The Cost of Compliance

Compliance is easy.

The state says you must get vaccinated. The media says you must get vaccinated. The celebrities, the scientists, the influencers, every public personality say you must get vaccinated.

The government says you must get vaccinated or you'll be banished from public life, and you must incur significant financial costs just to exist. The bosses say you must get vaccinated or you'll be fired, or otherwise blacklisted. Your friends and family say you must get vaccinated or you're irresponsible and uncaring.

Compliance is the path of least resistance. It is easy. Everyone is doing it. If you get vaccinated, the government promises that one day, you will full participation in civil society, and life may even return to normal.

What is the cost of compliance?

Everything.

Re-read everything I've stated above. It's all about what people say you must do. You, as a living human, are not part of the process. Your choices, your conscience, your circumstances, none of these matter to those who push for compliance.

To them, you are not a human. You are a source of labour, a stream of revenue, a digit on a spreadsheet, a tiny cog in a well-oiled machine, a source for future cogs in a growing machine in the coming years and decades. You are nothing more than a biological robot to be programmed into absolute service so that they can extract value from you.

Worse yet, through compliance, you signal that you will not resist them and that you do not value your soul. Having seen that such pressures will work, people will continue to exploit you.

Compliance will not end the pressure. Why would it? The other side has everything to gain if you comply, and continue to comply. So long as they do not encounter any resistance, so long as they do not have to face costs of their own, they will continue to pressure you. If they make you take a vaccine against your will now, tomorrow they can make you do anything.

They may justify these measures by claiming that it's for the public good. The compliant media will repeat they say. The reality is far, far different.

One month ago, the government turned proof of vaccination into a de facto Covid pass. The unvaccinated has been shut out of society. Shortly after the policy was introduced, cases skyrocketed. Only recently are transmission numbers dropping, but still the daily infection number hover in between two to three thousand.

Over the past few weeks, the government has steadily reduced the amount of data disclosed to the public. Hospitalisations and deaths are no longer broken down by vaccine status—except when an unvaccinated person dies from Covid.

For the past month, the government has demonised the unvaccinated. The government insists that the unvaccinated consume medical resources, that they are much more likely to suffer severe symptoms and to die, and that they must be isolated from society for their own protection. Through the nonstop narrative, the unvaccinated are portrayed as socially irresponsible, as disease carriers, as rebels.

If the unvaccinated were the cause of the spike in transmissions, why is it that one month into restrictions, a virus with an incubation period of one to fourteen days is still raging in the country?

The evidence is clear.

The vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission.

The protection provided by the vaccine fades over time—six months at best, four months at worst.

The people most at risk are the elderly with multiple medical conditions. Everyone else is likely to recover.

This is the information that is allowed to leak through the narrative. There is so much more that isn't. There are still so many questions that have yet to be answered. These include:

Why is the government withholding data on vaccinated versus unvaccinated patients? Contrast the data the government has published with the information provided by Israel and the UK, and you will see a huge difference in the quality of data.

Why is the UK experiencing enhanced Covid risk among the vaccinated, and is Singapore seeing the same?

What is the true adverse reaction rate of the Covid vaccines? Why does the government insist that no one has died from the vaccines even though America, Europe, and Taiwan, among other countries, have reported this?

Why did the government claim Ivermectin is dangerous and poisonous after one person was hospitalized, yet continue to push the Covid vaccines when they are the most dangerous vaccines ever developed in the past twenty years?

Singapore aims to be a global pharmaceutical and medical hub. BioNTech has signed a deal to produce mRNA vaccines in Singapore. Innova Bio-Medical, based in Singapore, has embarked on a joint venture with Sinopharm to distribute the Sinopharm vaccine. Pharmaceutical giant Sanofi will invest $638 million to build a vaccine production centre in Singapore, which will have the capacity to manufacture both cell culture-based vaccines and mRNA vaccines.

To what extent is Singapore's vaccination strategy influenced by economics?

You have to think through these questions. The government will not answer them directly, and neither the media nor the opposition will dare to ask them.

Anyone who asks these questions will be called an 'anti-vaxxer' or a 'vaccine skeptic', and the Establishment will cast him as an opponent in the struggle against Covid, as nothing less than a traitor to humanity. The Establishment will continue to demand that you believe them—and ignore all evidence that contradicts the narrative.

When they treat you as less than human, they don't care what happens to you. All they care about is how _they _benefit—at your expense, and at the expense of everyone around you.

Do you want to take back your life? To live, not as a robot, but as a human? To find a way to survive these crazy times, and thrive? If so, then you must embrace freedom.

What is the cost of freedom?

Everything.

A Choice of Costs

To be free is to take charge of every aspect of your life. Your relationships, your health, your lifestyle, your habits, your beliefs. Every choice you make is on you. Every mistake you make is on you.

Every part of you that you do not control you surrender to others. If you do not critically examine the news you read, then the government will tell you what to believe. If you do not choose to live a healthy life, then Big Pharma will tell you how to live in a way that benefits them. If you do not vet your relationships, then the toxic people in your social circles will have a say in your life.

To grow is to take responsibility for your life without infringing on the lives of others. To be a sovereign is to rule, to have the final say, to choose, to decide—and to live with the consequences.

Most people aren't suited for freedom. East Asian society is engineered against freedom. The Confucian emphasis on harmony breeds conformity, and conformity is the death of freedom. A person driven by the desire to maintain harmonious relationships will be far more likely to just go along with the crowd, with the elders, with the superiors, than to stand up and step away from the crowd. The only socially-approved freedom is the freedom to act in a way that benefits the authorities.

That is why taking the vaccine is a 'free' choice. It is 'voluntary'. The government does not mandate it. But the Establishment paints not taking the vaccine as being socially irresponsible, as placing others at risk, as choosing to be a loner, and therefore a freak. On the flipside, the Establishment paints 'choosing' to take the vaccine as being responsible, as being civic-minded, as being a hero. From this narrative, the government justifies the penalties it has imposed on people who freely choose not to take the vaccine.

The costs of freedom is high, and can only grow higher. What is the reward of freedom?

Your soul.

The souls of others too.

No one knows your life better than you. The government cannot possibly account for the circumstances of every single person. Therefore it must paint with a broad brush. As we have seen with Covid, this means forcing people to squeeze into a little box they have built for them. Either you are in full compliance, or you are a threat to society.

You are not a robot. You are human. To live by the dictates of a faceless, impersonal authority is to surrender your soul and become something less. It is to give up the hope of living your best life in exchange for pleasing something that doesn't have your interests at heart. It is to place yourself at the mercy of a machine with neither a heart nor a soul. It is to hand over your life to an apparatchik who has no interest in your life, who is not liable for anything that happens to you, who treats you as nothing more than a stepping stone on the way to some material reward.

They demand control of your life, but they will not accept any responsibility for what happens to you. They reap the benefits, while you shoulder the burden. Is that fair? Is it right?

No.

You are a human. Over your lifetime, you have accumulated experience, knowledge and wisdom. With this wisdom, you can live a better life. You don't need a government official, a reporter, a corporate shill, or an influencer to tell you how you should live. If you make mistakes, you can correct them and find a better way to live. If they make mistakes, they're not going to make things right.

Humans are social creatures. Social networks generate outsized outcomes. When you live life on your terms, people notice. It is easier for others to become free when those around them are also free. When those people will support them too, they create mutually supporting networks, making it that much easier to effect greater change.

We are now faced with a choice of costs. The costs of compliance and the costs of freedom. Which do you choose?

Freedom in A Time of Covid

Dare you choose freedom?

The government will scapegoat you. The media will demonise you. The influencers will ridicule you. Your friends and family will oppose you. Your enemies will seek to pressure you, if not destroy you.

Dare you still choose freedom?

Or, putting it another way: would you rather be a soulless machine, working solely for the benefit of the elite, turning other people into soulless machines?

I haven't had much of a choice in the matter. Ever since I started this blog and co-founded The Online Citizen, I've had to live on the fringes of society. The Sword of Damocles, in the form of lawsuits and the Internal Security Act, has hung over my head for almost half my life. I've had to live an unconventional life because conventional society will not have me, and never will. I'm used to living the way I do. I had no other option. But to you, it could be different.

You have your life. You have your circumstances. Chances are, you never had to be on the wrong end of the government and the media and the woke mob. If you've lived a life of peace until now, it is a hard transition to make. Should you choose freedom, then you must accept the following:

Everything supports the narrative. News reports, government policies, corporate-funded 'studies', human interest stories, influencers, everything you see out there supports the narrative. This doesn't mean that everything is fake, but it does mean that everything that goes to print is designed to drive the narrative. Not just with the vaccine either. _Everything. _Everything political, everything of interest to society, everything comes with a narrative, and the only thing that the mainstream media will publish benefits the narrative.

The truth is out there. It cannot be contained. We do not (yet?) live in an absolute tyranny with absolute control over information. At the same time, there is a lot of nonsense and baseless conspiracy theories. The truth is out there, but it is mixed with misinformation.

They cannot take your soul from you. They cannot make you make a choice. They cannot reach into your brain, hijack your body, and make you do something. They cannot control your thoughts. The best they can do is try to convince you that you have no other choice but the choice they show you. If you can see through this illusion, you are free.

To be free is to live in harmony with truth. To find the truth, and to make the best choices possible based on the truth. To do this, you must cut through the noise. Here's how you do it.

1. Understand what you want out of life. What is your goal? What kind of life do you want to live? The information you seek out should support your life goals.
2. **Seek out what is not being reported. **Everything that supports the narrative will be published. Everything that does not will be ignored or outright censored. Seek all the data, not just what happens to support you. Use alternate search engines, such as Brave or Presearch. Read media criticized as 'right wing' or 'populist', but nonetheless conducts actual journalism. Compare studies, opinions and reports from competing news agencies with different slants.
3. Establish the right heuristics. There is a lot of noise out there. There are lots of bad actors seeking to deceive you for their own ends. You're going to need strategies to filter out the deception. Below, I'm going to discuss such heuristics.
4. The opposite of the narrative is true. The Western mainstream media has lied about everything. Russian collusion, 'mostly peaceful protests', Hunter Biden's laptop, everything of public interest. If they can lie so blatantly about so many things, assume that they will continue to lie. Thus, the opposite of a narrative based on lies should be the truth.
5. Fact-checks point to the truth. There is an infinite amount of false information, and only a finite amount of resources for 'fact-checks'. Remember that the goal of the media is not to report the truth, but to drive a narrative. Therefore, they will focus their energies on discrediting stories that attack their narrative. They will spend the most energy on 'debunking' truth, because it causes them the most harm. There may be some minor errors in the 'debunked' stories, but the essence of the story usually points to the truth. The more something is fact-checked, the more you should treat it as true_, unless_ you discover major factual errors in your own research.
6. If it is absurd, it probably is. Alien embryos in vaccines. A firefight in the middle of a German city without anyone noticing. Some Big Tech CEO arrested by a secret military unit. There's a lot of nonsense out there, on both sides of the political divide. The more ridiculous something sounds, the more likely it is to be fake. Indeed, the Establishment is going to use such nonsense as proof that the people should believe them instead. The more outlandish something sounds, the bigger the red flag. If there is no corroboration, it is probably fake.
7. Look at what the elite do. The elite want an edge over everybody else, and they aren't afraid of being seen as hypocrites. They will say anything to increase their social standing. The most sociopathic among them will deliberately promote a narrative that weakens those around them, will pursuing a strategy that strengthens their position. Instead of focusing on what they say, look at what they do. When they act on information, it is a signal that they believe it is true_, especially _if they do it quietly. Consider how Ivermectin has been slammed in the press, then look at Dr. Pierre Kory's revelations that 200 members of the US Congress were treated with Ivermectin. Likewise, notice that Big Tech is promoting measures to protect children who use their platforms, encouraging more children to use them, yet limit their own children's exposure to technology. The elite will say anything they want—the only thing that matters is what they do.
8. Find independent, credible experts. Remember: you are surrounded by narratives. The experts trotted out on the media are those who support the narrative. You have to find independent experts who can help you make sense of the noise. You're probably not an expert, and it will be very difficult to evaluate the full technical analysis. What you can do is learn enough about a subject to check for methodological and interpretive errors, and to look for gross mistakes. You can then aggregate a collection of opinions from other experts and cross-check them against each other.
9. Don't be triggered by contrary information. It is human nature to automatically reject information that disagrees with your beliefs. Simply encountering such information can create a sensation of physical pain. Don't run from the pain. Embrace it. While this sensation can be useful in helping you sift out facts from lies, you cannot act on feelings alone. Whenever you feel such a feeling coming on, recognize it, then breathe through it. Once you are calm, set your emotions aside and engage your rational brain. Look for evidence. Even if what you're looking is in fact false, you must find evidence of falsehood before you reject it.
10. Don't obsess over precision and accuracy. In most things, you don't need 100% precision or accuracy. What you can do is identify patterns and trends over time. Knowing the raw numbers of cases in the UK in a given week is less important than knowing whether the numbers have increased or decreased, and the circumstances surrounding them. While facts can be useful, ultimately what you need to do is to construct heuristics for action. Information is useless until you act on it. To act on something, you don't need to be 100% accurate; you just need to be confident in how things are now and how they may unfold.

To be free in a time of Covid, you need information that helps you to be free—and to act on it. To be truly free, you need the following:

1. Source(s) of income that are resilient against or immune to disruption from Covid restrictions.
2. Access to food, medicine, water, and essentials.
3. Health: lifestyle, exercise, diet, medical needs, etc.
4. Safety: physical, mental, emotional, psychological
5. Strong, stable, supportive relationships.
6. Higher needs: developing talents, exercising creativity and self-agency, spiritual, etc.
7. Ability to meet emergencies: financial, medical, etc.

Your circumstances are very different from mine. I can't give you a one-size-fits-all solution. What I can do is give show you how you can gather the right information you need for your life. You may only need to make some minor adjustments to your current lifestyle. You may need to leave the country altogether. You may need to make other choices. I can't make those choices for you, only show you how you can make the best choices possible.

Your most pressing goal should be to create a resilient lifestyle. Even if the government imposes more restrictions, you will only be minimally affected. Figure out what this means to you, then seek out the information that can best help you achieve that life. Live a life that minimizes your contact with the authorities, and maximises your contact with the people who matter most in your life.

Do you want to do more? There are options.

Do you have a social media presence? Do you have a website? You can use them to spread the message.

Do you have special expertise and/or knowledge that can help people? Share what you know with others.

Do you know people who need support? Help them however you can, or direct them to other resources.

Do you know employers and stores that don't discriminate against the unvaccinated? Support them and encourage others to do the same.

Do you want to contribute to legal efforts? Lawyer M Ravi will file a Constitutional challenge against Covid-19 restrictions. Iris Koh of Healing the Divide is launching her her own separate legal campaign. Others have launched petitions and written open letters protesting the restrictions. Support them however you can.

You are a single person. But you are also part of a network. The more you contribute to the network, the stronger the network grows, the stronger everyone in the network becomes. Until everyone is free, no one is free.

Freedom is a flame. It is a light that comes from deep inside you. It cannot be extinguished, only surrendered—or passed on. Don't give it up to those who don't care about you. Instead, light up those around you. Enkindle their flames, then encourage them to pass it on to everyone they know, and to ask others to do the same. Keep the fire going, and one day, there will be light again.

We don't live in Babylon, but the city of gods and monsters sure looks awfully familiar...