In the 2019 tabletop exercise called Event 201, simulating a global pandemic from a coronavirus with 10% case fatality, a participant named “Rea Blakey, PhD, epidemiologist” claimed this:
With enough money and political will, anything is possible.
Thomas Sowell, in A Conflict of Visions, identified this type of thinking as the Unconstrained Vision. Later on, Steven Pinker, in The Blank Slate: The modern denial of human nature, called it the Utopian Vision.
But while you can say that that type of thinking is naive or immature (“adolescent thinking”), it does have a source in the realm of communicated ideas, and also a source in the realm of instigated actions.
The realm of ideas is ideological, the realm of instigated actions is operational.
The Ideologic Origin of “Great Resets”
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates is talking to a sophist (someone who is unduly persuasive with words) by the name of Thrasymachus who claims that, whenever humans have conflict, then justice is whatever is in the interest of the stronger party (i.e., that might makes right). A concise view of the stronger person always coming out on top is:
What I want, whenever I want it, at whatever cost to: me, others, or society overall.
When put into concise terms like that, it is easy to see how naive/immature that view is. You can picture a child wanting ice cream and demanding it by the sheer force of will. The child really believes that the only thing keeping her from getting more ice cream is that she has not exerted enough willpower over her parents yet.
The child believes that feelings have power. Not just power over one’s own internal or mental states, but power over the external world. Later on, Existentialist philosophers would attempt to justify such a “will-to-power.”
The Operational Origin of “Great Resets”
Just over 2200 years ago, the thinking of Thrasymachus was popularized for the first time in a big nation, China, during the Qin dynasty. It was promoted by Li Si, a minister to the emperor. Li Si essentially gave birth to Chinese Legalism. A concise view of Chinese Legalism is:
We’re in charge, we make the laws, natural laws don’t govern us, so comply or else.
When put in the concise way, it is easy to see the adolescent (immature) nature of the thinking, but Li Si is the first to promote it on a grand scale. It is no accident that the Qin dynasty is referred to as “the first centralized Chinese empire.”
Li Si is also the brain-child behind the Great Wall of China.
Censorship was implemented on perhaps the widest-ever scale, and it became forbidden to teach history, and books were burned. Later on, Third Reich NAZIs would emulate Li Si, burning books of their own.
This type of “my way, or the highway” thinking is artistically emulated by a raised fist:
Image Attribution
Image URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_stylized_fist.svg
Attribution: Rafaelgr, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In Revolt of the Masses (1932), Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about this mindset taking hold in Europe before WWII:
Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.
But as the saying goes — “Live by the sword, Die by the sword” — and Li Si was killed by a co-conspirator when attempting to usurp the proper succession of power after the emperor had died.
A Contrast to Western Philosophy
In the book, 100 philosophers: A guide to the world's greatest thinkers, Peter J. King notes how it is that Western philosophers are primarily motived by Truth, while Eastern philosophers are primarily motivated by Power — though he couches these ideas in terms that are less concise, perhaps so as not to be potentially-offensive.
His way of describing the difference between Eastern and Western thinking is that Eastern thinking is operational in trying to get something done, trying to get some kind of task accomplished — while Western thinking is more concerned with uncovering timeless truth, something divorced from, and even above in importance to, the everyday desires that people harbor.
Hollywood Highlights
While “Hollywood” is now almost-completely captured by dark interests promoting Eastern ideals of ruthless power, there was a time when it was more honest. Ian Fleming’s first book with the protagonist, James Bond, was Casino Royale in 1953, but the first Bond movie was Dr. No (1962).
Most interesting was that Dr. No was written in 1958, before Thunderball (1961), but the evil organization which was introduced in Thunderball, called SP.E.C.T.R.E — SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion — was “retro-fitted” into the screenplay of Dr. No so that the public might be told about an extra-governmental organization enacting revenge and extortion.
Key parts to the story are that Dr. No was half-German and half-Chinese, presumably so as to account for both fascism and communism. Another key part is that the niche — every Bond bad guy has a special niche — of Dr. No was the use of directed energy weapons (primarily to disable missles).
In the film, while in the presence of Dr. No, Agent Bond makes a comment about how a disrespect for human life is Eastern.
Another film that deserves honorable mention in exposing Eastern philosophy as ruthless opportunism is The Godfather Part II, where Michael Corleone is giving a speech about adopting Eastern techniques so that his criminal organization can grow stronger.
The Importance of Understanding this
In 1942, a Quaker civil rights activist coined the phrase “Speak truth to power” but that’s Western thinking. The version promoted by Eastern thinking is the opposite of it: “Speak power to truth.”
Those behind the Great Reset wish to “speak-power-to-truth,” and the Western world, along with the Judeo-Christian values associated with it, hangs in the balance.
Let truth win.