"Mark Strand on Dreams: A Lyrical Love Letter to Where We Go When We Go to Sleep"

"Mark Strand on Dreams:

A Lyrical Love Letter to Where We Go When We Go to Sleep"

“Something nameless hums us into sleep… 

We feel dreamed by someone else, a sleeping counterpart…”

by Maria Popova

"The mystery of dreams has always bewitched humanity, tickling art and science in equal measure. Freud was besotted with it when he laid the foundation for the study of the subject, as was his eccentric niece Tom when she illustrated that gem of a vintage children’s book about dreams. Dostoyevsky found the meaning of life in a dream, and so did Margaret Mead. Leonard Bernstein sought the solution to his sexual identity confusion and the key to the creative process in his dreams.

However detached from the reality of life dreams may seem, they affect our every waking moment and even help us regulate our negative moods. And yet, try as we might to control our dreams, we still know so very little about where we go when we slip into that nocturnal wonderland. For all the advances science has made, it still seems best left to the poets - and the best of poets only.

In one of the many masterpieces in his "Collected Poems" (public library), Pulitzer-winning poet and MacArthur “genius” Mark Strand (April 11, 1934–November 29, 2014) explores the delicate and disorienting world of dreams with unparalleled elegance. The poem is a supreme testament to Strand’s belief that it is the artist’s task to bear witness to the universe, within and without."

"Dreams"

"Trying to recall the plot

And characters we dreamed,

     What life was like

Before the morning came,

We are seldom satisfied,

     And even then

There is no way of knowing

If what we know is true.

     Something nameless

Hums us into sleep,

Withdraws, and leaves us in

     A place that seems

Always vaguely familiar.

Perhaps it is because

     We take the props

And fixtures of our days

With us into the dark,

     Assuring ourselves

We are still alive. And yet

Nothing here is certain;

     Landscapes merge

With one another, houses

Are never where they should be,

     Doors and windows

Sometimes open out

To other doors and windows,

     Even the person

Who seems most like ourselves

Cannot be counted on,

     For there have been

Too many times when he,

Like everything else, has done

     The unexpected.

And as the night wears on,

The dim allegory of ourselves

     Unfolds, and we

Feel dreamed by someone else,

A sleeping counterpart,

     Who gathers in

The darkness of his person

Shades of the real world.

     Nothing is clear;

We are not ever sure

If the life we live there

     Belongs to us.

Each night it is the same;

Just when we’re on the verge

     Of catching on,

A sense of our remoteness

Closes in, and the world

     So lately seen

Gradually fades from sight.

We wake to find the sleeper

     Is ourselves

And the dreamt-of is someone who did

Something we can’t quite put

     Our finger on,

But which involved a life

We are always, we feel,

     About to discover."

"Dreams", by Mark Strand read by Maria Popova:
- https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/mark-strand-dreams-maria-popova

Complement the immeasurably rewarding "Collected Poems" with Strand on the heartbeat of creative work and his lyrical love letter to clouds.”

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"Reflections On Another Year Of Covidian Lies & How The Truth Will Ultimately Prevail"

"Reflections On Another Year Of Covidian Lies & 

How The Truth Will Ultimately Prevail"

by Rob Slane

"As we come to the end of the second year in Covidia, I reflect on just how much the instigators of the entire scam have managed to reshape reality in an amazingly short timeframe, such that what was considered normal 12 months ago is now considered abnormal, and what was considered abnormal 12 months ago is now seen as normal.

For instance, had one predicted 12 months ago that after “vaccinating” the elderly and those considered vulnerable, which was the “route back to freedom”, the Johnson Regime and countless others around the world would:

• Proceed to push the injection onto all adults.

• Move on to getting it into children.

• Make thousands jobless who do not wish to partake in the experiment.

• Begin the introduction of Vaccine Passports.

• Announce that the allegedly 95% effective products wane so quickly they’ll need to be taken every few months.

• Start talking about the possibility of mandatory jabs.

• Reintroduce the restrictions that these injections were supposed to do away with.

...why, such a person would have been called a Conspiracy Nut. Yet a year later the same person is called a Conspiracy Nut for opposing these very things they got called a Conspiracy Nut for predicting, but which are now reality.

There is something horribly ironic, and also deeply chilling about this. For it shows not only how easily manipulated so many people are, but also just how easy it has been for the Covidian Regimes to reshape reality such that millions have come to accept as normal the very things they would have dismissed just months earlier as the product of deranged minds.

The last two years has felt like people are living in parallel universes, so much so that it’s almost tempting to wonder whether Zuckerberg’s hideous Metaverse is already a thing, with millions having unwittingly entered it in early 2020 without noticing.

In the Metaverse, SARS-CoV-2 is a new Black Death that kills indiscriminately no matter what age. In the real world, it is a virus that has a 99.9% Survivability Rate, and there are effective early treatments available to the 0.1% for whom it might potentially be lethal.

In the Metaverse, Lockdowns of healthy people are how we’ve always dealt with outbreaks of transmissible illnesses. In the real world, other than a hastily ended five-day trial in Mexico during the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak, the quarantining of the healthy was never been done before the Chinese Communist Party implemented it in early 2020, to be copied all over the world by Governments ignoring their own long existing pandemic preparedness plans.

In the Metaverse, masks are about loving your neighbor because wearing them stops you passing on the virus you don’t have to others. In the real world, masks do not and cannot stop viral transmission, and thus they are a not a health aid, but a political and psychological tool of subjugation and dehumanisation, designed to humiliate and perpetuate fear.

In the Metaverse, a public health crisis caused by a virus has zero medical advice given out to people, but just a relentless barrage of talk about cases, hospitalizations and deaths, with all knowledge of effective early treatments ruthlessly suppressed. In the real world, a public health crisis caused by a virus would see Governments, health officials, and doctors recommending cheap and effective ways of boosting one’s immune system, such as Vitamin C and D, Zinc, Quercetin, sunshine and plenty of exercise and fresh air.

In the Metaverse, people who aren’t ill can spread the illness they don’t have, and so must take a test which cannot diagnose illness and which gives huge numbers of false positives, after which they must stay in their house for a prolonged period to stop the virus they don’t have from spreading. In the real world, if you’re well, you go about your daily life; if you have what are called “symptoms”, you stay home and rest.

In the Metaverse, the injection of billions of lipid nanoparticles containing mRNA, which has never been injected into people before, which tricks the cells into allowing it to enter, which then causes billions of cytotoxins to be produced in cells throughout every organ, and which the manufacturers have indemnity but no proper safety data for, is hailed as a savior. In the real world, this is the most dangerous, reckless medical experiment ever performed on masses of people without their knowledge of what they are being given, and the long-term consequences could be unimaginably disastrous, as Professor Sucharit Bhakdi explains in this horrifying warning.

In the Metaverse, a product which doesn’t prevent infection, doesn’t provide immunity, and which requires top-ups every three months, is a vaccine, even if it needs the dictionary definition of what a vaccine is to be changed to accommodate it. In the real world, the Groucho Marx rule about ducks applies — if it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck. Thus if it doesn’t stop infection, doesn’t provide immunity, and wanes after 10 weeks, then it probably isn’t a vaccine.

In the Metaverse, willfully going along with abnormal, illegitimate and authoritarian rules & behaviours is the way back to normality and freedom. In the real world, willfully going along with abnormal, illegitimate and authoritarian rules & behaviours is about conditioning us to accept abnormality, the end of a law based society, and the long term loss of freedom.

In the Metaverse, bringing in Vaccine Passports for nightclubs and other large venues is about keeping people safe, and of course won’t be extended to other venues. In the real world, Vaccine Passports are a Trojan Horse, firstly to be extended into other venues of much smaller size (as has been the case in many European countries), but ultimately to facilitate the creation of a Digital ID Social Credit Hellhole where your every move and transaction can be tracked, you have credits not money, and freedom as we knew it is a thing of the past.

In the Metaverse, people who refuse to submit to the mass medical experiment only have themselves to blame if they find themselves excluded by law from entering certain venues, doing certain jobs, buying certain goods, and even being able to avail themselves of the basic necessities of life. In the real world, this unscientific, unholy, sinister apartheid system shows that we are edging eerily close to repeating the ugliness and depravity of certain 20th century regimes that we smugly told ourselves we were not capable of repeating, due to our apparent goodness.

It is baffling that people can view what’s going on so differently, but I would point out that all the views in the real world are derived from facts, data, reason, logic and historical examples, whereas all the views in the Metaverse are taken from Government and media propaganda.

One of the exasperating things in dealing with this is that whilst there are an endless potential number of lies that can be told, there is only one truth. And what the Government and media are very skillful at doing is layering lies upon lies upon lies, such that whilst the critical thinkers and data analysts are busy trying to debunk lie number one, lies number two, three, four and following are already being laid on that foundation so that by the time the original lie has been shown to be false, things have moved on and hardly anyone can remember, let alone care about the original claim.

However, the good news is that this is also the Achilles Heel of the Globalist’s narrative. Firstly, the more lies that are told, the harder it is to sustain the story because it can only be kept going by more lies, each of which tends to become increasingly blatant and absurd, such that even those who have been slumbering for two years begin to stir. For instance, if you try to assure the huge numbers of people that have had adverse events from the injection, or who know others that have suffered, that they must get the next one and it’s perfectly safe, clearly you are going to have your work cut out as stark reality highlights the lie in what is being told.

But the other part of this Achilles Heel is this: The Truth will win because The Truth must win. It is The Truth. It cannot not win. Attempting to suppress it is like trying to hold a cork under water. It will always be wanting to get to the surface, and as soon as you tire of holding it and release your grip, that’s what it will do. And so although these lies will continue, and although they will appear to prevail for some time to come, there is coming a time when they will be defeated because The Truth, not lies, is the ultimate reality: “Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” (Proverbs 12:19)

As we look forward to 2022, although we do not know the details of what is to come, because it is very clear that the goal of the Covidian Regimes is to get everybody injected with their mRNA witches’ brew over and over again by carrot or by stick, by hook or by crook, we can be absolutely sure there will be many more lies, many more difficulties, and much more wickedness. Yet we can also be equally sure that these lies will ultimately be defeated, because he who is The Truth (John 14:6) is guaranteed the victory (Revelation 17:14), and he will suffer their lies only so far, until such time as he destroys their unholy, totalitarian, anti-human agenda. There will be a Reckoning. Just make sure that you are on the right side when it comes."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

- http://www.theblogmire.com/

○

Hat tip to Zero Hedge.

Musical Interlude: Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"

Full screen recommended.

Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"

The Daily "Near You?"

Jefferson City, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"For The Most Part..."

"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told- and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."

- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"

"Acceptance..."

"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."

- Margaret E. Rise

The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"

"Courage"

"It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out."

~ Anne Sexton

"Sometimes We Need..."

"Why do human beings have the peculiar impression that belief 

is the same as truth?" "Because sometimes the truth hurts. 

Sometimes we need to believe in a better truth."

"What better truth can there be than truth?"

- Gene Brewer

"The Human Condition"

"The Human Condition"

by Meanings of Life

"Man remains largely unknown of himself. What are we, in our innermost recesses, behind our names and our conventional opinions? What are we behind the things we do in our lives, behind what we see in others and what others see in us, or even behind things science says we are? Is man the crazy being about whom Carl Gustav Jung spoke ironically, when he demanded a man to treat? Is man the Dr. Jerkyll that contains in himself a criminal Mister Hyde, and more than a personality, and contradictory feelings?

Are we the result of our dreams, as Prospero, in the Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” asked? Are we able to raise our nature and become the dignified beings evoked by Pico de la Mirandola: It’s the seeds a man cultivates that "will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God"?

Almost two centuries ago, Spencer characterized the contradictory features of natives from the African east coast: "He has at the same time good character and hard heart; he is a fighter, conscientious, good in a precise moment, and cruel, pitiless and violent in the other; superstitious and rudely irreligious; brave and pusillanimous, servile and dominator, stubborn and at the same time fickle, relied to honor views, but without signs of honesty, niggard and economical, but careless and improvident".

It’s probably a good definition of a certain primitive man, to whom we are undoubtedly connected. But we are also cultural and ethic beings. We are able to change our values and behaviors. As William James says, human beings can change their lives through their mental attitudes. We can grow ethically. We can dominate part of our own instincts. And that’s why we can be different from the indigenous African described by Spencer. More: our thought dignifies us ("All the dignity of man consists in thought", says Blaise Pascal). We are, in many senses, the conscience of the Universe, and its utmost elaborated product. As Edgar Morin says, "in the core of our singularity, we carry not only all the humanity, all the life, but also all the cosmos, including its mystery, present in the heart of our beings".

We are creators, creator beings, and, in a sense, we can create, or recreate ourselves. All goes through our mind. It is our mind that constructs our truths and errors, and also the most sublime things in the Universe. And yet evil and stupidity exist in us. Sometimes we fall, we are stroked, and life reveals its cruelty, and we may think as Mark Twain, and say that it was a pity that Noah had arrived late to the ark. In our innermost recesses, there is also the cruelty and the inhumanity of life. Charles Darwin showed that we are descendants of inferior life forms: we have been long ago a "bush and a bird, and a fish silently swimming in the waters", to use the poetic terms used by Empedocles in its "Purifications."

From a genetic and evolutionist point of view, we contain in us the survival reflexes and the aggressiveness of the life forms that preceded us: "All that threatened the cave man - dangers, darkness, famine, thirst, ghosts, demons – all has passed to the interior of our souls, all troubles us, grieves us, threatens us from inside." (Morin). Besides, we are also beings that can differ significantly from each other. We are equal, but also different. "The awake involve a common world, but dreams deviate each one to its own world," Heraclites rather enigmatically declares. He thought we can’t help sleeping and living in illusory worlds, even when awake.

For all these reasons, Blaise Pascal’s celebrated definition of the human being, despite the hard language, not exactly agreeable to our ears, is undoubtedly one of the most powerful that can be applied to the rather unknown being that we can’t help being to ourselves: "What a chimera then is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle?"

- http://www.meaningsoflife.com/

"We Are Mortals All..."

"We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel."

- Gary Kowalski

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

- Steve Jobs,

Commencement Speech, Stanford University, 2005

"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true...

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called "The Whole Earth Catalog", which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of "The Whole Earth Catalog", and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."

○

"Listen to me. We're here to make a dent in the universe.

Otherwise why even be here?"

- Steve Jobs

"How It Really Is"

 

"Last Chance To Get Out Before The Crash"

Full screen recommended.

"Last Chance To Get Out Before The Crash"

by Epic Economist

"The U.S. economy is falling apart all around us. With inflation soaring to the highest level in 40 years, the central bank is trying to stay ahead of a potential hyperinflationary spike by rolling back its Quantitative Easing policies, initiating a taper, and introducing interest rake hikes. All of that indicates that a liquidity crunch is near. According to the financial and economic analyst, Charles Hugh Smith, this might be investors' last chance to get out of the bubble before its inevitable explosion. Investors have missed the timing to get out of the rally several times in the past because the vast majority of them don't see -- or don't want to see -- the rising dangers until after the crash happens and causes very painful losses. But in Smith's view, "every asset bubble has a last chance to get out before the crash point that becomes obvious in the aftermath".

Today, this last opportunity to exit before the stock market crashes is exceedingly difficult to identify for a series of reasons. First and foremost is the extreme confidence investors have at the peak of the bubble that more gains are right ahead. Everyone who sold when the bubble started to show signs of bursting is eager to get back in, so every dip in the market is reversed by 'buy the dip buyers' who have been collecting huge profits from buying previous dips. In theory, even after conditions start to reverse in the broader market, the bubble can still reach a new peak and even a double peak, head and shoulders if investors keep going all-in in the market. The rally that follows the beginning of a downward trend tends to exceed whatever levels were considered bearish triggers. So bullish investors have the deceiving notion that the market still has enough technical support to provide further gains.

But that's when they miss the last chance to exit the market. They keep buying shares to fuel a rally that has already begun to falter. The 'buy-the-dippers' ignore this decline and buy the second dip. "That too falters and once the third buy-the-dip has failed to rally back to previous highs, many buy-the-dippers have been wiped out and the momentum of buying slackens," Smith continues. It's only when investors collectively realize that the 'buy-the-dip' strategy has failed and will not work anymore that a major sell-off begins, turns into a self-reinforcing avalanche, and the stock market finally crashes. For those who want to believe that the rally will last forever, none of this is visible until it's too late to get out of the bubble with some profits in hand.

Right now, bulls are still thinking that fundamentals don't matter and the Fed will do everything in its power to prevent a collapse while bears are still mumbling about elevated risk. However, the tech bubble has already popped. We have already witnessed the first dip and soon traders will realize that there's no way to keep reaching new highs anymore. Everywhere we look, we can find a series of indicators showing that this window is closing fast. But the problem is that most people don't want to look at the red flags. All of this is scaring some veteran insiders, who worry that the stock market will go from a zero-interest rate to a zero-alternative environment. Amongst them is the chief strategist at RIA Advisors, Lance Roberts, who recently warned his clients that "without exception, rate-hiking campaigns led to a negative outcome". The last time we've seen such exuberant stock prices was during the peak of the dot-com bubble. And at this point, anything could derail the market, but Roberts exposes the top ten threats signaling the arrival of a downturn.

Today, the best-case scenario for the market seems to be one in which the number of virus cases significantly drops, inflation fades away by itself, rate hikes and tapering don't affect the economy or stocks, and consumers continue their strong spending. Needless to say, that's a lot of boxes that need to be checked. Only a miracle would bring back economic and financial conditions to somewhat normal levels to impede the looming stock market crash. This last chance to protect yourself from the disaster that is fast approaching. It's your choice to take it or risk losing everything."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

"What's Causing The California Mass Exodus And Collapse; Credit Cards Shut Off; Mortgage Debt Explodes"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 1/1/22:

"What's Causing The California Mass Exodus And Collapse; 

Credit Cards Shut Off; Mortgage Debt Explodes"

"Will Real Estate Finally Crash in 2022? Let’s Tour the Current Market"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, PM 1/1/22:

"Will Real Estate Finally Crash in 2022? 

Let’s Tour the Current Market"

"2021 was a record year for Real Estate sales. What will 2023 bring us? The most interesting part is that real estate has shot up around the world. It’s not just in the United States but the worldwide real estate market is that an absolute peak right now."

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Natural Light"

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, "Natural Light"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 5643? A swirling disk of stars and gas, NGC 5643's appearance is dominated by blue spiral arms and brown dust, as shown in the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The core of this active galaxy glows brightly in radio waves and X-rays where twin jets have been found. 

An unusual central glow makes NGC 5643 one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of galaxies, where vast amounts of glowing gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole. NGC 5643, is a relatively close 55 million light years away, spans about 100 thousand light years across, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Wolf (Lupus)."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201005.html

"What We Owe To Ourselves..."

"That we can never know," answered the wolf angrily. "That's for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we're bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything."

- David Clement Davies

"Huxley vs. Orwell"

"Huxley vs. Orwell"

by  Neil Postman

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one... 

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism... 

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...

   

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...

   

As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

 - http://www.dailykos.com/
◆

Huxley was quite obviously correct...

"Centering Ourselves: Gathering Our Straying Thoughts"

"Centering Ourselves:

Gathering Our Straying Thoughts"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"All too often our lives can be spread too thin and it becomes important to gather our thoughts and center ourselves to become whole again. When our thoughts are scattered in several directions at once and we are no longer conscious of what we are doing or why, it is time to center ourselves. When we center ourselves, we begin by acknowledging that we have become spread too thin and we are no longer unified inside. Our thoughts might be out of sync with our feelings, and our actions may be out of sync with both. The main signs that we need to center ourselves are scattered thoughts and a feeling of disconnection or numbness, as if we are no longer able to take anything in. In addition, we may feel unfocused and not present in our bodies. Centering ourselves is a way of coming to terms with all the different energies within us and drawing them back into ourselves.

Centering yourself means that you are working from or being aware of the core of your being in the solar plexus area of your body. At first it may not make sense, but as you progress you will understand what this feels like. We naturally know how to center ourselves when we take a deep breath, for example, before making a big announcement or doing something big. Another way to center ourselves is to sit down and engage in breath meditation. We can start by simply getting into a comfortable upright position and noticing as our breath enters and leaves our bodies. Our breath flows into our center and out from our center, and this process can serve as a template for all of our interactions in the world. In conversations, we can take what our friends are saying into the center of our beings and respond from the center. Our whole lives mirror this ebb and flow of energy that begins and ends at the center of ourselves. If we follow this ebb and flow, we are in harmony with the universe, and when we find we are out of harmony, we can always come back into balance by sitting down and observing our breath.

When we sit down to center ourselves we can imagine that we are gathering our straying thoughts and energies back into ourselves, the way a mother duck gathers her babies around her. We can also visualize ourselves casting a net and pulling all the disparate parts of ourselves back to the center of our being, creating a sense of fluid integration. From this place of centeredness, we can begin again, directing ourselves outward in a more intentional way."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

Related:

Michael Sealey, 

"Guided Meditation for Detachment From Over-Thinking 

(Anxiety/OCD/Depression)"

"A Little Late..."

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Lawrenceville, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It Has Become Our Collective Fate..."

"We live in radical times surrounded by tasks that seem impossible. It has become our collective fate to be alive in a time of great tragedies, to live in a period of overwhelming disasters and to stand at the edge of sweeping changes. The river of life is flooding before us, and a tide of poisons affect the air we breathe and the waters we drink and even tarnish the dreams of those who are young and as yet innocent. The snake-bitten condition has already spread throughout the collective body.

However, it is in troubled times that it becomes most important to remember that the wonder of life places the medicine of the self near where the poison dwells. The gifts always lie near the wounds, the remedies are often made from poisonous substances, and love often appears where deep losses become acknowledged. Along the arc of healing the wounds and the poisons of life are created the exact opportunities for bringing out all the medicines and making things whole again."

- Michael Meade, "Fate And Destiny"

"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"

"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"

by Paul Rosenberg

"I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly call the human species depraved... hopelessly unredeemable... that was, and remains, obscene to me.

The sad truth, however, is that the modern West swims in a sea of Calvinism. The corporate bullhorns feed everyone they can a steady diet of the bad, ugly, and if possible the bloody. Under their influence, we would believe that all is darkness, that truth is illusion, that the human path is ever-downward, and that all professions of goodness are scams.

In other words, the minds of millions of people (billions, probably), are continually pushed to imagine that human depravity is a fact. That strategy is terribly effective – there’s no better tool for manipulating humans than fear – but it is no less than obscene and evil. And it’s false. Humans are amazing creatures, and very often kind, gracious and loving creatures.

The Real Revolutionaries: I’ve used this passage from G.K. Chesterton’s "The Defendant" before, but it’s so important that I could use it once a month and feel fine about it: "Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelly, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness."

The popular image of a revolutionary is of someone railing against the rulers of their place and leading a mob against them to bring in a new political regime. Notwithstanding the ridiculous notion of politics saving us from politics, this has always been a fantasy. It’s very dramatic of course, which is why it remains, but in real life it simply doesn’t happen [1].

The real revolution, certainly in our time, is not to bring anything down, but simply to realize that we’ve outgrown a dark and manipulative public order, and that it’s fit for no more than to be tossed aside, like the worn-out clothing of our youth.

Real revolutionaries don’t want to take over an outmoded and abusive status quo, but to transcend it... to leave it behind and build better things. Behind such a belief, as Chesterton noted, will stand a realization of the goodness of existence.

How Good Can We Get? Consider the millions of hours... billions of hours... wasted every year fighting the mostly-imaginary evils pumped through television, radio and social media. Then, please, consider that the problems so terrifyingly portrayed are seldom really solved. So, what if we spent that time (and energy and money) to improve ourselves instead?

How silly is it to spend our time and treasure fighting within a system that can never allow its problems to be solved – if the system solved them it would have no reason to exist – when we are quite able to improve ourselves instead?

Consider, please: We have no real idea of how good we can get, because we’ve never seriously focused on making ourselves better.

Or, said differently: Instead of endlessly imagining human evil, what if we started imagining human greatness? One is just as possible as the other. So why shouldn’t we take the bright path instead of the permanently dark path that’s proven not to work? And I will add that the progress we have seen in the world... science, medicine and the like... has mainly come from people who imagined better ways, better things,  and better lives.

This, then, is the radical and revolutionary belief that stands before us: That mankind is far better than we’ve imagined... that human life can be satisfying and rewarding... that we are capable of being far more than we’ve imagined. All we have to do is to lift up our eyes and start trying."

- www.freemansperspective.com

[1]  It’s probably worth adding that the American Revolution wasn’t a revolution per se. Rather, it was a new society, on a new continent, that grew in a condition of “salutary neglect,” after which the Crown attempted to drag it into submission. The Americans of 1776 fought to be left alone rather than to bring down the Crown.

"2022: The Year of Breakdown"

"2022: The Year of Breakdown"

by Charles Hugh-Smith

"If we look at the fragility and instability of essential systems, it’s clear that 2022 will be the year of breakdown. Let’s start by reviewing how systems break down, a process I’ve simplified into the graphic below.

1. Regardless of whether it was planned or not, all systems are optimized to process specific inputs to generate specific outputs. Each system is pared down to maximize efficiency as the means to maximize profits. This efficiency in service of maximizing profits requires trade-offs that only become visible when some key part of the system fails.

The system that ships containers around the world offers a useful example. Shipping containers revolutionized shipping and reduced costs by commoditizing containers (all standard sizes), container ships (specifically designed to carry thousands of containers and container ports with specifically designed cranes, docks and truck lanes/queueing.

It’s possible to load a container on some other craft with a jury-rigged crane, but the efficiency of that is essentially a fraction of the optimized system: the jury-rigged crane will only be able to load a handful of containers, the ship will only be able to carry a few containers, and the likelihood of the containers shifting increases.

The infrastructure and labor are both highly specialized. Calling out the National Guard to speed up container offloading is a useless gesture unless the Guard can deliver more cranes and experienced operators. The greater the optimization, the greater the fragility as the breaking of any one link brings the entire system to a halt. Throwing in equipment and labor that the system isn’t designed to use will fail.

Virtually every essential system has been stripped of redundancy, resilience, reserves and adaptability as the means to fully optimize inputs, processes and outputs. The system works well if every link in the dependency chain is working perfectly. Should one link go down, the entire system goes down.

2. Cost-cutting has stripped systems of back-up staffing and expertise. Full-time workers have been replaced by gig workers, contract workers, part-time staff on call, etc. Experienced staff cost too much so they’ve been let go as well, so there is no depth in numbers or knowledge.

3. Management is top-heavy with MBAs and bean-counters with little pragmatic experience or knowledge of the systems they’re managing. Management is optimized to advance those who can generate big profits, not those with experiential skills needed to meet crises in real-world dependency chains, production, breakdowns, etc. So when the system comes apart, managers simply don’t have the knowledge or skills to solve real-world problems.

The skills that are most desirable when everything is running smoothly are useless in crisis. Who do you want to go into combat with, the continuously promoted officer who won high marks for filing reports on time or the officer with actual combat experience who got passed over for promotion because he/she didn’t devote the proper attention to paperwork, meetings, virtue-signaling and derriere-kissing? Unfortunately the vast majority of our systems are managed by people who lack the long experience and hands-on skills needed to meet cascading crises.

4. Systems are now so complex and opaque that they are in effect optimized to fail in ways that are impervious to quick fixes. Bureaucratic mission drift, virtue-signaling, the erosion of accountability, multiplying platforms and software and the endless expansion of compliance and regulatory burdens have loaded every system with numerous points of failure and procedural friction that contributes little or nothing to the organization’s core mission. As resources are devoted to make-work procedural black holes, the mission decays and collapses at the first crisis.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: contacting essential services (tax payments, etc.) rarely generates a timely reply, much less a solution; a new bridge or subway line takes decades to build and is billions over budget; software projects intended to streamline complex regulatory processes (building permits, etc.) never work right and end up slowing the whole system down, fraud is rampant, software security is laughably poor…the list is almost endless.

5. Once the system has been stripped of resources, experienced staff, back-up equipment and supplies and loaded with unproductive friction, even a small crisis will bring down the entire system. In the graphic below, all of these resources are the buffer that enables systems to respond to the pressing demands of crises. Once these are gone, the only possible result is systemic collapse.

6. We’ve collectively lost the ability and willingness to deal with crises for which there is no happy-story ending. We only want to hear the optimistic story, the glimmers of hope, the miracle cures, the painless tech fix, etc., and if we get a dose of reality instead, we’re quick to dismiss the bearer of inconvenient news as an alarmist, a doom-and-gloomer, etc.

In other words, our economy and society have been optimized for failure. Drifting along in a daze of disconnected-from-reality complacency we are completely unprepared to deal with realities that don’t respond to magical thinking, optimism, hope and tech fantasies."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch! Calls For 2022"

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch! Calls For 2022"

- https://traderschoice.net/