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So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, July 18, 2021
“7 Best Shakespeare Insults”
“7 Best Shakespeare Insults”
by The Huffington Post
"You should be women and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so." Shakespeare employs this biting insult in "Macbeth" to establish the complete and utter repulsiveness of the three witches. Their "withered and wild" features cause Macbeth and Banquo to question if the sisters are even human beings.
"Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe themselves upon you." In "All's Well That Ends Well," Lafeu hits infamous liar and coward Porolles with this blunt put-down after being finally fed up with his antics. Although, knowing Porolles and his mischievous ways, he probably deserved the jab.
"I must tell you friendly in your ear, sell when you can, you are not for all markets." Beggars can't be choosers is the modern way of getting this point across, but Shakespeare's version is far more biting. "As You Like It" showcases Shakespeare's gift of saying the meanest of things in the most eloquent ways in this insult Rosalind doles out to Phebe.
"Thou art a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way." Possibly the most elaborate jab he has ever written, Shakespeare pulls out all the stops in "King Lear" when the Earl of Kent replies to Oswald's innocent question of, "What dost thou know me for?" with nearly every insult in the book. And if that verbal attack wasn't enough to put Oswald down, the Earl of Kent proceeds to physically beat him!
"I'll beat thee, but I should infect my hands." In Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens," protagonist Timon and his least favorite dinner companion, Apemantus, insult each other to no end in a verbal smack-down that lasts half of the scene. While Apemantus tries to rally with comebacks as cruel as, "A plague on thee! Thou are too bad to curse," it seems Timon reigns supreme with this precise one-liner.
"Away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away! By this wine, I'll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you basket-hilt stale juggler, you!" This put-down was said by prostitute Doll Tearsheet, who was notorious for having a sharp tongue, to Pistol in Act II of "Henry IV Part II."
"Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood." King Lear calls his daughter, Regan, these terrible names only to revoke his insult and promise not to punish her. Regardless of how fast he apologizes to her for his spiteful words, it's still a grade-A insult.”
Paulo Coelho, "The Good Fight"
"The Good Fight"
by Paulo Coelho
"In 1986, I went for the first and only time on the pilgrimage known as the Way to Santiago, an experience I described in my first book. We had just finished walking up a small hill, a village appeared on the horizon, and it was then that my guide, whom I shall call Petrus (although that was not his name), said to me: "We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t, our soul dies.
The Good Fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us. The Good Fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we are young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to Fight the Good Fight.
The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to Fight the Good Fight…
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are Fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams - we have refused to Fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. What we sought to avoid in combat - disappointment and defeat - came upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons."
The Good Fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us. The Good Fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we are young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our own worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to Fight the Good Fight.
The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to Fight the Good Fight…
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are Fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams - we have refused to Fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. What we sought to avoid in combat - disappointment and defeat - came upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons."
"All Of The Available Data..."
"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has
about as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."
- Morris Berman
“The Financial System Is A Fraud - Prepare Or Get Wiped Out; Inflation Apocalypse”
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, AM 7/18/21:
“The Financial System Is A Fraud -
Prepare Or Get Wiped Out; Inflation Apocalypse”
"The Image That Comes To Mind..."
"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when... you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight. That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may [the world] be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends. There are the only three positions."
- Joseph Campbell
Saturday, July 17, 2021
Musical Interlude: Sarah Mclachlan, "In The Arms Of An Angel"
Sarah Mclachlan, "In The Arms Of An Angel"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is known as Arp 273.
The overall shape of the UGC 1810 - in particular its blue outer ring - is likely a result of wild and violent gravitational interactions. This ring's blue color is caused by massive stars that are blue hot and have formed only in the past few million years. The inner galaxy appears older, redder, and threaded with cool filamentary dust. A few bright stars appear well in the foreground, unrelated to UGC 1810, while several galaxies are visible well in the background. Arp 273 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of Andromeda. Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekick over the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form."
Kahlil Gibran, “The Farewell”
“The Farewell”
“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”
- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
The Poet: Mary Oliver, “October”
“October”
"There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.
What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.
I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.
The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes-
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something - a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
It pulls me
into its trap of attention,
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.
One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me - and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful."
- Mary Oliver
"How To See Things As They Are"
"How To See Things As They Are"
by David Cain
"I’m in the back room of a coffee shop right now, switching between writing and another mental exercise: pretending I’m not here. I don’t mean I’m wearing a disguise, or hiding behind a potted plant. I’m doing a perspective-shifting practice that I’d recommend to anyone: now and then, wherever you are, look at the scene in front of you as though it’s happening without you.
From any seat, or standing spot, anywhere - in an office, a breakfast diner, a public square, a waiting room - see your surroundings just as they’d be if you weren’t here to see them. Focus on the look and feel of the setting. The way the light lays across things. Take it in like a shot from a movie. Notice the movement and speech of people or animals, the soundscape and overall ambiance. It’s just a little corner of the world where things are unfolding, and you’re not here. Maybe nobody is.
When you do this, you might notice a certain lightness or simplicity arising. Things are more poignant. Everything seems less complicated, because it’s just stuff happening, not stuff happening to you.
I used to call this practice “dying on purpose” but that sounds a bit dramatic. Maybe “looking at the world as though you don’t exist” is better, but a good way to understand how to do that is to simply watch what’s happening here as though you’ve died, or maybe never existed at all.
Right now, in this back room, there’s a long communal table, with three students working in front of a spread of laptops and textbooks. There’s music playing - a band that sounds like the Cranberries. Framed by the doorway to the front of the shop is short-haired, golden dog (this place allows animals) waiting for its owner to order. No humans are visible but there’s a lot of easygoing chatter. The far wall is all window, with potted plants on hanging shelves silhouetted against the mid-day brightness outside. Someone comes to pet the dog. There’s a warm, neighborly feeling in the room. Now the not-Cranberries song is over, and a Beach House song comes on.
This vignette, seen in a certain way - as though it is happening, but not happening to me - can be just what it is, without any entanglement with my own interests. None of my reflexive moral judgments are present. The angle of the sun doesn’t remind me of everything I still have to get done today. Seeing twenty-year-old students doesn’t make me wish I was younger. Because I’m not here. It’s just life unfolding, and on its own it’s beautiful.
We have a habit of looking at what surrounds us through a self-referential lens. We don’t just see a thing, we see the way that thing fits, or doesn’t fit, into our lives. Seeing a luxury car might elicit judgment, or envy, or brand loyalty. Seeing someone enjoying what seems to be a day off might remind you that you do not have the day off.
It’s not that we all think we’re the center of the universe. But our lives do tend to feel something like The Biggest, Most Pressing Thing Ever to Happen, when it’s really only a short thread running through a vast, endless fabric of happenings that is life on Earth.
Even a short glimpse of something as it is- of any scene free from entanglement with our stories -comes with relief. What you witness in this way still has meaning, but it’s intrinsic meaning, like beauty, or some nameless quality. The meaning isn’t “What this means for me and my ongoing story.”
Those short glimpses are always available, by looking at what’s before you as though it’s happening without you. Every scene has its own signature, its own identity to express, which can only come through when it’s not mixed up with yours.
It’s not hard to achieve this perspective, for a few seconds anyway. Just see it as it would be if you weren’t there. This parking lot. This row of houses. This quiet kitchen. It looks exactly the same, but it feels different to see it this way.
When you look at a bug climbing a railing - at least for a moment, it’s nothing but a bug climbing a railing.
When you sit down with your coffee - just for a moment, the coffee shop is happening just as it does on days you’re not there, or as it might after you die.
When you look in the closet - just for a moment, it’s only clothing, hanging there quietly, as it does when nobody’s standing there choosing how they’re going to look today."
"We Are Never Deceived..."
"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Welcome To The 21st Century Sequel Of The Catastrophic 1600s"
"Welcome To The 21st Century Sequel
Of The Catastrophic 1600s"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"As the chart above on 'how systems collapse' illustrates, the loss of stabilizing buffers goes unnoticed until the entire structure collapses under its own weight.
• Disruptive extremes of weather: check
• Rising geopolitical tensions with no diplomatic resolution: check
• Multiplying scarcities in essential commodities: check
• Domestic disorder accelerates as extreme positions harden into irreconcilable conflicts: check
Welcome to the 21st century sequel of the catastrophic 1600s, an extended period of mutually reinforcing crises that overturned regimes and empires from England to China and triggered unremitting misery across much of the human populace. ("Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century" is a riveting overview of this complex era.)
What can we learn from the catastrophic 1600s? Leading the list: humans don't respond well to scarcities. They get crotchety, argumentative, and prone to finding ways to become disagreeable rather than agreeable. Their derangement deepens as they form self-reinforcing echo-chambers of the like-minded, and the source of their misfortune shifts from fate to equally fixated human opponents.
Three extended quotes come to mind: the first bitter satirical rant from Mark Twain, the second from Patrick Henry and the third from James Madison:
Mark Twain: "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
Patrick Henry: "But we are told that we need not fear; because those in power, being our representatives, will not abuse the powers we put in their hands. I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers. I imagine, sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny. Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism! Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom."
James Madison: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people... (There is also an) inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
Apt descriptions of 1641 and 2021? Check, check and check. War and conflict appear to be the solution once people are in the grip of this crisis-hardened derangement, and they discover their folly after their misery has increased 100-fold.
So where does all this lead? Nowhere good. Concentrated wealth and power breed hubris and open the door to catastrophic consequences flowing from the addled decisions of the few at the top. Voices of calm reason are shouted down and excoriated, and compromise becomes impossible. Those seeking to maintain their exploitive grip on wealth and power whip up intensities of derangement to further their own self-interest, always under the banner of some noble cause.
In the confusion of decay and failure, the herd seeks a simplistic explanation and solution. Those seeking to maximize their private gain are keen to provide the easy answer, which just so happens to maximize their private gain at the expense of the herd.
In self-organizing emergent systems, every individual is making decisions based their perceived self-interests. This seems to be a stable arrangement, but the line between stability and instability thins in eras of scarcity and crisis, and trends that seemed linear and predictable suddenly shift into non-linear dynamics, in which seemingly small actions trigger enormously consequential reversals of trend. Stability wobbles and then dissipates, and those experiencing the loss of stability slowly come to realize there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
As the chart above on how systems collapse illustrates, the loss of stabilizing buffers goes unnoticed until the entire structure collapses under its own weight of artifice, debt, fraud, obfuscation, greed, inequality and incompetence. Two short quotes come to mind:
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius
"I never did give anybody hell.
I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."
- Harry S. Truman"
"Economic Crash Will Be The Worst In History; Don't Go Into Debt Buying Dumb Stuff; Fake And Broke"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/17/21:
"Economic Crash Will Be The Worst In History;
Don't Go Into Debt Buying Dumb Stuff; Fake And Broke"
Friday, July 16, 2021
"There is No More Stimulus or Free Lunch. The Party is Ending"
Full screen recommended.
Dn, IAllegedly, PM 7/16/21:
"There is No More Stimulus or Free Lunch. The Party is Ending"
"The Party is over! There will be no more stimulus or free lunch. People
need to get ready to get off the unemployment, pay their rent and get a job."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, come together by moonlight in this serene skyview, recorded on July 11 from Lualaba province, Democratic Republic of Congo, planet Earth.
Taken in the western twilight sky shortly after sunset the exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon. Of course the Moon has moved on. Venus still shines in the west though as the evening star, third brightest object in Earth's sky, after the Sun and the Moon itself. Seen here above a brilliant Venus, Mars moved even closer to the brighter planet and by July 13 could be seen only about a Moon's width away. Mars has since slowly wandered away from much brighter Venus in the twilight skies of the coming days."
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