“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space, and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”

“Hannah Arendt on Time, Space,

and Where Our Thinking Ego Resides”

“The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”

by Maria Popova

“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ the White Queen remembers the future instead of the past. This seemingly nonsensical proposition, like so many elements of the beloved book, is a stroke of philosophical genius and prescience on behalf of Lewis Carroll, made half a century before Einstein and Gödel challenged our linear conception of time.

But no thinker has addressed how the disorienting nature of time shapes the human experience with more captivating lucidity than Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975), who in 1973 became the first woman to speak at the prestigious Gifford Lectures. Her talk was eventually adapted into two long essays, published as ‘The Life of the Mind’ (public library) – the same ceaselessly rewarding volume that gave us Arendt on the crucial difference between truth and meaning.

In one of the most stimulating portions of the book, Arendt argues that thinking is our rebellion against the tyranny of time and a hedge against the terror of our finitude. Noting that cognition always removes us from the present and makes absences its raw material, she considers where the thinking ego is located if not in what is present and close at hand:

“Looked at from the perspective of the everyday world of appearances, the everywhere of the thinking ego – summoning into its presence whatever it pleases from any distance in time or space, which thought traverses with a velocity greater than light’s – is a nowhere. And since this nowhere is by no means identical with the twofold nowhere from which we suddenly appear at birth and into which almost as suddenly we disappear in death, it might be conceived only as the Void. And the absolute void can be a limiting boundary concept; though not inconceivable, it is unthinkable. Obviously, if there is absolutely nothing, there can be nothing to think about. That we are in possession of these limiting boundary concepts enclosing our thought within (insurmountable) walls – and the notion of an absolute beginning or an absolute end is among them – does not tell us more than that we are indeed finite beings.”

Echoing Thomas Mann’s assertion that “the perishableness of life… imparts value, dignity, interest to life,” Arendt adds: “Man’s finitude, irrevocably given by virtue of his own short time span set in an infinity of time stretching into both past and future, constitutes the infrastructure, as it were, of all mental activities: it manifests itself as the only reality of which thinking qua thinking is aware, when the thinking ego has withdrawn from the world of appearances and lost the sense of realness inherent in the sensus communis by which we orient ourselves in this world… The everywhere of thought is indeed a region of nowhere.”

T.S. Eliot captured this nowhereness in his exquisite phrase “the still point of the turning world.” But the spatial dimension of thought, Arendt argues, is intersected by a temporal one – thinking invariably forces us to recollect and anticipate, voyaging into the past and the future, thus creating the mental spacetime continuum through which our thought-trains travel. From this arises our sense of the sequential nature of time and its essential ongoingness. Arendt writes:

“The inner time sensation arises when we are not entirely absorbed by the absent non-visibles we are thinking about but begin to direct our attention onto the activity itself. In this situation past and future are equally present precisely because they are equally absent from our sense; thus the no-longer of the past is transformed by virtue of the spatial metaphor into something lying behind us and the not-yet of the future into something that approaches us from ahead.”

[…]

In other words, the time continuum, everlasting change, is broken up into the tenses past, present, future, whereby past and future are antagonistic to each other as the no-longer and the not-yet only because of the presence of man, who himself has an “origin,” his birth, and an end, his death, and therefore stands at any given moment between them; this in-between is called the present. It is the insertion of man with his limited life span that transforms the continuously flowing stream of sheer change – which we can conceive of cyclically as well as in the form of rectilinear motion without ever being able to conceive of an absolute beginning or an absolute end – into time as we know it.”

Once again, it is our finitude that mediates our experience of time: “Seen from the viewpoint of a continuously flowing everlasting stream, the insertion of man, fighting in both directions, produces a rupture which, by being defended in both directions, is extended to a gap, the present seen as the fighter’s battleground… Seen from the viewpoint of man, at each single moment inserted and caught in the middle between his past and his future, both aimed at the one who is creating his present, the battleground is an in-between, an extended Now on which he spends his life. The present, in ordinary life the most futile and slippery of the tenses – when I say “now” and point to it, it is already gone – is no more than the clash of a past, which is no more, with a future, which is approaching and not yet there. Man lives in this in-between, and what he calls the present is a life-long fight against the dead weight of the past, driving him forward with hope, and the fear of a future (whose only certainty is death), driving him backward toward “the quiet of the past” with nostalgia for and remembrance of the only reality he can be sure of.”

This fluid conception of time, Arendt points out, is quite different from its representation in ordinary life, where the calendar tells us that the present is contained in today, the past starts at yesterday, and the future at tomorrow. In a sentiment that calls to mind Patti Smith’s magnificent meditation on time and transformation, Arendt writes: "That we can shape the everlasting stream of sheer change into a time continuum we owe not to time itself but to the continuity of our business and our activities in the world, in which we continue what we started yesterday and hope to finish tomorrow. In other words, the time continuum depends on the continuity of our everyday life, and the business of everyday life, in contrast to the activity of the thinking ego – always independent of the spatial circumstances surrounding it – is always spatially determined and conditioned. It is due to this thoroughgoing spatiality of our ordinary life that we can speak plausibly of time in spatial categories, that the past can appear to us as something lying “behind” us and the future as lying “ahead.”

[…]

The gap between past and future opens only in reflection, whose subject matter is what is absent – either what has already disappeared or what has not yet appeared. Reflection draws these absent “regions” into the mind’s presence; from that perspective the activity of thinking can be understood as a fight against time itself.”

This elusive gap, Arendt argues, is where the thinking ego resides – and it is only by mentally inserting ourselves between the past and the future that they come to exist at all: Without [the thinker], there would be no difference between past and future, but only everlasting change. Or else these forces would clash head on and annihilate each other. But thanks to the insertion of a fighting presence, they meet at an angle, and the correct image would then have to be what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.

These two forces, which have an indefinite origin and a definite end point in the present, converge into a third – a diagonal pull that, contrary to the past and the present, has a definite origin in the present and emanates out toward infinity. That diagonal force, Arendt observes, is the perfect metaphor for the activity of thought. She writes:

“This diagonal, though pointing to some infinity, is limited, enclosed, as it were, by the forces of past and future, and thus protected against the void; it remains bound to and is rooted in the present – an entirely human present though it is fully actualized only in the thinking process and lasts no longer than this process lasts. It is the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed existence of man; it is somehow, to change the metaphor, the quiet in the center of a storm which, though totally unlike the storm, still belongs to it. In this gap between past and future, we find our place in time when we think, that is, when we are sufficiently removed from past and future to be relied on to find out their meaning, to assume the position of “umpire,” of arbiter and judge over the manifold, never-ending affairs of human existence in the world, never arriving at a final solution to their riddles but ready with ever-new answers to the question of what it may be all about.”

“The Life of the Mind” is one of the most stimulating packets of thought ever published. Complement this particular portion with Virginia Woolf on the elasticity of time, Dan Falk on how our capacity for mental time travel made us human, and T.S. Eliot’s poetic ode to the nature of time.“

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"You Know..."

"You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually, and this is my belief, we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is."

- Maria Popova

"Western Civilization, Seen from 2150 AD, Part 1"

"Western Civilization, Seen from 2150 AD, Part 1"

by Paul Rosenberg

"A small roll of pages showed up in my mailbox last week, printed on an odd size and type of paper. They appeared to have been ripped from a history book entitled "2000–2150 AD: The Emergence of Modernity." I’m repeating the text here verbatim, sans the header, which mentions only the title of the book. (Or perhaps it’s the title of a chapter.) Make of this what you will.

"In the late 20th century it began dawning on the heirs of Western civilization that the archaic forms of rulership they lived under (and which they had held as the ultimate form of human organization) were actually enormous parasites. The first people to grasp this tended to be socially ostracized and were punished in a variety of ways, mostly informal. But they persevered and found comfort in the writings of like-minded men and women of the past, who had the good fortune to live beneath milder incarnations of parasitic hierarchy.

Soon books were being written on the subject and circulated among a small but devoted readership. Slowly, something of an intellectual movement began to form. The first great expansion came with the rise of the internet in the 1990s. The new ideas began spreading beyond small intellectual circles and into the minds of productive people worldwide.

The ideas advanced slowly. People of the era were, after all, forcibly schooled by those same parasitic regimes, and breaking away from a nearly universal system of thought was difficult, no matter how obvious the system’s barbarity.

Still, humans have always been clever and self-referential creatures, as well as being gifted with effective memories. Little by little the new ideas, like so many seeds, began to grow. One person here spread the concepts to one or two elsewhere, who – a few years later when the seeds in them had matured a bit – spread them to still others. With a geometric certainty, the seeds began filling mankind.

But while this appears as an inevitable process from our perspective, it seemed desperately slow and uncertain to the people involved. Many of the earliest adopters died before they saw the fruit of their labors, which didn’t appear in any significant concentrations until 2015 or so.

Restraints and Releases: The great restraint to these ideas, during the era of their first emergence, was the Internet’s corporate parasitism, running from roughly 2002 through 2025. The primary transaction under this model was for people to accept “free” services in return for granting the corporation complete access to their most private lives. No such service was truly free of course, and people did understand this at some basic level, but Westerners of that era were well schooled in the fear of scarcity (even though very few lived in conditions of actual privation), and all were bombarded with fear day and night by “news stations.” In that condition, the offer of “free” service was all but irresistible to them, and so they closed their eyes to the ongoing sale of their intimate lives.

This of course was before people learned to treat fear as mind pollution. At that time, embracing every new fear was considered a show of vitality. And so people flocked to “free” services, allowing those services and their spy agency partners to conduct deeper and more pervasive surveillance than could have been imagined in any previous era. This, as we know, resulted in the greatest systems of manipulation in world history. The monstrosities we see as Descartes’s Demon were possible only because of scarcity fears among people who faced little or no actual scarcity.

The first great release from parasitic systems was the decentralized digital economy, beginning with Bitcoin in 2009. By the time cryptocurrencies accounted for 10% of world currency volume, decentralization was firmly rooted in the realms of money and economic infrastructure, and it was clear that it would not be stopped. The Crypto Massacres in India and Turkey claimed several thousand lives, but they also turned most Indians and Turks against their murderous “leaders,” leading to the end of both regimes within a few years.

Nonparasitic Cooperation: What decentralized economics slowly taught the world was that their parasitic structures had been unnecessary. People had, from what seemed time immemorial, believed that violence-based hierarchies were necessary for cooperation… that without them, human life would become, as was famously proclaimed, “nasty, solitary, poor, brutish, and short.” The historical record didn’t support that statement of course, but nearly all history books after 1900 AD were written for and purchased by parasitic systems, and so contrary portions were left out.

Nonetheless, once decentralized systems were part of everyday life for the bulk of the populace (by 2050 or so), it became clearer and clearer that parasitic systems weren’t actually necessary. Finding ways to organize in nonparasitic ways took time, however. A first problem was that many Westerners still thought systems of organization had to be monopolistic, that a single system incorporating everyone was necessary. But by 2060 this idea was fading, primarily because no system could maintain sufficient violence to force everyone into it. Millions of people were honestly surprised to learn that multiple systems could operate simultaneously and successfully."

"I’ll stop here this week and complete my transcription next week."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

"Breaking: All 800 U.S. Top Generals To Attend Emergency Meeting!"

Prepper news, 9/25/25

"Breaking: All 800 U.S. Top Generals

 To Attend Emergency Meeting!"

Comments here:

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Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 9/25/25

"America At War? Defense Secy. Summons 800

 U.S. Military Leaders For Emergency Huddle"

"U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is set to meet with senior military leaders next week in what officials are calling a rare and significant gathering. The Pentagon confirmed Thursday that hundreds of generals and admirals have been ordered to assemble at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday. Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said only that Hegseth would address his top commanders but gave no further details. The Washington Post first reported that the meeting was called on short notice without explanation, fueling speculation about its urgency and potential implications for U.S. military strategy and global security."

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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/25/25

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: 

Trump’s Dangerous U-turn on Ukraine"

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- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Tofino, British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

"A Gift..."

“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.

Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”

~ Leo Babauta

"Leo Tolstoy: The Philosopher Who Solved the Meaning of Life?"

Full screen recommended.

"Leo Tolstoy: 

The Philosopher Who Solved the Meaning of Life?" 

by The Psyche, 9/25/25

"What if you had everything - fame, fortune, family - and still felt your life was meaningless? This was the haunting reality faced by literary giant Leo Tolstoy. In this profound and emotional journey, we explore how Tolstoy went from existential despair to discovering a radical, soul-stirring answer to the most difficult question of all: What is the meaning of life?"

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“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”

- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”

○

“All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper,

and the next – who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.”

- Sophoclese, “Philoctetes”

○

Free Download:

A little light reading from Tolstoy…

Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:

- https://ia903407.us.archive.org/

"How It Really Is"

 

Everywhere you look faces buried in the phones...

Now, several generations...

"It's Not the End of the World"

"It's Not the End of the World"

by Jeff Thomas

"Periodically, I’ll encounter someone who has read one of my essays and has decided not to pursue them further, stating, "You’re one of those ‘End of the world’ guys. I can’t be bothered reading the writings of someone who thinks we’re all doomed. I have a more positive outlook than that." In actual fact, I agree entirely with his latter two comments. I can’t be bothered reading the thoughts of a writer who says we’re all doomed, either. I, too, have a more positive outlook than that.

My one discrepancy with such comments is that I don’t by any means think that the present state of events will lead to the end of the world, as he assumes. But then, neither am I naïve enough to think that if I just hope for the best, the powers that be will cease to be parasitical and predatory out of sympathy for me. They will not.

For any serious student of history, one of the great realizations that occurs at some point is that governments are inherently controlling by nature. The more control they have, the more they desire and the more they pursue. After all, governments actually produce nothing. They exist solely upon what they can extract from the people they rule over. Therefore, their personal success is not measured by how well they serve their people, it’s measured by how much they can extract from the people. And so, it’s a given that all governments will pursue ever-greater levels of power over their minions up to and including the point of total dominance.

It should be said that, on rare occasions, a people will rise up and create a governmental system in which the rights of the individual are paramount. This was true in the creation of the Athenian Republic and the American Constitution, and even the British Magna Carta. However, these events are quite rare in history and, worse, as soon as they take place, those who gain power do their best to diminish the newly-gained freedoms. Such freedoms can almost never be destroyed quickly, but, over time and "by slow operations," as Thomas Jefferson was fond of saying, governments can be counted on to eventually destroy all freedoms.

We’re passing through a period in history in which the process of removing freedoms is nearing completion in many of the world’s foremost jurisdictions. The EU and US, in particular, are leading the way in this effort. Consequently, it shouldn’t be surprising that some predict "the end of the world." But, they couldn’t be more incorrect.

Surely, in 1789, the more productive people of France may have felt that the developing French Revolution would culminate in Armageddon. Similarly, in 1917, those who created prosperity in Russia may well have wanted to throw up their hands as the Bolsheviks seized power from the Romanovs.

Whenever a deterioration in rule is underway, as it is once again now, the observer has three choices:

Declare the End of the World: There are many people, worldwide, but particularly in the centers of the present deterioration – the EU and US – who feel that, since the situation in their home country is nearing collapse, the entire world must also be falling apart. This is not only a very myopic viewpoint, it’s also quite inaccurate. At any point in civilization in the past 2000 years or more, there have always been empires that were collapsing due to intolerable governmental dominance and there have always concurrently been alternative jurisdictions where the level of freedom was greater. In ancient Rome, when Diocletian devalued the currency, raised taxes, increased warfare and set price controls, those people who actually created the economy on a daily basis found themselves in the same boat as Europeans and Americans are finding themselves in, in the 21st century.

It may have seemed like the end of the world, but it was not. Enough producers left Rome and started over again in other locations. Those other locations eventually thrived as a result of the influx of productive people, while Rome atrophied.

Turn a Blind Eye: This is less dreary than the above approach, but it is nevertheless just as fruitless. It is, in fact, the most common of reactions – to just "hope for the best." It’s tempting to imagine that maybe the government will realize that they’re the only ones benefitting from the destruction of freedom and prosperity and they’ll feel bad and reverse the process. But this clearly will not happen. It’s also tempting to imagine that maybe it won’t get a whole lot worse and that life, although not all that good at present, might remain tolerable. Again, this is wishful thinking and the odds of it playing out in a positive way are slim indeed.

Accept the Truth, But Do Something About It: This, of course, is the hard one. Begin by recognizing the truth. If that truth is not palatable, study the situation carefully and, when a reasonably clear understanding has been reached, create an alternative. When governments enter the final decline stage, an alternative is not always easy to accept. It’s a bit like having a tooth pulled. You want to put it off, but the pain will only get worse if you delay. And so, you trundle off to the dentist unhappily, but, a few weeks after the extraction, you find yourself asking, "Why didn’t I do this sooner?"

To be sure, those who investigate and analyze the present socio-economic-political deterioration do indeed espouse a great deal of gloom, but this should not be confused with doom. In actual fact, the whole point of shining a light into the gloom is to avoid having it end in doom.

It should be said here that remaining in a country that is tumbling downhill socially, economically and politically is also not the end of the world. It is, however, true that the end result will not exactly be a happy one. If history repeats once again, it’s likely to be quite a miserable one.

Those who undertake the study of the present deterioration must, admittedly, address some pretty depressing eventualities and it would be far easier to just curl up on the sofa with a six-pack and watch the game, but the fact remains: unless the coming problems are investigated and an alternative found, those who sit on the sofa will become the victims of their own lethargy.

Sadly, we live in a period in history in which some of the nations that once held the greatest promise for the world are well on their way to becoming the most tyrannical. If by recognizing that fact, we can pursue better alternatives elsewhere on the globe, as people have done in previous eras. We may actually find that the field of daisies in the image above is still very much in existence, it’s just a bit further afield than it was in years gone by. And it is absolutely worthy of pursuit."

- internationalman.com

"Insiders Leak Alarming Data - America’s Economy Is Unraveling"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 9/25/25

"Insiders Leak Alarming Data - 

America’s Economy Is Unraveling"

"Insiders are spilling the truth about the cracks in our economy, and trust me - you won’t hear this anywhere else! From shocking restaurant "quiet time" surcharges to Bank of America shutting down branches and massive layoffs, the picture is clear: things are unraveling fast. Used car prices are collapsing, Enterprise is drowning in inventory, and foreclosure auctions are skyrocketing. It’s wild out there, and I’m breaking it all down for you.

Plus, why are grocery store shelves shifting toward ramen and hamburger helper? What’s happening with Porsche scrapping their EV plans? And wait until you hear about the secret behind classic car values tanking - it’s jaw-dropping. This video is packed with insider info you NEED to know in these uncertain times."

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Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 9/25/25

"Starbucks Closing Stores, 1,000’s Out Of A Job"

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"How Can We Amicably Separate?"

"How Can We Amicably Separate?"

by Eric Peters

"The subject of civil war comes up a lot lately. How about an amicable separation instead? People do this all the time in their personal relationships. You have two people who loved one another once and maybe still do but just can’t live together any longer. At least, not without some sort of accommodation that neither can agree to. And so the parties agree to separate.

One party does not (usually) try to force the other party to remain in the relationship and rarely tries to kill the other party when a separation is asked for. Most people understand that while it hurts to say goodbye, it’s wrong to hurt the other party for saying it. Why can’t this work on a political level?

The answer is simple. It is why there was what was not a civil war in this country, 1861-1865. There was a successful attempt to prevent a separation. The slavery thing is a non sequitur told to young people to avoid them asking impertinent questions – such as why the “union” was inviolable (as Lincoln said it was) when that clearly conflicts with the idea of government by consent (which Lincoln had the gall to say he was defending, by forcing the states of the Southern Confederacy to submit to a government they did not consent to).

The issue that was resolved – by force – was whether states (and so the people) had the right to separate themselves politically from a “union” they no longer wished to remain within. Lincoln’s government – and armies – forced the Southern states to return to the “union” and submit to its government. This is “consent”in the manner of a woman who is unable to fight off her rapist.

The Confederacy never sought to gain political control over the states north of the Mason-Dixon line. They sought to be independent of them. It is a lie, accordingly, that what occurred during 1861-1865 was a “civil war.”

Why is this lie told to school kids? For all the obvious reasons. The main ones being to portray the South as the bad guy and to portray the North as the good guy. This squelches questions about forcing people into a “union” they’d rather not be part of. How many people would consider getting married if it were made clear to them they could never (no matter what) leave the marriage?

Circling back to our situation. It is similar in at least one way to the situation in this country in 1861 in that – like the Southern states – about half the people living in this “union” would like to peacefully separate from it. For reasons of irreconcilable differences, which is the generally accepted criteria for the dissolution of personal unions when they are no longer mutually agreeable. It is interesting that the criteria almost everyone accepts for the dissolution of a marital union is considered unacceptable when it comes to political unions.

Wait. That is not actually correct. What happened in 1861 – and what may happen again – is that one side of the “union” refused to allow the dissolution. How bizarre! Everyone – almost everyone – would regard it (correctly) as criminal and even psychotic to force someone to remain in a marriage they wanted out of. The reasons why are beside the point. Marriage – any such commitment – ought to be done voluntarily and for love. Using force to maintain the relationship is the antithesis of loving someone because it is the relationship of owner and slave.

But it does explain why political separation is not permissible. One side refuses to let go of their ownership claims over the other side, though this honest if evil motive is never declared. In the context of our time, the reason why is the same as it was in that other time. One side needs the other side – in the manner of a leech that needs the warm blood of another creature to maintain its existence.

Most of you reading this are probably willing – eager – to agree that you want nothing from the Left (that is, from people who are socialists/communists) than to be free of them. More to the point, you don’t want their freedom. Or their money, either. The Left cannot survive without yours. It is like a spouse that does not work but demands you do in order to meet their needs, which always wax. A spouse who carries a .45 and makes it clear that you’d better go to work – and come home after work. And then give her a massage before bedtime.

It is really important to understand this. We do not need them – but they need us. They have to have us, just the same as the Northern states (more finely, the mercantilist interests that controlled the North and so the “union”) had to have the resources possessed by the South. Lincoln – for all his serial lying- admitted this prior to the outbreak of the war to force the South back into the “union.” He stated he would agree to any accommodation with the South regarding slavery – so long as the South continued to pay federal taxes (tariffs) and remained in the union. In other words, it was not the relationship that really mattered. It was the relationship of owner to owned that did.

This is why those of us who wish only keep what is ours and to be left alone – are not going to be left alone by the people who believe what’s ours is theirs and who are genetically incapable (so it seems) of leaving other people alone. We are in the position of a spouse married to someone who sees us as their property and who will never let us go without a fight. It is a depressing and daunting thing to come to terms with. But the sooner we do, the better."

- https://www.ericpetersautos.com/

"Chastity In A Whorehouse..."

"People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?"

- H. L. Mencken, 1928

Same as it ever was and will be...

"The Most Ominous Thing That A President Of The United States Has Said In My Entire Lifetime"

"The Most Ominous Thing That A President Of 

The United States Has Said In My Entire Lifetime"

by Michael Snyder

"There will be no peace with Russia, and we all know what that means. When I initially learned what President Trump had said about the war in Ukraine, I had a very difficult time believing it. When he was running against Kamala Harris, Trump reaffirmed his commitment to end the war in Ukraine over and over again. That was an extremely popular position, because the vast majority of Americans do not want to end up in an apocalyptic conflict with Russia. But now everything has changed. Trump has been receiving really bad advice from his national security team, and based on that advice he has fully embraced the war in Ukraine. In fact, he now appears to believe that Ukraine can actually win the war and take back all of the territory that Russia has conquered.

I had to verify exactly what Trump said about the war for myself, and so I went directly to his Truth Social account. When I got there, I read the most ominous thing that a president of the United States has said in my entire lifetime…

Ever since I first read this, I have experienced such a mix of emotions. But at this particular moment, I just feel sad. I feel like I am watching a great tragedy play out in slow-motion that I am unable to stop. I have issued very explicit warnings about what will happen if this path is chosen. Unfortunately, global leaders don’t really listen to people like us.

After Trump posted this extremely alarming message on his Truth Social account, he doubled down on his position during a press appearance…Speaking next to French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, Trump said: “Russia should have stopped the war.” He added that his once-close rapport with Putin “didn’t mean anything unfortunately.” Speaking about his Truth Social post, Trump went on: “Most of you have seen the recent statement I put out. I’m glad you got it, but I feel that way. Let him get that land back, so we’ll see how it works out.”

A lot of people out there have been waiting to see which way things would go with Russia. Now we know. When Trump arrived at the United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, the escalator stopped working as soon as he got on it…"President Donald Trump turned an awkward arrival at the United Nations headquarters in New York City into a political jab Tuesday during his address to the General Assembly moments after the building’s escalator stopped dead just as he and First Lady Melania Trump stepped on it.

The pair posed briefly for cameras as they arrived before stepping onto the escalator that, to the bemusement of onlookers, ground immediately to a halt as they boarded. After a moment of confusion, Melania quickly strode up the stalled steps, while Trump followed behind, leaving aides and staffers to take the stairs.

Subsequently, when he delivered his speech to the UN General Assembly the teleprompter did not work properly. This is something that he commented on during his speech… Trump said elsewhere in his speech that, “All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle,” he alleged, later adding, “These are the two things that I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much.”

On the exact day when the peace process with Russia was broken, Trump had to deal with a broken escalator and a broken teleprompter at the United Nations. Is it possible that this was more than just a coincidence? There was so much hope when President Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. But now it is clear that there will be no peace, and the Russians are not pleased about Trump’s shift in tone at all…

"The few early reactions trickling out of Moscow on Wednesday demonstrated how deeply Trump’s unexpectedly friendly appearance in New York alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly vexed the Kremlin, which just weeks ago was gloating over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warm reception in Alaska. “Russia is in no way a tiger. Still, Russia is more compared with a bear. There are no paper bears,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said to local radio on Wednesday.

In Alaska, the Russians presented their proposal for ending the war. You could argue that their proposal was not acceptable, but at least they were willing to talk. The right thing to do would have been to continue negotiations. Unfortunately, as Scott Ritter has pointed out, Trump has been getting advice from some very questionable people…

"Trump has, from the very onset of his presidency, been ill advised by a coterie of foreign and national security officials who, with very few exceptions, are dyed in the wool Russophobes. From his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to his National Security Advisor (initially Mike Waltz and, after his firing in May, Marco Rubio, wearing to hats ala Henry Kissinger), to his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to his CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, and on to his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessant, Trump has surrounded himself with people who have spent their adult lives loathing Russia and its leadership.

To the extent that Trump has access to advisors who might advocate good relations with Russia, he either dismisses their advice (as is the case with Tulsi Gabbard, his Director of National Intelligence), or nullifies their advice by having a Russophobic counter (as is the case with his Russia Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff, whose insights are offset by the anti-Russian positions held by Keith Kellogg.)"

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham has also been working very hard to sell Trump on the benefits of the war in Ukraine, and he is absolutely thrilled that Trump’s announcement means that we will “continue to sell high end American weapons to NATO for the benefit of Ukraine”…

I would love to know how much money defense contractors have poured into Graham’s campaigns over the years. There is no possible universe in which Lindsey Graham should have ever been elected to anything. If Trump keeps listening to warmongers like him, we are all going to be in very deep trouble.

Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to take actions that are intended to provoke such an overwhelming response from Russia that NATO will feel compelled to directly intervene in the war. For example, the Ukrainians just conducted a large scale drone attack on the Russian port city of Novorossiysk…"On Wednesday a major daytime drone attack from Ukraine rocked the Russian Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk, which reportedly involved both aerial and sea drones. The city center was hit, and explosions were also witnessed in the water very near the city. The Novorossiysk Hotel, located about 2 kilometers from the port, was also struck along with several buildings and cars. At least 20 cars were on fire, either from a direct hit or falling debris. It appears that docked vessels of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet may have been among intended targets, given that earlier in the war Russia had transferred much of its fleet from Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk."

And we also just witnessed a “massive aerial bombardment on Russia’s Belgorod border region”…"Ukraine has launched a massive aerial bombardment on Russia’s Belgorod border region, with initial reports suggesting major damage and many casualties. The attack comes following Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations on Tuesday.

The US President praised Ukraine’s army for its courageous resistance and said it was doing a “very effective job”. A rocket attack is reported to have hit the Frez plant in Belgorod, which produces milling cutters and special tools. The Telegram channel “Pepel” is reporting that eyewitnesses are saying there were many casualties following the missile strike."

The purpose of such attacks is to get the Russians to do something really stupid. Because if the Russians do something really stupid, NATO may feel forced to directly enter the war, and that is what the Ukrainians have wanted all along. The longer this war goes on, the more likely it becomes that this is how things will play out. The Russians are losing patience, and one prominent voice is even suggesting that it would be a “terrible sin” not to use nuclear weapons…

"Vladimir Putin has been warned that he would be committing a “terrible sin” by NOT using nuclear weapons in Europe. The astonishing claims were made by Sergei Karaganov, 73, aka Professor Doomsday, honorary chairman of the Russian Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, who claimed that unleashing tactical atomic weapons is the only way to prevent a larger war between the US and Russia.

He becomes the latest Putin acolyte and Kremlin commentator to advocate for a nuclear escalation to the conflict in Ukraine and the stand-off with Nato. The comments come after an apparent change of stance from US President Donald Trump who has indicated that Ukraine could feasibly retake all of its territory lost to Putin’s forces. Karaganov said: “The use of nuclear weapons, in extreme cases, in the most dreadful case, is a terrible sin. But not using them and condemning your people and the world to a major war is an even greater sin. That is an even more terrible sin.”

There are many thinkers inside Russia that are convinced that NATO will back down once the Russians show that they are willing to use a nuclear weapon. I very much disagree with that assessment, because I believe that it would just cause NATO to respond in kind. If even a single nuclear weapon is used in this conflict or in the Middle East, peace will be taken from the Earth. I hope that you understand what I am saying. We are so close to the unthinkable, and the vast majority of the population still has no idea where events are taking us."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"Alert! Drones Trigger State of Emergency! NATOs Insane Nuclear "Drill", ADIZ Intercept"

Prepper News, 9/24/25

"Alert! Drones Trigger State of Emergency! 

NATOs Insane Nuclear "Drill", ADIZ Intercept"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"3I/ATLAS Just Split in Two - A Second Object Is Moving Toward the Moon!"

A Terrifying Must-View!

Full screen recommended.

RevVolt, 9/24/25

"3I/ATLAS Just Split in Two - 

A Second Object Is Moving Toward the Moon!"

"Astronomers are stunned after the mysterious interstellar object 3I/ATLAS suddenly split in two. Even more shocking, one of the fragments appears to be on a direct course toward the Moon. This unprecedented event has left scientists scrambling to understand what’s happening. In this video, we’ll reveal: How 3I/ATLAS unexpectedly fractured in deep space. Why one fragment is now moving dangerously close to the Moon’s orbit. Theories about whether the breakup was natural - or something else entirely. How this compares to other mysterious interstellar visitors like ʻOumuamua. What NASA and astronomers are planning as they track the fragments in real time. This is more than just another space anomaly - 3I/ATLAS is rewriting the rules of interstellar science. Could this be the first time humanity witnesses an interstellar collision with our own cosmic backyard?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

They've now discovered 9 larger objects coming in on the same exact vector as I3/Atlas, which may be a scout ship for a larger fleet arriving in strength. Another, the enormous C/2025 R2 (SWAN) is 100 times the size of I3/ATLAS, and is generating 10,000 gigawatts of energy. (Earth's total global nuclear power capacity totaled 396 gigawatts, with 439 reactors operating across over 30 countries as of July 2024.) As the astronomer/physicist Avi Loeb states, if I3/ATLAS is the "scout" ship SWAN is the "fortress" to which I3/Atlas is sending reports. My guess is that it was the sudden massive energy signatures of using the atomic bombs in the 1940's that caught their attention. Their purpose unknown, all conjecture at this point, but data verified. What does all this mean for Humanity, for you and me? If Humanity has a future... We shall see... We can't fight, and there's nowhere to escape to. - C

o

Full screen recommended.

Hidden Headlines, 9/24/25

"James Webb Telescope Just Detected The Unimaginable"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"3 Million Bank Accounts Frozen, Innocent People Locked Out; You Better Hold Your Own Money"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 9/24/25

"3 Million Bank Accounts Frozen, Innocent People Locked Out; 

You Better Hold Your Own Money"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 9/24/25

"Vietnam Just Froze 86 Million Bank Accounts! 

Get Ready, It's Coming To The West"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen,"Everybody Knows"

Leonard Cohen,"Everybody Knows"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.

Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html

○

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in

heaven where the love of our lost ones pours

through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

~ Eskimo saying

"Household Debt Levels in America Will Bankrupt Everyone"

Full screen recommended.

"Household Debt Levels in 

America Will Bankrupt Everyone"

by Michael Bordenaro, 9/24/25

"Debt in America just reached new record highs and it has been steadily increasing since about 2014 with a noticeable spike over the past five years. The problem of course is that income is not keeping up with the level of debt that people are getting themselves into which will lead to many going into bankruptcy in the future."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 9/24/25

"Americans Panic As Retailers Skip Seasonal Hiring"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"10 U.S. States That Will Collapse First As Housing Market Crashes"

Full screen recommended.

"10 U.S. States That Will Collapse

 First As Housing Market Crashes"

by Epic Economist, 9/24/25

"Look at the maps. Entire suburban neighborhoods where "For Sale" signs multiply like a virus, spreading house by house. Where moving trucks line the streets like funeral processions. Where families are forced to abandon homes they can no longer afford. This isn't some Hollywood disaster movie. This is the American housing crisis unfolding right now, across multiple states, in real time.

While real estate agents smile and promise soft landings, while mortgage brokers push impossible loans onto desperate families, the numbers just don't add up anymore. Some states are already cracking under pressure, showing stress fractures that will become massive ruptures when the next housing crash hits. And believe me, that storm is coming fast.

Today we're exposing the 10 states where housing markets will crash hardest, where property values will plummet so fast it'll make your head spin, where millions of homeowners will wake up one day to discover their homes are worth less than what they owe. We're talking about full-blown housing crashes.

In September 2025, mortgage rates hit 6.35%, and experts expect them to stay between 6% and 7% unless recession forces them lower. But here's what they won't tell you: home maintenance costs alone jumped 18% in one year, adding nearly $1,800 monthly beyond mortgage payments. Most families simply can't afford this anymore.

These 10 states share the same problems: housing prices way above what locals can afford, economies that depend on shaky industries, climate risks, and crumbling infrastructure. They aren't just overpriced. They're about to crash hard. Warning signs flash everywhere. March 2025 home sales crashed 5.9% to lowest since 2009 recession. 52,000 sales got canceled representing 13.4% of transactions. Over 20% of listings show price cuts while 31 major metros report falling prices. Mortgage rates stuck around 6.7% through 2025 keep buyers sidelined while maintenance costs add $1,783 monthly beyond mortgage payments. This is financial strangulation in slow motion.

Housing market crashes don't happen overnight. They build slowly, then hit fast. When the final trigger comes - whether rising inflation from tariffs, economic recession, or climate disasters - these states will see massive price drops that wipe out wealth and destroy communities. Listen, if you live in one of these states, the time for preparation is now. And I mean right now. Because when housing storms strike these regions, they won't just weather difficult times. They'll face fundamental questions about economic survival itself. The countdown has already begun. The only question remaining is which state will crash first when the foundation finally gives way."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

""When An Old Friend Takes Her Own Life"

"When An Old Friend Takes Her Own Life"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"When an old friend takes her own life, your own life is irrevocably diminished. What seemed to matter before no longer matters, and what seemed to make sense no longer makes sense. My friend had recently moved 1,000 miles away, to a town which had long extended a magnetic draw on her. But she knew no one there, and since her work was all done on computer, she toiled alone. Like any other human being in those conditions, she was lonely. Yes, she had a loyal companion in her dog, and two very close friends here in California, and a constellation of lesser friends like me; but it was not enough at a critical moment.

She'd had those moments before, and been saved: just as she'd gathered the pills to swallow, a friend had called, and she'd gotten past that moment of dark obsession. Of all the past days' memories and thoughts, one returns: what if I had sensed her despair and called her at that moment? And why didn't I sense her need for reassurance and human contact at that critical hour? I have often dreamed of her, and had done so just the week before; it was a vivid dream, not at all alarming, and I'd recounted it to her in an email. She'd made no response, and I'd given it no further thought. Was the dream a premonition? No; but perhaps it was a signal, if not of distress, then of some tendril of distress.

It is convenient is think our friends resilient, just as it is convenient for adults to believe children are resilient when turmoil or tragedy strikes the family. Yes, children are resilent--they are human beings. But they are not endlessly resilient, and their quiet after death or upheaval is not resilience or resolve, it is the numbing of terrible pain.

And so this false reliance on resilience nags at me; I was too self-absorbed to think through the underlying conditions in my dear friend's life, and how lonely she might feel. Her childhood was not positive, nor was her family more than grudgingly supportive; there were always squabbles over money and demands for fealty she could not meet. She was resilient, but only just so; and I should have been alert to the proximity of her limits.

But I am also keenly aware of the limits of my influence in her life; though we each wish with all our hearts that we could have saved her in that moment of supreme temptation and pain, there are limits to our influence.

If you think of your oldest, closest friends - I have known and loved her for 37 years now - then we cannot recall all the thousands of words exchanged or spoken, or the thousands of hours spent together. We recall some few words and scenes, and it is those few we have to cherish and ponder. But what caused us to recall those moments and not others?

We are ripe to influence and connection only rarely; even our closest friends only influence our thinking and emotions at certain unpredictable junctures. After the fact, often when things have gone awry, we remember what they told us, or the comment they made off-handedly, or perhaps most rarely, their earnestly offered advice which we'd promptly ignored.

And so I hold two uncomfortably conflicting truths: that I could have been, and should have been, a better friend to her these past few months, when she needed all her friends' presence and understanding. But feeling this, and knowing it to be painfully true does not alter the limits of my influence in her life. Perhaps I could have contacted her in just the right moment, when my call or words could have tipped her away from that terrible decision; but more likely, that is a vain hope of a heartbroken friend, looking back from the periphery of her life.

For there are limits to us, this poor amalgam of brain and emotion; yes, faith can help, pets can help, friends and family can help, medication can help, insight can help, resolve can help -but none of these, or all of them put together, is guaranteed to overcome the darkness within us at its bleakest. The sufferer must be attuned to that particular wavelength at that moment in time; and if they have spun beyond our reach, then our ability to save them is lost as well.

Those of you who were born with minds which don't follow the happier pathways, the easier pathways, know that the "normal" person cannot understand the despair felt by those prone to one or more of the many madnesses which plague the human mind and spirit. Yes, we all know despression and anxiety, but those blessed with standard-issue minds will never experience the bottomlessness the others experience.

In a peculiarity of natural selection, or God's will (perhaps, despite the false labeling imposed by language, they amount to the same thing), the human spirits with the most enthusiasm for life, the ones with the poet's spark, the ones with the keenest sensibilities and sensitivities to life, are the ones most often drawn to that terrible cliff of self-destruction.

Some may mock Thanatos, the urge to self-destruction, the yin to the will to live's yang, as illusion. But it is real, and if you have not felt it, then count your blessings.

It is ironic, and tragic, that the selfish among us, the bitter types who have soured on life and who tap an endless well of bile to blame others for their own difficulties, or those who always find the energy to trumpet their own self-glory, never end their own lives. They cling on, as if the will to sow discord and ego are indestructable. No, it is the fragile ones, the thoughtful ones, who are drawn to that dark edge, and who jump; for life is too painful to bear at times, and they think not of faith or the love of their friends and family, but of escape.

It is an illusion, a cherished one, and one I wish was true, that love alone can save a lovely soul in extremis. She was loved, dearly, and yet we who loved her could not save her. We cannot but wish with all our own lifeforce that we could have done so, but there are limits, even to love. How I wish I had felt an urge to pick up the phone and call her that day, that hour, in the hope that perhaps that simple act would have distracted her, or comforted her just enough to stay her hand. But I had felt no such urge, and so the moment was lost.

To wish for that is to wish for powers and strengths I do not possess; I am just another muddled, muddling-through human, struggling daily with my own weaknesses and demons, trying not to fail those I love in this life. But I cannot help but feel I failed her, and that haunts me, and will haunt me, even as I know that to want that power in her life is not the same as actually wielding it. Though it is natural to wish for a limitless ability to save such a dear soul, perhaps it is overstating our reach.

When an old friend takes her own life, then you come to know how little you knew of her and of her life in that distant town. There are limits on what a friend can know, at least a friend who is not in the inner circle; and perhaps even they cannot know.

We were close at times, something like cousins or perhaps at the very best, as she once told me, siblings; she had no brothers. There is no good analog or word for friendships with no romantic frisson between men and women. We did not look anything alike; I am tall and fair, and she was very petite, with skin and eyes far different from my own.

She was the much better writer, the one who deservedly won the notice of mentors and prize committees. In comparison, I am a plodder, the aspirant who rows along without attracting much notice because, well, I'm just not that good. I thought her beautiful, and liked looking at her; she had an enthusiasm for things, and life, which I admired and even envied at times.

Now she is gone, and my life is so much poorer. My only consolation, and it too is a poor one, is that I had just written her that I loved her very much, and had always loved her. She'd made no answering comment, for it was known, and understood; but I hope, in my secret heart, that it gave her some small solace to read it, and to know it was true."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether 

it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The Daily "Near You?"

Pawleys Island, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!