Anyone else notice this?
Fairly unsubstantiated post, based on personal experience, and on what I am seeing elsewhere.
As a "not fully vaccinated" person, society is closing in, increasingly. I am barely allowed to participate in goings-on, anymore. My family shuns and shames me. My "friends" have essentially abandoned me. Shit is getting very, very real, now...
Mask mandates are ubiquitous, across 6 or 7 out of the Australian jurisdictions, including the one I am stuck in. Vaccine mandates, too. I'm not allowed to work. I essentially can't "go out". In another state, they want to make mandates apply in supermarkets, too, so you essentially won't be able to buy food...
"Social distancing" is also ubiquitously still in place. Businesses are closing EVERYWHERE, because they can't make money. Governments are constantly threatening "new lockdowns" and curfews, because, duhh, Omicron, means rising case numbers. It's genuinely scary to see where things are going...
Aside from not currently being in lockdown, we are currently the most restricted we have ever been. Ever. Especially if you are "unvaccinated", or, increasingly, unboosted...
Very soon, people like me won't even be able to enter a university campus, or even study online. Can't work, can't study. Logic...
And people ABSOLUTELY lap this up. Media coverage is UNIVERSALLY for more restrictions. Almost everyone I know, and encounter "IRL" is all for it. As is the entirety of local Reddit, aside from, obviously, the "critical" or "skeptical" subs. Worse than that, if you question ANY element of it, you are shamed, ostracised, demonized, treated worse than dirt. Why?
I know this isn't the case everywhere. Not in Red states. Not in Mexico, per se. Not in Japan. Not in parts of Eastern Europe, or Africa, or elsewhere. But it is, here. It IS, in NZ. It IS in Blue states. It IS in the UK, and in France, and in Germany, and in Austria, and in the Netherlands. Some of those places are even more extreme than where I am, despite less compliant populations, and lower vaxx rates...
When, and how does this end?? Next year will almost certainly be worse. In fact, for me personally, I 100% guarantee it will be.
When will people wake up? Will they ever?? What the fuck are we going to do?? How do we actually push back? I'm genuinely beginning to think that this WON'T end, because people simply do not want it to, so... Where do we go from here??
You're looking at it wrong OP.
You think things are doomed and already decided, thus there's no reason to fight for things worth saving, and good things are destroyed. You think the people are perpetually ignorant, thus you don't speak out against the lies, and the people remain ignorant. You think you're alone, thus you don't seek out anyone that thinks like you, and you remain alone. You think you can't do anything to stop evil, thus you don't do anything to stop it, and the evil remains.
The world is what is, and what we create. The world becomes what we tolerate, and thus through our inaction or action we deserve it. We're not just sponges that soak up the circumstance of the world around us. We have the power to shape it and change it. You may be partially right on what's going on, but you're wrong on your assessment of what can be done to stop it, and what you can do to change it. You're half right in the worst way possible. You've convinced yourself that everything is lost, that you can't do anything, that you're alone, and thus you've already decided your future actions, succumbed to doom, and acquiesced to the very evil you claim to hate. You've fallen victim to the propaganda just as much as the faceless public you condemn. The cabal wants us feeling exactly the way you do, so we never fight back against them. You've defeated yourself with your own thoughts. You've already lost without fighting a single battle.
In the worst times is the best time for good men to prove themselves, to seek out the other good people among us, to care for and defend each other, to realize we're not alone, to lift each other up, to realize all good isn't lost, to fight for it, to be outspoken against evil and lies, to fight against evil and lies. Your ancestors have achieved far more with far less against far greater odds. Even in that way, you're not alone. We were not put on this earth to lead easy comfortable lives. We're meant to be tested. The harder the test, the better the man that can overcome them. Why do you think the hero's journey has remained virtually unchanged in stories for millennia?
What can one man do? At the very least, he can remain a beacon of light in his own life, an example to those around him. At most, he can do far more. At the center, nothing will change until you change yourself. That choice, however, is yours.