How many of these idealistic people have ever worked a job where they need to fix something physical? How many have ever worked a job where they served a customer well? Yet they claim that they know how to burn down our entire political/economic system without any meaningful blueprint of what happens next.

Is that why so many of them spend so much time digitally grooming themselves on social media? And, BTW, the people who have spent a lot of time providing valuable goods and services to others are working class Americans who do seek community with other Americans, who value a hard day's work and who have been abandoned by the modern Democratic Party.

Glenn Greenwald:

If your only sense of purpose, self-esteem and political identity comes from how you posture online, then you will of course want to create a framework in which one's character and values are determined by everything *except* what you do with your life. That's online leftism.

Consider the recent work of Batya Ungar-Sargon:

We are hiding a class divide in America," she said. "We are hiding disgusting levels of income inequality in America. We are hiding the total dispossession of the working class of all races by focusing on a very highly specialized academic language about race.

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