Bubble Theory
By Visayas Outpost
As we sat at the balcony resto-bar overlooking a quiet beach cove in Sipalay, our attention was drawn to a gaggle of local kids splashing around in the shallows below. There were at least six or eight of them, all were brown as coconuts and sharing a kid-sized outrigger canoe between them. Whenever something exciting caught their attention, like an incoming boat, several of the boys would pile into the canoe and go paddling out there, causing general commotion and doing what kids do. I’m not even sure if they all had clothes. This is what we adore about the Philippines, it represents a life outside the bubble in many ways.
The Bubble is a metaphor I use for the artificial safe-space carved out by the West for itself. If your life has been spent inside the bubble, it is nigh impossible to even recognize it exists. It took this writer until the age of about 30 to finally visit a place that was not a first-tier nation, and actually get off the beaten path. We found ourselves purposefully navigating around Curaçao with just a paper map and almost no road signs. We visited fortress ruins with no handrails and no posted warnings. Caves that were more like backyard tourist stops, complete with DIY extension-cord lighting. I was mystified how the locals there managed to drive or hike around without getting killed. They even smoked. It felt….liberating, actually. The difference was palpable. We were outside the bubble for the first time. Church-mission-related trips followed, both around the Caribbean and in Western Africa. There is nothing quite like staring out at the blackness of the Atlantic at night from Sierra Leone to fully understand what it means to be off the grid; no tether, no safety-net as it were.
Returning home from the ends of the Earth to my trimmed grass, pocket-coil mattress, and favorite restaurants was always the best feeling – a perspective hard to gain in other ways. Sure I had taken Western life for granted, as anyone would, but you’ll find no self-deprecating White Guilt in this expat. Our founders had incredible vision, and we are better for it. The sweat equity of those who came before us cannot be ignored, either. What did gnaw at me though was not the absence of 3G back then or Big Macs in the other 3/5 of the world – it was their absence of care or worry. Their overall attitude, and happiness. How the poorest people seemed to be the most well-adjusted. They didn’t need to be told how to live, or what they should aspire to be, or how many carbs were in a bowl of rice. They didn’t have falling sperm counts, carpal-tunnel syndrome, or peanut allergies. I began to realize that we in the West had accepted a Better Way… but at a cost.
Many of us may never experience a life without Starbucks or wi-fi. Big though the world is, the less-traveled, unseemly parts of it tend to carry the stigma of uncertainty. Airport hubs and cruise ship ports naturally take you to corporate-approved cities where your MasterCard will work, and in my opinion these linkages go a long way to self-reenforce this concept of a protective bubble. Not many people are angling to check out Havana or Vladivostok, in other words. It takes effort to venture out of the comfort zone. The Bubble is trying hard to keep you in, as if to whisper “I know you can go anyplace with that US passport, but Mexico is…dirty…unsafe. If you must go, just stick to Acapulco.” Don’t worry about future travel plans to Mars though. If Elon Musk has his way, there will no doubt still be Amazon delivery and broadband waiting there, if you have first-world (third rock?) credentials.
Perspective
It actually took living outside the West for me to grasp its true influence, however, so here is where I shift gears: I assert there is a hard link between the safety-net thinking of the Bubble, and the foreign policy objective of making the world safe for democracy. I’m interested if you agree: As the American Empire has expanded its own reach and power in the decades since WW2, we have willed into existence our own reality. Given our resources, this was probably inevitable. It was our Dollar that brought world markets to heel. Our cultural and business influences. Our technology, our medical research, our spy apparatus, and so on. I may be singling out America, but it is really the entire Western system that continues to advance this bubble reality. We have think tanks, after all; those other guys don’t have think tanks. We have the clout – nay, the science - to make the world in our image, so it would seem. In doing so we have coalesced the Western raison de’être into three neat and tidy ideals: Safety, Prosperity, & Democracy. Unfortunately, Freedom and Justice got sacrificed along the way but the remaining three are still great ideals, and even invoke a kind of neo-Manifest Destiny. Say these three magic words, and any action seems justifiable. You can try to argue, but the think tanks are solid on this one. Try it yourself: Lockdowns? Safety. Ukraine proxy war? Democracy. See, it is easy-peasy.
Listing all the people ‘droned’ in the name of Safety, or the babies sacrificed for Prosperity, or the regimes ‘changed’ for the sake of Democracy would be moot. Don’t you just love the hubris? Yeah that Regime is not working out for us, I think we’re going to change it. But we are not here to prosecute past crimes, Your Honor, rather, to introduce them as evidence. We will therefore stipulate to the Court that all progress comes with sacrifice, and that overall good can balance out the evil that may have allegedly taken place en-route to the destination. The Defense, in making its case, must now show just how good is this destination; in other words, will the ends really justify the means? And just what are those mysterious ‘ends’ anyway? If it please the Court, there are many people out here in the 3/5 who deserve to know just what this Better Way might mean to them. And why is it, Members of the Jury, that the West must try so damned hard to spread it around? When we are finally all in the Bubble, will they stop collecting our data? Or stop trying to force injections? Or introduce fusion reactors? Or grant us freedom from unelected bankers, bureaucrats, and organizations? Will I be able to hop a boat to the next island without a vax card?
Of course Readers here know the answer to those rhetorical questions is hell no. Safety, prosperity, and democracy are merely the magic elixir, used by the West to create the Borg, expanding its safe space outward from the center. It is for our own good they would say, just drink it. This elixir has been used most recently to justify the global rollout of pandemic measures, which I have written about here. Covid procedures didn’t work out so well for us in the Philippines, just like the One-Child policy didn’t have China’s best interest in mind when Kissinger convinced them to roll that one out. Play ball too willingly with Western Bubble nations and your country may just end up with Bio Labs like Ukraine, and never really know what they are concocting. It is not very different from China luring-in poor countries with infrastructure projects to get a military base out of the deal, but at least the CCP is not making false promises. They promise short-term gain, with strings attached, and you can always say no.
So, what exactly are the benefits if we all just join the Borg? Will the ends justify the means? The Defense is making its case that, under the Bubble, outside countries will have enormous Safety and Prosperity, for starters. 5G, facial recognition, smooth roads, GMO foods, and immersion in the Imaginarium are just part of it. Your country will attract investors and host foreign military bases, and maybe get to attend Davos. You too can have woke ideologies running amok in the schools, doctors who can’t make decisions without the WHO, and elections controlled by the 5-Eyes countries. We didn’t leave out Democracy: soon you will get to elect one of the WEF’s Young Global Leaders, as other nations have been doing. Your new leadership will of course be on board with all of the various global directives related to climate change, carbon-neutrality, and the rest. After a generation, no one will remember the way your country used to be, and the carefree lifestyle that marked its pre-Bubble period. Rich Westerners will flock in, buying up everything and inflating the prices, now that they have Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A. It will be great; you’ll still get to live on your family land and work in the rich peoples’ houses. You won’t be able to afford cigarettes, and the dogs will be on leashes, but they promise it will be worth it in the end. You won’t get to farm sugarcane, because the crops will switch over to wheat and corn, which will be automated. But this will be the Better Way; we are all doing it, they argue, and you should too.
Outside
Against these promises, Members of the Jury, must be a clear understanding of just what countries like mine get to keep by remaining outside the Bubble. Well, Freedom for starters; from tracking and monitoring, from search & seizure, from global organizations. Sovereignty for another, deciding for ourselves whom we will trade with, and how we will govern. These are not decisions for The Hague. Cash and paper records, which some would scoff are outdated, but which most of us actually like. Gun rights, low-level police presence, 4G, local foods from our own neighborhood, gas and diesel vehicles, self-determination, and the list goes on. Easy taxes, easy regulations, ease of starting a business. Or how about a majority Christ-centered population? No doubt the bubble would dampen that. We get to keep self-built vehicles and self-built houses, and a system whereby the poor have a right to build on available government land. So, there is a pretty clear choice to be made, for those being drawn in by the Imaginarium and for those of us trying to shatter it.
As you might guess, I choose to stay outside the bubble. The challenge is helping people here realize that the Bubble is a trap before they fall victim to its temptations. I have realized since moving to the outer rim territories (sorry for the Star Wars refs, I just can’t help it), that a lot of the events going on in the Flyover parts of the world are actually animated by the very struggle being outlined above. Will Venezuela play ball, or suffer more regime change? Will the Son of Marcos be attacked and undermined by Western powers that would rather install a puppet? Count on it. Will NATO countries continue backing Ukraine to prevent airing of their dirty dealings? Absolutely. Will elected leaders who don’t join the next Covidian-type cult get erased again? For anyone paying attention, this is how the chess game advances, and team Borg is a master strategist.
Choose Wisely
As to the question of whether the ends justify the means, I have to say No Way as someone on the outside looking in. And shouldn’t it ultimately be our choice to make? I cannot go back inside the Matrix just to enjoy the taste of that steak – and literally, it is really hard to find a decent cut of beef. I can’t drive faster than about 60mph either, without running someone over or colliding with a carabao, but I will take keeping freedoms over losing them every time. Global leaders remind us frequently through the Imaginarium, just what the future is they have in store for us, once we are assimilated. It is great that so much awareness is growing, and active opposition forming against these plans. As I have written previously, we will have something to say about the so-called inevitability of their desired outcome. That is why in this age of increasing pressure to ram a Unipolar world system down our collective throats, it is vital to reassert the Multipolar system. It must simply be the Newtonian reaction. Of course we are going to repeatedly hear how evil the other side is, which is how the Bubble operates. Of course they are going to continue wreaking havoc to keep your attention, and make you ever more desperate to cling to the Bubble. After all, they simply must promote Safety, Prosperity, and Democracy – with a gun, if necessary.
I’ll sign off with this reference, and by now you know I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s: Sci Fi fans may remember the movie Logan’s Run, later a series, in which Michael York escapes from a domed city for a life outside it facing unknown obstacles. He had it pretty good inside the dome; a well-respected position, casual sex whenever he wanted, no diseases or dangers of any kind. But assimilating into that society was going to cause his early death, so he took his chances outside. He chose unpredictability over safety, and potential for life over the certainty of death. That is a good allegory here and sums up the beauty of diversification: there are still plenty of places outside the bubble for those who want to chart a different course, or to give themselves future options. You might be amazed or even inspired by what you find, and if that interests any of you Readers then I may illustrate more of these differences in a future piece.
The advice I often give is, remember who made you, and avoid living in a state of fear. As always, Dear Reader, stay vigilant.
Visayas Outpost