“Do you want to take the vaccine?”
“No.”
“Are you scared of needles? It’s safe!”
“No.”
“Everyone is getting the injection. Why don’t you take it?”
“No.”
“You spread the virus to others then how? Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“What are you trying to prove?! Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“You don’t take the vaccine, you cannot find job, how?”
“No.”
“You take the vaccine, you can sit down and eat in the hawker centres. So convenient! Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“You not vaccinated, how can you travel? Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“You don’t take the vaccine, later you cannot take the bus and MRT, how? Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“The government will impose more VDS on you. Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
“You have no choice! Take the vaccine!”
“No.”
October 8th, 2022:
It is October 10, 2022, and vaccine discrimination measures have been lifted in Singapore. Every single doomsday prediction the naysayers made has failed to come to pass.
For a year, I held the line. For a year, I refused to compromise. For a year, I endured everything the mob, the state, and the virus threw at me. I survived it all.
And all I had to do was say no.
The Road to a Thousand Nos
In truth, saying no was easy. But that’s only because I had far too much experience standing against a howling mob than is healthy for any sane individual.
I made my debut as a blogger in Junior College. Shortly thereafter, I showed up on the radar of the nascent radical feminist movement. Every time I criticized one of their personalities or pet causes, they would swoop down on me and my blog, as predictable as clockwork, spewing their hatred and their vitriol. When I wrote a critique of Slut Walk for The Online Citizen, the feminists unleashed their rage and fury, demanding that TOC drop me and my posts.
That’s right: feminists tried to cancel me before the term ‘cancel culture’ was invented.
The greatest lesson I took away from this was the power of endurance. It takes a huge amount of energy to sustain a two minute hate. Human interest eventually fades. The mob will move on. All I had to do was to wait them out.
Let them pour out their scorn; all it does is reveal the contents of their hearts to the world. Let them scream for my cancellation; screaming is all they can do. Let them harp on about how I am the scum of the world; I already know I lack sympathy for those who would destroy me. They have no power over me, for I give them none.
When I signed up with Castalia House, I knew the social justice mob was target me again. I was confident that Castalia House would not bow to them. I did, however, have to guard my sources of income from a cancel campaign.
I drew a thick black line between my writing and my work. I called zero attention to my sources of income, or to any aspect of my personal life. I sought multiple ways to diversify my income streams, proofing them against the next two minute hate.
The mob came for me again, as I predicted. When I was nominated for the Hugo Award, the mob fired up another two minute hate. Among them was the Singaporean author now known as Neon Yang. For all the whining and the angsting, the swearing and the outrage, once and again, they could do nothing to harm me.
It turned out that mob-proofing my life worked just as well against vaccine discrimination.
The pandemic could not—would not—last forever. Either the virus would burn itself out or it would become endemic. Lockdowns and mandates would cause significant economic, social, political and civil disruption. That placed a hard time limit on how long governments the world over could justify vaccine discrimination. Past the tipping point, they would melt down their own societies. They would have to lift measures at some point.
I was prepared to be cancelled, but I didn’t know how long the pandemic would last. I had no idea what kind of vaccine discrimination measures would come down, but I knew perfectly well what an all-powerful state was capable of. I didn’t know how many would stand with me, only that the state and the masses stood against me. I had no way of knowing whether I would survive. All I had was faith.
Faith was enough.
The pandemic would not, and did not, last. But everything you say and do will echo across the ages. That was why I said no: no to the mob, no to vaccine discrimination, no to the growing creep of corporatism and authoritarianism across the world. The more you comply, the more you will be forced to comply. It only takes one yes to roll down the slippery slope into the pit.
We are seeing it now.
Into the Future
The Covid era will be remembered as one of the bleakest moments for humanity.
Near-total shutdown of the global economy. Healthcare systems stretched past the breaking point. Educational disruption for a generation of students. Atomization and isolation of entire populations. Destruction of livelihoods by government fiat. Governments, corporations and media organizations collaborating to push an agenda on the entire world, and to punish everyone who refuses to comply.
There is no sign that things will get better. The global elites are taking full advantage of multiple crises to maximise their power and wealth. The intellectuals chose careers over principles. The corporations have unprecedented control over the lives of their customers. We have gone from two shots to two shots a year, and now to ‘up-to-date vaccination’. And now the world is slipping into an era of inflation and recession.
The effects will be felt for an entire generation. How you acted during the Covid era, and how you continue to act, will define the rest of your life—and the lives of your children and your grandchildren.
Did you go along with the crowd, or did you dare to think for yourself? Did you scorn everyone who disagreed with you, or did you try to bridge the divide? Did you trust the science, or did you seek the truth? Did you allow fear and hate to consume you, or did you conquer them? Did you speak out, or did you stay silent? Did you chase convenience and pleasure, or did you harden yourself?
Did you hold fast, or did you surrender your integrity?
And if you surrendered that inch of yourself—will you do it again?
You are the sum of everything you have done. Everything you do, you will become. The more you choose to act a certain way, the more you will continue to choose to act that way, until it becomes a habit, your default choice. And your habits become your destiny.
Choose to support the division of society, and continue to divide people, and there will come a point when people will no longer choose to be with someone who tears their friends and families apart. You will discover that you will be divided from everyone you love.
Choose to give in to fear, and you will continue to fear more and more and more, until at last you shrink away from everything and everyone, and shrink down into nothing at all.
Choose to go along with the crowd, and you will continue to submerge yourself deeper and deeper, until there is nothing left of you but a hollow vessel, to be programmed at whim.
You will be isolated from friends and family. You will become a quivering mouse, scared of its own shadow. You will become nothing more than a meat puppet.
Is that what you want to become?
Since you’re reading this, the answer is no. What, then, can you do?
You must take responsibility for your life. Your health, your finances, your relationships, every aspect of your life. No longer can you blindly trust the bureaucrats, the experts, the celebrities, the journalists, the influencers. They are all pursuing their own interests, which is not necessarily your own best interest. Only you know what is best for you and yours, in your specific situation.
You must shockproof your life. If you stand against the world, you must assume that at some point the world will try to destroy you. You need to prevent this. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential adversary, be it a Twitter hate mob or a pitiless bureaucracy, and puzzle out how they will attempt to ruin you, and why. Identify the chinks in your armor, and plug them before them it is too late. If you’ve ever felt that you have no choice but to do something, then you must create choices to prevent this from happening again.
You must build a tribe. The world seeks to break you down and remake you into its own image. To resist this, you must build mutual support networks. Find people with similar values, and inculcate these values into the next generation of the tribe—the children and the grandchildren. The world may turn against you, but your tribe will not.
Most importantly, you must choose.
Choose to overcome your worst impulses and to strengthen your best. Choose to build up your friends and family. Choose the truth over the lie. Choose faith over fear.
Choose, again and again and again, to be all that you can be—and more.
The system is not going to save you. The politicians are not going to save you. The experts are not going to save you. The time to do that was a year ago, and you’ve seen how well they performed. They are not invested in saving you.
You, and you alone, must save yourself.
It isn’t enough to say no a thousand times. All you are doing is refusing to allow someone to impose their will on you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be better off. You have to continue to do the work.
Hard times are coming. The Covid era may be drawing to a close, but the curtains are rising on global recession. Inflation is rampant across the world. The divide between the rich and poor will grow starker. War rages in Ukraine, with the potential for catastrophic consequences. And though vaccine discrimination measures have been lifted for now, the machinery still remains in place, ready to reimpose restrictions at the drop of a hat.
We are living in the bleakest period of the new century. And yet, it is also a period of revelations. For those who wish to see, the masks have been torn off, the light is shining on the maggots, the truth is burning through the lies. For those who know where to look, there are roads to a better and brighter future.
You don’t have to change the world. You probably can’t. But you can change yourself—and in so doing, change your world. In this crisis, there are opportunities for greatness. To capitalize on them, there is one thing you must do.
Choose.
You can start by choosing to remain sane in a crazy world. Check out my FREE ebook here!
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