Monday, March 1, 2021

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Coming Home"

"Coming Home"

"When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place-
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me."

- Mary Oliver

The Daily "Near You?"

Roosevelt, Utah, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Party Like It’s 1984"

"Party Like It’s 1984"
by Jim Kunstler

"Chalk up a fatal blow to The Patriarchy. That avatar of toxic masculinity, Mr. Potato Head has been dumped into the same humid chamber of perdition where the ghosts of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Theodore Bilbo, and Phyllis Schlafly howl and squirm - liberating the billions of potatoes world-wide from the mental prison of binary sexuality. The move by Hasbro (bro? really??) may yet disappoint the legions in Wokesterdom as a-bridge-not-far-enough while they await the debut of Transitioning Potato Head, complete with play hormone syringe and play scalpel, so that the under-six crowd can begin to map out their own gender reassignments without the meddling of Adult 1 and Adult 2, formerly known as Mommy and Daddy.

Was it mere coincidence that the action in Toyland happened the same week that one Rachel Levine was grilled in his Senate confirmation hearing for the post as Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health and Human Services? The hearing tilted toward transphobia when Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) asked zie, a little too aggressively, if they were in favor of pubescent children opting for sexual reassignment in opposition to xyr parents. The nominee, who hirself transitioned from “male” to “female” in 2011, answered that transgender medical issues are “complex and nuanced.” True (perhaps). And probably more than a Senator who transitioned from ophthalmologist to politician might appreciate.

Such are the great preoccupations of American leadership in these late days of empire. Are their any “historic firsts” left for Progressives to achieve in the march to a transhuman nirvana? An “undocumented” president? Animal representation in the House and Senate? A-I “entities” qualifying for public office - Governor Smartphone? Let’s face it, the pitiful old school humans in charge of things for so long are making a hash of our affairs. A cash register could probably do a better job as Chairman of the Federal Reserve than the always-waffley Jerome Powell. And a MacBook Pro might make a better president than Joe Biden in the brief daily operational hours before his managers a “call a lid.” We’d have to come up with some new personal pronouns for them, of course.

Pundits and observers-of-the-scene have warned us that all this artificially-generated turmoil over the sex-of-things is but one part of the prelude to a “Great Reset” in which people the world over are to be herded into corrals of ultra-regulated behavior. Of course, steers and cows are easier to push around than bulls, and the technology for transforming bulls into steers - or men in to eunuchs - is not that complex or nuanced. The question is: will enough American men submit to castration, either chemical, financial, political, or literal? Maybe not.

Cheerleaders for the Great Reset underestimate woefully the factor of disorder in the system they so crave to hegemonize. Disorder is exactly what the system is expressing, and in direct proportion to the wishes of authorities to exert tyrannical control over populations. Not only will the disorders get worse, but their effects will go increasingly non-linear, producing unintended consequences. Has anyone noticed that the psychopathic Woke curricula of Higher Ed have mirrored the collapsing business model of the colleges and universities? The more trouble they got themselves into with the loan racket, the crazier the faculty was allowed to act - as far as calling for the extermination of white people and the cancellation of Western Civ. Both the broken business model and intellectual rot will bring down many of these institutions, and quicker than you might believe. And then you will have no Higher Ed. People get what they deserve, not what they expect.

It’s been entertaining, for sure, but as we enter the 2021 springtime, with the banking system coming apart and markets wobbling, and more Americans evicted from both their living quarters and the middle-class, and conflicts between the state and federal governments, and new bouts of street-fighting, looting, and murder in the cities, it won’t be so amusing anymore. There will be a lot more to worry about than the gender of toys.

There isn’t a chance in hell that all Americans will get herded into a corral of cashless, digital currency that amounts to financial castration. Too many of us value the liberty of not having our every money transaction tracked by some Big Brother. As the dollar fails, Texas and Florida may be moved to issue their own currencies, and other states could follow their leads - may even follow them into an epic political realignment independent of the Beltway Swamp. And many citizens of this land have had enough of Google, Facebook, and the rest of the tech monopolies interfering in politics and pushing everyone around. The time has come for the heads of those outfits to start worrying about their own liberty."

"Grave Faults..."

“Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.”
- Paulo Coelho, "Like the Flowing River"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/1/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/1/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/1/21

"Markets:

 Keep Your Eyes On The 10 Year Yield!”

"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Feb 28th to March 1st, Updated Daily 
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts

"Straight Talk On Covid"

"Straight Talk On Covid"
Bob Moriarty

"It’s been right at a year now since the Wuhan/Covid Bio-terror program began. At first the world was forced by a lack of information to believe everything the “Experts” said and the media pounded home. Today we know better, after all, we have a year’s real data to justify or to disprove what we were told. We know the “Experts” overstated the danger by an order of magnitude. We have ample evidence that we have been lied to and manipulated all along. Actually we know that virtually everything the trusted “Experts” maintained was dead wrong and the mainstream media simply out pimped their worst lies of the past.

I’m going to present a number of articles and videos which make it clear that there was a flu, it killed people and should be avoided where possible. Just as the flu kills people and should be avoided every year.

For those short of time or patience, do watch this thirty-minute video of a medical doctor talking about Covid and what can be done about it. To give you some idea of the degree to which you are being manipulated and told what you can and cannot think try entering Dr. Lee Merrit into YouTube’s search function. You will not be directed to the video. That’s not an accident. YouTube does not want you to know about the total fraud that has been perpetuated on the world in the name of a minor seasonal flu. Now on to the most informative discussion of the flu that I have found from Dr. Lee Merrit.


There is a flu dangerous to a small segment of our society. We know how to mitigate the effects. As Dr. Merrit explains above a simple dose of Vitamin D daily improves our chances of not getting the flu or if we get it, reduces the severity. We also know that HCQ can help to reduce the time it takes to get over the disease. We are not allowed to read about HCQ or use it because President Trump said it might be effective. The Deep State hated Trump and tried for 4.5 years to dump him. They were not about to allow him to make a perfectly reasonable suggestion supported by a legion of real doctors.

We also know and understand that a common and cheap anti-parasite drug from Australia often stops the virus in its tracks. But Ivermectin costs $2 a dose and can be found at any farm supply store so Fauci and the MSM is not about to suggest a cure that doesn’t put billions of dollars in the pockets of big Pharma. Fauci would far rather see tens of thousands of people die without a cheap treatment.

But what of Saint Fauci, worshipped by the MSM. He’s the highest paid government official in the United States and also the loudest shill for Big Pharma on the flu. In March of last year Fauci was interviewed on 60 Minutes and was quoted as saying, “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” YouTube has suppressed that video for obvious reasons since Dr. Fauci has had a change of heart about the use of masks.

In August he maintained that for public health safety everyone should wear a mask. Then he realized even more protection was needed than merely a facemask so he recommended not only a facemask but also goggles for maximum protection. In January of 2021 Dr. Fauci updated his mask recommendation to that of wearing two masks instead of just one, saying, “It just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective.” A full week later Dr. Fauci backtracked one more time saying, “if you really wanna have an extra little bit of protection, maybe I should put two masks on. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's no data that indicates that that is gonna make a difference and that's the reason why the CDC has not changed their recommendations.”

So there you have it. The leading “Expert” in the United States and highest paid public government official has made it clear that,

• You don’t need a mask.
• You do need a mask.
• You need a mask and goggles.
• You really need two masks, it makes sense.
• But you don’t need two masks.

Kary Mullis the inventor of the PCR test, the Gold Standard of testing that gave the US an infection rate five times higher than the rest of the world knew Dr. Fauci and had his own opinion as to his qualifications. Kary Mullis maintained that the PCR test was useless for detecting a disease. The WHO has finally admitted that PRC has a giant flaw. While the CDC and NIH recommend using 40 cycles to determine presence of a virus, even Fauci admits that anything over 27 cycles generates too many false positive signals. Actually of the 28 million cases that the US claims, over 80% were false positive results due to using too many cycles in an ineffective and basically flawed testing procedure.

John Rubio of Dollar Collapse had a brilliant article on the “Experts” back in January talking about why hardly anyone trusts the virus experts. Even the WHO has finally admitted that lockdowns not be used as a primary control method because they cause so much other damage and don’t stop the flu.

But what of the so-called magic bullet, the vaccine. First of all, it is not a vaccine. Vaccines contain particles of the original virus or germ. What is being called a vaccine is actually a highly dangerous and untested permanent gene modification. The MSM mocked DJT for months after he maintained that there would be this gene therapy before the end of 2020. The election came and went and as if by magic the “Vaccine” appeared as if it just popped out of nowhere.

So the issue now is the safety or lack of safety in the gene therapy. Doctors from around the world have issued their own warning "Do not get the Covid Vaccine!!” Numbers are starting to come out as to how safe the “Vaccine” is. In the UK Care Home “Covid” deaths have increased by 240% since vaccinations began. Some solution.

As discussed in the original interview with Dr. Lee Merrit, the mRNA gene therapy has not been tested and could cause the deaths of millions eventually. A young man in Israel was injected with the gene therapy. We can quickly see just how much it helped him.

The US has a new President and a new direction. On January 20th Joe Biden became President of the United States. One of his first actions that day was to dictate that no one would be allowed on any US Federal property without a facemask. A few hours later he became one of the first to ignore his own rule. In doing so he followed a long and hallowed tradition in government at all levels of telling taxpayers what the rules were for them and ignoring them as a government functionary. It comes under the “Do as I say, not as I do” rule closely followed by mayors, governors, local officials and Federal officials at all levels."
Related:

"How It Really Is"

Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

Musical Interlude: Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"

Simon & Garfunkel, "The Boxer"

"Excellence..."

 
"Excellence Is not a skill. It is an attitude"
- Ralph Marston

"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, 
but there ain't no man got to be common."
- Satchell Paige

"What 'Normal' Are We Returning To? The Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge"

"What 'Normal' Are We Returning To? 
he Depression Nobody Dares Acknowledge"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"Even as the chirpy happy-talk of a return to normal floods the airwaves, what nobody dares acknowledge is that "normal" for a rising number of Americans is the social depression of downward mobility and social defeat. Downward mobility is not a new trend - it's simply accelerating. As this RAND Corporation report documents, ("Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018") $50 trillion in earnings has been transferred to the Financial Aristocracy from the bottom 90% of American households over the past 45 years.

Time magazine's article on the report is remarkably direct: "The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% - And That's Made the U.S. Less Secure." "The $50 trillion transfer of wealth the RAND report documents has occurred entirely within the American economy, not between it and its trading partners. No, this upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn't inevitable; it was a choice -  direct result of the trickle-down policies we chose to implement since 1975.

We chose to cut taxes on billionaires and to deregulate the financial industry. We chose to allow CEOs to manipulate share prices through stock buybacks, and to lavishly reward themselves with the proceeds. We chose to permit giant corporations, through mergers and acquisitions, to accumulate the vast monopoly power necessary to dictate both prices charged and wages paid. We chose to erode the minimum wage and the overtime threshold and the bargaining power of labor. For four decades, we chose to elect political leaders who put the material interests of the rich and powerful above those of the American people."

I've been digging into downward mobility and social depression for years: "Are You Really Middle Class?" The reality is that the middle class has been reduced to the sliver just below the top 5% - if we use the standards of the prosperous 1960s as a baseline.

The downward mobility isn't just financial - it's a decline in political power, control of one's work and ownership of income-producing assets. This article reminds us of what the middle class once represented: "What Middle Class?" How bourgeois America is getting recast as a proletariat.

This reappraisal of the American Dream is also triggering a reappraisal of the middle class in the decades of widespread prosperity: "The Myth of the Middle Class: Have Most Americans Always Been Poor?" 



Downward mobility excels in creating and distributing what I term social defeat: In my lexicon, social defeat is the spectrum of anxiety, insecurity, chronic stress, fear and powerlessness that accompanies declining financial security and social status.

 Downward mobility and social defeat lead to social depression. Here are the conditions that characterize social depression:



1. High expectations of endlessly rising prosperity instilled as a birthright no longer align with economy reality.


2. Part-time and unemployed people are marginalized, not just financially but socially.


3. Widening income/wealth disparity as those in the top 10% pull away from the bottom 90%.


4. A systemic decline in social/economic mobility as it becomes increasingly difficult to move from dependence on the state or one's parents to financial independence.


5. A widening disconnect between higher education and employment: a college/university degree no longer guarantees a stable, good-paying job.


6. A failure in the Status Quo institutions and mainstream media to recognize social depression as a reality.


7. A systemic failure of imagination within state and private-sector institutions on how to address social depression issues.


8. The abandonment of middle class aspirations: young people no longer aspire to (or cannot afford) consumerist status symbols such as luxury autos or conventional homeownership.


9. A generational abandonment of marriage, families and independent households as these are no longer affordable to those with part-time or unstable employment.


10. A loss of hope in the young generations as a result of the above conditions.

 The rising tide of collective anger arising from social depression is visible in many places: road rage, violent street clashes between groups seething for a fight, the destruction of friendships for holding "incorrect" ideological views, and so on.



A coarsening of the entire social order is increasingly visible: "The Age of Rudeness." "Depressive thoughts (and the emotions they generate) tend to be self-reinforcing, and this is why it's so difficult to break out of depression once in its grip.

One part of the healing process is to expose the sources of anger that we are repressing. As psychiatrist Karen Horney explained in her 1950 masterwork, "Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization," anger at ourselves sometimes arises from our failure to live up to the many "shoulds" we've internalized, and the idealized track we've laid out for ourselves and our lives.



The article "The American Dream Is Killing Us" does a good job of explaining how our failure to obtain the expected rewards of "doing all the right things" (getting a college degree, working hard, etc.) breeds resentment and despair.

 Since we did the "right things," the system "should" deliver the financial rewards and security we expected. This systemic failure to deliver the promised rewards is eroding the social contract and social cohesion. Fewer and fewer people have a stake in the system. We are increasingly angry at the system, but we reserve some anger for ourselves, because the mass-media trumpets how well the economy is doing and how some people are doing extremely well. Naturally, we wonder, why them and not us? The failure is thus internalized.



One response to this sense that the system no longer works as advertised is to seek the relative comfort of echo chambers - places we can go to hear confirmation that this systemic stagnation is the opposing ideological camp's fault.

 Part of the American Exceptionalism we hear so much about is a can-do optimism: set your mind to it and everything is possible. The failure to prosper as anticipated is generating a range of negative emotions that are "un-American": complaining that you didn't get a high-paying secure job despite having a college degree (or advanced degree) sounds like sour-grapes: the message is you didn't work hard enough, you didn't get the right diploma, etc. 

It can't be the system that's failed, right? 

I discuss this in my book "Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform": the top 10% who are benefiting mightily dominate politics and the media, and their assumption is: the system is working great for me, so it must be working great for everyone. This implicit narrative carries an implicit accusation that any failure is the fault of the individual, not the system.

 The inability to express our despair and anger generates depression. Some people will redouble their efforts, others will seek to lay the blame on "the other" (some external group) and others will give up. What few people will do is look at the sources of systemic injustice and inequality. 

Perhaps we need an honest national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality and the failure of the status quo that avoids polarization and the internalization trap (i.e. it's your own fault you're not well-off).

 We need to value honesty above fake happy-talk. Once we can speak honestly, there will be a foundation for optimism."

Sunday, February 28, 2021

Must Watch! “Don’t Be Delusional, System Will Fail You”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Don’t Be Delusional, System Will Fail You”

"Eviction Moratorium Ruled Unconstitutional, Largest Tsunami Of Evictions In U.S. History Incoming"

Full screen mode recommended.
"Eviction Moratorium Ruled Unconstitutional,
Largest Tsunami Of Evictions In U.S. History Incoming"
by Epic Economist

"Right after the burst of the sanitary outbreak, a federal eviction moratorium was put into place to avoid the massive displacement of American renters amid a ravaging health crisis. The order has prevented landlords from evicting millions of tenants that were behind on their rent payments. On the other hand, all the rental debt accumulated since then didn't go away, and tenants are expected to pay for it at some point. Conversely, small landlords were sent to the brink of financial ruin after the measure was implemented, and many filed lawsuits against the moratorium, alleging it wasn't legal while also questioning CDC's authority to issue such a decree. 

Housing experts started to sound red alerts for a massive homelessness crisis in case the order expired or was removed, which prompted the government to extend the moratorium twice. However, last week, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas named John Campbell Barker finally heard landlords pleading, and now it's official: the moratorium was ruled unconstitutional, which means a tragic eviction tsunami is about to start. That's what we're going to expose in this video.

Last Thursday, John Campbell Barker, a judge in the Eastern District of Texas, issued the 21-page ruling responding to a lawsuit from a group of landlords and property managers. “The federal government cannot say that it has ever before invoked its power over interstate commerce to impose a residential eviction moratorium,” Barker wrote in his decision, remarking that it did not do so during the Spanish Flu health crisis or during the Great Depression. 

Although the order has helped millions of Americans to stay housed throughout the health crisis and one of the toughest winters ever recorded in all U.S. history, it also caused acute financial distress for many landlords, especially those who run small and mom-and-pop properties. Nearly half of the 49 million rental units in the U.S. are owned by individuals, who usually offer more affordable housing alternatives inside their own communities. 

Such small landlords have been particularly hard-hit by the consequences brought on by the health crisis, having to bear an enormous financial burden and left to deal with a responsibility that should have been properly addressed by the government. They are essentially at risk of losing their properties or having to face foreclosure since they have become unable to keep up with their mortgage payments. In that way, they are also on the brink of losing their main asset and their primary source of income. 

At the same time, the real estate crisis has also been fueled by businesses' rental debt, with many filing for bankruptcy since they couldn't make enough revenue to afford their maintenance bills. That is to say, the tsunami of bankruptcies happening since the burst of the crisis is directly impacting the real estate sector just as well, and according to several experts, the worst may be yet to come. 

Recent data exposes that while in 2019 there were 5,236 Chapter 11 filings, last year there were 6,917, which is roughly 30 percent higher than any of the previous four years.Considering bankruptcy filings underscore other signs of economic pain, researchers with the firm explained that the circumstances might get much more troublesome over the next months. Bankruptcies resultant from the 2007 financial crisis didn’t peak until 2010. 

The record low-interest rates that kept the markets heated and enabled the formation of several bubbles in the housing and stock markets, may undergo a fast increase as the economy reopens in the second half of 2021. As we mentioned in previous videos, chaos has returned to Wall Street as overly-inflated stock prices are finally being confronted by our bleak economic reality. Last Friday, the Dow declined another 469 points. 

Multiple investors can already feel that a whole lot more pain is coming, that's why they already began another major sell-off of Big Tech stocks and started to pursue safer assets. As our economy in the process of crumbling all around us, and a stock market crash is imminent, while the housing market bubble is quickly expanding, and, more worryingly, a considerable part of our population may lose their homes and inevitably enter a poverty spiral that could lead them to financial ruin, we can't afford to ignore the early warning signs to the next “trigger events” that will hit us in 2021 and beyond. Unfortunately, the troubles experienced in 2020 were just the beginning, and we still have enormous challenges ahead of us."

2002, "Sound of Still Water"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Sound of Still Water"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young.
But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way's interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”

Paulo Coelho, "Be Like a River"

"Be Like a River"
by Paulo Coelho

“A river never passes the same place twice,” says a philosopher. “Life is like a river,” says another philosopher, and we draw the conclusion that this is the metaphor that comes closest to the meaning of life. Consequently, it is always good to remember during all the year:

A] We are always doing things for the first time. While we move between our source (birth) to our destination (death), the landscape will always be new. We should face these novelties with joy, not with fear – because it is useless to fear what cannot be avoided. A river never stops running.

B] In a valley we walk slower. When everything around us becomes easier, the waters grow calm, we become more open, fuller and more generous.

C] Our banks are always fertile. Vegetation only grows where there is water. Whoever comes into contact with us needs to understand that we are there to give the thirsty something to drink.

D] Stones should be avoided. It is obvious that water is stronger than granite, but it takes time for this to happen. It is no good letting yourself be overcome by stronger obstacles, or trying to fight against them – that is a useless waste of energy. It is best to understand where the way out is, and then move forward.

E] Hollows call for patience. All of a sudden the river enters a sort of hole and stops running as joyfully as before. At such moments the only way out is to count on the help of time. When the right moment comes the hollow fills up and the water can flow ahead. In the place of the ugly, lifeless hole there now stands a lake that others can contemplate with joy.

F] We are one. We were born in a place that was meant for us, which will always keep us supplied with enough water so that when confronted with obstacles or depression we have the necessary patience or strength to move forward. We begin our course in a soft and fragile manner, where even a simple leaf can stop us. Nevertheless, as we respect the mystery of the source that gave us life, and trust in eternal wisdom, little by little we gain all that we need to pursue our path.

G] Although we are one, soon we shall be many. As we travel on, the waters of other springs come closer, because that is the best path to follow. Then we are no longer just one, but many – and there comes a moment when we feel lost. However, “all rivers flow to the sea.” It is impossible to remain in our solitude, no matter how romantic that may seem. When we accept the inevitable encounter with other springs, we eventually understand that this makes us much stronger, we get around obstacles or fill in the hollows in far less time and with greater ease.

H] We are a means of transportation. Of leaves, boats, ideas. May our waters always be generous, may be always be able to carry ahead everything or everyone that needs our help.

I] We are a source of inspiration. And so, let us leave the final words to the Brazilian poet, Manuel Bandeira:

“To be like a river that flows
silent through the night,
not fearing the darkness and
reflecting any stars high in the sky.
And if the sky is filled with clouds,
the clouds are water like the river, so
without remorse reflect them too.”

"With The Years..."

“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”
- Ernest Hemingway, "True at First Light”

The Poet: A. J. Constance, "All Of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"

"All of Us Here On This Spinning Blue World"

"Let's not plan too much
or expect
or promise
or say how much
or how little
or outline how things must be
or how they must not be.

All of us here on this beautiful
spinning blue world,
let's just love each other
from one millisecond to the next
as much as we can."

- A. J. Constance
Full screen recommended.
The Moody Blues, "Blue World"

The Daily "Near You?"

Prineville, Oregon, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"We All Know This..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio

"Of All Tyrannies..."

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. " 
- C.S. Lewis

“What Doesn’t Kill You Can Make You Stronger”

“What Doesn’t Kill You Can Make You Stronger”
by Mark Manson

“Each week, I send you three potentially life-changing ideas to help you be a slightly less awful human being. This week we’re talking about: 1) post-traumatic growth, 2) living in the age of entitlement, and 3) the world really has become smaller. Let’s get into it. 

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – A few weeks ago, I wrote a newsletter discussing the expanding definitions of words such as “trauma,” “violence,” and “harm” and how these expansions of definition in our culture, at a certain point, begin to have adverse effects. Several readers were skeptical of this claim. They argued that trauma is always bad and that we should combat it regardless of how it arises. So I’d like to spend some time today discussing why this may not be totally true. As with most things in life (and especially in psychology), trauma is complicated.  In its first century of existence, the field of psychology mostly studied what we loosely refer to as “trauma” today. Freud was obsessed with sexual traumas… in kind of a creepy way. 

After World War I, European militaries debated the existence and causes of “shell shock,” as if having two-ton bombs exploding over you every day for four years straight was supposed to have no effect on a person.  In the ’40s and ’50s, B.F. Skinner tortured rats to see how it inspired and inhibited behaviors. In the ’60s, R.D. Laing proposed that much of what was assumed to be mental illness was actually people’s coping mechanisms to deal with their inner traumas. 

But it wasn’t until 1980 that “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” finally entered the official lexicon. It’s been a mainstay ever since. In the 80s and 90s, we discovered that PTSD symptoms don’t just occur in war veterans (although that’s where they are still most common). They can happen to survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, or even things such as bullying or divorce or a horrendous car accident. The world was just one big oyster of trauma and we could all have a piece of it. One study estimated that 75% of all people experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. Most of us will experience many more. 

But here’s the stat that you don’t hear as often. Most people who experience trauma later report benefitting from their traumatic experience. Yes, you read that right. Most of us, when asked later on, actually reported not only benefitting from our traumatic experience but being better because of it. For example, when researchers surveyed New Yorkers just two months after the 9/11 attacks, 58% of them reported benefits from the experience. You see these results everywhere, from shipwreck survivors to Holocaust survivors. From Maya Angelou to Christopher Reeves. Most people, in the long run, feel that they are better off for their traumatic experiences, not worse.  This is why trauma is weird. On the one hand, we wish it didn’t happen. It was horribly painful. On the other hand, we’re kind of glad it did. It made us who we are today. It made us stronger, more resilient, more grateful for everything we have. 

This is the experience of what’s become known as “post-traumatic growth” (PTG), and despite being far less “popular” than PTSD, it turns out that PTG is far more common. One trauma researcher with fifty years of experience said that of all the people who experience trauma, he estimates 30% suffer from PTSD, and 70% experience some form of personal growth from the event. A minority of people who suffer a traumatic experience develop PTSD. Yet a majority of people experience PTG. It’s just that we don’t talk about it. It’s not cool to say, “Hey, you know what? I’m such a better person since my wife died.” No. That would be f*****g horrible. 

But when researchers look at what leads people to experience PTG instead of PTSD, you know what one of the key factors is? Their beliefs about the traumatic event itself. People who believe their traumatic experience will be an opportunity for growth are generally the ones who grow from it. People who believe their traumatic experience will ruin their lives are the ones who feel stuck.  (To learn more about post-traumatic growth, check out a post I wrote a while back called “How to Grow from Your Pain“. The book “What Doesn’t Kill Us“, by Stephen Joseph, is a good read on the subject as well.) 

Obviously, there are more factors that determine PTG like emotional intelligence, social support, etc. But I’m focusing on the beliefs because this is where my point about definitions comes in. I worry that, as a culture, by expanding our definition of trauma, we are shifting away from seeing it as “a terrible and unfortunate thing that happened,” towards, “something that never should have happened to me and I’m ruined forever.” It’s a subtle and seductive shift in attitude—especially because it grants one a feeling of moral righteousness—but it has hugely negative repercussions. 

The fact is: our relationship to pain is largely determined by our beliefs about pain. And when we believe that pain is permanent and debilitating, then it becomes permanently debilitating. 

2. The Age of Entitlement – In “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck“, I defined entitlement as believing that one deserves to never suffer and/or be forced to overcome hardship. I also argued that more and more, we are living in a culture defined by entitlement.  Knowing what we know about post-traumatic growth, one can see how an entitled mindset prevents any possibility of growth from one’s trauma or pain. If your traumatic experience is seen as something thrust upon you unfairly and the world should reconfigure itself to resolve it, then you’re essentially dooming yourself from ever overcoming that pain. 

I think we’ve all watched a prime case study of this play out publicly in the news and social media the past six months. Whether it’s the entitled idiots starting fistfights at Walmart because they don’t want to wear a mask, or the entitled idiots trying to take down a statue of Abraham Lincoln because, like, racism or something—I’m developing calluses on my palms from slamming them into my face so many times. 

One of Freud’s better ideas was that there is an inherent and constant tension between the individual and society. By living in large groups, we increase our survival and quality of life. But to live in large groups, Freud said, each individual must suppress parts of their own self-interests and desires. This suppression then gives us all a little bit of a complex and makes us neurotic about certain things (like sex, for one). 

Basically: living in a community has benefits, but those benefits require that each individual makes sacrifices. Politics is then the discussion of these individual sacrifices and whether they are worth it for everybody or not. Because this is a constant tension, politics is an infinite game, unwinnable and perpetual, defining and redefining the terms of our coexistence one bullshit, bloated piece of legislation at a time. 

In this arrangement, left-wingers tend to be more concerned with the distribution of benefits from everybody’s sacrifice. Lefties want to make sure that no one is getting completely hosed. Therefore, lefties tend to believe that making more individual sacrifices is worth it if it means the benefits become more evenly distributed throughout society. 

Right-wingers, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with individuals giving up as little as possible. They intuitively recognize that, at some point, if you’re giving up so much to the collective, then it stops being worth it. Therefore, righties tend to believe that an imperfect system is worth it if it means guaranteeing individual liberty. 

We need both of these dispositions, of course. We need people checking to make sure our benefits are getting distributed fairly. We also need people checking to make sure that individuals aren’t being asked to give up too much. The problem is when entitlement comes in. It corrupts both of these attitudes. 

The entitled left-wing attitude is the belief that no inequality should exist anywhere – that everyone should receive the exact same benefits at all times. This is unreasonable because people are simply different. They have different talents, experiences, histories, and beliefs about the world. Therefore, different outcomes will be natural and expected. 

The entitled right-wing attitude is the belief that no individual freedom should ever be given up anywhere – that as long as I’m not overtly hurting somebody else, I should be free to do whatever the hell I want. This is also unreasonable. Our actions affect each other indirectly and often in subtle and surprising ways. This could be something as complex as climate change or some other Tragedy of the Commons scenario. It could also be something as simple as being asked to wear a mask. 

My concern with the expansion of the definitions of words such as “trauma,” “violence,” “prejudice,” and “oppression” is that it opens a very wide door into promoting entitled political mindsets. If being asked to wear a mask in Walmart becomes an accepted definition of “oppression,” and being punished for destroying federal property is commonly interpreted as “fascism,” well… then, we’re in for a very, very long decade. 

3. The world really is getting smaller – On a lighter note, in the early 2000s, one of the hip, cool takes on the internet was that, by connecting everyone, it would make the world “smaller.” Well, it turns out that there’s some really interesting data that suggests this is true. 

You’ve probably heard the term “six degrees of separation.” The idea is that each person in the world is connected to every other person in the world by no more than six social connections. Researchers even tested this in the 1960s and found that it was roughly true. But in the social media age, one would guess that since we are all acquainted with so many more people from so many different parts of the world, that there would be fewer links between any two random people. 

Facebook recently decided to analyze this. And who better? They already know what my wife and I talked about last night and what underwear I want to buy next January. Go for it, Zuck. Sure enough, after analyzing 721 million people and their connections, Facebook discovered that, as of 2016, on average, two people in the world are separated by 3.57 people. So, call it “Three-point-five-seven degrees of separation.” Err… not quite as catchy, is it?  See you next week. “

"How It Really Is"

 

“The Waiting Place”

“The Waiting Place”

“…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO! That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.”

- Dr. Seuss