My Response to Jessica Valenti’s piece on Medium entitled “We Can’t Afford Another 4 Years of ‘Me Me Me’ Politics”
Who stands to benefit from this proposition?
https://gen.medium.com/we-cant-afford-another-4-years-of-me-me-me-politics-b814d6bc1fc0
(NOTE: Jessica’s post is a quick read, if you want to get the full context of my reply.)
Jessica, it’s difficult to have a conversation with a Medium writer who never responds to her commenters, and the one I’m starting with you here is a bit of a diatribe, I admit. But I’m curious:
What makes you think that “living in a civilized society means working for the health and happiness of everyone in it”?
And if that is your ultimate goal, who gets to define exactly how everyone achieves health and happiness? Is one definition sufficient to cover the nearly 8 billion people on the planet? Does this seem rational or reasonable? Who is the “we” in your article title deciding on what constitutes ‘me, me, me’ politics, and who thus should define what “the greater good” entails?
What if the person defining “working for the health and happiness of everyone” said that everyone must eat cantaloupe every day because cantaloupe is beneficial to health, except that ten percent of the world’s population were severely allergic to it? What if the definer/decider said that they would mandate everyone to take experimental drugs to supposedly correct these allergic conditions? Do you think it would be fair to force those ten percent to take the drugs and eat cantaloupe anyway? If your child was allergic to cantaloupe, would you automatically get the drugs, or would you do some research and try to find a way around this mandate if you found that the drugs had caused harm to others? Would this extend to you “giving a shit about others” (your phrase) — that is, would you approve that others are forced to take experimental drugs, or even drugs that are deemed ‘okay’ by someone else’s standards? Whose standards would you accept as legitimate, and why?
What if the person defining “working for the health and happiness for everyone” decided that everyone must wear a special robe when they are in public, because the definer/decider thinks this piece of clothing has a magical quality that gives wearers the power to ward off all forms of evil? What if some people didn’t believe in these magical qualities or powers and they wanted to wear their own favorite clothing, not the robe? Would you non-judgmentally let them do their own thing, or start yelling at them in public to shame them? What if you also questioned the magical qualities and powers but didn’t tell anyone, so you kept wearing the robe just to avoid inconvenience, or actual consequences? What do you think would be fair to do to the rule-breaking people? Keep them from being in public perhaps, or simple allow others to berate them and run them back home, or maybe fine them every time they went outside their home without the robe? What if your mother or best friend refused to wear the robe in public? Should anyone be exempt? Who? Why?
What if someone else decided they were going to start making the rules instead of the first person? What if the new decider now defining “working for the health and happiness of everyone” said that no one was allowed to eat pasta ever because the decider believes that pasta is “the devil’s food” and threatens safety and security? What if rule-breakers had their livelihoods taken from them and were fined or even jailed? Would you eat pasta anyway, knowing that you were going against this new rule? How would you do it? Go to the dark web for pasta, or start making your own in a secret room in your house? Or would you follow the rule, despite your lifelong passion for eating pasta? Would you applaud, either privately or publicly, when others lost their jobs, their family businesses, their writing careers because they defied this new rule?
Who gets to decide on the definition of “working for the health and happiness of everyone,” Jessica — or even that such a concept is reasonable?
Is this notion truly just? Is this social construct an inalienable “right” (defined as something that does not cause harm to a sentient being), or is it a “wrong” (defined as something that does cause harm)? Who gives us our rights? Authority figures? Or do they come from a Divine source? If we do not have individual rights as men and women here on Earth, and we are constantly sacrificing for the “greater good,” are we truly free? Do you think freedom is good and right, or is it bad and wrong? Is freedom conditional? Do you think that we should be enslaved to one another — and to a “ruler” — as part of this cult-ural “greater good” imposition? Is that the kind of world you want to live in, where one person’s happiness is immediately another person’s misery? If so, how is this “right” by any stretch of imagination and reason?
These are the kinds of scenarios that mature people have either been through or thought through in the arduous psychological work of healing their traumas, of individuating from the cult-ural hive mind, and of learning to take excellent care of their bodies, minds, and souls. Mature people, rightly, don’t feel they owe anything to infantilized people who sit around, waiting for government, pharmaceutical companies, and other “authorities” to fix their problems.
I think you know that I’m not talking about turning away from the elderly in care homes, or from infants born to drug-addicted parents. But if an adult person chooses to eat nutritionally poor food, never exercises, ingests a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs, becomes diseased, and then blames society or bad DNA for that, how, exactly, am I personally responsible for taking care of them? And I really do want to hear your answers to that question.
Being an individual whose self-care comes first does not make me narcissistic: It makes me mature, because I can’t truly help others if I’m in a shambles, can I? In fact, I DO CARE for people. I endeavor to share scientifically proven, experiential facts about nutrition, psychological well-being, and creativity. These aspects of human health are defunded, de-platformed, and discredited frequently by powerful industries. True health, a component of maturity, is largely ignored by the masses, who much prefer 1) pills, “injectables,” and fad diets to eating a healthful, mostly whole-food plant-based diet. The mind-controlled masses also 2) watch mainstream tell-a-vision news, movies, and social media instead of doing the hard work of researching, improving themselves, creating their own art, and forging a unique path to maturity.
In other words, most people consume what the cult-ure tells them is satiating and entertaining instead of fixing their psychology and taking care of their bodies. They don’t think for themselves. They don’t explore alternative ideas. They don’t buck the system, question authority, or follow their heart. They’re killing themselves, physically, mentally, and spiritually. And yet, Jessica, you and so many other folks demand that I step in and provide some kind of solution.
The problem is that these people clearly DO NOT WANT my solution. They want to carry on with eating rich-tasting foods that come with extreme costs, telling themselves that it is normal and natural to have a heart attack or get cancer. They want to continue entertaining themselves to death, telling themselves that they are meant to live a false New (c)Age life of “constant joy,” while berating me because I won’t protect them from the diseases and disappointments that they bring on themselves. How much more “me, me, me” can they get? These people hate me because I refuse to be responsible for something I was never given: THEIR FREE WILL. I’ve got my own free will, thank you very much, and I’ve got my own work cut out for me in learning to properly exercise that free will.
So, Jessica, my choosing to not wear an identity-concealing self-suffocating device (face mask) is because I am healthy in body, mind, and spirit when I am free to be myself. And I intend to stay that way, rather than cut off my own oxygen supply, take in excessive carbon dioxide, and breathe through a wet, bacteria breeding ground. Yes, this means I am self-ish, because I actually have a self, which I have worked very hard to mature into and which I will sacrifice for no one and nothing unless I choose to do so.
I would, for example, choose to make certain sacrifices if I were a mother, protecting my child, for I would be responsible for my helpless baby. But do you seriously want me to come to your house every 15 minutes to check on you through the night, as I would do for my own infant? Should I treat my fellow human beings like 10-year-olds, stomping up to them in the grocery store and telling them to drop the candy bar and grab an orange instead? How about if I act like everyone is 16, and I approach them in public or even go to their homes, scolding them to practice abstinence with their date? Sure, those are simple examples, but I’m trying to show that what you are advocating for is adults treating each other as helpless, or dumb, or about to do something regrettable — or all of the above.
That’s not the world I want to live in, nor the one I am working to create, and that’s why I spend so much time writing responses to your posts that you will probably never read [but Medium “Trust & Safety” globalist lapdogs will]. Because, at least if I’m going to share my thoughts with you, it’ll be in a way that you can decide if you give a shit about me and my freedom, or if you just want to hang out, high in your cushy tower, and try to enslave both of us with your “officially sanctioned” definition of “working for the health and happiness of everyone.”
Meanwhile, enjoy eating pasta whenever you please. If it sounds ridiculous to entertain the notion that rotini, linguine, and sedanini can be taken from you in the same way other freedoms are — by certain people defining “the greater good”—then you have conveniently forgotten about slavery, prohibition, Kristallnacht, and, more recently, the cruel, life-crushing COVID-19 measures being foisted on humanity from the same controlling forces that bring constant war, poverty, starvation, debt, and destruction to the world.
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Sharine Wonders 