This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply (no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the utilities they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their follow-up comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here, and have extended that ban to LLM-generated content of all kinds.
With that said, have at it!
Good Morning Mr. Greer. I was wondering what you think of Graham Platner. If you ask me, he really is giving off Fred Halliot vibes right down to the odd mustache, being a veteran in a controversial war, a folksy rusticated manner, a quasi-Nazi tattoo, and really embodying a “totalitarian center” in terms of economics and socio-cultural vibes!
Hey JMG – last weeks post shows 331 posts on home page but going to the post only shows 315 posts. Tried refreshing and using different browseer but no joy.
Meanwhile on the populist right, Tucker Carlson has announced that he no longer supports the Republican Party because they put the interests of foreign countries above the interests of Americans:
https://www.foxla.com/news/tucker-carlson-says-no-longer-supporting-republican-party-im-out
So it has been almost 4 months since this situation with Iran started and i am really surprised by how things have gone with the economy.
I am still a very firm believer in the idea that the economy is physical thing that obeys the laws of physics and that surplus energy is a key to understanding it. But i am reminded of the saying “Markets can be irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” But this just seems crazy to me. There has been a very large reduction of available oil and gas but the economic impact has been mild (at least in the US). And although talks are ongoing the flow of oil and gas is still very constrained and not actually getting better. (the rate that things are getting worse may have slowed slightly)
My question is how much longer can oil and gas deficits be ignored?
I truly thought at best we would have ~3 months from the start of the conflict to serious economic impact. If we don’t have a serious negative impact on the economy by the end of summer I am going to have to do some serious thinking on why i was wrong.
Greetings all,
We had a delightful 3 days together at the First Annual Adocentyn in Providence. Fewer people showed up than I hoped for, but it worked out in the end
The theme was Past, Present and Future (H/T Al Stewart).
Friday, we began with an hour with Roger Williams. Mr. Williams discussed the world he came of age in, with The Great Chain of Being, where G*d ruled over all, below Him the angels, and then, as His annointed on Earth, the Kings, the nobility, the yeomen, the peasants, the animlals and plants, and last the soil itself. When he established Providence in 1636, Mr. Williams sought to break that chain, where men could choose their rulers, and worship as they wished. He left us with the charge not to abandon those aspirations. I then led us on a 2 hour tour of the history of Providence.
Saturday, we met in a rented space. 3 people gave presentations on the general theme of what is happening in the Empire in decline. Andrew spoke about the Maker Space he is involved with. Michael spoke about the ISO 9000 certifications, and how it has caused ever expanding lenocracy. Inna assured us that we have barely begun the 5 steps of collapse (per Dimitri Orlov), based on her experience in the former USSR.
The presentations gave us a framework to enjoy the kind of free flowing discussion we enjoy here, but with immediate response. It was a relief to be with people who don’t mock the idea of collapsing empire. One of our discussions was how do we couch our language so others do not immediately shut down what we say. 7 hours and a pizza lunch later, we retired for dinner.
Sunday, we met for a couple more hours. We toasted those absent with a lovely gin from France, agreed that having a smaller group than expected was to our advantage, because we could easily respond in the moment, and decided that we’ll do it again next year.
This is the announcement for the Second Annual Adocentyn in Providence, June 19, 2027. The format will be modified from this year: presentations and discussions from 9 to 5 in the daytime, followed by a potluck in the evening at my house. Mark you calendars now!
Do you have any thoughts about Elon Musk becoming a Zilionaire and making space a giant AI data center? Will it forestall decline, or is it just a rich man’s fantasy. He seems to want to be a competency porn star from a Heinlein novel.
Hello JMG and commentariat:
Another Open Post today…I’m afraid I’m not going to be the only one commenter in Johns blog who writes about last UK Prime Minister fall. What do you think about Keir Starmer recent end as head of the British Government?(By the way, it seems Trump hasn’t wasted his time to mock him. And some politicians here have suggested here our weak government to imitate the Brits govt: so Sánchez should resign and try to win a new election to rule Spain with a new govt: If he would win it…I doubt it).
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I wanted to comment in the previous post why “feminist men” here tend to be middle-upper class people or even directly upper class men; but I’m afraid I wrote it too late yesterday.
It seems there’s s lot less “feminist men” within middle-low class men and worker class men, who (especially the youngest ones) tend to vote more and more to far right wing…
Have you seen these tendences in your countries too? If this happens across some western countries, too, why it happens? (I guessed some clumsy ideas to explain it here, but I’m not very sure of them).
Gunstone, I see him — and also the recent victories of socialist candidates in the NY Democratic primary — as more evidence that voters are willing to accept literally anyone who offers them an alternative to the business-as-usual stance of the bipartisan political class.
Earthworm, it might be that I had to delete repeated attempts by one would-be commenter to post wall-of-text comments promoting LLMs. (If he keeps it up he’ll be permabanned.)
Anon, no surprises there. Carlson can’t stand being upstaged, and the Orange Julius upstages everyone on the GOP side of things.
Dobbs, demand destruction is the most effective way to deal with energy shortfalls, and that’s happening in an unexpected way as mass layoffs begin to hit the cubicle class and mass illegal immigration stops propping up our contracting population. An interesting piece on this latter:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70793664/half-of-us-cities-are-depopulating-ghost-town-era/
I’m beginning to wonder just how much letting population decline naturally will ameliorate the decline in energy availability. Factor in the accelerating movement toward retro tech, and the Long Descent could be a little less bumpy than I’d anticipated.
Great Khan, I had a wonderful time, fwiw. I’ve inked in next year’s event!
Bradley, a truly gifted con artist always shoots for the stars. I note that SpaceX stock has fallen quite a bit from its peak on June 16; it’ll be a while before it eventually settles on its ultimate price of $0.00, and no doubt Musk will fill the media with plenty of clickbait before that happens.
Chuaquin, Starmer had become the least popular prime minister in modern British history, so it’s no surprise that the Party swapped him out for another bland little nonentity. The policies won’t change, of course, so Burnham’s tenure is no more secure than Starmer’s.
Thank you, thank you, to everyone who joined us or otherwise contributed to the Ecosophian convention in Providence this weekend! The company was delightful, and the discussion was intelligent and freewheeling. I am grateful to have had the chance to go.
Those who weren’t able to make it this year, I encourage you to come next year. Give a talk, or host a workshop. The only risk is that—with more presentations—we’ll have to book even more time for conversation, because every talk this weekend gave us so much to discuss. On the other hand, “more of this kind of conversation” is a risk well worth running. 😃 Thank you again!
On the morning of Sept 11, 2001, I woke from a dream around 7:50am Pacific time (shortly after the WTC collapse). In my dream, I was in a tall building with floor-to-ceiling windows. In the distance I saw a tornado heading toward the building. I was thinking, “That looks like it will make a direct hit. But tornadoes don’t hit buildings in cities. That won’t happen.” But as it got closer, I ran for cover in a closet. It smashed in all the windows and blew out the furnishings. I ran up to the roof to see where the tornado was going. It was circling above with businessmen in suits caught in the whirlwind, screaming for help. I grabbed one man’s leg and pulled him down to safety as the tornado blew into the distance.
I turned on the TV as part of my normal morning routine. What I saw made me think — for the first time in my life — that I might not have woken up. It felt like a continuation of the dream. I intentionally shook myself to see if I would awake.
I wrote all this down in my journal of that day. My question relates to this — I remember in the 1990s some New Agers would talk about how if a certain percentage of the world thought the same thing at once (ie world peace), that act could telepathically elicit a desired effect. I had to wonder about this on the morning of Sep 11. Billions of people the world over were watching the same images repeatedly with strong emotional reactions. I felt as though I had picked up on shared global mental transmission.
Do you think I experienced one of life’s oddest coincidences or a true telepathic event?
“I truly thought at best we would have ~3 months from the start of the conflict to serious economic impact. If we don’t have a serious negative impact on the economy by the end of summer I am going to have to do some serious thinking on why i was wrong.”
That’s because the United States has been emptying its Strategic Petroleum Reserve the past few months to cover losses from the Middle East. Truly serious economic impact won’t happen until the Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out.
Summary of a paywalled article; a certain salary class is stressed by their pet projects getting cut off.
“A survey conducted by science news website STAT found that more than half of researchers with grants from the NIH—once a reliable source of $40 billion a year—reported some level of disruption to their funding: a total freeze, a delay in disbursement or a reduction in amount. And 81 percent of researchers in tenure-track positions said they were concerned that funding disruptions could affect their productivity enough to jeopardize their chances of getting tenure.”
Cross reference to elite over production too.
This Stuff Works: Apparently in the World Cup some Ghanian witch doctor hexed one of England’s soccer players in its game vs Ghana, and that player did not score a single goal in that game.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/ghanaian-witch-doctor-who-nobbled-37325441
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2026/06/24/englands-drab-draw-against-ghana-a-southgate-performance/
Just to follow on with the comparison of the dystopian Obama Museum with concrete sewers and septic tanks (although I immediately thought of the Berlin Flak Towers), I would like you all to consider the inescapable similarity between the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg MB., and a WWI German Pickelhaube.
I leave it to you as an exercise in pondering on the irony.
Hi what does everyone think about the alien stuff, including psionic navigation of alien crafts and communication via telepathy? How wild do you think it is? Is it just a few crashes obeying our known laws of physics? Or is it an entire inter-dimensional system complete with time travel and controls our matter-based universe with consciousness?
John, there seems to be a lot of excitement about micro nuclear reactors. I know you’ve mentioned that large nuclear reactors are not profitable, but are micro’s a game changer? I see that some don’t even use water for cooling. They also claim to be almost fool-proof safety-wise. Your thoughts?
Another batch of salary class down the river, although I’m not sure how Oracle pays its employees.
“The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The “deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the report says.
Hey JMG,
I’ve noticed that several of the late 19th/early 20th century English Catholic writers seemed to have been rather more comfortable with the pagan Gods than you’d expect from Christians. Tolkien comes to mind, obviously, but here’s Chesterton in The Honour of Israel Gow (The Innocence of Father Brown):
Implying that the pagan Gods came from heaven and, at least as I read it, could have returned had they not lost themselves in the Scottish forests.
What do you make of that?
On another note, I recently had a conversation with a soon-to-retire relative. I made the mistake of saying that the government-run pension system here in Germany will have gone broke by the time I am at that age, so I got treated to an explanation on how it can’t go broke because it doesn’t save money, it immediately redistributes money from current earners to retirees, so it can’t run out of savings and can always ratchet up contributions if necessary. Technically true, but, as I pointed out, this doesn’t matter if there are simply too few earners.
His counter was that productivity would just go up as the population shrinks. Why? Because nobody wants to go back to the times where you had to work until you dropped dead.
I decided that sarcasm wasn’t the most diplomatic response, so I’ve saved it for here: how delightful! Nobody informed me that the system will continue working just because we want it to.
(That this was about pensions, of all things, is quite baffling. I remember being told in school that we need to import millions of foreigners just to keep the system going so even if you don’t believe in the long descent, the collapse of the pension system should not be unthinkable. He actually brought that up too, later, when ranting about the AfD. By that point, I was just smiling and nodding along, rather than asking him how that’s working out.)
—David P.
OK, seems I have gone slow on the draw in my old age. 🙂
dobbs @#4 beat me to it.
His experience mirrors my own and the questions he raises are the same. The last 4 months are a staircase of failed prophets saying “this is the big one” first there was the initial panic after operation Epic Fury. I remember the gas stations over the border limiting the amount you could tank, because the people did a run on the stations. We abided and got over it. After two weeks the lines disappeared.
Then there were all the doomsday prophets going on about:
40 days tanker transit times.
Sulfuric acid.
Helium.
Fertilizer.
El Nino….
And all those points were well argued, sound, observed. But, well not “Bang!” but even consequences.
Mind you I do not mind the extra time to prepare. But what gives? Seems like every stupid global thing just… persists. Out there just over the horizon in Ukraine, Hormuz and the like.
I do not know.
Maybe JMG, or some Australians can give other perspectives.
Any thoughts about how to maintain certain hard won perspectives and bits of knowledge past the incarnation boundary? Not necessarily really detailed things, just general worldview stuff.
JMG,
Have you ever hitchhiked? Do you still practice it? Any suggestions for an aspiring hitchhiker who has trouble getting cars to stop?
There was a discussion on the latest Magic Monday about the use of online random number generators and how they don’t work:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/372571.html?thread=60769115#cmt60769115
The actual reason why they don’t work is because they aren’t actually random. They are instead pseudo-random number generators, deterministic algorithms used to simulate randomness in the eyes of human beings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator
This is why you should use physical sources of randomness like a dice.
Dobbs @ 4, One factor keeping gas prices down is that the US has been replacing lost production by draining US petroleum reserves, and even exporting said reserves. That strategy will work until the reserves are empty in a few months.
From CNBC, no comment necessary:
“Global stocks tumbled as a tech-led selloff hit Asian, European and U.S. markets, hammering semiconductor shares and Magnificent Seven stocks. Analysts downplayed catastrophe risks, arguing strong earnings and AI-driven growth make the downturn a buying opportunity.”
PETER #5
Thank you for your stewardship of Adocentyn. Even for those of us who couldn’t attend, the inspiration was contagious. Thank you for the advance notice. A year should be sufficient notice!
Under the heading “unexpected results only for those who can’t do math”;
“Seattle City Light has proposed back-to-back average rate increases of 9.5% for both 2027 and 2028. …The utility cited surging electricity demand—driven by the adoption of electric vehicles and heat pumps—alongside inflation, aging infrastructure, and the need for costly grid modernizations as primary drivers for the hikes.”
But also hot off the press;
“Canada has unveiled a national strategy to build up to 10 new nuclear reactors over the next 15 years as it seeks to double electricity-grid capacity by 2050. Energy Minister Tim Hodgson called it a plan for a “new civilian nuclear renaissance.”
“If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years, there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,” Hodgson said. “There is no credible plan for Canada to become an energy superpower if we choose not to build upon one of the strongest energy advantages we have.”
And of course the US will try as well;
“The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to speed the development of 10 new large nuclear reactors to meet the skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers. Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “tremendous interest” among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, ”
I have noticed a large drop in interest from the West Side of Washington in ripping out the hydroelectric dams on the Snake River to improve the fishing opportunities of the urban elite, a very rare outbreak of common sense.
For the BPA’s service area they added 204 MW of new solar capacity bringing the total to 342 MW.
There was some reshuffling of contracts for existing wind turbines so now BPA claims 3031 MW of wind power so the green line on the plot is still mostly wind.
https://transmission.bpa.gov/BUSINESS/OPERATIONS/WIND/baltwg.aspx
Now back to my raspberry flavored Florida Weisse beer. The wort should be cool by now.
You have previously mentioned the power of repression and that many hard left women would joyfully enter purdah of their own free will.
I do not understand why. I understand why hard left women would put OTHER women into purdah as it’s a power move.
But why would women who fully believe the universe owes them everything and that they should be able to do whatever they want willingly constrain themselves?
Could you please enlighten me?
If anyone here enjoys YouTube videos and is a fan of Agatha Christie and movie reviews, Bill and I livestream (no script!) every Thursday at 11:30am about the film we watched Wednesday evening.
Find us at https://www.youtube.com/@peschelpress9911/streams
All our previous videos are here, too.
It’s not necessary to watch the film first, either.
We are slowly working our way through all the theatrical and TV movies of Agatha’s stories, in chronological order from date of HER publication. For a given title, if there’s more than one film, we’re watching them in order of filming, oldest to newest.
It’s been quite the film festival education.
Tomorrow will be the 1967 German version of “Love from a Stranger.”
After that, the four versions of “Lord Edgware Dies.”
In terms of banishing/purification practices would it make sense to focus on filling the space so completely with “the good” so there’s no room for “the bad” rather than focusing on banishing what is not wanted? Makes me think of the kind of gardening where you densely plant the things you want so all the ground is covered. That way you’re not spending all your time pulling weeds. Recently have been experimenting with a modified sphere of protection to focus in this way. Curious about your thoughts on it. Thanks!
JMG, thnks for hosting this space. I’d like to thank @Cynthia Christie last week for those interesting and helpful comments, as a person of similar persuasion who chose not to make the jump, it helps to have that decision validated, I otherwise get heaps of propaganda pushing the other way on a regular basis.
Lately I am struggling to deal with my younger-boomer-age parents, who I have been rapidly losing respect for – in their scramble to maintain an upper middle class lifestyle (that they were only able to afford for three years ~25 years ago) into their retirement, they seem to dive further into scam-adjacent “entrepreneurship” opportunities. I am unable to even convince them it’s bad. They are, it turns out, incapable of applying moral principles to new situations – if the bible says not to do something, they won’t, but add the thinnest language change to that thing and endow it with the possibility of making money and they’ll plunge in headfirst.
Yes, it turns out that of all the values they espouse, the ability to obtain and display large amounts of money is the only one that really matters to them. They would of course be horribly offended if I said as much out loud, and deny it at length in strident terms, but after a couple decades even a midwit like me can figure out the score. Yes, karma has been repeatedly slamming their face into the issue, I don’t expect they’ll figure it out now.
I’m doing journaling work. I’ve ceased all but perfunctory communication with them just to limit the amount of stress I feel. I would like to know if you or the commentariat have any advice in handling the situation – JMG, you’re much more familiar in dealing with boomers along these lines than I do. I expect others on this forum have dealt with similar dynamics as well.
I just don’t want to get to their funerals and have only this to honestly say, “I checked all the boxes and did all the things they said they wanted and valued, but they never cared a bit about any of it except the money, which was never enough, and now they’re gone.”
Khan Peter:
ISO9000 is lenocracy on steroids!
Cugel
Status report The Derive wander.
7 weeks with 50kg bike, food water and camping kit wander across Sicily, northern Italy, over the Lukmanier pass ( tough 1580m assent in 30c for 30km) into Switzerland and onward along the Rhine to northern Germany.
So have a request…..after the summit of Lukmanier pass I was a tad grateful as I was not sure I’d make it. Rested on a small pullover in awe of the fairy tale raw beauty of the Swiss Alps and wee farms. Looked down and there was this stone idol. I bowed in reverence in case the entity had been a help in my getting there and poured a libation of my very precious water(month of 28-34c tends to make you very careful). So folks, did i do it right or paid respect to some Lovecraft demon? This spot would not have anyone stop of all the places I picked to rest and it was not easy to see from the verge.
No idea how to load the Pic from my phone so brief description. 2ft high ,carved granite possibly , figure sitting cross legged with a large bowl in lap. Head bowed over the bowl. Head shaped large wolf but big ears. Pentacles carved on top of each ear. Fair amount of candle wax on top of head. Human hands clasping the bowl.
And John, thank you for the assessment of of the demise of the salary class post as they are the grossly incompetent wankers that have destroyed my country. In my pre covid Unclean days I thought just voting out Little potato would steer the ship of state away from the reefs. But the whole dang country is brainwashed. No hope.
Another day, another few “memes”:
https://imgur.com/a/ncbqS6X
https://imgur.com/a/btA0az0
https://imgflip.com/i/av3ouy
Hello. I’ve noticed a lot of pushback lately on data centers, and rightly so. But there is also a huge disconnect between those who oppose the centers being built in their backyard and current global data usage and its environmental impact. It’s seems more of a “not in MY neighborhood” vibe rather than recognizing the whole problem of continued internet/data usage and growth. I remember one commenter lamenting why data centers couldn’t be built away from people and in the wilderness. 🤦🏻♀️ Thoughts anyone?
Earthworm # 2:
“last weeks post shows 331 posts on home page but going to the post only shows 315 posts.”
Yes, I’ve seen it after having read your comment. Maybe my missed late comment about “feministos” (feminist men) in JMG previous post, is within the lost comments between # 315 and # 331…
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Anonymous # 3:
T. Carlson getaway from the Republican Party seems IMHO a clever and logical behavior, according my limited European view on American politics, though I’m not exactly a fan of him. Evident elephant in the room of USA bipartisan politics, is how easily Zionist lobbie uses its power above the two parties alike, and it’s even more evident when POTUS signs a (fragile) peace treaty with Iran, but Tel Aviv keeps its war against Lebanon without obeying its supposed “boss” (if Washington dares to order it to stop its attacks, which I doubt it). So everybody who doesn’t have too many biases can do the math…
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Dobbs # 4:
“I truly thought at best we would have ~3 months from the start of the conflict to serious economic impact.”
I’m not very sure of it, but likely shortages in oil “production” and refining due to ME main war can be noticed soon or later in Western countries, especially in EU zone. When? It’s interesting I’ve read some different predictions about incoming problems in oil and fuels prices and eventually a real shortage for consumers…I bet we’ll see it during this summer, maybe our reckless leaders can manage to hide trouble until the end of this summer and eventually, until this fall beginning. We’ll see.
There’s an ominous silence here in spanish MSM about this ominous topic: main infotainment topic now here, is the corruption scandals aired out with the evident hope to make fall our current and declining woke left government and let new elections and a new right wing govt…A smoke screen, methink, beyound its little local importance.
I think situation today and in a near future for USA is slightly better than for Europe. American govt can try to use Venezuela heavy oil to relief its oil imports (though, I wish good luck for Trump with its refining…). However, the EU hasn’t big oil reserves nor geopolitical power to assure its imports. Indeed, like I’ve written some post ago, I think European elites are hiding their heads in the soil, “like ostriches”, so they’re wasting…err…spending European strategic oil reserves to pretend there isn’t any problem (“fastening” prices for a while). Oh, this trick won’t last forever. It’s said every week, it’s spent a day of strategic oil reserves here, so how many weeks are left before oil/fuels prices begin their big rampage? I don’t know it exactly. I bet it could happen in between 1 and 3 months from today, as work hypothesis.
JMG and commentariat,
I have noticed a resurgence in discourse around wifely submission as the New Right and the new religiosity ramp up. That’s all well and good for Christians; I have no particular problem with it, and although my own religion does not demand it and we don’t follow that model in our marriage, I wouldn’t find it particularly onerous to do so. What I want to ask about is a common argument I see, which amounts to “Somebody has to be in charge, and (for reasons) it should be the husband.” I remember seeing this same argument years ago in C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and was puzzled by it then. I remain puzzled by it now. It simply doesn’t match my experience of life at all. In no adult one-to-one relationship, romantic or otherwise, has one of us been “in charge” in some kind of consistent way. One of us might temporarily take charge in various contexts, but never have I actually felt that one friend or spouse was the overall leader and the other the follower. Yet when this argument is presented, this dynamic is always assumed: someone must be in charge, officially or unofficially. I am curious—does your experience match mine, or do you feel that there is always an implicit hierarchy in within a couple?
Hi JMG and all on here,
Is the outcome of the Iran war a blip in a long downward trajectory for the US ’empire’ or a more significant event with shorter term bad outcomes for all involved. Am trying to read Spengler but OMG my attention span is practically dead these days!
JMG # 8:
“it might be that I had to delete repeated attempts by one would-be commenter to post wall-of-text comments promoting LLMs.”
OK, if this deletion due to boring and weary attempts to post LLM stuff, I understand “collateral damages” to good faith late commenters in your previous post.
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“Starmer had become the least popular prime minister in modern British history, so it’s no surprise that the Party swapped him out for another bland little nonentity. The policies won’t change, of course, so Burnham’s tenure is no more secure than Starmer’s.”
I knew Starmer was unpopular within the Brits, so it’s a smart move for his party (to some extent) to replace him with another “bland little nonentity”, at least until the new “leader” is “worn-out”. I see this political strategy isn’t suitable for Spain current government, in spite of some politicians here suggesting it to Mr. Sánchez (they’re wrong). It’s a very different situation of the UK politics, Spain and Britain only share a weak govt, but “socialists” here are under a strong leadership (near an inner dictatorship) by Mr Sánchez personalist headship (like the rest of main spanish parties). I think our current President (Prime Minister) will never resign his actual power: he loves too much his seat, and he knows there isn’t an easy “charismatic” replacement for him in his party; and of course, he also knows his party will probably lose next elections, so: let’s spend current mandate until its end…
On the other hand, I grasp UK political system is different from the Spanish one, though we’ve got a Parlamentary Monarchy alike. Brits haven’t a written Constitution like us, and UK electoral system isn’t a proportional one like here. In addition to this, I see Britain Prime Ministers aren’t the “owners” of their parties, like it usally happens here. Maybe I’m wrong, but UK parties can get rid easily of their fallen leaders because their members enjoy a more inner democratic situation than Spanish ones…Spain Constitution (according my shallow knowledges of it) prefers a weak declining govt instead of many short sucessive govts (“horror vacui”); but UK system prefers replacing Prime Ministers/govts without any complexes…
JMG
I’ve seen in a couple of interviews that you’ve given that you think Trump may die in office. I’m curious do you think it’s possible that Trump could be the first President to be impeached and removed from office instead? As of now things look bad for the Republicans in the midterms and several of the pro-war neocons have made their disappointment in the lack of total destruction of Iran known. I’m wondering if the democrats outperform in the midterms and those neocons cross the aisle, if we might see Trump force the deep state to out him. If that happens it could lead to more chaos than an assassination.
Hello Slithy Toves, I wanted to thank you for your comment posted late in the book club discussion of two weeks ago, concerning the Platonist argument put forward by the character Puddleglum in C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair: “It contrasts a worldview in which there is no meaning vs. one in which there is, and concludes that there is no consistent argument from inside the former against adopting the latter.”
It’s been a while since I read that novel, and I pulled it down off the shelf and read from the scene you quoted all the way to the end. What a good yarn. I remembered the scene quite well, but hadn’t much dwelt on the deeper meaning until you pointed it out. I think your interpretation is correct. Thanks for the oblique invitation to step back into Narnia for an evening 🙂
Also, re comments going missing, as earthworm is talking about. I’m seeing the same thing right now that earthworm is. I also see some similar weirdness mid-week some of the time. What happens is that I see one of your comments includes a note to me along with the other notes, so I reply to it, and then when I refresh the page your comment that I replied to, possibly along with some others, is gone, until you come back again and put another batch through.
Peter the Khan of Potlucks #5
ISO9000 is lenocracy on steroids!
Cugel
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One more try:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!I8Dz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdef50f50-5792-4199-8355-883f8c7568ae_1600x1200.jpeg
@#10 Jen K
Coming at it from a non-chrisitan perspective, I mostly agree with you. I think that naturally, in all human groups, whether a group of two married couple, or a sewing circle, or a tribal war party, leaders will naturally arise to fit the moment. It is entirely possible to be a leader and not a manager. Managers are what you get when you stop the natural hierarchical flow and impose a rigid structure upon it. I suppose late stage you get managers whose abilities actually often preclude them from actual leadership… but that’s another line of thinking.
With respect to couples in my marriage I find that my wife and I tend to end up with one or the other of us becoming “the leader” depending upon the task at hand. In a practical sense, we have our own divided spheres of influence and whoever “controls” that sphere ends up being the one who leads when something significant requires decision making. We rarely make a conscious effort to divide these things, they usually just automatically happen. On occasions when they don’t, they often generate conflict.
Examples, most social outings, I defer to the wife, she may seek my counsel but she usually decides what sort of family social events we are going to, or not. Say we are out and about in town and we end up having a run in with a some of our local homeless color (has happened now repeatedly in our small town) that is my domain and I take charge and she immediately just becomes “submissive” if you want to call it that and does what I say. We have had conflict arise, as an example, with school. We had our kids in a local private school when the cooties era got going. I would have pulled the plug much sooner than my wife was willing to. She felt the kids needed to be in school and it was the option, I felt like they didn’t and that it was now a risk to them at a number of levels. The conflict arose because school was ultimately usually her final call, with my input, but external threats are my call. This ended up being a slow rolling point of contention for a couple of years.
As for the return of the “a wife must submit to her husband in all things” attitude, I suppose there is a lot of historical precedent for that among some lines of Christian thought but I also think it is a return of the repressed. In this case, I’m not referring to it for women (though as the discussion with the dildo flinging pointed out the other week that is likely in play too). I think that the average American male, especially the average American middle class white male, has grown up surrounded by a couple of things, 1. Everything wrong in the world is your fault and you are inherently bad. 2. #1 is due to the existence of the patriarchy that you directly have benefited from wrongly. 3. The actual feeling amongst these groups, whether consciously or not, is that we live in a society that elevates women and gives them special status at the expense of men all while blaming them and telling them that they are so powerful while emasculating and dis-empowering them. Or, in other words, we we are creating a double bind that says basically we live in a matriarchy that is executing some “accuse them of what you are doing while you are doing it” sort of gaslighting while crowing about a patriarchy and taking all the actual resources.
In a way, I suppose you could describe the microcosm of the macrocosm like a couple where the woman is in charge, makes all the decisions, demands all the stuff while forcing the man to work while feeling righteous about it because her ex was a douche bag. The man is constantly simping and apologizing and feeling awful and telling himself what a bad person he is because his mother didn’t love him. The woman is literally incapable of seeing that maybe, just maybe, she is actually the bad guy and the man is stuck in a cycle of self-hatred and low self-esteem. Instead of doing what they ought to maybe be doing like getting some counseling or journaling about it or whatever, the woman is doubling down on her righteous victimhood and the man has been doubling down on his self-hatred and low self-esteem.
I think that what we are starting to see emerge is the return of the repressed amongst men where the line of thinking is something like, “you know what? I’m not the bad guy. In fact, I’m not gonna take it anymore, this chick is psycho and we’re done doing what she wants. She accuses me of being in control while she emasculates me? Screw this, I’m taking control or I’m walking. We’re done with this chick having a say in anything!”
The problem with that, in my opinion, is that we are likely to swing from one dumb extreme right on over to the other when there are actually quite a few better answers somewhere in the middle. Personally, I rather like the division that places internal matters (by internal I am referring to the larger social group, not just nuclear family) generally under the dominion of women and matters that have a significant external impact generally into the dominion of men but, your mileage may vary.
HV
I’m quite a fan of the British political commentator Simon Jenkins. I’d characterise him as moderately right-wing these days. He is quite common-sensical, and I particularly like his localism, which is in opposition to the increasing centralism of the UK. What is your view of him, JMG? Would you say that you have anything in common with him?
And what is your view of “Tommy Robinson” ? Simon Jenkins has described him as “appalling”. Do you think that Robinson has any redeeming features?
@JMG. way OT: My daughter passed on to me a YA novel called “The Cat who Saved the Library”, set in modern Japan , and translated into English, with a rather British flavor thereof. Books are disappearing from the library as if they’d never been there, and the viewpoint character, Nanami, an asthmatic teenager who hangs out in the library a lot, has discovered it. Enter a talking cat called Tiger the Tabby, and a tough-talking man called the General, who preached a brand of ruthless toughness as strength (didn’t he learn anything from the last time that happened in the 1940s?) Many adventures ensue, with a lot of interesting looks at the culture and beliefs – and Nanami finds her own strength of character and independence. Copyright 2024.
Hello JMG and fans. A couple of weird things happened this past week that I thought were worth sharing. Maybe you’d like to comment:
The self-proclaimed “world famous” director Ewe Boll (famous for being one of the worst directors alive) released the film, Citizen Vigilante, to uproarious acclaim by the dissident right. It’s about an American vigilante who goes around Europe avenging those victimized by foreign migrants, and targeting judges and politicians who betrayed their people by favoring the migrants. Apparently it’s been censored in Europe.
Also, one of the strangest headlines I’ve ever read: “Report: Female cop shoots Jewish rabbi outside Pornhub office in Canada while hiding from Marxist gunman who killed immigrant officer named Mohamed’
Apparently the gunman was targeting Jews but ended up only killing a Muslim cop while his jumpy female partner shot and killed a Jewish rabbi who was a bystander. I believe he was later captured and taken into custody by police.
-David M.
US never had hyperinflation.
My model predicts it in US somewhere in 2027-2028, and Europe maybe a few months earlier than US.
Do you have hyperinflation anywhere in your predictions geopolitical, astrological or otherwise?
if there’s hyperinflation no class will win!
Also do you mean the GoLLeM will be an excuse for the salary class getting the boot just before the bubble pops? Bu is it worth it the thing eats more money than it can be saved from those salaries, a lot of people are running the numbers.
But there are huge sums of investor class in the GoLLeM bubble? I guess some of the investors will go bust too, when the thing pops!
Also people are complaining that durin so called AI layoffs, well connected moochers get tot stay while people that were doing actual work were being booted. Working in corporations I can imagine they lack a good way to rank people…
Over on MM, the subject of Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancoly” came up briefly. Has anyone here attempted to read it? Maybe “life’s too short” for most of us to attempt it. 🙂 The section titled “Religious Melancoly” is the only part I’ve read clear through. It appears at the very end of the book. Subsection II from “Religious Melancoly” begins by quoting Matthew 24:24, which would certainly interest people interested in paganism, Christianity, theosophy or whatever. I think a few of those comment here now and then. Herman Melville picked this topic up and used it in his novel “The Confidence Man” which discusses the usefulness of “life preservers” and “counterfeit detectors” though you don’t get to where he’s explicit about this until the very last chapter. Melville owned a copy of Burton’s “Anatomy” which he had purchased used. By a sort of synchronicity, it turned out to have been the copy previously owned by his father. Anyhow, now in my late 70s, and somewhat on the verge of personally “aging out”, “religious melancoly, “life preservers” and “counterfeit detectors” have, over the decades, become a lot more interesting to me. In the final scene of “The Confidence Man” an old retiree, clutching his life preserver and his counterfeit detector is being led away into the darkness by a shape-shifting confidence man. Cheery stuff, don’t you think?
What is your view of the most modern buildings of London, JMG, and in particular the Gherkin and the Walkie-Talkie? Strange that the latter has such a retro nickname.
Michael, dreaming true is one of the most common forms of psychism, and it’s especially common in the case of a dramatic event of the kind you foresaw. That is to say, yes, you had a psychic dream.
Siliconguy, it’s the wave of the future. As the US proceeds through its national bankruptcy proceedings, the sciences are going to take their share of the hits. Since many of the universities where these people hope to get tenure won’t exist in a decade or two, it’s probably for the best that they start looking for new lines of work now.
Anon, the English team had better talk to some British occultists!
Renaissance, you’re quite correct:
I suppose it’s appropriate for Canada to have a museum of human rights, as a memento to something that once existed there.
Candy D, oh, it’s much wilder than that. Are you at all familiar with John Keel’s writings on the phenomenon?
Jay, every nuclear technology is safe, cheap, and clean as long as it stays on the drawing boards. It’s only when it gets built that it turns out to be just as risky, dirty, and expensive as all the others. Myself, I’m pondering those micronukes they’re planning on putting down deep boreholes in the Earth’s crust; all that’s necessary is for one to melt down, and you’ve got a self-sustaining center of rock liquefaction sinking straight through the crust toward the mantle, with the enticing possibility of a radioactive volcano raising a cinder cone over the site in the not too distant future. Fun times!
Siliconguy, yep. No question which way the wind’s blowing now.
David, a classical education will do that. TS Eliot is another good example: “I do not know much about gods,” his poem “The Dry Salvages” begins, “but I think that the river is a strong brown god.” As for your relative, no surprises there. We’ve reached the point in the barbarism of reflection that mere reality is inconceivable to the comfortable classes.
Vitranc, remember that most of the pundit class (as mouthpieces of the salary class) is frantic to find some way to convince itself that something or other will drag Trump down, and all their assessments are biased toward the catastrophic by that desire. The economy has a lot of give in it right now, and short-term shocks are unlikely to trouble it much. It’s the longterm suction of events that needs to be watched.
Cynthia, can’t be done — at least not until you’ve reached a level of spiritual development at which you don’t need further material incarnations. You will have the worldview in your next life best suited to give you the experiences you need to grow.
Four Sided, I’ve never tried it. Sorry.
Anon, thanks for this. That makes sense.
Roldy, whee! 😉
Siliconguy, yep. We’ll be talking about conservation at some length in upcoming posts. In the meantime, enjoy that beer!
Teresa, my experience is that it’s not the hard left women who believe that — it’s the middle-left affluent women who think the world owes them whatever they happen to want. On the hard left, life is much more constrained anway — what you’re allowed to want is determined by peer pressure and current fashions in theory — and so moving to a more stable set of constraints will become fashionable in its turn.
Julia, it’s an interesting idea. Certainly it’s important to fill the space with positive energy — every banishing ritual does that — but pulling a few weeds here and there can also be helpful.
Sirustalcelion, I wish I had something constructive to offer. It’s been my experience, though, that when people go rushing on their fate, there’s nothing you can do to stop them, and distance is often the only choice that works.
Longsword, that’s fascinating — if you can upload the photo to a website somewhere and post a link, I’ll copy the image and post it here. I doubt it was anything Lovecraftian, as you didn’t mention tentacles. 😉 Other than that, I don’t know enough about the local folklore to guess.
Justin, ha! Thank you.
Heather, I wish I could say I was surprised. A vast amount of what passes for environmentalism these days is pure NIMBYism* — that’s why next to nobody complained when we offshored so much of our production of carbon dioxide to China. As long as they can claim to be virtuous, they don’t really care!
(*Northwind — NIMBY means “Not In My Back Yard.”)
Jennifer, I can only assume that there are a lot of very insecure men in the New Right. The thought of distorting marriage into a boss-and-peon arrangement baffles me; it works so much better simply to negotiate as needed, and let each one take the lead where he or she has special expertise that the other lacks.
Marcia, as I see it, it’s simply one more roadbump along the Long Descent. If it provides cover for the US to get out of the Persian Gulf, it could actually turn out to be positive.
Anon, while I suppose it’s possible, I think it’s the least likely of all the options out there. Nor do I think the midterms have as certain an outcome as you seem to believe.
Justin, you’re having a heck of a time with that one, aren’t you? Try this link instead:
https://ecosophia.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/def50f50-5792-4199-8355-883f8c7568ae_1600x1200.jpg
Zemi, I’m not familiar with Jenkins. As for Robinson, I’m not surprised to hear him called “appalling,” since that’s usually what the privileged classes think of populist upstarts.
Patricia, that seems very odd, and thus very Japanese!
David, I don’t think any comment is needed, other than a chuckle.
Arcane, good — you’ve had the courage to make a specific, datable prediction. Now we’ll see if you’re right!
Phutatorius, Sara read it but I never got around to it.
Zemi, I have yet to see a large modern building that would not be greatly improved by a few dozen rounds from a 155mm howitzer. 😉
Hi JMG & commentariat,
Over the last month, I have been thinking about zombies. My mother-in-law (who in her advanced age approached 90, had transformed herself into a Komodo dragon-like (“Komoda”) being, a zombie). I witnessed it firsthand. The USA’s healthcare system (“the industry”) had kept Komoda, as it does hoards of others, alive fifteen-to-twenty years past what would have been her, what is it called, ‘natural death.‘ I think this industry that keeps people falsely-alive is adding to the fall of the West.
I am still trying to make sense of what happened among the three of us a year-and-a-half ago: Komoda, and my husband Jethro (“Komoda’s 60-ish son”), and myself. Komoda lived with us for seven months in 2023, and died in 2025 in another state. While she lived with us, she exerted such a power over Jethro and I that, in order to save our lives, we had to eject her from our household, in 2024, and none too soon. Komoda physically resembled a classic zombie but no-one could face it.
At the latter part of Komoda’s stay, the female-“pr_ick”-bully side of her emerged in full force, naked, where it became painfully obvious that she refused to acknowledge that Jethro and I had legitimate priorities equal to hers. “Hungry ghost“ would be an apt description.
In the forty years since I had first met her, all those decades, she scrupulously hid her female-pr_ckness-bullying; she never focused her venom on the in-group she called family but on whatever out-group or out-person she felt deserved her malevolence.
There is a genre of books on the subject of zombies, of which I have started reading again. This genre functions as a catch-all subject about any human(s) who/that not only cannot accept his/her death, but refuses to discuss “death” in general and, unintentionally or intentionally, figuratively or literally, covertly (perhaps overtly) kills those humans who happen to be in the zombie’s vicinity, clutches, or under ‘its’ spell.
I purposely say ‘it’ because ‘it’ is what I witnessed in Komoda near the end of her stay — she was no longer human — at some unidentifiable point or time-span, she had transformed into an ‘it’ or ‘ghoul’… she had little, or no, discernible human characteristics left.
I could hardly imagine anyone lacking in humanity like that and, when I finally let the information into my psyche, the whole situation was scary as h_ll. Having an “it” or “ghoul“ who is in a human body, and, in one’s personal space all the time (at home), gave me world-class heebie-jeebies. The whole episode left an indelible mark on me, and that is why I am talking about it. Zombies/‘it’s/ghouls walk among us.
I think there is a connection between the healthcare (a euphemism) industry as it exists today in the USA, which keeps people artafishally alive,— literally at all costs,— past when each individual’s (what to call it, ‘natural death‘?) “initial event that would have resulted in death.” I can’t speak for other countrys’ healthcare systems because I have not witnessed them firsthand.
What industry is this so-called “healthcare system”? An evil industry. An industry collectively, we accept, must carry on in its current guise. “The carrying on” I suspect contributes to the West’s demise.
COVID, and its shots (puncture wounds?), killed many old people; in a most heartless way, those elders died alone, because those who loved them were forced out of the room, if not out of the building. The “higher-ups” (whomever they were) were trying to protect whom? The industry exacted its pound of flesh and made tons of money. How evil is that?
For English or writing class(es), if I were a high school or higher student, I would write essays on different aspects/angles of zombies and ghouls among us (former humans that have heinously debauched themselves into the plural ‘it’). There is so much material there. Is there such a thing as a “zombie expert”?
💨🧟♂️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Similar thing again, doing a refresh after getting back from morning shopping: a disppeared comment. Something about lenocracy on steroids. Nothing you would have deleted, I’m sure. Ok, that’s the end of the bug reports about this unless requested.
“Chuaquin, Starmer had become the least popular prime minister in modern British history, so it’s no surprise that the Party swapped him out for another bland little nonentity. The policies won’t change, of course, so Burnham’s tenure is no more secure than Starmer’s.”
I’m the kind of person who points to and votes for an association, not a leader, anyway. Particularly in Westminster-style systems where the prime/first minister is officially the “primus inter pares” or first among equals within his/her cabinet (quite the contrast with a Presidential style system)
@Jennifer K, #34,
My view broadly matches yours. Certainly when my wife and I first married, there were some things that she naturally handled and some things that I did. Over the years the distribution shifted, as she became progressively more incapacitated by long-term illness. But I would consider any “hierarchy” that arose to have been purely situational or pragmatic, and based on the concrete needs of the moment—not a law of nature.
I am planning to start LRM in a few days and have a question on one aspect of it. I can do most of the practices in the morning when I am free of any mind-altering substances, but there is a daily recollection when falling asleep, and I am wondering how to fit that with my social life. I go out a few nights a week with friends, and tolerably often there is some alcohol involved. While the total amount I drink at a given time is relatively low, it would still be a very dramatic shift to my life to become a tee-totaler for most of a year. While I am prepared to do that if necessary to complete LRM, I’d prefer not to do so.
I intend to follow the directions as written, so are practices like the daily recollection safe to do so while under the influence of modest amounts of alcohol?
Currently, datacenters and the surveillance state are unpopular with voters, though politicians tend to vote otherwise. Many expect the AI bubble to pop, and the diesel flow to slow (reserve used up, and also used as backup fuel for many/most datacenters), in upcoming weeks or months. Anyone have ideas about how competition for how distribution of the remaining electricity and diesel is likely to play out? Historical or foreign precedents? In Virginia data centers use something like 25% of electricity, and PJM has suggested brownouts could start in 2027
Peter Khan #5
I’m delighted that the event went well!
Has it occurred to anyone else that Donald Trump’s career is a lot like the career of Timothy Dexter (1743 -1806), the luckiest, and stupidest, businessman in New England history? Here’s a link about Dexter;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pickle_for_the_Knowing_Ones
Dexter made a fortune doing stupid things, like sending bed-warmers to the West Indies and buying up loads of Continental currency at the end of the American Revolution–
Similarly– While the Donald has no thought or concern for anyone but himself, and making more money, consider the large number of his actions that will be best for everyone in the long run;
Closing the Strait of Hormuz– It’s ridiculous that the entire world economy is completely dependent on oil. By pointing out the precariousness of it (again, thru stupidity) , Donald may save a lot of folks by causing them to seek a reduced-oil lifestyle.
Kicking the USA out of NATO — The US can’t be the world’s policeman. It is unsustainable in the long run. By getting the US out of NATO thru sheer offensiveness, he is moving the US away from global meddling before such a move is forced on us thru crisis.
Scamming the world with his own Bitcoin — Pointing out that Bitcoin and other blockchain currencies are based on nothing and meant to scrape money from the many to the pockets of the few.
Dumping Israel and getting the US out of the Middle East — Thru incompetence, he has allowed Netanyahu to show himself for the mass murderer he is; Showed all Middle East countries they can’t depend on the US; Paved the way to get our military kicked out of the entire Middle East. It had to happen sometime. Trump just speeded things up.
Generally, Trump has united regions and countries that weren’t talking to each other and helped people get along. Of course, he has generally united them by causing them to dump the US, and breaking down diplomatic relations, but in the long run they might all be better off–
Just as the US will be better off, eventually, as a 2nd or 3rd rate global power. We were headed there anyway, but the Donald has helped us to get there as soon as possible, thanks to his own incompetence and the fools that surround him.
Re depopulating urban areas: I live in St. Louis County, Missouri, which is stagnant in population. It’s politically separate from the city of St. Louis, MO, which is depopulating. The two together are the largest part of the St. Louis statistical metro area, which is the largest population center in the state. I’ve lived here for 42 years and moved here as an adult, so I have had a ringside seat to watch what happens in such areas over time.
St. Louis County has over the past few years gone through a process to devise what they claim is an Equitable and Sustainable Comprehensive Plan, which you can read about here: http://www.stlouiscounty2050.com. This included a series of public meetings that were claimed to determine what the residents want for the county; my husband and I attended the one we could walk to and made our inputs. From this process they issued a report, all of which is online and can be accessed at the website I gave.
Population stagnation is one of the 5 key issues the report addresses. More people have been moving out of the county than in for the past 50 years, and in the 2020s we are now experiencing more deaths than births as well.
How does the report say we should address this issue? Responsible Growth, of course. Supposedly if we follow all the report’s recommendations, we will create such a wonderful area that everyone will move to and live here. This despite the inconvenient facts that we don’t have much of anything to attract people, and a lot of things that no one can do anything about that people don’t like. Like the weather: let’s just say that everything that can go wrong with weather will go wrong here, and most of them go wrong at least once a year. We’ve even had people die from hurricane remnants that caused flash flooding. We live a day’s drive from the closest ocean, a day’s drive, in different directions, from the Appalachians and the Rockies, a day’s drive from Canada – and those are what are closest to here. Sure, the Ozark Mountains are nearby, but they are old and ground down, with less scenic value than the other mountains I mentioned. The Great Lakes are closer but still most of a day’s drive, and they are not really affordable anymore as tourist spots. Most of the varied industrial base that made this area an economic powerhouse before the mid 1900s is gone, and it shows.
It’s clear that when the county lenocrats went through the process to develop the report, they were not taking into consideration that other metro areas are also depopulating or soon will be, and those metro areas will respond like our county, with similar big plans given in similar reports full of the currently popular buzzwords. Most of those metro areas have some advantage over us. The report, in other words, is worth about as much as the electrons that are being forced to host it.
JMG, you commented to Mary B in the previous post that it isn’t time for building. I’ve just pulled out The Ecotechnic Future to remind myself about why it isn’t time for building and what we’re really going to get. Next up will be Dark Age America. Thank you for them, BTW; they keep me sane while the lenocrats play musical chairs with each other.
Chauquin 7
> It seems there’s s lot less “feminist men” within middle-low class men and worker class men
It likely *IS* as you state here. It is because feminism is expensive. Only rich people can afford feminism.
The same goes for LGBTQ. It is an ideology for the rich only.
In general, as individuals’ incomes decline, so will feminism’s and LGBTQ’s fortunes decline. Both will fade into the woodwork with no-one the wiser.
Feminism and LGBTQ are fads. Already, both have begun the slide into wearing out their welcome. I prophecy that ten years from now, neither will be recognizable. Or will be actively panned (“severely criticized“).
💨🤷🏽♀️🪵💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@Longsword – an offering bowl to Apollo Lyceus?
Gunstone @ #1 The author of the History Unfolding blog–his name escapes me at the moment–has a good article up about the Maine Senate election. I was particularly interested in his remarks about the skull and crossbones theme, which, I gather has been used by various military units since the days of the Templars. I will say, for myself only, that I have about had it up to the eyebrows with being told that I must use this word and not this other one over here, etc. etc. Now, I hasten to add I of course avoid words and phrases that are intentional insults, ethnic slurs and the like.
I don’t vote in Maine, but a few thoughts: Senator Collins, IMHO, rode into office on the coattails of Olympia Snow and may even have appealed to memories of Margaret Chase Smith, two women of far more substance than Susan Collins. Persons of the conservative Christian persuasion might be interested to learn that Miss Susan is a homewrecker and husband stealer.
Establishment Democratic hypocrisy about the Platner campaign is simply unbelievable. One example. It seems that Graham’s Mom owns a restaurant and is the primary buyer for our boy’s oysters. Farmed oysters. Our boy is not wantonly destroying pristine shorelines or seafloor to keep Mom supplied. Now stop and think for a moment. What if? What if this were an immigrant family operation? Would not the same bitter critics be calling on all of us to “celebrate” this example of American success?
Would I vote for him if I lived in Maine? Probably. Do I consider him the perfect candidate? No, but you might recall that one Daniel Boone was elected to congress, coonskin cap, rifle and all. I would point out that he recently served a stint as harbormaster of his seaside town. While IDK what exactly that might entail, I do believe it is a position of some responsibility.
As for the Haliot vibes, I believe I have read that the National Socialist party was armed or had an armed wing as early as the mid 1920s and had already gained a certain notoriety for carrying out assassinations. As has a certain small country, I might add.
@Peter #5,
Thank you for your hospitality! I had a great time – so many inspiring conversations! June 19, 2027, is marked.
JMG and everybody,
I have a geopolitical question. JMG, a while ago, you surprised many people by pointing out that the US and Canada are geopolitical enemies, but it made sense. So… why is the animosity toward Russia more acute in the UK than in any other European country? Is their geopolitical rivalry more acute?
I’m talking from a personal experience. When I last visited England (2024), Russophobia was palpable. Souvenir stores were doing brisk business selling poo tins (cans of unknown content with pictures of Putin on them). I saw multiple caricatures of him on the streets. On a few occasions, people heard my accent and approached me on the streets, compelled to tell me how much they hated Putin. They were strangers who heard my accent while I was doing such innocuous activities as ordering lunch or buying a train ticket. These feelings are not mutual. In Moscow, anybody who is at least a little bit somebody still wants to send their kids to a boarding school in England, while the average person on the streets of Moscow has no idea who the British prime minister is. This is an asymmetrical hatred. I am perplexed.
The USA isn’t the only country tapping their strategic reserve. I’ve heard China is doing that in a pretty big way too.
And there’s only so much in those reserves…
@RenaissanceMan,
I just went and looked up the museum you mentioned. It is indeed very pickehaube-esque. LOL.
JMG, something is wrong with the site. I just posted a comment and saw that it was a fifty-something number. However, when I went back to read, it was showing only 38 comments.
About the Carlson announcement; Tucker would like to be president himself someday without subjecting himself to the rigors of a cursus honorum. Mayor or city council where you have to fill in the ***ed potholes, a few terms in congress where you get to be on committees bored out of what mind you have listening to witnesses lying to you and so on. I think he also sees the possibility of getting in on the ground floor of a possible pro-business, libertarian new party.
I have one question for California voters. How in the blazes did you folks manage to have not one, but two Brit Twit poseurs coming within hailing distance of your two most high profile positions this last primary? Are you jokers all that enamored of the elegant Oxbridge accent? Can someone, anyone please explain how having been former PM Cameron’s fixer qualifies a rich guy, member of the transnational elite, to govern an American state? Mind, I have no brief for the present LA mayor. I thought she was an idiot in congress, when I used to watch CSPAN, and I doubt she has improved much since then. If I lived in LA, I would be voting for the city council member.
Just a wee note to say that at our son’s graduation ceremony today, from an agricultural college, we were amused to see that one of the special wwards given was for an “AI Services Prize for performance in Animal Breeding Module”…
Reminding us that the more traditional meaning of that acronym was “Artificial Insemination.”
David P. 19
> you had to work until you dropped dead
I can’t think of a better way “to go.” When I die, I hope to be working at what I enjoy. What matters is finding work one enjoys, including through hobbies, side gigs, and 2nd-careers.
💨⚰️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Dylan (no. 37), I’m not sure if I read that book, but I like the existentialist take that meaning is subjective / chosen by each person / comes from within. “The Life of Pi” presents a similar argument (to make you “believe in God”) to what you’re describing, and does quite a good job of it–it basically applies the “rule of cool” (thus TV Tropes) to religious metaphysics: “Which story do you like better?” Of course, it helps that the tiger story carried Pi through his ordeal, and wasn’t just something he made up, but bubbled up from somewhere very deep within him. Many details of our real-world religions seem to have been cobbled together in this way, as a means of holding groups together through difficult circumstances.
Siliconguy 26
> ten new nuclear reactors… If our goal is to double our grid and build a low-carbon economy in less than 25 years
More realistic is:
If our goal is to still be alive in 25 years…
How droll. What a clown this energy minister Tiim Hodgsoon is. Nuclear reactors? How about everyone use HALF the energy ‘then’ that they use ‘now’? Ban artafishall dis-telligent servers altogether — ain’t happenin’.
💨☢️💀💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Re. Providence gathering
Glad to hear it was a success and a good time was had by all! The Glastonbury gathering last year was lovely, and I seriously considered attending this year too, but in the end I felt like I couldn’t justify the expense in money and carbon. Will give it some more thought for the next one. Also, I’m curious: were there any attendees from outside North America? One thing that surprised me at Glastonbury was seeing so many come all the way from America and even further afield. Finally, will there be any video uploaded from the event, like last year?
I wonder if it’s a good dating strategy for male occultists (or maybe female too) to pursue alternative looking women. I have a hunch that 90% of women with tattoos would be okay with the occult. While maybe 15% of untatted women would be. Tattoos are kind of a signal that says “I do not conform” ( I know that isn’t a law), although I don’t have any myself. I think this is a good idea anyway. I’m tempted to broaden this topic and make it a bit philosophical but I don’t know how to do it tactfully, anyway, curious on anyone’s thoughts.
About Platner, I suspect that another factor is repulsion from cancel culture, particularly when it is used selectively the moment a candidate sides with the wage class or against a certain Middle East country/religious fantasy. Also, Maine has always had a more pronounced division between the folks who do the hard work and the (wealthier) folks from points farther south who come to their vacation homes for the winter. So many voters there will not be impressed by a bunch of Massholes attacking one of their own.
For a gentle and amusing portrayal of this split, I can recommend the novel Empire Falls by Richard Russo.
“As for the Haliot vibes, I believe I have read that the National Socialist party was armed or had an armed wing as early as the mid 1920s and had already gained a certain notoriety for carrying out assassinations. As has a certain small country, I might add.”
The bitter ender/We Want Round Two milieu out of which the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party arose formed around Second Reich soldiers from WW1 who basically never laid down their weapons. In addition to executing the leadership of the new communist party at the behest of the socialist party government, they also provided their services fighting Bolshevism in the Baltics. There, they were so violent that those fighting against the Bolsheviks and for independence finally asked them to leave.
Of all the times I have seen the rise this politician or that one compared to the rise of the Nazis, I can’t remember ever seeing one that had any resemblance to the actual historical record.
Northwind, well, I never met the person in question, so I don’t propose to comment on the specific case. I’ve known quite a few very nasty people but nobody who fits your description.
Cynthia, hmm. Odd. I’ll check with my IT guy.
Anon, don’t worry about it. Do the reverse recollection whatever your state of inebriation; the point is that you shouldn’t do the core practices (ritual and meditation) while chemically impaired.
Gardener, it would not surprise me if organized sabotage of data centers were to become a significant trend in the years immediately ahead.
Emmanuel, how could I have reached the age of 64 without knowing about Timothy Dexter? The man was clearly Massachusetts’ answer to Emperor Joshua Norton. As for Trump’s supposed stupidity, making people think that he’s stupid is one of his signature tricks; I don’t recommend falling for it.
SLClaire, none of this surprises me. If the local lenocrats let themselves recognize what’s actually going to happen to the St. Louis area, and to most of the urban areas in North America, I suspect they’d fling themselves off the nearest available office tower.
Inna, the British always hate somebody. For many centuries it was the French, then it became the Germans, and now it’s Russia’s turn. I think it’s the pressure valve that enables them to deal with their absurdly overemphasized class system, or something.
Pygmycory, granted, but you may have noticed that the petroleum is flowing out of the Persian Gulf at this point…
Luke, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. More broadly, of course, 80% of men chase after 20% of women and vice versa; if you happen to have, or can develop, a taste for the unchased 80%, you have certain advantages.
Jessica, thanks for the book recommendation!
By the way, it occurs to me that there may be a simple but troubling explanation for the oddity that many people have noticed about different numbers of comments appearing. Every time I put comments through or hit the “post comment” button, a new version of the web page you’re reading right now propagates out over the internet. We’re all used to that happening quickly and seamlessly, but it’s by no means guaranteed that this will remain the case, and it may be that different versions are being propagated for shorter or longer times by different server farms…
Hi Four Sided,
Well, I’m not JMG, but I have hitchhiked. I’ve also picked up hitchhikers.
First, you need to be in a good spot. You want the driver to be able to see you (and see that you are hitchhiking) from as far away as possible so they have time to think about it. Don’t stand in the shade. It’s good to have a sign. Signs are hard to read when driving so make it as big as you can, as much contrast as you can, and short and simple like “South”. Then, you want to have a nice easy spot for them to pull over that is safe for them (ideally, just slightly past where you are standing so they can get a good look at you before committing).
Then you need to look nice and friendly. Do not wear at hat or sunglasses, let them see your face. Smile. Stand with your pack at your side, don’t sit. Or if there is very little traffic you can sit, but then stand up as soon as you see someone coming.
A single person is more likely to get a ride than a group of 2 or more, although if you are a dude, having a female (“ride bride”) probably evens that out. Don’t have a lot of stuff.
Finally, don’t get into cars with strangers in them unless you feel completely comfortable. If there is absolutely any doubt, or even if you just want a little extra safety, ask if you can take a picture of them standing next to their vehicle with the license plate visible and text it to a friend before you get in. Honest people shouldn’t mind, and it will give authorities a major clue where to start their investigation if you disappear.
I consider it good form to offer a couple of dollars for gas at the end of the ride, but so far I have not had anyone accept it (nor have I accepted it when I’m the driver). I still think it’s polite. If they ask you for money before you get in, that’s a big red flag.
Happy Trails & Good Luck!
I just experienced the server thing. There were 38 comments when I was typing mine. As soon as I hit Post Comment, I see my comment is awaiting moderation and is #79. Very strange.
Throughout the US/Israel war on Iran, varying unknown quantities of oil (and other substances?) have flowed through the Hormuz Straight. I suspect that no one knows for sure how much. Alternate routes (the pipeline that bypasses the straight, railroad from Iran to China) have also played a role.
And it is also true that this war has provided a petri dish environment for anyone wanting to harvest clicks with doomsday forecasts or who sincerely has come to believe such a forecast.
And on the third hand, (I’m Buddhist and some of our deities have a lot more than two hands), I clearly remember at least a year of people forecasting doom for sub-prime mortgage securities before the sky fell in with the financial crisis “that no one could have foreseen”.
I remember reading that the Chinese intended “May you live in interesting times” as a curse and not understanding. Now I do.
Oh for an editing function
people come to Maine to vacation in their summer homes, not winter homes.
And I used to work as a proofreader. Sigh
@JMG, #78.
You wrote, in part, “By the way, it occurs to me that there may be a simple but troubling explanation for the oddity that many people have noticed about different numbers of comments appearing.”
An additional data point about the appearance or non-appearance of posts. At the time that I write this (4:15pm Pacific Daylight Time), there are still only 38 posts visible under the normal URL:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/
This is exactly what @Inna reported, for example.
But there are 78 posts (ending with yours, to which I am replying right now) visible under this alternate URL:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?moderation-hash=ecf86ada69ed6e29f64f914cc1b6b002
I don’t know what a “moderation hash” is, and I don’t know why there’s a difference. But if someone in the commentariat understands blog technology, this point may provide a clue.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the fascinating depopulation article. Hmm. Another way to describe demand destruction, would be economic ructions. I’ve personal experience of being on the wrong side of the recession in the early 1990’s with 10% unemployment – and what that means. Life goes on, and plenty of people do OK during such times but the pain is not shared equally.
I’ve never forgotten that lesson, and candidly I know lovely people who are both older and younger than I, who missed out on the harsh end of those days because they were either in school at the time, or being older were more secure in their jobs than myself – who was considered disposable. That word describes the reality of ‘redundancy’ (you’re no longer needed son!) (Or, meet your new and cheaper replacement son!)
After almost 29 years of economic up, up and away, things are slowly unravelling mostly because the fundamentals appear to have been ignored. Reading history is a good guide to the possibilities don’t you reckon? I’ve set up my life with the historical potentials very much at the forefront, and you know, I could be wrong, and was certainly way too early. But interestingly, the path is yielding some results which I’m happy about. As a point of interest, the boomer population up in this little hamlet appear to be beginning to sell up and move on, and I can appreciate the reasons for that, but perhaps the prices being asked for the properties may not be payable by younger families, and so you can see the tensions playing out in real time. That’s one path to depopulation.
Have you ever considered updating that essay you wrote years ago about depopulation playing out. I was personally sad about the barista in the story, but I appreciate your artistic effect – hit ’em where it hurts, in the caffeine receptors. 🙂
I’ve heard that some rural towns have troubles fielding a football or netball team, due to lack of young folks. The government down here has been playing around with changes to the tax system, and they appear to have fluffed this one up royally, if the polls and by-election results have anything to say about how it is all going down. I’m scratching my head about this one, because they’ve protected the interests of older folks, and slammed the door in the face of the younger folks, and I’ve not spoken to many who are happy about it. And that lot were rusted on supporters of the Labour party too.
So yeah, the younger folks don’t have the spare coin to spend on oil products, and it really is that simple. This is not how I would have organised things, no way. Crazy stuff. Oh well, the elites never claimed they were rational.
By the way, Mars boys space business, I believe lost money in the last financial reports. Why y’all buying that stuff is beyond my understanding. How can a business which loses money, pay a return to investors other than out of debt or capital? It’s hard to fathom another person’s motivations, or thoughts, but that bloke may well have an unflattering opinion of the population after this episode. Dunno, just pure speculation there.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
The website issues are due to I believe Cloud Flare. It works like an old school repeater throughout the globe, and is fast, but not necessarily speaking all from the same data.
Cheers
Chris
@Mary Bennet, #69.
You asked a question about California voters. Here’s my take.
Years ago I tended to be pretty dismissive when I heard claims of voter fraud at any level above that of white noise. It always sounded like sour grapes.
But I assume it is safe to generalize that voter fraud is like an iceberg: if there is anything that you can see out in the open, that represents only the smallest and most innocuous fraction of what is really being done. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?
Last year, California approved an amendment to the state constitution—allegedly by a vote of 7.5M to 4.1M—to legalize gerrymandering. The measure was called “Proposition 50.” There were all kinds of reasons given, most of which boiled down to “He started it!” with impassioned gestures pointing towards Texas. (I’m the father of two boys, so I never much liked to hear that argument.) You can find the details in Wikipedia, or lots of other places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_California_Proposition_50
But now let’s go back to that iceberg analogy. Gerrymandering is nothing more than an attempt to subvert the vote. I don’t think it goes to far to call it a form of fraud. And yet this was a constitutional amendment passed in a massive public vote. It could not have been MORE public!
Doesn’t that suggest that there’s a lot more going on below the water level? If the state government is willing to broadcast this form of fraud so publicly, shouldn’t we assume that whatever is hidden in the shadows is worse, and more extensive?
I find that it helps to think of California as a one-party state, where the important decisions are made somewhere other than at the ballot box. It wasn’t always so, but that seems to be the case today.
Happy Solstice all
Sounds like a good time was had at the Povidence gathering . I was off at a long weekend on the south Eel river in the Avenue of the giants area ( CA). Walking in the redwoods, floating on the river, drinking a few adult beverages and having nice outdoor campfires. I brought lots of wood.
https://www.redwoodhikes.com/Photo.html?src=Humboldt/AveGiants2.jpg&scroll=50
Apologies because I know you’ve answered this before and one of the answers was Lambspring. What are your other two fave alchemical texts? And do you have any observations on why they made the top three? Thanks!
I’ll second the Iran War question. I think it’s a milestone, not aan Empire ending debacle, just one of many mini debacles. Maybe we’ve learned how to botch everything in a way that plausibly appears a passing grade. Never stick around for the finale, pull up stakes in Act III and head home. It is certainly worth noting, but hardly Waterloo. Not even Teutoburger Wald. More like Antietam.
Electricity prices
They are, of course, up here as well and I think we have the highest or almost highest in the country. But, what we are told by our power companies, like PG and E, and the State of California, is that our rates are lower. They seem to think that semantics like that are fooling us. What they did was institute a base charge of $24/month no matter how much you use, then did slightly lower the “rates” per KiloWattHour. So they can say the rates are lower, but we all see our bills are higher. A basic non-low income household using electricity below a certain amount per month would be paying $24 plus $.32/kWh used, then alot more for any over the limit.
The other rate plans are so convoluted no=one can figure out f their bill is right or what it all means. I am part of a PG and E group that gives them feedback on communications before they go out ( not that they seem to listen to us, but maybe sometimes) I just reviewed a sample bill proposal, I was confused and I am experienced with them. ( there was alot of subdivision of charges, transmission, generation, time of use, selling back to the grid, ending up with additions here, credits there, and so much so even I was confused)
SO, basically, what they do in most of California is obscure what we are being charged for by subdivided billing categories, showing both credits and charges and base set charges, time of use, etc… and have plausible deniability as to rates going up by how they define rates. Reminds me of the book 1984, our chocolate rations have been increased to an amount less than before
Dobbs # 4:
“I truly thought at best we would have ~3 months from the start of the conflict to serious economic impact.”
One significant factor not mentioned is that China has reduced their imports during the war (11.6 million a day in 2025 to around 7.8 million a day in May). They are drawing down their reserves instead. Why? It could be to fill back up at lower prices. Also, it could be to sabotage Trump in November by bidding up oil once an actual peace deal is signed. Only they know the actual strategy behind the surprising move.
OI shortage not affecting economy:
Well, you said you are in the USA. We dont get our oil from the middle east, not much of it outside of California, we do get ours from the middle east. SO, gas prices went up some, and that gave them an excuse to break the $5mark that they have wanted to break here in Ca, so I doubt it will go below that in Ca now. But, overall, a small increase in gas prices in the USA is not going to tank our economy. This was a much, much smaller percent increase than we had in the 1970’s ! Gas doubled between April 1979 and April 1980. This was on top of the oil shock just 4 or 5 years before. I graduated high school in 1979, so I do recall this. And the earlier one due to its affect on my family while I was in Junior high age. These were huge price increases, affecting our household budgets in big ways, not to mention people literally turning down or off the natural gas heat, buying turtle necks and wearing turtlenecks with knit vests, this was not a fashion statement when you look back at those old photos ! Driving less, changing cars. In 1979 only buying gas on either an even or odd day, which for young people who never had any money in a downturn like that, scraping change day to day, meant a constant borrowing and trading back and forth of license plates to go buy a couple gallons of gas. You didnt have the money to fill up on your day and your car probably went 11 miles on a gallon of gas, so at some point when you needed to drive and had mined the couch cushions or got paid, that is the time you had to get the gas. And, even then, we all got along alright. Gas prices doubled and we kept on keeping on at 11 miles on a gallon of gas.
Tucker Carlson was interesting. Follow this logic: A Republican says he’ll never vote Republican again. Because of…what exactly? Then he gives advice to Vance, Rubio, the whole group. Wait: he can’t vote for Republicans anymore, he just promised. Not never ever. Since no Conservatives can get election advice on him anymore, never ever, well what are they watching him for? Advice on which Democrats to elect?
See how silly this is? So no one’s thinking, and no one notices. What’s going on? So Tucker is either lying, and WILL vote, or is a fool and doesn’t grasp what he’s claiming. He’s not a fool.
He says he’s serving the interests of Americans, which he complains is the problem, by voting for no one and offering no solutions except, “Do it my way or else.” You’ll go on media hunger strike and stop talking, Tuck? Is this what it’s come to? Suit yourself, but no one will notice.
“I wanted to comment in the previous post why “feminist men” here tend to be middle-upper class”
Because Lower Class people deal with practical reality and not theory and childish fantasies. Now I understand why Socialist dictators forced Academics to work on a farm to beat some sense into them.
“19th/early 20th century English Catholic writers seemed to have been rather more comfortable with the pagan Gods than you’d expect from Christians.”
This is quite false and I’d refer you to the middle ages. All household magic is done in the name of Mary, the Saints, etc. That is, Christianity and magic are one. We see this also in the Renaissance: what were they exited about, writing poems, plays about? The availability of Greek and Roman classics, which were filled with Roman gods then thos same poets referred to Jupiter, Juno, Eros, constantly for 100 years after. Who? Well these same educated men were also all the religious men of the age, or at least until the 1750s (1850’s?) or so. That is, Christian clergy were often enough the promoters of such pagans and the opponents of them were the weird minority except in a few times and places (Cromwell, Puritans, etc). So I disagree with the premise, which is modern slander that all Christian religion is bad, and the religious educated are invariably small minded. No they never were, and aren’t now either.
“Is the outcome of the Iran war a blip in a long downward trajectory for the US ’empire’
I depends what you mean. Trump and his team have been **expressly** America First and AntiEmpire. “Empire” Party is the Globalists and NeoCons, his arch enemies. Therefore every loss to **Empire, Trump and almost all of America consider to be a win, not a loss. So for them it’s not downward at all. It’s upward. And I agree as an American, no Empire, no one here ever wanted one. Every withdrawal from China or Iran they consider an American WIN. So who disagrees with this and says we’re losing or shouldn’t go? (Pundits and Anti-Trump especially including the Left, who agree with Lindsay Graham on this subject.) Aren’t they by definition ProEmpire then? Wouldn’t it make more sense if you were anti-war to agree with Trump and help him return home?
Read your “Ceremony of the Grail” book. I’m intrigued by the idea of it being Piscean in nature. Any suggestions on where to look for an Aquarian ritual? Nothing springs to mind from Arthurian romance, Tolkien, or the Kalevala. I’ve read Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” twice and noting comes to mind from there either.
Anonymous – Re: #23 Random number generators. I don’t know how one could distinguish between an on-line random number generator which is merely pseudorandom from one which is truly random. Certainly, there are ways of generating truly random numbers which could be provided at a web site (random.colorado.edu, for example). However, I think that if you want randomness for personal magic, you need some local, manual process which gives your subconscious mind a say in the result (like dice, dots in the sand, tea leaves, etc.) I imagine that you would want it to be random enough to defeat conscious intent, but not impersonally random.
JMG,
I watched your Q&A panel with Mark and Ike on Voxhermes. Afterwards I had some quite time alone, letting my thoughts drift. I don’t really know what it is that draws me to occultism other than an irresistible pull. Even though I’ve struggled at times: stumbling into it haphazardly, finding out this stuff is real, dabbling, making dumb rookie mistakes, trying to find the “right” system, lapsing in my daily practice – it took me a while to realize no matter how much I fumble, or let my daily practices lapse, I can’t stop.: this is what I want to do – and to finally learn enough to stop dabbling and take things more seriously. I still fumble sometimes but I don’t let it stop me.
When I consider people that I’m learning from and look up to, like yourself and Mark, and how even the likes of you talk about adepts, not to be too dramatic but my eyes get wet with emotion at the enormity of the task before me. You guys have been doing this your whole lives with serious dedication and don’t even call yourselves adepts. And I’m not even an initiate. No doubt it will take me many more lifetimes before I’m able to approach my goal. It really puts things in perspective. But I guess that’s why they call it the Great Work.
-David M.
JMG,
The most telling thing about the idea of mini-nukes is that no where in the world they have ever been used on a commercial ship. The compact nukes they love to talk about are the perfect size to run a ship and save the shipping company millions in fuel ( in the minds of the mini-nuke folks). But even the Russians only use them on state owned icebreakers for reasons not associated with cost. We tried in once with the USS Savanah but it was shut down after a few years due to being un-economic.
Even the big nukes in the US are a pipe dream as we gave up building them and any and all equipment needed to forge the pressure vessels, reactor shells and steam generators have been dismantled and shipped over seas. Westinghouse went bankrupt after the last build it did. So now it only sells plans and engineering services for some novice company to use in building a big nuke.
Maybe Elon can do it and get it right after the first two or three have meltdowns like his rockets. Even if they could build them they will be uneconomic and take decades to build.
Fwiw, I am having trouble with lagging comments too. My phone and incognito browsers both have comment 43 as the latest, and my regular browser has comment 74 as the latest. I am suspicious my regular browser is behind too, but I don’t know for sure.
Andy Burnham is a ZIonist and a member of the Labour Friends of Israel. He won’t do much to win back the people who left the Labour Party becuase of Kier Starmer’s support of Israel, which is quite a sizable number of former Labour Party supporters. And then there’s the immigration issue, and Burnham has in the past opposed limits on immigration into the United Kingdom and opposed background checks for illegal immigration, which means that he likely won’t do much to win back the people who left the Labour Party because of immigration, which is also a quite sizable number of former Labour Party supporters.
re: Retrotopia — is there any difference between the 2016 and 2024 editions?
Do shoggoths like cheesecake? It’s mostly sugar and cream cheese. Maybe they prefer the hard cheeses.
I deleted my browser cookies to see if that would fix things now half the comments are gone, so half this comment is to bring the comments back which seemed to happen last time I commented (please don’t put it through if you’re tired of these). JMG, not trying to sound like a know it all, but this site is isn’t propagated to other servers (unless you’re hosting it really weirdly). It would only be on the server you host it on and our browsers make HTTP calls to it to fetch the website. So my guess is your server/server guy/web guy has something set up goofy.
The New York Times is now talking about the potential end of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel:
https://archive.ph/pZYyh
@Chuaqin and JMG “The policies won’t change, of course, so Burnham’s tenure is no more secure than Starmer’s.”
I suspect he will be Starmer with a very slightly different hair cut that will barely limp the party to the next election only to be demolished by anyone that will promise any kind of change. Starmer’s popularity at election was barely a mile wide and an inch deep, I don’t see Burnham being any different.
@ Jay #!6 – Micro Reactors. We can build micro reactors, have been for decades in submarines and ships. But they did that for many technical reasons, none of them being economics.
@ Siliconguy #18 RE : Oracle layoffs. I am continually amazed at the scale of these businesses. 141,000 employees, they probably only need 1/5th of that and even then that is being generous. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in the mid-90’s he found there was about 350 different projects and products in development, he cut it down to 12 in the space of 6 months and dropped a lot of people with it. Helped save that business.
@Anonymous #23 RE : Random Numbers.
There is the technique of tying these to real world things. On some computers you can use the temperature sensors to seed the number system, or you could do like Cloudflare and use the Lavarand. A wall of Laval Lamps with a camera watching to provide the number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavarand
@ Sirusalcelion #31 RE : “Lately I am struggling to deal with my younger-boomer-age parents” – “in their scramble to maintain an upper middle class lifestyle” – “they seem to dive further into scam-adjacent “entrepreneurship” opportunities.”
I know a lot of people who are doing the exact same thing as your parents. At least some admitted they will never be able to retire because of their choices. I don’t get it, they know what is causing their problem but just cannot face the idea of changing their lifestyle to ease on the breaks. Remember, tour parents are their own people while you may be related by blood and upbringing, you do not have to hold on to their problems.
@ Heather #35 RE : Datacenters. My real question is, why are modern software stacks so rubbish that they need data centers to be so big?
Decades back in the mid 2000’s, I helped setup some smaller server systems for various universities/businesses. I have seen some server racks the size of a common refrigerator serve 100’s thousands of people very reliably with plenty of head room. These things could probably be done on a single desktop computer nowadays.
But because software keeps getting heavier all the time, and this AI coded rubbish is only accelerating it (because it turns out rubbish software), they just keep throwing more hardware at a problem rather than handling it with grace.
I have to say I’m a little upset, because no matter how much I start fresh, or refresh the page, I can’t get more than comment #44. And I know there’s more than that. I’m not sure what’s broken. Maybe it’s on my end?
My monthly long forum links are up, including a curious case of a fake savant, a reconstruction of human diet since our genus began, a full report on the Sri Lankan fertiliser ban saga, and a rich analysis on the economics of nukes versus drones. Check it out and support human curated content recommendations on the web.
https://open.substack.com/pub/recombinationnation/p/the-long-forum-june-2026?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
dobbs and others re oil:
Jeff Childers stated in March that China, India, and other Asian countries are the largest users of the oil (89%) that goes through the Strait
(https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/whose-war-thursday-march-19-2026),
and that the U.S. is (for the moment) a net producer of oil. So, closure of the Strait not as much of a problem for us.
Per ZeroHedge more recently (https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/read-14-point-us-iran-draft-deal-set-friday-signing), yes, everyone’s been leaning on their petroleum reserves. Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran to let the Strait open, because “the world”‘s reserves would run out in four weeks, putting everyone over an “energy cliff”.
Based on the chart in the earlier Childers article, I wonder if Trump was forcing China to draw down their petroleum reserves in order to weaken their position strategically.
Jennifer K. #37– your comment caused a light bulb to go off in my head.
I’ve seen this cultural difference in my workplaces, too– I’ve worked for two employers where the culture was “we are a team” — there were managers, but they were regarded more as quarterbacks than kings. On the other hand, my second employer was purchased by a different company, and we got a vice-president who was all about tops-down dominance and hierarchy.
I wonder if the gradual increase in this ‘we are a team’ cultural thread in North America is the influence of a New World ‘spirit’ gradually shaping attitudes? Perhaps it’s related to ‘tamanous’? (From
https://www.ecosophia.net/america-and-russia-tamanous-and-sobornost/ ) :
“Tamanous—that’s pronounced ‘tah-MAN-oh-oose,’ by the way—is the guardian spirit of the individual, and also his luck and his destiny. In a great many Native American cultures, finding and establishing a sacred relationship with one’s tamanous, via various traditional practices, is the primary religious act a person can engage in, an essential part of achieving adulthood and thus something that most people do as a matter of course. The result is a religious vision unlike any other, in which the personal relationship between the individual and an equally unique and individualized spiritual power takes center stage.”
Regarding the comments going missing, I am not experiencing that. But in the past on other sites when I had a different internet provider, I experienced something similar as a result of the provider or some other server in the chain caching results in an inconsistent way. I’d say it was just another symptom of the enshalification of the internet, but in general it has become less common over the past decade in my experience. As always, YMMV
Perhaps an antipodean adocentyn might be worthwhile for those of us who can’t handle long haul flights. Something for us down under to meditate on…
@ Michael in Taiwan:
Curious that your dream had a tornado rather than a plane. There was, apparently, a hurricane off the coast of New York on 9/11. I don’t know how open you are to, ahem, ‘alternate views’ of what happened on September 11th, 2001, but Dr Judy Wood has a rather intriguing presentation which details this, among other anomalies on that date – type in Judy Wood Breakthrough Institute if you do video and are interested.
On Monday, I was working and didn’t have enough free time to formulate much less share my thoughts on why malefic spirits act in the petty, small-minded ways they do. I was going to wait until the next MM, but then I remembered this is an open post week.
If some of the evil spirits are not demons, I thought, they ought to be in a different state of consciousness than demons, and so behave in different ways. In particular, I’m thinking of ghosts of evil people who were ambitious in life. Shouldn’t some of them be trying to use the living to bring about their political goals? I also wondered about beings who are not evil, but have interests opposed to humans. Here are my conclusions:
1. Evil ghosts. While humans have free will and can be ambitious in life, ghosts do not have their level of agency and a dreamlike state of consciousness. The dead humans who do are close to achieving Gwynfydd, and are probably much more aware of karma. So they are much more likely to give up the grand designs they might have had while incarnate. The ones who are spiritually advanced yet evil get picked up by comets. Evil ghosts are probably confused, self-centered, and likely to lash out at those fools who form arrangements with them. So they act similar to demons in practice.
2. Higher spirits have an awareness of their karma and their role in the cosmos. This is why the universe has order and does not collapse into chaos. This being said, some of them can and do influence humans to bring their visions into material manifestation. They are gods in the polytheistic sense and cannot easily be contacted by doing workings to lower one’s state of consciousness.
Anonymous # 11:
“That’s because the United States has been emptying its Strategic Petroleum Reserve the past few months to cover losses from the Middle East. Truly serious economic impact won’t happen until the Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out.”
Yes, I had forgotten the USA has its own reserves, like the EU. However, I think EU is in a worse situation than US, because it hasn’t any valuable oil “production” in its territory nor geopolitical influence outside it…So its seems strategic oil reserves of EU are going to be depleted sooner than US ones.
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David P. # 19:
“I remember being told in school that we need to import millions of foreigners just to keep the system going”
The same thing was told to everybody here for some years until today. Oh, all those migrants sometimes can be ill, so they need to use our health public system (more money spent by the govt) and they surely will get old and will need to be payed with more pensions (so more money…). Do the math. Even without the Longe Descent thing, we’re screwed…
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Siliconguy # 27:
“there is no credible plan to do that without nuclear energy and the clean, reliable baseload power it provides,”
What a good joke when he says nukes are a clean power!…if you forget the “small” problem of radioactive waste.
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Sirustalcelion # 31:
It’s sad what you wrote about your parents, but I can’t tell you any useful advice about it. My family situation seems better than yours, but I’ve got sometimes some problems with my parents, too; however, they’re less troublesome than yours.
I’ve seen in my town public library a book titled “Gardening adapted for climate change”, written by Sally Morgan and Kim Stoddart. To some extent, I was waiting such a book was ready for being shown to the readers here. By the way, we’re suffering here a long and hard heat wave for some days…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETLzoyzPYr0
After 10:10 Larry Johnson says that the oil markets flollow the logic of 2+3= fish.
Are we discussing here demonic influence? is this the case because markets are full of algorihms, AI or ols school
Hey JMG,
I’m mostly commenting so that I’ll be able to read beyond comment 38 (because the new comments tend to be on the awaiting moderation page). I can already see your comment about versions of your website being propagated between server farms in my RSS reader, though.
If I may, that doesn’t sound accurate. It’s not your web server that pushes out those versions, it’s the CDN (aka the server farms) pulling the new versions. If it doesn’t, that’s most likely a configuration issue due to the web server either telling the CDN that nothing has changed when it asks or maybe the CDN being configured to caching things for too long, not a sign of the long descent.
—David P.
My browser will load up to comment #43, but I see from my feed reader that JMG’s comment plus another nine comments ending at “Happy Solstice all” from Atmospheric River have already been posted.
I have tried with Firefox, Chrome, and Edge. None will load further than #43.
If we call the tech people’s love of tech a religion, and we equate their ‘singularity’ to the idea of nirvana, what if this singularity is an endpoint of a downward tendency on the spiral path, in the form of descent ever deeper into dense material limitation?
A kind of materially distorted reflection of the path of the occultists and mystics etc where the internet is a rough analogue mimicking the astral plane. i.e. The internet is the astral of the materialist but a path that leads elsewhere than advertised?
I ask from the standpoint of:
If ‘we become what we contemplate’, and if consciousness is increasingly focussed in a ‘virtual world’ (a set of human created reflections within the greater reflections), where the internet is of even deeper abstraction than the world of sensation, what might the metaphysical ramifications be?
Consider the explosion in internet use since 1995 or so – and internet connected phones (2007) – fleeting moments. Steiner’s web of spiders comes to mind.
The fact that the internet is sold as a gateway to the world is all very well, but a gateway to ‘which world’ and perhaps even ‘whose world’ may seem outlandish, but perhaps also prudent? There is a kind of irony in posting this on the internet…
Anyway, re the embrace of internet as world within world and “I asked AI and it said…” I’m reminded of the words of Paul Brunton:
“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.”
Hi all,
Regarding Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs for short). No, they will mot be any more profitable than their big cousins. I’ve said this before and elsewhere; nuclear power is a political technology, not an economic one. The push for SMR’s and “The nuclear renaissance” is being driven by LLM bubble economics and more importantly, on the need for more production of plutonium, tritium and other elements needed in nuclear weapons. The US is realizing that its Carter-Reagan era fleet of bombs is hopelessly obsolete, and China’s nuclear arsenal is rapidly growing, with cutting edge destruction engines entering front line service in both the tactical and strategic roles.
Can nuclear power work? Sure, can it be as profitable as coal, LNG or oil? No way. Nuclear power was and always will be motivated by geopolitics primarily, not energy production.
I apologize if this rant is out of place, but I have a background in nuclear physics and I get very annoyed by the hype train.
Anyway, JMG, I was wondering if my view of Trump as Donald Trumpachev might be too cynical. Increasingly it seems that Trump is not a changer per se, but a reform minded politician. He reminds me of Gorbachev, not in temperament but in that he seems to be trying to change just enough to keep a deeply unpopular system going. But the public’s patience is rapidly wearing thin regardless of the D or R next to a politician’s name. Trump ran and won on stopping inflation and stopping pointless wars, and he couldn’t overcome DC and Wall Street inertia on those issues, never mind the lack of affordable housing. I’m not sure what this means but part of me thinks your Fred Halliot situation or something like it may still be in store for us. Am I being overly pessimistic?
Best,
JZ
John,
Do you currently have a garden? If so, what are you planting?
Zemi #51 & JMG:
The modern buildings which get all the hype, such as the Obama Bunker, are not all modern buildings. There are a few architects who design in a modern version of historic styles, either overtly neoclassical, or an evolution of the typical city building of the 1920s. Those buildings will endure, I suspect.
Most modern buildings will be a fine source of steel, and maybe even glass, in future, though. Brutalist concrete buildings from the mid sixties to the mid seventies will end up as hulking empty ruins for centuries, suitable only as watchtowers and jails in future.
Boreal Bear #74
One person came from France, but he is a resident of the US most of the time. 2 came from California, almost as much a foreign land as France.
I did not arrange for video. i will be posting the 3 presentations once their writers have cleaned them up, and linking them here.
My standard offer is for whomever comes from furthest away can stay in my guest room. I keep hoping for Chris from Fernglade to set the record….
So I been trying to find out why the effects of the Iran war have not been as bad as expected.
As many pointed out, there has been enormous withdraws from Strategic Petroleum Reserves in the US and the West and there has been demand destruction, but apparently the biggest unexpected actor has been China. Somehow they have reduced the purchase of oil by somewhere between 3.5 – 5.5 million barrels per day. The Chinese leadership has been expecting disruptions to their oil supply and they have taken several important steps. They have huge strategic reserves of raw oil and finished oil products. They have invested heavily in using coal as a chemical feedstock instead of oil/ gas, securing supplies from Russia, and developing alternative energy (nuclear, solar, wind) and achieved breakthroughs in battery technology.
It is kind of weird that the US military threats to China have motivated the Chinese to prepare for war with the US and that preparation has prevented most of the negative economic impacts of the US/ Isreal’s war on Iran. (at least so far, the West’s strategic oil reserves are running low, and flow through the straits is still very constrained.)
Canada is plotting a nuclear renaissance– 10 new reactors by 2040.. Well, based on how long the last set took, they’re already behind schedule. If only we really were the evil colonialist nation we pretend to be in our tearful apologies and land acknowledgements– then we’d flood out a bunch of native villages* to access the gigawatts of power that go begging in the rivers draining into James Bay. We got 15 GW built in Quebec– enough to power Belgium– but there’s at least as much potential on the Ontario side of the border, and plenty of power left in Quebec, too. I know one project alone that was rated at 3MW before they cancelled it.
Apparently we’re still officially engaging in genocide, but we can’t inconvenience them with a few dams to preserve industrial civilization. So instead we’ll pour billions into the nuclear subsidy dumpster, further impoverishing everyone in this fast-declining nation to no end. It’s enough to make you tear your hair out.
*that flood regularly because there are no control dams, because the locals don’t want dams, and so have to be regularly rebuilt on the taxpayer’s dime, I might add. That is in part the government’s fault for putting the reservations in the dumbest possible spot, but the locals agreed to those locations in treaty and refuse any talk of relocation, so it’s hard to be sympathetic.
re. Heather #35: It’s not surprising that there’s so much pushback on data centers. Firstly I don’t think that the common person really has any idea why data capacity has to increase by another order of magnitude. This really does make data centers different from typical NIMBY issues, in that most people actually want the new NIMBY thing…new Target store or whatever, just not in their own yard.
Can’t we already watch all the streaming movies we want? What data is going to fill them anyhow…are they mostly to operate massive new surveillance infrastructure? Are they to operate massive AI systems which allow Chase or whoever to fire their customer support staff in Pakistan who were making an egregious salary of 35 cents/hour? Do we really think it’s an excellent idea that our electricity rates and energy use skyrocket to support this? I read about a 1+ gigawatt data center which was creating a heat island around it, where ambient temperatures were elevated by some 5-6°. None of this seems at all responsible. Best outcome as I see it is that the whole thing collapses like the South Sea bubble, railroad bubble, tech stock bubble of the ’90s, etc. In the meantime, it does seem responsible to put limits on this insanity. Other opinions? Thanks
JMG,
You’ve mentioned before that your suburban childhood was painfully boring. I always find myself curious when I think about this. As someone who has never really been bored, I keep trying to imagine what it was like and failing. Why/how was it boring, if you don’t mind saying?
John, thanks for uploading the picture. I was beginning to feel like the various services I was using didn’t like that one at all. I suppose I could figure out how to upload them to my own website without posting them as such, and share link. I will look into that…
…I guess all the comment trouble gives a taste of what’s to come.
Going through some old files I found a short article I wrote on the National Traffic System used for radiograms. I may post it up tomorrow.
In the meantime I have a short piece I transcribed from one of my time-traveling DX sessions. It’s an announcement about the Lighthouse Coastal Academy, and I caught it from a station up on Lake Eerie some fifty or more years from now, guessing. The substack link also features an audio embed of one of the shortwave radio programs I did with Imaginary Stations, called The Great Lakes Pirate Radio Ships.
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/the-lighthouse-coastal-academy
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/the-lighthouse-coastal-academy
Thanks for the link to that Popular Mechanics article. Makes sense and gives me further intuitive insight about stuff I’ve got in the cooker.
Those depopulated cities really do put me in mind of Dhalgren. Also puts me in mind of your vision mentioned of depopulated cities/suburbs. As Phutatorius has pointed out, Delany had visions of depopulated cities himself, and he was no mystic. Not that visions are infallible… but could be probabilities.
Michael-20 @ 87, I can’t comment on the prop 50 incident. I do understand CA voters approved it, no? I guess I would say that it is all too easy to attribute fraud and collusion when a majority does not share your opinion. For example, some leftist journalists, looking for clicks and fame, are attempting a theme that the Rs “stole” the 2024 presidential election. For the record, I believe that neither 2020 nor 2024 were stolen.
My personal view is that I wish the British Invasion had been in music only. I still would like to know what made the two Brits contending for LA mayor and CA governor attractive to voters.
I think that Congressional districts should have fixed boundaries. Congresspersons ought to represent regions, IMHO. In New York, that might be each NYC borough, another for Long Island outside the city limits, one district each for the larger cities, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, Binghamton–all of which have large and politically active minority and recent immigrant populations, and maybe a handful more for, e.g., Mohawk Valley, Hudson Valley, North Country, Finger Lakes and Western New York. Yes, that would mean more travel for rural reps. No system is perfect.
Hello Mr Greer, I have kind of a silly question, but if you’re feeling indulgent..I recall you once used the term “unimaginative” in reference to the Lord of the Rings films, which really surprised me. How would the films be different had you been in the director’s chair?
Why do you think progressive women might convert in large numbers to Islam? If any group did that, I would expect it to be black men, as a form of national separatism (and really, such a mass conversion might have been closer to happening in 1970 than today).
Empire Falls by Russo was a great book. And I am no fan of Massholes. I do love Maine, and I have been a vacationer there, but I hope to get a pass because I can’t afford a vacation home. We usually camped or stayed with my cousins who live in Portland, though we have also rented a place twice. Camping or staying with cousins has been the only to afford it and it has gotten more expensive. I understand the sentiment about the working people in Maine… those are my cousins. My dads older brother decided to stay in Maine when he was stationed up there, and so my dad has been going up periodically since he was a teen… and we went up a few times growing up. My wife has a connection to the state too, through our family friends, and close friend Joe who passed away earlier this year. When he settled in America after fleeing the commies in Hungary he got a music teaching position on the island of Vinalhaven. After he got the viola position in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra he relocated here, but took his family back to Maine often, where he had met his wife. My wife got to go with them on some of their family trips… so we ended up honeymooning there. We think of moving there, but it would be so expensive to relocate, and leave our kids and grandkids and other family here. I do love Ohio too… but the ocean, forests and mountains, all in one place, won’t ever stop loving that.
On Graham Platner: It’s nice to see some working class populism returning to the left. However, I am distraught by the Totenkopf tattoo he had. He said he was a student of history, so you just don’t end up with a Totenkopf if you know 20th century military history. I know people change, people get dumb shale tattooed when they are dumb and stupid. Him? Idk… Lots of crypto-fascism I’ve come across in the noise and industrial music scenes where the use of Totenkopf or other symbols supposedly “really don’t mean that, they mean something else”. They were just being edgy. Yeah, right. Then the evidence comes to light showing actual involvement with Nazi groups (speaking here of Boyd Rice, Death In June, Michael Moynihan, and the late publisher who ran Feral House books.) Nicholas Schrek is another one who has left the Church of Satan and become a Buddhist, but I’d still be wary of the guy…
I have a number of Jewish friends… some practicing, some not… just officiated the marriage of one who doesn’t practice. He’s not a big fan of what they are doing in Palestine. I don’t think the money pump can last, nor am I a fan of any kind of killing. To see that transformed into hatred of Jewish and other people is quite a different thing though. So I am wary of this guy getting into the government.
Here is a good article in The Quietus about “The Countercultural Figures Who Helped Give Birth to the Neo-Nazi Terrorist Networks of Today”
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/counterculture-nazi-essay/
The guy who wrote the piece, Spencer Sunshine, did some research in some archives and found the letters proving these guys really were Nazi sympathizers after years of them claiming they were just being transgressive and provocative.
@ Jennifer K #34
Bill and I trade off responsibilities and duties according to talents, skill, and dislike of something. I think most long-term couples do that.
That “head of household” jargon is a poor way of expressing that a clever, responsible husband values the advice of a clever, responsible wife and listens to her, first, before making any kind of decision. As you can see, that decision ends up being a joint one.
@Slink, #80 – Thank you for the good advice!
JMG: Thanks for that picture of misbegotten architecture. I never dreamed someone would use a pickelhaube as inspiration for a building. 😂
I wonder which ‘shrooms they were using.
As for possible diesel fuel rationing, that would be interesting. I wonder where the slack would be on that. For whatever reason even small tractors are diesel now where they used to be gasoline. There were a number of LPG (propane) tractors in the old days too, then there was Tractor Fuel which was basically kerosene. They had a small gasoline tank to start the engine and warm it up until it could vaporize the kerosene. Woe unto you if you forgot to switch it back to gas for a few minutes before you turned it off lest you leave the carburetor full of kerosene with a cold engine.
I am curious if you can see savannas returning to the Sahara, Arabian Peninsula, and Thar Desert (of the sort that used to exist in the hypsithermal) by the time of Star’s Reach (the 26th Century).
I keep forgetting to ask our gracious host and enlightened commentariat’s opinion and insights into the writings of Florence Scovel Shinn.
Superficially, it appears to me, to be a christian light version of occultism. An early 20th century introduction to secrets teachings without ever going into the deep pool. Her short books have been recommended to me several times in the past weeks (so it may have been just a random expression of the internet currents; all hail the mighty algorithm!) but wanted to confirm with a more adept crowd before digging in. The discussion may get interesting if it turns out to be a détournement of the occult by mostly Christian vulgarization.
@ Bradley # 6
There are several difficulties with having a datacenter in space. The most significant one is that datacenters are not autonomous – they require constant maintenance and human presence. While cool photos of datacenters usually show rows upon rows of stacked computer boxen with no humans inside, the reality is that there are loads of IT workers inside a datacenter constantly bumbling around trying to patch and rewire things.
I have been in a datacenter. It was a small one in India, and it still required considerable human oversight. New boxes needed to be placed in, server machines needed to be switched off and on to restart them manually, and so on.
So unless you plan to turn run-of-the-mill IT workers into competent astronomers, this is not going to work out.
@ Cynthia # 20
Pardon me, but I thought hard-won perspectives that I deeply internalize would just normally persist past reincarnation, with or without my endeavour. At least that is much of what karmic theory implies.
@ Teresa # 132
The expression “head of the household” comes from rural joint families that share an income from their farmland. In such families, the income would be maintained in a shared family account (usually in the form of physical proceeds from their labour, stored in the barn), and the family farmers – all men – would sit together and hear each other’s counsel before making any financial decision.
The oldest male member of the family – usually a retired and experienced farmer – would be the head of this council. Hence the expression “head of the family”. Since this was also likely to be a father-figure, this person would also be named the patriarch of the family.
Families that jointly run a business in India also follow this structure in their workings. There is even a separate tax category for it in our government – Hindu Undivided Family.
17:30 UTC Oxford
Using usual URL shows post with 88 comments, opening a new browser window and using the URL that Michael_20 posted at #84 reveals 132 comments
Jmg,
One of the things that is not much commented on in the rise of these DSA local political candidates ( some backed by Momdani) is the dynamics of localized low information political campaigns. I have seen this here in my locality where DSA ( democratic socialists of america) have won several seats for state house positions over safe incumbents. In addition to the issues of people being dissatisfied with the cost of living etc there is also a particular political dynamic.
Local races, which do not encompass a whole state or a whole big city, are considered ” low information” because candidates have few opportunities to make themselves known to voters. There is little press coverage, and targeting adds is difficult. Thus in the past incumbents often won due to long term name recognition.
The DSA candidates tap in to a huge army of canvassing foot soldiers in the form of public sector union members, teachers and under employed youth who can go door to door. We recently had a card carrying. member of the DSA beat a business backed incumbent for an important state seat because the foot soldiers knocked on every voters door an average of 5 different times during the election period. This is, of course ,is fair in American politics and a legitimate way for a group to gain power even if I don’t agree with them on most of their platform.
I believe this power dynamic will persist and grow for a few more years before it burns itself out on the wheel of unmet promises, but for now it will be a growing force in politics.
@Heather #34 How about we not build them at all especially in the few remaining wilderness areas. Maybe I’m just old but construction of these data centers and their exorbitant use of land, energy and water for the purpose of processing unfathomably large amounts of data makes me truly believe that humanity has gone insane. It seems as a global society we are grasping for some sort of manufactured wisdom to dig our way out of our problems. Perhaps we should be looking more at the wisdom that was inherent in may of the world’s Indigenous cultures.
JMG (and everyone else who wants to express an interest)
Some of us who were at Glastonbury last year were wondering if you’d be willing to come back and do a repeat in 2028?
(I am the guy who was doing all the filming).
It’s too early to start serious preparation, but I’m just posting this now to see if you’re willing in principle to come back in June 2028, and gauge interest broadly from people here and then we can firm up details and organization and dates about a year in advance.
I think most of us who were at Glastonbury last year would be interested in doing it again.
I’ve got an email off to my tech guy to see if he can figure it out. BTW, how many of you who are getting this problem are using the .net address, and how many are using .org?
Michael_20, hmm! Interesting.
Chris, well, there’ll be no shortage of economic lurches and wobbles in the years ahead, so that’ll also play a role in it. As for Rocketboy and his latest stock gimmick, the only reason I could see for buying into that is to pass on the stock as soon as possible to a bigger fool, and that’s not how I invest. With regard to the website issues, I could see that — since my blog isn’t hosted by one of the big boys, it may be shoved to the back of the queue when CloudFlare is under stress.
Celadon, my other two favorite alchemical texts are the Splendor Solis, mostly because of the illustrations, and the Aurea Catena Homeri, because it’s less cryptic than most.
Moonwolf8, they haven’t been written yet — or, rather, the last Aquarian rituals were written more than 23,760 years ago, before the end of the last Aquarian age, and haven’t survived.
David, Mark and I have been working at this longer than you have, but a single life isn’t anything like enough to reach adeptship. If my apparent past life memories are anything to go by, this is the third life in which I’ve put in serious occult study, the second in which I’ve received initiations, and the first in which I’ve done more than a little occasional practice. I think I’ve done quite well, all things considered, but there’s still a long road ahead. That doesn’t trouble me — the journey has its own delights.
Clay, it’s important to be precise here. There have been four nuclear-powered commercial vessels in service, our Savannah, Germany’s Otto Hahn, Japan’s Mutsu, and the Soviet (and then Russian) Sevmorput. All used small nuclear plants not too different from the mini-nukes that are being marketed so heavily right now. The last, which doubles as an icebreaker, is still in service; the German and Japanese vessels were converted to diesel power once it became clear just how wildly uneconomical they were to operate, and of course the Savannah was simply mothballed.
Nemo, (1) a few typos got corrected. (2) I don’t know — none of my characters ever offered cheesecake to shoggoths — but they’d probably adore it. They’re perfectly happy eating hard cheeses but soft foods are shoggoth delicacies; when Brecken made mac and cheese for the first meal she cooked for Sho, and followed it up with vanilla pudding, it was an inspired choice.
Anon, somebody’s tossing some straw in the wind to see which way it blows. Interesting.
Patrick, those are at least plausible.
Archivist, when a media pundit insists that the markets are behaving irrationally, that usually means (a) the pundit bet the other way, (b) the pundit isn’t taking all factors into account, or (c) both.
Earthworm, that’s by no means impossible.
John, thanks for this. Can you recommend a couple of good sources I can quote when I start posting about the latest glow-in-the-dark hype? As for Trumpachev, the possibility’s a very real one. The thing his enemies can’t stand and won’t mention is that he’s a moderate — his policies are all things that would have been completely uncontroversial in 1990. If he had the power to impose those policies, I think he’d be wildly popular, but he’s pushing against the combined inertia and pushback of a massive and wholly corrupt system. If he fails, people may turn to a Fred Halliot type and give him the power to succeed, and the mere fact that the last scraps of constitutional government will go by the wayside if that happens is not something most people will worry about.
Nephite, regrettably, no — I don’t have gardening privileges in my current apartment. I try to make up for it by shopping at the first-rate Silver Spring farmers market and taking my compost weekly to the compost pickup station at that same market.
Dobbs, thank you for this.
Tyler, Canada really does have a bad case of the barbarism of reflection these days, doesn’t it?
Jennifer, I found schooling dreary beyond belief, mostly because I was always well past grade level and the prevailing philosophy of education was that everyone had to trudge along as a unit irrespective of ability. I was hopelessly inept at sports, which boys are supposed to make the center of their lives, and repeated failure and humiliation made that pretty dull, too. (Never in my life have I managed to get a bat and a baseball into contact, just for example.) The adults around me — parents, teachers, etc. — kept up an endless parade of Stuff Kids Are Supposed To Like, which I didn’t. On the occasions when I could simply go off and read, or do the other things that actually interested me, I was fine, but that’s not the suburban way: you’re supposed to do what everyone else is doing and like it. Do you recall the scene in Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time — the book, not the wretched movie — in which the characters are on Camazotz and all the children are bouncing balls in exactly the same rhythm? That’s what suburbia felt like to me.
Justin, you should certainly figure out how to host your own images — it really helps! Dreamwidth will do that for free, you know.
Roy, the reason I called them unimaginative is that the producer (Peter u bagronk sha pushdug Jackson-glob bubhosh skai!) constantly used cheap cinematic clichés and special effects instead of getting the actors and actresses to, you know, act. The scene at the Mirror of Galadriel is one example of many. He had to trot out the faux-spooky lighting instead of getting the actress to put some subtlety and richness into her performance. Bleah.
Tankermottind, er, did you read what I wrote? I specified that it would be activist women on the far left, not progressive women in general. Look at the attitudes toward Islam, toward Israel (and increasingly toward Jews in general), toward men and ordinary heterosexual relations, that you’ll find among activist women, and I think the answer writes itself.
Justin, thanks for this. Back when I ran a small Hermetic quarterly, I fielded attempts by several people in that scene to interest me in a zine exchange, and their zines (which they sent) were promoting full-blown Nazism; it wasn’t just “being edgy.” I never responded to the requests — ick — but that was what got me reading Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke and other scholars researching the neofascist scene, so I’d have a better idea of what to watch out for.
Siliconguy, hmm! Another example of too much reliance on a single resource…
Gunstone, I didn’t have that in mind when I wrote Star’s Reach, and since I’m not going to revise it or put any more stories in that fictive setting, it’s an empty question.
Rashakor, I’m not familiar with her, but a quick glance online suggests that she was a standard-issue New Thought author — that is to say, a vulgarization of the occult with some Christian frosting over the top.
Clay, interesting. Yeah, that seems plausible.
RTSGame, it’s possible at this point that I’ll be back in England at some point in the summer of 2027. That doesn’t put a June 2028 trip out of the question by any means, though — I have more flexibility in travel and scheduling now than I’ve had for many years. I’ll certainly consider it, though, and we can sort out the options over the next six months or so if you like.
This evening (local time) I was in a cafeteria with a friend, so I’ve read my town main local newspaper. I’ve paid attention to the “international”, where journalists were rejoicing apparently, for the success of the “peace treaty” in ME, with a not very reasonable optimism (ahem). Another news pointed in a happy mood that oil prices were the lowest since the war(s) began. Of course, no news about how much oil is coming from USA and EU strategic oil reserves to fill the gap in oil imports, thanks to the war destruction…It seems maybe there are orders from political and factic powers here to hide real problems in the short term. By the way, I read in the smaller corner of a page, mild disturbing news, which contradicts this apparent optimism: more than 1,000 ships with near 20,000 sailors are waiting outside the Persian Gulf to have safe promises for crossing Hormuz Strait without any Iranian attack…I think it’s the fly in the soup of MSM here, so they’ve chosen to write about it in the smallest corner of the newspaper (cough). Commercial shippers and insurance companies still distrust there’s a real peace in ME now.
The .org just redirects to the .net, specifically to the homepage no matter where the .org goes (so if I replace the .net in my address bar with .org right now, I won’t see this open post, I’ll just get dumped to ecosophia.net).
—David P.
@Jennifer K:
Early in my marriage, I needed a power dynamic. Either I was in charge, or she was. The problem is, she was uncomfortable with power. I unsuccessfully forced both dynamics into the marriage in an attempt to solve the “problem”.
Having grown up in Christian fundamentalism, I understand the teaching of wives to submit. I also understand the strongest argument against it, which is that when any man is given that kind of power, they will tend towards abuse of that power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that.
What I have found is that wifely submission is an answer to a problem a good marriage doesn’t have. As I think about my marriage, we are on the same page 95% of the time. I don’t have to tell her what to do or what I would like her to do because she is already doing it in the way we would want it done. Of the other 5%, 4% is stuff we agree on but she hasn’t thought about. That leaves very little where I am “putting my foot down,” and I would guess such cases are under 1%; they are probably even lower. Literally, probably 2 times in our almost 20 years of marriage.
If we tweak the understanding of submission from “submit/obey” to more of a “follow/support” framing, I think it becomes much healthier. Specifically in the Christian tradition, beginning from the first purpose of the woman Eve as a “helpmeet” to Adam, someone who is perfectly suited to help Adam. Supporting and following someone will include an element of questioning and challenge, not of a rebellious nature, but of a searching, planning nature.
Domination and the struggle for control within marriage were elements of the curse (Gen 3:16). This marked a shift from a cooperative relationship to a power struggle.
I still believe in roles, so this isn’t a defense of egalitarianism. The cooperative relationship I speak of is within the context of roles. My role is wage-earner and financial; my wife’s role is the house and children. I also look into, take part in, and have a say in the house and children, and my wife looks into, attends to, and has a say in financial arrangements/matters, and sometimes brings in side income from various things she does.
@JMG
Thanks for the reminder a lot of people are angry that the AI bubble doesn’t pop just now, I think it will pop, but no one knows, could be tomorrow, or Valentines day 2027
HippieViking # 45:
“As for the return of the “a wife must submit to her husband in all things” attitude, I suppose there is a lot of historical precedent for that among some lines of Christian thought but I also think it is a return of the repressed.”
I agree, though I’d like to explain it with my own words as the return of the pendulum toward the opposite extreme, which cannot be a good idea, neither. Bland and soft ideal “feministo” man could be replaced soon (at least in right wing American groups) by the old myth of “alpha male”…so he’s correlative with submission by the “new-old” woman.
However, even in the most “old school” societies in the past, men have never had all the power and women any power. For example, in my country North mountains, some peasants used to be shepherds too. Mountains in winter don’t allow to live big sheep herds, so sheperds had to go with their cattle to the warmer and lower South, and live there all the winter until spring time. Who used to handle farms in mountains during winters? Shepherds wifes and their children. It wasn’t a “matriarchy”, but men power wasn’t absolute, neither. In addition to this, in traditional societies men usually were lords of public life (of course, with social differences according classes), but women were “masters” in their home. Even it wasn’t very strange some men were ruled by their wife at home. Word for this ashamed men in Spanish is “calzonazos”. Those controlled men were compared with a coward hen by “normal” men. I think those situations of relative men power were common in another countries, too (with local cultural features).
I mean, those Christian right wing men are idealizing a past which never has been real, outside their fantasies about the return of “patriarchy”.
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David # 48:
“The self-proclaimed “world famous” director Ewe Boll (famous for being one of the worst directors alive) released the film, Citizen Vigilante, to uproarious acclaim by the dissident right.”
Oops! I knew a German director, famous (or in-famous) thanks to his bad movies, whose name is UWE Boll. Is it the same guy you’ve written about his last controversial movie? If he’s the same man, I can tell you I’ve seen some movies of him, I think the less bad was “Tunnel Rats”, about Vietnam war.
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JMG # 52:
“I can only assume that there are a lot of very insecure men in the New Right. The thought of distorting marriage into a boss-and-peon arrangement baffles me; it works so much better simply to negotiate as needed, and let each one take the lead where he or she has special expertise that the other lacks.”
Yes, that’s what me and my partner usually do when we’re together. Although we aren’t married, we like to negotiate, and sometimes I win, sometimes not; and sometimes it’s a 50/50 (she wins/I win too). We’re not perfect, but at least we treat each other like human beings who think and feel, it’s not a master-slave relationship.
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Emmanuel # 60:
“Has it occurred to anyone else that Donald Trump’s career is a lot like the career of Timothy Dexter (1743 -1806), the luckiest, and stupidest, businessman in New England history? Here’s a link about Dexter;”
Thanks for your link. I didn’t knew this historical guy: he was under my European radar. I don’t know wether Trump deserves be compared with Dexter, or your comparison is wrong. I’ve also read somewhere Trump can be compared with Bonapartist-like men like the French G. Boulangier…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Ernest_Boulanger
I think this comparison isn’t very accurate, yours maybe is more similar, but I’m not sure of it.
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Northwind G. # 62:
“It likely *IS* as you state here. It is because feminism is expensive. Only rich people can afford feminism.
The same goes for LGBTQ. ”
Yes, I wanted to suggest this disturbing reality thinking in 4th wave feminism especially, which has been led by middle/upper class white woman from western countries…and pretend to represent every woman in the world (cough).
However, there are more theories not always incompatible with the “caviar left” idea. For example, I met some years ago a guy who said “feminist” men were people who never had met a bad woman…A bit cynical, but an interesting hypothesis.
It’s also interesting a theory said by some old school leftists, who think nowadays feminism and LGBTQ frenzy is a smokescreen to hide social classes problems and “castrate” progressive groups: “Si non é vero, é ben trovato”(maybe true maybe not).
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Inna # 65:
“When I last visited England (2024), Russophobia was palpable.”
I think UK elites and quite lower class citizens there still think they’re an empire (?), and look: UK was a sea empire. You can see easily Russia is the biggest country in the world yet, and it’s been always a land empire. So do the math and think who’s the Brits elites geopolitical bias to Russia…at least from the old times Crimea war stereotypes against Russians.
Here we were also a sea empire, to some extent, but it’s interesting I haven’t found any real common Russophobia in the street people, beyound usual tantrums by politicians and journalists. It seems their attemps to spread Russophobia to average Spaniards have completely failed. Maybe in Spain we’ve been too many time despised as “less Europeans” than another countries (“Africa begins in the Pyrinees”), so to some extent, even in a non conscious way, we don’t hate Russia (which is seen even today as not really European neither). In addition to this, Spain lost its empire sooner than the UK…
————————————————————
(To be continued)
Unless you got so annoyed you deleted every comment, I am seeing the odd comments issue: it was 88 at about 11:00, and at 3:30, it’s zero…..
And when I submitted it, it is waiting as comment #145. This is very odd indeed….
Chuaquin #112:
> Oh, all those migrants sometimes can be ill, so they need to use our health public system (more money spent by the govt) and they surely will get old and will need to be payed with more pensions (so more money…). Do the math.
Perfectly true but assuming that this just won’t be a problem is a mistake that I’d expect people to make. It’s infinite growth applied to people: we’ll always have more migrants that we can import to solve our problems. It’s wrong, of course, but you can see why a true believer in Progress would believe it.
What I wouldn’t expect, if the last ten years or so hadn’t demonstrated it quite decisively, is that people would simply ignore the fact that migrants have become a net drain on our resources. The millions of foreigners living off of benefits aren’t paying for anybody’s pension.
But I should probably let the topic rest. I recall several recent posts here in whose comments I have also talked about migration and it’s not like I’m contributing anything new to the discussion. Plus, frankly, the whole matter is quite tiring.
—David P.
Luke # 75:
“Tattoos are kind of a signal that says “I do not conform” ( I know that isn’t a law), although I don’t have any myself.”
I’m afraid I disagree. At least in my country (in which people usually follows with a slight delay foreign western fashions, a lot of very “average” people wear tattoos in their skin. A woman I met a time ago told me in a fun and upset mood alike “There will be soon more tattooed people than non tattoed people, so this later people should be paid by the government thanks to our minority future situation” (sic). I see a lot of spanish woman (not all young girls) with tattoos here, but most of them live a very normies life…Maybe in your country it’s different, but I see here tattoos means in real world a very little level of “rebellion” against conformism.
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JMG # 78:
“the British always hate somebody.”
I think you’re right, but I can say in addition to your view, the Brits maybe haven’t forgotten yet their trauma for having ceased to be an empire, after Second WW. So they need to believe they’re still an empire (?), so as a sea empire, they like to hate another “empire”(Russia).
Emmanuel Goldstein 60
> the Donald
Wow. Thank you for this note. I have been scratching my head multiple times this last year trying to find anything that made sense of the Donald’s behavior and wordings.
His kookiness made sense to me up to, and not including, the Iran sh_t and Izrule sh_t. Your post has enlightened me and, indeed, has literally lightened my psychic load on what the heck shananigans he has been up to this last year or so.
Now Trump needs to re-affirm (get back to) “America First,” as well as apologize to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson, bringing Greene and Carlson back into the fold.
💨🍊🤗🥸💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Cugel#31
Why you have so bad opinion about ISO 9000
For me, ecosophia.net currently has 144 comments; ecosophia.org has 88. However, it was the .net site which I used earlier where all the comments vanished. So it looks to me like there’s an issue with both.
Commentariat, I figured out an ethical hack to get comments to work. Use this url https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=1 . The key is the approved=1 param. This worked for me anyway. I may have oversimplified with my server comment based on what Chris said about CloudFlare. I’ve never really tried to understand that aspect of things.
JMG and anyone interested, I’ve had some insight into the whole “inventing the individual” concept (brought it up years ago, iirc, you aren’t big on it). Ethos used to be determined by role, according to After Virtue. Then we move into a period where people don’t identify with their roles and think they’re autonomous floating head moral agents. But this may not be entirely bad. It opens an avenue for people to choose their own purpose as you have said one must do if one wants a purpose. This act of self invention is also probably why people get tattoos. I think this ability to self invent only becomes available during post-modernity, but the downside is a lot of people drown in others inventions. I’m still early in figuring all this out. I have several books on inventing the individual on my shelf but haven’t read them yet. I think JMGs/your take is that individuality takes different forms in different cultures (iirc), so I’m curious in your take on this roleless moral agent floating head inventing themselves idea. I thought I would attempt to post something of substance because I made several comments about commenting.
Hey JMG
Firstly, I’ll let you know that I use “ecosophia.net” when accessing this blog.
Secondly, I thought I would mention that H5N1 bird flu was detected in Australia for the first time, somewhere in Western Australia. I expect that we should prepare for chickens to be mass culled at some point in the future if this virus spreads further..
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/21/h5-bird-flu-australia-wildlife-emergency-explainer-h5n1
A question in the spirit of your recent post about leftist ladies throwing dildos at Trump.
Why do right wing men like to pin penises on powerful women like Michelle Obama and Brigitte Macron?
For those interested, this is a Nate Hagan informative interview about our energy predicament and nuclear power, which seems relatively accurate and middle ground to me (not a nuclear fan, nor expert). He talks about the relative lack of safety in smaller units (and that’s before considering oversight by the likes of Zuck and our current anti-regulation feds). Keefer thinks some of the more stable larger nuclear plants will be rehabilitated for extension of usage, with more doubt about new large ones being built. Though it is video, linked show notes have some references.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chris-keefer-empowering-the-future-from-nuclear-to/id1604218333?i=1000655667001
Regarding comparisons with the late 70’s oil crunch, diesel then was cheaper then than gasoline. Prices have risen much more for diesel than gasoline thus far. It is heavily used in industry and agriculture, and mostly imported to the US. Inflationary pressure will be different, especially when coupled with anti-diplomacy.
Oops. From Eurointelligence;
“On Tuesday late evening, the entire German railway system collapsed. Nothing moved for two hours. Deutsche Bahn’s 2G mobile communications system clapped out after a software update. This is the system used by railway companies to alert train drivers to emergencies, like people on tracks, or signal failures. An emergency backup system was eventually activated. Tens of thousands of passengers got stranded overnight.
Worse was the impact on freight rail. Twenty-four hours later, around half of Germany’s freight trains were still stranded throughout the country, with estimates that it would take several days to clear up the logjam.
The telecoms system concerned is GSM-R, from the era of 2G communications – the 1990s. Most European rail companies have switched systems.”
But not Germany.
It’s possible the ethical hack I posted about is a fluke. I’m at #159 comments even in my incognito browser where I didn’t use the hack. The first time I tried it I went from 88 to 140 though.
Archivist, exactly. Remember that Isaac Newton tried to time the South Sea Bubble and lost his shirt. Neither of us are as smart as Newton, so trying to time a market in a bubble is not something we should try to mess with!
Luke, the entire idea of the autonomous individual is a creation of post-medieval western European cultures (and those of the European diaspora, of course) and makes very little sense from within the worldviews of other cultures — each of which, of course, has a sense of human existence that is just as opaque to outsiders. Every one of these culturally constructed senses is a fiction, and the floating-head sense of identity no less so than others. People act out that fiction, to be sure; they get tattoos, wear the right clothes, mouth the right opinions, and so on, so they can be uniquely individualistic in exactly the same way as everyone else. “Yes,” shouts the crowd in Life of Brian, in perfect sync. “We are all individuals!”
J.L.Mc12, I’m half convinced that the whole point of the bird flu hysteria is to shut down backyard chicken raising and boost profits for the big chicken producers.
Jain, that’s an odd one, isn’t it? The same sort of Freudian analysis would lead me to wonder how many of the people making these claims have a secret fondness for “shemale” porn.
Siliconguy, good heavens. Germany is turning into its opposite.
Northwind (offlist), enough. You’ve made it clear to everyone that you don’t like unexplained acronyms; that’s your call, of course, but it doesn’t give you the right to police other people’s posts or, ahem, “repeated attempts to hammer on points already addressed.” If other people don’t choose to cooperate with your request, that’s their call.
JMG, that does sound wretched! I was much the same, but luckily was almost invariably allowed to go somewhere and do my own thing while adults dealt with more obviously troublesome children. There were some short, painful incidents (mostly in P.E.), but they didn’t last long enough to go from acutely embarrassing to boring, and conformity was not a priority of local adults, so I did all right. Part of it was that I developed the ability to maintain vivid daydreams while doing almost anything. I also had the great good fortune to be born to good, weird parents who appreciated me for who I was, even as they let me take the knocks that sometimes entailed.
@Dylan #40
You’re quite welcome! I’ve been sitting on those thoughts for some time and was glad to have a chance to air them.
Mr. Greer
Reading above your suggestion not to do rituals under the influence of mind affecting substances has me wondering. Firstly, I wondered what would be the likely result of performing rituals, SoP for example, or scrying while under the influence of shrooms. Not something I plan to do, with that or any other substance, but that was more out of a desire to develop my own abilities than rely on a crutch. However, since you specifically cautioned against it, I’m curious why. Please enlighten me.
On a related note, does this advice extend to caffeine? There have been times where caffeine gave me the little burst of energy necessary to stick to my daily practice after a long day at work, particularly on the days I also go to the community garden. Is there danger here?
Thank you.
To change the subject, the latest issue of The Atlantic, with the complete text of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the cover, is both a very strong article on the hymn, and yet, with a classic example of “The Pot and the Kettle” in the flavor of its comments.
The writers find the moral absolutism of the abolitionists disturbing; that to end slavery was to be on God’s side, no question about it. And yes, of course. The Battle Hymn is a very powerful statement to that effect. But, the writers insist, it isn’t compatible with today’s moral absolutism, i.e. the standard “woke” line.
Okay – chronocentrism at its thickest. even so. Shakes head. Sorry wokesters, it’s become a patriotic classic call to action. With a tune the labor movement adopted in its day, because of its simplicity and raw power.
And folks down here are shameless fl;ag-wavers, glory be!
P.S. Magic Monday is still refusing to expand the comments.
@ JMG: yes, the site is acting wonky. (I use the .net URL.) I regard these little frustrations as an opportunity to take a break and contemplate the topic of internet addiction.
@ JPM: Since you brought up Delaney’s “Dhalgren” I’ll admit that I can no longer remember where I read that about Delaney’s vision of abandoned cities. But I did read something recently that reminded me of “Dhalgren.” It was in “Cracks in the Great Wall: UFOs and Traditional[ist] Metaphysics” by Charles Upton. (p.46) He came up with a concept he calls “deferred closure.” Here’s how he describes it: ” inexplicable data are continually fed to the victim [the reader in this case] or victims … data which always suggest the possibility of a rational explanation but never quite allow it…. Deferred Closure, then, might be defined as an experimental method for producing paranoid schizophrenia.” He then refers in a footnote to “That Hideous Strength.” I’ve read “That Hideous Strength” twice, but I immediately thought of “Dhalgren.”
Chaquin, Thanks for the recommendation. I often suggest Sally Morgan’s book “The Healthy Vegetable Garden” for both beginner and more advanced gardeners.. Her information finds a good balance between of easy-to-understand and accurate, though she is in England so is adapted for somewhat different weather and soils. She respects ecology and limits. I’ll be checking my library soon…
@JMG #144:
Thank you, that’s oddly reassuring although this incarnation of mine hasn’t been an especially pleasant one (which is likely at least partly why I was drawn to occultism in the first place). I’m not necessarily looking forward to doing it all again., except with the vague hope that things will turn out better next time. But I guess that’s entirely up to me now, isn’t it? Just like growing up, it really does seem to be all about learning to take responsibility. Self-mastery.
@Chuaquin #149:
Yeah, it’s the same guy. I may have gotten the name slightly wrong. I just thought it was a rather funny set of circumstances and noteworthy.
-David M.
“Generally, Trump has united regions and countries that weren’t talking to each other and helped people get along. Of course, he has generally united them by causing them to dump the US, and breaking down diplomatic relations, but in the long run they might all be better off–”
Now I wonder if he’s going to unite the left and the right in American politics, that weren’t previously talking to each other, and help them get along, by causing them to dump Trump and the uniparty (Republican Party and Democratic Party) for some third party alternative.
JMG, maybe I should have asked more explicitly, but is the autonomous individual the reason modern humans have to and can choose a purpose if they want one?
Mr. Greer (#144): Oh, you don’t plan to revisit the setting of Star’s Reach? That’s too bad. I loved its take on a grittily realistic post-industrial America and the way it deconstructed our modern perception of spaceflight as the next glorious step in the march of progress. I understand if you’re done with the setting, though — I would eagerly buy and read another book in a different setting that takes a swing at the modern myth of progress from another direction.
(I posted a comment like this one but I think WordPress ate it.)
@Dylan #40
You’re welcome! I’ve had those thoughts bundled up for a while and I’m happy I got a chance to air them.
@Ambrose #72
If I might challenge your perspective a bit: if meaning really comes from within, then you couldn’t be wrong about the meaning of things. You’d be like Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass. Instead I’d suggest that, like meaning in language, the meaning of things is an interaction between a thing, its context, and the various persons trying to make sense of it. The meaning is not in any one of those alone.
David Chapman goes into more detail on this idea in his article “Rumcakes and Rainbows”:
https://meaningness.com/objective-subjective
He compares meaning to a rainbow: “A rainbow is a physical phenomenon, but not a physical object. It has no specific location.… Although an observer is necessarily involved, a rainbow is not subjective. It is not “mental,” not an illusion…. The rainbow is not in your head…. But it is also not an object-out-there. It is not in the mist, and not in the sun, although both are required for a rainbow to occur.”
In the case of The Life of Pi, I took the point of the ending to be that only Pi knows which story actually happened. Was the second, boring story the real story or was it him appeasing the prejudices of the officer who is interrogating him, and possibly the reader’s? We can’t know, so we have a choice in what to believe. The implications about the real world should be obvious.
Jennifer, if I’d had parents like yours I probably wouldn’t have minded. Unfortunately I didn’t.
Oatmeal, none of the sources I know of have a table explaining just what downsides come with mixing meditation with this or that drug. They do mention that there are problems, and specify that meditating while drunk can mess over your nervous system. Caffeine and tobacco are the main exceptions, and caffeine only in moderation. Tea, everyone seems to agree, is better for meditation than coffee; the English vicar downing a cup of tea before doing walking meditation in the vicarage garden, putting together next Sunday’s sermon, used to be just as common a sight as Zen monks downing cups of strong green tea before a long session of zazen.
Patricia M, it’s always amusing to see one set of moral absolutists denouncing another set of moral absolutists for moral absolutism, while remaining utterly blind to their own. As for Dreamwidth, I’ve got a ticket in. I got the same effect, but only when I wasn’t logged in.
David, it is indeed entirely up to you. The more of your karma you work through this time, the less of it you’ll have to face next time.
Luke, but modern people don’t do that any more often than anybody else. They just deck out the usual human habits of blind conformity and obedience to subconscious drives with the rhetoric of autonomy, individuality, and so on.
Ethan, when I finished writing Star’s Reach I knew I shouldn’t write anything else in that fictive future — it’s complete in itself, and anything further would spoil it. (For the same reason I’ve known since early in the process of writing my tentacle novels that it would be a disastrous mistake to try to write anything set in that world after The Weird of Hali: Arkham.) I’ve already jabbed at the myth of progress in my tentacle novels, on the one hand, and in The Hall of Homeless Gods on the other; doubtless I’ll have more to say about it as we go, though right now the Ariel Moravec stories are occupying much of my imagination.
Something that occurred to me today: JMG, many years ago, I think before you even started ADR, you posted an article on one of the peak oil sites (which I can’t find just now) about how environmentalists were caught in a defective ternary: specifically, in the plot of Dudley Do-Right.
Environmentalists saw themselves as essentially well-intentioned bumblers (Dudley), all but helpless to save the poor environment (Nell Fenwick) from the moustache-twilingly evil Big Corporations (Snidely Whiplash). And you mentioned that similar to how the escape from a defective binary was to form a ternary, the way out of defective ternary was to escape to unity at a higher level: see themselves, the environment, and the big corporations as part of the same biosphere and claim both their power and responsibility within it. (How Dudley’s horse, who is the real hero of the cartoon and Nell’s actual love interest, factors into this, you didn’t say.)
It hit me today that most Americans are now trapped in this frame with regards to their political values: they see themselves as fruitlessly lashing out against the evilly-evil evilness of the Other S(n)ide, with our hapless democracy/republic and civil rights/civil liberties tied to the train tracks. And the obvious prescription is a movement back to unity: recognizing that Left and Right and everyone else are in this together — we are our democracy, and we have to live with each other, like it or not. (Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done, and there are some far less pleasant options for breaking the frame that seem a bit more likely at the moment.)
“There is the technique of tying these to real world things. On some computers you can use the temperature sensors to seed the number system, or you could do like Cloudflare and use the Lavarand. A wall of Laval Lamps with a camera watching to provide the number.”
For the purposes of divination and other magical uses of randomness, it’s not enough to seed the PRNG with a random seed and generate the rest of the numbers deterministically. You need every number used to be random, not just the seed to be random.
@ Mary and Ca Prop 50, voting district gerrymandering
Yes, the Proposition was passed, what ever that means in this state anymore.
However, the population in this state resides predominately in 2 dense population regions, then alot of other areas less populated. If we, for the sake of this discussion, assume the voting is legitimate, it still wasnt fair. Basically the populated areas voted to gerrymander the voting districts in the rest of the state. The areas of the state which had their voting districts tampered with voted overwhelmingly NOT to do it !
So, no, the people affected did not vote for it. This is not the only instance where that is true, you can go ahead and carve it into californias gravestone, ” The people affected did not vote for it”
I discovered something that may help other readers: At the .org blog earlier this week, I got an error when “expand”-ing comments. The solution for me was to click “thread”, where I was greeted with captcha and a claim that I was randomly selected for it. Once I did that everything was fine.
Also, JMG, have you heard of The Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi? It’s a series of Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective stories set in the Edo period of Japan, written by Okamoto Kido. I haven’t read any, but they look fascinating.
Regarding long descent, I was recently in the US, and heard the Post Office has really gone downhill in the past few years. As in, a greeting card taking 9 days to go 150 miles, and a small envelope package without tracking failing to show up after a month.
An astrological question- my YouTube algorithm seems to think I would be very interested to hear about the so-called “barbault basket”. Which if I understand correctly is a transition where four heavenly bodies collectively form one opposition, two trines, and three sextiles. There’s apparently a very close one happening this July.
Some people seem to think it marks something significant, or at least very stable. I lack the background in astrology to reliably assess that kind of claim so I was hoping to get your usual sober take on the matter
Davie 124
> Can’t we already watch all the streaming movies we want?
Jethro and I (not my doing) have TV stuff that streams. That is about as technical as I get. I do streaming-surfing. If one adds Amzn, Netfx, MHx, and whatever is #4 and #5, if I wanted to sit in front of the TV for the next 500 years, there would still be shows left over that I would never catch because of lack of time. These networks are sponsoring newly-produced series’ and pouring them out to the public (for a fee) by the truck-loads. I never in 500 years would be able to watch them all.
After this sunk in, I said, “There is a huge mismatch here.” I personally watch a couple hours a day, usually to wind down after a busy day. I limit my watching (usually streaming shows like Cadfael, Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, and the occasional new show). But who is watching all these zillions of shows? Who can afford the time to watch all these zillions of shows? Who would want to spend time to watch all these zillions of shows?
My main entertainment is reading paper books of murder mystery anthologies, as well as adjacent genres like horror, zombie, and some of the anthologies leaning towards Lovecraft, so I end up reading those sc fi too.
I don’t watch TV much, like I said, a couple hours a day. Most of the storylines are not even close to original but really, with hundreds of new TV shows coming out, many are going to repeat storylines. It seems like a lot of flash for nothing. It feels like the whole ‘film’ industry is desperate.
The volume of films is hundreds of times more than the possible audience.
At some point, I would like to cancel all our accounts that involve TV; we donate what TVs we have to GoodWill. But Jethro won’t hear of it. After our LLC gets going, we will need to cut expenses, and I can’t think of better accounts to cancel than everything TV-. We/he will have no choice. We can’t keep those accounts as overhead forever.
But my god. We need MORE artie-fecal dis-intelligent servers for MORE TV shows? Humans want MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE? (never satiated?) Where are our priorities? We already have mushy brains — we need more mushy brains?
I will stick with ‘artie-fecal,’ with fecal at the end. It has a nice ring to it.
💨📺🎞️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hi JMG,
For most of yesterday until 2am, whenever I refreshed the page, all I got was maximum, message 38. Only this morning after 11am did messages 39-88 show up. Throughout today, more messages showed up.
💨📜💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
A minor bit of synchronicity recently: I was searching for some details of Tolkien’s legendarium, when literally just a few days ago (the day before I searched), a newly discovered letter from Tolkien came out that the walking elms observed in the Shire were Ents sent by Treebeard: https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/1ubey37/confirmed_the_walking_trees_that_were_observed_in/
I had some reflections on Tolkien and the creative process in the general.
I think his masterpieces emerged out of the tension between having to write for publication vs writing his own legendarium.
He wrote the Silmarillion for years, since WW1, but he never actually linked it to The Hobbit. The Hobbit, in the beginning, was linked to our actual Earth and mentioned China and other places. It was his publisher who pushed him to write a sequel about Hobbits, which started off as a silly story about Bingo Baggins trying to find a treasure and evolved along the way. Bingo was the name of a toy koala his children played with.
I mean the Silmarillion and his languages are an interesting example of worldbuilding, but in themselves, they have no weight. Today we have hundreds if not thousands of people writing their own worlds, creating their own languages. Why should we care?
On the other side of the spectrum, there is schlock and slop peddled purely to make some money. I learned about this term called “database consumption” recently. In so many words, it basically describes the modern isekai writing, and much romance fiction — people consume tropes, not actual worldbuilding or stories.
But we care about the story of Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol. They are closer to us. Tolkien himself wrote this: “…without the high and noble the simple and vulgar [by which he meant common or ordinary] is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless.” But it seems that this is something he only discovered through the process of writing The Hobbit and LoTR, because his histories and the Silmarillion etc didn’t feature much of the simple and ordinary.
The worldbuilders need a bit more pressure to craft compelling stories, and the slop-writers, if they haven’t ruined their own sense of Taste, need more depth. But I don’t know, maybe the modern world is wide enough that they can all live on their own ends of the extreme and make a living. Actually the slop writers probably make more money than the worldbuilders.
Greetings all
@ RTSGame and JMG
I was planning to come to Glastonbury in 2025 but could not make it for personnel reasons, I’d be delighted if a new round of ecosophia conferences were to be organised!
Regards
RTSGame said “I am the guy who was doing all the filming.”
By any chance, have you uploaded any of the films on the web?
Regards
JMG @144: Yes, I did, but the thing is, converting to conservative Islam would require activist women to reconcile with and submit to patriarchy. I think more likely would be a nihilistic rejection of all sex, reproduction, cross-sex relations, and the human condition more broadly. I have even seen that in some articles and social media posts, like one I read claiming that women have the power to end the human race, or at least hold it for ransom, by refusing to have any children by any man, period. That sort of attitude, I think, is far more likely than conservative Islam.
@ Emmanuel Goldstein # 60
You have alleged that US President Trump can claim to have “Kick[ed] the USA out of NATO…” and that “By getting the US out of NATO thru sheer offensiveness, he is moving the US away from global meddling.”
I have just checked the official nato.int website, which lists the US as a full member, and gives no indication of any change to that status.
The US is also very much still an active member in the US/NATO proxy war against Russia being conducted on Ukrainian soil. US intelligence sharing is key to the Ukrainian drone strikes which have been hitting civilians and infrastructure deep inside of Russian territory. While US President Trump did temporarily halt such intelligence sharing early in March of 2025 – https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-putin-trump-cia-zelenskyy-5eb2c8025f6bb4b616c86e1fe89bba0f – his administration resumed its intelligence-sharing programme with Ukraine before the end of that same month – https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/us-resumes-military-aid-and-intelligence-sharing-as-ukraine-says-it-is-open-to-a-30-day-ceasefire/
There is a lot of talk about the US distancing itself from Europe and from the Ukrainian “war hotspot” that is the point zero for a larger proxy war, but it has been difficult to detect any practical reduction in direct US involvement in “meddling” with the mechanics and conduct of that war. I will frankly admit that among our frankly unpopular crop of EU leaders, there is no shortage of war[againstRussia]hawks, too. The whole mess does appear to be a juggernaut headed into a cliff that many powerful people are massively on board with, but my only point is that I see no practical evidence that the US has taken a back seat in it, and much practical evidence that the US still appears to have its hand on some, even most, of the controls of it.
@ Slink # 80
As a long term hitchhiker for many years, followed by years of being a driver happy to pick up hitchhikers, I will concur 100% with every bit of advice you give here, with one additional one.
Which is that, for the ordinary driver, this is a bargain. What you expect FROM a hitchhiker is a way to pass the time more quickly and interestingly. A hitchhiker should try to BE good company. As a driver, I began to lose interest in picking up younger hitchhikers (this would have been 2006 to around 2016 when I gave up my car for good) because it was increasingly evident that they were no longer interested in conversing with me. They would get in and sit like sticks, responding to any direct question with a single word, and showing no curiosity, no interest in this other human being sitting beside them. In later years, they might actually scroll on a screen while getting their lift to whereever. So, I got picky and gave more lifts to older folks, who at least understood that they had a social debt to pay.
I will say that the entirety of my hitching experiences (both ways) took place in Ireland, I never experienced any wierdness either with drivers or passengers – other than the non-conversationalists – but also, I always trusted my gut, and that may be why. Also, I never offered, nor ever was offered money, that may be a cultural thing, I’ve never even heard of it being done here.
I stopped hitching during Covid – drivers were often anxious about masking and infection – and have never tried to do it since. I use busses and taxis and my electric bike, as indicated. Seeing someone else hitching is much, much rarer now since Covid, too. Whole weeks or even months can go by without seeing a single person with a thumb out.
Hi John Michael,
My website uses local servers which do not utilise clown flare, so I’m hearing you. For your interest, I connect in via the .net, and had been unaware that you mirrored the site under a .org domain. I get that, and it’s nice to be popular! 😉
When a currency crisis forces realistic fiscal and monetary policy, we’ll get to see whom is swimming naked rocketships and all, as the very clever saying suggests. Mars boy is yet again ahead of the curve, and full up to the gills with stocks of mad cash. I take that insider turn of events as a warning, but people look here and there instead.
Hey, thought you might be interested to read that the kids are becoming aware of the old fashioned concept of: ‘return on investment’. University graduates’ satisfaction with degrees at record lows, according to government-funded survey.
You know, it’s a weird old world of puppet theatre that we’re living in. Listening to the local youth news the other day, I heard a brief sound bite of your President providing unsolicited advice in relation to the UK situation. From memory (and please correct me if I’m in error) he said to address: “Immigration and energy policies”. I dunno my friend, even in decline, things can be pretty cushy historically speaking for most people, but are those outcomes actively pursued? Probably not. Sometimes with elites, they have to lose, to win.
It was a delightful winters day down here. Blue skies and despite the cool air, calm prevails. The rainfall forecast for next week, is not so calm inducing with strange blue colours suggesting perhaps another four inches. Whilst everyone is freaking out about a super El Nino, I’m worrying about what to do with the excess rainfall.
Peter – Thanks, and sorry mate, I don’t fly anywhere. Blame my grandmother who took me to the cinema in the late 1970’s to sit through the film Airport ’77. Who knew these things crashed, and into the ocean of all places! What the heck? 🙂 However, whilst it’s not the same, but I would happily drop by virtually next time via video link for an hour or half hour or whatever. Up to you bro.
Cheers
Chris
@Northwind:
The stars must be aligning because I agree with both of your remarks.
As for David P’s comment about German pensions, I must congratulate David on his restraint. No, things don’t go on just because we hope they will , indeed!
But actually, I encourage a certain amount of patience and sympathy. The human mind is just not designed to accept holding contradictory thoughts like “I did everything right according to the rules I was taught” and “the system is insolvent”. It takes time for people to accept.
As outlined in the last thread, my understanding of the math and the law is that pensions will be paid, but in very-devalued dollars (or Euros).
Real inflation is already 7% and that’s not going away for a raft of reasons that are now baked-in. So: you might ask your friend what happens to the purchasing power of a pension or a 401(k) when real inflation is 7%. Even if the pension is indexed, it’s indexed to “official” inflation (the CPI, which is a government fiction).
Go ahead, do the math, or ask your favourite stochastic parrot to do it. Millions like your acquaintance are going to wake up one day in 2040 and find, with a sense of impending horror, that they just don’t seem to have the money they were promised and it’s too late to do much about it.
Anyway my point was, as for Northwind’s comment – I agree, I also can imagine nothing better than dropping dead in the field while tending my sheep, like Matthew in Anne of Green Gables. (Uhhh sorry for the spoiler?)
As for the comment about feminism and LBGTQ, I also agree about that, and this intersects with what I said previously about marriage becoming transactional again.
I’m not trying to give anyone a hard time or engender hard feelings, but the fact is, not next year, probably not next decade, but increasingly as the century wears on, young people are going to be pressured to marry in a way that benefits the family, at risk of being cast onto the street, out of the will, etc.
This just won’t leave much room for outside-the-box expressions of gender and sexuality.
Sirustacelion: I like that pfp, that’s cute! Also, thanks for your kind comments and if anything I said was helpful for you, I’m happy to hear that. Of course I think you’re right to resist the propaganda pushing the other way that you mentioned, and I hope you keep doing that.
My relationship with my boomer parents was a hot mess and I have little to say about it other than that I hope nobody else has a similar thing going on. It’s different from what you described. My father may or may not be alive. I’ve let go enough that I don’t google his obituary anymore. My mother has been gone for most of a decade.
One thing I said last week that I’m not proud of and that I’d like to walk back is that thing about how I’m “the darling of people I hold in contempt”. That’s overly harsh as well as casting too wide a net. I don’t hate people who give me good vibes, of course. In most cases I have the normal human response to that: it makes me happy and I give good energy right back.
Sometimes it doesn’t feel very genuine though, and I think that the person’s performed attitude towards me is just because to affirm us [transmissions] is to bolster their own status as The Good People ™, and that’s the thing that I don’t care for. But when the nice young fella at the guitar store and the nice young ladies at the dispensary and at the grocery store are all smiles and happy chit chat towards me, that’s a totally different thing and it makes me feel great that I’m a hit with them. Of course I’ve talked to these people a few times now and so they’re not really reacting to “me, a [transmission]” anymore, they’re reacting to “me, Cynthia”.
Quick note about how the site gets served up and how as a result of that, we see different versions of it at different times. Yes, that’d explain the weirdness that we’ve been talking about. I learned a little bit about that last year when I noticed that some groups of hosts were making connections with my machine, seemingly not related to anything that I was trying to do. I built an app to manipulate iptables in response to this and keep the bad actors out, and I found that in most cases that I could indeed block whole groups of addresses without it impacting anything I was trying to do, so as far as I’m concerned those hosts were indeed attempting some bad activity on my machine. Scraping, I would imagine.
Sometimes, some site that I was legit trying to use would get blocked by my app and I would have to temporarily suspend the block if I wanted to use it. Prior to your moving and changing web services, JMG, Ecosophia was not one of those sites, but now it is. For whatever that info might mean to you.
I had been getting lazy about it and leaving the barn door open, but I’m gonna tighten it up now, although it may be the case that my original work has already been well scraped. 🙁 That’s on me, of course.
Rajarshi: That rings true to me. I tend to believe that.
Chuaquin#38
The Spanish regime can not be compared with the British, because the first is a partidocracy and the second is a parlamentary system. But both share the comon feature of hide to their respective subjects who is really in charge. In Spain I guess that that the votes in the polls really are not counted. But this detail leaks of importante if you read a little of British history or If you watch the British TV series “House of Cards” or the more interesting American replica, wich I have seen some times admiring the magniifical rol of Kevin Spacey performing a machiavelical oficial fighting for to revenge an humillation. Thing that make to wonder about the next movement of our president Pedro Sánchez .
I really hate the way the media endlessly discusses who’s winning and who’s losing in the negotiations to end the Iran war.
Surely the optimum settlement is one where both sides claim they have won? It has happened. Don’t dispute the claim and make people unhappy with the result. Just accept it, and let’s get on with life.
Hey JMG
I have heard others say similar things, but all I know is that the vast majority of the time these Bird Flu scares end up being “nothingburgers” in the end. I honestly don’t know why people keep worrying about it so much. In Australia many people, or rather “The Guardian”, are saying that there is a chance that the virus will decimate Australian native animals, despite the fact that it rarely kills humans. Seems a bit odd to me.
“that’s by no means impossible”
Yeah, it’s not the impossible but the potential of the possible that concerns me.
Just been re-reading Manly Hall’s Death to Rebirth and he refers here and there to the importance of mind state at the time of transition when the physical body pops its clogs.
Got me wondering how internet phones are not just having physical effects but likely entraining minds in ways that could have a metaphysical result of importance.
The use of the tech does not appear to be freeing up minds to develop but patterning them to be dependent… combine with reduced attention spans, inability to focus, a concomitant reduction in critical and rational thinking skills makes me wonder if one could be forgiven for thinking that there seems to be an effort to reduce human consciousness to a hackable biological algorithm.
In 2020 behavioural psychologists embarked on a mental hacking programme – using fear to override rational thought – how much this has impacted the seeming cognitive collapse I do not know, but using the base animal level deep emotions to override more subtle aspects of mind was an alarming spectacle. The fact that it coincided with pharmaceutical mandates and an accelerated rush to embrace the misnamed Artificial Intelligence may not be connected, but may indicate a trend or direction of travel.
If the internet is like a materialist reflection of an Astral Plane, does it also lead to some Mental Plane, does it lead somewhere else, or does it lead anywhere at all?
Why is this important?
May be it isn’t.
Don’t mean to go all Butlerian Jihad here, but how many ‘veils’ do we need? Especially given the internet, like the astral, is an abstraction that lends itself to illusion and delusion as much as anything useful.
The internet is sold as information at your fingertips, I suspect that is the presentable face of something that could be more important than imagined. Once each internet phone comes with its own AI assistant, the scope for individualised narrative content means people could be building their own mental prisons where their prison guard is confidante, protector and guide in a totally illusory material substrata within the world of sensation.
Maybe nothing on the scale of a lemurian deviation of consciousness of course, but recognising whether something is a meat pie or a turd in pastry has its upsides.
Would the rise of the planet Uranus and the Age of Aquarius make humans somewhat more autonomous, or at least make the subconscious drives that govern us more variable and eccentric to provide the illusion of freedom?
@Phutatorius & JMG:
Since you brought up UFO’s…
https://justinpatrickmoore.dreamwidth.org/file/475.jpg
And as an entry with some text from the new book by J.D. Vance about his alien abduction experiences. His book could be considered a kind of deferred disclosure.
https://justinpatrickmoore.dreamwidth.org/441.html
Spencer Sunshine has a whole book on the topic that his article was based on. I will be reading, and finally getting around to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.
There was an electronic music magazine I used to get and read (also online still) called Datacide: Magazine for Noise & Politics, that had some good articles on entryism into different subcultures from neofascists.
https://datacide-magazine.com/
They have a recent article from December of last year on the Situationist International as World Heritage… I will be reading that shortly.
https://datacide-magazine.com/the-situationist-international-as-world-cultural-heritage/
Here is the article I mentioned on entryism or as they called it “transversal strategies”:
https://datacide-magazine.com/from-subculture-to-hegemony-transversal-strategies-of-the-new-right-in-neofolk-and-martial-industrial/
& another related one on Boyd Rice
https://datacide-magazine.com/just-say-non-nazism-narcissism-and-boyd-rice/
@Jenifer K (#125, #165) and JMG (#144, #177):
Your exchange resonates with me so deeply!
Like JMG, I couldn’t make a bat and ball connect to save my life. Also, I always found being part of a team not only a mystery, but absolutely repellent on some very deep level. And even as a very small boy, I preferred to sit still and read (or think or watch) over any sort of high-energy physical activity. (On some basic level, that’s probably why I wanted to become a professor in the humanities, where one could be extremely individualistic and shun any intense team-work.)
Fortunately, my family was full of wage-class non-conformists, weird people who cared little for main-stream respectability, and adherents of non-mainstream religions (Swedenborgians, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, and so forth). And schooling in Berkeley in the 1950s was not very coercive.
Also, it was still very easy for children to go somewhere out of sight of any adult every day and do their own thing. That was crucial for me. [Our modern world, where that sort of childhood freedom from adult supervision is nearly impossible, is (IMHO) a world that cripples children, sometimes even destroys them.]
Also, I met my first esoteric teacher (outside of my own family) as a senior in Berkeley High School: he taught the school’s courses in Physics, but also ran an after-school club for learning how to read Old Egyptian hieroglyphic texts! I kept in touch with him for some years after graduation, and learned more about his esoteric interests, which had begun in his childhood spent in a Californian Theosophical community (Point Loma). He’s long dead now, of course. But he finally managed to find what he had been seeking all his life.
Also it seems to me that people like Boyd Rice and James Mason are other potential candidates for The Hunchback out of phase.
Reading about James Mason, I see that he was locked up in the Cincinnati Workhouse. I still remember the building before it was torn down. My father goes to the new place, River City Correctional, in his work as a prison chaplain.
The Workhouse had really good architecture from Samuel Hannaford, but was a rough looking place, scary, when I was a kid. I’m sure all the psychic prison vibes it soaked up didn’t help, but it can be seen in this article on my workplaces website.
https://chpl.org/blogs/post/throwback-thursday-samuel-hannaford-helped-build-the-foundation-of-cincinnati/
JMG, you mentioned a few weeks ago, I think it was, that you were reading Proust. What was your opinion? Can you recommend his five vol. opus? Would you say that Remembrance of Things Past is useful for the present day, or has it now become merely something enjoyable to read? I add that I am not at all convinced that the early 20thC is any kind of “Golden Age” in western literature, except for in South America. There were some books published (and translated) that I like very much, such as Weymouth Sands and The Man Without Qualities, but almost any era where there are literate writers and readers will have some gems.
I also think many of the American women writers of the mid-20thC are greatly underrated. Three are Ann Petrie, Carson McCullers and Mary Austin. At one time, feminism was an important social movement one could respect: at that time the movement did the useful task of reviving the works and reputations of earlier women of talent in literature, music and art. Trollop’s mother was also a successful novelist, who supported her family with her pen. I liked the one novel of hers I have come across better than her son’s work. As for Trollop fills, a little goes a long way.
@Inna (#65):
English animosity toward Russia goes back at least as far as the later 1600s, but not (I think) further than that. (John Dee’s son Arthur was court physician and alchemist to Tsar’ Mikhail Romanov for over a decade, 1622-1634.)
I think this animosity had something to do with England’s perception that Russia might come to challenge England’s virtual monopoly of ocean trade in Northern waters, after Russia had established an ocean-going port in the White Sea (Arkhangelsk), and then another such port in the Baltic Sea (St. Petersburg). England had long regarded the Northern waters as their own exclusive domain.
“Luke, but modern people don’t do that any more often than anybody else. They just deck out the usual human habits of blind conformity and obedience to subconscious drives with the rhetoric of autonomy, individuality, and so on.”
I suspect any humans who do end up acting as individuals also end up fully developing their mental sheaths into a mental body and thus leave the material world entirely after their current incarnation.
Turns out talks are continuing to happen between Iran and the United States, despite rumors that Iran have ended the talks with the United States after Trump threatened to bomb Iran.
https://archive.ph/xMVJP
Inna#65
The rusofobia of several Britons is not an accident , but the result of decades of brainwhasing. If you go to another countries you’ll have not this problem, wich is explained by the historian Andrei Fursov and wich be explained in a nutschell with the next advice: Be prepared for the war against UK .
JMG
Thanks for this re Glastonbury.
I’m part of a small chat group of people who attended last year (which includes Brigid who was the primary organizer of last year’s event) so will have a discussion with them and get back to you.
I think it’s fair to say there is a lot of enthusiasm to have you come back for a repeat, whether June 2027 or 2028 and we’ll definitely make it happen in either 2027 or 2028 – I think we’ll have a good showing of all the European side folks.
dZanni # 93:
““I wanted to comment in the previous post why “feminist men” here tend to be middle-upper class”
Because Lower Class people deal with practical reality and not theory and childish fantasies. Now I understand why Socialist dictators forced Academics to work on a farm to beat some sense into them.”
Ok, another theory for explaining the sub-group within current “caviar left” (or “gauche divine” here) self labelled as “feminist men” or “men for equality”. It will go with the rest of theories. I think it doesn’t contradict another theories written in this blog until now, but it complement them (thanks). Maybe lower class people are nearer to real world than typical masochist “feministos” (for example, not every women are good victims, nor every men are the villains of the sexes/genders narrative).
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M. Gray # 103:
“I suspect he will be Starmer with a very slightly different hair cut that will barely limp the party to the next election only to be demolished by anyone that will promise any kind of change. Starmer’s popularity at election was barely a mile wide and an inch deep, I don’t see Burnham being any different.”
Well, I’m not an expert in British politics, I’m only a dilettante in it, so I take note of your interesting comment about Starmer “heir”. I tend to think the same as you. I can say UK political structure is quite different than Spanish one, like I said previously. I think it isn’t better nor worse than our political institutions, only different to some extent in its performance. However, I grasp there are some common tendences in the two countries alike, for example, political tension and social polarization…
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Earthworm # 117:
“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.”
Wise words said by P.B., an author whom I didn’t know. Thank you! I only would add to this view that I think there are fools due to lack of intellect, but also fools for too much intellect. Most I’ve met usually are the first ones, but I can also say I’ve met some of the second kind…
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Justin P. # 131:
“Lots of crypto-fascism I’ve come across in the noise and industrial music scenes where the use of Totenkopf or other symbols supposedly “really don’t mean that, they mean something else”. They were just being edgy. Yeah, right. Then the evidence comes to light”
It seems, IMHO, a weak subterfuge when people with evident Nazi style tattooes pretend they’re only provoking and/or kidding (?). By the way, in my country it hasn’t been strange a few neofascists and far righters have tried to enter into cultural and sociopolitical leftist groups, sometimes with success (ahem). It isn’t the same behaviour exactly as you’ve depicted, but it rhymes…Finally, during the ’80s there was a Spanish rock band named “Ilegales”, they played a very goog music methink…but one of their most (in)famous song was titled (cough) “Heil Hitler (so you can easily guess its lyrics, ahem). Its frontman said it was a mere provocation, so they weren’t Nazis, but I’ve got my doubts about it…
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JMG # 144:
“Look at the attitudes toward Islam, toward Israel (and increasingly toward Jews in general), toward men and ordinary heterosexual relations, that you’ll find among activist women, and I think the answer writes itself.”
Yes, it’s very embarrasing how those leftists/feminists are “casually” blind about how “well” are treated Palestinian women by Hamas, or how “happy” are gay Palestinian men…(cough).
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(To be continued)
“(…) since my blog isn’t hosted by one of the big boys”
Are you certain about that? I did a quick check on ecosophia.net and it returns 4 IP addresses pointing to Google infrastructure.
Anyway, that there are four of them points to a possible cause of the issues that people have.
In basic terms, there are four different servers that host your website, and visitors get sent to one of them. Sometimes that’s based on visitor location, but it can also depend on server load (so that none of them get overloaded) and it can also be quite random.
The difficutly with setups like this is, that these servers have to be synchronised, so that they all show exactly the same stuff at the same time. To me, it looks like that’s where things go wrong and that one or more of these servers don’t get synchronised quickly enough.
–bk
Hi John, posted the picture i referred to( scotlyn gave me a site as im hopeless at this) called imgur.com
I’m set up as Longsword1 and it’s “mystery idol in Swiss Alps “.
Oops! In my last comment, about JMG statement about radical feminists becoming muslim in the future, I’ve forgotten to write “far” before “leftists/feminists”…So I really wanted to write “far leftists”(…). Sorry!
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David P. # 152:
“we’ll always have more migrants that we can import to solve our problems. It’s wrong, of course, but you can see why a true believer in Progress would believe it.”
It’s a Ponzi scheme made of people (neverending supply of migrants-a belief), yes. During an unknown time in the future (I don’t know when), poor countries birthrate will go down so low than massive migrations could end…Game over! (Although mainstream left loves to point climate change will provoke new massive refugees waves, I think it’s a dubious “hope”, due to the likely near future conservative/far right majorities in the West against globalist fondness to massive migrations…).
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“The millions of foreigners living off of benefits aren’t paying for anybody’s pension.”
I think you’re right especially with the non legal migrants, who don’t pay any taxes because when they work, they’re in undeerground economy, but they go to the public hospitals and can achieve governments subsidies…No argument here. I haven’t any problem with LEGAL migrants who pay taxes here, indeed some of my friends are foreign people (but legal migrants).
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Siliconguy # 161:
After having read your news avbout those problems in German railways, I’ve remembered how many people in my own country are still complexed with the German legend (efficiency, hard work and 0% mistakes); in spite of the hard fact that in Germany sometimes they’re wrong and make mistakes…By the way, I’ve read in a Spanish Economy book, that our regional governments system isn’t perfect (indeed, most of these govts have deficits); but when they compare it with German federal system (with real evidences, not jingoism), it’s embarrassing to check Germany as a whole country works even worse than Spain in regional govts economics…It seems Germany (former poster child of EU) isn’t an example for success anymore, at least in some areas.
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JMG # 163:
“Yes,” shouts the crowd in Life of Brian, in perfect sync. “We are all individuals!”
Ha ha…very good memories of that old movie! Yes, we’re individuals, who wear tattos, we’ll never will marry, and we’ll see the same brainless shows “for non conventional people”(ahem).
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Lazy Gardener # 171:
You’re welcome! I know these books are based in UK situation, so I’ve got my doubts their advices can be used here, further South Europe; but I’m going to start reading it to learn their useful part (which I hope it will be most part of the gardening guide I’ve borrowed from my town public library).
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David # 172:
OK, I guessed Uwe Boll was Uwe Boll, maybe today worst film director in the world, or at least in Europe!…I can tell you he’s got a not small groups of online fans here. I liked to some extent “Tunnel Rats”, because he tried to humanize Viet Congs who fought against the GI Joes, equating the two sides alike in the dirty and creepy tunnels war in Vietnam. I’ve also seen a very bad movie he did about zombies in an island (I don’t remember its name now). I think he loves to be politically incorrect in his movies, for good and bad. An “enfant terrible”…
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About apparently common Russophobia in UK:
I remember an old British movie in which its director mocked with some self-criticism the anti-Russian hysteria previous and during Crimea war, which happened during the XIX century…Well, it’s interesting it was made in 1968 (the UK had lost a lot of its former empire and it was a “rebel” year across the world). Please, pay attention to its beginning, very ironic (if you’ve never watched it). I think this ironic approach to that old war was maybe a fringe attitude within British people, then and nowadays.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/charge_of_the_light_brigade_1968
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Finally, I see now 184 comments here, for your information.
Okay, my tech guy is on the missing-comments issue — it’s apparently a problem with caching. It may be a little while before he can install the necessary upgrades to fix that, but I’ll keep everyone posted.
Now, on to the comments…
Slithy, now there’s a blast from the past! The piece you remember is “Getting Beyond the Narratives: An Open Letter to the Activist Community,” and you can find it here:
https://ecosophia.net/getting-beyond-narratives/
You’re right that Dudley’s horse — or rather, to call him by his proper name, Horse — didn’t get into my analysis. I wanted to teach activists about ternary thinking, and getting them to understand the quaternary was more than I thought they could manage.
John, no, and that series sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll look for it. As for the post orifice, well, yes; it’s partly the Long Descent and partly bureaucratic paralysis.
Christopher, it’s just one of many astrological aspect patterns. Anybody born during the period when all the planets are in orb will have certain relatively favorable influences on their natal charts, though how that will play out will of course depend on the houses in which the planets appear. A big deal more generally? Nope — and you might consider how many Astrological Big Deals™ have come and gone on the internet in recent years without noticeable effect.
Alvin, fascinating. Yes, the slop writers in every generation make more money than those who take things more seriously, because most people read to be entertained rather than to be inspired and transformed, and for most people, there’s nothing more entertaining than having the same canned fantasies dished up over and over again. That’s simply the nature of our species. Fortunately it’s sometimes possible to make a living doing something more interesting.
Karim, I hope to meet you in Glastonbury one of these days!
Tankermottind, why, then, you’ve made your prediction and I’ve made mine. Now we get to wait and see which one of us is right!
Chris, one of the things that fascinates me about the current situation is how many people, especially but not only among the young, are starting to back out of the dead ends of modern technofetishistic pseudoculture. I know a lot of young people (mostly children of friends) who have decided against a college degree and are heading into apprenticeships and trade schools instead. We’ll talk about this, and much more, in an upcoming post.
Cynthia, thanks for this. I’ve also made a point of blocking whole swaths of incoming IPs, though that’s mostly because it cuts down the spam.
Martin, that’s valid. In the current situation, both sides have to pretend that the other side lost, and so that makes the whole thing even sillier than it would otherwise be.
J.L.Mc12, maybe it’s just blowback from the Covidiocy, but it’s hard for me these days to miss the way that epidemics are being waved around to try to buffalo people into stampeding in directions that only benefit corporate interests.
Earthworm, granted. I see this as another IQ test graded pass-or-fail. Dumbphones and flip phones that won’t host LLMs are becoming increasingly available these days, and quite fashionable in some circles; the divide between those who walk away and those who stay in the belly of the beast until they’re digested by its stomach acids may be involved here.
Patrick, ask me in 2160 years! We’ll just have to wait and see.
Justin, I’ll definitely check out the improbably named Dr. Sunshine. As for Datacide, it sounds like a good idea to me. 😉
Mary, I enjoy Proust quite a bit. His vast novel’s not “useful” in any sense, but then neither are most works of art and literature; as an immersive experience in a different place and time, it has its virtues.
Anon, that’s the traditional take on it, certainly. When you learn what you need to learn in kindergarten, you go on to a different classroom and other lessons.
RTSGame, let’s tentatively plan on a Glastonbury event in 2028. I can’t guarantee the timing of the 2027 trip, as it depends on several other people and will have a different focus. Still, Glastonbury’s one of my favorite places on the planet; if Britain didn’t have a government that arrests people for posting things on the internet, I’d almost certainly have arranged to move there for a couple of years, once I finished picking up the pieces after Sara’s death.
BK, thanks for this!
Longsword, that’s not enough for me to find it. When you posted it, the software at imgur.com gave it a specific webpage address — you can find that in the address bar of your browser, when you’re at the image and not logged in. If you can cut and paste that into a comment here, I can go straight there.
One of the Democratic candidates running for Congress who just won the Democratic primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier, is against interracial relationships:
https://nypost.com/2026/05/23/us-news/darializa-avila-chevalier-bashed-old-white-lady-interracial-relationships/
Democrats are adopting white nationalist talking points. Wouldn’t be surprising if in a few years they get into power and try to overturn Loving vs Virginia.
On depopulated cities: The eastern part of Germany had serious problems after the huge population loss in 1989-1990 (people crossing the now-open border into the western part), following on the slower population loss of 1945-1963 and the low population growth in between. Apartment buildings were uneconomical to maintain with low occupancy, and whole streets became uneconomical to maintain: water, electricity and sewage maintenance didn’t pay for themselves. At least some cities decided to “build back” methodically: encouraging tenants to move to viable buildings, streets and boroughs, then razing the others to the ground. A kind of catabolism, actually…
I got my article on Radiograms and the National Traffic System up today.
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/telegrams-radiograms-and-the-national
It comes complete with music made from shortwave radios and other radio sources or music made explicitly for radio.
I hope everyone who is celebrating Summer Field Day has a blast.
& Hopefully this works
https://imgflip.com/i/av9jp4
Hail is the true enemy of solar power,
“This is according to the latest report from US-based climate insurance provider kWh Analytics, which published the 2026 edition of its annual Solar Risk Assessment (SRA) report this week. The previous year’s report highlighted the impacts of hail on US solar projects—noting that hail accounted for 73% of financial losses for US solar, despite accounting for just 6% of all loss incidents—and the impacts of hail feature prominently in this year’s report.”
Although fixed mounts are cheaper to install, the installations on tracking mounts can pivot to put the panels on edge which cuts the losses. “The piece also argues that “robust stow”—the practice of stowing modules at an angle of at least 70 degrees—is a more effective tool in minimising the impacts of hailstorms than building more resilient modules by itself.”
The second biggest problem is a grass fire under the panels which makes sense.
https://www.pv-tech.org/hailstorms-stow-methods-fire-lead-us-solar-project-risks-2026-solar-risk-assessment/
Looking at it, trackers make a lot of sense up here at least in the summer. Sunrise is at 5:03 at a heading of 53 degrees from north. The sun isn’t at 90 degrees, (true east and first touching the face of a south pointing solar panel ) until 8:40. the sun will be at due west ( and just leaving the solar panel) at 5:30 PM. and setting at 8:58 PM at a heading of 307 degrees . (all times Pacific Daylight time)
Those interested can got here and put in your nearest city and see how it works out for you.
https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/
Mr. Greer,
Thank you for your answer. This is the topic I’ve been wanting to ask, if you please: karma. Again. Please forgive me if my misunderstanding makes you roll your eyes.
First, I was thinking about the idea that suffering is what pays off bad karma. If this is so, what about deliberately increasing your own suffering as a way to do so? I’ve read of some religious sects, both fictional and current-world, for example which flog themselves in penance. A Christian sect in, iirc, Mexico, also, who would have themselves crucified, and hang on the cross for a time, before being taken down.
This leads me to wonder also about the idea of the hypersensitive person who squeals at every little thing they dislike. I can see how doing this cultivates bad habits which lead to more suffering in the long run. Nevertheless, what of the suffering caused by, say screeching about the ice cream machine being down at a fast food restaurant, and then seething impotently all day about it? That is suffering, of a sort; does this also burn away bad karma?
What about the monk, for another example, who burned himself to death in protest of war? Or those who mummify themselves while still alive? Suffering burns some of the karma, right? But killing also welcomes bad karma? What of the soldier who kills in defense of his home? If he kills the invader, he suffers the bad karma of that; if he does not, he suffers the karma of his home being taken, his wife or daughter raped, his son enslaved or killed, and his culture wiped away, to use the results of historical wars, as example.
The conclusion I’ve arrived at is that all actions produce karma, what is left to us is only to decide if something is important enough to us that we are willing to endure said karma, and whether or not an action is likely to result in more bad karma down the road. This strikes me as unfair, since for example, the mother who shoots a home invader in defense of her child, only did so out of the most desperate conditions, which were forced on her by the actions of others, yet she still is forced to endure penance in the next life? The same could be asked of a police man who uses lethal force, perhaps in active combat, perhaps in the performance of capital punishment on a serial torturer, rapist, and murderer. Yet he must suffer himself for it?
It’s all very confusing to me. I read your write up on karma several times, but still come up seeing it as unfair. This tells me I must be misunderstanding something – can you help?
Thank you
JMG @163: The online right is absolutely saturated with that sort of pornography, often of children and adolescents (“traps” or “femboys”). One controversy I remember from the world of video games several years back was that surrounding Bridget, an early-adolescent boy character from the Guilty Gear series of fighting games who, to escape some sort of persecution, disguises himself as a nun, but because this is that sort of game, a sexualized parody of a nun costume. He fought with a pink yo-yo and had (existed for) a fanbase of complete degenerates who considered him a sex object despite identifying as heterosexual (“it’s not gay, it’s a trap”). Eventually the game’s publisher thought this was an embarrassment, and changed him/now her in later games to actually identify as a girl, and to be far less sexualized, and the perverts revolted.
@Anonymous #173
‘Will Trump unite Left & Right’
I think no one, not Trump or his supporters, can know at this point.
Timothy Dexter was a buffoon from start to finish, and despised by his fellow businessmen. They successfully put Timothy up to business schemes that should have made him bankrupt, but time after time, Timothy made boatloads of money.
So in the case of Donald Trump, I think there is a 3rd action in play here; Some greater power is moving this administration to make actions that enrage his enemies (and many of his friends), and puzzle his supporters, BUT (IMHO) will ultimately turn out to have been the best course for the US and many other countries, done in a timely way.
This may be the answer to Ugo Bardi’s essay, “Peak Civilization” – Bardi said that, even if the best of the late Roman Emperors had received timely and wise advice on how to minimize the damage of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Emperor could not follow that good advice, because the short-term goals of the politicians around him would prevent it. But in Trump and Timothy Dexter, maybe there IS a way to lessen the impact of the fall of the American Empire. It may be irrelevant whether Trump is a buffoon or a master strategist. Perhaps there is a game being played here by powers larger than we can imagine…
Here’s a link to ‘Peak Civilization:’ Well worth a read!
https://countercurrents.org/bardi100111.htm
@ Inna #65 & Robert Mathiesen #180,
I think Robert is correct about English animosity towards Russia starting in the 1600, but I think he misses a crucial detail– the English failed to colonize Russia then, and will never forgive the Russians for it. The Muscovy Company was founded to be analogous to the Hudson’s Bay Company, the East India Company, or the Royal African Company– except those danged Muscovites proved harder to deal with than the peoples found around Hudson’s Bay, East India or West Africa.
If you look at UK and EU ambitions for Post-Soviet/Post-Putin Russia, they’ve never really changed the plan: screw the locals, loot the place. That the playbook that worked all over the world failed in Russia is unforgivable to the merchants of The City.
I imagine that when London’s merchants have gone the way of the Romano-Britons or Anglo-Saxons the new culture that arises in the replacement population will finally give up the grudge.
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific 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 6/21). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Alex R. be blessed in his efforts to resolve his financial situation, and successfully get completely out of debt within the current year 2026; may he find opportunities toward that end, and also the wisdom to recognize and seize them when they come.
May a safe and happy home environment be enjoyed by Laurelmirror, her daughter, and her mother, as well as protection from evil influences. May their family situation be resolved in such a way that Laurelmirror’s mother will get a chance to recover physically and mentally from the stresses it has caused.
May Kallianeira come to understand or face the entity or issue that seems to have trapped them, causing problems in her material circumstances, causing expensive troubles that threaten to force them out of home and mind, and leaving her burnt out and overwhelmed despite every attempt to find real help. May she quickly find out what to do and how to act to overcome these hardships.
May Geoff G’s sister Lindsay, who suffered a stroke at the end of May, recover to the fullest extent possible, and be blessed and supported in her mental wellbeing throughout.
May Mathew Damon Gallowglass, who has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, be treated successfully for his condition and make a full recovery.
May Lisa C be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from breast cancer.
May 6 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 Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, whose cancer has returned, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment, and may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Jule from Iserlohn, Germany, who is experiencing complications in her pregnancy due to an influenza infection, recover and have a pleasant pregnancy and birth.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Pierre’s young daughter, Athena, be healed from her fatigue and its root causes in ways that are easy, natural, and as holistic as possible.
May Lydia G. of Geauga County, Ohio heal and recover from prolonged health issues.
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 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 Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
[ethical hack] On https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=1, I am seeing 209 messages.
On https://ecosophia.net/, I am seeing 177 messages.
💨🤷🏽♀️👩🏼💻💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Here is another version of the new communion book about JD Vances experiences as an abductee:
https://justinpatrickmoore.dreamwidth.org/file/822.jpg
JMG 164
> You’ve made it clear to everyone
Got it.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG, you have given me a good chunk of ideas to think about and will keep your last two comments in mind as I continue to read. What you say makes sense, btw. Different topic. I saw on reddit you’ve read Prometheus Rising. I’m curious what you make of it considering you are a lower case t traditional occultist, and the book is emphatically not traditional? I am a GSFer, so I’m in the same boat, but I read PR well before I had a traditional practice. I remember reading about the 5th circuit and knowing deep in my bones that it was the most profound thing I’ve ever read about up until that point. “You mean I can get high WITHOUT drugs”. My take is Arousal of the Inner Fire is nothing more and nothing less than 5th circuit activation. I wish RAW would have put that term in the book, and also wish he emphasized the drugs part less. You kind of have to be paying attention to realize drugs aren’t necessary. Btw, the deceased Antero Alli wrote a 8 circuit manual called Angel Tech which teaches how to activate the circuits with 0 mention of drugs.
I’m restoring my old water windmill. These things are complex and take a lot of social capital to maintain. In comparison to an electric submersible pump, they are SIMPLE SIMPLE machines to produce.
A windmill is too complex to maintain in a Mad Max world and too expensive for a world where we will be manufacturing water out of thin air with free electric. Since neither of those worlds are our likely future, I’ll take the gamble.
Re english hatred of Russia.
Probably the english elite is preparing the english hoi polloi for the next war against Russia, so this could be the reason of the extreme campaign of hatred directed against Russia, the old advice of Montgomery is in deaf ears.
If it was a very bad idea to attack Russia for much powerful and much bigger empires, now is a complete madness, anyway the british elite will continue to poke the bear counting the yanks “will save the day” as usual, but may be this time is different.
Anonymous, Pepe Escobar was saying on Judge Napolitano’s show last night that the Saudi’s coaxed the Iranians back to the negotiations with a promise of an all gulf states military alliance. Sunni and S
hia working together all of a sudden? Nice one boys, Donnie and Bibi, that is.
Escobar also said tankers are sailing into and out of the gulf IF the Iranians say they can, and they pay transit fees. Watch for the oil companies to run crying to congress for anyone but them to have to pay their transit fees.
Anon, of course! What you contemplate, you imitate — and hating something is one way of guaranteeing that you’ll contemplate it. I expect to see a lot of people on the far left swing far right in one way or another, and watching them try to pretend they’re doing it for left-wing reasons will be a source of quite some amusement.
Aldarion, thanks for this. That may be a useful model for the wider landscape of depopulation ahead of us.
Justin, thanks for this.
Siliconguy, fascinating. It’s as though the storm gods have a grudge against it.
Oatmeal, that’s understandable, but you almost have the answer already. Every action creates karma, and in fact the word “karma” literally means “action” in Sanskrit. You have to consider every dimension of every action. Let’s take the mother who grabs a pistol and drops a home invader to save her child. She killed one person to save another, and both the killing and the saving matter. Why did she end up having to make so difficult a choice, when a hundred other families in the same subdivision didn’t? That’s also karma, unfolding from previous lives; she didn’t choose to make that situation happen, after all. All this makes sense if you start by remembering that this isn’t the Abrahamic notion of Big Daddy spanking you because you’ve been bad. It’s not suffering as such that matters. Suffering is only one small facet of karma.
Karma is a learning process. The experiences you get in this life are those that, in the light of your previous lives, you need to take the next step in your spiritual growth. Some of those experiences may be agonizing — if you’ve spent a lot of lives being a jerk to other people, you’re going to have the kind of experiences that teach you at a deep level why that’s a really bad idea, and those remain with you even when the conscious memories do not. (Conscience may be defined as the legacy of pain from past lives.) If in other lives you’ve refused to take decisive action when it’s necessary, then yes, you may find yourself in a situation in which taking decisive action with a pistol is the only way to save your child — and if you do the right thing and drop the guy, the positive karma of saving your child, the negative karma of taking a life, the complex karma of making a split-second decision instead of just standing there staring, and much more, all flowing together to help shape lives to come.
Tankermottind, now surprise me. One of the weird things about the extreme right is how many closeted gay men you find there. Just to cite the obvious example, I thought that Lothar Machtan made a good case in his book The Hidden Hitler that Hitler and a good share of the Nazi elite were gay. That was well known at the time — in It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis’s brilliant satiric account of a fascist takeover of the United States, the Minute Men (the new regime’s storm troopers) and one of the dictator’s inner circle are portrayed as stereotypically gay. I suppose all those buff blond beasts have their admirers, or something.
Ecoprayer, thanks for this as always.
Northwind, thank you.
Luke, I don’t use Leary’s theoretical system in my own practice — that’s what Wilson and Alli used — but that doesn’t keep me from reading books written from within that set of metaphors and learning from them. It’s very much like the CCRU Numogram — not my style (though I was amused to find that you can assign certain Druid spiritual beings very precisely to the Numogram), but interested to study and think about.
Jfisher, well, you could certainly describe 17th century Europe as a Mad Max world — look up the Thirty Years War or the Dutch wars of independence sometime — and yet windmills blossomed like dandelions during that very century. So you may be well positioned no matter what.
RE ethical hack: (Northwind Grandma and anyone else who tried) – I’ve been playing with it and it seems if you use the same param value multiple times it flakes out. So just change it every time you use it to a new number, word, or letter. So for example, if you did ?approved=1 the first time, switch it to ?approved=aquarius the second time, and so on. I’m pretty confident this ethical hack works now. The change in the param probably forces the cache to reload somehow.
Atmospheric River @ 180 OK, I am trying to stay civil here, but if I ask a question no one is obliged to answer. What I don’t much care for is having my question diverted to some unrelated topic about which the person answering has some sort of emotional fixation. If you want to complain about the gerrymander proposition, why not just open a discussion about that topic?
As an American, I don’t think I am out of line–I know, you didn’t say that–in objecting to the continuing stream of Oxbridge third raters coming to our shores to make their fortunes. CA population is something like 39.3M souls. I just now looked it up. Thirty nine million+ people, and no one could find some capable American of good character to become governor or mayor of LA.? Give me a Dreamer any day, who at least grew up here and understands our culture, history and institutions.
@209 Chuaquin
I think that feminism and LGBT equality, despite what progressive rhetoric implies, are far less important components of moral progress than the basics: functional societies, meaning, purpose, general kindness, material prosperity, and the belief that our society adheres to its stated principles. LGBT equality & fenism were widely adopted in large part because left-leaning people believed their triumph would lead to increased happiness, purpose, and general kindness.
Material prosperity is declining, nihilism is prevalent, people continue to be jerks, and the Spectacle which hid the hypocrisy of Western foreign policies has broken down.
So portions of the more radical Left are losing faith in feminism and LGBTQ acceptance to deliver the goods.
And I suspect the Middle East would be more socially liberal if the US, Israel, and their allies didn’t bomb their societies for decades to make profits for the Military-Industrial Complex (and to maintain political unity in Israel). Our way of life is tainted by association with our behavior towards countries in their region.
@Oatmeal #218
If I might suggest a way of thinking about this: the karmic consequences of individual actions is something different traditions disagree with each other about, sometimes strongly. Jainism and some Buddhist traditions go so far as to suggest that even killing a deadly spider that’s trying to bite you will condemn you to a long succession of tormented lives before you can claw your way back up to the human level. On the flip side, Hinduism tends to put fulfilling one’s lawful duties above ahimsa, as shown in the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna tells the king Arjuna, essentially, “You don’t want to do violence? That’s very good and very wise of you. Now get out there and fight.”
The truth as I see it is we just don’t know, and probably aren’t meant to. Those who can remember their past lives can often see broad strokes of the mechanism but even they don’t seem to see all the minute details.
The reason I think we aren’t meant to know the details is that if we did, the natural human response would be to try to game it. This is exactly what you see in some Asian Buddhist traditions, where there is often a great preoccupation among the devout with farming merit in hopes of a better rebirth, and sometimes this seems to my Western eyes to dip into outright scammy territory. (This is why I greatly prefer Japanese Buddhism, which did away with much of this during the Kamakura period.)
Personally I think one of the reasons we are allowed to know so little about the metaphysical world in general is so that a thousand flowers will bloom. Each speculative response adds to the richness of our lives and cultures.
Given all this, what I suggest is to focus on building your character and cultivating virtue — and not just the soft, squishy ones. (If you make yourself a pin-cushion, you’ll get the karma of a pin-cushion.) Since some measure of character is passed from life to life, and character is destiny, that strikes me as the most practical approach.
The Supreme Court grants Monsanto immunity from state level lawsuits over the toxic chemical glyphosate that Monsanto manufactures under the name Roundup:
https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/monsanto-company-v-durnell/
“Anon, of course! What you contemplate, you imitate — and hating something is one way of guaranteeing that you’ll contemplate it. I expect to see a lot of people on the far left swing far right in one way or another, and watching them try to pretend they’re doing it for left-wing reasons will be a source of quite some amusement. ”
And that’s the biggest worry here. The potential to have the Democrats kicking out the liberal establishment and becoming the party of antisemites, racists, and white nationalists (many of whom are nonetheless nonwhite), and then electing a Hitler figure who also wins over all the former MAGA people pissed off at Donald Trump for not doing mass deportations, being too pro-Israel, releasing the Epstein files, starting a war over Iran that is raising gas prices and squeezing Americans’ budgets, etc.
Well first of all I can’t resist an open post when my favorite artist dropped the #1 rap album in the world, and from a completely independent studio/label, handful of good people in Southside Minneapolis. Here is the playlist or go to http://stophouse.com and buy a physical copy, make it so the Billboard execs can’t argue it. Here’s to art returning to physical form in the hand! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9OFhFK93gOorFiJiwJtdLvdEvjDbExd2&si=KyAfokvoVAPkhHBc
I also have a new substack, which echoed in advance themes I was definitely picking up at the solstice gathering I attended, about how much too much the world feels these days. So glad to hear you all had a blessed time in Providence. https://open.substack.com/pub/aliceem2de3u/p/june
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert thinks that the relationship between Israel and the United States may be breaking because the two countries no longer want the same thing:
https://xcancel.com/MarioNawfal/status/2070222998125367326
@peter khan of the potlucks re:This is the announcement for the Second Annual Adocentyn in Providence, June 19, 2027. The format will be modified from this year: presentations and discussions from 9 to 5 in the daytime, followed by a potluck in the evening at my house. Mark you calendars now!
This makes me so happy! We did the same with heritage food fest that we put on first full week weekend in Nov in KY– same weekend, same venue, same invites and many same teacher/sessions, more stability, more traction, less work!!! Hooray!
The right wing in Britain are going full on “All Cops Are Bad” for their coverup of the Pakistani rape gangs in Britain:
https://xcancel.com/JamesPGoddard90/status/2068912835376357857
Anon, yes, and that’s something I’ve been warning about for a very long time. Call it the tragedy of the abandoned center — the process by which people whose needs and wants are ignored by all the respectable political parties end up turning to any movement, no matter how toxic, so long as it takes those needs and wants seriously. It’s a very real danger here and now.
AliceEm, good to hear on both counts.
Anon, they never did. I gather, though, that the Jewish lobby in America no longer has the clout it once did.
I had a lost comment too which didn’t return the usual ‘awaiting moderation’ message. Often draft in notes in case phone behaves weird but not that time so, I won’t repeat but note that my favorite artist dropped his album today and due to wildly loyal long-term fans, love of physical artifacts and creative arts unmarred by robotic influences, talent, effective processing of intense trauma which many find reflects their own experience in some broken piece of mirror, it is shaping up to be the #1 rap album in the world, produced by a completely independent studio made by above artist w a handful of good people Southside Minneapolis. Billboard execs fighting it/him because they don’t want this coup to be possible and think they can stop it by lying and saying it’s not happening. Lalala I can’t hear you.
i wrote this better the second time. to support independence against the ‘major labels’ buy the album at http://stophouse.com or stream it here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9OFhFK93gOorFiJiwJtdLvdEvjDbExd2&si=5C5fG0LgGcqYk17P
or just enjoy the first and final tracks.they are made for this people here.
also it makes me happy to see you guys sometimes on substack and I feel like I’m really getting an artistic process for the hypertexts; posted ‘june’ on the solstice a beautiful day all around
also @earthworm “I don’t mean to go all Butlerian Jihad” cracked me up all the way and then JMGs response included roughly ‘whether they walk away from the belly of the beast or get digested by the stomach acid’ so you must be doing something right. apparently the hit new horror movie Backrooms is about the ‘jeez don’t we have enough veils’ issue. Jonathan pageau analyzes it on The Symbolic World.
If television is a non-chemical drug, then does mixing meditation/ritual with television have any dangerous effects? I notice that a somewhat odd kind of psychosis about what magic can do took root in the western occult community around when television took off….
@Jennifer K
re: “wife submits”
I doubt it’s what any of the people having the “Christian marriage means husband rules, wife submits” people have in mind, but… the Gospel also prescribes, in practically the same breath as wives obeying husbands: “husbands love your wives”. These things are not separable.
Yes, it’s a pendulum swing. Also, functional marriages have always been a case of largely agreeing anyway, ruling over separate domains, mutual respect, common goals, etc. and frankly, after 16 years of marriage: for those odd things we can’t seem to agree on, for the sake of not getting terminally stuck it’s good to have a designated tiebreaker.
That said: the modern western take on marriage is not historically normal, and Gospel norms around who should be in charge are kind of the default human setting. You have to have rules and norms, particularly when you’re no longer looking at a situation where nearly everybody getting married is self-sorting in a very extreme way, and then choosing someone who largely resembles themselves in class, culture, intelligence, habits, personality, looks, etc. Given the huge degree of free choice, most of us choose people who are very much like ourselves.
That’s not… how it usually works. More often marriage has been about things like family alliances, economic decisions, and who happens to be available in your small town’s marriage pool. You were likely to end up with someone from a very similar cultural/economic/religious background, but rather less likely to have a spouse deeply compatible in temperament, habits, intelligence, aesthetic preferences. And you might not know them very well before getting married, so a lot of the first year or two was “getting to know you” and figuring out how to live together. That could be pretty hellish in a modern self-fulfillment-first environment. But it seems to work pretty well in an environment where there are some fairly comprehensive pre-set expectations, obligations, and norms. Now that looks like: We’re still figuring this out, but it’s a game we both understand the rules to, and our families are counting on us to do our best. These norms are of course far more comprehensive than “husband is in charge” and involve complex chains of command and obligation with the larger extended family. This would be unbearably rigid to most individualist western people, but it’s still a going thing in many parts of the world, and seems to work. These complex sets of rules, obligations, and norms help couples who are not perfectly matched navigate the complex landscape of being married, raising a family, and fulfilling hefty community obligations as a team. What *never* works out well, is a situation where people *don’t* have the extreme voluntary assortative mating habits of the modern west, *and* either the wife is the primary authority or there’s no clear chain of command. Having that work out well is pure luck.
Additionally, if you think of marriage in its more normal historical/global context– an economic/family contractual arrangement where the participants may have a pretty minimal say in the choice of spouse– I have to wonder if there weren’t other implications to that Gospel injunction that don’t even compute for us, because of the abnormal way we do marriage. Is “wives obey your husbands” perhaps implying also that her duty to her husband perhaps supersedes her duty to her mother, her siblings, her clan leader, and a host of other authorities who might feel entitled to interfere in her marriage? For people enmeshed in a tight web of overlapping obligations, this could be clarifying and liberating rather than oppressive. Is it possible that “husbands love your wives” might have similar implications for his relationships with his own relatives? A wife might be something more or less assigned to him, with a lot of contracts negotiated about dowries, exchange of livestock, contingencies if the marriage should fail to produce children… couldn’t it be refreshing to cut through all that and give a superseding command: LOVE your wife. Don’t just tolerate her for the sake of the fifty camels and hand her off to work for your mother. You’re obligated to cherish her, actually.
Remembering that the way we live here and now is a weird, erratic little blip in history, and not how most humans in most places most of the time have lived… I’m not against interest in seeking out historical norms like “husbands are in charge” but… they do tend to lack scope and subtlety. We’ll probably remember what those norms were *for* about the time we start negotiating marriages as family contracts again. We didn’t progress out of those norms, and we won’t be progressing back into them either. It’ll just be a reversion to mean.
For those benighted souls who don’t do videos, and might otherwise miss out on these important cultural moments, here is a transcript of a scene from that contemporary classic, “Beavis and Butthead”:
Mr. van Driessen: “It’s come to my attention that some of you have been using AI to do your homework for you.”
Butt-head: “Whoa! What’s AI?”
Mr. van Driessen: “AI stands for ‘Artificial Intelligence.,’ Butt-head. And if you use it to do your homework for you, you’ll never learn anything.”
Beavis: (laughs) “That sounds cool! Learning sucks.”
Butt-head: “AI kicks a**.”
Mr. van Driessen: “Well, no. There’s a concern that AI will take over all of our jobs, and replace humans entirely.”
Beavis: “Yes!”
Butt-head: “Cool! Jobs suck.”
Mr. van Driessen (sighs): “No. What I’m saying is, if we’re not careful, AI could destroy humanity itself.”
Beavis: “Yeah yeah yeah! Cool! Destroy it all! Destroy!”
Butt-head: “Beavis, we need to get us some of this AI.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWeca3sU6hw
JMG #78, Chuaquin #149,Robert Mathiesen #180, Anselmo #183,
Thank you for the lovely discussion! Yes, I understand that people on the street respond to official propaganda, that’s why they buy poo tins. It would be impossible to sell such toys in Russia. Nobody would buy deer Keir, farmer Starmer, or anything like that. Nobody would get the connotation. Also, there is definitely no animosity in Spain and Latin America (also, personal experience). My question was about the reasons for England’s animosity. I believe there are no consequences without causes.
Robert, your explanation makes total sense, Northern waters, of course! “An ocean-going port in the White Sea (Arkhangelsk), and then another such port in the Baltic Sea (St. Petersburg).” Ha! I was born and raised in Saint Petersburg. My dad was a ship captain in Merhcant Marines. His home port was Arkhangelsk. I’ve been there many times as a child – such a beautiful town!
I’ve always felt that when a government (any government) starts talking about poor people in a distant country suffering under a brutal regime of a dictator (Putin, for example), they just want their goodies, Northern waters, for example. 😁
William, I would like to take a shot at answering your question because it is something near and dear to my heart. I did occult practices for two years without watching TV and the rest with. In a mundane sense, it is no more dangerous than regular TV watching, but I wouldn’t recommend doing formal practices with a TV on. In a esoteric or maybe even neurotic sense, there’s all kinds of things to consider. While you watch TV, at times wonder how lame you really are and fantasize about all the wonderful things you could be doing instead. You’ll spend many consecutive minutes with a background thought to turn it off and read some pages of your book. When you’ve read enough, you’ll sit there consciously knowing that you’re displacing the pneuma of your own subtle bodies with the figments of someone else’s imagination and that your programming of choice is making you more mass minded. Then you’ll turn it off and wonder if the lack of TV will make you too weird to relate to other people in your life. I could go on… My unsolicited advice is to quit if you’re able to quit.
I’ve planned on quitting or hard dieting it for awhile now, and probably will at some point (did it before). I have a box of unopened safety pins ready to tape one to the back of the TV because JMG or a commentator suggested that at one point. I haven’t done it yet because I know it will work.
test 2 ‘page not working’
initially 230 posts but then reverts to showing 177 comments with page load failure
AliceEm, no, it got posted as #237. Interestingly, I haven’t had any problems with posts being hidden.
William, I have no idea. I haven’t watched a television since I was a teenager, and most of the serious occultists I know watch little or no TV. Anyone else?
Ambrose, that seems weirdly prescient.
At the risk of adding unnecessary chatter to the “comments about missing comments”: On the main site, it says this post has 230 comments, and when I click into the page… only 184. I feel strangely bereft.
Depopulation really doesn’t sound so bad. Assuming that economic decline, resource depletion, national debt default, and monetary reset are all baked in– no avoiding any of it– why not? Does a lower population make any of that worse? What if declining birthrates are just nature adjusting to conditions we aren’t good at comprehending?
Hi JMG,
May interest you that the first complete virtual unwrapping of a carbonised Vesuvius scroll has just been made – it seems to be a scroll of Stoic Philosophy (possibly Chrysippus). The burnt scrolls are too early for Neoplatonism, but there might be some Middle Platonism in the library somewhere (to go with the Epicureanism and Stoicism discovered thus far).
I’ve just had a rather troubling thought. I’d like to apologize if this has already come up, because once more I can’t see comments past 88, but the issues with comments here is likely a caching issue. Your site is small enough it’s probably relying on some major company to take care of it: I doubt your tech guy maintains separate caching servers for ecosophia. This means it’s likely a broader problem.
With most of the web though, I’m not sure we’d be able to notice issues of this sort: far too much of it lacks the combination of linear chronological ordering and being on a small enough scale that human beings can easily keep track of it.
This means this could be a far more widespread problem without turning up much evidence. It might even be affecting most of the web without us seeing anything, because too much of it has moved away from showing static pages towards personalized ones. I’m far from sure even in theory how to detect these errors on sites like Google which recreates each page entirely anew every time it’s requested, or Facebook which intentionally hides things to keep people checking in later.
I hope I’m wrong, because having caching break would severely damage the utility of the web, but right now I’m thinking this is just the canary in the coal mine….
Once more, commenting brings forth the missing comments. This is quite strange.
Luke (247),
I have mostly removed TV from my life. I still get some exposure, because of things like the odd way that they are installed in almost every bar and the like. It has occurred to me to wonder what effect mixing TV watching and occult practices has, because at this point it’s become clear to me that TV is a pretty powerful, and destructive, influence.
Hmm, I arrive at Ecosophia, either net or org and it says 230 comments. I tap and it turns into 184 comments. Could this be the first whispers of what E.M. Forster predicted in The Machine Stops written in 1910 that amazingly describes the collapse of of a web based society featuring deliveries of everything to people living in cubicle apartments and communicating via a Zoom/Facetime style technology
Interesting experience, perhaps a follow up to something I shared on Magic Monday. My daily walk goes through a remnant patch of riparian forest along a creek in a small park in the middle of my city. As I passed by one of the larger, older trees I felt a call, a connection I stopped and felt a tingle in both of my palms which happens often during my tai chi sessions. I placed my palms on the sides of the tree for about a minute and it just felt right. A new practice that I continue in with the pine trees in my apartment complex. The buildings are in a square with a courtyard in the middle filled with a miniature forest of trees of that are now over fifty years old and with the long California growing season and irrigation have attained a good size.
I have another thought on TV as a drug. A lot of drugs alter appetite and taste. I wonder if processed foods caught on when they did in the 950s because they taste better to people under the influence of TV; and if part of the reason TV screens have been added to so many restaurants is to make the food more palatable by inducing an altered state of consciousness where processed junk tastes better….
Hi John.
I’m seeing a rise of anti Semitism, it’s concentrated so far with more obsessive hard left and/or alt-right type people to date.
But it’s definitely spreading.
I have my own theories about the obsession with Jews (definitely a feature of those geared towards conspiratorial worldview – one friend of mine is a coder and he was convinced the world is being secretly controlled by elite Jews – but also anger and frustration about declining living standards.
But is there more to the return of social anti Semitism.
Anonymous #182:
The fact that on both sides, hardliners internally and proxies and clients abroad are loudly complaining about the negotiations is precisely what makes me think there’s something to this Iran “deal”. Otherwise, I give no credence to anything either side says officially about how they achieved complete victory and totally kicked the other guys’ butts, because of course they are going to say that.
Hi John Michael,
Hmm, your website has hit Peak Strange! 🙂
My only other thought on this topic is that, your cache WordPress program is a bit, err, off.
What I see down here is 230, but can only read either 209 or 184 comments depending. It’s complicated. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
I posted a comment, and now see 249 comments (with all the missing good bits). Told ya it was a caching issue. Get a better add-on, is today’s unsolicited advice.
Cheers
Chris
I tried these urls and got 177 and 209 comments:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?moderation-hash=ecf86ada69ed6e29f64f914cc1b6b002
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=1
I tried this url and my no of comments jumped from 209 to 249, i.e. up to date;
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=100
@JMG and RTSGame (if I may)
Happy to hear there’s a real chance of another Glastonbury gathering as soon as 2027 or 2028. Definitely didn’t expect you back on these shores so quickly, but a pleasant surprise for sure. I’ll be there unless some absolutely unavoidable commitments should come up.
@JMG
On another topic, you wrote: “Ethan, when I finished writing Star’s Reach I knew I shouldn’t write anything else in that fictive future — it’s complete in itself, and anything further would spoil it.”
As you sometimes say to us, thank you for getting it! If only other authors and people in other media would think that way. I’m fond of Star’s Reach and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I’ve also seen so many series in various media tarnished by totally unnecessary sequels over the years, and it always frustrates me to no end. There’s definitely something to be said for considering a work complete and having accomplished its purpose.
If you want to post an image or free an post a link on this blog try
https://postimages.org/
You don’t even have to sign up. As a test I posted this image without an account
https://postimg.cc/yJNfztrP
(Apologies to the original cartoonist.)
“…but also fools for too much intellect”
I’ve seen the terms ‘educated fool’ and ‘credentialled idiot’ but there are probably more.
On credntials – Years ago I knew a guy on the corporate ladder waxing lyrical about passing some fancy project management course. It turned out the ‘exam’ was online multiple choice and the pass mark was 50%.
A project manager who is only right half the time would explain a lot.
I could see on your main page that this open post was at 230 comments, now 249 – but when I click the link, it’s stuck at 184. Refreshing the page, or clearing the cache doesn’t help.
JMG “Dumbphones and flip phones that won’t host LLMs are becoming increasingly available these days”
I didn’t know that – still using nokia 1800 on 2G pay as you go – costs me about £30 per year. I think it gets turned off 2029/30 so not sure what we’ll do then.
“Earthworm, granted. I see this as another IQ test graded pass-or-fail”
Uhm… I don’t fancy the remedial class for failing this one
“the divide between those who walk away and those who stay in the belly of the beast until they’re digested by its stomach acids may be involved here.”
Yeah, and if 5G is like free floating digestive juices… well, blimey.
I have just been reading a bit about Oswald Spengler’s predictions. One curiosity is that while he foresaw a “coloured world revolution”, where the “coloured races” (which to him included Slavs and Mediterraneans) would use the benefits of Western technology, medicine, etc against their creators, he did not foresee the rise of China as a major unified power.
He viewed China as a “petrified” state that had gone through its cycles of culture and civilization long ago and now existed in a “fellah” state, a term used for the Egyptian peasants that outlasted the Pharonic civilization by being passed around from conqueror to conqueror with relative indifference.
For Spengler and other reactionaries, China existed as a warning about the fate of “Western” civilization, not an entity capable of true power in the near future.
I was wondering what your view was on these forecasts.
Good discussion on diesel in light of current events
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/are-we-sleepwalking-into-a-diesel
Transcript of Hagans interview of the honest sorcerer about geopolitical/energy stresses and decline (lacks charts, but more updated)
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/TGS-209-Honest-Sorcerer-Transcript.pdf
Dear John Michael Greer, I stumbled upon a copy of “The science of getting rich” from Wallace D. Wattles. I know you have critique on some aspectd of the New thoight. However this is from early 20th century. What ate your thoughts on this? Thank you in advance.
Methylethyl, since depopulation is also baked into the cake, getting comfortable with it strikes me as a good idea.
Strda221, I’m delighted to hear this! A previously unknown Stoic text is a cause for celebration — though the thought of a Stoic celebration is a little daunting, admittedly. (“It was a really wild party. Gaius and Decimus both smiled.”) Some lost Middle Platonism would be even better — here’s hoping for something by Antiochus of Ascalon — but the top of my wish list would be a complete work or two by Posidonius, maybe even (may Hermes grant it!) his lost work on the Celts.
William, ouch. Let’s hope it’s just a problem with my tech guy’s software.
BeardTree, that’s a form of qigong much practiced by Taoist hermits. Pine trees in particular are held to give off a modality of qi that’s unusually beneficial for human life and longevity.
William, I could see it. Bleah.
Forecasting, it’s always baffled me that so many people choose the Jews to blame for everything. That goes way back — long before the coming of Christianity, Egyptians used to insist that the Jewish god was actually Set, the slayer of Osiris, and persecuted them on that basis. In the West, it surfaces reliably whenever standards of living take a dive, and (as happened in central Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) Jews are overrepresented in the professions and the managerial class, and thus become an easy target for class hatred from the laboring classes. That is to say, it could get ugly.
BorealBear, thank you. I’ve also read my share of disappointing sequels, of course. Even when a sequel’s possible, it can take a long time. Journey Star finally came together fifteen years after The Fires of Shalsha, and the last volume in that projected trilogy, The Last Halka, may take another fifteen; I have a few sections in rough draft and an outline I’m not satisfied with, but that’s all.
Earthworm, I’ll be talking about new-old phones in an upcoming post. Other than that, yeah, the pass-fail IQ tests we’ve gotten so far have been bad enough, and this one may be worse.
Gunstone, like most pioneers, Spengler sketched out a rough draft but his outline needs to be filled in with further work. He missed, for example, the fact that every rising civilization goes through two pseudomorphoses, and he also missed the way that a civilization sunk into fellah-style decadence can be revitalized by an invasive pseudomorphosis. That’s what’s happened with China; its radical Faustianization under Communism has given it a new lease on life — temporary, I suspect, but we’ll see.
Gardener, thanks for these.
Merman, I haven’t read it and so can’t comment on it.
dZanni #93:
> So I disagree with the premise, which is modern slander that all Christian religion is bad, and the religious educated are invariably small minded. No they never were, and aren’t now either.
Sorry, what? I have never made such a claim. I may disagree with some central tenets of Christianity but that does not mean I harbour any dislike towards it, nor have I said anything about small-mindedness.
I attended a Catholic school. In Latin class, we talked about Roman/Greek mythology at length. In RE class, the very same teacher made it very clear that he thought the Gods we had discussed in Latin class quite morally corrupt and not worthy of worship. So excuse me if I am a little surprised that this is the universal Catholic attitude (and that I am doubly surprised at a statement as theologically ambitious as the one I quoted from Chesterton).
> This is quite false and I’d refer you to the middle ages. All household magic is done in the name of Mary, the Saints, etc. That is, Christianity and magic are one.
Okay, but again, how is this relevant to what I said? Mary and the Saints are obviously not in the same category as the pagan Gods. At no point have I denied that there is Christian magic, though I’d argue that equating Christianity and magic goes too far; there is quite effective non-Christian magic.
—David P.
FYI
The post shows 249 comments on the top but when I click on it only 184 comments show. This happened last night as well.
Bofur #192:
Thank you. Let’s just say that restraint in such a situation is not a virtue that comes easily to me.
There is a slight problem when applying your math to Germany: we strictly speaking don’t really have pensions except for civil servants. What I called the pension system for lack of a better term is more of a cross between a proper pension system and social security: what you get depends on your contribution to the system but there’s no fund; the current working generations pay for the retired generations, not for themselves. The exact rates are redefined every year.
Yes, this is a straight-forward pyramid scheme. Unfortunately, that pyramid is not the shape of our age distribution; the biggest age groups are the ones about to retire or just retired. Needless to say, this means that lowering rates is political suicide and until rates are lowered, contributions will need to be ratcheted up as people retire.
Alternatively, you can increase the age at which people get to retire but that, too, is basically unthinkable. We had a slight increase recently, from 65 to 67 (with reduced rates available starting at 63). My father (not the relative in question) recently said that he doesn’t think it will have reached 70 by the time I retire. I’m 23.
As for young people being pressured to marry the right person, please! It can’t be worse than the current state of “well, we don’t want to impose anything on you, so from now on every generation will have to figure out courtship and relationships from scratch.”
Chuaquin #212:
I never said anything about legal or illegal immigrants. Right now, over two million foreigners in Germany claim unemployment benefits. Most of them probably never worked in the first place. I don’t know how many of them are legal or illegal. Illegal immigrants over here don’t need to work in the underground economy, they can just pop out a few children and get a few grand a month and will never be deported because apparently we can’t tear families apart and sending the children along with them is too mean or something.
(I know I said that I’d let the topic rest but the situation here is so much worse than you think.)
I’ve got foreign friends too. That doesn’t change that millions abuse the system and need to go back where they belong.
As for your reply to Siliconguy, if our country was still successful, the AfD would not be our strongest party. The entire country is a shaleshow at this point. Should we ever cross paths (maybe if JMG comes to Glastonbury again?), I’ll gladly regale you with tales of dysfunction.
—David P.
> Siliconguy, good heavens. Germany is turning into its opposite.
You’re a bit behind the times. The railway network has been dysfunctional for ages.
I commute by train. The day before the incident, I wanted to take the tram to my university (which is in a different city). The instant it was supposed to arrive per the info screen, it gained ten minutes of delay. When it finally arrived, the display on the tram car said that it would terminate in the town before the one I needed to get to, which was of course not announced beforehand or on the info screen (that stop isn’t one where that line ever terminates normally, either).
So instead, I decided to take a bus to my city’s central train station and take a proper train. In the five minutes the bus—five minutes behind schedule, incidentally—took to get there, the train I wanted to take gained a delay of fifteen minutes. Instead, another train arrived that I wouldn’t have caught had it not been thirty minutes behind schedule. I entered that one. But for the A/C, I needn’t have bothered. A door was broken and wouldn’t close for half an hour, by which time the the other train had finally arrived, rather more than the announced fifteen minutes late.
This one slowly crawled onwards to the next train station, where we were informed that there were signalling problems around that station and the next (the only two stations between the one in my city and the one I needed to get to). This had apparently resulted in several trains waiting before the station and we would only be allowed to continue our journey once they had cleared out. At this point, I resigned to my fate and stopped looking at the clock. I arrived so late that I figured it would be too rude to still enter the lecture hall.
It’s usually better than this but I also wasn’t terribly surprised. There is the occasional stretch of several weeks where the tram is always on time but my habit of taking two trams early just in case (there’s one every twenty minutes) has been vindicated often enough. And the tram is more reliably than the train by far.
(And yes, I could’ve just taken the second tram on Monday but I didn’t know why the first one terminated early—still don’t, actually—so it seemed safer to take a different route).
—David P.
JMG,
Hi.
Do you think digital currency will take over? If so, wondering what you think about that possibility. I fear it because I fear it will used to silence dissent in a situation similar to the Canadian truckers.
Thanks,
Jacques
After posting that last I found myself on a preview page which showed my comment as #262:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?unapproved=163679&moderation-hash=5e5dc1e489b51e2edb3e45eb0ff573c7#comment-163679
Click the home button top left and home page shows the open post as having 249 posts
https://ecosophia.net/
Open the open post and now comments show as 184
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/#comments
Make a new post (Test) takes me to preview page:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?unapproved=163691&moderation-hash=08f0e9428735110125d5ab647a716968#comment-163691
and now 275 comments show with mine at #276
I’ll not post any more about it.
Fingers crossed your tech people can unbork it.
But, as Phutatorius said: “I regard these little frustrations as an opportunity to take a break and contemplate the topic of internet addiction.”
Nice synchronicity for my musings on the nature of the internet.
Says 249 comments when ecosophia.net comes up, now getting 177 when I tap on the comment line to read the comments. Is a disgruntled Neopagan doing you dirty?
On the topic of tea/coffee for meditation, I wonder if there’s a geographic impact. I found that is true in temperate zones, but when I lived in Hawaii I found the opposite. Or maybe coffee just doesn’t like to travel, but it was quite notable.
(I also find more than maybe a half a cup of coffee in a temperate zone gives me a migraine and messes with my sleep; while it seemed a lot gentler on my system in Hawaii)
When I call up this blog, the header says 249 comments, but when I open it, it says 184, and that’s the only ones that show. ais something wrong with the website?
Using this url but incrementing the number every time you refresh the page seems to bring up all the comments:
https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=100
OK – I am answered. And the weather icon in the corner of the larger screen reads “92 degrees, light rain,” on a clear and sunny day. I
I’m starting to assume that everything has gone into serious strangeness.
Do the vibes on the inner planes seem pleasant to anyone else? (I’m flying solo this weekend so I’m commenting a lot)
William, if anything occult practice negates some of the negative effects of TV. The main issue you’ll have is guilt of wasting time.
Chuaqin, I would agree most people with tattoos are average people. I would argue most of them are 20% more open minded though. I bet that’s provable in the realm of sociology.
comments not working solution I put this in previous comments but I don’t think everyone saw. I feel bad people are struggling when there’s a very easy workaround: Use this url https://ecosophia.net/june-2026-open-post/?approved=1 . The key is the approved=1 param. if you use the same param value multiple times it flakes out. So just change it every time you use it to a new number, word, or letter. So for example, if you did ?approved=1 the first time, switch it to ?approved=aquarius the second time, and so on. This works.
Hey JMG
Just thought I’d let you know that from my end, while on the main page it says that this post has 249 comments, the moment I actually clicked the headline to read this post it only showed 184 of them. It was like this yesterday as well.
@ JMG #277 “that’s a form of qigong much practiced by Taoist hermits. Pine trees in particular are held to give off a modality of qi that’s unusually beneficial for human life and longevity.”
Well, what’s not to like with that one! And the comment thingie is now fixed.
JMG,
I hesitate to ask this, but here goes.
My wife and I, suburban apartment dwellers, have noticed an odd pattern in a rather high turnover rate for our nextdoor neighbors all around us. Normally I wouldn’t think anything of it, but my wife is actually a leaser here and said that it’s not something she’s seen anywhere else (it’s a very large complex). For whatever reason, all but one of our neighbors have moved out within a year of moving in. 3 out of 4 of the apartments directly adjacent or diagonal to us have done this TWICE. Meaning the apartments have turned over twice since we’ve lived here. And they tend to stay empty longer than usual. This isn’t because of anything intentional on our part. We’re good, quiet neighbors who keep to ourselves. On the occasions when we’ve spoken to our neighbors and asked them about it they said as much (that we’re good neighbors).
Now, I know this could just be a coincidence, but I find myself wondering if a daily SoP can have an effect like this?
-David M.
Hey JMG
Since some commenters have mentioned your “Shalsa” series and it’s hypothetical threequel, I thought I would ask you about that novel set in a far-future civilisation which you mentioned a year or so ago. Are you still working on it, or is it on the backburner?
“The post shows 249 comments on the top but when I click on it only 184 comments show.”
Me too this morning, but now at 4 PM PDT I see 283 comments.
“I wonder if processed foods caught on when they did in the 950s because they taste better to people under the influence of TV;”
It is probably simple distraction. You can’t pay attention to everything at once, so either you don’t really register what you are eating or only the strongest flavors can get through.
Anon @ 238 writes: “Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert thinks that the relationship between Israel and the United States may be breaking because the two countries no longer want the same thing…”
Trump and Bibi have been making me think of the movie “Sideways” about two “friends” out on a misadventure. Paul Giamotti would don an orange wig and play the Trump character (just in case there’s any confusion).
# 188 Another possibility is in vitro gametogenesis. It is possible to take stem cells and get them to turn into the kind of cells that produce egg or sperm cells. This can be used to create functional sperm from a female donor which can then fertilise the egg of another female. This has actually been used to produce a successful pregnancy. In mice.
As far as Russophobia goes, I don’t really see much of it here where I am in the UK, as distinct from the anti-Putin opinions that revolve him being labelled as Evil Dictator ™. Not in the real world rather than the media anyway.
One thought I had is its about the old colonial era stereotypes about Africans and Asians that it just aren’t politically correct to voice in today’s world. However, Russians being white, they can still be an ‘acceptable’ target as a kind of displacement.
There is also the soft bigotry of low expectations. We all know that for example, Saudi Arabia is frightfully authoritarian and prolific in performing executions judicial and otherwise , but they are tacitly excused as a primitive culture. It doesn’t need to stop them hosting a load of sporting events in order to rebrand themselves. However Russians being white and in large part European, they’re not supposed to do the Bad Things, at least not against other white people.
“Gunstone, like most pioneers, Spengler sketched out a rough draft but his outline needs to be filled in with further work. He missed, for example, the fact that every rising civilization goes through two pseudomorphoses, and he also missed the way that a civilization sunk into fellah-style decadence can be revitalized by an invasive pseudomorphosis. That’s what’s happened with China; its radical Faustianization under Communism has given it a new lease on life — temporary, I suspect, but we’ll see.”
Are there any more recent books on Spenglerian civilizational pseudomorphosis that updates Spengler’s theory to include these more recent discoveries? The Decline of the West was published over a century ago.
A week ago I was meditating on these scriptures – “Noah walked with God”, “Enoch walked with God”. I said to myself, “I will walk with God like Jesus did” The Spirit immediately said,”No, you will walk with God like Jeff” Jeff is my first name. I felt a release of freedom. As it says “ Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty”. I see the tree qigong experience as a continuation of growing in my personal walk. I look forward to your Etheric Energy workbook to see if there is something for me to glean from it. As a Christian The created life energy – which I regard as an accessible natural gift -I experience as being different than the personal Holy Spirit, but still something we may cultivate as a an ancient technology like the radio and electricity technologies humanity has delved into over past 200 years.
“Gunstone, like most pioneers, Spengler sketched out a rough draft but his outline needs to be filled in with further work. He missed, for example, the fact that every rising civilization goes through two pseudomorphoses, and he also missed the way that a civilization sunk into fellah-style decadence can be revitalized by an invasive pseudomorphosis. That’s what’s happened with China; its radical Faustianization under Communism has given it a new lease on life — temporary, I suspect, but we’ll see.”
Yes, Spengler repeatedly stated that Russia and Japan were two of the main “Asiatic” powers of the future rather than China.
As much as I hate to say it, I personally believe that the Chinese Communist Party was the only force capable of truly ending the era of warlords and foreign “concessions” (it is too often the case in revolutions that the most radical and determined tend to come out on top and subsequently impose an even stricter regime than that of the ancien regime).
In a way, the most important legacy of the Bolshevik “Revolution” of 1917 was a unified China. I say this as,
a) It very much robbed Russia of the (especially demographic) potential that it would have had in the 20th Century had the Bolsheviks not taken power. Had Russia come out of the Great War without the terror, depopulations, and depravations of Bolshevism, both Russia and Japan would each have a strong geopolitical imperative towards preventing China from becoming a single powerful empire again. Subsequently, I can see the two powers (along with maybe the British in the South) playing the post-1916 warlords against each other while ensuring that none are ambitious/capable enough to come out on top.
b) In China itself, Bolshevism directly inspired the formation of the Chinese Communist Party which was perhaps the only force cohesive enough and non-corrupt enough to take over the entire mainland. The Kuomingtang under Chiang Kai-Shek was notoriously kleptocratic and incompetent and never ruled the whole country without some provincial government going warlord.
As much I distain much of the legacy of Maoism, especially the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the CCP itself may have been the only vehicle capable of lifting the Chinese populace beyond a fellah status akin to the descendants of the Pharaohs subjects.
I found one timeline where the Russians and Japanese carve up most of China which ultimately leads to a Muslim warlord from the far West of the country (out of range of those two powers) taking over the country.
@Forecasting Intelligence: re: antisemitism:
“is there more to the return of social anti Semitism.”
I’m seeing that around a lot, it’s extremely irritating, and… IMO it has the feel of a foreign propaganda effort. Plenty of domestic sorts are more than willing to jump on the bandwagon once it rolls by, but I don’t think that’s where most of it is originating? Haven’t a clue what foreign entity or entities might have an interest in promoting that in the US. Your guess is as good as mine.
“Anon, yes, and that’s something I’ve been warning about for a very long time. Call it the tragedy of the abandoned center — the process by which people whose needs and wants are ignored by all the respectable political parties end up turning to any movement, no matter how toxic, so long as it takes those needs and wants seriously. It’s a very real danger here and now.”
Yeah, I guess one difference for me vs you was come the 2024 election, while you were still very optimistic about Trump’s ability to reform the system, I was extremely pessimistic since, despite #Resistance propaganda about Trump being the second coming of Hitler, Trump governed much like a traditional Reagan / Bush era Republican his first four years in power, and I didn’t think he would change his behavior that much in his next four years in power. To me it was more likely that Trump would fail to reform the system enough to satisfy many of his America First MAGA supporters, and the disaffected former supporters would end up hijacking the moribund Democratic Party away from its liberal establishment and turn it into a vehicle for populist anger at and revolutionary action against the system and its bureaucratic managerial rulers.
We’ve already seen some signs of this in 2020 when a lot of the alt-right were disappointed with Trump’s first presidency and some of the alt-right started supported people like Andrew Yang in the 2020 Democratic primaries because Yang at least promised some things that seem beneficial to “the white race” that none of the liberal Democratic establishment candidates were promising. But now in 2026 it’s not just portions of the alt-right that are disappointed with Donald Trump, it’s huge swathes of the coalition that elected Trump and supported him from the very beginning in 2015. Any Democratic or third party politician who rebukes the hated liberal establishment and their pieties stands a good chance of winning support from both the DSA left and the America First MAGA right, who have a lot more in common with each other these days than they do with the establishment of either party. And disaffected right-wingers crossing over and supporting the Democrats is made a lot easier with the recent turn towards antisemitism and racism amongst some Democrats.
Not to say that I like this new Democratic party if it does come into fruition – most likely I will hate it and I’ve always told people that while I don’t support Trump and the Republican Party right now, it is likely that after this upcoming political realignment is over I will end up on the Republican side of things. But I’ve always viewed the Democrats becoming the dominant party in the political realignment after they’ve kicked out the hated liberal Democratic establishment and their #Resistance lackeys as more likely than Trump reforming the system enough to keep the Republicans as the dominant party after the political realignment.
Mr Greer #230
Thank you for the detailed reply. You’ve mostly mirrored my own thoughts back at me, which I take as a good sign that I’m on the right track. I wonder though, about the role of chance in such things. For example the hordes of people killed by the Japanese tsunami in 2011, some of that must have just been chance, no? Or the lizard I remember seeing on National Geographic that had been caught by a praying mantis and was being eaten alive. Or the hole full of pigs in China, which were culled by having a flaming 55 gallon barrel of fuel dumped over them, during the swine flu thing, before being buried alive. If not chance, then that would imply animals have karma…then again, there are the birds I’ve seen, some of whom seem to delight in stealing and frustrating, while others I’ve seen bring food to fish so help them eat. So maybe that is all karma, and the development of a morality and karmic balance begins well before human incarnation. Perhaps even before incarnation as blue-green algae. Of course that then raises issues of fairness, and implies the same problem of evil the monotheistic religions grapple with. I’ll need to consider much more.
Again, thank you.
Slithy #234
Thank you, too.
I believe you’re right about gaming the system both positively and negatively, or trying to. In fact, one of the problems I arrive at while meditating about karma is that it always leads me back to feelings of dissatisfaction because of that. For instance, a man wins the lottery; most people would be ecstatic in his position. I, on the other hand, imagining myself like that wonder what I’ve done to earn it, and how it will affect me in the future:
“If i refuse to accept the winning, then maybe I won’t burn whatever good karma lead me to this, so it will still be there in the future, likewise I’ll get good karma for passing it along to another person, and thus I’ll avoid a karmic expense while adding to my karmic savings; if I accept it, then I’ll burn the good karma that brought it to me, while possibly gaining more bad karma inadvertently, through lack of proper moral or spiritual development.
“I may even be forced to return to Earth for another life, even if appropriately developed, if I burn this good karma, now, so it’s better to not accept the good, but instead accept suffering so my karmic debt will be lower, and maybe even low enough I won’t be forced back, or else have a longer time to rest in the afterlife, which will probably be better than anything I can get here, so I’d rather burn the good karma there.” Thus, I’d never be able to actually enjoy winning it, as I’d be looking for the other shoe to drop, either in this life, or another, and thus being robbed of the pleasure most any other person could feel.
I’ve come to much the same conclusion you have, that pursuing virtue is the only reliable option. Otherwise you end up like for example, nameless politicians, or privileged busybodies, wherein your own lack of virtue leads to you gaining a whole lot of bad karma because you choose to exploit the greater opportunity, and leverage your karmically-awarded position provides.
So yes, perhaps there is a good reason we aren’t meant to know. Then again, it is precisely that we don’t know, that has lead to religious wars. That fear of hell is a real bear. Imagine how much suffering humanity throughout time has endured because of that. Or from the necessity of work – entropy requiring competition, and seemingly rewarding selfishness, deception, cruelty, etc. So much so that species evolve to fight and kill competitors, at all costs. Because if they don’t, they get killed themselves, or have their territory and resources usurped, then are out-bred and replaced. That is the reason for all the racial strife in the world, as another example: genetic drive to secure territory and resources and safety for ones own line in a zero sum world. That’s a lot of bad karma, apparently, but if you don’t accumulate it, your competitors will by destroying you and yours.
For this reason, at first glance at least, the lack of knowledge seems to be a trap. It makes the idea of a demiurge, or prison planet plausible. But then again, what do I know, I’m just a human. More reflection required.
I can’t say I’m a fan of karma being tied to law, as the law is so often arbitrary and unjust, but once again, what do I know, I’m just a human, and I appreciate sharing thoughts with you.
Processed foods were sold to the American public as convenient. Tomato soup in January. Kids are hungry Right Now, Mom, open a can of soup. We tend to forget now that home canning is difficult, time consuming and sometimes dangerous. You could fill your pantry shelves with fruits and vegetables to be opened and served all year round. I can remember Campbell soups. Black bean was my favorite. In those early days, mid 1950s, the products were mostly edible, oversalted perhaps, but not yet the chemical stews we have now.
OTOH, Cool-Aid was nasty stuff which condemned a generation to excessive tooth decay and diabetes.
@Inna (#246):
As for the “northern waters” and England vs. Russia, I’ve been keeping up with the current geopolitics there with the help of http://www.arctictoday.com . You might enjoy it, especially since your dad knew those waters well. It offers a neglected and valuable perspective on the current tangled mess of world affairs.
Important race to keep an eye out on is Ohio Governor: Amy Acton vs Vivek Ramaswamy. There seem to be a lot of right-wingers who intend on voting for the Democratic candidate because, unlike Vivek Ramaswamy, at least she isn’t of Indian origin and didn’t promise to import millions of people on H1-B visas into the United States.
“As much I distain much of the legacy of Maoism, especially the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the CCP itself may have been the only vehicle capable of lifting the Chinese populace beyond a fellah status akin to the descendants of the Pharaohs subjects.”
The case could be made that it was precisely these movements that did the dirty work of surgically removing enough of the stifling old culture for China to come back to life. (OK, surgically is probably not the right term for something done more with axes than scalpels.) In addition, both reined in the new communist bureaucracy enough that it could not settle into Brezhnev type sloth.
China is also another example of how turbulent and harsh societal rejuvenation can be if the ancien regime “succeeds” in putting off reform for too long. There is a great alternate history to be written in which the Taiping movement mellows out and succeeds in reforming China in much the way the Japan reformed a decade later (using many reforms that the Taiping had sought).
Hi Scotlyn #190
Well, I am older, and have mostly picked up older hitchers, so I’m happy to say I haven’t experienced the “sit like sticks” or scrolling thing (although I have seen that with younger colleagues at work). Most of my hitching was related to hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, so there was always something to talk about! (Joke: How do you know if someone has hiked the PCT? They will tell you!). But you make a good point. Some drivers don’t like to chat, but some do. As a passenger, “read the room” and go with the flow. Cheers!
Methylethyl #244 re “wives obey your husbands”:
“…perhaps implying also that her duty to her husband perhaps supersedes her duty to her mother, her siblings, her clan leader, and a host of other authorities who might feel entitled to interfere in her marriage? For people enmeshed in a tight web of overlapping obligations, this could be clarifying and liberating rather than oppressive. Is it possible that “husbands love your wives” might have similar implications for his relationships with his own relatives? … couldn’t it be refreshing to cut through all that and give a superseding command: LOVE your wife. Don’t just tolerate her for the sake of the fifty camels and hand her off to work for your mother.”
That’s an excellent point. I think the line from Genesis “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to a wife,” makes that same point: it means psychologically leaving one’s parents, as well as physically moving out. That’s good psychological sense, since a certain emotional separation from parents is necessary for a good marriage. I’ve read enough advice columns to know that it can destroy a marriage when a husband won’t stand up for his wife when his mother denigrates her, or sides with his mother/family against his wife (and of course that goes both ways). Jesus quotes that line from Genesis in the Gospels, which underlines the importance of it.
Hi Atmospheric River!
Beautiful picture of The Eel. I live in the other Bay Area (Humboldt Bay). I think you’re the closest Ecosophia reader to me. If you ever come to Humboldt again and want to meet up, let me know!
@ Jennifer K, methylethyl, and others on the subject of marriage and roles…
First, as JMG said, there really is a lot of extraordinary insecurity among on the New Right, especially over sexual issues. It’s one of the things that’s pushed me entirely away from that movement, which I found very interesting 10 years ago (when I was still recovering from a prior decade spent among the Far Left). To be completely honest, I really think the underlying dynamic among a lot (by no means all) of the Right is repressed homosexuality; many of them seem to simultaneously despise women and see them as playing the same role that the “bottom” typically plays during gay sex.
But I also very strongly question the idea that male dominance is the universal historical norm that many conservatives think it is. Gender norms of some kind are universal in every human society, but how those norms are constructed varies widely from one culture to another, even among cultures which neighbor one another. Is descent reckoned through mother, father, or both? Do the happy couple strike off on their own after marriage, or do they live with the wife’s family, or with the husband’s? Is she allowed to initiate a divorce? Should women tend the farm while men hunt, or should men clear the fields while women plant them, or should they labor together, or is it a source of ritual pollution if your wife enters your garden? Where gender roles are strict, what do you do with people who fit more into the opposite-gender category? Banish or shame them? Force them into their proper role? Allow them to don the dress and identity of the opposite sex? If you choose the latter, is a cross gender role only available to men who wish to become women (as among many Native American societies), or only to women who wish to live like men (as among yuppies in America in the 1980s and 90s), or to members of either sex (common in many Native societies, with a weird Communist variation made available recently to American yuppies). Do men alone hold political authority, while women rule the home? Or do men hold all official authority, while women unofficially rule the home? Or do you have separate governments for members of each sex? Can women fight in wars?
All these and countless other questions have been answered in as many ways as you can think of by different human societies. Biology sets certain limits, but the most important one isn’t the one people think of. The population of any society is determined by the number of women, not the number of men; a society of one woman and one thousand men is doomed, while a society of one man and one thousand women will survive, thanks to the luckiest man on Earth. When population growth or preservation is necessary to survival, those societies which survive will be the ones who keep women out of danger (no berdaches, no amazons, keep to the home, whether as ruler or slave). When population threatens to overrun resources, those societies which survive will be those which reduce the number of women, or at least the number of childbearing women– though here again, that can be through allowing women in combat, or encouraging female monasticism, or practicing female infanticide.
I also doubt, based on certain things that regularly come up here and there in the historical record, that men have always had the power that they claimed to have. William Lily’s astrological manuals, written in the 17th or early 18th century, for example, include a formula for using an astrological chart cast at the time of a marriage to determine “which of the two will be the master.” Again, this was reformation-era England, surely the good old days of the patriarchy– and yet it was an open enough question that people felt the need to consult an astrologer to determine the answer on a case by case basis. Two thousand years earlier, Ocellus Lucanus (I think), a contemporary of Plato, was complaining of men who marry wealthy women. “For the wife who surpasses her husband in wealth, in birth, and in friends, is desirous of ruling over him, contrary to the law of nature. But the husband justly resisting this desire of superiority in his wife, and wishing not to be the second, but the first in domestic sway, is unable, in the management of his family, to take the lead.” Again, the point isn’t that the official line was that the rulership of the wife is “contrary to the laws of nature,” but simply that it happened frequently then, just as now. Lucanus sounds very much like the boys of our Highly Online Right, demanding a simpering tradwife rather than a partner in household management– and I suspect that Spengler would tell us that both Lucanus and the tradwives can be found in the same part of the historical cycle.
With all that said, there is also a pendulum swing going on, and more than one pendulum swinging. Saturn is the malefic feminine planet, and has been very active among our activist class for the past two decades. Speech policing, censorship, and highly feminized bureaucracy are all manifestations of Saturn. His opposite among the masculine planets is Mars, the Lesser Malefic, who is now demanding his place at the head of the table. I personally find the whole situation appalling, and do my part by raising a daughter who will never learn in my household that her husband is to be her “head,” even if he “loves her with the love of Christ.” She has her own head, and my job is to teach her to use it. My own wife and I trade roles as necessary– but then, she also surpasses me in wealth, in birth, and in friends.
@ Mary Bennet @ CA politics, gerrymandering, 1 party state
I am the second person to respond and say that all is not right with our (California ) elections and politics. Maybe those of us that are in the middle of it do see what is going on
The gerrymandering, prop 50, was voted no in the regions of California that were affected, it was imposed on them, they did not vote for it.
LA Mayor; none of the rest of California cares. I have no idea why it bothers you when it doesnt bother the rest of California. We figure LA is a weird place and alot of their values and decisions dont make alot of sense. If you try thinking that way too, you can just shake your head and sigh along with the rest of us. LA is like a Narcisist, they think they are the center of the world and the best thing to do is to just not engage.
California Governors race: Becerra is going to win. That has been decided by the California Democratic political machine. He was anointed after the previous favorite had to withdraw his nomination due to a sexual scandal. And, he, Becerra, is not a white male. I literally have had a person tell me they voted for him specifically because of his ethnicity. That is likely common. Not to mention that colorful voting ads were sent to every registered democratic voter before the primary to give him name recognition and tell them to vote for him. He was not the most knowledgeable democrat in the debates at all, another democrat going for the nomination, Steyer, was seen by many to be more qualified. That said, we had low voter turn out and it should have been lower except that California has legal ballot harvesting. Alot of Californians do not trust the way the votes came in and how we handle voting registration and signature matching on mail in ballots. I do not know how many illegal ballots ( votes from non-existent people, people who have moved, are in nursing homes with someone else voting all their ballots and the known buying of homeless votes to mention a few) California has same day registration with mail in ballots counted for the next week. Citizenship is not verified, but that is not the biggest problem at all, there is no birth certificate check, there could be made up people voting. The match on signatures doesnt have to be a close match, they are almost never not verified, so anyone can be signing for a mail in ballot for someone who has moved out of state, or is incapacitated. Anyways, you should not worry about the British guy getting to be Governor, hell is not freezing over. But, maybe we will get some interesting debates or some actual issues in the state will get brought up due to having a republican in the race and not just 2 democrats .
And, the best thing to do is to not worry about it. I dont, and I live here and I think Becerra is an even bigger tool than Newsom.
While he wont be governor, California has had foreign born Governors before and fairly recently, remember Arnold Schwarzenegger ? He did as good of a job as most. California is a very large state and has alot of immigrants from all over the world. We do have alot of UK ex-pats. I dont get what you have against UK born naturalized citizens running for office. You think this is any different, or worse since it is the only nationality you brought up, than ones born in Canada, Mexico, Somalia, Austria or anywhere else ?
The World cup being hosted in North America took me by surprise as I dont follow sports. But, now I see alot of little news blips on it and it seems that it is bringing up alot of patriotic feelings in the USA. Both because of our team but also due to all the tourists enjoying themselves here and bringing in positive vibes.
Seems like realy, realy good timing leading up to the start of our 250th anniversary.
And, it seems like soemthing has shifted, more positive vibes in general
What do you all think ? Background garabage in the ether is going down…. things feel more positive ?
I recently heard that an old friend has chosen to take a vow of Sallekhana (a form of ritual suicide by starvation). If I’m being honest, he’s never really seemed comfortable or competent at being a human, so I’m not too surprised. I’d always figured it was that he had a rough childhood, but he told me he somehow knows that he will be “going home” once he dies, a sense he can’t explain beyond that.
It’s a little hard to avoid reading this in light of your vision; and its lead me to a fairly troubling thought about the reason why so many prophetic religions have ended up embracing suicide over the years.
I was deeply depressed for a while, but never committed suicide. It’s not, if I’m being honest, because I thought anything would get better: it’s more that overcoming a basic instinct (survival) and intentionally ending your life is hard. I was too weak willed to do it. I suspect that had my personality been more aggressive I would have done something violent and foolish; had the chance presented itself, I would have died in heroics; but intentional suicide is not easy. The human instinct to live is pretty powerful.
The troubling thought is that everything gets easier the more you do it. So if these alien souls knew at some deep level there would be a period of time where they needed to make sure to be out of incarnation, practicing getting out of incarnation by reliable means in advance makes a lot of sense…..
I actually don’t agree with Spengler’s use of fellah. In the 3rd century CE, common Egyptians born in small agricultural villages started the audacious movement of entering the desert and living there as monks. They hadn’t done anything so surprising since at least the unification of Egypt more than 3000 years earlier.
Those same monks and their supporters then took a very active role in disputes with the Greek-speaking ruling elite, and in about 400 CE a new literature in the Egyptian literature began after a millennium of domination by foreign languages.
Finally, beginning in the 10th century CE, that Egyptian language and Christian religion were largely substituted by Arabic and Islam in a long, bitter and vividly remembered struggle.
I don’t see Spengler’s fellah passivity in any of this. Toynbee modified his scheme of civilization in books 9 and 10 of his magnum opus to better account for Egypt and China.
There was a young man from Dubai
Who put his faith in AI
May he R.I.P.
For ChatGPT
Said, “It’s okay to jump, you can fly.”
Oops! I’ve just seen there are suddenly a heck of new comment this morning (local time). I’ll answer only the most interesting ones, IMHO.
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Tyler A. # 221:
“the English failed to colonize Russia then, and will never forgive the Russians for it.”
It’s an interesting theory, which could explain to some extent British elites hatred against Russia for a long time, but I think it doesn’t explain very well those elites success in spreading that hatred to average Brits, unlike our elites failure in doing the same with average Spaniards here, in general terms. Maybe “better” propaganda?
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JMG # 230:
“One of the weird things about the extreme right is how many closeted gay men you find there. Just to cite the obvious example, I thought that Lothar Machtan made a good case in his book The Hidden Hitler that Hitler and a good share of the Nazi elite were gay.”
I think you’ve opened a can of worms with these bizarre but likely idea. It’s an uneasy situation to be admited by usual woke leftist gay activists and far right/Neonazis alike, he he…If Hitler and quite Nazis were really gay, I’m afraid they wouldn’t be pointed as “beings of light” for gay hall of fame, and Hollywood wouldn’t never shoot any movie about that dirty topic…(nor European film-makers).
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Patrick H. # 233:
“Material prosperity is declining, nihilism is prevalent, people continue to be jerks, and the Spectacle which hid the hypocrisy of Western foreign policies has broken down.
So portions of the more radical Left are losing faith in feminism and LGBTQ acceptance to deliver the goods.”
I agree. I can add to your comment answering me, that LGTBI… and feminism are preferred by current “Left” because they’re soft targets which don’t disturb factic powers (especially in economics), only disturb socially conservative people, so do the math.
I know portions of the radical left (and less radical leftists) are giving up woke ideology as a hot rock, joining the discontent old school leftists who never trusted woke ideology (at least here). So they’re blamed (at least here) as “rojipardos” by wokesters: “fake” leftists who indeed would be far righters…I think it’s a dishonest thoughtstopper for avoiding any inner criticism against wokism from the own left wing, and maybe a sign of desperation within wokesters to keep the social narrative control (threatened not only by their slow defeat by the right wing in the cultural wars, but also by the inner leftist “rebellion”).
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Inna # 246:
“Also, there is definitely no animosity in Spain and Latin America (also, personal experience).”
Yes, Latin people migrants here haven’t any hatred against Russians. It’s interesting Russophobic propaganda peak here was in 2022, during first months of war, but then even the most warmongering MSM have going down in their claims. Nowadays, there’s “only” a lower level of that propaganda. It’s a very different situation from current British animosity.
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(To be continued)
TV rejection in your life:
I barely watch TV nowadays, I started to give up TV watching slowly during COVID losckdowns, you can guess why (toxic stuff in TV during those sad times), and I hadn’t any problem to watch less and less shows. Although I haven’t been as radical as JMG and others in this blog to fully stop watching TV, I think my mild decision has bettered my body and mind health in the long term. I don’t regret my decision.
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Gunstone # 267:
“he foresaw a “coloured world revolution”, where the “coloured races” (which to him included Slavs and Mediterraneans) would use the benefits of Western technology, medicine, etc against their creators,”
Oops!, I see Spengler had his bias against Southern Europeans, who (including myself) see ourselves as “white people” and long time civilized people. Well, nobody’s perfect…
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David P. # 274:
No argument here. What I had in my mind when I differenciated between legal and illegal migrants is current and declining woke dominant narrative says if you don’t like non legal migration, you’re a fascist…even if you’re a leftist (then, they blame you as a “rojipardo” fascist-like supporter, ahem).
I think legal migrants are better, or less bad, than the other ones, but of course eventually they’ll get old and they’ll need to be paid in their retirement…So this Ponzi scheme will fail finally too (sooner, if we keep on allowing massive illegal migration thanks to woke narrative).
Yes, a lot of migrants (even illegal) enjoy many different subsidies here, too; especially thanks to their many children… It’s one of the favorite far right criticisms against massive migration here (Vox). I think it’s a half truth. A lot of migrants manage to bringe here their many children from their origin countries, so they get a lot of public help…However, when they’re living some years here, high housing prices and another economical problems prevents them to “breed”much more children, at least it’s what I see in my town. Their birth rate ends beings the same (low) than “native” people.
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Luke Z. # 283:
“I would agree most people with tattoos are average people. I would argue most of them are 20% more open minded though. I bet that’s provable in the realm of sociology.”
Well, I haven’t any statistics which support or denies my point of view, I can only witness what I see in my town streets and bars…I think tattooed people was counter-cultural maybe during ´90s, when I was a young guy, but nowadays this custom is so spread than its “rebel” and “open mind” power has waned, at least here. If some of its “power” has survived, it seems it’s very discrete, according what I look here. Of course, maybe things can be different between different countries, due to likely cultural features.
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Mawkernewek # 292:
“However, Russians being white, they can still be an ‘acceptable’ target as a kind of displacement.”
Yes, but Russians are “white Europeans”, to some extent, with some refusal by “true” Europeans to see them like “real” Europeans…Sometimes Russians are depicted like half-Asians. For example, in Franco regime propaganda here, evily evil Russian Commies were usually depicted as Turkey-Chinese (sic), to dehumanize them as non Whites).
It’s a similar case of Central Europe far right people who usually have pointed Spaniards, Italians and Greeks aren’t true Europeans (White People). “Africa begins beyond the Pyrinees”, according some “funny” French man…Spanish people can be seen to some extent like half-Moor/Arab people, in a xenophobical way…(ahem).
@JMG – that makes sense
We will start preparing for a full on event in 2028 (meaning we’ll contact you and post an announcement here in the Open Thread etc and basically start serious preparations in 2027, about a year ahead of time).
However if you make it here to the UK on your other business in 2027, I hope you’ll post an announcement and have a smaller scale get together in London for an evening – I think a lot of the UK crowd will turn up given sufficient notice.
@Karim and @BorealBear – Glastonbury was great – hopefully it’ll be another good event in 2028. You won’t miss it as long as you keep an eye here – there will be posts in the Open Thread and I imagine JMG will also post an announcement on his Dreamwidth blog like he did last time, with plenty of time to make travel arrangements etc.
PS – I don’t have the videos taken of last year’s event. I did the filming, but Brigid (who led on organizing last year’s event) has the camera and the video. I know she was thinking of putting it on YouTube but I don’t believe she’s gotten around to it.
I have been watching through a video game named Arcanum. And it puts forward an interesting Lore premise.
As technological civilization advances so does disenchantment which is a central lore premise of its world. And lo and behold even during medieval times it is noted that Faerie manifestation is hindered by cold iron and by Church Bells ringing. Rationality perhaps itself being a kind of antithesis to their manifestations.
I do wonder if Fae interfaces with us electromagnetically such that iron scrambles or stops the manifestation dead. Similar to how salt especially unrefined salt does something similar enabling it to act as a purifier and barrier.
Although for the greater beings like the Christian God. Angelic manifestations and such aren’t really hindered in said highly rationalized and technological world. Of course in natural theology, Christ is identified with the Logos which is particularly prominently used in orthodox apologetics.
Which paradoxically makes the Scientific Revolution and such allies of said Cosmology.
@DT
“Having grown up in Christian fundamentalism, I understand the teaching of wives to submit. I also understand the strongest argument against it, which is that when any man is given that kind of power, they will tend towards abuse of that power. ”
This is also why there is both the wife’s submission and the requirement for the Husband to love his wife as Jesus loved his Church. It does assume that both are genuine Christians. One allows for a stop-gap when disagreement arises and a tie-breaker is needed and unity of purpose so that Husband and wife may be one social unit. And other prevents abuse. Of course criminal Justice and the Church also enables accountability if the above fails.
Also the history of Christian traditional sex roles weren’t a fantasy. St John Chrysostom keyed into the norms of the Church of the time had this to say:
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230120.htm
Greetings JMG,
I remember this chart that showed that natural gas supply will be reduced by 20 % in 2035 . Natural gas remaining reserves are mostly in Russia, Iran and Qatar. What impact do you think it will have on industrial production worldwide ?
Thank you.
@Inna, you’re from Piter? One of my favourite places on earth. I worked there 2014-15, on Kazanskaya Ulitsa. For about half the time, I lived Vasilievsky Island (Ulitsa Korablestroyteley) before moving to Cheboksarsky Lane between the Singer Building and the Cathedral on Spilled Blood.
As a Brit, one of the things that really struck me was the Asian-ness of the city. I don’t mean the migrant workers (mostly Uzbek), but the people with pale skin and blonde or red hair, but with “Asian” cheekbones and eye shapes (even if the eye colour was green or grey). I heard people lament the Soviet era, “when an Uzbek could marry a Ukrainian and settle here”.
In many ways, it seems to me that Russia has a model of the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional society within a strong national identity that reflects the ideal that many British progressives claim as an ideal – but achieved through ‘traditional values’ that are anathema to them.
That, though, I’d put as just a garnish. I think the real roots of British Russophobia derive from the fundamental differences of their respective empires – MacKinder’s analysis.
Britain, like France and, earlier, Spain and Portugal, was a maritime power. It dominated resource sources around the world, and extracted their wealth, through naval power. This was particularly true of ‘ the Jewel in the Crown’, the Raj: India. As long as Britain could maintain a stronger navy than other powers, it would be dominant – and it did this very successfully.
Russia, though, was a land power. First of all, it had to defeat its land enemies to its west: Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then it had to establish a status quo with the Muslim South: the Ottomans and the Persians. This took it well into the era of western maritime empire. And then… Russia began its slow march east, into Central Asia.
For close to a century, British planners could see Russian railroads gradually inching their way towards India’s northern border, potentially able to transfer its army and Cossacks quickly to the northwest frontier. British armies, by contrast, had to travel slowly by troopship and then march the length of India. Weakening Russia by any means necessary became their absolute strategic priority; the arrival of the Russian railways in Afghanistan their constant nightmare.
They did, in the event, reach an agreement and, I think, this is why they were allies in the per-WWI Triple Entente: Germany’s development of a first-class fleet threatened the British and French empires. while its development of rail links to the Ottoman empire (the Berlin-Baghdad rail service) threatened both British and Russian interests.
But, I think London has never lost its terror of a powerful, stable Russia that has the capacity to force the UK to the periphery of Eurasian influence, with all the loss of political and economic weight that would bring.. As modern Russia booms while Britain de-industrialises, that terror only grows. And so we’re told we have to hate Russia…
For what it’s worth, of course, if and when ordinary British people do get to visit Russia, they love it. Which I suppose is why it’s being made difficult these days.
“One of the weird things about the extreme right is how many closeted gay men you find there.”
“Eradicate homosexuals and fascism will disappear” – Maxim Gorky. Pravda on 23 May 1934,
It isn’t a coincidence that Fascism was so fashionable too. And loves leather quite a bit. There is even an analysis on how SS uniforms make you feel so powerful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60FM9WjkXtA&pp=ygURbmF6aXMgZmFzaGlvbmFibGU%3D
But it is basically keeping itself in line with historic German Military Uniforms that was just as big on bling prior to WWI. Military Uniforms are always meant to be fashionable. Weapons and Armor too for the Warrior Nobles.
This morning (local time), I was in my favorite bar during my coffee time, so I’ve read my town main newspaper. When I’ve looked at the obituary section, I’ve known Serguei Ivanov has passed away (73). This topic is loosely related with the Russophobia topic. I’ve checked the article about Mr. Ivanov recent death was mildly neutral, in spite of current low level Russophobia bias within this conservative newspaper. The journalist points Ivanov was a close friend of Putin, one of his ministers, and one of his main ideologues; but he also writes he liked sports, for example basketball. I mean, he’s depicted as an human being in spite of being an EU “enemy”. Often it’s said that in my country nobody speaks bad comments about recently dead people, but I think this “humane” obituary seems beyond the cultural common place.
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Leftist Antisemitism topic:
I’ve been seeing some ominous changes from fake antisemitism (honest criticism against Netanyahu government dirty behavior) to real
Antisemitism in the Left here.
First example: yesterday I saw a little poster in the street whose slogan was “Let’s destroy Zionist State”. I think if tomorrow the IDF were unlikely destroyed, I doubt Israeli civilians lives would be forgiven by some angry Palestinians/Arabs. “Vae victis!”(oh the defeated!). It seems far leftists who wrote that slogan are asking for an implicit Israeli Jews massacre in a near future (cough). Or maybe are dumb and reckless people.
Second example: I’m reading recently more and more online leftist comments and posts in another blogs, whose main idea is Zionists control everything in the world. Well, one thing is to think Zionism has a lot of power yet, but another different one is to believe they control and cause everything it happens globally. This idea seems to close to the old rehashed conspiracy theory, “Protocols of Zion Wisemen” and another Nazi-like rubbish…Of course, when you point this dangerous friendship with Fascist ideas, they always get angry and repeat you they’re true leftists (ahem). They love to hide these claims with the fig leaf of Anti-Zionism due to Gaza massacre. Ironically, some of these Antisemitic Leftists aren’t “rojipardos”, but wokesters, at least to some extent.
@JMG That’s what’s happened with China; its radical Faustianization under Communism has given it a new lease on life — temporary, I suspect, but we’ll see.” My own feeling, based on a decade and a half of living in China, is that the current situation there is a system and a societal form that most people fully support and feel works for them. It may face long-term historical and economic challenges that it can’t withstand, but that’s true of all societies, and I suspect China will withstand them longer and better than Europe or Japan. What makes you doubt this (asking out of interest, not for argument)?
@Gunstone
both Russia and Japan would each have a strong geopolitical imperative towards preventing China from becoming a single powerful empire again. Japan, yes. Russia, not necessarily: Tsarist Russia and Qing-dynasty Russia lived alongside each other as powerful, unified states for centuries, rather successfully.
the Chinese Communist Party which was perhaps the only force cohesive enough and non-corrupt enough to take over the entire mainland. The Kuomingtang under Chiang Kai-Shek was notoriously kleptocratic and incompetent and never ruled the whole country without some provincial government going warlord Yes, agreed.
I found one timeline where the Russians and Japanese carve up most of China which ultimately leads to a Muslim warlord from the far West of the country (out of range of those two powers) taking over the country. Well, there’s always one timeline, of course, but I collect travel narratives of the region from the late 19th-century to the 1930s and 1940s, and they all agree that in Xinjiang Russian/Soviet influence was as strong as, if not stronger than, that of the Chinese government (Beijing under the Qing, Nanjing under the Guomindang) for the simple reason that they were much closer. Russia was also very influential in (all of, then post-independence Outer) Mongolia and in Manchuria during the first two-and-a-bit decades of the 20th century.
David P.#272, Zanni#93
I am a student of the philosofical materialism system proposed by Gustavo Bueno, wich states the next claim about the link between the roman gods and the Virgin and the saints :
” the Catholicism triumphed and became universal precisely by merging with the legal and mythological culture of the Roman Empire (starting with the Council of Nicaea). Catholicism did not destroy the Roman pantheon; it metamorphosed it. It converted the temples of the gods into basilicas of saints and the statues of deities into images of the Virgin and martyrs. This kept intact the psychological and social need of the faithful to worship plural, close, and corporeal entities.”
@ Slink
Wish I could, I actually cant drive that far, so whenever I go thru there I am in a family members car !
You do live in a beautiful place up there for sure. We, myself and offspring/offspring family, were meeting in the middle more or less, of our respective homes for a short camping trip over Solstice weekend. We carpooled from both ends, so 2 households joined up from mid-ish Coastal Oregon end, driving down the 101, and 2 households from here driving up the 101. We had the worse drive (traffic) no matter what the maps say, although it is likely the case that that one section of 101 north between you and my family members is still under its perpetual construction with a lane closure…..
We actually camped on someones air bnb property right on the river in Miranda. Very peacefull
If you ever make it down to this southern end of the Coastal Redwood territory, let me know. We could try for a small get together if anyother eco-sophians in the SF bay area are interested. Inna is over the hill, about 1 hr away from me, Temporary Reality is busy a few counties to the east about 2 1/2 hours. I was blessed to meet them on separate occasions here. There may be others, but if so I am not aware. I am on a few acres in the hills outside of santa cruz, so yes, also redwoods and river and ocean here like you all have up there
Probably more appropriate for Magic Monday, but it’s open post time. I regard myself as a Christian Druid. I see that Druidic aspect of me from earliest childhood and unconsciously in parents and grandparents. I did become a member of AODA but decided not to go through through the courses of study. In my two encounters with trees in that patch of riparian forest – one tree telling me I was a pine tree person, the second triggering the tree qigong encounter, both trees were august California valley oaks. Are oaks teachers of wisdom? I sense that older oaks have a sweet gravitas and a giving spirit. Any insight on oak characteristics like you shared with the pine?
I run across pagan types online saying we northwestern Europeans need to honor our ancestors and return to their gods. This amuses me.That is my background. My ancestors were devout Protestants back to the 1500’s and arrived in New England in the early 1600’s to practice that faith. I am descended from cousins of John and Samuel Adams. And before the later 1500’s going back to over 1000 years it was the Orthodox/Catholic version of Christianity. Before the 1054 split those two branches were one. And I am sure as you go back farther and farther you find differing and changing versions of gods and spiritualities So I find that pagan argument weak and non historical. If anything me changing gods would be a betrayal of my ancestors going back many generations. I am a Roger Williams type of guy and say “Let freedom ring”.
Nuts, I may have inadvertently posted my “pagan argument” before editing it and completing it. Will see how it looks and may have something to add.
“But I’ve always viewed the Democrats becoming the dominant party in the political realignment after they’ve kicked out the hated liberal Democratic establishment and their #Resistance lackeys ”
The string of victories of the Democratic Socialist (as they call themselves) wing of the party is starting to worry the old timers. The billionaires that fund the Democrats aren’t happy either.
As for TV rejection, to spin the old Soviet Russia trope somewhat, In rural America TV rejects you!
More accurately when they turned off the old analog broadcast stations TV in the countryside stopped. The digital signals have much shorter range and the TV stations never rebuilt the translator towers. In towns of adequate size you can get cable at their famously extortionate rates, and satellite is still around, also at an extortionate rate.
Streaming is possible for me but I got out of the habit of TV. Even when I had it was boring, all the plots have been beat to death. There are better sources of news, weather, and sports, and I don’t even care about the latter.
“One of the weird things about the extreme right is how many closeted gay men you find there. Just to cite the obvious example, I thought that Lothar Machtan made a good case in his book The Hidden Hitler that Hitler and a good share of the Nazi elite were gay.”
You see it in today’s far right as well. How many people involved in the alt-right / white nationalist movement in the past decade are gay or transgender.
“That said, we had low voter turn out and it should have been lower except that California has legal ballot harvesting. Alot of Californians do not trust the way the votes came in and how we handle voting registration and signature matching on mail in ballots. I do not know how many illegal ballots ( votes from non-existent people, people who have moved, are in nursing homes with someone else voting all their ballots and the known buying of homeless votes to mention a few) California has same day registration with mail in ballots counted for the next week. Citizenship is not verified, but that is not the biggest problem at all, there is no birth certificate check, there could be made up people voting. The match on signatures doesnt have to be a close match, they are almost never not verified, so anyone can be signing for a mail in ballot for someone who has moved out of state, or is incapacitated.”
You should probably expect more of this low voter turnout and Democrats winning the elections across the nation in 2026 and 2028, because a lot of the America First MAGA base is pissed of at Trump and the Republican Party for “being Israel First and betraying America and 2024 election promises”, and is likely to vote for Democrats or third party or sit the race out, just to spite Trump and the Republican Party, who they now view as traitors to the America First MAGA cause.
The upcoming Florida Governor Republican primary is another election to keep an eye on: whether groyper and Christian nationalist candidate James Fishback is able to win vs Trump endorsed Byron Donalds, and if Fishback loses, whether Fishback’s groyper and Christian nationalist supporters are going to support the Democratic candidate or sit the election out just so they can spite Byron Donalds.
“Second example: I’m reading recently more and more online leftist comments and posts in another blogs, whose main idea is Zionists control everything in the world. Well, one thing is to think Zionism has a lot of power yet, but another different one is to believe they control and cause everything it happens globally. This idea seems to close to the old rehashed conspiracy theory, “Protocols of Zion Wisemen” and another Nazi-like rubbish…Of course, when you point this dangerous friendship with Fascist ideas, they always get angry and repeat you they’re true leftists (ahem). They love to hide these claims with the fig leaf of Anti-Zionism due to Gaza massacre. Ironically, some of these Antisemitic Leftists aren’t “rojipardos”, but wokesters, at least to some extent.”
AKA the unholy Red-Green-Brown alliance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%E2%80%93green%E2%80%93brown_alliance
Communists, Islamists, Nazis / white nationalists vs Zionists and the American empire.
@ Rajarshi #139
Farm wives in English, German, or American households could make or break the household.
A clever, hardworking, capable wife who was also a gifted cheesemaker or had other, extra and salable skills could make the difference between scraping by and getting ahead.
Was this true in India?
Aldarion # 310:
“Finally, beginning in the 10th century CE, that Egyptian language and Christian religion were largely substituted by Arabic and Islam in a long, bitter and vividly remembered struggle.”
Yes, and nowadays there’s still a Christian Coptic minority in Egypt., more or less 8% of its population. Coptic language, heir of the Phraraohs language, is only used as a “dead language” within Coptic Church, with its own alphabet.
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Bogatyr # 317:
I had explained British elites hatred against Russia to some extent, looking at historical and actual geopolitics, in a previous comment, too. Yes, a land empire (even today, Russia is the biggest country in the world) and a sea empire aren’t exactly friends.
However, I think this theory doesn’t explain well the middle and lower class Brit people meekness to believe blindly their elites Russophobic propaganda, in contrast with another European countries, whose “human scum”(according their elites predictable view), didn’t believe it with any enthusiasm, beyond usual PMC like the usual journalists…
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Info # 318:
“Eradicate homosexuals and fascism will disappear” – Maxim Gorky. Pravda on 23 May 1934,”
I think this real phrase in Little Father Stalin times is very embarrasing, not only for (Neo)Nazis, but also for today woke left: old school Commies weren’t very friend of gay people (ahem). So homophobic leftists were in those times correlatives of some Nazis fondness, or at least understanding, of gay attitudes within their movement (double ahem).
Native Brits are looking to leave the UK as soon as possible:
https://xcancel.com/RobLancaster72/status/2070999845490585779#m
Re. Spengler forecast,
In the book “Der Mensch und die Technik” (1931) O. Spengler said:
“The mechanization of the world has entered on a phase of highly dangerous over-tension. The picture of the earth, with its plants, animals, and men, has altered. In a few decades most of the great forests have gone, to be turned into news-print, and climatic changes have been thereby set afoot which imperil the land-economy of whole populations. Innumerable animal species have been extinguished, or nearly so, like the bison; whole races of humanity have been brought almost to vanishing-point, like the North American Indian and the Australian.
All things organic are dying in the grip of organization. An artificial world is permeating and poisoning the natural. The Civilization itself has become a machine”
So he predicted the climate change and the sixth extinction. He then continue:
“Today more or less everywhere— in the Far East, India, South America, South Africa — industrial regions are in being, or coming into being, which, owing to their low scales of wages, will face uswith a deadly competition. The unassailable privileges of the white races have been thrown away, squandered, betrayed. The others have caught up with their instructors. Possibly — with their combination of “native” cunning and the over-ripe intelligence of their ancient civilizations — they have surpassed them. Where there is coal, or oil, or water-power, there a new weapon can be forged against the heart of the Faustian Civilization. The exploited world is beginning to take its revenge on its lords. The innumerable hands of the coloured races — at least as clever, and far less exigent — will shatter the economic organization of the whites at its foundations. The accustomed luxury of the white workman, in comparison with the coolie, will be his doom. The labour of the white is itself coming to be unwanted. The huge masses of men centred in the Northern coal areas, the great industrial works, the capital invested in them, whole cities and districts, are faced with the probability of going under in the competition.
The centre of gravity of production is steadily shifting away from them, especially since even the respect of the coloured races for the white has been ended by the World War. This is the real and final basis of the unemployment that prevails in the white countries. It is no mere crisis, but the beginning of a catastrophe.”
And then he predicted what will happen to the “Machine” when the Faustian Civilization decay enough to not be a threat to the “coloured” people:
“For the coloured races, on the contrary, it is but a weapon in their fight against the Faustian civilization, a weapon like a tree from the woods that one uses as house.timber, but discards as soon as it has served its purpose. This machine-technics will end with the Faustian Civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten — our railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon. The history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture. When, and in what fashion, we know not.”
It is not impossible, but seems not probable, because technology is a weapon and even with the fall of the Faustian Civilization the geopolitical competition wil continue between the great powers of the future, but may be the pace od destruction slow down.
Cheers
David
Dobbs and JMG, the conversation here has moved on, but I wanted to chime in on the oil prices dropping while the reseves are draining. I was one of the people expecting the price to sky rocket, but that hasn’t happened so far. There are many moving parts but two factors seem decisive: China going on a buying strike (5-6mbd) and deflationary pressure.
The Chinese position is interesting: they are considered to be allies of Iran, but they undercut Irans strategy of establishing deterrence via threatening the world economy. I think China is playing the long game and doesn’t want to get into an open fight with the US. With 4x as many people and higher growth rates they could believe they are poised to become the dominant power in the world. That’s imo a dangerous assumption but if China has started to think as linear as the Faustian West it would be no surprise. China is also getting more oil from the GCC than Iran so they don’t want the Gulf on fire. Just as the US wants to monopolize energy, so China has countered by diversifying energy sources, massive reserves and creating other monopolies like rare earth which they have shown not to be afraid to use.
Nobody knows how long the oil reserves will last, but for example Cushing could run out of oil according to estimates anywhere between mid July and mid September. For other western countries I see or calculated estimates ranging from mid July to mid October.
I could be missing something, just as I missed the drop, but it looks to me there still is a significant risk that we’ll get a bottom-of-the-barrel crisis that will skyrocket oilprices. Before that happens, though, I would expect western governments to try rationing oil / energy lockdowns etc. High oilprices will fan inflation which would force the intrest on T-bills higher which would make the debt unsustainable. To kick that can lockdowns would look attractive. Another variant would be that Iran gets integrated in the USD network as an east/west link as a plan B. Perhaps outlandish but everybody is lying and double dealing so who knows…Or the war will simply resume as Israel and elements in the US want it. The bigger picture is imo that the fight for hegemony is just starting and this could easily drag on for 5 or more years. In the meantime the SoH could be intermittently open thus taking oil off the markt till expensive workarounds are established.
Apparently in the UK most of the native British converts to Islam are gingers:
https://www.jollyheretic.com/p/the-science-of-why-gingers-convert
https://redhairmyths.blogspot.com/2025/03/gingers-converting-to-islam.html
https://salamcenter.online/articles/converting-to-islam/reasons/gingers/
food for thought for anybody wondering what a potential future Islamic Britain might look like.
For those who protest against the current move to swoop down and deport anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant – a Woody Guthrie song at last night’s Oldies concert reminded me that FDR did precisely that 90 years ago, by issuing an order to round up all the Mexican workers in the entire US and fly them back to Mexico. Note: “Deportees” was NOT sung at the concert, but Guthrie put a human face on them with his eulogy for the airplane that crash, killing all aboard. One hopes they didn’t use ICE’s tactics of singling out weak individuals and brutalizing them.
It’s not surprising that history repeats when necessity calls.
Just stumbled across a very thoughtful post by Nassim Taleb, commenting on a quote by Toynbee:
“For ages scholars wasted their time & confused us trying to figure out why civilizations collapse. Few if any have looked at the RISE as a pure accidental event, followed by reversion to the mean as things should.”
https://nitter.net/nntaleb/status/2071337108015403110
I don’t think the study of collapse was a waste of time at all, but I do think the frame he’s put forward here is a very good way to look at things.
@TylerA #221,
Interesting… I didn’t know England tried to colonize Russia. Brits seem to be too… er… practical for such an endeavor. Of course, many ambitious European men tried to bring Russia into the European fold. Heck… even ambitious Russian leaders tried to do so. Vladimir the Great brought monotheistic Christianity (to this day, Russia shows its dark pagan roots like a bottle blonde), Peter the Great outlawed traditional Russian clothing and long beards (he got riots and backed off), and Yeltsin loved to blabber about democracy. Wild, unruly, and very distinct Russian culture always reasserted itself.
@Robert Mathiesen #300,
Thank you for the link! It’s really interesting and somewhat nostalgic. It’s from the town of Arkhangelsk, I remember the rule, “If your spit hits the ground as ice, it’s -40C (also -40F). Yey! No school today!”
@Bogatyr #317,
Yes, I’m from Piter, born and raised 😉 You remember the streets really well. Wow! I always wondered about you, “Why does this Brit have a Russian avatar?” Your story explains it. 😊 In Saint Petersburg, if you see Asian people with a white complexion, they are most likely Tatars. Quite a few of them live in Saint Petersburg.
MacKinder’s analysis (Heartland Theory) is very interesting, indeed.
@Atmospheric River #322, @Slink, @Inna, @Temporary Reality,
I’m farther south (Santa Barbara County), but please cc me if you start pulling together something on the West Coast. I’m pretty sure there are still more ecosophians in California too, and with luck maybe they will join in.
Anonymous 336:
Well, when British society constantly bullies gingers for their red hair and says that they have no soul, is it any surprise that gingers would turn to a religion that accepts them for having red hair and says that they do in fact have a soul? Maybe the British should stop their bigotry against gingers and start treating them equally to the rest of society if they want to stop 10% of its population converting to Islam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_people_with_red_hair#United_Kingdom
@ Forecasting & JMG RE : Anti-Semitism
I think JMG gets is right. They represent a group that have gotten themselves into a visibly comfortable position while also in terms of numbers do not have enough of them to defend themselves.
They end up being the perfect scapegoat for issues of the world. It is a calculated risk, they look foreboding at a distance but do not have enough people to push back thus are not seen as a massive risk to those that want to oppose them.
Both strong and soft at the same time depending on if you look at soft or hard power.
To JMG and esteemed fellow readers,
I read with great interest JMG’s Getting Beyond the Narratives, and I was wondering which school of occultism our host was referring to in Section IV of the letter. It sounds like a fascinating framework for thought!
“If you’re a mage, you respond to dysfunctions of this sort by shifting numbers. The traditional rule here is that numbers always change in a specific order: one becomes two, two becomes three, and three becomes one and shifts to another level. (The reasons for this rule, again, are too complex to go into here.) Thus if you’ve got a situation that presents itself as a binary, and you want to change it, you can’t effectively turn it back into a unary — it’ll just pop back into being a binary again — but you can turn the binary into a ternary by redefining the situation in terms of three independent factors, rather than two. This is called neutralizing a binary, and it’s a very common bit of magical strategy.”
@ Atmospheric River #322, @Slink, @Inna, @Temporary Reality
I live between Fresno and Bakersfield. Used to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains, still have a soft spot for Redwoods.
@Inna (#339):
You’re very welcome! It’s a fascinating website, isn’t it?
@TylerA (#221), and also Inna:
I was vaguely aware of the Muscovy Company, but not of the details. Thank you for inspiring me to go learn a bit more about its founding and its failed colonizing efforts. Yes, I think you’re right about it and the origins of British Russophobia. (America did not widely share in that British Russophobia until the McCarthy Era and its “Red hysteria.”)
I spent the 1950s, my ‘teen years, living in the San Francisco Bay area, where my immigrant Danish ancestors had settled in the 1860s. You got a different perspective on the shape of the world–very different from the current mainstream US perspective–growing up on the Pacific Coast then, where Asian lands–China, Japan and Russia–are not all that distant from you, but Western European countries (including England) were a strange, small land on the remotest backside of the globe from where you were living. And we still dimly remembered, in the 1950s, a time when England had been widely regarded as the foremost enemy of the United States, so much so that US military war-games until the late 1800s had always cast England in the role of the invader and main enemy. (The “special relationship” between the UK and the USA was created during America’s “gilded age” by wealthy, but plebeian, East-Coasters, who sought social status by marrying into British aristocratic families. Before that it was memories of our War of Independence and the War of 1812 that set the tone for American feelings about the British.)
And the San Francisco Bay area was packed full of émigré Russians (as well as very many Chinese and Japanese, too). The very earliest of these Russian settlers had come to California as early as the 1810s or 1820s, when Northern California and Alaska were still officially Russian territory but most of them came a century later, after the defeat of the Tsarist (White) Army by the Soviet (Red) Army in Russia. (My first girlfriend was one of those Russians, born in California but still very Russian, very Orthodox, and very Tsarist. I learned a lot about the inner world of Russians and Russian character from her, her Russian friends, and their families.)
We are born as human beings, constrained by our instincts and also to a certain extent by our genes. We are born into a predefined world and universe, where the food chain is in operation. “Nature red in tooth and claw”. Fortunately we stand at the top of the food chain, most of the time. Occasionally a human might be eaten by a lion, shark, or a Komodo dragon, and it must be horrifically painful. So who is to blame for this nasty food chain? Is it God, who created the universe this way? No – JMG believes that there is more than one god and that the universe created gods, along with us humans and everything else.
Apparently the universe also makes us humans subject to karma. In this heatwave in England, when I see a thin little carpet moth upon the wall in my house, I splat it with my finger. What karma will I get, if any, for that? Or must I wantonly kill a higher beast before I get karma? But isn’t it hypocritical of this universe to inflict karma on me when it operates the cruel food chain? Couldn’t the universe have been arranged in a different way, without the suffering of the food chain?
But then maybe the universe too was subject to constraints when it was born. Maybe the food chain was a given, and it had no control over that? I suppose all this has to be largely unknowable for us humans, but do you ever have thoughts or theories about it, Mr. Greer?
Regarding gender roles and Steve’s comment on William Lily, I’d argue that you can also see this in fairy tales, specifically in the evil step-mother trope. Are we to believe that Cinderella’s father approves of his new wife and step-daughters’ treatment of his own daughter? The story makes much more sense if we imagine him imagine him to have meekly surrendered to his wife—which only makes sense if the medieval European audience could relate to this power dynamic.
—David P.
Hi John Michael,
Hope you are doing OK? Tech problem stuff gives me a headache. 🙂
Thought I might just chuck in the observation that with all that oil your country is exporting right now, it goes some way to address the reduced demand for (and offloading of) the err, IOU’s. It’s a strategy. Quite a nifty one really. Dunno, just a hunch there.
Cheers
Chris
“For those who protest against the current move to swoop down and deport anyone who looks like an illegal immigrant – a Woody Guthrie song at last night’s Oldies concert reminded me that FDR did precisely that 90 years ago, by issuing an order to round up all the Mexican workers in the entire US and fly them back to Mexico.”
Considering the demographics of the American Southwest today vs 90 years ago, if somebody tried to deport every Mexican and Indio looking worker from the Southwest to Mexico, it’s likely you’ll end up with the American Southwest seceding from the United States.
@ Teresa Peschel # 331
No, sadly. India is a very fertile agricultural land, so farmers working on their fields could typically satisfy the needs of their family. This means that the menfolk contributed exclusively to the economy, with all contributions from the women being restricted to the household.
There is a gradient from Northwest to Southeast in India. The north-west is a wheat-growing region, and the south-east is a rice-growing region. Traditionally, women play a bigger role in rice cultivation and next-to-no role in wheat cultivation. Also, cooking rice is simple and cooking wheat (into roti) is a chemical manufactory of a process. This means that women in the wheat belt were almost entirely occupied in the kitchen while men did all the work, while in the rice-producing regions women had more say in the affairs of the household.
Its a really sad fact that this made India a deeply sexist country, and we are still struggling our way out of this division.
David P., I have had the same experiences with the German railway system. At the time, when I still had a job in an antique online bookshop in a village near my city, there were at times big problems with the commuter rail system; at times, I had to take several day off because of the impossibility or difficulty to get to my job. And my father related to me other adventurous tales about getting to Berlin and back. Currently, I have a job lined up in my city, so this won’t be much of an problem anymore.
And the wholt situation isn’t helped by the fact that in Germany the reaction ageinst the dysfunction of the democratic system is th demand that the AfD be outlawed, without even having a national discussion of any kind about the problems of Germany. On the other hand, I can add about the consequences of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz that there isn’t much in the way of consequences except of rising prices.
Atmospheric River @ 307, I lived in CA for about a quarter of a century so I do remember the Arnold governorship. What I heard at the time was that the former gov., Davis, had a plan to establish a state power authority and, but of course, that couldn’t be allowed. Davis was one of those wimpy academic looking guys, and Arnold was The Terminator.
First off, I note the breathtaking hypocrisy of ICE, as Patricia Matthews stated above, thank you Ms. Matthews, using ” tactics of singling out weak individuals and brutalizing them.”, whilst at the same time, the upper echelons of the Republican Party appear to be inviting into our country any and all richy rich types from just about anywhere. And not only rolling out the red carpet but shoehorning them into positions of influence. I guess the idea is that possession of great wealth makes up for the failure to actually know something about one’s new home. BTW, Christian nationalists might want to take note that the Adelson fortune came from gambling. Just saying.
I do not agree, nor have you nor anyone else convinced me that being fixer for former PM Cameron qualifies a person to govern a U.S. state. Were I still resident in CA, I would most likely have voted for Katie Porter, of whom I happen to be a bit of a fan girl–any gurl who used her position in the House to be rude to and ask mean questions of a Big Important Bank President gets my vote.
I suspect Becerra is benefitting from a growing trend against what is increasingly looking like amateur governing. The guy may have an inspiring personal history, but he also has no charisma and his public speaking ability looks to me like no better than average. Interviewees in a recent PBS report on the CA elections referred over and over to Becerra’s experience, as in this is someone who understands how our govts. work. What I noticed in the 2025 gubernatorial and mayoral elections, outside of Seattle and NYC, was voters turning out for candidates who looked and sounded like capable people who know what they are doing. I also suspect that the Gabbard resignation and revelations about her cult memberships couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Republican hopes this November.
@ JMG #241
“I gather, though, that the Jewish lobby in America no longer has the clout it once did.”
I have said several times that I did not think that the “Jewish lobby” in America (which you often credited as being organised enough to keep the US in a tight alliance with Israel) is co-terminous with the “Zionist lobby”, especially given that approximately 9 out of every 10 Zionists is Christian, not Jewish. (I’ve also said that I did not think the Jewish lobby itself is anywhere as near monolithic as it is made out to be).
The last time I said this you said it would be interesting to check into in detail, so I did.
In no particular order here are just a few of the relevant facts and links I uncovered:
1) Christians Unified for Israel (CUFI), which boasts 11 million members, is the biggest of a large number of well organised Christian zionist lobbying groups, and certainly deserves to be at least as well known as AIPAC. Its influence is directed both upwards into the centres of power, and downwards into where ordinary Christians gather in their churches, and (among other policy achievements) lays claim to the Trump administration’s decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. https://cufi.org/resource/how-you-helped-move-the-us-embassy-to-jerusalem/ Please note that in numbers alone, the membership of this one organisation may match, or even exceed the numbers of Jewish citizens of the US.
2) In a rally speech given in Wisconsin on August 17th, 2020, US President Trump said, “And we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals. It’s amazing with that. The evangelicals are more excited about that than Jewish people. It’s incredible. But we did, we did that.” https://www.rev.com/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-transcript-wisconsin-august-17
3) Successive Israeli administrations have worked very closely with the Christian Moral Majority movement that gained so much political influence and momentum in the 1970’s and 1980’s. “Soon after Menachem Begin was elected prime minister in 1977, Israel gave a Lear jet to Baptist preacher and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, who in 1980 was awarded the prestigious Jabotinsky Award. The alliance became so strong that when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981, Begin reportedly phoned Falwell to solicit political support before he informed President Reagan. In return, Falwell pledged in an address to the Rabbinical Assembly in Miami “to mobilize 70 million conservative Christians for Israel.” https://www.wrmea.org/2002-september-october/the-christian-right-and-support-for-israel.html
4) Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical US President, ironicly lost the trust of his evangelical constituency almost immediately after he gave public recognition to the human rights of Palestinians. “… the alliance between Likud and the Religious Right was [accelerated following] Carter’s March 1977 statement that he supported Palestinian human rights, including the “right to a homeland.” Likud, when it came to power just two months later, immediately reached out to Christian evangelicals. Likud’s strategy was simple: split evangelical and fundamentalist Christians from Carter’s political base and rally support among conservative Christians for Israel’s opposition to the United Nations’ proposed Middle East Peace Conference.” https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-03/evangelicals-and-israel
5) The wikipedia article on the Christian history of the Zionist idea is actually surprisingly comprehensive and well referenced, going back as far as some of its roots in the “expectaion of Jewish restoration among Christians… in 17th century English Puritan thought” which suggests that Zionism may have arrived in America with the pilgrims in the Mayflower – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism
This is a huge subject, with a massive bearing on elements of American culture and politics, and yet, it apparently escapes the notice of everyone who wonders at the relationship between the US and Israel.
It seems this relationship may be as simple, and as close, as Israel being a “twinkle in America’s eye” for centuries before its founding as the love child of the same Christian endtimes apocalypticists who left such a strong imprint on the US’s own founding principles and culture.
(Apologies for length)… 🙂
Thought for the day from a financial column,
“our responsibility isn’t to sit around predicting the precise date the system falls apart. Our responsibility is to understand the system we’re investing in.”
That applies to more than finance. The ‘second coming is nigh’ crowd keeps the same mistake.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/last-word-kernen-vs-grantham
The point of the article is summarized as
“That’s the real debate. Grantham believes valuations still matter.
They may not matter next quarter or next year, but eventually they matter.
Kernen is essentially asking whether investors have spent fifteen years waiting for history to repeat while the rules of the game have fundamentally changed.”
Those two conclusions are more generally applicable too. Has society and the economy crossed the Rubicon or is there another leg of the old world still in play?
***
BeardTree says:
June 29, 2026 at 12:40 am
@ Atmospheric River #322, @Slink, @Inna, @Temporary Reality
I live between Fresno and Bakersfield. Used to live in the Santa Cruz Mountains, still have a soft spot for Redwoods.
***
Hah! I was born and raised ”… between Fresno and Bakersfield” (Tulare) and now after journeying hither and thon have settled with my delightful French wife on the Central California Coast (Los Osos.) Please count me in as an Ecosophian interested in a future West Coast gathering too. Cheers!
“I think JMG gets is right. They represent a group that have gotten themselves into a visibly comfortable position while also in terms of numbers do not have enough of them to defend themselves.
They end up being the perfect scapegoat for issues of the world. It is a calculated risk, they look foreboding at a distance but do not have enough people to push back thus are not seen as a massive risk to those that want to oppose them.
Both strong and soft at the same time depending on if you look at soft or hard power.”
The Southern Chinese fill the same niche in Southeast Asia that the Jews do in the West, and they suffer from many of the same problems in Southeast Asia that the Jews do in the West, down to the conspiracy theories that the Southern Chinese secretly control the governments of the region and are to blame for all the problems in the region, and the frequent pogroms that the Southern Chinese face from the majority ethnic groups in the region.
BeardTree #323:
June 28, 2026 at 12:25 pm
“In my two encounters with trees in that patch of riparian forest – one tree telling me I was a pine tree person, the second triggering the tree qigong encounter, both trees were august California valley oaks. Are oaks teachers of wisdom? I sense that older oaks have a sweet gravitas and a giving spirit.”
One theory about the origin of the term “druid” is that it means “knower of oak trees” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Druid) from “dru” an oak, and “vid” the root word for “knowledge” (hence “wisdom”). I like to think that the word is ambiguous and means that the trees themselves have knowledge, e.g., the study of tree rings can provide information about rainfall in different years, which can in turn explain things like why the Anasazi abandoned sites such as Mesa Verde (there was a long drought).
What is the solution to expanding comments on the Dreamwidth site? I tried clearing my cache, but no luck. I’ve been unable to expand comments on the last two Magic Mondays.
@JMG and Beardtree regarding pines and various tree species’ compatibility with humans (or lack thereof), I would like to mention black spruce (Picea mariana). Canada’s boreal forest (the same bioregion that the Wendigo legends come from) is chock full of them in my part of Canada, farmers used to like to plant rows of them to the north and west of their farmhouses as an all-season windbreak. Thing is, I get bad vibes from them. For a while during my student days, I rented a room in a farmhouse that had a big black spruce windbreak. I lasted there two weeks because of the gloomy atmosphere radiated by these trees. I didn’t even bother trying to touch one to see for sure. No way! I am wondering if there is any traditional lore about black spruce being inimical to humans (in the same way that elms are).
So, over the weekend I finished reading your book, the Long Descent. It was material covered in various blog posts, but nonetheless it was full of fascinating insights. I would like to share a few thoughts, late in the game as this post is.
First of all, you’ve outline an excellent way of looking at the predicament, not problem, our society faces. I myself have gone through most of the mythic outlooks defoned in the book – from faith in utopian progress, to descent into apocalyptic thinking, a bout of survivalism, to an effort to trying to build alternative communities with little actual chance of its members embracing the meeded lifestyle changes. Your book plots a nice path between and beyond all such failed startegies, and allows one to understand our downward trajectory without feeling like its an inescapable tragedy. Indeed, there are plenty of things one can do to prepare for the comkng downward slope without dropping out of society or throwing away one’s life, and the steps you outlined are quite helpful, practically and emotionally for not being helpless in the face of our predicament.
I would like to point out, however, that there are some successful alternative communities that have succeeded in continuing to exist, in your local neighborhood. Twin oaks community, in central VA, has existed since 1969. They took the radical step of requiring a specific number of work hours per member and scheduling the work – radical concepts in the utopian community movemement. They were so successful, they not only survived, they spawned a couple offshoot communities. Acorn is one, but the Living Energy Farm is one I think you would be quite interested in. They combine organic agriculture, low energy impact farming methods to create a quite sustainable farmstead/community. You should look them up.
Still, they do all rely on modern social networks – medicaid basically covers all healthcare needs, for instance, and they have to sell products on the market to function, so your point about alternative community sustainability still stands.
Your book piqued my interest in old social organozations, such as the masons, and I happened to run into some at an autism even I took my children to and inquired about membership. I’ll show up to their next cookout – could be the beginning of a worthwhile chapter in my life.
I have to say, I think the butlerian future is coming sooner than you anticipated – AI is creating a serious political resistance to the prosthetic society, and making people more aware than ever of the serious disability resulting from turning one’s existemce over to machines. Increasingly, those who embrace the latest fad of the religion of progress are cripling their mind’s ability to engage in logic or critical thinking – the supposed fruits of our age of reason. Those who turn down the digital drug are watching ,horrified from the outside as massea of formerly intelligent people slide down the slope of delusion and psychosis so rapidly that you can’t miss it if you aren’t part of it. I think this AI mess might be the end of the religion of progress and the the start of a mass turning away from the prosthetic society.
Anywau, excellent book, glad I chose to buy and read it.
No talks between Iran and the United States are scheduled in the upcoming days, because certain points of the MOU, such as an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, have not yet been implemented.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/no-iran-us-talks-in-coming-days-irans-foreign-ministry-spokesperson-says/
Hello Mr Greer
Reading about someone else’s dreams is usually a bit boring but as I have experienced something of a synchronicity, I’d like to bring up one of mine. I dreamed that I was in a brothel which I then left. Interestingly, in the morning it turned out that a chapter in a book I was reading was on Artemidorus and dream interpretation in ancient Greece. An example was given specifically of dreaming about being in a brothel – apparently entering a brothel and being able to leave is good, while being unable to leave is bad (and even supposedly presaged death in a case cited by Artemidorus).
Are you familiar with Artemidorus’ Interpretation of Dreams, and do you find it relevant for our age? In a relatively recent post you have written that sometimes dreams can be pretty straightforward predictions. Do you have any additional thoughts on how dream work can be established as a regular practice? Thank you.
Re: marriage roles
The consensus seems to be that the “someone needs to be in charge” argument mostly applies to marriages where the spouses don’t already see eye to eye. In those cases, having one spouse be the designated tie breaker prevents endless power struggle.
If you’re well-matched in marriage, however, a fluid dance with lead changes based on roles and circumstances seems to evolve naturally. Even for those who say they follow the wifely submission model, what they describe is virtually indistinguishable from my own marriage, which does not follow the headship/submission model. In both cases, each spouse has areas or times where they typically take the lead, while taking into account the advice and preferences of the other. I suppose the difference is mostly that the wifely submission model often assigns roles more traditionally/less freely, and that the husband gets firm veto power while the wife might ultimately be overruled.
When I discussed this with my husband, he said, “Well, if you ever felt strongly enough about something to outright tell me what to do, I’d assume it was really important and do it,” which is my stance as well. But I can imagine that if I were married to a different sort of man, I might feel very differently, and so might he if I were a different sort of woman. In that case, having someone designated as being “in charge” might be the only way to make the marriage work, if preservation of the marriage were the overriding goal and the alternative were a constant fight over who would prevail over whom.
In defense of the men on the New Right, most of them that I’ve encountered are (justifiably in my opinion) reacting against the creeping wokeness and feminization of everything and the erosion of any sort of positive masculine role in our society. Also in their defense, I often see quite a generous scope in their vision of wifely domains and responsibilities; it isn’t all power and dominance fantasy (although I do think some of them are trying to build ideological scaffolding for a subculture in which they are not expected to act like kicked dogs by trying to become the person doing the kicking).
Perhaps y’all have run across this before, but if not:
Dr.Seuss and the Call of Cthulhu – Adult ReadAlong #readalong #drseuss #lovecraft #cthulhu
Little Cozy Nostril
15.6K subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCFdYRzCWw
You’re welcome, I’m sure!
Mr. Greer .. In a prior post, you made some reference to Tucker Carlson being of the ‘woke right’ … (or is that woke reich..??) .. of which I made a sort of mock response ( Nooo! How can that be!!) Well, I’m still kinda confused as to what you mean.. For my own part, I believe there is in fact a WR … but Mr. Tucker ain’t it … If anything, many of the ‘stable-o-bros/broesse ‘influencers’ are absolute phonies(sp) … only in it for the outrage clicks & bitcoinage/benjamin$. So, having said that, can you clarify??
Anselmo # 321:
It seems allegations about Catholicism being a shamefullly disguised Paganism is quite more older than modern materialist philosophy(ies). Indeed, at least since Luther times, Catholics have been blamed for being apparently worshipping gods (male saints) and goddesses (female saints and Holy Mary). I think there’s a serious part of truth in these accusations, and a part of open propaganda form Protestant Churches.
I also think it’s a bit reductionist to identify Paganism hidden within Rome church, only in its fondness to statues and pictures of their favorite heroes. For example, I bet Catholicism (and Eastern Europe Orthodox Christianism too) is partly based or inspired in Greek-Roman times philosophies, like Platonism, Aristotle and Stoicism, due to “strange” coincidences” in ethics and even theology (though I’m not an expert in them). In addition to this, there are another old influences, like Manicheism. It seems Protestants have had more success in hiding these suspicious links with their Pagan former “enemies”, methink.
It’s interesting some religious thinkers like Berdyaev wrote that Christianism in general wasn’t a partial plagiarism of Pagan thought and beliefs, but near the opposite: some Pagans were predecessors of Jesus and his followers teachings. Well, “si non é vero, é ben trovato”.
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Anonymous # 330:
“Communists, Islamists, Nazis / white nationalists vs Zionists and the American empire”
OMG! What a bizarre political blend…Let’s wait to see how it ends this mess (I hope not very well for democracies). I think woke doctrine won’t fail tomorrow, but eventually it would fall due to its contradictions and excesses, but I don’t hope any much better replaces it in the ruling narrative.
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DFC # 334:
“The Civilization itself has become a machine””
A phrase which amazes me, because Lewis Mumford himself could have agreed with Spengler in that idea, according I understand it. However, ironically and paradoxically, Mumford was near in the opposite ideological side of past century political spectrum; but Mumford and Spengler alike thought modern Civilization and machine rhymes.
On the other hand, Mumford pointed the first and oldest (Mega)Machine was the Pharaohs Egypt with its gigantic pyramids and another power exhibitions. I’m afraid Spengler wouldn’t agree in this idea.
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Slithy # 338:
“For ages scholars wasted their time & confused us trying to figure out why civilizations collapse. Few if any have looked at the RISE as a pure accidental event, followed by reversion to the mean as things should.”
I’m not a complete fan of Mr. Taleb, but I think his phrase tells everybody a hard lesson about History, especially for those scholars so obsessed with collapse (as a “strange” event), but not with the really strange event named “rise” of this or that civilization. In real History, it’s difficult to find a “1,000 years Reich”, like those evil Germans dreamt during ’30s and ’40s.
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Zemi # 346:
“Fortunately we stand at the top of the food chain, most of the time. Occasionally a human might be eaten by a lion, shark, or a Komodo dragon, and it must be horrifically painful.”
And occasionally, a human might be also “eaten” (in a metaphorycal sense) by a deadly virus or bacteria, especially and more often if you live in a poor country (for example, by malaria or tuberculosis).
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Booklover # 351:
“in Germany the reaction ageinst the dysfunction of the democratic system is th demand that the AfD be outlawed, without even having a national discussion of any kind about the problems of Germany”
I think that serious decision should be very justified according real threats to democracy, and not the German government and its supporters biases against far right. I see things are getting hotter in Germany than here, for the moment, if that radical measure is even suggested.
The only one awful thing I’ve read in Spanish MSM during this year (and the worst one, IMHO), related with usual polarization, happened in April, when two woke left morons (one of them a known feminist, former Minister; and the other one, a leftist Catalan secessionist), talked in a public act about stopping the Fascism. Of course, they were thinking in our far right main party (Vox), whose occurrences aren’t very good in general for this country…but they’re allowed in a democracy, by now. I think the case of AfD is similar to our far righters here. It seems Vox nor AfD are true Fascist parties by the moment…It’s interesting far right here avoids carefully to attack our Constitution directly for avoiding leftist temptations to suggest them to be banned. I bet AfD has the same or similar strategy, too (if they aren’t stupid).
There were a lot of criticism against these two big mouths here, mainly but not only by the right wing. Well, we’re in summer but the two brave freedom fighters against what they define by themselves as Fascism haven’t attacked their black beast yet. So…we’ll keep waiting.
JMG, glad to hear you want to come back to Europe again in 2028 and possibly sooner. I remember you mentioning Carcassonne. Is that a possibility too or just Glastonbury again? A budget airline flies there, Ryanair. Would you consider doing both?
Anonymous 297,
What the average person supports in typically doesn’t have much of an impact on politics. More important are the elites composition of the coalitions of each party. People hate wars and immigration but that doesn’t matter if the Republican Party elites support wars in the Middle East and massive amounts of immigration, legal and illegal, to the United States. In the same way, political realignments occur when certain elite factions / sectors defect from the dominant political coalition to the formerly minority political coalition to form a new dominant political coalition.
And what I mean by this is that right now the Democrats consist of the sectors of the economy that are largely informational, such as finance, the news media, entertainment, the university system, the K-12 education system, non profit organizations, government workers, and the security apparatus (CIA, FBI, etc). The Republicans consist of of the sectors of the economy that are largely material, such as the military, police, security forces, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and energy extraction. Right now the Republicans are the dominant coalition since Reagan’s election in 1980, with the Democrats the minority coalition. Note that Trump is not the realigning figure, he’s what people call the disjunctive figure who tries to reform the system from the dominant coalition but fails due to forces from the dominant coalition who want to keep the status quo.
For a political realignment to happen, you need significant parts of the coalition of one party to defect to the other party’s coalition, such as for example manufacturing defecting from the Republicans over to the Democrats. Alternatively, if the people in charge of the Democrats refuse to change to allow the defecting sectors into the party, the Democrats can implode and be replaced by a third party, and the defecting sectors in the Republican coalition join the anti-Republican third party instead.
Keep an eye in the next few years on which elites in the Republican Party are getting dissatisfied with their current coalition and are willing to defect to the other coalition. If you just focus on popular sentiment, you will end up with situations where the public elects somebody from the minority coalition because they are dissatisfied with the majority coalition, but where no realignment has actually happened among the elites of both parties.
So I think those in the US will get a sad kind of kick out of this. Sort of like a tragic comedy.
The Democrats have a way of shooting themselves in the foot, with their new “Project 2029 – Kids Over Clicks” proposal. Firstly, taking the naming from a plan that their own base hated is just terrible optics.
Secondly, it is basically a plan to reign in tech companies which is not a bad idea but this looks to be the foundation for an online national ID system similar to what is being rolled out in other countries.
I mean… surely they cannot be that blind to the issues people are facing.. right?
“Project 2029 proposals are likely to go down in Washington like a lead balloon — at least right now, as the party focuses on the midterms.”
https://www.semafor.com/article/06/28/2026/democrats-project-2029-goes-after-tech-companies-with-online-safety-plan
The ongoing Democratic civil war is important for whether the Democrats survive as a party or whether they die out and get replaced. The only way that the Democrats survive as a party is if the current populist insurgents kick out the unpopular establishment from the Democratic Party in the civil war. If the Democratic establishment remains in control of the party, then the populist insurgents will go form a third party in the next few years that will replace the dying Democratic Party as the anti-Republican Party force in politics.
Keeping this updated as I swore to do until my draft is completed. 20 chapters finished, and at least six more to go!
“The string of victories of the Democratic Socialist (as they call themselves) wing of the party is starting to worry the old timers. The billionaires that fund the Democrats aren’t happy either.”
The Democratic old timers are addled with Trump Derangement Syndrome. If Mamdani is any indication, the new crop of “Democratic Socialists” don’t have TDS, are willing to work with Trump to get stuff done, and are willing to blow up the Democratic Party because they are tired of Democratic politicians doing nothing but attacking Trump.
Not only is the German public transport system going to the dogs, they just lost to Paraguay in the World Cup.
Winds are changing.
The immigration restrictionists in the past decade are like the Know Nothings in the 1840s. People who disrupted the political system to try to reverse the rapid demographic changes to the United States but ultimately they failed and immigration was eventually overtaken by other issues. The Know Nothings were largely on the sidelines of the slavery debate that lead to the American Civil War, the Republicans that took over were still pro-immigration, and eventually the Irish immigrants took over New England marking the complete failure of the Know Nothing platform.
Same thing is likely to happen here as well: the immigration issue is going to be overshadowed by the end of the American empire, with immigration relegated to the back as other more important issues like reforming and cutting back on the American government and civil service takes precedent, and whoever takes control of America after the collapse of the empire is likely still going to be pro-immigration as they’ll be composed of the same kind of industrial elites that the Republican Party after the civil war had, i.e. that want cheap labor. Biggest losers are going to be the people who want to preserve a white America, as America gets divided into people who want to preserve the American empire at all costs vs people who want to wind down the empire, with both sides in support of more immigration.
I also see the remigration phenomenon in Europe in a similar light. Biggest topic in the near future for Europe is not going to be immigration and sending all the non-Europeans home, but rather about freeing individual European countries from American and EU control and adapting to a post-American and post-EU future, which is going to have support from both the European petty nationalist right and the anti-American left, who might collaborate with each other against the pro-America pro-EU establishment in European countries. After that, European petty nationalists will most likely end up too busy starting wars against the petty nationalists in neighboring European countries in the post-American future to care about deporting their non-European population, and they’ll probably want to press those non-Europeans into military service to win the wars. End result, the non-European population in Europe remains there, as a failure of the remigration platform.
I should add that non-Europeans might become second-class citizens in Europe, especially since Europe is out of phase in phase 26 and likely to be out of phase in phase 27.
But that’s different from Europeans ethnically cleansing the entire non-European population from Europe, like what the remigration people are promoting. The latter would constitute a genocide worse than whatever is going on in Palestine right now. Though in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Europe does end up genociding the non-European population when it reaches phase 28.
BTW have to campaign to have this added to Oxford/Websters dictionary. 😉
Lenocrasy – An American dream in which you find something two people who need from each other and standing between them.
“I’m seeing that around a lot, it’s extremely irritating, and… IMO it has the feel of a foreign propaganda effort. Plenty of domestic sorts are more than willing to jump on the bandwagon once it rolls by, but I don’t think that’s where most of it is originating? Haven’t a clue what foreign entity or entities might have an interest in promoting that in the US. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Probably it’s coming from the fact that a lot of Zionist organizations have started using the antisemitic trope of conflating Judaism with Zionism in order to make people support Israel regardless of anything that Israel does.
That trope is just false, judging by the fact that there are a lot of Jews in America who are anti-Zionist and a lot of non-Jews who are Zionist, and dangerous for Jews, as it defeats the entire purpose of the term “antisemitism” as people now think it refers to “anybody who criticizes Israel” rather than “hates Jews”. Many Jews end up getting accused of antisemitism by Zionists simply because they criticize what Israel is doing.
In the end, “antisemitism” becomes as diluted of a term as “racist” is nowadays, and this then emboldens the actual antisemites in the same way that racists are now emboldened after the woke called everybody racist a few years ago.
I guess the real question now is how long will it take before the left starts embracing Holocaust denial. The right is already well on its way to Holocaust denial via people like Nick Fuentes.
My experience with broadcast television is as follows. I used to watch as much as anyone until about my mid twenties, when I drifted away from it for this and that reason. I had about 20 years with very little of it, and I’ve recently discovered that more than about 20 minutes of exposure to it drives me to high levels of irritation and disgust. I feel like it is not good for me. It felt like … this will be somewhat inexact … it felt like something gross got on my inner self. It was that feeling you get if you get say, bird poo on your hand. Except it wasn’t my hand, it was my *self*, my inside *self*. That’s how it made me feel. It made me feel “get it off me!’ and the inability to get it off angered and disgusted me.
This is not applicable to youtube, or to streaming services or whatever. I’m not video-averse in general. I can lose an hour or so at a time on youtube shorts, although not every day. But this is how I felt about some involuntary exposure to daytime broadcast television. It was talk shows and stuff. I’m not sure which ones or what else. I was trying very hard to tune it out you understand.
It was just so yuck.
Can’t imagine that’s very good for meditation. Unless it’s as a handicap – like if you’re so good at meditation that you need a massive impediment like that to make it a real exercise. Is that a thing?
People talking about Chevalier’s racist posts from the past, do realize that she has apologized for them and other comments she’s made and said it was wrong for her to make those comments:
https://www.ms.now/news/darializa-avila-chevalier-new-york-primary-regrets-old-social-media-harris-biden
On the other hand, this does mean that Chevalier isn’t as much of a break from the Democratic establishment as was once portrayed by the mainstream media. She apologized to Kamala Harris. I don’t think Chevalier realizes how popular some of her previous views are amongst the general American public, such as endorsing COVID 19 conspiracy theories at odds with the mainstream COVID 19 narrative and hating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Bryan Allen, atmospheric River, slink, inna, temporary reality, beard tree
I am in SLO and the Cuyama Valley from June-Nov, and would be interested in attending an ecosophian get together. Bryan, we are close enough together to have a coffee some time.
I am at Stephen H Pearson, all lower case run together at the y thing.com.
Look forward to seeing any or all of you.
Stephen
@Scotlyn (#353):
Here’s a further detail to add to your excellent, right-on-target summary.
There was, back in the day, very wide-spread popular American (and British) support for curious theory that the English-speaking peoples were the true and only surviving descendants of the Ancient Israelites (more precisely, of the “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel”, and thus the US and the UK were the only true inheritors of the Divine promises once made to Ancient Israel. This had implications for Anglo-American geopolitics in the Middle East, too.
Look up “British Israelism” and “Anglo-American Israelism.” There’s a good new book out now on it: Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, Israelism in Modern Britain (2021), to stand alongside of Michael Barkun’s classic of American religious history, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (revised edition, 1997). Barkun’s work is important, IMHO, for anyone trying to understand the growth and politics of modern Evangelical Christianity.
As a footnote, it’s worth noting that this movement had an influence on various forms of Neo-Paganism, notably some early varieties of Traditionalist Witchcraft in the US and some forms of Druidry in the UK.
At one point in American history, American Israelism seems to have been a fairly wide-spread theory among members of the American Legion — anyone here remember them? So it became, in some circles, a patriotic (as well as a religious) obligation to support Israel as a state.
I saw something else that I wanted to talk about and that was the subject of suicide and about the question of being tough enough to do it and overcoming the survival instinct and so on.
This is something I’ve given some thought to from time to time and I keep coming back to the same idea, and that is that the consequences for a failed attempt could easily be much worse than just toughing it out, no matter how much time you may have left. I’m not gonna serve up any bovine shale about how oh there’s a silver lining or everything happens for a reason or it any [shoot] like that. I’m also not gonna say anything judgy like coward’s way out or whatever.
But: no matter what way you’re thinking of, not anyone in particular I mean, I’m addressing the proverbial unknown reader here, but no matter what way you pick, you might survive and be worse off, so if nothing else there’s that reason not to do it.
When I was in construction I sometimes saw this guy who worked for the concrete placers when we were doing a big pour. He’d completely mangled his face with a shotgun some years previously. I don’t know if he’d had facial reconstruction. It didn’t look very reconstructed to me, not that I was rude enough to take a good look at it. I also don’t know what problems he’d had that made him do that. But I can bet that action did nothing to improve those matters either!
I can understand wanting to get out early. But it’s better to just do your time. It could be so much worse.
Ah yes that story made it to the limelight again:
“Plz dont grow your own food, rely on the chemical slop your lovely government provides”
https://9gag.com/gag/axy54P2
read the comments to the featured picture in the link, thats presenting the story previously presented here, “growing your own vegetables damages the climate”
The audience of 9gag is (apparently at least) mostly male, western hemisphere, anti-woke with some arabs and indonesians in between.
I always take it a little bit as an indicator for the mood of my demographic – male, western, 18-55
In general, anti-progress posts and sentiments have visibly increased these past years I can tell!
Audience has also changed since 2015 – back then it was social justice warriors, opftne women, vs alternative right men, or political center guys becoming increasingly irritated.
The wokes have left for imgur now.
Northwind#183
Have you watched “Breaking Bad”, “House of Cards”, “Ascensión”, ” La Valla” or “Silo” ?
Forecasting#257
I thing that the term “antisemism” is deceptive, because the semite race include many peoples ,like the Egyiptians. And many Jews are of Khazarian origen; Caucasics. This deception is aimed to protect the State of Israel against all criticismo, exploiting the complex of guilty of many Western European countries for the crimes commited against Jews during III Reich domination.
The increasing of hostility against Jews in USA, I guess is motivated for the kidnaping of their international and defence polítics for the project of the Great Israel wich involves the territorial expansión of the frontiers of this state to the rivers Nilo and Eufrates, wich will require the expulsion or extermination of 100 million people; Amalekites , acording the Christian Zionists who are suporting the Jews Zionist who are really in charge of USA goverment.
Additionally , this
Thankyou AliceEm (242) but I don’t do films and video much any more – and that’s going back a few years now (pre 2020) -the last two I saw that seemed worth their salt were:
Ink: “A mysterious creature, known as Ink, steals a child’s soul in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip to join the Incubi – the group of supernatural beings responsible for creating nightmares.”
But would not call it horror, more a story about redemption. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071804/
The other was Tangerines: a portrayal of humanity in war time. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2991224/
JMG – where Paedrig (360) said about ‘turning one’s existence over to machines’ – the internet is like the candy jar to catch a monkey, though I think we may have gone way beyond ‘Houston we have a problem’, to Gandalf and ‘Fly you fools!’
I may be wrong of course – I am only seeing a fragment of this from a western perspective and it’s possible the fragility of western society has exacerbated things. In about 30 years we seem to have gone from problem to predicament as behavioural psychologists and the usual control freaks reckon they’ve struck the motherload.
Even so, given our limitations, the frame of examination and reference has to be set somewhere.
One thread I’ve been picking at is that internet and social media has allowed what would once have been lunatics separated by geography to gather in an internet petri dish, and provided numbers of bodies to a cacophony of crazy – essentially allowing delusion not to just propagate but metastasize. Sadly the ‘information superhighway’ has not only empowered fringe groups and nerds but encouraged pathologies that a sane mind would usually laugh out of the room.
Herd mentality and innate freakery of humans at its worst.
The increasing difficulty in fathoming reality from slop and deliberate bad actors has been leading me to re-evaluate internet usage for a while – I’ve done a couple of experiments with this recently and more to follow I think.
Link the entraining of minds to be dependent, with a reduction in critical thinking at the same time as a tsunami of contradictory and delusional pap spreads online, the possibility that this is destabilising minds is a subject to look at even if to just find the idea is incorrect.
Check this out:
“Six weeks into the term, I assigned my rhetoric and writing students a 20-page article. It was the same length I had assigned for five years and the same length I had read without complaint as an undergraduate a decade ago. Not one student finished it.
When I asked why, a student answered honestly: It was too long, and she kept losing track of what the paper was about. This was not a remedial class: These were students who had cleared the admissions process and written essays good enough to get them here. Yet a routine academic reading assignment had defeated them.”
https://archive.ph/3uMsn#selection-3099.0-3105.318
It is fascinating that the assumption seems to be that internet is good. For sure it is for some things, although that is being increasingly undermined by LLM and censorship – perhaps people don’t want to think that a cornerstone of folks lives these last years doesn’t just have a dark underbelly, but could actually be incrementally and increasingly detrimental to the functioning of the vehicles of incarnation.
It has occurred to me in bleaker moments that the encrapification of just about everything could be a reflection of a failed path being shut down from higher levels of consciousness:
“Looks like the humans are doing it again – lets get this wrapped up and roll out the remedial lessons in consciousness.”
And in less bleak moments, I laugh.
Scotlyn @353: It’s nice to see someone willing to do some reading and some research.
@Cynthia: re: broadcast television:
Agreed. But it’s interesting to see someone who *doesn’t* have problems with video notice it. I feel the ick, and I notice it on other people. Not incidental exposure, but, like, people who are connoisseurs of television shows, who devote a significant portion of their week to some streaming series or other… even if they’re not talking about it, there’s something kind of… blunted, about them. Truncated vocabulary. Circumscribed interests. Muffled personality. And a… psychic texture that’s hard to describe. Fuzz.
It shows up in their writing as well. I mute any account in my newsfeed that reviews or analyzes TV series, broadcast or streaming. Thought at first… they probably talk about other things and might have something interesting to say on other topics. Nope. I clicked into several of the accounts to peruse their other stuff, and… even when they’re writing about non-entertainment topics the trammeling of thought, syntax, and vocabulary is still there. It’s tempting to say… that’s a cause not an effect: maybe it’s just that the sort of people who can tolerate 10+ hours of videotainment a week aren’t that bright to begin with. I don’t think it’s that, because I’ve met and talked with a lot of not-bright people who were nonetheless engaging, with unshackled personalities. They were also busy people who didn’t have the sort of leisure to be industrial-scale TV consumers. The blunting effect comes either directly from the TV exposure, or indirectly from the… well, think about how much time that represents. What is it displacing? Let’s say someone is watching 3hrs of TV/day. 21hrs/wk. That’s 21 hours/wk when they are doing exactly the same thing as millions of other people, the identical passive content consumption, participating in the world’s most boring collective egregore. If they didn’t have that, what else would they be doing with that 21 hours? Probably not being melded into the Uniform Commercial Identity. Not 21 hours cut off from the physical/social/intellectual/spiritual realms all around them. They’d be doing other things, and instead of millions of people all being trained like decorative shrubbery into identical shapes… that mental landscape would look more like a natural forest.
Last Sunday Pride Day was celebrated here, like in another western countries. I’ve read some news and (biased) opinion articles in my town main newspapers (only two), about my town Pride demonstration. Maybe I’m subjective, but I saw some twilight mood this year…I’ll try to write some sub-comments avoiding a too sarcastic tone; I hope to comment it only in a mild ironic mood, for not being too cynical.
Some “pearls” I read in local MSM:
-According some activists/politicans who say theu represent LGTBI people here, “prosecution against LGTBI people in Russia is shameful, they haven’t rights like here”. Well, Putin is a Conservative Christian, one more of the evily evil right wing straigth men, so no argument here…to some extent. It’s a pity our brave LGTBI-etc representatives have forgotten opportunely how happy must be gays and other sexual minorities in the democratic Ukraine…where far right and directly Nazis are free to do what they want there; meanwhile, performing leftist politics in Kiev an another Ukrainian cities seems a very risky “sport” (cough). I bet LGTBI Ukrainian people isn’t very better than their Russian “comrades”. It seems Spanish LGTBI-etc mouth pieces share usual Russophobe narrative, skipping every disurbing fact which contradicts it, even in a remote way. A very dishonest behavior, methink.
-Activists also said they and the spanish society would never accept a regression in LGTBI-plus rights and freedoms, so much hardly achieved during last years/decades. OK; I understand it very well: more cultural war against the right wing, blaming it as homophobic, and praising the left to be LGTBI-friendly. But beyond this partisan paint layer, I smell fear. They’re afraid of a near future right wing parties victory in next general elections, a likely event which would let activists probably without current woke government subsidies (ahem). “Weeping and gnashing of teeth” for this groups activists, phrase that could be applied equally to our woke feminism, and “antirracist” groups, also subsidized by our current govt…I smell anxiety on the air.
-In spite of frantic enactment of unity between gays, lesbians and so on, I think there’s some pose in it. It’s a dirty secret aired by some people online, that there’s a dull rivalry between, for example, lesbian feminists and transgender most radical activists; due to the generous legal frame and govt propaganda in favor of under legal majority age transition. The more young girls decide “freely” to transition toward “men”, the less likely lesbians will be here. Do the math. It isn’t as banal as it seems, here and in another wokeized countries…
-Our “beloved” govt President (Prime Minister) seemed more relaxed this weekend than during last week. I bet he grasped a chance to “forget” hard accusations of corruption within his party (including the prison sentence for a former Minister, ahem). Nothing better for him than being cherished with love by one of his favorite captive voters (because LGTBI people usally tend to vote woke left here and in every western country, methink). It’s a pity the Pride celebrations have ended two days ago, so let’s go on the current lawfare and polarization “normal” politics here: he’s a corrpt, so he should resign (usual narrative from the right wing parties).
Scotlyn # 353:
“Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical US President, ironicly lost the trust of his evangelical constituency almost immediately after he gave public recognition to the human rights of Palestinians.”
Thank you, I din’t know that decision. Well, looking at the bad consequences for Mr. Carter -loss of trust by his former supporters-, could I say that then and nowadays, according Christian Zionists, Arabs aren’t human beings? (Because they don’t seem to deserve human rights Carter gave Palestinians). Maybe I’m a too suspicious guy…
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Anonymous # 361:
I think current “peace” in ME is shaky, in spite of frantics efforts form MSM, politicians and businessmen mouthpieces to pretend everything it’s OK and it will be fine in near future, as a recent narrative.
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Peter # 373:
“Not only is the German public transport system going to the dogs, they just lost to Paraguay in the World Cup.
Winds are changing.”
I noticed it, too. I don’t really like very much football (or soccer like Americans like to name the world “sports king”), but I’ve always heard Germans have been for decades the best players, or at least one of the best teams in this popular global sport. According Gary Lineker: “Football is a sport in which 22 men run towards a ball and finally Germany always win”. It’s a well known phrase in Europe, but it seems now it’s a bit old fashioned…at least, until German team shows in the future they’re again the kings of world football/soccer…
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Anonymous # 377:
“Many Jews end up getting accused of antisemitism by Zionists simply because they criticize what Israel is doing. ”
Yes, Antisemitism wide definition to allow supporting Israel politics at any cost, ends being absurd. Antisemitic Jews topic is an old Zionist song; do you remember that Philip Roth was blamed with that thoughtstopper, due to some ironic views about his own people, in some of his novels? (Jew and Goyim Zionist haven’t any sense of humor nor self criticism, methink).
I bet Netanyahu definition of Antisemitism could be likely this one: “An Antisemitic person is anyone who doesn’t love to kiss my a** when I order it to do it”.
However, I think real Antisemitism is growing this last times, which is a real problem, too.
Jennifer K, about RW male anger, feminization of society and so on, I ask again the same question When are these guys going to build something? I also am not understanding why the opening of opportunities for women to support themselves is “feminization” of society. One could also ask why should layabouts and exhibitionist goofballs receive automatic and unearned respect and deference?
John @ 372, if the current crop of Democratic Socialists form the nucleus of a revived Democratic Party or a new party, they will have to make some alliances which they have so far been just as unwilling as the establishment Dems to do. Such as with conservationists, environmentalists, the regenerative farming movement and so on, even if those alliances do cost their donors money.
So the Supreme Court has upheld birthright citizenship:
https://xcancel.com/SCOTUSblog/status/2071966331029627105#m
More examples of right wingers pissed off at the Republican Party and willing to vote for leftists in the next elections:
https://xcancel.com/CassandraRules/status/2071620452846280973#m
“if the current crop of Democratic Socialists form the nucleus of a revived Democratic Party or a new party, they will have to make some alliances which they have so far been just as unwilling as the establishment Dems to do. Such as with conservationists, environmentalists, the regenerative farming movement and so on, even if those alliances do cost their donors money.”
Oh not just that. Biggest alliance they’ll have to make will be with the America First MAGA people who are pissed off at Trump over Israel, immigration, etc. Democratic Socialists will have to get over their aversion of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie being from flyover nation and work with them against the rotted establishment of both parties.
AI is just an excuse that corporations use when they replace white collar labor in the United States with cheaper labor in India:
https://www.chrisbrunet.com/p/exclusive-michigan-insurance-giant
My tech guy has made some changes to the cache settings. Let me know if you see more problems.
David, well, I haven’t been to Germany since 1977, so yes, I’m far behind the times. So much for Germany’s once-fabled reputation for efficiency and technical excellence!
Jacques, the attempt will certainly be made. Then the blowback will follow — that is, people will stop using official money for anything but dealing with officialdom, and some other form of currency will become the de facto means of exchange. That happens even in tightly controlled environments such as prisons — I don’t know what the current practice is, but a few decades ago cigarettes were the standard currency behind bars in the US; everything was denominated in how many cigs it cost. And of course it won’t take more than a relatively short time before people figure out how to hack the digital currency system…
William, interesting. I can’t tolerate coffee at all — it gives me migraines — but maybe that would be different if I lived in Hawai’i.
Patricia M, these days that’s a safe assumption generally.
David, that’s not something the SoP usually does. I’ve lived in apartments for most of my life, and done banishing rituals daily since 1984, and haven’t had that effect. I wonder if there’s some negative influence on that part of the building from which the SoP is shielding you and your wife.
J.L.Mc12, it’s on the back burner. I’ve got the setting worked out but the plot I came up with didn’t work, and I haven’t yet found another.
Anon, the more recent attempts to discuss Spengler’s thesis that I’ve seen pretty consistently try to twist it so that it’ll support modern pop culture assumptions, which isn’t useful at all.
BeardTree, the esoteric Christian authors I’ve read don’t equate the Holy Spirit with the life force in general. They suggest that the Holy Spirit is God made manifest through the life force, as he was made manifest in matter in Jesus. Just as (in that theology) there are plenty of human beings who aren’t Jesus (or God), there are plenty of etheric forms that aren’t the Holy Spirit. Mind you, you may still not find that appropriate to your own approach to your faith, but I thought a clarification was in order.
Gunstone, who can say? Certainly, though, the rhythm of Chinese history over the last three millennia has been set by totalitarian monarchs whose reigns are bathed in blood, but whose legacies become the foundation on which a later generation of leaders build something more stable and humane.
Anon, I could see that quite easily. The point I’d make is that Trump is an absolutely classic moderate liberal Republican of late 20th century vintage — he only looks extreme because the Democratic Party has gone so far over into La-La Land. Thus the alt-right was always going to be disappointed with him. The question is whether the Democrats can maintain a tent big enough to fit the DSA and disaffected conservatives under it, without being pulled down by the limousine liberals. They might still pull it off, but right now it doesn’t look good — and if the Dems nominate any of the obvious candidates in 2028, they’re facing electoral disaster.
Oatmeal, one of the Druid triads has it that in order to achieve Gwynfydd (“the luminous life,” the state beyond material incarnation), a soul must be all things, know all things, and suffer all things. That last one is the point most of us don’t like, but there it is — material incarnation involves a lot of suffering. It’s a Druid teaching, in fact, that human existence is by and large happier than that of other animals. Consider the life of your average wild creature — an unending struggle to find enough to eat and avoid the constant dangers that surround you, until finally something else jumps on you, tears you to bloody shreds, and gobbles you up. How fun! As for the problem of evil, or of fairness, that’s only a problem if you assume that you have the right to expect anything else, and in polytheist traditions, you don’t. The universe is what it is; the gods didn’t create it, they were born from it, and some of them will die, just as other gods have already died; they suffer just as we do. It so happens that there’s a way for us to move more or less steadily away from lives of ignorance and suffering and toward lives of wisdom and greater happiness, so long as we’re doing the work. For those on the Path, that’s enough.
Atmospheric, I’ve noticed this as well. There seems to be a slow improvement in the vibe.
Anon, that’s unnerving.
Martin, ha! I like it.
Chuaquin, I’ve already enjoyed the frantic convulsions of the vegetarian community over the well-documented fact that Hitler was a vegetarian. If it ever gets shown conclusively that Machtan is right in his analysis, it could get very colorful indeed…
RTSGame, if things work in 2027, I’ll be coming over in part to take part in a book release party for a very important project — more on this in due time — as well as visiting some of the many places in Britain I love, and doubtless going to find some more. (I have a standing invitation from a friend to go visit him out in East Anglia, where I’ve never been.) I’ll certainly announce it as soon as the details are clear.
Info, they got that from fantasy fiction. If you have the time, see if you can find a copy of Poul Anderson’s very early novel The Broken Sword, which covers some of this same ground.
Tony, that depends very much on whether other countries can find some way to gimmick financing the way the US did to fund the fracking boom. If they can, there’ll be more natural gas, though the process will impose even more strains on the global economy.
Bogatyr, a lot depends on how effectively China weathers two competing trends — first, the ongoing depletion of the resources that make industrial civilization possible; and second, the suction of the power vacuum drawing China into the role of global hegemon. The latter is by far the more dangerous, since taking on the role of imperial power puts economic stresses on a country that land hardest on the working classes. My suspicion is that over time, the social compact that keeps the Chinese people happy with their system may fray to the breaking point, and then familiar kinds of trouble follow.
BeardTree, yes, clearly you’re a Christian Druid, or you wouldn’t even have asked that — much less gotten it right. Yes, pines give longevity, but oaks teach wisdom. As for “honoring your ancestors,” I’ve had a good laugh about that myself from time to time. My ancestors were Scots Calvinists, and I’d sooner dine on live rats than embrace that loathsome faith, but I’m not under any illusion that my Druidry has anything in common with the Pagan beliefs of my distant ancestors. Modern Druidry is an indigenous nature religion of modern Anglo-American culture, full stop.
Slithy, that’s an excellent point, and I’m not at all surprised to see it coming from Taleb. Of course he’s right, and only the myth of progress makes that point obscure to anybody.
Jessica, I originally got that from Druid sources, but it’s also an insight common in various branches of the French esoteric tradition, including Martinism, and has Pythagorean roots.
Zemi, from my standpoint — the standpoint of traditional polytheism — the universe wasn’t created. It’s a natural growth, not an artifact, and I’m far from sure I believe that it had a beginning in time. The gods are younger than the universe, and can shape it to some extent but only within its (and their own) limits. As for the universe being unfair, er, who promised you that it would be fair? For that matter, if you do something that generates good karma, is it unfair for you to receive benefits as a result? The universe is what it is and does what it does; we may not like that, but if we whine about that, it’s not going to listen, you know. All we can do is work with it — and since it happens to provide ways to move from ignorance and suffering to wisdom and happiness, why, the sooner we get to work on those, the less we’ll have to whine about.
Chris, yep. Nearly everything going on in the US today makes sense if you assume that the government and the elite classes are getting ready for the end of the dollar’s reserve currency status, the inevitable default of the US and a lot of big corporations on their foreign debt, and the global shockwaves those will cause.
Scotlyn, as it happens, I’ve done some looking in that direction, but thank you for the list.As I see it, the difference between these groups and the Jewish lobby is a matter of priorities. To Christian Zionists, the survival of Israel is one issue among many — important, sure, but no more so than anti-abortion activism or any of a dozen other hot button topics that concern them. By contrast, the Jewish lobby in the US has until recently treated US support for Israel as the most important issue of all, and acted accordingly. The fact that the US is increasingly pursuing its own interests even when those conflict with Israel’s suggests that somebody is losing clout — and I don’t see any evidence that fundamentalist Christianity is on the wane just now.
Siliconguy, thanks for this. As for the question, all I can do is repeat that anecdote about Isaac Newton losing his shirt when he tried to time the South Sea Bubble. If he couldn’t get it right, I’m not going to attempt it.
Mike, it’s a glitch in the site software, over which I have no control. You might put in a comment to the site management at https://www.dreamwidth.org/ . The one fix that seems to work is that if you get a free account and log into it, the expand-comments function works.
Ron, you’d have to check the local First Nations folklore, which I don’t know. Certainly some conifers have that vibe — yew was traditionally grown in Old World graveyards because it’s a death-tree, and gives off vibes that living people don’t generally benefit from.
Paedrig, delighted to hear this. Oh, I’m quite aware that a handful of intentional communities have survived, though all of them are so dependent on the surrounding society that it might be better to think of them as intentional suburbs. Compare them to the tens of thousands of communities that didn’t make it and you’ll get some sense of the very long odds any such project has to face. As for the Butlerian future, you’re quite correct that it’s coming a good deal faster than I expected — I’ll be dealing with that in an upcoming post, in fact.
Soko, I’ve recorded my own dreams for extended periods at various times in my life, but rarely succeeded in getting any sense out of them at all — with a handful of odd exceptions. Thus I’m not really the guy to ask about dreamwork; there are people who’ve made it work for them, and you might want to track some of them down and ask them.
Clarke, the book’s hilarious — I was writing my tentacle novels when it came out.
Polecat, how else would you describe him?
Bridge, good question. I haven’t begun to make plans yet! If I go to southern France, I’ll want to visit more than Carcassonne — there are sites of Cathar interest I’d like to see, and a stop in Lyon to meet with Martinists there might also be on the agenda. But we’ll see.
Michael, I wonder if it’s ever occurred to them that listening to their base, rather than lecturing it, is the one thing that could get them somewhere…
Mark, it’s a real possibility. What the rise of the DSA has shown is that next to nobody on any side of the political landscape is willing to put up with business as usual any longer. The longer the Dems try to hang onto their business-as-usual orientation, the uglier things will get for them.
Shinjuki, excellent. Keep on going!
Cynthia, my experience is much the same. I stopped watching at a somewhat younger age — when I left home to go to college, I dropped TV like a hot rock, having previously gotten bored with it and watched very little for a while — and on the few occasions where I’ve had to sit through it since then, it makes my skin crawl. It’s really impressively vile.
Curt, it astonishes me that anybody thinks that this will catch on!
Earthworm, there’s certainly a lot of damage being done to internet addicts by their addiction. The interesting thing is that outside academic settings, I see considerable movement the other way. One of the magical lodges I’ve joined, for example, requires members who want to get past the door to write a paper of modest length — no LLM input! — on some theme related to the tradition. Nobody seems to have the least trouble with that; one recent initiate got excited by her theme and turned in a 33-page essay plus footnotes. Fringe culture seems to be rising triumphant…
Addendum to my post (#382) about Anglo-American Israelism:
Another aspect of the Anglo-American Israelite movement in the US (but not in the UK) was a strong interest in esoteric interpretations of the Great Seal of the United States, especially its reverse side (the side with the eye in a triangle above an unfinished pyramid) — see the back of the US $1 bill for an example..
An early strong proponent of both aspects of the movement was Charles A. L. Totten, a very prolific author (see the reasonably good wikipedia article on him for some of his very many publications). This Great-Seal esoteric theorizing also influenced the Builders of the Adytum; its founder, Paul Foster Case, wrote a pamphlet on the subject: The Great Seal of the United States: Its History, Symbolism and Message for the New Age (1935). Robert Hieronymous and “David Ovason” [Fred Gettings] are two of the more recent esoteric authors who devoted whole books to the subject.
@Mawkernewek #292,
Here is my top anti-Putin propaganda story. 😂 While sitting on a bench in a park in Exeter, I was approached by an overly friendly teenage girl who started chatting with me. She was obviously developmentally disabled. Upon hearing my accent, the girl asked about it. I said that my accent was Russian. She immediately said something about Putin. I was floored. Wow… a mentally retarded girl knew the word “Putin”. Respect to the British propaganda agency – these guys are thorough! 😉
@ Chuaquin #391
“Well, looking at the bad consequences for Mr. Carter -loss of trust by his former supporters-, could I say that then and nowadays, according Christian Zionists, Arabs aren’t human beings? (Because they don’t seem to deserve human rights Carter gave Palestinians). ”
There are many ways to dehumanise others. And the temptation to do so for any of us is as strong as the human temptation to “tell” ourselves as stories. According to Terry Pratchett, our species would be better called “Pan narrans” (the story telling ape). In my view, the fault is not to think in stories, but, as JMG has often cautioned against, to get stuck in one SINGLE story, and, consequentially to relegate everyone we meet to a role in that story, which removes their complex existence as a human being who has their own stories to tell.
In the case we are discussing, and in terms of the specific people whose culture I know best – evangelical, and often dispensationalist, Christians – the story of the endtimes assigns specific roles to Jews in the drama of the second coming of Christ.
Now there is this tension between Jewish zionism and Christian zionism. The broadest appeal of zionism for Jewish people, as I see it (and please may I be corrected by anyone who knows better), is the hope of creating some practical safety for people who have felt perennially vulnerable to endangerment and attack. Christian endtime zionism does not really give more than lip service to the safety of Jewish people because it does not see Jewish people as PEOPLE with legitimate concerns and interests, but as ciphers who have a specific role to play out in God’s drama. Whatever it takes for them (and more to the point, whatever it COSTS them) to construct a new Israel is worth it to the Christian zionist because it hastens the second coming of Christ.
To me this approach is as dehumanising to Jewish people – who, after all, are the human shields that will take whatever punishment the world wishes to impose on Israel, while Christian incitement stays largely unnoticed in the background. Christians have much less “skin in the game” in that sense than Jewish people do. The fact that it is ALSO dehumanising to Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrian, Turkish and other middle eastern peoples is more of a side effect. The biblical role and purpose of these modern day peoples is not as clear (unless they are framed as Canaanites whose role in that story is to be killed and eradicated from the land so that the Israelites can lay claim to it).
Ironically Islam is something that has developed completely outside of the biblical framing story, and it is very difficult to cast the only true monotheists (as I personally see it) as the “idolaters” that the biblical god was continually warning his chosen people not to mix with.
I think what has happened here is that the evangelical, dispensationalist branch of Christianity has chosen to treat the bible and all of its prophetic, mythic writings, as if it could be mapped onto a single, linear timeline… ie it is one single story, in which every existing human person has one, single, assignable role.
There are many other ways in which the bible could be read, including ways that allow it to be a source of many stories, instead of a prison made of one story, but this group of people, my people, have chosen to read it this way.
I think a person trapped in this one-story prison struggles to see others as fully human. JMG has also written about this single story problem.
“a few decades ago cigarettes were the standard currency behind bars in the US; everything was denominated in how many cigs it cost”
I read somewhere that with smoking much more restricted in prisons and the food worse than ever, the new currency is cup noodle.
“Anon, I could see that quite easily. The point I’d make is that Trump is an absolutely classic moderate liberal Republican of late 20th century vintage — he only looks extreme because the Democratic Party has gone so far over into La-La Land. Thus the alt-right was always going to be disappointed with him. The question is whether the Democrats can maintain a tent big enough to fit the DSA and disaffected conservatives under it, without being pulled down by the limousine liberals. They might still pull it off, but right now it doesn’t look good — and if the Dems nominate any of the obvious candidates in 2028, they’re facing electoral disaster.”
More likely in my opinion: there won’t be very many limousine liberals left after the American economy collapses in the next two years and liberals get forced down a few rungs on the social class ladder. This will leave a lot of space in the Democratic party for other factions to take over.
“that anecdote about Isaac Newton losing his shirt when he tried to time the South Sea Bubble. ”
Keynes lost his shirt betting on a fall of the German mark in the early 1920s. Shortly after unexpected brief political backing drove up the German mark and wiped out Keynes, the mark collapsed in the famous hyper-inflation. Reliably timing these things is just not possible.
@ Robert Mathiesen #382
Thank you for the note on anglo-Israelism. 🙂
I do think that there is a fundamental sense of deep and intimate “familiarity” with the idea/symbol/egregore of Israel (and also Jerusalem, the “shining city on a hill”) running through all of anglo-american culture – even when people do not consciously espouse these ideas – which may underlie the strong feelings that are provoked. Although there is an ostensible argument about politics (or even geopolitics) that inevitably surrounds the name and the doings of “Israel”, one can always hear echoes and subtexts arising into the midst of it that come straight from the deep recesses of cultural story as built up in our “collective unconscious”.
“My ancestors were Scots Calvinists, and I’d sooner dine on live rats than embrace that loathsome faith, but I’m not under any illusion that my Druidry has anything in common with the Pagan beliefs of my distant ancestors. Modern Druidry is an indigenous nature religion of modern Anglo-American culture, full stop.”
Yes, Calvinism and to a lesser degree Protestantism overall, took a lot of knowledge, beauty, and magnificence (and certainly fun) from what Spengler would call the “Spring” of Western Civilization and tossed it into the furnace. Its is believed that the relative paucity of sources in Old English and those related to early Anglo-Saxon history generally were due to the Sacking of the Monasteries under Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell.
They were in many ways like hardline Maoists in the 1960s and 70s or Wahhabist/Salafist Muslims around the turn of the Millennium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldenstorm
https://hilarywhite.substack.com/p/heresy-and-hammer-how-protestant
Hence why many who distain modernity (both many traditionalists and the cultural left) ironically have similar targets in terms of the legacy of Protestantism and especially hardline Protestants like Calvinists.
“Fringe culture seems to be rising triumphant…”
May it continue gloriously!
I saw two young people reading actual books on the street recently; the tendency of youth to rebel against existing orthodoxy is a facet of life that control freaks dismiss in thinking propaganda in schools etc will keep wrongthink down, but the anecdotal stuff I’m hearing suggests the tide is/has passed its peak… but we’re probably looking at a couple of generations to pass before the existing corruption in thinking gets properly flushed. With everything else, it looks to be wild whatever happens.
On UK politics, the best description I’ve seen on starmer being replaced by burnham:
“It’s like crapping your pants and deciding just to change your hat.”
The excreta must flow.
Well Mr. Greer, a woke neo-jacobinist he certainly ain’t! At least he has the good sense to admit when he’s been wrong on various past issues. In my book, the real woke righties are the media influencers who support ANYTHING and EVERYTHING Trump ( well … Not Everyone e.i. NeoCon$ R US..), without question! Anyone who finds fault in that regard is called a ‘panican’ .. a ‘commie’ .. a ‘closet democrat’, or some such. Do I agree with everything he opines on?? Absolutely Not. But on the whole, I think that he’s generally an honest player.
@ Phutatorius #388
Thank you!
@ JMG
“The fact that the US is increasingly pursuing its own interests even when those conflict with Israel’s suggests that somebody is losing clout…”
That would be one way to read it. The other way would be to say that the policies zionist lobbyists, both Jewish and Christian, were pushing WERE – coincidentally – more in line with what the US [elite] saw as their own interests than they are now.
Israel has been a very useful proxy for the pursuit of US interests in the middle east, and is currently carrying out tasks that are useful to those interests by weakening the sovereignty and coherence of states along the eastern shore of the mediterranean, which might have competing interests in the Levant gas fields lying between Gaza (Palestinian Authority?), Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Cyprus. (It’s other essential role, of course, is to draw any resulting blowback away from the US – like a lightning rod).
It strikes me that certain US interests might be threatened by allowing Israel to become the sole sovereign power on that coast (could it pull a “Strait of Hormuz” over those fields, for example?), and perhaps those interests are beginning to make themselves felt.
To Ron M. In the miniature forest in my apartment complex there is a group of five pines next to one of the duplexes that make up the north side of the courtyard of buildings. I’ve discerned that the vibe/energy of those trees were messed up by some sort of negativity that happened in one or both of the duplexes. So I choose not to touch them, but have blessed them, done banishing work, and did a spot of natural magic – scattered a ring of kosher salt, Angelica root, frankincense and nettle root powder around the duplexes and trees.. Better but not finished yet. The other Monterey pines are fine
Apparently there are more Mennonites in Ethiopia than there are in the United States.
https://mwc-cmm.org/en/membership-map-and-statistics/
Then third and fourth on the list are the Democratic Republic of the Congo and India.
Thank you for your responses to my comments. My mind is not subtle enough to be an esoteric Christian. I simply see the life energy as another distinct creation of God like oxygen, water, good food, sunshine, herbs which is available to make use of with wisdom. The difference being it is one of the last category of created things mentioned in the Nicene Creed. As follows:
“I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.”
Jessica, that makes sense.
Anon, well, I’ve been listening to predictions that the US economy was going to collapse any day now since I was a teenager. There was a time when I even believed them. As I noted many years ago, though, hallucinations needn’t obey the laws of gravity, and so much of the current US economy is smoke and mirrors I’m far from sure the sudden plunge of popular prophecy is in the offing. Quite the contrary, as I’ll discuss in a future post, I think it’s quite possible that the Dow will hit all-time highs and all the other statistics will be in rosy territory the day that Manhattan loses its last flickers of grid power and a mob of neo-barbarians rides across the George Washington Bridge with plunder in mind.
Jessica, another good example.
Gunstone, a favorite song of Sara’s, “The Yew Tree” by the Battlefield Band, had lines about that:
“Did you no’ think tae tell when John Knox himsel’
Preached under your branches sae black
To the poor common folk who would lift up the yoke
O’ the bishops and priests frae their backs
But you knew the bargain he sold them
And freedom was only one part
For the price o’ their souls was a gospel sae cold
It would freeze up the joy in their hearts.”
Earthworm, ha! Yeah, that’s a good summary of current Labour politics. As for those two young people reading books, more power to ’em.
Polecat, so noted.
Scotlyn, and that’s also one way to read it, of course.
BeardTree, and so noted!
@JMG @community
The Supreme Court decision today got me thinking about what it means to be American, beyond legal definitions. I saw a recent short talk JMG gave in NYC reiterating his syncretic vision for collapse, civilizations and specifically North America – “Tamanous”, etc. It got me thinking about how different places in North America make me feel. I was born and still live in Northern California. I feel at home here but it seems to accept then spit out transplants, even those who can afford it. They have some kind of visceral reaction to it – “It’s not really America” “People are flaky” “I don’t like Asian food I miss bagels” “no seasons” etc. I kind of get where they’re coming from. It is developing into a different nation so to speak, but I understand the landscape, the people, so can go with the flow. When in Rome…
I have a similar reaction to the Northeast corridor. Whether it’s Boston, NYC, or DC, there’s something about the energy there that.. saps my energy. I don’t have any rational reason for it. On paper, it checks my boxes – walkable, etc. Nothing negative has ever happened to me there. But I just feel slightly out of sorts at all times. Also, the sense of decline in the infrastructure is quite visible at times.
In contrast, I recently got back from a trip to Chicago and Wisconsin. I really vibed with it. Something about the massive freshwater lake, the trees, the space, and yet it has a real Americana community feel to it, even in the big city. American without asterisks is how I described it to a friend. Although on paper it’s radically different, Quebec gave me a similar feeling. I felt refreshed after that trip, for lack of a better word. The exact proportion of architecture to landscape, mountain to freshwater, city to country… for me anyway. It just clicked.
Texas gives me the opposite vibe. The wide open prairie feeling of it. The sprawl. I know some people love it. Freedom 101. But I just don’t vibe with the plains. I need some kind of geographical hook. Tennessee, where I lived for a while, does have nooks and crannies to tuck into. It never felt like home, but home-ish. Ditto for the Pacific Northwest. Wouldn’t mind hanging my hat there.
Anyway, just rambling, but curious how much stock people put into vibes when deciding where to live or travel.
@JMG re: #396
Well, for the sake of brevity I left out the detail that this has occurred in two separate buildings we’ve lived in on-site, since we relocated to a larger apartment. We lived in our old building a little over a year and the apartment next to us was vacated three times. The one above us was vacated twice (and again shortly after we moved). That’s 2 out of 3 apartments around us. I’m not sure about the one diagonal to us.
We’ve been in our new building for about a year and a half and the apartment below us was vacated after just over a year and remains empty. The one below and diagonal to us has been vacated twice and the current residents are moving out. The one next to us on the other wall moved out recently, just leaving the one directly next-door to us.
Since you mentioned negative influences on the building, what about negative influences around us? I’ve hear various stories about hauntings, and it seems like people can be haunted as well as buildings. In recent we’ve noticed off and on weird and out of place smells, like cigarette smoke in the middle of a room with no open windows or way for smoke to get in. I’ve also heard disembodies voices on a few occasions, sometimes waking me up from sleep, or even when wide awake. One night while I was awake reading a book I heard a voice whisper (loudly) “coward!” Oddly, the next day I heard my downstairs neighbor yelling at one of his kids calling them a coward. We’ve had objects disappear seemingly out of nowhere.
I wonder if the SoP is causing whatever’s trying to get at us to bother my neighbors instead.
-David M.
I have to add a comment about the Montreal shooter. Previous commenters have mentioned it, but with inaccurate, but plausible, falsehoods.
I personally know that neighbourhood, I have family who live nearby, and it is absolutely not a “Jewish” neighbourhood, not for the past 30 years. It was, once, way back when… but no longer. It’s a very diverse neighbourhood with people from all over the world. The Jewish man was an unfortunate who was caught in the cross fire, not a target. The Muslim police officer was shot during an exchange in a gunfight with the shooter. The shooter was not targeting Jews.
The shooter took a room in the hotel so he could shoot across the street into the offices of an online porn company, he was an ‘incel’ and, according the the police who searched his home in Lethbridge, Alberta, he was deeply into incel victimhood.
@Stephen Pearson #381
I’d like to get in touch. What’s “the y thing.com”?
I am still seeing issues. I only see 380 comments on ecosophia.org (main page and the open post itself), on the ecosophia.net home page it claims there are 395 comments, while on the ecosophia.net open post itself I see 411.
I did come up with a way to check for caching errors elsewhere and found some on YouTube, and Substack (the number of comments on videos and articles don’t always line up when accessed on different devices), and this suggests to me a broader issue, but at this point I don’t think I can get enough data to say much more than that.
methylethyl: I like the chemistry inspired name, that’s cool.
So about 30ish years ago when I was in my late 20s, and I’m just now realizing that puts it in the same time frame as what I said previously, I read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman, which at the risk of trivializing it, I’ll say was about the evils of television. I don’t recall any of the things he said very well today, but I did at the time and I felt that yes, the part of the world around me that I saw that related to television was absolutely what he was describing. So it’s been a long time since then and I’ve had a lot of thoughts about tv and media since then, but what I read in that book is sort of foundational to all of that. The thesis as I recalled it was, “we are making ourselves stupid with television”, but according to the internet today, it’s that television is making us see more serious things through the lens of entertainment.
I don’t recall clearly which came first, drifting away from tv or reading the book.
About the psychic fuzz people, I don’t want to get too far into thinking about that. Last comment, I removed a snide remark about how just anyone can vote before I posted it.
About psychic fuzz itself: I don’t feel anything I’d describe like that, but I do have a sense about people. Some people feel like what you said, blunted interests and so on. I hope the explanation actually is that they’ve had their ridges polished smooth by the idiot box, because the alternative explanation is that people just come that way anyway.
Anyway, it’s egregores plural, these days, thanks to the internet. Thanks for that word by the way!
I’m agnostic as to whether a natural forest would appear in the absense of these technologies, or whether alternative means of egregore formation would arise. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
JMG: Looks like so far, so good about the new cache settings.
@ 413 David
I get you. I grew up in Pennsylvania and loved it. And I loved the vibes of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. To me, PA is home. I don’t like the vibes of the west coast, its too open, too wide, not enough mountains and rivers. I lived in Ohio for a while and I felt like the land was hostile. I am a child of Pennsylvania, that’s how i feel.
Mr. Greer, thanks for the reply, knowing that you’ve not cast me out into ether. I just now pulled up the site via the Intertoobs .. which had listed, as total comments, at 380. However, when I clicked on this post proper .. we show 417. Humm. As an aside, Me thinks there is a kink in the InterForce: might be time to consider a backup plan .. a periodical, zine, or what have you. Personally, I’d like to see an ol’ time block-printed broadsheet, something one could tack onto a post, or a montjoy .. complete with modern versions of Mr. Skeleton .. e.i. DEATH, in the margins … as contemporary signifiers of our quite human foibles – with the graphics to bring it home. My point being .. that the Internet, as we currently know it, is crapifying as we type! Just a thought. Of course, you could, by druidic decree .. mandate that we all cough up the quatloos .. to purchase en mass, our own clunky personal communication devices .. aka, the short-wave radio! ‘;]
JMG, you write:
“…material incarnation involves a lot of suffering.”
How Buddhist of you.
“It’s a Druid teaching, in fact, that human existence is by and large happier than that of other animals. Consider the life of your average wild creature — an unending struggle to find enough to eat and avoid the constant dangers that surround you, until finally something else jumps on you, tears you to bloody shreds, and gobbles you up. How fun!”
I wonder how we look to the other animals. We are mysterious and capricious. We possess strange knowledge and powers. Sometimes we are deadly predators, other times we are compassionate saviors. Are we their Fae?
Here’s my crackpot tinfoil-hat theory: that our 20th century population explosion was fueled by recruiting souls from the other animals; that our 21st century population implosion will fuel a mass exodus back to those other animals; with the result that 22nd century animals will act more like us. We’re Animal College!
Robert Mathiesen (no. 397), Swinburne Clymer also writes about the Great Seal in “Mystic Americanism” (1924). NK Roerich is often connected to the Seal, or its appearance on the US dollar (from 1935). Although this is apparently a legend, Henry Wallace–who later became his disciple–did claim responsibility for it:
https://www.roerichs.com/nicholas-roerich-dollar-design-one/
https://greatseal.com/dollar/hawfdr.html
Inna @ 416
Yahoo: For some paranoid reason I hate to spell the whole address out on a public site.
would be great to get in touch.
Stephen
BeardTree: you write
“I said to myself, “I will walk with God like Jesus did” The Spirit immediately said,”No, you will walk with God like Jeff” Jeff is my first name.”
The Danish poet Piet Hein, in a poem to the Olympians, questioned:
“… this fantasy of second-you-ing?
The me that seems to me worth being
Has quite enough to do with me-ing.”
JMG:
“Yes,” shouts the crowd in Life of Brian, in perfect sync. “We are all individuals!”
And one guy said:
“I’m not!”
To Jessica #400
I can attest from personal experience, having done a 2 year bit, that cup noodles are, in fact, the primary jailhouse currency. They are about a dollar and are thus easily mentally convertable in value, small and easy to stack and move around.
I worked in the library, and would smuggle confiscated sports illustrated magazines out of the back. I charged 5 cup noodles for a picture of a girl. I also stole a copy of Alestair Crowley’s The Book of the Law from there – I figured he would approve. I charged a cup noodle a day for access to my tome of dark secrets, with threats to curse anyone who didn’t pay up or return it. I had some interesting times in there.
“but curious how much stock people put into vibes when deciding where to live or travel.”
Where to live has always been bound to the job for me. Now I could move but this area of Eastern Washington appeals to me.
Once long ago I was headed from western WA to Wisconsin on US 2. After winding through the mountains somewhere between Browning and Cut Bank the road was on a hill and I could see the plains stretching endlessly to the east and I felt a profound sense of relief and peace. So I’m not a mountain person.
US 2 (and I-94) are some of my favorite roads. Another favorite drive which is in the mountains is US 26 from the Grand Tetons to Riverton. It’s not really relaxing as you have to pay attention, but the scenery and geology you are passing through is great.
Closer to home the Waterville Plateau is a fascinating place. The glaciers did a number up there. Just a couple months ago I found a spot on the map called Boulder Park. I got there and found a large number of boulders parked in a field. Plus one for accuracy in naming, minus several dozen for figuring out how all those boulders come to be in that particular spot.
David @413
Interesting: your feelings about place. I have always felt most at home around and in the Pacific, especially CA coast, Hawaii, east coast of Australia and NZ, and in the Mediteranian basin, especially Greece. I was not born in any of those places, nor is my ancestry from those places, but coming back to them has always felt like coming home. Especially flying in to Hawaii, I would literally sigh and feel at home. I am now half the year on the central coast of CA and half and half on the Pacific coast of Mexico, so all good.
People often ask on this site where they should move to or live. I guess that is fine for many people. Sometimes I feel it may be better to die where you feel right than live where you don’t, as in pick the hill you are willing to die on. To each his own, I guess.
Stephen
@JMG
Thanks for the recommend. What interesting is that in real life. While the Fae sightings and activities seem to have been suppressed.
Hardened atheists and materialists dabbling in the occult because it’s funny or there is nothing to worry about still were demonically oppressed or even possessed.
There have been a few stories of hardened atheists from the testimony of exorcists I read that refused to do the rite and call on the name of Jesus that subsequently died horribly often with the demons claiming their souls while they insist to the end that it was just a hallucination or bad dream.
Those who don’t believe in the rite but goes through the motions still got relief from the phenomenon however.
Is anyone noticing changes in the energy of Tuesday’s? Usually Tuesday has a Martial feel to it. Brusque, harsh irritable and forceful. But lately it has been the day when things break or fail, sometimes spectacularly. Is Mars doing something I am unaware of?
Kevin
David, the United States is a single political entity but it’s not a single country. The Puget Sound country where I grew up is as alien to the east coast where I now live as Japan is to England. I can live in most parts of it, but there are places where I feel more comfortable and places less so. I follow intuition when deciding where to move, but that’s generally less a matter of vibes than of work I have to do.
David M., hmm! That’s very odd. Do you know of a reason why you might be haunted? Such things don’t happen at random.
Polecat, I’m watching that carefully. I’ll make the transition to some other venue when it becomes necessary.
Paradoctor, not at all. Buddhism teaches that existence is suffering; I simply note that suffering is one of the things that happens. Your tinfoil hat theory, by the way, is generally accepted in many occult circles.
Info, this is one of the reasons why I discourage atheists from practicing magic. It’s like going hiking with a blindfold on.
Kevin, Mars is currently applying hard to a conjunction with Uranus and a sextile with Neptune, so that might well be involved.
Phaedrig,
Thank you for the confirmation. I hope your time inside wasn’t too hard but provided some useful lessons.
Jessica
@Ambrose (#422):
Yes indeed. Mystic Americanism (1924) lies at the root of (almost?) all later esoteric speculation about the Great Seal, such as those of Celestia Root Lang, Paul Foster Case, Maurice Doreal, E. Raymond Capt, Robert Hieronimus and “David Ovason .” I’m impressed that you know about the book.
( BTW, Clymer published Mystic Americanism,, but the author was Grace Kincaid Morey, whose speculations briefly appeared in other Clymer publications as early as 1916. Her book is now available for downloading from archive.org )
The terms “ZIonism” and “anti-ZIonism” have changed meaning over the years:
https://johnbjudis.substack.com/p/redefining-zionism
https://www.jta.org/2026/02/04/ideas/the-zionism-gap-what-data-really-shows-about-jews-israel-and-zionism-today
JMG,
Other than the aforementioned dabbling before I got wise enough to knock it off (I’m not certain what’s possible here), I can’t think of any reason. Uhm. Nothing goetic. Mostly the chaos Brand of cookbooks that are mass marketed these days. Mainly working with sigils, angels… I’ve long since thrown them in the trash bin, even though I got results from them. Something about it felt sleazy and wrong: The ease of the methods involved and (seemingly) getting something for nothing. I’m sure I paid a price for it although it wasn’t immediately apparent.
All that aside, I’m only guessing at what might be going on here, if anything. I’m not actually convinced I’m haunted, or my building is haunted. It could all be coincidental, or incidental. Although the disembodied voices thing is difficult to explain away it doesn’t have to be connected to the other things that are going on. It hasn’t been frequent enough or bothersome enough to worry about. Usually it takes the form of (what sounds like) my wife’s voice calling my name even though she’s in the other room, sleeping, or outside the apartment. I only just connected the things recently when my wife noticed the odd pattern with our neighbors and I thought it was strange too.
-David M.
Here is an article that covers an issue that looks like an echo from our near future. It does highlight the benefits to the people of housing over supply. In China it was due to policy mismanagement, elsewhere it will be due to population decline.
The young Chinese choosing life in ‘ghost cities’ – Urban castaways are making homes in half-empty towers left over from the world’s biggest housing boom
https://archive.md/EeaKa
Dear JMG, a kind of a minor&light-weight question this time:
I have noticed that when describing the religion of elves, several fantasy writers like to default to an “Elfified” version of Indo-European paganism (so like Roman Paganism or Hinduism). I was wondering why that it is.
For examples, there is the old man himself (Tolkien), with his Elven pantheon. The same translates over to for instance the Elder Scrolls games (which adds the Asura/Deva divide with more juicy and edgy gods).
Another interesting one is the Warhammer/Warhammer40k version , which has a pantheon, but also adds a bit of more edge. So one of the gods is Khaine, the bloody-handed god of war. But despite being rather obviously a sinister character (sort of like Ares in Greek mythology), the good-guy elves (with their fetish for white flowing robes) worship him too, at least when going to war. The division lies more in the degree of worship – the white robe fetishists worship him very carefully and with the proper precautions, the purple-robed spiky shoulderpad fetishists (the bad guy elves) worship him with less discretion.
Still, what is the deal with connecting elves with Hinduism (or in any case, pantheon-style paganism). Where did this connection come from?
I was curious if you were thinking about writing something on the Semiquincentennial and contrasting it with the Bicentennial, which you are also old enough to remember.
Hello from Providence. Is there a tradition or book you would recommend for someone whose faculty of mental imagery isn’t naturally developed? I heard you mention on a podcast that you think mostly in words rather than images, and I’m the same way. I’m pretty lost because so many occult traditions focus on visualization. I have done seed thought practices, but it can be difficult to discern what is real vs unreal when it’s just words/thoughts.
“As for the Butlerian future, you’re quite correct that it’s coming a good deal faster than I expected — I’ll be dealing with that in an upcoming post, in fact.” Great news! It’s nice that Earthworm, AliceEm and Paedrig have mentioned the Butlerian future, perhaps with apprehension or mixed feelings. All I’ve got to say is that I would be an easy recruit for the jihad. True, we wouldn’t be able to have these pleasant and illuminating online discussions if Butler has his way, but I see it as a tiny sacrifice for an immense greater good of getting the 800-pound robot off our backs, and the techno-fascist elites along with it. Seeing the damage that it has done to our society – and especially the under-30 demographic, and the younger the worse (my wife works in a school and she is absolutely horrified by the smouldering ruins of what childrens’ minds and behaviours have become thanks to those abominable ‘screens’) – it is high time that Thinking Machines and their offspring be put down.
I know, “Make the Dark Ages Great Again” is neither a great slogan nor battle cry, but sometime soon something more catchy will gel. I see a thousand data centres going up in flames in the not-too-distant future. For that I will shed nary a tear.
Looking forward to the coming post, JMG!
Good gods…Fabrication is not an ‘error’ or ‘hallucination’!
The twisting of language is beginning to boil my piss.
From zerohedge:
“A new analysis from Laine AI suggests that AI-related errors in U.S. court filings are no longer isolated incidents but a rapidly expanding trend. Drawing on hundreds of confirmed cases, the study finds that courts are seeing a growing number of filings containing fabricated citations, inaccurate legal authorities, and other AI-generated mistakes as lawyers and self-represented litigants increasingly incorporate generative AI into their work.”
“The authors conclude that AI can remain a valuable legal research tool, but only if every citation, quotation, and legal authority is independently verified before being submitted to a court.”
And from the AI company:
“About Laine AI
Laine AI is a legal technology company focused on improving the accuracy and reliability of AI-assisted legal work. It delivers tools that help legal teams detect errors, verify citations, and reduce risk in court filings”
“AI-related filing errors tend to fall into a few clear categories, with fabrication standing out as the most common. It accounts for 624 mentions, or 51.7% of all recorded mistakes.”
and
“Legal teams should therefore treat every AI-generated citation as unverified until checked, using a mix of trusted research tools and review processes before submission.”
Some potential efficacy as glorified search engines.
Beyond that, I am currently trending with Ron M 440 and Ripley from Aliens:
“I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit… it’s the only way to be sure”
JMG, I would love to hear your thoughts on this story (I know a lot of the people involved) of a supposedly secular group that went off the rails in 2019. https://lydialaurenson.substack.com/p/the-inside-story-of-leverage-research
Hi JMG,
I was watching a video on YouTube this morning and thought of you since you’ve covered many posts on the topic. I was wondering your take on its accuracy particularly about the parts on the occult. It’s fairly long but well bookmarked.
How Occultists and Bankers Manufactured WW2 Germany w/ Matthew Ehret
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtVI_UrXtT8