"10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

"10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn"

by Martha Beck

"In the past 10 years, I've realized that our culture is rife with ideas that actually inhibit joy. Here are some of the things I'm most grateful to have unlearned:

"1. Problems are bad. You spent your school years solving arbitrary problems imposed by boring authority figures. You learned that problems- comment se dit?- suck. But people without real problems go mad and invent things like base jumping and wedding planning. Real problems are wonderful, each carrying the seeds of its own solution. Job burnout? It's steering you toward your perfect career. An awful relationship? It's teaching you what love means. Confusing tax forms? They're suggesting you hire an accountant, so you can focus on more interesting tasks, such as flossing. Finding the solution to each problem is what gives life its gusto.

2. It's important to stay happy. Solving a knotty problem can help us be happy, but we don't have to be happy to feel good. If that sounds crazy, try this: Focus on something that makes you miserable. Then think, "I must stay happy!" Stressful, isn't it? Now say, "It's okay to be as sad as I need to be." This kind of permission to feel as we feel- not continuous happiness- is the foundation of well-being.

3. I'm irreparably damaged by my past. Painful events leave scars, true, but it turns out they're largely erasable. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist who had a stroke that obliterated her memory, described the event as losing "37 years of emotional baggage." Taylor rebuilt her own brain, minus the drama. Now it appears we can all effect a similar shift, without having to endure a brain hemorrhage. The very thing you're doing at this moment- questioning habitual thoughts- is enough to begin off-loading old patterns. For example, take an issue that's been worrying you ("I've got to work harder!") and think of three reasons that belief may be wrong. Your brain will begin to let it go. Taylor found this thought-loss euphoric. You will, too.

4. Working hard leads to success. Baby mammals, including humans, learn by playing, which is why "the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." Boys who'd spent years strategizing for fun gained instinctive skills to handle real-world situations. So play as you did in childhood, with all-out absorption. Watch for ways your childhood playing skills can solve a problem (see #1). Play, not work, is the key to success. While we're on the subject...

5. Success is the opposite of failure. Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soon learn to do well. Success is built on failure.

6. It matters what people think of me. "But if I fail," you may protest, "people will think badly of me!" This dreaded fate causes despair, suicide, homicide. I realized this when I read blatant lies about myself on the Internet. When I bewailed this to a friend, she said, "Wow, you have some painful fantasies about other people's fantasies about you." Yup, my anguish came from my hypothesis that other people's hypothetical hypotheses about me mattered. Ridiculous! Right now, imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back.

7. We should think rationally about our decisions. Your rational capacities are far newer and more error-prone than your deeper, "animal" brain. Often complex problems are best solved by thinking like an animal. Consider a choice you have to make- anything from which movie to see to which house to buy. Instead of weighing pros and cons intellectually, notice your physical response to each option. Pay attention to when your body tenses or relaxes. And speaking of bodies...

8. The pretty girls get all the good stuff. Oh, God. So not true. I unlearned this after years of coaching beautiful clients. Yes, these lovelies get preferential treatment in most life scenarios, but there's a catch: While everyone's looking at them, virtually no one sees them. Almost every gorgeous client had a husband who'd married her breasts and jawline without ever noticing her soul.

9. If all my wishes came true right now, life would be perfect. Check it out: People who have what you want are all over rehab clinics, divorce courts, and jails. That's because good fortune has side effects, just like medications advertised on TV. Basically, any external thing we depend on to make us feel good has the power to make us feel bad. Weirdly, when you've stopped depending on tangible rewards, they often materialize. To attract something you want, become as joyful as you think that thing would make you. The joy, not the thing, is the point.

10. Loss is terrible. Ten years ago I still feared loss enough to abandon myself in order to keep things stable. I'd smile when I was sad, pretend to like people who appalled me. What I now know is that losses aren't cataclysmic if they teach the heart and soul their natural cycle of breaking and healing. A real tragedy? That's the loss of the heart and soul themselves. If you've abandoned yourself in the effort to keep anyone or anything else, unlearn that pattern. Live your truth, losses be damned. Just like that, your heart and soul will return home."

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Paulo Coelho, "The Law of Jante"

"The Law of Jante"

by Paulo Coelho

"'The Law of Jante?' Of course I had never heard of this, so he explained what it was. I continued on my journey and discovered it is hard to find anyone in any of the Scandinavian countries who does not know this law. Although the law exists since the beginning of civilization, it was only officially declared in 1933 by writer Aksel Sandemose in the novel “A Refugee Goes Beyond Limits.”

The sad truth is that the Law of Jante is a rule applied in every country in the world, despite the fact that Brazilians say that “this only happens here,” and the French claim that “unfortunately, that’s how it is in our country.” Now, the reader must be annoyed because he/she is already half way through the column and still does not know what the Law of Jante is all about, so I’ll try to explain it here briefly in my own words:

“You aren’t worth a thing, nobody is interested in what you think,

mediocrity and anonymity are your best bet.

If you act this way, you will never have any big problems in life.”

The Law of Jante focuses on the feeling of jealousy and envy that sometimes causes so much trouble for people. This is one of its negative aspects, but there is something far more dangerous. And this law is accountable for the world being manipulated in all possible manners by people who have no fear of what the others say and end up practicing the evil they desire. We have just witnessed a useless war in Iraq, which is still costing many lives; we see a huge abyss between the rich and the poor countries of the world, social injustice on all sides, unbridled violence, people being forced to give up their dreams because of unfair and cowardly attacks. Before starting the second world war, Hitler sent out several signals as to his intentions, and what encouraged him to go ahead was the knowledge that nobody would dare to defy him because of the Law of Jante.

Mediocrity may be comfortable, up to the day that tragedy knocks at the door and people start to wonder: “but why did nobody say anything, if everybody could see that this was going to happen?” Simple: nobody said anything because the others did not say anything either. So in order to prevent things from growing any worse, maybe this is the right moment to write the anti-Law of Jante:

“You are worth far more than you think. Your work and presence

 on this Earth are important, even though you may not think so." 

Of course, thinking in this way, you might have many problems because you are breaking the Law of Jante – but don’t feel intimidated by them, go on living without fear and in the end you will win.”

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"A Lot Of People..."

“When science discovers the center of the universe,

a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.”

- Bernard Baily

"The Road to Serfdom"

"The Road to Serfdom"

by Addison Wiggin

“There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame?”

- V for Vendetta

“We have arrived,” assert John & Nisha Whitehead, “at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta... which is no future at all.” You’ll have to forgive us. We didn’t sleep well last night, got up at 4am and made the mistake of following an X (formerly Twitter) feed that began with Joe Rogan’s latest 2hr 41min podcast with the zaniest richest guy on earth, Elon Musk. It’s not all that surprising what kind of ideas an early morning coffee and social media produce.

So… After a week of recent political and economic history from the perspective of our writing partner on "Empire of Debt", Bill Bonner, today we take a break… and spend a bit of time connecting dots from film, political philosophy and monetary economics.

A simple question to begin: What happens if we continue down our current economic path? The Whiteheads kick us off by summarizing the scene in "V for Vendetta": "Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, deplorables, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless."

With "Vendetta," whose imagery borrows heavily from Nazi Germany’s Third Reich and George Orwell’s "1984", we come full circle. The corporate state in V conducts mass surveillance on its citizens, helped along by closed-circuit televisions. Also, London is under yellow-coded curfew alerts, similar to the American government’s color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System. The film’s director, James McTeighe, observed: “V for Vendetta really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don’t think it’s such a big leap to say things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people.”

Civil libertarians have been fretting over state control since the fascist movements of the 1930s. One of our favorites hits the nail on the head. The Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich Hayek was famously alarmed by Nazi Germany and the rise of national socialism in the 1930s. Hayek’s most famous work "The Road To Serfdom" was originally published in 1944. The book began as a “memo” to Sir William Beveridge, the director of the London School of Economics (LSE), where Hayek was then teaching. Hayek intended to refute the then-popular claim that fascism represented the “dying gasp” of a failed capitalist system.

It’s hard to conceive today, but Eleanor Roosevelt, the nation’s then First Lady, was said to publicly support the efforts of Josef Stalin. Albert Einstein and many of the scientists who had fled Nazi Germany for the United States, supported socialist policies “lock, stock, and barrel.” In "The Road To Serfdom," Hayek argued that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.” Government planning of economies, Hayek asserts, by its very nature leads to arbitrary and unfair edicts and loss of individual liberty.

At the time, "The Road to Serfdom" was deemed heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the economy. Later, in the 1960’s "The Constitution of Liberty," Hayek urged“all those who wish to stop the drift toward increasing government control, should concentrate their efforts on monetary policy.”

A fitting warning today following all the ink spilt trying to read between the lines of Jerome Powell’s explanation for the decision to maintain a “hawkish pause” on interest rate hikes on Wednesday. The stock market rallied on the Fed’s decision. The Dow, S&P and Nasdaq gained half a percent each in unison. The prevailing Wall Street consensus is still “higher for longer” interest rates. But the question financial journalists are trying to answer is not “if” the Fed will revert to cutting rates, but “when.”

The trouble for us, having recently published the 3rd Edition of "Demise of the Dollar," is not just errant policy decisions regarding the nation’s money… not just the historic inflation that was stoked by years of low to zero interest rates and a gush of stimulation checks during the pandemic… but the fact that if the Fed is even successful at reaching it’s arbitrary 2% inflation target, the money in your retirement account still loses purchasing power year-over-year—by design. Here’s what the dollar purchasing power looks like since 1971 when priced in gold:

Of course, Richard Nixon famously dismantled the Bretton Woods exchange rate system linking the dollar to gold in 1971. Up until 1971, the median price for a family home rose relatively consistent when priced in gold.

Since 1971, the amount of dollars it takes to buy - or finance - a home has risen, while the former dollar peg, gold, has remained within range. “Higher for longer” interest rates only make the burden of owning the largest asset in most American families’ portfolios more difficult over time.

In the 1970s my parents bought, rehabbed and sold old colonials in New Hampshire for a living. I recall vividly moving into one house originally built in the 1750s that had no plumbing. We moved into the house in February and had to put on our mukluks and heavy wool mittens to go to the outhouse. I think I was five at the time. That’s the kind of memory that can stick with you.

But, as we recount in our video "The Great American Shell Game", even on that small income we still lived a good life. We were able to go to school, had a couple cars and a truck… we took family vacations… and didn’t have any debt. That’s a lifetime ago. Fat chance anyone trying to buy a family home on a single income anymore.

“Reckless government spending,” reads an op ed in The Hill this week following the release of both glowing GDP and CPI numbers. “Incessant money printing. Historically high interest rates. The worst inflation in 40 years. Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts to deceive them, the American people know that Bidenomics isn’t working.”

Bidenonomics isn’t working in another facet either. The government is stuck managing a rising debt load… actively engaging in two expensive wars… and politically they can’t cut spending or raise taxes. The newly minted House Speaker, Mike Johnson, just proposed cutting Social Security to finance the spending bills for Ukraine, Israel and a secure Southern border. That’s a ballsy political stunt, if you think about it… he’s basically daring the warmongers to prefer Ukraine and Israel to their own obligation to the nation’s retirees.

“It’s clear where this is going,” wrote the monetary economist Judy Shelton, critiquing Bidenomics in September during a spate of White House press releases. “When the government is unconstrained by budgetary discipline and monetary-policy makers punish the private sector with high interest rates to rectify the errors of fiscal policy, democratic capitalism can’t last long.”

The worst-case scenario, in our view, is when otherwise productive middle and lower class workers get disgruntled and start finding less-than-productive uses of their time, like taking to the streets over political issues. Or worse, engage in all sorts of random and organized theft and violence. When experiencing economic anxiety and political disenfranchisement… people will do some very foolish things.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people,” writes Alan Moore, in the original V for Vendetta. Check out Shell Game, here.

Follow your own bliss,

- https://thewigginsessions.com/

P.S. Earlier this week, we waited in line for a sales associate in Home Depot to unlock a glass panel over the selection of drill bits we wanted to buy. The guy next to us, a building contractor, had been waiting for 45 minutes to get a battery he needed on his job site. That can’t be good for business, we thought. Out of curiosity we wondered what the total (reported) cost of retail theft at stores like Target and Home Depot is… and discovered it’s astounding.

In 2023, losses from theft are projected to reach $122 billion; an amount of loss equal to the entire annual GPD of Ethiopia."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Grocery Prices That Are Going Up In Winter Of 2023-2024! Food Shortage Report"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 11/3/23

"Grocery Prices That Are Going Up In Winter Of 2023-2024!

 Food Shortage Report"

"We're going over all of the different foods that are going up in price for Fall and Winter of 2023 - 2024. We also cover some of the different food shortages that are popping up around the country. With prices continuing to rise, we have to prepare for the worst and plan accordingly. It's getting tough out here as many families continue to struggle to put food on the table."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "There Will Be No Relief"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/3/23

"There Will Be No Relief"

"In this deep-dive, we examine the grim forecasts from the National Retail Federation, the struggles of ordinary people to keep up with soaring costs, and the radical changes in our education system. We also discuss the implications of the increasing wages in California, and the impacts on popular food chains."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Dangerous Place..."

"If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity."

- Albert Einstein

"Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it.

Right is right even if only you are doing it."

- Author Unknown

Jim Kunstler, "The Jewish American Dilemma"

"The Jewish American Dilemma"

by Jim Kunstler

“In a world that is not conforming to the narrative of continuous Progress, the response from self-declared progressives has been to try to rewrite our past into the multicultural utopia that they wish to see realized. This will not end well. The war on reality cannot be won.” - Luke Dodson

"At this moment, when there is an awful struggle over the Hebrews’ place in the world - so dire that you’re waiting for World War Three to vaporize everything you’ve ever cared about - one observes the Jewish American scene with trepidation. Since I am a Jewish American, I’m just going to flop this one on the table like so much meat to see what kind of animals it brings out of the woodwork to fight over it.

The Hamas war has exposed a deep current of animosity against Israel and against Jews generally world-wide, even here. This, you understand, is happening at a time of what we might call epic global political mental illness. A mass formation psychosis appears to grip many population groups, each in its own way, but often expressing itself as a longing for death, ranging from the economic suicide of Western Europe to the rise of Jihad to the desolate nihilism of American nose-ring youth.

Jewish Americans have played a leading role in American intellectual and political life through the 20th century and into this one. We Jews increasingly dominated the arenas of literature, academia, medicine, law, news media, and show biz. Business and government, too. In America, we mostly overcame (or seemed to) the deep, old-world superstitions against us, thanks to successful near-total cultural assimilation. I, for example, came from a Jewish family far more interested in baseball than Talmud, who put up a Christmas tree in the living room, and ate sweet-and-sour pork frequently. Perhaps this made us “bad” Jews, but frankly, it was more important to be good Americans - that is, people who cared more about our country than our ancestral origins.

American Jews have also been major players in the political Left through the past hundred-odd years, and especially within the Democratic Party. Lately, it appears that the Democratic Party is bent on destroying the country, so one is naturally left to wonder how this happened and what is the role of American Jews in this. I will offer a hypothesis.

Old World Jews, scattered in diaspora among alien nations, were united for centuries by the longing to return to Jerusalem, the ancestral homeland. “Next year in Jerusalem!” is the toast that concludes each Passover seder. The modern activist manifestation of that, starting in 19th century Europe, was Zionism, the political movement to reinhabit the Bible land of the Middle East. The label Zionism has recently been confabulated with a notion that it stands for Jews wielding a disdainful sense of superiority against non-Jews.

This is, of course, a false understanding. Mostly, it is an envious projection because Jews succeeded so well in America, and they succeeded, as I averred above, largely because they assimilated so completely. How else can you explain a Jew such as Samuel Goldwyn (born Szmuel Gelbfisz, later Samuel Goldfish) of Gloversville, New York, rising to run Hollywood’s MGM studio and turning out movies like "Gone with the Wind" that showed the rest of the nation what America was about? Or Irving Berlin who wrote "God Bless America?"

For the Jews who arrived here in the late 19th and early 20th century, America became even more of a promised land than that sliver of Biblical real estate on the Mediterranean. They succeeded here beyond their wildest dreams. Why dream idly about returning to the Middle East when the USA turned out to be the real Land of Milk and Honey? Hence, a revision in American Judaism became necessary. Next year in Jerusalem was replaced as a central animating principle by an alternate shibboleth: tikkun olam.

Tikkun Olam means repair the world. This has been driving American Judaism since the early 20th century. Meanwhile, the genocide of the 1940s gave new impetus to next year in Jerusalem for what remained of the European Jews, and thus you get the establishment of Israel in 1948 - notwithstanding the geopolitical legerdemain that actually brought it about. American Jews, while sympathetic to a fault with the founding of Israel, and deeply vested emotionally in its success, had a different agenda in the USA after World War Two. They endeavored to repair America. Tikkun Olam!

Mostly this expressed itself in Jewish support and involvement in the Civil Rights movement, since the end of discrimination against anybody was considered a good thing for the Jews as well as humanity in general. The country needed a moral repair job, especially after defeating manifest evil in the big war. That effort climaxed in the mid 1960s with the federal legislation that ended Jim Crow policy in voting and public accommodations. Much of the actual on-the-ground work to make this happen was accomplished by Jewish lawyers. This is a fact, not an accusation.

But then something happened. Several things. One was that not all of black America necessarily regarded the Civil Rights movement as the great moral victory it was touted to be. A lot of black youth in the 1960s opted out early on and went their own way in black separatist movements of various kinds. As a practical matter, it also slowly became obvious that the new Civil Rights laws did not raise up the black underclass out of poverty and misery. Jewish liberal apostates would even argue that the vast federal social safety-net program largess that accompanied Civil Rights Inc. only made the condition of poor blacks worse.

This became a growing fiasco for American Jewish liberals, who, by the 1980s, then strove to impose another set of repairs (more tikkun olam) on American society: multiculturalism, meaning it was no longer necessary to promote a common culture that people would be encouraged to assimilate into, to join a consensus of values and behaviors. Instead, all cultures could behave according to their own rules. That hasn’t worked out so well either, and the world repairers have lately had to resort to coercion such as tyrannical diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and the shoving aside of equal opportunity for enforced equal outcomes (“equity”). That business has only produced additional unintended consequences, such as the new epidemic of institutional incompetence and the resentment of at least half the population against new forms of counter-discrimination (cultural Marxism, in short).

Another poorly understood byproduct of this failure to repair the world is the guilt and shame secretly experienced by the American liberal Left over the apparent failure of the Civil Rights movement they fought so hard for, and the subsequent failed efforts to tweak it and save it (still more tikkun olam). Thus, we see the absurd racist “anti-racism” of the universities, and so many other affronts to common sense and reality itself.

But the worst byproduct of all this tragically misguided tikkun olam is that the main political vehicle for it, the Democratic Party, has gone so insane that it now devotes itself fanatically to the utter destruction of what remains of our country. This is most particularly true in the law, which might be considered the backbone of America. Lawfare attorneys such as Marc Elias, work tirelessly to turn American election law upside down and inside out so it becomes increasing impossible to know who is voting and if the ballots are legitimate.

The Democratic Party has decided it’s okay to use the law in bad faith to persecute and jail its political opponents. The Democratic Party has destroyed American’s faith in the federal courts, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. The Democratic Party allows an invasion of millions of unvetted aliens across the border, quite a few of them possibly bent on making mayhem here as global tensions careen into hot war. The Democratic Party is still pushing Covid vaccinations that are well-understood at this point to be ineffective and unsafe. And the Democratic Party is doing everything possible (with help from RINO Republicans) to destroy our financial system. You could easily make the case that the Democratic Party is the anti-American Party.

If they really want to repair the world, it’s time for Jewish Americans to get out of the Democratic Party and re-assimilate into an American common culture - a consensus about reality - that is consistent with running a successful, orderly, and just society."

- https://kunstler.com/

o

"The Dilemma of Jewish Privilege"

Anti-Semitism both on the left and right is getting in 

the way of Jews coming to terms with their own racism.

- https://newrepublic.com/

Bill Bonner, "Give War a Chance"

"Give War a Chance"

A look back at the glory days... when war still paid.

by Bill Bonner

Normandy, France - "The White House has asked for $106 billion so it can be a part of the futile stalemate in the Ukraine and the mass murders in Israel and Gaza. The Israelis don’t need the money – they are among the world’s richest peoples. The Ukrainians merely waste it…with billions skimmed by corrupt officials and much of the rest making its way back to America’s firepower industry.

But though this spending is considered essential to preserving the peace and happiness of the world, nobody seems very eager to pay for it – at least not with honest money. No ‘war tax’ has been levied, neither in the US, Israel or even the Ukraine. There are no crowd-funding efforts on the internet. No government is cutting back on its butter to pay for its guns.

Nor will there be any pay-off from victory. Making war used to be a profitable enterprise. You would steal land, gold, jewelry…and sell your victims into slavery. No more. Now, unless you are actually under attack, war is a losing proposition. But let’s look back at those glory days…when war still paid.

Danegeld Tribute: The rich and fertile valleys of what is today Normandy must have been an appealing prize. Viking raiders must have thought they had found the promised land. The attacks began at the end of the 700s – pillaging, raping, stealing the treasuries of monasteries and killing, blinding or mutilating everyone who got in their way. By 851, a Viking army…an organized army of Danes…camped on the banks of the Seine and used the river to raid far into the heart of France.

The local ‘french’ were the Palestinians then. They were chased from their lands…or, if not killed, turned into slaves or serfs of their new “Norman” masters. Once Normandy was fully under their control, the men from the North – mostly Danes and some Norwegians – built their castles, collected their ‘danegeld’ tribute…and soon began to fight with each other. They were warfighters, and thanks to a lot of practice, they were good at it.

In 1066, led by Duke William, they got together and attacked England. Now, the English were the Palestinians. After their army was defeated at Hastings, some English nobles held out. Some made peace. Some resorted to ‘terrorism’ to try to hold the Normans at bay. But the invaders were better organized, ruthless and relentless. Land, won by the sword, remained with its new owners. The native English were dispossessed, forced to submit, die or flee. Even to this day, some of England’s green and pleasant land is still in the hands of the descendants of fierce Norman warlords.

Normans were a restless bunch. As William the Conqueror destroyed the English, a single Norman family – the Hautevilles – laid waste to much of Southern Italy. Tancred de Hauteville had 12 sons by different wives. At least one, apparently, went to England with William and ended up in Somerset. Two others, returning from the crusades, through Apulia, found their services, as swords-for-hire, much in demand. They sent for more brothers, cousins and other Norman knights. After a few decades of fierce fighting – the native Italians were the Palestinians then – they were in control of all of Southern Italy and Sicily. By a remarkable quirk of history, in 1220, one of the Hauteville descendants ended up as Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. He was a Hohenstaufen…but a Norman too.

Primitive Peoples: Meanwhile, England pacified, the Anglo-Normans turned their attention to Ireland. There was another prize…inhabited only by ‘primitive’ peoples. “Oh…the history of Ireland is as misty as the Blackwater Valley,” says a neighbor…a fellow resident of the land along the Blackwater River.

As to both, he seems to be right. This time of year, even on a clear day, down in the valley, the mists take several hours each morning to dissipate. We live on “Church Hill” – where an ancient Church tower reminds us of the clouds of Irish history. Only a few hundred yards from it are the ruins of an abbey – raided by Vikings in the 9th century…(probably) destroyed by the English in the 17th. In the other direction is a castle keep…heavy, with thick walls poking up from the morning fog. It is a relic of another part of Ireland’s history. This castle was built by the Earl of Pembroke, Richard (Strongbow) de Clare, or one of his group of Anglo-Norman invaders in the 12th century. It was fortified, protection against the native Irish and other Norman warlords.

Like Gaza in the 21st century, Ireland in the 17th century had the misfortune to be a long way from God and very close to a much more powerful and determined adversary. And like the people of Gaza, the Irish had little power…and few friends. They were seen as barbarians – poor, dirty, uncivilized. If you had been able to check their DNA back then, you would have found them very similar to the English themselves. Both were fundamentally ‘celtic,’ with a generous admixture of Viking blood. But by the 1100s, the two groups were separated by a wide gulf of history, religion, language and culture.

“Old English”: The first Anglo-Norman invasion began in 1166. One hundred years after William the Conqueror landed on the English coast, Norman fighters, led by Strongbow, came up this same Blackwater River…the same river used by Vikings 300 years earlier. They built their castles…imposed their laws and treated the locals like…well…Palestinians. After a few hundred years, however, these conquerors had been assimilated into the local Irish culture. They became the “Old English,” who spoke Irish, married into the Irish clans, and were said to be “more Irish than the Irish.’

These ‘English’ clung to the area around Dublin and enacted laws designed to prevent further assimilation. The Kilkenny Statues of 1366, for example, forbade intermarriage, speaking Irish or dressing in an Irish way. Inevitably, the more the English tried to assert their authority, the more Irish ‘terrorists’ resisted. It was a chaotic time, with battles between the English settlers and the Irish chiefs…and between opposing Irish clans, as well. Then, in the 16th century, The Desmond Rebellions brought “the greatest exercise in ethnic cleansing in modern history.” Tune in on Monday for Part II of ‘Give War a Chance.'"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Col. Douglas Macgregor, "Real Threat"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 11/3/23

"Real Threat"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: Hours Away... Iran Moves Troops To Israeli Border; Russia Joins Iran; US Nuke Plant Attack"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 11/2/23

"Alert: Hours Away... Iran Moves Troops To Israeli Border; 

Russia Joins Iran; US Nuke Plant Attack"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"There Comes A Time..."

"We Americans have a saying: "It's more important what you stand for than who you stand with." I do not rely upon peer opinion to decide what is right and what is wrong. I make those decisions for myself, and even if I discover that every other human alive chose differently, that doesn't mean I was wrong. There comes a time in every man's life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse.

Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and "great thinking". It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice."

- Steven Den Beste

Gerald Celente, "Market Bounce Fraud; Brink Of Annihilation"

Very strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 11/2/23

"Market Bounce Fraud; Brink Of Annihilation"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald's in exceptionally fine form today, lol

Jeremiah Babe, "Americans Living Paycheck To Paycheck Sipping On Starbucks; Stock Market Madness"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/2/23

"Americans Living Paycheck To Paycheck 

Sipping On Starbucks; Stock Market Madness"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Wait For Me"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Wait For Me"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.

The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110403.html

"In The Last Analysis..."

"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity;

 since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the

 madness on which the whole world happens to agree."

   - George Bernard Shaw

"Credit Crisis Is About To Trigger A Flood Of Bankruptcies As Banks Warn About Serious Risks"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/2/23

"Credit Crisis Is About To Trigger A Flood 

Of Bankruptcies As Banks Warn About Serious Risks"

"This is not just a credit crisis. It’s the beginning of a downturn that will change our lives. The credit crunch is about to trigger a huge spike in bankruptcies in the United States, and millions of Americans are likely to lose their jobs as a result. That’s according to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks that warned about the impact of the Federal Reserve’s disastrous policies this week.

Right now, the largest banks in America are extremely worried about rising loan delinquencies and defaults. That’s why they are borrowing less money from U.S. businesses and consumers. At such elevated interest rates, the probability companies and individuals will end up falling behind on their loan payments is really high, and so is the risk of banks facing even bigger financial losses.

They’re trying to preserve their integrity after the meltdown that shook the industry back in April, especially as more indicators point to increased turmoil in the next few months. By cutting lines of credit, these banks are trying to stop the bleeding before it gets worse. But on the other hand, they are setting the stage for an unprecedented spike in business bankruptcies as they cut an important lifeline for struggling companies. Since the pandemic, Main Street has been feeling the pinch of conditions that haven’t improved materially up until this point.

Data from the S&P Global shows that 2023 corporate bankruptcies are rising at an alarming rate. Researcher and economist Peter St Onge blamed the problem on one key facet: "It’s simple. Banks aren't lending," St Onge said. Just in the first half of 2023, the number of corporate bankruptcies in the U.S. shot up by 216%, the highest year-over-year increase since 2008. A UBS report also found that bankruptcies worth $10 million or more had a rolling average of about 8 per week.

Meanwhile, Bank of America is concerned about what will happen to the U.S. consumer as a result of these policies. In March, analysts warned that the Fed would push consumers to the “point of pain” in order to tame inflation. And now, according to Bank of America’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, that time has come.

During an interview with CNBC, Moynihan said the way consumers are acting is consistent with the behavior seen right before crises erupt. In a given year, Bank of America customers spend $4 trillion dollars — be it using a debit or credit card, writing a check, confirming a bank transfer, or taking cash out to spend. From 2021 to 2022 that spending went up by 10%, Moynihan revealed, and began dropping to 9% in the first quarter of 2023.

Today, many Americans say their household expenses are outstripping their incomes, leading them to save less for their future. Researchers found that about 2 in 3 Americans say their household expenses have risen over the last year, but only about 1 in 4 say their income has increased in the same period.

The main question is what is going to happen to millions of Americans facing similar issues when the credit crisis chokes out numerous U.S. businesses and sparks widespread job losses? How will they afford basic necessities without a job and a line of credit? Who is going to help U.S. workers to get back on their feet? No matter where we look, the scenario seems completely devastating. The credit crisis will have far-reaching implications across our entire society, and unfortunately, the pain we felt so far is just the beginning."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Most Ignorance..."

"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. 

We don’t know because we don’t want to know."

- Aldous Huxley

The Daily "Near You?"

Boring, Oregon, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Every Human Decision..."

"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, 

every human decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."

- Jeff Duntemann

"Internet Sacred Text Archive"

"About Sacred Texts"

"All ancient books which have once been called sacred by man, will have their lasting place in the history of mankind, and those who possess the courage, the perseverance, and the self-denial of the true miner, and of the true scholar, will find even in the darkest and dustiest shafts what they are seeking for, - real nuggets of thought, and precious jewels of faith and hope."

- Max Müller, "Introduction to the Upanishads" Vol. II.

"This site is a freely available archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language.

This site has no particular agenda other than promoting religious tolerance and scholarship. Views expressed at this site are solely those of specific authors, and are not endorsed by sacred-texts. Sacred-texts is not sponsored by any religious group or organzation.

Sacred texts went live on March 9th, 1999. The traffic started to increase when sacred-texts was listed at Yahoo! under 'Society and Religion|Texts'. In its first year of operation sacred-texts had about a quarter million hits. By 2004, it was receiving well over a quarter million hits per day. 

Today, site traffic often exceeds a million hits a day. Sacred texts is one of the top 20,000 sites on the web based on site traffic, consistently one of the top 10,000 sites in Australia, the US and India, and is one of the top 5 most visited general religion sites (source: Alexa.com).

The texts presented here are either original scans from books and articles clearly in the public domain, material which has been presented elsewhere on the Internet, or material included under fair use conditions in printed anthologies.

Many of the texts included here were originally posted in ftp archives or on bulletin boards before the growth of the World Wide Web and have been lost. In some cases, the texts were posted in such a form as to make them unusable by non-technically oriented users. Some of these texts were on the web at some point but have completely disappeared because the site they were posted on has closed. Thus the need for an archive which organizes this material in a persistent location.

From the start, we have had a special focus on remedying the under-representation of traditional cultures on the Internet. The site has one of the largest collections of transcriptions of complete books on Native American, Pacific, African, Asian and other traditional people's religion, spiritual practices, mythology and folklore. While many of these pre-20th century books are flawed due to orientalist or colonialist biases, they are also eye-witness accounts by reliable observers, typically at the moment of contact. These texts are crucial to the study of tribal traditions, and in many cases, the only link with the past. Locked up in academic libraries for decades, sacred-texts has made them freely accessible anywhere in the world.

We have scanned hundreds of books which have all been made freely accessible to the world. A comprehensive bibliography of the texts scanned at sacred texts is available here.

We welcome email regarding typographical or factual errors in any file at sacred-texts. Please write us if you spot an error; include the URL and a few lines of context so we can pin down the location.

While all due care has been taken in the reproduction of the texts here, none of the texts or translations here are represented to be sanctioned by any particular religious body or institution. We welcome advice as to errors of fact or transcription.

Some of the material here may be copyrighted. It is our hope that the copyright holders may allow these texts to be posted here in the public interest. If you are the copyright holder of record of a text which you believe has been archived at this site in error, please contact us at the email address listed at the bottom of this page. We have made a good-faith effort to determine the provenance of each text and apologize if we have posted a text in error. Note: If you are requesting the removal of a file, you must be the copyright holder of the file, and you must specify the exact URL of the file.”

- http://www.sacred-texts.com/about.htm

○

Fabulous, an absolute treasure trove! Enjoy!

"The Web Gallery of Art"

"The Web Gallery of Art"

"The Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture of the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism and Realism periods (1100-1850), containing over 52,800 reproductions. It was started in 1996 as a topical site of the Renaissance art, originated in the Italian city-states of the 14th century and spread to other countries in the 15th and 16th centuries. Intending to present Renaissance art as comprehensively as possible, the scope of the collection was later extended to show its Medieval roots as well as its evolution to Baroque and Rococo via Mannerism. More recently the periods of Neoclassicism and Romanticism were also included.

The collection has some of the characteristics of a virtual museum. The experience of the visitors is enhanced by guided tours helping to understand the artistic and historical relationship between different works and artists, by period music of choice in the background and a free postcard service. At the same time the collection serves the visitors' need for a site where various information on art, artists and history can be found together with corresponding pictorial illustrations. Although not a conventional one, the collection is a searchable database supplemented by a glossary containing articles on art terms, relevant historical events, personages, cities, museums and churches.

The Web Gallery of Art is intended to be a free resource of art history primarily for students and teachers. It is a private initiative not related to any museums or art institutions, and not supported financially by any state or corporate sponsors. However, we do our utmost, using authentic literature and advice from professionals, to ensure the quality and authenticity of the content.

We are convinced that such a collection of digital reproductions, containing a balanced mixture of interlinked visual and textual information, can serve multiple purposes. On one hand it can simply be a source of artistic enjoyment; a convenient alternative to visiting a distant museum, or an incentive to do just that. On the other hand, it can serve as a tool for public education both in schools and at home."

- https://www.wga.hu/

For those so inclined, this is a treasure trove of material. Enjoy!

"Luminarium"

"Luminarium"

“I have undertaken a labor, a labor out of love for the world, and to comfort noble hearts: those that I hold dear, and the world to which my heart goes out. Not the common world do I mean, of those who (as I have heard) cannot bear grief and desire but to bathe in bliss. (May God then let them dwell in bliss!) Their world and manner of life my tale does not regard: it's life and mine lie apart. Another world do I hold in mind, which bears together in one heart its bitter sweetness and its dear grief, its heart's delight and its pain of longing, dear life and sorrowful death, dear death and sorrowful life. In this world let me have my world, to be damned with it, or to be saved.”

- Gottfried Von Strassburg


"A comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration and Eighteenth Century. This site combines several sites first created in 1996 to provide a starting point for students and enthusiasts of English Literature. Nothing replaces a quality library, but hopefully this site will help fill the needs of those who have not access to one.

Luminarium is the labor of love of Anniina Jokinen. The site is not affiliated with any institution nor is it sponsored by anyone other than its maintainer and the contributions of its visitors through revenues from book sales via Amazon.com, poster sales via All Posters, and advertising via Google AdSense.

For all materials, authorities in a given subject are consulted. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Encyclopaedia Britannica, and The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English are some of the general reference works consulted for accuracy of dates and details. Many of the materials collected here reside elsewhere. Quality and accuracy are concerns, and all materials are checked regularly. However, "Luminarium" cannot be held responsible for materials residing on other sites. Corrections and suggestions for improvements are encouraged from the visitors.

The site started in early 1996. I remember looking for essays to spark an idea for a survey class I was taking at the time. It seemed that finding study materials online was prohibitively difficult and time-consuming - there was no all-encompassing site which could have assisted me in my search. I started the site as a public service, because I myself had to waste so much time as a student, trying to find anything useful or interesting. There were only a handful of sites back then (read: Internet Dark Ages) and I could spend hours on search engines, looking for just a few things. I realized I must not be the only one in the predicament and started a simple one-page site of links to Middle English Literature. That page was soon followed by a Renaissance site.

Gradually it became obvious that the number of resources was ungainly for such a simple design. It was then that the multi-page "Medlit" and "Renlit" pages were created, around July 1996. That structure is still the same today. In September 1996, I started creating the "Sevenlit" site, launched in November. I realized the need to somehow unite all three sites, and that led to the creation of Luminarium. I chose the name, which is Latin for "lantern," because I wanted the site to be a beacon of light in the darkness. It was also befitting for a site containing authors considered "luminaries" of English literature."

- http://www.luminarium.org/

The Poet: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

- Dylan Thomas

"In These Downbeat Times..."

"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each other s throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."

- Cornel West

"How It Really Is"

 

"Considerable Knowledge..."

"It takes considerable knowledge just to

realize the extent of your own ignorance."

- Thomas Sowell

o

Adventures With Danno, "Holiday Sales At Kroger, Stock Up Now!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 11/2/23

"Holiday Sales At Kroger, Stock Up Now!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger in Pigeon Forge Tennessee, and we are showing all of the holiday sales for November 2023. We all need to take advantage of these sales as prices continue to go up all around the country!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can’t Afford Lunch"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/2/23

"You Can’t Afford Lunch"

"Inflation is taking such a big bite out of people’s ability to eat out. Lunch has become to expensive for most of us. Plus, we are hearing huge problems with ensuring electric vehicles."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"World War III Update, 11/2/23"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 11/2/23

"The Potential for a Third World War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/2/23

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Israeli Self-destruction In Gaza"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"WW III Alert: Erdogan Threatens Invasion Of Israel &

 Netanyahu Calls For Total Gaza Bloodbath"

o

"Sobering Analysis - Israel Cannot Destroy Hamas,

 And The USA Cannot Defeat Iran"

"Today we bring you part 2 of the hard-hitting interview with Dr. Shiva, plus a very important analysis of why Israel cannot destroy Hama, and why the USA can't defeat Iran. You need to know this information. The western press has lied to you about the capabilities of countries like Iran and Turkey. They are both actually more advanced than the USA and Israel in terms of military weaponry, drones, hypersonic missiles and more. Through arrogance and stupidity, the USA and Israel are walking right into a trap that could lead to the total destruction of Israel and the financial collapse of the U.S."

View this video here:

- https://www.brighteon.com/