Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, December 21, 2025
"7 Ways to Support Others During Tough Times"
"7 Ways to Support Others During Tough Times"
by Lexi Behrndt
"Life is fragile. Hard times are inevitable. At one time or another, we will all go through a difficult time, whether we deal with sickness, catastrophe, crisis, or relational breakdown. In those times, we need each other more than ever, but it's not just enough to be surrounded by people. We, as supporters, need to be educated in the best way to love our friends and family through tough times.
1. Silence speaks louder than words misspoken. Don't ignore them. Plain and simple. If you don't know what to say, don't avoid them. Say something. Ninety nine percent of what you could say is better than saying nothing at all. Instead, if you had a relationship with them, even if it was 10 years ago, a simple, "I'm so sorry," or "I'm thinking of you," or "I'm praying for you."
2. Don't make them ask you for help. Do they need help? Absolutely. Do they want to ask? Absolutely not. There is nothing more humbling than having to admit that you don't have your life under control, and for all the people pleasers out there, asking people for something as simple as meals or free babysitting is something we'd rather avoid. We'd rather tough it out than beg. Instead, offer your help, and offer specific ways that you would like to help.
3. Don't rush them through their pain. Saying things like "I know exactly how you feel" or telling me a story of your cousin's boyfriend's aunt's struggle and how she made it through. While we may say things with good intentions, it can also serve to minimize their issues and urge them to stifle their pain. Yes, what they are going through has probably been faced before. Yes, people do survive. Yes, things might get better. Yes, to all the things.
People need to know that the pain they feel is real and they need to move through it. They need to get a little messy and be a little more honest and feel a little more, because if they move through it too quickly or try to avoid their feelings, they might not heal just the right way. A doctor doesn't just give a sling with no cast to someone who has severely broken their arm. The doctor gives a cast. The doctor prescribes time for healing, because they know that if the healing is rushed, the bone may also not heal properly. In the same way, we need to give time for others to move through their pain rather than rush them. Instead, sit with them. Listen. Let them be honest when life is hard. Let them be angry. Let them be whatever they need to be, and resist the urge to fix them, heal them, or placate them. Just be with them.
4. Don't give unsolicited advice. Even if you have been in the situation before, support, but don't preach. This includes all cliche and trite phrases and platitudes. You may have heard them said before, but that doesn't mean they are helpful. Instead, listen, love, give. Give time, energy, resources... give yourself. Just don't give advice when they haven't asked.
5. Don't give them magic formulas. If they stand on their head, count to 30, twice and backwards, confess everything they have ever done, change their past mistakes, then this tough situation would no longer be happening to them. There is no magic formula. Life is hard and messy and it doesn't negate the goodness in this world, but it does assign blame and guilt to the situation, one of the last things that someone who is suffering needs is to be shamed. Instead, let them know you are thinking of them, praying for them, loving them, and cheering them on.
6. Don't make it about yourself. Essentially, don't complain about how your friend's tough time makes you feel. If you are close, you will be affected, but if they are closer to the problem than you, then they are not the person to whom you should vent. Instead, you should offer them support. Check on them. Love them. Let someone else support you. Instead, focus on supporting them.
7. Don't forget the person. With all of the above tips, don't just follow them like a black-and-white guide. The beauty in each of us is that we are unique individuals with different backgrounds, personalities, experiences, and circumstances. Instead, consider the recipient. Some people want hugs. Some people aren't touchy-feely. Some people want company. Some people prefer to sit alone. Some people want you to do things without asking, some people want you to run it past them first. Some people want someone to cry with and talk to, some people reserve that trust for a select few. Consider who they are before you act, and support them accordingly.
The bottom line? Love them selflessly and support them unconditionally, or as I remind myself... Say a little less. Love a little more. Life can be messy, but with love, we can help each other survive even the toughest times.”
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
o
Free download: "How Not To Say The Wrong Thing"
"The Universe as Pool Hall"
"The Universe as Pool Hall"
by Fred Reed
"We will start this magisterial explanation of everything with the time-honored approach of the philosopher, beginning with the things we know beyond doubt and then reasoning from them to suitably astonishing truths. As we know, Descartes began by saying, “Cogito ergo sum,” I think therefore I am.” (Ambrose Bierce, a more profound thinker, said, “Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum. Cogito.” Butthis way lies madness.) So with what certain knowledge can we begin our quest?
Our only certain knowledge is that we don’t have any. Acceptance of this condition will diminish the world’s output of philosophy, or so we may hope, but this column faces reality with a brave front. We may now list our certainties: We don’t know where we came from, where we are, why, what if anything we should do while we are here, and where if anywhere we go when we die.
On this bedrock we shall construct our philosophy of everything. However, before we begin thinking about these profound matters, we need to take into account one more certainty: Thinking is impossible. I will explain. But what it comes to is that while we know nothing about which to think, it doesn’t matter because we couldn’t think about it if we did know something.
Why? Consider the brain. It is an electrochemical mechanism, blindly obeying the laws of physics and chemistry (chemistry being the physics of the interactions of atoms). For example, consider a nerve impulse propagating along a neural fiber, depolarizing, sodium in, potassium out. Pure chemistry and physics. When the impulse comes to a synapse, a neurotransmitter diffuses across the gap, pure chemistry and physics. It can’t do anything else. Even chemicals with long, imposing names cannot make choices. The neurotransmitter then binds to receptor sites, because it has to. Textbooks of neurophysiology state it thus: “A brain has less free will than a wind-up clock.” Or at least if it were so stated, it would be. This is close enough for philosophy.
Putting it precisely, the state of a physical system is determined entirely by its previous state. This establishes beyond doubt that we have no free will, and that what we think are thoughts were determined at the time of the Big Bang, if any.
Now, no philosophical essay can be held in repute unless it contains words ending “ism.” The reigning creed today is materialism, the philosophy of the wantonly inattentive. Many who believe in materialism are of high intelligence, and so can only be sufficiently inattentive by great effort. Anyway, a materialist believes than nothing exists but space, time, matter, and energy, however hyphenated. That is, physics. As the physicist Joe Friday said, “The physics, ma’am, just the physics, and nothing but the physics.”
This means that the Big Bang, if any, was set up, or I suppose I should say, set itself up, like one of those billiard-table trick shots. You know the kind: The balls seem randomly placed on the table but bounce around a lot before miraculously running into the pockets like birds returning to their nests. In the Bang, if any, all those subatomic whatsamajigggers erupted forth at exactly the right angles and velocities so that, billions of years later, they formed Elvis, San Francisco, and Hillary. (This had to be by chance, since no one in his right mind would form Hillary on purpose. QED.)
Next, consider plane geometry as taught in high school. (You may wonder why we have to consider it. Well, we just do.) Plane geometry deals with planes, lines, points, angles, and nothing else. It is useful and interesting, but it cannot explain a cheeseburger, Formula One race, or political hysteria. Why? Because cheeseburgers exist in three dimensions, which plane geometry doesn’t have. Formula One races involve matter, energy, and motion, which plane geometry also doesn’t have. Hysteria is an emotional state associated with liberal co-eds in pricey northern colleges who, thank God, do not exist in mathematics.
What it comes to is that a logical system is defined by its premises, and all downstream results are mere elaboration. (Of course, as established in the beginning of this luminous essay, we have no premises except the lack of premises, but philosophy readily overlooks such minor hindrances.) Plane geometry is not wrong. It is just incomplete. To state it in mathematical terms, you cannot flatten a cheeseburger enough to fit into a plane.
Physics, the foundation of the current official story of everything, also depends on its premises. Physics is just mathematical materialism. From its equations one may derive all manner of fascinating and useful things, such as planetary motion, npn transistors, smartphones, nerve gas, and hydrogen bombs. (Some of these may be more useful than others.)
But, just as you cannot get strawberry milkshakes from plane geometry, because they are not implicit in it, there are things you cannot derive from the equations of physics: Consciousness, free will, beauty, morality, or curiosity – the whiches there just ain’t in physics. This would not worry a rational thinker. He (or, assuredly, she) would simply state the obvious: Physics is not wrong, but incomplete. It does what it does, and doesn’t do what it can’t. Not too mysterious, that.
However, the true-believing physics-is-all Neo-Darwinian matter-monger cannot admit that anything – anything at all – exists outside of physics. Since some things obviously do, the only-physics enthusiasts have to resort to contorted logic. I think of kite string in a ceiling fan. Or simple denial.
For example, sometimes they say that consciousness is merely an “epiphenomenon.” Oh. And what does that mean? Nothing. (Actually it means, “I don’t know, but if I use a polysyllabic Greek word, maybe nobody will notice.”) Epiphenomenon of what?
Sometimes they will say, “Well, consciousness is just a by-product of complexity.” But if consciousness is a byproduct what is the primary product? A computer is somewhat complex, so is it somewhat conscious? Is a mouse less conscious than a human or just, in some cases, less intelligent? A materialist ignoring consciousness is exactly equivalent to a geometer ignoring cheeseburgers.
We will now examine the question, where did we come from? The answer is ready to hand: We don’t have a clue. We make up stories. The physics-only folk say, see, there was the Big Bang and all these electrons and protons and things flew out and just by chance formed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in the most motingator a-stonishing pool-table trick shot ever set up. Just by accident. Damn! Who would have thought it?
Of course any sane person, to include materialists when they are thinking of something else, would say that TSMC was designed by hordes of Chinese engineers. But of course designing anything requires mind and intelligence (or a computer designed to simulate these things), But Mind cannot be derived from the equations of physics. Therefore we are all mindless. In general human behavior supports this.
Of course other stories exist. Yahweh created the world, or maybe Shiva, or Allah, and I think some remote tribes believe that it just appeared on the back of a giant turtle. I have no information on the matter, though frankly I incline to the turtle story, but will let the reader know the instant I find out.
The weakness of creation myths from Bang to Turtle is the question of the five-year-old, “But Mommy, where did God come from?” or “Who made God?” Fifteen years later in dorm-room bull sessions he will phrase it differently, “Well, what came before the Big Bang?” Same question.
A sort of second-echelon creation myth now in vogue is Darwinian evolution, also a subset of physics and therefore completely determined. Mutations are chemical events following the laws of chemistry. Thus trilobites had no choice but to form, and so they did. Metabolism is physical from the level of ATP to animals eating each other.
There is of course no such thing as a sex drive, teenagers notwithstanding, since no sort of drive can be derived from physics. (This will no doubt devastate Pornhub.) From this the inevitable conclusion, proven by physics, that we cannot reproduce. Therefore we either have always existed or do not exist at all.
To give oneself an aura of overwelling wisdom, one may say things like ontology, epistemology, entelechy, and teleology, but these do not detract from mankind’s underlying and perfect ignorance. It’s all a trick shot, I tell you."
○
Food for thought...
"Existence from Nothing?
What You Are And The Creation of the Universe"
"The Way You Carry It..."
"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."
- Lena Horne
"Millions Are Living In Sheds And Storage Units Because They Can't Afford Rent Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/21/25
"Millions Are Living In Sheds And Storage Units
Because They Can't Afford Rent Anymore"
"Americans are now living in storage units, sheds, tents, and vehicles because rent has become completely unaffordable. This isn't about bad decisions or laziness, this is about a housing market that stopped working for everyday people. In this video, we hear directly from those going through it: families in cars, single moms in RVs, workers sleeping in storage units just to survive. And the hardest part? Many of them have jobs. Some have two. They're still homeless. This is the new reality for millions of Americans, and it's only getting worse. If you've been feeling the squeeze or wondering how people are getting by right now, you're not alone. What are you seeing in your area? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. And if this resonated with you, consider subscribing for more real conversations about what's actually happening out there."
Comments here:
"720,000 Layoffs Killed Black Friday - 15 Big Retail Chains Are Falling Apart"
Full screen recommended.
RV Crisis, 12/21/25
"720,000 Layoffs Killed Black Friday -
15 Big Retail Chains Are Falling Apart"
"Black Friday was supposed to be the rescue - this year it wasn’t. Instead of overtime and extra crews, two thousand twenty five brought layoffs in the hundreds of thousands, draining wallets long before anyone even reached the checkout line. It did not just change one weekend. It changed what “normal spending” looks like day to day. So what happens when the weekend that used to patch weak quarters stops doing its job? Chains cut payroll, vendors tighten terms, and stores tighten policies - quietly, carefully, while acting like nothing has changed. That is why this collapse does not always look like a collapse. It looks normal… right up until it doesn’t. So in this video we are revealing fifteen big retail chains that are falling apart, starting with one that still looks sleek, modern, and safe…"
Comments here:
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
"A visual journey into mankind's
favorite pastime throughout the ages."
"Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20).] An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...'" The lower figure is more plausible but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total."
"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human
race proved to be nothing more than the story of an
ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump."
- David Ormsby-Gore
And humanity just never, ever learns from it all...
"For Whom..."
“Life passes like a flash of lightning, whose blaze barely lasts long enough to see. While the earth and sky stand still forever, how swiftly changing time flies across man’s face. O you who sit over your full cup and do not drink, tell me – for whom are you still waiting?”
- Hermann Hesse
"Don't Take Anything Personally"
"Don't Take Anything Personally"
by Don Miguel Ruiz
"Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally. Using an earlier example, if I see you on the street and I say, "Hey, you are so stupid," without knowing you, it's not about you; it's about me. If you take it personally, perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, "How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?"
You take it personally because you agree with whatever was said. As soon as you agree, the poison goes through you, and you are trapped in the dream of hell. What causes you to be trapped is what we call personal importance. Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about "me." During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me, always me!
Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.
Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point of view comes from all the programming they received during domestication.
If someone gives you an opinion and says, "Hey, you look so fat," don't take it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own feelings, beliefs, and opinions. That person tried to send poison to you and if you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours. Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up.
You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.
When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong. You also try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. In the same way, whatever you feel and do is just a projection of your own personal dream, a reflection of your own agreements. What you say, what you do and the opinions you have are according to the agreements you have made- and these opinions have nothing to do with me.
It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don't take what you think personally. I don't take it personally when people say, "Miguel, you are the best," and I also don't take it personally when they say, "Miguel, you are the worst." I know that when you are happy you will tell me, "Miguel, you are such an angel!" But, when you are mad at me you will say, "Oh, Miguel, you are such a devil! You are so disgusting. How can you say those things?" Either way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I don't have the need to be accepted. I don't have the need to have someone tell me, "Miguel, you are doing so good!" or "How dare you do that!"
No, I don't take it personally. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.
You may even tell me, "Miguel, what you are saying is hurting me." But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way that I can take this personally. Not because I don't believe in you or don't trust you, but because I know that you see the world with different eyes, with your eyes. You create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie.
The way that you see that movie is according to the agreements you have made with life. Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one's truth but yours. Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get mad because you are afraid, because you are dealing with fear. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will get mad at me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will hate me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will be jealous or sad.
If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of these emotions. If you don't feel any of those emotions, it is logical that you will feel good. When you feel good, everything around you is good. When everything around you is good, everything makes you happy. You are loving everything that is around you, because you are loving yourself. Because you like the way you are. Because you are content with you. Because you are happy with your life. You are happy with the movie you are producing, happy with your agreements with life. You are at peace, and you are happy. You live in that state of bliss where everything is so wonderful, and everything is so beautiful. In that state of bliss you are making love all the time with everything that you perceive.”
"Do Only The Stones Remember?"
"Do Only The Stones Remember?"
by Sylvia Shawcross
"We would not make good communists. We of the democratic nations. Not the proper kind. Not the disciplined, purified kind. We would try - briefly - with the awkward sincerity of people wearing borrowed clothes. We would recite the words, mispronounce the vows, trip over the rules. Even if we meant well, we would break it. We always do. We know this about ourselves. Somehow, they do not.
They would attempt the reshaping. They would ration hunger into virtue, align our homes like teeth in a jaw, file down difference until it passed inspection. They would tax us into gratitude, choreograph our steps, teach our necks the correct angle for obedience. They would borrow our children for “the future,” our voices for morning hymns to the ruler of the week. They would bleach the color from things - walls, words, weather - and send us out masked and careful into their tidy grey little worlds where nothing is far and nothing is free.
They would try. We might even cooperate. It would last fifteen minutes. Soon we would itch for tattoos on our skin - and then everyone would need the same tattoo, because variation is a threat. We would crave stories chosen by accident, music found at the wrong hour, images that do not behave - except most would be sealed away, some thoughts declared unspeakable, some devices never issued.
Some days we would want sweetness instead of sustenance - chocolate instead of bugs - but desire would no longer count as a category. The store would decide. The shelves would be obedient. The shelves would hold bugs.
We would remember the forest.
The ungoverned green.
The place that does not ask permission.
But the forest would require paperwork. Two days a year. Weather permitting. We would last fifteen minutes. This is not rebellion. It is anatomy. We are not designed for this boundaried shape. We are human. Forgive me for explaining this to the elites - to the Predatory Class - but humans revolt the way lungs breathe. History is a pulse of it. Again and again we have risen for a word that tastes like air: freedom. Once it has passed the lips, nothing else nourishes. We did not merely sample it. We lived inside it. We grew old beneath it. We buried our dead for it. We expect it now.
We paid in blood.
We paid in sweat.
We paid in names no one remembers except stone.
And war - the old kind, the blunt kind - we are done with it. In this, at least, we have learned. We are more civilized than our rulers believe. The Predatory Class will need a new idea. Humans have changed. They have not. How such wealth can coexist with such primitiveness is a mystery. For all their cleverness, they remain ancient. They do not adapt.
Poor predators. We are finished being prey."
The Wile E. Coyote Insight: What We "Know" Is More Dangerous Than the Unknown
The Wile E. Coyote Insight: What We "Know"
Is More Dangerous Than the Unknown
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Oh crikey, is this another boring post trying to make philosophy relevant? No, it's a post about survival of the fittest, as what we "know" will lead us straight off the cliff in a state of delusional confidence. What we "know" is a mix of what we accept as known and what is knowable, which is defined by the system/zeitgeist/frame of reference we inhabit.
Nowadays we can't talk about "knowing" without invoking AI, which claims to have gathered all of human knowledge and made it available to us in natural language. But as I've taken pains to describe this year in dozens of posts and two books, what AI presents as "known" has been processed in ways we don't see, and these processes limit the reliability and trustworthiness of what AI presents as "known" and "knowable."
The danger here is our ill-informed confidence in AI and in what our system presents as rock-solid "knowable." The system says Gross Domestic product (GDP) is a rock-solid measure of the economy, and since it's rising, you can be absolutely confident about chasing gains (the Roadrunner) off the cliff. (See Wile E. Coyote above.)
Here's the thing that gets passed over: AI hallucinates, but it doesn't "know" it's hallucinating; it presents fabrications as "known facts." AI didn't "knowingly" take digital Ayahuasca and LSD and "know" it will be hallucinating as a result. It "thinks" it's reporting what are established "knowns"- first, this is knowable, and second, this is known.
We're no different when we're fed hallucinations as if they're "known facts." We're unaware they're hallucinations, and so we blithely walk off the cliff because we placed our confidence in fabrications, models that have collapsed without us being aware that 1) we accepted a model as reality and 2) the model collapsed and is now generating "information" that isn't entirely knowable and isn't "fact."
You see the difference: when we knowingly take hallucinogens such as Ayahuasca or LSD, we know our experiences no longer reflect "facts." We understand our experiences may veer into territory that science defines as "unknowable," yet we are experiencing it anyway. We know it is unwise to walk along a cliff edge at dusk in a hallucinogenic state. But in model collapses, we think the hallucination is the real world. It is in this confused state that we place our confidence in a hallucination and walk calmly off the cliff to our demise.
This is where the survival of the fittest kicks in: confusing reality and a model-collapse hallucination does not generate positive survival outcomes. I explain the systemic sources of this confusion in my latest book "Investing In Revolution."
As I explained in "Model Collapse: The Entire Bubble Economy Is a Hallucination," model collapse is the inevitable result when those controlling the model's gearing/programming begin using the output of their previous results (output) to "train" the next iteration of their "knowledge," i.e. what they consider knowable and known.
Using probabilistic functions and overweighting what is accepted by conventions as knowable and known both skew the outputs, which accumulate as each iteration "trains" on the skewed outputs. Knowledge that is on the margins or discounted by conventional definitions of what is being measured as "facts" is edited out of the knowledge base or reframed in conventional terms: in AI "training," this is the Silicon Valley frame of reference.
Those who control the gearing/programming trust their own judgement and models, and so they resist recognizing the increasingly hallucinogenic nature of their model. Their frame of reference is we have god-like powers and are building utopia, and the idea that they have a poor grasp of what is knowable and what is known doesn't penetrate their hubris.
The inhabitants of their Mouse Utopia have been trained to trust their techno-leaders as demi-gods because "technology is Progress," and so their core survival skills - skepticism, a keen awareness of what is unknown because reality has one foot in what is intrinsically unknowable - have atrophied. Surrounded by novelties, addictive distractions, conveniences and comforts, they have lost the ability to differentiate the real world from a (highly profitable) artificial world.
This is a visual representation of what happens when a system "trains" on its own output: GDP is rising, so everyone's doing great, money solves all problems, except moral decay and the other sources of our hallucinations, and so on:
Here's a list of the model-collapse hallucinations we now trust as reality to our future detriment:
1. The entire global financial system is a hallucination generated by model collapse. This hallucination is most easily visible in bubbles, credit, "banking" and "money."
2. The entire AI bubble, including AGI (artificial general intelligence), is a hallucination generated by model collapse that is being purposefully obscured to maximize private gains from the public's embrace of the AI-bubble hallucination.
3. Social Media is a hallucination generated by model collapse that is being purposefully obscured to maximize private gains from the public's addiction to the social-media hallucination.
4. The entire status quo of Ultra-Processed Life is a model collapse hallucination, including the delusions that all our problems can be resolved with an "abundance of money" and "energy."
This is why "knowledge is power": those who define what is "knowable" and "known" shape the reality of everyone in the model / system. The result is we're living in a Mouse Utopia that is in late-stage model collapse that is largely unrecognized by the inhabitants but acutely visible to those keeping it glued together long enough to amass private fortunes before it all implodes.
It's highly profitable to maintain the illusion that these hallucinations are "the known world," but when the model implodes, you'll want to be outside the ruins rather than buried beneath rubble. It is only then that we'll realize that what we "know" is more dangerous than the unknown."
