This article is based on this dutch article of Martijn Benders
Slush Puppie in Grandma’s Vase.
I also make music videos now. Not like the studios with dozens of assistants, lighting technicians, and camera operators, but in a stripped-down, solo version where resources are reduced to a minimum and the creative urge is blown up to the max. Six minutes of scenes generated in just a few days, a process that used to demand at least a year of your loneliness. And the music? I am the band. The lyrics? Sprung from my own pen. Everything, from the first trembling image to the last echo of sound, was plucked from the air by my own hand.
Is this poetry? For me, absolutely, in every fiber and cell. I would even dare say: it is more ‘poetry’ than what usually tries to be poetry, more than those crafted words on paper that press against every sound and form, begging for recognition, hoping to be embraced by something greater. Yet, in the eyes of many, this work floats somewhere in a no man’s land, outside the kingdom of ‘real’ poetry. For them, only the recognizable stamp, the familiar form matters. They don’t evaluate the work itself, but check if it meets the criteria in their heads: does it match with their idea of what ‘poetry’ ought to be?
Surrogate people, that’s what they are. I say it without apology, perhaps even with a bit of provocation, a trace of mockery. These people live in a world where they cling to molds that constrain their thoughts. They recognize poetry by its shadows, its outlines, like checking a passport at the border.
I think about this when I see the eight-billionth moral performance laced with symbolic politics, another farcical act by the second chamber of clowns. Is this politics, or is it comedy? They’ve already succeeded in making discussions about deporting minorities seem ‘normal’.
In this age of symbolic politics, where even the most fundamental values are hollowed out and sacrificed to the gods of popularity, it feels as if everything that was once genuine has now reappeared in surrogate form. Political rhetoric has become theater, a farce that doesn’t even recognize its own absurdity anymore. And the remaining audience, the compliant ones, swallow it without protest, just as they consume surrogate poetry without any critical note.
We’ve reached a point where the ability to think critically is on the verge of becoming a historical relic. People are no longer capable of it. Critical thinking requires a well-functioning evaluation mechanism in the brain, a process that allows us not only to perceive ideas and phenomena but to examine them, to question them, and ultimately to weigh them on their merits.
It’s a complex and finely tuned system, this evaluative circuit in the mind. A circuit refined through evolution into something highly sensitive, with networks that allow us not only to perceive our immediate environment but also to understand, dissect, and weigh the abstractions and layers behind it. The ability to doubt, the strength to topple assumptions, to test them against reality—this evaluative process is what sets humans apart, what nourishes culture and drives science.
And yet, as we see now, this delicate system of critical thinking is more vulnerable than ever. The sensitive brain does not harmonize with agricultural toxins, microplastics, pharmaceutical residues, and lipid particle-delivered mRNA. These substances infiltrate our bodies, nestle in our brains, and seem to short-circuit our thoughts, dampening our ability to reflect. Where once there was room for nuance, a flat simplicity now prevails. Where we once could navigate through layered ideas, many now follow only the straightest paths.
As for that mRNA: initially, they claimed these particles would ‘only target the cells at the injection site’. That’s the biggest nonsense you could dream up: it’s impossible to inject something into the bloodstream and not have it spread throughout the body—come on, even a five-year-old knows that. Sure, most of those particles might indeed settle locally, but some will always spread through the bloodstream.
And since those lipid particles are designed to break through the blood-brain barrier, this means that mRNA is also active in your brain, producing spike proteins there. Without anyone having the faintest idea what that means in practice—zero research done. A live experiment on the entire world population. No, it’s not that massive amounts of foreign mRNA are opening some kind of toxic protein factory in our brains, but just the idea—why on earth would you even do this? Why take the risk?
To fight the common cold?
Read once again what I wrote above about that evaluation process.
Regards,
Martinus Benders
