"The Sometimes Hidden Beauty of ‘This Too Shall Pass'"

"The Sometimes Hidden Beauty of ‘This Too Shall Pass'"

By Richard Haddad

"It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence to be ever on view and which would be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.'"

"“This too shall pass.” This proverb has no doubt been repeated millions of times in many different languages. The sentiment may be difficult to accept amidst so many hardships from lost jobs, lost businesses and lost lives.

This adage grew from the roots of a Persian fable and became known in the Western world primarily through a 19th-century retelling by the English poet Edward FitzGerald, who crafted the fable “Solomon’s Seal” in 1852 illustrating how the adage had the power to make a sad man happy but, conversely, a happy man sad. The fable was reportedly also employed in a speech by Abraham Lincoln before he became the sixteenth President of the United States.

But the version I want to share today that I think is most beautiful and powerful was written in 1867 by American newspaper editor and abolitionist Theodore Tilton. He reworked the fable into a poem called “The King’s Ring.” Here again, the retooled adage wields a double-edged sword. It can help us endure the passage of difficult times, or keep our perspective and humility during good times. Here is the Tilton poem:

"The King’s Ring"

"Once in Persia reigned a King,

Who upon his signet-ring

Graved a maxim true and wise,

Which, if held before his eyes,

Gave him counsel, at a glance,

Fit for every change or chance;

Solemn words, and these are they:

“Even this shall pass away.”

Trains of camels through the sand

Brought him gems from Samarcand;

Fleets of galleys through the seas

Brought him pearls to rival these.

But he counted little gain

Treasures of the mine or main.

“What is wealth?” the King would say;

“Even this shall pass away.”

In the revels of his court,

At the zenith of the sport,

When the palms of all his guests

Burned with clapping at his jests,

He, amid his figs and wine,

Cried, “O loving friends of mine!

Pleasures come, but do not stay:

Even this shall pass away.”

Lady fairest ever seen

Was the bride he crowned the queen.

Pillowed on his marriage-bed,

Whispering to his soul, he said,

“Though no bridegroom never pressed

Dearer bosom to his breast,

Mortal flesh must come to clay:

Even this shall pass away.”

Fighting on a furious field,

Once a javelin pierced his shield.

Soldiers with a loud lament

Bore him bleeding to his tent.

Groaning from his tortured side,

“Pain is hard to bear,” he cried,

“But with patience day by day,

Even this shall pass away.”

Towering in the public square

Twenty cubits in the air,

Rose his statue carved in stone.

Then the King, disguised, unknown,

Gazing at his sculptured name,

Asked himself, “And what is fame?

Fame is but a slow decay:

Even this shall pass away.”

Struck with palsy, sere and old,

Waiting at the Gates of Gold,

Spake he with his dying breath,

“Life is done, but what is Death?”

Then, in answer to the King,

Fell a sunbeam on his ring,

Showing by a heavenly ray -

“Even this shall pass away.”

I believe enduring well is an essential part of the test we must pass while on this Earth together. I am still taking this test. We all are. I also believe we must have a certain amount of faith and hope as we do all in our power to make things right in this world while also accepting that we don’t have the power to control all outcomes. I’ve been learning these truths and striving to apply them more in my own life. In the past I have sometimes hearkened to gloomy voices in the world. Many a time I entertained unnecessary doubt and worry. But I am learning that worry works against faith and hope. My mother once shared this other saying with me that I have tried to apply in my older years - “Worry is interest paid on money never borrowed.”

"May we all strive to endure, live and love well, for this too shall pass."

- https://www.dcourier.com/

Travelling with Russell, "Russian Typical Supermarket Tour: Giperbola Yekaterinburg"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 9/22/24

"Russian Typical Supermarket Tour: Giperbola Yekaterinburg"

"Giperbola Hypermarket is a Russian Owned Hypermarket chain based in Yekateringburg, Russia. With over 43,000 items from more than 55 countries. Giperbola is one of the best-stocked food stores in Russia. Discover what the best supermarket in Russia is together."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Rhododendron, Oregon, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Life..."

"Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit."

- A.W. and J.C. Hare,

  "Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers," 1827

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

On your knees you may live to see another day,

but you’ll never live to see better days.

by Robert Gore 

“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.

In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.

While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!

Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.

It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.

But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.

Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.

The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.

We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Why The Other Side Won’t Listen to Reason"

"Why The Other Side Won’t Listen to Reason"

by David Cain

"At some point during your first year as a human being, the adults throw a real curveball at you. They expect you to start understanding what right and wrong mean. These lessons come in the form of mysterious reactions that follow certain things you do. After you pull all the books from the bottom shelf onto the floor, quite a feat for a one year-old, they scold you for some reason. When you pee in the correct place, they praise you. It’s completely baffling, but over time you get a sense that adults are extremely preoccupied with classifying actions into two broad categories: okay and not okay, or good and bad.

You quickly gather this is how the world works. And there is some logic behind what’s rewarded and what’s punished: “bad” actions are usually (but not always) ones that hurt, annoy or inconvenience other people, and “good” actions usually (not always) help in some way, or at least don’t hurt anyone.

This classification system is so strongly emphasized by the adults that you develop a keen sense of it yourself. You see rights and wrongs everywhere, particularly where you stand to gain or lose something personally: in the fair distribution of treats, in acknowledgement for chores done, in which cartoon characters deserve to be happy (or in a police wagon) at the end of the episode. 

Seemingly everything is morally relevant. There are right and wrong ways to speak, play, fidget, ask for things, touch people, and express your feelings. The rules are endlessly detailed and idiosyncratic. There are right and wrong places to sit or stand, things to wear, things to stare at, even expressions to have on your face. Some acts are okay in one place and very bad somewhere else. The adults insist that navigating this sprawling bureaucracy is simple: just be good.

You make use of this system. You argue your case to your parents when your sibling takes something of yours, or plays with a coveted toy too long—if you feel slighted, there must be wrongdoing, and you say so, perhaps listing reasons why you’re right. You petition teachers to take action against other kids who are being greedy, annoying, or mean, and you defend yourself when you’re the one being accused.

There’s Something Fishy About the Way We Judge: By adulthood, morality has become such an intuitive part of our thinking that we barely realize when we’re making a moral judgment.

Hundreds or thousands of times a day we assess the character of another person. We feel we know enough to commend or condemn (usually condemn) a person from the way they park, a word they chose to use in their comment, the state of their front lawn, how they stand in a queue, what they laugh at, where and when they look at their mobile phones, how long they take to get to the point of their anecdote, or any of ten thousand other morally salient micro-actions.

Our moral sense works with great speed and force. Every news article - even the headline alone -gives us a strong, immediate, and seemingly unmistakable sense of which are the good and bad parties involved. Virtually every time we feel annoyed, we reflexively assert some wrongdoing on the part of another human being, even if it’s someone we’ve never seen. If service is slow, some employee is being lazy or inconsiderate. If traffic is crawling it’s because the city always schedules construction work at such stupid times. If an item’s price is unexpectedly high, some greedy CEO is getting paid too much.

There’s something fishy about all this moralizing. We treat our moral feelings and judgments as though they’re truly all-important; seemingly, nothing deserves as much energy and attention as determining the right and wrong of everything done and said in the human world, and lamenting that world’s failure to meet our idea of what’s right. (For endless examples, just check Twitter.) Yet for all their importance, we’re extremely flippant with our moral judgments. We make them all day long, with ease and even a kind of pleasure, and very little second-guessing. Maddeningly, other people have almost perfectly opposite positions on the same moral issues - drug policy, immigration, pornography, whether mayo belongs in guacamole - and they cast their judgments with the all the same ease and certitude.

You’d think that if determining right and wrong were truly what’s important to us, we’d be far more careful about making judgments. We’d want to gather a lot of information before saying anything. We’d seek opposing viewpoints and try to understand them. We’d offer people the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. We’d be very wary of our initial emotions around the topic, and very interested in how our personal interests might be skewing our conclusions. We’d refrain from making conclusions at all if we didn’t need to.

In other words, we’d employ the same reserved, dispassionate, self-scrutinizing ethic we use to examine questions about anything else: physics, history, biology, engineering, business, or any other arena of understanding where premature conclusions can create a big problem. We’d have a keen, ongoing interest in learning how we might be wrong.

But we’re not like this at all. We make moral conclusions freely, immediately, and without self-scrutiny, recruiting as much emotional tilt as possible. We dismiss counterpoints reflexively, as though it’s dangerous to even consider changing our minds. We only rarely admit that an issue is too opaque or complex to be sure what to think.

Why are we so smart and careful when it comes to figuring things out in most areas of inquiry, and so dumb and impulsive when it comes to moral questions, which are supposedly the most important ones to get right?

Why We’re So Stubborn: Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt sheds a lot of light on our confused moral psychology in his book, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion."  It’s a fascinating read, but the main punchline is that our moral sensitivity didn’t evolve in order to make us good at determining right and wrong. It evolved to help us survive and thrive in highly social environments.

Our moral feelings are quick and reactive because they developed to aid us in real-time social interactions, not in careful, solitary periods of reflection. These feelings are often conflicting and illogical because they adapted to meet a number of different social goals:

• Our desire to protect the vulnerable, and our hatred for cruelty and carelessness, adapted to motivate us to keep children safe at all costs, and keep potentially dangerous people away
• Our resentment for cheating and unfairness adapted to help us avoid getting exploited by the rest of our group
• Our respect for loyalty, and our fear of betrayal, evolved to help us form coalitions, and identify disloyal people before they make trouble
• Our attitudes towards authority, and those who subvert it, conferred an advantage at positioning ourselves within social hierarchies
• Our moralizing around cleanliness and the sanctity of bodies, sex, and bodily functions, adapted to help us avoid infection and disease 
• It’s no wonder our moral intuitions are so strong, quick and often thoughtless. They are essentially survival reflexes, conditioned by our upbringing and our instincts.

Our moral reasoning - our capacity to explain why something is right or wrong - comes only after our emotional intuitions, if at all, and is tuned for persuading others of our value to the tribe, not for helping us find the most sensible moral stances. Haidt describes our moral reasoning as working much like a press secretary or company spokesperson - its purpose is to justify positions and actions already taken, using any explanation that sounds passably good in the moment, true or not.

Note that none of the above social goals require our moral feelings to be fair or logically sound, and in fact, that can be disadvantageous - a tribe that viewed all outsiders as predators likely would have protected its children better than a tribe that was most concerned with never falsely accusing someone of being dangerous.

In other words, our moral intuitions are strongly tuned to make us groupish and tribal, not even-handed and insightful. And our moral reasoning is tuned more for soliciting approval from others than for actually discovering moral truths.

This explains why we’re so susceptible to rhetoric, prejudice, selective hearing, and fake news. It also explains why it’s strangely pleasurable to take hard moral stands, no matter how poor or nonexistent the reasoning behind them - hard stands, declared publicly, reliably generate a small flood of praise and approval from the tribe that shares those positions.

You can see what a powder keg this moral psychology is liable to create in an increasingly global, internet-connected society, composed of people from many different backgrounds, all of whom enjoy getting Retweeted, Liked, and Favorited. It’s why, when it comes to politics, the other side simply doesn’t listen to reason. Of course, all of us are on someone’s other side."

- http://www.raptitude.com

"Here's Why the Collapse of Rome is Foretelling the Decline of the US Empire"

"Here's Why the Collapse of Rome is 

Foretelling the Decline of the US Empire"

by Chris MacIntosh

"Ancient Rome was the world’s most powerful empire for 500 years. At its height, Rome boasted of roads, public baths, and much else that was close to miraculous for the rest of the planet. Then came the Great Fall, and what happened has lessons for the world today.

In his book "The City In History" (1961), Lewis Mumford explains how Rome went from "Megalopolis to Necropolis."

This great city set up its own demise in two ways: Panem et circenses (or "bread and circuses"). Mumford says, "Success underwrote a sickening parasitic failure." As ancient Rome became prosperous, it became an unsustainable welfare state. Mumford writes that "indiscriminate public largesse" became common. A large portion of the population "took on the parasitic role for a whole lifetime." More than 200,000 citizens of Rome regularly received handouts of bread from "public storehouses."

Lewis Mumford also wrote the desire to lead an industrious productive life had severely "weakened." So what did people spend their time on? Distractions, which meant circuses.

The Roman people, not working for their livelihood but living off of the prosperity of their city, became numb. Mumford writes, "To recover the bare sensation of being alive, the Roman populace, high and low, governors, and governed, flocked to the great arenas" for games and distractions

The entertainment in Rome included "chariot races, spectacular naval battles set in an artificial lake, theatrical pantomimes in which lewder sexual acts were performed." Today it is social media and porn. Out of 365 days, more than 200 were public holidays and 93 were "devoted to games at the public expense."

Consuming entertainment became the primary priority of Roman citizens in Rome’s decadent phase. As Lewis Mumford writes, "Not to be present at the show was to be deprived of life, liberty, and happiness." Consuming entertainment became the primary priority of Roman citizens in Rome’s decadent phase. As Lewis Mumford writes, "Not to be present at the show was to be deprived of life, liberty, and happiness." Concrete concerns of life became "subordinate, accessory, almost meaningless."

Ancient Rome could put half of its total population "in its circuses and theaters" at the same time. A new public holiday was declared to celebrate every military victory. But the number of holidays kept rising even when Rome’s military prowess began to fail…

Mumford writes that no empire had such an "abundance of idle time to fill with idiotic occupations." Even the Roman emperors who privately despised the games had to pretend they enjoyed them for "fear of hostile public response." Bottom line: The very power and prosperity of ancient Rome set the stage for its collapse.

As welfare states expand around the world today and entertainment options get ever more immersive, we are forced to ask a question: Is this Post-Industrial Civilization Rome, Part II?

Edward Gibbon, the author of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", says: "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the fabric yielded."

All advanced civilizations become "complex systems," and then rot sets in."

- https://internationalman.com/

o

Download "The Collapse of Complex Societies", 

by Joseph A. Tainter, here:

- https://archive.org/details/TheCollapseOfComplexSocieties

How It Really Is"

 

"Bravery..."

“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”

- Veronica Roth, "Allegiant"

Dan, I Allegedly, "Real Estate Agents Are Starving"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/22/24

"Real Estate Agents Are Starving"

"I delve into the shocking stats revealing that a staggering 47% of real estate agents haven't sold a single home in the last year. The truth about this broken industry is out, and it's time we face it head-on. Please join our email list for exclusive content and updates. In this eye-opening video, we discuss everything from the outrageous costs of selling a home to the jaw-dropping decline in successful agents. Are you a realtor? You might want to sit down for this one. Plus, I share insights on the looming economic storm and how it's affecting everything from shopping malls to big-name retailers."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Scott Ritter: Israel Will be Wiped Out in Hezbollah War, IDF & Netanyahu Crushed"

Danny Haiphong, 9/22/24

"Scott Ritter: Israel Will be Wiped Out in 

Hezbollah War, IDF & Netanyahu Crushed"

"Former UN Weapons Inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter reveals the truth about Israel's capabilities against Hezbollah and his prediction will shock you as the region becomes engulfed in total war. This video breaks down what you need to know about a conflict that will shape the lives of generations to come"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

"'Two Million Israelis On Target':

 Hezbollah's Revenge Roar 'Unnerves' Netanyahu"

"Hezbollah has expanded its rocket attacks on Israel, now targeting areas with over two million people, including the greater Haifa area. This escalation follows Israeli strikes in Lebanon and booby-trapped device explosions that killed 42 Hezbollah members. Thousands have taken refuge in bomb shelters, as Hezbollah warns its missiles can reach almost any part of Israel."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 9/22/24

"Iran’s Chilling Threat Spooks Israel, ’Saddam’s Fate Awaits…’ As Hezbollah Decimates Haifa"

"After the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched an overnight attack on Hezbollah locations, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani issued a stern warning, asserting that the resilience of regional resistance movements has surprised their adversaries. He emphasized that the "Resistance" has endured numerous challenges and declared that the goals of Israel and the U.S. would never be achieved."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel. FAFO...

And a little tune for you...

Robert Palmer, "You're Gonna Get What's Coming"

"Lawrence Wilkerson: A Disastrous Defeat Awaits Israel After The IDF Terrorist Act In Lebanon"

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano, 9/22/24

"Lawrence Wilkerson: A Disastrous Defeat Awaits 

Israel After The IDF Terrorist Act In Lebanon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Army Bro, 9/22/24

"Israeli Nightmare! Hamas, Hezbollah

 Using Latest Defensive Iranian Weapon!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "The End of the Journey"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "The End of the Journey"

Amazingly beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. 

This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"Finish Each Day..."

 

"The Right Time Will Never Come"

"The Right Time Will Never Come"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Lots of good people are frustrated with the world, and I understand that only too well. They are, furthermore, eager for the world to improve, and I respect that a great deal. Their problem arises, however, right on the heels of these desires, when they ask the question, “What should I do?” And that’s where the wheels fall off.

All the Popular Answers Are Wrong: The world is full of people who are glad to tell you what to do. They have elaborate arguments as to why their plan is the right one and why everyone else’s is wrong. They’ll encourage you to commit to them, and they’ll try to surround you with people who have already chosen their plan. If you join, you’ll get lots of pats on the back and assurances that you’re a good person. But all those ways are wrong. They offer you fast, cheap self-esteem. They offer you a fast track to feeling useful, important, and wanted. And all you have to do is join their very pleasant crowd.

Let me make this very clear: There is no blueprint for freedom. There will be no great plan to follow. People who say they have such a thing, while they may be well-meaning, bright, and even respectable, are moving in the wrong direction. (And I truly don’t mean to criticize here; we’ve all made our mistakes.) Here’s the core of the issue: If we want a world that is safe for individuals, we’ll have to create it as individuals, not as groups. Groups beget after their own kind, and individuals beget after their own kind.

I’m not the first person to decide this, by the way; here’s what Albert Schweitzer had to say on the subject many years ago: "The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for new truth."

The Easiest Thing to Do: Following someone else’s plan is the easy way. It saves us from responsibility. It allows us to deflect the blame, at least a little, if later we’re found to be wrong. This easy way, however, is a wrong way. There’s a great line from Steven Stills’s song, “The Southern Cross,” that goes like this:

"And we never failed to fail;

it was the easiest thing to do."

It will always be the easiest thing to go downward into servitude. That is the current condition of the world, with its dominance-obsessed and status-worshiping inertia. You can go downward quickly by handing your will to the status quo, or you can go slowly by standing still. But until you act, solely upon your own judgment, you’re not going to go upward.

Are You Saying…? Yes, I’m saying that you have to make your own decision, all alone, and that you have to raise the courage to start acting upon it by yourself, with no leader telling you the best choice, with no famous author guiding you, and with no authority sanctifying the path for you. You’ll have to choose, all by yourself. And you’ll have to face all the fears that hold you back from stepping out… you’ll have to push past them… you’ll have to make your own legs start walking. That, my friends, is the price of progress… and we each have to pay it, or not pay it, alone.

We Should Act Without a Plan? Emphatically yes. The central issue here is not following a plan, but dragging ourselves out of stasis and taking some kind of initiative. Unless you’re making some kind of wild, destructive choice, almost any choice you make is a good one. Your central necessity is to unfreeze yourself and start moving. Once you’re in motion, it’s easy to correct your course. But if you never move, you’ll just keep sliding down the majority’s path, regardless of how much you complain.

In our time, most of the good people in the world remain motionless. We complain about our local fiefdom’s abuses, of course, but that’s about all. That’s the seduction of “democracy,” you see: It magically turns complaints into progress. Except that the magic of democracy never really shows up. Still, it’s the easiest thing to do. And so we complain and we wait, but we do not act.

But again: There’s never going to be a perfect plan and there’s never going to be a right time. If you wait for them, you’ll wait forever. So, pick a spot and start. You probably already have choices in mind: Bitcoin, homeschooling, intentional communities, agorism, becoming a perpetual traveler, or something else. Whatever it is, get moving: your central necessity is to face the fear and to act anyway. And if you’d like to know my favorite choice, here it is: Sit at bus stops or train stations and talk to people. You can do that at almost any time and any place.

Who Happens to Whom? In other words, “Who acts, and who is acted upon?” As an old coworker of mine used to say, “He who hesitates is lost.” If you wait, you’ll be acted upon. And then you’ll have to re-form your plan, and you’ll hesitate again. And then you’ll be acted upon again… over and over, until you’re too old to do much of anything.

The ‘right time’ never comes. Either we let the world happen to us, or we transcend our fears and we happen to the world. So, I propose a simple motto for people who have courage enough to break stasis: The world doesn’t happen to us. We happen to the world."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

Crosby, Stills & Nash, "Southern Cross"

"15 Major Restaurant Chains Are Being Wiped Out Right Now"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 9/21/24

"15 Major Restaurant Chains

 Are Being Wiped Out Right Now"

"Restaurant chains have been a familiar part of American culture for decades, offering convenience, affordability, and a sense of familiarity. However, the industry has faced significant challenges in recent years, leading to the closure of several major chains in 2024. This raises concerns about the future of casual dining. Here are 15 major restaurant chains facing imminent closures."

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Jeremiah Babe, "WTF? Squatters Overtake Another Mansion; 7-11 Trashed By Teens In Beverly Hills"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/21/2

"WTF? Squatters Overtake Another Mansion;

 7-11 Trashed By Teens In Beverly Hills"

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The Daily "Near You?"

Saco, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"This Is Your Life..."

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice.

To be or not to be.

Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.

Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume

and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

- Chuck Palahniuk

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,

who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"

~ Stephen Levine

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood -

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

That place among the rocks - is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,

And in broad day the midnight come again!

A man goes far to find out what he is -

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke

"The Great Beyond"

"The Great Beyond"

by Bill Bonner

"The heart has its stories… often best left untold. Jealousy. Hate. Betrayal. Desperation. Our beat is money. But on its own, money is worthless. It is the heart, with its wants and needs, it's vanities and mysteries, that gives money meaning. So, today, we will dig a bit further into the mush and muscle, in the hopes that we might learn something.

State-Sanctioned Suicide: An old friend, in Switzerland, committed suicide. This was a death of an entirely different sort. Premeditated. Assisted. Sanctioned by the government. Here’s the report (from a family member): “Marie got in touch with an organization called ‘Exit.’ Normally, they help terminally ill people kill themselves. But they will also do it for people who are severely depressed. Marie had cut herself off from her two children. I think it was over money. She had become a recluse. And she was very unhappy.

She called me about a month ago to say that she had contacted the Exit people and was planning to commit suicide. I didn’t know what to do. Or how to take it. She could be melodramatic. And very emotional. I figured she was just telling me how depressed she was. I knew she was taking antidepressants. I thought she had it under control. Then, she called to say she had a date – about a week ahead. She seemed very determined. Calm. Her mind was made up."

Apparently, the Exit group did interviews with family and friends to make sure that she was in her right mind and was unlikely to ever recover from her depression. Then, they came to her apartment, along with a policeman as a witness; they gave her a pill. I heard from her friend, who must have been with her, that she was smoking a cigarette, calmly and even making jokes. Then, she took the pill, fell asleep and died. Rest in peace. Another family member reported that the end was “serene”… and that “it was what she wanted.”

Total Control: But the news left others deeply disturbed. One offered a comment: “Rest in peace? What kind of peace is that? She was obviously at war with her own children… and it tormented her… drove her crazy… so crazy that either she wanted to escape by killing herself… or wanted to torment them by removing all possibility of a reconciliation. Either way, it was the wrong thing to do. Not just ‘wrong’ like a mistake… but wrong – sinful… selfish and mean."

That’s what is wrong with our whole modern world,” she continued. “It has lost its soul. Imagine, people who come to your house… give you a pill… and watch you die. What’s wrong with these people? Didn’t anyone try to stop her? Didn’t anyone try to save her? Suppose you saw someone getting ready to jump off a bridge? Would you just say ‘oh well, that’s their business’? And didn’t it occur to anyone that killing people – even people who say they want to be killed – is wrong?

Look… I have no idea whether Marie should live or die. But neither do they. It’s one thing when people suddenly shoot themselves and there’s nothing you can do about it. But coming to her apartment with a pill?

This is so disappointing… and so sad. These people think they can make life or death decisions based on interviews and psychological profiles. How did they know what was really in her heart… or what Marie’s suicide would do to her children… or her friends? Why did they think she had any choice in the matter? She didn’t choose to be born; who gave her the right to choose to die? Those are things we shouldn’t decide for ourselves. How did they know whether she was meant to live or die… or whether she might some day see a burning bush… and get down on her knees to beg forgiveness… beg her children and her god… to take that iron corset off her heart and let her live?

I find it just overwhelmingly sad… crushingly sad… as if there really were no God at all… no real grace or beauty… no hope of redemption… as if we were now all at the mercy of soulless technicians with their crackpot theories on their power trips… with their charts and graphs… telling us the planet can only be 1.5 degrees warmer… or that we should have 2% inflation, not more, not less… and telling us when we can go a restaurant… and giving children vaccines that they don’t need… and censoring what we say…and insisting that we put their medicines into our bodies… you’re always going on about the Fed monkeying with interest rates and printing fake money… and I guess that’s part of it too… they think they can control everything and everybody…and now, they think they have the right to tell us who can die… and when."

“Very sad.”

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com