Apr 302018
 
 April 30, 2018  Posted by at 12:40 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Gustav Klimt The Park 1909

 

 

Dr. D feels his own golden age coming on. It’s just a bit dark gold. Nothing a good polish can’t help, I’m sure. In the end, the spirit is familiar:

A man only begins to grasp the true meaning of life when he plants a tree under whose shade he knows he will never sit.

That is literally how he finishes this:

It’s going where it’s going, as I grow plants and make the bees happy, let the trees rest in the forests, as best I’m able when devoid of any help. They will survive. We are as perennial as grass, and will diminish someday. When we do, I will have left the trees, the seeds, the order, the patterns that will feed the generations that follow, as true men, not infants, should.

It’s spring.

 

 

Dr. D:

Ilargi —
 
Would rather work on a more positive article, something about life, nature, spring, gardens; however I find that they are so complicated as to be inexpressible.  So many, from Thoreau to Sand County Almanac spend entire books and barely scratch an overview of the complexity of nature.  It’s at once so obvious and, lacking personal experience, so inexplicable.  So I haven’t done that, but it’s been chilly and till the asparagus, start the plants (too early) and wait for the leaves.
 
Maybe it’s the case that once we understand how much there is, no thoughts can be put into a 1,000 word article.  Certainly that’s to the detriment of modern thinking and persuasion.  Maybe I just always use too many words to say things and draw in sidelines that are better neglected, however interesting and connected; for all things are really equally connected in mind just as in nature, and because of our linear minds we can’t look at them at once, but only one by one.
 
John Day is correct of the gestalt, however seldom that happens to humankind.  And what is it?  Does that not mean we partake of Jung’s mass consciousness, that we are in fact telepathic, like schools of fish and flocks of birds gyring in the sky?  The nation has gone insane, truly mad, I could not describe it to you.  80% of people believe whatever they think that minute is reality.  When CNN tells them the opposite of yesterday, or the beginning of the sentence is the opposite of the ending, it causes no distress. 

It’s truly Robespierre, cultural revolution, and it doesn’t end well, for the expression of all of it is Crowley’s “Do what thou will” with Ayn Rand’s “What’s best for me is best for all” so you have a system of plundering by power, whether by force or victimhood, where the reality – actually, earnestly, incontrovertibly believed – is whatever will get me the most in this moment.  Is it easier to fake medical paperwork, not check patients, and let them die rather than get out of a chair once an hour?  We do it. 

Call them on it and they’ll deny it, believing even to themselves.  Steal from your own work, your family, banish them on Facebook if they call you on it, then expect a minute later there should be no ill will, no consequences?  Certainly.  Look around and call on public opinion for the callous, selfish, murdering behavior, and 80% of them support you, they think it’s normal and fine, punishing the 20% who still have order, consequences, cause and effect, logos. 
 

 

I have no explanation for it, nor is there an end, but I greatly fear the only cure for it is for the good people to withdraw and leave the bad people starving in a ditch, their children and dogs included, for as adults, it is nearly impossible for them to change, and impossible for any good people to trust that change.  And how are you supposed to run a justice system, a society, in a world of truly pathological, lying, self-serving sociopaths?  How even will their children not end up the same, with only 20% left to throw a lifeline?  A lifeboat cannot save the ship, you know.  It can hardly save itself.
 
I was surprised at the comments today, for this open, transparent, appalling, illogical lies are still completely internalized, completely believed at the meta level.  Trump has an open war on the CIA and Deep State – I don’t know how it could possibly be more obvious or advertised – and any common level would tell you we have been antagonizing North Korea to justify keeping country-sized bases in Japan and SoKo because the men needed to contain China wouldn’t fit in Pearl Harbor and are too far away. And yet when Trump’s team openly undercuts the CIA and peace breaks out everywhere, it’s suddenly not him. 

It’s Kim Jong actually, I read yesterday, he beat the U.S., Trump lost (when Trump also wasn’t trying anything) and…I don’t know, NoKo is going to invade us and SoKo, after they nuke Miami and the moon with the CNN missiles that can hit anywhere on earth?  After Pompeo (and allegedly Trump) met with Kim Jong in the Forbidden City? Earlier, however, he WAS completely responsible for war and the 12M dead Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow longed for.  So let me translate: all bad things forever in time and space are Trump, all good things forever in time and space, not Trump.  And that’s logic now.
 
Maybe it’s inappropriate to give the Nobel to a man when it’s often a team, maybe we shouldn’t give prizes for doing a normal, decent thing and simply not killing each other, but that’s not the tradition.  Personally, I wouldn’t give it to him because in my estimation all he did was STOP the CIA from holding Kim and NoKo hostage to his own Deep State Generals.  Kim is a Swiss-raised trust fund playboy: he doesn’t want war unless forced to it.  I can’t give a medal for simply stopping a war that never should have existed, and one they even now lie about and won’t admit. 

 

But that’s not the point.  The point is, our own readers, who are very smart and should be more than up to speed, seem to completely fall for CNN, Brian Williams, and an endless list of exposed, transparent liars for 20+ years, instead of you, for example, who’s been calling it out and they read every day. My God, what will it take?  It’s disheartening.  I believe that is part of the same Jungean mass-mind they have somehow hacked and it’s a struggle for even smart people to break through.
 
So apparently Kanye, following Professor Griff and a wide number of other immediately ignored and sidelined black artists, has woken up before our own readers.  Not that Trump is great or anything, because he’s a jerk, but that they’ve arranged the same system from 100 years ago where darkie has to think and vote the way master says, or else.  That’s the worst system of slavery ever devised.  You think your color, vote your color, dress your color, watch your color, apply for jobs according to your color, and not your free thinking, your talents, your politics, your soul. 

Yet again, that’s normal: that’s not racism to tell groups how they better vote, yet it IS racism to tell them to think for themselves.  All overwhelmingly racist countries easily elect and accept Black Presidents with Muslim names, have black leaders in both parties, black billionaires, black megastars.  That’s how we know they’re racist, right?  Reality doesn’t matter, evidence doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter, it hasn’t mattered my whole life, it will never matter ever again.
 
It strikes me that although pretty poor, whose mascot should be the rhino, Republicans are the party AGAINST slavery, AGAINST the southern Democrats, born AGAINST the KKK, who have black cabinet members, black presidential candidates going back decades as still today. 

Doesn’t matter.  Doesn’t have the slightest effect.  Then they are so racist, so bigoted, that when any member of a subgroup, be they Kanye, Milo, Janda, Diamond and Silk should cross the aisle, they are easily welcomed as party members and people, as thinkers, and not as races, skin colors, or issues – no backlash, no contention in the party. Doesn’t matter.  Hasn’t mattered in 100 years, doesn’t matter now.  It’s truly astonishing.
 

 

Like I said, I once thought, “if only people knew”, if only there were events that would remove the mask of lies, corruption, and abuse, but there are dozens daily, and as Churchill said, they pick themselves up and brush it off, continuing with the lie, no matter how continually debunked, for example, daily for two hysterical years.
 
So what are we supposed to do when that lie — which everyone knows is a lie, but they lie and claim it’s not a lie — can get us into a war ending life on earth?  I do not know.  I say stop lying, as Trump plays along, for all the good that does us.  People tell the truth constantly: big, high-profile journalists, stars, senators…doesn’t have the slightest effect.  They’re still crazy, and the Assad-gassed-his-people-because-he-likes-to-lose-although-we-sniffed-the-backpack-and-door-handle-and-found-nothing are still credible and rational. 

Nor do I trust the gestalt.  They have a bad habit of going where they’re going, and when driven by what are essentially insane people have a bad habit of going astray, meeting their karma, with all the bad consequences therein.  I can’t stop that, but I am an American, and it’s my duty to survive this madness and this civil conflict as did my ancestors before me.  And I’m sure I will, or well enough.  Where would I go to escape this karma anyway?  Britain?  Belgium?  China?  I don’t think so. 
 
It’s going where it’s going, as I grow plants and make the bees happy, let the trees rest in the forests, as best I’m able when devoid of any help.  They will survive.  We are as perennial as grass, and will diminish someday.  When we do, I will have left the trees, the seeds, the order, the patterns that will feed the generations that follow, as true men, not infants, should.

 

 

Home Forums Let The Trees Rest In The Forests

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  • #40355

    Gustav Klimt The Park 1909     Dr. D feels his own golden age coming on. It’s just a bit dark gold. Nothing a good polish can’t help, I’m su
    [See the full post at: Let The Trees Rest In The Forests]

    #40356
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Hmmmm….

    #40358
    zerosum
    Participant

    My stomach is full.
    I am not hungry.
    I am worry free.
    Tomorrow, I will be able to feed myself.

    Therefore, I have the luxury of being able to contemplate your words/thoughts/presentation.

    “…grow plants and make the bees happy …”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_tower
    The term ivory tower, From the 19th century, it has been used to designate an environment of intellectual pursuit disconnected from the practical concerns of everyday life. In American English usage it is also used as shorthand for academia or the university.

    “A lifeboat cannot save the ship, you know. It can hardly save itself.”

    #40359
    SteveB
    Participant

    “What’s best for me is best for all.” In what context? In that of exchange-belief-based culture? Then, no, it’s not best for all. In life, as for all other species, without such a global dysfunctional belief? Then, yes (with some lingering caveats), because “Do what thou will” when thou can’t leverage the profit motive for oppression, exploitation, manipulation, and fear mongering.

    #40360
    MoFlora
    Participant

    Dr D
    I find it ironic that you write so eloquently about nature and then defend Trump. The current administration is pursuing environmental policies that only accelerate decline and extinction. Pure unapologetic greed.
    I plant hundreds of stems every year, as the trees native to this area die off from the effects of climate change. We try to keep up with accelerating phyto-migration and only fall further behind. Yet, we still plant. We still start tree seeds that (if they survive) won’t be mature for at least 100 years after I’m dead. We still bury tons of carbon.
    Our wild bird population is less than 20% of what it was only a few years ago. Monsanto and their death squads are winning. Hail Trump. Hail Pruitt. Hail Zinke.

    I am (thankfully) unfamiliar with any of the wealthy celebrities you mention. Frankly, they are not important. Elite Democrats are not important. Trump is merely a useful stooge. The insets, birds and trees are dying. THAT is important. I must go plant. Fode debimus.

    #40361
    zerosum
    Participant

    Radioactive glass project in the middle east

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass
    The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of glass are “silicate glasses” based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand.

    #40362
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_steal
    “Thou shalt not steal” is one of the Ten Commandments[1] of the Torah (and by extension the Old Testament), which are widely understood as moral imperatives by legal scholars, Jewish scholars, Catholic scholars, and Post-Reformation scholars.[2]

    … nuclear documentation on bomb making from Iran and prove that you did steal it on TV.

    #40363

    MoFlora,

    Yours is a contradiction in terms that’s not fair to Dr. D. If you ask me. Trump may have ‘extreme’ views on nature, but he had no influence at all on its decline prior to his presidency. Not signing Paris is a good idea for all the wrong reasons, because it’s a deal signed by a bunch of zillionaires looking to make money off of people’s fears.

    Trump is on the wrong side for sure, but that’s still the same side that Obama, Merkel, Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates and all of the other smooth talking liars are on. At least Trump’s not smooth. But that’s the only difference, really.

    #40364
    zerosum
    Participant

    Has the police been sent to arrest Netanyahu for stealing?
    Does everyone think that its okay to interfere in Iran?

    Yep!
    Yesterday is gone.

    #40371
    Chris M
    Participant

    Zerosum,

    It’s called a preemptive strike. It appears that my neighbor might be trying to kill me. I must destroy his weapons. If I kill him and his family in the process–oh well.

    #40382
    MoFlora
    Participant

    Ilargi

    Under the Trump administration environmental decline has accelerated. We see the effects every day. They are proud of it. We work with land management agencies whose personnel are in despair. This is worse than under Clinton, Bush or Obama. This is our work. We see this.

    This is not a question of who is”smooth”. This is not the Obama administration with different hair. The worst polluters have free reign now. They are Trump’s masters. This is far more important than what some rapper has to say about politics.
    Of course Trump had no great role in environmental decline before he took office. I did not say he did. However he is shooting to be the “greatest polluter ever”.

    I made no mention of the Paris Accord which I also consider to be a corporate/banker masturbatory elitist fantasy. And, I certainly am not defending Obama, Bush or any other shills of the elite.

    I always look forward to reading Dr D and I certainly meant no offense to him – and I don’t believe I was being unfair.

    You cover many topics that I do not feel qualified to comment on. The intensifying war on the environment is, however, a topic that I am surrounded by every day.

    Now I must go and try and do something about it – however small and insignificant my efforts may be.

    Keep up the good work.

    #40383
    Dr. D
    Participant

    You are so eloquently making my point for me, that we have reached a point of not thinking, of being triggered as we are trained. What part of “Trump is a jerk,” “I wouldn’t give [credit] to him,” “I can’t give a medal for stopping a war that never should have existed,” and “[Trump] even now lie[s] about” looks like defending Trump? Can you see that as a demonstration that if I don’t promote that “Trump is the sum total of all evil throughout time and space” that I must therefore be a Trump supporter and also by extension love everything he loves, promote everything he promotes? What man, what politician before was ever held to such standards? We could never vote for any — no not one, for none have been found righteous before our God of the Ideological Purity Test, yes?

    That is the definition of illogic, the false dichotomy of all-or-nothing thinking that pervades the world today, and yet half the nation has been conditioned to kill the other half over it. As all politicians are men, and all men have opinions, it is guaranteed that I disagree with every politician ever made whether I voted for him or not. If you’ve ever voted, you have made this compromise yourself. Yet this does not apply when you add the word “Trump” to the sentence, or “Putin” “Israel” or whatever the fashion; when the magic word is used, men are no longer equal, and due process does not apply. Surely we must change this habit or else you, there in your room, must kill me, here in my room, for the good of all humanity. Alternatively, we could just have different opinions, different perspectives on how to accomplish what are essentially very similar goals.

    We disagree with people at work, with the Unitarian Universalist Church (they’re not inclusive enough), and even with our children and the people we marry. Yet with this one guy, be it Trump or Hillary or whatever, if we agree with a single thing, we agree with all, and you can know that about me while I’m half-basting Trump as a pugnacious jerk who is lying to the public when we so desperately need truth. How did you come to say such a thing?

    The views on ecology are more complex as well, for have you seen any environmental policy difference between Democrats and Republicans over the last 50 years? If anything, the most signature legislation was by Teddy Roosevelt focusing national attention and creating national parks and Richard Nixon who put in the single – and perhaps only — real environmental law with the EPA and Endangered Species Act. Not ironically, they were Republicans, because so often history is written by “experts” who make things the opposite of what happened. There’s a lot of crossfire in the Kanye West (a wealthy rapper) dust up, where they are discussing how Republicans, who sacrificed 800,000 Americans to end slavery, also were the only reason Civil Rights were passed over the staunch objection of the likes of rumored KKK member Governor Thurmond and the Dixiecrats. And although real history is complicated, it doesn’t matter: no one remembers, no one cares. Today it’s canon, common knowledge, that this never happened. The Democratic Party, founded by slave owner Andrew Jackson, was never the party of the Jim Crow south for 100 postwar years. Never happened. The Republican Party, founded by Lincoln’s split against accepting legal slavery (complicated) and sacrificed 1 in 10 men, has actually always been the racist party. The party that stopped rivers from burning in Ohio and saved the bald eagle from extinction has actually always been the party that is FOR rivers burning and dead eagles and so on. The truth doesn’t matter, only the stories we tell. And no one looks, although it’s a click away on wikipedia.

    The truth is complicated, filled with nothing but fallible men who contradict themselves like the rest of us, where one-time political gain somehow becomes permanent, and long, well-meaning attempts come to nothing. Where wars are started despite themselves and won on historical accident, then recorded erroneously by failed and partisan men. Did Columbus discover America? Yes/no/depends on what you mean. As adults, this is the world we live in, not an easy world of faultless superheroes and villains who were just born evil.

    And so with Trump. You expected a granola-crunching pacifist of demure retiring nature was going to take down the world’s largest war machine that has murdered 6 million people in last 30 years, allegedly including whistleblowers, generals, Congressmen, and Presidents? Or is that guy more likely to be a bare-knuckle street brawler who shrugs off five assassination attempts, marries a divorced woman, beats a guy on the floor of Congress with his cane, opens the White House to a whiskey bash, and wakes up ready to fight with anyone? And if he is that type, is he the type to love all men and sing kumbaya? Unfortunately, no. Each man is only one way and not all ways, although we have many pressing social needs at any time. So we have a man at war with the CIA and not Mansanto at the moment. Maybe later, who knows?

    In my opinion, if he got the AGW carbon-credits through (which China and India won’t participate), he might save the forests but he would cause the deaths of a few hundred thousand men in the transition, so we could be mad at him about that instead. Politics is tradeoffs. Life is tradeoffs. And always we have too little information to choose wisely, and will always, always be wrong. So chance gives us a candidate and we each pick the least-bad one on the basis of which demands we find most urgent. And so for better or worse we Americans did the same again this time. That wasn’t the preference of half the people, but that doesn’t make it stupid either.

    Why are we at the center of this? We’re just one bankrupt country with a crippled military and GDP probably more the size of Brazil than the E.U. Why does this one idiot matter so much? We’ve had idiots going way back, people who’ve done far more harm to the economy, started far more wars, and been less liked and more divisive. Did you catch Jefferson calling Adams a “hermaphroditical character, which has [not] the force and firmness of a man,” or when the Vice President shot the Treasury Secretary in cold blood? That time we nuked 2 civilian cities of a surrendering nation? How about that time a President used white phosphorus and depleted uranium or droned 3,000 civilians including U.S. citizens abroad? How do lousy tweets and a weak EPA director compare over these 200 or 20 years?

    We do the best we can, and I don’t know which nation you are from, but I’m sure I could bring up similar examples for you: Austria, Australia, Austin, anywhere on the globe. You and me too for “There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are altogether become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” And that’s a pretty humbling thought here, facing our consequences, facing our karma in a country on the brink of collapse and civil war, that what we deserve goes back not a year, not two years, but 100 years or more. Let us just fix one thing – like the CIA or Korea before you bring up how much we haven’t fixed. We’ll be lucky to accomplish even that without a second Civil War and losing another 800,000 or 8,000,000 men. It’s not theoretical: we’re losing over 42,000 civilians a year now in areas like mine — as much as the Vietnam War, more than the refugees, more than are lost in Greece — and it needs to stop. Which would you pick? I’ll have the seeds and shovels ready for them, but for some, planting trees is a thing that may have to wait.

    #40384
    MoFlora
    Participant

    Dr D
    Your insult notwithstanding, I think about these issues – especially the collapsing environment – constantly. I didn’t comment to get into an argument about your interpretation of American history – or your opinion of my supposed gullibility. As I stated, I do not feel that I have anything to contribute on most issues that you and Ilargi write about. I read you to learn. However, 50 years of doing environmental work and getting my hands dirty every day planting, growing, culling, harvesting and generally being a nuisance gives me a perspective that I believe most of your readers do not have.

    Trump isa useful stooge – for all sides. I believe that if Clinton had been elected many of the issues you write about would still be going to hell. The geo-political morass would be as bad or worse. The same goes for most social and economic problems. However, the easy issue for her to score points with the limousine liberals would have been the environment. Big treaties for big corporations and big government. Meanwhile, the empire would still be going to hell. Democrats are not the answer.

    US environmental policy was largely bi-partisan through the 1970s. That changed with the Reagan (“You’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all”) administration.

    And, yes I can point to one significant environmental victory for the good guys that happened in the Obama administration. It would never be allowed to happen in the Trump admin. I will only use this one example because, although I’m aware of others, we worked for years to make this one happen. It is not the result of my believing anyone else’s story of our history.

    Look up the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage act. A coalition of ranchers (conservatives) Native Americans, conservationists, sportsmen and the USDA Forest Service and BLM worked for over 7 years to save a very important hunk of real estate, stretching for over 150 miles, which borders the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park. This is the only place left in the lower 48 where grizzlies still come out of the mountains on to the plains. The act was passed in 2014. Without the legislation the Front would be covered with fracking rigs. Coalition building worked.

    You ask why one idiot matters so much. Scott Pruitt has stated he wants to eliminate the EPA after he dismantles all environmental regulation. He is working on it. Zinke is rolling back protections on public land that have been in place for decades. It matters. Kids are dying from pollution. The birds are gone. Monsanto poisons the food supply. It matters.

    Now my coffee is cold and I must go finish planting some walnut seedlings I started last year. I need to turn the carrot bed and I have to butcher a rooster for stew.

    Please consider that people who disagree with you may not be brainwashed idiots.

    Keep up the good work. Fode debimus

    #40440
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks for the kind mention, Dr D
    Jungian-John-growing-vegetables

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