I have always thought a way freeze people without damage would come first and then there would be a race to reverse aging while millions would be frozen and stored to keep them from dying. Maybe we will not have to freeze anyone.
Left-Right-Mixed
Money has become the demon-god of this world. There is little doubt of this in the early 21st century. Neoliberalism has become the driving force in civilization and now threatens to burn it to the ground by way of Climate Change. What immediately comes to mind is the Fermi Paradox and the most likely solution that technological civilizations quickly and inevitably self-destruct. Biological life may be just too stupid to survive. We believe we are intelligent, but this does not seem to be so. That old liberal saw that education solves all problems does not hold when the idea of truth itself is destroyed. The Orwellian firehose of falsehood that is now corroding the structure of our civilization is not being addressed. And I trace the evil back to simple greed.
The complexity of reality is such a hard feature to overcome both individually and collectively that we, as a species, may well be doomed. Our Darwinian survival strategy is based on fiction, not fact. We imagine the best possible future and then change this lie into truth. But if we look too far into that future, we find the opposite of life short circuiting the whole project. All are driven mad in this sense. I suspect an indefinite lifespan would bring sanity and It is the only path I can see; that our survival as a species depends on our survival as individuals. As long as we are submerged and slowly drowning in existential madness, there is no hope. If I die, we all die. If you die, we all die. We will cease to exist, and the universe will continue in silence. This is what our radio telescopes seem to be telling us. That the majority of our efforts as a race should be united and focused on reversing aging is an idea that does not exist. And so, I believe, as long as that idea does not exist, we certainly are doomed to extinction and perhaps far sooner than anyone imagines.
In terms of politics, there is no mystery if our organization is contemplated outside of the left and right cultural echo chambers. The closest humankind has come to a fully functioning society was undoubtedly the American mixed economy in the middle of the 20th century. Sadly, democracy as a collective check against institutionalized sociopathy is a concept the majority of humankind chooses to ignore, or at least is easily distracted from. The only device capable of interrupting the rise and fall of empire, the boom-and-bust cycle of capitalism, and the only path to a sustainable future. Calls for a “Green New Deal” and a “New Bretton Woods” go unheeded. Oligarchy, Autocracy, Plutocracy, in all their guises, and Fascism, are on the march again. Darwinian economics will end us like dinosaurs.
But…there is hope. Or I would not be writing this.
Is Democracy Ending?
When considering the end of anything it is helpful to revisit the beginning. The very beginning of this thing we call democracy can be traced back to ancient Greece.
Five hundred years before the time of Christ, an Athenian named Cleisthenes established a new form of government where authority over the state, and by extension the population that made up the state, was exercised in part by each citizen by way of their individual vote. Democracy meant that if ten of the richest or most powerful citizens of a state voted to stop being taxed or start a war, even if they owned almost all the land and held all the wealth, if eleven citizens voted to continue to tax or not start a war, then even though these eleven citizens were far less powerful, a hundred times less wealthy, then their will would be carried out and not the will of the rich and powerful. Democracy arose because in matters of property and warfare, it was inevitable that a small minority would amass all wealth and power and control all others with that wealth. This minority would inevitably seek more wealth by going to war, which would of course be fought by those they controlled. The ultra-violence of the Greek city-states showcases this cycle-of-greed mechanism. Democracy in Athens lasted less than a hundred years before it began to be corrupted by a resurgent aristocracy and oligarchy. This idea and example of Democracy was not lost to history though and eventually…. America became a nation.
Redistribution of wealth and restraining the corrupting effects of power caused by morbid wealth were the key ideas of Democracy. Truth and the rule of law were and are, 25 centuries later, the two prerequisites for a functioning Democracy. As populations increased by orders of magnitude and the complexities of technology created a very different world, the basic essentials of a modern “Representative Democracy” have become clear. Two of these essentials are a media (the fourth estate) trusted to tell the truth and a self-correcting process to maintain a rule of law providing the greatest good for the greatest number. Representative Democracy also requires an Academia that allows the most intelligent, ethical, and morally righteous individuals to be equipped to be elected and represent the citizenry.
It is obvious the greatest good for the greatest number is best expressed by universal healthcare and allowing the most righteous to be elected is best enabled with free public education (the Nordic Model). It should also be obvious why these elements of democracy- redistribution of wealth (progressive taxation), regulation (anti-trust, environmental, and labor laws), health care (universal), and education (free)- are all opposed by oligarchs. The response to the citizenry taking steps to limit the power of oligarchy was the Corporation. This entity, with its appointed board of directors and shareholders is a kind of faux-democratic zombie, that is, not a living being but affecting the world like one, that allows oligarchy to thrive despite any attempted democratic checks and balances on obscene wealth and power.
Oligarchs, to a large extent, now control the fourth estate, and the Truth, that first prerequisite, is now being corroded and warped to the point where trust is being lost. The second prerequisite, “A self-correcting process to maintain a rule of law providing the greatest good for the greatest number” is the second target when destroying a democracy. The rule of law being enforced, and effective laws, are what create all the other necessary elements listed: redistribution of wealth (progressive taxation), regulation (anti-trust, environmental, and labor laws), health care (universal), and education (free). In America we see the supreme court, the highest court, has been corrupted and is now in the process of serving an incipient Oligarchy. “Orwellian”, a term used to describe the warping of human society by requiring individuals to accept opposites of reality such as “hate is love” and “war is peace”, can now be accurately applied to much of the activities of vested interests manipulating the public. This profound algorithmic psychological manipulation in the service of greed is a threat not just to democracy. Billions of human lives are at risk from a climate catastrophe that goes largely unaddressed due to these cyber-agents of human greed.
If the cause is to be named, then Neoliberalism is the most accurate identifier. This ideology has made money the demon-god of Earth and is the common feature of civilization in this early 21st century of human history. It is the device by which almost all influence is wielded, and all evil manifests. By applying Darwinism to Economics, the unholy cancer of Neoliberalism is slowly killing any chance of a better world for our children and children’s children. When profit replaces human life, which it surely has, then we are an endangered species. By making the meanings of the words “Freedom” and “Greed” interchangeable, by making redistribution of wealth synonymous with theft, society is degrading and devolving, and we all can see it, though many refuse to understand what is happening and prefer an alternate reality. Democracy is being changed into the strong eating the weak and this is truly Orwellian in that this cannibalization by zombies is what it was created, long ago, to end.
WILL OF THE PEOPLE
I commented on YouTube they should rewrite the lyrics, so this is my best try:
“WILL OF THE PEOPLE” The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of X 4
Let’s vote the orange into oblivion, The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of the-
Goodbye dark money election, The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of the-
Tax the rich no longer our gods, The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of the-
Say goodbye to all of the green frogs, The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of the-
———————————————————————————————————————————————
We need a transformation
One we all can see
We need a revolution
So long as we stay free
The will of the will of the-
——————————————————————————————————————————————–
It’s all redistribution baby
We will build for everyone’s need
No more yachts and jets for you baby
No more watching the rest of us bleed
———————————————————————————————————————————————
Stop the burning, unlock the sun, The will of the will of the
A solar electric future, or there is none
With every second the heat increases
We”re gonna smash the coal plants to pieces
The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of the-
We need a transmutation
One we all conceive
We need a revolution
So long as we stay free
The will of the will of the-
———————————————————————————————————————————————
It’s all redistribution baby
We will build for everyone’s need
No more yachts and jets for you baby
No more watching the rest of us bleed
The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of X 5
The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of-
The will of the people, the will of the people, the will of the will of X 2
The will of the will of the-
It’s all redistribution baby
We will build for everyone’s need
No more yachts and jets for you baby
No more watching the rest of us bleed
Meme War
“It’s OK to be white….left on the internet to be found and taken down the rabbit hole with.”
“The thing about any kind of conspiracy theory, or an idea, or any of these things is, they work, they go viral, when they play on something that feels true. Right? You don’t get conspiracy theories that don’t resonate in some way with some kind of part of someone’s experience…. what happens is, when it resonates online, then, if the resonance gets strong enough, they’ll go into the real world and do something. -And this is where…in order for it to…lead to something like January 6th, you need, in real life, there to be some kind of spectacle, or violence.”
The air we breathe should be free of course. Enough clean water to drink and for minimum sanitary needs should be guaranteed. A certain area of land that is free for anyone to walk on and pedestrian paths connecting the world should be a basic feature of human existence. The key to not freezing to death in northern latitudes and not dying of heat stroke in equatorial climes is energy. Electricity provides heat and light in the winter and air conditioning and food preservation in summer temperatures. Growing food everywhere possible and converting all biological and material waste into benign compounds that can go back into the environment is a prerequisite. People have to understand these things are just the bare essentials for humankind to survive. Climate change remediation, a basic living stipend, rent control, and free education and universal medical care are what follow. These things make up the only civilization that will not self-destruct.
If the million or so hard-core right-wingers think they can get away with it they are going to start murdering people in the tens of thousands and then the tens of millions if they win the initial battles. They want an all-white planet. It is as simple as that. Who started this?
“Twitter is a cauldron of elites, in a lot of ways…Elon Musk represents a kind of technocrat…and there is a growing number of folks who have this idea that, as technologists, they know more than other people. -I can tell you a lot of people in Silicon Valley have this sense that, hey, we are the ones that made this world the way it is and we know how it works and the government is broken, and the system is broken and this is a techno-monarchist mindset that is insurgent in certain very powerful circles.”
These neoliberal technocrats are not new. The super-rich have just repackaged themselves.
My comments on YouTube:
For me, personally, the most heinous example of the influence of technocrats was Elon Musk, some years ago, calling Space Solar Power “the stupidest idea ever.” This was because beaming solar power down from space to cure climate change is a project that is so immense it can only be undertaken by governments and is thus unattractive to “entrepreneurs” who cannot own it all. His plan to take over the internet with his own 40,000 pieces of space junk was the goal. Very sad in that space solar power is likely the only guaranteed solution to climate change IMO.
16:30 I have commented on popular space forums for years and finally gave up after being repeatedly banned from forums for simply criticizing spacex and “rocket jesus” as he has been called. The fanboys dogpile anyone not in the Musk cult relentlessly and hound them into silence, or, failing this, they email campaign moderators to ban critics. These Ayn-Rand-in-space toxic trolls, many of them also Trumpists, have essentially hijacked all the forums discussing space exploration.
Behind the GOP gaslighting over Pelosi attack: They know it won’t happen to them
Heather Digby Parton
The Republican base is highly motivated by the Big Lie and its ongoing hatred for what they perceive as the forces that are destroying American culture — immigrants, Black people, “cosmopolitan” city dwellers (often meaning Jewish people), feminists, liberals (aka “communists”), LGBTQ people and so on. The proliferation of crazy conspiracy theories feeds this hate and leads to the kind of violent attack that severely injured Paul Pelosi on Friday, as well as the ongoing threats against Democrats and civil servants. Republican officials, by and large, cannot quite bring themselves to condemn this. If anything, they wink and nod and suggest that it’s all part of the game: Democrats deserve this at least a little, they are prepared to win by any means necessary and, anyway, both sides do it too. No, not really. In fact, not at all. And on the vanishingly rare occasions when that may happen. Democrats step up and strongly condemn any such actions.
I do not see a clear message being sent containing the truth about America: Everything comes down to the rich evading taxes and regulation. The right-wing has spent, literally, billions over the last century to brainwash the public into voting for policies allowing the super-rich to become wealthier than they have ever been in the history of humankind. Absolute greed has made money the demon-god of this world and American democracy soon to end. Unless the neoliberal agenda is stopped, and reversed, less than one percent of the population will soon own everything. The 99 percent will be reduced to living in relative squalor as wage slaves.
Progressive taxation, financial and environmental regulation, and social safety nets, to include universal medical care and free public education, are the minimum requirements if America is to survive. We the people must decide if Democracy is the strong eating the weak or the greatest good for the greatest number. It is a choice that can only be made by way of the truth. Trust that a society is providing the truth and not lies to its members is the only ground on which any good thing can stand. Without this trust, without the truth, a society will inevitably descend into chaos and self-destruction. Those wishing for the “freedom” to become ultimately powerful first seek to destroy the truth and divide and conquer with lies those who would keep them from preying on others. And that, is the truth.
23 Dollars per Hour in 2022?
Minimum wage should be considered a “first job wage” for teenagers working part-time over the summer break. If wages had kept pace with productivity instead of flatlining during the Reagan Revolution the minimum wage would be 23 dollars an hour. That would be what teenagers working over the summer would get.
The best places to live on planet Earth, by almost every measure, are those with the “Nordic Model” as their way of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
We are failing. By every measure. Capitalist Scott Galloway says we can fix it all. Can we? Stupidity killed the dinosaurs, and it looks very likely that greed will end our species.
Discordant Knowing
A new series of nine experimental studies indicates that “discordant knowing”, certainty about something one perceives as opposed by the majority of others, predicts greater fanaticism. The studies showed that experimental manipulation of participants’ views, i.e. putting them in a situation where they are set to see their views as being in opposition to the majority, increased behavioral indicators of fanaticism, such as aggression, determined ignorance and wanting to join extreme groups in service of one’s view. The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Dogmatic beliefs, fanaticism and similar phenomena have been attracting interest of social psychologists for a long time. Tendencies of some people to maintain their beliefs in opposition to the views of the majority of people in their environment has been linked to these phenomena. Some studies proposed that people adopt such isolating behavior in an effort to satiate desires for certainty, control and uniqueness.
One concept proposed to explain this is “discordant knowing”. It consists of “felt knowledge” – being sure about an opinion or viewpoint – and “opposition” – perceiving one’s claim as being generally opposed by other people. While previous studies have focused very much on “felt knowledge”, a concept associated with dogmatism, rigidity, overclaiming and similar traits, psychological processes linked to holding minority viewpoints have not attracted much research attention.
To study discordant knowing, study author Anton Gollwitzer and his colleagues designed a series of nine social experiments. They recruited a total of 3277 people through Mechanical Turk [MTurk] and Prolific platforms as participants in these experiments. The first six experiments included 450-700 participants each, while the numbers in the last three were lower.
In the first five experiments, participants were randomly divided into a number of groups each of which was assigned a different experimental condition. In some of the experiments, researchers would ask participants about some of their beliefs and then, depending on the condition, asked them to imagine being in situations that regarded their views in a certain way. Participants were thereafter asked again to express the degree of endorsement of beliefs in question.
Experiments 6-9 included testing the generalizability of detected psychological mechanisms to beliefs about presidential candidates from the 2020 US elections, attitudes towards abortion, antivaccination beliefs, and on a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, whom authors included in the study as “members of a fanatical religious group” and thus a group holding “their religious claims in a discordant knowing framework” as compared with non-fanatical religious individuals.
Results obtained across these multifaceted experiments supported the authors’ hypothesis that discordant knowing underlies fanaticism. Experimental manipulation of participants views to fall under the discordant knowing framework heightened all aspects of fanaticism. They found that: this effect is based on mechanisms for responding to threats; it depends on the strength of opposition to one’s views; it differs from effects of extremism and extends to the way one sees oneself.
This series of studies highlights new ways in which fanaticism can be studied. However, authors note that many details about these psychological mechanisms remain unknown and should be explored in future studies. Notably, it remains unclear “whether the observed effects are temporally stable” i.e., “does inducing discordant knowing heighten fanaticism only temporarily or over a longer time-period”.
The study, “Discordant Knowing: A Social Cognitive Structure Underlying Fanaticism”, was authored by Anton Gollwitzer, Irmak Olcaysoy Okten, Angel Osorio Pizzaro, and Gabriele Oettingen.
Email to NASA
Nasa emailed asking for more input and a link to register for their “Moon to Mars” town hall. I responded with this.
I provide input and now I am being solicited to do the same for “Moon to Mars.” Except…I don’t want America wasting money on going to Mars. My position on Ceres being the place we will land humans on while Mars is bypassed goes like this:
1. The raison d’etre for human space flight is space colonization as envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill, which ruled out human colonies on any natural bodies due to the requirement for one Earth gravity as necessary for humans to thrive. Artificial gravity is of course possible using centrifuge type constructs on natural bodies but true colonies with large populations are not practical except with miles-in-diameter artificial hollow spinning moons. Planetary defense can be argued to be equally important and being part of colonization. Human exploration Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO) can take place using craft designed for carrying nuclear weapons to deflect impact threats.
2. Human exploration of the solar system is possible and desirable but will require a Near Sea Level Radiation One Gravity environment. These NSLR1G crew compartments will have cosmic radiation shields likely containing over one thousand tons of water even for a small crew on an interplanetary mission. Spinning this compartment with a near mile long tether system with an equal mass on the other end will likely come about by way of “Fat Workshop” double-hulled upper stage wet workshops. The water shielding would be brought up from the Moon using approximately 20 times less energy than from Earth.
3. Such a “true” Spaceship, with artificial gravity and massive shielding, will not be propelled by chemicals but must necessarily use nuclear energy. Pulse propulsion using bombs is presently the only practical system, but recent technological advances make some form of nuclear electric propulsion a possibility. An interplanetary exploration mission would probably number several such Spaceships traveling together in case of emergencies. Such a fleet of Spaceships is likely several decades away. Once this fleet is available then the question becomes whether to send them to Mars or to bodies with oceans that might have life and can be explored with submarines. Since the icy bodies with oceans are all low gravity and far easier land on then Mars, Ceres becomes the logical first destination. Not Mars.
Thank you for your time.
Gary Church
Policy of Truth
You had something to hide
Should have hidden it, shouldn’t you?
Now you’re not satisfied
With what you’re being put through
It’s just time to pay the price
For not listening to advice
And deciding in your youth
On the policy of truth
Things could be so different now
It used to be so civilized
You will always wonder how
It could have been if you’d only lied
It’s too late to change events
It’s time to face the consequence
For delivering the proof
In the policy of truth
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Now you’re standing there tongue tied
You better learn your lesson well
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell
You’ll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
Never again
Is what you swore
The time before
When Black people were slaves, white people were free. When Black people were free, white people were slaves. Slavery wasn’t just the basis of the plantation economy. It was the basis of democracy for the well-mannered overlords of elite southern society. For them, without slavery – without suffering – civilization would collapse.
Among the many obvious problems with this way of thinking is something less obvious. If you believe that what’s bad for Black people is good for white people, what do you have when they, through means internal and external, achieve their freedom?
The answer is nothing.
There’s no there there. There’s no moral constitution that can go on in the absence of a social and political order built on Black bodies. Yes, not just slavery. Black bodies stacked up over centuries – were the foundation. Take them away? Civilization really does collapse.
Now apply this binary mode of thinking to a subject much in vogue these days thanks to redhat propagandists like Tucker Carlson. Of course, the subject I’m talking about is “The End of Men” or, as David Brooks put it more mildly, the “Crisis of Men and Boys.”
At the root of this subject is an assumption that, if given a hard look, would be seen as gonzo nuts. Anyone with eyes that can see – or senses that can sense – can discern that men, especially white men, are doing fine. To be sure, problems remain, societally and individually. But relative to others, white men are still on top.
Here’s an example: I’m 48, white, tall, bald. (Not bad looking.) When I go to pick up my daughter from school, where she’s in the racial minority, nonwhite parents, especially mothers, see me coming and hustle themselves and their kids out of the way, even apologizing as if they’ve done something wrong by standing still in public. This … just happens. It’s not natural, though. It’s a culture white men created.
That culture is complicated, but I think it boils down to this: white men deserve whatever they desire – money, sex, power, whatever.
This is somewhat scandalous to talk about openly, so we invented all sorts of ways of pretending that white men work as hard as other people do; that we aren’t the center of a political culture built for us centuries ago; and that we don’t accept at birth a rich inheritance.
Of course, we do.
The question is whether we want to know that we do.
Because if white men don’t know, what happens when they don’t get their heart’s desire? Some men turn inward to religion. Some to politics. But others don’t have what it takes to reconcile themselves to the consequences of democratic politics. So they reach for a gun.
Still, others discover ways to profit from telling these white men that democratic politics has cheated them of their birthright – that when women gain a fraction of an inch of political power, it’s castration; that when Black people succeed, in business or sports or politics, that’s a sign of societal disease and rot. It wasn’t this way back in the day. Something’s gone terribly wrong. We gotta do something.
To be sure, propagandists like Carlson influence these men in various and sundry ways, but propaganda doesn’t work unless there’s already a kernel of truth to build on. In this case, there are two kernels.
One, as I said, is a political culture telling white men that they deserve everything. But the other is perhaps more important: an understanding, though likely unconscious, that if white men do not dominate – that if women and nonwhite people have equal political power as a consequence of democratic politics – what do they have?
Nothing.
They don’t have moral cores that exist independently of the lives and fortunes of their supposed inferiors, because the political culture permits them to grow up without bothering to develop moral cores. What do they have when women are strong and independent?
Due to either-or thinking, nothing.
Worse, they are nothing. Zeroes, ciphers, blanks.
That’s so terrifying, you’ll believe anything.
The reaction among Democrats and liberals, to things like the funny recommendation for men to beam red light onto their genitals, is by now conventional. We say that this wouldn’t happen if these men weren’t so sexist, so racist, so something-ist. If they only sought to be as “enlightened” as we are, this farce would be self-evident.
What some Democrats and liberals – especially Twitter hard*sses – don’t account for is that this reaction feeds into the either-or thinking that seeded a political culture at the root of the problem.
We keep telling them to not be something. But not being something terrifies them. The more we say don’t be X, the more they double down on being X. We see the former as the solution. They see the former as the problem. Either-or thinking becomes a vicious cycle.
Instead of telling them not to be something, we should tell them to be something. In other words, we should admonish them to develop a moral core – a rich inner life – that can exist independently without being conditioned on democratic politics. Instead of sharing power being seen as losing power, it would simply be seen as sharing it.
Developing such a thing is a heavy lift, though.
Living in your inheritance takes less effort.
Over the past several decades comic books have gradually evolved from a niche hobby into the most valuable intellectual property in Hollywood. One person who has been around the industry during every step of that evolution is Alan Moore, who wrote landmark comics like “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” and “Batman: The Killing Joke.”
While Moore was an essential figure in the artistic legitimization of comic books, that doesn’t mean he’s thrilled to see what the industry has turned into. In a new interview with The Guardian, Moore expressed his concerns about our culture’s newfound obsession with superheroes.
“I said round about 2011 that I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see ‘Batman’ movies,” Moore said. “Because that kind of infantilization – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.”
He continued: “Hundreds of thousands of adults lining up to see characters and situations that had been created to entertain the 12-year-old boys—and it was always boys—of 50 years ago. I didn’t really think that superheroes were adult fare. I think that this was a misunderstanding born of what happened in the 1980s—to which I must put my hand up to a considerable share of the blame, though it was not intentional—when things like ‘Watchmen’ were first appearing. There were an awful lot of headlines saying ‘Comics Have Grown Up’.”
Moore gets plenty of credit for turning comic books into an art form adults, but he’s not sure that’s what they actually are.
“I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up,” he said. “There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they’d ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way.”
While Moore is proud of the work that he’s done in comic books, his distaste for everything that surrounds them prompted him to move on to other kinds of writing.
“I will always love and adore the comics medium but the comics industry and all of the stuff attached to it just became unbearable.”
Ice on the Moon 