ashvin
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Babble post=4694 wrote:
Some statements made here sound weird because they are just plain backward. For example: “Berman points out that Causey and Goldmacher are right to dump on Reagan’s neo-liberal, trickle-UP economic paradigm, but they are also asking the wrong question”. This is stupid. Reagan was not a neo liberal, he was a conservative (though not by today’s standards of the lunatic right) and he touted trickle DOWN economics not trickle up. This is still the mantra of conservatives.Neo-liberal is an economic theory/perspective, not a political ideology…
Trickle-UP of wealth was the result of that perspective in action… obviously a play on what he claimed to be “trickle-down”.
dr.van nostrum post=4662 wrote: What I DO object to is the ridiculous idea (born of historical or philosophical ignorance?) that America is somehow unique in its greed, exploitation,etc.
No one has claimed that it is unique in this way, so I’m not sure what or who you are objecting against.
Berman is an American, I am an American, and a lot of readers here are American, so it makes sense to focus on the depravity of America.
You must use bbcode for now. It is bracket [tags] instead of
. SecularAnimist post=4654 wrote: “This is why socialism, or spreading the A.D. around more fairly, is not an adequate response to capitalism”
He obviously has an “American” definition of socialism.
“no growth, and not profit-oriented”
Well, gee, if it is not individual profit oriented, one would assume that it might be more – oh, I don’t know, social or community oriented.
Again, the labels don’t do us much good. What is clear is that all past and current systems that have called themselves “socialist” or “communist” have most definitely been oriented towards growth and profit. What you have in these systems is a populist call for centralized institutions to act as our moral arbiters and distribute the wealth/resources fairly, but what we really need is for individuals and small-scale institutions and communities to be their own moral arbiters. As long as we keep thinking we can substitute top-down restructuring, i.e. “capitalism for socialism”, for systematic personal transformation, we will never make any progress towards our professed ideals.
Supergravity post=4651 wrote: Yes, the US citizens are flawed devices, and spiritually spent, and their embodiment in the AD has produced delusional exceptionalism and wrongful hierarchies of want, but there’s a bright side too. Its at least better than the soviet dream as realised.
The only reason it seems better than life under the SU Communist ideal is because most of our murdering and pillaging and suffering has been externalized to other parts of the world… but that will soon catch up with us. IMO, an amoral and selfish system composed of likewise individuals is always going to end up being just as “bad” as any other amoral and selfish system, regardless of what we call it.
“selfless struggle towards the good of the collective?”
This runs afoul of the collectivist fallacy; the idea that individualism is equivalent to selfishness and that collectivism must therefore be altruistic. This is not so. There could be altruistic individualism and selfish collectives too.
The collective ‘good’ is never defined by the collective itself but by dominant individual voices, using political power for selfish reasons disguised as the ‘common good’. This seems to be an intractable problem of large-scale political power structures which mobilise collectives.I agree that the labels do us little good here. The key question is not whether there is “collectivism” or “individualism”, but whether the individuals in society are primarily motivated by their obedience to moral/ethical principles and their concern for others. If the latter is true, then the collective good will necessarily follow. It must start with the individual, and can be aided by small-scale organizations such as the household, schools, churches, community centers, etc. Obviously, what we have now is the exact opposite of that.
The idea of ‘Entrepreneurial individualism’ may sound badly growthlike, but I’m not convinced there are viable institutions to enable entrepreneurial collectivism in any form, except maybe for war. Certainly economic entrepreneurship itself is positive, if relating to societal innovation and prosperity.
Entrepreneurial activity is bad in so far as it is primarily defined by a profit motive, which necessarily elevates the selfish attributes of individuals participating in those activities. Once the individuals and communities transform, entrepreneurial activity will work for the collective good.
A steady state system with stable material and energy throughput also necessitates a stable population, otherwise additional population will diminish material wealth for the rest. This poses a problem, as methods of coerced pop control, being forms of tyranny, are more immediately and more certainly dehumanising than possible starvationary resource constraints.
It may be that a steady-state global economy would have to be artificially constrained and have all social change arrested by totalitarian control of all intellectual throughput and elimination of innovation.Here I may agree with you that Berman is incorrect to think that a radical moral and socioeconomic transformation can be sustained at the global scale. Once we get to scales larger than your typical villages, communities, states, etc., it becomes harder and harder for the moral foundations of individuals to endure, and we lapse back into episodes of corruption, exploitation and tyranny. It is all contingent on the inherent desire of the individuals and communities to voluntarily restrain themselves from growing and consuming more than their local environments can handle.
And abusing the idea of infinity to fool people into believing that there are no material limits may be a less dangerous form of social control than fooling them into accepting artificial scarcity and placing fixed constraints on socioeconomic innovation.
I disagree with this completely. It sounds good in theory, but the reality is that individual accumulation of wealth and societal orientation towards growth produces hierarchies and temptations that will always overwhelm the underlying intentions that may be pure. Once you have social and political hierarchies at large scales, it only takes a few well-placed individuals to be corrupted before that corruption “trickles down” to all sectors of society. That is the reality of Reagan’s trickle down economics… the wealth stays at the top and all the bad stuff trickles down.
There is nothing inherently wrong with technological innovation or even expansion into different places, such as space, but the question is where those desires are actually coming from. If we are acting from a moral and selfless foundation, and we still CHOOSE to pursue such things, then so be it… I have a feeling, though, that such a society would be much more focused on maintaining their current scale and quality of existence rather than reaching for the stars. It’s really just the practical and wise thing to do, because increasing complexity always breeds unintended consequences and corruption.
Cris Sheridan post=4646 wrote: As anyone seen the three part documentary along these lines called Technocalypse. It is a MUST! Absolutely brilliant and frightening.
It is a very interesting and informative documentary. While I don’t think many of these transhuman technological efforts will ultimately be scaled up for significant portions of society, it is the entire mentality surrounding it that is the most frightening for me. At a time when our economic, social and political realities are rapidly transforming, the last thing we need to do is completely uproot all of our traditional conceptions of who we truly are. Yes, scientific research and advances in these fields have given us more insights into how nature functions, including how we function, but it should not be used as the foundation for a new global metaphysics and religion. That is just a recipe for disappointment and disaster.
For those interested, here is Part I of Technocalyps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMCMs_11Llg&list=PL986668AADBE36E75&feature=player_detailpage
This is what programmer Dan had to say about cloudflare:
“I took a look at it but I’m not sure what it buys us. We pay $x/month for Rochen and to get comparable service, we’d have to pay $2x/month here. We’re on a pretty much unlimited bandwidth now as well, but I do like that feature.”
backwardsevolution post=4530 wrote: Ashvin – so the debts are wiped out in your scenario. People get to keep their degrees, their houses? That would certainly free up a lot of money, with inflation right around the corner.
I don’t think people who can reasonably pay off substantial amounts of debt, without suffering a huge drop in their standard of living, should be allowed to completely walk away from those debts. In my mind, the Jubilee is about giving debtors every possible chance we can give them to redeem those debts (without the debts growing larger), and, if they are simply incapable of doing so, then having others step up to redeem those debts for them. Most of the external money will have to come from somewhere, i.e. government, taxpayers, large banks/corporations who eat the losses.
Would the price of houses come down, or would they go up? Would people be able to turn around and sell their houses? If they did, what would stop them from levering up and buying several more?
If house debt is gone, how about current market prices? I imagine they would have to come down to zero. What are the chances this would happen?
I’m not sure… but given the fact that major banks would be eating a lot of the losses and forced into bankruptcy, it wouldn’t be very easy for people to get credit for large purchases. In addition, I think any debt jubilee policy should be accompanied with major structural reforms.
Henry Blodget wrote an article entitled, “There’s an Easy, Fair Solution to the Global Debt Crisis – Too Bad No One Ever Talks About It”.
“It’s called ‘bankruptcy.’
The borrower says, “I can’t pay you back” and then the borrower surrenders his or her claim on any assets that he or she still possesses.
The lender, meanwhile, sifts through those assets and recoups what he or she can.
Yes, I’ve written before that bankruptcy is the closest we will probably ever get to “jubilee” in the developed world, and especially in America. I also wrote, though, that it’s a fundamentally rigged and broken process, and does very little to relieve debt burdens anymore. At the very large corporation level or the sovereign nation level, it doesn’t even exist. So if we are going to rely on a judicial bankruptcy process, that entire framework has to be radically changed, made cheaper and made much more effective at extinguishing debts… then we would basically be turning it into a form of Jubilee.
And in this normal, natural state of affairs, both parties get hurt by the experience, and they go home to nurse their wounds, having learned a harsh lesson that hopefully will help them avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
We do need to accompany debt forgiveness policies with structural reforms that are aimed at preventing speculative debt bubbles in the future. There are a lot of ideas floating around out there for how this could be done. First and foremost, we need to hold the financial elites accountable for their reckless and fraudulent actions, making it very clear that such actions will not be tolerated. Second, we need to dismantle the Federal Reserve System, which helps concentrate the process of money-debt creation into a few large private corporations. Third, we need to implement regulations that disincentivize debtors from levering up and speculating on asset prices – Dr. Keen has a few good ideas on this, such as putting a time limit on the value of corporate shares once they enter the secondary market.
The way I see it, if we ever get to the point where people are considering something as “radical” as a Debt Jubilee, it wont’ be very difficult to push these other “radical” changes through as well. BUT, I think we all know that it is VERY unlikely that we ever get to that point. Honestly, I don’t even spend much time thinking about the details, because first I want to hear that somebody, somewhere, in a very influential position within government, is talking about getting this process started. At the very least, we need a group of influential academics, media people, business leaders and spiritual leaders making it their mission to get something like this underway. Unfortunately, we don’t see that happening, and we most likely won’t before the debts are redeemed in a much more chaotic and unsympathetic manner for the masses.
bluebird,
I would think any modern plans to repudiate or redeem debts should be targeted at those debtors who have been hit the hardest, i.e. cannot come close to satisfying their debts with their earned incomes or the sale of secured assets. Perhaps the redemptive plan could grow to accommodate more and more debtors over time, but initially I think the only universal aspect should be that compounding interest is terminated and timelines for repayment are extended. By no means should anyone be forced into any sort of servitude in exchange for debt cancellation, simply swapping one form of slavery for another.
The mindset involved here has to be one of charity and forgiveness, rather than making sure everything works out “fairly” in every case. Charity for struggling individuals and small businesses, not large banks or corporations. The latter must be held accountable for any illegal actions they have undertaken and must be allowed to suffer the monetary losses they have incurred. Shareholders get wiped out, creditors take massive haircuts and only depositors are protected to the best extent possible.
Dave,
I think it all depends on how much control you think the Eurocrats and their corporate masters have here, and what kind of plans they come up with. We are all well aware of the phrase “crisis should be used as an opportunity”, and we have seen how that has played out for the last few years. If letting Greece default at the “right time”, i.e. after they pillaged and looted the country, was always a part of their plan, then it’s hard to see how that is a positive thing for the Greeks or anyone else.
I do see your point, though, and it is one I have also made in slightly different ways. There are ways in which the natural progression of things here are opening up opportunities for the people, either through financial or social or political channels. But, ultimately, I think it will be the mass strikes and civil disobedience that produces the best results for them, rather than acute, panicked episodes of financial breakdown that are largely out of their control and will catch a lot of people off guard. You are right that consumers refusing to consume is a great way to threaten the system, but that’s not really what’s happening over there. It’s consumers/depositors scrambling to salvage what little savings they have left before it vanishes into a black hole.
Dave,
I think we should also remember that banks runs in Greece, or the EZ periphery in general, are perhaps the most well planned for contingency in this whole global financial mess. It had to happen eventually, and, now, it very much seems like the relevant central authorities want it to happen, because the Greek economy has become such dead weight (and Spain is catching up quickly). No doubt there will be unintended consequences, but I’m sure the banksters and their cronies have a million and one different measures in place to deal with it, ranging from media propaganda to capital controls and police/military repression. As always, the masses will take the brunt of the blow for now.
davefairtex post=4484 wrote: skipbreakfast –
Asimov had a character of his use a line I really liked: “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” I feel that is true for speech as well as actions. Like most such things, perhaps its not a rule to be slavishly followed, but an ideal to strive for.
I’ve been on quite a few forums where the “regulars” acted exactly opposite of that principle, and that’s why I’m glad we have regulars like you here on TAE. Other than few obvious trolls, people are open-minded and civil and strive for understanding, rather than some ratification of their online ego/pride.
Ilargi wrote: The article may trump any such intentions. Some things only work in secret, and once Pandora’s box is open, they no longer do.
This is a good point. Perhaps the article is just a float to put a lot of pressure on the new Greek government, trying to force them to stick to the original memorandum terms. It seems odd that they would announce intentions to excommunicate Greece a month or two in advance. Either that or the article leaked their true intentions, and now they will have to revise their plans. Or… they figured it would be a more peaceful transition doing it this way… which I highly doubt.
Regardless, it doesn’t reflect well on state of finances and political brinksmanship in the Eurozone right now. They are truly getting desperate.
TheTrivium4TW post=4435 wrote: My entire point is that they could change the entire system should they simply decide to do so. You’ve erected an arbitrary constraint on them that need not exist and doesn’t exist. They’ve already changed the entire system in which we operate several times over. if you think about it, I bet you can make a list of how the system was fundamentally changed since 2008.
…
That’s where our paradigms part ways – they simply choose the system and the system forces certain actions… When it suits their needs, they change the system. They’ve already done it multiple times – TBTF, selective legalized securities fraud, Presidential assassination powers with zero oversight, government reaching inside your pants, etc…
But think about how the system is changed by them… it HAS to be towards more centralization of wealth, more consolidation of authority and more explicit repression. So, yes, they can change the system, but that change comes out of a necessity to maintain their grip on the levers of power, and it can only go in one general direction. For ex., Nixon unilaterally taking the US off of the international gold standard established by Breton Woods is a great example of elites changing the monetary system, but they really had no choice if their goal is to maintain socioeconomic complexity as well has their privileged roles in society (which it is). It’s not like they could have switched to a silver standard, or back to a domestic gold standard, or anything they wanted to do.
I believe this general direction of centralization sows the seeds of its own destruction over time. That conclusion is based on a lot of factors, but I think a good way to think about it is in terms of natural ecosystems that go through similar adaptive cycles, i.e. phases of birth, growth, conservation and collapse.
https://theautomaticearth.com/Finance/fractal-adaptive-cycles-in-natural-and-human-systems.html
Please post a link where I can find the TAE article that exposes the Federal Reserve as black letter law criminally breaking Section 2A of the Federal Reserve Act. I want to send that link out to everyone on my mailing list.
We are going to get that link, right? 😉 For the record, I don’t think that link exists, Ash – but I’m pretty darn excited about being proven wrong.
How about taking it one step further, and saying the FRA itself breaks the black letter law of the US Constitution, allegedly the most supreme law of the land:
We could write stacks of books on the prevalence of money in politics and the swarms of lobbyists who descend on Washington every single week, and many people have, but it’s simpler to just focus on the most egregious example of corruption. The most powerful, influential economic policy-making institution in the country, the Federal Reserve (“Fed”), is an unelected body that is completely unaccountable to the people. Well, let’s back up and start with the fact that this institution’s very existence is most likely unconstitutional. Here’s why:
In terms of general debt-dollar and Fed tyranny across the world, though, I can also provide you with a boat load of links to articles I have written about that.
As to your point that different people have different goals and different ways to achieve them – I totally agree and respect everyone’s wisdom and right to do as they see fit. I obviously enjoy TAE’s overall approach immensely, hence, my participation here.
Sorry for ranting a bit on the main thread and taking too much space. Ilargi, thanks for the reminder to be more concise.
And it’s great to have you here! At the end of the day, we are basically on the same page, just focusing on it from slightly different angles. Even between I, S and me, we take different approaches to the same issues, and then of course the differing backgrounds/perspectives of all the commenters, which I believe is a very good way to go about constructing the biggest possible picture.
Tao Jonesing post=4428 wrote: I view his actions as BOTH embracing the true societal values (i.e., screw everybody but me) and a rejection of them (i.e., screw you).
I think we’re talking about the same underlying thing for the most part. Ames portrayed the past rampages as rebellion against a repressive, enslaving culture, and Vulliamy portrayed the actions as fully embracing the shadow American iconic culture, as WHD put it. I believe both portrayals are accurate to an extent, and both aspects of our cultural values can lead to a person being fully “excommunicated” from others and him/herself, or more accurately his/her moral identity.
Glennda also raises a good point. I tend to view traditional labels of mental illness with a lot of skepticism, but at the same time I recognize that a lot of people who are truly afflicted with some sort of debilitating condition are rejected by societal institutions and left to fend for themselves. That will become even more true as economic conditions worsen and the political climate becomes even more splintered. Our concern for the “least of these” in this country has always been severely lacking to non-existent.
42for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; 43I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ 44“Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ 45“Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ Matt. 25
Tao Jonesing post=4423 wrote: Ashvin,
You’re right to inquire as to whether the values espoused by our societal institutions are somehow driving this kind of deviant behavior, but I think you’re way off in suggesting that the violent imagery of popular “culture” is somehow at work here.
Humanity is a violent species. By some measures, we are far less violent today than any other time in history.
I wasn’t suggesting the pop culture imagery is the cause of senseless violent actions… it is just a reflection of a senselessly violent culture. Why else are these industries and themes so profitable? And premeditation doesn’t make the violence any less borne out of rage/anger. In fact, it means the person was acting less on “heat of the moment” emotions and more on calculated desires that have festered for quite some time.
In his book, Ames points out that there were times in American history where almost everyone carried around a concealed weapon with them in public, but you still never got the kind of mass execution sprees we have seen since the 1980s. That could be because it was easier for others to defend themselves, but I think it is deeper than that. Something has definitely changed, and I believe that neoliberal values are certainly a part of it, as you point out. But I don’t think we should just write it off as something that has always existed, and something that won’t continue to get worse as societal conditions make the self-absorbed desires of individuals, borne out of fear and anger, even worse.
Greenpa post=4421 wrote: https://littlebloginthebigwoods.blogspot.com/
Sorry, but it’s far simpler than all this. They just want to be celebrities. All the endless discussion- is just what they wanted.
I’d bet if we polled a bunch of Americans asking them who the Arizona shooter was last year, less than half of them would remember the guy’s name, especially before today. Hell, I barely remembered what it was and I wrote an article about it. In today’s world of YouTube, Facebook and an infinite number of spinoffs of American Idol and America’s Got Talent, there are easier ways to get 15 minutes of fame. No doubt that our culture’s twisted promotion of star f*cking pride has a role to play in the cancer, but it not even close to the whole story here.
No, I believe this type of deeply-rooted anger/rage goes beyond a simple need for short-lived publicity. A guy studying for his doctorate in neuroscience suddenly turns into an insatiable media hound? To me, what we are seeing is the type of mentality that truly separates an individual from his/her soul (or whatever you want to call the moral impulse), and it is endemic to modern cultures. I could be wrong that this is what is going on with this specific guy, but if not him, then others who have come along before and will come again in the near future.
TheTrivium4TW post=4412 wrote:
For example, they could mint $50 trillion debt free coins and hand them out to, equally, to every citizen in the country.I disagree. They may have been instrumental in creating the system, but they can’t simply change the most basic rules without changing the entire system. That means they are being forced in a certain direction in order to maintain their grip, i.e. more centralization/consolidation of wealth, more intervention/regulation of markets, more explicit handouts to the elite class, more extraction of wealth from workers/taxpayers and mid-level owners of assets, more police state repression, etc., basically – more complexity to maintain complexity. I believe that forced path will eventually lead them to a steep cliff somewhere, with nowhere left to go but down… way down.
Call it self censoring.
How does the evil system cause someone as gifted and good as Stoneleigh to self censor? Not just Stoneleigh, but Ilargi as well? Not just those to, BUT NEARLY EVERYONE! It is trivial to prove beyond all doubt and back… it is the root cause of the Greatest Depression… but it is, apparently, off limits.
Why? How? It isn’t an accident… it benefits Big Finance Capital and it hurts the average citizen… will eventually murder 100s of millions, if not a billion people.
What causes a highly intelligent and compassionate law student bent towards social justice to just *accept* the criminality that ultimately will lead to the Greatest Depression human history has ever seen?
Because I’m livid about it – and it is awful lonely being livid because nobody else seems to be able to acknowledge the root cause, let alone give it a second thought.
We’ve been over this too many times before… you are assuming that no one else knows about it because we don’t write about it every chance we get. That’s not true. We have written about it several times in the past, but we also feel our time is better spent on a regular basis writing about different aspects of what’s going on, including the ways in which the BFC is potentially losing control.
You are not lonely, Triv. As you well know, there are hordes of other people who have been saying what you’re saying for many years now. It is actually a very common argument, and there is a lot of merit to it. The problem is when you assert that anyone not making this argument on a repeated basis is somehow missing the point and being duped by the BFC into not caring enough. Do you really think we don’t know about the Fed, debt-dollar tyranny, fluoridation, academic/media corruption, and a million other related things?
It’s not self-censorship. Speaking for myself, I have decided there’s really no point parroting that same information over and over. Most people who read TAE are already aware of a lot of that stuff, and by focusing on it too much you miss the nuanced big picture that is actually unfolding this very moment. The elites have their tricks/tactics to not-so-subtly convince the masses of their own power/control over the direction of humanity, and we have ours to convince people that the elites are self-deluded and wrong – humanity can change it’s ultimate destination, one person at a time.
TheTrivium4TW post=4389 wrote:
I do see where Stoneleigh can be perceived as being a bit arrogant. For example, I think her POV is exactly correct, even if for slightly different reasons. She’d argue mechanics of the system (which is correct), but I’d argue that her POV benefits the criminal banking cartel, which is more FUNDAMENTAL than the system because they could – and would – change the system to benefit themselves.This leads me to believe that deflation is a criminal Big Finance Capital choice (leaving the current system in place instead of changing the system midstream) rather than what Stoneleigh argues is the necessary outcome (assuming the system remains the same).
So according to your BFC criminal cartel model, could the Owners simply maintain the status quo financial capitalist system for the next 5, 10, 20 years if they wanted to? Could they keep the masses confident in the banking system, the international bond markets functioning smoothly, the mercantile countries exporting, the debtor nations consuming, etc.? If not, then we must necessarily place a limit on their power to produce specific outcomes.
I’m not saying that many of the current crises were not anticipated and/or planned by groups of elites, or, even more obviously, that they are benefiting from these crises in many different ways. But it seems very unrealistic and counter-productive to me when we assume these already powerful people and institutions are borderline omnipotent. Instead, I am confident that there will come a time when they are rendered nearly impotent, and how soon that time arrives is ultimately up to the rest of us.
Jerry McManus post=4371 wrote: Hmmm…, no HTML in comments?
https://michael-hudson.com/2012/07/the-weaponization-of-economic-theory/Hey Jerry,
HTML tags have to in brackets rather than <> tags, i.e. [insert html here]
Truly insightful, inspiring story and words.
It is not some misanthropic preoccupation but a visceral awareness of the implications of what I describe. This is not the providence of fiction but actual historical phenomenon. It is easy to dismiss something you have not experienced but that is a position of unexamined assumption and bias that must be exposed for what it is. It is not about making someone agree with you but to at least intellectually recognize the validity of the claim and to earn respect for your position. This again is at least a seed. I often summarize my goals as radical intention coupled with diplomatic action.
We must now engage others in whatever ways we know how. It seems that many people think of “tolerance and respect” for others as just letting them go about their business without bothering them, or finding a way to accommodate everyone’s perspectives and beliefs without diminishing them or offending anyone. I fail to see how that will be anything but counter-productive now. If anything, it shows a deep lack of respect for the other.
Instead, we must have “radical intention coupled with diplomatic action” as Alexander so eloquently puts it. Speak honestly and listen carefully. Treat with respect and stand firm with your convictions. Teach what you know and learn what you don’t. This type of mutual engagement is much easier said than done, especially in bitter climates, but I think sometimes we will find that doing it turns out to be much easier than we thought it would be. If it can be done in the most politically, socially, ethnically and spiritually fractured environments, then it can be done anywhere.
Surly1 post=4281 wrote: I do not understand your last statement, though:”The political machinations of nation-states are all but dead now; only the natural sovereignty of individuals and their local communities remain.” The nation-state retains an impressive array of tools to coerce and prod the public. The point of the last graph seems to be that we are all in the same boat, and we shouldn’t blame one another… so what do you mean?
It means that we should not expect to find fairness, justice, peace, love or any of those good redeeming qualities of humanity through large-scale political processes at this point. I’m sure a lot of charismatic leaders will emerge promising exactly those things in upcoming years, and some of them may even scapegoat what seem to be all the “right people”, but we shouldn’t believe any of them. I think those things will only come through the strength of individuals, and whatever communities they can manage to forge and sustain.
sangell post=4249 wrote: I think you’re drawing the wrong conclusion as to the decline in bankruptcies, especially in regards to businesses. This probably has more to do with zombie banks rolling over loans to zombie companies to avoid writing the loan off. Low interest rates makes the process easier. Also, to the extent that banks are allowing short sales or reworking loans under the various government foreclosure avoidance programs is going to reduce the number of “homeowners’ filing for bankruptcy.
Yes, that’s what I meant by keeping debtors on “the treadmill” in the post. The decline in bankruptcies is obviously not only due to people being unable to afford them (or qualify for them), but also people coerced to stay in debt via low interest rates, refinancing and loan mods, most of which is directly subsidized by taxpayers. Either way, the decline is not a “positive” economic development (for return to growth) as the pundits would have us believe.
jal post=4244 wrote:
they didn’t have nearly enough equity left in their assets or dischargeable debt to justify paying the lawyers’ fees and court costs associated with a bankruptcy filing. Basically, they have already been squeezed out of so much wealth that they have been priced out of the bankruptcy process. It is really a sad state of affairs
What happens to those people?
Is the next step being hounded and scared by private collectors of debts?
Prison?
The first step for these people is really just selling their assets or walking away from them altogether, as well as their loans. Depending on the jurisdiction, creditors and debt collectors may be able to come after them for the balance, and I certainly wouldn’t want to find myself in that situation, because I do think the “normal” protections we have been accustomed to will go out the window pretty quickly and we have already seen quite a few people jailed for what essentially amounts to unpaid debts – see Revisiting the Physical Risks of Debt
rlmrdl,
If you want to simultaneously exercise your brain and get exposure to the single best argument for HI out there, I suggest you visit FOFOA’s blog and familiarize yourself with Freegold theory. Obviously I don’t agree with it, but it’s hands down the best argument for HI you will find, and it is somewhat creative in how it makes the argument.
I have neither the knowledge of Nicole or AG in this area, but I actually don’t find their views to be THAT far apart. They have some critical differences, to be sure, but also some critical points of agreement. I find the key to AG’s view in this part:
We need gradual, decentralized trickle charge or slow pumping energy storage systems for sustainable humanity. Anything else is not viable for the planet. If we want to zip around at high speed and be able to have instant this and that, yes we have an energy crisis. If we want to emulate biological processes and eschew the love affair with higher energy density per mole of fossil and or nuclear poisons killing the planet, we don’t have an energy crisis.
Nature paces everything; so should we.
In essence, we need to scale down (and slow down) our energy production/consumption if alternatives are going to be viable in any meaningful way, no? Another critical area of agreement I find between Nicole and AG is in terms of the socioeconomic and political structures that are in place and that make alternatives very unlikely to develop before catastrophic collapse. AG says:
All that said, there is the 1% with their hubris and arrogance and there is the rest of humanity. The agenda of the 1% is a tad different from the rest of us. I agree the knockdown is coming. The people controlling the levers of innovation and adaptation in our governments and the elite parasites that own them want this knockdown so it will come. I maintain that the false notion of a causal relationship between a large population and a polluted, unsustainable, fossil fuel dependent human society is the driving force behind this elite desire for a knockdown. The elites are the only truly unsustainable population on this earth because of their mega-carbon footprints. So, in true Wall Street Orwellian fashion, they blame the bulk of the 7 billion humans for THEIR piggery and slavish dependency on fossil fuels. The 1% that owns our governments loves the predatory resource extraction paradigm despite the fact that some of them probably suspect that it will cause a population knockdown, not from lack of fossil fuels, but from environmental collapse
Nicole probably wouldn’t put in those terms… but the ideas are not too divergent here. As she makes clear in her article The Storm Surge of Decentralization, TPTB is a major obstacle to any move towards creating self-sufficient communities in the developed world, especially in terms of food and energy production, distribution and consumption. Like both Nicole and AG, I fear it is much too late for us to avoid some of the worst outcomes of our fossil fuel dependence, but I also think there is reasonable room to discuss WHY it is much too late. Nicole places more emphasis on the negative EROEI, while AG obviously thinks it is mostly centralized industries and political hacks to blame. However, I think there is a good deal of overlap there and they both agree that ultimately society’s energy demands will need to be scaled way down and/or the energy infrastructure customized to be way more efficient than it is right now if we are to mitigate the damage from our predicaments. And, it seems they also both agree that it is very unlikely any of those things will happen at this point.
AG,
I believe you are absolutely right about these “guerrilla tactics” being well established in America by the 1960s, and arguably immediately after WWII. Some of the “experiments” we conducted with human beings ( as test subjects (and the aid of Nazi scientists) are absolutely horrific.
To me, JFK sounded like a President that was already being cornered by external forces of all sorts that had been corrupting American society for many years, but also one who decided to respond in an honest and courageous manner. It was forceful plea to the one remaining set of institutions that potentially could help the American people confront these threats, the Newspaper Press, but we all know how that ended up just a few years later… all you have to do is watch the movie Network!
agelbert post=3993 wrote: Ashvin,
I can’t seem to paste the url for The young turks video but for those interested, just go to rense.com and you can see it there.If it is a youtube video, you should be able to just paste the url link in your comment and it will automatically embed. As you can see, a lot of people have done that already… so it should work for you too.
Is this censorship debate really continuing here??
Surly,
There is a thing called trust in this community, and people from SB to Ilargi have it for my moderating decisions. That’s not to say they would have done the same thing, but they respect my decision. Before you start analogizing that to whether we should trust our leaders when they tell us it is in our best interests to suppress free speech, that is not the same situation at all. This is the first time I have had to ban anyone besides a corporate spammer on this forum, and I did it for very good reasons. In fact, you are in a better position to know those reasons than anyone here on TAE. But since you and RE still insist on continuing with this discussion, instead of getting back to the REAL topic at hand (shale gas issues), I will indulge you guys this once.
This is what Karpatok said on DD (YOUR site) after she attacked me for making Christian arguments over there:
But the hypocritical coward Ashvin. I just knew that I smelled rottenness with all of his loathsome pontificating. PEEYOUUU. So yes. I just wish he would shut up and keep it to himself. Furthermore, what’s the big F deal at TAE? Are they all 3 fundamentalists? As gadfly for SOC I will not rest until I sting the whole bunch of hypocrits at TAE.
Umm, OK. Not very long after she says THAT, she shows up on this thread after agelbert and I briefly discuss Christian values in relation to Vandana Shiva’s ideas, and says this:
So are the originators of TAE, Stoneleigh and Illargi, Christian evangelicals like Ashvin? And is the final objective of this website the kind of proselytizing that Ashvin is engaged in? Or rather is it to play on people’s confusion and fear, perhaps to make a living?
Now we (I) obviously know what her intentions are with these “questions”, because she told us over on DD. Then I politely explain to her what the purposes of TAE is – to expose deceptions in economic, financial, environmental and energy issues – and tell her to drop her deceptive agenda to undermine TAE. She responds with this:
What is really behind your tizzy fit Ashvin? Do you feel that YOU have been exposed in some way? I merely asked a few questions? I did not make a statement so how can I have lied? If you are so concerned about the well being of the web site and your employers stake why did you turn it into a scripture spouting site? Are all 756 members evangelicals like yourself and looking for that kind of validation and enlightenment? I am still waiting for a reply from Stoneleigh and Illargi. And by the way, I have greatly appreciated the insights and posts over the years. But I find your Bible thwacking very distasteful.
Clearly, she is going over the top here to pursue her original agenda. This kind of stuff is not even worthy of consideration or a response. So I told her plainly:
One more comment like that, Karpatok, and I am forced to ban you.
Take what’s written here at face value and share your thoughts on these pressing issues if you want. But do not try to come here and undermine the site and its authors with your silly “questions” and ridiculous insinuations.
One more, and you will be banned for the time being.
Needless to say, she kept on saying the same crap in her next comment.
Ashvin P. You are behaving in a very irrational and immature manner. First you had a tantrum and you removed it. Now you are behaving like an asshole. Did your employers feel threatened enough to encourage you to ban me for questioning the agenda of this site? Why would they feel so threatened? And why would you? This kind of censorship implies many unsavory things. For example the allowing of bible thumping like yours but the banning of any conspiracy ideas is certainly the most arbitrary of favoritisms. But then the constant appeal to authority is unsavory in itself.
Her whole agenda from the very beginning was to imply “unsavory things” about TAE, as should be painfully clear by now, so my deletion of her comments and banning did not change anything about what she believed or her agenda. This last comment reflects unauthentic “concern” about my moderation at its finest. She was trying to use my justified moderation as a means to pursue her original agenda of casting doubts on the site. Therefore, she was rightfully banned for her deceit and her trollish attacks, and that was that. Nothing to hide here, only something that needed to be squashed before it even started.
So… can we get over this now?
One more comment like that, Karpatok, and I am forced to ban you.
Take what’s written here at face value and share your thoughts on these pressing issues if you want. But do not try to come here and undermine the site and its authors with your silly “questions” and ridiculous insinuations.
One more, and you will be banned for the time being.
Karpatok post=3925 wrote: @Ashvin P. You wish to expose me or something about me? Please by all means be my guest. Expose away. And what kind of silly threat is that exactly? Are you some kind of judge and juror in your role of proselytizor ? and it still remains for your employers to answer the question.
I really don’t have to do much, you have exposed yourself in your original comment. You are implying that this site has some ulterior motive and is being used as a means to teach religious doctrine and make “believers” out of the readers, and/or for personal financial gain. That is not true – it is a bold-faced lie, and you are using it as a means of undermining years and years of hard work that has gone into this site by I&S and has produced fantastic insights for their readers. Frankly, what you are doing is more deceptive than even the worst corporate spammer that shows up on this forum and it makes me SICK, so it will not continue anymore…
No one here owes you an answer to anything. Now drop it and contribute something meaningful to the discussion here, or leave.
Karpatok post=3918 wrote: So are the originators of TAE, Stoneleigh and Illargi, Christian evangelicals like Ashvin? And is the final objective of this website the kind of proselytizing that Ashvin is engaged in? Or rather is it to play on people’s confusion and fear, perhaps to make a living?
I’d say the main purpose here is to expose the deceptions of the public in whatever form they take, but mainly in the areas of economics/finance, energy and environment. Whether you believe in the Christian Faith or not, it is clear that the authors of the Bible understood the material goals of men and the deceptions they would use to reach them. So I have no problem quoting scripture from time to time, as it can be very relevant to the issues we face today.
Now, Karpatok, if you come here with an agenda of deception with regards to me, I&S or TAE, then you will be EXPOSED as well. So go do your homework before making combative accusations… or else drop this whole matter altogether.
agelbert post=3916 wrote: Ashvin,
As to the Christian golden rule concept, the elites have certainly pulled out all the stops to demonize it. It also follows exactly the same pattern of screwing people into poverty and them blaming them for it to the point of claiming that sustainable living habits involving clothing and eating habits are a mark of poverty, “bad” thinking and “anti-growth” thinking. It’s laughable BS but that is what we are all taught is true.Yeah exactly. As soon as Constantine decided to “convert”, the whole process of co-opting and manipulating the original Biblical doctrine began in earnest. The Catholic Church was almost as bad as the Gnostics in this regard! The latter essentially blamed the God of the Bible for all of humanity’s woes, and it has been one piece of propaganda after another since then. And of course the modern day “neo-cons” who claim to be Christian are so Anti-Christ that it is indeed laughable that anyone believes it or associates them with the spiritual faith.
I do admit they are quite clever even if in the long run they are actually quite stupid and suicidal.
“But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
2 Corinthians 11:14“Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”
Revelations 12:12agelbert post=3905 wrote: Ashin wrote
Ashvin, I only ask that you step back and look at the big picture from a planetary perspective. When money is “thrown” at some industry, it is being stolen from many powerless people. The harm all this does to the environment aside for a moment, consider Vandana Shiva’s very accurate description of the fallacy of putting several energy inputs into a process in order to get one energy output and then claiming a profit.I indeed was not the author of this fine piece, but I have written about Vandana Shiva before and specifically her article “Two Myths that Keep the World Poor”. You can find it at the link below:
Reverse Engineer post=3861 wrote:
Tough Call? OMFG. Its this kind of insane logic that got us into this mess.Spacey doesn’t “Win” when Pitt fills him full of Lead, he LOSES. He’s DEAD. Dead=Lose here.
Sorry, RE, but you totally missed the point of the reference here (perhaps because you have not even seen the movie). I specifically chose Se7en because of the obvious themes of Christian faith running through it. Kevin Spacy represents the Devil, and is possessed by one of his demonic spirits. When Pitt ends the life of Spacey, the spirit WINS… and then it simply moves on to seek another physical body in which it can undermine God. That is how it works in Judeo-Christian theology. I would not have chosen that reference if I knew we were just going to skip that plainly obvious aspect of it altogether and focus on the American legal system…
If I was St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and Brad had let Kevin live, I would slam the doors shut on him. He does not deserve Everlasting Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven. He had the CHANCE to Exterminate some Evil and passed it up. This is not Everlasting Glory meritable.
In actuality, sticking to the spirit of the reference here, God would look at Pitt and say something like… “you were tempted by the Devil to commit sin, just like Eve in the Garden, and you failed the test, just like she did. You spent an entire lifetime searching for Me and let all the fruits of your hard work slip away in that one moment of rage. Therefore, you never knew me and you must depart”
If YOU were the Ultimate Decider in Heaven, then the Judeo-Christian faith and God’s plan for humanity would be rendered meaningless…. But, hey, at least people would get to play out their revenge fantasies on Earth without any spiritual consequences.
Reverse Engineer post=3849 wrote: [quote=ashvin post=3844]
I see. If I pull a quote from the Bible, it is out of context. If you pull a quote from the Bible it is in context.Well, seeing as how I provided you with the book, chapter and all the surrounding verses of the relevant statements… yeah, a lot more context was provided than “go forth and multiply”. Believe it or not, context is absolutely critical for determining the meaning conveyed by anything communicated in any form.
“Be fruitful and multiply” or some version of that appears several places in the Bible. The first instance is in Genesis 1 after Adam and Eve were created:
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Hmmm, so let’s see… God creates two human beings on Earth and then tells them to multiply so they can populate it and govern over it in His name. Sounds pretty logical to me. Either way, it has absolutely nothing to do with our current issues of over-population thousands of years later. God didn’t tell them to keep multiplying forever until there were no resources left to sustain the human population. You can easily go through every instance that phrase is used in the Bible with online software and figure out what the context is, and therefore the actual meaning/message conveyed in that context…
Of course, sometimes to determine the meaning you will have to compare one part of the Bible [or any written document] with another part that is similar or being referenced, or understand the historical time period in which something is being said or taking place, or the beliefs structures that were in place, or the literary device that is being employed, or how certain spelling/grammar is used in the relevant language, or…
I think you get the idea.
If you don’t accept the premise, you have a lot more room for maneuvering.
RE
Uh, yeah. If we DO accept the premise that No OMMP as laid out by RE = automatic extinction, then… it’s kind of difficult to argue against it. Not impossible, as I have shown with the afterlife/reincarnation arguments, but difficult. Fortunately for us, though, the premise that no OMMP equals auto extinction can be placed somewhere on a scale from ridiculous to absolutely insane.
Surly1 post=3846 wrote: Your point about poker is well made. My poker playing skills are such that, when I sit down to a game, I may as well hand my wallet to my fellow players. To follow your analogy, playing your cards well early to avoid tough choices involves knowing the odds. Not sure the odds are knowable at this time. Collapse is coming; do we play for an intermediate term, or go all in now?
Well that’s kind of the point of everything we discuss on these forums, right? To figure out the “odds” of how this particular collapse will play out. That’s exactly what you do in a poker game, except it’s obviously much easier in comparison. Here’s an example:
A player raises 4x the big blind in early position, and you have AT (ace-ten) on the button. So now you are faced with a decision – fold, call, or raise. To make the best decision here, you must figure out the “odds” involved. That’s not as easy as it sounds, though. It involves a lot of factors, such as what kind of hands the other player is capable of raising with (and that depends on his playing style, his betting patterns, recent action at the table, etc.), who else is in the pot, what kind of equity your AT has against the range of hands the raiser has, what the effective stack sizes are, and a couple other more minor variables. And of all that is just to make a decision before the next betting round – you have to do the same thing on every betting round. BUT, making good decisions on the first betting round could make your decisions on the later ones much easier (although that fact alone is not what makes the first decision good)
So going back to the issue at hand, let’s say that the strains of thought in every comment within this debate represent a betting round. That means we have thousands and thousands more betting rounds to play before the game totally collapses. One of our goals, then, is to choose the strains of thoughts we engage wisely right now so that we may have easier decisions later. Some strains of thought need to be folded right now out of the gate, while others can be entertained to varying degrees.
Using this analogy, I would say the spiritual strain of thought is really the one that makes our decisions the easiest later. It’s almost analogous to folding every hand on the first betting round, i.e. there are essentially NO tough decisions to be made later. We already know how we will deal with every choice we are presented with in the future, at least in theory. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right move to make, though, based on the all of the complex factors involved. Sometimes leaving yourself with only easy decisions isn’t the best way to play your hands… it all depends.
Surly1 post=3843 wrote: [quote=scandia post=3842]There is blood on my hands if I resist, there is blood on my hands if I comply.
Precisely the point I hoped to address by what I wrote in the article above, now obscured by the haze of battle between Ashvin and RE:
I apologize for that haze, because I do agree with your guys’ underlying point that most people are facing very tough choices here either way. Although, that does remind me of something a very good poker player taught me (paraphrased) – “The best players aren’t great because they make lot of tough choices correctly when playing their hands, but rather because they play their hands in ways that allow them to avoid making tough choices down the line”.That may not make a lot of sense if you are unfamiliar with poker, but it really applies to life in general. The whole point of this debate for me is really to analytically flesh out the issues involved in these tough scenarios, so we may be fortunate enough to figure out exactly what “side we are on” and why BEFORE those tough choices actually present themselves. Then, the choices won’t be so tough anymore.
Reverse Engineer post=3839 wrote:
We are at serious risk of the END of Human Sentience. If you value Biblical Morality more than that maybe you risk this, but I do not so highly value morality which makes little sense in this world. “Go Forth and Multiply?” WTF? That is the LAST thing we need to do these days. My moral principle here is to Save as Many as I Can.You really need to stop quoting everything from the Bible completely out of context as if that has any meaning. Who does that? No one ever does that for any written or oral statement they are trying to attack, EXCEPT if it is found within a spiritual text. I am going to do it to you now just to show you how ridiculous it is:
RE wrote:
The collateral damage here is going to be ENORMOUS, beyond any scale ever in all of Recorded History.This is one of those times we have to make sure J6P runs the Death Show…
I’ll put my kids up against these folks anytime. No more pussy footing around with this stuff.
Bring ’em on TAE, I will take them ALL on.
Damn, RE, sounds like you really want to start some kind of Fourth Reich here and exterminate ALL of us… and you’re gonna make your kids do the dirty work!! What kind of maniac are you??
Clearly not everyone would choose the OMMP no matter what, that is what you yourself argue all the time. You argue that some principles are so inviolable that in fact it might be better to let ourselves go EXTINCT than to violate them.
The key words in that statement were… “if we knew how to do it in a perfect way and one that is in harmony with our personal beliefs/values
No, that is NOT all there is to it.
I understand well enough why people have faiths of varying sorts, and I understand also well enough IMHO the Christian Faith also.
The problem with about all of these faiths in a world of serious overshoot is they have limited applicability if you want to Save as Many as You Can. I don’t think all those folks who generated up these Faiths were “wrong” in their assumptions when the world was new and resources seemed limitless. Conditions have changed here now though, and for much the same reason that the monetary system we run based on growth will not work, so also the “truths” many hold near and dear to their moral center ALSO will not work.
People do not let go of truths they think are universal very easily, only really when personal survival becomes the name of the game are such truths really tested vor veracity. A few souls will hold onto their truths right to the bitter end, and get Nailed to a Cross for it. The fact they will do that is quite remarkable, but it doesn’t make them Right all the time either.
You may think you understand WHY people have various faiths and what exactly those faiths entail, but I don’t think you really do, based on your numerous misrepresentations of the most popularized (and bastardized) one in Western culture – the Christian faith. Here’s an example of quoting something in context from the Bible:
Mathew6.5-15 wrote: And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
9After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11Give us this day our daily bread.
12And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. 14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: 15But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Right, Jesus recognized all of these things before you and I ever did – that many people would begin practicing the faith as hypocrites and throw out trite nuggets of His wisdom from time to time. But He told His true believers not to do that, and to always remember when they pray in solace – “Our Father which art in heaven… Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in Earth, as it is in Heaven” and “…if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”.
Do you not see how this prayer informs all aspects of a true believer’s thoughts and actions in this world? What they believe can be accomplished through their faith? Why would they go against what is told to them by someone who they believe to be the Messiah prophesied in the OT, not necessarily without good reason, and give all that up for the OMMP? Your very premise that humanity faces inevitable extinction without the OMMP is ridiculous in their minds, and, no, they are not ignoring the evidence that you are considering. Like I said before, they realize all the evil being perpetrated today, and the various economic, social, environmental and militaristic calamities we face across the world. That actually gives them even MORE confidence in their faith.
But this is why I think the spiritual thing is a dead end with you, because you refuse to research their views and accurately portray their beliefs, and THEN take them to task for what you think they got wrong. And I don’t really expect you to take a bunch of time out of your life to do something like that, but I do expect you to acknowledge that there are well-established perspectives out there that will arrive at completely different conclusions about what we need to do when faced with all the current Evil that we are faced with.
Reverse Engineer post=3826 wrote:
This is Elementary, my dear Watson. Whether your deduction is the more realistic scenario or not is open to conjecture, but the fact is that if it does indeed play out that way it is NOT the OMMP, it is then the IMP, Illuminati Master Plan. The significant DIFFERENCE between these two plans is who ends up DEAD here. In the OMMP, it is mostly Illuminati who end up dead (by percentage, not absolute numbers of course since they represent only .01% of the total population). In the IMP, mostly J6Ps end up dead. Given the Morton’s Fork choice here that it is going to go one way or the other, Sherlock here picks the OMMP.I thought the whole point of this “thought experiment” of yours was to see what types of economic and sociopolitical dynamics will realistically happen in upcoming years? We would all choose OMMP if we knew how to do it in a perfect way and one that is in harmony with our personal beliefs/values. But, REALISTICALLY, we know that there are a dime a dozen problematic issues wrapped up in this thing, and I am just pointing out to you one of the major ones that I see. And I know I’m not the only one, because other people have mentioned how it could be co-opted by the Illuminati and what not. I am simply taking that logic a step further and positing that it may already be a part of THEIR master plan to deceive the masses (as always) and warm them up to their faux Orkin Man. If that is true (and I maintain that it is a much more likely outcome than your OMMP with truly righteous intentions), then we are simply playing into their hands when we advocate for it. We are helping to sow and water the psychological seeds that they would like to see fully grown.
RE,
I don’t think there’s much left to debate down this spiritual road. You are convinced that spiritual truths have zero application to human dynamics in the “real world”, and you are unwilling to do any research about the spiritual perspectives and principles that you casually dismiss.
All of the evil you see happening now and in the future is exactly the same evils that those of faith see, but they have fundamentally different explanations for why it is here and therefore fundamentally different views on what we can do about it.
You and I will say that we knew all this stuff was coming down the pipeline for years, and they will say “oh really? well half this crap was prophesied in the Bible 2000 years ago, and in some cases even earlier…” Even you like to quote Revelation 18 as being relevant to how monetary collapse would go down today.
If you still can’t understand why their faith is critical to what they think is an acceptable course of action and also what they believe will happen in the future, both to them personally and the world as a whole, then there’s nothing more I can say to make you understand that.
You think they’re wrong, they think they’re right, and I think they are a lot more right than you are. That’s all there is to it.
