"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: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"We have only seen a handful of movies in a theater over the last decade. Ever since the kids grew up, there hasn’t been a reason to spend too much for too little. Regal Cinemas in Oaks was the place to go in the old days. It had 24 theaters and was always packed. You could never get a parking spot close to the venue. The restaurant near the theater always had a line and you usually had to wait 30 minutes to get a seat.
We decided to go and see Civil War on Friday night, and boy times have changed. Regal Cinemas went bankrupt a few years ago after Covid, and the theater was taken over by some local businessmen. They now play four or five movies, but $10 per ticket is pretty reasonable compared to the chains. Instead of hundreds of cars in the parking lot, there were about 30 cars. We expected a long wait time at the PJ Whelihans, but there were dozens of seats at the bar and booths.
When we ventured over to the cinema, there was no one checking that we had tickets, and it was like a ghost town. A Friday night at the movies a decade ago was a big deal. The place would have been bustling. I can’t see this place making it over the long haul. There were eight people there to see Civil War. The previews were so loud, we thought we were going to need ear plugs. The sound became more reasonable once the movie started.
I had read a few reviews of Civil War and they leaned negative, for a myriad of reasons. Some people seemed disappointed and angry that the director did not pick a side, or even make a single political statement. My interest in this movie stemmed from the snippet shown in previews, where a guy holding some journalists at gunpoint asks them who they are, they respond “Americans”, and he asks them:
I think that is a profound question, as this country has already split into at least two enemy camps, with the leftists already fighting the war using any means necessary. Laws and morality no longer matter during this time of coming conflict. Knowing we are in the back end of this Fourth Turning, there is a high likelihood of civil and/or global war in the next few years. Whenever I point this out, many scorn the possibility of civil war. Some think keyboard warriors will never actually have the guts to get into a shooting war with the government and/ or leftist fanatics.
I was hoping the movie would provide some thought provoking fodder giving me an inkling of what might be on the near term horizon. The movie is more about the journalist characters traveling from NYC to Washington DC in order to get an interview with the embattled president. There was no background regarding what started the civil war, who were the good guys, and whether the entire country was involved. The entire movie took place in the eastern U.S. My observations are as follows:
• The conflict was between the Western Forces versus the existing U.S. government forces. The Western Forces constituted Texas and California, with Florida leaning in their direction. It was not clear whether all the states chose a side. Since both sides had high tech military weapons, the assumption is the U.S. military split its allegiance. That means rogue generals did what southern generals did in 1860.
• For most of the movie, you can’t tell who is fighting who. That seems realistic in a civil war scenario. The scene where the journalists are asked “What kind of American are you?” captures how confusing and chaotic it would be. I don’t think the guy dressed in military garb is on either side. They were dumping bodies into a hole. Without anyone to enforce laws, warlords will rise up and execute retribution on locals they consider enemies. Every local community will become a battleground. Neighbors versus neighbors, families versus families. With 300 million guns, there will be blood.
• Two characters let it be known that their parents have stayed on their farms in Missouri and Colorado, pretending their is no civil war. They seemed dismayed that they wouldn’t choose sides. That made me wonder whether those who choose to not participate in the coming civil war will be able to work their farms in peace. Since modern society will come to a grinding halt, with shortages of fuel and food, I’m afraid small farmers will come under attack by the hungry masses. It will be essential for small communities of like minded folk to form militias to protect their farms and communities.
• We all know our existing uni-party government is corrupt, evil and hates us. Whether we call it the Deep State, corrupt oligarchy, or corporate fascist totalitarians, it is clear they are our enemy. They are continuing to implement their Great Reset/Great Taking scheme, and will only be stopped through violent means. This movie did not take sides, but did imply the existing government will be defeated. The question is who or what takes their place. Sadly, it is unlikely that a republic will be reborn from the ashes of this empire of debt, delusion and decay.
• Civil War was a sobering and depressing movie. I think it is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead. Innocent people will die. Senseless slaughter will be the norm. The boundaries between good and evil will blur. Right and wrong will become meaningless. It will be unclear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Conflict is upon us. Will the cessation of our Constitution before the upcoming election be the spark that starts this civil war? Where and when will our Fort Sumter moment happen? I don’t know, but I fear it is close upon us."
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
"Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” says the UN’s quest for total tyrannical control of your life is coming sooner than you could imagine. Newman explains, “The bigger story here that people are not paying attention to is the UN is coming together in September and they are having ‘The Summit of the Future.’ They are telling us they are going to bring out radical drastic reforms in the structure of the UN and the power of the UN. Think of it as the biggest power grab ever at the global level. The Secretary General of the UN (António Guterres) has put out briefs where he is calling for the UN to be the one world global dictatorship with him at the helm. In emergencies, the UN would have all power in emergencies and have all power to oversee emergency response. They say the crisis could be a climate crisis, an economic crisis, environmental crisis, pandemic crisis, black swan crisis or maybe something from outer space. So, basically, anything could be a crisis, and when the Secretary General declares a crisis, all power and authority would go to the UN. This is like a blank check on the wealth and liberty on every person on the planet, and this is coming soon. It is eminent. This is coming in September at the UN, and it is a power grab of historic proportions. They know their time is short, and they are going for the big enchilada here. This is really a summit for a tyrannical future. They want control of every aspect of your life.”
If you think the “depopulation” or murder program by the Deep State is some sort of conspiracy theory or myth, think again. Newman says, “One of the interesting things about going to the UN conferences is they are totally open and totally transparent about the fact that they think there are way too many of us on this planet. We are taking up their space and consuming their resources. They say this openly. They say there are way too many people having way too many babies, and we have to drastically cut back on the number of people on the planet. They have a whole agency dedicated to this called the UN Population Fund.”
One sure fire way to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time is war. Newman says, “They have understood, the globalists, the Deep State, the evil doers and the sick cabal, have understood for a very long time that war was the best mechanism for bringing about their totalitarian one world government. This is not speculation on my part. This is what they say. Their game plan is war, famine, energy crisis and economic crisis. These are all tools and catalysts for accelerating this agenda. If millions of people die in a third world war, and it does not matter if it is Iran and Israel, or China and Tiawan, or Ukraine and Russia, it really does not matter, they want millions and millions of people dead so people will give up their attachment to the nation state, self-government and individual liberty and give up anything, money or freedom, anything to make it stop.”
Don’t lose hope because Newman also talks about all the things you can do to not comply with tyranny. Newman also points out what state and local governments can do and are doing to resist this UN total control of everything. Newman says, “We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.” There is much more in the 40-minute interview.
“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”
"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul, supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind." Headphones recommended, not required. Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video...
“Namibia has some of the darkest nights visible from any continent. It is therefore home to some of the more spectacular skyscapes, a few of which have been captured in the below time-lapse video. We recommend watching this video at FULL SCREEN (1080p), with audio on. The night sky of Namibia is one of the best in the world, about the same quality of the deserts of Chile and Australia.
Full screen recommended.
Visible at the movie start are unusual quiver trees perched before a deep starfield highlighted by the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This bright band of stars and gas appears to pivot around the celestial south pole as our Earth rotates. The remains of camel thorn trees are then seen against a sky that includes a fuzzy patch on the far right that is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. A bright sunlight-reflecting satellite passes quickly overhead. Quiver trees appear again, now showing their unusual trunks, while the Small Magellanic Cloud becomes clearly visible in the background. Artificial lights illuminate a mist that surround camel thorn trees in Deadvlei. In the final sequence, natural Namibian stone arches are captured against the advancing shadows of the setting moon. This video incorporates over 16,000 images shot over two years, and won top honors among the 2012 Travel Photographer of the Year awards.”
"When the pulse of the first day carried it to the rim of night, First Woman said to First Man, "The people need to know the laws. To help them we must write the laws for all to see"... And so she began, slowly, first one and then the next, placing her jewels across the dome of night, carefully designing her pattern so all could read it. But Coyote grew bored watching First Woman carefully arranging the stars in the sky: Impatiently he gathered two corners of First Woman's blanket, and before she could stop him he flung the remaining stars out into the night, spilling them in wild disarray, shattering First Woman's careful patterns."
This episode from the Navajo creation story of is from "How the Stars Fell Into the Sky", a children's book by Jerrie Oughton. It is a lovely story, full of ancient wisdom. For centuries, Navajo children heard the story at an elder's knee. The story was taken literally, or at least accepted with a willing suspension of disbelief. I heard a similar creation story in my youth - of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Serpent. I accepted the story with a willing suspension of disbelief.
All cultures, everywhere on Earth, have stories, passed down in scriptures, traditions or tribal myths, that answer the questions: Where did the world come from? What is our place in it? What is the source of order and disorder? What will be the fate of the world? Of ourselves? No people can live without a community story. The problem comes when the community story becomes so disconnected from empirical experience that it no longer commands a suspension of disbelief. For many of us in the West, that is the case with the creation stories that have undergirded Western civilization.
Today, a New Story exists for those who choose to accept it. It is the product of thousands of years of human curiosity, observation, experimentation, and creativity. It is an evolving story, not yet finished. Perhaps it will never be finished. It is a story that begins with an explosion from a seed of infinite energy. The seed expands and cools. Particles form, then atoms of hydrogen and helium. Stars and galaxies coalesce from swirling gas. Stars burn and explode, forging heavy elements - carbon, nitrogen, oxygen - and hurling them into space. New stars are born, with planets made of heavy elements.
On one planet near a typical star in a typical galaxy life appears in the form of microscopic self-replicating, carbon-based ensembles of atoms. Life evolves, over billions of years, resulting in ever more complex organisms. Continents move. Seas rise and fall. The atmosphere changes. Millions of species of life appear and become extinct. Others adapt, survive, and spill out progeny. At last, consciousness appears. One of the millions of species on the planet looks into the night sky and wonders what it means. Feels the spark of love, tenderness, responsibility. Makes up stories - of First Woman and Coyote, of Adam, Eve and the Serpent - eventually making up the New Story. The New Story places us squarely in a cosmic unfolding of space and time, and teaches our biological affinity to all humanity. We are inextricably related to all of life, to the planet itself, and even to the lives of stars.
It has been the task of many of us gathered here on this cyber porch to help wed the New Story to the spiritual quest, to create what Thomas Berry calls an "integral story." In his introduction to Kathleen Deignan's collection of Thomas Merton's nature writing, Berry writes: "Today, in the opening years of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in a critical moment when the religious traditions need to awaken again to the natural world as the primary manifestation of the divine to human intelligence. The very nature and purpose of the human is to experience this intimate presence that comes to us through natural phenomena. Such is the purpose of having eyes and ears and feeling sensitivity, and all our other senses. We have no inner spiritual development without outer experience. Immediately, when we see or experience any natural phenomenon, when we see a flower, a butterfly, a tree, when we feel the evening breeze flow over us or wade in a stream of clear water, our natural response is immediate, intuitive, transforming, ecstatic. Everywhere we find ourselves invaded by the world of the sacred."
Berry reminds us that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred. The older creation stories locate the source of the sacred outside of the creation. The New Story, the scientific story of creation, provides unique opportunities to experience the creation itself as holy and good.
We should treasure the ancient stories for the wisdom and values they teach us. We can praise the creation in whatever poetic languages and rituals our traditional cultures have taught us. But only the New Story has the global authority to help us navigate the future. Of all the stories, it is certainly the truest. It is the only story whose feet have been held to the fire of exacting empirical experience.”
“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.
The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.
The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.
Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.
In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.
Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.
Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.
In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.
The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.
It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.
Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.
Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.
There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.
The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.
That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”
"1950s USA, Real Street Scenes of Vintage America Colorized"
"The West That Was"
by Paul Rosenberg
"A great tragedy of our era is that young people have no feeling of what Western civilization was like. In the government owned and operated schools where they sat for years, they were presented with a litany of the West’s failures, most of them exaggerated, or even imagined. In this post, and in several that will follow, I’ll be ignoring anti-Western propaganda. To obsess on flaws is dishonest and destructive. The fact that the people of the West have been conditioned to require them is not something I’ll indulge. All civilizations have had their failures, and our Western civilization stands out, not as the worst, but as the least bad.
My goal for this series of articles is to give you a deep sense of Western civilization and the cultural assumptions that informed it. I’ll be careful to stay with the truth of each era, but what I want is for you to understand the West that was, down to your bones. That’s a tall order, of course, especially for short posts, but that’s what I’m going for. And to get the best start possible, I’ll begin in my own time, describing the America of about 1960. To be precise, I’m probably best describing the years 1953-1963; from the end of the Korean war to the assassination of John Kennedy.
What It Was Like: The first thing to understand about this era is that it was still a time of community. People felt a kinship with their neighbors. They looked out for one another. If something went wrong in your home, you went immediately to your neighbors for help. If your car broke down far from home, you went to the nearest house, knocked on their door and asked if you could use their telephone to call for help. (And were as likely as not to have someone pull out a toolbox and take a look at the car for you.) Crime wasn’t that much less in this era, but people still trusted one another, partly of necessity and partly because we weren’t inundated with fear every waking moment.
Doctors made house calls on their way home. (I vividly remember my brother being examined on our dining room table.) If you had children, the neighbors – even the ones you argued with – would bring over some milk when there was a heavy snow and you couldn’t get to the store. This was standard in more or less every neighborhood. People did stupid and thoughtless things, of course, but we also relied upon one another. We weren’t atomized as people are now.
Back in this era, moms would leave their kids outside in their strollers (prams) while they went into stores. I knew quite a few women who did precisely this. I asked one of them about it long after and she told me this:
Oh, sure. We’d meet at a local restaurant. They gave us a table at the window and we’d park our kids right in front. If a kid needed attention, one of us – not necessarily that one’s mother – would go out, take care of him, then come back in. We all did that then.
And back before air conditioning (which came into homes just after this era), people slept outside on hot nights. In my home town of Chicago, hundreds of families would grab sheets and pillows, head to the lake (it was cooler there) and sleep on the sand.
Moreover, in places like Chicago (though definitely less so in the south or in occasional outbursts), daily race relations tended to be non-hostile. In my early experience, Negros (as they were then called) carried themselves with dignity rather than anger. Certainly I grew up in a nice area and I was sheltered when very young, but I rode the buses and trains by myself at a young age (it would probably be called child abuse now), and observed hundreds or thousands of random people, including at large events.
Another of my observations was that Jews and Blacks felt closer to one another. Both had dark histories of abuse and they felt a kinship. Typically the Jews were bosses and Blacks/Negros employees, but they were loyal to each other. I knew the son of one Black man whose Jewish employers continued to send him paychecks for many years after he became too old to work. That type of loyalty wasn’t terribly uncommon at the time.
Divorce was considerably less common in this era, largely because of a different set of incentives. First of all, people believed that the two-parent family was a necessary model, and those expectations (which could be benevolent or otherwise) drove couples to work harder at staying together. Secondly, there were few if any welfare programs that gave a mother more money if she was single. As a result, the nonmarital birth rate was far lower than it is today, and for all ethnicities.
Politics was less vile in this era. Certainly there was corruption and police brutality – those things are eternal where the few rule the many – but politicians and reporters were expected to do their jobs defensibly. Politicians were frequently scrutinized and public affairs were examined at length, rather than in five second sound bites. People read books on a regular basis. Politics had not yet overcome society.
College was where you went if you wanted to learn how to do important things. It wasn’t a place to get drunk or to get a work permit for a high status job. K-12 schools were more serious places of learning too (with zero politics), but I should add that there was plenty of bullying and a somewhat higher tolerance for brutality among the students.
Another thing that seems to have made a difference was that we felt we had something to prove. This was the era of the Cold War, and being better than the Soviets mattered to people. As a result, they defended their beliefs, worked to live up to them, and treated others who were likewise interested in the goodness of “the American way” with loyalty and respect.
We had movies and TV, of course, but the programming was far more family friendly. Not because of laws, but because the viewers had a strong preferences regarding what was appropriate, sometimes enforced with boycotts of advertisers. In other words, people cared about their culture and wanted to keep it strong. They believed in their ways.
This last point, I suppose, was the key to this era: People still believed in their ways. That is, they still thought the civilization of Abraham, Jesus, Raphael, Bernini, Da Vinci, Newton, Mozart, Locke, Jefferson, Brahms, Edison, Bell and the Wright brothers was a blessing to the world.
As in all generations, these people had their shortcomings, and were easily abused by those who claimed to be protectors of their civilization, but they still believed in it, and acted like they believed in it. These people most certainly understood that there was injustice in the world (they had just gone through World War II), and many of them found meaning in fighting injustice. There was plenty of complaining, but most of the complainers were trying to improve Western civilization, not to wipe it away as a curse.
In short, while all the usual human stupidities were present at this time, most people were also committed to a higher standard than their stupidities. And that not only minimized the damage they caused, but maintained an inter-personal environment that was less stressed, more dignified, more reliable, more forgiving, sometimes warmer, and far less suspicious than our present environment."
"One Retailer left customers high and dry with unfulfilled orders totaling a staggering $33 million! Discover the dark side of luxury shopping and massive chargebacks that are shaking the industry. We break down the alarming practices that led to massive losses for both consumers and credit card companies, focusing on how American Express is now handling the fallout. If you’ve ever felt cheated by a high-end purchase, you're not alone. We dive deep into the world of luxury fraud and what it means for your wallet."
"America Will Not Escape The Debt Abyss, No Way Out"
"The U.S. is spending so much money while homelessness, debt, education, infrastructure and small businesses collapse and we wonder why inflation isn't going away."
"The inspiration for this song was a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode called "The Offspring". Data (an android) creates a "child" for himself which he names Lal (in the Hindi language, Lal means "Beloved"). Lal eventually dies in Data's arms, remembering and retelling the precious moments she has lived. Data transferred Lal's thoughts into his own neural net, so that she would not be forgotten."
"Where do the dark streams of dust in the Orion Nebula originate? This part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, M43, is the often imaged but rarely mentioned neighbor of the more famous M42. M42, seen in part to the upper right, includes many bright stars from the Trapezium star cluster.
Click image for larger size.
M43 is itself a star forming region that displays intricately-laced streams of dark dust - although it is really composed mostly of glowing hydrogen gas. The entire Orion field is located about 1600 light years away. Opaque to visible light, the picturesque dark dust is created in the outer atmosphere of massive cool stars and expelled by strong outer winds of protons and electrons."
"The eternal silence of infinite spaces frightens me. Why now rather than then? Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time have been ascribed to me? We travel in a vast sphere, always drifting in the uncertain, pulled from one side to another. Whenever we find a fixed point to attach and to fasten ourselves, it shifts and leaves us; and if we follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips past us, and vanishes for ever. Nothing stays for us. This is our natural condition, most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desires to find solid ground and an ultimate and solid foundation for building a tower reaching to the Infinite. But always these bases crack, and the earth obstinately opens up into abysses. We are infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, since the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from us in an encapsulated secret; we are equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which we were made, and the Infinite in which we are swallowed up."
"We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer and knowing this allows us to find compassion. From time to time, we may all feel fed up with humanity, whether it’s from learning about what’s going on around the world, or what’s going on next door. There are always situations that leave us feeling as if people are simply not capable of behaving in a way that is coming from a place of awareness. Often it seems as if people are actually geared to handle things in the worst possible way, repeatedly. At the same time, none of us wants to linger in a judgmental mood about our own species. As a result, we might tend to repress the feelings coming up as we take in the news from the world and the neighborhood.
It is natural to feel let down and disappointed when we see our fellow humans behaving in ways that are greedy, selfish, violent, or uncaring, but there are also ways to process that disappointment without sinking into despondency. As with any emotional response, we honor our feelings by feeling them fully, without judging or acting on them. Once we’ve done that—and we may need to do it every day, as part of our daily self-care—we can begin to consider ways that we might help the situation in which humanity finds itself.
As always, we start with ourselves, utilizing our awareness of the failings of others to renew our own commitment to be more conscious human beings. We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, and remembering this keeps us in check, as well as allowing us to find compassion for others. We may find ourselves feeling compelled to serve people who are suffering injustices at the hands of other people, or we may begin to speak out when we see something that we don’t think is right. Whatever the case, the only thing we can do is pledge to serve the best, rather than the worst, of what humanity has to offer, both in the world, and in ourselves."
"What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.”
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
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“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is here...
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