This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly (well, more or less!) open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply — no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank — but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic. (Well, with one exception: there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the current virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.)
Also, a reminder — submissions for the Gristle Cli-Fi Contest will be closing on Monday, November 1. I’ve got quite a selection of first-rate stories but there’s still room in the anthology for more. Details? You’ll find them here.
With that said, have at it!
Hello,
I celebrate All Souls Day and say a prayer for those who have passed.
I wondered if there might be some memorial tradition to be developed among the commentariat. I know I miss some of the people here who have passed, Bill and Shane in particular.
If this might be appropriate, perhaps a list could be developed for those commenters who have passed along with an annual day of remembrance. This time of year seemed like the right one so it seem like a good time.
You’ve mentioned many times prayer requires permission, so I want to be mindful of that, but it also occurs to me that in the thousands and thousands of comments, one of the people who passed gave permission and I missed it so thought of the crowd-sourced list.
Putting it out there for consideration.
KMA
John–
You and the other here may have seen some of these stories already, but I’m trying to figure out how Condaleeza Rice can be proclaimed to be a white supremacist and how repairmen fixing radiators turned into a crisis?
https://www.yahoo.com/now/condoleezza-rice-crt-stance-proves-222000707.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-college-student-apos-angry-120043781.html
I’m admittedly confused by this world I’m living in today. Or at least, some of the people who are living in it. We’re all are looking at the same thing yet coming to vastly different conclusions, each of us perplexed by the other’s lack of comprehension of what seems patently obvious to us. How can such a society hold together?
Dear John (and all),
I’m a father of two (1 month, 2 yrs) and am part of the upper middle class (Canada) as a university professor in engineering. I’ve been collapse-conscious ever since I read what I consider to be your magnum opus : The Ecotechnic Future, yet I deliberatly decided to have children despite “getting it”. I know that you and Sara decided not to, but I would still like to ask you the “top things” that you would do to make your children prepared for the future if you had any. I don’t think that teaching them how to brew beer is a top priority when they reach the age of five, so what would it be for you?
The reason I specify my income class and my profession is to say that I can afford picking up hobbies that may be out of reach for some (machining, forging, etc.) and bring my children along eventually and also because I have a strong technical background (mechanical, electrical and software) to which you can tailor your response if need be.
Be safe,
Do you think the current chaos in Haiti is following the larger pattern of collapse in complex civilizations? Gangs that have been used by political figures and business elites for decades are now extorting their former employers and setting up on their own. It looks a lot like the gangsters and narcos are Haiti’s Visigoths and Vandals. Is Haiti’s collapse a preview of coming attractions in American cities?
I’d be interested to hear JMG’s and anyone else’s thoughts on Christopher Alexander (Timeless Way of Building, A Pattern Language) and/or folks inspired by him. From my point of view, it looks like his attempts to wrest architecture/urban planning out of its love affair with modernism were wholly unsuccessful, but I’d be thrilled to hear about any counter-examples.
It’s easy to see identity politics as a strategy of divide and conquer. I think it’s something more specific with a particular historical precedent.
In the history of American racism there was the One Drop Rule – where if someone had any black ancestry, they were considered black. Meanwhile in South America there was th Casta system. That had over 100 categories for every possible mix of ethnicities. Each had their own sterotypes, rights and restriction, enforced by law. It didn’t make colonialism and slavery any less bad, just really, really complicated. It hammered many more wedges into the population and made infighting easier and resistance harder. It’s easy to see how the growing mass of identies, genders, orientations, and so on could grow into that. Especially as legal recognition of definitions becomes more pervasive.
There seems to be another level to it as well, that I think of as ‘the complicity plan’. Each of these sub-groups will be offered tainted victories by the authorities. Like when someone offends one of these groups and loses their job or faces criminal charges. But the target chosen will have either done something minor like a poor choice of words, or be completely innocent. Then if that group chooses to accept this as ‘justice’ – two things happen. Firstly any others who notice will realise this group is willing to bing down the hapless or blameless. They will become far less trusting and any real solidarity will be much less likely. Second, the group who accepted this victory are now complicit and tied to the establishment who delivered it. Meanwhile, the real, most serious oppressors and abusers carry on unchallenged.
I’ve noticed lately that the rudimentary AI in devices keeps attempting to anticipate what I want next, be it a word or action. Things as simple as “are sure you want to use that phrasing” to the Lyft app not grasping that the EXACT address I entered is, indeed, where I want to go, while offering suggestions which are NOT the address. Which leads me to wonder how easy it will be to have these programs alter our thinking? After all, AI is the Christ Of Progress, so trust it completely. No wonder Stephen Hawking said that AI is the greatest threat to the survival of the species.
I think you and your readers may find this review of Ross Douthat’s new book interesting. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ross-douthat-the-deep-places-tick-bite-prophet-lyme/ It’s about Lyme disease and the limits of “science-based” medicine, among other things. I have not read the book, but I found the review fascinating.
Do you happen to know the name and website of the cover artist for A Voyage to Hyperborea? I might be in the market for someone who can do good nautical cover art.
If there are any readers from the Seattle area who are interested in starting a discussion group to talk about some of the themes of this blog (or better yet, are a member of such a group that already exists), please contact me at roysmithedmonds(at)gmail(dot)com. I would love to have such a group to participate in. Thanks!
A question for all the old-school sf aficionados on here: Are you familiar with the work of the late sf satirist Robert Sheckley, and do you think he would be able to write his brand of satire in today’s world if he were still alive? During the 1950s and `60s, Sheckley was one of the sharpest minds and best humorists sf had. Author Neil Gaiman has described Sheckley’s novel Dimension of Miracles as being clearly a precursor–in its absurdist style of humor and even some specific jokes–to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which it preceded by nearly a decade. My favorite moment in the novel comes when the hapless adventurer at the heart of the plot meets the contractor who built Earth for our god. Ah, yes, I remember that one, recalls the contractor. That one was a budget world; built it in six days. Sheckley was one of the first authors I encountered when I first began to seriously read sf in my late teens, and I’ve been a huge fan of him ever since.
John–
On a more geopolitical topic, I’m curious as to your thoughts (a well as those of the commentariat here) on the US-China relationship vis-a-vis Taiwan. My current assessment is that China is getting its chess-pieces into place (working the long game, as I see China as culturally adept at doing), and when the time comes, the US will find itself in no position to act, though loud denunciations from the sidelines are highly likely. I don’t know if H-hour is anytime soon, but I’d guess it isn’t terribly far away, as the Chinese leadership has to be taking notice of our accelerating decline in capabilities.
I’ve been meaning to share this with you and the commentariat here since it was shared with me a few months ago – “100 bad habits learned at school”. If anyone needed a handy checklist of how school warped you into a less than full human being, here it is https://supermemo.guru/wiki/100_bad_habits_learned_at_school
I know its been fashionable to blame parents, society, race, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other things on why people are so much the way they are today, but what this man has compiled matches my experience of my homeschooled children.
I wish I had journaled more of what homeschooling did to me! Its probably better told through fiction than non-fiction though.
Hi John,
Recalling your earlier essay on wealth and illth, I’d welcome a discussion about the ways that illth has invaded our society. Environmental damage is one example of illth that’s obvious to anyone on the receiving end of it. To me, a lot of sources of illth is making a good artificially more expensive. Big Pharma, for example, has been accused of suppressing natural or at any rate less expensive cures, in order to force the public to purchase far more expensive cures with side effects that the alternative cures do not have. To the extent this is true, we have several forms of illth: the price difference between natural cures and the synthetic pill, as well as the cost of the consequences of the side effects. Then there is the illth we bequeath to posterity: mismanaging scarce resources today can create unnecessary poverty tomorrow. On the other hand, collapse can remove certain forms of illth; e.g., certain addictions that are mediated by technology. It can also halt or slow other forms of illth; e.g., certain modes of environmental destruction mediated by energy-intensive technology.
JMG,
I am interested in your take on how our growing epidemic of homeless folks living in tents and such will play out in the ongoing collapse. I understand all the reasons for this ( and yes I know it is just a polite term for poverty), and that the progressive dreams of building enough free and low cost housing to solve the problem are not going to pan out in an era of diminishing resources. But how would history educate us on the next stages of this “predicament”. Will me see parts of West Cost cities turned in to Favellas? or will the poor rise up and force a change in real estate and financial norms?. I am guessing their are other possibilities that I don’t see.
@Jeff Russell: Take a look at the New Urbanists. I think they took/take some inspiration from Alexander (who is indeed awesome!) Also, some permaculturists have started using a “pattern language” approach to city planning.
There are some good articles coming out by James Howard Kunstler and others here on New Urbanism:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/
Take a look at Peter Bane’s book “The Permaculture Handbook: Garden Farming for Town and Country” for someone applying pattern languages to a household.
Your inspirational picture of the flying dog reminds me of a couple examples of things that are technically possible but completely impractical. The personal air taxi has a number of examples at the moment. The most practical one I’ve seen is the Jetson One. This is configured as a single person ultralight aircraft so the operator doesn’t need to be a licensed pilot. So if I lost 30lbs so I could be within the weight limit, and scraped together $100k, I could get in line to get a kit that I could assemble into something that could keep me in the air for all of 20 minutes. Thanks, I’ll walk.
The next impraticality is from a company called Cometeer. They promise to brew perfect coffee, freeze it into convenient pucks and send them to you to defrost and enjoy. As one of the commenters on the review I read said “Congratulations, you’ve invented Sanka”.
I look at these examples and feel a strange sense of unease over the fact that the local big box store can’t keep my favorite brand of toilet paper in stock.
With the mainstream media and the PMC class stuck in their positive reinforcement loop, many authors, intellectuals, academics, etc. have turned to publishing their own blogs/podcasts and many of them offer premium content for a subscription fee.
This freedom to publish is great of course and essential in these times.
Where in the past I subscribed to one or two main stream content generators (all my MSM subscriptions sadly passed away in the past year), I now find that I need half a dozen or more subscriptions to get the information that interest me and that I think is important.
I’m wondering where this ‘spreading out’ of the money available for content subscriptions will lead. Concentration of content generators (in a newsroom for example) must have had some benefit; is this lost for the lone wolves running their own content platforms? Is it possible that content generators might in future band together again to pool their resources and maximise their access to the money available from readers/listeners/watchers?
I would be interested to hear what the commentariat thinks, especially those who run their own subscription services.
@JMG and commentariat
In last week’s post, I asked about the role that electroculture could possibly play in the agricultural base of an ecotechnic society and got my query clarified by our host. There’s one question related to it that I have, and that is – if, as some electroculture proponents claim, that electroculture increases the quality, quantity and diversity of soil biota, could this have been put to work by ancient civilizations by way of building megaliths, temples and stepped pyramids, whose design enabled them to act as some sort of ‘atmospheric electricity generator’? I’m thinking here about the wonder-soil terra preta, which contains a diversity of soil biota not known in any other soil (and to a very large extent, even to modern microbiology), and that it was developed by ancient Amazonian societies who were indeed capable of building large cities, and even megaliths, temples, etc. Could electroculture as practiced by the ancient Amazonians be the secret behind what makes terra preta indeed ‘special’?
I feel like I’ve been too focused on the falling-apart recently, and that it is too easy in such times to find worrying historical parallels and to join the ever-growing ranks of those consumed and motivated by fear.
I recently launched a new project which I hope will serve as an antidote, as a reminder of our interconnectedness and our participation in the biosphere of our planet, as a way of beginning to build something new as a society built on the fantasy of Progress begins to disintegrate.
https://dendroica.substack.com/
Thanks JMG for maintaining sane spaces in insane times!
Pseudomorphoses and the Land
Hello all. I’ve been thinking about some of the comments from last weeks post, like Justin’s (#281) about Hinduism and the discussion of a possible Hindu pseudomorphosis. And all the comments on what America’s next pseudomorphosis might be -where it might come from. Can there be more than one pseudomorphosis? This strikes me as a possibility because of the size of America. I could see California and the west in general embracing some pseudomorphosis from an Asian country -possibly India. Whereas the heartland I could see the second pseudomorphosis coming from people embracing Orthodox Christianity and that kind of culture. In the South it could be something else still, such as further fusion of Carribean and African diaspora magics with Appalachian folk beliefs, as already has occurred in Hoodoo but with a more widespread adoption. Also a good dose of snake handling.
The way the various parts of the land effect consciousness, will I suspect, have an influence on what types of pseudomorphoses occur where.
What do others think?
I hope what follows doesn’t sound trite or banal, just want to share a recent experience. In the last few weeks I’ve been under a great deal of stress due to the ongoing world events and some personal circumstances. I know when I’m particularly stressed out because I get a type of heartburn that makes me painful gas and makes my chest feel like it’s burning. And this was basically all of last week.
On Friday evening I just laid down, and tried to quiet the mental chatter, the constant imaginary debates about current events with fictional sparring partners, the anxiety from wondering what’s coming next, the jarring sense of being politically isolated from most of the people I know. I laid down and reflected and ended up after about an hour realizing just how afraid I was of it all, a kind of deep, powerful fear underlying all the streams and permutations of my daily thoughts. Since acknowledging its presence and recognizing the source of it, it seems to have faded quite a bit, and the heartburn has gone.
Maybe this is new to me and not to anyone else, but it showed my own role in creating this anxiety. It looks like I may finally be ‘getting’ Epictetus and the Stoics, turning it from an intellectually grasped concept into something practical.
Putting that out there for what it’s worth. At the moment, I’m in a bit of a period of respite from the fallout of everything going on, probably a temporary lull and I may be singing a different tune as events continue to unfold and affect me and others close to me, but it was as good a moment as any to try and ground myself.
Hi JMG, apologies in advance, as this ended up kind of long.
First I want to say thank you for publishing your various writings on catabolic collapse, polytheism, and historical cycles. They’ve been exceptionally helpful to me as a young person in these trying times, for making sense of the world around me. This is obviously my first post on this blog.
I have never regarded myself as a particularly religious or superstitious person, but the concept of synchronicity you’ve talked about in the past has given a name to something I’ve noticed in my life more and more over the past several years, and I have taken some interest in the topic as a result.
I’m posting today because I had a question regarding a particular set of synchronicities that I wanted your perspective on. I’ve already sort of drawn my own conclusions, but I want to kind of “check” myself to make sure I’m not grasping at straws here or just plain delusional.
…What would you say it means when synchronicities start to cluster around a particular person? Specifically, a stranger that I do not know on the internet.
The synchronicities I’ve experienced regarding this person are quite eerie. For reasons I’ll get into later, I’m not sure how much detail is safe to provide, but a number of significant dates of theirs have lined up with significant dates of mine, with additional “random events” occasionally happening to them on those dates that seem to “reference” my significant event that is happening simultaneously.
To provide an example (purely hypothetical but generally representative):
1. The anniversary of my X is coming up
2. This person schedules a major event of theirs on my X anniversary
3. On the date, they relate an anecdote where they received a unprompted phone call from a close friend that morning asking why they scheduled their event on their X anniversary.
4. This person is confused because it is not their X anniversary and the topic of an X is completely irrelevant to what is going on. It is laughed off as a misunderstanding.
Something along the lines of this effect has happened multiple times, though not always to this degree of explicitness. This example is probably on the stronger end of what I’ve experienced, most of the other synchronicities were a little easier to write off as potential coincidence. It’s the seeming proliferation of them creating this apparent overarching pattern that gives me pause.
This person was “in my orbit” so to speak in that I was already sort of following what they were doing out of a mild interest, but since the synchronicities started happening I’ve been paying closer attention and have discovered that we share a great deal in common, including interests, sense of humor, taste in art and music, deeply-held values, and so on. We even share some odd habits and preferences. I was not aware of any of these commonalities prior to the synchronicities, so it feels a bit uncanny, to say the least.
My understanding of synchronicities is that they are supposed to offer guidance, so at this point I might assume the guidance on offer was something like, “You have a lot in common, try interacting with this person and forming some sort of connection with them?” However, there is a complicating factor.
This person is a small-time public figure. I don’t know how much I can say without risking revealing the identity of this person in a public forum like this, but they have on the order of 100s of thousands of followers and their content similarly tends to get views in the 100s of thousands. I strongly suspect in the future that this will grow into the millions.
That is to say, if I were to state my intent to befriend this person to any reasonable individual, they would think me a delusional fan, and understandably so, in my opinion. I am 100% certain this person does not know or actively think about the fact that I exist, and I have a fairly healthy social life with no particular desire to form unhealthy one-sided relationships with public figures on the internet, so this leaves me very confused as to what I’m supposed to be doing with this information.
However, I’ve only seen positive effects in my life so far from following this person more closely (besides the confusion and associated mental distress), and even see opportunities for personal development here that would address some longstanding issues I’ve had in particular areas of my life. Specifically, I think being involved in this person’s online community will encourage me to pick up art again, something I have wanted to do for a very long time, and I’ve been receiving a variety of “nudges” in my life lately to do just that.
So, that is the (tentative) conclusion I sort of reached after brooding about it for a few weeks, is that I should just be involved and make art and wait and see what happens.
However, though I (think I) know what to do, I still don’t know what to make of any of it. Do I have some sort of connection to this person or is that just an assumption I’m making? Should I be going out of my way to try and meet this person eventually? Is that unrealistic or inadvisable? Should I just pay attention to them and expect nothing else? Perhaps this whole thing is supposed to be one-sided and my personal development is the end-goal? Maybe I should just stop thinking about it so much? Am I just delusional and need to “wake up”? I don’t know.
Thoughts would be appreciated. I can’t think of a single person in my life I could ask about this who wouldn’t think me daft.
I’m seeking answers from pretty much anyone , but does anyone know of any reliable books on canning? Im interested in learning how to preserve food, however I have no clue where to start, and the internet is not helping. I can cook and bake, but as far as being able to can, that’s a whole other science that I have far less experience in.
Besides that, I feel that something’s about to break or happen for the better, there seems to be far less stress despite the political and social situations that are currently plaguing every day life. I know that the veil is thinning because it’s spooky season, but I doubt that would have any affect. Though would it?
I’ve been taking a biology class this semester titled “Sharing the Environment”, and we had recently touched on a subject that reminded me greatly of a post here from a while ago. The instructor had mentioned the Quaternary Megafauna Extinction, where ancient hunter-gatherers overshot their resource base of large mammals and suffered for it — a similar situation to our modern use of oil, when you think about it. However, the part that got me thinking was when he mentioned extinction rates across different continents, and got to Africa: its extinction rate of large mammals was much lower, because they had evolved alongside humans. That part reminded me of your post about the zebra mussels in Lake Erie, where nature adapted to human abuse of thr environment, recovering and going in directions inconvenient for business as usual. I was curious as to how these large mammals were able to adapt to and counter human hunting tactics, but then, the industrialists who polluted Lake Erie are probably confused to see the zebra mussels doing something similar. There have been lots of interesting parallels to the themes of this blog in that class — though, the instructor still seems to think that electric cars are a wonderful replacement for gasoline-powered vehicles…
A minor item of potential amusement/interest…
While reading another blog linked to by a commenter on a previous post here, I stumbled across a notion I hadn’t heard of before: the so-called “F Twist” principle in economics, coming from no less of a figure than Milton Friedman himself. It says that it doesn’t matter if a theory has unrealistic assumptions as long as it makes good predictions.
Now if only that same courtesy were extended to, oh, say, other systems of making predictions that don’t have the official stamp of approval from contemporary academics and scientists.
@Frank Kaminski
Ive never actually *read* anything by Sheckley but his books are a favorite of mine at https://librivox.org/
where one can find audio books in the public domain.
See https://librivox.org/author/741?primary_key=741&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results for a list
As what comes to All Soul’s Day, I just read this: https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/
It seems its history is more complex than just Samhain -> Halloween.
Conspiracy Culture and a New Satanic Panic
I feel like I am sensing the stirrings of a new satanic panic among the conservative end of conspiracy culture. It is something I want to pay attention too, because I see in these conspiracists writings or talking, a lot of finger pointing at the occult and esoteric side of things and almost immediately labeling it “satanic”. True, there have always been a lot of people misinformed about occult practice and thought. So I’m not totally surprised by this. Yet, I’m also reminded of the discussion around Paul Kingsnorth here a couple weeks ago and his use of Aleister Crowley as a whipping boy. As the 2nd religiosity stirs and some move back to orthodox Christian beliefs, I have concern about a second satanic panic and how that might effect occultism and occultists here in the U.S. Conspiracy culture which use to be a fringe subject is now mainstream. The internet has made it easy for people to do “research” and find “connections” to things, all without actually having to read books or dig into actual documents. I’m used to those who refuse to educate themselves thinking that a pentagram is a satanic symbol. As unreflective conspiracy culture further spreads into various orthodox and fundamentalist Christian corners, I speculate on a return of the “everything occult and everything that isn’t christian is satan” mindset… Granted, that never went away for some!
I see talk of how the Masonic pillars of Joachim and Boaz are connected to evil occult rituals, etc. in some of the new conspiracy minded folks, all amped up from the Q psyop. (Yes, that may sound like I am conspiranoid as well!)
Perhaps it is just one of many moral panics rolling through our culture, and those who get into these avenues of thinking
Now, I have dipped my toes into conspiracy reading on and off my whole adult life. I do think there have been real conspiracies. Yet I don’t think everything is connected into one vast overarching conspiracy. Luckily I read my Robert Anton Wilson and he absolved me of that sin. He also made me a pope and then excommunicated me, so now I have my own religion too, but that’s a different story. David Icke and the reptillians and stuff of that nature -maybe good for bathroom reading, but I can also find better bathroom reading.
I do think people get together in secret to plan stuff that may not be in the best interest of other people or groups. People do some nasty stuff to each other, no doubt. There are dark and destructive forces in the world, I don’t disagree. We have been lied to by government, church, and corporate powers. I don’t disagree. Should human trafficking rings be investigated, no doubt they should. I don’t disagree there either. I just don’t think it all connects back to various cabals of satan worshippers, or one big cabal of satan worshippers, which I’m seeing more and more talk of in various circles.
The social media hall of mirrors and reflections doesn’t help the matter.
Pick your reality tunnel wisely, is all I can say now. But I’m curious to here what others think of this and other moral panics of the day.
And regarding one of the main topics of this blog, the collapse of values in America, the main ideologue of CCP saw it already 30 years ago:
https://palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/the-triumph-and-terror-of-wang-huning/
https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/america-against-america
Copper,
The Ball Blue Book is the Bible on safe modern canning techniques. IIRC you live in the state directly south of mine, so simply find your County Extension Agency and ask for one. They’re pretty inexpensive. Your County Extension Agency will also test your pressure canner gauge for you if you have a gauge kind, and can do a seal inspection for either style. (Ball Blue Book is not actually the title, nor is the cover of the current edition blue, but I’ve never heard anyone call it anything else.)
Read the entire front material and start with a simple recipe like canning tomatoes in a boiling water bath, remembering always to adjust for altitude, as described in the front of the book.
After you have used the modern techniques a while, you may want to get into older, now considered unsafe, methods, or older recipes. If you do, remember that one reason those have fallen into disuse is because modern varieties of fruits and vegetables have been bred for different characteristics than when those methods were commonly used, and procede with great caution. For example, from the time I started canning as a child in the 1980s to now the acid content of commercially available tomatoes has droped so much that adding acid (usually vinegar) is now in the standard instructions, which it was not back then.
@copper #24
https://extension.msstate.edu/sites/default/files/publications/publications/p1152_1.pdf
Here is a brief guide, and I know the Ball company publishes a guide to home canning that can be found easily. You might even find free pdfs if you know where to search.
On last weeks discussion of nascent tamanous I do agree with a few posters that the beginnings of that spirit can be found within the thruhiking communities of the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail. Each year there is a “class” of hikers who attempt the journey. The generations of “classes” before them provide guidance online, through books, guidebooks, owning businesses along the trail and offering services to the current years hikers. While on the trail the thruhikers (generally those hiking the whole length of the trail in one year) tend to be a somewhat insular group united by their shared experiences and shared spaces that have over the 4-6 months it takes to hike the trail.
The thruhikers are joined on the trail by a slew of others who are within but not at the center of the thruhiking community but contribute to it and participate within it to a different extent. Section hikers who are attempting to hike the trail in several sections over the course of years or a lifetime. Trail crews and ridgerunners who perform the thankless job of building and maintaining the trail and its shelters. Trail angels who provide free food, drinks and rides at spot where the trail crosses roads. Day hikers just out for the day.
The community is always ebbing and flowing with the mileage, pace, injuries and personal whims. You might walk with someone for days, camping together for many nights and then not see them for weeks. Together but apart.
Everyone is on a separate journey but on the same general track. Although everyone’s journey is different there are milestones of places, a language and traditions are shared that somewhat unite the experience. And how they make their way on their journey is their business and no one elses. As the saying goes “hike your own hike”.
@Piper at the Gates Cometeer sounds a lot like the Silicon Valley start up Juicero that sold a $400 wifi enabled appliance that squeezed a prepackaged juice package into your cup.
Hello, everyone. I’d like to offer this link to a song called Oro Se do Bheatha Bhaile performed by Seo Linn. The lyrics are in Irish, but I gather from some of the comments directly below the video (especially by D Glen) that the chorus means something like “Listen up, your heritage back home”. Translation isn’t needed to understand the song as a battle cry. The power and intensity of the lead singer is something to behold. May the song strengthen all who need it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzXswoAUi0U
Chris in VT
I have found your insights to extremely useful, especially when I don’t agree with you. One of your very useful insights is that collapse is a long process and that we should not expect an all encompassing apocalypse. Yet, decline is happening and there many signs that it is going on. There is also a lot of noise that may not have anything to do with the ongoing decline.
Question: any suggestions on how to distinguish between signal and noise? I suspect patience is a good start.
Thanks again for your insights
JMG
Joke circulating in Quebec: Bovid-19 the disease that turn people into cattle.
Thing is, in French it comes into: Bovid-19 la Maladie qui rend les gens en vaches
I know you can read french, but not most of your readership.
And the second meaning comes out as Vaches = bitchy
Hi JMG,
I just read your Weird of Hali series (all seven books) and just wanted to say thanks for the very lovely read. It’s nice to have a fantasy series that’s both creative and turns so many tropes on their heads and gives them a good shake. Are you completely finished with this world or might we see something else in this setting in future?
Re: Copper #24
Canning is very straightforward. I recommend the Ball Blue Book for starters, and the National Center for Home Food Preservation has a good collection of recommendations and recipes. https://nchfp.uga.edu/
There is definitely a strong PMC attitude of “you must follow the recipe exactly or you will die of botulism” which makes people afraid to get started, but as you gain confidence you will realize that botulism was extremely rare even before academia secured a stranglehold on home canning, and that if you understand the general principles you can get away with a fair amount of creativity.
I believe that the United States is going to default on its debt very soon.
Dear JMG, Recently I read Hofstadter’s _Anti-Intellectualism in American Life_, and found it fascinating and helpful. As an exercise in the history of ideas and letters I found it very persuasive, but I noticed he didn’t really discuss television at all and looked more into the conflicts between various strata of the population.
The advent of television — which is doubtless a cultural product and thus ‘feminine’ according to the cultural schema Hofstadter discusses — seems to have made the old, and often admirable American democratic anti-intellectualism rather more malignant and destructive. It also seems to have queered the symbols of American masculinity — many young men have told me in a bragging tone “I don’t read books.” When I hear that, I hear the distant echoes of an old heroic masculine ideal still faintly present: an idea of a distinction between feminine culture and masculine action and accomplishment. That said, I’ve heard far fewer young men brag about not watching television. Television, a cultural product as fruity and staged as the fruitiest of cultural products — musical theatre! — gets a pass when it comes to masculinity.
It seems to me than that a major part of the crisis of masculinity is the incredible crisis of television in American life. Whatever the merits of books, it seems to me far more masculine to, say, read books for 8 hours a day rather than to watch television 8 hours a day! Many Americans do watch television 8 hours a day, and something like two thirds — at least according to one survey I read — never read for pleasure! It’s strange to me that in American society television gets a pass as normative whereas intellectually demanding books and theatre and other cultural products do not. Do you have a sense of what’s going on here to account for this massive double standard?
KMA, I’d certainly be willing to see that. I miss Bill, Shane, and Onething, among others.
David, it can’t. Next question? 😉
IG, I have no idea. Since I have no living children — my only child died at birth due to medical malpractice — it’s a topic I’ve left to those people who actually have the chance to raise children, and so have some idea of the possibilities and problems involved.
K.A., it’s the standard pattern of dissolution on the borders of empire. The US empire and its European predecessors insisted on putting Western-style political and economic systems in place all over the world, whether or not those made any sense in terms of the local culture and resource base. Now that Western civilization is going to bits, those are breaking down, and the emergence of warband culture on the borders is one of the normal phases of dissolution. It’s already happening in some cities here in the US, and will spread more widely, since the US is part of the Western periphery, not part of the center.
Jeff, it was a brave attempt that was brushed aside by what I’ve termed the Uglicist movement in architecture — the passionate conviction on the part of architects and artists that the world must be made as ugly, soulless, and inhuman as possible. I don’t mean this as satire, by the way; Uglicism is a real ideology, and it pervades the architectural scene, as well as that of modern art and academic music.
Yorkshire, interesting. That’s plausible.
Marlena, this is why I turn off spell checking and all the other “helpful” features on my computers, and don’t use any service with intrusive AI.
Roy, thanks for this. I’ll take a look when time permits.
Kyle, the artist’s name is Melrose Dowdy. I don’t happen to know the website.
Frank, I managed to miss Sheckley — in my teen years I wasn’t much into satire, though my tastes have changed since then.
David, that’s one of the big flashpoints in the contemporary world, but it’s a broader flashpoint than it appears at first glance. Japan and Australia are getting into the act, and both those nations are developing very close defense ties with India — military alliances, joint exercises, everything you need to get ready to fight on the same side. The first big question is whether that will settle into stasis — China and India both have nukes, after all, and Japan’s rumored to have extensive stocks of bomb-making material stashed away as a result of its extensive nuclear energy program, and could probably have nukes ready to deploy in a matter of weeks — or whether it will go kinetic. The second is, if the latter happens, who will win. It’s by no means a done deal either way.
Denis, thanks for this. Write that novel!
Greg, that’s a huge topic, because our economy produces at least as much illth as wealth, and probably far more of it. Your examples are good ones.
Clay, what’s happening can be described simply as America’s natural transition from a First World country to a Third World country. Yes, those tent cities will turn into favelas, because that’s the kind of housing for the poor that a Third World country can afford. As population decline picks up speed and the economy lurches down the curve of decline, that will morph into salvage culture, with existing buildings being repurposed as dwellings for the poor.
Piper, too funny. The thing to keep in mind is that stupid inventions have been a constant feature of modern life since the Industrial Revolution. Here’s a great Victorian example — a bathtub designed to imitate ocean waves:
Sacked, I think someone could probably do very well for themselves by curating a regularly updated website that lists and reviews free and subscription-based content. I’d gladly see my stuff included — links to this blog and my Dreamwidth account, plus info for my subscription astrology posts, along with much more of the same kind? You bet.
Viduraawakened, that strikes me as well worth researching. I’ve come to the conclusion, after a couple of decades of research, that one of the points behind the old megaliths was precisely drawing down atmospheric electricity into the soil, where it has well-documented benefits for plant growth — that was part of the “temple technology” I discuss in my book The Secret of the Temple. It would make sense if there were other technologies that went with it to maximize the effect, and terra preta might be the result of one of those.
Mark, I’m delighted to see this. Thanks for the link!
Justin, that’s quite possible. I’ve been thinking mostly in terms of the pseudomorphosis that will influence the future North American great culture, which (if I’m right) will begin to emerge five or six centuries from now in the Great Lakes-Ohio River area; it’s an open question which of the several potential cultural sources will provide the second pseudomorphosis that finally kickstarts cultural genesis into question. Other parts of North America could well have very different cultural histories; I’m pretty sure New England, for example, will remain attuned to the fading Faustian influence for much longer than other parts of the country.
Jbucks, it’s not trite or banal at all. That deep unacknowledged fear is a major source of our collective craziness just now, and bringing it into conscious awareness is a crucial step.
ConfusedChild, you’re wise not to approach the person directly. I know if somebody came to me with that sort of story, I’d back away fast — there are a lot of crazy people on the internet, and I’d have no way of knowing whether you’re one of them. Granting for a moment that you’re not, I think your choice is a wise one; the point of the synchronicities may simply have been to draw your attention to the person, because there’s something you need to learn from them or from the scene that’s evolved around them.
Copper, the Ball Blue Book is frequently updated and generally considered very reliable.
Ethan, that’s a parallel worth exploring! I’m glad that there are still classes discussing that sort of ecological thinking.
Florida Druid, funny. Thanks for this.
Justin, I think it’s a real possibility, not least because there will be a lot of people like Kingsnorth who go from the occult scene into some conservative Christian sect and talk smack about their former occult involvements to please their new friends. This is one of the reasons I don’t live anywhere in the Bible Belt.
A. Karhukainen, thanks for this.
GP, interesting. Yes, that sounds like it’s moving in that direction.
Chris, thanks for this.
Raymond, if I had a reliable way to distinguish signal from noise, my predictions would be much less tentative!
Denis L., that’s hiliarious. Merci beaucoup!
Chronojourner, many thanks for this. As for future Haliverse novels, I don’t know. I don’t want to run the world into the ground — we’ve all seen series in which the authors should have stopped long before they did. Right now, too, I have plenty of fiction to keep me busy — a hefty trilogy about magic, and a fun little deindustrial detective novel set in 2090 — but we’ll see.
Rodger, okay; what’s the basis for your belief? I’m not challenging you, I’d simply like to know your reasons.
Violet, Hofstadter was like most social critics — very good at criticizing what was already going out of fashion, not so hot when it comes to those that are coming into style. As for television, it makes most sense to me to think of it not as a cultural product but as an addictive drug. Drug use is an acceptable part of the masculine identity in America, and binge TV-watching fits that just as much as binge drinking.
Copper, Canning is dangerous and botulism is for real. I have personally known of at least one unfortunate who died from botulism following ingestion of home canned peppers. There are some things, i.e., meat and most vegetables, which should NOT be canned. Consider drying or even drying and powdering for a highly nutritious addition to winter soups. There are a range of storage options available, including drying, root cellars, preservation in salt, and freezing. Please, do your research, online and in books, not just word of mouth, before attempting canning. If you must can, do consider investing in a pressure cooker, the newer ones don’t explode. Lehman’s sells an American made pressure cooker in a range of sizes starting at about $250 + shipping the last time I looked.
A classic reference is Stocking Up, Rodale Press 1977. Another good one is Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying Cold Storage and Lactic Fermentation, from The Gardeners & Farmers of Terre Vivant, 1999, 2007, Chelsea Green, is great fun to read and contains many ingenious ideas from French bonne femmes. I think Chelsea Green publishes or carries many of JMG’s books, and they have good sales from time to time.
Canning also involves a pretty significant financial investment in equipment, jars ( any old mayonnaise jar won’t do) lids, shelving and utility expense. If I have to choose where to put my kilowatts, I would rather bake which helps keep the house warm. I bought a food dryer–the thing which looks like a basket with tiers–for $10 second hand. It runs off one lightbulb.
>How can such a society hold together?
It’s not. Plan accordingly.
@ jbucks RE: fear…
You are NOT alone in your fear. I am an old guy, and only discovered meditating a decade ago. Most of my life was spent reacting and acting without much thought. Discovering mindfulness was quite an eye opener for me, and while I have no idea of what you do to achieve your relief from your fear, I have found that mindfulness has relegated my own to something far less troubling. But TBH, I find myself actively reaching for mindfulness much more often these last couple of Covid years.
The other thing that has helped me measurably is to completely avoid any broadcast news – left or right or centrist. All of them lie and obfuscate, an their primary goal is to keep people watching and engaged in Hegelian dialectics. I have 3 or 4 sources for current events, 50% of which are not US based. I go to each in the morning, digest and dissect the articles with a caustic and wary eye, and then put that away for the day. I move on to concrete things and out of the ‘stream’ of daily news.
So mindfulness and limiting my intake have helped me maintain a clarity which has turned into what I call a “bullsh!t shield’. Much of what passes for ‘news’ may be new, but what does that current article or op-ed contribute to your well being? What does it bring into your world view that is actionable or valid for you personally? Analyzing this, one quickly sees that most articles that include the words liberal/conservative/democrat/republican contribute little of value to your psyche nor are they actionable. In America, you rapidly discover that there is little ‘news’ that does no include those 4 words – which eliminates quite a lot of “news” worth actually countenancing.
I also have seen that most articles directly referencing Trump/Biden/Harris/Pelosi and other similar figures are of little that is actionable or truly news. The entire sweep of the most recent articles involving these people and the new budget is useless for the average person – our views are simply ignored by our bought representatives, the same as the FDA, CDC, NIH etc. ad nauseam.
Not trying to preach to the choir, but your words elicited this from my own experiences. If it refreshes you, a long walk into the woods or other natural settings can also be balm to worry – as you are walking through a setting where only you are even capable of worrying…
I love that flying pug photo.
In regard to China’s long game, monarchies and empires do have an advantage in carrying out long games. The question is have they chosen the correct long game.
Japan planned very well for their “decisive battle” doctrine against the US. The Yamato and Musashi were built to defeat any two other battleships. But in the end they did nothing useful. Using the same amount of steel to build an extra pair of first line carrier battle groups would have done them more good.
The Germans made the same mistake. Instead of the Bismarck and Tirpitz, they could have had a couple dozen more u-boats at a start of the war, and England would have starved out.
Now the US has continued to bet on carriers. How they intend to keep them afloat in an environment of supersonic and hypersonic anti-ship missiles i don’t know. And as an ex bubble-head I can state the boat seldom had any trouble getting into firing position during an exercise. And modern torpedoes are really determined.
Way too much of the world’s top of the microprocessors come from TSMC in Taiwan. The Chinese would love to have that capability. I do wonder is the factories are wired for instant demolition if the Chinese invade.
@David BTL (#2) re: yahoo news: My comments. First, was Rice quoted accurately and in context? *Was* she being an Aunt Thomasina? Or was she trying to be fair to both sides? Instead of the usual TMI, this time we’re getting TLI. (Too little information.)
Second: Hey, sister. If the radiators have to be fixed, they have to be fixed. So, the repair techs are men and this is an all-women “safe space.” You can’t go get lunch while they’re working there? Just, like, you know, leave? Or would you rather freeze? Your choice.
Personally and privately, my own not widely shared opinion, I think canning is mostly more trouble and expense than it is worth. Even fruit has to be sugared and acid added, sugar which none of us need, and, for me, dried fruit tastes much better and has far many more uses that caned fruit. Dried fruit and veges can be stored in any convenient jar or plastic container. Stick in a bay leaf to keep bugs out.
My thoughts on how schooling contributes to our current societal woes:
The mess the school system makes of kid’s minds is deliberate, the intent being to produce a population so receptive to absurdity that the would-be tyrants of today could succeed where the Nazi Party failed. I believe the current covid crisis is in part a test for how well it has worked so far. For a more detailed explanation, see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc Bonhoeffer hit the nail right on the head.
My thoughts on canning: (@Copper, #24)
Canning is actually quite simple and easy to do; getting good at it just takes discipline and practice. The two main objectives are: 1. Rid the food and its containers of any biological agents that could spoil the food; and: 2. Seal the containers so that they do not again become contaminated. How safe the food is afterwards is a direct function of how fastidious you can be in carrying out the canning process, and properly canned foods will last just as long as the integrity of their containers. Taking a ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ approach will yield the best results.
That being said, there are some items of conventional wisdom that really do need questioning. One is the addition of huge quantities of sugar as a preservative. Sugar doesn’t preserve the food; it is meant to reduce the risk of botulin production by bactierial contamination in the event of an unsuccessful sterilization process or compromised seal. It doesn’t kill off the bacteria, just changes the reaction so that less botulin toxin is produced. Do the process properly, store the containers properly, and won’t need the sugar because you won’t have the contamination.
Another is the business of getting all the air out. That’s nonsense. Back in the days when the jars had rigid glass lids with wax or rubber seals, the practice was to set the jars upside down to cool so that any improperly sealed jars could be found by air bubbling up through the liquid as it entered the jar. The air didn’t make the food go bad, the broken seal did – the air bubbles just let you know the seal was bad. Getting all the air out in those days was necessary because otherwise you couldn’t tell if the air came from a bad seal or if it was already there in the liquid. Seal indication on modern metal lids is by the lid flexing under the pressure differential: if the seal is bad, air enters to balance the pressure, and the lid doesn’t flex. Air already in the jar won’t make a pinch of difference.
You’ll find out a few other things like that as you go along; pay attention to what you’re doing, and the more you do (and the more you pay attention to what you do and how you do it) the better you’ll get at it. Good luck!
IG, your post struck a chord with me. I have 2 older kids and have been building up a home business with machining and forging capabilities as my kids have grown. It started as a side-hustle to my engineering job but has ended up replacing my corporate gigs. Many of the skilled machinists who used to make parts for me have retired or gone out of business, meaning that if I really need parts for a job I often have to make them myself these days, so that has actually been a pretty good call.
JMG, I have loved your posts and writings since I discovered them around 2014. I’ve been designing and building robots and flying machines for a living (ie. it’s my work, not a hobby) since 1996. I have been dumbfounded at the disconnect between my first hand, day-to-day experience in the practice of technology on one hand, and the popular conception of where technology is at and its capabilities on the other. I kind of think CGI may have something to do with it as it removes the necessity to imagine, say, realistic flying cars for yourself. I’m really impressed with how spot-on you generally are with your assessment of the state and direction of “modern technology”.
@JMG: I don’t remember whether you addressed this or not, but Toynbee could not find any trace of any pseudomorphises for Egypt. Were there, and what were they?
And – when I draw The Pig in the Gypsy Witch cards, I always think (and write) “The Hog.” IS that just regional, or is there a real semantic difference?
Anthony Fauci, the current avatar of Progress and Science ™, is not having a good time right now. Hashtag #ArrestFauci is trending on Twitter – for lying to Congress, and for performing cruel experiments on puppies.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/ARRESTFAUCI
https://news.yahoo.com/arrestfauci-trends-twitter-doctor-faces-224524496.html
https://nworeport.me/2021/10/26/arrest-fauci-dr-fauci-should-face-prosecution-for-lying-under-oath-to-congress-about-wuhan-lab-lawmakers-say/
Here’s what Babylon Bee has to say about that:
‘Fauci Says Attacking Puppy Torture Is An Attack On Science’
https://babylonbee.com/news/fauci-says-attacking-puppy-torture-is-an-attack-on-science
‘Fauci Hopes His Experiments On Puppies Will Distract Everyone From Experiments He Performed On Humanity For Past 18 Months’
https://babylonbee.com/news/fauci-hopes-his-experiments-on-puppies-will-distract-everyone-from-experiments-he-performed-on-humanity-for-past-18-months
Is the death of the faith in Progress close at hand?
***
Jen Psaki had a “let them eat cake” moment(s) when she laughed at the problems of regular Americans with bare shelves in the stores and the soaring inflation. She says Americans should buy less, including food, I guess, so it’s more of a “let them eat nothing” moment.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/10/19/psaki-laughs-about-the-supply-chain-crisis-n2597687
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/10/15/psaki-makes-wh-chief-of-staffs-tone-deaf-let-them-eat-cake-retweet-worse-1149059/
Are Americans going to roll out Guillotines? We live during interesting times, indeed.
Copper #24 – the pdf version of the USDA Guide to Home Canning is available for free download in sections here:
https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html
This is the latest version I could find, which is from 2015. If you live in the US, you should call your county extension agency and ask them if there is a more recent one. They can also direct you to additional resources.
Veryily, thanks so much for the link! These will be great to have playing in the background on my next chore day. If you would like to listen to Dimension of Miracles (not included in the list at librivox.org), you can find a marvelously done audiobook of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-eYO9hhgE. YouTube also has a number of other Sheckley audiobooks not on librivox.
Toynbee noted that “Peace on the Northwest Frontier will never happen until Afghanistan is Westernized.”
First thought: “And that will happen when the sun and moon rise together in the west.”
Second thought: Does that mean it’s now India’s problem to deal with? Or is Pakistan a sort of buffer zone?
P.S. China may be sticking its nose in there now, having never read about Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving nation.
Greetings JMG,
The empire of Byzance lasted a thousand years after the fall of Rome.
Do you think Asia can continue on for a long time as civilization(s) after the current Western decline?
Last week’s discussion of the spiritual influence of the land and its influence on cultures has me thinking about China. I’ve never found Spengler’s characterization of Chinese history very satisfying–he’s right that through the fall of the Han it is quite strikingly parallel to that of Greece and Rome, but the Sui-to-Ming set of dynasties don’t seem to me to resemble the unproductive fellaheen-civilization stage that he imagines them as. Instead they (and the Sui’s immediate precursors) seem like a full resumption of the creative phase of the culture that had ended at some point in the Han dynasty.
The period of transition between the Han and Sui saw not only a change of religion (the spread of Buddhism), but a dramatic change of the Chinese landscape–that is, of the landscape inhabited by people considering themselves Chinese. In the golden age of medieval China, the cultural and economic center of the empire was in the subtropical mountainous south, the Yangtze valley, even though the imperial court was often further north. That region was peripheral at best in the time of Confucius–the Warring States were mostly limited to the flat, open, temperate Huang-He plain. Whatever forces the landscape had on ancient Chinese culture surely were at least tempered by the very different terrain and climate of the south. There are some clear examples in agriculture and warfare: the north had wheat and cavalry, the south rice and infantry. But I’m curious about the arts and religion, where my knowledge is extremely superficial (not that it’s deep anywhere else). To what extent were the spiritual tendencies of ancient and medieval China actually similar to each other? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were about as different as those of the Apollonian and Faustian cultures–that is to say, connected in history and in their most fundamental metaphysics, but seeking different ideals.
Hello Mr. Greer,
I wanted to know if you have been watching/listening to the recent changes in Hip Hop music, in particular rap music. Just a few weeks ago established rap artist Nikki Minaj publicly criticized the vaccine. The consistently number one trending YouTube rapper, Tom McDonald, sings alt right songs with titles like White Boy, If I Were Black, Brainwashed, and others. And now the number one song on iTunes comes from another rap artist named Loza Alexander and is titled Let’s Go Brandon. These artists are a black woman, white Canadian, and a mixed race black man, respectively. It seems like pop music, which used to be the domain of the left, is taking a hard step to right.
Pygmycory, so do I! If I ever end up in the publishing industry, editing books or what have you, “Flying Pug Productions” is the name I want for the label.
Siliconguy, well, you know my opinion on the future of US carriers!
Patricia M, we don’t know enough to be able to say how the oldest known civilizations came into being — the documentation isn’t there, since they evolved prior to writing. What societies might have existed prior to Egypt, Sumer, and the Indus Valley civilization, and influenced them? Nobody knows. So we just have to work with the ones on which we have adequate data.
Ecosophian, I don’t think we’re quite to that point yet, but when the flashpoint finally arrives, Fauci and Psaki had better have plans to get out of the country fast.
Patricia M, that’s why I pay more attention to Spengler than to Toynbee! Toynbee was part of the British establishment, and never managed to extract himself far enough from its mindset to draw the obvious lessons from history. Peace will happen on the northwest frontier of the Indian subcontinent when continental drift changes the geography of the region — say, fifty million years from now — or when humanity goes extinct, which will doubtless be a lot sooner.
Tony C, the decline of the West will doubtless catalyze the rise of several other civilizations. That’s history as usual. Which of the Asian cultures will rise to the challenge? Hard to say with the data we currently have to hand.
AJT, Spengler had his blind spots, and one of them is that he failed to grasp the possibilities for a culture that survives its first cycle of decline. China, India, and ancient Egypt are all good examples of cultures that recovered after long eras of decline, and did it rather more than once.
Stephen, I’ve heard about the various political shifts in rap music, but I don’t listen — I’m enough of an old fuddy-duddy that rap isn’t to my taste. I think that what’s happening can be stated in another way: the notional “left” these days has become an entrenched ideology of privilege, and so those who reject the liberal status quo are of course turning to alternative views, such as conservatism.
In the discussion over at Dreamwidth many of the responses resemble “here’s this horrible thing the government is doing or saying they are going to do but it couldn’t possibly happen because there’s no basis for it in science / there’s cracks in the narrative /people won’t stand for it / the courts will intervene”. It’s clear people are seeing reality but not accepting it.
Any suggestion for how to wake people up to the realization that this whole mess has not been based on science, whoever is running things doesn’t care about polling, the majority of people are going along with everything they’ve been told to do, and the courts have sided with the government/corporations/schools on mandates every time?
I’ve been posting some nudges on there but man, the amount of cope is overflowing. I’d assess the majority of posters believe the momentum around more rules, policies, and mandates is going to just stop any day now and the public faces of the narrative will just retire or be fired. The cope is everywhere really, I’ve had a dozen people shocked that their jobs mandated the foxes thinking it would never happen where they work.
I’d love suggestions on opening people up to the suggestion that whoever is running this show (it sure ain’t Brandon) is going to keep plodding ahead and decide now what you can tolerate or agree to and act accordingly? No need to go full conspiracy theorist, just run the trajectory forward of everything that’s already been implemented.
The future isn’t predetermined and set, and we each can influence something in our circles.
NOw I’ve taken a PMC class job to sustain. Fortunately, it is also in the software industry of a lower size, so the craze is much contained in these people.
Few women, alas, but overall a more family oriented and settled down crowd, less spleen and vanity peacock bickering there.
It was a good moment to enter in September, because my first order unemployment subsidy subsided in August after six months. The second would have entailed
unfavourable conditions probably.
I gamed it well enough to stay free through summer, which was necessary.
I sit in a glass draped megalith, facing another megalith and behind it an even higher, odd shaped absurdity. I get along with the people in it reasonably well so far.
The job is tied to the banking sector. For how long this will play out…?
Lately I watched the theater play and concert of an old time friend and his three men group. I enjoyed the are, as they have truly put good work into it.
The locality is the uppity PMC party and art central of my 2 million city.
It is super absurd. I don’t need to explain much about it to you commentariats.
I mostly wanted a change from everyday life, see the old friend whom I rather like and who is certainly the most unpretentious and honestly good willing man there.
Also it was interesting to take this as an exercise; What’s going on? Let’s see.
They really live in a bubble. What seems reasonable to the crowds in this central complex of core PMC outlets only makes everyone else’s head shake.
I notice that a silent tendency against it is spreading, amongst the broader vaguely liberal crowd.
On tram I met a facility technician, a Turk from Germany. Unfortunately we only had few stops together, otherwise it would have been interesting to hear more.
I asked how work is, he said: “challenging. There’s no personel to be found at building construction these days.” Where are they all? I asked.
He laughted heartily, I was a little confused because I didn’t mean it as a joke.
Inflation has pulled upwards here too (In Vienna). I notice little, because I live off carefully maintained family property as an offset and spend only little
on unnecessary stuff. All the more I wonder how are the masses to service slaves and construction hands doing.
My cousin lives in the better parts of Salzburg now, but crime seems to have risen there too; three Taxi robberies and one aged man robbed with a gun in
one week…that city is really small and technically wealthy.
A friend of mine has moved to the wealthy sub urb of Vienna rather recently because he was beaten and robbed around six times in the past decade, in the
lowest class district of Vienna, which by itself would also be Austria’s second biggest city.
He comes from a working class background and dislikes the rainbow crowd, I can’t blame him,
These days I am under a lot of tension, although so far I have managed to weather all this well enough, with little unnecessary collateral damage.
Lately the old yugoslavian cleaning woman at work whom I like explained to others how to operate the lid of a small waste basket, to dispatch fruit
remnants (I’ve always liked all the cleaning women at the places I’ve worked, and they were always friendly)
I had a plate full of remnants I wanted to dispose when no one was around. The lid failed to open and all the refuse piled onto it.
Now, I am slightly neurotic with these things. It wouldn’t open, and I found the waste basket had provoked me indignantly.
I punched it open, which made some refuse go into it while the rest launched into the ambient background.
I tried to cover that up of course when the cleaning women turned around the corner and asked for an explanation in her amusing pidgin german:
“[#My Name], what you done?”. I apologetically replied:” The basked has a problem…” “No, basket not problem!”
Probably not. She forgave me of course.
Last winter I slightly broke my hand when I had an argument with the waste paper container in my houses court yard.
The hand swoll for the weeks and was immobilized, but over the course of 4 months I managed to heal it again using the direction of my feeling projected into
it and cracking it into place steadily with my other hand.
I think I have a difficult relationship with waste paper baskets. Or is it the sorrounding time?
We hear of shortages. Military and civil protection corps warn of a rolling black out in astoundingly direct words. Not a voice in this countries public
much listened too.
My friend in the suburb preps, I prep marginally. He has great crafting and assembling skills, I don’t.
Given that I do not know about the intensity and nature of this Winter’s upcoming christmas surprises, I can anyways only prepare liminally.
My theoretical plan would be to walk to the wealthy suburb where I have family, it is no big deal. About one hour to escape the city, if walking fast.
Who knows.
That Natural Gas and Electricity thing really doesn’t flare much on people’s radar I feel.
Currently, say since last week, I wonder somehow whether we have some special days of ire over here, though subtile still.
I am full of rage more than before, though for me this has been standard most of my life, more than the average.
Tomorrow seems to be a “portal day”, though that concept is widely obscure to me still.
Of all skills I have into a long descent, it’s mostly doing a variety of movements, some skill at distinguishing healthy movements from bad ones, being social and
monitoring people’s motivations, and for whatever it is worth, being literate in German and English.
@ Walt F – you replied to me just at the end of the last post, and I want to say that you also have given a mighty example. What made a person recover from an illness or injury? Was it their medical team? Their alternative medical team? Their prayer team? Their own personal attitude and belief? It is never “allowed” for all of these to have played a role in the “common ground” they all share, who is the patient themselves, who availed of everything that was available to help them. One of them must rule, one of them must be the One True Reason.
I would note that your example applies equally when a person has died of an illness or injury, too. In which case there will be a hot debate as to whether it was the medicine, the alternative medicine, the praying, or the personal attitude and belief, which is the One True Narrative of the Failure that Killed Them.
For myself, I try very hard to remember that practitioners (all of us, in whatever discipline or style) treat, while it is patients who heal (or do not). And to give the very best of my skill and ability to every treatment… and then let it be.
But, as you say, every Faustian narrative wishes to pin this down to the One True Reason, and people will get as exercised by the existence of alternative True Reasons, as they do about *what* those reasons are thought to be. Whereas life is messy and continually escapes our efforts to pin down its nature. 🙂
clay dennis re homelessness,
a few years I read a statistic in a book about the plague of Justinian and it’s effects on the Roman empire that made my jaw drop, namely that half the population of Constantinople just before the plague hit was homeless and sleeping in churches and the like, and surviving on public bread. Then the plague hit.
So that’s one really nasty possibility out there.
I think in the near future, we’re likely to see a lot more of what’s showing up already around me.
Lots more unofficial subpar housing of one sort or another. Tent cities that are shooed out of one location only to spring up somewhere else. Squatters in abandoned buildings. Illegal suites. More people living in a house than is legal. People living in the bush. Maybe tent cities being condoned in certain areas and gaining informal buildings, turning into something like favelas because chasing the tent cities just gets too hard to enforce?
We’re also likely to see changes to what is legal, and lots of attempts at fixing the problems along the lines of shipping container tiny homes, reducing the minimum legal size of apartments, removing or raising limits on unrelated people living in a home, defacto legalization of illegal suites, more carriage homes/tiny homes/laneway homes…
If the work-from-home thing continues, we’ll probably see people who can work from home continue to move away from pricy city centers. This may make sprawl worse, while reducing commuting. But an awful lot of low-paid jobs are in-person. Can’t flip hamburgers or clean a bathtub remotely. So most low-paid workers are going to have to live near where they work.
Saw some comments on canning. Easy as pie. It really is. Keep it clean. Try some small batches.
Also want to put in a word for Kimchi. Also easy as pie. Without going into details of recipes, Kimchi uses saltiness and anaerobic fermentation to preserve veggies. You can Kimchi almost any veggie. The anaerobic bacteria cannot make you sick. We are aerobic beasts and anaerobes don’t thrive on us.
Kimchi is much more forgiving of less than sanitary conditions and is pretty well fool proof. Consider that Korean culture was pretty simple and made Kimchi in clay pots. Germans also liked clay. If you like heat and salt, use the Korean Hot Paste or pepper. If of tender sensibilities, make sauerkraut.
Fun fact: Westerners were taken back by Koreans burying the Kimchi pots. No big secret here, in a society without dependable heat or refrigeration, they were just burying pots below the frost line. Poor mans root cellar.
Try some small batches. Pack it tight. As a last hint, a batch can be altered after the fact. Add salt or water to get the saltiness you like. You can always add more heat, but you can’t take it out.
–JD
JMG,
Thanks for the advice. It gives me some peace of mind to get another person’s take on this. Needless to say, I’m well aware of how strange it sounds, and even were I ever to meet this person (I don’t plan to), I don’t think I would ever mention this to them or anyone else, especially since there’s still room for doubt. Again, I’m normally not very superstitious, and always reserve the possibility that I’m just imagining things.
I won’t assume too much and will keep my distance, but will keep an open mind. Thanks again, I very much appreciate you humoring my odd story.
jbucks said:
“On Friday evening I just laid down, and tried to quiet the mental chatter, the constant imaginary debates about current events with fictional sparring partners, the anxiety from wondering what’s coming next, the jarring sense of being politically isolated from most of the people I know.”
That is a great description of my mental “noise” these days too.
For some reason, my personality is very anxious and fearful. I had panic attacks before and I tended to make a big deal out of any problem. Plus, I am/was very bad at communicating or influencing people.
I think finding about peak oil and civilization collapse more than a decade ago actually helped me. It gave me a higher point of reference – you know when the manager yelled I could compare that with the collapse of Rome and gain some perspective.
But it has been a long process of growing up and this year and last year have been painful.
So thank you for your positive experience. For me they happen mostly when I am working with my hands or simply relaxing with my family. Recently I have also expanded my reading – I am now reading JMG’s book about geomancy and I have to say, it’s the right combination of playfulness (a new toy!) and actual serious consequential occult philosophy. Not to mention that I am starting to get some answers.
I hope we can all learn to enjoy this life in an enormous indifferent universe and find comfort in family, nature or philosophy.
Clay, with respect to the “poor rising up”, check out the recent referendum in Berlin on the expropriation of the houses owned by very big investors (from what I read, those who have upwards of 3,000 apartments each). It won.
@Violet (RE: TV) When walking around my neighborhood in the evening I’ve always observed the strangeness of the blue lights of televisions emanating from the homes shut off from the outside world. Recently while walking I saw through a window a “news” talking head (a frozen dinner heir) on the screen in a home. He was yelling and raving about whatever the outrage du jour is. As I continued walking I began to think how funny it is that Americans buy guns, security systems and move to the suburbs to protect their families from outsiders coming into their homes. But then they gladly turn on the TV allowing a person to come into their house start yelling, ranting and screaming. Same with the suburban neighborhoods that pass no solicitation bans to prevent salesmen coming door to door to peddle goods. But then they gladly turn on the TV and let a bunch of salesman barge into their home to sell them products.
@IG #3
I am a long-time follower of JMG and am similar in age to our host. I also chose not to have children.
With your skillset, you could provide a business with a deeper understanding of metalsmithing, water wells, wood stoves, repairs to some solar or wind energy systems. What about refrigeration methods that upgrade the old block of ice icebox? Work with passive solar for heating interior spaces and providing hot water. I’m not good with electrical things, but knowledge of old telephones, radios, and other communication devices will likely be useful. The village will always need a blacksmith. If we go back to horses and oxen, then general large animal vet skills and farriers will be frequently required. Recycled aluminum may be abundant in the future, learning how to work with that along with the more traditional iron and steel.
I’m educated as an architectural engineer who has simplified my life a great deal. When out in the gardens I do a lot of thought experiments about how the future could maybe be a little less harsh as we decline. I’m past the age of taking on some of these projects, but I enjoy thinking about them.
I’ve been in several discussions lately about how if we want our electricity and carbon neutrality at the same time, then unfortunately, nuclear energy will probably become a thing again. I know in the past you were opposed to nuclear energy and felt it was prohibitively expensive to be feasible. Is that still your opinion?
@Jeff Russel – I know of Alexander through Permaculture, where he has had a big influence.
JMG #41 – A deindustrial detective story? I love that kind of thing! Count me in! Do you have an ETA yet on when it will be available?
@ Denis (from prior post)
They don’t do what they are told by us commoners and have never done so.
On that we wholly agree!!!
JMG re uglicism in music,
I’ve encountered modern music that managed to make the harp sound ugly. That’s impressive in a “yes that’s difficult, but why in the world would you want to do that?” sort of way. About 22 and 36 min. in to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOpYPDyIwNE&list=RDkOpYPDyIwNE&start_radio=1&t=2147s
for an excellent example of what I mean. There are many parts of this concert that are okay, but why did they feel the need to to have their seven harp ensemble playing dissonant non-tune mess that sounds like nails on a blackboard? It’s hard to do that with a harp! You have to be trying really hard to make it sound that bad.
@ Patricia Mathews #47
I just find it incredible (and laughable) that people like Elders and Rice are being labelled “white supremacists,” in some cases by white people! Obviously, words don’t mean what I thought they meant. It’s resulting in a serious through-the-looking-glass kind of sensation for me.
The Oberlin incident just left me shaking my head and thinking how “safe spaces” are starting to mirror “white only” areas from the Jim Crow era. (The Arizona State University incident at the multicultural center was another similar case.)
Jeff #5 re: Christopher Alexander
As a self-taught builder I can’t praise Alexander‘s work highly enough, especially A Pattern Language, for its content as well as for the way it is constructed as a teaching tool.
I just lent it to a school teacher who is teaching an extracurricular class on alternative architecture, and who, upon grasping what it is, immediately decided to base the whole course on it, apparently with good success.
That story is familiar enough: APL is an instant hit with people who come to the field of architecture from some other place, yet besides decades of praise, it is still largely ignored by architects.
I suspect the reason is something like this: Modern architecture (as opposed to vernacular building) – with its home in academia, its rules and statutes established by 20th Century iconoclasts in awe of progress – is very much a child of Man, Conqueror Of Nature, and as such out of touch with healthy normal humans.
What Alexander et al. did with APL was strictly empirical, practical, and in its demonstrability an unshakable testament to the supremacy of matters-of-fact over human fancy.
I believe Christopher Alexander‘s work belongs to an era that is hopefully soon to come again (it always returns between great civilizations) in which the consequences of our Faustian attempts at world-domination have restored people’s self-image to a more reasonable place that allows us to learn from things again instead of trying to impose our will on them.
APL says: „we‘ve observed what works“, and that is anathema to people who say „let me tell you how it’s done.“
Funny, writing this made me realize once again how the vestiges of a passing worldview last longest in its institutions. Another example for unequally distributed collapse: professors of architecture may still think le Corbusier had great ideas when most people are back to gathering firewood 🙂
@ Marlena # 7
I use Word for writing and grammar-check comes with as part of the program. It can be useful to ensure I didn’t make a mistake with verb tense or repeat a word.
It is annoying, however, to have grammar-check flag gendered word choices. When I write ‘landlady’, I mean a landlady!
It is infuriating when grammar-check flags a word and suggests a completely wrong one.
That is to say a seamstress is NOT a tailor! They are different skillsets! They are NOT the same!
David, by the lake ..
With regard all those confused .. moi included – certainly in need of a chiropractor, from much head swiveling.. ‘multi-conclusionalism’ if you will, went into hyperspeed once a broadly defused digital authoritarianism insinuated it’s tethers EVERYWHERE! Giving sooo many .. the good, bad, and the ugly .. avenues towards real-time access to global converse virtually non-stop, to the point where nobody knows what, nor by whom, for what purpose .. or even gain!
So .. Babylonia 2.0 – Here we be ..
@ copper # 24
The Ball Blue Book of Preserving (there are many editions) is good. Your library will have a copy. Because standards change WRT botulism, get a more recent edition, not the one your grandmother used 60 years ago.
One point about canning that isn’t typically mentioned: you cannot can on a glass-top stove! The glass-top will tell you when it can’t stand the weight of a fully-loaded pressure canner by shattering.
Twix just put out a Halloween at where a transgender boy is defended by his goth witch nanny who makes another child mocking him disappear. I’m really getting worried that the inevitable backlash against wokeism will also result in a persecution of alt spirituality.
I tend to keep an eye on world hunger issues, because it’s important. So…
There’s been a serious increase in world hunger in 2020, and before that, hunger had started increasing slightly during the 2010s.
https://www.who.int/news/item/12-07-2021-un-report-pandemic-year-marked-by-spike-in-world-hunger
The inflation we’re seeing in food prices worldwide is not going to help this issue, and hunger could show up in the news dramatically in the next few years in a way we’ve not seen much of so far this century.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Global-Food-Prices-Set-To-Soar-As-The-Oil-And-Gas-Crunch-Continues.html
If 2.3 billion people worldwide are moderately to severely food insecure, and 9.9% of the world population (21% in Africa) is undernourished, how much more can they take? (stats from 1st source mentioned above)
There’s a lot of people who depend on food assistance or food aid for a lot of their food intake. That’s a pretty big vulnerability. What happens if the assistance drops markedly for some reason? Judging by last year, we get an increase in hunger and food insecurity over large areas, though not necessarily outright famine.
We could just get a slow, grinding increase that mostly stays below the radar and out of the main narrative, but that’s been happening for a while already. I worry something big and nasty could be brewing in this area.
How long can this continue before something breaks and we get something no one can hide splashed across every front page for months that makes it very, very obvious that progress in this area is now regress?
The former reduction in proportional world hunger is something that tended to get trotted out to prove that progress was still alive. I haven’t heard much about that in the past year or so, now that events aren’t suiting the narrative.
@Justin Patrick Moore – Thanks very much for the recommendations, “New Urbanists” is not a term I would have known to look for, that will give me lots of happy digging!
@sacked by pestilence – There’s quite a lot of writing on the subject in the business world – some search terms you might find helpful are “long tail”, “aggregators”, and “winner take most”. Basically the idea is that if the only people who can buy your good or service are the ones around you, they have to put up with the best your local area has to offer. If anyone in the world can buy from anyone else in the world, that favors the very very best/cheapest/other most desired quality. On the plus side, it’s easier to find weird niche stuff in a wider market, but it can be harder to be the provider of that weird niche stuff.
To learn more, the blog Stratechery has some pretty good analysis of how this has played out with tech companies (and the writer is very interested, as he makes his living offering subscriptions to the site! But he publishes many of his articles for free).
Also, Dror Poleg talks a lot about how this has impacted/will impact employment in several articles, but I think this one sums it up neatly (note that he assumes crypto-based NFTs will be important, and along those lines, assumes an ever-expanding internet, so if you read this blog, take his predictions with a grain of salt): https://www.drorpoleg.com/nfts-and-the-future-of-work/
Hello everyone.
@jbucks #22 You’re not alone in this. I think the fear and confusion are actually “in the air”, underpinning the zeitgeist. In my teenage years, not kowing much about climate change or decline, let alone Spengler, I wrote many fearful poems about cultural atrophy and the downfall of humanity. Did I have any objective reasons to think in that way? Not at all, intelectually I was firmly grasped by the myth of Progress. But on a deep, emotionally raw level I felt that the culture I lived in was dying, if not dead already, and that its myths had lost their meaning.
JMG and others, I imagine some of you have some experience of being in a religious vacuum — which is a situation I’m struggling with now. I was baptized and took the First Communion in the Catholic Church, and during childhood I was somewhat devout. Then, as a young teenager, I became an atheist Tthat’s important: I wasn’t confirmed, because I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.). But with time, I have slowly moved back into spirituality. The problem is, though I still have a lot of Christian baggage, find a lot of value in the Gospels and Christain tradition, and use the Lord’s Prayer (It’s safe, because it’s unspecific; I wouldn’t dare to invoke Jesus or the Trinity.), I am not a Christian. Even in a recent dream, where I was looking at Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, someone asked me “Are you a Christian?”, to which I replied “Kind of”. At the same time, I am somewhat drawn towards Paganism – but its modern renditions are too conjectural and, err, flat *for me* (I don’t wish to offend Pagans, nor Pagan Gods! I would gladly describe my feelings in detail, but that would turn into an essay.) The fact that the country I live in is a religious monoculture doesn’t help. If someone has been in this kind of religious terra nullius, I’ll welcome any advice they have to offer.
Hi everyone! Don’t forget to visit us at greenwizards.com.
We love to chat about vegetable gardens, window dancing, and yes, there’s plenty of information about canning and food preservation.
@Teresa re: #77
If you’re using a recent version of Word, you can go to Options > Proofing and where it says “Writing Style: Grammar” or “Writing Style: Grammar & Refinements” you can click on the Settings button and can choose what you do and do not want checked.
(And if you’re using an older edition of Word, I don’t think they had that to begin with…)
I’m reading David Graeber’s latest (and last, unfortunately) book, _The Dawn of Everything_ (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56269264-the-dawn-of-everything). It’s an excellent antidote to the modern myth of inexorable progress from bands to families to clans to farms to cities to empires to the pinnacle of human progress that is today’s society.
Instead he shows with voluminous examples that history is far more complex than that, and that what we often think of as the inevitable connections between agriculture, urbanism, exploitative hierarchy, inequality and central government are anything but. Just as one example, as ties in with the idea of prehistoric civilizations, there are plenty of examples of urbanism both with and without central government well before the wide-spread adoption of dependence on agriculture.
Bill and I have finally finished the 223B Casebook series of vintage Sherlock Holmes fanfiction!
Our new book is The Cases of Blue Ploermell by James Thurber (and Bill Peschel).
It’s James Thurber’s juvenilia, written when he was a cub reporter in 1923 for the Columbus Sunday Dispatch. He wrote a very loose cycle of 13 short stories about Blue Ploermell, an animal-cracker eating incompetent private detective with a Chinese manservant named Gong Low.
The stories have never been republished other than one or two, here and there. It’s less than 15,000 words so don’t expect much Thurber. Bill added another 100,000 words about everything connected to Thurber, the Chinese in America, and so forth.
We’re very proud and very relieved to finally be done with this series.
If anyone is interested in vintage James Thurber juvenilia here’s the link: https://peschelpress.com/the-cases-of-blue-ploermell/
If anyone here is a) a James Thurber fan and b) interested in self-publishing, the stories are part of a Sunday below the fold feature Thurber wrote for the Columbus Dispatch. It’s called Credos and Curios and is a mixed bag of jokes, reviews, the aforementioned Sherlock parodies, other short bits, and anything else he came up with to fill the page. The feature ran for just under a year. It’s now out of copyright. To my knowledge, the complete Credos and Curios has never been republished. If you’re a Thurber scholar, looking for something new to say about Thurber and bring more Thurber to the world, here’s your opportunity! It will involve a visit to the Columbus public library and sitting down with the microfilm reader and copying everything you find.
NONE of this material is online and unless the back issues of the Columbus Dispatch are digitized, it won’t get online.
@ #24 #42 #79 re: canning
I’m amazed that someone here actually knows someone who got – and died from – botulism from home-canned food. The US CDC publishes annual botulism summaries and a typical year has 15-20 cases of foodborne botulism in the US, of which less than half are attributed to home canning and maybe one is fatal. This is despite the “Rebel Canners” group on FacePlant boasting over 100,000 members willing to flout the rules. Of course we have learned in the past year that we can’t always trust CDC data…
I can say that I know plenty of home canners using a mixture of officially-sanctioned and improvised methods, and no one I know has ever gotten sick much less died. And I’ve also been using a pressure canner on a glass top stove for many years with no issues, despite insistence that it can’t work (and clearly sometimes it doesn’t). Your mileage may vary :-).
@Denis, #60
Your best option is to investigate what Jung called mass hysteria because that is what is driving things at present – not ‘cases’, not ‘vaccines’, not ‘evil politicians’. The fundamental cause is an irrational belief in a pandemic (what generates that belief is another interesting, but different question).
All the presented ’causes’ for the pandemic are simply inserted excuses attempting to bolster an irrational narrative, which is why they can me more holey than Swiss cheese and yet have no effect on the pandemic insanity. The logic is backwards – and thus until one acknowledges the actual cause (pandemic) precedes the effects (cases, vaccines, conspiracies) in sequence, one is stuck thinking thinking changes in the effects (cases, vaccines, etc) will change the cause (pandemic) which is obviously impossible.
Now, you can explain this to people, but as it requires acknowledging that our world is not under control – that it is primarily driven by unconscious and irrational forces – you are asking them to make a very large leap. And thus most will continue to fall back to trying to decipher the presented logic (eg cases leading to pandemic) even though it does not (can cannot) ever be understood in that manner. And unfortunately compounding the suffering is that trying to rationally understand irrationality is a path to madness itself.
@TJandTheBear I think we’d enjoy having a beer together and lively discussion on this!
I’ve brought up examples of attending the modern est training over the years here. One of the rules in est being in your seat, on time, and ready to go for the sessions. About 25% of the attendees could not do all three. The leader would spend up to two hours with people having them figure out why it was they couldn’t do it. It was fascinating and revealing about human behavior.
I believe the majority of the 75% who did follow the directions did it for fear of being called out, not because they enjoyed following directions. I was in the 75% for sure. It took me a year of attending to find the joy in just doing what I was told to do because I made an agreement to do it. Stop fighting and spending the energy on it! Very freeing.
A lot of people today are fighting being told what to do and going back to JMG’s essay about getting out of the current mess, we don’t have leaders or followers to do it. I’m not sure what it is going to take to get there.
Re nothing at all pertaining to politics or craziness of the day
After trying my hand at a couple of different crafts, I’ve settled on the fiber arts as a skill set. I’ve been crocheting for a few years now and recently completed my second throw blanket (after two baby blankets and many, many scarves). I’m hoping to make a ragrug from old sheets next and learn to knit at some point, too.
Do you think you’ll get back to your Road to Amalin writing project some day? I’d like to read more of that story.
Anecdotally, as I’ve seen others mention ‘gets’ from time to time, I have noticed an absolutely incredible number of them over the last six – nine months or longer. At least several in terms of time every day, and many others in all aspects of daily life. It has almost come to the point where it’s strange when I look at the clock and it’s not 11:11, 2:22, or 3:33 etc. It’s very, very unusual and I don’t think it is simply a matter of me noticing these repeating numbers more than others.
Hello, JMG,
Are you and/or your blog readers familiar with this book? It just came across the email transom, and since it crosses your expertise in cli-fi and all things with a “profound spiritual dimension,” as the book blurb puts it, I thought I’d inquire. I’d be interested in hearing impressions from anyone who’s read the book, though my initial skepticism is high and expectations low.
https://www.booksshelf.com/books/Gaia%27s-Revenge?utm_campaign=46b36591-c463-4bfd-971c-144a2f5556df&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=d4fdb39b-eb8e-44f5-8cc2-faafd9d8042e
I think that a lot of the preppers are misguided thinking that rural areas will be safer than urban ones. How are you going to stop roaming bands of looters in rural areas where the neighbors are miles apart? Large stretches of road to and from cities would be big targets, poverty will increase more than it is now with more drug use and property crime (already a big problem). Those moving out of cities during the pandemic with remote jobs might be disappointed in the near future.
Thanks for sharing Jbucks. Most, maybe all of us talk to ourselves way too much. I’ve been doing breathing/inquiry practice to stop the blah blah blah self referential narrative in my head with some success like you had. Keep going. Especially if heartburn symptoms return. Even if they don’t it’s good practice.
Denis, about people denying reality,
Thank you! I have been ranting for more than a year now about that. Every step of the way the majority is convinced that “people” will stand up or that the govt will lose the elections or …
I am not a psychologist but it was obvious from the beginning that people are using all these excuses the same way as solar panels, electric cars etc are used in the CC debate – basically to avoid taking responsibility and changing themselves.
So people expect others to stand up for their rights (after they have obediently done everything the govt asked). They postpone doing something until the next election or until the next outrage (jabbing the kids, mandates etc). But of course when the time comes they will cave again and again.
That is the reason that so many people find comparisons to the Nazis apt. If you read “They thought they were free” you will see the same step-by-step descent into evil. Will people that have jabbed their own kids care about the freedoms of others to refuse the jab? Of course not.
To answer your question – I am pessimistic. Most people will never stand up. There will always be an excuse, a reason to delay or someone else to blame.
As for me, I already changed almost my whole life (location, friends, job, schooling). I did this for more than one reason and I started before 2020 but the last year has included the biggest changes.
But if I am honest with myself I am not ready yet. Think of all the people displaced during wars – I am not ready for that. Did you know about the German jews that lost their citizenship and ended up living in a No-man’s-land between countries? How can I be ready for that?
Thanks
@JMG: Thank you – reading your reply made me realize that although it has been useful to acknowledge my fear, I haven’t yet thought about why I have that fear. After some thought just now, I think I can make a list of several competing trains of thought that dominate my consciousness at any given time, and many of them are different modes of fear. So it seems I have a habit of looking at many situations with fear-tinted glasses, as it were.
I guess the trick is to sort out what things are actually worthy of fear from those things which I look at through this lens of fear. And I obviously need to put more thought into what the root of this habit comes is.
@Oilman2: Thank you! I do indeed try to limit my intake of the news, and I also have a limited set of sources I go to to keep up-to-date. For a while, I wasn’t paying much attention at all to the news, but got drawn back into it as I started to get affected by Covid, inflation, etc. I don’t watch news on television, but I do spend a bit too much time on online news sources.
I do meditate daily (discursive meditation) along with a banishing ritual, and this really does help – what you said about how this helps with reacting and acting without much thought really rings true.
By the way, I always look forward to your updates about the state of the oil industry, peak oil, and things in general from your perspective!
@NomadicBeer: Thanks also for your comment! I know what you mean about the higher plane of reference by learning about peak oil and decline. It has both helped and hindered me. It is a much more realistic scenario than apocalypse and makes sense in terms of what has happened in history. So it has given me a direction in which to prepare. But if I’m honest, fear is still a motivation with this, too, it seems, something I’m just now realizing (as described above to JMG), because the sudden lurches downward along the way aren’t easy, as we are currently finding out.
Finding comfort in family, nature, and philosophy is something I am trying to do, too.
@David by the Lake #75 – I ran those links by Jean Lamb in Oregon together with my comments. Her reply: “Those people are idiots.”
Agreed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlO3hukMnzU
Anyone here have any thoughts on this? It’s about the unrealized capital gains tax thing they’re trying to shoe horn down our throats….. Basically if the value of your house, stocks, bitcoin, or underpants goes up, you have to pay a tax on the paper value. I’m sure JMG will say this is part of the rent economy.
I think this unrealized capital gains tax is part of the Closed-Ear-Swab New World Order…..
Hi all.
1. I read on the Magic Monday that magic should be abstained from during pregnancy. Does that include the father? I put my practice on hold as soon as I found my wife was pregnant and was hoping to check I got that right.
2. A thank you to JMG for all the information about energy and the rise and fall of civilizations. Without it I would be utterly bewildered with what’s been going on the last few years. I especially find that energy illiteracy is so common, and I am grateful for having some grasp of the difference between diffuse and concentrated energy.
Copper,
“Easy To Preserve” by the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is another good canning reference. Good luck, and may you ‘put up’ great things preserved! ‘:]
Copper #24 and Mark L #38
I am going to second Mark L.’s comment. In fact I would recommend older Ball Blue Books or the Kerr Home Canning and Freezing Book from the 60’s or 70’s. The newest editions are very PC and will frighten you into not starting. You might be able to find the older editions in used book stores or used book sites online.
I would also be wary of the personnel at your local extension agency or any of the online ones for the same reason. Following the older books will allow you to can all your produce safely. I have followed these two canning guides for 40 years and no one who has eaten my canned goods has died of botulism.
Boys Mom #31 recommended using vinegar in your tomatoes to raise the acid level to ensure safety with a water bath canning method. You can do that if you like, and it would be a really good idea if you are buying your tomatoes from the grocery store and not from a farmers market, farm stand or u-pick field. Grocery store tomatoes are picked green (I don’t care if they have the stem on them, they were picked green) and artificially ripened with ethylene gas, so they never develop the natural sugars and acids that make home grown tomatoes that are ripened on the vine so tasty.
Also, it has been some years since the Salt Lake county extension office tested pressure canner lids for accuracy. After a very humbling experience several years ago, I learned pressure gauges on canner lids and vary up to 2%, plus or minus, so the the people testing your lid, will very frequently tell you your gauge is defective. I went round and round about this with the manufacturer, they were trying to get me to use a weight on my pressure canner, and the people testing it before I was able to talk with an engineer who explained to me that using a weight was a far more accurate way to regulate the pressure in the canner. It doesn’t matter if your gauge doesn’t test “accurate” what matters is that you use the weight to regulate the pressure when you can something. The gauge just gives you something to look at as you adjust the heat under the canner during processing.
Start simple and with a small project and you will have some really nice food in your pantry and a wonderful sense of accomplishment as well.
Best of luck.
Some of the people I follow on the web suggest something significant may happen tomorrow. Anyone getting any unique vibes, energies or readings surrounding the 28th??
David, by the lake (no, 12), I follow these discussions as closely as anybody, and as much as I’d like to know what’s going to happen, “always in motion is the future,” as Yoda says. While predictions are inherently controversial–my wife and I disagree about what to expect–I think a 50/50 chance of war within the next ten years is reasonable.
China–and more particularly, Xi Jinping–obviously wants to take Taiwan at some point. This will boost their political legitimacy at a time when people might otherwise be complaining because of the economy. For demographic reasons, if they’re going to do it, they should do it within the next ten years. (As their population ages, they can expect more trouble back home.)
The USA–and more particularly, the Pentagon–understands that if Taiwan falls, China will be able to threaten Japan and Korea. The USA will cease to be a significant power in the Western Pacific, one of the major nodes of global trade, and be well on the way to turning into a glorified Brazil–fairly large but far away.
If war breaks out between the USA and China, this would interfere with trade across the Pacific, currently the center of global trade. Both China and the USA would suffer economically. On the other hand, if they’re already suffering economically, then this might be just the thing to rally their populations.
Several military people have suggested “2025” or just after, as the most likely year for an invasion. On the other hand, these people do not have a great record with predictions.
China has been busy strengthening its military in various ways. The more this is done, the better their odds, which suggests waiting. (Do they have enough boats and ships?) On the other hand, Taiwan and the USA are also likely to improve their readiness.
If you were Xi Jinping, would you want to attack during a Biden presidency (which may end in Jan. 2025, unless it is Harris by then)? Or take your chances with the next guy? No doubt they are carefully watching economic and pandemic news, to see how distracted the USA is. Also, the fall of the US-supported Afghanistan regime has made other military adventures less likely for now, although this reluctance won’t last forever.
Taiwan has elections in 2024 as well, so China will be watching those. It’s not clear who will be running.
What China would really like is to coerce Taiwan into surrendering without a war. That way China would get its industrial base. If the USA collapses or something, this could happen.
What Taiwan would really like is for China to collapse before they can do anything. On the other hand, this would cause a bunch of other problems. I can actually think of worse things than an invasion. (For instance, China has a bunch of nuclear reactors along its coast–upwind of us. Hope they’re well managed.)
For technical, meteorological reasons, there are certain times of year when an invasion just can’t be launched–the sea is too choppy.
RE : “Uglicist movement in architecture — the passionate conviction on the part of architects and artists that the world must be made as ugly, soulless, and inhuman as possible. ”
I honestly think that a little part of this has to do with the use of computers in design. This trend of ugliness began a long time before computers came around but it is a technology that has accelerated the issue. That computer design has this strange ability to make even the ugliest of designs almost palpable. It is only once they are manifest in the real world that the entire scope of their awfulness is realized.
This is where I kind of dig the idea of the ‘Solarpunk’ crowd. As much as they are believers in progress, the star trek future and the bright green future – at least they understand that architecture doesn’t have to be completely soul less.
Your post last week reminded me of a question I’d been meaning to ask: Are you familiar with Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”? I ask for two reasons. First, your discussion of the ‘Tamanous’ concept seems very similar to how Pressfield describes what he calls ‘The Muse’, as well as some people who seem to have been influenced by him. Second, his discussion of ‘Resistance’ brought to mind the concept of Dinergy, which I first came across when you mentioned a book discussing the concept of aesthetics appearing when force meets resistance (I’ve unfortunately forgotten the title – it was by an East European architect).
If you are familiar with Pressfield’s work, I’d be curious to know whether you also see a connection between his description of the artist’s struggle, the concept of dinergy, and the movement between the planes as described by Fortune.
@jbucks,
The mental chatter you describe is, in my family, referred to as ‘having squirrels.’ I live in the Southeastern US; the local squirrels will chase each other up and down tree trunks in dizzying spirals, occasionally leaping great chasms to land on a skinny limb of another tree, where the chase begins again. I don’t know if squirrels in other parts of the world behave the same way, but it is an apt description of the unpleasant fear-laden stream of consciousness thinking that torments me from time to time.
About a week ago, I started doing the etheric banishing ritual that JMG posted a while back (https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/126779.html). Two nights ago, I had a busy day and busy evening and completely forgot to do my evening ritual. It wasn’t a bad day or even a stressful day, but that night, lying in bed, the psychopathic squirrels in my head had me depressed to the point of tears. Then I remembered I hadn’t done the banishing ritual.
I got up and did it (in the dark, as not to wake anyone). It takes less than five minutes. Then, back to bed, said one of the affirmations I read on JMG’s blog a few times (I’ll post it below), and went to sleep, sans squirrels.
Of course, YMMV, but if you haven’t tried the etheric banishing ritual, I would suggest giving it a go.
Either way, like @Oilman2 said, you are not alone.
(The affirmation re: fear,
Fear is failure and the beginning of failure. Therefore be thou without fear. For in the heart of the coward, virtue abideth not; and he that trembleth at the fire and the flood and the shadows of the air hath no part in God. I shall not fear.)
What I have thinking about the last week is a simple solution to our twin problems of inflation and shortages of certain goods. It seems like the straightforward solution would be some form of rationing. It is not un-american as we did it during WWII. It is technically much easier now than in the past with some kind of digital ration card that could be run off existing payment networks. It could solve problems with toilet paper hoarding, scarce commodities like semiconductors getting squandered on things like RV’s or video games when they are needed for other things, plus it would reduce demand and slow inflation ( at least in the rationed goods). But we all know it will never happen because it is contrary to the American myth of abundance, consumer choice and the religion of progress. Oh Well.
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Tamanous looks like a very useful concept for Green Wizards to apply in our own lives and our projects, as well as making sense of some of the winds and currents here in Ohio. Are there any titles on the subject that you recommend? Might you be persuaded to expand your discussion of tamanous for the Wizardren? Maybe not a full-on old time-ey lodge lecture… on second thought, how about a lodge lecture on the magic of Tamanous for the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association?
Many thanks.
teresa from hershey #77 I know years ago Word’s grammar check was aimed at an 8th grade education. I have a Master’s degree, so I’m gonna write on MY level I mainly use it as spell check. Its that the “suggestions” mainly dumb it down. I kind of need that part cause of my disabilities. Same reason I need the Lyft/ ride app on my phone. My main thought is the tech is designed to take over our thinking while dumbing us down. At least I know how to use a dial phone, thread a reel to reel tape or projector, and *gasp !* write in cursive! 🙂
Oh, *canning*. I guess nobody wants this, then:
https://www.lascivity.co.uk/a-complete-guide-to-bdsm-caning/
(Hey, I’m not the one who chose to name it the “Ball Blue Book.”)
Re: Patricia Mathews #55
“Peace on the Northwest Frontier will never happen until Afghanistan is Westernized” and
“And that will happen when the sun and moon rise together in the west.”
Yes, it seems more likely that the West is going to get Afghanistanized.
*
To all the new readers of this blog, who might be unaware – I have a collection of links to all of JMG’s interviews and podcasts. You can find them here:
https://ecosophian.dreamwidth.org/1885.html
and
https://ecosophian.dreamwidth.org/429.html
Denis, since neither you nor they know what the future actually holds, you will likely have quite a bit of trouble convincing people that you’re right and they’re wrong…
Curt, thanks for this! In your place, I’d do some journaling about the issue with waste paper baskets — it seems symbolic, somehow.
John, you’re quite correct about kimchi. I’ve made quite a bit of it, and lived to tell the tale. 😉
ConfusedChild, you’re welcome, of course. The world is a weird place and weird things happen in it fairly often!
KayeOh, no nation on earth has ever had a nuclear power industry without huge and ongoing government subsidies. The dirty secret of nuclear power is that it can’t pay for itself. If my experience is anything to go by, you won’t be able to convince pro-nuclear types of that, because they’ll just say, “Well, there has to be something!” No, there doesn’t. No law of the universe guarantees that once we burn through our current set of energy resources, there’ll be something else waiting for us to use — but you won’t be able to convince them of that.
Chronojourner, not yet, no. I’ll keep everyone posted!
Pygmycory, and that’s exactly it. If all you care about is doing something new and different to show off, doing something really ugly is the easy way to do it.
Aloysius, I’m also concerned about that. It’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important for occultists with conservative views to make sure our voices are heard.
Pygmycory, thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately I expect things to get quite a bit worse.
Spiritus, a lot of people I know have been through that “terra nullius.” I was born in it — my parents weren’t so much atheist as apathetic — and found my way to occultism because I wasn’t satisfied with secondhand truth; I wanted to experience spiritual realities for myself, rather than just accepting what this or that authority figure had to say about them. In my case, the way out of the empty lands involved reading about a lot of different religions and spiritual paths, and seeing which of them spoke to me and which left me unmoved; that led me to occultism, and then to practice, and then to gnosis.
Kulibali, thanks for this. Several other people have mentioned the same book to me; I’ll see if the local library system carries it.
Teresa, congratulations!
David BTL, delighted to hear this. Those are fine and immensely useful crafts.
Phalaenopsis, I don’t know yet. I haven’t felt any further push in that direction, but you never know. Thanks for the data point about gets!
Lisa, hmm. I haven’t heard anything about it; it sounds pretty dismal, but of course I could be wrong.
Trustycanteen, I’ve been saying this for a long time. Historical evidence suggests that small cities or large towns in the middle of agricultural belts, with plenty of water, are a better bet.
Jbucks, probe the fear, understand it, and it may well turn into a source of power.
Austinofoz, if you can find a print source, I’ll have a look at it.
Russell, if you check out the Magic Monday FAQ, you’ll find a detailed discussion of this.
TJ, interesting. Well, we’ll see!
Michael, I’d agree with that, except that uglicism triumphed in architecture in the 1950s, when the word “computer” meant somebody you paid to crunch numbers for you!
Christopher, no, I’m not familiar with Pressfield at all; I’ll look him up when time permits. The concept of dinergy is from Gyorgy Doczi, The Power of Limits.
Clay, since it’s almost certainly not going to happen, we’ll just have to settle for the other, very American approach: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
Rhydlyd, that’s an interesting question to which I’ll have to give some thought.
Michael Gray #105 Another name for the “Uglicist” movement is Brutalism. It’s roots feed from both the Fascist architecture of Albert Speer, and Stalinist designs, both meant to dehumanize and brutalize. To be an affront to life The UN buildings in NYC are in the brutalist style. I remember as a child the first time actually seeing them, and then going inside, the feeling of nausea and disgust reached its height in the main meeting hall. No wonder the UN causes more violence than it prevents.
@JMG – did you mean for your answers on #113 to come out light green on white?
JMG, thank you as always. Two queries for you kind consideration:
a) How does Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ relate to the planes of reality?
b) I am having a difficult time comprehending how one differentiates products of one’s own fantasy from more meaningful images as they arise while ‘scrying’. A tip or two would be appreciated.
Prayers and best wishes.
m
Here’s a question for John and others in Washington state: what is your opinion of Western WA University and Bellingham? My SF Bay Area niece has decided that’s the school for her, even though she’s not sure what she’ll study. She liked the feel of the campus.
Also, I second the notion of developing modern ice boxes!
Ellen
Happy Halloween, 🎃👻🤠 everybody!
Patricia Mathews (no. 51), in US farming usage, “pigs” are younger and smaller than “hogs.” In British English, a “hog” is male and castrated. (If male but not castrated, it is a boar.)
Spiritus flat ubi vult (no 83), I sympathize and resonate with your difficulty, but it’s hard to know what to suggest, what you might find spiritually attractive. Most forms of Buddhism have roles for deities and spirits, and Tibetan Buddhism is famous for this aspect, but you may find this too exotic. Although this is my religion, there are many Buddhist groups I would not endorse, and I would not recommend Buddhism for every person–different religions are best for different people. The main thing is that your religion should teach love and compassion (as most do), and that you be able to apply it positively in your life.
If you’re having dreams about the Greek New Testament, then maybe some other form of Christianity would appeal? Nonprogrammatic (*) Quakers and Unitarian Universalists would be the most liberal and accepting (and are by no means exclusively Christian–you can be a Quaker atheist or a UU pagan, for instance), but tend to embrace left-liberal politics. At the other end of the spectrum, Orthodox churches are known for their liturgy, and emphasis on the church fathers, but also for their conservative social and political stances (e.g. gays are bad). Different national churches can feel very different from one another.
(*) “Programmatic” Quakers have church services similar to other churches. Quaker meetings are traditionally “nonprogrammatic”–participants sit quietly until moved by the Holy Spirit to say something.
Anyway, happy searching, and visit different groups if you can. (I assume there must be *some* degree of choice, even in a religious monoculture?)
Copied from the previous post:
“Info, “best” is a value judgment, therefore irreducibly personal; what is the best synthesis for you will not be the best for me. That’s what keeps the wheel spinning forever. ”
In a Darwinian Sense. What makes you think such syntheses wouldn’t overcome the other but is able to exist in parallel without any of them prevailing long term?
As in regards to another topic. In regards to the pictures posted. It is bizarre that some stoneworks look like Ancient Astronauts:
https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2014/11/14/Sculpture_of_astronaut-700×420.jpg
https://www.theepochtimes.com/ancient-aliens-mysteries-of-the-salamanca-cathedral-astronaut-carving-revealed_1081104.html
Time Travel? Or was Civilization just as advanced on even more so existed?
https://i2.wp.com/moco-choco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ancient-quimbaya-figurines-4.jpg?w=740&ssl=1
More images. Helicopter, Planes and Tanks?
https://i1.wp.com/moco-choco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ancient-egypt-aircrafts.jpg?w=800&ssl=1
A perpetual historical cycle?
To All ..
Some years ago I purchased online, via a chemistry supply source, a small Ph kit .. containing both paper that rolls out from it’s case, a color chart, and a small capped vial (I just use a spoon, full of whatever I’m cooking, before commencing to fill jars) for doing tests. I do so for the specific testing of batches where the acidity such might be in question, whether due to altering a known recipe’s contents, or just unsure of a given fruit or vegetable’s Ph to begin with. An example would be tomatoes – different varieties vary somewhat in their relative acidities, so it’s good to be able to gage whether added acid e.i. 5% either lemon juice, or vinegar is in order.
Just an fyi to all canners, both the aspiring and the well-seasoned ..
@K. A Wood
“Do you think the current chaos in Haiti is following the larger pattern of collapse in complex civilizations? Gangs that have been used by political figures and business elites for decades are now extorting their former employers and setting up on their own. It looks a lot like the gangsters and narcos are Haiti’s Visigoths and Vandals. Is Haiti’s collapse a preview of coming attractions in American cities?”
Organized violence has in its best interests to suppress unorganized violence like murders without their Authorization because it gets in the way of them making money.
This means that they maintain the monopoly on force in their respective territories no different from the Government.
And as they compete with other Gangs for control over people or tax cattle in the absence of government putting a stop to them by wiping them out as rebels or getting them to submit to current ruling Government.
They are forced to become militarized.
This militarization will force them to set up bureaucracies to organize their more militaristic forces and they become a proto-state which if they are victorious will become the new Government.
Of course if they manage to take away Government Monopoly of Violence. They are also able to control by Government by killing all Political candidates/Politicians, Mayors and Civil Servants that don’t submit to their rule.
@JMG Do you have any advise for identifying hidden or secret message in occult texts of the sort that Manly P Hall makes reference too in his discussions of ciphers. As a student of cryptography and such I’m more curious about instances where they are used and perhaps why the author chose to use them.
Have you encountered any? Are there any common “tells” that indicate one might be present? In Manly’s self unfoldment text I got a chuckle this week when I found the word “Sit” spelt by the first letter in each word of part 3’s section on preparation for concentration. The word has significant meaning to practiced meditators, but would you take it as a coincidence or a “tell” that other meanings might be hidden in a text especially when you already know the author was incredibly well researched in occult works that contained steganography.
Or if you prefer a more direct question from one of your works on ritual magic. In an exercise on sacred geometry you instruct the reader to lay out the tree of life and then ask the reader to ‘ignore’ the location of what I remembered to be the abyss, and some follow up research revealed to be Da’at sephiroth. Was the geometry exercise a clever rouse to point the neophyte directly to that location by omission? Any suggested readings for someone interested in the geometry of hermetic symbolism?
A report from Calgary, Canada – book reading group successfully launched with three members. Books include JMG’s as well as other books mentioned on this blog & the other blog. First book is God Is Red, by Vine Deloria Junior. Looking for more members, so if there’s more Calgary readers lurking out there, please contact me – ashrountree at yahoo, not the ca but the com.
I miss Bill and Shane as individuals but what I especially miss was the interpersonal dynamic between the two of them. There was nothing better than one of Shane’s diatribes about boomers and Bill’s rebuttals. Still makes me smile.
Some of the leaders in my local community (generally of the PMC persuasion) are pushing more and more for Electric Vehicles. There is talk of replacing town-owned vehicles with EVs and of purchasing electric school buses for the school district. When I heard this morning that a plan to turn an abandoned property into a park had been replaced with a plan to turn it into a parking lot for electric school buses, I got irritated, to say the least.
I’ve hung around this blog and the ADR blog long enough to know that EVs are nothing more than coal-powered vehicles. I’d like to be able to make that case to others in the town. That replacing everything with EVs is *not* going to be an improvement. However, I don’t have any actual data to make a hard-data-based argument if I need to.
Does anyone have any sources they can share which demonstrate EVs to be “environmentally worse” than the equivalent gas-powered or hybrid vehicle?
That’s my plan: to make a data-based argument against EVs. Maybe it’s not the best approach. This evening, when I told my father-in-law (who is a “car guy”) about my plan, he said it will never work because there’s an “electric car mania” right now. He said every major car manufacturer is making promises to convert to exclusively building electric cars within the next ten years. In the midst of this sort of mania, he said, it won’t matter what the facts are.
Be that as it may, I’d liked to be armed with the facts if I can. Or if anyone has any better ideas for how to fight this mania, I’d be happy to hear them.
Copper #24: My mom and grandmas canned a lot, but I had no interest in it when I was a child and a teen so when I started canning as a young married I used the Ball Blue Book to learn. I still recommend it to novice canners. It’s very rule-oriented and stresses safety, but when you’re just starting out that’s not a bad thing. Later on when you’ve got more experience you’ll be able to be a little more adventurous.
If you can find a copy of the old Kerr canning guide, it’s also very good.
An interesting website to check out is Marissa McClellan’s ‘Food in Jars’ foodinjars.com. Her directions are quite detailed and there are lots of photos so you’ll know what everything is supposed to look like step by step.
Hello JMG,
There is an author on the blog alt market us , who wrote that c.vil war will is now unavoidable in the US.
He is intelligent, yet my two cents are that a full fledged war is unlikely in the next twenty years, and after that quite possible.
Also internal conflict can take different forms such as the states not following rules and taxation of the federal government, cyberwarfare, rising criminality, guerilla warfare.
On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think such a full conflict is, say in the next five years? And what shape could it take?
May there be peace –
@Justin Patrick Moore
“I’m used to those who refuse to educate themselves thinking that a pentagram is a satanic symbol.”
Its because Satanists Invert the Pentagram. Which in your case is normally upright
Good and Evil become Inverted. Beauty and Ugliness also gets inverted.
I mean there is this picture of a horned demon looking drag queen story hour:
https://tse2.explicit.bing.net/th?id=OIP.6JIubq_Foq9cCiK1ouRWmwHaFQ&pid=Api
And the inversion of the Masculine and Feminine in Popular culture like in Hollywood movies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soh-3jiHq4s
Inversion is the order of the business for all kinds of Symbology at least in regards to Satanists.
Boys Mom #31:
I used lemon juice for years to acidify tomatoes when I canned, but recently found that using citric acid works just as well and doesn’t give the tomatoes an off-taste. It probably works out cheaper than the lemon juice too. I’ve never tried vinegar and have read that it’s not recommended because of the way it changes the taste of the tomatoes. Have you found that?
Dear JMG,
I’m curious what your take is on the on-going, and getting worse daily, supply chain train wreck?
The grocery, auto parts, and drug stores in my area are getting emptier and emptier on a weekly basis. Today I noticed signs limiting how many canned items you can buy at a time. All this is going on while there are no CV lockdowns or natural disasters.
I’ve been a prepper / doomer since ’98 (Y2K), and this is the worse I’ve seen the stores, worse then last years’ panic buying as that was just some items like tp and flour.
It seems that the supply chain is broken in so many places, and the gov’t is trying to fix it anyway they can, but there’s no magic bullet. It’s taken decades to build our just-in-time supply-chain system, and it was dismantled in less than eighteen months.
As a prepper and long-time follower (you got me interested in beer brewing in the late 2000’s as a good skill to have and I just ordered more beer making supplies while they’re still available ), I’ve been thinking planning for this time, but when it might really here, it’s pretty surreal. Sometimes I think I’m just having confirmation bias from what I read, but I can’t make-up what the shelves look like.
I tell my extended family to keep the cupboard full this winter, and they just laugh and think it’s a big joke (that could be because they voted for Biden and admitting something is wrong with the economy is a no no).
Maybe things will suddenly turn around and the shelves will magically refill by New Year’s, but I know you can’t eat “maybe”. “Hope for the best, but plan for the worse has served me well the last 23 years, so I’m sticking with it.
Karl
Patricia M, no, I just messed up the HTML. It should be fixed now.
Mobi, (1) the collective unconscious is Jung’s name for the inner planes in general, and the astral plane in particular. (2) It takes time, practice, and a lot of meditation. For the time being, assume that everything you see is a mix of material from your own mind with material reflected from outside it, and let the practice itself teach you from there.
Ellen, I was there from 1980 to 1983 and I have no idea what it’s like now. Sorry!
Info, Darwinian evolution is a fine example of what I’m talking about, because it has no endpoint; it doesn’t achieve an objective “best,” just a temporary condition which inevitably changes. That’s why one species gives way to another, and then to another, in response to the endless variations of the environment and the other organisms present. In the same way, any given balance between the individual and the collective will only remain standard for a certain period of history, after which it will be displaced by another. As for the stone images, good heavens, I haven’t seen those since von Daniken made a fuss about them back in the 1970s!
Void, it’s a real challenge. Still, you’re working on it the right way. Hall did a lot of steganography in his major works. As for my book, good — you’re paying attention. In terms of symbolism and steganography in Hermetic work, you’ve read Hall’s chapter on the subject in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, right? Trithemius’ Steganographia is another useful source, and the basis for many of Hall’s ideas.
Brother K, delighted to hear it.
Tony C, I think the chance of civil war depends in large part on the long-term effects of the current covid vaccines. A lot of people on the right are biding their time, because they believe that there’s a very good chance that the vaccines will result in a bumper crop of illness and death among those who take them — and if that happens, why bother to fight a war? All they have to do is wait for the Democrats to drop dead from a self-inflicted plague. If it turns out that they’re wrong, then it’ll depend on circumstances when that becomes clear. Since I’m not a medical researcher and don’t even play one on TV, I’m not going to assign a probability to that…
Karl, I’ve been watching the unraveling of the global economy with great interest. That’s what’s happening, of course — the system of offshoring and global transport of products has been under increasing strain for many years, and now it’s cracking apart, not least because so many of the working class people who were expected to keep on slogging away while their wages and work conditions got worse and worse have gotten fed up and walked away. I expect things to get unsteadily worse over the next few years, and then to improve as businesses in desperation start turning to local sources for what they need. Keep your pantry full, and stock up on what you need whenever you can!
How much of your current personality is a product of current life experiences and current biology? Where else does our current life personality come from?
My 12 year old sibling came to stay with me recently and I was amazed by how similar she is to me and how much of myself I recognize in her. There are 16 years between us and we do not see each other all that often so I can’t, for the life of me, understand how we are so similar. I have other siblings who I am much closer in age to (we grew up together) and we are almost nothing like each other.
Looks like we agree on that one, then. Not good. This is something I’d really like to be wrong about.
@JMG
I see no way that Biden and the Democrats can just keep raising the debt ceiling for much longer. I believe that the latest set of measures to raise it may just be the last and that we’ll see a default before the end of the year. I was just curious as to what your thoughts are.
Dear IG (#3), I also have a 3 year old child, and I may have one or two more. I have been reading JMG’s writings since about 2008, when I was in college. I also had to think long and hard before getting married and bringing children to this world.
There is a segment of the climate change movement that considers the entire human existence as akin to eternal sin, and that having babies is like somehow poisoning the planet. There is another segment whose only vision of the future is an apocalyptic wasteland with warbands roaming over deserts. So they live in mortal fear that any children they might have will be slaughtered in the Climate Apocalypse. JMG has talked about how these are basically Christian beliefs wrapped up in non-religious imagery. Anyway, I digress.
My point is, you don’t have to feel guilty or afraid for having children. If we raise our children right, they will surely become capable of adapting to the adversities of life. Despite all the problems of the present and the future, life is still worth living.
Coming to what you can do to prepare your children, I am starting with simple things like teaching my child how to clean up around herself, like sweeping and mopping the floor in her room, picking up the trash she makes, folding her clothes etc. This way, she will learn to rely on herself, instead of expecting mommy-daddy for everything. Then I will move to teaching how not to waste things, like switching off things when you don’t need, using water economically, etc. I have started a small vegetable garden with a dozen plants, and she learns along with me. I use JMG’s acronym LESS — Less Energy, Stuff and Stimulation — when deciding what to teach my kid. I am also an engineer. I do electrical, plumbing, carpentry and building repairs on the house myself (something I learned by watching my dad). But I would wait involving my kid before it’s safe for them.
Children are incredibly perceptive. They watch and hear you even when you think they are not. So if you keep doing the right things around them, they will slowly pick it up from you. So you just model good behaviour, and they will pick it up just fine.
@Isaac Salamander Hill (#73) – Thanks very much for this – I’m familiar with what permaculture is, but most of my exposure has been from reading about the food/farming end of things. Any particular recommendations on sources for community/the built environment?
@Eike (#76) – Thanks very much, and I think there’s a lot right in your analysis. I just read an article and its follow up on Scott Alexander’s new blog, Astral Codex Ten, about trying to figure out “Why do we have modern architecture when so many people don’t like it?” and the lack of any discussion about the ideology of progress was somewhat glaring if you expect to see it:
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/whither-tartaria
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-modern
Any tips on what good starter projects are to try to begin learning his methods (I’ve read the books but haven’t done anything with them)?
Unherd has put up a couple of reviews of Steven Pinker’s new book, Rationality. I stumbled across this quote from the book in one of them:
“The arc of knowledge is a long one, and it bends towards rationality.”
Emotionally, this makes me want to vomit myself to death.
In a socio-political sense, he’s clearly preaching to the PMCs, trying to shore up faith in the ancien regime.
Semantically, I don’t think that combination of words means anything. If someone were raised on a deserted island, and had never encountered the old bit about the moral arc of the universe, and they came to the mainland and ran across this sentence, would they have any idea what Pinker was trying to say here?
@Spiritus flat ubi vult (#83) – I was in a similar situation and a few months ago came out of it with a somewhat dramatic (to me) religious experience. I was raised as a pretty low-involvement Methodist, in college I got a bit more serious about Christianity, and then eventually I found myself pretty much an atheist, but wanting to find something “spiritually” fulfilling. For awhile I tried doing a form of polytheistic practice where I believed the Gods were archetypes and that it was effectively a means of communicating with my subconscious and it was all in my head, but as you say, that fell rather flat for me.
Two things made a big difference for me, both thanks to our kind host: discursive meditation and his book “World Full of Gods”. Reading that book got me to a point where I was at least willing to give a shot to taking the Gods and Goddesses seriously as independently real, and then I began a regular prayer and mediation practice with a pantheon that I’ve always found at least interesting, even when I didn’t believe in the (the Norse/Germanic one). Not too long after allowing myself to take it seriously and doing regular daily practice, I had an experience that really made me think there was something to all this, and I’ve been groping to put together a personally fulfilling religious practice since.
You can find JMG’s instructions on how to take up discursive meditation starting here: https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/65232.html
As for what subject matter to explore, @Bei Dawei made some good suggestions on other forms of Christianity that may or may not appeal, and I might add that some other near-adjacent religious subjects to consider are Christian Esotericism/Occultism, Gnosticism, or perhaps even Judaism. You might also find some familiar ground in the religion/philosophy of Late Antiquity, specifically Neoplatonism, as much of it became important in Christian/Catholic thinking (this is an area I’ve had surface-level familiarity with for a long time and am considering jumping into). Also, I have found our host’s “Druidry Handbook” to have a lot of spiritually rich material that is very flexible depending on what Gods you do (or don’t!) worship.
One possible caveat on my own experience: that “doing the practice without the belief” period lasted with waxing and waning enthusiasm for a few years, so I might have been laying down more of a foundation than I realized. Jumping into discursive meditation with wholly new material might not have as quick or as dramatic effects. As they say, your mileage may vary.
@Christopher Henningsen (#106) – I’m a big fan of Pressfield’s (I keep a copy of “War of Art” on a shelf over my desk so I see it frequently and remember it). If you find his worldview in that book congenial, consider checking out Carl Jung – Pressfield’s Muse draws much on Jung’s concept of the Anima, and his distinction between Ego and Self is straight from Jung.
Siliconguy @46, I have a bit of historical critique here: you wrote- “[the Germans] could have had a couple dozen more u-boats at a start of the war, and England would have [been] starved out.”
The Germans built virtually all of their 1000 u-boats early on, which sank 8 million tons of Allied shipping. Still, the Brits and the US sank 750 of them. And the US was cranking out Liberty Ships as if from an assembly line… (by contrast, the US sank 3 million tons of Japanese shipping, a total wipeout, while they had sank about 50 out of 250 US subs).
(These figures are from memory from “US Submarine Operations in WWII”, published by the Naval Institute Press.)
I can’t see how the Germans having a couple dozen more u-boats at the beginning of their campaign would have mattered.
The scale of WWII never ceases to boggle my mind.
—Lunar Apprentice
RE : “I’d agree with that, except that uglicism triumphed in architecture in the 1950s, when the word “computer” meant somebody you paid to crunch numbers for you!”
That is a very fair call. As ugly as todays creations are, the 1950’s where a particularly awful time period for this rubbish. As Marlena pointed out with Brutalism. Not a single microchip was needed to inflict that on the world.
I will leave this topic alone for now but leave it with some architecture that is a little more rational, if you will. Materials and design that respect each other.
Obanazawa, Japan – https://i.redd.it/tbxvnawd9yr71.jpg
Ellen @117. I’ve lived in Bellingham for the last 12 years.
Scenically, the region is breathtaking, and Bellingham is arguably one of the most scenic small cities in the US, assuming you don’t object to a lot of clouds and rain. It’s not crowded.
Crime is not a big issue apart from the vicinity of our skid row, which admittedly is a big one. Crimes involving firearms are rare.
The local economy here is dependent on 1) The local hospital, 2) the local aluminum smelter, now closed, 3) the local oil refinery 4) Western Washington U. and 5) retail trade, which is heavily dependent on Canadian money, as we’re 20 min south of the border. Canadian trade has been wiped out by the covid shutdown, as the border has been closed for non-essential travel, though it has been recently re-opened only for those with proof of vex. I have yet to notice even one Canadian license plate in shopping areas. Our local mall is 25% vacant (the next two malls south are 75% vacant, and defunct)… There is a rumor about the smelter getting sold and re-opened. The redevelopment of the water-front has been hit hard by the shutdown, but there is some move afoot to re-activate the port for specialty cargo ships, as well as to unload some of the smaller backlogged container ships, as the port is deep enough for them. A big crane on a barge was floated in, and it looks like a second berth is being dug/dredged… Property values are vastly inflated because of all the affluent refugees from Seattle and points further south.
As for Western, I have minimal firsthand knowledge, though in their School of Electrical Engineering, they recently established a department of Power Systems Engineering, and they have several programs which are rare, e.g. Cytology and Laboratory Science… I met a Western “Gender Studies” professor at a party of friends of my former-wife… In-state tuition 3 years ago was 50% higher than my medical school tuition… Like all schools of higher education in this state, the big C vex is mandatory for all students, staff, faculty and contractors. I hear it is Woke Central.
If your niece is from SF, she’ll probably feel right at home here. Culturally, I find Bellingham to be a solid bastion of wokeness. I’m the only non-woke/non-vex’d person my daughters (11, 18) know, and they are embarrassed even to be seen in public with me. I can’t wait to get out of here.
—Lunar Apprentice
Dear JMG, yikes, that makes a great deal of sense.
Dear GP, it seems to me that’s a classic case of enantiodromia, the turning of extremes into their opposite.
Dear JMG and community, I took your advice and expanded upon it, I am originally from Oslo Norway. In Oslo the University of Oslo has a good library. I contacted the University library to see what they had on a man that once lectured at that university before he went to America…. They have a very complete collection in several languages the writings both books and articles in old scientific papers, for you a collection of Wilhelm Reich…. anyone fluent in German here? Let’s see if we can reverse engineer his “Cloud Buster”… Yeah and there is loads of things you can do beneath the blanket, behind closed doors and those things;) Let me know if you want the collection….
I don’t know about who is wrong and who is right about the future, but seeing things like this sponsored by one our progressive foundations seems to be showing a future that’s coming whether we like it or not. Isn’t better to plan around this being implemented and then adjust? Having to maintain vixen status is a big deal imo.
https://thecommonsproject.org/newsroom/press-release-vci-marks-major-milestone-will-host-global-smart-health-cards-forum-amid-continued-and-growing-interest-in-vaccination-record-verification
Dear Archdruid,
On the topic of druidic influence spreading in interesting ways, Rod Dreher just favorably presented your take on “Burkean conservatism” as a positive version of conservatism to contrast to another kind known as integralism.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-do-integralists-want-reactionary-catholicism/
Do you have any thoughts on integralism – which appears to be some kind of ideology promoting a fusion of the state with the Catholic church? It seems like a rather fanciful idea and even the traditionally Christian Rod Dreher views it with scepticism. I doubt you like the idea much more either.
I guess to make the question more interesting and relevant to recent disucssion – do you think this “integralism” might have any chances of a revival, given any type of “second religiosity” emerging in the West? Or is the Catholic church too rotted out by now for that to be possible?
Hi John,
I have a few topics on my mind, but let’s start with these two:
— While reading The Long Descent and came to the part where you talk about the New Age, it brought to my mind how this movement also is starting to form its own elaborated myth. With all the stuff about starseeds, ET races, disclosure narratives, etc. There are stories actually on how our race and planet came to being, in some sources (mostly claiming to be channeled) saying it was seeded from either Vega or Sirius if I remember correctly, and that there are higher “beings” from these planets and star systems communicating and guiding us. I was always intrigued by how the only humanoid ones were the so-called Pleiadians, the Nordic-looking ones. Some people take this very seriously and on a spiritual level, unlike the majority who are obsessed with “physical” UFOs landing on earth. Could it be that those beings are merely planetary intelligences?
— From your polytheist perspective, what are angels and archangels to you? How do you explain and classify their existence (if they do) in your universe?
Cheers.
Its Wednesday and we have active and interesting posts on the Green Wizard website:
First up, this week’s main blog post is a look at why using your Fall leaves for mulch to your flower and garden beds is a better option. Save money, save time, and improve your soil, as well as help your home’s yard ecosystem at the same time. 70% of native bees are ground dwellers and using leaf litter to mulch your beds will help them survive the coming Winter weather. We also talk a bit about an important Green Wizard principle, “Thinking in Systems”.
“Fall Leaves and Systems Thinking”
Next, Green Wizards is seeking guest blog posts and informative articles for our front page. Are you a gardener, do you prep, just have an interesting lifestyle of sustainability and living with less? Then get out your pencils, dust off your keyboards and submit something. Added bonus, the writers selected will get a free copy of John Michael Greer’s “Green Wizardry”, the book that started the website. Check here for the guidelines:
“We Are Looking For Guest Bloggers”
From last week, the “Green Wizards Is Now On Facebook” post continues to discuss how we plan to upgrade the Green Wizard website and community. Check out the preview of the new forum due at the end of the year.
“Green Wizards Is Now On Facebook”
Are you a gardener and always wanted to try a few new plants? We are planning to try a Holiday Seed Exchange and want your input in how we do it. Check out the forum post and give us your thoughts.
“Holiday Seed Exchange?”
You will need to register and get an account at Green Wizards to participate in the Seed Exchange. Best and easiest way to do that, contact me direct via email or Facebook Messenger.
email: green wizard dtrammel at gmail dot com
Messenger: “https://www.facebook.com/david.trammel.545/”
IG said:
“I would still like to ask you the “top things” that you would do to make your children prepared for the future if you had any. I don’t think that teaching them how to brew beer is a top priority when they reach the age of five, so what would it be for you?”
IG (and other parents) did you know that Green Wizards has a forum set up to talk just about that subject?
The Fifth Circle: Your Family and Your Children
Contact me if you want to set up an account there and talk about it with the other Green Wizard parents. (green wizard dtrammel at gmail dot com)
Roy Smith said:
“If there are any readers from the Seattle area who are interested in starting a discussion group to talk about some of the themes of this blog (or better yet, are a member of such a group that already exists)”
Roy feel free to cross post to this forum on the Green Wizards site:
Local Events and GW Meet Ups
We’re beginning to get some traffic and maybe your post will get some local eyeballs and interest.
We have a similar group of people who meet every three months here in St Louis. Its really nice to just sit down, share some coffee and conversation with people who get where we are headed in the Future. I recommend everyone try and organize something similar.
Bei Dawai @111, thanks for the good belly laugh! I will never can again without a chuckle…😄
JMG,
A couple of weeks ago on a Magic Monday you mentioned that the next couple of Astrological great ages are not particularly magic-friendly (in practice? In results?). How does that fit in with any ideas you have for the destiny of humanity? e.g. the other half of the up/down equation – any rising up through the planes. Just trying to visualize the interplay.
Thanks.
John said:
“As population decline picks up speed and the economy lurches down the curve of decline, that will morph into salvage culture, with existing buildings being repurposed as dwellings for the poor.”
That’s already happening. Shout out to Justin Patrick Moore for this from last year:
Hobo Living in Alphabet City
Reply to copper about canning resources:
First place to go is:
http://Www.pickyourown.org
Has a great primer on canning and what you need and then all the recipes to do it right. Also has pictures with many recipes to help. I have books on canning and honestly at this point I just go to this site most of the time.
Just start with simple stuff like jams and pickles. All water bath canning.
You have to work up to pressure canning.
Mother Earth News is also a good resource online.
Many cookbooks out there. I found an old Betty Crocker Canning Cookbook (or one of those old-school cooking companies) in a little library that I use as well.
Remember that all these recipes including in the cookbooks are tried in a USDA lab to make sure they actually work and kill botulism. USDA has a website as well with all the canning information. I just use pickyourown.org because he has explained the recipes in more detail and with pictures.
Also, if the canning recipe is pre about 1960 you shouldn’t use it. Many of the old recipes passed down by family aren’t tested and could potentially cause botulism. That said, I do use some old recipes like this but end up keeping them in the fridge and using them quicker without actually canning them. My homemade mustard is a good example of this with a very old recipe from who knows when… Tastes better than any other mustard though!
Good luck!
Eric in Maryland
Sorry, should have linked to this one by Justin instead:
Squatters Rites. Its better at talking about repurposing abandoned buildings.
This passage, from David Cayley’s new book “Ivan Illich; An Intellectual Journey” has much to say about that period during the 80’s that you yourself have often commented on, with the same sense that there was a road looked at by society, but not taken, which might have significantly lightened the load we now carry.
Quote/
There was a moment, now nearly half a century ago, when Illich believed that this time had come historically – a time at which he thought people might suddenly awaken from the impossible dream of endless growth and ever-intensifying institutional care and begin to undertake the renunciations that would allow them to celebrate present abundance. But the moment that Illich had thought “propitious for a major change of direction in search of a hopeful future” passed. The judgment he entered against a society swaddled in counterfeit care and on the brink of terminal social paralysis was again deferred, the crisis prolonged…. He predicted in “Tools for Conviviality” that, should technology not be restrained and the “balances” proper to nature and society restored, the consequence would be an increasingly “uninhabitable” social and natural environment in which personal initiative would shrink, polarization would grow, “all bridges to a normative past” would be broken, and “the world [would be] transform[ed]… into a treatment ward in which people are constantly taught, socialized, normalized, tested and reformed.” This seems to me a pretty accurate pencil sketch of the present moment, even if the “uninhabitability” is unevenly distributed.
/End Quote
“
@info ( & all): Yes, I’m quite aware of the inversion of the pentagram, and I wouldn’t use it that way myself. Satanism itself is an inversion of Christianity. In that respect, it’s pretty stupid, because if they really hated Christianity as much as they think they do, they wouldn’t start a religion that depends on Christianity for it’s very existence. As such it is very infantile to my mind.
That being said, I don’t think it takes much looking to realize that the pentagram is most often used in ways that have nothing to do with Satanism. However, I guess I can’t expect people who binge watch television to have time to read or learn about anything outside the social media house of mirrors.
My broader point though is about how conspiracy culture often places occultists in the role of the baddie. As the second religiosity warms up, I expect, and as JMG has pointed out before, this is going to cause those who flip from being neopagans (and related groups) into Christians or some other orthodox faith, to loudly denounce their former magical practices. I suspect they will call it Satanic. I see the stirrings of a new Satanic panic already at work in various corners of the conspiracy theory culture. As conspiracy culture has gone more mainstream in the past few years I see the effects of crappy and shoddy research and unthinking bandwagon hopping (such as the assertion that Aleister Crowley was the father of Barbara Bush or something like that) leading back to a Satanic panic type situation ala the early 1980’s. A situation where everything is Satanic, role playing games are evil, lsitenig to AC/DC can turn you into a killer, etc. The Qanon shale has really amped it up IMO. Tenuous connections become undeniable facts. It’s a kind of moral panic that is the reverse (or as you say inverse) image of the moral panic happening on the left with woke ideology, mandates and other bunk. Both sides have shrill tones that nauseate the “heck” out of me.
& I have seen some people who used to be open minded about the occult get saved in the past few years, and with the fervor of the new believer, start saying that anything outside of the narrow purview of their own path is evil. That’s a concern to me (though I ain’t trying to be a concern troll). A lot of these people are also now heavily into conspiracy theories. Some of them are family to me, so I’ve know them my whole life and have seen the switch. So I’m starting to see this aspect of things JMG has been talking about come to fruition.
[For the record I did listen to heavy metal and play D&D starting in grade school. And that was a good thing. I want other people to be able to do these and other things without being subjected to witch hunts and worse.]
@JMG: I live just on the fringe of the bible belt so I’m hoping to stay safe on my side of the Ohio river!
—-
Speaking of mirror rooms:
“Untangling the direct ray and separating it from its reflection, this is the work of the initiate.”–Eliphas Levi
I’ve started reading the print version of “The Archdruid Report,” and a question keeps coming up– Have you ever thought of putting together a bibliography of works regularly referenced in your writings? I’m blown away by the depth and breadth of your references! A bibliography of such material would keep me occupied for the rest of my life!
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-do-integralists-want-reactionary-catholicism/
In this long discussion of Catholic integralism (a political philosophy which argues that the Church should rule and order the temporal power of the state) Rod Dreher quotes extensively and approvingly from JMG’s exposition of Burkean conservatism.
Intriguingly, he doesn’t introduce JMG at all. The assumption is clearly that readers interested in intellectually serious and spiritually awake conservatism (Dreher’s stock-in-trade) will probably know who JMG is.
The context is Dreher’s continuing public search for a post-liberal-order (liberal in the old sense of restrained governmental power, primary individual freedoms, etc.) politics that won’t instantly collapse into one kind of tyranny or another. IMHO, we are all now searching with him. (I myself am re-searching in the tracks of Ivan Illich, Leopold Kohr, G. K. Chesterton, and others who felt that scale and size are crucial elements of politics that have never received the sustained intellectual attention in the West that they require).
JMG, I think this is a strange but good sign. Dreher has a voice. It was at his urging that Tucker Carlson went to Hungary recently. I mention that because I believe that the Hungarian situation is another clear example of a search for post-liberal-order politics. Opinions will differ, of course, but as I note above, I agree with Dreher that we no longer have a choice about the search.
Since it seems that discussing the decline and the reaction of the professionals to their lost power is a mainstay on this blog and community. (For someone who is housebound, I have to find community where I find it. I found it here, no really.) I will tell about the Virginia (USA) Governor race that is now national news.
For the past week, every Democrat running for office has been tying all of the Republicans to Trump and to what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. They are running commercials that denote that their opponents are Nazis and fascists and all those dread things that right-minded (i.e. Woke) people should shun. It is over the top in tone and shrillness.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are all in the trenches going from community to community stumping group by group. They are knocking on doors and telling people what their plans are for the future. Youngkin, the Republican for Governor, believes that all politics are local (i.e. Tip O’Neil). He has run on the issues expressed by the people he meets.
The issues is schools – that the professionals should not tell parents what their children have to learn. So far, Loundoun Cty and Fairfax Cty where most of the professionals live and vote Democratic are angry with the Democrats. A father whose daughter was raped by a nonbinary person in a restroom was nearly arrested to trying to have the local school board acknowledge what happened. The students all have walked out of the high schools in protest of lack of safety. The parents in both counties want the school board officials to resign, and have organized their efforts.
Meanwhile, McAuliffe has all the big name Democrats coming to pitch for him. They have flooded the area with their vague generalities such as “Vote for us or see the planet go up in flames and fascism descend on the nation.” My conclusion is that they are running scared and are going to have a massive mental breakdown if Youngkin wins.
I think that the professionals in power will all have mass depression and be unable to function.
@Info re 120
A perpetual historical cycle? Well, no.
The Salamanca Cathedral astronaut is really a recent addition made during the 1990s when
the cathedral was undergoing restoration.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-astronaut-cathedral-1600/fact-check-stone-astronaut-was-not-carved-into-cathedral-wall-in-1600s-idUSKBN2832D4
Also be wary of modern interpretations put on ancient images which were often carved or molded
in highly stylized patterns not to be interpreted literally. You don’t think Egyptians actually stood
in rigid poses or walked sideways do you? And in spite of the fevered scenarios of spaceships
taking off and landing from the Nazca Lines, they are in fact sacred designs created by the
native people of that time for a sacred purpose. Non-literate people could hold elaborate maps
in their heads and didn’t need hot air balloons to create the Lines. Their ability to memorize locations
and orient themselves on the landscape would leave us moderns in tears over our own klutzy ignorance.
And of course there are the wonders and marvels which can be produced by the bucketful courtesy
of Photoshop. You really need to keep a large grain of salt in your mouth when you look at
anything on line nowadays.
JMG, just wanted to share an interesting cultural bellweather for you regarding . I don’t know whether you’re familiar with Russell Brand; a few years ago he was one of the most famous comedians in the world, though for a little while now he’s been retreating from the shark infested A-list waters in favor of the more sedentary lifestyle of podcaster and Youtuber. He is definitely veering more and more “esc-center” over time. I happened to watch a video of his a few days ago mocking Kamala Harris for an obviously staged video with her and a group of child actors propagandizing for the space program (https://youtu.be/9SmVVLYgArk), and I was quite surprised by some of the words out of his mouth:
Furthermore, the whole project of making space exploration appealing to kids underwrites the Myth Of Progress– the idea that things’re getting better and better. “We’re going to space now. You too will be able to get a ticket to space… as long you are extraordinarily rich.” You know, like– the whole thing is propping up a system that’s based on deception. I’m not saying that there aren’t great advances in medicine and technology, and even the fact that we can communicate like this is akin to a miracle. But the idea that this, it has to be pursued at any cost, no matter what it does to the lives of ordinary people all over the world– that’s a myth, it’s a choice at the very least. And this kind of propaganda has to be created so that people don’t think, “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of this crap, man. I want some authenticity. I want to eat real food. I want to be a real human being connected to nature. I don’t want to move through life saying “Well at least we might go to space one day, baby”.
And, later on:
“I hope all these kids have wonderful–well, not careers, but I hope that their lives mean more. I hope that they get to become who they really are. And more than seeing craters on the moon with their eyes, their own eyes, their own eyes, let me emphasize your own eyes, not someone else’s eyes, not a mass’s eyes,”— [this is riffing off of one of the things Harris said in her video] —“they get to live in a fair, equal, representative society, where their actions, thoughts, dreams, and communication mean something, and it’s not some zoetrope, some dumb game, some sort of veil, some maya’n device laying across the eyes to distract you from what’s real. That’s what I hope for for those children, that’s what I hope for for my children, that’s what I hope for for all of our children. More than going to space, let’s live on this planet. Properly.”
That video is five days old now and has gotten over 800,000 views. Given the way Russell Brand (seriously big time celebrity Russell Brand, who not only has over 4 million Youtube subscribers but who is well known to anyone who has paid attention to English-speaking mass media culture during the last 10 years) phrased this specifically in the terminology of the “Myth of Progress”, I would wager money that he picked this idea up directly from you in some way. Congratulations, your memes continue to spread.
Just to clarify my last comment, I’m talking about the involution/ evolution arc.
And not immediately related, I did post about fuel pump prices increasing at a rate of 4p a week three weeks ago. That rate has slowed, but not much. A 9p rise over three weeks at my local gas station with the Cop26 Circus just about to start up the (admittedly quite long) road. Not sure that has the support on the streets round here.
Happy (almost) Samhain everybody!
I am just starting to get involved in celebrating the cross-quarter holidays (and others, too), and while I’ve read a variety of rituals in various books (including Sacred Actions, JMG’s books, and others) I’m wondering what others of you in the community actually *do* for the holiday – a ritual is one thing, but what do you wrap it in or around that makes it special for you? To put it another way: how do *you* celebrate Samhain (as distinct from the ordinary trappings of Halloween)? I’m trying to turn this into something more sacred and any ideas or inspiration that makes the season meaningful to you along those lines will help me get into the spirit of it.
(Feel free to elaborate on other holidays you love too, as I’m taking notes on all of them.)
Thank you!
to IG about raising children:
I live on the west coast of Canada and moved from Vancouver to Salt Spring Island when my child came along. I truly believe the best thing for children is the freedom to grow up in a rural environment – not isolated, but with a small community that has a wide variety of both income levels and interests. Not sure if you can do that in your circumstance.
Let them grow up being safe to head into the woods for their adventures, to sleep on the trampoline under the starts, to discover the wonders of digging in dirt. When they’re old enough, consider having them join 4H to learn about agriculture in a child-friendly way (better yet – volunteer so you learn too!) My daughter auctioned off her prize-winning Ram, cried when she said goodbye, knowing he was going for slaughter, but also knowing how her efforts created food for someone, and most importantly – knowing the meat she ate came from a sentient being and that we have an obligation to ensure fair treatment.
Your idea of passing on mechanical skills is good! Kids also learn by osmosis and seeing you puttering will inevitably lead to “Can I help”? Follow your heart when raising kids, live your values, and prepare for that time when they get rebellious in their early teens. I lived by the motto “Connection before Correction” which meant understanding the behavior before applying logical consequences. That connection and trust are EVERYTHING in hard times. Lastly, be very aware of who their friends are – other kids (and parents) can be toxic to your relationship with your children as they grow older. I found that out the hard way and if I could change one thing it would be I would have been a lot more pro-active about who she was spending time with.
Today, she’s 29, and a commercial painter. She is hyper aware of what’s coming and we support each other through the grief of knowing what’s coming with climate change and with the economy. Best wishes to you – your kids are already ahead with you as a parent thinking of these things 🙂
To any Hindus in the commentariat: my 12-year-old is interested in Hinduism. Are there any books on the mythology and history that you would recommend? I’m also wondering if there are any gods in the pantheon that are particularly approachable, and any suggestions for a basic devotional practice if he decides to pursue it.
Personality-wise, he’s rather nerdy and hyperfocused, and loves ritual (yes, on the autism spectrum).
Many thanks for any suggestions!
RE: shortages.
A local fast food place claimed they couldn’t get ham for their breakfast sandwiches, because shortages.
I went to the next nearest location. They had ham, but the sandwich with ham was exempted for the 2 for $5 special, as was the sandwich with bacon. The only choice was sausage.
I went to a third location. Only the sandwich with ham was not eligible for the 2 for $5 special, but could be had for an additional 85 cents. So I got one bacon and one ham for $5.85 total.
This got me thinking that shortages are not just actual lack of an item but also a result of a lack of affordable items, specifically what the market is willing to pay. Certain managers of these fast food places have decided rather then spend extra on ham, they’d just cut it from the menu, either to save themselves money, or because they don’t think their customers will tolerate the higher prices.
This starts to quantify shortage as a form of inflation. Imprecise, to be sure, but simply put, a shortage is a form of inflation, and the price of the unavailable thing can be assumed to be somewhere north of what the market can bear. Basically in this scenario you’ve gone completely off the supply/demand curve. The only remaining question is whether this is due to consumers considering it a very discretionary item and so there is little tolerance for price changes, and the item could be readily supplied for a few dollars over the price consumers will pay, or whether the shortage scenario is more of a bona-fide supply issue (although even at the height of toilet paper shortages you could probably keep toilet paper on the shelves if you charged $10/roll, everybody in the supply chain would move heaven and earth to make that kind of money, but that runs afoul of gouging laws and whatnot. Although gouging is an effective but brutal way to solve true supply issues).
The thing to keep in mind is that the first scenario is more likely than it might seem, because the customer is not just the end consumer, it is also the business supplying the item. So in the case of my ham sandwiches, the business wants be profitable selling ham, while pricing the end product at an attractive price point for the end consumer. It is likely the first fast food place could easily sell ham at *a* profit, but not at *enough* of a profit that justifies the changes necessary to do so in light of the increase in supply cost. It’s not really a matter of losing money as much as it is a matter of being worth the effort.
The second scenario is certainly in play, however. I spoke to a coworker yesterday whose husband runs a painting company. His preferred brand of paint is experiencing a shortage which is bringing business to a standstill. He could schlep over to Home Depot and buy all the paint he wants… but for him it is an inferior brand. Big box stores and Amazon have the billions to grab the supply chain by the throat and make it do what they want, even if this means chartering their own container ships. Meanwhile small business dies on the vine. (It feels like someone is picking winners and losers here.) Where the second scenario is consistently in play, in my view, is construction (and related trades like painting) and electronics, moreso for parts and components, and less for popular finished products like phones and bluetooth headsets.
I actually think our supply chain problems are more than just a breakdown in the just-in-time global supply chain. A good example I just came across this morning. At the local post office where I have a business PO Box the main entrance door is a big steel. aluminum and glass thing from the 1960’s ( as is the rest of the building). This is the main post office in an economically bustling suburban small city (Beaverton). But for three months now the front door has been broken. The original hinges were replaced with weak modern ones and now the door sags and scraps on the cement in front of it. After a couple of weeks of dragging and grinding they just locked the door and put up yellow safety tape. Now everyone has to go around to the side door with the long ADA ramp. I imagine replacing this door involves some long official budgetary process that could take months or years or never. But something that in past years might have been handled by an in-house repairman or local handy-guy now drags on forever, and the solution is yellow caution tape. This by itself does not constrict the supply chain. But hundreds of thousands of such circumstance where delivery people, manufacturers, truckers, and other key members of the supply chain have to take the ” long way around” is just enough to clog up the machine. In the drive to create. more profit for the “intermediaries” too many of the essential cogs in the machine were ” disrupted”. But much too many peoples dismay, software, or A.I .or remote workers or diversity managers or websites do not fix the front door.
Replying to Frank Kaminski: Even better than Sheckley’s “Dimension of Miracles” in my view was his scintillating “Mindswap”, containing the deep ideas of “metaphoric deformation” whereby the overloaded mind of an interstellar traveller gives up on accepting alien-ness and begins to translate everything he sees into terrestrial terms. Also there’s the ironic climax in the chaotic, logic-free “Twisted World”. A marvellous book.
Just how full should our pantries be? This deserves its own post….imo
@Spiritus #83
There are plenty of reasons for not wanting anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church. That’s not the decision I ended up making, but I can see how it makes sense to lots of people.
I am not sure I can say much more that what JMG and Bei Dawei have already offered, but if I may… The fact that you think the phrase “Our Father” is vague does not make it vague. The Father is Yahweh, the first person of the Trinity, and you calling him Our implies that you’re still One of Us, aka a Christian. Then there is the issue with You subjecting your Fate to His Will (Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done)… and requesting all the goodies that are reserved for His Flock (from the very mundane Daily Bread to the awe inspiring Deliver Us from Evil).
Is it possible that your continuing to say the Lord’s Prayer is in fact keeping you attached to the Egregore of the Catholic Church; which you avoided being Confirmed into but never quite formally Renounced? Are you sure you really want to leave?
Either way, if you are to make a decision with a clear mind, maybe you should try some different prayer for a time, while you are considering your options. Of course, any vacum wants to be filed, and these days the random filling you find around is all stinky rubbish; so you will want to use some sort of neutral but uplifting practice instead. The result for searching “Atheist prayer” in the web returned uniformly lame results, but some ideas that come to mind.
1. Etheric hygiene is de rigeur: cold baths and floor washes with vinager for starters, they you can follow up with our host’s advice if you feel like (search for “Magical Safety and Protection”).
2. Use affirmations of the sort “I am for life, harmony and kindness” or “I am committed to the pursuit of virtue”. You could do worse than “Blessed be me and mine” for protection.
3. Play and sing aloud a song that speaks of the Highest virtue that you resonate with. Here are two examples that resonate with me, but your mileage may vary. In particular, I am not sure a Divine Being aligned with that value will not show up to say “Hi”, but if you did choose wisely, that would be a plus.
Such great discussion!
Justin Patric Moore: I was thinking the same thing about a new Satanic panic yesterday when I was reading Rod Dreher’s essay in “The American Conservative.” I usually love reading Dreher (with whom I mostly disagree), but good gods “The Age of the Antichrist is Here” really took me back to the 1980s and the fundamentalists I grew up around. I went to high school in the buckle of the Bible belt at the very end of the Satanic panic and remember a classmate of mine who testified about his baptism into Satanism. His story was utterly incredible, but you could tell he believed it.
Steph D.: IMHO, hip hop (like punk) is first and foremost anti-authoritarian. Right now it’s the woke left who are the loudest and most anti-populist authoritarians on the public stage. It seems both natural and fitting that hip hop would attack them.
I’ll add my own experience to the discussion. I’ve been a Dave Chappelle fan since the mid 1990s. As some (if not all) of you know, there is a big controversy around his latest comedy special “The Closer” because he dares to affirm the existence of biological sex. Of course there is a loud and authoritarian (and science denying for the win!) sect of Trans activists that want to erase biological sex from discussion. All of the dozens of mainstream media critics have piled on Dave Chappelle.
However, in real life and on web forums I have noticed an increasing full-throated defense of Chappelle and his latest special. Discussion has gone from “Chappelle is a comedian” to “Chapelle is a comedian, deal with it!” to “turn off Netflix if your so offended,” to increasingly “Explain exactly how Dave Chapelle is wrong on that point.”
On the one hand, more people getting fed up with wokism is a good thing. On the other, discussion is no longer possible since people, particularly the wokies but they are not alone, don’t agree on enough common starting premises to discuss anything. I find the latter worrying.
@Justin Patrick Moore
I fully agree with your take on conspiracy theories.
I think it’s all various cabals of money worshippers.
Also I love Robert Anton Wilson. Has he got you counting quarters yet? (Prometheus Rising)
Sincerely
Jessi Thompson
anotheramethyst
Regarding your earlier suggestion about conservative occultists sharing their views, I was actually thinking about starting a collapse blog with a local focus but was not sure about how keeping silent applied to it. There are many issues here that nobody is talking about.
Obviously you are out in the open about your general involvement as a public figure but have pretty serious opsec when it comes to whatever particulars you are working on. Would that be a good example to follow for someone with only a few years of taking it seriously so far?
@David: Thanks for the plug on Squatter Rites! I hope to get back to the “Down Home Punk” series which was mostly shelved as I worked on other things and spend some more time on the Green Wizards site again. I’m glad to see it prospering, and wish it to continue for as long as the internet is around, and morph into something else when it dies.
@Chris Smith: I hear you! I would read Dreher’s article but I got enough sermonizing and demonizing in the 14 or so years I attended the World Wide Church of God as a kid -before finally being allowed to quit. So I’m going to pass on reading him for now 😉
I hear you on the Chappelle front too. Matt Taibbi had a good article on his substack about Chappelle. I lived in Yellow Springs for a year and a half before I dropped out of Antioch (Chappelle’s hometown and where he lives now). My daughter was up there a few weeks ago with her boyfriend and she said that a lot of the stores had signs that said “We Support Dave Chappelle”. I was glad to hear it. (I’m getting an error message on his substack or I’d send the link now.) I love Chappelle’s Midwest style of humor.
…speaking of weird Satanic panic blasts from the past… my older sister and my cousin were both sent to Kids Helping Kids… that organization has a dark history. The weird thing is, they weren’t even drug users, but it was supposed to be a rehab.
@Jessi: I loved Prometheus Rising. It’s definitely worth a re-read. & I get what you mean about the quarters. If you start looking for quarters you see them every where. If you start looking for reptillians, hmmm, they too might be seen lurking around every corner.
I think RAW said something like the “what the thinker thinks, the prover proves”. I see that a lot with the new conspiracists.
Sam @ #147 and Anon @160, Pardon my cynicism, but I still maintain that Dreher is bought and paid for. As are many prominent leftist “influencers”, not least Mr. Dore. The unacknowledged secret of such Republican electoral success as we have seen over the past four decades has come from the addition of conservative Catholic voters to the Republican coalition of segregationists, evangelicals and amoral materialists. Catholics were promised repeal of Roe vs. Wade forty years ago and are now realizing that the promise was a lie. As JMG has pointed out more than once, Republican officeholders and their rich donors have girlfriends and the occasional pregnancy is a problem to be taken care of privately, not at all a “blessing from God”, whatever they might say publicly.
I suggest Dreher’s article represents an attempt to offer the conservative Catholic community something that will get their parishioners back into the voting booth. If Dreher and other similar intellectuals can influence well known Catholic writers and speakers, those persons can influence bishops who will then give orders to parish priests. At one time, parish priests were required to mention and denounce abortion at every public event. During one Saturday vigil–a mass frequently attended by seniors because it is easy to get in and out of the parking lot on Saturday evening–a voice from the congregation said loudly, Father, you are the only person in this building who might be capable of reproducing,
pygmycory #81 Ugo Bardi blog The Seneca Effect has a new post on exactly this topic: https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-vi-great.html It’s part 6 of a series titled The Age of Exterminations…grim, but necessary reading imho. If you’re not familiar with his work, it’s worth checking out.
Jerry Flaxfield @ 159, if you were to supply the online space, I think I and others here could supply the bibliography. Medium used to publish reading lists, 100 best 20thC novels, etc., which made me want to scream and throw something through the monitor. Nothing from the South American cordillera, for example, arguably the most important literary movement of that century.
If Russell Brand wants to eat real food, I hope he is down with the notion that some of that real food will be being grown in front and back yards in his town and he will be expected to keep his pets out of food producing yards.
IG, in addition to what has already been said above, I would urge you to make sure your kids know how the world works. Dumb is not cute. Stupid is not OK, I don’t care what Hollywood says. Just be nice does NOT ensure that things will turn out alright. Cock-eyed optimism can too easily become cock-eyed foolishness. Teach your kids the art of discernment along with good principles.
@blue sun
The relative damage of EVs versus petroleum-burning cars is so variable between regions and vehicle models that it’s a difficult question to answer. This article has analyzes many facets of the issue and includes a county-by-county map comparing three electric models’ emissions to those of hybrid and conventional models: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/044007/pdf
You might also make the case that it would be better to wait for improvements in EV technology (and decreases in cost) and only replace the current fleet when it actually needs replacement. If the current fleet is in good condition, it would be better to spend the money on carbon offsets rather than cars. Even if the fleet is about to break down that might be true: if I’ve done my math right, the price of an electric school bus can pay for a new conventional bus and the removal of its lifetime emissions with a good chunk of cash left over. It should be fairly easy to find the relevant figures online and put them together to present.
As for the parking lot, why can’t they put the new buses where they used to put the old ones? Are they keeping the old buses?
JMG and Trustycanteen about small cities and towns:
The best and most creative cities in history (Florence during renaissance, Athens at its peak etc) had a population of less than 100k. Cities of 10k can and did have all the culture, art and entertainment people want.
Yes, I know that we won’t probably live to see those kind of cities again but there is hope for civilization (civitas = city)
The question is the transition period – will the large cities be fed by stripping all the food from the hinterlands (like Rome did)? Or will the large cities become hellholes and the small towns will have a chance to turn into viable villages? I don’t know.
@JMG
thank you, a good idea to take up. I hope the following recount of mine isn’t too lenghty. I try to concisely
tell my experiences that I find interesting, maybe someone else does too.
THere was one interesting thing at the PMC three men theater and jubilee concert occasion I was at, with about 50 or 60 people.
There was an older classical leftist man and an oldish couple he was overflooding with excited text.
That growth cannot be endless, how it shows and what good and energy efficient ideas come from older times.
The old hippie types in Austria are often much more accessible to this idea;
Though probably also because some of them had good opportunity to do down to earth alternative stuff like annual drumming festivals,
crafting, gardening…more so than my generation (´1988)
the younger and hipper pockets of people around were certainly not much assuming about a predicament of serious rumble of the staggering colossus that
our civilization is. Or wanting too hear it; I’ve seen that and received and angry chorus of birds before.
I found it also remarkable that my old time artist friend there was a little sad when comparing himself to our other uni colleague, who simply inherited
a company from his dad. It was funny how this guy after a time grew into his position and started to walk in polished italian leather shoes and
drive his dads giant car. Not a bad character though, still.
My artist friend envied the business man, while I myself am impressed with my artist friend, who abandoning our mutual environmental political science
study and made a career as a professional dancer and theater player.
He did it since he was a kid and always had a highly aesthetic gesture and language about him. Good with women always. And still a genuinely friendly man too without
too much vanity or ill will.
Another entirely different, much closer friend I have is a wisened middle aged man who abandoned studying economics earlier on for a life as barkeeper and waiter.
He came here when he was three, his parents fleeing a south american military dictatorship. He discovered spirituality when opportunistically visiting an indian ashram.
Though he isn’t unabmiguous about its leader and sceptical of his utter sainthood, he found into a path.
He remarked how it is absurd enough observing how our time demands to give up one’s health a lot for a position of status and leadership.
My aforemontioned company owning friend, once sportive now has grown a typical posture. The artist enving him is slenderly dynamic, of course.
I see it this interesting health-status relationship in the software job too.
Part of my long time rage I’ve always carried is being forced to do something unnatural for a living, like in a little box, and get no chance to learn
about esprit and lively tides.
I studied environmental political science, before I knew what woke was, but I learned fast enough, though I lacked words to describe it because there were
no common words for it then.
Decided that both I would not want to wear a suit and do project management for public-private municipial agencies, and that they wouldn’t want me with
my set of values anyways, I liked abstract thinking and programming better.
Everybody asks how studying at an agricultural university brought me into the software industry.
Its was both luck and intention, maybe luck was really a consequence of will.
If I have to sit in front of a computer for a living, I want an abstract mental challenge, and bearable people around me, and even better as a frequent
privilege of it, not work full time.
At work, two interesting conversations took place.
At a small coffee table with +5 people one proclaimed that hans rosling said nothing was as bad as people thought because statistics said otherwise.
I left my computer and joined (Im relatively new…) and chimed in that these statistics left out things like exponential growth in some populations, and
the stagnating wages since decades…it was surprisingly well received.
Though the same man also has given good points about modern vs traditional medicine, for example how doctors always try to sell surgery where a physical therapist
can help you do your own healing. I’ve experienced the same, and back then had only very vague idea of anything spiritual or physical.
It put me at the hands of the first alternative spiritual people I’ve met who were competent but hell on earth.
An outrage!
The second conversation was the most interesting recently outside of my close social range: one colleague remarked to the other how she tried to prepare for a black out
(single family house on the outskirts), whether she should reactivate her stove but wouls need to pay the stove brusher then, and how her plumber recommended
keeping her ~30 year old boiler, because the new ones, *ahem*….
I commented how a lack of natural gas would affect fertilizer production. He answered, but it is only energy and that can be replaced.
I explained, no it is also the chemical reaction what you need it for. “Oh…”.
Somehow this conversationed relieved my heart a little.
If anyone has read this far, I also recommend the interviews on the art of manliness website about “movnat”, natural movements.
regards,
Curt
Michael Gray #105
re: computers in architectural design
The trend towards unpleasant buildings began roughly with the advent of treating buildings as individually designed objects, instead of relying on conventional, proven styles and methods.
I read once that this sprang from the invention of reinforced concrete, which allowed entirely new forms to be built.
Anyhow, designing buildings on a sheet of paper in a studio was a first significant step away from making navigable public spaces, but while a 2D drawing of a building still requires some degree of imagination from the architect, allowing for imagination with its base in real-life experience to creep in and ameliorate things, 3D design on a computer produces a visualization that is so seemingly realistic that this correcting factor of imagination is cut out, leaving the architect with a thing that looks fine and finished already.
Trouble is, it looks fine on a screen, not IRL.
Seen from an appropriate distance, such as a window high up and far away, even the most modern of built atrocities have their charms, because that’s how they were designed.
It‘s when you‘re the meaningless ant up close to them that they unfold their full terror, because that perspective can’t be simulated on a screen.
I‘m curious wether the implementation of VR glasses in architectural process could help fix this.
Following on Christopher H.’s comment above (#106), if I may, I’ve found that Pressfield’s concept of “Resistance” as described in _The War of Art_ bears an uncanny resemblance to the “Watcher at the Threshold” as described by JMG and others in _Learning Ritual Magic_. I have no idea if Pressfield has studied occult philosophy, but he definitely seems to be tapping into some key concepts therein.
@AJT, if I may:
On post-Han China, I think Toynbee had much more insight than Spengler. He first proposed a succession of cultures – a Chinese followed by an East Asian one. In the latest books of Studies in History, he proposed ditching the 1000-year Graeco-Roman model altogether for China and using a rise-and-fall model of indefinite duration.
PS: Toynbee’s later model of a Graeco-Aramaic cultural potpourri, with important contributions from the older Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, also seems to me to be a much better model of the Levant during the first millennium AD than his earlier model of a reawakened Aramaic civilization, or Spengler’s tragical Magian pseudomorphosis. The more I hear about hermetic literature, the origins of the Cabbala and Neoplatonism, the more even Roman Egypt seems a rich cultural mix to me, not a sterile Fellaheen stage.
Our host uses pseudomorphosis in a more general way, for any transient influence of one culture on another before it finds itself. For Spengler, the one example of pseudomorphosis is deeply tragic because it supposedly stopped the Magian culture from fully expressing itself for 600 years.
@ David Trammel #149
David is asking for guest blogposts. I’ve written some for Green Wizards and it’s not hard.
Based on some of the very lengthy, thoughtful, detailed comments I’ve seen here, I know many of you can write a terrific guest blogpost. You’re already doing it.
The hardest part for me was getting the pictures but I’m not a photographer. I rely on my kids and my husband for my pix and then help getting them inserted into the blogpost.
@ Neptune’s Dolphins #161 and local elections.
You reminded me of a local primary election a few years ago. It demonstrates what the future of politics will be.
We’ll call the candidates Jill and Rob. The local democratic party was all-in with Rob, a long-time local pol. I was invited to his official wine and cheese soirees. He sent out plenty of fliers.
Jill was his opponent. She was ultra-fringe and looked-down-upon by the party’s leadership. She knocked on every door in the district including mine. Rob didn’t do that.
Jill cleaned Rob’s clock in the primary and became the official party candidate for the general election in November. The party was not keen on her. Too fringy! Too independent!
She attended a township board of supervisor’s meeting I happened to be at and introduced herself. Apparently, she did that with every local municipality in her district.
When she ran against the incumbent Republican (we’ll call him Tom), she lost. However, she lost by a surprisingly narrow margin considering she did a grass-roots campaign on her own and had virtually no name recognition and this is a conservative district.
She made Tom work for it.
Does anyone here remember the greatly feared Eric Cantor from Virginia? He lost his primary bid when his unknown opponent went all out in the primary and knocked on every door in the district.
@ Austinofoz #171
Two weeks at absolute minimum. After that, it’s how much space do you have available?
Learn how to cook, if you don’t already.
Do not store ANYTHING you don’t eat regularly now. That is, don’t go out and buy buckets of wheatberries unless you already eat them.
Practice first in/first out. Use the oldest stuff first. Your pantry should be cool, dry, in the dark, and well-ventilated and everything you store will last longer.
If you store correctly (see above) the use-by date on the can is a guideline. We’ve eaten plenty of expired foods and lived to tell the tale. See our discussions on the subject at Greenwizards.com!
Don’t forget to store water.
Don’t forget pharmaceuticals, paper goods, health & beauty, cleaning products, and your pets.
If you’ve got the space, six months will get you past a big disruption.
Lots of people have written extensively on the subject. There are plenty of resources online and at the library. We talk about this at greenwizards.com too.
So have I and I assume you’ll do your preps largely at the grocery store: https://peschelpress.com/fed-safe-and-sheltered/
Sammy, the whole “nature vs. nurture” debate has been keeping geneticists well supplied with dissertation topics since Mendel was a pup.
Pygmycory, me too.
Rodger, that seems unlikely to me. Since most US debt these days is being bought by the US government — Enron financing, anyone? — there’s no reason they can’t keep hiking the notional debt ceiling as often as they want. In all probability, unless conditions change, the US debt will be erased by hyperinflation rather than default — that’s the way things are headed right now, certainly.
Cliff, it’s definitely pukeworthy, but it’s one of the basic credos behind the myth of progress. What it means, translated out of Pinker’s inimitably bland babble, is “In the future, everyone will agree with me.” This term “rationality,” after all, has no objective meaning outside of “conformity to some subjectively agreed-upon canon of reason,” and what counts as reason in one age is incomprehensible in the next.
Michael, I think you have a valid point, but it’s the wrong way around. It’s not that computers created Uglicism; it’s that the mindset behind Uglicism — the abolition of human values and their replacement with mechanistic anti-values — is what created computers. Thanks for the image — that’s lovely architecture.
Martin, glad to hear it. I’ve got copies of most of Reich’s work in English — enough, and then some, for the work with his ideas I have in mind — but I hope others are interested; there’s a lot of “there” there.
Denis, think tanks propose lots of stupid ideas, and most of them never get enacted. Why assume in advance that you’re going to lose?
Sam, interesting. “Integralism” is a new label for a very old and very bad idea — the fusion of church and state that gave us the Inquisition. I doubt it’ll get far, as Catholicism is losing ground rapidly these days; if it does, they’ll be burning Jews and heretics at the stake again in short order, because that’s what the Catholic hierarchy does when it gets political power. Look at Spain under Franco, where thousands of Freemasons were rounded up, gunned down, and buried in unmarked graves because of Catholic bigotry against the Craft!
Aziz, (1) the New Age scene has had its own robust mythology all along — see if you can find some of the formative books in the movement from the 1950s, by writers such as George Van Tassel, and you’ll find it in great profusion. It’s mutated somewhat since then. I don’t think they’re in touch with planetary intelligences — it’s the same spirits who pretended to be Aunt Agnes back in the heyday of Spiritualism, showing up in different ectoplasmic drag. (1) The teachings I follow identify them as beings like us who passed through the process of spiritual evolution long before we did, but in the present solar system, while gods are beings who did this in systems that finished their life cycle long before this system was born.
Jay, we’ve already cycled many times through the precessional cycle during the lifespan of our species — the cycle’s only 25,920 years long, after all, and humans have been around a lot longer than that. The cycle takes us from periods when we’re more in contact with spiritual realities to periods when we’re more in contact with material realities, and back again. Both are necessary phases of our species’ evolution, and we just happen to be human at a time when the cycle is moving into its densest material phase.
David T, thanks for the reminder!
Scotlyn, thanks for this. Yeah, that echoes my experience exactly.
Justin, it’s anyone’s guess. I think that most of the larger midwestern cities should be safe. If the witch hunts start and that turns out not to be the case, a fast relocation to New England might be in order.
Jerry, sure, but I don’t have the time. Somebody else will have to do the work!
Anon, interesting. Of course he doesn’t cite me — he’d be belabored by his readership for quoting an occultist. (Oh, the horror!) I just wish those thinkers who recognize the importance of scale and size would apply the same thinking to Catholicism sometime…
Neptunesdolphins, thanks for the data points! I’m watching the Virginia election closely, of course.
Quin, good heavens. I’m delighted to hear this. Maybe common sense will finally break through the third-rate mythmongering of the progress worshippers!
Jay, thanks for the data points.
Hippogriff, I meditate on the season, perform a ritual, and then have a good dinner to celebrate.
DT, that makes a great deal of sense. Thanks for this!
Clay, I recall reading that on the eve of the French Revolution, it took forty years of correspondence to get a broken roof tile fixed in a church, so I think you’re on to something.
Austin, I’ll consider it.
Aloysius, “keep silent” doesn’t mean that you can’t speak when you choose to do so. It means that you choose when to speak, and keep your mouth shut otherwise. Obviously I have no compunction about making my views known in public! With that in mind, I’d encourage you to start your blog, and yes, the approach I’ve used is certainly one you can borrow.
NomadicBeer, true enough.
Curt, fascinating. Many thanks for the data points.
@Spiritus flat ubi vult (#83): Perhaps consider asking the gods…? I am of the mind that the gods choose their own, though in our upside-down state, we perceive things as vice versa.
Was raised in a half-Reformed (Puritan)/half-Catholic (lapsed) background, both of which were emphatically convinced of the reality of the spiritual realms (the latter of which abounded in spiritual practices that were, eh, off the beaten path, to say the least). Was never much of a joiner, so can’t empathize there, but glad to say the conviction of the spiritual realms never departed.
Whatever path you find yourself on, may it be illuminated by the divine light.
Axé
JMG said “Why assume in advance that you’re going to lose?”
Came in from throwing compost on the garden beds, Read this reply from you and annoyed that this was your response to what I thought was a very serious contribution to the open post.
Then I opened up the news saw the Biden admin is proposing giving half a million to each illegal immigrant family, Facebook changed its name to Meta with an accompanying virtual reality, and saw the list of fraud committed in the PA election. You’re right, a 1000% right. It’s not even close to a fair fight.
John, I don’t know if you have seen this yet, but you are quoted at some length in this article. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-do-integralists-want-reactionary-catholicism/
JMG: “no nation on earth has ever had a nuclear power industry without huge and ongoing government subsidies. The dirty secret of nuclear power is that it can’t pay for itself.”
Granted, but I’m curious about your (and other interested Ecosophians) perspective on Russia’s nuclear industry where abundant state subsidies are not a problem. As far as I know, Russia has big plans to continue building out their nuclear infrastructure for electricity generation domestically and exporting their technology all around the ‘developing’ world.
I’m not pro nuke at all and the nuclear waste disposal issue looms darkly over the future wherever it’s installed. Seems kaput in the US though and will likely never be revived as the speed of our decline over the next 20 years will probably disable our capacity for projects of this scale.
So much of the material decline in the west will be attributable to energy scarcity and expense, but I wonder if Russia is actually quite well-positioned with respect to energy access and affordability for the remainder of the 21st century. They also have a rather abundant supply of natural gas and the distinct possibility of discovering new oil reserves in the arctic as it thaws.
I know fear of Russia and hatred of Putin runs deep in the US but I find myself often admiring their skillful maneuvering through the first two decades of the 21st century (on numerous fronts). Also reflecting a lot on the probable rise of the Subornost great culture in the coming centuries and wondering how the antecedent of a more well-managed decline phase in those lands might influence its development.
As always, thanks for the monthly Open Post and to all who dwell herein.
Jim
JMG–
I’m sorry if I misrepresented Dreher’s article.
Firstly, he absolutely did cite you, by name. My point was that he did not explain who you are or give any background about you. Here’s the start of a long section of verbatim quotes from you:
“…let me put a word in for a Burkean approach. Here’s something John Michael Greer wrote about Burke:…”
The assumption, as I wrote, is that his readership, far from being horrified by his quoting you, would be familiar with your name and wouldn’t need to have it explained to them why they should be interested in what you write.
Secondly, he is vehemently opposed to integralism, not on questions of scale (I raise those; I don’t have any reason to think that Dreher spends much thought on them) but on simple historical grounds; for example he cites the nightmarish case of Edgardo Mortara. He knows exactly where integralism would go if it could, as do we all. He also cites a letter from a priest who points out that it would be the death of any true spirituality in the Church.
>you won’t be able to convince pro-nuclear types of that, because they’ll just say, “Well, there has to be something!” No, there doesn’t.
I would say something about how when the world ran out of tin to make bronze, they all switched to iron. It took them 5 or so centuries to figure it out though. And the world was a completely different place too by the time they did. Maybe it won’t take that long to switch over to nuclear, then again, maybe it will. And like you said, there’s no guarantee that people won’t give up trying to make it work.
Although that does present an interesting question – why did they keep trying over and over for 500 years to make stuff out of iron? Why didn’t they give up? What kept them going?
@Denis
re: “It’s got to crack and fall down soon!” “Everyone will realize how wrong this is and change their minds!”
I hear you. If only, right?
I think St. Paisios drew a direct connection between the “mark needed to buy and sell” or to find work, and a vaccine for a new disease. His prognosis was that it would be very difficult for those who did not receive the mark (“not sealed”) as they’d be barred from commerce, but that it would in the long term be worse for those who had been sealed, as “People who are marked will attract the rays of the sun and suffer such harm that they will gnaw their tongues in pain”. I don’t pretend to know what that means, but I think the Elder saw something true, and was explaining it to the best of his limited ability. Other monks have said this is “a mark” but not yet “THE Mark”. Either way… we have some teachings on that subject, and none of them leave a lot of room for the rather optimistic idea that “the narrative” will crack, everyone will see the lies, and the entities pushing things along will just give up and go home… and then we can all go back to our regular commutes, retirement plans, mortgage payments, etc.
This is a test, and spiritual discipline and discernment are the only way to pass it: may God have mercy on us!
relevant quotes plucked here:
https://cyberianorthodox.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/spiritual-awakening-pages-204-205.jpg
Jim W,
I am familiar with Ugo Bardi’s work, but I’m not sure I’ve seen that post, so I’ll go take a look. Thanks.
Denis, my response was meant in all seriousness. We are in a historical situation of the kind that normally precedes the total collapse of the established order of society, with the standard economic unraveling picking up speed around us, and the wild card of vaccine-induced illness concentrated in the supporters of the regime. The blustering of the Bidens and Zuckerbergs of our time means about as much as the speeches put into the mouth of Konstantin Chernenko. Why assume that victory is out of reach?
Roy, thanks for this.
Jim, financial subsidies are a proxy for energy subsidies. While Russia has abundant fossil fuels, they can keep their nukes running. Once those start running short, not so much. No doubt their curve of decline will be slower than ours, for the reasons you’ve indicated.
Anon, fair enough. I didn’t take the time to read his article, since I’ve got a lot of other things to do right now, and I jumped to unwarranted conclusions. That’s really odd, that his audience should be listening to a Druid…
Owen, that view of the end of the bronze age is inaccurate. Tin is still readily available today — until recently it coated most garbage cans, for heaven’s sake; nobody ran out of it in 1300 BC. What happened, rather, was that bronze was expensive because it required relatively rare ores. Iron ore is readily available. Meteoric iron was a known commodity, and very expensive because the supply was limited; the labors of proto-alchemists to create iron out of mud from bogs were motivated by the very high price of meteoric iron. Then some bright soul figured out how to make it in quantity. Cheap iron weapons turned out to be tougher than bronze; wars raged, armies perished, kingdoms fell, and the Iron Age arrived. If nuclear power really was too cheap to meter, it might do the same thing; since it’s too expensive to produce, it’s rather as though the king of Assyria decided he was going to equip his troops with gold weapons instead of bronze, and didn’t bother to find out whether gold can hold an edge.
Hey jmg
A couple of times you mentioned being interested in some of the ideas of a French philosophy group called the situationists, and so I have been reading some of their texts.
My main question is how would you suggest reading and understanding them since many seem rather obtuse and ethereal in the way a lot of European philosophy is.
Also, I began reading “The society of the spectacle “ by guy debord, and I can’t help but notice that each sentence is numbered just like dion Fortune’s books are, coincidental?
@Quin – RE Russell Brand and the myth of progress. Thanks mate, I just sat down to give John Michael the exact same heads-up. One of Brand’s subsequent (or maybe it was previous) posts referenced the myth of progress too.
Thanks John Michael for your tireless efforts of sowing mental and spiritual seeds. Much respect to you!
Jez
@AJT
Thanks for sharing this. I guess it’s not as cut and dried as I thought. As far as the lot goes, I was trying not to overcomplicate my question with all the details. They want to drop the contract with the private busing company which currently does everything and bring the whole operation in house, including maintaining and storing these electric buses. I doubt anyone in the school district has the first clue about what that would entail. So that’s a whole other issue.
I wonder if the Science Fiction folks would be willing to help me out with a reference. I have from my childhood days the faintest recollection of a story, where schoolchildren go about their days in a drab underground facility on Venus; the main scene that made an impression on me was the giant lamp they would have to undress and stand near for several hours to get the “sunlight” their body needs.
Not sure if this was a film or a story, but if anyone can give even a guess as to what the title of this piece of fiction was I’d be greatly appreciative.
@Sammy
The Minnesota twin experiments studied identical twins who were separated at birth and found that 33% of an individual comes from genetics and 33% comes from the environment.
That leaves 33% (ok technically 34% but it’s so close to a division of 3 thirds…) that was never accounted for, which must come from the individual, possibly also from totally unique or personal experiences. I always thought of that as coming from reincarnation, or the individual soul, but that’s just me and my worldview.
Sincerely
Jessi Thompson
anotheramethyst
teresa from hershey ..
As one who stores wheat berries in bulk for personal use, I disagree. They store marvelously well, if kept dry, out of direct sunlight and heat, and sealed well in containment. I’ve berries from about 2010 that are perfectly fine for grinding to this day! .. both hard winter red, and white .. same goes for beans, rice, and pulses ..
Some celebrities are seeing the light and fleeing California.
Tattoo artist Kat Von D is moving to Indiana, closing LA shop: ‘Goodbye California!’
From the article: “Last year, she cited California’s “terrible policies, tyrannical government overreach, ridiculous taxing, amongst so much more corruption” as her motivations for moving to moving to rural southern Indiana, as well as a desire to live in a small town and be closer to nature.”
Kat had a TV reality show called LA Ink on the TLC network. I had heard of it but never watched it as I’m not into reality (fake!) shows, but it’s good to hear some well-known people are coming to their senses. I read elsewhere that she recently had a baby. Maybe starting a family had something to do with it too, and got Kat to thinking about the environment she wanted to raise her child in.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2021/10/26/kat-von-d-moving-indiana-closing-high-voltage-tattoo-la/8548954002/
How many famous people are leaving California? Is there a site tracking this?
Joy Marie
https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/
As someone who came rather close to going into a history Ph.D program, I found this article equal parts interesting and sad. I’m curious as to what your take on it, and the broader situation it describes (our whole institutional class of history scholars being almost shut off to new entry). I mean, maybe I’m biased here as a history lover, but to me a society that puts its future historians though a miniature hell for seven years and then doesn’t even employee them at the end seems really unhealthy. Come to think of it, this whole setup in which becoming a professional scholar of history is made such an unappealing choice that nobody in their right mind does it seems like a key ingredient to produce the sort of drastic break in intellectual transmission from which dark ages are born.
JMG,
Firstly, thank you with all of my heart for the work you do and thanks to everyone else for contributing.
Second, I don’t know you well enough to guess what you might say to the following request:
Before farmers resume the next year’s cycle of agriculture, there will be an online event including high and low ranking gov’t officials, soil scientists, educators, influencers, etc. If you’re familiar with the film Kiss the Ground, the USDA and NRCS, those are good beginning indicators of the vibe.
This event has the ear of some institutions that could nudge the behemoth of agriculture in a more regenerative direction.
Please forgive me if my lack of knowledge about behemoth resulted in an inappropriate analogy or if this inquiry is tone-deaf.
I think that if it were a good fit, your message and presence would be a needed injection of fresh, incisive thought, perspective, direction and management of expectations for the future.
If you’re interested in exploring this, please indicate how I may direct my boss to contact you.
@ Denis
I think we’d enjoy having a beer together and lively discussion on this!
Definitely. If you’re ever going to be around Sin City then let me know and I’ll buy that beer.
@Spiritus #83
All I can add I that I sympathize with your situation and that my own situation lead me from a fundamentalist version of Lutheranism into which I was baptized and confirmed into adolescent atheism, and from there into the study and practice of Buddhism, first in its modern secularized atheist-friendly version, and then in a more authentic Vajrayana/Himalayan/magic form. Buddhism resonated intellectually but I could never fully conjure the devotion to either the guru or the various deities (other than Padmasambhava) that I naturally felt for Jesus by way of upbringing, and so for the last decade or so I have been working with the occult materials here and elsewhere, along with deeper readings in Christian and Buddhist sources, and am only now beginning to feel at home, even if I couldn’t tell you the specific address of that home.
@Crimson Flaming Hippogriff (#165) – I’m pretty new to this as well, but it seems appropriate to incorporate some kind of acknowledgement/honoring of ancestors and/or the dead. The Old Norse apparently honored “the elves” (which may or may not have been linked with the heroic dead), many traditions of the Wild Hunt (sometimes linked with this time of year, sometimes with the Winter Solstice) involved the dead returning, and of course, there’s the Christian (with some help, sometimes) traditions of All Souls and All Hallows days and the Dia de Los Muertos. All of which is to say, even if ancestor veneration is not a normal part of your practice, it might be the right time for some toasts and/or offerings.
Otherwise, my family does pretty typical Halloween things (decorations, costumes, candy, scary movies), though after last year, one silver lining to the whole lockdown approach is that we’ve gone from handing out candy at the front door to tailgating in the driveway with a block party kind of feel.
John, for a long time I’ve been wanting to ask you about your experience with translation. I’m 24, have thus far resisted pursuing higher education but I’m reconsidering. I would like to work as a translator and/or interpreter and I don’t see how I can become employed in those areas without first becoming certified. Plus, and here comes my question, I don’t really have a method or much of a solid knowledge base on how I should go about the process of translation. So, how did you acquire these? Any do’s and don’ts that as an experienced translator you would care to relay to the uninitiated?
A big thank you for hosting this space, and all the best to you and your loved ones.
“Tony C, I think the chance of civil war depends in large part on the long-term effects of the current covid vaccines. A lot of people on the right are biding their time, because they believe that there’s a very good chance that the vaccines will result in a bumper crop of illness and death among those who take them — and if that happens, why bother to fight a war? All they have to do is wait for the Democrats to drop dead from a self-inflicted plague. If it turns out that they’re wrong, then it’ll depend on circumstances when that becomes clear. Since I’m not a medical researcher and don’t even play one on TV, I’m not going to assign a probability to that…”
The vaccine eager have been walking around with the vaccine coursing through their viens for 6 to 8 months now. Shouldn’t we be seeing the Democrats dropping like flies by now if it were going to happen?
Ethan, they don’t know jack and are simply projecting their paradigm onto any Rohrshacks they see. So let me get this straight: humans lived alongside megafauna for 10,000 years and didn’t kill them. Then from the dieoff until now lived alongside them for another 10,000 years and didn’t kill them, such as moose, elk or rare things like pronghorn. AND didn’t kill them in Africa. AND killed them mostly in North America but not so much anywhere else. What sense does that make? That’s like proposing a lighting strike killed them, which makes as much sense as “all humans went crazy … but only for a few years”.
Here’s a megafauna theory: dead mammoths are in Sibera in such numbers they sent mammoth ivory to the Vatican for centuries. Today you can still find them with daisies still in their stomachs. That’s the evidence. Wait a minute: not only were they eating daisies and suddenly were flash-frozen for 10,000 years, BUT daisies only bloom in summer. AND only at temperate latitudes. AND there isn’t enough foodstuff for an elephant in sibera, they’d HAVE to be latitude Nebraska. How about this for a plan: Some sudden megaclimate change hit the earth like a comet and the larger fauna did not survive. Humans did not suddenly break from 10,000 years of habit for a year or two and return back to it for another 10,000 years until 1801. There were only like 100 million humans worldwide anyway, you’d have to walk all day to meet one. Humans had nothing to do with it. Your Professor is just projecting his thoughtless, well-trained disgust and hatred of humans, because he can’t be bothered with the obvious, irrefutable evidence. (Mammoths, not the hypothesis) Doesn’t that seem more likely?
Putting Food By has canning I think, but other things too. It’s easy and safe, make no (little) mind of all the fears. Be a responsible adult. Don’t sweat the cost: you’ll use all the jars and setup for everything else, like dry goods and spaghetti pots. If you suddenly need to stock up, you may suddenly find flour moths and mice and the jars cure that. There is more than canning: I remember the Italians with wine and salami hanging in the cellar.
Why would preppers think it’s safer to be rural? Two reasons: all of human history, and in America, we’ll shoot them. Not some people, not always, not at first, not successfully, but by and by anyone who tries it will disappear pretty quick. Reminds me of an episode of “rural crime”: city slickers robbed a rural bank knowing it would be easy pickings. It was. They were immediately caught as there are only four roads out of town, and 40 minutes to go on each one. If the neighborhood knows you’re a menace, where you going to hide?
Taxing unrealized gains: Money will vanish for 1,000 years. “Money” is generally put into something, a restaurant, a shoe factory. If they tax them, they will put it in Krugerrands and bury them in the ground. Prove I own them you dimwits. They’re still digging up pots of coins from the LAST time the Senate tried this: the Roman Senate. Therefore: No jobs. No investment. No inventions. No economic activity, ever again. Politicians’ economic illiteracy knows no bounds.
Aldarion (no, 185), In a few centuries, as a result of global warming, the plains of central China will probably be underwater, while Beijing will be desert. I expect the area south of that gulf–south China plus SE Asia–to form some new civilization. No idea what language they might speak, or what their religion will be. The area around Lake Baikal might also become the nucleus of some future culture.
The USA has great geographic advantages which its successor states should enjoy, regardless of their economic problems now. Same with Europe and Turkey. India has also been around in some form since forever (not necessarily as a single state).
Industrial Alchemy (no. 167), I am a big fan of the Chopra Mahabharat, an Indian TV series based on one of the world’s greatest epics. There are 94 episodes of about 40 minutes each. Half of India watched this when it first aired, and were like, decorating their TV sets with flower garlands like an altar. I started watching (with English subtitles) just because I had seen clips of it, and was curious about it, even though I laughed at how goofy it looked. The first episode was indeed pretty goofy, with primitive special effects, but it ended on a cliffhanger–so I watched the second episode. By the fourth I started to understand what this was about. It is truly a work of genius. Lord Ganesh himself promises that if you hear the whole story, you will be a different person when you finish! And I have found this to be true. Here’s the first episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnXkv_ozPQw&list=PLn1oS0M3pSUzIuZrDWd4vH-xZhtM5g5fj
The stories of Krishna (which it incorporates) can also be seen as cartoons (made by the Hare Krishna):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1p7Lo8nwNI&list=PLB973DBD69DB69061
(If you like these, don’t miss the movie finale, “Krishna aur Kans” (Krishna and Kansa). Note: the songs are better in Hindi than in English.
Countinthe north (no. 122), you’re most welcome! I was afraid that the joke must have already been made many times, and that I would deserve to be beaten with a….well, you know. (Actually, marriage is my preferred form of BDSM.)
Hi JMG,
Just a thank you for the Weird of Hali Cookbook! A lovely loaf of honey oat bread is cooling on the rack, and looks and smells delightful.
The Burgoo and the Boston Baked Beans are regulars in our small household. We look forward to sampling more recipes. Such a fine variety, with warm and friendly narration.
Thanks for helping us Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush well fed!
Appreciation to you and the Commentariat,
OtterGirl
@Justin Patrick Moore
“As the second religiosity warms up, I expect, and as JMG has pointed out before, this is going to cause those who flip from being neopagans (and related groups) into Christians or some other orthodox faith, to loudly denounce their former magical practices. I suspect they will call it Satanic. I see the stirrings of a new Satanic panic already at work in various corners of the conspiracy theory culture. As conspiracy culture has gone more mainstream in the past few years I see the effects of crappy and shoddy research and unthinking bandwagon hopping (such as the assertion that Aleister Crowley was the father of Barbara Bush or something like that) leading back to a Satanic panic type situation ala the early 1980’s. ”
Again. I will point to the drag queen story hour man dressed like a horned demon who is reading books to little children in the Library in the picture I provided.
Its no coincidence I’d say.
@ #97trustycanteen wrote:
“How are you going to stop roaming bands of looters in rural areas where the neighbors are miles apart? Large stretches of road to and from cities would be big targets, poverty will increase more than it is now with more drug use and property crime (already a big problem).”
Ahem! It sounds as though you don’t live in a rural area.
My rural neighbors aren’t quite miles apart, more like half-miles. But if something hinky goes on, folks are on the phone or the net letting everyone around know about it. Many also have CBs, “just in case”, so communication is possible in grid-down circumstances. For example, I just got the word out about a large black bear traipsing across my farm — much to everyone’s surprise, since the local thought has been that there aren’t bears here. During any calamity, neighbors watch out for each other.
Lots of rural folk can take down a game animal in hunting season from 300 yards, more than safe distance to eliminate “marauders” traveling in groups down the highway. There’s thousands of places to hunker down and scrutinize incoming traffic without being seen. With a chainsaw, trees can be dropped and any road can be blocked in minutes. Stopped vehicles create a “fatal funnel”, in which distant folk with hunting rifles can pick and choose which elements to dispatch. Rural people have (1) thought of this already; (2) discussed it with neighbors; and (3) developed plans to be implemented on short notice. There won’t be much reason to travel those long roads to big cities … there’s hardly any reason right now.
Poverty and lawlessness and drugs are problems everywhere. If things really go bad, many of those issues will be dealt in the country in ways that are prohibited now. Rural folk tend to be practical people, problem-solvers, workers. Those traits will be pretty useful, should things really SHTF.
Good Evening sir,
Two things for this evening. On the more serious side I cast a Geomancy chart to determine if I should go ahead and submit my Religious exemption for my civilian job tonight. The chart was interesting.
Shield Chart
Should I submit my RA to xxxx tonight during the hour of Jupiter.
The mothers
Fortuna Minor
Via
Rubeus
Rubeus
The daughters
Fortuna Minor
Via
Rubeus
Rubeus
The nieces
Fortuna Major
Populous
Fortuna Major
Populous
RW Fortuna Major
Judge Populous
LW Fortuna Major
Needless to say I think that looks pretty positive. The way of points leading to a large amount of Rubeus. Strong emotion does seem to describe the situation these days.
On a lighter note lately I have been wondering if you have any thoughts on why so many people who study occult topics also over lap strongly with people who enjoy role playing games?
Other Dave
JMG: “no nation on earth has ever had a nuclear power industry without huge and ongoing government subsidies. The dirty secret of nuclear power is that it can’t pay for itself.”
Granted, but everything has a price. Nuclear can not compete with fossil fueled power but I think they can out compete renewables. Considering nuclear power plants run at 90% utilization and renewables at 25% or less for a 24/7/365 post fossil fueled power generation system nuclear wins hands down. People will be willing to pay a lot more for electricity than they do now.
That is unless you feel there will be no construction of any power stations post fossil fuels.
Archdruid,
Continuing our conversation from last week: “the thing to keep in mind here is that India had its own well-established great culture before the Magian and Faustian waves of invasion. Spengler didn’t talk much about the later phases in the history of a great culture, and it’s a complex subject — it seems to me that intrusive cultural elements are dealt with at once more shallowly and more adroitly than in a true pseudomorphosis, of the sort we have here in the US. It looks to me as though the Indian elites simply picked up Faustian forms as the temporary rules of the game by which they needed to play for the time being, while US elites tried their level best to ape European ideas and worldviews as well as material culture.”
I would be very interested to hear some of your views on the later phases in the history of great cultures. I don’t know whether India’s great culture is going to survive the fight against Islam and Christianity, but I have some thoughts on what the current pseudomorphosis looks like that I hope to share once I flesh them out a little more.
Regards,
Varun
For what it’s worth, I’m assuming victory for those of us against the vax. But victory or not, resistance is required and I think demanded on the physical level for spiritual reasons. They are vaxxing kids!
As John said in the podcast, the majority of people are hypnotized by the the cheap magic of advertising and constant news propaganda. I stopped trying to convince those people of anything and commit energy to staying aware of how different our world views and understanding of reality differ when interacting with them. A firm, quiet, and open resistance while I continue preparing for decline and building resilience is all I can do. Physical, mental, and spiritual health, exercise, diet, and practice are what I’m spending time on now. Stopped by a free food distribution today and met some people and even helped out a bit. More an individualist than a loaner, never much of a joiner, I will work more on connecting with community and building social capitol now that the avenue I thought I be contributing in during a crisis has tossed me out.
@bei dawei @111, man, that was much more educational than the last link of yours I followed. That ruined my night… no, I had never heard of that person before. But, careful, that sort of spelling error can land you in worse trouble.
@David BTL
Fiber arts are the technology on which civilization was built! Cordage, yarn, thread, weaving, knitting, crochet, basketry… archaeology homes in on things like flint axes when it discusses technology, but that’s only because it’s what survives for thousands of years in the ground. But ropes, sails, blankets and baskets were at least as important, if not more! What good is an atlatl, if you can’t haul home the carcass?
Do be careful with your crochet technique, though– I jumped into that art with more enthusiasm than skill at age 8 or so, and by 12 I had developed a permanent wrist injury. Haven’t been able to do it since, and certain motions still make the wrist click. If I persist, it hurts for days.
Since knitting is on your to-do list, I feel compelled to point out to you the existence of this vintage book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/796946.The_Manly_Art_of_Knitting
I’m not entirely sure that bronze to iron age analogy with nuclear energy is so accurate. You say:
> Meteoric iron was a known commodity, and very expensive because the supply was limited; the labors of proto-alchemists to create iron out of mud from bogs were motivated by the very high price of meteoric iron. Then some bright soul figured out how to make it in quantity.
Well, why couldn’t we then say…..
“Electricity from nuclear energy was a known commodity, and very expensive because the ability to build reactors was limited; the labors of scientists like those at Oak Ridge National Laboratory were motivated by the very high price of that energy. Then some bright soul figured out how to make building nuclear reactors cheaper.
Alternate designs for nuclear reactors exist, such as molten salt reactors. Plentiful nuclear fuel exists. Do you really think humanity will just sit around and die as opposed to improving a technology with high EROI relative to renewables and lots of design space?
@Austinofoz
Re: unrealized capital gains: Looks to me like just another way to snooker the middle and lower classes out of any shot at owning real property, and inexorably suck more wealth out of the hands of the have-nots, into the hands of the extremely rich.
I mean, look at all those people out there who, say, own the house they live in, but aren’t actually wealthy. Think of people who have been a bit downwardly mobile lately, and perhaps are living in a house they inherited, and it’s all they can do to keep up with the repairs and taxes on it. At least where I’ve lived, those people are somewhat protected by things like homestead exemptions– you only owe property tax on the house you live in, if it’s worth more than a certain amount. It’s a modest amount, but it means that people who just barely managed to scrape together enough cash to buy a half-acre lot and put a trailer on it, are not barred from home ownership and can actually build up a wee bit of capital wealth over time (which they’d have no chance at if forced into the rental market) via improvements to the property.
Now say the Fed comes along and pumps a bazillion imaginary dollars into the economy in a bald-faced attempt to evade the unpayable US national debt, deliberately devaluing the currency, so that the US govt. can devalue its debt, and not pay back what it borrowed. Yay, inflation! So now the price of everything is going up, wages are staying the same, and everybody’s dollars are worth less than last year. If you’re a godzillionaire with a well-paid team of financial managers and you go to Christmas parties with Janet Yellen, then you saw this coming way in advance, and you converted your cash assets into hard assets: you bought real estate. And so did all your godzillionaire friends. This causes an asset bubble. You don’t have to worry about the silly unrealized capital gains on that stuff, because you have a team of accountants and lawyers to get you out of inconvenient things like that. But because you and all your buds just hoovered up every “for sale” house, field, and vacant lot in sight, the price of real estate just went through the stratosphere.
So back in Podunk, Ray and Linda who work at the local lumbermill are now facing a crisis situation: the 3br house on a quarter-acre lot that they inherited from her parents, and that they’re now living in and repairing as time and resources allow (it was built in the forties, and there’s some termite damage around the back porch)… is now worth twice as much as it was five years ago– at least on paper. It’s the only “asset” they’ve ever owned, but now, technically, they’re $80k richer than they were five years ago, even though absolutely nothing has changed about their actual financial circumstances because they haven’t sold the place or anything– they’re living in it. But now that it’s worth so much more, they now have to pay taxes on the “increase” in the value of their house. Even though the only reason it’s “increased” is because the dollar is worth less than it used to be.
That is a dastardly move. And they’re trying to sell it as a “tax the super-rich” scheme. I have some words about that, but they are not permissible to use in this combox.
Hello JMG,
I am curious what sites and blogs you like to find information and good commentary about what is happening in the world?
J.L.Mc12, treat them as avant-garde poetry, and remember to laugh. There’s a point to what they’re saying, though since it’s French philosophy, it’s overstated and rather high-strung.
Joy Marie, common sense breaking out all over!
Tolkienguy, I’ll put it on the get-to list, but it may be a while before I have time to read it. The entire academic industry is lurching to a halt right now, though, so no surprises.
Ash, thank you, but I do very poorly on online venues like that, and I’ve found very consistently that bureaucratic types confronted with an archdruid — or for that matter with the concept of an end to progress — tend to close their minds so fast you can hear the clank. Thus that’s probably a better job for others.
Lorenzo, it depends on what kind of translation you want to do. I’m not certified — I just know French and Latin fairly well — and so what I do is prepare translations of interesting texts and place them with book publishers. You don’t need any credentials for that, and you’re better off avoiding higher education. If you want to translate, start by choosing a language and then finding a couple of books that teach a reading knowledge of that language — you don’t need conversational skills, and they’re a distraction from what you want to do. Focus on reading knowledge. Work through the books, then get a relatively simple text (say, a children’s book) and translate it. Go on to more interesting and complex texts, and then try your hand at something for publication. That’s the way I did it.
Christopher, nope. The reason that every other vaccine has been tested for three to five years before being given to the public is precisely that many of the worst problems don’t show up until at least a year has gone by, and often longer. It was in the long term studies, for example, that all previous coronavirus vaccines have been scrapped, because that was when they turned out to cause problems such as ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement — where antibodies produced by a vaccine make it easier for a virus to infect cells).
OtterGirl, you’re welcome and thank you! I’m delighted to hear this.
Other Dave, the answer to your readings is “yes.” Fortuna Major as both witnesses and Populus as the judge tells me that your employer is desperate to keep as many people as possible and so will rubber stamp any reasonably complete application. As for occultism and roleplaying games, well, they both require a strong imagination, so that may be it.
Ross, like every other power technology — renewables very much included — nuclear power receives a huge energy subsidy from fossil fuels. Nobody uses nuclear energy to mine and process uranium or to do any of the other godzillion things that feed into nuclear power! Once fossil fuels are exhausted, that won’t be forthcoming, and no other technology — certainly not renewables — will be able to maintain the kind of power grid we have now, so future societies will have to make do with intermittent energy sources instead. (I’ve written about this at some length in my book The Ecotechnic Future.)
Varun, that’s probably a topic for a post of its own. The short form is that if a civilization has staying power, it can cycle up and down for an indefinite period, going through periods of relative strength followed by relative weakness, for several millennia or more.
DenG, that seems like a good plan to me.
Rus, I tend to think of the quest for cheap nuclear power as being right up there with the quest for perpetual motion; people kept trying for a very long time, and failed over and over again before someone figured out why it wasn’t an option. As for alternative nuclear reactor designs, why, every nuclear technology is cheap, clean, and safe until you start building it. Nor is it a choice between building nukes on the one hand and sitting around waiting for death — there are plenty of better options than either, though of course they require letting go of the absurd extravagance of modern industrial life.
Tony, I’m still looking for ones that will satisfy me.
@methylethyl and @David BTL (#223 and #91) – for what it’s worth, after a friend taught me to knit in college, I found in the Army that Charge of Quarters and Motor Pool guard shifts made *excellent* knitting opportunities. I even had a couple of buddies that also knit! So if any guys out there are worried about knitting being “girly”, I hope it helps to imagine some airborne infantry doing it and being glad of the warm hats/scarves/gloves that resulted.
In the last couple or three weeks I’ve received regular emails from the DMV encouraging me to acquire a California Real ID and listing all the really good reasons why it would be swell for me to have a Real ID. After the first one or two of these, I smelled a rat. I already have a driver’s license; what the hell do I need a so-called Real ID for? Sure enough, yesterday they sent me an email chock full of nifty illustrations full of happy people with Real IDs and pointing out that in future I might need a Real ID to be allowed to fly anywhere in the United States. Of course this has no connection to CoVaxport control freakery whatsoever; only a domestic terrorist would suggest such a thing, such as should be put on a no-fly list immediately.
Hi All,
Thanks A. Karhukainen for those articles on Wang Huning, they were intriguing, I had never heard of him before, and he is definitely a man worth knowing about. What a conversation he and Putin’s man, Vadislav Surkov would have, throw in the ghosts of Ayatollah Khomeini and Yukio Mishima and you have the makings of a proper party there.
Wang Huning’s diagnosis of America’s ills (and China’s too) reminded me of a passage from Robert Litell’s ‘The Company; A Novel of the CIA’- ‘The Soviet Union,” one of the independent economists was arguing, “is an Upper Volga with rockets.” He waved a pamphlet in the air. “A French analyst has documented this. The number of women who die in childbirth in the Soviet Union has been decreasing since the Bolshevik Revolution. Suddenly, in the early seventies, the statistic bottomed out and then started to get worse each year until the Russians finally grasped how revealing this statistic was and stopped reporting it.” — “What in God’s name does a statistic about the number of women who die in childbirth have to do with analyzing Soviet military spending?” a Company analyst snarled across the table. — “If you people knew how to interpret statistics, you’d know that everything is related’
And in this time we are living in, everything definitely is related. This science-driven hyperconnectivity is, perversly enough, fertile ground for the seeking and divining of omens, especially when reports from traditional news sources have become so fantastical and divorced from reality.
I have a quick question for you John (which might be a stretch), can you think of any societies or fraternal organisations that have chapters here in Ireland that would be enlightening to join.
@Lorenzo,
I made a career of translating Japanese to English. I have never been certified. I once passed the highest level of a proficiency test, but that was never part of anyone’s decision to hire me. I was lucky to come to Japan during an economic boom, and anyone willing to give it a go who could produce a reasonably accurate translation in a reasonable amount of time could find work easily. From there, I have acquired work mostly by word of mouth, and I freelance for a half dozen regular clients, including one translation company.
I have one caveat for you. Translation software is advancing, and demand has decreased. At one time I also translated Russian into English, but where I live there is virtually no demand for it anymore. One translation company I had worked for for many years with a lot of large corporate clients gradually became abusive, with high turnover of office personnel, and I finally stopped accepting work from them. What will set you apart in a dwindling job market is your ability to render your work or a computer’s into polished English. But if you love languages and you love solving riddles, this is a nice way to make a living.
The interesting thing about FACEBOOK (the parent company, allcaps, which seemed to read as FAKEBOOK to me) changing its name to Meta, is that I remember the Metanet from Retrotopia.
I don’t suppose Mark Zuckerberg reads this?
Tony C #226,
Here’s a pretty good aggregator for climate and economy worldwide:
https://climateandeconomy.com/
Methylethyl #225 Re: unrealized capital gains
Taxing RE cap gain not only increases tax revenue, it incentivizes freeing up money sequestered in the gain increasing money supply and velocity. The real magic (black) is you have to borrow your own gain through the bank and cut them in through fees and interest on a piece of your own wealth. Insidious and malignant. DenG
Hi John Michael,
As far as my experience suggests to me with this technology, solar PV energy can’t be utilised to replace itself – at any scale. It seems odd to me that people might consider this to be a genuine economic reality.
And the renewable energy technology seems to use a lot of aluminium, and not only in the frames, but also the cables and probably heaps of other components. And some parts of the world are running super low on magnesium which is used in aluminium production. Like down to weeks supply for the Europeans. There’s a lot of weird things going on like that.
I went to the timber yard a couple of days ago to order some lumber, and yeah – short supplies is an understatement. They were able to supply, but I had to pay for over sized and also treated timber which due to economics (i.e. it was expensive), was still on the racks. The more usual 2 by 4 equivalent here was just not available to the likes of me. The order cost me a pretty penny. However, I’m not complaining by any means, as some supply it should be said, is far better than none at all.
Mate, dunno about you, but there are times where I feel that I’m only one step ahead.
Here’s to the memory of Bill, the irascible, but also erudite and well meaning bloke. Onething on the other hand was always pleasant and lovely. I salute them and remember them on this day.
Cheers
Chris
JMG,
Thanks for the reply – I do get the deeper time bit and, as if by magic, this story popped up yesterday to remind some more that the homo genus has been around at least two million years and our ancestral knowledge is sparse:
https://www.popsci.com/science/new-human-species-homo-bodoensis/
I also can appreciate the joint rising tides of religiosity (moves to find meaning beyond reason) and concern on worldwide suffering and death (e.g. Pygmycory offering an example this week). Surely these would lead to more of a connection with spiritual thinking and undertaking – more magic, and not a retrenchment in the material.
How’s an increase in humans moving on into the more subtle realms tie in with an increased challenge of the age in practicing or using magic? – as my understanding suggests both, to be successful, ultimately require a layered appreciation of our, often subtle, interconnectedness with all.
I’m guessing there’s a sort of paradox in here somewhere – ‘low’ magic era keys in with high spiritual – ‘power’ going where it needs to maintain the cycle? (Are there any symbolic references to this for meditation?)
There was mention by one commenter about Quakers and Unitarians. I can’t speak to the state of Unitarianism these days beyond what I observe in UU neighbors, but for years I attended a Quaker meeting, unprogrammed. If you are looking for any kind of theological rigor, then Quakers are not for you. I discovered quite quickly that despite any claims to the contrary, in real life you could believe virtually anything and call yourself a Quaker, and some of my fellow attendees at the meetinghouse did believe very strange things. Occasionally these beliefs would stray into tin foil hat territory.
It’s also pretty widely recognized that these days almost all Quaker meetings (except for the most conservative of programmed meetings) and UU churches, at least in the US, are fully on board with wokeness and all of its corollaries. At least in the northeast, both denominations are quite vocal about their social justice credentials too.
@JMG I am inclined to agree with your take on integralism, but as a follow-up question, what do you make of the fact that a lot of the modern integralists tend to not be jackboot types but instead quixotic and bookish intellectuals in the vein of the book character Ignatius J. Reilly? It seems somewhat strange – is that common for promoters of this type of ideology?
@Mary Bennett I think your characterization of Mr. Dreher is a bit unfair. I think he has rocked the boat enough times to prove he is not a shill. He was in the 2000s (while he was still a traditional Catholic) one of the main journalists covering the Catholic abuse scandal on the side of victims. And again now, he is perfectly willing to criticize several of the different factions of his party – he has called out both the Republican “left” (the never-Trumpers) and the Republican “right” (the Trump faction) in his columns. All throughout his writings I get the sense he is a type of eclectic intellectual similar to JMG himself, and not really a cadre man or slick political operative for hire.
I’m inventing a new meaning for the word re-trench-ment btw (oops)
To re-dig a trench in the ground, rather than the ‘reduction’ meaning from the French. Just part of Brexit and in no way a mistaken use of the word. 😉
JMG,
I haven’t been that active over the last half year. I was putting into my life the 12 step program big book step study. It involves writing down all of one’s resentments, the lie behind the resentment, the fear behind the resentment and then the lie behind the fear. Then one prays to God about each fear and asks to be strengthened in faith of one’s Higher Power. Then one reads everything (which takes 20 hours or so) to one’s sponsor. Immediately after one retires for quiet meditation for one hour and then prays to have all one’s defects taken away. Then one asks for amends to others they have wronged. The most important aspects of this process are discipline, will and a true desire and willingness to give all of oneself to the process.
During this time I have been taking the Essene’s course you made available and studying Kabbalah which for me bridges over the mainstream Christian understanding of God with the gnostic understanding. The AA program I believe is training one to tap into the Holy Spirit as understood by Kabbalists using generalized Christian language and speech. For my background (raised Catholic) it is the most accessible way to discuss gnostic concepts and be in community with other gnostic practitioners even if we don’t call ourselves by that name. I also have never felt the Spirit as strongly as I have during this process. I can feel the actual development of the sixth sense. Everyone has said they see a dramatic change in my behavior, appearance and mood. There is a new dimension to my life and I understand your writing on a deeper level.
Thank you foe your writing and work. Thank you for making the gnostic courses available. I am storing them all away as I now know that this is a constant re-newal this sixth sense, this spiritual life. I pray all is well with you and your wife and I am excited to see how the course of your life continues to grow, those of my fellow Ecosophians and my own! I for one have been realizing the dreams I put off for so long. I will start horse back riding today
This might be a better question for Magic Monday–the problem is that by the time Monday rolls around, I may forget it. But if you prefer me to repost it there, I will.
My local UU-based pagan group is fond of rituals in which everyone is invited to invoke their own gods. I think these invocations are pretty shallow and unlikely to result in the presence of a deity, but still, I am not comfortable being in a circle where someone may invoke, say, Loki. And some members of this group do work with Loki, which is entirely their right, but I don’t want to. I feel like I need to shield myself within circle, which seems contrary to the whole point of being in a circle.
Maybe this is all harmless and I don’t need to worry about it. But I wondered about the potential harm of being in a circle where a variety of different gods are invoked, with no advance planning about who they will be. Do I need to take steps to protect myself? I do like the group, they’re the only local pagans I know, and I’d prefer to continue attending at least some of the time.
Thanks very much.
@J.L.Mc12 (#199): I’ve found that discursive meditation on some of the numbered paragraphs of Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle to be very productive. (Or you could think of the paragraphs as stanzas in an avant-garde poem as JMG suggested -an avant-garde prose poem).
Asger Jorn is another Situationist thinker well worth the time to read IMO.
You may find reading the book “The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International” by McKenzie Wark to be helpful, as it puts the work of the Situationists (and the Lettrists before them, et. al) into context. I found it to be very helpful in my understanding of these streams of thought.
Dear Mr. Greer, i have one vote and one question. If another 5th wednesday could be saved for another author, i would vote for Somerset Maugham, occasionally mentioned in your posts. As for the question, if i have a commentary on a very old post long closed to comments, is it ok to write it in an open-post week or i should just move on? Many Thanks, MC
ear Mr. GR
Someone brought up electric cars. What must be remembered is that the thing about any vehicle is that you not only use energy to move yourself around, but the vehicle, too.
EV: Nissan Leaf, 1,775kg for 5 people, 355kg each (the Tesla is over 2,200kg)
Petrol-driven bus, varies hugely, commonly 15,000kg for 50 people, 300kg each
Petrol-driven car: Nissan Pulsar, 1,265kg for 5 people, 253kg each
Electric train, 316,900kg for 1,380 people, 229kg each
Petrol-driven motorcycle: Kawasaki Ninja 250, 172kg for 1 person (2 if you’re both small), 172kg each
Petrol-driven moped, JL5A, 84kg for 1 person, 84kg each
Pushbike, typical, 7-18kg for 1 person, 7-18kg each
Walking shoes, 1kg for 1 person, 1kg each
And of course, many journeys are with fewer than the maximum number of passengers – at most once a month do I see an ordinary passenger car with 5 people in it, for example – the families that big usually get a minibus which could seat 6-10.
If you want to know how much energy a vehicle uses, you can experiment travelling while carrying or dragging one of those weights. Few of us would want to carry much more than the pushbike’s worth.
There is only so efficient you can make travel if you are carrying a quarter-tonne of metal and plastic around with you when you go. The only reason that any of this is at all viable is because we are taking 300 million years of stored sunlight (turned into fossil fuels) and burning through it in 300 years. This is the financial equivalent of a guy taking the inheritance his family built up over 114 years and spending it all in 1 hour – he could do some pretty amazing stuff, but I think his son might not be that impressed.
@ methylethyl #223
Thanks for the warning, and for the book recommendation.
My current plan is to try Tunesian knitting first, as it appears to be a cross between crocheting and knitting, which I figured I’d have an easier time picking up.
I ripped my first sheet last night for my initial rag-rug project. It was a lot of fun. Once I get the ball of “yarn” put together, I’ll be able to try out my new size R crochet hook 🙂
Speaking of the Spectacle…
…It seems to me that cryptocurrency and Non Fungible Tokens are the epitome of the Spectacle as it relates to the economy.
“Exchange value could only have arisen as the proxy of use value, but the victory is eventually won with its own weapons created the preconditions for its establishment as an autonomous power. By activating all human use value and monopolizing that value’s fulfillment, exchange value eventually gained the upper hand. The process of exchange became indistinguishable from any conceivable utility, thereby placing use value at it’s mercy. Starting out as the condottiere of use value, exchange value ended up waging a war that is entirely its own.” -Debord, Society of the Spectacle, II:46
[condottiere: n. A professional military leader or captain, who raised a troop, and sold his service to states or princes at war; the leader of a troop of mercenaries. The name arose in Italy, but the system prevailed largely over Europe from the 14th to the 16th cent. -Oxford English Dictionary]
—
@info: I can see how a drag queen with horns can be seen as an inversion of what has been “normal” until now. I don’t doubt that there are many who may have gotten involved in the nastier side of magic. My point stands that a lot of people won’t look to the deeper meaning of a symbol to get beyond just one of its meanings, when it happens to be inverted.
I’d hate to see the pentagram treated to the same fate as the swastika for example. Unfortunately, due to the horrors of the Third Reich, that symbol was also inverted, and now for many in the west it has a Nazi association instead of as a sun wheel, or the many other meanings of that symbol for Catholics, Hindus, Native American’s and others. The same thing could easily happen with a pentagram, more than it already has, here in the states and elsewhere. I get your point about people using inverted symbols, but as conspiracy culture spreads I see people just seeing symbols, and immediately going off the deep end.
For instance, Owls are associated with the Bohemian Grove and the conspiracies around that. Yet not every Owl is an emissary of Moloch or has anything to do with the Bohemian Grove. Owls are used in a lot of other symbolism to mean different things for different groups and cultures. Yet some conspiracy minded folks, when they see an owl, it means to them whatever organization is using it must have some link to the Bohemian Grove, and that’s faulty logic and reasoning.
Yet I suppose there is not going to be anything logical or reasonable in people’s minds when they get whipped up into a moral panic state.
@Hippogriff (165): Not a huge fan of the commercial Halloween, but there is a beautiful sense of the thinness between the planes that seems to emerge around mid-October, especially here in the Northeast. That feeling lasts, in my opinion, to roughly the winter solstice.
The Greater Mysteries were apparently celebrated roughly around this time, so I attribute this seasonal “thinness” to the abduction of Persephone by the Wealthy One, and the great rift that opened at that moment in the earth. (The solstice marks the beginning of the end of this cycle, and her return to the upperworld.)
For me, a good time to read the Homeric hymn to Demeter, to drink some barley water and mint, and perhaps crack a few dirty jokes…
Axé
One more quote from the Society of the Spectacle:
“The constant decline of use value that has always characterized the capitalist economy has given rise to a new form of poverty within the realm of augmented survival — alongside the old poverty which still persists, since the vast majority of people are still forced to take part as wage workers in the unending pursuit of the system’s ends and each of them knows that he must submit or die. The reality of this blackmail — the fact that even in its most impoverished forms (food, shelter) use value now has no existence outside the illusory riches of augmented survival — accounts for the general acceptance of the illusions of modern commodity consumption. The real consumer has become a consumer of illusions. The commodity is this materialized illusion, and the spectacle is its general expression.” II:47
Debord is still so relevant.
JMG #198:
“That’s really odd, that his audience should be listening to a Druid…”
I think you underestimate how much the readership of your blog and Rod’s overlap. As I’ve told anyone who’s asked, it was reading your blog that made me realize that I desperately needed a spiritual practice and Rod’s blog that made me know it needed to be Christian. So, thanks to you both!
@Jeff
Permaculture is definitely more focused on food growing, but using the design tools for buildings, communities and so on has also always been part of it. Alexander has influenced the way permaculturists design in general, especially in helping become fluent in pattern languages, which applies to all parts of design.
David Holmgren has written some great books, and he’s one of the originators of the movement, so I’d start there.
Generally though, permaculturists use design principles in building houses and so on by doing things like using appropriate local building materials, orienting to solar aspect, and siting the house in the right spot in the geography, using mass and insulation in the right places, making water flow a bonus instead of a problem, and things like that.
Has everybody seen Mark Zuckerberg’s big plans to create the “Metaverse” as seen in “Snow Crash” presumably? Irony really is dead isn’t it? In the novel “Snow Crash” the metaverse was something you logged your mind into to escape the lousy reality of everyday life in a hellscape world. Now The Zuck has to goal of creating his metaverse, I guess, to escape the hellscape the real world is becoming? Oooof! May the gods allow us to run out of sand before this happens …
JMG,
Can you list your current publishers? Do you send some genres of your books to one publisher over another?
AV
This is going to be a long one
@Mark L, Kyle, BoysMom, Mary Bennett, Chronojourner, John Dunn, teresa from hershey, polecat, Kay Robison, Beekeeper in Vermont, Eric in Maryland, Austinofoz, Steve, JMG
Thank you all! If anything ways to preserve food when things are predicted to get tough is primarily one of the reasons why I’m choosing to invest in such things. While I may have limited space in my 644 sq ft apartment, it challenges me to not just learn a valueable skill, but to do with less, not waste. Something I need to learn and know on a homestead besides basic survival. I’m also looking to do my own party favors for my wedding next year or so and I personally think that a handmade gift like 4oz of jam is perfect for a small fall celebration. Funny thing is its something that the hard core Christians in the family won’t second guess…After all isnt a way to a persons heart is through their stomach?
@Bei Dawei : Kinky 😉
~~~~~~~
I saw something about music earlier.
1. Most people are turning to alternative artists like Tom McDonald and others because they offer a better product than most contracted Mumble rappers and Hip hop artists. Nicki Manaj and others are concerned because despite being pro has and the like they are simply saying hey you do you, here’s ways to prevent getting covid, talk to your doctor, here’s why im not getting it, etc. And under a false flag they get censored by tech giants for “misinformation”, and one of the biggest no-nos is to pick on someone with millions of followers world wide and is rudely woken up for obvious reasons. And what did MSM and NM do?
2. Really we may want to think about “Lets Go Brandon ” (any version) as the American version of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen”. “F*** Donald Trump” was louded as that in 2016, but it wasnt censored by big tech and ironically Johnny Rotten is very Pro Trump and Anti-Woke. Safe to say if it’s not approved by THE Punk, it ain’t punk. I don’t listen to rap or hip hop often myself I’m more into music from or based on the sound of the 70’s-90’s, Oldies/jazz, Metal, and Electronic music (including trap), but I do enjoy listening to those specific rap/Hip Hop artists because it’s not the typical trash being put out.
Also here’s a song that describes our situation perfectly.
King For a Day- Battle Beast
https://open.spotify.com/track/6OcE7aXYmNEwF6H7Ei9Y3q?si=ECZ-llRYRS2fop2j7pFxAA&utm_source=copy-link
3. Oh dear GOD, WTF is THAT. I literally dry heaved at the sound of those harp players and that’s considered ART??? I mean sure challenge the conventional ideas of what art is, but dont market what some toddler or beginner can perform as Art.
Though my question is, isnt that what postmodernism promotes?
~~~~~~~
Spiritual emptiness and disassociation from “Christianity”
It wasn’t long ago that I personally felt empty and had nothing to do with “Christianity”, primarily because it turned to crap and the people were crap. That’s not counting the years of which I was unable to go to church. It was an emotional rollercoaster. But I got into witchcraft because I was driven to go to one specific occult shop in Magna, Utah. From there some drama, a mental breakdown and a half, a renewed sense of curiosity, and support from my mentor and my loved ones, and eventually I find myself here. I found that Magic was something I needed to get into, but I couldn’t leave behind my roots in Christianity, I tried that already, so I decided that it’s best to meld the two together, taking pagan gods and trying to find where they may fit comfortably. I won’t worship them necessarily, but the feeling that they too must be protected and committed to memory at al all costs overrides certain ideas from both Christians and Pagans alike. I’ve seen many embrace certain ideas that would fundamentally destroy very thing theyre trying to revive or promote, and it makes me worried and even upset that it’s taking hold.
I’ve shared my experience a couple times as an anonymous user on dreamwidth, but let’s just say I’m probably not going to join OBOD, AODA or others, any time soon because one mentally unstable 30 year old who likes studying the fae, and is a student of Druidry, decided to flap his gums too much on social media and show himself to be a woke hypocrite. Wicked smart, actually really miss the guy, but the lack of self awareness, and this may have changed within the last year, seriously pushed me away and created unhealthy mindsets. I’m associating the two primary gods he worships, with the idea that they would bring harm to me simply because I have Christian symbolism inked into my skin and hold certain beliefs. Causing that damage can take just one or two minutes, cant imagine what years worth of spiritual trauma feels like. Im attempting to deconstruct the wall I made, with the idea that God(s) isnt(arent) stupid and they’re not at all what anyone makes them out to be. By no means are they sunshine and rainbows, God(s) is(are) there to maintain balance, not necessarily to make us feel good about ourselves.
Reading, and listening to an Archdruid of about 12 years and conservative pagans who live up to their word has also helped considerably. My main few lessons in this instance so far, is to learn to keep the balance, practice dicernment, and that there is an entirely different egregor, or spirit, that hides behind or poses as other egregors that creates/ promotes suffering, festering, rot, and death. Its not exclusive to chaos or to order and it’s known by many names. It’s not good, it no longer is good.
That being said do what makes one feel at peace and truely connected to the divine, not a false sense of peace and connection like the magic resistance and self professed christians typically have. So long as you’re not infringing on others beliefs and wills (intentionally or not), acknowledge that your path is solitary and full of traps, and have a strong sturdy grounding/foundation that cannot be destroyed easily by false teachers and less than divine posers, things should be fine.
Christianity for me is a good foundation and one I’m very familiar with already. Despite the Bible being misread (or not read at all) and taken out of context by a vast majority of people, Christian and Pagan alike, it doesn’t take much to realize that it clarifies and condenses down lessons needed for human/spiritual survival. In my opinion the teachings and history of Abrahamic beliefs are very flexible and work very well with a lot of non-abrahamic beliefs, contrary to popular belief/knowledge, while still maintaining a clear structure. It’s great for seasoned practitioners and beginners a like. But I think what went wrong with Christianity is that a majority forgot that if a society does not wish to listen to what they have to say, they must brush off all the dust from their feet and sandals and move on with their lives.
That being said we are living in the Generation of the Fig Tree, prepare accordingly, because ignorance and trauma won’t be valid excuses to The Judge.
RE: Nuclear power
The wikipedia page is informative as background for nukes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States
I thought I put in my two cents, strictly from a power planning perspective. It is at most a 30 year time horizon.
The Virgil C . Summer project and the Vogtle progect are examples of projects that had/have billions of dollars of cost overruns without generating a Watt of electricity. They take a decade to build at least, and their size typically requires a complex power agreement between multiple parties. Many projects have retired early due to technical problems (cracked steam tubes are notable) that make them uneconomic. Nuke plants also need a lot of water; a 1000MW steam turbine needs to reject 1500MW of heat into the environment. This takes billions of gallons of water per year. Kind of a problem in a drying west. They don’t ramp well, so large nuke plants still require storage so that they can run at a constant power output. From a planning perspective, they seem like a pretty high risk option. Cost models currently seem to prefer to overbuild renewables and storage. If solar costs rise maybe 50%, the cost models start to select nuke plants, but given the recent history of big nuke plants, I don’t think there will be a lot of interest in them. A successful political lobbying campaign is always a possibility though. There does seem to be a lot of support on the conservative political end for nukes. I see this as an ideological thing, uninformed by the financial performance of nuke plants.
Currently there is interest in small reactors. The concept is that they require less absolute capital (though more per MW), can be made modular, and components can be transported to the site. Essentially it is a means of sacrificing economy of scale in favor of lowering financial risk. This concept makes a kind of financial sense to me, so I would not rule it out as viable a priori. No small reactors are in commercial operation, though there is a project (“UAMPS”) under construction in Idaho. Maybe another planned in Wyoming. If they can deliver on their cost claims and ramping ability, small reactors may have a future in the planning horizon. I don’t think fuel risk or political risk can be clearly predicted though.
Re: electric vehicles
I found this paper “CARBON POLICY AND THE EMISSIONS IMPLICATIONS OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES”:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28620/w28620.pdf
There might be some litereature at NREL.org. Those guys study all kinds of interesting things. If you find someone to email, they might respond. It is in NREL’s interest to get their work out to the public.
I am hearing some of the commenters bring up a common misconception . This is the idea that once fossil fuels are gone the next whiz bang tech thing ( nuclear, solar kites, etc.) may cost more but it will not have to compete with fossil fuels and people will gladly pay a lot more to have access to the wonders of electricity. This is a misconception because it assumes that energy is just a consumer good like avacados or toilet paper. The difference is that energy is the master resource that determines the productivity, profitability and practicality of nearly everything else in the economy. A nuclear power plant is very expensive in money but also in resources. It takes massive quantities of cement, steel, zirconium etc to build one and these things must be taken from the rest of the economy. So to build Stewart Brand’s dream of a coast to coast nuclear grid might mean ( if it were possible) to divert most of the resources of the society to this purpose. So that means no more new cars, no gas for cars, no new TV’s no planes or plane trips etc. This of course deprives most of the economy of the resources it now has so most people ( other than those building power plants) will lose their jobs or be very low paid ( like a third world country) so they would not be able to afford the more expensive electricity that many think they would gladly pay for. In addition this future (expensive electricity) would make uneconomic much of the economy that was left further diminishing our ability to pay for its higher cost. We have been fooled by the fact that in the past when we could build nuclear plants, or lunar landers or working aircraft carriers we had an excess of oil, or could easily steal it from our economic colonies. The gig is up and our thermodynamic books have to balance. As the Eagles said, ” There is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here.”
@OtherDave
Hi. Pathfinder nerd here
Ttrpgs are useful and actually loosened up a bit of stuff for me.
@ Ross RE: nuke power
My tiny company makes drilling bits and other equipment. There are 3 markets for drill bits: 1) oil & gas, 2) utility boring, and 3) mining.
One of the larger uranium mines I have visited in the Yukon uses drill bits to drill upward into uranium ore bodies, then liquefy the yellow cake and pump it up. The electricity used to do this comes from petroleum, and petroleum powers every single excavator, hauler, truck, etc. in the mining operation.
Pick your ore – petroleum is the ONLY thing used to power mining equipment, hauling equipment, excavating equipment. Without CHEAP petroleum, the costs for every ore rise. That is what the world has been seeing, along with ore quality dropping due to the good stuff having been removed already.
You need to also consider that as of yet, there are zero commercial 18-wheelers powered by batteries – primarily because you lose long haul capacity and freight capacity due to the batteries. Electric tractors – imagine the battery needed to match a 3-cylinder diesel ability to run all day, rain or shine. Same thing for mining equipment…
Cement is made via quicklime and crushing – all powered by petroleum.
Nuke does not do well if oil & gas are expensive – changes the economics at every single step of building a reactor and feeding it.
If hopium powered reactors, we would be awash in fuel…
@Mawkernewek #232
The ur-source of all things Metaverse is Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel _Snow Crash_.
In the continental USA there are very few safe places to put a nuclear reactor. As PG&E found out when they built Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Helena, OR, in not quite hailing distance of an active volcano which then…erupted. So John Q Public in Portland or Vancouver is looking at a half inch of volcanic ash in his front yard and wondering if his car will start. Meanwhile the cute spokesperson on TV is saying that in an excess of caution Trojan is off line but there is absolutely no danger to the public. Right. John Q. didn’t think whole mountains could explode, either, but one just did. This was before scientists found about the every 300 years massive earthquake which is due any day now.
A Russian general was quoted in RT as saying, partly tongue in cheek, that the Russians could simply drop a nuclear bomb on Yellowstone and not have to deal with the USA any longer. What the general seems not to have understood is that he actually has a choice of three such sites, Yellowstone, Mammoth Lakes in CA and another (probably extinct) underground volcano in New Mexico.
What with earthquakes and massive wildfires in the West, floods and tornado systems in the Midwest and hurricanes and flooding in the South and East Coast, I wonder just where anyone thinks they can site another nuclear plant.
JMG,
I’ve been trying to tackle the paradox from your Grand Mutation post that, even as we are forced to revert to prior technologies, people, on the whole, end up more prosperous. Any thoughts on that’s possible?
@ Panakaos #202
Do you perhaps mean the Ray Bradbury piece titled All Summer in a Day? It’s got school kids on a Venus where it rains continuously other than one day a year.
From Goats and Roses
I have a request for anyone who has a prayer relationship with any deities. My 24 yr old son spiked an (alarmingly) high fever yesterday, out of nowhere, we went to the hospital and it is looking like he has meningitis. He has a medical device in his head to calm his frequent seizures, and there is discussion about removing the device because of the infection. Life before the device was…….. Very, very difficult. It has helped him (and me) enormously to have an approximation of a normal life. I dread the thought of going back to how things were before.
If you feel moved to, please pray for our family, for resolution and healing for all of us. Many thanks.
@ polecat #204
I’m not saying don’t store wheatberries. I said don’t store wheatberries unless you already eat them.
Since you already eat wheatberries, they’re a valued part of your pantry.
For someone who’s never eaten wheatberries, learning how to prepare and eat them while under huge stress is going to be a major challenge.
Similarly, I say don’t store tins of sardines unless you already eat them. Younger son likes experimenting with strange and unusual food stuffs and as a 22-year-old male, he’ll eat just about anything. He opened the can, poked around at the bones and the curls of intestines and fed the can to the cats.
People under severe stress are better served and are more likely to eat if the food is familiar to them.
Store what you eat and eat what you store.
The time to experiment with wheatberries is now, when you’ve got grocery stores, not when you’re half-starved and desperate.
Unless you mean to store the wheatberries as trade goods?
Regarding the nuclear power discussion that seems to be bubbling up, I expect we’ll hear a lot of promotion in the popular press for nuclear power in the next few years. Officially it will be sold as part of the ‘decarbonizing growth’ narrative that’s been pushed for the past decade or so. The real reason I suspect, is the same reason it was pushed in the 1950’s and 1960’s. A new nuclear arms race; it’s no secret that the nuclear powers all went in heavily on uranium fueled reactors is because they produce plutonium as a byproduct, which is needed for implosion type nuclear bombs and as primaries for thermonuclear bombs.
In the United States for example, the government pushed heavily for a nuclear industry, but by the early 1970’s the infrastructure needed for a large arms program was complete, and so government interest in nuclear power faded. Carter and Reagan famously pivoted away from even pretending it was going to play a role in the US energy future. When the Cold War ended in the early 1990’s it was assumed that the unipolar end of history would continue indefinitely and so nuclear arms became even less relevant, and the US nuclear infrastructure was allowed to go fallow to an extent.
Recently however, Russia and China have embarked on large scale advanced nuclear weapons programs. The US political class, which had been laboring under the comfortable delusion of eternal omnipotence is now very worried about this development and the usual arms industry lobbyists are sensing an opportunity. However our nuclear industry is not up to par; it may have been state of the art in 1980 but it’s not 1980.
‘Decarbonization’ sounds better than ‘We have to win an arms race’ and so politicians and industry leaders in all the major powers will use that as their justification for nuclear modernization. Any electric power they supply to the grid will be gravy of course, but the infrastructure will be built, regardless of the uneconomical cost because of the geopolitical considerations first and foremost.
I’m sure we’ll hear all about thorium power though, and how sodium reactors will work this time, for real, you’ll see despite their iffy track record. Also It’s not polite to mention that U-233 can also be used in bombs in various ways.
Cheers,
JZ
Dear John Michael Greer,
As ever, my thanks to you for your generosity in hosting open questions– and all you do on your other blog as well, which I perceive as becalming and even beginning to clear and sweeten a portion of the astral.
To chime in on your answer to @ Lorenzo —
Yes, to secure regular employment as a professional translator you would need to get certified. For example, to work in a hospital as a translator you would need to be certified as a medical translator, and that takes some serious effort, time, tuition and fees. To translate a literary text, however, there is no certification, and what matters most is your skill with the target language, that is, English. Some of the best literary translators of Chinese poetry, for example, do not speak Chinese. There is infinitely more to say about literary translation of course, but I leave you with that one rock-solid thought.
For translating occult works, of course, it would also help to be familiar with occultism, that is, its vocabulary and concepts.
There are many different kinds of translation, and they vary quite a great deal in how enjoyable they are, what the payment is, and who pays (or doesn’t). Literary translation is usually the most fun; rarely does it pay, never mind pay well. You might keep your kids in oatmeal (no raisins or nuts, sorry) if you can get a contract for a book translation. Oftentimes literary translation doesn’t pay at all. I have translated many poems and short stories for just the honor, plus two contributors’ copies of the literary journal in which the translation appeared. That’s standard. That’s the economics, folks.
Like our host, JMG, I am a translator who translates (with counted exceptions) on my own initiative. For this kind of translation, no certificate or advanced degree is required, but rather, initiative, gumption, inspiration, and persistence. Of course, when it comes to publishing, one must have the permission of the author or holder of the rights; if the work is in the public domain (out of copyright) however, one can proceed without further ado.
There is no Great White-bearded Committee in the Sky to whom you must appeal on bended knee for authorization to undertake a translation. To publish, however, you do need permission, unless, as I already mentioned, the work is in the public domain (out of copyright).
Once published, your translation may face criticism from other translators and readers, some of whom are savvy, some of whom are snollygosters, and some of whom are lunkheads. That’s just part of the game, if you dare to to play it.
How to play? Start playing.
As our host has noted, and as I can confirm, there are many, many works that are out of copyright, begging to be translated– or retranslated. Seek and ye shall find.
Good wishes!
@Oilman2
Like you, I have abandoned most of my mainstream on-line news sources. I’d be interested to the news sources you now use.
Data point: https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-protest-over-ucsb-mega-dorm/
Design: minimal rooms “to encourage students to use the common areas.” One bathroom per 8 students. Two doors to the building. Shows bed under a “false window.” “Building density that of Calcutta.”
Book recommendation:
“The Enchantments of Mammon” by Eugene McCarraher (2019)
Thesis: Capitalism is a sacramental religion complete with an enchanter/spiritualist class (PMC). The author is a history professor at Villanova and a Catholic social critic in the style of Alisdair MacIntyre. The book cites and discusses William Morris and John Ruskin, among others.
@teresa from Hershey
Can’t you essentially treat wheat berries like flax? Grind them up and add them to a soup, hot cereal, bread, etc. Perhaps set aside some to plant? Been experimenting already with other stuff, even testing out recipes from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. and Kitchen Whitches Cookbook by Patricia Telesco.
I generally ignore contemporary movies, particularly horror movies, which tend to put me in a bad mood for some time afterward – I’m quite an empath, so I don’t really enjoy my mirror neurons firing off in response to images of torture, and what’s more, horror movies are generally so fragging dumb that it makes me furious with mass culture for producing such garbage. But, due to English politeness and the expectation of a lift at the end of the evening, I endured one such film at a friend’s place, entitled Wrong Turn.
Dumb plot, bad acting, and grotesque imagery aside, it was quite interesting as a check on the barometer of modern Faustian anxieties. The protagonists, a fashionably diverse and woke bunch of normie college graduates, go hiking in the mountains, get warned by some cliched rednecks in the bar about “sticking to the trail”, ignore this advice, and get picked off in various gruesome ways by a cult-commune who speak a strange language, use primitive technology, and wear deer-skull costumes all the time (none of which is adequately explained).
On the one hand, the film portrays the kind of PMC anxieties discussed in The King in Orange and the Haliverse novels; the civilised, affluent Good People being assailed by the dark and uncontrollable forces of Nature (one of the protagonists was a “sustainability consultant”!!). On the other hand, as Tobe Hooper chose his victims in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series from whichever subculture was most despised at the time (hippies in the mid 70s, yuppies in the late 80s), one could say that the film reflects a desire to vicariously take revenge on annoying college-educated hipster normies on the part of the audience…
Kevin, now surprise me. I bet they’ll be trying to recruit the neighborhood kids any day now to join the Woke Youth for the glory of the Gender-Undefined-Parentland.
Mawkernewek, ha! All they need now is the technology to project the screen directly into your visual cortex.
Chris, no argument there. PV, like nuclear power, depends on fossil fuel energy subsidies. There are solar technologies that don’t — solar water heating and passive solar space heating are good examples — but PV? Gone with the wind by the time the energy transition finishes. At least it doesn’t leave wastes that remain lethal for hundreds of thousands of years…
Jay, I don’t know of any discussion of this in print, alas. The entire subject of the precessional cycle has been yanked out of shape by our culture’s fixation on utopian wet dreams and linear progress to absurdity and beyond. I’d say, though, that each age has its own kind of spirituality, relevant to its distinctive conditions; the fact that magic in the age we’re now in has sharply limited effects — potent in its own way, but not what it was in past ages — simply means that we interact with the spiritual realm in a somewhat different fashion.
Sam, let me let you in on a secret — most of the leading Nazis were quixotic and bookish intellectuals. Hitler before 1919 was the Belle Epoque equivalent of a hippie — the kind of guy who hung around in cafés talking about his ideas to anyone who would listen, and made a barely adequate living by painting watercolors and selling them on street corners. (He was actually pretty good — here’s one of his paintings.)
Himmler was a geek’s geek, up to his eyeballs in occult literature, and Hess was cut from the same cloth. I could go on. Quite a few of the great mass murderers of history were quixotic and bookish intellectuals who happened to achieve political power, and used it with an intellectual’s lack of awareness of the human cost of their ideas.
Jay, funny.
Danielle, I’m delighted to hear this! Thank you.
Mouse, I share your discomfort with that sort of thing. If you feel you want to keep attending, you might pray to the deities you worship and ask them for their guidance and protection. Regular performance of the Sphere of Protection might also be called for. “Perfect love and perfect trust” is a nice slogan but not always suitable for the real world.
MC, I’ll take that under consideration, though I haven’t read all of Maugham’s work by any means. As for the question, it’s an open post — go ahead and ask.
Hackenschmidt, thanks for this!
Justin, an excellent point! I’ve sometimes thought of seeing if I can figure out how to sell the EFT of the performance of a magical ritual, and then see how much I can get for it — just to prove that every trend pushed far enough ends in absurdity.
Beekeeper, okay, so noted. It still seems very, very odd to me.
Chris, oh, not at all! Zuckerberg’s Metaverse will be a pallid ninth-rate imitation of the one in the novel, like Second Life but shoddier, and watching people pretend to be all caught up in it for the fifteen minutes before the fad passes will be hilarious.
Anthony, I currently have books in print with Llewellyn, Weiser, New Society, Founders House, Aeon Books, Sterling, Azoth, Inner Traditions, and some one-offs (publishers who have one of my books and won’t get another). Of course I send some genres to one and not others, not least because (for example) New Society doesn’t publish books on occultism and Sterling only does books they commission. I also choose my publishers based on how they treat me as an author — there are presses that are great to work with and others that are, well, let’s just say not so great.
Copper, thanks for this. For what it’s worth, AODA has a lot of Christian Druids in it, and if the person who flapped his gums at you had been in AODA when I was Grand Archdruid and had done that, he’d have been dismissed from the order for cause. That sort of crap should not be tolerated by any Druid order that respects the traditions of the Druid Revival.
BCV, thanks for this. Those are certainly among the issues.
Clay, thank you! A nice summary.
Amber, it’s quite simple. At this point human beings and their technologies are in competition for a limited stock of resources. The more resources go to prop up overly complex technostructures, the less is available to meet human needs. Downshift to simpler technologies, that meet the same needs with a smaller resource footprint, and prosperity for human beings increases.
Constance, positive energy en route.
John, a very good point! And it’s also true that plenty of people know they can make money by convincing governments and utility firms to pour more millions down the nuclear rathole, so between that and a new arms race, the nuclear hoopla will be pretty intense. I wonder if that’s what will finally push the United States over the line into national bankruptcy.
C.M., thanks for this!
Patricia, good heavens. An architect actually showing some concern for the people who have to put up with a building? Give me a moment, I’ve got to see if the Moon’s blue…
Stickbundle, interesting. Thanks for this!
Luke, fascinating. It really does sound like a dream worth interpreting.
@Sam (#147) and Anon (#160):
Adrian Vermeule and his Integralism sound very much like the Roman Catholic equivalent to Rousas John Rushdoony and his Protestant Christian Reconstructionism. Neither the one nor the other could ever be imposed on the USA by any means short of killing off the large majority of the populace that dissents from any and every ecclesiacracy.
The article that Tolkienguy linked to is spot-on, to judge from my own experience inside academia. If anything, he’s a little too gentle with the academic world (in the humanities).
@ Jack_Bent RE: newz
I use Asia Times for the latest CIA position; Zero Hedge for financial/political fear porn; AlMasdar for the sandbox, and Al Jazeera for kicks; Bogota Post and Tico Times for Latin news; Sputnik for central asia and Russia. There are also a few domestic, but you got to be able to literally wash the propaganda off after reading most – Turcopolier and TBP usually get a gander too.
I skim headlines – if they are at all familiar, then on to the next one until something new is present. I generally avoid anything with Republican or Democrat in the title, along with Biden or Trump in titles. And of course oilprice.com…LOL
Jim W,
I have now read Ugo Bardi’s extermination set of posts. As you say, an interesting but very dark topic. One thing I notice is that a lot of the time, we aren’t looking at gas chambers and death squads. Messing up the health care system, or making sure certain populations have disproportionate difficulty getting enough food can result in increased death rates in that population – though they are also a lot more likely to result in non-target deaths in other groups. And it doesn’t even have to be fully intended, or a direct action. Failing to respond quickly or in the right way to a growing famine because you don’t really care about that country/population/subset of people can kill a lot of them even if that isn’t planned.
I will note that the reaction to the pandemic does not match what would make most sense if you wanted to reduce the population of frail elderly with the minimum economic cost. Doing nothing while it ripped through care homes would be far more effective and would save on lockdown costs. If you really wanted to get rid of that population, you could make sure to send infected individuals back to their care homes and not provide isolation or proper care to that patient, or to anyone whom they infected. A certain amount of this happened, but to a large extent societies seem to be turning themselves inside out at great economic cost to try to prevent this outcome. And it doesn’t explain the lockdowns, or the desire to push vaccination of absolutely everyone despite any objections they might have.
Excuse me while I feel sick, this whole subject of willfully allowing/encouraging large numbers of deaths is utterly unethical. But ignoring it isn’t a good idea, because there’s going to be a massive temptation for the people in major power and privilege to try to hold onto it regardless to the cost to anyone else as resource constraints worsen.
I’m not sure there’s not a certain amount of this in action already, but I am expecting it to get worse as resources become more obviously constrained.
I’d also suggest that some of the unwillingness of people to admit that overpopulation and resource use is an issue is due to fear that admitting the problem will lead to choices that make sure it’s someone poor, powerless and far away who dies, and not you. But refusing to name the issue will just make it harder to recognize when what you fear is happening right in front of you. And make it more likely that it will happen, since if you don’t recognize it, you’re less likely to take steps to avoid that happening!
@ copper #269 and polecat
I’m sure you can but polecat would know better. Polecat? What do you do with wheatberries?
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear about food storage.
The time to experiment with your diet is NOW, when you’re not desperate. NOW is the time to learn how you feel about a diet rich in beans, pulses, wheatberries, and flax seed, especially if you do not currently eat them.
Don’t store foods you don’t normally eat and then expect to suddenly start cooking and eating them when everything normal has gone topsy-turvy.
For example, high-fiber foods can, if suddenly added to your diet, cause gastric distress. If you’ve got family members who are sensitive or picky, they may refuse to eat that strange glop on the plate.
The more stressful times are, the more you and your family will want to eat what’s familiar and safe. Dinner can be an oasis in the storm.
Eat what you store and store what you eat.
If you store what you don’t and won’t eat, you’ve wasted time, money, energy, and storage space.
Methylethyl #225 Re: unrealized capital gains
It is as simple as this – “unrealised” = “virtual” = “imaginary”. (ie – as they say here in Ireland – “butters no parsnips” – and puts nothing “real” into your pocket).
How easy will it be to persuade the tax office to accept some “unrealised” – “virtual” = “imaginary” token as payment? 😉
I’m a longtime reader, going back a decade or more to the previous website but I did not comment.
I also read Rod Dreher.
Rod can get overly excitable but that doesn’t make him wrong about Therapeutic Modern Deism (a generic god wants you to be happy and asks only that you be happy in return) or how crazy the world is becoming or how we’ve completely lost sight of the unseen world surrounding us.
Sam, I do find myself becoming increasingly cynical about govt. and media, not to mention celebrity culture, which at least has the merit of being amusing, as time goes on. You have heard of Operation Paperclip? I doubt it ever went away. I don’t suppose Dreher is paid for in the sense of having a “handler” who tells him what to say–Dore, OTOH, I think has exactly that–but I do think MSM has an official line its’ contributors must follow, and I suspect that Dreher gets the occasional email about here’s what we are covering this week and what we are saying is… I also find his book title “Benedict Option” seriously offensive; I don’t suppose he would care to have someone refer to some revered figure of the orthodox tradition in similarly over familiar fashion. If it makes you feel any better I also harbor highly unflattering views of many on the left.
Hi John,
I’ve got a few comments to make, the primary one being that word is starting to spread about ADE risks in relation to the vaccine.
Some of the comments in this Daily Mail article show a growing awareness of the real and potential risks relating to this mass vaccination programme.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10145581/Health-chiefs-cut-gap-Covid-booster-vaccines-vulnerable-immunocompromised-patients.html#comments
My specific question, if assuming your central scenario is correct, and that within the next 18 months or so, significant numbers of the vaccinated will die and get seriously sick from ADE across the highly vaccinated populations who have used the MRNA/DNA vaccines, what will be the geopolitical implications of this.
Clearly, Israel will be hugely vulnerable to attack from the largely unvaccinated Arabic world and will be at a huge disadvantage going forward strategically. The same could be said for the wealthy Gulf State regions, although I suppose they can import further healthy unvaccinated workers in to plug any gaps in the workforce.
The biggest losers, geopolitically speaking, will be a hobbled western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America (with the partial exception of the “flyover” states). Russia and eastern Europe in general will become far stronger, along with presumably East Asia, who have stuck to more traditional Chinese vaccines that are probably safer than the Western gene therapy vaccines.
It strikes me that if your scenario turns out to be correct – and my strong intuition, based on what I am seeing and listening to with the vaccinated in my world, is that you are sadly are – the mass vaccination rollout hugely accelerated the existing processes of decline in the West vs v vs the rest of the world.
In other words, a huge own goal for our clueless elites who will have handed the world to the rising powers of the East probably 5 to 10 years advance of where we probably would be anyway.
I find it so mindboggling how so many people on the left can deny that population plays a role in all of the environmental issues we are facing. It is almost as bad as climate change denial on the right. Leftists often say that we have enough to feed every one, but completely ignore that fact that we are already in serious overshoot. Many environmental groups won’t even touch the topic with a 10 foot pole because they don’t want to offend anyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS-zSUwEkc
Also, I would like some advice. I have been aware that our civilization has been facing environmental issues since I was a little kid. It wasn’t until the past 3-4 years that I realized that those issues could potentially (and probably will) cause the collapse of civilization. After doing the research, I have come to the conclusion that industrial civilization is probably unsustainable and will probably come to an end within my lifetime. I am also graduating from college in several months. Since I chose my major before I fully understood the situation we are in, I chose to major in Computer Engineering. I feel like I just got a ticket to the one of the first class seats on the Titanic. What should I do?
@JMG
I read your posts about the long decline. I also read your book Dark Age America. I noticed that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASS-zSUwEkc
This video above accurately describes the situation or civilization is in. The reason we are facing a long decline is because, right now, we are in a state of serious overshoot. Many mainstream environmental organizations will not touch the issue of population because they don’t want to offend anyone.
Mawkernewek,
I’m going to guess that Farcebook got the Metaverse name from Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.” At least that’s the first time I ran across it. That was about 1993. I remembering being very excited to experience that world.
Now, I kind of look at the whole thing as a joke. How can you experience freedom in the metaverse when that very world was created by people with a limited brain capacity and perhaps, ill intent in mind?
Will someone really be happy as a non-binary unicorn? This is the abstraction that Vico warned us about, I’m pretty sure.
@beekeeper #237: My experience with an un-programmed Quaker meeting was similar to yours. Fully on board with the woke, flooded with gender-ambiguous people, and willing to get behind Hillary Clinton in spite of putative Quaker pacifism; not that there were any great candidates being offered by either major party at the time… As far as theology went, it was quite mixed up. One fellow was adamant that George Fox was a mage and relied on a supposed suppressed text by Fox. The education level tended to be quite high; lots of people associated with our local behemoth university, lawyers, and other professionals. The only advantage I could see over the Unitarians was that at least the Quakers didn’t follow the order of service I grew up with among the Methodists: a hymn, the offering, another hymn, the sermon, another hymn, coffee hour, in basic outline. And not having to pay clergy salary kept costs down.
Teresa from Hershey,
Yes, now see where you’re coming from. I’ve, when I stared canning, made batches of stuff that inveriably sat on the pantry shelf .. never to be used up, cuz it just didn’t jell with any tastebuds .. It happens, although much less often. So now, when canning something new, l do a small batch, rather than going hog wild. We DO not trash any disappointing results, as that becomes a bonus for the cherished biota employed within the compost bin! ‘:]
As for the wheat berries, or rye even .. tbh, I didn’t start using them in much quanity until I developed good sourdough starters, with enough bread/pizza etc. recipes worth their urm, salt .. to make a tasty finished product.. THAT’S half the battle right there .. finding what works, palatability wise! – ‘keepers’ if you will.
Hi John Michael,
My thinking is along the lines of an inflationary outcome too. Two days ago mince meat was $17/kg (per 2.2 pounds) at the supermarket.
I realise everyone likes to discuss the Weimar banking collapse, but was wondering if you could point me in the direction of any other notable example of inflationary trends in an industrial economy so as to get some sort of idea as to how it plays out in the real world?
To be candid, inflation seems a rather difficult beast to try and control. Maybe people with their hands on the policy levers have forgotten this? And the situation bizarrely punishes those whom have been prudent. Oh well.
Cheers
Chris
Data point: you all might be interested in this: https://www.damemagazine.com/2021/10/27/when-cancel-culture-means-letting-go/
Bottom line: when fans find out how dreadful the creator of the art (literature, etc) was in real life, it’s devastating.
Full disclosure: I’ve had enough experience with those I was a fan of who either jumped the shark in what they were preaching, or in what was revealed about them – which, especially in literature, sheds new light on what they were saying – to sigh and let it go. Or to day “S/he’s a maniac about X but still valid on Y.” Anyway… it’s not all rabid glee at kicking someone out the door.
Data point from Happy Hour in the unremodeled bar area – I saw the pictures of what it would look like after the remodeling. The booths, the counter with high stools….duh! (Mouth hanging open). They’ve reinvented the old-fashioned diner! And all out in the open and brightly lit, not the quiet, enclosed ambiance of the old bar. I do note: our boss lady, who I think is 40-ish if not younger, would never dream of consulting the residents about what we would like. What would we know about what sells? (Bunch of old fogies, remnants of a dead or dying civilization.) At every point, she has slavishly followed the expert she did consult. Sriracha-mayonnaise martini, anyone?
And a blessed Samhain to those who celebrate it; likewise, El Dia del Los Muertos.
Copper,
if you’re referring to the harp link I posted, it’s not actually easy to sound that bad. I’m a just-past beginner harpist, and brand-new harpists sound a lot better than that. The harp is quite different from beginner violinists or bagpipers there. The default for harp music is more ‘blandly pretty’ than ‘horrible’. You have to be trying hard, and know what you’re doing, to make it sound that bad.
The question is why anyone would bother… JMG’s suggestion that it’s to show off by doing something new and different, even if there’s a good reason why it isn’t usually done, makes a lot of sense to me.
@IG
Go ahead. Why not have children? Not because of some “bleak” future predictions.
People had children in much bleaker times.
Most modern people not having children “for the planet already has too many already”, just mean to give a facade of altruism and noble intention to them just not wanting to bother to raise children, and keep behaving like 20-somethings well into middle age. They’re usually the same “woke” people one can’t stand.
Teresa, I don’t disagree at all with Dreher’s critique of “Therapeutic Modern Deism.” The gods are not plush animal toys.
Forecasting, if my hypothesis is correct and the death rate among the vaccinated is as high as I fear it will be, it’s basically the end of European history. 80%-90% dieoff is a level that leads to culture death, and with mass migration from Africa and the Middle East already in process, a century from now the European subcontinent west of the Elbe or the Vistula will be indistinguishable culturally, politically, and demographically from the northern half or so of Africa. In the United States and Russia, and in some other countries like India, the dieoff will be concentrated in the Europeanized segments of the population — here in the US, the managerial class which (as US elites have done since colonial times) slavishly copies European intellectual fashions, is far more heavily vaccinated than the working classes and the poor. As for Israel, given their sky-high vaccination rate, the Arabs can sit back and wait for the dieoff to run its course, and then just walk in.
I’m not sure it’s exactly an own goal, however. I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.
But of course my hypothesis could be completely wrong, in which case we’ll see what happens next.
Stellarwind, welcome to the lifeboat station! I’m going to encourage you to start by reading my book The Long Descent if you can find a copy; this early essay of mine is a good first glance at the same concepts. The crucial thing to realize is that the decline and fall of industrial civilization is not a fast process. It started half a century ago and will still be ongoing when all of us reading this blog right now are dead. So it’s not a matter of trying to figure out how to deal with the sudden collapse of civilization, but of learning how to ride the long curve of decline. Your degree will help you for the time being, and you can use the steady income to pick up skills you can use further down the slope.
I don’t watch videos, btw — I find nothing on Earth duller than watching little colored blobs jerk around on a glass screen. Have you by any chance read William Catton’s book Overshoot? If not, take the time to find a copy and read it; you’ll be glad you did.
Chris, there really hasn’t been another good example in an industrial society, since industrial society hasn’t been around that long. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are about as close as you’ll find.
Patricia M, of course it’s not all rabid glee. There’s always plenty of room to strike tragic poses and show how terribly your feeeeeeeeeeelings have been hurt…
Hello JMG,
I was wondering if you would consider doing a future post on climate change. Your recent post ‘The Future is a Landscape’ touched on it of course, but it would be very interesting to get your perspective on how it will play out in the decades ahead globally. It seems to be the most popular apocalypse du jour right now, with the Michael Dowds of the world proclaiming that we are runaway global warming and that we could be in our last decade, while others are more measured but completely ignore energy constraints in any of their discussions of mitigation. I find your voice to always be the most complete in any of these discussions and it would be nice to hear the ‘third way’.
Millenial
Tolkienguy (#206), I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in the 1980s, so earlier than the author whose article you point to. I can mostly agree with what he said, although I managed both my degrees in eight years combined, and managed to have funding for every year. My field is geography, so among the types of degrees he was talking about.
But the reason for writing is not to agree or disagree with your article’s author, but to point out what a very wise professor told me, who was not my advisor, but a member of my committee, and someone I work with on several projects, and still look up to and share friendship with: This professor confided with me and few other close colleagues that he figures that during his entire career at this large Midwest Big Ten university, he only truly needed to invest his time turning out two Ph.D. graduates. One to ultimately replace him at a similar Ph.D school (in the scheme of things, not literally at the same school) when he retires, and the other other as a spare for provide some one either who will teach at a smaller school without a Ph.D. program, or only teach temporarily before ultimately pulling back out of academic teaching (to which I represent, if I happen to have ranked in determining of two students, which I don’t know if I did). Assuming my professor friend is correct, an entire graduate school faculty thus only ever needs to turn out roughly twice the number of Ph.D. graduates as the size of the faculty over the entire course of their careers in order to keep the entire system functioning. All the other Ph.D. graduate students that schools turn our are all potentially “extras,” part of the inflation of over-educated persons our schools produce.
Now, obviously that is not the view of the school administration, as they otherwise live and die by the number of graduate students they can pull in.
An interesting concept to think about.
Felicitations to all. A bit late to the Open Post this week, but wanted to share something from the “You Gotta Be Kidding” department: an article titled “Private Jet Rage Grows as the Number of Flyers Strains the System.” Here’s but one of the groaner quotes: ““Say you’ve got a client who ordered Belvedere vodka and the caterer [could] only get Grey Goose,” [interviewee] said. “So the customer gets on the plane and he’s ticked off that he’s paying all this money and saying “why didn’t I get my Belvedere vodka?’”
Immerse yourself in the ‘outrage’ here: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/private-jet-rage-grows-as-a-record-number-of-fliers-strain-the-system.html
Thanks so much, esteemed Archdruid, for all that you do!
JMG,
It seems that the word “witch” can mean many different things. We have the modern witch, and the definition of witch that you say used to mean making bad things happen to people with thoughts and words. The Weird of Hali witches seem to be altogether something different. They seem to have actual power and wisdom that is put towards good use. Is this type of witch based on any understanding of witches in a particular historical&cultural time period?
Stellarwind,
I’ve been in the computer software industry for the last 3 years. The market is good right now. Milk it for all it’s worth and don’t get caught up in the woke ideology that permeates the industry. It’s fairly common practice for people to discuss woke politics during meetings. I either start looking at things I actually care about on the other screen or leave the meeting when this happens. The latter is probably only an option in the right company culture. Try to choose a job that gets you enough leisure time to study or practice more meaningful things.
RE Justin Patrick Moore et al on worries about backlash against spirituality.
I’m worried about it too. One of my hobbies is to steer conversations towards reincarnation when the time is right which is not often by any means. People genuinely enjoy talking about it, including conservative types.
JMG, on the vaccines, my take is that the big question right now is why do the vaccines become less effective over time? If the body simply forgets about the mRNA insult and moves on after a year or so, then I don’t anticipate problems with the vaccine besides the short-term effects, provided one stops getting boosters. On the other hand, if the mRNA insult is permanent, and the virus is evolving, I expect a fairly poor outcome. Before vaccines, human respiratory viruses evolved towards an equilibrium where the virus mostly only killed old people, because dead people can’t spread the virus. If a new variant that is especially good at infecting vaccinated people emerges, the same dynamics will apply, dependent on vaccination rates. On the other hand, if the vaccines cause cytokine storm on exposure to some new variant, yep, we’re headed for bodies in the street. The thing you’d expect to see in such a scenario is people dying suddenly of covid or other related disease. We’ve certianly had reports of that, but not a lot in the way of hard numbers…
Remember too, that in a scenario where the annual flu virus kills 5% of the vaccinated, and the political class and their tame scientists manage to blame the unvaccinated, you might very well be off with the vaccine.
If the worst comes to pass, hopefully enough Iranian nuclear experts manage to take over whatever the Israelis are doing with their nuclear program and do something sensible with whatever they find.
@JMG: “I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.”
I’m not sure. Do you actually think that the ruling classes of the West have that much nous? Lately, everything they are doing seems like so much flailing around. That is why I tend to discount the idea of “master conspiracies to do us all in.”
If a mass die-off was their goal, there are far simpler ways to accomplish that.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/26/china-energy-crisis-beijing-not-likely-to-lift-coal-ban-on-australia.html
I originally assumed the above was directly related to the present supply and energy crisis, but it seems to be a “parallel plot”, so to speak, since the energy crisis in China is due to the nation´s very own decision to boycott Australian coal. That is, it´s part of the geopolitical conflict between the two nations.
Unless somebody is hiding something, of course…
Long time reader, first time commenting. I would like to request any prayers that anyone is willing to send out for my cat who has been stuck up a tree for seven days. Her name is Jade. Thank you.
Let me share a good ex-work experience today.
I have openly and honestly shared my canned and banned in Boston for refusing the vax career experience for cathartic reasons and to support others by letting them know they are not alone and learn from each others experiences.
Most of our experience has been largely negative, as expected, for myself and other wonderful people who try to help others within a pretty corrupt and broken system. Treatment includes shunning and occasional outright hostility from otherwise reasonable people.
Today something really nice happened. Although my work badge no longer works for the garage or locked campus doors, it still looks shiny and bright hanging from my neck and acted as a very effective talisman at 6am this morning letting me breeze by the guards and see an old friend at work in her office. We reminisced a bit and hugged. She put our selfie on her facebook page today, I don’t have one, with a very touching message, and, through my wife’s facebook page, I saw and thanked a very large number people who have responded with wonderful messages of support and well wishes for me. I was not expecting that and I was blown away. It really moved me.
Hopefully my last post on this. End it on a high note. Thanks for listening. DenG
Mood: Magical:)
https://ashtarbookblog.blogspot.com/2018/09/speaking-with-authority.html
Was it on this thread JMG and somebody else mentioned the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, or whatever it´s called these days?
I actually wrote about this on my blog three years ago (see link above). It´s a bit…chilling. As if literally nothing has happened in over a century…
In all fairness though, Afghanistan had a very different culture about 2,000 years ago (you know, Greek Buddhist stuff), so perhaps there is hope for change we can believe in, after all! 😉
JMG wrote:
About that whole response…I remember you said on a Magic Monday once that an event as catastrophic as the one you’re talking about is usually proceeded by omens, and you mentioned stories from Aztec Teotihuacan of people-just a few months before Cortez landed-hearing a woman’s voice in the streets crying “Oh my children! Oh my children!” Er, I know this may be a sensitive question that you may not be comfortable answering in a public forum…but have you yourself encountered, or heard reports of, any omens of the kind you’d said would probably appear before a mass catastrophe?
Phutatorius (no 284): No lies detected. I’m not attracted to either denomination myself, although I admire their good qualities from afar. It have heard that there are neo-Gnostics around; maybe the OP would like that better. (They read the Greek New Testament too, I suppose, when they’re not reading Coptic noncanonical stuff.)
Robert Mathiesen (no. 273), I liked that article (dissuading potential Ph.D. students), but my experience was very different–for better and for worse. I went to less prestigious schools (not all in the USA), studied fringe topics that I enjoyed and was obsessed with, had a great time without much of the stress that this guy experienced, and built a career in Taiwan in a department unrelated to my studies. That department ultimately closed due to low enrollments, forcing me into early retirement (although I expect to keep working for a few years more). I am broadly happy with the course of my life to date, and grateful for the opportunity to pursue my diverse interests. I would recommend doctoral study to people who genuinely love their subject, find an institution that they like, and can finagle financing somehow–on the understanding that there may be no obvious, comfortable career path.
JMG (no 271): “I’ve sometimes thought of seeing if I can figure out how to sell the EFT of the performance of a magical ritual, and then see how much I can get for it — just to prove that every trend pushed far enough ends in absurdity.”
Possibly relevant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Sold_My_Soul_on_eBay
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/651406/you-cant-sell-your-soul-ebay
I find the rule puzzling. If ” all listings must include either a physical item or service,” would this apply to digital items such as fairy swords from a video game? Interpreted literally, the rule seems to treat souls and Bitcoin in the same way.
John,
This question might fit better with the Covid posts on the other blog, however…
You seemed more pessimistic regarding the possibility of very high ADE dieoff in your response to Forecasting Intelligence. Have you received new information in that regard, or are there other things that makes you feel that worst is more likely?
Constance, you and your son are now in my prayers.
Pat Matthews, that dorm sounds like a truly miserable place to live.
It’s very interesting from another perspective – universities have been trying to lure students with ever-greater resources put into non-teaching campus stuff/student life. This is the opposite of that.
I have to ask, given the huge numbers of students, and the few entrances and exits to the building, does it meet fire safety regulations? It seems like there would be danger of a major disaster if a severe fire broke out.
The lack of windows in student’s rooms is bad for mental health… and what happens during a power outage?
Sounds like an excellent example of something innovative not being automatically good.
forecastingintelligence writes that the vaccination rollout may have accelerated the decline of the West. Honestly, I think other things will have had a much larger impact.
During one of the breaks between the lockdowns here in Australia I went to the central city, and I took the train. I saw half of city blocks taken up with tunnelling works for the metro tunnel project, many tens of billions of spending. But at the old train station, built around 1900, along the walls beside the stairs there are tiles – with a century of rain having leaked rust-laden water down the tiles. Before all this I’d known a British guy on a working holiday who was paid $120 an hour on a Sunday to break rocks for one of the projects – but they couldn’t pay $20 an hour to someone to wipe down tiles on an old project.
Notice that in the lockdowns, all the busywork of what JMG calls the “intermediaries” was allowed to continue, but the productive work of making and repairing things was forced to stop.
If you don’t repair then you need to do more making, but again, these weren’t allowed. So foreign countries who continued making things sent them over to us in the West – and this is part of why it’s hard to get supplies, and why ordinary orders of clothing, furniture, books and so on are taking months rather than weeks.
Of course, there is no crisis so dire that a Diversity Manager has to stop their work, still less an Accounts Officer or Regulatory Compliance Manager. But that mechanic, the shirt-maker and the carpenter might be sent home at any time. This is going to influence the career choices of people in the future, and what sort of jobs they tell their children to do. We will get more intermediaries.
A society composed largely of intermediaries cannot exist for long. In the middle ages, 10 out of every 11 people were involved in food production, leaving 1 in 11 to be nobles, priests, smiths, potters and so on. Our enormous energy surplus from fossil fuels let this ratio change so that more intermediary jobs became viable. As this energy surplus declines, fewer will be able to do unproductive work, and importing these products is going to become prohibitively expensive.
This is going to come as a rude shock to individuals and to society as a whole. You can slot someone clueless into an intermediary job in a large organisation and it’ll take six months for anyone to notice they’re clueless – but a clueless carpenter would be found out on the first day. I think we’ve got some rough times ahead, and all the lockdowns and the like have accelerated their approach.
@JMG – Since you honestly believe this, it throws a lot of light on why you have placed so much emphasis on avoiding vaccinations.I sincerely hope you are wrong, since my entire family has been vaccinated in the sincere belief that this way they are protecting themselves and others.
I would like to make a bet with you – name your stakes -if, in 2025, the internet or some substitute for it is still functioning, I’m still alive (82 years old and triply vaccinated), and you’re still alive (anything can happen in times like these) that your hypothesis is wrong. To cover the bet, I’d write the stakes in my will. How about the entire Westria series, by Diana Paxson? Now out of print and hard to come by.
I am not kidding. This is not a joke.
Stellarwind72
did your studies include a lot about computer hardware, and maybe how to repair computerized devices? If the shortages keep up, computer/cellphone etc. repair could be a good avenue to pursue.
Millenial. you might try this old post of mine followed by this one. They still reflect my views pretty precisely.
Bryan, ha! Par for the course among the overprivileged and over-entitled.
Youngelephant, the witches in the Haliverse are based on standard European and post-settlement American wise women, “granny women” as they’re often called in Appalachia, with a few tentacles added for entertainment value.
Justin, there are any number of things that an experimental genetic drug can do, and we simply don’t know what this one will do because the necessary testing has not been done. It’s been proposed by some researchers, for example, that the constant stream of spike proteins in the bloodstream created by the vaccines overloads one category of T cells, so that they no longer do their jobs; the result is a general weakening of the immune system which appears in the official stats as a decline in the efficacy of the vaccines, but also drives an anomalous increase in deaths from a wide range of causes. If in fact that’s what’s going on, how far will the immunosuppressant effect go and how long will it continue? Nobody knows, again, because the necessary testing has not been done.
Michael, I don’t think it’s a conscious decision. I think it’s something closer to a collective death wish moving through the crawlspaces of elite culture.
Tidlösa, fascinating. Thanks for this.
Catlover, positive energy en route!
DenG, thanks for this.
Tidlösa, funny. No, not much has changed since Mirza Gulad Ahmad’s time!
Tolkienguy, I’d prefer not to go into details, but yes.
Bei Dawei, funny. I’ll consider it.
John, I haven’t received new information, if by that you mean new statistics or reports of new health problems — well, other than the spike in otherwise unexplained neurological problems reported in German public health sources immediately following the beginning of large-scale vaccination there, and that doesn’t necessarily support a high-end death toll in the long run. Call it an intuition, or a vision, or a chill down my back at certain hours, that suggests that something really terrible is happening. I’m perfectly aware that I could be dead wrong.
Hackenschmidt, that’s a point worth keeping in mind.
Patricia, I don’t bet on such things. It gets the ego involved, and that always interferes with clarity of thought.
U.S. Military & Covax Mandate
Spread: Mystical Diamond
Q: MD/TP – state of all branches of U.S. military (plus reserves) after covid mandate compliance deadline? – 10/29/21
1st card: What you bring to the situation – 10 of Pentacles
(represents wealth, abundance, inheritance, security, etc. – good card for a military)
2nd card: Detriments – 9 of Pentacles R
(represents damage, loss, destabilization, lack of confidence, lack of financial independence, reckless spending, etc – not a good card for a military)
3rd card: Potential (ie outcome of the above 2 cards) – 9 of Cups R
(represents false appearances, spending beyond one’s means, pretentions of power one can’t back up when put to the test, etc – not a good card to get for a nation’s military)
4th card: the Challenge for you – 8 of Swords R
(represents finding solutions, facing fears, facing truth, healing, obstacles overcome, release from bad situations – not a good card when the reading is saying it’s going to be a challenge for a nation’s military to accomplish)
5th card: What is confusing to you – The Magician R
(Represents a fake, phony, poseur, pretender, ineptitude, failed attempts at deception – another not-so-great card if you’re a military wanting to be seen by other countries as a credible challenge for their militaries)
6th card: Necessary burden for you – 6 of Cups R
(represents nostalgia, living in the past)
7th card: Your Task – Queen of Pentacles R
(represents disorganized, ungrounded, chaos, poverty, pretentiousness, neglect, exploitation, impracticalness, fear of failure – another not-so-great card for a military)
8th card: Your problem – King of Wands
(represents intelligence, wisdom, nothing rash – I see this as two potential meanings – that the Biden Admin knew mass resignations might happen and planned that as a backdoor method to implement budget cuts to the MIC as well as reducing the future likeliness of constantly throwing the military around like Bush did at Iraq – or two – that this card is saying that people who sold the covax mandate policy to Pres. Biden actually DO believe that their mandate is an intelligent response to covid – the 2nd of the two is the one I deem more likely.)
9th card: Possible Solution – 10 of Wands
(represents being overburdened, overworked, overloaded, restricted, burned out, uphill struggles, stress, major challenges, too much effort for miniscule payouts – again, not a great card if you are a military. Since this stanza says that it’s a ‘possible solution’ (ie possible outcome) I take that to mean the Federal regime running the country won’t take the military’s reduced capacities into account and may continue to ask it to perform around the world as if it were still at full strength. Especially since they won’t want to give final confirmation to China, Russia or Iran or anyone else that they’re no longer the leaders of a superpower with a superpower military).
http://askthecards.info/cgi-bin/tarot/free_tarot_reading.pl?interp=9¬es=My+notes…%0D%0A&view_spread=View+Spread
I put this out there since JMG says things like this need to be tested the same as any scientific hypothesis. I’m going to be looking over the next 2-4 years to see if what this reading says starts to happen.
If it does I suspect President Biden will go down in history textbooks everywhere as the president who’s policies finally led to the U.S. definitively losing its ‘super-power’ status. Nobody will be fooled after this or still feel the need to pretend the U.S. is still a superpower. This reading is disastrous for the U.S. military. 🙁
I was not a happy panda to see these cards turn up.
In fact, I remember JMGs inauguration reading said there were worrying signs about problems with the U.S. military and I wonder if THIS – the GUTTING of the military is what that inauguration chart was hinting at – not that the military would become dangerously involved against their own fellow citizens but rather that it would end up being swiftly hollowed out and overworked for what it would still be asked to do by PMC elites.
I hope this reading turns out to be wrong because if it happens Biden’s Covax Mandate is about to put the torch to all 4 branches plus the reserves.
An interesting data point: the Canadian Federal government has left the policy of all flags at half-mast “indefinitely” due to the residential school grave crisis (local and regional governments still have this in place, as well, following federal direction; I noticed that the BC Provincial government and schools seemed to have them up again, though… which is most ironic).
Now, the people pushing back against this publicly are the Mohawk First Nation, specifically, the veterans in their Legion branch who served in the Canadian military overseas. They want to be able to acknowledge their recent dead, and “you can’t lower a flag that’s already at half-mast”. For people who are not in Canada, that it is the Mohawk is very interesting, as the Oka crisis is iconic in Canadian-First Nations relations – they faced off against the Canadian military in 1990. That second photo in the link is our equivalent of Vietnam’s “napalm girl”.
I am popping all of the corn in hopes that a very interesting mental gymnastics virtue signal mouthword competition happens around Remembrance Day, veterans, Canadian history, and racism.
It didn’t occur to me until now what the 6th card in that reading might mean. I thought it meant the generals and admirals would be nostalgic for when they still had a credible military.
Only now did the idea pop up it might instead mean that the PMC U.S. elites will be so out of touch in their own abstracted ‘superiority-bubble’ they don’t realize how badly gutted all the branches (plus the reserves) are from their covax mandate and so that would explain the final card – 10 of Wands – the card that represents being overworked and burned out.
@Justin Patrick Moore
“I’d hate to see the pentagram treated to the same fate as the swastika for example. Unfortunately, due to the horrors of the Third Reich, that symbol was also inverted, and now for many in the west it has a Nazi association instead of as a sun wheel, or the many other meanings of that symbol for Catholics, Hindus, Native American’s and others. The same thing could easily happen with a pentagram, more than it already has, here in the states and elsewhere. I get your point about people using inverted symbols, but as conspiracy culture spreads I see people just seeing symbols, and immediately going off the deep end.”
I would agree. And this former artist who quoted the Freemason’s very own books shows this misuse of Magic and Occultic Symbolism as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7G5CKX0je0
In worship of their God who they say is Lucifer who gave Enlightenment to Mankind in contrast to the Demiurge who kept Mankind from True Knowledge.
Even giving credit to Tubal-Cain one of the Biblical Figures of the Bible.
Whatever the original intentions may be. Unless there is distance between such things and Moral Evil. It is bound to result in what you fear.
John,
I pray that we are both wrong. I felt this from the beginning of the year.
@JMG
A terrifying example of black magic..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99R_7e0P7Q&t=554s
I know you’re not into videos, nor is this video in English, so I’ll summarise it here in English:
Basically this video is about Raghunathrao (one of the principal characters in the history of the Maratha Empire, which ruled India before the Brits, who took control of India after defeating the Marathas (not the Mughals, the Mughal emperor was just a puppet controlled by the Marathas)), who, in his greed to become the Peshwa (i.e. Prime Minister), had a murti (statue used in Hindu ritual worship) of Ugra Ganapati made by a special image-maker in South India and worshiped it using what in common parlance in India we call Aghori rituals (basically black magic) to fulfill his desire. It talks about how, after the fall of the Maratha Empire, the murti passed through various hands, bringing misfortune to each of them (like miscarriage, mentally disabled son, untimely death, etc.)…ultimately the murti (along with a copy of it) was taken by one Dr. Keshavram Iyyengar to the Shankaracharya at Kanchi. The Shankaracharya took one look at both of them, and accepted the copy, but returned the original. After Dr. Iyyengar returned home, he learned that his wife had delivered a baby boy, but unfortunately he too turned out to be mentally disabled. Learning of this, Dr. Iyyengar’s friend, a certain Mr. Murthy, took the Aghori murti from Dr. Iyyengar and kept it in the Shankar Math (pronounced ‘mutt-th’) in Chennai (shortly after, Mr. Murthy passed away). After that, nothing is since known about the murti’/ whereabouts (thank Gods).
I guess this is as good an example one could find as regards warnings about the dangers associated with malevolent magic. I wanted to post this on Magic Monday, but since it’s not a question, I’m posting it here.
I, too, have had gut-wrenching premonitions of things to come. However, I have interpreted these premonitions in terms of psychic epidemics and mass psychoses. That is a subject I am very sensitive about.
Like JMG and many others here, I have Asperger’s Syndrome. As such, throughout my childhood and youth, I was the “Rorschach ink blot” upon which my classmates and neighbors all too often projected whatever “shadow material” they did not want to take responsibility for. No doubt my fellow sufferers can relate to this.
Consequently, I have developed a hyper-sensitivity to signs that people around me are getting “spooked” like so many head of cattle in a thunderstorm. I left the U.S. two years before 9/11, because I started getting that sense on the nape of my neck, that a psychic eruption was about to take place, which it duly did on 9/11. I still feel like I got out none too soon.
In my youth,I obsessively studied the rise of totalitarian systems in the 20th Century, most specifically the Nazi’s. I ultimately concluded, as did Carl Jung, that the causes were (and are) spiritual and psychic, not material. I believe that the collapse of Western Christianity, starting in the Renaissance and Reformation, opened the hatches to the pits of Hell for all the demons to burst forth.
Now, I sense the same thing happening again. That is what ties my stomach up in knots lately, not COVID-19 or vaccines. Perhaps I am not looking in the direction I should (?).
“I’m not sure it’s exactly an own goal, however. I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.”
I wonder if this decision being made was what made the early 1980s: “We don’t need to worry about the future; once it comes, it’ll be time to blow ourselves to smithereens anyway!”
Hey all,
My 110-year-old house with old cast iron radiators needs a new oil-burning boiler. I’ve heard some of the modern “high-efficiency” boilers do not play well with the old radiators. I know there are people on here with experience trying to retrofit old buildings to be more energy efficient. Does anyone have experience with this “new boiler for cast iron radiators” issue? What do I need to watch out for in selecting a new boiler? (Anyone have manufacturers to recommend?)
TIA everyone!
My tuppenceworth on the vaccines is that they will be every bit as inept at killing everybody off as the virus was. Some people will die from them, but most will be unharmed. Some people might even benefit from them. If the elite had tried such a thing back in the 1950’s when they were still competent it might have worked, but not now.
I foresee the end of Faustianism as being tragicomic, personnally. There will be ever more grandiose declarations of power and glory, to ever diminishing effect. Remember that Spengler declared the ultimate Faustian symbol as being King Lear wandering madly on the heath. I would agree, but I think that Lear will be wearing clown shoes.
(btw JMG, I will be announcing my Great Garlic Experiment in a future Open Post)
Hi John Michael,
Ah, now we get to the core of the economics matter. Perhaps the lack of first world examples is why they cry: ‘It doesn’t matter’, when discussing the printing processes? The Reserve Bank of Australia is I believe (and please correct me if I am wrong in my belief) introducing something like five billion additional thingees per week. It is a remarkable feat from my perspective, and you know, credit where credit is due and all that rubbish. They’re doing their best and are probably taking a big stanky dump in their pants.
Except, me thinks that it matters. Yes, matters it does.
Oh man and so way far out. Look down here in the more extreme end of things, I was given a Hobson’s choice. It is laughable to pretend that it was otherwise. I hear you about the ADE, and sure it is all super bad and stuff, but cheer up ol’ chap, we’ve met before, shared some fun tales, drank a mead or twenty, and no doubts we’ll meet again. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again – you worry overly much my friend.
Cheers
Chris
John,
Yes, I’d agree that the majority of those who claim ET contact are most likely encountering such spirits from the lower astral if not chthonic even, but I do believe there’s a minority who are naturally in contact with higher “angelic” beings from certain planets and stars who are coming forth for some reason as ETs. If you follow their stories and channelings, you’ll notice that those beings are almost elemental or made of a single quality related to the source they come from, which also goes well with the general notions on angels. After researching, it’s actually in Lyra where they claim humanity originated from in their mythology, it’s specifically mentioned in Lyssa Royal’s work. I find their stuff fun and intriguing to read, they have a strange cerebral approach to spirituality expressed in their writings.
Reading what you said on gods, I’m reminded of the Bene Elohim, it could be related.
—
On a totally different note, I’ve been thinking about the career industry nowadays since I graduated recently. I’m trying to stay away as much as possible from managerial jobs but it’s quite hard to find with lots of compromises. But one thing I’m vehemently opposing to is applying to Saudi Aramco. it’s almost a tradition here in the Eastern Province for any aspiring graduate to have the best job in the company’s headquarters. On the other hand, I have the strongest negative reaction towards it for obvious reasons regarding oil business, but also for subtle reasons about the work environment and ethic, the company from my perspective is loaded with the heaviest negative karma and miasma that’s effecting its employees. Deeply corrupt hierarchic system, covered by a glossy progressive image they keep on projecting, especially nowadays with the problems facing the industry. I know few people who work there and I’m amazed at the modern slavery they are ready to face just for high pay checks, neglecting their wellbeing. For that matter, I’ve been criticized and had strange looks when I shared my opinion on the subject, it’s really baffling to me what’s going on.
Even the FT are writing about it: https://www.ft.com/content/34242eae-0f43-4da7-a826-f5246495cd20
@Info, are you warning us about a moral panic, or trying to cause one?
Something tells me pearl-clutching about Satan-worshipping high-level Freemasons isn’t going to get much traction here.
>If it does I suspect President Biden will go down in history textbooks everywhere
Ironically, Biden never wanted to go down in history, he just wanted to take your order please. Trump was the one that wanted to go down in history yet nobody will remember him 100 years from now.
You can’t imagine my surprise and delight this morning when I opened my inbox and saw your name featured in the weekend update from the UK website UnHerd, leading to your excellent article titled “Will magic defeat America’s elites?” Kudos, congrats and sing hallelujah…it’s quite clear you’ve got your mojo workin’!
UnHerd has become a favorite site of mine in the last few years (love the name). Early comments are entirely favorable and I’m hoping your exposure here will lead to a big jump in people reading your books and checking out Ecosophia. Well done!
Interesting note on college enrollments
https://www.yahoo.com/news/college-enrollment-continues-decline-show-141300547.html
I’m thinking my daughter dodged a bullet by deciding to go look for a job rather than get a degree. I’ll be curious to see if these trends continue. Does make me somewhat sad, however, as I enjoyed my years immersed in academia.
@ jbucks #22
Re imaginary debates
I can relate. I haven’t been active on PoliticalWire for five years and I still find myself occasionally in a mental debate with one of my “regulars” from back then. It has gotten better, but not gone away completely.
@ Jeff #228
Re manly men knitting
Thanks for that image! 🙂
@Spiritus flat ubi vult: I think you’re right, the fear and confusion are in the air. I get that sense by reading the undertones in a lot of conversations I have with friends, family and especially work colleagues.
@Frank Schoenburg: Indeed it is a good practice to have! In moments when it goes well, the sense of clarity in my mind feels very different than my usual noisy state of mind.
@RandomActsOfKarma: Thanks for both the link and the affirmation! I like the image of the squirrels as a metaphor for the overactive mind: that the squirrels jump from one branch (of thought) to another branch (of thought). I have tried the Judson exercise you linked to, but I don’t do it daily, so I should remember to try it when things get difficult. And that affirmation is great, thank you once again!
@JMG: Thank you, I will meditate on what it could mean to find a source of power within fear.
By the way, it was great to see your essay in Unherd this morning. You made a point that interest in occultism in the U.S. dropped off sharply after the Great Depression and the New Deal. Is that because the wider population, faced with the fallout from the economic crash, had more practical matters to attend to, and then lost the habit of occult practice as the New Deal kicked in? You wrote that the population at large knew that their voices wouldn’t be heard, which drove their interest in magical workings, but I’m surprised that people didn’t continue these practices during the worst of the Great Depression.
Hi John,
I ended up writing a lot, and I know it’s late in the commenting time, so do with this what you will. If necessary, I may just re-post some of this next month. Thanks for doing what you do.
I’ve been practicing the memory method you laid out in your Ars Memorativa blog posts and I’ve had some small success so far. I’ve built up 4 rings of the garden you recommended (up to what I assume represents Chesed), built out the alphabet and numerals (although I still tinker a bit with my few less inspiring representations), and have begun to practice where it becomes applicable in my life… and sometimes when I’m bored, like below.
For example, I managed to memorize 10 license plates while driving and had access to them the next day. That experience led me to a question. How do you imbue order on symbols? The way I memorized the license plates was by making a “scene” and I imbued order through “camera movement” / “rendering” and when I had something like 2Z (represented by Zuko wearing glasses) I played with a variety of things like giving the glasses a glow to make sure they came first, rendering the glasses first, etc.
Also, I chose to place the whole memory set in one single gazebo, manifesting a little road in the corner with floating symbols representing 0, 1, 2, … , 9. I think created a link from the number to the first symbol of the relevant license plate. One thing this has me worrying about is “contamination” of these symbols blocking me from doing a similar index later. Will focusing on them + backdrop be enough to prevent this? Perhaps I should just build larger environments for spatial indexing. I’ve also run into the possibility of this contamination in the license plate exercise where for a moment a my have mixed characters from one scene to another, perhaps because the scenes were too similar. Gotta work on my punning creativity.
On another note, walking through the garden has showed me how terrible I am at astral projection. I can do stills ok, although it’s usually not vivid / hard to keep all context at once, like relevant imagery + hedges + flowers. Maybe one way to do this better is summon it all and then capture a larger gestalt “vibe” and only really visualize the object of focus (which is kind of how waking consciousness works anyways).
Astrally, movement is a disaster. As a Taiji practitioner the body is very real to me in the physical, and so the low res of my astral body drives me a bit nuts. I find proper walking very difficult (easier through imagined real environments like my house). Keeping a sense of gravity, balance, keeping the body from diffusing, etc are all very difficult. Also my perspective can sometimes jump and I’m neck deep in the ground or something. Finally, even if I get moving alright, often the experience is more like a series of stills than “I am smoothly approaching this gazebo, growing in front of me as the flowers pass by”.
I’m trying to figure out practices to improve here. Maybe the garden is too much for me and I should reduce to just walking well worn physical spaces. How does what I’m saying parallel your own development?
Finally, I’ve had some really cool moments recently that I just wanted to share, as my practice would never have gotten this far without you. I’ve had several moments during ritual or contemplation when the symbols “crack open” and become more living realities than static images. One example has been Cos Doc’s Cosmos going from mechanistic sphere to vortex. My mind has these glimpses where it kind of realizes that the symbol systems point to realities that are vastly more real and complex and moving and alive than anything I normally experience and then my mind just kind of reels at the vastness and snaps back.
Also, I am starting to really get a sense of, for lack of any better word, a connectedness between visualization and things actually happening in ritual. More specifically, an awareness of how “broken” the energy movements actually are and how damn difficult and tiring it is to do even the LBRP which I’ve done hundreds of times by now “well”. My study of Taiji has made this very clear to me and it’s lessons about energy and connection taught through the physical body have been a great source of insight for my magical practice.
Also, at one point I was at water fire and decided to do astral middle pillar, and ended up SUPER JUICED. Had some of the most “real” visualizing of my sober life after that. Also, I decided I wanted to draw an invoking pentagram of fire and my astral self just drew it seamlessly, like it was a part of me, which I found very surprising because although I’ve done many a lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram I only just cracked open regarded and saw the pentagram with the elemental attributions and greater ritual instructions for the first time. All this broader energy ended up translating into a week of intense body change with constant Taiji and Jin Shin Jyutsu work. My constant prayer in after my daily middle pillar before my closing banishing has been “whole vessel, free flow of life”, so this makes sense.
I’ve also now gotten to the point where I work through the Tarot a few times, memorized the Hebrew attributions, the meaning of the letters, and the Sepher Yetzirah single letter, double letter, maternal letter meanings (I used the qabalistic Tarot by Robert Wang). I’m going to work through the trumps one more time in a more intuitive fashion instead of focusing so heavily on what wang says about the symbols, and then I’m going to work through the tree for the first time in a long time and more seriously than I have before. I’m going to spend 1 to 2 weeks on each sphere, memorize the god names, archangels, and angels + (hopefully) their Hebrew spellings, with meditations on the relevant tarot cards on 4 of the days for good measure. I was also going to use this as an opportunity to learn the greater invoking ritual of the hexagram, invoking the relevant forces for each sphere at the beginning of the given weeks, and perhaps using the invoking ritual of the pentagram for the relevant element on tarot days (for hexagrams, should I invoke then banish or leave the invocation open for the whole week? I assume if I do that I need to be ready for some… ahem… shifts). I also may start practicing the rose cross ritual occasionally, just to get it in my repertoire.
By the end of this, I hope to have a solid foundation. It’s been a pleasure exploring. Thanks for being a great guide.
Best,
Jake
Re #287 (“When Cancel Culture Means Letting Go”):
Thanks for sharing the article!
While reading it, I thought of the 1980 short story “We Love Glenda So Much” by Julio Cortazar. Remember that?
The author of “When Cancel culture Means Letting Go” starts out gleeful and snide and seems really unempathetic.
She could think about: If she and her interviewees felt that way, why did their behavior come across toward the canceled as those opposing cancel culture have described? Because that’s the thing: It does. I can believe that the masses who follow the leaders who initiate a canceling do feel as the author described. But their behavior still executes a canceling, and toward the targets, still comes across as it does.
Wondering that…is what made me think of “We Love Glenda So Much.” Donella Meadows (of _The Limits to Growth fame_) wrote about it:
“Glenda is a movie star. Everyone loves her. Her fans know her films by heart; they study her every gesture and word.
“Of course Glenda has bad moments. In some frames she looks less than glamorous, especially as she grows older. You can find fault with a speech here and there. An occasional gesture falls flat.
“But film can be edited. Every image can be altered, if you’re willing the take the time to do it. Glenda’s fans, because they love her so much, take the time. They acquire master copies of her films and edit them just a little, just to show their idol at her best.
“They set up a worldwide network to replace all copies of her films with their revised versions. It keeps them busy, especially since the films are re-edited now and then to make them even better.
“More and more people come to love Glenda.
“The real Glenda, however, becomes a problem. When she makes personal appearances, she isn’t quite the Glenda everyone loves so much. She is looking older. Sometimes she’s a little awkward or ill-tempered. Her fans persuade her to stay home. Eventually they even convince her not to make any more films.
“After a long, lovely time, during which everyone enjoys the wonderful Glenda on the screen, the real Glenda gets bored. She comes out of retirement and schedules a new film and a series of public appearances.
“The fans are horrified. They hold emergency meetings to decide what to do, though in fact they know. Because they love Glenda so much, they have to eliminate her.
“The story ends there.”
But cancelings are also directed at ordinary joes and indeed, that’s the whole problem with cancel culture. Some lady makes an antiracist joke to her 5 twitter friends and while she’s on a plane, it blows up, people misinterpret it as a racist joke and get her fired from her job? That was not a celebrity, that was some lady. Some guy who just finally got his first steady job as a truck driver sees someone else on the street encouraging him to make a meaningless gesture, so he does, and this turns into an accusation that he “made a racist gesture” and gets him fired from the job he was so proud of? That was not a celebrity, that was some guy. Author says celebrities come out fine? Getting canceled has powerful psychological sequelae, but never mind that, *celebrities* do come out materially fine. It’s ordinary joes who have the problem…
JMG – I’m working not to fall in the trap of creating my reality by speaking it aloud and have others confirm they see it too, while also speaking of a possible future if things continue on the current path.
Going back to what I said about people’s response to our current predicament….I feel like there are a couple of unhelpful ones currently going on everywhere.
1) “I’ve got my situation squared away so who cares.” People who could retire from jobs that required the vax, or people who already had lives independent enough that they can avoid it.
2) “It’s only a vax and what is the big deal.” People ignoring the consistent invasive mandates and just comply without complaint.
3) “We’re all in this together and we all have to comply for success.” This is the revival of the social gospel of the early 20th century and the nation has a soul to save as I see it. The very fanatical and the loudest group.
4) “We are all doomed.” This faction is always present and I wonder how many are feds online just trying to get people to give in.
5) “If I ignore it, and just travel and do what I want, then the narrative will just flip like it always does and I don’t have to do anything that makes me uncomfortable.” Quite a few of my friends fall into this category.
And out of all this I am crafting my own approach which feels more and more like threading a needle with a camel (to quote the Aramaic translation of the gospel). If I wasn’t journaling, I would have shut down my thinking months ago on everything and slipped into that meta verse being pushed.
As I typing this I’m realizing I’m going to have to get even more uncomfortable myself. And showing joy while doing it so others see it as a possibility rather than something to fear feels necessary.
I think the only thing resembling an 80-90% die off is the impact of new diseases into the Western Hemisphere, so I doubt that will occur (admittedly one of those fascinating historical echoes if it does).
I’m one of those who is not an enthusiast either way who took the vaccine. If I was younger, I wouldn’t have.
I have already been thinking that by 2025 it will be clear if we are in the energy downturn or just going through the usual cycle of low oil price/high oil price/low oil price/high oil price,
I’m leaning toward the second option, but I’m also one of those people who consider fracking a “useful speculative bubble” like the original canal and railroad bubbles.
So, back to lurking until maybe 2025.
Thanks to you and the community, Drew
Hi John,
Thanks for the feedback.
I agree with you that our Western elites and the wider Faustian culture has a collective death wish. It reminds a bit like the strange reaction and excitement of European societies at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. A moment of insanity, at least among the elites and the educated middle classes of Europe (the peasants and working class populations were less likely to be among the crowds celebrating the outbreak of a new world war).
In regard to ADE, I second the responses made by John. We are still in the early innings of the rollout of these vaccines.
This Zero Hedge article shows just how rushed the Moderna vaccine rollout was – https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/covid-19-moderna-gets-its-miracle – and how everything was rigged to get that vaccine approved by the company. Great news for Moderna shareholders, not so great for all those foolish enough to have got vaccinated.
In regard to the prospect of mass die-off, I share your dread. So far, the most worrying thing I have noticed among the demographic I see most commonly – the 20 to 40 something age group is the off the wall sickness levels among active, fit and healthy younger people.
This is very worrying and implies that if their immune systems are already weakened enough that some of the fittest people in their 20’s and 30’s are off sick for weeks on end for viruses circulating in Autumn, it does beg the question how their bodies will cope with the inevitable mutational drift of new Covid variants in the coming months and years that will accelerate mass ADE across the vaccinated populations.
So, to conclude, I can see a dynamic that the more clinically vulnerable (e.g. the obese, elderly and sick) elements of the population are more likely to die in the coming years from ADE. Those that have (or did have) the most robust immune systems pre-vaccination will have a greater chance of surviving, medium term, but at the cost of permanently enhanced sickness compared to their pre-2021 self.
Longer term, the vaccinated who survive the initial wave of ADE, will slowly due from longer-term diseases e.g. neurological, autoimmune etc that are growing exponentially from the VARS data in the US.
A final point. My wife’s family live in south-eastern Poland, a deeply conservative and rural area of Poland where vaccination rates have been fairly low, compared to the rest of the country. The population is still quite religious and vaccine “scepticism” higher than among the more Westernised cities. The biggest resistance to vaccination are the religious and those from a more working class/farming background. The local managerial/aspirational office class are much more pro-vaccination overall.
As we currently live in Western Europe, we have to, at some point, if your scenario of mass death comes true, move eastwards to eastern Europe given the likely fate of western Europe.
Pygmycory #275 Thanks for your post here. I just read another very disturbing post at OffGuardian about Bill Gates involvement in the future of food: https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/29/bill-gates-and-the-uncertain-future-of-food-security/ Yikes!
I remember a scene from the film What A Way To Go: Life at the end of Empire which featured an interview with William Catton, author of the seminal work Overshoot. His final comment was “Make no mistake, the population WILL be reduced.” Reality bites.
My family was just sitting around together having some breakfast on a chilly, rainy Saturday morning, talking about the absurdity of a recent NYT article claiming that inflation was a bougie problem – like your Pelaton might cost a few dollars more – but not really an issue for poorer people. Rolling laughter ensued; does anyone really believe these blowhards? Then my 13 y.o. daughter said that she would just like to live in a world of internally-consistent logic…
More laughter from the parents. Sorry dear, you were born into this life in the wrong era for that. But then she started asking about options that might remove her from some of the madness of the coming decades. A Druid cloister possibly? Does such a thing exist? Any plans that you, JMG, or anyone else knows about for such a place? I don’t think I could do it, but my daughter would be an ideal candidate for such a living arrangement.
Many thanks,
Grover
NomadicBeer says: October 27, 2021 at 6:18 pm
I am extremely pessimistic. I worked and saved for years, and completely transformed my life over the last two years to escape what I knew was coming. I quit a highly paid job, moved 1000 miles to a smaller town in a red state, left friends and family
I just learned Friday that the vaxx mandates are coming here December 8, coming for me and my new job.
I’m not scared of being without a job right now financially, but I am scared of everything else going on. They (who?) are literally trying to kill us. How can that not be obvious to everyone? I have to think those who believe they are trying to wipe out the control group have to be correct. Things are truly so much worse than I ever thought. Even with my savings I no longer believe I am safe. It’s not real, just ones and zeros in a computer. Do I pay off this house? I no longer believe that makes one safe if they are bound and determined to criminalize and destroy those who aren’t vaccinated.
I’ve lost faith in people to fight back. Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of living here, and my job is now to find my people, as I will likely soon have to enter the underground economy and community.
It’s weird, having all the worst scenarios seeming to be coming true, where does this lead?
I was pleasantly surprised to see a JMG essay as the top UnHerd headline this morning!
https://unherd.com/2021/10/will-magic-defeat-americas-elites/
JMG (no. 310) “Bei Dawei, funny. I’ll consider it.”
Consider what–selling your soul?! I didn’t recommend that! Not that I actually think you can…I mean, it would be edgy, but as you see, the gimmick has already been done.
Hmm, maybe there would be a market for your mojo?
I’ve got it! You could auction off your faloorum (valorum?) and/or your ding durham:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi0yh4jpdBM
JMG, in “The End of Employment” post on Archdruid Report you wrote:
“I admit to a certain macabre curiosity about how that will play out in the years ahead. I’ve suspected for a while now, for example, that the baby boomers will manage one final mediagenic fad on the way out, and the generation that marked its childhood with coonskin caps and hula hoops and its puberty with love beads and Beatlemania will finish with a fad for suicide parties, in which attendees reminisce to the sound of the tunes they loved in high school, then wash down pills with vodka and help each other tie plastic bags over their heads.”
What if the baby boomers decided to take it a step further and TAKE EVERYONE ELSE WITH THEM? This whole thing with the virus and the vaccines could be a boomer suicide party taken up to eleven.
I imagine a humorously grim scene: Joe Biden is crawling through the halls of the White House filled with dead and dying staffers. He finally gets into his office, opens the nuclear briefcase and sends orders to nuke every country on Earth as his last act in life. “Now, that’s how you go out with a boom”, he whispers before dying.
Tidlosa @ 298, Surely Australia would be well advised to keep its’ coal for home consumption.
Stellarwind72, I think your skills might well be very much needed in years to come. If you can do things like reconfigure old computers that could be a source of fun and meeting interesting people now, side money later on and status as a necessary person who must not be killed should the worst occur.
Data points:
My son who works a fork-lift at Goodwill was sent home. Why? NO DONATIONS coming in for at least one WEEK. Goodwill industries told all their employees to expect only part-time work at best. DONATIONS ARE DOWN. They have been coming down for at least three months now.
So the Great Decline at least in PMC land is here. People are saving their stuff.
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As for gutting public services because of the vaccine mandate – It is here. Bus drivers in Charles Cty (MD) are all on strike. Schools are now virtual. Meanwhile, the DC Firefighters and EMS are only 60 percent vaccinated and are leaving. There is considerable push back in PMC land.
—-
Meanwhile at Federal Gov. world, Biden and group are delusional in thinking that if everyone is vaccinated and goes back to work full-time by Nov. 15, everything will be just fine and dandy. Vaccine gut happening there too and breakthrough illnesses.
—
My conclusion is everything in PMC world is going to h-e-double hockey sticks in a handbasket, and they are running around in circles.
John Michael Greer – I have to respectfully disagree with your assertion that the death rate among the vaccinated will be 80-90% (If I am I interpreting your darkest read of the situation correctly.)
I think believing all the vaccinated will die is the same fallacy as apocalypse tomorrow.
If I recall my college genetics courses, the body does have methods of repairing genetic damage. Figuring out which segments of DNA shouldn’t be there. And viruses have been inserting DNA into animal cells since the dawn of time, some of this DNA ends up just staying there, doing nothing, acting like a useless piece of computer code. To my mind the vaccine will most likely end up like one of the many viruses with useless DNA code. Or the body will figure out it shouldn’t be there and the immunity will be gone.
The body figuring out said DNA shouldn’t be there, and making a mental/physiological note of it, may also playa part in the development of authentic antibodies against covid in the long haul. Given the natural death rate of covid is negligible, let’s just say even if 10X as many people died of covid, there would still be a lot of humans left.
So apocalypse tomorrow fantasy? Probably not happening.
@methylethyl #223, @David BTL #91 and @Jeff Russell #228, as an aside to your practical interest in textiles, you might be interested in what archaeologists have found out about early textiles. E.J.W. Barber’s book, “Prehistoric Textiles,” Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-691-00224-X, has a very thorough discussion. It’s not the most thrilling read, but the book contains a lot of interesting information on types of weaves, patterns, sewing processes and even a very little bit on knitting. I hope you find it useful.
Chris at Fernglade: Brazil up to 1993 was a halfway industrialized country with hyperinflation.
@cary,
The first thing to determine is if your existing house heating system is steam or hot water. An old steam system is definitely not compatible with a new hot water system ( no such thing as a new steam system. You can tell because if yours is hot water there are 2 pipes to each radiator and at least one electric pump in the basement. If you are lucky and your house is hot water I don’t know any good reason it won’t work with a new hot water boiler.
This isn’t our first vax failure and mandate rodeo. Our school taught vax history is about as deep and accurate as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. A look back to the 1800s.
23 minute video of history of vax discovery, propaganda, failure, and mandatory vax laws in the 1800s! Very interesting history and questioning of vaccines. Presenting med journal and newspaper quotes with pics from sources, graphs, few tables…
I had to ask myself if I was being honest in my assessments of vaccine critiques and the significant mind changes I’ve been experiencing lately. I really believe I am objective in my reassessment of many things lately. Please try this video out. It was time well spent. DenG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQivkd4uDOk
Re: Meta (FaceBook rebranding) – it gets even more interesting – apparently “meta” sounds like Hebrew for “dead” (incidentally the Arabic word for “dead” is pretty close – “mette”):
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-59090067
And then there’s this:
https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-protest-over-ucsb-mega-dorm/
Also, any suggestions on how to tune out brain-less chatter that is just ‘out there’, and instead focus on productive/positive/spiritual thoughts and news that I really need to know about and can respond to in a purposeful way? I try to avoid mainstream media (MSM) as much as possible*, but even so its hard to avoid. I believe this might be deliberate in the constant repetition and recycling of toxic waste-of-time-and-energy. I won’t repeat the names of the themes here, but this could also include earworms (those catchy tunes that just won’t let go).
And another question: what percentage of the world’s petroleum resources has been used up for war?
And getting into fantasyland territory* here – what could have happened if these resources just been left in the ground for future generations?
* As in any novel based on this plotline would be rejected out of hand by the most incompetent publisher.
John, me too, on both counts.
Viduraawakened, many thanks for this. I’m not at all familiar with the practices of malign magic in the Hindu world, but of course they exist — every culture has both benefic and malefic magical practices — and it doesn’t surprise me at all that they’re as potent as they are dangerous.
Michael, there’s certainly a cascade of psychic epidemics in today’s America and in the industrial world generally, though I’d point out that those were just as common when Christianity was the unquestioned basis for Western culture. I’d also note, however, that the behavior of elites and masses alike around the current virus panic shows all the hallmarks of a psychic epidemic, and the frankly weird insistence that everyone must be injected with inadequately tested experimental drugs that, according to their own manufacturers, do nothing to stop people from catching the virus or communicating it to others — well, let’s just say Jung would have no trouble figuring it out. Totalitarianism is not the only way that a psychic epidemic can ground out.
Anonymous, that could be, especially since I don’t think it’s a conscious decision.
Phil, I hope you’re right. I’ll look forward to garlic!
Chris, I think you may well be right. It occurs to me, though, that the fact that hyperinflation doesn’t happen in fully industrial societies is a useful indicator that ours are no longer fully industrial societies. As for worrying, why, I’m well aware that it’s only one life and there’ll be others. I’m simply interested in sketching out the shape of the Long Descent in advance…
Aziz, it’s always possible that something angelic might be involved, but I’d want to see evidence of genuine sanctity in the people who make that claim. Spending time around angels ought to make you a considerably better person, as spending time around saints does! As for Saudi Aramco, staying away from it sounds like a very good idea; there must be other options.
Jim, thank you! I’ll be interested to see what kind of response it gets.
David BTL, no surprises there. After the rubble stops bouncing, it might be possible to create something more or less like what colleges were before they turned into marketing scams for predatory loans and Petri dishes for malignant ideologies.\
Jake, I’m delighted to hear this. There are various ways to order the symbols — that was a central theme of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory; spacial orientation is a classic, though you can also weave the symbols together into a narrative. The erasure of old symbols can be a problem, but it gets easier with practice. As for the astral dimension, that also takes lots of practice. Let’s see — I used actual settings for a long time before I tried my first imaginary one, and had equally good results with both, but your mileage may vary. As for the ritual work on the sephiroth, definitely invoke and banish each time — you’ll learn as much about the sephirothic energy by sensing its (relative) absence as you will from sensing its presence.
Denis, thanks for this. All this seems very constructive to me.
Drew, well, we’ll see!
Forecasting, all this feels very much like the runup to World War I to me as well, and the same mad conviction that doing the worst possible thing is the best possible choice. In your place, I’d definitely be maintaining my ties with Polish in-laws.
Grover, that’s a fascinating idea, but not one I’ve considered; I’m sufficiently fond of solitude that no communal living arrangement attracts me much. She may need to invent her own community of logical consistency.
Mark, so was I!
Bei Dawei, of course not. I was talking, as you’ll remember, about figuring out how to sell a ritual performance as an NFT.
Ecosophian, that possibility has occurred to me more than once.
Neptunesdolphins, thanks for the data points! That seems like a very succinct summary.
Black Bag, I’ve already said that I’m quite aware that the extreme case could be entirely wrong. That doesn’t make it impossible, and I think it’s not unreasonable to mention it so that my readers can keep an eye on events, and make arrangements to live in a world with a lot fewer people in it if that’s the way things happen to turn out.
DenG, thanks for this.
PatriciaT, with regard to mental chatter, that takes a lot of hard work. Regular meditation and steady effort seem to be the only known approaches that work. As for your petroleum question, I have no idea — anyone else?
I just heard a song by Alabama (from the mid-eighties) that reminded me how much this country has changed in the last forty or so years.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5e-ew0BXY
Forty-hour week (working for a living)
@ Patricia Matthews #269
I finally looked at that potential dormitory.
The fire marshal must not have seen it yet. To my knowledge, fire code in the US requires two exits to the outside from a bedroom: traditionally the door and a window large enough to allow a fully-equipped fireman to enter.
If 94% of the dorm rooms don’t have windows, this building wouldn’t qualify.
Maybe apartments are different?
There’s also the issue of 4,000 students evacuating in an emergency through two doors. It would be impossible.
I would not want any child of mine living in that potential deathtrap.
There’s also the issue of ventilation in the event of a power shutdown.
Hello all! Just a few ramblings from the western shores of Lake Champlain…
Rural vs small scale urban:
I can’t speak for other parts of upstate New York (it’s a very large state!) but the Adirondacks and northern tier seem to have a remarkably intact local culture and community connections. The saying is you’re not local until you have (at least!) a couple generations in the soil. And that sentiment emphatically excludes the multi-generational wealthy “cottagers”; those who can and do buy up hundreds of thousands of acres to “preserve them and ensure they stay pristine”.
Supply scarcity:
Our local Tops grocery store has had the entire organic/gluten-free section replaced with a wall of Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup. The cans are only one deep on the shelves but span about 12 feet. Additionally, several of the main end caps have been stocked with Bush’s Baked Beans.
I am currently reading “CLASSICAL LIVING, Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome” by Dr. Frances Bernstein. Has anyone here read it?
Kind regards to all
Court
@Info:
Tubal-Cain is one of my mythic heroes.
My Instagram feed (courtesy of Wellsboro Books) alerted me to the newest tarot deck:
Disney Villains!
I know very little about tarot decks but don’t the images mean something besides the card’s meaning?
What I’m asking is it a good idea to use a Disney character tarot deck? They’ve also got other Disney tarot decks.
Wouldn’t the fact that the images are Disney affect the reading?
@JMC I’ve no doubt hes already suffering the consequences spiritually. Check up on him sometimes to see how he’s doing. I personally wouldn’t want him to be given the boot, but certainly a swift kick in the rear by a human is far better than whatever is being pointed at him spiritually.
Aside from that, I looked on AODA’s site earlier this month. The idea to join certainly was heightened by a series of things. For now I’m working on internal affairs that may be a hindrance and establishing a sturdy foundation in GD before starting more detailed studies in things related to Druidry or shamanism.
Hi John Michael,
🙂 I knew that you knew, and I’m trying hard to draw upon courage.
There was a sentence in an Agatha Christie novel which kind of resonates with today’s circumstances, the gist of which is: “Uncertainty as a strategy fosters panic. Death has a way of resolving the panic.” This is very suggestive.
However, I’d have to suggest that nobody really knows the motivations behind the current events, and all any of us can do is but guess based on whatever resources we have to hand. On the other hand events look bonkers to me, but then my words are not words intended to soothe. My gut feeling suggests that we are witnessing an epic bout of fear and loss, which expresses itself as madness. It’s not nice you know. 🙂
Cheers
Chris
To all those who experience anxiety in these difficult times I recommend The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Although I was at first reluctant to read the book because of its vaguely new-agey title and because it was popular, I eventually read it and found it very helpful. I even experienced a Satori moment briefly after reading the book.
You can listen to the audio version of the book online for free. Seek and you will find.
Gentlemen Knitters,
My great-great grandfather was a soldier in the Danish army, and as a civilian emigrated to Utah to ply his trade as a blacksmith, practice his newfound faith as a polygamist, and father over a dozen children.
He taught my great grandmother how to knit.
Pretty sure no one questioned his manliness as he blacksmithed ships’ anchors in his shop in Copenhagen, or horseshoes, nails and etc in 19th century Utah. 😆
Best to you,
OtterGirl
@JMG: “I’d also note, however, that the behavior of elites and masses alike around the current virus panic shows all the hallmarks of a psychic epidemic, …”
My own views exactly. What I was saying earlier is that this is what I have focused my attention upon, rather than the thought that “we are all going to di-i-i-i-e-e-ee of the vax.”
Again, perhaps I am not paying attention to all that I should be. As I mentioned before, I got the vax, and if you are right, I may be dead in a little over a year. I have faced death twice in the past 10 years already, so I don’t panic about it. Right now, my focus is on discerning God’s will for me, to the best of my ability, and summoning the fortitude to do it. The rest, I leave in God’s hands.
Justin Patrick Moore (no. 353) That sounds like it should be the name of some kind of pain reliever.
JMG (no, 349): Oh! Uh, never mind…
Hmm, can you sell the NFT of a ghost or demon? That seems likely to get some free publicity.
You know who should sell funny NFTs? The “Take the Money and Run” art guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_the_Money_and_Run_(artwork)
(I’ve thought about mass-producing and/or counterfeiting this piece.)
Aziz A. (no. 322), alien contact stories generally feature aliens with human features–eyes, a head, arms and legs–even if distorted (big heads), parts missing (noses, ears), or strangely colored (skin and eyes). Maybe they are diminutive. This suggests to me that they are products of folklore. This is what “monsters” are–twisted, distorted versions of ourselves. (An alien that looked like a sea anemone wouldn’t be nearly as dramatic.) Perhaps we evolved to fear such things, because archaic humans who encountered very different human groups would probably be in danger.
If I actually saw one of these things, I would assume it to belong to a different race of humanity, heretofore unknown, or some closely-related species. Maybe they could be cross-time travelers from parallel timelines. But for now, I’d put my money on pure folklore. (Think “urban legends.”) You can see these stories changing over time, as a result of mass media influences, one assumes. When I was growing up, aliens were imagined as Little Green Men with antennae, not Whitley Streiber-style gray aliens.
As for angels / demons / elves, this raises what I call the “Dr. Strange” problem. If you saw the Dr. Strange movie, you’ll know that Dr. Strange is a magical superhero who fights an extradimensional entity called Dormammu (think Satan). The theological issue that this raises is, what makes God (or his angels) different from Dormammu? Shouldn’t Dr. Strange worship Dormammu rather than fight him? If not, then why shouldn’t we fight God, if he exists?
BTW I have a friend in eastern Saudi Arabia, who goes to Saudi Aramco for Anglican church services (held on the premises). He seems to like living and working there.
@ Patricia Matthews #269 and others, regarding the dorm.
I’m an architect, not very enamored of the last 80 years of my profession. That dorm looks as if someone fed code minimums into a program designed to meet the minimums in the least space. It does have adequate fire stairs ( the 3 stair blocks on each side, plus the pair straddling each entry).
It reminds me nothing so much as current city planning, where all traffic is funneled onto major streets, with the result that every one has long distances to travel, even if one only needs to go a short distance. In this case, everyone has to go through that central corridor. Just try to keep social distanced when 500 people are trying to leave the floor at once.
I get bi-weekly e-mail newsletters from The People’s Pharmacy, run by Joe Graedon, a registered pharmacist, and his nursing professor wife, Terry. Articles run the gamut from discussions of home remedies – what works and why – warnings about undisclosed drug side effects, and general information about prescription and non-prescription drugs in layman’s language. They appear to be supportive of the Covid vixens.
Yesterday’s newsletter included an article entitled, “15 Ways Pharma Cleverly Manipulates You”, guest-written by another pharmacist. Some of the ’15 Ways’ are pretty widely known, but others were a complete, and not entirely pleasant, surprise. I immediately thought that this article provides plenty of ammunition to anyone refusing to comply with the C-jabs.
https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/15-ways-pharma-cleverly-manipulates-you
The shortages are apparently now popping up in medical supplies and pharmaceuticals for a variety of things, including liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, insulin, and immunoproducts.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/im-doc-on-medication-medical-supply-shortages-and-political-backlash.html
To be fair medical shortages and price gouging have been a problem for years, from epipens to medications I’ve used. I’ve lost track of the number of times I could only partly fill a prescription, and had to come back for the rest a few days later. And last year I couldn’t get an important one for four months due to a worldwide shortage caused by problems at the lone factory where it was made. But according to the doctor talking, this is worse than anything he’s seen before.
@Scotlyn, thanks for that reply. Examples like those (cause-of-recovery and cause-of-death) really highlight the issue.
I’ve known for most of my life how much of everything I read is one-sided, one-answer, one-position, but it’s just dawning on me how strange that is. There’s nothing wrong with coming to a conclusion in an expository piece, but the idea of first acknowledging the evidence for a variety of positions before doing so seems to have gone out of style. For instance, if you’re making a video arguing that the role of vaccines in reducing the recent prevalence of infectious diseases is overstated, it doesn’t actually strengthen your argument when you conveniently omit polio (or tetanus, rabies, yellow fever…), or disregard the world outside the U.S. and U.K. (Sorry to pick on your video contribution, @DenG, it just happens to be fresh in my mind.) We sometimes remind ourselves and others to be aware of this tendency and attempt to counteract it (use a variety of sources, keep cultural contexts in mind, and so forth) but should we be so willing to put up with it in the first place?
I’ll just give my two cents on the vaccine
I speak as someone who is fully vaccinated (I’m male, very healthy and and in my 30s). I got vaccinated, even after reading your hypothesis and after extensive thought and contemplation on the subject. I did it because it felt like the right thing to do. I’m very intuitive person by the way. What I can tell you is this vaccine feels pretty tame, at least for me anyway. That’s not to dismiss the negative health reports surrounding the vaccine, or your prediction. I certainly feel your right that something is terribly wrong, though its at best (or worst) only indirectly to do with the vaccine or covid.
Actually another thought came to mind here. The effects of this vaccine I sense will be broadly similar to the long term effects of industrial pollution and the like, that is it will certainly cause plenty of problems, though the effects will be very indirect, and there will be plenty of room for adaption, mitigation of the negative health effects along the way, or even beneficial effects for some.
JMG,
There seems to be something in the air. I’m a huge fan of your Weird of Hali series. I am also a fan of the comic writer Alan Moore. Moore has been a long time fan of Lovecraft and had written two comics – “The Courtyard” and “Neonomicon.” Well he just released his magnum opus “Providence” which both back stories his other two works and caps them off as well. Guess where he ends up? In almost the exact same place the Weird of Hail ends up. The Gods of the Mythos arise, transform the world and humanity now must face the fact that they are a small part of world that has no real regard for them – in fact the world in which humanity was the center was really just a dream.
https://www.amazon.com/Providence-Compendium-Alan-Moore/dp/1592913393
I wonder if we will see more stories with these themes begin to appear?
AV
p.s. Warning to anyone who might be interested in the above titles: all three are explicit, violent, and gory,
To :
IG says:
#3 October 27, 2021 at 10:26 am
I was in your position and wound up having one sone anyway. Love him dearly and would not change a thing. Have been aware of our human trajectory for a long time before his birth. I have made sure hea was exposed to many adults older than his parents and that they were competent individuals. I am a tradesman and a farmer and his mother is a gardener and is good at preserving produce. He is now 20 and has chosen a career as a boilermaker/welder, and is nearly completed his apprenticeship at a small family engineering shop in a rural service centre town where he has obtained a wider range of skills that he would have at a larger, more specialised employer. Along the road we have build a substantial house, established a plantation, created a working farm, attempted to grow saffron (fungal infection in the soil and lack of cold enough winter temps killed that venture) and I was a partner in a startup repair business. He has been able to see how stuff can get fixed and how it gets broken. I have never glossed over the view of the world I have, but I have never been all doom and gloom either. Right now he is a couple of weeks into the experience of renting a house with his girlfriend and they seem to be coping ok. Is he exactly where I think he should be with regard to the turmoil we are experiencing? Not quite, but he is still prepared to listen to what I have to say and consider it.
Two bits of wisdom stick with me. Kahil Gilbran, on parenthhod: they are of you but they are not yours,
Bob Biggar, kiwi mate from way back: It is amazing how much your parents learn between the time you are 18 and 25.
Expose your kids to competent people and make sure you explain what competent means. Make sure your friendship group includes people who are self employed and who work on the land or directly for primary producers. That is where real survival skills reside. Perhaps even get them involved down the track in rural youth organisations. They will then have contacts in that area that can provide options. I take from you post that you understand that the university landscape is a poor source of such knowledge.Your ideas regarding skills are good but you need to expose them to others whose mindset involves knowing when and how to use those skills as well. As they become teenagers it will help to have other adults involved who understanbd the process when the teenagers inevitably rebel.
@Walt F
“Something tells me pearl-clutching about Satan-worshipping high-level Freemasons isn’t going to get much traction here.”
Is it pearl clutching if it is quoting from the Freemason handbooks themselves?
In reply to #267 I had a look at the plans. They appear to be based on the Royal Hospital of Chelsea. It was designed about 300 years ago by Sir Christopher Wren. I read an article on it. He based it on the design of ships of the time. The room resembled a ships’ berth and people spent most of their time in the main hall with their friends and neighbours socialising.
It houses retired military veterans. Basically an old folks home. The difference between it and the modern old folks home is that the residents live on average 5 years longer than the conterparts in modern nursing homes. Turns out having to exercise (walk to the bath room) and socialise keeps people alive, healthy and happy.
I remember in the article the person in charge was very proud of this fact. So proud he was going to redesign the rooms so that they all had personal bathrooms. Of course this would mean there would be fewer residents. However since I suppose their life expectance would fall in line with modern trends and the residents would start to die 5 years earlier they might actually house the same number of people over a 5 year time period.
I haven’t read all the comments, so I don’t know if anyone posted this yet. But it’s a really good article, so I thought it’s better to put up an extra link than to miss it.
https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91
Jessi Thompson
anotheramethyst
JMG,
I’m intrigued with “voor” (light voor and dark voor) as described in your Weird of Hali books. Do you write about the concept of voor or a similarly constructed form of life energy by another name in any of your esoteric works? I’d like to read more about it if you have. Thanks!
“I’m not sure it’s exactly an own goal, however. I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.”
What’s really scary is that this implies that if the vaccines don’t have a high enough death rate, something else will be tried….
I was recently surprised to learn that someone I am distantly acquainted with, is a Satanist. (Theistic, as I understand.) He has been kind to me on several occasions. This revelation has inspired me to rethink my prejudices.
I’ve had more contact with the Masons, although I’m not a member myself. To the best of my knowledge, they are a bunch of (primarily) old guys who hold those famous rituals (which some find boring), have dinner together, and raise money for charity. But if anybody thinks they control the world, well, they seem desperate for new members, so I guess this is your opportunity to join the elite. You can’t be an atheist, though (or a woman), except in a few odd jurisdictions that are out of communion with the main group of Masons. I doubt that an open Satanist would be welcomed.
Hi John,
I wanted to ask you today about reincarnation since you have written about it for a while back. Me and my wife have had a debate about this. Her opinion is that every incarnation, you are a completely new person. Everything is random and nothing connects. If it does, it is purely coincidental.
I on the other hand believe it is more of a 50/50. The soul itself is a personality and likely chooses incarnations reflecting that personality. I do believe there is randomness but something else lives on through life after life.
What is your opinion on this?
I also have one more question for you and that is about the planet Uranus. It is a very revolutionary planet that has brought in a lot of social and technological changes. Yet as time marches on and the limit to growth is reached, Saturn starts to take effect and things calm down again.
But since Uranus is quite actively involved with Aquarius, I wanted to ask but what type of revolutions will it now provide due to growth being limited?
Btw just as a pointer, it is known in astrology that Aquarius rules two countries in particular – Russia and Iran – two very conservative countries. Which is interesting as the “pop” astrologers (as I like to call them) imagine Aquarius to be full of liberal “progress” yet fail to see that two countries under that sign are conservative, which should be a sign enough.
Speaking of Aquarius, I also am an Aquarius and I happen to be quite traditional and conservative, unlike the liberal pop astrologers that expect me to be a liberal rebel…
JMG, thank you for your thoughts on this longer term interaction. The “Great Work” must continue, so it’s interesting to contemplate how these universal ‘nudges’ affect things for the current wave of humanity. Emphasis less across plane, more up plane perhaps? Probably more between incarnation time too. Does feel like there’s some work for the species to get through dealing with the dead end cul-de-sac of material progress we seem to find ourselves at. Guess it’s time to back up, turn around and try another path in the ‘becoming’ maze of existence.
(A)maze myself sometimes – “no blame”.
Question for US members of the commentariat who are vets or who have vet family members.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who’s an Iraq War vet wherein he described issues he’s having with his new VA doctor. As background, my friend’s vehicle got blown up by an IED 14 years ago and he has significant back and leg issues (several surgeries, including one on his spine). This new doctor, to whom he was assigned recently, cancelled everyone’s pain medication and refuses to prescribe anything stronger than a muscle relaxer. She also apparently has spent no time on my friend’s case file and behaves, as my friend put it, very dismissively towards him. She also told him that a support program outside the VA (Community Care, which allows vets to see non-VA providers) had been cancelled when it hadn’t.
My question is: is anyone seeing similar experiences elsewhere in the VA system? I’m wondering if this is just standard PMC class disdain or if there’s something deeper going on, like cutbacks.
Hi JMG,
As a matter of my own curiosity, can I ask why you included Kentucky and West Virginia within the Lakeland Republic in Retropia? Having lived the first half of my life in Wisconsin, and now the second half in Kentucky, it seems an odd choice–as the two place are very culturally distant. I can say from personal experience that the reserved, communal-minded, Scandinavian-descended Upper-Midwesterners find the rowdy, individualistic Scots-Irish Appalachians incomprehensible, and vica versa. Wouldn’t it make more sense to cast Kentucky and West Virginia in with other states (like Tennessee and Oklahoma) that feature a more similar culture and history?
Thanks!
JMG. You are seeing parallels with the current madness and the run up to WW1. What would be a good book to learn more especially about the social run up to WW1.
Thanks Will O
@pygmycory
Ah ok. I’m more into the visual arts, tried getting into music but is supposedly lack the discipline to learn violin or piano (yay undiagnosed issues), but the main issue with even art is that one can spend tremendous skill and effort making something ugly. No doubt every single art scene out there has this ideology, or whatever it is , inside it much to the dismay of many.
@Info, that’s sure what it looks like to me. But I could be wrong.
Let me invite you again to answer my question regarding moral panic, which I’ll rephrase here in more detail. Are you pointing out that the way Freemasons allegedly use symbols in ritual is vulnerable to being misinterpreted or misrepresented as Satanic, out of ignorance or in support of someone’s malicious agenda? (That was the context of the posts you were responding to when you first brought up the subject of Freemasonry. As Justin Patrick Moore phrased it, “…as conspiracy culture spreads I see people just seeing symbols, and immediately going off the deep end.”) Or are you claiming that these alleged uses of symbols show that Freemason ritual actually is Satanic?
In other words: did you put forward that five-hour-long video as an example of the kind of misinterpretation that can occur, or as an accurate exposé of nefarious Freemason practices?
I wouldn’t want to cause unnecessary confusion or ill will by responding to your comment in a way that doesn’t follow what you really meant. That’s why I’m asking.
Need to leave this here. Yesterday, in a discussion about electric vehicles, one person said, after much hand waving “We have to completely switch to electric vehicles! It’s the OINLY way to save the planet!!” I was ok, whatever and ended the convo. A True Believer *sighs*
A question for anybody knowledgeable in climate (too bad Bill isn’t around anymore, I will think of him!).
This year has been absolutely atypical in Quebec, at least from my 5 year experience, but I think in general. We didn’t have to clean the snow from the roof at all in winter; snow was gone at the beginning of April instead of May; May and June were so hot we had to run the fans all day and night; mid-September to mid-October were gorgeous. Only July was cooler than usual.
Out of curiosity, I looked at arctic sea ice at https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/, but 2021 has had actually rather more sea ice than most years in the past decade.
Does anybody knows how these pieces fit together?
On from my last comment and pushing a metaphor …
Of course a cul-de-sac could just appear a dead end to the unprepared. Could be an up and over, or even a ‘through’ – which just happens to be the family motto on my Mother’s side, for any keen genealogists looking at this.
Might be looking at more of a ‘labyrinth of existence’, then.
Looks like I’m busy anticipating your Sacred Geometry book!
JMG,
I’m planning to read soon on Celtic Christianity, what books do you suggest to start with?
Daydreaming a lot on the Emerald Isle these days…
—
Bei Dawei,
Definitely agree with your reference to the “archaic humans” reaction. It’s interesting to note that according to some channelers (like Barbara Marciniak) the Pleidians are supposed to be us on a higher timeline, so it’s not always about cryptids and monstrous humanoids. I’m especially fascinated by the narrative of the Zeta Reticuli (Grays) who also used to be humans but deformed themselves after progressing so much in their science to end up in a catastrophe, thus trying to contact us both to warn and take our DNA to heal themselves. Some in the fringe of the New Age actually believe our governments already made treaties with these races. Regardless if these stuff are real or not, I find the narratives fun and interesting to observe in some cases, more films should be made based on these stories which would give them potential if not depth even.
Our cosmos is filled with countless forms of life, spirits and beings, it’s just the way they communicate with us that is abstracted differently through times and cultures. Your stance on the devil and god dichotomy is something I cannot go much into, at least because these are usually outsider and secular perspectives on deeply ethnic and religious traditions. Satan is originally anyone who is against the will of HaShem, thus against the will of B’nei Yisrael. So the Egyptians, Romans and even Esau’s offspring were satanic agents as well, it’s very important to view these concepts from the lens of their original sources before exploring them from a different lens.
About your friend in Saudi Aramco, that’s good to hear. But I’d doubt his harmless position would give him direct access to the line of fire I’m referring to in this company.
Something I am wondering about…for those people who think the COVID epidemic either doesn’t exist or is being greatly exaggerated, what do you think is the reasoning behind making the public think it’s dangerous? What was the point of damaging the economy with lockdowns and such? How does any of this benefit the economic elite?
Congratulations on the Unherd piece this week.
Then there was Tinkzorg’s (Malcolm Kyeyune) honorable mention of your work on Sept. 24th in his from Kansas to Kandahar essay that began with:
A certain american heterodox intellectual by the name of John Michael Greer very recently put out a piece on his blog by the title of The Negative-Sum Economy. The piece is not too long, and well worth a read, so I won’t summarize it in detail here.
It makes me happy to know that respect for your work is growing steadily.
Will O #378, and anyone else. I found “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild” to be really excellant about the run up to WW1, and the war itself.
@David, BTL (#371) – I do not have any personal experience with VA doctors, as I’ve been lucky enough to have jobs that have provided decent health insurance since getting out (I also avoid going to the doctor for anything that isn’t especially acute), but one of my students is a Marine vet who told me that when he went to sign up for the VA at a pretty rough time in his life, the staff member in-processing him said something to the effect of “okay, what kind of drugs are you trying to get?” I also have a friend who is a Physician’s Assistant that did one of his clinical rotations with the VA who has shared a lot of his experiences.
The impression I’ve gotten is that, unfortunately, a lot of vets, especially those most likely to seek out VA help, are falling into the same bad traps that a lot of other working class and poorer folks are with lots of drug use to cope with the despair (to say nothing of whatever baggage they might have left over from their service). Anyhow, because of that, I think that a lot of vets coming in either are, or are suspected of, trying to score prescriptions to drugs of abuse like harder pain killers, which leads to doctors being extremely skeptical of prescribing them at all. Further, since the VA is a government entity, and therefore underfunded and overworked, I would guess that there’s additional pressure to avoid prescribing more expensive drugs. I haven’t heard anything recently to indicate it’s gotten worse than it was, but as I said, I’m not especially connected there.
Not related to your question, but possibly of interest to readers here, that Marine vet I mentioned turned around and walked out of the VA after being treated so rudely and found some help through his personal network. In order to give back after he got better, he created “Hives for Heroes”, which is a not-for-profit that helps vets get established as beekeepers, which can provide a source of income, sense of meaning, and a ready community of others with a shared interest (and it’s good for re-establishing bees and their positive effects on plants to boot!): https://www.hivesforheroes.com/
@Vala, #385
I do take the Covid pandemic seriously enough, but please let me try to outline what I think did happen before the spring of 2020.
First, let me remind you of Brad Pitt’s zombie movie (Z Wars I think its called). In that scenario, one of the last functioning nation states is North Korea. NK managed to avoid the zombie pandemic because their intelligence agency found early warnings of what was going on in India (where patient zero came from) and was believed by the country´s leadership; then, in one bloody week, they prophylactically pulled out the teeth of the whole population. Toothless zombies being exceptionally easy to put down with low risk of infection, all they had to do to survive was to close their borders.
This solution is high in cleverness but low on intelligence and wisdom, and it only worked because it took place in fiction. I’d dare to say it worked because it happened *offscreen* in fiction; a movie about toothless zombies would be a total flop and nobody would want to go watch it. Lame as this argument is, it bear witness to the kind of abstract thinking that is prevalent in the modern world: Zombies spread by biting -> no teeth -> no biting -> no zombies. Since the world’s elites are not One-Big-Happy-Family TM, anyone clueless enough to forbid breathing would have been neutralized ages ago by a more competent political rival. But curtailing social contact and mandating surgical masks was close enough, so that’s what they did.
Since it is too depressing to talk about what actually happened next, I will try to draft that Toothless zombie movie instead. The Kim family is one of those irrational Koreans that very much prefer to keep their teeth in their mouths, so they go into hiding. They are earnestly hunted down by Captain Park and his men. They are offered sanctuary in the clinic of simpathetic Dr. Moobon, where they hide in plain sight among the thousands of people waiting for their dental surgery (Papa Kim is secretly given fresh and further turns every morning). Dr Moonbon has been working 18 hour days for the whole week, and they are not nearly half the number of extractions required by the government’s plan, so he starts pulling the front teeth of the patients only, and filing the paperwork as if fully completed. Cpt. Park, who followed the trail of the Kims, discovers this and has Moobon and all of his medical staff summarily executed. Then, the patients are forced at gun point to pull their own teeth with whatever tools are available. Since the army has been helpfully nudging the population into compliance, the borders are understaffed. This causes the whole cast to be wiped out by the two million of very teethed Chinese zombies that walked unopposed from the Liaoning province.
And that’s why the lock-downs did not work. It was theoretically possible to starve the virus of new hosts, but it was not feasible to do so for any reasonable timeframe. But because the leaders would have to personally take the cost of accepting they had been mistaken, they choose to keep spreading greater total costs on the whole of their nations. Going by the Pareto Principle, the half measures took 80% of the cost, but yielded 20% of the benefit.
@Clay #346 and everyone:
When we bought they house they said it was water. Each radiator has two pipes, but I haven’t seen an electric pump that I noticed. That was 4 years ago and the house had a new boiler, yet it now needs to be replaced because according to the boiler mechanic it was a cheap boiler which couldn’t handle the temps our radiators needed. In addition to the old cast iron radiators, our house has two newer (’50s-era) radiators which I would think would use water.
So I think they *are* water.
Another concern is the brick chimney. The boiler vents up it. Someone had recommended a British book which mentioned in passing that high-efficiency boilers may be bad in that situation. Online research found this: https://www.finehomebuilding.com/1999/05/01/venting-high-efficiency-boilers-into-masonry-chimneys
My chimney vents both a fireplace and the boiler, so I think a plastic pipe is out. Could it be lined? My impression from the above is that in the US where I live, I don’t actually have the option of an old-fashioned, chimney-safe boiler anymore. Any thoughts/suggestions welcome!
REGARDING THE VAX…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeSJWGSnN8A&t=1108s
“At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days. In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.
Elsewhere, Moderna jab has already been banned from several countries.
Since I am feeling artistry this weekend, and it is an open post.
This is a song of sorrow and mourning, of good byes and letting go. But it is also a song of love, generosity and rebirth and a life well lived. In the voice of Linda Ronstadt, Tata Dios. A Blessed Samhain for all.
I do not quite like the translation they show on Youtube, so here it goes…
TATA* DIOS
Put my white dress on me,
the one I wore when we got married.
No matter [how fast] the doctor walks,
our ranch is too far away.
Don’t spend any more on remedies,
My strength is dwindling already.
Put my white dress on me!
Tata Dios… is calling me.
Tata Dios… is calling me.
Tata Dios…
Tata Dios…
~ ~ ~
Everything is going silent,
Only Juan speaks to her:
[If you could] see how pretty the cornstalks
Growing on the hillside,
But now I want nothing,
I’ll give away the crops.
Tata Dios willed it this way
And with Tata no one plays,
And with Tata no one plays.
Tata Dios…
Tata Dios…
Tata Dios… is calling me.
* Tata is a borrowed word from the P’urehpecha. Depending on context it could mean either Dad or Elder.
Courtinthenorth, thanks for the data points!
Teresa, tarot jumped the shark quite a few years ago with the appearance of the Kilted Rubber Chicken Tarot. (No, I am not making this up; I’ve inserted some cards below.) Of course a Disney deck will give lousy readings, but that’s true of most of the theme decks being marketed these days.
Copper, by all means do what you need to do. My comment was simply for the record.
Chris, no, it’s not nice. Still, we play the cards we’re dealt.
Michael, that seems like a sensible approach, one way or the other.
Bei Dawei, hmm! Yes, I could see that. I wonder if it would work for me to try to sell the NFT of an astral artwork — you can only see it if you’ve developed your clairvoyant senses, you understand… 😉
Beekeeper and Pygmycory, thanks for the data points!
AV, fascinating. Moore is an occultist, as I am, and that may account for some of the similarities — it’s very hard to cling to the overinflated anthropocentrism of our time when you’ve got that background. I hope we do see more stories like these — the sooner Man the Conqueror of Nature gets decent burial, the better.
Jessi, many thanks for this.
Chronojourner, of course! “Voor” is spelled nwyfre in old Welsh, and you’ll find a detailed discussion of it underr that latter name in my book The Druid Magic Handbook. Mind you, it’s spelled ki in Japanese, prana in Sanskrit, and so on through most of the world’s languages — the societies of the modern industrial West are as far as I know the only ones in history not to have common words for the life force — so you can find a lot more about it if you look.
Anonymous, always a possibility. The EU could always declare war on Russia…
Ksim, in the teachings I follow, there are two parts to the self — the personality and the individuality. The personality exists for one life only. It is an expression of some of the potentials of the individuality, and its life experiences become part of the individuality. As souls finish their journey through human lives, the personality becomes more and more like the individuality, until finally they merge and you go on to the level beyond human. So in a sense, you’re both right. 😉 As for Uranus, why, collapse is also a form of revolutionary change! Aquarius as a rebellious sign makes perfect sense, given that these days liberal ideas are the rigid, dogmatic establishment, and conservatism is the turbulent, radical set of ideas that seeks to overthrow it…
Jay, as I see it, we’ve had the chance as a species to find out just how poorly vast material abundance satisfies essential human needs. Now that we’ve tried that, we can go on to other things.
Balowulf, any of those boundaries could have been drawn in other places. I simply sketched out a set that was no more irrational than any other set of boundaries created suddenly in the aftermath of war — Europe, anyone? As for incompatibility, get people from the northern parts of Germany talking about people from Bavaria sometime!
Will O, I’m partial to Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, but there are many other good books on the subject. Your local public library is a good resource.
Dear Mr. Greer,
In response to another post, you stated:
“Chris, there really hasn’t been another good example (of runaway inflation and hyperinflation) in an industrial society, since industrial society hasn’t been around that long. Zimbabwe and Venezuela are about as close as you’ll find.”
In fact, there are quite a few examples of this in ‘developed’ countries and societies from within the past century: Israel in the 1960s through 1980s; Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and other Latin American nations in the 1950s through 1990s (an especially notable Wiemar-level of hyperinflation in Bolivia in the mid-1980s, although Bolivia might not be counted as an “industrial society”); Poland in the late 1980s; Russia in the early and mid-1990s; Mexico in the mid-1980s; France, Austria, Italy, and a number of other post-WWI European nations in the 1920s. Those are just some examples from off the top of my head.
In reality, it seems to me that monetary history is just as sordid, and just as full of examples of currency debasement and collapse, in the industrialized countries as it is in the largely non-industrialized or pre-industrial countries.
Aziz – re Celtic Christianity, I would recommend anything by John O Donohue, https://www.johnodonohue.com/works, or Seán ó Duinn OSB, one example – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1748692.Where_Three_Streams_Meet.
Enjoy.
Hey jmg
Have you ever read any novels by David Mitchell, such as his most famous book “cloud atlas”?
Marlena13, they’ve got to have their mantra, whatever it happens to be: electric cars, wind turbines, nuclear power plants, and the list goes on. I suspect the person who said that doesn’t have an electric car, even though they’re for sale in most countries — it’s purely a verbal thing, something to utter so that you can reaffirm your blind faith that the great god Progress will surely save us all.
Aldarion, I don’t. Anyone else?
Aziz, it’s not a subject I’ve studied. Anyone else?
Susan, thanks for the link to Malcom’s piece! I admire his work.
TJ, did you post this to the Covid Open Post?
CR, many thanks for this.
Alan, thanks for this! I stand corrected. Can you recommend some good sources on these?
J.L.Mc12, nope.
Dear Mr. Greer,
Glad to help and provide a bit of useful information here!
Regarding those examples of runaway inflation and hyperinflation from within the past century, I honestly don’t know of any good authoritative books on the topic, although I have no doubt that some such must exist.
I could only provide those examples from off the top of my head primarily due to my decades-long interest in numismatics (“coin collecting”), and to my fascination with numismatic history, which is inextricably intertwined with monetary history.
It should be noted that while hyperinflation, narrowly defined (taking as a definition “fiat currency debasement to essentially zero by many orders of magnitude”), is rather uncommon, runaway inflation — inflation rates annualized at 50% to 1000% — is not at all uncommon in the past century, and from all that I know has occurred in ‘developed’ nations at least as often as in undeveloped nations.
Just as you have a gut feeling of something very bad in the near future for those who have been ‘vaccinated’ (sic) for the Wuhan Virus, so I have a similar and equally bad feeling regarding the US dollar, and the entire world fiat currency system, over a roughly similar time frame, i.e. the next few years. I have the strong suspicion that we could be facing an imminent and complete collapse of the world’s monetary system, quite possibly and maybe even probably by design, which will result in a “build back better” digital fiat currency replacement that will, oh so conveniently, eliminate the option of holding and using physical cash, so as to make EVERY transaction trackable. And more than that, to shut down and ‘lock out’ of the entire economy anyone who dares to challenge the powers-that-be in any way going forward.
@JMG @forecastingintelligence and other vaccine-debaters
With regard to the discussion on ADE – even if this effect exists for the COVID-19 virus, is there proof that this would increase the coronavirus lethality to the point of causing a mass dieoff? As far as I can tell it would need to increase lethality by 10-fold or more to really have the impacts that are being discussed here.
As a further point, I would also like to remind the general commentariat here that there are more divisions in society than just “pro-vaxx” and “anti-vaxx”. There is also a third group (likely large but mostly silent) that is the most marginalized in the debate – the people who are trying to avoid both the COVID-19 and anti-vaccine hysterias and are looking with worry at the spread of divisive emotionality in response to this disease event. This worry is justified – after all, mass die-off from either the vaccine or the virus relies on certain worst case scenarios to play out exactly and is hence just a theory which quite likely will not happen. By contrast, the cascading hysteria can be witnessed in real time all over, in most social groups, both on the internet and in real life. It is not a theory, and does not require fulfilled hypotheses about ADE or variants or anything else. It is here now and in my opinion, has caused and will cause more damage than both the vaccine and virus put together.
And just reflect on what forces are being unleashed here. Most readers of this blog likely already know that there is a pseudo-religious narrative going around in the mainstream that centers on purity of the mainstream against the impurity of the out-group of “anti-vaccine deplorables”. Although I am not anti-vaccine, I admit that this has happened and I do not approve of smearing vaccine critics. I now see the same pattern emerging on the “anti-vaccine” side – in this pattern, there is the marginalized but virtuous in-group (like Elendil’s faction on Numenor) and then the corrupt mainstream which will soon be judged and wiped out for their corruption (think Ar-Pharazon and his men). As psychologically addictive as this kind of mental framing may be – I don’t really see how this type of splitting of the population into groups of good and evil (or pure and impure) is a good thing.
And as an additional reminder – if you are a reader of this blog, you likely know how archetypal and religious stories can seep into the minds of people, while masquerading as rational world views. We’ve all been here to see that happen to the mainstream in various ways, some entertaining, most worrying. It can happen to you too. Be careful.
JMG (no 392): I’m guessing you are aware of the tradition of Spiritualist / mediumistic art?
https://mediumisticart.com/
(Theosophical art is somewhat better known, as is Masonic or alchemical art of course.)
CR Patiño (no. 385), I am surprised and impressed that that movie had such a clever idea in it.
Aziz A. (no. 384) Oh, my friend doesn’t work for Saudi Aramco, he teaches at the university (and likes it very much). As for the aliens, I grew up reading books on this stuff, and would love to meet one (assuming benevolent), whatever they are.
Re men who crochet in a manly manner
Just finished my first rag-rug. 24 inch diameter round, from a single flat sheet, and took me about two days (not counting the sheet ripping). Simple white cotton with single stitches using an “R” (17 mm) needle. Even turned out decent. Probably give it to my daughter for her apartment.
It’s late in the cycle, but I keep forgetting to ask, and I know someone here ought to know –
Did the Taliban ever make a Zero Wing ‘All your base are belong to us’ meme? Because I couldn’t find one, but maybe don’t go to the right places, and am not so good at internetting ( which, maybe won’t matter soonish?. Though they could be exaggerating the impact as they did with the “weather bomb” we had last week. Or maybe we were just prepared this time, who knows. )
Anyway, I thought it was a bit of a shame and a missed opportunity, really.
Blessed Samhain to all those who celebrate it. And a blessed Dia de Los Muertos for those of you who celebrate that.
JMG (no, 393) “…the societies of the modern industrial West are as far as I know the only ones in history not to have common words for the life force…”
I would nominate “spirit” as the functional equivalent of Ch. qi / Jp. ki, Skt. pranha, Tib. rLung, Gk. pneuma, Hb. ruach / Ar. ruh, etc. It originally signified wind or breath, and by extension, came to mean the vital force (since the dead do not breathe). All of these terms have become vague in approximately the same way.
If “spirit” is not modern enough, I suppose “consciousness” will have to do…
@Jay Pine, per your cul-de-sac metaphor, this is the real life one I had:
Last fall, there was a fish kill event of a couple dozen fish in a stream in my town. Since it was clearly an anoxic event, they first searched for a sewer break or overflow, but none of the surrounding municipalities could find one, and there was no other evidence that had occurred. What had happened was there was a rain event, and when the stream rose some fish had gotten around the barriers erected to keep them out of an in-stream-works area. When the water receded, they died of anoxia in their puddle. When the water rose again with a new rain, their corpses were washed around the barrier, back downstream, making it look like there had been widespread pollution, but there hadn’t. Just a wrong turn by a few.
“I’m not sure it’s exactly an own goal, however. I don’t think the Faustian cultures could ever handle settling down into the stasis and slow decline that is the long-term state of every mature civilization. I think that at some level the decision was made to go out with a bang, and once it became clear that the US and the Soviet Union weren’t going to oblige them with an apocalyptic nuclear war, and none of the other hecatombs du jour panned out, a voluntary plague was the next best thing.”
A few years ago I knew someone who really wanted to die, but was unwilling to consider suicide for religious reasons. Instead, he kept rushing into dangerous situations: he’d call a 6 foot six black man a “f***ing n****r” to his face; took up skydiving; and eventually died on a safari after provoking a lion. Additionally, once he made this decision, he stopped worrying at all about the future. He’d pretend to, but he never planned more than a few weeks into the future, and actively destroyed any chance he had at a better future: why bother, if you were going to be dead anyway?
This seems to explain the change in the 1980s, and the mad rush towards conducting experiments which could and in several cases almost did end in catastrophe: it’s the same desire to commit (civilizational) suicide as drove that man to engage in so many risky activities, and just like him, they’ll keep getting more and more extreme until sooner or later one of them does the trick…..
JMG 397, he claims to have a hybrid, rooftop solar and an electric pickup on order. I did point out the hybrid still uses fossil fuel. His setup will work for him, cause he is retired, and doesn’t drive much. So, correct he doesn’t own an EV, cause that is “on order” It was about here he shouted about going “all electric” is the ONLY way to “save the planet”
Alan, so noted. That’s unfortunate — a good comparative history of runaway inflation would be worth having. As for the dollar, I ain’t arguing; whether or not an engineered crash happens, the US is hopelessly in debt at this point, and sooner or later it will either default on its debts or go into hyperinflation to clear away the unpayable debt burden. If some kind of digital currency comes into use thereafter, it’ll be interesting to see where the balance is struck between ad hoc alternative currencies, on the one hand, and movement away from market economics altogether (into customary, gift, household, and other alternative economies) on the other.
Sam, so noted. One of the reasons I’ve provided the Covid open posts on my Dreamwidth journals, and strictly moderated the conversation there, is to make it possible for vaccinated and unvaccinated people to talk to one another without the yelling getting in the way.
Bei, I am indeed. Though I find Theosophical and Masonic art more to my taste!
Pixelated, I have no idea. Anyone else?
Patricia M, and a blessed Samhuinn to you as well!
Bei, spiritus is the medieval Latin term for it. The problem is that it’s been given different meanings in modern languages, including this one. No, “consciousness” won’t do — consciousness isn’t the life force; languages that have a word for the life force have a different word for consciousness. “Life force” works fairly well, though I have readers who have adopted “voor” from my tentacle fiction!
Anonymous, you know, that’s quite a comparable example…
Marlena13, on order? Why doesn’t he have them already?
@Sam#399 – Thank you!
Okay. My take on the entire thing. COVID-19 was real and people died from it. The meat packers were hit especially hard. This is within the course of nature; we’ve had similar pandemics in recent history. Locking down the entire economy was not a good way to go about dealing with it; quarantining known patients and carriers, would have been far better. But then, when was the last time our bureaucrats have made a rational decision?
The bad reactions to the vaccination are also well documented. a good many pro-vaxxers have tried to stifle discussion of it in order not to feed the anti-vaxxer’s cause. That’s neither good science nor good medicine. And the pro/anti sides have become so tied to partisan politics that, as you said, hysteria reigns and carries with it a heavy dose of moralizing and of demonizing the other side. [Ask me about the 5-minute lecture my daughter (“I am a health professional, and people are dying!” Despite the infection rate of 3.1% in Alachua County) read me this morning on the need to go masked indoors in public places at all times. Same tone of voice as the evangelist warning you that you’ll go to hell for this.]
In the near future we will continue to see deaths from new cases, bad reactions, long-haul cases, and long-haul reactions. Hey, folks, deal with it.
If COVID was a deliberate, malicious act, I think the PRC is a more likely suspect than the PMC, many of whom in the managerial sector couldn’t wipe their own rear ends without a flunky handing them their favorite brand of bathroom tissue. And if it was a plot to reduce the surplus population, one likely suspect would be a fanatic who knows it’s gone into overshoot. If the lockdown was a deliberate power grab, it sure backfired on the grabbers, as their worker bees left the hive in record numbers. It’s almost as if the Powers That Be were under an “Everything they do goes amiss” spell. Hmmm… has anyone been checking up on the magic some of the Basement Brigade are playing with? Or it it just the blind leading the blind inside the Beltway and other seats of power? “Suppose there were a conspiracy to rule the world…. and it was incompetent?” (Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind, 2001.)
I now return you to your regular Hallow’een horror movies.
Robert Gibson, thank you for bringing up Sheckley’s Mindswap; I share your fondness for it.
@Vala,
One word: Power
@Walt F
“As Justin Patrick Moore phrased it, “…as conspiracy culture spreads I see people just seeing symbols, and immediately going off the deep end.”) Or are you claiming that these alleged uses of symbols show that Freemason ritual actually is Satanic?
In other words: did you put forward that five-hour-long video as an example of the kind of misinterpretation that can occur, or as an accurate exposé of nefarious Freemason practices?”
The Books that he is showing in the video in regards to actual Freemasonry that credit Lucifer as their God and utilizing the occultic symbols are definitely real.
And may be using said Magick to make use of dark spiritual forces they have made deals with.
That kind of evidence does look unrefutable unless its known to be fabricated. It cannot therefore be identical to an actual Satanic Panic unless the evidence is fabricated.
In a similar vein. The transgender dressed wearing horns whilst looking demonic and reading books to children in the Library is real too. Unless proven to be fabricated.
Since purity panics have been brought up, there was another metaphor that came out of the local stream.
This year, early summer, there was a much larger fish kill. A single pulse of disinfectant went down from someone’s household storm drain when the water was low, and around 300 fish and countless invertebrates died.
It was ironic, since the work to clean out a century of industrial pollution in the salmon spawning reaches had just been completed.
People bayed for the blood of the homeowner who released the chemical, but no one was not charged; the rumour was it was one of the people who had been most active for over a decade advocating for the remediation in the first place, and they were devastated. That’s why they’d hired a company that said they used “eco-friendly” products to do a mold cleaning job on their property. Whether it was a mistake – technicians were just new and didn’t dilute enough before releasing – or careless, or it was not actually an appropriate product, I never heard.
Fortunately, some children spotted the dead fish right away, and their parents called the authorities right away, and assembled a clean up party, so the eagles, ravens, owls and otters that had arrived to feast were not killed, though some were sickened. And no lasting damage appears to have been done to the stream ecology.
I preferred the first metaphor, still, but when it unfortunately fits…
JMG and Bei@404
If my French friend ‘T’ is to be believed, it seems the ‘life-force’ or ‘Voor’ is known as ‘Va Va Voom’ in France. In current Britain we still just officially frown at that kind of thing.
..
Pixelated @405
Funny, well, except for the fish left gasping. Your story reminds me of an important teaching all good geography teachers try to get across regards rivers that all too often gets under appreciated by planners these days. To really understand this flow of life, you have to visualize it over a pretty long term, taking in all it’s moods (the angry ones can get expansive!).
Solves some mysteries at least. 😉
@Aldarion
There is definitely an ongoing perturbation in the climate system, with unprecedented events occurring every 3-6 months or so (and probably more often looking at a wider scale). In my part of the world (western US) first it was the wild air mass that brought 100 mph winds across the west, firestorms across the northwest, and early September snow to the southern Rockies in September 2020. Then the weeklong cold that froze Texas and the gulf coast last February. Then the “heat dome” that broke all-time records by more than ten degrees (F) in Oregon and Washington (and hit 121F in BC). This month the “bomb cyclones” that set all-time low pressure records for the Pacific Northwest and all-time rain records for parts of California.
I can’t say what’s driving that, though it seems likely that anthropogenic climate change is playing at least some role. It may also be part of a longer cycle though, as parts of the 1930s were similarly anomalous.
As for the sea ice – there is only so much heat in the system, so when it’s extra hot at mid latitudes it tends to be comparably cooler at the poles, and vice versa. This year it seems that more of the heat stayed further south generating a scorching summer but allowing for more arctic sea ice to remain.
@Jessi #370
That’s probably the best analysis I’ve seen so far. The worse things get, the more the freight companies can charge, and the more clogged up things get, the slower they move. It seems like a problem that can’t really be solved on this end but can ultimately be resolved by reducing demand – increasing costs and delays sufficiently that buyers either move production back stateside, find substitutions that don’t require ocean shipping, or trim down order volumes.
On the subject of ADE. My assumption is that, because so many people are vaccinated, an ADE variant would be less inclined to take hold, because it would run too hot. The original SARS-COV1 killed about 10% of people infected, it also had much more trouble spreading because it made anyone infected sick to fast.
That said, if there are still a lot of non vaccinated people around, the disease could move around in the non vaccinated people, who don’t get the ADE, and then reek havoc on the vaccinated population. The main concern for a non vaccinated person in that situation is that, you would be an actual plague rat, and thus you should expect high levels of persecution.
I wonder if that is a part of the push to vaccinate the very young, at some level their is a concern that ADE might occur, and if it does happen they want to be able to easily segregate the non vaccinated from society, without having to worry about the concern which parents have for their children. (This isn’t the reason, I’m quite certain it’s money.)
Hi John Michael,
At many points in my life, actioning free will is a possibility, but each choice takes energy to achieve, and candidly my reserves of personal energy are finite. And any one choice or exercising of free will, eliminates other choices. Shackles, yeah, shackles, but all you can do is act and hope for the best.
As to inflation, I just wanted to thank Aldarion and Alan for their insights and suggestions. I’d have to suggest that hyper-inflation is already here and is expressed in property, equities, bond price increases (as well as the day to day basics). Down under the reserve bank is apparently expanding the money supply by five billion per week, and if that is true, I don’t understand the logic of that policy at all. People act as if it is merely a minor issue, but for many folks it most certainly is not an inconsequential matter: From a ‘class divide’ to ‘intergenerational theft’, Australia’s real estate frenzy leaves many behind
I walked away from the madness well over a decade ago, and the system appears to be so hungry for blood that it keeps drawing me back. Oh well, it won’t end well, and you might well be right, but I don’t really know.
Cheers
Chris
Hi lads,
If like me you are tiring off trying to keep pace with all the revelations and spectacles occurring in this age, I strongly recommend a bit of literary fiction. I’m re-reading Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’ at the moment. I didn’t know why I choose this book until I started reading it.
Two monks solving a string of murders high in an ancient monetary during the convulsing death of the dark ages. Its highly relevant to what we are going through now, political turmoil, suppressed knowledge, esoteric whispers and the first stirring of new epoch defining way of thinking. Plus the wise Fransican monk William has a bit of JMG about him
@JMG – as always, thank you very much for spending time with moderating your blogs – they are calm spots in the raging seas of current life in the Long Descent. I’ve been observing some anti-technology sentiment lately, and think it may be one of the few things that can be channeled in a positive, sort of Luddite way, as the pandemic continues and the economy morphs into something smaller. The paths ahead seem very sensitive to which way they’ll go. I’m hoping your post next week adds more background to that topic.
@DenG – thanks for your posts here and over on Dreamwidth. For some reason, your experience resonates with me, and I hope we’ll all experience more positive reactions of the human spirit, as many lives are impacted by the mandates. Hopefully some eyes are opening up on how totalitarian the reaction has been. I’ve heard and read many anti-Jabbers state “I’m not anti-vax, but….” when detailing their concerns about the vaccines. I’ve come to the conclusion “I didn’t used to be anti-vax, but I sure as hell am now….”.
@Anonymous – your comments on the 1980s reminds me of when Reagan had James Watt head up the Department of the Interior, which didn’t settle well with environmentalists – maybe having something to do with Watt stating something like, “We don’t have to worry about pollution or energy reforms – the Second Coming is right around the corner.” That logic seems to have stuck with the Feds for the next 40 years.
@Vala – my opinion about the lockdowns benefiting the elites goes something like this – many of them are aware that overshoot is real, the financial system is teetering on the brink of collapse, and contraction is inevitable. Wanting to preserve their advantages in the changes on hand, they’ve driven many small businesses under, and collected swaths of useful data on how to transition the “useless eaters” and former smaller consumers with discretionary income to spend on wants to dependents using minimal resources. Can you say “where’s my government cheese”? The economic pie will be smaller for all, and the elites want the percentage of their slice to stay the same or increase. We’ll see, as JMG pointed out during FDR’s time, whether they want to share some down the road.
@RandomActsOfKarma
Thanks for your recount of the LBRP experience and your mention of how it only takes 5 minutes.
I’ve abandoned it since last winter and tried it again today, it helped instantly!
I did a ritual based on the qabalistic tradition, as I never was much of a polytheist.
I felt the indian gods and godesses would have resonated well too, but I don’t know enough about them and
have no time to read endlessly. Practicality is the first order priority in these times.
@jbucks
I can absolutely relate to your “imaginary sparring” with imaginary (or real) characters – a burden of my life
since early on, very consuming and paralyzing I know. The lbrp has helped a little.
Joe Dispenzas techniques of invoking feelings and thoughs (after calming yourself with simplest meditation) and then
willfully dissolving them works out as well.
It all needs some time and effort no less. The lesser banishing ritual is a quick way to gain a little temporal
relief, as a 5 minute exercise.
————in general————————————-
I did only strenght training in the past weeks, which does absolutely not suffice for energetic cleanliness.
Cold showers are already my daily routine.
My role model is an engineer still alive though I’ve never met him, a friend of my grand mother who is 95 and still
taking care of her household (and me) alone. The engineer is 102 years old. Two years ago he swan in the danube in a
neopren suit, people took interest and he appeared on TV.
He has been lifelong an alpinist, an athlete and in general, sought out fresh air and exercise where he could.
So no unhealthy in only one direction as is fashionable, but a variety of exercises which is very important.
Your body needs variety of exercise the most.
Never drank, never smoked ofc. My grandma tells me at 35 in the office they worked in the 50s he walked with his hands
across the tables.
He was a musician too.
I guess spirituality and energetic hygiene is possible with a most natural outdoors life besides an office job life.
But I can get nowhere near this; my puny little strength training indoors three times a week in my own home gives me a basic
structure that keeps me through a 30 hour a week office day, but that’s it.
I know I can never achieve this almost sainthood, so I find the benefit of basic occult exercise time by time again.
As our host said, the western esoteric tradition is most well suited to ordinary citizens with a job, much more so than
monastic intensive practices of the East.
I can contribute at this point that: I have seen many 9 to 5’ers who tried to follow a strict monastic dogma of the eastern
variety in their ordinary modern life, and they fail spectacularily! Come to think, many of these yoga-qi gong, ninjutsu and
what have you clubs sicken from the motivation of its members, usually there is a charismatic and dogmatic teacher with a special
background and special skills, often expecting quasi-monastic devotion from the members, who as ever so often in modern life
are really sick from loneliness.
There is a great podcast interview on artofmanliness dot com, the epidemic of loneliness especially among young men;
Because today you have a thousand option of clubs to join and activities to do, but the completely irregular rhytms
of modern life have it that people will not be in one place at one time together.
No wonder the new model of ordinary westernized yoga and martial arts is these venues where you can join everyday
the whole week at any time, a kind of franchising complex.
Getting people to devote a fixed agreement of time during the week is very difficult now. Different work rhytms, sleeping rhytms,
but first and foremost also social poverty where you have to be super flexible to even meet people.
I digress much. These are my experiences of the past time. The clashes of lifestyles in our modern setting with
contradictory morals and rules, its a thing to behold.
I am considering whether it is possible to emigrate; In my early childhood in the nineties I always wanted to go to Russia. I’ve visited Russia and loved it. I love all of Eastern Europe too;
But I think I can’t go there in these upcoming years as I don’t speak the language and by next year I’ll be 34.
Why should they take me in?
I had never considered going to the US as I hate the idea of this suburban, car dependend life style. No hard feelings against the people; although the PMC members of the US (and its those that emigrate to Austria quite frequently) are even worse than our own stock.
When I was an adolescent, I took the behaviour of the actors in the US sitcoms as a stereotype, until I learned that many US citizens are really talking and behaving that way.
I of course took a look at Cumberland, Maryland where our host has lived, admirably without mobile phone or car. It looks very good to me, it actually resembles the outskirts of Vienna which I love.
I seriously do wonder, would the US have a reason to take me in? I fear not any special reason.
The US will certainly experience its turbulence in these years as it already does, but the country is big and
I am sure it won’t be equally the same everywhere. Right now my smug PMC peers consider the US a third world country, a reputation not unearned. But looking at Europe: slums of immigrants are already forming in France, genuine informal settlements, the french military and police are warning of a civil war since a long time.
Mexican cartels and angry deprived afro-american communities may not be funny, but an ideological enemy such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Milli Görüs, Grey Wolves, that really is something different!
The european middle class is too blind, they do not understand the nature of these political networks. The political institutions like Al-Azhar, I give them that, they are very smart and especially patient and strategic. The Western European middle class are like retarded chickens, unaware that the fence arounf them is crumbling, unawares that the foxes will become hungry, when they aren’t fed well anymore somewhere else.
I personally have seen the young turks sparring and training boxing out in the cold this winter when there was lock down. Our own middle classy youth, the wrap in colorful garments like its the carnival, or try to be cool but all they do i s take drugs, drink and feed their instagram narcissim. If they do sports, the go to the gym so they will look trained, to woo women, but they are unfit for combat.
These things become obvious if you look at them; our subconscious can filter a lot otherwise.
Recently I saw a security guard at a bar – a middle class austrian girl gave him a blow job out in the public, with the middle eastern security giving her a look of contempt and superiority from above. Some Austrian sitting by said “this isn’t my affair to take care of” – yes you are right, but not because you don’t want to, its because you can’t. You are just weak.
@Bei Dawei (#360)
Tubal-Cain Ointment & Salve! I love it! Made with the finest herbs from the greenwood!
This is something Tubal-Cain could do, too. In some Traditional Witchcraft (as distinct from Wicca, et al.) traditions Tubal-Cain is considered to be an alchemist, or at least someone who knows the ways of plants -due to relationship to Cain, who was a farmer and vegetable grower. Be it known I’m not a traditional witch myself, but I’ve read some of their literature and find the works of various members of the Cultus Sabbati and other related groups to be highly intriguing -especially their work with plants, and some of the work they do with dreams.
Tubal-Cain was also a smith and one of the founders of cities, and as an urban dweller, I appreciate all the good aspects of city life.
Tubal-Cain is also involved in some Freemasonic ceremonies, but you’d have to ask a Mason or do some research to learn more about Tubal-Cain from that angle.
@Walt F: Thanks for jumping into the mix on the “conspiracy culture” aspect of this thread.
@Youngelephant: Yes, reincarnation is a perennially popular topic. A good subject to steer conversations towards… speaking of which @J.L.Mc12: I did read “Cloud Atlas”: what a wonderful novel. An amazing romp through styles and fascinating exploration of long periods of time and reincarnation and connections in many lives.
JMG #408 “Marlena13, on order? Why doesn’t he have them already?” As to that, I have no idea about his personal reasons? Considering all the supply and staffing problems in the auto industry, it is most likely multi reasons. Whatever the reasons, it seems the Great God Of Progress is failing miserably at “saving the planet” Apropos to this, I noticed an article, from late Sept, about the state of Michigan “planning”, there is that “on order” again, a mile of EV charging road. At 30 mph, that would give you 2 mins of charging. No mention of how the charging road will get IT’S power, either. Maybe they will get a (non existent) AI to figure it out?
Alan@398 and anyone interested
Digital currency takeover doesn’t look quite so likely if we add the looming spectre of intermittent electricity supply into the mix. Try running things purely digitally via computers then.
There’s a lack of appreciation for the fundamentals that is fast going to be appreciated!
(e.g. I was looking at the history of wheels yesterday – what a bit of engineering! Not really thought about any more by your modern type, what with them being so ubiquitous. Will circle back though.)
Viduraawakened, an interesting thing I came across in regards to terra preta is that it has a very high ‘cation exchange capacity’ compared to adjacent soils. The ability to ‘hold’ positive ions seems to be a huge booster to soil fertility because it allows plants to exchange charge with the soil in order to uptake nutrients.
We seem to be just getting to the point of explaining why things like terra preta worked using modern science without yet being able to create our own technology along similar principles. I wonder whether the megalithic sites referenced in The Secrets of the Temple weren’t so much ‘adding’ positive or negative charge as they were ‘balancing’ the electroprofile of the earth against that of the sky. Faustian Science seems unusually weak at recognising the importance of ‘balance’ in dynamic systems – it’s very good at finding a common failure point (e.g. nitrogen) and applying the same solution over and over, but when something needs to be increased or decreased depending on conditions it’s intuitions aren’t always helpful. To me that would go a long way to explaining why this branch of inquiry isn’t well understood despite the volume of citizen-scientists using their own gardens to experiment.
@ Pixelated re #402
I think the Taliban is too busy locking horns with IS-k to thumb their noses at the
US at the moment. Apparently the local iteration of IS considers the Taliban as not
being hard lined enough. It’s hard to be sure after reading various news services about
how grave the situation is but it looks like tribal loyalties are trumping any impulses
to create a caliphate. We’ll have to wait and see, I guess.
https://www.tbsnews.net/features/panorama/taliban-vs-k-when-terror-terrorises-terror-313759
https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/what-does-the-rise-of-daesh-k-mean-for-afghanistan-pakistan-cooperation-51250
“Alan, so noted. That’s unfortunate — a good comparative history of runaway inflation would be worth having. As for the dollar, I ain’t arguing; whether or not an engineered crash happens, the US is hopelessly in debt at this point, and sooner or later it will either default on its debts or go into hyperinflation to clear away the unpayable debt burden. If some kind of digital currency comes into use thereafter, it’ll be interesting to see where the balance is struck between ad hoc alternative currencies, on the one hand, and movement away from market economics altogether (into customary, gift, household, and other alternative economies) on the other.”
Mr. Greer, I’ll be having some spare time this week, and I will make an effort to research and locate a book that covers historical inflationary episodes. I cannot believe that at least one such book does not exist!
Ad for the US either defaulting on its (massive and unpayable) debt, or going into hyperinflation, who is to say that BOTH will not occur? Exactly that has happened before to overindebted countries, more than once, and even within recent history (Mexico in the mid-1980s was a good example, although one could argue that they suffered ‘merely’ high inflation rather than hyperinflation, which has no exact definition in any case).
Being a believer in using cash whenever possible (and I can usually make it possible), I live in dread of the clear ‘digital currency’ push by the powers-that-be. If such a scenario transpires, I already have a network of friends and acquaintances who each grow or raise one or more basic food items (eggs, chickens, milk, oats, produce, etc.) who are willing and ready to conduct trade for these items via either barter, or the use of silver coins, in order to subvert the Orwellian digital currency system.
As an aside, how does one inflict a digital currency system on all those, such as you and myself, who do not and will not own an i-phone?
I’d love some guidance on how to handle a new trend by historians and archivists. Since last year it has become fashionable (possibly necessary) to name the Native American tribe who is on the land one is Zooming from on a call or a building sits currently. Bonus points (I’m assuming) are given if one states that the land was stolen. The National Archivist has put out a series of blog posts called “Acknowledging Our History.”
https://aotus.blogs.archives.gov
Now it seems to me that once one says that the property I own is in fact not legitimately mine, then it provides cause for someone else to claim it. I don’t think Native American tribes are actually going to step in and take back land, but the federal government would certainly feel welcome to do so on their behalf. It would be seen as compassionate and they would have the current owners become renters and give a portion of the rent to the tribes.
Once regular people can’t own an asset such as land well its game over. But I don’t think the bleeding hearts who push this new trend realize this. Or perhaps they don’t care.
I’ve successfully ignored it and gotten out of doing it but I keep seeing it creep into the work around me. People really don’t see the consequences of what they are doing. I’d love suggestions on how to handle this. Direct confrontation? Mockery? A meme?
Digital Currency…
In my cogitations, it seems we are running into several concurrent issues.
We are looking at a sustained rise in energy pricing brought on by the lockdowns and years of under investment in oil & gas. In the EU, we are looking at politics colliding with common sense, resulting in giant increases in energy costs. Within the oil & gas industry, we have the carbon neutral movement actually taking over the BOD of major O&G operators, further dis-incentivizing resource exploration. We have government policies that cripple transportation of O&G by killing off pipeline expansion and disallowing drilling at every opportunity based on the fallacy of renewables.
Those are within my industry that I am familiar with.
We have billions of people totally reliant on the internet for financial transactions. The assumption here is that between internet and cellular services the globe is covered nicely, and that these services will remain affordable. Concurrent with that, there is a rollout of NEW cellular that requires 5 times the infrastructure that the existing 4G uses due to range limitations. Musk has his global satellite net rolling out – but TBH, the sun can whack that out of the sky with a big X-flare – which we have not experienced in some time. It is also affected by weather on the ground.
I was reminded of this while driving past a server farm, where every inch of the roof is covered by AC units keeping the farm cool. There are two of them being built near me as well – several acres in size.
Then we have the trucking/supply mess – one article I read today posited that the supply crunch is MORE profitable for the transport industry by far – so there was zero incentive to “fix” it. The case he made was completely ‘sensical’, and based on human nature in the current realm of materialism.
I am thinking that the ‘civilized’ world has placed its eggs in the “digital basket” based on the assumption of cheap energy – which may not work out the way they imagine. Internet and cellular tech are 100% reliant on electricity – which can disappear as many of us have seen when hurricanes or severe weather suddenly crop up. What happens with our internet when oil prices hit and remain above $100/bbl? Cellular has the same issue with electrical power – and filling up the gensets for every cell tower is not such an easy task – look around while you are driving in your area – lots of towers even without the 5G hitting rural. And then what about places like my farm, which has no cell service even with 3G and internet is only available via satellite which is very weather sensitive and slow.
This is why I am not overly concerned by the “mass surveillance” that the globalists want to roll out – it will be far too fragile in nature to remain effective for long, and far too expensive to maintain as power costs increase.
If there is a ‘die-off’ or ‘disabling’ of the vaccinated, this would enter into the future possibilities as well Sure we have excess population, but where is that high population concentrated today?
I am just wondering how this will play out over the next few decades, but it sort of feels like the swans are lining up in several ways. Does anyone else see this?
for Vala at 385;
There are two reasons the pandemic could be exaggerated, and they are not mutually exclusive.
First, the governments at first thought it really was an escaped bioweapon. What they did was entirely reasonable for something with a 10 to 20% fatality rate. And once it became obvious it was not, the PMC couldn’t bring themselves to admit they were wrong. And there is lots of profit to be made in vaccines. A cost-plus contract with complete immunity from liability? What drug company could resist that?
The other reason is of the “never let a crisis go to waste” variety. The PMC decided to see how much pain they could inflict before the rebellion got too hot. Look at Australia where they have effectively incarcerated themselves. In Washington State the governor keeps assigning himself new emergency powers, and the courts and legislature are letting him get away with it. He already had a messiah complex, and now it’s getting worse.
If you want to worry, the PMC/government is starting to refer to a Climate Emergency. If declaring an Emergency is enough to trash the State and Federal Constitutions and begin Rule By Executive Proclamation, then this has been a very useful training exercise for the PMC.
JMG,
I have a question about the Great Depression. I remember reading somewhere that those years were the only time in the US history when there was wealth redistribution. If I understand correctly that happened even before Roosevelt’s “Great Society”.
Do you know if that is true? What would make deflation cause that?
I do agree with you that the most plausible scenario is high inflation over the next decade and a replacement currency (or currencies if US splits). But I do wonder if the converse of the above idea would suggest that the rich are helped by inflation. Yes they own lots of digital bits but they also own all the means of production. The question is: do they “own” enough minds to keep the army (for example) from removing the intermediaries and taking direct control of the industry?
Thanks
Hi John,
Thanks for the explanation on reincarnation and Uranus. It really cleared a lot of things up. 🙂 I thought I would add another ingredient to the mix when it comes to reincarnation and what we were discussing the other day…
It is about the souls who incarnate in the land of a certain soul spirit. From my own research, I have noticed that souls usually reincarnate to a specific location – one that the soul is connected to. Very rarely do souls incarnate elsewhere – unless the environment changes too radically.
Take Europe for example. My soul has always usually incarnated in this region. However since Europe is dying, I suspect I will probably reincarnate somewhere in Russia as my soul is becoming more acquainted and intertwined with this land. I also suspect this will be the case of many current European souls down the pipeline too. Radical SJW today? Tomorrow more of a conservative Russian…
I call this a soul transfer. When one soul starts to move to another land.
As for America, unlike Russia that tends to attract more mature souls, I get a feeling America attracts the more young and adventurous. With the exception of you and a few other Americans I have met (I can literally count them on one hand), most Americans always seem immature, young, all over the place is how I describe them. I think America really will have to “grow up” so to say.
Just my thoughts on that matter.
Now just one question regarding the Long Descent – it seems to me that the world just cannot stop using fossil fuels. Despite all the hype from the media about electric cars, renewable energy, blah, blah, blah, world leaders just cannot actually make a firm commitment to moving away from major fossil fuel usage.
Take America – only 19% of electricity is by renewable energy. 81% is all by fossil fuels. Europe I presume is no different. After all, if Europe was so confident of renewables, they wouldnt be panicking about Putin turning off the gas pipeline…
It seems when it comes to energy usage, the useless elites in the West are parading their green windmills as a solution. Putin has ordered 14 new nuclear powerplants to be built so Russia still has enough electricity. As has been noted by bloggers, due to Western stupidity, they really could be faced with major blackouts in the decades ahead.
Not saying trying to go green isnt a noble idea in itself but trying to transistion a major industrial economy into renewables really is going to be a huge downturn in living standards. Even if in 100 years we do rely in solar panels and the like, black outs will be a regular thing and the information economy likely taking a back slide.
Which reminds me what I also wanted to ask – what is your opinion on all the latest technological gadgets such as lab grown meat, 3D printing, etc. Do you think these will be basically pointless toys in the long run that fail to survive? I mean if we cannot even get past fossil fuels, how the heck can we sustain these toys?
Even the damn lithium batteries are all stuck in Afghanistan that are needed for the electric cars of the future…which I suspect due to prices will become the tools of the rich.
Last but not least, just want to say your work gives me hope. I never liked this whole “monofuture – one world system of sameness”. Sounds like a hell world. The Long Descent gives hope of renewal and rebirth, a chance for freshness. Better then the current elite path that is for sure!
In response to ‘Chris at Fernglade Farm’ (post #418),
You make a very valid observation and point, that raging inflation is already here, in the form of grossly inflated prices for real estate, bonds, and various other financial assets (Bitcoin, anyone?). Indeed, classical economists Ludwig Von Mises and Frederick Hayek, among others, have long noted that inflation does not strike evenly, particularly in the early stages, with some prices increasingly significantly or radically with other prices simultaneously increasingly slowly or not at all. And it should also be pointed out, as Chris has here, that the real inflation is in the increase of the money supply, NOT in prices — rising prices are just the by-product of the true inflation. So in that regard, high inflation is already here, even if prices have not (fully) reflected that fact yet.
In response to ‘OilMan2’ (post #431),
Oh, I totally agree with you regarding any proposed digital currencies and their inherent fragility, dependent as they would be on the expensive, fragile and increasingly unreliable electrical and communications grids. Talk about an electronic house of cards! Still, I don’t think for one second that those facts are going to deter the powers-that-be from desperately trying to create a financial total-surveillance grid, or even from operating one for a small while, particularly if (when) faced with a worldwide currency collapse and it’s aftermath.
It is disheartening and depressing to me to know just how pervasive digital payments are already, how readily most people have accepted them (and the TBTF banks that act as intermediaries in every such transaction, siphoning off their cut), and how little actual physical cash remains within our total (nominal) monetary base — less than 10% currently in the USA.
Re bone-headed political moves
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/protesters-show-outside-brides-wedding-163930270.html
Not exactly the best way to convince someone to vote your way. (Or terribly good press for your cause, for that matter). I sympathize with the bride and I think most people would, too.
I concur with Oilman2, many threads seem to be finding together soon, underway, many seeds to bloom.
What is the outlook of Europe?
Ukraine probably still has very good rural potential, as the rest of the East.
2004 is a long time ago but back then I saw the scythes working and the stacked hay,
things I had only known from tales of my grandmother from the 1930ies.
A strong rural subsistence potential becomes strength in these times.
the East has contracted and aged demographically, but a collapse driving revert to subsistence
agriculture may take care of that;
I’ve seen a wonderful potential of that too in rural Macedonia in 2014.
The easterners as I have seen are a hardy stock, more temperament also. The poles have a loud and expressive
way, and an intuitive way in their celebrations. More old qualities inherent.
The Western Europeans on average a more frozen and orderly, stiff also.
The Spaniards are more chaotic but very hedonistic, southern Italy is a legacy place of third world poverty.
The Easterners live much reduced in material compared to the West, and retain substantial qualities of fixing and improvising
stuff, and of course all trades, across Western Europe. The Easterners are often the more professional caste of trades people
I would say.
The West is super overladen with stuff that turns vestigial and needs massive material and Upkeep.
Countries like mine plaster their best and fertilemost agricultural areas with often tasteless housing,
Austria often especially bad with scattered settlements.
Gigantomanic building activities in Vienna esp the last years, a new metro line number 5, because there used to be 1 to 6 but no 5.
If that may not turn out to be symbolic! Have destroyed some wonderful old trees, I wish them consequence.
The construction sites dotting the city are gigantic, and road bridges outside are renovated in an effort, projects ranging in years.
Ah the electricity – nothing goes without, no commerce, no pumps at gas stations…recently one major banking app failed for 10 hours,
unseen before, and people were stuck at the gas stations.
Expensive infrastructure, extremely big purely hedonic share, a massive expansion of infrastructure, digitalization, all needs more juice.
And what about security? Where are the most guns and man power in Europe and who holds them?
As I heard, the Austrian military is dominantly turkish, then other Balkan people. Wouldn’t be surprised;
the middle class is pushed down not to be militaristic, because it could give them power, with exception of some political groups,
put into opposition against harmless people. And the third group, from the core conservative migrant societies, I bet could
sack both.
When I entered Uni in 2006, private Securities weren’t a common sight, now they’re everywhere, esp in railway and public transport domain.
Has expanded considerably, that sector. New normal!
Sweden already has bombings and shootings in a sudden escalation, not seen in the country before, and such an escalation of street and gang violence
is in general above the other Western countries…
Magnesiums lacks, China sends its bubble economy to hell and seems to plan retaining its resources for itself….Gallium Arsenide could be
mined in Europe, but not at current environment standards, and prob costly. Needed in all electronic communication!
No gas, no parts, no engines…
Good part of the kids destroyed psychologically esp in the middle class.
A minister I think said: every one in Austria is responsible for their own preparation in a black out event, it is expected that after two to three days,
there may be rioting and looting…
What if Germany’s export engine stops running, no cars, no planes..?
What of the masses of people starting their voyage when global hunger strikes? What of the countries currently gatekeeping them? What about Turkey, itself
half stable, half successfull, always to be reckoned with?
Yes, there’s just a lot of threads twining together here it seems.
Oh the August, late summer. Such an atmosphere of partying and sun dances…but always like in a movie with that sinister undertone.
What a Winter to come. I always tell to my couple of very goods friends: I hope we shall sit together in May, looking back on the events of that Winter.
I am not sure, what do I really know, but this landscape looks rather eerie to me.
I would like to thank David Trammel for all he does on the Green Wizards site, and for posting reminders here. And of course, ongoing thanks to JMG🌳
Sorry, CR Patiño #389, I still don’t get it.
@christopher henningsen
That’s a very interesting idea, thank you very much for this. I’ve been reading about electroculture, and I downloaded (but didn’t fully read) the book Seed of Knowledge, Stone of plenty. I’ll keep this point in mind while reading it, as it does offer an interesting explanation for why this could be the case. Still, before we can make any comment about the mechanism which enables the creation of terra preta via electroculture of the megaliths-or-temples variety, we need to be sure about whether it is really the phenomenon behind electroculture that is responsible for the extraordinary fertility of terra preta, or is it something else entirely. Once we know for sure, then we can actually figure out a mechanism.
@Dagnarus #417
if there are still a lot of non vaccinated people around
That the unvaxed pose the risks is the White House driven misperception that’s driving the hysteria. Most are young and/or very healthy and a huge number are already immune through prior exposure.
The data shows that the issues now are predominantly amongst the vaxed and they’re increasing. That’d be obvious if there wasn’t such a widespread effort to suppress anything that counter’s the official narrative.
@JMG Thank you for the reasonable response. And also I remembered – thank you for the interesting response with regard to the integralism question a few days ago.
@Patricia I think the reason for the reaction of the elites is simple. The elites have an illusion of themselves being in perfect control of world developments and thus any change that fundamentally shakes this conviction is an attack against their self-identity itself. That’s why their reaction was so overblown to both Trump and the pandemic – they took it personally, as an attack against their deepest self. It’s also why they followed up both shifts with overcompensatory displays of their own power – they were exaggerating to reassure themselves they still “got it”.
Thinking about the idea that favelas in the developing world are going the future for northern lower classes – if you have that kind of housing in a Canadian prairie winter that gets cold enough exposed skin can freeze in minutes or even seconds… that doesn’t work. Your lower classes would die in short order.
It might be better to look at preindustrial/early industrial cities in similar climates to see what might happen. Late Tsarist Russia for the Canadian prairies, perhaps? England for south-coastal BC?
@Oilman2, good points. We are hitting the limits of complexity in many areas. The surveillance state is surely being attempted. The Internet of Things was recently activated. Turns out the communications chips were dormant in all kinds of everyday appliances. Now they are activated. 5G is part of the IoT activation. Seems your water heater and my rice cooker have a short range for communication.
it is not clear what wonderfulness is supposed to result from my rice cooker picking up cell phones as people walk past my house. I have heard about mesh networks extending the range of 5G by passing cell phones along as they move, each toaster, microwave oven and parked automobile playing the role of a micro cell tower.
As an engineer, I am still scratching my head. Who is supposed to keep all this stuff working? How about when I get tired of having a rice cooker that snitches on me, reports when I am home, and eavedrops on my friends’ cellphones? Or it breaks and I replace it with a low tech thingy involving a pot with a heating element, just because the fancy ones have become become too expensive and unreliable.
As Oilman2 pointed out, someone still has to fuel up the generator on the cell towers, or mere power failure knocks out all the wonderfulness.
I deal with the actual cost of electrifying passenger vehicles in my practice. We have a mandate in place for providing car chargers for 20% of the parking places in new construction. It is only a slight exaggeration to characterize the load profile for new apartment buildings as car chargers with a building attached.
Everything has to be bigger: main service, transformer, main switchgear, cables. Here’s the punchline: everybody in the building pays for the car chargers in their rent (not cheap, as it is.) At most 20% of the residents get to plug in their gee whiz electric vehicle.
There is not enough anything to electrify even the entire passenger fleet. Even if we could find the lithium, etc, we would still have to rebuild the grid and the user distribution to charge all those vehicles. It is going to cost too much. Here we are struggling with our aging infrastructure and our high cost of housing and we want to crank up the housing costs to cover grid and distribution upgrades to plug in electric vehicles. Nah. We will just end up with the 20% having personal vehicles and other folks repurposing the empty parking space for bicycle repair shacks.
This is without pointing out that electricity is a way of moving energy around, not a source of energy. It still has to be generated somewhere else.
Raphanus
@tj
You misunderstand me. I’m not saying that non vaxxed are driving spread now.
I’m saying that a hypothetical doomsday scenario is that a new virus strain develops which takes advantage of imperfect vax immunity based upon wuhan spike protein. In this doomsday scenario vaxxed die 30% percent of the time when exposed to the strain, but unvaxxed are largely unharmed. If this virus showed up in a population which is 100% vaxxed, it would probably have difficulty spreading because it disables the people it infects to fast. But if it shows up in a population which is half unvaxxed, half vaxxed, it would be able to move around through the unvaxxed, who treat it as a regular covid infection, and from them spread to the vaxxed, who get totally wrecked by it.
Now in this situation you could say that logically, this is the fault of the governments who pushed these drugs on everyone. But in this hypothetical situation, do you think that people will be thinking calmly and rationally? If everybody’s child is unvaxxed, people probably won’t want to scapegoat their own children. If half of the children in the country half been needlessly vaccinated, and our now at risk, will people scapegoat the other peoples children, probably.
My main point is. If the nightmare Covid ADE scenario comes to pass. Unvaxxed should expect persecution. It would probably make pragmatic sense for the currently vaccinated, even if it doesn’t make moral sense. But who really cares about morality.
JMG et all
A sort of a data point: Years ago I remember reading that because of inefficiencies of the Soviet economy there were all kind supply problems and because of that factories couldn’t trust on their regular suppliers but had to employ specialist whose whole job it was to go around the SU trying find supplies. This was called a “uniquely soviet job” and a great example of how bad the late Soviet economy was.
Well recently, I got a temp job in company that does electronics assembly. On first day we were told that because of the supply problems with electronic components they didn’t know long they can employ us. One of the things we were told was that the company now has a team of employees whose job it is to find electronic components from all over the world because we can’t anymore trust on our regular suppliers…
Speaking of Soviet Union. If Biden is the American Chernenko, will there be an American Gorbachev?
A man of the system, an insider, who tries to save the empire by reforming it but ends up destroying it instead.
What would an American glasnost and perestroika look like?
Not that I think the collapse of the American empire will follow the exact same trajectory as the Soviets did but it is kind of fun to speculate who could play that role.
JAS
Biden’s apology today for Trump’s withdrawal from the climate agreement rubbed me the wrong way.
I am a Carter baby. I spent my life watching the situation go from “Global warming can be prevented if we act now” to, as I was reaching adulthood, proof that it was actually happening began actually appearing–horrifying me since these were things we’d previously been warned would happen “if we didn’t prevent them.” And then they did. My elders never prevented them. By the time my generation reached adulthood, it was really too late (I still took measures in my personal life, some of which I was able to maintain and others of which my body could not handle)…but…Boomers stayed stuck in their old, “No one will listen to us unless we keep it positive,” “
Global warmingClimate change can be prevented if we act now (never mind those incidents behind the curtain)” arguments.Get me at the right moment, and you can get me to literally cry over what was (not) done. But by the Trump came along…the agreement he pulled out of was fracking toothless anyway.
Biden’s apology didn’t sound like it was about the climate. Biden’s apology seemed to be about balming his soul by symbolically “erasing” Trump’s past actions and, well, election to the presidency at all. And that just…rubs me the wrong way.
@Denis what I have seen successfully done is to pretend that you’re actually concerned that to say the land is stolen negates the indigenous land rights that the organization in question actually seeks to uphold.
It was absolute genius; in that case it was a government committee, and someone pointed out there were indigenous title agreements in place that as a governement, we were obligated to respect. By saying the land was unceded or stolen outright, we could be at risk of looking like we actually didn’t recognize those rights. It put the social justice people into fits to ensure they were delineating exactly what rights they were upholding (fishing, hunting, certain jurisdictional issues) that in no way undermined our government continuing to govern.
For any publicly funded institution, a school, for example, a similar thing could be done. A private institution would be at one remove, though in order to have a private company, one must acknowledge that it was a similar government granting of the right to operate or own an asset, as you point out. So presumably you have the same obligation to respect existing agreements.
Argue that the problem is that you believe the spirit of the first agreement made between indigenous and settler groups on American soil – the Two Row Wampum belt – granting two cultures to live in peace and mutual aid but no domination on the same lands, had been violated, and you want to acknowledge that. They’ll eat their hearts out on your social justice badassity, but you’ll get to direct the idea back to both groups being within their rights to still be on the land. More flies with honey…
@Denis, #430:
This is probably not the most mature response to the trend you mentioned, but if it were me, I would do some research (and then list) *all* the tribes that used to claim the land, in chronological order. At least in my state, there are some areas where it changed several times since the 1600’s.
@Aldarion #382
I sometimes lurk on the arctic sea ice forum https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/
The arctic ice minimum in September was higher than in most recent years because the weather patterns in the high arctic were cool and cloudy for most of May through August. There was less air exchange between the Arctic Ocean and elsewhere than most recent years, which meant many of the peripheral areas such as Hudson Bay were unusually warm. The peripheral areas were melting out early which actually briefly brought the northern hemisphere sea ice extent to record lows for the date in the early summer. However, even then the knowledgeable commenters there knew that the record lows were unlikely to persist as the weather in the high arctic was not conducive to a record melt season. Peripheral areas like Hudson Bay melt out eventually every summer so don’t make a difference in the September minimum. The ice minima continue to follow a general downward trend but with plenty of fluctuations between individual years due to the weather. Between 2007 and 2012, there was a major change in the arctic ice and many predicted it was the beginning of a downward spiral that would lead to an ice-free arctic in September before 2020. That didn’t happen, the record low set in 2012 hasn’t even been surpassed yet, but that year was an extreme outlier because of the weather very favorable to melt. There’s still a general downward trend which if it continues at the current rate, we’ll probably start seeing complete melt-outs some years by the 2040s or so.
Curt (no. 423), you’re young. The years will go by no matter what you do. You can either spend these years doing what your heart really wants, or…not. 33 is the traditional age of Christ at his crucifixion! A very auspicious time for a transition, wouldn’t you say?
You’ve already been to Russia, and know you like it, so it’s not so much of a leap. You may not know much Russian now, but if you live there and study the language, you can learn it. (When I was your age, I made a similar move.)
Yes, you will need a visa of some sort, but this can be done. It may even be possible to get Russian citizenship after a few years (if you learn the language). There are many websites / companies offering to help you navigate visas. work, and study in Russia. Here is just one:
https://expatriant.com/russian-citizenship-the-easiest-passport-to-get-in-the-world/
Why would Russia encourage immigration? Because their demographics are terrible, and because the government feels there is a shortage of people in certain professions.
Besides Russia, you might also consider Bulgaria, which has a related language and culture, but is in the EU (so you, as an Austrian, could just move there whenever you wanted) and is a bit higher-class. In Russia you’d pretty much be forced to learn Russian. In Bulgaria, you could get by with English to some extent.
drhooves #420 Thank you for your supportive reply. I’m reading and taking in so much from others. Trying to give something helpful back. Unsure of so much now. DenG
@Info, I have no doubt that whatever books Childs waves at the camera in that video actually exist as physical objects. You are aware, aren’t you, that anyone can write a handbook for anything? If I decided to write and self-published a Football Players’ Handbook that said footballs are made of the skins of tortured puppies and that running backs pray to a severed pig’s head on a stick before every offensive series, no one could stop me, as long as I didn’t defame any individuals, violate anyone’s trademarks, or plagiarize someone else’s nonsense instead of making up my own.
Does Childs present any evidence that his Freemason’s Handbooks are endorsed or used by any actual Freemasons? Sorry, I didn’t watch five hours of video to try to find out.
I did watch a few randomly chosen segments of the video, just to get an idea of its tenor. My first random needle drop landed at about 3:21 (that’s hours:minutes) where Childs quotes lurid descriptions of black magic rituals including sacrificing children and using the blood or fat of young children. This is immediately followed by “How many children do you think go missing in Australia every year?” The answer then appears in a title card: “In Australia, an estimated 20,000 children are reported missing every year.”
Do you agree that the implication the viewer is supposed to take away is that thousands of Australian children every year are being snatched away and killed for evil magic rituals? Scary, isn’t it? Having their blood or fat used to summon some demon seems to be the fate of one out of about every fourteen children born in Australia! Those occultists must be very organized to get away with murder on that scale! (A point which Childs makes explicitly a few sentences later.)
Before I continue, did you spot the deception there?
It’s this: what Childs doesn’t mention is that the vast majority of children reported missing are recovered safe and sound. (In the U.S., that figure has recently hovered about 99%.) And of those who are not, investigation does discover what befell many of them. Very few disappear entirely, or show up lacking blood or fat.
Now, note that this doesn’t invalidate Childs’s point completely. If some fraction of the remaining 1%, like 100 or 20 or 2 children per year in Australia, were being killed by evil occultists, that would still be tragic and alarming. Childs could have acknowledged that the number reported missing is much higher than the number who disappear permanently, and gone on to discuss the latter. But he didn’t.
Why didn’t he? Does he, presenting himself as an expert in this subject, not know the difference between “reported missing” and “never seen again?”
I doubt that. I think he didn’t mention it because he wanted to try to fool me.
That’s what I found in my first random sample of the video. Childs is being deceptive and he thinks I’m an idiot who won’t notice. This is exactly the kind of infuriating rhetorical misconduct I was complaining about in an earlier comment (#389). It’s also an example of how moral panics that get innocent peoples’ lives ruined or ended are caused to happen.
That’s why his screed isn’t worth five hours of anyone’s time, or another five minutes of mine.
The idea of the Covid vaccines as a way to commit societal suicide makes it far more creepy how the main efforts are going towards forcing the working classes to get the shots, while much less energy is going to getting the welfare class and illegal immigrants to take them….
RE electric cars-one wonders, if we’re going to shift to completely electrified forms of transportation, why we can’t just go back to intra-neighborhood trolley lines. I mean, its a much more efficient use of electricity, and the expense of putting in the tracks and overhead cables would probably be less than the expense of upgrading the electricity grid to handle millions and millions of car chargers. (And in some cases the infrastructure is already there-I remember a few years ago, the local newspaper in a nearby city ran a story about how road crews, jackhammering the pavement on Main Street, had uncovered the remains of the city’s old early-20th-century trolley tracks.) I mean, if you think about it, our pre-WWII ancestors had the technology to build electric cars-there must have been reasons they went with something more centralized and efficient.
What’s really, really weird, actually, is how all of the above would have been generally accepted in progressive circles up until about ten years ago. Back during my political coming of age in the Bush years, the Left was all about trolleys, buses, trains, mass transit in general-and now it seems you barely hear about that stuff anymore.
@ Raphanus #444
Even if we could find the lithium, etc, we would still have to rebuild the grid and the user distribution to charge all those vehicles. It is going to cost too much.
A paper recently estimated it at $252 trillion. Oh, and we’d wreak more environmental damage mining & refining the materials then we’d ever gain switching by switching to so-called renewables.
@Aldarion and Mark L – I’ll wade in with my two cents, having been a meteorologist in the Air Force back in the 1980s, and working on climatological studies for a hitch.
We may have entered a period of climate “weirding”, but keep in mind that our records are an extremely small sliver of time when it comes to weather, and climate is just an “average” of weather, in a simple definition. As mankind burns off fossil fuels and pollutes the air, it’s easy to track the effects on the environment via the measurement of contaminants – acid rain, sulfur content, heavy metals on mountain tops, etc. To track energy as it passes through the Earth’s weather, ocean and land environments is much, much more difficult. It begins with the Sun, and ends when energy is emitted from the Earth and back out to space – and out of the system. It’s not in equilibrium, but it’s close.
Along with mankind’s contribution to the system, the Sun’s output changes on regular and irregular cycles, and is the biggest “driver” of climate. Then consider the Earth’s axis tilt and rotation, volcanoes, water vapor, ocean currents, upper atmospheric flows, terrain, and other factors, and you’ve got a very complicated problem trying to model and gauge the effects of energy transport, and translating that into a predictable climate change. Weather is a result of the Earth redistributing higher energy inputs at lower latitudes throughout the rest of the planet, and eventually diffusing that energy to keep Gaia from burning up.
When I took a course in “kinematics of the atmosphere”, one day the professor wrote 27 equations up on the chalk board to describe the motion of parcels of air. He then determined that over time, many of the variables approached zero, and could be dropped – leaving us with about eight equations and eight unknowns, and yet – the 19 other factors that would impact where the parcel of air would travel in due time would introduce the concept of “randomness”. This makes it very difficult to model the movement and energy content of weather and climate. This is one of the reasons why weather forecasts beyond 48 hours or so can be far less accurate, and why when a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, there’s a tornado a month later in Oklahoma. At least, in theory.
As to the question of why a warmer winter with little snow in one region, and build up of the arctic sea ice in another – it comes down to very subtle changes in the fluid dynamics of the atmospheric and oceanic current, which sometimes (but not always) set up in a pattern that persists for a whole season. It’s not unexpected, and it’s not out of the range of observed weather over the past few centuries. In the ’80s, the climate studies I worked on for McMurdo Station, Norway, and many places in between indicated a general warming trend, much more pronounced at the higher latitudes. It was called “global warming” back then, and we would joke sometimes on weather it was too early to buy oceanfront property near McMurdo to open a resort.
My own opinion is that the media has “created” a problem with climate change through alarmism, with intent to drive the agenda for the advantage of the elites. Is the climate changing? Yes. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not. I find this exasperating as it’s become a wedge issue which distracts from the much bigger problems of overshoot and pollution, or as JMG might say “ilth”. Like Covid, climate change is small potatoes when it comes to the major problems we face – but, we’re humans, and won’t be smart about it.
Hope this helps.
@Alan 429
You might try “The Great Wave” David Hackett Fischer. It covers price fluctuations from the 12th century. An interesting read.
@Vala,
Ok, let me try again, now that my head is a bit clearer. What I think did happen is…
Lockdowns was a clever strategy that works in the abstract but cannot be properly implemented. If you could truly have the whole population stay put in their homes for 2 weeks, the virus would die out for lack of new hosts. However, not even a tyrant in a repressive dictatorship would be able to fully lock their population: too many essential workers are needed to keep basic services running.
Now, in a political system where the power is diluted, that is even more impossible. Everybody with the tiniest amount of influence will try to relabel their own businesses as “essential”, so who is allowed to operate and who doesn’t is a political rather than medical decision.
Two factors prevented the leaders of the world from seeing that truth. First, they are out of touch with the reality on the ground, their power is abstract and they are used to not dealing with the details. So a clever but impractical idea is right down their alley. Second, and perhaps even more important, they put greater priority in being seen taking decisive action. The plan was implemented, though it was doomed to fail from the start.
From there, it is human nature to not want to see that what you are doing is not working; and to pretend not to see once you realize you are failing, for the sake of appearances.
Re my own question earlier pertaining to the VA
Saw this story, which sheds some light on the issue my vet friend has been having:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mission-act-supposed-help-us-150322343.html
Before we pack it in for the week – I’ve had the feeling for some time that the whole world is on “Hold.” Mentioned it to my daughter on Sunday and she demanded to know what I meant by that. Since it was a vague feeling, I couldn’t define it, but now I can.
First, everybody is going through the motions of Business As Usual, or at least, that’s the impression the stories in the daily paper give me, and meanwhile, trying to adjust to the New Normal.
Second, that a number of public figures are old, and may die at any time. Joe Biden, for sure, and if Kamala Harris becomes President, the political scene will blow wide open, since she’s far too “Young-Green-New-Deal-Woke-of the Wokest” for a huge chunk of the electorate.
Pope Francis, too, and there’s a Plutonian career arc for you. He began his papacy with a bang, and seems now reduced to vague “Joe Biden’s a nice boy,” mumblings. OTH, the Catholic Church is a sore need of a massive housecleaning, which he promised to deliver and still is, to the best of his ability.
Her Majesty is very old, and now has been told by her doctors to take 2 weeks off. The question of the role of the monarchy in England is up for grabs, but even more – I’ve felt for some time there has always been something special about the role of England’s best-known queens; as if they represent the heart and soul of the nation. Charles may or may not pan out; he’s a wild card, which may be what is needed these days. But Camilla is not queen material. Kate Middleton is, and Prince William is looking good as a future king. The question is: do they look that way to a Business As Usual mind, and is BAU what they represent? Or will they be strong crisis-era leaders?
So that’s three centers of power, at least psychologically, teetering on the brink.
Any comments?
@pygmycory – to look for the form housing for the very poor would take in Canada or in any other place, check out the housing of their pioneer days. That should give some sort of clue.
Finally, a trivial question about Star’s Reach – people are going barefoot a lot, in a subtropical climate, in the American south. Which had a massive hookworm problem back in the days of barefoot boys with cheeks of tan. One of the things that put an end to it was when backwoods people and the poor could afford shoes. How would the world of Star’s Reach have handled that? Because such climates seem to be Parasite Central in our world.
Hi, JMG. I’ll be cross-posting this to the Covid open post, but would like to post it here as well considering its timely nature.
This Wednesday, November 3 is “Worldwide Walkout Day” to protest injection mandates. Walkouts/ rallies are planned in quite a few cities in the USA. (Europe seems to be doing a good job of protesting already. Not that you’d know it from the MSM.) The idea seems to be that it’s the first of several such planned days, rather than one and done.
I’ll be protesting here in Minnesota at the Department of Education (gotta start somewhere).
For details, and to see if there’s anything already happening near you, visit
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/child-health-topics/health-freedom/worldwide-walk-outs/
I’m in the Minneapolis / St Paul area, and I’m interested in meeting other Ecosophia readers from Minnesota and western Wisconsin, individually and/or collectively.
I’m particularly interested in finding out what people are thinking or doing about collapse, and about the covid-driven changing political and social situations around us.
If you’d like to meet sometime, please drop me a line at willard (at) usfamily.net
@Pixelated and @RandomActsofKarma – both excellent suggestions and doable. You are helping craft a strategy which I know I’ll need. I’m amazed seeing boomer age people doing this first. Just giving away everything they own I guess before they go.
@Patricia Matthews I feel the same kind of “on hold”. Since September I’ve been waiting for something to spin us out of control. There were the mandates but that’s been more a slow burn. You offered up a good list and I think a black swan could appearing shortly too.
Re: slum housing on the prairies – my money is on Atco trailers and such that are currently used as industrial camp housing. When the salvage economy picks up speed, pre-fab buildings left to mould start to look worthwhile.
As we close for the week, a fascinatingly honest assessment of Afghanistan and the US debacle there:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/american-elites-gotten-tellingly-quiet-100109274.html
@David, by the lake and @Curt: It’s interesting to me that imaginary debating seems to be a more common habit of thought that I expected. Thanks for your replies!
@Curt: I do the SOP, which I believe is similar to the LBRP, and it does certainly help. Thanks again!
Patricia Matthews @ 461, I will take a whack at your three centers.
Harris is an opportunist with few or no discernable principles. For what it might be worth, I suspect Biden’s senility is partly, not all, pretense. Should he die in office, Harris would become a caretaker president, well hemmed in by various factions of the permanent government. No doubt we would hear accusations of anti-Semitism against any who criticized her, because she happens to be married to a Jewish guy. She is incapable of winning a national election against any reasonably believable challenger or even against Trump resurgent. I suspect we are in for a period of Republican nationalist, pro-business governance which may, I also suspect, be far less effective than its’ proponents imagine. The Maga guys and gals seem to have forgotten that less oversight for them means less oversight for others as well, not to mention that folks who are broke don’t spend. So much for their dreams of small town business opportunities. The two things that would put spending money back in working people’s pockets, restriction of or, better yet, moratorium on any immigration from anywhere, and fall in housing prices, the Trumpists simply won’t countenance; they are as unrealistic in their own way as are the woke in theirs.
As for Papa Francis, I still hope and expect that his successor will be a black man from Africa. Such a man would reaffirm Catholic teachings about marriage and family–if you don’t like them, you don’t need to be a Catholic–and revive Catholic social teachings about care of the poor and unfortunate. American Black and White evangelical ministers would be welcome to join the preisthood and not required to give up their families; the doctrinal differences are not insurmountable.
British monarchs have had unpopular spouses before and the institution has evolved ways to deal with them. None of our business in any case, let the Limeys sort it out for themselves. American presidents have had unpopular spouses, Eurotrash Barbie being only the most recent. The spouse of a Head of State need not be a style icon and I find it most refreshing that Jill Biden has declined that role. I do think that Scotland will increasingly see its’ future as being part of Scandinavia.
Ian Welsh has published a highly pessimistic assessment of the future of India today. https://www.ianwelsh.net/india-is-not-the-next-china/
As a person who has always harbored a sentimental affection for India–multiple religions and languages, people of diverse cultures living together, not to mention some seriously dangerous wildlife– I would like to think Welsh is uncharacteristically mistaken. Any comments from those who know more about the subcontinent than I do?
Hi all
This is an article that they say explain the supply chain crisis, at least in USA, I am not an expert and I do not know how close to the real causes are what they describe, but it seems they are right:
https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91
“Nobody is compelling the transportation industries to make the needed changes to their infrastructure. There are no laws compelling them to hire the needed workers, or pay them a living wage, or improve working conditions. And nobody is compelling them to buy more container chassis units, more cranes, or more storage space. This is for an industry that literally every business in the world is reliant on in some way or another….”
“My prediction is that nothing is going to change and the shipping crisis is only going to get worse. Nobody in the supply chain wants to pay to solve the problem. They literally just won’t pay to solve the problem. At the point we are at now, things are so backed up that the backups THEMSELVES are causing container companies, ports, warehouses, and trucking companies to charge massive rate increases for doing literally NOTHING….”
“This is the new normal. All brought to you by the ‘experts’ running our supply chains.”
it doesn’t look good at all, nor in the future, at least for months.
Good luck
David
Chris, none of us know. We just roll the dice and hope.
Dermotok, a fine lively book with a significant philosophical dimension! I read it when it first came out in paperback, and have reread it a couple of times.
Drhooves, tomorrow’s post may set some teeth on edge…
Curt, Russia’s population is contracting. You might be surprised about your reception there. As for Europe, well, yes.
Marlena, too funny! Michigan has an astonishing number of unpaved roads — even the suburbs of the big cities very often have gravel roads — because the auto industry didn’t want to pay state taxes. Before they start talking about EV charging roads, maybe they should look into some asphalt…
Alan, thank you! You’re quite right that default and runaway inflation aren’t mutually exclusive, and a combination of the two — defaulting on foreign debts, say, and inflating away domestic debts — might be more politically viable than either one on its own. With regard to stupidphones and digital currency, that’s an entertaining subject to consider, and I doubt it’s one that our soi-disant betters have ever considered. I can see their blank faces now: “What do you mean, your lives don’t revolve around whatever cheapjack technogimmicks we’ve decided you should own?”
Denis, mockery combined with frank talk about the endgame you’ve sketched out, for those who are willing to hear it, is probably your best bet for now. That ties in rather nicely with the whole “you’ll own nothing” cant from Europe, doesn’t it?
Oilman2, that’s something I’ve been thinking about, certainly. Quite a few of the likely trajectories ahead of us end with a de facto division of society, in which you have urban centers with internet and the rest of the gimcrackery associated with it, surrounded by very large areas that don’t; the offline areas will be treated as though they don’t exist, and the urban centers will shrink along with the population until they blink out, one after another. While they survive, surveillance within them will be pretty intense, and the same will be true of certain essential facilities in the hinterland, but other than that? Not so much.
@JMG and Alan #429 & 473
I have a smartphone, only I bought it used and it’s not the latest model, so it doesn’t run every app out there. I’ve been scolded by my bank (chosen because it has a branch office within walking distance) for not having its app. “With the app, you can give your bank card a new PIN at any time! Since you don’t have it, we’ll have to mail you a new bank card! Have fun waiting weeks.” They definitely seemed surprised and annoyed that anyone existed who didn’t have the app.
The whole situation was weird because where I used to live, I used the credit union (which has no branch in my new town) and it had a machine that would change the bank card’s PIN while you waited. Whatever happened to those?
@ Dagnarus #445
My main point is. If the nightmare Covid ADE scenario comes to pass. Unvaxxed should expect persecution.
All good points, and frankly that’s already happening, but given the general vaxed population’s ignorance that won’t fly in the end IMHO. Instead, I fully expect they’ll violently lash out at all the people that led them astray.
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@ drhooves #457
Is the climate changing? Yes. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not.
Well said.
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@ DFC #472
it doesn’t look good at all, nor in the future, at least for months.
More like years. I’ve been telling *ALL* my friends they need to stock up on essentials.
@JMG @Bei Dawei
Thank you for your words!
I spent 4 months in Bulgaria once a decade ago studying, and did not want to return home actually.
I had to still, due to studies and other dependencies.
A shame. My learning curve in the language was fast;
Maybe I can do a second time.
A good time to you all!
Following up on Catlover #299 post, asking for update on Jade the cat stuck up in a tree for days. Is she OK? I’ve been thinking about this a lot and sending positive vibes…
So $cience says “they are safe and effective”:
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
So now you can under$tand how tho$e big companie$ almo$t alway$ complete “succe$$ful” clinical trial$ ju$t in time to $ave the world.
It i$ very ea$y for them.
Cheers
David
NomadicBeer, there was indeed wealth redistribution of a kind during the Great Depression, if you look at the percentage. It worked like this. Imagine that you and your neighbor have houses and personal property worth the same amount, and have the same amount of money in the bank — say, a total net worth of $100K each — but your neighbor owns a thousand shares of Blue Sky Investment Trust stock, currently valued by the market at $1000 each. Now there’s a stock market crash, and the value of Blue Sky shares drops to zero. (That happened to some investment trust stocks in the 1929-1932 bear market.) How has that changed the distribution of wealth between the two of you? You’ve gone from owning just over 8% of the former total owned by the two of you, to 50% of the new total. That looks like wealth redistribution; what it actually is, of course, is the evaporation of a vast amount of notional wealth. As for who will benefit from inflation, that’s complex; by and large, anyone with fixed costs benefits, and anyone with fixed income suffers.
Ksim, reincarnational location varies from soul to soul. I was reincarnated in central and eastern Europe for several lives, then in continental Western Europe for quite a while, then three times in England, and since then — two lives so far — I’ve been in America. (It may be grist for your mill that late in my last English life, right after the First World War, I emigrated to the US and spent my final years in New York City, which was a nice place to be in the early 1920s; I have some very pleasant memories of it.) With regard to green energy, yes, there’s going to be a very sharp decrease in standards of living, because renewables can only provide maybe 15% of what we currently get from fossil fuels, and it’s intermittent, not reliable. Nobody in the political establishment is willing to deal with that. As for the technotrinkets, they’re all Fantasy Island, delusions of those who treat Progress as their god and can’t believe that it won’t bring them goodies forever. Did you know that, measured by the rate of new patents being issues, innovation in the industrial world actually peaked in the 1880s and has been declining steadily ever since?
David BTL, sure, but the goal isn’t to win votes, it’s to parade their virtue to prove that they belong to the Good People…
Curt, good. I’ll have a few things relevant to that to say tomorrow…
Sam, you’re most welcome.
Pygmycory, good! Yes, exactly…
JAS, welcome to Soviet America. We might get a Gorbachev, but frankly, Harris looks more like a female equivalent of Nicolae Ceausescu.
Anonymous, yes, that’s occurred to me as well.
Tolkienguy, that’s one of the many ways that the privileged Left has sold out the last of their ideals. All they want at this point is the perpetuation of the status quo.
Patricia M, I’ve noticed the same thing. Everyone’s waiting for the next shoe to drop, and hoping it doesn’t. As for Star’s Reach, they presumably have a serious parasite problem, because in Dark Age Meriga, most people can’t afford shoes.
MNanon and David BTL thanks for both of these.
DFC, yep. This is business as usual in pharmaceutical testing, and science generally. What fascinates me is that they’re actually making it public.
@DFC I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the supply chain problems since they are likely run by people with degrees in supply chain management.
@ JMG RE: futuring
What you describe has been an ongoing trend for the last decade, from personal experience.
I have fiber internet at my burb home but the nearest fiber to my farm is 50 miles away, and about 3x the cost of the current crop of tv/net providers. I can get cell at my farm, but only by piggybacking on my satellite downlink – and it has the old school “international call” lag time.
From government standpoint, anyone rural is already being shafted – reduction in state payments to rural school boards was already accomplished here in TX, with schools being closed already due to lack of money while new stadiums and such are built in suburban places. Within very rural counties, road repairs are almost nonexistent outside of the county seats and larger towns.
I am thinking that when we have the currency crisis, local governments will have to recalibrate – the teat will no longer flow their money honey as people go broke who have no physical assets. Property taxes are hard to enforce without police or sheriffs – who are already being cut. The courts are already backlogged – so no relief there for the mortgage holders…and so many original deeds have been lost due to bundling of mortgages to make MBS’s. I foresee possession being very important this time around.
I agree with the division you see ahead – which is logical, seeing as the majority of suburbanites have no idea how to raise or butcher animals – just buy what is on offer at the local Kroger. HOAs and city regs forbid vegetable gardens. I have neighbors who no longer own a lawnmower, and AFAIK, I am the only guy who changes his own oil on my street. It is fast becoming interestinger…
@Walt F
“I have no doubt that whatever books Childs waves at the camera in that video actually exist as physical objects. You are aware, aren’t you, that anyone can write a handbook for anything? ”
That may be true. But I cannot confirm if it is a forgery or not. The archaic drawings and the words on the page look like the real deal.
Maybe he did get it from his local chapter he joined. I think at least the branch connected to Celebrities.
“Does Childs present any evidence that his Freemason’s Handbooks are endorsed or used by any actual Freemasons? Sorry, I didn’t watch five hours of video to try to find out.”
Why would they? If they are what Childs claims they are. I was only inclined to believe the claims he based on genuine physical evidence in that video anyway. I think he is stretching outside of that.
If it is a real malicious secret society like Child’s claims. How would you go about exposing them. But doing it in a way that is credible in your opinion?
I would like to know.
@ Curt #476 & earlier: Hal Freeman is an American who wed a Russian woman, moved to the US for a decade, then moved to Russia about 5 years ago. He details his experiences at Between Two Worlds, including a lot of information on his dealing with the bureaucracy. He eventually obtained Russian citizenship.
As I type this, CNN is on the other room, where they are breathlessly reporting on the Governor’s race in Virginia. They are continuously reporting that the Republican is leading by about 55% to 45%, but there are still lots of votes outstanding, so there’s hope for the Democrat!
Meanwhile, I have the VA. Department of Elections website open, and they show a lead of 57% to 42%. Could the media be bending the reported results to keep their viewers entranced by hope? Perish the thought!
Mary Bennett (no. 471), I’ve spent about a year on the subcontinent, and I broadly agree with this.
I don’t want to derail this open post, but it is almost over, and some have already commented about the virus and the vaccine. The weekly “semi-open post” on the other blog permits a clearly stated range of opinions, which does not include “the official story and the arguments in favor of it”. I once posted a comment about a scientific paper, which was apparently too much “the official story” and was not put through. Since then I have read with quite a bit of attention, but have only rarely posted some isolated tidbit.
I am not complaining – those posts are mostly civil and seem to fulfil a pressing emotional need for those who don’t want to be vaccinated. However, it is hardly the case that those posts permit an open discussion of all sides of the argument. I do respect JMG’s repeated acknowledgement that his basic hypothesis, like all hypotheses, may be simply wrong.
Thanks to Mark L and kashtan for their comments about the arctic climate. I suppose some particularly stable weather pattern this year must be the reason for both the unusually warm temperatures here in Quebec and the average (for recent years) ice minimum in the Arctic Ocean.
Drhooves, of course I realize that some spot on Earth can become colder while at the same time the Arctic is getting warmer. The reason I was surprised is that in winter, I can walk 10 min from where I live and see the ice packs covering the St. Lawrence river and know that these ice packs bump into each other continuously from here to the North Pole.
I don’t quite understand why you separate out climate weirding from illth – I agree with JMG that climate weirding is one form of illth, and not the least important one. I am not so sure as you are that “we” (as species) cannot do anything about climate weirding, but I do agree that almost certainly “we” as species won’t do anything about it.
@Spiritus flat ubi vult– You mentioned that you currently live in a religious monoculture– Suppose, for discussion, that it is Roman Catholic; In such a case, you could have many options for churches. Perhaps one of them will have a microenvironment within it that will be helpful to you– But how to find it!?
If you are interested in finding a spirituality that helps you, I suggest that you pray to the God (or Goddess) whom you will beneficially end up with, and ask that deity to guide you to the right church/contacts and keep you safe from the wrong ones. Chances are that this Deity knows a lot more about you already than you know about the Deity. May your search be successful!
John,
Surprisingly, the British Journal of Medicine has had a history of skepticism toward the vaccines, at least the Pfizer one. I suspect it’s due to at least one editor on the Journal that appears to be able to think.
Hot language in the post-Crash world:
Noun: “See-ee-oh.”
Threat made by a young boy on the verge of a fight with another, “I’ll downsize you, you see-ee-oh.”
@DFC:
Thanks for the BMJ report. This is truly horrifying: ” In several cases Ventavia lacked enough employees to swab all trial participants who reported covid-like symptoms, to test for infection. Laboratory confirmed symptomatic covid-19 was the trial’s primary endpoint, the employee noted. (An FDA review memorandum released in August this year states that across the full trial swabs were not taken from 477 people with suspected cases of symptomatic covid-19.)” In combination with the fact that the vaccination status was imperfectly blinded, so medical personnel might have (in good faith, considering the unvaccinated at higher risk) given preference to swabbing the placebo group…
From Walter Stuart Bushell on the Bujold fan list: “Remember, in Humanities struggle against Nature: Nature is the home team.”
@Matthias #485 I have managed to inveigle a couple of references to the official data from the UK and elsewhere, but have been mostly staying away and ignoring the majority of the posts (especially those posted anonymously), many of which could benefit from some serious statistical analysis, let’s say. Maybe it’s because I’m living in a smaller country, where the health authorities are largely trusted, that I’m seeing a rather different picture than many folk here.
That said, England (as opposed to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), despite a fairly high number of cases, is definitely leaning toward the more liberal end of the spectrum, as regards legislation – currently no (officially mandated) vaccine passports, no compulsory face coverings (except in health settings, or where individual shops/venues require it), no mandatory vaccines, with the exception of workers in residential care homes (and possibly all NHS staff from next spring). And next to no panic, either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine.
Greetings again John,
I know that your predict a dark age in the coming centuries but I wonder if there may be prolonged stasis inbetween period instead of either a dark age or Mars and the stars. A dim age if you will. My frame of reference for this would be the Chinese and Indian examples. They had a formative period, a peak and then a decline but not into a dark age. Considering that the multicultural effects to come will include the religions and worldviews of those civilizations will the modern landscape perhaps keep things together by adopting the some of the approaches of those civilizations?