onlooker wrote:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
Yep, they are preparing in all sorts of ways
KaiserJeep wrote:Ibon, there simply is no precedent for a world-wide collapse, in the entirety of recorded history. The most that has ever happened is an entire country has had an economic conniption. Hyperinflationary currency, financial speculations, bank fraud, stock fraud, even famines affecting entire areas within a country, these things have all happened.
SeaGypsy wrote:"raunchy & primitive"- good terms. I think of it in darker language- vampirical, designed to absorb the viewer in the lower echelons of their own personal existence- in no particular order- fear, lust, revenge, pity, rage, powerlessness- then the ads pop on & sell the cure for all this negativity. If anything has changed since the internet became ubiquitous, TV has become even more blatantly appealant to these modes, the medium getting desperate, losing audience in droves. When the non internet using population dies off, they won't have an audience at all & the only such media will be government funded propaganda.
Ibon wrote:KaiserJeep wrote:Ibon, there simply is no precedent for a world-wide collapse, in the entirety of recorded history. The most that has ever happened is an entire country has had an economic conniption. Hyperinflationary currency, financial speculations, bank fraud, stock fraud, even famines affecting entire areas within a country, these things have all happened.
I never stated or embrace an all out collapse scenario. On the other hand I also don't embrace linear one way trajectories. Civilizations are cyclical, our species population is overshot, there will be a cyclical correction and the different bio-regions around the planet have varied carrying capacities that cannot be predicted ahead of time because of many factors.
I am satisfied just knowing the general trend line without too much precision.
On a side note we came off the mountain and are having a couple days break in Colombia going to Cartegena tomorrow. For the first time since last November I watched TV and allowed myself 15 minutes of CNN. All about this firing of the FBI dude. The tone of the discourse, the polarization, it was so raunchy and primitive and stupid I turned off the TV.
I feel really really sorry for all of you guys in the USA who have to live on a daily basis with ingesting this media shit. I feel even more sorry for some of the posters on this site who engage in this garbage and allow themselves to be drawn into the mediocrity of the media and the topics being discussed.
The 1% love it when the pawns get all fiery and opinionated either right or left. You guys really want to allow yourselves to be manipulated with such mediocrity?
Sorry to sound like a snob but the media crap out there is breathtakingly vacuous.
GHung wrote:OK, Ibon, I agree regarding today's media, but what's the alternative, especially when our elected 'leaders' misbehave in such extraordinary ways?
onlooker wrote: We pay little rent as my wife is disabled and thus we live together cheaply. Anyway, my point is that yes, craziness abounds in the USA and I have known that for quite some time, so that I think that allows me to be in it but not of it.
Ibon wrote:onlooker wrote: We pay little rent as my wife is disabled and thus we live together cheaply. Anyway, my point is that yes, craziness abounds in the USA and I have known that for quite some time, so that I think that allows me to be in it but not of it.
In your own quiet and humble way Onlooker you are a hero!
Ibon wrote:GHung wrote:OK, Ibon, I agree regarding today's media, but what's the alternative, especially when our elected 'leaders' misbehave in such extraordinary ways?
Do what SeaGyspy is doing. Exploit the loopholes, be in it but not of it. In any case don't engage with the media and don't believe that listening to the media is in anyway or fashion being informed. Furthermore, the politics are so corrupted that engaging in it corrupts you as well because it is a subtle way of communicating to you that you have no choices. That this garbage is reality.
You have 1000 choices. If you can really and truly put yourself where the elite and consensus reality doesn't want you.....in a place where they are irrelevant. Where I am for example. American culture and politics are totally irrelevant. We get many American guests but it is a rare moment that we ever discuss politics here and when we do it is mostly with the realization of what we are now discussing at this moment.....that it is a bunch of shit. It is so much easier to see it clear and plainly from up here where we are.
Everytime I go back to the USA it slowly works on me in a negative way where I get drawn in. I feel like one of those Eusocial insects Newfie refers to, like some ant back in the colony and I slowly get drawn back into the dysfunctional consensus reality that is there. We have a few days off. Except for visiting family going back to the USA is the last place we consider going.
I believe all around the USA there are probably millions who no longer participate in this media shit similar to what Sea Gyspy is doing or what I am doing. You never hear about these folks because all the noise is turned up full volume and is just pure garbage. Disconnect, unplug from it, create your own set of cultural values but don't feed into what is broken.
I think if you are in the USA it is very hard to do this. Newfie right, we are eusocial insects it seems and have a very hard time existing in a separate reality outside of what the establishment is feeding you every day.
I need the buffer of 600,000 hectares of cloud forest wilderness otherwise I think I would be cuckoo too!
Squilliam wrote: To get the things that represent genuine happiness and contentment for most people you need to opt into the system. To marry you need a good job, or conform to societal expectations of beauty. Buy a house/go to college you're participating in the system of debt and obligations. Then you're married and to stay married you need to continue on with that system. Then finally when you make it out the other side since you feel like you've gone through a river of BS to get to that point you don't want to change anything when you're older because you feel entitled to the spoils of others buying you out through taxes or property prices. Opting out of the system generally means also opting out of many of the things that make for a happy and healthy life.
GHung wrote:
High and mighty on your mountain top, eh Ibon? Take care that others don't accuse you of willfully having your head in the sand.
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