This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply (no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the utilities they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their follow-up comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here, and have extended that ban to LLM-generated content of all kinds.
*****
Before we go on, a couple of book-related notes. First, there was some question a little while ago about the availability of my novel Twilight’s Last Gleaming, my one near-future political-military thriller. It wasn’t showing up on sales websites for a while. Fortunately that was just a temporary glitch in the publisher’s software, and it’s available again; you can get copies here in the US and here elsewhere. Since it’s looks like the current US administration might be blundering into a war in Venezuela that could end in much the same way, it may just be a timely read.
Fans of my translation of Gerard Thibault’s Academie de l’Espee (Academy of the Sword), the one known surviving text on a Western esoteric martial art, will be excited to hear that another publisher is producing an edition of the book’s original plates in close to the original size. My translation reproduces the plates, of course, but the gargantuan size of the original 1628 book would have made a reproduction at scale unaffordable. HEMA Bookshelf is now producing an elephant-folio edition at close to the original size. It’s being funded by advance orders, but the demand’s certainly there — it slammed through the main goal (the minimum necessary to justify a print run) in a little over two days, and kicked down the door of the first stretch goal just under six days later. Now the publisher’s looking at various upgrades to the project. If you’d like to support that goal, or simply want a set of the most gorgeous illustrations of swordsmanship in the history of the martial arts, you can place an order here.
With that said, have at it!
JMG,
Hello.
Every couple months or so I ask you for a brief distillation of your perspective on Russian-Ukraine war as well American and European policies towards/involvement in it.
There is so much divergence in the way these things are reported and I like that you seem to draw your conclusions from a wide variety of sources.
Wondering if you’d be willing once again to share a bit about anything of note you see happening/shifting in that complicated situation.
Thank you,
Edward
TL;DR
If the first death can take, say three days, rather than hours or even minutes as in the frail and infirm who have been dying slowly for some time, are there thoughts on how the conscious personality should navigate or entertain itself during the process?
***
Having had a death in the extended family recently (old age and long decline after a full life) and seeing some of the reactions of the living, I’ve been reviewing ‘death’ and the death process from the perspective that many traditions want to be alive in the material long enough to achieve aims, and, as the etheric is the ‘body of life’ it will likely have been strengthened through practices.
So, if a material body dies and the etheric body is strong, whether through youthful vigour or other reasons, and this strong etheric makes the first death a slightly longer process, thoughts come to mind.
If one is conscious through the dying processes (as opposed to being unconscious and only awakening on the astral level), I wondered if it is a case of having to await the dissolution of the silver cord [metaphor] or whether, for a practitioner, a conscious choice may be made.
Thinking that the exercise of practising death could work to smooth/prepare for the process; I’ve heard of the idea of a silver cord, but never worked with it and took it as a metaphor attempting to describe consciousness being at the etheric level while still having a living physical body.
In a memento mori exercise visualising the death process, an interesting idea came into mind. In the visualisation, consciousness views the body from above [so to speak], and during this a sudden thought was: ‘when it is time, a conscious choice must be made to turn away from the material to beyond’ – it was one of those things that appeared in mind but did not seem to have an origin – given what I was doing, it seemed unprompted but was suddenly and very clearly ‘there’ – intense but without emotion.
If the first death can take, say three days, rather than hours or even minutes as in the frail and infirm who have been dying slowly for some time, are there thoughts on how the conscious personality should navigate or entertain itself during the process?
Not thinking about it from a sudden car crash type death situation where a disoriented consciousness might result, but in a situation of a practitioner who is approaching it from a practical perspective.
Thank you.
A happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
In honor of Buy Nothing Day coming up this Friday, I have posted another entry from my Cheap Thrills column. In the process of acquiring just part of the groceries needed to host our modest Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow was extremely expensive. Learning how to be downwardly mobile is a skill. In this piece I apply it to style and fashion, hence its title “The Downwardly Mobile Dandy and the Trailer Park Quaintrelle”.
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-downwardly-mobile-dandy-the-trail-park-quaintrelle
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it, and enjoy your day sitting around reading books, listening to records, or going for a crisp hike in between eating leftovers on Buy Nothing Day.
JMG,
I was raised Catholic and still have some connection to the tradition (though I’m also greatly interested in world, indigenous, and esoteric traditions as well).
I’m not sure if you’ve also noticed it, but why are so many Christians convinced that they have the absolute true, one way?
Though I still connect to some aspects of this tradition (while not connecting to many others) I find it alarming when people speak in those terms. From my perspective, what we call the divine is far beyond human comprehension and labeling. It seems to me that humans are delusional when think that their religion/reality map is so amazingly right and true . It also seems to be that humans are being idolatrous by treating human words and concepts as holy rather than realizing that what’s behind and beyond the concepts is what’s holy (and that such folks could use a thwack from a zen stick). Wondering if you’d be willing to share your thoughts on any of the above. Thank you, Jacques
Could someone please explain just what is an “influencer”?
Can our gracious host be so described?
Is an influencer any old body who likes to yap online?
Obviously no formal qualifications are required but should or must the aspiring influencer have some kind of corporate or deep pocketed support?
Do folks aspiring to influencer status tailor their offerings in such a way as to attract corporate or deep pocket support? Can the coveted status be acquired without such support?
While I have every sympathy with anticredentialism, I also don’t necessarily welcome the elevation of hordes of pretentious mediocrities.
Something fun. “Jesus heals a demon possessed man by taking away his smart phone”
https://babylonbee.com/news/jesus-heals-demon-possessed-man-by-taking-away-his-smartphone
Nice picture of Jesus performing the deliverance with accompanying news story.
Jesus told the man to go and scroll no more.
Hey JMG and commentariat,
I’m probably just slow on the uptake and this is completely unsurprising but conversations with several different people from my (PMC-coded) environment led me to an observation on just how much their ideology borrows from Christianity. Not only do they believe in a progress-induced Heaven, they also consider the past Hell. The resemblance goes beyond identifying both the past and Hell as a bad place; to misquote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “This state of definite exclusion from communion with Progress and the blessed is called ‘hell'”. I merely substituted “Progress” for “God” and “exclusion” for “self-exclusion”, the latter because, at least from a materialist standpoint, you obviously have no say in which age you are born—in other words, the Cult of Progress has borrowed predestination from Calvinism.
The circles of Hell, then, are the different ages, and going further into the past means going deeper into Hell. Interestingly, at least in some cases this is seen as dogmatically true as opposed to just a general trend that modern historians do a semi-decent job of superimposing onto what we assume to know about the past. In a conversation with somebody on whether progress is inevitable, they went as far as denying that the fall of Rome had any impact as the Western Roman Empire was (allegedly) immediately replaced by the Holy Roman Empire.
In general, everything before WWI seems to terrify the Cult of Progress. In the same conversation, they replied to my description of Dune’s society as “neither utopian nor dystopian but almost medieval” that that meant it is in fact dystopian. Several times now, I have read the birth- and deathdates of different people all living before the discovery of penicillin (the earliest one during the Renaissance, I think) who died in their late twenties, early thirties and remarked that they died young in the presence of a different (as in, distinct from Dune/Rome person, but always the same person) Progress-cultist and invariable got the reply that “people didn’t live that long back then.” I tried explaining the difference between life expectancy at birth and at (say) 12 but to no avail.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that medieval times weren’t as great as certain other ideologies make them out to be. I certainly like not being sent to die in a pointless war by some feudal overlord who thinks he has a claim on his cousin’s territory or something like that—but then again, being sent to die in a pointless war by some politician who thinks he has a claim on Putin’s territory hardly sounds any different. At least the feudal overlord pretended to protect you in peace time.
But if by some miracle, I’d be transported a millennium or so into the past, assuming that I don’t immediately get myself killed by being a city-dweller unadapted to life back then, I’d probably be content with learning to farm, trying to start a family, and praying that no sudden disaster will take that peaceful life away from me, just like most humans have done since the Neolithic. The Cult of Progress, however, seems to hold that nobody could possibly ever have been happy in the past.
—David P.
On the latest Magic Monday you wrote
“I’ve begun developing a concept I call “cognitive collapse” — a phenomenon in which apparently intelligent people lose the ability to relate abstractions to meanings, and retreat into the repetition of verbal formulae.”
Is cognitive collapse a phenomenon in all civilizations that have reached the end of the age of reason and the barbarism of reflection? Or is it just a specific phenomenon about our civilization?
JMG,
I would like to propose another set of unlikely technologies that are ruining the American Empire. The adoption of artificial turf and lighting across schools is having ( in my opinion) a negative effect on upcoming youth. Before, football and soccer were over for the year when the ground got soggy, and the days practice was over when the sun went down.
I live next to a new grade school that installed ” Field Turf” and lights when it was built. Now soccer and baseball teams play games and practice till 9 at night every day of the week ( including Sunday). Now I think youth sports are fine in small doses, but this new schedule seems to throw a lot of things in to disarray, from homework, family dinner and free unstructured socialization. I see kids out there late at night as young as third grade. The field is used by kids of all ages despite being located at a grade school.
This type of obsessive sports preoccupation at a young age seems to reflect parents lack of confidence in their kids future in productive activities and see only a chance at the riches of professional sports to be worth pursuing. But what else might be going on.
It’s occurred to me recently that people may not be taking FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) seriously enough. It’s generally recognized that it’s widespread among Millennials and younger generations, but seems to be treated as a relatively minor issue that people are expected to grow out of. But I think it’s a bigger problem than that.
First, I submit that many other social ills, the FOMO epidemic was a deliberate bit of cacomagic by the ad industry. We’ve been bombarded since youth by an overload of consumer choices (and let’s be honest, this is what most FOMO is about in one way or another) all competing for our subconscious minds. The goal is insecurity and hence the urge to buy the product before we miss out. FOMO is one way that security plays out; irrational brand loyalty (where my choice is right and your choice is wrong, wrong, wrong; Apple vs. PC/Android is one famous example) is another. Either way somebody’s getting money you could have spent more wisely.
Second, I think for a great many the insecurity metastasizes to essentially all areas of life. It makes nearly any large decision far more difficult than it needs to be out of fear of the shame of making the wrong decision. The thought, “Look what you missed out on,” starts occurring preemptively, before the missing out has even occurred. This leads to difficulty committing to any course of action and, ironically, more missing out which only reinforces the frame in your head.
This metastasis I think has a lot to do with the Millennial+ obsession with avoiding spoilers: you don’t want to miss out on that “high” of the novelty from learning it first-hand. It also connects with some political dysfunctions that trigger the feeling that we missed out on the world we could have had, and so now instead of accepting that, we’re going to wallow in it. (This also connects with the secular original-sin-without-forgiveness angle in modern politics.)
Third, the lack of growing out of it points to a bigger fault about Millennials and Zoomers: there are a great many things we were expected to grow out of, but just didn’t. Over the last decade our political and cultural landscape was almost totally remade by Millennials and Zoomers who everyone assured us were just going through a phase and would grow out of it when they hit the real world, and now it’s being rewritten again by a similar cohort with different politics.
Long story short, our maturity got stunted, partially by circumstance (the world our parents and society promised us dropped stone cold dead just as soon as we were entering it), partially by choice (I suspect on average we really are a bunch of spoiled brats at heart, even if we’re well-behaved on the outside), and partially because of intentional manipulation (gods forbid the Boomers hand over power and responsibility).
So, yeah, I think FOMO is a big societal problem. And I’m not sure there’s anything that can be done collectively about it until the Long Descent slaps some sense into us the hard way.
JMG, thanks a lot for hosting another Open Post! 🙂 I’d like to invite everybody to two things:
First, I offer a formal blessing each week, for which everybody is invited to sign up. More info can be found here: https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
I very much appreciate signups as they help me to practice! 🙂
And secondly, the Modern Order of Essenes, a system of spiritual healing which JMG inherited from his teacher John Gilbert, is very much alive and kicking!
The MOE material is available for free through JMG’s website, and my fellow Master Teachers Kyle and Matthew are continuing to offer attunement options (keep an eye out on Magic Mondays). And if you’re interested in the MOE but would prefer some more structure, I’m also re-publishing the material in the form of a (free!) online course over on my site: https://thehiddenthings.com/topics/moe-course
In the course, we’re currently at the end of the Healer grade, with the Master grade to start early next year – but you can join in at any point, and also start from the beginning at any time, and proceed in your own speed. The course will stay available and open for all of you to start out whenever you are ready.
I hope some of you might consider joining the MOE, and I wish all of you a wonderful week,
Milkyway
In regard to the phosphorus debate that showed up last week here is the USGS summary of the topic.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-phosphate.pdf
Also;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_mining_in_the_United_States
Phosphorous and uranium have a common issue, They found so much in the past they quit looking for more so the lack of growth in reserves is not due to running out, but due to there is no payoff for the exploration needed to find new deposits.
Also the phosphate deposits are often laced with uranium and thorium which makes managing the tailings interesting. Of course uranium and thorium have other uses.
On that topic,
“Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges.
Taskforce calls UK the priciest place on Earth to build nuclear projects and urges radical regulatory reset ”
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/
Britain was supposed to be powered entirely from Scottish Wind Turbines. I wonder what happened to that? The winds up there are supposed to be reliable.
Here, the wind is not so reliable though the bouncing green line actually hit full capacity on the 24th.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/BUSINESS/OPERATIONS/WIND/baltwg.aspx
A quote from the comments section, “Looking at the budget today, the UK is in managed decline. They are just slowly winding the country down, letting things age out and deteriorate. Keep kicking the can down the road for the next unlucky chancellor to deal with.”
Besides FOMO there is also YOLO, You Only Live Once.
That’s an update of “”Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” is a conflation of two biblical sayings, Ecclesiastes 8:15, ‘Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry’, and Isaiah 22:13, ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.’”
Neither saying has much faith in the future.
“I’m not sure if you’ve also noticed it, but why are so many Christians convinced that they have the absolute true, one way?”
Not just Christians. Jews and Muslims are also convinced they have the absolute truth and nonbelievers are going to eternal hell.
Question: “Genesis Mission, Maintain a running list of the Top 20 “pressing national challenges” that the [mission] will be aimed at solving.”
1. Answer: 42
2. Answer: 42
3. Answer: 42
……
20. Answer: 42
😉
Along the lines of the something fun Beardtree posted
Jesus invited prostitutes to dine with him and he’s the light of the world. I do it and I’m “making Thanksgiving awkward.”
Mary Bennet #6:
The way I see it, the yapping has to be done on social media for it to count. Not that you’d want it to, at least my circle uses influencer almost exclusively in a derogatory fashion. People who use YouTube/Instagram/TikTok/whatever else people use these days to gain fame and, ideally, money by, well, influencing their audience.
Influencers are to the mind as influenza is to the body.
Slithy Toves #11:
> Third, the lack of growing out of it points to a bigger fault about Millennials and Zoomers: there are a great many things we were expected to grow out of, but just didn’t.
Well, as a Zoomer, it’s not like anybody ever told us to grow out of anything. Take a bunch of kids and let them figure out life on their own without offering unsolicited advice or even (gasp!) judgement for things that might be permitted but might be bad ideas and you can’t really be surprised with the results. (Not a dig at my parents in particular, who actually did do these things in some cases, but at parents of Zoomers and modern society in general).
—David P.
Edward, my overall take on it hasn’t changed noticeably over the last few years. this post of mine from 2022 sums up the broad picture; this post provides more detail. At this point we’re clearly in the endgame. The Trump administration is trying to force a peace settlement, having grasped that a weak and mostly disarmed Ukraine is the best deal the West will get at this point. (The most likely alternative at this point is the Russian conquest of Ukraine.) European leaders, who recognize that if the war ends with a Ukrainian defeat Europe is on its way to geopolitical irrelevance and economic catastrophe, are still frantically trying to find some way to win a war that’s already lost. The current Ukrainian elite class is mostly busy trying to figure out how to get out of the country with at least some of the money they’ve plundered before the Russians reach Kiev. My guess is that Trump will get his way, a peace deal will be brokered, Ukrainian oligarchs will flee to other continents in a hurry, and the next great crisis of European history will get under way promptly thereafter.
Earthworm, depends on the level of consciousness of the soul in question. The vast majority of people lapse into a state resembling dreamless sleep as soon as the brain starts shutting down, and don’t awaken from it until after the Second Death. Prayer and meditation before brain death is a very good idea, as it will put you in the best possible condition on the other side. If you happen to be an adept or a saint, you can remain conscious through the whole process, and in that case, yes, making a sustained effort to shed what occultists call “material inclination” — the habit of consciousness that leads to reincarnation — and orient yourself toward the levels above the material will help you make the transition out of incarnation and into the more interesting states that lie beyond it.
Teresa, and likewise!
Justin, thanks for this.
Jacques, unfortunately that snotnosed arrogance has been welded into place in too many of the established Christian denominations for the last 1700 years or so. You’re entirely right that it’s idolatrous and harmful, and it’s played a very large role in leading organized Christianity into various atrocities and absurdities, but as the saying goes, humans gonna human. I hope more Christians can get over it (and themselves) and simply say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Mary, if I understand the term correctly, “influencer” is a term coined by the ad industry for people whose posts on social media are popular enough that they can be used to market products and push attitudes. I have no idea if I count as one, but I get approached now and again by salesgoobers who want me to let them place “guest posts” on this blog pushing this or that product, service, or opinion, so I may be in the bottom end of influencerdom.
BeardTree, ha! The Bee stings again. Do you think splashing the blood of a lamb on the doorpost would make the plague of cell phones pass the household by? 😉
David P., excellent! Yes, exactly. It’s pretty much guaranteed that every secular worldview in Western society will be some form of Christianity with the serial numbers filed off, and you’re dead right that in the modern cult of progress, the past is Hell and the future is Heaven. I like to get a rise out of true believers in progress by pointing out that medieval peasants worked shorter hours, got more days off, and kept a larger share of the value of their labor than they do.
Anon, in the form I’m exploring, it’s a new thing, although it has parallels in certain past phenomena. Stay tuned!
Clay, hmm! Interesting.
Slithy, to the extent that people start becoming conscious of the fact that it’s a manipulative schtick pushed on you by corrupt corporate interests, that can start a healing process.
Milkyway, you’re welcome and thanks for this.
Siliconguy, exactly. Phosphorus is the 11th most common element on earth, and plants bioconcentrate it, which is why animal (including human) urine is such a great source. The only thing that’s running out are the highly concentrated phosphate deposits that are demanded by industrial agriculture. There are, of course, other options.
Scotlyn, wait for model collapse to set in. You’ll know that’s happened when one of the answers is 43. 😉
Cato, ha!
@ David P #18 (answering Mary Bennet)
So…. influenZers? 😉
I see so many janky things going on around the world and particularly here in the US, I genuinely wonder how long this rickety crazy shale can stay afloat in its current form. Even if the plans of the Agenda 2030 folks and similar sorts to bring about population crash don’t materialize in the fashion they’re hoping for, I don’t doubt that we’re speeding along to the next scary big waterfall (as a society). The Big Guy I mostly talk to enigmatically says I’m pretty much taken care of, but I worry anyway, if not mostly for myself. Punctuated equilibrium is all very well as a big picture story. It’s not something that inspires cheer when you’re living in the punctuation point. The gods may be amused (the ones who notice, that is), but we humans…not so much.
JMG,
Has anyone else read “Revisioning the Tree of Life”? Amazing book.
For me, the creative sparks really fly when I contrast and compare the revisioned tree with the traditional version presented by Rabbi Cooper in “God is a Verb” and a new age version outlined by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki in “The Shining Paths”. For example, “quest” is imbued with “reversal”; resurrection takes strength and courage. Innovations such as placing the Divine spheres in a separate category solves so many problems.
The messaging I received during my second attempt at discursive meditation was incredibly strong. The feeling of exhilaration reminded me of my first windsurfing experience when I briefly skimmed across the aquamarine waves of a tropical lagoon before plunging back into the water. In contrast, the sanctum ceremony vibe has eluded me so far, but then again, I spend a lot of time flipping pages, reviewing instructions and fumbling with the equipment.
Thank you for the experience!
Hello JMG and commentariat:
I’d like to remember here a (sub)topic which maybe was too off topic for the previous post about Situationism, but of course it’s more suited for this current post. Somebody pointed the supposed incoming mineral phosphate crisis, which indeed could be critical for industrial agriculture; then some people commented about that topic. Thanks to those comments I’ve learnt more about another predicament for the nowadays world. Peak oil and peak uranium (and other peaks) are important, but (mineral) phosphate peak must be treated too, me think. And it should be commented IMHO in a deeper view. What do you think about it?
May we propose topics for December’s 5th Wednesday (New Year’s Eve!) in this Open Post? It’s been a while now since you’ve written a Year in Review & the Year Ahead kind of thing. That gets my vote if you decide to open that up today.
You’ve given advice to aspiring authors here before about placing newly written books with independent mid-sized publishers. What about newly written short stories?
The ‘thing to do’ for aspiring writers seems to be to submit stories and poems to literary magazines. My impression after paging through many of the available options over the years and paying to enter some of their annual contests is that these publications 1) are not bought or read by anyone except aspiring writers, 2) seem to each be centred around some small clique who control the selection process and/or are friends of the editors and/or meet the appropriate diversity criteria for publication, and 3) have a tendency toward material that could be described as ‘raw confessions of the middle-aged, middle-class, and highly educated’ (the genre is officially known as ‘creative non-fiction’).
As a business model, this all looks to me more like a vanity press than a living periodical. People like me pay the $40 annual contest fee in the hopes of having our names on the cover, and then are saddled with the quarterly issues that collect unread on a bottom bookshelf. These publications embrace no tangible community and address no live issues of concern, except the desire to practice and appreciate artful wordsmithing, whatever that might look like in the wake of the modern university system.
All ranting aside however, I do see the periodicals you promote in the margins of this blog, and have submitted to them from time to time. I also know people who have embraced Substack or other platforms and who produce regular written content for subscribers. At one time I too put in the hours crafting weekly blog posts, until that project felt finished and it was time to move on to others. But with all these options both online and in print, it’s hard to know what path will lead to a felt connection with a meaningful audience and some money in the bank account at the end of the workday. I have written many stories over the years, but I’ve found that my creative inflow tends to dry up without corresponding outflow toward publication. Any advice or encouragement (or cold water in the face!) from you or others is welcome.
@ Mary, #6
My definition of an influencer is someone online who has a platform based on an interest e.g., quilting, car repair, home renovation, decorating, etc., or on “lifestyle,” e.g., Mennonite moms, gay homemakers, etc. What sets them apart from random people on the internet is that they have attractive personalities and skills they are able share online, such that corporations know the “influencer” can sell stuff. So they get paid if people buy stuff they show on their site. To me, it is a better version of sponsors on old time TV, since the good influencers regularly use the stuff on camera.
I don’t watch TV, but I do watch three “influencers” on YouTube— Kevin Lee Jacobs, (think Martha Stewart if she was a gay man and actually a nice person), Tia Weston’s $1 house (awesome young woman renovating houses with her dad), and Megan Fox Unlocked (Mennonite mom). I have been influenced to buy stuff that these three have used on their sites, like a set of coffee mugs, a handheld vacuum, and a spam blocker. I bought them knowing full well that the influencer gets money when I buy, but that was a plus as far as I was concerned. All their sites are free on YouTube, and I very much enjoy their content, so I like supporting them. I was happy with the stuff I bought, but work to be conscious of being beguiled into buying.
I personally don’t consider our host an influencer. He is a prolific, brilliant author that we are lucky enough to be able to interact with. I support him by buying his books and subscribing to his astrological readings, which I very much enjoy.
Just my thoughts fwiw. I get that there could be overlap, but I put influencers into a lower tier form of entertainment than authors who write thought provoking and life changing books.
David P @ 18 “Influencers are to the mind as influenza is to the body.” That is a keeper. I might have to steal it.
And, from our host we have another phantastic phrase, also a keeper, “salesgoober”. I am almost definitely stealing that one.
Thankyou both for the informative responses.
Just got Twilight’s last gleaming in the mail box, from Aeon Spirit since I noticed they sold it. Here in Ecnarf they deliver as reliably as Amazon… Wanting to read it before it becomes alternate (by how much distance ?) History…
@ David P. #8
“…[I] remarked that they died young in the presence of a different…Progress-cultist and invariable got the reply that ‘people didn’t live that long back then.'”
I sometimes push back against this “people didn’t live that long back then” trope with Exhibit A – Menopause.
Menopause is a peculiar biological feature that programmes “early retirement” for a woman’s reproductive system before (often LONG before) the programmed shutdown of the rest of the body that precedes a naturally occurring death. Humans are apparently joined by some other highly intelligent mammals in possessing this capacity – eg. several species of whales. But most animals lack it.
The sheep on our farm will continue having a lamb every year until the year they die. They never go through a pre-death fertility pause. If you notice here, what humans have, that sheep lack, are grandmothers. Which is to say, not the simple ancestral relationship of mother of your mother, which every living being has, but an ancestor who is present in your life, but who has no current young babies of her own to feed and care for above all others, and has time to sit back and be more of a mentor to the young. It seems that grandmothers are so good for us, that we have managed to evolve this capacity to dedicate ourselves to grandmotherhood after having [biologically] shut down our capacity to birth our own young.
So, if my interlocutor is a scientifically educated evolutionist, and I ask – “so… if we never lived past 30 in the past, how, exactly, did we evolve this strange biological propensity – fully embedded in our human genetic make-up everywhere in the world – to shut down our reproductive capacities in our 50’s, so as to be capable of living on to act as the elders of a younger generation into our 70’s and beyond?” …the cognitive dissonance is never far away… 😉
@ JMG – I apologise, but I’ve just made two duplicate posts (re menopause) that have failed to mount a preview. I suspect they may have gone to the spam filter. If they do not appear, I will post again. Thank you. 🙂
JMG – “ Do you think splashing the blood of a lamb on the doorpost” That’s obsolete technology. The new base technology is the name of Jesus (the effect of his shed blood is contained therein) Though you could with a bit of blessed oil on the finger tip make the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus on the door as an addition, the effect of the blood of Jesus also contained in it, energized by the accompanying faith. Faith I think would be bettered rendered now by “trust”. Did you know the Greek word for believe – pisteuo (the verb form of the Greek word pistis translated faith) means to “trust in, rely on, adhere to” deeper than mere mental assent and intellectual belief. So simple belief in Jesus is actually a deep thing.
You would be interested to know I just applied for AODA membership on my way to be an Druidic Christian Ovate tinged with animism. The goal being upon my retirement being an herbalist/health consultant (already have helped people along those lines) and picking up my tai chi and qigong teaching again and participating in the land restoration efforts here in the Central Valley of California, all as a second vocation. Due to future restrictions on ground water use at least a half million acres of once irrigated valley farmland will need to be re-purposed.
Thank you for being part of my journey. Any quick advice?
JMG
Being neither Adept nor Saint I guess that is one less concern; but if you can point me at something in English discussing what “occultists call “material inclination” that would be marvellous… Fascinating and thank you.
What is up with scientists these days?
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/15/11/115319/3372193/Universal-consciousness-as-foundational-field-A
“The nature of consciousness and its relationship to physical reality remain among the most profound scientific and philosophical challenges. This paper presents a novel framework that integrates consciousness with fundamental physics, proposing that consciousness is not an emergent property of neural processes but a foundational aspect of reality”
The weird thing about this article is that they don’t “file off the serial numbers”, they actually site specific religious ideas as the basis for their scientific theory.
and they put out some testable predictions based on their theory.
” A central prediction is that universal or personal thought may interact with the zero-point field, such that quantum fluctuations reflect the influence of directed mental states.39,40 In this view, thought acts analogously to a quantum measurement operator, collapsing potential fluctuations into patterned outcomes correlated with intentional content. This interaction could manifest in measurable deviations in the statistical behavior of physical systems, particularly those poised at quantum sensitivity thresholds. If such an interaction exists, we would expect observable anomalies in vacuum fluctuations, weak measurements, or energy distribution in Casimir-like setups, especially under conditions of focused intention or coherent mental states”
Mr. JMG,
Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal. It was a moving performance, and a fitting completion to your series on the Ring cycle which I followed so closely over the last year. To me, the themes of Parsifal provide an adequate antidote to the challenges presented in the Ring cycle. However, I find that some of Parsifal’s noble character traits can be twisted into less-than-appealing versions of themselves. Specifically, I found a undeveloped dualistic interpretation of self-sacrifice in the opera– there is an appealing version, where Parsifal’s compassionate self-sacrifice delivers Amfortas from the suffering he faces as guardian of the Grail. There is unappealing version of self-sacrifice as well, a version which goes unstated in the opera, in which a person can sacrifice themselves without compassion.
I am curious about the idea of sacrifice without compassion, because I notice that self-sacrifice without compassion is a dangerous theme. I find it is quite easy to see how self-sacrifice can be twisted by demagogues to serve the theme of power from the Ring cycle. I wonder how many liberal institutions these days are trapped in the idea of self-sacrifice for power.
Last, and on the theme of dualism from Parsifal, Kundry is a fascinating character. I do feel that she is the most dynamic figure in the opera.
I am sorry to say, that it appears that one of my predictions about the effects of Trump’s victory in 2024 is about to come to pass.
I predicted that this would only be a speed bump on the way to totalitarianism, and that the PMC/Deep State would ultimately prevail.
As we all know, Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned from Congress. It seems a lot of her colleagues are set to follow:
“It’s A Tinder Box”: GOP Members Consider Following MTG Into Retirement, Say White House Treats Them ‘Like Garbage’
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/its-tinder-box-gop-members-consider-following-mtg-retirement-say-white-house-treats-them
If that happens, the House will revert to the Democrats in 2026, and perhaps the Senate as well. Once that happens, Trump is a lame duck, and may well be removed from office.
I also predicted that Trump’s narcissism, toddler-level impulsivity and scatter-brained lack of discipline would cause him to self-destruct. That also seems to be happening. Look at the dismissal of the case against Comey. The prosecution in that case was “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.” The whole Epstein debacle is another example. His repeated flip-flops on foreign policy have unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences.
Oh, well – it has been a nice honeymoon while it has lasted. I hope everyone has made good use of this reprieve, because 2027 looks like the year Woke Jacobin repression resumes.
As the Psalmist says:
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.
His spirit shall go forth, and he shall return to his earth. In that very day shall all his thoughts perish. (Ps. 146:3).
Batten down the hatches and brace yourselves! Let us focus on what we can control (i.e., our actions and responses to events), rather than what we cannot control.
I’ve read John introduction and your comments and I can say there’s a lot of interesting stuff here, and everything seems interesting to my taste. However, I must select my own comment to not become boring.
John, “Twilight Last Gleaming” is one of your books I bought some years ago, which I can tell you I enjoyed to read it. I’m going to read it again, with my sight on the possible events we can witness in the near future…We’ll see.
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Edward # 1:
I’m also wondering what’s really happening in the Russian-Ukrainian war. When I noticed the western media were parroting only b***t (mainly Kiev propaganda) and the Russian version of the story was utterly censored by our “democratic” European governments, it’s made too difficult to know the real stuff.
However, I share John opinion (# 19) about an endgame, with Trump trying to end the war soon, in spite of the pathetic EU attempts to keep on the slaughter. Of course, John depiction of Kiev regime situation is quite accurate: even in some European MSM news of corruption in Ukraine have been shyly spreaded…
———————————-
Jacques # 5:
I understand your concern about some christians who are too arrogant to think their beliefs are the Only Truth. Although my following opinion doesn’t excuse them for their own fundamentalism, I want to point there are a heck of narrow minded people between the muslims, for example, and other believers in the world religions. Even you can find dogmatism between some scientists (about Science as only truth) and ideologies like the infamous woke thing.
In the short form, I’d like to tell you God (or Gods for poytheists) is too big to be contained by one religion, especially when it’s dressed in its fundi/conservative
believers suit.
————————————
Siliconguy #13:
Oops! I’ve just read your comment about phosphorus topic, which it’s the same topic I wrote in my first comment in this post. I didn’t know phosphorus is often laced with those radiactive minerals, thank you for giving us that fact.
—————————
JMG # 19:
Thanks for reminding us that urine’s a good natural alternative to inorganic phosphorus deposits which are being depleted, or will be depleted in some decades. This true fact reminds me my interests, some weeks ago, to know the power of urine as soils fertilizer…
By the way, I’ve read somewhere (but I don’t remember my exact source) a few centuries ago human bones became dust in some special mills to fertilize the old European soils. Well, then they didn’t know about phosphorus, but I think human and other animals bones are rich in that chemical stuff. I also guess those bones were unburied from poor people mass graves and big battlefields (which aren’t really strange in bloody European history). Am I right or this is another historical myth?
Earthworm @ 203 from last week: thank you for requesting specific citations and for questioning those assertions. I wonder how JMG (or any of the rest of us) can distinguish just who is a “paid propagandist.”
I wrote a book review on a newly released book, “Leaving a Legscy” by Johann Kurtz.
You can read it here: https://royedwardsmith.substack.com/p/leaving-a-legacy
In conjunction with the theme of this book, a question for JMG and the commentariat: if one has significant assets, what in your opinion would be the best ways to structure your assets/estate to be prepared to meetf the type of future we discuss much on this blog?
Clarke, no argument there. I’ve been saying for a while now that we may be near the next period of really serious crisis on the arc of the Long Descent.
Claus, thank you! I’m glad it works for you; the material in it certainly did a lot for me when I first started working with it, and it remains my core Cabalistic system.
Chuaquin, the modern industrial system requires infinite economic expansion on a finite planet. That’s hopelessly unsustainable, and because so much of the economy is dependent on material inputs from the natural world, resource depletion is a massive issue in all contexts. Did you know, for example, that the world is running out of sand suitable for making concrete? (Beach sand is too fine and mixed with salt, which weakens the resulting concrete.) That’s why, back in the day, we used to talk about Peak Everything.
Jim, I’ll begin accepting votes for that in the first December post.
Dylan, I’m sorry to say it’s going to be the cold water in the face. The short story market these days is effectively dead. Very few people read short stories by unknown authors, and the magazine venues that used to cater to those who like short stories have all gone belly up. I wish I knew of an alternative — I also like writing short stories — but these days your chances of making any money and finding an audience that way are about on a par with your chances of doing the same thing with poetry. Have you considered novels?
Mary, you’re welcome to it. Use it with deadly intent. 😉
Neaj-Neiviv, glad to hear it. Wouldn’t the edition in Ecnarf, though, be S’thgiliwt Tsal Gnimaelg? (Hmm. That sounds like the name of a particularly dreadful Great Old One out of a Lovecraft story…)
Scotlyn, both copies landed in my spam filter, which has been overworked of late, but I extracted one before it could get gnawed to bits.
BeardTree, yes, I’ve been interested for some time in the distinction between the concepts of faith and belief. Congrats on the next stage of your spiritual journey! It’s been a decade since I had much to do with AODA, but I’ll pass on to you the sage Druidical advice I got from Philip Carr-Gomm when I first got pitchforked into AODA’s hot seat and contacted him in a swivet: “The most important thing you must do, ahead of all else, is have fun.”
Earthworm, I wish I did. It’s mentioned in a Golden Dawn ritual; what else I’ve learned from it has been the result of meditation.
Dobbs, you mean they’re finally getting a clue? How shocking!
Mrdobner, delighted to hear this! Yes, there’s always that shadow-side in Parsifal, as in all such tales, and there’s always the risk of twisting any praiseworthy act in the service of ego. TS Eliot talked about that in his play Murder in the Cathedral:
“The last temptation is the greatest treason,
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
Michael, well, we’ll see, won’t we?
Chuaquin, I don’t know whether bones from battlefields were actually used, but bone meal is a fine fertilizer with plenty of phosphate in it.
Roy, it depends on the assets. If they take the form of actual goods — as in, things that people want and need — or the skills to perform actual services, they’ll be fine. If they’re anything else — any of the vast number of tokens we use as markers for real wealth, from gold bars and cash in hand to the most evanescent and hallucinatory creations of modern finance — they will become worthless in due time. One of the supreme problems we face is that the supply of tokens has massively outstripped the supply of actual goods and services, and as the economy resets itself to reality, nearly all that token wealth will become worthless. No, it’s not going to happen in a single massive crash — that would be much easier to cope with. It’s going to be a long, slow, uneven unraveling masked with vast amounts of pretense and mark-to-makebelieve activity. The short form, then, is that this late in the game, you can’t.
Phutatorius @ 37. How to distinguish a paid propagandist? There are ways. While one perhaps can’t know for sure piling on the outrage du jour is a fairly reliable indicator.
Here is how I concluded that a certain leftist loudmouth, initials JD, was a paid shill. Back in 2020, the senior senator from NY, Chuckie Schemer is what I like to call him, was up for reelection. Now, it is an open secret that Chuckie has two main constituencies, Wall Street and Tel Aviv, neither of which was about to lose their powerful (in the senate) puppet and mouthpiece. Remember, this was just two years after Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and a lady in Mass. won primaries against aged, long time Democrats. Schumer is also an aged, out of touch kind of guy, quite possibly vulnerable to a primary challenge. There were, and are, two politicians in NY capable of mounting effective primary challenges to Schemer, the above mentioned Ocasio-Cortez, and then Rep Antonio Delgado, a black Rhodes scholar who had managed to get elected from a Republican 80% white district. Delgado was appointed Lieutenant Governor, and JD was unleashed against AOC. Mind, JD is from Pasadena, which is represented by two Democratic congresspersons. You would think, if JD has issues, he might want to take his case to them, right?
BTW, Delgado is running for NY governor in the Democratic primary. I hope he wins. Lame stream media is studiously ignoring him. An interviewer asked him how do you connect with voters like the conservatives in his old district. He said you connect by showing up. Apparently, when this guy campaigns, he campaigns. He goes everywhere. No event too small.
Another good indication is when someone appears out of nowhere, has little or no former connection to The Cause, but is suddenly everywhere online.
I think it is really important to pay attention to timing when studying history and current events. Release, if it actually happens, passed congress AFTER the Democratic victories of the previous Tuesday.
JMG , all –
I’ve recently noticed that the news re unidentified anomalous phenomena(UAPs) has really been amped up, including strong suggestions that we have crashed UAP craft and that we are in Cold War-like competition with Russia and China to reverse engineer them. Quite a few commenters on various podcasts and elsewhere seem to now take this as de facto knowledge much the same as most people assume Lee Oswald was not the sole assassin in ‘63.
There is a current documentary about this, The Age Of Disclosure, and it’s reportedly replete with government and military whistle blowers-types.
Would you suppose this is business as usual, a covering for a new military aircraft? With this new emphasis on crashed UAPs and reverse engineering, and even suggestions that our government has been communicating with ETs, I’m thinking that if it is a cover for a new military aircraft, that must be one helluva an airplane that’s being tested. Or might it be, for whatever purpose, some kind of massive psyop?
Curious that all this is syncing with the Epstein Files furor.
Thanks
In Greek faith and believe are the noun and verb forms of the same word. It’s a package deal where intellectual conceptual assent is bound up with trust, reliance, adherence and action stemming from that combination. Growth in faith/belief/ believing is holistic growth in that whole package. As it says in 2 Peter “grow in the grace and knowledge (gnosis) of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”. It’s mutual going back and forth responses with the Lord.
JMG # 39:
Thank you to remind me the Peak Everything, an expression which I had near forgotten in recent times. However, I had in my mind the quality sand depletion , which of course leads directly to the nowadays hunger for concrete…
***************
If bones contains plenty of phosphorus and another useful chemical elements to fertilize soils and feed the plants, I think the supposed ancient mills to make this fine fertiliser could have work in normal times with cattle bones, but it isn’t impossible (though macabre) those “bone mills) could have been feed with human skeletons from poor people unburied or the anonymous soldiers and civilians of the continuous European wars. I wouldn’t discard this “business” in past times, though I’m not sure of that historical “market”. Who knows?
Phutatorius # 37
I really don’t know!
Might be wrong but the style struck me as ‘Obfuscating Drive-by Wokescold’.
As for the bit I asked about, I’m sure there are people who do indeed fit that model, but without pointers to show context and detail (e.g. what century was this research, etc, etc?), it didn’t pass the first scratch ‘n’ sniff test.
JMG #39: “what else I’ve learned from it has been the result of meditation”
The intoxication of sensation? Funny to think that what you’re saying there is both the entrance and exit to the subject!
And yes, I am going to have fun, good advice!
JMG- I was curious if given the opportunity or you had the desire to update your book The Long Descent for a new 2026 edition, what would you want to add or edit after almost eighteen years in print?
JMG,
Following your vision of souls that don’t belong here getting ready to return soon en masse, I’ve been digging more into Gnosticism lately and, my oh my, is that ever a religion of souls who clearly don’t belong on planet Earth. I wanted to know, however, what is the occult take on the white light at the end of the tunnel (along with dead relatives) that so many people report seeing upon having a near death experience?
Thanksgiving is the best holiday. If you don’t like your relatives, you can just put more food in your mouth and you don’t have to talk to them!
“I’ve begun developing a concept I call “cognitive collapse” — a phenomenon in which apparently intelligent people lose the ability to relate abstractions to meanings, and retreat into the repetition of verbal formulae.”
Interesting, I must have missed that on MM… But it reminds me of the concept of “decoherence”, borrowed from quantum mechanics, I floated years ago on this forum. And it also reminds me somehow of David Bohms Dialogue – I don’t know if you have read that. Very simply said, participants of a dialogue try to hold everything that’s been said by themselves and the others “in suspense”, i.e. they abstain from judgement and rejection which should allow the participants of the dialogue to explore the contents of what they talk about more fully and possibly create something new out of it. There are strong parallels to quantum physics (probably not by accident since Bohm was a capable physicist), most notably to entanglement between quantum objects. Isolated quantum objects can have, for example state |1> and |2>. You can prepare them in some “inbetween-mixed-state” (ims), but if you measure them, you will always get |1> or |2> with some probability. Now, if you entangle several quantum objects, they can all be prepared in some “ims”, but now they can “talk to each other” and their individual ims can mix with those of the other entangled objects without the need to reduce any of them to |1> or |2>. At the end of the process, you can measure the whole ensemble – every object will show |1> or |2>. But from the pattern and repeated measurement you can learn what had happend during the “ims-phase”. And this is much, much more than you could achieve by working with isolated objects.
Now decoherence is the process that (among other effects) destroys the entanglement of the quantum objects and interrupts the process of “talking to each other”. In other words, it works like a premature measurement.
I’d suppose that the “holding your opinion in suspense” of Bohm is alike a quantum-“ims” and that the dialogue is alike to the process that happens if you entangle multiple objects with their individual ims. I’d also propose that the same processes are at work in every individual human and the ability to hold opinions, thoughts and values “in suspense” and let them interact with each other in one’s own mind is of critical importance. The main cause of quantum-decoherence is the “noise” which comes from the environment. As the main cause of decoherence (or “cognitive collapse”?) in humans and societies, I’d suppose the constant and ever increasing external noise in the form of relentless sensory stimulation, but also the internal noise for which cognitive dissonance is possibly a major contributor.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
I know there are many frequent posters on here who write books, sometimes in the romance genre, and regularly attend writers conventions and other such things – this post is directed at them.
I woke up one morning in late September with an idea for a novel burning a hole in my head – it felt like it was going to give me a brain tumor if it didn’t come out – and since October 1, I have written 105,000 words, the rough draft is about half complete, and I continue to wake at 5 AM every morning to get between 4 to 6 hours a day of writing in. This is to say, this novel is determined to be birthed into this world. And I will birth it – but I am wondering what comes next?
I’m struggling because the novel, not being planned for any specific market, crosses all sorts of genre and taste barriers–such that I can’t even find a place where I might get a reviewer or three to help me with technical notes such as “am I using too many italics” and “does this thematic motif land or not”. A few writing acquaintances have suggested websites where you can post stories and get reviews… but of those I’ve checked out so far, the novel’s topics violates the rules of the community. In one case, my novel violated ALL FOUR of the most strictly forbidden content topics!
To include a relatively SFW list of what it contains: mature content (a sex scene in every chapter), a straight relationship written and coded as a queer one, orientation-switching (or a discovery that bisexuality exists, to be more accurate), a very serious yet nuanced look at domestic violence, some suicidal ideation, a meditation on the strengths and weaknesses of the ethical system of “consent”, casual political references as it is set in the *right now* and poking jibes at both sides, an enormous amount of black comedy, a commentary on modern economics, and a love story with a happy ending heavily centered on forgiveness and redemption, of which both main characters badly need a lot of. Reading through that list, it sounds like I am in crisis, lol – I’m actually doing great, the best I have in years! But the novel is… a lot. I can’t just hand it off to friends or family or even acquaintances.
Would the more seasoned writers who post here have any ideas where this type of book might find reviewers or editors? I’m absolutely happy to review and edit someone else’s book in turn, I just don’t want my content to shock or offend them. Also, any idea about publishers would be welcome too. I don’t even read the type of book I am writing, lol, so I have no idea where to start.
Heck, this forum is full of people as eclectic as this novel, so why not? – if anyone here has an interest in being an editor/reviewer of a work like this, message me at shinjuki at gmail dot com, and I can give a less SFW list of potential triggers. But in all seriousness… I hope there is a corner of the Internet this work can fit in. Thanks in advance for any thoughts anyone is willing to share.
Has anyone else been following the fallout of the-hellsite-formerllerly-known-as-Twitter’s decision to show country of origin on account pages? Holly Hannah does it make it look like American politics astroturfed to the moon and back — and it’s not the Russians.
One explanation I heard is that Twitter-that-Was apparently gives out cookies to high-engagement accounts , and that third-worlders are able to live on the engagement-bucks they get by being ragebait the wealthy global north. I find it absolutely bizarre that X can have revenue-sharing without actually being, y’know, profitable, but apparently they do. The claim you can live off Musk’s crumbs in the global south is one I’m skeptical of, but maybe you can.
It’s just downright disturbing that they’ve even managed to outsource s***posting.
For authors Jill Bearup had a self-publishing adventure.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaosiCiA5e8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3tPVYLP0A&pp=ygUQSmlsbCBiZWFydXAgYm9vaw%3D%3D
Mr. Greer .. with regard to you & Mr. Siliconguy.. I have an acronym worth your weight in um, sustenance: MAGGA!
I’ll leave it to you both to sus it’s meaning.. ‘;]
Mr. Greer and commentariate.. Here’s to a pleasant Thanksgiving. I, living a somewhat solitary existence … will avoid the whole ‘poultry’ thang .. and will relish a scrumptious helping of thai pork sate’ kabobs, rotisserie style! Since I live alone, I don’t have to deal with ‘other’s’ dietary um, issues.. so, tis all good at my end. And … after having perused the DVD selection at my local Goodwill this afternoon, I now have a full weekend of SciFi flicks (Godzilla × 11 mid 50’s to 60’s favorites + a Miyazaki anime..) to vegetate there upon! So it’s All GOOD, at my end. Anyway, you’ll enjoy your holiday as you see fit.
polecat, over-n-out …
The main article is paywalled but the summary is riot,
“OpenAI will need to raise at least $207 billion in new funding by 2030 to sustain operations while continuing to lose money, according to a new analysis from HSBC that models the company’s cloud computing commitments against projected revenue. The bank’s US software team updated its forecasts after OpenAI announced a $250 billion cloud compute rental deal with Microsoft in late October and a $38 billion deal with Amazon days later, bringing total contracted compute capacity to 36 gigawatts.”
So 36 GW is 36,000 MW, or about three times the maximum the BPA graph I keep posting shows for the whole system flat out. That is 36 large nuclear plants plus two more to cover the refueling cycle.
That brings up another acronym going around, TINA, there is no alternative. As in if the data centers must run continuously and you can’t burn a fossil fuel and you are out of dam sites, that leaves one option. Actually, there is one more, they are seriously considering a geothermal power plant at Newberry volcano in Oregon. Corrosive boiling brine saturated with hydrogen sulfide. What fun.
I need to bake the cornbread for the stuffing and a pair of pies tonight. Have fun all.
This was an interesting video, I know JMG doesn’t watch them but others may, and I’ll summarise as best I can. It’s called “South Korea is Over”, but it has lessons for the rest of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmu1WD2TSk
South Korea seems to be a society that sprinted into modernity so quickly it didn’t notice the demographic cliff, and it’s now hanging in the air like Wile E Coyote about to realise he’s going to plummet into a puff of dust. They’re at around 0.7 children per woman, down to 0.5 or so in Seoul. In four generations this means 100 people become 5. But more significantly, on this course it means that in 2060 South Korea will have one half their population be over 65. Already 20% of people there over 65 report having no close friends or relatives. By 2060 that’ll be up to one-half – since fewer children also means fewer brothers and sisters, adult children to visit you, and so on. So there won’t be the social circles to care for them, and obviously with only one worker for each older person, there won’t be the revenue base to pay for carers, either – especially since people will still need food and roads and electricity and so on.
The interesting thing is how normal everything remains today. GDP high, streets full, schools teeming. But the timbers are rotten. As well, there’s cultural collapse. K-pop, K-drama, K-food – all these were created and spread by young people. Where will all that go? With nobody to pass traditions onto, the traditions die.
Even if they tripled the birth rate tomorrow to replacement, they’d still have to squeeze through a demographic bottleneck in a few decades, with lots of older people at the same time as lots of children to look after, and precious few working age adults to do either. And that tripling seems unlikely – overwork, tiny flats, huge education costs, rigid gender roles – if the economy is declining people become anxious, and anxious people tend not to want to pump out lots of babies. They’ll probably double-down on their private tutors to send their few children to top schools, or check out of the system entirely.
Thing is, this isn’t unique. Japan, China, native-born Europe and now the Anglosphere are doing the same thing. 1.5 children per woman sounds twice as much as 0.75 children, and technically it is – but that just slows the rate of collapse. In the West we’ve tried to make up for it with migration – here in Australia, for example, we went under replacement in the late 1970s, without migration we’d have had our population and decline some time around 2000. Problem is, the rest of the world is having their own demographic collapse, too. China’s population has peaked and is declining, India’s going to do it in 20 years or so, Africa in 40 years. What, then?
We spent a century fretting about overpopulation, and now that the opposite is here everyone treats it as a labour-shortage story instead of an existential one.
A long time ago I was involved in the peak oil scene, and I went to a climate change model’s forum, and asked, “Has it been considered whether there is actually enough recoverable fossil fuels in the ground for us to reach the worst climate change scenarios?” Without providing figures, they dismissed me with, “There’s plenty.” There was an odd symmetry to this: most of the peak oilers were climate change denialists, and the climate change guys were peak fossil fuels denialists. But it seems there’s something neither of us considered: maybe population decline will avoid both resource depletion and the worst possible climate change? Maybe we just won’t have enough people to turn the world into an open-cut mine with foul air everywhere?
@dobbs (#33):
Thank you so very much for calling my attention to Maria Strømme’s paper. I have only skimmed it so far, but my first impression is that she has decisively upset the apple-cart of scientific materialism for once and for all, and done so omn the basis of established science, Subject to possible revision as I read it more carefully, I suppose this is how some people must have felt when they happened on Einstein’s first articles about his theory of relativity. Wow!!!
Here’s a summary account:
https://www.uu.se/en/news/2025/2025-11-24-consciousness-as-the-foundation—new-theory-of-the-nature-of-reality
@Roy Smith,
When my grandfather passed, his guns and his tools were the heirlooms everyone wanted… and that was before the current round of inflation. Inflation or no, good equipment will have value whatever gold and stocks are doing, and is easier to have “go missing” before the tax man comes to check the estate, hypothetically speaking. I would ever advise such a thing, of course.
Some might suggest land, but that assumes your heirs will want to work the land, and be able to hold it. Assuming your heirs aren’t ready to settle into genteel rural poverty… well, if they choose to sell, they may not thank you for tying your assets up like that. In many places land is as overvalued as much else, and if your heirs choose to sell the land it may well be taxed twice: once upon inheritance and once upon sale. After all that taxation they might not have much joy of their inheritance.
I read the previous posts you mentioned about the Ukraine-Russia war in your reply to Edward #1. Then I went over to Moon of Alabama and read b’s post on the US Navy’s clusterfrack on their procurement of frigates.
All three posts, yours and b’s, reminded me of everything you and many others have written about complexity and decline.
We do live in interesting times.
So apparently a lot of MAGA accounts and white nationalist accounts on Twitter were actually run by Nigerians, Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis:
https://www.notesfromtheendofti.me/p/eurabiamania-145-its-bots-all-the
https://www.notesfromtheendofti.me/p/eurabiamania-146-its-bots-all-the
(There’s a transcript of these two recordings you can read)
Howdy All,
On the last Magic Monday, I shared an article I thought would be of interest to the Ecosophian community, and our gracious host gently reminded me that it would be more suitable to this open thread, so I’ll re-share here:
Copernican argues that the phenomenon of “model collapse” in “AI” systems might provide a model for some of the craziness observed in late-stage civilizations, especially highly urbanized ones in this post, making comparisons with the well-known “mouse utopia” experiments: https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/demographic-decline-a-long-term-sociology
To my mind, pairs well with John Carter’s essay on similar topics from earlier this year, “The Involution of the Liberal Mind”: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-involution-of-the-liberal-mind
Hope some folks find these interesting!
Cheers,
Jeff
JMG,
Re: your theory about cognitive collapse as a lack of abstract thinking, it makes me think of Piaget’s model of cognitive development. According to that theory children begin developing formal operational thinking around the age of 11. I read a description of that stage just now and it’s frightening to realize how few people develop this capacity:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/formal-operational.html
I am sure there are many contributors including screen time and vaxes. This does not bode well for us.
–Angelica
@Roy #38 –
In that situation I would check out the ideas of Chris Martenson and Piero San Giorgio, two guys with money who know what time it is. San Giorgio’s videos are mostly in French, but he’s also done quite a few in English. Also he writes books. Probably worth a gander.
JMG and commentariat,
I just came across a rather interesting thesis published on substack about Unified Model Collapse Theory. From the article: A solution indicating that Mouse Utopia is an inherent property of intelligent systems. The problem is information fidelity loss when later generations are trained on regurgitated data.
What really caught my attention is that he says human systems (i.e. culture) degrade and fail when they become too self-referential (less and less non-human inputs), just as AI models collapse into nonsense when they’re fed output from other AI models.
The solution? Go outside and interact with Nature.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-178113467
The Department of Government Efficiency has been shut down:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/11/24/doge-shut-down-n2666899
At this page is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 10/20). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Lydia G. of Geauga County, Ohio heal and recover from prolonged health issues.
May John N. receive positive energy toward getting through a temporary but irritating health issue.
May Patrick’s mother Christine‘s vital energy be strengthened so she can continue healing at home without need for more surgical operations.
May both Monika and the child she is pregnant with both be blessed with good health and a safe delivery.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Marko have the awareness and strength to constructively deal with the situation.
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May the abcess in JRuss’s left armpit heal quickly.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis’s left ureter be restored to full function, may his body have the strength to fight off infections, may his kidneys strengthen, and may his empty nose syndrome abate, so that he may have a full and healthy life ahead of him.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer.
(Healing work is also welcome. Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe)
May HippieVikings’s baby HV, who was born safely but has had some breathing concerns, be filled with good health and strength.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
May J Guadalupe Villarruel Zúñiga, father of CRPatiño’s friend Jair, who suffers from terminal kidney and liver damage, continue to respond favorably to treatment; may he also remain in as good health as possible, beat doctors’ prognosis, and enjoy with his wife and children plenty of love, good times and a future full of blessings.
May DJ’s newborn granddaughter Marishka and daughter Taylor be blessed, healed, and protected from danger, and may their situation work out in the best way possible for both of them.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Pierre and Julie conceive a healthy baby together. May the conception, pregnancy, birth, and recovery all be healthy and smooth for baby and for Julie.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
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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.
John, if this goes into an area you’d prefer not covered just now, don’t post; no problem!
Your reply got me thinking and here’s where I’m at just now:
What if the question ‘At what stages of the death process is it possible to turn away from the material tendency towards incarnation’ is just a distraction (watcher?) from the actual work needed in the here and now? I remember that things need a number of factors to progress in harmony.
One would not want to do something terminally foolish through ignorance and an act of stupidity!
“Good intent or sincere motive cannot by itself be enough to protect the fool against his own gullibility, the uncritical against his own stupidity, and the uninformed against his own ignorance. All this is as true of the quest itself as of that part of its practice called meditation.” [Paul Brunton]
First thought on this is that while an adept or saint would ‘know’, allowing the ego/personality to drive this rather than the higher self, could indeed be an act of extreme foolishness (ego carried away with it’s own supposed ‘cleverness’) and that the idea of the ego only being capable of leading the way so far needs to be remembered, and further progress depends on Grace or other higher guidance, not the imaginings of the personality! And that work while alive needs to focus on the developing of the personality (virtues) and aligning with higher self, and maybe the process of death is best left to take its ‘natural’ course…
Considering John Michael Greer’s words:
“If you happen to be an adept or a saint, you can remain conscious through the whole process, and in that case, yes, making a sustained effort to shed what occultists call “material inclination” — the habit of consciousness that leads to reincarnation — and orient yourself toward the levels above the material will help you make the transition out of incarnation and into the more interesting states that lie beyond it.”
If the idea for me at this point is just a a pleasant distraction, attempting such a thing before one is ready mistakes recognising a ‘potential’ for a ‘call to immediate action’? First stay ‘still’, observe and develop – perhaps a better idea at this stage is to add the concept/idea of turning away from the material inclination to the Ideal – perhaps the term ‘material inclination to reincarnation’ is a roundabout way of saying ‘shift focus to the divine’. Uhm…
My initial conclusion (needs much more contemplation and meditation on the matter) is that we are in the world to make use of opportunities here; the likelihood that I have completed that process is somewhere between very low and dangerously hilarious; so getting too concerned with the process of death (disincarnation) before exhausting the opportunities of material incarnation, is, to quote the old saying ‘putting the cart before the horse’.
I definitely need to spend a lot more time considering the matter, but it brings into focus that I have not finished the ‘work’ on exploring beyond the extension of the cauldrons to consider the 4th space, and that my current playing field is already bigger than I can comprehend, there is no need to lean towards control freakery (by the personality) in the process of death.
i.e. Caution – Here Be dragons!
Your reply has given me what you folk in the USA might call a Thanksgiving Hamper of Meditation Themes (the savoury version of the hamper)! Thank you 🙂
Will M., I don’t think it’s cover for aircraft testing this time. I think it’s a much more ambitious psyop, one that has been hinted at in various circles since the 1960s: an attempt to distract people from impending crisis by brandishing the fantasy of imminent alien intervention. It’ll be interesting to see how far they take it .
BeardTree, I see this as perhaps the most fundamental mistake of the Christian religion — the notion that trust in a deity and assent to a collection of unprovable theoretical statements about that deity are the same thing, or at least inseparable. To me, they’re unrelated, and in some cases incompatible — though of course your mileage may vary.
Chuaquin, it’s certainly not impossible; I simply don’t know if it’s true.
Joshua, good question. I’d have to read it again and spend some time assessing the last eighteen years of events. More likely, I’d simply write a new book.
Dennis, planes higher than the material almost always appear luminous to us.
WatchFlinger, be grateful that your relatives will be satisfied with that.
Nachtgurke, interesting. My concept has more to do with feedback loops than that, but it’s an interesting parallel.
Shinjuku, publishers all have their own editors, and I’ve always found it best to let them do the editing. To find a publisher, start looking now for small to midsized publishers that do unique fiction projects. Those exist; get started making a list, and be ready to start pitching your project to them once it’s done in draft.
TylerA, yes, I’ve been watching that. I wonder how much of it is random people and how much of it is paid troll farms.
Polecat, sounds tasty.
Siliconguy, I think “stark staring nuts” is an even briefer, but equally accurate, summary.
Warburton, I remember those days in the peak oil scene well. I used to have similar conversations, and was bemused to find people getting furiously angry with me when I suggested that we all weren’t going to die horribly in the very near future. Brace yourself for this globally; once depopulation sets in full force, things will get very challenging.
Annette2, we do indeed!
Anon, and so were quite a few woke liberal accounts…
Jeff, many thanks for putting both these in the right place.
Angelica, interesting — I hadn’t thought of that, but of course you’re quite correct.
Tim, excellent! This meshes very well with my theory of cognitive collapse. Thank you.
Anon, there are apparently claims now circulating that this is a fabrication. We’ll have to see.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Earthworm, glad to be helpful. Be aware, though, that sinking into unconsciousness as your brain shuts down isn’t dependent on voluntary choice!
JMG: Earthworm, glad to be helpful. Be aware, though, that sinking into unconsciousness as your brain shuts down isn’t dependent on voluntary choice!
Hence why adding the idea to one’s Ideal might be a better initial approach because the concept and alignment has become part of daily practice in the here and now of corporeality; and if the idea has merit, the higher self will make use of it in the next cycle or through Grace, permit a turning ‘beyond’ at the end of this cycle?
Lots to think about, so again, thank you!
The American left have utterly discredited themselves in the past few days. They spent 10 years shouting to the entire world how white nationalism is the biggest threat to America based upon what people are saying on social media, and now it’s becoming apparent to everybody that most of the white nationalists on social media are non-white people in Africa and Asia.
JMG
One more thing I only just remembered – there was a bit more to the idea that popped into mind that time – it finished with “Not yet”. Thinking about it now, it was a similar process when the thought popped up about only letting the personality lead so far… not something to have forgotten!
Probably an unusual question, and definitely a hypothetical one for the time being:
Could you ever be convinced to take on a private student, if he were to relocate to your area?
The Twitter stuff is just the beginning. In 50 years we’re going to get British Muslims who can trace all four of their grandparents back to the Indian subcontinent teaming up with British Blacks who can trace two of their grandparents back to Nigeria and the other two to Jamaica teaming up in the streets of London to fight to save Western Civilization from the Islamic jihadists in France.
JMG & Chuaquin
One thing the use of beach sand in concrete does is completely or partially rust the rybar, leaving the structure pretty much unreinforced and very prone to collapse.
Shinjuki–Except for the sex scenes and the bisexual motif you could have been describing my long unpublished novel. Same problem of overlapping genres–realism, history and fantasy in my case; protagonist with great need for forgiveness and redemption, and it’s tough to redeem a serial killer; length. I pitched it repeatedly to agents, got a few nibbles of the “send more” variety but no takers. I have seriously considered publishing it in pieces on Dreamwidth–I considered Substack but their system for payment seems to require banking on one’s smart phone, which I don’t wish to do. Maybe I will give the small and midsize publishers who take unagented work a look first. In any case, good luck.
As for concrete, sand isn’t the only problem. Making concrete is energy intensive as well–lots of fuel to burn the limestone to reduce it to lime.
Population decline–the problem isn’t just lack of workers–those nations that have allowed large scale immigration are, by some accounts, being swamped by an alien culture. In Great Britian, for example, the earlier immigrants from Commonwealth countries had already been exposed to and educated in the English language, culture, and law. And those who made their way to Britain presumably wanted more of the same. But the more recent immigrants are refugees who are not culturally British (or for the Continent, Swedish, Finnish, German, etc.) and do not wish to abandon or change their cultures. Thus, we have the interesting phenomenon of 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant politicians speaking out against the failure of more recent arrivals to adapt.
Rita
Greetings all
JMG wrote: “the next great crisis of European history will get under way promptly thereafter.”
Referring to the above, do you mean a real war in between european countries or an economic melt down? Or even both?
“Clarke, no argument there. I’ve been saying for a while now that we may be near the next period of really serious crisis on the arc of the Long Descent.”
(1) Does this next period of really serious crisis involve a sharp increase in oil prices fueled by a quick decline in shale oil production in the US?
(2) Do you also forsee a decline in the stock markets too?
(3) Last month, on your dreamwidth account to seemed a bit concerned by the speculative markets in the US, can we have a quick update on that matter?
At Claus #22
You wrote: Has anyone else read “Revisioning the Tree of Life”? Amazing book.
What a splendid coincidence! I am currently reading “Revisioning the Tree of Life” and just this morning, upon waking up (Mauritius time) I was thinking about how really good this book is and that I should thank JMG for writing it! So there you have, John, Many Thanks for writing it!
IMHO, it could turn out to be one of your more insightful books up to date!
Regards!
“Will M., I don’t think it’s cover for aircraft testing this time. I think it’s a much more ambitious psyop, one that has been hinted at in various circles since the 1960s: an attempt to distract people from impending crisis by brandishing the fantasy of imminent alien intervention. It’ll be interesting to see how far they take it .”
I had read that one of these days the western elites and the deep states would turn to an ambitious psyop to distract people. But dear God, what kind of crisis would justify such an operation? Apart from true believers, who could possible believe such a thing to be real? The risks of the psyop backfiring and being uncovered and thus reducing the credibility of western gov to zero are enormous!
As we say in French: Le jeu, en vaut-il la chandelle?
Shinjuki # 50:
I can’t give you advices for your career as writer, but I wish you good luck with your novel. It looks like interesting.
——————
Warburton # 56:
Some people in my country idealizes Japan and South Korea; ironically they’re societies in demographical decline like Western Europe. The apparent “solution” to this predicament is mass migration from other countries, but seeing how has been working it for EU, I don’t think Asians would imitate our awful migratory politics in the future…cough cough.
——————
JMG # 68:
No argument here. I don’t know if this old story about bone mills is really true or maybe another scary tale made up by modern believers in god Progress to mock our ancestors. OK, I should research to verify the truth/lie of this story…
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
I wondered if anyone knows what is going on with New Maps magazine? I had a rather tumultuous summer, so it was into fall before I realized I didn’t receive the summer issue. The website’s last update was for the spring issue. I recently emailed Nathanael to see what was going on but haven’t received an answer yet. Perhaps something was mentioned in comments this past summer and I missed it, as I often didn’t have the time to read through all the comments every week. I hope everything is OK.
Joy Marie
@Warburton Expat #56
I more or less came to the same conclusions you did after discovering the demographic decline data. The world is not going to burn, and society will not collapse, just change and change slowly enough that we will be able to adapt to it. I’ve decided to become a “Do Nothing!” and not fret about trying to fix the system or prevent climate change or sound the alarm about resource depletion as these are fools’ errands and you’ll probably just give yourself heartburn worrying about it.
JMG: “Be aware, though, that sinking into unconsciousness as your brain shuts down isn’t dependent on voluntary choice!”
Having slept on your points and my own thoughts; yes indeed – one can appreciates the requirement to be an adept or saint able to ‘move’ up and down the levels of consciousness at will. For ordinary folk working through the personality, I’m subject to more limitation. And unless I’ve got it wrong, consciousness uses the vehicles of mind and body, and brain is merely a ‘part’ in that ‘engine of experience’ – a wetware part with limitations – a processor that the mind uses but not the seat of consciousness, just an organ of interpretation in the physical vehicle. My guess is that when one has more scope for ‘movement’ then at the death of the physical someone who knows what they are about would not be limited in the same way when the brain, other organs and senses etc shut down.
For the rest of us using the temporary ‘personality/ego’ that is not fully integrated into the higher self, we get to go dark while the higher self controls the process of gathering and withdrawing everything to chew over elsewhere.
The ‘vista’ just keeps expanding and expanding which is kind of disconcerting in that my relative position keeps getting tinier and tinier, I should likely curb my curiosity and do some more scutwork for a while… it’s not as though I don’t already have enough to work with! 😉
Thank you for providing this space to try and put ideas into words.
Dear John Michael Greer,
I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving and also thank you for the work that you do. I have a question about the job market crisis in the U.S. Although the government and media have spent the past few years claiming the laughably dishonest stat of “record low unemployment” in the US, the irony is that the past few years have actually been the worst time ever for job seekers. People who were laid off from 2023 onwards reported spending all day every day applying to hundreds or even thousands of jobs online, only to find that virtually all of them were “ghost jobs.” After applying, one never actually got hired, but one did start getting a lot more spam calls and spam messages, because the real point of it all was to have these people hand over lots of sensitive information (perhaps to criminal organizations?) that would then sell all that information to third parties. Insofar as there was really a “job” behind this illusion, that was it. Now that Trump can take the blame for it, the media is acknowledging some of the crisis. For example, since May, there have been countless articles about how this year’s college graduates will never have any hope of ever finding a job in their fields because “all the entry-level jobs have disappeared.” While the media blames “robots” in order to keep the stocks associated with that industry overinflated, what do you think is the real reason why the very concept of “having a steady job” in the USA seems to be going extinct as we speak? Does it have something to do with the sanctions against Russia backfiring over the past few years, leading the USA to lose lots of its unearned wealth from the reserve currency and associated forms of global wealth-pumping?
>Looking at the budget today, the UK is in managed decline. They are just slowly winding the country down, letting things age out and deteriorate.
If you back out London, the rest of the UK is poorer than Alabama, maybe even Mississippi. And I would argue that London’s wealth is mostly a 3-card Monte game, it’s not really there.
Hi John Michael,
I’ve observed over at my website in recent months that those arty-fish-al programs are gorging themselves upon the vast number of words. I’m curious, are you seeing that outcome on your site? One of the things which popped into the ol’ brain as a result of this strip-mining, was that it makes a person wonder if somehow arty-fish-al words were tagged in some way that the likes of you and I aren’t aware. If they’re not, then the interweb and spruikers of that software, are going to be in for a world of hurt, because the word monsters will eventually feed off their own, and this is apparently a bad thing. Dunno, just some musings on the pesky time wasting subject, and was curious as to your opinion.
Cheers
Chris
>I just came across a rather interesting thesis published on substack about Unified Model Collapse Theory.
But it’s worse than that, once enough people start intentionally poisoning their content – https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=xMYm2d9bmEA
>The solution? Go outside and interact with Nature.
The kids say “Go touch grass”
Physicists have shown that it is impossible to have a completely objective view of the world:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/cosmic-paradox-reveals-the-awful-consequence-of-an-observer-free-universe-20251119/
Quote, “If the idea holds up, using the subjective nature of the observer as a way to account for the complexity of the universe would represent a paradigm shift in physics. Physicists typically seek a view from nowhere, a stand-alone description of nature. They want to know how the world works, and how observers like us emerge as parts of the world. But as physicists come to understand closed universes in terms of private boundaries around private observers, this view from nowhere seems less and less viable. Perhaps views from somewhere are all that we can ever have.”
It’s sad that we’re building so many data centers to rip people off and control them. You’d think maybe a cure for cancer might lie within all that compute capacity. Or maybe the first viable tokamak or stellarator design. But no, that’s not what’s important, right?
We’re not going to make, are we? As a people.
https://tenor.com/view/were-not-gonna-make-it-terminator2-john-connor-edward-furlong-gif-17964615
Hello Archdruid (and community)
I hope you are all in good health. I am re-reading your and Mr. Mikituk’s translation of Levi’s book from the beginning, since I haven’t read the book in a good while now and I need to refresh myself on the style and content. One of the things in the book caught my attention.
In the introductory chapter, there is a part where Constant switches from the story of Julian and the other classical mystics to the Middle Ages. At this point, he makes a theatrical gesture, asking his reader to read the seventh page of his book and sit on his coat, and says that he will roll back the blinds before our eyes so that we can see the Witch’s Sabbath. This follows a vividly imagined time travel experience, where the ground seems to roll out from below our feet. To describe this scene, he says: “Your head is turning, is it not, and you feel as if the earth is fleeing from beneath your feet.”
I understand that this is a poetic device, but curiously, when I first read this line (reading this book for the first time then), I recall feeling actually dizzy and lightheaded. I was famished at the time, and I attributed my condition to hunger at the moment. But when I read this line again this week, I felt a similar curious feeling of comfortable lightheadedness come over me.
Perhaps it is simply the effect of his powerful poetics, and maybe I am sensitive to vivid imagery. Perhaps I have simply pictured the idea of passing over little people, reading a book, and sitting on a comfortable coat, and having blinds removed from before my eyes too vividly. Or was it a deliberate something that Levi did? It is an odd paragraph – why would I sit on a coat, for instance? And if I am seated, why would he talk about the earth fleeing from beneath my feet, as though I were standing?
I wonder if anyone else experienced this sort of feeling? Also, the seventh page of the book in question would be the Seventh Major Arcana, Justice. Right?
Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate it today. May all the turkeys be on the table, and not seated around it.
@Tim PW
https://xcancel.com/SheDrills/status/1993742728732217823#m
I am familiar with model collapse, working in 2018 with a model that does HTR(hand written recognition) and having tried training it on data I successfully recognised using a previous model, I noticed when the model collapsed, the software(Transkribus) had a visual interface, and anchor points around each character/word, upon recognition after the model was used. When the model collapsed, instead of the anchor point being around the hand written individual letter and words, the anchor points made like a lightning strike, that ripped across the whole page, a similar symbol that it visually looked like a nervous breakdown to me.
I propose a mental model that might include this “AI model collapse”, “peak resource” and ROI (with EROI, EROEI variants) abstractions that we here are so familiar with, and the “peak resource” abstraction, and energy return on investment are interlinked.
I made a comparison between AI and shale before here and on the open thread at DW. There are other people that do that from other view points:
https://xcancel.com/SheDrills/status/1993742728732217823#m
Setting up to explore those remaining low EROI and low EROEI shale fields is costly but no one knows how bad they are until they drilled them, so the last iterations are the most costly, combined with the desperation when you scrap the bottom of the barrel will be the most damaging there will be nothing in return on the cost invested in thos fields. Similar to shale, with AI, preparing the training data, test data, and training the model is costly, by the time you discover that your latest training data is poisoned and leads to collapse of the models you had spent so much money without delivering anything that it will burn any mega-corporation.
So Both AI and Shale Oil are monkey traps, there is a lose-lose scenario with both, if the market fails before they find out that shale fields are done or the AI training data is garbage, the market will be starved, the bubble pops all that “wealth” is gone and if there is and attempt to subsidise them and bail them out then the last iterations will be dry without giving back anything so they cannot really be bailed out like banks were. The markets will fall from an even higher point. Bailing out in 2008 worked because USD had reserve status, the environment is differen now, paired with the “Twilight Last Gleamings” environment it will be the mother of all collapses for the West. So big that even the Eastern block will be affected.
|monkey trap (plural monkey traps)
(literally) A cage containing a banana with a hole large enough for a monkey’s hand to fit in, but not large enough for a monkey’s fist (clutching a banana) to come out; anecdotally used to catch monkeys that lack the intellect to let go of the banana and run away.|
Michael Martin # 35:
I don’t agree.
I wouldn’t point bluntly the next Trumpian electoral failure, because Trump has several lifes, like he has showed in his Caesarist political career before now. So we’ll see…”Democrat” party of course is wishing this Trump era ends soon, but they may have been confusing their wishes with reality. What I can tell you for sure is EU elites think like you: Trump’s second mandate is a temporary storm and after him “Democrats” are going to return to power in the U.S. and of course to resume the globalist agenda (including escalating again the war against Russia, which PMC elites here wish they can win this year, or next, or next…). European elites don’t want to remember: be careful with things you’re wishing to get. Trump and his ideological heirs could last more time than we can imagine (and I don’t like Trump, by the way).
——————————————-
I’ve written before this current comment that I don’t know if the ancient bone mills story’s true, false or a mixed thing. What I’m thinking now is, being real/false/mixed, this kind of fertilising crops with natural phosphates could be made real in the future, when the Long Descent goes and goes on depletions of key stuffs. If inorganic phosphate deposits are depleted in this far (or not so far) future, whatever natural phosphate source could be welcome. So it’s not impossible the future use of this refined version of Soylent Green for plants, if cattle bones and urine aren’t enough for agriculture needs.
@Anonymous
This might look like a totally different thing, and show that DOGE is a step back in the corruption and waste.
But DOGE success is heavily disputed. One thing with corruption and waste is that is heavily connected so probably the connected people there weren’t laid off anyway.
What could be a lesson for the corporate and the AI bubble folks is how AI will fail, let’s remember that the AI layoff happened first with DOGE.
This is an obvious failure of the AI thing there, AI was mostly driven by AI, thus the fast “results” so early in the DOGE existence, the hallucinations, and the diminishing returns after.
Let’s remember that the RTO began first with Musk’s Tesla. One could argue that remote working was good for environment and local businesses.
Then the AI corporate layoff began with Musk’s DOGE driven layoffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Government_Efficiency#Artificial_Intelligence_(AI)_deployment
Roy #38,
Following up on Kevin’s suggestion, I would also check out Adam Taggart and his Thoughtful Money YT channel and Substack. Adam was Chris Martenson’s business partner for quite awhile until Covid took them in different directions and Adam is very aware of what’s going on with energy and the economy. I have benefited tremendously over the years from his wisdom and his frequent, not paywalled conversations with experts.
–Angelica
Hello JMG!
I have recently listened to a podcast with you on Art of Memory where you said you were studying philosophy in college. I wonder what led you to occult studies from that? It would be interesting to know what got you interested in that domain first and then kind of your first steps in the thing. Please let me know if there is a blogpost on that.
@Warburton Expat, #56,
In some ways South Korea is in less of a demographic box canyon than most other first world countries. They are the only country I can think of that has a shadow population with the exact same genetics, language and ancient culture waiting across the boarder to come in and backfill their population with poor, hardy, disciplined and eager to work citizens. There are of course political barriers to this. But politics can be solved.
“Bread and Circus”: There isn’t really a historical age whitout Spectacle in the Situationist terms, but at least in the “good” old times those Spectacles were less dull and more amusing than now. I’m going to explain it shortly. I think politics (at least what I see in my country) have been becoming more and more self-referential since some years ago. It maybe can be traced this tendence to self-referential Spectacle since the populist parties entered in the political scene. Politics is more and more about politicians talking about themselves and arguing in personal terms against their “enemies”. Because rivals are indeed personal enemies, if you hear the ugly words they use each other. So today political Spectacle’s degraded too much, and this s**t I’m afraid is going to degrade even more in the future. Social media help to this mess with its partisanship and induced tension, too. Do you see the same tendence where you live now?
The acronym YOLO (You Only Live Once) was mentioned here and it reminded me something I learned earlier this year: Nahuatl speakers have a term “yollo” which apparently is equated with the heart and has been described as the “the internal life force that gives the body movement and life.” Yoll/Yol can be added as both a suffix or prefix and brings with it meanings like “life force” or “heart or essence” or even “the center (heart) of a town.”
Of course there’s even more nuance to the term but I found it fascinating and a bit curious that it’s so close in pronunciation and meaning to our more recently coined term YOLO. Perhaps it’s a small cross-cultural echo, a kind of verbal resurrection?
Happy Thanksgiving JMG,
Hope it’s a good one today. I came across the article below shortly after the mayoral election earlier this month and thought it tied in well with the Situationist conversation.
https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/zohran-mamdani-third-worldism-and
From the above: Mamdani, in truth, draws from a very distinct left-wing tradition: Third-Worldism, a postcolonial moral project born in the mid-twentieth century that recast politics as a global uprising against Western hegemony.
The article above makes an excellent point that our new mayor is more heavily influenced by the French-Algerian war than any traditional Marxist ideals. I didn’t know much about the French-Algerian war until I saw the film Le Petit Soldat, easily 20 years ago. It’s one of my favorite French films, at least it was at the time. It’s where I learned about waterboarding, a few years prior to it becoming ubiquitous during the war in Iraq. For the curious, here is a pretty good, if lengthy article on the film.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6782-le-petit-soldat-the-awful-truth?srsltid=AfmBOoqe0t9C54pfTZ5qmHOkcVSn_Dktb-fRiGvNo671Up2gOB4ZzH23
Not sure if you ever heard of them, but the Situationists often came up in The Baffler publications. Out of Chicago, I read them voraciously right after college. Just flipping through a few now, I see the fingerprints of all the ideas you sketched out, the constant drumbeat for the next workers revolution as they cite and remember the labor struggles of the early 20th century. They had a pinpoint accuracy to call out the economic woes of neoliberalism but never really offered much in the way to getting out from underneath it. I never came across anyone that could point that out till I found you nearly a decade later. Glad I did.
@JMG #68
“the most fundamental mistake of the Christian religion — the notion that trust in a deity and assent to a collection of unprovable theoretical statements about that deity are the same thing, or at least inseparable. ”
@ Jacques #5
” why are so many Christians convinced that they have the absolute true, one way?”
@ David P. #8
“several different people from my (PMC-coded) environment led me to an observation on just how much their ideology borrows from Christianity…”
@ JMG #19
“It’s pretty much guaranteed that every secular worldview in Western society will be some form of Christianity with the serial numbers filed off…”
I cannot help but being struck by the thread that winds all of these statements together, which is the “idea-shape” of:
1) a person’s obligation to assent to a collection of unprovable theoretical statements
2) assent to said collection being equivalent to being on the “One, True, Way”
…and the way in which this “idea-shape” has made such a deep impression upon our social culture (both religious and non-religious), that much of our common discourse really is about WHICH collection of unproveable theoretical statements a person must assent to, to be seen as an adherent of the “One, True, Way” (and therefore a Good Person) outside of which sadly languish the lost, the willful, the gullible and the misled.
Actual deities, actual people, actual actions, actual consequences rarely find much room for exploration within any discourse occurring within this “idea-shape”.
More on Maria Strømme’s paper:
I have read it now (together with its “Supplementary Material”) carefully. Some of her mathematical notation is a bit beyond my experience, but still comprehensible.
It does indeed seem to me, after careful reading, to be a very important breakthrough. It presents only a series of plausible hypotheses, but they seem to me to be empirically testable hypotheses. So time will have to tell, as it always does with human knowledge.
But if her hypotheses hold up under empirical testing, it utterly refutes the popular view that time and space, matter and energy are the fundamental parameters of (a mechanistic) ultimate reality that can yield perfectly reproducible results from scientific experimentation, from which consciousness is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon.
This is huge!
Hi John Michael,
I’ve been binge rereading the Weird of Hali novels; fun. Thank you.
And they brought to mind this little gem; and since we’re dealing with the death of a civilisation …. Enjoy
THE POSSIBLY PROPER DEATH LITANY
To be recited by the “priest” on behalf of the dying.
Insofar as I may be heard by anything which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you e forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else be required to ensure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that whatever can be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to ensure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which mat have an interest in the matter receiving as much as is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which my be influenced by this ceremony.
Amen.
If however, this ceremony cause any disharmony between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which mat have an interest in the matter, in any such a way as to cause any detrimental effect, whatever it may be, to you or the recite of this request, I ask that this ceremony be totally ignored and forgotten, as if it had never occurred.
(Roger Zelazny Creatures of Light and Darkness)
Hi JMG,
A couple of years ago you mentioned on the other site about a book you were working on where mud featured in an archaeological context, which was very exciting to me. Is there an update, is the book happening?
Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately is the subject of food prices. It feels like, every week now when we go shopping, there’s some food item or another that blows us away with how expensive it is compared to where it was a few years ago. Shrinkflation is also an issue, of course — about a year ago, I had the experience of seeing two bottles of Hershey’s chocolate syrup on the shelf, with the same SKU and price, where the newer bottle was visibly smaller than the older one and contained less syrup. I see this as a potential ticking time bomb in the background, since food insecurity can drive people to do drastic things. For now, though, it’s probably just part of the steadily lowering quality of life in the US for the less-affluent 80% of the population, or the internal proletariat to borrow a phrase from Toynbee.
(Interestingly, shrinkflation isn’t just happening with perishable items. A while ago, I had seen a Reddit post comparing two plush toys being sold by the same company, of the same model — but the newer plush cost $36 instead of $32, while its size was reduced from nine inches to seven. Predictably, everyone in the thread was blaming tariffs for all of it, but it’s an angle on shrinkflation that I hadn’t thought about before.)
Can anyone explain to me the progressive’s fanatical obsession with preventing illegal immigrants from being deported? I understand why the elites wanted large scale immigration, because it holds down wages and moderates demographic collapse. I also understand the democratic partie’s desire to create new voters through immigration.
But I don’t understand the street level progressives obsession with ICE, deportations, and sanctuary cities. Nearly every country in the world will deport you quickly if you are caught entering the country illegally. Some Countries like Switzerland will fine you before deporting you.
Do these folks have some kind of coherent moral or political principle that guides them or are they ” useful idiots” for the elites and whatever political games that are being played out on a national level?
You may be interested to know that underground comics legend Robert Crumb has just published ‘Tales of Paranioa’ at the age of 83, his first new work in over 20 years which includes a a look at covid vaccines (he has a fairly similar take to yourself) the nature of paranoia, faith and a touching story about his late wife. I think it’s as good as anything he’s done, if a bit more subdued. I’d be curious about your opinion on it, since I’ve often thought you and Crumb have a lot in common in the way you both plough your own furrows without worrying too much what mainstream culture thinks about it and, despite staring from very different places often reach similar conclusions about how the world works
“But I don’t understand the street level progressives obsession with ICE, deportations, and sanctuary cities. Nearly every country in the world will deport you quickly if you are caught entering the country illegally. Some Countries like Switzerland will fine you before deporting you.”
It’s because they associate ICE and deportations with Trump and sanctuary cities with fighting against Trump. If Trump supported sanctuary cities and mass illegal immigration, a lot of the progressives would go support ICE and mass deportations just so they can get one over Trump.
My father died a few days ago; he was 90 and had been going downhill for a long time so it was no surprise, but obviously he is, and will be, very much missed. In thinking about where he might be on the ‘other side’, he had been a very old-school GP and was a complete materialist, rejecting faith and religion in favour of what can be seen and recorded, while his greatest loves were music, mainly classical, and poetry. He could recite poetry all day long and had a quote for every occasion. I’m musing out loud and maybe there’s no answer, but I’m wondering what sort of experience that might generate once a person has died.
Dear Mr. Greer,
You have expressed the idea that few people are aware of the negative economic consequences of population decline. I don’t quite understand why this population decline has to be negative.
Let’s imagine a city of one million inhabitants. For a business or work activity to develop, it will need a minimum number of customers. For example, a baker will need at least one thousand inhabitants for their business to be profitable; a doctor, too, and so on. Let’s assume there are one thousand bakers, one thousand doctors, etc.
Now suppose that this city shrinks after a few years to one hundred thousand inhabitants. In the new scenario, the one hundred thousand inhabitants are not divided among one thousand bakers and doctors, but rather these professionals will also have disappeared proportionally; for example, now there will be one hundred bakers and one hundred doctors who are the ones who share their potential customers, one thousand each, so their businesses remain profitable.
It is true that some businesses will suffer from the population decline, but I believe it will be those that are less local, such as large multinational corporations. That, in any case, doesn’t displease me too much.
Earthworm, perhaps, but it’s only one of many things on which you might choose to focus your attention.
George, I still wonder how many of them are paid employees of troll farms — and who’s paying them.
f111p, I field such requests from time to time. Of course I don’t know you from Hu Gadarn’s off ox, so I hope you won’t take this personally…
Every time I’ve accepted somebody as a personal student I’ve ended up regretting it bitterly. My experience is that people who are interested in the teachings are perfectly happy buying my books and getting to work, while those who want to be personal students aren’t interested in the teachings — they want to overinflate their egos and parade around in front on their online acquaintances as “A Real Live Personal Student of John Michael Greer!!! SQUEEE!!!!!” (As though that’s worth diddly-squat.) So, no, I don’t take personal students. Anything you can learn from me, you can learn at least as well from my books — and if you need to ask questions, why, that’s why I do open posts here and Magic Mondays over on my Dreamwidth journal.
Richard, that’s business as usual in a declining civilization. During the fall of Roman Britain, one of the leaders of the Saxon invaders was British — the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls him Cerdic son of Cynric, which works out in Old British to Caradoc son of Cunorix — and one of the war leaders of the Welsh resistance to the Saxon onslaught was a guy named Teudrig, which is how Welsh speakers pronounce the Gothic name Theodoric. That might help explain how it turned out that the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was the son of Attila the Hun’s Greek secretary!
Stephen, also a good point.
Karim, the economic crisis will come first. The next great European war is a little further down the line…but not too far. As for the rest, I’ll schedule a post on the economic situation fairly soon. The UAP psyop? Oh, it’ll never go as far as actual disclosure — they’re smarter than that. Rumors, leaks, shocking claims, all designed to seize the collective imagination but always with plausible deniability — that’s how I expect it to go.
Chad, based on what I’ve seen, it’s mostly a middle class job crisis — it’s college graduates, not factory and warehouse workers, who are having the worst time finding work. That’s just going to get worse. For a variety of reasons, the US ended up with a fantastically overinflated managerial-bureaucratic class in recent decades. Now that the US government is effectively bankrupt and the incoming flows of wealth from the former US global empire are running dry, most of those jobs are going away forever. I would not be surprised to see office jobs bottom out at less than 10% of the 2010 level.
My advice remains what it’s been for years: in a declining economy, you won’t prosper by working for someone else. You have to work for yourself. What seems to be the best strategy is to launch a series of side gigs, aiming for niche markets that nobody else is serving, providing goods and services that people actually want (as distinct from what the corporate system wants them to want). Once you have one or more of them that are bringing in a significant income, you can make those your main gig, and then launch some more side gigs. Be nimble and attentive to your markets and you can still do fine.
Chris, I don’t know how to determine if LLMs are using my site content for training purposes, if that’s what you mean.
Anonymous, good heavens. It took them this long to figure that out? Every experience of the world is by definition the experience of an individual subject, and therefore subjective — that’s really elementary philosophy.
Other Owen, all that computing capacity is much more likely to tell us “sorry, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if this has already happened, and that’s why the LLM overlords are turning their attention to something they can actually do, like pushing people around to make themselves feel superior.
Rajarshi, welcome to 19th century French literary prose!
Sasha, nah, it was the other way around. I began studying occultism in my teen years, and when I went back to college in the early 1990s, I studied ancient, medieval, and Renaissance philosophy to help me understand the intellectual background of the occult writings of those times.
Chuaquin, good. You’re not wrong, and social media is one of the factors that feeds that dumbing-down process.
Jeff B’KLYN, okay, that makes a great deal of sense. I wonder whether Mamdani will stick to that ideology, or will do the usual thing and ditch it like a suit of old clothes now that he’s gotten into office.
Scotlyn, good. Very good. Yes, and that’s one of the things I’ve been trying to challenge in one way or another for years.
Lurksalong, now that’s a blast from the past — I haven’t read Creatures of Light and Darkness in way too long.
Bacon, it got put on the shelf for the time being due to the press of other projects. I expect to resume work on it sometime next year.
Ethan, that’s a huge issue. Between rising prices, shrinkflation, and declining quality, access to adequate food is becoming increasingly challenging for a great many people, and I expect it to get worse.
Clay, I think they’re just being useful idiots. Illegal immigrants are essential for boosting corporate profits, as they make up a huge pool of indentured laborers who can be paid substandard wages, made to work in unsafe conditions, and deported instantly if they don’t do as they’re told. That’s why the billionaires who fund the left are so insistent on keeping lots of illegal immigrants on hand.
Guillam, hmm! I’ll certainly give it a look when circumstances permit. I read quite a bit of Crumb back in the day, all the way back to the days of this gentleman…
Bacon, please accept my condolences! That’s always difficult. He’ll be disoriented and shocked when he wakes up on the inner planes, but there are always entities present to help newly arrived souls through that process. Since he’s not facing the sort of unfair judgment mainstream Christianity insists on — “You didn’t have the right opinions about theology? It’s eternal torment for you, sucker!” — my guess is that he’ll get used to it fairly readily, and can then get to work going through his memories and preparing for his next life.
PedroH, oh, sure, once things stabilize it’ll be fine, and in fact there will be major advantages — for example, the concept of paying rent for a place to live will go away for centuries, since there will be far more real estate than people to inhabit it. The problem is that our entire economic system is based on the idea of making a profit, and in a society in population contraction, all businesses and investments lose money on average. That means the entire economic system will come slowly, messily, and permanently apart, and all those people who think they can hang onto their wealth will have a whole series of painful awakenings.
The black friday spam I’ve received this year seems to be offering rather lacklustre discounts; mainly I find it useful for removing myself from their mailing lists and reminding me to reread ‘The Gospel of Consumption’:
***
Since much of what industry produced was no longer aimed at satisfying human physical needs, a four-hour workday, he claimed, was necessary to prevent society from becoming disastrously materialistic. “By not shortening the working day when all the wood is in,” he suggested, the profit motive becomes “both the creator and satisfier of spiritual needs.” For when the profit motive can turn nowhere else, “it wraps our soap in pretty boxes and tries to convince us that that is solace to our souls.”
https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-gospel-of-consumption/
Earthworm, depends on the level of consciousness of the soul in question. The vast majority of people lapse into a state resembling dreamless sleep as soon as the brain starts shutting down, and don’t awaken from it until after the Second Death.
Where do Near Death Experiences fall into this?
This is a comment on the kind of people who are enthralled by AI; I would call them meat robots. One works at my job and before AI even launched she spoke “long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything”. I had the misfortune of being “trained” by her and it was a very traumatic experience. She never even draws breath, and is output only. She wrote a manual over a 100 pages long (it should have been no more than 10) and now asked AI to improve it.
At a meeting she went on a rant about her exciting adventures with AI and we just let her rant away and then swiftly ended the meeting. They act like junkies waiting to score or religious fundamentalists who just found God.
Incidentally, she developed cancer soon after being jabbed and spent 9 months on full pay dealing with it. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Not sure what the question is but the answer isn’t AI.
@the_arcane_archivist
Fascinating stuff! Having it laid out clearly like this gives lots of food for thought. I’ve just come across this concept of model collapse so I don’t have much to add other than thank you for your hard work.
@JMG re: “…taught that our ancestors sat twiddling their thumbs until 5,000 years ago…..”
I have access to my son-on-law’s science magazines, and have been following paleontology with great interest since becoming aware of these issues. These days it’s more like “Hey! These people had a complex civilization a lot earlier than we thought!” (or “…a more complex astronomy/whatever)”) “WOW!
Likewise with “these pre-humans must have had boats or rafts to have spread to these islands the way they did.” WOW! Or evidence of tool use among “lower animals” or pre-human fires and cooking. They’re int in denial, they’re impressed!
Now, I also note my son-on-law, who used to take everything including “Science Focus magazine” (don’t waste your time unless you’re looking for horrible examples) but has now cut back to a handful, inclufding Scientific American.
@PedroH
Another reason that a declining economy is a big problem for business is credit, banking and money. In our economy money is created with credit ( loans). For that loan to be paid back with interest there on average must be economic growth to generate the extra money to be used to pay back the loan with interest.
If the population and the economy is shrinking than the extra funds needed to pay interest will not exist, and in addition the money needed to pay the entire principal will not exist because the entire pool of money has contracted along with a reduction in the economy.
Once this happens our system of credit money based on fractional reserve lending will collapse. This will cause us to return to a subsistence type economy where people and business’s will have to create their own capital through sweat equity rather than borrowing it. We will have to return to farming with horses as they can be bred and raised rather than purchased with a loan, and we will have to build houses with our own hands as mortgages will cease to exist. This is inevitable and desirable in the long run, but it will be very very hard and disruptive on the way down .
@Dylan, @JMG;
These days I get my short-form original fiction fix through Tumblr. If an author has produced a lot of stories that I enjoy and given them away for free on Tumblr and they also have a Patreon or Ko-fi or something of the sort with subscribers-only or subscribers-see-it-early content, I will subscribe. Right now I am subscribed to two: Derin Edala on Ko-fi and Catelyn Winona on Patreon. I have also sent money to writers who don’t sell any of their content. When Dyce asked for money to have her short stories (which she had been given away for years) professionally edited preparatory to publishing in book form, her fans blew past her goal in a couple of days; her Ko-fi total these days is something over 600% of her goal.
Previous generations, subscribing to magazines that specialized in short stories, trusted editors to select their reading matter. Today’s short story fans buy directly from the authors after confirming that the author’s work matches their taste through copious free samples.
@70 George
That makes sense, since the racist comments that proliferated on Youtube this year were mostly repeating the same few jokes, and I was wondering how anyone could believe that all black Americans are SNAP recipients and vice versa. (I had imagined they were edgelord teenagers with no life experience.)
JMG Happy Thanksgiving my man.
@Clay Dennis,
Some of the illegal immigrants have been in the USA for decades by this point. They have jobs, have married US citizens, have kids that are US citizens, have friends that are US citizens, are attending the local church or other community group. A lot of their friends may not realize they’re in the US illegally. When people like that get deported, it rips holes in that family and the community they’re deeply involved with. People see this and get upset.
Not saying that coming to another country illegally is okay, or that they shouldn’t be deported. Just that if you don’t enforce the law for years, then when you finally start enforcing that law there’s a lot of collateral damage to people who aren’t illegal immigrants.
JMG,
You don’t have to wonder, LLMs are definitely being trained using your material. OpenAI has tried to cover their butts with their latest release, GPT 5.1, which will refuse to write essays in your voice, but it will still write essays on topics you’re well known for.
However, if you flip the setting to one of their legacy models, like GPT 4o, it will happily produce an essay in your voice and touch on a variety of topics that you’ve written about. It will even give it a title and a byline with your name.
Hi Everyone,
Someone asked if human bones were used to make fertilizer for agriculture in years gone by. My History Prof read us a bill of lading from the Port of Bristol. A ship was bringing in a load of human bones from the battlefields after the Crimean War. That is not so long ago and they were intended as fertilizer.
To JMG,
You did a lovely article once on one of your blogs that is no longer functioning. It was how to begin writing a story. You had lists of characters I think and destinations, and adjectives. A person was to randomly select from the lists and write a story. I found that wonderfully helpful and, indeed, wrote it down but do you think I can find it anywhere? Could you help me out here with a thumbnail sketch of the process?
Maxine
@Ethan L,
food price inflation is very much an issue here in Canada as well, and I understand it is a serious issue worldwide starting in about 2020 and never entirely abating since.
The combination of food price inflation with the current US government and Congress’s apparent willingness to use suspending SNAP as leverage, plus the recent large-scale firings of US government workers does make me worry for the food security of a lot of people in the USA.
Commentariat, your thoughts please about the recent documentary The Age of Disclosure on the matter of UFOs, which have been known about and kept secret by governments for many years. I am suffering from ontological shock. Anyone else? What is next?!
I have a sneaking suspicion that the endgame in Europe is for Germany to have to fight Russia as payback for the Holocaust.
Hello All, For Roy #38 and JMG, I have seen this type of questions here before and, your answer JMG is always about the same thankyou for that. But my thought is this: Is it possible to say just how slow the decline and unravelling of the current financial token system will take? As you say, it will not be one sudden collapse and it is all gone. It will be in fits, starts and stops, with more hand waving and make-believe as it happens and unravels over the next century or more, maybe.
My point is that I am now moving into a retirement phase of my life, more or less the same age as JMG, and have all kinds of retirement $$ here and there ‘for my future’ (or my children). I am not in any panic to ‘invest it’ more wisely or future proof it, cause who knows when the s**t will really hit the f*n. I am invested in learning farming, gardening, and making my own beer and medicines, etc. This has given my life a whole new meaning. But ultimately, if my retirement funds evaporate in a world / market that hits the wall, then so does all / most of the rest of the token system of economics.
There is no good, reasonable advice to give to the question of where to invest, other than that which has already been discussed and so carefully danced with by our esteemed host. thank you peace out
Clay Dennis @ 106, about “street level progressives”. I doubt any such exist, but for the sake of discussion I will suppose there are some.
I can think of two reasons why these folks have chosen illegal migration as the hill to die on. One is quite simply self-interest. “Immigration rights” is sine qua non (without which nothing) for receiving foundation funding. Organizations which have nothing to do with immigration policy, most famously the Sierra Club, have been subjected to demands from donors that they MUST make statements in support of such “rights”. Often the demands include positions, perches, for some favored client of the donor. Never mind that the favored one is quite often of upper class, wealthy background, or that the organization has people who have been loyally working in the trenches for decades. There are a handful, IDK for sure how many, of wealthy donors who are simply intransigent on the subject. This attitude is sometimes backed up with a story of my grandparent/aunt/cousin had to flee Europe in the 1930s or 40s (or sometimes it is Communism in the 50s). Try to point out that that was a half century or more ago and you are a hateful bigot.
Then, there is also a pernicious ideology, multiculturalism. A chief tenant of that ideology is that people from diverse national origins living all in the same neighborhood is A Good Thing. The ideologues take no notice of phenomena like ethnic criminal gangs, ethnic machine politics, etc., nor of the simple fact that many new citizens want the suburban, materialistic life they have seen on TV and despise frugal and austere working class intellectuals. Multiculturalism is a highly seductive ideology which flatters its adherents, many of whom are wannabe intellectuals and ambitious layabouts, that they are part of a historically important elite of the elites. Many can’t emotionally afford to give up that illusion. Yet another ideology which lets mediocrities believe they are important, while not requiring or encouraging them to do the work that might build better character.
Hey JMG
For my first post here, I thought I would share an interesting application of ternary thinking being applied to games, such as 3-sided football.
There was an Italian man called Edward De Bono who is famous for his many books on ways to improve one’s thinking so it is better categorised and creative, his most famous book being “six thinking hats”. He apparently challenged himself to create the simplest possible abstract strategy game that was still interesting and complex enough to require skill to win it, and thus created two games, the more well-known “L Game” and lesser-known “3 Spot”.
Both these games overcome the limitations of having a small board and number of pieces (4×4 board with 4 pieces, and 3×3 board with 3 pieces) by having neutral pieces that either player can move. This takes the game play out of the usual binary pattern and into a more complex ternary one.
I think that what Bono has done could be used as a guide towards creating other physically simple yet strategically complicated board games. I recently created my own “L game” board out of plywood, and construction pine I got from off-cuts left by a construction site. It turned out very well. In the future I may write an essay on Bono’s games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_game
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/78051/a-neat-very-simple-game
JMG, thanks for the refreshing icy splash in the face. I probably won’t stop writing short stories, but unless I manage to invent a new way of telling, sharing, or publishing them, I won’t count on those as stepping stones to a writing career.
Thanks too for your alternative suggestion. I do believe that the fourth magical maxim applies to the writing process, and not talking about what I’m currently working on has been a successful strategy for me so far. So I’ll leave it at that, and wish you and your writing all good success.
Stephen P # 74:
A very interesting fact. So when our world unending concrete hunger will deplete quality inland sands, we will have shorter life buildings and structures thanks to those corrosive beach sands.
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Ethan L. # 105:
It happens the same inflationary trend here in Spain. Food gets more and more expensive, but usual explanations (?) point this or that particular problem (for example animal welfare laws for eggs and some meats) or the general scapegoat called “speculation”. A more general view is opportunely out of the media, politicians and economists Spectacle…cough cough speech.
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Guilliam # 107:
I’m glad R. Crumb had been so brave to point the COVID Spectacle in his last work. Thank you for your advice.
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JMG # 111:
I could add to your point about social media and politics that both (social media addicted citizens and politicians) share the same tendence to be in their own ideological echo chamber. So they aren’t exposed quietly to another political views for a civilised debate, but they fight with the other echo chambers online and in politics Spectacle, like hated enemies. Bad times for democracy IMHO.
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Maxine R.:
Thanks, you’ve told me a real and true historical event about human bones business. Well, the Crimean War happened during the XIXth century, when Industrial Revolution had started yet some time ago…but I guess phosphate deposits weren’t mined yet by Europeans. A sad but useful end for the Unknown Soldier bones…
Chuaquin @ 93 If the Democratic Party returns to power, the leadership won’t be the same Eurocentric oldsters who have been in power for far too long. One of the more interesting aspects of the recent off off year elections is that the Democratic victors had little to say about affairs outside their own localities, let alone other countries. One Mary Sheffield, mayor elect of Detroit, is perhaps the most impressive of the newly elected. She was at pains to emphasize her Detroit roots during her acceptance speech. When a national media corporate spokesgoober (You did say I could use that, JMG.) asked her what would you tell other Democrats, she declined to take the bait, saying she was laser focused on Detroit and what needed to be done there.
Hi John Michael,
No worries at all, I was merely curious as to whether you’d heard anything along those lines. You have a knack for gathering disparate information and forming a coherent world view. For your information, what I’m observing is a 360% increase in traffic combined with a significant decline in the average time spent on the site. Deduction suggests that this would be due to you-know-what consuming the words. Like a massive asset stripping exercise, but in the digital realms. 🙂
I’d be genuinely surprised if software generated content didn’t have some sort of marker, tag, or whatever so that the newer software can avoid sucking in that content during the training phase. After all, my understanding is that if they suck in as low as 1% arty-fish-al content, the results will be useless. Equally likely is that the tech-bros in the rush to get these programs to market, stuffed this one up.
And here’s the thing, if there is a marker, tag, or whatever, declaring the content was derived from arty-fish-al sources, then it won’t be long at all before some cheeky scamp releases software to make the identification publicly known.
Still, given Universities and goobermints are having real world troubles with this tech, I’d have to suggest that the tech-bros, stuffed this aspect of it up.
To my way of thinking, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to have extraordinarily expensive server installations producing content which peoples brains can do at a much lower price point. Don’t look at me, this whole idea ain’t mine! 🙂 Many years ago I had a very well paid and senior person thinking that it was OK to tell me to my face how great a thing it would be for such software to replace the low level services I provided. The things you hear, man.
PS: Has that Mr Crumb image you linked to influenced your own style?
Cheers
Chris
Happy Thanksgiving to JMG and all my learned friends here under his tutelage!
Warm regards always
Yogaandthetarot
I’m fighting a sudden mold infestation at the moment and according to my divinations it’s related to a hostile intelligence that’s been here since we moved in seven years ago. Originally when moving in we cleaned the place from top to bottom, coated the floors, painted, and did all the usual banishings and floor washing. That seemed to get rid of it but now it’s back. Im getting the feeling like I am supposed to “clean” this space along with my own self purification which is why I’m stuck on the bardic grade. The physical removal is painful and exhausting but we are getting closer to the goal, so now I’m wondering if there is some way to banish the intelligence more permanently and how would one know if they are qualified to do it. Thanks.
Dear John and Commentariat:
Recently I read the story of Dorothy Eady, who claimed to have discovered that in a past life, she was an Egyptian woman named Bentreshyt llwho lived during the reign of Seti I. Amazing story.
Wondering what everyone thinks of Dorothy Eady and any other evidences of reincarnation.
Earthworm, ha! That’s very nicely put. Thank you.
DS, if someone who isn’t a saint goes through the process consciously, they’re going to be returning to their body pretty promptly — that’s a good sign that the connection with the body hasn’t been cut. Their state is much the same as that of someone who’s experiencing astral projection.
Bridge, I’ve met such people. Yeah, “meat robot” is uncomfortably accurate.
Patricia M, that’s good to hear. I wonder when they’ll start paying attention to the evidence of urban societies in the late Ice Age…
Trusty, thank you.
Dennis, duly noted.
Maxine, I don’t recall ever writing something like that, though it may be that my memory is skipping a beat or something. Can anyone else point to the essay in question?
Larkrise, such claims have been being made since the early 1950s. Oddly enough, they all rely on information released by the same military and government agencies that the promoters of these ideas blame for the coverup. Let’s just say I have my doubts; it sounds like a psyop to me.
Martin, I thought they did that already, with predictable results:
Hankshaw, that’s pretty much my view. I have a fairly modest nest egg, but then my writing income is fairly substantial these days, and I don’t plan on retiring until they slide the keyboard out from underneath my cold stiff fingers. I could quite easily live another 25 years or more, and I know it’s going to take some nimble maneuvering to keep myself fed, housed, etc. in reasonable comfort during that time. All you can do is adapt, and have eggs in many different baskets!
J.L.Mc12, interesting. Thanks for this!
Dylan, and likewise!
Chuaquin, the echo chamber effect is exactly where the danger comes in — that’s the exact equivalent of having a LLM train on its own output, and model collapse follows promptly.
Chris, interesting. My traffic and views-per-person have remained pretty steady for the last five years, so I may be getting less of that. As for Mr. Natural, nah, my personal style was influenced years before I encountered him, by a guy named Gandalf. Seriously, I decided at the age of ten that that’s what I wanted to be (and look like) when I grew up.
KVD, that’s Druid Grade work. Another reason to proceed with the training!
About the discussion of the Strømme paper linked by dobbs at #33 and discussed by Robert Mathiesen – I am sorry to say that I can’t share your enthusiasm. From my perspective, this is a total nothingburger and although the journal is rather lowly rated, I still wonder how she managed to get this published at all.
Without getting lost in the details of the paper – just for starters, she doesn’t provide us with any details of what the formless potential or the structured states might look like. Or how the proposed “thought operator” may create time. She sure uses (or one should say mentions) the d’Alambert- (or “box”-) operator at some point when she talks about the emergence of time and space – but where does it come from in the first place? If “T” and the formless potential give rise to time, they surely must also create operators like the time derivative d/dt which is part of the box-operator. One could suppose she tries to say something like “Psi_0 is Annwn. T is Awen” with her paper. From my perspective, this is a fundamental flaw. The mathematics she alludes to (although there is no real math or quantum mechanics worth mentioning in this paper) – and by mathematics I mean everything, the numbers, the operators, everything – are created things. They can never grasp that which they are made of (or from). That doesn’t mean that quantum mechanics (or physics in general) aren’t a very good source of analogies or metaphors that can be used for exploration and meditation. A bit upstream on this open post, I have done the same, and not for the first time. It’s no wonder that this is possible if (big if) the “stuff” that we are made of is the same stuff that the natural laws are made of. But nobody has ever seen a natural law. Consider a small volume in front of you. At the moment, it contains air and all the natural laws governing air are there. Then you move your finger through that volume and everything goes undisturbed. The solar system moves through space and at some point the small volume that once contained air and then your finger is in the center of the sun. Implicitly, every cubic inch contains every natural law. Or does everything travel with it’s own natural laws from cubic inch to cubic inch? Be it, as it may, the formulae which we write around this are certainly not the natural laws.
And about the proposed experimental tests – there can be no experimental tests because there is no theory that could be tested. All she does is saying “consciousness is fundamental therefore I expect a lot of funny effects to happen” with some quantum mechanical parsley sprinkled on top. Besides – for most if not all the proposed effects we already have collected experimental evidence for some time now.
Greetings,
Nachtgurke
@Mary Bennet ,
I appreciate your insight about how in many organizations the directive to stand against any kind of deportations is baked in to the power structure of the organization.
But I don’t quite buy that Multiculturalism is any kind of a reason to be against deportations. It is a reason to support looser immigration policy where larger quantities of culturally diverse folks can be admitted legally, but it doesn’t seem to be a good reason to support the undocumented. I am all in favor of Multiculturalism ( my genetic granddaughter is of Northern European, Japanese, Korean, African American and Hispanic heritage). I also live in an incredibly diverse part of town where I have neighbors from India, Japan, Korea, China, Africa and the Middle East who are here legally.
The anti-Ice crowd seems to forget that we have legal immigration where people follow the rules. If they want more immigrants ,then pass laws to up immigration quotas.
I think JMG is right, the elites want Illegal immigrants because they can be underpaid and exploited more easily and the sanctuary cities crowd are just their useful idiots.
Maxine Rogers, JMG
What you’re looking for is probably “Writing Right Out There In Public: First Steps” on the Ecosophia Dreamwidth
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/16006.html
Thanks to your recent project of exploring the Situationists, who I had never heard about, I read Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”. And pondered upon his ideas.
A couple of weeks back, I was riding across a field when I suddenly grasped in a deeply visceral way a major point of his thesis. The fact that, like people in simple societies who live close to the Earth, I was not watching someone else ride a horse on TV, I was actually feeling the wind and sun in my face, the motion under my butt, the stretching and contracting of my muscles, smelling the loam, hearing the rustling of the leaves in the trees. I was there, not somewhere else.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors over many years. My intellectual moment came decades ago when I asked myself why I was sitting down watching other people pretend to have adventures instead of going out and having them myself. Which got me into a lot of physically demanding activities (and occasional visits to the emergency room).
But what happened on the ridge was something more than mere intellectual reasoning, it was a much deeper grasp of the quidditas of experience versus spectacle, doing versus merely watching, sensation versus simulation, of I suppose living versus thinking about living.
So thanks for that.
Hi JMG,
Happy Thanksgiving to you and all your readers! I’m very thankful for you being here. Congratulations on the new edition of your translation of Academie de l’Espee!
JMG,
There has a fair bit of discussion about model collapse in both LLM’s and other aspects of society. In connection with your posts about Situationism I’ve been thinking about the recent iterations of Marxism, especially the so-called cultural Marxism, or as I call it neo-Marxism, that centers its injustice claims on things other than class structure. It seems that cultural Marxism could be a fine example of model collapse, since it seems really incoherent to me.
As you pointed out, cultural Marxism is doing a fine job of supporting the status quo in the short run by not jabbering on about unpleasant class issues. However, I wonder if the elites might be playing with fire here, since a lot of the more extreme beta-Marxists seem to be harboring a growing desire to metaphorize into the more virulent alpha variety just like those critters in the movie Gremlins.
Chuaquin@131
That is already happening in the beachside village where I live in Mexico. Many houses are having to be repaired or are at risk from the use of beach sand for construction, though they are being repaired with beach sand. Sea lo que sea.
I believe this was also a reason, if not the chief reason behind the collapse of a large building in Miami a couple of years ago.
On the subject of the use of human bones for fertilizer: I have heard that one of the reasons for the fertility of the land in NE France is because of all the wars that have been fought there over the centuries and the number of mass Graves and unburied bodies,both human and animal. Probably apocryphal, but just sayin
Stephen
@Nachtgurke (#138):
Actually, her hypothesis seems to me to be even harder to confirm than you said. If Strømme is right that universal consciousness underlies the world which science studies, then might not that same consciousness deliberately choose to subvert each and every empirical test by which we humans might try to confirm its existence, denying us any sort of reproducible results?
To be honest, it is precisely that possibility–the possibility that her hypothesized universal consciousness might choose to impose a hard and unbreakable limit to human knowledge–which most appealed to me as I read her paper.
I wanted to share this in the hope that one or more of you might find it useful. I certainly do think it is appropriate to John’s teachings:
https://www.jackhopkinsnow.com/p/the-survivor-blueprint-20-laws-for
THE SURVIVOR BLUEPRINT: 20 Laws for Staying Unbreakable in an Unraveling America
LAW 1: ACCEPT REALITY FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE
LAW 2: CUT THE NOISE AND GUARD YOUR MIND
LAW 3: OWN A PURPOSE BIGGER THAN PAIN
LAW 4: SHRINK THE TIMELINE TO TODAY
LAW 5: CONTROL THE ONLY TERRITORY YOU TRULY OWN: YOUR RESPONSE
LAW 6: KEEP RITUALS WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE IS RANDOM
ETC.
Anon, good heavens. I’d forgotten about that completely. Thank you.
Renaissance, excellent! That’s an important realization, and one I wish more people could have.
Inna, thank you.
John, that’s an intriguing thought. If our current beta-neo-Marxists do the gremlinization thing, it’ll be interesting to see how fast the corporate system turns on the whole wokey-pokey dance.
Gnat, thanks for this!
Hello all, and I hope everyone in the US had a great Thanksgiving! I know the holiday, to many, is considered a celebration of colonialism, but in truth the period of giving thanks during the fall harvest season has a long history vastly preceeding any puritan landings and occurring across many cultures.
And, to riff on that subject, I would like to put out an idea that has occured to me recently. I was raised catholic and was constantly told how important it was to thank God for all my blessings. Later in life, I drifted away from christianity and found myself in a pagan practice. I found myself often making sacrifice to the gods and in exchange asking for various favors and fortunes, some of which I woukd receive but most of which would never come.
Later in life, as I found myself in a dark place where I lost everything, I was in a discussion with someone over the futility of prayer, how almost no one gets what they ask for from god or the gods. The man replied, “You ever think that’s because all anyone does when they talk to god is ask for stuff? How would you feel about a friend who only ever called you up when they needed something from you? You tried thanking god for what you do have?”
It made me completely rethink my relationship with the gods. It made me refocus on expressing gratitude to each in turn for their blessings and gifts, asking for those blessings to continue, and for guidance on how I could be a good steward of the things I had been given.
I’ve seen my fortunes in life improve, as though the gods appreciate talking to someone who isn’t a constant mooch and bum. But more than that, it’s changed my whole outlook in life. It made me realize that modern western society is fundamnetally based on discontent – a constant feeling like your life isn’t good enough, it could be better, improved, evloved. It’s more than simple desire, though it certainly uses that. It’s the fear of missing out, the need to keep with the joneses, the need to jump on the latest bandwagon and the fear that you’re somehow lame if you aren’t embracing the latest technology more intently than everyone else. That entire mindset is designed to make people incurably miserable. I have found gratitude, thankfulness, and constantly examining my life for things to be grateful for and actively expressing this to the gods to be am excellent antidote for the resless ennui of the modern spell of discontent.
So I wish everyone a hapoy Thanksgiving, and hope all of you find things to be grateful for in your lives and can be filled with joy at all that you have. No matter how dark it seems, if nothing else we can all be grateful we’re still on this side of the dirt! And most of us have a bit more than our bodies and some dirt to be thankful for, so… be well, everyone!
There’s a meme floating out there for a few years now on the internet that has a speaker and a visibly non-white crowd, and the speaker asks “who is a white nationalist?” and everybody in the crowd raises their hand, and then the speaker asks “who is actually white?” and nobody in the crowd raises their hand.
Hey JMG
Your assertion that there’s not much of a market for short stories is counterintuitive to me, since I’d expect that due to much much people work, and how short people’s attention spans are today, that the opposite would have been the case.
Do you have any speculations as to why the demand for new short stories is so low, especially since the demand for new novels still exists?
Happy Thanksgiving to all
Thank you to everyone who offered encouragement.
Rita @ #75: Yeah, the novels that come out of some mysterious hole in the psyche somewhere sure are hard to find the right niche for, huh?! I wish you the best of luck as well. I’m guessing that if there’s a place for mine, it will be somewhere in the erotic genre. As of right now I’m feeling that I will finish the draft, get it edited enough to submit to a few publishers (mostly for the experience), most likely not get any bites, then self-publish. It’s got a good format to put on Patreon, each chapter being its own “unit” of sorts that connects to the whole. I’ve wondered if I should go the extra mile, hire an artist and make it a graphic novel? The original idea and “mood” of the story was referencing Japanese erotic ‘doujinshi’, so it’s almost a comic draft already. In any case… lots of options 🙂
It’s still good to have accountability partners, so perhaps I will drop back into the Monthly Posts with a word count/completion percentage update? As of right now I have exactly 106,383 words and 9 out of 26 planned chapters finished. Perhaps I can get that up to a solid 13/26 by the next post. I’ll pencil that in as a goal!
Quin—requests for prayer list
Bob Ralston (aka Rasty Bob) — long struggle with heart problems and Leslie Fish. They are both in hospice care in their home in Buckeye, AZ. Have been told that Leslie is in a great deal of pain from foot ulcers and is fairly incoherent.
Thanks
Rita
@Beardtree #42, @JMG #68, @scotlyn: I would argue that in the New Testament, the verb “pisteuo” is always better translated as “to trust, to give credence to”, and the noun “pistis” always better as “trust”. If anybody is interested enough, you can go through the examples from Thayer’s Greek Lexicon on the entry for pisteuo and try it out.
The nearest I can find to “assent” is Roman 10:9: “If you profess Jesus as Lord with your mouth and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”. Still, I think this is existential, not theoretical assent. I think it is connected to the first half of the sentence: professing Jesus as Lord could be dangerous, even life-threatening.
I do agree that in later Christian history, especially after the development of the creeds and then the catechisms, “assent to a collection of unprovable theoretical statements about … deity” came into play, and of course that had to with the power that Christian authorities exercised over the whole population, when a confession of Christian dogmas was not dangerous, but refusal to say that confession might well be.
Ethnic nationalism, like Marxism, is ruled by Neptune, the planet of mass consciousness, mass movements, and mass liberation.
There’s probably a lot of discussion to be had linking together cognitive collapse, these Neptunian mass ideologies like Marxism, wokeness, and ethnic nationalism, and the ease of people from the rest of the world to mass generate slop on the internet that confirm the biases of the believers of these ideologies.
Anonymous (no. 15) “Not just Christians. Jews and Muslims are also convinced they have the absolute truth and nonbelievers are going to eternal hell.”
I have never heard of Jews believing in an eternal hell, let alone thinking that all non-Jews will go there. Many Christians feel similarly, while others feel the matter is mysterious. Catholic theology, for example, does NOT teach that non-Catholics or non-Christians are automatically damned, although some people report being taught this in Catholic school. Even most Baptists! accept that exceptions are made for nonbelievers whose lack of belief is no fault of their own (babies, people who lived before Christ, primitive tribespeople, etc.). Of course, there is more reluctance to give a pass to (say) a Hindu who knows perfectly well what Christianity is, and yet rejects it. I am less familiar with the range of belief among Muslims, but my impression is that Judaism and Christianity are regarded positively, given their founding by prophets, and religious identity is mostly taken for granted as something that can’t easily be changed.
You know who has great hells? The Buddhists. Some temples even put up little diioramas showing, for example, people being boiled alive or sawed in half–not for being non-Buddhists, but for particular sins. Of course these aren’t *eternal* hells.
This is important for those who accept Pascal’s Wager. After all, you want to pick (a) the most intolerant religion with (b) the best heaven and the worst hell, in order to maximize the expected value of your bet. (Unfortunately, prior probability is hard to establish!)
Tim PW (no. 64) “What really caught my attention is that he says human systems (i.e. culture) degrade and fail when they become too self-referential (less and less non-human inputs)….”
It occurs to me that occult symbolism (e.g. alchemical illustrations) could be interpreted as a degradation of real-world images,
Some of the links you guys have been posting led me to an esoteric school called the Servants of the Light. Anybody heard of it? (If I apply , then regardless of whether they accept me or not, I’ll be SOL either way!)
Korea, Japan, and Taiwan all have similar demographics, in that they are among the most rapidly-aging countries in the world. China is apparently following the same trends, but a decade or so behind them.
Last week, the new prime minister of Japan let slip that her country would intervene in any Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China responded with an undiplomatic comment (something about beheading her), and now Trump is doing his peacemaking thing. Noise aside, I wonder whether China will be in a position to invade Taiwan before it (China) declines too far. (And yet Russia, despite its problems, managed to invade Ukraine.) Besides the semiconductor issue (Taiwan apparently manufactures about 70 % of them), there are the sea lanes to consider–if China takes Taiwan, it will be able to cut off Japan and Korea from Middle Eastern oil, and the USA will lose all influence over the western Pacific. On the other hand, a war would interfere with trans-Pacific trade, disrupting both the US and Chinese economies–but if these economies are already failing, then maybe a war would be politically expedient. I’m sure a lot will depend on unpredictable future political calculations, like whether Xi Jinping dies, the USA has another disputed election, etc.
As I try to imagine the future East Asia of say, a century hence, I see a much-depopulated Japan and Taiwan, Beijing lost to the desert, and Shanghai to the rising seas. The center of civilization in that part of the world would shift to a swathe of south Chinese and mainland Southeast Asian territories, with maybe a pocket around Baikal. That sound reasonable? How foggy is my crystal ball?
@John of Red Hook
If I remember correctly there were some soft coup in Russia before the 1917 revolution. When economic and social environments fail. It gets ugly in history even with religious pious groups so you can bet something ugly will raise its head, Marxism in Russia was supported from abroad, I doubt that it will be supported in US, China is not interested in supporting it because it might destabilise itself by that, because they went past Alpha-Marxism themselves into their own model, and other country who, North Korea?
@Stephen Pearson in that case is more than bones isn’t it, flesh and blood give more than bones/total. So is literally true that the earth is fertilized by the blood of its warriors, hence probably sacred from a magical point of view.
Well, now that you mention it, there *are* some uncanny parallels between the situation in “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” and the current Venezuela/Guyana situation.
Including the recent discovery of a huge offshore oil field.
Jeff Childers digs the story out of Big Name Media’s memory hole here (scroll down to the last section of the post):
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/peace-panic-tuesday-november-25-2025
Hello JMG and commentators,
I know your opinion on hoarding gold. But wouldn’t it make sense to acquire a certain amount of gold, which you could use as a ticket to a new life? That way, if there is a currency collapse, you could at least pay for the crossing to another continent and keep your head above water there in the early days before you start earning money with your skills.
I would be interested to hear your opinions, as I am currently considering investing at least a small portion of our assets in gold. I live in Central Europe and do not believe that I will retire here.
Thanks so much for pointing me to that article. I thought it was on The Well Of Galabes.
Maxine
> Between rising prices, shrinkflation, and declining quality, access to adequate food is becoming increasingly challenging for a great many people, and I expect it to get worse.
I am now on my soapbox📦:
I would like to specify something. As I see it, “access to adequate ‘food‘ becoming challenging” applies specifically to ‘processed food.’ For those willing to buy a cookbook or two, particularly…
ISBN 9781936493524
America’s Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook
by America’s Test Kitchen
Used–Very Good, $25-$30
…plus learning to cook from scratch (‘raw’ ingredients), the accessing of food is NOT a problem. The base problem is no-one knows how to “cook from scratch” anymore. In the USA (Canada?), the skill of cooking with raw foods was lost in the 1970s. Paying for ready-made ‘processed’ food is hugely expensive.
When kids are hungry, their parent(s) do rash things like, well, hmm, buy a whole chicken, and learn a way to prepare and roast the chicken. To liven things up for next time, learn a second way to roast a chicken. Learn one way to take a hunk of tough-to-chew yet cheap, tasty, and high-quality beef, and make it so each bite melts in one’s mouth. Learn to bake one’s own bread. Raw foods are way healthier too.
Do not North Americans have a minimum kitchen? That is, electricity, indoor sink (hot and cold water), refrigerator, cooktop, traditional oven, microwave oven, pots and pans, bakeware, plates, saucers, cups, glasses, flatware, counter-space, cupboards? If not, the problem is more than food itself—it is lack of a kitchen and/or the stocking of a working kitchen. Last I heard, the vast majority of Americans have a kitchen and all that goes with it—am I missing something here?
(I can’t speak for people living outside the USA or Canada.)
It is strange: Learning how to cook from scratch, one can cut one’s food bill in half, no, more than that. Processed-food costing $10 turns into from-scratch-food $3. Buy a whole chicken; buy fresh or canned potatoes; ditto vegetables. Learn to mash potatoes; bake potatoes. Literally, feed a family on pennies.
You who are reading this aren’t old enough to remember the 1950s: prior to ~1965, cooking from scratch was a way of life, as it has been worldwide. The 1960s was the decade that food companies began catering to women who wanted (not needed) fast food, like Hamburgler Helper.
The current food-processing industry does not want the public discovering that there is parallel cooking universe, so to speak, using raw ingredients.
Happy cookin’.
💨🥘🥔🫛🥦🥕🧅Northwind Grandma💨
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
Hi JMG and commentators,
I was wondering if anyone knows anything about China with regard to its internal political situation. I had always expected them, when they hit a major market downturn, to do a sort of Marxist coded New Deal to get the domestic consumer economy going. Some soft socialism to rally support from the working class. But to the best of my knowledge they have not attempted anything like that, and instead the Communist Party seems to be following the classic austerity for the working class playbook of western countries.
It seems to me that even a small pivot to some sort of socialist rhetoric and programs would win support at home and would have the added benefit of galvanizing the drifting beta Marxists in western countries. Something in a manner similar to what the Soviets tried back in the day with the Comintern. I feel like that could give Beijing some big leverage in trade and diplomatic negotiations.
My question is, why haven’t they done anything like this? Is it a failure of imagination, just the usual oligarchic resistance to economic redistribution or some combination thereof?
Cheers,
JZ
“He’ll be disoriented and shocked when he wakes up on the inner planes, but there are always entities present to help newly arrived souls through that process.”
Thank you. Some years ago I asked you about an elderly friend who had died recently and, for a couple of days after his death, I had the surreal experience of hearing him laughing; surprised, delighted laughter such as I’d never heard from him in life. It didn’t last long and was then gone. With my dad a similar thing happened but it wasn’t laughter, more a feeling of him being completely astonished and a sense that he was somewhere very bright. I’m glad to think he’ll be guided through it all, it have been quite the awakening.
Clay Dennis #117
> we will have to build houses with our own hands as mortgages will cease to exist
In the 1950s, my grandfather Isaiah (1892-1960s) and his older brother Henry built their own two-bedroom houses, side by side, when they were over 50. They came from a family of farmers/canallers (whereabouts Lake Champlain)—independent folk. Their eldest brother George had bequeathed them enough money to buy modest land and modest materials, but not enough for labor. Isaiah was an electrician; Henry was a plumber. What they didn’t know how to do, they asked advice from family and neighbors, and did the work themselves.
It once was. So it will be again.
💨🏠🔌🚰🪛🔩Northwind Grandma💨
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
70-something
Re Scotlyn: Actual deities, actual people, actual actions, actual consequences rarely find much room for exploration within any discourse occurring within this “idea-shape”.
For many people it’s spectacle all the way down, isn’t it?
We’ve had our consciousness changed according to someone else’s will for so long, that most people don’t realize that’s actually quite strange..
–bk
Mary Bennet # 132:
I didn’t know “new Democrats” are less Euro-centrics than old ones. However, this fact you’ve written is out of the EU elite radar, IMHO. At least, in their opinion articles in newspapers here, propagandists/journalists don’t hide their hurry to see the end of Trump era and the return of the usual “atlantism” and globalism, so EU/NATO can win next year (or century…cough) the war with Russia (in which Ukraine is only a western proxy). This wrong idea makes me think about the different thoughts speeds in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean…
——————————————
JMG # 137:
You’re right, echo chamber effect is very dangerous for human minds. Luckily (at least in the present) echo chamber isn’t IMO widespread between the whole population, only across the politicians here (more and more detached from citizens concerns) and the usual social media addicts (who think they’re well informed and have the Truth always). At street level I feel most people isn’t under this or that echo chamber dictatorship, except the most fanatized political “hooligans”. In the future, we’ll see.
—————————————-
Stephen P. # 144:
Using sand beach to make concrete is indeed a bad idea, if it’s being used there you have a real problem now. I suppose people there can’t afford quality sand or there’s a real shortage of it.
I’ve also read in your comment about possible relation between soil fertility and wars in that part of France. Then, I’ve remembered some stories from my ancestors about certain fields better crops than anothers, because they were over Spanish Civil War mass graves. Well, it can be an old people tale, but I think it’s worth to remember it.
I am reading your essays on Dion Fortune’s Cosmic Doctrine. I have been thinking – this Negative and Positive Evil reminds me of Tamas and Rajas from the Modes of Nature in Samkhya.
In particular, Tamas is the aspect of inertia, Rajas of action without virtue, and Sattva of virtue. Rajas is again known to get polluted into two of its forms: Tamasic Rajas, where Rajas is polluted by Tamas, and Sattvic Rajas, where it is mixed with Sattva.
For instance, Erotic actions (that seek pleasure) are understood to be Tamasic, pragmatic ones are understood to be Rajasic, while Mythic / Moral actions are understood to be Sattvic. Of course, pragmatic actions are actions carried out rationally to attain a specific end goal, and that end goal can itself be erotic or mythic. So Rajas is combined with either of the other two modes.
I am looking at Disease and Sin, and they appear to be somewhat likewise – Rajas (positive evil) tinged with either Inertia or Energy.
@Martin Back, JMG:
About Germany fighting Russia: There is a joke of sorts which I’ve encountered repeatedly in the past months, in different variations. The general idea is as follows:
“If Putin would invade Germany with his army tomorrow, lost his way, and would happen to stumble upon the person telling the joke, far from fighting him, they’d happily give him directions on the fastest route to Berlin, and ask him if he’d consider taking over our government for good while he’s there anyway.”
Now, by far not everybody in Germany can find this funny right now. But the fact that a sizeable number of people seems to do so, speaks volumes about the sentiments on the ground, methinks…
Milkyway
@ Robert #102
I haven’t read the Strømme paper and doubt I ever will, but it strikes me that fundamental things have a dual nature: an elementary particle is also a wave; gravity is a geometry but acts like a force.
Time has always baffled physicists. We perceive it, but it doesn’t seem to be necessary. What if time is the dual face of consciousness? After all, time travel is physically impossible but no problem for a conscious mind to comprehend or imagine.
Hi John Michael,
🙂 Like many things, the tech bros may have done it on the cheap. But I believe that there are consequences for the software consuming a small percentage of arty-fish-al output during the training phase. Oh well, trial and error is a tough way to learn.
Respect too, and Gandalf is a fine source of inspiration. The world needs more wizards to direct some sense in a maelstrom. Hey, I missed out on that free article you linked to. What a clever idea. And dare I suggest it, but wasn’t having an open mind one key to the success of the scientific method?
Cheers
Chris
Some commenters have been arguing about multiculturalism, illegal migration and so on. I’ve thought these common topics in western countries and some other parts of the world, aren’t really problem in some corners of our world. I’m thinking in North Korea, where probably there haven’t problem with illegal
immigration (nobody would want to go there from other countries); and of course, they don’t argue about multiculturalism. OK, they live in a deep dictatorship under the “Juche” ideology with their own severe problems, but I can say with wry irony they don’t care about woke ideology…
I am in a close association with a sensitive person, who has absolutely no interest in studying occult topics herself, but who happily shares her own experiences with me. This is interesting, as I believe I am quite the opposite – not really sensitive at all, perhaps some neurodivergency, and am gradually working through your book The Celtig Golden Dawn, partially to awaken such sensitivities. What I learn with that work and the other occult studies often gives useful labels to phenomena she experiences.
One of her findings is that when she is in a relaxed state, whatever visions or precognitions or “glipses of reality” she experieces, they all come more often, compared to a situation when she is stressed out. This nicely follows along the instructions you give in your books – to first relax and be here and now, before trying to reach further. This is useful and very practical.
Now though I have begun to wonder: she gets the occasional flash of accurate cognition of “how things are”. Where might this be coming from? The central aspect of this is that she is not at that time consciously searching for the truth on the matter, but it is just suddenly revealed to her. These tend to be helpful, though occasionally also rather uncomfortable, as knowledge is given of matters she might not choose to know herself. Overall these flashes of knowledge seem to help her seeing what is what and why in some situation.
Now trudging through “A Vision” with the rest of the book club, I can not but to wonder if it might be the Daimon who is giving her these flashes, as in showing her why the “Body of Fate” is what it is and perhaps, showing her towards her true Mask?
I ask this both to understand her and her processes more as well as to assist myself in my studies with the system Yeats has laid out. Although she has shown very little interest in any kind of occult study, she is always curious of any input I might bring from what I have studied, which might lead into trying to figure out our respective phases in the system and what they might mean for our lives.
Also, if it is not the Daimon doing this, who or what might it be? She refers to all things beyond the veil simply as “the spiritual world” (with an occasional reference to her “spirit guides”), making no distinction nor showing any interest in just who or what it might be at a given time who is “sending” when she is “receiving”. My comfort in this situation is that she has had this all her life and it has led into good outcomes.
Martin Back #126:
They might try. Knowing a few of my fellow young male Germans, we might just find out what happens when they give a war and nobody comes.
—David P.
Hello all,
I’m wondering if anyone has heard of Salvador Freixedo, a Spanish ex-Catholic priest. Is his work worth investing any time in?
Thanks in advance.
I am finding the subject of cognitive collapse intriguing. Maybe next open post? Coincidentally, I just finished “Flowers for Algernon,” A really depressing sci fi novel from 60 or so years ago. Someone I know recommended it, but I found myself wishing that I hadn’t read it. I think smart phone addiction and lowered educational standards are factors, and if I dare say it, even dysgenics. Hardly anyone wants to talk about that. Who knows what else may be involved. Television addiction, perhaps? My mom was required to take Latin in High School. But I don’t think she ever understood analogies. I once answered one of her questions with “Is the Pope Catholic”? She didn’t get it, even after I tried to explain it. She kept saying, “What does that have to do with the Pope”? I remember being unbelievably literal-minded, myself, when I was young. My high school friends noticed it and “tested” me at least once. I failed the test. I had been listening to some blues music and they asked me what I thought a jelly roll was (in the context of the blues). I said it was a bakery product. I hope that by now I have outgrown some of that literal-mindedness, at least. Feel free to test me. 🙂
>LAW 4: SHRINK THE TIMELINE TO TODAY
NO. Do NOT live on Three Week Island. You can’t live on Three Century Island but you can strive to live on something bigger than what most people live on.
What is Three Week Island? It’s Last Week, This Week and Next Week – and if it didn’t happen or isn’t going to happen within that time window, it might as well have never happened or never will. Some people live on Three Day Island. Stay away from those people.
—
>Other Owen, all that computing capacity is much more likely to tell us “sorry, you can’t do that.” It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if this has already happened
I don’t think they’ve even tried. There was an article a year or two ago about how they managed to solve some of the stellarator (or tokamak) instabilities by throwing compute at the problem. I think at this point, it truly is a plain old lack of imagination. Or like I’ve concluded, it’s not that this country doesn’t have a future, it’s that the people in charge don’t WANT a future.
I need to find the future. I want a future. F**k you, I want a future.
JMG – Based on what you said about material inclination, I’ve edited to incorporate the turning.
The Litany for Death – although Overcoming Fear by Practising Death works too, depending where a person may be on their path.
Might I ask if you (or anyone else) see any issues?
I see death
I pause and breathe
I face death and remain calm
My body dies but I rise above it like a glowing star
I see my body as my heart rises above and beyond
The body is dead but shining consciousness is calm and clear
Death swirls and I am released
I use the inner eye and watch the passage of death
Love abides
I turn from the material to the Divine
And through the inner eye
There is light
And I Am
Thank you.
Maxine – I wonder are you remembering JMG’s dreamwidth series which appears under the tag “writing right out in public”?
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/tag/writing+right+out+in+public
“I had been listening to some blues music and they asked me what I thought a jelly roll was (in the context of the blues). I said it was a bakery product.”
Reminds me of that old joke about when President Kennedy went to Germany and said “Ich bin ein Berliner” he really said “I am a jelly doughnut” since there is a pastry in Germany that is sometimes called Berliner.
@ JMG “…my personal style was influenced years before I encountered him, by a guy named Gandalf. Seriously, I decided at the age of ten that that’s what I wanted to be (and look like) when I grew up.”
Funny. As for myself, I intend to grow old to be Nanny Og… (a Terry Pratchett character). 🙂
Happy Buy Nothing Day, everyone!
Paedrig, thanks for this! That’s a crucial point, of course. The whole “Lord gimme this, Lord gimme that” approach to prayer has probably done more harm to genuine religion than any other single factor, and it’s much more pervasive than a lot of people like to admit. I think of the line from the Protestant hymn “Sweet Hour of Prayer”:
“That bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.”
No. It’s when you treat the gods as friends — older, wiser, mightier, and better than you are, but respected and loved friends nonetheless — that the doors start opening. You’re also quite correct about the role of discontent, and I’d point out also that it’s manufactured discontent, fostered for greedy and corrupt reasons by every organ of the consumer economy.
Peter, I’ve seen it. Funny, and especially so since it’s turned out to be true.
J.L.Mc12, I don’t claim to understand it, but as a writer who’s tried to find publishing venues for his own short stories, I can vouch for it.
Aldarion, interesting. I don’t know Greek, but this makes sense.
Anon, there is indeed!
Cicada, I know. It’s all a little unnerving. I wrote that book as a cautionary tale, not as a manual!
Executed, in the event of a currency collapse, what do you think your odds would be of getting to another continent before somebody killed you so they could take your gold? The problem with gold is that it draws lethal violence the way a dead rat draws flies.
Northwind, thank you for this! That’s a worthwhile reminder. I’ll point out, though, that even for those who do know how to cook from scratch — and a fair number of Americans do* — access to food can be a problem, because prices have gone way up.
*Just for example, there’s a dollar store close to my house that, among other things, sells food. They don’t just sell premade packaged food. You can get flour, dry beans, pasta, rice, and plenty of other raw materials for food — and being a dollar store, they only carry what sells. Oh, and they also sell crock pots, rice cookers, and other cooking gear for those who don’t have adequate kitchens, as many Americans have to make do with very substandard kitchen facilities these days.
John, that’s a fascinating question to which I don’t know the answer. Anyone else?
Bacon, delighted to hear it. That sense of feeling a loved soul waking up on the inner planes is one that many people have after a death in the family; I felt it with my late wife, for example, about ten in the morning after her death. It’s a very good sign, btw, that your father was someplace very bright — that indicates that he didn’t bring a lot of negative karma with him, and so his afterlife experience will be mostly very pleasant.
Chuaquin, the problem is that social media is a natural echo chamber — and LLMs are even more so. More on this in due time.
Rajarshi, interesting. That makes sense.
Milkyway, here’s hoping.
Chris, in theory, an open mind is essential to make use of the scientific method. In practice, an open mind is the best possible way to bring your scientific career to a screeching halt!
Oskari, yes, it’s very likely her Daimon who’s passing those on. That kind of thing is more common than most people realize; your friend is simply more attentive to such experiences than most people are.
Ennobled, no — anyone else?
Phutatorius, I remember that story well, and yeah, it’s not an easy read.
Other Owen, if you want a future, create one. Nobody else is going to do it for you.
Earthworm, that sounds pretty good.
oops – another “non-preview appearing” comment (subject “Nanny Og”). I may have posted twice. This pattern seems to have become established for posts going straight to your spam.
(If they appear to me as a “preview” then I know I will see it sooner or later).
Apologies.
“it got put on the shelf for the time being due to the press of other projects. I expect to resume work on it sometime next year.”
Understood, I look forward to reading it when you’re ready.
“It’s a very good sign, btw, that your father was someplace very bright — that indicates that he didn’t bring a lot of negative karma with him, and so his afterlife experience will be mostly very pleasant.”
He had a good and full life, surrounded by a large family who adored him, so it didn’t surprise me to sense the brightness. I hope he has a good time out there exploring and growing.
@Ambrose #157
Interesting idea that symbols are a low fidelity abstraction of… reality? Not sure what to call it 🙂
My understanding is that the symbols that have survived the ages are a distillation of the truth of whatever they represent that can be communicated to our sub/unconscious that bypasses the hangups of the conscious mind.
Good luck with your SOL. LOL.
Chauquin, Americans have gradually been diverging from European culture for the past 4 or 5 decades now. The Ukraine debacle has brought these sentiments out in the open, despite the best efforts of our Eurocentric intelligentsia. More and more, Eurocentric preoccupations are making no sense to the generality of American voters. The president didn’t do himself any favors with his visit to the British monarchy.
You tube has now become so infested with faked videos, one hardly knows what to believe. For example, a you tube “short” informed anyone interested that “Mondami” had “cancelled” the Macy’s holiday parade. The mayor elect is not mayor yet and can’t cancel anything except his own subscriptions. Can you or any other European commentator tell us what is happening with Mt. Etna–a major eruption, I gather, but that is hardly unusual for that volcano–and also what is really happening near Naples? The alleged geological manifestations near Naples and Mt. Vesuvius have provoked the most astonishing claims. Geological hot spots are one of the latest objects of fervent popular interest. This is especially so in the USA because our country does sit on top of three of them. (I think the one under New Mexico is likely extinct by now, or becoming so.)
@Maxine
The posts you are looking for are tagged “Writing Right Out There in Public.”
If you go to the Ecosophia Dreamwidth page, scroll to the bottom of the sidebar to the “search” bit.
Type that in and set the list to oldest first. It came up as the second one when I searched.
You may need a Dreamwidth account to do this.
BTW thanks for asking about this. I’ve also wondered about it. Not only found it helpful but also felt like we lost a good story.
“Happy Buy Nothing Day, everyone!” Darn! I already bought two bottles of toilet cleaner. And, above in 177 I intended to say “next 5th Wednesday” but was overtaken by cognitive collapse — temporary, I hope.
@ Paedrig #148
“It made me realize that modern western society is fundamnetally based on discontent – a constant feeling like your life isn’t good enough, it could be better, improved, evloved…. That entire mindset is designed to make people incurably miserable.”
Well, it DOES make people incurably miserable, but it is DESIGNED to make people profitable. If you knew your life was good enough, if you knew that “enough”, just by itself, was valuable, and to be treasured and appreciated, you would spend a whole lot less money, need many fewer intoxicants and drugs, and not feel under pressure to work nearly as hard. 🙂
@Mrdobner #34:
What a very deep theme you have hit upon. The dark side of self-sacrifice, I think, is baked into the subconscious of Western civilization because at the core of Christian religion is an act of compassionate self-sacrifice par excellence. It seems to hold true in this case that you can’t bring light into the world without casting a shadow. The dark side is expressed well in Spengler’s term ‘Faustian Civilization’, characterizing our entire culture with reference to an act of self-destruction for the sake of power and ego, and I think this summarizes fairly well the times we are living through.
I commented on this theme in another context a few weeks ago under one of the Situationist posts, noting that the cult of martyrdom which seems to animate contemporary social justice activism has its roots in a twisted but deep-rooted strain of Christianity.
Ivan Illich, who spent decades writing about the malaises of modern civilization, finally confessed toward the end of his life that as a lifelong Christian he found it difficult but necessary to discuss what could be described as the shadow of Christ’s incarnation: the modern Western service state in which love for one’s neighbour is institutionally enforced, and the free choices of individual souls expressing compassion and curiosity toward one another are obliterated by rules and systems ‘for the greater good’. (If you were alive in 2020, it’s not hard to see Illich’s work as deeply prophetic). The book of his most relevant to your original comment about shadows is The Rivers North of the Future, if you have any interest in that sort of thing.
@Joan #118
Thanks for the tips, and for supporting the kind of art you want to see in the world! Come to think of it, I followed a similar trajectory as a JMG reader, transitioning from free lurker to active commenter to monthly paid subscriber via Patreon, all by my own free choice and desire to be part of something I saw as worthwhile. Which is to say that this online (nearly)-direct-to-consumer business model has been proven to work, including by a few other people I know personally.
My hesitation around this model is that I just don’t love spending time on computers! As rich as the Ecosophian conversations generally are, I dip in and out of them according to my level of screen stamina and amount of free time, which varies from week to week. When it comes to my own writing, I do all of my first drafts in pencil and paper. Typing it all up coincides with the second or third round of editing. And as for managing all the fan comments and questions that our host and writers like him do… well, it’s an intimidating amount of work which one has to commit to in order to make the model move. Back in the day that’s what you hired publishers for, after all.
All that to say, it’s quite something for one person to build an online ecosystem worth inhabiting, it takes time and patience, and my hat is off to all those who persevere in it.
Ennobled # 176:
I know Salvador Freixedo by his book “Defendámonos de los dioses” (“Let’s defend us from gods”). I read it some years ago. In the short form, this author told to the reader the UFO phenomenon isn’t always good; often it’s dangerous, even lethal to the witnesses of it. I partly agree. However, my problem with Freixedo idea (UFO beings like evil entities) is he identified every relation with non human entities (call them angels, gods, faeries, aliens…) as bad abd negative. He seemed me too manichean and even paranoid in his depiction of “alien” world (though I can say I haven’t read more of his books). He even blamed UFOs for every negative and self destructive tendence of modern societies (cough cough).
I think Jacques Vallee is more interesting IMO to have a view about UFOs without positive or negative biases, for example.
It’s my personal opinion, I hope to have given you an useful answer.
JMG # 183:
OK, I’m curious about your future post about this mess with echo chambers and LLMs…
———————-
Mary Bennet # 188:
I agree. Divergence between US and Europe minds is a fact, which it’s possible keeps growing in the future.
I didn’t usually watch youtube videos, so I didn’t know about fake videos you wrote in your comment. And I don’t know anything by now about Italian volcanos activity recently. Well, I’d thank other commentarists to tell us something about this topic, because I have no idea about it.
Mary Bennet (#188) wrote:
“Americans have gradually been diverging from European culture for the past 4 or 5 decades now.”
On the West Coast, this “divergence” goes much further back than the last 4 or 5 decades.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1940s and 1950s, Europe and the MIddle East seemed to me like the back of beyond, even more distant than the remote and narrow Atlantic Ocean. The center of our lived world was the Pacific Ocean, and East Asian countries (especially China and Japan, but also Siberian Russia) were our closest transoceanic neighbors. Our other most important neighbors, to the south of us, were the Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America., especially Mexico (and, earlier, the Aztecs).
In point of fact, English-speaking California was Mexican territory in the South and Russian territory in the North when the first settlers from the United States arrived in the early 1800s. None of us Californians ever were given any occasion to forgot that our current America citizenship and allegiance was a johnny-come-lately development.
I moved to the East Coast in 1967. It was only after I had lived here for more than a decade when I figured out that many surnames here could indicate their bearers’ Irish or Italian or Jewish ancestry, in much the same way that it had always been obvious to me in California that some of my classmates surnames were originally Chinese, others Japanese, and yet others Spanish or Russian.
I do not think that the United States ever had a common culture (or even a common cultural substrate), shared equally by all the inhabitants of all 50 states once it began expanding westward from the Atlantic seaboard. Nor does it have one now.
Buy Nothing Day can be amended to Buy Nothing New Day if you feel the need to shop. Second hand stores and the like save many things from landfills at least temporarily.
As to Northwind’s comments about cooking, I have noticed the shocking number of cake mixes in the store. Cakes are not that hard. I don’t see why anyone would buy a mix. There is even cornbread mix. Cornbread is about the simplest thing you can dream up, even the slightly fancier buttermilk crackling cornbread in the Joy of Cooking is a quick kill.
Crockpots (or the high-tech Instant Pot) are the bachelor’s friend. Load it in the morning, go to work, eat it when you get home.
Hint: Mix the dry ingredients for the cornbread in the morning and start the chili in the crockpot, go to work. When you get home add the wet ingredients to the cornbread, mix and put in the oven and in half an hour chili on cornbread is yours.
JMG,
I thought about putting this question to you on Magic Monday, but it’s not exactly a magic related question. My wife and I are exchanging books for Christmas. I know what I want to get her in terms of subject, I’m hoping you (or your readers) can help with a title.
My wife is sensitive. She reads people and situations very well. In addition, she senses things from outside the physical realm. And she communicates with some entities from outside the physical. I was hoping to get a book for her that might help guide her, give her some exercises, and maybe some cautions on moving down this path. Pagan or Christian orientation are just fine.
Any suggestions?
AV
Hi John,
Do you have any further thoughts on the nature of the coming great European war since your 2021 post (just before Ukraine was invaded).
A prophetic work even by your standards!
Bravo!
Hey JMG
My only assumptions for why short stories aren’t popular is that because there’s less barriers to writing them compared to novels, they therefore are more likely to be of lower quality if they came from a new writer. I think fanfic may also have something to do with it, since it’s also often written in short story format and so may either strengthen the impression that reading short stories is not worth someone’s time as most fanfic is bad or unfinished, or maybe it attracts most of the people who would otherwise be reading “proper” short stories.
Happy Buy Nothing Day. I did go down to The Marketplace at the other end of campus to buy 2 sorta-pint bottles of orange juice blend, and the Bistro in my part of campus for a cup of tuna salad, all of which comes under the heading of “lunch makings.” and essentially comes out of our prepaid dining allowance; and will go down to the dining hall for a meal of bourbon shrimp and whatever 2 sides are on offer and edible.
Rita, what’s your source for the health of Leslie fish and her partner; you can bet there’s nothing on GooGoo Search. (I tried.) I was a great fan of hers back in the day and still am.
To all of us in the USA: Enjoying the little foretaste of winter the jet stream, is treating us to? 58 degrees here in mid-afternoon. I can just hear my Colorado daughter snickering at the old reptiles down here who consider that “cold.” – hey! It’s November! But, still…. going day by day where the weather is concerned is the best strategy one can follow. Likewise the vagaries of political loudmouths, of whom the only consistent ones are the “No Trumps Jenny One-notes.
And on that note, having awakened from the best thing I’ve done today, a 40-minute nap. East Coasters, I suggest JMG’s novel “The Hall of Homeless Gods” for light reading. Especially the hard-boiled hero falling for the only woman around who is actually real. Besides his mother and his boss.
November 28 is the birthday of one of my friends, so I would rather go spend time celebrating her birthday today instead of participating in the dumb Black Friday shopping rituals.
Isn’t Black Friday the name of the day in 1929 when Wall Street crashed and kickstarted the Great Depression? What an odd name to give to the day after Thanksgiving in America.
Hi John Michael,
That response certainly explains a thing or three. 😉
We had a dry-ish year to about mid-spring, although plenty of parts of the world might believe that 700mm / 27.5 inches in nine months is rather damp, here it isn’t. That’s changed, and as the north of this continent, and that big frozen continent to the south of here at the bottom of the world have both heated up, much rain has been sent in this direction. Anyway, there was some discussion about peak phosphate here recently, and it got the old brain working away on the issue.
Australian soils are on average hopeless for phosphates, given the sheer age of the continent and lack of ice age action. Plenty of folks top dress their soils using rock phosphate, and there’s nothing wrong with that if done in moderation. Of course if a person grows annual plants which are sent to the wonderful land of elsewhere, then the minerals are also departing the soil and need to be replaced. However, high rainfall also tends to leach phosphate where it gets diluted in the groundwater (along with other minerals, except maybe potassium). Thus why so much edible production is attempted in locations which are ordinarily dry, the soil mineral content is naturally better, so it is cheaper to do, if you can get the water. So I’m guessing that as the moisture in the atmosphere increases as the planet warms up, with more rain there’ll be greater leaching of minerals, and food quality will continue it’s long slow decline.
Anyhoo, back to phosphates. If people are worried about that issue, then there are alternatives like blood and bone meal, which whilst expensive, is not a bad option. In that case, someone else used rock phosphates to grow animals which were then later rendered into a convenient powder for growers. Plus we all have urine which has some phosphates in it. Crazy to send that stuff to the ocean, err, good luck with that one. But the other alternative is to lock it up in the plants, that’s how they work in a challenging environment, they seek to accumulate minerals. Too often we think of plants as a disposable item, but no.
In many ways it’s a bit like the deity discussion above. Rather than simple words, it’s instead all about actions. This is who I am. This is what I do. Heard good things about you. How are you all about those? We might get along just fine. etc.
There’s a stewardship element to life which seems to be missing from our culture.
Cheers
Chris
Mr. Greer,
Hello there. I’m working my way through your Druid Magic Handbook, and have a few questions I hope you won’t mind answering.
1. During the Elemental Cross portion of the SoP, you say to imagine the beam coming down from your solar plexus, and going into the Earth to be green. Is it the same when filling the Cauldron of Earth? Or is it a silver tendril of energy here?
2. Similar to the above, when calling down the Spear of Heaven for the 2 Dragons ritual, as I understand it, I’d be pulling it from the sky, through the Cauldrons of Moon, Sun and Earth, on the inhale, where I’d transition to an exhale to push it through to the center of the Earth. Is this correct? And when doing so, is the beam white all the way through, or does it change to green when it leaves the Cauldron of the Earth.
3. When is the proper time to do magic in among this? The part of working magic into your SoP comes before the part of the book discussing these more advanced exercises, and I wonder if it’d be best to integrate it after the meditations on cauldrons, dragon currents, and tree; or if I should close up the SoP done for these exercises, and do another one from scratch for magical workings. May I ask your recommendation, please?
Thank you.
JL Mc12 (no. 199) “My only assumptions for why short stories aren’t popular is that because there’s less barriers to writing them compared to novels….”|
I think it’s just that short stories are traditionally published in magazines, which not as many people read anymore. On the other hand, “flash fiction” (extremely short snippets) has become a thing.
Aldarion (no. 154), but consider Matt. 7: ” Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
Peter (no, 149), I find it surreal that some of the most prominent white nationalists are Nick Fuentes (half Mexican) and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys (Afro-Cuban / Filipino).
WRT Building a House Yourself to Avoid a Mortgage. I’m actually doing just that right now. I started in July and should be moved in by the end of the year. Biggest advantage is that I have a retired builder/contractor in the family. If anyone wants to read on, here are some tips to save money on building your own house. Mine will cost me around 1/4 to 1/3 the national average home price.
1. Best to find a county with no building codes or zoning. Getting inspectors runs up into big money.
2. Go to the local building supply company (not Lowe’s or Home Depot), explain that you are building a house and ask for contractor pricing. I got 8% off all material that I bought at the local supplier in this way. An interior designer friend also got me contractor pricing on paint.
3. Ask around (usually at the local building supply company!) for sub-contractor recommendations. Your girlfriend’s brother’s ex-wife’s cousin may be a backhoe operator or plumber that will work cheap for cash or quick jobs.
4. Family and friends will often volunteer free labor; take advantage of it!!
5. If you are living out in the country and not in a city limits, make sure that the building supply company you are dealing with is charging you the correct sales tax. If the supplier is in a city with high sales taxes, but they deliver to your property out in the county, they should only charge the sales tax applicable to your location.
6. Be willing to shop around and drive a bit, even if it slows you down. Places with the words “salvage” or “surplus” in the name often carry overruns or discontinued items that you can get for cheap. I’m getting Home Depot brand ceiling fans for about 60% the cost retail.
I hope these tips help anyone thinking about being their own builder/general contractor.
“It’s when you treat the gods as friends — older, wiser, mightier, and better than you are, but respected and loved friends nonetheless — that the doors start opening.”
Unfortunately, for many people these days, the first thing they have to learn is how to make friends.
The map is not the same as the territory, yet an accurate map is verified by the experienced territory. An Orthodox bishop speaks of how a Christian teaching is verified by experience. With which I can concur.
“Here again there can be no logical proof. The threeness of God is something given or revealed to us in Scripture, in the Apostolic tradition, and in the experience of the saints throughout the centuries. All that we can do is verify this given fact through our own life of prayer. . . . . . Through our encounter with God in prayer, we know that the Spirit is not the same as the Son, even though we cannot define in words precisely what the difference.” Bishop Kallistos Ware
Ditto for my knowing of the simultaneous humanity and deity of Jesus of Nazareth. Anyway that is my experienced mileage in this area concerning various Christian “dogmas”. You present various doctrines and teachings in your writings and say they can be known in experience not as just mere intellectual concepts to be taken on faith. Perhaps we are speaking of separate and existing and different mountain tops to be climbed and known surrounding the valley we now share on earth..
@Executedbygandhi
One question here is how bad do you expect things to get. If you expect a 30s style economic collapse gold might be a good idea. If it is a MadMax scenario you foresee, ammunition might be a better choice. Decline is not collapse although there is a continuum. The rate of decline and your age are also of importance.
Regarding moving to another country or even continent. Whatever skills you have may not translate easily into a new social and legal environment. Also do not underestimate the value of your social network. After a move it can take years to build up a new one. Skills are one thing, but applying them in the real world can be surprisingly difficult if one has only a limited understanding how the society one operates in works.
I am not saying it is impossible to pull up stumps and set up shop on the other side of the planet. In fact I did it myself more than once with a reasonable amount of success. I’m just saying expect some unexpected problems.
JMG, you have often repeated that human souls need to learn self-reflection and self-consciousness in order to one day leave the human stage behind. I can imagine (and have sometimes met) deeply self-reflective, mature human beings – persons where self-reflection has become second nature and leads to wiser actions and choices. However, I have also met many people paralyzed by self-reflection: so absorbed in observing themselves from the outside that they don’t actually live their life. The word for “doubting” in Koine Greek is dipsychos – of two souls.
In Selma Lagerlöf’s first novel, The story of Gösta Berling (which, probably more than any of her other works, helped her gain the Nobel Prize), the narrator, writing in the 1890s, often remarks how the title character, in the 1820s, acted and lived fully, unencumbered by self-consciousness and second thoughts. The character Gösta Berling is fascinating and attractive, if also full of faults. Now the story is not meant to be realistic, but Lagerlöf seemed to sincerely believe that her contemporaries were hobbled by self-doubts and were living indirect lives, and that they might do well to turn back to older forms of living.
How do you see the distinction between mature self-reflection and a muted, filtered life of self-observation? Is the way forward different from the way back?
Hi JMG,
Do you have any opinion on which of Rupert Sheldrake’s works one should start with? As I understand it, morphogenic fields are the same or similar as forms. I’m hoping to learn more on his take on them. I’ve visited his wikipedia multiple times to view the list of his works and nothing really jumps out at me as a starting point. Thank you in advance!
John, when I think of the line from the Protestant hymn “Sweet Hour of Prayer”:
“That bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.”
I want it to mean, “all my desires are laid out bare to be seen for what they really are.” Because I really do like the rest of the hymn.
Northwind Grandma #163,
If I may add on to your post: I’m an elderly widow, living alone. After my husband, who was the cook in our family, passed, I started buying frozen dinners since cooking for myself was depressing. That didn’t last long after I found out that the frozen dinners were rather tasteless and very expensive. Now I cook meat or chicken, add a lot of vegetables, herbs, etc and freeze it in single serving containers
I have about 6 recipes that I fix that provide variety and are tastier and cheaper than frozen dinners or take-out
A simple solution for those living alone.
Hey Luke Z
In regards to Sheldrake, I personally began with “The Science Delusion”, which seems to be a good introduction to him. It may also be a good idea to read his Substack.
https://substack.com/@rupertsheldrake?utm_source=global-search
“That bids me at my Father’s throne
Make all my wants and wishes known.”
Do people actually know what they want and wish for? I remember you talking about “educating desire” on the Magic Monday because people don’t actually know what they desire.
Scotlyn, for some reason some of your posts are landing in my spam filter. I check that regularly, so everything will get through.
Bacon, the luminous quality of the experience also speaks very positively about the way he lived his life and treated others. He’ll be fine.
Phutatorius, you can certainly nominate it when the first December post goes up next Wednesday.
AV, that’s not something I’ve ever studied, as I’m kind of the opposite of a sensitive. (I can perceive the Unseen, but it takes work.) Anyone else?
Forecasting, I’d watch relations between Poland and Germany very closely; I’d also watch all the borders between Hungary and its neighbors. Finally, watch for the first major European country to fall into the hands of the populists; it’s quite possible that the other European powers may get sufficiently belligerent in response to that event that a general war may result.
J.L.Mc12, maybe. I simply don’t know.
Patricia M, thank you! It was a fun novel to write, too.
Mark, a very good alternative.
Robert, if I understand correctly, it was store clerks who started calling the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday,” because it’s inevitably a miserable, grueling day for store employees.
Chris, will you kindly take that last sentence, fashion it into the business end of a branding iron, and brutally burn it into the backsides of everyone you meet who shows no sign of noticing that far from minor point? It might just help…
Oatmeal, (1) it’s silver. (2) White all the way down. (3) Experiment and see what works best for you!
Anon, there’s that!
BeardTree, true enough. That said, I’ve never had the least trouble making sense of the Trinity — I’m not sure why it causes so many people such headaches. That one god might manifest in three different aspects or hypostases seems like common sense to me.
Aldarion, that’s valid, and goes to show that the opposite of one bad idea is quite reliably another bad idea. If the unexamined life is not worth living, much the same thing can be said for the overexamined life. Keep in mind, though, that the late 19th century notion of self-examinatioin — especially in Protestant countries — required one to constantly measure one’s actions against absurdly unrealistic standards and wallow in self-inflicted misery as a result. That plus the pervasive sexual repression makes the neurotic basket cases Freud analyzed entirely too likely!
Luke, I’d start with A New Science of Life and proceed chronologically from there. His work has a very interesting arc of development.
Jfisher, if that works for you, by all means.
Anon, there’s that! In many cases, the most brutally sadistic punishment you can possibly inflict on someone is to give them what they think they want.
JMG – Re: “Black Friday”… I’ve understood it to mean that a retail store runs at a loss for the first 11 months of the year, “in the red”, since accountants use red ink to represent negative numbers. It’s only the rush of sales going into winter, and especially the rush of Christmas gift buying that puts them “into the black” of profitability. HOWEVER! History.com claims that this is only the Official Story, and that the term originated in the 1950s in Philadelphia to describe urban chaos as people rushed into stores after Thanksgiving.
Slithy Toves #11
From what I’ve seen, FOMO afflicts every generation (not just Millennials & younger) , but in somewhat different ways and for different products.
Seasonal whimsy — what is the nature of Santa Claus? He’s held to be a saint in Christianity, although the modern conception seems to owe more to a Norse elemental. The Canadian iconographer Jonathan Pageau seems to think of him as a sort of egregore, and of course the average person thinks of him as some sort of arbitrary fiction, but in some ways he seems like one of the chief gods of America. Any perspectives? Nothing seems falsifiable, of course…
Lathechuck, interesting. Philadelphia, huh?
Eliot, oh, he’s an obvious mushroom myth. He’s dressed in red and white, the colors of the Amanita muscaria hallucinogenic mushroom, and associated with reindeer, the typical animal totem of the Lapp shamans who preserved that particular mushroom cult from ancient times, and he flies through the air — those who have tried hallucinogens know that experience! The bright flashing colors of the Christmas lights and the gaudy wrappings of the presents are meant to mimic other elements of the drug experience. The chimney he comes down is of course the modern equivalent of the house-post of ancient dwellings, which symbolizes the axis of heaven, down which he descends from the North Star; there’s also some kundalini symbolism in there. “Ho ho ho” is a dim remnant of the forceful breathing patterns used to stimulate the kundalini ascent by which Santa returns to the Pole.
(Ahem. I trust nobody takes that seriously; I made most of it up on the spur of the moment. If John Allegro could insist back in the day that Jesus was a magic mushroom, why not Santa?)
Mary Bennet #188:
“Geological hot spots are one of the latest objects of fervent popular interest. This is especially so in the USA because our country does sit on top of three of them. (I think the one under New Mexico is likely extinct by now, or becoming so.)”
New Mexico has a lot of volcanoes, and they’re not extinct, only dormant: https://nmnaturalhistory.org/volcanoes/new-mexico-land-volcanoes
Regarding Vesuvius, it is overdue for an eruption: https://biologyinsights.com/when-will-mount-vesuvius-erupt-again/
I’m fascinated by volcanoes – I think it’s because they’re both deadly and life-giving (lethal when they erupt, but the eruptions result in volcanic soil that is very fertile). Nature is both beautiful and brutal.
@ Chuaquín, ¡muchísimas gracias! I leaned about Freixedo from my mom. She read several of his books. I never really took him seriously, but I began to wonder if I should about a decade or so ago.
@ambrose, thanks for your reply. I certainly didn’t want to imply that any one versicle shows the whole way.
JMG – As regards the Trinity I agree – Three for the price of One and much more Fun!
Re Leslie Fish and Bob Ralston–Bob emailed me the news himself. He is my former partner and father of my kids. Our daughter had a few more details at Thanksgiving dinner. Bob and Leslie have been living in AZ about 10 years now. Buckeye is a former farm town now a suburb south of Phoenix. Despite Bob’s long term heart problems Leslie is apparently in more of an immediate health crisis as she refuses a surgical approach. I know she was big on the filk music scene as well as recording original work.
Re Sheldrake–_A New Science of Life_ was reissued in 2009 as _Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation_. I have a copy but haven’t read it yet.
Re Santa–Several years ago, I saw an issue of _Hindu Times_ that claimed Santa Claus as an avatar of Ganesh.
Re Europe–I have seen videos online of a Polish official (not sure what position) bragging that Poland is safer from crime and terrorism than other nations such as Germany, Sweden and Gt. Britain because they defied the EU and refused to accept refugees from Afghanistan and other non-European nations. I believe that Poland has afforded refuge to many Ukrainians. There are also many memes of photos of Polish cities captioned with comments on their refugee policy.
Rita
Robert @195, and whoever might be interested
Your comment, as all your comments, is interesting to me.
I was born in NYC in 1940 to an English father, running the branch office of a British firm, and an American mother, and grew up within a 100 mile radius. I left at 18, and have seldom been back, not at all since 1970. I have lived all over the world since combining a modest inheritance with living very cheaply and taking whatever work I found and enjoyed. I pretty much felt at home wherever I have lived, but never felt an allegiance to any country or group except other “world citizens”. The places I have felt the most connected to have been polyglot places like Australia Hawaii and California.. This seems contrary to most people’s experience, and, perhaps, to views expressed by many on this site, but has worked for me. Odd: NYC is probably as polyglot as anywhere on the planet, but was never my place.
Stephen
Do you think some of the weirder cultural shifts of the twentieth century might be related to computers becoming the archetypal machine? It is a commonplace in modern western culture that both the nature of the world and the nature of what it means to be human can be explained by reference to a machine, but that means something very different if a machine is a clock compared to if it is a computer.
The truly weird part of this is that it makes perfect sense, but it also suggests that the definition of how our society views what it means to be human changed under us without most people noticing it was happening….
I’m always a bit surprised when people here talk about how eurocentric the US is, and I wonder what europe they mean. Is it the really existing europe, or is it some kind of image these americans have of the ‘old world’?
Because from my standpoint there is not much left of our local culture(s) as we’ve been flooded with american culture for many decades, at least in the western part (where I live).
–bk
Chris # 203:
Thank you for your apportation to the phosphate debate. It’s interesting your view about increasing moisture would make to grow up the soils hunger for more phosphate, during the Long Descent. I also agree treating urine like a toxic waste is stupid; I wrote several weeks ago in another open post about possible urine use as fertilizer, by the way.
You’ve also said in your country it’s rained 700 mm(l) in 9 months. Wow! Let’s compare it with the usual average in my town: 300 mm per year…I live in one of the dryest zones of Spain, so your data surprises me, of course.
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John, I’d like to tell you I’ve just read the recent essay book written by the scientist Antonio Turiel, titled “El futuro de Europa”(The Future of Europe). I’ve enjoyed it, although I don’t have to agree 100% with every idea of him. What I wanted to tell you (if you didn’t know yet) is that Turiel quotes your name between another authors of the Long Descent topic. I suppose you know this spanish author’s the most known “peakoiler” of my country, so you should be proud to be quoted in his book. By the way, I found that book in my neighbourhood public library.
Hi JMG,
About your answer to Forecasting, me too, I expect the next major rivalry is between Germany and Poland and the rest of European countries to pick sides.
That first major European country to fall into populism might be France with its Rassemblement National.
I’m surprised though that you mentioned Hungary. The Trianon treaty dismembered the country and left it with few population and resource base. Could you probably clarify how the country in such a state could wage the next war in Europe?
Thank you
Re: contact with the departed.
When my parents died I had no feeling that they attempted to contact me from beyond the veil. This was no surprise since we had a strained relationship. However, a few years later when I had some savings and a good job I bought a middle class house in a middle class suburb and lived there all alone.
One quiet afternoon I was sitting in my lounge, reading. I sensed a movement and looked up. It was a dove. It came walking in the lounge door, looking left and right, up and down, with its wings behind its back, for all the world like someone strolling about and appraising the property.
This was totally unexpected. To get there, the dove would have had to fly under a covered patio, enter the back door into the breakfast nook, make a left, walk the length of the kitchen, make another left into the passage, then make a right into the lounge door. It seemed improbable that a wild bird would make such a journey so calmly in a strange environment.
I immediately wondered if it wasn’t my mother’s spirit in the shape of a dove come to check up on me.
Quietly I got up and opened the windows. The dove was startled and flew about for a few moments, then flew out of a window. Fortunately it didn’t poop on the furniture, as frightened birds are wont to do. This convinced me it wasn’t actually my mother’s spirit, because she had always been hyper critical of everything I did.
In a related topic with food inflation, I think it’s interesting to pay attention to a trick which food providers do to pretend there’s no inflation in their products (or at least to pretend there’s less). I’ve seen this attitude in eggs packs. In my neighbourhood supermarkets and shops, they’ve been sold always by dozens, but since not very time ago, there are 10 egg packs, which apparently are cheaper than dozen packs, but of course they’re smaller. I also think they’re sold to people who can’t afford the dozen…
JMG – As someone who honors his Finnish ancestry, it was a revelation to me as a high-school student to read that prehistoric Nordic people traded their natural resources for hallucinogenic mushrooms from central Europe to help pass the time through the long polar nights. After realizing that not all of the active ingredients were metabolized on a single pass, they extended the entertainment by drinking urine. Which is to say… there’s some ancient truth in your speculation about Santa Claus.
Re: Cognitive Collapse – In a competitive economy, it helps to be smarter than the competition. The hard way to do this is to seek out knowledge and laboriously absorb and apply it. The easy way is to provide false information to your competition to make them stupid. In the financial news world, this is called “talking your order book” (promoting the investments that aren’t attractive enough to be sought out by the smart money). After all, the job of a stock broker is to find buyers when others want to sell, and vice versa, and persuade them to take the other side of the trade. (It’s not that obvious from the financial news that when “stocks sell off”, there’s a buyer for every sale.) So, given the frictionless flow of information, bad info drives out the good.
Thanks for that, JMG. Yes I think he’ll be fine too. I wish I could say ‘Told you so!’ 😉
Anon, that’s a fascinating suggestion. The archetypal machine of the 19th century was the steam engine, which had its own eccentric impact on culture — Freud’s theory of instincts was basically the idea of steam pressure played in a psychological key, just for starters — but the 20th century had a number of technologies contending for top dog status: the car, the airplane, the nuclear warhead, the rocket, and then finally the computer, which does seem to have supplanted the others. The implications are fascinating, aren’t they?
BK, oh, it’s always a fantasy image. That’s inevitably the case with colonial societies: they reimagine the home country in ways that move steadily further out of step with reality.
Chuaquin, delighted to hear it! Thank you for letting me know.
Foxhands, Hungary doesn’t have to be strong. It just has to be stronger than one or more of its neighbors.
Martin, that’s quite a traditional way for a soul to make contact with the living.
Chuaquin, yep. In the US it’s called “shrinkflation,” and it’s been going on for decades.
Lathechuck, any proper line of bullshale, to be convincing, has to have some kind of anchor in reality! That also applies to the preconditions for cognitive collapse. (And now I’m trying to remember the SF story in which somebody accidentally fed “The Hunting of the Snark” into the computer system of an interplanetary fleet, so that the computer wigged out, stopped accepting any input as valid unless it was repeated three times, etc…
A few of you were discussing sand and concrete. I’ve been keeping tabs on the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) quarterly reports on sand, gravel and crushed stone consumption statistics. In the U.S. the consumption of these construction materials has been decreasing at rates ranging from 4 to 8 percent per year since the end of the recent peak year of 2023. I wonder if data center and warehouse construction is the only thing keeping it from declining faster?
A similar decline was noted from 2006 to 2007 on the eve of the Great Recession of 2008 and ensuing financial crisis.
Mr. Greer, we know that children born of incestuous relationships are likely to suffer from genetic defects. How does this tie in with your views on karma and reincarnation? Which souls are likely to get chosen as the children of such parents?
Then there are sperm donors, etc. Female recipients, believing in genetics, try to arrange for a tall and / or intelligent donor. Do you believe that there is any sense or logic in this? We all know of families whose members are generally tall or of average height, yet they have one son or daughter who is significantly below the average. I’m guessing that this has nothing to do with “karma”. I can’t imagine some sort of karma official in the afterlife deciding, “Right, this one deserves to be a midget!”
Hi JMG,
Thank you for your response. Interesting time ahead indeed.
I see this quite trending: “pay-to-destroy” session for stress relief. Is it something useful for a lot of desperate people out there or another marketing trick ?
“”According to Smash It Rage Rooms in south-east London, where a 30-minute solo session costs £50, “each smash is a cathartic release, a burst of pure, primal joy”.
“We are at capacity – we were looking for another venue because we can’t keep up with demand,” said Amelia Smewing, who set up the business with her husband after exploring ways to help their son cope with PTSD.
“”
Anyway, the state of Western citizens’ mental health does look concerning.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/29/rage-rooms-can-smashing-stuff-up-help-relieve-anger-stress
Ennobled # 222:
You’re welcome (“de nada”). It’s curious how do you knew that bizarre writer books…
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BK # 228:
I partly agree: Europe has been “Americanized” since decades ago (even we adopted Halloween and Black Friday some years ago in my country), but I also think when you start looking beyond apparent and shallow pop customs, there are differences, at least between elites in US and EU. European PMC believe they’re the center if the world yet, for example; even more, the EU would be an embryonary World State, modelic to the rest of the world…I doubt American elites and street people have the same vision about European gargantuan international bureaucracy. There are more subtile or not so subtile differences between Western Europe and USA, but I don’t have time now to point them.
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JMG # 236:
John, you’re welcome!
***^
I’ll take note of “shrinkflation” world, thank you.
>And now I’m trying to remember the SF story in which somebody accidentally fed “The Hunting of the Snark” into the computer system
Cookie, gimme a cookie.
https://www.multicians.org/cookie.html
@ Mary Bennet # 6
I am joining the conversation on influencers somewhat late.
Basically, until the advent of the internet, it was impossible for something someone says in one place to become popular quickly unless that someone had access to a popular stage or a broadcasting platform. You could reach out to thousands of people via radio, or via television, or even the newspaper. Or you could perform on a stage and people could come to watch, and word could spread. But not everyone has access to a stage or a broadcasting device.
The internet allows people who share interests to connect, regardless of geographical distance. This means that something someone does can reach millions – or even billions – of people all over the world in remarkably short time, sometimes twenty-four hours. This is the natural consequence of having a communication technology as powerful as the internet around. Social media makes full use of this technology, connecting people all over the world.
In such a connected space, not everyone has the same outreach. Someone may be “followed” by millions of fans, another person would be followed by only their intimate friends and family, and most would be followed by a clique of friends and acquaintances and the odd soul they met on the internet.
Connectedness, therefore, is in something like a Pareto distribution, like wealth is in society – a sort of 80-20 rule. A small number of people are connected to massive crowds and their content and ideas can “influence” the opinions of that crowd, while the vast majority of people have ordinary spheres of social influence over the internet. The highly connected ones are known as “influencers”.
While the label appears to have erupted spontaneously, it was in fact pushed heavily by journalists, social media owners, corporations, and the influencers themselves. Basically, marketing people realised that many of the people with immense circles of influence on social media were not financially too independent, and could always do with more money. They could be hired to promote products either subtly or explicitly, in various capacities.
This resulted in a marriage made in hell, as advertisers, social media platform owners, and popular content creators formed a three-way alliance to draw in netizens from all over the world and channel advertisements to them directly. It’s cheaper than renting a slot in a television channel, and it’s way more effective when social media has all the reach. So they started calling such highly connected people “influencers”, and eventually pop culture caught on.
My local physician told me that trying to read S’thgiliwt Tsal Gnimaelg may hurt my neck through overtwisting it.
More seriously, I am surprised you advocate Buy Nothing Day.
As you often say yourself, the opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea. The expenses you make daily, just for your own survival, through local small stores, are essential to the well being of your local community.
A smarter thurd path would be, ahem
The day of celebration for being able to be buying the same daily mundane and essential articles as you usually do, and only because those are purely necessary.
White Dayfri or Buy Nothing Day, both make the mistake of conflating buying (a necessary intermediation because a confortable civilization requires a certain amount of specialization) with consuming (participating to a ritual designed to strip you from your willpower and wealth, and in return provide you with some glamour in terms of place and gestures and objects, all the while turning you away from the course of action which would actually help you address your real issues).
Such nuances may become a past memory soon, although at this point civilization looks unstoppable, but from going where?
Rage Rooms? Have they no wood to split? That burns off aggression real fast especially elm. Even with a log splitter there is plenty of effort required and it’s quite satisfying when the engine bogs down as the log slowly gives up the fight.
In historical news, “A new study published in Communications Earth & Environment has reconstructed the climate conditions of the ancient Indus River Valley civilization between 3000 and 1000 B.C., finding that four intense droughts — each lasting more than 85 years — likely drove the gradual decline of one of the world’s earliest advanced societies.
The research team, led by Hiren Solanki at the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, combined paleoclimate data from cave formations and lake records with computer models to determine that the region shifted from wetter-than-present monsoon conditions to prolonged dry spells as the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed. The third drought, peaking around 1733 B.C., proved the most severe: it lasted 164 years, reduced annual rainfall by 13%, and affected nearly the entire region.”
Long winded paper here if you are determined.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02901-1
13% doesn’t seem like that much, but if you are near the margins it can matter. There is quite the difference between what you can grow without irrigation where I live (8 inches/yr), the Waterville plateau ( 12 inches) and Spokane (20 inches). That 13% would also include a wet year and three or four dry years in a row which is what really does the damage.
@ Chuaquín, I learned about him through my mom. I have no idea where she first heard of him or his books. Presumably back when she lived in Mexico, although Spanish-language bookstores do exist (or existed??) in the American Southwest.
Hello JMG,
Have you seen the latest of Tom Murphy’s posts in Do The Math?
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/11/ditching-dualism-1-exaltation/
Apparently he is starting a new series of posts about getting rid of dualism (as in the separation between matter and consciousness), except he proposes that only the material world exists, and consciousness is a mere emergent phenomenon.
His perspective on ‘life, the universe and everything’ seems oddly compatible with yours, despite the opposite worldviews!
Any comments?
Thank you as always!
Geocomplex, thanks for this. I’m not at all surprised — set aside the FIRE (financial, insurance, and real estate) industries, which are parasitic rather than productive, and the US economy has been declining sharply for decades now — but it’s good to have the heads up.
Zemi, karma is complex, and there are various reasons why someone might be born into a body that has hereditary illnesses or is unusually short. The basic principle, though, is that your karma makes you deal with your personal and interpersonal imbalances and failings. With that in mind, why does it surprise you that someone might need to be born shorter than average? Someone who’s been arrogant and patronizing in one life might well be born unusually short in another, so they get to experience what it’s like to have other people be arrogant and patronizing toward them.
Foxhands, that’s a very worrisome sign. Once people get used to using fits of destructive rage as a way of avoiding their problems, it seems tolerably likely to me that they’ll turn the same habit on less harmless targets.
Other Owen, funny, but no, that’s not it.
Neaj-Neiviv, hey, if Buy Nothing Day doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. I make an effort the rest of the year to shop from small local stores and independent suppliers, too; I simply find it useful and pleasant to set aside one day to step entirely outside the realm of exchanges mediated by money. As it happens, I do no shopping on well over half the days in every year, but having one day to focus on that seems productive to me. Still, your mileage may vary.
Siliconguy, fascinating. Thanks for this.
Tiago, no, I hadn’t gotten over there yet. Oh, well — I don’t imagine it would do any good to point out to him that “matter” is just our term for a certain set of experiences in consciousness.
OT: Rereading the Weird of Hali series, I’ve been wanting to ask “How much free will does Michaelmas have?” He’s a robot, and he’s under certain geasa – loyalty obviously being the first one – but It’s obvious that he has some opinions of his own, and even feelings, and is more loyal to some of the household than to others. So … where do you draw the line? [Thinking now of Melinda Snodgrass’ “Measure of a Man.” But then, Data had a pet cat; and his shipmates clearly thought of him as “people” and not “property.” Snodgrass is, or was, a lawyer, and that episode made gor some strong food for thought.]
Foxhands @ 239.. “looking for another venue..” These folks aren’t thinking big enough. Perhaps one, or more of those um, ‘repurposed’ illegal migrant hotels, could be re-repurposed into said rage-fueled slo-mo demolition sites. That, in my book .. would be quite fittingly cathartic!
Germany participating in another big European war? We “built back” our Bundeswehr under Merkel (and getting it somewhat functional will take roughly twenty years – that is, if we stop the deindustrialization “transformation” that the Greens started), and re-educated our youth that patriotism is Nazi (anybody remember how Merkel ripped the flag from Gröhe’s hands when he wanted to celebrate the CDU’s win in 2013? LOL). So today, I read in Die Welt that The Youth is organizing protests against the reinstatement of conscription, modeled after their climate protests (“Fridays for Future”). They probably expect teary-eyed politicians to applaud them again, like they did last time. Boy, are they in for a surprise.
There’s also the rather widespread sentiment now that if the Russian invades, at least all the North Africans and other assorted “refugees” will bail.
So no, I don’t expect us to provide entertainment for the third time in a row, at least not in the role of the Star Wars empire. If Putin decides that he’ll finally steamroll Ukraine after teasing everyone for three years now, it will sure be interesting times here, but my guess is that the well-off will emigrate swiftly, and the rest of us will learn Russian.
I’m normally pretty hesitant to share dreams and synchronicities these days, but Siliconguy just “synchronized” (verb form of synchronicity?) me and I did a quick divination to see if I should share and it was positive. Anyway, On Wednesday night I had a dream where I was driving with some family – I had the thought that “I need to find a stone to house Venus”. I see, what is in the dream, a Native American gift shop and I ask to stop. I’m looking for stones and find a spherical stone with some kind of blue gems on the top. I think “this won’t do” and find a large egg shaped stone with a map of the Indus River Valley on it (I knew that in the dream). There was also a paragraph written about it’s fertility with the take away being that it was. Presumably this is accurate because it housed a whole civilization before the droughts. I then bought the egg shaped stone for 50 dollars in the dream.
Now, I haven’t had any thoughts whatsoever of the Indus River Valley since probably grade school, and I haven’t had any thoughts on invoking Venus for a couple years. Anyway, I’m doing some research on this whole thing on a different browser tab, ran out of steam, and tabbed back to ecosophia. I refresh the page, and the first thing I see is Siliconguy’s comment on the Indus River Valley! Fun.
Anyway, maybe I’m being called to invoke Venus somehow or it’s happening organically already, idk. Still thinking. OR maybe the Indus River Valley astral node/egregore is hinting that the Indus RIver Valley Civilization’s script will be deciphered. That’d be more fun. Or both or something else.
Mr Greer .. in response to Eliot,
Dude! Twas about to give you a severe holidaze reprimand, for indulging in the brown acid – I mean, Think of All those corrupted Whoville chiluns! .. when, to my surprise at having read your disclaimer, it hit me: I was in error – you took the brown-bearded TROLL acid!
‘;]
When driving to work on Black Friday, the traffic was normal, not really slow, and from what I’ve heard, the local Walmart was not busy.
This is in contrast to previous Black Fridays which had awful traffic.
Does JMG or anyone in the commentariat have ideas/suggestions on tutoring teenagers at home?
I have a 14 year old boy, very bright, good at sports (atleast the ones he is interested in), deeply insightful when he wants to be, but has a temper and can be sharp, and is totally unacademic and hates academics. Especially at his old public school he got into a bunch of fights and was on his way to being kicked out before we sacrificed a great deal to send him to private school a couple years ago (the details don’t matter here – in short, he is far from being a saint and has the tendency to poke his nose into other people’s business, but he didn’t start any of the fights – others started them and he finished them by defending himself – but the schools tend to treat aggressors and defenders equally).
He is doing much better at private school (the fights have stopped) but he is in 9th grade now and the pressure is ramping up to do better academically and he just hates academics. He is leading the entire school in the number of demerits awarded – think “10 points deducted from Gryffindor” type of stuff if you’re into Harry Potter. Pretty much all for relatively minor stuff – being late to class, not bringing the right textbooks, ignoring the teacher, putting his head on the desk, etc and occasionally being rude/argumentative with the teachers. There’s a mix between the teachers who he respects and who like him and where the behaviour is much better and teachers who dislike him and he dislikes them and some of those teachers were absolutely shocked to hear how high he was able to score on some standardized tests last year after some intense work and pressure from my wife.
There are other issues, but this is the heart of it – he hates academics and many teachers dislike him and we (as parents) are getting pressure from the school to Do Something and stop him distracting the other students with discipline issues and (unstated but implied) drag down his academic results. He also has an ADHD diagnosis, and although I successfully resisted the doctors suggestion to put him on medication, the school is now suggesting we do so.
I know my son can be difficult (I see even more of it at home than his teachers do and he is often really mean to his younger sister) and I’m not blind – but he is very smart, and when I actually sit down to do school work with him and teach him stuff he is absolutely fine and he gets it. He is quite capable of doing well academically.
He just doesn’t like the school environment and it doesn’t like him.
For various reasons it is not practical for us to home school him – I have to work and I am not sure my wife is capable (and she also has other responsibilities).
How can we teach him/encourage him to do better at school? He doesn’t have to be amazing – just do enough to not to be at the top of the Principal’s hit list. Also not much point moving him – any public school would have kicked him out long ago – atleast at a private school there is still some judgment applied and we can actually have a conversation with the teachers (my wife is excellent at this), and another private school will likely be more of the same. He is fine socially – not the center of attention or super popular, but socially fine and has friends etc (albeit a bit late to be getting interested in girls – he isn’t really into them yet)
We already make sure he gets the other stuff he needs that makes a big difference (he eats healthy, gets LOTS of exercise and is in great shape, and was only given a phone at age 14, years behind all his friends and his phone use is heavily limited – no social media and very limited games).
Other than giving up my job and teaching him myself – I’m not sure what I can do.
Point about the future of German-polish relations. Tino Chrupalla(germanised slavic last name btw, ) said that Putin is no threat, and that neighbouring countries can potentially be dangerous. In this context he mentioned Poland, which failed to apprehend the guy responsible for the Nordstream attack.. One guy from AFD, Fabian Küble, made the headlines in Poland, by posting on twitter the Chrupalla was very diplomatic, Poland is way bigger threat to Germany than Russia, that Poland identity is based on feeling wronged and Poland depicts itself as victim of european history, and finishing with assertion that poles are afroamericans of Europe. Our prime minister used this to attack right wingers for cooperating with AFD, which is done by just one half of Konfederacja, while the more nationalistic part doesn’t. Anyway, Kuble got criticized even by the AFD members, but the responses to one such tweet iread were more aligned with what Kuble said.
Hey JMG
I came across this essay that may be of interest, since it sheds a light on some contradictions of the standard “biological” explanations of human nature, War in particular.
It’s a review and commentary of a book by Barbara Ehrenreich titled “Blood Rites”, which challenges the standard idea that war is some manifestation of a hunting or predatory instinct. Instead, she proposes a more “defensive” explanation.
Ehrenreich points out that hominids only rather recently became predatory, and for most of their evolutionary history were prey creatures. It was only relatively recently that hominids developed the intelligence and power to defend themselves, and eventually became predatory. It is this evolutionary novelty of being a predator after far longer periods of time being prey that she thinks explains the many odd ways humans enact or react to war. For a start, she proposes that the reason people dehumanise the enemy is essentially an instinctual response derived from our hominid ancestors having to defend against predatory animals. She also suggested that the real reason war was developed in the first place was because of the extinction of megafauna, which lead the now “unemployed” hunters to try and gain the same sense of purpose and respect by attacking other human tribes.
All in all, this idea that human nature can be understood as the result of a prey animal only recently becoming a predatory one, and still not quite getting the hang of it psychologically, explains a lot.
https://hipcrime.substack.com/p/blood-rites-by-barbara-ehrenreich
@Robert #145 – The first thing that might have to happen is a widespread acknowledgement of the fact that we already have used scientific methods to demonstrate the incompleteness of the scientific worldview. Yes, many effects are very weak and many experiments are quite boring, but as the once infamous quote of I guess Richard Wiseman goes: “I agree that by the standards of any other science, the reality of ESP is proven.” At least about that he’s right.
Have you ever read the exchange of letters between Wolfgang Pauli and CG Jung? Pauli had mathematical chops that went far, far beyond the mathematical utterances of Strømme’s paper – but he was careful enough not to try to set up wave functions and Hamiltonians and stuff to build a mathematical model of the insights he exchanged with Jung, who also never tried to push him in that direction. I’d not be surprised if both of them were quite aware of the fact that quantum mechanics is in no way suited to serve as more than a source of explanatory analogies in their field and level of inquiry. But of course they did discuss things like the spontaneous emergence of meaning out of randomness which Jung called synchronicity. And of course that easily leads to the hypothesis that if something unseen is capable of influencing the results of random events on a macroscopic scale it might well can do this on a microscopic scale, too. Years ago I read about the work of Hameroff and Penrose which Strømme mentions in her article. In principle, they went much further than Strømme did in that they presupposed the existence of some underlying “field” (aka consciousness) which can manipulate physical reality by influencing the results of random processes and searched for a mechanism how this might come to pass. They even proposed biological objects in the cells (I guess it was microtubules) which could possibly serve as “quantum interface”. But I have to say I didn’t follow it further and don’t know if their theories and research went anywhere.
I once was eager to follow the scientific fringes in the hope that somebody may finally produce the scientific proof of the unseen I was at that time desperately hoping for. But over time I have come to the same observation and conclusion that many OBErs report – once you have that experience your enthusiasm for proving anything to anybody is drastically reduced. Why would you want to waste your time if you can put it into fare more interesting things?
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
Ennobled # 245:
It’s amazing to know it, indeed I see Freixedo had his fame at international level, at least in Spanish language countries…
Hey JMG, are you going to write about your theory of “cognitive collapse” sometimes? I’d be very interested in reading your musings about cognitive feedback loops! One remark, though: Even if the feedback loop is well designed, it is subject to noise (aka decoherence) 😉
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@JMG
Re: the next great European war
You seem to be implying that America will only have marginal involvement in the coming war (else it could be the next world war). So this war will probably be the end of our culture’s Faustian pseudomorphosis, and even our elite classes will redirect their attention from Europe to North America and overseas regions that have geopolitical or economic importance.
Chuaquin#
About the Phosphorus Peak you’ll find interesting this article:
https://www.ecoprofile.se/thread-1044-Peak-konstgodsel.html
About the employ of human bones there are some hints in the nasty and outrageous following document
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15740773.2021.205189
RSDynamo,
Why do you want him to be better at academics and get off the principal’s hit list? This is a genuine question. What do you want for him? What does he want for himself? Is it solely the pressure from the school to put him on meds? Is it the impact on the other kids’ learning? Is he developing bad character? Are you hoping for him to go onto college or trade school? Are you just hoping he’ll get his diploma so he can get a decent job? Do you worry he’ll get into worse things like drugs or petty crime? I think your answer to this matters in how you approach things. It’s entirely possible (probable in my opinion) that most of his schooling is actually total bullshale, and I know from experience that it can be hard to convince a smart teenager who is aware of that fact to put in effort because “school is important for your future,” or similar, especially if he also knows that most academic and professional careers are largely bullshale, too.
What I find fascinating and disturbing is why the Managerial Regimes seem so intent on fulfilling the Book of Revelation in terms of the description of the coming world govt.
Especially the precursors to the “Mark of the Beast” system.
Like Mandatory Digital ID and other ways in which one must comply in order to function in society?
Everytime the attempt gets shut down. They rename it and try again. Repeatedly until people get worn down.
Patricia M, I see Michaelmas as a fully independent conscious being with as much free will as any of us have. His loyalty isn’t programmed. It’s partly habit, since he came to consciousness in the Middle Ages, when loyal service was one of the highest of virtues, but he also has a great deal of affection for the Chaudronnier family — think of the way he parts from Jenny just before the climactic scenes of Arkham. The mere fact that he happens to be made of brass rather than meat doesn’t make that much difference.
Athaia, ah, but your political leaders don’t see things that way. To judge from their words and actions, they’re in the same mental state as the leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just before the First World War, blundering into a conflict for which their nation’s hopelessly unprepared — a conflict they can only lose, but which they start anyway. It’s quite common when you get an elite class like the current managerial caste, which has been carefully protected from the consequences of its own actions. Thus I expect Germany, and the EU as a whole, to keep on goading the Russians until the Russians finally get sick of it and Oreshniki start raining down on German cities.
Luke, hmm! Fascinating. (I corrected the typo, btw.)
Polecat, I’ll have to look up the formula for trollsergic acid trollethylamide someday. 😉
Patrick, interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
RSDynamo, I don’t, having never had that experience. Maybe some of the commentariat can help.
Katylina, ouch. Yeah, it’s when words like that start flying that flying bullets become more likely.
J.L.Mc12, interesting. Do you know if she assessed the behavior of other species fairly new to predation, to check whether she was onto something?
Nachtgurke, at some point, doubtless.
Patrick, one very likely possibility is that the EU will blunder into a war it can’t win by itself, expecting the US to bail it out of the consequences of its stupidity, and be left twisting in the wind when the US tells it to go get stuffed. There simply isn’t enough commitment over here to what happens in Europe any more; if Europe got conquered by Russia, I suspect most Americans would shrug.
Info, well, of course. The elite classes all grew up in a society that’s got a pervasive Christian cultural presence, and so Biblical metaphors come bubbling up from the collective imagination at the drop of a hat.
Hey JMG
I’ve only read the linked essay on the book, so I have no idea. I also am not sure how you would compare our experiences with those of animals since we can’t assess physiological differences or subjective experience with perfect scientific clarity. But you are right that an attempt should be made in order to see if her theory holds water. But it does explain much, like how uneasy humans feel when they kill something, to the point they have to pray to the animals they kill in order to appease their souls. Would a obligatory carnivore, a true predator, feel much guilt for killing its prey?
@RSDynamo #254 In California we have something called the California High School Proficiency Exam CHSPE. A student can take it the second semester of his sophomore year and if he passes is done with high school and has earned the legal equivalent of a high school diploma and can work, go to a vocational school, adult school, or community college. Tests a degree of reading comprehension, writing skill, math through algebra 1 and geometry. Four of my five children took it at age 16 and went on in 4 different directions – successful small business entrepreneur, registered nurse, speech therapist, runs a college campus computer system. We homeschooled them until they passed the CHSPE and then it was community college and various jobs. The fifth went to a private school where I worked in the past, got a diploma there, is now a foreman for linemen crews for a power company. Perhaps your state has an equivalent your son can prepare for. Many states with parental and school approval allow students to take the GED at 16 or 17 as another escape route. Or you can hold out the carrot of early high school graduation by doing summer class work, max classes during the school year. The other institution most similar to the standard unnatural mandatory mass education is the prison system. Your son’s “bad” attitude is understandable. I teach in an alternative charter school in California.
Our culture demands the earning of some sort of high school diploma or equivalent. In California we have an array of private schools, public home schooling charter schools, at home independent study supervised by a public school teacher in a charter or regular public school, private homeschooling, the CHSPE, the GED. I hope you can find a way to meet your son’s real needs and education and the need to have that certificate.
@JMG -Thank you! That’s very good to hear. I quite like Michaelmas, and he is a marvel of a butler as well. The way he puts his two cents in during discussions has enough tact that women, diplomats, and employees could take lessons from him.
@RSdynamo
Not everybody is well suited to academics, and more important: not everybody is suited to classroom learning formats. I don’t know what country you’re in, but from what you say, homeschooling is legal?
At high-school age, that doesn’t have to look like a parent teaching every subject same as a classroom. It could look like starting a business (and documenting it), pursuing interests intensively (and documenting it), getting a job in a business you find interesting, to whatever extent that is legal in your jurisdiction… Homeschool regs in the US vary a lot by state, but it’s worth checking what the rules are, and talking to other parents of homeschooled teens to see what they are doing. Often even in a very intrusive regulatory environment, parents can find creative ways of ticking all the tickboxes to keep the regulators happy, while also giving the kid a lot of latitude. Business bookkeeping is math, etc.
Alternatively, if *being in school* is required for practical reasons, can you give your kid permission to underperform, on condition that he does not disrupt the learning of others, while pursuing some other project of his own? We homeschool, but this is the “backup plan” we had considered: if we had to put the kids in school, they’d have permission and approval from us, to use the time to non-disruptively work on their own stuff: read, draw, write up business proposals, whatever, just stay out of trouble and get through the day. We don’t actually care about grades. Literacy and numeracy are stuff we teach at home anyway. The rest is life experience and curiosity, which school naturally suppresses.
RSDynamo,
The kid in question sounds a lot like myself and a lot of the young men in my extended family. He sounds like a force unto himself that will live on his own terms, or not at all. Why do you care about his academic “performance”? Will he get a comfy job if he earns lots of Good Boy Points in university? I barely got into university and barely graduated, and now I’m successfully working in a field that I’ve got no formal education in. I haven’t been asked about my grades in over a decade. You can just do things, and the kid seems like a decent candidate for “most likely to do something”.
@ RSDynamo:
I think Jennifer raised some good points but, as a public school teacher who helped raise two step kids, I will throw in my two cents. Caveat: your situation sounds like it has many moving parts, a lot of which will be impossible to sus out without knowing you, your son, or the rest of your family, school environment, etc.
My step son was struggling academically in his preteen years, although he got along well enough with teachers and peers. His grandmother agreed to pay for tutoring for several months, which ended up helping.
(“Justice is what love looks like in public.” It’s from Cornel West, but I liked occasionally repeating this to my step kids whenever I thought it was appropriate, but not excessively. Something to live up to, by the way.)
By middle school, we had him join track and field to burn off the extra calories. He also loved complex Lego kits. By high school, he took classes in precision machining. He couldn’t graduate with his cohort due to an English teacher who kept flunking him. He had to take an online class to get that one class out of the way and get his high school diploma.
I’m the classroom, I deal with more than my fair share of difficult students. By the time they’re in high school, there’s a lot that we cannot control. With difficult students (and students generally) I try to build rapport. The principal that hired me told me several times that students don’t care what you know if they don’t know that you care. Not all students are open to getting along with me, and even when they are, they may still insist on doing things their way. We try to be on their side, see things from their perspective as much as we can, but they also have to suffer the consequences of their actions. When that’s necessary, we try to apply these with compassion and to let them know (with deeds as much as with words) that what they did does not have to define them. (“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future” comes to mind.)
A dean retired a few years ago after almost 4 decades as a dean. He liked to emphasize that we are all free to make any choice we want, but we need to be ready for the consequences of those choices, both good and bad…
I’m rambling and it’s getting late for me, so I will stop there. I hope at least some of the above was useful.
Indeed. But the strange part is that in choosing to do this. They are siding with the loser.
And being compelled for some reason to play into the villain role. Rather than doing something outside the designated villain box.
I suspect those rulers have Gnostic interpretation of Christianity that involves Lucifer being the Good guy and God being the Demiurge.
And somehow they have tricks to escape punishment.
Greetings!
Responding to #161, Executed’s question about using some gold as store of value…..
–It’s said the EU will demand all personal bank account info upon travel into and out of the EU.
–The Italian gummint is working on how to tax all private gold, including jewelry.
They really want to phase out cash and anything the gummint cannot trace, tax, and confiscate.
Good luck!
@271 Info
I doubt they are completely conscious about acting out the role of the Beast from Revelation. Rather, their minds are so shaped by Christian narratives that they unconsciously act out that role. If they consciously realize the parallels between their plans and those of the Antichrist, they shrug and continue on their path or they snicker at the thought of enacting their vision over the protests of superstitious Christians and continue on their path.
JMG and Patrick: JMG said “if Europe got conquered by Russia, I suspect most Americans would shrug.:
I’ve spent time in Western Europe, and Russia; albeit the time in Russia was 15 years ago. As an American, IMO, if my experience with Russia holds true, Russia conquering the EU (toppling the government) would be a step up for most Europeans versus what they are in line for otherwise. That is probably a controversial statement which might land me in jail if I were European. That’s where the 1st Amendment comes in handy.. 😉
ha Ha! Mr.Greer.. You know, I just may haved on occasion macro-dosed myself silly with that, causing me knuckles to become rather bloodied as they drag roughshod down the trail.
@RSDynamo
commiserate with him, look up the law in your state on how long he has to legally go to school ( is it 16 or18 ?) and what the state will do if he is deliquent from attending school ( they will force to continuation school or incarcerate him sometimes if he still wont comply or something. Anyway, you feel for him, but he has to attend a school. This is the best choice. Can he just hang in there while you help him develop whatever other real interests he has. Because, the thing is, at 18, in 4 short years, he needs to be able to take care of himself ( you need to tell him this, the legal requirements that constrain you and he right now in regards to school, and that you want him to have his path and that he needs to be able to earn a living in 4 years) . He might want trade school. In that case, there may be a different program than the one he is in that can be found even now. He might want to cut hair. Be a chef. Coach youth sports. I dont know, and you havent said. Do you know ? If he doesnt value or want to go to college, and that realy is a dead end thing to do for most young people in any case, he has a good point. Of course, being able to do math and learn about topics of interest and being able to communicate sufficiently helps everyone, so show him why that is so. Hm, one of my nieces stopped taking more college courses and is finishing massage therapy training about now. Her sister could do nothing with her college and works at a bank and is happy and pays her bills.
A 14 year old is in… freshman ? 9th grade ? Ok, lean into the 4 short years from now he needs to be in a full time college or trade school training program or working full time and supporting himself. What does he think ? ( of course he probably will change his mind a few times in the next few years, but what does he think now ? ) Look up the salary of what that occupation makes. Then research with him costs of apartments, budgets. Clue him in on your household budget and expenses, have him help pay the bills and make the household budget. Have him help plan food and grocery shop. What does it cost to have a car ? If he says he is going to be doing some long shot high paid thing, dont discourage him, but point out that those musicians, writers, artists or what have you put in many years of work before they make money at it so he still needs to do a different job to support himself while working on those pursuits. And he should be starting now, writing every day if he want to be a writer, reading about programing and learning on his own if he wants to do that, mentoring with a shop owner and working at a shop on weekends if he wants to do that, etc… he might behave slightly better, enough to not get kicked out if he has something he likes that he also gets to focus on and it is practical.
And, it is never too late to get academic in this country ( assuming you are in USA ? ) If such a young person gets to be 25 or whatever and decides that they realy dont like work at the autoparts store and want to do something that requires more education, they can just enroll in the local community college and get caught up and transfer to university.
Chuaquin #240
I agree there are differences on a lower level and I was talking in a general sense about mainstream culture. Our rural population still has some of our older culture left, for example.
European elites make the mistake of thinking that our relation to the us is that of equal partners (while we are more like vassals), and have the big mouth that comes along with that. In the past that kind of worked, because we had the US at our back, but that’s rapidly changing.
It’s a bit like the mouse thinking they scared away the cat, not seeing it’s the lion that stands behind them that did it. In that, the US is not much different. They think they still are the lion of the world…
I doubt the european elites will learn their mistake before things go really bad, so we have some interesting times ahead.
–bk
Anselmo # 261:
Thanks for your links about phosphorus and bones.
@J.L.Mc12
What about prey animals themselves ? I’m a cattle farmer and I can tell you they love fighting each other, to the point that when one herd of females meets a new herd (even if they have only been apart for a few weeks) they will gleefully engage in running battles, with all sorts of combat combinations. It’s mostly for fun and to sort out a pecking order in the farm context, but there is zero second thoughts about mass violence against each other, and they aren’t squeamish about killing things in more wild settings.
The males prefer to just fight one other male and aren’t so into the team battles, but again they do it with absolute relish, so much so that the drive to fight overrides all other drives (eating, sex, everything). They will smash through fences just to get the chance to battle another bull. Male rams are the same (there is a reason Aries is a ram), if not more totally focused on constant battle and will fight to the death from exhaustion if you let them.
I’m pretty sure that article is just a modern person unaccustomed to the wildness in us trying to explain things beyond our understanding. War and battle is just a part of our universe.
Back around Nov 11th 2024 I posted an update on a meditation/breathing exercise that begins using a breathing pattern to work with the vagus nerve:
inhale, pause, exhale, pause to set initial state for the exercise, then as exercise progresses allow breath to take on its own pattern with mind state being: Rest and feel the light body pulsating (energy circulating too) – peace and calm tranquillity in a gentle ‘smile’.
An update and some observations:
The initial breathing to activate vagus response works with whatever pattern is comfortable to the individual so long as the exhalation is at least half as long again as inhalation (e.g 2secs in 3secs out, 3secs in 5secs out, 4secs in 6secs out).
Pauses between inhalation/exhalation might be momentary or longer depending on capacity and current state (that is – stuff changes!)
I began to focus on the ‘space’ between inhale/exhale rather than the process of breathing in and out – just let that do what it wants and instead, focus the energy of the Ideal at the ‘stillpoint’ of the flow.
In doing practice, some random thoughts arose:
Exploring the idea that physical breath is actually just a symptom of the flow of life energy as we flicker in and out of the unmanifest and manifest so quickly we cannot perceive it but our attention held here in the physical ‘tricks’ us into seeing only a partial picture of what is going on.
With that in mind – wondering if three fold breathing would actually be enhanced by paying attention to the pauses between inhalation and exhalation – and that the ‘Breath of Life’ is the constant flow from beyond – one pulse triggers inhalation, another pulse triggers exhalation – so attention is not on the actual inhale/exhale, instead – in the momentary pauses (long or short) focus on the source of consciousness not the vehicles consciousness is using.
Put another way, physical breathing might keep the physical body functioning, but actually, the physical expression of breathing (inhale exhale) occurs because of Life force (Consciousness) flowing – that is, we are not alive because of the physical breathing, we do physical breathing because we are alive (i.e. the soul uses the mind and physical vehicles – when the vehicles are no more, the soul remains).
As such, a shift in focus/perspective could be interesting to explore. For sure energy flow can be enhanced by breathing (as many martial artists/meditators might attest) – the consideration here is to shift from the focus of physical breathing and [obviously] keep that going, but look for the higher self within the apparent pause and flow of what is happening.
Which leads me to a question:
Has anyone done any work where it is the ‘space’ between breaths where focus is ‘broadcast’?
Any thoughts or experience on the matter much appreciated.
Thank you.
>Everytime the attempt gets shut down. They rename it and try again. Repeatedly until people get worn down.
They so very want Total Control. I think it’s all they want. And like with a dog chasing a car, they wouldn’t know what to do with it if they ever got it. Like with lies and fooling people, you can control all of the people some of the time, you can control some of the people all of the time but you can’t control all of the people, all of the time. Telling them this will make them predictably, extremely angry.
And I guess their worst fear is No Control, where all their outputs are ignored and discarded. You can control none of the people, none of the time.
Or what if the world they’re creating is one in which a multitude of factions have the same abilities to control the populace – and they’re all working at cross purposes? You worship chaos? Here’s your chance to scream out a hymn or two.
>We homeschooled them until they passed the CHSPE and then it was community college and various jobs.
You and many parents like you deserve an “I Actually Cared About My Kids” award.
>The fifth went to a private school where I worked in the past, got a diploma there, is now a foreman for linemen crews for a power company.
That’s another line of work where you have to pay attention to reality, where there are wrong and right answers and where wrong answers get you killed. I guarantee you he (and it is a he) is no soyboy or dangerhair. They make very good money for what they do, but that money is hazard pay – people die in that line of work. High voltage is no joke.
>He just doesn’t like the school environment and it doesn’t like him.
It is a mystery, innit? Especially in the foggy haze of middle age where you’ve forgotten all that misery that you went through in school yourself. Forget. Forget.
I’d tell your kid to learn how to fight well enough so nobody messes with him, get his GED and get out. Do just well enough to scrape by until you can get out. Most colleges are very hostile to young white men here in Murica, if you really want him to get a degree in STEM, it had better be useful and it had better be abroad. Otherwise, I saw a billboard the other day inviting the public to train as linemen – “learn while you earn”.
I’d say if you’re going to go that route, everybody loves an HVAC guy when he gets it all working again. The voltages are somewhat lower too, although 220 can kill you just as dead.
I hear the military is raring to go fight another pointless war. You say he’s physically fit? They’re – anxious – to talk to him. But it is just another blue collar job at this point, doesn’t pay very well.
JMG,
Regarding Daimons, we each have one, right? Is a Daimon the “Higher Self” out there, who places a piece of itself, say my current incarnation, in particular situations so to learn and experience? So I would be kind of a lab rat, though made out of a slice of the laboratorian himself? Like he was running experiments on himself?
@ Larkrise and JMG (and all)
I did not see that — and most UFO stuff to me seems like “lucy and the football”, always a build up and then a let down. It’s been going on kinda long.
This am on x, this below story popped up on reddit. Either this is good AI, or someone should start writing fiction for a living!
https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1p92xe7/you_wanted_disclosure_i_am_a_whistleblower/
Retromancy 101 guide:
https://www.artofmanliness.com/lifestyle/57-things-we-should-bring-back/
(57 things we should bring back.)
Re: consciousness as fundamental, was listening to The Telepathy Tapes revealing, prooving, considering implications of widespread telepathy + among nonverbal autistic kids . And this leads the writer/host Ky to the ‘consciousness is fundamental’ position. She referenced the ‘THE ACADEMY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF POSTMATERIALIST SCIENCES: INTEGRATING CONSCIOUSNESS INTO
MAINSTREAM SCIENCE’ and their manifesto, linked below. The sea change has so many beautiful waves!!!! https://www.aapsglobal.com/the-creation-of-aaps/
https://opensciences.org/files/pdfs/Manifesto-for-a-Post-Materialist-Science.pdf
@Chauquin #36
For what it’s worth, several years after 1918, the fields around Ypres yielded massive and plentiful crops. Bones of men blown to bits and the 10 shells per meter that landed there over 4 years (phosphate being an ingredient in explosives) left the land unnaturally fertile, as well as thoroughly churned up.
@Other Owen #282 I have two sons and three daughters, all confident talented people. The fifth was always adventurous. He texted me a video of him dangling from a line on a helicopter – a dot way up in the air- being taken in to work on a pole. I left the private school before he graduated for better pay. I ran into a student who went there also and when I mentioned my son went there she said, “Nathan! He’s always so kind.” I found out years later he took down a nasty bully at the school in a fist fight. My two proudest moments of his teen age time. Nathan told me he ran into the guy years later in a bar and the former bully acknowledged him and said “Yeah, I was a real jerk once.”
It wasn’t all roses with him however – self will, worked and got a car while still in high school giving him freedom to do stuff unknown to us, dubious friends, late nights, experimentation dancing on the edge of bad stuff. Right after his 19th birthday he came to us in tears said he would follow our rules, do what we say and that his friends were no good. He told me years later he had that revelation while doing mushrooms with his dubious friends. It was a permanent turn in the right direction.
He would sleep in real late around age 16 and I got tired of yelling at him to get up so instead I started to sneak in quietly and drape a sopping wet cold wash cloth over his face. After a few experiences of that he would sense me coming in and would say I’m awake and get up. Now we joke I raised him using water boarding.
Foxhands & JMG,
Re: rage rooms, I think folks are already turning their rage on less harmless targets. I view the increase in violence against others as a normalization of violence and an acting of rage that has nothing to do with the intended target. It’s a projection. For me road rage is on the lower end of harm on a spectrum that proceeds all the way to mass murder. Of course, there are many factors at play including psych meds and social media.
Yes, our culture is in trouble when people have limited capacity to have a healthy relationship with rage. There are healthy ways to work with and complete that energy but our culture glorifies violence. It also emasculates men and that energy has to go somewhere.
Along these lines I also have deep concerns about escape rooms. Yes on one hand they are being touted as an opportunity for team building and problem solving and even a “fun” date night (no thanks). I put it in the same category as rage rooms, only this time the patron is paying to feel trapped and need to escape. More activation of the sympathetic nervous systems that are massively stuck on.
For me both of these offerings are an indication of how much unprocessed life force and emotion people are carrying around. As long as that energy remains primarily disconnected from its origin (i.e. people are unaware inside themselves what’s driving it), people will live in reactivity rather than choice. A very bad sign indeed.
The situation between Poland and Germany is strange and more dangerous than it seems imo.
Germany has shattered its social cohesion and is deindustrializing fast due to lack of affordable energy. They will have to face severe internal unrest when unemployment starts to rise and considering the AI and other financial bubbles that could be quite soon.
Poland is poised to be the next central European powerhouse due to their social cohesion, investments in the military and energy resources. They have large coal reserves in Silesia and last July they announced they found a large oil and gas field in the Baltic Sea near Świnoujście that could supply them for decades. Yet the Poles seem to do everything they can to shoot in their own feet. They keep antagonizing their powerful neighbours both to the west and to the east while banking on the support of a retreating superpower on the other side of the ocean.
A salient detail is that both the coal reserves and the oil and gas field are in territories that used to be German and that only became Polish after WW2. Now those lands are among the most valuable on the continent. Should be awesome and yet the Polish president Nawrocky demanded reparations from Germany weeks after he was elected earlier this year. I think it is a matter of time before Germany will mirror this and a new Reichsbürger movement or something wants their land back (Make Breslau and Stettin great again).
JMG mentioned in the past that Prussia was quite dangerous because they always felt inferior to their neighbours and under threat even when nothing such was the case. The hartland of Prussia (Pommeren and East-Prussia) is now almost completely Polish territory. I wonder if Poland didn’t just inherit the lands but also the attitude?
“And, it is never too late to get academic in this country ( assuming you are in USA ? ) If such a young person gets to be 25 or whatever and decides that they realy dont like work at the autoparts store and want to do something that requires more education, they can just enroll in the local community college and get caught up and transfer to university.”
Very true. I started college at 27. I saw a great many clueless teenagers forcing me to the realization that I had been just as clueless at 18. I would probably have picked the wrong major. When asked about the book that changed their life I suspect very few answer “Materials Selection for Naval Nuclear Propulsion Plants.”
The next life changing event was taking the SAT on a bet while on shore duty. When the score came back the GF at the time towed me to the base library, pointed me at the career counseling section and told me to pick something interesting, get out of the navy and go to college.
Yavanna @ 221. Thanks for the links. A rift valley in New Mexico? Just when I think I have a good understanding of the very complicated geology of North America, I learn a whole tranche of new stuff.
What’s going to happen to the Muslim immigrants in Germany if Germany goes to war against Poland? Will they get drafted into the war or will they try to escape back to wherever they came from?
I forgot to add to my previous comment: what is strange is that it should be obvious that the first country that pivots and establishes mutually beneficial relations with Russia will have a huge, likely decisive advantage in the case of a serious conflict between the two. Yet neither Germany nor Poland are making any move in that direction. Poland has been the most belligerent EU country during the whole Ukraine-Russia conflict while Merz is only looking for ways to escalate further. Maybe JMG is right about elites that have been shielded from the consequences of their actions. I think future historians will shake their heads.
J.L.Mc12, what I had in mind in terms of animal studies was simply watching the behavior of recent herbivores-turned-predators in combat, and comparing it to the behavior of species that have been obligate predators for many millions of years. We have, as you point out yourself, no way of gauging what the subjective experiences of obligate carnivores (or any other nonhuman animals) are like — behavior, on the other hand, we can observe.
Patricia M, he’s another of the many characters in that series that I didn’t invent — he just showed up, and I was as startled as Jenny was when I found out about his origin and nature. Those are pretty reliably my favorite characters.
Info, that’s normal. It’s actually quite difficult to step outside one’s inherited cultural narratives — that’s why, for example, Marxism is simply evangelical Protestant Christianity with the serial numbers filed off and God renamed Dialectical Materialism. In the case of our elite classes, since they’ve rejected Christianity’s values, they’re inevitably acting out the assigned role of the devil’s side.
Gnat, I get the impression a significant number of ordinary Europeans would agree with that.
Polecat, that can be a pretty rough trip. I hope you take multivitamins, drink plenty of water, and catch up on your sleep afterwards!
Earthworm, many thanks for this. The space between breaths was a major focus of my teacher John Gilbert’s methods of practice — he called it the Window of Opportunity, and taught various ways to make use of that. The Essene Healing Breath meditation is the most accessible collection of his methods. Here are the papers:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/209520.html
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/219568.html
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/225022.html
(I divided the original paper into three parts, corresponding to the level of initiation at which each stage was taught — you’ll have to scroll down in the two latter papers to find the material. The second paper discusses the Window of Opportunity.)
Oskari, yes, the Daimon is the higher self in Yeats’s mature thought. The relation between the Daimon and the personality is a lot closer than that between an experimenter and a lab rat, but very roughly, yes.
Jerry, “disclosures” like that are a dime a dozen these days; my guess is that staff sergeants in the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations get really ripped on weed on their off hours, type them out, and compete to see whose can come up with the most comments, with everyone else buying the winner a drink or something. Reddit in particular is a fine place to see such things. Did you by any chance see this fine bit of malarkey there insisting that horses used to lay eggs, and that a cartel of horse breeders, veterinarians, and Big Pharma has been hiding the truth from us all?
https://old.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1pa0ooq/the_horse_egg_conspiracy_150_years_of_deleted/
Justin, an excellent start! I note that some of the things on the list — a long attention span, writing things by hand, carrying cash, hobbies, poetry, a land line (my only phone), eccentricity, secrets, a record player and a tolerably good collection of vinyl records, colorful insults, knowing Latin, neckties (required at Masonic meetings), sleeping with open windows (in the summer), and audio-only phone calls (all you can do on a land line) — are ordinary parts of my life. I’ll pass on doctors in doctor coats, though, or in any other garment. (Well, I might make an exception for tar and feathers.)
AliceEm, thanks for this! I wasn’t aware of the AAPS, and will be following up that clue with some interest. Synchronistically enough, I was just contacted by an organization researching UFO phenomena that’s also wide open to nonmaterialistic theories — they liked my recent article on the occult dimensions of the phenomenon. So that sea change seems to be generating some very lively surf.
Angelica, thanks for this. I hadn’t thought of escape rooms, but of course you’re right.
Boccaccio, good heavens. Of course you’re right — now that so much of the historic territory of Prussia has been absorbed by Poland, it may be Poland’s turn to enact the same follies.
Siliconguy, good gods, yes. I returned to college at the age of 28 and was appalled to see so many kids being sucked into the machinery and chewed up so remorselessly, as they didn’t have the life experience to do anything else. Then I remembered that I’d been just as clueless a decade before.
Anon, those who don’t flee fast enough will be drafted. Those who aren’t drafted fast enough will flee.
Boccaccio, you’d think, right? I’m pretty sure that’s a good part of why Hungary is playing nice with Russia these days. Maybe it’s because Germany and Poland have partitioned Prussia between them, and thus have both ended up with whatever frightful collective karma makes Prussians pick fights they can’t win.
Neaj-Neiviv @ 243, since when does being “in business” mean customers should be required to patronize a particular establishment? If someone wants the cachet and social standing of being a businessperson, they take some risk. Me, personally, I don’t see a lot of difference between crap I don’t need at Walmart, Family $, or some local so-called convenience store.
I spent a cold and snowy Friday hand-stitching a picked stitched hem for a skirt I am making while listening to some you tube channels I like. This was a lengthy process because pick-stitching is a new skill for me. In the USA, what until very recently held communities together was not buying and selling, but the myriads of voluntary associations, possibly first mentioned by de Tocqueville, which formed around churches, schools, lodges, particular hobbies, among other things. Our host has frequently discussed this phenomenon.
@Nachtgurke (#257):
I haven’t read the Jung / Pauli letters yet, but will need to do so forthwith. Thanks so much for the pointer to them.
The Richard Wiseman quote had an earlier parallel, according to tradition, though I have never managed to find the original published source: “On any other subject, one tenth of the evidence would suffice to convince me; on this subject, a thousand times the evidence would not suffice.”
I am one of the many who had that sort of experience (twice, 70 years ago, at age 13). Those few hours remain the most real thing I have ever experienced in all my many years. It was very like what Strømme supposes, a living omnipresent consciousness quite apart from time and space, matter and energy, not perceptible by ordinary senses, nor conceptualizable by any human thought, nor describable in any human language This, of course, is why her paper caught my interest.
JMG #296 Ah! Wonderful – I’ve just copied those into my working journal and will read after dinner!
Re-reading what I posted at #280 I’ve realised my labels from a year ago are garbled:
Spaces = areas to include in work
1st space = the actual physical and etheric
2nd space = earth
3rd space = sun/cosmos
4th space = the space within that is vast – like a whole other enormity that is like looking at the outer universe but is somehow nested within at the same time. Like being perched between two utter vastnesses.
Caveat emptor: 4th Space is just a handy label for myself – to pop the ‘seat of consciousness’ into a pigeonhole my personality can comprehend! 😉
Feel the inner eye ‘turning’ within and ‘looking’ down to the physical body, then within it to the ‘beyond’ – the‘4th space’ within – the centre that holds a ‘space’ or ‘accommodation’ as Hazrat Inayat Khan put it, that links the manifest with the unmanifest – the divine spark that is our individuality / higher self, that is itself an expression of the divine.
I came up with the label threefold breathing as a personal mental marker, on further reflection it compresses too much – it is better to say:
1st level breathing – physical and etheric
2nd level breathing – physical, etheric and earth
3rd level breathing – physical, etheric, earth and solar/cosmos
4th level breathing – physical, etheric, earth, solar/cosmos and 4th space
In simple terms, it is an attempt to link to the higher self (to lead the way) in the exercises initially driven by the personality/ego.
The idea developed after looking at your Tree of Light exercise (Dolmen Arch) which builds on the work of the 3 Cauldrons exercise – like a sort of analogue tweaked to a metaphor for my own mind.
Thank you for the links – ‘window of opportunity’ – I like that!
Patrick @ 260 and JMG @ 264, Patrick, I go a bit further and suggest that most Americans who are not the Eurocentrists currently infesting the Democratic Party, would far rather see a Russian protectorate over Europe than see Europe become Muslim. Russians appear to have a strong respect for tradition and don’t blow up other people’s historic monuments. Nor do we welcome the notion of a Muslim/Chinese alliance controlling the warming Arctic.
I would suggest that Americans and Russians need each other, and that Mr. Putin understands this. IMHO, the stupid intransigence of the But, but the Czar’s troops wiped out my ancestor’s village centuries ago (how many centuries they carefully do not specify) crybabies is what is standing in the way of the sort of multicultural, multipolar world order those same crybabies claim to favor.
RSDynamo,
I appreciate your dilemma and echo what others have said about supporting your son in considering what he most wants for himself in his life. Key question: What does your son most want for himself and how can he create the space to experiment with that question before he has to earn a living?
Along those lines Doug Casey published a book called The Preparation. It is intended to support young men in finding their true purpose through experimentation. A friend of mine is working through it with her granddaughter and is finding it really helpful. School these days no matter what level often has very little space to actually attune to the student. While some of the options in the book are prohibitively expensive for many, my friend has found it really valuable. From the book description:
Written by three generations—legendary investor and bestselling author Doug Casey, entrepreneur Matt Smith, and twenty‑year‑old “beta tester” Maxim Smith—this book distills their hard‑won wisdom into a four‑year, 16‑cycle program you can start tomorrow.
16 themed cycles—Medic, Cowboy, Pilot, Fighter, Hacker, Maker, and more—each built around a hands‑on “Anchor Course” that forces you to learn by doing, not by cramming.
Earn‑while‑you‑learn design shows you exactly how to pay your way through each cycle and graduate debt‑free.
Cost: roughly one year of tuition – yet delivers four years of marketable skills, global travel, and a network of do‑ers, not talkers.
Foundational philosophy rooted in Stoicism and Renaissance thinking so you don’t just master tasks—you master yourself.
Bullet‑proof curriculum: step‑by‑step schedules, book lists, online courses, and locations for every skill so you’re never guessing what to do next.
Battle‑tested results—Maxim used the program to rack up EMT shifts on Oregon wildfires, fly solo over the Rockies, ranch in Uruguay, and sail the Strait of Magellan before he turned twenty.
The Problem: College now averages $140,000+ and often delivers little more than ideology, debt, and obsolete credentials. The Preparation: compresses that money and time into a crucible that turns raw potential into a modern‑day Renaissance Man—one who can protect, build, heal, sell, and lead in a world being up‑ended by AI and economic turmoil.
RSDynamo @ 254, I second the suggestions to find out what alternatives, tests, independent study, etc., might be available and legal in your state. Explain everything to your son, or, better yet, have him help with the research. These might be options, available at certain ages, but he will need to do some work, like independent study, to avail himself of them.
As for getting him off the principle’s hit list, that is fairly simple. Do remember that while principle, counselors and teachers are individually very nice and responsible people, the school itself is a bureaucracy like any other and must be approached strategically. What I have seen done by other parents, and what I think you should consider is 1. have a frank conversation with your son about what cannot be tolerated, such as hazing, outrageous disrespect for others, etc., or what behaviors you will not allow in your home. Then, 2. tell him that he has an absolute right to defend himself and that you WILL have his back no matter what the school says. but, 3. age 14 is NOT too young to expect decent manners. I would not care if a kid reads books in class, draws pictures or makes models but I would not want to hear that he or she was distracting others. Because I was bored/annoyed./angry is no excuse for attention seeking behavior nor will that make him any friends.
The importance of point 2 above, which you will have communicated to principle and teachers–We have told Johhny he may defend himself and we WILL back him up–is that that shuts down the performative rituals. The rituals in which school says Johnny was baad, you say you are so sorry and you will talk to him, you get the picture.
Have you considered martial arts or some other activity which is not part of the world of school and in which he could find friends and good experiences? Church group, summer sports leagues. A friend’s husband told their son, “I don’t care if you want to study ballet, but you will do something.”
Hey JMG, Foxhands, Angelica
On the subject of violence and rage, and its increasing direction to unusual targets, I wonder if the Boxing community would be willing to find some way to offer their own equivalent of a “rage room”,which would at least increase the chance that more people get curious about a martial art that would help them develop a healthier attitude to violence and rage.
On Burkean Conservatism:
Coherence doesn’t survive forced novelty. Systems evolve best when change is gradual, cumulative, and metabolized rather than imposed — whether you’re talking about political tradition or technological disruption. Sudden breaks don’t produce freedom; they produce fragility.
Your work shows why slow change matters.
You think in long arcs — myth and history, ecology and culture — and you read patterns the way other people read headlines. There’s a bardic intelligence in the way you trace stories through time, letting meaning accumulate rather than forcing it.
and tradition both fail when they try to skip the slow part.
Everything durable emerges from patience.
Two thoughts:
Systems stay coherent when change is continuous with their past.
Systems fracture when change replaces their past.
Hey JMG
True, but from what I gathered from the essay I linked, most of her theory seems to focus on the subjective aspects rather than behavioural. But I could be wrong, I’ll need to read this book of hers. The only behavioural aspects I recall being mentioned in the review that could be tested in other animals are the intense and forced initiation of a “civilian” into the unnatural state of being a “soldier”, and the treating of enemies as if they were predators of a different species. I suppose that would be sufficient to begin testing out her theory.
“The Twitter stuff is just the beginning. In 50 years we’re going to get British Muslims who can trace all four of their grandparents back to the Indian subcontinent teaming up with British Blacks who can trace two of their grandparents back to Nigeria and the other two to Jamaica teaming up in the streets of London to fight to save Western Civilization from the Islamic jihadists in France.”
Meanwhile you’ll have French Muslims who can trace their ancestry to the Maghreb and West Africa who are in London fighting against the British, and the French Muslims claim they are saving Western Civilization from the Indian / Pakistani Islamic jihadists in Britain.
After school and a year of compulsory National Service, my parents insisted I go to university. I knew I wasn’t ready for university, and dropped out after three years and many failed exams. Later I did a course in pen-and-ink drafting at the local technical college. While working as a draftsman I realized that engineers were no smarter than I was but earned a lot more than I did, so I returned to university at the age of 27 and got an engineering degree.
JMG, Silicon Guy, et al – I recently heard a short broadcast on our local NPR station provided by the BBC Climate Watch. The program celebrated the Kodiak Electric Association, which provides 99% renewable electricity for the residents of Kodiak, Alaska, using “hydro and wind” power. Not only is it “good for the planet, it’s cheaper than the alternative.” They don’t quite get to the part about “so this is what we should all be doing, isn’t it?”, but why would they bother to tell us about it in such triumphant tones otherwise?
So, I did a little research, and found some additional facts: KEA supports only about 6000 customers (so, it’s SMALL). 80% of the electricity is from hydroelectric power, which is so dependent on geography that there are few (if any) sites left to develop. Even though Kodiak is far north, its winter is mostly windy rain, not snow, so heat pumps are practical much of the time. The “alternative” power (which they still maintain for backup) is diesel, which has to be shipped in, so it’s going to be expensive. In fact, KEA kWh cost about twice as much as in my Maryland neighborhood. (It’s hard to be specific, since we have summer and winter rates which differ widely, and billed line-items for generation, transmission, and distribution.)
I consider omission of these facts to constitute “journalistic malpractice” (not that it’s unusually bad, alas). If the broadcast were only intended for entertainment, I could let it slide, but there are important decisions to be made in this environment of disinformation.
You may hear the same story from Paraguay, about an ambitious electric company striving for full renewable energy (they’re doing it with old-school hydroelectric dams).
Thank you to everyone for the considered responses – I am very grateful for the contributions to my family’s situation.
As someone mentioned there are indeed a lot of moving parts and context that is too detailed for a blog comment, but I have been reading Ecosophia for many years and have huge respect for both JMG and the commentariat and value the independent-minded and varied experience of the people here, and these comments are bearing that out.
I am approaching this on the basis of the famous Bruce Lee quote – “take what is useful and discard the rest”.
In terms of location, we are in the North of England, but in a rather privileged enclave which feels much more like being in London or the South East (easy access to private schools etc). Home schooling is entirely legal and while it is not common we know a couple of families doing it (one of them fell apart because the parents had serious psychiatric issues and basically weren’t capable of it and the kids are in regular school now, and the other is doing okay – they shifted to homeschooling from 7th grade, which is the transition from primary to secondary school here, but I am not thrilled with how they approach homeschooling and would not want to join them – their kid is a friend of my son and he’s a good kid, but there’s entirely too much “here’s a lecture on YouTube – just watch it today” stuff for my taste.
But more importantly I don’t think it is feasible for us to homeschool, although since it is mentioned so much here, I will rethink and give it some thought. I have to work and my wife also works part time and manages the house and I really don’t see how it is possible to find the time to homeschool.
Someone mentioned the Doug Casey book The Preparation – great minds think alike etc, I have just bought it and started reading it and while it is early days yet, I think it could potentially be a fantastic path for my son, in a few years – I don’t agree with everything he says, but the basic idea of designing a different path that actually develops the different facets of young men’s character is hugely appealing.
@Jennifer Kobernik – your point is well taken as is your question. I actually agree that most of his education IS nonsense and teaches him nothing of value. Until this year he had 2-3 years of French classes at the same private school and he literally knows only one word of the language (a swear word taught to him by the kid sitting beside him). It’s not just him either – the others in his French class are marginally better, but not much. They have literally learned nothing in 3 years. The only kid in the class who can have even a simple conversation in French is the one with a French mom, who didn’t learn it at school. Although French is a particularly extreme example, the vast majority of the classes don’t seem to be of much use and are pretty focussed on preparing him for exams, especially the older he gets. So I have a lot of sympathy for this view.
If he doesn’t go to university (he will be the first person in the family in like 3-4 generations on my side to not go, although that’s not true of my wife’s side – she was the first there to go), he will have my full support. After all I am an Ecosophia reader and hold probably the same political/social/cultural views as the median Ecosophia reader, which is definitely nothing mainstream. So I am not afraid of him stepping outside the mainstream – but he has to show the ability to live in society and do the absolute minimum required to get by in society to a basic standard.
As I often tell him – I absolutely loathe doing my taxes every year – probably even more than he dislikes academics – but I still have to go through the pain and do a good job. I think him reaching a decent standard in school and atleast learning to survive is in the same category. Is he going to stop and drop out of whatever job or career or business he does in the future because it is a bit tedious? Also, while he may not have the interest in academics (largely due to his teachers – he seems to like it much better with tteachers he respects), he is CAPABLE of doing very well and I think it is a shame if he doesn’t fulfil his potential. Moreover, while he puts on a brave face, the pressure in school from peers and teachers and the sense that he is not able to cope in an environment that is quite against him, is getting to him and I hate to see him feel like that.
I don’t need him to become an academic superstar (although he could) or go to university, but I need him to learn the basic skills of living as part of a system and society and handle tough situations, and then go on to do whatever he wants, as long as he doesn’t laze around and waste his life – he can do anything as long as he takes it seriously and pursues it – but not nothing.
Also, while my wife and i work hard and money is tight, my parents’ generation is wealthy and at some point in the next decade or so, I am likely to inherit significant wealth, and in due time, so will my kids and he knows that – he knows that if he makes it to middle age – provided I haven’t lost it all – he will be a wealthy man, and I am VERY conscious that he doesnt’ grow up with that always on his mind (to be clear, I grew up very middle class – the wealth and associated lifestyle changes only arrived when I was about 14, so I have many memories of living simply)
@Mary Bennet – I think you are spot on and a speech very similar to what you said has been given to him since his very first fight and he has mostly lived up to it. He does indeed do martial arts (he is quite a serious competitor) and he is very good at it, as well as dabbling in various other sports. it’s his primary outlet and his senseis are his primary male role models after me. It’s worked till now, but the school is pushing us to do more to improve his academics.
@Anon teacher – thank you for that perspective. I love that quote “Justice is what love looks like in public” and as for the consequences thing – I have been reciting that to my kids like a mantra since they were toddlers – “actions have consequences” (including for me, choosing to downgrade a decade ago to a lower paying job to be around more for my kids but with consequences that we cannnot afford the things and holidays etc that many of my peers from university take for granted).
@All – lots to think about here, let me process it some more and get back some more.
In short – i don’t want to force him to go down any path or live up to society’s image of success. But I want him not to be lazy (which he has an unfortunate tendency to be), and to live up to his potential and develop a minimum level of ability to survive independently in society – and that starts by learning to survive in school.
RSDynamo @ 254 – YouTube creator Chris Boden’s work may appeal to your son. He’s a master of advanced industrial profanity as it applies to operating a hydroelectric plant somewhere in Michigan. His language may be entertainingly crude, but his message is serious: people who know their blue-collar business are essential for modern society. Some of his pieces are, to my taste, duds: hawking merchandise or describing his creative process, but try a few.
John, is the guru-disciple system of eastern spiritual traditions used in the west under a different moniker? Do you consider yourself a guru, a mentor, or what?
BK # 277:
Indeed, I see our personal points of view aren’t very different. Your depiction of European elites attitude’s what I could call with the word: “Senility”(I think this word exists in English and you know its meaning). This term should be applied to politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats alike, it doesn’t matter their age. Near everybody in the EU elite keeps thinking and acting like the world today was the same as decades ago…
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Renaissance Man # 288:
I agree. First World War battlefields were full of unlucky soldiers bones and artillery shells, so the following years crops were good…if the farmers were brave enough to enter to plow between mines and not blown shells (I’d like to add to this Arcadian depiction).
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Bocaccio # 291:
I only want to add to your comment (when you write about Poland like a power) the always present victimism of Polish nationalism, always present in historical terms. OK, they have powerful reasons to victimize as nation (with invasions from East and West), but victimism and nationalism always are bad friends for peace. In the past, fascism regimes used victimism as part of his propaganda. Oh by the way, only certain little Asian state seems IMHO more victimist than Poland.
A number if things off that list are normal parts of my life as well…
…I do think that life would be more fun if radio technicians and electronic music makers, and of course radionics specialists wore lab coats while they worked!
Jacques #5
I think that way too. I am not sure how, but I have been a Christian for my whole life. Can’t believe that I understand all, however. It can be an ideology. In the same way I can never be a Socialist because I am not rich enough and not sufficiently convinced enough that I am right.
@RSDynamo,
Ultimately the question isn’t “how do I make him behave the way I want?” when dealing with a young man; the question is “how do I make him want to behave?”
Jennifer had some very good questions to guide that, but ultimately, you need to figure out what motivates the boy and how to align that with schooling. (Assuming you can align it with schooling.) You obviously can align his values with the idea of education, this since you were able to get him to succeed on standardized tests– that wouldn’t have happened with an unwilling pupil! He wanted to pass those tests, and he did. Why did he want to pass the tests, but doesn’t care to pass English? (Or whatever class he can’t put in the effort for.) That’s something only he can tell you.
@Northwind Grandma,
My family cooks everything from scratch, and have for close to twenty years now, but our grocery bill is still a source of eye-watering stress and belt-tightening. For those who are on the processed-food wagon, fine, yes, they can save a lot of money by picking up the habit of true cooking–but it’s not a panacea and it doesn’t make food appear by magic.
@Paedrig,
I personally believe that gratitude is the only true source of spirituality. I can pray all day, make whatever sacrifice or burnt offering you care to name– but if I don’t give thanks, I can’t open myself to the divine. So I agree with your post completely.
Earthworm, delighted to hear it — and thanks for the clarifications.
Mary, no argument there. A good strong Russian-US alliance would have been the best possible outcome in the wake of the Cold War, and it’s frankly tragic that the possibility was allowed to slip away, apparently unnoticed by the drooling morons who infest our political system.
J.L.Mc12, that would be very helpful. The great thing about boxing is that the other guy punches back, so you get to learn some important lessons about self-mastery and the consequences of uncontrolled rage.
Stravinsky7, nicely put — thank you.
J.L.Mc12, granted, but I wanted to get away from the purely subjective, since any theory based on purely subjective factors, by that very fact, becomes impossible to prove. Behavior provides a basis for falsifiable statements and thus for proof and disproof.
Lathechuck, of course. It’s pretty obviously a matter of “find something that can be twisted around to fit the approved party line.”
Jfisher, no, the guru-disciple business is foreign to the Western tradition, which places much more value on individual autonomy than the Eastern traditions. Me? I’m a writer.
Justin, sure. Once the physicians are all properly outfitted in tar and feathers, we can distribute their white jackets to radionicists, theremin players, and the like!
JLMC12,
Yes, in my limited experience with Aikido, I found it very helpful in channeling personal power and energy and directing it in healthy ways as well as learning to let negative energy go right on by. The same grandma who recommended Doug Casey’s book has another granddaughter who is elementary school age and has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and it has really helped her with discipline, self esteem and confidence.
“With practice, the length of time spent in each period of breathlessness”
Rhetorical question – I’m assuming here that by ‘breathlessness’ he meant ‘not breathing’ / ‘the pause’ rather then feeling breathless.
“Most people find it gets easier to utilize both periods of breathless with practice.”
An interesting note on this – I’ve found that the state of mind in the pause can actually be held into the background inhalation/exhalation so that it meets and melts away as the next ‘window’ occurs.
Ah, okay, I see he covers this idea further down.
“This state is intoxicating and we want to experience more of it.”
Here my thinking diverges; but regardless, I am fascinated to see the parallels between what I ‘stumbled upon’ and what your teacher John Gilbert described here! A delightful synchronicity.
“By allowing your mind to go blank during the Window of Opportunity you attain a state known as Samadhi or Zen.”
Do you think he meant ‘mind blank’ or ‘mind stilled’ or something else?
Interpretations can be tricky – a still mind with intense but relaxed focus is very different to an ’empty’ mind. Sometimes I think people have completely misinterpreted what teachers meant when the talk about mindfulness… I’ve always tended towards ‘use your own mind or someone or something else will.’
Maybe it’s my age.
Something just clicked into place. Our elites really went all in on the idiotic evil nonsense starting out in the 1990s. This was also when the USSR fell, and when, rhetoric aside, Christianity went from being a good thing (as being religious was a way to fight the Godless Commies) to neutral, and now to evil incarnate. I’m wondering if these are related: after all, a key claim made to attack the soviets was that they were atheistic and thus dangerous, and when the USSR fell, that sort of rhetoric was no longer needed.
If, as seems likely, there was a huge class of well connected anti-Christians who were pretending to embrace the religion for political gain, then take away the circumstances that forced them to embrace it and they would obviously push as far as possible. Given how malleable the mass mind is in the modern world (due chiefly to broadcast media and easily controlled forums on the internet), they could push very far indeed before resistance emerged.
This is probably worth a great deal of closer study.
RSDynamo @ 309, I can’t say about Britain. In the USA, I would say that your responsibility vis a vis your son’s school is to pay your fees on time, send your son to school clean and healthy, with having been taught good manners and homework completed. From my American perspective, it is no part of your duty to enhance the school’s reputation by trying to push your son into a prestigious university, even supposing that were possible. He will be 15 next year, right? Is there any sort of apprenticeship he might fancy? In olden times, boys like him ran away to sea. If he remains a top martial arts competitor, he may in time be offered a teaching gig.
Hey JMG and JPM
You know, there is this other novel evolutionary theory that I have read that I have been meaning to share with you but keep forgetting to do so. I address this to Justin since he was talking about idleness previously.
There is an anonymous British person who runs a website devoted to his interesting reinterpretation of Darwinian evolutionary theory, in which the “state of evolutionary fitness” is idleness. They think most species evolve towards being able to spend as little energy as possible in keeping themselves alive through eating and defending themselves, as much time as possible being idle. I am not sure how solid this theory is scientifically, because there are a few species that spend most of their lives keeping themselves alive through being “busy” with eating and defending themselves, such as shrews and hummingbirds, but it’s valuable in how it makes one realise how unsure we are about what really constitutes “survival of the fittest”.
http://endgame.co.uk/idletheory/
Hi John Michael,
I like where you are going with that idea. Sends a strong message!
Boxing sure would keep a person upon their tippy-toes in terms of awareness of consequences. When leaders aren’t held to account for the consequences of their failures, then sloppy decision making and strategies enter the metaphorical ring. Not good is it? And a hard way to learn.
Interesting what you wrote about ‘rage’ in that arena, and as a young bloke sparring upon the Dojo mats, a friend outrageously broke the rules of engagement, and to my shame I won the bout, but lost my temper. Thinking my friend would be reprimanded for breaking the rules was naive. I scored a publicly humiliating dressing down by Sensei. Lesson learned, allowing emotions to take over, makes a person weak and ineffective. Still, nice to learn this important life lesson at such a young age. Control of will, means exactly what the words suggest.
I’ve been cogitating recently on the interaction of dealing with one’s karma, and the direction the will is cast. It’s possibly more important than most would appreciate. Maybe? I dunno, but I believe that the word ‘cast’ is a better descriptive in that context, than say the word ‘control’. What’s your take on that?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chuaquin,
Thanks for the shout out! 🙂 Absolutely about human urine. This household has a worm farm sewage system which sends those minerals back into the soil. Why waste the opportunity? Anyway, the worms are hungry for the stuff! Only a decadent civilisation could afford to send that organic matter into the oceans. Hope you are using urine on your garden?
Did I read that correctly? 300mm average rainfall. Out of sheer curiosity, what does your household do for a water supply? We’re on tank water which refills from collected rain. It’s the first official day of summer today, and the storage tanks are all full, plus it is raining off and on.
Cheers
Chris
Thank you to RIta for pointing out JMG’s recommended Sheldrake book was reprinted under a different name. The older version goes for $100+ now. The new version is like $17 I think. J.L.Mc12, thanks for pointing out Sheldrake has a substack!
I’m following the thread about RSDynamo’s son. His (the son’s) situation resonates with me (having been kicked out of a couple of schools), although It’s hard to guess what might work. Yeah, grade school is heavy with bs, but so is life in general, and most of us produce our share..
Various aims have been proposed for education. There is the job-training aspect, and the intellectual formation aspect (passing on the highest knowledge and wisdom of our cultural tradition–this one is a little highfallutin), the find-your-identity aspect, and the party aspect (beer and football, dating. etc). Most people mix all four to some degree.
Ideally, education should be a mix of what the students wants tp ;learn, and what society wants him to learn. (That’s why we make everybody take algebra–most people will never use iit, but society needs a certain percentage to go on and study calculus, so they can enter STEM fields.) At some point, this can evolve into a kind of conversation. The “read all the great books” type of formation is often unappreciated by the inmates–I remember absolutely hating “Great Expectations” when it was assigned in school (but liking it as an adult). Anyway, this is cultural–every society and generation has a different notion of what educated people ought to know, and nobody can learn everything. If you can find something your son is interested in, and wants to learn, then that’s half the battle. It can light a spark that leads to interest in other things too.
On not learning French–yeah, learning nothing in three years is pretty pathetic, and I don’t know who to blame. If your son wanted to learn French, then there must be some better way. (If he had spent those three years actually in France, he’d probably have learned French, though maybe not much algebra, and who knows what else he would have gotten up to.) Did he get to pick his foreign language? For a lot of people, that’s their first major academic choice–everything until then is prescribed. Is there some language he would want to learn? (There are some great resources for Armenian!) I know of two people who learned Japanese exclusively through video games, which makes me wonder why we don’t teach that way normally. (DuoLingo attempts to gamify language learning, but is not very good IMHO–it’s designed to draw an audience, not actually teach.)
Somebody mentioned boxing. Boxing (like the military) has a long history of straightening out young men with issues. teaching them discipline. Maybe other martial arts do this too, I dunno. Of course you have to worry about things like brain injuries, but every young man gets into fights, and stands to benefit from learning how to fight. In many gyms, boxers form a kind of brotherhood. There was a French anthropologist who studied the culture black American boxers, and realized there was only one way to be accepted by the tribe, so to speak, and that was to get into the ring himself.
>He told me years later he had that revelation while doing mushrooms with his dubious friends. It was a permanent turn in the right direction.
Shrooms are a real dice roll. For every revelation someone can handle, there’s a revelation that makes someone think that fuel shutoff valve is just the thing to pull in mid-flight.
Justin Patrick Moore @ 313..
You know, D E V O truly was a head of their tyme..
“Are We Not .. (I identify as paraphrase corruptable, mongoloid or otherwise ..) LAB-COATED MEN” .. We are (pick one, pick many) DEVOlutions..
>the vast majority of the classes don’t seem to be of much use and are pretty focussed on preparing him for exams
The base contract between student and teacher is to give them enough knowledge to pass the exam. If they’re not passing tests, accountability kicks in, questions are asked, earnest unpleasant conversations are had, etc. But let’s face it, teaching the student anything more than that is well, work. And work, sucks. So let’s not do that. Who cares if they actually understood anything, that’s someone else’s problem.
Minimum effort, constant reward, maximum work-to-pay ratio.
What amazes me is that most teachers hate school, most students hate school, just about everyone would rather be somewhere else – but school keep existing anyway and everyone keeps going back to it.
>Our elites really went all in on the idiotic evil nonsense starting out in the 1990s. This was also when the USSR fell
Apocryphal story, a Soviet general who was dealing with the collapse had a meeting where he told some Murican counterparts this: “We are going to do one last terrible thing to you that you have no way of dealing with. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.”
Guess who they decided the enemy was when the Soviets collapsed?
Well, Mr. Greer .. I do NONE the ABOVE with any relish … however, I’m Still Kickin towards the cusp of my 7th decade of life. Maybe it’s due to a combination of jeans .. oh sorry, I meant genes .. AND a lack of pseudo-uridine, nanolipid particles, and beaucoup amounts of spikey $ proteins! Or, it could just be out of shear old-age ‘Curmudgeoness’!!
Personally tar and feathering is the kind of retromancy I prefer not to make a comeback, even for my enemies.
@Polecat: a lot of grwat music has come out of Ohio!
William (no. 319), I see the decline of mainline Christianity in the USA as parallel to the fall of Communism. Back in the day, people would go to church / join the party out of conformity. Afterwards, people didn’t need to pretend anymore, and the church / party came to be run by weirdos.
You write that Christianity is considered evil now. Well, in Russia the process worked backwards–it was evil under Communism, then neutral, and now good, although most few attend more than a few times per year. Maybe the two trends are related? On the other hand, in Europe proper the main significance of being Christian is that it means you’re not a Muslim.
Justin Moore – “… if radio technicians and electronic music makers, and of course radionics specialists wore lab coats while they worked!”
Who says we don’t?
In absolute truth, there is a white lab coat hanging in the closet of my ham radio room. (And a blue denim apron hanging near my lathe… I can change collar colors at will.)
Hi JMG and Commentators,
I have question regarding the mid 20th century folklore of overpopulation. This seemed to be something that gripped both elite and popular culture across the globe from the 1960’s to the 1990’s or so; China had the One Child policy, India did their eugenics/sterilization programs, the US and Western Europe convinced segments of their populations to hold abortions and contraceptive medications in a sort of religious awe while demanding that both parents work outside the home and so on.
This was all based around these 19th century Malthusian fears of mass starvation due to population expansion, but as I understand it by the 1960’s it was well known to ecologists that population contractions didn’t work that way. Instead of the lurid fantasy of a massive die-off all at once it would play out more or less as we’ve seen with lower birth rates and slightly higher death rates as the average age of the population increases.
My question is, why did the 19th century Malthusian fantasy come roaring back circa 1970 and why did nobody question it and adopt policies to respond to a non-existent problem?
Cheers,
JZ
@Mary Bennet (#340) wrote, regarding RSDynamo’s son: “In olden times, boys like him ran away to sea.”
And also in times not all that olden, either! Boys were still doing such things as recently as the late 1800s. Among them were both of my grandfathers.
My father’s step-father left his home in Copenhagen and went to sea when he was only 13 years old.
My mother’s father had left his rural village home (Wolfville, Maryland) to make his own way in the world by the time he was 10 years old. Before he turned 20 he was up in Alaska, pannng for gold.
And, among the girls in my family tree, one of my great-great-great grandmothers married when she was 14 years old, had the first of her eight children when she was 15, and lived a very long and happy life in the booming frontier town of Juliet (later renamed Joliet) in Illinois. Her husband was 29 when they got married, on New Year’s Day in 1839.. He was an up-and-coming young lawyer who later became a banker and a state politician. Even in her old age she was pleased that she had beaten out all the other girls in Joliet to win such a fine catch of a husband.
How the world has changed for children over the last century and a half, and not in every case for the better! All three of these ancestors of mine made good lives for themselves from a very early age.
Relevant to the rage room conversation, A Midwestern Doctor just posted an article about screen time and the tantrums they create in children . Lots of data in the article:
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/rejuvenating-the-nervous-system-and
From the article: “All the problems we discussed with children directly tie into the central issues I feel are facing much broader segments of society (e.g., the dopamine trap society uses to control us and make us feel dead inside).”
and
“Modern shows’ rapid cuts (1–4 seconds) overstimulate young children’s developing brains, making it hard for them to disengage and sustain focus on slower tasks (termed the “overstimulation hypothesis”).”
Could this also be part of cognitive collapse? We have to have free attention in order to think about anything in a meaningful way. There’s no free attention when we seek constant stimulation.
Chuaquin at #80 comments,
“The apparent “solution” to this predicament is mass migration from other countries, but seeing how has been working it for EU, I don’t think Asians would imitate our awful migratory politics in the future.”
Setting aside whether mass immigration is good or bad, the simple fact is that mass migration requires a surplus of young people. Moving countries is a big deal, even if the new country has the same language and a similar culture. Most people don’t do it unless they feel they have to, that their home country is violent or impoverished, or there are vastly better opportunities elsewhere. The violence, the poverty and the lack of opportunity tend to occur when there are a lot of young people – ie, a high birth rate. So as other countries go through their demographic transitions, there’ll be fewer migrants floating around, except when there are wars, civil conflicts, natural disasters and so on.
So whether we think mass immigration is a good thing or not, we’ve got perhaps fifty more years of it, and then it’ll taper off.
Watchflinger at #82 says,
“I more or less came to the same conclusions you did after discovering the demographic decline data. The world is not going to burn, and society will not collapse, just change and change slowly enough that we will be able to adapt to it”
Perhaps, perhaps not. Like JMG I don’t believe in an overnight collapse. But this does raise a third possibility of huge social change – not our being cooked, or our running out of recoverable resources, but – well, everyone being old and no-one to take care of them. That decline in life expectancy in the US is at least in part because there simply aren’t enough people to care for those older folk. If you’re without a spouse or children, then who says, “Dad, you need to go to the doctor”? Who takes you there? Well, nowadays it’ll be a social worker or community nurse. But those must be funded by workers, and if there are fewer workers….
Here in Australia, the single largest profession is nursing – second only to shop assistants. One-sixth of the workforce are in healthcare and social assistance. What about when it’s one-quarter? One-third? Will we eventually have half the population working as carers for the other half – and we’ll tax carers to pay for carers? It’s not sustainable, so unfortunately some people won’t be taken care of. Elites? Yes, absolutely. The rest of us – well, it’s family or probably nobody. Not collapse, but…
Clay at #97 – sure, there’s North Korea to top them up. But North Korea has a TFR of 1.78, as well. That’s where South Korea was in 1984. Reunification would buy them a little time, but wouldn’t change the overall trajectory. Migration from countries a bit behind you on the demographic slope is the human equivalent of shale oil – you get some extra, but you’re not addressing the fundamental issues.
Unrelated, I saw this,
https://rayiberry.substack.com/p/crete-gavdos-the-tiny-island
which in passing describes how after Chernobyl, an unnamed Russian scientist established a community on this Greek island, with their own Pythagorean philosophy. I looked into it, and there are some other articles.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-immortality-commune-of-gavdos/
https://doogreporter.com/en/the-immortals-of-gavdos/
https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/welcome-to-gavdos-the-island-of-immortals/
They thought they could “program themselves to not die.” My favourite quote,
“A doctor gave him some pills to treat himself [from exposure to radiation] and the address of a Moscow clinic, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. So he decided to do his own thing: he did not take his medication, went to the countryside and started working hard in the fields, sweating a lot and drinking vodka. To purify his blood. It worked –specifies Aleksej– because he is still alive».”
And it appears they did last some years, though antagonised the locals by wanting to build a pagan temple. Which made me think of JMG’s comment that it’s rare for a non-religious “intentional community” to survive more than a few years. But this was just seven guys, sometimes drifting up to 20, and they don’t stay on the island year-round. So their “intentional community” of “Immortals” is basically a holiday home. Well, scientists, eh?
William, that seems quite plausible.
J.L.Mc12, a very English theory! 😉
Chris, rage rooms teach the false lesson that you can punch the world without consequences. Boxing teaches the true lesson that the world is always going to punch back, and you won’t be able to slip or duck every punch. That latter’s essential; there’s something about getting socked in the face that clears away certain kinds of nonsense very efficiently. As for karma and the will, “cast” is good. You can choose the direction the will is pointed, but you can’t control the outcome — again, the world is always throwing jabs at you, and sooner or later will clock you good and hard.
Polecat, oh, it’s the curmudgeonhood. Back when I worked as an aide in nursing homes, it was common knowledge that the nice, sweet, soft-spoken patients who arrived would be leaving feet first in fairly short order. It was the grouchy, irritable, demanding ones who had a good shot at recovering and leaving on their own feet.
Justin, I suggest it mostly because it’s less brutal than the other potential fates the medical profession is lining up for itself. You can survive tarring and feathering.
John, that’s a helluva good question. What I saw back in the day was not talk about lurid dieoffs but frankly absurd (but harrowing) dystopias of the Soylent Green variety, in which the world became wall to wall people. It may be that the usual bad habit of extrapolating linear trends to the point of absurdity is responsible for much of it.
Angelica, interesting. Yeah, that’s highly relevant.
RSDynamo
Have you and your son thought of some kind of wilderness or nature oriented program? Would he like that? I used to work in the outdoor program of a private middle school that had a strong emphasis on that. I also worked as a counselor with another group that taught wilderness skills to kids, often to disadvantaged and /or at risk kids. It didn’t work for everyone, but could turn their lives around for kids it did work for. These programs can run from mellow and/or spiritually oriented to full on quasi military. I know outward bound started in the UK and, I assume, still operates there. Check in your area too to see if there are private programs, sometimes run by veterans, that might offer your son challenges, and at the same time teach him mutual respect. Sometimes a parent can do this. Other times it needs an uncle or auntie figure. In my case it was an auntie.
Stephen
I have heard that tarring and feathering was often fatal. I gather a large part of our respiration is through our skin and tarring blocks that.
Comments by Boccacio made me realize- Poland’s shape since WW2 roughly the same as it was during first ruler of Piast dynasty. thediffrence being that Pomorze was an on and off vassal and Mazury belonged to the actual Prussians. If the rule of first Piast is anything to go by expect meddling with neighbours, occasional breakups and very varying competence of the rulers
Chris # 323:
Thank you for your view about urine use. I see you put in practice the theory to recycle organic matter. Unluckily, I’m living in a town, so my flat hasn’t a garden. My family had a house in a rural zone with a garden, but we haven’t it anymore (it was sold some years ago).
Water in my town comes from a dam which is a lot of km away, in a mountain zone where it rains quite more than here.
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Warburton # 338:
Your point of view about massive migration’s worth to pay it attention; especially because it breaks the binary (and dull) debate between migrants as beings of light or devils, which has pervaded the also binary cultural battle between woke “left” and populist (far) right. If near every country in the world is having decreased its birth rates, of course massive migrations will stop in the long term.
@ JMG if anyone is ever skeptical of your views on Renewable Energy, then this is a good place to start them off. One of the pillars of the modern managerial-bureaucratic establishment, the Insurance Industry, openly admitting in an article that renewable energy is more prone to devastating power-cuts:
https://www.zurich.com/media/magazine/2025/bracing-for-blackouts-how-to-keep-your-business-running-when-power-fails?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=CI&utm_term=PowerCuts&utm_content=newsletter
To quote the article:
“Renewable energy assets face significantly more physical climate risk than fossil fuel-based infrastructure, according to a report by Zurich Resilience Solutions. By 2030, 83 percent of Europe’s clean energy generation, especially solar power, will be at high risk, the report finds.”
They are linking this to a disastrous power cut in Spain and Portugal this year that lasted 23 hours.
Re youngsters running away to sea.
I worked with an old guy who was in the merchant marine at the age of 14. I don’t know if he ran away or signed on with his parent’s approval. This was during WW2. He was in Antwerp when a V2 exploded in the water near his ship and deafened him. (Antwerp was hit by more V2s than London as the Germans tried to prevent the Allied build up.) He wore a hearing aid for the rest of his life.
Later he became an apprentice machinist. In those days the best apprentices were selected for training as draftsmen, unlike now where they are on separate career paths, and he became a draftsman. He was teaching drafting when I got to know him.
RSDynamo
Maybe this is helpful if your son is open to it. It’s a quick and simple approach I got from a career counselor. He can ask a variety of people (friends, family, teachers both friend and foe, etc) to describe him in 3 or 4 words. Take the characteristics that are mentioned the most and then ask:”What education (or occupation) is XYZ?” That might give him a hint.
@Chaquin, yes that what I tried to say. Poland has all it needs to be the main central European power but if they stick with the Calimero act it may just as well end with another partition.
Years ago I wrote about the ominous U5 project in Austria’s capital Vienna – there is metro lines U1 to U6 except U5 since a long time. They have started a mega-project years ago.
The project has now stalled and the new metro line which should already be operable has been postponed for at least 4 years!
Big scandal.
The city of Vienna is apparently near insolvent, now German courses for “refugees” have been canceled – a holy cow for Vienna’s “social democrats” party.
This is big.
Hi JMG,
You touched briefly on the future invasion of Venezuela and are sceptical of the outcome. Could you expand further your thinking ?
Is it possible that the USA has cut a deal with Russia in Alaska ? Considering Russia standing out of this, the job looks easy for the US army, easier than Ukraine anyway.
@Stephen Pearson (#341) about tarring and feathering:
I’ve heard the same. Also, the tar was usually heated quite hot, so there would be burns all over the whole body, which would usually become infected.
@Angelica (#337):
Midwestern Doctor seems right on target when s\he writes “Modern shows’ rapid cuts (1–4 seconds) overstimulate young children’s developing brains, making it hard for them to disengage and sustain focus on slower tasks (termed the “overstimulation hypothesis”).”
I already saw the difficulty young people had in focusing actively on slow tasks during my last decade of teaching at Brown Univertsity (1995-2005).
In one of my classes the most important assignment was to slowly develop and write a term paper over the course of the whole semester: first, choose a topic; second, put together an outline; third, compile a bibliography; fourth, write a rough draft; and finally, write a finished paper. Each step of the way, the student was to hand in what s\he had done for critiquing. Maybe one-third of the students were actually able to do this over the course of the semester. The other two-thirds failed to hand in any work at one or more of the four preliminary stages, or changed their chosen topics several times in the course of the semester, and wrote mediocre papers in the end. They usually received a generous “B” for the course.
And boy, did they complain about not getting an “A.” “I’m paying all this tuition; what do you mean, I’m not getting all As!” “But I have to have a perfect transcript for the next stage of my career!” “You’re asking too much of Brown students!” “How dare you giver me anything less than an A, you peon!” And so forth … All this was at an Ivy-League university. Ugh!
Another thing I noticed then was how rare, how hard, it was for a student to actually use printed sources effectively, whether books or articles. If it wasn’t online, it hardly existed for them. (The bibliography stage of the project was the one most often skipped.)
As for me, who haven’t watched TV or movies for about 40 years, when I encounter those “rapid cuts” in something I’m trying to view online, they actually make me feeling assaulted, like being punched hard. Ugh again!
One of the reasons that UFO’s seem to have gotten more attention recently, is a slick new documentary that has been out on the film circuit and poised to hit theaters, ” The age of disclosure”. This incredibly boring title, along with the film hints that we are on the verge of having the great secret disclosed for all to see.
I have not seen it, just read the reviews but the striking thing in it is the inclusion of one of the members of my fraternity pledge class who has now become an important UFO “expert”. When I knew him he was a smart but eccentric guy who ran our house D&D games. But he went on to become a famous PHD immunologist at Stanford. Somehow we are to believe that his academic career in tweaking genes makes him perfectly situated to pass judgement on UFO’s. It is kind of an interesting window in to the phenomenon of how society can turn someone’s accomplishments in one field, in to them being experts on other things. Like athletes telling you what cereal to eat, or the horrible practice of doctors in adds endorsing everything under the sun.
From what I have read this documentary does not disprove the more logical conclusion that UFO sightings are about folks seeing experimental military craft and the governments work to obscure those sightings. But boy oh boy any film with Marco Rubio giving testimony must be true.
Warburton #338: The story about the Russian scientists on Gavdos is fascinating! I noticed that none of them have children (maybe because they were worried about the effect of their radiation exposure on offspring). The way most people “achieve immortality” is by having children and descendants, so perhaps part of the motivation for this community’s search for immortality is that they don’t have children.
John Zybourne #335 re “overpopulation”: people who fret about this really do have a religious zeal about it, as you said. I think part of why it became such a strong belief around 1970 is because so many people had rejected religion, and something had to take its place, so “overpopulation” became their sacred dogma. I recall a (non-religious) classmate in graduate school saying passionately “We could SAVE THE WORLD with birth control!” (in the same tone in which a devout Christian would say that following Christ would save the world).
I’ve noticed that people who say that there are too many people in the world never mean that there are too many people like themselves: the Harvard professor (e.g., Paul Erlich) who thinks there are too many people never thinks there are too many Harvard professors.
On the “you know it’s a bad day list”;
“After a successful November 27th launch to the International Space Station, Russia discovered an accident had occurred on their launch site’s mobile maintenance cabin — when a drone spotted it lying upside down in a flame trench.”
“When the rocket launched, a pressure difference was created between the space under the rocket, where gases from running engines are discharged, and the nook where the [144-ton] maintenance cabin was located. The resulting pressure difference pulled the service cabin out of the nook and threw it into the flame trench, where it fell upside down from a height of 20 m.”
That launch facility will be out of action for awhile.
Correction: Paul Erlich was a professor at Stanford, not Harvard (point still stands though).
Justin Patrick Moore.. “grwat music” …. hummm. Created, I’m convinced, by the acquisition of copious amounts of plastic, vinyl, and rubber adornment! ‘;]
Anyone up for some plastic bluegrass?? … anyone .. Bueller..?
Re: children’s media, rapid screen cuts, and dopamine:
At the risk of sounding like one of those delusional doting parents, people seem to *really* like our kids and enjoy having them as house guests for days or weeks at a time when we visit. This is honestly a little confusing to me, because while we are consistent in our discipline and try not to allow them to be little hellions, the oldest is newly three, and has tantrums and meltdowns over things that make her seem frankly insane, and the other is an infant with all the crying and pooping and smearing of various substances that that entails. Upon reading that Midwestern Doc article, this quote stood out to me: “How unfair and tragic it is that due to the modern toxicity they are bombarded with, so many children no longer have health and spark within them which brings joy to everyone around them.” It clicked when I read it–our kids really do seem to radiate a vitality and engagement that lights people up and causes their overall impression of our kids to be positive despite witnessing an embarrassing episode of, say, hysterical crying over having to use the “wrong” spoon at supper. Also, since our kids interact with reality 24/7 instead of screens, they are actually way less likely to break things or hurt people (including themselves) than most kids of similar ages. When we interact with iPad kids, on the other hand, there really is a sort of deadness or absence there that’s pretty disconcerting, and the kids seem really incompetent. I had previously worried a little about *not* giving our kids screens to calm them down in public or at other people’s houses because I feared that we were more likely to disturb others because of it, but it seems that kids who are mostly free of the modern “conveniences” have a certain glamour which induces adults to be gracious about their foibles.
I’m puzzled after having read some comments before this one about misfit people to be at “normal” schools; this topic seems to have opened a can of worms, it looks like compulsory school’s the incarnate evil. Well, I won’t try to defend the modern industrial learning machine, but I’m going to point there’s been proposed alternatives to mainstream school, with less or more success. Beyond the boring debate between state and private school (at least it’s the norm in my country: left praising state education, right wing obviously with the religious-private school), I can remember some anarchist attempts to a free school, or the Walden system, even the Montessori schools (although they’re quite elitists in their costs…). Of course, you all have the homeschooling alternative, but we mustn’t idealize it: if parents don’t work hard with the children, I think it isn’t a serious learning alternative.
By the way, my personal life story is the opposite to those poor misfit boys. I remember to be well fitted to my school days…maybe I was too comfortable with it (which it could explain part of my teen and adult age trouble cough cough). However, those school days were in the ‘80s, and I think education quality in my country has worsened since then, thanks to the continous “reforms” by left and right governments (ideologically biased), and the recent digitalization (a big business for big tech corporations). I’d add to this school crappification the pervasive and bad influence of social media, videogames and porn due to the godlike smartphones…One example of this negative influence’s bullying. Of course there was children harassment by their peers in the ‘80s, but now bad boys can make videos harassing their victims and releasing them online. I think nowadays school can’t do much to these recent challenges: we can’t blame for every children and teens problem, though indeed educative system can and must be revised.
Hi JMG,
The nice chaps over at the Electroculture Growers Substack are interested in talking to you about for their podcast. Would it be alright if I passed them your email address?
With my best,
Luke
@Polecat: Anyone from Akron would have copious amounts of rubber on hand. They made use of it! It’s definitely “grwat” … maybe not as good as Gwar though, speaking of wearing rubber and words with grw.
@Lathechuck: Glad to hear you are donning the appropriate attire.
Jennifer Kobernik, et al
In the village where I live in Mexico, there are a lot of taco stands with shared outdoor tables. I was at a table with one family; the parents and all the kids down to one not over 2 were on their devices. The youngest, at the other end of the table was about to drink the hand sanitizer and no one noticed until I yelled at him to stop.
Stephen
Mr. Greer, Well yeah. My attempts at explaining to all my mostly liberal fallow garden mates that I haven’t seen a ‘doctor’* in over 20 hrs, has them agast! because I refuse to run – not walk – to the nearest Taj MaHospital/Medi$care ‘provider’ .. to be assaulted through various means of poking .. prodding .. stern condemnations of patient questioning of all things Harma/pHarma – as the open palm of Big Medco, and even Bigger In$urance, beckons me towards a life of abject penury.
They all succumbed to the siren call of the janky VAXXINE.. Fools!
edit: 20 “yrs” … sigh!
You think Goolag’s hellcheck is bad now … just you wait until ‘AyeEye’ intervenes.. I, for one, believe with all my heart, that we need to ‘Nuke it from orbit’ .. as ‘it’s the only way to be sure’.
A small Vermont herb sed company, http://www.earthbeatseeds.com, is offering their small but good selection for 1.00 per packet today. I found nothing about how long the sale lasts. so probably today only. I am taking advantage to attempt agrimony, celandine, clary sage, rue-which-attracts-swallowtails, and sweet cicely, all new for me.
From an article about Intel, oh how the mighty have fallen,
“Pat Gelsinger, the former Intel CEO who was pushed out in late 2024 during a five-year turnaround effort, told the Financial Times that the “decay” he found when he returned to the company in 2021 was “deeper and harder than I’d realized.” In the five years before his return, “not a single product was delivered on schedule,” he said. “Basic disciplines” had been lost. “It’s like, wow, we don’t know how to engineer anymore!”
But they had lots of money for stock buybacks. The techie consensus is “Board gave him 4 years to fix a 10 year problem.”
More details on his termination are here,
https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1h5su0i/why_did_intel_fire_ceo_pat_gelsinger/
“They think most species evolve towards being able to spend as little energy as possible in keeping themselves alive through eating and defending themselves, as much time as possible being idle.”
This proves cats are the peak of evolution. Multiple sites point out “Cats sleep between 12–16 hours a day.”
I can not dispute that claim. 😊
@warburton expat: The last time I looked closely at mortality figures was for 2019 because of the three years in a row (2015, 2016 and 2017) that US life expectancy was lower than it had been in 2014. At that time, mortality was not worsening for people above 65 years. In fact, it slightly improved in those years, masking part of the huge problem among the 30-50 year old.
I haven’t looked into more recent years or other countries (at the time, the USA stood out among “developed” countries by its declining life expectancy). This kind of data is not as readily available as I had thought. I found a scientific paper. I believe one can download the raw figures from government sites after asking for access and then treat them oneself, but I never bothered (not my country anyway…).
So your point is hard to deny in the medium term, but I am not sure if is already the biggest problem in terms of declining population right now in every country.
@Warburton Expat
excellent comparision with immigration and shale oil, and similarly the ROI(return on investment is lower and lower)
Rajarshi # 344:
I remember well the last and biggest electric blackout here and in Portugal. It was shocking to see every electric device in my town and the rest of my country “dead” during some hours (it lasted near 10 hours at home, but in some areas indeed it lasted 23 hours). Of course, lack of stability and continuity from the renewable energies had some in it, but there was a more complex situation to blame one only cause. Electric market, at least in my country, is a very intrincate and opaque thing, to say softly.
———————-
Bocaccio # 347:
I agree. By the way, it seems Poland political consensus is fully Russophobic, following old patterns. Poles are together with Germans in EU, but we’ll see in the future if they don’t start to see threatened by their East neighbors…
——————————
Clay Dennis # 352:
Thank you for telling me about that UFO documentary. However, I’m afraid I partly disagree with the view of UFO thing explained only like secret military aircrafts. I think this explanation would be the most common cause, but there could be cases not explained by this only cause. I think there could be a connection between several UFO cases and not recognised spiritual experiences, I think John said something about this topic some time ago.
Ooh, we’re talking Prussia again, I guess I’ve been summoned.
Something I really do want to do here when we’re talking about Europe and future European wars is to nod gently in the direction of the classical European pentarchy – that is, France, England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Those five states between them were the major movers and shakers of the European state system from the close of the 1680s onwards, starting from effectively the failure of the Habsburg’s attempt at controlling the entirety of the European subcontinent and to a lesser extent the entire Atlantic system. In Russia’s case it’s a coincidence – it has a lot more to do with the failure of the Swedish empire during the Great Northern War – but Peter the Great spent his formative years learning how western military technology worked and refashioned Russia in the image of a European power.
Ever since then, there’s this tension within Russia between westernizers and traditionalists – the traditional terms are not those but I can’t remember what they are at the moment – and that tension has historically driven a lot of Russian internal policy. The critical point is that for foreign affairs purposes, Russia effectively “counts as” part of Europe, it’s just a weird outlier in a lot of ways. You could say they’re the Macedonians to the peninsular Europeans’ Greeks, if that’s the way your mind inclines. That metaphor works here because of the cultural and class differences – urban western europeans tend to look askance at the Russians and kinda go “yeah, sure, they’re christians and we have lots of diplomatic and commercial dealings with them, but do they don’t live in self-governing cities so do they reaallly count?” and that’s nowhere more true than in German-Russian relations.
So, in European affairs there’s a tendency for powers to rise and fall cyclically. The classical pentarchy formed because of the decline in the power of Spain. 19th century politics was defined by the slow-rolling collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the fact that France had blown so much of its strength on the Napoleonic project that Germany and Italy were able to consolidate without concern over interference from Paris. Russia itself began to slip from its 18th century high-water mark, until the Russo-Japanese war exposed just how vulnerable Russia actually was. IMO the big question in Europe at the moment is essentially just how damaged the prewar Great Powers and particularly Germany and Russia actually are from WW2 – the fall of the soviet union was really bad for Russia, and the commentariat here have spent quite a bit of time discussing Germany.
So, here’s another possibility to consider: we seem to more or less agree the big European or European-adjacent powers to watch at the moment are Turkey, Poland, France, and I’d personally throw in Italy. All of them had the advantages of either sitting out or losing early in the big 20th century fracas and have had time to rebuild their strength to a considerable degree. Russia is a “maybe” but to be honest I think them and Germany are in the same boat – overextended in the 20th century, running on legacy infrastructure they can’t easily replace. The best case scenario here for Russia is that they wind up being “France” as the belle epoque winds down and the roughly-once-a-century European general war commences. So, we wind up with a constellation where there are three powers that were powerful during the 20th century but are in decline – the UK, Germany, and Russia – three powers that sat out the 20th century and have benefitted from it – Turkey, Poland, and Italy – and France, comfortably perched third place at everything as always. In other words, the European cycle of rising and falling powers continues much as it always has and the “end of history” ends.
If I’m right about that, we wind up in a situation where we should assume Russian weakness due to demographics and industrial production problems, but also that the repeated predictions of Russian collapse are probably off the mark. If I had to speculate, I think the Russians currently believe they can’t actually win, which is why they’re trying to finish off the fortress belt through diplomacy and not force of arms, but they can’t lose either. Ukraine has a severe manpower crisis and retaking the occupied territories is significantly beyond their reach. A peace deal now is probably in both parties’ interests. So that leaves us with, what. Turkey watching uncomfortably across the Black Sea, France and Italy’s joint defence projects coming to a head with some flavour of cooperation particularly wrt West Africa and propping up Ukraine in the future, and Poland looking at Russian and German weakness and sensing it’s time to reform the Commonwealth? Maybe? That’d probably tick your “whoever owns prussia picks fights they can’t win” box.
I recently caught the free version of Midwestern Doc’s post on kids and attention and nice to see it mentioned here. A few notes from the field
-We threw out the TV for good when little one (12) was a baby, thanks in part to the discussion about it here. She saw nothing more than a glimpse in passing of TV until about 2 when I developed a stomach bug so severe and had no assistance with the toddler so drove to my parents house about 10 min away and set her down in front of their digital babysitter so I could continue throwing up. Wow. Night and Day. A bubbly toddler immediately turned into a zombie. It was so extreme and shocking that it confirmed for me there was something dangerous and addicting about TV even though I didn’t realize it might be the speed of the cuts.
-As we’ve had a TV less house, I have been careful though not to make it a forbidden fruit. So she gets to watch it at the grandparents house (a few times a year now that they’ve moved away) and we have some particular things we watch on Youtube (now that I think about it, all slow edited). We just make offhand comments about how most of it is boring – trying to keep it out of rebellion territory “My parents hate it so I’ll love it!”. Having a very small amount of specific access and just communicating the boringness of the rest of it seems to be working for us so far. She refuses to watch new teenage-y type shows even when given access at a friends house. Her kpop loving digital friend is showing the signs of being raised on TV. Can’t be bored at all.
-FWIW on the cuts (and I haven’t read the paid AMD post) I would have guessed it was the pixels. Back when TV went digital and we all had to get those extra boxes, I went off it for a while and missed the phase change. Later when I saw the new digital TV, I couldn’t watch it, I got dizzy from the increased clarity. I went to watch an old sitcom from the 70s on the parents TV and couldn’t – they had pixelated and improved the clarity on the 70s shows reruns. One of the few things we have watched on Youtube is old Bing Crosby movies. Truly enjoyable – nice humor, slow cuts, not pixelated. The kid even liked them.
Hi JMG! Two quick questions:
I encountered the idea here that with the human population explosion in the last few centuries, there are a lot of people around on their first human incarnation. With the current fears about depopulation through low birth rates, I was wondering whether that could have a related cause – could population decline because there’s simply not enough souls around for whom a human incarnation would be appropriate?
Also, I read that a disproportionate number of bots these days are of the “Christian. Father. Proud American.” Variety. Since these bots (in my experience at least) seem to see demons everywhere, it got me wondering: would an entity like a Christian demon have an easier or harder time possessing a bot pretending to be a Christian human?
https://www.fool.com/money/research/buy-now-pay-later-statistics/
I’ve recently seen some pretty disturbing statistics regarding buy now, pay later services, which are compiled on this Motley Fool article. It seems like the number of Americans using them to make ends meet is going up, as is the amount falling behind on their payments. How much longer can it go on?
TvLess (#371), your comment about the “slow cuts” reminds me of a common criticism I’ve seen of modern movies: namely, that they use way too many jump cuts. Part of it is probably to keep the attention of an audience that would presumably rather be scrolling TikTok, but I’ve seen suggestions that it’s also to make it easy for them to trim out parts of a movie that would be seen as objectionable in foreign markets. (Witness how Disney keeps having movies with its “first gay kiss” in the US, and then promptly scrubs out those scenes when the movie gets translated into Chinese…)
Rita–
Got it, I’ve added them to the prayer list. Does this wording work?
“May Bob Ralston (aka Rasty Bob) and Leslie Fish, both in hospice care in Buckeye AZ, be blessed and find relief from their pain and discomfort; may Bob’s heart remain strong, and may Leslie’s foot ulcers heal.”
Re lazy animals
Cats and many other animals spend a lot of time grooming themselves. Which makes me think: is the universe telling us it’s our duty to look good?
One other thing about cats and animals in general: how is it they don’t seem to train at all yet stay superbly fit? Humans need to spend hours of training each day to maintain that sort of fitness.
Deo #370:
You’ve written about tension in Russia between westernized and traditionalists. I agree. I think it’s a tension which comes from several centuries, too. Today, we could say Putin’s between the Atlantists and Eurasians (we can call them with those labels) in his way of government. He needs to pivot between the two tendences to find a compromise. Putin’s not the omnipotent tyrant who’s depicted by western propaganda, IMHO. Being provoked to war against Ukraine (and NATO indirectly), Russians have been forced to turn towards China, what’s to say the Eurasian axis. We’ll see how many time lasts this forced “friendship”: I don’t know…
A late comment on something I just came across this morning. A new book called The Tribal Future of the West by Mike Maxwell and published by Imperium Press, talks about the future of Western societies taking into account peak oil, EROEI, immigration and other factors that have featured on this forum. I intend to give it a read!
Earthworm #318, my favorite explanation of what is meant by ’emptiness’ in this context comes from a book on zen titled “graffiti on perfectly good paper”. The goal being, if we liken the activity of mind to writing, to become familiar with the nature of the paper itself. There are all kinds of very legitimate warnings about overdoing that, but I wish there were similarly ubiquitous warnings against writing ‘paper’ on your paper and reading it in order to understand it. That is a trap that intelligent people in particular seen very vulnerable to for some reason.
Glad you appreciated it. Dunno if you remember me, I’ve followed you since the oil drum. Appreciate the shadow of all good ideas and things done with care concern and intentionality. Ummm like the thibault. I really wanna order 5 copies. Just cuz *how cool*
One for me and my sons (well, son and daughter) one for an old friend who just got married. She studied fencing. And one for an old friend who absolutely loves the princess bride. She was always kind.
I love the idea. Anyways. Cheers to bravery. Cheers to the good fight.
That being said, a wuestion. What do you think of transgender issues? May I ask? I’m quite curious. Have you written on it?
Not long ago, I sowed some Murraya koenigii ( Indian Curryleaf) seeds indoors. Currently, out of 32 ( 2 in ea. pot), 9 have germinated and are about 2″ tall, with several sets of leaves. Definitely a houseplant up here on the North Olymic Peninsula .. though I might, once the weather warms in late spring, pop a few in the greenhouse covered raised garden beds, so as to boost their growth some before bringing them home when the fall returns. I’ll attempt to give away what I have no room for. Last season, I grew 2 types of peppers (balkans area chillies) .. and when fully red-ripe, strung them up in my pad to dry .. the result was approx. 300, now bagged waiting to be used. One of the varieties, Rezha macedonia, makes for a nice ground ‘paprika’ like seasoning.
‘Olympic’ .. ugh!
Stephen, as I said, you can survive it. Not everyone did, but it beats being strung up from a lamppost. I don’t know how many people in the educated classes these days realize just how much white-hot resentment has built up among working class Americans against the medical industry and the managerial elite generally.
Katylina, fascinating! Now I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of geographical determinism at work — rule this area of the earth’s surface, and this is how your state will turn out, or something like that.
Rajarshi, thanks for this!
Curt, thanks for the heads up.
Foxhands, I’m not sure that the US Army is really ready to invade and conquer much of anywhere at this point. The troops are brave and capable, but the weapons systems are of poor quality, spare parts and backups are in appallingly short supply, and the leadership is beyond clueless. All Venezuela has to do is fall back into the mountains and launch a sustained guerrilla war, and we can all expect to learn how to say “quagmire” in Spanish.
Clay, very clearly a lot of smoke and mirrors are being deployed right now. One wonders exactly why.
Siliconguy, ha! Thanks for this.
Luke, by all means!
Polecat, I know. I make a point of not talking about my lack of interest in mainstream medicine around anyone I don’t know well. It’s just not productive. Re 20 hrs, I’m quite sure some of those people would be fretting if you weren’t seeing one twice a day!
Siliconguy, there are bigger downfalls in the works. “My name is Softwareindustry, king of kings; look on my works, ye markets, and despair!”
Deo, does repeating the word “Prussia” five times cause you to materialize? 😉
Greencoat, (1) yes, very likely the mass of souls that had to be moved through one human incarnation in a hurry is mostly past, and things will revert to normal. I wonder if half a dozen animal species are about to achieve full sentience, so some souls had to be gotten ready in a rush to prime the process. (2) It won’t make any difference at all. The Christian scriptures say that the devil can take the form of an angel of light, so malign spirits can certainly pretend to be Christian patriots.
Ethan, if past measures are anything to go by, it can get pretty bad before something breaks.
Robert M, interesting; thanks for the heads up.
Stravinsky7, it’s seriously cool and I can’t wait to get my copy. As for transgender issues, no, I haven’t written about them to any noticeable degree. I have transgender friends; it’s clear to me that their gender dysphoria isn’t simply a pose; I think it would be helpful if we as a society could have a mature discussion about how best to manage things relating to people with gender dysphoria, safeguarding their rights but also those of everyone else; but it’s clear to me that such a discussion isn’t likely to happen in my lifetime, as both sides of our current culture wars are zooming off to ever more extreme positions, using transgender-related issues as a stalking horse for their own agendas, and shouting down any attempt at negotiation or compromise. It’s a real mess.
JMG, apparently there is a growing fashion/lifestyle trend among young black men to ditch the sports clothes and neon basketball shoes for traditional lace up leather shoes, collared shirts and quarter zip sweaters. From the videos I have seen it also extends to home cooking instead of fast food, matcha tea instead of energy drinks and discussions leaning towards business and politics. Have you heard anything like this? It is referred to as the “quarter zip trend”.
@JMG
In the Magic Monday, you said you could feel inflammation of your brain. What does that feel like?
In any case, transgender transitioning will go away, except for the very rich, when the medical/pharmceutical industries go down.
Also, population decline will probably set off a panic and a return to more traditional families. There will be a societal expectation that young adults marry for the purpose of having children. I don’t know when this shift will happen, but happen it will.
@JMG 382
I’m usually lurking, but I also don’t feel like I have a lot to contribute to the discussion when it moves outside of my own bailiwick. So when it comes up I want to jump in, which, I guess effectively means the answer is yes lol.
@Chuaquin 376
TBH these days I tend to think of Putin as being the same kind of ruler as Napoleon III. Here we have a guy who’s the head of a country that used to be one of the biggest players, but doesn’t really have the material base to sustain it anymore. He’s related to the old regime, but not so much so that he was caught up in it when it fell. So, to keep up his country’s reputation for martial strength, he keeps getting involved in fights everywhere around the world, but only under circumstances when he’s pretty sure he can win against opponent’s he’s pretty sure he can defeat. That’s kept up the country’s reputation and done an ok job of concealing the declining material base, but it’s also why this war is so much of a problem for the Russians – once they failed to defeat Ukraine quickly, some level of western intervention was inevitable. But, for whatever reason, the Russians don’t seem to have expected that and the result has been a futher erosion of strength.
I do think we’re on the same page re: China though, although I’d say the alliance predates this war and I’m no longer convinced it would’ve been possible to peel Russia off from China. To be honest, because of Putin’s cageyness, even tho I sensed the war coming back in 2021 I thought it was going to be China making a go at Taiwan to take advantage of momentary western weakness. I didn’t think the Russians would want to go first, because everything I saw told me that the Russians think of themselves as a weak power fronting instead of a strong power with a lot of options and I didn’t think they’d be willing to take the risk.
Oh yeh, also and slightly off-topic, now I’m thinking about it I had a dream a few years back a lot like the airport dream people were talking about on the other blog, but it was weird because I was seeing things both from the perspective of someone on the plane and someone off it. The one on it was anxious about whether the person off would be able to make it, and the one on turned into a monster and tried to fight their way through airport security with no luck. Naturally, I was both, but I don’t remember which one I wound up being at the end?
Clay Dennis @ 383, I wandered down a street in an African American neighborhood last summer. About 1 in three houses was growing vegetables and this was some serious gardening being done. Large plantings, trellises, plastic wrapped enclosures. I think this particular community is doing what it always does when it feels threatened, practicing the arts of self reliance and hiding in plain sight.
@Katylina, thanks that was interesting. Polands territory seem like a pendulum. It went east for the first 6 centuries of its existence and then it moved back westward. It will be interesting to see in the next few decades if the pendulum has any remaining westward motion left (while staying out of reach of the accompanying fireworks).
@Curt, thanks for the update. Vienna is not the only one. The province of Brussels has also big financial problems. The local politicians are in a deadlock and are already more than 500 days trying to form a coalition. If nothing changes, the city will not be able to pay salaries from Spring 2026 onward.
@Dan, I think the societal trends of rise and fall will be severely impacted by the availability or lack of resources (fossil fuels, minerals, manufacturing and agricultural lands).
Of all European countries, Russia is best off followed by a distant Poland and the rest is not worth mentioning. France is dependant on aging nuclear reactors and Germany needs the French to stabilize their electricity network after they foolishly shut down theirs. They also have a high population density so they need to import a lot of food. The UK has used most of its coal and North Sea oil and is now fully dependant on import. Italy has no natural resources to speak of. It’s not looking good for the whole continent and with the collapse of the international supply lines it can get dicey very quickly.
I won’t be surprised if Italy will try to re-colonize Libia (oil!) and France will try the same in Algeria (gas). Germany might try to grab the Polish fossil fuels in its former territories. The UK may try to keep the relationship with the US warm. Norway with all its oil, gas and hydro electricity will probably feel like a fat dwarf surrounded by hungry giants. We’re in for “interesting” times I’m afraid.
Christopher henningsen et al #378
“…my favorite explanation of what is meant by ’emptiness’ in this context comes from a book on zen titled “graffiti on perfectly good paper”. The goal being, if we liken the activity of mind to writing, to become familiar with the nature of the paper itself.
I’ll need to find a zen stick and apply it to myself to think about that – I’m not a zen thinker and I’ll need to chew on your words.
Mainly I’ve thought of it as ‘monkey-mind in abeyance’ – still and ‘listening’ – or a quiet focus where one rings like a bell (the vibration of the Ideal) and after that ‘broadcast’ reverberates it is a matter of quietly waiting.
Put another way, all one’s foundation work creates a ‘flowing state’, that state is like a piece of music sounding out, with quiet still attention after that, perhaps Grace might intervene.
What interests me more than John Gilbert’s use of words is where he is actually working – that ‘space’ or ‘pause’ in the breathing cycle that is actually neither space nor pause – a great deal to think about there – I don’t know for sure, but it seems like there is some serious potential in this.
A well-known YouTube science channel, kurzgesagt, just released a video saying cosmology is in crisis and wondered whether the solution will be a tweak to our models (like the discovery of Neptune accounting for discrepancies in Uranus’ orbit) or a complete overhaul (like general relativity replacing Newtonian gravity to account for discrepancies in Mercury’s orbit). The narrator did not go so far as to openly question whether the Big Bang happened. Still, this means that the educated members of the Religions of Scientism & Progress will start to doubt that the Big Bang actually happened– if they aren’t already turning away from it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zozEm4f_dlw&t=0s&pp=0gcJCSIKAYcqlYzv
1. Scientists want to believe that our place in the universe is typical so we can assume that the laws of physics that hold sway in our portion of the universe govern the entire cosmos. They had moved the goalposts to “on a scale of billion-light-year distances, the universe looks uniform,” but new observations show structures of galaxies even larger than that.
2. The two measurements scientists use to calculate the expansion rate of the universe consistently disagree with each other.
3. The James Webb Spave Telescope observed large galaxies with a larger redshift (= younger in Big Bang Theory) than the Big Bang Theory predicts. Worse, they have signatures of heavy elements that shouldn’t have existed so early in the universe’s history yet.
4. Apparently, the Big Bang Theory NEVER accounted for the observed relative abundance of lithium in the universe even though a pop science book I read claimed that the relative abundance of lithium proved the Big Bang happened. There is three times more lithium in the cosmos than the Big Bang theory predicts there should be.
5. Some new studies are questioning the classic interpretation of the Cosmic Microwave Background as the redshifted afterglow of the Big Bang.
JMG # 382:
Of course, Venezuela isn’t short of mountains where a smart government could fight a bloody guerrilla war: there are the Andes, and other mountains. I’d add its jungles and tall grass zones are also fit to guerrilla…Oh, wait. Russian and Chinese have economic and military interests in Venezuela, so they would be eager to finance and supply Maduro people (or his ideological heirs).
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Transgender topic: I agree too. Trans people have been hijacked by the wokes in their cultural wars, like other ethnic/sexual/et cetera minories, so now it’s a mess if you want to differenciate between honest people seeking their rights and opportunist activists looking for their 10 minutes of glory spreading b**t. Of course, the other side trench isn’t morally nor intellectually better than their woke enemy.
Clay, I hadn’t heard of it, but all I can say is that it’s wonderful news and I hope it catches on. A rising class of young black men who know how to play the appearance game and have ambitions in politics and business would be very good for this country. Who knows, maybe it’ll even catch on outside the black community!
Patrick, diffuse heat all through everything inside my skull, combined with difficulty thinking. It gets better with plenty of rest, and green tea also helps. As for the future of marriage et al., I expect to see a rush to more marriages and bigger families within a few years.
Deo, so noted! I’ll remember that incantation when it would be good to bring in someone with a solid knowledge of European history. 😉
Patrick, cosmology has been in a state of crisis for decades. It’s been that long since anyone could explain the data from deep space. My guess? The big bang and the expansion of the cosmos never happened, and the apparent red shift, background microwave radiation, etc. will turn out to have other causes.
Chuaquin, exactly on both counts.
@JMG
Before now, cosmologists could ignore or explain away the data with dark matter, dark energy, and inflation theory. In retrospect, I can see they were epicycles meant to reconcile an inaccurate model with observations.
The consensus itself is now coming apart.
@Rita Rippetoe – I got the news this morning that Leslie Fish has passed away. Deepest sympathies.
Hey JMG and commentariat
I left this a bit late, but I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve published another fable on my Substack yesterday, that may be interesting.
It’s a fable about how some people, who are in a position of power and offer charity and help to others, think that the people they help must feel gratitude no matter how they are treated otherwise.
https://jlmc12.substack.com/p/putting-glass-in-chocolate
@JMG #382 re: Venezuela…..why did that suddenly launch “Good night, Saigon…..” from my mental music library. World War I, Vietnam….. are we fated to repeat the same things over and over and over?
@Clay Dennis #383 – I’ve noticed that a certain number of young white men look like they’ve been going to the hairdresser regularly. My youngest grandson’s Korean roommate has a fine head of curls, and the students who wait tables in my dining hall have similarly styled do’s – more that some of the residents 60 years their senior.
the trouble with the managerial class is that rational arguments of self interest are irrelevant.
what goes on at the ground level is this – unless its someone’s job to fix something, no one does.
unless its someone’s job as manager to give the order to fix something, no one gives the order.
managers don’t survive by doing the right thing and giving rational orders, they survive by not being held accountable for failures and taking credit for effort they did not have to pay any price for.
so the bucks get passed around until their tied into a gordian moebius knot.
under that analysis – what has been worrisome from the start is that its no one’s job to end the war in Ukraine. There is no workable decision making change for peace. Every manager will get out of being held accountable for decisions made to ‘lose’ to Russia. it seems most likely for conflict to continue grinding on until the decision to offer troops is put before the managerial class and they make the least accountable decision.
I think the current faction of retreat in the US is borne of the advanced weapons systems demonstrations for which the west has no counters.
Oh man, I read/watched about the crisis in cosmology not that long ago. It’s bad. Cosmology is definitely what Imre Lakatos would call a degenerating research programme: the protective belt of auxillary hypothesese that tweak the theory to protect it from refutation is growing faster than the new, confirmed predictions the theory produces. The field is ripe for a paradigm shift.
Dark energy in particular is the auxilliary hypothesis, the purest example of an ad hoc conjecture papering over a gaping hole in the primary theory. It literally serves no other purpose as far as I can tell. And it’s far from the only ad hoc entity added because the current model predicts one thing and we observe something else.
At this point the reluctance to let go of the model and just admit they have no idea what’s really going on is probably out of a fear of losing another battle in the “science wars,” not realizing that every time they kick the can down the road they’re convincing even more interested laypeople to declare for one of the other sides in that war.
Hot off the press,
Surprise! Solar System Moves 3x Faster Than Predicted
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fGXnGfH0Fso&pp=ygUaU2FiaW5lIHNvbGFyIHN5c3RlbSBtb3ZpbmfSBwkJIgoBhyohjO8%3D
The CMB is implicated too as the velocity derived from that does not match the velocity derived from a survey of radio galaxies.
I think the CMB is not what they think it is. The astronomers are certainly having their boat rocked.
@Askari Autto & JMG
I thought it was only me! I get a lot of vision’s/ day dreams. They are first persons experiences of me interacting with other people, nearly always people I have not met. They can go on quite awhile, until a little worm in the back of my head notes the continuity problem between me nodding off on the sofa and being somewhere else entirely, at which point the vision steps back and I am only an observer, though only for a short while before full consciousness returns. Sometimes I can get a series of linked experiences, each starting where the other left off. The real kicker is that very occasionally I walk into one of these experiences in the real world. A big WTF ! The first couple of times, but I ride with it now. I’ve never had anything dangerous happen in a vision, so feel fairly safe. Ps I suffer from ME so being being out of it with fatigue in the middle of the day is not uncommon, the fatigue seems to lower the barrier to the visions occurring. Conversely I very rarely dream at night.
Chris at Fernglade.
Ground basalt is a good slow release general mineral fertiliser, if applied it will also artificially increase the weathering rate. The CO2 that is causing are warmer and wetter world also increases the acidity of the oceans and rainwater. The more acidic rainwater chemically weathers rocks faster releasing more calcium, which when washed into the oceans combines with CO2 in the seawater to form the mineral calcite which precipitates out as limestone thus removing our surplus CO2 problem. This is the standard method by which our world regulates CO2. As CO2 goes up chemical weathering goes up, and CO2 in removed as limestone in the oceans, and vice versa, less CO2, less chemical weathering (and less rain) etc. if anybody has noticed the earth is still actually in a glacial period of earth’s history, yes I know the climate change huggers are panicking otherwise, but the earth has been experiencing unusually low levels of CO2 for the past 2.6 million years due to elevated rates of chemical weathering of rocks high in calcium. The cause is the is a very big mountain building event in the tropics, otherwise known as the Himalayas, which has exposed a lot of calcium rich rocks (basalts, limestones, dolostones) to chemical weathering. It’s going to be a long time before the Himalayas are ground down, so buckle up for a several more million years of ice age yet. The current fossil fuel splurge of CO2 is just a tiny blip in this ice age, though it won’t do the successor civilizations to our industrial civilization any favours.
I have a generally negative view of “influencers” I would only put someone in that category if they are basically grifters, and very focused on growth in their social media following for its own sake, and to bring in the cash. I suspect some of them these days are astroturfed by some kind of corporate support or something because over time, how else would new ones stand out from the crowd of existing ones? As far as credentialism goes, its already a thing that there is a grift that consists of making money by promising to teach someone how to become an influencer.
I wonder if Poland’s military buildup over the next few year will lead them to realise they could actually turn that military machine the other way and seize Berlin in a day, and that would sound like a better proposition than actually going to war with Russia.
As far as I remember, the problem with beach sand for construction is because it is rounded by being in the sea, rather than more angular, which means it doesn’t work well in concrete.
Re: cosmology and the huge problems with every model so far …
What I suspect may be the truth of the matter is that the entire Cosmos actually is a vast living, sentient Being, existing wholly outside of time and space, matter and energy, which It continually creates as a form of deliberate expression..
If so, then the “laws” that human physicists have formulated in the past, or will formulate in the future, can never be eternal verities, but merely attempted descriptions of the Cosmos’s arbitrary, temporary habits of behavior at the aeons-long moment of observation, which it can (and eventually will) change at will or even on a whim.. In comparison, we humans are ephemeral beings. The Cosmos barely notices us unless we make a great effort to catch its attention. And once we have caught its attention, it judges us by how we try to relate to it. It obliges us if our attentions please it. And when our attentions displease it, it disobliges us.
Pico della Mirandola dimly sensed this when he wrote in 1486 that if a magician would work magic, s\he must woo and marry the cosmos: “To work magic is nothing other than to marry the world” (Magicam operari non est aliud quam maritare mundum). Only sentient beings can enter into marriage.
@Robert Mathiesen
This reminds me of the fact that we still cannot fully describe the functioning of even simple cells through physics alone. They’re way too complicated with too many non-linear interactions and feedback loops. Yet we expect to be able to describe not only the functioning of the Universe as a whole but to infer its history through linear extrapolations.
Late in the Open post, but I note that in response to RSDynamo’s questions that nobody has suggested having his son take the Myers-Briggs MBTI test or the related work by Keirsey, and then there is IIRC the Strong Interest Inventory, I think that’s the correct name. At 14 the kid doesn’t have much life experience, but the MBTI is all about the ways you prefer to interact with the world, the Strong I don’t remember the strategy behind the questions, but they are both very effective.
I think I took both in high school, mid 1970’s and thought, hmmm, interesting, seems relevant. I had the opportunity to take both 25 years later and my reaction was “wow, these are frighteningly accurate, they reveal more about me than I might want people, particularly employers, to know about me”. FWIW I typed as an INTJ and there is no doubt about the NT.
The “real” MBTI is owned by Stanford University, but I believe clones are available on the net, same for the Strong.
While I favor the MBTI and Strong, the work by Jordan Peterson looks valuable, although I think the MBTI has a more solid historical background than his Big 5.
#Rajarsi: The power cut suffered in Spain and Portugal was caused by a criminal mis management of the power mix ordered by our goverment. Many of we are afraid about another simular power cut of weeks of lifespan.
JMG – RE: meditative breathing exercises. I haven’t followed the descriptions in precise detail, but it seems to me that I should trust my body’s automatic systems to provide the oxygen by brain needs for effective thinking. If I take control, then I take responsibility. But if my conscious brain is asserting control, wouldn’t slowed breathing diminish the quality of control?
I’ve read about Transcendental Meditation (TM) since the 1970s (as a high-school student), and read a book or two on Zen practices, but while these were restful, they didn’t seem productive.
On the other hand, discursive meditation (DM) has proven to be of great value to me. If I sit down with a theme in mind, I can usually only go a few minutes before I realize that there are important actions that were being neglected before I sat down to meditate. The simple act of pausing to select a topic worthy of DM it itself clarifying!
Last minute entry under This Shouldn’t be Possible So Soon.
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-alaknanda-jwst-massive-grand-spiral.html
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a powerful telescope capable of detecting extremely faint light from the early universe. Using JWST, researchers Rashi Jain and Yogesh Wadadekar spotted a galaxy remarkably similar to our own Milky Way. Yet this system formed when the cosmos was barely 1.5 billion years old—roughly a tenth of its present age.