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 — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with one exception. 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.
With that said, have at it!
With all the gloom, literal (in the northern hemisphere) and metaphorical that we are collectively living with at the moment and apropos to last weeks’ post on the subject of progress amongst other things, I thought it would be pleasant to contemplate a real breakthrough that I came across this last weekend. It just possibly points the way to how a low energy culture succeeding ours might operate. The paper is from 2020, it’s a new kind of circuit that switches from high voltage low current power to low voltage higher current. To put it another way, it can take the diffuse and impractical energy you can get from various sources of ‘static’ electricity to something that we might just be able to make use of in a small way.
It’s of particular interest because it can operate from a DC charge, it has a claimed conversion efficiency of 94% and it’s the product of Chinese engineering. It’s also mesmerisingly simple and intellectually beautiful which is why it stands out as a breakthrough in my mind. The smallest version of the circuit consists of three diodes and two capacitors hooked up in a way that allows you to charge them in serial via a high voltage, flick a switch and the diodes ensure that the capacitors discharge in parallel. This boosts the current and drops the voltage.
The conventional approach to a similar effect would be to use a transformer. That would require an AC input source and operates with rather poorer efficiency.
The astonishing thing about this arrangement is that you can replace the two capacitors with copies of the original circuit. So if you replace both the left and right capacitors you end up with a circuit that takes 4 capacitors and needs 9 diodes. This step can be repeated as many times as you want. I stared at the figure for a few minutes before the ‘Aha’ moment but once you get it, it’s a delight. It’s referred to as a Fractal Switched Capacitor Converter in the paper. I’d call it a Fractal Capacitor but something with that name exists already. I note that both capacitors and diodes are amongst the simplest of electronic components to create.
You can find the details here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15373-y Hedged around with all the ceremonial nonsense of a modern scientific paper, but all you really need to look at is Figure 2, a. b. and c.
At this link are 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. A printable version of the entire prayer list current as of 11/20 may be downloaded here. 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.
***HEAR YE HEAR YE***At the end of this year I will pruning all prayer requests which were made before July 1st, 2023 from the list entirely, with the exception of any that my own intuition tells me ought to be kept on the list. I make no claims to the infallibility of my intuition, so if your entry is older than that, and you would definitely like it to remain on the prayer list, please send a note updating your request.
(Also, if you think you might be interested in having anyone pray in support of your own self-improvement, please have a look at the Ecosophia Prayer List Autumn Special.)* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May the lawsuit for partition of the family land in which Jennifer, her husband Josiah, and her father Robert are involved be resolved justly and for the greatest good of all involved, including the land and its spirits.
May the brain surgery that Erika’s partner James underwent for his cancer on October 16th have gone successfully; and may he be blessed, healed and protected, and successfully treated for all of his cancer.
May Kyle’s friend Amanda, who though in her early thirties is undergoing various difficult treatments for brain cancer, make a full recovery; and may her body and spirit heal with grace.
May Jeff Huggin’s friends Dale and Tracy be blessed and healed; may Dale’s blood and spinal fluid infection clear up sufficiently to receive a heart valve replacement; may his medical procedures go smoothly and with success; and may Dale and Tracy successfully surmount these difficulties.
In the case of Princess Cutekitten and the large bank who is suing her, may justice be done, with harm to none.
Lp9’s hometown, East Palestine, Ohio, for the safety and welfare of their people, animals and all living beings in and around East Palestine, and to improve the natural environment there to the benefit of all.
* * *
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 now 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.
From time to time, I see people comment about modern art and how the traditional styles of art don’t get any love. When you (rightly!) tell them the tide is turning, some still question that.
I am one of those more traditional artists, and I don’t get any kind of animosity … I am simply ignored. It is shockingly difficult to build much of an art career, even when I came up with a snappy description: “modern day traditional artist.” Still crickets.
So for any of y’all out there who think modern art is ONLY what you see in the media, know that I am just one of thousands (literally) of artists trying so hard to get some kind of recognition through all the noise.
And thank you, gracious host, for letting me get that off my chest.
Katrina
(formerly hiding under the name dfr1973)
How do you interpret the Astology over the year end into the New Year…
Question has to do with will.
How do you determine your purpose? To figure out a defining purpose that will give you the strength and confidence to assert your will? This seems to be a major stumbling block for me in starting a practice. There seems to be so many contradictory opinions/facts/others will that I seem to be constantly in the breeze unsure what direction to go.
Hi JMG and all,
If the predicted cyber 9/11 (internet shutdown) comes to pass in the next 12-18 months to facilitate the introduction of digital IDs and cbdc’s, do you have any plans in place for communication workarounds and what if anything are you doing now in preparation? I understand taking any information you want to preserve offline either in hard copy or air gapped Faraday caged electronic copy but I’m also thinking what about ongoing communication with communities such as this one?
Mr Kemble
What will be the theme of the fifth Wedneday post?
News from my tiny island.
We had two black bears swim over here from Vancouver Island a few months ago. They were eating fruit out of the orchards as this has been a lousy year for berries and there seems to be no salmon either, both are mainstays of bear food. Now there is no fruit in the orchards.
One bear, an older very large bear, started to take sheep and goats. Four beasts were taken. The provincial government suggested we read a pamphlet on living with bears and refused to help us or the bears. The larger of the two bears was shot dead this week and left in the northern part of the island as I knew it would be. I wrote to the biologist in charge and explained this to her.
There are a lot of woke, city people on the island who wanted to save the Denman bear but the country people did not like the idea of such a bold bear as the next targets could be pets, children and small women. As a small woman, I too was against having the bears wander free in a very heavily populated island with limited food supplies for the bears.
I think this incident is indicative of the government abandoning its responsibilities to the people of BC. You should see what they are doing for homeless people: nothing! Their solution to the opioid crisis has been to supply free drugs for a safer supply. In reality, the type of drugs supplied are very dangerous and we are experiencing many, many deaths due to overdoses.
So, stay sharp out there and remember, you are on your own!
The effect of the ongoing Israeli/Hamas conflict on the future of the empire is dramatic and quickly changing. As most of the world ( and most of the US, under the age of 30) lines up to support the Palestinians, many new cracks in the facade of U.S. power begin to appear.
The one that is the most interesting to me is the way that the propaganda put out by the power structure ( here and in Israel) is being widely exposed and called out by people who were not aware of it before. Apparently the biggest thing in the current moment is young people on Tik Tok and other social media putting out videos mocking IDF ( and US state department ) propaganda. I think this will open up Pandora’s box and these same young people will begin to mock other establishment narratives.
Did anyone see the 11/12/23 Washington Examiner article “Fueling electric vehicles costs roughly the equivalent of $17 a gallon: Study” Granted, it was funded by the oil companies, but there are still some points to be made.
Dear JMG,
Thank you for your timely reply on the last post! Your answer gave rise to another question of mine that I’ve been thinking about for a while: Will trade (global, or inter-country e.g. China to India) and globalisation survive the Long Descent and come out on the other side? I’m asking this cause as previously stated, my country is dependent on these 2 factors due to its small size and dependence on imports. However, we are trying to increase our food security with technology (yes, I know), through the 30 by 30 plan! Moreover, there is evidence that we were a trade port even in the 1300s due to our geographical position (safe passage through the Malacca straits, making it ideal for traders), which gives me hope for the days ahead. So on top of what I already asked, I have one more question, if you are kind enough to answer: will Singapore survive? I have pride in my country and its government, and am fervently hoping so due to what I previously stated and our good relations with Asian powers (China, India). However, if I’m wrong, do you recommend moving? If so, to where? Thanks!
Also, side note: I’m first!
Greetings!
A little tell tale of my past time:
I joined a martial club recently, doing kickboxing and ground-wrestling. It would offer other courses too. It’s where the police and special forces train as well. As I had hoped, training with professionals gives dignity;
I had complained here about the fake Kung Fu club before, with hostile posers poisoning my stay there, and Qi Gong and Tai Ji courses that give the real practice a bad name. A karmic mistake to join there, although I met a spiritual woman with good healing skills there too, and some people were nice.
In this new location I train, spirituality is not included of course. But the people are friendly and fair, some trainers are surprisingly warm and friendly towards me, and there a many 16-20 year olds, some very achieved in what they do. They can be proud of it, and carry their success with more dignity and poise in their little finger than these fake Fu narcissists.
My gut feeling about this was right.
One thing though I do notice: seems some of the trainers there and some of the members undergo surgery for injury. That is one point in SOME of the Ninjutsu clubs I joined (there are fake ones too….), where traditional methods of self healing are taught, and dedication is given to keep your joints healthy. We lack that in the West clearly.
However, even though the esoteric and traditional asian martial arts clubs I joined taught very valuable skills indeed, many people going there are insufferable, and the trainers too by character. It just draws a certain audience….I think translating something from a traditional circumstance into our modern society does not always work out well.
And these fake clubs, they attract all kinds of LARPing crowds, like in a second rate trash movie. I feel stupid for having stumbled into that.
Greetings JMG,
I read these statistics that 40% of the US adult population is obese now.
No offense to the readers who are in that situation, but what kind of impacts do you think this has on the ability to work effectively?
I read that being obese can impact mental work as well.
Hi JMG,
A magical practice question.
Essential oils are often suggested as offerings. But what do we actually do with them? I’ve tried dropping a little on my wrist and on a stone in my working space. Any better suggestions?
Thanks so much
Hello John,
Hoping you are well. I’ve been reading your works and listening to some of you podcast interviews for a few years now and am incredibly grateful for your works and teachings, they have really expanded my knowledge on so many subjects.
For sometime now I’ve wanted to ask you about your experiences training in martial arts. More specifically I’ve heard you mention that you have studied aikido in your past. I have been studying aikido since I was in my mid teen years (now in my early twenties so not decades of experience). I’m currently training in Ki Aikido. I’d like to know about some of your experiences training and ask how and if you have found it a benefit to your practice and rituals?
All the best,
Leon
Mr. Greer,
I know you have talked about the birth of a new American civilization which you will believe will be centered on the Ohio River Valley but is there a possibility more then one civilization might arise in North America following the dissolution of Faustian civilization? When Classical or Apollonian civilization finally went down with the Roman Empire two civilizations emerged from the ashes; Magian to the east centered on Byzantium and Faustian to Northwest. The Roman Empire encompassed about 2 million square miles of territory at its height and the US currently occupies about 3.7 million square miles so there is enough land area to support two civilizations.
Also some people like Colin Woodward in his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America or Joel Garreau in his The Nine Nations of North America have noted there are distinct sub regions in North America that are increasingly diverging cultural. I have noticed that when I bring up these books or make any kind of observation that North America might be balkanizing people with mainstream political leanings (left and right) have a tendency to freak out and vehemently deny such a thing is happening. That goes double when I start talking about John Glubb or Spengler or Toynbee. I get the feeling a lot of people deep down realize that North America might be heading for its own Crisis of the Third Century and that thought really scares them.
Speaking of enchantment and disenchantment and scientist. The living human frame has capacities to detect, feel, know aspects of reality unavailable to dead scientific instruments. Besides the angelic, demonic, the Living God and in deference to polytheists, living gods here is another, a favorite quote – “Great forests, when they reach a certain age, take on an inhabited state. That is, there is a conscious and living presence in the forest. This does not occur in young forests and any forest that is extensively logged will lose this living presence. Humans have grown as a species in long relationship with this forest presence – a presence that possesses intelligence, awareness, and consciousness – and we are immediately aware of it whenever we encounter it. The loss of the great forests thus deprives us of something deeply necessary to our humanity.” Stephen Harrod Buhner from his book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers
Tell tale of my past experiences, part two:
A spiritual friend who is an achieved healing massagist as well as a professional musician and great sports man invited me to his birthday get together.
A great get together of spiritual, therapeutic and martial arts competence there was, some people I knew, others were new to me. A friend who trained Ninjutsu for 15 years, besides a great home worker and crafter. He has a big ego, too intense for some people, but is honest and upright. He has now switched to following the systema trainer Vasilyev. I trained with him once this autumn; he said the new practice has for once in this life led him to natural breath and movement. His training approach was very interesting, all laid out for dynamic and soft movent and breath, very little focus on form or strict procedure.
This man has in his life boarded a plane often and visited several grand masters of Ninjutsu, Tai Ji and now Systema. Also very spiritual, he and his woman live outside the city(Vienna) near the forests and talk to the forest spirits.
Another interesting man there was, whom I had not seen before. In the end of his twenties, he said he was a cook, but stumbled into heavy burn out. He redirected to healing massage and trauma therapy, often trating women with a history of sexual abuse. He also has the gift of seeing into people’s past lives as he said.
I refrained from talking him full of my history or anything, but unfortunately as it is, I carry post traumatic stress disorder with me all my life, once ten years ago even officially diagnosed at an occasion. When I looked in his eyes, I thought “If you do what you say, I cannot hide my condition, after all, you are trained to see it”.
Before we had talked, I said I envied them all for having chosen a path of healing craft and not like me, office man in informatics (although my govt job is as kind as can be in the circumstance). “But you chose what you do” he said, and I felt uncomfortably caught by that. Am I too afraid to break free from what my parents demanded of me, even now at 35? He recommended I should at least reduced my 30 hrs week to 25(this may actually be possible) and start doing courses in something valuable.
When I got up and said goodbye, he said “I can give you my contact and we can meet for coffee -I think there is a lot we could talk about”. I am looking forward to the occasion.
Also an woman came about 7 years older than me, I thought dimly I knew her, she recognized me instantly. It was the cousin of one of my cousins, last time I saw her I was maybe 13 or so. She is also a healing massagist, a very spiritual woman too and we talked a lot. It was a joyful surprise to both of us.
This event was blissful to me. I had had a hard time recently, now I’m better. I sometimes think, maybe I am not cut out to do a higher spiritual practice in this life, maybe my task is just get an ordinary life straight (boxing and wrestling as an ordinary goal, good diet and habits and so forth).
I had done spiritual practices over the years, sometimes reached a higher state of awareness, a higher skill of generating Qi.
Now I’m fine, but don’t find it in myself to continue. My life is demanding enough; taking care of my body and health is demanding enough;
I am utterly clueless and feel without direction, other than getting my ordinary life straight, grow up, take responsibility….my goals of strength and flexibility physically are already demanding.
One thing is true; I avoided to sell out entirely to the average academic boredom and illness, I did chose a different path.
I found your blog a few years ago on UnHerd.com. Thank you for helping me realize that I have been on the Druid path since childhood without knowing it.
My question: What is the role of Freemasonry in bringing the world to the current international crisis state where after 500 years of European derived spiritual and material colonization, the main drivers of this process are now pushing increasingly severe measures of control like censorship, police state surveillance, constant war, MMT, and forced genetically engineered transhumanism to maximize their extraction of wealth? I believe that the leaders of Freemasonry support every one of these movements to destroy the sovereignty of individuals and cultures so that they can totally control life on earth. My personal experience with individual Freemasons is that they align personally with this view. Although it is packaged as a course in personal development, Freemasonry itself might really be a school to indoctrinate the values and behaviors that serve the European derived economic elite. In this way a subservient class pyramid is created that effectively and surreptitiously assures wealth flow to the top. Liberty, fraternity, and equality only to apply to those who don’t threaten the established order.
Today, the day before Thanksgiving, I’m thinking of the assassination of JFK sixty years ago today. This is the song that got me into listening to Dylan more than I had… Mr. Dylan drops a lot of clues in his requiem song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbQkyvbw18
This article by Charles Eisenstein was written a few years ago, but is still very relevant about how the events of 11/22/63 continue to reverberate today:
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-america-that-almost-was-and-yet
On a more humorous note, this scene from Slacker comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9edQEzp7zGA&t=1s
On another, darker, note, there is a lot going on in the world today, as you might have noticed. In the words of Dylan, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgBhyU4IvQ
& again on a happy note I hope my fellow Americans all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day.
(P.S.: John… I got my copy of Mystery of the Cathedrals in the mail earlier this week… the few sections I’ve read so far, my just before sleep reading, have proved very illuminating. Thank you for suggesting I read the actual book. I also got my three copies of The Secret of the Five Rites, two as solstice gifts… looking forward to it! )
Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it tomorrow. May all the turkeys be on the table, not around it.
@JMG,
I have finished the six weeks of Solar candles. Now I will do six weeks of donating to a horse charity during the day and hour of the sun. Is any multiple of 6 a good amount (like 12) or are there only certain multiples I should use? I feel like I don’t know what I want in my life yet, but I’m still grateful for any insight that comes my way. Can I go ahead with the charity donations, like a “Thanks in advance”? Thank you.
What do you think about where we are at the timeline in the cycle of civilizations JMG? You have written extensively about our current predicaments and the fate of modern industrial society and that this current civilization is just one of many that has gone down the drain. But is it just another civilization of many that is going down, or is it a bit more significant than that? It seems that the current iteration of western civilization is quite anomalous from a historic point of view. The fact that it is the first truly global civilization that we have solid evidence for, what was before the ending of the last ice age is of course hard to know for sure. This current civilization is also the one and only we know of that across the globe is dependent on the same finite resources. There are lots of other anomalous features but it would take up more than this comment to list them.
I have been looking at among other things the Hopi-prophecies that seems to talk about this time. They specifically talk about four worlds before this one and that they all went down in cataclysms, the last one in a flood as many other traditions talk about. In their prophecies they have a set of signs that will appear before this, the fifth world, is destroyed. All but the two last of the signs have manifested. It would certainly be a bummer if they are right and the two last signs manifest. But maybe we are due for a shift of season in the mega cycle of ages? Or what do you think, is this something you have pondered? Are we heading for a greater shift than usual or is it one or more crash and burn civilizations before changing of the seasons?
Rod Dreher has been discussing the work of Diana Pasulka. Diana Pasulka has done academic study of UFO phenomena down through the ages. Her conclusions are that it is religious phenomena not extraterrestrial. Some folks in odd corners of the internet suggesting that these UFO/aliens might want to make appearances through the newly emerging AI technology.
JMG, et al, does anyone have thoughts on any of this?
Cheers,
Elizabeth
Dear JMG,
What do you think about the possibility of souls being able to split so that in the next incarnation the soul has split and there is two souls with two separate consciousnesses in two separate bodies which originates from one soul (or maybe one soul splits in three and is reborn in three separate bodies)?
In the same way maybe two separate souls (or more) can merge into one and be reborn as one soul in one body with one consciousness?
Just something i’ve been thinking about.
Hey JMG
Have you heard of a new book about the history of life and the earth that has come yo recently, “Otherlands” by Thomas Halliday? I recently have been reading a library copy and have found it to be a interesting exploration of what life was like throughout the millions of years of that life has existed.
I’m currently on chapter 12 which describes life in Rhynnie, “Scotland” 407 million years ago where life was just beginning to colonise the land, plants are recently growing, even the tallest of which are dwarfed by the 3 metre tall fungus or lichen called prototaxite, and the only creatures are Arthropods such as proto-springtails and proto-spiders.
The book is interesting in another way, which is that earlier on the author makes a subtle jab at current fears about climate change by pointing out that earth previously had climates equal to or “worse” than the predicted 1.5c temperature rise that is being predicted by climatologists.
I’ve noticed on a number of occasions that when I post a question on Magic Monday, the universe likes to provide the answer for me through some sort of weird synchronistic events. A few weeks ago, the topic of state-dependent memory came up, and I asked if it might explain why a lot of people who were into Plutonian things are now saying they never were*. The universe has managed to give me a very clear, emphatic answer: yes.
At work a few days ago, a song by Nirvana came on the playlist maintained by my coworker. My immediate reaction was revulsion, followed by a slight tinge of recognition. I chose to follow the tinge of recognition, ignoring the revulsion, and suddenly knew why it seemed familiar: I had heard the song literally hundreds of times, because I was deeply into grunge music until a few years ago. I used to love the song; but now I can’t stand it. Further, it took a serious effort of will to remember that I used to love the song; and a serious effort of will to then hold that memory. Had I not written it down later in my magical journal, this entire realization would be gone: I managed to completely forget about the whole thing by the next morning. As it stands, by the time I was able to write it down, I could not for the life of me remember which song it was, just that it was by Nirvana, and it was not one of the popular ones.
It’s occurred to me that not just would state-dependent memory be a plausible occurrence with Pluto, for Plutonian reasons it’s very likely a lot more intense than normal. The first is that state dependent memory seems very Plutonian; and so it’s likely that the state Pluto induces is one where this effect is far more markedly pronounced than it would be with most other states, even ones as alien as the one Pluto generates.
The second is that if these memories are as difficult to access as it seems, given how ephemeral most pieces of culture created since 1900 are, and given that most Plutonian phenomena appear to trigger some degree of revulsion among people not caught up in its spell, it seems quite plausible to me that this combination could result in the weirdness of the Plutonian Era being forgotten incredibly quickly; especially if any sort of disruption, as seems almost inevitable now, were to result in a serious disruption in information storage, and a corresponding loss of nearly everything not stored in physical forms.
This would be a truly fitting end for the Plutonian Era; not just does the Plutonian fizzle out and slowly vanish, nearly all of it ends up being forgotten, with most people unable to remember any part of it ever even existed. Some aspects of the 20th century, such as World War I, will remain as historical curiosities; others might enter the realm of myth (such as the Apollo program), but most of what made it truly weird could vanish without a trace, and if accessing our memories of it is as hard as my experience suggests, very few people would ever even know….
*https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/253660.html?thread=44607196#cmt44607196
Heavy wet snow blessing our little New England town today; wouldn’t it be nice if we could grace Earth, with thanks, somehow? even if I were young again, I would need to rest a bit, since there is alot of paths to clear up here on the ridge between town, and the Connecticut River. So I’m going to practice typing with all fingers between paths. I’m reading Thomas Paine’s _Age Of Reason_ and surprised. ‘The Universe is Infinite! there is no corner without Life in it; the Planets taught us to Reason; Nature is our guide and tutor and provider; we cand read Natures lessons in it’s signs.’
IDR how many American Revolutionaries were Deist.
_The Name Of the Rose_ is set this time of year, and I’ve re=read it more than once, and I’m reading it again; similar core; also happened to pickup _Mystery Teachings of the Living Earth_ by Mr. Greer — similar and similar!
Then looking at the planets transits, Pluto, (who was in Capricorn when constitutional law was born to the ringing of Liberty) Neptune (who rules all tides not ruled by the Moon) Uranus Mars are indicating revolution. Or it may be, evolution. Or just a change in the narrative. A plot wist?
Which do you think, or is it something else?
Running on empty as we sail into the Gulf of Oman? I’m just thankful I’m not a Marine stationed on that aircraft carrier. Or a swabby. I-mean-sailor. Apparently there is no Commander In Chief. Might not be a bad thing, actually — their adversaries may decide to watch as the neo-state, newworldorder wannabe world administrators trip over their own cleverly strategized monopoly game, and have a good laugh.
I mean, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (Oh, the Irony!) was commissioned in 1977, I just hope it doesn’t break a prop shaft.
Luke Dodson on his substack pointed me to this interview with Alan Moore:
https://thequietus.com/articles/32179-alan-moore-illuminations-interview
It’s caused me to radically revise my estimate of Moore’s intelligence downwards. He was still socially isolating in October 2022, and seems to uncritically accept government narratives despite being an anarchist.
But more than that, his views on block universe theory render everything he says incoherent. The universe is predetermined and there’s no free will, but he exhorts people to behave kindly because we all have to relive our lives over and over? How can you possibly square this with anarchism?
He thinks this is a humane philosophy – what about, I don’t know, the people who burned to death in Dresden? They just get to relive that horror for all eternity?
And why become a magician if no change is possible? Is all his Golden Dawn hoopla just set dressing and play acting and astral tourism in service of his weird public persona?
The Grauniad (UK) is having hysterics about the predicted Dutch general election result, though it’s likely that three or more other parties will try to form a coalition to shut Geert Wilders’ PVV party out of government for the time being even though they are set to get more seats than any other party. Needless to say, the AFD in Germany and Orban in Hungary are delighted. Here in Britain, I expect similar happenings in 5-6 years at the General Election after-next.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/22/netherlands-dutch-general-election-vote-result-exit-poll-prime-minister-government-live-latest-result
I’ve been reading two of your books on occultism the philosophy workbook and fellowship of the golden section, I’ve found the theory very interesting-many of the ideas e.g: re-incarnation and existence of other planes as real as physical plane e,g astral (which I think after reading I’ve had spontaneous projections onto usually after experiencing lucid dreams and or sleep paralysis) certainly makes more sense to me intuitively than the scientific materialism forced down every-one’s throat, which seems to be making people more nihilistic and depressed than they would otherwise be. I’ve recently taken up the discursive meditation practice as well as a few affirmations and the S.O.P ritual which I’m still learning, it seems to be subtly changing me in a positive way.
My question is, since I was partly drawn towards occultism to try to improve my mind (specifically cognition), to what extent is improving intelligence via occultism possible? My guess is that intelligence (which I’m using to mean whatever the IQ tests are measuring) is at least in large part a consequence of a more developed mental sheath? Since occultism is about deliberately evolving the astral body and mental sheath it should be somewhat achievable to become more intelligent-or do you think intelligence is, as many social scientists e.g: Peterson and evo biologists like Dutton, Lynn et al claim (based on large correlation studies I think), almost entirely genetically determined and therefore simply related to how well built the nervous system of the person happens to be.
Cheers,
Saul
I am looking to practice my Modern Order of Essenes healing techniques, especially the healing hands, which is a form of distance healing in which the divine aligns the recipient with spiritual forces to facilitate healing downstream. It can be done for any physical, mental, or spiritual ailments.
If you or someone you have the legal right to consent for, such as a child, would like to receive healing hands, please let me know here, message me on Dreamwidth at kylec.dreamwidth.org, or email me the details at fratch, followed by gmail. You can share as much or as little as you like, though a real first name should be the minimum. Nothing else is required.
I will call upon my own deity for help, but if you have one you would prefer, please let me know and I can call upon yours instead.
Andy, interesting. I’ll want to hear about what happens when people put it to use.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
KM, thanks for this. I’ve made it a point when money permits to buy paintings by traditional artists — we have some lovely watercolors here at home — and I’d like to encourage others to consider doing the same thing.
Gor, I cover that in my Patreon and SubscribeStar accounts, which are part of how I pay my bills…
Miles, the universe doesn’t hand you a purpose. (The universe doesn’t notice your existence, for that matter.) You have to create one yourself, and choose to follow it — and what other people say and think is irrelevant. You have a life; what do you want to do with it? Decide, and then go accomplish it.
Mr Kemble, I’ve made such arrangements. I recommend subscribing to, or at least noting down the postal address of, New Maps, the magazine of deindustrial fiction. It’s inexpensive and well worth reading, and I’ll be using that venue to start transitioning to a print magazine if in fact the internet suffers a serious breakdown. Mind you, I’m not expecting that to happen, but of course we’ll see.
Anonymous, the largest body of votes was for why China has been able to maintain its civilization through many cycles of rise and fall, while some other civilizations have failed to do so.
Maxine, it astounds me that so few people in power have bothered to notice that this is why fascist regimes came to power in so many countries in the 1930s: the established governments couldn’t be bothered to do anything about problems facing their citizens, so the citizens turned to guys in jackboots who would at least get something done.
Clay, I’ve been watching that very closely. It certainly looks as though the entire structure of authority in the US and other Western countries is suffering a collapse in legitimacy — and that promises a short lifespan for the current system. Hang onto your hat!
Bradley, no, I hadn’t seen that. Do you have a link?
Jeffrey, trade will drop sharply in volume but it will remain important. In the deindustrial future, expect most ordinary commodities to be produced within a hundred miles or so of where they’re used, but there will still be plenty of products worth trading over long distances. Singapore in particular is very well placed because it’s close to the largest growing areas for spices in the world, and spices have been traded internationally for millennia — there was a time when ordinary black pepper was literally worth its weight in gold in Europe, for example, and the merchants who shipped it from your end of the world across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, and from there via caravan and ship to Europe, made vast amounts of money. So globalization is doomed but trade isn’t, and the Malacca Strait will remain crucially important until continental drift changes the shape of continents and seas millions of years from now. (Btw, no, you’re not first — I just hadn’t gotten to moderating comments yet.)
Curt, I’ve seen martial arts LARP clubs here in the US, too, and the attitude’s much the same. Bah.
Tony, remember that most of that 40% are mildly obese — that is to say, they would have counted as normal weight until the standards were changed — and are perfectly capable of functioning. Demonizing obesity doesn’t help anybody…
Elena, the way I’ve always used them as offerings is to have a little bowl of water on the altar, and put a few drops of essential oil into the water. It floats to the surface and evaporates from there.
Leon, I practiced aikido for a while in my youth, but ended up doing my serious work in taijiquan instead — it was purely a matter of the opportunities I had available to me at that time. I didn’t progress very far with aikido but I kept a great respect for the system and its esoteric dimensions (which of course I’ve only read about — you don’t get those when you’re still working on getting your shiho-nage and irimi-nage to work right!
Karl, good heavens, yes. The United States is not a single nation except in political terms, and that’s a temporary state of affairs; the dryland west is already being reabsorbed by Mexico culturally and demographically, and several other regions are going their own way a little less rapidly. My comment about a future American civilization, though, was based on Spengler’s concept of great cultures — cultures that establish a frame for a large number of nations. I expect one of those in northeastern North America beginning maybe five centuries from now; another — the Mexican great culture — is recovering from the Spanish conquest and will doubtless reestablish itself over the next few centuries. In the meantime, I think it’s most likely that the US will break up into a number of smaller nations — my novels Twilight’s Last Gleaming and Retrotopia both take that for granted.
Moose, as a Druid I’m not exactly likely to argue!
Curt, it sounds to me as though your next path is about to open in front of you…
Marco, you’ve clearly never met any of the leaders of Freemasonry. I know quite a few of them personally, and your description leaves me scratching my head, because none of the high-ranking Freemasons I know are on board with any of what you’re talking about. The Craft stands for civil rights and individual liberties — that’s why Lenin, Hitler, and the Ayatollah Khomeini all banned Freemasonry as soon as they seized power over their respective countries, and it’s also why so many young American men who reject the status quo are joining it now. Thus I’d like to suggest that you’ve swallowed a bunch of lies — and you might want to do some thinking about who benefits from spreading such claims about an organization that upholds personal, political, and spiritual liberty.
Justin, thanks for this and you’re most welcome! Fulcanelli’s always worth close reading.
Patricia M, ha! That may be the best Thanksgiving blessing I’ve heard yet.
Cs2, any multiple of 6 is fine, and it’s perfectly appropriate to thank the Sun in advance. That used to be quite traditional back in the day.
Fredrick, my take is that we’re at the peak of the fifth world, to use the Native term, or the fifth great cycle of civilizations. That doesn’t mean it’s all going to go to bits at once — there will be civilizations after this one as the Eurasian epoch winds down, like the Atlantean, Lemurian, Hyperborean, and Polarian epochs before it. If the traditional lore is right, though, just as the civilizations before us in the present cycle were each bigger and more powerful than the last, the civilizations after us will be smaller and less powerful, until this epoch is at an end and we pass through millennia of small cultures and low tech before the next epoch gets going.
Elizabeth, I’ve read one of Pasulka’s books and thought it was very cogent. Her one mistake, to my mind, is the most common mistake made in looking at UFOs — she tends to lump all of it together as the results of a single cause. I’d argue instead that many different things have been buzzing around under the label “UFOs” (or its current replacement “UAPs”), and so no one explanation can account for all of them.
Hi Andy,
I got through just one comment… 🙂 Please don’t take offence, but the reason voltages AC, or DC, run at high voltage and low current is because the cables are cheaper. Higher current demands thicker cables, otherwise the resistance in the wire turns the cable into an electric heater. Run hot enough, and the cables will melt. Swapping volts for current, or AC to DC and then back again at good levels of efficiency is something we’ve been able to do for decades. Economics drives the process. People often tell me that solar panels are just getting so much cheaper, and it’s true. A few years ago I picked up 16x 200W panels for $400 second hand, and they work fine. It’s the cables dude, those are eye ball meltingly expensive. And proper fuses and switches for high current DC are also not something you ever want to skimp on – ask me why!
Two words, good luck!
Cheers
Chris
Henry, I know of no evidence that supports that. Sorry.
J.L.Mc12, no, I hadn’t heard of that! I’ll see if my local library system has a copy — I adore books like that.
Anonymous, hmm! That would be fascinating indeed.
Mark, most of the American revolutionaries were Deists, and Paine himself was at least peripherally involved in late 18th century Druidry. As for our current predicament, I’m waiting to see what comes out of the meeting of Arab foreign ministers going on in Beijing right now…
Cliff, that sort of incoherence is typical among those who insist that there’s no free will. I’ve often thought that an appropriate response to such people is to punch them in the face, and when they get upset, say, “I didn’t choose to do that. Your face was predestined to be punched.”
Robert, European politics seems to be becoming interesting again, after a long period of impressive dullness. I hope you’re right about Britain; it desperately needs something other than endless attempts to perpetuate a failed status quo.
Hi JMG,
I am curious what do you think the US will do once the fracking oil & gas output declines?
My thoughts are that:
*Canada is going to be maxed out soon
*Venezuela could increase its output, and lately the oil & gas business has been quite dysfunctional,
so it is very uncertain
*the Middle East oil & gas is in high demand with competition from Asia and Europe, and it will be
much more difficult to use the military to demand more oil exports to the usa
*one good candidate is fracking in Argentina
I think the best option will be to reduce oil & gas use, which means maybe EVs , and less industry and uncerrtain house heating systems.
The Ecosophia Book Club meets in Calgary, reading both books by JMG and those by other fine writers that come up on JMG’s blogs. Contact ashrountree on the yahoo electronic postal service (.com) if interested.
Howdy,
Recently i heard about Mormons doing “posthumous baptisms” of dead non-mormons, and it really makes me uneasy. In some cases, they are performing this ritual for people who were dead before Mormonism was a thing.
From a Western occultist perspective, what are the ramifications of something like this? Does it have any actual effect? From my limited background, at best it’s disrespectful to the dead (and hopefully has no effect), and at worst it seems like an entire religious group asking for some kind of ancestral curse. Any thoughts?
Thanks and i always enjoy reading your blog.
Hi John Michael,
Ha! Hadn’t heard of the change in acronym for UFO’s, but given how institutions love their use of acronym’s, it’s what I’d call a dead-give-away! 🙂 Our elites sometimes work hard at keeping us all entertained with their antics. I’m trying to think of a funny use of the acroynm UAP, but the best I could come up with in the time available was ‘United American Purblind’? Not quite snappy enough. Might have to do some more work there.
I’m beginning to note that even the official news sources are raising concerns about the consequences of the recent upswing in immigration. It looks like a tripling in absolute numbers from that of only a few years ago pre – ‘that topic which is unmentionable here’. I’d have to suggest that this is an economic policy for the sole purpose of increasing the pressures on house prices. Cast your mind back to the drought at the turn of the century and the dams supplying the big smoke were down to the low teens percentage. I do wonder what surprises the next drought will hold in store? But really, there are so many elements to the story that are at best tottering on the road to failure, that it’s hard to choose which will be the element to break. I guess this is what the Limits to Growth Standard run model was graphically attempting to explain to whomever cared to listen, economics be damned.
I’m genuinely surprised that our policy makers have such limited vision. Purblind perhaps? 😉 Why do you reckon there is a lack of vision coming from those folks?
Cheers
Chris
It’s time for the monthly report on renewable power at the Bonneville Power Administration.
It was a calm month which was not good for wind power. The worst day was October 18 at 1.7% of rated capacity. The best day was Oct 23 at 73.3%, much better. The monthly average was 14.4%, call it 1/7 of rated capacity.
For solar the worst day was Oct 16 at 5.4% of capacity. The best day was Oct 7 at 32.5%. The average for the month was 19.4%.
For the monthly dunkelflaute, the worst one was 15.75 hours starting on the evening of 15 Oct., not that bad, but it wasn’t the only one. The wind kept shutting down at sundown, so there were multiple calm nights when you would have been on the batteries. For the long dunkelflaute the average power demand was 5125 MW. Total energy demand was 80,718 Mw-Hr. To supply that would take 20,697 Tesla maxpower batteries with a total weight of 8.7 Nimitz class aircraft carriers.
“but the reason voltages AC, or DC, run at high voltage and low current is because the cables are cheaper.”
More exactly, plastic insulation is cheaper than copper.
A sci-fi story I haven’t seen yet is when a plastic-eating bacteria starts munching down on the electrical wiring. All the low voltage wiring in your house is insulated with plastic, and plastic eating bacteria are beginning to evolve. The high-voltage lines would be safe, and the collapse of the electrical system would start in the wetter climates as the bacteria still need water even if they build a biofilm that can absorb it from the air.
In other news, Nuscale cancelled it’s pilot modular nuclear reactor due to rising costs, as in high interest rates. “NuScale said in January the target price for power from the plant jumped 53% to $89 per megawatt hour, raising concerns about customers’ willingness to pay.”
Offshore wind isn’t doing any better, besides the cancellation of windfarms near New Jersey the UK had to offer more Free Public Money. “Ministers have agreed to raise the starting price of the government’s next auction for offshore wind subsidies by around two-thirds to £73 per megawatt hour to help more offshore windfarm projects to move ahead despite higher costs.
The government has also raised the starting price for floating offshore wind projects by more than 50% from £116 a MWh to £176 a MWh before the next subsidy auction in 2024.”
So no-one can make a buck without free money from either the bank or the government (who gets it from the bank.)
As far as the traditional art goes, my background screen on the laptop is The Lady of Shalott by Waterhouse. Art is that which I can not do, and I certainly can’t do that. 🙂 Miranda-The Tempest is pretty good too.
The background on the desktop is the Hubble Deep Sky Survey. It’s not quite the Total Perspective vortex, but it’s close enough. “Point it at the emptiest part of the sky you know of,” they said.
#9 Clay Dennis
Yes, and some young people are sympathising with Bin Laden too judging by their reaction to his viral Letter last week. I do wonder if in a few years some of them will start sympathising with ISIS as well – beheadings and burnings notwithstanding.
@JMG, why do you think it is that there is such a strong bromance between much of the woke left and Islamism, a religion whose values seem to fly in the face of everything the woke left seem to believe? And do you think one of the two groups is using the other or is it just a partnership of opportunity? We’ve seen them both out in force at anti-Israel demos recently. Islamists have made it crystal clear they view women as second class citizens, homosexuals as perverts deserving death and subjugation and that they aspire to subjugate everyone to radical Islam, even the generally atheistic woke left.
I can’t believe even the woke left are naïve enough to believe that there will be rights for them, especially the gay and transgender ones, under the rule of the radical (and not so radical) Islam they defend at every opportunity.
Thought I’d share some experiences after a few months working on the Five Rites and see if anyone else would like to as well. I do them every day. I’m up to sets of 19 although I usually have a light day or two (sets of 5) each week as they are more taxing than I expected! Early on, I was adding pull-ups and other stuff as well but I got exhausted – finding myself sitting with my eyes closed at my desk a lot, needing a long nap every day – so I am just focusing on the Rites untill I’ve adapted to doing 21 each per day.
Main observations:
– increased sexual energy, but balanced somewhat by physical exhaustion so not a major distraction
– feeling loosened and opened up energetically rather than energised at this stage
– I find the Rites hit my chest, shoulders and triceps most, which are thickening up nicely
– My body keeps on urinating regularly through the night just as it foes through the day, usually three or four times a night now
– I laugh to myself much more frequently about funny little things
– I feel like I have more charisma and that women seem to pay more attention to me
– I haven’t noticed any change in weight/body fat distribution but I have usually been pretty hungry and eat as much as I feel like
– The period practising the Rites has been the smoothest and most consistently happy few months of my life. I’ve never felt so content and positive
I’d love to hear more about others experiences!
Something I’ve been thinking about lately is the arc of Nationalism in left wing and liberal circles. Historically, late 18th and up through the 19th centuries nationalism was seen as part of the radical framework. For example, a commentator above was pushing the standard Roman Catholic line on Freemasonry and if my historical understanding is correct, the Church hated Freemasonry because they saw it as allied with secular liberal nationalist movements throughout Europe and the Americas. Nationalism was the future in progressive circles along with democracy, individual liberties, market capitalism, various flavors of socialism on the radical edges and so on. I know that the socialist radicals became anti nationalist because of the influence of Marxism on those schools of thought, but liberalism too had a strong divergence away from nationalism over the course of the 20th century. Is it because the two leading liberal regimes, France and the USA became imperial powers in their own right? Nationalism today is almost a snarl word in liberal circles. It seems like the years 1914-1945 are key as they are to so many other things. Teddy Roosevelt was an open nationalist, Franklin Roosevelt was about as anti-Nationalist as they come. Just something I’ve been wondering about and if our host or any commentators has any insight I’d be curious to hear!
Cheers,
JZ
Before we get going, I want to make two comments about deleted comments. First, this is not a place to post epic screeds about something that interests you. If you want to do something like that, open your own blog or Dreamwidth journal, put the screed there, and then post a short paragraph with a link. That way those who want to read your thoughts about something can do so, and those who don’t won’t have to page through yards of text to find the next comment they want to read.
Second, I’ve had several readers contact me to complain about long posts that do nothing but repeat what “AI” (that is to say, large language models, which aren’t actually intelligent) have to say about this or that. I’ve decided that they have a point, and so I will not be putting through any further posts of this type. This is a venue for human beings, not for pseudointelligent machines. ‘Nuf said!
With that said, let’s proceed.
Saul, intelligence is a complicated thing, and what can be measured readily in mass surveys or by multiple choice tests is a very small and flattened-out portion of it. Whether occult practice can cause increased IQ scores is an interesting question that would best be settled by competent double-blind controlled studies. Whether occult practice makes it easier to function intelligently in the real world is quite another matter; my experience suggests that some practices (for example, discursive meditation) do in fact do this, some others (for example, passive mediumship) have the opposite effect, and still others (for example, ritual magic) don’t seem to have much impact one way or another.
Tony, I think the first thing the United States will do once oil and gas output starts dropping is a shrieking hysterical meltdown that would impress the stuffing out of a spoiled two-year-old. Next up is a vast amount of handwaving and pompous babble about how this or that or the other technology will allow us to maintain our current standards of living on twinkle dust and unicorn flatulence. EVs will get a look in there, even though nearly all the electricity that powers EVs is generated by burning fossil fuels. Then we’ll probably try to invade somebody. Finally, a few years down the line, the hysterics will fall silent, the handwaving will run down, the useless military antics will stop, and we’ll start doing the obviously necessary thing, which is getting by on a more modest energy budget.
Bee, it’s very disrespectful to the dead, but you can’t actually baptize someone (and make it stick) without their willing consent. My guess is that most of the dead roll their spectral eyes and walk away.
Chris, I think they stopped thinking about the future in any real sense a long time ago. All they think about is the next election and the next quarterly profit statement, and they imagine those as existing in a sort of indefinite continuation of the present. That’s why the future blindsides them so thoroughly.
Siliconguy, thanks for this as always. Real world data is always welcome! With regard to science fiction about bacteria eating insulation, how about this one?
That saw print in 1971.
Sam, were you by any chance around in the very early 1970s? A lot of hippies, who’d been doing the antinomian, free love, drugs everywhere kind of trip, up and turned into fundamentalist Christians. “Jesus people” were the transitional stage: long hair and beards but copies of the Good News Bible everywhere and no more casual sex or drugs. By 1975 or so they’d shaved, cut their hair, put on the “square” clothes they’d claimed to despise, and were going to Southern Baptist churches. That’s what’s going to happen to the woke shortly — they’re already edging that way — but I expect a lot of them to convert to Islam instead of Christianity. All things considered, it’s not that far from “all men are phallocentrically oppressive rapists” to “I ought to veil myself in a hijab and never leave home without an escort.”
Spectivus, I’m glad to hear this!
I believe this gentleman reads JMG.
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/re-enchantment?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=25676&post_id=139075565&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMDAwNDIxLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxMzkwNzU1NjUsImlhdCI6MTcwMDY2NzE2NSwiZXhwIjoxNzAzMjU5MTY1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjU2NzYiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.EhQL-Lax_YC9CUZTtGRdQdwdJIpmYylXbyIiJHfXBIA&r=16vj9&utm_medium=email
Been reading you for many years. So will really miss this place if this internet thingy dies hard. (Mail address noted for New Maps). It’s a real Time in History we are living in. No zombie apocalypse I half hoped/ fretted over. Just reading my journals from five years ago for comparison to our current time and you sure nailed the slow staircase down version.
Maxine- bear chilli con carne,while a tad strong flavour, is a decent dinner. Sailing home a few years ago was startled by a dozen deer swimming over to Pender Island. Didn’t think clove hooves were viable swim fins but they were riding the flood tide and making way. Had a 8′ fence on my yard in Brentwood bay back in the day to keep the buggers out.
My folks, Depression era Prairie types, didn’t use long distance phone except for family emergency but used a Round Robin mail. With a dozen siblings in each parent’s world. You’d get a big envelope with all the news, gossip, pictures. You’d take your old letter out and write a new one and post it onward. We’re not there yet for comms but it’s a great way to keep the Clan. Ham radio for the non deaf but some juicy family stuff ya don’t want gushed over the airwaves.
#30 Robert / JMG
Remember that here in the UK we have a different electoral system to many of the European countries where other parties are gaining. Like the US/Australia/Canada/NZ we have a variation of the first-past-the-post electoral system which virtually guarantees dominance by two main parties (Lab and Con) with one taking a majority of the seats in Parliament since to win a seat a party has to concentrate its votes in one constituency. Countries where anti-establishment parties have made real gains have proportional systems where it doesn’t matter where the voter lives. Thus we are unlikely to see the kind of gains by an anti-establishment party, left or right, that we’ve seen in the Netherlands or Germany (or in France where they are likely to have a “far right” President next time).
Consider how in the 2010 General Election the UK Independence Party and the British National Party on the right got 919,000 and 564,000 votes respectively and no seats. The Greens on the left got 265,000 votes and one seat (concentrated in ultra-left Brighton). And yet dividing the 29.7m votes between 650 constituencies gives around 45,700 votes per seat.
The same would happen again unless the winner of the next general election chooses to be the turkey that votes for Christmas and replaces FPTP with PR. So I don’t expect to see much change from the usual choice of uniparty parasites and incompetents that we always get presented with to convince us we have any agency about who runs our country.
Frankly we’d be better off just giving the country to the King to run at this point. At least he doesn’t have to worry about election cycles.
Hi Mr. Greer, thanks as always for taking the time to field questions from your readers.
I wanted to ask if you have any specific opinions or insights you might want to share on the situation in Latin America. Is there any one nation or nations that have caught your attention in recent years? Are you noticing any trends that we should take note of? I’m a 20-something year-old citizen of one of the more stable countries of Central America, and, though I have no intention of moving elsewhere (as so many other Central Americans are doing), it’s increasingly obvious that I and many others of my generation will probably not enjoy the same social safety benefits that our parents and grandparents did. The drug trafficking business is everywhere, too, which means that our decrepit public education system is engaged in a race against time with the narcos to capture young people before they’re recruited into crime. The hope everybody has is that we’ll get enough kids to learn English and stay out of the drug business by landing jobs in the tourism and IT industries, both of which depend almost entirely on European and N. American money.
“it’s a new kind of circuit that switches from high voltage low current power to low voltage higher current. To put it another way, it can take the diffuse and impractical energy you can get from various sources of ‘static’ electricity to something that we might just be able to make use of in a small way.”
A very small way. Where humans are concerned a static charge is from 60 to 500 millijoules. One joule is 0.000278 watt-hours. That is a lot of cat-petting while wearing fleece to get any work done.
I was lent a copy of “The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft” published 2014 by Race Point Publishing. I am reading each story (they are quite often very short) and pausing before going on to the next. My initial impression is that the author had a very deep awareness of the magical aspects of the world. Anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying reading his works and am reminded of mine own very magical youth.
Courtinthenorth
Siliconguy 41: Telephone central offices (where the switching and transmission equipment is located) run at 48volts DC and consume lots of power. There are plenty of large diameter copper cables inside those buildings running up and down between floors, and damage to the insulation from rats has caused big electrical fires. So there’s no need to wait for insulation-eating-bacteria for a story. The rats are already on it. (The insulation on those cables is pre-treated with rat poison to help control the problem. )
All of the stages of conversion between AC and DC in a telephone central office is pretty staggering — but that’s another story.
JMG, I hope this is an appropriate, concise way to see if your other readers would like to pursue a subject outside of your blogs. I apologize for providing a long article here rather than in an outside link.
There have been some past conversations here about AI, but it looks like our host now prefers to not have those continue in this forum. Would there be interest among readers here in an information article from me about OpenAI, in the news this last week for a failed attempt at a coup expelling its CEO? I have relevant professional experience to provide a neutral overview, reasonably free of bias – and, as always from me, with no AI generated content, only my own human perspective and words. I have no association with anyone involved in last week’s events, and nothing to promote or sell.
If there’s interest in this subject, I’ll put it on Dreamwidth and provide a one-line link here when it’s up. If there’s not interest here, that’s fine, I’ll not mention it further.
Hello JMG and jeffrey
Re: the viability of Singapore (of interest to me because I have a lot of family there)
Would climate change not affect Singapore’s future success? It’s entirely low-lying and already quite hot almost all year round.
SMJ
Hello Mr Greer
How wonderful that this week is the open post as I was thinking of a question earlier today and wondering if the topic for today would be suitable.
I’ve started practicing memorization with version of GMS system developed by Vladimir Kozarenko (this version is a swedish book by Mattias Ribbing). It seems to me to be a good system, heavily traditional memorization techniques but substituting the spiritual aspects with brain research which is the part I’m a little bit worried about.
So my question is if you could use this more materialistic memorization system without to much undue influences on ones spiritual practices?
To pick a topic I hope is squarely relevant, JMG, I used the blog’s search engine but didn’t see remarks from you about the classical gnostic premise that a confused, morally depraved fallen spiritual force, the demiurge, is the creator god of this universe. If I understand this religious premise correctly, the idea is that the problem of evil is solved by the closest universal God to us not being entirely good. From a greater spiritual universe, the demiurge did a botched copy-and-paste job. The successfully copied items are what is beautiful and good, while the twisted problems introducing defects, errors, and evil.
Is this a topic you’ve discussed? What is your perspective on it?
$17/gal EVs
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/study-fueling-electric-vehicles-17-gallon
Original pdf
https://www.texaspolicy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023-10-TrueCostofEVs-BennettIsaac.pdf
dear Quin/tunesmyth-
please don’t prune James yet! we’ve had adventures of me kidnapping him out of the hospital against everyone’s wishes and then we simplified his care a bit so his brain surgery can heal, checked out another doctor, and he seeeeems to be on the MEND! no lie. thanks for all the prayers, you all. we’re on your bridge over this chasm and i think we’re gonna make it to the other side.
that’s all i can write now but i wanted you all to know that i think James really is gonna come back from this.
we’re listening to “america’s cultural revolution” and i owe Temporary Reality a proper email first; i just read this section already. James can’t focus his attention on the book after his surgery and with his meds, so we’re listening and it was frustrating to get this to even work.
(smile)
also, thanks for the training. our foray into the medical industrial complex here in the heart of mordor, would’ve been slaughter for us without the past few years of these open posts on Papa’s sites, training me in how they do …well, EVERYTHING.
more much later. i’m in serious play now…
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
erika
Andy- One more splash of cold water on the “breakthrough” you report. Energy is the product of voltage, current, and time (when the voltage and current are constant; more precisely, it’s the time-integral of the instantaneous product of time-varying voltages and currents). We use higher voltage with lower currents to reduce transmission losses, then trade higher current for lower voltage to satisfy devices that physically demand low voltage. The physics of a light-emitting diode require voltage on the order of 2-3 volts, and there’s a tiny high-to-low voltage conversion circuit inside the base of a typical screw-in LED light bulb. Electrochemical cell voltages are in the 1-3 volt range, so we stack them together to get 9V and 12V “batteries”. Our “low-energy future” will not be low voltage, or low current, but low voltage AND low current, and for short periods of time. The reading room of the future may be lit by a solar-charged battery pack, driving LED lights, that’s carried into the house after a day out in the sun: low voltage, low current, and zero-distance transmission and distribution. When the batteries are discharged, we’ll tell stories and make music in the darkness.
Five years ago, I read and enjoyed your series which treated the cultural futures of Russia and America through a Spenglerian lens.
https://www.ecosophia.net/america-and-russia-tamanous-and-sobornost/
Among other things, I kept in the back of my head your suggestion that the central theme of a future Russian Great Culture will be соборность, which you described as “a collective identity that arises out of shared experience and shared history. It’s not defined from above, like the community of the faithful that provides Magian culture with its basic theme; rather, it ripens organically in individual lives, as the natural fulfillment of individual identity. In a culture of sobornost, what lies at the heart of each person is not some unique essence, but a link with the whole.”
Since reading this, I’ve had the opportunity to learn Russian and travel to a Russophone country, and during that process I inadvertantly came across a great example of sobornost in contemporary Russian culture: the Youtube channel “Музыка Вместе” (lit. “Music Together”), which features collaborative performances of well known songs involving artists in many cities across Russia. They’re very cool videos to watch and listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/@Musikavmeste
I’m sure there are performances in a similar format from other countries, but I’m not aware of any of comparable quality or scale. For example this one, currently at the top of the channel, featured one of the most well known living pop music artists in Russia at the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s5yyZ-7Dy0
(His own recording of this folk song is particularly famous).
Hi JMG,
You’ve spoken before about the Faustian pseudomorphisis, and how it influences America, and how beneath that overlay, this land has its own unique vibe.
I have been thinking about the saying “as goes California, so goes the rest of America.” And as I see California become more and more totalitarian, I wonder which civilizational impulse is driving it.
Would you say that California’s authoritarian impulse is more Faustian (i.e. European) or more American? From what I can tell Europe definitely seems to lean socialist, but to me it doesn’t seem to be going as authoritarian as America (or California in particular).
Hi JMG,
Can you recommend any books on the relativity of time, and perhaps the types of time you discuss in Weird of Hali?
Thank you.
@JMG and Tony regarding Obesity.
This is something that I have always found funny. The stats say one thing but just observing the people of the world I have always asked that question “Where are these supposed obese people?”. Sure there are some but it is nowhere near what the stats supposedly say.
The obsession with BMI is strange and folks try to latch onto anything that can measure things. BMI was considered more a mathematical model that represented the distributions of mid 19th century Belgum population, not an ideal on which health is to be measured on across many varied societies. Try applying this to someone of Vietnamese heritage and you will see just how silly it gets.
I say this as someone that is absolutely in the middle of “normal weight” according to BMI, the obsession with weight in a lot of ways is just pointless. The extremes can cause issues with individuals but any issues for most people are over played.
John Michael Greer,
The woke left are already converting to Islam:
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-western-women-are-reverting
Your Kittenship, I get the impression he reads Rod Dreher, and Dreher reads me. But I could be wrong!
Longsword, one of the things that amuses me no end about the people who insist that I’m always wrong is that their predictions have generally done a faceplant and mine are holding up quite well just now. The long slow ragged pace of decline is of course the most important thing I’ve predicted, and here we are…
Sam, I’m aware of that, of course. (I’m fairly sure Robert is British, for that matter.) If you’ll glance back a little in your own country’s history, it used to be the Conservative and Liberal parties that had the electoral system locked up — and then the Independent Labour Party, as it was then, sideswiped the Liberals and drove them into third party status. I don’t think it’s at all impossible that somebody else could succeed in playing the same trick on Labour at this point.
Cristina, I’m sorry to say that since I’ve never lived in Latin America and have only a fairly general knowledge about it, I’m probably not the person to ask. People from the US have a bad habit of thinking that they ought to tell the rest of the world what to do, when we can’t even pull our own country out of its current rapid decline! I don’t recommend planning on an ongoing flow of US and European money, though — the centers of the global economy are shifting to Asia right now, and the US in particular is mired in unpayable debt and probably facing decades of economic contraction and political turmoil.
Courtney, that’s one of the delightful things about Lovecraft. He was an atheist and a rationalist as an adult, but when he was a child he was crazy about Greek mythology — to the extent of setting up an altar and pouring libations to Apollo and Athena — and in later life he clearly read a lot of occult literature. (I’m sure you noticed how often he cites it.) That’s one of the reasons I find his tentacled horrors such comfortable company!
Christopher, yes, this is fine.
SMJ, a lot depends on how fast sea level rises. As I’ve noted in several previous posts, climate change doesn’t cause much heating in the tropics — it’s the poles that have their temperature drastically shifted.
Lurker, good question — you’d have to experiment with it and find out. Still, as far as I know it’s not likely to be any kind of problem — Western esoteric traditions have included a very wide range of memory work down through the years.
Christopher, it’s not a topic I’ve discussed, no. I find it implausible, as the material universe is hardly a botch job — sure, it doesn’t cater to the human sense of entitlement, but that’s nothing to get bent out of shape about. As a Druid, I find the natural world a compelling source of meaning, value, and beauty, and the gods (plural) who made and continue to shape it seem very worthy of reverence.
Bradley, many thanks for this!
Megatherion, thanks for this also — yes, that sounds very much like the sense of sobornost I’ve read about.
Blue Sun, at one point in US history Boston was the cultural cutting edge. Then it was New York. Then it was Chicago. Then for a while it was Los Angeles, with San Francisco snottily declaring that no, it was the real cutting edge. Now both Los Angeles and San Francisco are in steep decline, and we’re between cultural centers — I’ve suspected more than once that the next one will be Nashville, but we’ll see. As for California’s descent into autocracy, it’s simply copying China, which is increasingly the dominant cultural force all over the Pacific basin.
Luke, by that do you mean curved time and angular time? Those were invented out of whole cloth by American fantasy author Frank Belknap Long for his story “The Hounds of Tindalos,” and ended up being picked up by a lot of other Lovecraftian writers. (It’s a good story, for whatever that’s worth; you can read it online here.) I’m not familiar with any nonfiction sources on the relativity of time, though.
Michael, thanks for this burst of common sense.
Mark, doesn’t surprise me a bit.
I saw this article the other day
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-nat-cons-are-dead-wrong-middle-class-america-is-much-better-off-today-than-in-the-past/ and assumed that the author was being ironic, speaking tongue in cheek or some other rhetorical device but sadly he was being straight up serious.
Apparently the US is *not* in decline and the middle class is swimming in cream … just one paragraph near the end claims “What launched the more than $50 trillion in American wealth over the last four decades was an era of lower tax rates, freer trade, a stable dollar, declining union dominance, a vast expansion of right-to-work laws, and a generous legal immigration process that allowed the U.S. to welcome more than 25 million talented immigrants who became Americans and expanded the pie for everyone.”
Perhaps the author might benefit from a taste of Greer-o-nomics or maybe just a frontal labotomy (can you still get those?) … I just kept waiting for the zinger but it never came … I was unsure whether to be apalled, saddened, grateful (that I didn’t think that way) or maybe I should just be glad for him that he is happy in his fools paradise ***
*** checked his bio on the site “Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government is Devouring our Economy.” … that dreck came from a pundit and an economist and an author … perhaps redemption might be a rather hard road for him to hoe!
Hi JMG,
In the course of a conversation with Open Space and Milkyway on the “other” blog, they gave me some good Healing Hands advice and I suggested I’d report the results here, if that’s okay with you. Your input would be most welcome! If this is not appropriate, please give that delete button a workout, and I’ll try again on Magic Monday in hopes of finding them both there.
I’d been experiencing a sort of ping back of sorrow at times while offering Healing Hands. Always this was to people who’ve expressly given me permission, or, most often, from someone on Quin’s prayer list. Both Open Space and Milkyway suggested this is normal, and to tidy things up at the end of the session.
I tried Milkyway’s suggestion to do a round of Healing Hands for myself, “…with the clear intention that whatever belongs to me and does me good will stay with me, and whatever doesn’t belong to me, or isn’t good for me, will be carried away by the Healing Energies.”
I’ve done this twice now, and both times I felt a sort of gentle pulling energy above my head, and not long after a crazy little burst of happiness. Just Wow.
Thanks as always,
OtterGirl
SMJ,
Singapore’s government is taking steps to reduce the impact of climate change already, just Google it.
This might be more of a Magic Monday question, but here goes. I know someone who is smart, pretty, and just darn nice. She has a great, steady job. She has two young children. She is freshly divorced and her boyfriend has just moved in. I love her, but she has had bad luck (or poor judgment) with men. The situation makes me nervous. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but “Mama’s new boyfriend” is a cliche in the ER because it’s true — “Mama’s new boyfriend” is a leading hazard to small children. And she works ER! What can I do? Not like I can give them little mojos to wear around their little necks. What can I do from a distance?
Some notes on HAM and Shortwave radio:
The landscape on the airwaves has changed a bit. Shortwave broadcasts are less common now. BBC is alive and well, but many first world nations are curtailing broadcast. For the poorer nations of the world, SW is still the key means of getting news and entertainment. It is still worth hanging a random longwire and a good ground. On winter nights the bounce is good and you can hear the world when the weather is right.
For those that want to listen (VoyEARS) you can do quite well with that antenna and ground on a fair quality radio. For those that want to play a little bigger, I suggest HDRplay. You set up the outdoor wire and a good ground. The HDR play is a little box that you use between the antenna/ground and your computer. It’s British, so a community of free information, but a bit of fiddling. You download some software online and suddenly your computer becomes the equivalent of a mighty expensive radio. Lotsa graphics and fancy filters. With a stealth antenna and a cold water pipe, you can quietly listen to the world without leaving fingerprints.
HAM equipment, where you can send and receive, has always held value. Prices for new gear were fixed, and used gear with original boxing held value. FOREVER. This has changed! The old guys are selling off their excess gear and prices are falling on quality used equipment. (Ask for a call sign to sort out thieves.) New stuff is better than ever and selling at reasonable prices. Suddenly there are sales. Younger users are taking up the sport, but the approaches to HAM and the nature of the hobby are changing generationally. There is still NO question that when the deed goes down and someone cuts the fiber optic cables, or the power goes out, a 12V car battery and a rig can talk and listen to the world. –JD
Dear JMG,
Three things.
1. Are you saying Singapore at large will be fine ( or at least the closest thing to it) in the future? I did some research, and it seems like within a hundred miles of us is large parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, both countries which are known for food production. Will they be able to supply the necessary food to us? On that note, what about water? Our “Newater” tech has been working well thus far, and I hope it continues to do so, but I’m worried that the tech will become unattainable. Will it?
2. What are the future of pets in our world? I know dogs and cats have been around for Millenia, and it would put me at ease to know that they will continue to accompany us on this path.
3, a more spiritual question. As a catholic, I’m inclined to believe God exists, but your comment about Gods(plural) has got me thinking: which gods do you speak of? Also, on that note, is there an afterlife, or a way the soul exists after death? Is there a way to communicate with those who went before? Sorry, I’m not very in tune with the spiritual side of the sub!
Hello Mr. Greer,
A couple years back Chad Haag released a video responding to something you said. Here is the url https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enoFWCe7oeQ&t=2s. The gist of the video basically tells us you felt the social justice warriors made a Faustian bargain with dark spiritual forces that should last 7 years, thus meaning by 2023 the woke movement would begin collapsing and their luck would reverse. Mr. Haag words things in a much more nuanced way and notes that you said this in a comment, not a blog post, but he still went on to make a full video about this.
With that said, I’d like to get you take on the recent events of wokism in popular culture. South Park produced a scathing satire of woke Disney policies. Formerly major intellectual properties like Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, Indiana Jones, and others have seen their profitability collapse. Now Disney has publicly stated their intention to build less pollicaly driven movies. Likewise, the woke seem to have finally gone too far with their support of Palestine. Now corporate America is boycotting them and the Biden administration is not giving them whatever they want. Finally, the military recruiters are now so desperate that they are literally calling up the solders they dishonorably discharged on vaccination grounds and telling potential recruits that the covid vaccine is not mandatory. If this really was a Faustian bargain then what do you think comes next?
Curt # 18 as someone with a past IT career, I think now is a good time to get out if it doesn’t bring you satisfaction or peace of mind, and if you aren’t on the fast track to a life-changing Equity Event (as in, enough money to buy a home free and clear, and retire if you like).
There are many good career choice books that have been praised by countless people for many, many years. Try the top ten classics (Parachute, Discover Your Strengths, Pathfinder, Refuse to Choose, etc.) and see which speak to you.
They all suggest you think of times you’ve been happy, proud, fully engaged, that time flies by, whether or not you were doing something work related. Pleasing parents who don’t currently pay your bills is not an important factor!
Use your personal stories to help identify your strengths, talents, knowledge base. And equally important, interests, enthusiasms, passions, as well as the environments where you thrive. Prioritize these elements as best you can.
Also consider whether you agree with JMG about the decline of an over technical, over specialized, overly abstract System. If he’s right, that prediction calls for more personally integrated and sustainable ways to live and work.
All of this may not point to a single job title yet. That’s okay.
Once you have this list, talk with people doing a variety of jobs to learn more about the world of work, visit related meetups, and use resources such as O*Net (a US government career information site) and NAICS (a US government classification of industries), until you know enough to make some choices about specific paths to pursue and who you might most like to work for or serve.
Then approach them directly, regardless of posted offers or not; your research is likely to have led you to some insiders by this point, or you’ll know by now which Mr. or Ms. Big could be most receptive to your desire to work for them for your specific, well considered reasons.
Or, you’ll have a specific, well informed direction for freelancing or entrepreneurship. Steve Blank’s Four Steps to Epiphany, Michael Gerber’s E Myth series, Donald Sexton’s Trump Marketing and Michael Gordon’s Trump Entrepreneurship (whether or not you’re a Trump fan doesn’t matter, these books have solid business advice useful for liberals too), and Mike Moyer’s Slicing Pie, are some great books to explore if business building could be for you.
Most important tip: You don’t have to get this perfect. A few years from now, you may want to make another career change. It’s allowed!
Combining this with a spiritual practice, such as JMG’s free series of psychological healing articles, or using astrology to explore your innate nature, can be a powerful blend.
Thank you, JMG for # 65.
Not sure if here or Magic Monday is better for this, but I had another hilariously specific I Ching reading today. I got a lead on a government official who may be able to address the housing issues I face, including my not being able to look for another place while off my feet during broken toes healing.
I asked about reaching out to this person. My reading was 40.4 to 7.
Hexagram 40 is Deliverance, the prompt restoration of appropriate conditions.
Line 4 is said by commentary to be a metaphor for separating from inferior people so that one can connect with those who are beneficial: “Remove your toe, and then your companion comes, in whom you can trust.”
Hexagram 7 is The Army and refers to authority appropriately and powerfully representing the interests of all the citizens.
Trying beginning geomancy as you say it’s more specific, I got Populus in 2nd for money, Fortuna Minor in 4th for home, Populus in 7th for contracts, and Conjunctio for Judge, which seems to be promising.
To add on to my last comment, JMG, what is the future of entertainment? Are we gonna go back to frolicking in the fields? Maybe reading books? Some sort of computer gaming? Will TV shows still be a thing?
elizabeth re: ufos, I just discovered Jason horsley who in this older podcast talks about something like what you reference in your comment. Trauma response, government agency nudges, necessary fictions for the psyche. ‘It’s coming from the inside out but we’re experiencing it from the outside in.’ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/liber-ohio/id1153925147?i=1000414645799
I listened to three interviews w him on this same show. He said something that struck me in what I’ve experienced w going through Bardon’s initiation into hermetics. He ended up feeling very darkly about his occult journey and perceives himself to have escaped. But one can hear from the metaphor in his current tongue that he still carries the learning and way of looking at the universe, humans, other beings. In any case. He finds occultism to always be fundamentally about will to power. And then also this requires domination of one’s body. It heightens the split between the psyche and the body with the mind over matter as the goal in a sense— being able to sense things with the minds eye for example that aren’t there to be scented. Smelling cinnamon on demand. Where I find more compelling and useful grounded ‘granny’ type magic, sensing with body and intuition what is in front of one, divination (which has been playing absolutely wild with me lately and guidance/cross border helpful communication), physically grounding imaginable work as you’ve suggested, using herbs (wild type full spectrum original pharma). I really appreciate when you said “my experience suggests that some practices (for example, discursive meditation) do in fact do this, some others (for example, passive mediumship) have the opposite effect, and still others (for example, ritual magic) don’t seem to have much impact one way or another.“ Discursive meditation plus remembering that the world speaks and has opinions, feels responsible but also respectful and not all about power-over, smashing the serpents head firmly with the foot. ThNks as always for the space .
Re: First past the post voting
I was already going to ask this . How come that the Canadian parliament, in spite of first past the post voting, contains sizeable representations of at least four parties?
Is this due to historical or psychological circumstances, or is Canadian electoral law in fact somehow more open to smaller parties than in the UK or USA?
Quick addendum, here’s the new site of horsley and it is ‘back to the land/ land made man’ gratitude to ‘nature’ and recognizing a many many handed collaboration behind the individual will
https://landmademan.com/
Whenever I examine the assassinations of the two Kennedy brothers I soon stop because what I find is so disturbing. Though not directly related I had an experience that somehow seems relevant. In the late seventies I had a long layover at O Hare airport in Chicago. I decided to take a walk outside. As I was going along a wave of what I can only describe as satanic evil washed over me from behind. I turned around and there behind me was Henry Kissinger with two bodyguards. I immediately turned to my right and returned to the airport building.
@Moose, thank you for quoting Stephen Harrod Buhner. I discovered his work a few years back and it is all absolutely wonderful. One regret I have had was that I did not reach out to him to thank him for his contribution to the world. By the time I worked up the courage, he had already departed for a journey beyond the moral world.
@JMG “that sort of incoherence is typical among those who insist that there’s no free will. I’ve often thought that an appropriate response to such people is to punch them in the face”
Oh my gosh yes! So many folks like to think of them as this sort of hyper-intellectual because they act as though they have seen through the illusion of free will. But it is almost always just a form of mental LARPing in drag.
@Christ at Fernglade. Recently I bought a house, a small two bed room thing at a surprisingly reasonable price. I love the 70 hectare nature reserve it backs onto. Nothing compared with your location I’m sure. 😉 But the real estate agents are well aware of this immigration push. There is no need for them to haggle prices down because immigration is filling in the gaps of poor planning everywhere. But for every gap they fill, it makes two more. A rough future ahead for our part of the world. I hope Holmgren is right with his idea of a Retro Suburbia.
And lastly JMG, for AI posts all I will say on that tech is this. The writers on the TV show ‘The Simpsons’ said that the hardest part of writing the show was when they had to make something deliberately boring and dull for a joke. If only they had AI tools back then. It is so dang good at writing draft boiler plate corporate emails that are beyond pointless. It says in 500 words what many would say in 50! What a marvel it is to be sucking rivers dry to cool the data farms that produce such drivel. A true innovation in the banal.
What was going to be a comment on last week’s post kept evolving until it became its own essay, expanding on “Science as Enchantment” and looking at other ways that the scientific paradigm mirrors older stories.
https://dendroica.substack.com/p/parallel-paradigms
“When I learned American History in school, I learned a particular story. This continent was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus. It was effectively “empty” – although yes there were some “Indians” who were sometimes helpful and sometimes violent – until it was “settled” from east to west by immigrants, fulfilling the “manifest destiny” of expansion.”
“In nearly every major religion, the truth was “discovered” by a prophet. The prophet spread the word, and gradually the same truth became “settled” in holy texts and in the minds of priests and adherents. Souls were effectively “empty” until they were baptized or converted, at which point they could embrace a “destiny” in heaven.”
“Scientific truth was “discovered” by Newton and Darwin and Einstein and other folks with famous names. It was “settled” by experimental evidence and replication and peer review. This set in motion an “Enlightenment” in which previously-“empty” minds were filled with knowledge and reason. Technological advancement gave rise to a story in which humanity had a “destiny” to become masters of the Earth, to travel the galaxy, to transcend our messy and mortal physicality.
Discovery. Settlement. Filling emptiness. Destiny.”
“All three of these paradigms – settler colonialism, evangelical religion, and modern secular science – begin with claims of discovery or revelation and then seek to spread – across space or across minds and souls. They demand an external reference – looking outside oneself – for truth and understanding. They are hierarchical and generate immense profits and power and prestige for kings and merchants, or popes and bishops, or tech tycoons and Nobel laureates. They also generate immense suffering – in the form of genocide of entire peoples, or destruction of cultures and religions around the world, or poisoned rivers and clearcut forests and acidified oceans.
What happens if we reverse these commonalities? If instead of discovery we have perception? If instead of seeking settlement we embrace change and uncertainty and mystery? If instead of filling emptiness we acknowledge what is already there? If instead of some defined or envisioned destiny we have collaborative creation? If instead of looking outside ourselves for truth we look within.”
Follow up for comment 27 (and, for what it’s worth, 27 is quite often a number the universe gives me when it’s saying “Pay attention!”), but I’ve just realized this also explains something I’ve always found a minor mystery: you have tons of people (including me) saying “I was left-wing, but then the left changed completely after Trump won (or some other event), and now I’m right wing”. However, the evidence does not support this analysis.
I’ve been immersing myself in 2000s culture as part of research for a story I’m writing, and part of this involves politics. The left apparently already had the weird histrionic energy, was prone to double-standards, was contradictory, was more interested in image than reality, and so on. Sure, it’s more intense, but I don’t remember it being anything like that, and me today would not be part of the left. I’m not even sure that TDS is different other than in degree from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). In other words, everything that prompted many of the former leftists to start to shift to the right was already present in the 2000s, in nascent form, sure, but it was there; and apparently lots of people just clued in one day it was there; not, please note, that it had grown more intense, but that it was there at all.
The possibility that occurred to me is that it’s not about the left; but rather, what happened is for various reasons, people have shifted states away from the Plutonian towards a more normal one. Suddenly, a lot of things the Left says and does seem totally bizarre, incredibly creepy, and because it’s apparently very difficult to remember the Plutonian, it looks as if the rest of the Left has suddenly lost its collective mind, where nearly all of the problems people like to cite can be found in some form for at least the last two decades.
In true Plutonian fashion, this would produce the illusion of a sharp divide, where none exists, and the illusion that an internal change is an external one. This could make figuring out what’s happening around us even more challenging than usual, at least until this profoundly weird influence finally goes away.
A link:
https://www.gmx.net/magazine/politik/russland-krieg-ukraine/krieg-ukraine-migration-waffe-schwerer-vorwurf-finnland-laesst-putin-kalt-38895286
Reads: “Migration as a weapon? Heavy accusation leaves Putin indifferent”
Oh, I thought migration could never be that?
I am sure it is only top engineers leaving Russia there.
Not to sound cynical, but we’ve all seen the debates 2015 and past, haven’t we?
State dependent memory could also explain why so many people who lived through the period when Pluto came into focus didn’t seem to quite notice just how much things changed as it happened. For a few years, I wondered how so many people missed just how dramatic a rupture the early 20th century was: but if they were literally unable to remember how the times before Pluto were different, it would explain this as well.
Hmm.
Siliconguy et al,
While I’m not convinced that nuclear power can save us from our energy predicament (see below), I’ve seen some arguments in favor of it that I think warrants consideration.
* The claim that nuclear power pays for itself needs to take into consideration that the cost of constructing new reactors in the US increased by a factor of 10 from the early 70s to the mid-80s, causing utility companies to shelve their remaining plans.
* This halt in new construction has destroyed economies of scale and dramatically limited the skills and know-how needed to efficiently construct new reactors in the west in recent years. (Asian countries are still able to build new plants in 5 years as opposed to 10–15 years here).
* Current regulations are based on a scientifically unjustified assumption that any amount of ionising radiation constitutes a health hazard, causing regulators to enforce limits orders of magnitude below the natural background radiation in parts of the world where cancer is no more prevalent than elsewhere.
* Highly expensive regulations added in the wake of accidents are also unreasonably strict: for example, regulators now require a double dome of reinforced concrete one and a half meters thick in addition to a continuously welded steel inside wall, as opposed to the single one meter concrete dome that worked perfectly well at Three Mile Island. They also require no less than eight stationary diesel generators in addition to two or three mobile generators for backup power, as opposed to just two backup generators, each of which is sufficient to power the plant.
I do think the nuclear evangelists are wrong in discounting the costs of converting the economy to run on electricity and hydrogen, and I also think they’re underestimating the fuel problem; a massive increase in the number of reactors would quickly deplete uranium reserves, and the idea that we can concentrate uranium from the oceans makes little economic sense. And no current commercial reactor that I’m aware of is running profitably on the proposed alternative fuels.
Still, I’m not sure if nuclear power can be entirely discounted as a way to give us a few more decades of relatively ample access to baseload electricity and heat, and perhaps reduce emissions of greenhouse gases somewhat as it could replace coal. Might the reality here be somewhere inbetween “nuclear never pays for itself” and “nuclear will save industrial civilization”?
Dear JMG,
Hope you are doing well with your wife.
Christmas is coming and I was wondering how do you celebrate it? Are you following the druid traditions to celebrate winter solstice? Is there any simple simbols, ceremonies which we can prepare or perform with the children?
Do you think the wreath of Advent with the four candles on it has its roots in pagan traditions? It doesn’t look very Christian for me with the circular form and the four candles like four gates.
And finally do you know how did it happened or when that in the Anglo-Saxon countries Christmas mixed together with Santa?
Thank you
Marco @19, cough…cough…; JMG is clearly too polite to tell you this: JMG himself is a Freemason. IIRC, he is a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason, which by definition means he is also a Blue Lodge Mason. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were a York Rite Mason as well (JMG, correct me as needed).
As a result of a blog post of his 12 or 13 years ago on Freemasonry, I finally joined in 2019. From time-to-time, JMG recommends it (or some similar fraternity) to us men. I recommend it myself, as already it stands as one of the better decisions of my life. I now belong to both Blue Lodge and Scottish Rite Freemasonry.
The lodges I belong to consist of retired tradesmen, law enforcement, firemen, small businessmen, military, and a few young-uns in these occupations. I happen to be a self-employed physician, age 65, which is younger than most.
Clearly you have been taken in by some bad information (if not lies as JMG more forcefully suggests).
There is a recent article on the origin on the evil aspersions on Freemasonry, i.e. the Taxil hoax from the late 19th century:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/decoding-taxil-hoax-part-1
I recommend it.
—Lunar Apprentice
@chris, @siliconguy, @lathechuck.
So to answer the general point, of course I’m not so foolish as to imagine swapping voltage for current improves the amount of energy available. I do think that the kinds of sources that you could usefully use this technology with – electrostatic generators, atmospheric electricity setups, triboelectric systems have lurched slightly towards the practical end of the spectrum. There’s no real question of reaching high currents requiring thick cables – I should think that at the moment the transformation is picoamps to milliamps?
Also no real question of transmission from some far away central point. All these systems have to be local.
It also means that long discarded generator technologies like Wimshurst machines suddenly start to look interesting. At least they look interesting to me.
I was interested in hearing that an alternative conventional high efficiency V to A tech exists. Would it handle a high voltage low current DC situation? Also, and I admit that this is whimsy on my part – is it beautiful? I mention that because that was what really caught my attention.
Hi JMG,
Watching the late events (wars, sanctions, BRICS, world realignment, etc), I keep thinking that the rest of the world will say that they had enough with the spoiled West and begin an oil and gas embargo against them. I live in Greece, we have zero oil and gas resources, only few exhausted lignite resources that cannot replace the imported fossil fuels. I believe in such a scenario Europe will face a civilization shock as they do not have oil and gas resources, as well. Do you think that this is something possible in the short term, and what will be the ramifications for us who belong on the spoiled side of the planet?
Kosta
“”That’s what’s going to happen to the woke shortly — they’re already edging that way — but I expect a lot of them to convert to Islam instead of Christianity. All things considered, it’s not that far from “all men are phallocentrically oppressive rapists” to “I ought to veil myself in a hijab and never leave home without an escort.””
Its like the ever-virgin Madonna/Whore complex. Its like the Insanity of either a Wildfire or an empty and dead Fireplace. Rather than a roaring fire in the fireplace.
Neither extreme is viable. But the unstable and the insane vacillates between one extreme to the next.
Thank you, Sam #48, a very valid point. The thing about the UKIP/Brexit parties in the UK, is that even though they did not win any seats in the UK parliament, the number of votes they won obliged the UK government to hold a referendum on Brexit and then their central policy – exit from the EU – was actually achieved and then adopted by the governing party. What I expect in next year’s general election in Britain is the same to happen with respect to ReformUK, the populist right-wing successors to UKIP/Brexit. The Tory party will lose a large number of seats because a large number of those who voted for them in 2019 will vote for ReformUK instead, reduce the Tory vote and Labour will take those seats instead.
After that, the right of the Tory party will take control, adopt many ReformUK policies and quite likely take power in 5-6 years as Labour has no useful ideas worth mentioning and is almost certain to be a disaster in government.
Apologies to readers disinterested in UK politics!
A heads up for the MOE practitioners:
I plan on offering an __Apprentice__ attunement (i.e. the first one in the series) on
+++ Saturday, December 9th, at 6pm German time (i.e. EST + 6). +++
I will post more details on an upcoming Magic Monday (the next one or the one after that), so please keep your eyes on the Magic Monday comments if you‘re interested.
Also, if you consider attending, make sure to study the attunement requirements well in advance – you will need to practice certain things daily for at least a week before the attunement! (If you have studied the material, you‘ll know where to find the requirements – and if you aren‘t sure anymore what they are, now might be a good time to go over the Apprentice material again in preparation… 😉 )
If you‘d like to attend, but can‘t make it this time: I plan on offering more attunements next year, and so does Kyle (and hopefully, there will be even more Master Teachers soon, too!).
If you were waiting for a Healer or Master attunement rather than the Apprentice: I plan on offering these early next year, too (no times set yet – my brain hasn‘t even wrapped itself around the upcoming holiday season yet, let alone any attunement dates for next year… 😀 ). I will also be posting those on Magic Mondays, so you might want to keep an eye on the comments there.
Also, remember that you can always be „re-attuned“. IIRC, JMG explained that up to six attunements of the same sort still have an additional effect – so if you already received the Apprentice attunement, don‘t be shy about attending again on December 9th! 🙂
Looking forward to it,
Milkyway
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the reply, especially because I treat this issue of vision, as a toothy terrier would chew upon a bone. I’ve looked at it from many angles, some of which are quite ugly and alarming. There is just something about this particular issue which bothers me. If I may explain myself here, I’d be very interested to learn of your perspective. Anyway, so you have practitioners of the dark arts, and yet to do that they’d have to be forming images at least of some sort. Hang with me here please. The thing that really bothers me, is that in order to block out information which runs contrary to the images formed, must exert a cost upon the practitioner. How could it not? And the further that reality and the images deviate, the stranger the mental contortions required to pursue the workings. Am I correct to be considering the likely possibility that the dark practitioners are slowly going loopy?
Cheers
Chris
One thing to bring to people’s attention. Another person who is covering similar ground about energy and the future of industrial society that JMG used to in his Archdruid Report days is Nate Hagens, who runs a podcast called the Great Simplification. Though I’ve never seen him name drop JMG, he uses such similar terminology (such as referring to fossil fuels as “stored sunlight”) that I suspect JMG was one of his sources.
I thought I’d mention this, because a lot of people tend to metaphorically poke JMG with a stick and go “C’mon, write about the collapse of industrial society!”. Those people might want to check Nate Hagens out because while JMG feels most of the time like he’s talked those issues out, Nate Hagens seems to enjoy making regular content on the subject.
Not that I mind JMG writing on the subject. It’s just that I know it’s stopped being his primary focus and a lot of the oil peak oil crew seem to have either changed focus (Kunstler seems to mostly just like being angry at “Woke Politics” now) or gone dark (such as Dimitri Orlov, at least in English), drawing people’s attention to new peak oil content creators might help JMG feel a bit less pressured.
The alliance between the woke left and “Islamic fundamentalism” is not essentially a rebellion against Faustian ideology, but the result of a transformation from one Faustian ideology to another Faustian ideology. It’s like liberals joining communism in large numbers. Today’s “Islamic fundamentalism” is essentially a Faustian version of Islam that arose in the Soviet era, rather than the older version that existed during the Ottoman Empire. Evidence? One of the characteristics of Faustian ideology is that it requires obedience from everyone within the control area. This is different from the mosaic isolation adopted by the Magians against heterogeneous peoples. The collapse of the Jewish population within Arab countries is very Good example. Although the collapse of the Jewish population within the Arab states was the result of twentieth-century nationalism, today’s “Islamic fundamentalism” largely inherits the Arab secular nationalism’s approach to heterogeneous populations from the previous century, and its scope No longer bound by the Arab nation-state. By the way, “terrorist” in the twentieth century mainly described communist and certain radical nationalist militants.
Michael at #63 asks,
“This is something that I have always found funny. The stats say one thing but just observing the people of the world I have always asked that question “Where are these supposed obese people?”. Sure there are some but it is nowhere near what the stats supposedly say.”
There are a few things here. The first is that obesity is concentrated among lower socioceconomic classes, and rural areas. If you’re well-off and living in an urban area, there won’t be as many around you.
The second is that many of the more obese don’t get out as much. This is partly because of the income issue – they don’t have a job or they’re disabled in some way, so they don’t go out much, which is what makes them obese, but also makes them invisible.
The last is that our perception of what is big, small, etc, changes over time. There was a study of General Pracitioners in New South Wales where they showed them pictures (absent faces) or children of various BMIs. On average, the GPs assessed the BMI 25-30 children as actually being in the BMI 20-25 range, and the BMI 30-35 children as actually being 25-30. They judged “normal” not by an objective standard (we can argue whether it’s a good standard, but BMI is objective) but by what they saw day-to-day.
Similarly, people driving massive trucks don’t see them as big, people drinking the extra-large drinks don’t see them as comically huge, and people leaving the airconditioning on while they’re out of the house don’t see themselves as wasteful of energy.
The problems of obesity, environmental damage and resource depletion all have the same root cause: excessive consumption. Our Western society is a consumer society, this applies whether we’re talking about an electric SUV or McDonald’s. We consume more than our systems can handle; our systems being our climate or our physiological is in a very real sense simply a cosmetic difference.
The denial of the harmful effects of this consumption has the same root cause, too: if I admit my consumption is harmful, I might have to do something about it. If I decide that my consumption is good but someone else’s is bad, I get to feel superior to others. Thus the rise in organic fair trade etc.
@Jeffrey, JMG and SMJ, re: Singapore. I’m more bearish, I’m afraid. I lived in Singapore for a number of years and gained Permanent Resident status – which I subsequently relinquished. My basic evaluation (heavily influenced by TADR, which I started reading while I was living there) is that Singapore will be completely unsustainable as the energy crunch hits. Without affordable aircon, with too many apartment blocks too tall to walk up without functioning lifts, with completely inadequate domestic food and water supplies… I can’t see how Singapore can continue to exist in anything remotely like its current form. Also, got to wonder about wet bulb temperatures in the future. Per JMG’s comment, that part of the world will continue to be important for the monsoon-driven trade and spices, but there are good reasons why that historically focused on Malacca, not Singapore. However, I acknowledge my generally doom-inclined outlook, and that Singaporeans are pretty smart (and the government is very well aware of the challenges), so perhaps they’ll come up with something.
@Curt, #18. I found that very interesting. I’ve had some superb teachers in traditional Chinese martial arts in the past, but a) they were of an older generation now passing, and I’ve not found the younger ones to have the same skills with integrating fighting content with healing and spiritual aspects and b) I don’t live in Asia any more. I’ve also experienced systema, of Karimov’s school rather than Vasiliev’s, though they have some shared DNA. It’s many years now since I trained (where did the time slip away to?), but I’m intending to get back into it, intensively. Increasingly, I think this is the only way to go: outside the mainstream, working on things that keep us healthy and sane while the mainstream collapses in on itself. My only problem so far? How to make it financially sustainable…
@Robert Morgan, #30: yes, indeed – and it’s interesting that this reflects a general trend across Europe. The Graun of course calls all of this ‘far right’ by default, propping up its own sense of beleaguered righteousness when I suspect it’s just the ordinary electorate deciding to look out for their own interests and communities – but how dare they think they can decide for themselves? On a related note, I see that the European Parliament has voted to beef up the role of the Brussels bureaucracy to become the ‘European Executive’ which will decide EU policy rather than the pesky national governments which just won’t do what they’re expected to. Good luck getting those governments to agree to alter the EU’s founding treaties to permit the change, though.
@JMG, #33: 5th week post on China. Well, the popular vote is the popular vote! I hope you’ll address the Austrian corporal’s enduring grasp on the western imagination in future, because that seems more pressing an influence in the part of the world where I live. As for China, I’m sure you will find really interesting material that I will enjoy reading. Having lived in there for years, I don’t think that the key reasons are transferrable to other parts of the world – that is to say, the western world – due to fundamental cultural differences. Still, I look forward to what you think!
@JMG, #35 I’m waiting to see what comes out of the meeting of Arab foreign ministers going on in Beijing right now… I wonder if you’ve seen that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria and Palestine have collectively threatened that western governments risk being charged with complicity in war crimes, re: Gaza? Together, they represent a huge lump of the world’s population, not to mention the ones controlling many vital natural resources. It’s an axis that will find it natural to align with Russia, which has a huge and mostly well-integrated Muslim population of its own. Interesting times…
@Sam, #42 It occurs to me to wonder whether the woke are largely those who simply haven’t really experienced prolonged contact with other cultures, which would explain why it’s largely an Anglophone phenomenon. Lacking this, they see other cultures only in abstract terms – and from within the dominant Anglo bubble, it’s easy enough to define others as ‘victims’ who must therefore be in solidarity with other ‘victims’. Of course, these groups, including Muslims, have their own self-conception, usually rather different. See Hamtramck, Michigan, for example.
@ Megatherion, #60. Thanks for that link. I’ve seen a few others, and it’s a fascinating exercise. This one is a common song, switching in musical styles from rock to orchestral to folk. The song includes village polyphonic choral, Russian folk, Cossack, Chechen and Circassian (possibly, the subtitles obscured the location). Others I’ve seen highlighted the Mongol and SIberian subcultures. Uniting Russia in all its diversity, indeed. Congratulations on both mastering Russian and moving to where it’s spoken; both are on my to-do list.
Hi John Michael,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to express, once again, my enduring gratitude for your voluminous body of work and to acknowledge your generosity. Your blog has kept me afloat and informed for a very long while now and has become an indispensable part of my life. I have many of your books and intend to keep the library growing. The one that I have found to be of immense value personally is ‘Retrotopia’. I currently reside in a fairly pristine area of Ontario, Canada in the upper Ottawa Valley/Algonquin Park panhandle. The decision to move here was based in no small part on your sage advice; “collapse now and avoid the rush”. We found our property in 2009 after a couple of years of earnest searching. It is situated high above the valley floor and commands an impressive view. This area of Ontario has a history of economic despair which makes for comparatively affordable land prices but, more importantly, a local population of very resourceful folks with a pioneer lineage that is only about 150 years old. The idea of taking a few steps backward, as far as modern conveniences are concerned, is not that great of a leap for many people up here and for me as well. As a bonus, we also have a growing Mennonite community that provides the area with abundant food options. Besides the natural beauty and abundance, the existence of a homegrown/DYI community already in place was another determinant for our decision to relocate away from the masses. Since ‘the pandemic’ local support groups have started to coalesce in a very real and tangible way and, as the societal situation continually degrades, the need for practical and appropriate action becomes all the more pressing. The template you offer in Retrotopia for this kind of retro-grade living is spot-on for the times that may come. This land supported people quite well without government assistance in the past and is still pristine enough to carry us forward. Between the original pioneer spirit and the road map provided by Retrotopia, I feel fairly confident about weathering the coming storm, even if it comes to my government pension being curtailed or stripped away from me for non-conformance to their dictates if/when CBDC’s come into effect. Maybe when the big nations collapse, as you predict, there will once again be an Algonquin nation.
So thank you again for all you do!!
P.S. I do have a question. As a lifetime organic gardener myself with no intention of giving it up any time soon, I’m curious as to whether or not you still get your hands in the dirt?
Hi JMG,
For years my masonic friends have gently encouraged me to look into Masonry. Since the local lodge is just a few blocks away in my “collapse now” town, I started to think about joining. But it was you and Randall Carlson who pushed me over the edge (in a good way.) So, last week I received my confirmation letter for the local lodge. Unfortunately, I won’t be getting instructions till about Feb or Mar.
So, thanks for your encouragement, too!
@Mark64 – the link led to a paywall. One caveat on what I did get to read of the article – Black activists have been attracted to Islam for several decades now, so the example given doesn’t prove that the woke left in general is attracted to it.
@KM Gunn #3, @JMG #33 I’ve made it a point when money permits to buy paintings by traditional artists — we have some lovely watercolors here at home — and I’d like to encourage others to consider doing the same thing.
Hear, hear. Ever since I started having my own income, I’ve bought pieces of art even when I couldn’t really afford them – and I’ve never regretted it. One, and only one, of those pieces has since rocketed in value – on paper in least. Even if I wanted to sell it, which I don’t because I like it, I don’t move in the kind of circles where I could sell it privately; if I tried to sell it at auction, the fees would eat up much of the increased value, so it wouldn’t be worth it. There’s some kind of moral there about ‘value’, I guess.
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2023/11/some-history-of-israeli-palestinian.html
Re: The rise in Islam
In the ’80s I remember a few professors who had opinions outside the “Israel Forever” that was part of my (partially chosen) upbringing – more than one professor noted that it was the Palestinians who homeland was being invaded – that and the fact that Michigan State was known for being pro-Palestinian. In the ’90s, there was always the occasional item in NPR and other media that showed Islam in a relatively positive light.
Probably the biggest recent item that has driven the opinion of many leftists in a pro-Palestinian and Muslim-curious direction (as one must look first to come to submit) is a series of maps which shows the encroachment of Israel on the Palestinian lands, from the settlements to the British division of lands to post-1948 to post-1973 to today’s division of The West Bank into Palestinian Islands in an Israeli sea. Add to that the utter demolishing of the structures in The West that gave support and meaning for those willing to “accept less” (the Church, Marriage, small towns, other clubs) and the allure of a group whose structures have seemingly held up against what’s happening in The West AND about which sympathetic stuff (if not positive praise) has been said for four decades can’t be denied.
(And as for Trans people supporting Islam, Iran has been ahead of the curve here. They started offering Gays free Transition Therapy (including the surgical parts) in the ’90s, reasoning that Gays were merely straight people born with the wrong sexual characteristics. It’s quite a mess, but unique in that the de facto stance puts Trans people above Gays. https://qz.com/889548/everyone-treated-me-like-a-saint-in-iran-theres-only-one-way-to-survive-as-a-transgender-person)
Happy Thanksgiving to those how accept it! Thanks for being an enjoyable and interesting community. Drew C
Erika, thanks for the update on James. That’s wonderful news that it looks like he’s doing better. May that continue until the cancer’s gone and he regains his health!
Don’t worry about falling off the list. Your listing is now back on the top– the rule is that updates do that for you– and originally requested well after July, anyhow. Anyhow, keep doing your best, and those of us that pray will keep on praying.
Maxine, it seems you’re a hard lady to catch on the internet! Life on a small island, I guess. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that you saw this report of prayer on Kameen’s behalf. Based on that experience, I feel fairly confident that wherever Kameen is, she is doing just fine. The symbolism of the imagery was just so on-the-nose and positive.
I’m wondering if any of the commentariat is willing to hazard a guess at how long smart phones will remain ubiqutous. Two years? Five?
I for one look forward to their ‘phasing out’ as their complexity becomes a problem w.r.t. supply chains and cost.
Mr Kemble #6 (and/or anyone with a view on the matter)
“If the predicted cyber 9/11 (internet shutdown) comes to pass in the next 12-18 months to facilitate the introduction of digital IDs and cbdc’s”
I have heard this idea mentioned once or twice, but it seems self-contradictory to me. Surely the introduction of digital id’s and cbdc’s depends upon the internet continuing to be dependably there.
How on earth does anyone expect a shutdown incident – proving the internet to be fragile and undependable, instead – might act as a rationale for building out MORE digital fragility?
JMG,
Yeah I meant curved and angular time. I didn’t realize those were fictional! I thought they were from advanced physics. I’ll reread the story you linked sometime soon, thanks!
A few points on my mind:
1. AI doomerism vs e/acc
I’ve been reading discussions on these factions within the tech bubble for a while now and shared some of my thoughts on previous open posts; things in this arena came to a head recently with the firing of Sam Altman and his return to OpenAI in a matter of days.
I don’t want to rehash the whole affair in detail since people can read about it elsewhere, but I find myself sympathizing far more with e/acc than the doomer/effective altruist/”rationalist” party.
I noticed that some occultists who were pretty lined up with the COVID rigamarole now seem to be drawn towards the EA/doomer lines as well.
I’ve listened to e/acc Twitter spaces, a lot of them are actually just focused on building their own projects; they are more realistic than the doomers about the functions of AI, while optimistic, even Balaji Srinivasan, for example says GPT is simply like a much better version of Google and nowhere close to the doomsday scenarios posited by EAs. By contrast, the EAs seem to create “Bayesian priors” based on bad science fiction and use that to justify totalitarianism. They are in a way more bullish on AI, in the sense that they are assuming it is way more powerful than it is, and that current approaches will lead to a “foom” scenario.
I’ve come to see that EA is the logical consequence of taking utilitarianism to its extreme, coupled with an imagination based on science fiction.
Just my opinion, but I believe that while utilitarianism has some useful points, it fails miserably as a guiding philosophy in life, as indeed most of these “civil religions” without any contact with the Divine. People who have left EA report feeling guilt-tripped that they are not spending all their waking hours working on the most important problem in the world, namely, AI alignment. This Twitter thread is illustrative: https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1725933595318268223?t=eHirSnqDdvSjO5SmuAS_hg&s=19
2. Singapore
I am also from Singapore, but I don’t particularly feel proud of the government here, lol.
Similar to other former British colonies, as mentioned by some commenters above, we have a political system based on the Westminster model, but ours has been deliberately engineered to have an even lower possibility of political dissensus and change. For example, the electoral districts are changed in every election to reduce the chances of opposition parties winning; the elected president, a role originally roughly analogous to that of the monarch in the Westminster system, became a role to ensure that in case a “freak election” happens and the opposition gains power, the president could veto policies that would draw on the treasury and change the appointment of key roles.
To give the ruling party credit, they took a drug and crime ridden island under the British (the opium trade was a major source of revenue for the colonial government here even in the 1950s) and made the citizens mild-mannered, compliant, and hardworking, hence attracting investment and trade, which is perhaps more than can be said of some other former British colonies.
Anyway, on Singapore in the future. I remember a Chan Chun Sing, a politician from the ruling People’s Action Party, made a speech back in 2011 referencing some other polities in the region which failed to last 100 years, the Lanfang Republic and the Demak Sultanate, and exhorting voters to vote for the PAP to prevent such a fate. It was a poorly received speech as he talked down to his audience, but I feel that there might have been a kernel of truth in it — in the Malayan Archipelago, it seems that there is a pattern of city-states acquiring and projecting power through control of trade routes, but then losing it over the course of a century or so.
Besides the states he mentioned, there are quite a few other examples: the Malaccan Sultanate, centered on Malacca, and whose fall led to an early city-state developing in what is now Singapore in the 14th century; and the city state of Temasek itself in Singapore, whose legends Stamford Raffles recalled when he first planned for a colony here. The longest-lived state here was arguably the Srivijayan Empire but so many of its details are unknown, it might have been a system of tributaries for example.
In a world of decline, Singapore’s survival as a state would likely depend on the ability to project force and maintain supply chains of food from the hinterland. There is little realistic chance that the food security measures can produce a significant amount of daily calories for the population, unless we lose 90% of the population and convert much of the land back to farms.
More wokes for Islam
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12766887/Millennials-Gen-Z-women-convert-ISLAM-Israel-Hamas.html
Megatherion, JMG: Re the collaborative music videos, they’re very much like the series called Playing for Change, which also features musicians from around the world performing the same song, with the claim “bridging what divides us and inspiring us to see how easily we all get along when the music plays.” They’re are lovely, and technically impressive, recordings of pop culture classics, like this recording of “The Weight”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1GU1qQ1zQ
They’re a bit gimmicky in that a whole lot of technology and effort goes into making all those separate recordings and editing them all together. (During the pandemic, I participated in a “virtual choir” video, which also edits many separate singers together, and the conductor had quite a bit to say about how hard it was to make the finished video.)
Cristina, I, alas, know very little about the nations washed by the Caribbean Sea, but I do know that North American kitchens don’t function without a vast array of tropical products, of which such staples as chocolate, vanilla, sugar, and coconut are only a few. If people in your countries could manage to take back control of your agriculture and transport sectors, I would think you could do quite well. Unfortunately, the drug gangs you mentioned are likely to be joining up with extractive corporations, if they are not doing so already.
As for Singapore, city states often do prosper during dark ages. This is particularly true of trading cities; a good example is ancient Masillia. It was founded in about 600 bc, and prospered along with its’ constellation of colonies bordering the Gulf of Lions, for about 500 years, until being incorporated into the Roman Empire. BTW, it was not “the Romans” who all but destroyed Masillia, it was a Roman, Julius Ceasar, because during the civil wars, Masillia had sided with Pompey, out of gratitude for Pompey’s suppression of piracy. Julie, (greatly overrated in our own time, IMHO) seems to have been you are with me or an enemy kind of guy.
I confess to a rather cynical take on the PMC attraction to Islam, which is that that religion offers the promise that as a member of the umma, you get to be important, the servants and members of lesser faiths have to drudge. Maybe we should be pointing out that slavery is still legal in at least some Islamic countries.
Happy Thanksgiving JMG and Ecosophians! This week has completely gotten the best of me — my candle spells a few months ago were successful and I have 32 music students… Propitiating to Aphrodite: TSW! But unfortunately it left no time for other writing as students jammed in before the holiday. I put up a Holiday Recipe Slam at my Dreamwidth blog if anyone is interested in submitting a recipe, a link to a recipe, an idea, or even a mere question about home cooking: https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/105236.html
And yes, I’m vegan but I don’t care if someone submits a meat/dairy/egg recipe. If you don’t think I could veganize that, then clearly you haven’t met me…
My question about the role of Freemasonry in bringing the world to the current international crisis state was triggered by my viewing the film “Killers of the Flower Moon”. In this film the villain, a 32nd degree Freemason, organizes the killing of Osage Indians for his personal financial gain. He keeps a clear conscience by believing that by bringing roads, schools, medicine, etc., he personally did a lot of good for the uncivilized Indians. If such a corrupt soul can rise to the highest grade of Freemasonry, is it wrong to conclude that Freemasonry is corrupt? On the other hand, the film might be spreading lies about Freemasonry.
BBC is reporting this morning that that Gert Wilder’s party (PVV?) has won in the Dutch elections. Beeb is having a freakout–closing mosques! no more asylum!–IDK what this might mean or what the Dutch constitution and laws will allow.
Dear JMG,
On a topic close to your heart of late: the prevalence of scientific fraud.
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2023/11/19/dorothy-bishop-on-the-prevalence-of-scientific-fraud/
“From the crooked timber of humanity”, etc.
The only way to solve this is to have a permanent red team in the academy. Their job would not be to do science, so much as to debunk it. It won’t happen: believing in “science” is the western shibboleth. And by science, I mean the stories of the chaps in white coats, not the scientific process.
@Bogartyr
Thanks for your comment! I don’t think Singapore is THAT unsustainable, at least in the ways you mention. Firstly, about the affordable aircon, we have been thinking of switching to central cooling, which is both more affordable (30% price cut) and more energy efficient, which I think settles that, hopefully. About the energy crunch, I don’t think it’s going to happen all at once, and hopefully advances in renewables help us keep at least the most basic infrastructure (I.e lifts) online. If not, well, we could always use more cardio, and maybe relocate the elderly to lower floors. As for domestic food and water, I assume you know about NEWater, which the government will most likely ramp up, and the 30 by 30 plan for food. Moreover, this is why I asked about trading, as we would probably still be able to obtain food from most of Asia, and water from Malaysia. About wet bulb temperatures, yeah, you got me there, but once again, the government knows already (Google 40 degrees Singapore for more info, basically they’re doing a bunch of stuff to lower temperatures without increasing air con and just helping nature in general). As for your point about geological location, I’m afraid you misunderstand. By “Malacca”, you refer to the Malacca straits, not the part of Malaysia which also goes by that name. Singapore is part of these straits, and trade was very much focused on it due to its capability to provide safe harbour (for business and allowing merchants to restock) and passage through the Straits to merchant ships, and thus trade was very much focused on Singapore. To support this point, evidence from the 13th century shows that Singapore was a popular trade port even then, through maps from both European and Chinese traders. Moreover, there is a reason why the British placed so much emphasis on Singapore as a trade port, and why we were considered the crown jewel of the Malacca straits!
I´m reposting this under a different username, because I hadn´t noticed that there was already another Marco asking a different question here and I don´t want people to get confused. Also I don´t know if this is the right place to suggest a topic for the 5th wednesday post , or if John has another upcoming post specifically for that.
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Hi John,
since this month has 5 Wednesdays, I just wanted to give a suggestion for the topic of the next post. I remember reading one of your old posts where you briefly talked about Jung and the fact that he was well versed in occultism and how he managed to merge this knowledge with the field of psychology. You also hinted that at some point you might be covering this topic in a future post, so here I am asking if perhaps that could be the topic for the next weeks post.
@Bogatyr
Sorry, forgot to ask this in my last comment, but what’s TADR?
@Alvin
On your take on Singapore:
You mentioned that “ Singapore’s survival as a state would likely depend on the ability to project force and maintain supply chains of food from the hinterland”. What do you mean by this? Hinterland as in other parts of Singapore? Anyway, on the food security front, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t produce enough daily calories for the population even in the colonial era, which is why I think we will continue what we’ve always been doing: import food from places like Malaysia, Indonesia, China etc. with the land area to grow food and a proximity close enough to us to make it plausible. We’ve done it for as long as we’ve been around, and I don’t think that’s stopping anytime soon.
Side note: I didn’t expect to see another Singaporean here on the fringes of the internet, so this is a pleasant surprise! I hope we both get abundant bubble tea!
Side note 2: I know our government isn’t perfect, but they’re doing what they can, and I’m proud of them 😀
@OtterGirl #67,
Thanks a lot for reporting back, and glad to hear about the results! 🙂
Milkyway
@JMG,
I think women considering converting to fundamentalist islam and not leaving home without an escort are likely to run into the fact that it’s kind of hard to do that and make enough money to live in a lot of areas in the west. I suppose some of them might switch to online work, but still. And it sort of supposes you have someone male living with you who has time and willingness to escort you, too. I suppose you could work online and go full hikikomori even for groceries, but judging from the pandemic this seems a) miserable and b) impractical. I think that aspect of fundamentalist islam might be difficult to translate to say, California or BC even for people who do choose islam. It’s hard to imagine that being more than a niche thing for those who don’t already work online or have a husband making good wages who’s willing to support you.
JMG thank you for your reply. I’d forgotten about new maps and will check it out again.
Scotlyn #108 I guess the thinking is having a false flag cyber attack (likely starting with banks) will allow govts and other players to force everyone to engage with biometric digital IDs and the surveillance/ social credit apparatus behind it, meaning only “good” people will be allowed back online. For which if they leave it off for just long enough to have people champing at the bit to accept any and all conditions set for them, if it will mean they can just get back to “normal” watching tiktok videos.
@Luke Z #65: You might be interested in the short book An Experiment With Time (1927) by the British engineer and philosopher J. W. Dunne. Not sure if it’s still in print, I got my copy second-hand a while ago.
Rescuing an injured screech owl on Thanksgiving? Any of the local augurs wanna take a stab at that one?
Cute little thing…
Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!
Hi Marco! Think of those guys as the bad popes of Freemasonry.
Happy thanksgiving, fellow Americans.
Do you think there’s anything to the traditional ban on saying Macbeth in a theatre, outside of during rehearsal or performance? Have you seen any evidence that it might actually bring bad luck?
A Nony Moose,
It seems a lot of folks, from the Pac NW particularly, dislike the claim that we have sasquatches in the Appalachians. But there are many stories of such around here, and I can add a couple personally that are easiest to explain with a bigfoot. But my working guess is that they inhabit patches of old forest, that they depend on that “aliveness” of old forests you mentioned. Right behind our cabin, where my two stories come from, there is a 1200 acre forest that hasn’t been cut in a very long time – white pines and beech trees in the 4’+ DBH class. I’m pretty comfortable in the woods, but I always felt like I was being watched in that forest.
Hmmm.
@Aldarion
different areas of Canada tend to vote very differently, meaning one party will have no support in one province, and be dominant in another. So ridings in different areas have different results. It’s a sea of Conservative in the prairies, interior BC and scattered in assorted other places, Liberals in the citified parts of Ontario, The Bloq Quebeqois in Quebec, NDP in Atlantic Canada northern Canada and coastal BC, a couple of green dots (the greens support is spread over large areas and only rises high enough to actually elect people in a couple of places) and assorted parties scattered around.
This is actually a bit of a worry, as some parts of the country wind up feeling pretty disenfranchised and if they’re powerful enough, throw temper tantrums. Alberta and Quebec are the usual ones that do this. I would not be terribly surprised if Canada splits into pieces at some point in the next fifty years or so.
Canada is very divided by region – probably more so than the USA.
Palladium Mag has an interesting take on technology and social engineering at https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/how-social-engineering-drives-technology
“ Without socialization, most of us wouldn’t know how to use any particular technology, or even what it was made for. Technology only reproduces itself through instruction or imitation—and only when embedded in the larger social organism that puts it to use. Every device not only has a manual but a social context. It is then social rather than material facts that drive or hinder the development and adoption of technology.”
Kosta, I don’t really believe there will be an oil embargo against the West. The non-Western countries are reluctant to do much of anything consequential about Western imperial activities, so the West is more or less free to do what it wants. There is still a bit of oil in the North Sea, especially in the Northern Atlantic near Norway, but not very much. Europe was the first region of the world to industrialize, it may be one of the first regions to deindustrialize and to lose access to fossil fuels.
@Kimberley,
congrats on the music students. Well done.
One thing that’s been driving me a bit crazy the past few weeks is the way a lot of people have gone full binary on the hamas-Israeli war, at least online. I’m seeing a lot of people insisting that one side or the other is lily white and anyone who disagrees with them is EVIL INCARNATE! no matter how nuanced the disagreement. And calling for all those who disagree with them even slightly – or don’t agree fast and loud enough- to be fired, investigated by police etc. In countries that are on the other side of the world from the flash point and that are supposed to be bastions of free speech. When the calls for censorship and cancellation comes from people and publications who were screaming about being denied freedom of speech immediately before Oct 7th, it ticks me off.
I’m increasingly convinced that most people these days are in favor of free speech when it is their speech, and all for censorship when it involves speech they don’t like. Almost no one seems to genuinely uphold the right to free speech for its own sake when the going gets tough. If this attitude continues, we’re going to lose a lot of the freedom of speech we still have.
Leaves me feeling strange as someone who who looks on the actions of both with horror, and feels sorry for the kids and noncombatants caught in the mess. And scared for their future, but at the same time wanting to be as far away as possible, and emphatically NOT wanting to enable either side to commit war crimes or get my country embroiled in someone else’s war. Because I do feel that Israel-Palestine is not Canada’s war. They did that themselves.
I feel like I can’t say what I think without serious risk of it being twisted into something else and used as a weapon against me. At least I haven’t been hearing anything like the same amount of insanity offline. Haven’t been hearing much about it offline at all, beyond a ‘let’s pray for the victims of this conflict, and victims of assorted other conflicts while we’re at it’ at church. Which I think is both sane and ethical compared to what I keep running into online.
How are people managing to do paragraphs on blog comments here? It stopped working for me a while back, and I haven’t figured out how to not have the blog mash everything I do together into a single paragraph.
@ Cliff:
Thanks for reading my Substack, although I must apologise for bringing your attention to Mr. Moore’s disappointing lack of critical thought!
I began to lose interest in Moore when I saw a live event in London, organised by the Guardian (who else?), in which he was interviewed by the equally brilliant (artistically) but equally idiotic (in every other respect) stand-up comedian Stewart Lee. This was back in 2016.
The audience was made up of a strange mix of old-fashioned geeks (like me) and a snobbish, unpleasant ‘liberal Guardian elite’ types, who looked at me and my group with such scornful condescension that it made me want to join UKIP right there on the spot just to antagonize them.
Moore was mostly talking about his novel Jerusalem, which sounded boring and self-indulgent, and how he put certain things on the first page “to keep c***s from reading it” (good to see your anarcho-socialism has kept you a down-to-earth man of the people, Alan). He also spoke about the research indicated that religious people tend to outlive secular atheists, an his interest in block-time as a way to deal with the uncertainties of death, and give secular atheists like him and his friends something resembling a religious faith, so that they wouldn’t die so quickly.
2020 might have made it obvious how empty and vacuous much of the 20th century counter-culture really was, but with hindsight, the writing had been on the wall for a few years already.
JMG et al.,
Long time reader here. Excuse my long post, but I experienced the strangest situation three weeks ago. Since it happened, I’ve been racking my brain as to exactly what happened and why. Given this community’s awareness of all kinds of spiritual and super-sensory phenomenon, I thought I would post it here. This is also one of the few places where the democratic explanation might be something other than my insanity or delusion. Here’s what happened. Every word is true.
I’m a young American professional traveling through Europe for vacation. I went to Latvia for a few days to explore a new country and visit an old friend. Spent a few days in Riga enjoying the delights of the local nightlife and exploring the cobblestone streets of the Old Town. My next to last day there, I’d scheduled a full day of museums, sightseeing with friends, and a trip to the Latvian National Opera for a new ballet. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But when I woke in my hostel that morning, I was suddenly seized by this unmistakable pull. A blind, overwhelmingly strong urge that ordered me to leave Riga and head towards the Coast. Immediately. Against all reason, I canceled my plans for the day, walked to the train station, and found a nearly empty regional train heading north. I took nothing more than my wallet, phone (which had no working SIM card), journal, pen, and passport. Like so many of Lovecraft’s characters, I was scrambling for a rational explanation to this urge. Perhaps I was tired of all the social events and needed some time alone…? Or maybe I was being affected by some suggestive book I’d recently read..? I didn’t know what else it could have been. I only had a couple beers the night before, and I don’t take any kind of pharmaceutical or recreational drugs.
Before long, I was being whisked away from the sullen city and trundling through the primeval Slavic forests. I was nearly alone in the passenger car, watching the endless forest scroll by and listening to the train cars shift and shudder. It was here the trip became truly strange. Suddenly, I felt a sense of meta-awareness – my chain of thoughts shifted from the first-person to the third-person. It was if I was now a narrator in a tale that featured myself as the main character. What’s more, this persistent pull I’d felt all day became explosively stronger. It also became more defined. I now knew I was heading for a fateful, critical meeting. I was about to encounter something or someone which would change my life forever. Maybe I was about to die. Maybe the train would careen off the tracks or I’d be mowed down by a car near the station. Maybe this train was now my carriage to the afterlife. The fateful feeling was so intense that I said my prayers and scribbled a good-bye note in my journal to my family. Then I waited for whatever was coming with a strange sense of peace.
An hour after departing Riga, the train pulled up to a tiny beach village called Saulkrasti and I hopped off. As I discovered later, the spot is quite popular in the summer. Tourists and locals alike flock to the place and enjoy the brackish waters of the Gulf of Riga. But in early November, the town is quite dead. The weather wasn’t lively either. The temperature hovered well below 50 F and the sky was carpeted with thick rolls of deep gray. The magnetic feeling that was pulling me toward the Coast weakened as I left the train, as if temporarily sated. I wandered along the main roads and then passed through a cemetery, soaking in details and searching for anything out of the ordinary. But everything seemed normal. One or two old women in shawls placing flowers over fresh graves. A bored groundskeeper shuffled along listlessly. So I picked up my pace and headed directly towards the beach.
The dense timberland of spindly pine and birch continued until I was about 25 feet away from the coast. Then everything peeled away to reveal an endless, barren beach. Only a few changing huts and benches interrupted the monotony of sand and wind. But the first thing I really noticed was the water’s color. It wasn’t blue or green or brown. Instead, it was a deep amber with tinges of red. I walked down the coast for a few minutes before sitting down at the water’s edge to meditate.
This was it. I’d arrived. I was ready for anything and everything at this point. I don’t think I would have been surprised if Cthulu himself had risen from the waters to end the world. But nothing happened. I heard only the harsh whispers of wind and saw only the waves scraping against the air and gray horizon. I waited for half an hour. A lone man walked by on the boardwalk behind me, hunched over in a thin hoodie and smoking furiously. My expectancy morphed into curiosity, then into confusion and then into boredom. Yet whenever I tried to leave, I felt a soft tugging to stay. Before, the feeling had been intense, impersonal, and demanding. Now it was soft, gentle, personal, even pleading. It was the kind of tone you’d hear from a sleepy lover when you leave her bedroom on the morning after.
After three or four failed attempts to leave, I finally stood up and walked along the beach for another mile before going back into town. Stopped into a local cafe, chugged an Americano restlessly, then departed for the train station. I still felt like I was leaving something invaluable behind, but it was now a feeling that could be resisted and suppressed. So I lingered for a time with a spasm of final expectation, then pulled myself away and board the train south.
I spent the entire train ride back to Riga in a daze, watching the light fail against the infinite sprawl of trees. The weak pleading sensation melted away like ice with the death of the day. Not long after that it seemed as if no strange feeling had ever existed. Before I knew it the train ride was over and I was just another dark traveler standing alone at the crowded Riga train station, numbly wondering what to do next.
Even since then I’ve felt like a slightly different person, but I can’t explain why. Nor do I have any idea why this incident happened. Does anyone have any idea what this might have been? Has anyone experienced something similar? Can recommend any resources that might help provide guidance?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Hey JMG
I’m glad that you like my book recommendation, and come to think of it the subject of palaeontology reminds me of a problem that occurred to me recently.
What do you suppose will be the fate of palaeontology through the long descent and in the long deindustrialised future of humanity?
Dreamer, that kind of gaslighting is pervasive from our managerial aristocracy and its media flacks right now. Like most decadent elites, they think that reality is whatever they say it is, and if they only announce that everything’s fine, the rabble will have no choice but to believe them. Doesn’t seem to be working too well, but if they follow the usual pattern they’ll just keep doubling down until the walls fall in.
OtterGirl, their advice is good. Some people, mostly those with a strong empathic streak, can absorb some of the negative conditions of the people they heal, and so have to make a point of healing themselves to clear away the negativity. That’s not a problem I have — Aspergers syndrome has its benefits! — but for those that do, regular self-healing is a very good idea.
Nemo, you have no right to do magic for anyone unless they give their explicit permission — consent is as important in magic as it is in sex. In your current situation, I would encourage you to consider praying that the situation will resolve in whatever way is best for all parties, and leave it at that.
John, many thanks for the update!
Jeffrey, (1) “fine” is a relative term. It’s likely to survive, although the usual problems with war, epidemics, economic crises, et al. will of course affect it. (2) Expect fewer pets and more working animals — but dogs have been important human allies since the Stone Age, and cats became globally popular because of their enthusiasm for getting rid of rodents. They’ll be fine. (3) I am a polytheist — that means I believe in the existence of many gods and goddesses, including yours. (I think that some people exaggerate the importance of their gods, but that’s another matter.) My Druid faith teaches reincarnation as the normal process of the afterlife; I wrote a post on the subject here —
https://www.ecosophia.net/a-few-notes-on-reincarnation/
I’ve done considerably more study since I posted that back in 2017 and I’d change a few of the details at this point, but the basic pattern remains as written. As for communicating with the dead, under most circumstances I don’t recommend it — they have their own work to do, and should be left to do it. Praying for them, however, is always a good idea.
Stephen, if it really was a Faustian bargain then the people who made the bargain will not be with us much longer. The way it usually works is that you get seven years of whatever you ask for — although what you ask for will inevitably turn against you, since that’s what demons do — and then at the end of the seven years you get dragged offstage. If we start seeing a significant number of wokesters dying of “suddenly” in the months immediately ahead, and especially if people who were publicly involved in the “Magic Resistance” start dropping, then the hypothesis has some support. I do want to stress that it was a highly speculative hypothesis and nothing more than that; nor is it one I like much. I will be considerably happier, for that matter, if it turns out to be wrong — and if we don’t see a lot of wokesters and Magic Resistance types dropping dead in the months immediately ahead, I think we can dismiss it. But we’ll see.
Christopher, that does sound promising.
Jeffrey, that’s a subject for an entire post, not for a brief comment here! For what it’s worth, I don’t expect electronic media to age well as the age of abundance winds down — but the rest depends on a lot of complicated factors.
Moose, I think most people know that the government wasn’t telling the truth about those killings. What was behind them, though, may be more complex and nuanced than most people in conspiracy culture tend to think.
Michael, oh, I know. It’s like the people who insist that there is no such thing as consciousness. The best way to deal with them is to take them at their word, and treat them as objects that randomly make noises resembling human speech. They get very irritated by that.
Mark, fascinating! And of course all the rhetoric about space travel attempts to paste that same formula onto billions of parsecs of radiation-laced vacuum. I’ve bookmarked your essay and will read it as soon as time permits.
Anonymous, that makes a great deal of sense. I went through a similar process rather earlier, because the same syndrome was already present — it just wasn’t quite as extreme yet.
Curt, it fascinates me to see the simple reality of the thing being admitted.
Anna, my wife and I celebrate the winter solstice — Alban Arthan, as it’s called in our Druid tradition. Its symbols include the bear, evergreens, and candles. The most important part of the ceremony is at night, gathering in darkness, and then after a while lighting a candle to symbolize the rebirth of the year. I’m not familiar with the Advent wreath you mention — that sounds like a lovely symbol, and it could very well have old pagan roots. As for Santa — that’s a very complex matter. The short form is that a lot of the countries that sent immigrants to the US had legends about Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, or what have you, and those got scooped up in the 19th century by mass marketers and used as a template for the invention of Santa Claus. The whole Christmas schtick as currently marketed worldwide is purely for the benefit of big corporations and has nothing to do with the birthday of Jesus. I think the Japanese had the right idea, in their own quirky way:
Lunar, yes, I was quite active in the York Rite when I lived in Maryland, and in fact was presiding officer over lodges of all three York Rite bodies.
Kosta, it’s entirely possible, since it happened before — you’ve no doubt heard of the oil embargo of 1973, which shook the economies of the Western world. If it happens again, the US will squeeze by — we’ve still got fossil fuels, though we waste so much we’d be in trouble due to a shortage of imports — but Europe will be in very deep trouble indeed.
Info, that’s one way to look at it. As I see it, most people’s beliefs are motivated by their feelings; if you understand somebody’s emotional needs you can predict what they believe about the world. The woke very clearly want to feel morally superior to everyone else; they want to reject their society; and they also want an excuse to hate others and, when circumstances permit, to be violent toward them. The jihadi end of Muslim fundamentalism provides an even better justification for those feelings than woke ideology does, so it’s the logical endpoint of their pilgrimage.
It’s very hard to not visualize the ring cosmos, and ring chaos as things in themselves happening somewhere else.
I can hold it as an intellectual concept, and feel and experience burst of insight from the teaching.
It is hard to feel it in my actual felt experience.
I can see and understand life as a dichotomy, a play of differentiation, however, I experience it as a multiplicity where I am at the center.
How do you relate to the teaching of the idea of the rings of Dion Fortunes vision?
@ Cristina #49…
Just wondering if you are a tica. 🙂
If so – pura vida! – it is very good to see someone commenting here from Costa Rica. It is the country where I was raised, even if I was not born there, and my parents, sisters, and nieces and nephews all still live there.
I have no way to answer your bigger questions, I tend to think we get drawn to the places we need to be. For myself, to my own great surprise, I have ended up living and raising my own family in Ireland. For better or worse.
Still, welcome, and may you find the answers you need, and may you be blessed!
@ Anon #27 – on forgetting …
Am reading a novel, “Shots” by James Miller. It’s about characters who took the jab in 2021 and their struggles. Aside from the tribulations in the plot, what strikes me most is being reminded of some of the things/thoughts happening then.
This included how quickly masking & social distancing took on moral right/wrong status — and created a sense of shame if you didn’t *do it right*. The automatic self-censoring of *bad thoughts* about what was actually going on. And wide open liquor stores & closed churches. Plus, more enraging elements of that time which I had LITERALLY forgotten. Gone clean out of my head.
Now, neurologists say that people in duress generate high levels of cortisol, a hormone that can inhibit memory formation. I know I was extremely stressed during the height of the covid mania. But THAT stressed? Or have I purposefully chosen to blank those recent years from my memory?
Pluto at work?
In the spirit of ‘ask anything’, I wonder if anyone has any experience or thoughts on hearing aids?
Specifically the potential negative aspects of having a battery and electrical device against one’s head for 12-16 hours per day. I also wonder about Bluetooth frequencies; in particular the fact that my rechargeable BTE (Behind The Ear) hearing aids communicate with each other and the energy of that communication is undoubtedly passing through that clump of neural tissue in my skull, with unknown consequences.
On the positive side, hearing aids make a MASSIVE difference in my ability to communicate with my fellow humans and to enjoy other higher-pitched details of the aural environment; birdsong, the sound of water flowing, wind, music, etc. It has also been posited that, by keeping neural paths functioning, use of hearing aids can slow or even help reverse some types of cognitive decline. “Use it or lose it” appears to be the brain’s neural wiring motto!
Thus, while I genuinely appreciate the benefits of my hearing aids (and so does my spouse!), I am concerned about potential long-term, subtle, negative effects from the electrical fields proximate to my noggin. Does anyone share these concerns? If so, any thoughts on mitigation?
Further on my post at #95, there are two other aspects. The first is that you don’t see that many really big people as the years go – simply because they died. For example, if you take the average BMI of the population of each age group, you’ll find BMI steadily increases up to 55-59yo – and then drops off. Are the people from 60 on slimming down? Unfortunately, no – the biggest ones are dying off.
It’s sobering to look at something like the US Social Security Arcturial tables – https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html – which show you that of 100,000 men or women born, how many tend to still be alive at whatever age. For us males, about 1% are dead just by age 17, and 2% by 24yo. That’s our risk-taking behaviour, which you can see leads to twice the death rate of women. By 38yo, it’s 5%. Apart from a few rare cancers, again this is mostly risk-taking behaviour, drinking and driving, substance abuse and so on. But by the 40s most of those sorts of blokes have killed themselves off, and after that it’s lifestyle factors.
By age 50, 10% of males are dead, and 5% of women. Have a think about that. If you finished high school with a class of 20 kids, 10 boys and 10 girls – one of those boys is dead, and one of the girls might be dead.
By 62yo, we’re up to 20% of the males being dead, and 11-12% of the females. In your class, now 2 boys are dead, and 1 of the girls. After that it’s only to 69yo to get 30% of the males and 18% the females deceased. And guess who’s dropping off? Well, disproportionately the obese ones.
So some people will say, “bah, I don’t see any obese people.” And as I said in my earlier comment, that’s because they don’t hang in obese circles, and lots of obese people don’t get out much, anyway. But it’s also because once you reach a certain age, the obese people have died.
Others still will say, “oh, obesity isn’t that harmful.” Some 30 million Americans – https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/health-equity/diabetes-by-the-numbers.html – have been diagnosed with type II diabetes. Cut off the supply of metformin to all 30 million tomorrow and see how many dropped bodies it takes before the “obesity isn’t harmful” claim disappears. Metformin and medicine in general are to health what airconditioning is to climate – sitting there insulated from the consequences of your actions, it’s easier to pretend there are no consequences.
This is of course not the only factor in health. Just as carbon emissions are not the only environmental problem, obesity is not the only health problem. And the climate changes naturally, and people die naturally. The question is just how rapid and violent the changes are, and that’s our consumptive lifestyle.
In particular, a person who is big but physically active and with a tight community of family friends is better-off than someone who is small but sedentary and lonely. This is why Amish live a long time, and anxious urban vegans do not. But most big people are not active, though they feel they are – and well, if every time you went from the couch to the fridge you had to carry an extra 100lbs with you, your heart rate would go up and you’d be sweating, and you’d be convinced you were active. And with Facebook and maxing out to the 5,000 friends limit, you might convince yourself you have a tight community. But unfortunately it’s not so.
Relevant to the themes of this blog, in coming years this sort of lifestyle is going to become less viable. The ones who do well won’t be the obese sedentary people on a dozen different medications, nor will they be the ones who are up at 5am to the gym and carefully weighing and measuring all their food and checking their abs in the mirror in between checking for likes on Instagram. Moderately active people who are willing and able to work with their hands and who are tightly-connected to friends, family and the community will do much better, overall.
Something else just clicked as well: the phenomena where people forget what they did is not new: plenty of people forgot the post-9/11 hysteria, their role in the Satanic Panic, a lot of people draw into Nazism appear to have forgotten it shortly after the war, and so on. If each of these are also effects from state dependent memories, it would explain a lot.
There’s also a theoretical reason to think people would be veering into weird states regularly during the Plutonian Era, beyond the fact that this would be a very Plutonian thing. If Pluto is an eclipse of the Central Stillness, then it will have pulled us in a weird direction. We’d thus be more spread out than usual, as some of us would resonate more with Pluto and be closer, others would not and so remain closer to our original position; and so we’d be more vulnerable to other disruptions. This would fit with the way that that the 20th century had a lot more great comets than normal, and plenty of weird cultural trends which everyone involved seemingly forgets about shortly after it ends.
In JMG’s response to Dreamer: “if they only announce that everything’s fine, the rabble will have no choice but to believe them.” Man, did George Orwell call it (mostly in the book 1984) or what? The changing of language to mean something else, the control of information, the government watching you. He really warned us. I’m pretty sure he thought he was writing a book of fiction, but well… Maybe Twilights Last Gleaming will go down in the history books that way too.
I really want to get one of those hats or t-shirts that say “Make Orwell Fiction Again”, but I don’t wear baseball caps or t-shirts or have bumper stickers.
Re: diversity of parties in Canada
Thank you, pygmycory! I took the diversity between Canada’s provinces as a given for such a huge country, where the population is mostly stretched out in one direction. I know neither Canada nor the USA well enough to judge if Alberta and Ontario or New Brunswick are actually more different from each other than are Massachusetts and Alabama (Quebec is a case of its own). It simply surprises me that the same two parties are the only ones on the menu in both Massachusetts and Alabama., but Anglophone Canadians have the choice between at least three.
A few weeks ago, on your Dreamwidth Journal, there was a brief discussion of some leftists eventually openly identifying as Nazis. About a week after that discussion, I came across a different but still bizarre development in the far left: MAGA Communism. Here’s an article discussing it: https://compactmag.com/article/the-rise-of-maga-communism. At first, I thought it might just be a joke or a grift, but I took the time to watch some of the videos posted by one of the leaders on YouTube, and it appears to be a genuine thing. They’re motivated by a political pragmatism that I can’t help admiring even as I continue to see Communism as an utter failure. Strange times.
Yeah, compared to Europe the USA was set to make a soft landing into a post fossil fuel world. Lower population density , immense areas of arable soil, navigable rivers, forests, maritime resources, a variety of climates to grow different crops, mineral resources, relocalization potential in our state and county system, buildings that could be retrofitted or torn down and recycled, a revived train and canal system, and larger reserves of coal, petroleum and natural gas to make a gradual transition possible. BUT that would require wise conservation and changes and retooling spanning several decades – beyond the capacity of our befuddled leadership elite to start and guide. As it says in the Bible, “without a vision the people perish”. It will happen the hard way instead.
Milkyway, delighted to hear of this!
Chris, you are indeed correct, and the results are in fact ugly and alarming…
Beige, I don’t feel pressured — one of the advantages of Aspergers syndrome is that peer pressure misses me completely. But I’d certainly encourage people to keep following Nate, or any of the other handful of peakistas still in the business. The reason I don’t have much to say is that I made my predictions some time ago and it’s kind of dull to keep saying, “Yeah, still right on track.”
林龜儒 , that’s correct, of course, and important to keep in mind.
Bogatyr, I’m sure the Austrian corporal will get his day in the sun. As for China, since I’ve never lived there and don’t speak the language I’ll be using my usual comparative method — the points I’ll be raising won’t be any more transferable at this point, for what it’s worth, but not due to cultural factors. As for war crimes tribunals, yep. Once the US can no longer defend its global hegemony, Israel’s in deep kimchi.
Eric, you’re most welcome and thank you! As for gardening, I’m between gardens at the moment, and putting time into other things; once the housing bubble crashes and my wife and I can pick up a house with a modest yard, putting in a garden is high on the agenda.
Jon, delighted to hear it.
Patricia M, thanks for this.
Godozo, and thanks for this also.
Luddite, good question. Many of the people I know never got into them in the first place. I’d be interested in hearing feedback from those whose friends are more into current technology.
Luke, I’m delighted to hear I made it sound that realistic!
Alvin, er, I have no idea what “e/acc” might be. Remember that most people pay no more attention to tech-bro culture than they do to the equally abstruse quarrels between different branches of Baptist theology…
Moose and Karen, thanks for both of these.
Kimberly, congrats! I’ve carnivorized quite a few first-rate vegan recipes, so I’m glad to hear it works well the other way.
Marco, can you name any institution anywhere that hasn’t had a scumbag or two manage to get in and rise high in the ranks? The fact that Masonry has had its failures doesn’t mean that the Craft itself is corrupt, just that human beings are what they are, and even the reasonable care that lodges take not to admit unworthy men can’t always screen out a plausible scoundrel.
Mary, we’ll have to see how it turns out.
Boy, the red team would have a helluva job getting staffed, since its members would very quickly become the most hated people on campus. Thanks for the link!
Marco Prof, thank you, but we already had the voting for that in the comments for the first post of this month. When we next get five Wednesdays, consider making a comment to the first post of that month and we’ll see who votes for it.
Pygmycory, I expect that to happen alongside a move back to single-family households. It’s reached the point that many couples would be better off on one salary, with the other member of the couple no longer having all the costs related to work and able to create value in the household economy; all that’s lacking is a way to justify leaving the workforce, in the teeth of pressure from feminism — and religion will provide that.
Grover, well, the owl is the symbol of wisdom…
Anonymous, I have no idea. You’ll have to ask somebody who does theater!
Grover (if I may), good heavens — back when I lived in the Pacific Northwest, I read plenty of accounts of the “skunk ape” and comparable BHMs (“big hairy monsters” — that’s the standard acronym in cryptological circles!) in your neck of the woods, and never thought that our local Bigfoot population was slighted thereby. I’m sorry to hear that the current residents are such dweebs.
KAN, thank you for this! I’ve bookmarked it.
Pygmycory, thank you! Yes, exactly. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have suffered atrocities; both the Palestinians and the Israelis have committed atrocities; both sides are convinced that their cause is just and the other side is pure evil — and with that attitude, I don’t see any way this can end short of mutual annihilation. Praying for the victims of the conflict, and refusing to feed it by lining up with ose side or another, seems like a wiser approach. (As for paragraph breaks, for some reason they’re not showing up on the preview screen, but they do show up when it reaches me.)
Tristan, fascinating. I wonder if that place meant a great deal to you in a previous life.
J.L.Mc12, that depends on whether there are people who care enough about it to preserve it and pass it on to future generations.
Travis, visualizing them is fine — they’re metaphors, after all. I tend to visualize myself at the center and the rings taking shape around me, but that’s simply my habit. Then, since they’re metaphors, I ask: what are these like? What in my life reminds me of them?
Ken, there I can’t help you. Anyone else?
Slink, I like the meme showing Orwell’s face and the words, “I didn’t write it as an instruction manual!”
Brenainn, funny. Still, one of the things that’s been happening for a while now is that the far ends of the political spectrum are curving around to join…
Moose, yep. At this point individuals, families, and local groups can still act to cushion the impact, but beyond that? The political will doesn’t exist even for the most basic sort of constructive response.
@Jeffrey #74 (if I may)
Maybe I shouldn’t admit this on this forum, but since video games have been a big part of my life from an early age (less so in recent years, though), I’ve given some thought to these questions. I think our host is right that the future doesn’t look very bright for them long-term. On the other hand, I think there’s a good chance a couple of twentieth-century successor artforms might give them a sort of legacy. That is: comic books/graphic novels as “sustainable TV shows/movies”, and board games, miniatures-based war games and tabletop RPGs as “sustainable video games”. Of course these successors are very different in important ways, but I also think both of them capture much of the spirit of their less sustainable counterpart too. Both of them can be made in low-tech settings with a fraction of the complexity and resource base needed for our electronic media.
>all that’s lacking is a way to justify leaving the workforce, in the teeth of pressure from feminism — and religion will provide that
If I had to guess, the Amish will inherit 2070. Literally. As in the only people left having kids, etc. I could be wrong.
>In other news, Nuscale cancelled it’s pilot modular nuclear reactor due to rising costs
And I had to track down an article.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/nuscale-cancels-first-of-a-kind-nuclear-project-as-costs-surge/
It’s actually worse than interest rates – they had some pretty hefty government subsidies too. Although I do wonder if government interference cuts both ways and that they may have been subtly set up to fail from the start. After all, nukular energy is a component of state security.
If they want it to take off (which they don’t, not really), they need to let people experiment with reactors in their backyards. Like I said, not going to happen. So the other fate is eventual forgetting.
Thank you, MR Greer, an Archdruid, for allowing and orthodox Christian to post Christian advice to a potential convert, you are truly a tolerant and generous man.
In the corners of the internet that I lurk in there has been a lot of buzz about the recent conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali- a previously ex Muslim Kenyan who became a thoroughly westernized atheist and ran with the new atheist crowd- to Christianity. have you read about this and have a view? it seems like re enchantment is taking place and some are not happy with that- her former atheist cohort for obvious reasons, some Christians because she converted for seemingly cultural. / Instrumental reasons.
may all be well…….
Quin-
Please pray for me to find gainful employment.
JMG, Sam, Clay, I’ve been reading that, especially since the latest set-to between Hamas and Israel started, there have been a fair number of progressive women converting to Islam with a lot of amazement at this trading of one set of oppressive patriarchal norms for yet another set of oppressive patriarchal norms.
I wonder though how much of this oppression is matriarchal as opposed to patriarchal and even whether Islam is especially guilty. My own ethnic group is European and Christian. And in this milieu, whether in the old country or in North America, when I was growing up, parents lived in constant fear of their unmarried daughters getting pregnant. Those girls didn’t quite live in purdah but it wasn’t far from it. I had aunts that walked their teenage daughters to and from high school school out of this dread. Dating American style? Not on your life. That was the way to disgrace and perdition. Any courtship and proposal of marriage was under the strictest supervision.
If a girl was waiting for her husband-to-be to finish military service heaven help her if she went to the cinema or to a cafe even in female company. See, she had to live in a state of no fun at all because that’s what her fiance was going through. If a widow was to remarry no matter if she’d been married for only a week or only a day before the demise of her hubby she’d be declared Whore Number One. She had to live her life thereafter wearing black and in a state of perpetual grief.
Absurd? You bet. I was witness to all this and a whole lot more. And the policing of women was done mostly by women by way of public and private denunciation and by ostracism, and when it came to daughters, by beatings. Things have loosened up somewhat and while the paterfamilias is still emperor, the domina is still the main enforcer. From what I’ve heard this state of affairs is common to many peoples, not just Muslim.
No matter, people are immune to fact. As compared to other cultures, the most common culture we see north of the Rio Grande is nothing remotely patriarchal. But try saying that out loud. People would rather pass kidney stones than listen to reason.
pygmycory # 134, If your paragraphs and blank lines look correct in the “leave a reply” text box, they will post correctly. The preview is broken for some users, but only the preview. When JMG approves the batch of comments onto the post, they display correctly.
Dear John Michael Greer:
Thank you again for providing this monthly service. I have a question, followed by a reflection based on a thread of conversation here in the comments.
1) I’m looking for a new line of work, eager to get out of highly dysfunctional and toxic work environment. I have a Masters degree in cultural anthropology, but sadly in this economy its hardly worth the paper it’s printed on. My natal chart strongly suggests I become a scholar or priest. However, the mainstream institutions have either become corrupt or milquetoast. (Although, I am considering joining an esoteric sacramental church and becoming ordained to minster to those on the fringe and provide a respectable cover for practitioners of alternative spirituality if need be). Ideally, I’d like a profession where I’m either self-employed or work with a small business; I can see myself in the role of Uncle Jelkes with my own bookshop. Alternatively, if I had to go back to school I’ve considered becoming an electrician, at least that would be a valuable skill to have in the future that awaits us. What kinds of decisions should I consider at this time, especially when it seems like both the economy and the status quo in general is going to tank any day now?
2) The thought of a jihadist form of Islam rising in the West leaves me deeply disturbed. If it was a Venusian Islam which historically has inspired mystics, poets, artists, and occultists I wouldn’t mind at all; but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon. What conditions would need to be met for a return of a more Venusian Islam?
Thank you in advance. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone here. May you all be blessed.
Sincerely,
“Christopher Kildare.”
“Scientists have detected the most powerful cosmic ray seen in more than three decades. But the exact origin of this turbocharged particle from outer space remains a mystery, with some suggesting that it could have been generated by unknown physics.
The puzzling cosmic ray had an estimated energy of 240 exa-electron volts (EeV; 1018 volts), making it comparable to the most powerful cosmic ray ever detected, aptly named the Oh-My-God particle, which measured at around 320 EeV when it was discovered in 1991. The findings were published today in Science.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03677-0
I haven’t checked the math, but supposedly that works out to the same energy as an apple traveling at 50 mph. Not bad for a proton. Because of time dilation, from the proton’s point of view it left wherever it came from a few days ago.
I hope everyone had a good day, and USians didn’t overeat too much.
Other Owen, nah, once the population starts dropping dramatically birth rates will nose up again, though probably not enough to equal death rates. This is a familiar process in the twilight of civilizations.
Stephen, you’re welcome. Polytheism has a long and impressive history of defending religious tolerance, and I try to uphold that here and elsewhere. As for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I’m planning a post right now discussing her as a symptom of a major shift under way in mass culture. If all goes well, that’ll be up in early December.
Smith, it’s always intrigued me to watch just how enthusiastically women oppress other women, and then blame men for it. I wonder whether the women who are turning to Islam are doing it to get out from under the thumb of other women, or of public opinion, the idol before whom so many people cringe and grovel.
Christopher K., (1) I don’t know you personally and I have next to no idea what your talents, limitations, strengths, weaknesses, interests, and dreams are, so I can’t tell you what to do. You might consider seeking divination on this — that’s always been my go-to for getting advice from the Unseen. In your place I wouldn’t delay any longer than I have to, and I’d make sure to have several unrelated skill sets, but that’s about as detailed advice as I can give. (2) People would have to want to live in the emotional state a Venusian Islam generates. To judge by the shrill anger and self-pity we hear all around these days, they don’t.
Siliconguy, no doubt the proton was shouting “Wheeeee!” as it zipped into Earth’s atmosphere.
I just had to try the math, but I ran out of significant figures. Before I did I found out the particle is traveling at less than one micron per second less than the speed of light. Or it might be less confusing to say the particle was traveling less than one-one millionth of a meter per second slower than light speed.
The time dilation was easier. One second of particle time is 8,105 years of earth time. So 24 hours ago particle time was 700 million years ago on earth. The solar system formed last week as far as the particle was concerned, although it might not be that old itself.
I am hoping to fix a major problem: I am distinctly unlovable. I have identified a few of the major bad habits and patterns, and am currently working towards fixing a couple of them (and will attempt to address others later).
I worship the planetary gods, and have gotten a go-ahead from Venus to work with her on fixing this. However, I’m a little unclear on the procedure, and one of the major bad habits I need to address is my tendency to jump into things without making sure I actually know the process. I use the Orphic Hymns and then do a free form prayer; but this seems a little more intense. My divination has cautioned me from planetary charity at this time, but I would like to do something a little more than ordinary prayers.
My current plan is that at sunrise for the next seven Fridays I will use the Orphic Hymn to bring myself into the right mental state, ask her to aid me in becoming more lovable, and then light a green candle and focus on it for around 30 minutes.
Does this sound like an appropriate working/prayer for this purpose?
Dear John Michel Greer:
Your response is more than fair, it is very much appreciated. I pray that many of us are able to keep our heads above water in the hard times to come. Peace and blessings to you and your loved ones.
Sincerely,
“Christopher Kildare”
JMG, e/acc stands for “effective accelerationism”, it’s a pun on effective altruism, but where EA is afraid of AI and advocates centralised control of AI research, EA wants to keep building. I don’t want to bore people here with the details if it’s not of interest, but I find it worrying that the doomers like Yudkowsky (who runs a literal AI doom cult) have started to gain some influence outside of fringe tech circles.
Jeffrey, after the way the government handled COVID, I will never support them again. They spent billions of dollars on vaccines, paying “safe distancing ambassadors” and nose-swabbers, and more and now want to raise the GST to pay it back despite a budget surplus. I will give them credit, they are more competent bureaucrats than in many other countries, but even putting aside COVID, one sees that the current generation of leaders are largely trying to continue the policies started in the 90’s. The Singapore system selects for good students who follow all the rules, it will be hard for them to adapt to a world where the rules are breaking down.
Something interesting has just struck me that reframes a lot of things, related to my hypothesis that an unusually intense and long lasting eclipse of the Central Stillness “scattered” us and left us a lot more vulnerable to plenty of other weird influences: namely, that while Pluto might be the most intense of this, it does not cover the full effect, since while the 20th century had a lot of great comets, so too did the 19th century; but this hypothesis suggests that it ought to be possible to determine when this eclipse started. It should have two indications: one, is the uptick in great comets; and the other is a massive shift in societies and culture.
Well, it turns out this actually can be dated: starting out with the double comets of 1532 and 1533, the number of great comets increased dramatically, from no more than one or two a century to multiple every century since. This is quite close to two major transformations in culture that reverberated around the world down to the present day: Protestantism and the Scientific Revolution. Protestantism started in 1517; and the Scientific Revolution started in 1543, and both of them saw things get strange by the standards of normal periods of time. Protestantism has a very strange view of God; Calvinism in particular seems borderline deranged; and the Scientific Revolution marks the start of the self centered view of Men as Gods.
In other words, people’s relationship with the divine got strange, and has stayed there since. This would imply two things: one being that while Pluto is a dramatic influence, it is not the primary eclipse right now, and so some degree of weirdness will remain for the foreseeable future; and second, Fortune is wrong to assign the Central Stillness to the First Plane; rather, it must be above it, if there is in fact such a disruption on the First Cosmic Plane.
Either way, I wonder just how large this system must be to have had such a long lasting effect…
Maxine- while the prov govt can’t be bothered to help you with aggressive bears our federal government will on Dec 1 will kill all the European fallow deer on Sidney island. The real hypocrisy is they will use helicopters crewed with shooters using the “evil AR assault rifle” kitted out with 30 round mags and silencers. Meanwhile Little Potato has still banned my rifle and don’t even imagine showing up at my range with it. Instant loss of my license. And large cap mags or silencers are likely jail time. Parks Canada will spend $5.9 million for maybe 30 deer.
To JMG and Jeffrey
I think people should speak to the dead — I believe in times that weren’t as spiritually confused as ours, people used to speak to the dead all the time. I never thought I would be writing this when I was an atheist 10 short years ago, but here goes: I speak to the dead all the time and I believe I was born with an ability to speak with them. I don’t think I’m that odd of a bird: often when we think we are talking to ourselves, whether aloud or silently, we are conversing with any number of non-corporeal entities that can and do include dead people. The secret is not IF we can talk to them, but how to figure out HOW we can identify them and choose who gets through. For instance, my father passed away in late October. He was a really good guy. He died in a large hospital. I was the only one with him when he died. I actually found it easier to speak freely with him after he died. He actually spent the first part of his afterlife trying to help other souls find their guides when his body was in the literal morgue in the basement of the hospital. That was the sort of person he was in life and he continued to be that way in death. The hospital was an astral cesspit as modern hospitals are. His selflessness in helping others was risky. He seems to be doing fine in his afterlife. I have not been talking with him constantly — he has too much work to do. I did know the day he was cremated. He has been in and out. He joined us for Thanksgiving dinner this evening and reminded me today that the outside hose water pipe had to be shut off in the basement so the pipes don’t freeze. So luckily I got the water shut off on what is probably the last frost-free day of the year. I did not tell my family members that I was talking to him today, though I have briefly spoken about being able to communicate with him as well as other dead people. My loved ones know I’m into lots of woo woo occult stuff but we try not to make a big deal about it. I am planning a future essay on speaking to the dead at my blog at kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org. For now, I have written some of my opinions on how to care for the newly dead: https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/97332.html
@luddite re: smartphones
My guess is that more people will give up on using them (or at least be more conscious of it) on the one hand, but that on the other hand the majority will gleefully adopt whatever is next. I hear fully voice-operated personal assistants are in development, and while cable-in-your-head type tech is still in its infancy, I wouldn’t be surprised if people go for that if it’s ever feasible.
Economic and supply issues squeezing people out of the smartphone market seems still a while off for the west and longer still for China and the rising powers. I‘d give them 20 years at least.
But I could be wrong, of course, it’s just a guess.
A propos tech feasibility, JMG, in The Ecotechnic Future (iirc) you mention that the internet as we know it may only have about 30 years left, so about 20 by now. Do you still see it that way, and if not, what made you re-assess the situation?
Pygmycory #122 re: woke wives in Islam
Your post suggests that the millennial convert women would have the choice to work and earn their own money. If we’re talking about the stricter versions of Islam, as those kids‘ reverence for bin Laden suggests, I wouldn’t be so sure that is an option. They can pretend to be fundamental ist Muslims, of course, but if they mean it, they’ll have to get married and their fundamentalist husband gets to decide what’s good for them.
I have the suspicion that many of these girls don’t know what they’re getting involved with.
Tonight at the altar, after coming home from Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter’s house, it occurred to me that Thanksgiving is decidedly a Jupiter festival. It takes place when the sun is in Sagittarius, and it’s all about abundance and eating. That was my meditation of the day.
After we were all seated but before we started to eat, we went around the table with “What are you thankful for.” I had plenty to be thankful for by the way, but nobody said any sort of grace, so at the altar tonight, I addressed Gaia and said my usual one of “Thanks for the food that fills me; thanks for the hands that feed me; thanks to whose whose labor (all the family members) brought this food to my table, and Hail Holy Earth Who gives to all.” With the invoking earth pentagram. It felt quite right. And that was my ritual of the day.
Dear JMG,
What are your thoughts about the part renewables will play in the future? I am aware that they are unable to enable our current lifestyle, but could they at least power the bare essentials (lifts, lighting, medical facilities, or central cooling)?
Thank you!
JMG,
What are your thoughts on future currencies? I assume each country will revert to using their own internal currencies for trade as such, but what about the international trade? Will it return to bartering? Will a new currency rise up as a universal trade currency?
JMG,
Well, wisdom is the obvious part! 😉 What I was wondering was what anyone might think about the rescuing thereof, or the timing. I was out for my first long walk in a while, so maybe it was just the usual Solvitur ambulando sort of nudge.
As for bigfoot, I can’t remember exactly where, maybe Monsters, but I remember you specifically doubting that there were any east of the Mississippi. I could be wrong about that though. I can verify, in any case, that if you get as close to one as I think we did, the name “Skunk Ape” is pretty appropriate. How bizarre a large cotton wall tent in the woods, glowing with gas light, must look to them! It was the first night we had that gas light system up and working, and I’m almost certain one of them ran its hand along the top edge of the tent no more than 3 feet from our sleeping toddlers…I admit, my wife and I were absolutely terrified…thankfully its curiosity seemed to be sated after that.
@JMG #149 As for war crimes tribunals, yep. Once the US can no longer defend its global hegemony, Israel’s in deep kimchi.
That’s pretty much guaranteed, yes, What’s more interesting is that these countries appear to be winding up to open a case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, indicting Joe Biden and other western leaders for enabling and supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing. It won’t be an edifying sight. The Global South will observe the exact same western officials who celebrated the ICC indicting Putin for ‘abducting children’ (which everyone outside NATO understands was simply a matter of children being evacuated from a war zone) turn on a dime and denounce that same ICC for having no competence over the actual mass murder of women and children which is documented in gruesome detail. I suspect that will lead many countries which were previously well-inclined towards the West to peel away in revulsion, with major consequences for international affairs.
@Jeffrey #117, 119
TADR stands for ‘The Archdruid Report’, which was our host’s original blog.
As for Singapore, well, I’ve given my opinion, and I would say history supports it – and I do mean Malacca rather than the Straits of Malacca. Zheng He visited Malacca, not Singapore, because the former was significant and the latter wasn’t. The Portuguese and Dutch fought wars to control Malacca, not Singapore – because there was nothing of importance in Singapore. Raffles was able to gain control of Singapore fairly easily because there was nothing of importance there. The common factor was the Sultanate of Johore, and I expect Malaysia to fare far better, not least because they have farmland and water.
Ken, I myself use hearing aids since childhood, and I don’t notice that they would have any problematic effect on the brain.
About obesity, I tend to side more with JMG’s assessment. The points Hackenschmidt mentions seem to me partly be of the type “don’t believe your own eyes, instead believe supposedly scientific and measurable quantities like the Body-Mass Index”. The idea the we don’t see many obese people because they don’t go outside or our perception of people is somehow otherwise wrong seems to me a bit akin to gaslighting.
I noticed that the planets Uranus, Neptune and the former Pluto have astrological influences that have very little to do with the Gods they are named after. This is expected, since the naming was not done by astrologers. But if you could name them anything you wanted, what would you name them instead?1
Hi JMG,
Overnon magic monday you suggested a natural magic method to me to find a new home. You suggested directing prayers to Venus, my questions is would praying to Brighid be equally appropriate? I just feel more affinity with the Celtic panthenon, living as I do in the Scottish Highlands!
Hi John,
So I did some research into places to potentially move should things get very dangerous in Europe in the coming decades.
Realistically speaking, I concluded that I didn’t want to live in a place prone to hurricanes which basically ruled out the entire Caribbean as I concluded that the damage these cause would be disastrous in the era of the Long Descent and the collapse of global tourism and the free movement of capital (e.g. tourism and offshore finance).
So, conclusion was either the US (via the HNT visa although hopefully America will make if more affordable to move there in the future), possibly one the Canadian options on the north-eastern coast (although I didn’t look too closely at that) and finally the most intriguing option, Mexico!
Mexico currently has a very viable permanent residency visa which is surprisingly affordable (at least for someone like me who lives in one the wealthier bits of western Europe). Merida is the safest and one of the nicest cities in Mexico (one of my friends recommends it having lived there recently) and is on the Pacific coast so away from the hurricane season.
What is your wider outlook for Mexico long-term? And do you think it is a viable alternative to the New England area of the States for English speaking European emigrants in the future?
In regard to Europe, I’ve been thinking about how the collapse of Europe will play out over the coming decades. I assume as a start that it will arise in waves, e.g. 1st wave starting in 2022 with the wars in Ukraine, Armenia flare-ups in the Balkans e.g. the periphery of Europe.
The next wave, due maybe as soon as the late 2020s(?) is the expansion of the chaos to the Balkan states (a Russian invasion), potentially, parts of the Baltic Sea and also in the south should the Russians expand into Moldovia.
Its a fairly safe bet that the parts of the Balkans could easily go back to war within the next 10 years and potentially also eastern Mediterranean around Türkiye, Cyprus and Greece.
The third wave is the big one, assuming that the 2nd wave is contained regionally and doesn’t lead to a wider regional war like WW1/WW2; wars spread into the heart of central-eastern Europe with further Russian expansionism, the rise of little nationalisms like Serbia, Hungary and Poland, the wider Mediterranean area falling apart due to migration movements, civil wars and potentially aggressive moves by the Turks, Egyptians and others around Israel and beyond. That will likely drag in to the chaos the Italians, French and Spanish.
In the meantime I expect to see ever worsening internal conflicts, particularly in the cities of France, Sweden, Netherlands and Germany around a rising Muslim population and a native population increasingly voting for “-far-right” parties.
The triggers for a regional war in north-western Europe do strike me as very hard to see. No border disputes, no budding nationalisms (unlike central-eastern Europe), no regional imperial power like in the East with Russia or the south-east with Türkiye.
I can certainly see France getting involved in wars in north Africa, Italy, and around the Mediterranean should we see piracy, boat wars and even armed invasions from the MENA region. But am I missing something here? Finland, UK and Ireland seem the most secure out of all of Europe.
pygmycory – No one has asked me for my position on the warfare in Gaza, but if they did, my reply would be “I don’t know enough about the situation to sift out the truth from the propaganda… and I’m not sure that you do, either. Our attitudes toward these events will make absolutely no difference in their evolution. Let’s talk about something more productive. What do we know, and how do we know it?”
re: screaming bluehairs going islamic
At least they’ll be tied to a single book full of written rules. Yeah, yeah, there’s the whole sunni/shi-ite split but even there, there are lots of things that have been written down and generally accepted. They can’t just make stuff up anymore.
At least now you can read a book (or three) and know with some certainty what will get their hijab spinning – and what will not.
Warning for all those who eat shrimp, courtesy of today’s Gainesville Sun in an article about the trials of Florida’s shrimpers. The shrimp being sold to grocery stores, restaurants, and wholesalers is cheap foreign shrimp raised in factory farms overseas with antibiotic use.
I clipped the article with a note to our Dining Committee chair, asking if the Powers That Be were aware of these issues and intend to cross-post to Frugal Friday. I’d been wondering why Dining was serving so much shrimp. but since shrimping is a major industry in Florida – wrong. Hurricane Ian destroyed the entire Fort Myers Beach shrimping fleet, the shrimp are swimming in cooler, saltier waters, and prices are being seriously undercut by the foreign shrimp. I will also email my daughter, calling her attention to it, if she does eat shrimp.
In a reply to Pygmycory…
“Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have suffered atrocities; both the Palestinians and the Israelis have committed atrocities; both sides are convinced that their cause is just and the other side is pure evil…”
All true, only I’d add a couple of wee wrinkles to flesh it out a little… Bear in mind that I myself lived for three years in a similar atrocity-prone, two-sides at loggerheads, corner of the world, and still live just 10 miles on the “right” side of its border… Northern Ireland…
Thusly:
“Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have suffered atrocities; both the Palestinians and the Israelis have [militarised gangs who have] committed atrocities; both sides are [afflicted with self-styled leading elites, whose position and power rely on keeping people on their own side] convinced that their cause is just and the other side is pure evil [and both side’s leaderships benefit from and are enabled to retain control of their own side by the atrocities committed by the other. And yet… both sides *mostly* consist of ordinary, non-elite, non-atrocity committing people with way more in common with each other than either of their leading elites would like them to appreciate… sadly].
@Christopher in California
Thank you Christopher for you rreply and all of these resources!
Yes, time flies, all unclear where anything is headed over here in Europe.
The accelerating decline of EU industry does not speak for a corporate future over here, that much is true!
I’ll be on watch for doors opening there.
@Bogatyr
Thanks for your reply!
It seems that martial arts traditions handed down from people like Masaaki Hatsumi are often diluted downstream – his direct pupils are good, their pupils are good, but the following generations become increasingly incompetent.
Also I think part of it is modern society – people can’t dedicate to things easily because they are busy smartphoning around to not feel alone, everything is too short lived.
Many martial arts/healing/spiritual traditions stem from established structures, monasteries, warrior castes…that exist no more, are almost not found.
Modern society has no attention span.
And to make something financially sustainable – a thing with which many martial arts clubs or other projects struggle as well. Not an easy task.
Besides that most people are mostly interested in wooing other people, in a society where social capital is also short lived, and everything is like a job interview.
Obviously I’m looking out for alternatives to trust in corporate mainstream too, but have a hard time already even getting an ordinary life stable.
I wish you a good journey despite all!
re the move back to single income households: the only way I can see that happening is if housing prices drop. Round here incomes and housing prices are WAY out of balance for a variety of reasons, from speculation, and keeping credit too cheap for too long to a giant spike in immigration post-pandemic.
That said, situations as skewed as the housing market round here tend not to last forever. I get the impression you are confident that an outright crash in housing prices will happen soon. Boy do I hope you’re right. This is just about unbearable. I’ve been spared the worst in my own life because I lucked in to a great housing situation that has lasted, but I’ve been watching things falling around me and wondering when it’s going to be me.
Hi John,
What is your take on No Labels third party prospects? – https://www.nolabels.org/memo
Do you think they have a chance to win enough EC votes to stop either party winning an outright majority? I currently have a 400 to 1 bet that Joe Manchin will become the next president. I still think its unrealistic but should No Labels prevent a majority the odds should crash and I can exit with a profit (assuming Manchin ends up the No Labels candidate in April 2024).
>I haven’t checked the math, but supposedly that works out to the same energy as an apple traveling at 50 mph. Not bad for a proton
I did. I was curious how many calories 240 EeV was. According to https://www.inchcalculator.com/convert/electronvolt-to-calorie/
it’s 240E18 eV = 9.190305 cal
And that’s not kcal, which is what you see on the back of that bag of junk food. Divide by 1000 to get that. .009 kcal.
BTW, an apple just at rest has about 100 kcal. It’s still a lot of energy for a tiny little proton but by hooman standards, it’s not very much energy at all. But if you were to create a whole bunch of particles with that kind of energy and harness them and then put someone like Dyatlov in charge…
@Bradley #10 and #57,
The article on EVs costing $17 per gallon-of-gasoline-equivalent makes points worth considering, but it neglects to mention that petroleum in the US is also heavily subsidized by government spending and externalized costs. Here’s an article about another study that estimates the true cost of gasoline at $15 per gallon, and that was in 2011. That suggests to me that the governments’ policies designed to give electric cars a foot in the door are calculated just about right, assuming the goal is to attempt to sustain an automobile-based economy for as long as possible.
The problem of course is maintaining unreasonable expectations. Expecting an electric car to have a 300+ mile range (quite easy to achieve in an internal combustion engine car) is like expecting an ICE car to have a 0-60 acceleration time under 5 seconds (quite easy to achieve in an electric car). It means every electric car needs a high-performance envelope-pushing capability. I’d gladly trade my current old ICE car to help pay for a two-passenger electric car that can go up to 60 miles at up to 60 mph, and no farther or faster. That would meet 97% of my driving needs; trains, buses, or if necessary, rentals could cover the rest. It would be small and light, because the batteries wouldn’t have to weigh a literal ton. It wouldn’t have AC, heating, or be safe in a collision with a truck, but I don’t get those things when walking, bicycling, or waiting at bus stops either, and those are the alternatives I’m comparing with. It wouldn’t need an electric service upgrade to recharge overnight at my house.
I’d be curious about the “true costs,” to pedestrians and communities, of all the businesses in a neighborhood sprawling out for miles because they’re surrounded by huge dangerous parking lots and connected by even more dangerous high-speed high-traffic highways (aka “stroads”). But somehow I don’t expect the Texas Public Policy Foundation to be interested in calculating that.
@Bogatyr,
On your Zheng He point: before Malacca was founded, Singapore had already gained a great reputation as an international trading hub. Coinciding with the Pax Mongolica, the ancient Kingdom of Singapura is mentioned in the Sejarah Melayu as being renowned across the world as an important commercial centre in the 13th century. This is corroborrated by archaeological findings that include ancient Greek coins and Chinese porcelain. So great was its wealth that the Majapahit Empire, in a bid to wipe out this economic rival, invaded its royal fort and destroyed the city. The last ruler, Iskandar Shah, fled to Malacca and founded the Sultanate.
“ The Portuguese and Dutch fought wars to control Malacca, not Singapore – because there was nothing of importance in Singapore”. They did, in a roundabout way. The wars to obtain Malacca were for control over the malacca straits, and they fought over it just because there was already a settlement there(I think), and if Singapore was also established then, they probably would have fought over it as well.
Good afternoon. I couldn’t decide if this was a Magic Monday question, but it’s not really a question, just an observation about geometry, so I’ll throw it out here for a giggle…
A few weeks back, you were on a podcast, and the link was YouTube and at one point it showed a ley-line map purportedly connecting a number of “important” shrines to St Michael in a straight line from Skellig Michael western edge of Ireland to The Monastery of St Michael Archangel on Xisos off the southwest coast of Turkey. I then saw the same green map as an illustration on a completely different YouTube channel and I wondered… so I checked… and, yes, that map is an artifact of the distortion introduced by the Mercator Projection, because there is no such straight line on any other projection or an actual globe. So, the immediate (rationalist) dismissal is: must be baloney, right?
Hmmm…. no… I got curious and found that, to within 3%, all of those shrines, some of which are the earliest in Christianity, on that map happen lie on an arc of a circle about 3,100 km centred in Archangelsk in northern Russia. That was a Norse trading port whose earliest potential reference is around 820 and which wasn’t associated with St Michael until the founding of a church there in the early 16th Century.
Weird, no?
Of course, I’d be remiss to not note that there are hundreds of churches and shrines devoted to St. Michael all over Europe, for which any number of geometrical connections could probably be devised, but it is fun to note that those in the fraction of the culture that explores the more occult teachings should somehow latch onto these particular ones which have this particular linkage and seem to be passing it around.
Set your receivers! Set your receivers!
This week on the shortwave dial via Imaginary Stations we have WS7S featuring a celebration of the humble seven inch single. This show will be beamed to Europe by Shortwave Gold on Sunday 26th November 2023 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz.
Then on Monday 27th November via the transmitters of WRMI we have the return of KMRT at 0300 UTC on 9395 kHz. Expect some Blue Light specials and a supermarket choir if all goes well. Tune in as “when it’s gone, it’s GONE!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqKXfiyykL4
https://www.reddit.com/r/shortwave/comments/181ajc3/ws7s_a_celebration_of_the_7_single/
Anonymous, that’s a good standard practice and ought to have good results.
Alvin, so noted! My take is that which side prevails in Silicon Valley and other Western venues is irrelevant at this point, since the US and its client states in Europe are rapidly falling behind the curve. The decisions that matter are being made in Asia — and over those, Yudkowski et al. have no influence at all and neither do their opponents.
Anonymous, an interesting hypothesis. It might be worth exploring the possibility that a cluster of systems went past on several different planes.
Kimberly, so noted! You’ve certainly got a lot of tradition on your side.
Eike (with an I), my take at this point is more nuanced. It seems likely to me that government, military, and corporate users will still have some equivalent of the internet fifty years from now, maybe longer than that. Long before that, however, most people will no longer have access to it. There may be local or regional legacy systems networking old computers via ham radio BBS systems by then, too — so fragmentation rather than complete collapse seems like the most likely outcome to me.
Patricia, thanks for this. A fine ritual!
Jeffrey, it’s profoundly uneconomical to take existing systems — even essential ones — and try to run them using renewables. What’s needed are new systems that take advantage of the strengths of renewables and cope with their weaknesses. Will those systems come into being? It depends on whether anybody gets to work on them. As for currencies, that’s another gargantuan question; my book The Wealth of Nature discusses it.
Grover, skunk apes aren’t sasquatches — they’re at least different species and may be from wholly different genuses, as different as gorillas are from gibbons. Sasquatches also smell like large unwashed animals — they don’t have the really spectacular stench that skunk apes have. As for the owl, there I have no idea.
Bogatyr,it’ll be quite the spectacle to behold! Go long on popcorn futures. 😉
Rajarshi, I’d name them Prometheus, Rhea, and Medusa. Prometheus and Rhea are Titans in Greek mythology, thus appropriate for outer planets; Prometheus is of course the great innovator and revolutionary, and Rhea is the mother of the gods and the ruler of the Milky Way. Medusa is the most famous of the Gorgons, and just as she turned people to stone, the dwarf planet we call Pluto turns people’s brains to mush!
Free Rain, I meant the planet, not the goddess!
Forecasting, you’d have to talk to someone who knows the Mexican scene much better than I do. As for Europe, the question in my mind — especially after the recent Dutch election and the current effort to remove the veto power of national governments — is whether the EU will survive at all. If it does, I see it becoming a bureaucratic-authoritarian state along the lines of the Soviet Union, and remilitarizing in a big way. It’s at least as likely, though, that it will shatter over the next decade or so, to be replaced by populist or neofascist national governments, which again will rearm in a hurry. Either way, wars will result, but they’ll be different wars in each case.
Other Owen, there’s that! I suspect one of the reasons behind the drift toward dogmatic religion is that even the wokesters are tired of constantly changing rules about what is or is not acceptable.
Patricia M, thanks for this.
Scotlyn, so noted. It may be that you’re right, but I’ve watched too many people I know cash in their supposed ideals and eagerly support the vilification of their neighbors to be so sanguine about it.
Pygmycory, Canada, and especially your part of Canada, are in an insane housing bubble just now. How long that can be propped up is an interesting question.
Forecasting, I think it’s quite possible that they and the other third parties could toss the election into the House of Representatives, which is what happens here when nobody gets a majority of electoral college votes. Again, this is a great time to go long on popcorn futures.
Renaissance, yeah, I know. My take is that there’s actually something behind the ley networks traced out by Alfred Watkins — probably, as he suggested, a network of late prehistoric tracks and means of land navigation — but the whole thing has been stretched to the point of absurdity since his time.
Justin, thanks for the heads up!
Regarding ham radio BBS systems; are there any up and running? I still have my extra class license but I’m not using it. If there are interesting BBS systems on ham radio, maybe I’d get some renewed interest.
Since interest has been expressed on the subject in several previous open posts, I am sharing a little update on what has been happening regarding the unity thunderbird (native American swastika) movement. I have been mindful of reporting past activities rather than planned future activities for reasons that are familiar to mages.
Cree native Adrien Thomas has continued his ‘mission’ of defanging the Nazi energy this autumn through various means. The most visible activity was his ‘End the Indian Act’ walk, from November 3 – 6, in which he and a small crew of 5-6 others successfully walked in a counter-clockwise direction around the entire city of Edmonton, Alberta amidst the howling prairie wind in barely-above-freezing temperatures. They continuously held various flags (the two different Thunderbird flags, Mohawk war flag and Two Row Wampum Belt flag) aloft along the entire route. In the view of Adrien, and many other Indigenous folks in Canada, the Anglo racist ideology that gave birth to the Indian Act (1876) and the German Nazi ideology are merely two different manifestations of the same phenomenon and that attacking it at a root, symbolic, level is essential for the welfare not only of Indigenous peoples but of all peoples in North America.
Adrien has also been active in holding long meetings with various social influencers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. He also sees this networking as key. ‘Cowboys and Indians United’ is one of his big themes – and, being a fashion designer by trade, he has come up with a potent visual design (see here: https://adrientherealist.com/products/unisex-3-4-sleeve-baseball-tee). And in case anyone is confused, out west (Saskatchewan and Alberta), First Nations still often proudly refer to themselves as ‘Indians’. One noteworthy thing is that while Adrien seems to have a clear ‘end goal’ in sight, the means seem to be a mystery even to him. People ask him what will happen and when and he answers that everything must happen ‘in the Creator’s time’ (i.e., not as per human-designed agendas and timetables).
JMG had earlier asked about Adrien’s political affiliations, activities or ambitions. He has strong political opinions and he voices them very bluntly (and usually with a lot of expletives mixed in). He is merciless in his criticism of political leadership – be it white or Indigenous. One of the conditions of his role (as given by the Grandmothers) is that he must not ‘shake hands with Power’ either in the present or have done so at any time in his past and that his allies must also fit the same condition. His main ‘political message’ (if it can be termed so) is that our country is governed by deeply flawed and corrupted ‘man-made laws’ and that these must be replaced by ‘natural laws’ as observed by Indigenous traditions and are still alive in the memories of the Grandmothers.
For those who may be ‘late to the party’ and want to know what all this ‘swastika stuff’ that I am referring to is about, here is a link to an image of the unity thunderbird flag that was given to Adrien: https://adrientherealist.com/products/house-banner. As per the native North American concept of the swastika (which coincides with traditional cultures in Europe and India), the root of the symbol is the annual path of the Big Dipper circling the North Star (see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/8446hh/it_looks_like_a_swastika_the_sky_isnt_racist/?rdt=40750).
@Renaissance Man #188 (or @JMG, if you happen to know the answer),
Would you mind posting the link to that podcast? I must have missed that one.
Thanks,
Milkyway
Okay Mr. Archdruid, now here’s something I hope you find entertaining. This happened just the other day.
I was musing on how my worldview used to be deficient. What many of us learned from the past few years is that there is an entire spiritual dimension whose waves toss human events like little paper boats, and we don’t have as much control as we think we have.
And then I began reading The King In Orange, wherein you say exactly the same thing! I laughed, thinking it was an amusing synchronicity.
And THEN, I came across this line in the book: “When you begin to practice magic you get used to encountering the bizarrely meaningful coincidences that Carl Jung called ‘synchronicities’.”
Ha!
On a more serious note, everyone wants to hear about the state of gun control in Canada, right? (You do, right, that’s what you came here for?)
Well, here’s where I’m going with this. I don’t know if you will remember, but some time last year I posted about the Trudeau government’s attempt at gun control, and how it kept getting delayed. I’m sure I posted about this in one of last year’s Open Posts, but I’m not able to find it.
Anyway, in review, what happened was that in 2020, the Trudeau gov’t banned a bunch of guns, with a due date for turning them in of April 2022.
April 2022 came around, and there was no plan in place for collecting any of these guns, and so they postponed the date until October 2023. Last month.
Well, last month rolled around, and wouldn’t you know it? There’s still no program in place, or any desire on the part of any law enforcement bodies to really participate in such a thing. So they changed the date again, to October 2025.
What’s my point, who cares? Well, it’s this: FIVE YEARS? This is never going happen. The government might have had the ability to do this 15-20 years ago, but not anymore, for a variety of reasons, including crumbling finances and social cohesion . Pace the folks who see a WEF-and-CBDC-themed nightmare in our future, centralized gov’t power is waning very rapidly, and this is a case in point. They can’t get anything big done now, and this will get worse.
Enjoy the decline!
(Well, I’m sorry, did you get new blog software? I promise I submitted that comment with proper paragraph spacing.)
@Luddite #106, I’m going to go against general sentiment here and predict that smart phones or some analogous form of handheld CPU-plus-display-screen will be around for a while. The reason is directly related to the fact that it’s much cheaper to equip an appliance with a Bluetooth chip than with a control panel or separate buttons and knobs for each function and adjustable setting. (There’s the cost of developing the necessary app as well, but that’s negligible when the appliance is being mass produced, and/or is only slightly different from some other model for which an app already exists.) So even if smart phones could no longer function as cellular phones, by then they’ll be needed as miniature C3POs, capable of speaking the “language” of your binary load lifters and vaporators (or at least, toasters and ticket booths).
My father used to tell me about the days you would buy an electric motor, just a motor, from a tool catalog, and then various “accessories” for it that would let you configure it as a pump, lathe, table saw, air compressor, or whatever. By my time a couple decades later, the economics had changed and it was hard to imagine any motorized machine not coming with its own single-purpose motor. User interfaces seem to be making the opposite transition: it’s hard to imagine every device not coming with its own user interface (control knobs or keypad) but the economics seem to be pushing things in that direction.
None of that applies to a post-collapse dark age or tiers of Retrotopia that don’t include electrical power, but you asked about much shorter time spans.
This week’s discussion about Wokesters converting to Islam is certainly thought proving, especially regarding females. It will be interesting to see what ‘shakes out’ socially and whether there will be any waves and counter-waves. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is receiving some attention these days, comes to mind. I do not intend on sounding like I am anti-Muslim, as there are many who are happy with that path, and I have personally mixed with Muslims covering the whole human spectrum from the admirable right through to the despicable. On the subject of Western non-Muslim women converting to Islam I have an uncomfortably close seat. Like some other proselytizing religions, there are Muslim sects that have a very smooth operation that effectively targets idealistic but confused/disenchanted Western women and uses every standard ‘cult’ trick in the book. Unbeknownst to the converts their ‘Muslim path’ often ends up being like a Hotel California in which only the most courageous manage to leave. It is one thing to admire passages in the Holy Qur’an from the comfort of your armchair and quite another to be subjugated to intense social pressures to go ‘full niqab’ after having been practicing Islam for a year or so. Some may find happiness and fulfillment there; but not all do.
Hi Michael Gray,
Hope you’re well, and well done you! What you’ve achieved is not so easy to do these days, and probably kept you quite busy. Thanks for the nice words about the place here. Having that nature reserve, and of such size, at your back door is an enviable achievement. And two bedrooms is the sweet spot in the market.
As to all the issues, man, I dunno where to even start sometimes. Most of this states natural gas supplies come from the offshore wells, but those are in decline and so demand is close to, or has now exceeded supply, yet they keep adding more people into that story. I tend to believe that the outcome will shortages and higher prices, but then there might be a lot of wastage – like outdoor heated pools, which are a kind of silly idea in this corner of the country.
But then, you get all those people wetting themselves with excitement for the prospect of closing down coal fired power stations (switch to gas maybe? what could possibly go wrong?) and yet want electric vehicles. Doesn’t make much sense to me.
On the other hand, I’m wired to be upbeat about such matters because after all, it beats the historical norm by a considerable margin. But then I’ve known less, and by and large it is OK, and in fact in some ways it is better because people tend to be more social at such times. How are you with all this stuff?
Congrats!
Chris
>I’d gladly trade my current old ICE car to help pay for a two-passenger electric car that can go up to 60 miles at up to 60 mph, and no farther or faster.
You can buy conversion kits that will let you do that right now. Seriously. There was a cottage industry of independent garages doing some of those conversions for you, but since the advent of Big Auto getting involved, that has probably gone away by now, since the range of them is around golf cart tier.
At least with a conversion kit, if you’re using old school lead-acid tech, when you need to rebuild your batteries, you have a pretty good shot at getting someone local or doing it yourself. And the batteries are cheaper too. But the downside is they can’t take you very far.
Just search for “electric car conversion kits”, there are several stores out there.
I’ve noticed around these rural parts that actual golf carts are popular for short range trips to and from the dollar store, etc. So, instead of a conversion kit, just get an old golf cart and fix it up.
Hi Andy,
The question is: How do you know that those minor amounts of electricity aren’t used in some other way by other parts of nature? There’ll be costs you’d never even thought of.
Fun fact: When lightning hits the ground, it adds a form of nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil that plants can access. It’s like a giant fertiliser process. If humans took that energy for themselves, there’d be consequences.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
I absolutely agree with your comment to Jeffrey. We’ve discussed it before, but the factor is about ten times the cost, just to get something reliable, but even then, my energy usage patterns, are not the common energy usage patterns. 😉 Thus why there is so much talk about large scale battery storage, and not all that much action. It’s economics dude! And sadly, with the locally made inverters I use, the company is ceasing manufacturing. So I now have to work out how to service the machines – at least they were made with servicing in mind. Best to do it now, is my thinking. Just another job to add to the list…
Thanks for confirming my thought processes. Taking the idea one step further, do you think it more likely that whilst in that state I mentioned previously, that the practitioners could be more easily captured? If that’s the case, it seems to be a remarkably foolish path. Hmm. As an idle thought, whilst on that dark path, do you reckon there is a moment upon which a person goes beyond the point of no return?
Cheers
Chris
JMG The planets and their names and influences have come up this week . Pluto governing grunge music it seems and Jupiter in charge of Thanksgiving. Then you said that you would call the outer planets by these names because their names do not really fit them
” I’d name them Prometheus, Rhea, and Medusa.”
is there any good introductions to how the planets work and what they influence etc. for a complete beginner. I know you have a book on Pluto but I would like to start with something more basic.
Thanks
Renaissance Man – this has reminded me of Graham Robb’s book The Ancient Paths – where he considers the angle of azimuth of the solstice sunrise and sunset, and finding various ancient sites or settlements lining up with this, although I wasn’t always entirely convinced, because you throw a load of things on the floor you can find that some of them are in lines, particularly if you are somewhat selective in which things you choose.
The question of what renewables will be able to power in the future is an easy one. In a moderately long time frame ( 100 year or so) renewables will power everything. Once no more fossil fuels are economically obtainable, than everything will be powered by renewables.
These renewables may or may not be the futuristic solutions the Tech Bro’s think of in their dreams of an accelerating, AI drenched , self driving future, such as solar- photovoltaics. But they will all be driven by energy from the sun. It may be in the form of grass fed to mules for transportation, or woodlands grown and harvested to be burned for heating. By then will have squandered the last of the millions of years of sunlight stored up by Gaia beneath the earth and will have to live within a budget defined by the energy from the Sun that falls on the earth in real time.
The question is not which things that renewables will power, but which things are economically practical within a drastically reduced energy budget. I may be wrong, but I would guess that elevators, central AC, the internet, cell phones, 60 mph living rooms on wheels and ordinary travel by airplane will not be among them.
For many people there is the tendency to go to the “bargaining” phase of the Kuebler Ross model and hope that their own pet technology will be saved because it “essential”. But when all the excess labor of the towns-people go in to building a large scale windmill it will most certainly be used for grinding grain and not lifting the mayor up to his third story penthouse in a rickety elevator, or providing an hours worth of air conditioning at the local meeting hall.
Happy Thanksgiving (belated, I know) to all who celebrate the holiday!
First off, some links.
I just found a YouTube channel that some of you with pets might find useful. Veterinary Secrets with Dr. Jones offers info on natural and alternative health options for your pets. I know there are sources out there for human needs, but didn’t know how much was available for the cat and dog crowd. He also provides a link to his website where you can get a free e-book on pet health.
https://www.youtube.com/@VeterinarySecrets/featured
Mutual aid is on the rise! I found this group by accident, called Forward Indiana providing assistance for people through food pantries and community gardens. They describe themselves as neither a business nor a non-profit. I like the saying they include on their home page: “It is a radical act to bypass the system to help your neighbor.” They don’t give a source for the quote though.
https://forwardindiana.wixsite.com/forward
Regarding the failure of the internet: I’m on the mailing list for New Maps, so will be in line for any type of newsletter, magazine, etc. planned to replace the Ecosophia blog; however this assumes that the USPS will continue delivery through hard times and upheaval, or even stay functioning (they keep raising the rates because they keep losing money). Also mail service has gotten worse, and doesn’t seem to be improving. I’ve missed letters or had late delivery, plus letters I’ve sent have not arrived at their destination. Is there a plan for this possibility? Even services like Fed Ex or UPS might suffer the same problems if they continue to exist.
Joy Marie
Phutatorius, I don’t happen to know, as I’m in the same situation you are — Extra class license still current, but there aren’t enough hours in a day just now. Anybody else?
Ron, many thanks for the update.
Milkyway, I’ll have to wait for him to post it — I’m not sure which one it was!
Bofur, just one of the services I offer. 😉 Interesting, that the Turducken’s gun control agenda has ground to a halt. The paragraph breaks were just fine, btw — for some reason, they don’t show up on the preview screen for some people.
Ron, the same thing happened when the Sixties counterculture imploded, of course — though the authoritarian cults came from different sources.
Chris, the further people go down that path the more vulnerable they become to manipulation. I’m not sure there’s technically a point of no return, but I gather from what I’ve read that there are points after which return becomes very, very unlikely.
Anonymous, a book like that would be a very good thing, but I don’t know of one. Anyone else?
Joy Marie, I’m still working on that.
Forecasting intelligence #177
It sounds a bit contradictory to me that you consider the new NATO member Finland to be a safe place in a time where you fear Russia expanding.
Also, from what I see and hear, life in the British isles looks increasingly difficult to me. They may be safe when it comes to outright war, but in every other respect (food, energy, stable government), they seem to be in heaps of trouble.
For the overall safety situation in Europe, I think it’s mainly down to who lets go of the West first and opens up to Eurasia.
The other big factor is being geographically out of the way. I‘ve been traveling around Portugal for half a year now, looking for a place to stay, and the absence of the gloom that suffocates Central Europe is noticeable. As is the number of „covid refugees“, early collapsers, and other such rats that have left the sinking ship.
When figuring out small scale renewables don’t over look water wheels. There are a lot of car alternators in the world, and connecting one of them to a water wheel will get a decent amount of electricity output. A quick check shows a Toyota Corolla alternator puts out 100 amps so that is over a kilowatt.
At #174 it’s commented,
“The idea the we don’t see many obese people because they don’t go outside or our perception of people is somehow otherwise wrong seems to me a bit akin to gaslighting.”
I don’t think it’s gaslighting to point out that without metfornim and/or insulin about 30 million Americans would die within 12 months, and that this was not always so, nor to point out that a certain fraction of people die by each age, and the ones dying past 40yo or so tend to be the obese ones.
Obesity denialism comes from the same place as climate change and resource depletion denialism. Ultimately: “We don’t want to change our lifestyle.” That’s alright, I’m a big believer in human freedoms. But choices have consequences, and while I’m a believer in choice, choices must be informed choices. With obesity, the climate and resources, the information is out there for people. They can choose to accept or deny it, but it remains true either way.
Hello John,
Are you familiar with the work of Anna Von Reitz? she has an interesting perspective and seem to be knowledgeable on what she’s talking about, she claims to be a judge but I haven’t seen any official proof of that. It’s a new thing to me, but she seems to be famous in what’s called the “sovereign citizen” community online, they are anti-government activists.
What I’ve gathered from the bits I’ve read from her, is that the US as we know it is a sham government placed upon an authentic one, and through what she call “semantic deceit” the employees of the government put the American people through null contracts they haven’t agreed on in the first place, it’s actually quite complicated what she’s trying to say, at least to me. She emphasize the difference in official texts between “the united States of America” as it is in the Constitution, and the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which is a corporation created by the feds after bankruptcies around the Civil War, claiming the Constitution to be a commercial contract in the first place. I really suggest you read the papers on her site.
I’ve instantly thought of you when I came across her work for many reasons, one mainly is you mentioning how in the deindustrial world (and the fiction you write) there will be new break away governments within the US, this is almost what you’ve been describing.
I suggest starting here: https://www.annavonreitz.com/firstbase.pdf
Hi John Michael,
Thanks. Mate, I have compassion and sympathy for those folks, but clearly, they have to learn of their folly the hard way. I guess that is the entire point, sorry to say.
Hey, are you watching what is going on in the Netherlands?
Cheers
Chris
Hello, I just want to offer a data point I just heard and found particularly hopeful. It is on the theme of folk doing stuff to help folk. Just because.
So, obviously, there have been a lot of funerals over the past few years. A friend of mine just told me that she has joined a local volunteer group, founded around 6 months to a year ago, to cater affordable funeral dinners for families who can’t afford them. A funeral dinner, around here, is the one that follows the public burial event at the graveyard, from where the bereaved will issue verbal invites to their close friends and relations. Restaurants and hotels are used to taking last minute bookings for funeral dinners which are vague about numbers (somewhere between 20-50 is probably most people’s guess about how many will actually sit down to dinner, since traditionally a mere three days are allowed to transpire between a person’s death and their burial (bar deaths which require investigations, etc).
Whenever their affordable funeral dinner offer is taken up, this group books a local hall, an all volunteer crew will do the cooking, serving, cleaning up, and there is a charge per plate to cover the cost of food only, which is roughly 20-25% of what the hotels/restaurants will charge. Even this charge will be skipped if it is totally out of range for the family concerned.
I was absolutely delighted to hear of this ever-so-practical people helping people effort going on in my own area, and I hope it will contribute to the strengthening of local networks.
JMG, I’m very curious about the new Ars Notaria translation you’ve referred to on the other blog. I’m only just beginning to dip my toes into ritual magic, so it seems like it’s too advanced for me in that respect. On the other hand, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the Trivium and Quadrivium, and the pedagogic methods of late antiquity through the late Middle Ages, over the past few years. I guess you’re still working your way through it, but do you have an opinion on its usefulness for someone primarily interested in that aspect?
Earlier this month, a newsletter from Helios press arrived in my mailbox, announcing several Lovecraft related publications in collaboration with the HP Lovecraft Historical Society. What piqued my interest is the version of the Euripides play Alcestis that Sonia H.G. Lovecraft & H.P. Lovecraft translated and reworked, filling in the gaps in the manuscript with their own hand. For those who are interested in the prodigious number of letters HP Lovecraft exchanged during his life, the Miskatonic Missives have been gathering these letter exchanges in a series of compilation volumes.
On another topic, what is the deal with the push to rename India to Bharat? Was this a publicity stunt on behalf of a wag of the Indian parliament, or is it part of a concentrated effort in the vein of the renaming place names such as Calcutta to Kolkata and Bombay to Mumbai? I understand their need to flex after their successful Moon landing and expansion of the BRICS, but it seemed very sudden and unexpected despite the presence of Bharat as an alternative official name in the constitution.
If it turns out to be a real push, as an American, I do appreciate that distinguishing effect of the adjective form of Bharati/Bharatan to distinguish that pertaining to the subcontinent vs the adjective Indian to refer to that pertaining to the Native American Indians.
Thank you for this JMG.
Re packet radio bulletin board systems, I wanted to indicate that another person is interested if there is such a thing running or planned. I am a radio amateur based in England (Intermediate licence). My local radio club are moving towards a group build of NinoTNC tarpn.net/t/nino-tnc/nino-tnc.html . TNCs are modems to link a computer to a radio network. There are some various notes about networking projects on the parent site https://tarpn.net/ Terrestrial Amateur Radio Packet Network and it could be a place to contact others who might have the skills and interest to move a bbs project forward.
I haven’t found a bulletin board on a TNC network basis yet but it seems like a possible next step if several of us locally get the modem hardware running next year. I’ve been thinking I would like to log local weather and have a message exchange, not yet thought about how to do that but could start finding out.
The packet radio project that I looked into previously was APRSThursday, co-ordinated by Michael KC8OWL in Nevada https://aprsph.net/aprsthursday/ . Not heard anything about bulletin boards from that group, they are more looking at logging numbers and locations of packet radio operators but the group is likely to be another place to contact other people who might be interested in developing packet bbs. If I remember right APRS works via VHF, packets are sent by radio to a gateway and then forwarded over the internet to the APRSThursday group to log the operator, I think where the packet was gated i.e., entered the internet is also recorded in the packet string.
>Alternatively, if I had to go back to school I’ve considered becoming an electrician
Why not just do it? Find something that needs doing and just do it? Although playing with 110 can be a bit dangerous.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NcXR_2w6Tn0
Phutatorius, JMG – Re: ham radio collaborations (e.g., BBSes). The only thing that I’m aware of is Winlink (winlink.org), which is not (AFAIK) a BBS, but a network of radio relay stations which supports gateways from the digital message radio world into the (currently wider) Internet, and radio-radio message passing. I suppose that it could be used for a round-robin letter system (as described earlier in the comments), where a package is passed from one member to the next in a cycle, each removing their prior content and adding new content before passing it along. I haven’t heard of a ham radio BBS being active in many years. I suppose that they must have used VHF, and had limited regional coverage.
A recent search on the topic of naguals brought me to an article titled “Nagualism. A study in native-american Folklore and History” written by Daniel G Brinton, MD and published in 1894. You can download the article at jstor or gutenberg for free.
The article by Brinton is about as good an overview on the topic of naguals as you’re likely to find and probably more accurate than Castaneda’s portrayals in his Don Juan books.
One of the more interesting usages of the nagual term described by Brinton is that of Nagual as a protective spirit with which you’re paired with at birth with the aid of your local shaman. The personal nagual is in fact very similar in function to the guardian saint that corresponds to you birth day in the Catholic religion. Apparently, in one area of Mexico, a newborn child was lined up with its nagual by the local shaman in the morning and with its patron saint by the catholic priest later in the day.
Hi,
I am starting my eighth decade and while I have read fiction and non-fiction, looking for quality stuff, all my life, I am quite ignorant of myth and legend. I always put it off until later for a variety of reasons. I have met many people who relate well to science fiction, mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare, Asian legends and so on, but I never get started on this stuff other than what Walt Disney, Christians, movies, and chance encounters gave me.
I guess now is “later”. I have a kid’s version of King Arthur, several Bibles, Bullfinch’s mythology which I remember has that Welsh section in it on my bookshelves. I feel like commenters and maybe JMG could point me down the right path.
Several decades ago I really liked C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and I just finished his space trilogy. I really liked Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers. I liked my youthful forays into Tolkien, too. I had a brief period delving into Grimm’s fairy tales. Greeks? Eastern traditions? I’m clueless.
I’d be grateful for any guidance.
Hi JMG,
I hope you and all the readers here had a great Thanksgiving. My last few comments had the paragraph breaks stripped out, so apologies if this appears in one block of text.
I finally got around to reading Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies. It has its biases, but is well worth reading. There was one point in particular that surprised me quite a bit. The issue is Tainter’s distinction between collapses of complex societies that exist without significant peer societies around them, such as the Western Roman Empire, and complex societies that exist in a matrix of reasonably equivalent peer societies around them (“peer polities”), such as the Maya. I don’t ever recall this point being discussed in my previous readings on collapse and it is a crucial one.
The idea is that collapse–a rapid simplification of the structure of society–can only happen in a power vacuum when competing neighboring states do not have the ability to take over and fill the void left by a dissolved state. Thus the Western Roman Empire was surrounded by far less complex tribal societies, so when it broke down, a true collapse of complexity took hold. In contrast, the Maya were a collection of variously equivalent city states crammed together. If one city state dissolved, it was simply taken over by better positioned neighbors and the overall complex society continued under new management. In the latter case, collapse does eventually come, but it comes in the form of the entire interlinked network of peer states collapsing together as a large unit, not one by one.
The interesting thing about this theory is that our current global industrial society is more analogous to the networked peer polity structure of the Maya than it is to the singular hegemon structure of the Western Roman Empire. What this suggests, which is quite horrifying, is that the status quo will be maintained far longer into the future than most people, even collapse-aware people, imagine. Because we are in an interlinked global society, the overall network will continue to creak along in increasingly dysfunctional ways until such a day that the entire global structure collapses. This doesn’t mean any individual nation or political unit will survive, and “status quo” doesn’t mean continuation of current comforts and conveniences. To me it suggests a very extended period of agonizing adjustments and muddling through. Ugh. Long Descent indeed.
Thinking through this has inspired me to learn more about different varieties of previous civilizations. I’m particularly interested in the Romans, but there are aspects of the current industrial scenario for which they are not the best model. In addition to the Maya, we have the collection of Mycenaean city states that went through the late bronze age collapse, and other less well-known examples of networked peer polities. History is a large subject!
What Clay Dennis wrote about the collapse of belief in the official narrative is something, where another event, which happened recently, is revealing: the big international art exhibition Documenta, which happened every five years in Kassel, Germany since the 1950s, is now for the first time in risk of being delayed, because the commission, which has the task to find the next curator, dissolved itself, after an Israeli artist and and Indian artist both stepped back because of recriminations to do with the Israel-Hamas war and because of a petition which the Indian artist Hoskoté subscribed. In a newspaper from today there was a lead article where the Documenta was accused of having become subject to censorship and ideological regulation.
Following up on the question of the names of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
I was thinking of Prometheus myself when I contemplated the nature of Uranus. (Well, him and Vulcan). But as for Rhea and Medusa, I didn’t expect those! I was thinking of Neptune as Epimetheus – the Titan creator of beasts, as a representation of the power that dissolves the Individual within us and makes us run on fundamental herd instincts and childish idealism (since Hawthorne has permanently bound the simplicity of a child into the nature of Epimetheus for us). As for Pluto, I was thinking of Epimetheus’s wife, the fatally curious Pandora.
I can understand why Medusa might make sense as Pluto, but why Rhea as Neptune? I know precious little about the Queen of the Titans. Aside from birthing the Olympians and handing them to the Lord of Seasons for consumption (except for Zeus, whom she hid), what else is she known for?
Also, I am currently reading The Twilight of Pluto. An excellent book, thank you very much for it!
On recommendation from Mrs. Psmith’s bookshelf, I am reading L. Sprague de Camps’s Lest Darkness Fall and enjoying the well thought-out details. The American narrator, who was living in AD 1939, gets jerked to AD 535 Rome and describes it:
“The streets were narrow, and for the most part not very crowded. The town had a drowsy, shabby-genteel, run-down personality, like that of Philadelphia.”
I found this curious. Detroit and other Rust Belt cities were hit by the oil shock and other crises in the 1970s. Savannah and other Southern cities lost their riches on Emancipation. But why was Philadelphia, one of the foremost cities during the Revolutionary War, particularly run-down, apparently more than other places, in 1939?
I know there are Pennsylvanians with deep knowledge of local history here on the blog!
Some thoughts, on topic of migration, politics, society, ethnical differences…
First off, the times of internet make it easy to fínd detailed analyses of conflicts and politics, and with detail I mean: strategic maps with trade routes, raw material sources, industrial sites, military bases, distributions of ethnicity, demography in general…plus less spatial informations on interest groups, regional strategic interests, cooperation and conflict…
And so on, relatively obvious. The more I see the less I feel I really know. That’s that.
So on to migration:
It is obvious that migrations of poor people to places as economic centres may lead to conflict, especially when the economic growth in that center is slowing too, thus I’d say loses its capacity to absorb populations, employ them, assimilate them into a common culture. Of course, a receding economy may lead to conflicts within a society anyways, it does not need migration for that.
And the general demographic rule anyways I’d say is: young men without perspective, without opportunity to start families, without any sufficient diversion to satisfy their needs simply equate coming violence.
An example is Venezuelan people migration to Uruguay (as I know a first hand source on that), not very welcome.
There are ghettos and cartels in South America, all kinds of violence. But where’s the difference to islamic migration to Europe and organizations like the muslim Brotherhood, Milli Görüs, Grey Wolves and others? I had interesting discussions with @Karim Jauferally on these things some posts back this year.
I think the difference is the latter, these organizations. South American Cartels to me seem to be solely interested in business, and politics in so far as to foster their business, but they don’t seem to care about societal politics, religion, social mores.
These organizations financed from Turkey and the Gulf states, they upkeep networks of hospitals, schools, social services, religious sites…and I think their goals are really strategic and very long term.
You could call them states within states. Cartels do on occasion engage socially too, to keep loyality of the people where needed, but I don’t think they are as sophisticated as civil organizations, neither do they aspire to be.
Where the Southern Italian Camorra contaminates agricultural lands with heavy environmental toxins, just for the shortest of short term gains, the said organizations from the middle east don’t seem to be motivated by solely such short term thinking.
And the recent migrations to Europe bring unsatisfied young men to no end, which already speaks crime and violence, but I think these socio-political organizations, they give and otherwise anarchic and undirected state of affairs a sharp direction – ultimately against the “host” of these emerging sub-societies.
As an outside it is simply impossible to fathom these interconnections between Western Secret Services, Think Tanks, institutions like the State Department, and islamic organisations from the Middle East.
One thing however, I’d say, can be assumed: islamic organizations had historic Western support as a way to combat socialist/communist international organizations back in the cold war (enemy of the enemy), and how many former friends of the West have become foes and ultimately were eliminated?
So far, that isn’t uncommon in all of written history anyways, just a constant shifting of Game Theoretical balances.
Sometimes I think societies can somehow be compared to ecosystems too: there’s predators, the bulk of plant herbivores (think medieval peasants), parasites, opportunistic creatures…
As was said, many Nigerians coming to the US are of the Eto, allegedly an ethnicity that does especially well in intellectual work and educated middle class jobs, somewhat like Jews in historic Europe, like Chinese all over Asia….
And then there’s ethnicities like the Roma in Europe, usually at the bottom of society (those who assimilate become invisible, because they don’t call themselves that anymore and disconnect from these roots).
What’s the difference though to the general principle of where there’s many poor people, gangs and criminal organizations start emerging?
I think there’s what is an advantage of an enclosed culture with a language that outside of their society is not commonly spoken. It reminds me a bit of what tís written about the Italian Cosa Nostra, namely they keep their business within family structures, and family members are less likely to testify against their own, while the Camorra is said to be kind of a freelance franchise enterprise, pretty much modeled after the modern idea of the “free markets”, and thus more anarchic and constantly in strife.
Social Dynamics of mankind are very dynamic indeed.
Hi JMG,
In your answer to Free Rain about prayers to Venus you said you “meant the planet not the Goddess”.
My brain stopped functioning as I realized I had no idea of what the differences might be between praying to Venus the planet and Venus the goddess.
This time of the year, on the very occasional clear predawn mornings, Venus is beautiful to behold and I would not want to be disrespectful to either the planet or the goddess. Could you please explain or direct me to where you might have already explained about this difference?
Buy nothing Friday was fun, I’ll continue it on today!
Jeff in WA
Hi Barry K,
You’re on the prayer list! Good luck, may you be gainfully employed in a job that generously fulfills your needs and desires very soon.
Hi,
Eike with an „i“ , i actually meant Norway not Finland.
Norway is in many ways the best positioned, energy rich, no debt, a huge wealth fund, stable demographics (and few MENA refugees/migrants) and geographically far away from the likely trouble spots of Eastern, central and southern Europe.
Portugal long term isn’t a good option. It faces desertification, increased heat waves in the summer and most importantly will be a frontline of Islamic migrations/invasions from a MENA region.
Yes the UK has many challenges. But at least it is far away from the likely chaos triggered by Islamic invasions, wars in much of central, Eastern and southern Europe in the future.
@ Mary Bennet #115
The BBC continues its panic over the 37 seats that Gert Wilder’s Partij Voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) has taken in the Dutch Parliament, joined by PBS this morning. They rant on about the PVV’s anti-immigrant, nationalist, right wing stance, and brought on a member of the EU Parliament to decry the PPV for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, no mention of the farmers on strike against the directive that they have to cull 30% of their cattle herds to combat global warming, a directive handed down from EU courts. No mention of the drastic rise in price for natural gas.
(Maybe they should interview Mayor Adams of NYC for his views on open immigration)
This post may go under the category of natural magic in the universe of JMG. In the late seventies I was an apprentice for two years in a garden based around the principles of Alan Chadwick and founded by him. His principles inspired a John Jeavons to develop the system of bio intensive horticulture JMG has mentioned in his books. Below is a link to lovely photos from that garden and time. Alan Chadwick is the older gentlemen dressed in white slacks and sweater. One of the Maypole Dances pictured was organized by me in 1979. https://chadwickarchive.org/saratoga-photo-collection/
I had become enchanted by the plant Angelica archangelica, a common medieval name being “the Root of the Holy Spirit”. I grew some wonderful plants in a rich garden bed. I harvested stalks (the plant has juicy stalks resembling celery, in the same family as celery, dill, fennel) and was chopping them. The air was filled with the rich fragrance of the plant which resembles a combination of frankincense and celery with a touch of fennel. Suddenly my being was filled for a second with the feeling one can get when the Spirit of God manifests. I paused and said to myself so that’s why it’s called the Root of the Holy Spirit.
I also used the fresh seeds to make a delicious uniquely flavored zucchini bread.
There was an unclean structure on the garden property, a wooden pyramid filled with a dark spirit of depression, used in some sort of meditation. We went up as a group to deconstruct it and before we did so I was moved to throw into it a leafy stalk of the plant to cleanse it.
I have now a daily tea made from the root and have made at times a sweet angelica liqueur from the root and seeds. When I make mead I flavor it with the tea.. Perhaps JMG you could apprise me of the special characteristics of the plant in your understanding.
Liqueur recipe
Regular bottle of a quality vodka
2 tablespoons of Angelica root, ground in mortar and pestle
1 tablespoon of Angelica seed, ground in a mortar and pestle
2 tablespoons of cane sugar or more to taste
Put in a quart mason jar, cover with lid, let it sit for at least two weeks, occasionally shaking
Then filter through a paper coffee filter, bottle as you like
Nice with carbonated mineral water and ice
Or just pour over ice and sip
Source for root – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017ZMFQUE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
Source for seed –
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J2Q77BH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1
For larger quantities of the root
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DXTXLY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have been in relationship with various plants and trees since childhood. The first tree that called to my heart was the northern white pine. JMG you would be amused to know that a D&D dungeon master friend of mine told me my character would be a Druid.
Cheers!
I did a little research after posting my question about ham radio BBS. (Of course I did it after posting!) AX.25 mode is apparently in use down to 40 meters. To me that would be more interesting than repeater relays on the upper bands. I suppose the data transfer rate is the limiting factor for using longer wavelengths. But if it’s just text, that shouldn’t really be a problem. Once the internet is out of reach for lots of people this could become much more interesting that it is today.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) may be more resilient than one might expect.
The prices go up all the time because the USPS is self-funding. They don’t receive tax revenue or run on deficits. When the cost of fuel for LLVs (“those little white mail trucks”) and semi trucks goes up, or when the employees get scheduled cost of living raises (which they do, because they’re unionized), the price of stamps and other services eventually must increase too.
Their operation is also very integrated vertically. They service their own vehicles and other equipment, the semi drivers are employed not contracted by the load, even the mule mail train in Arizona is USPS-owned and operated. They have their own police force. Though the vehicles and capital equipment are manufactured by others, there’s been no “outsourcing” in the modern business sense.
Most important of all, the organization, for all its size and bureaucracy, is… just a little bit cult-like, which is a good thing under the circumstances we’re considering. Having been a “member” myself in the past, I feel it advisable (ironically in this company) to keep silent on some of the reasons I describe it that way. What I can say is, of course most of the work is a routine daily grind, so the clerk at the counter might be surly or lazy and the carriers will probably toss your package into a bin from farther away than you’d like to see. But at the same time, there really is a sense of purpose and history throughout the organization, going back to Benjamin Franklin. And some (obviously not all) of the technology still in daily use, like the carrier bag and the deliverer’s sorting case, hasn’t changed since then.
Obviously, their present-day operational volume will become impossible where fuel and electricity are unavailable, though keeping the post running should and probably will have a high-priority claim on scarce resources. As always, prices will have to reflect the costs. (Consider how UPS or FedEx would react to an offer, even with today’s infrastructural resources, to carry and deliver a letter across the country for you for 66 cents; “but it’s okay if it takes a week or two to get there.”) Once upon a time, a one ounce Pony Express letter cost the equivalent of $52 (and that was after a steep reduction; initially it was $130 per half ounce). Where railroads are operating, letters can still be moved long distances more economically than that. But the costs will still be suitable only for articles of actual value to the sender or recipient.
@Samurai,
the mycenaean city states are definitely an interesting one, and I think somewhat closer to modern conditions that the mayans because you’ve got multiple different interacting cultures in different natural environments being affected in different ways and responding in different ways by the interlocking crises. Egypt, Hittites, Mycenaean greece… Egypt did noticeably better than the other two.
Post-Han China is also interesting, as is post-Heian Japan, though neither of them have multiple interlocking polities and cultures in different environments trading with each other the way mycenaean greece does.
If you look at Rome, also consider how different things were in the east vs. the West. Byzantium kept chugging along a very long time after Rome fell.
Dark ages and falling civilizations are a fascinating if dark topic.
Thank you to the several people who pointed out that my paragraph breaks were showing up just fine in posted comments. I shall not worry about it, then.
Siliconguy, a very good point! Small amounts of electricity are easy to generate — it’s the absurdly extravagant amounts we’re used to thinking of as normal that are a challenge.
Aziz, no, I’m not familiar with her, but I’ve encountered the same ideas elsewhere. Friends of mine who know their way around constitutional law say that those ideas are nonsense, for whatever that’s worth.
Chris, I am indeed. It’s fascinating to watch the neoliberal “consensus” cracking apart.
Scotlyn, I’m delighted to hear this.
Bogatyr, the trivium and quadrivium are specifically what the Ars Notoria (not “notaria” — in Latin it makes a difference!) is meant to teach. I’m still studying Castle’s book, and due to other magical commitments it’ll be another year or so before I can do the workings, but it’s not especially advanced magic — highly specialized, sure, but if you can concentrate on a visual diagram, build it up in your imagination, and recite prayers containing lots of unfamiliar words, it should be within your capacity. The medieval and Renaissance mages who practiced it usually took it up while they were still students at university, before they got to work with other magical arts.
Ighy, hmm! Back in the day, a Helios Press in England was the best source of Dion Fortune’s books and essays — I don’t imagine it’s the same press, though. As for Bharat, I’ll leave that to my Bharatan readers to comment — though, no question, it would make things clearer.
Imp, glad to hear it!
Greco, er, that article was probably what Castaneda used as the basis of his concept of the nagual. Nearly all of his research was done in the UCLA anthropology library rather than the Mexican desert. (But it’s a good article — and as esoteric fiction, Castaneda’s books are pretty good!)
Moserait, if you’re good with ebooks, here are three classic volumes of myth and legend:
The Mabinogion https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5160
Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14465
Old World Japan by Frank Rinder https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46863
Samurai_47, if Europe had been isolated, without peer polities, Western civilization would have collapsed in 1918. Instead, peer polities propped it up and eventually took over. Thus we’re already well into the longer process, heading for a general collapse.
Booklover, fascinating.
Rajarshi, Neptune/Rhea is underrated as a planet. As the planet of unities, she is precisely the Mother of the Gods, the planetary representation of the source from which all other things unfolds.
Aldarion, I know it doesn’t seem that way to a European, but from an American perspective, our Revolution was kind of a long time ago! Philadelphia peaked economically and culturally in the first half of the 19th century and has been increasingly a backwater since that time. Mind you, de Camp was born in New York City, and New Yorkers have a long history of being snotty about other east coast cities… 😉
Curt, hmm. Was there a question in there somewhere?
Jeff, in occult traditions each planet has a planetary intelligence — a guardian spirit who indwells the planet and can be invoked by magical means. That differs from gods and goddesses, who are less localized and are merely symbolized by planets (among other things).
Moose, you may be interested to know that there are a lot of Christian Druids!
Hey John, I’m wondering what you think of psi and remote viewing. You know, parapsychology stuff. I know the CIA tried it out, but they also tried all kinds of wacky stuff.
I personally think psi phenomena could be possible because I’m not a materialist.
Christian Druids? I guess I am half way there already. I could tell you a lot more plant involvement tales.. Could you point me to resources? I ordered a book by a Bruce Moran, Paracelsus, An Alchemical Life. I realize that the realm of natural philosophy in the 1500’s had a broader scope that what it ended up being in the 1800’s and my own experiences show me as Shakespeare said “there are more things in heaven and earth than of dreamt of in your philosophy” the philosophy of scientism. The Druid type stuff would be definitely a side line, more of an intellectual exploration with natural magic coming up as it may, as my main focus is application of Matthew 6:6 since Jesus has given me access to the Father through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (the gift of tongues is part of it all) “pray to your Father, who is unseen, then your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” Essentially a replication in my own small way of Jesus own walk with the Father filled with the Holy Spirit. What the Lord called having the Light of Life.
@ Phutatorius, Lathechuck, Orange Harebrained Imp…
TAPR is another good resource for information that might be put to use for an amateur BBS system https://tapr.org/
This is the Tuscon Amateur Packet Radio group, and they put out a publication, have a yearly conference, and usually a space at Hamvention. (I live within an hour of Hamvention. If anyone ever wanted to make the pilgrimage, we could perhaps have a Green Wizards meet up at Hamvention ourselves.)
As the librarian for my Ham club I have a lot of older books about packet radio. As JMG said though, only so many hours in the day. This is something I would like to get set up though. I tried to see if anyone in my club would be interested in setting up a local ham bbs system. Though I have my license, I still need some elmering to get a lot of the technical things working.
I did have some success using Winlink as Lathechuck mentioned. Anyway, I think my first step towards getting a capable of doing this myself would be getting a TNC or radio modem.
Hey JMG
I admit that I find it hard to think that much of modern palaeontology will survive through the long descent, and I wonder what will happen to all the fossils currently preserved in museums, I doubt many will be saved kept in good condition. However I find it likely that the science of palaeontology will be rediscovered multiple times throughout the lifetime of our species, though the types of fossils and their interpretations will change a lot. I feel a bit sad that a lot of what we now may not be rediscovered since we have extracted quite a lot of fossil species already and there may not be others of the same species to rediscover.
Also, a funny fact in the “Otherlands” book that you may like is that apparently trilobite fossils had been used as jewellery by Europeans 15,000 years ago, and also as medicine by some Native American tribes.
@The Other Owen #199,
I’d go the conversion route if my current car were suitable for such a conversion, but my understanding (subject to change as I look more into it) is that it’s not, or at least is less so, because it’s an automatic. And the result, though compact, would be heavier than what I think would be ideal. Still, it’s a possibility, and I’m pretty sure I could accomplish the work. Where I’d need help would be, finding a small used vehicle to convert, with a good body and drive train but a ruined engine, to make it economical enough.
A golf cart for me doesn’t improve enough on a bicycle, overall. It’s probably faster on average, less fatiguing, and has the possibility of keeping the rain off my head, but the drawbacks are I can’t carry it, and it’s not road-legal (I can’t get away with ignoring that here) which is a bad combination. Also, golf carts, like everything related to golf, seem very expensive for what you get.
Dorothy L. Sayers wrote an excellent short essay (30 small pages in all) on the Medieval Trivium and Quadrivium, and on their relevancefor her own times … and by extension, for ours. I recommend it. You can download it from:
https://archive.org/details/sayers1948losttoolslearning/mode/1up
JMG, and @Samurai_47, I beg to differ. If there were no “peer polities”, there wouldn’t have been America. Without American intervention, Imperial Germany would most likely have won WWI, thus Europe would have coalesced into an universal state – a Pangermanic Empire. Therefore, instead of collapsing, Western Civilization would enter its civilizational phase for good, and last perhaps some three or four centuries more.
That’s my take, at least.
Hi John Michael,
I hold strong doubts that a ‘consensus’ exists outside of the abstract idea of such a thing! 🙂 Did you notice how over in that country, a similar result played out (which is being repeated in many countries) as in other recent vote counts? Support for the existing order was marginalised to urban areas, then there was everyone else. You could see the same pattern here with the results of the recent referendum. It’s a bit eerie, but I expect the same drivers underpin the result regardless of location. Have you considered writing an update about this story?
I’m guessing an overall decline in wealth is being hidden in urban areas, by stripping the rest of the countries bare. The costs aren’t being shared equally, plus it’s hard to ignore the many examples of unwise social experimentation going on. How do you see the various factors in this story? If I recall correctly, historically there has always been tensions between those on the land, and the merchant class.
Cheers
Chris
I want to suggest a possible mechanism for the process by which leftists join authoritarian religions.
Some of the Tumblr blogs I follow have remarked on a certain resemblance between uptight, hyper-critical social justice warrior types and what they called church bullies, the people they remembered from the churches of their upbringing whose main thing was scolding people for their sins. (An extended comparison with many bullet points can be found at https://www.tumblr.com/curlicuecal/163802812550/jumpingjacktrash-kmclaude-queerpyracy.) Now I’m wondering: what if that’s who they are? We know that the mainstream churches are hemorrhaging members. People who are looking for someone they can judge, condemn, and power trip with impunity aren’t going to find as many targets in the churches as they used to. Where better to look for new victims than in grass roots leftist movements, or in fandoms where they try to, for example, work up cancellations of writers and artists who produce fanworks that feature relationships between two adult characters that are more than usually different from each other in either age or height, on the grounds that said differences make the relationship “pedophile coded.”
They won’t last long in these new hunting grounds, however, because grass roots movements by their nature aren’t authoritarian enough to hold victims in place through years of maltreatment. Instead, either moderators start to recognize these people for what they are and ban them or groups break up as members flee the poisoned atmosphere. Eventually the church bullies will recognize that their natural habitat is an authoritarian religious community.
Moserait # 219 You probably have the ideal community here to help you with your reading list!
Do you have a specific goal in mind? Just catching up in general on some references you missed in the past? Looking for ancient wisdom? For information relevant to a magical practice?
Do you want to start as far back as you can, and trace the progress of stories through different retellings and variations? Is the history of the ideas less important than the works famous for presenting them in the most memorable way?
Many of Shakespeare’s plays assume the audience is familiar with myths, legends, or history, which were well-known to the original audiences. The point is often not a surprise in the plot, but how the characters are developed, how their personality, choices, and flaws get them to the inevitable turning points.
Here are three suggestions for you.
My parents had a coffee table version of D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths when I was a kid. It’s an appealing introduction to the subject.
Eerdmans Handbook to the Bible explains the cultural backgrounds and literary or religious styles of each of the books of the Bible.
Many spiritually minded people see the Bible as so enduring because it’s said to work on more than one level. There’s the literal storytelling, or the obvious surface level metaphors of poetic passages. And then there’s a symbolic perspective on divine and human nature, for which the characters, places, and scenes are archetypes.
An example: The story of Jacob and Esau has the younger son trick the bllind father into giving him the older son’s blessing and inheritance. When the subterfuge was found out, even though the father was still alive, oh well, nothing could be done about that now!
20th century mystic Neville Goddard said this makes no sense as a literal story. He provided a mystical interpretation that the older son represents dwelling on old problems in life, the younger son represents good new opportunities, and the switch that has to be upheld represents a mental attitude of faith that replaces problems with solutions, through a change in consciousness.
I think every line in the Bible has commentary by now with these psychological or spiritual deep explanations. Would this kind of thing be of interest to you?
George Lucas realized in the mid 70s that he was out of ideas to tie together his cool sci-fi moments into a coherent story for a movie. He and his story advisors turned to Joseph Cambell’s “Hero with a thousand faces,” a heavy, ponderous, academic style book. Campbell proclaims that across cultures, mythology has some recurrent archetypal plot points. The value of his anthropological research has been called into question, by the way.
The success of Star Wars led Hollywood to widely adopt these ideas, in hopes that copying the structure of a hit would make more hits. Christopher Vogler’s book “The Writer’s Journey” is an approachable overview of the archetypes and stages of the standard hero’s journey. If you read that, you’ll then recognize how widely used and overused these ideas are as cultural memes.
A couple of online ideas to get more specific on what you want to catch up on now: Wikipedia’s article on Speculative Fiction might help you narrow down if specific genres appeal to you. Allthetropes.org page on Genre Tropes could also help you identify themes you’d like to explore in your reading – or, that you’ve had enough of in 80 years and don’t need to see any more!
If you were to make a blog with your reading discoveries, that might be interesting to ohers!
Egypt and China are both more isolated than you would think. Egypt has deserts around it, you have to land on the coast or walk through Sinai. China is protected by desert, mountains, Siberia, or you have to land on the coast again.
It’s not surprising if they are more resilient than one you first think. They had to rot further before an invader could push them over.
Regarding post industrial elevators, the solution is obvious. For those rich enough to need an elevator the counter weight can be provided by other people. In The Wind Up Girl, the criminal boss ‘the Dung Lord’ lives in the penthouse of a large skyscraper. He employees several runners to climb to the top and wait around for a VIP to arrive at the bottom.
I’m sure that AC could also be run in arid climes by evaporative cooling and fans powered by stationary bikes.
The question of the continued existence of the internet has been raised with JMG. I have a slightly different view to him. I think of the old saying, “the future is already here, it just isn’t evenly-distributed yet.” This was originally meant in praise of technological progress, but like “fusion power is 30 years away”, we can take it as one of those predictions which will always be true. Things are never evenly-distributed.
The elites of the world are not going to let all their comforts go away if they can possibly help it. We say “elites” and think of members of parliament, Generals and so on – but it includes all their hangers-on like the civil servants and those providing them their luxuries. In the dying days of any empire there are still well-off eunuchs and silk merchants.
So I view the most likely course of the future as being like India or South Africa today: very wealthy people living in gated communities, with poor people coming in and providing them cleaning, cooking, plumbing and security services. Really for the last generation the entire West has been a gated community, that’s why we have border controls, to keep the poor people out. It’s just that as our resource base declines, and we are able to support and protect fewer wealthy people, our gated communities will get smaller and smaller, from large federated unions like the US or EU, to individual countries, then city-states, and finally shrinking city-states. And in future one or two of those city-states will expand and become a new empire.
At 52, I will probably not see it. But I think my 12yo son will, if he lives to 75 or more, live to see places like Australia and Japan and Britain being largely lands abandoned to whoever wants to come and farm them (“the barbarians are coming!”) while a mix of migrants and locals live in slums surrounding walled cities, mining landfills for resources to keep the wealthy in those cities in their comfortable lifestyles.
About spiritual topics raised by others…
Kyle # 32 Thank you for your kind offer. I would welcome your distance healing help for the full healing of my broken toes and longer term health issues. And also, for whatever healthier mental or spiritual alignment in me might help bring about a prompt, beneficial resolution of housing and financial issues that have dragged on and dismayed me a long time.
@Quin do I need to post this anew to your latest prayer list, to stay on the list?
Miles # 5, Your will is simply what you believe is a worthy outcome, therefore you choose to do what you can to help bring it about.
Everyone has will about different levels of experience. If your will is to have a grilled cheese sandwich next week, your commitment might be to buy bread this weekend. If your will is to devote your life towards total peace on earth, your commitment might be to become a Quaker for life, and work for a social justice nonprofit.
The point is that it’s your own choice of what you believe is a worthy goal, your own choice of what you commit to as your own definition of your life. Opinions from others are irrelevant… unless you choose to believe someone else’s goal is worthwhile for you to pursue. Your will would then be to accept that other person’s will as your own. If you’re a beginner at a sport or craft, and the other person is an expert and a great coach, doing so could help you!
Remember that a scouting party doesn’t wait to have a map for every step before they set out. They choose a direction and discover what they find, as they take their journey. Perhaps your will could be to start any good enough practice now. And to do all it says to do for 30 days, about finding clarity of long term purpose. Then, you could choose if your will is to continue that practice.
Elizabeth Skewis # 24 I find this subject interesting. I also believe there are multiple types of UFO events, not only one thing.
Surely there are some people just faking hoaxes to amuse themselves, or to cheat the gullible.
Surely some sightings are misunderstandings of everyday natural phenomena or routine aerospace activity.
I find it plausible that some sightings are of advanced military technology the government wants to keep secret.
Some reports line up with paranormal or religious experiences described by previous generations as leprachauns, sprites, angels, etc.
Some experiences are associated with spiritual messages purported to be received telepathically or intuitively, often continuing after the initial alleged contact with the visitors from beyond everday life on earth. Many of these messages are bland, repetitive, and pointless. Some bring warnings of doom lest people stay hooked to the message-bringers. Some provide unique, erudite discussions of a useful and loving philosophy, spanning decades.
Some messages say these experiences are intentionally vague and unclassifiable, as their purpose is to awaken a sense of wonder and a spiritual search among those ready for a larger view than materialism.
What seems least likely to me is a lot of physical spaceships that got all the way here. And then failed to honor a Star Trek style Prime Directive, or to maintain secrecy for nefarious purposes.
Bee # 38 Mormons are very well known for having extensive geneology files for this very purpose.
Tristan # 136, that’s a fascinating story. Perhaps whatever made the ocean amber colored, or something associated with the surrounding landscape, was very eager to have a human witness of the moment. You happened to be available.
Is A Nony Moose # 17’s comment relevant for you? (That’s a different commenter, by the way, despite our both having pen names of Moose on the loose.)
Enjoyer, psi exists, but it’s difficult to make it reliable. Meditation helps, and so does systematic training, but for most people it’s always an occasional thing.
Moose, sure thing. These two websites might be good places to start:
https://www.christiandruidry.com/
https://druidry.org/druid-way/other-paths/christianity-druidry
J.L.Mc12, it would be nice if, as our civilization winds down, somebody were to take some of those carefully preserved skeletons and store them underground with documents on acid-free paper explaining what they are and why it matters. That might give the future a helpful boost.
Robert, thanks for this! It’s a fine essay.
Bruno, that’s also a possibility, of course.
Chris, hmm! That’s certainly what Spengler predicted — the urban centers remain vital at the cost of everything else, until finally everything else has been stripped of wealth and the urban centers collapse.
Joan, interesting. Yes, I could see that.
Siliconguy, Egypt was isolated until improvements in transport technology made it easy for other powers to reach, and then it fell and fell hard. China’s another matter — it’s isolated from other regions capable of hosting a large civilization, which is why it mostly got taken over by steppe nomads, who ended up taking on Chinese culture. That didn’t change until the European conquests.
Team10tim, just leave out the electricity. Having the fans powered by bike-driven belts is much more efficient!
Hackenschmidt, that kind of enclave approach has been tried tolerably often in the twilight years of civilizations. It always fails, because the servant class inside the walls quickly realizes that it’s in their best interest to ally with the people outside the walls, open a door one night, and start cutting throats.
JMG, Phutatorius, Orange Harebrained Imp, Lathechuck, Justin Patrick Moore re: ham radio BBS system – I am curious to see where this goes, but I am not able to contribute anything at this time as I am presently studying for the basic amateur radio exam and so there is quite a steep learning curve going on with me!
Ighy (#214) re: Bharat, I’ll put my two cents in here. There have been prominent Hindu leaders (spiritual, not political) who from the time that India became independent to today refused to refer to the country as ‘India’ and used ‘Bharat’ instead because it is the traditional name of the country and has deep historical meaning in Sanskrit and related languages, and they have encouraged their followers to follow suit. PM Modi comes from such a tradition – in fact, in his early adulthood he had desired to take the holy vow of renunciation (sannyas) but was advised by his guru that his path was one of engaging with the world and not renouncing it. I do not know of any immediate political or social reason for PM Modi to announce the change in official name of the country, but I suspect that it is part of the gradual ‘re-indigenizing / de-colonizing’ process that has been going on under his administration. I further suspect (but this is only my own thought process) that it could be at least subtly connected to the major event that happened in May of this year – that is, the installation of the historic golden sceptre (which was handed over to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to mark the transfer of power from the British to Indians and was subsequently forgotten and conveniently squirreled away by Nehru in his own house as if it was a personal gift by Mountbatten) to a prominent place behind the Speaker’s seat in the house of commons (Lok Sabha). It is as if in 2023, the nation was saying to the world, ‘we have arrived’ and then ‘by the way, call us Bharat, not India’. By the way, in Indian languages, a citizen of Bharat is called a ‘Bharatiya’.
JMG, thank you, am checking into the sites.
@Robert Mathiesen,
Thanks a lot for your pointer to that essay!
Milkywy
@JMG
It’s a hypothesis on migration – I may be missing some aspects thereof.
Maybe I did not put it into the most coherent way – but it is also maybe a reply to the discussions on Islam and European Society we have had previously here.
There were interesting arguments, and the question was, is Islam as a religion threatening the stability of European societies? Is it the nature threatening European societies?
And I think we have two major topics on immigration and not one when it comes to Europe – one, the conflicts caused by poverty migration into a faltering economy, two, the strengthening of foreign (I’d argue) hostile political organizations from demographically more young and vital societies, financed on top of that out of some of the most wealthy nations on Earth too.
There’s a difference to the topic of migration in the US I’d say, where all the problems of unregulated poverty migration and organized crime play a role, but up to now, foreign hostile political organizations don’t seem to be such a problem there?
I hope the point comes across I’m trying to make.
hey JMG
So basically a paleontological time-capsule? It may work, but whether the people who re-discover it will respect it appropriately or just reuse the fossils as decorations or grind them up for medicine as many past cultures have done is uncertain.
Anyhow, here is another book recommendation. a while ago I found an old 3 volume collection of Japanese decorative designs for free on internet archive called the Iroha-biki-moncho which should give endless entertainment, practice and challenge to anyone with an interest in geometry or art.
this is a link to the first volume.
https://archive.org/details/MAB.31962000726509Images/page/n102/mode/1up
@team10tim
WS that an attempt at a joke or are you serious? Sorry I can’t tell
@Alvin,
Why do you disapprove of the way we handled COVID? I am curious as to your reasons. Could you explain? Especially the vaccine part.
Also, I assume you’re unvaccinated?
Hello JMG! I had a question for you; I plan to become an academic (though it might be like writing on water in these troubled times) St. Thomas Aquinas had a letter on studying and I can’t find it online…can you help? I also had a question from Orthodox Christians: Can you recommend books on Orthodox spirituality?
Thank you from now.
Yiğit
Robert Mathiesen #240 wrote:
“Dorothy L. Sayers wrote an excellent short essay (30 small pages in all) on the Medieval Trivium and Quadrivium, and on their relevancefor her own times … and by extension, for ours. I recommend it.”
Thank you so much for posting that link – a very enjoyable and thought provoking read.
From page 16:
“Having thus pleased the Classicists among you, I will proceed to horrify them by adding that I do not think it either wise or necessary to cramp the ordinary pupil upon the Procrustean bed of the Augustan age, with its highly elaborate and artificial verse-forms and oratory. The post-classical and mediaeval Latin, which was a living language down to the end of the Renaissance, is easier and in some ways livelier, both in syntax and rhythm…”
Does anyone know of a good Latin Primer or resources that cover “post-classical and mediaeval Latin”?
Anonymous #81,
FWIW, I lost contact with the Left (or vice versa) during Obama’s campaign in 2008 (and basically right after our first child was born). And yes, I was prone to BDS right up until then! Apparently still a little slow on the draw…;)
I remember my lefty grandmother in 2016 telling me that this was no time to vote 3rd party. We had to unite to keep Trump out of the White House. And all I could think was, lady, if I don’t vote 3rd party my vote ain’t goin’ to Hillary…
Greetings JMG,
I have kept an eye on the crime rate in US cities. It was fairly high before, and it has increased significantly in the past 4 years.
Any thoughts on how that changes life for ordinary people in the USA?
Do you know if crime is rising in towns and mid-size cities also?
I noticed crime has increased a lot in many cities Canada, and in France also.
JMG,
I came across the following article in Nature Magazine,
“ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis.”
It is easy to find but if desired I can post the link. This seems like an ironic twist on some of your latest posts on the ongoing loss in faith of the Scientific Industrial Complex. I was going to write more about this but the title of the article says it all.
Hello JMG, commentariat. I don’t often comment these days, and just wanted to share a brief update on what’s going on with me.
I’ve been studying Vedic astrology with Freedom Cole this year, and it’s been a fantastic experience. It’s a very intensive program and about half the people who started it finished it, as the 15-20 hours minimum of study a weak is kind of a lot. I loved it though, and finding out the similarities and differences between systems has been mind blowing. This system is also very powerful – I can read a chart in ways now that I never thought I would be able to. With my previous astrological training I was never really sure what I was doing was helpful, but I feel able to provide a valuable service to clients now.
We also had our in person conference for the Plant Cunning Podcast in September and it was amazing. We had 125 people come, filling up our 18th century barn we had only just cleaned out and fixed up in time. It was really great to spend time with other people on similar paths.
I also just wrote a discussion of the use of magic this month for the spiritual seeker for the TAT forum, it’s available here: https://tatfoundation.org/forum/#Convictions_Concerns
Oh, and the Heathen Golden Dawn should be out next spring.
Maybe we can have you on the show again in the coming months?
@Ken
Maybe the book “The experience of a fool: who had an epiphany about how to get rid of his glasses Paperback – 20 Dec. 2017 by Mirzakarim Norbekov” could help in that direction.
I have not read this but another one and in general, the man offers energetic and meditative exercises, to regain better sight among other things. Unfortunately most of his books are only available in German and Polish.
But that one is in English.
I have heard a lot that inner visualization can heal conditions. I have made several experiences that at least suggest when you pratice a lot to feel into yourself, into the most finegrained feeling possible, you can at some point also transform, breathing light into parts of you as an option.
I admit though I have myself not brought it extremely far with that or regrown a missing limb, but I think it is never a bad idea.
One commenter on German Amazon btw showed photos of his optometrist receipts before and after he took up exercises, and said as long as he keeps to continuing his practice, his eye sight improves.
I think it is credible. Might be readjusted to hearing too, maybe?
regards,
Curt
What re your thoughts on Stephen E. Flowers? From and esotreic point of view not in regards to his politics.
and I meant “19th century” barn instead of 18th… oh typos, “week” instead of “weak” too, but, yeah.
Earthworm (#258) asked, “Does anyone know of a good Latin Primer or resources that cover ‘post-classical and mediaeval Latin’?”
H. P. V, Nunn. An Introduction to Ecclesiastical Latin. (1922 and later revised editions.) — available on the web, since it is now in the public domain.
Also useful (and still under copyright):
Wilfrid Diamond. Liturgical Latin. (1941) — focussed narrowly on Catholic liturgical books.
Wilfrid Diamond. Dictionary of Liturgical Latin. (1963) — the same narrow focus
The differences are in spelling, syntax and vocabulary. The declensions and conjugations are the generally the same as in Classical Latin, so most books (including Nunn’s and Diamond’s) assume you already have them down pat from some grammar of Classical Latin. If you don’t, you’ll need some grammar of Classical Latin as well. Standard reference grammars are by Basil Gildersleeve and by J. H. Allen and J. B. Greenough (both long out of copyright).
@Clay Dennis #261, etc al
Regarding “AI”: the BBC interviewed a candidate for the Presidency of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body.
The kicker? Hope Sogni is an AI generated woman of color, created by some advertising agency. When “interviewed”, it spouted an endless stream of meaningless DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) drivel, indistinguishable from that generated from its human counterparts. If Hope does succeed, I’m sure it will be glad to accept future “gifts” for favors bestowed in ephemera such as Bitcoin, instead of the physical bribes required by its human predecessors.
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/fifa-president-ai-hope-sogni-b2452252.html
@elkriver 141 and @anon
I discovered talking to a friend at thanksgiving who remembers everything of our childhood/teen years while I remember next to nothing: apparently I can forget an event where we made tiaramisu togerher, set it on the roof of her car, she drives off unsuspecting and the glass dish shatters in the road, we stare at it together, not even having tasted our hard work, tiny shards of glass throughout. I don’t remember this. How ?! I get what state dependent memory must be but What does ‘Plutonian’ mean?
Also JMG I was sent back to your post on reincarnation by link here, sensible enough, and went from there to the ‘god is dead’ next post—- wow that is a gem! I am going to hunt down ‘visions’ for sure!!
Also in the Israel Palestine both sides department, I must say that the lecture video at the end of this piece really clarified the political situation for me… https://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2023/11/13/watch-understanding-the-depraved-growing-kahanist-ideology-within-the-netanyahu-govt/
@ Hackenschmidt – you obviously have a great interest in obesity, but your persistent framing of the issue is as a “lifestyle”, a “choice”, which suggests you think that obesity both results from and can be reversed by behaviour.
One of the most significant alterations to my own thinking on the matter comes from this review paper written in 2009 – it covers much of the research extant at that point. “The Role of Impaired Mitochondrial Lipid Oxidation in Obesity” by Mary Madeline Rogge. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/1099800408329408 As a review paper, it covers a lot of ground.
In the introductory paragraph she, like you, observes that “Obesity represents a disruption in balancing fuel
intake with energy expenditure in favor of energy conservation.” Unlike you, she is struck by the extent to which the research available to her in 2009 suggested that adiposity levels in the body are *highly* regulated by many different aspects of an energy balancing system (aka a person’s “metabolism”), and this makes it extremely difficult for people to alter their adiposity levels (either up, or down) through deliberat conscious behaviour.
She says further, “Research points toward impaired energy production as a critical factor in developing excess adipose tissue. One way energy expenditure may be altered to favor the development of obesity is through failure to liberate fatty acids from adipose cells for energy production (Bougneres et al., 1997). Indeed, a number of beta-adrenergic receptor polymorphisms affecting lipolysis have been linked to obesity. However, mounting evidence indicates that failure of the mitochondria to produce energy from food substrates may be a more common pathway in the development and perpetuation of obesity. Furthermore, mitochondrial dysfunction helps to explain a number of the common signs and symptoms of obesity, including low energy expenditure, chronic food intake in excess of expenditure, and markers of low-grade systemic inflammation.” In this accounting “low energy expenditure” and “chronic food intake in excess of expenditure appear as “symptoms” of mitochondrial and metabolic dysregulation, rather than behaviours that cause this dysregulation. I do not think that it constitutes “obesity denialism” to give serious consideration to the research on mitochondrial and metabolic dysregulation and their effects on a person’s *highly regulated* adiposity levels. While it may be that certain sugary and junky foods are a sufficient way to break a person’s metabolism – and these types of foods are deliberately engineered to be addictive, there are many other things that can break it too – environmental toxins, toxic workplace chemicals, and other such.
One particularly ingenious set of measurements involved RQ’s (respiratory quotients) which measure the mix of macronutrients (glucose, fatty acids, proteins) the cells are actually burning at a given moment. It seems that certain people’s cells find it challenging to burn fatty acids for energy when at rest, and instead are already burning more carbohydrates at rest, which means that even while at rest, their bodies think they are (effectively) running a marathon. When “pre-obese and reduced-obese” people were able to GAIN FAT STORES, their RQ’s then normalised enough to allow them to burn more fatty acids inside of their mitochondria and free up energy for other uses.
Rogge – “Higher RQs, indicating reduced fat oxidation, have been observed in preobese and reduced-obese participants compared to lean individuals (Astrup, Buemann, Christensen, & Toubro, 1994; Filozof et al., 2000; Simoneau, Colberg, Thaete, & Kelley, 1995). Preobese and formerly obese people have lower rates of fat oxidation and are more dependent on glucose use than normal-weight people. However, when preobese and reduced-obese people gain weight, their RQ declines to normal or below normal levels, indicating their fatty acid oxidation improves as their lipid stores increase. This means that an obese individual requires higher than normal endogenous lipid stores to achieve a more normal balance between fat and carbohydrate oxidation (Ruderman et al., 2003).”
I found this particular RQ research fascinating, and I definitely think there is something extremely simplistic about the view of obesity as a “lifestyle choice”. I would encourage you to perhaps give an hour or two to stretching your mind around some other possible ways to look at what is happening to people.
Ron, delighted to hear you’re going for a ham radio license!
Curt, so noted and thanks for the clarification.
J.L.Mc12, that’s always the gamble when passing things on to the future! Thanks for the book suggestion.
Yiğit, I’m not very familiar with Thomas Aquinas’s work so can’t help you there.
Tony, this is one of the places where statistics hide lived experience. There are unquestionably some very large US cities where certain crimes have become extremely common, but crime rates in most of the country have been declining for decades. The term “crime rate” is complex, too, because what counts as a crime and which crimes go into the statistics vary depending on who’s trying to make what point. As far as I know, outside of the modest number of cities where the political system is going out of its way to encourage crime — and yes, that’s what the various “justice reform” projecs work out to in practice — it’s not affecting most people at all.
Clay, clearly ChatGPT has been paying attention to what too many scientists these days do, and followed suit!
Isaac, drop Sara an email any time you want to schedule me on the show. Glad to hear that so many things are moving ahead so well.
AV, I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable about Heathen spirituality to have an opinion about that end of his work, and I have a strong personal distaste for the Satanist and para-Satanist stuff he’s also into, so that’s not a subject I can comment on with any degree of objectivity. So there’s not much I can say.
Robert, many thanks for this! For what it’s worth, the transition from Wheelock’s famous introductory Latin textbook to medieval and Renaissance Latin seems to be fairly easy — that was my route, and I know other people who went that way and had good results.
Alice, glad to hear it.
JMG, thanks for reposting your article on reincarnation. I’ve been wanting to reread it. I find the evolutionary scenario it sets forth so compelling as a way of accounting for the experiences of life, the universe and everything that I’ve adopted it as my operating hypothesis for how things work.
@Yigit #257
Though I am not an Orthodox Christian, the book, The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware, an Englishman who converted to Orthodoxy as a young man, is good
@AV #264 re: Stephen Flowers/Edred Thorsson
Not that you asked me, but in case it’s helpful, I thought I’d offer the perspective of someone who started with Flowers’s work and is currently working through some of JMG’s materials. Obviously, these are my opinions and not our host’s, and so far less informed esoterically, and as always, your mileage may vary.
Flowers is deeply knowledgeable in the heathen lore, as well as rather a lot of comparative material. It’s also clear he has a very solid ceremonial magical background. That being said, as JMG mentioned, he has been a member of various “Left Hand Path” organizations and some of the beliefs from those ends of spirituality find their way into his heathen material, though it’s usually pretty easy to spot once you know what to look for (emphasis on the individual, emphasis on emulating/embodying/becoming Odin rather than worshipping him, that kind of thing). I find his writings on the Runes extremely insightful and he’s been so influential, you kind of can’t get away from them unless you start from only the Rune names and poems and read nothing else about them. As such, I find it helpful to know his material, so that I can see when other writers have likely been influenced by him.
Overall, I see him as a valuable resource, but one to be treated with some amount of discernment. He’s most useful when contrasted with other writers with different viewpoints (like JMG, for one). If you’re looking for some other esoteric heathens specifically to compare and contrast with him, some you might consider: Galina Krasskova, Raven Kaldera, Garman Lord, Maria Kvilhaug, Ann Groa Sheffield, and Diana Paxson.
If you’d care to discuss more privately, feel free to use the linked email address to reach out, or you can private message me over at jprussell.dreamwidth.org.
Cheers,
Jeff
Yigit #257: I found two sources for a letter on study from Aquinas. Is this what you needed?
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/aquinas/stud_e.html
https://isidore.co/aquinas/DearJohn.htm
Good luck!
Joy Marie
@team10tim #246 – Instead of fans powered by stationary bikes, how about plain old clockwork?
Interesting about the statistics on crime rates.
The rates published on numbeo for US cities are now similar to cities in Latin America (i.e. parts of Mexico, Colombia, Central America ) . I do know from experience and from what local people say on the ground that there are lots of neighborhoods where they will steal your phone and your wallet at gunpoint, especially at night, and it is best not to resist. I have talked to various people to whom it happened.
It is not everywhere and there are definitely safe neighborhoods in big cities and in some entire mid-size cities.
I guess statistics are calculated differently in the US.
Re the scientific replication / fraud issue … it is a bit of a conundrum from our ‘scientific’ perpective…
– on one hand we can have the possibility that a range of then ground-breaking discoveries that became the foundation stones of many ‘scientific’ edifices were fraudulant fool’s gold and so both they and all of the fruit from said poisoned tree need to be discared (along with all of the reputations and professions associated thereto) …
– on the other hand the aforementioned ground-breaking discoveries that we can no longer replicate could have been perfectly legitimate at the time but ‘reality’ is a shifting thing and so they don’t work now simply because they don’t work now due to circumstances beyond our control … however that means that ‘science’ is never settled and instead of defining reality science has to become a describer of current observational realities. Oh and that would also mean that the foundation stones of many scientific edifices etc etc
And since ‘reality’ in ‘science’ terms (excepting the field of multivariate probabilities of course) is only ever a binary there are only two choices and since one option is death choosing the Sinclair option is the only logical and reasonable option available!
Bad girl! I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday, but today I went to Bookshop-dot-org and bought my copy of the new edition of Weird of Hali: Chorazin. What can I say…. it’s an addiction.
Hi John Michael,
The pattern is playing out right across western countries. Apples are a good example. The fruit grows really well in these parts, and just north of here supplies a big chunk of the market (or used to). A few years ago, some ruling by some global trade organisation decided that we had to import apples from overseas. Good for consumers apparently. Except the risk of disease (fire blight I believe) suddenly becomes a problem for growers, and prices are driven down most likely due to over supply. Incomes in rural areas are driven down, and yet costs are reduced for urban folks.
Or get this little chunk of craziness: Plan to limit grass height to 30cm in South Gippsland Shire angers farmers It reminds me of your pithy line about the writers at The Onion and what a difficult time they must be having keeping ahead of reality.
I believe that the pattern is indicative of the larger decline, which as usual, is being papered over. You can only do that trick for so long. What’s your take on that?
Cheers
Chris
Hello all,
I’ve found this community to be quite a beautiful thing, and I’ve recently had some terrible news, so l wonder if you could please spare a thought or a prayer for my dear dad, Michael Long, in East Stour, Dorset.
It turns out he won’t be here long, and I’d appreciate a little hand to help him, so he doesn’t suffer, and has a peaceful journey into the next world.
Thank you
@JMG #149
Thanks for your insight. You could be onto something. Earlier that trip, I’d had what the Welsh call Hiraeth, a sense of nostalgia for something I’d never experienced. It was at an underground Latvian folk bar in Riga. My friends and I went for the strong beer and because we’d heard this venue did folk dancing on Tuesday nights. But when we showed up, I felt like the dancing and ambience were a long lost part of my childhood. It felt intimately familiar even though I’d never experienced anything like it. A bizarre experience. I’m determined to go back to Latvia now. Are there any ways of exploring these weird feelings or potential past-life experiences?
@Christopher from California #248
Thank you for your thoughts. I hadn’t noticed Bony Moose’s comments at #17, but it definitely feels applicable. Perhaps the particular forest I went through was an entity that had some effect on my mental state. FWIW, I consider myself a (heterodox) Christian, but there’s nothing I see in my religious background that precludes the existence of what some would call paranormal or animistic phenomenon. Who am I to say whether these things are or aren’t true?
Hey JMG
It’s a great book if you are bored and want to stretch your geometric skill, I’ve been copying designs from it every now and again and I always find some difficulty in figuring out the right construction.
On the subject of sources for learning about Asia, there’s a website called world of Chinese which has a lot of articles on contemporary and ancient China which is interesting, recently they published something on the history of advertising in ancient China. Apparently they had jingles and celebrity endorsements just like we do!
https://www.theworldofchinese.com
Kevin, you’re most welcome.
Tony, that’s certainly true in some neighborhoods in some cities — and of course those are the ones splashed all over the media these days.
Dreamer, exactly. It’s a very, very tangled situation.
Patricia M, thank you!
Chris, typical — on the one hand, insane overregulation; on the other, increasingly frantic efforts to make sure that nobody can do without the largest possible number of middlemen, who each get to take their cut. And down we go…
Petros, positive energy en route.
Tristan, it’s important not to try to push too hard when such things begin surfacing, as it can bollix them up. I’d encourage you to write down an account of your experiences and then set it aside and go on to other things. If you’re starting to remember your previous lives, more of the details will surface as you go, until gradually you get a clear sense of who you’ve been and why you’re where you are now.
J.L.Mc12, humans gonna human!
Hackenschmidt (offlist), enough. Several people have offered you evidence; you’ve responded with circular arguments and snark. That’s not welcome here.
On the topic of obesity, I think there’s a kind of false flag operation going on. I think obesity is a health problem; that the evidence is that average weight has increased by a modest amount over the last half century or so; but that the focus on the extreme, 500+ pound horror stories is a distraction from the reality that a lot of people in the US are modestly heavier than their ancestors, and it is the result of a major public health failure.
I’m confident that something in the food in the US is an endocrine disruptor which causes a host of issues, including increasing weight by messing with appetite; as someone who spends great deal of time in both countries, I’ve consistently noticed that Americans tend to be somewhat heavier than Canadians. It also matches my experience that the food in the US sucks, and is also an awful lot less filling than equivalent meals in Canada. This goes for everything from a meal at a pleasant restaurant through to potato chips and fast food.
(Note I said somewhat heavier, not dramatically heavier! It’s a difference that is easily noticeable, but I would not be able to pick out who is an American or Canadian based solely on weight. the distributions overlap a great deal, it’s just heavier types are more likely American.)
Since it’s a common complaint, and has been for my entire life, that we lack the variety of processed foods because the Canadian government blocks a lot of the food additives used in processed foods in the US, a logical explanation is that it is one or more of the additives common to food in the US but banned in Canada that causes Americans to be slightly heavier.
@ Hackenschmidt RE: Weight bias.
I absolutely agree that there is some bias here. Like how we rarely think about the air that surrounds us, for many it is the same for the society and the people. There is a lot of truth too what you say, what is excessive doesn’t seem like to it many. But it just feels like when it comes to obesity, the numbers are a little skewed because it is based on a standard that doesn’t entirely fit our society. This is a fault of trying to oversimplify a complex issue, using a single number and then saying everything above this number is obese everything below is not. From a stats point of view of a broad style of society, that can be interesting. But when it comes to advising folks on how to live, it gets fuzzy really fast.
I am not arguing that extra weigh doesn’t impact people, I am arguing that the measurements many use are too blunt of a tool to be used for concrete study/advice. For example, according to BMI my brother is obese, he is a body builder that looks like a WWE Wrestler. Below the 10% fat range – the opposite extreme. Maybe body fat to weight ratio would be better but it then becomes far harder to measure reliably.
Excess weight can be a real problem. There is a reason I dropped 100 pounds it wasn’t because weight loss is fun and I didn’t really care about my image in that sense. Because my Wife is on the heavier side and there is now this size difference, I say ww aren’t an interracial couple, we are interspatial. 😉
But what works for me doesn’t work for everyone. I suspect that a lot of health issues the world over is merely weight related problems that are manifesting in other ways. It wouldn’t surprise me, and don’t take this thought to seriously, is that a lot of what is being attributed to microplastics is merely a result of excess consumption in general. I completely agree with your assessment of where this is all heading. As food inflation continues because of various reasons (energy depletion, soil depletion, climate issues, political bungles etc), the lifestyle of excess is going to be a historical fascination.
@ Jeffrey and future entertainment. One of my ‘White Whales’ is this book idea that I have been writing on an off for the last few years. Working title – Green Age Dark Age: How information grows, lives and dies. But I just cannot seem to bring together. The content is there but it has no soul.
That was not the main point I was going to make. You should look at interesting projects such as Perma computing and Computing within Limits. Computing within Limits is a yearly event that looks at the material requirements current computing technology such as TV streaming services require or manufacturing of “smart” devices.
Perma computing is folks looking to see if there is a way to make computers (more) sustainable, locally produced and long lasting. Taking the concepts of permaculture and applying them to computing. Things that can be made without dependence of global corporations for both the software and hardware. So far it is looking like this will be a computer that would make a Commodor64/Apple 2 look fast. It is great to see folks thinking about these subjects, but it is also fascinating seeing them so focused on the continuation of computing.
Personally, I think that if it takes off, these will merely be a parachute on the path down. To have computers that last 30-50 years but there is no large generation of them beyond that. Are we going to invest resources in prolonging machines that are increasingly useless with time? Or put that effort into something more immediately useful? The hierarchy of needs beckons.
Storytelling as entertainment is a great way to preserve knowledge, it is memorable and easy to communicate. This is how we still have some stories from tribes that possibly go back tens of thousands of years, this is especially true of African and Australian tribes.
Something I learned this week was that a lot of medieval texts have especially ornate and colourful pages beyond the text is so that they are more memorable. Reading was seen as a means of prayer so to make it memorable meant you could meditate/contemplate the reading of the day.
@Kimberly I am always impressed with how well some folks can Veganize recipes without resorting to the used of these bizarre factory-made meat/dairy alternatives. you know the ones that have 300 hundred ingredients and have a weird aftertaste to them. No thanks! But to substitute with all manner of beans and similar is just downright wonderful.
As someone that is vegan adjacent, I swing close to it minimised my impact on the world but am not stressed out focused on it, I’m not 100% strict with it. It is a lifestyle choice, not a personal martyrdom. I always appreciate recipes that can keep the essence of a meal that also tickle my frugal itch. I love that folk, like JMG, can ‘Con Carne’ vegan dishes into something fresh and new. That is just neat to see.
“There may be local or regional legacy systems networking old computers via ham radio BBS systems by then, too — so fragmentation rather than complete collapse seems like the most likely outcome to me.”
I am already seeing the early stages of this. Part of it is simply because people are sick of how exploitative the internet has become, for others it is money of the connection driving the decision or a bit of both. For instance, Jose Briones who runs the ‘Moving Offline’ blog has now dropped internet in the home because the price is too high, and it is too disruptive to the rest of his life. That begun when he first got a dumb phone and just kept simplifying his technology usage to something that worked for him and not against his goals.
There are also many places around the world with small scale wireless/radio networks available. For instance, locally we have Melbourne Wireless. The plan is to build free community broadband networks, using inexpensive off-the-shelf wireless network hardware. This can involve things like using old coffee cans as antenna and mounting them on the tallest local tree. Very neat stuff. I love that there is also a few data links that go across our local bay, the largest covering a gap of 70KM/40 Miles. It isn’t “the internet” but it is a neat tool.
The website hasn’t been updated in a few years, but it does provide a glimpse at what is possible.
https://www.melbournewireless.org.au/
I personally have been heavily reducing my internet usage for a while now. At the start of last year, I mostly reduced my internet access down to about once a week. While this comes in waves usually depending on the various blog subjects, it has been consistent. I just checked and since 4th January this year I have used 16GB of data. The bulk of that would be to podcasts. Blogs and emails are very light weight in that regard. Relative to text data, audio is two orders of magnitude over text and video is another order beyond that. One hour of video can probably get you 1,000 hours of reading. Once this data plan expires in a little over a month, I don’t think I will be renewing it. If I really need it, my local library has open internet access. There are now computer programs like ‘Offpunk’ that are designed to take the internet and make it more offline. It is all text, and you merely flag what articles and blogs you want to grab the next time you get online and then it downloads the text and stores them for you to browse as you wish.
While I don’t make it a point to others, I would be more than happy to be labelled a luddite. That’s not an insult, that is a compliment. To contemplate my use of technologies as I see fit rather than just do what others are doing. In that sense most folks reading this are on board.
@Chris #242 “Support for the existing order was marginalised to urban areas, then there was everyone else. You could see the same pattern here with the results of the recent referendum.”
I was surprised at how the split was on the referendum. By that, I expected Victoria be the only State to clear the 50% mark for a ‘Yes’ vote because the urban vote here is very singular minded. But even that didn’t even happen. Actually, made me think we are starting to turn a corner towards the potential for more nuance. I can be a glass half full kind of guy sometimes.
And lastly regarding Chris’s comment and @Clay #261
““ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis.”
Again, I too am endlessly surprised that ‘The Onion’ is somehow still in business with the state of the world. We literally have a 2.5 billion dollar sphere in the desert to project Emoji on!
The recent failure of a number of companies set up to build EV charging station networks ( many of them Spacs), got me thinking about the economics of charging stations. From what I have heard the availability of fast charging stations in public ( as opposed to residential charging) is quite a problem for many EV’s.
From what I can determine the cost per charger to build out a high speed charging station (like a Tesla Super Charger) is $200,000 per each charger. This seems reasonable give the land, the cost of high voltage electrical gear, the utility connection etc. But the revenue generated per charger is very small at todays prices. By Tesla’s own information it costs $14 to charge your Tesla at home ( normal electrical rates) and $22 to charge it at a public Supercharger. So the spread or income to the owner of the charger is around $8.00 for a full charge. From what I have read it takes about 45 minutes to charge an EV on a Supercharger. So assuming a 75% utilization rate the investment that costs $200,000 only makes the owner about $8.00 per hour before costs for maintenance and repairs. This is nothing like a gas station that can pump thousands of dollars per hour in fuel.
I think Tesla fooled everyone by building out a modest network of chargers using their massive stock value for capital. Now when other business’s are expected to pick up the ball and build out a large enough network to support the techno-utopians dream of a giant EV fleet it looks like it is not economic. Has anyone else done this math or thought about this problem?
Re obesity: Unfortunately I can’t find the reference now, but I remember reading about a study done by an American university. They surveyed all their graduates who had maintained their college weight unchanged, hoping thereby to uncover the secret of controlling weight.
The surprise was, there was no secret! There was a huge range of ages, sexes, diets etc in the respondents. Nothing you could pick out as being the defining feature. The one thing they all had in common was they were concerned about their weight. They weighed themselves regularly, and if they were gaining weight they cut down on their consumption and exercised a little more. The sort of sensible advice your granny could have given you.
My theory of obesity (and we have plenty of obese people here in South Africa) is there are two main reasons:
One, food is too cheap, too plentiful, too delicious, too available, and consumption of junk food too heavily promoted. It’s just too difficult to resist. As farmer Joel Salatin points out, in the biblical days things were valued in pounds of grain. That’s because to grow grain you had to scratch the earth with a stick, or plow with oxen if you were rich, manually harvest, thresh and store the berries, and do your best against mold, rats, and thieves. Food was damned expensive. You couldn’t afford to eat more than the minimum.
Two, food is self-medication. They say sugar is the alcohol of the child. As a fat kid I recognize now that I was snarfing down white bread and apricot jam sandwiches to deal with a stressful home environment. Significantly, I lost all the excess weight when I went to boarding school and away from home. As an adult burdened with depression and suicidal thoughts I used alcohol, and when I stopped drinking returned to sugar. Eight cups of milky tea with five spoons of sugar in each kept me pleasantly buzzed each day.
Those days are over, but still today if I feel I’ve earned a treat, it is invariably something sugary to eat that I buy myself. I think a lot of people are in the same boat. They eat sugary things to feel good. We are like laboratory rats that choose sugar over cocaine, not that I’ve ever tried cocaine, but if it’s as addictive as sugar, it’s a terrible drug and should be banned.
Re the preview box:
“Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.”
Perhaps you could add “…with paragraph breaks restored.” until such time as full functionality is restored. This would help to alleviate the mild panic that commenters endure on seeing their comments rendered in eternal pixels, apart from their brow-smacking recognition of typos, infelicitous phrasing, and plain old spelling and grammar mistakes.
@NuclearSkeptic #84
Well fusion is forever 20 years away, renewables can’t power this civilization, fossil fuels are getting more and more scarce, so yeah we are going to continue to use nuclear. Moreover, as energy situation gets more and more desperate, at some point there is bound to be a mad rush into nuclear (government-sponsored of course) as a last ditch attempt to save industrial civilization.
When that happens I expect a lot more power plants to be built with “simplified design” and “relaxed regulations”. And a lot more Chernobyls happening as a result.
“The future is going to be so bright I am going to need blast doors”
Hi Christopher from California,
Technically according to the rules I posted on the Prayer List FAQ, you should put an update once a month to guarantee staying on the list. In practice, though, I’ve only done the divinatory culling I mentioned there about once every three months, and now that I’ve posted the “Hear Ye” notice above, I’m not planning to remove anything on my own like that again until the end of the year.
I see you mention housing and financial issues where you tagged me. Are you looking for your prayer to deal specifically with such issues? If so, you should probably rephrase it; as it stands, there seems to me to even be a chance that your housing and financial issues may be wrapped up in the current phrasing, as life challenges are often part of the strengthening process when we ask the heavens to bless our spiritual growth. But do feel free to change the wording if you desire.
By the way, I just noticed that I had your listing misspelled as “Chistopher”. I’ve fixed it now. Perhaps you were worried because you couldn’t spot your entry when you clicked on a search box.
@Scotlyn #269 – Thank you for referencing those papers! Especially this: “[…] chronic food intake in excess of expenditure, and markers of low-grade systemic inflammation.” In this accounting “low energy expenditure” and “chronic food intake in excess of expenditure appear as “symptoms” of mitochondrial and metabolic dysregulation, rather than behaviours that cause this dysregulation.”
This is a very large, multi-factorial topic and I am wondering for a while how to reconcile the *symptoms* that seem to imply that obesity could be related to lifestyle-choices (i.e. it is caused voluntarily) with an underlying reality that is more complex. While I personally know people who have become obese as a result of medication (for example) and there was little they could do against it, I am also aware of the picture one can frequently observe when visiting the grocery store. But I think it is too simplistic to say “see, they all buy this junk food in masses, it’s all their own fault”. One could ask, if mitochondrial and metabolic dysregulation are causes not symptoms, then what causes those?
While the intake of toxic substances through the environment are certainly a valid hypothesis and the regional distribution of obesity in the US (that had been posted here and on dreamwidth) seem to support it, I find it still too simplistic (and convenient, to be honest) to try to shift the blame entirely on the chemical industry.
What about psychological issues that might be linked to obesity? From my own (obviously very limited) experience I get the impression, that both a chronic and deeply rooted (frequently already below the threshold of recognition) state of a) fear or b) boredom seem strongly linked to obesity. My working hypothesis (not only in regard to obesity, but also to many other chronic pathological conditions) that there are many layers at work. Toxic substances are an issue, the psyche is an issue and lifestyle is an issue, too. Every human being is different to some extend. Everybody can compensate a certain level of negative influences but at some point, it’s just too much.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@Forecasting:
eh, as long as you stay out of the storm-surge flood zone (check your elevation), hurricane-prone coastlines are not as scary as the news would lead you to believe. But then, I’ve lived in one most of my life 😉 Storm surge is really fracking scary and not something you want to mess around with… but as long as you’re off the immediate coast (like, more than 8 blocks from the water) and ~30 feet above sea level it’s not an issue. Wind: construction of your home is really important, but you do have some control over that. OTOH, if that’s really your biggest criteria… West coast of Mexico *did* just get a rare Cat-5 right at Acapulco. No tropical/subtropical coastline is truly immune.
IMO, though, the biggest concern with relocating when you’re expecting trouble is whether or not you can fit in with the locals in your target destination. All’s well and good in bountiful times, but when things get lean, being a foreigner is not always a comfortable position to be in. Have a backup plan– how are you going to get out if things go weird on you? Watched this happen to a blogger I follow, during covid: they had successfully (they thought) relocated the whole family to the Caribbean and were doing well there, right up until covid. And then things got really really weird, the locals wouldn’t talk to them anymore, and things no longer felt safe. They repatriated.
@pygmycory
re: housing bubble prices: May God grant the crash happen soon!
This is clearly not a sustainable situation. We are in that weird gray zone where we make too much money to qualify for housing subsidies, but too little to afford the local rents, and I feel like the boundaries of that gray zone have been expanding in recent years, so that more and more of us fall into that gap. Stagnating wages + rising rents and house prices… it can’t keep going forever. The real-estate investor class is milking it for all it’s worth, but we’ve got to be in diminishing-returns territory by now.
“Science is littered with zombie studies.”
Here is a nice description of a problem. Research is published then found to be wrong, whether by honest error, fraud, or it turned out to be blind alley, it doesn’t matter. How do you excise it from the record? It’s in hard copy in the journals, it’s cross referenced, others have mangled their own work by using it, and some may have read it then abandoned a promising idea because of the wrong results that were published.
Back when I was researching in the ’90s there were tomes of cross referenced papers, I can’t remember the name of the publication though. Going through that to delete the links would be a chore. Does a librarian have to go through all the back issues of the various Journals with a “Retracted” stamp?
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4326865-science-is-littered-with-zombie-studies-heres-how-to-stop-their-spread/
@Ron M
Regarding: the India-vs-Bharat controversy
You are right in pointing out the de-colonizing aspect of it, and also the fact that Modi comes from a deeply religious background, and that informs his view of this matter. That said, I personally think that you have given one explanation behind this matter, but another one is also equally applicable – basically, I think the Modi government deliberately cooked up this whole matter because they wanted the Opposition to pay little to no attention to something far more concrete and potentially even more controversial; so this was a good way of distracting them. Consider this – the Indian Constitution itself says, ‘India, that is Bharat’. So, there is really no need to officially rename things. Plus, within India, government notices are issued both in English, as well as Hindi and other India languages – while the documents in English use the phrase ‘Government of India’, the ones in Hindi use the phrase ‘Bharat Sarkar’. So there’s no real issue at hand here – the most likely explanation for this whole controversy is that Modi laid a trap for the Opposition and the anti-Modi segment of the media (there’s a pro-Modi segment in the media too), and they walked straight into it, thereby wasting energy and time screeching angrily on TV screens, or wasting ink, paper and electrons on stupid op-eds solely dedicated to just how evil Modi is.
If I remember correctly, JMG spoke about how Trump deliberately created controversies where his position was supported by the overwhelming majority of the American public, and made his opponents scream bloody murder about it, so that he could distract them from his implementation of concrete items on his agenda. Looks like Modi and Trump both take leaves out of each other’s books. Maybe the ‘Howdy Modi’ and ‘Namaste Trump’ weren’t just photo-op sessions…
Petros, I’ve just spotted your prayer request and added your father to the prayer list. I phrased it as “May Petros’s father Michael Long, in East Stour, Dorset, UK, be protected from suffering and blessed with a smooth and pleasant life during his remaining time in this world, and a peaceful journey into the next.” If at any point you’d like me to adjust the prayer in any way, because the situation changes or just because you want a different nuance, please drop a line over at the prayer list. May your father experience great beauty and meaning in his remaining time.
methylethyl, where do you think a english emigrant would best go in the Caribbean?
Presumably a ex British colony that speaks Ebgoish? Any candidates?
Nachtgurke #292 – yes, of course, obesity is among many many multifactorial “canaries” in the very toxic mine we call industrial civilisation. And its causation is not simple at all. I mostly rebel at the simplistic, but also censorious and condemnatory, view that all obesity is behaviourally caused. This view suffers from: a) being too simplistic, and b) condemns huge numbers of people into a constant nagging sense of failure and sinfulness, piled on top of any actual “illth” and “suffering” their physical condition is causing them, from which they lack the power to emerge, recover or find respite from. To at least begin to unpick some of those other layers is worthwhile, though, as you say, they are always going to be highly personal, and be causing a range of levels of suffering. It is the suffering which (in my personal opinion, as an acupuncturist) I believe in prioritising, but for some obese people *they* don’t have a problem, and that being the case, I don’t think its anybody else’s business to force a problem ON them. On the other hand, metabolic disruption is common, and a disinclination to move, and an inclination to eat more – both of which produce a higher “adipose stability point” – can be symptoms of this, along with a wide range of other symptoms and signs, some of which do add up to personal suffering. This needs to be given careful, and nuanced, consideration. Hasty, censorious, and simplistic opinions are really more than useless to anyone I’ve ever met.
Talking about obesity, I would like to share my weight loss experience. My eureka moment came when I was chewing in front of the pantry, looking for something to eat and feeling full. At about that time I read about someone who kept her weight constant by eating whatever she wanted but not eating for another 3 hours after she had finished. That sounded doable to me.
In the last 8 months I have lost 13kgs, about 26 lbs. At first that last 30 minutes was a struggle but I reminded myself that I would not die of starvation in such a short time. I do not count drinks so if I want a coffee or a glass of wine between times I have it. If I am visiting people or going out for the day I don’t fuss. I just try not to overeat and get on with it the next day.
I have regained my sense of satiety and lost my desire for sweet foods. I would like to lose another 10 kgs. This will still be well over my young adult weight, but I am pretty old and don’t want to be ridiculous about the whole weight thing.
I have no idea of where I read that piece of advice but it has certainly helped me. Of course it is not that simple for everyone but has been useful for me.
@JMG (if you’re still answering these)
I got curious after looking at that Christian Druidry link: have you ever actually met a Muslim Druid? Seems like an intriguing combination.
@Forecasting Intelligence #227
As a Norwegian, I’ve naturally thought a bit about these things, so I just wanted to quickly chime in here. All your points seem broadly correct, and I agree that Norway probably is one of the better places to be in terms of continental Europe. That said, let me play devil’s advocate for a sec and offer some counterpoints:
-The climate is far from ideal. We’re spared the worst of the heat and we’ve got plenty of water. On the other hand, you still need either electric heating or a lot of firewood to survive the winters here. Plus lack of sunlight and short growing seasons. We’re also set to suffer from major floods in the future, like the one we had this summer. And back in 2018 we did have something close to a drought, so we’re not immune.
-Lack of fertile soil. A statistic that comes up often in land use debates is that only 3% of our land area is farmland. Traditionally this has been supplemented with fishing and transhumance, which might still be possible to an extent.
-While immigration isn’t as big an issue as in Sweden, MENA muslims are still a significant and very visible minority with a lot of attendant friction, especially in Oslo.
-We do have a land border with Russia and are very vocally pro everything NATO, even if I don’t think it’s going to be an immediate issue either.
-This is the big one: if the AMOC/thermohaline circulation/Gulf Stream/take your pick shuts down we’re probably in deep trouble. This one has me more worried about my country’s future than any immediate human-caused threats, tbh.
As mentioned in earlier threads here, in my opinion the ideal place to settle would be out of the way of major war and migration zones, with a balanced to warm climate and (for my personal tastes, anyway) English-speaking. So my vote would be for Australia, New Zealand or Hawaii. I think it’d be much easier to live a low-energy life in a place where you can use solar energy year-round and don’t have to use energy for heating half the year. Of course it’s hard to legally immigrate to any of these places as a European unless you have a sought-after degree and experience.
Moving to a poorer country like Mexico might be a good way to collapse ahead of the rush if you’re flexible and hardy enough to make it work practically and socially. I couldn’t do it, but might be an option for some. In terms of places within the Schengen area, I’d say Madeira or the Canary Islands would be the best candidates (assuming the latter won’t completely dry up).
Christopher from California,
Request received!
Very late in the week, I know, but:
@JMG You’ve written repeatedly over the years about the fact that astronomers of the Middle Ages were also active astrologers, and that this to at least some extent paid the rent. Also, that the two disciplines were then seen as aspects of the same discipline. Can you recommend a citable text which discusses this without too much woo?
Many thanks!
“I would encourage you to consider praying that the situation will resolve in whatever way is best for all parties, and leave it at that.” OK, I am using that as a template.
Dang, I was hoping for a loophole. Smite him if he hurts those precious littles in any way! Smite smite smite! Break out the millstones!
Which reminds me. Recently you mentioned a line of study that was good for those dealing with childhood crud. At least, I think it was you. Can you tell us which line of study that was?
“Eight cups of milky tea with five spoons of sugar in each kept me pleasantly buzzed each day.”
That’s downright frightening. I have enough trouble with my teeth as it is. I grew up with no fluoride in the water and a fluoride free toothpaste as well as bad genetics as far as teeth are concerned.
In other news, the risk from AI is over, 😉
“The United States, Britain and more than a dozen other countries on Sunday unveiled what a senior U.S. official described as the first detailed international agreement on how to keep AI safe from rogue actors, pushing for companies to create AI systems that are “secure by design.”
“In a 20-page document unveiled Sunday, the 18 countries agreed that companies designing and using AI need to develop and deploy it in a way that keeps customers and the wider public safe from misuse.”
BUT;
” The agreement is non-binding and carries mostly general recommendations such as monitoring AI systems for abuse, protecting data from tampering and vetting software suppliers.”
That was the funniest thing I read all day. Don’t you love it when the PMC has your back?
As for computers on the descent, the original Apple II was done with all TTL logic, no custom chips. And a few years ago a guy made a 6502 CPU with a home made photo lithography setup. It ran a half the speed of a real 6502, but it did work. And my personal Apple IIe still works. So where industry can hold the we-can-still-make-this line is a very good question.
Hopefully if the line stops at the 80286 they will just accept another step down to a 68000 or 8086 instead 😉
Jeffrey, I took Sinopharm and had heart palpitations for a few months afterwards. Fortunately they stopped. On the other hand, I have never even tested positive for COVID while at one point my whole family had it. My father is unvaccinated while my mother and sister took Pfizer. I experienced COVID symptoms, of which the worst was fatigue, but overall, my nose swabs were all negative, I never even had fever. I think the vaccines are worse than COVID itself, which isn’t really serious except for people in vulnerable groups.
I don’t know how long you have been reading this blog, but most people in this online community are at least sceptical of the official COVID narrative. I am not a “conspiracy theorist”, I don’t believe that the mRNA shots were deliberately designed to cause cancer or whatever, but I think it is plausible that many more side effects exist that didn’t surface during the short period for approval. I took Sinopharm because I thought the deactivated virus vaccines couldn’t be worse than the real thing.
When COVID was still a thing, I could predict Singapore’s COVID response in advance simply by saying that Singapore would adopt whatever Germany, Australia or New Zealand were doing a little later. This shows to me that the leaders of Singapore are simply doing the same thing they did in school — look at whatever is “successful” and try to do it. Our education system is entirely based on this, drilling 10 year series, past exam papers etc. The ministers and administration are the cream of the crop, they are the best at doing this, looking for successful “model answers”. They are not going to be people who dare to challenge the assumptions of the status quo.
People criticized Sweden at the time for not locking down, but their strategy has worked out pretty well. Their leaders, at least regarding COVID response, showed themselves able to buck the trend of lockdowns, and that the consequences were no worse than other countries, in fact quite a lot better. I am not saying Sweden should be emulated but that some of their leaders could think independently from the global consensus in contrast to Singapore.
Even today with the cost of living crisis, all we see from the government is GST vouchers to defray the costs of their GST increase. They take from one hand and give a smaller portion back to you and say they are being fair. Inflation and increases in the cost of living are not unique to Singapore, and their root causes are not within our control, but increasing tax at this time is just exacerbating the costs on average citizens. This GST increase is purportedly to pay back the reserves for the sums they took out during COVID BTW, despite there being a budget surplus in 2022.
All this indicates to me that the 4G leaders are just furthering the policies launched in 3G and 2G.
If you support the current leadership, that is your prerogative, and it seems the average normie Sinkie also agrees with you. This is just my opinion, based on what I observe.
In case you missed it JMG, Alastair Crooke quoted one of your prescient commentaries on Southwest Asia in his recent column: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/11/27/the-magician-hat-and-great-simulacrum-palliative-balm/
Beige Shiba,
I also miss the peak oil musings of Mr. Kunstler and Mr. Orlov. Perhaps the passing away of our fossil-fuel powered utopia is too much for any mortal man to contemplate for long.
JMG, as to why women, particularly progressive women, are turning to Islam, my vote goes to public opinion as you say. You know, that ‘look at me, look at me’ posturing and virtue signaling.
For a long time I thought that Islam would become the religion of the impoverished and downtrodden in Western countries, particularly in Europe. But maybe it will be the elite leading the charge.
Siliconguy at #295 mentions the problem of studies turning out to be wrong, and later studies referencing them not being corrected. This will be a worse problem than it could be because of how many journals these days are paid access only.
If they were open access, then any lay person reading them could contact the authours and point out the issues. As with software, wikipedia and so on, we’ve seen that open access means you get thousands of enthusiastic amateurs working on projects, and – for all their faults – improving them all the time.
Paid access only stops that from happening. Which will slow everything down. JMG and others have previously spoken about how science has been approaching, or perhaps passed a point of diminishing returns. The decline in open access may be a contributor to this.
Others have mentioned how in tyrannical societies where certain thoughts are held to be “wrong”, and scientific journals kept secret, and people anxious to avoid clashing with the authorities, this will slow scientific progress, because scientific advances come about less from lone geniuses and more from conversations. So we see that the extremes of capitalism are as oppressive to science as the extremes of authoritarianism.
This is of course a separate question to whether there is much more to be discovered, or whether overall we genuinely need more resources to get smaller advances than before. Whether those two things are true or not, it’s certainly true that shutting laypeople out of the scientific discourse inhibits it. I recently watched a movie about Ramanaujan, and it occurred to me that today he would probably never have emerged from the slums to show his brilliance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
One thing I’ve been pondering recently, and which touches on Kimberly Steele’s post about time on Magic Monday: what if the past is just as underdetermined as the future?
The future is undetermined but constrained, and more constrained in the near-term than the long-term, and the longer into the future, the more degrees of freedom there are for various possibilities to actualize. In a practical example: in a year’s time I can maybe shed some pounds but it won’t be in the next five minutes.
Even in the present, we can’t say for sure, and in fact have reason to think it isn’t true, that the nature of reality is such that all properties are sharply defined and all quantities have definite values, in short that all questions have answers if only we had the omniscience of the gods to perceive them.
In both cases, there’s good reasons to think that our lack of (fore)knowledge is not merely an epistemological difficulty, but an ontological one: it’s not just that we can’t know because we aren’t smart enough, but that there’s nothing there to know, at least not in the sense we might want there to be.
What if, then, the past is similar: we think of the past as a series of events that definitely happened, but what if there is are increasing “degrees of freedom” as past events get more distant from the present, just as with future events. Perhaps the past, like the future and the present, is actually a probability space.
As an example, if Timeline A has probability 3/4 and Timeline B has probability 1/4, maybe it’s wrong to say “It’s three times as likely that Timeline A happened than that Timeline B happened.” Maybe we should say something closer to “Timeline A is three times as real as Timeline B.”
One implication this would have is that, pace C.S. Lewis, our intuitive sense that past wrongs are less important with the passage of time is not simply an error on our parts, but because in some real sense, as those wrongs fade into the background, they become a smaller and smaller part of the probability space of the past, until eventually the past timelines in which they didn’t happen outweigh the ones in which they did.
On the other hand, maybe I just need to get to bed!
@Forecasting Intelligence, #117
Sorry, I am late to the party, but for what’s worth.
Maybe you are confusing Mérida with some other city (Manzanillo or Mazatlán come to mind) because it is almost as far from the Pacific as you can be on Mexican territory. As a matter of fact it sits right at the north part of the Yucatan peninsula, in between the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. It is located about 25km from the coastline, and with just 10m (as in 30ft) above sea level… I am afraid you’d be very exposed if some hurricane came your way. Please note that the Yucatán is a flatland where only trees hamper the progress of storms, unlike most of México where both arms of the Sierra Madre keep tropical storms contained near the coast. On the other hand, please notice the city is thriving and in no way destroyed by water every other year, so as in most things, risk does not equate certain doom.
Other location you may be interested in is Querétaro: pretty safe, booming economy, up in the central plateau (and thus protected from hurricanes/tropical storms) and not particularly prone to earthquakes, either. My own hometown, Guadalajara, is not as safe as it used to be but still livable; just keep in mind that you’d get all the pros and cons of a city which experimented rapid growth and is just gaining its footing as a large metropolis.
So much intellectual fun I have had exploring the universe of JMG! So I say the New Testament is my grimoire and IMO the premier spell is “Whosoever confesses that Jesus Christ is the Son of God God lives in him and he in God and so we know and rely on the love God has for us” 1 John 4:15-16 and the premier ritual is Matthew 6:6 “But when you pray go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is there in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” “secret”!? Oh no, I have ended up in the occult, dang you JMG. Religious and spiritual freedom is a foundation of the American experiment. Blessings!
JMG, I’ve been reading about Organ donation,”harvesting” I read sometimes it happens before the patient is dead etc, what are your thoughts on this in relation to, karma,reincarnation.
What effect if any do you think it has on the afterlife?
@Slithy Toves (#311):
That’s basically how I think about the material world. There are too many odd instances where two or more people sharing a moment in time and space will perceive what happened so differently from one another that you can’t easily explain the difference by assuming different foci of attention or hallucinations (the two standard explanations). It seems more parsimonious to assume that the real world is underdetermined at any given time and place, and that differening perceptions are due to indeterminancy in one and the same reality as perceived by different persons.
The “hardness” or “fixity” of the world of energy and matter at any given point in time and space is a convenient and useful philosophical hypothesis, without which the scientific method would not work all thaty well. It’s not a proven result.
Anonymous @ 284, sometime look at photos of Americans en masse, crowd scenes, and see how many seriously or even somewhat overweight persons you see. Likely, not many. I do believe that food additives and agricultural chemicals, mostly introduced over the last 3-4 decades have had serious effects on our health in many ways, including impacting the ability to maintain a healthy weight. Time was, a person who ate well but sparingly could expect to remain trim, if not thin, and functional throughout most of his or her lifespan.
Jeffrey and Patricia,
My point was that after fossil fuels these amenities won’t be common or cheap, they will be luxuries. The wealthy will be able to afford to pay someone else to toil so that they can be comfortable. Along the same lines, the Romans sent runners to the mountains to collect snow so that the well off could enjoy snow cones.
The dry humor was in part to point out that humanity doesn’t really *need* elevators or AC, but lots of people want them. And historically the wealthy have gotten what they wanted by paying others to toil to produce or procure it.
Forecasting Intelligence @ 184, about No Labels (NL hereinafter): NL has been around for a while. What quite a lot of folks fail to understand is that Republican apparatchiks and operatives are no less greedy and wedded to PMC careers than their lefty and so-called woke counterparts. NL is an attempt to divert, and cash in on, the corporate funding that is now going to the MAGA faction. The relative success and longevity of the Libertarian Party has shown that there is a constituency Out There which is disenchanted by both major parties, but which can be persuaded to vote for a business-friendly agenda. The sentiment “The business of America is business.” is still profoundly believed throughout wide swaths of our citizenry. (To be sure, there are personal motives at play at well, as for example members of Congress who feel insulted by the antics of some of the newly elected MAGA types.)
What has happened this year to throw a monkey wrench into the political machinery is the Kennedy campaign. No matter how much the candidate pledges his belief in capitalism and emphasizes his long career as an environmental lawyer suing government agencies, with less emphasis on suits against only the most hated of corporations, i.e. Monsanto, men and women who inhabit boardrooms understand quite well that his programs, if even only partly introduced into congress and passed into law, will Cost Them Money, the cardinal sin for corporate America. Manchin is seen at NL as a good fundraiser, who has been generously supported by major corporate interests throughout his career, and as someone who has the ability to rile up voters and non voting citizens offended by crazy wokesters. Look for his campaign, if there is one, to emphasize “traditional education”.
I doubt Kennedy expects to become president this cycle, or even ever. I think he plays a long game, as shown by the fact that he resisted all calls to declare himself an independent till he had managed to provoke the DNC, a widely hated org. in leftist circles, into establishing some truly bizarre and blatantly undemocratic rules for the upcoming primaries. I do think his real goal is to found a viable and long-lived political party.
Hello John Michael Greer! I was just thinking about The End of the Age of Reason and came across this post: https://thesaxoncross.substack.com/p/mythologizing-modernity. He was talking about the re-enchantment of modern consciousness, I think it is an article that should be read and now, looking at the events in the world, I can say with certainty that; The Age of Reason is over. Finished. It seems like it’s time to choose the things that will be useful to us from the rubble. Your foresight is truly admirable!
Michael, I’m very glad to hear this. The more such lower-tech backup systems get put in place, the smoother the deindustrial transition will be.
Clay, fascinating. That doesn’t surprise me in the least, but it’s not a detail I’ve seen discussed. Can you point me to a couple of links I can cite on the cost of building charging stations and the revenue from them?
Martin, I’ll consider that.
Siliconguy, many thanks for this!
Kim, no, I haven’t, nor have I encountered the concept.
Bogatyr, unfortunately I don’t currently have access to a university library and the books I once read on that subject are all histories of Renaissance and early modern occultism from academic presses. You might see if you can find a bio of Johannes Kepler that talks about his astrological work.
Nemo, it was indeed. The course of study is the one offered by the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, which you can access here:
https://octagonsociety.org/preliminary-lessons/
Siliconguy, here’s hoping. The most stable computer I’ve ever used was a Sanyo MBC-550, an 8088 machine with two 5.25 floppy drives and no hard drive; I wrote my first two published books on it, and if something of the sort could be built straight through the dark ages ahead, quite a few interesting possibilities would proceed from that.
Anonymous, good heavens. No, I didn’t see that — fascinating that somebody of Crooke’s standing would cite a piece that provocative from a fringe thinker like me!
Smith, I think that’s an important factor as well.
Slithy, whether the past is physically determined or not, it’s psychologically undetermined — your past is a narrative you have constructed from the raw materials of your memory, emphasizing some things and ignoring others. You can change your past dramatically by changing that narrative. The same is true for families, communities, nations, and cultures — their past is always a construct, in which selective attention plays a far more important role than anyone wants to admit.
Moose, you’d be in very good company among Christian occultists, too!
Dylan, none whatsoever; losing an organ is no different from, say, losing a limb or an eye. When it comes to reincarnation, the body is merely a lump of meat.
Yiğit, good to see others catching on.
Alvin, sorry, “Sinkie”? Also, you are right, that is my stand. I’m quite confident in our government, but I respect your opinion and I’m not going to attempt to argue mine. See you around!
Alvin, just a side note, however: Singapore did, in fact , haves budget deficit in 2022 of around 2 billion. I’m not saying this justifies the increase, just an interesting thing to note.
On a separate note, how do you see us working out long term? Do you think our government will adapt and keep Singapore as a safe haven or collapse and cause outward migration? (On that note, Malaysia is always an option!)
@Hackenschmidt #310:
I am all for open access to scientific publications. However, it is worth pointing out that having any open access journals at all is a new thing which became possible only with the internet.
In all former times, from the 17th to the end of the 20th century, one had to pay to get a copy of a scientific journal. Same as for books and newspapers. And of course one also paid for the images, for the specialized type setters and in general for the upkeep of the learned societies who published those journals. In practice, one read the journals that a nearby scientific library had subscribed to (if one was lucky). But of course, the library might restrict access to members of the learned society, or of the university.
This is to say, there are many reasons why science may be more sclerotic today than in the 19th century, but I don’t think the access to scientific papers has become more restricted since then.
Anonymous @ 307, from the excellent Alistair Crook article to which you linked:
What is truly remarkable is that the leaders of the new narratives are the youth of Generation Z, Y, and Alpha. Leveraging social media, and speaking directly to their peer groups, they have conveyed the grievances of the Palestinians to the world
I think that the youth of generations Z, Y and Alpha (whatever that is) are quite well aware that their own futures have been sacrificed to, among other things, prop up an increasingly fanatic theocratic regime on another continent. I would also suggest that the blatant meddling of AIPAC in American elections is having a much larger effect on public opinion vis-a-vis Israel than many realize.
@ Siliconguy #305. Between sugar, neglect, and hatred of dentists, I have lost a lot of teeth over the years. If I had my life over, two things I’d do different are to never start smoking; and to look after my teeth.
Hi John Michael,
Well, well, well. This article was interesting and very telling about the actual state of things on the ground: Has Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia failed? One officer says it was doomed from the start
Hmm. A hill to die upon perhaps? Are you seeing such media reports in your country? It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of supposed easy victory, which I note that the same media used to crow about.
Oh, mortgage defaults are supposedly on the up. And here’s the kicker, apparently applications for credit cards are also on the up. What could possibly go wrong?
Cheers
Chris
JMG,
Here are links to the data I used for my ” back of the napkin” calculation of fast charger economics. The first link is for the capital cost per fast charger:
https://www.sparkcharge.io/blogs/leadthecharge/ev-charging-station-infrastructure-costs
To arrive at my “revenue per fast charge” I used Tesla’s own numbers for the cost of charging at home ( base cost) and Tesla’s numbers for charging at a Fast ( Supercharger).
https://electrek.co/2021/10/27/how-much-does-it-cost-to-charge-a-tesla/
I assumed the spread between the two would be the revenue to the Fast Charger Operator. I just guessed at utilization ( on the high side as it turns out). So my numbers are widely optimistic.
Here is the link to a Mckinsey Study that shows much lower utilization rates and much more dismal Profitability ( loss actually). They use a different approach to calculating things than I did ,which is good. They then jump to all the scenarios for subsidizing charging stations as it appears to be the only way they are viable.
I am only concerning myself with the economics of fast ( level 3 , High Amperage DC) chargers and not level 1 or level 2 (residential or slow parking lot units).
Media reports on the Ukraine have dried completely up. There was a report of mass poisonings of political and military figures, but some uncertainty whether it was internal power struggles to see who gets to take over after Zelenskyy or Russia retaliating for various assassination of Russians.
The press has admitted that the Great Offensive has failed and that the Ze-man’s forces are not half way to Moscow. All eyes now are on Gaza. The mass media is surprised that the Palestinian’s have a fair bit of support. The backlash has been anyone who dares criticize any Jew anywhere or Israel for anything is guilty of antisemitism. That’s creating a counter backlash.
I’m in the ‘a pox on both your houses’ camp myself.
@Mary Bennett re: Generations Z, Y, and “Alpha,whatever that is.” There is a very close parallel to the lineup of my own early days, when it would have read “Silent, GI (‘Greatest” being a later tag hung on them), and Boomers.” Generation Y is now called “Millennials,” born 1982-2000, no conscious memory of the pre-Reagan years.
“Z” is their successors, now called “Zoomers” because they spent so much of their formative years – only a single year, but one that bit deep – under Lockdown, doing everything via Zoom. They have no conscious memory of the happy, roaring 1980s and 1990s. but only of a world in crisis. 9/11. The War on Terror. Etc. That’s my grandsons and my older grand-nieces and -nephew. At least in the Upper Middle Classes, they tend to go along with their parents’ program of, as JMG’s character noted in Witch of Criswell, “taking all the right courses, all the right activities, holding all the right opinions, working 24/7 to get into a good college and have a professional career that will keep them in that class. There may be a lot of individuality in hobbies, fashions, and tastes in music, but they’re as locked into that “one role, one passion, one sort of occupation” as any Man of the Gray Flannel Suit of my own day. If history is any guide, their rebellion will come in midlife, when some of them will cast their lot with their own successors, now still in day care and kindergarten: Generation Alpha, and won’t they take that to their heads in adolescence as they set the new social and cultural trends. And, yes, may well sell out in middle age if there is anything left to sell out too. Instead of a material-world crisis, they’ll preside over a cultural crisis. See also, Transcendentalists, if you think this is anything new.
Hope this helps. If not, return my my $0.02…. I’ve been around the wheel completely plus a few years.
Thank you, Patricia. That does help.
Sorry Alvin, one more thing: Singapore’s COVID response started in about Jan—Feb, before either Australia or New Zealand
Jeffrey, I already laid out my points on why I have no confidence in the leadership of Singapore, so I don’t think the present status quo will last in the next few decades. Why don’t you share more on how you think they can navigate Singapore through the future crises to come?
Sinkie is a common term used for Singaporeans in many online communities. I am curious what age bracket you are in if you haven’t encountered it.
I’m right near the deadline for this week. I promised Phutatorius to post a link to the summary of Panagopoulos et al. (2021)’s review of one well-elucidated biological mechanism of harm from manmade EMR, which is interference with cells’ voltage-gated ion channels. A friend and I worked on it together, and here is a link to the result. I have not had any luck getting Dreamwidth to post figures or photos. There was one we included in our summary. The reader will have to follow the link in our summary to the original paper and locate “Figure 1.” Here is the link to our summary: https://sinners4diseasecontrol.dreamwidth.org/778.html
@Chris at Fernglade, regarding Ukraine. I was talking to my mom in a weekly call Monday morning, really just listening to her chatter about her life, and she told me it was very important to keep up with the news, “especially about Ukraine and what’s that place over in the Middle East.” Curiosity got the best of me, so I asked her what was going on in Ukraine. She said, “Well the Russians advance a little, and then we push them back. And then they advance again somewhere else, and we push them back again. So they can’t make any progress, but then they threaten to use nuclear weapons, so we threaten them too.”
So I noted, “Yeah, it’s a good thing both sides have nukes. Neither side can really use them.”
She said, “Yes, there are some real hotheads. That Putin just seems so much like Hitler!”
I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing. Thank goodness my mom didn’t seem to connect it with what she’d just said. It had come across to me like the punch line of a particularly droll dark joke.
I must seem awfully callous. The collapse of a hegemon is much more entertaining at a distance.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/11/27/the-magician-hat-and-great-simulacrum-palliative-balm/
…….in which Alastair Crooke cites your 2012 essay in his latest article on Israel/Gaza.
Alvin,
I just view things differently from you, I guess. I view the GST increase As a way to increase our financial supplies for the days to come, and I think the government is implementing new policies while continuing the old ones too. As for continuing the old ones, why fix what isn’t broken (imo)?
@Forecasting
I wish I knew! I have no experience of the Caribbean, just the Gulf Coast of the US. The blogger in question briefly summarizes his experience here:
https://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/freedom-day-2021/
and it seems like any destination… but in particular the smaller poorer countries/islands, is vulnerable to something like that. It’s not that you shouldn’t go. It’s that it’s really important to have a backup plan. Best of luck to you!
@Yigit
If you’re starting from not knowing much about Orthodoxy, I’d recommend Frederica Matthews-Green’s *Welcome to the Orthodox Church* as a good, user-friendly launch point that covers all the basics in plain English, from the vocabulary for parts of the church, the basic sacraments, and church etiquette, to sketching out basic church history and theology. It is easy to jump right into Ware or Lossky and get completely bogged down in the rather dense text and scholarly language. They’re great to read, of course, but I sure wouldn’t start there!
@Pygmycory:
We have already made the leap to single-income household. Without a college degree or specialized training in anything, my earning potential is zeroed out by what it would *cost* us, in childcare, food, transport, medical, and other expenses, if I were to re-enter regular paid employment. That situation might or might not change as my children get older. I think it will depend a lot on how our household economy develops over the next few years.
We are rapidly approaching a choke-point for housing here in the US. We live in that strange twilight zone where we can’t *really* afford even the cheapest rents, we make too much to afford housing subsidies, and we could, theoretically, afford a modest house with a mortgage, but we consistently get outbid by investors who can pay cash– who will then turn around and rent that same house out to people like us, who will struggle to afford it, but it’s still better than living in our car. This used to be the situation only of the working poor, but in recent years it has been creeping up the income/education ladder, and altering the expectations we formed in childhood, about acceptable housing situations. Here’s what I foresee happening as a result:
Single-income households, yes, but… before we get there, we will see a massive return to multi-generation households, and people “living with relatives”. We had a preview of that around 2008. I remember that in my parents’ nice lower middle-class neighborhood, their neighbors suddenly had an adult son, his wife, and their three kids, move in with them after they lost his job and their house. The garage, without any improvements, became an auxiliary family living area. Everyone involved accepted, out of necessity, a decrease in privacy and living standards. Family eventually got back on their feet and moved out, but it took some years. I think we’re about to see a LOT more arrangements like that.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the housing market once that picks up steam. We do not have a housing shortage in this country. We just have a lot of people taking up a lot of square footage they don’t actually need. Squeeze them enough, and they’ll be eager to share that space… and then a lot of housing should come up available, prices should come down, and people like us, on the edge of the distribution, should be able to afford a roof and four walls again. Once free of a predatory rental market, one-income families become a viable option again. Operative word: “should”.
I think it’s an open question how long that’ll take to happen. The current situation is completely unsustainable of course, but… how long is it going to take to pry investors’ greedy fingers off the house inventory that nobody can afford anymore? And how many of us will be living in tents in our inlaws’ backyards in the meantime? Banks and investors have been manipulating that market for a very long time, and they won’t give up easy.
Late for the Nov open post, but this article from the Atlantic is about cats who fetch. I’m only a little surprised they don’t suggest they aren’t wanting to transition to becoming dogs.
Otherwise, maybe our host thinks they were dogs in a previous life and they’ve been reincarnated as cats?
*When I originally commented I clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get four emails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thanks!
I have read a few accounts of the vigilanté smashing the satan display in Iowa. I would be very interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/satanism-and-the-limits-of-liberalism