Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously stated that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
Some intellectual fun would be to identify such cycles in our own lives. Creative individuals, who bring forward ideas for open debate and discussion, enter this three-part sequence at its most difficult phase. Periods of ridicule can be protracted, and they require resilience and patience to navigate. The final transition to a social discourse of the entirely self-evident can be even more remarkable. Crowd-thought and mass narrative may execute an about turn without so much as a by-your-leave. Accountability or apology for propaganda later dropped from mass circulation is rare. Some creative individuals who advance truth may never enjoy wider acceptance in their own lifetime.
Continental Drift
The Continental Drift hypothesis, proposed by Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), was initially met with ridicule by the scientific community. Wegener proposed that continents were once joined together as a ‘supercontinent‘ (Pangaea). Subsequently they drifted apart over millions of years. His theory was based on fossil distribution and the similarity of geological formations on different continents. Wegener was mocked and largely dismissed by the ‘experts‘. With the development of plate tectonics theory decades later, and beyond his own lifetime, Wegener’s ideas were revisited and eventually accepted as a cornerstone of geology.
Medicine
Medicine is no stranger to ridicule. It is a common currency.
Physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) introduced antiseptic procedures into medical practice in Austria. He identified that infection in maternity wards was linked to the failure of doctors to wash their hands. Semmelweis was derided by the medical experts. His ideas were seen as an insult to the medical profession and they challenged the customary notion of disease transmission (miasma theory, the Overton window of the time). He was ostracised by the profession. His theories on hand hygiene and infection control were eventually validated by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, decades after his death. Semmelweis is now recognized as a pioneer of infection control and the ‘Semmelweis reflex’ is occasionally used as a term to describe rejection of new evidence that contradicts established norms.
Countless cycles of ridicule, opposition and then the final acceptance as completely self-evident have taken place in Medicine over the centuries.
Willem Dicke (1905-1962) established that exclusion of wheat, rye and oats from the diet led to dramatic improvement in coeliac disease. Toxicity was shown to be a protein referred to as gluten. Established medical experts of the time struggled greatly to accept that children could possibly suffer from a ‘wholesome staple food‘ (bread). The Coeliac Society (Coeliac UK) was founded in 1968 and similar societies now exist across the world.
Ridicule Has Direction And Intent
Ridicule is almost always generated by the majority who hold a mass narrative. It is an output from the crowd. The chant of the mob. Targets are those perceived as a challenge to the status quo. It is a tool used to enforce social hierarchy and social control. From Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (tried in 1600 AD by the Inquisition and burned at the stake for heresy in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome) onwards.
A significant risk in medical practice and wider society is mass narrative. Group-think, crowd-thought, murmuration, mind-lock. It may gain momentum that is difficult to stop.
Psychology of Mass Narrative
Assimilation into a mass narrative has been likened to hypnosis, and hypnosis on the scale of a population describes totalitarianism. Ambitious totalitarian regimes have included the 20th century Great Leap Forward (Mao Zedong, China) and 21st century doorstep applause on a Thursday night for the National Health Service. Political theorist Hannah Arendt described the totalitarian state in which individuals are susceptible to propaganda and mass narrative in their search for a sense of purpose. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Mattias Desmet argues that modern cultures have been left without a ‘grand narrative‘. Such destabilised societies show heightened anxiety and fear that seeks to ‘latch on’ to new narrative, the very conditions required for the population to behave as a crowd – mass formation – a hypnotic state of shared song or shared mantra. Open debate is closed down, dissent is censored, ridicule is employed and a totalitarian state is born.
Healthy scepticism and independent thought are unwelcome in totalitarianism. Both the totalitarised masses and their totalitarised leaders believe fervently in their narrative. The usual hope and pursuit is for utopian solutions, led by technocrats and politicians, supported by the lowest forms of all scientific evidence – the expert and the predictive model.
Totalitarian thought is an ever-present under-current in human societies, ready to seize control whenever conditions allow. Healthy scepticism is rare but essential. It must be nurtured as a key component in the pursuit of scientific truth.
A World Simply Not Yet Ready
Mass narrative – crowd thought – murmuration, may simply not yet be ready for quantal shift.
In the early 1900s, a clerk sat and stared out from the window of an insurance company, somewhere in the European Union not-yet-formed. He despised his career; he despised insurance; he wanted to be a writer. But the world was not yet ready for his creative works. He was widely scorned and he did not enjoy success in his life time. For Franz Kafka, recognition would follow only after his death.
About the same time, from Dayton, Ohio, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright were equally persistent but more fortunate. Lampooned widely for their ‘flying horse’, labelled by local media The Dayton Daily as ‘sky-bound imbeciles‘, derided by expert engineers and accused by authorities of ‘devilry‘, their efforts would eventually see take off in their own lifetime.
Frances Kelsey would witness the full cycle from scorn to acceptance and public recognition. Marketed in Germany in 1957 by Chemie Grünenthal, thalidomide would soon be launched by Distillers in the UK as a ‘wonder drug’. Advertisements used the catch phrases ‘non-toxic’ and ‘no known toxicity’. The drug was subsequently marketed under at least 37 different names around the world. It was to become one of the saddest chapters in pharmaceutical history.
The first publication to link thalidomide and birth defects appeared in 1961 in The Lancet, as a letter from an Australian, William McBride. In 1968, Chemie Grünenthal was brought to trial in Germany, charged with involuntary manslaughter, but in 1970 this trial was ended prematurely by the German government, who stated that it was ‘not in the public interest’. It was only on 29 November 2023 that the Australian Prime Minister announced a ‘formal national apology to all Australians impacted by the Thalidomide Tragedy’, more than half a century on from the earliest harms.
Through the diligent work of FDA scientist Frances Kelsey, who demanded further safety trials prior to market authorisation, thalidomide was never approved for release in the USA. Despite intense personal criticism, she protected an entire nation. Had the US launch occurred, the number of deformed newborns could have been five or six times the toll in Europe. President John F. Kennedy recognised Kelsey’s heroic effort.
Pandemic Years
For our current era of COVID gene-based mRNA injections, globalist narrative and promotion; when will it become widely self-evident in social discourse, that if the spike protein is toxic from the virus, the same spike protein will be toxic when manufactured by the body after the gene-based injectables. The global vaccine development industry has simply chosen the wrong protein.
Estimates of global excess deaths related to the gene-based mRNA COVID vaccine roll-out now include independent analyst Edward Dowd (8-15 million); Denis Rancourt, former Professor of Physics, University of Ottawa (17 million); Foster, Frijters and Baker with the Brownstone Institute (18.2 million); Peter McCullough (17.5 million). For a comparable event in excess global death, one must look back to China and the Great Leap Forward of Mao Zedong, which caused one of the largest ever recorded famines, with between 15 and 55 million lives lost through centralist and collectivist policies.
Conclusion
Medical Science has made extensive use of ridicule and directed it towards curiosity and open mindedness. The profession desperately needs to learn humility. Accountability and apology for extensive harms are difficult to find. In the pursuit of truth, less ridicule and more sincerity are required. We must cultivate open dialogue and question narrative.
Curiosity and honesty should be valued over conformity, crowd-thought and mass narrative formation.
