One of the first lectures I attended when I started medical school way back in 1982 was on Pharmacology. It was delivered by a resident Professor who was also the co-author of the standard and ubiquitously used text at the time. The Professor was an older man, obviously brilliant, but it wasn’t anything he said about the science of drugs I can remember: it was something else.
For some reason or other he spoke about stress and he made reference to the Greeks at the time of the Peloponnesian Wars, the gist of which was something like ‘if you think life’s stressful now, imagine living back then when at any given moment your entire city could be attacked and razed.’
And indeed, that is exactly what happened to the inhabitants of the island of Melos when, in 416 BC, the Athenians presented the Melians with an ultimatum: surrender to Athens or be vanquished. The Melians decided to stand and fight when they were besieged, and they lost. All of its men of fighting age were killed and its women and children were summarily enslaved.
Expeditious savagery was nothing new, but what made the siege of Melos remarkable was the justification used by the ‘democratic’ Athenians for their assault: the strong can do whatever they want, and the weak must submit. Or, perhaps even more simply, Power Rules.
In the midst of Operation Covid we have seen this principle exercised at every turn and in every conceivable way. Mandates were issues, dissenters were ‘cancelled’, silenced, or, like Reiner Fuellmich, jailed. Here in New Zealand, while I write, one of the doctors who saw fit to help rather than indiscriminately jab her patients is in the dock at a Tribunal — a Tribunal whose expenses will be billed to her, no matter the outcome. And it is for no other reason than because the Authorities, in this case the woefully corrupt Medical Council of New Zealand, wish to wield their power. Logic, sense, good medicine, ethics, duty of care — nothing matters except their determination to bring dissidents down. Yes, it’s that naked and that bad.
The Covid downpour may have ended, but the Covid Clowns remains above us all, hovering ominously, warning us that submission is our only choice. The zombies around us who marched to the Piper’s tune try to believe that everything’s okay, but even they can sense this shift, no matter how vigorously they deny the Sudden Deaths of the young or the efflorescence of strange or viciously aggressive Cancers all around, or the hypocrisy of awarding architects of Medical Totalitarianism — such as Jacinda Ardern or Ashley Bloomfield — high State Honors.
Like the Melians and other peoples during the Peloponnesian Wars we are all of us laboring under the peculiar and relentless threat that our lives and liberties may be snatched from us at a pin’s drop should Power decide to flex its arbitrary muscle.
For us, in our globally-networked world, it’s everywhere — then again, for those unfortunate Mediterraneans who ran afoul of Athens or Sparta or Persia, it was also everywhere that counted for them.
I often amuse myself by following discussions in Physics and the quest for that elusive ‘theory of everything’ — not that I understand string theory or particle accelerators or so-called dark energy and matter, or general or special relativity, or the fine points of quantum mechanics. I really don’t. But in my ruminations I am often led to the question about the human pursuit of knowledge. Is there a limit to how much we can know? Is there some special drive that blesses the quest to know with a virtue that cannot ever be questioned?
The old adage ‘knowledge is power’ rightly sums it all up for me. There is NO knowing without at least the hidden desire for control. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a clever fiction.
I’ve said many times before that we possess all the technological and scientific knowledge we need to make the Earth a living paradise for its billions: the only things standing it the way is human greed, selfishness and the never-ending quest for greater power over others that we may exalt ourselves.
It’s pitiful, when you think about it. And it would be laughable were it not for the destruction that has ensued. How many hundreds of thousands are dead in the Ukraine and the Middle East, and are dying in the ‘hidden’ war against our bodies, because of the illusions and fickle employment of Power?
I understand the Nihilists better, those of my friends who see no political solution, those who have been jaded by the machinations of the Deep State that killed their heroes in plain sight: JFK, RFK, MLK, X, and others.
But the Deep State, like Goliath, is not invincible. The problem, in the end, with Nihilism, is that there is no way out, and there is nothing one can put to them to shake them from their position, no evidence of little hopes. If I utter the name ‘Trump’ I am immediately dismissed as a deluded fool, for example.
And yet, I note, during Trump’s first four years in office he started no wars. And yet, I think, he has publicly questioned the role of vaccines in autism, and publicly acknowledged the phenomenon of human trafficking, and publicly criticizes bureaucratic drones and publicly refuses to concede an election we all knew he won in 2020, and on and on.
But I keep these things to myself among the Nihilists. It’s really not about Trump after all, but about the struggle against the wielders of Power against the people, a struggle that has been going on since the birth of our species, and will always go on. And it is no shame to hurl ourselves into this struggle with the heft of political figures espousing our cause, whoever they may be.
There are probably more of us now than ever who are awake to this truth, and it behooves us as we continue our fight to make sure we help each other out — we in our community. That, in and of itself, is a source of shining Hope. And it is also the best antidote to the weight of the Covid Cloud, which we may see no longer an an oppressor, but as a reminder that the siege launched in 2020 was NOT successful.
I’ve been saying for a long long time that all we need is a fighting chance, and we now certainly have it. Stress is stress and it will always be, but in shaking off the cobwebs of despondency and listing actively in battle we have the antidote.
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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
