Sunrise, Earned

The first and even the second draft of this piece was written few weeks ago.  I like to let ideas incubate for a while, and I try to give some space so I can catch all the typos that I can. The events depicted were from a freer time, when there were jobs to go to.  I mean, I didn't go to one -- but they were there. 

==

This piece will be about my experience watching a sunrise and some of the implications of such an activity, but before that I start in one of my favorite places -- a coffee house.

When my wife and I showed up, all of the tables suited for sprawling out were taken.  Instead, we sat a little nook with four of the kind of chairs you could sink into, positioned in a circle gesturing at the kind of intimate conversation over coffee I think many of us long for but virtually never have [1].  Well, I didn't know it when I sat down, but two ladies were about to have one of those conversations.  The first to arrive sat some items down and then asked if anyone was sitting here.  As I had already given my wife my headphones in an act of kindness, the question fell upon me.  I chirped some polite welcome to the seat.  She sat down and pulled the other seat close to her.  I'm not sure whether or not I felt trepidation about it at the time, but it sounds like something I would feel.

Her friend showed up shortly after that and they began a very bougie conversation -- career, remodeling, the personality of a boss, soccer tournaments, etc.  I had been working on the second draft of a piece, but I couldn't concentrate with their conversation going on.  To give some insight to my writing process, if I am writing a second draft on a yellow notepad rather than typing it out it means I have some problems with structure that I find particularly knotty.  In that situation, I need to be able to clear my head.  And a bougie conversation does not help me to do this.

After dealing with their bougie conversation for a while and attempting to start with the problem several times, I saw a seat had opened up by the window and I moved to it for a while. Finally free from the bougie conversation, I was able to quickly see a solution and proceeded to smoothly write the piece.  Truth be told, once I had the puzzle figured out I probably could have returned to where I was and worked effectively enough, but coming back after such a short amount of time away would have seemed rather odd.  As it was, when I finished the draft and was looking to return, I was nervous that the ladies would give me a perplexed look when I took my seat again.  Fortunately, they did not.  They continued right on, rapt in their conversation (did I mention it was in the manner of the bourgeois yet?)  They spoke a short time longer and I was able to pull out a book and half-read it and half-listen to them with a spirit of slack, and thus some pleasure.  They departed soon enough after that.

After they left, I wondered what it was that was so distracting about their conversation.  Their volume was perfectly appropriate for the setting, so it couldn't have been that.  They weren't saying anything offensive or cruel or even callous.  Instead, I think the answer is that they kept hitting topics I could find interesting, then proceeded down paths I could follow and agree with, but then just . . . veered off.  It's not that they were too different from me; it was that they were too similar.

I think it's great that someone is attempting to free-lance.  In fact, it is one of my life's aspirations to one day be self-employed.  But then if you talk about the need to re-model to make an office, I distrust your ability to stay profitable.  Maybe your connections will bail you out.  It must be nice to have those.. . . Oh, one your offers is something involving George W Bush.  This leads to bougie agreement that while W wasn't a great President -- ha ha -- Trump shows he's not that bad, I mean W's a sweet man who does those paintings.

I want you to know that at that point, I didn't formulate a thought.  But I know that listening to this at the time felt mostly right. . . then wrong.  And this pattern kept happening in the conversation.  The feeling is what prevented me from seeing a solution to the structural puzzle I was trying to solve in my prose.  I think the subtle off-ness of the conversation took up my "feel space" so I couldn't feel what to do with the writing.

If it came up, I could tell someone the "Bush is better than Trump because he paints now" felt off to me.  If the person I was talking to gave sympathetic body language, I and the person would feel closer, but then I could be done with it, having never formulated the feelings as thoughts.  But if someone asked me why I felt that way (and their tone could be curious or accusatory, with different emotional implications, of course), I would provide something like "Jesus Christ!  How stupid does someone have to be to get their information only from social media?  I've seen that shit too, and when I did I immediately did something called thinking.  What does painting or politeness have to do with policies and how they materially impact people?  Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead.  The banking crisis brewed under his 8-year watch. The punitive nature of No Child Left Behind. The normalization and even fetishization of torture.  The rise of mass surveillance [2].  And don't forget about what Katrina showed about the levels of competence and care."

That's what I would say, if asked to elaborate on my feeling.  If I were to write out a position on the matter, I would reverse the arguments about material impact and social media group-think trying to make civility the only short-cut for goodness.  Also, I'd remove the the insults and curse words.  However, again, I want to emphasize that I didn't think any of those thoughts at the time.  This is because I'm not the habit of constantly signaling my moral intuitions.  Instead, I sat there more or less placidly until I saw a way to change my micro-environment to get the task I valued done.

But before I got up one of the two ladies, the one who wasn't experimenting with free-lancing, but instead thinks the taciturn nature of her boss is interesting and has her kids in too many activities including, of course, soccer, said something that I can honestly say has changed my life.  She mentioned waking up at 5:00 am in order to get her exercise in.  For one thing, she said she has discovered that she won't do it in the evenings.  For another, when she gets a workout done in the morning, even if she gets nothing else done in the course of the day, she can at least say she did that.

By golly, I'm glad my mind was placid [3] because I was able to hear her and weigh the merits of what she said.  The women saying this wasn't particularly thin, so this wasn't a moment of pleasantville-like positivity propaganda, or a kind of managerial eugenics.  Instead, she was earnestly sharing an idea that let her feel good about sacrificing a little bit to the the right thing.  I thought about it for a few days, and then started setting my alarm for 5:30 am and doing exercises in the morning.  I have started very small, almost laughably small to avoid injuries, but it feels like the kind of habit I want to keep.  It gives me structure to my days here in a sabbatical and it is something I should be able to do even when I return to work.

Part II
===

I remember listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, something I do rarely enough, and he mentioned someone who wakes up even earlier than I am proposing, say 3:30, to work out.  Rogan said with admiration "he earns his sunrise."

I had been working on my habit of rising early to work out for three days.  The first two I had missed the sunrise.  On day one, I fell back asleep after the exercises and breakfast only to wake up at noon (reasonably enough as I had originally gone to sleep after 2:00 am).  On day two I stayed up but had missed the sunrise doing other things.  But on the third day, after I dropped my wife off to her job and filled the gas tank, the sky looked beautiful with pastel pinks and blues playing on the clouds.  Being the student of Life that I am, I knew the closest location to get a good view of the sunrise was the Walmart parking lot.  (The perfect spot of sunsets used to be a grocery store parking lot.  There was even a bench at a bus stop where I could sat and watch, but then a Chick-Fil-A was put in.  Since there are not buildings behind that, I assume the Chick-Fil-A parking lot is now an optimal place to watch sunsets, but I have not explored this possibility yet).

I parked my car and soaked in the early morning.  I let two songs play on the radio before I turned off the engine to just watch and Do Nothing.  First: "Shallow".

Tell me somethin', girl
Are you happy in this modern world?
Or do you need more?
Is there somethin' else you're searchin' for?

If I didn't like the next sound, I was going to turn the radio off, but the next song was "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey.  This lead me to dance seated, thrashing my shoulders around a bit.

. . .

After the music, I settled into silence.  At that moment, for the first time, I wished I had a more sophisticated phone, so I could take a picture and send it to my best man, as I like to call Nat Wernick, who was naturally enough the best man at my wedding.  Through the years I had a smartphone and data plan, I would send him photos of sunrises and sunsets.  This happened infrequently and randomly enough to serve as a good ice breaker and reminder of presence.  I made a mental note to text him when  I got home, after the aesthetic experience was done.

. . .

A little later I heard some geese in the distance, which is always such a wonderful surprise gift to receive.  I basked in the smile (is it right to call it "my" smile?  The dance of the moment created it; I was just choosing to notice it).  And then I saw that the geese were coming toward me.  I watched them fly by in two waves.  I had never seen a goose honk mid-flight from a profile directly in front of me before.  It looked like the goose in question was straining forward, as if the strain in the beak and neck  was pulling the rest of the bird body along.

I was overwhelmed with feelings of compassion and love.  I have had so much death in my life that I have deep understandings of it (ones I wouldn't wish on anyone) and many times deep experiences will activate these understandings.  So much happened nearly simultaneously and jumbled together that "think" is the wrong word, so I will use the word "perceived" instead.

I perceived that all the geese would one day grow old, and one day would die.  I perceived that death is often a struggle, that I have have spent hours ruminating that there is a high likelihood I will be very scared the moment I die [4] and I will probably struggle.  I was reminded of other times I have been flooded with love and compassion for animals, like one time with a mouse (something I have not yet written about).

All that happened in a second, perhaps two.  But I think you'll admit it was a good moment.

. . .

It was back to Doing Nothing and watching clouds for a bit.  Eventually the composition of the colors changed, regressing back to the mundane.  The sun also moved up to a position that hurt my eyes.  It became time to go.  As I drove away, the song was "Faith" by George Michael.

Implications
===

I want to be a writer about, and defender of, perfect, unhurried moments. But more importantly, I want to experience them. With that said, it is often better to plan and monitor in larger blocks of time -- say, a week.  If all I do is chase beauty and stillness, I find I get kind of habituated to that and it makes knocks down my energy levels very close to, if not in fact, depression. Also, I then have nothing to show for my time and people around me do not approve.  (And "no thank you" to changing my tribes.  I like the ones I have just fine).

There is a time to create, a time to maintain the body, and a time to contribute.  These are all recognized within bourgeoisie habits.  I merely add that there are times for beauty and transcendence.

===

[1] Especially for me, considering caffeine is too prone to make me far too manic to do my part to keep the conversation feeling like an inter-play, a dance, a true act of intimacy.  I really need to experiment more with tea and mint teas.

[2] I know that Democratic politicians are complicit in nearly all of this. . .  And?  Do you think bad things are only bad if they score points for one political party or another?

[3] I already mentioned that I am not in the habit of public signaling as one reason why this is so.  I also think my work in the discursive cluster of so-called Eastern thought helped me form the habit.  (the Western tradition of Stoicism could potentially work; it's just not the one I got to first). While I haven't done all that much sitting meditation, for decades I have built up experiences noticing narratives forming and then pausing them, questioning them, or just letting them pass over "me" (the observing self).  Because of this perhaps many judgmental or angry narratives don't often come up to play.  Or perhaps I'm not a dick.  And perhaps those are the same thing.

[4] I did not perceive in that moment my other thing I had ruminated over, such as I could one day die in my sleep or under anesthesia and not have any experience of the end.  I know a lot of people have a stated love for this way to go, but I see such meaningless in it that it has caused me terror.  If the last moment is meaningless, what about the second to last moment? The third to last moment . . And so on to every moment.  Not the kind of thoughts happy people think, I know.  I feel blessed to not be trapped in these mental grooves anymore.  I don't wish it on anyone.

Bernie and the Bourgeois

The bougie world order is under siege.  It might be more accurate to call it the world order of middle management.  Middle management was paid off to perform what (in the long run) was an impossible task: inspiring loyalty in organizations that increasingly gave no loyalty.  Many tricks were . . . employed (pun accepted):

* positivity
* awards and goals -- which is the positive side of . . .
* surveillance and evaluation
* charisma, coolness, attractiveness
* credentialism

* the language (but not the reality) of innovation and entrepreneurialism.
* promoting the culture of fear for the world outside [1]
* bureaucratese
* political correctness (as policy and trainings)
* levels of irony and meta-irony

* smarm

It worked just well enough to hold together an empire through the Great Cultural Suicide -- they did try to kill all weirdness, but the owners of capital were even more interested in sales. . . Ah, the internal contradictions upon which systems fall. . . eventually.

The Trump thing was a crack in this order, confusing and then infuriating to some, refreshing to others. He a) showed the futility of all of those sensitivity trainings, b) decoupled charisma from keeping ones cool, and c) was decidedly not invested in positivity.  His ascent in the primary showed that rank-and-file Republicans preferred their hierarchy raw and aggressively stated, rather than hidden behind some bougie tricks [2].  Note that #neverTrump Republicans by and large based their critique on presentation and competence, not on policy, with the fantastically telling exception of Trump's challenging globalization.

Though Bernie has been neutralized, his movement represented the stand of a) the young and b) care workers against a) the old and b) management. Before the South Carolina Primary and the seismic move of voters  that lead to the Biden landslide on Super Tuesday, the critiques I saw of Bernie were by and large personality based.  I heard Bernie is "cranky" and "always yelling."  Hilary Clinton needed to let us know "no one likes him."  (See how much everything turns into a "popularity contest" with these people? There are very formal, though hidden, rules of who gets to say what in middle-management world).

I would contend that the pressure to find "anybody but Bernie" -- and yes, though it was desperate, it was more or less hidden pressure, but that is the way of middle management -- was not just that Bernie would raise taxes on the comfortable or that he self-identified as a socialist (which did turn out to be a problem for people over 65 who have a more extensive Cold War context), it is that he violated bougie norms, such as positivity and coolness.  You are never supposed to show anger in Bureaucrat World, at least not on a "punch up" basis.  Everyone must calmly accept that the technocrats are doing the best they can -- nay, the best anyone can.

Well, people under 45 aren't buying it, and that cohort probably never will.  But it turns out they are (still) not where the votes are among Democratic primary voters.  So, the siege continues, and the political appetite to prop up the paper pushers' world lessens.  I am very interested to see how it plays out for them, but I wouldn't put my money on their economic survival. 

==
Also, for posterity, a twitter thread from the night of Super Tuesday.
==
[1] I'm making a nuanced argument here.  While, yes, I think there is more out-and-out bullies and tyrants in management than nearly anyone is willing to admit, I think it is more common to use all the scary things outside the office to promote general fear and anxiety.  We need to "take precautions" . . . "better safe than sorry" as a way of life.  This makes the day-to-day work place seem better by comparison and makes losing one's job seem to be a more dreadful prospect.

[2] That's how Trump won the primary; he won in the general election because enough people in the Rust Belt who would lean Democratic decided to stay home for a whole portfolio of reasons -- an important one being that another Clinton signed NAFTA.

On References

Just because I mention an idea from someone doesn't mean I am an expert in his or her work.  It doesn't mean I have comprehensive exposure to his or her work.  It certainly doesn't mean I endorse every idea he or she ever states -- and if this culture wasn't completely diseased with political thinking, there would be no reason for people to assume that I did. 

I am a dilettante.  I am eclectic.  I listen to some episodes of some podcasts.  I have listened to some Bob Dylan songs (I even owned one of his albums on CD: Blonde on Blonde).  Most things I am exposed to come from a combination of non-systematic searches and playing.  That's not to say I never go for depth.  When I do, however, I usually can't shut up about it, like Shakespeare or the Daodejing.

With the disclaimer out of the way, I will now explore the question of why so many assume by default that when someone mentions anything they are therefore a fanatic of that thing.  Here are 6 ideas


1/ Many people have exceedingly poor idea/information diets, and this fact has grown to be common knowledge.

There is an analogy to this and our current crisis of obesity.  There are just so many things that aren't very nourishing but still quite appealing.  So it is with food, and so it is with information.  In both cases, the situation arose because if there was any way to hack into desire centers, capitalism was going to find it, and once any hack was found, it would be be replicated to the breaking point, -- and past it, unless acted upon by an outside force.

Because of this, any information more complex than informational junk food that somehow breaks through probably represents a huge portion of someone's intellectual pie chart.  It's not just that the person in question might prefer to have fewer ideas, they simple don't have other ideas.  Still, that brings us to . . .

2/ Many people prefer to have fewer ideas.

In the eternal struggle of fox and hedgehog, hedgehog is winning.  For one thing, most people like to conserve mental energy.  While some freaks like myself don't, it is often quite mal-adaptive.  Also, many of the best mental junk food hacks to desire are through identity, giving psycho-social incentives to be a fanatic for a small set of easily definable ideas.  Combining signaling with mental laziness means many people will endorse ideas they haven't even explored for themselves, once they see whose side it is on.  These people are more than happy to prop up the game that we are all devoted to anything we mention.

3/ Fanatical endorsement is a mode of American salesmanship.

This mode is clearly related to all those smiling faces and the often pointed-out (near?) orgasm in advertisements for every product.  You can't just like wine, you are now a wine freak.  Everything is "the best."  And there are existential stakes to this "bestness" . . . every time.  That these people are lying con artists doesn't stop their effectiveness, particularly in the aggregate -- meaning, they need to get as many people doing it as possible.  Why can't you just be more confident?  After all,  it's very important to learn how to sale yourself.  And any small scrap of something you consume is now a part of you . . . ergo sale that with complete confidence. QED.

(Another case where I have found it to be true that winning is for losers.)

4/ It makes for an easy attack.

In the maelstrom of the identity wars, the modern consumer of indignity on the go is always looking for easy (ie low mental effort) ways to make bad faith arguments.   Guilt by association fits the bill.  This pattern of attack is also asymmetrical, here meaning it takes more time and energy to defend against the attack than to make it.  (Online meme warfare is all about these types of asymmetries.  Cp "Okay, Boomer").

5/ We live in the information age.

Thus we feel that a whole body of work is readily available.  Though we now live in a post- "The Corporations and Governments Strike Back" world (see), and therefore this might now entail considerable expense to collect, it is convenient to continue assuming everything is easy to track down, especially when combined with some combination of the other reasons listed.

6/ The stunning mission-creep of academia leaves the impression that that everything is academia.

Thus, everyone is an expert and everything needs a highly specific citation, if not a footnote.  With that said, like most things in the era of appearances, this is a show.  Many academics still fall prey to what I listed above: 1) poor info diet 2) hedgehoging 3) signaling 4) bad faith attacks and 5) placing undue burdens based on techno utopianism.  (While I'm at it, keep bragging about all the books you haven't read, you philistines.  It wouldn't be that interesting to your gathering if they weren't also assholes).  But let's all be fake experts, shall we?

==

Because of the reasons #5 and #6, I have started more and more to cite many things more loosely. Most of the greatest essays were written by people not under a system of publish or  perish, and so they just gestured towards other works, assuming either you've read the text, will read it (if interesting enough), or will take the author's word that they are doing justice to the idea so we can all just move on.  It feels better to write that and lets me sticking to the ideologies of the system.

This is a strong argument for a bibliography at the end rather than a footnote aligned to a specific claim.  A bibliography says "if you want to know all I know, read these books.  Otherwise, take what I'm saying as a starting point since you haven't done your work in the field yet."  Whereas a citation aligned to every claim exists in academia because it is expected that enough background knowledge exists on the part of the reader to get into granular sub-debates.  Anyone who has spent any amount of time online arguing with people should see how ridiculous that assumption is.

Books to Leave an Echo Chamber, Short Writing to Grok

Expanded from a post I did at  r/weirdcollapse :

==

I think books (ie long-form texts) are still the best way to learn. A hundred pages is often the dose needed to give the author space to set up their definitions and appropriate contexts, at least in a way that will stick.

An implication of that would be that the most productive people to read short-form are those that you can groove with.

Though this is counter to prevailing narratives about the internet and the need for a "world village" and to avoid "echo chambers," I think it is right. Online forums, especially those that limit your character count like Twitter, are probably the worst places to explore ideas you disagree with. (Also, at some point, it degrades into a kind of bullying). Books are the more productive place to explore. I know no one "has the time" to read books, but I'm used to acknowledging there are problems in our society that aren't going to get fixed.

I've read a lot of books by political conservatives and another group I don't share many impulses with -- optimists. In that format I find much to appreciate, and I can learn from them. Again, the lack of immediate hectoring and humiliation for people seeking internet points helps, but so does the clarification of the author's terminology and, frankly, the trust that develops through a book. People do not realize that ethos is a real component of persuasion, and anti-social media preys upon that ignorance.

So many people are trying to get short-form writing to do things it just cannot do.  Why? It's easier.  But who said truth was easy?

Round Up #25

Aphorisms and Shorts

The dao is real.  In fact, the dao is realer than we are, and that's our real problem in explaining it.

Why less anti-social media? Simple: more living, less arguing.

". . . in narcissism believing something is preferable to doing something because the former is about you and the latter is about everyone else." from The Last Psychiatrist

"When we work at the sugar-canes, and the mill snatches hold of a finger, they cut off the hand; and when we attempt to run away, they cut off the leg; both cases have happened to me. This is the price at which you eat sugar in Europe."  In Candide.  (1759)

Complaining is one thing, if it is done under a set of fairly consistent principles.  (Keep in mind also that people don't have to have a stated opinion on everything).  Instead, I call the way most people complain mowbs (magic one-way bats).  Well, bats can crack both ways.

People with problematic views at least (also sometimes at most) show they care about the issue.  One of the best ways to avoid having a currently problematic view is not care about anything and therefore agree with everything in your social circle.  Too bad the person who agrees with the current group-think will one day have problematic views on record when the consensus changes.

Detroit is already here; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

If your nation's pandemic plan requires everyone to be galaxy-brain level economic mentants, AND simultaneously altruistic, then you have a bad pandemic plan.

Links and Research

As I use the radio functionality on my dumb phone more and more, I keep having fun finds like the Retro Cocktail Hour.

Here in 2020, I have been making a study of weirdos.  One such term I used was "eccentrics."  This chapter from the autobiography of  Edith Sitwell contains some comments bound to amuse, if not instruct.  The quote most pulled from the chapter and spread on the internet:

Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

You may also be interested in the life of Stanley Clifford Weyman (New Yorker piece)

Canada's Technocracy, Inc from the 30s and 40s is fascinating (see also Wikipedia). I learned about it because I read Elon Musk's grandfather on his mother's side was involved in it.

And another case of where I don't need to do doomer writing because the work has already been done.  I present this review of Four Futures.

Speaking of doom, here is a twitter thread of cognitive mistakes people make around nature, because they translate it into a relationship.  Yet another set of reasons you can't get people to coordinate to do the right thing.

While we have computation, though, might as well have mandelbulbs. . . Like the Mandelbrot set brought into 3D.

I'm really glad I started the sub-Reddit r/weirdcollapse.  It has brought some websites my way such as Rustic Outcast and Zero Input Agriculture.

A friendly reminder: the founding fathers did not want you to vote.

How Low Can We Go?

It is understandable if you thought from the title that this piece might be about our stock market tumble, but after a brief paragraph it won't be.

In a lot of ways, the top and bottom of a market is the wrong question to ask an individual investor.  My real advice   [1 -- Disclaimer, below]  is first be super frugal so you have money to invest.  Then look into a portfolio strategy that uses several asset classes, such as the Permanent Portfolio (see also) or the All Weather Portfolio (see also).   You could use the portfolio as a framework and if you think you have a smart idea,  you could work that bet in as a way of tilting a portion your portfolio instead of going all-in. 

==

Below is the edited version of a response I made in a thread on Reddit. 

==

I wish I could find someone who has done some systematic, high quality work on what some scenarios for down-ward limits would be because the idea fascinates me. However, if no one else has done the work, I don't think I'm the right person to. Here's some thoughts, though:

One source of limits which we cannot not go lower than unless we just royally mess up is all the bush-craft projects people already do as a hobby. I am thinking of the Primitive Technology YouTube channel. He has great skills, sure, but he's drawing on knowledge of mechanics, aerodynamics, hydraulics, ergonomic design, etc.  And it's not like he needs several semesters of college classes in each of these fields.  The broad outline of what is possible is the fruit of centuries of people creating and tinkering within civilization, and the outline is often enough to work with.  People will have wheels. I hope they'll keep germ theory to know to bathe, hand wash, sterilize [2].  Rocket stoves are kind of hippy stuff, but by golly they really do converse wood. Energy-descent humans will have drills, pumps, wheelbarrows, etc.

Also, we've already pulled a tremendous amount of metal up from the ground. The stuff is too good to just let go to waste.  So that future should still have good knifes, axes, saws, scythes.  Also, already-processed metal has been distributed (not to say evenly) around the entire habituated world.

Another way to pose the question is what time could serve as a good "comp" for how far down we could go? The 1750s? 1650s? 1340s? I could see electricity for the super-wealthy. I don't see a reason why some group can't keep calculus. In that case, I think there can be precision engineering. . . for those able to pay for time and resources.

===
[1] This writing is for entertainment purposes only. The information in this blog/forum is distributed on an "As Is'' basis, without warranty of any kind. The site owner may have a financial relationship with some of the companies or products mentioned on the blog.  Advertisement does not imply endorsement. Information might not be completely comprehensive and some readers may want to consult additional sources. This blog/forum does not contain professional advice. For professional advice, consult a professional. By reading this blog/forum you acknowledge full responsibility for your actions with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly in connection with the blog/forum. Last edited March 9th, 2020. 

[2] I will say this, though, traditional cheese makers (at least the ones I read about coming from England) knew to sterilize instruments, changing out boiling water again and again in the process. They just didn't know that's what they were doing. Germ theory shows the value of all correct theories: being able to extend an idea into multiple domains. 

Our Politics Won't Have Peace Until . . .

I responded to this Degringolade post with the following:

==

Maybe free college or UBI can't be sustained, but something still has to give on healthcare, wealth destruction or not. I am starting to gel a thesis that both left and right might be coming together to figure out that bureaucrats and paper work can get the ax. The managerial class should be shitting their pants right now, and many of them are.

I wrote this aphorism recently:

The real cruelty of America to its young is not that it is denying them the American Dream. It is denying them the Human Dream of starting a family that they can keep healthy and free from deprivation.

The thing is, it's one thing to be personally screwed on healthcare by the opacity, price gouging, and red-tape. It's possible for me, for example, to be a philosopher about dying from something my society could have treated, but didn't (you know, our healthcare is still better than it was for the richest person 100 years ago or so) but when I think of a child [especially a child of mine] trapped in that . . . killed by something that was easily within the grasp of a society better run than ours . . .

Millenials have been denied the basic security of home and hearth it takes to pivot into the conservatism that comes so naturally to the middle-aged. And they aren't being subtle about their willingness to upset apple carts over it.

Point taken about stair-step collapse in the JMG model, but we won't be hitting any equilibrium point until we stop eating our young, and young families.