Saturday, July 27, 2024

"The Limits of Our Freedom"

"The Limits of Our Freedom"
by Mark Harrison

"Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning", "Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies all our freedom."In the most extreme conditions of privation imaginable, Frankl discovered that he was, remarkably, free to choose his response to any situation. I love this quote because it sums up the essence of my philosophy. I believe it is the cornerstone of a happy and effective life. A real, experiential understanding of this radical freedom is life changing, liberating and empowering. To suddenly come upon the realization that we have always been free, not in some abstract sense, but in a real, personal and imminent way, is like being let out of prison.

We are not free to control others: The point is that we are free. And so is everyone else. That means we cannot impinge on the freedom of others. This is not some moral statement. I'm not saying we should not interfere with other people's freedom - it is simply impossible to do so. You cannot make another person do anything. Even putting a gun to someone's head cannot make them do anything. If someone is threatened to the extent that they fear for their life, they are likely to comply with whatever is being demanded of them, but this compliance is not a result of the threat, it is still a choice they make. If you doubt it, think about the people who have been threatened and not complied, think about people who have died for what they believe in rather than comply with an external demand.

The belief that we can control and coerce others, bending them to our will, is the cause of a great deal the misery in the world. This belief, springing from the external control psychology that we have overwhelmingly been conditioned to accept, is the cause of much of our pain. To let go of our belief that we can control others is astonishingly liberating. To accept other people as they are, to make no demands on them, simply to dance our own dance, as Anthony de Mello would have put it, and to accept that we cannot but allow everyone else to do the same, is not only the only choice that makes any sense, but is also the only way we can make any difference in the world.

We have a choice: In every situation, there is a choice. Accept that we cannot control other people or try to force, coerce, manipulate and bully to get our own way. The latter course of action damages relationships and, in the end, leads to pain and dysfunction. Or, we can accept people as they are, accept they are utterly free agents, accept that we cannot force them, and concentrate instead on building relationships with them and on building the inner world which echoes back to us as our experience. When we have good relationships, things work. Perhaps not in the way we might have expected, or even in the way we would have preferred, but things will work. The world is not ours to control, so let it go, and let it work in its own miraculous way. This is the effortlessness to which Lao Tzu alluded when he wrote, "The world is a mysterious instrument, not meant to be handled." Those who act on it never, I notice, succeed. 

We are responsible: We are responsible for ourselves. We make our choices and then we must live with them, not blaming others or circumstances, and not cowardly abdicating responsibility to some external forces. We are not victims! We are in control. By the same token, we are not responsible for other people. Their fear, their anger, their pain, their misery - it's all a choice they make, as freely as we make ours, and they need to shoulder the consequences of these choices, they are not our crosses to bear. Their happiness, their success, their joy - it's all their doing, not ours.

Being proactive: So here lies our freedom, it is inside us every moment and we can recognize it and live our lives according to the truth of this freedom, or we can continue to behave in the way we have been conditioned by society and try to force our way through life, pushing and coercing others into doing our will. One way is peace and happiness, the other way is pain and madness. Being proactive is the first of Steven Covey's "Seven Habits" and is the cornerstone of a truly effective life. I believe that living a proactive life, centered in the self, accepting that we can change nothing but ourselves, and choosing to focus on the good in our life and seeking to attract more it to ourselves is the purpose of our existence." 

"A Real Church Sign"

 
"Oh yeah, we're doing fine, thanks for asking..."

"Our Natural Predators"

"Our Natural Predators"
by Paul Rosenberg

"Nearly every creature upon this planet has one or more natural predators: creatures that prey upon them. Humans seem to be a striking exception; even though we’re bereft of natural weapons – claws, ripping teeth and so on – we easily protect ourselves from even large predators. There are the occasional “bear in the woods” stories, but those come when we leave our constructed environments.

The reason we’re so able to keep ourselves safe is simply that we can think. Humans have, since long before recorded history, figured out how to master wild animals. And so we have no natural predators… or at least none of the usual type.

Our Predators Are Intellectual Predators: In case anyone is pounding a desk and screaming “war,” don’t worry, I’ll get to that in a minute. Humans are not destroyed by claws and teeth, they are destroyed by ideas. In fact, they are highly vulnerable to ideas. In particular they are suckers for authority, for idols and for promises of free stuff. We see these vulnerabilities from one end of human history to another. Here’s just a brief explanation:

Authority: Humans will obey a well-presented authority without critique. The doctor in a white lab coat, the politician wearing a fine suit and podium, the monarch with a crown and a retinue… people turn off their minds when confronted with them and simply comply. The fact that so many order-givers play up their authority proves the point: they wouldn’t take pains to create such images if they didn’t work. Beside that, we all know from experience that they work. And people will reflexively defend authority, if for no other reason than they’ve already obeyed it and they don’t want to look stupid.

Idols: Humans find psychological comfort in holding to a great and powerful person. It makes them feel safe. If you frighten people, then supply them with a powerful figure (Mussolini makes a nice example) and they’ll line right up. It’s no accident that the communists made giant images of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the others: It works.

Free stuff: From the plunder of enemies to robbing the rich to technical incarnations of the same principle, humans are easy marks for this scam. We’ve all watched it in action, and so I won’t elaborate further.

Okay, Now I’ll Do War: War begins with the people. Genghis Khan had to get his arrows from somewhere, after all. No warlord is solely blamable for his slaughters. Warfare rests upon the complicity of normal people. Those people must be manipulated, in one way or another, to supply the materials and bodies required for war. (Crime can be an individual venture, of course.)

No war-seller, so far as I know, has clarified this better than Nazi boss Hermann Göring. Note from this passage that he and his Nazi brethren didn’t use bullets and swords to make people service their war machine, they used ideas:

"Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." And Göring was right that it’s the same in any country: Our entire species is vulnerable to this type of predation.

The Way Forward: Our first step forward, as the AA people rightly say, is to admit we have a problem. And we do have a problem. It’s fixable, but so long as we refuse to acknowledge it, we won’t repair it.

We’ve already covered the basic vulnerabilities above, and I won’t dig into further discussion on that. But our habit of chaining one thought to another, as if each were purely and unquestionably correct, is another major issue. Author Ben Hecht explained this very well, when he commented upon people who were, “unable to think, except in homage to other thoughts.”

Hecht was right, and stacking one concept upon another, and then on another, leads easily into gross errors, unless each of those thoughts are perfect, complete and ideally expressed… which they never are. Still, stacking thoughts up in this way (ever deviating from precision) yields the comfort and confidence – and the justification – of having thought.

The bottom line here is that our predators use words and emotions to make us do their will. They are, in illustrative terms, vampires, sucking our will from us. They convince us, through emotional pressures and devious logic – by riding upon our vulnerabilities – that it’s right for them to collect our sacrifices, that failure to obey them will bring us shame, that comfort and safety require our immediate obedience, and that being restricted is the only way to be safe.

“He was going to suck my blood!” “Which is what we do 
to anyone when we say we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way.”

All of that is predation. Again, if we are to stop being abused, the first step is to realize… to accept… that we have a problem. We must recognize that we have vulnerabilities; then we must forgive ourselves for them. After that it’s straightforward and not terribly hard."

Free Download: Richard Bach, "Illusions"

"We Are All. Free. To Do. Whatever. We Want. To Do.”
by Richard Bach

“We are all free to do whatever we want to do,” he said that night. “Isn’t that simple and clean and clear? Isn’t that a great way to run a universe?” “Almost. You forgot a pretty important part,” I said. “Oh?” “We are all free to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t hurt somebody else,” I chided. “I know you meant that, but you ought to say what you mean.”

There was a sudden shambling sound in the dark, and I looked at him quickly. “Did you hear that?” “Yeah. Sounds like there’s somebody…” He got up, walked into the dark. He laughed suddenly, said a name I couldn’t catch. “It’s OK,” I heard him say. “No, we’d be glad to have you… no need you standing around… come on, you’re welcome, really…”

The voice was heavily accented, not quite Russian, nor Czech, more Transylvanian. “Thank you. I do not wish to impose myself upon your evening…” The man he brought with him to the firelight was, well, he was unusual to find in a midwest night. A small lean wolflike fellow, frightening to the eye, dressed in evening clothes, a black cape lined in red satin, he was uncomfortable in the light.

“I was passing by,” he said. “The field is a shortcut to my house…” “Is it?” Shimoda did not believe the man, knew he was lying, and at the same time did all he could to keep from laughing out loud. I hoped to understand before long.

“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Can we help you at all?” I really didn’t feel that helpful, but he was so shrinking, I did want him to be at ease, if he could. He looked on me with a desperate smile that turned me to ice. “Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood…”

Maybe it was the accent, he didn’t know English that well or I didn’t understand his words, but I was on my feet quicker than I had been in many a month, hay flying into the fire from my quickness. The man stepped back. I am generally harmless, but I am not a small person and I could have looked threatening. He turned his head away. “Sir, I am sorry! I am sorry! Please forget that I said anything about blood! But you see…”

“What are you saying?” I was the more fierce because I was scared. “What in the hell are you saying, mister? I don’t know what you are, are you some kind of VAM-?” Shimoda cut me off before I could say the word. “Richard, our guest was talking, and you interrupted. Please go ahead, sir; my friend is a little hasty.” “Donald,” I said, “this guy…” “Be quiet!” That surprised me so much that I was quiet, and looked a sort of terrified question at the man, caught from his native darkness into our firelight.

“Please to understand. I did not choose to be born vampire. Is unfortunate. I do not have many friends. But I must have a certain small amount of fresh blood every night or I writhe in terrible pain, longer than that without it and I cannot live! Please, I will be deeply hurt – I will die – if you do not allow me to suck your blood… just a small amount, more than a pint I do not need.” He advanced a step toward me, licking his lips, thinking that Shimoda somehow controlled me and would make me submit.

“One more step and there will be blood, all right. Mister, you touch me and you die…” I wouldn’t have killed him, but I did want to tie him up, at least, before we talked much more. He must have believed me, for he stopped and sighed. He turned to Shimoda. “You have made your point?” “I think so. Thank you.”

The vampire looked up at me and smiled, completely at ease, enjoying himself hugely, an actor on stage when the show is over. “I won’t drink your blood, Richard,” he said in perfect friendly English, no accent at all. As I watched he faded as though he was turning out his own light… in five seconds he had disappeared.

Shimoda sat down again by the fire. “Am I ever glad you don’t mean what you say!” I was still trembling with adrenalin, ready for my fight with a monster. “Don, I’m not sure I’m built for this. Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on. Like, for instance, what… was that?”

“Dot was a wompire from Tronsylwania,” he said in words thicker than the creature’s own. “Or to be more precise, dot was a thought-form of a wompire from Tronsylwania. If you ever want to make a point, you think somebody isn’t listening, whip ‘em up a little thought-form to demonstrate what you mean. Do you think I overdid him, with the cape and the fangs and the accent like that? Was he too scary for you?”

“The cape was first class, Don. But that was the most stereotyped, outlandish… I wasn’t scared at all.” He sighed. “Oh well. But you got the point, at least, and that’s what matters.”

“What point?” “Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he’d be hurt if…”

“He was going to suck my blood!” “Which is what we do to anyone when we say we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way.”

I was quiet for a long time, thinking about that. I had always believed that we are free to do as we please only if we don’t hurt another, and this didn’t fit. There was something missing.

“The thing that puzzles you,” he said, “is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. My vampire told you he’d be hurt if you didn’t let him? That’s his decision to be hurt, that’s his choice. What you do about it is your decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake of holly through his heart. If he doesn’t want the holly stake, he’s free to resist, in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices.”

“When you look at it that way…”

“Listen,” he said, “it’s important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.“
o
"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
o
Freely download “Illusions” here:
o
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
by Richard Bach

“Born in 1936, Richard Bach is an American author who has written many excellent books. His quotes are inspirational and motivational. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull;” “Illusions;” “The Bridge Across Forever;” to name only a few of his books."

Notice: This electronic version of the book has been released for educational purposes only. You may not sell or make any profit from this book. And if you like this book, buy a paper copy and give it to someone who does not have a computer, if that is possible for you.

"Feeling Fed Up with Humanity, In the World and in Ourselves"

"Feeling Fed Up with Humanity, 
In the World and in Ourselves"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer and knowing this allows us to find compassion. From time to time, we may all feel fed up with humanity, whether it’s from learning about what’s going on around the world, or what’s going on next door. There are always situations that leave us feeling as if people are simply not capable of behaving in a way that is coming from a place of awareness. Often it seems as if people are actually geared to handle things in the worst possible way, repeatedly. At the same time, none of us wants to linger in a judgmental mood about our own species. As a result, we might tend to repress the feelings coming up as we take in the news from the world and the neighborhood.

It is natural to feel let down and disappointed when we see our fellow humans behaving in ways that are greedy, selfish, violent, or uncaring, but there are also ways to process that disappointment without sinking into despondency. As with any emotional response, we honor our feelings by feeling them fully, without judging or acting on them. Once we’ve done that—and we may need to do it every day, as part of our daily self-care—we can begin to consider ways that we might help the situation in which humanity finds itself.

As always, we start with ourselves, utilizing our awareness of the failings of others to renew our own commitment to be more conscious human beings. We are all capable of the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, and remembering this keeps us in check, as well as allowing us to find compassion for others. We may find ourselves feeling compelled to serve people who are suffering injustices at the hands of other people, or we may begin to speak out when we see something that we don’t think is right. Whatever the case, the only thing we can do is pledge to serve the best, rather than the worst, of what humanity has to offer, both in the world, and in ourselves."
"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"The Consequences Of Our Choices..."

"Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.”
- Richard Bach, “Running From Safety”

Friday, July 26, 2024

Adventures With Danno, "Boars Head" Recalls 200,000 Pounds Of Deli Sliced Meat!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 7/26/24
"Boars Head" Recalls 200,000 Pounds Of Deli Sliced Meat! 
We Finally Have Answers!"
Comments here:
o
Adventures With Danno, PM 7/26/24
"Vegetable Recall Expands & Is Affecting Walmart,
 Aldi & Kroger! We're In Trouble!"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Even Now"

2002, "Even Now"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Planetary nebula Abell 78 stands out in this colorful telescopic skyscape. In fact the colors of the spiky Milky Way stars depend on their surface temperatures, both cooler (yellowish) and hotter (bluish) than the Sun. But Abell 78 shines by the characteristic emission of ionized atoms in the tenuous shroud of material shrugged off from an intensely hot central star. The atoms are ionized, their electrons stripped away, by the central star's energetic but otherwise invisible ultraviolet light. 
The visible blue-green glow of loops and filaments in the nebula's central region corresponds to emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms, surrounded by strong red emission from electrons recombining with hydrogen atoms. Some 5,000 light-years distant toward the constellation Cygnus, Abell 78 is about three light-years across. A planetary nebula like Abell 78 represents a very brief final phase in stellar evolution that our own Sun will experience... in about 5 billion years.”

"What A Privilege!"

“Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment - not discouragement - you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.”
~ Joseph Campbell

Free Download: Albert Camus, “The Plague”

“Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it’s stupid and won’t last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else – they did not believe in plagues.”
- Albert Camus, “The Plague”

Freely download “The Plague”, by Albert Camus, here:

"Against All Odds..."

“Maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves that reality is better. We convince ourselves it’s better that we never dream at all. But, the strongest of us, the most determined of us, holds on to the dream or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We wake to find ourselves, against all odds, feeling hopeful. And, if we’re lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life the true dream is being able to dream at all.”
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

The Daily "Near You?"

Port-of-spain, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Thanks for stopping by!

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything"

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s 
Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and 
Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning"
by Maria Popova

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” Sometimes, life asks this question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living.

That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by readingSome through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character.

A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing "Man’s Search for Meaning."

As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure - especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame - these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered - as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past - they are now published in English for the first time as "Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything" (public library).

Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit, Frankl writes: "We cannot move toward any spiritual reconstruction with a sense of fatalism such as this."

Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision: "Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age."

Insisting that it takes a measure of moral strength not to succumb to nihilism, be it that of the pessimist or of the optimist, he exclaims: "Give me a sober activism anytime, rather than that rose-tinted fatalism! How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism?
[…]
Through this nihilism, through the pessimism and skepticism, through the soberness of a “new objectivity” that is no longer that “new” but has grown old, we must strive toward a new humanity."

Sophie Scholl, upon whom chance did not smile as favorably as it did upon Frankl, affirmed this notion with her insistence that living with integrity and belief in human goodness is the wellspring of courage as she courageously faced her own untimely death in the hands of the Nazis. But while the Holocaust indisputably disenchanted humanity, Frankl argues, it also indisputably demonstrated “that what is human is still valid… that it is all a question of the individual human being.” Looking back on the brutality of the camps, he reflects:

"What remained was the individual person, the human being - and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down - the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one - the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self."

In a sentiment that bellows from the hallways of history into the great vaulted temple of timeless truth, he adds: "Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being."

Frankl then turns to the question of finding a sense of meaning when the world gives us ample reasons to view life as meaningless - the question of “continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness.” Writing in the post-war pre-dawn of the golden age of consumerism, which has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product, Frankl first dismantles the notion that meaning is to be found in the pursuit and acquisition of various pleasures:

"Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else — preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us."

He quotes a short verse by the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore - the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize, Einstein’s onetime conversation partner in contemplating science and spirituality, and a man who thought deeply about human nature:

"I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked - and behold,
duty was joy."

In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation - an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity - Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point: "So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down."

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe, Frankl turns the question unto itself: "At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?"

Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life - it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to - of being responsible toward - life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.

Frankl adds a caveat of tremendous importance - triply so in our present culture of self-appointed gurus, self-help demagogues, and endless podcast feeds of interviews with accomplished individuals attempting to distill a universal recipe for self-actualization: "The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.

We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?"

What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms, learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms - terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment:

"One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a meaning. One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions."

With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death - a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe. Frankl writes:

"The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.
[…]
Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or leave unfulfilled - that gives our existence significance. But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole that gives it importance, it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment that represents something that loads our existence with the weight of a terrible and yet so beautiful responsibility! Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness."

In the remainder of the slender and splendid "Yes to Life", Frankl goes on to explore how the imperfections of human nature add to, rather than subtract from, the meaningfulness of our lives and what it means for us to be responsible for our own existence. Complement it with Mary Shelley, writing two centuries ago about a pandemic-savaged world, on what makes life worth living, Walt Whitman contemplating this question after surviving a paralytic stroke, and a vitalizing cosmic antidote to the fear of death from astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson, then revisit Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Return”

“The Return”

“Suddenly the window will open
and Mother will call,
it's time to come in.
The wall will part,
I will enter heaven in muddy shoes.
I will come to the table
and answer questions rudely.
I am all right, leave me
alone. Head in hand I
sit and sit. How can I tell them
about that long
and tangled way?
Here in heaven mothers
knit green scarves;
flies buzz.
Father dozes by the stove
after six days' labor.
No - surely I can't tell them
that people are at each
other's throats.”

- Theodore Roethke

"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

Dan, I Allegedly, "Here is Proof that Real Estate is Insane"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 7/26/24
"Here is Proof that Real Estate is Insane"
"Enjoy this tour. We talk about the fact that real estate prices are absolutely through the roof. Imagine a world where you can buy a house and the rents are $5000 less than your house payment would be."
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"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "In the National Interest"

"In the National Interest"
The elites all want ‘yes’ men. In the White House and in Congress. Almost all legislation transfers money and power from the people to them... their cronies...and their pet projects.
by Bill Bonner

"No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session."
- Gideon J. Tucker

Poitou, France - "Widely reported yesterday was Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Some people - mostly those who benefit from pro-Israeli campaign funds or are otherwise employed by the military/industrial/DeepState/surveillance/university/press complex - applauded wildly.

They rose to their feet 50 times…like the Supreme Soviet during an address by Josef Stalin. They seemed especially enthusiastic when the Israeli president suggested that those who objected to killing thousands of Gazans were aligned, and possibly supported, by Iran! Didn’t they know, the Iranian regime hangs gays from construction cranes?!

Other people - mostly Democrats, and notably including Kamala Harris - preferred to keep their distance. Netanyahu is widely and plausibly regarded as a war criminal, who leads an apartheid regime that steals land, tortures innocent people, destroys schools and hospitals and has killed nearly forty thousand Palestinians in the last nine months.

Just mentioning the mass murder brings charges of ‘antisemitism.’ On college campuses, professors who speak up may lose their jobs. Students lose job opportunities. And media reports of ‘rising antisemitism’ make it sound like every Jew on campus lives in fear for his life. So great is the danger of being labeled an ‘anti-semite’ that the goyim held back as Jews - who can’t reasonably be charged with opposing themselves - led Wednesday’s protests at the Capitol.

For politicians, the risk of getting on the wrong side of the Israeli lobby is even greater. They’ve all seen what AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) did to Jamaal Bowman. It can outspend almost any adversary. And according to Rep. Thomas Massie, AIPAC assigns a staffer to monitor each member of Congress to make sure he votes correctly. If not, a replacement is found to challenge him in the next election.

So, when Mr. Netanyahu himself appeared before a joint session of Congress only one Republican dared to sit on his hands, the aforementioned Thomas Massie. The premise of today’s comment is that Massie deserves more attention.

Third Rate Grandstander’: Massie first came to the nation’s notice during the Covid pandemic. “He tested positive for asshole,” said John Kerry. He’s a “third rate grandstander,” said Donald Trump. (Massie countered: “I take great offense at that; I’m at least second rate.”) “Thomas Massie is indeed a dumbass,” tweeted Rep. Maloney. A man with enemies like that can’t be all bad, we thought. So, we looked more closely. As always, context mattered.

In March, 2020, the Senate rushed to authorize an extraordinary spending spree - $2.2 trillion dollars’ worth - unanimously. Then, the House of Representatives was expected to rubber stamp it. After all, the nation faced a national emergency! Of course, the US government didn’t have that kind of money lying around. So, it would have to be ‘printed’ and borrowed... which would inevitably lead to sorrowful results downstream.

The Constitution requires that there be a quorum in order to pass important legislation. But members of Congress were ‘sheltering in place’. And when Massie got into the House he found only two members there. So, he wondered why it was that ‘essential workers’ - truck drivers, food store workers, nurses and many others - still had to go to the job site... but members of Congress did not? Apparently, they weren’t essential. Members of Congress had ‘the best healthcare in the world,’ Massie noted.

He demanded that members return to work. They grumbled. They groused... and they said mean things about Massie. But they came back to Washington. They voted. The bill was passed…almost unanimously. Massie voted ‘no.’

And he was right about everything. There was no reason for the peoples’ representatives to be cowering at home, while the people themselves were stocking shelves and moving freight. As it turned out, the Covid hysteria and the lockdown were unnecessary. And the trillions in excess spending - by Trump and then Biden - led to 9% inflation and a $35 trillion debt-bomb.
Click image for larger size.
The elites, Deep Staters, insiders, the Establishment - all want ‘yes’ men. In the White House and in Congress. Almost all legislation transfers money and power from the people to them... their cronies... and their pet projects. “It’s in the national interest,” they say. But it’s not the nation that gets the money... it’s specific groups for specific reasons.

Massie is a ‘no’ man. He voted against sanctions. He voted against naming Israel a ‘strategic partner,’ whatever that is. He voted against the Paycheck Protection and Health Enhancement Act. He is often the only member of Congress to oppose more spending. In one session he voted ‘no’ 324 times. Massie introduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education, for example... and co-sponsored another that would have abolished the Environmental Protection Agency. Alas, those initiatives went nowhere.

It must be lonely, being a ‘no’ man in today’s Washington. And if it means being an ‘a-hole’…or a ‘third rate grandstander,’ it’s too bad there aren’t more of them. Tune in again next week... "

"Empire of Lies"

"Empire of Lies"
by Brian Maher

"Why does government lie so repeatedly - and so atrociously? Why does it fear truth as the vampire fears garlic? The answer, we hazard, reduces to its desperate quest for prestige. Government equals authority. And an authority is an authority. Its word must be the final word. Its word must be the ultimate word. A supreme authority cannot withstand rivals - else its authority falls into question. It cannot endure mockery, ridicule or derision. And if its undeniable incompetence is exposed, its back goes up… and its dukes go up. Consider for example Monday’s congressional testimony of a certain Kimberly Cheatle…

The Greatest Sin Against Government: Ms. Cheatle directed the United States Secret Service when an aspiring assassin made a mockery of the lady’s organization. How can a murderous fellow scale a low rooftop with a rifle - some 140 yards from a former and potentially future United States president - and let eight projectiles loose - before being scotched? Here he was… placing his thumbs in his ears… wiggling his fingers… and putting out his tongue at Ms. Cheatle and the organization she bosses. And in the private opinion of Ms. Cheatle, that is the highest sin. It is not act itself. Is greater professional incompetence scarcely conceivable? We do not believe it is.

“It’s an Ongoing Investigation”: Yet the lady donned her armor, barricaded herself within fortress walls and deflected all questions concerning her agency’s abominations. She could not answer this question or that question because it is an “ongoing investigation.”

“Was July 13 a Saturday, madam?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What time did the attempted assassination take place? What was the local temperature?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What color blazer was the former president Trump sporting?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“In which hemisphere of Earth did the incident occur?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What color is the sky?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Governing Means Never Saying You’re Sorry: Could the lady openly and candidly concede her organization’s botchwork? What government functionary ever does? Imagine her arguing, for example, that her sniper may have failed to shoot first because his scope was trained not on the rooftop - but on the fetching young lady in the third row with the cropped top and the shortest shorts.

Imagine her arguing that the 5’4” female agent lacked the height to cover adequately her 6’3” protectee. Furthermore, that the identical female agent was admitted to the United States Secret Service on a sliding scale - that she did not satisfy the physical standards required of men.

Imagine her conceding that her personnel were snoozing on the job. Have you imagined these potentialities? Then you have imagined impossibilities. Ms. Cheatle would never concede any of them even if true. That is because she fears for her (former) agency’s prestige.

The Bigger the Organization, the Bigger the Lies: “Why are you stating the obvious?” comes your retort. “Every organization, from the smallest business concern to the largest business concern, from any local government to the federal government, fears for its prestige. No organization wants to be publicly embarrassed.” You are of course correct. Yet the larger the organization, the larger its scope. Thus the greater number of lies - and scale of lies - it must tell to cling to its prestige.

Imagine you are the proprietor of a local business concern. You quake in fear of the competition. And you are hot to scotch it. Imagine the lengths to which you proceed… the fibs you tell… to defend and expand your localized little empire. What misdemeanor - indeed, what felony - wouldn’t you execute if it advantaged you? Yet your enterprise maintains a very constricted reach. It represents a nearly absolute insignificance to the world beyond. Who cares if you claim to be the most superior plumber in Springfield when you manifestly are not?

A Local Government Can Manage Its Lies: Next imagine that you are not a business concern. You are instead a local government concern. You are its mayor. You must tell your lies to glitter before your captives, your residents. The business may be difficult at times - yet it is manageable. You must lie about the efficiency of the Motor Vehicle Department or the Highway Department, for example. You must lie about the bribes you have accepted. You may therefore maintain your prestige. Yet the scope of your lies is contained with your narrow borders.

A nation - a normal nation - must likewise tell its lies to hold up its prestige. It may be difficult at times. Yet if the nation is reasonably sized and has little ambition, it is, again, possible. In highest contrast stands the government of the United States…

The Burden of Maintaining Global Prestige: This is an empire that exerts dominion over each individual, over each local municipality, over each state municipality within these shores - from oceans Atlantic and Pacific, from the border with Mexico to the border with Canada. Imagine the impossibility of managing such a vast space. The United States government manages the job very poorly. Yet by its nature it must maintain its prestige among the American people. It must therefore inform you that it performs the job very well. It will stare you in the eyes… and lie to you… even if it knows that you know it is lying to you.

Yet the United States is the world’s reigning kingpin, its dominant power. Its wingspan therefore covers the entirety of planet Earth. Does a single sparrow fall outside its awareness? Imagine - then - the lies it must tell to maintain its prestige among all the nations of Earth…

Lies of Commission and Omission: Who detonated the Nord Stream pipeline transmitting natural gas from the Russian Federation to the German republic? The answers reduce to the United States itself, one of its European allies or the nation of Ukraine. Do you believe the United States government is unaware of the answer? Yet imagine the catastrophic damage to its reputation if it revealed the answer.

It would concede that the United States itself executed the largest act of environmental sabotage in all of history - and heavily wrecked the economy of its central NATO ally - or that another NATO ally did the deed. Or that the nation it stands impassionedly behind, Ukraine, did the deed. It must therefore shrug its shoulders in befuddlement or inform you that Russia blew holes in its own pipeline. It is a lie of omission or a lie of commission.

We’re the Good Guys Here: Imagine if the United States government conceded that Russia’s unprovoked aggression was very much provoked? And that it was the saboteur of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine that would have ceased the bloodletting one month after it commenced. Public support for the Ukrainian cause - in the United States and abroad - would collapse in a heap. United States government prestige would absorb a fatal blow.

It must therefore babble lies. It must tell you that Mr. Putin’s aggression was not provoked. It must inform you that he will be at the English Channel within no time if he is not heaved out of Ukraine. It must inform you that it is battling on behalf of democracy. From the Middle East to East Asia, from South America to Africa, the identical dynamic obtains. If the Antarctic continent were sufficiently populated, it would extend there too.

Empire of Lies: Our co-founders Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin once labeled the United States an empire of debt. It is an empire of debt, yes. It is certainly an empire in debt. Yet in the more fundamental sense it is an empire of lies. The emperor in charge of it is presently being exposed - he is well and truly nude before a gaping world. Yet this emperor will never concede his nudity…"

Gregory Mannarino, "Understanding The Game: Market Continues To Price In Trump Selection"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/26/24
"Understanding The Game: 
Market Continues To Price In Trump Selection"
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o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/26/24
"Inflating Our Way Into Disaster; 
People Have No Idea of What Is Happening"
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