"Why the Most Intelligent People Escape Social Life"
"Why do the most perceptive minds often withdraw from social life - not out of fear or arrogance, but out of necessity? In this video, we explore a profound psychological and philosophical truth first articulated by Arthur Schopenhauer: intelligence naturally gravitates toward solitude. Drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, and modern psychology, this reflection reveals why deep thinkers often feel drained by social environments and why silence becomes essential for clarity, creativity, and self-understanding. This is not about antisocial behavior. It is about mental depth.
From Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Jung, Kierkegaard, and modern neuroscience, this video explains why solitude has always been the silent companion of the world’s greatest thinkers. If you’ve ever felt out of place in crowds, exhausted by small talk, or more alive in silence than in noise, this video will help you understand why. Once you recognize this pattern, you’ll never see solitude the same way again."
“The barbarian hopes, and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.“
"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
- H. L. Mencken, 1929
○
"It is extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut,
with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well;
and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes
life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. "
"The 'Painful Betrayal' That Made Russia Give Up on Trump"
"In a stunning and detailed analysis, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter joins Judge Andrew Napolitano to dismantle the official narratives surrounding US foreign policy towards both Russia and Iran. Ritter reveals the deep bitterness in the Kremlin following Trump's abandonment of a hard-won agreement in Alaska, and argues that the US is not a trustworthy or serious negotiating partner. He further contends that, contrary to popular belief, Benjamin Netanyahu's primary goal is to stop Trump from launching a premature war with Iran that Israel knows it cannot survive."
"How U.S.- Israel Pressure Could Ignite World War III"
"This interview examines rising tensions as Israeli leaders meet U.S. officials in Washington and media narratives frame Iran as weak. The guest argues the 12-day war did not end in Israeli victory, claiming Iran restored control quickly and strengthened its deterrence through missile power. He says U.S. policy is focused on regime change, not diplomacy, and that real de-escalation would require shifts on Palestine and regional occupations. The discussion also explores Iran’s military capabilities and its evolving ties with Russia and China."
US & Israel are Rejecting Peace to Plot War with Iran"
"In this bombshell analysis, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins Judge Andrew Napolitano to reveal how the United States and Israel may be actively ignoring and sabotaging Iran's repeated offers for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East. Professor Sachs breaks down an "intelligent, coherent" speech by Iran's foreign minister that laid out a clear path to peace - including a two-state solution for Palestine - which was met with a complete media blackout in the West. He argues this is part of a "bloody-minded" determination by Israel and the US to reject diplomacy in favor of conflict."
"Police cars in an Ohio county were nearly repossessed over just $57,000 in missed payments - a shocking sign of how fragile local government finances have become. If sheriff departments can’t manage basic bills, what does that say about the broader economy? In this episode of i Allegedly, Dan breaks down government debt, business closures, rising utility costs, EV losses, corporate shutdowns, data breaches, and the growing financial strain hitting everyday Americans. The headlines say everything is fine - but the warning signs are everywhere."
"I feel quite exasperated right now. Everyone knows that the economic numbers that federal bureaucrats in Washington are feeding us each month are fraudulent. It has been that way for a very long time. The employment numbers are a perfect example of this. Every month they give us a headline number that looks pretty good, and then months later they revise it much lower when nobody is paying attention. That is the game they want to play, and many of us understand that. But this latest stunt that they have pulled is absolutely astounding. More than a million U.S. jobs suddenly disappeared from the numbers, and they would like us to believe that this is perfectly normal. How are we supposed to have any faith in the numbers that the BLS releases each month if they are off by this much?
As Zero Hedge has reported, nonfarm employment in the United States as of December 31st, 2025 was revised down from 159.546 million to 158.497 million…"Starting at the top, total US payrolls were revised dramatically lower starting with the Jan 2021 data and every month since, and net of the cumulative changes December 31, 2025 total nonfarm employment was revised lower by 1.029 million from 159.546 million to 158.497 million.
As expected, the bulk of the negative revisions took place in 2025, with negative revisions to 2024 amounting to -413K, 2023 was just -73K while 2021 and 2021 were revised modestly higher. Focusing on 2025, the negative revisions to both the year and previous years, meant that the change in total jobs for 2025 was revised from an already low +584,000 to a shockingly low +181,000."
How can over a million jobs suddenly disappear? Well, the truth is that they never actually existed in the first place. It was all smoke and mirrors. Let’s take a look at the January numbers. We are being told that the U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January…"The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that employers added 130,000 jobs in January. That figure was above the expectations of economists polled by LSEG, who estimated the economy would add 70,000 jobs. The unemployment rate was 4.3%, slightly lower than economists’ expectations of 4.4%. But the “unadjusted” figure for January was actually a loss of 2.6 million jobs…"
There is another reason why today’s report will be revised away: while the seasonally adjusted change was a stronger than expected 130K, the unadjusted was a negative 2.649 million. That means that the entire delta in today’s “surprise beat” was due to seasonal adjustments. Isn’t that fun? Everyone is running around talking about the “130,000 jobs” the U.S. added last month, knowing that the “adjusted” number will almost certainly be revised down multiple times later on. But the “unadjusted” number shows that the U.S. economy lost 2.6 million jobs in January. Yes, mass layoffs really are happening all over the nation. In January, the number of job cut announcements was the highest that we have seen for that month since 2009. And even though 2.6 million jobs were actually lost last month, the government is telling us that 130,000 were gained.
What a joke. Meanwhile, more bad news about the housing market continues to roll in. In January 2026, the number of foreclosure filings in the United States was 32 percent higher than it was in January 2025…With the number of Americans losing their homes to banks rising for an eleventh straight month, it’s clear the housing crisis is getting worse rather than better. US foreclosure activity jumped again in January 2026, with a total of 40,534 properties facing foreclosure filings – a 32 percent increase from the same time last year. Foreclosure filings cover every stage of the process, from the moment a lender issues a legal warning to the point a home is formally seized after missed mortgage payments.
It is starting to feel like 2008 all over again. We are off to such a bad start in 2026, and this comes on the heels of a year in which foreclosure filings were 14 percent higher than the previous year… The bleak start to 2026 follows an already brutal 2025, when 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings – up 14 percent from the year before, according to a previus report from ATTOM. Foreclosures are clearly trending in the wrong direction. And the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all, because mortgage delinquencies among low-income households have been steadily increasing…"90-day delinquency rates have skyrocketed among borrowers in the lowest-income ZIP codes, rising to 3% in the fourth quarter from 0.5% in 2021." We are now at the highest level that we have seen in about a decade.
At the same time, electricity bills are rising to unprecedented heights. Some are complaining that their monthly electricity bills now exceed $800, and others are complaining that their electricity bills now exceed $1,000…On Reddit, one user in the r/homeowners group shared that their electric bill in Pittsburgh topped $800. Others weighed in with their experiences, and suggested making modifications to save money. “Everyone needs to take quicker showers, don’t leave hot water run, and turn the heat down to 68 and wear clothes and warm pajamas and use blankets at night,” one comment advised.
On TikTok, user MamaSelena shared that her January electric bill in Ohio was $1,013, cutting into her grocery budget. She contacted local representatives in hopes they would advocate for lower costs, and encouraged others to do the same.
It is easy to tell people that they should just move to a state where the cost of living is lower. Well, Alabama has a very low cost of living, but even some residents of that state are now facing electricity bills that are close to $1,000…"Alabama Power customer Miessha Reed is one of many customers who has seen a jump in their electric bills. Reed said her monthly bill during last year’s summer months ranged between $300 to $400, but she can’t say the same about her latest power bill. “It did a rapid increase. June was like $674, July was like $777, and I got an August bill for $963,” said Reed."
Soaring heating and cooling costs are one of the primary reasons why power bills are rising so much. In fact, it is being projected that the average U.S. household will spend $995 just on heating their homes this winter…A new report this week estimates that U.S. households could spend an average of $995 on home heating alone from mid-November to March, which is $84 more than they spent last winter. The report is from the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA), a policy organization that represents state governments seeking federal funds for low-income home energy programs. It predicts that heating costs will rise by an average of 9.2% over the next three months."
Of course it isn’t just power bills that are going up. Just about everything is steadily becoming more expensive, but the bureaucrats in Washington would like us to believe that the inflation rate is in the low single digits. Give me a break.
If a major conflict with Iran erupts in the Middle East, our power bills will experience another huge spike. On Tuesday night, President Trump issued a very ominous warning to Iran…"The President on Tuesday night said he is considering ordering a second aircraft carrier strike group to position itself outside Iran. US diplomats and Iranian officials met last Friday in Oman to discuss ending the ayatollah’s nuclear program. This is the first time the two countries have engaged diplomatic talks since the 12-day war with Israel in June. ‘Either we will make a deal or we will have to do something very tough like last time,’ Trump told Axios."
I have been warning about a final showdown with Iran for a very long time. Once the missiles start flying, nothing will ever be the same again. But for the moment, much of the population continues to believe that everything will work out just fine somehow. There is nothing wrong with being optimistic, but right now our economy is crumbling all around us and there are very dark clouds on the horizon."
"The Consummation of Empire," by Thomas Cole, 1836.
"The Age Of Empires"
by Joel Bowman
“The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable.”
~ Edward Gibbon, from "The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire" (1776)
Tokyo, Japan - "We are up in the air this week, dear reader, traveling through space and time, from one End of the World to the other. From such great heights, we watch the earth turn beneath us, same as it always has, and we wonder… where to from here? From great heights fall great empires. Ancient Egyptians to Akkadians... Assyrians to Babylonians... Hittites to Spartans to Parthians... and down on through the ages. Rise and fall. Sunrise and sunset.
In the east and in the west, all across time, political power congeals around a centralizing idea, a unifying mythology. Inwardly focused at first, a critical mass is formed, often spontaneously. Order emerges out of chaos. The core is hardened, refined, made resilient, as in a crucible. Pressure builds, intensifying to the point of implosion. With nowhere to go, the direction changes. Centripetal forces turn centrifugal... political power projects outward... in search of new energy, new resources, new horizons. And new people and lands to conquer. Whether through trade and commerce, spear and sword, or a combination of them both, the sphere of influence is expanded. Until the core comes to depend on expansion itself as a form of sustaining energy…
Age of Empire: On average, the great empires of the world – across the east and west – stand for about 250 years. (Remember that figure…) The Qin dynasty, the very first dynasty of imperial China, might have expected to exceed the average when, having conquered its surrounding rival states, founder Ying Zheng abandoned the title of king and declared himself China’s first ever emperor. The year was 221 BC.
The Qin harbored grand ambitions under Zheng’s leadership, including the creation of a centralized government, standardizing weights, currency and measurements and even the introduction of a uniform system of writing. The Qin also embarked on a massive roads and infrastructure program, including connecting various walls along the northern border (which would eventually become the Great Wall we know today).
But despite its bold aspirations, the Qin proved to be the shortest lived of all the major Chinese dynasties, with just two emperors. The enterprise ended in a bloodbath of usurpation, execution, betrayal and rebellion. The Qin’s 15 years (221-206 BC) puts it roughly on par with the little known Nanda Empire of the northern Indian subcontinent and various breakaway states from the Roman Empire, such as the Gallic Empire (260-274) and the Palmyrene Empire (260-273).
On the other end of the scale, there are a handful of empires which endured beyond the millennial mark. The Kingdom of Kush (780 BC - 350; 1,129 years) of the Nile Valley, the Chera Dynasty (200 BC - 1100; 1,300 years) of southern India, and the aforementioned Assyrians (2025-609 BC; 1,461 years) of ancient Mesopotamia, managed such unusual longevity. Only the mighty Pandyan Dynasty, one of the four great dynasties of southern India, qualifies for the multi-millennia club (300 BC - 1759; 2,059 years).
Fast-forward to our own fleeting blink in history, the term “empire” has fallen somewhat out of fashion. The world’s preeminent superpower, the United States of America, may not consider itself an empire... and yet, the US maintains between 750 and 800 military bases in some 80 countries around the world, enough to make poor old Genghis Khan bend the knee, if not kiss the ring.
That’s more than three times as many military bases as the US has embassies and consulates, leaving little doubt as to whether Washington prefers diplomacy or militancy. The cost of maintaining such a presence around the world means the US spends more on its military than the next nine countries – China, Russia, Germany, India, the UK, Saudia Arabia, Ukraine, France, and Japan... combined.
Countries with the highest military spending worldwide in 2024
"Last April, renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner predicted a depression cycle starting at the end of 2025 into 2026. The economy is clearly slowing down, and the latest “1 million plus” negative jobs revision that came out Wednesday (2/11/26) certainly points to a tanking economy. Nenner says, “I have to adjust for all the immigrants let into the country, but we will soon see unemployment numbers go up.”
The next big downward surprise for the economy is big losses for the banks. Nenner predicts, “The institutions I work with that are selling real estate in New York are telling me a lot of banks are already negative. If you look in their books in California, they already had these big losses. They did not get out of their bonds because they thought interest rates would never go up. There are a lot of things that are already wrong, but it has not come out yet. I don’t know if there are going to be failures, but it will come out, and they will have big losses when they have to show the books.”
So, what is Nenner predicting will happen with the troubled banks? Nenner says, “I guess the Fed will step in or the government will step in because if you are a banker and you lose a fortune, then you are always bailed out with tax money. This is why they never improve.”
With gold and silver, there is good news and bad news. First comes the bad news. I asked Nenner if he would be a buyer of silver and gold now? Nenner says, “No, not right now because the cycle is down for the moment. It is the same thing for gold. The cycle is down. If we close below $4,700, we will get some downside price targets. Usually, things that go up fast also go down fast. It’s not over for gold and silver; it’s just a correction.”
Nenner put his clients in gold at $1,600 an ounce, and he bought silver at $29 per ounce. Now comes the good news, as Nenner points out, “The bull market for gold and silver will continue to the end of 2027. By then, we can do some fine tuning.”
On the war cycle, good news—for now. In the Middle East, Nenner says, “Right now, the war cycle is not going to heat up.” How about the war cycle for Europe and Russia? Nenner says, “No, they are not going to heat up either. The war cycles are topping right now. It’s not going to heat up for the short term.” Nenner is still worried about China and Taiwan at some point in the future. The really bad news on the war cycle comes in the 2030 to 2032 time frame. Nenner says, “The 2030 to 2032 war cycle is going to be very bad. There are going to be a lot of casualties. They start shooting rockets, and how many people are going to die? I think it will be in the billions of people, and that is what the numbers show.”
Nenner warns of terrorists let into the country by the Biden Administration that could set off bombs in the US “on a big scale.” Nenner contends this will be part of the war cycle that comes at the end of this decade. Nenner also said Trump could help cushion the financial fall of the USA, but he could not stop the down financial cycle. Nenner pointed out, “You cannot stop winter, but you can get a winter coat, and Trump is a winter coat.” Now, Nenner says, “There was so much damage done to America that Trump can’t fix it. The cycle is turning down, and you can’t do anything about it.” Nenner also predicted in January of 2024 that President Trump “would be coming back.” So, let’s all pray to God the Father for divine help. There is much more in the 49-minute interview."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner:
Normandy, France - "First, came the bad news. The Wall Street Journal: "Job growth last year was far worse than we thought. The government has dramatically lowered its estimates for how many jobs the economy generated over the past two years. The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday said that the U.S. added just 1.5 million jobs in 2024, well below the previously estimated 2 million. In 2025, it said the labor market added only 181,000 jobs, versus the previously estimated 584,000."
Then came the good news, also from the WSJ: "The US adds 130,000 jobs in January, starting year off on stronger footing." More jobs? Fewer jobs? But our focus today is on gold.
In what was said to be the most memorable event at Davos this year, Mark Carney, former central banker and current Prime Minister of Canada, told the world that the ‘rules-based order’ was over, because the major rule maker has turned into the major rule breaker. And one of the first, and most important rules it broke, was the one that concerned the world’s money.
Context…Gold is, first and foremost, a naturally occurring metal - Au 79 in the periodic table, with 79 protons and 79 electrons in each atom. Most everything in nature finds a use and for thousands of years gold has been useful as “money.” It fulfills Aristotle’s requirements. It is trustworthy, portable, and divisible.
It is also mostly useless. This is important. Because a useful metal would be priced on the basis of its usefulness. Iron ore, copper, aluminum - there are markets for each, and prices set by users. Ideally, real money shouldn’t have any purpose or value other than as money; it is meant to keep track of the values for other things, not to have a value of its own.
Another key attribute of gold is that it is relatively rare. You can’t add to the quantity of above-ground gold without digging into the ground and hauling it out. In a sense, the value of gold is a measure of the time and energy that goes into mining and refining it. It’s a natural limitation. You won’t spend $1,000 mining an ounce of gold that sells for only $100. But when the ‘price’ (that is, the value of the goods and services that it will ‘buy’) rises to $2,000, you might spend as much as $1,900 looking for it, adding to the above-ground supply and thus keeping prices more or less stable.
All of which is to say that gold makes good money. Pieces of paper with ink on them do not. They are portable, divisible, and reasonably durable. Alas, they are not rare or limited. As Ben Bernanke explained, above, the feds can produce as many as they want at ‘essentially no cost.’ But pieces of paper proved as attractive as a hand grenade on a playground. Early banks printed up pieces of paper saying, in effect, that they could be used to claim the gold in their vaults.
The paper could also be exchanged for goods and services, just like gold. Then, of course, banks saw that they didn’t actually need to keep all of that gold in their vaults. They could use a ‘fractional reserve’ system. Customers were unlikely to claim all the gold at once. All the bank needed was half as much gold...or 25%...or even 10%...or less, just enough to cover the usual demand for it. What this did, in effect, was to enable the bank to lend money it didn’t have and earn interest on it. It made the banks complicit in counterfeiting...‘printing’ pieces of paper and calling them ‘money’ that was ‘backed by gold reserves’ that weren’t there.
Economist Murray Rothbard argued that this practice was criminal fraud and should be outlawed. But it caught on. And today, everybody does it. The US imposes no reserve requirement (in March of 2020 the Fed set reserve requirements to 0% for all depository institutions in the US and has left them there since). Thus did this ‘credit money’ - fake money coming out of nowhere - come to dominate the US economy.
Fake money proved to be an even more effective scam in the hands of government. People were wary of banks’ gold certificates - effectively limiting the supply of them. Banks sometimes went broke. In the Great Depression, for example, some 9,000 of them were judged insolvent. But a government “can’t go broke” because it can always “print up” lawful money.
After WWII, the US led the world in trying to create a ‘rules based’ rather than brute force based, order. There were rules for war...for trade...and rules for money too. The Bretton Woods agreement set up the dollar as the world’s go-to currency. At the time, the dollar was ‘as good as gold’ because the US pledged to exchange its dollars for gold at any time.
But remember, the key requirement of gold-backed paper is that it be actually limited. Another key requirement, barely mentioned, but which will play a big role in our story, is neutrality. Gold didn’t care where it came from or whose hands it passed through. Was it mined by child labor? Did it pass through the central bank of an enemy country? Did it come from a country with a positive trade account with the US? Gold didn’t give a damn. But the Biden and Trump administrations did! More to come, on how the US broke the rules…and how the broken rules will now cause the US to go broke."
Annual US government deficits will rise from $1.9 trillion in 2026 to $3.1 trillion in 2036, according to new 10-year projections reached by the Congressional Budget Office. Total public debt, as a percentage of GDP, will reach 175% by 2056 - well past the historical point at which a nation has a currency or bond market collapse.
"Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms.
It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole."
"Sleep and the Meaning of Life: Fernando Pessoa on
the Existential Dimension of the Horizontal Hours"
by Maria Popova
"One of the most important things I have learned about living is that, in any life of purpose and creative vitality, you must be as religious and disciplined about your sleep as about your work. And yet one of the great self-betrayals of our culture is the way it wears the lack of sleep as a badge of honor on the lapel of the ego of achievement - the cult of productivity gone past the sacrifice of presence, sacrificing even that precious nightly absence of conscious thought and metabolic urgency necessary to recover, to reset, to recalibrate so that we may begin again, in the deepest sense, in the new day.
Trouble sleeping both troubles living and signals a troubled life - because sleep is how most of the body’s physical systems recover; because, ever since evolution invented REM in the bird brain, it has been helping us regulate our negative emotions; because sleep goes beyond the physical, the mental, and the emotional to touch the existential.
Pessoa recognizes that, more than a biological impediment, all those unsolved disquietudes and subtle estrangements from ourselves that keep the eyelids from closing the curtain on the day are emissaries of our existential angst. Wrestling with his own, he writes: "I’m going to life’s bed wide awake, unaccompanied and without peace, in the ebb and flow of my confused consciousness, like two tides in the black night where the destinies of nostalgia and desolation meet."
While Kafka is reverencing the creative power of insomnia a dozen degrees of latitude north, Pessoa discovers in his sleeplessness a strange metaphysical power: "The clock in the back of the deserted house (everyone’s sleeping) slowly lets the clear quadruple sound of four o’clock in the morning fall. I still haven’t fallen asleep, and I don’t expect to. There’s nothing on my mind to keep me from sleeping and no physical pain to prevent me from relaxing, but the dull silence of my strange body just lies there in the darkness, made even more desolate by the feeble moonlight of the street lamps. I’m so sleepy I can’t even think, so sleepless I can’t feel. Everything around me is the naked, abstract universe, consisting of nocturnal negations. Divided between tired and restless, I succeed in touching - with the awareness of my body - a metaphysical knowledge of the mystery of things."
The portal into that mystery, Pessoa realizes, is the cessation of selfing that marks waking life: "To cease, to sleep, to replace this intermittent consciousness with better, melancholy things, whispered in secret to someone who doesn’t know me! … To cease, to be the ebb and flow of a vast sea, fluidly skirting real shores, on a night in which one really sleeps! … To cease, to be unknown and external, a swaying of branches in distant rows of trees, a gentle falling of leaves, their sound noted more than their fall, the ocean spray of far-off fountains, and all the uncertainty of parks at night, lost in endless tangles, natural labyrinths of darkness! … To cease, to end at last, but surviving as something else: the page of a book, a tuft of dishevelled hair, the quiver of the creeping plant next to a half-open window, the irrelevant footsteps in the gravel of the bend, the last smoke to rise from the village going to sleep, the wagoner’s whip left on the early morning roadside… Absurdity, confusion, oblivion - everything that isn’t life…Behind me, on the other side of where I’m lying down, the silence of the house touches infinity."
It is sleep, Pessoa comes to believe, that most readily allows us to empty ourselves of our selves and touch the infinite: "There are moments when the emptiness of feeling oneself live attains the consistency of a positive thing. In the great men of action, namely the saints, who act with all of their emotion and not just part of it, this sense of life’s nothingness leads to the infinite. They crown themselves with night and the stars, and anoint themselves with silence and solitude. In [them] the same feeling leads to the infinitesimal; sensations are stretched, like rubber bands, to reveal the pores of their slack, false continuity… And in these moments both types of men love sleep, as much as the common man who doesn’t act and doesn’t not act, being a mere reflection of the generic existence of the human species. Sleep is fusion with God, Nirvana, however it be called. Sleep is the slow analysis of sensations, whether used as an atomic science of the soul or left to doze like a music of our will, a slow anagram of monotony."
Pessoa eventually experiences one such moment himself - a moment of profound unselfing, on the other side of which he comes to feel that one is most awake to life, to its essence and its mystery, when asleep: "It was just a moment, and I saw myself. I can no longer even say what I was. And now I’m sleepy, because I think - I don’t know why - that the meaning of it all is to sleep."
This may be so because meaning is so often muddled by interpretation, but sleep disables the whipping hand of the analytical mind, quells all the rationalizations that pass for reason, returns us to a state of pure being before the storying of identities and opinions. Pessoa writes: "When asleep we all become children again. Perhaps because in the state of slumber we can do no wrong and are unconscious of life, the greatest criminal and the most self-absorbed egotist are holy, by a natural magic, as long as they’re sleeping.
[…]
All life is a dream. No one knows what he’s doing, no one knows what he wants, no one knows what he knows. We sleep our lives, eternal children of Destiny. That’s why, whenever this sensation rules my thoughts, I feel an enormous tenderness that encompasses the whole of childish humanity, the whole of sleeping society, everyone, everything."
“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”
"A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality.
Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud and corruption are lauded as saviors.
The national mood is aggrieved and bitter. The luxuries of self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment have impoverished the national spirit. Bankrupted by these excesses, what little treasure remains is squandered on plots of petty revenge.
Blindness to the late hour is cheered as optimism, confidence in the false gods of technology is sanctified while doubters of the technocratic theocracy are crucified as irredeemable infidels.
Witch-hunts and show trials are the order of the day as those who cannot stomach the party line are obsessively purged, as healthy skepticism is condemned as a mortal sin by brittle true believers who secretly fear the failure of their cult.
Mired in a putrid sewer of suspected subversion and disloyalty to The One True Cause, heretics are everywhere to those caught up in the mass hysteria. In this choking atmosphere of toxic hubris, self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment, humility is for losers, prudence is for losers, caution is for losers, skeptical inquiry is for losers.
Completely untethered from cause and effect, those confident in the inevitability of a glorious future of unlimited expansion cling to past glory as proof of future glory, even as their hubris leads only to a treacherous path of decay and decline. As they stumble into the abyss, their final cries are of surprise that confidence alone is not enough.
Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies where cause and effect, skeptical inquiry, humility, prudence and thrift can still be nurtured."
"Most people think of societal collapse as something like a zombie apocalypse where everything suddenly stops working. Instead of people turning into brain eating zombies, they stop going to work. The “system” collapses, so everyone just stops doing what they normally do all of a sudden. The next day, people divide up into gangs and begin to guard their turf using what is left of modern weapons. Life quickly returns to a hunter-gatherer existence with modern clothes.
This image of collapse is a powerful one. Google the phrase “United States collapse” or some version of it and you get results going back many years. Most of them start with economics but some start with culture. Right now, the people we call the Left for some reason think America is on the verge of collapse because they cannot force people to nod along with their weird morality. Many normal people think collapse is coming because they see the food bill every week.
Of course, there is a market for taking the contrary view. This is a popular gag for internet characters on what we continue to call the Right. They counter the claims from their fellow anti-leftists with arguments for why the “founding principals” will prevail and avoid societal collapse. Maybe they will point out that the magic of the free market has conquered communism, so it will conquer whatever is happening now. It is a form of strategic gainsaying to get attention.
The thing is societal collapse is a real thing that does happen just as civil wars, revolutions, wars and social upheavals are real things. Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and we got to watch lots of it on television. When people suddenly realized that the guards were not going to shoot them if they tried to escape to the West, it did not take long before order broke down. Once the process started, there was no way to stop it and the system collapsed.
The thing is it did not happen overnight. The collapse actually started much earlier but people did not notice it. Little things stopped working. For example, people in Hungary began to notice that the border to Austria was not always guarded. Maybe the guards were there and ignored their duty or they just abandoned their post. Over time the border was not much of a border. Similar breakdowns of small systems became common over the course of the 1980’s.
Of course, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not send these societies back to the stone age either. Politics became increasingly chaotic. Law and order broke down to the point where criminal gangs were imposing their will on whole cities, because the police no longer had the ability or desire to stop them. The people got poorer in many small ways, but mostly in the breakdown of trust. They could not rely on the system, so they slowly abandoned it for alternatives.
We do not think of social trust as a part of the poverty equation, but in realty it is the key component of social happiness. High trust societies may not have unlimited consumer goods, but the people trust the system, because they trust one another. This allows for long term planning. Africa will never be rich, despite having massive natural resources, because social trust is near zero. Finland will never be poor because the Finns can count on their fellow Finns to always be Finnish.
Social collapse, like war and revolution, will reflect the material relations of the age because those reflect the resources of society. Revolution in the 18th century was peasants with pitchforks, because that is how you can revolt in an agrarian society operating under feudal rules. In the 19th century revolution was workers hurling homemade bombs and shooting at the authorities, because that is how you can stage a revolt in an industrial urban society.
This is the information age, so revolution will reflect the weapons we choose to use in this age, which will be money and knowledge. Money in all of its forms is a type of information that says things about the general state of affairs. In completely financialized societies like the West, money is the big weapon. It is also other information, like the government hiring clowns and carnies to nudge people in the “right direction” during the Covid panic.
The great tumult in the West over the last decade has been centered on the things that are important in the information age. The rise of a new group of oligarchs was made possible by the technological revolution. Just as agrarian people measured wealth in land and industrial people measured wealth in capital, technological people measure wealth in control of information flows. The reason Mark Zuckerberg is richer than Bill Gates is he controls something more valuable than PC’s.
Societal collapse in the information age will, at least at the beginning, reflect the socioeconomic relations of the age. Trust in what we are told by the media has collapsed, because it is easier to see the lying than in prior ages. In 1985 you could think the New York Times was biased, but predictably so. Today, you cannot trust anything they say because it is false in unpredictable ways. Trust in the media has collapsed because their information is chaotically false.
The slow collapse of trust in our information is spreading. We used to think that the courts were predictable, if not always fair. Poor people might not get the same justice as rich people, but the reason was understood. If you could afford a competent lawyer, he would get the most from the system for you. Today, no one knows what the hell will happen in a courtroom. Alex Jones got fined a billion dollars because the regime supporters are still salty about the 2016 election.
Of course, trust in government is collapsing not because they do not fix the streets or make the buses run on time. Trust is falling because they lie. It is not about politicians lying, which is expected and predictable. It is the government itself. For example, they appear to be faking key economic data. Their inflation numbers are laughable as anyone who buys food will tell you. They also like to change the meaning of words, which puts an Orwellian spin on the lying.
Getting back to the topic of collapse, what happens in the information age when no one trusts the information? In a world where your bank may close down your account because they claim you hold the wrong opinions; how can you trust them to be straight about anything else? If the government is faking economic data, how can we trust anything else they are doing? When the people responsible for 100% of disinformation claim to be fighting disinformation, who can we trust?
When the Soviet system began to collapse, it was the symbols of its power that first came under pressure. When people stopped fearing the border guard, they slowly stopped fearing the system behind it. The same will be true in this age. When people stop trusting the information that runs this world, they will slowly begin to stop trusting the system behind it. It is at that point the system begins to slowly unravel as alternative trust networks form up to fill the void.
The bottom line is those waiting for collapse are mistaken. It is not a thing that is looming over the horizon. It is a thing that is happening now. Every day there is a new reminder that the system cannot be trusted. Maybe it is ten dollar gas in Germany or skyrocketing food prices in England and America or demonstrably false claims from the drug makers with regards to the Covid jab. These things chip away at trust in the system and like the game of Jenga, the result is inevitable."
"The economy has fundamentally changed - and no one is escaping the affordability crisis. From rising consumer debt and shrinking tax refunds to home equity borrowing, credit card delinquencies, and businesses cutting staff just to survive, the financial pressure is hitting individuals and business owners alike. Millions are moving because they can’t afford rent, 73% need tax refunds just to survive, and debt levels are reaching dangerous highs. In this episode, we break down the real numbers behind the cost-of-living crisis, credit tightening, data breaches, rising taxes, collapsing retailers, and why even millionaires are cutting back. This isn’t a temporary slowdown - it’s a structural shift in the economy. If you think things will go back to “normal,” think again. It’s time to question everything and prepare for what’s next."
"President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would do everything to avoid a clash of global powers but would not let itself be threatened, in a speech to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Putin was addressing massed ranks of Russian servicemen on Red Square.
After calling for a minute of silence, Putin ended with the words: "For Russia! For victory! Hurrah!", providing the cue for thousands of troops to answer with three loud cheers. "Russia will do everything to prevent a global clash. But at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us. Our strategic forces are always in a state of combat readiness," Putin said in a short speech as flurries of snow whipped across the vast square.
Russia stages its main annual Victory Day parade in Moscow's Red Square marking victory in World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to make an address at the event. Russia on Thursday marks the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two as relations with the West spiral deeper into crisis over the advance of Russian troops against Ukraine's Western-backed forces.
Vladimir Putin, who rose to power just eight years after the Soviet Union broke up, will speak at the Victory Day parade on Red Square though there will be less military hardware on display than in parades before Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin now casts the war as part of a holy struggle with the West, which he says has forgotten the role played by the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany and the lesson that neither Napoleon Bonaparte nor Adolf Hitler could defeat Russia."
