Fresco depicting Iapyx removing an arrowhead from Aeneas' thigh. Pompeii. (Image by C. Raddato, used... [+]
orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
This must be your prayer: a healthy mind in a healthy body.
(Juvenal, Satire 10. 342)
Juvenal condenses all of human desires, ambitions, and wishes to a single and poignant prayer: mens sana in corpore sano. At a basic level we can understand this phrase, which was written about 2000 years ago.
This succinct phrase encapsulates a fundamental truth about the human experience: we are in an ever-present state of embodiment from the moment of conception to the moment of death. We have broken bones and pulled backs. We have felt illnesses of various kinds move through our bodies, forcing us to vomit out bile or cough out mucous. We all know that one day our bodies will kill us. The body eventually stops and embodiment ends. A corpus sanum is truly something to be desired. The alternative is simply the definition of pain and suffering.
Likewise, we can intuit what Juvenal means by mens sana. We see the mental illness pervading our city streets or in homeless shelters. We see those with dementia and other forms of mental deterioration, losing their memories and eventually their personalities. We know that depression, anxiety, and suicidality are at an all time high, all of which are signs of a mens insana. We all know that mental illness can plague us our entire life. Unlike the body the mind never stops until the body makes it. An unhealthy mind is hell on Earth.
Covid Policy, Bodies, and Minds
We will interrogate more fully Juvenal’s loaded phrase below in order to highlight its precise Roman valence. But first, let us take the idea of mens sana in corpore sano seriously and evaluate it in terms of the COVID response. In the context of Juvenal’s aphorism we come to a harsh conclusion with regard to COVID policy and its consequences. It was an unmitigated disaster.
For two years it has been clear that COVID would be an omnipresent part of the human experience. Frankly, anyone who suggested that a zero COVID policy was achievable ought not to have been taken seriously in the past, and certainly should not be taken seriously now. To that end it has been vital to recognize whose bodies (corpora) are most impacted and how are they impacted. The who and the how ought to have shaped COVID Policy. That the who and how didn’t shape COVID Policy either signifies catastrophic incompetence or catastrophic intentionality.
Notice the following charts taken from Government Quebec:
The data are clear with respect to the age of bodies most at risk of COVID; those with less healthy bodies are far more at risk from COVID than those with corpora sana. Of the 13,336 deaths with/from COVID in Quebec only 299 (.02%) total have been among people with zero comorbidities and the vast majority of those have been over 70.
The older and more unhealthy your body is, the more likely your corpus insanum will succumb to COVID. Of course, the truism can be applied to any disease.
Any policy that ignores this stark and unambiguous reality is the WRONG policy.
Our government pushed vaccination on a huge group of people who simply were not in danger of COVID. The aggregate data does not lie.
Now, everyone should be able to be inoculated against COVID if they so desire. This is the nature of informed consent. But the government wasted a massive amount of resources, political capital, and credibility in promoting vaccination for everyone.
Had the inoculations wholly neutralized and sterilized COVID to the degree that it negated the transmission of the virus for all intents and purposes, this government policy would have been understandable. But it was clear from the beginning of the vaccine campaign that governments KNEW these vaccines were non-neutralizing and non-sterilizing because governments were ALREADY buying booster shots during the initial vaccine roll out. We used to call that a scandal.
And this is the crux of the issue: in promoting vaccination for everyone the government employed a “nudging” campaign of demoralization, fear, and hysteria. In effect, the government mutated mens sana into mens insana in order to compel compliance. As I write MPs in Britain are actively investigating the use of unethical nudging in catalyzing fear and hysteria in the populous. To quote:
A group of psychologists have written to Parliament’s Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, warning that a team of civil servants dedicated to “nudging” public behaviour during the pandemic were unaccountable and unethical.
The letter’s 40 professional signatories – led by Dr. Gary Sidley, a retired clinical psychologist – said they opposed the use of dramatic adverts, which included slogans such as: “If you go out you can spread it, people will die.”
They also condemned the use of “images of the acutely unwell in intensive care units” on billboard and television adverts, as well as the “macabre mono focus on showing the number of COVID-19 deaths without mention of mortality from other causes or the fact that, under normal circumstances, around 1,600 people die each day in the U.K.”.
The signatories said it was “highly questionable whether a civilised society should knowingly increase the emotional discomfort of its citizens as a means of gaining their compliance”.
The letter added: “Government scientists deploying fear, shame and scapegoating to change minds is an ethically dubious practice that in some respects resembles the tactics used by totalitarian regimes such as China, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behaviour they perceive to be deviant.” …
The letter drew attention to a government memo from March 2020, which suggested that “the perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent” and called for more frightening messaging.
Governments actively harmed individual’s mental health (mens sana) in order to push mass inoculation. People with corpora sana—the vast majority of whom would likely have had no real negative outcome from COVID—experienced a full frontal assault on their mens sana through governmental propaganda (what has been rebranded as “nudging”).
That is not all…
The STATE’s assault on human consciousness went beyond the terror of nudging. All of us lived through it and it is something I have gestured to here and here.
It is important to create a record of the active harms achieved by the STATE against the MINDS of it citizenry. Every single one of these actions results in causing the mens to become insana.
*Lockdowns, Isolation and Quarantine, which we now know had little impact on COVID mortality
*Compulsory Masking, which never had any basis in science.
*The assumption of universal COVID sickness.
*Mass demoralization.
*Vaccine Passports.
*Telling children they were grandma killers.
*Telling parents their children were going to die.
*Discrimination, segregation, and apartheid based on medical decisions.
*Changing policy continuously in order to “follow the $cience,” when in fact the policy changes did not “follow the Science.”
*Gaslighting.
*The employment of Hate Speech and abuse by Political leaders.
*Shutting down places of shared, communal experiences in violation of Constitutions.
*Media malfeasance and misinformation.
*Occluding familial congregation.
*Precluding Holidays and religious services.
*Separating families during funerals, weddings, at hospitals during surgeries and births.
*Limitations on travel.
*Demonizing unvaccinated people or coercing people into vaccination.
*Shutting down schools and universities.
*Disrupting socialization.
*Causing mass unemployment and the shuttering of small businesses.
I could go on and on and on.
All of these policy decisions, which were designed to slow the spread of a virus and keep the corpus healthy, resulted in making the mens sick on a mass scale.
The data on this are clear and unambiguous.
And as an aside, people’s corpora became unhealthier. People became more obese. Drug and alcohol abuse increased. Necessary surgeries were delayed. Gyms and swimming pools were closed.
There is no doubt on this point:
the COVID policies enacted by governments are borderline crimes against humanity. The longer these policies are maintained, the clearer their criminal intent is made manifest.
What would the Romans do?
We intuited above Juvenal’s meaning of mens sana in corpore sano.
But we are not the Romans.
The Romans had an entirely different conception of the body and the mind. Even their conception of health was different. This is not to suggest there is not some semantic overlap between our culture and Roman culture, but it is a mistake to read Juvenal according to our cultural algorithms.
From a Roman perspective Juvenal’s statement is so poignant precisely because it was so rare that one could achieve over one’s lifetime mens sana in corpore sano. Ancient peoples lived brutal and harsh lives. On average, people died around 30. Disease, war, violence, injury, infection, and death were ubiquitous and omnipresent.
You want water? Walk and get some.
You want food? Grow some.
You want clothing? Make some.
You want heat? Make a fire.
You want shelter? Build some.
Get used to being thirsty.
Get used to being hungry.
Get used to trudging through feces and urine on your way to collect your water.
Get used to dying young and in a million different ways.
You may escape the turmoil and live until a ripe, old age, but that is the exception, not the rule.
Every aspect of life was beyond difficult from the moment of conception to the moment of death.
mens sana in corpore sano was rare indeed.
Of course, there were moments of joy and happiness and pleasure. People laughed and fell in love and cherished each other. There were moments of celebration and rejoicing. All of this is witnessed in the literature, art, and inscriptions.
But the backdrop behind the comedy of life was the hardship and suffering of tragedy.
The very nature of Roman existence necessitates a very different meaning behind mens sana in corpore sano. Let us look at a few examples below in order to learn from the Romans.
The Romans had the cure for COVID all along.
Juvenal clarifies what he means by mens sana in corpore sano, and it is very different than what our intuition would suggest.
He states that we should ask for a “brave/strong mind” that lacks the fear of death (fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem), and one that can endure whatever travails that might arise (qui ferre queat quoscumque labores), one that doesn’t know how to become enraged and has no desire (nesciat irasci, cupiat nihil), and one that believes the tribulations and savage labours of Hercules are more preferable than sex, feasting, and luxury (potiores/ Herculis aerumnas credat saeuosque labores et uenere et cenis et pluma Sardanapalli).
What makes a mens sana? Mental equilibrium and strength in the face of hardship, and the rejection of desire and sloth. Note the relationship between the physical labour of Hercules and its relationship to mental well-being. It is through struggling that our mind becomes sana.
COVID lockdown policy—from a Roman perspective—negated the ability to achieve mental and physical well-being. It infused us with the fear of death and disease, as we were forced to sit around month after month after month.
Seneca (Dialogi 7.3.1) says something similar, that the good life (beata vita) is predicated on mens sana and omnipresent sanitas (health, both physical and mental). The mind must be strong (fortis), vigorous (vehemens), patient (patiens). One ought to understand (intellegis) how to follow tranquility (tranquillitas) and liberty (libertas), while being free from things that annoy us or cause us fear or give physical pleasure. Under these conditions one achieves a peace (pax) and harmony of the mind (concordia animi). Seneca ends this exegesis on the mens sana with the following: omnis enim ex infirmitate feritas est: “all savagery derives from weakness/sickness.”
Look at the world. It is in a state of feritas.
COVID policy has accelerated it by weakening our minds.
Look at the world.
You are witnessing cascading institutional failure, catalyzed by weak-minded people.
The Cure for COVD…
Lucky for us that more than 2000 years ago Cicero had offered us the cure for covid.
But there are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they are of a more dangerous nature; for these very disorders are the more offensive because they belong to the mind and disturb it; and the mind, when disordered, is, as Ennius says, in a constant error: it can neither bear nor endure anything, and is under the perpetual influence of desires. Now, what disorders can be worse to the body than these two distempers of the mind (for I overlook others), weakness and desire? But how, indeed, can it be maintained that the mind cannot prescribe for itself, when she it is who has invented the medicines for the body, when, with regard to bodily cures, constitution and nature have a great share, nor do all who suffer themselves to be cured find that effect instantly; but those minds which are disposed to be cured, and submit to the precepts of the wise, may undoubtedly recover a healthy state? Philosophy is certainly the medicine of the soul, whose assistance we do not seek from abroad, as in bodily disorders, but we ourselves are bound to exert our utmost energy and power in order to effect our cure…
What, and to the other perturbations of mind, as fears, lusts, anger? For these are pretty much like what the Greeks call πάθη. I might call them diseases, and that would be a literal translation, but it is not agreeable to our way of speaking. For envy, delight, and pleasure are all called by the Greeks diseases, being affections of the mind not in subordination to reason; but we, I think, are right in calling the same motions of a disturbed soul perturbations, and in very seldom using the term diseases; though, perhaps, it appears otherwise to you.
Cicero (Tusculanae Disputationes 3.21; Translation by Charles Duke Yonge)
Now look around you.
Witness the fear, the lust, the anger. Look at the social contagion upon our minds. Envy and physical pleasure has annihilated the rational mind.
Witness the government policy of terror and fear in promoting its COVID policy. It has annihilated the rational mind.
The STATE has made the mens insana in corpore insano.
For those of us who kept our rational mind, we see the harm of the government policy and its lack of wisdom and integrity. We see a better policy.
For those of us who lost our rational mind, we have only been in a state of terror and fear for two years now. Rationality was the first casualty of COVID. We are incapable of recovering. There is no better policy.