The Bay Area and Slab City: Two Extremes in One Big State

The Milgram Experiment, Desert Coffee, and Compliance

California is a state large and diverse enough to encompass two opposing realities: blind compliance and unbridled freedom.

Perhaps the only patch of land in the entire country where the ruling class can still sleep peacefully, knowing they matter, is the Bay Area (for now). This is evidenced by the forthcoming mask mandates for healthcare facilities and workers, despite clear evidence suggesting these mandates harm the very people wearing the masks. Being in a low-oxygen or anaerobic state fosters the generation of disease. Therefore, any measure that decreases oxygen will always result in the proliferation of illness, especially for those already in a compromised state. Doctors know this. Healthcare workers know this. You know this. I know this. So why does it continue?

People don’t wear masks because they fear illness; they wear them because they fear expressing themselves. Likewise, governments do not use mask or vaccine mandates to protect citizens—they use them to protect themselves from the tools of freedom

When we view COVID-19 through the lens of the Milgram experiment, without the distortion of emotions and programming, everything becomes stunningly clear.

When Stanley Milgram conducted his infamous study at Yale University in 1961, he struggled to understand why people would do things that violated their own conscience under the pressure of authority.

In his controversial book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, Milgram detailed the series of studies that involved regular people being asked to administer electric shocks to "learners" in the name of scientific advancement. The results were unexpected: a very high proportion of participants obeyed, with every subject going up to 300 volts, and 65% continuing to the full 450 volts.

“Milgram’s experiments on obedience have made us more aware of the dangers of uncritically accepting authority,” wrote Peter Singer in The New York Times Book Review.

But where was Peter Singer and The New York Times when ordinary citizens across the globe were subjected to the same experiment in the name of COVID?

In listening to this podcast it appears he was busy “debunking” all theories that might diverge from the narrative. He seemed very taken with the “wet market theory” which sounds more like a Michael Crichton novel than anything resembling sanity. Instead of looking towards these types pseudo-intellectual voices during hard times, we’ve awakened to the truth that our own voices are the safest guides available to us when things get rough.  

Now, who are the people who will go to any length for their personal freedom? After watching Desert Coffee, a documentary about the desert community of Slab City, located in the Sonoran Desert of Southern California, I deeply relate to why people choose to cut all ties with society in the pursuit of freedom. Everyone interviewed in the film had, at one point or another, been abused by the system, which awakened their inner freedom fighter. Even the children interviewed seemed capable of seeing through the perversions of law enforcement and child welfare agencies, not to mention the profound sickness in federally funded organizations that take far more than they give. They call Slab City the “last free place,” and with COVID lurking in the rearview mirror, it appears they may be right.

Are those our only choices, though? Either living in homeless encampments in a part of the desert deemed uninhabitable by most, or enduring the bitter taste of lingering authoritarianism in the rest of California, particularly in the Bay Area? Where is the middle ground in America, where people can simply be free?

The COVID-19 experiment continues... but every day is an opportunity to use the clear and crystalline voice you were born with.