Sunday, January 15, 2023

"My Warning To America: Time Is Running Out; Massive Retail Closures Continue"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 1/15/23:
"My Warning To America: Time Is Running Out; 
Massive Retail Closures Continue"
"My warning to America is to prepare now, do not rely on hope as we are heading into a massive economic collapse in which millions of people will be wiped out. Time is of the essence, prepare with security, food, water, gold and silver, get into better physical shape, and most of all get in the best spiritual shape you can and walk close to God."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

Chuck Wild, Liquid Mind, “Dream Ten”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“It is the largest and most complex star forming region in the entire galactic neighborhood. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy orbiting our Milky Way galaxy, the region's spidery appearance is responsible for its popular name, the Tarantula nebula. This tarantula, however, is about 1,000 light-years across. Were it placed at the distance of Milky Way's Orion Nebula, only 1,500 light-years distant and the nearest stellar nursery to Earth, it would appear to cover about 30 degrees (60 full moons) on the sky. Intriguing details of the nebula are visible in the below image shown in scientific colors. 
The spindly arms of the Tarantula nebula surround NGC 2070, a star cluster that contains some of the brightest, most massive stars known, visible in blue on the right. Since massive stars live fast and die young, it is not so surprising that the cosmic Tarantula also lies near the site of the closest recent supernova.”

"The Level Of Intelligence..."

"If man were relieved of all superstition, and all prejudice, and had replaced these with a keen sensitivity to his real environment, and moreover had achieved a level of communication so simplified that one syllable could express his every thought, then he would have achieved the level of intelligence already achieved by his dog."
  - Robert Brault

“In Denial, On the Road to Extinction?”

"When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard,"
 I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
 - Sydney Harris

“In Denial, On the Road to Extinction?”
by Robert Jensen

"Put simply: We're in trouble, on all fronts, and the trouble is wider and deeper than most of us have been willing to acknowledge. We should struggle to build a road on which we can walk through those troubles - if such a road is possible - but I doubt it's going to look like any path we had previously envisioned, nor is it likely to lead anywhere close to where most of us thought we were going.

I have been talking about multiple crises without naming them in detail. As I have been speaking, I suspect you all have been cataloging them for yourself. For me, they are political (the absence of meaningful democracy in large-scale political units such as the modern nation-state), economic (the brutal inequalities that exist internal to all capitalist systems and between countries in a world dominated by that predatory capitalism), and ecological (the unsustainable nature of our systems and the lifestyles that arise from them). Beyond that, I am most disturbed by a cultural and spiritual crisis, a condition that goes to the core of how we understand what it means to be human.

Add all this up and it's pretty clear: We're in trouble. Big trouble. Based on my political activism and my general sense of the state of the world, I have come to the following conclusions about political and cultural change in my society:

• It's almost certain that no significant political change will happen in the United States because the culture is not ready to face these questions. That suggests this is a time not to propose all-encompassing solutions but to sharpen our analysis in ongoing conversation about these crises. As activists we should continue to act, but there also is a time and place to analyze.

• It's probable that no mass movements will emerge in the United States that will force leaders and institutions to face these questions. Many believe that until conditions in the First World get dramatically worse, most people will be stuck in the inertia created by privilege. That suggests that this is a time to expand our connections with like-minded people and create small-scale institutions and networks that can react quickly when political conditions change.

• It's plausible that the systems in place cannot be changed peacefully and that forces set in motion by patriarchy, white supremacy, nationalism and capitalism cannot be reversed without serious ruptures. That suggests that as we plan political strategies for the best-case scenarios, we not forget to prepare ourselves for something much worse.

• Finally, it's worth considering the possibility that our species - the human with the big brain - is an evolutionary dead end. I say that not to be depressing but, again, to be realistic. If that's the case, it doesn't mean we should give up. No matter how much time we humans have left on the planet, we can do what is possible to make that time meaningful.

Realistically, we need to get on a new road if we want there to be a future. The old future, the road we imagined we could travel, is gone - it is part of the delusion. Unless one accepts an irrational technological fundamentalism (the idea that we will always be able to find high-energy/advanced-technology fixes for problems), there are no easy solutions to these ecological and human problems. The solutions, if there are to be any, will come through a significant shift in how we live and a dramatic downscaling of the level at which we live. I say "if" because there is no guarantee that there are solutions. History does not owe us a chance to correct our mistakes just because we may want such a chance.

I think this argues for a joyful embrace of the truly awful place we find ourselves. That may seem counterintuitive, perhaps even a bit psychotic. Invoking joy in response to awful circumstances? For me, this is simply to recognize who I am and where I live. I am part of that species out of context, saddled with the mistakes of human history and no small number of my own tragic errors, but still alive in the world. I am aware of my limits but eager to test them. I try to retain an intellectual humility, the awareness that I may be wrong, while knowing I must act in the world even though I can't be certain. Whatever the case and whatever is possible, I want to be as fully alive as possible, which means struggling joyfully as part of movements that search for the road to a more just and sustainable world.

In this quest, I am often tired and afraid. To borrow a phrase from my friend Jim Koplin, I live daily with "a profound sense of grief." And yet every day that I can remember in recent years - in the period during which I have come to this analysis - I have experienced some kind of joy. Often that joy comes with the awareness that I live in a creation that I can never comprehend, that the complexity of the world dwarfs me. That does not lead me to fear my insignificance, but sends me off in an endlessly fascinating search for the significant.To put it in a bumper-sticker phrase for contemporary pop culture, "The world sucks/it's great to be alive."

Free Download: R.D. Laing: "The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness"

"The Divided Self: 
An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness"
by R.D. Laing

"Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder. Laing was associated with the anti-psychiatry movement, although he rejected the label. Politically, he was regarded as a thinker of the New Left.”

"First published in 1960, this watershed work aimed to make madness comprehensible, and in doing so revolutionized the way we perceive mental illness. Using case studies of patients he had worked with, psychiatrist R. D. Laing argued that psychosis is not a medical condition but an outcome of the 'divided self', or the tension between the two personas within us: one our authentic, private identity, and the other the false, 'sane' self that we present to the world.”

Freely download “The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness”,
by R.D. Laing, here:
"Insights Of R.D. Laing"

"Decades ago, psychiatrist R.D. Laing developed three rules by which he believed a pathological family (one suffering from abuse, alcoholism, etc.) can keep its pathology hidden from even its own family members. Adherence to these three rules allows perpetrators, victims, and observers to maintain the fantasy that they are all one big, happy family. The rules are: 
Rule A: Don't talk about the problems and abject conditions; 
Rule A1: Rule A does not exist; 
Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A1, and/or A2."

“From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful.”

“Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.”


“We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.”

“Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”

“We are bemused and crazed creatures, strangers to our true selves, to one another, and to the spiritual and material world - mad, even, from an ideal standpoint we can glimpse but not adopt.”

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”

"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times"


"Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower: 
Rilke’s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times"
By Maria Popova

There are times in life when the firmament of our being seems to collapse, taking all the light with it, swallowing all color and sound into a silent scream of darkness. It rarely looks that way from the inside, but these are always times of profound transformation and recalibration - the darkness is not terminal but primordial; in it, a new self is being born, not with a Big Bang but with a whisper. Our task, then, is only to listen. What we hear becomes new light.

A century ago, Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926) extended a timeless invitation to listening for the light in his poem “Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower,” translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in their altogether indispensable book "In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus" (public library).

I read it here accompanied by another patron saint of turning darkness into light - Bach, and his Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor, performed by Colin Carr:

"Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower"

"Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am."

The Daily "Near You?"

Holly, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Douglas Macgregor, "Major Escalation By Russians!"

Full screen recommended.
Douglas Macgregor, 1/15/23:
"Major Escalation By Russians!
 Each Missile Costs Around 6-7 Million Dollars"
Comments here:

"Yet Now..."

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”
- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”

"The Great Decentralization, Part II"

"The Great Decentralization, Part II"
Tolstoy's theory of history, Heraclitus' 
opposing forces and Napoleon's dinghy...
by Joel Bowman

"Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Welcome to another Sunday Session, dear reader... that time of the week when we step away from the Monday-Friday war of attrition and take a moment to contemplate the bigger picture, such as we can...all with the animating assistance of a glass or two of high-altitude Malbec...

When we left you this time last week, we were ruminating over a theory of cycles, large and small. This is not a novel musing. In fact, greater thinkers have been puzzling over the subject for millennia, at least as far back as the ancient Greeks.

It was that clever ol’ Ephesian, Heraclitus, who believed in the universal concept of enantiodromia (later taken up by Nietzsche and Jung) – the idea that everything is at all times in the process of becoming its opposite; hot things cool, wet things dry, etc. One might consider this with regards to centralization vs. decentralization, top down control by the few vs. bottom up “spontaneous order” of the many, growth vs. value, life giving way to death...

The pendulum swings from one extreme to another, the emergent membrane between the two akin to that undefinable moment where one thing morphs into the other, when an edgy band becomes mainstream, when the politics of liberation becomes the politics of oppression, or when a young man looks in the mirror one day and sees an old man staring back at him.

In political terms, we think of peace giving way to war... then, once the parched earth is soaked in the blood of young men, yielding to peace once again. “Great armies rise,” as Bill observed during the week, “and then – under the weight of their own booty, bureaucracy and brass – they fall.” Today we continue our series on the nature of cycles with a look at how we view history itself. Please enjoy..."

"The Great Decentralization, Part II"
By Joel Bowman

“History would be a wonderful thing – if it were only true.”
~ Leo Tolstoy

"In some ways, all history is fiction. We don't mean to suggest that the past did not happen (how could we know?)... only that the retelling of it is, necessarily, flawed. We're interested in this point because we're trying to reckon out a theory about cycles, both great and small, and how they shape the world around us over time.

Dear readers will recall from our last musing a pithy, inexhaustive list of historical undulations... from the minute, barely perceptible news and fashion cycles... through to the slightly longer election and stock market cycles... to the longer still natural resource and bond market super-cycles...And, standing back from our cracked lens a little further, the vast rhythms showing the centralization and decentralization of political power over the ages. To put these cycles in some kind of context, we first need to take a quick look at history itself... and how we've come to understand it.

The primary problem with history, it seems to us, is the storyteller. Humans recount events selectively. Which is to say, at least with regard to objective reality, poorly. We do so with an eye - whether consciously or not - to our own personal biases. Politics... love... family... money... religion... our own puny egos, yearning for something more; many and varied are the compromising, corrupting influences on our ability to recall the past. And that's just our day-to-day recollections.

Whether trawling through primary sources or scouring dusty, hand-me-down secondary documents, most historians come to "misimagine" history. At least, that's how Leo Tolstoy saw it. The Russian-born writer set out to explain his thinking in the second epilogue to his momentous work War and Peace, itself an impressionistic, largely fictionalized retelling of the Napoleonic Wars.

Instead of grappling with the nature of cycles within our immediate focus, Tolstoy complained, academics tend instead to ascribe meaning where there is none, to conflate cause and effect and to generally make a mess of things. Historians give credit where it is not due, he argued, endowing certain actors - Napoleon, for example - with near Godlike powers to impact the course of history.

This is hardly surprising. Humans are, after all, painfully self-aware creatures; creatures that have fashioned many gods in their own image. It should be little wonder then that we would, looking back over our own sordid affair, imbue our kin with history-altering omnipotence... to deify, glorify and vilify our ancestors... and, by extension, ourselves.

Tolstoy, a self-described "spiritual anarchist," explained the arc of history as similar to the course of a giant ship, stretching out across an enormous ocean of time. Whereas most historians favored placing human actors – again we'll take Napoleon as our example – in the mighty tugboat up front, pulling the hulking ship through the swells, Tolstoy had the Little Corsican in the lifeboat behind, tossed about by forces both beyond his control and indifferent to his rapidly worsening circumstances.

Replacing the ship with the Grande Armée itself, the genius of Tolstoy's observation starts to take shape. When Napoleon first crossed the Niémen on his eastward march, he did so with 422,000 troops under his command. By the time he returned, lurching homeward from the opposite direction, his number had dwindled to barely 12,000...
Click image for larger size.
(Charles Minard's map of Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. The graphic is notable for its representation in two dimensions of six types of data: the number of Napoleon's troops; distance; temperature; the latitude and longitude; direction of travel; and location relative to specific dates. Source: Public Domain.)

Everything that could go wrong, seemed to do just that. But how? Tolstoy understood that no army this size could possibly fall under the direction of one man. Even if every last troop wanted to obey his general's orders (doubtful, given the practice of "levée en masse" – mass conscription – popular at the time), the sheer logistical undertaking of command from on high rendered uniform obedience next to impossible. The problem with top-down organization, Tolstoy realized, was not only behavioral... but also informational.

Let us imagine for a moment that Napoleon has issued a directive for his cavalry to move into a position he considered, for whatever reason, advantageous. (This is a wildly oversimplified order, a fiction conscripted in service of a point that should soon become obvious.) At first blush, this might appear a reasonably basic request, especially given Napoleon's famed brilliance for military strategy and the Grande Armeé's (shall we posit?) unwavering discipline and dedication to its fearless leader.

Alas, even this small order proves to be no easy task. To begin with, the cavalry is composed of both heavy and light divisions. In turn, each division may be further split into three subunits - the Carabiniers-à-Cheval (Horse Carabiniers), Dragoons (Mounted Infantry) and Cuirassiers in the former and the Hussars (Hussards), Chasseurs-à-Cheval (Mounted Hunters) and Lanciers (Lancers) in the latter.

That's a lot of moving parts, both human and equine, allowing plenty of room for error. Moreover, each of these divisions consists of numerous individual regiments... often made up of soldiers from different national and cultural backgrounds, including those from conquered lands who don't always share a common language. The Chasseurs-à-Cheval, for example, had 32 different regiments in 1811, six of which were composed of non-French-speaking Belgians, Swiss, Italians and Germans.

Further complicating matters, each has its own chain of command... internal squabbles... politicking... alliances and petty jealousies. Dispatches, such as our comically rudimentary "Cavalry proceed from A to B" example, were conveyed via horseback, usually by one of the brave Hussars. Provided our young individual is not wounded or captured en route... assuming he does not lose his nerve along the way... supposing his message is not in some other way compromised or corrupted... allowing that the intended recipient is still in one piece when he arrives... imagining a million other possible – perhaps even probable? – outcomes do not eventuate, the young fellow might be able to deliver his message...

Just in time for the spontaneous order of events already in motion to have materially changed... along with his capricious general's all-too-human frame of mind...If Napoleon, arguably one of history's greatest generals, cannot even get a timely message to his own front line... what then do we make of his supposedly pivotal role in the wars that bear his name?

And yet, believing their research accurate, their knowledge beyond doubt or question and their understanding of events long since transpired unassailable, historians assign lynchpin importance to the directives of one mere mortal or another. A supposition stacked on an assumption built on a guess tied up in an imaginary fantasy... thus is history, as we "know" it, authored.

(The Grande Armeé also made use of homing pigeons and observation balloons. The reader is invited to imagine the manifold and unknowable variables that must have arisen using such communication technologies...)

Suffice to say, society is complex. Information – both its dissemination and reception – is often nonlinear. Perfect knowledge, and therefore central planning, is untenable. Why is it important to understand these points? And what does it have to do with the theory at hand?

For one thing, it helps disabuse us of the misapprehension that any one man or woman or governing committee is truly capable of directing the grand cycles of history. It relieves us of the strange but common urge to over-assign historical agency to an Obama or a Trump or a Biden or, worse still, some mysterious man behind the curtain, pulling the levers and pushing the buttons. For another, it hints at the flailing impotence of top-down command systems...And critically, it dovetails neatly with a point we'll revisit later in this little series: that of distributed systems and their indispensable role in the Great Decentralization. More, next week..."
o
Part I of "The Great Decentralization" is here:

"If You Look..."

"We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy. It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong."
- Robert James Brown

"They Promised 'Safe And Effective'; We Got 'Sudden And Unexpected'" (Excerpt)

We’re one tragedy away from pitchforks & torches…
"They Promised 'Safe And Effective'; 
We Got 'Sudden And Unexpected'"
by Mark Jeftovic

Excerpt: “No one must ever ask where another rabbit was, and anyone who asked ‘Where?’ – must be silenced.”

"In the story "Watership Down" a group of rabbits flee their home warren of Sandleford, ahead of its imminent destruction at the hands of real estate developers. They set out looking for a safe, new home and among their adventures they encounter another warren called Cowslip. There, all the rabbits are uncharacteristically large, affable and seemingly well fed. For awhile, the Sandleford rabbits think they’ve found a safe haven.

There’s only one problem: every once in awhile one of the the rabbits goes missing. It turns out the entire warren is on a farmer’s land who feeds and otherwise takes care of them, but then sets out snares and traps them from time to time for their pelts. There is only one rule at Cowslip’s Warren, nobody is allowed to ask or talk about any of the missing rabbits.

I want everybody reading this to think of two numbers from asking you two questions:
Question #1) How many people do you know who died of COVID?
Question #2) How many people do you know who died “suddenly and unexpectedly” over the last 18 months?"
The full, highly recommended article is here:
o
Related:
o
"If you've taken the "vaccine" at least understand how and why you and your loved ones will die, much sooner than later, quite intentionally. God help you...
o
Freely download "Watership Down", by Richard Adams, here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Major Price Increases At Aldi!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/15/23:
"Major Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Ridiculous! What's Next!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

"When..."

Musical Interlude: Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

The Poet: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

“Ulysses”

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
o
Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"

"The War Against Will"

"The War Against Will"
by Paul Rosenberg

"The modern world will allow you to join any of a thousand collectives, but it will punish you for standing on your own, as a self-willed entity. People who commit this crime understand that they are outlaws in the present world. And if at first they don’t understand that, the world makes sure they know.

The world as it is, then, is the enemy of will. This is nothing new, of course, governments have been at war against will since they began: How else can you get people to blindly obey you, to hand over half their income, and to thank you for it? People who possess a full and active will must be convinced to do things, and governments couldn’t function if they had to do that.

The present world is built around the restraint of will, and not just on the government level. Advertising, for example, is more or less devoted to implanting subconscious desires and subverting the will with them. In dysfunctional families, manipulating one another – whether by guilt, ridicule, being left out of Papa’s will or whatever – is the currency of the realm.

And so obedience, consumption and acquiescence have become cardinal virtues, and the avoidance of immediate pain the prime directive. As we might paraphrase an old apostle, this world’s God is the belly.

The Willful, For Whom Heaven And Earth Were Created: All human creativity functions on individual will. Everyone interested in creativity knows this, and here are just a couple of passages to make the point:

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is
created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
- Albert Einstein

"This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the
individual human is the most valuable thing in the world."
- John Steinbeck

It is the active will of individuals that has created everything good in this world. Really, life comes down to a choice between creativity and entropy:

• The world (the realm of officialdom, acquiescence and so on) is an incarnation of entropy, winding down and collapsing once the fuel left to it by creative men and women of the past is burned out.
• The creatives, who are willing to take blows in defense of their willfulness, and who bless the world in myriad ways

The willful, then, are creativity incarnate; the universe is and ought to be dedicated to beings of their type. It should also be populated by beings of their type, and I think someday shall be. This is not to say that entropic people can’t make their way out of entropy and join the creatives; in fact they can, and do, on a daily basis. Still, it is a gulf that must be crossed, and the only way across is to act on one’s own will, alone, and for purely self-generated reasons. That is the price.

The Automated War On Will: The great threat of the modern world is a system I call Descartes’ Demon, the Big Data/AI personalized manipulation system that is already in daily use. I held back talking about this for years, seeing that it was too much for people to bear, but the beast has progressed so far that I can’t see holding back any further.

The Matrix, as it turns out, was all too true, and its world is now the world of Facebook, Twitter and especially Google. The real-life version of The Matrix is functional, right now. (See here for explanation, or here for illustration.) What personalized manipulation is really all about is the subversion of individual will. And if you don’t think it’s happening, pull up YouTube on your smart phone, then ask your friend to pull it up on his or hers: You’re already receiving personalized pages. The world is deeply committed to passing this off as trivial and ridiculing those that don’t. But it isn’t trivial; it’s a present and actual war against free will.

We Are Inherently Creative: Humans are inherently creative beings. We cannot create matter out of nothing, but we can mold it to an infinite number and variety of uses. We are the fountains of new and beneficial action in the universe. And we ought to function that way.

I’ll leave you with a few words from Albert Schweitzer: "Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it… It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals." This is what we need… and we need it now."
Full screen recommended.

"It Is Common To Assume..."

"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."
H. L. Mencken, 1929
"It is extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut,
 with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; 
and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes
 life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome."
-Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”

“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”
by Simon Black

“In the early summer of 1914, Albert Einstein was about to start a prestigious new job as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The position was a big deal for the 35-year old Einstein – confirmation that he was one of the leading scientific minds in the world. And he was excited about what he would be able to achieve there. But within weeks of Einstein’s arrival, the German government canceled plans for the Institute; World War I had broken out, and all of Europe was gearing up for one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.

The impact of the Great War was immeasurable. It cost the lives of 20 million people. It bankrupted entire nations. The war ripped two major European powers off the map – the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire – and deposited them in the garbage can of history. Austria-Hungary in particular boasted the second largest land mass in Europe, the third highest population, and one of the biggest economies. Plus it was a leading manufacturer of high-tech machinery. Yet by the end of the war it would no longer exist.

World War I also played a major role in the emergence of communism in Russia through the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Plus it was also a critical factor in the astonishing rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Without the Great War, Adolf Hitler would have been an obscure Austrian vagabond, and our world would be an entirely different place.

One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was. Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans. The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen. To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.

As AJP describes in his book "War by Timetable", the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS. Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time. A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements. In short, there was no room for error.

In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day – not with regards to war, but for monetary policy. Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory. Their success depends on being able to precisely control the [sometimes irrational] behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital. And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.

This is nuts. Economies are comprised of billions of moving pieces that are beyond anyone’s control and often have competing interests. A government that’s $31.5 trillion in debt requires cheap money (i.e. low interest rates) to stay afloat. Yet low interest rates are severely punishing for savers, retirees, and pension funds (including Social Security) because they’re unable to generate a sufficient rate of return to meet their needs.

Low interest rates are great for capital intensive businesses that need to borrow money. But they also create dangerous asset bubbles and can eventually cause a painful rise in inflation. Raise interest rates too high, however, and it could bankrupt debtors and throw the economy into a tailspin. Like I said, there’s no room for error – they have to find the perfect balance between growth and inflation.

Several years ago hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio summed it up perfectly when he said, “It becomes more and more difficult to balance those things as time goes on. It may not be a problem in the next year or two, but the risk of not getting it right increases with time.” The risk of them getting it wrong is clearly growing. I truly hope they don’t get it wrong. But if they ever do, people may finally look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to hand total control of our economy over to an unelected committee of bureaucrats with a mediocre track record… and then expect them to get it right forever. It’s pretty insane when you think about it.

As Einstein quipped at the height of World War I in 1917, “What a pity we don’t live on Mars so that we could observe the futile activities of human beings only through a telescope…”

Saturday, January 14, 2023

Must View! "We Are On The Cusp Of Thermonuclear War! Situation Is Out Of Control!"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 1/13/23:
"We Are On The Cusp Of Thermonuclear War! 
Situation Is Out Of Control!"
Comments here:

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, 
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
- Albert Einstein

God help us...

"Living In A Mad Max Society; People Are Running Out Of Time And Money; American Workers Are Broke"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 1/14/23:
"Living In A Mad Max Society; People Are Running
 Out Of Time And Money; American Workers Are Broke"
"We are living in a Mad Max society as people run out of money and time we will see more desperation and you must be prepared to deal with the changing times. Situational awareness, training, mental mindset and financial assets will all be important to your survival. We have gone from living paycheck to paycheck to credit card to credit card we are now at a dead end..."
Comments here:

"NATO Mission Miscalculated In Ukraine Very Badly, Ukraine Defense Is Slaughtered"

Full screen recommended.
Douglas Macgregor, 1/14/23:
"NATO Mission Miscalculated In Ukraine Very Badly, 
Ukraine Defense Is Slaughtered"
Comments here:

"They Are Watching All of Us"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/14/23:
"They Are Watching All of Us"
"They are watching all of us. Everybody’s heard of smart appliances. The only problem is that these appliances are now doing everything from listening to us and even taking photos of us and sharing them on the web."
Comments here:
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Related:

Musical Interlude: The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"

The Alan Parsons Project, "Prime Time"