don Miguel Ruiz, “The Power of Doubt”

“The Power of Doubt”

by don Miguel Ruiz

“Have you ever asked yourself if something you heard was actually true? Have you ever wondered if someone was lying to you, or worse yet, have you ever wondered, “Am I lying to myself?” Do you believe those voices in your head that are giving you opinions? Do you tend to believe other people’s opinions? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will understand when being skeptical is a good thing.

Right now, you’re delivering a message to yourself and to everyone around you. You’re always delivering messages, and you’re always receiving messages from one mind to another mind. But the most important messages are the ones you deliver to yourself. What are those messages? The word is a force you cannot see, but you can see the manifestation of that force, the expression of the word, which is your own life. The way to measure the impeccability of your word is to ask yourself: Am I happy or am I suffering? If you’re suffering, it’s because you’re telling yourself a story that isn’t true, but you believe it.

When you look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use the word to tell yourself lies? If you believe that you are not attractive enough, then you believe a lie, and you are using the word against yourself, against the truth.

Is it really true that you are too heavy or too thin? Is it really true that you are not beautiful? If you’re telling yourself: “I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m old. I’m not good enough. I’ll never make it,” then be skeptical. Don’t believe yourself, because none of these messages come from truth, from life. These messages are distorted; they’re nothing but lies. The truth is, there are no ugly people. There’s no universal book of law where any of these judgments are true. Every judgment is just an opinion - it’s just a point of view - and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born.

Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings and society. They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth?

What is the truth and what is the lie? Humans believe so many lies because we aren’t aware. We ignore the truth or we just don’t see the truth. When we are educated, we accumulate a lot of knowledge, and all that knowledge is just like a wall of fog that doesn’t allow us to perceive the truth, what really is. We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.

In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth. We never stop to consider that our beliefs are only a relative truth that’s always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory. As children, we are innocent; we believe almost everything that we learn, but everything that we learn isn’t true. We put our faith in lies, we give them power, and soon those lies are ruling our lives.

Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun. There is nothing to justify, nothing to believe. You have no mission except to enjoy life. You are here just to be, for no reason. Then the only thing you need to be is the real you. Be happiness. Be love. Be yourself. That’s wisdom. It’s the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness.

But first you have to unlearn a lot, and you only have one tool to do this. That tool is doubt. Being skeptical is an important part of recovering what you really are because it uses the power of doubt to break all those spells you’ve been under. Whenever you hear a message from yourself, or from someone else, simply ask: Is it really true? With the power of doubt, you challenge every message you deliver and receive. You challenge every belief that rules your life. Then you challenge all the beliefs that rule society, until you break the spell of all the lies and superstitions that control your world.

Once you recover all the power you invested in lies, you can see what is real; you can feel what is real. Even though lies still exist, you no longer believe them. You don’t believe everything anymore, but you can see, and what you can see is the truth. The truth doesn’t need you to believe it. The truth simply is, and it survives – believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them. If you don’t believe lies, they don’t survive your skepticism, and they simply disappear.

Centuries ago, people believed that the earth was flat. Some said that elephants were supporting the earth, and that made them feel safe. The belief that the earth was flat was considered the truth, and almost everybody agreed, but did that make it true? It was nothing but a superstition, and I can assure you that we still live in a world of superstition. The question is: Are we aware of it?

Wherever you go, you will hear all kinds of opinions and stories from other people. You will find great storytellers wanting to tell you what you should do with your life: “You should do this, you should do that, you should do whatever.” Don’t believe them. Be skeptical, but learn to listen and then make your choices. Be responsible for every choice you make in your life. This is your life; it’s nobody else’s life, and you will find that it’s nobody else’s business what you do with your life.

For centuries, there have been prophets who predicted big catastrophes in the world. Not that long ago, there were people who predicted that in the year 2000 all the computers would fail and society as we know it would disappear. The day arrived, and what happened? Nothing happened. Thousands of years ago, just like today, there were prophets who were waiting for the end of the world. At that time, a great master said: “There will be many false prophets who claim to be speaking the word of God. Don’t believe.” You see, being skeptical is nothing new. Doubt takes you behind the words and helps you to discern the truth from lies. And this is a good thing.”

- http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Power-of-Doubt

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"And, Of Course..."

 

“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.”

- Sydney J. Harris

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably 

excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”

- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...

Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?

"Could Be Worse..."

"I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse."

- Jim Butcher

Dig your way out, they said...

"Divide and Conquer"

"Divide and Conquer"

by Martin Armstrong

"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

- Benjamin Franklin

"This strategy includes the termination of free speech which is what we are seeing. For example, a letter of self-proclaimed 270 experts wants the Swedish audio streaming service to terminate “The Joe Rogan Experience” show, claiming he is spreading disinformation. I do not listen to his show, but the very idea of a free society means that we must tolerate those opinions we disagree with. To demand silence from the opposition leads only to communism.

Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff (1892-1938) was a Russian economist. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kondratieff, an economics professor, was called upon by the new government to create the first Soviet Five-Year Plan. Kondratieff was thus given the opportunity to draw the economic plan for Russia, he assumed, upon a blank slate. He explored the past to gather empirical data upon which to construct the new economy. What he observed was the cyclical nature of society through its booms and busts, and that knowledge would later cost him his life.

In 1926, Kondratieff published his conclusions after investigating history, entitling his work "Long Waves in Economic Life". Kondratieff discovered that there were progressive wave formations running spans of 50 to 60 years in length. He had reviewed historical events beginning in 1789 up to the date of his publication in 1926 and described three great waves, with highs of around 1820, 1864, and 1920 that were closely linked to wars. During this time period, the economy, even in the United States, was largely about 70% agrarian. By 1929, the United States’ economy was still about 40% agrarian, and this naturally provided an undertone to his work.

Even without war, adding the maximum time span of one of Kondratieff’s cycles of 60 years to 1920 brings us to 1980, the peak in OPEC oil and gold. Kondratieff effectively reached the conclusion that the economy was driven by cyclical activity, and thus this was implicitly against Hegel and Marx to the extent that no government would be able to reach some perfect state of synthesis. For this reason, Kondratieff’s work was seen as a criticism of Stalin’s goals. He was arrested in July 1930 and accused of being a member of the non-existent “Peasants’ Labour Party,” and was imprisoned for eight years. Stalin wanted him dead and expressed this in a letter dated August 1930. When his eight-year sentence was complete, he was put on trial again under new charges during the Great Purge and sentenced to ten years in prison.

However, upon his sentencing on September 17, 1938, he was taken outside and shot at the age of 46. Kondratieff died as a political prisoner, the government has done its best to destroy his research and to prevent its influence.

The powers in New York already tried to exterminate me. I have no doubt at some point they will think assassinating ANYONE or imprisoning them on fake charges will silence their opposition to the Great Reset. They will assume that silencing anyone who opposes them ensures their success. It will not. What they are doing is exterminating human rights. This is a standard agenda that has been played out countless times throughout history. It is what Patrick Henry explained: “Give me liberty or give me death!” Indeed, I saw the world they are creating behind the Berlin Wall. Death is preferable to living like that and being afraid to speak to anyone. There is no other way to judge the future than to look at the past."

- https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/

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Click image for larger size.

Freely download "Long Waves In Economic Life", 

by Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff, here

- https://www.cannonfinancial.com/

"Survival..."

 

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”

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“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Not Such An Easy Business...”

“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”

- Woody Allen

Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.

Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

"Relaxing fantasy music, "Dance of Life" 

by Peder B. Helland, for relaxation and meditation."

"The Heart of Humanity"

"The Heart of Humanity"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us - the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

"A Language Older Than Words"

"A Language Older Than Words"

"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life - every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."

- Derrick Jensen

"Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?"

"Is America Heading For A Systems Collapse?"

by Victor Davis Hanson

"In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it. Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Every day things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile.

Consider contemporary Venezuela. By 2010, the once well-off oil-exporting country was mired in a self-created mess. Food became scarce, crime ubiquitous. Radical socialism, nationalization, corruption, jailing opponents, and the destruction of constitutional norms were the culprits.

Between 2009 and 2016, a once relatively stable Greece nearly became a Third World country. So did Great Britain in its socialist days of the 1970s.

Joe Biden’s young presidency may already be leading the United States into a similar meltdown. Hard Left “woke” ideology has all but obliterated the idea of a border. Millions of impoverished foreigners are entering the United States illegally - and during a pandemic without either COVID-19 tests or vaccinations. The health bureaucracies have lost credibility as official communiques on masks, herd and acquired immunity, vaccinations, and comorbidities apparently change and adjust to perceived political realities.

After decades of improving race relations, America is regressing into a pre-modern tribal society. Crime soars. Inflation roars. Meritocracy is libeled and so we are governed more by ideology and tribe.

The soaring prices of the stuff of life - fuel, food, housing, health care, transportation - are strangling the middle class.

Millions stay home, content to be paid by the state not to work. Supply shortages and empty shelves are the new norm.

Nineteenth-century-style train robberies are back. So is 1970s urban violence, replete with looting, carjackings, and random murdering of the innocent.

After the Afghanistan debacle, we have returned to the dark days following defeat in Vietnam, when U.S. deterrence abroad was likewise shattered, and global terrorism and instability were the norms abroad.

Who could have believed a year ago that America would now beg Saudi Arabia and Russia to pump more oil - as we pulled our own oil leases, and canceled pipelines and oil fields?

Our path to systems collapse is not due to an earthquake, climate change, a nuclear war, or even the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, most of our maladies are self-inflicted. They are the direct result of woke ideologies that are both cruel and antithetical to traditional American pragmatism.

Hard-Left district attorneys in our major cities refuse to charge thousands of arrested criminals - relying instead on bankrupt social justice theories.

Law enforcement has been arbitrarily defunded and libeled. Police deterrence is lost, so looters, vandals, thieves, and murderers more freely prey on the public.

“Modern monetary theory” deludes ideologues that printing trillions of dollars can enrich the public, even as the ensuing inflation is making people poorer.

“Critical race theory” absurdly dictates that current “good” racism can correct the effects of past bad racism. A once tolerant, multiracial nation is resembling the factionalism of the former Yugoslavia.

The culprit again is a callous woke ideology that posits little value for individuals, prioritizing only the so-called collective agenda. Woke’s trademark is “equity,” or a forced equality of result. Practically, we are becoming a comic-book version of victims and victimizers, with woke opportunists playacting as our superheroes.

Strangest in 2021 was the systematic attack on our ancient institutions, as we scapegoated our ancestors for our own incompetencies. The woke have waged a veritable war against the 233-year-old Electoral College and the right of states to set their own balloting laws in national elections, the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year-old, 50-state union.

The U.S. military, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, Center for Disease Control, and National Institutes of Health until recently were revered. Their top echelons were staffed by career professionals mostly immune to the politics of the day. Not now. These bureaus and agencies are losing public confidence and support. Citizens fear rather than respect Washington grandees who have weaponized politics ahead of public service.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Attorney General Merrick Garland, former FBI heads like James Comey and Andrew McCabe, retired CIA director John Brennan, and Anthony Fauci head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases - have all politicized and vastly exceeded their professional purviews. They sounded off in public fora as if they were elected legislators up for reelection. Some lied under oath. Others demonized critics. Most sought to become media darlings.

This governmental freefall is overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden seems to believe his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels. As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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We're this close...

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. 

If we falter and lose our freedoms it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

 - Abraham Lincoln 

"How It Really Is"

 

"Very Scary...Walmart With Lots Of Empty Shelves In The Food Section"

Full screen recommended.

southernprepper1, 1/21/22:

"Very Scary...Walmart With Lots 

Of Empty Shelves In The Food Section"

"If..."

If they'll do this for a TV, what happens when there's no food?

"Two Ways To Be Fooled..."

"There are two ways to be fooled.

One is to believe what isn't true; 

the other is to refuse to believe what is true."

- Soren Kierkegaard

"Panic Buying Frenzy Triggers Massive Food Shortages As Chaos Sweeps Across Supply Chains"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 1/21/22:

"Panic Buying Frenzy Triggers Massive Food Shortages

 As Chaos Sweeps Across Supply Chains"

"Grocers are blaming the new shortages on a fresh wave of panic buying and continued supply chain issues, reporting that the 2020 toilet paper wars are back in many of the country's supermarkets. As infection numbers rise, store shelves across the nation are getting increasingly barer, with consumers complaining that bread, meat, fresh produce, and shelf-stable items have become impossible to find. A Walmart spokesperson who remained in anonymity told CNBC that panic buying was seriously aggravating the problem of supply shortages, especially because every time shelves were restocked, 'consumers would wipe everything down in record time'. The source also said that the giant retailer is currently experiencing direct impacts of supply chain disruptions, including reduced transport capacity and warehouse worker shortages.

At the same time, in an attempt to fill in the gaps left on the shelves, supermarkets are turning to different, less popular brands than they normally would stock to at least provide some options for their customers. On the other hand, restaurants are having to downsize their menus to cope with a limited range of available ingredients while prices across the board go on a steady climb. As shipping bottlenecks and factory closures leave a toll on the food industry, restaurant and grocery leaders say that the combined pressures of inflation, low stock, and labor shortages are sparking major operational issues. "It's a confluence of all of the events," explains Bob Luz, the president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association. "There's a shortage of truckers, a shortage of warehouse workers, a shortage of pickers, a shortage of meat-cutters. It's just wreaking havoc on the entire retail world."

Likewise, restaurants have been grappling with unavailable products "pretty routinely for months, not weeks. It's hard enough if you're shopping for a family, but imagine you have a menu you're supposed to deliver to the guests each week," Luz said. "For instance, all of a sudden chicken wings go out of stock. How does a restaurant go out of stock on chicken wings?" Given that Americans are eating more at home than they used to two years ago, consumer patterns have changed, and the gap between supply and demand has only grown wider. With panic buying and hoarding making a comeback at this point of the crisis, it means that inventories will remain tight in the first half of 2022, and prices will reach levels never before seen in modern history. Data from the Consumer Brands Association shows that U.S. groceries typically have 5% to 10% of their items out of stock at any given time, but right now, that unavailability rate is hovering around 20% in urban centers, and up to 35% in rural areas.

In a recent study conducted by business consultancy KPMG, 71% of grocery shoppers said they were ‘very concerned about shortages or stockouts,’ but only 35% of them were willing to switch brands when their favorite items are out of stock. For that reason, when retailers finally are able to restock their shelves, they’re reimposing purchasing limits of select items to prevent the panic buying frenzy from getting force. Costco was the latest to reintroduce temporary purchase limits on some items including toilet paper. But while big retailers are able to source more supplies and handle staffing challenges amid the worsening supply chain crisis, millions of small business owners are on the brink of bankruptcy.

A survey released today by the Small Business Association of Michigan exposed that 56% of small businesses in the country are reporting workforce shortages, while about the same rate is being overwhelmed by inflation, 59% are suffering from supply chain disruptions for over a year. And altough 70 percent of businesses are increasing wages to attract and maintain employees, 66 percent of them are find it hard to maintain the staff. Grocery stores can close if labor and product shortages intensify, warned Calley. “If the situation worsens, some grocery stores won’t be able to stay open, threatening food security in rural and remote areas that rely on a sole independent grocer,” he said. Sadly, chaos seem to be the new normal for the U.S. supply chain. And the problems we’re witnessing right now will have huge repercussions in the months ahead. The worst is yet to come, and if you want to keep updated with the latest developments of this ravaging crisis, don’t forget to leave a thumbs up on this video and subscribe to our channel to get our latest notifications!"

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"Investors Panic As Super Bubble Begins To Burst; 3,000 Bank Branches Closed"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/21/22:

"Investors Panic As Super Bubble Begins To Burst; 

3,000 Bank Branches Closed"

"This Is Your Last Chance," Part Two

"This Is Your Last Chance," Part Two

by Robert Gore

Part One

"Supposedly collectivists will reap the rewards of the only things they produce - destruction and death. After the collapse, a global collectivist government will replace the current multiplicity of collectivist governments. Most of the collapse’s survivors will become slaves living on subsistence doled out by the small aristocracy that will rule the planet. The real work will be done by artificially intelligent machines. The slaves will be pacified chemically and electronically through ubiquitous virtual reality technologies and monitored ceaselessly while the aristocrats live in unimaginable splendor. Those who resist pacification and enslavement will be “corrected,” or if that fails, murdered.

This is simply a straight line projection of the present and recent past that ignores a fully evident counter-trend still gathering steam. After a centuries-long, bull-market run, government as an institution has topped out. The plans and predictions of the global totalitarians are the overconfident rationalizations of newly minted millionaires at the top of bull markets - the “permanently high plateau” in 1929, the “new economy” in 2000, “house prices only go up” in 2007, and “the Fed’s got our backs” now.

We already have shining examples of totalitarian collectivist failure in really big countries with lots of people - the Soviet Union and Communist China. The former collapsed after tens of millions died, the latter made a mid-course correction towards more freedom after tens of millions died.

Blithering idiots attribute those failures to incomplete control by the totalitarians or claim collectivism can only work when the whole world is completely enslaved. They ignore the core quandary of collectivist control - it produces nothing. Collectivist governments steal, they don’t produce. A global collectivist government will produce exactly what the current multiplicity of collectivist governments produce: nothing. Yet, this government will supposedly build the world back better from the ashes of financial, economic, and political collapse.

Collectivists have perfected a demand management technique that obscures but does not solve the productive inability of the economic systems over which they presided: murder a lot of people. People are producers so production shrinks faster than populations, exacerbated by the collectivists’ unerring ability to kill the most productive people. Today’s collectivist killers plan to use the same demand management technique, but this time AI machines will make up the shortfall.

Current AI technology isn’t there yet but somehow a slave society will produce the innovations necessary to get it up to snuff. The absurdity of this presumption is captured in the contradiction in terms that will supposedly fill the gap: state science. State science is the approved propaganda of the moment propagated by state functionaries and cohorts mislabelled as scientists - for instance the rampant convolutions, contortions, corrections, and prevarications that characterize the Covid travesty, climate change, and green energy.

As for slavery, Alexis de Tocqueville had the last word on its economics in 1835: "It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay the slaves whom they employ, but the derive small profits from their labor, while the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid but he does his work quicker than the the slave; and rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but they are purchased only when they may be useful; the black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well as in manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth, in sickness as well as in health. Payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men: the free workman receives his wages in money; the slave in education, in food, in care, and in clothing. The money which a master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived; the salary of the free workman is paid in a round sum and appears to enrich only him who receives it; but in the end the slave has cost more than the free servant, and his labor is less productive."

- Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America", Volume One, 1835

The slaves will own nothing because they’ll produce next to nothing. It’s doubtful they’ll be any happier with that state of affairs than slaves have been in the past.

Turning again to the historical record, the accomplishments of state science and industry are an almost undetectable molehill compared to the Everest of innovations and wealth flowing from free scientific inquiry and production. Picking through this meager molehill, one finds that many state “accomplishments” are merely new and improved ways to kill people.

Setting aside straight line projections, what’s actually coming is a history’s greatest trend change: total financial, economic, intellectual, and moral collapse. The staggering sum of global debt, unfunded liabilities, and derivatives is in the quadrillions, a double-digit multiple of global production. The numbers are so large and opaque that a more precise estimate for that multiple cannot be derived. Every asset and stream of income is already pledged as collateral - often several times - or will be de facto collateral as governments’ bankruptcies and rapacity mount; they’ll steal whatever they can get their hands on. What most of the world reckons as wealth is somebody’s debt or equity, so insolvency will quickly work its way through the daisy chain. So much for financialization.

Like financial and economic collapse, intellectual and moral collapse will center on governments. Billions of people indoctrinated in some version of statist dogma will look to governments as the solution for the government-created apocalypse. Courtier intellectuals, media lights, corporate shills, and other minions and toadies will be scurrying like cockroaches in a filthy kitchen when the lights are turned on. Their voluminous output of putrid, state worshipping dreck will have the same value as fiat debt and currencies.

Today’s “thought leaders” are circling the drain. They’re on the wrong side of history and they’ll take billions of devout believers in government omniscience and omnipotence with them. Fat cat crony collectivist corporations all the way down to those subsisting on some form of state-granted transfer payments will find the government teat withered and barren. The delusory notion that bankrupt governments can provide universal basic incomes will be treated with the universal derision it deserves.

Government has been collapsing under its own weight for decades. If one were to graph its overall strength, the U.S. government at the end of World War II was peak government - the U.S. empire was at its unchallenged economic, political, and military apex. Vietnam, Nixon’s abandonment of the gold standard, the fall of the USSR, the war on terror, the Patriot Act, and the Covid insanity would mark some of the downward inflection points since.

History will probably look back on the Biden camarilla’s fraudulent ascension to power as the final sharp break, the demarcation of the vertiginous crash. It’s hard to imagine that the institution that plays such a huge part in all our lives will simply be rubble amidst the chaos and ruins, but few people foresaw the end of the Soviet state either. Straight line projections don’t yield such predictions.

To those who rule and are trying to implement their global consolidation: This is your last chance to save your own skins. Nothing will stop the collapse, but you can at least abandon your nefarious project and its totalitarian blueprint. It’s your only chance to avoid the Sarlacc pit, and that’s a slim chance indeed. Collapse will focus your victims’ attention on their ruination and your responsibility for it. You’ll be lucky to escape their retribution. Your odious class has always hid your failures and tried to shift the blame, but that game is up.

As always happens after cataclysms, the survivors will rebuild. The human race is a hardy bunch. With previous equity, debt and its corresponding credit assets wiped out, and many real assets destroyed in the mayhem and chaos, there will be little capital to fund their efforts. Capital will be earned and rebuilt the old fashioned way - consumption less than production generating savings invested in enterprises whose returns compound the savings.

With governments either broke or wiped out, emergent groups in smaller geographic areas will have to look to their own resources for protection. On the other hand, they’ll be unencumbered by the confiscatory taxes, stifling laws and regulations, rampant corruption, Big Brother surveillance, perpetual violence, and general idiocy we now take for granted among governments.

There will be a decentralized multiplicity of new political arrangements and subdivisions, from chaotic black holes to well-ordered enclaves. The success of the latter will be due to the freedom they embrace, the individual rights they protect, and their ability to defend their enclaves. New industries, technologies, modes of commerce, and ways of life will emerge. This will be the true great reset, not the Klaus Schwab version, which only recycles failed concepts of centralized power and collective subjugation on a larger scale.

Brace for impact, the collapse is well underway and will soon hit its inflection point, if it hasn’t already. It will be a test of character unlike anything we’ve faced before. It was Jabba the Hut and his creepy cohorts - Planet Tatooine’s establishment - who were blown to smithereens and cast into the Sarlacc Pit. Our enemies’ greatest weakness: the arrogant stupidity of evil and the crumbling bulwark of lies behind which it hides. These are the allies of Samuel Adams’, “irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” Our greatest weapon: the magnificently defiant human spirit that stands on the plank above the abyss and shouts: “Jabba, this is your last chance, free us or die!”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/21/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/21/22"

Collapsing Narratives Continue in CV19, 

Vote Fraud & Fed Fueled Economy

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"At the end of last year, I predicted that the narratives in three big areas of total fraud and lies would be unraveling in 2022. I did not think the CV19 narrative would unravel this fast. The first big Western country to throw in the towel on the CV19 virus and vax fraud fest is Britain. Out of the blue and without warning, Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson stopped masks, injection mandates and work restrictions. Why the about-face? Is it as simple as the jig is up and PM Johnson is running for cover? How far behind are the U.S. and other Western nations?

The vote fraud story is the energizer bunny of stories. It keeps “going and going and going.” The mainstream media (MSM) does not report on it, but alt media does and it is far from over. Investigations are in several states, and the entire “Biden won fair and square” narrative is crumbling. Even two Dem Senators would not allow the Senate to kill the Filibuster, and that stopped so-called “voting rights” legislation in its tracks. It should be called what it really is, and that is a federalization of the cheating that took place in 2020. Dems need to cheat in 2022, and it looks like this way has been blocked.

Big warnings are coming from big money investors about how shaky the economy is and how the Fed is going to try to snuff out inflation, which is running as a painful 7% a year. One big name money manager is predicting the biggest wealth destruction in U.S. history. If he’s half right, you may want to lighten up on the risk."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 

these stories and more in the weekly News Wrap-Up for 1/21/22.

- https://rumble.com/

"The Attack of the Ignoramuses"

"The Attack of the Ignoramuses"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"Somehow the task of saying the unsayable always seems to fall to The New York Times. It’s like their assigned role as the newspaper of record. If the Times says it, it is OK for everyone to say it. For some years now, this has been the job of the paper. To float trial balloons, to warm up the public, to give a green light to policymakers, to introduce absolutely mental and intellectual chaos into our realm such that we are invited to believe things that are utterly ridiculous.

I will drop here my favorite example from Feb. 28, 2020, when the lead virus reporter (since thrown under the bus) introduced readers to an utterly preposterous idea: "We should reject all conventional practices of public health and instead “go medieval” on the coronavirus. Lock everyone in their homes. Block the highways. Ground the planes. Force everything to close."

He didn’t get his way entirely but almost entirely. What matters here is the manipulation of the public mind. Before that day, such would have been considered complete and utter nonsense, as dangerous as it is ineffective. After that day, policymakers were invited to imagine grotesque possibilities. Their minds swelled with excitement. Ultimately, they got their way. Thanks a lot, New York Times.

Another Trial Balloon: Here’s another date for you: Jan. 13, 2022. That’s the date that The New York Times floated the idea of price controls. After that, the rest of the corporate media got busy: TheStreet, MSNBC, CNN, they all fell in line to suggest that this was not crazy but rather a legitimate policy option. Dig this line: "America’s recent inflation spike has prompted renewed interest in an idea that many economists and policy experts thought they had long ago left behind for good: price controls."

That’s the opening sentence. Yep. Here we go! Not all attempts at reining in prices have been such clear failures. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration imposed strict price controls to prevent wartime shortages from making food and other basic supplies unaffordable. Those rules were generally viewed as necessary at the time, and economists have tended to view them more favorably. In fact, there have been plenty of instances of wartime price controls throughout history, often paired with rationing and wage growth limits.

Hey, we are in a war against a virus! Are we unwilling to use tools we used in the past? Of course we aren’t talking about the 1970s! Don’t be silly!!

This Time Is Different! Few economists today defend the Nixon price controls. But some argue that it is unfair to consider their failure a definitive rebuttal of all price caps. The 1970s were a period of significant economic turmoil, including the Arab oil embargo and the end of the gold standard - hardly the setting for a controlled experiment. And the Nixon-era price caps were broad, whereas modern proponents suggest a more tailored approach. Oh, oh, oh!!! A “tailored approach,” huh? Of what does this consist?

You see, the problem back then was that the price controls were not coupled with… rationing! How silly of those guys! Didn’t you know that the only way to make massive government coercion work is to impose maximum government coercion across the board?

That’s what “tailoring” consists of: "Wartime price caps typically came alongside rationing, in which the quantity of goods people were allowed to buy was limited, said Rebecca L. Spang, a money historian at Indiana University. “If you try to have price controls without rationing, you end up with shortages, you end up with purveyors pulling their goods from the market,” she said."

But hey, there’s more. The key is to impose controls that are product specific and time limited. You know, like two weeks to flatten the curve! By instituting temporary and product-specific price caps, the logic goes, the government could ensure that the poor don’t end up getting gouged. Fans say lower prices would give an incentive to companies to sell as much as they can possibly produce at the permitted price.

Testing Kits: Want an example? This you won’t believe. It turns out that the White House has already experimented with price controls. Maybe you can guess the product in question: home COVID tests! It all happened last September when the White House began authorizing tests. They said that they had to be sold at cost, which was about $14 at the time. When the price controls expired the prices went up as high as $24.

So you see what’s happening here. The price controls were rolled out to prove that they “work” and when they expired, the prices went up, proving further that they should have kept them in place. When I went slogging around town for testing kits, there were limits on the number you could buy and they lasted on shelves only a few hours, with long lines. I wondered at the time why they didn’t raise the prices. The reason: fear of regulators. They were selling only with government permission. That permission could be withdrawn at any time.

There we have it. Long lines. Rationing. Unavailability of goods that you want. This is what happens when you disable market forces. It screws up everything, but government officials have a ball playing market.

It’s Coming: Here we go again, with the great excuse of the virus being deployed as yet another occasion for intensifying controls on the people. They won’t work, obviously. But this time the authorities won’t make the mistake of failing to impose rationing at the same time. It will be all about gas, heating oil and food. Mark my words: Some version of this is coming.

For months now, I’ve predicted that the government would use anti-gouging laws to impose price controls under another name. But I’ve underestimated the stupidity and brazenness of this White House. We have every reason to expect full-blown controls imposed under that name. There will be price controls, but they will work this time because they will be “tailored,” they will be “product specific,” they will be coupled with “rationing” and they will be “temporary.”

For now the White House says that controls are not on the table. Not ready to go there yet. Yeah, where have we heard that before? The heck of it is that they have the time. They still have a full year in office with a single party that controls basically everything in league with an army of bureaucrats ready to pass edicts and crack the skulls of the noncompliant.

These people are economic ignoramuses plus they have been infected by massive power lust. Put those together and you have the makings of an economic crisis we’ve yet to experience. And that’s saying something these days."

- dailyreckoning.com

Gregory Mannarino, "The IMF Warns: Markets Drop... Is The Worst Yet To Come?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/21/22:

"The IMF Warns: Markets Drop... Is The Worst Yet To Come?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Adiemus, “Adiemus”

Full screen recommended.

Adiemus, “Adiemus”

"A Look to the Heavens

“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).

Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140828.html

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

On your knees you may live to see another day,

but you’ll never live to see better days.

by Robert Gore 

“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.

In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.

While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!

Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.

It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.

But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.

Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.

The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.

We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Chet Raymo, “Half Sick Of Shadows”

“Half Sick Of Shadows”

by Chet Raymo

“Who is this woman? Her name is on the prow of her boat: The Lady of Shalott. Yes, it’s Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott,” from the poem of 1842, here illustrated by John William Waterhouse in 1888. By some unspecified curse this lovely maiden was confined to a tower…

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river”

…near Camelot, where, forbidden to look out the window, she observed the world in a mirror and wove what she saw into a tapestry. So what is she doing in the boat, with her hand-stitched creation? One day, Sir Lancelot rode by her tower alone. She saw him in the mirror and – “half sick of shadows” – couldn’t resist turning to see him unreflected.

“His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;

On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flow’d

His coal-black curls as on he rode…”

The mirror cracked. She left her loom, descended from the tower, found a boat, inscribed her name on the prow, and…

“Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right -

The leaves upon her falling light -

Thro’ the noises of the night”

…cast off to drift downstream to Camelot – and to Lancelot. But curses are not to be foiled.

“For ere she reach’d upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.”

We are all of us in a way the Lady of Shalott, all of us who seek to create an image of the world, artists, poets, scientists. We perceive the world through the filter of our limited senses, our biologically evolved brains, our nurtured preconceptions. We weave our tapestries, knowing that our creations are a reflection removed from reality. Our “curse” is to be in love with the real, yet never able to embrace it except in the cold glass of conceptualization. Our legacy? To be found in a boat lodged among the reeds, our tapestry draped across the thwart, with Camelot yet somewhere further down the stream, glistening, beckoning, inescapably out of reach. But, ah, there’s that gorgeous tapestry.

There is another curse, self made, and that is to mistake the mirrorworld for the world outside the window, to fail to recognize the contingency of our conceptualizations, to forego an honest seeking for the falsely found, and – most ominously – to want to impose our own mirrorworld on others.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"The Essence Of Human Existence..."

"Curiosity is the essence of human existence.

'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'

I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions.

I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out."

- Eugene Cernan

Free Download: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are

only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,

something helpless that wants our love.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

○

Download “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke here:

- https://kbachuntitled.files.wordpress.com/

Read online :

- http://www.carrothers.com/rilke8.htm

The Daily "Near You?"

Erskineville, New South Wales, Australia. Thanks for stopping by!