These-two Things’ll-be
Jungians teach themselves to be receptive to dreams. What are you after? The further through you go, the worse it gets. Feast or famine, the reality as opposed to the perception. In the swamp on the ground in the back, the tribal council is in session. It’s over populated. More than 1,000 hajj pilgrims die amid temperatures approaching 52C in Mecca. Heat dome over Illinois. Rafah, Delhi – the sun was burning people. In this atmosphere of perpetual contact, perpetual surveillance, intimacy falters. António Guterres: We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unlivable lands. The world has few or no regulations in place to prevent individual countries, cities, companies or even wealthy individuals from trying to modify their local climates using geo engineering techniques like marine cloud brightening, even if it is to the detriment of people living elsewhere.
The hand’s dexterity is the physical manifestation of the mind’s ingenuity. An authority figure asks you to inflict pain on somebody and it’s very difficult to refuse. We live in a capital society, very classy. It would seem profligate. Thinking about tomorrow – low time preference. That thing, that’s happening again. I can do a roundup later. I don’t need it by my bedside. I’ve watched more Love Island than the Euros, put it that way. Justice for Omar. No! Why are they fumbling these chances to make it a better show? I pay attention a bit to that reality game. Nothing binds a group like an irrational belief. The noise of argument, the constant hum of disagreement – these can irritate people who prefer to live in a society tied together by a single narrative. Internet pockets and ladders of information. Suffering without understanding. Passive income – you want to create something that works on its own, versus treadmill. Once upon a time life might have been sweeter or simpler, but it was also more dangerous, or more boring, or perhaps more unjust.
The political system is just a slushy machine, red or blue. Can I pick green? Can I pick yellow? No. When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule – who is the elite – is never over1. Macron snap election, announcement of a campaign that will be the shortest in modern French history at barely three weeks. The far right’s inside the tent. They’re building and they’re taking advantage of this sense that these systems aren’t working for people, cost of living and the sense that things are corrupt. Inflation, immigration, irritation. People think Macron is condescending. Now’s the time to be bold. Nobody’s filling the leadership gap, Macron and Scholz have not been filling it in Europe. Whatever our society is doing right now, might not be the best way of doing things. Pissing contests. Hubris. Controversy – the implication that there are multiple competing views. Let’s turn this sinking ship around and sink the other way. Let’s recreate studies and facts to look like they’re pushing this thing I want. Mutual understanding without a network sounds tough. True. But it also seems kind of fun.
The pursuit of beauty and the pursuit of knowledge are one and the same, for in the observation of nature lies the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. Humans go out of their way to spend time and energy to create something, a powerful tool, for ceremonial use. Musical instruments – 30,000 year old flute made from tibia bone with holes punched. Bell overtones, pure harmony, call and response2. To look inside – what is driving us to do that? Reaching a dead end. The suffering, the pain. The systems that we’ve created that are collapsing around us. How can we seek the divine without having to go through a religion that’s really a business? Listen, there’s breaking news, we need to stay alive – that’s the trap here. You can’t live in the results, you have to live in the process. Everyone who keeps going does make it eventually… If we don’t write our future, the stature of mankind lowers to that of an ant colony. We undervalue the future, at our peril. We may not be able to survive the world we’ve created, re. Fermi paradox – Where is everybody? Here he is. Lacking a sense of wonder. Surrounded by idiots. I felt like the tone thing was just kind of you know. The ennui of one dimensional time. It’s not that deep though. All good. I know what I’m doing. I have purpose. Got to make the most of a fun time. What I’m looking for is nothing but a touch of verisimilitude. Two sixteens are eight. Saturday is mayhem and Sunday I’ll be dead.
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1 Anne Applebaum
2 Alexandre Tannous