68 Comments
User's avatar
Dev's avatar

Toby, I know this is an older article, but I had to offer something here. I went through this process myself, as an academic, becoming more and more mercury intoxicated. I began to lose track, and it was very disconcerting, of the concrete. Everything became "relational." I found myself getting confused what distinguised positive from negative, matter from life. I had a terrifying dream, in which Aristotle's Scala Naturae turned upside down. Instead of uninformed matter at the bottom and form at the top, it was matter dictating to form what it wanted to have done, compelling us to extend the periodic chart into new elements, searching for the island of stability (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability); shaping itself into the figures on the Galopogos islands.

While I worked assiduously to get out of this hell, a very bright colleague of mine and friend went through something similar. Read the short description of her book at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Animacies-Biopolitics-Mattering-Modernities-Halberstam/dp/0822352729

I'd like to share more about this case, but as it's personal to her, I'd want to do it directly. If you have a way I might contact you, you're welcome to let me know. (Or, as an author maybe there's a way you can get my email from this site?) I'd be very interested in further exploration of this area. I've read Forrest Maready and many, many other books relevant to these Environmental Illness issues. There's even a relevant, if fairly thin, academic field: neuro-psycho-toxicology.

Expand full comment
A Midwestern Doctor's avatar

Hello, Great observations. I just wrote a post on this topic and one of my readers linked me to this post. I wanted to share it with you because I thought you would find it insightful given what you have written about: https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/how-rare-is-justin-biebers-vaccine?s=w

Expand full comment
JHOC's avatar

When you see the number of scientists who identify as "neurodivergent" this makes perfect sense, however it's not isolated to one political subset.

Expand full comment
Lidia's avatar

A number of people have looked at the mugshots of antifa crowds and commented that many of the faces seem to be seriously off-kilter. Maybe there was something to this "phrenology" stuff, after all?

(Just an example below, but there are dozens of different assortments... search "antifa mugshot" images.)

https://fashionmodelsecret.com/world-news/mugshots-of-antifa-rioters-arrested-in-portland-released-by-cops-as-unrest-continues-to-rock-the-city/

Expand full comment
Lidia's avatar

I think it cannot be overlooked that Foucault was a homosexual pedophile (not 'just' an ephebophile), who thus had less-than-purely-intellectual reasons for wanting to undermine traditional society. One will find a number of post-modernists in this situation.

"In 1977, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and other intellectuals, Foucault signed a petition to the French parliament calling for the decriminalization of all "consensual" sexual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen" (wiki) In other words, down to infants, N.B. https://devilslane.com/michel-foucault-prolific-serial-paedophile-rapist/

Coincident with the more recent intrusion of the declared "rights" of male "trans" to dominate natural women's spaces, Derrick Jensen, a gay man who was sexually abused as a child, has called out these people and revealed their sick games (6 min.): https://uncommongroundmedia.com/derrick-jensen-queer-theory-paedophilia-jeopardy-banned-from-youtube/

Expand full comment
Liberty4all's avatar

For anyone interested...

"Fired for Freedom: Doctors, nurses, and attorneys expose civil rights abuses"

Livestream will be available here on Tuesday, December 7 at 12pm (noon) ET.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/conference-stop-the-shot/fired-for-freedom-civil-rights-abuses/

Expand full comment
M.'s avatar

Glossopharyngeal neuralgia seems to be more common now. I swear I have it.

Expand full comment
Toby Rogers's avatar

Whoa, that sounds intense.

Expand full comment
Lynnster's avatar

Sometimes you completely knock my socks off - this is one of those times. Top notch.

Expand full comment
Toby Rogers's avatar

❤️ 🙌

Expand full comment
Joe Skwara's avatar

I have always felt there was something wrong with childhood vaccines when they provide lame ass excuses as to why they can’t be spread out over years so child behavior and physical traits can be tracked and documented.

Expand full comment
Toby Rogers's avatar

Yep, something does not add up.

Expand full comment
Joe Skwara's avatar

Toby would you be interested in being a guest on a talk radio program with a wide reach out of CT. The host read one of your other substacks and loved it. I told him I would ask you.

Expand full comment
Toby Rogers's avatar

Sounds good. I'll send you an email and we can chat further.

Expand full comment
Isaac Middle's avatar

This is a spicy health conspiracy if i have ever seen one. Well played sir

Expand full comment
Toby Rogers's avatar

😊 🙌

Expand full comment
Eucatastrophe2021's avatar

Wow. Just wow. I never thought about this but it makes total sense

(don’t want to bore you with personal history and things I’ve noticed in my own family, including grandma’s Alzheimer’s) and it all seems to be falling into place. Thank you for your brilliance.

Expand full comment
Sharon Reeve's avatar

"Crooked" is an excellent book, but I wish he had carefully cited all of his references and provided an index. I also enjoyed, "Moth in the Iron Lung" about polio.

Expand full comment
Norman Pilon's avatar

As a possible explanation for a person's inability to feel empathy, there probably is something to this hypothesis of yours.

But as with all things societal, personality derives from a complex interplay between a multitude of factors, not the least of which is the 'predatory' dynamic of for-profit production and distribution, and the atomization of the working class consequent upon its condition of expropriation.

Regardless of how empathic you are as an individual, you are compelled to live in a state of perpetual competition with your neighbours, and this cannot but result to some degree in the suppression of your better nature.

In the kind of society we currently live, preserving one's sanity depends upon being able to close one's eyes to far too much inequity and injustice.

Something other than what we have is required to liberate what humans are truly capable of in terms of empathy and mutual care.

Certainly, empathy has a neurological foundation. But it also requires a field in which it can be practiced even assuming a sound neurological foundation.

Expand full comment
Christine99's avatar

Wow! And very well possible...all through their heads, not their hearts.

Expand full comment
Shayne Wissler's avatar

The "Prime Directive" of illegitimate power is to keep that power at all costs. But truth is opposed to such power. Therefore such illegitimate power centers can naturally be expected to attack the philosophical basis of truth. We don't need theories such as vaccine injury to explain this phenomenon; postmodernism is just a simple consequence of attacking the rational/critical meritocracy that would otherwise be a check on power.

Expand full comment
Todd Fanady's avatar

Good associations, could be the case! Thanks for Forrest book recco, I still need to read Moth in the Iron Lung! This chemical truncation of his (their) ability to empathize with other people may also explain Foucult's pedophilia...and maybe Sartre's and all the other members of the supposed French intelligencia that signed this letter promoting the rape of other people's children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws

This tells me all I need to know about the superiority of their high-minded mutterings.

Expand full comment