Monday, January 31, 2022

Chet Raymo, “Caught In The Middle”

“Caught In The Middle”
by Chet Raymo

"It doesn't take a genius to recognize that human males have a propensity for intergroup violence, and that the killing is often accompanied by rape. One need only read the newspapers. The only question is to what extent these tendencies are innate or culturally inculcated. Nature or nurture? Or both? A new book, "Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World," by population biologist Malcolm Potts and science writer Thomas Hayden, dishes up a bit of both. The violence is in our (male) genes, they maintain, but it is susceptible to cultural control.

What the authors calls "behavioral propensity to engage in male coalitional violence" evolved as far back as the common ancestor of humans and chimps, they claim, although our other close relations, bonobos and gorillas, seem to have found more peaceful ways of living. Genes predispose, say Potts and Hayden, but cultural forces can alleviate the worst of male nastiness. By empowering women to be leaders in cultural, social and political spheres, the violent propensities of men can be restrained. Further, empowerment will give women control of their reproductive destinies, and will therefore result in fewer offspring. Less population pressure will reduce other factors fueling violence and conflict, the authors claim.

Anthropologist Hillard Kaplan reviews the book in the October 9, 2009, issue of "Science." He agrees that the available evidence suggests that male intergroup violence has a long evolutionary history. He believes this tendency was exacerbated into large scale warfare with the development of agriculture and the associated larger population groups and competition for fertile land. Kaplan believes that male group violence is stoked by poor economic prospect for young males. To the empowerment of women he would add education and jobs as a way to reduce antisocial behavior.

There is nothing particularly new or revolutionary about any of this. Progress? Yes, I suppose so, but we clearly have a long way to go before women exercise equal power in society, or before young men in the developing world, especially, have an economic stake in social stability. Meanwhile, as the painting above by Jacques-Louis David, "The Sabine Women," suggests, women and children will continue to be caught in the middle.”

"The Tragedy Lies..."

It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is a sin.
- Benjamin E. Mayes

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch: If The Federal Reserve Fails To Act Again The Stock Market Will Crash"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/31/22:
"Must Watch: If The Federal Reserve Fails 
To Act Again The Stock Market Will Crash"

The Daily "Near You?"

Fife Lake, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Contrarian? Or Damned Fool?"

"Contrarian? Or Damned Fool?"
by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "We’ve come up to Dublin for a few days to help take care of a grandchild. Before leaving home, we decided to spend a couple of days working alongside Mick and Connie, the local stonemasons. They were building a wall on the side of our garden until Mick came down with COVID. Then, the project stalled for almost a year. Here, we’re helping them to pick it up again:
(Photo: Your editor - right - contemplates the next stone)

(Photo: Securing the perimeter)

We’ve done masonry work for 50 years… but very little stone masonry. Mick is a real old-time pro. We thought we might learn something from him. “It’s not the stone you’re laying that you need to worry about,” he said. “It’s the next one that gives you trouble. “ Thus had Mick brought into focus the problem of all human life. Actions have consequences. Today is followed by tomorrow… which is when the troubles arrive.

Mick was merely pointing out that a poorly laid stone makes it difficult to pose the next one on top of it. But the principle is universal: problems always reveal themselves later. It may be fun, for example, to have a fling with the hat-check girl. But then what? Rob a liquor store? Same problem.

Try to goose up the US economy with artificially low interest rates (below zero in real terms) and printing press money? Yeah… there will be Hell to pay.

The Cost of Doing Business: But we are going to desist from our usual old-school, middle-American moralizing…instead, we take up a practical Dear Reader’s question. Our reader has noticed that we own a lot of non-performing real estate. He guesses, correctly, that they must cost us money: "From following you all these years, I know that you own many properties around the world including several hundred thousand acres of land. Having been involved in the real estate business for 40 years, I know that without substantial rental income these properties become a drain. So my question is, does someone in your position think about the effects of negative cash flow or does it continue to be the cost of doing business?"

Our reader puts it politely, but the gist of his question is: what kind of fool are you; what about the consequences? Herewith… an explanation. And we begin by taking the high road: not everything we do is intended to make money. We have farms in France, the US, Nicaragua and Argentina. None were bought as serious farm investments (although… we had hopes!) We lose money on all of them.

Is this a good idea? Probably not. Each one makes us poorer. But, heck… we have no other expensive tastes or hobbies. No fast cars. No corporate jet. No art collections. No racy girlfriends. No yachts. We rarely travel for fun (besides, it’s not much fun anymore.) Our houses are modest. We drive a Ford F-150. We wear Lee blue jeans.

If we have a weakness, it’s property. We like owning it. We like fixing up old houses and restoring old fields, fences and gardens. And we tell ourselves: after all our improvements, maybe… when we finally shake the clods off of our boots… maybe the grandchildren will be able to sell them at a profit.

Or maybe not. And since, as our reader points out, these properties produce ‘negative cash flow’ we have to be careful. Annual negativity could overwhelm the eventual positivity, such as it may be.

Contrarian Farmers: We’re also getting older. In the final innings of our career, we’re learning how to bunt and walk – how to cut costs… increase income… and invest in better land. And, overall, we’re almost at breakeven! Yes, while we own a lot of ‘non-performing’ farmland, we are also buying performing farmland. And here is where our globe trotting gives us at least a broader perspective. We’ve become ‘contrarian farmers.’ No… we do not plant backwards to fool the crows. Instead, we are buying land in Argentina.

Here in Ireland, we were bidding on an adjoining farm. The bids went up and up… until the price was over $12,000 an acre. We gave up, figuring that the local bidder wanted it more than we did. At that price, it’s hard to see how it could ever be profitable. But like us, the Irish like owning land. Perhaps it brings a psychic benefit that doesn’t show up on an income statement.

Meanwhile, in France, in Poitou, land sells for only about $5,000 a hectare… or about $2,000 an acre. It was always poor land. Still is. And the rental income is running about $50 per acre/year – a rate of return of about 2.5%... not enough to cover the taxes and maintenance.

In the US, in the Upper Midwest, rental rates are running about $225 per acre. Iowa farmland is trading hands at about $7,000 an acre. So, the return on investment is only a bit better than in France.

Crop yields are heavy in the US. And prices are high. Farmers should be doing well. Trouble is, costs are rising sharply too. Potash, nitrogen and phosphates approximately doubled last year. Costs for fuel, pesticides, herbicides and seeds are also going up. Farming is no clear winner in an era of rising inflation.

Meanwhile, down in the Northwest corner of Argentina, there may be a unique opportunity. A terrible drought has wreaked havoc. And whatever damage nature leaves undone, the Argentine government fills the gaps. Effectively, farmers cannot sell their land to foreigners – substantially lowering market demand. And even if they could buy, non-Argentines would find that they couldn’t repatriate their profits except at the ‘official rate’… which would wipe out at least half the value of their earnings. The peso is getting cut in half each year. Shortages of machinery, fuel, and chemical products bedevil the hard-pressed gaucho farmers.

There is not yet any light visible at the end of this tunnel. And it’s rather amazing that there’s any market at all for Argentina farmland. But there is. And prime cereal land – good for wheat, soy, corn or other field crops – sells (up in Salta province) at about $1,200 per acre, an 80% discount from US prices.

Crop yields are lower than in the US. But so is the dependence on fertilizers and pesticides. This leaves, we believe, the Argentines in a strong position among the world’s low-cost producers. And in recent years, returns to investors have been running between 5% and 10% (not counting farmland capital appreciation).

In any case, our goal is modest. We only seek to make enough to cover the losses on our other Argentine farming ventures. Then, we can leave the farms to our children with a clear conscience; at least, they won’t be a burden. We’ll be heading back down to the pampas in March… to have a closer look – stay tuned for an update."

"Things Are Not Getting Better - It's a Global Problem"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/31/22:
"Things Are Not Getting Better - It's a Global Problem"
"Everything is going up in price. The value of everything is dropping. We do not get our money's worth for what we are paying for right now. Everything is over priced. This is a worldwide problem. Today I am at Swami’s Beach in Encinitas, California."

"The Revolt Begins"

"The Revolt Begins"
by Jim Kunstler

"The Canadian trucker rebellion, rolling east across the vast, frozen Canadian prairie, blew into the country’s Woked-up capital city, Ottawa, like the scalding wrath of history, forcing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to skulk off punkishly under cover of night - after bad-mouthing the big-rig invaders as “a fringe minority” in a nation of otherwise obedient hypnotics sleepwalking into Big Pharma’s spike-protein fun-factory of all-causes early death.

The news media is working super-hard to avoid reporting the event, of course. Canada’s leading paper, The Toronto Star, put up a peevish little item complaining that a protester hung an upside-down maple leaf flag on a statue of national hero Terry Fox (a cancer-stricken athlete who ran across most of the country on a prosthetic leg in 1981 to raise cancer-awareness). The paper also mentioned that “[a] discordant symphony of truck horns blared across downtown Ottawa as demonstrators geared up for their second full day on local streets.” Beyond that, the paper lost interest.

Canada under the Trudeau government has been more restrictive on Covid-19 than the Big Gorilla to its south, with the population compliantly following all the insane, economy-wrecking rules, until a recent mandate to vaxx-up every last trucker in the land finally sparked-off a revolt. Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party failed to win a parliamentary majority in last September’s federal election, and he heads a flimsy coalition potentially facing a no-confidence vote that would drive the PM out of office.

For now, the truckers seem determined to stick around and disrupt the Canadian capital. Their estimated 50,000 rigs could surround the city and create siege conditions, where food supplies and other goods won’t get in, starving the government into surrendering on its mandates and restrictions. So far, the local Ottawa police have stood by with a very light hand, and there are rumors that they are on the same page as the truckers against federal overreach.

Will Mr. Trudeau resort to using the military to break up the revolt? Good luck with that. Like virtually every other “advanced” nation, Canada depends on trucks and truckers to move everything needed for everyday life. The truckers can just say no… we don’t feel like working this month. No poutine or Cornish pasties for you, Ottawa! Then what? Throw them all in jail? How will that help move stuff from Point A to Point B? It kind of looks like they have Mr. T over a Molson barrel. For now, it’s a stand-off, but it looks to me like the Prime Minister must resign and whoever takes charge next will have to rapidly rethink the country’s entire Covid-19 policy in a not-insane direction.

The Canadian revolt appears to be inspiring similar operations in the US, where a movement has started for a massive trucker convoy from California to Washington, DC - the swampy pivot-point of Covid tyranny under the phantasm known as “Joe Biden” - as a very general way of saying we’ve had enough of being pushed around by political grifters and their bureaucratic subalterns.

The Covid-19 saga gets darker every day, while the official alibis, cover-stories, and disinfo ops bend ever deeper toward an arc of criminality. The US government has lied about every plot-line in the two-year horror show. In fact, a conscientious observer would have to conclude the following: That the government’s highest-paid employee, Dr. Anthony Fauci, led surreptitiously in the creation and release of a bioweapon; that he and his cohorts, along with the pharma companies, and other interested parties such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization, enabled the release of so-called “vaccines” (genetic treatments) that were at least as deadly as the disease itself; that as a result of the shots many people of all ages will die before their natural time; that the process is already underway as documented in the all-causes death data tallied by insurance companies; that the same government officials maliciously suppressed viable, inexpensive, FDA-approved treatments for Covid-19 in order to herd the populace into receiving dangerous “vaccines”; that said officials have worked strenuously to muddle and fake the statistics that would show who is actually dying of what; and that the entire fiasco appears to have been ginned up in order to systematically control the population in ways contrary to our natural rights while killing off a substantial number of us.

Let the trucks roll from Fresno to DC if they still want to play rough. Think the “Joe Biden” gang will try to divert attention by starting a war in Ukraine? They don’t dare. Think the financial markets will tank? Well, of course they will, no matter what, because the markets and the money are detached from reality. Face it: what America needs most of all is to reconnect with reality, and you can be sure that the process will be uncomfortable, having sojourned so far from it for so long. (“Let’s Go, Brandon!”) And Let’s go, Canadian truckers!"
Loza Alexander, "Lets Go Brandon"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/31/22"

"Economic Market Snapshot 1/31/22"
Updated as available.
"The more I see of the moneyed classes,
the more I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
Latest market analysis 1/31/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Jan 28th to 31st 2022
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts

Commentary, highly recommended:
And now, the End Game...

Gregory Mannarino, "Important Updates: Market Drivers Remain Intact"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLyV6j2V55M
Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/31/22:
"Important Updates: Market Drivers Remain Intact"

"How It Really Is"

 

"30 Survival Skills Everyone Should Know Before The Imminent Economic Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/30/22:
"30 Survival Skills Everyone Should Know 
Before The Imminent Economic Collapse"


"The 2021 economic collapse has demonstrated its ability to wipe out supply chains, drive grocery store prices sky high, and cause massive shortages of everything. If it wasn’t that clear before, now we all can certainly see that our modern society is rapidly crumbling. Every single structure we rely on has proven to be incredibly vulnerable to external disruptions, and with global tensions rising by the day, we must be ready because dark times are coming for us. Corrupt governments are leading the world to the brink of financial ruin, and their reckless monetary policies have set the stage for a brutal economic collapse that has just begun.

At the same time, every link of our supply chains is breaking down, and global production continues to decline, widening the imbalance between supply and demand. So as global supplies get increasingly tighter and inflation pushes the price of everything to insane levels, people’s purchasing power has never been so compromised. Food prices are going through the roof, while housing and rent prices are making it harder for families to afford a roof over their heads. This is exactly the type of scenario that made empires fall apart and triggered widespread chaos in every corner of the planet.

Since our entire system is built like a house of cards, and several pieces have already fallen, it’s only a matter of time until we witness the end of the world as we know it. This is a chain reaction -- and at this point, so much damage has been done that it would take a miracle to reverse this coordinated downfall. If you think our leaders are going to rescue us from the mess they created, you’ll be totally unprepared for what’s coming next. Many still don’t know that we’re headed to an era of food shortages, power cuts, bankruptcies, cyberattacks, and devastating geopolitical conflicts. For that reason, learning primitive skills is just as important now as they were 10,000 years ago.

The global economic and societal collapse is accelerating at an alarming pace, but the worst is yet to come. That’s why we must do whatever we can to survive the challenges that are fast approaching, so today we gathered 30 primitive skills you should learn before the total collapse of our modern civilization.

For example, one of the skills that changed life on Earth and led to the advance of humanity was knowing how to build a fire. Today, most people have become accustomed to having devices to help them do it effortlessly. Many people have never learned how to start a fire without lighter fluid and a lighter. However, being able to find and collect natural materials to build a fire from scratch is the number one prepper survival skill. It can definitely save lives during an emergency. There are many techniques you can learn, such as the fire bow or fire spindle. But it’s very important to practice first to prevent potential accidents.

Learning and practicing these skills will definitely be very handy to get through the challenging times ahead. We must protect ourselves while we still can, because those in positions of power will not be there to save us when things go south. There are many blogs that can guide you through your prepper journey. We would like to give a special shout-out to Ask A Prepper, whose writers always share prepping secrets, tips, and tricks that we all will need at some point. The world is changing must faster than most of us realize. And we should be paying very close attention to what happens next."

Sunday, January 30, 2022

MUST WATCH! "Economy Slams San Diego, Looks like A Wasteland; A Depression Has Begun; Market Crash Next; Survival"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/30/22:
"Economy Slams San Diego, Looks like A Wasteland;
 A Depression Has Begun; Market Crash Next; Survival"

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Sea of Dreams”

2002, “Sea of Dreams” 

"A Look to the Heavens"

"No, hamburgers are not this big. What is pictured is a sharp telescopic view of a magnificent edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628, a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep galactic portrait puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, The Hamburger Galaxy.
The tantalizing island universe is about 100,000 light-years across and 35 million light-years away in the northern springtime constellation Leo. NGC 3628 shares its neighborhood in the local Universe with two other large spirals M65 and M66 in a grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. Gravitational interactions with its cosmic neighbors are likely responsible for the extended flare and warp of this spiral's disk.”
“When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it - memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis (remembrance of a guest who tarried but a day) - the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this place and time allotted to me?”
Freely download "Pensées", by Blaise Pascal, here:

Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"

"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Jane Hirshfield

"If I Am..."

 

The Poet: David Whyte, "The Winter of Listening"

"The Winter of Listening"

"No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning red in the palms while
the night wind carries everything away outside.
All this petty worry while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious inside us does not
care to be known by the mind
in ways that diminish its presence.
What we strive for in perfection
is not what turns us into the lit angel we desire,
what disturbs and then nourishes
has everything we need.

What we hate in ourselves
is what we cannot know in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer so far off
I feel it grown in me now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years listening to those
who had nothing to say.
All those years forgetting how everything
has its own voice to make itself heard.
All those years forgetting how easily
you can belong to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow difficulty
of remembering how everything
is born from an opposite
and miraculous otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that otherness.

So let this winter of listening
be enough for the new life
I must call my own."

- David Whyte,
"The House of Belonging"

"The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth..."

"In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the
alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted."
- Michael Musto

The Daily "Near You?"

El Tejo, Cantabria, Spain. Thanks for stopping by!

"The True Dream..."

“Maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves that reality is better. We convince ourselves it’s better that we never dream at all. But, the strongest of us, the most determined of us, holds on to the dream or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We wake to find ourselves, against all odds, feeling hopeful. And, if we’re lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life the true dream is being able to dream at all.”
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything"

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s
Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and
Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning"
by Maria Popova

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” Sometimes, life asks this question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living.

That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by readingSome through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character.

A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing "Man’s Search for Meaning."

As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure - especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame - these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered - as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past - they are now published in English for the first time as "Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything" (public library).

Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit, Frankl writes: "We cannot move toward any spiritual reconstruction with a sense of fatalism such as this."

Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision: "Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age."

Insisting that it takes a measure of moral strength not to succumb to nihilism, be it that of the pessimist or of the optimist, he exclaims: "Give me a sober activism anytime, rather than that rose-tinted fatalism! How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism?
[…]
Through this nihilism, through the pessimism and skepticism, through the soberness of a “new objectivity” that is no longer that “new” but has grown old, we must strive toward a new humanity."

Sophie Scholl, upon whom chance did not smile as favorably as it did upon Frankl, affirmed this notion with her insistence that living with integrity and belief in human goodness is the wellspring of courage as she courageously faced her own untimely death in the hands of the Nazis. But while the Holocaust indisputably disenchanted humanity, Frankl argues, it also indisputably demonstrated “that what is human is still valid… that it is all a question of the individual human being.” Looking back on the brutality of the camps, he reflects:

"What remained was the individual person, the human being - and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down - the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one - the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self."

In a sentiment that bellows from the hallways of history into the great vaulted temple of timeless truth, he adds: "Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being."

Frankl then turns to the question of finding a sense of meaning when the world gives us ample reasons to view life as meaningless - the question of “continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness.” Writing in the post-war pre-dawn of the golden age of consumerism, which has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product, Frankl first dismantles the notion that meaning is to be found in the pursuit and acquisition of various pleasures:

"Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else — preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us."

He quotes a short verse by the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore - the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize, Einstein’s onetime conversation partner in contemplating science and spirituality, and a man who thought deeply about human nature:

"I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked - and behold,
duty was joy."

In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation - an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity - Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point: "So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down."

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe, Frankl turns the question unto itself: "At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?"

Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life - it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to - of being responsible toward - life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.

Frankl adds a caveat of tremendous importance - triply so in our present culture of self-appointed gurus, self-help demagogues, and endless podcast feeds of interviews with accomplished individuals attempting to distill a universal recipe for self-actualization: "The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.

We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?"

What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms, learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms - terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment:

"One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a meaning. One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions."

With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death - a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe. Frankl writes:

"The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.
[…]
Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or leave unfulfilled - that gives our existence significance. But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole that gives it importance, it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment that represents something that loads our existence with the weight of a terrible and yet so beautiful responsibility! Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness."

In the remainder of the slender and splendid "Yes to Life", Frankl goes on to explore how the imperfections of human nature add to, rather than subtract from, the meaningfulness of our lives and what it means for us to be responsible for our own existence. Complement it with Mary Shelley, writing two centuries ago about a pandemic-savaged world, on what makes life worth living, Walt Whitman contemplating this question after surviving a paralytic stroke, and a vitalizing cosmic antidote to the fear of death from astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson, then revisit Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: A Massive Opportunity Is Developing"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/30/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
A Massive Opportunity Is Developing"

"The Economic Pain Continues - Living through the Global Insanity"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/30/22:
"The Economic Pain Continues - Living through the Global Insanity"
"We need to learn to live with the economy we have. The economic Insanity Continues. Everything is chaotic and we can still get ahead knowing this. I am at Seal Cove in La Jolla."

"How It Really Is"