“10 Things You Should Know About Life’s Most Important Questions”

“10 Things You Should Know 

About Life’s Most Important Questions”

by Marc Chernoff

"It’s a harsh fact that every one of us is ignorant in some way. Although we tend to pretend otherwise, it’s impossible to know it all. Ignorance is our biggest collective secret. And it’s one of the scariest and most damaging realities of life, because those of us who are most ignorant – and thus most likely to spread ignorance – are also the ones who often don’t know it.

Here’s a quick test: If you have never changed your mind about one of your learned beliefs, if you have never questioned the fundamentals of your opinions, and if you have no inclination to do so, then you are likely ignorant about something you think you know.

What’s the quickest solution? Get outside and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, behaves, and handles certain aspects of life very differently from you, and just have a simple, honest conversation with them. I promise, some of life’s most important questions will become clearer by doing so. And it will do both of you lots of good. Once you’ve done that, here are some key things to remember:

1. Many of the biggest misunderstandings in life could be avoided if we would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”

2. An expert is not a person who gives all the right answers; she’s the one who asks the right questions.

3. Very few of us actively seek new knowledge in this world on a daily basis. We get comfortable with what we know, and we stop questioning things. On the contrary, we try to squeeze from the unknown the answers we have already shaped in our own minds – judgments, justifications, validations, forms of consolation without which we might feel incomplete or off-center. To really ask something new is to open the door to the storm.  And the answer just may blow us away.

4. If someone can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about how they answer you.

5. Monsters do exist in the real world, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous in the long run. More dangerous are the common people with good intentions who are instantly ready to believe and act without asking questions.

6. At the end of the day, the questions you ask of yourself determine the type of person you will become.

7. Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life. 

8. When it comes to your relationships: Does he/she treat you with respect at all times? That’s the first question. The second question is: If he/she remains the exact same person ten years from now, would you still want to be in a relationship with him/her? And finally, does he/she inspire to be a better human being? When you find someone that you can answer yes to all three questions, you know you’ve found yourself a relationship worth having.

9. Regardless of how much you know, or how many incredible questions you ask, you can never know it all. To believe that you do, is proof of the contrary. The wilderness around us always holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. And that’s a beautiful thing.

10. Although life will always be filled with unanswered questions, it’s the courage to seek the answers that counts – this journey is what gives life meaning.  Ultimately, you can spend your life wallowing in frustration and misery, wondering why you were the one who was chosen to deal with your problems, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough and smart enough to grow from them. 

Your turn: Be present and have patience with everything that remains unexplained in your heart and mind. Try to love life’s questions. Like locked doors or like good books written in foreign languages, respect their nature. Don’t expect all the answers to come easy. They cannot be given to you right now because your present understanding isn’t ready yet. It’s a question of experiencing everything first. Right now you need to hold on to the questions – explore, learn, and live your life. Perhaps, as you do, you will gradually find yourself experiencing the answers you always wanted.

So with that said, which of the reminders above hit home the most? Why? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights with us."

- http://www.marcandangel.com/

"Sometimes..."

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?'

Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'”
- Charles M. Schulz

The Daily "Near You?"

Camberwell, Southwark, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Tell Yourself..."

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

- Louise Erdrich

"The Curse of Interesting Times"

"The Curse of Interesting Times"

Things are the most interesting they've been

 in 80 years, 250 years, and, well, ever.

by Contemplations on the Tree of Woe

"The Chinese curse their enemies with the phrase “may you live in interesting times.” Or, rather, Americans think that Chinese curse their enemies like that; according to Infogalactic, “despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no equivalent expression in Chinese.”

Fortunately, there’s an actual Chinese phrase that’s much more interesting. It’s found in a 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong called "Stories to Awaken the World," and it states "better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic times.” And to be a dog in 17th China didn’t mean being a beloved fur baby with your own YouTube channel. It meant being a workbeast that got eaten when times were lean. The Chinese still have an annual dog meat festival.

Whichever adage you prefer, our times are both chaotic and interesting. In fact, they are monumentally interesting - they are so interesting as to beggar coherent description, to put to shame historical comparison, so remarkable that every single one of us would be justified in screaming from the rooftops in shock and awe. And yet we don’t. We keep calm and carry on, sturdily gripped by our bias for normalcy, by our human ability to adapt to even the most bizarre circumstances. It’ll be fine, we tell ourselves. This is fine.

But what if we put aside our normalcy bias for a moment and look at how just how “interesting” our times really are? What do we see then?

Once Every 80 Years…Once every 80 years, a country enters a crisis. That is, at least, the assertion of Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. According to Strauss and Howe, human history is organized into repeating patterns marked by four “turnings”: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, and the Crisis. Each turning is approximately 20 years long, and an entire cycle of four turnings is therefore about 80 years long. According to Strauss and Howe, American history looks something like this:

○ American Revolutionary Crisis, 1765 - 1785

○ American Civil War Crisis, 1855 - 1875

○ Great Depression and World War II Crisis, 1930 - 1950

○ You Are Here, 2010 - 2030

If we believe Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, we are in the midst of what they call a Fourth Turning - a moment of Crisis.

Are we in a Fourth Turning? I certainly believe so. As I documented in "Running on Empty," the United States now stands at a financial precipice. US inflation is at its worst in 40 years because the monetary system we established under Truman and rejuvenated under Nixon is now collapsing. With that crisis have come challenges from a resurgent Russia and burgeoning China that could lead to a Third World War or, at best, a post-American world order. The Thucydides Trap has never been so close to springing. It’s no wonder then that US fears of nuclear war have surged to levels not seen since the Cold War. But unlike the Cold War, no one wants to ‘ask what they can do for their country’ anymore. US Army recruitment is at its worst in 50 years. And why would they want to serve? Our nation is divided into warring camps. US partisan distrust of the opposing party is at its worst in 30 years.

All right. That all sounds bad. But if Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is true, the Fourth Turning will be over in about 5-10 years and we’ll move into the next Turning, the High. And those are awesome! But what if we won’t be heading into another high?"

Full, fascinating, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://treeofwoe.substack.com/

○

Freely download "Stories to Awaken the World", 

by Feng Menglong, here:

- https://oceanofpdf.com/

The Poet: gk thomas, “Wretched of the Earth”

“Wretched of the Earth”

“Poor kids,
wretched of the earth,
why should we feed you?
Why shouldn't we empty our sea of
bullets into your swollen bellies or
poison you with toxic chemicals
or depleted uranium?
Why should we care,
we who are living well?

Where is it written in stone
that you deserve better?
Or that we are not animals
subject to the law of nature:
kill or be killed?

You suspect us of being cruel,
but we are kind.
Our god tells us so.
It is yours that lies.

So you cry at night,
shivering in the cold
or sell yourselves
for a slice of bread.
What is that to those of
us who are living well?”

- gk thomas

In remembrance of the 18,000 Palestinian children slaughtered in Gaza by the psychopathically degenerate inbred Israeli monsters. And here's the proof:

"Shocking Genetic Science Reveals Ashkenazi Jews Suffer

 High Rates of Mental Illness Due To Inbreeding"

"How It Really Is"

That's if the Dollar Store hasn't closed...

o

Full screen recommended.

ThisisJohnWilliams, 10/17/24

"711 to Close 444 More Stores: 

What Big Box Retailers Are Doing Now Says Everything"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Secret Impact on Your Wallet"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 10/17/24

"The Secret Impact on Your Wallet"

"Florida Real Estate CRISIS: The Ugly Truth Exposed! Welcome back to IAllegedly with Dan, where today we're diving deep into the chaos gripping Florida's real estate market. Can't sell your house? You're not alone. With rising insurance costs and the fallout from recent hurricanes, the dream of owning property in Florida is turning into a nightmare. We've got tales of soaring homeowners insurance, bank foreclosures looming, and an economy that's squeezing every penny. But there's more: From store closures to Boeing's unexpected struggles, it's clear that the financial landscape is shifting dramatically. "

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Collapse of The Enlightenment"

"The Collapse of The Enlightenment"

by Paul Rosenberg

"We are watching the Enlightenment collapse before us in real time. I’ll be as brief as I can in my explanation of why this is so and how it came about, but it strikes me as something we should understand. Bear in mind that what remains of the Enlightenment is collapsing for structural reasons. I haven’t formed this discourse around political or academic theories, I’m basing it on facts and direct observations. Obviously I’m simplifying (one can’t write history any other way), but minus the inevitable exceptions and complications, this is what happened and what is happening.

How The Enlightenment Gained A Structure: The Enlightenment began with a collection of outsiders studying science. They had little backing and few credentials. In fact, the motto of the first group (that became The Royal Society) was Nullius in verba: “Take nobody’s word for it.” There was a lot to like in the early Enlightenment, and it led to a long string of crucial discoveries.

Halfway through its run, however, at about 1750 AD, the Enlightenment took a dark turn. Rather than working to discover what was right, it began to fixate on what was wrong. That is, the leading voices of the Enlightenment left off building and moved into tearing things down. That change ran the late Enlightenment directly into the French Revolution, but we’ll pass over those details. You can find more in our Free-Man’s Perspective issue entitled "Darkness From The Enlightenment."

Bear in mind that there hadn’t been a large intelligentsia in Europe before this time. While the Church did have an intelligentsia, it wasn’t expansive, and the Protestant Reformation had recently broken the Church’s monopoly on supplying rulers with bureaucrats, lawyers and advisors. And so a new intellectual class began to form and soon enough began seeking power. But since they saw no way to take power from monarchs, they turned to the Church and began plundering its legitimacy. If they could become the new arbiters of right and wrong, reason and truth, they’d have the same kind of power the Church had.

And so the new intelligentsia went about to seize the legitimacy of the Catholic church, bringing it back to themselves. As historian Margaret C. Jacob wrote: "They removed God and in his place inserted the blind forces of matter in motion."

These new intellectuals (especially in Protestant areas where attacking the Church was appreciated) were given positions in the universities that had sprung up several centuries earlier. The universities were, by this time, mainly under the control of secular rulers. "Science,” then, became the product of the new intellectuals, turning the Enlightenment into a power-friendly structure with a legend. More than that, it had a wonderful means of expansion: Attack and de-legitimize the Church. Enthrone science, with yourselves as its priests. Steadily, they drained legitimacy from the Church, for reasons both honest and otherwise.

The Next Step: The intellectual class spawned by the Enlightenment (which by now was mainly over) held posts at universities and courts, but they served at the whims of royals, whom they tended to resent. Still, they had an effective set of tools for tearing things down and an ideology that made them noble for doing so.

Into this moment stepped a Frenchman named August Comte, a deeply disturbed man. (He had spent time in an asylum, set fire to a hotel room, attempted suicide, physically abused his wife and so on.) Comte hoped to build an intellectual-driven world from the ashes of the French Revolution. He was also, by all accounts, a very bright man.

Beginning in about 1830, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including sociology, which he more or less invented. Comte taught that his sociology was the last and greatest of sciences, integrating them all. But Comte not only proclaimed his new science as the master of the old ones, he also tried to turn the philosophy of science upside down. From Francis Bacon onward, science had placed experiment above theory. (The better scientists still do.) Comte reversed this, as we can see in this passage:

"If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theories. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them."

This enthronement of theory above observation (or at least equal to it), unfortunately remains in great swaths of the social sciences. Furthermore there was a hidden assumption in Comte’s work, which Leo Tolstoy sussed out: "The whole edifice was built on the sand - on the arbitrary assertion that humanity is an organism." (That is, a collective entity.)

Karl Marx, which should be no surprise, knew Comte’s work very well. And the following passage from Comte makes it very clear that he opposed individual thought and judgment: "Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy? Man’s only right is to do his duty."

At the same time “democracy” was spreading across Europe, taking power away from monarchs and handing it to “the people,” which really meant “to those who can direct the people.” This again empowered the intellectuals. We should further note that this was precisely the time when government schooling began to be imposed upon the populace, beginning in Germany, rigidly overseen by the intellectual class. And so, by the later 19th century, the intellectual class had a solid model, a powerful base, and immense possibilities in front of them.

The Socialist Opportunity - Socialism, which took root in the early 20th century, was attractive to the intellectual class for a very simple reason: It could empower them much better. Democracy had provided them with influence, but not much structural support. Socialism could enforce the positions of the intellectuals.

As aggressive socialism rooted in Russia and other places, the intellectual class (in general) wanted it to succeed and wanted it to spread to their homelands. This is something that Orwell pointed out memorably: "The secret wish of this English Russophile intelligentsia was to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip."

What intellectuals also saw in the USSR was a way to supplant the commercial powers of the world. They had all but supplanted the Catholic Church and were slowly supplanting the Protestant churches. They were also overcoming the monarchs. Commerce, however, riding on the industrial revolution, had stepped above them. It had brought immense benefits to the masses, who valued that far more than the bleatings of academics.

Socialism, then, became a path back to the top of the heap, and intellectuals grabbed the opportunity. Socialism could beat commerce back into submission. To justify their power-grab the intellectuals developed all sorts of theories about socialism’s superiority and worked overtime to get people to believe them. The beliefs of the masses became, to the intellectuals, the mirror of Narcissus. Gazing into that mirror, they saw their own glory.

Not all intellectuals followed this pattern, of course, but the better ones were pushed further and further from prominence; mostly they hung on in the objective sciences. I won’t recount the horrific results of 20th century socialism; those of us who have been paying attention know them all too well. Instead I’ll jump forward to the end of the story.

The Present Collapse: Intellectuals in the West, especially since 1970 or so, have ruled the institutions, and especially the education institutions, whose capacity and esteem they expanded greatly. They made university degrees compulsory for the children of a respectable family. This was the beginning of the end for the Enlightenment. It was a classic predatory overreach, the same as coyotes over-feeding on rabbits: soon enough there are too few rabbits and the coyotes starve.

The super-charging of “education” (recently with student loans) has produced a massive surplus of intellectuals. These young people are desperate to enlighten the world but have found all the jobs taken. And so, predictably, they are working doubly hard to get attention in other ways, which means pushing their beliefs, blindly, beyond any reasonable limits. This has been the driving force behind the reintroduction of racism (this time against whites) and the rise of censorship. The superfluous intellectuals intend to use their tools.

The question now is how far they can or will go. At this point it’s hard to see them standing down; they are enamored with socialism for the same reason their predecessors were a century ago. Added to that, the new generation of intellectuals has won a lot of battles. Beyond straight-up cultural subversions like drag queens in kindergartens, they have members in Congress and gained tremendous power from the George Floyd fiasco.

More than all this, however, the new intellectuals are bringing commerce to its knees. Giant corporations have bowed to their demands, have been hiring and firing based upon ephemera like skin color, and have even terminated the employment of people declared ideologically impure. It wasn’t empowered octogenarians who drove all of this, it was an army of superfluous intellectuals.

What happens next is hard to say, of course. One certainty is that the superfluous intellectuals will continue ripping things apart. The descendants of 1750 are equipped to tear down; they are not equipped to undertake the hard, slow and often thankless work of building. So, whether or not the entire system collapses into a heap of rubble, the new intellectuals will move things in that direction, and this fact will not be lost on their victims.

In the end, families will have to turn inward and young people, disillusioned with barbarities like neo-racism, overt manipulation and overt hate, will return to older values. Those values, however imperfect, were derived from direct human experience and not from self-serving theoreticians."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

Bill Bonner, "A Conservative Power"

Spanish forces under Hernan Cortes are defeated in

‘the Night of Sorrows’ in 1520 at the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.

"A Conservative Power"

War pays, at least for those in the firepower industry. For everyone else, 

it is a curse. So far this century, the total cost of the Empire 

budget is roughly equal to US debt. The Fed must inflate.

"τότε λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἀπόστρεψόν σου τὴν μάχαιραν εἰς 

τὸν τόπον αὐτῆς· πάντες γὰρ οἱ λαβόντες μάχαιραν ἐν μαχαίρᾳ ἀπολοῦνται.​"

"He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword."

- Matthew 26:52

Baltimore, Maryland - "The age-old evils - war and inflation - stalk the US empire. The warmongers and money printers have slipped their leashes... and now, a reckoning hangs over the country like an unsheathed sword.

Not wanting to die by the sword, prudent nations leave their swords in their sheaths... taking them out only when absolutely necessary. But sometimes, the balance of power is so lopsided... and the temptation is so great... the swords come out and the heads come off.

If a race of extraterrestrials, with much advanced technology, came down to Earth, they could erase all earthlings. They would not necessarily feel that ‘Black Lives Matter.’ White lives either.

In Megapolitics, it’s the balance of power that matters. Morality? Maybe not so much. As if coming from outer space, Europeans of the 16th-19th centuries climbed off of their boats and had such a lead over the natives in Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, for example, that they were almost able to wipe them out. No international court of justice... nor tender feelings towards the indigenous peoples... stopped them. But most of the time the imbalance is not so stark... the combatants are more equal... and the swords change hands.

Athens enjoyed a glorious empire... until it was conquered by Sparta and later leveled by the Roman general, Sulla. Rome itself reveled in a long period of marshal victories... until it was overrun by barbarians in an orgy of killing, slavery and rapine. More recently, the sword switched hands quickly. Napoleon went on a rampage in the early 19th century. By 1815, France was occupied by foreign troops and Napoleon banished. Hitler swung a big sword too... beginning in September 1939, with an assault on Poland. By April 1945, Hitler was dead and the Thousand Year Reich was history.

Today, the US enjoys a huge technological and economic advantage. It uses it to patrol and garrison much of the world... generally trying to tamp down anything that might challenge its “full spectrum dominance.” It is a ‘conservative’ power... trying to preserve the world order that it created - including the primacy of its money.

Its money system - set up in 1971 - replaced real money with credit-based dollars, IOUs that could be manipulated any way the feds wanted. It gave the US an ‘exorbitant privilege,’ said Giscard d’Estaing. America could ‘print’ new money at essentially no cost. The rest of the world took it at par value. Deficits, that could be easily bridged with this ‘printing press money,’ no longer mattered.

Even with honest money, the US would still be the world’s number one military power. But without the $35 trillion dollars’ worth of debt, added since 1971, its firepower industry would have been more restrained.

Before 1971, the US could borrow money. But too much borrowing by the feds drove up interest rates. Money got tighter and the economy slowed, as private borrowers were ‘crowded out’ by the feds. The feds still ran deficits from time to time. But the big borrowing was only done on an ‘emergency’ basis. To pay for war, for example. War was an occasional thing... and an expensive one. In WWII, for instance, citizens pitched their savings to the feds to help win the war. After the war, they expected to be paid back fairly... with honest money. And, for the most part, they were.

Today, the ‘emergency’ is permanent and deficits come routinely. US debt hit $400 billion in early 1972... accumulated over 181 years of fiscal operations by the US government. Today, the feds add $400 billion to the debt every 81 days. And war is almost constant. So far this century, US troops and their proxies have seen action in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Uganda, Niger, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Ukraine and Russia.

The obvious reason for it - war pays. At least it pays for those in the firepower industry. For everyone else, it is a curse. So far this century, the total cost of the Empire budget is roughly equal to US debt. The Fed must inflate to keep up with it.

But for now, the US is in the enviable position of being able to afford violence... and inflict it... without immediate harm to itself. Its bombs fall on much of the world, but not on the West. Its money is still good…for now. And its ‘defense’ contractors and their enablers in Congress, the White House, and the Deep State get rich. The US can live by the sword for the foreseeable future...Hell will have to wait."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com

Adventures With Danno, "I Was In Complete Shock At Kroger, This Is Unbelievable"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 10/17/24

"I Was In Complete Shock At Kroger, 

This Is Unbelievable"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Shocking Genetic Science Reveals Ashkenazi Jews Suffer High Rates of Mental Illness Due To Inbreeding"

"Shocking Genetic Science Reveals Ashkenazi Jews

 Suffer High Rates of Mental Illness Due To Inbreeding"

by Mike Adams 

"We are facing a dire situation for humanity. Today, I reveal some of the elements that have led us to that, including shocking scientific evidence that studied the inbreeding common among Ashkenazi Jews (the dominant population worldwide) and found that centuries of inbreeding has produced widespread mental illness and schizophrenia. This is relevant because Netanyahu thinks God talks to him and tells him to mass murder people in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. He thinks he's hearing voices from God. It's actually a genetic mental illness caused by inbreeding.

- Genetic studies on Ashkenazi Jews reveal mental disorders.

- Generations of inbreeding have produced mental illness defects.

- High levels of schizophrenia among "God's chosen people."

- Netanyahu thinks God is talking to him and telling him to commit genocide.

- Quotes from Jewish Rabbis calling for mass death of non-Jews.

- The U.S. has provided nuclear weapons to mentally ill sociopathic inbreds.

- Jewish inbreeding has also removed "mirror neurons" responsible for empathy and compassion.

- High risk of nuclear war that kills billions, due to Israel's insane genocide."

Fully explained in video here:

- https://www.brighteon.com/

"Researchers Find New Risk Factor 

For Two Psychiatric Disorders In Ashkenazi Genes"

"Population Bottleneck"

Many references online.

Now it all makes sense...

Full screen recommended.

"Investigating War Crimes In Gaza"

Adventures with Danno, "This Is Becoming A Nightmare... Prepare For The Worst"

Adventures with Danno, PM 10/16/24

"This Is Becoming A Nightmare...

 Prepare For The Worst"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Absolutely beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster. 

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud. Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way's close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121211.html

Chet Raymo, “Under the Surface”

“Under the Surface”
by Chet Raymo

“Somewhere, in something I have written, I recall quoting with approval this passage from Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire": “For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?”

Pleased enough with surfaces. Yes, I know what I meant. Pleased enough with this world, here and now, this world of light and matter. Not wanting or needing that other world that occupies so many people, a world of supernatural agencies, spirits, disembodied presences. Give me a world I can see and hear and touch and taste. Give me a world with heft and substance, a world with surfaces that shine and shimmer. What else is there? What else do we need?

Well, maybe not. I was scanning issues of “Science” and “Nature,” with their usual illustrations of the molecules of life, the nuclei acids and the proteins. The elaborate machinery that unseen, under the surface, endow the apple's flavor, the silk of skin, the abrasion of sand. Think of it. Atoms that are mere whiffs of resonance, binding into molecules, twisting and turning into endless shapes, fitting together like hand and glove, endlessly spinning and weaving, all without the slightest conscious participation on our part. Abbey's world of surfaces spun out of the mysterious, endlessly active, subsurface stuff of the world.

Pleased enough with surfaces? Not really. I want to know what's under the surface, that world of molecular frenzy that cannot be touched or seen, a world that in its own way is as beautiful and as meaningful as the macroscopic world we consciously inhabit. We don't need to know it. We can live a fulfilling life without knowing it. But I want to know it. I want to know what goes on behind the curtain of the senses. I want to hear that silent and ceaseless music of creation.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"The Sane Who Know..."

“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”

- W.H Auden

"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion."

 - Charlyn Khatero

"The Long Dark"

"The Long Dark"

by Chris Floyd

"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.

We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.

We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.

We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.

These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”

So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.

And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?

What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.

Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."

- http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/

Bill Bonner, "The Dying Kitten"

"The Dying Kitten"

A brief report from the thin line between the living and the dying...

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "We’ll hit the pause button today. We’ll catch up with the economy tomorrow. Herewith, for no particular reason and of no particular importance, is what happened last weekend. “Is it still alive?” Elizabeth wanted to know. The poor kitten, one of four she had rescued, had been brought into the office. There, she tried to nurse it…with extra rations and a warm blanket. But it wasn’t looking good.

The four kittens were just part of a litter at a neighbor’s house. Born in a barn to a stray cat, they weren’t likely to survive for very long. Elizabeth had grabbed those she could reach and brought them home. “I’ll try to find homes for them.” After a couple of days of feeding and cleaning up, three seemed to be doing well – playing in the yard…jumping…happily amusing themselves by getting into everything. The other one barely moved.

Death in the Fall: It was a beautiful fall weekend in this part of France. The sky was clear. The days were warm. And the nights were crisp, with a bright moon leaving long dark shadows across the lawn. A few of the trees have begun to shed their leaves…one or two of them danced on the breeze before disappearing into a ditch. But the bulk of the autumnal dying is still ahead.

On Sunday, we went to a special mass, a memorial to a local girl who died in an accident many years ago. “She was so pretty and so smart,” explained a friend. “Her father and mother adored her, of course. They expected her to take over the family business. “But when she died the whole family fell apart. They just couldn’t get over it. [The mother] started drinking. She was okay for a while, then she’d go on a binge. Finally, she got lung cancer from smoking so much. She was thin as a rail. They spent years fighting the cancer…alcoholism…and depression. She died last year.

“And the poor father. He used to be so outgoing. So sociable. He had a career in politics. Everyone liked him. And then, he just closed in on himself.” We saw him in church. Stooped. Gray. He looked much older than we remembered him. Along with many others, we had come to pay our respects to him. But as soon as the service was over, he slipped out of the side door.

Elizabeth coached us as we were making our way out of the church. “There’s Jean-Jacques. He lost his wife last year.” “What was her name?” “Francoise…be sure to say something to him. And there’s Marie-Juliette, don’t forget to ask how Rene is doing.” “Who’s Rene?” “Her husband…he had an operation; I can’t remember what kind of operation.” “Oh, you know…” Marie-Juliette replied. “He has good days and bad days… He had a heart operation; the surgeon was very pleased with it. But it didn’t seem to do Rene much good.”

Middle Ages: Friends gathered in front of the ancient church, built in the middle ages. We exchanged greetings…and thoughts that the old stones must have heard 1,000 times. “It’s hard getting old,” our friend continued. “So many things can go wrong. I think of all the people we know who are widows or widowers. And so many our age who can’t get around because they have some problem.” He listed a few. One neighbor spends his days in a wheelchair; he has a degenerative nerve disease. Another has such a serious case of arthritis, her hands and feet have twisted…making it difficult to walk. Still others – are dying of this or that. “I guess we are all going the same way, sooner or later. And I guess we should be grateful that we’re not there yet.”

Back at home, “how are the kittens doing,” we asked Elizabeth. “The vet said to keep the sick one warm…and bring them in tomorrow, if they’re still alive.” From across the road, Claude and Christine came to visit. Claude limped. He is much younger than we are, but much heavier…and a farmer. He’s had to stop work. One knee was repaired. He shifted his weight onto the other one. “Now they say I have to have my left knee operated on too, because I’ve been using it too much. Then, it will be another 6 months off work. I’m going a little crazy sitting around the house.” Christine nodded her head in agreement.

Deep France: “But did you hear the good news? Well, maybe it’s not good news for you. Your renters are leaving you. [We rent out two tiny houses on our property.] “What a shock. I saw that they were getting along well…but I was surprised. They’re moving out so they can move into a bigger place – together.”

The shock of it comes from the fact that one of our tenants is 62 years old and already retired. Paul, a disabled electrician, has an earring, which seems uncharacteristically fashionable for this area. This is ‘la France profonde’ – deep France – where the fashions of Paris seem far away…and generally unwelcome. Paul has a bad hip. The other renter is a young woman in her 30s. Heavily tattooed and extremely shy, she might have some disability of her own. Improbably, they got together.

Later in the day, Paul came over to ask permission to break the lease. Then, explaining his new living arrangement: “I didn’t expect it. But you never know. These things happen. I just hope it lasts.” “Best of luck to you both,” we said, as we raised a coffee mug.

By Sunday evening, the kitten was still breathing. But barely. We studied it. It was alive. Prodded, it could move its paws. It murmured once or twice. We watched as it struggled for breath. There is such a thin line between the living and the dead…sometime during the night, the line was crossed. Breathing stopped. These things happen."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

o

“For Those Who Have Died”

“Eleh Ezkerah” (“These We Remember”)

“Tis a fearful thing

To love

What death can touch.

To love, to hope, to dream,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

Love,

But a holy thing,

To love what death can touch.

For your life has lived in me;

Your laugh once lifted me;

Your word was a gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

Tis a human thing, love,

A holy thing,

To love

What death can touch.”

- Chaim Stern

Graphic: “Into The Silent Land”,

by Henry Pegram, 1905

The Daily "Near You?"

Stevenson, Alabama, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Jeremiah Babe, "Buying You Next Home At Walmart, Easy To Assemble; Living The Dream In 96 Square Feet"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/16/24

"Buying You Next Home At Walmart, Easy To Assemble; 

Living The Dream In 96 Square Feet"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Citigroup Sounds The Alarm On TOTAL Economic Collapse, Chase Bank Warning"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 10/16/24

"Citigroup Sounds The Alarm On TOTAL Economic Collapse, 

Chase Bank Warning"

"As we end 2024, the ominous tune of a banking collapse looms large over the once-mighty Citigroup. From its inception in the late 20th century, where it pioneered modern banking services, automatic teller machines, and credit card offerings, Citigroup has witnessed a relentless downward spiral since the housing crisis and financial meltdown of 2008. Now, a collapse is nearer than ever before.

Citigroup, one of the world's leading banks, has made a shocking announcement about the looming threat of a complete economic collapse. This alarming forecast comes amidst growing concerns over the state of the labor market, which has shown signs of deterioration that could have far-reaching consequences for the nation's economic stability. The warning has prompted governments, corporations, and individuals to prepare for an unprecedented economic calamity.

Before 2007, Citigroup stood prominently among the elite financial institutions in the United States, consistently delivering robust returns to its steadfast shareholders through both appreciating share prices and generous dividends. However, the culmination of the housing boom and the subsequent financial crisis pushed Citigroup to the brink, necessitating government intervention to navigate the resulting losses. Subsequently, Citigroup's stock struggled to regain its pre-crisis momentum, failing to recover from the setbacks of 2008.

Chase Bank and Citigroup have raised red flags, signaling a deep-seated issue within the banking sector. Nine percent of all bank branches in the U.S. have shut down since 2017. Earlier in the month, Citigroup informed the majority of its employees that they could work remotely for the final two weeks of December. Workers are allowed to log in remotely from any location within their country of employment from Monday to December 29, a Friday, marking this week as the last in-person experience for many staff members this year, according to sources familiar with the situation.

In contrast to last year when the perk was introduced, employees are now apprehensive about CEO Jane Fraser's comprehensive corporate reorganization, with some expressing concerns about the potential existence of their jobs next year. Citigroup has indicated that Fraser's assessment of the third-largest U.S. bank by assets will be concluded by the end of 2024."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Here And Now..."

“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

"The Competence-Free Economy, The Cargo Cult, And Control"

"The Competence-Free Economy, 

The Cargo Cult, And Control"

by John Wilder

"I was reading Mark’s blog over at Practical Eschatology (LINK) the other day and he had a story about a “pink-haired DEI trainer” who had managed to get the deputy head of the Oregon Department of Forestry put on administrative leave. His alleged crime? Well, besides being a Chad that the “pink-haired” tattooed circus freak of a DEI trainer could never in a million years manage to get a glance from (she is beyond coyote ugly), his crime was that he wanted to hire “candidates most qualified for the job”.

Yes, that was his sin. He wanted to hire people who could best do the work that the taxpayers of the state of Oregon were paying them to do. I mean, Oregon has a lot of trees. They have so many trees that I hear that in order to keep track of the ones they cut down: they make their lumberjacks keep a log.

What was the DEI circus sideshow reject’s solution instead of hiring competent people? According to the Daily Mail (and every other paper that I can find), it was to pick people via an “‘intersectional lens’ whereby applications from people of marginalized backgrounds are given greater weight. Since the head and shoulders shot of the DEI trainer is all we have, I’m unsure of how she could be given greater weight since I’d estimate that 400 pounds is long in her rearview mirror.

Her other complaint was that a colleague made a joke that she, “puts in in a really good lunch order.” Which is somehow sexist? Because guys don’t order lunch? Maybe this person was striving to make a nice comment about a person whose job it is to be perpetually offended by everyone and everything. Oh, wait...

Speaking of which: she/her was also upset that she was carved out of the regular executive meetings of the Department, but, in my view, it’s simply because absolutely no one wanted to be in a meeting where decisions about forests and trees were made with a whiney GloboLeftist who cares more about pronouns than pine. She was as necessary as Joe Biden at a Cabinet meeting.

Does my description of her sound mean to the “pink-haired” gravity well in question? Probably. But I’m not going to apologize, since it is people who say the things that she does that are ruining it for the entire world, especially her “marginalized communities.”

The bigger point is that to the GloboLeftist and GloboLeftistElite, there are only two possibilities on how they think about economics.

First, the GloboLeftist, the rank and file – the DEI hires and DEI trainers – think that wealth and prosperity is something that simply exists. They don’t view the world as a place where people work and strive to create that wealth and prosperity. Instead, they view that that wealth and prosperity is their right, merely by having been born.

They have no idea where wealth comes from, and in this are like the Cargo Cults that came to their greatest prominence after World War II. This is a cult where the native population was suddenly overrun by great armies in motion across the Pacific. These armies would move in, create an airfield, and suddenly planes would appear. What would be on the planes? Most everything. People. Ammunition. Fuel. Guns. Food. Simply the most amazing wealth the natives had ever seen.

These people had nearly no understanding of the world outside of their island – to them the airfield was magic. The white people who built it summoned great gods from beyond that brought them amazing wealth. Then those same white people took all that wealth, which was obviously meant for the natives, and left. After that, these natives would build airfields, towers, bamboo airplanes, and hold mock military drills like they had seen the soldiers do.

Their expectation? That, regardless of their competence, regardless of their understanding of the way aircraft and modern commerce worked, that they would get the wealth because they deserved it. Now, they resent the white man for taking the wealth away, and spend their time building lonely airfields, waiting for the wealth to come back.

That’s the GloboLeftist: They fundamentally hate those that have achieved more than they have, and are driven by envy, hate, and fear. Yes, this “pink-haired” monstrosity is only one species of this type of life form. There are others. They are the type of people that if they cannot possess a thing, they want to destroy it. They revel in it. The orgy of the George Floyd riots is simply one example.

On the other hand, the GloboLeftistElite want to crash everything and really doesn’t care about competence since I assure you, Larry Fink and Bill Gates don’t hire their pilots or security staff based on intersectionality, unless one axis of that intersection is “amazingly competent.”

A prosperous middle class that has a culture, tradition, and roots can stop them from doing as they please. This is dangerous to them. How better to facilitate the end of this class, the end of broad wealth, than to encourage incompetence through nonsense like DEI? Why else would BlackRock® want to buy houses and then rent them back to the people that used to buy them? Why else would services like Übëŕ® be held at as a way that the middle class can rent a car, instead of owning one?

To the GloboLeftistElite, the assets a member of the middle class used to take as normal – a house, a car, a farm, a business – are assets that they want to buy, own, and use so that no aspect of a life in the United States (or anywhere else they control) isn’t subject to a cut off the top for them. They really don’t care if you live in a pod, as long as you pay your cut to the house.

So, we have two goals that are being followed by two groups. The first group, the GloboLeft, consists of AntiFa®, the “pink-haired” activists, the kindergarten teachers that just can’t wait to teach children about pronouns and gay sex, and their hangers-on. Why are they in it? As we’ve discussed again and again, they hate what the world has done to them, they feel powerless, and by destroying the system, by making it as ugly and incompetent as they are, they get power.

The second group is the GloboLeftElite. The GloboLeftElite loves, loves the GloboLeftists because they’re the willing footsoldiers that take common, hardworking men of competence and force them to hire people based on their particular fetish, mental condition, or other random factor. The GloboLeftElite is pushing these people into organizations everywhere, so they can defang the last opposition to them: the middle class. Those 17,000 jobs that Boeing® just lost? DEI, baby.

I think the Department of Forestry Chad will be fine, since, well, he’s a Chad. And, he’s on paid leave right now, which is a vacation. I’m sure he’s got some pension vesting, and I’d be willing to bet he could get a job in a variety of states that don’t take the word of “pink-haired” DEI trainers who are offended when people are hired based on their competence. And, if Oregon persists in DEI hires Forestry Chad will want to move out of the state, soon enough the forests will be deserts. Won’t that be diverse!"

https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"How It Really Is"