I saw this quote the other day (Einstein?) and it really resonated with me, when trying to make sense of the unutterable atrocities of the last 16 months, where so many of us have said, "how can all these intelligent people be falling for this, how can smart, well-educated humans participate in such brutal, inhuman tyranny?"

It's because being a decent, thoughtful, whole (soul) human being has nothing to do with your IQ. It has to do with your convictions, your depth, your moral courage - your character - and far too many people, it would seem, don't have one, or rather, have a terribly withered and deformed one. I touched on this in my 'Good Person Thing' post, noting that your average quaxxed-up maskinator has the moral depth of a puddle, and they don't really believe in anything. As one friend put it, they care only about their reputation, not their integrity - about "looking like a good person", rather than actually being one.

But because they have no genuine moral compass of their own to discern what 'the good person thing' to do is, and are completely reliant on cues from culture (TV and "experts") to guide their behaviour, they can - increasingly often - make staggeringly inept errors of judgment, as was so starkly illustrated by the story of my dad's obituary about his good friend, and how the self-declared "good people" responded to it (please see here: https://www.facebook.com/miri.anne8/posts/10157931276291034).

It should be noted that both of these individuals have since apologised, which is appreciated, and, of course, we can all make mistakes and so it is incumbent on all of us as imperfect people to forgive others when they are genuinely contrite. So I'm not suggesting these two particular people are further implicated or 'judged', I just sincerely hope they reflect on their behaviour and change.

But that it happened at all is so revealing of where we are as a culture, and what empty, morally bankrupt husks so many people have become.

This is something I've been aware of for quite some while, going back to childhood, where I would be repeatedly shocked and horrified with what casual immorality so-called "educated, intelligent" adults could behave - and, whilst I don't claim for a second that people of other political persuasions are exempt, this is something I have always observed as being disproportionately common in those who identify as left-wing liberals - as if labelling themselves this way so clearly makes them a "good person", they don't have to put any effort at all into actually being one.

What is rife in these circles particularly (again, NOT saying others are exempt or that all left-wing liberals are this way) is what I now recognise as malignant narcissism - or, what might be better termed, the lack of what essentially makes us properly human. Some people seem to be, quite literally, soulless. There is something fundamentally broken and essentially missing. At the current time, such people have often been referred to as NPCs (Non-Player Characters, comparing them to stock characters in video games that are controlled by the computer), but they have had many different names in other cultures and throughout history.

Those of us who have a character and a soul assume that everyone else does, too, and what I think has become increasingly and undeniably apparent through the convid hoax, is that not everyone does.

People who can easily be manipulated into justifying - and indeed, demanding - the abuse of children (masking children is patently abusive and anybody with a fully formed character can see that), the forced detainment, isolation, and ultimately mass-murder of the elderly, the false imprisonment and forced, invasive 'testing' of millions of healthy people - are simply not fully developed human beings. I'm not saying they're not human, any more than I would say a baby is not human as it is not as tall as an adult. I am saying that they are suffering profoundly arrested development - just as an adult would be, if it had not grown from infancy.

And that is why society has been split down the middle and why we, the "crazy" ones, spend every day reeling in shock, horror, dismay, and stunned disbelief, that our "fellow human beings" can behave the way they are, callously and casually disregarding everything in the way of morality, decency, and real human values.

The reason for this is that their soul has withered away and perhaps even died altogether (and many have made the plausible argument that this is a factor of the vaccine, that it interferes with the divine spark of real humanity within us, downgrading us to just obedient fleshbots who take orders - the perfect slaves).

Everyone is born with a soul but not everyone maintains it. Just like any other part of your being, body and mind, the soul needs continual work and maintenance to remain intact and continue to grow. If you shirk from this essential maintenance - which, like any exercise regimen, can be punishing and tough - then that part of you withers, atrophies, and, eventually, dies altogether.

You don't do essential soul work by following the crowd, virtue-signalling, and taking orders from the Guardian. You do it by facing hard, unpalatable, unpopular truths. You do it by doing the right thing, rather than the easy or applauded thing. You do it by experiencing alienation, rejection, condemnation, vilification and, often, utter visceral hatred, including and especially from some of your previously closest confidantes.

The prospect of this is obviously not enticing, but anyone with an intact character and fully-formed soul has done it, recognising it as the essential work it is. Real character is forged in a crucible of fire, and too many people are afraid of getting burned. But as has been said, what is to give light must endure burning.

When I think of some of the most brilliantly insightful and incisive people I know, whose thoughts and insights into the convid situation have been sustaining and profound, I have no idea whether any of them would do well on an IQ test. I suspect most of them would be high-average, but nothing exceptional to the extent of "genius" territory (my own IQ is thoroughly unremarkable, since those exclusionary fascists who make IQ tests insist on putting maths on them...).

But their minds - and their souls - remain brilliant, because this is the key thing: genius is not a matter of intelligence, it's a matter of character.