Scholé news November (nocebo) 2020

What we are experiencing at the moment could be described as a worldwide experiment with the NOCEBO effect.

Translated literally from Latin, “nocebo” means I WILL HARM. Most of us were confronted with it early in life: whenever a child’s mistakes and shortcomings are held against it, whenever it is made to feel that it is not good enough, the nocebo effect is quietly activated every time – with devastating long-term consequences: the child feels bad, weak and dependent.

More attention is paid to the beneficial placebo effect, which gives researchers in the pharmaceutical industry headaches. As is well known, approval procedures for medicines require double-blind studies, in which the effects of a newly developed drug must be compared with those of an identical-looking preparation that contains no active ingredients at all. The people involved in the trial must not know which subjects were given real tablets and which were given fake ones.

Die-hard materialists find it hard to explain why, in such double-blind studies, the placebo effect occurs with remarkable regularity in at least a quarter of the subjects: the fake tablets, which contain no active ingredients at all, produce effects and side effects in them very similar to those the real tablets produce in other subjects. What is at work here? The test person’s conviction that they have been given an effective medicine? The aura of the person who handed them the fake tablets?

The NOCEBO effect, the harmful form of suggestion or autosuggestion, is even more powerful, because it immediately mobilises the deepest of our emotions: fear. Whether the news is true horror, half-truths or lies makes no difference. People who wrongly imagine they have swallowed poison can develop physical symptoms of poisoning out of sheer fear. Many patients whose doctor told them they had only two months to live did in fact die exactly two months later. Those of our contemporaries who believe we are threatened by a deadly killer virus have been under enormous stress for months. No one will ever be able to put a number on how many severe illnesses, deaths or suicides are due to exaggerated warnings or sensationalist media reports illustrated with horror photos of coffins and masked figures in intensive care units…

Why, since the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, have the numerous renowned specialists in infectious diseases who call for calm and level-headedness been defamed in public just as fiercely as the alternative media in which they are given a voice? Why did those in charge not listen to experts such as Dr Wodarg, who – unlike the inventor of the corona test – was already completely right in his assessment of swine flu? An anti-corruption initiative by Dr Wodarg and colleagues was able at the time to prevent vaccine injuries from a hastily marketed vaccine from exploding further: the vaccination campaign had to be stopped, so that “only” 700 children developed the incurable sleeping disorder narcolepsy as a result of the swine flu vaccination – and as thanks for this, Dr Wodarg’s videos are now being deleted from YouTube!

Conventional and alternative practitioners could easily have agreed on tried and tested measures to strengthen the immune system – as little stress as possible, a healthy diet, exercise in the fresh air, fun and joy. In the event of an acute threat to public health, would it not have made sense to also consider the treatment suggestions of homeopaths, TCM doctors, naturopaths and alternative practitioners of all kinds, even if their healing successes can only be explained as placebo effects? But no – under the guidance of the World Health Organization, governments unanimously opted for NOCEBO strategies that are guaranteed to do harm:

It is common knowledge that stress weakens our immune system. Everyone knows that a lack of oxygen impairs our ability to think. It is a fact that fear is a bad adviser. So what are those in power aiming at with nocebos such as scaremongering, compulsory masks, lockdowns and other restrictions on freedom? The answer to this question could be read in bold letters on the cover of Time magazine of 22 October 2020: THE GREAT RESET. How long this reset has been planned and prepared you can trace in the exemplarily researched book “Chronik einer angekündigten Krise” (Chronicle of a foretold crisis) by Paul Schreyer. The author and journalist Paul Schreyer grew up in the GDR and has stayed alert. That is why he has a finer sense for the signs of dictatorship than those inhabitants of the golden West who never had to learn to question information critically.

The great RESET was proclaimed by the World Economic Forum. The arguments with which it is to be made palatable to the population not only sound convincing, they are: no one will dispute that our current competitive system ought to be replaced by a new, cooperative system that must be more environmentally friendly, more sustainable and fairer. The crucial question is simply who is to have the say in this fundamentally renewed social system:

The same representatives of big capital who have driven our planet’s ecosystem into the wall? The same large corporations whose business model is based on the exploitation of people and nature? Billionaire “philanthropists” whose enormous fortunes have grown even faster since the lockdown than ever before? The same black, red, green or otherwise coloured politicians who serve the big earners as henchmen by letting their lobbyists advise them on legislation? The same foundation-funded and award-winning scientists and journalists who would never dare to bite the hand that feeds them?

Who is to be allowed to decide on our well-being in the beautiful, greener and fairer world of tomorrow? This is the fundamental question we finally need to face – provided we have not already been so weakened by the concentrated NOCEBO effects of the officially decreed “protective measures” that we accept our progressive disenfranchisement without resistance, or no longer even notice it. If we continue to let ourselves be distracted by side debates, the worldwide “new normal” of tomorrow could resemble the political conditions in today’s China: government, corporations and media finally merge into a single power bloc. The small minority of the powerful enjoys special privileges protected by police and military, while the rest of the population, electronically monitored at every turn, has to obey their orders.

The historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser gave a talk on “Fear and corona” in Vienna on 29 October, which can be listened to online. He distinguishes three main fears: the fear of illness and death, the fear of hardship and impoverishment, and the fear of a new dictatorship. All of these fears are very real. None of them is unfounded, as anyone who seriously examines their causes can see. Instead of quarrelling with one another, we should therefore compassionately grant each other our different fears, in order to avoid painful divisions reaching right into our closest circle of family and friends.

In his talk, Daniele Ganser also presents a few simple mindfulness exercises that help us not to be dragged down by the ubiquitous nocebos. Only by concentrating on what is good and desirable do we gain the strength to defend our remaining rights, to actively resist the perfidious divide-and-rule manoeuvres of the powerful and, with united forces FROM BELOW, out of an engaged civil society, to let a greener, fairer and truly DEMOCRATIC new world come into being!

Personally, I draw hope and confidence from the certainty that the worldwide drama currently unfolding before all our eyes is being directed by a higher power that ultimately always means well with us.

November greetings Alexandra

Now revised – “Lernen ist wie Atmen” (Learning is like breathing) as an eBook

Together with two unschooling mothers, Gudrun Totschnig and Sigrid Haubenberger, we published it ourselves and have now also made it available as an eBook.

We feel that, especially in this time of distance learning, experiences from unschooling can help people find their bearings. Let the reading sample inspire you, or buy the eBook as a PDF on the GAIA marketplace (the 10 % member discount applies here too). The book is in German.

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