Ezra Pound, Confucian Order, and the Politics of Discipline

 

Here are some thoughts  around Ezra Pound and Confucianism, focussing on parallels between Confucian order and Pound’s attraction to political control. It seems to me in our current times, the desire for order in the Western democracies - highlighted today by the speech by Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference - was echoed in Ezra Pound's thought processes, especially  in the 1930s and 1940s.

Meantime China is  these days  reviving Confucianism’s values  where they align with its overarching political agenda. This,  after the Maoist-era rejection of those values.  And so with  China beginning to  lead  the world in manufacturing output , a controlled programme towards Net Zero by the 2060s ( a realistic target), and a controlled autocratic politics informed in part by Confucian ideals , Ezra Pound’s vision offers an interesting and fertile landscape for debate about authority, culture, and the search for social coherence.

Poetry as a Blueprint for Civilisation

The poetry of Ezra Pound cannot be separated from his lifelong engagement with the ethical and political thought of Confucius. As the diagram on this page suggests, Pound’s ambition was not simply aesthetic but civilisational: he believed poetry could help restore moral clarity and social order. Nowhere is this clearer than in the poems themselves, especially in sections of The Cantos where Confucian ideas of governance, language, and historical example shape both the structure and purpose of the verse.

Ezra Pound, Confucian Order, and the Politics of Discipline

Pound did not read Confucius merely as an ancient sage; he treated him as a diagnostician of civilisational health. In Confucian philosophy, Pound believed he had found a framework for restoring moral clarity, linguistic precision, and hierarchical harmony to societies he saw as collapsing into financial abstraction and political incoherence.

Pound’s Discovery of Confucius as a Civilisational Guide

Central to Pound’s interpretation was the Confucian insistence that order begins with correct relationships: ruler and subject, parent and child, word and meaning. Social harmony, in this view, is not achieved through democratic contestation but through moral authority, ritual continuity, and disciplined hierarchy. Pound perceived modern Western democracies as having lost precisely this coherence. Parliamentary politics, mass finance, and ideological propaganda appeared to him as symptoms of a civilisation that had abandoned moral structure for procedural mechanism.

Confucian Order versus Modern Democratic Disorder

This intellectual longing for order helps explain Pound’s attraction to authoritarian models of governance, including his support for Benito Mussolini. Pound imagined fascism not primarily as a doctrine of repression but as a vehicle for no restoring the ethical clarity he associated with Confucian governance. He believed strong leadership might realign language, economy, and culture with moral purpose. In this sense, Pound’s fascism was less an embrace of totalitarianism as such than an attempt—misguided and historically catastrophic—to translate Confucian ideals of hierarchy and virtue into modern European politics.

From Confucian Ethics to Authoritarian Politics

The flaw in Pound’s reasoning lies in a crucial difference between Confucian and fascist concepts of authority. Confucian political philosophy binds rulers to moral responsibility: legitimacy depends on virtue, and unjust rulers lose the Mandate of Heaven. Fascism, by contrast, tends to ground legitimacy in power, myth, and national destiny. Pound collapsed this distinction, projecting Confucian ethical restraint onto regimes that did not in fact embody it.

Enduring Questions About Order in Modern Societies

Yet the questions that animated Pound have not disappeared. Contemporary Western politics still wrestles with anxieties about disorder, economic opacity, and cultural fragmentation. Calls for renewed discipline and strategic coherence continue to surface in public discourse, such as in recent remarks by Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference, where concerns about geopolitical instability and institutional weakness were foregrounded. These anxieties echo, in a different register: Pound’s fear that liberal societies risk losing the capacity to sustain order.

Meanwhile, the global rise of China—with its combination of centralised political authority, long-term industrial planning, and civilisational self-consciousness—has renewed interest in alternative models of governance and social coordination. Some observers see in China’s trajectory a modern echo, however imperfect, of the Confucian belief that social stability flows from disciplined leadership and coherent cultural narratives.

Pound’s Legacy: A Warning

For this reason, Pound’s thought remains provocative. His political judgments were deeply compromised, and his antisemitism and wartime actions rightly condemn him morally. Yet the underlying tension he articulated—the struggle between procedural freedom and civilisational order—continues to animate debates about democracy, governance, and cultural continuity.

Pound’s Confucianism therefore survives not as a political prescription but as an intellectual focal point. It reminds us that modern societies still wrestle with an ancient question: whether stability arises primarily from liberty, or from moral structure and hierarchy. Pound’s tragic error was to believe the latter could be imposed by authoritarian power. His enduring relevance lies in forcing us to confront the dilemma itself.

Poems Showing Confucian Influence in Pound: Poetry as Moral Instruction

The engagement of Ezra Pound with the thought of Confucius appears most clearly in the poems where he treats poetry as a vehicle for moral and civilisational instruction rather than personal expression. In these works, Pound draws on Confucian ideas of ethical hierarchy, historical exemplars, and the shaping power of language.

Confucius Speaks in The Cantos

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The most explicit example occurs in Canto XIII of The Cantos, where Confucius himself speaks. Here Pound presents the sage not as a mystical figure but as a practical teacher of order, emphasising disciplined governance, proper conduct, and the cultivation of virtue. The canto offers fragments of dialogue intended to guide political and ethical reflection. 

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History as Moral Example: The China Cantos

Confucian influence also shapes the so-called China Cantos (LII–LXI), where Pound recounts episodes from Chinese history. These passages present rulers as moral exemplars whose success or failure depends on their ability to sustain ritual, justice, and social harmony. History becomes, in Pound’s Confucian mode, a series of lessons in governance rather than a chronicle of events.

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Early Signals of Order: Cathay and the Idea of Civilisation

An earlier, more indirect influence can be seen in Cathay [ Links to audio on YouTube] [ Link to Project Gutenberg for the full set ] . Although based largely on classical Chinese poems rather than explicitly Confucian texts, the collection introduces Pound’s admiration for a civilisation he perceived as ordered, ceremonious, and ethically grounded. The clarity of imagery and restraint of tone in these poems foreshadow his later belief that poetic language should function with the precision Confucius demanded of political speech.

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Poetry as Cultural Architecture

Taken together, these works show Pound using poetry not merely to describe the world but to model a civilisation. Through Confucius, he imagined verse as a tool of cultural memory, moral instruction, and social order — an ambition that lies at the heart of his lifelong poetic project.

Three Revolutions, One Story: How Interfaces, Networks, and Games Shaped the Digital World

 

Here is a summary of the intertwined origins of personal computing, showing how breakthroughs at Xerox PARC and the countercultural ethos of the Whole Earth Catalog converged to redefine technology. Engineers envisioned computers as intimate tools for thought, while idealists promoted access to empowering tools for everyday life. Together, these movements laid both the technical and philosophical foundations of modern computing, shaping a vision of technology as personal, creative, and transformative.

In the second half of the twentieth century, three technological revolutions unfolded in parallel. Each began in a different place, driven by different communities, and aimed at different problems. Yet together they converged to create the digital environment we now inhabit. These revolutions were: the invention of human‑computer interfaces, the creation of computer‑computer networks, and the rise of computer games as a cultural form. Their stories intertwine in surprising ways.

The first revolution began with a simple but radical idea: that computers should be tools for individuals. In the late 1960s, Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the mouse, hypertext, and windowed interfaces — a vision of interactive computing that would profoundly influence the next generation of researchers. In 1970, Xerox founded the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a place designed to explore “new information technologies” far beyond the company’s copier business. PARC’s researchers created the Alto, the first computer with a graphical user interface, a bitmapped screen, and WYSIWYG text editing. These innovations transformed computing from a command‑line activity into a visual, intuitive experience. The Alto was never sold commercially, but its ideas would later shape the Macintosh, Windows, and every modern interface.

At the same moment, a second revolution was taking shape — one that focused not on how humans interacted with computers, but on how computers interacted with each other. In 1969, the U.S. Department of Defence established the ARPANET, the first wide‑area packet‑switched network and the first to implement what would become the TCP/IP protocol suite. ARPANET’s design was shaped by Cold War concerns: military planners wanted a communication system without a central point of failure, one that could survive attacks or outages. Packet switching — breaking messages into small pieces that could travel independently across the network — was the key innovation. The first nodes came online in 1969, linking UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The network was declared operational in 1971, and soon supported remote login, file transfer, and early email.

By the mid‑1970s, ARPANET had expanded rapidly, and in 1975 operational control passed to the Defence Communications Agency. Researchers like Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn developed the Transmission Control Program, which evolved into TCP/IP — the protocol that allowed multiple networks to interconnect. On January 1, 1983, ARPANET officially adopted TCP/IP, a moment widely considered the birth of the modern Internet. That same year, ARPANET split into two networks: ARPANET for academic research and MILNET for military communications. The foundations of today’s global network were in place.

While these two revolutions — interfaces and networks — were unfolding, a third revolution was quietly emerging: computer games. The earliest games were experiments in interactive computing. Spacewar! (1962) was created by MIT students exploring the capabilities of a new PDP‑1 computer. In the 1970s, arcade games like Pong and home consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey introduced gaming to the public. Text adventures such as Colossal Cave Adventure and Zork explored narrative and imagination through pure text. By the 1980s, games had become a major cultural force, with titles like Pac‑Man, Super Mario Bros., and SimCity shaping the imaginations of millions.

These three revolutions influenced one another in subtle but profound ways. PARC’s work on graphical interfaces made games more expressive and accessible. ARPANET’s packet‑switching concepts laid the groundwork for online multiplayer gaming. The rise of home computers in the 1980s created a generation of programmers who learned to code by making games. And the emergence of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s — built on top of the Internet’s TCP/IP foundation — created new spaces for game distribution, community building, and online play.

By the mid‑1990s, the convergence was unmistakable. The Mosaic browser made the Web accessible to ordinary users. Doom popularized online multiplayer gaming. The WELL and early Internet forums created communities that blended gaming culture, hacker culture, and the countercultural ethos of the Whole Earth Catalog. .

First published in 1968, the Whole Earth Catalog was the brainchild of Stewart Brand, a countercultural thinker who believed that access to tools — intellectual, mechanical, and technological — could empower individuals to build better lives and communities. The Catalog’s pages were filled with everything from woodworking kits to ecological theory, from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes to early computing devices. Its ethos was simple: tools give people agency.

Though PARC and the Whole Earth Catalog emerged from different worlds, they shared a common belief: that technology could be personal, empowering, and transformative. This shared vision helped create a bridge between the counterculture and the nascent computer industry. Many early computer hobbyists — including members of the Homebrew Computer Club — were steeped in the Catalog’s ethos of experimentation and self‑reliance. They saw computers not as corporate machines but as instruments for creativity and liberation.

And so, building on this ethos, the Macintosh and Windows 95 brought graphical interfaces to hundreds of millions of people. And massively multiplayer online games like Ultima Online and EverQuest created persistent virtual worlds that depended on both sophisticated interfaces and robust networks

By the 2000s, the three revolutions had merged into a single digital ecosystem. Broadband Internet enabled online worlds like World of Warcraft. Consoles like the Xbox integrated networking directly into their design. Smartphones introduced touch interfaces that reshaped both computing and gaming. And the Web became the platform through which culture, communication, and play flowed.

Looking back, it is striking how these revolutions — interface, network, and game — emerged independently yet converged so completely. PARC’s vision of personal computing, ARPANET’s vision of distributed networking, and the game industry’s vision of interactive play all contributed to the digital world we now take for granted. Each revolution solved a different problem, but together they created a new kind of environment: one where humans interact with computers, computers interact with each other, and people interact with one another through computers.

The modern digital world is not the product of a single invention or a single institution. It is the result of decades of parallel experimentation, cross‑pollination, and cultural imagination. The interface revolution made computing personal. The network revolution made it global. The game revolution made it playful, social, and immersive. Together, they transformed not just technology, but the way we think, communicate, and live.

References:

• Move Fast and Break Things - Jonathan Taplin (2017)
• Research at Hatfield Polytechnic (Now University of Hertfordshire) (1989-1990)
• Produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

Inclusion as Evolution and Strength: An Alternative View

A critical enquiry into the moral and philosophical basis against boundary-making in post-liberal societies

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed / For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse.  - Bob Dylan "Chimes of Freedom"

And rest yourself ’neath the strength of strings / No voice can hope to hum. - Bob Dylan "Lay Down Your Weary Tune"

In contemporary political discourse, the concept of inclusion often finds itself under scrutiny. Critics argue that inclusion without boundaries leads to moral entropy and societal fragmentation. However, here, I offer some arguments that inclusion, far from being a surrender of values, represents an evolution of moral and civic strength.

Liberalism’s Moral Depth

Liberalism is frequently criticized for its emphasis on individual rights, which some interpret as a neglect of communal duties. Yet this dichotomy is misleading. Liberalism fosters civic duties such as participation, responsibility, and mutual respect. Philosophers like John Rawls and Martha Nussbaum have articulated a vision of liberal inclusion that demands engagement and justice, not passive permissiveness. Moreover, liberal universalism is grounded in human dignity, providing a moral foundation that has empowered civil rights movements to challenge unjust traditions.

The Misuse of Schmitt

Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction offers a compelling but dangerous framework for political identity. Historically, this binary logic has justified authoritarianism and exclusionary nationalism. Liberalism resists such framing not out of naïveté but from a recognition of the moral hazards inherent in defining identity through opposition. Pluralism, contrary to claims of fragility, thrives when institutions are robust and inclusion is paired with deliberation. Democracies such as the United States, Canada, and many European nations demonstrate that diversity can coexist with strong civic identity.

Tradition vs. Transformation

While thinkers like Roger Scruton and Alasdair MacIntyre rightly emphasize the value of tradition, it is essential to acknowledge that traditions can perpetuate injustice. Inclusion challenges traditions not to erase them but to refine them. Historical milestones such as the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and LGBTQ+ rights emerged from this tension between tradition and transformation. Furthermore, models of hospitality need not be conditional. Radical hospitality, practiced in various faith and secular communities, welcomes without demanding assimilation, trusting in shared humanity over shared doctrine.

Inclusion as a Practice of Virtue

MacIntyre’s concept of "practices" underscores the importance of narrative unity within communities. However, this unity need not be exclusionary. Communities can embrace diverse voices while maintaining coherence—much like jazz, which is improvisational and plural yet deeply structured. Inclusion does not imply the abandonment of standards; rather, it calls for the co-creation of expectations rooted in democratic norms, human rights, and civic responsibility.

Boundary-Making Reimagined

Liberalism does not reject boundary-making; it redefines it. Boundaries should be negotiated through dialogue, not imposed through coercion. Inclusion fosters resilience through diversity, and tradition must be continually tested by justice. Persuasion and participation are more effective tools than coercion in maintaining social cohesion.

Conservative View	Liberal Counterpoint
Boundaries protect identity	Boundaries must be negotiated through dialogue
Inclusion erodes cohesion	Inclusion fosters resilience through diversity
Tradition is moral anchor	Tradition must be tested by justice
Coercion may be necessary	Persuasion and participation are stronger tools

Conclusion: Inclusion as Moral Maturity

Inclusion is often dismissed as sentiment unchecked by reason. Yet, when rightly understood, it embodies reasoned compassion. It is not the refusal to draw lines but the refusal to draw them in fear. A community that includes does not lose its soul; it discovers its depth. To include rightly, we must sometimes expand. Inclusion, therefore, is not erosion—it is evolution.

To include rightly, we must sometimes expand.

• A thought experiment produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

 

 

When Inclusion Becomes Erosion: A Philosophical Case for Boundary-Making: One View

A critical inquiry into the moral and philosophical basis for boundary-making in post-liberal societies

"There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it."                                                                                   -   attr: Friedrich Nietzsche

 In the modern liberal imagination, inclusion has become synonymous with moral progress. From civil rights legislation to multicultural pluralism, the moral arc appears to bend always toward broader accommodation, deeper toleration, and the softening of boundaries. Yet the foundational question remains: Can a community endure if it refuses to draw lines around its values, identity, and cohesion?

While inclusion can be a moral good, it is not an absolute one. There comes a point at which the expansion of inclusion without corresponding commitment to shared values becomes not a sign of vitality but of erosion. Drawing from thinkers as diverse as Alasdair MacIntyre, Roger Scruton, and Carl Schmitt, these words which follow make the case for philosophical and practical boundary-making.

I. The Liberal Commitment and Its Limits

The liberal tradition, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism and Christian moral universalism, treats the individual as the fundamental unit of moral concern. Rights precede duties; inclusion is a default posture. Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, critiques this view as a fragment of older moral frameworks stripped of their ultimate grounding, the purpose they serve.  While he calls for the renewal of communities rooted in virtue traditions, he avoids advocating coercive measures against dissenters.

Roger Scruton, similarly, emphasises tradition, continuity, and the shared cultural inheritance of a people. In works like How to Be a Conservative, he warns against liberal overreach that tears down institutions in the name of abstract justice. Yet Scruton, too, remains committed to the language of law, civility, and constitutional restraint.

In both cases, the response to internal erosion is cautious and pastoral: re-educate, re-embed, rebuild. Coercion is viewed as a symptom of failure, not a strategy of survival.

II. The Post-Liberal Challenge

This reluctance to act decisively in defence of a community's identity reflects, arguably, a continued subscription to liberal moral instincts. Post-liberal and realist thinkers argue that this very posture allows for the slow undermining of social cohesion.

Carl Schmitt, in The Concept of the Political, asserts that the defining act of politics is the drawing of the friend-enemy distinction. For Schmitt, communities cannot survive without the capacity to name their enemies, including internal ones. Liberalism, by avoiding such distinctions, becomes unable to defend itself against existential threats.

From this perspective, a society that welcomes all without conditions eventually loses the ability to sustain the very virtues it wishes to preserve. Tolerance becomes self-liquidating. Inclusion, when unbound from reciprocal commitment, functions as erosion.

III. Virtue, Tradition, and the Limits of Hospitality

MacIntyre's emphasis on "practices" and "narrative unity" offers an important clue: a community is not a collection of strangers but a shared moral project. Outsiders who reject or remain indifferent to the purpose of the community do not simply extend diversity—they fracture intelligibility.

Hospitality, in traditional societies, is always bounded. The Benedictine model, for example, welcomes the stranger as Christ—but also expects the stranger to join the rhythm of the monastery. Inclusion is contingent on participation. A practice that accepts all but forms no expectations ceases to be a practice at all.

IV. Toward a Philosophy of Boundary-Making

What then constitutes a legitimate act of boundary-making?

Moral Deliberation: The community must define its values clearly, not abstractly. Without a defined ultimate goal or purpose, no inclusion or exclusion has meaning.

Reciprocity: Inclusion must involve commitment from both sides. A unilateral tolerance is not a moral victory; it is political suicide.

Proportionate Action: Coercive or exclusionary measures may be justified, but only when persuasion has failed and the integrity of the community is under sustained threat.

Cultural Self-Awareness: The community must discern whether its openness stems from virtue or from a lack of conviction.

V. Conclusion: From Sentiment to Survival

The liberal impulse to include springs from noble sentiments—compassion, openness, remorse for historical exclusions. But sentiment must be ordered by reason. Communities that refuse to name limits, set expectations, or defend their moral and cultural inheritance will not be more just; they will simply be more fragile.

Inclusion is not an absolute good. A political and moral order survives only by boundary-making: not the rejection of others per se, but the insistence that membership implies meaning. Without borders—moral, cultural, spiritual—a society becomes an open circuit, unable to hold energy, unable to pass on purpose.

To include rightly, we must sometimes refuse.

July 2025

• A thought experiment produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

What is this Covid, Actually?

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you away -

                        Stephen Stills: For What It’s Worth Dec 1966

Here are a few thoughts around where we might be in the current debate about what Covid is, and the place of vaccines as a benign countermeasure to any effects it engenders. We might start with the idea that a serious disease has for some reason spread across the world and is causing a significant number of deaths as well as serious illness. A small but significant minority of people refute this, but if we wish to pursue a realistic debate, we must start with the assumption that a disease named Covid-19 exists and warrants investigation (qua Stephen Stills "There's something happening here/What it is ain't exactly clear).  

So, is it clear? Is there any mileage in the view that this Covid 'pandemic' created from nothing but the authoritative voice of government and media? Could this be another plank in the ongoing construction of one of the greatest acts of sleight of hand, 'bait-and-switch' or whatever you like to call it in the history of the world?  

My instincts in March 2020 at the beginning, when looking at the UK figures for Hong Kong flu in 1968, were that the 1968 (and 1957) events were deadly indeed but had by no means been the subject of co-ordinated and prolonged lockdowns and general governmental push towards mask-wearing and social distancing. Why then were the prospects in this latest event any different?  

By May 2020 it was way too soon to compare the numbers, but H3N2 had at that time seemed to have proved deadlier than COVID-19. Between 1968 and 1970, the Hong Kong flu killed between an estimated 1 and 4 million, according to the CDC and Encyclopaedia Britannica, with US deaths exceeding 100,000, and the UK 30.000. In May 2020 Covid 19 had reportedly killed around 295,000 globally and around 83,000 in the United States.   

Do we trust these figures? Between 1 and 4 million seems to be a meaningless statement, for example, but in a half hour of research trawling many websites, I could find no consistently authoritative numbers.   

Here for example is what GAVI says "In terms of the number of deaths COVID-19 has caused (349,095 as of 27 May 2020), it is actually more comparable with previous flu pandemics. The Asian flu in 1957-1958 killed an estimated 1.1 million people, close to the 1 million people thought to have been killed by the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-1970". Not 4 million, then?  

We can read in Wikipedia that “worldwide deaths from the so called Hong Kong virus peaked in December 1968 and January 1969”. At the time, public health warnings and virus descriptions had been widely issued in the scientific and medical journals. In Berlin, the excessive number of deaths led to corpses being stored in subway tunnels, and in West Germany, garbage collectors had to bury the dead because of a lack of undertakers. In total, East and West Germany registered 60,000 estimated deaths. In some areas of France, half of the workforce was bedridden, and manufacturing suffered large disruptions because of absenteeism. The UK postal and rail services were also severely disrupted.   

But do we look back on the years 1968-1970 and see panic, lockdowns and endless debates about vaccinations and controls? In the West, certainly we do not. These years were populated by seismic events, such as the Apollo moonwalk, Prague Spring, the escalating war and TET offensive in Vietnam, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, Woodstock, student demonstrations especially in Paris but elsewhere, the Ohio University campus shootings…  

The World Health Organization estimated the case fatality rate of Hong Kong flu to be lower than 0.2%. The disease was allowed to spread through the population without overarching restrictions on economic activity, and a vaccine created by American microbiologist Maurice Hilleman and his team became available four months after it had started. (More about Hilleman follows below).  

Meantime, in current Covid-19 global up to date figures using Worldometer, the reported deaths worldwide currently is 4.5 million. (Sept 2021). This is 0.058% of the global population. 0.2% UK.0.198 % USA 0.16% Sweden (Using Worldometer figs for deaths and population).    

However, we know that the UK presents its figures as deaths with Covid within 28 days of a positive test.  Are we clear what India does? Or China? Or Brazil? Do the Worldometer figures address these different approaches to data collection and interpretation? And indeed, finally, and crucially, how many deaths have actually been prevented by the waves of draconian measures put in place by governments worldwide? It ain't exactly clear.  

What is clear is that distance lends a kind of perspective. The last truly devastating global pandemic was incontrovertibly the so-called Spanish Flu post 1918. The world was at that time already in tremulous shock. That pandemic simply ripped through populations already traumatised. It created a new fractured politics, a new fractured art. However which way we look at the current sets of data, the effects of current pandemic - in terms of illness and death - bears no relation at all to the 1918 devastations. That is exactly clear.  

And so to vaccines.   

Maurice Hilleman was a difficult beast, but massively influential as a vaccinologist at a time when the zeitgeist did not challenge the concept in the way in which we are led to believe today. He is now more or less faded into obscurity. But in his story in the late 1960s, we have many of the elements repeated in today's melange of activity: angst, virtue-driven certitude, mutations, quickly developed vaccines, maverick scientists, conflicting political and medical opinion.  

Interestingly we read this about Hilleman in a 2005 Obituary: [ BMJ Obituary republished in the National Library of Medicine https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557162/   

"Hilleman characterised several viruses and identified changes that could result when a virus mutated. This concept, which he worked out while at the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research, helped prevent a huge pandemic of Hong Kong flu in 1957. Learning that the flu was a new strain, 40 million doses of vaccine were rapidly made available in the United States."  

"Hilleman's style of working was iconoclastic. Dr Offit said, “To give you an example of how he worked, in 1963, [when his daughter had the classic symptoms of the mumps,] he swabbed the back of his daughter's throat, brought it to the lab to culture, and by 1967, there was a vaccine.” He added, “Today's regulation would preclude that from happening... If Maurice was alive today, I doubt he would be able to be Maurice. He was a very strong-willed person and a person like him could face a high level of inertia.”  

"During his more than 60 years in basic and applied research, he earned a reputation as an often harsh , impatient fellow who tangled with industry and government bureaucracies. Hilleman defended his pushy and prickly behaviour (today also we might say deeply sexist), which offended some colleagues and co-workers, as crucial for science to advance. He argued that politics, not science, determined which breakthroughs were brought to the marketplace".  

And so in the space of 60-odd years, it seems we have a complete volte-face of the public perception about the deployment, and the constitution of vaccines. The mavericks today are named Montagnier, Yeadon, McCullough, Raoult, Fuellmich, Zelenko.....  

In the current marketplace of opinion (for many opinions are indeed monetised via (anti)-social media and burgeoning video platforms), debates are intense. We might look at the assertion that most of the vaccinated population have no idea of the substance they are allowing into their bodies. Or perhaps very little idea. This, of course is incontrovertible. But whether this is a reason alone to vilify the current crop of vaccines, produced in circumstances which are familiar to mainstream virologists, is absurd. The bigger picture is how medicine has become compromised since the development of a post-enlightenment science-based medical establishment, and petroleum-based solutions which have overtaken and more-or-less supplanted natural and holistic medical practice. How to understand and respond to this is a matter for individual conscience. In a free society, this remains a right and is the source of discussion, such as this one.   

Aside from people of faith, for most people living in the maelstrom of modern existence, when defining how we stabilise as best we can, the health of nations, there can be trust in the authority of the day which is paid for through the Social Contract (whether this be via taxation, or democratic affirmation of the majority, or tribal acquiescence). Or we can develop and act upon our  individual knowledge of the workings of viral vectors, mRNA and their relationship to spike proteins et. al. and so act independently according to individual conscience. The perspective of history tells us that this pragmatic approach to medicine - with all the checks and balances of scientific understanding - saves lives and improves the prospects of millions. 

That is the balance which we inhabit in the modern era. But what is new, of course, is the prospect of the weaponizing by governments of the binary between vaccinated and unvaccinated, and between the tested and untested. This set of notes ends where that discussion starts. But the mood music in the airwaves is not promising.   

September 9th 2021

Update: December 27th 2021 : Here we are in the UK.

Recent UK Government announcements on  Covid Passport interventions in the everyday, neatly summed up in terms of Identification Document Validation Technology (IDVT).

For What It's Worth 

Buffalo Springfield. Released December 1966 

There's something happening here

But what it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware 

I think it's time we stop

Children, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind 

It's time we stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

What a field day for the heat  

A thousand people in the street  

Singing songs and they carrying signs   

Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"   

It's time we stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

Step out of line, the man come and take you away 

We better stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Now, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down? 

You better stop

Children, what's that sound?

Everybody look, what's going down?   

Songwriter: Stephen Stills For What It's Worth lyrics © Cotillion Music Inc., Ten-east Music, Springalo Toones, Ten East Music, Richie Furay Music, Cotillion Music, Inc.