"So many people reach out to me and tell me how they’re cutting back. It’s not just cost savings it’s the fact that they are eliminating things in their lives because they cannot afford them. Inflation has destroyed so many."
"Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.
About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous featured image combines both narrowband and broadband images."
"While Seamus Heaney, the world-famous Irish poet and Nobel Prize Winner, was being rushed to the operating room he sent a single text message to his wife with just two words: "Noli Timere ." This Latin phrase when translated to English means Be not afraid. Heaney passed away not long after."
“There was no virtue more important to the Stoics than courage, particularly in times of stress or crisis. In scary times, it’s easy to be scared. Events can escalate at any moment. There is uncertainty. You could lose your job. Then your house and your car. Something could even happen with your kids. Of course we’re going to feel something when things are shaky like that. How could we not?
Even the Stoics, who were supposedly masters of their emotions, admitted that we are going to have natural reactions to the things that are out of our control. You’re going to feel cold if someone dumps a bucket of water on you. Your heart is going to race if something jumps out from behind a corner. These are things the Stoics openly discussed.
They had a word for these immediate, pre-cognitive impressions of things: phantasiai. No amount of training or wisdom, Seneca said, can prevent us from having these reactions. What mattered to them, and what is urgently needed today in a world of unlimited breaking news about pandemics or collapsing stock markets or military conflicts, was what you did after that reaction. What mattered is what came next.
There is a wonderful quote from Faulkner about this very idea. “Be scared,” he wrote. “You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid.” A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. Being afraid is an ongoing process. Fear is a state of being. The alertness that comes from being startled might even help you. It wakes you up. It puts your body in motion. It’s what saves prey from the tiger or the tiger from the hunter. But fear and worry and anxiety? Being afraid? That’s not fight or flight. That’s paralysis. That only makes things worse.
Especially right now. Especially in a world that requires solutions to the many problems we face. They’re certainly not going to solve themselves. And inaction (or the wrong action) may make them worse, it might put you in even more danger. An inability to learn, adapt, to embrace change will too.
There is a Hebrew prayer which dates back to the early 1800s: כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל. “The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.” The wisdom of that expression has sustained the Jewish people through incredible adversity and terrible tragedies. It was even turned into a popular song that was broadcast to troops and citizens alike during the Yom Kippur War. It’s a reminder: Yes, things are dicey, and it’s easy to be scared if you look down instead of forward. Fear will not help.
What does help? Training. Courage. Discipline. Commitment. Calm. But mainly, that courage thing – which the Stoics held up as the most essential virtue. One of my favorite explanations of this idea comes from the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. “It’s not like astronauts are braver than other people,” he says. “We’re just, you know, meticulously prepared…” Think about someone like John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, whose heart rate never went above a 100 beats per minute the entire mission. That’s what preparation does for you.
Astronauts face all sorts of difficult, high stakes situations in space – where the margin for error is tiny. In fact, on Chris’ first spacewalk his left eye went blind. Then his other eye teared up and went blind too. In complete darkness, he had to find his way back if he wanted to survive. He would later say that the key in such situations is to remind oneself that “there are six things that I could do right now, all of which will help make things better. And it’s worth remembering, too, there’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse also.” That’s the difference between scared and afraid. One prevents you from making things better, it may make them worse.
After the stock market crash in October 1929, America faced a horrendous economic crisis that lasted ten years. Banks failed. Investors were wiped out. Unemployment was some 20 percent. Herbert Hoover, who’d only been in office barely six months when the market collapsed, tried and failed repeatedly for the next 3.5 years to stem the tide. FDR, who succeeded him, would have never denied that things were dangerous and that this was scary. Of course it was. He was scared. How could he not be? Yet what he counseled the people in his now-legendary first inaugural address in 1933 was that fear was a choice, it was the real enemy to be fought. Because it would only make the situation worse. It would destroy the remaining banks. It would turn people against each other. It would prevent the implementation of cooperative solutions.
And today, whether the biggest problem you face is the coronavirus pandemic or the similarly dire economic implications – or maybe it’s both those things plus a faltering marriage or a cancer diagnosis or a lawsuit – you have to know what the real plague to avoid is.
This life we’re living – this world we inhabit – is a scary place. If you peer over the side of a narrow bridge, you can lose the heart to continue. You freeze up. You sit down. You don’t make good decisions. You don’t see or think clearly.
The important thing is that we are not afraid. That we don’t overthink things. That we don’t get distracted with the worst-case scenario on top of the worst-case scenario on top of the collision of two other worst-case scenarios. Because that doesn’t help us with what’s right in front of us right now. It doesn’t help us put one foot in front of the other, whether it’s on a spacewalk or a tough business call. It doesn’t help us slow our heart rate down whether we’re re-entering the earth’s atmosphere or watching a plummeting stock portfolio. It doesn’t help us remember that we’ve trained for this, that there is a playbook for how to proceed.
Remember, Marcus Aurelius himself faced a deadly, dangerous pandemic. His people were panicked. His doctors were baffled. His staff and his advisors were conflicted. His economy plunged. The plague spanned fifteen years of his reign with a mortality rate of between 2-3%. Marcus would have been scared – how could he not have been? But he didn’t let that rattle him. He didn’t freeze. He didn’t relinquish his ability to lead. He got to work.
“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole,” he wrote to himself, as it was happening. “Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, ‘Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?’ You’ll be embarrassed to answer.” The crisis could have crippled him. But instead he stood up. He not only endured it, but he was a hero. He saved lives. He prevented panic from turning the battle into a rout.
Which is what we must do today and always, whatever we’re facing. We can’t give into fear. We have to repeat to ourselves over and over again: It’s OK to be scared, just don’t be afraid. We repeat: The world is a narrow bridge and I will not be afraid.
We have to focus on the six things, as Chris Hadfield might say, that we can do to make it better. And we can’t forget that there are plenty of things we can do to make things worse. Foremost among them, giving into fear and making mistakes. Rather, we have to keep going. Now is the time for everyone to show courage, like the thousands of generations who have come before us. Because time marches in only one direction – forward.”
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
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“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is rapidly approaching.
"Russian Regional Supermarket 8 Months After Sanctions"
"Take a look inside a Russian regional Supermarket in Moscow, Russia. What can you buy in a Russian supermarket in almost every town in Russia? Pyaterochka is the most popular supermarket in Russia with over 14,000 locations. What will we find, what kind of prices can were expect on food inside?" (For comparison purposes, as of Oct. 29 one Russian Ruble is worth 0.0163 Dollars.)
Fascinating. Look at the scene, the cars, buildings, what people look like and are wearing, and then the market. Do they, does it all, seem so different from you? What are your impressions? And how's it going for you in your life and area, Good American? Stores well stocked and open? Food readily available and affordable? Comment below...
"After what happened this morning food prices are about to explode, I've just been advised from a distributor that major price increases are on the horizon. "
"The end of the "growth" road is upon us, though the consensus continues to hold fast to the endearing fantasy of infinite expansion of consumption. This fantasy has been supported for decades by the financial expansion of debt, which enabled more spending which pushed consumption, earnings, taxes, etc. higher. All the financial games are fun but "growth" boils down to an expansion of material consumption: more copper mined and turned into wire which is turned into new wind turbines, housing, vehicles, appliances, etc. There are three problems with the infinite expansion of consumption "growth" paradigm…
Planned Obsolescence:
1. Everyone in developed economies already has everything. The "solution" is planned obsolescence and the obsessive worship of marketing, which seeks to manipulate "consumers" into buying stuff of marginal utility that they don't actually need with credit. This is sold as "fashion."
The reality is many consumer goods are of far lower quality than previous generations of products and services. Some of this can be attributed to lower quality control and the relentless pressure of globalization to lower costs, but it's also a systemic expansion of planned obsolescence:
Product cycles, low-quality components, designs intended to be unrepairable, etc. have all been optimized for the Landfill Economy where products that once lasted for decades are now dumped in the landfill after a few years of service. (As for recycling all the broken stuff - that's another endearing fantasy.).
The purchase of "fashionable" replacements and marketing gimmicks are the only real driver of "growth" in developed economies. Life is not being enhanced with better quality or utility; it's supposedly being enhanced by "new" stuff, the only benefit of which is that's it's "new." The claimed benefits are marginal.
Financial Magic Won’t Cut It:
2. Those who could actually use more stuff don't have any money. China's unprecedented development enabled 500 million people who previously didn't have the earnings or credit to buy vehicles, high-rise flats, etc. and gain the income and credit to buy all the middle-class goodies. This immense expansion of the global middle class boosted the global economy for 30 years.
But the rest of the developing world has a harder time duplicating the staggering flood of capital into China that funded its transition into "the workshop of the world." Global corporations might be able to sell snacks and soda and cheap mobile phones to developing economies, but vehicles and high-rise flats - those require expansions of earnings, capital flows and credit that cannot be generated by financial magic.
3. The easy-to-get materials needed to build another billion vehicles, high-rise flats, etc. have been extracted. While the faithful await new technological miracles that will keep the "growth" system expanding forever, those tasked with actually building the new techno-wonders are looking at real-world limits and costs.
Look at copper. Existing mines have been heavily depleted, with supply growth expected to peak by around 2024, according to industry sources. There hasn’t been enough investment in new mines, and there are few new projects. It generally takes at least 10 years to develop a new mine, so we’re looking at a long-term shortage of one of the world’s most important resources.
“Renewable Energy”: What about so-called ‘renewable energy” like solar? Well, as natural resources expert B.F. Randall explains, "Obviously there’s nothing more natural and renewable than daily solar radiation. The planet is awash in free photons. But to convert free photons into electricity requires, among other things, Polysilicon. And polysilicon is anything but renewable. It's not even recyclable. Polysilicon manufacturing requires three inputs:
1. High-purity silica from quartzite rock.
2. High-purity coking coal.
3. Lots of dispatchable (fossil) electric energy.
Yet none of these is, in any sense of the label, "renewable.”
Can You Call It Progress? Meanwhile, the logic of "growth" is to consume more materials, not less. Consider the premier consumer product globally, the automobile. We're constantly told the value of advancements in safety and comfort are the drivers of higher vehicle prices, but the reality is the advances that mattered occurred in the 1970s. Since then, vehicles have become much larger and heavier, consuming more resources for marginal gains.
My 1977 Honda Accord (built 45 years ago) was a considerably different vehicle from the 1962 Dodge Dart my Mom drove. It had far better fuel efficiency and far more power per cubic inch of engine displacement and was far safer and more comfortable. The same can be said for the modest-sized four-cylinder Toyota pickups we drove for work.
The modern versions of this car and truck are far larger and heavier and consume far more resources than previous models. If we scrape away the marketing mind tricks we would conclude the 45-year-old vehicles were far more environmentally sound than the bloated modern versions, and the supposed advances (rear cameras, Bluetooth sound systems, etc.) are either marginal or annoyances.
Worse, Not Better: I looked through a Toyota Prius manual a few years ago. The majority of the thick book addressed the convoluted, complex sound system. Issues such as why the starter battery went dead if the car wasn't used constantly were unaddressed.
Electric vehicles and hybrids use far more of the planet's resources than simple ICE (internal-combustion engines) vehicles, and they don't last as long as their heavy, costly batteries must be replaced long before the basic ICE vehicle reaches the end of its useful life. Only an inconsequential percentage of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, and regardless of rah-rah marketing claims to the contrary, this isn't going to change.
The environmentally sound approach would be to make vehicles that were radically lighter, less powerful, more efficient and slower, vehicles that would get the equivalent of 200 miles per gallon of fuel (or electrical charge) and last 20 years without major overhauls, battery replacements, etc.
But the logic of marketing and debt expansion demands bigger, heavier, more complex and more costly everything, and the replacement of everything sooner rather than later. Only if we consume and squander more real-world resources can we continue running the marketing/ planned obsolescence/expanding debt machine toward the goal of infinite "growth."
The End of the "Growth" Road: Marketing and debt are not substitutes for real-world limits. A great many people are enamored of techno-promises of limitless energy, etc., but they don't look at the vast material consumption needed to build and maintain it all
I’m talking about techno-wonders such as fusion reactors (incomprehensibly complex), nuclear reactors (huge, complex plants that take years to build) or the mining operations needed to dig up and process all the copper, uranium, bauxite, etc. that all these techno-wonders require in the real world.
We've reached the end of the "growth" road in which the expansion of marketing and debt magically increase the materials we can consume. Debt and marketing have their own limits, and our reliance on them has generated second-order effects few understand. The road ends, and the trail beyond is narrow, rough and unmarked. Those who are deaf to marketing and debt and attuned to self-reliance will do just fine.
Everyone caught by surprise that the infinite road actually has an end will face a bewildering transition. In Jim Rickards’ book "The Road to Ruin", he used this equation to predict the end of the financial world:
P2 = P1 x r x (1- p1)
Jim even went so far as to say the next financial crash would be like: “A nuclear chain reaction, which starts with just a single atom being split, and soon it splits so many atoms that energy release would be enormous.” Well, insert one massive stock market bubble and a global pandemic later… And it looks like the day this market goes “nuclear” has finally arrived. And soon - much sooner than most people think - millions of Americans are going to be feeling the pain."
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! How can people afford this? We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"The retail death march persists. Retail businesses of all sizes in America have been facing an unprecedented crisis for more than a decade. The past couple of years have accelerated the demise of many companies, pushing them into bankruptcy, while others, with no hope for rehabilitation, just went out of business abruptly. But the storm that is brewing all across the sector right now may be unlike anything we've ever seen. A flood of bankruptcies is expected within six months. And according to data provided by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, almost half, or 47%, of U.S. retailers may not be able to survive another recession.
At this point, thousands of celebrated American brands are saddled with massive debt loads, depressed profit margins, falling sales and declining foot traffic, and before we notice, many of them can close their doors forever. Dollar-store chain 99 Cents Only is slowly dying before our eyes. It still operated about 350 stores across four states, but it’s been accumulating distressed loans since 2017. The pile of troubled debt outstanding expanded by about $12.6 billion as record inflation takes a toll on the chain. According to Bloomberg, the discount retailer’s presence in the industry is endangered by a competitive disadvantage compared to larger chains as well as a series of operational and execution issues. Given that net profits plunged by 88%, don’t be surprised if the company starts announcing layoffs and store closures in the near future.
New-York based cosmetics retailer Revlon is one of many in the industry that has faced reduced demand even before the pandemic kept most Americans confined to their homes. Revlon has been struggling with declining revenue and a $575 million debt that ultimately led the company to file for bankruptcy in July. With sales falling 21%, supply chain disruptions, and rising operational costs, as well as the rise of influencer cosmetic brands, Revlon is facing major challenges to adapt to today’s market. And while rising interest rates continue to tighten borrowing conditions, the future of the company is remains uncertain, with lenders still evaluating whether the 89-year-old company deserves more than half a billion dollars to restructure itself.
A potentially lackluster holiday shopping season can wreak havoc on the balance sheets of many struggling retailers and push them off a financial cliff. “I think many of these companies will file for bankruptcy, and it’s not going to be a handful. It’s will be a scary number,” said Stifel managing director Michael Kollender, who leads the consumer and retail investment banking group, Stifel. “It’s far more than we have seen over the last several years combined,” he predicts.
Given the fact that many of these businesses are reporting worsening financial problems for many years, we are likely to see major chains and big household names go away and not come back. Consumers are being squeezed on each and every front, and right now, there aren’t many reasons to be optimistic about the state of our economy.
The death of retail represents the death of our middle-class and the collapse of our purchasing power. These downward trends will continue to gain force as our financial conditions keep getting weaker. This winter is going to bring unprecedented challenges for all of us. And by 2023, our economic landscape may be much emptier than anyone could’ve imagined. That’s why today, we compiled a list of 20 companies that may vanish during the downturn that is intensifying all over the country."
"There is no energy crisis, only a crisis of ignorance.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller
"Collectively, investors in Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta watched $700 billion in market cap evaporate between Tuesday and the open today. By contrast, Tesla gained about a percent on trading today. Elon Musk invited his team of Tesla coders to the Twitter headquarters to oversee the outgoing gang given Musk’s successful completion of the deal we wrote about yesterday. And in the many daily missives before.
What’s grabbing our attention today however is the impending diesel shortage in the U.S. Diesel, as you may know, is a “dirty” fuel that gets pumped into cars and big trucks, and is used for heat and manufacturing. And basically powers the dirty part of the economy. For some reason, the president just noticed on October 19 that we’re running low on the stuff.
According to another Orwellian titled government agency, The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said earlier this week on October 21, “stockpiles” of diesel and “other distillate fuel oils” are at the lowest for this time of year since 1982. Other estimates put it as low as last seen in 1954 – the lowest level since records started getting niggled in 1945, right after World War II.
Why do low stockpiles of diesel matter? Well, for folks who drive diesel cars, like one of our colleagues here at the Wiggin Session, the price per gallon has leapt to $5.69. Luckily, we mostly have a post-pandemic work from home ethic.
The other reason is inflation… the bugaboo Jay Powell, chairman at the Federal Reserve, thinks he can tame by raising interest rates. “The problem now,” however, our friend Sean Ring at the Rude Awakening pointed out some six weeks ago, “is that inflation expectations are embedded in the supply chain. And expectations don’t turn on and off like a light switch.” Mr. Ring continues.
Fuel oil, better known as diesel, is still up 75% over last year. Sure, you may feel happy, temporarily, that gasoline is cheaper at the pump. The problem is that taking your car to pick up supplies is the last link in a chain where all other links are connected with diesel. Some still think the situation is salvageable without creating too much mess.
Our friend, Bill Bonner elaborated, in our last Wiggin Session. I’d asked him what he expects to be our next biggest challenge as investors would be. Bill’s response: "I expect an energy crisis. But energy crises have a way of leaking out into other kinds of crises. Our whole economy in the United States runs on diesel fuel. Trucks deliver stuff, and trucks run on diesel fuel. Trucks run on diesel fuel to deliver bread and milk, everything else that we eat. If there were a big crisis in diesel fuel, the shortages, all of a sudden. We've seen how shortages can happen.
Then there could be other shortages such as compounds and electricity goes out and you can't pump the diesel fuel. So anyway, I'm just warning people that it's dangerous for government bureaucrats to interfere in critical industries like this. They've been handing out money, wasting money, doing stupid wars for a long, long time. But this is the first time they have interfered with the very thing that makes it possible for eight billion people to live on Planet Earth. That thing is energy. And these guys don't know anything about energy, except they don't like it. They want it to come from windmills. Well, good luck on that."
In the banter following the president’s awakening that diesel shortages have run down a 25 day supply, there have been several suggestions for banning exports of diesel or fixing the price. When was the last time price fixing worked? Oh yeah, during the Nixon administration following the collapse of Bretton Woods… ha, ha, ha. I’m being unnecessarily sarcastic. Nixon and successive president Ford’s attempts to “Whip Inflation Now” included price fixing schemes. They didn’t work.
“Banning or limiting the export of refined products,” reads a joint report released by the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers sent in October, “would likely decrease inventory levels, reduce domestic refining capacity, put upward pressure on consumer fuel prices and alienate U.S. allies during a time of war.”
Talking their book? Sure. That’s what they get paid to do. But what if they’re right? It’ll be interesting to see what a shortage of dirty fuel does. To me, this is the underbelly of the cultural change to a utopia of climate safe energy... we don’t really know how people are going to react when their houses are cold, food’s expensive and the lights flicker."
"Breaking news: BASF has announced they are partially shuttering operations in Germany and moving capacity to China.
Today is the pivot point. Europe dies from here forward, and it doesn't recover for generations. It's done. Almost nobody realizes this yet, but the dominoes are already falling. Europe is rapidly plunging into a continent on a collision course with total collapse: no industry, no supply chains, no energy, no metals, no fertilizer and no food. The "first world" status of Europe will be a distant memory after just 2-3 winters without food and energy, and once Europe's industrial infrastructure is shuttered, there's no easy way to bring it back online.
This is going to end in mass civil unrest, famine, pandemics and WAR. It will also see revolutions and the toppling of governments, currencies and entire economies. The house of cards is coming down."
Get the full details - plus an emergency interview with an expert on this - in today's feature article and podcast here:
“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”
“How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.”
“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” – Roger Waters
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.”
– Dresden James
“A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.
The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.
But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.
SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.”
Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.
Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”
Postman ended his book by writing: “what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.”
A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
