"Consider The Possibility That This Is Already The Dystopia You Fear"

"Consider The Possibility That This 

Is Already The Dystopia You Fear"

by Caitlin Johnstone

"Consider the possibility that the Orwellian dystopia you fear is already here and has been in place for many years, you just haven’t noticed because you’re still allowed to watch Netflix or buy a gun or say whatever you want to say within a small impotent online echo chamber.

Consider the possibility that the powerful are already getting everything they want from you, right now, exactly as things are, and that any suspicious action you see them taking isn’t them constructing a cage for you but them tightening the bolts on a cage that was quietly built around you some time ago.

Consider the possibility that while they’ve been training you to watch out for communism and microchips and overt totalitarianism, they’ve been covertly transforming us all into mindless gears in a machine constructed to serve their interests which challenges them in no way, shape or form.

Consider the possibility that tyrants have evolved an understanding that you can exert a lot more control over a population with mass-scale psychological manipulation than you can with overt force, and that they have been developing the science of that mass-scale psychological manipulation for over a century.

Consider the possibility that we’re like a woman who always feared winding up in a physically abusive relationship like the kind depicted on television, and then wound up in a psychologically abusive relationship where her very mind is bent to the will of her abuser in every way.

Consider the possibility that just like in a psychologically abusive relationship, we’re manipulated into believing things are fine and that we give our abuser everything he wants of our own free will and that any problems that arise come from us and not our abuser, and that we are so well-trained at this that we’ve even learned to gaslight ourselves.

Consider the possibility that governments forcefully seizing control of all media and transforming them into official state propaganda outlets would actually be far less efficient at mass brainwashing than our current system in which people believe they are getting accurate information from a free and honest press.

Consider the possibility that if the powerful were able to surgically implant microchips in our brains and control everything we think and do, what they’d make us think and do would not be significantly different from what the overwhelming majority of us already think and do.

Consider the possibility that the dystopia we’ve been worried about has already been ushered in, not from any of the directions we’ve been conditioned to anticipate, but through the simple fact that the human mind is far more hackable than we’ve been conditioned to believe.

Consider the possibility that while we’ve been trained to fear communist authoritarians taking over and forcing us to obey their will, capitalist authoritarians have had us marching to the exact drumbeat they desire for generations. And we only think this is freedom because we’ve been trained to think that.

Consider the possibility that you’ve been trained to believe freedom looks like being able to buy a gun which we all know you’ll never use against the powerful, or choose from 197 kinds of potato chip at the grocery store, when really that mindless consumption is just you turning the gears of your own prison.

Consider the possibility that real freedom isn’t being able to consume whatever advertisers have convinced you to consume, it’s being able to think with a mind that has not been molded by the powerful, to educate yourself in an information ecosystem that is not locked down by those who rule over you, and to speak the truth without having your speech stifled by oppressive dominators.

Consider the possibility that the only thing keeping us from creating heaven on earth is our inability to clearly see what’s going on in our world and thus strategize a truth-based path out of this mess, and that the powerful know this, and that that’s why they work so hard to keep us from seeing clearly.

Consider the possibility that the real obstacle to terrestrial harmony is not so much opposing ideologies as the fact that all attempts to see clearly what’s really going on in our world are being actively obstructed by propaganda, by Silicon Valley manipulation, and by government secrecy.

Consider the possibility that the bastards succeed not by overtly quashing dissent but by covertly quashing all will towards dissent, and that we succeed not by trying to ward off a dystopia that’s already here but by working to awaken the giant within our brothers and sisters from its propaganda-induced coma.

Consider the possibility that real freedom means all of humanity awakening from our dehumanizing role as brainwashed gear-turners for the capitalist machine and uncorking the wild unpredictable brilliance within us that our oppressors have worked so hard to keep bottled up.

Consider the possibility that there is so much more to us than we’ve been permitted to know, and that the only thing keeping us from achieving our true potential as a species at this point in history is a propaganda-induced misunderstanding of what is freedom and what is slavery."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"This Sucker's Going Down..."

"This Sucker's Going Down..."

by MN Gordon

"By now, anyone with half an inkling of curiosity about why prices and values don’t add up has traced the divide back to the money itself. It’s not hard to see. Asset prices, like houses and the major stock market indexes, have lost all visible connection with the underlying economy. However, wage growth has stagnated; over the last 40 years low level wages have only increased by $0.32 per hour in real inflation adjusted terms. Stocks and residential real estate, at the same time, have gone to the moon.

Even with the NASDAQ’s 11.2 percent decline from its all-time closing high set on November 19, the index is still up over 110 percent from its March 2020 low. What will it take for the NASDAQ to crash back to earth?

Something else that has gone to the moon is government debt. In 1980, the national debt was $908 billion. Today it’s over $29.8 trillion. That’s an increase of over 3,181 percent. Over this time, however, gross domestic product (GDP) has only increased 632 percent – from $2.86 trillion to $20.94 trillion.

Of course, these are merely the facts and figures. The effects to countless Americans are hard to measure. But, by and large, the last 40 years have been a great disappointment for the American worker – and an absolute boon for the political elites.

In addition to asset prices and government debt, social discontent has also gone to the moon. Here in the LA Basin, for example, some of America’s most resourceful fellows have taken to emulating the corruption found in Washington and on Wall Street. They’re looting stores and plundering freight trains as a matter of business. Daring professions like these flourish when hard work and playing by the rules no longer pays. What’s really going on…

Spineless Money: To begin, the nation, in nearly every aspect, is failing. Such is the fate of nations who adopt spineless money. More specifically, as 20th century currency analyst Franz Pick observed: “The fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same.” We’ve seen that spineless money is synonymous with spineless nations. Nero’s Rome. Revolutionary France. Weimar Germany. 1980s Argentina. Zimbabwe. You name it…

Once a country’s economy and finances have been corrupted by fiat the fate of the nation is doom and disaster. Yet it didn’t have to be this way. A balanced budget. Stable currency. Limited government. Industrious populace. Personal responsibility. Rule of law. Commonsense. These, and similar sensibilities, would have prevented all the wild moonshots. Instead, we got lies, corruption, teachers unions, arbitrary rules, monster debt, Anthony Fauci, fake money, woke, and a dependent populace.

Abhorrence like these, again, go back to the money… Management of a spineless currency by central planners always falls to frequent debauchery…followed by short episodic periods of crushing austerity. The central planners never seem to get it right. Their extreme intervention lurches the economy from boom to bust. Now they’ve done it again…

In advance of the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming rate hikes, the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note eclipsed 1.8 percent. This is the highest its been since January 2020 – two months before the federal government declared a national emergency on coronavirus. At the same time, the 2020 and 2021 fiscal year deficits, which covered much of the coronavirus period, were a combined $5.9 trillion. Much of this was financed via printing press money from the Federal Reserve.

The Greatest Crackup the World’s Ever Known: Should it be any surprise that consumer prices, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), are increasing at an annualized rate of 7.0 percent – or over 15 percent when using 1980s calculation methods? More importantly, do you really think hiking the federal funds rate 50 basis points is going to cut it? This may cause a tantrum on Wall Street, but it won’t do much to control raging consumer price inflation…

Let’s be clear, consumer price inflation has nothing to do with rising prices or greedy corporations. But it has everything to do with declining money. This can’t be said enough. When the quantity of money goes up, the value of each money unit goes down. The systematic destruction of the dollar has been compounding for over 107 years; since the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. And it has been going on in earnest since President Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971. But that’s not all that has been going on…

The plundering, corruption, and lies of public officials are criminal. Federal Reserve Presidents have been buying and selling stocks to front run their market swinging policy decisions for years. Members of Congress have long been trading off insider information related to their legislative wheeling and dealing. Indeed, the fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same. We’re headed for complete financial, moral, and political collapse. But it’s not all bad…

You can count your blessings. You have front row seats for the greatest crackup the world’s ever known. The dollar’s doomed. The nation is too."

- https://economicprism.com/

"This Is A Choice..."

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world,

to aim at doing something which shall really increase the

happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind -

this is a choice which is possible for all of us;

and surely it is a good haven to sail for.”

- Henry Van Dyke

"You Can Avoid Reality..."

 

"Markets Full Of Desperation; Speculative Frenzies Will Implode; Prepare For Doom; Wage Slavery"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/23/22:

"Markets Full Of Desperation; Speculative Frenzies Will Implode;

 Prepare For Doom; Wage Slavery"

○

"Desperation"? As of 4 years ago these psychopaths had bought, on margin, $2.4 QUADRILLION of derivatives. God knows what it is today. Any drop in price will trigger an incomprehensible tsunami of margin calls which they cannot possibly meet, resulting in universal global bankruptcy.

- https://steemit.com/money/

○

With no exaggeration, this video is a perfect metaphor for what's

 coming, as the Good Ship World Economy encounters the Derivatives Wave..

Full screen recommended.

God help us...

"Jeremy Grantham Turns Apocalyptic: Stocks To Crater 50% In Largest Wealth Destruction In US History"

Full screen recommended.

"Jeremy Grantham Turns Apocalyptic: 

Stocks To Crater 50% In Largest Wealth Destruction In US History"

by Epic Economist

"Investing legend Jeremy Grantham is once again sharing an apocalyptic forecast for U.S. stocks. In a recent note, he warned that the market is headed to a brutal crash and that we’re all about to witness the largest wealth destruction event in modern history. Over the past few years, the GMO founder has quietly turned from bullish to bearish on the U.S. stock market. He has been sounding the alarm about a potential financial disaster since June 2020. And after correctly calling the last three financial bubbles, he said this one is the ‘Real McCoy,’ and that the current rally is absolutely ‘crazy’.

However, in 2021, Grantham’s warnings of an imminent crash didn’t come true. In August, he said that a spectacular crash was coming within a few months. Right after that, he cautioned investors that the bursting of this epic bubble was going to be the most important investing event of our lives. This time around, he might have underestimated how determined the Fed is to avoid another financial meltdown amid a bumpy economic recession. But even though he’s got the timing wrong, that doesn’t mean he’s not right.

In the last days of December, U.S. stocks have started to plunge, especially in the tech sector, where the bubble has actually burst. Now that the Fed support is finally fading away, a reversal in this downward trend seems nearly impossible. That’s why, a couple of days ago, 83-year-old Grantham publish his gloomiest note yet, titled "Let The Wild Rumpus Begin,”* in which he exposes that we are currently living in a superbubble - the fourth of the past century - and just as during the crash of 1929, the dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008, Grantham is "certain" the bursting of this bubble has begun. The iconic value manager sees the S&P plunging by at least 50% to 2,500 from its all-time high of 4,800 reached just a few weeks ago. The Nasdaq Composite, on the other hand, which has closed in correction territory last Wednesday, is about to face an even bigger and far more painful correction.

The expert has been seeing signs that something was terminally broken in the market since last February, but it wasn’t until recently that indicators started to show the same. The bursting of this superbubble has become crystal clear after dozens of the most speculative stocks began falling. For example, Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF, has already crashed by 52%, and so did the shares of the electric car maker, Rivian. And then, the Russell 2000, an index of mid-cap equities that normally outperforms in a bull market, fell behind the S&P 500 in 2021. In fact, most bubbly assets that are sensitive to central bank liquidity have been significantly lower over the past month.

While Grantham is one of the last remaining legendary investors and value managers that have been on Wall Street for over 50 years, calling boom and bust cycles for almost as long, according to Bloomberg's Erik Shatzker, the veteran's predictions are largely dismissed by today's investors. They often ask, "how could the S&P 500 advance 26.9% in 2021 if stocks were set to go down, especially when Grantham was warning of an epic crash early last year?"

But instead of disproving his case, Grantham argued that the strength in blue-chip stocks at a time of weakness in speculative assets only reinforces it: “This has been exactly how the great bubbles have broken,” he stressed. “In 1929, the flakes were down for the year before the market broke, they were down 30%. The year before they’d been up 85%, they had crushed the market". Simply put, the market veteran is alerting about the same kind of market leverage that led Goldman Sachs to ring the alarm last month, when the bank observed that 51% of all market gains since April are from just 5 overvalued tech stocks.

Having seen the same trends playing out in every past superbubble is what gives him so much confidence in predicting this one will crash in a similar manner. This is the "most dangerous breadth of asset overpricing in financial history,” he writes. And as it always happens, the stock market bubble has begun to deflate from the riskiest end of the market first – as it has been doing since December, Grantham wishes us all good luck because that's what we're all going to need in the dark times that are fast approaching."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

○

*Freely download “Let The Wild Rumpus Begin,” 

by Jeremy Gantham, here:

- https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/

Don't worry about a 50% drop, long before that something 

inescapably terrifying will happen. See above post...

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Full screen mode recommended.

Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision.

M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The featured image in HDR, taken through a small telescope, spans an angular size just larger than a full Moon, whereas the inset image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope, zooms in on the central 0.04 degrees.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160727.html

“On The Meridian Of Time...

“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”

- Henry Miller

"Write Your Worries On The Sand..."

“I walked slowly out on the beach.

A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:

WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.

I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.

Kneeling there under the vault of the sky,

I wrote several words, one above the other.

Then I walked away, and I did not look back.

I had written my troubles on the sand.

The tide was coming in.”

- Arthur Gordon

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"I Am An Enemy..."

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”

- George Bernard Shaw

The Daily "Near You?"

Waxhaw, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Full screen recommended.

Tommy Bites Homestead - Prepping, PM 1/23/22:

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/23/22:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: 

This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Once You Eliminate The Impossible..."

"Most Do Not Fully See..."

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

- M. Scott Peck

"$1 Billion a Day - That’s How Much Top 10 

U.S. Billionaires Added to Their Fortunes During Pandemic"

by Jake Johnson

"The 10 wealthiest billionaires in the U.S. have added roughly $1 billion to their collective fortune every day - or around $12,600 per second - since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed millions of people across the globe and thrown countless lives into chaos.

The billionaire wealth update comes courtesy of the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which released an analysis Wednesday estimating that the combined net worth of the 10 richest people in the U.S. has more than doubled since March 2020, reaching $1.35 trillion this week. “The pandemic has been very good to American billionaires, especially the top 10,” said ATF executive director Frank Clemente, who noted that billionaires’ pandemic profits will likely not be taxed because they consist largely of unrealized capital gains.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposal to subject the unrealized capital gains of the mega-wealthy to taxation has gone nowhere in Congress. “Their obscene rise in wealth - all of it potentially untaxed - stands in stark contrast to the lot of America’s working families, who’ve struggled through almost two years of a health crisis and economic uncertainty including most recently, rising prices,” Clemente said. “Chairman Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax would better align the fortunes of America’s richest of the rich with the needs of average Americans.”

That breaks down to $1 billion every day. Each made about the same in a single minute as the average American household earns in an entire year.

This can't continue. pic.twitter.com/gcaxL7ZN7M

- Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 19, 2022

ATF’s analysis is the latest in a series of new studies highlighting the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the decades-long trend of soaring wealth inequality in the U.S. and worldwide. Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, Oxfam International released an analysis showing that the 10 richest men in the world have doubled their combined wealth since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, the anti-poverty group noted, “the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of Covid-19.”

On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive organizations including the Fight Inequality Alliance and the Institute for Policy Studies estimated that a modest annual wealth tax on global millionaires and billionaires would raise $2.52 trillion dollars a year, enough money to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty.

In an open letter published Wednesday morning, a group of more than 100 rich individuals voiced support for such a tax, warning that “history paints a pretty bleak picture of what the endgame of extremely unequal societies looks like.” “For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich,” reads the letter, which was addressed to political and economic elites. “If you don’t, then all the private talks won’t change what’s coming - it’s taxes or pitchforks. Let’s listen to history and choose wisely.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

Madame DeFarge, where are you now that we need you?

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

"Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Clif High is an Internet data mining expert who uses “Predictive Linguistics” and computer programs to sort through billions of bits of information on the Internet to predict future trends and events. Some of his most disturbing trends he has spotted in his data analysis surround the CV19 vax. High is seeing the vax narrative breaking down. It may only be a matter of weeks before the restrictions and coerced injections are over, but that does not mean it’s clear sailing. According to High, the worst by far is yet to come. High explains, “So, it’s breaking down. The real horror is yet awaiting us, and that’s when all of the people who have been harmed by these injections wake up and realize they have been harmed and will have the natural emotions that accompany that.

The CDC is now reporting a 40% increase in death totals for 2021. The reports are saying the huge increase is “unexplained.” High and many others say the CV19 injections explain it all, and it’s only going to get much harder to explain. High’s analysis says, “I think we are looking at three years here before it peaks: 2022, 2023 and 2024. There is a lot of stuff in the data that says 2024 will be the tail-off of it. So, we have a number of very rough years ahead of us. Each year in succession will have more people dying than the year before. There is also going to be more infirmities, more illness and more of a drain on the system. 

In this three years, we will take the globalists to task and hold them accountable for their crimes. We are going to have a ‘red pill’ moment that’s coming soon. It’s not going to take months. It’s not going to take weeks. It’s going to take a short period of time, and many of them are going to go ballistic. So, I expect frequent, irregular, episodic, periods of chaos. They won’t be lashing out at society at large. They will be lashing out at their abusers... You will need to stand back. People will need to understand that there will be a section of the social order that is going to go crazy in anger, grief and all of this. These will be very violent reactions to having been poisoned, and some of them will be spectacularly so in terms of the violence of it. It’s not going to be wise to hang out around these elite guys.”

High’s analysis now says at least “30 million people will die from the CV19 injections” one way or another in the next few years, and that could be a very low estimate.

Clif High talks about many subjects including the so-called “financial reset,” China, Bitcoin, gold, silver (which High predicts will be more expensive that gold one day), the 2022 Election and why 28 Democrat Congressmen are not running for re-election, the crash of the financial system as we know it in 2022, the Petro dollar, inflation, why you need cash, and the Fed that High says is dying and the Fed knows it. That and a lot more in this one hour and ten-minute in-depth interview."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes 

One-on-One with data mining expert Clif High:

- https://rumble.com/

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/22/22:

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

"Banks are in a precarious spot right now. Banks are complaining that they cannot get employees and they are in serious need of help. The last time our economy took a dive the banks for bailed out by the government. That will not happen this time because the banks will be bailed out by the depositors. This is called a bail in."

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 1/22/22:

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, 

And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

"In today's vlog we visit Kroger Marketplace, and witness a lot of soaring prices. With stores struggling to get in products we are also dealing with another issue of skyrocketing prices. We will also check out the shelves as stores all across the country are having trouble."

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "1001"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, "1001"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.

Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130116.

"You Think..."

“You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”

~ Wendell Berry

"Fools And Knaves..."

“In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of

fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain

degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.”

- Philip Stanhope

“There are more fools than knaves in the world,

else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”

- Samuel Butler

"We Know..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

- Albert Camus

The Daily "Near You?"

St. James, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

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