"Welcome to a dark, whimsical musical journey. "Shadows on the Faded Glass" is a mystery-folk cinematic ballad that captures the bittersweet isolation of a midnight journey. Tailored with a distinctive "stop-motion puppet texture," the track features an intimate, close-mic older male baritone lead. The song moves at a steady walking pace driven by a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, deep upright bass, low viola pads, and delicate pizzicato strings. Wrapped entirely in a warm, dusty analog tape hiss with absolutely no EDM elements, it evokes the feeling of an old film reel coming to life. If you love atmospheric acoustic music, dark storytelling, and melancholic indie folk, this track is for you."
"Ain’t got the energy to fake it no more. “Too Old to Pretend” is a stripped-down, truth-first Delta King’s Blues tune about honesty, self-acceptance, and finally living without putting on a show. A bare, unpolished acoustic guitar lays it out straight - no tricks, no hiding. The harmonica speaks plain and low, like a man who’s done explaining himself. The groove moves slow and steady, built for folks who stopped performing and started being. This is blues without masks. For people who outgrew pretending and found peace in being real. Truth gets easier… when you stop trying to impress."
"And, believe it or not, this is rather good news. I’ll explain. We all like to know what’s happening in the world, and for good reason… understanding our surroundings is essential to survival. We instinctively seek information… we need information. There is, however, a problem that we face: No matter how much “news” you consume, you won’t really know what’s going on in the world.
We can’t know, because ‘the news’ is half illusion, provided by government-dependent corporations that are paid to keep you watching and to keep you joined to the status quo. Granted, they are quite good at providing pictures from disaster areas, but when it comes to explaining why the disaster happened, they mislead almost every time. Yes, some truth makes its way through the news machine, but most of it is wrapped in layers of manipulation. If, for example, you watch the news feeds all day, you’ll find a good deal of truth, but you’ll find it amongst a pile of half-truths. Do you really have enough time to analyze them all?
One Piece of Truth: The truth about public reporting comes out from time to time, but usually well after the fact. So, here’s one piece of truth that’s worth remembering: For those who don’t recall the 1970s, Daniel Ellsberg was a man who worked as an analyst at the RAND Corp., moved from there to the Pentagon, spent two years in Vietnam working for the State Department, and then went back to RAND. He is the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. These were the documents that revealed that three US presidential administrations had been plainly, knowingly, and openly lying to the public.
Here’s what Ellsberg thought the New York Times was good for: "… to see what the rubes and the yokels are thinking about and what they think is going on and what they think the policy is…" Later, in 1998, he said this in an interview: "The public is lied to every day by the president, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can’t handle the thought that the president lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay in the government at that level…"
And here’s what Michael Deaver, a top aide to President Ronald Reagan, said about the press: The media I’ve had a lot to do with is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day." That’s the truth about news, my friends. The news channels and newspapers are where the yokels get informed, presidents flatly lie, and legislatures are massively corrupt. And Internet news sites primarily recycle TV and newspaper stories.
Yes, some truth does slide through, but it looks almost the same as the other stuff. The only places we get anything close to refined truth is on a few Internet sites… and many of them have a particular axe to grind. The Internet is being funneled into Google, Facebook, and a few other friends of the state. Social media is being massively censored, and the the independents are being squeezed out anyway.
More Truth: This is what William Colby, former director of the CIA, is quoted as saying in "Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See": "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
Now, since people have disputed that quotation, let’s back it up: Please consider Operation Mockingbird: Beginning in 1948, a CIA agent named Frank Wisner started gathering journalists and broadcasters… and started using them to ‘inform’ the public. The operation soon got so elaborate that other agents called it “Wisner’s Wurlitzer.” (Wurlitzer being a popular brand of organ.) In other words, Wisner played the media like a musical instrument.
While the real situation is more complex than this short description, rest assured that every major news organization in every major country is manipulated by intelligence groups. Where do you think they get all those “unnamed sources”? If you were an intel operator, wouldn’t you do precisely that? You’d be considered derelict not to. So, you can rely upon this fact.
And So…I could continue listing facts, but there’s no real point. The crucial thing is to accept the truth: The news is worked over before it reaches us. We do know some facts, of course, and a generation from now we may learn nearly the whole truth about some of these events, but only if we wait and then go out of our way to find it.
The good news in all of this comes when we accept the facts and stop running our brains on bad information. Yes, it would be nice to know what’s really going on, but we don’t, and there isn’t much we can do about it. So, it’s time to stop treating the news seriously.
So long as the guv-megacorp-intel structure remains, it will enforce our ignorance. That’s what such organizations do, by their very nature. To expect differently is like expecting a dog to sprout wings and fly. But once we accept that fact, we stop being spun around by the talking heads and their handlers. And then, you can start building the kind of world you’d like to live in."
"The cost of living has become absolutely suffocating for millions of Americans. For years, the bureaucrats in Washington have been feeding us numbers that show that the rate of inflation is low, but it is obvious to everyone that what they are telling us is simply not true. Many of the items that I regularly purchase at the grocery store have more than doubled in price over the past decade. Some have more than tripled in price. When I get to the register to check out, I feel like asking the cashier which organ I should donate to pay for my groceries.
We have reached a stage where grocery prices are causing extreme financial stress for families all over America. One man recently caused quite a stir on social media when he revealed that a grocery order from Target that cost $64.50 in 2020 is now $158.30 in 2026…
This post has already been viewed a million times. The reason why it is so popular is because it instantly resonates with people. Everyone knows that grocery prices have risen to absurd levels, and yet the statisticians in Washington keep assuring us that everything is fine. I don’t believe them. Do you?
The Washington Post just conducted a poll that found that 66 percent of Americans consider the cost of groceries to be unaffordable. That figure has risen by 21 percent just since February…"Americans are feeling worse about the price of groceries than they were before the war with Iran began, a Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds. About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of Americans say they would describe the cost of groceries as unaffordable, up sharply from the 45 percent who said the same thing in February before the conflict started." Partisanship continues to play a big role in perceptions, with half of Republicans saying groceries are affordable in the latest poll, compared with about one-quarter of independents and Democrats.
Housing is even worse. The median price of an existing home in the United States has now surpassed the $440,000 mark…"With a landmark housing affordability bill in political limbo, U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high. The median price of existing homes in June was $440,660, up 1.8% from $432,700 a year ago, according to new data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Home prices have risen for 36 straight months. “Housing affordability remains low under slowing wage growth and stronger home price growth,” Ershang Liang, an economist with PNC Economics Research, said in a report."
Who can afford to pay that much for a house? Rental prices have also gone through the roof. If you can believe it, the average rent on a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan is now a whopping $5,408 a month…"The city’s housing crisis has hit “DefCon 1”- with average rents for a one-bedroom in Manhattan hitting an all-time high of nearly $5,500 last month, and Brooklyn following suit, according to new data and critics. “We need bold action. This is a crisis,’’ New York City Comptroller Mark Levine posted on X over the weekend, along with a link to the latest figures from the inhabit blog by real-estate giant Corcoran Group. The dismal June stats reveal that renters paid an average of $5,408 for a one-bedroom in Manhattan, with studio prices not far behind at $4,014.
It isn’t a mystery why most Americans are struggling in this sort of an environment. Many are turning to debt in a desperate attempt to make ends meet…"Many American families are struggling to make ends meet on their incomes alone and have resorted to credit cards, payday loans, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options for groceries, according to nonprofit research center Urban Institute.
The findings are based on a survey of 18-to 64-year-old working-age adults conducted in December 2025. About 8.7 percent of adults said they used a credit card for groceries and were unable to make the minimum payment, up from 7.1 percent in 2023, the Urban Institute said in a July 13 report. This suggests “worsening financial distress” among families."
Almost one in 10 used BNPL to pay for groceries, out of which more than a third missed a timely repayment last year. Unfortunately, when you keep piling up debt a day of reckoning eventually arrives. Coming into this year, alarmingly large numbers of Americans were getting behind on their credit cards…
And the number of foreclosures in the U.S. is way above the highly elevated pace that we witnessed last year… Foreclosures across the U.S. ballooned in the first half of the year, a sign of the increasing financial strain facing the nation’s homeowners. Foreclosure filings reached nearly 228,000 from January to June, up 21% from a year ago and 28% from two years ago, according to data released Thursday from real estate data company ATTOM.
Rising foreclosure rates indicate that more homeowners are in financial distress, Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, said in a statement. Homes go into foreclosure when the owner falls behind on mortgage payments, often due to extenuating life circumstances such as a job loss. ATTOM defines foreclosures as default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions.
This reminds me so much of the conditions that we experienced just before the financial crisis of 2008. Unfortunately, the cost of living is only going to go higher. The cost of energy directly affects the cost of everything else, and it appears that the Strait of Hormuz is going to be closed for an extended period of time. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has nearly reached four dollars again, and the average price of a gallon of diesel has already risen above the five dollar mark… "US gas prices have rocketed higher during the on-again, off-again war with Iran. After a brief respite, the average price for gas has surged 15 cents in a week to $3.94 a gallon and appears headed north of $4 again. Diesel, which shows up in customers’ shipping costs, topped $5 a gallon again Thursday for the first time in 3 weeks, according to AAA."
It serves as a painful reminder of how the military conflict in the Persian Gulf has a direct effect on your wallet. Of even greater importance is what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global fertilizer market. As Mike Adams has pointed out, without sufficient quantities of nitrogen fertilizer we won’t even come close to producing enough food for everyone…
Admittedly, I have failed to explain the stakes clearly enough. For months, I have written about fertilizer supply chains, the Haber-Bosch process, and the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. But the gravity of this crisis has not sunk in for most people. Let me put it as plainly as I can: The global population of more than 8 billion people depends on a fragile web of natural gas, oil, and downstream chemistry that took 60+ years to build on this planet. If we lose 25 percent of these critical substances, we lose 25 percent of the population. That is 2 billion people. Here is why that math is inescapable.
As I documented in my article “The Haber-Bosch House of Cards,” the single chemical reaction that fixes nitrogen from the air into fertilizer is responsible for feeding roughly half of humanity. That process requires vast quantities of natural gas. The Persian Gulf region, especially Qatar and Iran, supplies much of that gas. When the Trump administration launched its war on Iran in February 2026 and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, the global fertilizer supply chain began to collapse. This is not a prediction of future famine. The famine is already baked in. But it could still get a whole lot worse depending on how things go from here.
We could be facing multiple years when global food production is at depressed levels. That means that food prices will go even higher in wealthy countries, and in poor countries there will be shortages. Famine is one of the major trends that I am tracking, and what we are already witnessing in some parts of Africa is absolutely heartbreaking. There is no magic button that we can press that is going to make these problems go away. A crisis of historic proportions is now upon us, and we are still only in the very early stages of it."
"The cyclospora outbreak is spreading like wildfire across the country. There were roughly 300 cases nationwide just a week to 10 days ago, now there are more than 3,000 cases in the state of Michigan alone! And these numbers are expected to grow dramatically over the next few weeks, in part because we still have no idea what is causing the infection.
Indeed, as cases of this parasitic infection, which causes “explosive diarrhea,” continue to sky-rocket, health officials are struggling to determine the exact source of the outbreak. According to The New York Post: "State and federal health officials are continuing to investigate multiple outbreaks, but the source has not yet been identified.
In previous US outbreaks, cyclospora has repeatedly been linked to fresh produce, including raspberries, basil, cilantro, green onions, snow peas, lettuce, mesclun and salad mixes. Research has also connected past outbreaks to blackberries, watercress, mangoes and vegetable trays. Health officials in Michigan, one of the states hardest hit during the current outbreak, are beginning to suspect lettuce or salad greens may be responsible, although the investigation remains ongoing."
While the culprit remains unknown, what we do know is that the symptoms from the parasite aren’t pretty: The parasite, cyclospora, spreads through raw produce and water contaminated with human feces – and it causes the intestinal illness cyclosporiasis, whose symptoms include cramps, nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite, low-grade fever and vomiting. The most commonly reported symptom is “watery diarrhea with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements”, according to the CDC.
Many Americans are asking what they can do to avoid this parasite: Officials recommend following proper food safety practices when preparing meals. Experts also say some foods appear to pose much less risk. “To date, no commercially frozen produce, cooked foods or peeled fruit have been associated with cyclosporiasis infection,” one study cited by WPIX found. The CDC advises washing hands thoroughly with soap and water after using the bathroom and before preparing food. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers do not kill cyclospora."
"This food safety story is raising serious questions across America. Reports involving a widespread parasite outbreak, contaminated produce, and thousands of illnesses have consumers wondering whether it's still safe to eat fresh vegetables or dine out. In today's video, I break down what health officials are saying, why Taco Bell has become part of the conversation, and how this could affect restaurants, grocery stores, farmers, and consumers nationwide. We'll also discuss Cyclospora infections, produce safety, restaurant inspections, the similarities to previous food contamination outbreaks, and why businesses could suffer long after the headlines disappear. As always, do your own research, read the sources below, and let me know whether you think this is being handled appropriately or if the public is overreacting."
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
"The term “Luddite” originated in the early 19th century and refers to a movement of English textile workers who protested against the increased use of machines in their industry. The term “neo-Luddite” was later applied to those who similarly oppose technology for similar reasons, but in a contemporary context.
Everywhere you go, you see people with their faces in their phones. Constantly, constantly, constantly. At the bus stop. On the train. In the driver’s seats of their moving cars. Their kid makes a bit of noise at the restaurant table? Shove the iPad in their face.
Boomerisms aside, it really can’t be overstated how f**ked up this is, and not because “people don’t interact” anymore. It’s actually much worse than that… Nobody ever allows themselves even a moment of peace inside their own heads. The real insidiousness of the smartphone is that it encourages you to constantly consume content, endlessly, never ever stopping. It’s common for people to spend their entire day with earphones in, listening to podcasts and watching Tiktoks literally constantly.
Our brains did not evolve to be bombarded with constant microbursts of hyper real stimulation this way. Attention spans are getting measurably shorter. Reaction times are getting longer. None of this sh*t is good for your brain.
Everyone always says, “Well, what about TV and the radio?” Inherently limited and fundamentally different because of the fact that they’re pre-programmed and don’t act as “magic mirrors” of you and your personal inputs into them. Your smartphone is designed to learn everything about you so that it can be as addictive as possible and maximize the amount of data it squeezes out of you. Nothing about TV or the radio - or even Web 1.0 internet - ever came anywhere close to this.
Even so, we have known for decades that TV is horrible for your brain on account of many of the same mechanisms that affect attention span and cognitive development. So imagine how much worse the smartphone is. Unfathomably worse. We already know it’s worse, but we won’t know exactly how much worse it is until at least another decade, when the younger Zoomers and Gen Alphas are a few years into adulthood after an upbringing that revolved around Web 2.0.
Millennials were lucky enough not to take the full brunt of the experience. We got our first taste as we came of age instead of growing up being marinated in it. The saddest part is that the only reason any of this even caught on or is the least bit operable is because of the fact that it hijacks the mechanisms that make us feel satisfied and good. We didn’t evolve to handle this level of stimulation, but BOY do we respond to it. It’s so excessive that it’s impossible for some people to resist. So there are no f**king brakes.
You have to cast The Ring into the fire or it totally consumes you. That’s the reality for most people. And that, my friends, is just sick.
Look at your screen usage on your phone and tell me I’m wrong, how you totally don’t need it and can stop whenever you want. You are no better than a crack head, and you won’t realize that until you actually do try to stop for real. It’s unprecedented in human history to think this way. We are truly in uncharted waters here. Just wait until the sensory overload most people are bathing in all day, every day becomes fully automated instead of just partially automated like it is now."
"At the end of April, renowned climate engineering researcher Dane Wigington was on USAW to warn about increasing extreme weather caused by geoengineering or manmade weather modification in the sky. Wigington predicted a “Summer from Hell.” With record high temperatures all over the country, he was right - again. Let’s start with the drought in the Southwest that has water sources like Lake Powell hitting record lows. One story last week said, “Lake Powell reaching critically low elevation levels, nearing ‘dead power pool,’ experts say.” The water level in the reservoir is so low it is approaching a point where “water can no longer flow past Glen Canyon Dam by gravity.” Wigington explains, “There is 110 feet of sedimentation behind the Hoover Dam. That means that’s not water that’s dirt now. This means these incredibly low numbers of how much water is in these basins is probably half of what the official figure is. We are hurtling toward impact right now. There is no way out of this.”
What would Wigington do if he lived in Phoenix or Las Vegas? Wigington says, “Move. Yes, we have drought/deluge scenarios, and that is a hallmark of climate engineering. While we are seeing the Southwest dry up completely, what are we seeing in places like Texas right now? We are seeing emergency flash flood warnings. The scenarios of nothing but deadly deluge or devastating drought are hallmarks of climate engineering operations completely disrupting the entire global hydrological cycle.”
Then, there is the so-called ‘heat dome’ problem that is affecting most of the United States right now. Wigington says, “In Montana, record highs, and a week later, three feet of snow. A week after that, a record obliterating high of 115 degrees. The train is totally off the rails, and the vast majority has no idea how grave our situation is. They are caught up in politics and sports games, and we are about to hit the wall. People need to wake the hell up.”
Another problem is a huge smoke layer over North America. Wigington says they are burning forests in Canada to get smoke to do temporary cool downs with wildfires. Millions of square miles are torched, according to Wigington. Again, what makes this all much worse is climate engineering. Wigington says, “There is a psychological operation for climate engineering that serves those in power. Also, we have a covert weapon of war with which they can and continue to control populations and then blame nature. They can crush crops and cause unimaginable misery and blame nature. This is the crown jewel weapon of the controllers.” There is much more in the 43-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes one-on-one with Dane Wigington, founder of GeoEngineeringWatch.org, as the huge damage caused by geoengineering continues unabated as the obvious environmental collapse unfolds before our eyes.
"Today's economy is filled with policies and financial decisions that sound great on paper but often make life even more expensive. In this video I break down Alameda County's proposal for a $30 per hour minimum wage, why restaurants and businesses are warning about higher prices, and how longer 96-month auto loans could leave millions of Americans trapped in debt. We also discuss soaring vehicle prices, Ford recalls, Lucid's financial struggles, and why buying beyond your means has never been more dangerous. I also cover the latest business news including Costco's massive new gas station, 7-Eleven's store remodels and closures, Nike's unusual lawsuit, weakness in major technology stocks, and why protecting your finances has become more important than ever. If you're interested in business news, the economy, inflation, personal finance, banking, real estate, and what these changes mean for everyday Americans, this is a video you won't want to miss."
"Most Americans Are Running Out of Money Right Now"
"Most Americans Are Running Out of Money Right Now, but the real problem goes far beyond inflation. Why are millions of working Americans struggling to stay afloat even as wages continue to rise? This documentary uncovers the hidden forces behind America's growing financial pressure. Millions of households are discovering that earning more does not necessarily mean living better. This video explores how real wage growth has barely kept pace with inflation, while the cost of living continues to rise through higher housing, groceries, insurance, healthcare, and transportation expenses. It explains why slowing inflation does not bring prices back down, leaving many families with little financial margin to absorb unexpected costs. As everyday bills consume a larger share of income, saving for the future becomes increasingly difficult. The documentary also examines the housing affordability crisis, rising mortgage rates, growing credit card debt, and the increasing reliance on second jobs to cover basic living expenses. Through evidence based analysis and real life examples, it reveals why many middle class Americans feel financially trapped despite a stable economy. This is a closer look at the economic realities reshaping everyday life across the United States.'
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."
- Bertrand Russell
"Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.
What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to
ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one...
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those
who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism...
Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...
Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we
would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent
of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...
As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
Huxley was very obviously correct..
o
Freely download “Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, by Neil Postman, here:
“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” - Roger Waters
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.
The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.
But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.
SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.
Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”
Postman ended his book by writing: “What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
"Welcome to a dark, whimsical musical journey. "Shadows on the Faded Glass" is a mystery-folk cinematic ballad that captures the bittersweet isolation of a midnight journey. Tailored with a distinctive "stop-motion puppet texture," the track features an intimate, close-mic older male baritone lead. The song moves at a steady walking pace driven by a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, deep upright bass, low viola pads, and delicate pizzicato strings. Wrapped entirely in a warm, dusty analog tape hiss with absolutely no EDM elements, it evokes the feeling of an old film reel coming to life. If you love atmospheric acoustic music, dark storytelling, and melancholic indie folk, this track is for you."
"Life didn’t leave me flawless… it left me real. “Life Beat the Pretty Outta Me” is a gritty, soul-stirring Delta King’s Blues tune about hard roads, broken dreams, and the quiet strength that comes from surviving what should’ve broken you. A weathered, slow-burning acoustic guitar carries the melody like worn boots walking through another long sunset. The harmonica cries deep and weary, echoing every scar, every heartbreak, and every lesson earned the hard way. The groove stays slow and heavy, built for folks whose faces tell stories that words never could. This is blues for the beautifully worn. For those who traded youthful shine for wisdom, resilience, and a soul that can’t be bought. Life may have taken the pretty… but it left me with character, grit, and a story worth telling."
"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.
We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.
We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.
We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.
These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”
So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.
And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?
What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.
Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."
"In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means."
