Friday, May 3, 2024

"There Are Times..."

"There Are Times"

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

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

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

"Assumptiions..."

 

"Hermann Hesse on Hope, the Difficult Art of Taking Responsibility, and the Wisdom of the Inner Voice"

"Hermann Hesse on Hope, the Difficult Art of Taking Responsibility, 
and the Wisdom of the Inner Voice"
by Maria Popova

“Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life - is the source from which self-respect springs,” Joan Didion wrote in her timeless essay on self-respect. And yet this willingness does not come naturally to the human animal. We glance left and right, we peer above and below, placing the responsibility for our suffering everywhere but at the center of our own being. We treat the unhandsome consequences of our actions as something that happens to us, at us, by some wretched external causality. In the process, the tick of our self-righteousness grows fatter and fatter on bloodthirsty blame.

The great German poet, novelist, and painter Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962) offered an antidote to this all too human tendency in one of his least known pieces of writing, composed as the world was coming back to consciousness after the First World War.

The war had violently ejected Hesse from the exultations of his youth. But he never lost his idealism - he became an impassioned advocate for pacifism and its wellspring in the mindfulness of individuals. Over the next three decades, through the aftermath of one devastating war and the harrowing actuality of another, Hesse composed a series of remarkable, clear-minded, largehearted essays, letters, and pamphlets condemning his compatriots for the unthinking herd mentality that had allowed Hitler’s rise to power and inviting what he saw as the only salvation for them: a new ethos of responsibility, beginning at the personal level upon which the political rests. He was especially invested in invigorating the young - the next generations who had inherited a burden not their own and upon whose shoulders the task of redemption fell with spirit-crushing weight.

These pieces were eventually collected in 1946 - the year Hesse received the Nobel Prize - and later published as If the War Goes On… (public library). Among them is the stirring “Letter to a Young German,” written to a dispirited youth in 1919 - a decade before the publication of Rilke’s almost spiritual classic Letters to a Young Poet, and brimming with kindred consolation for the transcendent traumas of living. This was a momentous year for Hesse. Having recently lost his marriage to the fallout of his wife’s acute mental illness, he had just left Berlin to settle alone in a small farmhouse in Switzerland. WWI had just ended, having begun as “the war to end all wars,” instead netting millions of deaths and laying the gruesome groundwork for future genocides. That year, Hesse signed Romain Rolland’s Declaration of the Independence of the Mind - the extraordinary manifesto for critical thinking and pacifism, co-signed by such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore, Jane Addams, and Upton Sinclair.

Hesse addresses his despairing young correspondent while himself perched on this precipice between optimism and despair. Three years before Bertrand Russell made his timeless case for what he termed “the will to doubt,” Hesse writes: "You write me that you are in despair and do not know what to believe, what to hope. You do not know whether or not there is a God. You do not know whether or not life has any meaning, whether or not love of country has a meaning, whether, in the wretched condition of the world, it is better to strive for spiritual goods or merely to fill your belly. I believe your state of mind and soul to be the right one. Not to know whether there is a God, not to know whether there is good and evil, is far better than to know for sure."

More than half a century before Jacob Bronowski admonished against the dark side of certainty, Hesse offers a sobering antidote to the destructive self-righteousness our certitudes delude us into: "Five years ago, if you remember, I should say you were pretty well convinced there was a God, and above all you had no doubt as to what was good and what was evil. Naturally you did what you thought was good and marched off to war. For five years now, the best years of your youth, you have kept on doing “good”: you have fired a gun, gone over the top, lounged about in barracks and mud holes, buried comrades or bandaged their wounds. And little by little you began to doubt the good, to suspect that the good and glorious occupation you were engaged in was fundamentally evil, or at the very least stupid and absurd.

And so it was. Evidently the good you were so sure of at the time was not the right good, the good that is indestructible and timeless; and evidently the God you knew in those days was not the right God… Hundreds of thousands of bloody battle sacrifices were offered up to him, and in his honor hundreds of thousands of bellies were slit open, hundreds of thousands of lungs torn to pieces; he was more bloodthirsty and brutal than any idol…"

With an eye to the tragic human tendency toward perpetrating wrong under the trance of self-righteousness - a tendency as devastating in the personal realm as it is in the political - he holds up a discomfiting mirror to the self-righteous: "Has anyone stopped to consider, and to wonder at the fact, that in those four years of war our theologians buried their own religion, their own Christianity? Committed to the service of love, they preached hatred; committed to the service of mankind, they mistook for mankind the authorities who paid them."

Decades before James Baldwin observed that “it has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within” and a century before Anne Lamott admonished against how self-righteousness syphons self-respect, Hesse contemplates “the disastrous art of putting the blame on others when we are in trouble” and exhorts for personal responsibility over self-righteous blamefulness:

"We are all of us equally guilty and innocent of the fact that our faith was so weak and our officially patented God so ruthless, that we were so incapable of distinguishing war and peace, good and evil. You and I, the Kaiser and the priest, all played a part; we have no call to accuse one another. It is childish and stupid to ask whether this one or that one is guilty. I propose that for one short hour we ask ourselves instead: “What about myself? What has been my share of the guilt? When have I been too loudmouthed, too arrogant, too credulous, too boastful? What is there in me that may have helped… all the illusions that have so suddenly collapsed?”

Echoing Emerson’s foundational ideas about nonconformity and self-reliance - “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” the Sage of Concord, whom Hesse read and greatly admired, had written in the previous century - Hesse offers his young correspondent the only real and reliable source of comfort:

"If you are now wondering where to look for consolation, where to seek a new and better God, a new and better faith, you will surely realize, in your present loneliness and despair, that this time you must not look to external, official sources, to Bibles, pulpits, or thrones, for enlightenment. Nor to me. You can find it only in yourself. And there it is, there dwells the God who is higher and more selfless… The sages of all time have proclaimed him, but he does not come to us from books, he lives within us, and all our knowledge of him is worthless unless he opens our inner eye. This God is in you too. He is most particularly in you, the dejected and despairing… Search where you may, no prophet or teacher can relieve you of the need to look within… Don’t confine yourself… to any other prophet or guide. Our mission is not to instruct you, to make things easier for you, to show you the way. Our mission is solely to remind you that there is a God and only one God; he dwells in your hearts, and it is there that you must seek him out and speak with him."

To hear and heed that inner voice - the sound-minded, pure-hearted critical thinking unmuffled by the shriek of self-righteousness, unlulled by herd mentality, unsullied by external manipulation or internal self-delusion - is perhaps the most consistent challenge we face throughout our lives, playing out in myriad forms across every realm of existence.

Complement with E.B. White’s lovely letter to a man who had lost faith in humanity and Seamus Heaney’s splendid advice to the young, then revisit Hesse on why we read and always will, the three types of readers, savoring the little joys of life, and what trees teach us about belonging and life."

The Daily "Near You?"

Brigg, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Never Be A Spectator..."

"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
- Christopher Hitchens

"My Task..."

My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel; it is, before all, to make you see. That and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, encouragement, consolation, fear, charm, all you demand – and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
- Joseph Conrad

"The Devil’s Work"

"The Devil’s Work"
by The Zman

"There is an old expression that has fallen out of favor in the post-scarcity age, but it may be the key to understanding the current crisis. That expression is, “Idle hands do the Devil’s work.” When people do not have anything productive and useful to do with their time, they are more likely to get involved in trouble and criminality. A variant of this is “The Devil makes work for idle hands.” The idea there is if you want to avoid Old Scratch, then make sure you keep yourself useful to God.

The source of these proverbs is unknown, but variations of them go back to the early middle ages, so it is probable they evolved with Christianity. It is not unreasonable to think the idea is universal to civilization. After all, every human society has had to deal with the idle, lazy, and troublesome. Making sure these people are kept too busy to cause trouble is one of those primary challenges of civilization. Every ruler has known that too many idle young men is bad for his rule.

Even in the smaller context, this is something we instinctively know. In the workplace, people with too much free time get into trouble. If the IT staff has too much free time, they start tinkering around with the stuff that is working and before long that stuff stops working and the system goes down. A big part of what goes on inside the schools is to keep the kids and the teachers busy. Home schoolers have known for years that the learning content is just a few hours a day. The rest is busy work.

The point here is that people of all ages need a purpose, something that occupies their mind and their time. If something useful and productive is not filling that need, then something useless or unproductive will fill the void. For most people this may be a hobby or leisure activity. For others, it often means a useless activity is turned into something important. Elevating the mundane to the level of the critical and then creating drama around the performance of the mundane activity.

This is what we see in our political class. The ruling class of every society has a ceremonial role, a procedural role, and a practical role. Outside of a crisis like a war or natural disaster, the political class is performing its duties in the same way a line worker in a factory preforms his role. In popular government this means the pol shows up at public events. He performs the tasks his office requires like signing papers and casting votes. He helps grease the wheels when they need grease.

Into the 20th century, most of our political offices were part-time jobs. State legislatures met for a short period during the year. Otherwise, the legislators were back home doing their jobs. Executive positions like governor and president were fulltime jobs, as they were in charge of the civil service and in the case of president, commander-in-chief of the military. Within living memory, Washington DC would empty out in the spring and remain empty until the fall when Congress returned.

What we see today is politics at all levels has become a full-time job, but one with less to do when it was considered a part-time job. Congress, for example, is something close to a 24-hour drama now. The politicians and their retinues are now doing politics as a full-time obsession. Yet almost all of what they do is unnecessary. In fact, much of what they do is harmful. Very few things passed by Congress enjoy the support of the majority of the people or even a large plurality.

It is not just that these part-time jobs have been made into full-time obsessions. It is that much of what we used to need from government is now filled by individuals, ad hoc networks, and the private sector. Much of what government does is actually done by private contractors on government contracts. One of the ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the federal workforce has declined relative to the population, while the number of people employed in politics has gone up.

Then there is the fact that much of what government does could be automated or simply eliminated entirely. The services that are required like renewing licenses and paying fees can all be automated. In many cases they have been, but that did not result in fewer people, as we see in the dreaded private sector. Instead, it resulted in more idle hands looking for a purpose. On the political side, much of what Congress does could also be eliminated or automated.

What has happened in the last 30 years is we have grown the idle class at the top of our society and while decreasing their necessity. Much of what goes on in our politics is make work designed to get public attention. Think about it. If the cable news channels were shuttered and the social media platforms run by the oligarchs were closed, what would change in America? Nothing of practical importance. Our world would get quieter and there would be a boom in forgotten hobbies.

American political culture evolved during the Cold War to fight communism and prevent a nuclear war. Those were important tasks that occupied the minds and hands of the political class. Once those things went away, those idle hands searched about for a new crisis. Health care, Gaia worship, Islam and now invisible Nazis have been used to keep the idle hands of the political class busy. In the process, the political class has been driven mad and is threatening the rest of society."

"How It Really Is"

"Why Would They Want To Solve It?

"Why Would They Want To Solve It?
By Jim Quinn

"The entire world is nothing but a racket. Just call it a war and the funding is never ending. Why would any politician or general ever want peace? Their funding would stop. Why would Big Pharma and their media co-conspirators ever want to cure cancer or any disease created by other mega-corporations? Their riches would evaporate.

The war on terror must never be won, because the Department of Homeland Security and all the parasites that live off that bloated cow need your money. Joe Rogan points out the same narrative when it comes to homelessness. Bureaucrats and departments in all these Democrat shitholes don’t want to solve the homelessness problem. They would be out of jobs. Everything is a racket."
Click image for larger size.
Watch video here:
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Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

Dan, I Allegedly, "You Have to Fend for Yourself"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 5/3/24
"You Have to Fend for Yourself"
"We just heard that Tesla has laid off everyone in their supercharged division. Elon Musk said that the entire EV industry needs to “fend for yourselves.” Plus, we share the unemployment numbers that just don’t seem to change. Do you believe this?"
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Follow the Money"

"Follow the Money"
Free Speech is the easiest and simplest of the Bill of Rights protections. 
The Constitution says plainly that “Congress shall make no law” 
that restricts our right to express ourselves.
by Bill Bonner

"Randall Mindy: The truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for.
Kate Dibiasky: Would you please, just stop being so [bleep] pleasant? I’m sorry, but not everything needs to sound so goddamn clever or charming or likeable all the time. Sometimes we need to just be able to say things to one another. We need to hear things! Look, let’s establish, once again, that there is a huge comet headed towards Earth."
- "Don’t Look Up" (2021)

Dublin, Ireland - As the nation keeps its head down... its eyes on its own feet...it rejects the principles that made it great…and the comet speeds up.

Setting aside Social Security contributions, the federal budget has not been in the black since the 1970s. The US dollar - a real money backed by gold - was replaced with ‘Federal Reserve Notes,’ (IOUs from the Fed), in 1971.

Free enterprise has turned into managed enterprise... subject to control by Congress, the White House and bureaucrats in hundreds of agencies and departments, with mountains of paperwork and a plethora of rules and regulations. Just try to open a mine or factory in California!

Free Speech is the easiest and simplest of the Bill of Rights protections. The Constitution says plainly that “Congress shall make no law” that restricts our right to express ourselves.

But here, in the news from yesterday... Congress is proposing just such a law. And it has the support of a majority of our elected representatives. First Amendment... first schmamendment... Washington Post: "House passes divisive antisemitism bill as GOP denounces campus protests."

"GOP leaders this week announced plans for new oversight investigations of elite universities where - in the words of House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) - “pro-terrorist anti-Semites [are] taking over.” And on Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which its advocates said would empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on campuses by codifying a definition of antisemitism..."

If this passes, we will still be free to criticize Albanians... Indonesians... or even those “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in France. But when it comes to Israelis, we will hold our tongues... lest we say too much. The deciders will determine what is permissible to say and what is not.

We remind readers that we have nothing to add to the discussion of stupidity or venality of Congress... or to mass murder, Zionism, war in Ukraine, white supremacism, racism, anti-semitism or any other kind of ‘ism.’ Who’s right? Who’s wrong? It’s not for us to say. We’re just looking at how the dots connect... and wondering when the debt comet is going to strike.

The question for us is not whether the proposed law is ‘good’ or ‘evil’... but what it means. Why would the elected representatives of ‘The People’ want to throw overboard a constitutional protection that has served us well for 233 years? Why now?

Why would they want to ditch a common sense rule - such as, don’t spend more than you can afford - when everyone knows it is crucial to our financial security?

Why would they want to entangle the US in fights all over the world... where it cannot win, has no clear objective... and no real business getting involved in the first place?

At a practical, readily-understood level, the answer is simple: Follow the money. The Guardian: "A handful of pro-Israel groups fund political campaigns in support of individual candidates in US elections, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), a powerful force in American politics. Before the 2024 election, Aipac plans to spend tens of millions of dollars against congressional candidates, primarily Democrats, whom it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel."

Take representative Don Bacon, for example. He seems like a decent fellow. But he knows which side his bread is buttered on. He has received about a quarter of a million dollars from Pro-Israel donors. Naturally, he does what he is paid to do. “Whatever Israel wants ... we should be there to help,” he says.

And here we find the definition of corruption in the late, degenerate US empire. Tom Emmer, mentioned above, valiantly stands up for truth... at least for the part of it his paymasters want to be heard. Who butters his bread? Surprise, surprise... his largest single campaign donor is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Neither Bacon, Emmer, nor any other member of Congress may be particularly corrupt. The rot is deeper and more pervasive than that; decisions are made at the behest of special interests, not the US public. And it is not just the Israelis who have Congress bought and paid for. Here’s Breitbart:

“People talk about how, you know, the Democrats are the problem, or the Republicans are the problem in Washington. And, you know, presidencies come and go and the swamp still remains the same,” [Brody] Mullins explained. “So, we wanted to dig deeper and say, ‘What’s really at the core of the problems in Washington?’ and we look at the lobbying community.”

Corporate lobbyists spend so much money on Washington, they have both parties in their pockets and they really get passed, whatever they want for the last 40 or 50 years... corporations are spending to change public policy in ways that help companies, but hurts the rest of us. Follow the money."

"Warning: Now Entering The Accelerated Collapse Stage Of The Nation Once Known As 'America'”

"Warning: Now Entering The Accelerated Collapse
Stage Of The Nation Once Known As 'America'”
by Mike Adams

"We Americans no longer have a nation. We no longer have a functioning representative government, honest elections, a free press or a fair justice system. From here, the collapse only accelerates more quickly, and right now, we are being simultaneously overrun by illegal invaders as well as a theocratic tyrannical regime that's weaponized against the thoughts and speech of the American people. The spiral of collapse is now entering a rapid acceleration stage, and there's no rescuing this nation before the collapse."
View video here:

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Gerald Celente, "Crackdown On Freedom Escalating; Dragflation Coming"

Very Strong Language Alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 5/2//24
"Crackdown On Freedom Escalating; 
Dragflation Coming"
"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."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "FantasyLand Is Over, We're In Big Trouble; There Is No Tomorrow"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/2/24
"FantasyLand Is Over, We're In Big Trouble;
 There Is No Tomorrow"
Comments here:

"He Cannot Help..."

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale’, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence – briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing – cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity.”
- Erich Fromm

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust. Through this window, a brightly-lit workshop appears where a whole open cluster of stars is being formed. In this cavity tall pillars and round globules of dark dust and cold molecular gas remain where stars are still forming. Already visible are several young bright blue stars whose light and winds are burning away and pushing back the remaining filaments and walls of gas and dust.
The Eagle emission nebula, tagged M16, lies about 6500 light years away, spans about 20 light-years, and is visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Serpent (Serpens). This picture involved over 12 hours of imaging and combines three specific emitted colors emitted by sulfur (colored as red), hydrogen (yellow), and oxygen (blue).”

"We WERE There..."

"Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be."
- Orson Scott Card
 
"Now the voices and the sound of movement were gone, and the stream could be heard running quietly under its banks. The air was full of the scent of water and of flowers. She walked, quiet, while the house began to reverberate: a band had started up. She walked beside the river while the music thudded, feeling herself as a heavy, impervious, insensitive lump that, like a planet doomed always to be dark on one side, had vision in front only, a myopic searchlight blind except for the tiny three-dimensional path open immediately before her eyes in which the outline of a tree, a rose, emerged then submerged in dark. She thought, with the dove's voices of her solitude. Where? But where. How? Who? No, but where, where… Then silence and the birth of a repetition. Where? Here. Here? Herewhere else, you fool, you poor fool, where else has it been, ever…?"
- Doris Lessing

"Shaya's Home Run"

"Shaya's Home Run"
by Rabbi Paysach Krohn

"In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school careers, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs. There are a few children who attend Chush for most of the week and go to a regular school on Sundays. At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, “Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything that Hashem [G-d] does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is Hashem’s perfection?” The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father’s anguish and stilled by his piercing query.

“I believe,” the father answered, “that when Hashem brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that He seeks is in the way people react to this child.” He then told the following story about his son Shaya. Shaya attends Chush throughout the week and Yeshivah Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway on Sundays. One Sunday afternoon, Shaya and his father came to Darchei Torah as his classmates were playing baseball. The game was in progress and as Shaya and his father made their way towards the ball field, Shaya said, “Do you think you could get me into the game?”

Shaya’s father knew his son was not at all athletic, and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya’s father understood that if his son was chosen in, it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging. Shaya’s father approached one of the boys in the field and asked, “Do you think my Shaya could get into the game?”

The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, “We are losing by six runs and the game is already in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning.” Shaya’s father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play short center field, a position that exists only in softball. There were no protests from the opposing team, which would now be hitting with an extra man in the outfield.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya’s team scored again and now with two outs and the bases loaded and the potential winning runs on base, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shaya was told to take a bat and try to get a hit. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible, for Shaya didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so that Shaya should at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came in and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya’s teammates came up to Shaya and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shaya. As the next pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far and wide beyond the first baseman’s reach. Everyone started yelling, “Shaya, run to first! Shaya, run to first!” Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher’s intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman’s head, as everyone yelled, “Shaya, run to second! Shaya, run to second.”

Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran towards him, turned him towards the direction of third base and shouted “Shaya, run to third!”

As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, “Shaya, run home! Shaya, run home!” Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit the “grand slam” and won the game for his team.

“That day,” said the father who now had tears rolling down his face, “those 18 boys reached their level of perfection. They showed that it is not only those who are talented that should be recognized, but also those who have less talent. They too are human beings, they too have feelings and emotions, they too are people, they too want to feel important.”

That is the exceptional lesson of this episode. Too often we seek to find favor and give honor to those who have more than us. But there are people who have fewer friends than we, less money, and less prestige. Those people especially need attention and recognition. We should try to achieve the level of perfection in human relationships which the boys on the ball field at Yeshiva Darchei Torah achieved. Because if children can do it, we adults should certainly be able to accomplish it as well."

The Daily "Near You?"

Washington, DC, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Maya Angelou's Life Advice"

Full screen recommended.
"Maya Angelou's Life Advice"
"Maya Angelou born Marguerite Annie Johnson April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim."

"A Realistic Attitude..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip José Farmer

Dan, I Allegedly, "None of Us are Safe! Billions Vanish in New Scams"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly PM 5/2/24
"None of Us are Safe! Billions Vanish in New Scams"
"Uncover the shocking reality on why you should be on high alert! I delve into a recent scandal involving skimmers at Walmart. With over 27,000 transactions compromised, the stakes have never been higher. But that's not all—the economic turmoil doesn't stop there. From massive layoffs at big names like Tesla and Google to the precarious state of the job market, I'm breaking down everything you need to know to safeguard your financial future."
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"How It Really Is"

 

"The West That Was," Part 5

"The West That Was," Part 5
by Paul Rosenberg

"When law was sovereign: All of us in the modern West grew up believing that we were living under “the rule of law.” The truth, however, is that the rule of law – the sovereignty of law – ended a couple of centuries ago. And by losing it, we lost a primary driver of our civilization. The sovereignty of law was never perfect, of course… it had to be applied by actual human beings… but it engaged the better aspects of human nature and thrived along with them. The systems that replaced it, on the other hand, thrive mainly upon human weaknesses.

What “rule of law” means to people today is that a single set of rules applies to everyone equally. That’s not remotely true in practice, of course, but that failure doesn’t make the concept bad: implementation in the real world always introduces problems. What makes our “rule of law” deeply and even fatally flawed is the part that’s not included in the slogans: the fact that a small group of law-makers stand above the law, not below it. Unlike the rest of us, if the law-makers don’t like the way the law applies to them, they are free to change it, and can nearly always do so without consequences.

In the old days of Western civilization, no one was above justice. Law was sovereign over everyone. And that version of law was not made; rather, it was discovered. The judges of that era didn’t write edicts, they discovered and explained what was just or unjust in particular cases.

That sounds foreign and even wrong to many modern people, but it worked very well for more than a thousand years; in certain areas of modern legal systems it still functions. But to make this idea clear, there is one thing you must understand… something that strikes moderns as terribly foreign and even impossible, even though it founded Western civilization and maintained it over most of its run: Law, in those days, was not legislation. In fact there was no legislation of our kind over all those centuries.

The law books that were published at the time were collections of the reasonings noted above, not edicts and threats of force. And just to buttress this statement, consider that when English philosopher Jeremy Bentham died in 1832, he was hailed as “the founder of modern legislation.” Legislation, previously, was a collection of legal findings, put together into one group for convenience.

You should also bear in mind that from the founding of Western civilization until about 1800 AD, there were no democracies. In fact, if you check quotations from the American founders, you’ll find them saying that democracy had always failed and would always fail.

Having grown up within a culture that holds democracy and rule of law as untouchable and unquestionable gods, this may disturb you, but it’s true, and the old way was actually far better at organizing human affairs. The material advantages we have now (cars, medicine, etc.) didn’t come to us via democracy; they came to us through brave and dedicated individuals and the accumulation of hard-won knowledge.

Once Upon A Time…Our civilization formed in the vacuum left behind by Rome. There were few real rulers exercising power upon Europeans in those days. Very often, the “king” had no fixed court and traveled around with a collection of armed men; and where the king wasn’t, power wasn’t. Historian Robert Latouche, for example, noted that there was a “state of anarchy which prevailed in Gaul throughout the whole of the Merovingian period.” In another place he writes, “Never in our history has the conception of the state known so complete an eclipse.”

The Europeans of the 6th through the 10th centuries had to forge a new society by themselves, not at the urging of self-glorious leaders. And so they created their methods of attaining justice on a town-by-town basis, as historian R.H.C. Davis noted: "Even the law might change from village to village; a thirteenth-century judge pointed out that in the various counties, cities, boroughs, and townships of England he had always to ask what was the local customary law and how it was employed before he could successfully try a case.

Law, then, was built from the ground, up. It addressed actual disputes that arose among the people… after the fact. People sought judges to solve existing problems, not to solve future problems before they occurred. Even kings had to acknowledge this original model of law if they hoped to be taken seriously. A king was held to be a worthy ruler if he upheld the law, and unworthy if he did not. The law, then, was above the ruler; it was sovereign.

On top of that, the universal standard for justice in this era (and this was well noted among English jurists) was “the reasonable man.” So long as you were reasonable, and your actions defensible with reason, you really didn’t have to worry about legal problems.

And this is very important to understand: Under Western civilization’s original model, you faced a comprehensible world. That spawns a far healthier and more productive state of mind than the modern one, which revolves around hundreds of thousands of pages of law that not even a collection of the greatest judges and lawyers actually know… and thousands of armed enforcers standing ready to use violence for the breaking of any one of them.

Even through the 19th century, many people clung to the old model, as economist Friedrich Hayek recalled: "It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today." This is what life was like when legal systems were developed through decisions of courts and similar tribunals, rather than through legislative statutes or executive edicts.

In Our Time: Beginning in 1800 or so, a new model of governance was imposed upon the West. Under it, law became the edicts of the powerful, and it was called legislation. Supposedly the new system placed the people in control, but that was never actually true. For the most part it was just a flattering slogan. When law became legislation, the sovereignty of law was ruined. From that point on, rulers were no longer subject to the law – they created the law. And they could change the law however they saw fit. They were firmly above it.

For the past few centuries, “the law” has been under the control of smallish groups of rulers; thus it became something wholly different from what it had been. This change transferred sovereignty to the winners of popularity contests, aka, politicians.

And so our modern world hasn’t really been “Western civilization” for quite some time. It has been a hybrid civilization, missing one of its original pillars. As a result, the people of the West no longer have the confidence that their civilization once cultured. Rather, they’ve been made to feel inadequate. But when law was sovereign, people just like them – their direct ancestors – encountered a comprehensible world, in which they were fit participants."

"The West That Was," Part 4

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"The West That Was," Part 4
By Paul Rosenberg

America, 1776: "The development of the American colonies moved in an arc. They began with a lot of oppression (after the old world model), shook it off as the arc rose toward 1776 and the revolution, then headed slowly back down. My job today is to give you some feel of the times, and I’ll begin with some background.

Perhaps the most important accident of the early America period was a British policy that later became known as salutary neglect. This salutary (healthful) neglect began in 1722, when a Whig named Robert Walpole became the king’s chief minister. The Whigs held what we might call libertarian opinions, and Walpole wanted to govern loosely, to avoid government meddling, and to let natural forces bring prosperity to England. Under Walpole, many of the regulations upon American trade were simply ignored. This policy lasted, more or less, until 1760, after which the impositions we normally associate with the American Revolution began.

The most enduring expressions of this line of development came from George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. But more important than the words of the most eloquent Americans were the words and deeds of working people. In 1773, for example, the people of Hubbardston, Massachusetts, a town of about 300, published this in a declaration:

"We are of the opinion that rulers first derive their power from the ruled by certain laws and rules agreed upon by rulers and ruled, and when a ruler breaks over such laws...and makes new ones...then the ruled have a right to refuse such new laws and  to judge for themselves when rulers transgress."

In Worcester, a town of a few thousand, a similar letter was published at about the same time:
"It is our opinion that mankind are by nature free, and the end design of forming social compacts  was that each member of that society might enjoy his life and property, and live in the free exercise of his rights  which God and Nature gave."

Notice in both these cases, that we are seeing working men and women making firm and confident pronouncements about the world.

At the same time, a group of creditors, lawyers, and judges (again, people of the political means) posed a threat to the small farmers and artisans of Worcester county. In response, the people formed their own legal system, abandoned government courts and used arbitration to resolve their disputes.

Events like these were common all through the colonies. These people believed in their individual right to judge the world and to act upon it without permission, and that’s the first thing to understand about this era: These people had been far enough from power, and for long enough, that they felt they had the right to judge it.

This was the real revolution, according to John Adams, a man deeply and even centrally involved. He maintained that it had almost nothing to do with the external events. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, dated August 24, 1815, he wrote this: "What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760-1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.

The Americans of 1776, then, or a large number of them, had moral and political references outside those authorized by power. Upon consideration, they had no interest in being ruled by the English king. And while they weren’t particularly looking for a war (at least most weren’t) they did want the king’s enforcers to leave."

The outside points of reference these people had were primarily two: The Bible and John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. The Bible is a large book, written by a significant number of people over many centuries. And while it can be used to support all sorts of ideas, it places rulers in a highly critical light, and as less righteous than the virtuous poor.

Locke’s "Second Treatise on Government" is a fundamental work of political theory, and should still be read by most everyone. (It’s not long and the old language isn’t that hard to understand.) The American founders (Sam Adams in particular) revered it and referred to it often.

To understand this moment, then, we need to understand the mind of someone who looks at current events from a point outside of them. Looking at the world as an outsider reduces the power of propaganda. And if the ruler doesn’t have myths and legends that will make the masses swell with emotion, he’s left with convincing people to slave their lives away for his benefit. And that’s precisely what failed in the colonies.

The British Americans of 1776 had lost their bias toward rulership. They no longer gave it the benefit of the doubt at all times. The began to see power for what it was, not what it was promoted as. As a result, power could no longer hold its grip. The farmers, mechanics and so on lost their awe for “the institution,” and walked away from it. The Americans who still supported the king were mainly those who had something go gain from it (a considerable percentage), and, of course, those who wanted to believe the old myths.

Bear in mind that Americans had been fending for themselves for a long time. They knew from actual practice that they really didn’t need the king.

Three Underlying Factors: As we know, the colonists weren’t allowed to walk away, nor were they allowed to vote on secession. Rather, they were forced to fight, and that requires a far deeper conviction than most people possess; that’s why despised rulers stay in power: working people simply don’t want to engage in fights to the death (that’s what war is). And so rulers – employing men who will fight to the death – have a massive advantage… an advantage allows them to abuse without consequence for long periods of time.

The American colonists were able to transcend that advantage, and walk into gigantic fights to the death, because of three primary factors:Religious faith. This is a large subject by itself, but beneath it lies a simple observation: The people who display serious courage are overwhelmingly people of faith. These may not be deeply observant people, but they do have beliefs. This is obviously a complex subject, but the observation holds, and there is clearly an internal organizing power to beliefs. And very certainly these people had strong beliefs; that was a crucial part of their ability to stand up to the king’s armed men.

Deep drives. Deep psychological drives, like the need for heroic and historic meaning, compel us. By far most humans have lived and died without suitable outlets for such desires. That is, they find no accessible ways to overtly change the world. The rebellion against the British, however, gave these colonists such an opportunity. Moreover, their pressures toward this were somewhat higher than the same pressures we feel today. Beyond the electronic perma-distractions of our time, these people faced shorter and less certain lifespans than we do. If you have one shot at a historic life and few years in which to take it, you’re as likely as not to jump upon the opportunity at hand. And so these people did.

An acceptance of the tragic aspect of life. This goes hand in hand with the above, but it’s a bit different. Death was more of a companion in pre-modern times. Babies often died, infections could sometimes be deadly, and so on. More than that, people frequently died at home, where other family members would see it up close. It seems to me that our modern separation from death is perhaps better for us, but it has definitely insulated us from the tragedy of life. These people, then, accepted that tragedy was part of life, making it easier for them to step into a tragic war.

Understanding The Culture:Moving along from the outer aspects of the West of this era, let’s look at the more important part: The culture of the time, incorporating the daily lives and thoughts of these people. There’s a lot to understand, of course (these people were fundamentally as complicated as we are), but we do have a number of telling aspects to look at.

Intellectual life. Intellectual life in the American colonies took place primarily in churches, taverns and newspapers. Newspapers were more or less unconstrained after 1735, were very widely read and were generally well-written. The urban populace was well informed, as were most of the farmers, albeit some days later than the cities, owing to delivery times.

The churches were likewise centers of intellectual life. Firstly, of course, were the weekly sermons, which were taken very seriously (many were transcribed and published) and also related to current events. As I’ve noted before, churches were strongly attended and a place where most people dealt with serious thoughts for at least an hour or two every week. And, quite contrary to Europe, American Christians of different sects learned, even if grudgingly, to get along, as Historian Merrill Jensen wrote: "The back countrymen were of various religious sects, and while perhaps not tolerant by conviction, they were so on necessity on the frontier where so many religious groups had settled."

The taverns were where men went to discuss, argue about and plan the events of their times. A very large percentage of the American rebellion from Britain was forged in the taverns of America. And yes, the consumption of alcohol, per capita, was quite a bit higher at this time than it is today.

On the whole, we can say that the people of this era took their ideas very seriously, and were quite willing to act upon them. Between the “no myth” issue we covered in The West That Was #3 and the fact that they had been so substantially on their own, the came to find importance and meaning in important ideas.

Commercial life. The American colonies had what we can call a strongly bourgeois culture. That is, it was a culture dominated by shopkeepers, small farmers, mechanics and merchants. Many other commercial activities existed, but these were the most common.

Slavery and large farms (plantations) accounted for a good deal of commerce in the South, of course, but even there the bourgeois model was strong. For example, in 1766 the rebellious Sons of Liberty of Charleston, South Carolina (a slave state), were composed of, “six carpenters, three painters, three clerks, two blacksmiths, two coach-makers, two saddlers, two wheelwrights, a glass-grinder, one carver, one upholsterer, one butcher, one tailor, one schoolmaster, and one merchant.”

This “shopkeeper” model of life creates an assumption of self-reliance, as well as assumptions of capability. These are strongly positive ways for people to view themselves, and the colonists embodied a great deal of it… another of the forces that made them feel competent to judge kings.

Liberation from class. European life, during this era, was strongly class-based. The aristocracy was separated from the peasants by law and treated very differently. City life differed frequently, but the vast majority of the populace remained rural in the 18th century.

Americans in the 18th century were very clear on the fact that they had far more opportunity than their relatives back in Europe. Their self-images often featured this fact and their actions were very often impelled by either gratitude for it, or a need to show they deserved it.

The arts. The usual comment about arts in the America colonies is that they were miserable. To an extent this was true, as survival in the wilderness (which is what most of America was in those days) leaves little room for the production of fine arts. Still American homes featured reproductions of European art, even good reproductions. More than that, however, music was a significant business in the colonies."