This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply (no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the utilities they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their follow-up comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here, and have extended that ban to LLM-generated content of all kinds.
With that said, have at it!
I am a close reader of the New Testament and when I look at the actual spiritual practice and dynamics portrayed in it and in my own life, it involves a active personal sky god – the Father, a relationship with Jesus that is similar to the one a Dakota indigenous has with his totemic spirit animal he met in a vision quest and encounters with the inward action and outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit analogous to what can happen among Voodoo practitioner when a deity of that tradition “rides” or fills them in a group setting or alone as an individual – I have at times Pentecostal/charismatic manifestations – speaking in tongues, dreams, visions, knowings.
This primal “primitive” “paganish” stuff can be and has been tempered, replaced or perhaps censored out by sacramentalism, and philosophical, scripture and theological head trips, institutionalization, hierarchy, reserved to special monastic or saint types – though in the New Testament it is found among the ordinary Christian. Yet this primal approach keeps bubbling up among Christians through history. I know deep and wise and good people who move in this primality.
Continuing thoughts on cognitive collapse…
Re Bacon’s comment at the end of last post on the coffin business physical weakness:
https://www.ecosophia.net/cognitive-collapse-a-first-reconnaissance/#comment-150913
We seem to be seeing a whole cascade of ‘systems failures’ – Societal and environmental systems, physical capacity, cognitive collapse
Things move in cycles and is it too much of a stretch to wonder that the big alignment you mentioned for February 2026 might mean while we have yet to hit bottom, and that while the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming express train, and this has years to play out, the heavens are indicating an inflexion point?
Also, does anyone know if this thing in February has generated any good woo-woo space-cadet stories? e.g. Anybody expecting to get raptured (again!)?
Hello JMG and commentariat:
First, and according to today and tomorrow day, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Although I know John and some commentarists who usually write in this blog aren’t christians, I think it’s always a polite wish.
Now, I’m thinking some topics to comment you in this Open Post.
For example, some comments in the last post before this one were written about D. Lynch fondness for meditation. In addition to this, I’ve heard he even became a buddhist some years before his death. This spirituality has been under the radar between some cinema critics, maybe because of ignorance, maybe at their will (irreligious critics may see controversial wether a film director who’s their “enfant terrible” has religious beliefs). However, it isn’t a coincidence that Lynchian personal world was always full of mysteries and sobrenatural beings, often evil. Another director whose movies are influenced by spirituality was Andrei Tarkovsky. Who nominally was a product of USSR “scientific atheism”, but was indeed a poet who worked with images, me think.
**************
Another topic I’d like to write, I thought about it after having seen a movie recently. Well, a few days ago I broke my apathic lazyness and lack of interest in movies (especially American mainstream movies) and I went to my town theater to see “Nuremberg”. It seemed me well done but not a master work. There were moments I liked more than anothers. However, I don’t want to tell you about that movie in itself (spoilers are innecesaries because you know how ended Nuremberg trials); but about what I thought later, caused by these trials, with their lights and shadows. I’ve been thinking those trials (with their evident part of winners rettaliation after the war), were indeed the first serious attempt to implement some punishment to war crimes thanks to international collaboration. Nowadays, we can see this “International Rule of Law” in the International Penal Law, which allows to judge governments leaders who allegedly have commited war crimes.
However, before starting with the proggressive mantra about how civilized we have become, I want to remember Milan Kundera personal idea of “kitsch”: in his own words, kitsch is to deny the s**t in everything we live.
Well, I won’t fall in the international relations kitsch, so I can’t deny the International Penal Court works sometimes well, but not always. For example, both Putin and Netanyahu have been accused for supposed (or not so supposed) war crimes; though international judges and lawyers have hurried up more in the Putin case than in Netanyahu accusation, according what I’ve read online and by MSM. I’m not a laws expert, but I wonder if the difference status of two the accused politicians can make the kitsch…the quid of the question. Indeed, Netanyahu rules a country which buys and sells a lot of weapons from/to NATO countries, but Putin is a clear enemy of NATO/EU interests in Eastern Europe. In addition to this, the International Court hystory isn’t very bright: its trials have been aimed to despicable leaders from small and/or poor countries which opportunely weren’t good friends of western goverments. Well, maybe it’s again the international laws kitsch.
Dear and Wise friends, in the past open post, I asked a question that remained unanswered. I understand that this was due to my inability to articulate coherent questions in English and make myself understood.
I will ask that question again and try to give more context, but first I want to ask two other questions that I personally find more important.
Due to the acceleration of the collapse in Spain, I am very concerned about my family.
I have people who depend on me and who will not be able to be independent for at least 20 years.
I am terrified by the possibility of dying before or during the collapse and not being able to help. In addition, there are also adults who depend on me financially, and I don’t know if they would be able to cope without me.
What can I do? Am I worrying too much about something that will be very gradual? Is there anything I could do to help?
On the other hand, I have spent my whole life dealing with the fear of death and with enormous sadness and melancholy every time a cycle ends (small deaths, perhaps?).
Prayer has helped me a lot, but I am still a recovering ex-materialist with the consequent relapses. Any advice?
Finally, I will rephrase the question from the previous open post:
In recent times, I have observed that certain cracks are beginning to appear in the materialistic philosophy underlying modern science (for example, we now have the Essentia Foundation and a lot of cases of doctors with books on NDEs ).
I don have any porblem with that but im very suspicious person, and I wonder if behind all this there aren’t certain interests seeking to take control of the narrative, just as they replaced religion with science (see Earthly Powers by Michael Burleigh), and now they’re going to replace materialistic science with something else to fill that void and continue manipulating our minds.
Opinions?
T
Hi John,
What are your latest thoughts on the general state of play regarding the LTG model and the collapse of our globalised system around 2030 or so.
Are we tracking that? My personal view is yes we are.
@jmg — hope all is going well!
back in the day, I used to read tom murphy (do the math). I kind of quit during covid when he had an article going over how he was explaining the shots to someone “less” educated. I think I came to your blog whilst reading his stuff back in the early teens.
In any event, he popped up on the radar and I saw this article (https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/11/space-case/) . He, of course, thinks space is a fantasy — but got into a discussion with a prominent “astrophysicist”.
It is the end of 2025 — it is pretty clear we aren’t going — I am just amazed at this conversation. I know you’ve covered this topic plenty, but my reaction to this article was just “WOW”.
I assume you’ve had similar conversations as well?
thx
Jerry
Hi JMG and all. The Rob Reiner murder case has taken over the internet. People seem to be of the opinion that Nick Reiner’s demons got the better of him. I think Nick was a demon. Have any of you seen the many Reiner family photos that Nick is in, and seen the bizarre expressions on his face? What say you, JMG and Ecosophians? Maybe the real Nick “died” during one of his drug trips and was replaced by an evil spirit.
What is your take on the hypothesis that the collapse of Earth’s magnetic field will allow solar radiation to completely knock out the electricity grids on the planet, leaving us pretty helpless, within the next decade or so, based on historical patterns? (a Carrington event scaled up to our total dependence on the grid)
Wishing all my friends a wonder-full 2026 from rainy SoCal and hope to rendezvous in person with some of you in NYC late spring!
Warm wishes
Yogaandthetarot
Continuing the food production discussion from yesterday that is a good paper on the difficulties of defining the terms.
https://www.etcgroup.org/content/backgrounder-small-scale-farmers-and-peasants-still-feed-world
However it does not address that these small scale farmers are not making Washington State minimum wage of $16.66 ( about to increase to $17.13]. That is per hour. If you are content with the World Banks view, “The update results in a new international poverty line of $3.00 per person per day,” then there is considerable scope for negotiation.
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/factsheet/2025/06/05/june-2025-update-to-global-poverty-lines
Also the paper asserts that “further 20% of nutrition is sourced from these other aspects of the peasant food web (artisanal fisheries, hunting and gathering, urban production). ”
Does anyone here get 20% of your food from non-commercial fishing, hunting, gathering, or your garden?
Dad had a 200 acre farm, which is 81 hectares, the paper calls small scale 2 hectares. The old homesteading laws that settled the Midwest US set the standard at 160 acres, a quarter section where a section is one square mile which is extremely evident from the air. None of those farms count as small scale by the paper’s standard.
This all leads to a coming crunch, “Today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization, the gradual shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the overall growth of the world’s population could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90% of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa, according to a new United Nations data set launched today.”
https://www.un.org/uk/desa/68-world-population-projected-live-urban-areas-2050-says-un#:~:text=Today%2C%2055%25%20of%20the%20world's,increase%20to%2068%25%20by%202050.
So who is going to be left to feed the cities the cheap food they demand? For a couple centuries now people have left the farms because the work was easier and paid better in town. This includes my father. None of his siblings stayed on a farm. Only one of mother’s siblings stayed on a farm. Same reason.
This is where you can insert vague arm waving about AI and robotics.
Since I notice that a lot of people here on this blog look at the long historical game I will give it a shot:
I subscribe to the Idea of morphology as in morphic fields of Sheldrake.
But also in morphology in time as in Toynbee/Spengler form of empires/civilizations.
But also of morphodynamics as in morphic patterns in time/space/mind as in Ioan Petru Culianu, but also to an extent Philip K. Dick, even if the morphodynamics I think belongs to Culianu.
Philip K Dick thought he was in 70. AD.
Based on that PKD experience, I made this timeline, US Empire lives 3 times faster than the Roman empire:
https://i.imgur.com/tVLK4sw.png
We are now in the equivalent of second half 227AD in Roman Empire
Since model collapse is a thing I wanted to put this model outhere to get come constructive/destructive criticism.
[I use this model since 2018, and it predicted a few things for me, the rize and fizzle out of LGBT influence (Ellegabalus reign), the war with Iran/Russia and the increasing power of Iran/Russia, it predicted for me that the Trump reform will not succeed but it will be seen looking back as the last stable president as Alexander Severus emperor is seen, this is not a 1:1 correspondece between Roman and American Empire]
Based on my experience in the Communist Block I added a Soviet Timeline, I am starting to see these parallels a lot in Romanian current events compare to 35 years ago, Romanian as a vassal, we even had a contested unellected president on 22 december 2024 and we were in the same situation on 22 december 1989. I caught both times, the COVID19 repression fel to me exactly like the repression in communist Ceaușescu’s Romania in 1985-1987 when I was a child. I also compare Chernobyl disaster with the 2021 clot shot mandates.
https://i.imgur.com/r7vq5wm.png
[There is a backstory of how I got an inkling of these timelines, but unfortunately is in Romanian, if you know one of those modern translators that is pretty decent, you can give it a shot to try and read it:
https://revistavatra.org/2025/04/03/ghicit-in-philip-k-dick-dan-sociu-in-dialog-cu-eduard-florinescu/%5D
Serendipity strikes, I archived this article a couple weeks ago just to post it here, it is on affordability and discusses food prices.
“Green’s analysis centers on the poverty line, which was established in the early 1960s by Mollie Orshansky. The original formula she developed was simple: take the cost of a basic basket of food for a family, multiply it by three (on the assumption that food accounted for about one-third of a household’s budget), and use that as the poverty threshold.”
Actual date was 1963.
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/affordability-crisis-challenging-poverty-line
So there’s yet another person suggesting we channel the demons of the Goetia, this time in order to meet the needs of our inner children. Sephirah Shamanism is offering Zoom calls at 250 pounds per hour, online “shamanic” training courses, et m. Le sigh. In the video linked below, he focuses upon Volak, a demon whose main attributes are finding hidden treasure (which he interprets as unlocking the occulted secrets within, which to my mind is not problematic) and commanding household spirits. The commanding household spirits part is where I take umbrage, because as someone who works with household spirits, I can confidently say it is insulting and stupid to try to command them to do your bidding, especially with help from a Goetic demon. Why are these people so reluctant to work with gods? Are the gods ignoring them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXVv6jAxiuU
@ Siliconguy #9
Well, I’m game… 🙂
Firstly, there is no doubt that the “coming crunch” you speak of, reducing availability of cheap food to dwellers of cities is already here. Foodbanks are very busy stepping up, but the crunch is real, and deepening.
However, when you speak of a poverty line which is measured in money, then I think you have not (yet) broadened your mind to a consideration of true the meaning of wealth, which is measured in many things for which money is really not a very good proxy. For example, sufficiency – which is the capacity to “stand upon” one’s resources and live from, and in relationship with, them – is a faculty which industrial society tries to steal from people, offering mere money in exchange. For many people this exchange continues to be an exceedingly poor exchange, mainly because having to rely on money to meet one’s needs is the same as having to become dependent, and having to learn to accept helplessness.
When you ask: “Does anyone here get 20% of your food from non-commercial fishing, hunting, gathering, or your garden?” I will answer – “Yes!”.
Most, but not all of that 20-30% comes from my own gardening, gathering. Some of it comes via community exchange, by means of which much in the way of food arrives at my house with no money being involved. In the past year I have received gifts of lobsters, prawns, free range eggs, beef, venison. Much of it is offered as a tribute to basic friendship (on the model where one “stores” one’s surpluses in one’s friends)… or in gratitude for treatments, which I offer at rates that even the poorest can afford. *** I, too, have gifted potatoes, onions, tinctured herbal remedies, and other goods to neighbours and friends. None of these transactions involved money. All of them contributed to our mutual capacity to subsist, reducing dependency and learned helplessness. Ultimately, these are the kinds of exchanges that will endure. And these kinds of exchanges are definitely part of the blog’s perennial advice to “collapse now, and avoid the rush”.
Perhaps, one can also say that “subsistence is resistence.”
*** In this I have been guided by JMG’s statement many years ago, to the effect that if your products and services are accessible even to poor people, you will never run out of customers. I have tested this statement of his, and found it to be true. 🙂
BeardTree, if Christianity were to evolve in that direction I think it would be a very good thing. The one additional hope I would have is that Christians would recognize that their sky god, personal totem, and indwelling spirit are not the only options. I quite understand that Christians may feel that theirs is the best option, but the equally primal spiritual sense expressed in Judges 11:24 — “Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.” — would spare the future a lot of useless bitterness and confusion.
Earthworm, I’m sorry to say I don’t have any space cadet stories. On the other hand, I’ve finally gotten enough details to calculate an accurate chart for the last Saturn-Neptune conjunction at the beginning of Aries — March 11 (NS), 594 BC, at 4:19 pm Greenwich time — and have been harvesting historical details from what happened immediately afterwards, so I’ll be leading off with a retrospective analysis of that conjunction and then following with a prospective analysis of the one to come.
Chuaquin, and a blessed Solstice season to you too! Here in the US, a biblical animated epic called “David” from a non-Hollywood film company has just horrified the critics by becoming a box office success despite limited access to theaters and dead silence from the corporate media, so I think the critics’ hatred of religion is becoming a liability to them and the big Hollywood firms that listen to them, not to producers with religious beliefs. As for the International Criminal Court, it’s a propaganda venue run mostly by the EU for its own benefit. Kitsch? Yeah, basically.
Achille, I disagree with the underlying assumption that a culture’s beliefs are determined by elite manipulations. Those have a part to play, but people aren’t simply puppets in the hands of elites — if they were, Hillary Clinton would have stepped down from her second term as US president early this year. I don’t doubt that various elite factions will find ways to exploit the resurgence in religion, but others are fighting it tooth and nail — and they’ll fail. As Spengler pointed out, a resurgence in religious beliefs is a normal process in declining civilizations like ours.
Forecasting, sigh. No, the LTG standard run does not forecast “the collapse of our globalised system around 2030 or so.” It forecasts significant declines along a lot of metrics that reach their steepest slope in that period. “Collapse” is an overstatement. Is it going to be a rough time? Sure, but — well, Theodore Sturgeon put it best in “The Hurkle is a Happy Beast”:
“In times of such huge confusion, the little things go on. During the ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ the cafes and theaters of Moscow and Petrograd remained open, people fell in love, sued each other, died, shed sweat and tears; and some of these were tears of laughter. So on Lirht, while the decisions on the fate of the miserable Hvov were being formulated, gwik still fardled, funted, and fupped.”
Jerry D, thank you for asking! Yes, things are going fairly well; I’ve been taking a lot of private time over the holidays to sort out what I’m going to do with the next stage of my life, now that I’ve more or less finished sorting out the aftermath of Sara’s death. (You never really stop grieving, but life goes on.) As for the astrophysicist, good gods, yes — that sort of blind faith in space travel as a technologically mediated version of the Rapture is embarrassingly common these days.
Dana, I have no idea; I don’t follow Hollywood scandals, not least because they are so many of them and they’re replaced with new ones so often.
Jerry S, scenarios in which sudden cataclysm overwhelms everything all at once have been wildly fashionable since before the Dead Sea Scrolls were written; the one thing they have in common is that they’re inevitably wrong. The evidence for past geomagnetic reversals doesn’t allow us to say how fast the decline will be, nor what its precise effect on current electronics will be — and the revival of interest in tube-based electronics (which are resistant to EMP effects) means that as the effects start to come into play, if they turn out to be serious, a Y2K-style mass replacement of vulnerable technologies is very much an option. (I may go long on vacuum tube futures, with this in mind.)
Jill, thank you!
Siliconguy, have they factored in the fact that human reproduction has dropped below replacement levels on every continent but Africa, and even there it’s falling fast?
Archivist, good — you’ve made firm predictions, which shows more courage than most. Now we’ll see what happens.
Kimberly, working with gods requires you to admit that your ego isn’t the biggest and most important thing in the cosmos. That’s an admission that a lot of people aren’t willing to make just now. The obsession with goetic magic sickens me — a lot of people are likely to be sucked into it, to their lasting misfortune.
Scotlyn (if I may), “subsistence is resistance” is a keeper!
I would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season this year, to all my fellow Christians here a very Merry Christmas, to all our pagan friends a blessed just past Solstice, and Happy Holidays to everyone else.
I was wondering if any one here has been following the Comet 3I/atlas? It is an interstellar comet that is passing through our solar system at the moment and it has a whole list of very strange characteristics. It seems NASA may have some very high resolutions photos of this object from when it passed Mars but they have not released them. Just seeing what folks are thinking about this.
Thanks
I recently discovered that the dismissal of the aether may have been premature.
To make this as short as possible: the Michelson-Morley experiment found a difference in the speed of light along the path of Earth’s motion vs. perpendicular to it of only 8 km/s instead of the expected 30 km/s. A second attempt at the experiment by Morley and Dayton Miller found a similar result. This was considered small enough to be within the margin of error, and some later experiments found much smaller values.
But this is where things get weird: in 1954. Maurice Allais found his Foucault pendulum behaved anomalously during a total solar eclipse. This is known as the Allais Effect, and while its reality is disputed, other researchers have replicated it, including as recently as 2016: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/771/1/012001
Allais himself believed the effect was due to an “aether wind” which he calculated to be about 8 km/s, right around what Michelson, Morley, and Miller found. It’s worth noting that this should, if I’ve understand it correctly, be fully compatible with the Lorentz transformations that produces most of special relativity’s predictions: interestingly those transformations were originally conceived of as an effect of the aether and borrowed by Einstein for special relativity.
One possible problem is I’m not sure how nicely this would all play with general relativity. Considering satellites have to take GR’s time dilation effects from gravity into account, we can’t afford to lose GR’s predictions at least.
Here’s an article from Substack author Moriarty, who most often publishes deeply scientific pieces about Covid. Instead this article warns of the impact of the AI boom on the price and availability of consumer electronics. While many folks here may celebrate the demise of cheap gadgets to consume precious attention, others rely on laptops etc for their livelihood. I sit squarely in the middle of that camp. Here’s the link:
https://hiddencomplexity.substack.com/p/the-coming-consumer-eletronics-crash
From the article:
“DDR5 [a type of DRAM] is experiencing the fastest and steepest increase in price in its history. High-end DDR5 kits that cost $200-250 in August are now selling for $500-600, higher-end (more GB per stick) are priced even higher, while server-grade RAM has seen comparable spikes that cascade directly into AI rack costs. A high-end consumer PC is now roughly $800-1,500 more expensive than it was in early October, with memory and storage accounting for the vast majority of that jump. Both laptops and smartphones will now be shipped with lower RAM.”
Dear Achille #4,
In answer to your first question, adjust how you are training people to rely on you. If you have responsibility for someone who can never be self-reliant, then of course you must have a plan for who to take over when and if you cannot. It is not given to any of us to know if we shall have even another day.
If you have children (as your twenty years statement might indicate), raise them to be adults. Challenge them. If they want things, let them find ways to earn money, to scramble, to get those things. I almost never buy my children treats at the store, for example, and by five or so they consistantly found ways to earn enough to buy candy or chips on occasion. Neighbors will pay by the task: my now eleven year old youngest child has a good gig where she cleans dog poops up. Same cost to the neighbor if she spends three hours playing with the dog while she works or does the clean-up in ten minutes.
Adults who rely on you financially, how did you get to this situation? What do you gain from having them need you this way? Are they unable by age or disability to support themselves? Could they support themselves at a lower standard on their own resources? How can you decrease the support in a way that leaves them able to manage on their own?
Or is it a more symbiotic relationship, where you benefit from something they do for you, and which they would replace with other activities in the event of your loss, and you recompense them financially by gifts rather than taxable wages?
To the general group, I put in a not for posting last week, having lost track of the schedule, because I thought our good host would be interested: one of the conservative alt-media ran an article in praise of global warming and all the benefits of increased CO2. Never a quibble about if it was happening or a word as to why. I was amused at the flip from “Of course it isn’t happening and if it is humans didn’t do it” to “Of course it’s happening and it’s great.”
I didn’t save the link: I saw it on ZeroHedge, as a mirrored article from American Greatness, if you care to track it down and read it yourself.
Hello JMG,
I dunno one thing with Holocaust I find odd that no one calls Holocaust a Christian genocide of the Jews like they have made Nazi which is a political affiliation into some religious identity and conveniently forget/hide the fact that Adolf Hitler was a Roman Catholic and Germany at that time was heavily Christian country. To whitewash their sins and Christian guilt made them create the Nation State of Israel in 1948 which displayed Palestinians and now what has now become a forever war which means that it is a fight to the death.
Do you think that for the past 2000 years the way Abrahamic religions Islam and Christianity basically conquered the world destroying all pagan civilizations expect one. Now that they have conquered everything but the DNA is still the same so the purity spiraling is happening within their own countries. In Islamic Countries one can see that it quite direct but in the Christian West like all the isms which is all washed up secularized Christianity like in West too their is a ritual sacrifice happening.
Like now I am like all the homogenization of the world makes sense to me because according to their own books there can only be One God,One Religion,One Law(Magna Carter),One Science(Only one of discovery),One Constitution(Only one of governance),Universalism and White Man Burden converted into Human Rights.
Do you think it will ever end?? Or do you think the 3 desert cults will always be at each other’s throat till only one survives.
@ Achille,
I have similar underlying concerns about the future. I have a large family and my children are all too small to really make it on their own. Part of my own thoughts on being a parent and raising children in this incredibly unpredictable and unanchored future is that I need to accept first, the fact that I am going to die, second, that the world that my children inhabit will likely be a harsher, rougher, and generally more challenging world than I have inhabited and finally, The best that I can do to prepare them is provide them with the knowledge and tools to manage a wide range of situations. Will I be able to equip with with the knowledge and skills to deal with everything? No. But the resulting struggle is what will help define them as people. Or it will break them. In the end, I accept responsibility for building them up individually and as the nucleus of a future clan while also accepting that their fate and circumstance (as well as mine) is not completely within my control. We try to remember that we are NOT raising children. We are raising future adults and adults need to be able to deal with the world on their own terms.
So, I suppose what I’m saying is that you shouldn’t waste too much time today thinking about the future, make sure you’re doing your best to pass on the knowledge, skills, social connections etc that you can now and accept the fact that sooner or later everyone who depends upon you is going to be thrown on their own merits. The most powerful thing that you can do is give them your energy and effort now in life to prepare them for that now.
@ Siliconguy
I missed the prior discussion but I had to laugh a little when I saw this. I happen to be, I suppose, a small farmer on less than two hectares in Washington. Our family of six definitely gets more than %20 of our food from non-commercial household food activities. I would swag it at about 30% from our own personal efforts and small farm and another 40% that is sourced from local small scale (but not less than two hectares) other producers. We do sell some of our excess in the form of beef, which is definitely not “cheap” but if you worked out the actual dollar value of our hourly farm labor., I’d swag that somewhere in the neighborhood of less than half of minimum wage and only having reached that point of great efficiency via years of skill and infrastructure building.
I don’t see the world population increasing much, if at all, from where it is now. But I also expect that a good deal of the coming sharp drop in population across our species will be driven by the massively falling production rates temporarily driven so high by the green revolution and that famine may be a common element of the global future until we’ve shaved off 95% or so of the populace. I also expect that at some points in this future their will be multiple hard switches during more local and regional destabilization that will push people into small scale agriculture. I expect that the learning curve is going to get STEEP. This learning curve at different points may well end up being the proximate driver of some more local/regional population bottlenecks. I think a lot of it will depend on how slowly or quickly the rising tide of the green revolution recedes.
Collapse now and avoid the rush!
HV
From the last post…
“I’ve begun considering a future book on how alternative spirituality can be used by writers (since I’ve been doing that for years, of course), and Lynch might be worth including.”
If you do, check out his book “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity” … very good. It’s something I come back to.
You mentioned in your last post leaving the tunnels for the field… this is something I had a dream about a few months back, a book of my writings called “Fieldifications” … Lynch talks about the creative field of consciousness and tapping into the field for ideas, and that things that might not seem connected can be connected through the field (as in his most mind boggling feature film, Inland Empire). The post-Chaos mage Aidan Wachter uses the metaphor of the field in his writings on magic that I recently read…
Also, since you don’t watch the films, he worked with novelist Barry Gifford on two of his movies. “Wild at Heart” Lynch adapted from the short novel of the same name. Gifford wrote a bunch of them with those charachters, compiled in the Sailor & Lula anthology. It’s really good, as far as my tastes go. It’s like a surrealist take on Southern Gothic literature, with a bit of Santeria thrown in to one of them for good measure. Gifford also co-wrote “Lost Highway.” –Gifford’s fiction, I like rather much.
Here is my fave Gifford quote from the books used slightly differently in the film.
“Lula always used to say the world is wild at heart and weird on top, and sometimes its tough stayin’ out of the weirdness. Kinda like a tornado, you never know where it’ll set down or what’ll be left in place after it blows through.”
As for your proposed book, please do. I’ve printed out for my own use, various bits of writing advice you’ve given over the years. Thank you for all of it… it has been a lot more helpful to me actually getting published and things finished than most of the writing advice books I’ve looked through from the library.
Another thing that Lynch had in common with the surrealists: he used a lot of imagery directly from his dreams. This is something I do as well, and a good habit I think for creative people of any stripe. Sometimes really good stuff comes through.
@Phutatorius: Angelo Badalamenti made Twin Peaks come alive with his soundtracks and work throughout. Love the show, of course. The world of Twin Peaks is a dark world, but its one I feel drawn back to again and again, because it is so mysterious and alluring.
Merry Christmas and a joyful New Year to everyone!
Kimberly, I notice that he has a video titled “The Hidden Dangers of Banishing: when magick [sic] suppresses emotion.” So, he identifies goetic demons with the Shadow, teaches integration of said Shadow, and warns people not to banish. That should end well…
I didn’t see this particular post (at the European Conservative) until it was too late to add it to last week’s discussion of Cognitive Collapse.
Talk about feminists completely missing the point! Saying that we shouldn’t stigmatize female genital mutilation because it’s correct for those cultures? Little girls who get no say in what’s done to them. It’s quite awful.
Anyway, here’s the link if you want to read further: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/the-moral-cowardice-of-defending-female-genital-mutilation/
JMG, re the new movie “David”, I found this review hilarious and extremely telling, especially the hysterical insistence that the movie is “an evil, manipulative piece of media that manages to alienate every demographic…Angel Studios has produced a genuinely evil film”:
https://fandomwire.com/david-review-angel-studios/
Merry Christmas to the Ecosophia commentariat! In the spirit of the season (and with a nod to Dickens), I’ve written a 3 part Canadian twist on A Christmas Carol called “A Carbon Carol: The Ghost of Energy Past”—a satirical look at the energy extraction empire and its ghosts. If you’re in the mood for some holiday reading with peak oil vibes, check it out here: https://thegreatcanadianreset.substack.com/p/a-carbon-carol-the-ghost-of-energy
Hope it amuses!
I don’t have much to say this week, but I wanted to contribute a data point that came up last night.
My brother told me that lately, he and his friends have been lamenting the rising cost of fast food, as we were discussing the topic of food affordability. In this area, McDonalds charges roughly $10 for two burgers, and a plain bean burrito at Taco Bell is about $4. When he and my mom went out shopping last night, they encountered a Mexican woman selling tamales out of the back of her van, 6 for $10, cash only of course. Those tamales were on the dinner table in front of us.
I’m taking this as evidence that the business model for fast food, with its dependence on global supply chains, is starting to seriously collapse, and soon it simply won’t make financial sense for most people to eat at these places anymore. Along with the food truck business model which has been picking up steam for a while, we may see a resurgence of small businesses in the food industry in the coming years, which is encouraging to me.
This is, of course, just an anecdote. If others have contradictory data to share, I would be just as interested to hear about it 🙂
JMG and Jerry S @ 15 & 8, I like to watch you tube presentations about geology, science for lay persons but not too dumbed down. A favorite presenter is one Dr. Shawn Willsey, geology prof at an Idaho State U. When discussing magnetic pole reversals he said these seemed to happen fairly quickly, “a matter of a few thousand years”, which is quick in terms of geologic time, if slow when compared to flood and lava flow events. We do know that the magnetic north pole has been not stationary lately, so we may be at the beginning of a several thousand year reversal. Not going to happen in our lifetimes and no earlier one was responsible for Noah’s flood.
Dana @ 7, please allow me gently to suggest that it is not usually a good idea to be making accusations about demonic possession and the like. Some deluded person might well up and decide that you or me or anyone of us here are demons in disguise–I just know. It’s obvious, Can’t you tell? Which in turn opens the door for nefarious persons to be able to take out their real or perceived enemies with accusations of unseen wickedness.
I also think that such accusations are being resorted to be people who are heavily invested, both emotionally and financially, in the present state of affairs, and who won’t or can’t admit that institutions and activities which they themselves promoted are in fact causing the derangement, not to mention immiseration, of many of their fellows.
Beardtree # 1:
There aren’t hard evidences of what I’m going to write now, but it seems according which is known now by historical science, that early christianism was thriving with a lot of mystic and theological tendences. At least until it became the Roman Empire official religion; which implied more power centralization, the emperors “protection” and, of course, an orthodoxy which was created in the Concils (and the consequent fighting against “heresies”). Maybe some beliefs and practices could have arrived to our time, assuming they were labelled like non heretics, so “politically correct” for the orthodoxies wards. However, I’m only a “dilettante” in History of Religions, but I wish those minoritarian trends within christianism would thrive again during the Second Religiosity which awaits in the future.
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Achille # 4:
Well, I think you’ve opened a can of worms asking those problematic questions. It’s a pity they were under my radar and I didn’t ask them before.
You’ll know I’m living in Spain like you, so I’m seeing the same scenary but maybe my interpretation of “signs of times” vary from you. I can point political tension and demagogy are hotter and hotter nowadays in this country, but I can also see every end of governments cycle in Spain have been ugly and full of tension since the “happy” ‘90s (and a heck of Spectacle in the worst Debordian way). It’s true the old bipartidism is declining, so governments will be weaker and unstable, so I see problems in near future (depending of secessionist/populist parties doesn’t secure strong governments). By the way, political tension is widespread in EU countries, by disgrace. This will worsen as the real economy declines in the whole EU. I also see a steady but non stop growth in poverty and middle class decline, and more social tension thanks to reckless massive imports of migrants.
However, I think more in slow decline terms than in a fast collapse. We’ll see…
Your personal and family situation isn’t ideal, but well mine isn’t it neither. I can teach you honestly a good strategy to cope with it, I’m also trying to find one…
You’ve asked about the supposed decline of materialistic hegemony in conventional wisdom, because you’ve seen something more apparently spiritual is “invading” slowly the social tendences, even within hard scientists. Well, it could be true in near future, let’s wait to see it, because it’s not very clear IMHO. If it’s the Second Religiosity, it could gain speed in the future. It could be partly a spontaneous social tide caused by decline events, partly a social engineered move, who knows it.
To cope with desperation and fear, I think it’s useful to meditate and body activity mixed, IMHO. At least, it’s worked for me.
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The arkane # 11:
Historical analogies can help to grasp the pace of current decline, but I wouldn’t dare to make very accurate predictions of it comparing current events with older ones. Situations and circumstances are simillar but non equal. For example: nowadays technology, will accelerate or slow the decline?(history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes).
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JMG # 15:
You’re welcome too (and happy solstice in return to you and other pagans between commentariat).
I haven’t noticed that sucessful biblical animated story (“David”) because I suppose it hasn’t been released in theaters here yet, but I think as soon as it arrives to Spain it would be rutinarily despised/ignored by the usual wokeized critics. Well, John, like it usually happens in every industrialized western country, culture industry and social tendenced are dominated by leftist middle class pundits, while economy strategic zones are right wing feuds. What predictable!
***********
Sorry, I’ve written incorrectly the name of “International Criminal Court”, but you’ve guessed what I was refering with my wrong name. Well, your opinion about it is hard, but I see isn’t contrafactual: ICC legal fightings are clearly biased against non EU friendly countries. So history won’t be friendly with this institution (I guess wether future history great academics will live in China or India in the long term).
JMG, do you have any thoughts to offer toward a ‘report card’ for the first year of Trump’s second term? Is he living up to your hopes, dashing your expectations, running madly off in unexpected directions?
JMG: “a retrospective analysis of that conjunction and then following with a prospective analysis of the one to come”
594BC… Quite a while then. Very much looking forward to those!
Re cognitive collapse did you see this one: https://postimg.cc/Vr51GGm9
Siliconguy, re: who feeds the world:
Limiting it to two hectares excludes almost all the small farmers I know, including me. And the ones it doesn’t exclude are located in or near cities/towns and produce primarily specialty crops of high monetary value but relatively negligible caloric value (salad greens, gourmet mushrooms, etc). Seems silly. Well, actually, seems like the authors of the critiqued papers have an agenda. Quelle surprise. I don’t doubt that the situation regarding farm size is different in historically more populous countries with a peasant class, but still.
As (I think) Joel Salatin once said, they used to say, “I’ll believe it when I see it” about successful small and ecological farmers, but now they ought to be saying “I’ll see it once I believe it.” If I had a dollar for every time an “expert” told me that I can’t do what I am doing and that it doesn’t produce what it does produce, I could buy another farm. That’s not to say I couldn’t make more in the city–I have college classmates making a literal order of magnitude more than what I make here–but I wouldn’t trade lives with them for an order of magnitude more than that. I also wouldn’t trade lives with a Tyson chicken farmer for the same amount, though!
Also, we do easily get more than 20% of food (by calorie and weight) from non-commercial food activities such as hunting, fishing, gathering, and gardening, although these activities do benefit from crossover with our commercial growing in ways that are hard to fully separate out.
JMG and commentariat: I’d just like to take the opportunity this Christmas Eve open post to say thank you.
Almost everywhere else that I interact, even as a silent observer, online these days is increasingly hostile and quite frankly insane. I have very little use for the modern “left” but I do like a couple of their (former) positions, but where can I say such a thing without getting pigpiled? Well, here. And as for the “right” these days – the increase in open so-called Christian Nationalism and related sentiments has become very concerning, to say nothing stronger.
But here, there are pleasant conversations, even about unpleasant topics. There are smart people exchanging ideas and sometimes very good information. Y’all have made me a better gardener, among other things! It’s hard to overstate how great it is these days to have such a place. (Though I may be getting close to bloviation at this point.)
So JMG, many thanks for providing and moderating this place. You provide an example I will follow if and when I get my Dreamwidth journal going. And you do indeed have the best commentariat on the Net.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and Happy New Year.
A normally pretty establishment but informative about obscure subjects commentator appears to have gotten a clue about what’s happening with Gen Z and the conservatism seen there, and why Trump etc is actually happening. Or his screenwriter did, but an interesting development for sure:
For those who watch videos – but it’s mostly talking head so can be listened to just fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBQWJtuzx5o
Check out my interview with John Michael Greer, where we discussed various aspects of culture through the unfolding decline of industrial civilisation.
The show interviews green wizard amateur plant breeders, cultural experimenters and deep thinkers on the challenge of our time so sign up for future episodes or check out the back catalog from the previous year of interviews.
https://youtu.be/6JRtXRV9kVI?si=DurG3kPVS9LAl519
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/recombination-nation/id1777033551?i=1000739527141
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Ipkig3QECI6wgSjRBAEbL?si=7a5f286933fa4955
NOT FOR POSTING
unless you’re sure it meets fair use or out of copyright standards.
And trim as you see fit.
AFAIK it IS out of copyright published 1920; Cupid in Africa by P C Wren.
I got a tech savvy friend to find a pdf and down load this masterly page.
Hi JMG,
Some years ago you bemoaned the lack of creative invective and the glut of dreary four letter insults, and invited the commentariat to try their hand. IIRC no-one tree (certainly I didn’t) so when I recently found this.
May all enjoy some Christmas cheer
From Cupid in Africa by P C Wren
P C Wren was a writer of adventure fiction , mostly about improbably noble white aristocrats sweating in hot colonial misery surrounded by the nonwhite, ignoble and plebeian for impossibly noble reasons
The scene; a dockside Naval store in an African port (WW1)
The Captain comes in demands to know if the car has been telephoned for; “No, Sir” replies the Petty Officer.
then ….
“You blundering bullock,” quoth he; “you whimpering weasel; you bleating blup; you miserable dog-potter; you horny-eyed, bleary-nosed, bat-eared, lop-sided, longshore loafer; you perishing shrimp-peddler; you Young Helper; you Mother’s Little Pet; you dear Ministering Child; you blistering bug-house body-snatcher; you bloated bumboat-woman; you hopping hermaphrodite—what d’ye mean by it? Eh? . . . What d’ye mean by it, you anæmic Aggie; you ape-faced anthropoid; you adenoid; you blood-stained buzzard; you abject abortion; you abstainer; you sickly, one-lunged, half-baked, under-fed alligator; you scrofulous scorbutic; you peripatetic pimple; you perambulating pimp-faced poodle; what about it? Eh? What about it?”
Mr. William Hankey stood silent and motionless, but in his face was the expression of one who, with critical approval, listens and enjoys. Such a look may be seen upon the face of a musician the while he listens to the performance of a greater musician.
Having taken breath, the Captain continued: “What have you got to say for yourself, you frig-faced farthing freak, you? Nothing! You purple poultice-puncher; you hopeless, helpless, herring-gutted hound; you dropsical drink-water; you drunken, drivelling dope-dodger; you mouldy, mossy-toothed, mealy-mouthed maggot; you squinny-faced, squittering, squint-eyed squab, you—what have you got to say for yourself? Eh? . . . Answer me, you mole; you mump; you measle; you knob; you nit; you noun; you part; you piece; you portion; you bald-headed, slab-sided, jelly-bellied jumble; you mistake; you accident; you imperial stinker; you poor, pale pudding; you populous, pork-faced parrot—why don’t you speak, you doddering, dumb-eared, deaf-mouthed dust-hole; you jabbering, jawing, jumping Jezebel, why don’t you answer me? Eh? D’ye hear me, you fighting gold-fish; you whistling water-rat; you Leaning Tower of Pisa-pudding; you beer-belching ration-robber; you pink-eyed, perishing pension-cheater; you flat-footed, frog-faced fragment; you trumpeting tripe-hound? Hold your tongue and listen to me, you barge-bottom barnacle; you nestling gin-lapper; you barmaid-biting bun-bolter; you tuberculous tub; you mouldy manure-merchant; you moulting mop-chewer; you kagging, corybantic cockroach; you lollipop-looting lighterman; you naval know-all. Why didn’t you telephone for the car?”
“’Cos it were ’ere all the time, sir,” replied Mr. William Hankey, perceiving that his superior officer had run down and required rest.
“That’s all right, then,” replied Captain Sir Thaddeus Bellingham ffinch Beffroye pleasantly, and strode to the door. There he turned, and again addressed Mr. Hankey.
“Why couldn’t you say so, instead of chattering and jabbering and mouthing and mopping and mowing and yapping and yiyiking for an hour, Mr. Woozy, Woolly-witted, Wandering William Hankey?” he enquired.
The large red man looked penitent.
“Hankey,” the officer added, “you are a land-lubber. You are a pier-head yachtsman. You are a beach pleasure-boat pilot. You are a canal bargee.”
Mr. Hankey looked hurt, touché, broken.
“Oh, sir!” said he, stricken at last.
“William Hankey, you are a volunteer,” continued his remorseless judge.
Mr. Hankey fell heavily into his chair, and fetched a deep groan.
“William Hankey-Pankey—you are a conscientious objector,” said the Captain in a quiet, cold and cruel voice.
A little gasping cry escaped Mr. Hankey. He closed his eyes, swayed a moment, and then dropped fainting on the table, the which his large red head smote with a dull and heavy thud, as the heartless officer strode away.
@BeardTree,
Chrisitanity is at heart a relationship between humans and God. On both collective and individual levels. There needs to be that personal aspect. It’s vital. Without that, there isn’t much point in all the singing, and ritual, and buildings and the like.
In terms of ‘religious experiences and manifestations’, I haven’t experienced speaking in tongues, but I have heard a voice, and seen things that weren’t literally there. More often than internal sight or hearing its a feeling of presence and emotion. And conversations between different parts of myself/imaginary/non-imaginary conversations? I’m not 100% sure what’s going on. But something is.
John, looking with a malevolous view how Putin case was processed so fast for his supposed Russian war crimes, I could guess if ICC and UE/NATO wanted to repeat the WW2 narrative, identifying Putin and the other Russians with Hitler and Nazis. This rehashed narrative would end eventually in Putin processing as war criminal (with ICC like modern Nuremberg court). The problem is Putin hasn’t been defeated yet, and he’s not as stupid as to travel to western countries or their de facto protectorates.
By the way, the epic WW2 narrative has to ignore the authoritarian tendence in Kiev (even allowing openly Nazis groups in the Ukrainian army cough cough).
Glad Yule, blessed Alban Arthuan, and Merry Christmas to all who are marking the season!
@ Kimberly:
It tickles me that the title of that guy’s video is “Healing the Inner Child with Demonic Power.” Seriously? Healing the inner child? Brother, if you’re dumb enough to play around with goetia, at the very least try and do something vaguely cool and dark-lord-ish, like total world domination or something that a well-trained psychotherapist probably can’t help you achieve.
Also, regarding the poverty line article, the “basic” budget in that article seems ludicrously expensive to me.
Quote:
“I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the “Participation Tickets” required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024.
Using conservative, national-average data:
Childcare: $32,773
Housing: $23,267
Food: $14,717
Transportation: $14,828
Healthcare: $10,567
Other essentials: $21,857
Required net income: $118,009
Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500.”
Are people really spending this? More than a thousand dollars a month on transportation? Nearly as much on healthcare? Almost an entire median household income in our county on childcare? Does this sound right to y’all? We are a family of four, and these numbers seem insane to me.
@Siliconguy,
I’m not at 20%, nowhere near, but I might be 8% in a good year, 2% in a bad one. And I’m a renter gardening in her landlady’s backyard and wildcrafting some berries who won’t be showing up in anybody’s small farmer statistics.
I’m also doing a lot of cooking from scratch with cheap ingredients, which combined with a bit of growing my own means I have a food bill a fraction of the average in my country.
Yeats and the occult are in the zeitgeist
https://daily.jstor.org/yeats-and-the-occult-imagination/
Boysmom # 19:
I’ve read with quite interest your answer to Achille questions, but I’ve found more interesting too your own questions to him (and myself and maybe others here). Living with elders and disabled people during the Long Descent won’t be easy, but at least is a LONG Descent, so it wouldn’t be such traumatic as a fast collapse.
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Arnav J. # 20:
Hitler was (nominally) a Catholic, yes. He was also a vegetarian and he liked dogs. So vegans/vegetarians and pet lovers could be responsible for Holocaust, too. Bright…
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Teresa P. # 25:
Some postmodern feminists don’t get angry about female genital mutilation because it’s an atrocity not commited in the hated western culture, so it should be respected.
By the way, no feminist from every tendence worries about male (babies and children) genital mutilation, because the circumcidated victims are always boys…
Will, since I lack a large telescope and so can’t check for myself, I’ve turned an occasional glance on the internet gabblefest but have drawn no conclusions.
Slithy, it would be just too funny if physics was driven back to the aether. I wonder if aetheric effects could account for the appearance of time dilation.
Angelica, fascinating. Thanks for this! When the LLM bubble pops, in turn, RAM will likely be insanely cheap for a while.
Arnav, Hitler was raised Roman Catholic but left the church in early adulthood; his writings show that he was an Ariosophical occultist — part of a central European offshoot of Theosophy that blended their occult teachings with racism and antisemitism. When you reference “all Pagan civilizations except one,” are you referring to Japan? It’s the only polytheist society I know of that wasn’t conquered at some point by Europeans — despite which, there are quite a few thriving polytheist faiths in various parts of the world. That is to say, generally speaking, you’re presenting a very one-sided picture of the last two thousand years of religious history, and that doesn’t seem helpful to me.
Justin, thanks for the book recommendations. Synchronistically enough, one of my recent thrift store runs netted me a book on using the Cabala for writing.
Teresa, and a blessed solstice season to you and yours!
Sister Crow (if I may), of course he does. Demonolaters hate banishing rituals almost as much as demons do.
Teresa, I’ve been saying for a long time that a significant number of radical woke feminists are going to end up converting to some conservative sect of Islam. This is a big step in that direction.
Sister Crow, too funny. Somehow “alienat(ing) every demographic” isn’t keeping David from raking in serious bucks at the box office.
Ludovic, thanks for this! I’ve bookmarked it for reading this evening, as Santa (that transparent metaphor for the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom) takes his annual trip through the skies.
Untitled-1, thanks for this! Yeah, food trucks and other little independent venues are the wave of the future, once it stops being viable to support legions of corporate flacks in office buildings on the proceeds of (formerly) cheap lunches.
Mary, thanks for this. The north magnetic pole has never been stationary, but it’s certainly starting to wobble more than usua, and there are weird magnetic anomalies popping up, most famously in the south Atlantic. Yeah, we could be in for it over the next two thousand years or so. 😉
Chuaquin, it’s the same here, of course, but the pundits are increasingly being ignored by most of the population.
Dylan, he’s behaved about the way I expected, maintaining a rough balance between those elements of the existing elite he has to placate and his followers, who are by and large much more radical than he is. He’s done more than I expected in some fields — laying off around 10% of the federal bureaucracy is a real achievement — and less in some others, but all in all, it’s about as expected.
Earthworm, ha! That’s a keeper:
Jeff, you’re welcome and thank you!
Pygmycory, well, that’s definitely a step in the right direction.
Mark, as far as I can tell it’s wholly out of copyright, and this quote is arguably fair use anyway. Thank you!
Chuaquin, the problem with our current ruling classes is that they’re under the delusion that once they decide what narrative they want to playact, the rest of the universe has to conform to it. It never entered their heads that to 130 million Russians, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin among them, the World War II narrative runs the other way, NATO is the Nazis, and they are the gallant Soviet heroes destined to steamroller their way, slowly but remorselessly, right into Berlin. (Or Kiev, as the case may be.)
Jennifer, like so much of what comes out of the media on this subject nowadays, they’re trying to pretend that the average person is a member of the upper middle classes. Balderdash, of course, but common or garden variety balderdash.
Joel, delighted to see it. Thanks for this!
Re: David: I read a synopsis on the film and it apparently covers the material of First Samuel, which has some of the most entertaining* stories of the Bible (though I think David becomes more sympathetic in 2 Samuel dealing with betrayal from his allies and even family.
*However, I think the historical David was a traitor who served King Achish of Gath to seize Saul’s throne and the narrative is largely royal apologetics to whitewash him.
So I am starting, very rudimentary steps, (yes, I know, probably problematic…timing late), of planning escape from the bowl of death (unsustainable). I don’t know when my obligation here will come to an end, but I’m seeing it on the horizon (still years). My thinking is semi-rural US or semi-rural western Europe. I’m interested not necessarily real suggestions but instead you’re thinking in general since. I am disabled, an academic, MS Env. Studies, former EMT, ex- military, retirement age (early 60s) I am a caretaker, and work in education. I’m looking to retire. I should note here I have read Dark age America, the eco-technic future, and decline and fall. Any thoughts? :/
JMG,
I don’t often read mainstream media, and almost never about other people’s budgets, so those numbers took me by surprise! I do wonder how much of the rained-on feeling I note amongst younger generations (I am an “elder millennial” apparently) comes from being fed such lies about what is needed merely to subsist. They have gotten a genuinely raw deal in some regards, I acknowledge, but I often encounter what seems like outrageous entitlement, not merely to the necessities of life, or even “bread and roses,” but to ridiculously high standards of living without having to do anything particularly difficult or unpleasant to achieve them. Often accompanied by vaguely socialist sentiments about how awful and exploitative it is that their bosses or the government refuse to keep them in the manner to which they’d like to become accustomed. I have no love of the government nor of soul-killing jobs, but I have been somewhat baffled by the lack of acknowledgement that people do have to actually work reasonably hard to create things worth having, combined with the conviction that it’s insulting to expect them to subsist on a mere $80,000-$115,000 per year. But of course if they think that is merely scraping by and everyone else has had it easier, they’d likely feel resentful.
Re: the David review: I just read it and was slightly boggled by how hysterical it sounded. Also by the fact that it couldn’t find a single thing to say that wasn’t ‘BAD BAD BAD EVIL BAD!!!’ about any aspect of the film. So one-sided it’s completely unbelievable and rather funny in a ‘this is a parody of a biased review’ sort of way , and makes me wonder what the film in question is actually like.
I’ve not seen it, nor heard of it before it was mentioned on this site. Has anyone here seen it, and what is it actually like, beyond being able to make that reviewer start frothing at the mouth level hysterical? Any good?
For the other Canadians here: I keep hearing about this religious revival elsewhere. Are any of you seeing it locally? I’m really not. I don’t think it’s gone back up even to prepandemic levels in my area.
@untitled #28: We rarely buy ready-made food, but I have noticed a similar trend when buying ingredients. Produce at the local supermarket is both expensive and not very fresh – not too surprising, since three chains have an oligopoly on local supermarkets in Quebec. I had resigned myself to this state of affairs, but we moved to a neighborhood with many Iranian, Korean and North African families, and so I have started buying at their grocery stores. Salad at the Korean store is almost half the price and usually much fresher than in the standard Canadian supermarket. Similar (if not quite as extreme) for other vegetables, fruit and meat.
To me, this indicates that the economy of scale in the big chains doesn’t compensate anymore for their bloated administrative structures. A store run by a family can get rid of most of the administrative overhead. Probably some of the taxable job benefits, too… I would prefer to buy at a place with good worker benefits and little bloat, but that option is not available here.
@JPM: I liked season 1 of Twin Peaks. I just tolerated the abortive season 2. (I only watched these on DVD long after they played on TV and long after they were “a phenomena.”) The 25 year thing between season 2 and season 3 is downright uncanny. I read a few reviews of season 3 and have not been able to decide whether I want to subject myself to it. It looks like it’s available on DVD at the river. Long ago, in the 1970s, I subjected myself to some material that I’m sorry I watched; certain images stay with you for a long time. One review on “the river” says season 3 is sure to give you bad dreams. I don’t doubt it. There was another writer, Mark Frost, who co-wrote Twin Peaks. We talk a lot about Lynch and his creative methods, but not much about Mark Frost. I’m curious. Blue Velvet was way over the top; I had trouble getting through it, but after I managed to watch it all the way through I began to appreciated — until it became one of my all time favorites. “Mulholland Drive” made sense once I read some useful interpretations, that are no doubt very near the mark. Angelo Badalamente’s musical scores are a big plus, and his cameo roll in Muholland Drive was highly amusing. The perfect espresso is soooo hard to find. 🙂
Might you consider finding inspiration as a topic for a post or several? A few years back, my failed attempt to write a module for your RPG begat several deindustrial short stories, two of which sold. (The module refuses to be written, btw. Every time I try, it runs over to my setting where the only enemy met is ourselves.) Unfortunately, my setting was based on the sum of my experiences in the Rust Belt and the logical extension of FDR’s regime into an urban / rural sitzkrieg, resource depletion and continuations of current weather and climate trends. And just when I was finally drawing the blueprints for a novel… the US got a new regime… leaving me with just another YA detective story set in the past’s future.
And, no, I don’t expect the new regime to “fail” in the manner of either leftist daydreams or doomer fever dreams. The glut of YA climate change sci-fi is instructive, I think. Is there any chance of a lecture for Ecosophians on how to survey the ever-shifting landscape of the political economy?
Speaking of the future – Out here in Flyover Country, the second religiosity is most definitely moving and showing signs of increasing speed. Yard displays and store offerings suggest a loss of interest in Greedmas, while Solstice stargazing parties are becoming a popular family activity. On the other hand, I work for a company where having a freak flag to fly is convenient, so I’m out as a Druid. This year, I’m finally getting traction as a clergybeing. I’ve gotten requests for thoughts and prayers, gifts of clothing and even one of those sausage and cheese sampler boxes with the words, “for Solstice.” Similar reports from other Druids are trickling in. Given our past role of warlords’ wizards and troubleshooters for the peasants, how do we find and define our new role between and among the new laptop class and the everybody else class? (Boy Scout leader was the first idea on my list, btw.)
Hello JMG,
When I say expect one I am talking about India/Bharat/Hindustan yes they carved out Pakistan and Bangladesh but still 80% of India is still Hindu which is like there are full efforts being made to convert us. And about Hitler and Nazi Germany like yes the Aryan pure race stuff was the main motivating factor but again didn’t Christians conduct pogroms against Jews for 1000 years before Holocaust. Japan has Zen Buddhism which they inherited from China and Buddhism was adopted from India. My main point before was that will this ever end the constant fight between the three as per their own books??
I want to join in and wish each of the commentariat a Blessed Solstice Season, Happy Holidays, and a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it. I am glad to still be around, to share this little hub of sanity with all of you, and to partake in the community. And to our host, JMG, may you be blessed and receive joy and success, for you have been a voice for Good in all these years!
Hi JMG,
Thanks for another year of hosting this blog, which is an island of sanity in an increasingly crazy world. Your writings and the many excellent comments from all the commentariat have been very helpful to me. Thank you!
I listened to the audiobook version of the Ceremony of the Grail recently, and the narrator was terrific. Loved it. The commentary on Well at the Worlds End set up a very hard-hitting take on Frodo as the Fisher King. Wham!
I haven’t had a chance to comment for a few weeks, so I also wanted to say thanks for the discussion of Gregory Bateson recently. I had been struggling with an aspect of my personal life that I thought was entirely my fault and I suddenly realized the key to the whole problem was a double bind-type interaction with a family member. It was a relief to sort that out.
Also, I suspect the following is due to the meditation and spiritual practice I have been doing, but I am having trouble finding fiction that holds my attention. The science fiction and fantasy I used to love doesn’t work any more. I’m hungry for stories of individuation but can’t seem to find them. The Razor’s Edge and the Herman Hesse novels scratch the itch. I would be grateful for any suggestions by you or any other readers here.
Best wishes to you and all for a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2026!
This is the fixed version of my earlier comment.
Ice-age and mesolithic archaeology has fascinated me since I first heard of Göbekli Tepe. It is plausible that most human traces older than about 8000 years are now submerged under the rising seas, but underwater archaeology has been slow to catch up with terrestrial excavations. Very recently, a fascinating discovery from Bretagne was published (open access here). Walls too long, too high, too strong and too complex to be fish weirs were built between 5800 and 5300 BCE bridging a bay in the coastline as it existed at the time. They are so well built that they are still mostly intact in about 9 m depth, in spite of the immense local tidal currents. The authors cautiously suggest these were “protective structures”. I take that to mean that the mesolithic inhabitants of the coast constructed a harbour to protect their ships from that frightful tides. Of course, nothing at all excludes the possibility that structures just as or even more complex lie at much deeper ancient coastlines (at the Last Glacial Maximum it lay > 100 m lower, too deep for the LIDAR scans that identified these walls).
This prompted me to investigate a bit more, and I found a study from 2015 about a 12 m long monolith lying on a shallow bank between Sicily and Africa. The authors conclude it was constructed at the latest ~7350 BCE, when this was the coastline, and speak of “mesolithic activity”, but what they leave implicit is that it could have been constructed at any prior point in time, contemporaneous to or earlier than Göbekli Tepe.
Here’s to hoping that more such finds will be made before the funds for archaeology run out (and the sea level rises further).
@ JMG and Jennifer K
With regards to Michael Green’s viral article on substack. Before just reading a news clip about it or knee-jerk writing it off as the powers-that-be throwing senseless numbers around, I’d gently suggest you give his original article a read. It is on his substack and paywalled but you can read through most of the article without paying.
The link is: https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie
Green was arguing about how ridiculously out of touch the “poverty line” is as a metric and he started digging at the metric a bit and breaking down it’s pedigree and what it would mean to calculate it today in its original terms. Along with this he was emphasizing the very real; “valley of death” as he referred to it, basically the benefits cliff experienced by lower middle class earners that punishes their abilities to improve their lot.
Really, he was just pointing out that the middle class life of the 1950s is completely out of reach for on one income for that vast majority of people and perhaps suggesting that gaslighting them about it while telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps might not be the solution.
The number that he arrived at was based off of a fairly expensive county in New Jersey. His choice of this county wasn’t arbitrary, it was because he was using it for prior article and went with that data. In his follow up article where he discusses his surprise at it going viral he states that he wasn’t trying to define a new American poverty line but to make a point. He recalculated it based off of the median American county and it came out to something like $90k/yr.
Jennifer, with regards to my personal experience of that budget, I have to say it has very little similarity to our budget of a year ago when I was still employed full time with two adults, one and a half incomes, and four young kids. I live in what is likely a well above median cost county in a rural area (the boomer retirees are gentrifying everything except wages). Our childcare cost was $0 but then, childcare was almost solely the responsibility of myself and my wife which is overwhelming when you also are both working and homeschooling and maintaining a home farm. Our housing cost, if we include our mortgage, utility bills, taxes etc exceeded the cost in that estimate and that is considering that we got what is an absolutely screaming deal on our property. Our neighbors, two adults, two kids, average working family next door to us, pay right around $33600 for rent alone on their house plus electricity and garbage. Their house is a decent 90s era maybe 1600 sq ft. We produce a significant amount of our food, including almost all our meat, ourselves and get a lot of the rest of it locally, some through trade. We do spend on better quality stuff though in terms of things we buy. To balance that though, we don’t eat out pretty much ever. Our food costs are probably somewhere in line with what is there solely because we produce a lot of it ourselves and don’t eat out. Our transportation costs probably run around $6k a year but our vehicles are all old. Our costs are fuel, maintenance (significant), and all the various fees associated from the state. As for healthcare, our spending was probably around $1500/yr paid out of pocket although that balloons with each childbirth. Our last one cost us around $6k for a homebirth with almost none of the pregnancy related doctor visits etc. the lion’s share went to the midwife.
I will point out that I left my job and am no longer bothering to work since that time. Our income has dropped a good bit but also, the benefits thing was completely true for us. I don’t have much interest in collecting government benefits but I now have health insurance.. Damn good health insurance too. Now, I don’t go to the doctor or really have anything to do with the established medical community and health insurance won’t change that, but it does provide me with protection from medical bankruptcy if end up run over by a truck or something. This is the first time in many years that I have had health insurance. What changed? I’m no longer a member of the “gainfully employed”. That is exactly the valley of death that Michael Green is talking about.
The county I live in is probably closer to that NJ county that he used in the original article. Are people here who make less than $136k living in poverty? Maybe not quite, but I can say that my wife and I together were making nigh on $100k a year and we live (and have lived) for years in a house with no flooring. We walk around on the sub-floor. I even have all the tools and technical knowledge to put flooring into our house. We can’t afford to. Are we in poverty? I don’t think the question really matters much at this point because measuring everything in income rather than quality of life is becoming far less meaningful, at least for me.
HV
Patrick, no doubt there’s a lot of spin doctoring in the Bible. It’s intriguing to compare the situation of the early kingdom of Israel with that of Celtic kingdoms in northwestern Europe, which had similarly tangled relationships with their French and Anglo-Norman neighbors.
Alatar, since you’re disabled, you’ll want to make sure you’re in a community large enough that you can exchange the work you can do for the services you need. There are plenty of small cities and large towns in the US tht might be very well suited to that. I’d be wary of Europe unless you’re happy with the prospect of war.
Jennifer, I know. The corporate media has labored long and hard to encourage that state of entitlement. It’ll be interesting to see how well it survives the next serious recession.
Rhydlyd, I’ll consider it. As for being “out” as a Druid, it’s remarkable how readily Druidry is accepted by everyone except (a) the really extreme Christian dogmatists and (b) the really extreme scientific materalists. Being Druids, no two of us will define ourselves in exactly the same way, but being ourselves — with all the freakish eccentricity that typically involves — is normally the best bet.
Arnav, I see you’ve never heard of Shinto, Japan’s indigenous polytheist religion, which most Japanese practice. A little more research into such things might be wise before you start making sweeping historical assumptions.
CR, thank you!
Samurai_47, thank you also. I know what you mean about fiction — most current novels bore the bejesus out of me. Books by dead people generally help — recently I’ve been enjoying Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which ought to keep me busy for a while.
Aldarion, fascinating. I’ve been hearing murmurs for a while now about ruins found well below the ocean in various parts of the world. We may be nearing a major inflection point in our understanding of the past.
Hi John Michael,
A happy solstice season to you, and that despite your quiet sorrow, you can find the time to enjoy a good book and a dark ale. What are you reading at the moment?
My brain has been a touch over stimulated during the past six months to a year, with all sorts of strange turn of events, and can only hope that next year is smoother, maybe. One can hope anyway. Oh, stop digressing and get to the point. For comfort, I’m reading the Jack Vance book: Clarges. A very thoughtful tale upon a once vibrant, but under pressure, civilisation in terminal decline. Fun fact: It was originally titled: To Live Forever. As a personal note, I’d not want to aim for that goal on the basis that it wouldn’t take too many decades to become stale. 🙂
Out of sheer curiosity, and I realise that you’re not interested in vehicles, yet I note that there are moves from your leader to introduce the concept of smaller vehicles for US roads, but I’m kind of flabbergasted by the behemoths manufactured in your country, so was wondering whether you’re seeing any signs of increased prices for energy in your country? Certainly they’re on the up here, and I’ve a love of the Kei car concept (and own Suzuki’s for that reason. Cheap to buy, run and maintain.
PS: From all that you’ve said over the years, it’s probably good for the rest of us if you avoid getting behind the wheel.
PPS: I’m reminded of the old dad joke, it being the silly season: Imagine a person in a job interview who’s asked if they can perform ‘under pressure’. The answer is: ‘No, but I can do a pretty decent Bohemian Rhapsody!’… I now retire from the field and hope the groaner produced a smile!
Cheers
Chris
Regarding last weeks topic, cognitive collapse:
Michael Nehls have written a book about what he believes is the reason for this, called The indoctrinated brain. The very short of it is that people are being indoctrinated by keeping them in a permanent state of emergency, amongst other things by propaganda. Also the gene-therapy is mentioned.
There is a review of his book on his substack https://michaelnehls.substack.com/p/a-great-mental-reset
He also has done interesting work on alzheimers, which can also be found on his substack.
@JMG
Re: Demonlatrists
So does a demonlatrist who attempts the SoP or LBRP feel some discomfort, despite their banishing ritual probably being fairly weak compared to the experienced practictioner’s?
@ Teresa P #25
“…we shouldn’t stigmatize [male] genital mutilation because it’s correct for [Abrahamic] cultures [and religions]? Little [boys] who get no say in what’s done to them. It’s quite awful…”
I couldn’t agree with you more!
…of course, there is the matter of comparing “motes” to “planks” and all that… 🙂
PS – of course I do agree absolutely about female genital mutilation… but, if we are to be consistent, it would be good to support the idea of every child getting to keep all the bits God has given them, at least until they reach the age of majority, at which point they will be capable of consenting to their removal, should they wish.
I just wanted to vent briefly on a major annoyance I just ran into today.
After several years of not gardening much, I’m ready to try an actual garden this year. I went to request the usual catalogs I like. Out of ten catalogs, five don’t do paper catalogs any more! Some of my very favorite suppliers are now online only, like Raintree Nursery.
I detest, completely detest, online catalogs- endlessly clicking in and out of things just to read a description, and our internet here absolutely sucks (we might as well be on 28k dial up, you can imagine how well that works with modern websites).
Of the five who still do paper catalogs, two the online order form was flat out not working, one requires an email to request the catalog, and one charges $$ for the catalog. So out of ten desired catalogs, only two requests were successfully submitted. Those may end up being the only two I order from.
If they all end up going online only, our crappy internet will for all practical purposes cut us off from access to garden seed suppliers. Then my only source will be the low quality stuff that shows up at local stores. No more rare heirloom varieties for me. 🙁
Samurai_47: I second JMG’s recommendation about reading books by dead people! Here’s a good starting list: https://seascs.net/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdf
If by “individuation,” you mean novels where the main character learns about himself and others and grows as a human being, that describes a lot of the books on that list. Two “books by dead people” that I’ve read recently that met that criteria were Jack London’s “The Sea Wolf” and Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations.”
“Herr Winter
Herr Winter stammt vom Kaukasus.
Er ist ein alter Mann,
hat einen Wickel um die Brust
und sieben Mäntel an.
Er hat seit tausend Jahren schon
die Gicht im linken Bein.
Drum webte man in seinen Thron
zehn Katzenfelle ein.
Zieht euch warm an.
Zieht euch warm an.
Wenn es Winter wird,
zieht euch warm an.
Sein dicker Schal aus Wolle
ist geschlungen um den Hals.
Der Nordwind ist sein Leibgardist,
der Westwind ebenfalls.
Als starke Wachen schützen ihn
der Raureif und der Frost.
Auch machte er zum Paladin
den strengen Wind aus Ost.
Zieht euch warm an…
Herr Winter ist ein armer Mann;
denn springt im warmen März
der kecke junge Lenz heran,
schleicht Angst ihm in das Herz.
Ja, die Tyrannen sind nicht froh.
Tyrannen sind verbittert.
Sie selber zittern ebenso,
wie man vor ihnen zittert.
Zieht euch warm an…”
Since winter has just started and turns out to be pretty cold in some parts of the world, I thought it would be appropriate to share the above poem and song written by the late poet and writer James Krüss. There are two versions of the song, I can highly recommend. The first is a very nice and rather slow accoustic interpretation, but if that’s to slow for you, the second is by the faux-medieval rock band “In Extremo” (both no video, just one/a few stills). My children love this powerful winter song and sing it quite often, no matter if it’s summer or winter…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPZNboEgXnQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU_kUQOL23I
Despite not being a Christian myself, the “days between the years” (don’t know if you call them like that in English) are always something special for me. A blessed Christmas to all who celebrate it and generally a blessed time to everybody!
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
HippieViking,
Alas, I cannot read the original article because I have Substack blocked. Left to my natural inclinations, I will all too readily spend all my time getting involved in long intellectual conversations and arguing with strangers on the internet rather than farming, with notably poor results, so I only allow myself access to a limited number of websites three days per week.
Thank you for contextualizing the article and for the data points regarding your budget! In my area, I’d say the $30k poverty line is about right; it’s hard to live a stable life for much less than that if you’re operating primarily in the money economy and haven’t gotten lucky by, say, inheriting a house or having grandma around for childcare. At $50k you can be quite comfortable, and at $80-120k you’ve really “made it” even with a fairly large family of 4 or 5 children.
The “valley of death” is a real thing, for sure. We are honestly frustrated that there seems to be a concerted effort to force us onto government benefits that we do not want. I had good, fairly cheap private health insurance before Obamacare, then was forced onto the (inaptly named) Marketplace at greatly increased cost when all the private health insurance vanished, then forced onto an HMO when the PPOs vanished, and then went without for years until we started trying to get pregnant (although getting insurance turned out to be pointless since we too used midwives and it covered nothing), and now they keep trying to force us to apply for Medicaid whenever we apply for Marketplace coverage (although then they inevitably deny us after a long delay and make us reapply to the Marketplace, ensuring that we have no coverage for a number of months). Ugh! If someone would just sell me a private insurance plan, I would be delighted, but the only option is now the Marketplace or a standard job with benefits.
Just wanted to express some thanks for small the lecture on Celtic languages you gave to me on Magic Monday! It’s somehow fascinating to me that Breton and Cornish are closely related to each other, but not so much to the Celtic languages of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. So far, I have been to Brittany, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland – Brittany feels like my second home and when I first came to Cornwall I instantly thought “Oh my god, this feels just like Brittany”. Ireland, despite all its beauty, felt much more distant to me – it was like visiting a very ancient great-grand parent I had never seen before, speaking a different language. Wales had an old, but much younger vibe than Ireland – but here I felt truly like an alien and strangely uncomfortable.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Jennifer,
Good on you for staying off the internet! Time spent on the home economy is time better spent. And if you’re anything like us as soon as you strike down one homestead project two more arise in its place.
Your numbers sound believable to me. A few years back I was in central Louisiana for work. In chatting with some of the locals they told me what half a million dollars could get me in terms of a house and land there, something like a decent mid-century house on 10-15 acres. I told them that half a million where I was from could get them a double wide mobile on a postage stamp.
Another point to the cost of living, we have some relatives also living in Washington. They are a family of three, two adults and one young child. One income. I know their income is right in the neighborhood of $180k a year, maybe a little more. They are trying to keep up with Joneses, fancy vacations, nice schools, new clothes, eating out etc. They also get quite a lot of help from both sides of their family financially and otherwise. They are absolutely swimming in credit card debt and pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. A few months ago at a get together the husband told me he couldn’t wait to be done with his current contractual work obligations to he could start, “making real money”. I’d say the lifestyle that couple is living is something comparable to that upper middle class lifestyle and over $180k a year is not enough to make it happen.
I’ll keep my life, thanks!
HV
Jennifer Kobernik,
The article you’re referencing is based on estimated costs in Essex County, NJ, an area the author admits is an expensive county. His figure for Lynchburg, VA, was a little over 94,000 for the same basket of expenses. Also, as the part you quote states, it’s not so much a “poverty line” as it is the amount needed to pay the cost of existing for a family of four with two earners needing two cars and two kids in childcare without help from government subsidies for food, housing, healthcare, or childcare.
With regard to the specific figures, childcare in many places is very expensive. I don’t live in Essex County, but I do live in an expensive county and my wife and I paid $14,000 (toddler) to $18,000 (infant) per year for one child at a Bright Horizons between 2007 and 2011. Even at those prices we had difficulty finding a spot for our son. I don’t know what the cost is now, but it’s probably higher with the recent inflation. As for the transportation expenses, the IRS allowance for 2025 is 70 cents per mile, which is not meant to be a figure generous to taxpayers. Transportation expenses of $14,828 equate to a little over 21,000 miles or less than 11,000 miles per car. Whether the amount is reasonable depends largely on how much the parents drive to get to work. With respect to healthcare, an unsubsidized 60/40 bronze ACA plan with a $12,200 deductible in our area costs almost $2,000 per month for two people. A two earner couple will likely have employer provided insurance, so the cost depends on the deductible and the employee’s monthly responsibility for family coverage. My experience doesn’t indicate that $10,567 annually out of pocket for a family of 4 is unreasonable even with employer provided coverage. Of course people can skip care to save money and I’m sure many people do. As for housing, I still live near the complex (nice, but by no means high-end) where I rented a one bedroom apartment in 1999 for $1,095 per month, now the same apartment rents for $2,750 per month. A 772 square foot one bedroom is tight for a family of four. There are cheaper complexes near us, but I haven’t seen anything under $2,300 per month and a two bedroom will cost significantly more. Incomes have not kept pace with the increase in rents since 1999. Overall, I think the cost of living today is absurd, and it makes it very difficult for people living in expensive areas, even with seemingly high incomes. I think these issues are a factor in the declining birthrate and were certainly a reason my wife and I had only one child.
As far as I can tell, the dogmatic religious-ists and dogmatic materialists are suffering from the same neurosis, projected shadows and massive insecurities. Calling out either group for being inattentive to their own religions (pointing out their heresies works pretty well) tends to make them at least avoid me. On the other hand, serious people take me seriously as soon as they notice I’m serious and extend the same treatment to them – a practice that took me far too long to develop, but one I wholeheartedly recommend.
Chris, thank you and likewise! My reading material right now is a series of books by American Rosicrucian mystic Corinne Heline for study, and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past for relaxation. I’ve heard some of the chatter about small cars, and about time, but gasoline prices are apparently down quite sharply here these days, though electricity is more costly in a lot of markets as the LLM fad gobbles up power. The groaner did indeed induce a smile, btw.
Chaga, thanks for this. I’ll give it a look.
Patrick, good question — you’d have to ask one.
Mother B, I concur. I’ve gotten fairly good at using internet catalogs but I don’t like them. It’s practically a ritual to spend a couple of nights in January paging through paper seed catalogs and dreaming of the summer and fall garden.
Nachtgurke, that’s really lovely! Thank you. As for Celtic languages, glad it was helpful. The Celtic languages fascinate me; I’ve dabbled in Welsh and Cornish, enough that I can pick my way through sentences with a little help.
Rhydlyd, very glad to hear this.
Hey everyone,
having just returned from a month-long trip to my native Germany (I left 3 years ago), I thought I’d share the fresh impressions: The mood is foul. A friend who lives in Berlin told me three independent stories of immigrants that he knows who have decided to return to their homeland – his Polish parents after some 40 years, an Australian neighbor after 15, and a (white) South African after about a decade or so. Most people I talked to are aware that things are bad, among the complaints are inflation (still high); a collapse in meaningful business leadership; violent youth gangs in small towns, along with a police force that doesn’t; Overall crime on the rise; fear and suspicion of the political opposite (establishment left and populist right, respectively); an absolutely universal bewilderment about the current chancellor and his government; some fear of war with Russia, although it seems the uneasiness about the governments talk re: military service is more widespread. Russophobia is common, but only reaches acute fear among the most devout newspaper readers. A noticeable proportion of society is entirely turning away from the news.
Oh, and the trains are slightly less late and disorganized than the last time I was there, but it’s still a disaster.
I’m glad I left when I did and am happy to see things unfold from a safe distance. It’s not the degree of change or the concrete situation of Germans (the economy is still much better than here in Portugal), it is the German habit that things have to be the way they’re supposed to be, and the German people’s inability to improvise in the face of bad circumstances that gives the situation its threatening undertones.
I have mentioned this before, but with the mood in Germany fresh in my mind, and as you, JMG, have just linked to your article on war in Europe, I’d like to repeat my prediction that the need to distract the populace with war, the understanding that Europe won’t stand a chance against Russia, and the built-up hype for war (in minds and factories alike) will coalesce into war between European countries.
I just heard Alexander Mercouris describe the bitterness that is arising between European leaders who try to pin the blame for the outcome of the Ukraine story on each other, and it feels to me as if all it will take is the exit of one EU member state, or the political turning of one of the bigger ones towards national self-interest, and the whole house of cards comes crashing down and we’re back to visiting each other with tanks.
The other direction the war fever might go is against the population itself, but I have my doubts that the personnel of the military would be up for that.
I’d like to hear the opinion of other European readers, on this or both of the topics I mentioned. How is the mood in your place, and what are your thoughts on war between western European countries? I know it sounds unlikely now, but we do live in interesting times.
Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, I have made the decision to try and turn my life-long hobby into a profession and have thus launched a website for my paintings. As the topics discussed here inform a lot of my outlook and thinking, I wouldn’t be surprised if they resonated with some of you. Go have a look at Eikebraselmann.com
Happy holidays!
I had a thought tonight that helps me understand the particular fallacy where someone thinks explaining something (ex: collapse) is the same as wanting that thing to happen. It comes down to how pervasive tribal my-side-vs-your-side thinking is, possibly as a result of a century of trying to repress that urge.
The thought is this: suppose you complain about someone who annoys, and I tell you, “Well, you have to understand that…” and give a list of reasons why that person’s behaviors are at least somewhat reasonable under the circumstances. Now suppose you complain about someone else who annoys you, and I readily agree. Finally, suppose that when you annoy me, I complain just like you have been. (Yes, this is based on things I’ve dealt with, and honestly I’m pretty sure I’ve been on both sides of this.)
I suspect you’d begin to get the sense that my insistence on understanding in the first case was rooted not in a general belief in the importance charity but because I’m taking the other person’s side over yours. However I presented and rationalized it, at bottom the whole thing was an exercise in orangutan social politics.
I suspect generations of trying to suppress these instincts had resulted in them quietly metastasizing to all aspects of our thinking. Tribalism is the new sex.
@JMG: If I may ask, where are you now in Proust? Are you reading it in English translation? I preferred the outer novels, numbers 1, 2, & 7. The inner novels were the most, uh, uh, sluggish. I slogged through them; especially the seemingly endless rehashes of the Dreyfus affair, which I’ve harped on here before. “The Captive” was probably the most difficult for me of them all. “How to torture yourself” might be a good alternate title.
To all:
Merry Christmas, or whatever holy days all keep, and a happy New Year for all. And remember those loved ones who have passed on before us, and be thankful for their time with us.
Cugel
Happy ROC Constitution Day! Or, for the Commies among you who don’t celebrate it, the ROC Constitution Day *Season*!
(Pity the poor Baha’is–a dozen holidays, and none of them in December!)
JMG (no. 45) ” Santa (that transparent metaphor for the hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria mushroom)”
Same as John Allegro’s Jesus, then?
Hmm–a dark-horse indy movie, outperforms the Hollywood giants. If only there were some handy religious metaphor for this…
On “Healing the Inner Child with Demonic Power,” I’m pretty sure my inner child doesn’t have any demonic power (picturing Damian Thorne here), so this wouldn’t apply to me.
JMG (no. 15) “gwik still fardled, funted, and fupped.”
Mark Mordin (no. 37) “You blundering bullock…you whimpering weasel; you bleating blup; you miserable dog-potter…”
I have always striven to avoid UN-Druidly language, but today, I finally understand what *Druidly* language sounds like.
JMG (no. 72) ” Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past for relaxation”
SPOIL:ERS! He eats a Little Debbie or something.
Hello,
Whenever I start a serious magic practice my marriage starts imploding. The first time round my husband had an emotional affair (during the height of COVID lockdowns). The second time round he has decided that our marriage is simply not a priority to him at this stage in his life and he is choosing to spend every spare second with his mum and dad (he is carrying a lot of grief about them ageing). To be fair he has never really prioritised our marriage and its always been on me to organise our entire social calendar, all celebrations etc etc.
I am not willing to let my marriage implode for the sake of our children and my vows. Is there a possibility that this is actually due to my occult practice or simply timing? If, so, what could that mean or be caused by?
Eike, thank you for this. I share your concern about Europe, of course; I can only gauge by what I see from across the ocean, but the situation looks very grim from here. I’ve bookmarked your painting site!
Slithy, you may well be right.
Phutatorius, I’m in the second part of Book 2, “Within a Budding Grove;” we’re in Mme de Villeparisis’s carriage. Yes, I’m reading it in English translation; my French is probably up to Proust but I don’t read fast enough in any language but English to get through it in this lifetime.
Cugel, thank you for this. Yes, that’s very much on my mind just now.
Ambrose, wasn’t Allegro’s Jesus a different species of mushroom? Yes, I thought that the synchronicity of David slaying the giant Hollywood was unusually good. As for Druidly language, yep. Irish bards were reputed to be able to rhyme rats to death with their scathing satires; I’m sorry to say we’re not quite up to that these days, but calling someone “you poor, pale pudding; you populous, pork-faced parrot,” et al., has its charms. I’ll have you know, by the way, that the first time I started into Proust I made a point of buying some madeleines and some linden tea bags, and began the experience the proper way!
Sam, it’s possible that your husband is uncomfortable with your practices and is punishing you for doing them; that’s unpleasantly common, albeit tacky. Does he tend to be passive-aggressive?
Chris @60, et al
Kind of like the old one where one one guy tells the other “Do you know you’re an a…. hole”, and the other replies ” No, but if you hum the tune, I’ll try to remember the words”
JMG., are you reading NABI? To your knowledge, what new elements does Heline bring to the tradition of Heindel, Steiner, and Blavatsky?
“wasn’t Allegro’s Jesus a different species of mushroom?”
Nope, same one.
JMG,
I would like to bring up a question I first brought up two or three weeks ago, unfortunately near the very end of another weekly comment thread:
What, in your opinion, is the broader social and political significance of the ongoing meteoric rise to prominence of the far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, along with the ferocious struggle to suppress him and his influence that this has elicited among prominent figures in the more “mainstream” portion of the rightward political spectrum?
Does this social phenomenon represent the incipient rise of a Hitler-like figure, and a Nazi-like movement, in the United States, as some in the more “mainstream” portions of the political right fear?
I also welcome comments by others on these matters as well.
Re: Proust
I read the Montcrieff-Enright translation about 20 years ago (mostly on the train to and from work), and loved it. A particular line in I think the last or penultimate volume really stuck with me and seemed to sum up the entire work. I won’t share it here, lest it spoil its impact, but the full work is well worth reading for what it says about life.
This is a pretty trivial question in the grand scheme of things, but I am curious if anybody has opinions to share about Orson Scott Card’s writing? I personally really liked most of his earlier books, but got increasingly annoyed with his later outright preaching and (honestly) increasingly bored with his rehash of “same characters with different names” through his different series. The characters were compelling the first few times, but there are only so many “choose your own adventure” iterations of them that are worth reading. Do writers really “run out” of ideas?
That aside, what really got me to pose this question is that I have been reading (and occasionally hearing) more about his work, and it seems that people increasingly don’t like Card’s writing because of his political and religious views (which they clearly disagree with). I find it bizarre that people can’t separate the two–or, apparently, even separate the *quality* of someone’s writing with *attitude* of person writing it. It seems eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany arguing against relativity on the ground that it was “Jewish math” (sorry for the standard Nazi reference–the relativity part jumped to my mind because of some work I am doing at the moment).
Anyway, thoughts? Opinions? (both on Card’s writing and on the way it is being judged)?
Beyond that, i
Hello John Michael,
I hope you and all the readers have had the best possible Solstice, Christmas, and everything celebrated this week.
Live from Pelican Place,
Christine Clifford
Christmas Day at 1:00am Central Time
I am writing notes.
Dana #7
> I think Nick was a demon.
If you think Nick Reiner is a demon, he probably is. Go with your intuition.
I think demons exist. Here on this blog I have gone into quite a bit of detail (what dates, I could’t say) about two significant encounters I had with a demon, one in 1990, the other in 2023.
😈In 1990, a demon entered me. It was my own massive anger and frustration that let it into me. I think it came from a house we were renting but I was susceptible. I struggled with the demon for a couple years, and finally expelled it.
😈In 2023, my mother-in-law (born 1939) came to live with my husband, “Jethro” and I, from her home in Arizona. We invited her. Big mistake. I nicknamed her “Komodo dragon” because that is how she behaved. On UTub, watch videos of Komodo dragons chasing goats, deer, or people. THAT was HER.
“Komoda” was totally different than all my experiences of her prior to her move here.
Jethro and I should have gotten a professional evaluation, ahead of time, of her physical state, but most importantly, an overview of her mental, emotional, and psychic state. The closest I can say is that something akin to the spirit of a Komodo dragon/“demon” entered her sometime between 2015 and 2023 in Arizona. She was never an “aware” person to begin with. Her inner “terribles” came out full force for seven months in close quarters. I had to dig down deep into my inner self to come out alive in any sense of the word, plus I felt I had to protect Jethro’s soul because she gunned for him most of all; because she knew him so well, he was hugely vulnerable. Our “ejection” of her was not pretty but, as far as I can tell, Jethro and I came out of the ordeal alright. It took a few months to recover any semblance of safety. Harrowing is a word for the entire episode.
So I have two sets of experience dealing with demons.
There aren’t a whole lot of books on the subject of demons that I could find. What is it even called? Demonology? I hope libraries have more and better sources than were/are available to me online.
I advise anyone with an interest in demons to read as much as one can. Research demons. Study demons. Get to know demons’ characteristics from the viewpoints of different religious traditions.
Become familiar with the sorts of things that bring a demon near one. Actually, at this point, I believe demons are all around every one of us, generally invisible. I will go as far to say “demons stalk.” They hover invisibly. Getting to know about demons makes them more visible in one’s awareness, and therefore, one is better armed at dealing with them. They are here. I feel them.
Demons wait. They have infinite time. They wait for a soul’s weakness. They wait for a time when a person is in bad shape.
Any kind of gestures or prayers of protection are definitely warranted.
I am secular. I think demons relish secular people because secular people pooh-pooh the existence of demons, which demons love. Secular people are complete suckers, being unprotected because of denial.
Another thing is to find some kind of helper to aid in the experience of a demon. It is not something to undertake alone.
Both episodes were frightening. Who, and where, does one turn to? A local religious or holy person? Does my town have a shaman? If so, I have seen no classified advertisement saying, “Are you up against a demon? I am the new professional shaman in town. Call (—-) ———-.”
These personal experiences are part of the reason why I feel VERY strongly that “love-and-light” (and its variations) is 110% cr_p. Love-and-light “mood-making” does not keep demons at bay. Love-and-light against a demon is like Tinkerbell against Godzilla.
I shall end here.
Wishing you well,
💨🤷🏼♀️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
@Eike, my prediction is that the next inter-European war will be between Poland and Germany. Anti-German sentiment has been whipped up in Poland over the past few years, and right now, they’d have a good chance of winning. Alternatively, after Ukraine has been reduced by the Russian peace treaty, they might want to return the western parts of it to the homeland. In any case, I’d watch the Polish; right now, they are undecided whether to hate us or the Russians more, and are armed to the teeth.
JMG # 45:
When I’ve read your prediction about woke feminists converting into conservative Islam in the future, I’ve thought: “Oops! It doesn’t sound very strange for me…” Endophobia ironically can make a convergence between two ideologies with not much self criticism alike…
*********^**
I agree. “Our” western narrative is “our” Spectacle, rehashing the weared WW2 stereotyped against the Russians, but of course Putin and his supporters have their own narrative, which can be easily developped thanks to the Kiev regime fondness to allow Nazi symbols and attitudes within some Ukrainian Army units. So the Russian Spectacle has some real base to be held…
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Phutatorius # 52:
I also liked the Mulholland Drive scene in which appears the own Badalamenti: yes, the perfect coffee, ha ha…
–>AT THIS LINK<– is the FULL list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 12/22). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Bob Ralston (aka Rasty Bob), who is in hospice care in Buckeye AZ, and who just lost his wife Leslie Fish, be blessed and find relief from his pain and discomfort; may Bob’s heart remain strong.
May Leslie Fish, wife of Bob Ralston, who passed away in early December, be blessed and make a peaceful transition to her next existence.
May Angelica, who has reason to believe she and her property are under physical threat, remain safe and protected, and her property unbothered.
May Corey Benton, who passed away on 12/10, be blessed and make a peaceful transition to his next destination.
May Satoko L in Kyoto, who is recovering at home after weeks of hospitalization for Acute Hepatitis while in a state of immunodeficiency, continue to heal quickly and safely, and return to full vitality.
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Lydia G. of Geauga County, Ohio heal and recover from prolonged health issues.
May John N. receive positive energy toward getting through a temporary but irritating health issue.
May Patrick’s mother Christine‘s vital energy be strengthened so she can continue healing at home without need for more surgical operations.
May both Monika and the child she is pregnant with both be blessed with good health and a safe delivery.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Marko have the awareness and strength to constructively deal with the situation.
May the abcess in JRuss’s left armpit heal quickly.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis’s left ureter be restored to full function, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May HippieVikings’s baby HV, who was born safely but has had some breathing concerns, be filled with good health and strength.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May J Guadalupe Villarruel Zúñiga, father of CRPatiño’s friend Jair, who suffers from terminal kidney and liver damage, continue to respond favorably to treatment; may he also remain in as good health as possible, beat doctors’ prognosis, and enjoy with his wife and children plenty of love, good times and a future full of blessings.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
Aldarion # 57:
Thanks for your comment. I had no idea of those very ancient walls in Bretagne. Our image of our “primitive” is usually biased by our modern Progress mythology, but our ancestors were wiser and more skilled than we would like to imagine.
Merry Christmas Day or happy vacations to your all!
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Scotlyn # 63:
The “little” problem with male genital mutulation (also known as circuncision) is that their victims can’t opine about it, and they usually lack will and reasoning to think about it. Oh, it’s a very easy operation, but when it’s perpetred outside an hospital can be dangerous (some times ago, the son of an African couple of migrants died after being mutilated at home, cough cough in my country). Female mutilation usually is more aggresive than male one, but circuncision isn’t free of risk. Of course, liberals won’t point this practice indeed is dangerous and against the Human Rights, because it’s not woke to be blamed as Antisemitic/Islamophobic alike. A big can of worms could be opened! In addition to this, even some pundits say circumcision is good for health, if you believe a United Nations informs. By the way, Arab kingdoms rich in oil (until today) have gently financed a good part of UN expensive meetings and bureaucracy. I’m sorry if I’ve been too much politically incorrect.
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Some commenters have written about the cost of life nowadays. Well, I would like to say only that there may be a correlation between expensive and increasing cost of live (especially flats thanks to the house financing bubble) and collapse of birth rate; at least in my country. It’s also interesting our beloved migrants, when they have been living here a certain time, let their own birth rate falling like the native Spaniards (in spite the far right Spectacle about high birth rate between migrants cough cough).
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Eike # 73:
I don’t hear the war drums yet, here in Spain. Our political leaders and the “opposition” are engaged in the own ugly Spectacle to keep/reach the power, without worrying about everyday people problems. Economy officially works well, but inflation (cough cough) especially in food, cannot be hided by cooked statistics. Oh, and we also have an evident finance bubble in housing: get a house in propiety or rented is near impossible for young people. I think we’re going to worse times, but the decline by definition is a slow thing, so unless EU morons decide to go to the war against Russia directly, there eon’t be a fast collapse.
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Achille#
I am a country fellow of you and , equality, I feel that we are in the acelerating phase of a new and more acute phase of a the catabolic collapse in wich is involved all the world , but wich I fear that It will be more harsh in our country.
Yesterday I watched the TV series Chernobyl, about the nuclear catastrophe that schocked all Western Europe in 1986, and I found too much paralelisms between the soviet society of these times and the present spanish society because the criminal incompetence and malignity of the political élites and equality because the generosity , nobilty and courage of the Russian and Ucranian people. This find added with the inexplicable delay in the helping to the víctims of the last year’s flooding in Valencia (DANA) lead to me to fear that we must be prepared for an unbeliavle assortment of disgraces. And the need of to store in our houses wáter, food, candles , torch batteries , means for cooking , etc. for more than ten days.
About your worry about death, I think that we should think that each day that we enjoy will be the last and, about our sons, we should encourage them for the adquisition of the skills required for Jobs like plumbers, Carpenters, eléctricians, etc. According with the advices of our admired Archdruid “Collapse now and avoid the rush”.
Please , understand my words not for to induce you a feel of shelf defeating but , metaphorically, the caution of a guerrillero wich needs to survive for to wait the oportune moment for fight.
If I may, a wee question about the cover of your recent book – “Revisioning the Tree of Life”. I do realise that cover art is not your department, but still, I wonder if you (or any of the commenters here), know the identity of, or anything about, the medieval looking manuscript which appears, as if with torn off edges, on this cover?
Thank you for the book. Sitting my way through the 8th sphere in an absolutely first pass that has taken me 3 months or so…
Re Eike #73,
Here in the Netherlands it’s difficult to get a good idea of what people really think, as there is a lot of self-censorship. I do know there is something of a split in society, which, I think, is not really a left / right thing, although both sides frame the other side in that way: you are either woke or a fascist, that’s the idea..
(Both sides don’t talk to ‘the enemy’ and when you don’t immediately and fully agree with them, they assume you are with the bad guys and treat you as such. I know of small villages that are split in two, like this…)
As for Europe as a whole, I don’t see a war coming (or at least not soon), but I expect some color revolutions, here and there (France, Germany) and maybe some countries that leave the EU (Hungary), which will destroy the EU.
What happens after that is anybody’s guess, but I assume that here in the Netherlands we will first hang on to the globalist / EU story for as long as is profitable for us, and then switch over to the idea that Russia and China are our best friends, and that they have always been our best friends.
–bk
Good day all. Thank goodness that Ezra Klein, the chatteringest of the chattering classes has written a book on POLICY (imagine that, an intellectual lecturing people on the policy of the government that will be good for them) for a future that grows the economy and protects the environment. How generous of our smart leaders to tell us to just move to a walkable city, don’t eat meat or drive anywhere and we can grow the economy and still have half the world left over to be a nature preserve.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/472664/decoupling-abundance-growth-meat-cars
This article literally says that agriculture is not that important to an economy.
The other topic that I’m noticing lately is the rise of “clutter-clearing” or “Boomer hoarders” or something along those lines. As I get less and less satisfaction out of having “nice” things I’ve started to see, especially senior citizens’, excessive possessions as a burden to deal with and not a source of stability or satisfaction. I’m even looking around at my stuff, which is not much more than I need, and am looking for things to sell. Multiple online sources are talking about people clearing clutter and just “stuff” often finding that there are no buyers and perfectly useful things are often just thrown away or given to charity. This tends to be the adult children of 70+ aged people who are dealing with a parent’s death or move to an elder care facility. Add to this, and at least in the rural areas, I’m starting to see a “flea market culture” emerge. People just have crap they want to get rid of, then they can post their “finds” on Facebook. It’s this weird paradoxical thing that we have so much cheap stuff, we don’t really need it, there doesn’t seem to be a market for it, yet everything is too expensive. While I am still a consumer and live partly in that world, I just wonder when it’s going to stop. Comments? Anyone else notice this?
John and other people have written about the movie “David” and its friendly” critics by the usual wokeized pundits. I want to say it isn’t the only religious activity to be opportunely silenced/hypercriticised by woke “soft” censorship. Well, I define myself as Christian, but though I’ve been raised in Catholicism, I don’t identify myself necessarily with every Roman dogma. Indeed, I don’t like certain catholic ideas and attitudes. However, a catholic idea has made me to pay attention to the catholic activism, in which I see something positive in it. If you didn’t know it yet, a candle light with fire from Bethelem (from the supposed place were Jesus was born) has travelled across all Europe to arrive to my neighbourhood catholic main church. Well, I haven’t been active in this campaign with my candle, but I think in addition to the pious tribute to Jesus birthday, indirectly this action supports at least the Christian minority in Palestine, which has suffered equally like their Muslim brothers and sisters.
Oh I wouldn’t surprise you when I’ve checked none of MSM here has paid attention to this campaign, but they’re eager to publish every supposed catholic sexual scandal as soon as possible. Of course, pro-Palestinian leftist activism has said no word about this, neither. It’s sadly interesting to see christian Palestinians have been ignored by anti-zionist left and pro-Israeli right alike (at least in my country).
By the way, I tell you I’ve got sympathy for the Palestinian people and I condemn the Netanyahu government war crimes against them, but I’m puzzled and even angry with the willing leftist blindness about who are Hamas and what are behaving with, (cough cough) the Palestinian women (which, according their ideology/religion, it isn’t a surprise). Of course, woke people (between them the feminists), shuts up because this uncomfortable truth doesn’t match with their particular Spectacle…
>Oh, and the trains are slightly less late and disorganized than the last time I was there, but it’s still a disaster.
You know things are getting bad when the *Germans* can’t keep the trains running on time.
>I’m glad I left when I did and am happy to see things unfold from a safe distance.
A hurricane is fascinating – from 1600km away. Well, I suppose it is fascinating from 30m away, but also terrifying.
>distract the populace with war
The problem with that right now, is they’ve been kicking those stray dogs, I mean, young men, they want to fight this war with for the past 10-15 years. They will get something from those young men. It will not be what they want.
In reponse to Eikes report of her impressions of Germany I can concur that the mood in Germany is rather gloomy. The Christmas market in the city where I live has seen a more modest amount of visitors than in some years past. The cultural life has a rather stagnant feel to it, a bit in the vein of endlessly rehashing the same things. There is a malaise and people don’t seem to have much of any other idea than muddling through as best as they can. I’ve read that German ecomissts (called Wirtschaftsweise, economy-wise people) warned that the German ecomony is in free-fall. This isn’t particularly visible publicly, but it promises a frightening spectrum of consequences.
Since the Second Religiosity was mentioned, I can add my impression, and it is that religion-wise, things in Germany seem to be as usual, so no big changes.
@nachtgurke #66
Machen Sie jeden Weihnacht ein deutschen Weihnacht! Jetzt! Schnell!
Und hier ist etwas Weihnachtslieder! Du musst einhoeren!
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=zE-xk_pUK54
re: the moron meme
You might like to stash this one away too.
https://imgur.com/a/O18u6pr
>its always been on me to organise our entire social calendar, all celebrations etc etc.
Yes, dear.
>I am not willing to let my marriage implode for the sake of our children and my vows.
Can you think of ways to entice him to be around you more? To be more carrot and less stick?
Chuaquin: “By the way, no feminist from every tendence worries about male (babies and children) genital mutilation, because the circumcised victims are always boys…”
In Denmark, the campaigners against female genital mutilation also oppose circumcision. Part of that is because, circumcision there is quite rare among ethnic Danes and is found primarily among Muslim immigrants.
While surfing the TikTok dumpster fire, I saw a video of two bratty, young kids who had taken the liberty of opening all of their presents that were designated for Christmas morning. The wreckage was strewn around the Christmas tree and the children were not sorry. I sincerely hope the scene was AI, but I highly doubt it was. I chose not to become a parent a long time ago, so my question is for those who are parents or were parents of young children, what would you do in this case?
@ Shane Simonsen #36
I listened to the podcast with JMG that you linked to… and I noted with interest your mention of Eugene McCarthy, the scientist carrying out “dam*ed” research (in the fortean sense) into the subject of hybridisation (including as a potential account for human origins).
I’d like to point you both to his most recent (2025) publications:
“Telenothians: An Inquiry into the Limits of Hybridization”, a work in three volumes.
And a link to the goodreads post on volume 1 – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/234482278-telenothians-an-inquiry-into-the-limits-of-hybridization
This will be going on my “to read” list… 🙂
@JMG on Proust: I started “Swan’s Way” in the old Scott Moncrieff translation: But by the time I got around to reading the whole cycle the Enright revision of the Moncrieff translation had appeared in nice Modern Library hardcovers. I thought the Enright revision was a big improvement. Some of the “preciousness” was gone. I also have “Swan’s Way” in a French edition, but I didn’t have the patience to get through more than a few pages. Anyway, enjoy it.
On the RAM price hikes: The RAM that goes into “AI” computers is not the same as RAM that ends up in computers and smartphones. In consumer devices, the RAM is packaged into chips which are then soldered onto a circuit board. In the high performance computers used for “AI”, the RAM gets packaged together with the processors on a silicon interposer, which is basically just a very high performance circuit board. The RAM cannot be repurposed at this stage. So there will be no glut of RAM when the AI bubble pops, at least not in forms that are useful for laptops or smartphones. The reason why consumer RAM is affected by this is that the same equipment and raw materials can be used to make both types of RAM, and currently the high performance compute RAM is much more profitable to manufacture than consumer RAM.
I will note that gasoline prices where I am are only 7% higher than they were fifteen years ago. I find this remarkable considering the decline in the value of the Canadian dollar over the same time period.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
@Nachtgurke, “days between the years” is not a phrase I’ve ever heard in English – but what a wonderful way to describe the last few days of December.
JMG,
Here is a big picture question I have been thinking about lately.
What would things in the US be like today if those in charge had chosen to no longer pursue the dark and often covert manipulation of other governments and people for economic ideological or economic purposes.
Lets say we choose the point in time where The Shah was installed in Iran, and go from there. No Vietnam War, No Pinocet in Chile, no Iran Contras, No operation Condor, No arming Islamic militias to fight the Russians, etc.
I realize that these things have been part and parcel of empire, but what would things in America be like without them. Would the empire have collapsed long ago as those in power at the CIA probably believe? Or would things be better?
@Phutatorius, et al: I didnt watch the show when it aired originally either. I got started with Fire Walk With Me, which I saw in 1998 while having a summer fling in Tennessee with a girl I had met after one of my friends moved there with his girlfriend. It was the same summer I went with her and my cousin and a yoga teacher to the Espanola mountain area in NM and did a week of kundalini yoga and “White Tantric Yoga” with the Sikhs under the late Yogi Bhajan. I was 18 and the movie seared my memory like other events of the summer, including a week at the annual Rainbow Gathering in AZ that year.
A number of years later I got into watching Lynch’s other films. The first time I saw Mullholland Drive it baffled me… but later it became, perhaps, my favorite of his films. The Elephant Man is a beautiful straight forward film, and you realize Lynch’s humanity in seeing that. Its not all huge weirdness. His movie The Straight Story is very good too, based on the true tale of a brother who drove his tractor mower 240 miles across Wisconsin and Iowa to visit his dying brother. Very heartland.
My old boss at work, who also shares my love of Tiny Tim, loaned me his VHS tapes of the show and that is how I first watched the show. I think the library also had a VHS tape of the pilot, the Euro version which was edited into a movie with different footage at the end: all the stuff about the boiler room at the end, which ties in with stuff that came up in The Return.
I hear what you are saying about the images. I started watching horror films when I was just a kid, at another kids house. Some stuff I saw there I wish I had never seen.
You are right about Mark Frost. I note that he wrote two mainstream occult detective thrillers in the 90s. I read the TP tie in novel he wrote when The Return came out. Also read Lynch’s daughters Laura Palmer Diaries. So yeah, I am into all this stuff.
The way he used sound in Eraserhead and other films is another aspect. All those industrial sounds… he was industrial music adjacent. He left behind a very rich body of work.
@Sister Crow: re: David movie review: 😀 that is the funniest hit piece I’ve encountered in ages. I can’t tell if it’s deliberate parody or accidental parody. Basically amounts to: “your religious stories are offensive to non-religious people: and your animation stinks too”. Somehow I think the reviewer is not the target audience 😉 On suspects the only way to make that reviewer happy would be to tell… a completely different story.
To all them that celebrate it: Blessed Nativity!
‘Tis the season for making predictions about next year, and since this is an open post I figured I would provide mine at the risk of being pilloried as a buffoon come next December:
– Open war between the US and Venezuela (although it may not officially be called war); open conflict of some kind in Eastern Europe (probably in the Baltics). Basis: To a certain extent this has already kind of broken out, but in the Aries ingress, Mars is in Pisces in the 10th house (US/Venezuela) or the 7th (Eastern Europe). Since Neptune is in Aries, Mars in Pisces has mutual reception and acts as if also in Aries.
– Beijing will attempt to retake Taiwan THIS year rather than next as the pundits predict. Basis: Mars in the 4th for both Beijing and Taipei’s Aries ingress charts. From China’s perspective this is a domestic matter.
– The Democrats retake the House but not the Senate, and in any case Congress is hampered in its ability to tackle issues (Basis: The Libra ingress is the salient one for the election. Cancer rules the 4th and Capricorn the 10th. Saturn is cadent, retrograde, and in fall. The Moon is succedent and peregrine. The Sun rules the 5th and is cadent; Uranus rules the 11th and is succedent, peregrine, and retrograde.
– Despite this, “woke” does not make as strong a comeback as some might fear. Basis: The past 50 years have seen the outer planets Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune often in the more humanistic final triad of the zodiac. Untii about 2035 all three are in the primal first triad. This prediction COULD be wrong. The extended Neptune-in-Pisces period (which included much of Neptune in Aquarius because of mutual reception between it and Uranus in Pisces) also had a great deal to do with this.
– US stock markets will likely peak in Q1, be more or less steady in Q2, but fall in Q3. Basis; Rulerships of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th houses – the 3rd house because so much of the stock market at the moment is tied to the well-being of the tech sector.
@Jennifer, Siliconguy:
“are y’all really spending this much?” (paraphrase)
Haha, no.
I am tearing my hair out in frustration because we’re still stuck renting, which sharply limits our ability to, say, grow food and set up household workspaces of the type that would either save us money (lots of clotheslines), or allow for smallscale manufacturing for sale and trade.
And still, we are living on slightly more than *half* what these doofuses writing such articles define as “the new poverty line”. Nobody’s going hungry, we still eat meat, everybody has enough clothing and shoes, and we’re a family of five. And we’re not in debt. I’d hardly define that as dire poverty. Just not affluent.
I mean, perhaps it’s accurate if you live in a very expensive urb, or somewhere like Vermont where it’s apparently impossible to find a house if you didn’t inherit one. But we don’t live in a rural area either– my spouse’s job depends on us living in commuting distance of one or more decent-sized hospitals.
Which is not to say that there aren’t problems with living on a median income these days, and yeah it’s definitely worse now than trying to live on a median income a few decades ago: we are over forty and staring down the barrel of old age with some anxiety: we’ll never be able to retire, and unless the RE market does an impressive collapse (we’re hoping!), may never be able to escape rental serfdom. At the same time… we’re able to live on one income and homeschool our kids (local schools are garbage: this is the only way they’d get an OK education), and for now at least, we have everything we need. A lot comes down to how you define poverty.
I just finished reading “God is Red” by Vine DeLoria, Jr. and was surprised that he seemed to be a fan of Immanuel Velikovsky. Do you have an opinion on Velikovsky’s work?
Thanks.
@Eike, I‘m in Germany at the moment and tend to agree that the mood is pretty grim. That the German trains are now among the worst in Europe is generally felt (by passengers I’ve listened to) as confirmation that the country is going down the drain. The Government, and Friedrich Merz in particular, are considered (by most of the people I’ve spoken to) to have failed dismally.
However, there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on what to do about it. Germany seems to be divided into two camps: on the one hand those who think our problems are caused by ongoing opposition to liberalism, and who thus think the way forward is to turn liberalism up to 11 and purge all the non-believers. And on the other hand are those who think liberalism/globalism is the cause of our problems, and should be abandoned. Both sides seem to be beyond the point of compromise, are are drifting further and further away from each other.
Germany has always been a country of extremists, both positive and negative. I hope we can sort ourselves out before someone else does it for us.
Having said all that, the mood today at the Christmas choir service at the cathedral here was very positive, so there’s still hope 🙂
@Kimberly: we’ve been doing Christmas with kids for thirteen years now, and they’ve never done any such thing. Wouldn’t even occur to them, I think.
@WatchFlinger: decluttering: if you donate or sell useful things, they’re not wasted! Families like ours completely depend on the secondhand market to furnish and equip our homes: I cannot remember the last time I bought a kitchen implement or piece of furniture new. I get that stuff at a tiny fraction of retail price (new would be prohibitively expensive!) generally in thrift stores or at estate sales. So yeah: we benefit from the excess of boomer clutter.
The useful stuff at least. We note that the same electric cork-pulling device, new in box, has been at the thrift shop unsold for months. They will probably throw that thing out, eventually. There’s not much overlap, IMO between folks who shop for secondhand plates and mixing bowls, and people who throw wine parties 😉
Merry KRAMPUS to All, and to All a Good Fright! … especially as it pertains (with a few exceptions) to the various eurotard, um, so-called ‘leadership’! ‘;] I’ll even toss the neocon establishment on both sides of the Pond ..for bad measure, tho they be often one and the same..
Speaking of catalogs, I received a 2026 BakerCreek cat. in the post recently. Not as extensive as last year’s tome that I purchased at the local bookstore. Sorry to hear that Raintree’s gone totally digital. Used to buy fruit trees, assorted berries, and such through them, which were established throughout the house lot .. back when I OWNED a house, pre-divorce. Argh!
I’ seriously thinking of ordering some film treasure DVDs through Criterion/Janus .. while they still have that medium on offer, while it lasts.
@House of Card: re: Orson Scott Card: I understand he had a stroke somewhere in there. Never dived in to figure out which books were before and after the stroke, but did sort of assume that was the reason the later ones didn’t quite… work. Perhaps it was his health. There’s also the possibility that, like many very driven authors, he spent a few good books hashing out some pretty deep personal griefs and conflicts, but there’s only so many times you can go to that same well before the themes get stale. Maybe something brilliant might’ve followed, if he’d ever truly transcended his personal hangups. But he’s only human.
Ambrose, it’s on order. I’m currently halfway through Star Gates, which I read many decades ago. I’m not yet sure how much of her material is original to her and how much is from Heindel’s private lessons, but she’s certainly working with the same ideas taught by George Winslow Plummer and the early Manly P. Hall; what I’ve read so far of her work takes those ideas, popularizes them somewhat, and blends them with an angel-centric spirituality that draws its symbolism but not its theology from Christianity.
Denizen, I haven’t really followed the squabbles over Fuentes. The internet is constantly churning with figures who rise briefly to prominence and then sink back down again, and it’s far from clear at this point whether Fuentes is anything different. The possibility of a Nazi-equivalent movement in the United States, however, is a real one, as I’ve been pointing out since 2014 —
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/02/fascism-and-future-part-three-weimar.html
— but it’s not antisemitism that drives it. It’s the consistent failure of the political classes to address the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans, which leaves the field wide open for a plausible tyrant.
KAN, that’s the translation I’m reading, too. So far it’s very pleasant, if slow going.
House, I read a few of Card’s earlier works back in the day and found them mildly dull, but not otherwise objectionable. Writers can certainly run out of ideas, especially if they’ve got a narrow set of images that obsess them; the later novels of Robert A. Heinlein are poster children here, for example. (Must we get yet another pregnant redhead?) As for the dismissal of writers on ideological grounds, yeah, that’s become pervasive of late; it’s very clear that a lot of people are so insecure in their political beliefs that they can’t stand anything that doesn’t kowtow to every last detail of those beliefs. Fortunately this is having an unexpected blowback, which I’ll be discussing in an upcoming post.
Christine, thank you and likewise.
Chuaquin, yeah, that’s the perennial problem with “magician states” — the sorcerers become the victims of their own illusions.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Scotlyn, I have no idea. You’d want to drop a note to the publisher and ask them. I’m glad to hear you’re finding the book useful!
WatchFlinger, that is to say, Klein is pushing the same set of failed ideas that people of his class have been pushing for the last thirty years or so. I hope he enjoys the warm rush of self-righteousness he must have felt when he sent the manuscript to the publisher, because that bit of intellectual onanism is the only result that book is going to get. As for clutter-clearing, that’s fascinating — and for me, timely; I plan on relocating early in the new year and so have been assessing a decade’s worth of clutter and deciding what goes.
Chuaquin, literally the only other people I’ve heard talking about the oppression of Palestinian Christians by the dominant cultures in that part of the world are some Christian members of the populist right. It’s a good indication of the extent to which the world’s complex narratives are being flattened out into cheap morality plays by most groups in Western society.
Other Owen, got it and thank you.
Scotlyn, thanks for the heads up. I’ll consider getting the trilogy as well, as I’ve been a fan of McCarthy’s theory since I first encountered it. If he’s right, and human beings really are descended from a hybridization of bonobos and swine, it would explain so much!
Phutatorius, I’ve got the Enright revision in three fat volumes.
Clay, the empire would have collapsed and all of us in the US would be a lot poorer. On the other hand, we wouldn’t be facing the traumatic collapse of empire that’s bearing down on us right now.
Brendhelm, duly noted!
Pam, Deloria was interested in alternative views, and Velikovsky’s theories seem very plausible if you don’t have a background in physics. Velikovsky was certainly correct that major catastrophes play a much larger role in human history than it was fashionable to suggest in the 1950s, though he was wrong about their source.
Oh, and speaking of that supposedly ‘horrendous’ film ‘DAVID’ .. some of the good folks at NERDOTIC* were/are looking forward into viewing that flick, last time I watched their podcast. They, the Nerdrotic Crew .. as a general rule, totally Excoriate much of what the Corpesrate Movie/Film industry is/has been spewing out these decade(s) long years of Wokian Hell. They Absolutely take No Studio/Actor/Tinseltown Gliterati-Reviewers prisoners! Good on them I say. And to Mr. Greer – they’ve about had it, regarding all the crapification done to the ever cringe worthy attempts at changing the whole ‘Superhero genre’ into pushing the ‘gurrrl boss’ narritive, at the expense of .. you guessed it .. traditional, white, straight, male attendees.
*not suitable for the faint of art .. or at times, the ears…
@ JPM and other fans of “Mulholland Drive”: There are so many scenes that were spooky or scary on first viewing that became hilariously funny upon repeated viewing. The scene at “the corral” with “the Cowboy” was one of these. I let my brother watch the movie on DVD at my house. He remarked after that scene that it was absolutely the weirdest/oddest thing he’d ever seen. After it was over, I went to bed but my brother stayed up and watched the whole movie again.
Denizen of Hillsdale # 83:
I’m not an expert in US sociopolitical situation, I’m only a “dilettante” with a broad interests spectrum…but in none of them a pundit. So it’s not strange I didn’t know that rising far right man name. What I can tell you from my European view is we must have caution before to point there’s a new Hitler at home. The fallacy “reductio ad Hitlerum” is dangerous: if everybody can be a Nazi, then nothing is really Nazi (because we’ve degraded the term “fascism” by over-use). I’m interested in radical speechers from far left/right because they rarely say truths under the radar of sociopolitical consensus (or “conventional wisdom”); though I’m also concerned by what would it happen if these extremists tiny Spectacle would gain momentum within the whole society: maybe nothing good. I’d like to finish my comment about far right radicalism remembering a good moment IMHO in the movie “Nuremberg”, when the main character says Nazis aren’t really different from us in their mind. They have certain tendences which share with some of our nowadays citizens, so…it’s not impossible fascism would revive some day, but in which way?(not in the stereotypical german way).
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House of Card # 85:
I’ve read Orson Scott Card “Ender Game” books, translated to spanish, and they looked like good IMHO, not for Nobel Prize but good. By the way, I suppose you all know Card is a Mormon (a fact which doesn’t mean nothing to praise nor to despise this author, me thinks). It’s sad wether he’s judged by his idyosincratic beliefs. I’m not a Mormon but liked his Ender saga.
I haven’t read more recent novels by this writer, so I don’t have a full and definitive opinion about his most recent books.
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Northwind Grandma # 87:
Some years ago a spanish catholic priest (José Antonio Fortea) wrote several books about Demonology and had his 10 minutes of fame in MSM. Of course, he’s a very controverted man, but his bosses in Rome didn’t punish nor criticised him never. Orthodox churches and some Protestant churches have their own exorcists/exorcisms; and I bet some Pagans (like our dear John has said a time ago, me thinks) believe in demons existence too.
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Athaia # 88:
I don’t know surely wether Germans and Polish will be at war soon, but I know it’s said Poles have hated and hate the Russians today. Is it a national stereotype or a real hatred which goes on thanks to xenophobe local Spectacle? Maybe real thing is mixed. I know Polish people usually is conservative and in every election far right harvests a heck of votes: so, Russophobia indeed exists there until some degree I’m unable to measure.
@Scottlyn: In the trilogy, does McCarthy discuss his “hybrid hypothesis” at any length? Or is it mainly about his other work on hybrids in general? Either way it looks intriguing.
First off, a happy Yuletide to JMG & the whole commentariat – may you all enjoy whichever holy days you celebrate at this time of Winter!
Second, does anyone know if New Maps is still being published? I know that Nathanael Bonnell published it quarterly when it was new, but it seems to have slowed down of late and no new issues have dropped in the last seven months. I’d like to know if any more are planned as I have a deindustrial story I’m looking for a publisher for.
@House of Card,
I do have a similar opinion about Orson Scott Card – he was my favorite author when I was a child, but as I got older I realized that he wrote all his really good works at the beginning of his career (Treason, Worthing Chronicle, Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, etc. ) and that everything he’s written since the mid-1990s is increasingly bad pulp fiction… albeit pulp fiction that’s clearly written by a Mormon with all the peculiarities that implies. (Let’s be honest – the atheist-materialism of the majority of sci-fi writers these days is boring; even schlocky stuff written by religious people is less boring.) But oh well… most authors don’t have the ability to produce even one book on the level of <Ender's Game or the Worthing Chronicle, so I won’t hold all the pulp against him.
@85 House of Cards
I’ve read Ender’s Game, Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, & Shadow Puppets.
The first five books are decent to great, IMO. Shadow of the Hegemon was bad. Shadow Puppets was way too preachy* (Children of the Mind was too preachy but the plot was good) and low quality. I read Wikipedia synopses of the rest of the Shadow spinoff series, and in the fifth book of that series he again rehashes the characters of Ender, Peter, & Valentine in Bean’s children. And Ender was deceived all along and the Buggers were evil, which trashes the message of the original sequels to Ender’s Game.
*I would have rather have Card make the gay character a horrible person rather than turn him into a mouthpiece for Card’s own views on homosexuality.
There is something which I forgot to add to my earlier comment: according to recent experiences, German bureaucracy has become quite dysfunctional.
@Chuaquin, Phutatorius:
It would be neat to grab an espresso with you cats!
Lynch on the art life
“You drink coffee, you smoke cigarettes, and you paint, and that’s it.”
“Cuan an Cheoil Clár 10: Caoimhe Ní Fhlatharta agus Séamus Ó Flatharta”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TurIKn3qkY4
I don’t know if you like this – the Video isn’t necessary if you don’t want to watch the musicians playing, although the setting is pleasant enough. It can be heard just as “radio” with a lot of beautiful music and talking in Gaelic (ok, now I’m rather sure it’s Gaelic 😉 ). I don’t understand a word, but I really like it.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@Owen #99 – I’m not really sure what you want to tell me… But if I remember correctly, my parents owned the CD and I had to listen to it from time to time. Not sure, if I liked it back then.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
I have enjoyed some of Brandon Sanderson’s writing – the Mistborn cavalcade of books. The influence of his Mormon theology at least from my probably partial knowledge of it is apparent. As regards Mormons you are welcome to think their religion is stupid, but from my own experience of Mormons if you think Mormons are stupid you are the fool.
Anselmo # 92:
Hello! It’s ironic we’ve met at least 3 spanish citizens in such as Anglophone blog. Well, it’s maybe a sign of the times…
You’ve started writing about catabolic collapse. It’s not an absurd concept, and may work better than other faster and more sudden collapse models; because by I’ve read about that model, collapse would arrive with unstability, but then it would “die” by itself to find a new provisional and temporary equilibrium. In a rough analogy, we’re going to go down in a long ladder.
I’m not happy with Spain current context, neither.
I’ve also seen the Chernobyl series like you, and I agree. It’s a “dejà vu” feeling to notice near the same attitude in our reckless and incompetent elites. However, I’m skeptical about a fast fall into the next step down the catabollic collapse stairs. Well, maybe I’m wrong, but unless we would be dragged by the EU bureaucrats/politicians to directly defy Russia, I cannot see big disruption signs. Of course, signs of sociopolitical, spiritual and economic decline are everywhere, but I think they only suggest a slow way down.
Thanks for your advices to Achille, which myself could apply in my own everyday life and in worse times. Though I’ve made since some years ago a “survival kit” in my storage room, for example. Gracias!
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BK # 94:
It’s sad to me when I find the same or simillar self destructive tendences across different EU countries: polarization, political tension and echo chambers everywhere. Well, there are national “local color” in depictions but trends are converging me thinks.
So in your depiction of Netherlands today I see reflected some Spain problems too. Elites are reckless and out of reality, for example.
I share your thought when you say you don’t see a big European war soon, but more probably color revolutions and some runaways out of EU.
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Booklover # 98:
Your reference to German Christmas market has reminded me I was a bit puzzled when I went to my town own Christmas market (yes, there are some spanish imitations of them here) and I saw a lot of people, but few buyers there. However, this Cristhmad Eve the few bars opened in my town were full of drinkers. Though under one of my town main bridges, at less than 100 m from the crowded bars, there’s a small tent and cardboard town, full of homeless African migrants. I think you can choose what you want to see according your own Spectacle, but IMHO the differences are painful.
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Jessica # 102:
Congrstulations to the Danish because you’ve got such as responsible and coherent feminism. I’m afraid I can’t say the same thing about spanish feminism/leftism. Unless a few fringe groups, critics against compulsory babies/boys “cultural” circuncision have been a few far right groups, some of them connected with the “man-o-sphere”(which is the simetrical mirror game to feminist excesses and victimism made up by certain men). Here the Antisemitism and Islanophobia bogey men are rutinarily used as thoughtstoppers when the topic is rarely seen. MSM and lobbies make near impossible this topic appears into the Overton window here…
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(To be continued…)
“So there will be no glut of RAM when the AI bubble pops, at least not in forms that are useful for laptops or smartphones.”
True. The sort of soldering skills and equipment needed to deal with those chips are watchable on YouTube by a guy called dosdude1. Here is one example.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrg7nPG6_UU&pp=ygUIRG9zZHVkZTHYBgk%3D
As to the poverty level debate, back when Elizabeth Warren was sane she did a Ted talk (or some other lecture) on how bringing women into the workforce did not improve the finances due to the extra childcare, transportation costs, and taxes consuming her new income. Of course GDP went up as all that unmonetized labor was now “properly” accounted for. GDP is the greatest good, just ask Paul Krugman. (Insert sarcasm tag here)
And to go way back, a Carrington event could be a mess. The good news is this has been considered. The longer the powerlines the bigger the problem. Local power distribution should not be affected. The solar observatories will see the flare coming and give enough warning so the long distance interconnects can be shutdown. At worst they can shutdown the whole grid for a couple of days. Better that than risk blowing out transformers that take two years to build.
The Federal Emergency Management Administration recommends being able to get by for three days on your own. If you can manage that you can ride out a Carrington event.
Also, a Carrington event is not the same as a nuclear weapon induced EMP. Different physics involved, different mitigations needed.
@ Phutatorius #121 – I cannot tell you that, since I have not gotten my hands on the books yet. 🙂
I will reveal that my first review of McCarthy’s website was way back years ago when JMG dropped a passing reference to it somewhere in an Archdruid Report post. My own interest in fortean research means that it proved to be an irresistable, and delightful, rabbit hole that I myself spent a few weeks going down… then…
The recent refresher in the conversation between Simon and JMG prompted me to go over to his website again, and despite the old-fashioned “feel” of his website, he has kept it up to date, and is apparently still active there. He mentions his recent publication in the “about me” section here: https://www.macroevolution.net/about-me.html
What he says about the books is that they go deeply into the question of how wide can the distance between species be before they can no longer hybridise.
🙂
Kimberly Steele @103
When my daughter was a child, we gave her a few good quality things that we knew she would like and use, and she was great with it. Her one cousin used to receive a lot of stuff, much from his grandmother. It was a disgusting sight to watch him. As in your video, he would tear the package open,throw it aside and go on to the next one. By the end of the day much of it was broken.
Stephen
@Denizen #83 As regards a effective fascist style movement in the USA I think the signal would a smart, crafty, charismatic figure leader with a broad appeal (not Trump, he is aging out) and certainly not Nick Fuentes. I don’t know if J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio could pull it off or some other current member of the Trump administration. I think a successful movement unlike the more imperialistic regimes of Italy, Germany, and Japan would be America First as a giant Switzerland with a Monroe Doctrine style keeping of outside influences away from Latin America and Canada. A localized imperialism so to speak.
Antisemitism wouldn’t be a feature, but perhaps Israel would be left to stand on its own. And future Muslim immigration to the USA would be stifled and there would be no tolerance for Muslim extremism, or Woke/Antifa rioting. Act like the Sikhs who have their culture but are peaceful citizens and would happily put down Muslim shenanigans. And from my own experience of the conservative tendencies of Mexicans and many Afro-Americans and a number of gays a clever “fascist” leader could create a big tent they would be happy to join and the Sikhs and Indian immigrants. Yep, a moderate fascism I could get into, but a horror to the woke types.
@Chuaquin
I was aghast at Israel’s Western backers allowing the state to destroy historical Christian churches, and I saw that as evidence that the common leftist claim that Israel is a puppet of the USA and not the other way around is false.
Denizen of Hillsdale, Michigan #83
I am a fan of Nick Fuentes. He tells the truth. I have really liked him since I saw an interview he did with Tuckr Carlsun (subscription). If one ACTUALLY listens to him firsthand, he says nothing objectionable. If one takes others’ word for what he say, well, that is when trouble comes. He has been libeled and slandered. I started reading what he actually wrote, seen what he actually said, and have come to my own conclusions. I studied him. The guy is terrific.
“Telling the truth” is more than enough why powers want to silence him.
Nick Fuentes is not anti-semite. He is not FAR-right. He is on the right, foremost in his mind is “America First.” When the American taxpayer pays taxes, he wants to see that money get applied to Americans, including White Americans. He wants to see the USA not in serial foreign wars. He wants to see illegal immigration stop. He wants to see illegal immigrants ejected from US soil. He feels “White lives matter.”
Nick Fuentes wants to see a fedral govmint be FOR native Americans (the ones who have heritage here). No more bringing in hundreds of thousand of Somalians, paying for their passage, food, shelter, clothes, transportation, schooling,—things that heritage-Americans have been denied for decades, BECAUSE they are White. Not only that but govmint officials state out loud, on film, that they insist that Americans support Somalians IN SOMALI. No more foreign wars, spending taxpayer dollars they never gave permission to embark on.
Fuentes expounds returning to wholesome days. If I picked an American decade he would most want to see return, it would be the 1930s: men given respect, given back their masculinity (after having been shorn of it since); strong nuclear families; decent jobs akin to JMG’s long list of trades. Etc.
One needs to read, hear, and watch firsthand Nick Fuentes — don’t believe a thing others say or write about him. Writers have been lying through their teeth, and are highly prejudice and closed-minded. People put words in Fuentes’ mouth; we need to see past others’ misjudgments of him.
In my book, Nick Fuentes is a folk hero🎖️.
💨💨🙉📔🏆Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JPM @ 125: You’d be disappointed. I’m just an old flatus who listens to Brahms’ “German Requiem” repeatedly.
My comment earlier about the scene with “The Cowboy” in “Mulholland Drive” got me thinking more about it. (Or maybe it’s that second cup of coffee I just treated myself to, since it’s Christmas.) If The movie had become the pilot of a TV series, as apparently Lynch had hoped, I wonder if “The Cowboy” would have developed as a demonic figure. Here are the three uncanny things about him:
1. He appears out of nowhere, like he just stepped out of another dimension.
2. He clearly doesn’t know how to dress.
3. His idea of a “conversation” does not adhere to normal human conventions.
Other than that, he’s just like any other guy you’d meet late at night in an empty corral at the end of a canyon. 🙂
Polecat, if I liked movies I’d doubtless check out Nerdrotic, then.
Thrown Sandwiches, I haven’t heard from him in quite some time.
Nachtgurke, oh, that’s definitely Gaelic. No other Celtic languages throws around the letter H with such wild abandon. 😉
BeardTree, I tried to read the Mistborn books but bogged down early in the first book. It was painfully clear that Sanderson has no idea what’s involved in staging a revolution, and even the most ninth-rate tyrant would have had everybody in the plot rounded up by the time whatsisname finished putting the second point on his whiteboard. (I mean, seriously, you don’t lay out the plan in front of everyone. No matter how careful you are, at least one member of your inner circle will be a secret police infiltrator. Successful revolutions compartmentalize information.) It didn’t help that the part of the first book I read revolved around yet another plucky female character from a disadvantaged background who of course had the superpowers that alone could overthrow Blorg the Bad, Evil Lord of Evilness. Still, I know people who enjoyed those books.
I normally never, ever, post anything on Christmas Day: but I just spotted an email from Hermitix about your episode chatting with James about WB Yeats and Magic, and I want to say to you both – you guys are the greatest; thank you, and I sincerely hope you can have a happy or at least peaceful Christmastime, and I mean that in the most gregarious and friendly way. A previous year, after the day was done, and all through the house, not a child or dog was stirring (but maybe a mouse): I was settling into my old slippers and relaxing with leftovers, and lo and behold a Hermitix episode popped up with yourself and James discussing the end of industrial civilisation and – this may be a sign of my perverse humour – I thought: this can’t possibly get more cosy. You’ve done it again. Thanks a million. Take care.
House of card, et al
I enjoyed Ender’s Game and the first few after that, as my daughter and her friends in their teens. He does tend to drag a series out for too long, though I suppose he was making money from it. My favorite of his books, which I never hear mentioned is Past Watch The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. It is an alternate history of first contact in the Americas, though it appears now that there had already been plenty of contact.
Stephen
Nortwind Grandma
Are you sure you, or he mean the 1930s? That was the heart of the great depression with 30 0/0 unemployment.
Stephen
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it.
JMG You may enjoy the Wax and Wayne sequel set 300 years later, not featuring a plucky girlboss. I found it better than the first books. Gives a picture of marriage I enjoyed with imperfect people working things out.
Mr. Greer .. oh of course, I wasn’t inferring that you stream over, ha!, and peruse the site; I know 9f your aversion to squiggly pixelated photons .. just my way of implying just how bad things have uh, ‘unevolved’ as it were. As for old books by dead people, there’s an antique mall downtown, a history booth of which has a rather thick encylcopedic book on all things antiquity .. complete with numerous explanatory illustrations, NOT photos. I found it quite fascinating, and am tempted to purchase it, if it is still there. Tis so large, I might have to find a book stand to accompany the thing.
JM Greer @Boysmon @HippieViking @Chuaquin
Thank you for your responses.
It’s true that I seem to speak in riddles.
I am extremely paranoid and distrustful, and I find it difficult to open up even through this anonymous medium.
Indeed, when I talk about 20 years, I am referring to kids.
Regarding the adults who depend on me financially, I have certainly exaggerated. Perhaps my wife could look for a job i. In fact, if the government continues to provide services and pay benefits, there would be no major problem (perhaps a small adjustment to a more frugal lifestyle). The point is that there may come a time when the government does not pay benefits such as retirement or widowhood, or when these benefits decrease in amount while inflation rises. This would make things even more difficult because both my parents and my mother-in-law are retired and depend on government pensions.
My father has a wealth of knowledge about agriculture, practical horticulture, and livestock farming, as well as spirit that I envy. But his body no longer responds to him.
My mother and mother-in-law are city dwellers, perhaps in slightly better physical health, but psychologically, both have many problems. As young women, they were very determined and hard-working, but I suppose the weight of life has taken its toll on them emotionally and mentally.
Regarding the situation in Spain, I would like to clarify how I see it.
In addition to political tensions, Spain has many other problems.
To begin with, it is a country that lives off tourism, which makes it extremely fragile during an economic crisis, as the first thing people cut back on is foreign travel.
Furthermore, even with fairly massive immigration (which also brings its own problems), I am beginning to see the writing on the wall in terms of demographic decline.
As if this were not enough, we have a hellish bureaucracy that hinders everything, destroys what little agriculture and livestock farming remains, and seems to aim to turn all citizens into puppets.
Finally, I believe we have lost everything that once allowed people to survive in this country.
Family and community ties are broken, the wisdom of the old ways has been lost under modernity, we have destroyed the best farmland, we have forgotten our cultures to embrace an empty pseudo-culture…
Kimberly Steele,
My kids are quite young, so if they did that I would be less appalled than if, say, kids over age 4 or 5 did it, but the freshly-three-year-old is definitely old enough to know better. Whenever she is disobedient or destructive with a toy, it immediately goes away for a period of time (usually at least several days, if not weeks or months if she’s demonstrated she’s not ready for it). In the case you describe, especially since they were exulting in their poor behavior rather than showing remorse, we would give the toys away to someone else and they’d have to live without more stuff for Christmas. If they were genuinely sorry or seemed to lack understanding of what they really did wrong, I might let them keep a toy or two or put the toys away to be doled out later, but they need to lose something (either some of the toys themselves or more time to wait before getting them) or you’re just rewarding them for misbehavior. For what it’s worth, we got our two daughters one nice joint toy for this year’s holiday, so we are on the minimal side anyway.
Siliconguy,
Is the nuclear EMP thing legit? Would it be doomsday bad? My knowledge of this subject is based entirely on poorly-written prepper fiction, heh.
Seasons greetings to our host, and to the best commentariat community on the internet.
Just read Stars Reach for the 4th time this year. I am such a fan of that book I bought the Merigan Tales anthology as well. The world portrayed there is comforting in it’s own way, it illustrates the adaptability of people to circumstances, and there is an honesty that underpins everything, even the people who are lying (Jennel Cobey)
I love this book. Several of the descriptors have wandered into my vocabulary (Mam Gaia, reborn, Old Believers) much to the puzzlement of those around me.
Thank you for writing it, John Michael. It is a complex and important book, and if any of you haven’t read it, I heartily recommend it.
Chuaquin, Northwind Grandma: I know of two polytheist exorcists, one Heathen and the other Graeco-Roman. From the little they say about it, they are busy and demonic activity is increasing.
Since the subject of collapse and reduced living standards has come up, I am back in the village in Mexico where I live half the year and have noticed the decreased number of visitors, both Mexican and foreign.
It is not necessarily a huge decline, but noticeable. Some businesses are noticing it and starting to freak out a bit.By the end of next week one will have a clearer idea of the number of Mexican visitors, and by the middle or end of Jan of foreigners.. A lot of people are just considerably poorer than they were, especially older people on fixed incomes. On the other hand the business people’s expenses have gone up too, and they still can’t quite believe the boom may be coming to an end. I have one friend who has had her house on the market for a year with no offers. Some of the houses that are on the market for US$300,000 might sell for 200 or less. Also,some of the houses were built way up the hill on multi levels by people in their 50s and 60s as their dream retirement house. Now that they are in their 70s and 80s they can’t access the house or deal with the stairs:another form of collapse they didn’t want to think about at the time, as well as shoddy construction. Interesting times. I fear there will be tears before bedtime.
Another thing one notices when one doesn’t see older people for 6 or 9 months is their level of physical and cognitive collapse. And lest one might think I haven’t noticed: yes it does serve as a dark mirror.
Stephen
Imperium Press’s blog has been putting out some interesting ideas that are pushing the edges. The latest post (I have only read the non-paid part but that is worthwhile reading – especially the discussion of historical Egypt and China) talks about the framework they are using (https://imperiumpress.substack.com/p/the-death-of-literacy-and-the-archaic) (and the article is the second time in recent days that I have encountered discussions of orality vs literacy).
Excerpt:
“We here at Imperium Press have developed a conceptual framework through which we can make sense of what otherwise seems like magic—the return of folkishness in the 21st century. One of the key concepts in that framework is the Archaic Revival, the literal return of pre-classical modes of human life and understanding. Environmentalism is a re-skinning of the archaic idea of cosmic maintenance, where the king would have to perform certain rites to prevent the world from ending; identitarianism is a re-skinning of the archaic idea of ancestor worship, where the highest good, and the source of all imperatives, is the blood—there are probably about half a dozen such symptoms of this revival, and the re-oralization of Western culture is one.”
JMG, in the past I took you up on your enthusiasm about vacuum tubes and decided to set out and repair a radio described to me as in working order and sold for 20€. It wasn’t even in working condition so I had more to repair. I found that vacuum tubes can be built by hobbyists even with a glass blowing workshop and a high vacuum pump when watching glasslingers YouTube channel. The parts for it may be a little bit hard to obtain as there are specialized metals and or chemicals for wires and getters required. Then which is the more important part you need 60-80W of electricity to power the thing the most of which is just heating your room. Also the enclosed volume is easily more than a bread box. Given that the great achievement of modern electronics is miniaturization which lead to far lower resource use per device, I have doubts that a resource poor future will reduce the pressure to miniaturize. The possibility of an emp that destroys a battery powered transistor radio may exist but I have doubts that you can’t protect one sufficiently to survive such a brief event. Fortunately there are hobbyists that build transistors now, so I suspect electronics will be available if the remainder of society still works. Overall the repair skills improved my electrical engineering knowledge so this was a great exercise.
did my comment just disappear?
Clay Dennis # 107:
I’m not obviously JMG, but I can tell you I find your question fascinating. It would be a fine exercise of “alternative history”(or “uchronia” to try the way the USA could have been in the recent past without those geopolitical intrigues (cough…). And it could be even more interesting to think what would look like the USA nowadays without those dirty operations. Who knows? Unluckily, I’m not a skilled and licensed historicist, only a “dilettante”, so I won’t write more about this (sub)topic.
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Justin P. # 108:
I watched “Twin Peaks” at the beginning of ‘90s when it arrived to my country recent opened private TV Channels. I was a teenager then: it’s rained a lot since then. I think it’s the best ever made TV series of history. I’ve also seen every Lynch movie…So what I could say to praise now one of my favourite artists?
TV series, like mainstream cinema, have been getting worse and worse in contents and artistic sense, since then, me think. It’s painful and makes me upset. I’ve thought sometimes I’m biased by youth nostalgia, but often I’ve found online nowadays teens and young adults who love “Twin Peaks” and other old series and movies…and despise the today garbage!
Nowadays, the only series I watch is “Stranger Things”, which I know it isn’t so good as “Twin Peaks” was in its time. Times have changed too to watch TV (which I rarely watch today). However, I can appreciate some virtues in “Stranger Things” which make it better than average actual series. First, its calculated blend of sci-fi/teens/fantasy/horror elements. And second, its realistic depiction of ‘80s lifestyle and culture. Well, IMHO this is the secret of this series success in and outside the USA: everybody who remembers the ‘80s know, consciously or not, that comparation with nowadays everyday life and culture shows there’s been a complete crappification of everything since that old times. Even the digitalization frenzy is only a “fig leaf” which doesn’t fool us anymore. With the evident slight differences between local culture and US “native” one, of course; though pop culture was globalizing yet since the ‘80s. By the way, I was a happy child during the ‘80s…
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Brendhelm # 110:
Be careful! I’m taking note of your forecasts for 2026. Although don’t worry: they look like to me unfortunately possible, except the Chinese attempt to retake Taiwan. I doubt China regime would be so stupid to do it and put in risk their economic power too soon before to have full geopolitic muscle. We’ll see these predictions…
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Pam # 112:
You’ve remembered old Velikovsky in your comment, which leads me to remember Robert Anton Wilson, who was positive about Velikovsky works (if I remember him well). This scientist was educated in a materialist philosophy and worked within it (if I’m not wrong), but his mortal sin to the scientists orthodoxy of his time (until our time) was pointing hypothesis apparently too bizarre for boring official science, me think.
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Methylethyl # 116:
I didn’t know Mr. Card had suffered a stroke. It could be that health problem
had affected his writing…or not, in the case of his full recuperation. Of course, I don’t know what’s his real health level now.
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JMG # 117:
At least in the USA, there are some right populist people worried with Christian Palestinians predicament; while my country right and right wing politicians are full pro-Israeli politics, so they shut up about this uncomfortable thing (in spite of being very proud to be Christians, at least nominally).
By the way, who cares nowadays in the West about Christian minories in Syria? Since the “democratic” Spectacle was perpetred there, with a “mild” islamist government after Assad fall, I guess life won’t be easy for non muslims there (though in general terms it won’t be easy for woman and gays neither).
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Booklover # 124:
Germans: you aren’t alone in EU with your dysfunctional bureaucracy. You shouldn’t want to know spanish bureaucracies…I say them in plural because complexity levels here in the public “business” are huge. Even a writer called Sara Mesa has written about this topic eventually in her novel “Oposición”(a story about a new bureaucratic worker who starts to live inside this Kafkian world from the other side of the counter, different but not better than bureaucracy users). I don’t know wether is translated to English or German yet.
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Justin P. # 125:
Ah, ha ha ha…Thank you for your short but expressive comment! A good Lynchian quite too.
BeardTree, I’ll consider that. As for plucky girlbosses, I wonder how many of my readers realize that a good many of the female protagonists in my novels are deliberate attempts to deconstruct that hackneyed stereotype…
Polecat, excellent. I get a remarkable fraction of my reading material from antique malls, too.
John Paul, thank you! I’m delighted to hear this, of course — not least because that was the project that convinced me that there really was a point to writing fiction. I owe my commentariat for that, big time, since they applauded my first attempts to tiptoe back into fiction so generously, and then joined me in the years-long fiction-blog journey that gave rise to Star’s Reach. So thank you again, and may you have the best dreams tonight that anybody ever had. 😉
Stephen, thanks for these data points. I wonder how much of it is broad economic decline and how much is the steep decline in ready cash among the laptop class now that government-funded grifts of the USAID variety are being chopped here in the EE.UU.
KAN, “pushing the edges” indeed! I wonder if it’s occurred to them that the preclassical is also the postclassical — those things also returned in post-Roman Europe, for example.
KTi, I’m delighted to hear this. Sure, you can protect transistorized gear if you have advanced warning — a well-grounded Faraday cage will do the trick, for example. I’m delighted to hear, too, that homebrewed transistors are becoming fashionable. The important thing is that individual craftspeople can make electronic components themselves — so long as that’s the case, basic radio technology will remain viable straight through the coming deindustrial dark ages, with immense benefit to all.
Stephen, no, for some reason it got flagged as spam by my spam filter. I rescued it from durance vile, as you see.
Chuaquin, oh, the populist right here has its own downsides. I’ve seen Christian shaleposters suggesting that the best solution for the Israel-Palestine squabble is to replace both with a revived Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem —
— which may be one of the most harebrained notions yet.
Blue Velvet .. Now THAT was some flick. Denis Hopper fully creeped me out in that ‘iconic’ role. One of the beggining scenes – of that bloodied severed ear nestled in the grass, with the chirpings of crickets with that pensive sound tract – was so lynchian .. never quite thought of crickets in the same ol’ way ever since. ‘OH Mama, huff .. huff, OHMAMA!’
@ Kimberly Steele
As someone with four kids, I can tell you that I wouldn’t need to do anything. It wouldn’t happen. I have a great relationship with all of my children. Last night we were stomping around our den in some sort of imitation of an Indian war dance shaking the house and yelling instead of going to bed, which is what they were supposed to be doing. I started that, my wife just laughed. The kids had a blast and couldn’t stop giggling between their war whoops.
Why can I have both kids that would never do something like you describe but also that I can play with and bend the rules with? Because I’ve spent their whole lives teaching them where the boundaries are and that, while there is a lot of latitude between those boundaries where they can do as they please, if they cross the line they can expect repercussions. Knowing where the line is makes them feel secure and allows me to be able to relax and be playful and fun.
@ Achille
I live on the Olympic Peninsula about eight or nine thousand kilometers from you. Allow me to describe the situation here:
In addition to political tensions, the Olympic Peninsula has many other problems.
To begin with, it is a remote area that lives off tourism and retiree pensions, which makes it extremely fragile during an economic crisis, as the first thing people cut back on is foreign travel and the funding behind the retiree pensions is probably mostly smoke and mirrors in a major economic crisis.
Furthermore, even with fairly massive immigration (which also brings its own mix of extra old people and imported drug addicts that support the local organized crime business model), I am beginning to see the writing on the wall in terms of demographic decline.
As if this were not enough, we have a hellish state level bureaucracy that hinders everything, especially small business and home economies. The local government makes concerted efforts to destroy what little agriculture and livestock farming remains in order to pave the land over for more suburban development or to cordon everything productive off for the aforementioned organized crime group, and both our state and federal government seem to endlessly dream about recreating a techno-surveillance state.
Finally, I believe we have lost everything that once allowed people to survive in this country.
Family and community ties are broken, the wisdom of the old ways has been lost under modernity, we have destroyed the best farmland, we have forgotten our cultures to embrace an empty pseudo-culture…
Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t mean to make fun of you. The frustration is real. I think the situation you’re describing applies far more widely than you might think. The hour is late, you might say. Nonetheless, sitting around wringing your hands and stressing will do nothing. Pick something to do, I can heartily suggest investing time in the next generation’s knowledge and skills as I mentioned earlier, and get to work. Stop worrying about the Byzantinely complex government regulations. Start asking yourself, “what is the risk of me getting caught?” If it is little to none, then who gives a shale what the government thinks. If you worry about a lack of family ties, start building them with your children now. Time spent teaching them valuable skills will build your knowledge, their knowledge and familial ties that just don’t come about any other way.
If you worry about dying and leaving everyone to their own devices then take do something about it. Strong people are harder to kill and more useful in general. Get stronger and involve your kids in doing so.
If you worry about your kids being capable then teach them something useful. It doesn’t matter what. Get a piece of flint and a steel. Make some char cloth and go practice building fires with them. If you don’t know how to do that, learn and involve them in the process.
Start cooking food from scratch, if you don’t now, Involve your kids. Go buy a live chicken and kill it clean it and eat it. Involve your kids.
Maybe none of these suggestions work for you but there are an endless number of things you can come up with to do. Just do it. And involve your kids. Forget about comparing you or your kids to anybody else, just make yourself and them better today than you were yesterday and have fun doing it. If you’re worried about the breakdown in social ties then you can appreciate the fact that you are building the nucleus of a little clan that, if done well, will long outlast you.
HV
Re: older folks clearing clutter, I can’t speak for my whole generation but I am in the process of sorting through my possessions, pulling out the ones I am unlikely to use again, and hauling them to the nearest secular thrift store. My reason is that the rent on my storage unit, which was iirc $79/month when I first started renting it, has been steadily rising over the last couple of years to the point where it’s now more than twice that. If I can get about 2/3 of the contents off my hands, I can move the rest to a smaller unit in the same building, which will cut the monthly rent down to a more manageable number.
More generally I’m guessing that rising real estate costs (to rent or buy or even just pay the taxes on) is combining with decreasing able-bodied-ness, plus the memory of the Herculean task of settling the estates of our Depression-kid parents who were often relentless pack-rats. My mom managed to avoid the need for probate, but it still took me six months to dispose of all her stuff. I don’t want my nephews to have to deal with anything like that after I go.
Beardtree # 133:
I’ve written before I don’t live in US so I can’t help much in prospecting a hypothetical American style fascism. However, I could agree with your thoughts about it. Of course, I can say an American fascism would be different of European style possible new fascism. For example, I see American political spectrum doesn’t have far right parties which here exist, because of your hard bipartisanship every right people votes Republican, even the hardest guys. What I can see from my country is nowadays far right black beast is the Islam (what a surprise!). Other cultures migrants are despised too, but a heck less than for example Moroccans. A real fascist party in a grim near future (at least in Spain) would be anti-muslims filling the forgotten anti-semitism, and ironically pro-Israeli (extremisms usually touch each others). This half-religious hatred would be the travel fellow of a mixed totalitarian politics/conservative catholicism (like Franco did during his dictatorship). Maybe new fascists leaders could be able to fool not only native Spaniards, but Romanians, South Americans and even Gypsies too. It’s not very absurd to think it, because those migrant and ethnic minories aren’t islamic, so they would be considered as “honorary spaniards” adding them to their participation in a future hypothetical “crussade”.
What I think could be common between American and European wannabees fascists could be (in adittion to open violence) the inclusion of growth limits and global warming in their ideary, to justify their incoming atrocities. That would make them
more dangerous than nowadays far right denialists, because they would succeed in fooling former woke/leftists/radical ecologists to be recruited by their Sturmtruppen. Indeed, in the past there were German Nazis who were former Commies, and even Nazi-Bolsheviks…
Well, I wish these predictions never become real…
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Patrick # 134:
Thank you to make remember me that ominous hard fact. Israeli destruction of ancient churches in Palestinian zones can’t be explained well, unless we point that indeed, Israel has its own agenda (so it isn’t one more of usual US “colonies”). Churches destruction by Israelis nominally Jews,
while USA keeps being a mainly christian country is a bloody contradiction. I think Israel has parasitized the USA since Israeli US lobby was met first time. Maybe it’s too simplistic to say USA is an Israeli puppet: I’d like to tell you that Zionism and US foreign politics are an “emporium” of shared interests which converge apparently until today. So Israel is the poster boy for American politicians in both parties, maybe it can be seen as an equal partner, a “convenience marriage” where both members are at the same level (over the EU serfdoms for example). What I see as clearly as you is that leftist pro-Palestinian Spectacle misses this point and eventually fails to explain the Zionist/American relationship beyond its usual propaganda…
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Northwind Grandma # 135:
Indeed, that man in my country would be labelled fastly as far right extremist, because at least in his ideas in common with populist spanish party (“Vox”), he shares a heck of them. Some of his ideas seem reasonable, but others seem too bizarre IMHO (I save for myself which I think are reasonable and which ones are not).
By the way, I think there’s a big and growing trench between US and Europe sight of political spectrum(Right/far right difference between countries).
However, I think some things never change in every country of the world. I’d like to tell you to be careful in the apparent true truth finding. Especially in politics, there isn’t an only truth.
Oops!
I finally find curious his last name doesn’t sound very American-English origined. Although I guess he looks at himself as a white man.
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Phutatorius # 136:
Indeed, the Cowboy who appears in “Mulholland Drive” is a heck of strangeness. I think he could be an archetype of American culture, or maybe “only” a character who ran away a dream. Who knows? You can let free your imagination to think what the frack’s that mysterious cowboy…
First off, I’d like to join the chorus wishing everyone a happy holiday season of whatever stripe you celebrate, as well as a happy New Year. I’ll also join the other commenters in saying “thank you” to JMG for hosting this delightful little corner of the internet, and for another year’s worth of thought-provoking writing. It was also a privilege to be able to meet our host and many of the commentariat in Glastonbury this June.
@JMG
Sometimes people post little “progress updates” here in terms of their spiritual practices, and I figured I’d do the same here at the end of the year, since it seems like you appreciate hearing how readers have benefited from your teaching. Now, admittedly I’ve been working with Isaac Hill’s Heathen GD, but it was inspired by your work, and I’d never have found myself on this path without your influence.
Anyway, without turning this into my personal blog, I will say I’ve had some interesting TSW-type experiences this year. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away as coincidence by a materialist, but like you said in a recent Magic Monday, that doesn’t mean they’re right. 🙂 For one simple example, I tried the “cut and clear” spell a while back and found it remarkably effective. On a more substantial note, I’ve made some choices and done some things I never would have seen myself doing a few years back, and all this seems like it might just let me break out of the rut I’ve been in and finally realize some long-held aspirations. This has also involved some tests of will I don’t think I’d have passed before I started serious spiritual work. Along the way I’ve also had some very interesting synchronicities, some involving the names of Heathen gods in unrelated contexts, which especially made me pay attention. Some of my Rune divinations about the events of this fall turned out uncannily accurate in retrospect too.. So to sum up, a few weeks after I got back from Glastonbury I did the Thrall grade initiation, and if these are the results I’m certainly pleased to see some pay-off to the practices.
@Untitled-1 #28
As it happens, I have a similar anecote, even if I’m in northern Europe and not the US. I’ve long wondered how McDonalds can offer burgers at such ridiculously cheap prices, especially here in Norway with our high costs. When this came up in a conversation with an old friend who still occasionally eats there, he said their dubious offerings have gotten so expensive lately it’s become hard for him to justify. There was also a headline in the MSM here explaining why so many of the second-tier American fast food chains don’t open franchises here, apparently because they can’t afford it with our price level. So yes, another data point in favor of your theory.
@Eike with an “i” #73
“I’d like to hear the opinion of other European readers, on this or both of the topics I mentioned. How is the mood in your place, and what are your thoughts on war between western European countries?”
Up here in Norway, things still seem relatively fine from my perspective. I’ll admit I’m often a bit out of touch with the mainstream, though. That said, from what I can see there’s still enough residual wealth to keep the bread and circuses going for now, and we’re still well-fed enough to be squabbling over petty trifles and expecting all the lines to grow into the sky forever. Ie., of course everyone will always have more purchasing power every year, it’s only a matter of how much. Or as seen in the recent national budget: the question is how much revenue from the sovereign wealth fund we can responsibly use, not whether we have funds or not. Cheap electricity is basically a human right, etc etc. On a more positive note, I’d say we’re also in better shape than some other places because there’s still a partially intact national culture, social cohesion and trust that forty years of neoliberalism hasn’t quite managed to choke out. Of course being a small country of five million helps here too.
So for the time being business continues more or less as usual, as seen in the grotesque yearly orgy of consumption at Chrismas. Still, in spite of all this, there is a quiet but discernible sour note in the background. There’s a palpable sense that things aren’t quite as rosy as back in 2015, that many things have gotten more expensive for many people, and that the endless wealth might not flow quite as easily anymore. Plus a certain baseline level of angst around immigration and the aging population. We also have a looming crisis with a lot of municipalities being effectively bankrupt, while being saddled with ever more expensive obligations. I think there might be a half-articulated sense in, as JMG might call it, “the crawspaces of the national imagination”, that we have a lot of lose and probably shouldn’t be as smug about living in the best of all possible worlds as we’ve tended to be for the last fifty-odd years. For now, though, the illusion holds and the mood is reasonably calm and contented overall.
Hello Mr Greer and the commentariat!
I have been interested in discursive meditation ever since I have learned about it on this site. I am finally in circumstances where I can commit to daily practice for a while, so I am now going through preparatory exercises described on Ecosophia Dreamwidth. I am currently at the fourfold breath stage, and in a few days it will be time to move on to the full practice. I would therefore like to use this opportunity to ask about something that seems like a potential stumbling block.
The practice of discursive meditation consists of some relaxation, 5 minutes of fourfold breathing, 10 minutes of discursive meditation proper and a few more cycles of fourfold breath. Now, during the preparatory exercises, I have realised that my perception of time flow is rather inaccurate, and that I would need a clock to switch between the different phases. Currently I set an alarm to notify me when the time allocated to the practice has passed. However, since the full practice includes several transitions, I would need to stop the alarm once I have finished 5 minutes of fourfold breathing, then set it to ring again after 10 minutes, stop it once more once I have finished 10 minutes of reflection on a theme, and then proceed to several cycles of fourfold breath. Would this be acceptable, or would the mini-breaks for fiddling with the alarm be too disruptive?
Alternatively, I could have a clock in front of me the whole time. This might also be disruptive though – I would either have my eyes on the clock throughout the practice, making it a sort of focus, or have it outside my direct sight, which means I would have to interrupt my stillness in order to check the time.
Since discursive meditation had been developed before clock has been invented, I suppose accurate timekeeping is not a core element of the practice. So how to use a clock/alarm in a helpful way, and are they to be discarded eventually? Any suggestions welcome.
Many greetings!
Hi John Michael,
Corinne Heline was a very interesting person indeed, I can appreciate your curiosity as to the words and world-view. Out of sheer curiosity, was the lady forthright in the presentation of her views? I detected a certain understated righteousness, but may be off track there, or it may well be a whiff of the puritanical carried forward – we’re all something of a mish-mash of past relics. Dunno. Proust, I doff my hat to you, and wonder whether you’re delving into the French edition? Alas, I’ve no gift for other human languages.
Cheers
Chris
Data points from Christmas at my daughter’s house: among the gifts were “Boetheus: The Consolation of Philosophy” to me from my youngest grandson Caden – who was given “Marcus Aurelius: Meditations” by, I didn’t notice who. ( They are a high-energy and noisy family, especially when festive.) Three cheers!
They also got shoes, and Carol got wading boots;; I got some very practical clothing and cotton slipper-scuffs with good, solid soles. And Carol was folding up the tissue paper and whatever wrapping paper was more or less intact; gift bags abounded, including some very pretty cloth ones. And the house thermometer read the same (68 degrees) as the outside temperature – she was NOT trying to heat the whole outdoors! Methinks they have finally gotten a clue, consciously or not, and I am so proud of her.
@Chuaquin: I was a 90s teen too. I have to agree about your assessment of the standard of living sinxe then, and quality of life for teens and young people as depicted in Stranger Things. For sure, that has been a big part of its appeal, and 80s nostalgia in general.
@ Jennifer basic budget
Merry Christmas and greeting from a stormy Holiday, Toasty fire in the woodstove and batteries powering the internet modem 36 hours in….
For this area of the USA I would say that the housing number is way too low at 2,000/month as that will rent you a room in a shared house. Childcare is… well, they dont say age of 2 children. If that is after school and summer care, then maybe so, that is too low for infant/preschoool full time care of course as that is 4-6 children per adult, and so then you are expecting another adult to run their household on 64,000 to 96,000 a year ? But, that would not be provider take home as at a center as there is rent, management employee healthcare etc…out of that gross income before pay to provider of then only 45,000-70,000 a year or less. Although if you live in a area where you have a 3 bedroom house for 2,000 a month, then you might have childcare that low. This is why in addition to what is best for the baby/toddler, a parent or grandparent needs to take care of them.
The grocery number seems ok, you could eat for less, but a bit over 250/month per person is a fine budget for houeholds these days. Healthcare premiums are that high for famiies. Of course this is all not sustainable and many live on less by not having childcare,not paying for healcare premium, and cooking simply and driving one used car
The European right-wing is definitely going into the anti-Islam direction. As evident up in Britain, you can be whatever race or ethnic origin you want, Nigerian, Jamaican, Indian, Jewish, whatever, and so long as you declare yourself anti-Islam and pro-Israel the likes of Tommy Robinson etc will welcome you into their coalition.
JMG-#154
As for plucky girlbosses, I wonder how many of my readers realize that a good many of the female protagonists in my novels are deliberate attempts to deconstruct that hackneyed stereotype…
Oh, I noticed. You are an adept dismantler of hackneyed ideas of all kinds. That is why you command respect.
JOAN #157
More generally I’m guessing that rising real estate costs (to rent or buy or even just pay the taxes on) is combining with decreasing able-bodied-ness, plus the memory of the Herculean task of settling the estates of our Depression-kid parents who were often relentless pack-rats.
Same. I have an enormous record collection, which I am reducing in size since my ejection from the record store I used to work at. I still love physical media, and a well curated collection is something my son has expressed interest inheriting.
One of the greatest gifts we ever received from our father was, after my mother died, he liquidated his possesions, and when he died he had a truck with a camper, a Camry he towed behind it, and a storage space that had some tools, but was mostly my sisters shale. She will leave a mess.
Chuaquin #158
I’d like to tell you that Zionism and US foreign politics are an “emporium” of shared interests which converge apparently until today. So Israel is the poster boy for American politicians in both parties, maybe it can be seen as an equal partner, a “convenience marriage” where both members are at the same level
In my opinion, Israel is the 51st state. But, that is a complex region, of secret shifting alliances, of things not being what they appear to be on the surface. Little is revealed. Unless it serves another purpose. Human beings, man. Not that simple. Our host illustrated that well in Twilights Last Gleaming, which had a very plausible story line surrounding that part of the world.
@ Silicon Guy food production poverty line
What is meant by 20% ? 20% of calories ? 20% of money spent on food if it were to be all store bought ? Either way,, if a family has the space, it is not hard and doesnt take much time to provide 20% of food by either metric. But why would I do extra and send to a city ? It seems to me we are importing more and more vegetables and fruits, which is going backwards, why are there Canadian hothouse grown tomatoes in California in a top agriculture region of the state ? This implies way too much large scale specialization with us trading berries for winter tomatoes ? Crazy. Personally, I provide alot of my vegetable and all fruits. The region is going backwards as a whole
This is intertwined with the poverty line percentages as we are NOT paying enough for our food as a percentage of our monthly costs. This is why it is so hard on getting local foods. And in being a small or medium scale producer. Milk is especially underpriced vs historically which puts alot of pressure on that industry and the animals and precludes smaller production. The on the ground reality of what low income outlay is in this region is 50-80% outlay on shelter ( rent, heat,electric,water) over 50% just on housing easily all the time, much more the lower income. This is why I would say that most on foodstamps in the county is hiding income, or technically homeless ( could be couch surfing, staying with family or freinds or renting a room) as Federal guidelines assumes 1/3 of income is available for purchasing food. On a national level, this makes sense, it is a pressure to say, you cant afford to live in that region, move ! There are alot of free food distributions to make up the difference of course. But, food is not seen as the greatest need of the monthly money, the money is all going to rent and energy of one form or another ( transportation, heat, etc..) Then, as the article you linked says in the later part, the guy is making an argument for middle class status which is different than poverty. And I say federal level poverty is based on the whole country, and of course cant and shouldnt be based on SF bay area median expenses, could be that being on a retirement or disability income payment means that people should move, or at least could. States can make up their own metric and fund their own solutions if they want ( and they do, although I notice the states fund basic direct food giveaways of staple foods and then complain if the Feds want to do the same ( box of food aid or cut out junk food vs current food stamps. California has an extremely high percentage they charge the feds for administering Food stamps and direct aid USDA food distributions, more than one would think even given the higher cost of living. I amiagine we will rightly be getting federal pressure, and ocud be the stuff we saw last month and will again is the circus but is part of the showing the waste and pushing for reform, even as it stresses and hurts the poor temporarily. How does one get the state of California to employ less PMC to “administer” every Fed dollar ? . ))
I used to be a firm supporter of Israel, but now I think its creation was a mistake going back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration of the British government that supported a national homeland for the Jews. Between that and the creation of an independent Israel in 1948 for the purpose of creating “ a safe homeland” for Jews. Well, that didn’t work out as planned and now we are stuck with a perpetual bad situation with no seeable solution. There are over 7,000,000 Jews in Israel. The Biden administration had more than that enter the USA as undocumented immigrants so let’s have them come here with their skills and education. That’s my certainly
not going to happen solution..
I found the image below in 2016 but don’t know its provenance.
Is it just me or is there more going on in this than just an optical illusion?
https://postimg.cc/HVsfgBhZ
Might we end up in a situation where the American and European right-wing hate each other because in the future the American right-wing is anti-Semitic and would rather ally with Muslims, while the European right-wing is anti-Islamic and would rather ally with Jews?
@northwind grandma #135
>I am a fan of Nick Fuentes.
They call the people who follow him, Groypers. You are probably the strangest groyper I’ve seen yet. They have a stereotype. I won’t elaborate on it. Not important anyway.
I’m probably as far as you can get from being a screaming blue hair. Well, maybe if I listened to country music and wore cowboy boots, I could extend my distance a bit more. But when it comes to Fuentes, I’d keep my distance from him. I’m not sure which details to go into about him, you could write an Erika class wall of text about all the drama that he’s involved with. I’ll quote Joshua Moon who basically said “Fuentes only cares about Fuentes and nobody else” and I’ll point out nobody gets a thread about them on Kiwifarms to over 1000 pages without something serious being wrong with them. Guaranteed.
A lesson I had to learn a decade ago, just because someone is saying stuff you like to hear, does not make them your friend. In fact you need to be extra cautious with the ones who are saying the things you want to hear. And he is very very good at that. Not so good at other things though. Terrible at other things.
House of Card (no. 85), my experience was similar to yours. Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and the Alvin Maker books were all thoughtful classics of their genres, and I remember liking his short story “America” too (which seemed to use his time as a missionary as the jumping-off point). I lost interest in all the Ender sequels, though. His two “Ultimate Iron Man” comic-book miniseries (each 5 issues, 2006 and 2008) try to fix key problems with the Iron Man concept (e.g. how does he survive acceleration?)., but fan response was poor. Sure, a lot of that was due to the gay controversy / people just not liking Mormons, but the story was generally received as strange and not really what people wanted from Iron Man.
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Northwind Grandma (no. 87), yes “demonology” is a term in use, but primarily as a very niche subdivision of Catholic theology, (You can major in this at the Pontifical University, if you want to be an exorcist. God knows what kind of mail they get.) For a popular historical introduction to the devil / Satan / demons, etc., see Jeffrey Burton Russell’s four-volume series (The Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles), or their one-volume abridgment (The Prince of Darkness). Cross-culturally, demons behave a lot like the hungry ghosts of Chinese culture, or the witches of Africa, and must play social roles in addition to the narrative ones arising from the need for drama. They’re not always irredeemably bad; Padmasambhava is known for converting malevolent spirits to Buddhism, turning them into dharma protectors; while some Islamic traditions see Satan as the ultimate monotheist and lover of God, who is ultimatelly reconciled with him.
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Kimberly Steele (no. 103)
Maybe take away their presents until Armenian New Year? Something along those lines.
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JMG (no. 117), I didn’t realize she had a Plummer connection. Is there much difference between Plummer’s and Heindel’s theology? Interesting too about the angel emphasis. (Steiner had the Michael thing, of course.)
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Northwind Grandma (no. 135) Fuentes, on what to do with some black guy he saw littering:
“I’m supposed to be mad at Hitler? I’m supposed to be cross with Hitler? I want this guy dead. And I wish Hitler would kill him. I wish Hitler would have killed him, you know? … That guy should be KILLED! That guy should be killed for that. That guy should be dragged from his car and beaten to death by the public. … If I was in a room with Hitler and that guy, me and Hitler would team up and f*** that guy up! We would kill that guy! … And we’d high-five at the end.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/16-heinous-quotes-anti-lgbtq-120003531.html
Anything to pwn the libs, right?
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Sister Crow (no. 148), I’ve watched Daoist exorcists in action. It’s nothing very spectacular–they just wave incense on people.
– A place to check out classic out of copyright poems, https://openpoet.org/ now at over 97,600 poems free, legal, searchable….. Including Yeats. This is the project of a person I know who is a big poetry enthusiast, done as a labor of love to spread good poetry He is excitedly planning on ways to scan, convert and put up more next year as more goes out of copyright as we go into a new year. And, he does buy old hardcover print editions as he showed me two recent purchases, one from 1860’s the other 1912 , while there is nothing quite as good as the old leather bound book in hand, who has room for all 97,600 ones in print in ones living room ?
Come swish around, my pretty punk,
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill.
– My Holiday musing include: shrinkflation in the size of oysters on Christmas Eve; Why is what is thought of as the worse road of three up the mountain the one least likely to have a downed tree on it ? (A leading theory is maybe the people driving that one are more likely to carry chainsaws and get out and apply them ) ; While a limited data set, all the cars that blew past us, ignoring our quickly multiply flashed headlights at them ( the universal sign for there is a problem ahead) were 2 Teslas, the other cars stopped and verified that yeah, they needed to turn around. Leading to the thought that are Tesla owners the new BMW owners of the era ? Leading to fellow car occupant asking me ” what is the difference between a BMW and a porcupine ? ( answer below) Who has the jokes for Tesla drivers ? I did hear someone went off the road after we were there warning, have not heard if it was one of the Teslas trying to turn around where there was no room to do so; My 1974 yellow kitchen wall phone is still making calls, I do have a tube radio on top of the fridge, it does use more power than a transister radio, but the sound is great and it somehow receives a station or two out here with no antenna connected, maybe it uses the power cord for that….; Someone found and gave me a made in USA wooden handled pie server for Christmas, others a warm sweater, a handthrown pottery tea mug a set of beaswax tapers and some fat wood fire starters. I made 3 wooden garden hods and home canned apple products.
The answer is BMWs have their pricks on the inside
Denizen @ 83, Have you considered that there might be less than meets the eye with respect to Fuentes? I can’t really say, because I don’t follow lefty or righty celebs, life being short and all, but could this person be yet another grifter who found a profitable niche? I hasten to add, such grifters are to be found in every possible ideological niche.
JMG @154
In this case, I think most of the problem is with the cost of things rising much faster than anyone’s income/assets,whatever. Most of the foreigners I am thinking of are retired, and most Canadian, some American and others. The loss of disposable wealth of the American laptop class may well affect some resorts for younger people and shorter stays, but most of the people here are retirees on limited incomes. The Mexican tourists are mostly middle class families from Guadalajara for shorter stays. I can’t think of anyone I know whose expenses haven’t risen much more than their incomes pretty much worldwide. The decline is really very widespread. Food, heating, car expenses, housing are amongst the main issues mentioned.
Stephen
Kimberly Steele @ 103, about the opened presents, etc., I call that poor planning and negligent parenting. Presents are best opened on Christmas Eve when there are small children. The kids have something new to play with; that plus the excitement knocks them out and they don’t awaken till mid-morning the next day. If guests are expected for the big Christmas dinner, the cook has leisure to be cooking. If parents want to do the opening on Christmas morning, they need to be up and about before the kids get up.
In the situation described, presents would be all put away and there would be a general clean-up. I would neither demand nor be much impressed by ritualized expressions of remorse.
Borealbear, you’re welcome, and thank you for contributing to the community. Delighted to hear that the magical work is going well.
Soko, just have a clock somewhere in a place where you can see it easily. It’ll distract you a little at first, but after a while you’ll be able to take a brief glance at it now and then without interrupting the practice.
Chris, she was a Southern belle of the old school, the product of a very rich family, and I don’t think she shed all of the downsides of that heritage — a bit of self-righteousness, a bit of the puritanical spirit as impressed on an officially designated Flower of Southern Womanhood™, that sort of thing. None of us ever really gets out from under what we are! As for Proust, no, I’m sticking to the English translation for this one.
Patricia M, very glad to hear about those books.
John, okay, good. By the time I started my tentacle novels I’d developed quite the antipathy to plucky characters of all sorts, and decided the best way to express that was to have characters with, you know, ordinary human vulnerabilities and (in most cases) normal human abilities.
BeardTree, at this point it’s a predicament, rather than a problem; there will be no solution, just more rounds of pointless violence, quite possibly accelerating until mass death on all sides settles things temporarily.
Earthworm, I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.
Jack, I’ve encountered very little sympathy for Muslims on the American right — quite the contrary. It’s worth noting that Jews and Arabs are both technically Semites, and American antisemitism seems to be perfectly willing to include both.
Ambrose, not worth noting. Plummer’s theology also draws directly from Steiner, but by and large it’s a slight variation on Heindel’s.
Atmospheric, thanks for this!
Stephen, thanks for this. A useful data point.
How would a druid handle a demon?
💨💨📘Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hippie Viking @ 156 I wonder if you could elaborate on your comment:
“The local government makes concerted efforts to destroy what little agriculture and livestock farming remains in order to pave the land over for more suburban development or to cordon everything productive off for the aforementioned organized crime group, and both our state and federal government seem to endlessly dream about recreating a techno-surveillance state.
The part about development is depressingly familiar. RE interests all but own local governments all across the western states. What I would like to read more about is cordoning off of everything productive for a organized crime group. Do you have perhaps a link?
I have really enjoyed reading your article over the past couple of years. You take esoteric topics that would normally be difficult to understand and come as close as possible into putting them into layman’s language. As a youth, I was fascinated by astrology, out of body experiences, premonitions, coincidences that were too odd to be believed — all of which I had experienced at different stages of life (I swear I had out of body experiences as an infant, but now I wonder if it was sleep lock or misunderstanding of dreams). Then I “grew out” of such interests. Now approaching 60, I feel a need to be reconnected non-religiously to those instincts and interests. That’s where you have helped.
My question is about magic. Some of your articles on the topic I have read more than once. It’s a bit much to take in, but meaningful and worth absorbing. What I conclude from your writings, though, is that perhaps there is no difference between magic, hypnosis, advertising, social media influence, and media outlet owners manufacturing opinion through bias. Do you make any distinctions?
By the way, when I said “infant” I meant around age 4 or 5. I guess that’s toddler? I didn’t mean as a baby, which I obviously wouldn’t remember.
>On the RAM price hikes: The RAM that goes into “AI” computers is not the same as RAM that ends up in computers and smartphones.
Most of the equipment that is needed for this AI or Crypto is not much useful for anything else, the GPUs and TPUs are expensive and not that useful for normal tasks.
Most of the technologies adopted during perestroika and glasnost in 1985, 1986 did little to stall the collapse of the soviet union quite the contrary, all the reforms were made to copy the US power, computers, press, music and other tech actually accelarated the collapse. And during the collapse the specialist were vaccumed by US.
One would argue that US is in a sort of perestroika with AI to imitate China, if history is any guide, the imitator loses without a clear strategy. If the shale hits the fan, most of the AI scientists will be vacummed by China and Russia, leaving US with a gapping wound, from all these data centers and squandered energy.
@northwind grandma #135
>I am a fan of Nick Fuentes.
This Nick is the most obvious control opposition I ever seen in US. As JMG once said when someone is calling for illegal things is either undercover or a fool.
I’m nearly through Brian C. Muraresku’s book “The Immortality Key – The secret history of the religion with no name.” The author shows links between the ancient religion of Gobekli tepe, the Elysian Mysteries, details about Elysian-like religions brought to Spain by Greek emigre’s; How the Gospel of John was targeted to the local members of the Cult of Dionysius; And that the original Christian communion wine might have contained hallucinogens and been similar or identical to the ‘kukeon’ drink consumed at the Elysian Mysteries.
It’s a wild, mind-blowing ride, and seems to be based on archaeological research.
The author has so far not given an opinion about whether hallucinogens are helpful to a person’s spiritual life–seems more interested in documenting the links. As is, it’s given me a lot to think about, and I’d recommend it.
Anyone else seen this one? I’m sure someone here mentioned it in a previous blog post– Many thanks for that!
Just want to add more clarification to my previous comment.
Perestroika & Glasnost (1985-86) were accelerated by fax, VCR, PC, photocopiers, and satellite TV. These technologies broke the soviet information stranglehold.
AI is supposed to help with more control and social score but it is already starting to backfire the other way.
@110 Brendhelm – 2026 predictions
Hi Brendhelm, I’ll join you on the predictions mockery bench for Dec 2026–
My first impression of 2026 was the phrase “2026, year of clay.” No, I don’t understand what that could mean. Also, a stock market crash in Oct 2026. That’s all I’ve got so far. Anyone else?
A Scale of Sharklets.
In last weeks post Northwind Grandma mentioned the horror B-Movie “The Six-Sided Shark”, with a hydra-like shark-monster. JMG suggested, that the finally blown up shark pieces could transmute into Sharklets.
OK, Sharklets still fascinate me. So I made make a sharklet scale. Imagine there would be a follow-up movie: sharklet attack, and our hero+heroine pair manages to throw the sharklets into a mill, and grind them to dust. What could happen?
– micrometer scale: size of bacteria. You get SHARKMOEBA. It eats killer bacteria for breakfast.
– nanometer scale: you get SHARKNITES. You don’t want to get this stuff into your bloodstream, or liver, or brain.
– sub-nanometer scale: now we arrive to the size of an atom. Can Sharklets exist on a sub-nanometer scale? I suppose now, but wait, maybe we get something new: SHARKONIUM atoms! Not much is known about this nasty stuff. But we can assume, it is capable of biting and breaking all bonds in every molecules.
And now i will do some useful work, for example make a scale of electricity consumption or a list of abundant materials (the anti-rare-earth-list).
blessed solstice and christmas time,
parttimedruid
Last week, I mentioned a book written by AI that I had stumbled upon. I had actually been looking for a book about the Great Depression that had been mentioned several times around here (because of its usefulness for the coming Great And Interesting Times). There’s an abundance of books with those words in the title, though, so hopefully someone can remind me what the exact title (and maybe even the author) of that book was?
Stephen P. # 140:
Well, your sharp comment reminds me again Kundera view of the “kitsch” (to deny the s**t of things). Indeed, to have nostalgia for a not lived times have its own kitsch…By the way, everybody can be kitsch, even me when I was remembering my childhood during the 80s, now I can remind the heroin addicts lying in public parks, cough cough…everything has a dark side we sometimes don’t want to see.
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Achille # 144:
You’re welcome!
I think your personal and family situation isn’t very good yo cope with the next step down in the catabolic “collapse”(decline), but you aren’t too bad, too. My situation isn’t much better. I partly depend of government subsidies thanks to personal problems, so a decline in the dying “welfare” state would affect me. My family and friends are usually people who are middle class (or they pretend they’re yet). I have a certain social network around me, but I wonder how many of this friendships would survive the hard times ahead us. Well, we’ll see it. I think we’re towards a relatively slow decline, so if we start to be prepared now, maybe it won’t be such as dramatic as we fear it. Finally, you’re right when you say the end of massive tourism would mean the Spain economy ruin. However, I think in the lo g term every resources dedicated to tourism would be redirected to another activities. For example, empty touristic flats could be reformed to local people (so the housing problem would stop).
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Sister Crow # 148:
Indeed a sign of the times, how busy are now those politheistic exorcists…
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JMG # 154:
That right wing idea is very bizarre. Nostalgia for crussaders kingdom has made me to remember that some pro-Palestinian activists see the modern Israel state like a secularized version of Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, then they blame it as prototypical and first example of every colonialism. Last and anachronic specimen of colonialism would be the Zionism, with its Israel state. Well, it’s a good movie but historically I don’t think it’s very serious. You can see, John, there are bizarre thoughts in every side of political trenches…
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Boreal Bear # 159:
I’m glad there’s a live national/local culture there in Norway. Not every European country could be proud of it!
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Justin P. # 163:
Yes, so I’m not the only one here who has good memories of ‘80s and ‘90s times. However, not only who were young in these times are fans of “Stranger Things”. Indeed, there’s a lot of teens and young adults who like to watch a series which happens in an era which they didn’t live. I think they unconsciously notice there were different times, and until some extent, better times than today. Of course, we can notice too we must see the kitsch side too (there’s always a dark side in everything).
@ Hippie Viking #156
Hear! Hear!
I try always to remember that at the same time as external circumstances deteriorate, that – looked at from the “wrong” end up, as it were – they ALSO expand the scope and range and variety of simple things that we (each) CAN do to obtain and accomplish the kinds of marginal gains that improve quality of life for ourselves and for all those who are within the reach of our small, but real, powers.
And, therefore, I thank you, also, for the timely reminder. May your goings and doings be blessed!
@ Jack #170 –
Do you mean as a political alliance? (In which case, WHICH Muslims and/or WHICH Jews would find such an alliance with a western style right wing movement on political grounds attractive, since neither set of people could be described as forming a politically unified monolith, or even of sharing any coherent political programme)…
Or, as a tribal alliance? (In which case, how would this alliance work – by each “right” emphasising and embracing the aspects of Christianity which meld best with either Judaism and/or Islam, according to preference?)
Or, as some other kind of alliance not yet mentioned?
You’ve asked an interesting question, and I’m curious how you see it?
@ The Other Owen #171
“A lesson I had to learn a decade ago, just because someone is saying stuff you like to hear, does not make them your friend. In fact you need to be extra cautious with the ones who are saying the things you want to hear.”
A very useful lesson indeed, whether you are being “courted” by a political movement, by a marketing campaign, or by a goLLuM… 😉
Anonymous # 165:
Indeed Islam is the favourite bogey man for the far right wing everywhere in Europe. It’s part of its Spectacle, but anti-islamic propaganda has unluckily a real basis to work. Conservative muslim migrants (when not openly Islamists) have offered themselves as black beasts for native frustrations, for example, rejecting stupidly “de facto” to integrate in western culture. North Africans and Pakistani women with their ubiquous hijab on their head, walking in EU streets, show their stubborn dependence on their ethnic/religious origin, but they attract fatally the hatred of local extremists with their self margination. This suicidal attitude can’t be fully blamed to muslim
migrants, but also to the woke leftists who encouraged migrants to behave in such s way (“we must respect every customs they have and blah blah blah”).
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John O. # 166:
I agree. We don’t know exactly what happens in high spheres of foreign and domestic US/Israel politics. We only can grasp there are favors in both countries which sooner or later, must be compensated with another favors, and so on.
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Beardtree # 168:
Zionist dream to return “its” land became a nowadays nightmare. Zionism ideologues thought (or fooled themselves) the Holy Land was an empty territory with only a few scattered nomad Arabs, when in the real world Palestine before Zionist invasion thrived with towns and villages full of muslim population. Some Arab peasants were taking care of olives with more than 1000 years old. Of course, they were a conservative islamic society, but this fact didn’t give the Zionist jews the right to take away their land and destroy their culture. Palestinians have their own kitsch, but Israeli ideology has a heck of kitsch too…
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Jack # 170:
Thanks to this JMG blog I’ve noticed there’s a growing gap between American and European mind, but I don’t know by sure wether your division is going to be part of this growing trench. We’ll see.
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The Other Owen 171:
I agree. Indeed, I think Northwind Granma has falled in love with Mr. Fuentes! OK when you fall in love with someone, you can’t see his/her flaws during the first times of relation…so I return to my dear Kundera idea of Kitsch, and I can say it’s dangerous and blind to deny the s**t and see only the good side of people and ideologies (also called “Spectacles”).
By the way, I don’t like people who tell us they know all the truth. Another example of dogmatism which I can remember is Greta Thunberg (cough cough), in the opposite side of Fuentes ideological spectrum.
> We note that the same electric cork-pulling device, new in box, has been at the thrift shop unsold for months. — methylethyl #114
An electric cork-pulling device… who dreams up these things? And invests money into manufacturing and selling them? They live in a different world to me.
I wonder if there’s a dental attachment so you can use it for pulling teeth? “No home dentist should be without it.” Although, joking aside, I had a dentist who sold his practice and retired in his 40s because he went lame in one arm and no longer had the strength to do extractions.
Speaking of cork pulling devices, my dad had a cork pushing device. It was an air pump with a needle attached. You stuck the needle through the cork, pumped, and air pressure pushed the cork out.
I used it until the day I tried opening a wine bottle while a bit drunk by holding it round the neck and pumping the device vigorously. Too vigorously. I pulled the needle out of the cork on the upstroke and stuck it into my finger and pumped on the downstroke. The last two sections of my finger inflated. Gordon Highlanders. I was terrified of getting an air bubble in my bloodstream, which I understood could be fatal, so I grabbed my finger and sneezed and worked little bubbles of air out of the wound until my finger was back to normal. Lesson learned. Stick to the good old mechanical corkscrew.
Soko, I’m not sure if JMG would approve if this, but I have an app on my phone called “Mindfulness Bell”. You can set it to issue a gentle “gong” sound at an interval of your choosing.
Hey JMG
I recently finished reading “The Richest man in Babylon” by George Clason, a personal finance classic. I found it to be a fairly good read, quite interesting to see how Clason uses stories about Babylonians to explain how to increase one’s wealth. I wonder if you ever read it as well, or if you had your own favourite book on personal finance?
JMG “Earthworm, I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.”
Your response there sums things up quite nicely. Thank you. With the majority of what I think or write, I too, am not sure if I understand what I’m on about either; so, I shall be satisfied that at least I seem to be in good company on that matter 😉
To be a little less concise – periodically I look at that image and appreciate the effort that has gone into it. Obviously I was not referring to the ‘in one’s face chalice/goblet/grail’ but I suddenly wondered if the two younger characters were ‘inside’ representations of the old man and old woman – capturing time, change and ‘higher/deep emotion’ [for want of a term] in a still image.
Of course it could just be my imagination in overdrive, but there seems to be scope for symbolism of interest, an obvious one being the faint outline of structures within the old man’s head that ‘almost’ look like they could correspond to glands of interest in what looks like a tower-like structure.
The shading of the faces of the younger woman and man has been done in such a way to give form to eyes/eyelids of the old man and woman – not an idle piece of work and maybe worth considering more. Switching focus between the young, the old, and the vessel is an interesting process.
I don’t know tarot, but quietly looking at the image it reminded me of symbology seen in such things – the platter at the base of the chalice and ‘fruit’ or whatever (maybe lime to go with the cerveza!?) and the woman who forms the old man’s ear being in mid step out of the archway. Things like that… hidden meaning in plain sight?
The juxtaposition of two images from years apart representing two people with the third ‘overlay’ of a grail-like vessel made me wonder several things, including:
1. Does anyone else see any symbolism?
2. Does anyone recognise the style or know the source?
3. Does anyone know of any similar images to share?
Anyway – no worries, but if anyone knows of any similar older images created by the work of a human or humans, I’d be very grateful for the pointer.
I’ve got a doubt. Which one term should depict better the growing xenophobic (fsr right xenophobia against muslim migrants? Islamophobia or Arabophobia? Most of muslim migrants in my country are North Africans, so not Arabs “strictu sensu”, but indeed Islamic. However, in Middle East there are small but not to despise them, Arab-Christian minories…
Whatever name we label in this anti-Islamic hate feeling, I think (like I’ve written before) it’s partly caused by the own migrants attitudes and behavior. Women with hijab are only the iceberg peak. Often muslim migrants tend to live in ghetto-like communities in our towns. Well, this tendence to live with their compatriots, but when it lasts long time leads to self margination towards main native society. Even worse, sometimes I feel these migrants want to build a society within our society, with separate non written rules, according their origin countries customs. This attitude leads to the self accomplishing prophecy: muslim migrants don’t integrate in western countries, so…(xenophobia, racism, and so on). I’ll tell you not very time ago, some North African men (and women) asked a town local spanish authorities for allowing muslim woman to use the public swimming pool dressed or with “burkini”. Oh, and they wanted to bath there segregated from men, like they do in their country. There was a legal and media controversy, but finally the town major denied these bad ideas (hearing voice of reason…and state constitutional laicity). You can bet this cultural clash was cannon fodder to far right champions of “christian civilization” to blame every muslim migrant by this stupid iniciative.
I think these muslim migrant unconsciously are putting themselves a target in themselves with these self segregating attitudes.
Of course, not every muslim migrant behaves in this endogamic and “suicide” way of life. For example, I met some years ago a woman, who first I mistakedly thought she was Latin. However she told me a day she was from Morocco. She didn’t wear a hijab in her head and she worked cleaning stores. She was very integrated in our society, participating in social and cultural neighbourhood activities, but she said she was muslim in her own way. Unsurprisingly, she told me she hadn’t had near no problem with xenophobics here. Well, it always will be xenophobic and racist attitudes in societies, but migrants can trigger them with their behavior too, me think.
This was maybe not quite about cognitive collapse, so I saved it for this week, but in my mind, although possibly only there, there is a connection between cognitive collapse and the very large number of cars with only one front headlamp working (cyclops cars) that both I and my boyfriend are noticing out in Seattle exurbs these days. I used to see maybe one cyclops car a month. Now it is at least a few every day. If nothing else, one-eyed cars are a good symbol of cognitive collapse.
Not for everyone , but two books by an Italian Alpha Marxist (lifelong communist party activist) that cover topics our host has discussed in recent weeks, but from an Alpha Marxist standpoint.
The book “Western Marxism How it was Born” by Domenico Losurdo explores the rise of beta Marxism and gives details about the role of US government agencies in promoting it. (His “Western Marxism” is JMG’s beta Marxism.)
Losurdo’s “Stalin History and Critique of a Black Legend” must sound singularly uninviting but much of the first half portrays the struggle between utopianism and practicality within the Soviet government in its first decades. In Losurdo’s take, Lenin and Stalin were the practical force . When there was a conflict among the communists, the weaker faction would invariably take a utopian stance, comparing what its opponents were accomplishing or attempting to against some utopian perfection. This take is hard to argue against when it comes to the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty* but weaker in other areas. Still interesting.
(*The highly unequal peace treaty in early 1918 in which the new Bolshevik government capitulated to Germany, which would not lose the war in the West until the end of the year. As unfair as the Treaty of Versailles, it also sowed many seeds that helped cause WW2)
According to Losurdo, not only the Tsarist state but also society in the countryside had disintegrated. The Bolsheviks, for all their utopian plans for the withering of the state, found themselves not actually taking over the state, but having to build a new one in the feral rubble of the old one. This and the fact that peasant rebellions tend toward the utopian and millenarian means that the conflict between practicality and utopianism was more intense and perhaps more illuminating.
Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Keith Woods, Nick Griffin (of British National Party fame), Ron Unz, etc are all right wingers who would rather ally with the Muslims rather than the Jews over the Israel issue, which has become the biggest dividing line in the right in 2025 that is splitting apart the MAGA coalition.
When I’ve remembered the probable not easy situation of Christians and other “target” groups (women and gays) under the “democratic” and “mild” Islamic government in today Syria, I’ve forgotten to write about not Sunni muslims minories in that country. Their real situation may not cause envy, though the suspicious western media blackout about Syria real situation makes difficult to know what’s really happening there.
Hi JMG,
Can I ask you for some advice?
I have a lot of topics that I’m interested in and do research on as an amateur. Among other things: reconsidering the Labour Theory of Value and how self-proclaimed Georgists should not adopt a blanket dismissal of it based on “marginal utility”; the DNA links between the Xiong-nu, Huns, the early Shang and Confucius; the diffusion of bronze age metallurgy along the river and forest region in north Eurasia; why Singapore should not be a role model, and more.
I post about these topics once in a while on random places online. Sometimes here, sometimes Reddit. Otherwise I talk to my wife in bed about these as she and the baby fall asleep while listening to me.
My wife tells me I should start writing about all these things online somewhere, on Substack maybe, instead of doing this crazy, grey market side business I’m thinking of. I have actually thought about this before, but I feel like my range of interests are too broad to build an audience. Someone who e.g. might be interested in how the early Shang seems to have a strong East Eurasian steppe component, might not necessarily be interested in Georgism or Singapore or the LTV.
Do you think this is a justified worry or I should just write and not care about the audience? The main reason I haven’t done this is that I don’t think it will make money vs my other ideas..
Thanks
Following up on the discussion of the sequel to The Brothers Karamazov last week, there are contending versions. One that I cannot find the link to again has Alyosha falling from grace, but eventually returning to the monastery and living happily and constructively ever after. The other version, which many established Dostoevsky scholars reject and dislike intensely is:
From:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370370194_Dostoevsky's_Sequel_to_The_Brothers_Karamazov_Tsareubiistvo_Revisited/link/644c7f22809a535021366d32/download?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19
“Alesha will leave the monastery, become a socialist, and end his life in front of a firing squad for attempting to assassinate the Tsar (tsareubiistvo) – this according to A.S. Suvorin, a journalist friend, writer and publisher who tells
of a conversation between himself and Dostoevsky in February 1880 about Alesha’s “political crime” in a sequel; and the anonymous “Z”, who, in the Odessa Novorossiiskii Telegraf (May 1880), reported talk in “Petersburg literary
circles” of a tsareubiistvo ending [J: Tsar murder] after attending readings of the first Karamazov volume by Dostoevsky in April of the same year.
A month after Dostoevsky died, the tsar really was assassinated.
But it gets better. 6 years later a real life Alex was executed for trying to assassinate the next tsar. That Alex had a younger brother, which makes that brother the fifth Karamazov brother.
That real-life brother did what many brothers in his situation would do, he vowed revenge. Few brothers succeed in a task when their target is such a powerful figure. However, this brother, the fifth Karamazov, was named Vladimir, Vladimir Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin.
I think that part of what fascinates me about Dostoevsky is that he never resolved his internal war between the good conservative tsarist loyalist and the revolutionary he was nearly executed for starting to think about becoming. (Dostoevsky’s canceled execution and his real imprisonment and exile were for thought crime.) This conflict also reflects the conflict in Russia then between the Slavophiles and the Westernizers. If he succeeded in coming down completely on one side or the other, even if he had come up with some kind of compromise, he would have been a less interesting author. But he didn’t.
I am also interested to see conflicting currents in US conservatism that have some similarity to the Slavophile vs. Westernizers debate that runs through so much Russian/Soviet history, even to this day. One place this is showing up is in debate between those for whom there is an actual American culture to which immigrants should be assimilated (Americanophiles) and those for whom America is a set of principles that different cultures can exist within (Globalizers).
If America falls undeniably far behind China, a Chinasizer element may emerge, although at least at first, it would have to veil itself in anti-China-ism. (”We’re only copying Chinese style industrialization through technology acquisition in order to get strong so we can defeat China”.) Something along these lines already occurred in post-WW2 Western spirituality.
I have a question for out host and the commentariat. How or do you at all distinguish between responsible shopping and virtue signalling?
I am all for local shopping, but I need to see some local hiring as well.
I mostly buy 2nd hand, or make do without, or make myself (food, clothing). When I do have to purchase something new, I would rather not contribute my mite to the accelerated melting of Greenland, or the heartless exploitation of young women in sweatshops. And, I simply don’t like the feeling of being surrounded by plastic crap. I avoid shopping malls for that reason.
I would assert that there is nothing wrong with supporting good people, such as your local organic farmer, doing good work.
>This Nick is the most obvious control opposition I ever seen in US
I was once in that camp too. I’ve received info that may not be true. I know, surprised me greatly when I heard it. Takes a lot to surprise me these days. Nevertheless, he is a world-class f**kup, to put it mildly. Meow. And even if he isn’t taking orders from someone with an E-numbered paycheck and a pension plan, there are suspicious gassing and botting activity to boost his posts. His rise isn’t exactly organic, there are booster rockets on him. Someone wants you to pay attention to him, someone who probably hates you.
I think the best response to him is to keep your distance and warn others to do the same (which I’m doing now). Listen to him if you want but don’t get close to him. He’s in the same category as that Baked Alaska guy – if you see him in a crowd, get to the edge of it and run as fast as you can away from the crowd. I’m not talking about ideology here, I’m talking about survival.
Greetings all
At Beardtree # 168 amd JMG # 177,
With due respect to all, I have a slightly different view of the Israelo-Arab predicament.
It is clear that the establishment of Israel in 1948 was not only a mistake, but a grave injustice carried out against the natives with the full support of the west and interestingly enough of the USSR under Stalin.
The situation has now degraded till a point of no-return. But escalation may not happen at all, for a number of reasons:
(1) Israel is a nuclear armed country gone crazy enough to use them in west asia. Arab countries, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia are very aware of that. They will do anything possible to avoid that, hence the intense diplomatic activities across the region.
(2) Israel is totally dependent on US power and money to exist at all. Israel is the proxy of the US in west asia. With US power on the decline the position of Israel weakens and becomes untenable.
(3) Israel has lost considerable prestige in the US due to its own stupidity in razing Gazah. Israel loses support in the US
(4) Due to a number of factors Israel has begun a process of internal collapse and emigration accelerates
(5) As soon as Nethanyahoo leaves office, the next Israeli Gov will have little choice but to reconsider its options
(6) Hamas remains in Gazah, international forces move in.
(7) West Bank becomes more ungovernable than usual. Settlers more violent but with less state support.
(8) Withdrawal of Israel out of west bank now on the horizon due to loss of western support and rising financial costs
(9) Israel now recognises Palestine to avoid complete loss of international support and under intense Chinese and Russian pressure.
(10) Israel agrees to pay compensation to Palestine.
(11) Conflict appeases for another 10 to 20 years.
(12) Israel loses the demographic battle due to higher birthrates of Arabs
(13) The 2 state solution becomes the one state solution called Palestine
(14) Jews either leave for good or accept to live in an Arab country.
As JMG says, I have made my predictions and we’ll see in due time what unfolds.
@peter #201
And I’ll leave this meme here. You don’t have to pick a side, especially if there are no heroes in the story.
https://imgur.com/a/jCv334a
Northwind, I’d banish it so fast its hooves would leave skid marks on the astral plane. Demons have their normal and natural place in the cosmos, but that place is not here on the plane that humans inhabit, so sending them back where they belong is a beneficial deed; that’s why a line from an old Druid ritual reads, “let darkness be gathered to its proper place.”
Michael, those are different things but they related to the same broad class of human experiences. Advertising is a debased form of manipulative and usually evil magic; social media influence and manufactured opinion sometimes involve magical actions, usually (again) of the debased, manipulative, and evil variety; hypnosis is a technique for trance induction that some people use for magical purposes. Magic is the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will; while it includes the others, it also embraces much more. Out-of-body experiences in childhood are quite common, btw.
Emmanuel, hmm. I’ll take a look at it at some point, but so far everything I’ve read from that point of view has been unconvincing. So many books along those lines read as if a bunch of stoners were sitting around passing a joint from hand to hand, and somebody said, “Wow, man, what if those ancient Greek dudes in the mysteries ‘n’ s*** were just getting high?” — and one of the others stumbled over to a keyboard and started typing.
Parttimedruid, “sharkonium” is a keeper. If you take it even smaller, would quarks become sharks? Or sharqs? Or that mysterious subatomic particle, the sharkon?
Athaia, the book I always recommend is The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith.
Chuaquin, as I said, it may be the most batshale notion yet — but of course weirder things have happened.
J.L.Mc12, the closest things I have to a favorite book on personal finance, are, on the one hand, The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith, which has saved me more money than anything else in print — learn to recognize speculative bubbles and you’ll avoid the most common cause of mass bankruptcy — and on the other, the Essene lessons of Burks Hamner, which are the best version I’ve yet found of the saner end of New Thought, and completely changed my attitude toward my career and financial matters in general when I studied it in 2007-2009.
Earthworm, fair enough. No, nothing really comes to mind.
Chuaquin, I personally dislike the use of “-phobia” terms as a label for prejudice. Bigotry is not the same thing as panic. The phrase “anti-Muslim prejudice” works just as well, to my mind.
Jessica, hmm! The data point and the book are both interesting.
Alvin, your range of interests is just about broad enough to build an audience. Consider this blog, which ranges from peak oil to occultism to US and global politics to whatever wild hare gets into my mind next week. Your wife is correct; give it a try. Just remember to post regularly, stay weird, and engage with your audience as that builds.
Mary, ask yourself this. Do you care what other people think about the purchase? If not, it’s probably not virtue signaling.
Karim, that’s not impossible; I’d consider it a best case scenario, and somewhat unlikely for that reason, but I’d be willing to be pleasantly surprised. I didn’t think the Boer ascendancy in South Africa would end peacefully, either.
Ironically, multiculturalism has been harmful in the long term to “native” and imported ethnic and religious minories. If the impossibility of criticising anything from other cultures leads to western self censorship by woke “clergy” in MSM and Academia, then its consequence is the lack of communication and debate between cultures. Which lead to mutual isolation, and the non western cultures idealization (correlative to self hatred agains European culture, which indeed can and must be attacked in its dark side according wokesters dogma). It’s the “multiculti” kitsch: it’s denied the s**t of non western cultures, with the correlative censorship and cancelation to preserve idealized groups against unpleasant dirty and ugly side of them. The multiculturalist/woke long term failure has provoked the new European supremacism revival by the usual (far) right side of political spectrum: sometimes with the MacGuffin of supporting state laicism (like it happens in France); sometimes bluntly defending a conservative Christianism (this last happens in spanish Right wing).
Meanwhile, some leftists have noticed multiculturalism has failed, so they propose the Interculturalism: a way to communicate different cultures towards hybridation, though accepting every culture has its dark side which cannot be praised anymore. I think this term could be more constructive than multiculturalist kitsch, but unluckily it arrives too late. There’s an international tide in the western countries toward the far right side of cultural wars trenches.”Vae victis!”
>Also, a stock market crash in Oct 2026. That’s all I’ve got so far. Anyone else?
I can hardly see all these loose ends make it past spring. I am thinking a market crash may 2026.
@Chuaquin, people are pretty tolerant of burqas. It’s the stabbing and raping of indigenous Germans, and the driving of cars into crowds that sours people on the Muslim immigrants here. The deafening silence from the Muslim community after such atrocities on the one hand, while whining about islamophobia on the other, isn’t exactly helping things, either.
Arcane # 183:
A very smart comment about Mr. Fuentes case. I wonder how I wouldn’t realize it before…He could be the far right version
of the fake radical opposition in the left by Chomsky, for example.
————————————
Jessica # 199:
“Cyclops” cars may be explained by cognitive collapse, but also by its owners mere lazyness or lack of money to repair those cars. Who knows?
———————————
Jessica # 200:
Losurdo explanation of Beta Marxists origin is indeed a conspiracy theory me think. Well, these theories are usually perpetred by far right people, so I’m glad I’ve found a leftist exception…
I think some Beta Marxism could have been pushed with some “help” from outside the marxist Spectacle, but the fast and many changes in sociopolitical and economical senses, in western countries, during last century, can explain better that ideological mutation.
—————————
Karim # 207:
I thank your apportation to the Middle East wasp nest. I think your ideas about Israel/Palestine can be plausible, but I don’t share your idea of Israel as a simple US proxy in the area. The whole Middle East mess is a predicament (a situation with no evident nor easy solution), not a simple problem to be fixed. I think Israel has its own agenda which opportunely matches with USA agenda until today. Israel isn’t a proxy like other puppet countries, but the first place between US allies. We’ll see…
———————-
JMG # 209:
“Anti-Muslim Prejudice” fits as a correct definition of those attitudes, but I’m afraid it’s too long…However, I agree the “-phobia” terms aren’t fitted enough to describe a prejudice.
Browser went ‘bibbeldy’ – trying again
“Earthworm, fair enough. No, nothing really comes to mind.”
Ha! Found it… Salvador Dali ‘Old Couple or Musician’ from 1930
https://www.chilloutpoint.com/art_and_design/illusions-through-the-paintings-of-salvador-dali.html
And for new year smiles – The importance of listening to intuition:
https://ifunny.co/picture/off-the-mark-com-by-mark-parisi-i-can-t-UJyiVpD8C
@JMG and John Paul ONeil #147
Ah, that reminds me I was going to say I also reread Star’s Reach this year, for the first time since it was new. I agree with you, John Paul, in that it’s still a delightful book that has that great “adventure” feel, of settling into a colorful voyage through a very different world. That’s something I’ve been missing in a lot of modern fantasy and adventure stories too. Like JMG, I often find them boring and formulaic, but sometimes it’s hard to put my finger on what exactly they’re missing. So Star’s Reach certainly has that, but at the same time, it also felt very American in a way, as a plausible successor culture to the modern US. Also makes sense that there was a Star’s Reach RPG project at one point (I think?), since the main characters did give me a bit of an “RPG party” feel.
There are two scenes in that book that really stand out to me. The first is when Trey looks out at the ruins from the top of Troy Tower. I think that part more than any other really drove home the feeling of being in a new world after the end of industrial civilization, and showed in a visceral way how both vast and vulnerable our civilization is. My clear favorite part, though, is the bit where (light spoilers ahead) Trey sits down in that chair at the coast and visits Drowned Dee’Cee. It’s a very clear break with the rest of the book, which is so grounded in tone, but in a way that feels like an effective contrast rather than being jarring. I also love the mildly surreal, otherworldly atmosphere, and how the story teases us with whether anything supernatural happened or not. And of course, treating Washington DC as Atlantis is such a JMG thing to do. 🙂 This whole part feels like it could have been a stand-alone short story, but of course it also works well as it is.
@Chuaquin #189
Yes, I think we’re lucky in that regard, and Norway is probably a bit like Japan there. We have our problems, and there’s a growing divide between the upper and lower classes here too, but on the whole I do think we’ve managed to keep some of that social trust and cohesion that’s been eroded in many other places. If that’s going to last when the wealth runs out is a different question, of course.
@soko, @meditation timing
One way to approach this is to use the timing chore as an intuition exercise. While the conscious mind is clueless, in my experience the subconscious is capable of extremely accurate time-keeping. So when I start a phase of meditation, I make a mental note of the desired time and then forget about it, move on to the task at hand.
At some point, a feeling will surface: ‘times up’, at which point I check myself with the clock. I’m not always completely accurate but I can usually predict (before looking at the clock) how accurate I’ll be, entirely based on the strength of the feeling. I can often get accuracy within a few seconds of the desired time.
Dear John and commentariat: Do you know who is Col. Pedro Baños? He’s a very interesting geopolitical spanish thinker. It’s worth to read and hear him for what he says…and what he doesn’t say. He’s towards the right side of political spectrum, so his books and TV/online interviews are followed mainly by conservative people. So he has quite influence over this ideology.
First of all, I find provocative and bright his idea of “GeoHispanidad”, which is also a book. He starts pointing tacitly EU is in decline, within a “sandwich” between USA and China/Russia blocks. So he proposes not a full rupture with the rest of Western Europe, but slowly to weaken our dependence to Brussels. At the sane time, Spain future governments must reinforce cultural, economic and political bonds with South America, with every country where spanish language is spoken.
Well, this idea isn’t mainstream between the spanish right: both conservatives and far right populists share until
today their fondness for keeping being part of western block: Brussels, Washington…and Tel Aviv. However Mr. Baños new view towards Latin America is gaining slowly momentum.
In my next comment I’ll write what I think personally about this author ideas on a future possible spanish geopolitics.
(To be continued)
Arena #
The nazism was not only a political ideology more , but a religion ( positive christianim ) oposed to christianism and based in the effort for the purification of the germanic with the goal of obtain the aryan race.
The genocide of jews and gypsies was aimed by the pagan religious fanatism of the nazis and this presented certain similarities with the luteranism extended in Germany, but not with the catolicism., wich is opposed to the racial distintions and is focused in the good works and the sins of some one.
Emmanuel Goldstein @ 184 Just off the top of my head:
We do not and cannot know what rites would have been practiced at neolithic sites nor what beliefs accompanied those rites. We can take note of what flora and fauna were carved, an activity needing significant time and energy, but even when those same motifs reappear in other Mediterranean sites centuries or millennia later, it is almost certain that the rituals and symbolic meanings would have altered. A scholar can view a statue of Athena and understand this particular person or deity was of importance, but in the absence of written records, not know she was a virgin goddess–an extremely rare phenomenon worldwide–or that she was born, fully armed, from her father’s head.
Greek settlement in Iberia was confined to a handful of small city states along the northwestern coast, established by Phocaea and later by its’ colony, Massillia. I think it fair to suppose that the reasons for these foundations were, first, trade, and second, to watch the sea-lines leading to Massillia. That formidable city state is known to have successfully fought off two, IIRC, Carthaginian attacks and to have established its’ own zone of influence north of the Balearic Islands. I doubt they were foolish enough to tamper with local religions, and I rather think Carthaginian influence would have been much stronger in Iberia than Greek.
There were what we now call “mystery” cults all across the Greek world, all or most of which do seem to have kept their secrets. Why cite the Eleusinian, in which Phocaeans and their daughter cities are not known to have participated, in particular? It is of some interest to note that the Romans of the late Republic and early Principate as well–I hope I have that right–outlawed and suppressed Dionysiac worship.
Christians were by no means the first cult to receive unfriendly attention from Roman authorities.
Adulterants in communion wine wouldn’t surprise me, and has probably been done many times, if only to stretch a scarce supply.
In general, I can’t help wondering if Mararesku hasn’t muddled both geography and chronology. One example, there does happen to have been a well known mystery cult which took place on the island of Samothrace, right off the Anatolian coast, no more than a day’s sail from Phocaea. Granted the Eleusinian rites were to become more famous, but not at the time when the far sailing Phocaeans were founding their northwestern Med. colonies.
JMG, I don’t much care what anyone thinks of whatever I might do. If it ain’t illegal, go for it. I can take your point about environmentalists’ lavish lifestyles. Nevertheless, wholesale accusations of virtue signalling strike me as the whining of persons whose sit on my rump while other people work enterprises are losing money.
Untitled-1#28
We are wich we aeat. Our healthy depends absolutely of this, so the some one diet should be not only an economical question.
@Mary Bennet 179
What I am referring to is a very local scale group and my experience of that is as an actual local. There aren’t any written exposés or anything. The label of organized crime is mine. The group operates legal businesses, enjoys widespread public favor from the retirees that flood the area which it buys via civic projects and such, and exerts strong influence over local politics by throwing its substantial financial assets into backing various local political and judicial candidates. It is centrally controlled and operates without significant legal scrutiny due to its special status in the law. Upon closer inspection many of its businesses operate on legal but ethically objectionable bases. Its motives which at first appear altruistic or charitable once the patina has been scratched off are self-serving and destructive. Whenever a candidate for some political office or judicial position appears vocally speaking out against this group they almost always seem to drop out just ahead of the election citing “health” or “personal emergencies” etc. Actual local politicians and judicial officials are quick to always back them up or give them credit. When issues arise for the group with local ordinances, zoning etc they seem to just nicely disappear in short order and never be mentioned again. When this group takes issue with anybody else they can count on the opposite. I could go on but I’m not going to.
So when I say organized crime, I’m not talking about cartels. Think more a homegrown variety of the mob.
I’m not particularly worried about them. They would be an absolutely classic example of a group that builds itself up by breaking everyone else down, with exactly what that course eventually entails.
HV
Anonimus #165
There is a nazi intellectual , called Jaume Farrerons, who states that the anti-islamism of the right wing groups is because they are controlled by the zionists.
Anselme, was not the Spanish Inquisition directly aimed at conversos? Probably because they may have been thought to be in cahoots with Islam, the Sublime Porte and the North African sultanates being clear and present dangers to Spain. And because Ferdinand and Isabella, autocrats in their own way, may have thought they needed an enemy.
I wonder if it might not be time for us to request from our esteemed host a deep dive into the phenomenon of controlled opposition. Who resorts to this technique, what is it expected to accomplish, and how can we recognize it? I will say that the swift rise in publicity of Mr. Fuentes is very suspicious.
Chuaquin, “multiculturalism” was never more than a stalking horse pushing the supremacy of the managerial class, which has its own transnational culture and defends that with a great deal of nastiness and bigotry. As the blowback against the managerial class accelerates, and the rising entrepreneurial class moves to supplant it, yeah, various other views (laïcité in France, Catholic traditionalism in Spain, evangelical Protestantism in the US) are becoming the banners of the revolt. As for “anti-Muslim prejudice,” it’s only one syllable longer than “Islamophobia”!
Earthworm, funny. Thanks for both.
BorealBear, thanks for this. I considered doing a Star’s Reach RPG but sales of the Weird of Hali RPG have been so lackluster that I couldn’t justify the time it would require. I’m glad, btw, you caught the American quality of the Star’s Reach world. I’ve gotten very tired of the way that a sort of faux-European pastiche dominates so much of modern imaginative fiction, and wanted to do something rooted in the experience of this continent.
Chuaquin, no, I wasn’t familiar with Col. Baños. His ideas seem very sensible to me — those linguistic and historical connections are a potential source of considerable strength, and a way out of a rapidly failing European system.
Mary, in that case, you’re immune from the temptation of virtue signaling. If you really don’t care what other people think of your purchases, go ye forth and purchase, and let the whiners whine. As for controlled opposition, hmm. I’ll consider that, but it’ll take some research time on my part.
Anselmo, I have seen similar speculation which claims that Islam is, in effect, the armed wing of Judaism. No, I don’t believe it, nor the theory you referenced. It is certainly true that Jews facilitated some of the early Moslem conquests, in Spain, for example, because their communities received better treatment under the Caliphs than in Christendom. It is also true that Jewish money persons, along with many others who have more wealth than is good for them, do like to meddle in politics. I never heard that the Koch bros were Zionists. They merely wanted to own whatever their eyes could see.
Hippie Viking, thank you for the most interesting explanation. I greatly fear we will see many more local cartels such as you have described as decline progresses. I think it is high time the rest of us figured out ways to cope with such cartels, maybe how to recognise them in the early stages and at least limit their influence.
“Greek settlement in Iberia was confined to a handful of small city states along the northwestern coast”
Northwestern Mediterranean coast = Southeastern Iberian coast?
Chuaquin #218
Something like Beta Marxism was going to arise eventually for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I doubt Losurdo would have disputed that.
People in power do do things that they don’t publicize or that are the opposite of what they claim.
That US government agencies were involved in cultural promotion (and selection) during the Cold War has long been widely documented. Leading feminist Gloria Steinem’s connection with the CIA is just one better-known example.
I think that Losurdo is making the specific case he does because he wants to excommunicate the heretics and restore what he sees as true Marxism, namely a means for replacing capitalism with a better social system. To put it simply, there are DINOs (Democrats in name only) RINOs (their republican counterparts) and, for Losurdo, MINOs (Marxists in name only). Good names for sub-atomic particles too.
Okay… just a quick scan and that bloke Dali was one seriously strange character, and that is for sure!
“Salvador Dalí’s tarot deck, Dalí. Tarot , is a captivating fusion of his surrealist artistry and the mysticism of tarot. Commissioned in 1971 for the James Bond film *Live and Let Die*, though ultimately not used in the movie, the deck was completed in 1984 and remains one of Dalí’s most intriguing projects.”
“Dalí’s fascination with tarot wasn’t just a professional endeavor; it was deeply personal, shared with his wife and muse, Gala. Both Dalí and Gala were known to be intrigued by the occult and mysticism, with Gala, in particular, having a keen interest in tarot and astrology. She often consulted tarot cards for guidance and inspiration, influencing Dalí to explore the mystical world in his art. The creation of this deck was a way for Dalí to merge his artistic genius with the esoteric traditions that he and Gala found so captivating.”
https://www.crystalking.com/dali
JMG you said:
“the psychotic end of New Thought has been absorbed hook, line and sinker by elite culture. I’ll be discussing that when we get to that post — New Thought was one of the three winning topics this month.”
Sounds like he was pretty weird as a kid from the start (throwing himself downstairs for attention) – I’ve seen you mention Crowley (1875-1947) but don’t recall this bloke Dali (1904-1989) coming up – are we looking at a poster boy for the psychotic end of New Thought’ or something else altogether!?
Yeats and Dali each had a muse… but dear gods: “As you can see, Dalí added images of himself and Gala into the deck. ” what a narcissist!
Have you ever looked at his tarot deck? I get the impression his imagery strikes a deeply discordant note with some people.
Perhaps a rabbit hole to step quietly around?
Not sure if you’ll want to post this, but images from the deck:
https://www.crystalking.com/hs-fs/hubfs/dali%20tarot2.png?width=1344&height=600&name=dali%20tarot2.png
It strikes me that a lot of the arguing about female genital mutilation is caused by placing a number of very different practices in the same bucket and trying to treat them all the same.
Some things called FGM are considerably less invasive than circumcision, while others involve amputating the clitoris of preteen and early teenage girls without anaesthetic or their consent, with the direct aim of preventing orgasm. That’s if everything goes right – the conditions under which it is often done and the invasiveness of the surgery I understand is substantially more likely to result in infections which can lead to infertility and even death. Which is way more intense than circumcision, and results in numbers of women who remember what happened to them and are really angry about the continuing negative impacts on their lives.
I reckon a lot of people would be willing to leave the mild forms alone, and ban amputating the clitoris. You could make the cutoff ‘somewhat more invasive than male circumcision’, and then you wouldn’t have that problem either.
@222 Anselmo
Europe is facing mass immigration from Muslim countries, not of Jews from Israel or the USA, so right-wingers would likely be anti-Islam even without Zionist influence.
“Europe is facing mass immigration from Muslim countries, not of Jews from Israel or the USA, so right-wingers would likely be anti-Islam even without Zionist influence.”
And that’s the big difference between Europe and America: In America the big boogeymen enemies are going to be blacks and Jews, not Muslims, because America doesn’t have very many Muslims, but has a tense history with its black minority population and a currently rising anti-Semitism. After America leaves the Middle East it won’t care about Muslims anymore. In Europe, blacks (who are usually Christian) and Jews are going to be religious allies with Europeans against the sizable Muslim minority in the upcoming religious wars.
Jessica @ 226 northeastern Iberian coast. Roughly, the coast of what is now Catalonia. It is surprising to learn how many well known cities along the coasts of Catalonia, Gulf of Lions and eastwards to about Liguria began as Phocaean or Massillian foundations, Mersailles itself, Antibes, Nice, Ampurias in Spain among others.
Just a curious question to other members of the commentariat: Have you noticed a marked change in the attitudes surrounding climate change in your interactions of late? My personal anecdote would be my holiday conversations with my more mainstream “normie” relatives this year re: climate change and the need for renewable energy. The change in attitudes, reflecting the new narritives in the MSM, are an abrupt change from previously passionately held views. Of course the reality that AI datacenters have a 0% chance of running on renewable energy are at the root of this change in narritive. Maybe I’m just naive, but it astonishes me to watch people’s world view get steered in a new direction so abruptly, it’s rather disquieting!
Athaia # 212:
I think you didn’t read well my comment about muslim migrants.
I didn’t write about those crimes commited by some muslim men, because they’re in public knowledge and of course cannot be hidden by woke censorship. According what I’ve read online by more or less reliable sources, situation in Germany could be worse than here.
When a yihadist cell attacked Barcelona people with a stolen van, some years ago, I can remember quite muslim migrants condemned and mourned the attack.
Hard data about domestic abuse and rape against women in Spain are cooked by MSM to hide a dirty secret: a big chunk of those crimes are perpetred by migrant men, between them muslim migrants may be majority (cough cough). However, feminist/woke influenced media usually only say “men” to blame every men without describing their origin (very kitsch in Kundera definition: deny the s**t within multiculturalism).
Burkas are seen rarely in my town, but hijab are another thing. Maybe in Germany people doesn’t get upset with that evident sign of conservative Islam, but I can assure you here, under the woke MSM radar, more and more people are upset with their ubiquous street presence. If we connect this diffuse fear/hatred with some cultural wars which woke left has lost in the late times, we can do the math: so in next elections conservatives and far right populists probably will win in coalition the central government (they’ve got already some regional governments) and they will have free way to starting next cultural war against muslim migrants (indeed, a good way to distract spanish people of their awful neoliberal politics they’re planning). I don’t like this ideological turning point and I’m not especially worried when I see a woman with hijab in the street…Although right wing people indeed they’re upset with this beliefs/ethnic exhibition.
I hope I’ve written you an explanation about my apparent interest on muslim migrant women with hijab, which you can understand.
“Teresa, I’ve been saying for a long time that a significant number of radical woke feminists are going to end up converting to some conservative sect of Islam. This is a big step in that direction.”
Why it almost seems as if those feminists — if they were to convert — would use their new beliefs to control how other women behave and keep them in their place. All the while, they’d be so happy because controlling other women’s behavior would be culturally and religiously approved.
@chaquin
Do people in Spain still call them coches or is it just latams that call them carros? I remember being taught el coche but it seems all the spanish dialogue these days uses el carro.
>I have a question for out host and the commentariat. How or do you at all distinguish between responsible shopping and virtue signalling?
What do you mean by responsible shopping? Not blocking the aisle and vegging out for 10 minutes on your phone? Putting things back on the shelves where you got them if you’re not going to buy it? Returning the cart to the corral when you’re done with it? Trying to find something that hasn’t been crappified and cheapened in a desperate attempt to keep the price constant? Not spending more than you have?
Virtue signaling involves telling others what you’ve bought so they can call you a good boy (or girl). Imagine if dogs could call each other good boys. You’d never hear the end of it. So it’s real simple. Don’t tell people what you’ve bought. It’s your secret. Then they can’t tell you what a good girl you are. You don’t hear cats calling each other good boys, that’s for sure.
#215 BorealbearI also love the mildly surreal, otherworldly atmosphere, and how the story teases us with whether anything supernatural happened or not. And of course, treating Washington DC as Atlantis is such a JMG thing to do.
Yes! So true.
This story happens at a time that seems far off in human terms, but is a blip in geologic time. And at least a couple of hundred years before Meriga transforms into a civilized nation!
My favorite part in the book is when they show the message from Delta Pavonis, which caused such a deadly reaction from the WE BELIEVERS (alien visitor believers) driving home the end of the original Stars Reach project. My second favorite part is the Sirk, where Trey learns about animal acts. As someone who hates the zoo, and roots for the bulls at rodeos and bullfights, it really struck a chord (Cord, hehe) in me.
I also loved the early (2007) story arc in Adams Story, because it takes place in Neeonjin Country, which is where my descendants will probably live. It’s really early JMG fiction, but it illustrates how solid John Michael is as a writer and thinker, and very plausible. I am PNW for life, and I like trying to imagine how this land will evolve. Will the Puget Sound expand to make an inland sea like Banroo Bay? I am not solid enough on geodynamics to make solid predictions, but I do know our region is overdue for a major earthquake.
Sorry, Borealbear. I don’t know how that extra “l” got in there.
I also noted that Adams story was the beginning of comment moderation. I would like to express my gratitude for the work John Michael does in weeding this garden.
Boreal Bear # 215:
Norway has and will have its own problems, but I think (according my “dilettante” knowings) it will sail the Long Descent stormed waters better than my country. Spain depends too much of its first national industry: tourism. Good days of massive international tourism will be numbered as soon as economic contraction thanks to limits of growth bites more and more the wealthy countries which are the origin of those masses of tourists. So the Long Descent would be earlier here than in other EU countries.
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Anselmo # 218:
In addition to your reasoning, I’m going to remember Pope Pius XII wrote before WW2 an encyclical in which he prevented German catholics to join the NSDAP party, rejecting racist ideologies.
It’s a pity when in “Nuremberg” movie, a character blames Pious XII for having dealed the 1933 Concordate with Hitler; but that movie writer forgot the “little” detail of remembering the Encyclical.
I won’t defend everything Roma has done in its whole history, but I recognize soon the anticlerical propaganda.
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Anselmo # 222:
I don’t usually pay attention to fascist ideologues, but it’s a curious coincidence I guessed a simillar feeling when (during the worst part of Gaza massacre) every conservative and populist spanish right leaders parroted their inconditional support to Israel in its “war” against Palestinians. If they weren’t paid by the USA Israeli lobby, it looked like…Although without evidences this feeling doesn’t go beyond usual conspiracy theories.
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JMG # 224:
I hadn’t put in the “multiculti” equation the managerial class behind its curtains. A class which doesn’t have to live everyday enjoying the multicultural marvels (like cultural conflicts and lower work incomes), which suffer the native low class. And yes, your term is only a little longer than the other one.
*******
Col. Baños IMHO has access thanks to his military career and personal studies, maybe to information which we have no direct access, so I usually pay attention to his last opinions about everything. However, I’m also aware he promotes his personal Spectacle (like nowadays live author), so I try to have a critic eye on him. Although I can say his Spectacle is different of official politicians speeches here. I’m going to write soon the second part of my comment about him.
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Jessica # 227:
There’s never one only cause to explain
historical events, so deep changes which led to Beta Marxism could have been helped by intelligence operations. However, unless that author has hard evidences of it, his writings may belong to a conspiracy theory.
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Patrick # 231:
One thing doesn’t have to exclude the other one. Maybe Zionists are eager to accelerate the right wing “natural” tendence to whatever purposes they have in their mind. However, I repeat it: evidences please…
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Richard # 232:
I agree mainly, but African black immigrants in Europe have a big muslim minority, at least in my country there are a lot of Senegalese for example. So the situation is more complex than we usually think. What I think possible is Christian Blacks join with the other non muslims in the long or not so long term.
The Other Owen # 237:
In Castilian Spanish the most popular word for car is “coche”, but the term “auto” is also used, but less frequently. Here “Carro” is heard within the Latin
America diaspora, but rarely between “natives” here.
@jmg #209
Fair enough. As mauritius is not far from south africa and has long and deep economic links with that country since the time of apartheid, the fate of apartheid south africa was a constant source of discussions here before the fall of apartheid. I was struck by 2 aspects (1) most people assumed that the end of apartheid south africa would be a blood bath, when i disagreed, noting that there are many dynamics at hand, people were dismissive of my views. Thankfully i was right.
(2) i have noticed the close parallels between apartheid south africa and israel. Both have sprung out of western supremacist ideology and both caused havoc on large scales and both depended on full western support for survival. apartheid collapsed under its own weight and so will israel and for the same reasons. Peter botha was inflexible and nethanyahoo closely resembles him. Botha was pushed aside when it was clear that his policies led to disaster. Western business interests noted that and i suspect were instrumental in the downfall of botha and the rise of de clerk.
Interestingly enough i suspect that gulf states recognise that policies of nethanyahoo lead to disaster and is bad for business. And they will work with less stupid forces in israel to steer that country away from self immolation.
Gulf states now understand that the region can only become wealthy with a cessation of hostilities. And that means a palestinian state. The time of zion israel is now passed, the time of palestine and a secular israel have come.
The historical trajectory is now written in stone. It cannot be avoided only delayed. I also suspect that trump agrees with the above, hence the shaky cease fire and the quick end to the 12 day war against iran. China needs oil and gas from west asia, it cannot allow war to spread there. Its really is an existential threat to them.
Hence there are many forces now pushing towards some form of conflict resolution. Now i may be wrong, of course and the conflict may well widen and become uncontrollable. Time will tell.
@chaquin 213, yes israel is more than a proxy for the usa and there is alignment of interests between these 2 countries. Now with trump, much less. However the usa hawks may still want a wider war for their own reasons. Its trump versus the hawks now i tend to think. We ll see what faction wins.
@ Anselmo
Thank you for your words. The Dana was a terrible tragedy, but at the same time it revealed the great moral character of ordinary people.
@ HippieViking #156
You’re right, and I think your suggestions are very wise. In fact, I’ve already decided what skills to practice. I’ve gotten my fishing license and I’m looking to buy some chickens and rabbits. On the other hand, I have always been attracted to nature and already know something about medicinal and edible wild plants.
Thank you for your advice. I will try to face things with a more constructive mindset.
@ Chuaquin #158
Apart from the possibility of a return to Franco’s Catholic fascism, don’t rule out an Islamic fascist state or a fascist state aligned with Islamic interests. It may seem like a fantasy to you, but it’s curious that Vox (the Spanish far-right party) was financed by the People’s Mujahideen of Iran (MeK).
But to be honest, I have a very negative view of immigration, not only Muslim immigration, and my view may be a little biased. I can’t usually be so direct when commenting on this because people label me as far-right when I mention it. It’s curious how they have managed to silence any criticism or dissenting opinion with these kinds of accusations.
I also noted another parallel between apartheid south africa and israel. Both had powerful armies that could not be defeated by armies of surrounding countries yet both could not maintain hegemony in the region.
In the case of south africa, resistance in namibia and angola showed the strict limits to the military power of south africa. Similarly the axis of resistance with hamas, yemen, iran, hezbollah and other groups across the region shows the limits to the military power of both israel and the usa.
Israel’s invasion of southern syria and Gaza is a bridge too far. It shows limits. Sharply. Just like the invasion of namibia and angola by south africa was a bridge too far…sharp limits. The time of apartheid south africa was over, the time of a democratic south africa had come. It was written in stone. Could not be avoided only delayed. South africa elites of the time had the good sense of noticing that.
Nick Fuentes supports waging a war against Venezuela.
(2nd part). Col. Baños and his “GeoHispanidad”.
His idea of building an economic and sociopolitic commonwealth joining every country where spanish language is spoken, seems to me a good idea at first glance. EU dream of perpetual wealth and expansion’s dying in the bureaucratic Brussels nightmare (and the Ukraine battlefields); so Mr. Baños indeed is proposing to the spanish elites a plan B for the future.
Basing international cooperation in shared language and (a part of) history seems smart, and better than the Babel tower called EU (in spite of having adopted English as lingua franca), and its heterogeneal cultural differences, which cannot be erased even by a common Euro.
However, sharing the same common language doesn’t mean shared views in politics, economics and so on. We have the same language but maybe we din’t agree. And common history can be seen equally from the old imperial center and from the former colonies. Nationalistic and leftist tendences in South and Central America have fondness in remembering the violent historical events from past (Conquista and Independence wars) to blame Spain for every problem there’s nowadays in those countries. This complaining has part of truth but also part of Spectacle (quite today problems in spanish language countries have been caused by reckless local elites after their independence, and another powers economic imperialism, the most powerful the US).
Deeper collaboration between spanish language countries should jump over this historical lack of trust in Spain “motherland”, but this is utopian without the will of every governments implied in this, which implies a common agenda that doesn’t exist yet, beyond beautiful speeches.
Another problem for Mr. Baños proposal is ironically geopolitical. The very slow but true UE fall into weakness would allow more national empowerment to countries like Spain in the future; but we’re also witnessing the slow withdraw by the USA from its vassals EU states. Please notice that withdraw into isolation is correlative with more US interest in its continental neighbours. Trumpian rehash of Monroe Doctrine’s a first sign of future USA governments growing influence towards south of Rio Grande…
Of course you may have guessed this tendence will be in a blunt contradiction with possible Spain ambitions to become the main influence towards its former colonies. If we add the Long Descent to the hypothetic clash between Spain and USA for the influence over that part of the world, we could imagine interesting times fir geopolitic unstability. However, though USA is going to suffer very much in its fallen status as last global superpower, I’m afraid the Long Descent will be worse for Spain, by its size and economic weakness. Oh, and we have another rising global superpower called China, whose imperial interests in South America could prevail there (at least until limits of growth bite the last global long distance trade). I think Spain is a second level runner in this race to win South and Central America for geopolitical power. However, future isn’t written yet, so I wouldn’t discard Baños theory as utopian. We’ll see…
As the ‘flame’ of 2025 gutters out, I wish JMG and everyone in the commentariat a blessed and joyous remainder of the year and a wonderful 2026.
According to Vedic (sidereal) astrology, it looks like the first month of the new year could be a bumpy ride! (some highlights below)
During the Full Moon on January 3, the Moon (at 18 degrees Gemini) will be in opposition to the Sun (at 18 degrees Sagittarius), which could shed some light on communications and the media (including its propaganda), possibly stirring up some truths and/or putting pressure on the justice system, given the meanings of the two Zodiak signs.
On January 9, Venus and Mars will be Kazimi with the Sun (all at 25 degrees Sagittarius): aggression/war and harmony/peace will be magnified by the Sun in the house of justice/the truth. And Jupiter will be in precise opposition (at 25 degrees Gemini), which can expand/magnify the energies of these two ‘warring’ planets with its aspect. What makes things even more interesting is that Mercury is in Sagittarius (which is ruled by Jupiter) while Jupiter is in Gemini (ruled by Mercury)! This combination of being in the house ruled by the other, while fully aspecting each other, means that these two planets will be working together, likely on the matter of communications and truth/justice (notice a familiar theme yet?).
During the New Moon on January 18, Venus, Mars and the Moon will be conjunct with the Sun in Capricorn (along with Mercury and Pluto – wow, a five-planet pile-up!). Capricorn represents (among other things) government, so there are a lot of contradictory energies hitting governments on this day. Could be rough!
And to top it all off, the North node of the Moon (Rahu) will be placed in Aquarius – a sign of ‘the people/unconventional folks’ and the South node of the Moon (Ketu) will be placed in Leo – the sign of ‘the ruler’ for nearly all of 2026. With Rahu generally meaning acquisition and Ketu generally meaning renunciation/letting go, there could be some changes in leadership in many countries because the public ‘won’t take it anymore’! At least, that is one straightforward interpretation.
No doubt there will be both similarities and differences between Vedic and Western mundane astrological forecasts for January. We’ll see how things pan out here on Earth.
On an unrelated note, those in the commentariat who are of a mystical temperament may like to visit a Dreamwidth account that I started this past Autumn (https://mystical-mountain-9.dreamwidth.org/) and post weekly. Comments are most welcome! Warning: my perspectives are personal, eclectic and pretty darn heterodox, but not – as far as I am aware – pig-headed.
@Other Owen et al: re: Fuentes
I’m with Owen: stay away from that one!
Tried writing this comment once already, but the ether ate it (if it shows up later, that’s why the duplicate!)
I have no idea what his stance is on anything, and don’t quite trust thirdhand rumors. I’ve had this very weird experience with him, repeatedly: somebody will post a link to a vid, say great things about the guy, so I click into the vid to see what all the fuss is about.
And then: I can’t get more than ten seconds in. Not even using my usual low-input video strategy of separating the visual and the sound and taking them in one at a time. There is something *deeply* wrong there, either with the guy himself, or with the video production. I don’t know what that thing is, but I associate it with people’s insides not matching their outsides: when the image someone is presenting is so radically out of tune with who they really are, that it sets up a blaring, intolerable dissonance. I have to turn it off.
I’m no expert, but my best guesses on what, exactly, that dissonance is:
-A glamour. In this crowd, at least, I can say that. As our host has pointed out, nearly all advertising these days is some kind of malign enchantment. Perhaps it’s something of that nature.
-A hidden agenda. When I encounter this dissonance in person, it’s often a hidden agenda problem. The person’s actual intent is at odds with the person’s stated intent and self-portrayal.
-He’s fake. Maybe not quite at AI-generated uncanny-valley level of fake person, but simply that the facade he’s putting on for the camera is so at odds with who he really is, that it causes a sort of painful psychic static (for lack of a better phrase).
Any way around it, when I get that dissonance from anybody, onscreen or off, I am careful to avoid them. Nothing good comes of contact with that. Whatever it is.
Hi John Michael,
It was the strong opinions as to what the lady believed would be best for people to consume, which twigged me to that aspect of her soul. Interesting, and I’ve no cultural experience with such a person, but yes, the character sounds all very formidable and stuff. Have you learned anything interesting from the book/s?
I’m of the very old fashioned perspective that people have to take personal responsibility for their food choices. Although, a lot of very dark magic gets thrown at the subject of food. I’d imagine that there’d be some sort of blowback from those workings, and can imagine one biggie which is circulating in elite circles right now (cough, cough, possibly resulting in mineral deficiencies). Do you believe that it is possible that there’ll be some sort of blowback from all those dark workings in relation to food?
Cheers
Chris
“and…if…yoooooooooou…can…believe it!!!!
it’s a Friday once again!”
—David Lynch
Ham radio, tape decks, D&D, bicycles and the ability to be a free range kud in small town Indiana – all good things, re: Stranger Things… and cool stuff todays kids want.
Where it is annoying is the special chosen ones / special powers tropes. There are enough characters that dont have special powers to make it good still, but it could have been better if the kids who were part of the secret govt program werent quite so so special in their abilities.
@methylethyl
I’ve never gotten to the point of watching him. Well, that’s not entirely true. Meow. And then for some strange reason I lost interest in what he had to say. Meow.
Well, maybe it’s time I sat down and tried watching him to see what you’re talking about. This is funny, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be watching him at all.
@methylethyl
Watched one of his latest, he decided to attack Tucker. I get a sense of insincerity from him but that could be because of all the other things I know about him. Car dealer vibe. He sounds like the kind of guy who will put you on an easy payment plan. But then again, I also got that vibe from Putin too, when Tucker interviewed him. Trump also has that car dealer vibe as well, but he does it better than anyone I’ve seen.
There’s three ways to make it if all you’ve got is a camera, a mike and an internet connection. Do porn, demonstrate talent, say shocking things. It looks like he’s all in for saying shocking things. He’s like a male version of Brittany Venti. Yeah, you heard me. I’m not repeating that.
@ Achille #244
Awesome! Blessings on your ventures.
Keep in mind that fish, rabbit, chicken, and eggs all make great barter items. We just sent our daughter over to deliver a chicken all dressed out and frozen to our neighbor in exchange for some tuna, salmon, and cod. We regularly trade with him for fish. We also regularly trade with another friend nearby for his excellent homemade wine. Building a local barter network is a fine piece of resiliency you can work on for yourself and your family.
HV
Back in the 90’s there was an attempt to set up the two state solution with Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As part of that process Gaza received self rule. In 2005 Israel completely withdrew from Gaza and Hamas subsequently won the last election and has ruled since and used Gaza as a base to attack Israel with rockets. Another factor sinking the attempt to establish a peaceful two state solution was the Palestinian insistence that descendants of Palestinians who once lived in the Israeli state territory in 1948 return to Israel, numbering in millions. Israel naturally refused. As JMG said it is a unsolvable predicament. I doubt that a resolution similar to what happened in South Africa will happen. And South Africa has a different set of problems and different type of bad governance that it had before. History generally inevitably sucks with good times ending.
Earthworm, ah. I didn’t realize you were unfamiliar with Dali. He was the most surreal of the Surrealists, a Spanish aristocrat manqué whose own life was his weirdest work of art. He was less deeply involved in occultism than most of the Surrealists, but more than made up for it by devising an approach to art which he called the “paranoiac-critical method,” in which he whipped himself up into a state of paranoia in which everything was connected to everything else, then painted the results. No, I haven’t looked at his tarot deck; I should remedy that one of these days. The pictures you linked are quite interesting.
Selkirk, I’ve seen some of this already. Yeah, it really does demonstrate how much of the chatter about climate change was just people mouthing slogans from the media. It’ll be interesting to see how many of the other talking points of the privileged classes turn on a dime in the next few years — and also interesting to see how these same people react as the (non-apocalyptic but challenging) reality of a changing climate affects them.
Teresa, why, yes, that would follow, wouldn’t it? The sad thing is that the current wave of feminism really did begin as an attempt to liberate women; as with so many liberation movements, unfortunately, the “liberators” became tyrants themselves as soon as they got a taste of power, and massive cooptation by the corporate system was of course also involved.
John, thank you. Yeah, I had to go to comment moderation with the first post in the “Adam’s Story” sequence because one of my readers got his little boy pants in a twist over what he saw as the negativity of the story, and tried to flood the comment page with shrill denunciations. It worked out well, because — oh, what was the guy’s name? The “Tribe of Anthropik” fellow who used to post vast teal-deer pieces insisting that we would all become hunter-gatherers in the post-peak oil future, and turned out to be a 300-lb brittle diabetic who wouldn’t have survived a week in even the most lavishly supplied hunter-gatherer setting? At any rate, once I went to comment moderation because of the other guy, Mr. Anthropik’s stuff was among the things I deleted, and he then went and launched a website titled “Archdruid Watch” where he posted lengthy denunciations of me and my ideas. The Streisand Effect then did its usual magic, and that was how I first started getting significant traction in the blogosphere.
Chuaquin, of course! Multiculturalism is strictly for the proles. It’s a source of some amusement here in the US that so many black Americans who claw their way into the managerial class end up being rejected by other black Americans, and sometimes by their own families, for being “too white,” as they’ve adopted the culture of the managerial class. The irony’s very sharp in that most white Americans find managerial class culture just as alien. As for Col. Baños, he does seem to be worth watching. Of course he generates his own Spectacle; so does every author, artist, etc., including me.
Karim, there’s another parallel. It was standard practice in the postcolonial era for the NATO nations to maintain a string of bridgeheads around what Mackinder called the “world island,” basically Eurasia plus Africa; each of those bridgehead-nations was encouraged to pursue policies that kept it constantly at odds with its neighbors, to keep potential regional powers pinned down with local conflicts and thus unable to counter US/European hegemony. Those started getting discarded one at a time once they became too expensive to maintain; South Africa is an example. These days there aren’t many of them left outside of East Asia, where Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan still keep China pinned down; Israel is one of the few other surviving examples of the strategy in action, and how long it’ll last is a very good question. I hope you’re right that things will wind down without massive bloodshed there; I admit I’m skeptical, but again, I was wrong about South Africa.
Chuaquin, granted — but there’s a simple solution. In effect, Spain will have to become an economic colony of the great Latin American powers, a bridgehead on the European continent. That’s roughly what happened to Britain after 1945, and galling as it was, it was a better outcome than any of the other options.
Ron, thanks for this. My ingress charts for the new year suggest an equally bumpy ride. Hang on!
Chris, the diet thing was something she got from her teacher Max Heindel. It’s one of the peculiarities of the vegetarian/vegan diet that few people can take them up without becoming preachy cranks — though at least the vegetarians don’t tend to become as full of rage as many vegans do.
Justin, the “special powers” trope has to be handled very, very carefully or it becomes stupid. I’m still uncomfortable that the plot arc of The Weird of Hali required me to do a version of it with Jenny Chaudronnier; I tried to make her a distinctly unspecial person who happened to have an unusual talent for sorcery, but I’m not sure how well I did.
BeardTree, I don’t know what it is with Middle Eastern ethnoreligious groups, but so many of them seem obsessed with the notions that the atrocities they’ve suffered justify the atrocities they commit, and that God will give them whatever they want, no matter how absurd. A great many Palestinians and no shortage of Israelis fall into that category, thus my sense that it probably won’t end well.
Northwind (offlist), yeah, that’s over the line. Sorry.
Do you still think the US is going to get to avoid large-scale violence — whether a second civil war, third world war, or something approaching one of those? You said several years ago you had a feeling for a long time that there’d be a civil war around 2024, and 2026 is still reasonably “around” that year.
I had hoped by now the political tension in the country would be turning down but it seems like it’s turning up and both sides are going off in increasingly unhinged directions because neither can imagine a future where they have to live with the other and compromise about anything: it’s total dominance or bust for both.
Dear JMG:
To quote ex president Biden; “Aw come on””. Neither the Palestinian nor the Zionist approaches are working. Put in a government nobody likes, and they will hold their noses and work together. And it will (temporarily) solve the problems of the Christians in the area.
And , saving the best for last, if I remember and Wikipedia is accurate, the current head of the House of Stuart is the legitimate successor to The Kingdom of Jerusalem”!
Um , House of Stuart, successful government, …
Well they say insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results!
And to all, peace, prosperity (as you define it, it isn’t necessarily having the most money, stuff, etc.), and good friends!
Cugel
Forgot to mention, work together to overthrow the government!
Cugel
JMG #209
> Northwind, I’d banish it so fast its hooves would leave skid marks on the astral plane. Demons have their normal and natural place in the cosmos, but that place is not here on the plane that humans inhabit, so sending them back where they belong is a beneficial deed; that’s why a line from an old Druid ritual reads, “let darkness be gathered to its proper place.”
Thank you. This paragraph gives me an orientation from which to start learning. I have never felt I had a handle on the issue of demons.
💨💨😈Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hey JMG and Earthworm
On the subject of Dalí, did you know that he also wrote a cookbook? I recently bought a copy of it when I chanced upon it in a Dymocks store.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/10/les-diners-de-gala-dali/
>Put in a government nobody likes, and they will hold their noses and work together.
I know, let’s bring back the Ottoman Empire. Satisfies all your requirements. Historically that part of the world as always been rolled up into one empire or another. This is an extra special time, between empires for that part of the world.
Yep, Christianity also does not mix well with political power and nationalism. As do other religions. Taoists in China when they had political power persecuted Buddhism as “a foreign religion” The track record of Buddhism in Japan and Tibet has its severe blemishes. In 1950 China there were 1,000,000 Protestant Christians. They had no political power and were severely suppressed over the years, now they are possibly nearing 100,000,000.
JMG: “ah. I didn’t realize you were unfamiliar with Dali.”
So you did know the source!
Alas, whilst I enjoy playing with words I am but a peasant. My life has been more practically oriented rather than appreciating ‘the arts’ – Like the fancy wine we had yesterday and preferring the stuff that cost a third of the price, I liked the original image I posted because of the seeming skill of putting it together; being pleased to find who did it, the fact that the artist seems to have been a complete horse’s arse and a bastard is indeed a new discovery – the guy was ‘something’ I am not interested in, but he had skill.
When I asked for the source it was out of genuine ignorance and I tend to think that allowing ignorance to continue is not a worthwhile thing.
The original questions I wondered about have been answered and I will incommode you on the subject no further.
It has occurred to me that when we die the dialogue goes kind of like this:
Me: So what was that all about?
Orb: Well, you can’t become a practitioner until you’ve spent a life in the asylum.
Me: You’re having a laugh…
Orb: Come and have a Guinness, there’s some stuff you need to know.
Could Israel, after getting clobbered in another war, abandon most of its unattainable ambitions at the behest of the US, and use the nuclear deterrent to survive (but probably not thrive) for several decades?
I can’t help thinking that there was a tragic miscalculation made when Israel was founded. Palestine in antiquity and later under the caliphate was a wealthy and prosperous place, as also were the Balkans. Under Ottoman rule–please note I do not say Moslem, but specifically Ottoman–both seem to have become economically depressed hinterlands. One might also note the impoverishment of Mesopotamia during the same period, c.1450-1920, or thereabouts. Clever, educated Jewish folks from Europe might have approached their neighbors with offers of we can work together. We are cousins, after all. European science and education in cooperation with Palestinian centuries old knowledge of the land and sea.
Owen, I was referring to knowing where your stuff comes from and how and by whom it was made, not about shopping manners, admittedly important though those are. I think, or suspect, that the virtue signalling trope was invented around about the same time when substantial numbers of consumers began boycotting certain companies for their egregious polluting habits, Exxon most notably, because of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. I knew Republican voting, proud conservatives who would not buy their gas from Exxon.
# 234 in what way are these people’s views changing? Would they be all for a big expansion of nuclear power to power AI? Or even new fossiI fueled generation?
The current enthusiasm for LLM based AI to me reminds me of a sci-fi story of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where enormous resources are invested only to get the answer 42.
I find managerial class enthusiasm for AI a bit perplexing as those jobs could be the easiest for Al to automate, since they’ll just have to make the right noises in meetings, write a few boosterish post on LinkedIn etc.
JMG, The Americans seem to be desperately trying to put off the now-inevitable event of losing the war in Ukraine to the Russians. An obvious loss to Russia in such a significant conflict seems that it will knock the empire down several notches or more.
To you think Trump and his crew have any options to avoid this situation? Or will they just try to spin the situation all the way down. So that when the Russians enter Kiev like the Soviets entered Berlin they will claim they are just here to clean the toilets.
Slithy, it’s still uncertain, but I think there’s still a good chance that we’ll avoid civil war.
Cugel, okay, that’s genuinely funny. I thought the Habsburgs were the titular kings of Jerusalem, but if it’s the Stuarts — well, all I can say is that history continues to have a fine sense of humor.
Northwind, you’re most welcome.
J.L.Mc12, no, I didn’t. I admit I shudder at the thought!
Earthworm, no, I didn’t know whose it was until you linked to that sequence of images. I’ve only just started trying to develop a taste for the Surrealists.
Patrick, in theory, yes. In practice? I find it unlikely.
Clay, the next logical move for the US will be to figure some way to blame everything on Zelensky, the EU, or both, and do something or other to distract attention from Ukraine. There are different ways to spin a defeat, and fingerpointing is always an option.
Climate change is still happening in my region of the United States. We have temperatures in the high 40s Fahrenheit in the Chicagoland over Christmas, which was virtually unheard of before the year 2020, but after 2020 seems to happen every year.
Fred Halliot still hasn’t come to power yet, but when he does, the first victims will be any journalists who write a headline containing the phrase “NPAPP Smeared.”
Karim
I think F.W. De Klerk was, perhaps one of the unsung heroes of our time. Not to detract at all from nelson Mandela’s well deserved recognition, but, if the white government had not yielded graciously to majority rule, there would have been a bloodbath. Also Mandela and the ANC agreeing to not demand war crime trials was a very merciful and wise act. The whole situation could have turned out much worse.
Stephen
It will be a blessing if Palestine/Israel turns out as well.
On the issue of whether Fuentes is a government plant, well, let’s suppose that’s not a concern. What would be the attraction of a *genuine* Fuentes? I pasted *one* racist quote from him (in which he fantasizes about high-fiving Hitler after killing some black guy together). I gather that this is a fairly typical utterance of his. At best, he is an unserious troll. Why would anyone follow such a man? The alternative is that he is what he presents himself to be–some sort of Nazi.
On Israel / Palestine, was 1948 a mistake? Maybe, but it wasn’t just the British government (which was reluctant to allow Jewish immigration); Jewish groups–or some of them, diaspora Jews were very divided over Zionism back then–were mobilizing their influence. (Remember the ship, and Paul Newman movie, Exodus.) Was it a mistake? Maybe, but now, you can’t just tell millions of people to go away. Okay, you can commit genocide / ethnic cleansing, but now I have to ask about your goals–does anybody *want* to live in such a society? If there’s ever going to be peace, we’re looking at either a two-state solution or a one-state solution. The former gets you something like Bosnia (which is doing semi-okay these days); the latter gets you Lebanon. The tragedy of it all is that the different population groups have every reason to work together, and here they are going around poisoning relations. Of course this does fit the interest of particular leaders (on both sides).
Jessica (no. 204), that second scenario (as reported by Suvorin, ““Alesha will leave the monastery, become a socialist, and end his life in front of a firing squad for attempting to assassinate the Tsar “) sounds as though it would fit with Dostoevsky’s sense of drama. Think of Raskolnivok in “Crime and Punishment.” Alyosha’s execution scene would be very introspective and religious.
Mary Bennett, et al
Anyone interested in the modern background of the shale show in W.Asia might enjoy reading Mary Doria Russell’s ” Dreamers Of The Day’, a novel mostly set around the 1921 Cairo conference.
Stephen
@Chuaquin
I was implying that both Zionist meddling and natural interests are probably at play in the European Right, mostly the latter.
@Mark
In my area (northwestern Middle Tennessee), it reached the mid 70s Fahrenheit (around 24°C). I almost put on the air conditioning.
@JMG
Note that my scenario involves at least some death in the near term, and the eventual conquest of Israel by Arabs after Israel can no longer maintain nuclear weapons and the Arabs call Israel’s bluff. I think that after WWII, Jews should have been granted land for a self-governing territory in the US or Canada (doing that in the USA would have been unconstitional– but that didn’t stop the creation of West Virginia).
Karim # 243:
Yes, there’s some analogy between nowadays Israel and old South Africa. It’s more of a leftist pro-Palestinian commonplace. If you replace Afrikaner by Jews and Blacks by Arabs, “comparations are hateful”(well, I’ve roughly translated a spanish expression here, though I hope to be understood). It’s interesting comparing too, apartheid South Africans looked at themselves like a democracy, while Israeli Zionists and their “goyim” western supporters love to parrot “Israel is the only democracy in Middle East”. Of course, it’s the Spectacle (and the kitsch) in action, because democratic virtues are useless when are mixed with racism and colonialism de facto.
I don’t see a hard fighting between Trump and war hawks, but I’m aware there are a heck of information from the elites who it’s known by journalists and online anglosphere.
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Achille # 244:
Future is opened to whatever ugly situation you can imagine, but too to better futures. There are a spectrum of possibilities. I know the replacement theory, which has been popularized by the French writer Houellebecq in his novel “Submission”. It points to the Islamization of western Europe in a few decades. Honestly, I wouldn’t discard this theory at all, but I don’t think it’s going to be the unavoidable fate of Spain and France. It’s true natives birth rates are the lowest of Europe, but migrants are having fewer children when they live here; and birth rates in their origin countries are going down too. So in the last term, we will see in every case, a propaganda fight (I hope not an opened religions war) to the hegemony beliefs. I don’t discard a return of conservative Catholicism neither.
Far right populist spanish party seems to me a case of controlled opposition. Its financiation has been a bit opaque cough cough…I’m not surprised by your information. Do you have noticed “Vox” complains about poor North Africans migration, but not about Saudi and Qatar sponsoring of spanish football teams? In addition to this, I think Vox is an attempt of economics elites to lead the conservatives (PP party) to more hard right positions. I don’t have evidences yet, but time will put everybody in their place.
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Justin P. # 252:
A part of the Stranger Things appeal is their characters (except Eleven) din’t have special powers. Even we can say they’re freaks or marginated at school. However, they’re capable to help each others and “save the world”.
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Beardtree # 256:
Of course Middle East Big Problem is really a predicament, so it hasn’t an easy solution. I told Karim there’s an analogy between Israel and South Africa in their Spectacle and “modus operandi”, but I’m aware analogy doesn’t mean repetition…
————————
JMG # 257:
Yes, multiculti brainwash is for the plebs, but at least here lower class people feels more and more disengaged from MSM and academia mantras. I’ve met a lot of people who are fed up of multiculti Spectacle, and they tell me off the record, in private chatting. I’m afraid next general and local elections (far) right parties are going to have an easy victory…
*****
Mr. Baños of course has his own Spectacle, and I think he’s allowed by elites to say some things but no anothers. Self censorship? It could be…
**********
You’re right when you write Spain could be the bridge between Europe and South America, becoming dependent of the South American new powers. However, I tend to think Baños has in mind a new “lite” spanish imperialism (maybe I haven’t understood well, but this was my feeling about him).
By the way, I’d like to complete your depiction of Spain connected with Latin American powers pointing it should be very opportune for our future being more friendly with our neighbour. Portugal has strong connections with Brazil, starting with their common language. I think Brazil could be the main South American power soon…
The Other Owen # 263:
Wow! The return of Ottoman Empire. I bet Erdogan have had this dream every night this revival when he sleeps in his bed at his Turkish palace…
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JMG and commentariat:
Do you think Zelensky future is doomed? I think his role as puppet NATO leader will end as a peace treaty is signed by Russia and USA (officially with its European proxies). His authoritarian attitude and fanatic anti-Russian mood would be made him incapable to lead Ukraine to the peace. I bet he would be soon removed from Kiev leadership by another piece of that regime (who could be the candidate? Who knows?). Of course, before this operation, Trump must compel the EU armchair warriors to not support Zelenski anymore, maybe with the stick, maybe with a carrot (or maybe mixing the two alike).
@Chuaquin what a red herring Chomsky turned out to be, turns out he liked to use the Epstein Airlines.
>Do you still think the US is going to get to avoid large-scale violence — whether a second civil war, third world war, or something approaching one of those?
Nothing like this happens out of the blue. you get plenty of warning before it comes. People in the 1840s were talking about how “There’s a civil war coming”. I’d say we’re at that stage again. Then later on, there was “Bleeding Kansas”, where people were essentially fighting a prelude to the civil war. Then the Whig Party collapsed and the Republican Party rose out of the ashes to replace it. Then the Civil War began. If you were paying attention, annunciator lights were going off all over your panel before it happened.
This time around, if there is a civil war, the whole world would get involved with it. There would be little difference between it and WW3. And you can be absolutely sure because of that, none of the establishment will ever ever EVER breath those words “civil war” aloud. They’ll call it just about everything else but that.
So, not yet, nobody will tell you one is happening except for alternative bearded hairy guys in t-shirts making internet videos that report the news (because those are the only people actually reporting the news these days), and I’m guessing we got at least 10 years before it does. If the Republican Party collapses and something rises out of its ashes, start worrying. If you see open irregular fighting (not people larping with bats and shields but actual guns) over some lightning rod issue, start worrying.
>Yep, Christianity also does not mix well with political power and nationalism
Look up the Taiping Rebellion. There’s a reason China is so ticklish about religions in general, especially foreign ones they don’t quite understand.
I want to say I think Mr. Baños thoughts in geopolitics look like very good, me thinks. However, I also think Col. Baños has his own Spectacle/agenda/kitsch in his writings and speeches (please, choose your favorite term). I mean, I like his wise view of international affairs, but I don’t like another opinions of him. For example, when DANA storms hit Valencia and a lot of people died there, Mr. Baños was invited to a well known TV show here, and he said nowadays spanish government was garbage (in which I agree), but then they subtly suggested it should be replaced. He didn’t openly refered to new elections (which it’s the normal process within a democracy), so I understood he was asking for a civilian “color revolution” or even worse, a military coup d’etat. I think many TV public thought the same I understood (facepalm!). Well, maybe I’ve been influenced by my paranoid tendences, but I also think a militar in the reserve must take care of what he says in public places. I like his geopolitics but I’m cautious with other things he says/writes. So let’s wait until next general election here, and I suppose current woke government will be defeated neatly (though I don’t hope next right/populist coalition government at Madrid won’t be much better, but this is going to be another story).
Finally, I’d like to tell you a story which is spread here about Baños outside MSM. It’s said Col. Baños was for a while a strong candidate to direct spanish intelligence center, not very years ago (which traditionally is directed by a high rank military), but he wasn’t chosen because he wasn’t Russophobe enough. I can’t check this story truth, but I can say: “Sin non é vero é ben trovato”(if you don’t mind this Italian expression). It could be a true story or not.
>though at least the vegetarians don’t tend to become as full of rage as many vegans do.
Huh, you’ve noticed that too. It can be mildly entertaining to point out to a vegan how angry they are getting and watch them get even more angry at you for pointing it out. I wonder what it is about meat that makes people more chill? Happy cows?
@ Beardtree #256
Your potted history is absolutely catechism-perfect… 🙂
What I have found, though, is that if a person ever decides to grant the premise that Israelis are the fully human equals of the fully human Palestinians, and then tries to picture each human being walking in the other human being’s shoes, then the catechism becomes harder to recite.
Be well. May all your goings and doings be blessed.
Hi John Michael,
Things may be different in your country, because most vegetarians and vegans I’ve encountered down here, seem just like everyone else. 🙂 I’m sure there are some proselytising ones out there, and may have subconsciously walked away. I eat a vegetarian diet at home, but when off the property, whatever is fine by me. No point creating a drama, or being a focus point. You may have noticed that a lot of people seem to be creating the spectacle, you wrote of recently, for not much gain. I don’t get that.
Max Heindel is a very interesting dude who had some startling experiences. What a time those folks lived in.
If I may add, global weirding just makes growing edible plants all that much harder. It’s not nice news. But truly, it isn’t going in one nice pre-ordained direction as some folks may like to claim.
Cheers
Chris
@ Slithy Toves #258
“…neither can imagine a future where they have to live with the other and compromise about anything: it’s total dominance or bust for both.”
This is a sound analysis of so many situations around the world, and it often makes me wonder.
I should point out that I live right next door (around 10 miles on the “republic” side of the border) to Northern Ireland. Around 30 years ago your sentence, as written, would have described the situation there very well. Somehow, although the cultural differences, and mutual historical grievances, remain, the “oomph” to multiply atrocity after atrocity seems to have greatly cooled down, and the atmosphere is considerably less tense than it was back in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
I often wonder if the first atrocity (and possibly second and maybe even third) in a multicultural situation with historic mutual grievances like this one was and is, needs to be a “false flag” operation carried out with the aim of starting a fire that will eventually perpetuate itself with ongoing, locally organised, tit-for-tat operations. The speculation that MI5/MI6 were heavily involved in promoting the kinds of atrocities that sow intractable suspicions and hot desires for revenge, in Northern Ireland, may not be altogether untenable. It seems to be the case that, as Britain took less interest in the region, its own internal tensions gradually cooled, its own leaders got down to relatively productive negotiations and the region is back to going about its business in the more usual, muddling through, backbiting and political scandally kind of way, (as opposed to the shorter lived, and horrific, violent and terrorising ways of previous decades).
Somehow, “total dominance or bust” and a general failure to imagine having to live in the environs of other people with strange habits and worldviews, on the basis of compromise, are extremely dangerous states of mind.
But possibly, given that most ordinary people tend to be lazy and uncommitted to larger causes, keeping everything “cooking” at that level of tension and heat, needs constant, deliberate “charging up” activities by those standing to benefit from heightened hostilities.
It can be quite subversive simply to refuse to accept anyone else’s prefabricated enemy. One should probably make one’s own enemies in the same way one makes one’s friends – up close and personal, on the basis of actual interactions. 🙂
I’m in a geopolitical mode today, so I can’t avoid to tell you my feelings about nowadays news. For example, I’ve seen the US launched an operation against supposed Islamist bases in Nigeria. In Trumpian language, it was done to protect Nigerian Christians from Yihadists. Amen. Well, I don’t know very much of Nigeria, but I’ve been told roughly the North tends to be muslim and South is mostly Christian (but of course Animist customs are widespread in the two areas at least as folk remnants). There are some Islamist terrorist groups, but I think Trump has used them as a MacGuffin for his well calculated “gorilla chest beating”. Beyond his religion war Spectacle against Yihadist scum, I see Nigeria’s a big oil exporter. What a surprise!
Now, I’m going to remember another international hot place: Venezuela. Well, in Maduro regime you can’t find Islamic terrorist, but the old tale (war against drugs) and the anti-Commie fear does a similar function, as subterfuge. It’s not by hazard Venezuela has huge amounts of oil (though it’s a very heavy oil, can be refined with a lot of patience and proper technology), and its fake commie regime has good relations with China and Russia. I’m not a moralist, so I recognize Trump has a good sense to vary his Spectacle to accomplish his geopolitical goals (until now). I’m afraid I’ve being too cynical…
@JMG: I think you did it well. It didnt pull me out of the story, and the second book, when she is at the mansion, was a favorite. She still had to learn about all the magic.
Anotherbpro in favor of Stranger Things is how it blends scifi with fantasy / paranormal. It doesnt dismiss the psychic side of things.
@J.L.Mc12: Is there a recipe in there for lobster ala telephone? Is the book called Critical Paranoiac Cooking, or Cooking the Paranoiac Way?
Here in Montréal, the past municipal election was in part about bike lanes. The outgoing administration had made a point of creating a network of bike lanes, while the opposition promised to revisit the utility of some of those lanes and possibly remove them. The opposition won, and we are waiting to see how this will work out.
All car drivers I know complain incessantly about how hellish it is to drive in Montréal. Most people like the underground, but the underground can never reach everywhere, and in fact has not been expanding in decades. Bicycles, in many cases, are a perfect fit: one of the best bike lanes in the city passes a few steps from our house and takes me in less than 15 min to places in downtown that I would take at least 40 min to reach by bus and underground (and a car driver, taking into account congestion and the time spent on the search for a parking lot, might well take longer than 15 min) . Of course, biking in the Canadian winter is a hard sell, so buses or maybe tramways are also necessary.
Why is it so hard to pass changes to (for example) install fast lanes for buses and prioritize buses at crossings? Every time 10 or 20 people leave their car at home because the bus is faster, everybody wins. It seems to me that cars only make sense up to a density of a few of them per acre. In rural areas, everybody might need and make good use of a car. In cities, when there are already dozens of cars per acre, each new car on the street makes life harder for other cars, for public transport, bikes and pedestrians.
I read an interesting history of how jaywalking became punishable in the USA. My conclusion is simple: once the number of car owners passes a certain threshold, their political clout makes it almost impossible to restrict cars in any way relative to other means of transport (though in places like Copenhagen, Amsterdam or even Berlin, the historical infrastructure of bike lanes and tramways has survived the car age, to a certain point). So, ironically, it will only become possible to reduce the portion of cities dedicated to cars (driving and parking), once the number of car users goes down.
@JMG#270, the “something or other” being a war with Venezuela?
There can be a certain level of natural and “supernatural” (there being nothing unnatural about uncommon reality and phenomena) protection from having a kind of wide cultural agreement, as somehow Americans in the US had until about the mid-1960s, and which was not thoroughly shredded until quite recently. I believe the “roof” of that protection is largely or even entirely gone, now. Events indicating the US’ “mandate of heaven” has left us are now more likely. Not always dramatic, not world-ending, but pretty awful: earthquakes, fire, flood, famines, pestilences, etc. Rather biblical, even if my point of view on this is more Taoist and/or Confucian. Meaning, I guess, folks so inclined should get their preps ready. My prediction? A rocky few years, odd and unpredictable shortages, and more. Y’all know what to do, I’m thinking. If not (why not?) I’ll follow up with some of them. Peace, everyone. The chaos and disruption are likely to be uneven, so no two individuals’ experience will be the same. —Old Man Clarke
A note on Nick Fuentes:
A while back I decided to watch some of his stuff to see what the deal was. I rarely watch video and don’t do social media. What I noticed upon watching him and talking to a few people about him is that the algorithm effect is pretty strong with him. It showed me, a formerly progressive, still slightly baffled MAGA-adjacent woke-annoyed conservative, things of the level that Northwind Grandma describes, right on or just a hair past the edge of “stuff everybody is thinking but hasn’t been able to say without getting canceled.” My husband got similar stuff. I was left with the impression that those criticizing him as a crazy far-right bigot were probably just being hysterical again. But people I know who are more left-leaning get outrageous hate-bait when they watch him, and the genuinely bigoted seem to get things that are far harsher than what was fed to me. I can only assume he deliberately tailors his content to facilitate this.
JMG,
I think one of the largest political events of the next year will be the uncovering of the same kind of corruption now being unearthed in Minnesota in at least every blue state in the union. I think it will not only be social service organizations but state funded care homes of all kinds and even NGOs in the homeless industrial complex.
People are a bit detached when they see corruption on the federal level. But they become much more politically active and angry when it occurs on a more local level. This may drastically change the political calculus for the next several years. Especially when politicians at the state and local level get drug in the dirt. State and local politicians have almost none of the coverup tools available to corrupt federal officials so this will blow open much more quickly because the deep state will be powerless to stop it.
Patrick @ 276, Israelis could have bought land in the US post WWII. I think that ship has sailed, for a number of reasons. Rising resentment against AIPAC is one. Fears of a possible future Jewish/Muslim alliance is another. I suspect the plan now is to remove Israel to Ukraine, the historic Pale, as a last resort. Do take note sometime how much of the Ukrainian leadership is Israeli dual citizens.
Mr. Fuentes would not have to be a govt. plant to be bought and paid for. Any deep pocketed interest who wants to keep the populace riled up might be bankrolling him. We all do recall that Adolph himself was being financed by British and American banking interests, not by governments (so far as we know).
Aldarian, American town and county governments tend to be dominated, if not outright owned, by real estate dealers, car dealerships and insurance companies. And, sure, folks who love them their cars are quite content with this state of affairs.
Mark, of course it’s still happening. You don’t dump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into a delicately balanced atmosphere every year for a century and not get an effect! It’s one of the bleaker tragedies of our time that by using climate change as a stalking horse for their political agenda, and exaggerating its effects to an apocalyptic scale, the corporate Left has guaranteed that nothing whatever will be done about it for at least another quarter century.
Grebulocities, nah, the first victims will be whichever scapegoat class gets used as the focus of the NPAPP’s denunciations — my guess is that it would be American Muslim immigrants, but we’ll see. Purging the press comes a little further down the road.
Patrick, I know. I still don’t think Israel will do it.
Chuaquin, oh, I’m sure Col. Baños thinks Spain will be able to continue acting as imperial overlord to some degree. It’s astonishing to me how many Europeans haven’t noticed that their small, weak, resource-poor countries have lost the technological edge that temporarily gave them world dominion, and think they can swagger around on the global stage. As for Portugal, no argument there — Brazil still has growing pains ahead of it but it’s well on its way to becoming not merely a regional but a global power, and good relations between Spain and Portugal would make it easier for the whole Iberian peninsula to benefit from the rising strength of the Iberian Americas. As for Zelensky, since his sudden death would be such a great advantage for all concerned, I wouldn’t want to bet on his continued survival…
Other Owen, I once had a vegan go into a screaming in-my-face meltdown at a co-op hippie grocery store because I put a turkey in my shopping cart. I was living on Seattle’s Capitol Hill when that was a major punk hangout area and the straightedge band Vegan Reich was calling for meat eaters to be rounded up and gassed. I have plenty of other stories like that. So, yes, I noticed — and I also have friends who worked in fast food places close to freeway offramps, and used to joke about how often cars with aggressively vegan bumper stickers would pull up to the drive-through window, so their drivers would order double bacon cheeseburgers, and then park and eat the burgers in the parking lot so that nobody would know that they weren’t sticking to their vegan diet. To be fair, I also know many vegetarians and a few vegans who are perfectly mellow about their food choices, and as far as I know they also don’t sneak cheeseburgers.
Chris, see my response to Other Owen immediately above. I’m glad to hear that you’re one of the sane vegetarians!
Chuaquin, of course. Right now, as it backs away from its former empire, the US is engaged in that most difficult of all military operations, a forced retreat through hostile territory. Lobbing bombs and missiles at semirandom targets is a useful tactic during that process, as it keeps everyone else nervous and makes an assault on the retreating column. Expect more of this as things proceed.
Justin, thank you. That’s very good to hear.
Athaia, it could be that, or any number of other things.
Clarke, that strikes me as very sensible advice.
Clay, that’s one possibility. The other is that the Trump administration will make a gruesome example of one or two politically marginal states such as Minnesota, and use the threat of that to force changes in behavior in other, more powerful blue states — for example, less gaudily corrupt elections. My take is that the latter is the more likely option.
“I’ve only just started trying to develop a taste for the Surrealists.”
I know someone who, having been told that sardines were good for him forced himself to overcome his gag reflex in order to eat them. If innate beauty of something does not speak naturally to the heart and/or mind, it strikes me as intellectual contrivance.
The idea reminds me of an old Woody Allen film:
Ariel: “Leopold has taught me how to listen to Beethoven.”
Andrew: “With your ears, right?”
But, as I said “Peasant” 😉
It has though, started me on a train of thought about what an artist or other practitioner might imbue in a creation that is unseen by the eyes but registered by the heart/soul so that, while technically marvellous, the visceral response is disquiet, distaste, rejection or disgust rather than delight, attraction pleasure etc. Like creating a talisman or other object the nature of one’s energy creates an energetic form; the nature of that form is perceived and depending on the individual’s energy state/path one is either attracted or repelled. Does one vibrate in harmony or not.
I have never been attracted to Tarot, but it occurs to me that one would need to take great care in the choice of deck because the underlying vibrations will have an effect on the user – if putting together symbolism is like adding ingredients to a recipe – did they use rose petals or butyric acid and at which point might one discover that!
Is it possible a deck’s symbolism might lead to an energy state / path best avoided in the way of ‘what you contemplate you imitate’ – particularly if one cannot discern the underlying nature of forces used to create it?
I wonder if the hostility by vegetarians and vegans is a peculiarly American thing and is another facet of our ongoing Diet Wars and our longstanding culture of moral one-upmanship. Gods forbid Americans not have a reason to hold each other in contempt. Most societies have social class for that purpose but since we rarely acknowledge social class openly here this has become one more proxy for it.
JMG,
I don’t think the unraveling of various types of social service and welfare fraud in many blue states will require the Trump administration to be the primary hammer. I think that local red opposition or ambitious DA’s and attorney generals will see plenty of career upside in prosecuting any kind of fraud wether or not it is connected to the democratic political machine.
Even in Portland there are forces waiting in the wings to pounce. The Old Money Real Estate power structure has been totally ineffective in getting politics to go their way in the Rose City with one exception. In the last election they backed a tough on crime DA candidate who defeated the Soros backed soft on crime DA. He is ready and willing to pay back his political debts as soon as any crack in the homeless/ social service corruption racket shows itself.
Howdy, JMG
I’m looking to learn about the history of fossil fuels, and am curious what sources you’d recommend. I’d like to learn why people started using fossil fuels when, where, and how they did. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Has anyone else here seen the old 1998 NBC miniseries Merlin? I was reminded of it yesterday and ran across this video essay on it that got me thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeGZce_6Xy4
The video is mostly about how limitations foster creativity but that’s not the part that caught my attention: as I watched it, it suddenly occurred to me that the miniseries does to Arthurian Mythology what Wagner did to Germanic mythology in the Ring Cycle or the Grail legend in Percival. As a retelling of the Matter of Britain Merlin is terrible, but it uses those elements to hit completely different notes.
To summarize overly much, the pagan gods and magic are fading away as faith in them is replaced by Christianity. The evil Queen Mab steals the young Merlin and raises him to become a rallying figure to lead the people back to the old ways, but Merlin refuses the role (echoes of Krishnamurti here). Merlin’s goal is to help put a good king on the throne so the land can be free and at peace, but this idealism backfires on him twice: both Uther and Arthur prove fatally flawed, and Merlin is forced to do unjust things to avoid even worse outcomes. (One of the themes of the story is that no one is perfect and judging people as good or bad too hastily and expecting too much from them is a grave error.)
After Arthur dies in battle with his son Mordred, Merlin confronts Queen Mab and, after proving himself as mighty as her in magic, he finally banishes her by leading a gathered crowd in turning their backs to her, renouncing and forgetting her for the last time, causing her to fade away into nothing. (Did someone read Dion Fortune on how to deal with evil?) The old gods are now gone, and so is magic (well, almost… I’ve skipped over a rather sweet love story that ultimately gives the miniseries its happy ending). As he’s walking away from Mab, Merlin narrates how he tried to be happy about his victory, but with Mab’s death he had finally lost everything. His world was now gone.
I thought this was an interesting turn of events, perhaps a straw in the wind. My stepdaughter and her kids (ages 8 and 13) were visiting for Christmas, and she commented that they hate AI. No details, just that they hate it. She’s been totally gung-ho about AI, says it’s been a big help in her (very PMC) job. (Teaching ESL is actually quite a useful thing to do, but she’s in administration now.) Then she said she’s taking a course in AI, and she’s learned that it’s “not really intelligent.” I used the term “large language model” and she agreed. So there seem to be some cracks in her certainty. But her kids have been steeped in tech since they were born, each got her own iPad at the age of 2. They’re completely dependent on the electronic pacifier. Yet they hate AI. To take a guess why would be speculation, but at least I was pleased to hear it.
>things of the level that Northwind Grandma describes, right on or just a hair past the edge of “stuff everybody is thinking but hasn’t been able to say without getting canceled.” My husband got similar stuff
Nudging that Overton Window. I wonder who’s doing the nudging and why. Not that I mind it getting nudged in that direction but still not everyone who does these things, is your friend and some of them outright hate you.
Mary Bennet #225:
The expulsión of the Jews for the Crown and the search of fake converses by the spanish inquisition was motivated by the necessity for to build a modern state, with an uniform type of catholic subjets arranged in their respective social estament, and not expresely for fear about they could arrange any kind of fith colum for the Turcs.
https://share.google/UGEs4fC7IFfGUOWjI
The threat of the Ottoman expansion was extended by all Western Europe and was one of the causes of the travel of Cristóbal Colon; to make an alliance with the Great Khan of China for the obliteration of the Ottoman Empire.
Mary Bennett,
FWIW, I haven’t noticed much overlap in the people who boycott polluters and those typically said to be virtue signaling. The former seem to predate the latter by quite a bit (at least in my awareness), and to be different sorts of people. But, oddly, there also doesn’t seem to be as much overlap as I would have assumed between people concerned with gross pollution and those bewailing the horrors of climate change. I think pollution has become an unfashionable concern and less compatible with PMC mores and lifestyles than, say, carbon credit schemes.
@aldarion #289
Even if it’s legal to ride your bike around, if you get hit by a motorist, oftentimes, they’ll get off scot-free. A cop in LA ran over and killed a cyclist and got off on it. Some places have space laws, where a cyclist is entitled to 1m of space around him but even where such laws exist, they’re rarely enforced.
I dunno, some cyclists make themselves annoying. Like with vegans, they tend to be angry and pious. Probably the angriest person on the planet is a cyclist who is also a vegan. Grrrrr.
I like riding bikes – it’s way less boring cardio than staring at the wall at the gym. And it’s easy on the joints. And it actually has a point, you can get from A to B. However out here in the rural areas, everyone has this critter called a dog. And dogs, they have strange ideas about property lines and what is public and private. And they love to chase things. And they can keep up with you going 10mph. I haven’t gotten bitten – yet. Woof woof woof.
Well, I am on my 4th day with no electric service, 2nd with no telephone, internet wires are energized, although that went off earlier, then back on, so they were refilling the generator on their line ? Dont know.
I do know that in general most communications these days needs either energized lines ( fiber optic, not the old copper) or energized repeater towers or both for phones in many areas. The starlink only needs the household to power the base station, although I do not think this is a long term solution by any means. Ham radio is working just fine, I only have a small handheld receiver set up on my end atm, so I ping off of a repeater tower about 5 miles away that a friend hosts and powers for the general community. If I had a larger base station set up I could reach all over the world even without any satellites needed, still needing to power my end of course. My hand held can be powered in my car if my house batteries run out. And, I can idle the car to recharge its battery at least. In general, there is either battery or for a large tower potentially a generator with some amount of stored fuel to keep all your communications going in grid down times on their end, on your end, you may need your device powered or internet box or somesuch. The level of power needed for something like the laptop I am typing on right now is low and easy to power from many backup ways or from a car.
I noticed that San Francisco residents got grumpy in their short outage last weekend. That was only 3 days. That is also earthquake vulnerable area, how soon they forget ! ( Loma Prieta Earthquake was only back in 1989, and they, SF, only lost power for 2 days, this can easily be longer from earthquakes) Instead of complaints, they should be taking to heart that they need household resiliency, minimum 3 days if a large earthquake hits before FEMA or someone is getting food and water in….. They’ve got cars that just stop and block the roads when the traffic lights dont work, it is hilarious. Except that they are demanding monetary payouts larger than is ever given for power outages and that will come out of all of our power bill payments, I am not amused. ( normal is a small inconvenience bill credit of $50 when the outage is 3 days long).
I started out the outage with about 9kWhours worth of stored electric, but I didnt know the power was out and since it was Christmas Eve morning, turned on an electric resistance heater in the bathroom to have a cozy area to take a shower ! It was on full blast for maybe 20 minutes , luckily it is small, but not a great way to enter a long outage. If you are wondering how much power I started with realy means, look at your monthly usage on your power bill, in the USA it is reported as kWhours, how many do you use a day ?
The world will continue to get to be interesting, I would recommend looking at how to meet your basic needs in your particular circumstance for 3 days min, being sheltered, not freezing, priority one, water to drink priority 2, food/communications as you can, you will want food of some type, you will feel much better with it and have the energy then to walk and do what you need to do and you wills stay warmer. Get your self another wool blanket and a mylar emergency one, if you own a house, put in a woodstove for space heat and food warming as a priority to save money for. Put some water storage aside, they make cheap 5 gallon square containers for water, just buy 2 and fill them up and stick them somewhere out of the light.
I am fine even if I dont have any battery storage left, I have a wood stove, a tank of water slightly uphill of the house. But, atm. since I can, it is nice to still have power on day 4 to the refrigerator and to run communications like the laptop and the HAM handheld. The back up there is I try to imagine the half tank level on the car is empty and keep a half tank, so the car can be idled for charging low power communications or for warming me potentially short term. And, if the refrigerator doesnt have power, which I have had happen, I have food I can eat that doesnt need to be kept cold or frozen.
No batteries needed in a sense for survival, but a very small solar and small battery setup, which is all I have, is a good bridge technology to have water, refrigeration, a light, and low power communications.
Hello JMG, I’m stuck with my mobile for now so please forgive me for sloppy writing. I am wondering how with the idea derived from Schopenhauer, that interpersonal truth is the best humans can do, you personally avoid falling into relativisms of all kinds? I have been thinking about this for awhile on a roadtrip and have some ideas, but I think it might distract from the question to type them all up. But one potential answer is this question meant as a heuristic: what works best for me and what do I think would work best for society? I have a feeling you could write a book on this, but I’d still appreciate a short version.
I have heard that Israelies have bought so much property in Cyprus that the Cypriot government has considered trying to regulate it. I suppose it is perfect for them: similar climate, similar Mediterranean culture.
>I once had a vegan go into a screaming in-my-face meltdown
Let’s go for the double. Did s/he have blue (or danger colored) hair? Was she a screaming blue hair?
Hey JMG and Justin P.M.
The recipes in Dalí’s book are rather fancy but still fairly normal, but my cooking class teacher did browse through them and said they were either very expensive or somewhat crazy. Amongst all the surreal artwork in the book, there’s recipes such as Banana pie, Crayfish consommé, Puréed calf’s liver, sausages of frito misto, Snail stew, Quails with corn, and Casanova cocktail.
I am watching the 1984 production of “Miss Marple” with Joan Hickson (1906-1998) (she had a Mona-Lisa smile if ever I saw one.) I concentrate on the production and first-class sets (via Britbox). The British TV industry in the 1980s had big budgets and the sets were a wonder to see. All high-quality screen-writing, actors, locations, buildings, scenes, wardrobes, furnishings, knickknacks,—all perfect.
Zip forward thirty years, to about 2015, and similar British murder mysteries are mediocre. I have watched many such British murder mysteries over decades, and I see a pattern.
I suppose what I am seeing before my eyes is the decline in quality of British TV shows. I much prefer shows from the 1980s and 1990s, not only because all of the above is top-notch, but because I don’t have to wade through the tedious, moralistic woke-crap of the late-2010s and 2020s.
If I extend the idea further, Brits won’t be able to organize details of putting together such shows. Organizing any TV episode is the work of dozens of people, sometimes hundreds, and I bet, as the West declines, the creating of such shows will fall by the wayside. I see these shows as very much a treat, because they were produced when big budgets still existed, and the shows are still being “broadcast” on cable, satellite, and/or streaming video. Enjoy them now, because in another five or ten years, even those broadcasts may be few and far between, until they stop altogether.
I mix watching this category of TV with paper books of ghost stories of the 1870s, non-fiction tutorial books where I learn something, and the occasional Bums & Noblesse Notch digital books I can’t get greasy while eating. Dummies and Idiots books are my favorites, like First World War (WWI) for Dummies (I never knew all that stuff).
My maximum 8th-grade mother’s father “Isaiah”—canal ancestered, dairy-farm ancestored, mechanically-inclined, electronically-inclined, even though poorly traditionally-educated, had skills up the wazoo that designated him to the Signal Corp in Panama where he sat out WWI. I believe having been assigned to the Signal Corp in Panama was a rather plum existence where, as far as I know, there was no combat, just heat, mosquitos, and malaria.
It was Isaiah’s grandfather’s male-line where all sons got trained within the family many practical things they could fall on over their lives. By age 18, he was a jack-of-all-trades, much like JMG recommends youngums (young ones) get familiarlized with by age 20. He and his brothers built houses from scratch. Daughters got familial training in cooking, mending, washing, and dressmaking—the female arts.
Isaiah’s ancestors came from County Norfolk, England, marsh canal country. I don’t think it was by chance that this emigrant male ancestor ended up in Lake Champlain country of New York State in the 1840s.
I watch the old TV episodes with renewed awe, seeing them as cheery diversions that at some point will disappear. The shows help lessen (unruffle) the unsettling forever-feeling of “agita,” as Tony, the main character on The Sopanus, used to talk about.
There is a channel, Pluto, dedicated to 1960s sitcoms. Anyone for The Brady Bunch? (not my thing)
JMG, you prefer to read dead people’s stuff, and I prefer to watch dead people’s films, that is, of actors and actresses who have since died.
💨🇬🇧📺💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@The Other Owen and @Scotlyn
Thank you for your replies. You both make excellent points. Hopefully it will turn out that despite the deep animosities between the left and right wings of US culture, it’ll turn out that we just don’t have the right ingredients for large-scale violence.
“having a kind of wide cultural agreement, as somehow Americans in the US had until about the mid-1960s, and which was not thoroughly shredded until quite recently” Not only in the a USA but all through what used to be called the “West” the “free world” “the first world” The intention was to replace the varied “cultural agreements” of countries with a glorious globalist, high tech liberal progressive, multicultural, DEI one world. Not going as planned and sure to fail in the coming decades because of resource limits alone not including its innate weaknesses in organizing culture and social and economic structures.
Situationist Souffle:
1 tablespoon surrealism
5 tablespoons Karl Marx, divided
5 teaspoons Lettrism
5 teaspoons all-purpose avantgarde
¼ cup cold comfort
1 tablespoon brandy-based cynicism
1 teaspoon freshly grated irritants of modern life
2 large pieces of coarse sanding paper
⅛ teaspoon vanillaized de Sade
2 large comic books for repurposing
Any news on the 4th Ariel Moravec book?
Am halfway through Boethius. Lady Philosophy hauling Boethius out of his depth of self-pity was marvelous, and her dismissal of his earlier muses – haven’t we all re-read our juvenalia and been embarrassed by it?
The political scene that brought him to the dungeon reminded me a lot of the early-to-mid 15th Century in England and the lords around the court of Henry VI – Suffolk et. al. were pulling the same sort of stunts then, in the Retreat from France period. Again, a dying system about to fall apart.
In the later part, which I’m just getting into, Philosophy seems to be bombarding him with Socratic dialog at machine-gun speed. Wow. The writing is fantastic, and the lessons so far, sound.
>I wonder if the hostility by vegetarians and vegans is a peculiarly American thing
Like JMG said, we were founded by a bunch of religious fanatics and that fanaticism is still there, just expressed in different ways now.
Proto Surrealist Stew:
On a dissecting table combine pieces of a sewing machine inside the cavity of an umbrella and twirl while emptying the contents of your pockets and random words from the dictionary.
>Crayfish consommé
I wonder what he would’ve thought about having a southwestern kick with some Doritos consomme?
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=cppOojKBNko
JMG #209, thanks for the recommendation for The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith. I just ordered it. News about the looming (or rather, already in-progress) economic crash in Germany are alarming and depressing. I’m still frantically looking for a second income source, but can’t think of anything that people would be able and willing to afford, once the manure hits the wind farm. Maybe the book will give me some ideas.
” If you are wondering how much power I started with realy means, look at your monthly usage on your power bill, in the USA it is reported as kWhours, how many do you use a day ?”
25 kWh/day in the summer averaged over a month which includes those days the AC is on and the irrigation pump. (7 amps at 240 V for 18 hours once a week).
80 kWh/day in the winter again averaged over a month. Heat is combination of a heat pump, wood stove, and baseboards in the end bedrooms of the house.
The house is all electric, so hot water and the dryer in the winter, and the stove. The stove is rated for 11 kW if all the burners were on high at once. It never happens but they have to design for it. There are 12 kW of baseboard heaters in the house. When I put in the heat pump the baseboards had to stay in for backup purposes which means either the heat pump broke or it’s just too cold for it, like last January. Five below zero F and a stiff wind, and the heat pump couldn’t keep up. I had to energize the resistors.
Atmospheric River is quite correct about priorities. If you live up north (or the South Island of New Zealand) you have two problems to consider. Keeping the food from spoiling in the summer and avoiding hypothermia in the winter. The next problem in the winter is keeping the water pipes from freezing or limiting the damage if they do. The rest is pretty manageable given there is a lot of water in the water heater.
Ambrose # 274:
The most realistic “solution” to the biggest Middle East predicament should be a two states plan. However, this plan could be very difficult to be implemented. First, there should be an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians (with their correlative countries which supports them) to establish the limits between Israel and Palestine. Where will be drawn? Which year limits would be accepted by both countries?
In the case there were an agreement to draw limits between the two states, hatred between Jews and Arabs didn’t disappear soon. So it should be necessary, IMHO, a separation zone between the two countries to avoid infiltration attempts from the two sides. Of course, some kind of international military force should be patrolling that zone 24/7. If everything works, I think we only should pray Israelis and Palestinians don’t be tempted in the short term to reconquer more territory in a new war.
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Patrick # 276:
OK, no argument here. I take note of it.
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The Arkane # 279:
No doubt, a fact which I didn’t know. Thank you…
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Justin P.#288:
It’s true Stranger Things has a psychic part, so it puts over the table the paranormal thing. I agree.
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JMG # 295:
Yes, European elites (even the most apparently on the fringe like Col. Baños) share the blind spot you’ve written. They think this (sub)continent will keep being a happy Arcadia which is going to led the western civilization fire forever…It’s a pity they don’t realize how EU influence and global prestige’s waning day after day, for example.
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Portugal has always seen by most Spaniards like a brother, but a poorer and lest advanced one than we, the big brother. It’s a pity because Portuguese sometimes have a certain brotherhood feeling toward us. Portuguese writer Saramago wrote a novel (“La balsa de piedra”) in which the Iberian Peninsula sails outside the rest of Europe towards west, compelling the two countries to be friends. And Brazil, yes, it’s indeed the first between the Third World countries, its membership within BRICS cannot be despised.
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Zelensky case: John, I hadn’t thought in his opportune death by “accident” nor assesination (blaming then Putin?). I’m not as cruel as you. There are some measures before that blunt act. I was thinking first in pressures from Washington to him for his “voluntary” resignation; if this doesn’t work, my hypothesis would be the carrot and the stick: the carrot (offering him cocaine…eh…dollars and a golden exile). Finally, the stick as last option: color revolution or military coup d’état to put another civilian/military puppet in Kiev, more eager to sign s peace treaty with Russians.
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I understand Trumpian tactics which trust in the war against bad guys Spectacle. I’ll wait for your extended opinion about this more psychological than real war.
Stephen P. # 308:
Cyprus is a good touristic place, and a country for a permanent life there, until Turkey near future government decides to revive Ottoman Empire; and Greeks get angry about that imperial dreams. It won’t happen tomorrow, but I wouldn’t to live in Cyprus island in the long term. I thought average Israeli citizens were smarter…
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Northwind Grandma # 311:
Yes, I remember from my childhood some good British series and TV films during the ‘80s. There wasn’t shortage of them to be broadcasted in spanish public TV (which was the only TV corporation then, a monopoly which was broken in the ‘90s). Today, I rarely watch TV, but in those few times where I share TV time with my family, I can only see how series writers and actors have worsened their performances. Oh, the woke thing is there, but I think nowadays British series aren’t very wokeized when you compare them
with American series. Maybe it’s a personal view, because I don’t waste enough time in watching TV to have a full panoramic of it.
Other Owen, for cyclists of all ages (children, elderly) to feel and to be safe, the bike lane needs to be protected from the cars by being more elevated or by trees or by parked cars or maybe concrete pillars. Otherwise, it will only be a reserve for adults who want to work out like you or me, or at most (when it is marked by generous double lines on the asphalt like here in Montreal) for children accompanied by their parents.
Mary Bennett (no. 294) “. Fears of a possible future Jewish/Muslim alliance…”
Say what? I mean, Israel is already sort of allied with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but popular solidarity?! That seems farfetched.
“I suspect the plan now is to remove Israel to Ukraine, the historic Pale, as a last resort.”
If Israel falls, a big group would relocate to the USA, of course, but Argentina is also being eyed.
Earthworm, I’m not sure I agree with that. Acquired tastes are sometimes worth having; in the arts, very often one has to learn how to look or listen to be able to enjoy the work fully. As for tarot decks, yes, very much so — choosing a suitable deck is important.
Slithy, the European vegans I’ve met (not necessarily a representative sample, of course) were smug rather than irate, so you may be right.
Clay, well, we’ll see.
Alexander, it’s been close to twenty years since I last went digging in that area, and I no longer live on the side of the continent I was on then, thus don’t have access to the libraries I used! Anyone else?
Karen, hmm! That’s fascinating — and speaks well for those kids.
Atmospheric, glad to hear you’re doing well. Thank you for a very timely bit of advice.
Luke Z, relativism is just as indefensible as absolutism from a Schopenhauerian standpoint. The fact of the matter is that we just don’t know. Any given perception may or may not reflect an objective reality, thus the precautionary principle (i.e., keep “what could go wrong?” in mind) is essential, and it also makes a great deal of sense to pay attention to what results previous actions have yielded. If you’re in a thick fog, you feel your way bit by bit — you don’t make sweeping assumptions about what is or is not real. That’s a good metaphor for human existence.
Other Owen, no, colored hair and nose rings hadn’t come into fashion yet. She was blonde, worn in a short and expensively styled cut.
J.L.Mc12, that sounds like Dali!
Northwind, if you like visual media, that’s a good plan.
Patricia, The House of the Crows, Ariel’s next adventure, will be out in April.
Athaia, well, what do you want that you can’t get easily?
Chuaquin, a close alliance between Spain and Portugal seems like basic common sense to me, but we’ll see if the elites thereof have that much brains. As for Zelensky, the problem is that he knows too much, and the chance that he’ll try blackmail is too high. In his place I’d be very, very careful about boarding an airplane.
“I’m not sure I agree with that. ”
Of course, and that is fair enough!
…but where is the post to which you are replying?
If lost in the aether, here it is again:
***
“I’ve only just started trying to develop a taste for the Surrealists.”
I know someone who, having been told that sardines were good for him forced himself to overcome his gag reflex in order to eat them. If innate beauty of something does not speak naturally to the heart and/or mind, it strikes me as intellectual contrivance.
The idea reminds me of an old Woody Allen film:
Ariel: “Leopold has taught me how to listen to Beethoven.”
Andrew: “With your ears, right?”
But, as I said “Peasant” 😉
It has though, started me on a train of thought about what an artist or other practitioner might imbue in a creation that is unseen by the eyes but registered by the heart/soul so that, while technically marvellous, the visceral response is disquiet, distaste, rejection or disgust rather than delight, attraction pleasure etc. Like creating a talisman or other object the nature of one’s energy creates an energetic form; the nature of that form is perceived and depending on the individual’s energy state/path one is either attracted or repelled. Does one vibrate in harmony or not.
I have never been attracted to Tarot, but it occurs to me that one would need to take great care in the choice of deck because the underlying vibrations will have an effect on the user – if putting together symbolism is like adding ingredients to a recipe – did they use rose petals or butyric acid and at which point might one discover that!
Is it possible a deck’s symbolism might lead to an energy state / path best avoided in the way of ‘What you contemplate you imitate’ – particularly if one cannot discern the underlying nature of forces at work?
***
“…in the arts, very often one has to learn how to look or listen to be able to enjoy the work fully.”
Really?
If one has to be taught ‘right-think’ in order to enjoy something, might it not be argued that a piece ‘lacks’ if it is incapable of connecting without prior induction/indoctrination?
Are the people who dye their hair aware of the toxic chemicals that get used in creating synthetic hair dyes and the environmental and health damage that those chemicals and waste products cause?
That is not to say that ‘way think’ does not have place – what I mean is that truly beautiful work stands with or without.
For sure, there are things to look at beneath the surface that can enhance, but if the appreciation is dependent on ‘understanding’ beforehand, then a ‘thing’ is not truly resonating and is an intellectual construct… basically, that true beauty transcends and precedes intellectual analysis which usually follows the experience. Preloading mindstate short-circuits impact?
JMG #325 Acquired tastes are sometimes worth having; in the arts, very often one has to learn how to look or listen to be able to enjoy the work fully.
Exactly. Sometimes the quick take is right on the money, sometimes it off the mark because you are not ready for it.
Record store wisdom, Item N. 1746: sometimes, in the course of the day, you can hear something wrong, and hate it, because of the context you are listening in, how distracted you are, what else is on your mind, etc etc. Many times I have heard something, and HATED IT, then, 3 months later, you hear it again, and it becomes your favorite record.
ITEM N. 647 : Many times you will remember something fondly, from your past, something that was a “favorite” that you listened to “all the time.” Upon listening again, mostly in the store environment, where you are employed, it’s weakness is revealed to you, and you realize you have moved on. The opposite is true as well.
ITEM N. 648 Sometimes, you listen to something you either “hated” or “loved” back in the day, and it turns out it’s better than you remember.
It all fits. It’s basically one story. And, you are a part of the story.
I learned very early in the game. Whatever you think about what you played, or what you’ve said, or songs you played, or anything, people receive it with their own ears, and make of it what they will.
And, they could be right. And you could be wrong.
John Michael: Have you discussed where in the world “The Hall Of Homeless Gods” takes place? That is next on my re-read list. I need to get into the Ariel series, and the Ctulu series as well. I need some more tentacles in my diet.
Apologies for fanboying out on you. 🙂
@ Silicon Guy
My house is all electric, but you dont run all that off 9kWh of battery storage. I actually never run the electric heat as main house heat, it is just too expensive, power is .42-.60/kWh depending on time of day. I do normally cook on a vintage 1950’s electric range. I have a stand alone portable induction burner and a solar oven that are called into play. I actually used the induction burner off the battery storage a few times a day during outages, last night I made popcorn on it, this morning hot water for a thermos of tea to get it sooner than the wood stove.
Part of my collapse now and avoid the rush is that I dont use a clothes dryer ever; I dont use the electric heat normally, it is rare; I threw away 3 window air conditioners that came with the house, planted a few grape vines and sometimes just deal with it being too hot, it does get quite hot here, I can pass on many ways to deal with heat – it does not get as cold as you do; I have a basic GE energy star refrigerator Yellow tag rated at less than 1kWh/day; I changed out my well pump to a low power consumption 120V AC pump ( grundfos Flex at this point); I can irrigate by hand or do basic in the house off gravity water, the pressure pump is very low power model – if I listened to the “well guys” locally, I would use alot more power, I dont landscape and planted deep root stock apple trees that could be trained to not need summer water. I do water garden, livestock and other fruiting trees.
@Patricia Mathews, are you reading the Slavitt translation? I liked it very well, too.
@all, I posted a shorter poem some weeks ago. Another, longer and more elaborate poem from the Consolation of Philosophy concerns the proper relation to external tyrants, even if they might have the power to imprison, torture and kill you, as was the case for Boethius, while and right after he wrote this poem. Maybe appropriate when several people have been trying to evaluate the risk of civil war and tyranny.
It is called Sunt etenim pennae volucres mihi.
Lady Philosophy begins singing (based in part on Slavitt’s free translation):
‘I have wings with which you can fly
to highest heaven.
If your mind fastens them on, it will…
soar through the spheres of air…
rising into the houses of the stars,
join Phoebus on his way
or march in the army of the cold old man,
a soldier of the glittering star…
Until it is exhausted and,
passing through the last heaven…
becomes part of the awesome dazzling light…’
For me the whole poem falls into place with the very last word (Slavitt’s translation with one change):
‘There you will at last remember yourself,
on the road back, the road home,
and you will say: “Yes, I recall it all,
where I was born, where I belong.
Here shall I stay!” And should you chance to look down
to the dark earth you have left behind:
those tyrant rulers that wretched people fear,
you shall see: they are exiles.’
I was thinking about San Francisco with their short power outage, and about California PMC thoughts that everyone should be “all electric”. I was out for an afternoon walk, and went by a neighbor who rebuilt after the fire, a net zero, I think it is called, house. This is the first outage since the house completion sign off.
They have a very large solar panel and battery backup, but I forget teh specs. Anyways, the house is designed with very thick walls and a super amount of insulation, triple pane coated glass fibrex windows, it is very airtight, so needs an air to air heat exchanger, the only heat for it is a central air to air heat pump ( resistance elements are in there for when it is coldest), 240V induction burner range, 240V electric water heating, they have a 240V well pump, fancy Mielie fridge, etc… It is designed to get zero passive heat gain, but overhangs to stay cool are built in
It has gotten cold here the last few nights, so they had to fire up a gasoline powered generator last couple days so that they could use their heater during this power outage time and not freeze, the batteries were too low to use for heating anymore. Prior to their old house burning down, they had a propane central heating system they did not use as it was expensive and they had a wood burning stove they heated the house with. They had to drive out thru storm and bad roads and get more gasoline for the generator.
That house is very expensive for its size to get that airtightness, triple pane windows and heat exchanger, etc…. And they believed all the clean energy hype and did not plan in a space to put a wood stove backup for heating the house and warming food and boiling water. Maybe they will at least get a pour over cone for backup coffee, when we went by morning of 24th at the beginning of the outage they were making everyone latte with the espresso maker off the batteries
They are still happy, but I find the whole thing too expensive for what it does and not as resilient as I think new houses should be. Kind of like all the new stuff pushed by our local California PMC
John, two questions. I quote from your reply to Luke Z, “…..also makes a great deal of sense to pay attention to what results previous actions have yielded. If you’re in a thick fog, you feel your way bit by bit — you don’t make sweeping assumptions about what is or is not real.”
1)When it comes to spiritual practices, especially those that produce results after a certain period of daily practice, how do you measure the efficacy of the practice? If a subjective experience such as “enlightenment” or “healing” has not yet come into the practitioners experience, they technically don’t know what “it” is and may not be able to identify it once “it” happens. I grant that we stand on the shoulders of giants in this regard. Some things are better done without question and without trying to reinvent the wheel. Daily practice is costly, and the desire to build and explore efficient spiritual technology for the wellbeing of people is strong. “Do what works” sounds simple, but the task is nothing short of Herculean.
It has been said that mediation and rituals involving only yourself is exclusive in that you can hurt no one but yourself, but that rituals involving others are inclusive and have the potential to be exploitative. 2)How would one develop the capabilities to design and implement rituals for the betterment of the participants?
I think one of the most dangerous factions in the world today are the China hawks in the Trump administration.
I mean I’m just an external observer but what I see right now is that Hegseth is the most prominent of the “hawks”. JD Vance is aligned with them on some things but it seems he is less inclined to send American forces to a conflict than others are. Bessent is opposed to them but supports an economic war to force China to reduce its trade surplus, Tulsi Gabbard is also opposed to them and decides on the flow of intelligence.
The “tech right” seems very strongly in favour of a war with China. It seems they took a statement by Xi about military preparations by 2027 as a plan for invasion, you can see Anduril pretty much banking their whole company on a 2027 war in some leaked plans. Their CEO Palmer Luckey quite explicitly antagonizes China and the last few days has been in Japan trying to sell his drones there and set up a new office. I think some consolation comes as Ukraine reported that his drones failed miserably and are much more expensive than Chinese components.
Peter Thiel is a common thread among many of the hawks IMO.
I think Trump himself has been rejecting a lot of the hawks’ rhetoric; he personally doesn’t want a war and he wants stocks to go up, which brings him closer to Bessent, at least for now.
I think if there’s one thing Trump can do that will leave a legacy it’s to avoid WWIII with China.
@ Scotlyn #286 ” One should probably make one’s own enemies in the same way one makes one’s friends – up close and personal, on the basis of actual interactions. ”
Well, now you’re really being radical. And I couldn’t have said it better, nor agree more. Those words should be committed to memory and kept in mind. I shared them with my daughter, who very much has a mind of her own, and she agreed.
Earthworm, it’s already up; you’ll find it at #296 in the comment thread. As for needing to learn how to see or listen, do you think that someone would enjoy reading poetry if they hadn’t learned how to read? It’s not a matter of learning “right-think” or of indoctrination; it’s the esthetic or literary equivalent of developing an educated palate. That’s why so many people think of artistic traditions from other cultures as ugly and awkward; they’ve never learned how to look, and don’t realize that their ability to read (at least the basics of) their own culture’s art is something they were taught, usually in early childhood, by way of illustrated books and the like.
Anon, I’ve heard people argue that blue hair dye causes brain damage, if that’s what you have in mind.
Earthworm, sure, if your definition of “true beauty” amounts to “what I like.” If you haven’t had the experience of encountering a creative work that you didn’t “get,” and then later got the necessary background and came back to it and realized what it was saying, why, there’s not much I can communicate to you.
John, yes, exactly. As for The Hall of Homeless Gods, it’s located somewhere on the Atlantic coast of the United States — I was very deliberately ambiguous about where. Somewhere between northeastern Florida and Massachusetts, surely.
Jfisher, (1) you can’t. All you can do is take up a practice and work with it until you develop the necessary capacities to perceive what’s happening. This is why it’s a good idea to take up a practice that’s been tested and refined by others, so you won’t be wasting your efforts. You cannot “build and explore efficient spiritual technology for the wellbeing of people” until you’ve reached a fairly advanced stage of practice and experience. (2) Get to work practicing an established system, and once you’ve gotten to the point where you can perceive what the rituals are doing, you will have the necessary knowledge and perceptive ability to do it.
Alvin, the problem of the chickenhawk — the intellectual who doesn’t have the slightest experience with combat but thinks he ought to be able to send other people off to fight and die — is one of the real challenges of modern life. Maybe the politicians and Silicon Valley businessmen who talk about this could be rounded up and sent to Ukraine or somewhere to put their enthusiasm for war to good use!
JMG,
Good joke.
More seriously, for scientific studies that link the use of hair dye with increased rates of cancer:
https://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/38/2/707.abstract
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7246134/
The companies DuPont and Chemos GmbH both claim that p-Phenylenediamine, a chemical commonly used in hair dyes, is toxic to aquatic animals with long lasting effects:
https://www.scribd.com/document/434158221/pp
https://www.chemos.de/import/data/msds/GB_en/106-50-3-A0023765-GB-en.pdf
JMG #338 I was very deliberately ambiguous about where.
Thank you. I read it as ambiguous too, but was confounded by the Japanese angles to the story. I can imagine it being on the west coast as well, off the california coast. Good job with that. It’s a sturdy novel, which I am reading starting tonight. I want to let Stars Reach percolate in my brain, instead of reading it a 7th time.
Surrealist cuisine is definitely an acquired potlach scent of moldering exquisite corpse.
I decided to use this open post as a sort of accountability marker for progress on the rough draft of the novel I am writing… well… I am happy to report that I am still working on it, and haven’t slowed down much! It’s at 13 chapters now, roughly the half-way point. Still getting in 1-3000 words a day!
Now that I am in the mushy middle part, I’m laughing to myself at how many concepts from this forum are getting reflected back from it in a VERY different genre than usual. For the amusement of regular readers, here’s what Ecosophia looks like as a torrid romance novel…
The male lead is written a lot like President Andrew Jackson – a man who won the woman he would love passionately for the rest of his life by beating up her husband when he was on the way to the courthouse to put forth a lawsuit about her adultery with Andrew. The husband didn’t show up, because he was bleeding in an alleyway, so Jackson won the case. [Yes this is real history lol] Loud, brash, a playboy, unapologetically masculine and a little too willing to use his physical strength and natural cunning to get what he wants, very successful financially and thinks he’s better than others because of it, narcissistic and emotionally immature – I’m sure it’s clear what I’m referencing!
The female lead is a disgraced former professor who ended up on the wrong side of modern feminist thought and was thrown right out of the ivory tower for her sins. [Cancel culture] She’s struggling through a series of awful retail jobs [probably what a lot of unemployed academics are going to be doing now or shortly] while creating art in a unique style to burn off stress from this transition [tamanous]. She is neurodivergent, as is a pretty popular thing to claim on the left nowadays, but it makes her a jerk, not a victim. One of her worst character traits is assuming that certain groups are worthy of her scorn and disrespect because of physical characteristics (cough, men). She lies to herself and others to avoid facing unpleasant emotional realities. Her hair may not literally be blue, but I think it is clear what I’m referencing!
These two examples of the very worst of red state and blue state culture, respectively, have spent the first third of the novel clashing with each other about as intensely as the two halves of America do nowadays. (While also having a torrid physical affair, of course.) Of course there are things they secretly desire and are drawn to about the other one, but are very personally conflicted about. The female lead is actually bisexual, not a lesbian, and has spent her adult life mentally trapped in a rigid and increasingly irrelevant orthodoxy – she craves the freedom and don’t-give-an-eff-ness the male lead represents. The male lead is increasingly lonely and adrift in his role he plays as ‘the guy other guys wish they could be’, and is having qualms about some of the things his profession justifies (an analog to the Epstein parties). He secretly fantasizes about a woman who can be just as powerful as him – in the bedroom and outside of it – who can provide a new goal for his life (his current career was his ex-wife’s idea [hello, neoliberalism!]) and meet his need for genuine intimacy outside of strict gender roles. They profess to hate each other, but they *definitely* do not. If anything, they each hate themselves, and *that* is one of the biggest sources of conflict between them.
Though this is a romance, I’m writing my way towards a pretty catastrophic blow-up between the two of them at the 2/3rds mark – not to the level of civil war, but pretty bad! And then they will have to put the pieces of their lives back together, and figure out how to *really* make it work. So I guess things are getting worse before they get better.
Can the *actual* American left and right ever find their way towards this reconciliation?? Who knows! I don’t get to decide that, but boy I am having fun with this story! 🙂
I have a family vacation right in the middle of next month, and it will be a marital issue if I keep writing this novel during it, but I think I can still get another 3 chapters written by the next Open Post. Onward!
@Mary Bennett #219
Thanks for your thoughtful comments! Muraresku pays a lot of attention to archaeobotany; analyzing the remnants of sludge in the bottoms of the cups found in ceremonial sites, recipes in Greek medical books, and the like. It’s surprising what we _can_ know of ancient practices from this type of analysis. He describes his studies of archaelogical literature, and visits to various archaeological sites. While I’m personally skeptical that having hallucinogens in the communion wine would be a lasting benefit to spiritual development, they could have been there by design, not accident. Muraresku claims never to have tried hallucinogens–an odd claim, considering his persistence to find ancient evidence of them in sacraments.
I thought the parallels described between the Myth of Dionysus and the deeds of Jesus as described in the gospel of John were fascinating, and makes me want to look into stories of Dionysus. IMHO, a worthwhile read for anyone who participates in this blog, since the book touches on many recurring topics.
Justin P. # 314:
I take note of your Situ recipe, which could be too heavy to digest by delicate stomachs, but for me it’s exciting. I thing I’d like it.
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Aldarion # 323:
I want to tell you my town has a lot of bike lanes since the 90s. Unfortunately, some of them are only dellimited by a white paint mark in the floor from the motor vehicles, so there you can only hope (and pray) cars respect that weak sign…
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JMG # 325:
I see you often quote Schopenhauer in your philosophical comments, and you also usually say we can’t reach to real reality, because we’re mediated by our (imperfect) senses. What do you think about Kantian terms “phenomenon” and “noumenon”?(I personally think it’s a good view to do science work without a childish belief in materialism).
***********
Yeah, a Hispano-Portuguese alliance would be great, in addition to their former colonies it would be a great block. However, until today elites are quite blind to this idea.
*************
It’s true Zelensky has had access to a heck of information during his presidency, so he could have a sad ending wether he speaks too much. Although I could see it as last solution to the Zelensky problem. A forced resignation, or “carrot and stick” could fix this “little” problem to reach a peace treaty soon. If Zelensky is smart enough to do the math so he avoids blackmail temptation, he could make a good deal with Washington, me think (OK, maybe I’m overestimating his mind. Drug abuse usually damages cognitive habilities cough cough).
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Alvin # 336:
I’ve got the impression that Trump wants economic war against China, but world economy is globalized enough today to realize in an economic full war everybody would lost finally. What I don’t think is Trumpian politics (except a few hawks) wants really a military war against China. US military power in real world has been dwindling these last decades fighting terrorism and very weak countries, so it’s unprepared to fight a big war even against a mediocre country like Venezuela in an invasion with ground troops (by the way, I think Trump will attack Maduro regime, but only “beating his gorilla chest” showing B-1s and B-2s poster boys of US aerial supremacy, for s short time). I think Trump is selling to the rest of the world US hegemony Spectacle, but he knows his Army is indeed incapable to fight and win a sustained war against China.
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JMG # 338:
A good comment about “armchair warriors” who become in war hawks. I’d like to add to your comment which those hawks often fool themselves with their wrong belief in hi tech like “magic” which will assure western victory against a Chinese or Russian enemy, who’s always depicted with outdated Cold War technology. However, they don’t want to realize China has make an effort to reach the “world industrial” main power, so its technology can be equal or eventually better than ours is. And even a half-poor country like Russia spend a big part of his national budget into military tech.
Perhaps we are arguing about the flavour of moonlight, the colour of love, or who gets to keep the smoke rising from a just blown out candle?
>Peter Thiel is a common thread among many of the hawks IMO.
Like in Palantir social credit score, anti-Christ obsessed, Epstein’s friend, Peter Thiel?
I’ve got a question for John and the dilettante/proffessional astrologer commentariat here. Maybe you all know next year 2026 there will be a full solar eclipse which it will be seen from some zones in Spain. I’m curious about its possible astrological effects on my country and other parts of the world. Thanks on advance.
Involuntary comedy in the special local newspaper ressuming of this 2025 year. I’ve read my country regional and national governments are going to impulse in full
mode a heck of data centers here in 2026…and next to this “optimist” news, journalists remember the complete Spain and Portugal alike big blackout which happened this year (cough cough). Well, today is the “Innocents Day” here. If you don’t know it yet, Spaniards don’t have Aprils Fool day in April, because we have our own day for pranks in December 28: today! I wonder wether to put those two news together in the newspapers is an involuntary joke..,
>Hopefully it will turn out that despite the deep animosities between the left and right wings of US culture, it’ll turn out that we just don’t have the right ingredients for large-scale violence.
Oh the ingredients are all there, it’s just the cooks haven’t put them together yet. They’re all measured and sitting on the kitchen counter but they haven’t been mixed yet or put into the oven. Unless things change, you know there’s going to be a moist delicious cake at some point. But the smell of cake hasn’t yet permeated the kitchen.
>Otherwise, it will only be a reserve for adults who want to work out like you or me, or at most (when it is marked by generous double lines on the asphalt like here in Montreal) for children accompanied by their parents.
If a bike lane isn’t separated, this is what it turns into in the big city – https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ
Or maybe what looks like argument is actually movement:
Dancing around each other like spiralling threads of DNA
The logical rhetoric of the accomplished scholar vs the babblings of a part time poet
Cords that are chords
Moving in and out of harmony
Like trying to make a braid of sweetgrass using sunlight and soil
Held together by laughter and tears
It is only when the inner fire blazes
And the heart is called from beyond
That beauty may arise
No eyes needed to see
No ears needed to hear
No skin needed to touch
The light of life burst forth
And the tranquillity of peace rings out
Then again, I might just be full of pretentious garble and need to remind myself not to give up the day job! 🙂
@earthworm #327: I think there is often good reason to make an effort to understand and appreciate a form of art. One may or may not end up truly enjoying it, but without the effort one would never know.
When I was maybe 12, my father took me for the first time to a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (parts 1-3). For him, this was a ritual – he is a Bach fan through and through, as is most of his family. At the time, I had been playing small Bach pieces on the piano for a while, but on that occasion, I didn’t enjoy the Christmas Oratorio at all. Over the following decades, I have listened to it many times and performed it several times (always the best way to appreciate music), and now it is is as important to me as to my father, though my favorite part is no. 5. I prefer chorales and recitatives to arias, but there are some arias I enjoy, mostly alto and bass ones. On the other hand, my father tried to pass his love for jazz and ragtime to me, completely without success.
When I was 19, I read a historical novel where the protagonist fell in love with Claudio Monteverdi’s music, which made me buy my first Monteverdi CD. At first, among the 20 pieces on that CD, I only liked 3. After listening again and again, I ended up liking 19, and in the end even the last one. I bought more and more Monteverdi CDs and at some point was able to hear almost the entire content of a CD in my head, text and melodies. Monteverdi and Bach are my favourite composers until today.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t like any poetry, but I did love all of C.S. Lewis’ books, both fiction and non-fiction. He loved Homer, Virgil, Dante, Ariosto and Shakespeare, so I started to fight my way through them. Today I love Virgil and Dante, and I highly appreciate Shakespeare. On the other hand, while appreciating and respecting Homer, I have never come to really enjoy the Iliad or the Odyssey (still haven’t tried Ariosto). So it is not a question of learning “right-think”, but of making a sincere effort to enjoy a piece of art that is remote from one’s own experience.
Our Indian commenters will tell you how much effort it has taken even them to really understand and appreciate Indian classical music.
Come to think of it, even with food, overcoming initial repulsion sometimes (not always) pays off. I remember I didn’t like sushi at all the first time I ate it, but have enjoyed it ever since the second time!
Hi John,
Apologies, my question is poorly written (I was in a bit of a rush at the time).
I’m well aware we aren’t going to “collapse” in 2030, more that the 2030 timeframe is a key point when unsustainable trends stop globally. Or at least that’s certainly my reading of where we are.
I recall you predicted that around 2030 you think global tourism will effectively cease to exist, for example. Now, the end of global tourism isn’t the end of the world but it would still be a significant moment at a macro level.
Jennifer Kobernik @ 304, indeed. Not-polluting is doable and practical, and the results are almost immediately visible. You will doubtless recall it being said that during the pandemic, the Himalaya Mts. became visible from New Delhi for the first time in decades. Alas, your average “concerned” faux environmentalist has little or no interest in doable and practical measures. If they did, they would not be buying Mcmansions or resource guzzling land yachts.
JMG @ 117, about boycotting writers for their political opinions, there is also the pervasive across all spectra insertion of irrelevant to the story or argument opinionating. Must we have yet another bisexual character of multiply exotic origin? Do I need to be told in an otherwise rather interesting explanation of an academic conservative author’s views that the works of the brilliant classicist Moses Finley need to be taken with a grain of salt because Finley was a communist? Finley was apparently one of that generation born before WWI who converted to communism in the wake of the great depression, in the hope that socialist govts. could reign in the excesses and cruelties of capitalism.
Alderion @ 352, I hope you have listened to the Vespers of 1610, possibly the most brilliant job application in history. Montiverdi was angling to become official state composer ( IDK the exact title) in Venice. The opening flourish of trumpets heralds the Doge and attendants entering San Marco.
As a teenager, I found Dickens unbearable; a decade later I read through all his novels.
Anon, at this point I’d be astounded to hear of some heavily marketed chemical concoction that didn’t cause serious health problems of one kind or another.
John, thank you! The only reason you can be sure the five Habitats and Shoreside are on the east coast is that the sun rises over the ocean and sets over the hills.
Shinjuku, that sounds like a first-rate novel, one that I would like to read. Please finish it and get it into print!
Chuaquin, Kant’s essential, and in fact Schopenhauer drew heavily on him (giving credit for his borrowings) and included a long section in the expanded version of The World as Will and Representation discussing the strengths and suggesting corrections for the weaknesses of Kant’s philosophy. Those two terms of Kant’s are highly useful; I’d also draw a distinction between the noumenon, which stands for thoughts, and the psychomenon, which represents mental contents other than thought, such as dream imagery and emotions. As for chicken hawks, yeah, China’s already testing a 6th generation fighter…
…which is far in advance of our current planes, while ours is still on the drawing boards.
Earthworm, or not, as the case may be.
Chuaquin, I haven’t delineated it yet. I’ve got a bunch of charts still to cast and interpret yet. As for Innocents’ Day, I didn’t know that! Happy Dia de los Inocentes.
Forecasting, thanks for the clarification! Yes, I expect a lot of curves to begin changing direction or dipping fast in the decade or so between now and 2035.
Mary, another good point! I sometimes joke about how odd it is that my novels are neglected by the woke even though I put a strong black lesbian protagonist into two of them. Now, granted, Sho’s a shoggoth, but should she be denied those labels out of mere eldritchphobia? 😉
@Mary Bennet: Yes, I do have the Vespers! My favorite piece is Nisi dominus.
My best friend in high school majored in German literature and had to read Thomas Mann novels. I think I would have hated them at that age, but I read and enjoyed all of them some years later.
>If they did, they would not be buying Mcmansions
Which are basically the only choice if you want to buy a house now. Smaller houses are illegal to build. Have been for a while now. Nobody can seem to do anything about it either. Other than try to shove more credit down people’s throats, ie. the 50 year mortgage.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=I2BnQmZZ2rI
>or resource guzzling land yachts.
That they do have a choice over. Somewhat. But even there, cars have been made heavier by quite a bit since 2000, due to safety regulations. And the extra expense of all of that pushes people to buy bigger vehicles.
Would you be willing to put up with “undesirables” in your neighborhood or cars that were less safe for the environment? Or are you going to tell me that you want it all and finger wag at me to make it happen? In any case, there’s a reason these bad decisions got made over the years. It’s worth something to examine why they got made in the first place.
JMG: “Athaia, well, what do you want that you can’t get easily?”
I want a horse, and a wide, open plain…
Seriously, I can’t think of anything I want that I can’t easily get (the above excepted). I guess I’m a pretty content person? I can fix most anything myself (I had to learn how to do it, because I didn’t have the money to call a professional), I got payback from my electricity and utility bills because I apparently lived extremely frugally (it didn’t feel that way to me, so I was very surprised), and I’m in no need of any new gadgets. I have all the gadgets I need.
Maybe that’s my problem: to subconsciously think that other people also wouldn’t need anything they can’t get easily, and least of all from me. After all, they can just order from the internet. And if they can’t afford that anymore, how would they be able to pay me?
In a post-apocalyptic world, I could probably make a living with my skills, but in the pre-apocalyptic world of today, there’s still too much working infrastructure, and too much of a mindset to first seek out experts and professionals (and if all fails, the state with its welfare programs), and to distrust the amateurs.
But I’ve long wanted to learn how to make shoes, because the ones you can buy never really fit, so maybe that’ll be my trade LOL.
Speaking of dipping curves coming upon us- In Germany – “Among women born between 1988 and 1992 – that’s to say, now in their mid-to-late thirties and approaching the end of their fertility – just under fifty per cent are childless.” It is apparent that Western European culture has passed its use by date and will fade into irrelevancy over the next hundred years. The birthrate in Britain is the same and the song that kept English spirits up in WW2 will ring false – “There Will Always Be an England” Though not quite as far gone, the American culture developed in its first two centuries is also fading. The vibrant America, with all its pluses and minuses, of my youth in the 50’s and 60’s is gone. A common fate for cultures – have any of us run into Romans, Hellenic Greeks, Cretans, medieval Japanese, Han Chinese, Vikings, Assyrians, Sumerians, Scythians, Persians of the Sassanian Empire?
@ Northwind Grandma #311
A major reason why the Joan Hickson “Miss Marple” series was so beautifully done and mostly faithful to the text (“Pocket Full of Rye” being a notable exception, bleah! that ending! bleah!) was because Rosalind Christie Pritchard Hicks, Agatha Christie’s sole child, was still alive.
Rosalind and her son, Matthew Pritchard (by her first husband killed in WWII) were both EXTREMELY protective of Agatha’s legacy. The BBC and London Weekend Television had to stick to what Rosalind wanted. The Christie estate’s experiences with film and TV, especially in the 60’s (Margaret Rutherford and the truly dreadful Tony Randall flick) made them wary and cautious.
Bringing Agatha to TV was a long, slow process. The filmmakers knew that if they wanted to put more Agatha on TV, Rosalind had to sign off. If she didn’t approve, it didn’t happen.
Now, of course, Rosalind’s been dead for decades. Matthew Pritchard must be pushing 80. The family sold a big chunk of Agatha Christie Ltd. to RLJ Entertainment Holdings Ltd. Grandson James Pritchard (Agatha’s great-grandson) is in charge of the estate today.
Any concerns about selling the old girl out went away a few decades ago. They want to make their money NOW. This is because the estate is facing the fact that in 2046, Agatha Christie falls into the public domain in most of the world.
Add in the loss overall of decent storytelling and filmmaking to the estate’s fears of losing its cash cow and you see why you get some of the film adaptations that you do! See https://peschelpress.com/agatha-christie-she-watched/ and https://peschelpress.com/international-agatha-christie-she-watched/ for details.
I admit I admire Agatha’s estate. Whatever ELSE you can say about some of the adaptations (and I’ve seen virtually all of them) is that they keep her in the public eye. Dorothy Sayers? She is vanishing under the daily tsunami of swill because HER estate doesn’t care.
Finally got to where I am content with my Christianly modified Sphere of Protection to comfortably fit my personal understanding and experience of reality. A challenge I had was fitting in the banishing aspect. Also figuring out how to consciously root myself in the Viriditas of the created order so everything wasn’t just purely heavenly and spiritual. Thank you for putting me in contact with a useable template to bring in life and joy.
Owen, undesirables in my neighborhood? I am the undesirable. Fortunately, I rent from a person who likes to be paid on time and doesn’t appreciate the fun and excitement of an ever revolving cast of friends and relations in and out of his property.
As for your other points, none of this is written in stone. Building codes are human constructs, not natural law, ditto with autos. You might like sometimes, just as an intellectual exercise you understand, that there might be values more important than some folks get to become rich. BTW, could you please explain the obsession with “blue hair”? Do you refer to the rinse some senior women use for grey hair–I don’t, nor do I know any reason why I would–, or to some young people’s habit of painting odd colors in theirs. Reminds me of 70s leisure suits in colors not found in nature.
Hey JMG and commentariat
I recently discovered that Christopher Schwarz and just made another of his book available as a free PDF download.
This time, it’s his rather unique classic “Campaign Furniture”, which explains the history of this furniture style and how to make it. I think I have mentioned this book previously, since the campaign furniture style is uniquely designed for transport and economy, which may be relevant in the coming decades.
https://lostartpress.com/collections/books/products/campaign-furniture
BeardTree,
I do wonder what that statistic will look like in a few years. Birth rates are certainly well below replacement, but as a woman at the oldest end of that range (born 1988), many of my peers are currently pregnant for the first time or have just had their first child. I myself have a child under one (my oldest is three) and would like to have more. Of course, starting so late means you’re unlikely to have a very large number of children, and fertility issues may arise, but of the women I know who’ve started trying in their mid-to-late thirties, all of them have successfully had children. I only know one woman who had IVF, and I’m not sure how old she was when she had her son; I’m thinking late twenties or early thirties based on her appearance and her husband’s age. I suspect that for many of the women in your statistic, it will turn out to be “later and fewer” rather than “none at all.” However, I think you’re likely right about the fate of Western German culture.
JMG #357 Perhaps if I had just remembered that the Atlantic Ocean was mentioned ON THE FIRST PAGE! I will read more carefully, and slowly going forward.
Teresa Peschel @362 Are you familiar with the British golden age of mysteries author E.C.R. Lorac? Hers are now being republished. She reminds me a little of our own Elizabeth Daly. A few have shown up at local public libraries and I like them very much. I am afraid I find Sayers overrated as an author and translator. Thank you John Ciardi for demonstrating that there is an audience for Dante, we are now, over the last few decades, getting some good translations of the Divine Comedy.
One of my grands loves to watch Hoan HIckson’s Miss Marple movies and David Suchet’s Poirot. I never much cared for the character, but Suchet was a brilliant actor, and the episodes are perfectly done, as were the Marple series. I am hoping to be able to reproduce some of Miss Lemon’s fashions.
We have been discussing clashes of cultures, female genital mutilation, cultural relativism and other similar subjects this week.
Well, along comes this article from Harrison Koehli’s “Ponerology” Substack:
Third-World Morality Is Brain-Damaged
https://ponerology.substack.com/p/third-world-morality-is-brain-damaged
In it, Koehli talks about “honor/shame” and “face” cultures versus “dignity/guilt based” cultures. He argues that the last is objectively superior to the previous two.
“I think the so-called moralities highlighted for inclusion above (and others that have gone unmentioned) could and should be better, and there are objective reasons for why they’re not. By extension, I am a moral colonialist. I think those who know better can and should exert influence to change worse cultures for the better. I just don’t think the traditional methods have been very effective, because they don’t target the root causes. American democracy promotion was one of the worst examples, and didn’t take the above realities into account.
To effectively target root causes and improve third-world morality would probably look very little like traditional colonialism .. The first step would probably look like something completely unrelated: fostering adequate nutrition, heavy metal detoxification, and omega-3 supplementation. The rest would take several generations. Of course, each nation would probably be best suited to eliminate or mitigate the third-world within their own borders first, out of self-respect and as proof of concept.”
As you would expect I (as a Christian) will agree with this. I expect Toynbee would also agree, although Spengler likely would not.
Forecasting Intelligence # 353:
2030 year has made me obviously think about 2030 Agenda, which has created such as hopes in a side and such as conspiracy theories in the other side of politics spectrum. Each year which we go into its countdown, it’s clearer that Agenda won’t be accomplished, not at all. Why 2030 is such a special year. I don’t know. We also had some years ago the 2012 frenzy and then…cough cough.
End of tourism? The decline and end of massive international tourism will be painful for EU touristic powers like Spain, France and Italia; but it will be far worse for a heck of Third World countries which depends more of foreign money from tourism to not leave their economies sinking more than they’re today.
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JMG # 357:
I had forgotten the influence Kant had on Schopenhauer philosophy, thanks. I also take note about the “Psychomenon” term.
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It’s evident Chinese are capable even to go a step beyond American military hi tech, when you realize they’re becoming the main industrial power of the world…except for chicken hawks blinded by their own Spectacle of apparent hi tech supremacy.
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You’re welcome…though today I haven’t made any prank to another people nor I’ve been “victim” of anybody pranks. “Santos Inocentes” day seems to be a declining tradition here.
Some Surrealists and part of past century leftists have fondness for the life and works of the Marquis de Sade. It’s evident his raw transgression against Christian morality attracted them aiming to “épater le bourguois”. However, beyond his rampant sexuality and atheism, I haven’t found in Sade a true interest in liberal topics, nor in revolutions outside his ever hungry libido. Indeed, he was comfortable in his privileged aristocrat life so I don’t see him as a democracy supporter.
Maybe philosopher Michel Onfray attack against Sade (because he supposedly partly inspirated Fascist atrocities) is a wrong hypercritical view (near paranoid), but indeed liberals sometimes have mythified authors hiding their politically incorrect side.
Another fine example of this whitening is Nietzsche, a philosopher who’s worth to be read by his sharp views and critics against everything. I don’t doubt it. However, his mysoginist, antisemitic, antidemocratic and antiliberal thoughts have been opportunely ignored by his leftist fans. I think this happens because this thinker maybe’s the biggest critic of Christianism, so for liberals “enemy of my enemy is my friend. Ironically, I think Nietzsche was one of Mussolini favorite authors, ahem.
Of course, I’m not proposing these authors cancelation, but pointing how in a certain mode, liberal hegemony in western academia and counterculture has its own kitsch ignoring the dirty side of some of its heroes.
In regard to entry level housing, zoning and NIMBY are often the enemies.
https://www.fleetwoodhomes.com/building-center/lafayette/floorplans/553-pioneer-16763k-fi
https://www.cavcohomes.com/our-retailers/us/nv/winnemucca/cavco-home-center—craftsman-homes/display-homes/cav310or25-16652a-river-view
Yes they are “trailers”. I lived in one for five years and was quite content. Mine was 902 sq ft. Yes they need to be properly anchored. Conversely in earthquake country they have an advantage in that they are built to stand up to the equivalent of a magnitude 8.5 earthquake from the road trip.
Panel-built houses are also an option; entire prebuilt walls and roof sections come by truck and are assembled with a crane.
A few years ago I read the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn on recommendation from Tom Murphy (Do the Math Blog). The themes were elaborated on in other stories such as The story of B and My Ishmael.
I have found the perspectives and insight very powerful and they provide a compelling explanation for the mess were increasingly suck with. Once I started to see things this way it became increasingly difficult to imagine that modernity can continue due to the very fundamental flaws in how we live. Making up the rules is just not going to work for long.
JMG have you or have any other readers have any thoughts on DQ’s work?
@Alatar #47
(and to all the others seeking relocation advice)
A year and a half after a hastily planned immigration, I feel I should share from my experience that immigration can be very, very, very difficult. My life situation is different than yours (mid 40s with little kids), so many of the hardships I encounter may not be relevant to you. But I’ll list the major ones here just so you have them on your radar.
Immigration is extremely expensive (mostly because of all the unpaid work involved, but also due to the costs of beginner’s mistakes in the new place, erasure of carrear continuity, moving stuff or buying new, selling and buying real estate, and many other factors). It can drown you in bureaocracy. It usually cuts your ties with your social support circles and social safety net. It can be very very lonely unless you already have friends where you’re moving to. Restarting your carrear in the new place may not be easy (or even possible). You may remain a social and cultural alien for the rest of your life. All the niche aspects of your lifestyle may take years to reestablish themselves (I never imagined I would do most of my daily shopping in chain supermarkets). If you don’t speak the language, multiply everything by 10. And if you love the place you’re leaving, leaving it will probably break your heart.
All in all, I think anyone planning immigration should at least consider the possibility that when the shale hits the fan you might actually find yourself *more* vulnerable, even in a generally prosperous new location. And the future is anyways always a game of educated guesses. You can see the general trends, but pinpointing what exactly is going to happen when and where is extremely tricky.
That’s my 2 cents. I hope it’s helpful. We live in scary times, and fear can cause people to make grand, foolish mistakes. I’m not saying immigration is never a solution. I cannot say yet if my immigration was the biggest mistake of my life or the only reasonable thing to do in my situation. Maybe I will never know. I just feel I should share my experience from the other side.
Athaia, learning to make and repair shoes is a fine trade — there are still shoe repair shops in many US cities, and they do a steady business.You might consider it!
BeardTree, exactly. There won’t always be an England, just as there isn’t a Roman province of Britannia any more. As for the US, it has a long strange journey ahead of it, and the old America you remember was a transitional stage toward something that won’t exist for centuries yet. Glad to hear about the SoP!
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this.
John, if it helps any, I forgot that I mentioned that!
Michael, Spengler would have rejected that claim, but in a distinctive way. He would have said that from a Faustian viewpoint, yes, those other moralities are false, and within the homelands of Faustian culture, they are also inappropriate — a poorly fitting pseudomorphosis best rejected.
Chuaquin, glad to hear about the decline in pranks. I’ve always agreed with Robert Heinlein: “A practical joker deserves applause for his wit according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit, one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on a live anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.” As for de Sade and Nietzsche, they deserve careful reading, and precise criticism. There’s such a thing as being clever but dead wrong.
Derek, I read Ishmael some years ago. I thought it made some good points, but the overall thesis was one more rewrite of the Christian myth of Eden and the Fall, with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as Eden and the invention of agriculture as the Fall. (This is quite common; Marxism, another rewriting of Christianity, calls Eden “primitive communism” and the Fall “the invention of private property.”) I haven’t read the sequels, so don’t know where Quinn took the ideas thereafter. As for modernity, well, have you read any of my peak oil books? I would certainly agree that industrial civilization is well into its decline and will proceed from here via the usual long, ragged process to the common fate of civilizations:
Omer, thanks for this. It’s with things like this in mind that I’ve reserved emigration for emergencies.
@ Mary Bennet #368
No, I’ve never heard of E.C.R. Lorac. We’ll have to look for that writer.
One of the more interesting side effects of the Agatha Project is realizing how MANY authors vanish without a trace, including major bestsellers in their time. Sometimes reviving them is worthwhile. Other times, it doesn’t work. We’ll see what happens with Lorac.
Have you seen Dean Street Press? https://www.deanstreetpress.co.uk/
They specialize in lovely reprints of forgotten writers from the Golden Age.
As for Dorothy! Well, Bill is a major fan. For me, she varies. Our kids vastly prefer Agatha’s mysteries to Dorothy’s. Her books are much less of a slog, which is why Dorothy NEEDS annotation.
@ modular houses ( park model mobile homes) and the pre-assembled panel homes
They are absolutely allowed in our building codes, and our building codes are very strict. In a single family zoned lot, the park model mobile home types must be on a poured perimeter foundation with the same geological and engineering as anything else. In a mobile home park, they may likely be on a less permanent foundation ? I think, I dont know. The modular ( like park model mobile homes, come in as double wides) are certainly cheaper than a stick built new build.
After the fire, there are now 4 modular ( double wide) within 1/2 mile of me, including across the street, and 2 more with 1.5 miles. They are not as money saving as they would be in other parts of the state or the country. A couple extra advantages of them is that they are not required to have built in house fire sprinkler system nor a solar electric system both of which are extremely expensive and both of which are otherwise required under California state building code for a more conventional build. The downsides include layouts that I dont like, limited layouts, very truncated resale values, difficulty or inability for some financing, like lines of credit, a new buyer when you sell will likely have trouble with financing options. And they are not that much less expensive than a stick build of the same size, layout and finish choices would be. That said, it is allowing 3 households of elders to be able to come back to the lot they lived in and live out their remainder of their lives, those 3 households dont care that they will have a very low resale value. The other one is a young person co-housing with his mother. And it was what made it doable, what they could afford, that looks like probably a nice layout larger one, it is just going in. You are not allowed to live full time in a travel trailer in this county, but a park model ( meaning built for full time living in a trailer park) tied down to a foundation is allowed and would have to be allowed on a city lot too. They are never put on city lots as building a duplex, 4 plex or apartment building would be seen as much more lucrative, it is rare ( I have not heard of one) to see a new built single family home or even a townhouse or condo in the city limits around here.
I have seen 2 after fire rebuilds that have the walls prebuilt, brought in on a crane, I watched one installed. Those are both Net Zero homes, the walls are very thick and energy efficient. One is on a slab foundation, no attic, the other looks more traditional with a perimeter foundation and an attic. They may have been more cost effective than stick built, not sure. They were much more flexible on layout of rooms and outside overall look and design. They were required to have the sprinklers and solar electric systems. The one 5 miles away looks like it may be designed to get passive heat gain, but it does not have any built in mass inside, so it doesnt operate as a passive house and it doesnt have passive cooling in anysense. It uses less A/C due to good insulation. The one by me has large overhangs to keep cool, and no way to get any passive heat gain in winter. So, it too was not designed as a passive solar house. It is not in vogue right now, it is all about the solar electric panels that the state requires to get a building permit sign off. Neither have solar hot water even.
The disaster rebuilds based on Mennonite plans are like the modulars in layout, and it is the cheapest way. Use free plans with some volunteer help saves the most money yet. The set plans would help alot on cost even if you use paid for builders. I saw a while back that some firm made free home designs to be used by Altadena fire rebuilders if people choose. That is a huge savings, it would be nice if they were available to any Californian and accepted as meeting all counties requirements. In this county, we somehow could get our act together to make use of Mennonite volunteers, our county is hard to work with, but they are allowing a local nonprofit to use their plans and one or 2 will get built with partial local volunteers. It just will take much longer.
On the RAM shortage–
I have some optimism that this may be the best thing to happen to computer science in decades. What do you do on your computer you weren’t able to 10 years ago? 20? Go back 30 and we’re running into limits– there was not a lot of streaming video in those days. RealVideo (anybody remember RealVideo?) is almost that old, dating to 1997. Other than video calls and streaming, I can’t really think of anything new these past 30-odd years.
And yet the latest hardware has nearly as much computational oomph as a supercomputer did at the turn of the century. (4.9 TFLOPS for the IBM ASCI White in 2000, vs 4.26 TFLOPS Apple’s M4 chip… which you can get in an iPad. The new M5 is much faster). What on earth are we doing with all that power? Wasting it, obviously. After all, everyone knows that the next year’s model is going to be even more powerful than this one, so there’s absolutely no reason to corral bloat.
It’s entirely possible to write a modern, 64-bit operating system in assembly code to fit on a single floppy disk, like was done in the 1980s. The problem is that except for a few weirdo enthusiasts who’ve made doing it their personal Everest*, nobody writes code like that because it’s too much work. Why implement a twelve-line algorithm when you can just include it in your code via a twelve megabyte library? That seems like a small thing, but when everyone’s been doing it for decades, it really adds up.
This RAM shortage is putting developers on notice: next year’s model won’t be any better, and might be less performant at the same price point. Suddenly getting RAM usage under control might show up on developer’s radar. Which is why I say the shortage may be the best thing to happen to CS in decades: it’ll force a certain degree of craftsmanship into back into a field where old saw “pick two: cheap, fast, or good” doesn’t apply because management always, always, always picks the first two. (It’s not that all programmers are hacks with no interest in creating good stuff– it’s that the pressure of the work doesn’t let them. That’s why things like MinuetOS, the aforementioned assembly-language floppy-disk OS, exist as passion projects.) Well, maybe management’s priorities will shift; increasing bloat is going to hurt usability for everyone now, not just the schlubs who upgrade too slowly. That means more optimization, which is IMO where a lot of real artistry is in programming.
Encouraging people to hold onto their devices for more than a year or two seems like another bonus, though one that isn’t personally great for those of us who dip into the e-waste stream for our own use. So for everyone worried about lack of RAM, I say “let them eat optimization”.
And of course, if it wasn’t for this current bubble, it would be something else a few years down the line. Endless growth… ends. Perhaps for ever-improving home supercomputers, this is finally the high water mark.
This (https://open.substack.com/pub/imperiumpress/p/the-death-of-literacy-and-the-archaic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&shareImageVariant=overlay&r=3lzo7) argues that we are seeing the death of literacy, and thus the return of pre Axial thought patterns. Aka, monism, monotheism, rationalism, abstraction, and universalist ethics replaced by tribalism, polytheism, emotivism, and concrete thinking. First of all, the Age of Aquarius and it’s kooky fragmentation come to mind, compared to Pisces and its zealous oneness. This could express the saturnian edge to Aquarius, as a pre Axial world would certainly be harsh and vicious. Interestingly, we are about to see a Saturn Neptune conjunction on the Aries point too, which JMG has noted happened last during the Axial age. As a lover of books and abstractions this seems fairly grim, but quite logical as a response to the very odd nature of the last 2500 years. But that’s not all. As an aquarius moon, I’ve often noted the dual, or even triple, and paradoxical aspect of the sign. It’s democratic and intellectually pretentious and strangely aristocratic all at once. The thing that popped into my mind when I thought of all this is the severing of imagination. What if the age of aquarius and the Sat-Nep conjunction are winnowing us not only mentally, but imaginally, as the intellectual tools for coherent imagination are scythed away, or slowly vanish? The torrent of bad, vague fantasy novels produced with Neptune in pisces comes to mind. What if the tools and institutions of piscean spectacle making are being fractured, but that very fracturing will produce only emotive or dull husks among the many even as it unlocks realms of vast inner freedom for the very few after a terrible collective agony? (Saturn-agony, Neptune-collective, Aquarius-elite mental skills of abstraction and creativity.) What if democratization of the imagination IS inherently aristocratization by dint of the necessary harshness involved, and the affinity of pisces and aquarius for popular democracy only indicates the transition period of the two ages, after which the Age of Capricorn will exude it’s stern influence from afar into the rest of the Age of Aquarius? The nature of aquarius itself seems to point to this. The question then becomes, how do we sort through the Axial/piscean age to find what is essential, and how can we even do that when so few may make it past the threshold of imaginal morlockhood? Saturn and Neptune represent pisces and aquarius, so perhaps their conjunction indicates that the full-blooming fruit of Neptune’s mystic visions will, at the moment of it’s fulfillment, be torn apart and rot into the loam of an age darker than even we anticipate. Maybe all we can do is grow strong within so our reincarnate selves can be pinpricks of light in this period.
The question of this blog, of saving what we might from the wreckage of the West, may be just half the equation. Apologies for the schizophrenic and rambling tone, I barfed this out at work during my lunch. Curious to hear what others may think.
Everyone who replied,
thanks for your take on Europe and the prospect of war. Interesting to see the variety between Norway and Spain.
I also re-read your, JMG, article and was surprised to see it was published before the Ukraine mess took its current form. It’s often the balkans, but not always, it seems.
Jessica, re: cyclops cars
Driving today, I also had an association with cognitive collapse. It just occurred to me that navigating traffic will require a bit more foresight in the coming months. I felt some synchronicity vibe reading your comment.
It’s a miracle card don’t kill more people.
Several people re: stock market crash 26
My take right now is that investors will wake up to the underperformance of LLMs and close the money spigot. Since the mag7 are all tied up in that and their prices tumbling would crash „the economy“, they get a bailout from the government, possibly larger than the banks in 08/09, and we get to see the consequences of that ripple out. Think euro crisis, Arab spring, that kind of thing. Lots of downward mobility and overall anguish with sudden movements at the political fault lines.
Oh, and whoever mixed that up, I‘m a dude. I know, weird name 🙃
@Chuaquin, yes, I think Trump is using the hawks much as he did with Bolton in his first term. I only hope that will continue if/when the stock market takes a dive, and he resists any pressure to force a military confrontation with China.
About the chickenhawks in general, Palmer Luckey in particular has shown an incredible lack of understanding of the Chinese as a people. He thinks Chinese have a surplus of males so they are likely to value human lives less in any invasion of Taiwan so that means they won’t use drones as much. https://x.com/A1Anduril/status/2000910307879760343
The Chinese have been supplying drone components to both sides in the Ukraine war. What makes him think they won’t readily use it in any conflict that involves their own soil?
I think the most charitable historical parallel I can think of is a kind of jingoistic, nationalistic rhetoric to bring about (re)industrialization. E.g. the Satsuma Han in pre-Meiji Bakumatsu Japan. The Satsuma were one of the most loudly anti-foreigner factions, but at the same time they secretly traded with the British and amassed weaponry to fight the shogunate. Later on, despite some members of the faction rebelling against the new Meiji government, generally they settled into roles in the government and helped industrialize Japan.
Derpherder,
Doesn’t Uranus represent Aquarius?
Thanks John,
I have not read your books but a great many of your blog posts and fully agree with your assessment of the fate of civilization (you’re on my short list of modern day ‘wise elders’). I call it a permanent recession to help those not familiar with the long collapse process. Also the role of oil in our industrial civilization, the master resource that continually ‘bootstraps’ the entire system. There is no substitute for it.
Yes DQ did elaborate quite a bit about the fall, which was a new angle form me. But I think the more fundamental point he makes (possibly more so in The Story of B), is that “the world belongs to mankind and and it is for us to conquer and rule”). So there is the duality that we have created, but most importantly, we think we can make up the rules to suit just us while ignoring/excluding the remaining community of life. Tribal peoples may have had rules, but they were rules derived from observing how nature actually works (with very long term success), not how we think it should work. A fundamental mistake that we make over and over again because it is so ingrained in our cult(ure) that we cannot see it. It may even be a probable explanation as to why we keep failing at civilization (which might even be a fundamentally and fatally flawed way to live).
Michael M. # 369:
I don’t want to argue about the supposed moral superiority of western thought, because we can open a can of worms. More when that author writes without problem about moral colonialism. I think in abstract European origin moral could be better than others cultures morality, but in real world western ethics are doomed because they lack prestige which had a century or two ago. The reasons? Well, ironically the own colonialism, whose negative effects have made a lot of African and Asian people to reject the western superiority myth. In addition to this, within the own West not very much people seems to believe in western moral (religious or secularized) anymore. How could you impose a morality in which yourself don’t believe? I think it’s an arrogant and contrafactual attitude.
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JMG # 375:
No argument here about pranks. And you’re right about reading Sade and Nietzsche with critical sense and care, not rejecting them bluntly, but paying attention to their biased views. This attitude could avoid dangerous siren chants. Well, Nietzsche thought was easily hijacked by Fascists, but it’s also true his writings were manipulated after his death to fit into that racist narrative. By the way, if I’m right Hegel and Plato had their own “kitsch” in Kundera sense. The first said black African people was born to serve (as slaves?) and the Greek thought the best government was the king philosopher (a dictatorship of the wise man…).
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I think “Ishmael” fits perfectly in the weared and dull anarchoprimitivist narrative. When I read it, it looked like to me manichean so binary in his author views (before agriculture=good; after its discovery=evil). Indeed, we actually don’t have very real evidences from the Neolithic times, even less from Paleolithic times, so a big part of theories about transition towards agriculture are ideological biased Rousseaunian fantasies..
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Eike # 380:
The perspective of a near future LLM fiasco causing a crash, and then governments “fixing” that mess with a bailout, seems very grim IMHO. At least from an European view. If you see how much money has been throwed into the Ukraine war “black hole”, adding to that mess that hypothetic bailout by EU and its governments would be the last nail on welfare state coffin. After that, a can of worms would be opened by elites.
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Alvin # 381:
Trump’s playing a dangerous game, but I also trust he can manage to win it without the worst we fear.
The example you’ve written about shows me how reckless are these hawks in their attitude against China.
It’s incredible how ignorant are usually Sinophobes war hawks about Chinese mind and real technological advances. Their ignorance is IMHO by their biased dogmatic belief in western supremacy, so it survives every real evidence which deny their own Spectacle.
@ J.L.Mc12 #262
“did you know that he also wrote a cookbook?”
Yeah I saw that on one of the sites I looked at – First thought after seeing that he included himself in his tarot deck was that such a narcissist might not be trusted to boil an egg as he’d be too busy wanting someone to watch him posing in a mirror… but then I haven’t looked so don’t know!
@ Aldarion #352
“@earthworm #327: I think there is often good reason to make an effort to understand and appreciate a form of art. One may or may not end up truly enjoying it, but without the effort one would never know.”
We are talking apples and birds – I was not saying there is no good reason to make such an effort, but that there are other levels that go beyond intellect; but clearly did a poor job of explaining what I think I mean. It happens.
I tried again at #351 and failed once more – the fault is likely mine – it is not the end of the world.
>Mr. Fuentes would not have to be a govt. plant to be bought and paid for. Any deep pocketed interest who wants to keep the populace riled up might be bankrolling him. We all do recall that Adolph himself was being financed by British and American banking interests, not by governments (so far as we know).
Why not both?
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists argues that the US capital financed also the communist rise to power. Finance both sides against the middle…
Re the location of Hall of Homeless Gods (which I loved, and will read again), I figured it must be the Atlantic coast – all the cardinal directions scattered throughout the text pointed to that. And yet, the migration story of the people from Japan after their disaster seemed to make a Pacific coastal placement seem more likely. It kept giving my head a directional twist. 🙂
I think there’s been some debate half-kidding half-serious, about blue haired women. I’d like to say first everybody has the right to follow whatever fashions which thrive in nowadays society (and another cultures in space and time). However, when these fashions are clearly joined with a certain ethnic/ideological/religious tendence, we want it or not, we’ll see a sudden label on those people who follows that fashion. Fashion and personal style shows symbols, and symbolism is Spectacle too. When you see a blue haired woman, you can easily identify her wokeness generally for mere association. There would be exceptions, but the whole blue haired hordes will fit with the stereotype (sadly but true), at which they join voluntaryly. In the opposite apparent ideologic spectrum side, when you see women with a hijab over their head, you’ll bet surely they’re conservative muslim migrant women. Of course, you can argue me these women in fact, are forced by his North African or Pakistani husbands and fathers to wear such an Islamic sign. Well, maybe a big part of them wears hijab compelled by muslim androcentrism, but the rest of them could wear it by self conviction (religious or/and nationalist will). Being a forced imposition or a voluntary decision, it’s the same, in the sense of showing a religious/ethnic belonging. Western blue haired women and muslim migrant women with hijab share ironically to wear a dressing/hair code which can be decoded fastly to easy mutual recognizing between the same tribu. Though they can also be targeted by their ideologicl/ethnic enemies without talking with them before. I think in the stormy times we’re going to live, this appearance codification can be dangerous…I sincerely would reccomend discretion in dressing and hair “codes”.
@ Michael Martin #369
” I am a moral colonialist. I think those who know better can and should exert influence to change worse cultures for the better.” (You quoting your source).
I would just wonder whether your source understands the MORAL difference between exerting influence and exerting force.
Because ultimately, attempts to “improve” people (to improve their “morality” especially) are precisely the kinds of well-intentioned utopian projects pursued by “those who know better” which so frequently result in utter mayhem, destruction and disaster in practice, rather than to the wonderful results originally envisioned.
And this is partly because stopping at mere influence, when it fails, is so difficult to achieve, that an inspired utopian can easily fall to the temptation to exert full force.
About a Portuguese-Spanish alliance mentioned in #325 and #344,
I’m not Portuguese, so I don’t know how they feel about this. But the Portuguese have been continuously fighting for their independence for over 800 years. As recently as during Franco’s government the Portuguese were (rightly, as it has been shown later) suspicious of a Spanish invasion and actively working to counter it. There’s a saying “De Espanha nem bom vento, nem bom casamento” which means nothing good comes from Spain. Had any of the many Spanish attempts to conquer Portugal succeeded, Portuguese language and culture would most likely have suffered the same fate as Galician and Catalan, to mention two Iberian languages that used to have a rich literary tradition.
On the other hand, a revival of the Iberian Union in South America seems to have fewer historical burdens. The continent is split about in half, both in population and landmass, between Brazil and the Hispanic republics, so a union would happen on more equal terms. In the Hispanic side, a movement towards union has exist ever since they’ve broken apart, and this idea of continental union has slowly penetrated Brazil to the point of now featuring in its constitution. In Brazil the inherited distrust for Spain and the inherited reliance on Anglo-America is being slowly erased, as the country does not have the same geographical and demographic limitations Portugal had, which made it lean too much on the Anglo side to guarantee its independence.
As a curiosity, there was a secret society of which Argentina’s Juan Perón and, supposedly, Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas were members which strove for the continental union and thought of it as some sort of event with wide cosmic repercussions that would bring about a new age.
You can read about it here:
https://infokrisis.blogia.com/2009/081901-la-vertiente-ocultista-del-peronismo-i-de-iii-la-logia-anael.php
Following my last comment: dress “codes” have their most fine and extreme identitarian expression in uniforms, and within them, in military uniforms. Human mind tendence into symbolism appears here in its biggest and saddest expression. If you don’t mind it, I’ll remember here the Schmitt idea of “friend and enemy dialectic”, which fits well with the military uniforms. Uniform identify first who are your friends: comrades and brothers in arms (“us”), darkening individual personalities within the homogeneous own group. At the same time, “our” uniform differenciates us from
the other countries uniforms (“them”), who, as foreigners, could be eventually enemies. In that case, their uniforms identify them: bad boys, the “huns” and so on.
I won’t deny how useful is in the battlefields to notice who’s a friend and who’s an enemy, but I can say it’s sad to kill another human being because of his wrong uniform color.
I also think uniforms in civil wars shows their useful purpose, because soldiers in the two sides alike share a same language and ethnic origin, which is indeed the saddest thing in this wars.
****
Finally, I want to add to my last comment about expressing an identity with dressing/hair codes, that in some cases, different people isn’t capable to hide their ethnic origin by evident reasons. Black African diaspora in USA and more recently in Europe, can have a discrete behavior, even integrating themselves in western societies, but their skin color shows without doubt their heritage. We can fool ourselves with the woke b****t slang (“racialized” people), but indeed will be necessary some centuries of racial hybridation to leave behind this obvious difference. So I’m afraid racism has at least in the short and middle term, followers within the far right politics spectrum, always ready to detect the “other” different.
>As for your other points, none of this is written in stone. Building codes are human constructs, not natural law, ditto with autos.
Sure and nobody seems to have the collective will to change them or get rid of them, we just get more piled on over time. Until it collapses, I guess. It’s not that the problems in this godforsaken country aren’t fixable, it’s that not enough people want to fix them. Or the solutions they offer are essentially half-measures, like the 50 year mortgage. Also see: Boomers.
>BTW, could you please explain the obsession with “blue hair”?
There’s a distinct positive correlation between woke nutters and their hair color. Sometimes it’s pink or green, not blue. Some people use the term “dangerhair” to categorize this correlation. Correlation isn’t causation but for making decisions, you don’t have to care. If you see A and you can expect to see B with A, then you can make decisions regarding B based on seeing A. So simple, if you’re a dissident. Very complicated, if you are not.
I’d recommend watching the opening scene of SLC Punk, where the blue haired punks were fighting the pickup truck driving rednecks. That was the (blue) hairline crack back in the 80s, that has widened to the gaping fracture that exists today, mainly due to the stresses and strains of all the bad decisions made over the past few decades.
The question I ask myself these days, who’s going to survive the collapse? Those blue hairs or the rednecks? You tell me.
As a white South African born in the same year Israel was formed, let me point out that although Israel and South Africa were both apartheid states, there were important differences between them.
TIME: European settlement in southern Africa began in 1652, not 1948, so we had a lot more time to get used to one another. Also, the indigenous population of the area was the San people. Both Whites and Africans were latecomers who hunted the San almost to extinction.
NUMBERS: Google tells me there are approximately 7.2 million Jews and around 11.2 to 12.8 million Palestinians living in the Middle East region, almost a 1:1 ratio. In 1994 at the time of majority rule in South Africa there were about 30 million Africans and 4.5 million Whites (and 4.5 million other races) for a 7:1 African:White ratio. (It’s now 11:1)
SUPPORT: The Jews of Israel get enormous financial, military, and political support, from the Jewish diaspora, the Americans, and most of Western Europe. South African Whites were considered “the polecats of the world” to quote a former Prime Minister, and subject to sanctions, sports boycotts, and international condemnation.
NEGOTIATIONS: Probably the most important factor. The Israeli government has the policy “We do not negotiate with terrorists”. In South Africa, once it became clear the the options were a negotiated settlement or civil war*, the government opened direct negotiations with African leaders. The CODESA talks were crucial in hammering out an understanding of the way forward that all could agree to (some more reluctantly than others**}.
* My personal view of why FW de Klerk, who was a right-winger when elected President, changed direction, is that the police force was increasingly unable to hold the line. Policemen were stressed out and leaving the force faster than they could be recruited.
** There are plenty of Africans who maintain that Mandela was a sellout, or fooled by the Whites, or gave away too much, and demand violent action. Ugo Bardi in his book Exterminations cites three factors that lead to a group being exterminated: they are clearly identifiable, they are relatively weak, and they have resources worth seizing. South African Whites tick all three boxes. Our future is by no means secure.
@jmg — looks like you got a reference in nakedcapitalism with regard to your book…
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/12/american-pirates-and-the-coming-militarization-of-commercial-shipping.html#comment-4347014
I think I will get a copy! thx
Hello JMG, I wondered if yourself or any politicos on your side of the pond have been keeping track of the apparent growth in popularity of the UK Green Party under its new, creepily charismatic leader, Zac Polanski. Since his election, he has featured in almost every MSM political show and publication as well as social media, while his party has risen from single figures to mid- or high-teens in the polls, around the same as the Labour and Tory parties. A few usually trustworthy right-of-centre commentators have speculated that the Regime or whatever you wish to call it, has the Greens lined up as potential replacements for the hugely unpopular Labour Party in the case the latter completely implodes. Polanski himself – not his birth name, apparently – is a strange one even by the standards of Green Party leaders and some of his utterances which have seemed designed to stir up hostility against anyone of any wealth, have had me wondering if he is a wannabe Fred Haliot – your anagram of a certain WW1 Austrian corporal. There’s something about the way he smiles, too much like a crocodile.
JMG,
You wrote: “It’s with things like this in mind that I’ve reserved emigration for emergencies.”
I agree. But the problem is that when a true emergency comes, for most people immigration is no longer an option, only fleeing (at best). There’s a difference between an immigrant and a refugee, just as there is a difference between an expat and an immigrant. And when the true emergency hasn’t arrived yet, and it’s still just hinted in the horizon, it’s all a game of guessing the future, with super-high stakes both ways.
Zach Polanski was a hypnotherapist before he became a politician.
We should be calling the likes of LLMs etc “unintelligent computer programs” (UCPs) rather than “artificial intelligence” (AI) because that’s what they are, there is no intelligence to be found in them.
JMG, you mentioned a planned change of residence in the new year. Are we to expect a blog hiatus?
I am having some difficulty accepting the notion that an unprovoked raid in oil rich Nigeria (I will refrain from saying a certain world leader can’t read a map, but I do wonder) across a thousands of miles of ocean is part of overall strategy. My guess, payoff for financial support from someone or entity, or both, in the oil industry.
From NakedCapitalism in a discussion of recent US piracy:
Camelotkidd
December 29, 2025 at 10:36 am
In Twilights Last Gleaming, John Michael Greer, described the Chinese using missiles hidden in shipping containers to attack and sink a US carrier
Art precedes reality
Wow, I took a look at the Magic Monday questions you have posted – many people with minor and major needs and quandaries and hoping you will be a fount of wisdom.. You have my sympathy.
Regarding personal grooming decisions as identity markers:
I don’t shave my legs or anything else. This has led numerous people over the years to conclude that I am either 1) Amish or 2) some kind of rabid man-hating feminist. It now skews heavily Amish since I am often accompanied by my children and/or husband, but when I was younger and single it skewed heavily feminist. I mostly don’t think about it because it is normal to me, and people generally don’t say anything out of politeness, but then later I’ll hear from a mutual acquaintance, “So-and-so was surprised to find out you weren’t Amish!” If you have an “abnormal” or “outsider” grooming or style habit, people will automatically try to assign you to some tribe or other based on it. They will almost never assume that it is merely an individual preference. This is worth keeping in mind as social tensions rise, I think.
“Encouraging people to hold onto their devices for more than a year or two seems like another bonus, though one that isn’t personally great for those of us who dip into the e-waste stream for our own use.”
I agree. The oldest PC I commonly use is a 2002 Mac dual processor G4 with 1.25 GB of memory. The internet has bloated to the point it can’t get on that in a meaningful way, and HD video is off the table but anything else is still viable.
I also have a 2010 Mac Pro I rescued from the recycler. It runs the current Linux including the modern Internet just fine. Its limitation is video processing that requires AVX instructions the CPU does not have.
The newest used computer acquired is a nicely loaded M2 Mac Mini which I got for less than half of its original 2023 purchase price. I assume seller needed Christmas money or something. There is no reason to buy a new computer unless you are wed to Windows 11. The used market is awash with machines even more so if you can get Linux to work for you.
Any intel PC with a CPU starting in 4 or later (i5-4xxx, i7-4xxx, etc) has the AVX instructions that are increasingly necessary and those came out in 2014.
You can find Windows 11 capable used machines too, there you need i5-8xxx, i7-8xxx, etc and maybe a video card upgrade. My daughter has an i7-8700 from 2018 that is windows 11 capable but the ancient video card gives trouble so she is still on Windows 10.
If you want a new PC fine, but the used market is stuffed with good hardware. The memory shortage mentioned above is for DDR 5 memory, the newest hotness. Older systems use memory that is still available and the machines probably have enough already. Replacing a spinning hard drive (if it has one) with an SSD is not that expensive and usually easy and gives a big performance boost.
Derek # 383:
I like your idea of “permanent recession” to define briefly the historical process we’re facing since now until the long term
future. I don’t like very much the term “collapse” because it looks like too ambiguous to me, and what I think even worse, for some people it suggests a sudden/fast event (which indeed won’t happen in the real world). I prefer personally “The long descent”, which implies a decline process measured in decades…or even centuries.
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Scotlyn # 389:
I agree. It’s a very dangerous thing to mistake influence with coertion. Every historical attempt to show a supposed moral superiority by the rough way has usually ended in a blood bath. Oh, even when apparently the “civilizers” were true in their intentions.
By the way, Congo people even today remembers the infamous Belgian colonial government under the personal rules of king Leopold II, when direct or indirectly several millions of Congolese were killed, with the subterfuge of civilising them.
Theorical western moral supremacy isn’t only despised by a heck of Asian, South American and African people by the bloody colonial past, but for recent events too. For example, Israeli massacre (war?) on Gaza has shown to the rest of the world (Third World included) how shallow is the “superior” western ethics, supporting overtly (US government) or shamefully (the EU) Zionist attacks against civilians. By the way, Israeli people usuallylooks like more white/European than darker skinned Palestinians (at least Israeli government seems more simillar to European people), so I’m afraid dark skinned people in Thirld World countries may think Israel-Palestine predicament has a strong part of racism…Western prestige in the rest of the world may be going down fastly.
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Ybityriguara #390:
First, I’m sorry if I haven’t written well your online name (which it seems to me difficult to type).
Well, I must give to you some reason when you remember me the despicable spanish attempts to conquer Portugal several times in a shared Iberian history which has been inluckily problematic. However, I think you’re simplifying the Portuguese feelings about us the Spaniards. I’d like to tell you that Iberian idea of unification between the two countries (which has been always minoritarian but it doesn’t die until today), has been more debated in Portugal than here along history. Ahem. This unification would be made in an ideal world with the two peoples democratic will.
However, I’m not advocating for the Iberian union in a federation/confederation (like wrote spanish republican Pi i Margall more than a century ago), but for creating a “commonwealth” similar to which British made up after they lost their colonial empire. This attempt would have more sense, IMHO, because it would form a huge geopolitical block with the two brothers countries and their former colonies, of course in an equality level between members. Portugal and Spain alike have a lot to lost and nothing to win
keeping their actual submission to Brussels (EU/NATO) submission; of course the “runaway” should be slow and discrete, but I think for a while Iberian countries could keep an eye to the North and another one looking beyond the Atlantic Ocean..,
By the way, I can assure you that Galician and Catalan languages (after their “inner exile” by last dictatorship) have indeed a live literature nowadays. You should actualize your knowledge of today Spain! Although I think we’ve started yet our decline as country, I also think spanish democracy did something good in these past decades.
I can agree in the rest if your comment (I didn’t know about those secret connections between Peronism and the Brazilian leader).
One thing I found when emigrating to Australia as a single young man in the 60s was that a common interest group made a lot of difference. Certainly there can be no comparison between the 60s and now, but I think the common interest would still hold true. I was very into skydiving at the time and my world revolved around it. Some of my friends from that period worldwide ( those who are still alive) are still some of my best friends. I am not recommending taking up skydiving ( that world may well have changed too), but to seek out people with similar interests: sporting, cultural, literary. nature,whatever. Having the same language or a knack for languages certainly helps. I don’t know where you are from or where you moved to, but for instance, since you are on this blog, maybe you could ask if there are other people here from your new home who might like to get together. In general, the more shared interests you can find, the more friends you should be able to make. hopefully.
Stephen
On the subject of a US-China war over Taiwan, my feeling is that the US would have to start it or seriously provoke China.. Probably over half the population of Taiwan is pro unification and will grow as they see the US weakening..Baring some unforseen development in the meantime, I think China can afford to wait.
I have just realised that the three Deathly Hallows of Harry Potter were inspired by three magical items from the original Nibelungenleid – the Cursed Ring, the Cloak of Invisibility, and the Strongest Sword. These become the ring that kills Dumbledore, Harry’s cloak, and the Elder Wand. Go figure…
Martin Back
Thanks for the point about FW De Klerk and police recruitment/ retainment being the main factor in his decision . I hadn’t known that.
Stephen
Scotlyn #387
YES! i am currently reading it again, and the story is full of directional descriptions, that I blithely ignored the first time through. Probably because of my west coast bias. It’s going to be an excercise for me to reorient myself, and truly pay attention to the geography that is quite apparent to me now, even though my provincialism makes it hard for me to imagine the sun rising over the ocean, rather than setting.
My 2026 goal: Read every JMG book. Reading the same books over and over again doesn’t count.
Off the subjects being discussed here, but a series of thoughts I woke up with this morning. It started with a question about Donald Trump – has he jumped the shark? Or is he still on the track described in “The King In Orange?” Stories differ widely, but I read about temper tantrums, firing the advisors of his first term, vanity projects, and suchlike. And of course the economy.
Then, about anacyclosis: it seems to me, noticing we’re in the 4th round of ours, that they themselves are members of a mega-round of anacyloses, to wit: #1- George Washington’s Presidency – Spring. Abraham Lincoln’s – Summer – a red hot summer of riots and rebellions, protests, assassinations, and a lot of public moralizing, Ye elders among us -sound familiar? FDR’s Presidency: Autumn. A mature, autumnal feeling as he solved the crisis of his day by taking under the Federal wing , many things that had historically not been there – and ending in a long era of prosperity. The Trump Presidency is decidedly Winter, the tail end of a fading, failing system. (Image: a big fish with 4 smaller identical fishes inside it.)
And again, thinking of the 15th century in England, with classical feudalism on its last legs as money began replacing the older ties between village and lord – and many villages were owned by several absentee landlords, and France had been plundered so thoroughly that losing it was the only way out, and as I noted earlier, the crew around the impotent king were as stupid, greedy, and clueless as our own crew…. and at the end of the War of the Roses, was Henry VII taxing everybody and his son, later, totally dismantling the last of the medieval social safety net (which wasn’t in much better shape.) (Yeah. I know. “That was then, this was now.” And parallels that come to my mind may just be constrictions of a bookworm’s cloud castles in the air, when a sinkful of dishes awaits my return to the real world. But – comments welcome.
P.S. Book title that comes to mind: “The Waning of the Middle Ages.”
The Other Owen # 392:
The blue haired people (and another not natural colored haired people) shouldn’t be labelled as woke/feminist/countercultural freaks, in an ideal world. However, we like or not, the act of choosing such strident colors for their hair make them a live symbol of something which, true or false, identifies them as woke/feminists/etcetera by the another political spectrum side freaks. So hair color as symbol of something in addition to a questionable personal taste, I’m afraid is Spectacle in the Debordian sense. When Spectacle enters, reality doesn’t disappear, but it’s deformed, me think.
Of course, not every woke and company shows unnatural hair colors, but I could say roughly a lot of colored hair people can be woke and company.
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Martin B. # 393:
I think your historical facts are mainly right, and I also think like you: full identification between short Israeli history and apartheid age South Africa is wrong and maybe dishonest.
However, I can say the parallelism (analogy) between the two regimes mustn’t be despised. Israel today and South Africa decades ago self legitimated their racist policies pointing there were democracies. However, this propaganda/Spectacle didn’t manage to hide institucional racism against large populations. Of course, Palestinians aren’t Blacks, but because of their ethnic/religious origin, they’re segregated, oppresed and killed by Israeli government (whose members looks like white people and are “de facto” from
European origin ancestors). Well, you’re right Blacks outnumber White South Africans in more proportion than Israelis/Palestinians, but that fact shouldn’t be the basis for what could be seen as victimism to justify a “moral” new colonialism.
I’d like to hear the other side version too.
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Robert M.# 395:
I don’t know really much of the British Greens and its leader, so I wouldn’t say wether is like “Fred Halliot” or not. What I can tell you is the in other times poster boy of political ecologism, the German Green Party, has been for a heck of years leaving with no shame its first ecosocialist ideology, to win more votes within middle class. Its leaders during last 2 years have been who have yelled more to support authoritarian Kiev Regime and to keep fighting war indirectly against Russia. I think British Green Party could repeat (with the local color tendences) this way of giving up ideology to win more “respectable” votes.
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Omer # 396:
In theory a refugee is clearly different of a mere migrant: the first migrates for political reasons (exile), the second by economics (poverty). In real world sometimes the difference can be made well, anothers not. For example, some people who flee Venezuela nowadays have been threatened by Maduro regime (so they’re refugees in another countries), but in some sense a lot of economic migrants who leave that country hadn’t gone to another country if Venezuela regime hasn’t led such disastrous economical politics (so in a certain sense they could be labelled as refugees).
re: migration
Just file this away. The most effective response to a hyperinflation, is to leave and go somewhere else where the currency is (more) stable. Ask the Venezuelans.
At some point, which we may have already passed, there may not be *any* good decisions left, only bad ones and it’s a question of how bad the decision is. Migrating could very well turn out to be one of the least bad decisions.
@Chuaquin, Scotlyn re: “Moral colonialism”
If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read the entire article I linked. This would put the quotation I cited in fuller context.
As Koehli emphasized (both in the article and in the excerpt I quoted), this is not the sort of thing that either can, or should, be imposed at gunpoint. The European Crusader mentality will not help here.
For that matter, Christianity itself (contrary to a number of tropes on the Internet) did not take over the Roman Empire by force of arms either (and no, Constantine did not “invent” Christianity, Dan Brown to the contrary notwithstanding!). The early Christians took over Rome over the course of three centuries by “walking the talk” and setting an example for others to follow. The power politics (unfortunately) came later, when Theodosius made Christianity the only legitimate religion in the Empire.
In fine, the fact that many who profess a superior moral code are hypocrites, does not invalidate the moral code itself, only those who misuse it.
As a random aside, I just read the wikipedia article on Fernando Pessoa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_Pessoa – via the Psmiths) and his concept and use of heteronyms was fascinating.
“[He] was a prolific writer both in his own name and approximately seventy-five other names, of which three stand out: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. He did not define these as pseudonyms because he felt that this did not capture their true independent intellectual life and instead called them heteronyms, a term he invented. These imaginary figures sometimes held unpopular or extreme views.”
Has anyone here read Arthur Melzer’s Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing – and do they have any views on whether it is worth reading?
Hi John Michael,
Yes, spare us all from the harridans of dietary fervour! 🙂 Ooo, I like that line, has a nice ring to it.
Woke up super early this morning. At 5am the air blowing through the window was a toasty 24’C / 75’F. Gonna be a warm day. No point trying to sleep in those conditions, so headed out and grabbed a coffee and nabbed a trailer load of compost, as you do in such circumstances. The plan is to trial some paw paw’s (Carica papaya) in the greenhouse. I’ve got two different varieties already, a Yellow and a Red. Where am I going with all this? Oh! Over coffee I read a book (in public, how subversive!) and came across the word ‘stagnation’. Resonance hit me hard at that moment. It’s an interesting word because it describes the teetering precipice of early decline. What a funny old world it is that we reside in.
The Minnesota thing is just weird. Follow the money, as they say. But I’m of your opinion, because that is how things tend to work. A big nasty expendable example is made, and the rest fall meekly into line. Heck, I’ve used that strategy myself when in business – and truly, it was deserved – I’d have never acted the way person did at me, and believe that the Golden Rule of ‘Do Unto Others’ applies in all situations. Standards from that moment onwards were enforced, and upheld.
Don’t you wonder sometimes how a lack of enforcement, tends to escalation as the soft approach is taken to be license, and then there are the consequences? It’s not pretty.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Siliconguy,
These discussions are always interesting, and I respect your honesty.
On average the daily usage for electricity here is 8.0kWh / day. That covers all lights, cooking, electronics, some electric fan heating (on cold but sunny days), and a little bit of a portable air conditioner use (I can run the thing for about four to five hours on a warm but sunny day), and it draws 1.4kW, so hardly much cooling really, but good enough for me. For your interest, there are 8kW of solar panels installed. 🙂 Winter averages one hour of peak sunlight per day, but some days can be as little as 15 minutes.
Hot water on the other hand is a tough school. Hot water solar panels provide plenty of energy, for about six months of the year. The 30kW wet back on the wood heater provides tepid hot water during winter, but plenty of heat for the hydronic radiators throughout the house – the system is not optimised for the water part. The hot water is backed up by an LPG gas instant on heater, and on average an 8.5kg cylinder lasts 37 days in winter and about 70 days in summer. I’m honestly not sure how to do better than having cold baths in winter, which is an unappealing prospect.
For heat, I use firewood, but have access to at least ten thousand trees, so no shortage there, other than the effort, tools, fuel and systems, required to create the stuff.
I’m honestly not sure how a person could heat an off grid home to a comfortable temperature without firewood, gas or mains electricity. I’ve heard much theory, even more lies, and done my best. Dunno.
Cheers
Chris
Many thanks to Mr Greer, Sidaway and Paul for the tips on the timing during discursive meditation. I have now started with the full practice and am very curious to see how it develops and where it will take me.
On an unrelated topic, here is a link to an article by the British historian of ideas John Gray that some of you may find of interest:
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/10/the-prophecies-of-paul-kingsnorth
The article is a review of a collection of essays by Paul Kingsnorth. Both Gray and Kingsnorth believe that the current industrial civilisation is unsustainable and a collapse is approaching. Kigsnorth’s response is going back to the land, which, as Gray points out, will not be a refuge once violent groups spread everywhere following the urban breakdown. Gray’s own potential solution of using nuclear technologies to mitigate the harm that humankind has wrought on the biosphere is not convincing either, but the dialogue of ideas of these two interesting thinkers contains many keen observations and is well worth reading.
@Michael Martin, I have read the article you linked to. I think he bases a lot of very detailed and prescriptive suggestions on a very personal hypothesis of widespread “frontopathy”. I have no idea if he is a good political or social scientist; even if he is, it will be hard for the same person to also develop and defend a novel hypothesis in neuroscience and public health.
My very first contra-argument would be: how then did Northern European and North American societies develop his (our) preferred ideals of an impersonal law, since public health and malnourishment in e.g. 18th and 19th century Great Britain were quite as bad as in any modern Third World country if not worse?
At that point, I think one has to look for cultural and institutional changes over the 19th century (BEFORE hunger and slums were eradicated), and such changes are notoriously hard to impose on foreign countries.
To The Other Owen et. al. … I suggest leafing through one of Lloyd Khan’s books on ‘alterative’ home construction. They’re quite fascinating in that there are sooo many interpretations of what shelter actually means to people who what to buck the rigid, bureaucratic malaise that is modern code dominance within our monopolistic ‘big bidness’ structure. Shelter, Homework, and Tiny Homes are all inspirations on the idea that municipalities, big builders, politicians generally find abhorrent! I mean .. would want to infringe on ALL that institutional grift, right? I suggest obtaining one or several of these ‘historical documents’ for future reference, for you and your’n .. to be utilized .. when things really DO go sideways.
just an fyi…
Howler of the New Year, which may belong in the New Thought post …. from the 2026 Witches’ Datebook, which I’d already decided would be the last one I’d ever buy: “Twelve Mystical Portals for Wealth Expansion,” by Pamela Chen, followed by “Abundance is our birthright….”
On Daniel Quinn, besides “Ishmael,” I recommend the essays at the end of “The Story of B” for a concise overview of his beliefs. (Don’t bother with “My Ishmael..”)
On emigrating abroad–what exactly are we running from? I mean, what are you guys expecting to happen? Sure, the world is in chaos right now, but that just makes it hard to name *anywhere* as a safe haven. I can see equally good arguments for fleeing *to* the USA, as for leaving it. I’m not saying don’t go (in either direction), I’m just confused. I mean, doesn’t JMG envision the New York / Great Lakes region as one of the regions likely to survive the coming chances? (Along with European Russia..)
On Nick Fuentes, moderate-conservative Canadian YouTuber J.J. McCullough has named Fuentes–along with his Communist opposite number, Hasan Piker–as a notable political figure who broke out (i.e., made it into the American “cultural canon”) in 2025. McCullough says that both are “known for having extremist views” and have become, respectively, the leading pundits of the far-right and the far-left. “Both of them traffic in the sort of stereotypically extreme ideas commonly associated with the two radical ends of the political spectrum.” Fuentes gets described as “a paranoid racist who just loudly shouts anti-Semitic and misogynistic slogans all day.” McCullough observes that while political polarization is nothing new, these guys take it to “cartoonish extremes.”
The video in question (start at 21:00 min.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veDTPQQqqpY
Stephen Pearson (no. 406) ” Probably over half the population of Taiwan is pro unification…”
There’s regular polling on this. More like 11 or 13 percent. The polls may be skewed by their reliance on people answering their phones, which probably means older people; younger generations tend to despise China.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2025/11/25/2003847788
https://www.tpof.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/20250214-TPOF-Special-Report-Taiwanese-Preferences-on-Political-Future.pdf
“Every single major bank and financial institution has piled hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars into building data centers that take forever to even start generating money, at which point they only seem to lose it. ”
This is a quote from the newsletter that Ed Zitron mailed out today, entitled “The En[shale]ification Crisis”. It’s a slog, at about 19,000 words, and lots of Really Big Numbers that make my eyes glaze over.
“In really simple terms, I believe that almost every investment in a data center or AI startup may go to zero. ”
“The mistake that every investor, commentator, analyst and member of the media makes about NVIDIA is believing that its sales are an expression of demand for AI compute, when it’s really more of a statement about the availability of debt from banks and private credit. ”
Maybe it’s time for me to pull more money out of my S&P Index fund… and put it where? Alternatively, it’s probably best just to look at those account balances as entertaining fiction, and focus on what actually made me happy today: a big pot of chili, a chunk of whole-wheat bread, and two seedless oranges for dessert.
Would Galician be a Romance language or a variation of Basque?
The comments above in answer to my query about blue hair seem a bit disingenuous to me, in that respectable appearance is pretty much dictated by advertising and the fashion and cosmetics industries. One of the oddest things about our contemporary scene is the way Christian evangelicals and Christian Nationalists, in my observation, there can of course be exceptions, are all in for the whole nine yards of female fashion and cosmetic enhancement. If there is any one industry in which family values are routinely mocked and openly flouted, it is the fashion world.
Odd hair colors, along with tatoos, are mostly seen among the disaffected young, who pay little or at most, intermittent, attention to politics. That has been my experience and observation.
JMG – If you read the lengthy article “Russia-Ukraine gas disputes” in Wikipedia, you might run across this statement:
“There was an accumulation of Ukrainian debts and non-payment of the debts, unsanctioned diversion of gas and alleged theft from the transit system, and Russian pressure on Ukraine to hand over infrastructure in return for relief of debts accumulated over natural gas transactions.”
Accumulation of debts? Non-payment of debts? (I’m not quite sure what the difference is!) Unsanctioned diversion… sounds like theft to me. Hand over infrastructure? Isn’t that what the Russians have been working on for the last four years? What I don’t understand, and maybe you can explain, is why THESE issues are not discussed by anyone involved in the Russ-Uk war? Why the historical claims to territory and culture?
The really sad part of it is that everyone in both countries is paying the war-time price for the reckless thievery of the gas dealers, who spent years “fooling around”, and now “find out” about the consequences.
ambrose @ 423
thank you for the correction. I think I was just vaguely remembering the KMT results in the last election. The only time I was ever in Taiwan was in 1969. Most Taiwanese then thought of themselves as Taiwanese and resented the Mainland/KMT influx and takeover of the island. If that orientation persisted,I would imagine they would be opposed to reunification, whatever the Chinese government. That was certainly the majority sentiment in Hong Kong at the time.
Stephen
Atmospheric River @377
I was very interested in your observations on rebuilding in SC county. My daughter lives in southern SLO. I spend part of the year there with her. I see almost no building of individual houses there or in SLO city, though there are a lot of condos being built, some of them supposedly affordable. There may be more being built in north county, though, even there, they seem to be mostly pre -built developments that are then sold to buyers. The common factor seems to be their unaffordability where even a couple with two good incomes would pay a huge chunk of their income to buy one.
I know there are interest only mortgages in Sydney Australia now where the buyers only hope is for the property value to go up and then flip it.
I also have a small cob cabin on a community a couple of hours east of SLO, where they were doing sustainable building workshops until they got stomped on by the county: definitely not something the establishment wants to see. Mine was the last one built before the ban. Some of the methods are great, but require either a lot of time or a lot of people, and probably wouldn’t be the best options for urban areas.Some counties in Nor Cal are a bit easier, but still there are issues.
Stephen
Mary Bennet “Would Galician be a Romance language or a variation of Basque?”
Romance. Portuguese that has been influenced a bit more by Castilian
@ Stephen
I love building with cob, I have a small bump out addition made from COB which I worry if county ever lays eyes on it. I dont have alot of time but if I do my idea is to do a colored lyme wash to match the house color, maybe it will look like stucco if no one looks close. I had a fancy place send me a pre done lyme wash sample a few months ago, and I can get them to match color if I can get around to it.
We need to not go the way of Australia or England with those horrible loans, or the other horrible loans they commonly do where the loan is only for 5 years and then must be refinanced again ! Going to a 50 year loan here doesnt sound good either.
It is a very tough time for the young folks right now in regards to housing, that is for sure. But as we baby boomers die, and if we stop immigration, we will have surplus in time. However, as you point out, it is all about the large real estate companies, that is why it is all apartments to rent or large expensive housing tracts. So they want the prices to stay high, they dont care that our kids cant buy. And they are going to push an awful lot to not allow owner buillt, to go back to unlimited immigration, to not allow building outside city limts and whatever else serves their pocket book.
Back to cob, or straw bale or earthship for that matter, none of it would help new housing here as they would still need all the unaffordable stuff, 80k for an engineered septic system if out of town, and no doubt a similar fee to hook up to waste lines if in town; permit fees are unbelievable ad they dont even inspect themselves for that, they sit at their desks and have check off lists ( not entirely, but for alot of the inspections) then the homeowner is paying a private engineer for the report of sign off for foundation, for rough framing, for an awful lot of it. Imagine the consultant sign off fess for a load bearing cob wall, well, you couldnt get that, for a non-load bearing wall and the support next to it. Then you have to have fire sprinklers that only give an extra 10minutes max to leave the building, there is one company certified who must do it, and that means all water system components upgraded to get that high water pressure they need. Solar electric panels are mandatory. Lot prices are high, maybe 400,000 for a lot, it could be higher of course in a rich area.
With all of that, it is amazing when someone buys a lot ( outside of city limits is the only place, and not much left) and builds. It is not affordable housing at that point, allthough for a few it is if the person is a builder and does it themselves, I have seen this.
I have experience with natural building in a few places. If you gave me a shovel, a tarp and a few bits and pieces ( can I have a bucket to fetch water ? some rocks to get that cob off the ground ? Im gonna put that tarp on top once the walls are up for the first winter, might regret that) I could make a half dug hovel over the summer and not get hypothermia maybe. It is easier with a group of course to get something bigger. Have you looked up Sir Cobalot ? Pallet Cobins done outside of Oakland ? I have not been to them, but have seen the video, great idea for emergency shelter. Use pallets for the wattle framing, shove in any non mass in the center for “insulation” then Daub with cob. Hold those sideways pallets off the ground with things like rocks or broken concrete. A good way to do these skills right now is to make a shed in a backyard for tool storage or such to build skills and you have that skill if ever needed after a large earthquake event or something, you can be a resource. then, you teach your grandkids how to make a Cobin shed to hang out in as sulky teens, pass those skills along.
Hope you had a good holiday visiting SLO town. Ive got family north of there in Paso but we all met in teh middle.
Jennifer # 402:
When I’ve read you don’t shave your body hair, I’ve remembered I’ve been told it’s usual within the Eastern Europe women to do the same. In the other hand, it’s a pity a personal decision is mistaken with an identitarian “shibboleth”.
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Stephen P. # 406:
If China rulers are smart enough, they won’t answer to American possible provocations about Taiwan. They must reinforce and assure their way into Chinese economic hegemony (and the political and military too). USA government shouldn’t provoke a direct war against China because I think its Army is uncapable to fight a full war (with boots on the ground) even against a middle sized country like for example Iran.
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Patricia M. # 410:
From my personal view as “dilettante” in history too, I see fascinating your analogy between a natural year and US history. I read with interest your brief depiction of ending of Middle Ages in England and France. Analogy is useful to understand better historical processes, though I always can remind you the map isn’t the territory (it mustn’t identify events in different eras, only compare them).
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Michael M. # 414:
You said hypocrisy of some of the supporters of a superior moral code doesn’t invalidate it. I can agree in an ideal world with your statement. Unfortunately, I repeat in the real world the best preacher’s the personal example. In my country, catholic religion faith and mass attendance has lowered in last years not only by general secularization, but after sexual scandals within the Catholic Church. And countries which were former European colonies have bitter memories from the white people “superior moral” cough cough. Well, you can try to convince sexual abused children and colonized people of your moral supremacy…Good luck!
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Soko # 419:
It’s very interesting the debate between Gray and Kingsnorth, two thinkers with different lives and views. Well, the runaway outside cities won’t be a solution against possible widespreaded violence, but I think mutual aid between neughbours to make local rural militias could be a good idea in the future. Grays hope in nuclear power is contrafactual with the relative fast uranium mines depletion, unless he puts all his hope in breeders reactors (cough cough) or the fusion myth.
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Mary B. # 425:
Galician language was born like Spanish and Portuguese, from the broken Latin who spoke people there during Roman Empire.
About odd hair colors and tattoos: I think they’re a counterculture legacy. Maybe their users want to be different to the rest of people, but what happens when a lot of individuals repeat the hair colors and tattoos? It’s a wry irony they become something a uniform mass like the “normal” people they didn’t want to imitate…
Thought I’d quickly write before the weekly post moves on, firstly a huge thank you to our host for his consistent writings that really do stretch my thinking in new and important ways, and to all the other regular commenters I see on each post who pull the discussions in always interesting ways. Good luck to everyone as we enter a new year!
It’s been a busy year, personally, and frankly a busy decade it feels like! I’m in a place now where I can slow my life down considerably, start saying no to events that eat up my time and finances, enjoy my new dog and start to get some consistency in my work and life in general…
I have a sinking feeling that because this is now my new goal, it’s likely I’ll be conscripted for war in Europe or something awful in 2026 because that seems to be how life goes!
Anyway, what a gift it is to have found a place to discuss the reality of what is actually happening in the world, I feel more prepared (psychologically at least) for whatever might be coming next.
All the best
Tobes
Cornwall, UK
Ironically, contrafactual belief in own ideology/religion moral supremacy is not only a blind spot of some Christians, but a common Spectacle within non Christians and even anti-Christian ideologies.
For example, it’s been historically common between Zionists their claims fir moral supremacy faced against Arabs (“the only one democracy in Middle East” blah blah blah). Of course, it’s easy to check Israeli state non stop abuses against Palestinians until last blood orgy in Gaza to contrast their belief with real world.
Another case of belief in a supposed moral supremacy is Marxism and maybe left in general terms. Marxists claim of their supremacy over the bourguois/christian morality crashes not only with the dissolution of Eastern Communist block in Europe and the USSR end decades ago, but also with the true news about Real Socialism atrocities in name of Marx utopia: the Stalinist Gulaghs, and the Chinese Commies occurrences (the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution alike had as consequences a heck of millions deaths…).
Hi Achille,
Re your first question, the best advice I’ve encountered with regards to this is to build a business that could function both before and after a collapse. By the numbers the most chaos proof industries are hospitality and brewing, but most activities would qualify – for example, if you sell flowers mostly to wedding planners today, you might see a disruption in business as people tighten their belts tomorrow. But some will likely still get married and want flowers at their wedding even then, and you might be able to pivot to medical sales to make up for the shortfall in demand for decorations. The rationale is that the investments made in a personal business- expertise, relationships, tools of the trade, inventory etc. are more resilient to disruption than most investments one could make, and you’ll be used to adapting to new conditions with minimal mental friction if things go sideways. Also, planning one’s life around a future collapse can lead to missing opportunities that would help one prepare for it. A relatively collapse proof business that can hold it’s own in a softer environment doesn’t have that downside. As for the fear of death specifically.. that seems very logical under any conditions! It sounds like you may be less willing to die for your ideals with dependants, if that’s your concern it sounds more like something to make peace with than manage.
Re your second question, I think nobody has as good an answer to this as the church of the Subgenius. I paraphrase: ‘Opportunistic conspiracies are a fact of existence and not always undesirable. But the degree to which the Conspiracy feels monolithic is the degree to which we’re shadow projecting into it. When we catch ourselves at that, the correct response is to remember that we are the ultimate beneficiary and head of the Conspiracy doing an undercover boss type of thing. That doesn’t allow us to pull rank and fire the nearest reptilian overlord, but it does help us better manage our relationship to it’.
“Breaking news”…You probably know Trump ordered an air strike (with missiles or airplanes, the effects have been similar) against a Venezuelan harbor facility. Of course, the US government MacGuffin to this air raid is its old and weared subterfuge: drugs and more drugs; to blame Maduro regime. Some pundits in MSM say this is indeed an scalation in Trumpian low intensity war against Venezuela, but I’m skeptical about it. I keep thinking US Army is unable to fight a full war with boots on the ground even against a mediocre enemy. Some of those MSM (and some online “wise” self proclamed experts) pointed not too time ago, that US aerial bombings over Iran to help Israel (destroying Irani air defences and its missile potential to threat Israel) were no doubt the prelude to a long time air strike campaign and then US invasion on Iran. Today, theocratic ayatollahs regime keep ruling Iran and I’m waiting to the “fast” end of Iran regime (cough cough). I think there’s an analogy with apparent scalation in the Venezuela thing by Trump, who’s playing an Spectacle of global hegemony which in real world is indeed losing day after day. More and heavier air strikes could be done by the US during next days or weeks, but I think Trump won’t go beyond that “gorilla chest beating”.
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I suppose you’ll have heard about Holodomor as part if the shameful Soviet Union history. First time I knew about that sad event was by some people from the Ukrainian diaspora here, some years before the war with Russia started. I thought their narrative was honest, but I also found they were very anti-Russian biased (until some extent like Polish Russophobe victimism). I read some books and online historical opinions/facts about that event, and well…I can say now that Soviet Spectacle made an effort to hide this grim event against Ukraine people, like other shameful commie acts (the Siberian gulags cough cough), disguising them as anti-communist western propaganda, until the Eastern Europe block finally collapsed.
However, I think Ukrainian people has been heavily brainwashed by their own government anti-commie and anti-Russian propaganda, even before the Russian invasion and the Color Revolution (whose western sponsoring is evident). This bias could be traced even since the Ukraine independence. According to which Ukraine citizens are told by their schools and MSM, every bad event in their whole history has its causes in Russia, including the Holodomor (with its blunt depiction of famine and not strange cases of cannibalism).
Moscow Soviet leaders were no doubt responsible for that disaster (promoting a sharp and brutal rural collectivization which led to an artificial induced famine a century ago), but Ukraine nationalist Spectacle forgets opportunelly the hard fact: totalitarian blunt measures to end with private soils property and manage the full collectivism were perpetred in Ukraine, but also in the whole USSR territory. Russian peasants suffered equally as Ukrainian people during that Soviet stage. So I smell the Ukrainian victimism in this half-true Holodomor narrative. The same biased narrative can be pointed in the Ukrainian usual depiction of Chernobyl disaster: they usually blame Moscow for the nuke accident in Ukrainian soil,(which it’s true), but they don’t usually remember the heaviest part of radiactivity went over Belarus, according some researchs. But of course Bielorrusian regime is a long time vassal of Russia, so a potential Ukraine enemy. Ahem.
For anyone interested in a bit of pyschogeographic musicology, this piece on the Church of Hed album The Father Road, might be of interest. It is a journey of progressive electronica, motorik beats, and kraut infused Americana landscapes passing west to east along the Lincoln Highway.
https://igloomag.com/features/church-of-hed-the-father-road
The body is a temple… so why not decorate it?
Not a big fan of chemical dyes, makeup, or “better living through chemistry” –but hair dye, blue or otherwise, can still look quite fetching to this middle aged punk. As can tattoos and piercings, IMO. Yes, including those septum piercings. Somebody who is into crafting beauty supplies might make a nice cottage industry of supplying natural alternative dyes to people.
Henna can also be used to dye hair and decorate the body.
Some starting points:
https://blog.mountainroseherbs.com/henna-hair-dye
https://www.healthline.com/health/natural-hair-dye#making-the-color-last-longer
Here is a fun meme:
https://imgur.com/a/ICVmAHM
@Chuaquin:
“Another case of belief in a supposed moral supremacy is Marxism and maybe left in general terms.”
Well the right has just as much of monopoly on “moral supremacy” as the left. The Christian nationalists of decades past didn’t call themselves the Moral Majority for nuthin’, ROTFL
They speak liberty and freedom, but send gay kids to conversion therapy camps, or put them into “troubled teen” programs as if that would make the teenagers more to their liking. There are other examples.
…meanwhile other people have taken up the Seven Mountain Mandate to inject…
I guess I need to back to thinking about kaiju : )
Jessica #199 Re: “Cyclops cars” and thier increasing numbers on the road. As someone who performs all his own automotive maintenance, and occasionally helps friends and family, it has become clear that easy maintenance as a concept has been thrown out the window. As an anecdote, it takes 5min to replace a headlight bulb on a 25yo Subaru, one from fifteen years later requires putting the car on a jackstand, removing the tire, then removing the fender liner to gain access to change the headlight bulb! Dealers charge >$300+ to change it, and maybe that’s on purpose? A shallow dive into the grievances driving the “right to repair” movement make it obvious that some of this nonsense is purposeful and coercive.
Jessica # 429:
Indeed, during High Middle Ages, Galician and Portuguese languages were one only language which was born from
the local “macarronic” local Latin; then with new borders between Galicia (pivoting towards Castille) and the young Portugal kingdom, they started diverging (later, I think Portuguese court was influenced by French), more in pronunciation than in words meaning.
By the way, a time ago I knew a crazy minoritarian ideology, present in Galicia and Portugal alike, whose purpose is to join both territories; one of its justifications is both areas share the same language (though in real world, Galician and Portuguese people can understand each other…with “some little” problems. I suppose they don’t like very much the other few supporters in Portugal and Spain alike who dream with federate the two states…
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Cristopher H # 434:
Although we aren’t going to suffer a sudden collapse into a Mad Max situation, it’s true we’ll have to adapt to new scenarios in a probably fluctuation between economic contraction (open crisis) and temporary stability times. So I agree. People will keep marrying (good example) and some industries will survive the baddest times, if they adapt on time with those fluctuations, me think.
@ Michael Martin #414
Thank you for coming back to my response. 🙂
I did read the article. For which, many thanks!
I will say that it is not very convincingly different (to my ears) to any other promotion of “missionary” or “vanguardist” efforts that I have read of or known of, or known.
Disclaimer: I myself am a “missionary kid” – daughter to American evangelical missionaries still “called” to Central America.
I might pose a question for your own consideration, should you care to give it time and thought.
Can the quality (“superiority” or “inferiority”) of a moral code be properly judged in the absence of the words, and deeds, of all of those who profess it?
A moral code does not hang in space, like the opening lines to a Star Wars movie, instead it lives in and through people. To know the code, know the people. The term JMG introduced to us a few weeks back – POSIWID – may be applicable, in that – the purpose of a moral code is what it does (POMCIWID).
May all your goings and doings be blessed, Michael!
Atmospheric River
If you would ever like to visit the community I am referring to, I can easily arrange that, and another one as well. There is accommodation for guests and food. Guests usually kick in about $20 per day.
I will be back in CA from MX in June or July.
I am always hesitant to give specific information on a public site, but you can contact me at Stephen H Pearson all lower case run together at the y thing. com
Happy new year
Stephen
Teresa (if I may), I find Sayers very readable, because her novels aren’t just mysteries — they’re novels that happen to focus on a crime. Christie? To me, her novels are duller than dishwater; her characters are two-dimensional and her plots embarrassingly contrived. That is to say, it really does depend on the reader!
Tyler, here’s hoping!
Derpherder, first of all, a drop in literacy is a normal event in the decline of a civlization, and the only cases in which the loss of literacy became total took place in societies in which literacy was the private preserve of an elite scribal class. Once literacy becomes tolerably common it never completely goes away. Second, er, “monotheism, rationalism, abstraction, and universalist ethics” haven’t exactly produced a decrease in harshness and viciousness — quite the contrary, in fact. Third, with Neptune moving into Aries, I’d expect to see imagination become more active and vigorous — fewer bad fantasy novels, sure, but more concrete innovation. Neptune was last in Aries from 1862 to 1875, a period of dramatic scientific and technological discovery, and also one of the great eras in the arts. So my take on what’s immediately ahead is somewhat different from yours!
Derek, part of the problem with that logic is that “civilization” isn’t a single thing. Right now we’re living in a very unusual civilization, the first, least efficient, and most self-defeating of what I’ve termed “technic civilizations” — that is, civilizations that get a significant share of energy from some source other than human and animal muscle. In our case, we broke open the Earth’s store of fossil carbon and burnt it all in a fairly short time, and that’s behind the suicidal arrogance — Man, the Conqueror of Nature! — that I’ve lampooned in many of my books. Most other civilizations haven’t had that attitude, which is why there are cities in several parts of the world that have been thriving centers of agricultural regions for more than five thousand years. It’s important to take the wider view and realize that hunter-gatherer tribalism and modern urban civilization aren’t the only two alternatives; I don’t think Quinn ever really dealt with that.
Chuaquin, Plato was the first in a long line of intellectuals who were clueless enough to think that intellectuals ought to run things. Every time it’s been tried, it’s been a total disaster, but hope springs infernal! As for Quinn, exactly — project warm fuzzy fantasies onto prehistoric times and you can always make the modern world look bad.
Scotlyn, part of the point is that the migration of Japanese nanmin wasn’t a linear thing. They scattered all over. If I ever write a sequel, that’s going to come out in more detail.
Ybytyrygûara, understood. I’m well aware that history stands in the way of such an alliance.
Martin, duly noted. I admit that if I were a white South African, getting out would be at the top of my agenda; in a country where “Dubul’ ibhunu” is widely sung, it seems very unlikely to me that the white population of that country will escape eventual genocide.
Jerry, hmm! Thanks for letting me know.
Robert, no, and thank you for the heads up! Polanski sounds like the kind of demagogue I’ll want to watch.
Omer, long before the emergency arrives, there are certain red flags I’d consider definitive. Since my income is completely portable, for that matter, relocating isn’t a high-stakes gamble for me.
Mark, that works!
Mary, it’s possible, but that will depend on how certain details work out. As for flinging bombs in assorted directions, one night several years before we married, my late wife had to walk home through a very dubious section of town. No one bothered her, because she worked herself up into a pretend rage, and slammed her fist repeatedly into the palm of the other hand as she walked, growling out loud, “I’m gonna kill the son of a b***h” and things like that. Big, tough, burly men crossed the street to avoid her. That’s basically what Trump is doing now.
Jessica, hmm! Thanks for this.
BeardTree, thank you. It’s one of the best ways I know to figure out what people want to learn from an occult author, though, so I consider it market research.
Rajarshi, from the sublime to the ridiculous…
Patricia M, hmm! Yes, I could see that fourfold pattern. I don’t think you’re just spinning moonbeams.
KAN, no, and it sounds like a book I’ll want to read; thanks for the heads up.
Chris, I don’t think the Minnesota thing is just a lack of enforcement. I see it as systematic, organized looting of public funds, and the Somalis are just the middlemen — my working guess is that a very large share of the money is ending up in the hands of state officials and their cronies. That being the case, it’s a golden opportunity for the Trump administration; it’ll be interesting to see just how far they take it.
Sokol, thanks for this. Both are wrong because both assume a fast collapse, and miss the fact that we’re already well into the Long Descent and it’ll just keep on going like this for the next few centuries: more poverty, more infrastructure breakdown, more social and political dysfunction, with depopulation coming into play in the decades ahead and rural de-electrification and road system collapse also on their way. Read up on the decline of any other civilization and you’ll recognize the pattern.
Patricia M, oog. Yeah, and I expect to see more of that until it finally sinks in that inflating one’s sense of entitlement to the bursting point isn’t a useful habit.
Ambrose, what would make me emigrate would be impending civil war or large-scale domestic insurgency here in the US, on the one hand, or the abolition of civil rights here on the other. Those are good reasons to be somewhere else. Anything else? I expect to stay.
LatheChuck, unless you can convert your S&P index fund into chili, bread, oranges, and other things that have actual value, it’s best to assume that its value is best measured in imaginary numbers. Think of them as derived from the square root of negative profitability! As for Ukraine, of course.
Tobes, thank you for this.
Chuaquin, of course. Any time anybody claims moral superiority over someone else, you can safely assume that it’s an attempt to justify a power grab or a war.
Justin, by all means decorate your temple — but if you choose to do it in a way that marks you as a member of a given subculture, don’t be surprised if people treat you as they would other members of that subculture. The business with blue hair and nose rings isn’t aesthetic in nature — it’s that young men of conservative opinions have noted that very reliably, women who wear these things have certain attitudes and behavior patterns that the young men in question dislike, and so it’s become a bit of practical wisdom in these circles that you don’t date a woman who has those features. You’d think the women in question would be fine with that, but in fact a good many of them are screeching like gutshot banshees because clean-cut conservative men won’t date them; I’ll let you speculate as to why.
I’ve been with my wife for 22 years, so I am happy to say I am happy to not have to deal with anything like dating. I wish you luck if you continue to go down that road after you move.
But I don’t think there is anything morally superior about a person who isn’t tattooed or pierced or does hair dyes, as per one who does. I’ve gotten plenty of earfuls of the opinions of older conservative men that I know, who aren’t dating, who are married, but still want to berate the way some younger women, or even men for that matter, choose to present themselves. They are chosen and on gods side because they haven’t “profaned the body.” At least in that way! -they might have profaned someone else’s unwilling body though, or are very comfortable telling other people what do with their body… but not as much of a problem for some reason.
The original straight edge punks opted for clean looks and short hair to differentiate themselves from the druggified hippies and drunk punks… so I understand about the signaling. I also get it about punk fashion and its derivatives being just as much of a uniform as the bland uniforms and dressing codes they rebelled against themselves…
Between the poles, there is again a middle ground that has been abandoned.
I imagine some of the people yelling will convert to Christianity, but I also hold out hope that some will find their ways to paths of sane occultism. It’s a “live option” for those of us whom the Church or churches are not a good fit.
Justin, er, I’m not talking about moral superiority. I’m talking about attitudes and habits that one person has that another may not find pleasant. I wouldn’t chat up a woman with blue hair and a nose ring, for the same reason I wouldn’t chat up a painfully thin, tense woman with a crucifix necklace and a well-worn King James Bible peeking out of her purse; I wouldn’t consider myself morally superior to either woman, but I’d recognize that we wouldn’t find one another congenial company, and look elsewhere. That’s what the conservative young men are doing, too, for the most part.
JMG,
Without going into too much detail, during my own spiritual practice I felt “pushed” towards ancient Christian Gnosticism. And over the past few years I learned textual and higher criticism and studied various theories on the formation of the New Testament and came to the conclusion that the Ophites (aka the Naassenes, Peratics, or “snake” gnostics). I’ve gone as far as to compile an alternative Bible free from what scholars call “orthodox corruption.” I plan at some point to release this Ophite bible, but I’m not sure how you go about reviving a long dead religion/spiritual movement. I know there are a bunch of eclectic gnostics running around, but I want something more “authentic” kind of like the revivalist Norse pagans, but for Ophite Christianity. As someone who’s had experience with reviving a dead/dying spiritual movement do you have any advice?
Also this form of Christianity had the multiple “gates/doors” of gnosis with the first gate being a mystery rite, but unlike back in the day we don’t have those readily available. So would you mind or take offense if I recommended your Celtic Golden Dawn works as a possible substitute for the traditional mystery rite (I like the Golden Dawn system, but it’s incompatible with Ophite Christianity, what with the angels being evil and all)?
No, but it frames part of the background around such issues, and I think it is related to the “moral colonialism” discussion being had here. Your approach seems the sensible one (and I didn’t think you would do either of the examples you gave as far as meeting people goes, FWIW.)
Yet the way the people are being described, or rather the caricatures of people are being described, to me is conveying a sense of superiority. I am reading it like this: the conservative man, well groomed and able to maintain emotional calm, is “better” than the shrieking woke pierced and tattooed blue haired woman. In turn, I think that goes back to to old arguments about men being in control of themselves, woman being irrational, and so on.
I know a lot of people who comment on this blog seem to be angry about all things woke, and because they are not or don’t want to be associated with that, therein lies my perception of moral superiority being a part of this topic as well.
Thank you for this post. And many of the previous. I found your books this year, and have read six of them this far. I find many of your trains of thought compelling and relieving. Being a Finnish musician and writer in my late fifties I find many of the themes you write about close to my heart. I am a lover of classic scifi, historical synthetists like Toynbee, Spengler and Friedell, also Bateson and RAW. I have studied Jung seriously, and been a student of many forms of western esotericism from my teens. From the nineties on I have been trying, through songs to bring themes from these writers and traditions combined with my own spiritual ventures to a country of engineers, sometimes with a bit of success. What you say a about LMM’s is so true, and the way this tech is pushed to the public at the moment makes all my Cabalistic triads bleed black puss.
On second thought, perhaps Adorno was correct, with regards to Godzilla when he wrote:
“the Loch Ness monster and the King Kong film, are collective projections of the monstrous total state.”
…Then again, they could have just been monster movies…
>it’s that young men of conservative opinions have noted that very reliably, women who wear these things have certain attitudes and behavior patterns that the young men in question dislike, and so it’s become a bit of practical wisdom in these circles that you don’t date a woman who has those features
Relevant meme – https://imgur.com/a/stVWVlf
>That being the case, it’s a golden opportunity for the Trump administration; it’ll be interesting to see just how far they take it.
So far, they’ve taken it – nowhere.
>As an anecdote, it takes 5min to replace a headlight bulb on a 25yo Subaru, one from fifteen years later requires putting the car on a jackstand, removing the tire, then removing the fender liner to gain access to change the headlight bulb! Dealers charge >$300+ to change it, and maybe that’s on purpose?
Rates have risen to $100/hr these days, so if it takes 1.5 hours to take it apart and another 1.5 hours to put it back together, there’s your $300 in labor, plus the part itself. Yeah, if you can do the work yourself, by all means, do it.
That’s bad, for sure, but it gets worse than that. Look up “wet belt” sometime. I won’t go into it, but it’s definitely something as a customer, you do not want.
JMG, from my experience legalistic woman with a cross necklace and a Bible in their purse tend to be definitely on the plump side. Though I am sure they are skinny ones too. I believe that plumpness is pleasing to you, so sorry for the bad news.
I would like to share a hypothesis I’ve formed on the Magic Monday FAQ section on children shorting out minds. I’m not sure how to test it, but I wonder if it’s a result of the “Think of the children!” tactic the magician states use when they want to push something. Someone will almost always find a way to claim that not going along with whatever will harm children, and I wonder if long term exposure to that peculiar form of insanity, and the resulting twisted thinking, makes it utterly impossible for some people to think clearly about anything that might put children at risk.
I scroll through a passel of websites, and have noticed that often the proprietors have a small photo portrait of themselves projected on a corner of the screen. Almost to a one appear to have been taken from years ago, before the wrinkles & gray hair made their presence .. but, when one sees the actual blogger: Wow, Have THEY Aged! No narcissism there, am I right?
I find it rather annoying – seeming so fake & gay .. like, Who are You ??.. the Adonis-like visage you think you once were, or the person you are Now! Pick One for fn sake..
@Clarke aka Gwydion (#291): writes about “a kind of wide cultural agreement, as somehow Americans in the US had until about the mid-1960s, and which was not thoroughly shredded until quite recently.”
I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, and lived on both coasts (Pleasantville, NY, and Berkeley, CA) during those decades. As I saw it at the time, that “wide cultural agreement” was simply not there at all, except as a fiction promulgated in what then were the mass media (print media and movies, chiefly) at the time.
That fiction was promulgated in the mid 1940s under FDR as a means of unifying the many different Americas for an all-out war effort against Japan and Germany. Take a look at the great number of war-effort advertisements published in mass media by the War Advertising Council and the Office of War Information. They all advocate for the reality of a unified America. Even as a child they struck me as desperate fiction.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, as my father experienced it in real life, about one third of the US populace favored entering the war on the side of Nazi Germany (and very many of them wanted to implement a eugenics program, and many even hoped to establish mandatory sterilization programs and even Nazi-style extermination camps, here in the US), a second third favored entering it on the side of Great Britain, and the final third wanted to stay out of the war, let win it who may. Basically it was a clash between pro-Germanic America and pro-Britain America, each of which formed a huge part of the citizenry here.
There’s very little popular enthusiasm a-building now to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in sharp contrast to the national mood for its 200th anniversary in 1976 (which I remember well). I’d wager the 2026 celebration will fizzle out almost completely, despite the government’s best efforts to promote it.
So far as I know from my elders there wasn’t much enthusiasm for the 150th anniversary, in 1926, either. The nation was still bitterly divided on Prohibition, and the Crash of 1929 was looming up ahead for those with eyes to see.
So. no, historically speaking, there never was much cultural agreement in America at any time before the late 1940s and the 1950s
@polecat
That’s not the problem, the problem is if you try to do that eventually the cops will come down and drag you away. Heck, there were articles from 15 years ago or so, where someone out in the rural area wasn’t trying to do anything with the building codes at all, they just wanted to disconnect from the grid (generate their own electricity and use their own water) and the local county gubmint condemned their property and dragged them off.
Like I said before, the problems in this country are fixable to a certain extent, but not enough people actually *want* to fix them. What they really want is for the current arrangement of things to just keep going forever. Or they want to have it this way but also that way too. So I guess we go *flump* in 10, 9, 8…
Except for the younguns. Mainly because nobody dealt them into the status quo. They’re fine with the current arrangement going away. They don’t expect the hospitals to be there, social security to be there, etc. If it all goes *flump* right now, you’ll get a shrug from them and they’ll go back to whatever they were doing before.
I’d say something about who you’re going to sell to, if you own a house and you’re not letting any of those younguns buy anything at all. But I think they’re just going to print up the money, hand it to a bunch of corporations and they’re going to buy all the houses.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear these shades…
@Mark
>We should be calling the likes of LLMs etc “unintelligent computer programs” (UCPs) rather than “artificial intelligence” (AI) because that’s what they are, there is no intelligence to be found in them.
Or I am thinking maybe a term that actually reflect what it produces. And that term could cover also the stable diffusion or other text to image stuff or text 2 anything, maybe something like:
Artificial Stupid Slop or
Artificial Secondhand Slop
@JMG: I hope you do write that sequel to “Hall of Homeless Gods.” I remember you mentioned sending Jerry to New Washington once, as a sequel. I like Jerry; I’m not quite sure why.
I know it’s very late in the cycle, but I hope you’ll still see this, JMG. I just now read about it, and I’m more than shocked. This is a snapshot of the current state of the EU:
“Brussels is not accusing this man, Jacques Baud, of being a mercenary or spy on the Kremlin’s payroll, or of having participated in military operations, acts of sabotage, or other intelligence activities for Russia. No, the serious crime for which the EU is imposing sanctions on him is the dissemination of “Russian propaganda” and “conspiracy theories,” because Jacques Baud is now also a sought-after expert and author who has made a name for himself as a lifelong practical conflict researcher and mediator, not least with his analyses on Ukraine. (…)
For the so sanctioned, those arbitrary sanctions are pure horror. They hit him harder than any Russian politician or oligarch outside the EU. Baud lives in Brussels, where he is not actually supposed to be. At the same time, he is now prohibited from leaving Belgium and traveling through a neighboring EU country. His accounts have been frozen. He is prohibited from engaging in any economic activity in the EU. He cannot and is not allowed to pay his rent, nor is he allowed to buy a loaf of bread. Anyone who helps the colonel, sends him money, or provides him with accommodation, is liable to prosecution. The EU is falling behind medieval England before the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.”
You can read the article in full here: https://archive.ph/TmdZ4 (it’s paywalled, so this is a mirror on archive.ph – in German, because the article appeared in Die Welt)
I’d love to leave Europe, but I’m over fifty and have no idea how I’d make a living overseas, so I’m stuck here…
Anonymous, you might consider reading my book The Ceremony of the Grail, which argues — on the basis of a body of evidence collected a century ago by pioneering Arthurian scholar Jessie Weston — that what’s behind the Grail legend is a Naassene initiation rite, and which attempts to reconstruct that rite. Beyond that, why, my advice would be to get a website, publish your Ophite bible, publish at least one book on the spiritual practices of Ophite Gnosticism, and see whether anyone responds. As for mystery rites, you can certainly recommend mind if you like.
Justin, I’m going to challenge you here. I think you’re reading a rhetoric of moral superiority into this discussion because that’s the way people in the alternative scene that gave rise to punk liked to frame the debate — “you just despise us because you think you’re morally superior.” (Recall that I dated a punk rocker back in the early 80s, before my marriage, and got to hear a lot of the rhetoric.) Are there people who consider themselves morally superior to women with blue hair and nose rings? Sure — but a significant number of women with blue hair and nose rings consider themselves morally superior to conservative young men, you know, so it cuts both ways. As for people who are angry about the woke movement, maybe you should consider the possibility that people get angry when they’ve been repeatedly bullied?
Yrjänä, welcome to the commentariat, and thank you!
Justin, alternatively, Adorno could have found them convenient metaphors for thinking about the monstrous total states to which he objected. There’s always a middle ground!
Other Owen, it’s still early days yet.
BeardTree, interesting. The ones I’ve met tend to be skinny and very tense. Thanks for the warning!
William, hmm. That’s plausible, certainly.
Polecat, interesting. I try to update my photo at intervals, but sometimes a few years pass.
Patricia M, thank you! Yeah, in his own odd way, Jerry’s a likeable guy.
Athaia, I’ve heard of this. It’s one of the reasons I plan on staying well clear of the EU.
Challenge accepted.
I do remember your story of when you dated a punk…
I do agree that it cuts both ways. After I posted my last comment on this, I saw how I had made it into a binary… and I think there is some binary thinking going on in the memes shared and experiences discussed. For either case I hope they find suitable matches and the kind of people they are each looking for.
I understand how the bullying works… being bullied by sports obsessed jocks in school, made me go further into my artsy poet self, and “rebel” by getting deeper into the punk movement, skate boarding and the like. I can see easily how the polarity reverses once another group becomes dominant. Because then I hated the jocks as much as they hated me… (I am over most of it).
I think where I read another rhetoric into it, is when I start thinking about the Christian influence on the conservative movement, the parts of that that hold no appeal to me, and the parts of that which are scary to me, because of what amounts to religious bullying by fundamentalist church I was raised, Catholic school I went to, other people I know who feel like because there opinions come from their interpretation of the bible, they are the correct opinions, and the like. I still get these from people now, even as I limit my connection to such things.
Just as there is a middle ground between Adorno and King Kong (King Kong could be our own man made environment stepping on us). Where is that middle ground to be found? Perhaps in our shared humanity and other things that could bring our cultures together again, at least in civil discourse, and letting each other get on with it, whatever each group or person wants to do.
Finding a vision that others on either side might embrace would be one way out of the binary.
Thanks for the discussion.
Hey JMG
Since this open post is wrapping up, I thought I would ask if you were still working on the novel set thousands of years into the future? And if so, are there any new details about its setting that you are willing to share before publishing?
I guess the other thing that has me bring Christianity and moral superiority into it, is just how much I and others were told what we were doing (piercing, dying our hair) was wrong, that it left a residue. I had siblings, cousins, and friends all sent to “troubled teen” instituitions… it didnt make them more compliant with the religion or the way they were “supposed to be.”
I guess the “moral” for me is to not abide bullies of any kind.
Justin P. # 439:
Well, I hadn’t forgotten how right wing ideologies have usually hijacked Christianism to achieve a supremacist morality (this tendence has been accepted without problems by a lot of Churches cough cough). However, I think my reference to the right was implicit in my critics about how the supposed superior moral of the West has worked in real world. Western moral supremacy in the name of Christian Civilization has been one of the favorite right wing topics since the old times of colonialism, going through the anti-communism and finishing (by now) with the clash between cultures. Of course, right tendence of believing its moral supremacy it’s simetrical to the leftist same self delusion, in a mirror game.
———————————
JMG # 444:
Your answer to Derek, pointing there are more historical societies than binary urban societies/hunters-gatherers, has made me to remember the interesting civilization which thrived near the Indo river some millenials ago: Mohenjo Daro (if I remember well its name). It was an urban society, but in its streets archeologist haven’t found big temples nor palaces…so they think it was a much more equally organized culture than Mesopotamian first state cities. According to some scientists, this Indo culture declined and disappeared during a very long drought. I point this ancient culture because it shows not always civilization leads to oppression and marked social differences. In addition to this, some archeologists think Neolithic villages weren’t socially structured, because there wasn’t a big agricultural excedent to be saved by its bosses, to justify power centralization.
********
I agree. Plato seems to me in his support for a king-philosopher, he’s despising democracy so it’s the philosophical grandfather of every totalitarian regimes. Of course, we shouldn’t cancel him for his opinion in this topic, but we must take it into consideration.
—————————
Athaia # 461:
I didn’t know who’s Jacques Baud, but blaming him as “conspiracy theorist” and “Russian propagandist” is indeed a very ambiguous accusation by Brussels. I see the rule of law and maybe another half dozen democratic “red lines” at risk to be crossed by our not elected EU politicians-bureaucrats. If they haven’t crossed actually with such as hard punishment against this man in form of draconian sanctions.
People talk about where to emigrate if times get tough. The United Staes is a complex of 50 states and a few territories and if times are bad in one state another one might be better and states do have the capability to resist a wayward federal government. Will the South rise again? So just staying in the USA I think is a viable option. I know a young man in the military and he has told me about conversations among the troops about if push comes to shove disobeying orders from a tyrannical executive branch. An EU style from the top take over in the USA faces real obstacles.
The way people decorate themselves in mostly an adaptation strategy and has little to do with morality. If your goal is to work at a housing nonprofit in Portland while living in an old bungalow on the north east side of town having blue hair and a septum ring is a good adaptation strategy. But it is not a good strategy to fit in with the crowd at the 4th of July Rodeo in Dillon Montana.
If your goal is to make partner at a white shoe law firm in NYC then dreadlocks are a poor adaptation strategy.
If you are a woman and your goal is to date a clean cut conservative guy then having blue hair and facial tattoos is very obviously counter productive, no morality judgement needed.
I can’t speak about present generations, but there was a time in the late 60s and into the 70s when a certain unpleasant subset of young men believed that they were entitled to tell women, including mere acquaintances, how to dress. I vividly recall being told by one such that I needed to “get on pills” because of acne. Never mind the possible health effects. I was not then nor until much later sexually active at all and had no boyfriend, and I have never used The Pill.
I didn’t know about the women thinking clean cut, conservative men ought to date them. That was not on my radar. What I am seeing is young women of various grooming styles, occupations and income levels flatly refusing to have anything to do with conservative men. I am also seeing and hearing about young women being far less sexually active than were their counterparts a few decades ago. That is of course a reaction to the laws making abortion illegal in many states, and why this would have surprised anyone is beyond me.
Nothing like an enigma to round out the year! Zero Hedge has just reported that my favourite shortwave radio station (Russia’s UVB-76 aka “The Buzzer” aka “doomsday radio station” at 4625 kHz) broadcast Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake this morning – for the first time since the mysterious station started broadcasting in the 1970s. It is my favourite station because nobody has been able to definitely figure it out – though some believe that it a component of Russia’s “Dead Hand” system (i.e., retaliatory nuclear strikes against enemies in the event that Russia’s military leadership is suddenly taken out). Usually it broadcasts stuff like regular buzz tones and seemingly nonsensical litanies of names and/or numbers. Almost as if it were being run by Monty Python.
At present I do not hear anything exceptional on The Buzzer, but I will tune in from time. For those who are wildly curious but do not have ham radio equipment, one can listen online via various sites (one I’ll link here: http://na5b.com:8901/ – just select the 80m option and click on “The Buzzer” tab.
@Justin Patrick Moore
Respectfully,
For a decade political activists on the left, dressed in kind, performed the most combative and egregious dance of moral superiority over almost everyone who wasn’t in lockstep with their set of beliefs.
If you consider politics in our North American sphere as related to contact sports, and political activism as being related to team practice, then consider the experience of trying out for a squad and proving your mettle to confirm your starting position. The spectacle of your prowess must be displayed and it is compelling to hit the players that hit you hardest back even harder if you can! In front of your coaches, and other team players, of course… letting everyone know. Some players might beat their chests after this display, others may take the attitude of ‘silent but violent’. The result can be acute reputation adjustment.
Our polarized political fighting camps do seem coded to might means right. Is this attention to, and distaste for, nose rings and hair color a compelling but subtle blow?
I guess I could have made this a shorter, less pretentious post but I felt a pressing need to add a sports analogy and frame this more of a competition dressed in morale trappings
@Ian Duncombe:
I see what you describe as Spectacularized version of the left, just as there might also be the same on the right.
The tribalized nature of it all is why I was never an activist.
In between is a lot of empty space where vague camps of the politically homeless hang out.
Dorothy Sayers. It very much depends on the reader as to whether or not she’s readable! She is not as accessible as Agatha Christie but she rewards a deeper read. “Clouds of Witness” (we will soon publish our annotated edition) upends the classic murder plot into something you may not have seen coming.
Our goal, at Peschel Press, is to eventually thoroughly annotate all of Dorothy’s Lord Peter novels and short stories, along with the Montague Egg short stories, and her novel, “The Documents of the Case.”
She needs annotating! In the meantime, if you want to look up an obscure reference in her books, check out Bill’s master directory: https://peschelpress.com/the-wimsey-annotations/
If you have an annotation to add, please tell us!
Ron M @470: I’ve been listening to Radio Educacion from Mexico on 6185 late at night for decades. They play albums and you never know what you’ll hear, or how the reception will be. I tuned in one night in the middle of the third movement of Brahms’ 2nd Piano Concerto. I’ll have to check out the Buzzer.
I just finished Hall Of Homeless Gods, and I read it more slowly this time. I tried to reorient myself spatially, with partial success. I realized that the Japanese that made it to the Atlantic Coast came via Russia, because Japan was a Russian protecorate after Kikai. Reversing my inner flow chart to accomodate that view came easier then.
I love the fact that the languages get muddied up in this world, and the combination of Japanese, Chinese, Russian and English behaves the way real languages work. They serve the purpose of their time.
Taiwan
I would take polls about attitudes toward reunification with an extra bit of salt. The real question isn’t do you want reunification. It is “how much would you personally be willing to sacrifice to maintain the status quo of de facto independence”. Questions such as “Do you think you would have the business elite on your side” and “Do you think America values Taiwan as a nation or that it sees Taiwan as a disposable bargaining chip”.
Opposition to reunification was quite strong last time I was in Taiwan, but that was in 2014. From the outside, I get the impression that that opposition is starting to wear out.
Upon much reflection about the tattooed/blue hair topic, I’ve actually come closer to JMG’s position on this. I can remember the first time I came across nazi punks, or frat boys who showed up to beat the stuffing out of someone in the name of slamming in the pit. I grew dissatisfied with music you had to wear a uniform for, but, indeed, people who wear uniforms do want to communicate status, and belief systems.
But one thing about being in public is: whatever you think about what you are saying, people will project their own spin on you. Getting to know someone reveals multitudes.
I’m so glad I will never marry again.
Straws in the wind – from the mainstream media.
From the Salem Statesman Journal to the Gainesville Sun via ISA Today: “Regenerative Farming is making a comeback.. Farmers say centuries-old practices could slow climate change.
From today’s USA Today: “Black women find a home in Mexico.”” They are not rich. and they live like their neighbors. They speak Spanish and eat at the panaderia, or local and street markets, rent apartments, and take on roommates. Their reasons? A lower cost of living, more affordable housing, health care and medical procedures, And above all, they feel safer, even though Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere for women. Safe from American police with tear gas and excessive force convictions back home; and nobody gives them any hassle about their color. They’ve taken steps to become citizens, and Mexico doesn’t have ICE agents dragging people off the streets and throwing them out or in camps while they’re in the process of applying. All this out of their own mouths. But there is a lot of Gringos-go-Home resentment of the wealthy white expats who make no attempt to assimilate, but who remind me of the Californians who moved into remote areas and proceeded to Californicate them, as the saying went.
Anyway, for what that’s worth.
@Anonymous (#447) re: “Ophite Christianity” et al.:
As I have stated in prior comment threads, I spent a lot of time in my youth studying the liberal Protestant “higher criticism,” and ultimately concluded that I was wasting my time. I kept going around in circles without landing anywhere solid. For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the notorious “Jesus Seminar” with its “color-coded Gospels.” The premises upon which it was based struck me as completely arbitrary. Among these are the assumption that there must exist, somewhere a “Q Document” (where is it? no one has ever found it!), and that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest because it is the shortest (what does length have to do with historical priority?)
Ultimately, I concluded that the whole approach of ‘higher criticism” was wrong from its foundation. Trying to deduce the validity (or lack thereof) of the Church from Scripture is a “bass-ackwards” approach. You can never come to any firm conclusion on that basis.
One of the best analyses of the problems with Protestant “Sola Scriptura” and the “higher criticism” was written in 1914 by Hieromartyr St. Hilarion Troitsky (later martyred by the Bolsheviks):
Holy Scripture and the Church
https://orthochristian.com/33327.html#_ftnref36
It is a long read, so have a cup of your beverage of choice handy before reading it! As long as it is, it is well worth the effort, if only to spare you the years of bootless flailing about that I wasted in my youth.
@ Michael Martin, #479 so it’s “Sola Ecclesia” instead? And in that case which of the several which claim Apostolic descent and continuity and authority? I can think of at least five. But I do agree wrestling with the Bible is not easy so in the meantime I am awaiting the final revelation of the Jesus I know by the Spirit and Word and have met in the Eucharist(Protestant) and in fellow believers – “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” 2 Corinthians 5:8 and these precious words of the Lord “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may also be” John 14:2b-3.
Thes will be describing the last 3 years, having a machine imitating what you are doing, what could go wrong?
A preview:
https://xcancel.com/cixliv/status/2004899966326858157
Happy New Year to all!
Michael Martin (no. 479) “that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest because it is the shortest (what does length have to do with historical priority?)”
It’s not just length–Matthew and Luke each contain virtually the whole of Mark, plus additional material shared by Matthew and Luke but not Mark. It certainly looks like Matthew and Luke copied Mark. The additional shared material (much of it consisting of sayings of Jesus) has been explained in terms of a hypothetical second source (called Q for Quelle, the German word for “Source”), but another possibility is that Luke had both Matthew and Mark before him, and disagreed with some of Matthew’s additions. I agree with you that the “Jesus Seminar” went a little too far (they certainly knew how to get media attention), but they do not represent the whole field of Jesus Studies, which is very diverse. Rather than see Jesus as a Cynic, as the Jesus Seminar did., the most common scholarly approach would be to emphasize his origins in apocalyptic Judaism via John (with the Dead Sea Scrolls community as a cognate branch of apocalyptic Judaism). Others emphasize his commonalities with the Pharisees or Palestinian Jewish folk magicians (like Honi the Circle Drawer).
———————-
BeardTree (no. 467) “conversations among the troops about if push comes to shove disobeying orders from a tyrannical executive branch.”
I am glad they take their Oaths seriously, and hope none of them does anything stupid.
(no. 454) “from my experience legalistic woman with a cross necklace and a Bible in their purse tend to be definitely on the plump side.”
And play the clarinet. (This is science–SCIENCE !!)
—————–
JMG (no. 444) “Ambrose, what would make me emigrate would be impending civil war or large-scale domestic insurgency here in the US, on the one hand, or the abolition of civil rights here on the other.”
That seems quite sensible. These things change by degrees, of course–e.g. civil rights violations already occur with some regularity.. Your exoectation of a long decline strikes me as realistic.
BTW Quinn doesn’t really teach that we ought to return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle–he knows (or knew–he’s dead now) very well that this is impossible. As for what we *should* do, I’m afraid he has little specific advice (he used to get irritated when people made this complaint), and urges us to use our creativity to find some other way. Some sort of “tribal” structure seems a given.
Quinn traces unsustainable population growth to the Agricultural Revolution (he hates the term, though), but I think it could be traced even further, back to the discovery of fire. Of course mass agriculture accelerated the trend, as did the Industrial Revolution. Gail Tverberg thinks that modern societies *must* grow, or else they collapse (for economic reasons). Enter resource limits….
https://www.psypost.org/users-of-generative-ai-struggle-to-accurately-assess-their-own-competence/
Is official cognitive collapse for users of LLMs is baked in the cake:
>New research provides evidence that using artificial intelligence to complete tasks can improve a person’s performance while simultaneously distorting their ability to assess that performance accurately. The findings indicate that while users of AI tools like ChatGPT achieve higher scores on logical reasoning tests compared to those working alone, they consistently overestimate their success by a significant margin.
Re the corruption in Minnesota, with the Somalian/local state mafiosos operating ghost health care and day care centres, among other things…
It strikes me that the first step in embedding a new immigrant wave into American culture is when it figures out what that culture’s deepest illicit desire is, and caters to it, and (incidentally) entering into a cant-live-with-em-cant-live-without-em relationship with local elite structures of power. Thus we had Irish immigrants joining armies and police forces en masse, and quickly offering armed muscle for the highest bidder who felt in need of illicit security… We had the “Sicilian mob” taking over gaming and prostitution… We had lots of different factions fighting over the right to supply alcohol during the years when that was illegal… and then the territorial fight moved to drugs, in which, eventually, Mexican cartels edged out many of the others… (and this is not intended to be a comprehensive list, by the way)… Eventually, a few generations on, all of the people in that migration wave who never benefited from the elite/local crime boss alliance, manage to find ways to assimilate, and (as the Irish did), “become white”.
It has taken me a few days to figure this one out though, because the corruption reports do not appear to show the Somalia/Minnesota mafia selling drugs or weapons or sex or other such illegal but desirable goods that anyone might be prepared to pay for, so – what IS the specific illicit, and AMERICAN, pleasure that this Somalia/Minnesota mafia has been catering to?
Well, I may be blowing smoke here, but I think I may have worked it out!
Given the recent turn in American politics against the progressive side – the ability to indulge in the peculiarly AMERICAN progressive virtue of boundless compassion for the stranger at one remove ***, no questions asked, is exactly the illicit pleasure that is being supplied here! And, for the purely venal, there is the “Loadsa Money” aspect. Money for nothing at all in return – expect the virtuous feeling that vicarious liberal compassion supplies – that’s the trick!
Anyhow, that’s how it looks to me. 🙂
*** by “at one remove” I mean, of course, that one is not exercising such boundless compassion for oneself, one is voting in people to do it for one… 😉
@ John Michael Greer
Thinking about my failure to express things and exploring that via a metaphor of existence:- The vehicles of consciousness, the body and mind, seem, initially, to be driven by the habits that develop and form the personality. The personality/ego is necessary to navigate physical existence but it is not us. It is not who we are, it is a construct of mistaken identity where the vehicle mistakes itself for the driver.
Over incarnations, the soul creates different potentials that can manifest through the personality (can manifest, not necessarily do manifest). Many systems seem to be trying to form a balance where the vehicle of personality/ego is ‘tuned’ so that it becomes a lens for the higher self – a multi way channel of communication – we recognise the communication coming downstream from the higher self as ‘intuition’ – upstream flow is what the higher self gets from the vehicles (mind/body) of incarnation.
Before the personality is polished as a lens, as time goes on the ‘vehicles’ create more and more ‘noise’ that drowns out the signal of intuition; this seems to create a situation where the higher self becomes opaque to the personality/ego and it (the personality/ego) thinks it is the driver of the bus.
So, there seem to be several possibilities including (but not limited to): –
• The vehicles are developed, polished and condensed to become a lens and integrate the small self into the higher self
• The vehicles are developed, polished and expanded and become self-referential, not a lens but an expanding hall of mirrors
The higher self seems likely to not only ‘know’ beauty but to be able to recognise/appreciate beauty because it’s perception is wider even though it is ‘using’ the vehicles – the vehicle of mind is extraordinary but it is still a vehicle and as such its perceptions are limited and it is ‘intermediary’.
What I was trying to say is that if Consciousness can flow using vehicles as an expression of beauty, there is also the potential that is beyond the calculations and interpretations of the vehicles and/or the restraints imposed by culture or education.
And that we do not need the vehicles to recognise beauty if the lens is successfully ‘polished’, the vehicles are just one model of interpreting things. The beauty of sunrise and dawn chorus needs no reduction to ‘elements of beauty’ codified in a particular viewpoint/perception – it just is.
Granted I did not express myself clearly, but where you said:
“Earthworm, sure, if your definition of “true beauty” amounts to “what I like.”
I did not say or imply that and I am surprised to see that; what I actually wrote was:
“That is not to say that ‘way think’ does not have place – what I mean is that truly beautiful work stands with or without.
For sure, there are things to look at beneath the surface that can enhance, but if the appreciation is dependent on ‘understanding’ beforehand, then a ‘thing’ is not truly resonating and is an intellectual construct… basically, that true beauty transcends and precedes intellectual analysis which usually follows the experience. Preloading mindstate short-circuits impact?”
What I was trying to express (poorly) was that there is beauty as perceived by the vehicles and then surely there is beauty as perceived by the higher self.
i.e. that when we get intuition, it does not originate in the mind but from the higher self – the gut feeling is a ‘knowing’ and I wonder that this ‘knowing’ could relate to beauty that is beyond the mind.
The polishing and condensing of a lens for the higher self kind of makes the vehicles more ‘transparent’ and condensed as a lens; but if the vehicles drown out the intuition of the higher self, then opacity expands and the surface area for bruising increases.
JMG: “…why, there’s not much I can communicate to you.”
I may have this wrong but thought communication is more than a single direction process.
It would be a shame to end here on failure to communicate; and while I’m not sure I’ve explained myself any better, this ‘exchange’ has been very illuminating. I have reached a plateau and will withdraw to ponder on things. Thank you.
May all have success on their paths.
Best regards,
Karl Gunter
@Beard Tree #480: “so it’s “Sola Ecclesia” instead? And in that case which of the several which claim Apostolic descent and continuity and authority? I can think of at least five. ”
The key here is (a) Apostolic succession and (b) Apostolic doctrine. In other words, who of the 5 (or more??) have actually kept the faith intact and unharmed, without alteration? That leaves out Protestantism from the start, as Protestants have no firm concept of the Church as such. As for the others, the key is “Who innovated? Who made changes?” That is how I settled upon Orthodoxy as the true church.
Yes, God will guide us, and we must ask for His guidance. We must also do our own homework, to the extent of our ability. That is the Orthodox concept of synergia. Another way to express it is this: “Without God’s help, man can do nothing, but without man’s effort, God will do nothing.”
I hope this helps.
>What I am seeing is young women of various grooming styles, occupations and income levels flatly refusing to have anything to do with conservative men
https://imgur.com/a/iryOwwN
I’m not against anyone bluing their hair and screaming their ideology. In fact, it sort of acts as an anti-collision beacon, allowing you to see and avoid. When I see a screaming bluehair, I say “Thank you” and “Traffic in sight”. What would annoy me is a normal looking girl with all the screaming wokeness hidden inside. It’s hard to keep all that darkness bottled up though. It has to shine out. Let your darkness shine.
And I’m done pretending.
I know too much history to regard either the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox institutions as pure and always accurate vessels and conduits of God’s truth. And the same for Protestantism. The Jesus the New Testament points to is that conduit and he units us with the Father and the Holy Spirit – Eternal Life.
Oh, Mr. Greer .. twasn’t pointing a finger at you specifically* (I’ve never noticed an Archdruid thumbnail.. but you appear not to do much in the way of podcasts..) just noting the discrepancy of prior image vs. real time, and why its even a thing with some sites .. Personally, I’m all in on depictions of agedness-what with age spots/skin issues.. silver-white head/facial hair.. balding pate.. and that’s just the superficial stuff. Aging certainly is not for the faint-of-heart! I take it full frontal.
*and I’m sure you’ve aged quite gracefully.. ‘;]
VERY IMPORTANT NEWS! USPS: postmarks will now reflect when the mail was *processed* instead of when you mailed it. Hence, you’ll get a lot of “YOU MAILED IT TOO LATE!” Sorry to shout like that, but tax season is almost upon us. And I, for one,will be getting out an estimated quarterly payment ASAP.
Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/you-d-better-pay-close-attention-to-this-small-but-crucial-change-in-us-postal-service-policy/ar-AA1Tjb7a?uxmode=ruby&ocid=edgntpruby&pc=HCTS&cvid=69553d34089e4bfba279e17364cb63ac&ei=11
And, yes,I cop tp having my tailbone in a spin.
Oh, and one more thang.. here’s to a fruitful New Year to you and the ecsophia salon! Stay safe-n-sane out there everyone.
JMG #444: It’s at the end of the window (and the year), but I’d like to make a point regarding technic civilizations, which you define as: “civilizations that get a significant share of energy from some source other than human and animal muscle.”. There’s an intermediate phase you seem to be overlooking, which is watermills & windmills, an early revolution of energy in the medieval period. It was really the ancient world that relied mainly on human & muscle power; while the Romans had the technology for watermills & windmills, the former was underused, and the latter was neglected entirely. I theorize that it was their reliance on slavery that caused the high-level equilibrium trap, with its stagnation and lack of innovation.
We can roughly divide our use of energy thus:
Bronze Age & Classical Antiquity: human & animal muscle power
Medieval period: watermills & windmills
Modern world: fossil fuels & industry
JMG #444
Five thousand years is an eye blink in human history, time will tell if the human invention of civilization can last a truly meaningful length of time.
——
Chuaquin #384
I did not interpret the views so much as good and evil, but as adaptive and mal-adaptive. Leaf cutter ants have practiced agriculture for what I’d consider to be long enough to be sustainable, so we have one solid example at least.
Humans may have already or may find some way to continue agriculture that is adaptive and leads to long term success. Then there is the separate question of whether we can, in addition to that, have the icing on the cake – “civilization” as well.
For this to work, we will need to be integrated with the community of life. This means we need to follow the rules, not (try to) make them and civilization is all about making up rules so we will have to tread carefully!
Having said that, we can never possibly know how it works out.
Hello JMG
If this is not relevant enough for the topic at hand, I won’t be offended if you delete it, but I did want to state my feelings about your writing efforts.
I just want to say that I have enjoyed your posts since 2006. I was glad that I found you then because I was going crazy regarding the extremes of opinion I found online and was searching for some other viewpoint. You kept me sane by pointing out that there is indeed a third way other than the extremes at both ends of the social spectrum.
I have read most of your posts since then and a number of your books. Often times I have to read them two or three times and dwell over certain phrases to find the meaning. I also enjoy the commentariat. They comment of things that expand my understanding of the world. I found your book “The King in Orange” fascinating. I still laugh when I see it on my book shelf. The ideas inside saying; ” I dare you to consider this”. It still took me until 2024 to vote for Trump, I usually vote for a third party for president. Regarding Trump some of what he does is disappointing and some is not, I knew this when I voted . I can’t understand the extreme hatred he inspires.
I was indifferent to spirituality, the idea of one supreme being over everything doesn’t make sense to me. But when you write about multiple perhaps an infinite number of spirit beings overlaying our existence that makes sense to me and excites me to consider that I am a part of that ecosystem.
I am 76 years old and I know of only one who has even heard of you, but I am glad that you are doing well and I hope that you will continue to write.
Dan