The Commoner Voice
Historical accounts of people who lived through the World Wide Pandemic covering a two year period. Dec 2019-Dec 2021.
An aid for future historians
Tell your story
We all have a story to tell and other people are desperate to hear it.
Be part of something bigger
Our purpose is to have first-hand accounts of people who lived through the COVID Pandemic
Help write History
The stories will be gathered and turned into anthologies of 100 individual stories on Kindle Books.
What is the commoner voice
The opportunity to read the voice of the common person is relatively new to humanity, emerging with industrialization and the availability of paper and postage. For the first time, there were first-hand accounts from common people that became part of our history. The lives of everyday soldiers in every war, from the advent of postage in the 1850’s to the 2000’s, was recorded. Many of these records are considered by historians as an invaluable window into the past.
They bring us a personal and private history. Intentions, tactics, and the purposes of government and organizations are exposed and revealed through letters that change the official view presented in history books. Historians view personal letters and diaries as having an open, candid quality, contrasting sharply with the highly conceptualized and self-protective language of official documents.
History
Prior to the voice of the commoner, we only had the musings of the great leaders of history. Written in the hand of Caesar and Pompey, we have journals of the Roman Civil War, while the architects, engineers and craftsmen were represented through their industry and science.
Only 150 years ago, 95% of humanity lived in abject poverty. Since then, with stability and education, history now has countless diaries, letters and journals that have changed and shaped the recitation of historical events.
…..and now
As the postage stamp created the world where common voices were heard, it appears that the newly arrived media technology may dismantle it. The digitalization of our world is arguably the biggest threat to the voice of the individual in history. Our libraries are empty. Vernacular is the popular form of language. No rules about writing. Information is governed by so-called fact-checkers, producing some genuine threats to society and freedom. The spoken word is displacing the written word, with talking heads beamed to our phones. Meanwhile, people are losing confidence in the organizations and structures that deliver our access to information.
Many top-tier media companies have eliminated the common voice for a fabricated narrative, fueled by sensationalism and division through identity and gender politics. And, of course, profit. Monetization, a new word to humanity, has left us only one model to express ourselves, and that model must earn or die.
Some of the largest players of this new world order are knowingly manipulating and censoring information to elicit addictive dopamine responses from the users.
This has led to a less educated and more easily influenced society, communicating in cliché’s of less than 140 Twitter characters. None of it is redeeming; most of it is mean and easy to discount or discredit. Very little of it intends to open discussion, debate, or negotiation. The commoner is fast losing access to the personal written word that relies on narrative, or storytelling. That element which gives historians a useful, inspiring, and sometimes a challenging threshold for the story they want to tell.
The Future
This short-lived era of humanity’s voice being part of the discussion must be re-ignited! When we react to Twitter or Facebook posts, we use very little of our brain. Our minds are not doing the needed exercise for rational thought and reasoning.
What will future historians do? Will they have only discredited media nonsense for data, or can we preserve the written word of the common man in history?
Our Challenge
Our goal is to gather first-hand accounts of people’s experiences of the pandemic – and publish them.
They can be typed and emailed, or written in your own hand and mailed to our P.O. Box. The hand-written letters will be gathered, scanned, and uploaded to Kindle Books along with the emailed stories. The Commoners Voice Project will publish Kindle books in volumes of 100 letters each.
The minimum requirement for submission is First Name, Age, Gender, Place. You can use your full name if you wish.
Please observe a maximum of 2000 words for each contribution, describing your pandemic timeline by memory. No Google input, or any other. Just what you recall from memory.
Describe everything you can. Social memes; changing advice from health officials. Hopes for humanity, your reason to get vaccinated or not. If you got sick or not. Family members and friends. Lockdowns, civil rights. Psychological effects on you, family, friends. The writing style and message are up to you as long as it deals with the two-year period of the pandemic starting December 2019 – December 2021.
Covid Deaths – How many did you know personally who died? Please describe the person, their previous health and personality (outgoing or introverted)? Whatever you think belongs in your story.
This is about documenting the individual’s experience of the pandemic and the worldwide Gene Therapy Experiment called COVID 19.
So please try to speak without vernacular where possible, limit political ideologies, views and agendas; describe life as if you were on a wagon train headed West and you wanted to describe the journey to your grandchildren.
This is not to debate vaccine efficacy, or political parties, or the neighbor’s idiocy. We want your story, not a recitation of the world’s problems.
Submissions
Please forward handwritten letters to: Commoner Voice Project P.O. Box 561 Murwillumbah, NSW 2484 Australia
Emails to: thecommonervoice@bearclawmedia.com
While our intent is to publish all received submissions once the Commoner Voice Project has established Copyright, we simply cannot know how many responses we will get. Should the number exceed our ability to get them all published in a timely manner, the stories with the most substantial historical relevance will be the first focus.