by Dr David, Editor / Publisher

There are a lot of different kinds of intelligence. My friend X has an assortment of them. He also has a psychiatric history. Common wisdom separates the two with a thin line, but, to me, the difference between madness and genius lies only in that genius pays the bills.

X and I spent time together 20+ years ago, making quite an impression on each other, when he was in his early 20s and I in my early 40s. Recently, we've renewed our acquaintance with a series of long conversations on Zoom.

X believes in a spiritual world underlying and directing this material world, but he doesn't like the idea of God. He prefers the idea of the Messiah, who, according to Jewish tradition, is always present, living incognito among us. Please don't trip up on the religious terminology. The Messianic age is the era of truth and justice for which so many of us are yearning. X believes that this rectification of our world, this revelation of a more perfect order, is dependent on our actions. We have to do the work to bring the Messiah. That God, as a Big Daddy would do it for us, X insists, is a childish idea.

Most people think
Great god will come from the skies
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You will look for yours on earth
And now you see the light
You stand up for your rights.
      - Bob Marley

"As above, so below," is the mystic credo. Looking for these lofty concepts in our daily lives we can see them reflected in our attitudes towards government. In the broadest terms there is a dichotomy. There are those who look towards government as Big Daddy. They trust that those in power have the good-heartedness, knowledge and power to make things better. And then, opposed to these, there are those who consider the most frightening utterance to be, "We're from the government. We're here to help."

I grew up in an era with a healthy skepticism of all things "big." I still don't believe that Big Pharma or Big Business or Big Government has my best interests in mind. "Follow the money." In my day we were suspicious of the CIA and the FBI and whoever was in power. Today it is fashionable to employ high-ranking "ex" members of intelligence agencies and current members of the military-industrial complex as talking heads on mainstream media shows to explain things to us.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald was a darling of the left for his Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of Edward Snowden. Then he fell out of favor with the progressives when he started criticizing Obama's wars. Glenn Greenwald believes that the proper role of the press is to scrutinize our rulers, to vigilantly check those in power. As the saying goes, "Power corrupts."

Glenn Greenwald
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It was said that George W. was the kind of guy you might want to have a beer with. Obama certainly was polished. Trump was crude. Biden (it has become obvious to everyone since his withdrawal from Afghanistan, no?) is not all there. Glenn Greenwald has been and is overwhelmingly critical of all those presidents and Congress and the FBI and the CIA and the NSA and... Regardless of our need, common in all social animals, to identify with a powerful leader, none of those presidents are nice guys. You don't get to be president by being a nice guy... or gal.

I believe that solutions come, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. Call me old fashioned, but my faith lies with the individual, the family and the community. We have to do the work. No Big Daddy is going to fix things.

"Politicians can solve almost any problem — usually by creating a bigger problem. But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political 'solutions' are a political success."
      - Thomas Sowell

Take this pinche pandemic. Vaccines, ok, vaccines; I get it. But after all this time, why don't we have an effective treatment for Covid; not instead of the vaccine, but, you know, alongside it, just in case, for those who can't or won't take the jab and for those who get Covid despite the vaccine? But we do. It's proven that melatonin, vitamin C and vitamin D effectively reduce Covid's most fatal phenomenon, the cytokine storm. The scientific proof appears on government websites. You're just not allowed to mention it on social media.

Ralph Nader coined the name "orphan drugs" for effective pharmaceuticals whose patents had expired, which no pharmaceutical company would manufacture. The same prejudice is held against many natural substances; they work great, but they are non-patentable. Big Pharma can't make their usual one billion percent profit selling them.

I'm glad Big Medicine and Big Pharma are there, but I think we rely on them too much. The $100,000 dollars spent on repairing one person's heart could prevent many cases of heart disease if spent wisely in the community. But, then, there is no money to be made preventing heart disease. I used to tell my patients, "Ask yourself if you really want to eat that last quarter pound of steak on your plate right now. Maybe you'd enjoy it more in a vegetable stir-fry tomorrow night." Yes, it's work to stay healthy, but there are a lot of rewards along the way.

I'm also thankful for the military-industrial complex. While our Social Justice Warriors have been perceiving micro-aggressions, the fall of Afghanistan reminds us of what aggression really looks like. While our media and political class do their best to convince us that January 6 was an insurrection, the Taliban shows us just what the term really means. I'm glad we have a military to protect the freedom even if so many of us would barter it away so as not to commit any micro-aggressions. I just agree with Glenn Greenwald and President Eisenhower that we have to keep an eye on them:

"...we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
      - Eisenhower's farewell address

I know it seems hard, but really it is simple. The kabbalists say that our work, the work we must do to repair the world, to create justice, to bring the Messiah, is to make a vessel. The revelation would pour down on us, if only we had a container to hold it. It already is pouring over us. Like radio waves, it already is filling the atmosphere, but we need a device, a vehicle, a practice, to tune into it.

But I think I've got that figured out... for us all. I've been putting my efforts into creating an internet platform where all of our individual efforts can combine. Lokkal is a digital town square, a social network and search engine, that builds community. Already up and running here in San Miguel, hopefully it will spread in the near future to towns and cities around the world.

Making my way through Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, this week I came across this quote, supportive of my madness:

"For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole... Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another."
      - Book 6, Chapter 2

Someone said that this grand failure in Afghanistan, with all the Americans trapped in Kabul, is happening because those who are pulling the strings wanted it to happen. I don't know about that. But I'm convinced that the sh*tshow that is Kabul right now and that is American politics right now serves, or will be made to serve, the powers that be.

I'm convinced that community, not Democrat or Republican, is the basic political unit. Yes, it's work to create a new politics, but there are a lot of rewards along the way. Lokkal is grassroots organizing, the web as a public utility. Take back the internet!

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Dr David and his merry band believe that the new expanded Lokkal will change the world, city by city.