Thursday, April 27, 2023

Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"

"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo

"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.

Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."

Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?

Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"

"Moment. Moment. Moment.
- equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.

It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.

Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.

I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."

~ Jane Hirshfield

“Life, Explained To You”

“Life, Explained To You”
Author Unknown

“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed.

On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed.

On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again.

On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.”

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”
“Life has now been explained to you.”

"Here We Are..."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
- Kurt Vonnegut
o
But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."

"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
- Viktor Frankl

The Daily "Near You?"

New Britain, Connecticut, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"15 Signs That Amazon Stores Are In Deep, Deep Trouble"

"15 Signs That Amazon Stores Are In Deep, Deep Trouble"
By Epic Economist

"When even one of the most powerful and better-established retailers in the whole world is scrambling to navigate through the storm that is hitting the retail sector right now, then you know for sure that something really scary is happening. Amazon, the largest online retailer and tech powerhouse in the globe, is coping with a series of challenges that range from billionaire losses, crashing stock value, mass store closings, layoffs, negative profits, and a chilling outlook for 2023 and beyond. At this moment, we are watching one of the biggest players in the market being absolutely crushed in the brick-and-mortar sector as high inflation and soaring interest rates affect businesses and consumers alike.

For example, Amazon is shuttering dozens of Whole Foods stores all over the U.S. as cash-strapped consumers turn to big-box and discount retailers to stretch their dollars as far as they possibly can. A source familiar with the matter told Insider that many more locations may soon be on the chopping block given that the organic grocery chain is struggling with declining profits for several quarters now. Even CEO Andy Jassy has admitted that Amazon is postponing new store openings and canceling plans for new locations until they figure out how to differentiate themselves from other established competitors in the market.

Since Amazon bought the organic supermarket chain in 2017, very little has been done to boost the growth of the business, says Lesley Hansell of Riverbend Consulting, a retail consultancy firm. Amazon is failing to adapt to the food sector’s wafer-thin profit margins. And the company is losing the competition against other major grocery retailers who already have consumers in their pocket. Retail consultant Richard Hyman said that Amazon decided to enter a highly competitive industry without fully considering where it fits in this market, and it is going up against food retailers that have had decades to master a complicated trade. “Being big on its own is nowhere near enough to be good,” he told Insider. “Amazon is not a retailer, it’s a tech company, and their absolute core competence is in tech, where they should’ve stayed.”

While Walmart, the largest grocer in the U.S., has over 25% of the grocery market share, according to Euromonitor, Kroger has just over 8%, and Albertsons has roughly 5%, Amazon commands just 1.2% of sales in the grocery market. If anything, Amazon seems lost when it comes to opening a viable grocery chain, says retail consultant Brittain Ladd, who formerly worked as a strategist for the company’s grocery business. “Unfortunately, Amazon right now does not have any strategy for physical grocery stores, just a bunch of ideas,” Ladd highlighted. “

This is the carnage we’ve been warned about, and the worst is yet to come! Many factors will continue to impact Amazon’s brick-and-mortar business, especially if the company doesn’t make the necessary changes to restructure its operations and understand consumer behavior in the physical retail environment. Many more doors could be shuttered for good in the months ahead, hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line, and the potential of a financial and economic downturn just makes the situation increasingly threatening. The retail sector is facing the most drastic shift we have ever seen in our lifetime, and not even the biggest names in the industry will be able to escape from it! Today, we decided to compile several facts that reveal why Amazon’s retail stores are being financially eviscerated and why they are doomed to fail."
Comments here:

"In All Seriousness..."

"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking"- if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think- and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts- the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five- or maybe five hundred!"
- Dale Carnegie

"We See Where This Is Going"

Dan, I Allegedly 4/27/23
"We See Where This Is Going"
Comments here:

"The World Is On The Brink Of A Catastrophic Population Collapse"

"The World Is On The Brink Of A 
Catastrophic Population Collapse"
by Michael Snyder

"Have we already reached peak global population? Birth rates have been declining in wealthy countries for years, and now they are way below replacement level all over the industrialized world. Birth rates are still above replacement level in some poor countries, but they are steadily trending down as young people in those nations embrace cultural values from the wealthy countries. Meanwhile, average life expectancy is falling in the United States and elsewhere, and the number of excess deaths has spiked dramatically all over the planet during the past couple of years. If we cannot find a way to reverse these trends, we will witness a catastrophic population collapse. It is just a matter of time.

According to CNN, the number of births per woman has fallen by more than half since 1950…"In 1950, women typically had five births each; globally, last year, it was 2.3 births. By 2050, the UN projects a further global decline to 2.1 births per woman.

In some countries, it is lower. In the US the 1950s, it was 3.6 births per woman, it slipped to 1.6 in 2020, according to the World Bank. In Italy, it was 1.2; in Japan, it was 1.3; in China, 1.2. In January 2022, the country announced the birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, even with the repeal of the one child policy, allowing couples to have up to three children as of 2021."

Here in the United States, we haven’t been making enough babies to replace ourselves for a very long time. In fact, we are being told that our fertility rate “has been generally below the replacement level since 1971”…"America’s fertility rate has been generally below the replacement level since 1971 and consistently less than the replacement level for more than a decade. Population projections do not envisage the country returning to the replacement level any time soon." It is likely that the slide in our fertility rate will actually accelerate in the years ahead, because large numbers of young adults in the U.S. simply do not want to have children.

Earlier this week, I came across an article that greatly saddened me. It explained that there has been “a surge in vasectomies” among young males in the United States in recent months. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, a lot of young males want to make absolutely certain that no “accidents” happen. But if we do not replace ourselves, we are going to have some very serious societal problems on our hands.

Our population is rapidly aging, and we need millions upon millions of young workers to support our extremely expensive Social Security and Medicare systems…"The number of Americans aged 65 years and older has increased to approximately 56 million, or 17 percent of the population — nearly double the 1960 level of 9 percent. With the growing numbers of older Americans, the large-scale exit of Baby Boomers from the labor force and rising health care expenditures per person, the U.S. government faces rapidly rising costs and worrisome expected insolvencies in the near future of programs such as Social Security and Medicare."

Europe is facing similar problems.At this point, fertility rates are well below replacement level in every single EU country…"In 2021, France had the highest fertility rate among the EU member states with 1.84 live births per woman according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. Malta had the lowest rate with 1.13 live births. This average for the EU as a whole was 1.53." If so much migration was not happening, population levels throughout the EU would already be steadily shrinking.

But if you think that things are bad in Europe, just check out what is happening in Asia. The average woman gives birth to just 1.4 children in Japan, and the rate is even lower in South Korea…"The fertility rates are 1.1 children in South Korea and 1.4 in Japan. The prospects in both cases are alarming, with Japan’s population, which today stands at almost 126 million, dropping to 104 million in 2050 and a mere 72 million in 2100. The figures in South Korea’s case, now with 52 million people, are 46 million by 2050 and 24 million in 2100."

Look at those numbers again. South Korea’s population will fall by more than half if their fertility rate stays at the current level. So what happens if the fertility rate continues to drop?

In China, population decline has become a major national crisis. According to the New York Times, the Chinese population is falling so fast that India will soon take the number one spot by default…"Despite the rollback of China’s one-child policy, and even after more recent incentives urging families to have more children, China’s population is steadily shrinking — a momentous shift that will soon leave India as the world’s most-populous nation and have broad rippling effects both domestically and globally."

The change puts China on the same course of both aging and shrinking as many of its neighbors in Asia, but its path will have outsize effects not just on the regional economy, but on the world at large as well. Just like so many in the western world, young people in China put very little value on marriage and family these days. As a result, the fertility rate in China has dropped to a depressingly low level of just 1.15 per woman…"China’s fertility rate plummeted to 1.15 children per woman in 2021, far below the replacement level of around 2.1 live births per woman needed to ensure a broadly stable population in the absence of migration."

Russia is also wrestling with huge demographic challenges. Despite government incentives that encourage having children, the Russians will need approximately “1 million new migrants every year until the end of the century to maintain its current population levels”…"Russia would need to attract as many as 1 million new migrants every year until the end of the century to maintain its current population levels, according to research cited by the RBC news website on Thursday. Russia’s population has declined for the past four years in a row and dropped by half a million people last year alone, standing at 146.45 million people at the start of 2023."

But at least the poor nations are making up for the selfishness of the wealthy nations, right? To a certain extent, but the truth is that fertility rates are falling in South America, Africa and the Middle East too. Through education and entertainment, the values of the wealthy countries are being exported all over the world, and this is depressing fertility levels everywhere.

So even if the population of the globe is not dramatically reduced by war, famine, disease, unprecedented natural disasters and all of the other things that I warn about in my latest book, it is still likely to fall precipitously in the years ahead because our values have infected the entire planet. What we choose to believe about marriage, family and children has very serious consequences, and now we really are on the brink of the most serious fertility crisis in all of human history."

"Everybody Is A Genius..."

 

"How It Really Is"

Yeah Joe, you're a big help...

Bill Bonner, "Saints and Sinners"

"Saints and Sinners"
A closer look at our better angels in government.
by Bill Bonner

"And one was straight, and one was a queen,
and one was a fraudster pretending to be green:
they were all of them saints of mammon, and I mean,
God help me to be one too."
~ Apologies to Lesbia Scott whose hymn, “I sing a song to 
the saints of God” was a favorite in the Episcopal Church

Dublin, Ireland - "The well-meaning elite have so many reasons to feel good about themselves. When they look in their mirrors in the morning, they must all see halos over their heads…or perhaps they just gaze upon their beatific smiles – an outward sign of inner grace.

The Heroes of 2020: Today, we salute the saints, the heroes. Michael Chertoff. Leon Panetta. Michael Hayden. Jim Clapper. John Brennan. How do we know they are heroes? The mainstream press says so. They are the ‘Heroes of 2020’ who saved us from the truth. All former spooks…heads of various government agencies, they spent much of their careers peeking in windows, opening other people’s mail, and spreading misinformation. As experts in this kind of thing, they signed an open letter, three weeks before the election of 2020, assuring us that the New York Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden was false. The laptop story, they said, was a “Russian (dis)information operation.”

They ought to know! And their public declaration led to a thousand headlines. Here’s Politico, with the leading example: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.” It sounded conclusive. And it dismissed a line of questions that might have derailed the Biden presidential campaign.

But it wasn’t Russian disinfo. It was American disinfo fed to us by former public servants of the highest rank…people we were supposed to trust. And that’s another thing the great and good can feel great and good about: protecting the public from ‘wrong think’…and honest elections. In this case, these people were paid to know what was going on. But they either didn’t know what they said they knew…or didn’t want to say what they really knew. So, they lied.

Michael Morell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, explained why he did it: “Because I wanted him [Joe Biden] to win the election.” Hmmm. Had they not misled them, voters might have chosen the wrong candidate. What saints! And thousands more like them!

Capital for the Cronies: They are not only saving our democracy…they are saving the entire planet. Do they not separate their trash…turn down their thermostats…and serve vegetarian-only meals on their private planes? Did they not support Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ knowing that it had nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with rewarding crony industries in the ‘green’ sector?

Are they not banishing racism, white supremacy, and homo-trans-weirdo-phobia? Do they not run the “Equality” flag up the pole every morning and salute, before checking to see how much their ESG stocks have risen?

Did they not ‘stimulate’ the economy with an addition of $8 trillion to the Fed’s balance sheet…and $27 trillion in extra federal debt (aka “money printing”) so far this century? Did they not stop the corrections of 2001…2008…and 2020?

Are they not protecting the sovereignty of the Ukraine, insisting that Russians respect the results of the CIA-led coup of 2014…and keep the border right where Lenin, Stalin, and Khruschev put it? Did they not rise to their feet (perhaps suppressing a laugh) and applaud heartily when Zelensky spoke to a joint session of Congress?

And just to make sure that everyone knows who’s in charge, do they not – Republican and Democrat alike – support spending $1.5 trillion annually (according to figures from Winslow Wheeler, including veterans’ benefits, aid, loans, and other foreign policy spending) to keep the empire in business?

With so many things to be proud of…how lightly they must trod…skipping from one fantasy to another… conveniently forgetting all the chaos and misery they’ve wrought so far. Aren’t they – Biden, Pelosi, McConnell et al…all the old humbugs and ‘heroes’ who have pulled the strings for the last half a century – responsible for it?

America’s $33 trillion in debt…its $1 trillion trade deficit…$8 trillion squandered on wars (this century)…prisoners tortured…1 million lives lost – where are the investigations…the tribunals…the war crimes trials? Have we no lampposts from which to hang these people? Activists and politicians are almost always scoundrels. For every Sophie Scholl there are a hundred John Browns. For every one who resists evil, dozens are ready to cause it.

Just Stop… Protesting: And in last weekend’s Financial Times, we are given more examples of what we least need. More heroes! “Greta Thunberg and her fellow students in the Fridays for Future movement, and the young people of color (!...aren’t white activists heroes too?) who launched the global Movement for Black Lives after George Floyd’s murder in 2020…

"Recent protests by Just Stop Oil activists interrupting the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield, by animal rights demonstrators invading the course at the Grand National and by French opponents of pension reform storming the Paris headquarters of luxury goods company LVMH…" According to Yarmin, they are all saints, selflessly ‘taking a stand,’ often illegally, to protest something they don’t like.

Oddly, there is no mention of the Trump activists who stormed the Capitol, January 6, 2020. Nor of the demonstrations led by the Hitler Youth in the 1930s…nor of Mao’s hit squads in the Cultural Revolution…nor of those who seized the Bastille and executed its commander in 1789… nor of those who massacred the Swiss Guards in the Sack of Rome in 1527… nor of Gavrilo Princip’s bold move, when he took the law into his own hands, assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, and started WWI…nor of the mob that began the Petrograd food riots of 1917 that led to the Bolshevik Revolution.

But what a charm it must be to have a mind so untarnished by history…so untainted by nuance or ambiguity…that it can believe any damn thing it wants."

"Major Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/27/23
"Major Price Increases At Kroger! 
This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! This is not good as we are also seeing some empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and also charging extremely high prices! "
Comments here:

"Putin Rushed To Kremlin; Attack On St. Peterburg Airbase; Biden Sends Nukes To Korea"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/26/23
"Putin Rushed To Kremlin; 
Attack On St. Peterburg Airbase; Biden Sends Nukes To Korea"
"Sources claim that Vladimir Putins motorcade was rushed to Kremlin (video), meanwhile Ukraine claims to have entered Russian held side of Dnipro river, possible attacks on St. Petersberg airbase, China makes one last ditch attempt to broker peace before SHTF."
Comments here:

"Ukraine Has Suffered Over 300,000 Killed In Action"

Douglas Macgregor, 4/26/23
"Ukraine Has Suffered Over 300,000 Killed In Action"
Comments here:
So, Good Citizen, YOU and all of us have paid at least $200 billion for 
this horror. Are you proud? And how does all this positively affect your life?
This was none of our goddamned business!
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 4/27/23
"Putin's Kalibr Missiles Strike Mykolaiv; Russia Unleashes
 324 Attacks On Bakhmut, Kharkiv In A Day"
Russian missile strike has killed one person, and injured 23 others in Mykolaiv. Ukraine claimed that Russia fired four Kalibr cruise missiles in overnight attack. Meanwhile, Russian forces pounded Bakhmut and Kharkiv along the frontline. Ukraine's armed forces said that Russia unleashed 324 attacks in the past day."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"

Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"

Feel familiar?

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

"Zombies Are Playing Video Games While US Economy Is Being Destroyed; More Banks In Big Trouble"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/26/23
"Zombies Are Playing Video Games While US Economy 
Is Being Destroyed; More Banks In Big Trouble"
Comments here:

"Rent Prices Soar 150% And Trigger Perfect Storm For Evictions"

Full screen recommended.
"Rent Prices Soar 150% And Trigger
 Perfect Storm For Evictions"
By Epic Economist

"A perfect storm for evictions is forming all around us. A new report reveals that rents are rising four times faster than incomes in the United States. In recent years, the rate of rent price growth has tripled, making housing increasingly unaffordable for millions of Americans. For some households, it now takes more than three full-time workers to afford the typical two-bedroom rental. Researchers found that in many areas, rent prices shot up over 200%, and are likely to continue to rise in 2023. This means that many struggling U.S. families are about to lose their homes as they fall behind payments, and evictions start to pile up all across the country. That’s what we’re going to break to you in today’s video.

Over the past three years, home prices jumped by almost 47%, and today, they remain about 38% more expensive than they were in 2019. Higher mortgages are also pricing many would-be homeowners out of the market. As a result, demand for rents is soaring, and a shortage of affordable rental units is creating a perfect storm for evictions, experts say.

Right now, rental vacancy rates are at the lowest level since 1984, which is giving landlords, especially corporate landlords, much more power to mark up prices for a limited number of available units. On the other hand, we all know by now that wages aren’t keeping pace with rising rents in the U.S.

In point of fact, wages aren’t keeping pace with anything these days, and 58% of renters are currently living paycheck to paycheck. About the same rate, or 57% to be precise, are now paying more than 30% of their income on rent.

In cities with minimum wages above $7.25, it takes an average of 2.5 full-time minimum wage workers to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable, meaning renters would spend no more than a third of their income on rent. In cities with a $7.25 minimum wage, it takes an average of 3.5 full-time workers to meet this threshold. “Income disparity does really play a big role and impact the affordability outlook for a lot of renters,” Chen added.

From 1985 to 2022, the national median rent price rose 151%, while overall income grew just 35%. That’s to say, the average rent rose over 4 times faster than wages. Overall, the cost of living in the U.S. increased by 89% since the mid-1980s, according to the firm’s calculations. In other words, Americans have experienced a steep decline in their purchasing power across the last four decades, and they have been forced to move to cheaper, subpar units or spend significantly more of their earnings on rent.

We’re going to see cases of evictions reaching crisis levels in the months ahead, especially as big companies start to layoff their workers en masse. Many renters are hanging by a thread at this point, and as the economic downturn that is now unfolding all around us accelerates, millions of U.S. households will be pushed over the edge."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Memory of the Sky"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Memory of the Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

Chet Raymo, "The Meaning Of Life"

"The Meaning Of Life"
by Chet Raymo

"There is only one meaning of life, the act of living itself."
– Erich Fromm

"I had heard from a high-school student in the midwest who had read my book 'Skeptics and True Believers,' in which, as you may know, I take to task all forms of faith that lack an empirical basis, including astrology and supernaturalist religion. He writes: "Are we just meaningless beasts roaming a meaningless Earth with the sole purpose of popping out babies so we can raise them to live longer, more meaningless lives?"

A good question, the best question. What we have learned about our place on Earth does indeed suggest that we are beasts, related even in our DNA and molecular chemistry to other animals. And, yes, the driving purpose of all animal life would seem to be "popping out babies." But our uniquely complex human brains allow us to be more than beasts, more than baby-poppers. As far as we know, humans are the most complex thing in the universe, and in our desire to gain reliable knowledge of the universe the universe becomes conscious of itself.

As for myself, I don't need stars or gods to give my life meaning. I work at meaning every day, in the love of family and friends, in caring for my own little pieces of the Earth, in art, in science, and in making myself conscious of the mystery and beauty - and terror - of the cosmos.

"Or is there a possibility that there may be more?" asks my midwestern correspondent. Yes, there is almost certainly more to existence than what we have yet learned. Just think how much more we know than did our pre-scientific ancestors. But that still greater knowledge will have to wait for minds other than my own. My children and grandchildren will know far more than I, and in that growing human storehouse of reliable knowledge I hope they will find some greater measure of meaning.

In the meantime, I attend to the fox that sometimes walks across my windowsill, the morning glory seedlings that reach achingly for the sun, and the moon that hangs like a great milky eye in the sky. Francis Bacon said that what a man would like to be true, he preferentially believes. That's a mistake I try to avoid. I choose instead to believe what my senses tell me to be palpably true."

"Life..."

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.”
- Bill Bryson

"They Can’t Hide This Anymore"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 4/26/23
"They Can’t Hide This Anymore"
"So many industries are having difficulties right now. The next one that’s going to come to the surface is the car industry. It is just a matter of time until Car lots start to close before our eyes."
Comments here:

"The US Government Declaring War on Mexican Drug Cartels"

"The US Government Declaring War
 on Mexican Drug Cartels"
By International Man

"International Man: "There has been a recent push by some US politicians of the neocon variety to use the US military against Mexican drug cartels. Senator Lindsay Graham has proposed designating them as "terrorist organizations." Representative Dan Crenshaw introduced an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to target drug cartels inside Mexico. What's your take on this?

Doug Casey: That's just what the US needs: another war, and this one on the border. The people who back the use of military force in Mexico can only be described as thoughtless warmongers with no grasp of either ethics or history. If the war against organizations like the Taliban in Afghanistan was a world-class disaster, would an invasion work out better in Mexico, which has three times the population of Afghanistan, is much richer and much better organized? And they're right on the border, which is really asking for trouble.

The solution to the drug cartel problem is to legalize all drugs. The fact is that anybody who wants drugs today can get them easily, even if they're in high-security prisons. From a practical point of view, making drugs illegal doesn't work. All it does is greatly increase the price of the drugs in the US and create huge profit margins to import them. Even if you destroyed every cartel in Mexico, people that want drugs will still want them. As long as drugs are illegal, their prices will remain high and new cartels will arise. But despite the relaxation of penalties on cannabis, it's highly unlikely drugs will be legalized. The DEA, one of the most corrupt Federal agencies, is a permanent lobby to keep them illegal. And there's way, way too much money in keeping them illegal.

The only solution is to learn a lesson from Prohibition in the 1930s. When they illegalized alcohol in the 1920s, it created the profits that allowed the Mafia to grow. It certainly didn't cut down the amount of drinking; it just increased the amount of crime. Similarly, the insane War on Drugs is responsible for the success of the cartels.

They say fentanyl, an important medical drug, kills 50,000 to 100,000 Americans per year. That's mostly because its quantity and quality are uncertain, a consequence of its illegality. But the real question is ethical: Does government have a right to "protect" people against themselves? My answer is: No. If people like it, it's their body and their business. Prohibition of alcohol—which is also quite a dangerous drug—was costly, destructive, immoral, and stupid. Fentanyl, the current bete noir of busybodies, is no different. If drugs were as easily available as aspirins through pharmacies, users would know what they were getting, and people who want them could get them at a cheap price in known doses.

Apart from recognizing that you can't protect people from themselves, it's important to look at the root of why many people get lost in drugs. The answer, I believe, is that they're trying to hide from reality and blot it out. Why is that? It's a subject for another conversation. But the irrationality and coercion caused by State intervention in private lives are part of the answer.

International Man: Mexican President Obrador has stated he will not allow the US government or military to enter Mexican territory. It's also well known that Mexican cartels have a significant presence inside the US. Suppose the US government sends the military into action in Mexico anyways. What do you think could happen?

Doug Casey: It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the US has invaded Mexico. In the 1840s, the US basically stole all the territory in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, from Mexico. I know you shouldn't say that—it sounds unpatriotic. But patriotism should be focused on American values, not necessarily on supporting the actions of politicians in Washington.

In the Marine Corp's hymn, one of the lines is "From the Halls of Montezuma" because US forces were actually fighting in Mexico City. It happened more recently when during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, Pancho Villa raided across the Rio Grande, and General Pershing's troops crossed into Mexico to (unsuccessfully) pursue him.

There's plenty of precedent for Americans invading Mexico, but perhaps the shoe is on the other foot now. 20 million or more Mexicans live in the US, mostly in the Southwest. Believe it or not, many of them talk about a Reconquista.

It's uncertain what effect it will have on the US border if warmongers like the smarmy and foolish little Lindsey Graham succeed in fomenting an invasion of Mexico. It could turn into a counterinvasion, an active shooting war unnecessarily created to quash the Mexican drug business. Which—insofar as it's even a real problem—is a US problem.

International Man: No matter what happens with the US military in Mexico, the situation at the border remains a mess. What do you think should be done?

Doug Casey: The violence of the cartels is said to be one of the motivators for migration to the US. There appear to be at least one or two million people—nobody has the exact number—annually migrating from Mexico and other places into the US. Once they arrive, many become wards of the vast US welfare system. It's a problem.

The solution, as with so many social ills, is strict observance of property rights. That implies the border should be defended. Why? The migrants usually cross the privately owned land of Americans; they have no right to trespass. Even when the land is owned by the federal or state government, they have no right to trespass. It's a question of strictly enforcing property rights.

There's a sign that often appears out west, "If you're found here at night, you'll be found here in the morning." It's a justified sentiment. Entering the US, or, more importantly, onto anybody's private property without permission, is a serious offense. Property rights are the basis of all rights.

It's hard to know exactly, but I suspect a major attraction to migrants is that they know that once in the country, they're basically guaranteed free food, medical care, schools, housing, and numerous other forms of welfare. That attracts the wrong kind of people. The immigrants of the 19th century were also penniless but got absolutely nothing when they came to the US. Now migrants get lots of freebies. Part of the answer is to eliminate any and all types of welfare both for Americans and immigrants—as well as strict enforcement of property rights.

International Man: Renowned trends forecaster Gerald Celente has said, "When all else fails, they take you to war." Do you agree?

Doug Casey: Gerald is absolutely correct. Looking at America's war history, when the US fought Germany and Japan, those countries were transformed because they were totally flattened, devastated, and dispirited—that made it easy to reform them in the image that the US government wanted.

In the Korean War, which was really a war fought against China on Korean territory, the US dropped more bombs than in all of World War II. The country was totally flattened, and South Korea also transformed itself in the image that we wanted. But Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and for that matter, Vietnam, were more on the order of sport wars against primitive countries. They were all embarrassing disasters.

What kind of war are we looking at with Mexico? Will Washington flatten the country in order to change its government? I question whether the Mexicans will accept that. Or will Washington get involved in a protracted guerrilla war where drug gangs are designated as terrorists? Randolph Bourne was right when he said: "War is the health of the State." Unfortunately, the average American seems to have lost the power of critical thinking. He robotically equates the health of the State with the health of America.

Either way, it's a bad idea for America. But Washington isn't America. The Deep State will, however, find somebody to fight. Unfortunately, it looks like Russia and China are next on the dance card, although they could certainly add Mexico to the naughty list while further bankrupting and corrupting the US.

International Man: The US government is becoming more desperate and reckless by the day. How can the average person protect themselves and profit from this situation?

Doug Casey: The US government is increasingly designating any real or imagined enemy du jour— whether they're Mexican drug cartels, the Russians, foreign separatist movements, or various American citizens—as terrorists. Once someone is termed a terrorist, the gloves are off, and it becomes possible to commit any kind of crime to combat him.

As the US destabilizes in many ways, Washington is finding its real danger lies within the country. What we're looking at is a war of the US government against numerous and various groups, as well as dissident individual citizens. The FBI, CIA, DEA, and other praetorian agencies are being transformed into domestic secret police forces.

One way to protect yourself from this is to vacate the premises until it becomes safe to live in the US again. Let me emphasize the importance of having a second residency or a second citizenship in case the US goes in the direction of so many countries in the past. And it's not just the US. Many supposedly free Western countries are becoming quite repressive.

In fact, it's dangerous being a US citizen in the US these days, at least if you speak out too loudly. It certainly concerns me personally. Even though I don't believe it's possible to change the course of events, I say what I do because it's right, not because it's smart. That said, you should plan on the US government becoming much more virulent in the future. Washington, not Mexican cartels, is the real danger.

That's absolutely the case for the next two years, while genuine Jacobins control the government. But perhaps beyond that. There's no telling who's going to be elected or what they're going to do. Since we're likely going to be in the middle of a huge financial, economic, political, social, and military crisis, anything is possible. Little of it is good. The trend in motion is probably going to stay in motion."

The Daily "Near You?"

Kingston, Clarendon, Jamaica. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Are Mortals All..."

"We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel."
- Gary Kowalski

The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”

“In These Times”

“In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home.”

~ John O’Donohue,
from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Inflation"

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires [the so-called wealthy "Elite"- CP], become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie [the nearly dead middle class- CP], whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat [the always impoverished poor- CP]. 

As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery [Wall Street- CP].

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
- John Maynard Keynes

"The Debt Elevator"

"The Debt Elevator"
Forget the so-called 'ceiling'... US debt is a one-way elevator
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Dublin, Ireland - "Well, here’s another thing not worth worrying about: the debt ceiling. MarketWatch: "The deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling is approaching faster than expected, with the political uncertainty surrounding when the government’s borrowing limit may be lifted already beginning to worry markets, according to Goldman Sachs Group."

We’ve got news. There is no debt ‘ceiling.’ US government debt is in an elevator that just goes one direction – up. The ceiling goes up with it. But as it rises, so does US vulnerability -- to defaults, bankruptcies, market crashes…and inflation.

You can blame the old fogies still in Washington – Biden, Pelosi, McConnell, et all. They were there the whole time – passing laws…approving regulations…raising the debt ceiling…spending money they didn’t have on projects America didn’t need. When Joe Biden was first elected to Congress, the US total federal debt was $427 billion. Now, it’s nearly $33 trillion…77 times as much.

Sanctions Backfiring: Until recently, the feds could ‘print’ dollars, confident that many of them would end up in foreign bank vaults. They would not be part of the US money supply; they would do no harm. But now, the red ink in US trade and budget figures is more crimson than ever….and those outward bound dollars have round trip tickets.

A major policy failure was turning the dollar, and the international financial system, into a weapon. Both Trump and Biden have used it like an AR-15 in the vegetable section of a supermarket, imposing sanctions against thousands of innocent foreigners. As predicted, and reported yesterday, those sanctions are backfiring. The foreigners are finding new non-dollar ways of doing business. The Cradle:

When the US and its allies blocked access by most Russian banks to the Belgium-based global financial messaging system, SWIFT, and froze some $300 billion in Russian foreign exchange reserves, every government from Riyadh to Beijing understood that such sanctions can happen to them as well.

This realization has prompted many countries to take action to decrease their vulnerability to sanctions, with China creating a new financial infrastructure outside US control and pushing for commodity suppliers to short-circuit the dollar. The establishment of a BRICS bank as a counterweight to the IMF is just one more step in that direction.

What is certain is that sanctions do not work. As the dollar is dropped and downgraded, so is America’s capacity to ‘export its inflation.’ And suddenly, it’s a whole new ballgame. Once again, overspending, over-borrowing, and over-printing matter. It’s not the debt ceiling that poses a problem; it’s the debt itself. Thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar, excess greenbacks are still absorbed in overseas swamps. But as we saw yesterday, the swamps are being drained and dried out. Now, dollars accumulate at home…and raise consumer prices in the USA.

Our Dollars, Your Problem: Having the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency was a big contributor to America’s success. For more than half a century, as Treasury Secretary John Connelly pointed out to foreigners: the dollar ‘may be our currency, but it’s your problem.’ And it’s not the only problem. Here’s another part of the US success story, now becoming another self-inflicted wound.

When the ‘American century’ began, US industry was young and vigorous…and the US empire had just entered Eden. As the world’s richest, fastest growing, most powerful and most admired nation, it had only the devil to fear. Back then, ‘free trade’ benefited American exporters…and the world. The Financial Times:

"As an important recent paper from the Peterson Institute for International Economics by Alan Wolff, Robert Lawrence and Gary Hufbauer brings out, the hostility to trade that has increasingly seized the US risks reversing nine decades of hugely successful policy. Ever since the protectionist disaster of the early 1930s, the thrust of US policy has been towards creating an open and rules-governed trading system. These policies created a more prosperous world economy, which became the foundation of western economic (and so political) success in the cold war. They facilitated a staggering reduction in global poverty. They are the most important credential for the US claim to have been a benign hegemon. Waging war on trade will be costly."

As the US aged and foreigners caught up, the feds bit into the apple. Again, you can blame the old jackasses still in the Capitol. Over time, they diverted more and more of America’s wealth to unproductive projects, and burdened it with deadweight regulations. “Made in America” became less competitive on the world market. Then, ‘free trade’ was increasingly seen not as an opportunity, but a threat.

Record Deficit - In 2016, along came Donald Trump, who pried the Republican Party loose from its traditional loyalty to free trade. “A trade war is easy to win,” said The Donald. He claimed to ‘protect American jobs’ by reducing US imports from China and elsewhere. How did that work out? Trade with China dipped. And then recovered. Imports rose 14% from the year before, to a total of $353 billion. And then, the trade deficit with the whole world got worse too. Investopedia reports: "US Trade Deficit Hit Nearly $1 Trillion in 2022, Largest on Record."

"The U.S. trade deficit hit a record of almost $1 trillion in 2022, with more than a third of the total coming from trade with China. The annual goods and services trade deficit rose 12.2% to $948.1 billion, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. The goods deficit jumped 9.3% to $1.19 trillion, while the services surplus declined 0.6% to $243.7 billion. The deficit with China was the largest, climbing $29.4 billion to $382.9 billion."

The debt ceiling is a typical Washington farce. Full of sound and fury, it signifies nothing. We all know how it will turn out. The war against free trade is a fraud too. Either people decide for themselves what they buy and from whom. Or someone else decides for them…and it is more expensive."

Joel’s Note: "The nation’s top Treasury official was in the news again yesterday, putting the fear of government default into the hearts of working Americans. Secretary Janet Yellen told officials at a confab in the nation’s capital that their constituents are greatly at risk if Congress fails to raise the debt limit by the summer. "The solution is simple,” lectured Yellen, “Congress must vote to raise or suspend the debt limit. It should do so without conditions, and it should not wait until the last minute.” A default, all agree, is simply unacceptable.

But despite what you may hear from squawking heads on the TV, this would not be the first time the US has defaulted on its debt obligations. Bonner Private Research’s macro analyst, Dan Denning, gives us the sorry history from up in his bolthole in Laramie, Wyoming…"Lincoln's Greenback was a default inasmuch as it was paper money, and no longer redeemable for gold. FDR's Executive Order 6102 was a default. And so was Nixon closing the gold window. All were/are unilateral redefinition of terms between the debtor (the United States Government) and the creditor (investors) which resulted in lower real returns for investors. Inflation, too, is soft default…"

Apparently oblivious to history, Miss Yellen went on to outline the obvious… that actions have consequences (who knew?) "In the longer term,” she told officials, “a default would raise the cost of borrowing into perpetuity. Future investments — including public investments — would become substantially more costly."

Well yes, Miss Yellen. That’s how borrowing and lending generally works. When the borrower is a deadbeat who constantly goes further and further into debt, racking up record deficits and spending like a drunken sailor, his creditors do tend to demand higher interest rates as a way of protecting themselves against (increasingly likely) non-payment.

And since the United States government is already in hoc to the tune of $31.7 trillion… about $94,000 per citizen… or $247,000 per taxpayer…And since the record trade deficit is currently bumping up against the $1 trillion mark…And since Congress has already voted – in their performative, theatrical manner – to raise the debt ceiling no less than 78 times since John F. Kennedy entered the White House, back in 1960…

Well then, yes… creditors might ask Uncle Sam to pony up a little more by way of payments, or at least leave his gold watch behind the bar while he calls his mates to come pick up the bar tab. Dear readers may expect a call in three, two, one…"

"How It Really Is"

 

"This Is A Very, Very Bad Sign"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/25/23
"This Is A Very, Very Bad Sign"
Comments here: