Maintal, Hessen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, October 18, 2024
"Challenges..."
"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. "
- Paulo Coelho
o
"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"Against All Odds..."
"There's a little animal in all of us and maybe that's something to celebrate. Our animal instinct is what makes us seek comfort, warmth, a pack to run with. We may feel caged, we may feel trapped, but still as humans we can find ways to feel free. We are each other's keepers, we are the guardians of our own humanity and even though there's a beast inside all of us, what sets us apart from the animals is that we can think, feel, dream and love. And against all odds, against all instinct, we evolve."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
"Luddites Were Right, You Know…"
"Luddites Were Right, You Know…"
By Chris Black
"The term “Luddite” originated in the early 19th century and refers to a movement of English textile workers who protested against the increased use of machines in their industry. The term “neo-Luddite” was later applied to those who similarly oppose technology for similar reasons, but in a contemporary context.
Everywhere you go, you see people with their faces in their phones. Constantly, constantly, constantly. At the bus stop. On the train. In the driver’s seats of their moving cars. Their kid makes a bit of noise at the restaurant table? Shove the iPad in their face.
Boomerisms aside, it really can’t be overstated how f**ked up this is, and not because “people don’t interact” anymore. It’s actually much worse than that… Nobody ever allows themselves even a moment of peace inside their own heads. The real insidiousness of the smartphone is that it encourages you to constantly consume content, endlessly, never ever stopping. It’s common for people to spend their entire day with earphones in, listening to podcasts and watching Tiktoks literally constantly.
Our brains did not evolve to be bombarded with constant microbursts of hyper real stimulation this way. Attention spans are getting measurably shorter. Reaction times are getting longer. None of this sh*t is good for your brain.
Everyone always says, “Well, what about TV and the radio?” Inherently limited and fundamentally different because of the fact that they’re pre-programmed and don’t act as “magic mirrors” of you and your personal inputs into them. Your smartphone is designed to learn everything about you so that it can be as addictive as possible and maximize the amount of data it squeezes out of you. Nothing about TV or the radio - or even Web 1.0 internet - ever came anywhere close to this.
Even so, we have known for decades that TV is horrible for your brain on account of many of the same mechanisms that affect attention span and cognitive development. So imagine how much worse the smartphone is. Unfathomably worse. We already know it’s worse, but we won’t know exactly how much worse it is until at least another decade, when the younger Zoomers and Gen Alphas are a few years into adulthood after an upbringing that revolved around Web 2.0.
Millennials were lucky enough not to take the full brunt of the experience. We got our first taste as we came of age instead of growing up being marinated in it. The saddest part is that the only reason any of this even caught on or is the least bit operable is because of the fact that it hijacks the mechanisms that make us feel satisfied and good. We didn’t evolve to handle this level of stimulation, but BOY do we respond to it. It’s so excessive that it’s impossible for some people to resist. So there are no f**king brakes.
You have to cast The Ring into the fire or it totally consumes you. That’s the reality for most people. And that, my friends, is just sick.
Look at your screen usage on your phone and tell me I’m wrong, how you totally don’t need it and can stop whenever you want. You are no better than a crack head, and you won’t realize that until you actually do try to stop for real. It’s unprecedented in human history to think this way. We are truly in uncharted waters here. Just wait until the sensory overload most people are bathing in all day, every day becomes fully automated instead of just partially automated like it is now."
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap-Up"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 10/18/24
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern -
Weekly Wrap-Up"
Comments here:
"How It Really Is"
"Most ignorance is vincible ignorance.
We don't know because we don't want to know."
- Aldous Huxley
"Middle East Geopolitics: War"
Dialogue Works, 10/18/24
"Larry C. Johnson: Israel's Desperate Gamble,
Begging for a Crushing Defeat from Iran & Hezbollah?"
Comments here:
o
Dialogue Works, 10/18/24
"Dmitry Orlov: Israel's Downfall - Uncontrolled Chaos"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "More Pain And Layoffs"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 10/18/24
"More Pain And Layoffs"
"Get ready for a wild ride in today's video on the gas price spike caused by California's costly shutdown! Join me, Dan, as we explore the shocking decision by Phillips 66 to close a major oil refinery and its impact on skyrocketing gas prices. The economic ripples are real, and it's all unfolding right here in California."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Inflation Nation"
"Inflation Nation"
The Dow/Gold ratio was 20 three years ago. It is 16 today; stocks
have lost 20% of their real value. They need to lose another
nearly 70% from here (in gold terms) before they are real bargains.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "MarketWatch: "Gold futures top $2,700 an ounce, on track to settle at a record high. Gold futures climbed above $2,700 an ounce on Thursday, with prices based on the most-active contract poised to settle at a fresh record high. "Uncertainty surrounding the U.S. economic outlook continues to drive up gold prices" and the risk of missteps in future Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes has increased, said Dilin Wu, research strategist at Pepperstone, in emailed comments. "Coupled with a massive $1.8 trillion U.S. deficit, these factors have intensified concerns over the economic trajectory, pushing investors toward gold as a safe haven amid rising volatility and unclear monetary policy."
Gold is doing what it should do. It is anticipating inflation... and protecting us. We caution Dear Readers, however. Gold bulls and gold bugs can become ‘irrationally exuberant’ too. Then, the price goes wild... and buyers pay too much. But so far, most of the buying is coming from foreign governments - BRICs - who aim to protect themselves from America’s credit money system.
There will come a time when people get giddy over gold. Cab drivers will tell you about the mining stock they just bought. People will brag about ‘when they got in.’ And they’ll tell you that gold is ‘going to the moon.’ The price will go up so high you’ll be able to buy the whole list of Dow stocks for just 5 ounces of gold. That’s when we will happily unload our gold and buy stocks. But that is (probably) a few years down the road. In the meantime, stocks and gold both set new records.
And yet, the fundamental picture hasn’t changed. The Dow/Gold ratio was 20 three years ago. It is 16 today; stocks have lost 20% of their real value. They need to lose another nearly 70% from here (in gold terms) before they are real bargains. And we’re counting on the Fed to get us there.
And Jerome Powell et al. are on the job. They had no reason to cut rates last month…except that they are trying to cause inflation, not eliminate it. Spread over the last three years, price inflation is more than three times what the Fed was supposedly looking for. That is, at a 2% annual gain, prices should be about 6% higher than they were in 2021. Instead, they are, officially, 20% higher. Unofficially, prices are even higher. This week’s Wall Street Journal, for example, tells us that cost of medical care insurance has gone up at a 7% rate for the last two years: "Health Premiums Soar Even as Inflation is Cooling." "Average cost of family coverage reached roughly $25,500 this year... projected to rise rapidly again in 2025."
Or, just look at transportation. The Ford F-150, the most popular pickup in history, left showrooms at $30,000 in 2021. At 2% inflation, the price of this year’s model ought to be $31,800. It’s not. It’s $38,000 - a 26% increase... or four times what it ought to be.
And how about housing? Lower mortgage rates suckered home buyers into big mortgages based on inflated prices and low monthly payments. Then, in 2008, housing prices fell... mortgage lenders went broke... and millions of families lost their homes.
So, the Fed lowered rates even further... and anchored them below zero, in real terms, for a 10-year period. This, of course, led to more housing inflation... and then, to the absurd situation where people had a hard time either buying or selling a house. With big mortgages, locked in at low rates, sellers couldn’t afford to sell. And with big, new mortgages at much higher rates, buyers couldn’t afford to buy. New housing starts are now back to the level of 1974 - fifty years ago, when the US had 120 million fewer people.
The average house cost about $300,000 in 2007. At 2% inflation, it should cost about $420,000 today. Instead, it’s close to $500,000. And now the Fed has begun a new loosening cycle to make it easier for people to buy a new house. The result? Anticipating more inflation, lenders increased long-term mortgage rates making housing less affordable than ever!
NPR: "Just 15.5% of homes for sale were affordable for a typical U.S. household, the lowest share since Redfin started tracking this a decade ago. A home is deemed affordable if the estimated mortgage payment is no more than 30% of the average local monthly income. Affordability plunged 40% from before the pandemic, and 21% from just last year."
In other words, real consumer price inflation is way beyond the Fed’s 2%. And in order to get it back to the target, the Fed would have to bring the actual price inflation rate below 2% for several years. Instead, as expected, it is inflating."
Jim Kunstler, "The Three Layers of Culpability"
"The Three Layers of Culpability"
by Jim Kunstler
"The migrant crisis has been the first issue to truly evocatively make obvious
that something extremely dark and sinister is happening to the country."
- Simplicius on Substack
"The Great Fright among the elite of the party ruling our country steals across the land chillingly now from sea to shining sea - as if all those ghouls, werewolves, zombies, and tormented wraiths assembled in the front yard Halloween displays send up one mighty wail of despair: Donald Trump will seek revenge against his enemies if you elect him! they scream into the pale moonlight.
Well, he ought to, of course, and remember: they are your enemies, too - the FBI thugs battering down your doors at five in the morning, the malicious US attorneys manufacturing phony felonies, the Soros-owned DAs and party-owned judges, and the thousands of spooks from agencies both known and unheard-of surveilling your every move, every purchase, every journey, every thought. Consider that it is not whether Mr. Trump might seek revenge but whether justice, and the mental health of the nation, require an accounting for the real crimes of actual persons against the people of America lo these years of the Woke Jacobin Inquisition.
Finally, as the days dwindle down to November 5, you understand exactly what motivates the three layers of evil heaping America with malice and punishment. Layer one: the officers of the political establishment, a.k.a., “the blob” or Deep State, both current and emeritus. You know now that they are motived to stay out of courts-of-law (and, ultimately, prison). Figures such as John Brennan, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray, Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Barack Obama, and many more, exude culpability for doing real harm to US citizens. They do not want to do time. As Dr. Johnson famously said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” They see Donald Trump’s poll number go hockey stick and they tremble in their Beltway mansions. On the Kubler-Ross transect of grief, they are just now wavering between the stages of anger and bargaining.
Second layer: the lawfare lawyer gang deployed to keep the blob safe from investigation and prosecution: Marc Elias, (the mail-in ballot fraud genius), Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord (authors of every get-Trump legal brief), and many others who work with them, are motivated by the gigantic fees they command from the Democratic National Committee and other cut-out orgs that funnel payments to them. The Elias Law Group alone is rumored to have raked-in millions from one client, the Kamala Harris campaign. This is apart from whatever lawyerly zeal they exercise so enjoyably in their blood-lust for Mr. Trump and his associates. Remember: Jacobins are sadists who derive pleasure from cruelly punishing their adversaries. It probably motivates them more than the money involved, since ambitious Beltway lawyers can always and easily make bundles of money from the most mundane services to the blob.
Third Layer: the news media. The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature. They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock. They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply). A year from now, don’t be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise. By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC’s Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.
Now, whether Mr. Trump would actively seek revenge is a thing apart from the paranoia of his adversaries. On the one hand, he seems aware that his own place in history will rest not on looking backward to the harms inflicted on him as the sacrificial goat for the sins of “the deplorables” - the many Lawfare cases against him will likely be reversed in higher courts, or just dropped - but on attending to and fixing the many obvious, reality-based problems afflicting the nation: inflation, the horrendous debt, the libido for war induced by military contractors and neocons, the return of productive industry and jobs that pay living wages, sealing the border and expelling dangerous aliens, and stopping the race-and-gender hustles, to name a few things.
In 2016, Mr. Trump floated the idea of defaulting on US debt, or negotiating its terms. Sounded outrageous to some at the time. Now, with the BRICs org meeting to de-dollarize their trade arrangements, might be a ripe time to make such a move. He can reverse “Joe Biden’s” 2021 reversal of his border policies by executive order on day one, put a stop to the “sanctuary city” idiocy, and end all cash incentives to illegals currently inside the USA. He can negotiate a reasonable end to the Ukraine conflict that leaves that country neutral, as everyone knows it should be. He can incentivize the return of factory production with US companies. He knows (and you know) that there is a huge agenda of practical problems to face. Mr. Trump does not need the aggravation of stirring up further grievance and resentment among the defeated Wokesters. He needs them to get aboard a national reclamation project, get their minds right, and lend a hand.
Speaking of hands, on the other hand, remember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies. Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob. The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether. Some of these people - Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples - really do need to do some ‘splainin’ in front of juries. That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country. We can’t pretend that nothing happened. Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters."
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: Markets Up As World Goes Down"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 10/17/24
"Trends Journal:
Markets Up As World Goes Down"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Adventures with Danno, "We Need To Talk About This, This Is Unbelievable"
Adventures with Danno, PM 10/17/24
"We Need To Talk About This,
This Is Unbelievable"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "This Is Goodbye, California Is Done, Heading To Alabama"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/217/24
"This Is Goodbye, California Is Done,
Heading To Alabama"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What surrounds the florid Rosette nebula? To better picture this area of the sky, the famous flowery emission nebula on the far right has been captured recently in a deep and dramatic wide field image that features several other sky highlights. Designated NGC 2237, the center of the Rosette nebula is populated by the bright blue stars of open cluster NGC 2244, whose winds and energetic light are evacuating the nebula's center. Below the famous flower, a symbol of Valentine's Day, is a column of dust and gas that appears like a rose's stem but extends hundreds of light years.
Click image for larger size.
Across the above image, the bright blue star just left and below the center is called S Monocerotis. The star is part of the open cluster of stars labelled NGC 2264 and known as the Snowflake cluster. To the right of S Mon is a dark pointy featured called the Cone nebula, a nebula likely shaped by winds flowing out a massive star obscured by dust. To the left of S Mon is the Fox Fur nebula, a tumultuous region created by the rapidly evolving Snowflake cluster. The Rosette region, at about 5,000 light years distant, is about twice as far away as the region surrounding S Mon. The entire field can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Unicorn (Monoceros)."
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100214.html
Rumi, "The Tavern"
"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home."
- Rumi, "The Tavern," Ch. 1:, p. 2, from "The Essential Rumi"
Freely download "The Essential Rumi" here:
"I Am Always Tempted..."
"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"
I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
- Sydney Harris
"A Self-Congratulatory Delusion..."
"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told- and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"
Free Download: Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World"
“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O, brave new world, That has such people in't!”
- William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” (V, 1)
“Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too - all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions...”
- “Brave New World: Suggestions from the State”
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Freely download “Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley here:
Chet Raymo, “In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The World?”
“In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The World?”
by Chet Raymo
“In earlier times, when I was still teaching, it was my habit to occasionally take a wildflower, or piece of rotten bark, or pinch of oil into a biology lab where I had access to a high-quality dissecting microscope. I'd put my sample on the stage of the scope and go exploring. A hawkweed blossom, say, became the concise equivalent of a tropical jungle, teeming with wildlife.
We bemoan the loss of wilderness, and rightly so I suppose. But there are vast tracks of wilderness that we do not despoil, on a scale too small for annihilation by our marauding hand. Elephants and gorillas may be in danger of extinction, but the ants are doing just fine.
In fact, they seem to find my kitchen countertops entirely to their liking. A paradise of crumbs. An Eden of spilled nutrition. Just look at them, armies of them, as small as the period at the end of this sentence, scampering in gleeful forays.
To my eye they are only featureless specks. But I know that they have legs, antennae, mouth and anus. Sense organs. Reproductive strategies. In other words, we have a lot in common, the ants and me, including common ancestry. It's all a matter of scale. For me the wilderness is mostly gone. For the ants, it's just changing form.
In "The Creation", E. O. Wilson writes: "Ants alone, of which there may be 10 thousand trillion, weigh roughly as much as all 6.5 billion human beings." In the kitchen, I still outweigh the interlopers, but take the whole island and I suppose they might outweigh me. In any case, they don't seem to be aware of a loss of wilderness.
And while we are on the subject of scale, consider the nematodes, mostly tiny, threadlike worms whose millions of species make up four-fifths of all animals on Earth. A handful of loam might contain a thousand. They live virtually everywhere- soil, water, desert sand, arctic ice, hot springs, and as parasites of plants and animals, including humans. Pinworms and hookworms are nematodes. For the nematodes, we are part of the wilderness.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
“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."
"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
- Charles M. Schulz
"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:
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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?”
“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:
"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"
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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. "
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"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."
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