Jeremiah Babe, 2/1/24
"America Is Falling Into A Cesspool;
Cities Vandalized; Renters Fall Behind"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Adventures With Danno, "It's About To Get Worse! Be Prepared!"
Adventures With Danno, PM 2/1/24
"It's About To Get Worse! Be Prepared!"
"Many people's budgets are thinning out due to very high prices in our grocery stores and beyond. We're noticing stores get overly packed on the first of the month which is a sign everyone is being careful and stocking up on food as soon as the paycheck comes."
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter,
"Music of the Night: East of The Full Moon"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."
"Write Your Worries On The Sand"
“I walked slowly out on the beach.
A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:
WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.
I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.
Kneeling there under the vault of the sky, I wrote several words, one above the other.
Then I walked away, and I did not look back. I had written my troubles on the sand.
The tide was coming in.”
- Arthur Gordon
The Poet: James Broughton, "Having Come This Far"
"Having Come This Far"
"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.
No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.
I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."
- James Broughton
“Thucydides in the Underworld”
“Master, what gnaws at them so hideously
their lamentation stuns the very air?”
“They have no hope of death,” he answered me…”
- Dante Alighieri, “The Inferno”
“Thucydides in the Underworld”
by J. R. Nyquist
“The shade of Thucydides, formerly an Athenian general and historian, languished in Hades for 24 centuries; and having intercourse with other spirits, was perturbed by an influx into the underworld of self-described historians professing to admire his History of the Peloponnesian War. They burdened him with their writings, priding themselves on the imitation of his method, tracing the various patterns of human nature in politics and war. He was, they said, the greatest historian; and his approval of their works held the promise that their purgatory was no prologue to oblivion.
As the centuries rolled on, the flow of historians into Hades became a torrent. The later historians were no longer imitators, but most were admirers. It seemed to Thucydides that these were a miserable crowd, unable to discern between the significant and the trivial, being obsessed with tedious doctrines. Unembarrassed by their inward poverty, they ascribed an opposite meaning to things: thinking themselves more “evolved” than the spirits of antiquity. Some even imagined that the universe was creating God. They supposed that the “most evolved” among men would assume God’s office; and further, that they themselves were among the “most evolved.”
Thucydides longed for the peace of his grave, which posthumous fame had deprived him. As with many souls at rest, he took no further interest in history. He had passed through existence and was done. He had seen everything. What was bound to follow, he knew, would be more of the same; but after more than 23 centuries of growing enthusiasm for his work, there occurred a sudden falling off. Of the newly deceased, fewer broke in upon him. Quite clearly, something had happened. He began to realize that the character of man had changed because of the rottenness of modern ideas. Among the worst of these, for Thucydides, was that barbarians and civilized peoples were considered equal; that art could transmit sacrilege; that paper could be money; that sexual and cultural differences were of no account; that meanness was rated noble, and nobility mean.
Awakened from the sleep of death, Thucydides remembered what he had written about his own time. The watchwords then, as now, were “revolution” and “democracy.” There had been upheaval on all sides. “As the result of these revolutions,” he had written, “there was a general deterioration of character throughout the Greek world. The simple way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society had become divided into two ideologically hostile camps, and each side viewed the other with suspicion.”
Thucydides saw that democracy, once again, imagined itself victorious. Once again traditions were questioned as men became enamored of their own prowess. It was no wonder they were deluded. They landed men on the moon. They had harnessed the power of the atom. It was no wonder that the arrogance of man had grown so monstrous, that expectations of the future were so unrealistic. Deluded by recent successes, they could not see that dangers were multiplying in plain view. Men built new engines of war, capable of wiping out entire cities, but few took this danger seriously. Why were men so determined to build such weapons? The leading country, of course, was willing to put its weapons aside. Other countries pretended to put their weapons aside. Still others said they weren’t building weapons at all, even though they were.
Would the new engines of destruction be used? Would cities and nations be wiped off the face of the earth? Thucydides knew the answer. In his own day, during an interval of unstable peace, the Athenians had exterminated the male population of the island of Melos. Before doing this the Athenian commanders had came to Melos and said, “We on our side will use no fine phrases saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us – a great mass of words that nobody would believe.” The Athenians demanded the submission of Melos, without regard to right or wrong. As the Athenian representative explained, “the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
The Melians were shocked by this brazen admission. They could not believe that anyone would dare to destroy them without just cause. In the first place, the Melians threatened no one. In the second place, they imagined that the world would be shocked and would avenge any atrocity committed against them. And so the Melians told the Athenians: “in our view it is useful that you should not destroy a principle that is to the general good of all men – namely, that in the case of all who fall into danger there should be such a thing as fair play and just dealing. And this is a principle which affects you as much as anybody, since your own fall would be visited by the most terrible vengeance and would be an example to the world.”
The Athenians were not moved by the argument of Melos; for they knew that the Spartans generally treated defeated foes with magnanimity. “Even assuming that our empire does come to an end,” the Athenians chuckled, “we are not despondent about what would happen next. One is not so much frightened of being conquered by a power like Sparta.” And so the Athenians destroyed Melos, believing themselves safe – which they were. The Melians refused to submit, praying for the protection of gods and men. But these availed them nothing, neither immediate relief nor future vengeance. The Melians were wiped off the earth. They were not the first or the last to die in this manner.
There was one more trend that Thucydides noted. In every free and prosperous country he found a parade of monsters: human beings with oversized egos, with ambitions out of proportion to their ability, whose ideas rather belied their understanding than affirmed it. Whereas, there was one Alcibiades in his own day, there were now hundreds of the like: self-serving, cunning and profane; only they did not possess the skills, or the mental acuity, or beauty of Alcibiades. Instead of being exiled, they pushed men of good sense from the center of affairs. Instead of being right about strategy and tactics, they were always wrong. And they were weak, he thought, because they had learned to be bad by the example of others. There was nothing novel about them, although they believed themselves to be original in all things.
Thucydides reflected that human beings are subject to certain behavioral patterns. Again and again they repeat the same actions, unable to stop themselves. Society is slowly built up, then wars come and put all to ruin. Those who promise a solution to this are charlatans, only adding to the destruction, because the only solution to man is the eradication of man. In the final analysis the philanthropist and the misanthrope are two sides of the same coin. While man exists he follows his nature. Thucydides taught this truth, and went to his grave. His history was written, as he said, “for all time.” And it is a kind of law of history that the generations most like his own are bound to ignore the significance of what he wrote; for otherwise they would not re-enact the history of Thucydides. But as they become ignorant of his teaching, they fall into disaster spontaneously and without thinking. Seeing that time was short, and realizing that a massive number of new souls would soon be entering the underworld, the shade of Thucydides fell back to rest.”
"That's All There Is..."
"Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.
Kate Lockley: And now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.
Angel: I keep saying that, but nobody's listening."
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512846/quotes
"The Silence of the Damned" (Excerpt)
"The Silence of the Damned"
Our leading humanitarian and civic institutions, including
major medical institutions, refuse to denounce Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
This exposes their hypocrisy and complicity.
by Chris Hedges
Excerpt: "There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.” Clinics, along with ambulances – 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank – have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016. Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers.
Israeli soldiers routinely enter hospitals to carry out forced evacuations – on Wednesday troops entered al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and demanded doctors and displaced Palestinians leave – as well as round up detainees, including the wounded, sick and medical staff. On Tuesday, disguised as hospital workers and civilians, Israeli soldiers entered Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank and assassinated three Palestinians as they slept.
The cuts to funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) - collective punishment for the alleged involvement in the Oct. 7 attack of 12 of its 13,000 UNRWA workers - will accelerate the horror, turning the attacks, starvation, lack of health care and spread of infectious diseases in Gaza into a tidal wave of death."
Full article here:
o
Now defend that, if you dare...
"Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness"
"Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and
His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness"
by Maria Popova
"It starts with a low hum that adheres itself to the underbelly of the hours like another dimension. Gradually, surreptitiously, the noise swells to a bellowing bass line, until it drowns out the symphony of life.
It can last for days or months or entire seasons of being. It visited Keats frequently in his short life, leaving him with a mind empty of ideas and hands heavy as lead. It rendered Lorraine Hansberry “cold, useless, frustrated, helpless, disillusioned, angry and tired.” It drove Abraham Lincoln to the brink of suicide.
If you are lucky enough, if you have the right aids of science, social support, and chance, one day you look over the shoulder of time and, like the poet Jane Kenyon, gasp in grateful incomprehension: “What hurt me so terribly all my life until this moment?” But until that moment comes, as William Styron so vividly observed in his classic bridge of empathy, “the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.”
Among the legion of us soaked by the drizzle is one of the most beloved artists of our epoch, whose music has made life brighter and more livable for generations.
In his memoir, "Born to Run" (public library), Bruce Springsteen writes about his father’s “long, drawn-out depressions,” often so debilitating that he could not rise from bed for days, and about his own tumble toward the edge of the abyss quarried by his genetic inheritance and the darknesses of his childhood, and about what kept him from falling. “God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God,” John Lennon reflected in his most personal interview, but no outside “they” - no critic, no cry from the public - ever measures up to the inner chorus of anguish that most cruelly lowers an artist from the pedestal of their creative power and into the pit of depression.
In a particularly vivid vignette from the period just before he finally sought help, Springsteen writes: "My depression is spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise-green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence. Its black sludge is threatening to smother every last living part of me."
Even Springsteen’s favorite books reflect this lifelong undertone of black. But it is in his BBC Desert Island Discs appearance that he opens up most candidly about his experience of depression and his life-honed coping mechanisms for it. He reflects: "Ive developed some skills that help me in dealing with it, but still - it is a powerful, powerful thing that really comes up from things that still remain unexplainable to me."
After noting that much of it is pure biochemistry, and can therefore be greatly salved by biochemical interventions, he considers the psychological skills that have helped him temper the onslaught and offers a Buddhist-like strategy of unresistant presence with the flow of experience on its own terms, laced with a gentle admonition against the trap of blamethirsty projection:
"Just naming it [helps]… What most people tend to want to do is, when they feel bad, the first thing you want to do is to name a reason why you feel that way: “I feel bad because…” and you’ll transfer that to someone else “…because Johnny said this to me,” or “this happened.” And, sometimes, that’s true. But a lot of times, you’re simply looking to name something that’s not particularly nameable and if you misname it, it just makes everything that much worse.
So my “skill” is sort of saying, “Okay, it’s not this, it’s not that - it’s just this. This is something that comes; it’s also something that goes - and maybe something I have to live with for a period of time. But if you can acknowledge it and you can relax with it a little bit, very often it shortens its duration."
Complement with Bloom - a touching animated short film about depression and what it takes to recover the light of being - and Tim Ferriss on how he survived his suicidal depression, then revisit Robert Burton’s centuries-old salve for melancholy and two centuries of beloved writers - including Keats, Whitman, Hansberry, Carson, and Thoreau - on the mightiest antidote to depression."
o
Bruce Springsteen, "Jungleland"
Dan, I Allegedly, "Stop Driving Your Car Now"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 2/1/24
"Stop Driving Your Car Now"
"There is a warning that was issued to Toyota drivers
that there is a massive recall. Was your car included in this?"
Comments here:
"Israeli Soldier Tells IDF To 'Kill All Palestinians' To Become Moral Army"
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 2/1/24
"Israeli Soldier Tells IDF To
'Kill All Palestinians' To Become Moral Army"
"A video of an Israeli soldier provoking the IDF to 'execute Arabs' is going viral. The Israeli soldier can be heard saying that Israel has destroyed vast majority of Gaza but to become moral Army it needs to kill all Palestinians after interrogation. Another Israeli soldier was awarded a honorary certificate by the military just a week after his video calling for a massacre in Gaza went viral."
Comments here:
o
NO! Don't look away and pretend you don't know! 30,000 defenseless old people, men, women and 13,000 CHILDREN, slaughtered. 29,000 bombs and 6,000 2,000 lb. bombs dropped. The monsters doing this genocide aren't human beings, they're a psychopathically degenerate, murderously genocidal sub-species of Mankind. And Americans, to our eternal shame and disgrace, allow and support this! TELL ME I'M WRONG!!! - CP
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 2/1/24
"Hamas' Fiery Message To Israel, Arabs & West:
'No One Can Dictate Us About Gaza'"
"Hamas has given out a message to Israel while it reviews a new hostage proposal. a Hamas official said that no one will dictate the group on how to manage the Gaza strip. Top officials from Hamas & Palestinian Islamic Jihad spoke to Al Mayadeen. In a live televised interview, they said that other Palestinian Resistance factions are being consulted on the hostage release proposal hatched in Paris."
Comments here:
"What the First Week of War With Iran Could Look Like"
"What the First Week of War With Iran Could Look Like"
When Logic and Proportion Have Fallen Sloppy Dead
by Matthew Hoh
"I was asked for my thoughts on what most concerned me about the expected US attacks on Iran following the death of three American soldiers over the weekend in Jordan. Some of those thoughts made it into Newsweek. Below, I’ve provided an extended set of thoughts on what we could expect from US attacks against Iran. It’s divided into best and worst-case scenarios. Not surprisingly, the worst-case scenario is longer:
Most concerning would be an attack on Iran itself that would put the same types of domestic political pressure on Iran to respond that President Biden is facing. It’s hard to see the Iranians, or any nation, being overtly attacked by a foreign country and not responding in some equivalent manner. I think limited attacks on targets in Iran would see commensurate Iranian reprisals. So attacks on Iranian Republican Guard facilities or air and naval bases would see return attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria.
Best Case: The Iranian response to the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani by the US in January 2020 is a good example. Hopefully, that is where it would end. However, there is the danger of it not ending and an escalating tit-for-tat cycle taking hold – insisted upon by internal US and Iranian political pressures. There is also the danger that a US attack on Iran would see groups allied with Iran increase their attacks on US targets in response, including against targets such as the US Embassies in Baghdad and Beirut. Further, anti-Iran groups such as the Islamic State and Kurdish and Baluchi separatist groups could see an opportunity to attack Iranian targets, including civilian targets, as happened earlier this month in Iran. That’s what I see as the dangers of a “best case” from a US attack against Iranian territory; again, hopefully, it’s a replay of January 2020.
Worst Case: The worst case is the US decides to launch significant attacks on Iranian targets in Iran, including Iranian political and military leadership, and indicates that the attacks will be wide-ranging and lasting, i.e., a military campaign that seeks to destroy Iranian military capacity and presages regime change (whether or not that is the actual intent doesn’t matter, what matters is what the Iranians perceive). Such intensive attacks give the Iranians a political motivation and a practical reason to launch full-scale attacks in return.
Iran, with a “use it or lose it” mentality, could launch large-scale attacks on US bases, especially air and naval bases and command headquarters in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain, damaging or destroying the US ability to conduct operations with US Air Force ground-based aircraft. Iranian attacks on US naval ships, focusing primarily on the US aircraft carrier in the region, the USS Eisenhower, using anti-ship missiles, drones and diesel submarines, could not just cause losses and casualties but could, along with the loss of airfields in the Gulf monarchies, prevent US airpower from defending US troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria. US forces in Iraq and Syria, with limited American air support (US ground-based air support would still come from Turkey, as well as long-range bombers from Europe, Diego Garcia and the US), might then be overrun by large numbers of Iranian-allied Iraqi and Syrian units (the same experienced and very competent troops that defeated the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria). I don’t believe we would see long-range Iranian missile strikes on Israeli targets out of fear of an Israeli nuclear response, but that would not stop Hezbollah from launching tens of thousands of missiles against Israeli bases, ports, airfields, infrastructure and cities.
Cyberattacks are probable, as cyberattacks have already been conducted over the last two decades. So, despite the 7,000-mile distance to the Persian Gulf from the US East Coast, the US public would feel the war in some hard and costly ways if cyberattacks are not limited to government and military targets (if they can even be confined to specific targets).
It must be said that the Iranians are assumably well prepared for this war. Forty-five years of US regime change efforts, including the 1980s war, sanctions, assassinations, bullying, and threats, have left no doubt in most Iranian minds that they must be prepared for war with the US. No nation is immune from incompetence and corruption in its leadership, military, and industry, and the Iranians may be as bad off as the Americans are in that regard. Regardless, the expectation should be that the Iranians have taken the threat from the US seriously and are ready for it.
Questions then abound as to how other nations would respond. Likely, Hezbollah and Ansar Allah would enter the war. Syria and Russia would seemingly be eager to quietly help, or at least not get in the way of the destruction of US forces in Syria. What would the Kurds, in both Iraq and Syria, do watching US forces attacked and destroyed and the Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria now dramatically affected? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain would have difficult decisions to make as their populations would possibly see the attacks not against them but against the Americans (the Iranian attacks, though significant, would presumably be confined to the US bases). The entire region, minus Israel, along with much of the world, would see the Iranian actions, as they do the Yemenis and Iraqis, as being done in defense of the Palestinians.
At a minimum, within the week, we would then witness a prolonged US air, drone and missile campaign against Iran; a Hezbollah-Israel war that might spill into Syria; US prisoners in Syria and Iraq; and a plunging world economy. Turkey, China and Russia would see a great opportunity in an eventual reduced presence of the US in the Middle East, essentially the US in an isolated alliance with a Fortress Israel. Turkey, Russia and China would present themselves in juxtaposition as calm and reliable partners. Ukraine would need to sue for peace.
The political pressure on the US to “win” in the Middle East would be enormous, the ghost of John McCain would haunt the 2024 elections, and while I don’t think we would see American ground troops in large numbers like in the Iraq and Afghan wars, the idea of a US invasion and occupation of Iran is terrifyingly absurd, the resulting war would make those previous American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem like provincial affairs."
Gregory Mannarino, "This Is A Declaration Of War"
Gregory Mannarino, 2/1/24
"This Is A Declaration Of War;
US To Begin Prolonged Military Campaign Against Iran"
Comments here:
o
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
"'Get Ready, We Are Going To Attack Iran', Col. Douglas MacGregor"
Redacted with Clayton Morris, 1/31/24
"'Get Ready, We Are Going To Attack Iran', Col. Douglas MacGregor"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "Tiny Homes Are Selling Out In California, The American Dream Is Shrinkflation"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 1/31/24
"Tiny Homes Are Selling Out In California,
The American Dream Is Shrinkflation"
Comments here:
"Opiod Addiction (Xylazine/Fentanyl) Is Killing Every 11 Minutes In America"
Full screen recommended, if you can stand it.
Drones R Eagles, 1/31/24
"Opiod Addiction (Xylazine/Fentanyl)
Is Killing Every 11 Minutes In America"
Filmed in Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended, if you can stand it.
Drones R Eagles, 1/31/24
"Putting Smiles On The Lost Souls Of Kensington Ave."
Filmed in Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Comments here:
o
My hometown...
Full screen recommended.
Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Philadelphia"
Musical Interlude: Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia"),
Full screen recommended.
Il Divo, "Wicked Game" ("Melanconia"),
Live In London 2011
"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"
“Learning And Yearning”
by Chet Raymo
“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD. I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.
I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"
"I Was Never Able To Pray"
"Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.
Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.
I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves
and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night."
- Edward Hirsch
"Humanity Today..."
"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson
“One of the penalties of being a human being is other human beings.”
- Christopher Morley, “Hide and Seek”
“Societal Collapse”
“Societal Collapse”
by Hardscrabble Farmer
“Anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of human history must first and foremost understand the cycles of Nature and the nature of living things. There exists a balance in every closed system; creation and dissolution, growth and decay, life and death. There is no escape from this dynamic, no means by which one can exist without the other. Sometimes societies ascend, but eventually, over time, they collapse.
For a very long time America has benefited from exploiting the reserves of other nations – their labor, their resources, and their environments in a form of cultural strip mining. It has given the appearance of a sustainable system that required no effort to store surpluses or to build reserves for the future. There has been a perpetual live for the moment feel to our experience that was based on such illusory systems as credit and fiat.
These things are not real. They are manifest realities, things that exist only because a critical mass of people agree to believe in them rather than what is reflected by actuality. When such time occurs that a large enough number of people abandon their participation in that system, reality rushes in to the void left behind.
A large part of what we are seeing – as described to us by experts or media – is occult in nature, hidden not by design or subterfuge, but due to the ignorance or stupidity of the mass of men. They no longer recognize that a large part of what is taking place on the streets of cities like Portland and Minneapolis is simply a mating ritual for a generation that was so atomized and dissolute that they had no opportunity to make real life connections with the opposite sex except through electronic devices. Living beings cannot - despite the assurances of the Musks and Weils - exist by proxy.
They must eat, sleep, perform some activity during their waking hours, seek companionship, etc. These drives can be sublimated or suppressed either by societal controls or chemical dependencies, but they cannot be removed from our core drive. This is what happens when humans are thwarted from fulfilling their animal destinies – the drives of their particular species. If you eliminate the family, you do not stop fornication. If you eradicate healthy foods and a connection to its production, you do not eliminate hunger. Thus the dramatic rise in obesity and the ubiquity of pornography.
Everything exists in context, there is no way to eliminate the void left behind in a fatherless home without a corresponding flow of the feminine. A mind that has no reason will seek to replace it with an equal measure of emotion.
The Western Cultural experience that gained prominence and near global hegemony over the past several centuries is in terminal decline, accelerated by the opportunistic interference of competing cultural spheres, but predominantly by its own senescence. We are, in short, spent. What we are seeing is not a political or ideological struggle – again, manifest realities – but the natural process of a cultural expiration. The West is dying and with it all of the ideals and symbols that were attached to its rise.
Just as an elderly family member in their last days makes a point to give away their possessions, America is passing its treasures on; freedom of speech, the iconic symbols of Manifest Destiny like the statues of its heroes, even its own birthright to the rising of a new cultural expression, one that is less concerned with things like honor, nobility, truth and justice. None of those things exist in Nature, but rather are created and used like iron tools to achieve an end. Now that its energy is spent they serve no purpose, especially to the multitudes of others who share a far more dynamic and exuberant expression of collective identity.
This is a natural event, no different from a forest fire, but one which applies to the human species specifically. This is how we clear the ground for whatever is to replace us and we will serve as its fertilizer.”
"The Crisis In The Red Sea Threatens To Disrupt Global Supply Chains Even More Than The Pandemic Did"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/31/24
"The Crisis In The Red Sea Threatens To Disrupt
Global Supply Chains Even More Than The Pandemic Did"
"For patriots who haven’t heard of the details of the Red Sea crisis, this is a proxy war between America and Iran, which began on October 19th, 2023. This proxy war began when the Houthi movement initiated a series of attacks against vessels in the Red Sea, claiming these boats were of Israeli origin. Although this claim was never verified, the proxy war has continued to date.
The United States government is waging war in the Middle East, one it refuses to acknowledge, and one that will most likely not be successful. It is unconstitutional, and it will negatively affect most of America in the upcoming years. Even worse, if there is no success found in these situations, we will be faced with even more economic turmoil and inflation rates that might make us bankrupt in a matter of days, leaving many American patriots without any ability to survive or defend their homes.
America has quickly found itself on the brink of economic collapse, and 2024 will be one of the most drastic and important years so far. America is desperately in need of a new economic policy, the recovery of trade routes, and the return to constitutional actions."
Comments here:
"US Facing ‘Death Spiral’ Of Swelling Debt – Nassim Taleb"
"US Facing ‘Death Spiral’ Of Swelling Debt – Nassim Taleb"
Only a “miracle” can reverse the problem,
the renowned economist believes.
"The burgeoning US debt pile is akin to a “death spiral” that only a “miracle” could extract the country from, economist and 'Black Swan' author Nassim Taleb said at a business event on Monday, as quoted by Bloomberg. Taleb defined the expanding US debt load as a “white swan,” meaning a risk event that is highly predictable and more probable than a “black swan” event, a metaphor describing an occurrence that comes as a complete surprise.
“So long as you have Congress keep extending the debt limit and doing deals because they’re afraid of the consequences of doing the right thing, that’s the political structure of the political system, eventually you’re going to have a debt spiral,” Taleb said. “And a debt spiral is like a death spiral.”
Earlier this week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the absolute level of US public debt looks like “a scary number.” US government federal debt topped $34 trillion for the first time in history at the end of December. It now amounts to about $102,000 for an average American family of three. In 2023 alone, it grew by more than $4 trillion.
According to Taleb, a former trader who is best known for publishing several bestselling books on economics, white swans include both the US deficit and the American economy that has grown more vulnerable to shocks than in previous years. He called such vulnerability a feature of globalization, as problems in one region can ricochet around the world.
When asked how the US “debt spiral” could play out, Taleb said, “we need something to come in from the outside, or maybe some kind of miracle,” adding that this makes him “kind of gloomy about the entire political system in the Western world.”
"Trapping Wild Pigs"
"Trapping Wild Pigs"
by Jeff Thomas
"Most of us would like to assume that we’re smarter than pigs, but are we? Let’s have a look. Pigs are pretty intelligent mammals, and forest-dwelling wild pigs are known to be especially wily. However, there’s a traditional method for trapping them. First, find a small clearing in the forest and put some corn on the ground. After you leave, the pigs will find it. They’ll also return the next day to see if there’s more.
Replace the corn every day. Once they’ve become dependent on the free food, erect a section of fence down one side of the clearing. When they get used to the fence, they’ll begin to eat the corn again. Then you erect another side of the fence.Continue until you have all four sides of the fence up, with a gate in the final side. Then, when the pigs enter the pen to feed, you close the gate.
At first, the pigs will run around, trying to escape. But if you toss in more corn, they’ll eventually calm down and go back to eating. You can then smile at the herd of pigs you’ve caught and say to yourself that this is why humans are smarter than pigs. But unfortunately, that’s not always so. In fact, the description above is the essence of trapping humans into collectivism.
Collectivism begins when a government starts offering free stuff to the population. At first, it’s something simple like free education or food stamps for the poor. But soon, political leaders talk increasingly of "entitlements" – a wonderful concept that by its very name suggests that this is something that’s owed to you, and if other politicians don’t support the idea, then they’re denying you your rights.
Once the idea of free stuff has become the norm and, more importantly, when the populace has come to depend upon it as a significant part of their "diet," more free stuff is offered. It matters little whether the new entitlements are welfare, healthcare, free college, or a guaranteed basic wage. What’s important is that the herd come to rely on the entitlements. Then, it’s time to erect the fence.
Naturally, in order to expand the volume of free stuff, greater taxation will be required. And of course, some rights will have to be sacrificed. And just like the pigs, all that’s really necessary to get humans to comply is to make the increase in fencing gradual. People focus more on the corn than the fence. Once they’re substantially dependent, it’s time to shut the gate.
What this looks like in collectivism is that new restrictions come into play that restrict freedoms. You may be told that you cannot expatriate without paying a large penalty. You may be told that your bank deposit may be confiscated in an emergency situation. You may even be told that the government has the right to deny you the freedom to congregate, or even to go to work, for whatever trumped-up reason.
And of course, that’s the point at which the pigs run around, hoping to escape the new restrictions. But more entitlements are offered, and in the end, the entitlements are accepted as being more valuable than the freedom of self-determination.
Even at this point, most people will remain compliant. But there’s a final stage: The corn ration is "temporarily" cut due to fiscal problems. Then it’s cut again… and again. The freedoms are gone for good and the entitlements are then slowly removed. This is how it’s possible to begin with a very prosperous country, such as Argentina, Venezuela or the US, and convert it into an impoverished collectivist state. It’s a gradual process and the pattern plays out the same way time and again. It succeeds because human nature remains the same. Collectivism eventually degrades into uniform poverty for 95% of the population, with a small elite who live like kings.
After World War II, the Western world was flying high. There was tremendous prosperity and opportunity for everyone. The system was not totally free market, but enough so that anyone who wished to work hard and take responsibility for himself had the opportunity to prosper. But very early – in the 1960s – The Great Society became the byword for government-provided largesse for all those who were in need – free stuff for those who were disadvantaged in one way or another.
Most Americans, who were then flush with prosperity, were only too happy to share with those who were less fortunate. Unfortunately, they got suckered into the idea that, rather than give voluntarily on an individual basis, they’d entrust their government to become the distributor of largesse, and to pay for it through taxation. Big mistake. From that point on, all that was necessary was to keep redefining who was disadvantaged and to then provide more free stuff.
Few people were aware that the first sections of fence were being erected. But today, it may be easier to understand that the fence has been completed and the gate is closing. It may still be possible to make a hasty exit, but we shall find very few people dashing for the gate. After all, to expatriate to another country would mean leaving all that free stuff – all that security.
At this point, the idea of foraging in the forest looks doubtful. Those who have forgotten how to rely on themselves will understandably fear making an exit. They’ll not only have to change their dependency habits; they’ll have to think for themselves in future. But make no mistake about it – what we’re witnessing today in what was formerly the Free World is a transition into collectivism. It will be a combination of corporatism and socialism, with the remnants of capitalism. The overall will be collectivism.
The gate is closing, and as stated above, some members of the herd will cause a fuss as they watch the gate closing. There will be some confusion and civil unrest, but in the end, the great majority will settle down once again to their corn. Only a few will have both the insight and temerity necessary to make a dash for the gate as it’s now closing.
This was true in Argentina when the government was still generous with the largesse, and it was true in Venezuela when the entitlements were at their peak. It is now true of the US as the final transition into collectivism begins. Rather than make the dash for the gate, the great majority will instead look down at their feed and say, "This is still the best country in the world," and continue eating the corn."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)