Friday, April 27, 2012
The Eagle and the Condor
The Eagle and the Condor from Pachamama Alliance on Vimeo.
Mass Extinction or the (r)Evolution of Consciousness?
Both?
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
"Born Into Captivity", Professor Guy McPherson on The Lifeboat Hour
This last Lifeboat Hour broadcast, was quite excellent. DONT MISS IT.
DOWNLOAD (right click "save as")
See also:
Dmitry Orlov and Michael Ruppert discuss Collapse developments
The Birth of Post Petroleum Human
Monday, April 23, 2012
Blamed For Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm
source: http://cryptogon.com/
April 19th, 2012
Via: Natural Society:
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.
See also:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/genetically-modified-foods-not-served.html
April 19th, 2012
Via: Natural Society:
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.
See also:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/02/genetically-modified-foods-not-served.html
FBI: Hundreds Of Thousands May Lose Internet in July
Update: I submitted the following comment to The Huffington Post, the source of the article in question and it was, big surprise, not posted. Notice it is not profane or hateful, just critical of those who own and finance The Huffington Post. I could continue and point out that AIPAC is one of these entities who uses The Huffington Post as a propaganda platform but I dont want to offend anyone who has mistaken an ethnicity for nationalistic identity. For those who don't know, internet censorship is prevalent throughout the web, particularly the Mainsteam Media affiliated sites.
Basically, the way I read the following article is "be quiet or we are gonna shut you down". And they don't even have to be explicit with the message, because those who have developed a critical mind and discernment will automatically read it that way while the rest of the "sheeple" will think that the FBI is truly concerned with their cyber safety, just as they believe the Patriot Act is truly for their protection and not actually in place to monitor their every move.
Can you see a correlation between the escalation of "Anti-Terrorism" measures and rhetoric in tandem with a rise in domestic political dissent, ala "Occupy Everything"? The Neo-Cons saw a great deal of this coming a decade ago, the decline of the American Empire, an oil empire run by those thinking with their reptilian mid-brain, truly suppressing Humanity's potential to advance greater degrees of democracy, well-being and equality which are requisite for our continued survival.
To put it bluntly, those running the show are insane and stupid. More on that in another article soon to follow.
I often wondered how the prevailing power structure would attempt to limit dissenting views expressed openly on the internet, as killing the net completely would obliterate what remains of their "Infinite Growth" economic paradigm. Loading up dissenters with viral programs and just deactivating them is an elegant solution indeed.
Original article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/fbi-internet-july_n_1441260.html
WASHINGTON (AP) — For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.
Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.
The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the Internet.
Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.
Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.
"We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because ... if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service," said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. "The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the Internet is broken."
On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.
Now, said Grasso, "the full court press is on to get people to address this problem." And it's up to computer users to check their PCs.
This is what happened:
Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet's domain name system.
The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address — such as www.ap.org — into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.
The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their Internet browsing.
When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie's clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.
The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The U.S. has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.
Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.
FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the Internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won't be the last.
"This is the future of what we will be doing," said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI's Cyber Division. "Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations."
Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, "we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system" without creating a bigger mess than before.
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. - George Orwell
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. - George Orwell
Basically, the way I read the following article is "be quiet or we are gonna shut you down". And they don't even have to be explicit with the message, because those who have developed a critical mind and discernment will automatically read it that way while the rest of the "sheeple" will think that the FBI is truly concerned with their cyber safety, just as they believe the Patriot Act is truly for their protection and not actually in place to monitor their every move.
Can you see a correlation between the escalation of "Anti-Terrorism" measures and rhetoric in tandem with a rise in domestic political dissent, ala "Occupy Everything"? The Neo-Cons saw a great deal of this coming a decade ago, the decline of the American Empire, an oil empire run by those thinking with their reptilian mid-brain, truly suppressing Humanity's potential to advance greater degrees of democracy, well-being and equality which are requisite for our continued survival.
To put it bluntly, those running the show are insane and stupid. More on that in another article soon to follow.
I often wondered how the prevailing power structure would attempt to limit dissenting views expressed openly on the internet, as killing the net completely would obliterate what remains of their "Infinite Growth" economic paradigm. Loading up dissenters with viral programs and just deactivating them is an elegant solution indeed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For computer users, a few mouse clicks could mean the difference between staying online and losing Internet connections this summer.
Unknown to most of them, their problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of infected computers around the world. In a highly unusual response, the FBI set up a safety net months ago using government computers to prevent Internet disruptions for those infected users. But that system is to be shut down.
The FBI is encouraging users to visit a website run by its security partner, http://www.dcwg.org , that will inform them whether they're infected and explain how to fix the problem. After July 9, infected users won't be able to connect to the Internet.
Most victims don't even know their computers have been infected, although the malicious software probably has slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.
Last November, the FBI and other authorities were preparing to take down a hacker ring that had been running an Internet ad scam on a massive network of infected computers.
"We started to realize that we might have a little bit of a problem on our hands because ... if we just pulled the plug on their criminal infrastructure and threw everybody in jail, the victims of this were going to be without Internet service," said Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent. "The average user would open up Internet Explorer and get 'page not found' and think the Internet is broken."
On the night of the arrests, the agency brought in Paul Vixie, chairman and founder of Internet Systems Consortium, to install two Internet servers to take the place of the truckload of impounded rogue servers that infected computers were using. Federal officials planned to keep their servers online until March, giving everyone opportunity to clean their computers. But it wasn't enough time. A federal judge in New York extended the deadline until July.
Now, said Grasso, "the full court press is on to get people to address this problem." And it's up to computer users to check their PCs.
This is what happened:
Hackers infected a network of probably more than 570,000 computers worldwide. They took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system to install malicious software on the victim computers. This turned off antivirus updates and changed the way the computers reconcile website addresses behind the scenes on the Internet's domain name system.
The DNS system is a network of servers that translates a web address — such as www.ap.org — into the numerical addresses that computers use. Victim computers were reprogrammed to use rogue DNS servers owned by the attackers. This allowed the attackers to redirect computers to fraudulent versions of any website.
The hackers earned profits from advertisements that appeared on websites that victims were tricked into visiting. The scam netted the hackers at least $14 million, according to the FBI. It also made thousands of computers reliant on the rogue servers for their Internet browsing.
When the FBI and others arrested six Estonians last November, the agency replaced the rogue servers with Vixie's clean ones. Installing and running the two substitute servers for eight months is costing the federal government about $87,000.
The number of victims is hard to pinpoint, but the FBI believes that on the day of the arrests, at least 568,000 unique Internet addresses were using the rogue servers. Five months later, FBI estimates that the number is down to at least 360,000. The U.S. has the most, about 85,000, federal authorities said. Other countries with more than 20,000 each include Italy, India, England and Germany. Smaller numbers are online in Spain, France, Canada, China and Mexico.
Vixie said most of the victims are probably individual home users, rather than corporations that have technology staffs who routinely check the computers.
FBI officials said they organized an unusual system to avoid any appearance of government intrusion into the Internet or private computers. And while this is the first time the FBI used it, it won't be the last.
"This is the future of what we will be doing," said Eric Strom, a unit chief in the FBI's Cyber Division. "Until there is a change in legal system, both inside and outside the United States, to get up to speed with the cyber problem, we will have to go down these paths, trail-blazing if you will, on these types of investigations."
Now, he said, every time the agency gets near the end of a cyber case, "we get to the point where we say, how are we going to do this, how are we going to clean the system" without creating a bigger mess than before.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George Orwell
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. - George Orwell
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. - George Orwell
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is Strength - George Orwell
See also:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/11/doomsday-project.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/progressive-news-hour-james-fetzer-new.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/09/would-us-policetroops-fire-upon-us.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/end-of-america-naomi-wolf.html
See also:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/11/doomsday-project.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/progressive-news-hour-james-fetzer-new.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/09/would-us-policetroops-fire-upon-us.html
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/end-of-america-naomi-wolf.html
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The Relentless Spread of Humanity
source: http://collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/news-alerts/item/7538-the-relentless-spread-of-humanity
-- Not even CNN, one of the most fervent of handmaidens to Infinite Growth can help itself from revealing truth. That is because truth is like blades of grass that always find their way through a sidewalk. Truth lives untouchable and immutable in what this dying paradigm refers to as the "empty space" between the ones and zeros of Cartesian tyranny. Sometimes it takes many lifetimes, even 26,000 years, for truth to stand forth in full, naked and acknowledged splendor.
I remember a closing scene from one of "The Matrix" trilogy. As the Matrix ceased to exist and as Neo stood victorious, brilliant beams of light just started shining through the villains and the deceivers... until they just vanished. That's all they ever were, shadows and illusions.
How is it that prophecies written by many civilizations, including the Mayans, based upon wisdom far predating five thousand years of recorded history, do a better job of reporting on the world we live in today than corporate-owned media with all their billions of dollars and resources?
Power resides where you believe it resides. That is one of the great secrets long hidden from us that will prove to be our salvation. Where do you believe power lives? If you are not prepared to answer this question now, just know that you will have to answer it this year. And on your answer your future will depend. -- MCR (Michael C. Ruppert)
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/world/road-to-rio/satellite-photos-urban-sprawl/index.html
My comment:
-- Not even CNN, one of the most fervent of handmaidens to Infinite Growth can help itself from revealing truth. That is because truth is like blades of grass that always find their way through a sidewalk. Truth lives untouchable and immutable in what this dying paradigm refers to as the "empty space" between the ones and zeros of Cartesian tyranny. Sometimes it takes many lifetimes, even 26,000 years, for truth to stand forth in full, naked and acknowledged splendor.
I remember a closing scene from one of "The Matrix" trilogy. As the Matrix ceased to exist and as Neo stood victorious, brilliant beams of light just started shining through the villains and the deceivers... until they just vanished. That's all they ever were, shadows and illusions.
How is it that prophecies written by many civilizations, including the Mayans, based upon wisdom far predating five thousand years of recorded history, do a better job of reporting on the world we live in today than corporate-owned media with all their billions of dollars and resources?
Power resides where you believe it resides. That is one of the great secrets long hidden from us that will prove to be our salvation. Where do you believe power lives? If you are not prepared to answer this question now, just know that you will have to answer it this year. And on your answer your future will depend. -- MCR (Michael C. Ruppert)
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/world/road-to-rio/satellite-photos-urban-sprawl/index.html
My comment:
Although receiving negative feedback, I must concur with Beta36 in that it isn't Humanity's collective aggregate biomass that is the issue, what is at issue is our rapacious appetite. Collectively the "Smart Ape" comprises less than 1% of biological life here on earth yet consumes a staggeringly disproportionate 25% of all incoming solar energy (not stored energy as in fossilized algae/oil but energy coming in at this moment, converted into biomass). I think that is what Beta36 was pointing out. But I also agree with the Lovelockian Hypothesis that just as the bacteria on our teeth (plaque) will, if left unchecked and aided by an abundant energy source (in this case sugars, in ours non-renewable carbon energy), multiply until they destroy the ability of the host to continue to live. Gaia is reaching for the toothbrush.
Parasites, in order to be successful, have to dial back their level of vampirism with their host, they learn this early on through natural selection and Morphogensis (Ruppert Sheldrake). It is highly unlikely Petroleum Man's Morphic Resonance pattern will lend to successful future iterations of "The Smart Ape" and will likely be edited out as the Universe pursues an evolution of consciousness towards greater and higher levels of self awareness.
Parasites, in order to be successful, have to dial back their level of vampirism with their host, they learn this early on through natural selection and Morphogensis (Ruppert Sheldrake). It is highly unlikely Petroleum Man's Morphic Resonance pattern will lend to successful future iterations of "The Smart Ape" and will likely be edited out as the Universe pursues an evolution of consciousness towards greater and higher levels of self awareness.
Truly successful parasites evolve symbiotic relationships with their hosts, as seen in Nature with Lichen (algae and fungus) and Mycorrhizae. Our calling is to evolve a symbiotic relationship with our host and the rest of the body (as it stands Petroleum Man is indeed, cancerous).
The following was lifted from The Empathic Civilization: The Race To Global Consciousness In A World In Crisis By Jeremy Rifkin, which I am reading at the moment:
Cultural historian Elias Canetti once remarked that "each of us is a king in a field of corpses". Canetti said that if we reflected on the vast number of creatures and Earth's resources each of us has expropriated and consumed in the course of our lifetime to perpetuate our own existence, we would likely be appalled by the carnage.
More on my blog: http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com
Resources:
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation by Ruppert Sheldrake
The following was lifted from The Empathic Civilization: The Race To Global Consciousness In A World In Crisis By Jeremy Rifkin, which I am reading at the moment:
Cultural historian Elias Canetti once remarked that "each of us is a king in a field of corpses". Canetti said that if we reflected on the vast number of creatures and Earth's resources each of us has expropriated and consumed in the course of our lifetime to perpetuate our own existence, we would likely be appalled by the carnage.
More on my blog: http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com
Resources:
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
Morphic Resonance: The Nature of Formative Causation by Ruppert Sheldrake
Friday, April 20, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Chris Martenson: "The Trouble With Money"
source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/chris-martenson-trouble-money
Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com
The Trouble With Money
Times of great upheaval offer a gift -- the chance to really sit down and rethink things. Certain fundamental questions can arise, such as Do I have the right job? and What should my kids study in college? and Should we really have increased total derivatives by $100 trillion after the financial crisis erupted in 2008?
When faced with the sort of predicament we currently find ourselves in, even more existential questions might dominate our thinking, such as Is there more to life than working hard, buying stuff, taking on debt, and getting older? or even What's the meaning of life? The primary narrative telling us that we are supposed to work hard, consume harder, and keep ourselves centered on the treadmill that we seem to have been born upon is beginning to unravel.
It's a mark of maturity to use a moment of crisis as an opportunity to engage in introspection and as a springboard for personal (or societal) growth and development. Unfortunately, there are virtually no signs that either our dominant culture or our leadership is that mature.
So our opportunity here is to really question ourselves and our actions, hold them up to the bright light of day, and decide what needs to change, what we should keep, and what new things we might start doing.
In Part II: True Prosperity, we explore what constitutes real wealth, both material and intangible, as well as what alternative aspirations we can consider as individuals and as a society if we find the courage to change (or at least step out of) our broken narrative .
With the certain change discussed above headed our way, how do you personally want to enter that future? What will your work be? What will your relationship be to those around you and the place where you live? Where will your happiness come from?
Is your strategy simply to do more of the same and hope for the best? Or do you plan to use the time we still have to reposition your priorities, your behavior, and your resources to meet that new future with as much resiliency as possible?
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).
Submitted by ChrisMartenson.com
The Trouble With Money
A Broken Narrative
Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, "Probably because they're smart."
In my opinion, we're asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn't make any sense.
Sure, we can grow the earth's population to 9 billion (and probably will), and sure, we can extract our natural gas and oil resources as fast as possible, and sure, we can continue to pile on official debts at a staggering pace -- but why are we doing all this? Even more troubling, what do we say to our youth when they ask what role they should play in this story -- a story with a plot line they didn't get to write?
So far, the narrative we're asking them to step into sounds a lot like this: Study hard, go to college, maybe graduate school. And when you get out, not only will you be indebted to your education loans and your mortgage, but you'll be asked to help pay back trillions and trillions of debt to cover the decisions of those who came before you. All while operating within a crumbling, substandard infrastructure. Oh, and by the way, the government and corporate sector appear to have no real interest in your long-term future; you're on your own there.
Yeah, I happen to think apathy is a perfectly sane response to that story. Thanks, but no thanks.
To understand how our national narrative evolved (or, more accurately, devolved) to become so unappealing, we have to take an honest look at money.
Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, "Probably because they're smart."
In my opinion, we're asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn't make any sense.
Sure, we can grow the earth's population to 9 billion (and probably will), and sure, we can extract our natural gas and oil resources as fast as possible, and sure, we can continue to pile on official debts at a staggering pace -- but why are we doing all this? Even more troubling, what do we say to our youth when they ask what role they should play in this story -- a story with a plot line they didn't get to write?
So far, the narrative we're asking them to step into sounds a lot like this: Study hard, go to college, maybe graduate school. And when you get out, not only will you be indebted to your education loans and your mortgage, but you'll be asked to help pay back trillions and trillions of debt to cover the decisions of those who came before you. All while operating within a crumbling, substandard infrastructure. Oh, and by the way, the government and corporate sector appear to have no real interest in your long-term future; you're on your own there.
Yeah, I happen to think apathy is a perfectly sane response to that story. Thanks, but no thanks.
To understand how our national narrative evolved (or, more accurately, devolved) to become so unappealing, we have to take an honest look at money.
Money is Not Wealth
Money is just a marker for real things. As long as you can exchange your money for real things, your money represents value. Because we tend to conduct all of our most meaningful transactions using money, our perspective can become warped to the point that we think it is the money itself that has value.
The economy is measured in these units, these markers, which we call "money." But money is not the same thing as the economy. Far from it. And money has no value on its own, but only in relation to the things we can exchange it for.
The economy consists of real needs and wants being fulfilled. On one end of the spectrum, we have the basics like food, water, shelter, medical care, and other necessities. On the other end of the spectrum, we have 15-minute neck massages at the airport. Everything else lies in between
Money, on the other hand, is simply a facilitator of exchanges.
When we reduce the economy to its simplest form, it really consists of a growing number of people trying to meet their needs and wants. More people (~80 million more each year) simply translate into increasingly greater demand for the earth's limited and ever-limiting resources.
Since our human desire to consume is virtually limitless, a key role of money is to provide the scarcity necessary to divvy up a limited amount of goods and services among the population. There has to be a balance between money and the things that humans can produce and distribute, or else prices get out of whack.
So now let's imagine a world where real things are in limited (and limiting) supply, and then compare this idea to our money supply in order to get a sense of where things are headed.
This is a chart of Money of Zero Maturity (MZM), which is the largest and most comprehensive accounting of money in the Federal Reserve system and has been ever since M3 was abandoned.
If that looks like an exponential chart to you, you are correct. Sure, there are a few wiggles and jiggles along the way, but the system of money we've been living under and setting our expectations around is an exponential money system. For it to remain in balance with resources that come from the earth, we need those to expand exponentially, too. If they don't -- and they can't forever -- things will get out of whack. And it's probably no surprise to hear my view that money is what is increasingly out of whack in this story, not the earth's resources.
One feature of exponential systems is that the amount of accumulation of whatever it is that is being measured increases over time. If we draw a few arrows on the above chart, we can see that money is accumulating in our system at a faster and faster pace:
"Stage 3" in this chart shows what has been happening since 2008. Aside from the little hump there in 2008, MZM is accumulating at the fastest pace in history. Isn't that interesting? Even as employment is historically very weak, income growth is stagnant, the economy is limping along, and inflation is (allegedly) quite low, the US is manufacturing money at the briskest nominal pace in the series.
The reason that we've not experienced massive inflation (yet) is that the money that is being injected into the system is basically just piling up and not really doing anything. It's just sitting there. One measure of this is the so-called 'velocity' of money, which is not actually a measured value but an inferred one, derived by dividing the stock of money into GDP. The higher the resulting number, the faster each unit of money is racing around in the economy trying to do something (which usually means to spend itself before inflation steals its value).
In fact, the velocity of money is at an all-time low and seems to be headed lower. When this money all finally decides to go out and spend itself while it still has some value, it will be quite a process to observe. Just think of stored-up money like potential energy, the same as a massive snow cornice hanging precariously over a steep gully. It's not a question of if, butwhen it will finally release and cause the value of money to plunge.
And the point I am trying to make is that there are two sources adding to the pressure here. One is the amount of money being piled up, and the other is the dwindling quality of oil. Adding more and more snow to the situation (as the Fed and other central banks are busily doing) is not really helping anything, and neither is a decrease in the net energy returns of new oil discoveries.
Just for kicks, here's a chart of money in circulation (including cold, hard cash and coin) stretching back through time to around the creation of the Fed.
Is that a picture-perfect exponential chart or what?
Now the other side of the money situation is, of course, debt. Here we see something quite remarkable, which is that somehow the Fed has managed to achieve a new all-time high in total credit market debt.
I say "remarkable" because what really should be happening here is de-leveraging, not re-leveraging. We should be seeking to decrease the total amount of debt, not increase it. But of course, that is not the business of the Fed. Its business is strictly to keep the exponential money and credit systems growing exponentially.
Well, that and assuring that the big banks never have to have an unprofitable quarter. But that's another story for another day.
Yet even with the heroic efforts of the Fed to push, badger, cajole, and horse-whip the aggregate amount of debt higher, its efforts are falling short. Note that we are still many, many trillions away from the trend line, which is what we'd need to get back to in order for things to return to 'normal,' as abnormal as those times really were.
Recall my other main point about debt, which is that it must double slightly faster than once every decade if we want the future to mirror the past four decades. This means that from 2008 to 2018, credit market debt will need to expand from $52 trillion to $104 trillion, or a bit more than $5 trillion per year, to keep us on the same "normal" trajectory.
Part of my skepticism about the odds of things returning to "normal" rests with the difficulty I have conceiving of what exactly it is that the US might find to suddenly go another $50 trillion into debt for.
If the US cannot find a way to go that much further into debt, then all of the many fine and subtle, overt and gross ways that we've come to expect the economy and financial markets to work will no longer apply. Many things will change and will simply operate very differently if no other reason than credit growth has slowed to a relative crawl.
As we are now four years past the 2008 crisis and we've only just managed to eke out a nominal new high in total credit market debt, this means that we are roughly $20 trillion behind the curve. You could do worse than this for an explanation as to why the national budget is such a wreck, why incomes are not keeping pace, and why the nation's infrastructure and capital investment are in such poor shape.
The bottom line is that, as expected and predicted here many times over the years, money creation with an eye towards keeping the credit markets expanding is the name of the game.
And the problem is that money is not wealth. It's only a marker for wealth. Simply increasing the money supply without understanding where we are in the energy story is an incredibly risky, if not foolish, thing to do.
That's the trouble with money.
The economy is measured in these units, these markers, which we call "money." But money is not the same thing as the economy. Far from it. And money has no value on its own, but only in relation to the things we can exchange it for.
The economy consists of real needs and wants being fulfilled. On one end of the spectrum, we have the basics like food, water, shelter, medical care, and other necessities. On the other end of the spectrum, we have 15-minute neck massages at the airport. Everything else lies in between
Money, on the other hand, is simply a facilitator of exchanges.
When we reduce the economy to its simplest form, it really consists of a growing number of people trying to meet their needs and wants. More people (~80 million more each year) simply translate into increasingly greater demand for the earth's limited and ever-limiting resources.
Since our human desire to consume is virtually limitless, a key role of money is to provide the scarcity necessary to divvy up a limited amount of goods and services among the population. There has to be a balance between money and the things that humans can produce and distribute, or else prices get out of whack.
So now let's imagine a world where real things are in limited (and limiting) supply, and then compare this idea to our money supply in order to get a sense of where things are headed.
This is a chart of Money of Zero Maturity (MZM), which is the largest and most comprehensive accounting of money in the Federal Reserve system and has been ever since M3 was abandoned.
If that looks like an exponential chart to you, you are correct. Sure, there are a few wiggles and jiggles along the way, but the system of money we've been living under and setting our expectations around is an exponential money system. For it to remain in balance with resources that come from the earth, we need those to expand exponentially, too. If they don't -- and they can't forever -- things will get out of whack. And it's probably no surprise to hear my view that money is what is increasingly out of whack in this story, not the earth's resources.
One feature of exponential systems is that the amount of accumulation of whatever it is that is being measured increases over time. If we draw a few arrows on the above chart, we can see that money is accumulating in our system at a faster and faster pace:
"Stage 3" in this chart shows what has been happening since 2008. Aside from the little hump there in 2008, MZM is accumulating at the fastest pace in history. Isn't that interesting? Even as employment is historically very weak, income growth is stagnant, the economy is limping along, and inflation is (allegedly) quite low, the US is manufacturing money at the briskest nominal pace in the series.
The reason that we've not experienced massive inflation (yet) is that the money that is being injected into the system is basically just piling up and not really doing anything. It's just sitting there. One measure of this is the so-called 'velocity' of money, which is not actually a measured value but an inferred one, derived by dividing the stock of money into GDP. The higher the resulting number, the faster each unit of money is racing around in the economy trying to do something (which usually means to spend itself before inflation steals its value).
In fact, the velocity of money is at an all-time low and seems to be headed lower. When this money all finally decides to go out and spend itself while it still has some value, it will be quite a process to observe. Just think of stored-up money like potential energy, the same as a massive snow cornice hanging precariously over a steep gully. It's not a question of if, butwhen it will finally release and cause the value of money to plunge.
And the point I am trying to make is that there are two sources adding to the pressure here. One is the amount of money being piled up, and the other is the dwindling quality of oil. Adding more and more snow to the situation (as the Fed and other central banks are busily doing) is not really helping anything, and neither is a decrease in the net energy returns of new oil discoveries.
Just for kicks, here's a chart of money in circulation (including cold, hard cash and coin) stretching back through time to around the creation of the Fed.
Is that a picture-perfect exponential chart or what?
Now the other side of the money situation is, of course, debt. Here we see something quite remarkable, which is that somehow the Fed has managed to achieve a new all-time high in total credit market debt.
I say "remarkable" because what really should be happening here is de-leveraging, not re-leveraging. We should be seeking to decrease the total amount of debt, not increase it. But of course, that is not the business of the Fed. Its business is strictly to keep the exponential money and credit systems growing exponentially.
Well, that and assuring that the big banks never have to have an unprofitable quarter. But that's another story for another day.
Yet even with the heroic efforts of the Fed to push, badger, cajole, and horse-whip the aggregate amount of debt higher, its efforts are falling short. Note that we are still many, many trillions away from the trend line, which is what we'd need to get back to in order for things to return to 'normal,' as abnormal as those times really were.
Recall my other main point about debt, which is that it must double slightly faster than once every decade if we want the future to mirror the past four decades. This means that from 2008 to 2018, credit market debt will need to expand from $52 trillion to $104 trillion, or a bit more than $5 trillion per year, to keep us on the same "normal" trajectory.
Part of my skepticism about the odds of things returning to "normal" rests with the difficulty I have conceiving of what exactly it is that the US might find to suddenly go another $50 trillion into debt for.
If the US cannot find a way to go that much further into debt, then all of the many fine and subtle, overt and gross ways that we've come to expect the economy and financial markets to work will no longer apply. Many things will change and will simply operate very differently if no other reason than credit growth has slowed to a relative crawl.
As we are now four years past the 2008 crisis and we've only just managed to eke out a nominal new high in total credit market debt, this means that we are roughly $20 trillion behind the curve. You could do worse than this for an explanation as to why the national budget is such a wreck, why incomes are not keeping pace, and why the nation's infrastructure and capital investment are in such poor shape.
The bottom line is that, as expected and predicted here many times over the years, money creation with an eye towards keeping the credit markets expanding is the name of the game.
And the problem is that money is not wealth. It's only a marker for wealth. Simply increasing the money supply without understanding where we are in the energy story is an incredibly risky, if not foolish, thing to do.
That's the trouble with money.
Change Is Coming
Look, I hate to be the bearer of what many will consider to be bad news, but things are not ever going to go back to "normal" if we define normal as the period from 1950 to 2000 during which relatively constant economic growth and slightly-faster-than-that debt growth went hand in hand.
Everyone currently in a position of power honed their skill sets during a period of time when the pie was reliably growing and the skirmishes centered around how best to lay claim to one's own portion of the expansion.
Unfortunately for those with these skill sets, we have entered a brand new epoch, where, for a variety of inter-related reasons, old-style economic growth is no longer possible. These reasons are partly demographic, partly related to reaching the mathematical limit of growing one's debts faster than one's income (or GDP, in this story), and partly related to the end of cheap (and easy) oil.
It is this last part, the oil story, which has almost entirely eluded the intellectual grasp of our monetary and fiscal masters. I don't blame them, as mastery of the physical sciences is not a requirement of any classical economics departments in any of the universities that churn out our PhD economists.
This is very strange, when you think about it, because economics is entirely rooted in the process of extracting and converting natural wealth into material wealth. Without the primary inputs of the earth, there would be NO secondary or tertiary wealth for us to divvy up (via a money-driven rationing process) or develop exotic derivative products around. Economics should be the study of energy and resource flows as well as money.
Imagine if medical scientists did not have to learn about digestion and nutrition as a part of their training. After such a course of study, they might come across an emaciated patient complaining of low energy and prescribe exercise because that's been proven to boost energy in most people. Of course, they would then be mystified by why the patient deteriorated and did not recover.
Today we find the world's central banks mystified as to why trillions and trillions of freshly-printed fiat units, be they dollars or euros or yen, are not resuscitating the world economic system. The answer might just be grounded in the observation that we are out of cheap and easy oil. The very food of the economy is no longer as packed with calories as it once was, and the patient is losing weight.
What I am describing here is nothing less than a complete and utter paradigm shift that is so profound and so large that it will, paradoxically, escape detection by most people. That's just how gigantic shifts seem to happen: They go largely unnoticed, perhaps because they are too big to internalize.
If an ever-decreasing net energy return is slowly starving our patient, which we might detect each and every time we spend $80 to $200 to fill our gas tanks (depending on whether we live in the US or Europe), then how should we position ourselves for this very different future?
What sorts of things will change whether we wish them to or not? And what is actually under our personal control?
Everyone currently in a position of power honed their skill sets during a period of time when the pie was reliably growing and the skirmishes centered around how best to lay claim to one's own portion of the expansion.
Unfortunately for those with these skill sets, we have entered a brand new epoch, where, for a variety of inter-related reasons, old-style economic growth is no longer possible. These reasons are partly demographic, partly related to reaching the mathematical limit of growing one's debts faster than one's income (or GDP, in this story), and partly related to the end of cheap (and easy) oil.
It is this last part, the oil story, which has almost entirely eluded the intellectual grasp of our monetary and fiscal masters. I don't blame them, as mastery of the physical sciences is not a requirement of any classical economics departments in any of the universities that churn out our PhD economists.
This is very strange, when you think about it, because economics is entirely rooted in the process of extracting and converting natural wealth into material wealth. Without the primary inputs of the earth, there would be NO secondary or tertiary wealth for us to divvy up (via a money-driven rationing process) or develop exotic derivative products around. Economics should be the study of energy and resource flows as well as money.
Imagine if medical scientists did not have to learn about digestion and nutrition as a part of their training. After such a course of study, they might come across an emaciated patient complaining of low energy and prescribe exercise because that's been proven to boost energy in most people. Of course, they would then be mystified by why the patient deteriorated and did not recover.
Today we find the world's central banks mystified as to why trillions and trillions of freshly-printed fiat units, be they dollars or euros or yen, are not resuscitating the world economic system. The answer might just be grounded in the observation that we are out of cheap and easy oil. The very food of the economy is no longer as packed with calories as it once was, and the patient is losing weight.
What I am describing here is nothing less than a complete and utter paradigm shift that is so profound and so large that it will, paradoxically, escape detection by most people. That's just how gigantic shifts seem to happen: They go largely unnoticed, perhaps because they are too big to internalize.
If an ever-decreasing net energy return is slowly starving our patient, which we might detect each and every time we spend $80 to $200 to fill our gas tanks (depending on whether we live in the US or Europe), then how should we position ourselves for this very different future?
What sorts of things will change whether we wish them to or not? And what is actually under our personal control?
A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Times of great upheaval offer a gift -- the chance to really sit down and rethink things. Certain fundamental questions can arise, such as Do I have the right job? and What should my kids study in college? and Should we really have increased total derivatives by $100 trillion after the financial crisis erupted in 2008?
When faced with the sort of predicament we currently find ourselves in, even more existential questions might dominate our thinking, such as Is there more to life than working hard, buying stuff, taking on debt, and getting older? or even What's the meaning of life? The primary narrative telling us that we are supposed to work hard, consume harder, and keep ourselves centered on the treadmill that we seem to have been born upon is beginning to unravel.
It's a mark of maturity to use a moment of crisis as an opportunity to engage in introspection and as a springboard for personal (or societal) growth and development. Unfortunately, there are virtually no signs that either our dominant culture or our leadership is that mature.
So our opportunity here is to really question ourselves and our actions, hold them up to the bright light of day, and decide what needs to change, what we should keep, and what new things we might start doing.
In Part II: True Prosperity, we explore what constitutes real wealth, both material and intangible, as well as what alternative aspirations we can consider as individuals and as a society if we find the courage to change (or at least step out of) our broken narrative .
With the certain change discussed above headed our way, how do you personally want to enter that future? What will your work be? What will your relationship be to those around you and the place where you live? Where will your happiness come from?
Is your strategy simply to do more of the same and hope for the best? Or do you plan to use the time we still have to reposition your priorities, your behavior, and your resources to meet that new future with as much resiliency as possible?
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The Empathic Civilization: The Race To Global Consciousness In A World In Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin
I spotted this book out of the corner of my eye the other day in the library and checked it out, its ideas are vaguely familiar.....
A brief excerpt (if there are errors it is because as with Lewis Mumford's work I had to reproduce this manually, by hand):
This book presents a new interpretation of the history of civilization by looking at the empathic evolution of the human race and the profound ways it has shaped our development and will likely decide our fate as a species.
A radical new view of human nature is emerging in the biological and cognitive sciences and creating controversy in intellectual circles, the business community, and government. Recent discoveries in brain science and child development are forcing us to rethink the long-held belief that human beings are, by nature, aggressive, materialistic, utilitarian, and self-interested. The dawning realization that we are a fundamentally empathic species has profound and far-reaching consequences for society.
These new understandings of human nature open the door to a never-before-told journey. The pages that follow reveal the dramatic story of the development of human empathy from the rise of the great theological civilizations, to the ideological age that dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth, the psychological era that characterized much of the twentieth century, and the emerging dramaturgical period of the twenty-first century.
Viewing economic history from an empathic lens allows us to uncover rich new strands of the human narrative that lay previously hidden. The result is a new social tapestry -The Empathic Civilization- woven from a wide range of fields, including literature and the arts, theology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology, and communications theory.
At the very core of the human story is the paradoxical relationship between empathy and entropy. Throughout history new energy regimes have converged with new communication revolutions, creating ever more complex societies. More technologically advanced civilizations, in turn, have brought diverse people together, heightened empathic sensitivity, and expanded human consciousness. But these increasingly more complicated milieus require more extensive energy use and speed us toward resource depletion.
The irony is that our growing empathic awareness has been made possible by an ever-greater consumption of the Earth's energy and other resources, resulting in a dramatic deterioration of the health of the planet.
We now face the haunting prospect of approaching global empathy in a highly energy-intensive, interconnected world, riding on the back of an escalating entropy bill that now threatens catastrophic climate change and our very existence. Resolving the empathy/entropy paradox will likely be the critical test of our species' ability to survive and flourish on Earth in the future. This will necessitate a fundamental rethinking of our philosophical, economic, and social models.
Toward this end, the book begins with an analysis of the empathy/entropy conundrum and the central role this unlikely dynamic has played in determining the direction of human history . Part I is given over to an examination of the new view of human nature that is emerging in the natural and social sciences and the humanities, with the discovery of Homo Empathicus. Part II is devoted to exploring the empathic surges and the great transformations in consciousness that have accompanied each more complex energy-consuming civilization, with the aim of providing a new rendering of human history and the meaning of human existence. Part III reports on the current race to global peak empathy against the backdrop of an ever-quickening entropic destruction of the the Earth's biosphere. Finally, we turn out attention to the fledgling Third Industrial Revolution that is ushering in a new era of "distributed capitalism" and the beginning of biosphere consciousness. We are on the cusp, I believe, of an epic shift into a "climax" global economy and a fundamental repositioning of human life on the planet.
The most important question facing humanity is this: Can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the Earth?
A brief excerpt (if there are errors it is because as with Lewis Mumford's work I had to reproduce this manually, by hand):
Introduction
This book presents a new interpretation of the history of civilization by looking at the empathic evolution of the human race and the profound ways it has shaped our development and will likely decide our fate as a species.
A radical new view of human nature is emerging in the biological and cognitive sciences and creating controversy in intellectual circles, the business community, and government. Recent discoveries in brain science and child development are forcing us to rethink the long-held belief that human beings are, by nature, aggressive, materialistic, utilitarian, and self-interested. The dawning realization that we are a fundamentally empathic species has profound and far-reaching consequences for society.
These new understandings of human nature open the door to a never-before-told journey. The pages that follow reveal the dramatic story of the development of human empathy from the rise of the great theological civilizations, to the ideological age that dominated the eighteenth and nineteenth, the psychological era that characterized much of the twentieth century, and the emerging dramaturgical period of the twenty-first century.
Viewing economic history from an empathic lens allows us to uncover rich new strands of the human narrative that lay previously hidden. The result is a new social tapestry -The Empathic Civilization- woven from a wide range of fields, including literature and the arts, theology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology, and communications theory.
At the very core of the human story is the paradoxical relationship between empathy and entropy. Throughout history new energy regimes have converged with new communication revolutions, creating ever more complex societies. More technologically advanced civilizations, in turn, have brought diverse people together, heightened empathic sensitivity, and expanded human consciousness. But these increasingly more complicated milieus require more extensive energy use and speed us toward resource depletion.
The irony is that our growing empathic awareness has been made possible by an ever-greater consumption of the Earth's energy and other resources, resulting in a dramatic deterioration of the health of the planet.
We now face the haunting prospect of approaching global empathy in a highly energy-intensive, interconnected world, riding on the back of an escalating entropy bill that now threatens catastrophic climate change and our very existence. Resolving the empathy/entropy paradox will likely be the critical test of our species' ability to survive and flourish on Earth in the future. This will necessitate a fundamental rethinking of our philosophical, economic, and social models.
Toward this end, the book begins with an analysis of the empathy/entropy conundrum and the central role this unlikely dynamic has played in determining the direction of human history . Part I is given over to an examination of the new view of human nature that is emerging in the natural and social sciences and the humanities, with the discovery of Homo Empathicus. Part II is devoted to exploring the empathic surges and the great transformations in consciousness that have accompanied each more complex energy-consuming civilization, with the aim of providing a new rendering of human history and the meaning of human existence. Part III reports on the current race to global peak empathy against the backdrop of an ever-quickening entropic destruction of the the Earth's biosphere. Finally, we turn out attention to the fledgling Third Industrial Revolution that is ushering in a new era of "distributed capitalism" and the beginning of biosphere consciousness. We are on the cusp, I believe, of an epic shift into a "climax" global economy and a fundamental repositioning of human life on the planet.
The most important question facing humanity is this: Can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the Earth?
ONE
The Hidden Paradox of Human History
The evening of December 24, 1914, Flanders. The first world war in history was entering into its fifth month. Millions of soldiers were bedded down in makeshift trenches latticed across the European countryside. In many places the opposing armies were dug in within thirty to fifty yards of each other and within shouting distance. The conditions were hellish. The bitter-cold winter air chilled to the bone. The trenches were waterlogged. Soldiers shared their quarters with rats and vermin. Lacking adequate latrines, the stench of human excrement was everywhere. The men slept upright to avoid the muck and sludge of their makeshift arrangements. Dead soldiers littered the non-man's-land between opposing forces, the bodies left to rot and decompose within yard of their still-living comrades who were unable to collect them for burial.
As dusk fell over the battlefields, something extraordinary happened. The Germans began lighting candles on the thousands of small Christmas trees that had been sent to the front to lend some comfort to the men. The German soldiers then began to sing Christmas carols - first "Silent Night", then a stream of other songs followed. The English soldiers were stunned. One soldier, gazing in disbelief at the enemy lines, said the blazed trenches looked "like the footlights of a theater."The English soldiers responded with applause, at first tentatively, then with exuberance. They began to sing Christmas carols back to their German foes to equally robust applause.
A few men from both sides crawled out of their trenches and began to walk the no-man's-land toward each other. Soon hundreds followed. As word spread across the front, thousands of men poured out of their trenches. They shook hands, exchanged cigarettes and cakes and showed photos of their families. They talked about where they hailed from, reminisced about Christmases past, and joked about the absurdity of war.
The next morning, as the Christmas sun rose over the battlefield of Europe, tens of thousands of men -some estimates put the number as high as 100,000 soldiers- talked quietly with one another. Enemies just twenty-four hours earlier, they found themselves helping each other bury their dead comrades. More than a few pickup soccer matches were reported. Even officers at the front participated, although when the news filtered back to the high command in the rear, the generals took a less enthusiastic view of the affair. Worried that the truce might undermine military morale, the generals quickly took measures to rein in their troops.
The surreal "Christmas truce" ended as abruptly as it began -all in all, a small blip in a war that would end in November 1918 with 8.5 million military deaths in the greatest episode of human carnage in the annals of history until that time. For a few short hours, no more than a day, tens of thousands of human beings broke ranks, not only from their commands but from their allegiances to country, to show their common humanity. Thrown together to maim and kill, they courageously stepped outside of their institutional duties to commiserate with on another and celebrate each other's lives.
While the battlefield is supposed to be a place where heroism is measured in one's willingness to kill and die for a noble cause that transcends one's everyday life, these men chose a different type of courage. They reached out to each other's very private suffering and sought solace in each other's plight. Walking across no-man's-land, they found themselves in one another. The strength to comfort each other flowed from a deep unspoken sense of their individual vulnerability and their unrequited desire for the companionship of their fellows.
It was, without reserve, a very human moment. Still, it was reported as a strange lapse at the time. A century later, we commemorate the episode as a nostalgic interlude in a world we have come to define in very different terms.
For nearly seventeen hundred years in the West, we were led to believe that human beings are sinners in a fallen world. If we were to hope for a respite, we would have to settle for salvation in the next world. At the cusp of the modern era, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes quipped that "the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." His only answer to the nightmare of human existence was to call for the tight hand of government authority to keep people from killing each other in a war of "each against all".
Enlightenment philosophers tempered by Hobbes's less-than-kind view of the human condition with a number of new narratives to explain human nature. John Locke, the English Philosopher, argued that human beings are born tabula rasa -our minds are a blank slate- and then molded by society. But to what end? Here Locke compromised his blank slate theory just enough to suggest that we come into life with a predisposition. We are, he proclaimed, an acquisitive animal by nature. We use our hands and tools to expropriate nature's resources, transforming the Earth's vast wasteland into productive property. To be productive, declared Locke, is a man's ultimate mission, the reason for his very existence on Earth. He wrote,
Land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called as indeed it is, waste.... Let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in common, without any husbandry upon it, and he will find, that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value.
Locke believed that "the negation of nature is the way toward happiness."
A century later, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham qualified the idea of happiness by suggesting that the universal human condition boiled down to the avoidance of pain and the optimizing pleasure. His utilitarian spin was later sexualized by Sigmund Feud at the turn of the twentieth century in the form of the pleasure principle. Each newborn, Freud reasoned, is predisposed to seek pleasure, and by this he meant eroticized pleasure. The mother's breast is more than a mere source of nourishment -it is also a source of sexual gratification that serves the infant's insatiable libido.
Yet what transpired on the battlefields of Flanders on Christmas Eve 1914 between thousands of young men had nothing to do with original sin or productive labor. And the pleasure those men sough in each other's company bore little resemblance to the superficial rendering of pleasure offered up by nineteenth-century utilitarians and even less to Freud's rather pathological account of a human race preoccupied by the erotic impulse.
The men at Flanders expressed a far deeper human sensibility -one that emanates from the very marrow of human existence and that transcends the portals of time and exigencies of whatever contemporary orthodoxy happens to rule. We need only ask ourselves why we feel so heartened at what these men did. They chose to be human. And the central human quality they expressed was empathy for one another.
Empathic distress is as old as our species and is traceable far back into our ancestral past, to our link with our primate relatives and, before them, our mammalian ancestors. It is only very recently, however, that biologists and cognitive scientists have begun to discover primitive behavioral manifestations of empathy throughout the mammalian kingdom, among animals that nurture their young. They report that primates, and especially humans, with our more developed neocortex, are particularly wired for empathy.
Without a well-developed concept of self-hood, however, mature empathic expression would be impossible. Child development researchers have long noted that infants as young as one or two days old are able to identify the cries of other newborns and will cry in return, in what is called a rudimentary empathetic distress. That's because the empathic predisposition is embedded into our biology. But the real sense of empathic extension doesn't begin to appear until the age of eighteen months to two and a half years, when the infant begins to develop a sense of self and other. In other words, it is only when the infant is able to understand that someone else exists as a separate being from himself that he is able to experience the other's condition as if it were his own and respond with the appropriate comfort.
In studies, two-year-old children will often wince in discomfort at the sight of another child's suffering and come over to him to share a toy, or cuddle, or bring him over to their own mother for assistance. The extent to which empathetic consciousness develops, broadens, and deepens during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, depends on early parenting behavior -which psychologists call attachment- as well as the values and worldview of the culture one is embedded in and the potential exposure to others.
The Human Story That's Never Been Told
It has become fashionable in recent times to question the notion that there may be an underlying meaning to the human saga that permeates and transcends all of the various cultural narratives that make up the diverse history of our species and that provides the social glue of each of our odysseys. Such thoughts would most likely elicit a collective grimace from many postmodern scholars. The evidence suggest, however, that there may be an overarching them to the human journey.
Our official chroniclers -the historians- have given short shrift to empathy as a driving force in the unfolding of human history. Historians, by and large, write about social conflict and wars, great heroes and evil wrongdoers, technological progress and the exercise of power, economic injustices and the redress of social grievances. When historians touch on philosophy, it is usually in relationship to the disposition of power. Rarely do we hear of the other side of the human experience that speaks to our deeply social nature and the evolution and extension of human affection and its impact on culture and society.
The German philosopher George Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel once remarked that happiness is "the blank pages of history" because they are "periods of harmony." Happy people generally live out their existence in the "microworld" of close familial relations and extended social affiliations.
History, on the other hand, is more often than not made by the disgruntled and discontented, the angry and the rebellious -those interested in exercising authority and exploiting others and their victims, interested in righting wrongs and restoring justice. By this reckoning, much of the history that is written is about the pathology of power.
Perhaps that is why, when we come to think about human nature, we have such a bleak analysis. Our collective memory is measured in terms of crises and calamities, harrowing injustices, and terrifying episodes of brutality inflicted on each other and our fellow creatures. But if these were the defining elements of human experience, we would have perished as a species long ago.
All of which raises the question "Why have we come to think of life in such dire terms?" The answer is that tales of misdeeds and woe surprise us. They are unexpected and, therefore, trigger alarm and heighten our interest. That is because such events are novel and not the norm, but they are newsworthy and for that reason they are the stuff of history.
The everyday world is quite different. Although life as it's lived on the ground, close to home, is peppered with suffering, stresses, injustices, and foul play, it is, for the most part, lived out in hundreds of small acts of kindness and generosity. Comfort and compassion between people creates goodwill, establishes the bonds of sociality, and gives joy to people's lives. Much of our daily interaction with our fellow human beings is empathic because that is our core nature. Empathy is the very means by which we create social life and advance civilization. In short, it is the extraordinary evolution of empathic consciousness that is the quintessential underlying story of human history, even if it has not been given the serious attention it deserves by our historians.
There is still another reason why empathy has yet to be seriously examined in all of its anthropological and historical detail. The difficulty lies in the evolutionary process itself. Empathic consciousness has grown slowly over the 175,000 years of human history. It has sometimes flourished, only to recede for long periods of time. Its progress has been irregular, but its trajectory is clear. Empathic development and the development of selfhood go hand in hand and accompany the increasingly complex energy consuming social structures that make up the human journey. (We will examine this relationship throughout the book.)
Because the development of selfhood is so completely intertwined with the development of empathich consciousness, the very term "empathy" didn't become part of the human vocabulary until 1909 -about the same time that modern psychology began to explore the internal dynamics of the unconscious and consciousness itself. In other words, it wasn't until human beings were developed enough in human selfhood that they could begin thinking about the nature of their innermost thoughts in relation to other people's innermost feelings and thoughts that they were able to recognize the existence of empathy, find the appropriate metaphors to discuss it, and probe the deep recesses of its multiple meanings.
We have to remember that as recently as six generations ago, our great-great-grandparents -living circa mid-to-late 1880s -were not encultured to think therapeutically. My own grandparents were unable to probe their feelings and thinking in order to analyze how their past emotional experiences and relationships affected their behavior toward others and their sense of self. They were untutored in the notion of unconscious drives and terms like transference and projection. Today, a hundred years after the coming of the age of psychology, young people are thoroughly immersed in therapeutic consciousness and comfortable with thinking about, getting in touch with and analyzing their own innermost feelings, emotions, and thoughts -as well as those of their fellows........
Monday, April 16, 2012
The Quantum Activist
Discussion/Commentary:
http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/must-see-videos/item/7459-the-quantum-activist
My response in particular:
# 2012-04-19 02:21
Great comments, I agree that the problem with positive psychology with such perverse mutations such as "The Secret" (you too can have a McMansion!, never mind the starving slaves in India and China) is that the Law of Attraction is accommodating not only your wishes and desires (I want a hamburger) but that of the whole (the cow wants to live in peace). The films succeeds in explicating this but some people still fail to see it and believe if only Humanity would form one giant chain around the world and sing Koombaya that all 9 billion of us (never-mind the 1 billion already starving as we speak) can "make-manifest" Big Macs. Gaia is a living organism, she and the rest of sentient life that comprise her have other plans.
More on my blog:
Highly Recommended Reading:
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza
A Modest Health Care Proposal, by Dmitry Orlov
Source: http://cluborlov.com/
Paul Scott Thomas
Edge of the World
The US Supreme Court has taken up the issue of so-called ObamaCare: the controversial plan to extend private health insurance to all citizens, with a stiff tax penalty for those who refuse to purchase private health insurance. I know something about it, since I live in Massachusetts, a state that adopted so-called RomneyCare, after Mitt Romney, who was our governor at the time, and is now running for president. ObamaCare is modeled on RomneyCare.
The Supreme Court wasted a day discussing whether the tax penalty is a tax or a penalty, a distinction that's relevant only in the context of some arcane law concerning the litigation of unjust taxes, but lost on everyone, because the penalty shows up on one's tax bill. This point was discussed ad nauseam, so I will not discuss it or any of the other issues relating to ObamaCare that everyone banters about endlessly. Instead, I will say what no-one is saying: Obamacare (and Romneycare) invalidates the notion of health insurance.
First, let's make sure that we are all clear on the concept of insurance. Insurance is generally taken to mean a promise to pay out a settlement (or coverage) in case of a certain event (fire, flood, sickness), in exchange for a recurring cost (premium) and, usually, a deductible (or self-insurance). Insurers weigh the risk of the event against the amount of the settlement. Thus, if the policy is against your spontaneous combustion, with a risk estimated as 1 chance in a billion per year, and you want to insure yourself for $1 billion, then your premium is $1 per year, plus whatever the insurance company wants to charge you for writing the policy. If, however, you are currently engulfed in flames, then the risk goes up to 100% and the premium would theoretically be $1 billion, same as the settlement, but no insurance company would ever write such a policy because the risk is too high.
Now, health insurance is a strange proposition to start with, because everyone dies, and nobody dies healthy, so most people require medical treatment at some point. (A few people spontaneously combust, I suppose. They are still none too healthy during the few seconds before they die, but that's not long enough for them to avail themselves of medical attention. But that's a very rare case.) The point is, if all houses burned down at some point, there would be no fire insurance, and if all houses flooded at some point, there would be no flood insurance. But everyone dies, and yet there is health insurance. How is that?
ObamaCare introduces the provision that health insurers are not allowed to decline insurance coverage to individuals with pre-existing health conditions. That is equivalent to mandating fire insurance for houses engulfed in flames, or flood insurance for houses slowly sinking while floating downstream. In return, insurance companies are assured that they will be able to spread the risk over the entire population, which will be coerced to purchase their product by being threatened with a stiff tax penalty.
Some coercion is certainly required for people to accept such a faulty product. My family's health insurance bill comes to nearly $15,000 a year, with a $2,500 a year deductible. That is, we have to consume more than $2,500 a year in health care before the insurance pays anything. If I am employed, then the employer has to pay 80% of the premium; if I become unemployed through no fault of my own, then the state picks up the 80% for a few months; after that, I have the option of paying even more for an individual insurance plan, or paying somewhat less for the tax penalty but then risk being bankrupted by a medical emergency.
Recently, I called my insurer to ask how much a certain elective procedure might cost. You see, under this system, the doctor bills the insurer, the ensurer “adjusts” the amount, and then I pay the adjusted amount. I wanted to know the adjusted price beforehand, but I was told that they do not give out this information. The adjustments are generated by an inscrutable computer program, which determines the numbers on the spur of the moment based on a set of formulas. Now, normally I don't do business with companies that refuse to quote a price before I place the order. That's where the tax penalty is most helpful to them: it leaves me no choice but do business with, and get robbed by, this company.
As Vladimir Nabokov once pointed out, nothing breaks the human spirit more effectively than consistent bad treatment. To this end, forcing everyone to navigate an infuriating bureaucratic maze with their very health held at ransom is quite an effective strategy. Another is to force everyone to abide a blatant falsehood, such as calling health insurance “insurance” (now preferring, I notice, the more abstract word “coverage”) whereas it is definitely not insurance at all but a tax. Yet another is to force people to make false choices, such as between Romney, author of RomneyCare, and Obama, author of ObamaCare, which are very similar. At this point, the American spirit seems very well broken, along with the economy and the political system, and I do not advise you to squander your precious energies in trying to fix the latter two. I do, however, recommend that you mend your spirit, and stop thinking it necessary to abide a falsehood: health insurance is not insurance.
What is it then? “Insurance” that everybody is forced to buy as a legal precondition of citizenship? Where the risk pool includes the entire country? Where compliance is enforced by a federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service? (But where, if one does comply, the money goes to private entities, to pay other private entities.) What is that? Why, of course, it's a private tax collection service! Under ObamaCare, medical insurance companies become private tax collectors. Now, private tax collectors are not unprecedented in the annals of empire. The Roman senate bid tax collection contracts out to publicans, with mixed results: farmers often opted to abandon their land rather than farm it and have the grain confiscated to pay taxes. But ObamaCare takes private tax collection one step further: under it, the tax collectors not only collect the taxes, but also set the level of taxation as they see fit. That is, the medical “insurance” companies are allowed determine the “health tax.”
What makes this complex scheme of private tax collection so necessary? Its benefits include maximizing health industry profits, which can be recycled as electoral campaign contributions to elected officials who then protect the prerogatives of the health industry, keeping this private tax collection scheme running smoothly. But none of these benefits have much to do with keeping the population healthy. On the other hand, it creates a massive perverse incentive to maximize health care costs, while at the same time institutionalizing a private system of public robbery.
I therefore propose that the health tax be collected
directly by the Internal Revenue Service.
Furthermore, in absence of any competent agency within the US that could be charged with administering a public health care system, I propose that health care be directly funded by the Internal Revenue Service as well, as part of an integrated strategy for maximizing tax revenue: the “Keep American Taxpayer Healthy” plan.
The unambiguous mandate of the IRS is to maximize tax revenues. This it will do by making sure that taxpayers are healthy, so that they can earn the maximum of income and pay the maximum of income tax. It will make it a priority to provide good health care to all children, who are IRS's “seed stock”—the taxpayers of the future. It will also make sure that the health needs of the working-age population are attended to, to make sure that they continue to work, earn, and pay taxes. It will also provide palliative care to the retirees, to keep up the morale, but certainly nothing as lavish as what is available to them now. Since their tax-paying potential is negligible, keeping them alive as long as possible is not a priority from a tax revenue maximization perspective.
Not being specialists in the medical field, but realizing that basic and preventive care have the highest health care ROI and specialist care the lowest, the IRS would probably want to dramatically simplify health care delivery. Huge hospitals and medical centers, with their teams of specialists, support staff, swarms of administrators, billing departments, medical labs, intensive care units and MRI machines, are too complex for the IRS to even audit, never mind administer effectively. It is far simpler to establish neighborhood clinics, and to provide them with a fixed fee per patient per year, to spend in line with the overall mandate.
Provisions would be made for some number of specialists, probably shared between clinics, but with the understanding that, from a tax revenue perspective, specialist care reaches diminishing returns rather quickly. For instance, a triple coronary bypass is hard to justify financially, because the patient's earning potential, even after a full recovery, usually does not cover the cost of the operation.
Also, the IRS might consider actually denying health care to rich people (those with net worth over $5 million) in order for the treasury to reap the windfall from estate taxes when they die. Such people (Mitt Romney is a good example) rarely pay their fair share of tax in any case, being able to hire accountants and lawyers, who exploit every possible loophole. And so, there shouldn't be any free heart transplants for Dick or free brain transplants for George.
Having the health care system administered by the Internal Revenue Service may seem rather inhumane to you. However, I hope I have succeeded in pointing out that doing so would still work better than ObamaCare. This health care system is so bad that improving it is not any sort of challenge at all: I submit to you that even the IRS would do a better job of it.
The Supreme Court wasted a day discussing whether the tax penalty is a tax or a penalty, a distinction that's relevant only in the context of some arcane law concerning the litigation of unjust taxes, but lost on everyone, because the penalty shows up on one's tax bill. This point was discussed ad nauseam, so I will not discuss it or any of the other issues relating to ObamaCare that everyone banters about endlessly. Instead, I will say what no-one is saying: Obamacare (and Romneycare) invalidates the notion of health insurance.
First, let's make sure that we are all clear on the concept of insurance. Insurance is generally taken to mean a promise to pay out a settlement (or coverage) in case of a certain event (fire, flood, sickness), in exchange for a recurring cost (premium) and, usually, a deductible (or self-insurance). Insurers weigh the risk of the event against the amount of the settlement. Thus, if the policy is against your spontaneous combustion, with a risk estimated as 1 chance in a billion per year, and you want to insure yourself for $1 billion, then your premium is $1 per year, plus whatever the insurance company wants to charge you for writing the policy. If, however, you are currently engulfed in flames, then the risk goes up to 100% and the premium would theoretically be $1 billion, same as the settlement, but no insurance company would ever write such a policy because the risk is too high.
Now, health insurance is a strange proposition to start with, because everyone dies, and nobody dies healthy, so most people require medical treatment at some point. (A few people spontaneously combust, I suppose. They are still none too healthy during the few seconds before they die, but that's not long enough for them to avail themselves of medical attention. But that's a very rare case.) The point is, if all houses burned down at some point, there would be no fire insurance, and if all houses flooded at some point, there would be no flood insurance. But everyone dies, and yet there is health insurance. How is that?
ObamaCare introduces the provision that health insurers are not allowed to decline insurance coverage to individuals with pre-existing health conditions. That is equivalent to mandating fire insurance for houses engulfed in flames, or flood insurance for houses slowly sinking while floating downstream. In return, insurance companies are assured that they will be able to spread the risk over the entire population, which will be coerced to purchase their product by being threatened with a stiff tax penalty.
Some coercion is certainly required for people to accept such a faulty product. My family's health insurance bill comes to nearly $15,000 a year, with a $2,500 a year deductible. That is, we have to consume more than $2,500 a year in health care before the insurance pays anything. If I am employed, then the employer has to pay 80% of the premium; if I become unemployed through no fault of my own, then the state picks up the 80% for a few months; after that, I have the option of paying even more for an individual insurance plan, or paying somewhat less for the tax penalty but then risk being bankrupted by a medical emergency.
Recently, I called my insurer to ask how much a certain elective procedure might cost. You see, under this system, the doctor bills the insurer, the ensurer “adjusts” the amount, and then I pay the adjusted amount. I wanted to know the adjusted price beforehand, but I was told that they do not give out this information. The adjustments are generated by an inscrutable computer program, which determines the numbers on the spur of the moment based on a set of formulas. Now, normally I don't do business with companies that refuse to quote a price before I place the order. That's where the tax penalty is most helpful to them: it leaves me no choice but do business with, and get robbed by, this company.
As Vladimir Nabokov once pointed out, nothing breaks the human spirit more effectively than consistent bad treatment. To this end, forcing everyone to navigate an infuriating bureaucratic maze with their very health held at ransom is quite an effective strategy. Another is to force everyone to abide a blatant falsehood, such as calling health insurance “insurance” (now preferring, I notice, the more abstract word “coverage”) whereas it is definitely not insurance at all but a tax. Yet another is to force people to make false choices, such as between Romney, author of RomneyCare, and Obama, author of ObamaCare, which are very similar. At this point, the American spirit seems very well broken, along with the economy and the political system, and I do not advise you to squander your precious energies in trying to fix the latter two. I do, however, recommend that you mend your spirit, and stop thinking it necessary to abide a falsehood: health insurance is not insurance.
What is it then? “Insurance” that everybody is forced to buy as a legal precondition of citizenship? Where the risk pool includes the entire country? Where compliance is enforced by a federal agency, the Internal Revenue Service? (But where, if one does comply, the money goes to private entities, to pay other private entities.) What is that? Why, of course, it's a private tax collection service! Under ObamaCare, medical insurance companies become private tax collectors. Now, private tax collectors are not unprecedented in the annals of empire. The Roman senate bid tax collection contracts out to publicans, with mixed results: farmers often opted to abandon their land rather than farm it and have the grain confiscated to pay taxes. But ObamaCare takes private tax collection one step further: under it, the tax collectors not only collect the taxes, but also set the level of taxation as they see fit. That is, the medical “insurance” companies are allowed determine the “health tax.”
What makes this complex scheme of private tax collection so necessary? Its benefits include maximizing health industry profits, which can be recycled as electoral campaign contributions to elected officials who then protect the prerogatives of the health industry, keeping this private tax collection scheme running smoothly. But none of these benefits have much to do with keeping the population healthy. On the other hand, it creates a massive perverse incentive to maximize health care costs, while at the same time institutionalizing a private system of public robbery.
I therefore propose that the health tax be collected
directly by the Internal Revenue Service.
Furthermore, in absence of any competent agency within the US that could be charged with administering a public health care system, I propose that health care be directly funded by the Internal Revenue Service as well, as part of an integrated strategy for maximizing tax revenue: the “Keep American Taxpayer Healthy” plan.
The unambiguous mandate of the IRS is to maximize tax revenues. This it will do by making sure that taxpayers are healthy, so that they can earn the maximum of income and pay the maximum of income tax. It will make it a priority to provide good health care to all children, who are IRS's “seed stock”—the taxpayers of the future. It will also make sure that the health needs of the working-age population are attended to, to make sure that they continue to work, earn, and pay taxes. It will also provide palliative care to the retirees, to keep up the morale, but certainly nothing as lavish as what is available to them now. Since their tax-paying potential is negligible, keeping them alive as long as possible is not a priority from a tax revenue maximization perspective.
Not being specialists in the medical field, but realizing that basic and preventive care have the highest health care ROI and specialist care the lowest, the IRS would probably want to dramatically simplify health care delivery. Huge hospitals and medical centers, with their teams of specialists, support staff, swarms of administrators, billing departments, medical labs, intensive care units and MRI machines, are too complex for the IRS to even audit, never mind administer effectively. It is far simpler to establish neighborhood clinics, and to provide them with a fixed fee per patient per year, to spend in line with the overall mandate.
Provisions would be made for some number of specialists, probably shared between clinics, but with the understanding that, from a tax revenue perspective, specialist care reaches diminishing returns rather quickly. For instance, a triple coronary bypass is hard to justify financially, because the patient's earning potential, even after a full recovery, usually does not cover the cost of the operation.
Also, the IRS might consider actually denying health care to rich people (those with net worth over $5 million) in order for the treasury to reap the windfall from estate taxes when they die. Such people (Mitt Romney is a good example) rarely pay their fair share of tax in any case, being able to hire accountants and lawyers, who exploit every possible loophole. And so, there shouldn't be any free heart transplants for Dick or free brain transplants for George.
Having the health care system administered by the Internal Revenue Service may seem rather inhumane to you. However, I hope I have succeeded in pointing out that doing so would still work better than ObamaCare. This health care system is so bad that improving it is not any sort of challenge at all: I submit to you that even the IRS would do a better job of it.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Strange Jubilee, by James Howard Kunstler
source: http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/04/strange-jubilee-1.html
Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here's how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem - a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!
And then something truly marvelous will happen. They will at once disempower the swindling generation of their fathers, teachers, loan officers, and overlords and quite possibly bring on, at long last, the epochal collision of pervasive American control fraud with the hard hand of reality.
I think this will happen, and I would venture even to set the meme loose here and now and watch it go viral. The college loan racket has been an even more cynical enterprise than the mortgage racket was because so many people who ought to have known better, people of supposed intelligence such as college deans, cabinet secretaries, and think-tank Yodas, all colluded to support the false promise that the gigantic cargo cult of higher ed would keep churning out fresh careers forever - when the truth was that the entire groaning vessel of hopes and dreams was already under water and sinking into the eternal darkness.
And is there a Millennial so dim who believes that the promised package of lifetime goodies once called "a job with benefits" waits like a liveried servant to conduct them without friction through the ceremonies of career and family according to premises and promises of an obsolete American Dream? Dreams do die hard. As dreams go it was a pretty good one while it lasted, but like all dreams, it has vanished in the mists of a new morning leaving the dreamers half-sick, anxious, and drained. They have nothing to lose but their fears of the re-po man and the simulated dudgeon of telephone robot debt-collectors.
This idea should catch on as the election season heats up. Like the anti-war youth of August, 1968, burning their draft cards in the streets of Chicago, the Millennials should flock to Charlotte and Tampa this summer and fill the parking lots (there are no streets in these places) with the smoke of their burning loan contracts - and then proceed with the loud repudiation of party politics in its two current useless, lying, craven, feckless factions. The effrontery of these rogues, promising a hundred years of shale gas, and jobs, jobs, jobs, and a personal relationship with Jesus! Send them packing into the bowels of history, then go home and make it work locally, where it will have to happen in any case because the arc of events has a velocity of its own now and that is our certain destination.
The colleges themselves will, of course, implode shortly, along with everything else currently organized on the super-gigantic scale. They are no more prepared for what is about to happen to them than the chiselers in government, banking, medicine, and global corporate enterprise. We will wonder in retrospect how they ever managed to winkle 50-grand a year for their absurd promises, and how we permitted young people with undeveloped powers of judgment to sign their financial lives away on terms even more stringent than their parents' mortgages. When the universities do go down, tossing their employees overboard in the process, it will be interesting to see the former faculty chairpersons and distinguished professors of econometric modeling learn how to plant kale and care for chickens side-by-side with their formerly-indentured students. I can imagine a period of turmoil in America even harsher than, say, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China where officials, professors, and authorities of all kinds were paraded through the angry mobs wearing dunce caps. Weird things happen history.
The college loan money will not be paid back anyway, so Millennial youth ought to seize the golden opportunity to make the deliberate point that the years of swindling are officially over now. This strange jubilee could, and should, change everything.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
1945-1998 Visual History of Nuclear Testing
At this critical juncture we have two options:
The 6th Mass Extinction Event.
(r)Evolution of Consciousness.
In all probability it is too late to avert the 6th Mass Extinction Event now underway, but we can mitigate its worst effects and reduce the suffering it will entail and possibly survive and learn from our mistakes by collectively re-assessing the core myths of Technological Progress and Industrial Civilization.
If we do not alter our behavior our demise and undue suffering is most certain.
See also:
http://dieoff.org/
Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be … the past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for — a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. — Joseph A. Tainter
Japan Poisoning Other Countries By Burning Radioactive Debris
source: http://www.collapsenet.com/free-resources/collapsenet-public-access/news-alerts/item/7385-japan-is-poisoning-other-countries-by-burning-highly-radioactive-debris
"Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram...
"...Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has said that much lower levels of cesium - 5,000-8,000 bq/kg (20 times lower than what will be allowed to be burned at Fukushima) - would be sent to a special facility in the United States and buried underground for thousands of years. See this and this. It is comparable to the levels of radioactivity found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. See this andthis. And even the Japanese - who have raised acceptable levels of radiation to absurd levels - would normally demand that material with this radioactivity be encased in cement and buried:..."
-- Last September I started sounding alarms about plans to incinerate radioactive waste in my speech on September 11th in Portland, Oregon. Pressure brought by Collapsenet and echoed throughout other media outlets put pressure on Japanese officials and they stopped the incineration. But apparently after censorship the incineration is beginning again in earnest. Last September we discussed book-cooking tricks that allowed officials to burn highly contaminated waste concealed as below safe limits. Personally I believe there are no safe limits.
This is not honorable. This is a threat to all on this planet because the Jet Stream can carry the particles anywhere in the world. At particular risk is the west coast of the United States. Recently we posted alarming statistics showing that Southern California has been particularly hard hit by radiation already.
-- Fukushima is not a Japanese problem. It is a human problem. We, as a species, cannot allow the incineration, and we also cannot leave a broken, wounded and bankrupt Japan to deal with it alone. Because if we do, it will not be dealt with at all. -- MCR [Michael C. Ruppert]
Zerohedge article
"Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram...
"...Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has said that much lower levels of cesium - 5,000-8,000 bq/kg (20 times lower than what will be allowed to be burned at Fukushima) - would be sent to a special facility in the United States and buried underground for thousands of years. See this and this. It is comparable to the levels of radioactivity found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. See this andthis. And even the Japanese - who have raised acceptable levels of radiation to absurd levels - would normally demand that material with this radioactivity be encased in cement and buried:..."
-- Last September I started sounding alarms about plans to incinerate radioactive waste in my speech on September 11th in Portland, Oregon. Pressure brought by Collapsenet and echoed throughout other media outlets put pressure on Japanese officials and they stopped the incineration. But apparently after censorship the incineration is beginning again in earnest. Last September we discussed book-cooking tricks that allowed officials to burn highly contaminated waste concealed as below safe limits. Personally I believe there are no safe limits.
This is not honorable. This is a threat to all on this planet because the Jet Stream can carry the particles anywhere in the world. At particular risk is the west coast of the United States. Recently we posted alarming statistics showing that Southern California has been particularly hard hit by radiation already.
-- Fukushima is not a Japanese problem. It is a human problem. We, as a species, cannot allow the incineration, and we also cannot leave a broken, wounded and bankrupt Japan to deal with it alone. Because if we do, it will not be dealt with at all. -- MCR [Michael C. Ruppert]
Zerohedge article
And Now....U.S. Military Plans For Alien Invasion
Source: http://cryptogon.com/
Just as with the sinking of the U.S.S Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Reichstag Fire, and 9/11 this is the culmination of the Invoke External Threat strategy, this is how the "elites", the "1%", whatever you refer to "them" as are going to justify a truly draconian attack on what remains of freedom and liberty, under the guise of needing to globally unite in the face of an existential threat.
More on the Invoke External Threat method of social-manipulation and control here:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/end-of-america-naomi-wolf.html
For an honest exploration of our true relationship with extra-terrestrial life I cannot recommend the work of Dr. Steven M. Greer more highly:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/12/contact-and-disclosure-final-sequence.html
Just as with the sinking of the U.S.S Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Reichstag Fire, and 9/11 this is the culmination of the Invoke External Threat strategy, this is how the "elites", the "1%", whatever you refer to "them" as are going to justify a truly draconian attack on what remains of freedom and liberty, under the guise of needing to globally unite in the face of an existential threat.
More on the Invoke External Threat method of social-manipulation and control here:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2012/01/end-of-america-naomi-wolf.html
For an honest exploration of our true relationship with extra-terrestrial life I cannot recommend the work of Dr. Steven M. Greer more highly:
http://philosophersbunker.blogspot.com/2011/12/contact-and-disclosure-final-sequence.html
A Fog of Drugs and War
Source: http://cryptogon.com/
April 9th, 2012
April 9th, 2012
Via: Los Angeles Times:
More than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year took antidepressants, sedatives and other prescription medications. Some see a link to aberrant behavior.
…
More than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year took antidepressants, sedatives and other prescription medications. Some see a link to aberrant behavior.
…
In a small but growing number of cases across the nation, lawyers are blaming the U.S. military’s heavy use of psychotropic drugs for their clients’ aberrant behavior and related health problems. Such defenses have rarely gained traction in military or civilian courtrooms, but Burke’s case provides the first important indication that military psychiatrists and court-martial judges are not blind to what can happen when troops go to work medicated.
After two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year were taking prescribed antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed to The Times by the U.S. Army surgeon general. Nearly 8% of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and more than 6% is on antidepressants — an eightfold increase since 2005.
“We have never medicated our troops to the extent we are doing now…. And I don’t believe the current increase in suicides and homicides in the military is a coincidence,” said Bart Billings, a former military psychologist who hosts an annual conference on combat stress.
The pharmacy consultant for the Army surgeon general says the military’s use of the drugs is comparable to that in the civilian world. “It’s not that we’re using them more frequently or any differently,” said Col. Carol Labadie. “As with any medication, you have to look at weighing the risk versus the benefits of somebody going on a medication.”
After two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year were taking prescribed antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs, according to figures recently disclosed to The Times by the U.S. Army surgeon general. Nearly 8% of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and more than 6% is on antidepressants — an eightfold increase since 2005.
“We have never medicated our troops to the extent we are doing now…. And I don’t believe the current increase in suicides and homicides in the military is a coincidence,” said Bart Billings, a former military psychologist who hosts an annual conference on combat stress.
The pharmacy consultant for the Army surgeon general says the military’s use of the drugs is comparable to that in the civilian world. “It’s not that we’re using them more frequently or any differently,” said Col. Carol Labadie. “As with any medication, you have to look at weighing the risk versus the benefits of somebody going on a medication.”
Achim Steiner: 'We haven't even begun to understand the damage we are bringing to bear on the sustainability of our planet'
It's a question many people have probably asked themselves, seeing the ever-increasing environmental degradation around the world: why aren't we doing more to protect our planet? And it's not that easy to answer, as it seems such an obvious course of action, given the parlous state the Earth is in. But Achim Steiner has an answer of sorts. He thinks things are so bad that people can't quite grasp it.
He is worth listening to, because there are not many individuals who could be said to have a truly comprehensive overview of the state of the planet. This 50-year-old Brazilian-German is the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), the part of the UN family that deals with planetary ills, and he has spent a long career trying to help communities across the world to develop, without trashing their surroundings and their natural resources base. In other words, without screwing up their future.
Sustainable development, it is called. For more than 20 years it has been thought of as a great idea whose time has come. So why is so much of what is happening on every continent still clearly so unsustainable? "In a sense ... reality has overtaken our cognitive capacity," Mr Steiner says. "I mean the reality of it has overtaken our capacity to understand it, to understand quite what we are causing and unleashing, almost ... I think we have not even begun to understand how serious are the underlying trends that we have brought to bear on the sustainability of this planet.
"A classic illustration is the ... luxury of this continued debate about scientific uncertainty with climate change. If even 10 per cent of what the IPCC [the UN's Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change] said were to come true, it should actually make us sit up and say immediately, 'change course!'."
But we don't say that, Mr Steiner believes, because "there is an accelerating set of trends, from the atmosphere to the biosphere, to our ability to feed ourselves in a world which will soon have nine billion people, that gives us a sense of what will happen in the next 20, 30, 50 years, that we have simply not yet begun to appreciate".
He can see the trends, quite clearly, because it is his job to, and he talks about them vividly: agriculture which is no longer "a management of that one metre of arable land on which we depend for virtually everything that grows" but a process which "very often has become a mining operation"; oceans which have been overexploited to the point where "two-thirds or more of the fish stocks are either at maximum offtake or actually depleting"; carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere "to the point where we are actually fundamentally changing the climate prospects of our planet".
It is the fact that we have got our hands on everything, humans are grabbing everything, and we still do not realise the extent of our grab. In his words: "That notion, of realising that actually we as human beings have moved from somewhere in the food chain, to be right on top of it in planetary terms, is something we have not yet grasped.
"And partly it is a luxury, because it is much easier not accept that reality, because then you really have to take responsibility; and we are at the moment avoiding taking responsibility. Individually as much as collectively."
Yet Mr Steiner is no misanthropist; he is not one for scolding, like a hell-fire preacher; he does not think people are the problem. Just the opposite: he is a convinced humanist and has spent his life in development, focusing on the poorest countries and how they can grow their way out of poverty. The way forward is to combine economic growth with respect for the environment, in that powerful concept of sustainability. Yet it is not happening....
He is worth listening to, because there are not many individuals who could be said to have a truly comprehensive overview of the state of the planet. This 50-year-old Brazilian-German is the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), the part of the UN family that deals with planetary ills, and he has spent a long career trying to help communities across the world to develop, without trashing their surroundings and their natural resources base. In other words, without screwing up their future.
Sustainable development, it is called. For more than 20 years it has been thought of as a great idea whose time has come. So why is so much of what is happening on every continent still clearly so unsustainable? "In a sense ... reality has overtaken our cognitive capacity," Mr Steiner says. "I mean the reality of it has overtaken our capacity to understand it, to understand quite what we are causing and unleashing, almost ... I think we have not even begun to understand how serious are the underlying trends that we have brought to bear on the sustainability of this planet.
"A classic illustration is the ... luxury of this continued debate about scientific uncertainty with climate change. If even 10 per cent of what the IPCC [the UN's Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change] said were to come true, it should actually make us sit up and say immediately, 'change course!'."
But we don't say that, Mr Steiner believes, because "there is an accelerating set of trends, from the atmosphere to the biosphere, to our ability to feed ourselves in a world which will soon have nine billion people, that gives us a sense of what will happen in the next 20, 30, 50 years, that we have simply not yet begun to appreciate".
He can see the trends, quite clearly, because it is his job to, and he talks about them vividly: agriculture which is no longer "a management of that one metre of arable land on which we depend for virtually everything that grows" but a process which "very often has become a mining operation"; oceans which have been overexploited to the point where "two-thirds or more of the fish stocks are either at maximum offtake or actually depleting"; carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere "to the point where we are actually fundamentally changing the climate prospects of our planet".
It is the fact that we have got our hands on everything, humans are grabbing everything, and we still do not realise the extent of our grab. In his words: "That notion, of realising that actually we as human beings have moved from somewhere in the food chain, to be right on top of it in planetary terms, is something we have not yet grasped.
"And partly it is a luxury, because it is much easier not accept that reality, because then you really have to take responsibility; and we are at the moment avoiding taking responsibility. Individually as much as collectively."
Yet Mr Steiner is no misanthropist; he is not one for scolding, like a hell-fire preacher; he does not think people are the problem. Just the opposite: he is a convinced humanist and has spent his life in development, focusing on the poorest countries and how they can grow their way out of poverty. The way forward is to combine economic growth with respect for the environment, in that powerful concept of sustainability. Yet it is not happening....
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