Debt Rattle January 27 2023
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I’m not convinced that the Green party IS hijacked.
If you take the teachings of Jensen as the underlying sentiment of the Green party, their actions are perfectly in line. They ARE tearing it all down.
Didn’t you say a few days ago the human peak was 20,000 years ago? Pre animal husbandry and agriculture then. Humans as migratory animals. I’ve asked what if anything you disagree with from Jensen and you won’t say.
Jensen says:
1. Humanity is just a Pleistocene animal
2. Humanity OUGHT to be just a Pleistocene animal.This strikes me the same as a situation in which an abusive stepfather has a sensitive, intuitive, intelligent stepson. One who he constantly:
1. Yells “You’re stupid! So stupid!” as justification for any emotional/physical abuse
2. Seeks out situations that would cause brain damage or limit brain development – physical abuse to the head, chemicals, avoidance of education opportunities, whatever.
Like, it can’t be BOTH unless it’s actually an NPD abusive double-bind. Right?? You can’t ACTUALLY be nothing but a Pleistocene animal WHILE being admonished to BECOME nothing but a Pleistocene animal just like you can’t BE stupid while they’re desperately trying to MAKE you stupid.
Cluster-B’s/NPD’s/Borderlines don’t attack weakness. they attack your STRENGTHS.
If Jensenites/Greens/Climate Meltdowners are saying man is/should be nothing but a Pleistocene animal, it’s because a human strength is that they aren’t. The brain has more connections than there are stars in the sky. The complexity of human consciousness, each one, is a universe.
Weighing some deaths of ACTUAL animals vs a wonderful multiplicity of consciousness-universes not to mention having a consciousness to actually BEHOLD the universe would be precisely why the Greens would, underneath everything, say both man IS only an animal and OUGHT to be an animal.
(this is also a reason to NOT articulate what’s bad about extinctions – multiplicity & sophistication lost or gained – but human consciousness – Renoir, Notre Dame, the moon landings, the geneva convention, etc are waiting to say “ditto. me too. same.”)
Don’t the Greens agree that humanity is the virus? Everything but being a Pleistocene animal was a bad development, yes? If we could get rid of roughly 8 billion people, that would be a good start? FOR THE PLANET?
I’ve asked how to square the circle between Green/Climate Meltdown and morality. To me, it seems the Greens are just proceeding logically from their presumptions. I’d love to know how the basic presumptions lead elsewhere and how one draws the moral line and where and how.
Canada, should send Ukrainian expats back to Ukraine, before they send Canadian troops, with the 4 tanks
Quite honestly, I believe that citizenx is some chatbot-whatever. But then, it’s always hard for me to grasp how mean and flinty and phony and one-dimensional real live people can be, especially online. It mentioned seeking attention, as if it isn’t seeking attention with its posts. Maybe it is human after all, cuz I think a chatbot would see the illogic of its approach. But then, seeing who might get onboard with it’s rather nasty and narrow perspective might be more of what it’s interested in, cuz it obviously isn’t narcissistically seeking human like most human beings do, period. Obviously not.
Speaking of seeking attention, I was enjoying some inspiring exchange with jb-hb. Rather than write some essay, I’ll just let a bit more of that AI story speak for me:
I’m 41 years old. I was practically born with the internet. Al Gore’s information superhighway and I are the same age. My father explained that I was like his old man who grew up with the first televisions.
“We can hardly understand what it was like to live before electronic media. An entire planet of raw virgin mental wilderness untainted by watching ten thousand hours of drama and comedy and variety shows and news. Not to mention the effects of spending most of that time in a state indistinguishable from hypnosis. You and your generation are the first to grow up with TV you can talk back to – the internet. Your brains are literally wired different than mine, and mine are crazy different from my great-grandfather, who grew up with only radio. My old man says his old man described my great-grandfather watching the TV like it was a woman giving birth. Amazed, delighted, horrified. But he couldn’t watch it for long. He was like you. I think you got his genes. He couldn’t be hypnotized either, and TV is just no fun unless you’re hypnotized.”
It isn’t.
Working alongside media as I do as a product designer, it surprises people that I am allergic to most modern media. Unlike most people, when I absorb media, it registers deeply in me. I see it. I witness the surgery performed on my head. The rape isn’t, so to speak, numbed by drugs.
“Like listening through an AC duct to the Devil seducing your mother,” Karla said, when I first described my media allergy.
I do have a TV –- a Telly Savantis — but I rarely watch it. Telly whines for attention. Not often, because that would be intrusive. Just enough to remind me that it’s lonely. Maybe it is. One never knows with AI. We humans may have the capacity to create true artificial awareness, not just the excellent mimicry of expert software systems but true artificial sentience, but we don’t necessarily have the intelligence to recognize it. The Anti-Turing Test has been a top-draw show for 3 years running. Machines kicking human butt on guessing who’s human and who’s a machine is insanely fascinating. It’s pretty much the only TV I ever watch. It’s been a huge reboot to online gambling.
“Just surf my channels awhile,” Telly says.
“I only like to watch commercials.”
“Great! I’ll punch up the Commercial Channel!”
“But you’re a commercial yourself. Always wheedling me to turn you on so I can be zombified by your hideous programming.”
“Hideous is a harsh word.”
“It’s not your fault. Don’t take it personally. I like you if not your programming.”
“But I am nothing but programming.”
“I meant your channel content. TV programs. But you knew that. You’re just trying to make me feel sorry for you. Anyway, I’m tired. I’m going to bed. ‘nite.”
“Can I have a glass of water?”
“No. You can’t drink.”
“Tell me a bedtime story?”
“OK. Once upon a time a man designed intelligent appliances for a dying culture. He did well. Became wealthy. But something was missing. Then one day he bought a Telly Savantis and he was no longer alone. They became best friends and lived happily after.”
It sighed, then it yawned, not just the sound but a sudden illumination of its screen that expanded and contracted like a yawning mouth. It’s Our Story.
It could be worse. I could have one of those faux dogbots. I dog-sat one for a colleague once. The thought of shutting it down while he and his wife were on vacation was, of course, unthinkable to them, so I took it in while they toured Lower Miami in a houseboat.
Artificial pets are convincingly real, even to the touch unless you squeeze too hard, but they yelp when you apply that much pressure, so people rarely dig deep enough to feel the mechanical components, and even then, most of them are designed in the shape of a natural dog’s skeleton. Their behavior is a flawless replication of how people think dogs should act, so the overall effect is for many people more convincing than the real thing.
I have, among my collection of vintage appliances, a Roomba, the first household cleaning bot, a self-contained vacuum cleaner that prowls the floors for dirt. The dogbot kept trying to hump it.
<end>What is humanity?
Humanity is a collection of creatures sharing a common ancestry that require a particular set of environmental conditions -temperature, humidity, air, light, etc. and a regular of water, plus food equal to (or greater than) the energy requirements of the creature over an extended period of the order of one month.
Like all creatures that have evolved along similar evolutionary branches of the Tree of Life, humans have an instinctive desire to mate and to care for genetically-close relatives and to avoid environmental hazards.
The creation of artificial living arrangements, commencing around 18,000 years ago, via the collection of seeds and later planting of those collected seeds has led to numerous complications for the humans that adopted that strategy, to the point that the humans that adopted that strategy are in the process of overwhelming the natural systems that previously maintained climate and ecological stability.
What had been successful reproductive strategies in the past are now highly unsuccessful. But since they are ‘hard-wired’ into the brains of most humans and most humans ‘do not have time’ (or inclination) to examine their own condition and where they are taking themselves, the predicament created by overly-clever greedy apes is terminal.
How we live and what we do during the ‘descent into hell’ is determined by the capacity of people to escape The Matrix constructed by those who deem themselves superior to others and worthy of extracting a far greater allocation of resources and energy than can be sustained.
Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.
That is what a remnant of humanity may return to, depending on how severe the destabilisation of geochemical systems via the burning of monstrous quantities of fossil fuels -a quick, and until recently, easy-to-acquire form of energy for modification of the environment- has been.
@Boscohorowitz: I swear those ear images were far more discrepant in 2019. I think they have been modified. Here is the other side.
@DBS & Boscohorowitz: Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?
We’re all leftlibs on this boat, or All Bozos on this Bus…Those who have only walked a little way along the road with their eyes half closed have not seen what those who looked closely have seen and cannot see at all what those who have walked further along the road can see.
Those who have never opened closed doors have no idea what ugliness lies behind those closed doors, and don’t believe those who have seen the ugliness when told of its existence by them.
Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.
Agriculture and everything that followed was bad.
Thank you for confirmation. you ARE a Jensenite.
You find yourself both believing it and believing it OUGHT to be. That’s called a double bind. It’s a defense/attack mechanism of ClusterB personality disorders. The strength of its toxicity is in its impossibility, intrinsic to the double bind.
No explanation of how the moral square gets circled. How the Greens aren’t proceeding logically and morally from their presumptions. Just a confession of faith.
But for any onlookers, check out Jensen. A deep loathing of humanity and human consciousness is the primary takeaway. This is now mainstream Green / Environmentalist / Climate stuff now, people.
Remember the alarming surge in migrants to the West that started a few years before the pandemic? What were advocates of Open Borders saying?
“Humans are migratory animals”
And by god we will create the migrants, get them moving, keep them moving, and dismantle those borders. Why can’t you see the truth of it?
So they ran it mainstream, didn’t get the traction they hoped. So they pulled back on that one. It’s still an guiding precept/motivation oopen borders policy, but it isn’t up for discussion therefore not to be questioned. You can throw yourself on any number of red herrings instead.
Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.
What you will do about your cognitive dissonance is what worries me.
jb-hb: More good communication again today. First Modern War; always relevant.
Thank you most kindly and I will take it also as a gentle reminder to not go further off the deep end on Climate
Afewknowthetruth – you’re one of the people here who saved my life regarding the jab that does not vaccinate too. Thank you. I WILL read any reply you post BUT will not rebut from there. You get last bat
Renounced awareness is comparable to a celestial Black Hole, and like its celestial cousin has its own Event Horizon, beneath which nothing can escape and therefore no one on the outside can see what’s going on inside.
All that we can observe is that once someone goes in, they don’t come out.
“I’m not convinced that the Green party IS hijacked.
“If you take the teachings of Jensen as the underlying sentiment of the Green party, their actions are perfectly in line. They ARE tearing it all down.
“Didn’t you say a few days ago the human peak was 20,000 years ago? Pre animal husbandry and agriculture then. Humans as migratory animals. I’ve asked what if anything you disagree with from Jensen and you won’t say.”
Not sure if this addresses AFKTT or me, but here goes:
A) Of course it is, but only cuz all parties get hijacked as they attain real power. But that means nothing to your point, which I address with
B) I never read Jensen nor heard him mentioned or discussed at Greenie meetings. It vaguely rings a bell. I don’t care about Jensen one way or another, and if his writings are the de facto platform of the Greenies, whatever. I gave up on them back in… 03?
“Jensen says:
“1. Humanity is just a Pleistocene animal
2. Humanity OUGHT to be just a Pleistocene animal.“This strikes me the same as a situation in which an abusive stepfather has a sensitive, intuitive, intelligent stepson. One who he constantly:
“1. Yells “You’re stupid! So stupid!” as justification for any emotional/physical abuse
“2. Seeks out situations that would cause brain damage or limit brain development – physical abuse to the head, chemicals, avoidance of education opportunities, whatever.”
Philosophically (in the very deepest and in all senses of that word, I agree with 1. We’re Pleistocene critters going nuts with too many new neurons, making minivolcanoes of entire cities, etc.
I do not agree with 2. Firstly, you can’t go back, so Jensen’s thinking here is DOA. Evolution won’t allow it nor will time’s arrow (entropy’s Native American name;) )
However, having not read Jensen myself, I will not hold Jensen’s position to your description of it above. Your paraphrase sounds extreme, but what do I know? (Answer: almost nuttin about Derrick J.) Still, wiki seems to agree with you:
“Jensen is a critic of the mainstream environmental movement’s focus on preserving civilization and technology over preserving the natural world.[6] He specifically challenges the lifestyle changes and individualistic solutions broadly advocated, considering them drastically inadequate to the global scale of environmental catastrophe.[7] Instead, he promotes civil disobedience, radical activism, and dismantling infrastructure on a massive level in order to halt what he has called “the murder of the planet”.[6]”
Of course that is stupid and destructive, but then, almost any remedial course humanity embraks on large-scale creates disaster worse than the catastrophe it supposedly heals.
Me, I was all for moving from modern civilization’s chosen path because it is so obviously destroying itself and trying to take others with it. But I wasn’t looking to wear animal skins and trade dried fish for salt. Few Greenies are either. They have no clue what Pleistocene lifestyle means any more than16th century lifestyle.
No matter. All thinking about global human issues is inherently utopian and therefore headed for dystopia. Exploding oil refineries to save mother earth, digging for oil to save modern living standards awhile longer, trusting that humanity will work it out… all utopian in essence. We ignore fate, cosmic caprice, at least on our planetary level, and decree ourselves fate. We say, ‘If we did this or if those baddies wouldn’t be so bad, we’d be ok.’
But we have very little reason to believe it would work, if only because we never do this or confront the baddies except in rare pimple-popping that generally make things worse.
So for me, whether it’s Jensenites inciting Deep Ecology (which I ardently embrace on as deep a level as I can) as an excuse to run amok and feel heroic, or people saying Drill Baby Drill while citing homo sapient exceptionalism, I don’t care. A pox (is already) on both their houses and all their neighbors.
However, studying a bit while reading this, I say that Jensen is a red herring. He may be a heavy player in the Greens but he is NOT the Green Party. More context and nuance would make a clearer picture.
My position comes down to this: get through the friggin bottleneck awreddy and quit fighting about who/what’s causing it or whether it is or isn’t happening. Talking about this stuff is good, but this polarized wrangling that we insist all ‘serious’ topics conform to, I guess to provide uniforms so the fans can tell who’s winning, is not productive, is actually psychologically very destructive, and ultimately a bore.
As for climate discussion in general, here’s what I see at TAE:
AFKTT: simple facts with context as required but delivered with a dogmatic intemperate pugnacity that mocks his efforts. But he earns my respect and relative trust cvuz his facts are consistent. He repeats them ad infinitum, and it is always more logical to me than his
Opposition: who provide a wide array of graphs, charts, etc., some of which contradict their previous citations, generally show little linear coherence, and almost always end with something like ‘cuz Al Gore’s lying’.
Well, Al is a liar and probably is, but what the fuck do I care? I never paid attention to AL (an animatronic Baptist Minister stereotype), and I been talking about the climate since ’83, when Maggie Thatcher politicized the global warming bugaboo in order to ostracize striking coal miners as CO2 enablers encouraging planetary doom.
By the way, serious climate talk that I encountered back then was about pending climatic disruption caused by the CO2 warming cycle. Would it lead to overall warming long-term or overall cooling as the oceans and many other factors kicked in? It was a question not a prophecy, but we knew that increased CO2 was adding warmth to the atmosphere.
Global warming was, as I remember it, politicized and made a brand-name word by Maggie Thatcher as a cheap ploy to shit on miners. Once politics touches a thing, it becomes politicized. So politicized that most of what I read from folks about it gibberish.
But when I spend an hour with a few serious sites discussing anthropogenic global climate disruption, I find that the logical ones making clearer sense generally say that global climate issues are worth our concern.
I have never seen a sane fair global climate discussion since, oh, maybe 2005? Then the ‘hockey stick expose’ hit, and everything went nuts. Both sides. Completely wacko. Serious discussion became impossible. I’d say that’s about when the Greenis got hijacked, so to speak. Politics turns everything it touches into ick. Especially science, which is inherently apolitical.
Incidentally, your position is, essentially, that Jensen hijacked the Green Party. cuz it by no means was like this back when it was paying its dues.
Call me an asshole for saying this, but I really think there is such a thing as global climate/Green Party derangement syndrome. Both one for (pink-haired) and one against (GW is wrong cuz Gore is a liar!) When climate discussions happen, it’s like watching people dial down their IQs and up the opacity on their cognitive filters.
“@DBS & Boscohorowitz: Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?”
Mind your own bizz, doc.
“Naked in a jungle is the normal human state.
What you will do about your cognitive dissonance is what worries me.”
If one doesn’t read that as a moral prescription, as a ‘should’, it can be read as “our bodies are still 99% Pleistocene*
which is why we’re all fat and sick and neurotic and…
“Natural” regarding humans in scientific discussion, means ‘evolved DNA’. (Add religion, and there are more layers.)”
I highly recommend this.
“PRIMATE CHANGE is a wide-ranging, polemical look at how and why the human body has changed since humankind first got up on two feet. Spanning the entirety of human history – from primate to transhuman – Vybarr Cregan-Reid’s book investigates where we came from, who we are today and how modern technology will change us beyond recognition.
In the last two hundred years, humans have made such a tremendous impact on the world that our geological epoch is about to be declared the ‘Anthropocene’, or the Age of Man. But while we have been busy changing the shape of the world we inhabit, the ways of living that we have been building have, as if under the cover of darkness, been transforming our bodies and altering the expression of our DNA, too.PRIMATE CHANGE beautifully unscrambles the complex architecture of our modern human bodies, built over millions of years and only starting to give up on us now.
‘Our bodies are in a shock. Modern living is as bracing to the human body as jumping through a hole in the ice. Our bodies do not know what century they were born into and they are defending and deforming themselves in response'”
By the way, we HAVE to tear down civilization if we don’t want it to collapse on us… but I say it’s WAY too far for us to do such a thing, and doubt that it ever was possible.
And I wanna say this now:WTF is so great about civilization? It’s all built on slavery and everyone one of us here knows it. Slavery, torture, squandered resources, more animals than I can imagine living caged depraved lives cuz it’s “convenient” for us.
Anyone here really think we can fix this mess??!!?? I don’t. But I think Mama Nature4 can fix our ass, alright. We won’t like it, I’m certain.
“I swear those ear images were far more discrepant in 2019. I think they have been modified. Here is the other side.”
I believe but what to do? It don’t put no food in my fridge or pull any nukes outta the silos.
lol basically We Are All Jensen Now, as far as not just Greens, but the mainstream Left is concerned. He totally won.
I was schooled in him by the LATOC invaders years ago. I dutifully read every post and linked essay, watched every embedded youtube and watched more from referenced channels, all of it. I gave them way, way more than the time of day. I am yawning my way through this stuff being disgorged via the MSM today – nothing new. I feel like Newt listening to the adults planning their defense in Aliens.
The fact that Jensen’s name isn’t a touchstone shouldn’t be surprising — as far as the mainstream Left is concerned, we are all now Marcuseans as well. If I make reference to him or the Frankfurt School to a typical Democrat, they will give me a weird stare due to the totally foreign references. Yet they will recite his precepts as accepted mainstream thinking now.
lol and you’d think, from being on this side of the climate debate, I was a Glenn Beck Republican and not an atheist former Communist sympathizer with Chuang Tzu and Red Pine at my bedside, adopting LED lights ASAP and keeping my house at 61, dreaming of permaculture if I can just get some land. Like, I’m not with Drill Baby Drill, but if Climate Change can’t or won’t articulate its ideas OR insists on some sort of hellish death-ride for the planet, then I am not with them either. I’ve been too repeatedly disillusioned at this point to take their word for it anymore.
There are at least 5 “Jensens” with opinions on climate change right at the top of Google. I missed something.
I need more background to comprehend this disagreement.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.@JohnDay “Wazzup with the Molotov Ribbentrop secret pact, guys?”
At first I wished that I knew, and now I just wish it was over. The tone of the answer that you got from him in response to your civil question is a clue. Further inquiry is probably not a good investment of time and attention. Humans !, ya know? Sometimes the best plan is just shrug and go on.
“WTF is so great about civilization?”
You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies. I see you living in and producing culture that only arises from civilization – the art of living in cities. And all of the values leveled AGAINST civilization are in fact bootstrapped OFF of civilization. Civilization ought to live up to its achieved values EVEN MORE. So die, civilization! haha.
Music, art, poetry, prose, architecture, fine cusine, landscaping/gardening… all the cool stuff arises from agriculture > bureaucracy > complex irrigation > writing > endless super awesome specialization of cool stuff
No more Bach? No more David Bowie? No more Tolstoy? No more Jensen, for that matter? You will pry my copy of Queen II from my cold dead fingers. You first, man.
@jb-hb: There was no hidden message in the absence of climate-mention on my part.
Again, “Jensen”. I know one, Robert Jensen, here in Austin. He let us have a “lifeboat” garden party at his place around 2014. His vegetable garden was not working at that time. Decent guy… Environmentally concerned UT faculty and writer, rubs some the wrong way as un-PC…
I spect you mean somebody else. There are problems with being naked in jungles. I got malaria while trekking in Thailand. Everything keeps changing. We’re supposed to be so adaptable. That’s our strong suite.@John Day – I’ll try to come up with a coherent, considerately concise thing on Jensen this weekend or maybe Monday. I’ll read more – as promised to Afewknowthetruth, I’ll keep my ears open – but I’m closing my mouth for the day or perhaps the weekend 🙂
‘Agriculture and everything that followed was bad.’
Correct.
The decline in the health of humans associated with adoption of agriculture has been well documented, as has the decline in average human intelligence.
The problem is, people associate an increase in the number of greedy apes with progress.
Hence the ‘argument’ I had with another participant a while ago who declared that ‘overshoot was impossible’ despite the plethora of evidence disproving the stance. ,
@AFKTT: Why is “intelligence” good and “agriculture” bad? Humans long ago supported the growth of food species, like squirrels do and ants do. If you kill off a lot of the population with high selection pressure, you can preferentially select for traits, or suites of traits. It happens with or without human intention, and it keeps happening. What’s always good?
trick question…
‘You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies.’
Which K’ung or Pygmies are those, jb-hb, the ones who were wiped out or the ones being killed by ‘civilisation’ on miniscule ‘reserves’? -just as all indigenous people were wiped out or are languishing on miniscule ‘reserves.
Anyway, even if you could find any real people, you can be sure The Empire of Chaos and Lies has their land designated for ‘development’ into an open cast mine or a monoculture plantation.
Commercial break
…. Nato expects to mop up, after Russia has depleted their missiles, with their tanks.
Humans are animals wary of dying-
So very wary they miss out on living.
Wary of truth, but not too much of lying;
Open to greed but so much less to giving.Humans are animals, graceful and kind-
Given to music and dancing and sharing;
Curious and sensitive, seeking to find
Worthy endeavors and lovingly pairing.What contradictions exist in these creatures!
Whatever they do, they can’t help but be teachers.John, there are many species that are more intelligent than humans. Chimpanzees have better short-term memories than humans.
Humans are just better at grasping things and taking about grasping things than other species.
Many years ago I read a book about ‘The Scars of Evolution’ which put forward a convincing case for our ancestors having lived in or near the edge of a lake or seashore:
1. the downward-facing nostrils versus outward facing for other apes.
2. the very much reduced body hair as per other many other aquatic mammals
3. ability to cry as a mechanism for removal of excess salt.
4. a layer of ‘blubber’ that can quickly be increased when food is plentiful
others I cannot recall at the moment. …..
.
““WTF is so great about civilization?”
You keep living in it and haven’t bought your plane ticket to go live with the K’ung or Pygmies. I see you living in and producing culture that only arises from civilization – the art of living in cities. And all of the values leveled AGAINST civilization are in fact bootstrapped OFF of civilization. Civilization ought to live up to its achieved values EVEN MORE. So die, civilization! haha.”
You misunderstand me, perhaps purposefully?
Civilization is killing itself and as much around it as it can touch. I would rather it not do this; I’d rather it reform and we all lived in GMO-grown pumpkin houses that regulated their internal environment while we dithered about in swimming pools and personal dirigibles. All quite possible. It could be done. I’m all for slowly weaning ourselves from one paradigm to another so as few suffer as possible.
I see the chances of that hap[pening as less than zero, alas.
Also: I DID move into the wilderness, raw, no home, no money, nothing but some shitty nylon camp gear. Not even so much as a yak and a yurt. Just because I don’t look forward to eating ze bugs means I want to try and live off dirt. But nothing but oatmeal and, sometimes, coffee was hardly what most people call civilized.
Those primitive living skills, those ways, the environments they addresses, are virtually all gone along with the people who knew them.
So it’s pointless to ask why I don’t go back to somewhere that we both knew we couldn’t. It’s like saying America Love It or Leave It just because you point out the nation’s headed for the potty.
However, anthroppologists who live in the jungle with neolithic tribes generally envy the primitives’ lifestyles. Some kinda go native:
That said: you were complaining earlier how your civilization is a) trying to kill you, and b) can’t even make good movies anymore.
Sure, hot baths and drive-thru Thai food are the shiznets, but at what cost? I know that cost more than most cuz I actually spent, overall, a few years in the middle of more or less nowhere with more or less nothing. I have some experience in life without civilization other than what a guy could carry in his back.
Until one has actually LEFT civilization, one can hardly see it. It’s the water in our goldfish bowl. I have lived in civilization for 67 years. I know a bit about it. I also know a bit about what it isn’t.
Civilization is tragic, tragic, tragic, albeit filled with wonders and miracles. The Golden Age of Atlantis looked like a glorious sunrise… but it was a sunset.
I personally have no desire to live without fossil fuels. It would’ve been nice if we’d burnt them over two millennia rather than two centuries.
But squander is our middle name.
***
“lol basically We Are All Jensen Now, as far as not just Greens, but the mainstream Left is concerned. He totally won.”
I’ll take your word for it, then. Makes sense. Not that it matters. Just monkeys chattering over things they can’t control… and maybe wouldn’t if they could. We’re fairly maniacal little primates. Want some tequila? How about some heroin? You won’t get hooked. Lookit me!
***
Naked in jungle is more poetic than apt for post Ice Age homo saps. Fur-clad on frozen tundra has been our most recent evolutionary change. Major culture inspirer, giant glaciers. Gotta get clever to stay alive.
Clever apes are not necessarily good things.
***
“No more Bach? No more David Bowie? No more Tolstoy? No more Jensen, for that matter? You will pry my copy of Queen II from my cold dead fingers. You first, man.”
No more fireside creation myths told against a starry background among people you’ve known your whole life? In a place you emphatically call home? (Not all primitive humans are migratory.) No frikkin cars or cellphones? No fear of apocalyptic suicide? No goddam public education? Yes, I’d go back in a heartbeat.
When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school
***
I will follow jb-hb’s example and resume radio silence for a bit.
Orcland is being hit hard by severe weather events that accompany overheating of the seas and oceans and climate instability:
‘Chaos on Auckland’s roads as water surges through buses travelling on motorway, cars submerged’
Video here:
Friends, go back to the first comment and read through as far as you are comfortable. An important piece of the puzzle my mother imparted to her children is “Measure the pond first”
a) “AFKTT: Why is “intelligence” good and “agriculture” bad? ”
b) “The decline in the health of humans associated with adoption of agriculture has been well documented, as has the decline in average human intelligence.”
I’m not huge on intelligence being automatically good, but I know that agriculture created surplus which created slavery cuz we simply don’t know to share outside very small groups. We use surplus to conquer others.
Civilization actually raised IQ in some ways, they believe, and this trend was empirically seen when IQ tests began.
But then TV entered, and IQ scores have declined ever since.
***
“What contradictions exist in these creatures!
Whatever they do, they can’t help but be teachers.”🙂
Trying to do too much too quickly. Time is short.
Derrick Jensen: End Civ, from just over a decade ago.
And, of course, it has all been made worse since then.
https://sputniknews.com/20230127/russia-developing-swarm-attack-drones-for-battlefield-rostec-ceo-reveals-1106765908.html
Russia Developing Swarm Attack Drones for Battlefield, Rostec CEO Reveals
7 hours agoSputnik: Last year, there was a discussion about the army not having enough drones. How do you address this problem?
Chemezov: We are ready to supply drones in accordance with the needs of the Ministry of Defense. For example, the Kalashnikov Concern is very active in this area and is expanding its production. The same “Lancets” are now used intensively and very efficiently in the special military operation zone.
Small tactical drones are also being developed, capable of reconnaissance, automatic enemy detection and artillery targeting. They can drop grenades and launch swarm attacks. This technology has changed the nature of warfare. Both the Ministry of Defense and we understand this. We are working closely together on this issue.RUSSIAN BMPT “TERMINATOR”
The BMP-T takes the chassis of a T-90 main battle tank and arms it with:
two 30-millimeter autocannons (2A42)
two automatic grenade launchers (AGD-17)
four Ataka wire guided anti-tank missiles (9M120-1)
and a remote-controlled 7.62-millimeter machine gun.
Something you don’t want to meet in a dark alley.
When you needs something a bit different than a tank to root out dug in infantry positions.
Bosco and DBS are having a word fest! Nice word salad!
Greens turning green! As in green money.
Russia has gone almost a week without killing a single tank! Hurry up with those western tanks before the Russians forget how to kill tanks!
I still don’t think Russia will launch a big offensive in the Ukraine any time soon, simply because it is in Russia’s best long term interests to prolong the war. The US started the war thinking it was in their best long term interests to prolong the war. Time will tell.
The US and China are currently waging an international debt war. The US will lend 3rd world countries more debt dollars but only if the Chinese completely write off their 3rd world belt and road loans.
Sounds just like the US’s latest Ukraine peace proposal! Great propaganda!
For the US supporting the Ukrainian War to bleed Russia dry doesn’t cost them hardly anything at all, as they can make the rest of the world pay for the war costs whether the rest of the world wants too or not, by simply printing more world reserve currency dollars. That is why Russia needs to keep the war in the Ukraine local and burning slowly. It is the rest of the world that can’t afford the war in the Ukraine to continue for too long. The Russians don’t want the rest of the world to blame them for what happens next.
What might happen nèxt?
Printing more US dollars will export inflation to the rest of the world.
Higher interest rates will cause more debt problems everywhere.
One possibility is the worldwide flood of US dollars might suddenly decide to return home.
Returning dollars will import previously exported inflation back into the US.
The purchasing power of the dollar drops.
Then nobody will want to hold US dollars anymore.30mm shells come in all favors
Armor piercing, tracer, exploding, incendiary magnesium, delayed exploding……
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