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 followup 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.
Also, an announcement for those who will be coming to meet me in Glastonbury this coming June. Regular reader Guillem has set up a Dreamwidth page so that attendees can arrange travel and lodging together if they so wish. As a frugal and energy-saving project, this fits in with just about everything I discuss, and I encourage everyone to consider it. You can find it here:
https://glastonburyarrangements.dreamwidth.org/
With that said, have at it!
Hello JMG and Everybody,
Do you have any interest or opinion regarding the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him?
Inna
Hello all, it’s the Impatient Inpatient hete. Continue to need prayers, please.
Howdy,
Ecosophia has been something of an island of sanity and reasonableness in an otherwise uneven online alt-spirituality world. That unevenness applies just as much to online discussion/community of Heathenry as anything else, and so I have a combined offer and request:
Would anyone here with Heathen leanings of whatever strength or stripe who feels willing say “hello,” and do any of y’all know good online resources/communities/writers for Heathens? If everyone’s answer is “not really,” and if there’s sufficient interest, I might look into setting something up for Ecosophian Heathens (even if it’s just as simple as a regular open post on my dreamwidth).
To get the ball rolling, hi, I’m Jeff! I’ve always loved the Norse myths, and when I started groping my way toward spirituality, they seemed the obvious starting point. Since then, I’ve taken something of a winding path, and am currently in the middle of exploring JMG’s Druidic material, though through a Heathen lens. As for resources, though I don’t agree with any of these folks on all points, I’ve found them helpful to varying degrees, especially since they don’t all agree with one another: Galina Krasskova (https://krasskova.wordpress.com/), Nordic Animism (https://www.youtube.com/@NordicAnimism), Ocean Keltoi (https://www.youtube.com/@OceanKeltoi), Tom Rowsell (https://www.youtube.com/@Survivethejive), Scott T. Shell (https://www.youtube.com/@scottt.shellcontinentalger2464), and Eirik Westcoat (https://americanfutharch.com/).
Cheers, and my blessings to all who welcome them,
Jeff
Happy Astrological New Year!
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. 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 and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May 1 Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Ron M’s friend Paul fully recover from the debilitating illness that has rendered him bedridden as well as recover from the spiritual malaise/attack that he believes is manifesting the illness.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
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 Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
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.
May Corey Benton, who is currently in hospital and whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
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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.
JMG,
I understand that you’ve already commented extensively on these topics and may have nothing more to say, but wondering if you might say a bit more about what you’re currently thinking about things pertaining to the Ukraine war/situation, what with Trump now in office and European leaders talking tough.
Thanks,
Edward
Mr. Greer,
Hello. I have a question regarding your work as an astrologer. Have you ever drawn up a horoscope or chart or whatever it is (sorry, not sure of the right terminology) that indicated that the subject of the study never should have been born? Thanks in advance for your thoughts on the subject.
Dear Michael Greer,
I’m writing with the help of a translator, so please forgive me if my English doesn’t sound entirely natural.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on Art Berman’s recent article titled “Peak Oil: Requiem for a Failed Paradigm.” As you know, Berman was for years one of the most respected analysts supporting the peak oil theory, but in this piece he argues that the paradigm has failed. He claims the issue was never purely geological, but rather a complex interplay between energy, economics, debt, and public perception — and that markets have adapted in ways the original peak oil framework failed to anticipate.
What are your thoughts on the capitulation of people like Albert Mann? Have you ever considered the possibility that peak oil might have been a failed paradigm?
We did a do-it-yourself writers’ retreat in Ocean City last week. Writers’ retreats are normally appallingly expensive and if they’re in a major tourist destination, why are you paying thousands to sit in a hotel room to write?
So we went to OC in the off-season, taking advantage of the tens of thousands of short term vacation rentals going begging and an empty city.
Were am I going with this? T-shirt stands. OC is simply lined with them, each bursting with T-shirts. I don’t often make it to OC (a completely artificial town built on a sand bar) but when I do, I see what T-shirt stands sell. They’re hyper-competitive and must carry designs that sell.
I have never seen so many presidential T-shirt designs, ever, anywhere. Other than a few derogatory Biden shirts, they were all pro-Trump, in a huge array of styles.
Trump baring his chest to show off the Superman logo.
Trump baring his chest to show his manly pecs with a big tattoo saying “glory or death”
Trump’s pic from the shooting, with the tag line “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Trump’s manly pic with “Impeached, convicted, etc., etc.,” and “back for more!”
On and on and on.
My personal favorite:
Trump and Vance, text only : “Elect the Felon and the Hillbilly in 2024!”
He really is becoming an icon.
Hello JMG and all!
Just received The Cornelian Moon and can’t wait to read it (after my current book read has finished). Thank you JMG for this series.
Ok, just some info to share with anyone curious about Patañjali s Yoga Sūtras:
At joisyoga dot com, we have just started sutra study… it’s about a half hour daily – 5:55 am west coast, 8:55 am east- it’s free though donations welcome if you wish. Andrew (teacher) starts with opening prayers then 10 or 15 minute discussing sutra by sutra with lots of review…he also simultaneously coaches on Sanskrit pronunciation for anyone interested.
Just go to website and click on morning chanting.
ps his teacher died unexpectedly a short while ago so we always end session with a beautiful chant for souls that have passed.
Do you still follow the resources/peak oil scene?
I somehow do, and despite the U.S. achieving a record-high production of 13.6 million barrels per day, global output has remained stagnant since 2018. Even a minor decline in production could trigger severe economic and geopolitical crises. Back in the 1980s we were on a similar plateau, and economic and political turmoil, and it was around the world, and arguably it contributed to the Soviet Union’s collapse— that collapse took out some pressure and there was a short period of prosperity for the other survivors. A scenario that could potentially repeat if even a slight decline in oil production occurs. Who would be now on the menu Europe, US, India, Russia, China?
And this scenario could follow just from business as usual, without the double digits percents declines the oilmen are reporting about the fracking patch…
Do you plan an update at some point?
I made a more detailed comment about it here:
https://the-arcane-archivist.dreamwidth.org/582.html
JMG, I usually just lurk here but found something too intriguing not to share:
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-02-10-what-trump-could-learn-from-hitler-on-nih-funding/
For those who don’t want to go to the link, it’s an article titled “What Trump could learn from Hitler on NIH funding”. The portion of interest (and the only part of the article actually discussing the man in the mustache) is:
“Even Hitler did not trash German science.
Hitler did seek to turn science to his own ends, to promote research on eugenics, new technologies for blitzkrieg war, sick medical experiments, and more efficient ways for the mass killing of Jews. Yet civilian German science, long a mark of German pride, also thrived. During the Nazi era, German scientists and engineers invented the first electron microscope, industrial-scale production of artificial fiber, pharmaceuticals such as advanced sulfa drugs, artificial rubber, and much more.
Trump, in short, is even more nihilist than Hitler.”
It is fascinating how they simultaneously claim Trump is worse than Hitler (at least in the nihilism department) for simply pulling funding from universities while praising Hitler himself for promoting German science (let’s just ignore the defection of many great German scientists directly due to his policies).
All of this I’m sure is of interest as it seems to capture the exact moment of simultaneous love and hate for the man in the mustache as you so astutely pointed out a few months ago JMG.
Once again, thank you for putting in the time and effort to enlighten us, Archdruid.
I have formed something of a habit of discussing ideas that provoke thoughts in me when your open posts come round, and there is one that I have been pondering on for some time now. I would like to share it with everyone.
I live in India, and there are stray dogs in the streets here. When I was in college, I was fond of feeding them treats. I would buy a packet of biscuits and toss some towards the dogs, hoping to supplement their sparse scavenger diets.
I quickly realized that not all dogs were equally confident when it came to trusting and accepting treats from me. Usually, the bigger, muscular, and more well-groomed dogs were the most confident. They would traipse in calmly and accept their treat, and then look up at me with an expectation for more. The most harried, emaciated, wiry, and dirty dogs were the least confident. Many would jolt back from me the moment I called them or tossed them treats, stand at a distance, and then eye both me and the treat I threw at them (now lying on the street) with suspicion.
On one occasion, I came across three dogs together – a “well off” one and two emaciated ones. A canteen was nearby, so I purchased a Parle-G (some of the cheapest biscuits in India, ideal for college goers), ripped the pack open, called out to the dogs, and began to offer them the biscuits. The “well off” dog arrived immediately, and after receiving his treat he began to eat with contentment. I called out to the other two, but they came no closer. I tried very hard to woo them, because they clearly needed my compassion more than their well-off compatriot. But they would not approach, either because I terrified them or because their well-off compatriot held first dibs on the human by some canine pact I do not understand.
So I tossed the next two treats at the emaciated dogs. They promptly dodged away, and then the well-off dog, noticing the treats, swung in to claim them. I shooed him, scolded him, and told him (in human words) to leave the treats for the other two. He refused, and stared me down with a bold, challenging countenance. I kept trying to woo the other two, but they were absolutely scared doofy and did not approach me. So I had to just leave the treats there, and as I watched, the well-off dog chewed them comfortably, left, and only then did the other two approach. They then began to quarrel over the crumbs left behind. Even then they held no trust in me, because as I approached them with a piece of bread to supplement the meagre remains of my charity they ran off.
Years later, as I learnt about the boots problem, I recalled this incident. It dawned on me that the emaciated dogs may be suffering from what we humans call ‘poverty’ when it ails members of our species – they have little, so they can afford to lose little, so they do not dare to take risks, and hence they do not pursue opportunities. And this, in turn, keeps them from opportunities and keeps them ‘poor’.
At the time, I interpreted this as “dogs have a kind of economy!”. But with the maturity of the years, I have realized that I had probably stumbled upon the reverse of that – its not dogs who can be understood with economics, but humans who can be understood by ecology.
Trees rush upwards towards the sun with their branches, and downwards towards the water with their roots. Those that gain an early advantage in the race get the best resources, and can therefore reinforce their initial victories with this advantage. They grow taller and deeper with the sun and water. Likewise, bigger fish get first dibs on plankton and thereby get still bigger and stronger. This is the law of nature, and affects more than just animals and plants. When stars form in a nebula, for instance, their gravitational attraction forces compete over the fixed amount of hydrogen gas in the nebula. The bigger a star gets, the quicker it gets at sucking in the gas because of its higher mass and gravitation force.
So maybe class and caste, poverty and wealth, these are simply the humanity edition of the same essential, fundamental laws of the universe? Perhaps the do-gooders who try to challenge poverty and strive for equality are fighting an eternally losing battle? Maybe poverty and wealth exist as an unshakeable ecological necessity? Maybe we can only hold it off for a while during periods of immense upward social mobility, such as when we burn great gallons of oil. But like shadows rushing in as the lonely candle flickers and dies out, poverty will rush in to claim its prize the moment the external advantage weakens in supply.
So yes, I have been pondering (pessimistically) on the nature of poverty, and I have realized that it might just be the ecological distribution of resources among the members of a population of Homo sapiens. Even socialist countries, sooner or later, do develop poverty. I read in an article that the apparatchiks had immense birthday celebrations with dances and several guests, while the soviet working class had smaller birthday parties in schools with home-cooked treats. Maybe ideologies, laws, and constitutions are simply no match for a power as fundamental as poverty?
https://x.com/balajis/status/1904830270135820757 Balaji Srinivasan is one of the more interesting people on Twitter IMO. In this thread, he’s actually saying things very similar to what JMG has been saying for years — post-WW2 USA is history’s greatest empire, and the post-WW2 world order is set up so that the majority of monetary flows goes to the US.
But one crucial difference with JMG is that he thinks MAGA’s approach with tariffs, pulling back from the world, will result in basically something similar to the post-USSR collapse happening in the US. At the fall of the USSR, native Russians were 50.1% of the population, there was a “Soviet” identity that had been collapsing and finally dealt a death blow with the death of the union; white Americans are today about 47% of the US population. Soviet industrialization had fallen far behind that of the West and Western allies such as Japan. ( (older thread: https://x.com/balajis/status/1876571631369535778)
To be fair, a lot of this isn’t too different from what JMG has said — MAGA, whether intentionally or not is “collapsing now to avoid the rush”. The main difference is that he thinks this will result in chaos internally in the US and that even if the average American has benefited less from the monetary flows than in previous decades, it will get a lot worse if the empire is dismantled. For comparison, he points out that the Russian Federation today does have a majority Russian population and regained order after the chaotic 90s, but this came after Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine etc split off, and a lot of internal unrest in Chechnya, Dagestan etc. In the meantime, the hegemon role would likely be taken by China.
Overall, I quite appreciate a lot of what Balaji says — unlike many figures from the tech world, he doesn’t think AI will replace humans anytime soon, and also that AI + a few advances in military robotics in the US won’t be a substitute for a cohesive community. Actually a lot of what he says parallels what JMG has said, as far as I know, the main thing is whether the MAGA pull-back of empire will result in a huge decline in the US internally, if the monetary flows are much reduced.
I will take this opportunity to remind all that the 8th Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck will be held June 21, 2025 at our house, behind the Charles Dexter Ward Mansion in Providence, RI. Only 87 days to go! Sign up here. I look forward to your presence, and once again, whomever comes from furthest is welcome to stay in our guest room.
Hello JMG!
Several months ago you wrote about the origin of werewolf stories – the historical phenomenon of semi-feral adolescent boys roaming around the outskirts of villages in packs at a certain stage in their social development. I would love to learn more about this history but I wasn’t able to find any other resources – are there books you would recommend on this subject? Thanks!
In the category of that which can’t continue won’t continue;
“Central Washington has quickly become a hotspot for data centers, as tech giants relentlessly pursue enhanced computing power to advance artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. According to a recent report by CBRE, this region leads the nation in the growth of wholesale secondary data center markets, boasting an impressive 246.4 megawatts of inventory—an increase of 84.2 megawatts from the previous year. Remarkably, only 0.4 megawatts of this capacity remains unused, underscoring the high demand in this locale.”
https://www.yoursourceone.com/columbia_basin/central-washington-emerges-as-one-of-the-fastest-growing-data-center-hubs-in-the-u/article_07cef178-f144-448c-931f-bc2a2a6873b0.html
Most of this is just cloud services and video servers. Where do they think they are getting more power for AI?
The utility is running a dedicated power line from the dam to the substation that feeds several of the data centers.
The other interesting side effect is; (From the Washington Post)
“More than a quarter of all computer programming jobs have vanished in the past two years, the worst downturn that industry has ever seen. Things are sufficiently abysmal that computer programming ranks among 10 hardest-hit occupations of 420-plus jobs for which we have data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ”
The rest of the article is behind a paywall. The point is AI is replacing programmers. All that boilerplate code can be done by an AI. The orchard pruning crew across the road right now has more job security.
Unintended consequences strike again.
What are your thoughts on the question of consciousness being emanant from matter versus consciousness being pre-existing and being/causing the precipitation of matter/time/space from the field of possibility?
I’m thinking specifically in relation to Animism, humanity’s oldest spiritual belief system; it seems likely that many, if not most, of our collective ancestors believed all matter and patterns of organization of matter (mountains, rivers, wind, thunder, rain, etc.) were not only conscious but conscious in distinctly anthropomorphic ways. It is unfortunate that those ancient/primal experiences are now generally considered fanciful, childish or at least metaphoric by most anthropologists. “Of course rocks and trees, mountains and birds don’t ACTUALLY talk to people.” This self-blinding “rationalism” would seem to remove the obligation of respect (and the possibility of assistance!) from those Other Beings… It also makes for a very lonely existence if the only consciousness you acknowledge in the world is human.
Thoughts?
In mid-winter of this year (2025) I had a remarkable encounter with an Anna’s Hummingbird and was asked by friends to share it on the island online newspaper. Since it is uppermost in my mind in regard to Animism I am offering this link to the post:
https://theorcasonian.com/me-and-anna-down-in-the-backyard/
John,
I have been rereading Dark Age American and it has been very helpful for me in putting things into a larger context and healthier perspective. Recently I have been struggling to maintain my tranquility, my perspective. Your work has long been appreciated and is grounding for me. Thank you for your wisdom and for sharing it with us. The Wealth of Nature reread is next.
Much appreciated from Rangley, Maine.
Inna, yes, I’ve put some time into reading up on it. As you may know, every author has favorite words, phrases, and sentence structures. “Shakespeare’s” works have these, too, but they vary from one part of “his” work to another — for example, the vocabulary choices in the sonnets have next to nothing in common with the plays, and there are several clusters within the plays that have their own unique vocabulary and phrase choices not shared with other plays, to an extent found in no other writer, ever. Thus it’s clear that the works attributed to “Shakespeare” were the product of more than one author, and may include the work of anything up to a dozen writers of varying quality. The best thesis I’ve seen yet is that since plays in the Tudor era were considered very lowbrow stuff, the actor William Shakespeare was the front man for a circle of aristocrats who had enormous fun writing the plays. He probably revised the manuscripts based on his own experience of the stage to make them suitable for performance, and likely put in some of the jokes, but the bulk of the work was done by others.
Your Kittenship, positive energy en route!
Jeff, I hope it works out.
Quin, thank you for this as always.
Edward, we’re in the endgame. Trump is doing the sensible thing and backing away from a lost war, European leaders are melting down and preparing the ground for their own political destruction, and the Russians are methodically going about a war of attrition, the kind of war they excel in beyond any other modern nation.
Stephen, nope. If a soul shouldn’t come into incarnation, that soul does not come into incarnation. There are no accidents or mistakes in the cosmic process. Mind you, some souls that have a lot of bad karma may wish they hadn’t been born, but them’s the breaks; one way or another, we all have to work out our karma, and sometimes that really sucks.
XCO, your English is fine. Thanks for letting me know about this; I haven’t followed Berman for a long time, and I now know that peak oil is about to become relevant again. He’s right, to be sure, that the simplistic model of peak oil — “we reach the peak by 20xx, and then everything falls apart” — was never going to happen, but that was never the only game in town. I argued back during the heyday of the movement that politics and economics couldn’t be ignored, and that the supply of oil was going to bounce all over the place as supply constraints, demand destruction, and the effect of rising prices on the profitability of marginal sources came into play. What fascinates me is that Berman pays no attention to net energy issues, and the ways that the decline in net energy has functioned as a hidden tax on all economic activity, pushing large parts of the global economy into ragged declines. That’s huge, and it startles me that he misses it.
Teresa, fascinating. I was in DC in November, and was startled — in that most blue of blue cities — to see plenty of pro-Trump logo gear for sale.
Jill, many thanks for this!
Arcane, yep. I do indeed still follow energy issues, and plan on doing an update or two later this year, once Wagner is out of the way.
Parched, that’s hilarious. Telling, granted, but hilarious. Thank you!
Rajarshi, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s advantageous for every species of living thing to compete against other members of the same species for the available goodies, since this improves the genetics of the species overall — the more successful, after all, will reproduce disproportionately more than the less successful. What fascinates me, as someone who was very poor for many years, is that among dogs as among humans, a great deal of poverty is self-inflicted — attitudes like the ones you saw, and self-defeating habits, play a very large role in keeping the poor poor.
Alvin, er, you apparently missed my discussions of the decline and fall of the United States and the likelihood that it will break apart in the years ahead. My nonfiction book Decline and Fall and two of my novels, Twilight’s Last Gleaming and Retrotopia, both discuss that. I think it’s possible that the Trumpian revolution will prevent that by discarding our nomenklatura instead, but that’s still a bit of a long shot.
Peter, thanks for this as always,
Kevin, I wish. My werewolf theory is something I’ve put together gradually over close to half a century of reading and study. I may have to write a book on it one of these days.
Siliconguy, yep. Whee!
Ken, it seems to me that the whole dispute is based on a false assumption, one that George Berkeley pointed out a very long time ago. How do we even know of this thing called “matter”? Because of patterns of experience in consciousness. Is there anything to “matter” other than those patterns in consciousness? Not as far as we can tell. “Matter” is an abstraction assembled out of sensory data folded, spindled, and mutilated by the minds of observers; it might even be called a figment of our collective imagination. Since the only existence we ever actually encounter consists of patterns in consciousness, the fanciful notions of the anthropologists you mention — those who insist that their tribal prejudices determine what can or can’t speak to people — should be set aside as childish superstitions, and the sober testimony of animists taken seriously. Thank you also for the hummingbird encounter!
Tom, you’re most welcome and thank you.
JMG, what do you think of the current efforts of the Dems and their street thugs to vandalize Teslas in order to punish Elon for saving the tax payers money?
Yesterday I had a conversation with someone on the far left and they were smugly recounting their virtuous move to sell their Tesla and purchase instead something called a “Polestar”. It appears that Polestar is a money losing EV car company mostly owned by a Chinese Car company that has several suits against it for defrauding shareholders somehow.
Wow, sounds virtuous to me.
Re Glastonbury: probably someone’s already mentioned it, but just in case not &/or as a reminder:
Anyone going to Glastonbury in June should be making sure their passport is up to date *now*, and possibly requesting expedited service if acquisition / renewal is needed.
Also, there’s now a “visa” type thing required for visiting the UK, called an electronic travel authorisation (ETA). You can either apply by app (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-uk-eta-app) or at this website: https://apply-for-an-eta.homeoffice.gov.uk/apply/electronic-travel-authorisation/how-to-apply
FYI, and safe travels
Greetings all. I know this has been discussed before, both here and on your other blog, but I have been thinking about the apparent contraindication of Eastern energy work (specifically qigong, I believe) with Western practices. JMG, I believe it was you (and perhaps another reader) who discussed this specifically related to qi practices. Were you also practicing specifically “Western” energy practices at the time, or were there different paths (ritual magic, etc.) that just proved incompatible? Were you practicing any type of “banishing” rituals at the time? Do you think this is a bug or a feature, as it were?
I am looking at this through the frame of St. Symeon the New Theologian, who, in a tract on prayer practices (“The Three Methods of Prayer”), advises a breathing practice focused on the navel (which is awful close to the dantien). Although these Christian prayer practices lean much more heavily on invocation than any external, “mechanical” techniques per se, the idea of breath and its connection to spirit (spiritus, pneuma) seems to be analogous if not eqivalent to qi.
Thank you.
Axé
In response to Inna, an essay titled “Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays?” was posted just last week here:
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-who-wrote-shakespeares-plays/
. . . and has generated 656 readers’ comments so far.
I am just a layperson, but I suspect that an Israel-Iran war is going to break out soon, and that would cut global oil supply and cause prices to shoot up.
Two things druidry regarding trees.
Summer solstice triggers synchronized beech tree reproduction across Europe.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/03/240313135330.htm
Also, finally a competition I can get behind.
A summary of the Tree of the Year competition.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20dd6yk55yo
Here is an interesting link on how depopulated Europe and the Mediterranean were by 750 CE
https://x.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1879767785246744592
After all the disastrous invasions, wars, climactic disasters and plagues, I have read that the whole of Italy alone had less people than just the city of Rome in 300.
Can you see anything like this by 200 years in the future?
@Kevin & JMG in regards to the werewolves, there’s a really interesting book that traces a similar theory called “The One-eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde (Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph No. 36) ” by Kris Kershaw
In the population decline or demographic crisis, there doesn’t seem to be much news, except a few more middle income countries have reported a decline in birthrates (last stories I saw were Chile and Vietnam hitting around 1.2 to 1.3 children per woman). However, a few Open Posts ago, I saw some discussion of the possibility that we are not actually at 8 billion people (and probably will never know) due to inaccurate or dishonest governments inflating their numbers. Curious if anyone has any more information along these lines.
Other thoughts to discuss with population issues; if the US succeeds in reducing immigration, how does this accelerate population decline in the US? What are the implications worldwide? (Russia, I believe is actually already in a population decline.) Are we already seeing the effects of a population slowdown?
Final random thought, anyone think that US foreign policy is now inspired by the old story “Br’ayer Rabbit and the Briar Patch?”
JMG,
I just finished your book After Progress, and no sooner had I finished it then I saw blurbs for these two forthcoming books, courtesy of one erstwhile presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who interviews the authors on his podcast. Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Bring it Back, by Marc J. Dunkelman, and Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I haven’t read them yet, but based on the publisher’s descriptions, it looks like we can still have our Star Trek/Jetsons future, we just need to tweak the existing political status quo a bit. Hooray!
Here’s a money quote from Yang’s podcast interview with Derek Thompson: “Trump is embodying the politics of scarcity,” Derek says. “The abundance agenda can be the antidote and define the next era of American liberalism, a liberalism that builds.”
Methinks I heard the concept of “scarcity industrialism” being talked about in polite company. It looks like your ideas are trickling in from the fringes and influencing the culture, even if that culture is still firmly ensconced within the conventional wisdom. Would this be considered denial, or bargaining, or both?
A while back, you were talking about how Donald Trump was energised by his opposition. Howard Lutnick talked about exactly that in a recent interview on CBS:
“What people don’t understand is that when people bring negative energy to Donald Trump they’re just charging his battery. Your energy around him comes to him…He never steps back. He just takes it like a centrifuge and hurls it back. He’s been that way always, this is not new. This is who he is. So those people who attack him think they’re attacking him, but they’re literally charging his battery. He just comes back bigger and stronger.”
Like the Cosmic Doctrine, opposing something just locks it into place. If the Democratic Party had ignored him to build their own vision like Dion Fortune would have suggested, he would have been a much smaller figure.
Hey JMG
I recently came across an interesting book in the Brisbane square library which may be of interest to you in regards to understanding how the legacy of the Industrial Revolution will affect the Earth Millenia from now, and how much of it could still be studied millennia from now.
It’s called “Future Fossils” by David Farrier, and it is essentially an account of his personal quest to discover how the material legacy of the modern world will show up on the geological record, or influence the way the Earth turns out in the millennia ahead. It’s full of useful references, interesting observations and great anecdotes. For example, he mentions that when our cities become part of the geological strata, it would most likely show up as a thin band of red iron-rich minerals, glass shards and iron pyrite along with possible fossils of everyday things such as chairs or machines.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45892252-footprints
JMG, thanks a lot for hosting this space again – I’m very much looking forward to this months topics. 🙂
I’ve got a few offers and a question to everybody today. The offers first:
1. Blessings: I perform a formal blessing each Wednesday, and appreciate signups, as they help me to practice: https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
2. MOE newbies and interested people: I’m currently putting up a Modern Order of Essenes online course. Everybody is welcome to join, and it doesn’t matter if you start out late! 🙂 https://thehiddenthings.com/topics/moe-course
3. MOE practitioners: There will be a Healer attunement this upcoming Sunday, but only if at least one person confirms: https://thehiddenthings.com/moe-healer-attunement-2025-03-30
….
And the question: I love to read good, thought-provoking stuff as much as time permits, and I’m wondering if you folks have any favourite online resources for occult/spiritual content…
Do you have any recommendations for worthwhile websites/online authors who write about occult/spiritual topics or related things? I don’t care if it’s about paganism, mesmerism, ritual magic or anything else, no matter how obscure, as long as the content is deep, well written, thought-provoking, and the writers know what they are writing about. No videos please, only written stuff – and I don’t mind longer articles/texts at all. Obviously, I already know about JMG’s blog. 😉 (And yes, I’ve noted Jeff Russell’s comment above…)
Suggestions much appreciated. Thanks! 🙂
Milkyway
The developments in the past few days made me realize the West is speedily going in the direction of ever more authoritairianism. It doesn’t matter if left or right are in power. The many transgressions of the Democrats have been talked about here and other places many times, but the Trump administration isn’t doing any better. People being deported without due process, judges baselessly slandered by the president, Musk’s X censoring the Turkish opposition, Gabbard straight out lying to the Senate that the Signal apps didn’t contain classified info, etc.
The media isn’t any better. Just as the left leaning media refused to mention Hunter’s laptop, the right leaning media refuse to report on Signal gate (ZH) or comes up with farfetched 5D-chess explanations (Jeff Childers). Each side lives in their own, mutually exclusive, information bubble.
As Gabbard and Ratcliffe have testified that the chat didn’t contain any classified info, The Atlantic has now published the whole chat (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/signal-group-chat-attack-plans-hegseth-goldberg/682176/). Which of course contains details like the timing of the strike that were shared before it happened. Sounds classified to me….
I must say it was a very interesting read, especially observing the quality (or rather lack of quality) of the discussion. Vance, Hegseth, Walz, Rubio, Gabbard, Witkoff – they all want to bomb the Houthi’s as if it would solve anything. The Houthi’s have been bombed for 10 years by Saudi Arabia. Do they really think the US will be able to stop them without groundforces? Only Vance had some doubts but they pertain the messaging. Also Israel is conspicuously absent in the discussion. The easiest way to make the Houthi’s stop closing the Red Sea is of course if the US would stop facilitating and covering for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The participants in the chat are looking to send the bill to Europe, claiming to do it mostly for the Europeans. What a gaslighting nonsense! If it wasn’t for Israel they wouldn’t lift a finger and Europe would be helped most by peace in West-Asia, not another war.
In the meantime the EU is doing just as bad or worse. This post is already long, so I’ll keep the examples to myself. Many to choose from…
JMG, how do you see this all? And how do you deal with this breaking of our shared worldview? Finding out the truth seems to get harder by the day. Same with the rise in authoritairianism. Is there something we can do on the individual level or can we only adapt to the maelstrom of collective events?
JMG, would you consider an essay or two about those “self-defeating habits you mentioned above? People voluntarily collapsing before the rush might benefit.
I wanted to bring up a phenomenon of American English I have been noticing for some time. A few decades ago, a kid home from school would have said something like “Mom, I was late to first period and Mr. Jones said why are you late? I told him I had to wait in line to use the bathroom, and he said I need to manage my time better.” Nowadays, and for quite some time, the kid is likely to say ” Mom, I was late first period, and Mr. Jones was like Why are you late? and I go I had to wait in line for the bathroom, and he was all You need to manage your time better.”
It is easy to sigh over ignorance of proper English, but it has recently occurred to me that in using locutions such as ‘was like’ and ‘goes’ and “was all’ as synonyms for ‘said’, what is being communicated is emotion and states of being. BTW, ‘go’ or ‘goes’ as a synonym for ‘says’ or ‘said’ is nearly always in the present tense, even when past events are being described. ‘Went’ still means left or departed. I wonder what anyone here makes of this phenomenon. Of course, I do know that languages change over time.
@Kevin O #15 “the historical phenomenon of semi-feral adolescent boys roaming around” IMO In My Observation – still happening, saw my two sons doing just that. And JMG’s The Carnelian Moon is a worthwhile read. Inspired me to be aware of my environment as I roam around.
JMG, so what you’re saying is that Shakespeare was the world’s first known shalepost?
XCO and JMG
I have heard that some of Art Berman’s turn around on peak oil depends on who is paying him. He sometimes appears to be saying peak and no peak at the same time.
I feel that the most honest discussion of the issue is probably at oilystuff.com, though peakoilbarrel.com is also good.
Stephen
Putting this out there for the non-Brits here. This interview with David Betz, a well-respected professor of War Studies at King’s College London, who has advised militaries and governments about civil conflicts (his speciality) went semi-viral a few weeks back. In this interview and others given shortly thereafter, Prof. Betz posits that social tensions compounded by the policies of HM government could lead to a civil war (Northern Ireland style, or worse) in the UK and elsewhere in the next few years.
As Europe’s multi-decade slump continues governments seem to be adopting more authoritarian and undemocratic measures to keep order over more restive populations and thereby undermine their legitimacy. Keir Starmer locking people up and threatening them with the police in the UK and attempts to ban or block popular anti-establishment right wing alternatives like AfD in Germany and Calin Georgescu in Romania (in the name of defending democracy), with the apparent blessing of the EU, serve as examples. In addition, David Betz points at the increasingly common practice of appeasing those demographics of the population they consider harder to control while coming down hard on others deemed more docile or less well-organised, in a “two-tier” system of legal application of the law as a significant risk factor too. UK-based or not it’s well worth a listen if you have a spare hour or so.
https://youtu.be/Gid48FgiHho?si=0pPwQ3mGS7orgQZY
On a more cheery note, Mr Greer, I was interested to see you were coming to England this June. You were the first person to open my eyes to the current situation in the world (I was very much a “normie” before), specifically in an old interview on YouTube you gave at the ASPO conference back in 2008, which the algorithm gods showed me and completely upended how I saw the world. I would profit far more from meeting you than you would profit from meeting me, but I would love to go along if schedule allows.
Some years ago a shipmate and myself were having a conversation re religion, says my shipmate, “ I dont believe in God, how can it be all these religions believe theirs is the only true way to God?” Only one can be right, and all the others wrong, seems unfair to all the ones who got it wrong.
“But what if, maybe God didnt really care, possibly He gave all diffrent people their own religion, I said, why not?”
Look when on a ship at sea you have loads of time to have all manner of peculiar conversations..
I find Buddhisim fascinating, Im not a Buhhdist mind you but I get the appeal.
Anyway it so happens my thoughts arent at all original, there having been a Muslim scholar by the name of Al Farabi who posited this notion, which being why wouldn’t God have given Christianity to some, Hinduisim to some, and Islam to some?
Im fair certain plenty of others have had the same thoughts.
Dear fellow ecosophians,
I have been commenting on JMG’s forums under the nickname Ecosophian for about a decade. Today, I am excited to share some good news with you. After what feels like years of hard work, my first book was released this past Tuesday!
The book is a translation of _The Solar Way_, the magnum opus of early 20th-century Russian occultist Nina Rudnikova, whose name has been largely forgotten until recently.
Our host, JMG, has been incredibly supportive throughout the writing process and has graciously provided a wonderful summary of the book, which I will share with you:
“One of the lost classics of Western occultism, this book sets out the way of esoteric initiation in 22 steps symbolized by the 22 arcana of the tarot.
It comes out of the same school of Hermetic occultism as Mouni Sadhu’s famous work _The Tarot_, but goes even more deeply into the philosophy of magic than Sadhu did, setting out the essential symbols and concepts of each step on the path of the initiate.
Among the many themes covered in this volume are:
– The nature of the macrocosm, or occult universe
– The nature of the microcosm, or individual human being
– The inner side of human evolution
– The spiritual hierarchies that influence the occult path
– The principles of occult initiation
– The training of the mind
– The rise and fall of religions and societies
– The role of gender in occultism
– The dangers of black magic
– The Path of Liberation
This work is an essential guide to students of Hermeticism, Martinism, and the Western occult way in general.”
And here I am speaking about the book on the Appleknocker Radio podcast (they also have podcasts with JMG!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVPf7IL8Gds
If you’re interested in the book, you can visit the publisher’s website:
https://spirit.aeonbooks.com/product/solar-way/95336
Thank you for your attention.
With best regards,
Yury Pankratov a.k.a. Ecosophian
XCO, JMG. I have a data point on peak oil which may be useful, or not useful. In the course of my professional career, occasionally I need to give lectures. I was asked to give a talk on climate change to some earnest, upset and despondent university students. So I showed them the planetary history of CO2, said that the planet will be fine, but no, us humans have seriously destabilised our living conditions, but that the planet might not care, and would shake it off. We however care. I then showed them the negative feedback loops on climate change, as in the Limits to Growth original and 2023 update, plus the fallacy that solar PV will save us on account of low EROEI.
I told them this was to assist them in not having false hope, but also not to put the weight of the world on their shoulders. Do good, in the context of your limited life. False hope can be as dangerous as depression. I think they liked it, I hope they did.
However, the interesting response, the one I was testing for, was that of the professor. She seemed horrified that in 30 years, no one had put it so bluntly before. She finished pleading that if you just keep working, we will keep reducing the warming scenarios (not listening of course to my message, that the extreme warming scenarios were always based on bogus numbers, and nothing to do with activist efforts). What I didn’t get was a strenuous denial of the limits to growth, but I also don’t think I’ll be getting a return invite. Just as when I did my masters on it, it still isn’t popular to talk about natural breaks on human behaviour.
I think the upper classes will deal with the next round of peak oil with a sullen, stubborn resentment, rather than any direct attacks. They no longer have much political power, not that I’m saying anyone else will be much better.
Hot off the press,
“Governor Ferguson Launches Initiative to Balance Data Center Growth with Sustainability in Washington”
“Governor Ferguson emphasized the importance of this endeavor, stating, “We must ensure Washington remains a leader in technology and sustainability — these experts will help us do that. This group will help us balance industry growth, tax revenue needs, energy constraints and sustainability.” The workgroup is expected to provide crucial insights into managing the expansion of data centers while maintaining environmental and economic stability.”
So we are saved? Snort, snicker, tee-hee.
Tax revenue is a hot issue. The legislature raised taxes including a carbon tax (part of the $3.80/gal at the pump), then they spent half again that, collected only two thirds of what they thought they would get, and now there is a big budget shortfall. So predictable.
Hi JMG. I think it was about nine months ago that I asked you for book recommendations on Ramon Llull. I read your suggestions and then started chasing down and reading the most promising sources from their bibliographies. This has already been such a fascinating journey and really, I have only begun. So, thank you for sparking my interest by mentioning Llull a long time ago and thank you for the assistance you have provided so far.
I am working on the first draft of the book I wish existed when I started, a practical manual that clearly explains the system and how to use it, and why one would want to.
I hope it is okay to share here that I have started a YouTube series (for those who do video) where I explain the Lullian Art in bite-sized chunks (usually 5-10 minutes per video). Last time I asked you a question about Llull here someone asked for more information and I felt bad that I couldn’t give them any beginner-friendly resources at the time.
Here’s a link to the playlist for anyone that is interested in learning about Ramon Llull’s medieval mental training and analysis system: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLThtsoFvIZV8e-h8acMmnDPUPlVflwqAq&si=ZKeqhXKP70LlvptN
JMG,
A couple weeks ago you recommended the book Savage Continent by Keith Lowe. I just picked it up from the library and am finding it disturbing (all the violence even after the war was officially over). Wow, humans can be awful to each other. It made me scared about what would happen were war and/or social breakdown to occur.
A question I have is do you think the things he writes about in the book indicate that under the surface of supposed European unity today there are still plenty of historical wounds and resentments that could/might come out in ugly ways in the right conditions?
Thanks,
Jacques
JMG,
Wondering if you might please make suggestions about how one might best make up for wrongdoing/sins in the past. I am seeing my life more clearly now and see times in the past when I have been harsh, critical, or otherwise unconscious and harmful toward others. Many of these people are no longer in my life. I am wondering what/if anything I can do to digest/face the karma of my actions now in a way that is as clean as possible.
Thanks,
Edward
Oh I’ve followed you for years since you wrote those books JMG :-), Retrotopia is one of my favorite fiction books by you . I think what I mean is that Balaji seems to think there’s a serious risk that the MAGA admin’s foreign trade policy will very quickly dismantle the mechanisms of empire and result rapidly in the US version of perestroika, and ensue in chaos internally. He thinks Kamala would have been worse, and would likely have started a nuclear war, but overall he seems to prefer a slower, more paced dismantling of the empire.
Maybe I misunderstood or misremembered your earlier writings but I thought you saw it as a more drawn out process lasting into the 2040s or so.
Granted, of course, as you just mentioned, you think a more optimistic scenario is possible, and I hope you are right.
Separately, I find it interesting how so many people commenting on Balaji’s posts want to deny that the US is an empire. Most of them seem to be libertarian-leaning, US citizens.
It seems that spirits are attracted to physical structures whether a house or mountain or cave or spring or maybe altar. The altar at the front of our church had a small door and an inner compartment. When I was a young lad I was very wary of that thing. I feared it. You did not pass in front without genuflecting. I was convinced that someone that I couldn’t see was always there and it bugged me no end that I couldn’t see them.
Every Sunday the priest would thank the “ladies in charge of the altar” and name them and I envied them. I wondered what the altar needed. And when it was time for communion the priest would open that small door and take a shiny chalice from the compartment and I would strain to see the inside.
But I chose a life whose object of worship was Mammon. I thought that learning the rituals and incantations of my particular line of work was being practical and rational. If you could have seen what I saw. What a joke.
Clay, it really shows just how desperately they want an excuse to be hateful. As I noted in my essay Hate is the New Sex, the rule of mandatory niceness in modern society has left many liberals frantic to let out the normal, healthy emotion of hate, and Musk is giving them an excuse.
Fra’ Lupo, yes, both I and the other people I know of who had this effect were doing Western energy work specifically, and also doing daily banishing rituals, when the trouble happened. I don’t know exactly what the incompatibility was, and I don’t propose to experiment and find out!
Patrick, it’s certainly a possibility.
Michael, thanks for these.
David, of course. I expect global population to bottom out at around 5% of its peak figure, though it may take 300-400 years to do it. As for your other attempted post, er, please, no low-effort “what do you think of this?” questions!
Isaac, hmm! Thank you for this.
Watchflinger, I don’t have further information, and would distrust any source I found. We’ll have to wait and see.
Gallifrey, no one is ever quite as fanatic as a true believer in a religion that is in the process of disproving itself. Have you read the famous sociology text When Prophecy Fails? These are classic examples of that sort of bargaining in action. (It’s not denial because they admit that progress isn’t working any more.)
Kfish, it’s one of the most obvious things about Trump, and I have no idea why so many people miss it.
J.L.Mc12, thank you for this! I’ve just put a hold on it at my local library.
Milkyway, I’m old-fashioned enough that I read these things called books. 😉 I’ll leave this question for others to answer.
Boccaccio, this is normal. Authoritarianism always becomes stronger in times of crisis, and as I’ve discussed before, what we’re facing is a whopper — the final crisis, most likely, of the Western world order. I wish that wasn’t the case, but here we are.
Mary, I’ll consider it. As for language, that’s an interesting shift and I’ll have to reflect on it.
Justin, nah, shaleposting was going on in Roman times. I grant that the Elizabethans were unusually good at it.
Stephen, ouch. I hope that’s not true.
Sam, a government that refuses to address glaring injustices and abuses can end up there, yes. The fact that most of the outdoor surveillance cameras in London have already been destroyed tells me that they may be very close to that point. I’ll look forward to seeing you if your schedule permits!
Steve, it’s a reasonable suggestion. If you believe that the Divine is omnipotent, then by definition human beings would have exactly as many religions as He wants them to have…
Ecosophian, delighted to hear it. I’m really looking forward to this one.
Peter, yeah, that sounds about right.
Siliconguy, ha! Asking how much data center growth you can have while still being sustainable is like asking how much wild sex you can have and still remain a virgin…
Industrial, delighted to hear it. Please keep me informed about the book!
Jacques, yes, very much so. As I noted in a post a few years ago, Europe’s temporary state of peace is ending and will likely be followed by another round of ghastly wars.
Edward, let your higher self take care of that. It will guide you into new situations where you’ll have the chance to make, or avoid, the same mistakes again. When you avoid doing so, you’ll outgrow that bit of karma.
Alvin, I think that sort of sudden dissolution is certainly a possibility. It remains to be seen whether or not Trump is our Gorbachev.
Smith, of course spirits are attracted to material objects. It’s simply a question of which spirits…
I’m finding the supplement section to Levi’s ritual quite fascinating, especially p.460-461 about “deeds before words: it is in this manner that one’s right to speak is established and proven.” I was quite taken by the sentences: “Christianity was still a mystery when the Caesars sensed that they were dethroned by the Christian Verb. A system which the world admires and the crowds applaud, can only be a brilliant assembly of sterile words; a system to which humanity is subjected to, in a manner of saying, despite itself, is a Verb. Power is demonstrated by results …”
In there lies a nice hubristic for assessing social movements and the like.
So, I have an idea that may be the stuff of madness, or an excellent way to monkeywrench the machinations of the priests of the god Progress.
So, as I type this, I’m actively building the power systems for the servers in data centers that will be the body of the great AI, avatar of the god progress. I’m not only a nonbeliever of this religion, I actively disdain this being, since it will be used by the oligarchic priesthood to take away jobs. I’m quite certain that the AI disaster will be the great flop – they will try and replace as many jobs as possible with AI, then when a real crisis hits, the AI will prove utterly inadequate to the task and there will be no qualified personnel left to fix the mess.
So, as for how this is relevant to you – I’ve rather wanted to play a trick on the priesthood of this false god progress. Would it be possible to invite trickster spirits into the machinery of this would-be consciousness? I’m thinking of perhaps drawing runes of Loki in hidden places along the bus duct where all the servers take their power and invoking him, just inviting him to play around and have fun. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, I hope!
Is this a terrible idea? If you dont completely disapprove of this, do you have any recommendations for any entities other than the god Loki to invoke, or any suggestions how to go about doing something like this?
A recent post by Egon Fischer has a piece which IMHO is worth contemplating [my translation below it]:
“In einem früheren Beitrag habe ich geschrieben, dass mein geistiger Begleiter mich darauf hingewiesen hat, dass man aufpassen muss, was man energetisiert, worauf man seine Aufmerksamkeit richtet. Er meinte damals sinngemäß: Pass auf, was du energetisierst. Man kann auch seine Vorstellung und Gedanken energetisieren und wenn man dies längere Zeit macht, landet man in einer mentalen Blase.”
[In an earlier post I wrote that my spiritual companion pointed out to me that you must pay attention to what you energise, to where you direct your attention. He suggested at the time as a general rule: pay attention to what you energise. You can also energise your imagination and thoughts and if you do this for a longer period, you end up in a mental bubble.]
He then went on to discuss the problems of being in that mental bubble where your thoughts are no longer congruent with your actual feelings.
A quick comment, and then I will return later. Diana Kordas on the Greek island of Samos has written an open letter to RFK Jr. about the dire situation facing agriculture and the natural environment on her island and in Greece in general. The people at Children’s Health Defence will draw RFK Jr.’s attention to it as soon as possible. She has given me permission in the meantime to distribute it. I have translated the Executive Summary into Japanese and Russian, and have posted the Japanese (and later today, will put up the Russian). They and the full letter in English can be accessed here: https://keitaimotanai.web.fc2.com/
@Princess Cutekitten, I’ve been praying each Sunday. Shall I make it more daily for you?
If the US breaks up into several entities, do you think relations between the new countries will be peaceful, or do you think wars will frequently break out in the decades to come?
Maybe the exact times the new countries are founded will make all the difference (their foundation charts).
(For this scenario, I’m assuming the dissolution of the Union itself is mostly peaceful, and that assumption might be wrong.)
Ecosophian (#41) —
Thanks for the heads-up. Oddly enough, back in 2023 I picked up a copy of an English translation by Charlotte Cowell, with the author’s name rendered “Roudnikova”, which suggests that Ms. Cowell came to know of the author through French sources. She has translated a number of more or less esoteric works (including several by G. O. Mebes). According to her Acedemia.edu entry (https://oxford.academia.edu/CharlotteCowell) she has her own publishing house (Shin Publications).
Interestingly, too, she seems to tie Rudnikova in with Olive Pixley, an occult writer whom some people may remember.
I look forward to seeing your book!
@31 Kfish
Liberals formed an addictive habit of hating Trump. To stop hating Trump, they need to redirect their hate to another target (or group). The anger and hate they’ve trained themselves to feel for years cannot be eazily dispelled– I know from experience. Elon is too close to Trump and the GOP for Musk Derangement Syndrome to supplant TDS.
Hi, I have a question regarding the LTG BAU model. Can you discern around us the rapid decline in industrial output that it predicts? I mean, we saw an initial dip in spring 2020, right on time (and this suspicious synchronicity caused me to be skeptical about the pandemic story), but it seems that since then production growth resumed. Or maybe I’m missing something?
I’m asking because I can’t wait to see the decline in pollution a decade or two from now…
Ken Wood #18 I had a similar experience, minus the nostril probes with two hummingbirds. Six months later I realized they were thanking me for the scarlet runner bean flowers…
Morning John,
Your latest Arial Moravec novel popped through my letter box yesterday, so I know what will keep me busy this weekend. Is there plans for any more?
Regards Averagejoe
WatchFlinger at #29 wrote:
“a few Open Posts ago, I saw some discussion of the possibility that we are not actually at 8 billion people (and probably will never know) due to inaccurate or dishonest governments inflating their numbers”
After I read that discussion, this research was mentioned in our local mainstream media, claiming that we are actually much more than 8 billion people.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56906-7
I haven’t actually read the paper, as it’s way above my head, but my first reaction was that this probably means that there is some truth in the idea that we are with less people than we think..
bk.
My son, after long heated argument and some pleading and attempts to control (home first ti mailbox/prepaid cards available in gas stations/web access everywhere/hard headed=no ‘control’ possible), ‘gave up’ synthetic weed-like on Ash Wednesday, but later got a previously ordered thc cartridge in the mail which he has since told me was the sketchiest one he had ever gotten but there it was. He used it and went into psychosis starting with a text to all his contacts at the peak of the lunar eclipse at 2:30-3am that his phone had been hacked. On the equinox he went to a behavioral health floor where he was for a couple days during which time he opened thich naht hahn’s Being Peace which I brought for him among other books, and he identified with the approach deeply and read the whole thing, came out of the fog and the paranoid fantasy and began teaching and sharing the book with other kids on the unit, realized a completely new ability to adopt other people’s perspective with empathy. Since he got home he has been staying with his dad a little while, his phone was locked up by his past paranoid self and he is engaging in activities like cleaning and sitting outside in the sun. I took him back to his juijitsu class and his teacher noticed both his new clarity of focus, his skill and his teaching energy and he was asked to challenge and won against everyone in the class and got his first stripe on his white belt. He couldn’t face down the karma with parental advice, had to have the experience, but he caught himself and took the right turn! Those synthetic drugs everywhere and so unbelievably available to the youth but so much more risky and foul than the plant forms… He has 0 Aries rising w his sun in Leo on the cusp of cancer and was born on a solar eclipse day himself. I posted very worried on the end of two posts back. Wanted to thank anyone who prayed for him with me and thank the gods prayer works and astrology happens! May the coming solar eclipse cement his gains as a solid platform to launch his next 15 years. Lord Have Mercy!
I recently came across this paper at work:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x
Its a paper from Nature, the acclaimed science journal that every STEM person dreams of being published in. It claims that using AI to automate writing and art creation is some 300+ times less carbon-emitting than doing it manually. As I will subsequently discuss, this paper is utterly bogus.
The discussion we were having is, that a digital artist will need to run their Photoshop (or equivalent) application for a length of time while they work on their project. This consumes more energy than using artificial intelligence needs to produce images. One of my interlocutors shared this paper, and as soon as I went through it my BS detector went ding-ding-ding.
The paper ‘calculates’ the carbon emission for writing an article or drawing a digital image, and then compares it with the power consumed by a massive transformer-based neural network to do the same. But here’s where the ‘calculation’ becomes unbearably wrong: it simply multiples the time taken to write an article or paint an image with the AVERAGE HOURLY RATE of carbon emission per person.
The average carbon emission, of course, is the annual average – the annual carbon footprint divided by the number of hours in a year. This includes the footprint from driving, from the production of appliances we buy, and from activities like cooking, and so on. Of course, no one is driving or watching TV while writing an article. Nor is someone cooking. And the purchases of blenders, microwave ovens, etc. should not even be factored into the calculation. In other words, the hourly rate of emission is much lower when writing or drawing art manually, even if someone is typing into a computer or painting into one.
What I find appalling (and scandalizing, as a STEM professional) is that this article was published in a hallowed journal like Nature. I have often heard STEM ‘skeptics’ proudly brag about the efficacy and reliability of the Peer Review system, at least on respectable journals. So for me, this article was a jolting reminder of how far we have fallen.
Also, on the topic of poverty, you are absolutely right about self-inflicted poverty. My college years were spent in campus dormitories (hostels) of my alma mater, a tier II Indian engineering college which has students from some of the most rural and impoverished parts of India. I got to meet people from a wide variety of backgrounds, and quickly learnt that folks from rural and impoverished backgrounds had extremely limited ambitions and dreams. While the more advantaged among us aspired to pursue post-graduate study and then work on the latest technologies, the less fortunate ones were happy to simply get placed in a job.
If I may ask because of the discussion between Fra’ Lupo und you about incompatibilities between Eastern and Westerways of energy work, does the energy work done in Tai Chi or Qi Gong happen to be asymmetrical? That might, in this case, be an explanation for the incompatibility.
>We must ensure Washington remains a leader in technology and sustainability
I sense someone wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Which usually ends up with them not having a cake or eating it either.
Dear JMG and commentariat:
It seems European governments have lost their minds. I saw the podcast of Dr. Betz’s talk and if I was in the government I’d be very worried. But PM Starmer in playing at being Churchill and there is talk about sending troops (that the British don’t have) to Ukraine. If he thinks he’s unpopular now, how about a military disaster?
On the other hand, what the US government thinks dropping a few more bombs on the Houthis is going to do is puzzling, beyond saying “Look, we’re doing something!”
This won’t end well.
By the way, Aurelian’s last two posts, especially The Man Who Almost Woke Up from last week, are very interesting . That one covers a lot of topics and trends discussed here.
Cugel
JMG,
My last few posts have been about “skills”, mastery of them and their life/death.
So now I am going to ask “Culture or skills which comes first?”. I ask because I have seen cultures (in communities, towns, cities, states, countries, etc…) that do a better job at promoting mastery and preserving skills and many others that do not. I have seen attempts to transplant skills into cultures that didn’t take and I have seen attempts to transplant a culture into skills that also didn’t take.
I’ve been reading a lot lately, which has led me to once again reflect on reading a lot, and ‘informational glut’. A buzzwordy tech industry Substack post I stumbled across this morning has brought this reflection to a head. The writer quotes someone who ‘reads four or five books in a day’.
I recall that systems always have an informational layer, and it seems to me that if you have too much information in a system, that system is going to be overwhelmed in a particular way. Too much of one ‘stock’ flowing through a system is also a kind of overwhelm, such as too much water in a flood, but at least with a healthy informational layer, the system has useful information about what is happening and can adapt. But with an informational glut, the excess of information would seem to distort this, and the system then requires energy from elsewhere in the system for it to handle the informational excess.
I enjoy reading – which is a great reason in itself to read – but the example of the person who is reading four or five books a day makes me wonder at the point at which reading too much creates more problems than it solves.
That article talks about ‘hyperlegibility’: being so legible with one’s writing so that more people are able to read it so that more people actually do read it. And share it, as I’ve unfortunately done… the article is essentially suggesting doing to information what fast food companies do to raw ingredients.
In any case, this is in stark contrast to some occult or spiritual texts, which are sometimes ‘hyperillegible’ so that you read it over and over until you have a deeper, more experiential, sense of the various meanings in the text (or the meanings you have chosen to assign to it).
I know you read a lot. How do you know when you’re being overcome by an informational glut? I recently tried an ‘information fast’ which brought about some useful effects but didn’t entirely feel like the most appropriate solution. This will likely depend on the person, but is there a point where one has enough knowledge, from some sort of standpoint, that more information isn’t necessarily the single thing required to make good choices and make sense of the world?
(Disclaimer: this entire comment might be a way for me to justify not looking for some of the interesting-sounding book titles this comment thread has already introduced! 🙂 )
As a American though I tend conservative and was happy to see Trump elected I do agree with Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet who said “a plague on both their houses” when speaking of the rival clans, the Montagues and Capulets. My own preferred society, not to happen soon in this present system, would be Chestertonian distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism combined with a conscious living in balance with the earth. Not on the Trumpian agenda or his opponents.
From the model of my parents I learned to live responsibly in the here and now where I actually have some control and volition and not worry about big picture things I have no control over beyond periodically making marks on paper that I mail in (voting) and deal with stuff as it comes into my personal sphere. I also realize no matter what source I go to, the source will have partial, incomplete information so I hold my opinions lightly and don’t get all riled up and aim to be friendly with everyone.
It seems to me that sometime in the next 20 years or so. we will be hitting resource limits and the dream of endless tech progress and economic growth and settling Mars will hit a wall and painful adjustments will begin.
Jeff Russell @3, you’ve already named Galina Krasskova, so I’ll nominate Wyrd Designs https://wyrddesigns.wordpress.com/ . She posts infrequently, but her information/lore seems to be very good. I will keep my eyes open for more information about your group!
That said, I should maybe introduce myself too. Hi, I’m Sister Crow (not to be confused with the Mister Crow who posts on Dreamwidth!). I’ve been following JMG’s work since the article about him in Pangaia (around 2012 or so?). Since early childhood I’ve loved mythology, magic, and fantasy–I remember reading the M volume of the World Book Encyclopedia in 2nd grade and being captivated by a photo of a statue of Athena: not only a Goddess but a Goddess of wisdom, amazing! Seeking a Goddess-focused religion, I became Dianic in high school and practiced it for a couple decades, though it felt less sufficient as the years went on. Eventually I met Brigid and did a hard turn into hard polytheism. Because the only material on Gaelic polytheism I could find was from ADF, I began practicing Druidry from JMG’s books. At some point Thor introduced Himself, so I began worshiping the Aesir as well as the Tuatha de Danann. Just this month I decided to take up Golden Dawn work (also from JMG’s books), so my practices are perhaps even more mixed than usual for this group!
JMG, there is another phenomenon of American which do personally much dislike, my opinion only, that is the refusal to pronounce any word which has more than two syllables. ‘Secretary of Defense’ becomes Sec Def, for example. I am afraid I do not take a benign view of the habit of not paying attention to anything which does not sound like an advertising jingle. To me, it is akin to the truly annoying and, IMO, rude habit of assigning people nicknames without their permission. I think a person’s name is what they say it is.
Kfish and JMG, I surely agree that hatred is a normal human emotion and I would go further and say that some things should be hated. I think the best way, at least in private life, to deal with deliberately provocative people is to ignore them and live your own life without seeking their permission. If they then want to come after you, they have to expend energy to do so, and they are clearly the bully for all to see.
I have been absent since my husband is getting cataract surgery (both eyes) and I am his seeing-eye squirrel. He has ADD and is nearly blind. Prayers are welcome for his surgery and healing.
—-
About Trump Derangement Syndrome which is now morphed into Elon Musk DS. I have watched the anti-Trump post their stuff on social media. I was wondering if they would split off into pet causes. Only one has, who has been reporting on transexuals being threatened. He is very passionate about that.
However, all the other causes – immigrants, etc have been curiously absent until the Democratic machine pops out with meme of the day. I have watched the meme machine start with a democratic sign or alt-fed workers or some such, and then like sheep, everyone posts the same meme.
Not only that, but class warfare is one of the old memes that is being trotted out. Watch out for DOGE, they are destroying the usual suspects – Social Security, etc (Think of the starving old people!) A lot of those memes have been panicking my “little buddies.”
Two things I have noticed. One, the age of the TDS and EMDS sufferers are over 50 and mostly female college educated. The people who are happy with Trump are under 30 and mostly male (various levels of education). The TDS folks will probably die off.
Two, the Trump is a Nazi (dictator meme) is making the rounds again. There are standard statements that everyone makes under duress such as when found drunk – “I only had two beers!” “I have proof of them emailing me, but my phone just got busted…..”.
Anyway, in during the first term, it was “my grandmother was alive in Germany, and she saw Hitler… blah, blah, blah” – ends with Trump equals Hitler. Now it is, “this is what my high school (college) history professor said about rising dictators, etc.” ending with Trump equals Putin.
As for burning Teslas, a guy in my neighborhood drives a Tesla truck. Ugly thing. However, no one remarks on that, just that they think the truck won’t take the hills of W.Va.
Just an addendum, one could say Musk has Nazi tendencies since most of his children are screened for eugenics. He is an advocate of smart breeding. However, no one with EMDS ever mentions that. Just Teslas being swatzicars, etc, In other words, just memes and no actual thinking.
As you know I do read Neo-Pagan blogs, which are obviously all TDS in spades, not to mention extreme paranoia. One question, is this a result of that hexing they were doing? Paranoia comes back in spades.
Last question, why are they all obsessed with Star Trek? I have encountered various discussions of how we need to be like Star Trek or we need to keep the flame burning during these dark times. What’s with Star Trek? Why not Star Wars? or some other science fiction or action adventure like the Avengers or something?
One Conservative pointed out to the group of Neo-Pagans, that the Federation could be run on conservative principles such as the Prime Directive – Mind Your Own Business. Everyone decided to tell him he was “unsafe” and “disturbing.”
@Peter Wilson #42–
That sounds like a very helpful lecture on Carbon, and a good strategy–to do what we can, and try to chart a course between depression and false hope. Have you or someone posted a YouTube of the lecture, or is there a link on-line to the text?
@JMG re: Pacific NorthWest Changer Myths
You mentioned a myth of Coyote the Changer and the name of the book with the story of how the Changer travels from the sea to a mountain top, defeating each dangerous beast and changing them– One attacked him with a board, so he attached the board to its posterior and named it ‘Beaver,’ for example;
Could you re-post the name of that reference book? I am having trouble finding it through our library system;
For the interested, I have found these references:
Hines DH. Tales of the Okanogans. Washington; Galleon Press 1976. ISBN 0-87770-173-3
“Thirty-eight tales traditional to Okanogan Indians living in the border area of Washington State and Canada.
Mourning Dove (Humishuma). Coyote Stories. Caldwell, Idaho. Caxton Printers, 1933. ISBN 0-8032-3145-8. Also; University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books 1990.
This reads like the ‘Jack Tales’ anthology, and gives a good feeling for the character of Coyote.
King, Thomas. Coyote Tales. Toronto, On. Groundwood Books / Anansi Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-55498-833-4. Contains two stories, ‘Coyote sings to the moon,’ and ‘Coyote’s new suit.’ King’s very engaging style made these a pleasure to read. They would be suitable for reading aloud to young children (Not all coyote stories are).
I have a few small children, and one common complaint about other people with small children are that Baby Boomer grandparents, specifically white ones, are, at the same time, absent, entitled, and not especially good at grandparenting. I thought it was only my parents at first, but speaking to many other parents around my age, we all have same complaint.
They’re never available when we need them. They complain about us never being available when they’re available. They promise to retire and then don’t, or retire and then never visit. They freak out over basic things like crying children. They leave as soon as the kids act up a little bit.
And, growing up, I remember my parents receiving a lot of help from their own parents. Every Friday was dinner at Grandma’s. Grandmas and Great Aunts stepping up to baby sit. Grandpas taking the kids to school and extracurricular activities. And all this stuff. And then, when we ask for a little help, “We never got help growing up.”
I think it’s contributing a lot to people not having kids even if they have the money to have kids, because even if you have the money, with the lack of help, you don’t the time, unless you have enough money to hire foreign nannies. The foreign families (mostly Indian where I live) are also shocked by the complete absence of intergenerational help that white American families have become accustomed to with this generation of grandparents.
Shakespeare is pretty obviously a writer’s room for 1,000 reasons, but AI can chunk apart and more or less prove it by writer style now. You’d think that would be obvious since his name is “Wanker” in Tudor English. I mean OBVIOUSLY. Will may not have even been literate. Or a live human being. It was probably an elaborate put-on most people at the time knew was a joke. Even right now there are obvious ghost writers and names in Hollywood credits that are stand-ins for “Anonymous” yet everyone denies it.
The language tic is quite obviously the narrative media. If I’m talking to YOU, I’m talking to YOU. What the kidlings are doing is the “Quote words,” Comma, He SAID, format. He was LIKE (that is open quote “….) I was Like “…Open quote/close quote.” Like is w weird twist that means, “Said”. Because ALL media right now is Sitcoms/Cartoons/Novels/Comics, and none of it is exposition, non-fiction, 300-page books.
Peak Oil is yet another level complicated, which as so many, particularly UK openly ignore though obvious: Russia is shut in. Iran is shut in. Half of Africa is shut in. Alaska is shut in. And if you open them all up completely you’re going to have another 50 years of oil, minimum. That is, there’s going to be a boatload of oil, BUT ENGLAND ISN’T GETTING ANY. So for them Peak Oil is both true and false. Maybe they shouldn’t have screwed Iran and Russia for 70 years straight and just bought it on market, it’s cheaper. Like how buying every barrel in Iraq would be half the price of our war there. …It was never about the oil, it was about DENYING it to others.
I finished reading The Carnelian Moon and loved it. A few comments – don’t post if it would be spoilers for those who haven’t read it, or delete the spoilers.
First, Ariel is growing up. In Witch, she was feebly fending off her mother. In Book, she told her mother to get real, and apparently, her mother hasn’t called since. But she still gloats at being able to do things that would freak her mother out. In Moon, that seems to be behind her. Adolescence is not a time nor a phase; it’s a *process.*
Second, the boy she thought was just using her, is not the right one for her. They are far too much alike, and he seems to be carrying more baggage than Portland International’s lost-and-found over the holidays.
Third – What are the local werewolves getting out of their shapeshifting? I could see it if they were next to the Adocentyn National Forest (if such exists)) to do a bit of discreet poaching, but not in a small urban park. Or is it, simply, reviving an ancient religion on our shores to keep it alive?
Oh, and what is the projected title of Book Four?
@KevinO #15 – Finn McCool’s Fianna started out that way. From what I understand, before Finn took them over, they were something less than a warband. I may be mistaken in that.
@Ken Wood #17 – at the dinner table, I had occasion to ask one of my tablemates (partly to get her off her current rant) “Suppose your cat talked to you and said “This cat food tastes like sawdust.” She promptly said “I’d get him better cat food. Then added, as if it were an imposition, “I feed him Fancy Feast. Fancy Feast!” Which unexpectedly did NOT leas to a discussion of the decline in quality of cat food over the past 20 years. But nobody disputed the conversation with her cat.
Hello Everyone
I am wondering what everyone is thinking about the war of words and trade that my country and Canada are engaged in lately. I understand Trump’s tariff stuff, he wants industry to restore to the US and leverage over Canada, but what is all the talk of the 51 state. Is he just trying to get negative energy sent his way or is he trying to damage the Canadian liberals. What dose everyone think and how do our Ecosophian Canadian friends see things from up there now.
Thanks Everyone
Hi JMG, thank you as always for this forum. About a month ago, I had what felt like a sudden energetic shift in my solar plexus. I experienced a feeling of increasing openness over a period of a few days, visualized in my body as what I can only describe as a spherical void, the depth of which feels intensely deep and open. This has been accompanied by a certain shift in consciousness, where I am much more aware of and can sense energetic flows in my body in a way I have never experienced before. A few days after this, I experienced a sudden and intense attack of fatigue and brain fog in my body, to the extent that I had to nap for the afternoon. I had felt fine up until this point, and after the nap I felt completely normal. The next day I found out that I was being let go from my job of 8 years, which I knew was a possibility beforehand, but it was still somewhat of a shock to get the news.
I have some questions about this I would appreciate your perspective on. One, does this sound like I had some sort of energy blockage clear in my solar plexus? And did I sense the coming news of losing my job moving down the inner planes into manifestation? And if so, is there a way to recognize this process happening the next time and constructively direct the energy in a way that doesn’t cause me to feel that intense fatigue and brain fog?
The Netherlands has energy distribution problems too, scroll down to see the maps.
https://www.pv-tech.org/iea-transparent-data-on-grid-capacity-critical-to-identify-bottlenecks/
The “dynamic line rating, which monitors and optimizes how much electricity can flow through the power lines” translates to when it’s cold we can run up the current in the lines because the heat can dissipate into the air. On a hot day they have to cut back current flow or the lines will get too hot.
Smaller safety margins are just fine, right?
As for the Shakespeare debate, the man had a production schedule to keep. I always envisioned him sitting in a pub brainstorming with friends around a pitcher of of beer. There was a similar scene in the movie Amadeus where Mozart was composing at the piano with a soprano softly singing the notes behind him (probably to see if she could actually do what he was writing) and several other people hanging around.
Jeff,
I have been involved in “heathenism” very informally since about 2015, before I knew anything about the occult. I was introduced to it by a blogger who has since gone offline. He was a practicing Hellenist and based on some of his writings I built a relationship with the Roman pantheon without knowing what I was doing. When, later on, I got more into occultism, divination/meditation reminded me of this and I have slowly moved back toward them. Though I come from a Northern European background myself, for some reason Roman polytheism has had most attraction for me. But this counts as heathenism. For a time I was conflicted because I thought I might return to the Christianity of my youth, but I’ve finally decided I had too many misgivings about that faith and there’s no reason to return to it when Roman polytheism and occultism can accomplish the same spiritual goals anyway.
Thus far, I have mostly worked within the Golden Section and Hermetic Rose traditions that JMG has laid out, and I’ve gone slowly because of some difficult life events in the past couple of years. Because of this I have had little time to look into much of the wider heathen community. Thanks for the guidance. For now, it will have to remain a project for another spring. However, I have happily kept in contact, from time to time, with the Ecosophians, at this website and some of its allies (e.g. Kimberly’s Dreamwidth) and I’d be happy to keep correspondence to whatever extent time allows with other practicing heathens. One thing I mentioned to Kimberly is that there is now, around this Ecosophian circle, an active community performing blessings, prayers and divination free of charge — this is proof of an active and growing egregore which can be of benefit to all of us and hopefully the wider society as well. It’s an exciting time!
Best,
Deneb
“For example, he mentions that when our cities become part of the geological strata, it would most likely show up as a thin band of red iron-rich minerals, glass shards and iron pyrite along with possible fossils of everyday things such as chairs or machines.”
A stainless steel kitchen sink should last quite well in a sedimentary deposit. It will make an interesting fossil.
As for the Houthis, the US has a long standing dislike of pirates. What’s happening there is not surprising. You can look up First Barbary War if you like. The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine’s Hymn is not an accident.
KAN, did you intend “hubristic” for “heuristic”? Either way, it’s a fine coinage — a heuristic based on the presence of hubris would indeed be useful in this context.
Paedrig, good gods. I’d encourage you to reflect on whether you’re comfortable with the karma of that action, which could lead to a great many deaths among other things — “what do you mean all those bridges and buildings just collapsed? They were designed by AI, which can’t make mistakes!” That said, it’s not my job to tell you what to do, or what not to do — and yes, it would be possible, and potentially rather easy, to do something like that.
KAN, good. That’s useful advice.
Patricia O, thank you for this.
Patrick, oh, there’ll be wars. I don’t think that the resulting nations will end up as bloodsoaked as Europe, say, but where there are nations with competing interests, there will be wars.
LeGrand (if I may), good heavens. I didn’t know Pixley had connections with the Russian Martinist scene!
Omer, I haven’t seen it yet. That’s the next great test the model has to face.
Averagejoe, the fourth volume, The House of the Crows, is already at the publisher; the fifth, The Sign of the Phoenix, is in process, and I have the next two, The Greater Key and The Marble Sphinx, in outline at present with a few scenes roughed out. Ariel has a long road still to walk.
AliceEm, I’m delighted to hear that your son came through the experience in good shape, and even more so that he learned and grew through the whole thing.
Rajarshi, yeah, that kind of propaganda masquerading as science has been far too common of late, and I’m not in the least surprised to learn that it was published in Nature. The WEF’s flacks are now claiming that growing vegetables at home using hand tools produces far more carbon pollution than having them grown in industrial farms and shipped thousands of miles by truck or plane; I assume they’re using the same sort of absurd pseudologic. If they really want to convince most people that science is a pack of lies, they’re going about it the right way.
Booklover, no, the taijiquan system I studied was very careful to keep things symmetrical.
Cugel, I know. It’s getting really weird in Europe these days.
GlassHammer, that’s a chicken-and-egg question. The point I’d make is that it’s a lot easier to learn a new skill than it is to learn a new culture!
Jbucks, it’s a real issue. I’ve never met anyone who could read 4-5 books a day and get anything significant from them. I put about an hour a day into reading these days, and if I’m reading something of importance I go slow and make sure I understand every paragraph before going on. That way I finish the book having learned something.
BeardTree, good. My measured enthusiasm for the Orange Julius isn’t based on any particular approval of his agenda, it’s purely because that agenda is leading him to get rid of things that we as a nation desperately need to get rid of — for example, a fantastically overinflated federal bureaucracy, a textbook case of global imperial overreach, and a regulatory state that’s choking the Main Street economy to death. I’m well aware that Trump’s presidency will bring plenty of problems of its own, for that matter; my take is simply that those problems are somewhat less lethal than the ones inflicted by what’s been business as usual until now.
Mary, of course it’s annoying, but American culture is what it is!
Neptunesdolphins, positive energy en route for your husband. Yes, I think the paranoia in the Neopagan scene is part of the blowback from their practice of evil magic; there will be more. As for the Star Trek thing, I have no idea. It was a dull show, anyway.
Emmanuel, nah, it wasn’t a Coyote story — he’s not the Changer in western Washington. It’s a story of Moon, or as he was called in the old language, Dukwibal. You’ll find it in Arthur Ballard’s Mythology of Southern Puget Sound.
Dennis, I wish I could say that this surprises me. My g-g-g-generation is turning out to have been pretty much a waste of oxygen, isn’t it?
Dzanni, there does seem to have been an actual actor from Stratford-on-Avon named William Shakspere — that’s how he spelled it most of the time — and he was literate enough to sign his will and to write a bad poem for his epitaph. Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.
Patricia M, thank you for this! Yes, Ariel’s growing up, and will continue to do so. Austin? Au contraire, the two of them are going to reconcile in a couple of books, begin dating, and eventually get married; yes, both of them have plenty of baggage, and that’s one of the things they’ll have to work through. As for the werewolves, yes, it’s an ancient religious tradition they’re trying to preserve. Books Four, Five, Six, and Seven will respectively be The House of the Crows, The Sign of the Phoenix, The Greater Key, and The Marble Sphinx.
Will, I’ll be interested to see what kind of responses you get.
Kwo, that sounds like a blockage being cleared, yes. There was some murky energy that had to be discharged, which is what caused the brain fog; a nap is often the best thing you can do in that case, and it’s just something you’ll have to put up with if it happens again. As for the job change, I suspect that’s more an effect than a cause; one consequence of changes in your spiritual condition is that your life very often changes in response.
Siliconguy, that doesn’t explain why he had the vocabulary of a dozen men, at least one of which was expert in English law and at least one of which had traveled extensively in Italy…
JMG, It seems that a future potential source of failure for the internet is the relative political venerability of the high energy use data centers. In a period when the Tech class is power they may be save from depredation. But political fortunes could turn and they could be looked at as handy sources of revenue for cash strapped local governments. Since they have very few employees, are stuck in place, and are perceived by far away billionaires that nobody likes there would be little pushback on cranking up taxes or fees sky high.
Or communties on the same grid could find themselves electricity starved in the future if Natural Gas power production meets resource depletion. People experiencing 6 hour brownouts and such would care little about the pleas of Google if they wanted the power to be stripped from the Data Centers and provided to the people.
Either of these scenarios could create a tipping point for a power hungry internet realm that has few good ways to scale things back.
@Steve Lovett (#40): The Septuagint, at least, hints that the Most High did indeed appoint different gods and religions to different peoples:
“When the Most High allotted each nation its heritage, when he separated out human beings, He set up the boundaries of the peoples after the number of the divine beings…” (Deuteronomy 32:8).
The late Michael Heiser has more in that vein, for any interested in considering the (IMHO strong) case for henotheism in Christianity.
@JMG and Booklover: Thank you. I guess that prompts the question: Is qi indeed equivalent to spiritus/ether/et al.? Are they different names for the same energy (I assume so), but just used in different ways? Would be interested to hear anyone else’s experiences, if they are willing to share. In one case, it seems as if the operator is cultivating their own energy (whatever we’d like to call it), whereas in other instances it seems as if the operator is invoking external forces/energies.
@Rajarshi
I have heard from a friend who visited India about the local hierarchy of the dogs, where the strongest get the best begging and scavenging grounds with the little ones offside in smaller backalleys.
The fact that two lower rank dogs where to afraid to take treats in front of the bigger dog seems a likely case of the promise of punishment for that from the bigger dog to the little ones.
They know each other and he knows where they live.
I’ve been given a cat and noticed, it seemed to me, he can see energy flowing.
I lay on the sofa with him beside me. I concentrated my focus on points in my belly and chest, but moved little outwardly I guess.
When I had a proper focus, for example under the navel, he immedeatly turned his gaze there.
The friend who gave him to me said cats read your thoughts or inner pictures and will often be found where you intended to go, before you.
My cat in the morning when I think of leaving to my commute often went to my shoes and played with the laces, digging into my shoes and being wild when I try to put them on, ostensibly to prevent me from going.
He can go outside or inside whenever he wants alone, so he is not afraid that he is locked inside or outside when I am away.
JMG,
You may have touched on this at some point in your years of writing, but I don’t recall, and since it is in the news with the (possible) discovery that there are structures under them… Do you have opinions on the nature and purpose of the great pyramids in Egypt?
AV
I’m starting to pray to the planetary gods. I feel called to worship something, am learning astrology,have been told they are safe to approach like this, and confirmed with divination this is a good process. The process I’ve come up with for this is a daily prayer each night before bed. First, I spend a moment to clear my mind and get everything ready; then I light some incense, recite the Orphic Hymn to invoke the god, then offer the incense to the god and ask that it hear my prayer. After that, I move to a more personal prayer. For instance, asking for advice on something related to the god’s domain, thanking the god for a blessing in my life, commenting on a part of the Orphic Hymn, or just saying what happens to be on my mind at that moment. Then I pause, wait and try to get a sense of any answer that might come; and then when it feels appropriate, thank the god for joining me, record anything that happened or that I felt during the prayer, and then put everything I sued for my prayers away.
a) How does this process sound to you? Is there any step you would add?
b) Right now my prayers mostly feel like me talking to myself while burning incense, with the occasional vague feeling of something present. Do you have advice beyond sticking with it to get better at hearing their responses?
JMG,
Yes, chicken or the egg problem.
Still, its fascinating to see what skills go from “try it” to “master it” based on the culture your in. And we can’t ignore “necessity” which is an ever present force dragging some skills way ahead while others not so much. (From what I have seen, the absence of “necessity” seems to be a major component of skill decay and death.)
John–
Usually, I’d ask this on a MM post on Dreamwidth, but as this is an open post week, I figured it’d be ok here as well.
Trying to get a sense of my future path as my life recalibrates to some recent changes. A shield chart on the question: “Will teaching at a small college be in my near future?” yielded a puzzling court
LW Laetitia
RW Rubeus
J Fortuna Minor
Via punctis leading to Via in the First Daughter
Reconciler = Rubeus
The issue of anger and deception in the RW troubles me the most. Am I deceiving myself? There are issues at my present work (anger, frustration) that are leading me to strongly consider early retirement (within the next 5 years) with an eye to a second career doing something else (like teaching). Similarly, Fortuna Minor in Judge could be instability (certainly a descriptor for the higher ed industry) or swiftness (things will line up quickly).
How would you read this?
Re: LeGrand Cinq-Mars #55
Thank you for your kind words. I am aware of Shin Publications’ translations.
I believe they found a reference to Rudnikova (as “Roudnikova”) in Valentin Tomberg’s _Meditations on the Tarot_.
I will have my own translations of Mebes’s works published in the coming years.
Also, I have a Substack where I publish my translations of Nina Rudnikova’s shorter works and other interesting essays.
If you’re interested:
https://substack.com/@russianesotericism
John Michael [#83]
Turns out the Pixley/Rudnikova paper was a bit disappointing: not establishing connections, but pointing out parallels. Interesting in its own way. Written in response to a request for something on Pixley or Rudnikova.
@neptunesdolphins re: #72 “Why Star Trek and not Star Wars?”
Answer to that one strikes me as fairly straightforward: Star Trek explicitly takes place in our future, with clear ties to Earth of the present: “it is our destiny.” Star Wars, on the other hand, reminds you at the start of each film that it takes place “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” Being a decade older and therefore able to influence more minds at an earlier date might have also played a role – the “core” boomers (1950-55 births) were still kids-to-teens when Star Trek came out, while already in their twenties when Star Wars did.
(That said, there is substantial Star Wars influence on thought processes – the Evil Empire, the plucky Resistance guaranteed to win, etc.).
Thank you JMG, that seems to fit my experience well since the blockage cleared. It’s been a cascade of mostly positive and welcome, but definitely drastic changes. I’ll buckle up for the ride!
Hi Mr. JMG,
It’s been a little bit since I’ve been on the blog. I’ve fallen behind on the Ring/Parsifal series, but I plan to catch up soon. In the meantime, I have been reading some other things, mainly a couple of plays from a Matthew Gasda. Mr. Gasda is a thirtysomething writer living in New York City, and he has acquired a micro-celebrity status online for writing a play called Dimes Square, a social-commentary on the New York art scene.
I had the pleasure of seeing one of his newest plays performed in San Francisco last week. This play is called Doomers, and its an unstructured social drama about the OpenAI funding brouhaha that occurred last year. Think of unstructured in the sense that the play does not really have a plot, but rather it is a bunch of characters conversing about the “ethics of AI” or “ethics of funding for their company,” instead of a linear plot.
Now, I am a genuine AI disbeliever, but those fun themes aside, I found the play to have a very interesting structure. I noticed that the characters related to each other in the manner that Russian nesting dolls relate to each other. In the play, there is an CEO-fellow who is the innermost doll, and then there are subsequent character layers extending out from there. There are two characters (who are sleeping together) as the next closest layer to the CEO, the “AI Ethicist” and the “Top Programmer.” Then a further layer of characters who embody parental themes and give advice to the CEO, and a final layer of outermost characters who are set in a separate scene occurring simultaneously as the first scene.
I tell all this to you because by my measure, this play is evidence that the Russian great culture has arrived in the United States. There are other rumblings about some recent oscar-winning movies that also draw on the Sobornost for structure and meaning. Food for thought!
Hi JMG,
As always, thank you very much for producing a couple of fine moderated forums. It’s always a pleasure to have almost all the insanity in today’s world left at the door, so to speak.
A while back you mentioned Ben Franklin’s autobiography on a short list of recommended reads, and I put it on my list and am now about halfway through. I can see how this book fits into a LESS approach to living, and am enjoying how he details the character and motivation in others as to whether or not he does business with them. I read this book back in high school in the late 1970s, and recall a rigorous daily schedule he kept to make the most use of his time, and that certainly reminds be of your prolific output of material.
Are there any other major takeaways from the Autobiography that you would note?
@neptunesdolphins; Star Trek is a beacon for a lot of people because it shows people from different ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds working together and respecting each other. It is a well known fact that when Nichelle Nichols who played Tenent Uhura considered leaving the series, Dr. Martin Luther King (yes, THAT Martin Luther King) asked her to keep working on the series because it was a weekly example of having an African American (and a woman) being in a position of power and responsibility, trusted and respected by those that worked with her. Star Trek appeal was never about the technology, but for the way it depicted people.
It is not a bad example to follow.
Whispers
To John and the commentariat on the Peak Oil conversation:
I think that the following paper is useful to study. I am not sure whether I’ve posted it here before, but I think it’s good to take a look at it either way. It views Peak Oil in terms of net energy rather than in terms of oil production. Essentially, before there is a peak in oil production, there is a peak and decline in the amount of energy from oil production that actually goes to society.
“Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: A net-energy perspective”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261921011673
It is also important to remember that societal decline and collapse is about much more than just peak oil. It is diminishing returns and rising costs to every kind of human activity over time.
Yes, the black box of the federal bureaucracy and it how it spends money hasn’t been opened and looked at since at least the 1930’s and 40’s. It seems that some people regard the federal bureaucracy as an independent fourth branch of the government filled with beneficient unbiased experts that know what is best and certainly not accountable to presidents.
I recently read through David Worrall’s (1992) “Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790–1820”, largely because I was interested in his book on Blake’s visions (William Blake’s Visions: Art, Hallucinations, Synaesthesia) , but hadn’t yet been able to read a copy. Worrall refers back to Iain McCalman’s “Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840”, which is well worth reading as well., but has done a huge amount of archival work reading not only court records but intelligence records of the period.
Worrall’s book provides a very rich and detailed chronological survey of radical culture, insurrectionary attempts, and so, of great interest to anyone who is interested in William Blake. Worrall himself has some sort of materialist sympathies, occasionally remarking on “materialist metaphysics” (as distinguished from the naughtier sort that goes beyond the material), and a sweet-summer-child admiration for the possible outcomes of a Spencean revolution.
“Instead of an industrial economy, we could have had an agrarian society, even a ‘green’ one in the late-twentieth-century sense of the word. Instead of nineteenth-century imperialism, there might have been a self sufficient and equable nation decentralized into parishes , perhaps even into a welfare state, on a Paineite model, whose
clock could not be turned back by successive trimming and cutting. It did not have to be the way it
is now.”
Given that, as he shows, the radicals and revolutionaries were seriously interested in bringing in French intervention to help achieve their goals, one can only wonder about Britain’s fate as yet another Overseas Department.
At any rate, the interesting point is the way that the radical political culture overlapped with other marginal scenes (McCalman is more useful in this regard) — including marginal religious and esoteric scenes. And, as McCalman shows, the way that radical publishers and printers eventually re-found themselves as pornographers.
This this ties into the social history of esotericism, since several writers of more or less pornographic texts also wrote on esoteric subjects, including Edward Sellon, and of course Richard Burton. The “priapic interpretation” of ancient religion, and esoteric themes in general, found a home in this setting.
Prominent among these was Leonard Smithers, “publisher to the Decadents”, who had a line in more or less pornographic texts, and whose affair with Althaea Gyles was part of the turmoil surrounding Crowley’s passage through the Golden Dawn.
The full story of the overlap of the 19th-century occult and pornographic worlds has yet to be elucidated, but it’s worth remembering that people like Arthur Machen also had connections with this scene, though I do not think he published with Smithers.
A decade or so ago there was an attempt in Britain to filter the internet for radical, pornographic and esoteric content — could the inclusion of the last have had something to do with this 19th-century history?
A long haired young man with a YouTube channel called Eurodollar University is earnestly, fiercely saying we need a collapse so we can have a Recovery. There hasn’t been a true Recovery since the Global Financial Crisis. I’d like to introduce him to the concepts of peak oil and catabolic collapse, but I think the effort would be dismissed as ravings of an old lady(I’m 73). Once upon a time pouring money into the economy would have caused a boom. No longer. Money is watered down, no longer backed by a growing supply of Black Gold.
JMG (and Commentariat),
In your response to Rajarshi you mentioned that the WEF is now claiming that growing vegetables at home using hand tools produces far more carbon pollution than having them grown industrially. I am positive that this is a wet dream of theirs, and that they greatly help to support the study that published last year that claimed that. However, I could find nothing that directly linked that idea to anything they have published, like that “you will own nothing’ smoking gun. If anyone has a link to any such claim made by them directly, could you provide that link in a comment here?
Clay, that’s extremely likely. I could also see sabotage becoming a real issue, especially if AI gets used in exploitive and authoritarian ways, as doubtless it will be.
Fra’ Lupo, my experience working with eastern and western systems is that qi = ether, full stop, end of sentence. Of course some systems work with the body’s own etheric supply, others draw in ether from outside, and still others do both; there’s also a lot of variation in which energy centers they use — there are a great many of them, probably several hundred, and each system of practice takes a small selection of those and uses them, with different effects.
Curt, cats see the etheric plane as clearly as they do the material plane, so yes, they can see energy, and anything reflected in your etheric body, such as your intentions and emotions.
AV, nope. I wasn’t there when they were in use!
Anonymous, that’s classic, and increasingly common these days. As for the response, it takes a while to pick up the sensitivity to perceive any deity. Keep at it!
GlassHammer, granted.
David BTL, I’d say that it’s more a passing fancy than anything else. Take your time and let the transformations you’re in play out (way of points ending in Via), and you’ll get a clearer idea of what you should do.
LeGrand, well, that’s disappointing! Stil, worth knowing.
Mrdobner, hmm. We’ll see.
Drhooves, I’d have to reread it — it’s been twenty years!
Enjoyer, it’s a good paper. Of course nearly everybody ignored it, as it doesn’t fit into the two canned narratives about the future that structure almost everyone’s thinking — if it’s not perpetual progress or overnight apocalypse, most people aren’t interested.
BeardTree, and they’re very well paid to think so, or at least to say that they think so.
LeGrand, fun. I’ll have to give those a read.
Rebecca, you’re probably wise not to try to explain things to him. Very few people can embrace that clarity yet.
John, hmm! I thought I had something bookmarked on that subject, but I can’t find it. Anyone else?
@ jbucks #67
If I may 🙂
I would note that, in very much the same way as one is never nourished by the food one EATS, but only by the food one DIGESTS, one’s mind can not be nourished by the books one can EAT, so much as by by the books one’s mind can DIGEST.
(And of course, JMG’s prescribed method of discursive meditation, is an effective tool for DIGESTING book content – as well as other types of content).
@will b
If Trump is trying to damage the Liberals by threatening annexation, it’s backfiring badly. Since the trade war and the threats started, the Liberals have abruptly risen in popularity while the Conservatives have dropped. I have never seen so many Canada flags outside of Canada day. And a lot of people are boycotting US products and travel. There’s also been a somewhat-belated realization that we need to stand on our own two feel militarily a bit more if we don’t want to get pushed around like this, and that being Canadian is in fact meaningful and worth keeping.
Right now expressing support for Trump is likely to make you very unpopular, very fast. I’m in coastal BC. The situation probably varies a bit depending on what part of the country you’re in. It sounds like the East is absolutely enraged, along with coastal BC, while Alberta is trying to calm things down. It’s weird seeing Premier Smith trying to do diplomacy. She’s got a reputation for being the opposite. I’m not sure her efforts are working terribly well.
There’s a lot of anger at Trump, so he’s certainly getting negative energy sent his way.
I’m saying this as someone who actively dislikes the Liberal party and has no plans to vote for Carney or the local Liberal candidate in the upcoming election. I am very unwilling to vote for a career banker who is up to his eyebrows in the WEF globalist idiocy, and has already put in place policies likely to inflate the housing market still further – until it crashes. But then I look at the others, and I’m finding myself going ‘I hate all my options, this completely stinks’ again. Voting is definitely going to be a case of holding my nose and feeling guilty, whatever less-bad option I pick.
@Rajarshi @JMG regarding Carbon output.
I am sure we have all meet the kind of people that would write those kinds of “studies”. It is starting with a conclusion and works backwards to that. They would have all manner of word play, statistical narrow boundry stats at hand and a conviction that they are right! No matter what is presented to them. They would argue a fire is cold as hold their hand in it. But cannot see the broader picture either because their pay check is dependent on that or they have an ego to size of the Pacific ocean. Probably both.
In the book The lost language of plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner, he goes on for a few chapters about how things like this are used to depict a world that just doesn’t exsist. As he said “All mathematicians I have meet seem like control freaks”, and this extends to a lot of other academic types. They are separately trying to shove the world into boxes for which they cannot fit.
Also JMG, I keep pushing that carbon emissions from home grown plants into the rubbish bin, but you keep dragging it out! You did once say you where the dumpster diver of forgotten philosophies, occastionally something else comes along. 😉
@ kebin o #15 and Beardtree #36: Adolescent boys roaming round in groups. Funnily enough young male horses do this too! They form ‘batchelor groups’ and spar with and annoy/hassle each other pretty much constantly ( but have a lot less personal space and a much flatter pecking order than mares) Watching them at the stud I used to work at reminded me of lads you see hanging out on street corners!
@neptunesdolphins
When I see a bunch of different social media/MSM sources all saying the same thing at once, suddenly, I just assume it’s because they’re being paid to. Enough real-life examples of this have come to light over the last several years to reveal a well-trod path from sources of funding with agendas to promote, to “influencers” who will say anything for a buck. See, for example, the latest scandal with influencer personalities getting caught taking money to shill for soda companies, in the wake of RFKJ talking about making sodas not eligible for food stamp purchase.
Mainly commenting to respond to others, but since I’m here, I’ll just say that as a Scandinavian I’ve been watching the (Danish) freakout over Greenland with amusement. And in general, I’ve enjoyed seeing our elites seethe on the sidelines lately as they plaintively insist that Trump and/or the Russians have to listen to them and care about their opinions on anything.
On previous open posts I’ve been talking about how Norway seems to be sloughing off some of its absurd wealth. While this will obviously bring a lot of pain, lately I’ve also been seeing it hopeful terms: maybe it’s better for us to become a normal country again, like we were up to the 80s, rather than this glittering bubble of privilege. You’ve written about the Western world’s “thirty-year vacation from reality” before, and I think that vacation was especially strong here. Of course the coming realignment will bring a lot of misery, and I won’t romanticize that, but I also suspect it’ll be good for us in many ways to have to (re-)learn that abstract “rights” and good intentions can’t substitute for physical reality.
@Jeff Russel #3
Hello again. 🙂 Sounds like a good idea, and I for one would be happy to become a regular at your open post. I’d also like to see more good Heathen spaces online, especially but not only from a Scandinavian/European perspective. Wish I could add to your list, but I think you have a better overview of the field than I do anyway. Outside of the ones you mention, I lurked a bit on the Reddit Heathen sub before I turned my back on that site completely. As might be expected, it’s mostly beginner stuff and very much oriented towards the American Team Blue mentality, with the occasional good post. So yes, I’d very much like to see a bigger Heathen online sphere. I’ve even toyed with the idea of trying a blog of my own, but we’ll see.
I think I’ll save most of the introductory stuff for when/if your proposed hangout gets started, but in short, as a Norwegian I naturally grew up with the Norse myths and always saw it as my “default paganism”.
Even back when I was a Dawkins-style atheist, I remember having a lot of fondness for Heathens and thinking it would have been amazing if the Heathen Gods actually did exist and could be worshipped, even if I thought those who did were obviously wrong. Still, I envied them rather than looking down on them. Getting to that point has been “a long, strange journey”, as our host might say, and in no small part due to his influence.
Religion is still kind of awkward to me, and my entry point has been more through ceremonial magic so far, but I’m trying. JMG and Sven Erikson’s original Heathen Golden Dawn rituals were my gateway to that whole scene, and after some years of various false starts and meanderings I’m now working the new Heathen GD and hope to do the Thrall grade initiation in early summer. On a related note, I still haven’t quite given up hope to see an Order of the Heathen GD eventually. Who knows, maybe your new open post could attract some interested practitioners.
@Rajarshi #12
At the risk of coming across as all neo-primitivist, I think there’s one major flaw to your reasoning here: for the vast, vast majority of our history we were hunter-gatherers, and this concept of “poverty” doesn’t really apply there. So I’d say it’s really a product of (sedentary, agrarian) civilization, which is of course fairly recent in historical terms.
Hello Mr. Greer. My name is Jonathan. Perhaps a year or two ago, a weekly post of yours introduced me to verse. It inspired me to write a very terrible poem, which I am sorry for subjecting you to; yet it also introduced me to poetry, a blessing I didn’t know until you demonstrated a few lines of verse. I have been reading Gerard Manley Hopkins: though he is difficult, I adore his poetry more than almost anything else I’ve ever read. Without you, I would not have had the inclination to study a poet. And now, your most recent posts introduces me to classical music. Thank you very much for sharing everything you do; though I don’t comment often, I read every weekly post, and just wanted to let you know that Wednesday is always a decent day, at least for the half hour your post takes to read.
I hope you are in good health and will continue to post for years.
Hey JMG
I’m glad to hear this, as I am certain that you’ll find much of interest in it. One of the very interesting things the book introduced me to is the work of a paleoclimatologist called William F. Ruddiman.
Ruddiman is famous for his rather controversial hypothesis that even before the Industrial Revolution, humanity has been producing enough carbon dioxide and methane gas via agriculture over the past 8000 years to disrupt the ice age cycle, preventing or at least dampening it. If this is true, then it is possible that for as long as humanity continues doing agriculture an ice age will be put off indefinitely. I think this will be even more likely if using methane gas derived from agricultural waste becomes a common energy source for ecotechnic civilisation.
https://humansandnature.org/william-ruddiman-and-the-ruddiman-hypothesis/
@JMG #49 – what you’re saying is that the current crisis is a Megacrisis, similar to the Fall of Rome (and, no, Byzantium was NOT Roman; it was totally Greek.) I think the 15th Century War of the Roses was another. Even though on the surface, our times resemble those of Julius Caesar.
@John of the Red Hook and JMG
Urban agriculture vs conventional farming study, showing 6x greater co2 emissons from UA: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00023-3.epdf?sharing_token=Zsn_WtKGttWsz-B3AVDI8dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0N-LlYQ9vCYuIp_pfSiuAlXN2XJuWJ-VQnh367xpQ_Y_vwtV_gmzH5pk5cNoarxeLxFQCyRProBx5Xa0YXgxzPXkC9J8B0a7KCvxNf7gP2L9nj75Ckn_7_ccAYTTkIO_kvHyitXa1TWYSdkSf5yH2uc-zTXazaeiZXzqBOXGzuZv45K224cm3nE-YXNiFmtv7w%3D&
Would be interested to here what you all make of it!
Good day to JMG and all the commenters!
I’d like to point out that the cost of living might have some effect on birth rates? The 1950s seems to be the mental template a lot of people have, and in those days a (white) man could bring home enough money to support his (white) family in a reasonable suburban style. (Your mileage may vary if your family was not that sort of family, or if the man in question wasn’t employable or the parents didn’t stay married.)
That single family starter home is harder to come by these days, and as a result women are making different decisions about children, and possibly also different decisions about marriage and men.
In any case, the current USAian (apparent) plan to remove any sort of support or safety net for families and children would seem suggest that reproduction is only an option for the rich?
So, I’m questioning the people who are blaming unhelpful grandparents for a declining birthrate, rather than low wages, expensive housing, and men who are addicted to video games.
Each family is different, and their decisions about children and parenting will reflect their economic and social conditions.
@JMG re: Ariel Moravec – Thanks for this! She really hasn’t met any boys in her age group so far, except Orion Jackson (ooh, how her Mom would freak at a working class boy!) who is 2 years younger – in adolescence, older girl and younger boy is a deal-killer, I think. But she does need friends her own age who accept her as she is. And looking forward to Book 4 and beyond.
@Jeff Russell (#3) and commenters thereon:
Also of considerable interest is Winifred Hodge Rose’s Heather Soul Lore website:
ww.heathensoullore.net
When I first read the Long Descent, it was funny how my mind genuinely strained to comprehend a future that wasn’t apocalypse or utopia. Even after I understood it on an intellectual level, my emotions still characterized it as an apocalypse in the sense of an imminent event that would change everything. It took a bit for me to realize that it is a process that is much longer than my lifetime and that there will be no clear point when the Long Descent has “happened.”
Clau Dennis @ 21, I fail to see how the sending of money and materiel to Israel and bombing Yemen from an aircraft carrier stationed on the other side of the globe is saving us money. Someone remind me how much it costs to operate a carrier group.
As for Teslas, the decision what to buy or not buy is rarely if ever rational, as our advertising industry and business class know very well. You put your product out there and you takes your chances. If I get insulted in the local cafe, I am not eating there again, no matter how excellent the fare. I am not aware that anyone has an obligation to purchase, own or continue owning any particular make of auto. And, what about those of us who don’t drive and own no auto at all? Are we unpatriotic subversives?
Ecosophian (#92)
—
Thanks for the link to your Substack . I will be taking a look over the next day or two. A quick glance looks very interesting.
Siliconguy (et al) –
I saw the article on the drawdown in “computer programmer” jobs. That’s the click-bait headline. In the article, there is a graph showing that a new occupation was created just as the “programmer” occupation rolled over: “software developer”. Members of that occupation continued to grow. They’re the same thing, under different labels. As for AI, back in the 1960s, one of the first successful AI projects eliminated programmers by allowing scientists and engineers to express their computational needs in (a restricted form of) English and mathematics, and let the computer write the program. The project was “Fortran”.
Re: Home gardening and carbon footprint.
Tangentially related, but still quite a relevant data point. As the eggs crisis reaches Europe, prices have started to soar here too. Few days ago the local MSM reacted to this, as the synchronized opinion team they are, by publishing articles reminding -or teaching- us that we aren’t allowed to have unregistered chickens or any other cattle for self-supply.
Last year the government approved a law that limits the number of animals we’re allowed to have at home for self-supply and forces us to declare them to authorities. I don’t know further details as my circumstances don’t allow me to have animals but I suspect each egg would become worth its weight in gold. Also, infringements entail 3000 euro fines. For context, typical salaries are slightly above 1000 euro/month here, even lower in rural areas.
Of course this isn’t meant to keep us dependent on the multinational companies lawmakers and journalists work for, though. They claim this is a necessary measure to protect us from **drum roll** the next “pandemic”, as uncontrolled chickens are a menace to public health.
Michael, one curious detail of my college education is that I attended two different universities a decade apart, taking different courses of study, and in both, I got to witness blatant experimental fraud being carried out by prestigious researchers and condoned by university authorities. Why, yes, I’ve known people like the ones you described. The rot in science goes back quite some years.
BorealBear, here’s hoping! Absurd amounts of unearned wealth are almost always disastrous to the character of individuals and nations alike.
Jonathan, I’m delighted to hear this! Thank you.
J.L.Mc12, it would surprise me if CO2 emissions from agriculture would keep ice ages off indefinitely, if only because the Earth is a homeostatic mechanism and artificially heightened levels of CO2 will eventually encourage life forms to draw more heavily on the CO2 supply. It’s true, though, that 8000 years is not much in evolutionary terms.
Patricia M, why, yes, that’s what I’ve been saying all along, of course.
Free Rain, it’s unquestionably true that if you take the most extreme, energy-gobbling forms of urban agriculture, compare them to conventional farming, leave out a whole series of knock-on costs from the latter, and massage the numbers in the usual way, you can get those results. You can also get any other result you happen to fancy. The phrase “replicability crisis” may be relevant here, and so is that old saying about lies, damned lies, and statistics…
Sylvia, and of course that’s also a factor. Unhelpful grandparents, however, are another. I recall how much help my paternal grandparents and their siblings gave my parents in raising me and my sister, and I’ve seen just how little help most Boomer grandparents are willing to provide; it strikes me as dubious to insist that this can’t have an effect.
Patricia M, one of Ariel’s odd features — which I shared when I was her age — is that she has an easy time making friends who are much older than she is. There are reasons for that, which will become clear as we proceed. But she and Cassie are developing a strong friendship, and there will be others.
Enjoyer, it really is a challenge to most people these days!
Miguel, it really is getting pretty blatant at this point…
@john red hook again! Last one for now I promise! It doesnt seem this study was directly linked to the WEF. But the scientists involved seem to exist in the same deluded (IMHO) ‘tech will save the world’ bubble as the WEF gaggle. But seeing as science manages to totally exclude observer bias this has nothing to do with it of course
Hi John Michael,
It’s funny the difference a few weeks makes. What was being laughed off in the media as big talk – the Greenland grab – is now being taken more seriously.
As a long term strategy, it’s genius. Out of curiosity, were people complaining about the Alaska purchase all those long years ago?
Came across an interesting article the other day which highlights the intersection of declining returns and increasing costs. Apparently up in the north west of this continent which during the dry season is quite hot and arid, the miners are extracting ground water supplies to dampen down the dust, among other uses. Here’s the thing though, what looks to be taking place is that the underlying aquifer is in decline and so the miners are having to consider using desalinated water (taking sea water, removing the salt, then probably adding back calcium and magnesium I believe) – a very expensive and energy intensive source of water. The funny thing about all of this, is that in the future there’ll probably be heaps of ore left to mine, but nobody can afford to do so and turn a profit.
Pilbara traditional owners push back on Rio Tinto, state government water extraction from sacred sites.
And my underlying belief is that the massive expansion of debt in the west has allowed for a while, economic activities to continue which may have otherwise have ceased. Of course there are end points, or at least diminishing returns to all such policies. We seem to be at, nearing, or past that point. What’s your take on this matter?
The heavy rain last week has kicked off the growth in the ferns, and you’ll be happy to note, also the mosses. The rain up north of the country seems slightly crazy.
Cheers
Chris
@Methyethly #109 “When I see a bunch of different social media/MSM sources all saying the same thing at once, suddenly, I just assume it’s because they’re being paid to.”
That is probably a big part of it but never underestimate just how much some folks will cling together on some things for the sake of virtue signaling or attaining power for oneself. Starts off as astroturfing but eventually the folks will flock.
Back in 2016, it was a few days after Trump got elected and there was a large “”F$#% TRUMP” rally in the middle of the city. Blocking everyone from just going about there day. This is in Melbourne Australia! As far as I know, we didn’t have anything to do with him and it achieved nothing. And it is something that I see time and time again around the world. Movements that sweep across the west. mostly originating in the US. Some folks are just in on that stream of information from where ever and they will act on it even if only mostly symbolically. They are just waiting for instruction from various media sources rather than thinking things through.
Some movements are paid to get started but amplified by those that are influenced by it. It is the same way some conspiracies start, they are done either as a joke, or to try and highlight some silly factor of some conspiracies, or intentionally created for cover. Given enough time, those that are serious about it and take these at face value will take over the movement and it will become perpetual. But I am no expert on that. If only there was someone here that had written a book about 100 conspiracies of history in chronological order, complete with artworks to accompany them? 😉
Free Rain,
I believe that was the study that I was referring to, if not there are now two of them out there. The references to WEF only appears, as far as I find, in certain overwrought right-wing sites which reference this study. I’m looking for a reference by WEF itself promoting this. I suspect until this idea gains some real traction, let’s pray it doesn’t, the WEF will remain silent. I think they may have learned a lesson or two.
I don’t find the Simulation Hypothesis compelling, but if you take it as a thought experiment (“These images are intended to train the mind…”) I think it can illuminate some ideas.
For example, the main argument for the Simulation hypothesis argues not that we are in the simulation, one level distant from the base reality, but that we are in a simulation within a simulation within a simulation… on to the Nth level; this multiplication of realities is where the argument gets its probabilistic force.
I think a little reflection shows that the various levels of the simulation, while all unreal compared to the base reality, are in a sense not all equally unreal: the (N+1)th level simulation is unreal in comparison to the Nth level, which is unreal in comparison to the (N-1)th level, and so on, creating a hierarchy unrealness. We can also get a sense of this from another thought experiment: the characters in a fictional story are unreal, but what happens to them usually (exceptions exist) matters more to me than what happens to characters in a fictional story-within-a-story.
Then it hit me: isn’t this kind of how the planes work? Each plane is a kind of “experience machine” for the plane below it, plopping you into one possible instantiation of the energies of that plane. The lower the plane, the less real it is compared with the “base reality” of the One/Solar Logos/etc. The main difference is the purpose: instead of being an escape from a more real world into a fantasy, it’s more like a schoolroom preparing us for the real world.
It also accords with the sense I’ve had for some time now that what happens on the physical plane is simply less important than the goings-on of the planes above. Of course, it’s critically important to us still incarnated here, for the same reason that the War of the Ring is more important to Frodo than the Korean War.
Another random thought: there’s been attempts to distinguish the Axial Age religions from other religions, but it seems to me that the real distinguishing factor is that all and only the Axial religions posit a permanent state of happiness (however each one conceives of that) as an attainable goal for everyone or almost everyone, provided they do/believe the right things.
You might see some aspects of this in pre-Axial religions but it seems like it was reserved for the truly exceptional. And with the emergence of the post-Axial religions, it seems like we’re seen a backing away from that idea, to more humble promises of a better future existence for the virtuous/faithful, but not by any means a perfect one. To an extent I think that’s because we now crave meaning more than bliss.
@ Miguel “Few days ago the local MSM reacted to this, as the synchronized opinion team they are, by publishing articles reminding -or teaching- us that we aren’t allowed to have unregistered chickens or any other cattle for self-supply.”
I have absolutely no knowledge of any of my friends 60 chickens and 10 Quail. That sound in the morning? That is just their dog they taught to sound like a rooster.
@Clay “It seems that a future potential source of failure for the internet is the relative political venerability of the high energy use data centers.”
A lot of the smarter folks who have been following this have figured out were the rubber meets the road. They need loads of data centers. Data centers need power. These companies are getting into the power supply business. It is only a matter of time until they get into the water business and that is where a lot of people will start to take issue.
I saw it is estimated a single AI prompt uses 500ml of water (sounds about right from my back of the napkin figures), and the water they do use gets contaminated with all kinds of corrosion resistant chemicals to ensure longevity of the generator system/center cooling. That adds up quick and once the water supply is impacted, many will notice. The flip side of this, recently Microsoft started very quietly backing away from their data center ambitions and commitments as they realized they over estimated the future demands. I suspect this will happen with a lot of these big internet companies. This is a part of what Ed Zitron has called ‘the rot economy’ or ‘the rot com bubble’. That computing and the internet is mostly a solved technology, there is no more runway for new ideas and they cannot let the shareholders or the larger population figure this out. If they do then the bottom of the bucket for the industry will fall out. If it does however, that is not a huge issue long term as some sanity can return to the space. Make computing and the internet boring, it is a reasonable tool not a sci-fi machine to lump ambitions of progress on.
@Will O:
“how do our Ecosophian Canadian friends see things from up there now”
Pretty bummed. As little as three months ago polls had a Conservative superwave in the election, and now, as pygmy points out, Trump’s antics have resurrected the Liberal party from the dead, and almost everyone has already forgotten that Justin Trudeau ever existed or was Prime Minister.
Not that the CPC is all that great either but with a supermajority they would have been able to get some stuff done.
So yeah. I’m pretty bummed and soured on anything outside my immediate sphere these days. Thanks Donny.
There’s a lot more one could say but I don’t have the interest in the internet, right now.
Mary Bennet@119,
I don’t think my observation of street thugs vandalizing Teslas was in any way supportive of Trump rekindling Biden’s war in the middle east and especially the barbaric bombing of Yemen. You could. not find an American born person more opposed to Biden or Trumps’s policies in the Middle East than myself. In fact, I admire and respect the Houthis for their toughness, integrity and nearly limitless courage. But blaming these foolish foreign policies on the Tech Guy Trump rounded up to cut the federal debt is a bit of a stretch.
The person I was taking to about the EV switch was without a doubt someone who only bought the Tesla when it was the flavor of the day in virtue signaling. What I was chuckling at was that they though switching to a car brand which scammed its investors and is a stalking horse for Chinese car companies is somehow more virtuous than what they had.
I’m watching a DVD of the Walkure for the first time as I write this, traditional staged by the Metropolitan Opera in 1989. Tomorrow it goes back to the library in exchange for Siegfried, and maybe Savage Continent.
Despite the power of the Ring, Alberich cannot defy Wotan, and loses it. Even with the Ring, Wotan cannot defy his own pledge, and so gives it up, while scheming to recover it.
Is it only a coincidence that the largest manufacturer of armaments in Germany is Rheinmetall? And that metal is unable to bend the East to its will?
@Siliconguy #82. The US may have been against piracy when our merchants were the victims, but the Colonial ports of North America were well known for their ready acceptance of goods that fell off the stern of a passing Spanish ship. We Rhode Islanders know that the Revolution began not by throwing tea into the harbor, but with the burning of HMS Gaspee, tasked with collecting taxes in. Narragansett Bay. In fact, the US government continues the practice of piracy today, with the seizure of tankers alleged to be carrying Iranian oil.
Hey JMG
That is true, it may not be indefinite. But there is an irony in the idea that via human effort, we are encouraging the climate that I recall you saying encourages the supremacy of reptilian and avian forms of life over mammals, possibly leading to the re-evolution of dinosaur-like creatures.
@Free Rain I’m sad to hear that it’s like in the UK as well as in the US, and yes, the people I know who are like that are all from the middle and middle class-aspiring classes. It certainly could be a case that they were raised with a philosophy of “you can have your cake and eat it too,” and not just in the case of being absent grandparents, but also in things like taking on unsustainably large debt and not worrying about it on both a national and personal level.
@Sylvia Those other factors are certainly important, but among people who do have the money to have kids, energy and time become limiting factors. It’s really hard to raise even a medium-sized family (3-4 kids) these days, and even having your parents over and playing with your children a lot gives the other adults more time to do things (like cook food, clean the house, take care of sick children, help with homework, or earn more money doing work). Some people have enough money to hire live-in nannies or au pairs (I tried to get an au pair but I cannot since my wife doesn’t speak English natively), but nothing beats grandparents. We’re extremely jealous of the Indian families around here, as their custom is that one set of grandparents will help with the family for six months and another pair will come in for the next six months after a child is born.
And there’s also a relationship between low wages, expensive housing, and dudes playing video games. That is, if a guy can see that’s there’s no way he’ll ever be able to afford a house at the wage he’s being paid, a common response is to sit back, do the bare minimum, and get the sense of achievement that men inherently need via videogames. Men need to feel a sense of achievement, and modern life robs most men of that chance by not giving them meaningful work that affords them the ability to buy land, build up their property, marry a woman and start a family. Once you get a taste of that, as a man, video games become less fun because what you achieve in-game only matters in that limited context of the game. Unfortunately, most men don’t even get a taste these days.
Chris, yes, there were — Alaska was called “Seward’s folly,” after William Seward, the US Secretary of State who negotiated it. A majority of ordinary people supported it, even before gold was discovered there, but there were newspapers and politicians who denounced it, mostly because they were Democrats and the administration that did it was Republican. If this sounds familiar to you, welcome to US politics. As for debt, bingo — the mass production of debt is the gimmick that’s being used to try to manufacture the illusion of economic growth when the real economy of nonfinancial goods and services is stagnant or contracting.
Slithy, er, to my mind “unreal” is like “pregnant” or “dead” — it permits of no degrees; you can’t be slightly dead or only a little bit pregnant! From a traditional occult perspective, all the planes are equally real or equally unreal. As for the religions of the Axial Age, hmm — I’ll have to think about that.
Peter, ha! Rheinmetall indeed. But will the Russians snatch it from Germany’s hand?
J.L.Mc12, oh, I’m quite confident that saurian life will regain its former place in ten million years or so anyway, only to be elbowed aside after another hundred million years or so by a new cold spell and a new resurgence of mammal or mammal-like creatures. Gaia seems to like to change her vertebrates from time to time.
@Sylvia
I’ve spent some time overseas in two “less developed” countries which still boast a birthrate right at replacement level (where it appears stable), and I’m very much inclined to believe the “grandparents” explanation, based on what I saw there. These people were *way* poorer materially than the US, but extended family is foundational for them, and pregnant ladies/new moms are treated with a great deal of solicitude and respect. “It’s the grandparents” is oversimplified. But the lack of support from extended family networks here is HUGE. I don’t think most Americans would know how to tolerate having a couple dozen relatives all up in their business all the time, but it is gigantic plus if you are having babies and caring for small children.
I think that’s the single biggest factor, but once you throw in a host of subsidiary things like happy-motoring culture (where you can’t go anywhere with your baby without lugging 60 pounds of equipment, maneuvering an unhappy small person into a safety cage, driving somewhere, repeating the process to go home again, and nothing you need is in walking distance), the hostility of modern life to the mere presence of babies and small children in public places, the desperate isolation of caring for infants and small children at home, the expense of all that required-but-unnecessary equipment, the lack of social approval for stay-at-home parents, the lack of home enterprises as viable ways to support a family, the sneering attitude of the US middle class toward families with more than two children, the C-section rate (a limiting factor for number of subsequent children), and half a dozen other things… eh, that might be enough to push the maybes over the edge into “no we can’t have more”.
But I think all those things pale in comparison to the lack of family/community support. Hardly anybody decides against a third child because they’d have to buy a bigger car. I think probably a lot of people decide against a third child after struggling through a brutal postpartum recovery with a side of postpartum depression, for months, alone at home all day, trying to take care of an infant *and* a preschooler, when they can barely care for themselves. I don’t have the data to back it up, but my best guess about falling birthrates here is not, primarily, people not having any children– spinster aunts and bachelor uncles have been common enough through history. I reckon it’s people having one or two, and calling it quits, who in another place and time would happily have five or ten.
It’s anecdotal, but being religious I know quite a lot of families with four or more children, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that the overwhelming majority of them have *very* involved and supportive grandparents who provide significant financial and practical support. I’m so envious! I couldn’t even persuade my relatives to cook a meal or wash a few dishes when my babies were born, and some of these ladies have moms who come over and run the whole household for a month whenever a grandchild is born.
“humanity has been producing enough carbon dioxide and methane gas via agriculture over the past 8000 years to disrupt the ice age cycle, preventing or at least dampening it.”
If I recall, it was the domestication of rice that was blamed. All those flooded paddies put out a lot of methane. In a related note, the gardening style that the study was complaining about is some sort of English thing using raised beds filled with trucked in compost. They have the same possible issue, methane from anaerobic digestion.
David Archer made a similar argument that the CO2 levels now present would be enough to abort the next glaciation due to start in 3000 years. The book’s title is The Long Thaw. Check the library.
Clay Dennis, it is all one administration, and the president has responsibility for whatever decisions are made in his name. The most expensive and wasteful of human activities is war, especially in the modern world.
So far, this administration appears to be contemplating wars against Iran, Panama, Canada (!), and tiny, sane and peaceful Denmark (for control of Greenland). Maybe someone is jealous because the Danes have better governance and a higher standard of living overall than we do. I can see sound reasons for a closer alliance with the rest of North America, but that is what diplomacy is for. Except diplomacy is boring, it takes too long, and win/win is for losers, in the minds of people who are drunk on their own emotional highs. And besides, you have to rely on diplomats, dull, uncharismatic people who don’t make you feel like a champ and are always whining about what the Panamanians or Danes or Greenlanders think. As if anyone cares.
@Dennis #74, #135
It’s funny to see those comments, my wife and I are in a very similar boat with the utter disinterest in providing actual help with the grandchildren. We will sometimes not see my parents for a month or more. They live a mile and half down the road. I have the same experience of remembering just how much intergenerational help there was when I was a child and what a contrast it is currently. Time is by far the thing that we most need. We homeschool our older children, I work full time, the wife works part time from home, we produce a good deal of our own food, and we feed the family almost entirely home cooked meals. We hear a lot of platitudes about what a good of job we’re doing and how seriously we take raising our children, but actual support from the our boomer parents ranges from token to non-existent.
HV
@JMG
In that scenario, with the continents being apart, it would be likely that some continents (i.e. a temperate/subtropical Antarctica) won’t get the wave of the future and have mammal/bird dominated ecosystems.
@113 Patricia M
I think it’s a mistake to assume that Caesarism in Faustian civilization had to match the development of Roman Caesarism. The West chose an economic system of endless growth and “progress” that shortened the life expectency of Faustian civilization, so the Western led world order will likely collapse before the formation of Caesarism.
You sounded a bit under the weather on the Hermitix podcast that was released today. Hope you feel better soon.
So, I have been mulling a bit on the subject of carbon.
Organic chemistry is BOTH the chemistry of carbon, in all of its transformations AND the chemistry of organisms. Even though it is, to a degree, possible for carbon to exist in the absense of organisms, and some organic compounds can be poisonous to organisms, the wondrous processes that we know as “life” include the trick of speeding up organic chemical transformations of carbon by many orders of magnitude.
The etymological roots of the word “carbon” include Fr – “charbone” (coined or first recorded in the work of Lavoisier, a chemist), Latin “carbonem” (nominative “carbo”) “a coal, glowing coal; charcoal,” and PIE root *ker- (3) “heat, fire.”.
Now, there is a movement building, whose stated aim is to “reduce carbon” or even to “zero carbon”. The mythology of Prometheus, and similar fire-stealing heroes, comes to mind. Imagine if some AI-minded HAL type engine decided its dedicated purpose was to further this aim. Would it be able to distinguish between “zeroing” carbon, and “zeroing” carbon based life? Is fire itself (as contained within, symbolised by, a glowing coal that is the living cell) that which will be “zeroed” – because of people being careless about what they wish for?
Our very breaths, as living, carbon-based, and carbon-trading, organisms, may soon be forbidden, if we do not take care.
Hi John,
In regard to the Islamification of the UK, a Muslim activist has announced plans to try and gain control of Birmingham, the UK biggest largest city, with a blatantly sectarian Muslim agenda.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/controversial-lawyer-akhmed-yakoob-announces-30860329?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Currently around one third of Birmingham is Muslim (and in some areas much higher). If the Islamists manage to win power and actually sort out some of the challenges facing Birmingham, even non-Muslim voters might go along with a creeping islamification agenda in due course.
Couple of random neurons fired reading this thread. I watched a documentary last night about the NXIVM sex cult that was taken down a few years ago. It occurred to me that the WEF is pretty much a cult like NXIVM. If you read WEF’s website, it’s a lot of articles about some vague notions of saving the world and social gobbledygook that doesn’t really make any sense. I looked back at some of the NXIVM footage and it was the same kind of message. Not really saying anything, but promising some kind of enlightenment if you just put in the work. Maybe both were just clubs for rich weirdos.
@MichaelGray 130
Loved your observation, “That computing and the internet is mostly a solved technology, there is no more runway for new ideas… If it does however, that is not a huge issue long term as some sanity can return to the space. Make computing and the internet boring, it is a reasonable tool not a sci-fi machine to lump ambitions of progress on.” I’ve been thinking a lot lately that society at large is trying to solve all of our social problems with software. For example, human resources software if you are in the workforce trying to reduce all workplace friction into something that can be turned into numbers, or dating apps trying to get people a better social life. Seems to not work and maybe computers should just be there for banks and research universities to crunch numbers.
Hi JMG and everyone,
Can anyone give me some examples of countries/ethnic groups who have successfully combined people from vastly differing backgrounds to form a united identity? I think some empires like the Achaemenids achieved this to some extent, but I was thinking on a smaller scale.
The background is that I’m interested to imagine what Australia (and in particular South-East QLD) might be like at the end of the century.
Reading JMG’s “future fiction” like the “The Hall of the Homeless Gods” always gets me thinking along these lines. 🙂
Hey JMG
Speaking of the return of prehistoric creatures in new forms, have you noticed the commotion around these genetically engineered “wooly mice” a team of scientists created recently?
They essentially managed to alter certain mouse genes to produce effects similar to equivalent Wooly Mammoth genes, thus producing a bred of mice that are cold-adapted in a similar way. I hope that they have the decency to mass produce them as pets, so they can inevitably escape and go feral. It would add to the biodiversity that the world has lost.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/wooly-mice-a-test-run-for-mammoth-gene-editing/
For those interested in healing (though it has far wider applicability), I recommend Benebell Wen’s latest post on nine precepts for preventive spiritual care from a Chinese treatise of about 400BC. Each of the nine could in itself serve as a theme for meditation.
Mention of Samos brought back memories, if JMG will allow an old man to reminisce.
Around 50 years ago, backpacking around Europe with a group of friends, we found ourselves on the island of Samos. In the youth hostel we met a pair of friendly Californians and soon had a party going. Around 9pm we got thrown out for being too noisy. Wandering around looking for a place to stay we found everything closed. Even at the local monastery, where we had been told we could always find a bed, we were turned away by a bad-tempered monk.
Finally we found a suitable open spot in the local cemetery, spread out our sleeping bags, and lay down to sleep.
After a while one of the Americans complained, “There’s bugs.”
“There are no bugs. Go to sleep.” we told him.
A bit later, “I’m telling you guys. There’s bugs in this place.”
“Shut up and let us sleep.”
Next thing there was a wild scream. I happened to be lying near him and still have the image imprinted on my brain. A figure, silhouetted against the starlight, flapping his sleeping bag with a shower of tiny little things fountaining up to the sky.
In the morning we found he had put his sleeping bag on the entrance to an ant colony. That was the most excitement on Samos, which I remember as dry and dusty. It’s the closest Greek island to Turkey. In fact, you can see the Turkish coastline in the distance.
Wandering around, we found a lone fig tree with lots of little black figs on the shore of a bay. We South Africans tucked in and gorged ourselves. Free food! But the two Californians refused to touch them. This surprised me because my mother would dose me with California Syrup of Figs as a child, so I naturally assumed California was covered in fig trees which the locals ate from. Years later I learned that the California Fig-Syrup Co. was involved in a celebrated court case which revealed its true non-figgy nature.
Other than that, we watched a fisherman wading in the shallows pull out an octopus, bash it repeatedly on the rocks, and turn it inside out. Thus do we treat our fellow sentient creatures. Sigh. And that’s about all I remember of Samos.
@Will O:
@Bofur
@JMG
‘The Polls’ have been easing us in slowly to the understanding that Carney, a wolf in sheeps clothing (a globalist moth in canadian goose feathers), is taking the lead. This is a good way to condition a population towards accepting a leader that is against their national interest. Exposure, in increments, to polling numbers indicaing a certain candidate is gaining popularity also mutes the suspicion of a surprise win/st*len election. We have a great example of this kind of manipulative polling in the recent U.S elections. There has been a resurgence of national identity, albeit heavily guided by Liberal interests. Our state funded media will continue to shape hearts and minds. We need a deeper change in consciousness to expose these crimes for what they are.
To John and Ken on the subject of Consciousness and Emergentism
The evolution of consciousness makes absolutely zero sense from a materialist perspective. In materialism, consciousness is just a weird byproduct of some kinds of physical systems, which has no causal efficacy on the physical world. So why did it evolve to exist in the first place? Why did it need to ’emerge?’ Consciousness would provide no evolutionary advantage. In a materialist world, creatures with no consciousness or inner life at all would have just as much a survival advantage. It would make much more sense in a materialist world for consciousness just to never even exist. This is why some materialists have moved to the position that consciousness is just some kind of ‘illusion’ and it literally doesn’t exist, which is the only idea even dumber than flat earth.
I think it makes much more sense to put consciousness in the primary position and to see the universe as a conscious reality which is continuous with our own conscious minds. The materialist position takes mind, the only thing we directly know, and makes it a weird anomaly for no reason. It makes much more sense to think of the cosmos as mental in nature.
“The stuff of the world is mind-stuff… The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds…. The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it … It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.” – Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World
I am not sure, if this topic is too close to the discussion of AI but I just came across the concept of “Q-Day.” Quantum Day is the point at which someone builds a quantum computer that can crack the most widely used forms of encryption. Banks, hospitals, emails, police records, power stations, all the information would be exposed, creating quite a bit of chaos. Do you think this is a legitimate concern?
I am distressed to hear that about Boomer grandparents. I’m a boomer grandma and in 2012, when my oldest daughter’s husband committed suicide and her son was in Kindergarten, she asked me to come and help her. It was easy for me, I have never owned a house so picking up and moving was easy. I have lived with her since then and do all the cooking and laundry and took her son for all his appointments, etc., as she worked so much. He graduates from high school this May and I will be moving to PA to be close to my youngest daughter who has three children, the oldest is 9, almost 10. I intend to fully help her out, I love all my grandchildren very much. The thing that really bugs me about boomer grandparents is don’t they think about their kids and grandkids at all, with so many of them living profligate lifestyles that use up scarce resources, increasing debt, etc. they will tell you how much they love their grandchildren, blah blah blah, then don’t help them out, as one commenter above explained. My grandparents lived only about a mile and a half from us, us on out small farm, they on theirs. One of my earliest memories is putting my younger sister in our little red wagon and pulling her to our grandparents house. I was maybe three or four. And I can still see Grandma calling my mother on her old fashioned phone, the kind where you held up the ear piece to your ear and spoke into the mouthpiece attached to the wall, and asking my mom, “Ethel, do you happen to know where Heather and Sarah are? They walked all the way here!!” My mom had no clue, she thought we were just outside playing. And both my grandparents laughed and laughed.
Weird question for you, JMG, specific to the occult dimensions of storytelling. I have heard you, and many other writers of fiction, describe how a story seems to have a will of its own; the way sculptors talk about removing the stone to reveal the form beneath. I think you described the Hali series almost downloading itself into your brain, and how your characters often make choices and take paths that surprise you. There’s a particular animated series (I won’t bore you with specifics, as I know you don’t do video; for any of the commentariat interested, the name is Arcane) that has provided me with many themes for meditation; I regard the first “season” of 9 episodes (3 story arcs of 3 episodes each) as one of the finest pieces of storytelling I’ve encountered. I understand that it took 6 years to make. The second “season” was also 3 story arcs of 3 episodes, and was the final “season.”
It felt…rushed.
(I suspect the original intent was 3 seasons, each containing 3 arcs, comprised of 3 episodes each.)
My understanding is that economics and the real world had to be served — hundreds of people working on a huge project, all of whom have to eat and pay rent — and, the main storytellers have other projects and other stories they wish to tell. Taking a decade or more to complete their original vision likely exceeded their reach, and completing something is preferable to not finishing at all.
I can see where certain threads of the story either got dropped or compressed, and I feel like I have some grasp of what the story’s will might have been (as much as it’s possible…after all, it wasn’t my story).
My question…and I suppose I’m asking for your musings on this as a storyteller…is what the ramifications on the inner planes might be when a powerful story makes itself known to a storyteller, who then, for whatever reasons, kind of backs away from the “will of the story” after beginning it in good faith? Does the story’s will merely shrug, and express itself elsewhere?
I believe that storytelling is the oldest and perhaps most important of all human technologies, and my meditations around Arcane seem to be synching up in a fascinating way with your Wagner essays.
@Gallifrey (30) — this Derek Thompson? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-wrongest-man/618475/ that didn’t age well, and quite frankly makes me “trust” him less (and verify way way more) 🙂
@jmg and all — my 4 chickens are going strong after 2 years — the 2 barred rocks had a rough molt last fall and egg production fell (and there was some bullying and changes in the pecking order) but all is now good and most days I get 4 eggs — no sign of bird flu……. even though it supposedly everywhere.
@ miguel (122) that is crazy, chickens being a health menace — anecdotally, when people find out I keep chickens they always ask “do you sell them”?, not “are they contagious”. crazy times.
Hi John,
As a secondary point from my previous post (note a typo – meant to say Birmingham is the 2nd largest city in the UK), this article is highly concerning for Europeans.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/fall-europe
– Most countries within Western Europe will see their native young become a minority well before 2050.
– Islam will politically control much of Western Europe before 2050 as a result of rapidly declining native demographics, coupled with rapidly expanding Islamic demographics and single-minded bloc voting for Islamic political parties.
Also an interesting story, we were recently in Morocco and got chatting to a highly educated man who commented how Europe seemed to be in terminal decline (he referenced the US pulling out, its weak economy and terrible demographics). We had a conversation on why Europeans (at least the natives) hardly have children anymore and I noted that without children the culture dies.
We agreed that given current rates it seems Europe is in terminal decline. Obviously I didn’t mention the Islamic dynamic but the obvious conclusion, as you rightly say, is at some point Muslim demographics in western European cities will take control.
Fun morning headline,
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/europe/european-union-stockpile-member-states-intl-latam/index.html
“EU urges citizens to stockpile 72 hours’ worth of supplies amid war risk”
“The Commission’s European Preparedness Union Strategy says citizens across the continent should adopt practical measures to ensure they are ready in case of an emergency. This includes having enough essential supplies to last them for a minimum of three days, the document says. “In the case of extreme disruptions, the initial period is the most critical,” it says.”
That’s 71 hours and 40 minutes more supplies than anyone in a city will actually need.
So is it virtue signaling or is it the Great Reset that will leave Europeans of the correct social class in charge of the world again? I should stockpile popcorn.
Hi,
I continue to closely monitor the growing risk of European wars, particularly in eastern Europe and this got my attention:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/20/romania-us-ukraine-russia-election-george-simion-nato-vance/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJTnGFleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHTtio_dWZutwplVdo1_m79Ej1BZmXGT9td8ImQadz1RdEfJ3_XIdcv6dHA_aem_DZ16nMGpZepSWrfTshSWhw
“The party has in the past called for restoring the Romanian state “within its natural borders”, through claiming territories including the regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and Transcarpathia in Western Ukraine.
As such, Mr Simion has a tense relationship with Kyiv, having been banned from entering the country over security concerns as well as promoting “unionist ideology questioning the legitimacy of Ukraine’s borders” and “narratives alleging the violation of rights for Romania’s ethnic minority in Ukraine”.”
Now, throw in Hungary, where the ruling party openly talks about expanding Hungary’s borders. Throw in Bosnia, which is a ticking timebomb which experts are warning could explode at anypoint:
https://militairespectator.nl/artikelen/situation-bosnia-getting-worse-day
f Bosnia were to fall apart, the consequences would be devastating: ‘Any partition would trigger a domino effect in the Balkans that no one would be able to control,’ the political scientist warns in an interview with the Militaire Spectator.
Any partition would trigger a domino effect in the Balkans that no one would be able to control. We are talking about potentially violent conflicts in Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia itself. Belgrade seems to have forgotten that Serbia is a multi-ethnic state. If Dodik wanted the Serbian annexation of RS, the Bosniaks in Sandzak in Serbia would, likewise, seek to be annexed to Sarajevo.
So, to summarise, I can very easily see former Yugoslavia region exploding into renewed violence at any point now, bringing in Russian and Turkish forces into the mix.
Slightly longer term, I can also see a re-armed Romania, Hungary and Poland all electing (or re-electing) ultra-nationalists who dream of expanding the borders (depending on what happens to Ukraine, something similar there as well).
Greece is at perpetual risk of going to war against an increasingly autocratic Türkiye. And we haven’t even mentioned the Russians!
It seems to be a whole arc of eastern and south-eastern Europe could be in flames of savage wars within 10 to 15 years, potentially dragging in countries in central Europe as well (Germany, Austria and Italy).
At the same time, as discussed in separate posts on this thread, Islamic forces are starting to organise and get elected in the big cities where large minorities of Muslims live (already happening in Birmingham) as western Europe faces the growing horror of Islamification within 50 years.
@Michael Gray:
Indeed, the world is full of dupes willing to parrot anything the paid promoters tell them to. My MIL wears her Ukraine flag pin everywhere, like it’s a religious token. Does she know anything about Ukraine other than what CNN told her? Nah. But it’s what all the boomer ladies in her set do, so she does too.
In the world of internet news/commentary/socialmedia though, I have a sort of un-scientific system for sorting out shills from reliable sources: as soon as a group of accounts starts in saying the same thing with the same phrasing/buzzwords, at the same time, I mute/block all of them. *Even if I agree with what they’re saying*. Over time this tends to narrow down content to real actual people who are not getting paid to say things off a list. I still run into the braindead parrots, but those accounts don’t post any thoughtful or original content anyway, and are easy to sort out and ignore: people who mindlessly repeat, without any critical impulse, don’t themselves produce anything of interest.
More war preps, what a morning.
“Denmark Moves to Women’s Mandatory Military Service Sooner Than Expected”
“Denmark decided to extend the military draft to young women starting in the coming months, two years earlier than initially planned. Danish women who turn 18 after July 2025 will be required to register for the health screening and subsequent draft. At the same time, the standard service period will also be increased from 4 to 11 months.”
The article didn’t mention it, but I’m pretty sure pregnant women will be exempted from reporting for duty if their number does come up. Low birth rate problem solved at a stroke of a pen without overt coercion.
@Watchflinger:
If we had a bit of real, organic population decline (i.e. boomers dying off from old age, and *not* being replaced by mass migration), it’d free up a lot of affordable housing, so that families with kids could afford to live somewhere again. That’d probably even result in a little boost to the birthrate, and a shift to a younger, more dynamic population.
It would, of course, also collapse real estate prices, and at least a few big investment firms as a consequence. All to the good if you ask me 🙂
Will O #78
To follow up on Pygmycory’s and Bofur’s comments, the situation here in Toronto is pretty much what they described: a lot of anger and a definite backlash. Air Canada and Westjet have both said that flight reservations to the US are down by 40%, auto trips through the border are also down (this would be both one day shopping trips and longer tourist trips) but I don’t remember the amount. As far as I know, Saskatchewan is the only province that has not pulled all American liquor off the shelves. Stores have signs up that indicate Canadian products and encourage shoppers to buy Canadian. Hockey fans boo the American anthem at NHL games played in Canada. In all my 82 years, I have never seen so much anti-American sentiment and this doesn’t come just from the tariffs but even more from the 51st state comments, not just from Trump but also from his lackies.
I remember the 1979 Iranian Revolution and several American Embassy staff managed to get to the Canadian Embassy and were given Canadian passports and made it out of Iran. On 9-11 when all the US airports were closed, overseas flights were re-directed to Canada (and maybe some to Mexico probably). That put an enormous burden on our air traffic control and on the airports. The musical play “Come From Away” is about the influx of planes landing in Gander, Newfoundland. Bush thanked almost every country in the world but never said a word about Canada. We sent troops to Afghanistan in support of the US. The first four Canadian soldiers killed were by a trigger-happy American pilot who dropped bombs on them. When a Canadian journalist asked Bush about this, he replied that he had already spoken to Chretien and walked away. Apparently Canadian lives do Not matter–not to Americans anyway. We were still mourning our murdered soldiers when the Olympics started. In the final medal round of Women’s Hockey between the US and Canada, Canada won the gold even though the referees constantly penalized the Canadians. My husband and I watched that game and were disgusted by the refereeing. Later it became known that the American team had walked on the Canadian flag before the game.
There was a lot of bitterness and anger over these incidences but it faded in time. This time is different. Even if Trump were to fall dead tomorrow and Vance became president and dropped the entire 51st state thing, the hostility would still continue. I don’t see this ending any time soon. Not for years and maybe even longer.
Sabine has a good video up on the multiple failures of the current cosmological models. They never should have launched that last space telescope.
“Cosmology Crises are only Getting Worse”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WBfeKz1SG0k
Summary,
1) the Hubble constant has two different values depending on how it’s measured, and the difference is getting worse and the measurements get better.
2) the Cosmological principle that on large scales the universe is uniform appears to be completely wrong as there are gigantic galaxy clusters and equally gigantic voids.
3) galaxies that formed early in the universe grew too big too soon (or the universe is older than thought which sort of links back to #1.)
4) the tendency of matter to clump up is less now than it used to be.
She did not cover the effects of burning all those cosmology textbooks on greenhouse gas emissions. 🙂
There is also this, “Dark Energy Might Be Changing – This Is What It Means For Our Understanding Of The Cosmos” The article is paywalled unfortunately.
The gist is that different satellite (DES, Dark Energy Survey) got results that don’t match expectations. If true unlimited expansion is off the table and the oscillating universe looks more viable, (and I’m extrapolating here) then a big bang from a singularity isn’t needed. A paper I read long ago suggested two galactic masses per proton volume would satisfy the math without needing an actual singularity.
Very interesting on the Shakespeare/Shakspere authorship question. A family member of mine is obsessed by this and has spent a great many hours, over several years, in the Reading Room at the British Library researching who might have written all the works attributed to Shakespeare, but which seem to have been written by someone else.
A couple of things he’s mentioned recently are that a Professor Sandra Clark was involved in writing several dictionaries (https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/arden-shakespeare-dictionaries/), divided by subject, on Shakespearean language with titles such as ‘Shakespeare and Animals’, ‘Shakespeare and Science’, ‘Shakespeare and London’, ‘Shakespeare and Domestic Life’ and so on. My brother met with Prof Clark and asked her why, since Shakespeare appeared to have an intimate knowledge on Italy and Italian culture, and about a third of the plays being set in Italy, there is no dictionary about Shakespeare and Italy. How could he have absorbed so much information about Italian geography, history, culture and literature without ever having been there? It’s now going to be suggested to the publisher Bloomsbury that they look into writing such a dictionary, if they can find suitable researchers and an editor.
You may know, JMG, of Mark Twain’s essay on the subject of authorship: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2431/2431-h/2431-h.htm
There is also this: https://hardthinking.com/2012/01/27/shakespeare-authorship-short-version/ which is very interesting in making the case that Shakespeare did not write the plays or poems.
Yet the orthodoxy will have it no other way, Shakespeare wrote it all, and the tills ring constantly in shops and buildings all over Stratford-upon-Avon as fortunes are made in keeping that orthodoxy embedded.
Finally, as an aside, Shakespeare’s parents were respectable enough in their way; he came “Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could not sign their names” according to Twain. At the time they tried to claim elite status in order to use the Arden family coat of arms, which was denied to them because they were from the wrong branch of the Arden family and couldn’t claim kinship with them. Coincidentally, the Arden coat of arms was allowed to be used by the secondary school I went to, which is near to where the Arden family lived, at Arden Hall in the English Midlands.
I was recently in Nairobi, Kenya to visit my kid who’s teaching there. My other kid loves bookstores and wanted to visit one there. In the corner of the shop, I found a copy of JMG’s Conspiracy Book. In Nairobi! I though you’d want to know about your global influence.
Then I read the Conspiracy Book and enjoyed it.
I’ve also written about one of your topics — the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. I dig into the specifics of their prejudices, and found that in the non-Southern states like Indiana and Oregon, the Klan was primarily anti-immigration, while also being a Protestant temperance revival movement . Here’s a link: https://medium.com/@terryjbrennan/the-second-ku-klux-klan-a1d3e92aecf7.
@JMG: That makes sense. Even doing that more concentrated practice I find much of a book fades in memory as time goes on.
@Scotlyn: That also makes a lot of sense! I like the idea of discursive meditation as a digestion aid!
Y’all realize that when the baby boomers die they are no longer available for baby sitting?
My personal family situation involved 3 living grandparents, all of which were over 8 hrs away. So, not useful for regular child care!
MichaelGrey: That computing and the internet is mostly a solved technology, there is no more runway for new ideas and they cannot let the shareholders or the larger population figure this out. If they do then the bottom of the bucket for the industry will fall out. If it does however, that is not a huge issue long term as some sanity can return to the space. Make computing and the internet boring, it is a reasonable tool not a sci-fi machine to lump ambitions of progress on.
I respectfully disagree. Both computing and the internet can progress significantly in theory. I am sure you are aware of Metcalf’s law, which states that the value of a network increases as a function of the square of the number of users/devices. Perhaps you are not seeing or reading about new ideas, but that does not mean that none exist or that none will materialize. Incidentally, you may also not approve of it when it does materialize. I still for the life of me can’t understand why people put so much time and effort into posting on Facebook or Instagram, but those types of idiocies made 3G useful, if I recall).
As for sanity returning–honestly, that will happen as soon as the amount of stupid money flowing into the space disappears. Given the amount of loose money sloshing around, don’t hold your breath (or, I suppose, hope for a new “new thing” that gets people to take their money from the current sector and put it into a new stupid area–I would guess Quantum anything is going to be it, but nuclear fusion, robotics, and DNA-something-or-other are also strong contenders).
As an aside, computing as a technology has just been astounding–the fact that there are any gains to be made ~80 years after its invention, and the fact that these gains can be made on a regular basis, is pretty astounding. But the time is probably ripe for a new type of technology to provide a broad basis for propelling the general economy forward.
And fwiw, yes, I am acutely aware of and concerned about hard energy and ecological limits, and if not addressed, they will really bite. However, if there turns out to be a way to resolve them, I think it is safe to say that computers and communications will continue to improve over the foreseeable future (or, stated differently, they will continue to improve until we hit hard energy and ecological limits)
Patrick, that’s an interesting question, but I don’t expect to be around to see the answer!
KVD, that was recorded when I was dealing with the approaching first anniversary of my wife’s death, and yeah, I wasn’t at my best. I’ve dealt with it and am back on my feet.
Scotlyn, hmm! That makes a great deal of sense, as biophobia is a pervasive presence in Western cultures. What’s the outcry that sends the deepest shivers down the spines of horror movie watchers? “It’s alive!!!”
Forecasting, no surprises there. My prediction remains what it is: by 2050 or so, most of Western Europe will consist of overtly Muslim states, and the Christian minority — and it will be a minority by then, as a Muslim takeover is usually followed by a fair amount of conversion — may not be treated especially well. Yes, I know the Quran mandates tolerance of Christians and Jews; I also know how spottily that has been enforced in the Dar al-Islam down through the centuries.
Watchflinger, fascinating. I’ll have to revisit the WEF and see how it measures up on the cult scale.
Russell, every empire does this — the definition of an empire is that it unites many previously independent nations under a single national identity. The unity that results is always contested and fragile, but sometimes it can build considerable strength; the number of regions once in the empire that considered themselves Roman even after Rome fell is not small. On a smaller scale, look at the construction of nations such as Britain and France as examples.
J.L.Mc12, somehow I missed that. I hope they win the Ig Nobel this year!
KAN, thanks for this. Wen’s a very capable practitioner.
Martin, thanks for this. Weirdly, last weekend I got asked to take on the challenge of reviving a Pythagorean initiatory society, in which wine from Samos is an important feature of the regular banquets. I have a bottle…
Ian, thanks for the data points.
Enjoyer, exactly. The eliminative materialists — the folks who think that consciousness doesn’t exist and matter is the only reality — are like people who start from the assumption that the world is carried through space on the back of a giant turtle, and then end up arguing that the turtle is real but the world is not!
Caroline, I have no idea. If people are worried about it, though, I have a great idea: take the records off the computers, put them in paper in file cabinets, and hire some file clerks. Instant non-hackable database!
Heather, I’m delighted to hear that not everybody in my generation is a dork. Thank you.
Raab, in that case the pattern that’s trying to express itself will find another writer and possibly another medium. I haven’t yet had that happen — all the stories of mine that pushed themselves on me got written in full — but it doesn’t feel as though once they settle on me as their vehicle, they’re stuck with me; they could find someone else if they have to, and change the details in order to get the pattern out.
Jerry, yay for the chickens!
Forecasting, yes, I saw that. I don’t think it’s overstating the seriousness of the situation.
Siliconguy, talk about planning for the last war! They’re still stuck in the Cold War, when the existential struggle they’re facing will be fought in different ways and with different weapons.
Forecasting, yep. This is exactly what I predicted here a few years back. Bismarck’s famous comment hasn’t lost any of its relevance:
Annette (if I may), good! The sooner Canadians remember that they’re an independent nation and not a minor satrapy ruled from Washington DC, the better.
Siliconguy, I wonder if they’re starting to feel sympathy for those astronomers before Copernicus who were tearing out their hair trying to get the Ptolemaic model to work, and finding more and more problems with every improvement in the data…
Bacon, thanks for this. It’s a fascinating issue, and one I don’t expect to see resolved in my lifetime.
Tom, thanks for both these! Yes, the Klan in its 1920s manifestation was as hostile to immigrants and Catholics as it was to black people. That’s why it expanded so dramatically outside the old Confederacy.
Sylvia, well, most of them don’t seem to be much more useful while they’re still on this side of the grass, so…
Siliconguy #163: Sabine has a good video up on the multiple failures of the current cosmological models. They never should have launched that last space telescope.
No–this is exactly why they should have launched the last telescope!! Crating tools that generate new data to conclusively show that our understanding of the universe is wrong (or at least incomplete) is just about the only useful thing we have done over the last 20 years and is far, far more useful than arguing about how many quantum bits can dance on the head of a super-cooled hard drive!
J.L.Mc12:
regarding the notion that our actions are creating a climate that is more susceptible to reptilian life, it strikes me that that is exactly the sort of thing that would fit right in line with the notion that our civilization is controlled by reptilian overlords.
The urban gardening “high-carbon” piece assumes purchase of all new stuff. Garden surveys, on the other hand, typically quote food quality, money savings on food, and health as reasons for gardening:
https://www.farmanddairy.com/news/gardening-boom-one-3-u-s-households-now-growing-food/189850.html 36 million households in 2008 to 42 million in 2013. That’s a 17 percent increase and represents the highest level of food gardening in more than a decade, according to a special National Gardening Association report, Garden to Table. https://garden.org/special/pdf/2014-NGA-Garden-to-Table.pdf Detailed 2014 survey Reason #1 Better tasting, #2 Save money, #3 better quality, #4 food safety, #5 Feel productive; 1/3 HH growing food… https://gardenpals.com/gardening-statistics/ 21 study paywalled, The 2021 National Gardening Association study found that 42% of gardeners increased their gardening activities due to the Covid pandemic, while only 9% gardened less. (1). Mental health a major reason.
Regenerative Ag organizations ( Documentary Kiss The Soil) have reasonably good data suggesting this healthier version of ag (more cover crops/varieties/rotations plus negligible tillage/industrial fertilizers/pesticides), could reverse rising carbon after about 20 years. Media seems to cover the technofixes more. Associated health and environmental damage from BigAg/BigFood is getting attention, especially beyond the mainstream media. Sygenta has a regenerative ag program now, using an expanded definition to favor computer-assisted and monetized precision tracking.
@163 Siliconguy
I hope that there is a paradigm shift in cosmology soon. Then I can buy a pop science book about the new model and try to make some sense of the new theories as a layperson. Then again, the old guard who devoted their life to studying the Big Bang and its epicycles (dark matter & dark energy) might retain the power to censor the new paradigm until they retire or die off.
Forecasting, no surprises there. My prediction remains what it is: by 2050 or so, most of Western Europe will consist of overtly Muslim states, and the Christian minority — and it will be a minority by then, as a Muslim takeover is usually followed by a fair amount of conversion — may not be treated especially well. Yes, I know the Quran mandates tolerance of Christians and Jews; I also know how spottily that has been enforced in the Dar al-Islam down through the centuries.
Your comment has been rattling around in my head for the last hour or so.
I am not smart enough to figure out whether Europe will become majority Muslim or whether this is a good or bad thing. However, if this turns out to be the actual outcome, would it reduce the probability of an intra-European war, or would it make no real difference?
I was watching a Breaking Points presentation this morning. All three participants were using the “was like” formulation, so I suppose that is now part of our changing language. What interests me about it is that something rather different than “he/she said” is being communicated.
Another linguistic habit I very much deplore is the replacement of the verb ‘to think’ with another verb, ‘to feel’. As in we feel like you don’t like us. I believe that this particular formulation is a means of avoiding responsibility for what one does think, say or even decide. I would go so far as to say, that if you hear this “I or we feel like…” coming from a supervisor, you had best get that resume updated.
Grandparents not helping is all of a sudden a social problem? That sounds like a ginned up fake issue to me. Boomers selfishly clinging to land and houses they bought with money they earned, when us RE alphas could be developing and making the big bucks.
I am in a bad way. I am at the limits of my own power, and desperate for relief. I am at odds with myself, and thus seemingly impotent. I feel that some force must act from outside of me, like smacking an old tv to get it working again. I am terrified of truly being alive – of healing, and so avoid it.
I have tried several things, but my “at odds-ness” and fear prevents me from truly helping myself. Ive tried so hard. I dont know what to do.
In this, my extremity, what do you advise?
Haha, funny analogy with the flying turtle, I wholeheartedly agree. They first try to reduce reality to some made-up substance, then when that fails, just claim that the made-up substance is the only thing that is real and that there’s nothing to reduce!
By the way, have you heard of Donald Hoffman? He’s a cognitive psychologist. He argues that we can’t trust that what we perceive bears any resemblance to reality. Obviously, Kant figured this out a long time ago but Hoffman brings in arguments taken from evolution and cognitive psychology to justify it. He argues that evolution actually has the motivation to hide all parts of reality except those that are directly important for survival. Donald Hoffman proposes what he calls ‘conscious realism,’ which entails that consciousness “causes brain activity and creates all objects and properties of the physical world.” A good book of his to start with would be “The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes.”
Russell Cook,
I think Hawaii, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico,India, parts of California, etc. are doing a pretty good job of it. South Africa is certainly trying very hard. I don’t think SEQ is doing too bad of a job of it either, or Sydney. Historicaly the Byzantine and Ottoman empires were not bad. Maritime and trading cultures tend to be more inclusive than a lot of inland cultures. Probably no place is or was perfect, but lack of perfection shouldn’t blind one to good.
Stephen
@Raab (#154) on the power of stories:
Take a look at Terry Pratchett’s Theory of Narrative Casusality, which I think ought to be taken quite seriously by esotericists, occultists and magicians. You can download and read his own exposition of it at:
https://archive.org/details/pratchett-2000-briggs-lecture
My own view of reality is that the entire physical world, organic life included, is a secondary phenomenon, produced from/by an underlying non-physical “Something” which our ordinary bodily senses cannot perceive (and about which, in consequence, we have no adequate vocabulary to talk), That Something cannot be situated in time and/or space, does not consist of matter and/or energy, and even lies outside the dichotomy between “exists” and “exists not,” for all these things are part of the mere physical world.
Despite our lack of any truly adequate words, meanings and concepts to describe that Something, such words as “conscious,” “living” and “fiery” vaguely point towards it. And the things that we puny humans call “stories” can often reflect a small part of that same Something. When a story does, it seems to write itself at times.
Pratchett seems to me to have some inkling of all this with his Theory of Narrative Causality.
JMG, One of the things I find interesting in the discussions of room for improvement in computer technology and the internet is a lack of awareness of whether or not any of these things provide any benefit to ordinary people.
I recently did an ad-hoc survey of everyone I knew who had been adults before the common use of the internet and cell phones. I asked that if there was a magic button they could push and erase both things from the planet forever, would they push it. The answer with only one exception was yes, the world was a better place before those things which I agree with.
We went to the moon without either, built the Empire State Building, all the great dams , the Boeing 747 and created the middle class. Since widespread use of these communications and computing technologies virtually every objective measure of life has decreased. Movies are worse, publishing is worse, music is worse, dating and family creation are worse, social isolation is worse, educational outcomes are worse, etc. etc.
Yes this is obviously one of the main illusions for those who believe in the religion of progress. “Look people live in tents but we have AI picture art.” But my guess is when this last trope collapses in a heap we might be ready to let go.
“MichaelGrey: That computing and the internet is mostly a solved technology, there is no more runway for new ideas and they cannot let the shareholders or the larger population figure this out. If they do then the bottom of the bucket for the industry will fall out.”
That is why the rush to AI is going on. All the new processors have a neural processing unit. Your old processor does not. In advertising CPUs GHz and cores has been replaced by TOPS, trillions of operations per second. (The NPU calculations can run in parallel.)
As Windows 11 suddenly made a large group of older PCs obsolete, the “need” for AI will make a huge number of ‘we thought they were new enough’ PCs obsolete, or so they hope. Apple has a long standing policy of abandoning their machines after seven years. It may be even worse for them as the stingy so and sos sold a lot of their M1, M2, and M3 machines with 8 GB of memory which isn’t really enough. When the new AI equipped operating system shipped every Mac suddenly came with 16 GB. By the way, the M series Macs do not have upgradeable memory.
As for Q day, it’s theoretically possible. If it does happen it’s back to paper bills and checks. The postal service will be saved. You could defeat Quantum with a one-time pad but the logistics of that are intimidating to say the least.
Lazy, that seems about right to me. Thank you for the studies — I’ll deploy those as needed.
Semi-Four, it’ll have no effect. Muslim nations go to war against each other about as often as Christian nations, and it’s quite possible that there will be a period of bitter warfare while the various new Islamic republics of Europe sort out a pecking order.
Anonymous, no, the problem is that you aren’t applying your own power. Your terror of being truly alive and of healing is your problem, and nobody else can solve it for you. You and you alone can walk that lonesome valley, as the old song puts it. Accept that your conscious identity as you currently imagine it cannot deal with this, and place it in the hands of your true and deeper self, the real you that you’ve been hiding from all along. Then let things unfold. There is no other way.
Enjoyer, yes, but I haven’t read him yet. I’ll have to remedy that at some point.
Clay, you’ll get no argument from me. That’s why I don’t own a cell phone and don’t use any features of the internet except for the handful I find necessary or useful for my career.
@Ian #150:
“We have a great example of this kind of manipulative polling in the recent U.S election”
I have heard rumour that the polls are faked, in the manner of the Harris polls. During an ordinary year I would dismiss this as hopium, but this year? Not so certain.
@Annette #162
Yours is a very good comment and I agree with it. I have not (by a long shot) reached your esteemed age, but I have also never seen Canadians so united as they are now.
“ I don’t see this ending any time soon. Not for years and maybe even longer. “
Yes, forever is a long time, but I do sense that events have transpired, and things been said, that cannot easily be undone or taken back.
>However, if this turns out to be the actual outcome, would it reduce the probability of an intra-European war, or would it make no real difference?
And to that question I would add another. If Europe does go muslim, will they go Sunni or Shi’ite? As far as the question of them going muslim in the first place, I invite you to answer it for yourself. Take a train ride from, say, Rotterdam to oh, say, Munich. As you look out the window on the trip, count the number of mosques you see. Count the number of churches. Compare the two.
@Sylvia re: babysitting
One of the boneheaded things the boomers were prone to, was having children late, and discouraging their own offspring from having children young. Result: sadly few of them, even if they were willing, were in any condition to help out with infants or small children (where the need is greatest). My own mother was close by when mine were young, and there’s no way I would have entrusted anybody under five to her care. She couldn’t possibly keep up. I would definitely have heard from the police about my child being found wandering down the road in a diaper…
But also: they moved away from their families, and their kids did likewise, scattering kin networks to the four winds. My own grandparents, when I was a kid, lived 8 hours and 5 hours away. We only saw them on holidays.
@the commentariat: re: family trends more generally:
In contrast to the boomer/neoliberal infinite workforce mobility/family alienation/anti-localism model…
Since 2020 I am seeing a trend in the opposite direction, at least among my own social set (religious, lower-middle and working-class): whole families (3 generations, including adult siblings and their families) moving sometimes quite long distances, in order to settle near each other. This includes, just off the top of my head: grandparents, their adult children, and their spouses and kids, all researching and finding a reasonably affordable place with jobs (our area), and then all helping each other move there; family with several kids combining forces with out-of-town grandma to afford a house with a MIL-suite for all of them; local family purchasing a small acreage outside of town (smallscale farm) and then helping their grown children purchase lots/houses nearby so they could all be handy to share childcare. I think these sorts of arrangements, and the forward-thinking families now engaging in them, are… the future.
I’m curious if anybody else is seeing movement in that direction.
>EU urges citizens to stockpile 72 hours’ worth of supplies amid war risk
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at that. Like 3 days of extra food will matter if they start WW3.
>the Hubble constant has two different values depending on how it’s measured
Perhaps. Just maybe. It’s not a constant? I do like Sabine. She’s such a grumpy German.
@ Forecasting and Mr Greer
I agree with you and it may be the reason why I wake up sad some mornings, although the sadness dissipates when I get up.
My present sentiment is that the Transformer rules this world, and he certainly doesn’t care about our feelings.
Besides, I’ve come to the conclusion many years ago that the human population of this planet will be somewhere between one and two billion souls at the end of the century, or maybe much less, if the global population declines by as much as 95%, as some people think, because food production will decrease sharply due to depleted natural resources. The decades ahead will be terrible.
Things we can hardly imagine may happen. For instance, on a less tragic note, the Emirates may become English-speaking countries:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/weng.12507
This may be the effect of a weakness of Arabic speaking nations in general. In all of them, literary Arabic is the official language, and it is also the language of education, the press, politics, etc, but people speak dialects, which are as different from the official, literary language than modern Italian is from late Latin (I know a little literary Arabic and Moroccan dialectal Arabic). Think of France before the 15th century, when the people spoke some dialect of French in their daily lives but Latin was used in courts and official documents. I have Moroccan in-laws; they all understand literary Arabic (which they learn at school, hear on the radio and read in books and newspapers) but most of them seldom, if ever, speak it.
@Mary B 175: “Our changing language” is a nice way of putting it. I’d call it our degenerating language. Languages can be debased, vocabularies reduced, and thinking clouded and corrupted as a result. In Orwell’s “1984” the process is deliberate: He calls it “Newspeak.” I’ve ranted about it often enough.
I should probably remember my childhood lesson of not taking a second cookie until everyone else has one, but…
This is the question I was actually here to ask:
If the result of various sorts of international and economic chaos is to make manufactured goods more expensive and less available to those who need them, then which of the following is best?
A) making my own home made equivalent for my family and friends, not intending to get cash payment.
B) making my home made goods and using them for barter.
C) making my home made goods and selling for cash, which will continue to pay the electric bills and whatnot.
I worry that female-coded crafting has a tendency to be under priced relative to the effort and cost of materials. (ex. “I’ll give you $50 to make a king-sized crochet lace bedspread.”)
Regarding your predictions on Islamization, it would not surprise me if (similarly to other groups of “barbarians” in the past) they gain power and esteem by promising to some “old Westerners” to topple the power structures of other groups of “Westerners” from which they have been estranged. For example, I can really see Islam gaining a populist appeal by promising to go after old elites, universities, corporate structures such that they may actually see support from many non-Muslims in efforts to “cleanse” the old structures.
I have recently read a book entitled “The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In” by Hugh Kennedy (https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Great_Arab_Conquests.html?id=DWRKDgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y). Towards the end, Kennedy actually reads many accounts of the newly conquered subjects of the new Islamic empire. Within the territories of the old Eastern Roman Empire (Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, etc), many “Rum” Christians saw the Arabs as a curse from God caused by being forced to tolerate “heretics” like Monophysites and Jews. They often hoped that someday a great new Roman emperor would liberate them.
In the old territories of Sassanian Persia, we have less sources. Unlike with Christianity, Zoroastrianism had no complex network of monasteries where events were recorded and at the verge of the Islamic conquests, much of the population outside of the elites was becoming faiths other than Zoroastrian. For example, it is estimated that roughly half of the population of the capital Ctesiphon was Nestorian Christian and Jewish. Hence, this period is often called the “Centuries of Silence” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Centuries_of_Silence). Some of the few sources lament the decline of a lavish, splendid lifestyle (especially of the elites) embodied in the old class system in favour of the austere style brought by the Muslim Arabs.
I read that Myanmar is asking for blood donations to help the victims of the earthquake. What would you reckon to be the potential effects of receiving transfused blood, JMG, in occult terms? I have never given nor received blood, nor do I intend to.
Hi John Michael,
The ever rising debt is an odd story of subterfuge.
From what I understand of the fiercely independent Greenland folks, is that they all require subsidising from the Denmark treasury. All of them. This perhaps suggests that the underlying economic reality for that large island, is that they are at best an expensive outpost. If I may cheekily suggest, being independent means just what it says. Being subsidised on the other hand, well there’s a lot of that going on across the world right now.
It’s been remarked upon elsewhere that pride is the devil.
Do you reckon there’s a good chance the big island will become a territory of the US? I’m thinking it might just happen.
Hi Michael Gray,
A lot of IT projects these days seem to be pushing costs downwards onto unsuspecting customers. Not a fan, and the person on the unpleasant end of that story ends up doing the administrative tasks which companies (and other entities) used to have to do. Not a fan.
Cheers
Chris
To John and the Commentariat:
I am looking for some life advice from you all. My wife and I are heading into our mid-twenties, and we are soon going to be seriously considering whether to have children. When we got married a few years ago, both of us agreed that we would only have two children at most. But now we are starting to reconsider whether to have children at all.
It’s become more and more apparent throughout our marriage that things are going to hell very fast, and I don’t know whether I want to condemn a child to live through all that. Also, human population growth is directly linked with economic growth, which is responsible for harming the living world. We’re trying our best to live pretty simple, low-impact lives, and having children is one of the biggest impacts we could possibly have on natural systems. On the other hand, fertility rates are starting to decline, and perhaps we could teach our kids to live low-impact lives. Not having any children feels like giving up on the future, in a way.
JMG,
Is there any significance to a new moon occuring on March 29th at 10:57 and a partial solar eclipe also on the 29th between 09:56 and 12:14?
New Moon: 29 Mar 2025, 10:57
https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/uk/oxford
Global Event: Partial Solar Eclipse
Local Type: Partial Solar Eclipse, in United Kingdom
Start of Partial: Sat, 29 Mar 2025, 09:56 GMT
End of Partial: Sat, 29 Mar 2025, 12:14 GMT
https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/uk?iso=20250329
Hey JMG
I think they may get more than a “Ig Nobel” for their work considering how much fanfare there is over bringing back mammoths, which was the motivation for their experiment.
Out of curiosity, would you like to see more work like this being done in the future? More scientists making odd variants of standard animals like wooly mice and glowing cats instead of AI and failed attempts at Fusion Power?
@ian Duncombe #150: I wouldn’t be happy about Carney winning the election, but your comment made me wonder. You are suspicious of both polls and official election outcomes. Is there any hypothetical evidence that would make you believe the Liberal Party actually won?
The electoral map is so divided that outside of four or five big cities and the North you would rarely set foot in a Liberal riding (and somebody living in a big city would rarely meet conservatives), so it is hard to just rely on one’s own ears and eyes.
Clay @ 180. I could not agree more. One of the most positive uses for AI that I have read about, was discussed on the Great Simplification recently. Audrey Tang was interviewed, and included examples of using AI to assist with community problem solving. This was used successfully in Taiwan (and elsewhere, even a few US communities), and at least some of the software is open access. He also discussed helpful methods to break screen addiction and soften partisanship. His well thought out explanations made me appreciate how important imagination is going forward. He talks about the importance of including people of different age groups in discussions, within a reasonable sized group, focusing on a shared problem. Instead of going for likes and retweets, algos encourage listening and engagement in discussion. Sorry no transcript, but he did mention looking up dynamic fascilitation, good enough ancestor and people power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXgne-9F7uU
@Enjoyer #151:
I came to the same conclusions you did in my university days. The idea that consciousness is a by-product of the random collisions of atoms and molecules always struck me as the philosophical equivalent of the old stage magicians’ “Indian Rope Trick.”
That is why I rejected Darwinism 20 years before I became a Christian. Darwin’s scheme contains a multitude of untestable assumptions and blatant non-sequiturs that a clever schoolboy could see through. You don’t have to be a religious person at all to see this.
For years, I have contemplated writing an essay whose working title would be “Darwinism Is An Ideology, Not A Scientific Theory.” I will probably never write it, because anyone with a modicum of spiritual awareness does not need me to explain these things, and hard-core materialist ideologues would only respond with ad hominem invective and kindergarten name-calling, for which I have no patience.
At my age, I am happy to have honest discussions and answer sincere questions, but I have no time for back-and-forth contentious disputes. As St. Paul put it “Receive one who is weak in the faith, but not for disputes over opinions.” (Rom. 14:1)
Methylethyl, I haven’t, but then I may not run in the right circles. I’d gladly walk a hundred miles in tight shoes to keep distance from what’s left of my family…
Horzabky, it would be a fine bit of historical irony if the Arabic world, having rescued most of what survived from ancient Greek literature, were to do the same trick again with English literature!
Sylvia, it really depends on your circumstances and the circles of people you know. Me, I’d do A, and then B, and consider C after that, but your mileage may vary.
David, that’s exactly what I’d expect.
Batstrel, it’s complex. Any blood transfusion creates a link between the two people involved, which lasts until the blood has been cleared away by the recipient’s body. At the same time, it does save lives, and giving blood is thus an act of charity with considerable karmic benefits.
Chris, I know that Trump wants it, which means the circle of movers and shakers that are backing him wants it. Partly that’s the minerals and partly it’s the strategic value of bases to defend against Europe — either the EU, in the unlikely chance that gets its act together, or the future Islamic republics of western Europe. My guess is that it’s going to happen.
Enjoyer, the choice has to be yours, but I’d encourage the two of you to consider having children. The future will have its ups and downs, but it’s not going to be a hellhole by any means, and with fertility rates dropping hard, your kids will be coming of age in a less crowded world. I’d give them the chance — and if they grow up knowing how to get by on less, they’ll be well prepared for the future ahead of us.
Earthworm, solar eclipses always happen at the new moon, just as lunar eclipses always happen at the full moon. I’ve just posted a set of predictions for the solar eclipse on my Patreon and SubscribeStar sites.
J.L.Mc12, no, I’d rather see scientists put more effort into understanding nature and less into monkeying with it!
@Enjoyer #193:
Here is my $0.02 worth, from an Orthodox Christian perspective.
My advice to any married couple would be, “Leave the matter in God’s hands. If you are meant to be parents, you will be, and if not, you won’t conceive.”
By extension, if you are meant to be married, you will find a spouse, and if you are not meant to be married (as I apparently was not!), then you will remain a spinster or a bachelor.
Also, beware contraception. Here is an e-book about contraception which contains useful information. Most of the book focuses on Church teachings, but in Chapters 2 to 5 and Chapter 8, the drawbacks and side effects of contraceptives are discussed in detail:
https://www.orthodoxtalks.com/on-contraceptives/
As far as I am concerned, God knows how many people need to be on Earth at any given time. Adopting such an attitude will relieve one of many vain worries.
I hope this helps.
Same “bad way” anonymous as above.
That makes sense. This is not my first life pursuing my own spiritual development, and there has been a tension between my individuality and personality since childhood, along with the terror mentioned above. (The mundane circumstances of my childhood helped highlight the trouble considerably, for which i suspect i have karma to thank).
This tension was manageable for most of my life, and i didn’t quite realize what it was. Then I completed the dolmen arch some years ago, and it brought the tension and terror into sharp relief. Sharp enough that i haven’t really touched spirituality since completing the course. I see the path forward, but haven’t yet been able to muster the courage.
The specific hurdle is that to move along with my healing, I’ve got a debt of grief i need to pay myself. I suspect this debt extends into previous lifetimes, though I’ve got plenty of unprocessed childhood trauma in this life. There is a neglected and abused child in me, and that child is thoroughly terrified of the healing process. As I pursue establishing my individuality, it is clear that first i need to heal this rift, but then the child pushes back, and i find myself in a numb stalemate.
Is there something specific you can recommend i do to help shift the balance? Either mundane/generic or within the Dolmen Arch tradition?
Any advice is much appreciated. Thank you
Our old buddy and jolly raconteur, JHK, has just posted.
Bedlam, Pending
https://www.kunstler.com/p/bedlam-pending
“You understand, all these lawsuit shenanigans with select federal judges from Woke-crazed districts like Boston, San Francisco, Rhode Island, and the DC Beltway are aimed at provoking a second civil war. The objective is to burden Mr. Trump with so many restrictions on the executive that the country can’t be governed without declaring a national emergency.”
He concludes:
“So, if the SCOTUS upholds the arrogation of executive powers and prerogatives by federal district judges, don’t expect Mr. Trump to roll over for that decision. It may come to pass, as per all the above, that he will be constrained to declare a national emergency to vacate the Deep State actors who are trying to make it impossible for him to govern, establishing special tribunals to disarm them. This, of course, will be seen by the Deep State and the Democratic Party as casus belli, an excuse to declare war against the president. We seem to be headed in that direction. There will be friction, heat, and light.”
If that happens, that will be a true Rubicon moment, which will make the Constitution effectively a dead letter, and propelling us to Spengler’s Caesarism.
Sylvia, I suggest you should do all three, in the order you listed.
Anything you make for yourself and family is something that you and they do not need to buy, leaving cash for bills, and can be made according to your own taste. Vegetables and fruits not normally found on grocery shelves, clothing the styles you prefer that fit the size you are right now today, furniture from solid wood which lasts more than a month are some examples. Fancy from the store is no longer of better quality than made at home. $200. Pendelton shirts match plaids only across the front; I match plaids all the way around a garment, and I am not unusual in that.
Barter helps you make friends and allies. Both get something they need and no one is out any cash.
Selling for cash can then be undertaken when you have perfected your skills and established a reputation for good work. Customers willing to pay what your efforts are worth will come to you. I had people bringing me sewing jobs because of the items I made for our school’s fundraising auctions.
JMG,
You have often projected that one of the first big artifices of the empire to fall will be the higher education industrial complex. It appears that Trump is accelerating its demise by eliminating the department of education and cutting federal grants to many colleges. I was a bit shocked to see that for one DC area university federal funding made up 40% of its total revenues
I figured the fall of academia would be more organic. But it appears that becoming the breeding ground of woke ideology and anti-trump sentiment was a bad bet.
JMG #169: “Last weekend I got asked to take on the challenge of reviving a Pythagorean initiatory society, in which wine from Samos is an important feature of the regular banquets.” Did you use Pythagorean cups?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_cup
Methylethyl #137 regarding child-rearing support from grandparents in less-developed countries: I used to be addicted to reading advice columns, and a lot of the letters were from women complaining about mean and/or annoying mothers-in-law, or women criticizing their daughters-in-law. And of course, women don’t always get on well with their own mothers or daughters. Is this less of a problem in the less-developed countries you’ve lived in? Or do they just accept the annoying behavior as a tradeoff, figuring it’s worth the free child care? Also, even relatively young grandparents aren’t necessarily trustworthy caregivers – if there’s a history of child abuse, drug abuse, or alcoholism in the family, parents may not want to leave their children with relatives.
Siliconguy #160 on Denmark extending the military draft to women: “I’m pretty sure pregnant women will be exempted from reporting for duty if their number does come up. Low birth rate problem solved at a stroke of a pen without overt coercion.” That wouldn’t surprise me: I recall a female US Army sergeant (stationed in Germany) saying that women in her unit were getting pregnant in order to get out of being sent to Saudi Arabia.
Interesting point not obvious on a paper map, even the polar projection here,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Map_of_the_Arctic_region_showing_the_Northeast_Passage%2C_the_Northern_Sea_Route_and_Northwest_Passage%2C_and_bathymetry.png
From the former Thule Air base, (now called Pituffik Space Base) to a considerable part of the Northern Sea route is 1800 miles. I thought there would be a choke point at Severnaya Zemlya, which there is but it’s not materially closer than other portions of the route. The B2 has a 6000 mile range and of course it could use standoff missiles as well.
As for the Northwest Passage, if you don’t hold Greenland or at least have friendly relations with it, the Passage will be closed. That is really all you need to know about why Greenland matters. The Nunavut coast isn’t exactly well defended either.
“With a population of 36,858 as of the 2021 Canadian census (up from 35,944 in 2016) consisting mostly of Inuit, and a land mass almost as large as Mexico, Nunavut’s land area of 1,836,993.78 km2 (709,267.26 sq mi)[2] has a population density of 0.022/km2 (0.056/sq mi).”
@Ecosophy Enjoyer
If you haven’t got any major health problems, why not go for it? No parent in history has the luxury of making the world his kid inherits perfect for him… and honestly that wouldn’t be good for the kids anyway. I know a few who had the road paved for them (whatever you do, don’t give them a trust fund!), and… things aren’t going well for them in adulthood. The world we’re heading into looks like a challenge for sure, but I feel like I’m raising my children to meet that challenge.
Things are changing, for sure. It’s not gonna be a smooth ride. But I see a lot of hope in it. I look back on my great-grandparents, who somehow raised eleven kids on half an income through the Great Depression. By all rational metrics, it was Not A Good Time to have kids. And yet, they all grew up to be kind, functional, hardworking, resourceful people we all loved, and who revered their parents almost as saints. None of that was easy, but not only was it worthwhile, the ones old enough to remember it all looked back on the hard times with a certain fondness. It was a challenge they’d faced together, and they’d been victorious.
And also, kids are great, they will lay bare all your weaknesses (I realize that’s lousy PR, but trust me it’s a good thing), and help you reach your own adult potential in ways you can’t even imagine before kids. There’s a certain magic in seeing what you and your partner’s genes can produce– like you, but also someone totally new and unique. And, you know, don’t wait forever. In your twenties is a *great* time to have kids. It gets physically harder to keep up, later. Still worth it, but… gosh how many of us ‘old’ parents wish we’d started earlier?
If I had it to do over again, the only thing I’d change is: I’d have given more thought to social support networks beforehand: the early years are the hardest, and for mothers in particular, living near family (provided they’re actually helpful), or being an active part of a local community with other parents, can make a huge difference.
Yes, it’s a challenge, no the world won’t be perfect, but it’s a *good* challenge. Doing hard things is what makes us grow.
RE The Islamization of Europe: I guarantee when Germany, France and the UK start handing out draft notices (What do they call them in Europe? Conscription letters?) and lot of Muslims will decide that Pakistan and Syria aren’t that bad.
@EcosophyEnjoyer #193 I regret not having children.
@Lazy Gardner #197 Software, AI or not, is the wrong tool to solve social problems.
@Bofur
I am definitley not a polling expert. Though I think I am familiar with the process of exposure – easing people into accepting situations that they would otherwise find very uncomfortable. Its a process that can treat anxiety, that is exposure therapy. The way the polling is asdvertised to us, this easing in from all media types, from ‘Carney is gaining’ to ‘Carney is overtaking’ to ‘Carney is leading’. Do Canadians collecitvely have this significant of a short term memory problem?
@Aldarion
That is a good question highlighting the evergrowing and longstanding trust issue with government and crisis of democracy developing in this country. We do have charter rights.. what I see as consistent violations of 2(a) and 2(b) – including the full court press on freedom of concious in particular comes to mind in answering. A hypothetical situation that would allow me to trust that our elections were fair, after this obvious polling effort to condition? I hate to say better polls though what would that look like? Development of independent pre and post election polls by a disinterested third party. Full disclosure of questions asked, sample sizes, regions canvassed. Completed as transactions added into a encrypted blockchain where everyone can see the results in the international community. Either that or Mark dons a hair shirt from now until June to show penance for the behavior of his party over the last 9 years.
Clay, on your internet hypothesis, it’s also true of computing in general. The best things in computing were created before the mass internet. The C language, Linux, git, and a lot of other things. I put this down to the lack of distractions basically. A post-internet computing or at least, post-mass bandwidth computing would be a great thing to aim for. It would be of course a salvage exercise.
The thing about boomer grandparents – so many of them are so emotionally immature that it’s hard to have them around your kids even when they do want to help. They seem to think that grandkids only exist to fulfill their own emotional gratification and that it’s a grandparent’s role to spoil the grandkids. I can’t leave my kids with their grandparents without the kids being filled with lollies, chocolates, ice cream, copious amounts of television, unrestricted access to the internet and so on. We’re a culture that’s bloated with old people, but no elders. No wise people to steward the next generation.
JMG, if this is more of a question for Magic Monday, I totally understand if it gets fed to Fido.
Have you noticed any shift downwards of the intense stuff headed our way on the astral plane? If I remember correctly, once it hits the middle layer we’ll see it here, in the sense that many of us will turn abruptly from one way to viewing and approaching the world, to another. The example you gave, I believe, was how with the covid craziness, people who did not trust the medical industrial complex suddenly flipped and were all in on getting the shots, vaccine passports, mandates, and the rest.
However that energy shows itself this time, thank you for all of the years of good advice: tend to your spiritual practice, contribute to the wellbeing of your family and friends as appropriate, learn useful skills, pay off those bills, and keep a deep pantry.
Thanks as always,
OtterGirl
Can you see old buildings like universities/financial headquarters/etc being converted for new purposes in the future Islamic states? What will become of historic structures more broadly?
Will Arabic/Turkish/Persian become lingua francas in Northwest Europe?
Re Michael Martin #198
I don’t know what you mean by Darwinism. If you mean the concept of evolution, I regret to say that I disagree with you. I think evolution/natural selection is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life. I am not an atheist or materialist though, I believe that all life is a manifestation of the Divine and that the evolution of ecosystems expresses the telos and order of the Divine. So I guess I would count as a believer in theistic evolution. I’m not a Christian but I respect the Christian religion. I’ve found it hard to understand hardcore creationists/young earthers, though.
Re John #199
Thanks John, this helps me feel better about it. Perhaps I can raise the kind of people that the world will need in the future. I also think having kids would teach me a lot of important lessons as well. I feel like my wife and I have a lot of love to give to kids, which is why we haven’t totally given up on the idea.
Re methylethyl #200
Thanks methylethyl. I haven’t been hesitant because it’s a challenge, I agree with you that it will be a good challenge for me and that they will teach me a lot. There have been other really bad times to have kids- WWI, WWII, the Black Death, The Bronze Age Collapse, etc. etc. etc. I also think that if I worked hard I could raise kids that are well-adjusted and ready to deal with the world. As for community and family support- I’m planning on living for a few years in my hometown raising the kids with my family before I move out to the 3 acre property I own.
Ecosophy Enjoyer, speaking as a father of two: totally worth it, and do it in your 20s, sooner than later, don’t wait. I started in my 30s and it’s harder, just in terms of energy. The future belongs to those who turn up.
Anonymous, I have two suggestions. The first is the Octagon Society exercises, which you can find here. They are specifically designed to help you grapple with past trauma. The second is regular therapeutic massage, which I have personally found very helpful in dealing with grief from this and other lives. I would also encourage you, once you have those in process, to consider doing as the Dolmen Arch course suggests and begin the whole course a second time from the beginning. It’s a good general maxim that the only way out is through…
Michael, interesting. I note that Congress, which has authority over the federal judiciary under the Constitution, has begun to talk about exercising that authority. The possibility that the DC federal courts could be abolished by Congress is a real one…
Clay, the entire structure of higher “education” has metastasized to the extent it has only because of vast handouts from the federal government. Taking away the feed trough is the inevitable blowback, and I’ll be delighted when it happens.
Yavanna, nope. I’ll have to suggest that, though!
Siliconguy, a good point.
Watchflinger, did you mean to put through five copies of this comment? I deleted four of them.
Ottergirl, this is an open post, and since you didn’t ask about Covid or AI, it’s a legitimate one; Fido has gotten plenty of puppy snacks, so he can do without yours. (For some reason I’m getting deluged these days by spam from Turkish gambling sites; it all goes straight to Fido, since I’ve taught the spam filter to recognize Türkçe.) I’ve been busy enough of late that I haven’t had time to keep a close eye on the astral, but I think it’s closer but not there yet.
David, it’s too early to say with either of these.
Enjoyer, I hope you go ahead and have children, for whatever that’s worth.
Hey JMG
I suppose that would be the better option, though I confess that I feel that the world would be a bit richer with a few escaped genetically modified animals roaming in it.
On the subject of Trump, have you heard that there are people in Australia who want to boycott American products in poorly thought-out retaliation for his tariffs on Australia imports, particularly steel and aluminium? They seem unaware that it is Americans rather than Australians who will be paying the tariffs, and that China is a bigger buyer of our stuff than America is. On a somewhat related note, the Labor party is attempting to revitalise our manufacturing industry with their “Future made in Australia” programme, which intends to get more people in construction and engineering, and focus on encouraging the manufacturing of renewable energy technologies. I feel that Trumps “America first” policies are rubbing off on Australia.
Since (I suspect) a lot of our psychological dysfunction here in the West is from our massive store of unearned petroleum wealth, is there a belief system or philosophy you’d recommend for dealing with unearned wealth? The stereotype of trust fund babies is not a flattering one; how does one avoid that fate?
@Will O (#78) here’s another Canadian’s perspective on the whole situation regarding Trump, the tariffs, the 51st state, etc. I can’t claim to know what Trump is really up to. Given that his rationale for imposing tariffs specifically on Canadian goods has varied from day to day – one day it is fentanyl, the next day it’s letting terrorists across the border, and the third day it’s the trade imbalance – I believe that it is none of the stated reasons. I hope that it has to do with Canada falling into the clutches of the People’s Republic of China and/or the European globalist cabal – which Trump is determined to put a stop to, but I can’t say for sure. Some other dissidents share my beliefs. What I can confidently say is that Trump is a gambler who does not show his cards… or the cards of his that can be seen are deliberately let slip to mislead the viewer.
In terms of Canada’s reaction, it is a sorry sight to see. The masses who in 2021 were chanting in unison “safe and effective” and in 2022 were chanting “slava Ukraine” are now suddenly super-patriots who are fighting the Evil Orange One by buying French’s ketchup instead of Heinz ketchup (because the latter stopped using Canadian tomatoes a few years ago). *Sigh*. Meanwhile, the leaders of the main political parties are trying to out-do each other in terms of telling their followers what a bad@ss they will be in standing up to Trump. Canada has caught the TDS virus big-time. Lots of rage and unhinged negative emotional energy being sent to His Trumpness. *Sigh*. However, there is a kernel of patriotism in many Canadians’ hearts (of which they are usually ashamed because patriotism is, you know, so American) which has been allowed to sprout. We’ll see what comes of it because few people (especially in the big urban centres) can now define what Canada IS. I do hope that this mass of unfocused energy constellates properly and productively because the time is long overdue for Canada to wear some big boy pants.
The national propaganda networks have been trying to prop up the bankster-turned-unelected Prime Minister Carney (or ‘the Dark Lord of Finance’ as he was called by the English when he was the Governor of the Bank of England) while he ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ at the podium and sneers and snaps at and demeans the media who dare to ask him questions. Meanwhile, independent media show that the leader of the Conservative opposition party is drawing record-setting crowds at his rallies across the country (even in areas which are Liberal strongholds), multiple times the size of Carney’s rallies. But the ‘polls’ currently show the party of the bankster ahead of the party of the populist (after the latter had a lead of 25+ points a couple months ago) – a bit like the bump in US polls shortly after unelected Que Mala Harris replaced Sleepy Joe. And the party led by the Khalistani terrorist Jagmeet Singh (NDP) is in freefall. Here in Canada, there has been a lot of concern about foreign nations’ interference in our recent federal elections: well, right now there is major interference (of an orange nature) from south of our border. We’ll see what ultimately comes of this huge mess.
Pythagorean cup?
I prefer Klein steins. The down side is they are impossible to clean.
https://www.kleinbottle.com/drinking_mug_klein_bottle.htm
Hi JMG,
What’s going on with all the fear of a coming war with the “white Christian nationalists”? Some woke-types I know are extremely concerned about this. I’m not sure what to say to them—is there some basis in reality for this fear or have they simply settled on a convincing antichrist? Does “white Christian nationalist” actually mean “person who disagrees with me”? Thanks for any clarity on this.
” The second is regular therapeutic massage, which I have personally found very helpful in dealing with grief from this and other lives. ”
Oh great… didn’t realise that I’d be dealing with grief from other lives as well when I finally get far enough down the line.
I read some the comments above about Islam and Islamization and it brought to mind an old question I’ve had about the origins of that religion. Someone said that the beginnings lay with dissident Christians which sounds logical because there’s enough in Christianity that doesn’t sound logical.
But I wonder how much documentary evidence we have from that time. Are there ancient texts showing evolution of Islamic thinking like records of debates and disputations about religious doctrine that point to Islamic origins?
The other thing is when in history are we talking about? I read another guy that said that Islam arose pretty much contemporaneously with the rise of Christianity. In other words our timelines are wrong.
And I wonder if the Koran was written in pieces over centuries or generations and then assembled at some point into one book something like what happened with the Old and New Testaments.
My sense is that Mohamed was a historical personage but how many other minds and hands were involved in the founding?
You’ve mentioned a suspicion roughly to the effect that that parapsychologists aren’t getting sufficiently large results because they’re trying the wrong things. That being the case, how hard do you think it would be to come up a list of not-already-tried paradigms of parapsychology experimentation:
– such that if scientists were to attempt to openly perform and replicate a line of parapsychology experiments according to each of those paradigms, you would more-or-less expect experimental results to keep coming in at a more-or-less consistent above-chance level, given more-or-less consistent humanly-producible conditions internal to the experiment, even after a couple decades had gone by and increasing popular media attention had been attracted,
– so that therefore, if all of these paradigms of experimentation taken together were to nonetheless instead have their ability to achieve above-chance results evanesce after a decade or three — even if we could somehow also know that there hadn’t been any material parties consciously working in bad faith to cause experimental results to be falsified in a negative direction or cause positive experimental results to be suppressed — you would find that outcome quite surprising (less than 1 in 20 odds), and
– such that each paradigm on the list is at least as well-controlled, when it comes to potential fudging of, or vitiation of experimental-condition blinding from, any otherwise inherently necessary elements of subjectivity, as, say, the way the ganzfeld (mild sensory deprivation scrying) experimental paradigm requires the percipient or a condition-blinded third party to judge which of several possible scrying target conditions most closely matches the percipient’s recorded scrying report?
I didn’t want to ask this question in a Magic Monday discussion, because doing so seemed like it would go against the spirit in which you were offering your time there: I would be quite surprised if you came up with a list of experimental paradigms whose eventual fizzling of positive results I would myself find at all surprising, and so this is more like the opening step of an argument. (In my head, it’s not an argument, so much as the first step of a half-despondent plea that happens to involve a perspective that is apparently not at all standard or even intuitively recognizable for some reason — so that it takes extra argument-like steps to show how the perspective could even reasonably exist. But it’s not like I can prove that I intended to go somewhere else, with this, than an argument as such.)
I have been thinking for a long time of making a practice of voting (at least pro forma), every month where there was a fifth Wednesday, for you to write about another question that this one chains into, having to do with moral evaluations about moral evaluations about persons in a position of public trust. But (despite many drafts) I could never figure out how to explain why that other topic might be important, in a way that wouldn’t just produce an inoculation effect instead somehow. Breaking it down into this initial question seems like a good first step. I could fall back to the plan of trying to vote for you to discuss whether such a list would be possible, but since that topic might well never win, and it would take up a lot of effort and attention to answer even if it did, first I wanted to see what your answer might be in a less consequential context like this.
Thanks John. We probably will have children, having none would feel too much like giving up, and I feel like I have a lot of love to share with my future kids. I think that if I don’t have any, I’ll always end up wondering what could have been. Thanks for the encouragement and for the advice, and I’ll keep you posted.
I’m hoping to get help tracking down a literary missing link: I’m very interested in the ‘Plateu of Leng’, particularly anything that could educate me on the nature of its libraries. Lovecraft wrote about Leng in the Dream-Quest of Uknown Kadath, apparently Robert E. Howard mentioned it as well, though I don’t know which of the latter’s stories make reference to it. I’m reasonably confident ‘Leng’ is an alternate transliteration of the ‘kingdom of Ling’ from the Epic of Gesar Khan, though I’d be interested in counterevidence to that assumption.
Anyway, I’m wondering where Lovecraft and Howard might have encountered the name. The best guess I’ve encountered is that Leng comes out of the theosophical society’s writings, given Blavatsky’s fascination with Tibet, but ‘part of the theosophical society’s writings’ does not narrow it down nearly as much as I’d like! Any leads?
Milkyway, I recommend Gordon White of Rune Soup – he’s most well known for his podcast, but he also blogs. I believe this is currently the best place to find his writings: https://runesoup.substack.com/. I find Gordon White and John Michael Greer extremely complementary to one another. Two sharp-eyed people describing the same mountain from clearly distinct perspectives.
Paedrig (#51): I don’t know if I want to be encouraging this, because it is very questionable whether the delegated authority to install and maintain power cabling extends ethically to the delegated authority to include religious-or-otherwise ritual components in with the cabling, or alternatively whether this even could be a laws-of-war sort of situation in any way that mattered. But some obvious alternatives with much less downside risk than Loki (“the Ever-Contrary”) would be:
– Padmasambhava, to expel delusory self-concepts. (Not only in the clerisy of progress, but also [argument involving technical details of forbidden topic redacted].)
– Avalokiteshvara, to potentially give the truth to whatever conveniently legitimizing false beliefs about improving human long-term well-being we may have. And also because [second argument involving forbidden topic redacted].
– Morpheus, on a propitiatory basis, to arrange for us and our machines to have more beneficial dreams and confabulated illusions.
– Hermes, for any number of purposes (you might have to negotiate this attentively!), including wealth redistribution and exploiting loopholes in a legitimating ideology to confute exploitative purposes of powerful ideologues.
– Eris, on a propitiatory basis, except how could just one person follow through on the consistent self-deflation required to stay on her good side, on behalf of so many others? But maybe it could just be a little incremental propitiation.
– Demeter, on a propitiatory basis, because this is another case where we’re separating ourselves from nature by tying ourselves vulnerably to a different, only-sometimes more pliable facet of nature. What would be the equivalents of droughts and famines? Do we really want to know? But you’d probably need to cultivate substantially different personal character to pull this off.
– Hephaistos, because of one mythological connection with the idea of nonliving things that could move or speak independently.
– St. Michael, because of a different mythological connection with the idea of nonliving things that could move or speak independently, and because this might have many other benefits because of many other features of the situation.
However, I would only guess #2-#5 to not have issues with implied profanation associated with being so near the data cables. Athena is scarcely worth mentioning for this reason, despite how one might otherwise associate her with determined cold execution on the implications that a novel premise concerning the order of society might have.
Padmasambhava might be replaceable with Kali for this purpose.
But this is all speculation.
Also I think at some point I must have lost (well, purposefully passed over tbf) the plot of your original proposal to make this into an act of sabotage. We are all, in however varyingly relevant senses, in this together. Why not strengthen the connection between the legitimating goals of an ideology and the facts on the ground, so that it can be either the connection of the legitimation with the unconscious exploitative purposes that breaks if it has to (so that the goals can be achieved), or the connection between the goals and the legitimization (if the goals can’t be achieved)? Really, an electrical power system is potentially a decent casting metaphor and stabilizing focus for this, since it’s literally made of connections that supply power, and you have the ground wire, like, right there. Just avoid using any life-force-charged emotions, since life force supposedly has adverse reactions to strong electrical currents, at least in metals.
There’s a book by David Spangler called “Techno-Elementals” that you may want to read before you try anything, although your practice presumably isn’t at the level where you can get their input on anything.
@Ken Wood,
What an experience! I was glad to see in the comments below, too, that hummngbirds can be helped to overwinter in cold climates with a heated feeder, and I hope your Anna has been able to get by.
I am very much an animist, and find it a much less lonely world–and if you are attuned to it, there are these sorts of experiences that build a sense of connection with the spiritual aspects of Nature and the living beings within it.
I’ve had some amazing experiences at mid-winter this year, similar to yours. I described one in January on the open post. I perform misogi, in my case standing under a waterfall in a thin, short kimono. (I have my own sacred waterfall in a basalt grotto just below the Fuji Faith gyoba (literally “ascetic place” but basically their meeting hall.) Every time I perform misogi there I feel a deep connection to the spirits, and there is always something special. I frequently receive Divine messages there.
I’ve also been practicing overtone singing, which is a much longer story. In January, a wren was attracted by my singing and we caroled at each other–completely out of season for this bird. Since then a family of them shows up after I’ve finished chanting under the waterfall, and we carol at each other a few minutes, including in a blizzard in March (which was wonderful–I’d been hoping to do a misogi in the snow).
I think having a human being show up capable of producing bird-like singing is quite an attraction to them. I had an even more unusual experience just a few days ago. Both of our remaining frog species made it through hibernation, thank Heavens, and the green tree frog Hyla japonica, likes to hide out in pipes which offer cover while amplifying their voices. I was fiddling around in the greenhouse while practicing overtone singing, and came out in the garden. One of these frogs apparently anticipated how my song was going to proceed, because at the end of each line, it added a hearty “Gyp! Gyp!” perfectly timed, then fell silent for the next phrase. It repeated this several times until I’d finished the song.
These frogs sing to attract mates, with prolonged streams of gyps. I know they are attuned to hearing these as well. It was the rhythm and timing that was so amazing. We connected on that level.
@JMG #216 Sorry, had a glitch on my end!
JMG 199 “I’ve just posted a set of predictions for the solar eclipse on my Patreon and SubscribeStar sites.”
Subscribing to look at that I saw you said:
“All this suggests that the world is in for a wild ride.”
Realise this is about nations rather than individuals, but the lead up to the 29th has been particularly intense in terms of personal practice.
It is interesting to see what you said about the UK:
“This is not a fortunate placement, since a weak Saturn here predicts an attempt to maintain the status quo by inadequate means.”
There is a feeling of not so quiet desperation in the attempts at narrative control here in the UK and in the supermarket yesterday I saw that the front page of the Sun (IIRC), Charles Windsor is not doing so well and they had a headline referring to his doctors instructions – interesting timing given what else you said in your post!
Either that or they needed an excuse for him to disappear into a bunker somewhere while they poke the Russians again.
Perhaps Perfidious Albion is about to reap some blowback (I figure the Russians have long memories). Certainly the demise of Charles could likely be tinder for a bonfire. The propaganda here is very very over the top in terms of Russophobia and whipping up negative emotional states… Putin Derangement Syndrome to go alongside TDS (Trump) and MDS (Musk).
Starmer like them all is just a puppet, anonymous military saying he ‘had got ahead of himself’ re boots on the ground in Ukraine, but before that, it was interesting to see C Windsor doing a photo op with V Zelensky.
All in all – it seems the centre will not hold – they are still putting out stuff about the Russians being weak and disorganised (says the country whose army would fit into Wembley stadium and still have plenty of space) and the projection is so far off the scale it’s like having vertigo.
If the current King knows he is on a countdown to exiting stage right, this could be about to get very peculiar. The cognitive dissonance and stupidity in the UK is getting so strong it has a noticeable odour… and lets just say it isn’t roses.
@Sam says:
“We’re a culture that’s bloated with old people, but no elders.”
I heard someone say “We have Olders but not Elders” and I agree with that.
Ecosophy Enjoyer, if you both want to have children, and can, then I strongly recommend it. Don’t let fear or worry about the future turn you off. We had three, each with their own particular needs and it certainly wasn’t always easy, but it was a wonderful trip. Kids grow up in the world they grow up in, not in the one we did or the one we hope might come. With your love and support they can adapt and thrive in whatever circumstances they find themselves in. Help them figure out who they are and to become that, and don’t try to mold them into what you think they should be, and they should be fine. Good luck!
@Paedrig, I’d like to make an argument, as a member of the clergy for the church of progress*, why you should absolutely do this. First, let me suggest that 90% of the things you dislike about the religion of progress are the result of it being a state religion, subject to the kind of subversive reimaginings any other religion would also be subject to in the same situation. There might be enough to object to in the remaining 10% that you’d still never want to engage with it, but I doubt you’d be having thoughts of spiritual sabotage if this server was owned by, say, a Scientologist or a Dudeist.
The thing is, trickster spirits are very much part of Progress as a living religion, and aliveness is the only thing that makes it unwieldy to the technocrats that would use it to unbeautiful ends. Every religion must of course stratify somewhat if it’s to become the framework of a civilization, but I don’t think Progress is at a point where that would be healthy yet. My own estimation, based on linguistic markers, is that Progress is just about turning 300 this year – very youthful for a religion if one discounts the majority that never make it out of the cradle. Which is why I think offering a prayer to the Tricksters That Inspire Madmen is very much appropriate right now. If Faustian civilization is to make it through the current set of crises it needs a connection to living divinities, not dusty icons like Star Trek and certainly not guru-figures like Fauci. There’s plenty of time to stratify if we make it into the next century with something resembling an intact canon – so if you feel compelled to pray, pray with a will! And if you wish to build a shrine at your place of work, is that not your right?
I’m not sure about invoking Loki specifically because the Etruscan pantheon was not itself very technologically minded – the Aesir went to the dwarves for tools or weapons and the giants for walls if I recall correctly. Though the fact Loki was usually the one who paid the price on behalf of the Aesir for all these good things they got from Elsewhere might make him more appropriate than my first thought suggested. Probably not a bad option if you have a good relationship already, but far from the only one. If you’re up for it, I am convinced that the term ‘Enlightenment’ was a very open acknowledgement of that movement’s patron Archangel – they don’t call it Faustian civilization for nothing. If you don’t want to call on Abrahamic figures, Prometheus is an obvious one as well, or Changer if you want someone more local. And who can forget that smiling Egyptian frog that was chatting with the faithful back in 2016?
Perhaps more seriously, if the goal is to help the current state of things move past the ugly grind and squirm of a Piscean age, a Magian pseudomorphosis, and an age of relative material plenty all ending at once, you could try to make the servers a better conduit for people searching for their Tamanous. ‘Muse’, ‘Geni’, and ‘Wahrer Wille’ are all good synonyms for that concept as well, depending on what culture’s symbolic language you’re most familiar with.
I leave you with an alternative set of instructions by the incomparable Leslie Fish if you just want to frac shale up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DodPzphdXZo
*I mean this quite literally. I am a professional engineer and was motivated to attain that certification in large part because I wanted free reign to build my own weird inventions without society telling me I wasn’t allowed. I accept the assertion that the belief in Progress is a religion but I see Progress as one deity in a pantheon – an unusually human-friendly one, but not one that gives us things for free. The belief that she must is exactly the kind of food for vegetables we wouldn’t have to deal with if Progress weren’t a state religion.
@enjoyer your objections to having children seem to be external rather than internal. You’re worried about the current and future state of the world. That’s something you have no control over. Consider this: you’re a Frenchman in 1890. Belle Epoque. Life’s never been better, and everyone expects things to be great in the future ahead. Yet, if you had children at that time, they would face WWI by the time they reached their twenties. On the other hand, suppose you’re living in the 1930’s. Economic depression, a big war coming, everything seems to be bleak. Yet, in just 20 years, you’d be living during one of greatest economic boom of all times. And your children would be enjoying it. My point is, you don’t know exactly what the future is going to look like. Don’t let it stop you.
@Yavanna:
Dysfunctional family is an interesting question. What I observed, both overseas and in my own childhood (I grew up in a smallish town with tons of relatives), is that large, tight-knit kin networks are protective, when it comes to dysfunctional parents especially. Like, if ‘family’ means just parents and grandparents, one bad apple can ruin the whole barrel very quickly. But if ‘family’ is everybody from your grandparents’ siblings all the way down to second and third cousins, plus a handful of honorary aunties and grandparents, then you get a buffer against dysfunction in the immediate family. My parents were very far from perfect, but I was surrounded by other relatives who loved and looked out for me. I found models for healthy family relationships in the households of older relatives and neighborhood friends, *because* those people were kind and tolerant enough to *not* cut ties with us just because they might disapprove of my parents. It’s like the difference between climbing a fraying rope ladder, and climbing a huge rope net with a couple of fraying bits in it.
Re the polar centred map posted by Silicon Guy #206,
I note that it marks three different “poles” – labelled “North Pole” “North Magnetic Pole” and “Pole of Inaccessibility”.
And now I’m wondering what on earth is a “Pole of Inaccessibility”… and would welcome enlightenment from any quarter on this score. 🙂
J.L.Mc12, good. The more countries ditch the globalist fantasy and focus on local industries, the better a chance we’ve got of seeing knowledge and technical skill get through the disruptions ahead.
Kfish, that’s an excellent question to which I don’t know the answer. Anyone else?
Siliconguy, nah, since they have no inside, all you have to do is clean the outside! 😉
Eriadne, it’s what Jung called “projection” — the people who are making these claims hate and fear working class white people, but their self-image insists that they’re the good, loving, and brave people who don’t hate or fear anyone, so they project their hatred and fear onto its objects. It’s the same mechanism that drove persecution of witches and Jews back in the day.
Sam, you already are. This life is a manifestation of your karma from previous lives, and the grief you’re feeling now is all tangled up with grief from those other lives. The same is true of every other emotion. When you get to the point that you can sort out present emotions from the equivalent feelings from past lives, you’ll have come a very long way indeed.
Smith, interesting. That’s not a subject I’ve studied at all, so I don’t have anything to add to it; maybe someone else has a comment.
Anonymous, er, say what? I don’t remember ever saying that about parapsychology. The problem with parapsychology is that, like most genuinely complex phenomena, psychism does not lend itself to experimental testing because it’s literally impossible to control the variables, and any attempt to do so stifles the phenomenon itself. What we know about psychism is that it’s intimately linked to complex subjective states in which emotion often plays a large role; replicating those states is hard, to say the least, and honestly duplicating the emotional charge is much harder. There also seem to be external states that influence psychism, and these vary over time in ways we can only roughly anticipate through symbolic time-mapping processes like astrology. So we’re very much in the condition of people trying to understand the physics of motion in Aristotle’s time, when there were no quantitative time measurements worth mentioning (the minute was not invented until the late Middle Ages!) and nobody had yet thought of treating velocity as a quantity…
Enjoyer, you might also consider asking the prayer list for blessings for successful conception, a healthy pregnancy, and a safe birth. That’s scored some very good successes.
Eucyclos, the baleful Plateau of Leng showed up in Lovecraft’s fiction first, as far as I know, in “The Hound,” which he wrote in 1922 and published in 1924. I know of no Theosophical reference to it, and a quick search finds nothing. Lovecraft had a weird habit of picking up on real items about which he had no way of knowing; the Necronomicon, his supreme tome of sinister magic, is basically a lightly fictionalized version of the Picatrix — both were written by medieval Arab sorcerers, contain incantations to call down archaic powers from the stars, had a long and lively history in medieval and Renaissance Europe, etc. — but there is apparently no evidence that Lovecraft ever heard of the Picatrix…
Earthworm, many thanks for this. I really have to wonder what the British ruling elite is smoking; it doesn’t seem to be good for their mental health.
Scotlyn, a Pole of Inaccessibility is the point in any geographical region that’s hardest to reach. In the Arctic Ocean, it’s the point furthest from land in any direction. There’s another in the south Pacific, sometimes called Point Nemo, which is so far from land in every direction that if you’re there, the closest human beings are quite often aboard the International Space Station…
re: Heathenry Online Community and Resources
Okay, there have been at least a handful of folks expressing interest in a regular Heathen open post, so I’ve gone ahead and made one on my dreamwidth to make it easier for folks to find their way over from here: https://jprussell.dreamwidth.org/27483.html
@Sister Crow #69
Thank you! Wyrd Designs does have some good stuff, and very thorough from what I’ve seen. And I dunno, that level of mixing seems not entirely uncommon around here 🙂
@Deneb #81
Fair enough! Roman and Germanic polytheism seem to play pretty well together, though in my own practice, I’ve found Roman stuff more helpful for comparisons/models than direct practice. That said, you might find Marc’s work over on Of Axe and Plough (https://axeandplough.com/) helpful – he has a mixed Roman and Germanic practice and has written thoughtfully on them, though, again, I don’t necessarily agree with all of his approaches/conclusions.
@BorealBear #110
I had gotten the impression that the various Reddit options would have that flavor, which is one reason for my offer/request here – the Runes have been fairly insistent that those and other traditional social media are not the right way for me to pursue further links with Heathens online. Sounds like there’s at least a handful of folks interested in a regular open post, so I’ve gotten one going in order to make it easier for folks to find it from here (see link above)
As for your other comments, I had nearly exactly the same thought when I was a Christian, and later, an atheist: “I would worship the Germanic Gods if I thought they were real!” Well, once I had an experience that convinced me They were, my path seemed pretty clear. I also got started with the initial versions of the HGD rituals, before switching over to Druidry, so I hope you find Isaac’s book helpful!
@Robert Mathiesen #117
D’oh! I’m embarrassed that I forgot to mention Winifred – her work is very helpful indeed, thank you for mentioning her site. I’d also give a hearty recommendation for her books, though I haven’t yet engaged with them as deeply as I’d like.
My blessings to all who welcome them,
Jeff
Smith @ 223, about the origins of Islam: There was some discussion on this point on the old Spengler/Goodman forum, many moons ago. Spengler described Islam as a “cult”, his label, and seemed to think it had arisen from one of the many various religious communities of the post Western Roman Empire/early Byzantine period. all of which are grouped together under the moniker ‘Gnostic’. So, dissident Christians might be as good as a description as any. I have also come across an alternate theory of Islam being a Jewish foundation which got out of hand. Me, I do find that a bit far-fetched. Part of the background was economic, in that, because of political developments which I don’t precisely recall, trade which had once gone through Mecca and Medina began to bypass those two cities.
As for your Christian friend, I do think willful ignorance should be (gently) challenged. Islam arose in the 7thC AD, that is, a good SIX centuries after the birth of Christ. There are now scholarly books about what is known of pre-Islamic Arabia; those might be a good place to start. Translation of non-Christian, non-western chronicles and the like are beginning, over the last few decades, to be available in English.
Hi,
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/28/xgzg-m28.html?pk_campaign=wsws-newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws-daily-newsletter
In regard to the article are you still convinced that industrialised healthcare will effectively be collapsing by 2050 or so.
JMG,
Thank you. How might I co-exist with people caught up in projection? I’m somewhat scared of THEM, since at any moment, if I don’t say or do the “right” things I could become the object of their fear and hatred and roasted at the stake. This doesn’t seem to be an unreasonable concern. I am getting tired of being scared of them, though, and would rather break the cycle by not fearing or hating THEM in return, and instead being understanding, upfront and taking my chances.
>I prefer Klein steins. The down side is they are impossible to clean.
Only because we live in 3d. If you lived in 4d, they’d just be called steins. I’ll stick with ordinary cups, unless someone shows me a way to live in 4d.
JMG: “I really have to wonder what the British ruling elite is smoking”
I know you don’t do video JMG, but in response to that, if they were smoking what the animators of Betty Boop in Snow White (1933) were smoking, the world could be a much more interesting place! 😉
Might be worth a listen for Cab Calloway doing Saint James Infirmary Blues:
https://youtu.be/cKOSJ5AAwfc?t=258
For those who can stomach a little video… I don’t know what those people were on but clearly it was strong stuff – check out the backgrounds to the foreground animation.
“it doesn’t seem to be good for their mental health”
Not just theirs – anecdotally, a local tradesman who is, shall we say, Traditionally British put on a performance I never expected to see; this has gone beyond ‘Putin is a bad man’ (remember Saddam is a bad man etc) and I got to see a repeating tirade of:
“They’re evil. They’e evil people, evil. Something needs to be done because they’re evil…”
It was like listening to vinyl where the needle gets stuck. He went around and around in variations of the same thing and I’m not even sure he was aware of it, but it could have almost been cathartic – an opportunity to vent and rage without actually saying anything on a target of state sanctioned opprobrium.
Beyond Putin is bad to all Russians are evil – disturbing to witness – Thing is, it sort of makes me think of ‘If you can get a man to believe an absurdity, it is a small step to getting him to engage in atrocity’ [or something like that].
Wind is changing.
@221 Eriadne
The Woke have been screetching about the “white Christian nationalists” for years. Some of them are former New Atheists, or from a demographic that conservative Christians do not accept. But I think much of it is that the Woke hate the cultural heritage of the ‘racist settler-colonialist’ West, including White Americans and the Christian religion. Never mind that blacks, Latinos (and even a lot of Native Americans) are largely Christian.
That being said, there is a perpetual danger of American Christian nationalists* gaining too much political power, but it’s no greater than usual and will probably vanish in the longer term as the Uranus-influenced Aquarian Age hits its stride.
*White Nationalism, the desire to establish a whites-only nation-state, has been discredited.
@enjoyer
I would say it was prudent not to have kids until fairly recently. Between toxic food, toxic education and mandated autism enhancers, I mean, vaccines – why would you bring a child into a world that’s more or less out to get him? A kid who is already messed up before he gets a fighting chance to make a bad decision for himself?
But – things seem to be changing for the better. The vaccines aren’t as mandatory as they used to be. But only in places, you have a kid in the wrong place and they are well and truly cooked. The food looks like it’s going to get cleaned up. Home schooling is a thing now. It’s always going to be a risk, but the odds look better from where I’m sitting. At least better than they have in quite a long while. But only in patches here and there.
I’d worry more about finding a good woman. You do that, everything else will fall into place. You don’t do that, nothing you decide will ultimately matter as she burns it all to the ground.
Kfish, the general principle is 10% for charity, or, if you are a member of an established church, 5% to maintain the church and 5% for charity. Charity being defined as actual relief of the poor. You have perhaps heard of the New Testament passage about it being more difficult for a rich man to enter heaven than to pass through the eye of a needle. The Eye of the Needle happens to be, or have been, IDK if it still remains, a narrow passage through the walls of Jerusalem. This passage, I have seen a photo, is just large enough for a moderately loaded camel to traverse. So, what Christ was telling us is don’t overload your camel. In present day terms, don’t overload your truck just because you can get away with it. Someone else, sometime is going to have to repair or even rebuild the bridge your overloaded truck damaged.
Imagine what 10% of the federal budget could do to relieve homelessness and dire poverty in the USA. I doubt the present administration has any intention of spending whatever savings are realized from trimming the beaurocracy on relief of the poor and homeless.
Someone above mentioned Islamic use of existing European buildings. This link will take you to a photo of a mosque on the Turkish part of Cyprus:
https://www.cyprusalive.com/img/ckeditor/agios-nikolaos-church-ammoxostos-lala-mustafa-pasha-mosque-famagustajpg.jpg
As you can see, it was once a Christian church of the early Gothic period. Moslem migrants have been quoted as saying they intend to turn the famous European cathedrals into mosques. That means destruction of the stained glass and statuary, because no graven images. Never mind the astonishing achievement, the intelligent work and effort that decoration represents.
>the people who are making these claims hate and fear working class white people
There may be tribal aspects to this too – some people say this goes all the way back to the English Civil War. People moved to the New World but wherever you go, there you are. In any case, it’s not very rational and it never was, no matter how they try to reason their way out of it.
@Anonymous #201 re: Healing the Inner Child
Your situation has some parallels with what I’ve been discovering about myself. In addition to JMG’s recommendations, I might recommend you take a look at Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Though the focus on creative pursuits might not what you’re looking for, a good deal of the work is focused on building a healthy relationship with your “inner child,” and it includes exercises for doing so (including weekly “dates” where you go do something your inner child would enjoy, whether that’s visiting a museum, getting a treat to eat, “playing” in one way or another, or whatever).
You might also find journaling/active imagination useful – settle yourself, come up with a prompt for your inner child, and then explore the answers you get through writing or visualization.
At any rate, good luck, and my blessings if you’ll have them!
Jeff
@kfish #218 re: Unearned Wealth
The Stoics, and particularly Seneca, come to mind. Seneca was fabulously wealthy (likely through some combination of “earned” and “unearned”), so he adopted a practice of “practicing being poor” once a month or so. He’d wear cheap clothes, eat plain food, sleep on a cot, and so forth, and all the while, ask himself “is this what I so feared?” While this wouldn’t directly target the “unearned” part of the equation you mention, it does help to break the link between wealth and identity that can make it hard to let go of the expectations and attachments that come with that wealth. Folks in the modern self-help space also talk about ways to avoid the “hedonic treadmill” (where you get used to something, so you seek a nicer substitute that you can now afford, then get used to that, and find something new, and on and on).
Not sure if these are exactly what you’re looking for, but hope they help open a few lines of inquiry.
Cheers,
Jeff
I love the comments section, but is there a way to make it a bit more user-friendly? I keep hopping around from question to answer, really really hurting the scroller on my mouse (and my not-too-patient mind).
@Smith #223 re: Islam as an Offshoot of Christianity
I first encountered the theory that Islam began as schismatic sect of Christianity on Eric S. Raymond’s blog. He’s a materialist atheist rather hostile to both Islam and Christianity, so take with a grain of salt, but this post gives some of his sources: https://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=45 . I ran into the same claim somewhere else lately, but I can’t remember where to track it down – it might have been in this review on The Worthy House, this time coming from a fairly bellicose Orthodox Christian, so again, salt as appropriate: https://theworthyhouse.com/2020/03/09/the-throne-of-adulis-red-sea-wars-on-the-eve-of-islam-g-w-bowersock/
Anyhow, hope these give you some threads to pursue.
Cheers,
Jeff
I saw mentioned above how the Democrats are hitting on the theme of abundance as a solution to their woes.
I’ve been seeing mentions of this for several weeks, but I’ve been brushing it away like an annoying fly. It looks like a combination of utter non sequitur and rank stupidity, to such an extent that my mind doesn’t want to grapple with it.
It strikes me as similar to the selection of Harris to be the presidential candidate, but at least she was already VP, so it wasn’t completely random. But the nerve, the breathtaking gall required to gaslight us about inflation and unemployment for four years, and then to turn around and declare that we’re living in an age of abundance (to name but one problem with the scheme)… it’s stunning.
What do I compare this to? Is it like trying to jump the Grand Canyon in a rusted out old Toyota Corolla? After a huge media blitz that paints all doubters as Nazi sympathizers? I can’t get a handle on it yet.
On another note, several times a week now I’m running across writing by teachers and professors about the decline they’re seeing in their students. I knew things were getting bad, but nonetheless what these educators are reporting is fairly shocking. Rampant illiteracy, innumeracy, profound apathy and outright phone addiction.
The educational system has been bad for decades now, and I can see how some of the apathy arises from students trying to jump through the correct hoops in a system filled with irrelevancies. But still, it seems clear that digital technology is undermining our native human abilities to a catastrophic degree.
Hi John,
There are rumours circulating within elite financial circles in America that Trump might impose capital controls and punish Democratic super-donors.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/24/america-rich-scramble-swiss-bank-accounts-fears-trump/
The Telegraph has the article here on how US super-rich families are frantically shifting assets overseas to Swiss and other offshore finance centres outside the US.
“Fears of potential restrictions on moving money overseas mean ultra-wealthy Democrat families are moving huge chunks of cash out of the country as an insurance policy against the Republican administration.
Robert Paul, co-head of private clients at wealth management firm London and Capital, said: “These are big chunks of money. We’ve had five cases in the last three or four weeks, and the sums have been $40m [£31m], $30m, $30m, $100m and $50m.
These clients are taking money out of US brokerage accounts and opening accounts in Switzerland, Jersey and Guernsey to put it on cash deposit or in trust structures abroad, Mr Paul said.
He added: “It is literally a borders thing, having some money that is not domestically located inside the US.
“There has been fear around capital controls and movement of money. Why it’s heightened in the past four weeks is because the rhetoric is chopping and changing pretty quickly.
“A lot of this is discussions around dinner parties of the ultra-wealthy. People saying I’m worried about this and maybe you should be worried about this.”
Now, one of the things I’m been monitoring closely is any risk of a major country imposing capital controls on capital within the Western world. So far, no real sign of it or even talk.
But, if it does happen, it would prove a hammer blow to financial globalisation and the ability of smaller offshore finance centres like Jersey, Monaco, Cyprus, Cayman Islands (and so on) to operate.
What are your thoughts on this? My very tentative view – based on a mixture of fundamentals and the most accurate technical chartist analysis of the markets – suggest that at sometime around 2030 we are likely to see a serious breakdown of global markets (think, 1929, ahem…) and in that context capital controls could return in force across the West.
Question about eclipses in mundane astrology:
Do I calculate the period of effect from the start of the partial phase through the total phase (when there is one) to the end of the partial phase, and assuming the effects will peak during the days correlating to the maximum obscuration/total phase?
If so, in lunar eclipses, does the start of the penumbral phase introduce a delay in when the eclipse starts affecting national affairs, or do the partial phase effects begin during the eclipse itself?
Forecasting, it’s collapsing now. How’s the NHS doing these days? Health care is just as bad over here — for some years now the number of patient visits to alternative practitioners in the US has exceeded the number of patient visits to MDs, because (a) the alternative practitioners are affordable, (b) they listen to their patients, and (c) their treatments don’t have side effects worse than the illness with which the patient presents — none of which are true of MDs nowadays. Antibiotic resistance is just the brown smelly icing on a very fetid cake.
Eriadne, you’ll have to judge that for yourself, of course. Me, I keep quiet around people who are caught up in projection, and tend to drop them from my life as quickly as possible — but of course your needs and situation may not be much like mine.
Earthworm, I wonder how many people realize, at least subliminally, that Europe is losing the last of its unearned subsidies from the rest of the world, and will be plunging back into the peripheral and impoverished status it had before 1500 or so. That might explain some of the blind shrill hatred.
Other Owen, of course it has tribal dimensions, and much more. I was simplifying for the sake of clear communication. You’re right, though, that there’s nothing rational about it. Human beings are rarely rational, and then only as individuals.
Lei, a lot of people who find that awkward open two browser windows side by side.
Cliff, of course they are. The myth of progress is collapsing around them, so of course they’re going to reaffirm it in the most strident tones possible. Did you ever read When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger et al.? It’s a great discussion of the way that people so often deal with the collapse of their belief systems by doubling down on them. As for the education system, I think there’s another factor not often realized: the kids are smart enough to realize that they have precisely nothing to gain from what passes for education in the US these days, and since they’re forced to sit through useless classes anyway, they’re literally phoning it in.
Forecasting, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The Trump administration seems to have decided on shock treatment for the US economy, cutting the output of federal dollars wholesale and ramping up tariffs to encourage domestic production, and capital controls may become necessary at any moment if the vast pyramid of funny money we call the US economy lurches too hard — as it may. If we make it to 2030 without at least a technical default in US debt, I’ll be amazed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility
Wikipedia is one of the best things about the internet.
The overtly political topics may be biased, but for the majority of things you might like to look up it’s pretty good.
When I was an Internet Atheist, I encountered a theory that Islam began as a Judeo-Christian reformation movement and the story of Muhammad was invented later. More recently, I encountered the idea again in Spengler’s Decline of the West: he even suggested that Islam spread so rapidly partly because it made more sense to people of the Magian culture than its competitors (IIRC).
Eriadne #241 re co-existing with people caught up in projection: I’m somewhat scared of people like that as well – as you said, if you say the wrong thing, their hatred can get directed at you. Like JMG, I avoid them as much as possible, but if they’re co-workers or neighbors who I can’t entirely avoid, here are some suggestions for when people start ranting:
1. Say ‘mmm” and change the subject. This takes practice, but over time you can get quite good at it. Example: “I can’t believe our country’s turning into The Handmaid’s Tale”! You can say “mmm” and then “I never read that book, did you? Oh, I just read this really good book last weekend…”
2. If appealed to for an opinion, have a few noncommittal phrases ready to go. “It’s complicated,” or “Yes, it’s difficult,” are good ones. Then change the subject as in 1. above.
3. If you can, say “Nice chatting with you – gotta get back to work!” or “Good to see you – have a great day!” and slip away.
4. If escape is impossible, you can try a more direct approach and say “Y’know, this topic is kind of depressing – could we change the subject?” and then suggest another topic (travel, food, cooking, sports…)
@ David Ritz #213
You wrote: “Will Arabic/Turkish/Persian become lingua francas in Northwest Europe?”
Absolutely not. The UK will remain English-speaking, and France will remain French-speaking. I live in an Eastern suburb of Paris, where the native French are a minority, and indeed a very small minority among children. Yet French is the common language of everyone who was born in France or arrived young. As I said in my previous post, the linguistic ability of half of the people is one language and a half. When you absolutely need to speak French (or English, Dutch, German…) to get by, you speak that language, and eventually you remember just enough of your native language to chat with your monolingual foreign-born grandmother.
In London, where the White British are now about one third of the population, but still the largest ethno-linguistic group, English is the common tongue, and will presumably remain so, being the language of the administration.
Something similar happened in Gaul (the country which would later become France) when the Roman Empire collapsed. The peasants (an overwhelming majority of the population) still spoke their Celtic languages, but Latin was the language of the army, of the administration, of the church, of commerce, and the only written language.
Even after centuries of Roman rule, Latin was still the native language of a minority of the population, as shown by the fact that a 5th century bishop from Trier (IIRC) in present-day Germany, was surprised, during his travels, to hear people in Galatia (in. present-day Turkey) speaking a language resembling the one spoken by the peasants of his region. Galatia, as its name shows, had been populated by Celts who had wandered far away from their homeland in Central Europe.
Germanic tribes invaded the collapsing Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. The invaders, who were dominant but a small minority and whose languages had no written form, turned to Latin as a means of communication with their Celtic and Latin speaking subjects. Besides, Latin was the language of the church, without which Roman civilization would have disappeared.
It took several centuries, but eventually every resident of the country formally known as Gaul spoke the debased Latin known as French. The country itself was now known as France, a name which means “the country of the Franks”, a Germanic tribe… Basically, the French are Celts who have taken their name from a Germanic tribe, their language from the Romans, and their religion from the Middle-East.
Add a millenium, and eventually languages derived from Latin, such as French, Spanish and Portuguese, became spoken all over the globe by over one billion people, most of whom have no Roman ancestors at all. I expect English to be the Latin of the future.
@Mary Bennet # 119
I feel that. Latest Substack ‘which $3bn’ as my farm product diversification/good practice adoption/regional market development work is still ‘paused’ (neither cut nor funded) while Isreal has no problem getting whatever bombs and bombings they request and neither do the tech bro nightmare future fantasy projects…
@hippieViking @Dennis #74, #135 and methylethyl 185 re: late in life kids Ecosophy Enjoyer 195 re: to have or not have. And Michael Martin #200 re: letting god decide and beware contraceptives.
I married into a Mexican family and got to do the first few years of my kids (15 mo apart) like humans are meant to live. When my dad got cancer I had to move from there into the ‘support sphere’ of my white boomer parents and it was tragic tho we all survived. I second the overall advice to have the kids and have them early and also note I haven’t used contraception since early college and now at 41 still have just two kids and not through abstinence so yes, I trust the folks upstairs with that and i have liked that approach.
@eriadne 221 “white Christian nationalist” means someone who can be targeted using domestic terrorism laws angled to long term put a noose on free movement of free empowered people within these United States of whichever political stripe seem the most threatening to the entrenched powers at the time. Narrative pressure must be put on these targeted people to cover for future repressive actions. https://unlimitedhangout.com/?s=Domestic+terrorism , https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/who-is-a-terrorist-in-bidens-america/
Eriadne @ 241, take it from an old woman, everyone’s favorite scapegoat until I decided I was fed up with that role.
You deal with such folks like any other bully, which is what they are.
1. Have a clear idea of what your personal boundaries are. What will you absolutely not compromise on.
2. Claim your human rights. You are not obliged to answer up to any old thing any impertinent person asks. Phrases like “you’re getting kind of personal there”, or “I can’t help you with that” or “I don’t have an answer for that.” are most useful.
3. Nor is it in any way your responsibility to explain yourself to anyone other than when you are a witness in court and under oath. It is illegal to lie to Federal investigators, IF they have so IDed themselves, and it can be unwise to put off work supervisors with a smart aleck reply, but they generally have little interest in much outside their own responsibilities and even the most intrusive can be placated with general statements.
4. Organized bullies are best avoided, if at all possible. This is not cowardice, it is strategy. Your goal is, or I suggest should be, your own peace of mind and living your own life, not appeasing others.
5. Do consider some kind of physical activity, running, tennis, martial arts, to give you health and relaxation and that aura of confidence which repels bullies. Like all other predators, bullies are alert for the weakest.
Other Owen, the way to find a good woman is to be a good man. If I had sons and grandsons, what I would be telling them, is mind your manners, don’t lie or cheat, don’t be the guy who publicly catcalls and harasses people, and whatever you are good at, get better.
Anonymous comment #227 wrote:
“Just avoid using any life-force-charged emotions, since life force supposedly has adverse reactions to strong electrical currents, at least in metals.”
This bit of lore practically jumped off the page at me. I’m a welder by trade, my job is literally to direct strong electrical currents in metals. I would love more information on how the life force interacts with that. Do I need to take more precautions than the physical PPE to protect myself? Are there ways I could utilize life-force-charged emotions in my work, or should I be trying to avoid that? How does my emotional state affect the integrity of my welds? Etc etc.
Any further info on this topic would be much appreciated.
Regarding the origin of modern religions… I’m going to cut you all some slack, here , because You can TELL the true Yeti spawn from the false spawn of that which only calls itself a Yeti. People may say they fear Cthulhu, but they do not live as if they fear Cthulhu. Still, I said I’d cut y’all some slack, and Holy Smokes do I have some slack for you. It’s time we put “Bob’s” money where his two-fisted mouth is. Teach us! Teach us!
Never forget that you are a spawn of Yeti too!
How can you tell for sure? JHVH-1 will NEVER FORGET its perfect duty.
We REVEL in the Fake Healing in the sight of the false religions that have multiplied into in-magnanimous meritrocious ineptitude. Don’t be FOOLED! You KNOW the essence of OverWoManism, of real Wo/Man-hood, because you grew up in the hood. Or at least hood adjacent. The essential of the One TRVE KVLT of Black Metal NATURE cries out “Praise BOB or KILL ME!” Be like Dobbs, who ALWAYS lies and is ALWAYS RIGHT! Forget the false theories and their genetically reprogrammed combinatorial conspiracy. For the day will be upon us, even now, even in, THIS VERY RANT, when the saucers full of secrets will be revealed!
For was it not written in the sacred piece of trash I picked up at the bus stop after I saw it get dropped by this drunk hobo, before he went down to the jungle to eat some mulligan stew, that Christianity is an offshoot of the Egyptian Mysteries ( i.e., Osiris) and the Egyptian Mystery religions are an offshoot of the Atlantean traditions, and the Atlantean traditions are on offshoot of the Lemurian traditions, and the Lemurian traditions are an offshoot of the Hyperborean traditions, and the Hyperborean traditions are an offshoot of Polarian traditions. From there it came down to us from the Hollow Earth star brothers who live inside the earth. And the one true religion of all was found there, the visage of Bob carved inside the henge of the Hollow Earth, his face there, his sacred pipe, offered to all for the smoking.
Happy Slacker-day everyone!
Patrick, the duration of effect of a lunar eclipse is measured in months; as far as I know, nobody’s taken it past “from this day to that day inclusive.”
Justin, now that brings back old times –a good old-fashioned Subgenius rant. Praise “Bob”!
@ WatchFlinger says:
# 29. March 26, 2025 at 5:06 pm
“However, a few Open Posts ago, I saw some discussion of the possibility that we are not actually at 8 billion people (and probably will never know) due to inaccurate or dishonest governments inflating their numbers. Curious if anyone has any more information along these lines.”
Well I have studied the case of China, and some aspects of their declared demographics does not add up, and I think i s quite probable that the population of China is smaller in a significant quantity.
China started with fertility controls in the beginning of the 70’s, and the start the “one child policy” in full force in 1978 till 2015, but if you follow the published data from the Chinese government from 1978 to 1991 the fertility rate of China was 2,5 or higher, that is almost the fertility rate of Spain during our “Baby Boom” (around 3), and should means that the people in China completely ignore the “incentives” the Chinese government put in place to assure the 1 child policy is achieved; so we have to believe the same government of the “Great Leap Forward”, the “Cultural Revolution” or The Tiananmen Square could not “convince” people to have around 1 children “as maximum” during at least 20 years; so all that histories about forced abortion, forced sterilizations, economic and public punishment for having “too many children”, all the “family planning offices” full of policeman, all the “missing woman” due to the preference for boys over girls, etc… all of this are “western propaganda” and people in China had the number of children they want “as in any other country”, well I can’t believe that knowing the history of this country.
It seems that the Chinese government, before the industrialization of the country, used the huge population of China as a “strategic weapon” against the Soviet Union and India, with whom he had bloody border conflicts in the 60’s that could have developed in a open war. So probably they inflate the population of the country as a “deterrent”
I have written an article about the demographic collapse of civilizations and I have now translated to english, and in one of the sections I analysed the case of China (and also the cases of Japan, South Korea and Spain):
https://dferia.substack.com/p/demographic-collapse-and-civilization
In the text I also emphasize (with statistics of Spain) that the immigrant population fertility rate decrease to approximately the same fertility rate of the native population very quickly in the second generation, so the “population bomb” of the Islamic migrants in Europe is a myth.
Cheers
David
Never mind the internet and cellphones, I was 25 years old before I saw a television set. (We had a cabinet minister who was vehemently opposed to the “bioscope in box” as he called it.) In fact my father wouldn’t even let us have a record player. (It was the first thing my mother bought after the divorce.)
But you know what started the rot? The transistor radio. It was the first truly portable communication device that was capable of annoying other people.
Ah. I took the guidelines in your book (i.e. one minute of lunar eclipse = two days of effect) as precise increments!
Hi to JMG and all.
Now I don’t necessarily put lot weight on dreams, but I thought to report that JMG (or at least his voice) made an appearance in my dream last night. I don’t remember much about my dream, but in it I was listening to a podcast(?) interview of JMG, and in that interview JMG mentioned he had recently moved to Sweden. He also mentioned the particular region of Sweden he had moved to, but I don’t remember what it was. In the dream I thought “that’s where Malcom Kyeyune lives!” I don’t actually know where Malcom lives, but in the dream I ‘knew’ that was the place.
Now, I personally suspect this happened just because of the two ‘Council of Wizards’ episodes of Eurabiamania and because I’ve been thinking lot about the near term future of the west on both sides of the Atlantic. Dreams are weird and hard to interpret.
Still, data point is a data point. Even if weird and uncertain. Maybe it is of some use to someone.
Sweden seems like a strange place to run to these days though.
JAS
Brother JMG, in the Sphere of Projection, Calling of Spirit Within, do you have a suggestion for a Grand Word to go along with using the three-letter divine names from the Sepher Yetzirah? Maybe YHShVH? AHIH?
@ JPM 263; too much listening to KPFA late at night must of [sic] warped yer brain!
This, from a French journalist, is the most clear-eyed account I have seen yet of the machinations of our current administration.
“cautiously, President Trump is lulling his public opinion to sleep by evoking the annexation of the entire North American continental shelf, from Greenland to the Panama Canal, while liquidating the war in Ukraine and the European Union.
If my hypothesis is correct, we must not believe a word of the threats of annexation of new territories, such as Canada, and not imagine that the United States is withdrawing militarily from Europe to confront China, but admit that it is militarily abandoning its; Eruopean allies.”
The website is Voltaire Network.net. I remain not a fan of this admin or President, nor am I entirely convinced that the expansionist talk re Greenland, et al is mere bluster. Howsomever, (a new style American word I do like to use), the author’s reporting on high level economic developments is quite interesting, even though I can’t claim to understand all of it.
Things are getting strange here in New Zealand. One of the MSM sites – the publicly funded Radio New Zealand (www.rnz.co.nz) – has instituted a ‘mediawatch’ column which discusses/critiques the previous week’s local media. A couple of weeks ago there was a lot in the local media about the Prime Minister struggling and being in line to be deposed – the mediawatch column discussing this is quite shocking for MSM – it actually almost reads like some blogger’s takedown of the MSM.
Regarding health systems, here in New Zealand access to a General Practitioner (aka family doctor) has become quite limited with many not accepting new ‘patients’. On reflection this trend seems to have started when the emphasis shifted to a Ministry of Health led ‘preventative care’ focus – which seems to have been interpreted as ‘try to find something wrong with your healthy patients so you can put them on regular prescriptions’ – all of which created more work for those doctors.
>The Trump administration seems to have decided on shock treatment for the US economy
There was another country that tried shock treatment for their economy back in the 1990s – Russia. At this point though, there are no good decisions to be made, that ship sailed about 15 years ago, so I’m not going to judge their bad decisions too harshly.
Still, brace for impact.
Hey JMG
I am hoping that this will be the outcome for Australia as well, I have felt that we have had too little diversity in jobs for too long along with having not enough of them.
Anyhow, another book I think you, or at least the commentariat, would be interested in is “The Tricksters Hat” by Nick Bantock. He was the guy that wrote the famous “Griffin and Sabine” series.
This book is essentially a “apprenticeship” in creativity, that consists of 50 exercises that you are ideally meant to do one after another, though you can choose what you like instead. It goes without saying that this sounds very similar to the way manuals of magical training are structured.
The exercises focus on specific projects in collage, drawing or writing. One example is to draw as many animals as you can in a 2×2 inch square in 5 minutes. Another is using dice to randomly dictate the colours and brushstrokes of a painting. Another is a journaling exercise for exploring the 4 main Jungian archetypes. I have done a few of the exercises already and I am impressed so far. In a way it vaguely reminds me of that Art-manual by Dali I reviewed, but more clearly written and organised.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18079549-the-trickster-s-hat
Hi John Michael,
It’s hard to ignore that Europe has a long history of imperial expansionism when faced with unresolvable internal issues, so from that perspective, Greenland is a smart long term move. You mentioned to me many years ago that sooner or later, a person gets to face their worst fears. And I guess that may apply to geographical areas which avoid dealing with the underlying realities. Trying to apply an unworkable culture to a limited resource base and ecology, was always going to end badly.
Down here, the problem will always be water – either too much, too little, or just crazy natural distribution of the wet stuff. Looking at the murky weather outside right now, it’s hard to believe that less than two weeks ago the thermometer recorded 35’C / 95’F in the shade. The climate down here keeps a gardener sharp. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Lei #250
I have two open tabs for Ecosophia, one for the comments and the other for JMG’s replies. I find this works very well for me.
I’m always on the lookout for home-scale printing and duplicating methods, and keep tabs on what I find at my Mimeograph Revival blog. I’ve not updated in a while, but this week was able to put up a post on some experiments by fellow-enthusiasts. I’m ultimately hoping to find technologies and techniques that don’t require industrial inputs – so far no luck – but at least there are some options for decreasing the use of industrially-ready-made supplies and, instead, DIYing with ingredients. Recent post is here: https://www.mimeographrevival.com/posts/homemade-stencil-advances-paper-suggestion-and-spirit-duplicator-fluid-alternative/.
I’ve not been able to indulge my interest in tinkering with the methods and techniques of mimeography since we decided, as a family, to make a go at a small farm — this somewhat pertains to a few comments in this thread (Sylvia, methylethyl, Ecosophy Enjoyer, Kfish) : what we’re doing with unearned wealth (inheritance) is engage in projects that can help support the next generations rather than, say, going on vacation. So, the farm, and providing below-market-rate housing for the US-based daughter and son-in-law and their due-in-October baby, and if we can swing it, renovating our current house to accommodate, first, all of us living together while we build a tiny farmhouse, and second, potentially, the living-in-Europe daughter and her husband on the off chance Europe crumbles. Then again, we might be aiming poorly, California may crumble first, and we’re all set adrift. Even if that’s the case, we intend to be the kind of grandparents who are helpful and present. Children are worth it. I, for one, want to be involved in saving what’s worth saving and passing it on to someone who can respond creatively to the new day. On the farm front, we’ve planted nearly a hundred trees – for a similar reason.
JAS, at this point I have a hard time coming up with any reason to run to any part of Europe, and Sweden would be low on the list even then. Still, interesting.
Johnny B, the classic one would be the Tetragrammaton itself, pronounced letter by letter, but yes, you could use either of those also.
Mary, it’s a necessity at this point for America to let go of what remains of its overseas empire and refocus on domestic survival. If Trump can manage that, he may just keep this country from crashing and burning.
KN, hmm! Thank you for the data points.
Other Owen, yep. Notice how Russia is doing economically now.
J.L.Mc12, thanks for this.
Chris, we’re too close to the ocean here to get really drastic weather swings, but it’s 37°F right now and will be in the low 60s in a couple of days. Ah, springtime in New England! 😉
Temporaryreality, glad to hear it!
Esteemed JMG and honored commentariat, I beg your indulgences for bringing up the following topic, which appears to be quietly taboo to discuss. Numerous commentators, here and Out There, have commented on the composition of protest groups in the USA, noting the disproportionate representation of un-pair-bonded females, often of post-menopausal age. I had a stomach-churning realization that we’re seeing an unfortunate and indeed destructive intersection of identity politics, feminism, liberalism, and Jungian shadow projection (among other features.) For purposes of discussion, let me assign this an acronym: OWLS.
Should I give it away? Not so fast. Allow me to note that I am happily married, retired, and living in Central California. I often see examples of this… OWLS “characteristic”, and even more often hear tales of it from my wife, who is by FAR the more social person in our pair bond. Imagine packs of dismissive scowling persons at the local pool discussing at length the various & manifold lacks/failings of groups they actively despise. Imagine them forwarding hateful diatribes to their pack members (but critically, none of those diatribes are written by them.) Imagine them excluding from social contact any and all who fail to comprehensively endorse their tightly-held views. Imagine them calling the sheriffs at 4 PM to demand said constabulatory make the Hispanic family on the block (who lives right next door to us) stop making joyful music of tasteful volume (we next door were fine, and even pleased with the concert) that is celebrating the birthday of the family patriarch (who had been in and out of the hospital recently and can only walk with assistance.) Imagine living by yourself and hanging Ukranian flags and “Love is love, science is real” banners on your house balcony railings, with neighbors on either side displaying American flags.
I mentioned identity politics. This is a crucial part of the “characteristic.” Unconcious self-hate swirls about beneath the surface like a rip tide, threatening to drown these folks.
OK, I’ve kept y’all in suspense long enough; time to define the acronym, and discuss why I feel it to be such a distressing development. OWLS: Old White Lady Syndrome.
Old: Hollywood plus other social forces have made the old a deprecated and even despised group. I’m sure y’all can think of many examples, oftentimes revolving around financial issues and rigidity of thought.
White: which skin color group is the most despised for their “privilege”?
Lady: I look beyond current examples, and remember those delightful Old Ones when I was growing up who were always sharing cookies and jam and other small treats to kids in the neighborhood. Where have they gone? Have they ALL passed away?
Syndrome: a condition with associated symptoms.
So what happens when a group, that (crucially) identifies itself as a group, bumps up against this: “You’re unattractive (sexually unappealing), you’re unproductive (can’t have kids, don’t work, don’t reach out to others), you’re unloved (no confident male partner, a strained relationship with kids & family if either even exists, the folks on the block or in the apartment avoid trying to interact with you), you have undeserved privilege, and if you died YOU WOULDN’T BE MISSED.” Gack!
This is really sad. I think the demonization of whites, paired with the misguided over-reaches of the feminist movement and the associated shattering of family bonds, has given us a sizable silent social tragedy.
The solutions to such personal tragedies are enlocked in personal reflections taken on over time, with care and gentle acknowlegement of the frankly demonic forces that have led many to this place of OWLS. Not many seem to be able to escape this syndrome, just as few are finding their way out of TDS.
It’s worth reflecting too why OWMS (Old White Male Syndrome) is apparently so much less prevalent. Since men die earlier, perhaps it’s just our (unconcious or concious) realization that Our Time Is Short which keeps it at lower levels.
Chris at Fernglade, I once watched nature program, it may have been titled something like Wild Sri Lanka. One thing of great interest was the large pools in the interior of the island which animals were able to access during the dry season. The narrator went on to say that a 12th or 13thC king had had these vast pools, they may have been a chain of artificial lakes, like those at Ankor Wat, dug to capture water during the monsoons. I know Australia suffers from huge typhoons, as well as lethal wildlife. Might there be any way the occasional massive downpour could be captured and used later? Or maybe such pools would become crocodile habitat.
On careful reflection, I realize you are quite right. If I curse the AI, then karmically I can be held responsible for its many failures. Since I’m quite convinced this desperate gambit by our rulers will crash and burn and prove to be a catastrophic waste of resources at a time of critical scarcity, why on earth would I tie my karmic fate to sich a sinking ship?
Far better for me to do my labors on the temples to the god progress so as to support myself, and when the temples fail to invoke the blessings of the god proegress – well, its not my fault, I worked hard and did the best I could despite not believing in the god whose temple I was comissioned to build.
Thank you as always for your guidance.
Lei,
If you use Microsoft Edge as a browser, it has a function called “Split Screen” that works very well. Sometimes its button is on the toolbar automatically, although not in recent updates. If you don’t see it, use a search engine with the term “Microsoft Edge split screen” to find it in Settings.
Martin Black: “But you know what started the rot? The transistor radio. It was the first truly portable communication device that was capable of annoying other people.”
Yes. And the transistor radio was the first device that was often used by just a single user, not by a family or group of people. Also, a few years later, the FCC forced radio stations to have different broadcasts on their AM and FM stations and niche broadcasting started up.
@JMG: “I note that Congress, which has authority over the federal judiciary under the Constitution, has begun to talk about exercising that authority. The possibility that the DC federal courts could be abolished by Congress is a real one…”
That would be a huge step in the right direction. However, once that is done, we are still left with the 800-pound Silverback gorilla in the room …
Judicial Review!
That doctrine is nowhere in the Constitution. It was invented by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, and more-or-less accepted (acquiesced to?) by the other branches of Government. As noted by others, this doctrine has had a rocky history (Jackson, Lincoln, et al.).
In the 1960’s the Warren Court used the 14th Amendment as a crowbar to start overturning state legislatures on every issue under the sun, thus turning “judicial review” from a living doctrine into a cancerous one.
This judicial usurpation has to be reined in. I don’t know if an Act of Congress would be sufficient, or if it will take a Constitutional Amendment (good luck with that!). Nonetheless, if limits are not placed on that power, I cannot see how Constitutional government in any form can long survive.
Mary Bennet, hi, I agree, overturning the time line starting in the 7th century needs some pretty solid evidence which, given the passage of all these years, could be in short supply. And, even if good evidence was dug up such as carbon-dated early versions of Koranic passages that predate accepted chronologies or that revise accepted origin stories, given religious and political sensitivities, it could have highly deleterious consequences for the career and health of the scholar. Maybe I’m being overly conspiratorial but I wonder if such evidence has been found but kept under wraps. It won’t be the first time this happened. I read that archaeologists working on prehistoric North American sites in past decades would stop digs if they found evidence contradicting the Clovis First Theory. It just wasn’t deemed worth the career stopping fallout.
Jeff Russell, hi, thanks for the links. I don’t know anything about the history of the locales talked about in that article from worthyhouse so I found it really interesting. Unfortunately, when I tried to access the biblio.org site, my browser issued forth a security alert. I don’t know if the browser was just being trigger happy or if there really is a problem.
Having said all this, monotheism was an old idea in the area. My impression of the place is that it’s a Darwinian hotbed of religious thought and entrepreneurialism going way back. So I don’t think it’s wild to surmise that there had to be multiple contending versions competing with the nascent Islam, that is, besides Judaism and Christianity.
I’m starting to think my mother is a witch. I’ve noticed that whenever people do things she disapproves of, bad things tend to happen to them. My dad, for instance, does find when he eats wheat but has health problems if she knows he eats it (she is convinced it is unhealthy for him); I lost a job opportunity she disaproves of due to issues at the interview, as a result of being utterly unable to sleep the night before; my brother suffered a mental breakdown and descent into alcoholism which kept him out of the military, a choice she loudly criticized; her brother recently had to cancel a trip to visit due to a medical emergency (a trip which she was fuming over because she was “too busy”; and I could go on.
I have started working my way through LRM, but do not have much in the way of practical magic yet. I currently live with her and while I am planning to move several thousand miles away soon and will be cutting most ties with my family when I leave, I am stuck living with her for the time being. I’ve also seen even sure things fall apart for other members of my family when she does not approve of their choices, or it would allow us more independence from her, so I am not letting her know any of my plans to be able to leave.
Do you have advice for how to protect myself from her until I can leave?
Bryan, I wish I could disagree. There’s another factor, though — decades of pop culture propaganda pushing an overinflated sense of entitlement under the mistaken notion that this counts as healthy self-esteem. White middle class American women in particular have been told over and over again that they’re important, that they matter, that they are goddesses (!), that the whole world revolves around them…and the cognitive dissonance between that appealing but false set of beliefs and the simple fact that they’re just another sex-and-ethnicity subset in a society in decline, has produced an enormous sense of rage, resentment, and self-righteous vindictiveness in too many sufferers from OWLS.
Paedrig, thank you.
Michael, oh, I know. That was one of the crucial steps by which the wealthy college-educated classes took and enforced control over the US political system. I’m not sure it can be undone without bringing the whole kit and caboodle down, though.
Anonymous, you don’t have the magical skills to do much, other than leave. May I suggest that you actually do this, instead of just talking about it?
@hippieviking @aliceem I’m sad to hear we’ve all had the same experience of Boomer parents who live close by but aren’t nearly as available as they should be or as their own parents were when we were growing up. At the same time, I’m glad to hear that it seems to be a common shared experience among people with white Boomer parents. Makes me feel less alone.
At the same time, intergenerational living is something we will have to work hard to get back.
Mary Bennett, the “Eye of the Needle” was not a gate:
https://classictheology.org/2021/10/12/through-the-eye-of-an-actual-needle-the-fake-gate-theory
Justin Patrick Moore, “Bob” is dead!
https://www.reddit.com/r/ObscureMedia/comments/a33q99/assassination_of_j_r_bob_dobbs_january_21_1984
Put *that* in your pipe and smoke it!
Brother JMG, thanks for that quick response. The reason I think YHShVH could be appropriate is due to many writings where the Hebrew letter shin within the Tetragrammaton represents spirit descending into matter, as we covered with the Rose Cross Ritual way back when. Ehieh came to mind due to it’s connection with Keter = Spirit, but I was considering that Spirit Within shouldn’t be so “abstracted.”…? Maybe?
BTW, we’re still in Houston and if you still have my number that ends in 861, feel free to call. Much has changed since we last spoke (dulcimer string spacing, IIRC).
Hi all,
Something interesting I’ve noticed in the comments. A long while ago, maybe it was a Well of Galabes post our host mentioned how arcs of spirituality and politics sort of ebb and flow in something like 40 year cycles. As I recall the claim was advanced that we were at the cusp of a shift from a spiritual period to a political one when the post was written some 10 years ago. Our host mentioned that the spiritual tide that had been rising since the 1970’s and which the neo-pagan and New Age scenes were but notable examples had begun to ebb and flow back out to sea. Further, it would be replaced with a political focus in the cultural zeitgeist for some time.
Reading the comments here, with a large focus on politics, pro and anti-Trump/Musk opinions and whatnot I would say JMG’s thesis has played out. JMG, I was wondering, how did you derive that thesis to begin with? I’d like to be reading those books myself!
Cheers,
JZ
Thanks John, once we start trying for a baby I’ll ask to be added to the prayer list. Probably later this year.
Hope I’m not too late to reply.
@Ecosophy Enjoyer
You might consider adoption. My wife and I did not want to add to the human population. We adopted two special-needs biological sisters in 2009, aged 8 and 6, from near our home in North Carolina USA. They were “legally free” from the birth parents that neglected them. At adoptuskids.org there are plenty to choose from, sigh.
Whew, it was a wild ride! Case in point, we said we wanted them to grow up to be “happy healthy citizens of the world”. The younger woman (now 23) flew one-way to India in December to be with her Indian fiance’ and his parents. (They had met online five years ago and talked every day.)
She e-mailed my wife _today_ to say “Mom, I’m married.” Surprise! It was a brief (3-hour!) ceremony in the house with few (20!) guests. The more elaborate “show wedding” will happen later, date(s) TBD.
Surreal.
JMG said “I wonder how many people realize, at least subliminally, that Europe is losing the last of its unearned subsidies from the rest of the world, and will be plunging back into the peripheral and impoverished status it had before 1500 or so”
Of course it’s hard to say what people realize on a subliminal level, but I’d say very few.
My country, The Netherlands, has lived through such a decline before, when our so-called golden age in the 16th / 17th centuries ended and we became quite poor again. This poverty lasted basically until after the second world war and our old people still remember some of it, but collectively we act as if being rich is our natural state of being.
I think that a country with this history should have some kind of memory of it, which could help us see the current situation for what it is, but I see no evidence of that, at all.
bk.
Wer here
Well JMG I’ve been reading that theory of catabolic collapse of yours and I don’t think that I understand it this well corect me if I am wrong but does it mean that civilisations are like a staircase of up and down ? When your nation begins collapsing you go from one staircase and stay for a while and everything seems normal for a while then you take an another step and another… And eventually you turn back only to discover with horror that your eyeballs are far below when your feet once were..
I didn’t read this blog for a while but so information came though. Recently Polish ministry announced that are about 2 million Ukrainians in Poland mostly women (fighting age males were in mase deported there are few now, execpt those male Ukrainians who ditched the Ukrainian passports and became Polish citizens those were left alone) and only about 11 procent are thinking about returning home.
Meanwhile the “coalitiuon of the (un)willing” where everybody profeses their love for Ukraine but nobody wants to send soldiers and money exept Stammer but we will discuss him in a moment… Were making noise that Russia and the US decided to completely discard. Germany is pending enormous amounts of money to buy wait for it 50 tanks (Leopards 2 after their poor showing in Ukraine are no longer popular I guess)
Speaking about Stammer several people took notice of one thing. Despite the claim of sending troops to Ukraine nothing is ready (war is logistics) UK army is small, has massive conscription problems, UK population does not want to fight, UK is scraping it’s fleet of 4 destroyers and Estonia’s DM announced that British units are pulling out of the country.
One bloger even said that despite proclamations of sending troops to Ukraine the fact that noting is being made or even planned that this “coalition of (un)willing” is just a sad political theatre aimed at mocking Trump and current US administration.
It seems to me that American elites are arguing which piece of overseas luggage to throw off board: MAGA saying get rid of eastern Europe but hold on to the Middle East, the ascendant radical democrats saying get rid of the Middle East but hold on to eastern Europe, and the old establishment saying hold on to both. Does that sound reasonable to you?
>Other Owen, yep. Notice how Russia is doing economically now.
Oh my. I never thought you and Larry Summers would see eye to eye on anything. I’d say part of the reason they recovered is they stopped some of that “shock treatment”. Another part of it is that for the most part the gubmint can’t really do much one way or the other, they mostly just get in the way. Their economy crashed and recovered more or less by itself.
The older I get, the more cynical I get. There’s precious little difference between a state run megacorp vs an oligarch run megacorp. I suppose the oligarch might run things less wastefully, if he feels like it on the odd Tuesday.
What really allowed their economy to flower IMHO was what space they created for small biz and small entrepreneurs. They gave that crowd a sliver of a chance and they managed to stumble forward.
—
As an aside, Trump is using Abenomics as his template, as I understand it. Is it a good decision? We have to go back to there are no good decisions left to make. I’m not going to judge their bad decisions too harshly. At least he’s flying the plane. Thank god someone’s at the controls again.
Victor Clube:
“Cynics … would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!”
Dr Stace Victor Murray Clube (S.V.M. Clube) (born October 22, 1934 in London) is a British astrophysicist, previously Dean of the astrophysics department at Oxford University. Together with Bill Napier is co-author of books on coherent catastrophism, and also with Mark Bailey. He has also been Senior Visiting Fellow at Armagh Observatory, and Acting Director of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. In the late 1950s he played first class cricket for Oxford University.
About 3/4 way down post on a simplicius substack:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-32825-putin-vows-to-finish
“As part of its campaign to drum up war fears against Russia, the EU is beginning to roll out a series of cringe-worthy ads urging the population to put together “survival bags” in case of war with Russia:
and
“Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister scathed the charade:
“There’s only one explanation: Brussels is preparing for war”
To which simplicius says:
“It’s all meant to create an atmosphere of crisis to bring citizens in line with the Eurocrats’ illegal confiscation of funds and anti-democratic practices in pushing for war.”
Quite how exactly Europe is supposed to actually go to war with Russia is not clear, but 72 hour supplies is perhaps useful for a short and not too serious ‘local’ problem where the expectation might be that emergency services will be rolling in.
Or maybe it is a mind-game / atmosphere of crisis as simplicius says.
In moments of imagination I wonder if the whole thing is an illusion or shell game and perhaps The Dance of the Covidians was act one and Proxy War is act two of something more subtle.
It seems that would be too much of a real stretch given the low quality of politicians and the establishment(s) behind them; however, tying seemingly unrelated ideas together gives an ‘entertaining’ possibility [well, entertaining to me!]…
JMG Upthread at 255: “I wonder how many people realize, at least subliminally, that Europe is losing the last of its unearned subsidies from the rest of the world…”
Ottergirl at 212: “Have you noticed any shift downwards of the intense stuff headed our way on the astral plane?”
JMG at 216: “I haven’t had time to keep a close eye on the astral, but I think it’s closer but not there yet.”
What is the likelihood that subliminally / subconsciously the things that are playing out are symptoms of the approaching manifestation of stuff from higher levels?
i.e. not a plan as such but a manifestation or symptoms of something coming down the pike.
Can’t find the original pdf now but Victor Clube writing:
[W]hen the prospect of these global catastrophes recurs, such is the nerve-racking tension aroused in mankind that the principal leaders of civilization have long been in the habit of dissembling as to their cause (and likelihood) simply in order to preserve public calm and avoid the total breakdown of civil affairs. …
The Christian, Islamic and Judaic cultures have all moved since the European Renaissance to adopt an unreasoning anti-apocalyptic stance, apparently unaware of the burgeoning science of catastrophes. History, it now seems, is repeating itself: it has taken the Space Age to revive the Platonist voice of reason but it emerges this time within a modern anti-fundamentalist, anti-apocalyptic tradition over which governments may, as before, be unable to exercise control. The logical response is perhaps a commitment on the part of government to the voice of reason and a decision to eliminate all signs as well as perpetrators of cosmic catastrophes in order to appease a public not too far given to rabid uniformitarianism. Cynics … would say that we do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!
‘celestial intentions’ is a rather fine phrase that would fit with stuff coming down through planes of existence?
Watchfinger – Perhaps I was unclear. My point was not that AI is THE way to fix social problems, but that improved outcomes have been demonstrated, when AI is deployed differently. The speaker researched problems, then applied well-tested fascilitation methods, for problem solving. AI served as a communication tool for local citizens, with encouraging results. This compares to internet use by local small farmers to reach markets, rather than widespread surveillance or imposition of monopoly power..
Johnny, by all means. As for the phone number, no, I’m sorry to say that got lost a long time ago, and I mostly communicate by email these days; if you’d like to put your email address in a comment marked “not for posting” I’ll be in touch.
John, yes, I’ve noticed the same thing. I derived that thesis simply by looking at the history of occultism over the last century and three quarters, since Eliphas Lévi launched the modern occult revival; it stands out very clearly from that standpoint.
BK, and yet so many Europeans seem to be freaking out. My speculation is that they sense, on some level, that the bottom is about to drop out from underneath their lifestyles, and this is stressing them out. I suspect also that a good many of them the same sort of vague inchoate sense that the self-image of Europe as central to world history, as something other than a minor appendage dangling off the west end of Asia, is about to have a similar encounter with hard realities.
Wer, that’s part of it. The core of the theory, though, is the explanation of how that happens: the way that every society overcommits itself to maintaining what the past has built, runs out of resources, and has to let a great deal go to waste in one of those downward steps. As for the political theater, it really is something to watch; now that our government isn’t willing to prop up Europe’s proxy war against Russia, the governments of Europe seem to have taken leave of their senses.
Omer, that’s about right. The thing to keep in mind is that it’s simply a matter of which piece of luggage gets thrown off first; the rest will follow in due time.
Other Owen, of course things improved when the shock treatment stopped. That’s how shock treatment works. The initial round in Russia’s case cleared away the mummified socialist system; the second round, the 1988 debt default, got rid of unproductive dependence on the West; and all the while small businesses and entrepreneurs thrived. As for Trump’s Abenomics, exactly — there are no good choices at this point, only more or less bad ones.
Earthworm, I tend to think that European elites are simply so far removed from any contact with the harsh realities of the world that it’s never occurred to them that they need to check the state of their armies before becoming bellicose. Their subordinates are supposed to take care of petty little details like that! One consequence of the cult of charismatic leadership that pervades all our corporate and political worlds is that very often, leaders in both worlds simply drag up whatever pop culture clichés they think are relevant — the 72 hour crisis kit being one of them — and never stop to think through whether that will work. Add into that the way that so many Boomers are enforcing their second childhoods on everyone else (the profusion of comic-book movies, starring all the superheroes that were popular among Boomers in their teen years, is one example of this) and a sort of weird zombie reenactment of the Cold War is the result. Dumb? Granted, dumb as a box of rocks, but that’s what we’re stuck with at the moment.
Ecosophy Enjoyer:
Old white male here – I would highly recommend having children, not only for their sake but also for your own. Life has its ups and downs and there’s no guarantee that your children will have an easy life, or even survive of course. However most of us make it and for most of us the opportunity to be a parent or grandparent is an opportunity to grow. Even if your wider family is dysfunctional, the effort in ensuring that your bit isn’t will be good for you too.
Mary Bennett #280, who is replying to Chris at Fernglade #275
re water, and ways it might look at ya… (sorry, that lastphrasing is from an obscure Irish saying, never mind).
Anyway, in relation to that topic, I found this video quite interesting… for those who do video it is called “Reviving Rivers with Dr Rajendra Singh – The Waterman of India”, and its subject matter is how a project very close to the method Mary Bennett describes – digging holes at *specific* points in the landscape, which have *specific* geological characteristics, and which can keep, hold and re-distribute water for months or years after first “catching” it (or “caching” it) at monsoon time – developed, became locally and socially embedded, and achieved results…
So – for whoever might take an interest…
https://www.613tube.com/watch?v=_N9PIBATSFw
”the cult of charismatic leadership that pervades all our corporate and political worlds…”
At least you have an actual reality TV star, Trump, now as an avatar in the form of The King in Orange… I saw our prime minister referred to as: ‘Britain’s dead-eyed toad, Starmer’
@DFC #265. Thanks for the info on the Chinese population issue. I also read your article a month or two ago. I think it was probably the best summary of the topic of demographic decline that I have read. So, while this topic fascinates me, there is probably not much more to say or learn about it, except maybe stats on yet another middle-income or third world country’s birthrate plummeting. Just another issue that I need to be aware of in the future and possibly plan accordingly! But, I actually think that the population decline will solve quite a few problems like resource depletion or greenhouse gas emissions. And the world will still turn!
@Lazy Gardener #299. I guess I’m just a little skeptical of always throwing the newest technology at a problem that maybe isn’t that big or was already solved. Unintended consequences and all that. I would like to suggest that you or anyone read a few novels from the “Culture” series by Iain M. Banks. He has a pretty unique take on what the world (universe?) would look like with humans co-existing with AI.
Re Canada and the US… it’s the mark of a truly world-class troll that I know I’m being trolled and I’m still this angry. Makes me think of that meme from the Matrix: “What are you saying? No one will be able to tell I’m trolling?”
“No Donald. I’m saying when you’re ready… it won’t matter”.
I think it’s particularly upsetting coming from Trump – everyone knew the Bush-Clinton Cabal was arrogant enough to get what they wanted from Canada via lead once the silver ran out. Trump’s rhetoric… and the results of his first term… gave a lot of us hope that the US would step away from empire with a grace we were already lucky to see once from the British. Unfortunately, the leaders of the coming ‘multipolar world’ which Trump seems intending to join – the Erdogans, Dutertes, Putins etc are not particularly restrained when it comes to throwing their military weight around in their own back yards. That Trump is of a kind with them in that respect is not actually that surprising. Still upsetting though.
I suspect part of Carny’s jump in popularity is because as a longtime WEF insider, he represents that more peaceful, albeit more dangerous, unipolar world Trump is rejecting. The post coldwar I do think Carny’s handling it as well as he can. Whatever else Trump hopes to gain from this, a more unified America is an obvious consequence of making enemies of all your neighbors. Walking away and making deals with whoever else will take his calls allows the US’s internal fractures to widen, while attempting to exert any kind of pressure would do the opposite.
I am surprised that the conservative party hasn’t been able to capitalize on the latest developments. Their leader Poilievre was very quick off the draw, pointing out just how badly the US has exploited his own electoral center of oil-rich Alberta. Despite that, his party’s somehow become associated with being soft on the Trump administration. I imagine part of that is because a lot people in his coalition are so used to blaming the liberal party that they’re having trouble threading the needle between saying they’d be the better leaders against a hostile America without blaming America’s hostility on their fellow Canadians. I do hope they turn that around. If this is a signal of intent for the current electoral cycle and not just a shifting of the overton window, then the goal won’t be to annex all of Canada but to carve off Alberta. Alberta has some legitimate grievances towards the rest of the country, and the Quebec precedent would allow them to leave the federation with a sufficiently clear referendum. Easier to elect an Albertan than deal with the US propaganda machine in my opinion. And even if Mark Carny is the more competent of the two, it’s not like he can prevent the next few years from being economically painful.
Ambrose @ 289, I did in fact see a photograph, labelled Eye of the Needle. The aperture was shaped like a narrow, pointed arch, and the photo I saw showed a camel, with load, walking through it. For me, that interpretation of what Christ said makes much more sense than the alternative. The reason I like the former interpretation is that it leads straight to the notion of the responsibilities of wealth, a subject which I can well believe many nowadays do not want to see discussed or even mentioned.
JMG, I take your point re winding down the overseas empire; I have yet to see any indication that such will happen. No, I do not accept that the replacement of military bases with luxury real estate developments, in which the indigenous inhabitants get to be chauffeurs and maids in what was formerly their own land, is in any way an improvement over what we have now. Maybe I missed something, maybe the blizzard of presidential orders did include the closing of a few military bases. I have not read or heard that that is the case, but maybe.
Brother JMG, after posting my question about the SOP, I “found” your FHR link (why I hadn’t looked at the Magic Monday FAQ before now I …don’t know) and read the SOP as presented in the Candidate Grade. The extra information there regarding the Hebrew names (as compared to the Way of the Golden Section…which I just started) at least validated my question about AHIH.
Anonymous #286: perhaps until you can move, look at the Magic Monday FAQ for some suggestions on protecting yourself (See: “I think I’m being targeted by hostile magic. Is there something I can do to keep myself and/or my loved ones safe?”)
Re Victor Clube and celestial intentions – Not the document I was looking for but:
DTIC ADA359881: Giant Comets, Evolution and Civilization
“On this basis the most recent episode of severe Tunguska-type collisions may have occurred at
~500 AD, a time which tallies with bizarre phenomena that seem to have accompanied the end of the Roman Empire.
Gibbon [48] refers to a ‘fever of the Earth that raged with uncommon violence during the reign of Justinian (AD 527-565)…Each year is marked by the repetition of Earthquakes, of such duration and severity that Constantinople has been shaken for above forty days…’. As the Roman Empire collapsed, so did that of the Guptas in India, which it seems was torn asunder by the revolt of the Huns.
Further, W.M. Smart refers to Islamic text at a similar time which states: ‘In the year 599 on the last day of Moharrem, stars shot hither and thither and flew against each other like a swarm of locusts; people were thrown into consternation and made supplication to the Most High.
Page 15
https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA359881
Also there is a short story starting on page 32 of the pdf version which they have not made easy to read.
The Cosmic Winter
Victor Clube and Bill Napier
“It is 7:17 am, Eastern Standard Time, on the thirtieth of June 1994. Suddenly the power fails. The basement centre of the Defence Communications Operations Unit adjoining the White House is plunged into darkness… There have been power failures before, however, and there is no hint of impending crisis.”
I’ll have to screen shot and rotate the pages to read more easily… or practice reading vertically from bottom to top of page!
Hi John!
I have been hooked on your post-industrial work when I first read “Dark Age America” whilst camping in my cousins backyard in the winter shortly after you released it. I was 31 at the time and wondering why things were getting so out of hand and it put the situation into words perfectly and continues to encourage my alternative simple lifestyle. The Jerry Mander praise on the back cover opened up a whole other world as well (Absence of the Sacred especially)
Is there any way I could order a signed copy of Dark Age or would i have to send one in somewhere?
Either way thank you again and again.
Bryan Allen @ 279, about OWLS, etc. I am dismayed that what appears to be a fairly large segment of my age cohorts, male and female alike, have forgotten, if they ever learned, that others will treat you the way you treat them. I blame the 80s cult of look out for #1 for this attitude.
Jeff Russell @ 251. Thank you for the book link. I read the review and made note of the book’s publication details for future interlibrary loan, always supposing that remains available. I also read a review on the same site of a book by Lasch, a writer whom I do much respect. I also read through the author’s 12 point sketch for his idea of a just society, his Republic, if you will. I can agree with some of it. I particularly appreciated his ideas about architecture. While I do admire and respect the author’s erudition, I could wish he had read some anthropology. Men and women living together in familia might be primeval human nature, but the structure of those families has varied widely over the world and throughout the millennia of human life. Furthermore making divorce illegal but having a permissive attitude about adultery, is a recipe for the enablement of sexual predation by wealthy men and women on their social and economic inferiors. A state of affairs which hardly conduces to the furtherment of virtue in society. I was also greatly dismayed by his dismissal of agrarianism, IMHO, a most important and valuable strain in American thought.
He admits to being a techno-optimist, a stance I cannot agree with. I does seem to me that there is a fundamental contradiction in modern conservatism. In crude terms, I would describe this contradiction as fun, excitement and emotional (and sexual) satisfaction for me and my tribe, and hierarchical regimentation for everyone else.
A flash forward to Retrotopia.
Anti-drone shotgun
https://www.benelli.it/en/arma/m4-ai-drone-guardian
Anti-drone laser rifle.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/03/28/russia-unveils-laser-rifle-to-combat-drones-at-500-meters
Euro euphemisms are piling up too. “Peacekeepers are now a “reassurance force”, rearming is now “readiness”,”
“Oh, and Queen Ursula’s EU Commission isn’t stopping at just one dumb rebrand. The bloc is also giving a fresh coat of paint to what was once known as “fiscal responsibility.” EU rules used to cap member states’ deficits at 3% of GDP – now, that little restriction is being rebranded as a “National Escape Clause”. As in, congratulations! You’re finally free from the oppressive burden of not bankrupting your country.
Not long ago, a stunt like yanking off national debt brakes would have just gotten member states a spanking from her. Now? It’s “spend whatever you want – as long as it’s on weapons.””
https://swentr.site/news/614919-eu-ukraine-war-rebranding/
I just spent about half an hour on the phone listening to the son who lives in Central Ontario rant. They had an ice storm that knocked the power out and according to Hydro One, it won’t be back on until late tonight. All of this reminded me of the big power failure of 2003 (IIRC) and the entire Northeast of the US as well as Quebec and Ontario being without power, in some instances, for almost a week. My husband took his propane torch and built a small grill and we boiled water for tea and ate sandwiches for our meals. Thankfully that was in the summer and we didn’t need heat. But we learned our lesson and bought a gas generator. We had an unattached garage and a storage shed so there was no danger with the storage. It came in handy when we lost power a few years later during an ice storm.
There was a bigger ice storm that struck Eastern Ontario and much of Quebec around 1998. I have relatives who were affected by that one. They had no power for over a week. Luckily they lived in an old house with a fireplace, so at least had some heat. I saw pictures of the giant pylons crushed to the ground from the weight of the ice. Every time I think of that, I imagine Mother Earth saying “You think you’re smart silly humans? Take that.”
With the issue of peak oil (and natural gas, coal, etc), there has been little thought of transmission. Now that the weather is getting weirder and we seem to be having more tornadoes, hurricanes, ice and wind storms, coupled with government cuts, blackouts may become more common.
Prepare you silly humans.
“Also, a few years later, the FCC forced radio stations to have different broadcasts on their AM and FM stations and niche broadcasting started up.”
There must have been exceptions to that as I remember the AM and FM stations having the same programs running. But I lived in the country where there were lots of open frequencies. Such a rule would make more sense in a more crowded area.
Earthworm, the great weakness of the manufactured charisma of the current managerial elite is that it’s fatally vulnerable once somebody with genuine stage presence shows up. No wonder other members of the managerial class are so enraged — they’ve been permanently upstaged. (“Dead-eyed toad,” btw, is a keeper.)
Eucyclos, well, grace is not Trump’s strong suit!
Mary, oh, the US being what it is, we can expect to see the winding up of our empire take place in the clumsiest way possible. Wasn’t it Churchill who said that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing, once they’ve exhausted every other possibility?
Johnny B, glad to hear it. By all means run with that if it works for you.
Earthworm, interesting.
Marcus, you’d probably have to wait until you can catch me at a speaking gig or booksigning. Still, thank you!
Siliconguy, I’ll know I was on track when anti-drone snipers start being a thing…
Annette2, yep. As one of my fellow peak oil bloggers used to write back in the day, nature always bats last.
Navile,
I’ve also thought of adoption. My only concern is that it is an expensive and difficult process. But then again, so is birth, haha.
“Earthworm, interesting.”
Okay – not so much a story as a 13 page scenario:
“Belgium, it will turn out, has been obliterated… For the earth has encountered a cosmic swarm.”
The last line is a doozy:
“The outrage, then, springs from a singularly myopic stance which may now place the human species a little higher than the ostrich, awaiting the fate of the dinosaur”
If anyone would like a copy, I’ve put captures into a pdf to make it easier to read.
JMG,
Here is another thing to put in the bucket of potential causes for the huge increases in obesity and long term reduced health since the late 1970’s. I was reading about the how commercial air travel leads to huge increases in the pollution and contaminants found in the atmosphere. The rapid clearing of the skies during the covid air traffic leads some evidence to the significance of this factor.
It might also account for the greater prevalence of obesity at lower elevations, which you have noted. The lower the elevation the greater the density of the air and in theory the more pollutants per square foot.
This also tracks very well with the timeline of increases in obesity and long term illness better than groundwater pollution which began during WWII. While air travel and the volume of jet planes in the skies was fairly rare until the mid-70’s and did not really become heavy until the air travel deregulation that occurred in the late 1980’s.
It also explains why America has been especially hard hit with these weight and disease effects compared to other countries which have had similar amounts of industry and groundwater contamination. The US lead the world in domestic air travel given its size and wealth from empire. Very few other countries had large numbers of aircraft traveling from place to place within the country ( until recently).
It is most likely that this is just one cause among many.
J.R. “Bob” Dobbs remains a “live option”
JMG and Siliconguy,
I understand Ukraine is buying shotguns to give to their troops to use as close-range drone defenses. https://thedefensepost.com/2024/10/30/ukraine-military-safari-shotgun/ and the USA seems to be at least looking into them.
Greetings all!
It appears that Trump wants to apply maximum pressure on Iran to forgo nuclear and missile technology failing which war would be inevitable. Given that you believe Trump is trying to back off from a global empire, how likely do you think the US will attack Iran this year?
Regards.
@ Dennis
#74, boomer grandparents
While I have seen a few grandpparents that are like as you mention, kind of self absorbed and not as family centered, I actually cant name one, very much a minority. I am sorry your own parents are not more supportive.
What I see here is, even though she is self absorbed and likes to go out, the grandmother neighbor who is in her late 70’s watching the 4 year old one day a week, and when mom wants to go away for the weekend, having both, including the infant, at her house for 4 days. And other support when mom asks for it. Or the grandparents around the other corner that do after school pick up and watching the children every weekday. Or the one a few houses down that bought a property with 2 houses on it so that daughter and husband and child had low housing costs, and she pitches in other ways like babysitting when needed. Up in the Oregon county one of my offspring lives in, grandparent care of children is ubiquitous, no one there can afford paid care and housing jumped and salaries are low.
I am a boomer grandparent, but my one grandchild lives out of state. 2 things. First, how it was when I grew up re; grandparents. I did go to my grandparents house almost every weekend for an over night, notice that my parents drove us over to their place. They never dictated in any way how we were to be fed or entertained or disciplined. Sometimes my grand parents were out of town and not available, sometimes they took us with them for an out of town, again, not dictated in anyways by our parents. When I was young, us kids were in paid childcare, both local grandmothers were still working ( as everyone had kids younger back then, they were not retired until I was middle school or older), and we were “latchkey” children from relatively young ages, maybe 3rd grade on, which is 8 or 9 years old, so then no paid childcare for after school, which is just a few hours in any case. This was common. We also were taught and knew how to take care of ourselves and our surroundings, we could feed ourselves snack or cold breakfast or lunch, at the least, some could cook, our parents did not arrive home to a totaled or overly messy house, beyond what our current occupation was. What I am saying is no one expected that someone else was supposed to mind their own children for them, although of course they did at times on their own terms.
Some, not all I am sure, but many PMC young couples having a child are VERY controlling and dictating of terms to grandparents. It is quite disrespectful realy. My cousin, who has one fairly recent grandchild was quite willing to move by the young couple to watch full time for free, and was there as support right after the baby was born. The young couple gave her strict instructions on EXACTLY how the child was to be handled at all times, they didnt trust she could diaper ! She of course memorized and follows all dictates. She comes when called, even though it is a 4 hour drive for her. They chose an east indian full time nanny so the child could be bilingual. I have been told what to do also with mine, my son in law would not let me hold the baby for the first 2 days even though I was in the house staying with them for that purpose. ( I am not as vaccinated as he would like) he tried to force me to get a vaccination I did not agree with, she overuled him, but alot of PMC parents cut the grandparents off for this stuff, or threaten to cut them off if they dont do, or not do, x y and z. My skills at diapering were also called into question, although they eventually saw that I was more efficient and had less crying. They are still fairly controlling, but most of it aligns to how I do things anyways.
Another item that puts off grandparents gets back to how we were raised, as I mentioned earlier. Alot of new parents, esp PMC ones ( not mine) are raising undisciplined children. Undisciplined and unskilled and seeking constant entertainment from outside themselves. I have heard about these. And, it makes having them over a chore, a burden instead of a joy. I went to my grandparents often, I was not entertained specifically, of course as a normal kid of the age, I found it all interesting, life is varied and interesting. They put on the Laurence Welk show on saturday night, not a “kids” program. Some german language music radio station on Sunday afternoons. They also loved us, which we knew, and talked to us or took walks with us. We did not whine at them demanding different foods than what they were making ( we loved that they did give us icecream later, and our parents never told them what to feed or not feed, the grandparents didnt care if we ate everything or make something else if we didnt), we did not whine that we were bored or act out. Basically, they could keep their basic rhythm to their lives and we were a welcome addition. Contrast that with children that must have electronic entertainment of no interest to anyone else in the household constantly, who dont pick up after themselves, who must have only certain limited prepared foods, who cant be taken to the grocery store or any other store easily, who have no discipline so the grandparents are at a loss as to how to have them behave or put on their shoes. Who wants to have so much struggle when you are a retired grandparent ?
SO, I think there are a few sides to the shole issue. I have a feeling that the economically struggling parents my offspring sees out of state who truly need the help are giving up some control to the grandparents so that they can work together on the larger family issue.
I had an insight (quoting from your Wagner series) that “commodification, the process of flattening out all values so they can be expressed in terms of money” also applies to language in the Age of Reason. In The Master and His Emissary, Iain McGilchrist plainly states that language is a form of money. As our host has been pointing out for some time, words are empty husks in and of themselves, it is their meaning that gives them value. Similarly, money is also worthless in and of itself and obtains its value from the potential wealth it points to. I’ve observed the flattening out of meaning of words in mainstream culture and my personal life, so I wanted to point out this parallel process. It’s possible JMG has pointed this out in the series (I’ve only read about 75%, which is a personal failing), but anyway, I find this interesting. Have a good week everyone!
RE that last…
The Velikovsky Encyclopedia on Victor Clube and Coherent Catastrophism
https://www.velikovsky.info/victor-clube/
And a link to image pdf of Clube and Napier’s ‘The Cosmic Winter’ – a 13 page scenario for earth encountering a cosmic swarm [which looks like it could be the prologue to their book ‘A Cosmic Serpent]: https://www.filemail.com/d/itjbvesloxnulug
Re JMG #300
You could be right, of course, but I have my doubts about people here having the deep sense of history that you have.
bk.
Regarding my last comment and after watching that dastardly, ditzy dame from Europe talk about her 72 hour emergency bag, maybe I should add, in addition to the weather storms, the actions of all of the dumb-derriere politicians we are stuck with.
JMG, I try to follow your rules regarding profanity, so I use the term derriere instead of the A-double-s word. I don’t know if the A-double-s word is considered as profanity by you, but anyway derriere is a little classier.
Although considering what comes out of that region, perhaps ‘classier’ isn’t an appropriate term.
BK #294: I think that a country with this history should have some kind of memory of it, which could help us see the current situation for what it is, but I see no evidence of that, at all.
This is, IMO, deliberate, and it was in fact a policy by many European governments after WWII (or maybe WWI–I don’t remember).
The last thing European governments need is for their citizens to realize that they are on the front lines of WWIII, that their living standards are worse than people overseas, and that this is a structural thing–stupid policies certainly don’t help, but there is actually a limit to even what very astute policies can do without a voluntary (e.g. US) or involuntary (FrancAfrique) benefactor.
Ever wonder why the Europeans keep talking about their superior culture? It’s one of those things that keeps their citizens from leaving to “perhaps richer, but unrefined” or “crime ridden” or “too cold” or whatever amorphous label can placed on more desirable countries.
By the way, I do not mean to imply this is some sort of conspiracy — it’s just one of a set of standard techniques governments must resort to in order to keep as much talent as possible from fleeing the country.
To the commentariat: Is there some well-known connection between Canada’s new Prime Minister (Mark Carney) and the intelligence agencies or secret societies?
How does a guy run the central bank of Canada, then head one in the UK (Bank of England), work for a major energy builder, and then become the Prime Minister of Canada, all by luck and a bit of skill???
Clay, interesting. Yes, that’s worth looking into.
Pygmycory, Retrotopia here we come!
Karim, I don’t expect it, but we’ll have to see.
Luke, hmm! I’d phrase it the other way around — money is a form of language, rather than the opposite — but the point remains.
Earthworm, thanks for this.
BK, er, I think you’ve missed my point completely, but I don’t feel like continuing to hammer on it.
Annette, “dumb-derriere” is perfectly acceptable, and has the advantage of being funny and alliterative at the same time. Thank you.
Three days or more of emergency supplies on hand should just be common sense. I’ve been watching out for WWIII for sixty years and it hasn’t happened. But I see images of crowds of distressed people lined up at water distribution points 36 hours after some local or regional disaster somewhere in the world on a nearly daily or at least weekly basis.
Underappreciated blessing #877: People doing sensible things for wrong or silly reasons.
@Ambrose: “Bob” lives! The assassination was just a rumor. He is living on Howland Island with bugfoot, a cryogenic Jimmy Hoffa, mothman, the ghost of Amelia Earhart, and C. Eliot Friday. They have a nice resort there for the people who want to visit.
JMG, yeah I think I got that backwards. I was semi-conscious of it sounding wrong when writing it and ended up posting anyway, for some reason. Iain McGilchrist compares money and language several times in the book (and I still have a third of the book left) although I can’t find a place in my marked up copy that says one is a form of another. So I slightly misspoke, or just can’t find it at the moment. He does definitely compare them and find them very similar in a lot of ways though.
@Luke Z #322: Word are not empty husks. If you pronounce them aloud, they have a length, a weight (compare “thrive” to “grow”), a flavor (“nitpicking”, “cellar door”). It is the majority opinion that there is no connection between their sound and their meaning, but this is quite obviously not true for some words like “meow”. It is also generally not true when the word are joined by an actual word master, in prose or especially in verse. The best poets lose most of their interest in translation because their poems live equally through the sound and the meaning of the words. One of my favorite lines in English (though not by a poet usually considered great) is
Draw now the tide, spring moon, swing now the depth
Change one sound in that line and it loses flavor and strength. My favorite line in Latin is
Nascere praeque diem veniens age, Lucifer, almum
Each single sound in that line is calculated (or intuited) – you have to pronounce every “c” as “k” and the “ae” as “a-ee” , otherwise it goes wrong.
Hey JMG and commentariat
A question that I have been wondering about is whether there is really a sudden upswing of aircraft accidents, or if they reman at the same level of occurrence but the media has decided to report on them more often than usual.
I have noticed that for the past 4 years or so, there have been quite a few unexpected aircraft accidents than I recall happening previously. Recently we have had the incident at the Avalon air show in Melbourne, and that collision in Washington DC, and that military helicopter crash of the Queensland coast, amongst others.
I theorise that if the increase in aircraft accidents is real, rather than some kind of media bias, then a likely cause is simply that due to the financial situation making it harder to afford proper maintenance, combined with a lack of skilled aircraft mechanics, people simply can’t keep their aircraft in good condition.
You will send your data to Microsoft!
Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account. Microsoft insists you connect to the internet when installing Windows 11.
https://www.theverge.com/news/638967/microsoft-windows-11-account-internet-bypass-blocked
The Data must flow!
On a related note I just saw something about the NY Times admitting the conspiracy theory’s about the US running the Ukraine war was true. I need to bottle my beer so can’t check up on it myself. But if that pack of rats has jumped ship things must be getting dire.
The apricot is blooming and I have volunteer lettuce up in the garden.
“Ever wonder why the Europeans keep talking about their superior culture?” – I’m European and live there and know literally nobody who makes that claim.
Perhaps related: since Trump and Vance got to work cutting ties with Europe I notice a lot more negative remarks about the continent and its inhabitants in US media and forums. It seems to mirror the remarks of Trump administration officials like Pete “pathetic” Hegseth. I understand the rationale of the US taking distance, from their perspective it is the right thing to do, but the nasty remarks are painful and usually simply untrue. Europe is being used as a scapegoat for everything including the unconstitutional bombing of Yemen.
I have little doubt that once the European elite gets the message they will instruct the media to start denouncing America in the same way. Maybe it would be for the best if that happens soon although I would regret the souring of relations. It’s like a couple that cannot separate in an amenable way but feels the need to start throwing mud at each other. On my side of the pond so far the European MSM still sticks with the usual TDS.
JMG, what do you make of the bombing campaign in Yemen? I don’t see what the Trump administration tries to achieve with it.
I have a saying – “ Everyone has pieces of truth” I kept thinking there were pieces of truth for me in your book Learning Ritual Magic. Ordered it and sure enough, the pages 18-20 description of the sitting or standing attention method and the teaching on the development of the will there and elsewhere in the book.. The standing version was a variation of the Wuji standing practice in Tai Chi I am already familiar with. https://dochenstyletaichi.com/wuji-the-art-stillness-part-1/ Will now be more daily and systematic with it now. The explanation of what the will is and how to simply strengthen and develop it was a good example of the K.I.S.S. Principle – Keep It Simple Sweetheart. I am content with with my walk with and knowing of the Trinity and the plants, other creatures and the earth and sky so the rest of the book isn’t something I will use. But the attention, body knowing and will strengthening stuff will become part of my daily regime for body and inner being. Thank you.
We in the US can’t really pick on the 72 hour kit too much. Our government tells us to have one.
https://www.ready.gov/kit
The recent Palisades fire shows why you should have one. They have their limits though. How much good they would have done in the Burmese earthquake is an open question.
Beer is bottled. Garden is tilled the first time. Busy weekend.
An amusing redundancy from that quirky website “The Anglish Moot,” on the return to earth of the stranded astronauts. ” the Boeing craft they flew up in was deemed to be unflightworthy. ”
I love that word, “unflightworthy.”
As to the OWLS, period fiction has a lot of them, as society matrons or their small-town equivalent. Also, the current crop come from a generation notorious for shrill moralizing – of the woke variety on one hand and the Christian Conservative variety on the other. And some people (my oldest daughter) are just micromanaging types.
BTW – Ariel Moravec’s mother may love her, but she is a verbal abuser all the same. I lived for 23 years (until the girls were old enough to be self-sufficient) with a verbal abuser given to prolonged rants. It’s like getting daily massages with sandpaper.
Hi Mary and Scotlyn,
It’s an interesting issue for sure. What the early settlers did was remove much of the obstructions in waterways – mostly because they reacted unfavourably to flooding. The interesting thing about flooding is that it randomly dumps minerals around the landscape, but also recharges the ground water much further away from water courses. And of course, moving water away from an area in a suddenly cleared river or creek tends to move the water away faster before it gets a chance to get into the ground – as you do.
Up here in the mountains things are different again. The historical forestry work, then the later agricultural practices, pretty much strip mined the top soil, and that stuff works like a sponge to soak up excess water. Oh well. But time will fix that and even the flooding cycles will return. It takes lots of effort to clear waterways.
As a side note, I don’t maintain standing water in ponds and dams (the soil leaks like a sieve here anyway) due to the water bringing the snakes. No need to invite trouble into your life, there’s plenty of that elsewhere.
It’s all a moment in time really.
Cheers
Chris
@Boccacio
Pretty sure the USA and Russia have reached some sort of deal regarding the middle east so they can leave. I think it’s something like neutering both Israel and Iran so neither has the upper hand, with Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia offering other balancing poles. I think they both want France and the UK influence out of there and no chance of it coming back when they go (France is interested in Iran, note that Total, the big French oil company signed a deal with Iran that Trump nixed in his first stint in office.) The UK is heavily involved in Israel.
Bombing Yemen is a part of taking out all of Iran’s proxies.
JMG,
It’s been many years since I’ve commented, though I’m still around often learning from your site. First, I want to express my condolences regarding the passing of your wife. I found the obituary you posted very moving and can’t believe that was over a year ago.
I’m commenting specifically about how you’ll be amazed if the US doesn’t at least technically default on its debt by 2030. I just saw an opinion piece on Reuters from March 25 discussing how this may be done:
“One potential debt-reduction strategy would be to make holders of short-term U.S. Treasuries exchange them for long-duration or even perpetual bonds. The key word in that sentence is “make.” No one wants to swap short-term Treasuries for Perpetual Uncle Sams. The U.S. would need a carrot – or a stick – to make this happen.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/what-happens-when-trump-discovers-uks-wwi-debts-gulati-weidemaier-2025-03-25/
The article focuses on British debt still owed the US from WWI and trading that for treasuries currently held by the UK, but I think any actions along these lines would constitute a technical default. I know you’ve talked about a technical default on US debt for a long time, but I really hadn’t seen anything in the mainstream media about this issue until I saw this. Maybe 2030 is too far away.
Thank you for providing this forum.
Walt, oh, granted.
Luke, they’re definitely forms of the same thing — abstract, arbitrary tokens that are assigned meaning by a particular culture, and used to represent and manipulate the things they’re supposed to mean.
J.L.Mc12, interesting. I haven’t kept count, so I’ll take your word for it.
Siliconguy, if Windows 7 stops working I’m going to have to hold my nose and try Linux, then. My work computer is never, but never, connected to the internet.
Boccaccio, when an empire is contracting, the biggest risk is that its enemies might gang up on it all at once, overwhelm it, and turn an orderly retreat into a catastrophe. One way to stop that is to stomp the living bejesus out of a convenient target, just to remind the other hostile powers that you’re not completely past it yet. That’s my take on what’s going on in Yemen.
BeardTree, delighted to hear it.
Patricia M, granted, but Carmen Moravec has had a difficult life and it’s in the process of getting much more difficult. I’m dropping some hints about that in The Sign of the Phoenix, the book I’m writing right now, and there will be more in later books, until it blows up and becomes the central theme of one of the novels. Stay tuned!
Ryan, yes, exactly! I could see any number of technical defaults being used to reduce the burden of debt on the US government — and yes, it could quite easily happen well before 2030.
Greetings ADJMG,
Hope you are well.
Never fear, NPR solves the dilemma of the limits to growth, with the Malthus Swerve!
The real question is can NPR do the Doge Swerve and survive budget cuts?
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?i=1000701294092
Anonymous #286: About 2 months ago, my wife cursed me, and within 2 hours I was showing many of the symptoms of a heart attack. It wasn’t, but I took the hint. I made an amulet following the instructions in the Magic Monday FAQs. Since then, I have not suffered any more attacks. (Knock wood, cross fingers, tocca ferro).
JMG & Siliconguy,
Patrick Lancaster is an American living in the Donbas, working as a crowd funded journalist. A couple days ago he posted a video of a Ukranian suicide drone hunting the truck he was riding in. The Russian soldiers eventually killed it, one with an AK, one with a shotgun.
https://youtu.be/MowWjVqhWaI?feature=shared
A couple other thoughts on grandparents.
First, a couple comments I read here after the OP have said things like, (1) they say they love to see the grandkids, but dont come over. As I noted above, we were raised with the grandkids being driven to the grandparents place and hanging out at the grandparents place and the grandparents were doing their regular routines. (2) Another comment, they leave as soon as the kids start crying and they cry alot…. I wonder what the childs age is. Infants cry alot, although often, but cetainly not always, holding them or walking or rocking them takes care of the issue. This is understood. Us oldsters are good at rocking a baby. A child crying all the time, well, they may try something on, but if they have consistent discipline ( meaning training, not something punitive when I use the term) it is not usually an all the time thing. Makes me wonder if the grandparent on that one just doesnt feel that they are allowed to communicate with the parents on strategies, most younger parents are not open to other ideas, they think it is interference, so then the best strategy for the grandparent to do is to leave. Otherwise they are going to say something about child rearing. Newer immigrant culture, so far as I have seen, the elders DO say something about child rearing, or just do it, without fear of being reprimanded. My eldest and I see eye to eye on child rearing overall, so this is not an issue for me, but I do hear about it alot. And even I have to be careful about any hints, although when mom and child stayed with me for a week without dad, I was able to help her see how to get better behavior by just being consistent and not threatening and warning constantly. (3) Third comment was along the lines of, it sure would be great if a grandparent were here to play with them while I cooked or got other work done, it would make it easier on me. Through out history, and certainly how generations previous to you had it, even in multigenerational households, the children were not being played with and entertained so that some of the adults could work. There was better child behavior, or there was work being down while watching the youngest, knitting or snapping beans, or whatever. So keeping an eye on toddlers while working. I think it is revisionist to think that toddlers were constantly being played with or that work wasnt needed from all family members. I raised 3 children, most of the time as a single mom, and I had no trouble getting my household chores or cooking done. I did raise my children without TV or movies. Well, sure they saw it sometimes elsewhere or once a week when they were older, but my under 7s were not used to screen entertainment. If they are raised playing and doing things, interesting props or toys are available to them for dramatic play and outdoor play, it never seemed an issue. ANd if they were having an issue, they would just nee to be my buddy and help with whatever I was doing, like cooking or laundry. My toddlers always were locked in the kitchen with me when I cooked or cleaned in there, baby gate across the doorway. They love to play with pots and pans and wooden spoons. While I think grandparents have alot to offer grandkids, patience, a different perspective and activities than mom and dad, time to listen or read a story, but not constantly, it is alright if they are not available. I never felt sorry for myself that I did not have grandparent help. It of course never occured to me that it would be someone elses responsibility to help. Being close enough for sunday dinners would have been nice of course, but its not their fault if we dont live 3 miles from them and dont come over more often.
Oh my word, under the Boil that Dust Spec category we have; [drum roll]
A Mercury V-12 600 HP outboard.
At 4500 RPM cruise speed it burns 90 liters per hour. (24 GPH)
At 6400 RPM full speed it burns 200 liters per hour. (53 GPH)
List price $83,000 US,
I had no idea outboard motors had gotten that big.
https://mercurymarine.widen.net/s/qslkjx22b7/8m0191248_v12_feb_22
Note the fuel consumption is not mentioned in the brochure. I had to look it up elsewhere.
Clearly some members of the upper class have no concern for global warming. Then again, they obviously have large boats.
@JMG
Apologies for my comment coming across as hammering on about it. That was not my intention.
I do try to understand what you mean, but my interpretation of your words is so utterly different than my experience living here, that I have difficulty conneting the two.
(It’s as if you’re talking about a europe that doesn’t exist anymore, or exists beyond my horizon, something like that)
bk.
Hey JMG
On the subject of the EU, I wonder if people are going to romanticise it after it has fallen? I could see quite a few people writing memoirs akin to Stefan Zweigs “World of Yesterday”, or maybe fiction set in some idealised version of EU-controlled Europe, kind of like how “Little house on the Prairie” romanticises the South. It would be even funnier if it is the Muslim people of a Post-European “Europe” who are the ones writing and avidly reading such literature.
@ PumpkinScone, thanks for the info about Total, I didn’t know that. I’m not sure neutering the Houthi’s is a realistic goal but we’ll see.
@JMG, that take makes sense. And yet it also feels unjust. Maybe you can give an occult perspective on this? If I were an official in the Trump administration I would see the need to show strenght but also would be severely bothered by the civilian casualties. I couldn’t cheer the destruction of a whole appartment building just because the “Houthi number one rocket guy” was inside. What is in such a situation the right thing to do and what are the karmic consequences?
I was wrong about the scenario / prologue at #323, it was not from The Cosmic Serpent (1982) but from The Cosmic Winter published in 1990 (ISBN 10: 0631169539 / ISBN 13: 9780631169536).
Hahaha… Abebooks lists the cheapest second hand copy at £87.81 with £57.96 shipping and the river of commerce has it at £315.99 but shipping is a bargain at £2.80
From page 10 of the prologue:
“Why late June? What is the nature of these events? And what is the actual threat they pose for mankind? Such are the questions we address in this book. For within these last few years, it has been found that there is a great swarm of cosmic debris circulating in a potentially dangerous orbit, exactly intersecting the Earth’s orbit in June (and November) every few thousand years. More surprisingly, perhaps, it has been found that the evidence for these facts was in the past deliberately concealed.”
I know JMG is not keen on comments that are heading into the territory of the beaten-to-death term ‘conspiracy theories’; but if someone like Victor Clube is a space cadet loon, then things could be even more dire than I thought, and that is saying something!
Other than working my own little sphere of personal/local activity there is nothing I can do about such things – if the human craziness is symptomatic of things manifesting from higher planes, so be it; if the human craziness stems from something else (like human stupidity and base passions), so be it.
I’ll leave the subject here with two quotes; one from Clube and Napier from the 1990 book prologue and one from Marcus Aurelius:
“As we anticipated, some ‘authorities’ reacted to the book with outrage, and indeed the reader should be warned; much of what he may have regarded as established truth will in these pages also turn a somersault.”
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
I figure we’ve got our work cut out!
@eucyclos #226,
Thanks a lot for the recommendation! I wasn’t aware he is blogging, too.
Milkyway
I had recently found an article which reminded me quite a lot of this blog and its discussions of literature — not to mention the middle-class culture of contentment and turning a blind eye to their own privilege. It went over a piece of derivative “cozy fiction” so obviously intended for a middle-class audience, with a privileged heroine who can afford to benefit from the violence of others, and compared it to the sort of story I expect to be much more relevant to the lives of the average American, especially in the years to come: a story about those who have nothing coming together and supporting each other. If nothing else, it gave me a book, and author, to steer clear of in future… though, if trends in the literary world continue in the direction this blog indicates they are, then books like it are likely to get much rarer in future.
https://www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/02/23/legends-lattes-and-lament-the-necessity-of-pain-in-cozy-fiction/
Dear Mr. Arch Druid
Your book Twilights Last Gleaming was given a shout out in the comments of Naked Capitalism by commenter RevKev. This was in context to Scott Ritter’s response about the Houthis sinking a US aircraft carrier. Before I go on I like Ritter as an analyst and value his opinions, but at times Ritter is a typical boomer, and boomers tend to live in the past. Ritter seems to believe sinking a carrier will unleash a wave of patriotism and millions of white US kids will enlist and America will put boots on the ground and invade Yemen and destroy the Houthis. Ritter is living in 2001 and is reliving the build up to the Iraq war. On the other hand the commenters like RevKev are mad at their governments and want some authority to punish them, in this case the Houthis. The desire for an authority to set things right is a sign of perpetual students or bureaucrats. Note to anti-trumpers – Putin and Xi have their own problems and do not plan to solve yours.
Do you believe Ritter has an accurate analysis? My take is there is no groundswell of support in the collective west to fight China, Russia, Iran or anyone else with boots on the ground.
Second question, do you believe an aircraft carrier will be sunk? My take is the carrier would be damaged and then limp along for 5 months or so and then Chinese commercial ships would have to perform a rescue. Casualties would be minimal and this would just be one more crisis.
As a data point, I am a Canadian currently traveling in the US, and everything is normal. Lots of TDS around, but muted. Americans seem to think Canadians all have TDS and project. As usual, most Americans do not care about Canadian politics (or international politics for that matter) and do not care about tariffs or 51 state or such issues. I have noticed the price of things one cares about while traveling, like a sandwich in a gas station, are very high and the Canadian US Dollar exchange makes it even worse. The exchange rate likely has more of an impact on travel plans than political views in my opinion.
As I have been in National Parks I have encountered other Canadians and they all seem to have the same sentiments, and we all complain about prices due to the exchange rate. It also seems there are lots more stealth taxes down here and it seems like you are being nickel-ed and dimed to death. BTW I have talked to a number of Canadian (via India) truck drivers and they would all move to the US if able to as it is more central for driving as Surrey is at the edge of the map so to speak.
@ BK
My sense is that most people in Europe will be completely stunned and shocked when, as JMG writes, BK, “the bottom will drop out from underneath their lifestyles”. On a subconscious/soul level I don’t think it will be such a surprise though. The resulting tension expresses itself in all kind of unhealthy mental and emotional behavoirs. The past twenty years I have seen a steady increase in many indicators like narcissm, hardening political discours, acts of random vandalism and violence and not to forget rising authoriarianism in lieu with ever less accountability (remember the Covid lockdowns?).
I also can’t help noticing that the big problems we have are not being solved, no matter which party is in power. In my country housing is all but unaffordable for young people, mass imigration is very unpopular yet is only accelerating to frankly insane levels (but you have to dig deep into the data to find out), infation is ruining working class lifestyle and the MSM is gaslight central (for example they only want to talk about the supply side of the housing crisis ). The deindustrialisation is just gaining speed. Just in this past week 3 chemical plants and 5 refineries shut down. The owners warned that we will now be unable to provide the fuel for the overexpensive and underperforming JFS’s we ordered with our American ally. And I could continue for another page with examples….
I think most people are aware that the tensions in our society are rising to very unhealthy levels and that no resolution is anywhere in sight. As they say, if you make a peaceful revolution impossible, you will make a violent revolution inevitable….
My sense is that we are getting close to that point. It breaks my heart and I pray for a solution, but so far no response 🙁 Other countries will feel the coming economic depression too, but are in a better position to deal with the aftermath as we in Europe.
Re: I Hate Politics #326:
“This is, IMO, deliberate, and it was in fact a policy by many European governments after WWII (or maybe WWI–I don’t remember).”
You may be correct that it was policy, but I doubt it was because of the reasons you mention. Our living standards were rapidly getting better, say from the 60s on. (They are still not actually that bad for most people, although they are getting worse.)
Also, during the cold war everybody was very aware the europe would be a frontline if the war would ever become hot. (Even now, they are trying to scare us with the idea that russia will attack europe..)
Also, I have no idea what you mean with europeans always talking about their superior culture. I have never witnessed anything like that.
bk.
Aircraft carriers take a lot of sinking. I doubt the Houthis have anything that could do it. Put a hole in the flight deck, sure. Blow holes in the side, sure. Either one would put it out of action and be a Houthi victory. To sink it requires holes underwater, or uncontrollable fire forcing the ship to abandoned then sunk to deny it’s recovery by the enemy or in the modern case to keep the reactors cool.
Let’s look at WWII. On the Japanese side the four carriers at Midway were sunk by the Japanese after the US dive bombers had set them on fire. The fires didn’t sink any of them, the Japanese destroyers used their torpedoes. The Taiho was torpedoed in the Battle of the Philippine sea and was sunk by bad damage control. The aviation fuel dumped gas into an elevator well, the fumes built up and spread throughout the ship until an ignition source was found and boom. The Shokaku was hit with three torpedoes, set on fire, and sank. The Zuikaku was bait on a suicide mission and died by both torpedoes and bombs. The Unryu was torpedoed as well near the end of the war. The fire that started reached the hanger deck which was filled with kamikaze rocket planes. That didn’t end well.
On the US side, The Lexington was set on fire by dive bombers, then scuttled by US destroyers using torpedoes. The Yorktown was bombed and torpedoed by air, and finally sunk by a Japanese submarine. The Wasp was sunk by three torpedo hits. The Wasp was known to have inadequate torpedo defenses going into the war, but the carrier inventory was getting thin at the time. The Hornet was bombed and torpedoed. After it was abandoned the US tried and failed to scuttle it, then the Japanese followed the smoke and finished the job.
US Carriers hit and not sunk include the Saratoga which was torpedoed twice, then hit by a kamikaze and survived (it took two nukes to finally put her down in Operation Crossroads), the Enterprise which was more patches than original by the end of the war, the Franklin and the Bunker Hill. None of the Essex class carriers were sunk by enemy action largely because they had truly impressive firefighting capability.
Modern carriers have one other advantage, the airplanes use kerosene, not aviation gas. Kerosene is much less explosion happy.
So I feel the scenario in Twilight’s Last Gleaming is unlikely. The carrier could still end up on a sandbar though. It could lose propulsion due to a loss of reactor control power, then wind and current could strand it easily. (PS, the Nimitz class carriers have two reactors and four shafts.)
Just heard about the conviction of Le Penn in France. in case anyone doubts this is politically motivated, just read this article that is based on research of Dutch investigative journalism outlet FTM. https://archive.ph/aoro5
The article is in Dutch, but the first line says it all “Nearly one in four Members of the European Parliament have been involved in one or more scandals, including almost 90 cases of corruption or fraud and embezzlement.”
But somehow Le Penn, who the judge admitted didn’t enrich herself, is guilty and sent to jail for a minor transgression when she was member of the EP many years ago.
Are we still a democracy in the EU? After the ban of two Romanian election candidates and outright betrayal of the electorate in Germany where Merz changed his position 180 degrees on several crucial policies we now have this. And with that, tensions rose even further 🙁
Hello Princess Cutekitten, I just saw your prayer request. I’ll bump you back up the list. You’re an inpatient right now? Are you comfortable sharing more details?
Wer here
Well if I understand corectly the reason that so many European politicians are arogant and selfcentered is simple. Europe used to be the top dog for some many years that an different set of real rules is impossible to concieve to them. Think about that not long ago in historic terms the Europe was an unstopable jugernaut on the international stage. Compare the situation just 100 years ago. European colonial empires were going strong (although there were signs of obvious trouble right ahead) Enterie continents were under the iron grasp of the European powers,the mere thought that everything will fall apart soon and all because an endlessly unruly Germany which atempted another unsucesfull bid at global power (but ended up destroying the Europe power altogether) was considered beyond belief. In 1900 Europe had a very young population with European women giving birth to as many children as with nowadays Africa (the thought of Europe being almost childless and importing illegal migrants as a cheap labor force and then allowing those migrants run amok on the streets ) was again inconciveable by many right thinking people there. There were heretics like a certain Spengler that was spewing (in the minds of right thinking people ) the Europe has passed it’s power but nobody belived them. Then after the WW2 Europe convinced itself that it is mighty because we have the US having our back. Based only on that asumption that the US will fight for Europe and provide everything for Europe was literally the founding argument of NATO. Now the deal is coming to an end and hysteria is begginng. I recently was shaking my head when I read what was said during “the coalition of the (un)willing” were Stammer said that the UK will send troops to Ukraine (spoiler he was not going to) only after the US will pledge it’s support for the”coalition” Trump pobably told him go on a hike instead.
I read an interview with Warren Buffet where he was asked about possible default on the national debt and he answered that he didn’t expect it because the government could just hyperinflate the debt away. Do you think there’s any likelihood of the government going the hyperinflation route instead of an overt default? If they did, what effect that would have on your predictions?
Mr. Greer & Siliconguy..
So, a Kline bottle hath no need of scrubbing you’s sayeth .. Well, consider this: What if ol’ Cassandra had a few of these ‘vessels’ stowed away in her box of tricks for us hominids to monkey with? What I see is a sort of metaphorical ‘gain-o-funktion’ container – go ahead, crack one open .. FAFO!
‘;]
@JMG: “if Windows 7 stops working I’m going to have to hold my nose and try Linux, then. My work computer is never, but never, connected to the internet. ”
Don’t worry. Win 7 support was dropped ages ago. All that means, is that you no longer get security updates. If you don’t connect to the Internet, that is not a worry.
No, you won’t all of a sudden get the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD).
Serendipitisly, The Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic expressed his opinion on the Shakespeare question- https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/theory-3 .
This is a subject that triggers my RANT ON switch for some reason, so I will hold my tongue. Or try.
Hi John Michael,
As has been astutely remarked upon elsewhere, follow the money… Six Australian universities close Chinese government-linked Confucius Institutes
Makes me wonder what else was going on there?
Cheers
Chris
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Permian-Geology-and-Water-Say-Were-Close.html
Some areas in the Permian have hit geological limits while others, yet to be drilled, are not expected to be as prolific as the prime Tier 1 acreage.
Despite record U.S. crude oil production, limits to growth have started to emerge.
In the Permian, the gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) has steadily risen from 34% of total production in 2014 to 40% in 2024.
The water-to-oil ratio in the Permian is much higher than in other basins. On average, four barrels of water are produced for each barrel of oil, according to data from oilfield water analytics firm B3 Insight cited by Reuters. (Produced water is a disposal coat.)
“There cannot be “U.S. energy dominance” and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory. At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly (1 million barrels per day plus within a couple quarters),” an executive at an exploration and production firm wrote in comments to the Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the first quarter of 2025.
“The U.S. oil cost curve is in a different place than it was five years ago; $70 per barrel is the new $50 per barrel,” the executive noted.”
No surprises here.
What are some of the main reasons it is not wise to publish a book on amazon?
Please do not go deeply into the overall problems with using amazon. Richard Stallman, for one, has a comprehensive essay of this on his website.
I admit I have found some interesting self-published books on amazon that I am not sure exist anywhere else.
Interested in hearing from people who know a lot more than I do about it.
Hello Mr Greer and everyone,
I have recently started to view psychotherapy as a genuinely great Western contribution to spiritual practices. Going over one’s past experiences and thought processes with a thoughtful and supportive interlocutor is potentially radically transformative. After following this blog for a while, I have come to believe that the outcome of well-conducted talk therapies, through bringing about a change in consciousness, might even trigger events that are not solely due to the changed behaviour of the person undergoing therapy. An action that had previously been tried many times all of a sudden starts bringing desired results. Psychologists seem to be aware of this, but are understandably discreet about it, so we have a rare instance where benefits of a practice are undersold.
I have two questions about talking therapies. Have other cultures come up with similar approaches, that is, focusing intensely on private experiences in order to resolve conflicts and move forward, or is that a uniquely Western thing? Also, if psychotherapy is not available, are there ways to achieve at least some of its effects by working on one’s own?
On a different topic, it has been mentioned earlier in this discussion that there might be undesirable interactions between qigong and Western energetic work. May I ask which energetic work is potentially problematic in this context? I practice qigong regularly (and am also doing yoga with no ill effects). I am learning about tarot and would be interested in starting discursive meditation and journaling when I am able to commit to daily practice. Are any of these inadvisable, as I intend to continue with qigong? Many thanks!
Have you seen this article https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/02/americas-national-security-wonderland/. I started following the author a while back, and he has actually name dropped you as one of his intellectual influences.
JMG –
Last Friday afternoon, I was creeping down I-95 (the main East-Coast artery, here 4 lanes in each direction) where the speed limit is 65 mph, but I could go only 10-15 mph. The problem turned out to be a half-dozen or so political activists on an overpass, waving flags next to banners on the chain-link fence. “NO KING” “RESIST!” along with Canadian and Ukrainian flags. Once under the bridge, traffic spread out and sped up.
Oddly enough, their “action” did NOT actually bring me sympathetic to their political position. 😉
In fact, I suspect that the only people impressed with the project were those who were up on the bridge. Impressed with themselves, for the most part, and possibly impressed with each other.
The same group, I suspect, was hanging banners for Biden/Harris/Walz, with equally effective results.
So, my question is, “What are they thinking?” (And, “Are they smoking what I think they’re smoking?”)
@J.L.Mc12 @350, if I may: I have never had the sensation of living in an “EU-dominated” Europe. But yes, the Europe of 1948 to 1973 was the best in history, from what I have been told, and even the Europe of the 1990s and 2000s, which I lived, is well worth being romanticized if you were at university or planned to be go to there. Student exchanges in high school, town partnerships, Erasmus exchange programs at university, EuroRail to travel all through the continent on a dime, youth hostels with people from nearly every country in Europe and many others… all the cultural richness and history of this part of the world, all the food and music and feasts available to young people with little money, but lots of time.
Re: The grandparent question. I rarely bother to write long comments but I couldn’t let this one sit.
I am a father of three with a fourth on the way, all under ten years old. I work full time out of the house, my wife works part time from home, we raise animals for meat and eggs (cows, sheep, chickens) and we put up a ton of vegetables and fruits every year. We homeschool our kids because the local public schools are an absolute disaster. We live just outside the small town that I grew up in. We cook essentially all our meals because we value the food quality but also we can’t really afford to eat out. We are frugal. Very frugal. Like, our minivan is over two decades old and we bought it for $1250 and plan to drive it til it dies. Like, we live in a house that lacks flooring and have for five years and even though I am plenty capable of putting flooring in we haven’t because just buying the materials is too much for us. Like, I work full time for the government but I still don’t have health insurance because in our budget that is a “discretionary item” and discretion dictates that I can’t afford it. Like, my wife and I plan on working for the rest of our lives because there is no way we are ever going to retire. We could afford all these things if we were willing to live on an endless stream of credit but we aren’t. All of our parents have a net worth that is well north of a million dollars, this isn’t to complain about them not paying for our lives just to point out the intergenerational wealth gap in the middle class is huge and that wealth sure isn’t flowing in our case.
While we occasionally watch movies together as a family (on the laptop because we don’t own a tv), perhaps once a month or so, our kids are otherwise screen free and can entertain themselves very well considering their ages. My wife and I are lighthouse parents (this term and the fact that it applied to us was pointed out to us the other day). As in, we don’t follow our children around trying to control their whole lives, we are just there at a distance to be checked in with when they need guidance.
We had our friend stay with the kids the other day (we can’t afford a babysitter) and my wife and I went out on a walk for a date. While we were out we laughed about the fact that the last time we were free to go out without the kids was about a year prior. This is despite the fact that my mother lives a mile and half down the road and doesn’t work. Yet she is too busy to watch the kids. When she is not, she can’t think of anything she could possibly do with them except park them in front of the TV. This in spite of the fact that I have told her very clearly that there is no need for her to engage them constantly and that they are perfectly capable of entertaining themselves, they just need some light supervision to make sure no one is maimed or killed. On the rare occasion they end up at her place she must constantly manage their every move, likely because she can’t handle the thought of children having some sort of autonomy in her pristine house that she pays a cleaner to go through once a week.
I could go on with other examples, some more benign (my father), some much more malicious (wife’s father), some trying to help but overwhelmed with their own problems and too distant (wife’s mother), but the bottom line is that here we are trying to bring up the next generation and we are essentially doing it alone at every level. My wife and I pretty much live in a constant state of burnout. We keep going though. Part of our justification of having so many kids is that we want them to have a cohort of siblings who can help each other through life because the extended family will be of even greater value in the future. We try and model that to our kids in how we behave, how we help out our siblings, friends, neighbors etc.
My wife and I might happen to be the exception but we sure seem to know quite a few other folks who are in a rather similar boat. To be fair many of the people with kids we know don’t have family living nearby. We know a number of folks who have quite helpful boomer grandparents. I would hardly say the majority of them though.
My little farming hometown has become a boomer retirement village and I get quite a lot of opportunity to observe the specimens in their element. In my opinion the boomers were robbed of the opportunity to ever actually pass through their childhood archetype and become adults, let alone elders. Their generation won the material lottery but ultimately their lives are superficial and rather empty. It would be pitiable if their generation didn’t cause so many problems for the rest of us. I doubt their passing will be much mourned. In our family we’ll tell the children because we don’t hide such things from them, I doubt it will elicit much response at all and they’ll go about their lives barely noticing. As for my generation I think we’ll just be too damned busy to be able to care much.
HV
Thanks Dagnarus; that’s a good one.
It’s a good day for quotes, this one from the article, “The “operations” may very well be succeeding, but the DoD “patient” never actually gets better: in the American national security forest, every single tree has a detailed fire mitigation plan, yet the forest as such is still burning down.”
And this one from Kunstler about the Europeans taking over the Ukraine war, “Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.”
And this summarizes the article. (And it’s not just a Navy problem.)
“Let us thus put the real nature of the issue at stake in the most blunt terms possible: the Navy is being asked to maintain the dream of the American empire. Lacking a political class willing to seriously acknowledge or address the very real crisis this empire now faces, the burden of that political crisis is being shifted onto the shoulders of admirals and generals who were never intended to take on that role in the first place, nor do they have the capability to do so. Yet even so, by promising some unspecified, undefinable capability at some hazy point in the future, the Navy is, in its own peculiar way, doing the best job it can with the hand it has been dealt. This job cannot be done by delivering a handful of unremarkable Italian frigates, frigates the Navy cannot realistically repair in wartime nor fully crew in peacetime in any case. The Navy is not just building ships; it is trying to shield an increasingly fragile American leadership class from reality, and like the other services, it is paying a ruinous cost to do so.”
One other note from my time in the military. There was no way for NATO match the capacity the Warsaw Pact could put together especially with the supply lines NATO had to deal with, so doctrine was that technical superiority especially in aircraft would make up for it. That never got put to the test which is a good thing.
At the time we had a technical advantage, but as Stalin said ‘quantity has a quality all its own.’ Do we still have a relevant technological advantage?
As to the Navy’s drydock problem, the 600 ship navy got cut down to half that when the Soviet Union collapsed. The shore facilities were cut down proportionally. Now they want a big navy back, but they sold the dry docks, and many support facilities were sold to real estate developers seaside housing being valuable. Navy Base Orlando is gone, Mare Island Naval shipyard is gone, etc. Mare Island built the nuclear submarine I served on. That capability is gone, getting it back is a decade project at least.
One last note, between Pearl Harbor and August 24, 1942 the Navy won only the battle of Midway. Everything else was a loss. I don’t think we have nine months if the shooting starts.
(Coral Sea is counted as a US victory as the Japanese invasion fleet turned back. But the Japanese lost only a light carrier (Shoho) while the US lost a fleet carrier (Lexington) and an oil tanker (Neosho), a ship type in very short supply which sounds very familiar.)
@ Aldarion #372 –
Yes, the Europe I like to romanticize is the one where this kind of travel was possible:
https://www.vagobond.com/extraordinary-vagabonds-1-ed-buryn-vagabond-king-2/
I remember when this book was current, in the early 70s. I’d love to go be a hippie in Greece in the 70s.
Re boccaccio #356:
I agree that most people here will be shocked when things come crumbling down, but I’m not so sure about the idea that on a subconscious level people are less surprised.
My impression is that most people have lost their connection to the land, to their history, to their people and, because they are floating in this kind of nothingness, they have no healthy way to react to a crisis. That’s why we see the narcisissm, anger, violence, etc.
bk.
boccaccio @ 351, JMG said above in his response to you: ” when an empire is contracting, the biggest risk is that its enemies might gang up on it all at once, overwhelm it, and turn an orderly retreat into a catastrophe.” That is precisely what will happen if the insane clowns currently in charge of the Defense Department continue with atrocities like that we just witnessed, or, God help us, decide to invade our neighbors. The reporting I saw has it that 55 people were killed in the course of a “successful anti-terrorist operation”. Them jihadists must have been having a convention. I do not want to see some Nuremburg style retribution imposed on my country, but that is where we are headed.
Thanks so much for mentioning Mark Isham’s Vapor Drawings in one of your posts, it’s my new favorite record. As a total gear head for the stereo’s of the 70’s, and high quality sound reproduction in general, those Windham Hill sampler records look like the perfect thing to play my stereo on. I kind of lost interest in music in the last few years, but was getting into some of the soundscapes/ambient music on Youtube, but it’s not anything like the Windham stuff i.e. high fidelity produced at good studios by real musicians. My JBL monitors are gonna love it.
Re Aldarion #372 and J.L.Mc12 #350
Of course the EU has not been all bad, although if you look at it’s current state there’s not much positive to say. For a long time it was in the background, regulating trade between countries and things like that. It was something far away and we hardly noticed it was there.
Like any brueaucracy it grew steadily, becoming more present and I’m not sure if there is a point in time when it really started going downhill, but I think the banking crisis of 2008 would be a good candidate, with the covid thing and the war in ukraine accelerating it to avalanche level.
bk.
A German couple own an apartment in our building which they use during the German winter. Sometimes when unhappy with African levels of service they will mutter, “In Germany is not like this.” To which I think but do not say, “Just you wait. Soon it will be.”
Given the war talk and the demand that you keep a 3-day emergency supply handy that is current in Europe, I think I know what the plan is. The politicians, having realized what a mess they’ve made in Europe with their woker-than-thou policies, and not having the guts to do anything about it, have decided to start a war with Russia.
The plan is, they will allow Russia to invade Europe, they will surrender within three days, and leave it up to the Russians to sort out their mess. Whereupon they will kiss and make up, and somehow come out on top in a fresher, more European Europe.
So, after reading some of the responses to my odd idea of spiritual sabotage, I’m now intrigued by another concept. So, I’m quite sure that the desperate attempt to create consciousness through AI is doomed to fail, in large part because consciousness isnt generated locally by matter – it incarnates into matter.
However, if one were to invoke a spirit into the body of an AI, could this potentially allow the development of some kind of conscious awareness? I’ve largely abandonded the idea of inviting a spirit or god into the data center I’m building – I have no desire to help or hinder the creation of the grand oligarchic behemoth, it can fail on its own, thank you – but if one, say, created a local AI, and then attempted to call forth a spirit to voluntarily inhabit this form…
Is this utter madness? Or could one incarnate a conscious being in this way? If this doesnt sound like a terrible idea, how could one do such a thing?
JMG and commentariat,
After years of bumping along and encountering Sacred Geometry, Precessions of the Equinoxes, Musical Harmonics, Sacred Calendars, Yugas, Planetary Movements i.e., Venus’s 8 year cycle drawing a 5 petal flower, Flower of Life (Tree of Life), synchonicity, it occures to me that these may all be talking about the same pattern from differen perspectives. Is there one book that connects all these dots, perhaps detailing a unified theory? TIA
Silicon guy @358:
You are correct, however in my opinion a “Law of War” should be written that says: A peacetime navy forgets how to fight shipboard fires”. The USS Bob Homme Richard, a helicopter carrier, caught fire and burned while docked in San Diego Navy Yard. The fires could not be controlled till the point that the ship was declared a total constructive loss. If you can’t fight a fire tied up to the pier of one of the largest navy bases on the planet, where can you?
Also, uncontrollable progressive flooding is a problem; it doesn’t take much to lose watertight integrity in something that used to have it.
Finally the Navy is badly short handed. I hope it doesn’t happen, but when you have casualties on top of everything else, even more of a problem. The seagoing navy is apparently sleep-deprived as it is.
And finally (this time for real) carrier groups do not really belong in restricted coastal waters (stand off and hit them with air strikes). Open ocean and plenty of sea room are good! Near the coast, not a good place to be.
Cugel
#285 Smith
There is a site called, PfanderFilms, which is a Christian apologetics site aimed chiefly Muslims and Islam for some reason. Oddly, they have done a lot of very fine research to see if the claims of that religion stand up to close review (i.e., textual criticism, historical criticism, etc.) and have as a consequence drawn some very fine Islamic scholars into their debates. They suggest that the Quran is a pastiche of things taken from a variety of sources including (Nestorian?) Christian ones. There is a language issue relating to the assignment of vowel marks, as well that points to this. I believe they also look at physical evidence from periods relating to the founding of Islam, including coins and early mosques demonstrating that the direction of prayer possibly at the start not being Mecca, etc. YMMV, but this site at least suggests further avenues for research. And they are scrupulous about sourcing their work and appear to welcome fact-based critiques of it. The situation of that period is not, perhaps, as vague as you are saying.
I’m sorry to start a new topic on the last day of the open post, but here goes; the topic is “Little, Big.” I read it twice recently. On the second reading I was less impressed. The part about Frederick Barbarosa just didn’t seem to fit in. Why was it there? On the other hand, I liked the deliberate attempts to blur the line between human and non-human. I believe there was even a George Mouse who (in addition to the human by that name) was an actual field mouse. And all those other characters with nature names: Fields, Meadows, etc.. A guy who turns into a tree, (like in the scene opening of Dhalgren). And that subway rant, in which we first see the guy, was superb. And other characters being reborn as animals. As a whole I thought it was an almost good book that didn’t quite work for me. And it seemed to be more magical realism than fantasy; more like “100 Years of Solitude” than LOTR, for what it’s worth.
@Soko
This function used to be (and still is) served by going to confession, though I understand Catholics are pretty perfunctory about it these days.
Today begins National Poetry Month. Here is a new one:
MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER
“May I take your order?”
Beef crumbled in the taco
shipped from south of the border.
“Biggie size the fries,”
“What do you want to drink with that?”
Outside the Waco compound
guns held waiting for rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
Cars pull into the drive thru
around the block cops respond to the drive by
the fries are hot, covered in salt
Across the street, at his ex-girlfriends house
just out of the pen, a guy gets re-arrested for assault.
The line is filling up around the burger shack
there is a man in the bathroom shooting up smack.
The manager grabs the Narcan, this happens every day
a schizophrenic drinks endless coffees
talking to himself, praying the voices away.
The computer system goes down, ransomware attack
the burger orders can’t be placed, horns honking
people lose patience, composure and grace
blunt smoke is wafting out the back of a Cadillac,
from the way that its rocking, people inside bonking.
One honked horn too many as tensions escalate
a newsflash on the cellphone says the burger lettuce
is doused in glyphosate. “Let us eat, let us feast,”
people start to scream. Visions of special sauce
(Catalina mixed with ranch) explode in a wet dream.
Without cash no one can pay the bill at the window
civil society erodes because of one broken gizmo.
Outside the dumpster smells like chicken grease
and an old racoon nibbles on cold buffalo wings
the fry cook sneaks outside, takes a few hits from a vape
dreaming of another life, from fast food he must escape.
The chaos of the world is only one gunked up burger away
as the golden arches collapse and fall, true colors on display.
The chaos of the world is only one missing chicken nugget.
How to restore the order, once taken, to fix the hole and plug it?
Anyone still delusional enough to think invading Canada is in anyway a good idea needs to read the this:
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/02/13/Do-Not-Test-Us-Trump/
Please note the references to support from Russia (which would like to have Alaska back). and China, which will take whatever it can get, though Beijing might settle for informal hegemony over the west coast and welcome for a steady stream of Chinese migrants. Just because the current American regime despises alliances and diplomacy does not mean the rest of the world does. That is the fatal weakness of winning through intimidation; eventually everyone you have neglected and insulted gangs up on you.
>if Windows 7 stops working I’m going to have to hold my nose and try Linux, then. My work computer is never, but never, connected to the internet.
That you know of. Does this Win7 box have any bluetooth or wifi transceivers on it? If the Win7 box was never connected to the internet, you weren’t getting “security” updates anyway. Not that I would trust MSFT any further than I could throw them. They’ve demonstrated a deep disrespect of us as a customer over the years.
I’d say there’s no urgent reason to change your setup, but at some point down the road, your win7 box will die and unless you are willing and able to reinstall win7 from a pirated copy, you will have to make a choice. That choice will be, submit to the one-sided relationship of MSFT and let them abuse you like a battered wife – or leave and make your way out onto the mean streets of Linux. They’re gambling most people don’t want to go out on the mean streets of linux and that they can abuse them as much and as often as they want. They may be right.
Just file this away for when you will need to choose. Hey, at least you don’t have to spend 4 hours modifying XF86Config to get a mouse pointer. Yay my dinky PC is now a Sun workstation. The mean streets are at least paved these days. I would say you should’ve been there but looking back, no, you shouldn’t.
@JMG
There is a third option (you do like those Third Ways?) – become a Macolyte. They’re always happy to see new members join. I guess Tim Cook isn’t Jim Jones but like with MSFT, it is a one-sided relationship with you giving and Apple Corp taking. Leaving that particular cult takes some work as well. They don’t like it when you leave.
They also have very strange ideas about how many mouse buttons you’re allowed. The correct and holy answer is one. One is all you Need. Forever and Amen. They get quite tetchy if you question the Holiness of One.
Happy April Fools Day for those who celebrate it. May your pranks be merry and your mischief merciful.
Dear JMG
I’m 66, never liked Tekno and didn’t dance for 40 years.
That changed as I was introduced to this music by friends producing it and automatically started moving to the rhythm. Now a couple of years later I love dancing, do it a lot and became friends with DJs and people want to socialize with me like never before in my life.
It’s mostly girls and guys much younger than myself who like me being on the dancefloor with them.
Often I’m older than their (grand)parents, they couldn’t imagine being on the same dancfloor with. Many want some advice they could not get or expect or even want from their older relatives……
So I do my intuitive best and as non-parent can give back to society!
I feel so blessed and humble and would like to know whereto I could direct my thankfulness.
Thank you very much in advance and bless you!
@Mary Bennett: the Tyee article is absurb, risible, it-is-to-laugh, and so forth.
Right from the beginning. “Don’t test us”, says…. Aisha Ahmad…. surely as non-Canadian a name as one could find. Who’s “we”, kemosabe?
No, this article is meant to cater to the insecurity and weakness of the urban Leftist Canadian who’s never been punched in the face and seriously wants to believe that resisting Bad Guy USA is a thing they’re capable of.
In fact, the only young men in this country capable and psychologically equipped for an insurgency hate the Laurentian Elite and would shrug their shoulders at a US-led invasion. No one’s fighting for Mark Carney.
@377 Mary Bennet
While America might be forced out of the Middle East as an end result of the atrocities we’re facilitating, it will not be invaded and subjugated by another country like the Axis Powers were. We (the govt, people, and/or military) will decide what we do after the loss of empire and associated economic collapse. I doubt the next generation will even learn of the atrocities we committed or enabled during our late imperial period (it could undermine the patriotism the system tries to instill in them) unless the Union breaks apart and some of the new independent states use these war crimes as part of the justification for their later seccession.
Other Owen,
Apple’s one button mouse is a thing of the past. Though the current mouse has no buttons at all, the touch surface acts like it has two. The true acolytes use track pads anyway 😉
The ecosystem is a bit encompassing. If you have an iPhone, iPad, and a laptop or desktop they do all work together if you want them to. Or you can keep them largely segregated as I do. I have an iPad for general surfing and reading, and a laptop. But the real work is done on the Linux box which has twice the memory, six times the storage, and five times more USB ports than the laptop. The CPU performance is practically the same for both laptop and desktop.
Linux mint cinnamon installs easily and doesn’t need too much tweaking. It looks quite a bit like windows 7, or at least what I remember windows 7 looking like. It does get a bit grumpy with old Nvidia graphics cards. Intel built in graphics do fine as do AMD cards. My home file server is a 2014 Mac Mini I picked up cheap and replaced the hard drive with an SSD, then installed Linux. That part was easy. Configuring Samba was not easy but I did get it working. It’s the classic using a sledgehammer to kill a fly problem.
The initial install of Linux usually requires an internet connection to download specific device drivers for your hardware and the most recent updates. Once that’s done you don’t need it to use the PC.
Re windows 7
https://www.drive-image.com/
R-Drive Image – Drive Image and Backup for Windows
Used it for many years to restore borked windows 7 operating systems.. OS partition, data partition and Image files partition as well as image kept on DVD (always use ‘verify’ to check image files integrity!).
Finally dumped win 7 and went to linux mint in 2021… sadly R-Drive Image is not available for linux otherwise I’d still be using it.
Restoring OS from image file avoids need for reinstall from scratch – saved my backside on many occasions.
“The seagoing navy is apparently sleep-deprived as it is.”
Six on twelve off was the watch rotation on the boat. That’s an 18 hour day which doesn’t fit well on circadian rhythms. So what results in the ideal case is six on, 12 off with along sleep period, six on, 12 off with maintenance, entertainment, and a nap, six on again, 12 off with a long sleep period, etc.
Of course you don’t often get the ideal case because your 12 off during the nominal daytime is interrupted by training, drills, field days, etc. Your biorhythms get totally screwed up even if you are getting adequate sleep by total hours. It’s no surprise the Navy’s coffee addiction is legendary.
J.L.Mc12 @350: Not to be tiresome, but “Little House on the Prairie” romanticized not the South but the Western frontier, as the Ingalls family moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota to Dakota Territory. Although, parts of the series were far from romantic–I remember being quite scared by the grasshopper plague, all the more so because when I was a little girl we would visit family graves in South Dakota, and the prairie graveyard swarmed with (what seemed then to be) enormous grasshoppers that would suddenly jump on me and stick to my clothes with their nasty little claws…
Silicon guy:
Sorry, USS Bonne Homme Richard. Between my spelling and the @“**%*# spellcheck!
Cugel
There are still some tickets left for the Ecosophian Convention in Glastonbury, June 6-8. Email me at ecosophianconvention at gmail dot com for more information.
@HippieViking
You’re not alone out there! Keep plugging along. So much of what you relate is also us: cook it all at home, drive cars until the wheels fall off, babysitters??? And yet… wouldn’t have it any other way. The kids are great, and if the future belongs to them that show up prepared for it: it’s theirs.
Kids just got braces: I have deep reservations about this, but the crowding was not trivial, and we bent to pressure from (yes, boomer) grandparents over it (on the promise that they’d help with the costs). Now that we’ve begun… they seem to have forgotten that they offered to subsidize the project. We heard (blinking back a little wave of panic) all about the spontaneous trip to Europe. We said thank you for the usual check for $100 and cheerful suggestion that we should go on a date. We are, not for the first time, working through contingency plans, tightening all the nuts and bolts in our budget, and looking for other possible sources of income. We are resourceful people, and by the grace of God we will find a way through.
I attended a family funeral recently, among the more affluent branch. The younger set is typical urban zoomer: they aren’t getting married, they aren’t having children. They aren’t socializing. They’re lavishing mothering instincts on dogs and getting lip fillers. I used to live there, and that could’ve been my life. Moving away now feels like a lucky escape.
There are a lot of things we are doing with our kids, teaching our kids, *because* we struggle financially. And I am viscerally reminded that while this is hard for us, *it’s very good for our kids*. We have to have priorities. We have to be careful with money. We have to maintain and contribute to our various social networks– not for sport, but because we depend on them and they depend on us. We are interdependent. We talk explicitly about so many things my parents never mentioned: that making yourself useful to other people is important, the way unspoken contracts of mutual obligation function, why you always volunteer to help out, why you make the effort to get along with people even though they’re irritating, how to enforce personal boundaries firmly/civilly, why basic standards of politeness are non-negotiable, and, you know, what are the things that really matter in life. Not just “get good grades, go to college, and you’ll get a good office job” like our parents told us. I think, possibly, our kids are getting a better deal. We buy them more tools and fewer toys (when I think back to the heaps of broken plastic doohickeys…), prioritize competence over grades, and aim for resilience. We’ll know the results of this experiment in fifteen years or so… 😉
God bless you and your family. The future belongs to resilient people with well-ordered priorities who are not shackled by the poor habits of thought and learned helplessness our institutions engender– we are raising them. It’s not glamorous, but it’s important.
RE : @WatchFlinger #145
” I’ve been thinking a lot lately that society at large is trying to solve all of our social problems with software.” – “Seems to not work and maybe computers should just be there for banks and research universities to crunch numbers.”
Exactly. Computers are great at somethings, I love that I can pull up a weather report when ever I want and being able to find information much quicker than manual means is neat, but that shouldn’t a trillion dollar industry. Also accountants are typically very quiet and polite people, that is until you take away their spreadsheet, Excel and the likes made a huge different to that sector for those very reasons.
And yes, there is some decent things you can do with models but again that is a limited sector. Also use the caveat “All models are wrong but some are useful. – George P Box
RE : @Semi-four #168
“I respectfully disagree. Both computing and the internet can progress significantly in theory. I am sure you are aware of Metcalf’s law, which states that the value of a network increases as a function of the square of the number of users/devices.”
It isn’t that there cannot be improvements but I see it very much being in the same space as commercial aviation. Sure jets are more efficient and versatile but in the task of getting people from point A to B quicker, they plateaued in the 1960’s. This is how I see most computer technology. Most use cases for it were sketched out decades back, this have gotten more stable and visually more appealing but a word processor is still essentially the same as decades ago. Internet web browsing is fundamentally not much different than it was in the mid 90’s, if you ignore social media.
More than a few times there have been folks in the retro computer scene that have floated a fair question. Unless you are doing very specific heavy work loads (video editing, 3D graphics, modern games), computers from 20 years ago with a graphics card to handle video decoding should be able to do everything most people want, but bloat by design and negligence means we cannot.
The vast majority of all innovation in the computer space has gone to bloat and trying to exploit the users. That would be the fault of Metcalf’s law, or any such system of power, it assumes that people will use it inherently for good. Anything that can be used for good can also be used for the opposite, short term those that ignore that will benefit, longer term there is blow back.
It is similar to the aviation analogy, planes have gotten more efficient and smoother, but passengers are more crammed in than ever before.
The issue really is that these big companies are still projecting the image of being forefront leaders into the future. They are desperately trying to justify their trillion dollar valuations by any means. Thus “AI” in everything and them pushing it out as “we made machines think!” rather than what they really are. A system that can average a lot of information together and then continue to push out a continuation of said average, that that message doesn’t get the money flowing toward them.
I am still fairly up to date on the new stuff coming through but it all feels like we are so deep in the diminishing returns space. I cannot name the last thing in this field that was really kind of neat. The original iPhone in 2007 before it was flooded with a million apps was kind of neat but even then it more an admiration of technique rather than function. Like if Johannes Vermeer painted picture of a coke can.
There will be another leap to something to keep the Ponzi scheme going. Jaren Lanier who is deep in at Microsoft research is at least very honest about this stuff in saying “AI is just another word used to capture venture capital.” Like VR, AR, HTML5, Web 2.0, Metaverse etc.
@ Silicon Guy #181 – “That is why the rush to AI is going on. All the new processors have a neural processing unit. Your old processor does not.”
Definitely, I figure out where this was all heading about 20 years ago. They started to add things like ‘secure boot’ and unique processor ID’s. Keep changing the target for the software and they can sell both new software and hardware.
I am very cautiously optimistic about the future of Libre/open source software (like Linux), if they can get it tightened up and usable for the average joe, they may have a big audience that have been abandoned because of the silly current business model. But the amount of infighting and constant splitting off into there is “standard” means this is very unlikely.
But then there is…
@JMG: “if Windows 7 stops working I’m going to have to hold my nose and try Linux, then. My work computer is never, but never, connected to the internet. ”
… if you don’t need the internet this is an issue that almost entirely goes away.
Yesterday this was published “Privacy died last century, the only way to go is off-grid”. The head line is to grab peoples attention and to go off grid is the usual kneejerk reaction to things like this but it is just to highlight just how awful these new machines are.
The longer I see people trying these things the more you see them fail. Maybe the idea of trying to save the computer age is a folly in of itself.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/31/privacy_dead_opinion/
@ Chris #366 China’s influence in Australia and New Zealand is very deep but very quiet. This is how Wellington has a 10 story tall Chinese embassy and Australia has Pandas in Adelaide Zoo, by being very friendly to their government. We are both being exploited and benefiting from the imperial wealth pump.
Hey Aldarion
Those are all good points, I think that would be more than enough reason for people to long for the EU. Assuming that the were former middle-class members of it or people who never had to live through any of its nonsense.
Hey Sister Crow
Thanks for the correction, I have only heard of the book secondhand so I know little about it.
>Apple’s one button mouse is a thing of the past. Though the current mouse has no buttons at all, the touch surface acts like it has two. The true acolytes use track pads anyway
I hear that Islam split into Sunni and Shia sects? And then there are those weird Sufis over there in the corner? I don’t know why I thought of that now. Aloha Geniusbar.
Even back during their One Button dogma phase, you could buy an ordinary multibutton USB mouse, stick it in and it would work just fine. That was never the problem. It was the constant disapproval from the Macolytes of my evident Mouse Heresy that turned me off ever having anything to do with Apple again. The hardware itself is OK, the people using it, are not.
DaShui, people have been “solving” the limits to growth that way for a long time. “It hasn’t happened yet, therefore it’s not going to happen” is always popular, especially when you’ve redefined “it” to mean the kind of overnight apocalypse that never happens in the real world.
Peter, thanks for the Retrotopian data point!
Siliconguy, of course. “Stop using carbon so we don’t have to” is the motto of the rich these days.
BK, yes, that’s because what I’m saying is not what you think I’m saying. If you go back over what I’ve written, you’ll notice that I’m not talking about a conscious awareness of historical conditions. Start there, and you might find your way to understanding.
J.L.Mc12, quite probably — but, er, Little House on the Prairie doesn’t romanticize the South. The word “prairie” here generally means the Great Plains out west.
Boccaccio, of course it’s unjust. War always is. The people who suffer from it aren’t the ones who deserve it, the people who benefit from it aren’t those who pay the costs, and who wins and who loses has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong — though of course the spin doctors who write history books like to obscure that afterwards.
Earthworm, okay, I thought it was familiar. I read that books many years ago, and thought it made an interesting but far from conclusive case.
Ethan, thank you for this! I’ve bookmarked it for later reading.
A1, I think all the participants are living in a dreamworld. No, Americans won’t respond to the sinking of a carrier by clamoring for war — they’ll blame Trump for putting it in harm’s way. Most people nowadays in the US are sick and tired of the perma-war. Nor, as you note, are the other players in the game eager to make people like RevKev feel happy! As for sinking an aircraft carrier, it could be done by a volley of hypersonic cruise missiles — that’s what the Chinese use in my novel — but I doubt the Houthis have the necessary ordnance to do anything on that scale.
Siliconguy, remember that in my novel the USS Ronald Reagan was hit by three hypersonic cruise missiles flying at wavetop level — so you’ve got kinetic damage near the waterline as well as the explosive charges — and it still would have made it to port in Nairobi if it hadn’t suffered serious engine room damage that put three of its propeller shafts out of action, and tricky currents hadn’t put it on a sandbar.
Boccaccio, yes, I read about that. Trump’s election in the US, and the sky-high popularity of his policies, has European elites running scared.
Wer, exactly! What they’re going to do once the US leaves NATO and Europe has to pay for its own defense, I have no idea.
Joan, I’ve discussed that possibility as well, but I think Buffett is mistaken; hyperinflation would be more damaging to the elite classes than a technical default on, and renegotiation of, the US foreign debt. All Trump’s actions in office this time around suggest to me that he’s preparing for the latter.
Polecat, you can’t crack it open — you’re just back out on the outside again! 😉
Michael, duly noted.
Jon, er, count me unimpressed. It’s the same kind of bland oversimplification that was used for all those years to insist that continental drift couldn’t be real.
Chris, good heavens. I wonder if they were funded by USAID.
Siliconguy, yep. “Record production” always happens at the top of a Hubbert curve.
Barry, I don’t patronize Amazon for personal reasons, so you’ll have to ask someone who’s published with them.
Soko, (1) I don’t know of anything really comparable, so it’s quite possible that we’re dealing with a novel contribution. As for working on one’s own, the journaling exercises taught by the Order of Spiritual Alchemy have some of the same benefits. (2) The issue is specifically with inner energy work — in Western terms, exercises such as the Middle Pillar exercise — and ceremonial magic. If you’re just doing divination and meditation, you should be fine.
Dagnarus, good heavens, yes. Malcom and I have been on podcasts together, I consider him one of the best essayists and clearest thinkers in the international-affairs scene these days.
LatheChuck, yep. Politics as a form of LARPing is embarrassingly common these days.
M, I’m delighted to hear it! The Windham Hill label is one of my obsessions — I buy everything they put out from the start until they were gobbled up by BMI and got turned into mindless schlock. I’m nothing like such a gearhead as you are, but my stereo system — currently playing a lovely recording of Lili Kraus playing Mozart’s piano concertos, $5.00 for a three-LP set at a local used book store — is a source of considerable delight to me.
Martin, you know, that actually makes more sense than any other theory about the European elite.
Paedrig, calling a spirit into manifestation is a known magical practice, but, er, the spirits you tend to get in such operations are not necessarily benevolent or well-disposed. You might consider looking up a guy named Faust and seeing how that operation worked for him.
Clark, the only attempts I know of to create a unified theory out of that material dragged in flying saucers, evil reptilian elites, paraphrase or worse of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, et al. It could certainly be done without such entertainments, but I don’t know of anyone who’s done it.
Phutatorius, give it a third read in about a year. It’s a remarkably deep and multilayered story. I wonder whether it occurred to you, for example, that we just elected Russell Eigenblick to the presidency…
Justin, thanks for this. Did you mean to submit four copies?
Other Owen, I had my local computer guy take those out. As for Mac, I’d rather not exchange one arrogant and abusive company for another.
Pamouna, glad to hear it. I don’t dance — it’s never been something I enjoyed — but if you enjoy it, hey, have a great time.
Hi John Michael,
For your interest, we’ve got a federal election recently announced for early next month. One of the parties is campaigning on a platform of no new oil and gas, which to my mind is a startlingly naïve approach – we’ve discussed the barbarism of abstraction. Sorry, can’t help this – barbarism being the natural state of mankind… 😊 We’re 90% dependent on imported oil supplies down here, not good.
On that note, as a thought exercise, the old mind began cogitating upon how things work, when there is no widely accepted reserve currency for international trading. Taking the exercise back before the British pound was backed by the military which would, dare I say it, pound the daylights out of any country not willing to accept it.
Turns out, without a widely accepted reserve currency, a great deal of uncertainty gets chucked into the heady mix of international trade. Possibly also the military backing might not work in that environment due to basically long-range missiles. The general conclusion arrived at from the mental exercise was that global trade will continue, but not ever return to the heights we all get to enjoy nowadays. My, oh my. What’s your take on that possibility?
Cheers
Chris
No, I didnt. Sorry about that. I wasnt trying to be OCD…
My browser just did not acknowledge the comment was in the queue as it usually does (seen in red with a number after submitting)… so I thought maybe something was wrong, and tried it a few more times. My apologies for the hassel, and thank you for letting me share it here.
@JMG: Yes, Russell Eigenblick had occurred to me. How do you spell “demogogue” boys and girls? There’s a funny story about my copy(s) of this novel. I first got a copy to read on inter-library loan, not realizing I already owned a copy. Then I bought a used copy on line for my second pass through. Then I discovered I already owned a copy that I’d stored in my basement without reading it and had forgotten about. So now I have two copies.
So… we have a reddish or orange-ish incarnation of Frederick the Great in the White House today; I still wonder how it fits in with the rest of the novel. But, yes, in a year or so, if we are still reading long novels by candlelight, or whatever, I’ll try to give it a third pass. There are five Wednesdays in April. Maybe I’ll nominate this novel for the upcoming 5th Wednesday.
In the waning hours of this month’s open post, I’ll throw this out just in case there are any serious Herman Melville fanatics following along: Has anyone read Melville’s novel “Pierre,” and if they have, do they see any similarities to “Little, Big”? This is a real long shot, but I do see a similarity. Maybe next open post…..
It takes a serious Melville fanatic to get to “Pierre” and “The Confidence Man” (which Melville wrote in the decade after Moby-Dick”) but it’s worth it.
The whole Boomer grandparent issue is close enough to home to merit a meditation on the topic. It’s multi-faceted for sure…
We have what I’d call fairly involved Boomer grandparents, specifically the grandmothers (the grandfathers follow their lead). Each grandma visits at least once every 6 weeks unless a health issue intervenes. This is no small thing, as cost of living has pushed us a 5-hour drive from the cities they live in. They stay no more than 3 days at a time. This makes sense because they always choose to sleep on our living room couch, to maximize time with the kids. One is better at playing actively and creatively with our kids and being flexible with our existing plans; one is much more generous with financial support and practical living advice for us grownups (but hands our kids a tablet to entertain them). I have the philosophy that knowing a wide diversity of genuinely loving adults is the best possible thing for my kids, so I rarely intervene in their choices (even though I HATE that flipping tablet!). I also work very hard to be as welcoming as possible, even though both can greatly annoy me in their own very different ways. I figure this aspect is just… family, as it’s always been. The kids love them both dearly. I am quite sure they see this as the most they can give right now, and it **IS** extremely helpful, and I am grateful to have it. Both have bailed us out of a tight spot multiple times. I have no intention of requesting anything more from them.
But… is it ENOUGH? Well… no, not really. Ironically it is the grandmother whose emotional and social development halted at age 14 (and who I have to directly yet discreetly supervise to ensure my kids are safe…yep….) who is more aware of what we (and the kids!) actually NEED, which is another reliable pair of adult hands that can BE THERE–in an emergency, for Sunday dinners, to support kids who need a non-parent perspective on something, to drive them to an extra-curricular, the list goes on… she would be willing to move out here – to move into the nice low-income senior housing which is across the street from us, in fact! But my step-dad won’t agree because he “likes his independence.” He’s in a slow-motion eviction from their mobile home, which is currently approaching the level of a toxic waste dump, as they dealt with a mouse infestation by using poison, which was effective–but there are too many things in the home (hoarders) for them to remove the mouse bodies, so they are apparently rotting and creating an incredible smell… I could write a thousand words on these particular Boomers, but I trust this anecdote, which happens only to be the most recent, will suffice.
I’ve already made plans to rent a moving van on the day I get the call that they are out on the streets with nothing but the clothes on their backs – they are family, and we will rescue them. It would be a thousand times better to make a plan in advance, but that’s impossible. Neither are truly adults. Neither have any interest in talking about things that make them feel uncomfortable, or the mental wherewithal to follow through on any plans made, especially if it involves sorting through their hoard. I mention this to put their “help” into perspective. I have been an adult helping THEM for some time now, and this will only accelerate.
The other grandmother thankfully is more mature, and we definitely won’t have to swoop in and rescue her. She has enough money to throw around, and often uses it to help us out, which we are grateful for, and which helps give our kids a better life (she covers their extracurriculars). On the other hand, the woman has the most advanced and rabid case of TDS I have ever seen in the wild. I had to end all political conversations for the sake of family harmony. That lack of judgement is not limited to our current President, either. She generously offered to help us with the down payment on a house – which sounded wonderful! At first. Once I scratched the surface of the offer I immediately discovered as many strings attached as a spiderweb, and even more concerning, an inability to understand the social responsibility of money. As in, what if I don’t want to be on the hook for a $3000 mortgage to buy a house she thinks is a “good investment”? Well, I should just grow up and find a way, she thinks. The fallout in the family from “finding a way” doesn’t enter into her mind. My husband is currently in therapy for events that happened in the period of her life where she “found a way” to pay the bills after a divorce she initiated – substance abuse was involved. To her credit, she is no longer an alcoholic; she uses Ozempic instead. Not even suffering most of the reported side effects of the medication dissuades her from it. I genuinely wonder how many years we have left with her… and whenever she particularly annoys me, I try to remember that.
She has no intention of moving closer than 5 hours away for any reason, and though she makes up wild excuses, it’s quite clear that she doesn’t want to be within smelling distance of anyone who might just have voted Republican a few months back. I would call her political obsession ‘quirky’ except it’s directly responsible for her not providing what would be the most helpful to us. Also, it’s mean-spirited towards our neighbors, who have never been anything but welcoming and kind. And I wonder, genuinely, how she thinks her politics will support in any way her own grandchildren who are ALL – to the degree we can tell at this time – white, straight, and male. But let’s be fair–I can actually trust this grandma to safely drive kids in a car! It helps!!
To add to the situation, the two women disagreed so vehemently about COVID policy that they didn’t speak for 2 years. I got used to “grandparent custody” during this time – literally deciding and arranging visiting weekends. Thankfully, both have relaxed and can now interact on a very limited basis. This, too, is helpful.
Here’s a thought: IS this situation normal? Did families in the past commonly have to deal with this level of bullshale!? I love both of these women, but by the gods, they TRY me sometimes. I honestly don’t know the answer. I think there have always been difficult people, obviously; on the other hand, I also suspect there really is something about Boomers. Maybe they got so much without compromising, that they don’t think they have to? Or maybe it’s their internal narratives – “Don’t trust anyone over 30” “FREEDOM is the most important value” “Religion is restrictive and cruel” “If things aren’t happening the way I want in the world, I might as well be dead” – okay, that last one is just my mother-in-law. I hope.
I’m much, much calmer than I used to be about the complete lack of elders in my life – more specifically, anyone who deserves to be called by that title. I miss my grandmother, who passed on at the beginning of COVID at age 101. Go figure – she left this world just as I started to really want to ask her specific questions about “hard times”. She told me a lot of stories about her childhood, though, and I try to remember them. She worked hard to earn the money to complete school – her first husband immediately stole it from her, and after she filed for abandonment, she went back to work and earned it all over again. She worked as a maid for years despite having the 3rd highest grades in her state, as nothing else was available to her. She worked the lowest, least, terribly paid jobs in a home for Down’s syndrome kids until history swooped her elsewhere… she ended up watching the Nuremberg trials while on assignment in Germany, and having key members of the Nazi party as her patients. She was never anything other than the model of class and uprightness to everyone she met. I honestly think about these stories a lot.
That’s all the time I have for a meditation. I hope the personal anecdotes were of interest.
@methylethyl
We were laughing reading your reply. The social pressure to fit in with our declining society, the ephemeral offers of subsidy, the family gatherings that happen to be at a fancy resort in the tropics this year (what’s a few thousand in plane tickets and red eye flight with an layover with three little kids!) Sounds like we have similar problems and similar solutions! I told my wife the other day that being poor is actually looking more and more like a blessing. I think our lifestyle is vastly superior and laying an excellent groundwork for the kids. I wouldn’t trade for money any day of the week.
Blessings on you and yours!
HV
@John Michael Greer
Really, I have found said podcasts yet. Could you point me to a few? I would be interested in listening to them.
Found it https://www.spreaker.com/episode/eurabiamania-80-the-council-of-wizards–64482330
Clarke aka Gwydion, thanks for the tip about Pfander Films. This is the first I’ve heard of them.
JMG Said: “you’ll notice that I’m not talking about a conscious awareness of historical conditions”
I was also talking about a subconscious awareness. Like I said in my later reaction to Boccaccio, I think people have lost their connection to their history, even on that level. That idea may be completely wrong, but I was talking about the same thing.
bk.
JMG, since you are interested in military strategy and geopolitics, what do you make of the recent leak from Hegseth, in which he directs the military to prioritize defending Taiwan against China?
https://en.as.com/latest_news/secret-us-documents-leaked-tensions-with-china-on-edge-n
Does this suggest that maybe Trump is *not* withdrawing the military to North America after all? Or perhaps Hegseth is acting independently on this? It occurs to me that the “leak” might be intentional, and aimed at discouraging China from any such adventurism. Maybe Taiwan will end up as a US territory!
@ Shinjuki
# 410
I hope you dont mind a kind of devils advocate other side to it.
You moved the 5 hours away. And, I totally get affordability and other reasons you would choose to do so. But, you moved away from the helping hands that could have been there. ANd, the answer is, in the past no one expected that parents would also sell up and follow an adult child hundreds of miles away. And which child ? As we generally have more than one. SO, yes, sometimes we do move by one of them, but it is a huge deal.
You dont mention it, but how often do you drive back to the hometown to them ? Because if you were being comparable with the visits, you should be seeing a grandparent quite often, often for 5 hours away in any case ! ( As I mentioned, they way it “used” to be, is the family drive to grandmas, which makes sense too a s she had more than one child, for sunday dinner). So, every 6 weeks, if they each came to you, and you only went back once, that is 3 times in 6 weeks which is every other weekend seeing prandparents.
Anyway, maybe we all are just a safe place to let it out, but otherwise, it is best to practice thankfulness, sounds amazing to have people giving money for kids and driving so, so far in her old age ( any Boomer parent is at least 63 years old, anyone younger is not a boomer….) a 5 hour drive is huge.
Hello JMG,
I am late to the party, but since you haven’t posted again yet, I hope you might answer my question.
I’ve bought and read several of your books. I read through your Pagan Golden Dawn book (not to practice yet, but more to understand the mechanics behind the system).
You seem to have a good understanding of alchemical processes and also the properties of subtle energy.
So my question is this: Given that stones and metals can affect subtle energy fields and alchemical process via natural magic, I wondered if implanted surgical metal can affect someone’s energy body.
For instance, I have four titanium screws fixating my (previously) hypermobile SI joint to my pelvis. Could that affect me in a spiritual or subtle way? Would energy rising from the base of my spine become distorted or harmful in any way, if I were to practice any of the many forms of techniques that raise energy?
I would greatly appreciate your insight.
Thanks for all you do.
Brad
shinjuki (#410) asks “Is this [her] situation normal? Did families in the past commonly have to deal with this level of bullshale!”
“Normal” seems to me to be a harmful myth, that there are families which are admirable, functional entities over many generations. Yes, there are a few such families — I would think, VERY few — but they are hardly the norm.
I know a great deal of my own family’s history on both sides back to the earliest immigrants in the early 1600s from England to New England and from France to Quebec, in the early 1700s from Germany to Pennsylvania, in the middle 1800s from Denmark to California, and all the various transcontinental wanderings of their many descendants.
For the most part, they have been survivors rather than paragons of virtue or idealists. (Actually, the two things seem incompatible to me: being a paragon of virtue or an idealist is hardly a survival trait. Rather the contrary.) And that is why we have passed down their stories across the generations, to help their descendants grow up to be survivors (instead of idealists or paragons of virtue), able to learn valuable lessons in the school of very hard knocks that human life often is, and always ought to be.
Two of the men left their families and went out into the world on their own at a very early age, one on my grandfathers when he was 10, the other, a step-grandfather, when he was 13. Both of them survived and did fairly well for themselves as adults, though neither ever got even close to well-off. One was a boilermaker and machinist. The other ended up an auctioneer dealing in low-value intestate estate sales, after trying his hand at many other trades first: a carnival sharper, a stunt-man and actor in the silent films era in California, an auto mechanic and driver, a furniture buyer for an crooked Oakland auctioneer and fence, and so forth.
Further back, one ancestor (a French-Canadian named Louis Lussier) shot and killed a British military officer whom he and his compatriots had captured during the “Patriots’ War” of the 1830s. Then he was captured by the British, imprisoned in Montreal, and sentenced to hang for the murder. Yet he escaped prison in some still unexplained way, and fled across the border to safety in St. Louis, MI, where eventually he was joined by his wife and children. Finally, some decades later, he made it back to Canada, where a daughter of his eventually married a leading French-Canadian anti-British politician.
Much further back, an ancestress named Mary Harvey, the only child of a wealthy British father, was taken to New England in the 1700s by an unscrupulous uncle after her parents had died, and abandoned there by that uncle, who then returned to Britain, claimed that his niece had died in Massachusetts, and managed to take her inheritance for himself. She supported herself for a while by menial work, then married a forge-man passing through town and ended up a housewife in Vermont, still hoping to her dying day to retrieve her stolen inheritance somehow, but without success.
Further back than her, even, there was Isaac Allerton, who came to New England in 1620 on the Mayflower, was assistant governor for a while in old Plymouth Colony, but could not go along with Governor Bradford’s plans for the Colony, befriended both Thomas Morton (of Maypole fame at Merrymount) and Roger Williams, and settled in New York (then still New Amsterdam) and in New Haven (not yet a part of Connecticut). Not long after his death his widow, Joanna Swinnerton, successfully hid two of the regicide judges (Whaley and Goff, who had signed King Charles I’s death warrant) from Crown agents sent to apprehend them by King Charles II.
And so forth and so on …
None of them pursued what is now considered a “normal” family life, thank goodness. But each of them survived until he or she died, and their stories are their descendants’ precious heritage.
shinjuki-
I loved your family stories. Nothing so dramatic in my line.
I’m not sure if you will see this, but do you have social gatherings or in house learning events or zoom classes? I don’t have much but would even like to ask questions via a paid phone call. I figured this was worth a shot. I appreciate your time
Kennis, I have certain local events here in Rhode Island, but if you want to ask questions about any of the esoteric traditions I’m involved in your best bet is my Magic Monday open post on my Dreamwidth journal, https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/ , every Monday. Any question that comes in between midnight Sunday/Monday and midnight Monday/Tuesday, with a few exceptions, gets an answer from me.
Hi John,
I am reading “The Carnelian Moon”. And I see that you placed Dr Moravec, in Washington DC for a while. Did you base him partly off of Regardie?
Thanks,
Kevin.