“Enlightenment Now” seems designed to reassure both Republicans, who worry about increasing drug use and terrorism, and Democrats, who see racism and sexism as the crises of our time. Despite fears of resurgent racism, the number of hate crimes in America has been falling for decades, while analyses of Internet searches, which reveal searchers’ hidden interests, indicate that racist, sexist, and homophobic attitudes are also in retreat. What Pinker calls “emancipative values”—tolerance, feminism, and so on—are becoming more common even in old-fashioned societies. (Young people in the Middle East now hold social views comparable to the ones held by young Western Europeans in the nineteen-sixties.) Although there’s been a recent surge in drug overdoses in the U.S., most of those who die belong to “the druggy Baby Boomer cohort . . . born between 1953 and 1963.” Drug and alcohol use among teen-agers—with the exception of cannabis and vaping—is at its lowest level since 1976.
Pinker’s message is simple: progress is real, meaningful, and widespread. The mystery is why we have so much trouble acknowledging it. Pinker mentions various sources of pessimism—the “progressophobia” of liberal-arts professors, for instance—but directs most of his opprobrium toward the news media, which focus almost entirely on of-the-moment crises and systematically underreport positive, long-term trends. (Citing the German economist Max Roser, Pinker argues that a truly evenhanded newspaper “could have run the headline NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN EXTREME POVERTY FELL BY 137,000 SINCE YESTERDAY every day for the last twenty-five years.”) He consults the work of Kalev Leetaru, a data scientist who uses “sentiment mining,” a word-analysis technique, to track the mood of the news; Leetaru finds that, globally, journalism has grown substantially more negative.
The power of bad news is magnified, Pinker writes, by a mental habit that psychologists call the “availability heuristic”: because people tend to estimate the probability of an event by means of “the ease with which instances come to mind,” they get the impression that mass shootings are more common than medical breakthroughs. We’re also guilty of “the sin of ingratitude.” We like to complain, and we don’t know much about the heroic problem-solvers of the past. “How much thought have you given lately to Karl Landsteiner?” Pinker asks. “Karl who? He only saved a billion lives by his discovery of blood groups.”
Even as “Enlightenment Now” celebrates our ingenuity, it suggests that there’s something bratty about humankind: we just don’t want to admit how good we have it. In “It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear,” the journalist Gregg Easterbrook offers a wider-ranging account of our pessimism. In his view, it’s the result of various demographic, cultural, and political trends. The country is aging, and older people tend to be nostalgic and grumpy. Reaganism made “ritualized denunciation” of the government routine, encouraging cynicism among conservatives; among liberals, a focus on marginalized groups has led to the competitive articulation of suffering, creating a culture of “majority victimhood,” in which every group trumpets its grievances. “Claims for liability and compensation have increased,” Easterbrook notes, reflecting the rise of a punitive society obsessed with the assignment of blame; fewer people attend worship services, where they might hear messages of hope or have uplifting interactions with neighbors. Thanks to cable news, talk radio, and social media, “society has opinionized,” and it’s now “expected that all will possess strong views”; this has fed the rise of “catastrophism,” or the continual overstatement of what’s wrong. (“Everything is terrible” is a stronger view than “Things are pretty decent.”) Finally, technology has changed. Easterbrook cites psychological research suggesting that the physical proximity of our smartphones gives them uncanny power to influence our moods. It’s one thing to see an alarming headline on a TV across the room, and another to feel it vibrating in your pocket.
Perhaps we’ve come to see history itself as one bad news cycle after another. The word “history” used to evoke “traditions to be respected, legacies to be transmitted, knowledge to be elaborated, or deaths to be commemorated,” the French historiographer Henry Rousso points out, in “The Latest Catastrophe: History, the Present, the Contemporary.” After the traumas of the twentieth century, however, we began to define our historical era by “the most lethal moments of the near past”—the conflicts, wars, and atrocities that “have had the most difficulty ‘passing away.’ ” We “delimit the contemporary era” by referring to “the ends of wars or sometimes the beginnings of wars: the end of World War I, the end of World War II, the end of the Cold War.” (In America, we talk about the Vietnam era and the generation born after 9/11.) “Since 1945, all contemporary history begins with ‘the latest catastrophe,’ ” Rousso concludes. We see the past in terms of crises, and imagine the future that way, too.
Pessimism may even answer to our spiritual needs. The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book “A Secular Age,” from 2007, argued that modern life is characterized by a sense of individual spiritual obligation. In pre-Reformation Europe, ordinary people were held to lower spiritual standards than monks, priests, and nuns, and a member of the laity might live an imperfect, worldly life and still be saved, as long as he supported, through prayer or alms, the work of the “virtuosi.” Such a system, Taylor writes, “involved accepting that masses of people were not going to live up to the demands of perfection.” Eventually, Protestantism intervened, making individuals responsible for their own salvation. In the new way of life that emerged, religion was democratized, and each person was charged with spiritual self-stewardship. Part of this shift involved a political credo. In Taylor’s précis: “We are all responsible for each other, and for society as a whole.”
Today, we tend to conceive the credo of social responsibility as an ethical idea, justifiable on secular grounds. Still, it remains tied to an inner, devotional imperative. We know that we accomplish little by reading the news, and sense that our infinite, tragic news feeds distort, rather than enhance, our picture of reality. Still, it feels wrong to outsource the work of salvation to Bill and Melinda Gates, and presumptuous to trust too much in the power of good works. Pessimism can be a form of penance, and of spiritual humility in a humanist age.
Pinker urges us to overcome these cultural, psychological, political, and spiritual biases, and to take a more objective view of the world. But human beings are not objective creatures. When social scientists write about life expectancy, educational attainment, nutrition, crime, and the other issues Pinker addresses, they often use the abbreviation Q.O.L., for “quality of life.” They use S.W.B. to refer to “subjective well-being”—the more elusive phenomenon of happiness, fulfillment, or life satisfaction. In “Citizen Kane,” Orson Welles’s media tycoon enjoys high Q.O.L. and low S.W.B. He is healthy, wealthy, and unhappy. The question is whether what befalls individuals might also befall societies. If so, life could be getting much better objectively, on the social scale, without getting all that much better subjectively, on the individual scale.
The most obvious way to tackle this question is to survey people from different societies. The annual World Happiness Report combines data from Gallup opinion surveys with economic and sociological studies; it finds that, in general, citizens of high-Q.O.L. countries (Finland, Norway, Canada, Germany) report higher levels of S.W.B. than citizens of low-Q.O.L. countries (Venezuela, Chad, Laos, Iraq). Look closely, though, and the story is more nuanced. Although economics shapes S.W.B., so do social and political factors: despite immense economic growth, Chinese citizens are no happier today than they were in 1990 (fraying social ties, created by rural-to-urban migration, may be to blame), while in many Latin-American countries people report higher S.W.B. than their otherwise low Q.O.L. predicts. (Latin-American respondents often cite their strong family bonds as a special source of happiness.)
In the United States, the two measures have diverged. Although per-capita income has more than doubled since 1972, Americans’ S.W.B. has stagnated or even declined. In a contribution to the 2018 World Happiness Report, the economist Jeffrey Sachs attributes this divergence to a public-health crisis centered on obesity, drug abuse, and depression, and to a growing disillusionment with business and government. From all this data, the picture is one of large-scale predictability and small-scale volatility. Thanks to broad improvements in quality of life, today’s children are likelier to be happier than their grandparents were. But within any shorter span of time—a decade, a generation, an electoral cycle—there’s no guarantee that S.W.B. won’t decline even as Q.O.L. continues to rise.
These metrics may reflect something fundamental about how we experience life. Many psychologists now subscribe to the “set point” theory of happiness, according to which mood is, to some extent, homeostatic: at first, our new cars, houses, or jobs make us happy, but eventually we adapt to them, returning to our “set points” and ending up roughly as happy or unhappy as we were before. Researchers say that we run on “hedonic treadmills”—we chase new sources of happiness as the old ones expire—and that our set points are largely immovable and determined by disposition. Some fundamental changes can affect our happiness in a lasting way—getting married, immigrating to a wealthy country, developing a drug addiction—but many life improvements are impermanent in character. Although food quality may have been worse in 1967, the pleasure of today’s better meals is intrinsically fleeting. More people survive heart attacks than in the past, but the relief of surviving wears off as one returns to the daily grind.
The set-point theory is dispiriting, since it implies limits to how happy progress can make us, but it also suggests that progress is more widespread than we feel it to be. This last conclusion, though, makes sense only if we define “progress” in a certain way. “Imagine Seema, an illiterate woman in a poor country who is village-bound, has lost half her children to disease, and will die at fifty, as do most of the people she knows,” Pinker writes:
Now imagine Sally, an educated person in a rich country who has visited several cities and national parks, has seen her children grow up, and will live to eighty, but is stuck in the lower middle class. It’s conceivable that Sally, demoralized by the conspicuous wealth she will never attain, is not particularly happy, and she might even be unhappier than Seema, who is grateful for small mercies. Yet it would be mad to suppose that Sally is not better off.
Pinker is right: Sally is better off. To say so, however, is to acknowledge that we can be better off without feeling that way—working two jobs to pay tuition and save for retirement, Sally still suffers—or worse off without knowing it. Progress is objective and impersonal, at least in part, and can unfold without making us happier. “The goal of progress,” Pinker concludes, “cannot be to increase happiness indefinitely, in the hope that more and more people will become more and more euphoric.” Quality of life is higher today, no matter what you think, and it was lower under Communism, no matter how you feel about those whole-night concerts and epic soccer games. A blissful existence in the Matrix wouldn’t count as progress. There’s more to life than subjective well-being.
In a book titled “The Optimism Gap: The I’m OK–They’re Not Syndrome and the Myth of American Decline,” from 1998, the public-policy reporter David Whitman cited statistics showing that, in nearly every domain of life—crime, pollution, health, income, happiness—Americans were optimistic about themselves but pessimistic about society as a whole. While believing that crime was rising in general, they congratulated themselves for living in neighborhoods that were mostly crime-free; convinced that the economy was getting worse, they remained confident about their own earning potential. Pinker, too, finds that people are afraid for civilization but hopeful about themselves. Certain that those around them are living lives of quiet desperation, they continue to predict increases in their own life satisfaction. But it seems that this optimism gap isn’t just inaccurate; it’s pretty much backward. The world, as an objective whole, has been getting better. It’s our individual experiences of life that are unlikely to improve. We should be optimistic about civilization but neutral about our own future happiness.
A final reason for doubting progress is the future, in all its terrifying potentiality. One of Pinker’s most persistent critics is the statistician and risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan,” “Fooled by Randomness,” and other explorations of uncertainty. For the past few years, in a relentless barrage of tweets and Facebook posts, Taleb has responded to Pinker’s optimism by distinguishing between “thin-tailed” historical trends—picture the trailing ends of a bell curve—which are likely to continue indefinitely, and “fat-tailed” ones, which retain their capacity to surprise. Pinker shows that, during the past century, per-capita deaths from fire have declined by ninety per cent in the United States. In Taleb’s view, this is a thin-tailed trend, since it’s the result of innovations, such as better materials and building codes, that are unlikely to reverse themselves. By contrast, the decline in deaths from terrorism—far more people were killed by terrorists in the nineteen-sixties and seventies—is a fat-tailed trend; as Taleb writes on Facebook, “one biological event can decimate the population.” Pessimists of the Taleb school argue that we underestimate the number of fat-tailed trends. In a review of “Enlightenment Now,” the theoretical computer scientist Scott Aaronson imagines a hypothetical book, published in 1923, about “the astonishing improvements in the condition of Europe’s Jews.” The authors of such a book, Aaronson writes, would have reassured themselves that “an insane number of things would need to go wrong simultaneously” for that progress to be reversed—which, needless to say, is what happened.
Maybe our views about progress depend on our time horizons. Charles C. Mann’s “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World” tells the stories of two researchers, William Vogt and Norman Borlaug, who occupied opposing sides of the twentieth-century debate about the human population. In Mann’s terms, Vogt was a “prophet”: he predicted that, unless global population growth could be slowed, worldwide famine would result. Borlaug was a “wizard,” who argued that innovations in agriculture would make it possible for farmers to feed everyone. In the event, Borlaug was right: the “Green Revolution,” which he spearheaded, dramatically increased crop yields and saved billions of lives. But the deeper debate between the two sides—“Cut back or produce more?”—persists, this time around climate change. Today, pessimistic prophets argue that radical conservation is the only way to avoid a climatic apocalypse, while optimistic wizards propose innovating our way out of the crisis, perhaps through geoengineering or the creation of new energy sources. Our species seems to face a fork in the road: “If a government persuades its citizenry to spend huge sums revamping offices, stores, and homes with the high-tech insulation and low-water-use plumbing urged by Prophets,” Mann writes, “the same citizenry will resist ponying up for Wizards’ new-design nuclear plants and monster desalination facilities.”
Mann thinks the wizard–prophet distinction reflects a fundamental biological reality. If bacteria are left to grow in a petri dish, they’ll multiply quickly, then consume all their resources and die. The same goes for all species adaptive enough to flourish unconstrained. At first, “the world is their petri dish,” Mann writes. “Their populations grow at a terrific rate; they take over large areas, engulfing their environment. . . . Then they hit a barrier. They drown in their own wastes. They starve from lack of food.” A biologist tells Mann that “it is the fate of every successful species to wipe itself out.”
Both wizards and prophets hope that we can break this pattern. Wizards exhort us to “soar beyond natural constraints” using technology. (Think of Elon Musk, with his solar roof tiles and spaceships.) Prophets implore us to reach, through conservation and political reform, a “steady-state accommodation” with nature. (“What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources,” the activist Naomi Klein writes.) Both sides agree that progress of a general sort isn’t enough: unless we adopt a decisive and coherent survival strategy, we’ll become victims of our own success. “The Wizard and the Prophet” provides an unsettling coda to “Enlightenment Now.” Pinker could be right in the short term but wrong in the long term. Maybe the world is getting better, but not better enough, or in the right ways.
In the Middle Ages, painters used triptychs to sum up the state of the world. On the left, one might see our origins, in the Garden of Eden; in the center, ordinary, terrestrial life; on the right, the torments of Hell. Above it all, Christ floats in Heaven, surrounded by angels: our redemptive future. One longs for a modern equivalent—a data-driven version of Fra Angelico’s “Last Judgment” or Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” equal to the contradictions of the human situation.
In “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think,” the Swedish global-health statistician Hans Rosling, who wrote the book with his son and daughter-in-law, tries to find such a picture. Most depictions of the world, Rosling thinks, are either too optimistic or too pessimistic; if they don’t succumb to despair, they seem to look too quickly away from suffering. Rosling adopts a mantra—“Bad and better”—to avoid these extremes. “Think of the world as a premature baby in an incubator,” he suggests:
The baby’s health status is extremely bad, and her breathing, heart rate, and other important signs are tracked constantly so that changes for better or worse can quickly be seen. After a week, she is getting a lot better. On all the main measures, she is improving, but she still has to stay in the incubator because her health is still critical. Does it make sense to say that the infant’s situation is improving? Yes. Absolutely. Does it make sense to say it is bad? Yes, absolutely. Does saying “things are improving” imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No, not at all. Is it helpful to have to choose between bad and improving? Definitely not. It’s both. It’s both bad and better. Better, and bad, at the same time. . . . That is how we must think about the current state of the world.
Rosling’s image captures many of the perplexities of our collective situation. We desperately want the baby to survive. We also know that survival doesn’t guarantee happiness. The baby is struggling, and suffering, and will continue to do so; as a result, we’re more likely to be happy for her than she is to be happy for herself. (Pinker, similarly, is happier for us than we are.) It’s possible, moreover, that she’ll be saved only temporarily. No one is ever truly out of the woods.
In the meantime, the baby’s survival depends on the act of diagnosis. Until her ailments are identified, they can’t be cured. Problems and progress are inextricable, and the history of improvement is also the history of problem-discovery. Diagnosis, of course, is an art in itself; it’s possible to misunderstand problems, or to overstate them, and, in doing so, to make them worse. But a world in which no one complained—in which we only celebrated how good we have it—would be a world that never improved. The spirit of progress is also the spirit of discontent. ♦
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:13 am
It would probably surprise most American friends of Israel to learn that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has visited Moscow three times so far this year..
https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-is-israels-useful-idiot/5647690
Putin sucking the Jew cock..
LMFAO!
Cloggie on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:16 am
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, many posters here, including myself, have absolutely had enough of his five year long tirade of personal attacks, name calling, and childish BS.
Enough is enough.
Where is peak oil when you need it?
We (former?) collapseniks never got over the fact that industrial society didn’t collapse because the world was running out of oil. The only thing that collapsed was the oil price.lol
All dressed up and nowhere to go.
No wonder this forum got disoriented and lost discipline, like soldiers who lost out on a war, they begin to attack each other.
Makes sense.
Oil price or anything related to oil no longer interests me, although it would be nice if the oil price would go through the roof again, as a sort of “subsidy” of renewables, the next big thing after cars, planes, home computers, mobile phones, etc.
Deep decarbonization is next. For engineers these are fantastic times, better than the moonlanding.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:18 am
They are jealous, Greg. They refuse to accept that the Ps might be a better place to live than the Us. I’ve been here over 10 years now and have not changed my mind about it being the best decision of my life. Like a 10 year vacation at a tropical resort.
I will likely go back to the States a few more times, but I do not want to be there when the SHTF. I watch closely to current events just prior to my visits to see if the possibility of collapse is imminent. So far, I have been lucky, but the probability is getting higher every year.
Davy is a stalker. MM is just arrogant. fmr- is just screwed up.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:25 am
The Israelis have found the new administration in Washington to be what Lenin once described as a “useful idiot,” prepared to support whatever Netanyahu proposes while at the same time so clueless that the Israeli government can freely and openly simultaneously cut deals with Moscow that undermine the U.S. continued presence in the country.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:28 am
Clogg
Renewable’s can’t replace oil because oil is used for transportation, and renewable s are used for electricity..
You are energy illiterate..
Oil discoveries in 2017 hit all-time low –Houston Chronicle
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Oil-discoveries-in-2017-hit-all-time-low-12447212.php
IEA Chief warns of world oil shortages by 2020 as discoveries fall to record lows
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iea-says-global-oil-discoveries-at-record-low-in-2016-1493244000
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:29 am
Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Warns of World Oil Shortages Ahead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-minister-sees-end-of-oil-price-slump-1476870790
Saudi Aramco chief warns of looming oil shortage
https://www.ft.com/content/ed1e8102-212f-11e7-b7d3-163f5a7f229c
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:39 am
Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor
Make no mistake: Hacking the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s time we responded accordingly.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/16/putin-russia-trump-2016-pearl-harbor-219015?__twitter_impression=true
Hit em hard! politico calls for attacking Russia!
DerHundistLos on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 1:14 am
Meanwhile, back in reality, the University of Maryland completed an analysis of the world’s equatorial rainforests and discovered that 2017 ranks the second-worst year for tropical tree cover loss in the satellite record, just below the losses in 2016. In all, the world’s tropical forests lost roughly 39 million acres of trees last year, an area roughly the size of Bangladesh.
Example, Vietnam. Agent Orange appears feckless in comparison to the human and his chain saw. Except for a tiny area of 70.000 hectares, the Vietnamese have felled all of their once considered endless forest cover (thus last years extinction of the Vietnamese rhino). So the destruction was exported to Laos and Cambodia.
Things will continue chugging along so long as virgin habitats still exist to exploit. Then it will be reckoning time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/climate/tropical-trees-deforestation.html
Cloggie on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 2:05 am
“Yea right..Trumps daughter married a Jew.”
Reagan’s son was a homo, so now Reagan was a homo as well?
You are clinging to straws.
simon on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 4:04 am
Hi Everyone
The most important discussion of this board has been touched on IMHO
We have descended into a mindless tirade, I have been here since before 2008 and watched this happen.
This board still is a mine of usefull information, but I can no longer share this with colleagues, and the ranting makes it/us look ridiculous (I know there is one trader who will no longer speak to me after sharing an article about gas hub repairs)
could we all get it out of our system.
Could I suggest a few simple rules
1) Do not attack unless attacked
2) Do not attack any country unless the article allows for this (then all bets are off)
This does not mean if the name of the country is in the article.
Try, if the article is on USA Gas Dependency, attack the US for GAS
No one is interested in you own little views.
Cloggie on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 4:34 am
Peak oil is dead, there is sufficient carbon left (unfortunately for the environment) and renewable energy has won the PR and price battle.
The two keys issues are:
– environment/climate
– geopolitical transition away from empire/West/hegemony towards multipolar world
Running out of energy is not an issue, let alone “peak oil”
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 5:16 am
“They are jealous, Greg. “
3rd world, I could give a shit about your move. Who cares about you and your turd world country. I could give a shit about grehgster and his butthole Columbia. What I don’t like is the ugly anti-Americanism from you and grehgiee. I have offered a truce for years now. I think you two actually like the conflict. You like the exposure. I think you are lonely and bored and this fills your day with something. SAD
“Like a 10 year vacation at a tropical resort.”
Now you admit it, you are just a lazy bum doing little instead of the permaculture farmer you brag about. You are all talk 3rd world
“I will likely go back to the States a few more times, but I do not want to be there when the SHTF.”
You will maybe go back when you get a catastrophic illness or suffer dementia and maybe your family will bring you home.
“Davy is a stalker.”
Come on 3rd world. That is my line for grehggee. You are copying. Try to be more creative.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 5:24 am
“We have descended into a mindless tirade, I have been here since before 2008 and watched this happen.”
Simon, you are barking up a tree. A few weeks ago I tried to go in a different direction because I am sick of what you speak of. The gang of dumbasses continued to attack me even when I went quiet. This was not a parting cheap shot this was for two weeks that I made an effort to leave their insanity. These people are not going to stop so I am not. Gregt, JuanP, Mastermind, Makati1, Anonomouse1 and Cloggie are bent on their agenda and personal attacks. Yea I am part of it but look at the numbers. Six of them spewing their hatred and attacks. If you notice I say very little unless I am being attacked or my country being trashed. These people are sick and I give them sick back. This will not end so get used to it. I wish it could be different and I tried to do my part.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 6:05 am
“2600 U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear weapons on high-alert are launched, in 2 to 3 minutes, at targets in the U.S., Europe and Russia and other targets considered to have strategic value….
Hundreds of large cities in the U.S., Europe and Russia are engulfed in massive firestorms which burn urban areas of tens or hundreds of thousands of square miles/kilometers….
The smoke blocks up to 70% of the sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 35% of the sunlight is also blocked in the Southern Hemisphere. In the absence of warming sunlight, surface temperatures on Earth become as cold as they were 18,000 years ago at the height of the last Ice Age….
Average global precipitation would be reduced by 45% due to the prolonged cold. Growing seasons would be virtually eliminated for many years….
It would be impossible for many living things to survive the extreme rapidity and degree of changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with drastic increases in UV light, massive radioactive fallout, and massive releases of toxins and industrial chemicals….
A mass extinction event would occur, …”
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mainstream-media-the-consequences-of-nuclear-war-and-the-drive-toward-ww-iii/5647729
“Even humans living in shelters equipped with many years-worth of food, water, energy, and medical supplies would probably not survive in the hostile post-war environment.”
I prefer the financial/economic collapse over the above, but the empire is in a corner and might do anything at this point. We shall see.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 6:17 am
3rd world, why are you obsessed with war and death? You constantly insult and attack others. You spam the board with your mindless off topic anti-American agenda. You are a disgusting person.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 6:29 am
If you are not now collecting SS or close to it, you never will. The projections ALL depend on growth and BAU. When those end, so all government bennies. Or they will be frozen and then end when Congress pulls the plug. But then, so will ALL of the retirement plans that rely on stocks, bonds, etc. State and local plans will crash and burn along with any that are corporate sponsored.
Meanwhile you can read the lies…er…projections by your nanny government mouthpieces or investment sellers like this one: “Social Security and Medicare Will Add Another $50 Trillion to Our National Debt”
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/editorial/social-security-and-medicare-will-add-another-50-trillion-to-our-national-d/#
Real investments are non-mortgaged productive land, skills that can be bartered and usable education, like doctors, nurses, animal vet, etc.
Keep paying those taxes, Americans. I appreciate the extra cash every month for more trade goods and to help the neighbors.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 6:47 am
“Real investments are non-mortgaged productive land, skills that can be bartered and usable education, like doctors, nurses, animal vet, etc.”
Not in the real world but yes in your fantasy world I can see how you think that way. You have no assets so you are going to push the idea of nothing of value BUT abstracts. The world is not collapsed yet and no one has an idea how a collapse will unfold especially and uneducated senior like you. For each asset there is a liability until we get into the world of the central banks. In the world we all live in here on this board it is about assets and liabilities, 3rd world get a grip.
“Keep paying those taxes, Americans. I appreciate the extra cash every month for more trade goods and to help the neighbors.”
There is a reason for taxes 3rd world. They pay for society. We may have waste associated with those taxes but for the most part they are used to keep things going including your social security you don’t deserve.
deadly on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 6:49 am
After things have gotten worse, they then always get better.
Madkat is a cross between Chicken Little and the boy who cried wolf. I guess massive amounts of anything will get somebody’s attention.
Rome burned on July 18, 64 CE. Nero was the fiddler on the roof back then.
Great Fire of Rome
The great fire of Rome breaks out and destroys much of the city on this day in the year 64. Despite the well-known stories, there is no evidence that the Roman emperor, Nero, either started the fire or played the fiddle while it burned. Still, he did use the disaster to further his political agenda.
Tomorrow is July 18, 2018. 2018-64=1954 years ago Rome was burning, it was mayhem, panic. Things could get no worse. After the fahr, things could only get better and they did.
Rome should be fined even to this day for carbon emission violations and for causing an unnecessary disruption such as a great fire.
Teach Nero a lesson he won’t forget even if he has been dead for thirteen hundred years.
Then in 410 CE, Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome. The Visigoths felt cheated by Rome, they didn’t like what was happening. Alaric paid a visit to Rome and settled the score.
When you block the roads to Rome and no goods can arrive, you’ll obtain the desired results sooner than later.
410-64=346 years between one collapse to the next. Flip flop, it never stops.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and it didn’t fall in a day.
If you are impatiently waiting to see America fall from grace, don’t hold your breath or stand on one leg, you might fall over and bump your head.
It might take another 346 years in which case you will be long dead.
Never underestimate the will to survive.
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:22 am
Delusional Davy “A few weeks ago I tried to go in a different direction because I am sick of what you speak of. The gang of dumbasses continued to attack me even when I went quiet.”
What a load of crap! You are the main reason this board has been ruined, Exceptionalist! You have been lying, bullying, and abusing others here every single fucking day for over five years. You are incapable of keeping quiet. I gave you many opportunities to end this and you wasted them. You need professional psychiatric evaluation and treatment. Fuck, you are unbelievably thick? Do you believe your own lies or are you aware that you are a bully and a liar? I will not stop fucking with you. You are the one who started this and you have to end it. I expect this fight to continue indefinitely. It won’t be a three month thing like I warned you; your behavior has made this permanent. Enjoy it!
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:38 am
Delusional Davy “These people are sick and I give them sick back. This will not end so get used to it. I wish it could be different and I tried to do my part.”
Projecting again, Exceptionalist? You are the sick one here. The sickest person I have ever interacted with, as a matter of fact. You never did your part, and if you ever tried it was nothing more than a feeble, fake attempt and then you came back with a vengeance. I will always remain willing to end this if you lead the way. Where you lead I will follow! It’s your choice, it always has been.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:43 am
Juan, Davy is Pavlov’s dog on steroids. He cannot resist putting down any comment that he doesn’t agree with or a person he has decided to stalk. He cannot do it in an intelligent rebuttal, just immature name calling, cutesy made up names and other immure, irrational, delusional acts.
I think he has no friends so he is on the internet almost 24 hours a day to vent his frustrations, hate and envy. “Going postal” is in his future, I suspect.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:44 am
“What a load of crap! You are the main reason this board has been ruined, Exceptionalist!”
Shut up boney juan, you were the worst of the instigators attacking me even when I tried another approach to this board that has been ruined by the groupie gang.
“You have been lying, bullying, and abusing others here every single fucking day for over five years. You are incapable of keeping quiet.”
What are you doing right now you loud mouth adolescent fuck flinging hypocrite?
“I gave you many opportunities to end this and you wasted them.”
You don’t give out anything but shit you worthless playboy beach scum.
“You need professional psychiatric evaluation and treatment.”
What is documented is you have admitted to the board you have had a life of severe depression with suicidal tendencies. At least when you are depressed you try to be honest.
“Fuck, you are unbelievably thick? Do you believe your own lies or are you aware that you are a bully and a liar? I will not stop fucking with you.”
Adolescent fuck flinging
“You are the one who started this and you have to end it. I expect this fight to continue indefinitely.”
This is why I returned to rub your nose in the shit you leave behind when you come on this board.
“It won’t be a three month thing like I warned you; your behavior has made this permanent. Enjoy it!”
Quit being a big talker and show how tough you are with ideas you moron. Anyone can digitally talk up a fight it is quite another thing to carry a thought and defend it. I guess the bitch slapping I gave you and grehggie yesterday hit the spot because the both of you have been very angry lately. PUSSY
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:46 am
Clogg
Peak oil is not dead according to the IEA, Saudi’s, HSBC, Citigroup, and former head of the EIA..
Is The World Sleepwalking Into The Next Oil Crisis
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/03/23/is-the-world-sleepwalking-into-an-oil-crisis/#509edc8b44cf
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:48 am
“I think he has no friends so he is on the internet almost 24 hours a day to vent his frustrations, hate and envy. “Going postal” is in his future, I suspect.”
3rd world, I think your buddy boney juan is the one going postal. Read his comments and if that is not “mental” postal I don’t know what is. As for you 3rd world, you are a dumbass senior who has been the primary instigator of the trash that this board has become. The sooner you fade away into geriatric dementia the better. I am patient and time is on my side not yours.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 7:52 am
Deadly are you as stupid as you sound?
“It might take another 346 years in which case you will be long dead.”
The human race will be gone by 2100. The Us will be 3rd world by 2030, if not sooner. The collapse is coming and nothing will stop it this time. They cannot print enough money to cover the Grand Canyon of debt in the Us.
You live in a world of delusion if you actually believe your rant. That the collapse has not happened…YET…does not mean it will not happen. The newspapers were saying that the stock market was sound three days before the 1929 crash.
Better to be a year early than a day late. Prepare now. Tomorrow may be the day your world falls apart.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:01 am
We asked psychologists why so many rich people think the apocalypse is coming
https://www.salon.com/2018/07/16/we-asked-psychologists-why-so-many-rich-people-think-the-apocalypse-is-coming/
I read that Peter Theil that tech billionaires who endorsed trump..built a doomdsday mansion in nz..that has its own ‘panic room’..
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:07 am
Delusional Davy “Shut up boney juan, you were the worst of the instigators attacking me even when I tried another approach to this board that has been ruined by the groupie gang.”
You only tried a different approach for a few hours AFTER I bitch slapped you for a few days, it was too little too late. You’ve been ruining this board for years. Things here improve dramatically every time you are gone for a few hours. The problem is that by now all this mud slinging has become a habit for some regulars, and habits are hard to break, but I believe that if you left permanently we would get there eventually. I am glad I ruined this board for you, Exceptionalist! That was my goal! LOL!
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:13 am
Delusional Davy “you are a dumbass senior who has been the primary instigator of the trash that this board has become. The sooner you fade away into geriatric dementia the better. I am patient and time is on my side not yours.”
Time is not on your side, exceptionalist! Both you and the USA are in decline and closer to your end every second. I will be here to fuck with you, Davy, for as long as you keep fucking with others. I can promise you that. And, just like the USA, you have less friends and more enemies every day, and that will never change as long as you keep behaving the way you do. You and your country are both fighting a lost fight; you just are too sick to understand and accept it.
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:16 am
Davy is the worst problem on this board. I will not stop unless he stops first.
fmr-paultard on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:19 am
dear readers,
i’m a tard and a former paultard, i don’t need a large audience of believers. i only want to make one person believe in me. my larger audience is still supertards in hope they won’t become Cambridge Five if you know what i mean.
Today I want to mention a different collapsenik boney juantard. he lives in a boat and that’s a collapse scenario.
Words out of Bangladesh that the killing of drugs users mirror that of phils.
Bangladesh is a failed state because killing citizens is defintion of failed state.
please don’t listen to me. Just keep kicking the anti-american dog i made out of granite and dressed it to look like it’s alive.
fmr-paultard on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:26 am
dear simon
i pledge to stop the postings if there’s no alt-tard media attack on my america that supertards built for me to enjoy. i’m very humble i care about their liberty. i want to pay the jizya for supertards so they own multiple auto keltec and 5000 rounds. what can be stronger guarantee of liberty than that? i just demonstrate my commitment to liberty for everyone. you can’t dispute this
it’s also difficult if not impossible to dispute the fact that phils and bangladesh are failed states.
i already discussed why because killing is last measure. removing the problem is not solving the problem, it’s about failure to address the problem. because failed state has no resources to address the problems.
i believe your partiality is slighty unfair to us. we’re being told constantly america is collapsed. i pointed out collapsed states and collapsedniks. just wanted to even the playing field.
i am your servant in truth.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:32 am
Shut up Boney Juan. You, 3rd world, and grehggie have no interest in a clean board. It is all about the ownership of the board personality. I gave you a chance and your poor behavior ruined it. I was not even part of the personal attacks but you made sure to include me you double standard hypocrite. Everything you say now will be moderated you mentally ill lazy playboy. Yesterday was a taste so get used to it. Get a job or something. I have a feeling you got kicked out of your community gardens for bad behavior. Now you are bored and manifesting that bad behavior here.
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:41 am
Delusional Davy “Everything you say now will be moderated you mentally ill lazy playboy. Yesterday was a taste so get used to it. Get a job or something.”
I don’t know what you refer to about yesterday, maybe it was something I missed, but it doesn’t matter. If you enjoy what is happening here then keep it up. I am young, healthy, and comfortably retired, Exceptionalist, and I can keep doing this for as long as you and your sock puppets are still around. I am NOT going anywhere! LOL!
fmr-paultard on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 8:56 am
dear simon
i am a tard and a former paultard. i’m honorable. therefore i will take a temporary retirement from this board.
i demonstrated that i’m the only who read and obeyed the spirit of your post. i ask you fight for my side, the side of oposition to alt-tard media attack on america
JuanP on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:03 am
Enjoy your time off, fmr-Paultard. It is always a good idea to take a break now and then.
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:11 am
Boney Juan. Are you afraid debate because you haven’t said a thing today. You are showing how arrogant and lifeless your brain is. You are showing your empty life of mindless beach boy activity typical of South American expats from rich families. Let’s talk a topic and see who is the stronger. You got your ass handed to you yesterday as grehggie did a few days before that. It’s called moderation and expect much more.
Makati1 on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:12 am
fmr- your ignorance is showing. You try to equate Bangladesh with the Philippines when they are like night and day. Your knowledge of the real world is typical of the stupid American tax slave, about zero.
Get an education, and get off of whatever drugs you are popping. You cannot even type proper English. America is collapsing as we type. You are just blind to the changes. Typical frog in the pot.
BTW:
Drug pusher deaths in the Ps ‘War on Drugs’ for the last two years was about 4,000 with hundreds of thousands of users turning themselves in for treatment
Drug deaths in the Us in the same two years was about 128,000 people and few, if any were the dealers. Who’s ‘War on Drugs’ is working?
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
“Drug Deaths in America Are Rising Faster Than Ever”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/05/upshot/opioid-epidemic-drug-overdose-deaths-are-rising-faster-than-ever.html
THAT is a sign of collapse. Denial doesn’t change the facts.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:17 am
Putin laughed when confronted by Mueller’s indictment on Fox..
Well see who is laughing last Vlad the bad..
joe on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:33 am
Dude, you posted a link to Mueller lying about Iraq having wmd, then you get mad when Putin laughs at US lies. Which is it dude? What do you want? Are you schizo?
GregT on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:55 am
” You got your ass handed to you yesterday as grehggie did a few days before that. It’s called moderation and expect much more.”
Go and speak with a mental healthcare professional Davy. You’ve gone completely off of the deep end now.
You need help buddy.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 9:56 am
Madkat
People dont die in your country from drugs because they are so broke they cant afford them..They are still fucking donkeys..
LMFAo..
GregT on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 10:07 am
MM,
Makati1 is an American citizen. ‘His’ country is the USA.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 10:17 am
Obama: These are ‘strange and uncertain’ times
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/obama-these-are-strange-and-uncertain-times
Subtle hint at “collapse” ?
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 10:34 am
‘Proud Boys’ run out of LA bar by democratic socialists calling them ‘fascist’
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/397177-proud-boys-group-run-out-of-la-bar-by-democratic-socialists-calling
Davy on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 11:04 am
Mr. Noise, doing his usual pricking routine with absolutely nothing to say.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 11:14 am
Davy
You are a Russian troll..How much is Putin paying you to shill for him?
If I was president I would have you hanged for treason..
Boney Joe on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:29 pm
Hey DavyDonaldTurd (DDT) and Retarded Alter-Ego Paul:
Whatever happened to your pledge to moderate your nastiness and time spent on this site? I notice your temper tantrums come in waves. I imagine you alternate between beating the old lady and step children then once you tire of that, you transition over here. Some good samaritan needs to drop a dime on you (plural) to the Missouri Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Otherwise this is going to end badly.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 12:46 pm
Greg
He might be an American on paper..But he has sold us out..and is our enemy..
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 1:01 pm
My local weatherman is a rabid climate denier and fundamentalist christian..And I asked him on twitter last night why he hasn’t talked about climate change during our heatwave..And this is what he replied with, just to give you an idea what we are up against..
“Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official: “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
Yes, he thinks its a globalist communist plot to redistribute the worlds wealth..And here is what the official actually said..
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Ottmar-Edenhofer-the-UN-IPCC-official-say-We-redistribute-de-facto-the-worlds-wealth-by-climate-policy-%E2%80%9D-when-discussing-climate-change
MASTERMIND on Tue, 17th Jul 2018 1:16 pm
The whole point of this Russia collusion nonsense, is they want continued justification for the astronomical cash to continue to flow to the Military Industrial Complex, this is bread and butter of the hidden hand, the dark elite and the paymasters of MSM.
Peace is so dangerous it warrants a preemptive nuclear strike..
And its coming! They wouldnt put in all this work for nothing.