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Guest Post: America: #1 In Fear, Stress, Anger, Divorce, Obesity, Anti-Depressants, Etc.
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
The United States is a deeply unhappy place. We are a nation that is absolutely consumed by fear, stress, anger and depression. It isn't just our economy that is falling apart - the very fabric of society is starting to come apart at the seams and it is because of what is happening to us on the inside. The facts and statistics that I am going to share with you in this article are quite startling. They are clear evidence that America is a nation that is an advanced state of decline.
We are overwhelmed by fear, stress and anxiety, and much of the time the ways that we choose to deal with those emotions lead to some very self-destructive behaviors. Americans have experienced a standard of living far beyond the wildest dreams of most societies throughout human history, and yet we are an absolutely miserable people. Why is this? Why is America #1 in so many negative categories? Why are we constantly looking for ways to escape the pain of our own lives? Why are our families falling apart? There is vast material wealth all around us. So why can't we be happy?
Just look around you. Are most of the people around you teeming with happiness and joy? Sadly, the truth is that most Americans are terribly stressed out. Yeah, many of them may be able to manage to come up with a smile when they greet you, but most of the time they are consumed by internal struggles that are eating away at them like cancer.
So why is this happening? Is modern life structured in a way that is fundamentally unhealthy?
Below I have posted a short excerpt from a message that one of Charles Hugh Smith's readers named Kenneth Daigle recently sent to him. I think that it does a good job of describing the incredible stress that many people contend with on a daily basis...
Think about how our culture is now structured for the average adult: STRESS, everywhere you look--commuting in horrible traffic, as you want to scream in frustration--money stress, to pay rent/house note, tuition, utilities, gas, insurances, vacations, cable bill, rising food costs, and on and on and on--stress from family problems, divorce, delinquency, drugs, crime, infidelity, keeping up with the Jones, etc.
People have too high an expectation of what they should have out of life, and get overly stressed over it all. How does all of this manifest itself? A prescription drug culture (Zoloft, Xanax, etc.) that tricks people into thinking a pill will knock back the stress, when these drugs, in my opinion, only make things worse.
I am hearing more and more that people just want to drop out from it all, as they are reaching a breaking point, and have decided less income and dependency on entitlements will reduce their stress, and is not so humiliating, so giving up working becomes more acceptable, to KEEP ONE’S SANITY.
I know I am correct, from the feedback I hear every day, and the financial media does not see this like I hear it every day. People don't want to admit that they are too weak to deal with stress, so the financial pundits are not aware of this critical factor because they don't talk to Joe Sixpack.
Most Americans live lives of "quiet desperation" that are punctuated by moments of great crisis. We spend our prime years working for others (making them rich) in order to pay off debts that we have foolishly accumulated (thus making the banks even wealthier). When most Americans reach the end of their lives, they look back and wonder what they actually accomplished.
James Altucher published an incredible article the other day entitled "Why Do People Hate Their Jobs?" It did a great job of describing what life is like for the modern worker in America. The following are a few of the reasons that he says people tend to hate their jobs...
-Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more.
*****
-We are often verbally abused on the job and we take it because we think it’s normal that people would yell at us.
*****
-The government gets up to 50% of your paycheck and then 10-20% of that goes to kill people on other parts of the planet, including our own children.
*****
-From 7am to 7pm you are either A) going to work, B) at work, or C) coming back from work. Hence, the times when you can be most creative are garbage-compacted into your cubicle.
*****
-When you are paranoid at a job, you are probably correct. THEY are, in fact, talking about you and backstabbing you right now.
*****
-You realize that all the dollars you spent on degrees to get you a job that will make you happy were completely wasted. You were scammed but you can’t let the next generation know how stupid you were so now you become part of perpetuating the scam.
*****
-Your spouse is tired of hearing about your job after six months. And you couldn’t care less about hers. Ten years later you wake up next to a total stranger. 40 years later you die next to one.
*****
-When you were a kid you liked to draw, and read, and run, and laugh, and play, and imagine a magical world. You’re never going to do any of that again.
*****
-Over time everyone is getting fired and being replaced by younger, cheaper, more temporary, more robotic, versions of you. You see this but are afraid to do anything about it.
And of course when we get home from work there is even more stress. In America today, we are witnessing a breakdown of the family unlike anything we have ever seen before. The United States leads the world in divorce and in single person households. We are having an increasingly difficult time relating to one another, and many of us drown our sorrows in our addictions. We are addicted to pills, to alcohol, to food, to entertainment, to sex, to gambling, to shopping and to anything else that will make us feel good and forget about our problems for a while.
The following is a collection of facts and statistics that prove that America is being absolutely consumed by fear, stress, anger and depression...
-Suicide has now actually surpassed car accidents as the number one cause of "injury death" in the United States.
-More U.S. soldiers killed themselves than were killed in combat last year.
-As I mentioned in another article, Americans will spend more than 280 billion dollars on prescription drugs during 2013.
-Nearly one out of every four women in the United States are taking antidepressants.
-The percentage of women taking antidepressants in the U.S. is higher than in any other country in the world.
-In 2010, the average teen in the U.S. was taking 1.2 central nervous system drugs. Those are the kinds of drugs which treat conditions such as ADHD and depression.
-Children in the United States are three times more likely to be prescribed antidepressants as children in Europe are.
-According to a recent article by David Kupelian, "one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all 'millennials' (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder."
-Tens of millions of Americans use alcohol and drugs to numb the pain that they are experiencing. In the United States today, there are about 28 million Americans with a drinking problem and about 22 million Americans use illegal drugs.
-More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in America than anywhere else on earth.
-There are also tens of millions of Americans that try to deal with anxiety and stress by eating. Of all the major industrialized nations, America is the most obese. Mexico is #2.
-Back in 1962, only 13 percent of all Americans were obese. Today, approximately 36 percent of all Americans are obese.
-Many people try to escape from the pain of reality by getting lost in entertainment. Incredibly, the United States is tied with the UK for the highest average number of hours spent watching television each week.
-The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world by a good margin.
-The United States has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.
-According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all American adults are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all adults in the United States were married.
-At this point, approximately one out of every three children in America lives in a home without a father.
-For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.
-The United States has the highest child abuse death rate in the developed world.
-In the United States today, it is estimated that one out of every four girls is sexually abused before they become adults.
-The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world by a very wide margin.
-The United States produces more pornography than any other nation in the world.
-If you can believe it, there are 20 million new STD infections in the United States every single year.
-The U.S. has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.
-It is estimated that about one out of every six Americans between the ages of 14 and 49 have genital herpes.
-Sadly, one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease.
-The United States leads the world in eating disorder deaths.
-Nobody in the world gets more plastic surgery done than Americans do.
-Americans spend more time sitting in traffic than anyone else in the world.
-America has the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prison population in the entire world by a very wide margin.
Fear is one of the primary things that motivates the American people, and that is a very powerful weapon that can be used against us.
As I wrote about yesterday, those that commit acts of terror want to get attention and they want to create fear.
And that is exactly what the Boston Marathon bombing accomplished. It captured the attention of the nation for days on end, and it absolutely paralyzed the entire Boston area with fear.
When we allow ourselves to be terrorized, we actually encourage more terror attacks. When we give terrorists what they want, it just encourages more psychos to commit acts of terror. If you don't believe me, just check out the following links that I found posted on The Drudge Report on Monday...
*"3 Alabama hospitals evacuated after bomb threats"*
*"Connecticut Courthouse Evacuated After Bomb Threat"*
*"South Hills Village Evacuated After Bomb Threat"*
*"Rock Island neighborhood evacuated after bomb threat"*
*"Bomb threat forces evacuation of Seabreeze office building"*
The appropriate response to a terror attack is to refuse to be terrorized. Yes, we should also work to expose and punish the individuals, organizations and governments that are behind terror. But we should also not let terror change how we live our lives, and we should definitely not allow terror to be used as an excuse to rip our liberties and freedoms away.
Sadly, as Ron Paul has detailed, some of our politicians are already calling for "tighter security" in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing...
Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”
I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.
But no matter how much liberty and freedom we give up, we will never be 100% safe. Bad people are always going to do bad things, and unfortunately we are probably going to see some pretty nightmarish things in the years ahead as the world becomes even more unstable.
If we allow the bad guys to get us so frightened that we throw out the U.S. Constitution and abandon our liberties and our freedoms, then we are the ones who lose.
Yes, the years ahead are going to be tough. The economic collapse is going to accelerate greatly, there will be tremendous natural disasters, there will be war in the Middle East and there will be other problems that we cannot even conceive of right now. At the same time, the American people will continue to become even angrier and even more frustrated. According to a recent Pew Research survey, the percentage of Americans with a favorable view of the federal government is now at an all-time low. As the economy crumbles, there will likely be great civil unrest as people demand solutions. Unfortunately, our problems took decades to develop and they will not be solved overnight even if we did have good people in office.
So why am I saying all of this?
And why am I constantly warning about the coming economic collapse?
Is it because I want to create fear?
No, just the opposite of that.
I am a watchman on the wall.
In ancient times, a watchman would warn the people when the enemy was approaching.
When you receive the warning, there are a few different ways that you can respond to it...
#1 You can become consumed with fear and run away from the enemy. Unfortunately, cowards never get the victory in the end.
#2 You can dismiss the warning and pretend that the enemy is not approaching. But then when the enemy comes you will be completely unprepared.
#3 You can do everything possible to get prepared to face the enemy that is coming with strength and courage.
And that is how I would encourage all of you to approach the coming economic collapse and the other great problems that we will soon be experiencing as a nation.
Do not be afraid.
Instead, be strong and courageous and prepare well for the storms that are coming.
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I went fishing with with my son the other day, a high school senior. We talked about college and his future. He said: "I like school. What could be more fun than learning and hanging out with your friends. I don't understand why so many people hate school and have a bad attitude about nearly everything. I am looking forward to college and the future. I would probably be happy doing just about anything."
Count your blessings.
My children blow me away becaues they are so much more "on the ball" than I ever was.
I lead a Charmed Life and know it;
it is all going so well
not so much the politics of dancing more
the strategy of tension.
an old play book.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U2DeduiHeWU
This shouldn't surprise anyone.
When a culture becomes mired in postmodernism we lose the understanding of value, in things like family, religion and eventually this reflects on our currency. This is the result of Nietzsche and Kant, and no one knows it.
We become moral relativists, because we believe secular humanists that say offending someone by telling them they are wrong is a heinous crime, and we cease to believe in wrong.
We don't understand symbols and their meaning (...) <-- (How many fucktards misuse the ellipsis), and we mock everything, because we are justifiably cynical.
It's time for a renaissance back to the truth, which will bring back the happiness.
And the truth is ?
That's what Pilot asked Jesus: "what is truth?"
The truth is imbedded in all our souls, or DNA or consciousness -- the point is, it's already there.
We know what's wrong and what's right, misery comes from ignoring it and rationalizing our neglect of it. Truth is acknowledging our purpose, respoinding to consciousness with virtue, which is a Greek principal and it might as well be buried in Qatar.
You can answer the question yourself. Truth isn't up to our interpretation or creation, it's universally imbedded in all of us. Reality is reality. The seduction is, to spin reality in your favor. That leads to pills and depression and divorce and sexual deviancy and malcontent.
I went out to day with two impressive young ladies. Both discussed their antidepressants (and other meds) like you would discuss sports.
Jekyll is correct. Your conscience will either convict you, or guide you. The truth is self-evident. It is embedded. One gets mental problems when one decides to think they will trump their conscience with will power. Good luck with that.
No matter how politically correct something becomes (thanks MSM), the TRUTH always shines through. ALWAYS. Unfortunately, those worst affected and suffering all manner of mental illness are usually the last to recognize the cause. Hint: it's not genetic.
So for all of you that thought it was fun to have the dramas of multiple divorces, the euphoria of being a pot head (or other drug addict, incl. food), think it's hip to live alternative lifestyles, worship at the golden alter, etc. etc. etc. Go ahead. make your day. And make sure your insurance covers mental health. You gonna need it. Or more accurately, your kids will.
Look at the societal result. Reality (i.e. TRUTH) always trumps bullshit dreams. Sadly, those that caused this are so lost they don't even realize they did it to themselves. Forget buying Apple or Google. Buy Eli Lilly.
We are on a one-way train. To hell.
So I'm just going to crack the knuckles and kick the gloves under the desk and pop off here.
All of American's problems come from one source: departing from the roots and source code of our country and ourselves. Now I'm not going to sit here and pontificate on how the Founding Fathers fall conveniently into my belief system, but I'm going to tell you the founding fathers were fucking Theists, and they had backbones and they believed in something. See that word right there? Belief? It's conviction and belief that founded this country. It's conviction and belief that cause us to be good parents and work our asses off and not fucking lie all the time like the banksters and politicians we tar and feather every day. The problem is the Banksters and politicians are all postmodern, they don't fucking believe in anything anymore. It's Nietzsche's last man -- a man liberated from societal constraints, clear headed and drug free from the opiate of the masses, [Marx] crutchless and no longer handicapped by the Church. Well guess what? This guy turns out to be a total fucking monster! And he's eating the souls of our kids, and our souls and the soul of this country. It's easy to sit back and snarl and spit poison and not believe in anything.
Get ready to not like what I say next. Unhappiness is the result of running from reality or God.
If you're on antidepressants, odds are A. You’re an atheist, or B. an agnostic who doesn't believe in organized religion because 1. You had a "bad experience" with the church when you were younger and now reject the entire thing as a fraternity of hypocrites, or 2. You don't like being told what to do because your parents were religious and shitheads and didn't apply the curriculum accurately.
If you're on antidepressants, odds are A. You're divorced because you trashed your family during a point of weakness when the 70's, and moral relativity finally turned your fuck-thrusters on or B. You've decided that we are the sum composite of random genetics; moral and ethical codes are created by societies who find that certain behaviors perpetuate the species, such as monogamy, and you aren't going to buy any of that crack.
G.K. Chesterton said, "Fine things are hard." It's not supposed to be easy. MLK said, "There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a sincere ignorance and a conscientious stupidity.” Let’s stop being sincerely ignorant and conscientiously stupid. So there we go. If we work hard we can have fine things and be happy, and if we read books, the right books we don't have to be idiots. Although I do recommend you read the book, The Idiot by Dostoyevsky.
It's time we all started reading books about this shit and stopped leaning on the charlatan, derelict educations we received in college. Those professors had agendas, agendas to justify their autonomy from the Church and from God. The truth is, we are inexorably tied to God, on a quantum mechanical level and on a philosophical level. So lets stop pretending we're not. It's getting old and if we keep on shitting where we eat everyone's going to get E Coli.
Thank you, that is all.
@ Jekyll & Hyde Island:
+ 1,000,000
Reality is simply not palatable to most people now.
Croesus: My thanks. Because I am young I have much zeal, and therefor not much room for compassion. Perhaps when I am older these things will come, and I will be more gentle with those who have run from reality. For now, I wish to illuminate the bog we're all mired in. Very few know of the tides that carried us to such sorry puddles of misery. We are enlightened beings, able to detect these things; not simple organisms carried on currents unknown, incapable of consciousness who kick and scream like small children when we don't like our watery cribs.
For most of us on ZH, intelligence will lead us out of the cave we find ourselves in. Perahps those standing outside of it aren't as nefarious as we think, and were waiting all along for us to climb out, like they did.
re: "See that word right there? Belief?"
Yeah I see it...(yup I'm a fucktard too) I also see what's right in the middle of that word.
beLIEf
I forgot a 3rd section for antidepressant users:
or C. You're a Theist and one of those loons that are emotionally invested in a mega church or you believe that your interaction with God is personal and requires no community or structure -- and your relationship with God reflects as much; emotional. Since we are broken, and unable to constantly engage God, you pop pills to make up for your broken protestant mega-church misery or spiritual antinomianism.
The point is that "the spectacle is so fascinating." For the world is a
spell (in Latin, fascinum), an enchantment (being thrilled by a chant), an
amazement (being lost in a maze), an arabesque of such stunning
rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state
of involvement where we forget that it is a game. We become fascinated
to the point where the cheering and the booing are transformed into
intense love and hate, or delight and terror, ecstatic orgasm or
screaming meemies. All made out of on-and-off or black-and-white,
pulsed, stuttered, diagrammed mosaiced, syncopated, shaded, jolted,
tangoed, and lilted through all possible measures and dimensions. It is
simultaneously the purest nonsense and the utmost artistry.
Listen intently to a voice singing without words. It may charm you
into crying, force you to dance, fill you with rage, or make you jump for
joy. You can't tell where the music ends and the emotions begin, for the
whole thing is a kind of music—the voice playing on your nerves as the
breath plays on a flute. All experience is just that, except that its music
has many more dimensions than sound. It vibrates in the dimensions of
sight, touch, taste, and smell, and in the intellectual dimension of
symbols and words—all evoking and playing upon each other. But at
root—and this is a negative way of saying something highly positive—it
is nothing more than the mysterious utterance of the old man of
Spithead, who opened the window and said:
Fill jomble, fill jumble,
Fill rumble-come-tumble.
Bach states it more elegantly, but with just as little external meaning:
Once you have seen this you can return to the world of practical
affairs with a new spirit. You have seen that the universe is at root a
magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate
"you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The
only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws
itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the
universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that
come and go so that the vision is forever new. What we see as death,
empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this
endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should
seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an
urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no
time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is
never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend
that there is.
Anyone who brags about knowing this doesn't understand it, for he is
only using the theory as a trick to maintain his illusion of separateness, a
gimmick in a game of spiritual one-upmanship. Moreover, such
bragging is deeply offensive to those who do not understand, and who
honestly believe themselves to be lonely, individual spirits in a
desperate and agonizing struggle for life. For all such there must be
deep and unpatronizing compassion, even a special kind of reverence
and respect, because, after all, in them the Self is playing its most farout
and daring game—the game of having lost Itself completely and of
being in danger of some total and irremediable disaster. This is why
Hindus do not shake hands on meeting, but put their palms together and
bow in a gesture of reverence, honoring the Godhead in the stranger.
And do not suppose that this understanding will transform you all at
once into a model of virtue. I have never yet met a saint or sage who did
not have some human frailties. For so long as you manifest yourself in
human or animal form, you must eat at the expense of other life and
accept the limitations of your particular organism, which fire will still
burn and wherein danger will still secrete adrenalin. The morality that
goes with this understanding is, above all, the frank recognition of your
dependence upon enemies, underlings, out-groups, and, indeed, upon all
other forms of life whatsoever. Involved as you may be in the conflicts
and competitive games of practical life, you will never again be able to
indulge in the illusion that the "offensive other" is all in the wrong, and
could or should be wiped out. This will give you the priceless ability of
being able to contain conflicts so that they do not get out-of-hand, of
being willing to compromise and adapt, of playing, yes, but playing it
cool. This is what is called "honor among thieves," for the really
dangerous people are those who do not recognize that they are thieves—
the unfortunates who play the role of the "good guys" with such blind
zeal that they are unconscious of any indebtedness to the "bad guys"
who support their status. To paraphrase the Gospel, "Love your
competitors, and pray for those who undercut your prices." You would
be nowhere at all without them.
The political and personal morality of the West, especially in the
United States, is—for lack of this sense—utterly schizophrenic. It is a
monstrous combination of uncompromising idealism and unscrupulous
gangsterism, and thus devoid of the humor and humaneness which
enables confessed rascals to sit down together and work out reasonable
deals. No one can be moral—that is, no one can harmonize contained
conflicts—without coming to a working arrangement between the angel
in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his
manure below. The two forces or tendencies are mutually
interdependent, and the game is a working game just so long as the
angel is winning, but does not win, and the devil is losing, but is never
lost. (The game doesn't work in reverse, just as the ocean doesn't work
with wave-crests down and troughs up.)
It is most important that this be understood by those concerned with
civil rights, international peace, and the restraint of nuclear weapons.
These are most undoubtedly causes to be backed with full vigor, but
never in a spirit which fails to honor the opposition, or which regards it
as entirely evil or insane. It is not without reason that the formal rules of
boxing, judo, fencing, and even dueling require that the combatants
salute each other before the engagement. In any foreseeable future there
are going to be thousands and thousands of people who detest and
abominate Negroes, communists, Russians, Chinese, Jews, Catholics,
beatniks, homosexuals, and "dope-fiends." These hatreds are not going
to be healed, but only inflamed, by insulting those who feel them, and
the abusive labels with which we plaster them—squares, fascists,
rightists, know-nothings—may well become the proud badges and
symbols around which they will rally and consolidate themselves. Nor
will it do to confront the opposition in public with polite and nonviolent
sit-ins and demonstrations, while boosting our collective ego by
insulting them in private. If we want justice for minorities and cooled
wars with our natural enemies, whether human or non-human, we must
first come to terms with the minority and the enemy in ourselves and in
our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the
"external" world—-especially when you realize that the world outside
your skin is as much yourself as the world inside. For want of this
awareness, no one can be more belligerent than a pacifist on the
rampage, or more militantly nationalistic than an anti-imperialist.
You may, indeed, argue that this is asking too much. You may resort
to the old alibi that the task of "changing human nature" is too arduous
and too slow, and that what we need is immediate and massive action.
Obviously, it takes discipline to make any radical change in one's own
behavior patterns, and psychotherapy can drag on for years and years.
But this is not my suggestion. Does it really take any considerable time
or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to
define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To
see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor
and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in
the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock.
How could he be sitting there in stately judgment, being addressed as
"Your Honor" or "Mi Lud," without those poor bastards being dragged
before him day after day? It does not undermine his work and his
function to recognize this. He plays the role of judge all the better for
realizing that on the next turn of the Wheel of Fortune he may be the
accused, and that if all the truth were known, he would be standing
there now.
If this is cynicism, it is at least loving cynicism—an attitude and an
atmosphere that cools off human conflicts more effectively than any
amount of physical or moral violence. For it recognizes that the real
goodness of human nature is its peculiar balance of love and selfishness,
reason and passion, spirituality and sensuality, mysticism and
materialism, in which the positive pole has always a slight edge over the
negative. (Were it otherwise, and the two were equally balanced, life
would come to a total stalemate and standstill.) Thus when the two
poles, good and bad, forget their interdependence and try to obliterate
each other, man becomes subhuman—the implacable crusader or the
cold, sadistic thug. It is not for man to be either an angel or a devil, and
the would-be angels should realize that, as their ambition succeeds, they
evoke hordes of devils to keep the balance. This was the lesson of
Prohibition, as of all other attempts to enforce purely angelic behavior,
or to pluck out evil root and branch.
It comes, then, to this: that to be "viable," livable, or merely
practical, life must be lived as a game—and the "must" here expresses a
condition, not a commandment. It must be lived in the spirit of play
rather than work, and the conflicts which it involves must be carried on
in the realization that no species, or party to a game, can survive without
its natural antagonists, its beloved enemies, its indispensable opponents.
For to "love your enemies" is to love them as enemies; it is not
necessarily a clever device for winning them over to your own side. The
lion lies down with the lamb in paradise, but not on earth—"paradise"
being the tacit, off-stage level where, behind the scenes, all conflicting
parties recognize their interdependence, and, through this recognition,
are able to keep their conflicts within bounds. This recognition is the
absolutely essential chivalry which must set the limits within all
warfare, with human and non-human enemies alike, for chivalry is the
debonair spirit of the knight who "plays with his life" in the knowledge
that even mortal combat is a game.
No one who has been hoaxed into the belief that he is nothing but his
ego, or nothing but his individual organism, can be chivalrous, let alone
a civilized, sensitive, and intelligent member of the cosmos.
But to be lived this way, the life-game has to be purged of selfcontradictory
rules. This, and not some kind of moral effort, is the way
out of the hoax of separateness. Thus when a game sets the players an
impossible and not simply difficult task, it comes quickly to the point
where it is no longer worth playing. There is no way of observing a rule
set in the form of a double-bind—that is, a two-part rule whose parts are
mutually exclusive. No one can be compelled to behave freely or forced
to act independently. Yet whole cultures and civilizations have
befuddled themselves with this kind of nonsense, and, through failing to
spot the self-contradiction, their members have been haunted all through
their lives by the sense that individual existence is a problem and a
predicament—a form of nature doomed to perpetual frustration. The
sense of ego is at root a discomfort and a bore, and nothing shows it
more clearly than such everyday phrases as: "I need to get away from
myself" or "You should find something to take you out of yourself" or
"I read to forget myself." Get lost! Hence the fanaticisms and
intoxications—religious, political, and sexual, the Nazis, the Klan,
Hell's Angels, the Circus Maximus, the dreary fascination of the TV
screen, witch-burnings, Mickey Spillane and James Bond, pachinko
parlors, alcoholic stupors, revivals, tabloid newspapers, and juvenile
gangs—all of which, as things stand, are the necessary safety-valves and
palliatives for human beings whose very existence is defined in selfcontradictory
and self-defeating terms.
Finally, the game of life as Western man has been "playing" it for the
past century needs less emphasis on practicality, results, progress, and
aggression. This is why I am discussing vision, and keeping off the
subject of justifying the vision in terms of its practical applications and
consequences. Whatever may be true for the Chinese and the Hindus, it
is timely for us to recognize that the future is an ever-retreating mirage,
and to switch our immense energy and technical skill to contemplation
instead of action. However much we may now disagree with Aristotle's
logic and his metaphors, he must still be respected for reminding us that
the goal of action is always contemplation—knowing and being rather
than seeking and becoming.
As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested
experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our
own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us
more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard,
smelled, touched, and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more
than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of
those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an
existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an
infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, "It would
take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what's
happening now." How is it possible that a being with such sensitive
jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and
such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as
anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably
subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of
its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole
company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of
all eternity can be bored with being?
I read this post twice and thought about it a lot.
I enjoyed how Alan fuses the astrophysics of the self or consciousness and spirituality and existence. I think he's got a lot of things right.
I didn't enjoy the preachy, eastern desciptions of the duality of man. I think he's close to something here, but three failed marriages later I can't really seem to think he could seperate his thinking from his experiences, which were unregrettably imprudent. I've read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bhagavad Gita, the Rigveda, shit I've even read the Pearl of Great Price and The Book of Mormon.
It's not that there isn't truth in these religions. There's just less truth in them than Christianity, specifically Catholocism.
Sorry I asked.
You are correct with the exception that contentment, rather than happiness, is what we are in need of.......
Fucktard... Moi...?
" We don't understand symbols and their meaning (...) <-- (How many fucktards misuse the ellipsis), and we mock everything, because we are justifiably cynical. "
Ellipsis means leaving out letters, as in "don't" for "do not".
These are ellipses ( ).
I just can't help myself. It's actually more likely that Diogenes is speaking in earnest rather than tongue-in-cheek.
( ) <-- Parentheses.
Don't for do not, is a conjunction accented with a apostrophe.
An ellipsis is used when . . . <--- See my trail of thought sputtered. That's when an ellipsis is used. Not instead of a comma, not instead of a period. I'm not even going to blow the dust off the ol' semicolon.
Well, if you want to play punctuation-and-grammar nitpicky games -- "don't" is a contraction, not a conjunction. ;^)
A conjunction is a word (like and, but, or, or so) that connects phrases and clauses. (Remember the Schoolhouse Rock episode, "Conjunction Junction?")
Now, back to some real and fruitful ZH-style discussion.
I was tempted to cheat and go back and edit my comment. Then I thought, well, fuck it. I was on the phone anyway. You get my point.
My new cat shits like - alot
Is that like a lert?
e.e. cummings
write within freedom..., no/yes inhibitions?! http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/e-e-cummings
See that's what gets me. Those bastard terrorists come over here and think they can just take advantage of being in the greatest country on the planet then blow us up instead of just getting the fuck outta here.
nimnum go blow up your empty head you moron fuck.
it was an fbi plot numb nuts go find seal team 5 ask them where they within 100 feet of the bomb.
they will tell you the truth cos your a patriot a lover of truth and freedom.
#1 in every catagory of full retard. and soon to be #1 lost empire of all time.
-Jobs are modern-day slavery. We are paid just enough to live and not more. You are punished if you ask for more.
Well duh. Peasants worked all year long... then at the end of the year, the King's goons came over and took your food...
U.S.A. = #1 champion of Cognitive Dissonance.
you can add Normalcy Bias as well
Moar Forward!
Maybe the Amish (sp?) have it right:
Work hard physically every day, eat what you grow and produce, live in union with your environment, be happy with the non-technical things in life: family, firends, being tired after a hard days work building a building or harvesting a crop.
Like most theocracies, the Amish are riddled with internal power struggles, sometimes violent. they have a nasty habit of shunning anyone who aspires to independent thought...the mantra is .. tow the line, suck up and kick down. Doesn't sound so idyllic.
The trouble is not with "Theocracy", but human nature..........
human nature is neither man made... nor, is it formulated by our environment-- rather by survival instincts, and a innate intuition to proliferate the speices
every creature in the infinite universe is birth'd with this dual indelible,'god`gene'... that bifurcates our very spirtual consciousness?!
mankind is a paradox, as is our being...
I live around many Amish and they are awesome, I have modeled many things in my life after them.
They're the best humans I ever met...
yup - reserved and honest
hmmm
; ( ) "',...
long bad punctuation bitcheez
Solution is more stuff and more debt. Andy Warhol used to say, 'Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks."
It's stressful to try and be someone else.
There's a lot of that in the States. Always chasing an image.
Power is found within. The image is just a shadow.
There are those who are consumate manipulators of shadows.
No one can manipulate your self in the end, except of course, yourself.
"If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse."
-- Woody Allen
There is one Way to inner peace even in a gulag. Ask, seek and knock.
Ask who put you in there, seek them out, and knock their fucking brains out. That way they can't put anyone else in there.
There's a time to seek inner peace and there's a time to seek outward violence.
If you've got all the trappings of a comfortable existence and are still a stressed out mess, it's time to seek inner peace.
If some sumbitch wants to throw you into a gulag it's time to go down fighting like Hell.
+100
Post of the day.
This article neglects to mention Chuck Norris. The author is probably already dead.
Yes, death by roundhouse kick.
Our towns suck, our schools suck, neighbors don't talk to each other, family members move away. Most people you have to deal with every day are people you would rather not know. Everything you want to do requires a car to get there and driving in America sucks because people are discourteous assholes and there is too much traffic. Nobody reads or uses their imagination. Hobbies consist of driving your RV someplace to ride your quad/motorcycle/snowmobile around in circles in the winter and then driving your RV to the lake/river/resevoir to drive your boat around in circles in the summer. Self expression now consists of writting something stupid on your Facebook page every 10 minutes and getting tattoos.
You can still find areas which aren't spoiled yet, but you can be sure someone has plans to move in there and put up a strip mall and super Wal-mart and fuck it up.
A huge percentage of the human race are born fucktards. Rich, poor, ignorant, educated, it doesn't matter - the fucktard gene comes through and they grow up to be fucktards. You are doomed to be surrounded by fucktards in life.
You can either find their fucktardedness extremely amusing, or extremely aggravating. It's your choice.
The primordial instinct to propogate and survive has met the objective realization that we simply made up all of the shit that made life worth living. Pulverem Pulvis.
Either that or:
"God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
Dear Milestones:
Congratulations on your opus magnus. I agree with the spirit of your argument completely, but at the risk of wetting on your charcoal, feel it my bounden duty to inform all that, by definition, a nation with a constitutional government has no need of court precedence. Further, SCOTUS opinions are just that, opinions and do not have the force of law as the talking heads and the headless voices (and clueless "Constitutional scholars") would have one believe. If you feel that I am in error, please direct me to that clause in the Constitution wherein SCOTUS has the final say on the meaning of that doucment. All have a say, including, but not limited to the several states, governors, attorneys general and most of all, juries which have the power to nullify any statute whether state or federal.
One final point. Can you describe the legal mechanism whereby any of us is bound by the Constitution? Afteall, none alive today ratified the document. How is it that we are bound by it? The interested reader is directed towww.lysanderspooner.org. You will not be disappointed.
Kindest regards,
Yours forever in fiat scrip,
the PTB
Tue, 04/23/2013 - 17:33 | 3490284Milestones
Vote up! 0
Vote down! 0
PTB--ARTICLE VI Miscellaneous Provisions Section 2 "Suprency of constitution, treaties and Laws" This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made. or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby; anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary nonwithstsanding."
I presume yrou are aware of Article III concerning the Judicary.
Finally, it is my humble opinion that under the doctrine of seperation of powers doctrine, that the only powers in the U.S. Constitution all belong to the Executive and Legislative bodies of the federal government and that almsot none to the Judicary; as they are the Seperation of power that rules between the Executive branch (king -power to tax and war) and the legislature to control the purse ( in England the house of Lorda, as in Landlords (Senate) and the House of Commons (as in Commoner-House of REpresentives.
I would submit that this whole thing of courts goes back to a meadow in England called Runnymeade (sp?) and an instrumewnt called the Magna Carta done in 1215 A.D. where the large landholders forced the king to grant demands made by the Landlords (owners of large tracts of land and also to protect the vassels of the land lords so they could plunder their wealth (cheap labor) instead of the state (king)
I really appriciate your comments and taking the time to read a very long document.
Best regards--Milestones
stones,
second on the cheers for your opa magna thanks for reposting or i woulda missed it. Bancroft Davis is shirley a "missing heel" (maybe THE) in Amer-i-con history.
did you notice that their reply to you was the PTB's first post after being a member for over 2 years? quite a whopper it was.
I can't run much anymore, so I live dangerously by exhaustively playing with my imagination.
Not where anybody can see me, of course.
fear sells. The more abstracted the fear, the better.
-The United States produces more pornography than any other nation in the world.
Thank you America.
Like everything else we make, American porn isn't the best porn. But at least we're up to somebody else's ass in the stuff.
You got these "stats" off the free shit applicants, didn't you? Or whitehouse.gov? ~_~
Don't grow up! It's a trap!!!
Now back to my blanket fort!
Guns are Good God --just don't pray to the open end.
Bad karma sucks!
Yippie-kai-futhermuckin-yay
Old news... check out the first 45 minutes of Zeitgeist Moving Forward for a more in depth look at this subject. Hell, watch the rest of the movie if you haven't already.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
There is an incredibly simple answer. Remove the thing that created each one of these conditions. Here is a hint:
It is so entrenched, so debilitating, so ham-handed, it destroys everyone's free will at the end of a gun. It subsidizes the teen pregnancies and abortions at the same time, because people write the "donations" for either outcome to avoid being put in jail. It pays for obesity, because again, you donate to it to have a lower rate than the Jones-es next door. It is so complicated, not even Einstien could figure it out. Along those lines, more effort is spent on it at G.E. corp than they spend on nuclear reactor safety.
The conditioned response from most people is "well if we did not have it, nothing would work" yet, most honest people fear to speak its full name. It is largely created by people who never matured intellectually beyond their role as star football player/cheerleader and head of the student council raising money for their own shiny uniforms. It is far worse than any self destructive behavior, which are so easy to demonize other individuals with. It is not open to "on the other hand" type debate ... it needs both closed fists of every person in the mob to enforce, arbitrarily, on each other.
Antidepressants? /head slap I just Knew! something was missing from my life.
Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Rome, bitchez! Now, where's my fiddle? This bitch is burnin'!
Jesus is dead
Caesar is dead
and I feel miserable.
Also Sprach Zarathustra
Nietszche had a lot of respect for Jesus....just not the Christians...
And Jesus has a lot of respect for Nietzsche, just not the agnostics and atheists.
Jesus is very much alive, message me if you'd like to discuss.
http://vimeo.com/62276207
That's the way the ball bounces fellas.
Until you have travelled a bit you do not know how good we still have it here.
How many dreadfully unhappy Mexicans (undocumented guests) do you see? Even the guys at the fringe of the Home Depot parking lot are doing much better than they were in Chihuahua.
Or you own six carbon-copy Riviera villas in Shanghai; and you have face cancer at age 40.
A lot of the stress is about giving a shit about what other people think of you.
That, and Americans being terrified of death; because they know deep down they are hollow.
They don't take care of their elderly, they don't pay attention to their neighbors.
And they are credulous, just amazingly naive.
I've lived here all my life and no longer consider myself part of the thing.
"For fallen, fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great
She who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication (Hollywood, petrodollars)
Come out my people, says the Lord
That you may not participate in her sins
and that you may not receive of her plagues."
they know deep down they are hollow
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th8Y2V0qumE
I've read a big book on the Russian history... and it seems America is fast approaching the end of the Soviet Union phase...
And the more I study Stalin the more I see that Obama (and his advisers) resembles him A LOT...
And the suicides are an at all time high... drinking too...
Hey on the other hand we're # 1 in exporting weapons, financial fraud, drugs, violence, worthless dollars, all kinds of inovative and toxic chemicals, wars, genetically altered seeds and what else am I leaving out, oh yeah shitty cars that get shitty milage.. There.
This is what happens to a wealthy country that has become spoiled. It's the pussification of America.
I thought 'murkins' LIKED pussy.
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=154732
FOWARD
as a seller of poisons, business is good.
-Tens of millions of Americans use alcohol and drugs to numb the pain that they are experiencing. In the United States today, there are about 28 million Americans with a drinking problem and about 22 million Americans use illegal drugs.
That's the only way to deal with the pain...
It is called Ego or what Eckhart Tolle calls the "pain body". It is the constant pressure of fulfilliing an energy vacuum within us. The mind always wants something else, something in the future and it is never fullfilled in the now. The reason is that the mind (or the story which you and I are constantly repeating in our minds) will not survive if there is no time/wanting.
We constantly seek ourselves in the future or mentally repeat the past. Nothing is ever enough.
I live in NYC, where people are obsesed with wanting, craving and the next best thing, including me. I travel a lot for work. I've been to Florida for example where people look content on the surface and when they hear that I live in NY they start explaining how they don't care about money and they have choldren earlier, etc. At the same time all they are talking about is money, and how they want a better car or something else, which tells me that the craving is there, just not on the surface. But they are still obsesed, just less peer presure.
So until we change, the stress will be there, and deseases are way the body tells us to change. :)
If America is diseased, then New York City is the infection site.
Typhoid Bloomberg?
If you want to learn about our "ego" you need to study the evolution of humanity, culture and our spirituality. Not something you or your wife may have heard on Oprah. Be well.
"Life sucks, get a fucking helmet!"
-Leary
How does this compare to the evil states?
It's getting exciting now, two and one-half. Think of everything we've accomplished, man. Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history. One step closer to economic equilibrium.
Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
America needs to watch Fight Club one more time and LEARN FROM IT.
Fight Club and Serenity are two of the more seditious "mainstream" flicks I've seen. Everybody should watch 'em.
Sick of THIS shit! Oh...We're so depressed...it's all Obama's fault...capitalism is perfect if only government would get out of the way...grow up you fkn pansies.
Life isn't and has never been perfect, and never will be. It has ups, it has downs. If Jesus, drugs, alcohol, etc ad infinitum helps you get through that, great, good for you. But in the end we all got problems, and thats just the way it is.
Yeah, well, the dog dragged a dead rabbit onto my bed and now my bedding is full of FLEAS. The refrigerator broke down and all the FOOD is rotten and there's a big puddle of water on the floor. The car's Check Engine light turned on this morning. Wal-Mart is out of my favorite fucking PRETZELS. Idiot Brother-In-Law visited Mrs. Tippy while I was at work and drank all my BEER. ALL OF IT!
You try dealing with this shit.
+1
Well you should know better than to let the dog in, let alone the b in law! Other than that, see above dennis leary quote!
P.S. Maybe drop by his house and bring him a rabbit!
Republicans/democrats answer to all this : WE NEED MORE GOVERNMENT!!
I haven't taken so much as an aspirin in 2 years. Before that it was almost 10.. and it was the immense pain of pissing out kidney stones that halted that streak. I don't run to the psychjobs just because I'm bored and a little down. I refused the doctors push to drug my 6 year old because he's very high energy.. fuck those psychjobs in the ass with a veiny, dildo. I refuse to eat anything with Aspartame in it.. I've reduced my wheat intake and I feel great as a result.
America is being drugged involuntarily.. that's my angle.
You can do everything possible to get prepared to face the enemy that is coming with strength and courage.
Because "sheltering in place" is so Boston Terrier.
That display made my stomach turn.. 2 guys and an entire city vanishes like it was a zombie plague.
Dudes, what a bunch of downer stats.
Just got out of the water after a 3 hr session of mackin 6'- 8' barrels.
For G-ds sake lighten up.... when its over, its toast weather you like it or not.
Surf on friends!
yeah, live in the now, its all we ever really have :-)
"A man walking across a field encounters a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above.Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine in one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!" zen quote
Fonz, ir you are going to paraphrase George Carlin, at least give him the credit for it
My profound apologies. I figured that post was so well known around here I did not need to. But my bad on that one. Won't happen again.
You know you're not free when you think to yourself, "All this posting on ZH may get me in trouble one day." Yep....hated for my freedom. Aspirin is my only drug. Besides weight, I'm ok. I am stressed from school, work and family.....we simplify come summer and leave CT for OH.
Governments can only exist and grow through the propagation of fear and anxiety. As it grows, the fear and anxiety grows with it, ultimately consuming itself. Have you ever heard any government official who wasn't warning of the existence of a potential danger. Even in this world with many real threats, they warn us of the dangers in clearly recognizing and identifying real dangers, which will ensure bad things will happen, reinforcing their position as our protectors. Fear every false threat and ignore every real threat. Breaking us down to basket cases unable to care for ourselves and unwilling to identify what it is that is actually destroying us. To think we are depressed!
I don't like to bring religion into this, but here's some things I hear......does anyone out there here similar, by chance?
Ahhh....but don't worry...I hear some that say God is in control! So just sit back and do nothing, do some praying, forgive the government and send them kisses and it will all fix itself. Don't you know, that's what the founding fathers of America did back then. They just sat back and let God take care of it....AND guess what would have happened if the founding fathers didn't do what they really did...?
I rest my case...cheers!
Fonz, just so you know, I agree with every single word in your post, just would like you give the original author the credit due
America has a problem, true.
She has parasites in her gut.
I live in Mexico. I haven't missed California one iota. My house is smaller, but near the beach. People are friendly, I know all my neighbors, don't have a television, go to a bar once in a while and dance and listen to good music.
If I want to go to a beach, I don't have to pay to park my car. I can smoke and have a beer outside my house.
Problem with many Americans, is they forgot what life is all about and they are being turned into robots.
About time they laid a new foundation, gave up being the leading arms dealer, war machine and spook factory in the world and start living.
Freedom and liberty are not and have never been free, unless of course you live in your parent's basement.
So, are you saying that more surveillance, SWAT teams, cities on "lockdown", CISPA, DHS, TSA, BATF, FBI, fusion centers, the perpetual war on terror, perpetual drug war, the "Patriot" Act, drone strikes, smoking bans, trans-fat bans, sin taxes, seatbelt laws, property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, a massively bloated military, and hundreds of thousands of inscrutable laws designed to make regular people into criminals are the hallmark of a free society?
Not at all, but living in a isolated environment while also enjoying the benefits of advanced societies, is not sustainable other than in a very rare occasion. we may not like a lot of the crap we have to deal with, but I still think i would rather have my lifestyle than live in a part of the world where the laws are not simply dictated by peabrains in Washington but by any asshole with an automatic weapon. I think gun laws are pretty strict in Mexico unless of course you are a drug dealing outlaw and then pretty much anything goes. of course given a little time I'm sure we can get there! A few more shootings and bombings and we won't have anything but big brother to worry about. At that point, dealing with drug cartels might look more appealing.
Winning!
i bet it was a survey of zh commenters...
:)
We are #1 in Swat Fests too! Go facist mutha's!!!
sorry but such comments are having the intension to make us forget,that we do live in world's most blessed country.
and yes we need tougher laws against possible terrorist actions.
Yeah. More laws to keep us safe. 'Cause they hate us for our freedoms. We're almost there.
FUCK! That shit just makes my head want to explode like a pressure cooker bomb.
Somebody should pass a law against murder too. People act like it's okay just because there's no law against it.
America Number One
Consolidated....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKAFlHQRcj0
And...#1 in waking up!
Listen to what the average American has to say here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU8i54eDeKo
I can recall being at the movies with my father in the 1950s they had one of those news reels on prior to the main movie. It showed American children practising for a nuclear attack by getting under their school desks. Talking about the news reel to my mother after the movie, Dad was incensed that the Americans were scaring their children in that way. No wonder the people are fearful now, its been ingrained.
Howdy, GdK.
Did you know what most humans first learned, or programmed memory/instinct is? Fear. When the purposeful entry into life form is normally meant to be a peaceful one, most of the time it is first met with a big SLAP, and a big CUT, and all that sudden Bright LIGHT, and the freezing room temperature, and now you are breathing in a new quickened breathing pattern, and a whole lot of new outer stimuli adds to the confusion. That first swack instils shock, fear, and it is carefully nurtured and propagated by babylon for the rest of the beings life span. Multiply that by millions, and you have a fear conditioned society, ready to re-act to the swack any time.
Next, practice how to re-program the short breaths and first programmed fear by taking deep long breaths when you find yourself in that fetal-form (hunched over) taking short quickened breaths. See yourself coming in to your new life in a peaceful full breathed way. Forgive all that was part of that first experience and move on. Live long learning to step out of the mental-box and seeing what is around you in more detail focusing in the present moment, and not the past or future, slowly breathing in and appreciating every free and peaceful moment when you can find them.
Thank you for allowing these thots
Bless.
Some poor fuckers out there tightning a noose around his stupid neck because he got my share of angst.
I got none of those problems because I don't have debt.
Went without a bunch of shit I didn't need to get that way too.
Except for guitars. Can't have too many guitars.
While Im in general agreement with the theme of the article with concern to America as a nation in decline, sourcing a bunch of bs mainstream media articles who quote government studies is exactly going to convince me
Money is the mechanism of slavery and while being forced with a whip to do what the gang in power wants leads to the least possible amount of creativity and productivity, being a slave to money created by a gang that doles the money liberally to itself and stingely to those not in the gang is almost as demotivating. Sure we get to choose the jobs we want to do as long as the slavers have a need for it, if we grow tired, bored or demotivated by the job it is difficult to make a change. Money is almost as unfair as the whip ... and no, everyone does not have an equal opportunity to get money.
IMO. if we want happy and productive people then we need to start teaching kids from an early age what it takes to be happy and productive. We teach neither now. We teach them what it takes to make them good wage slaves, to not challenge authority, to not think creatively and to do what they are told. We teach them none of the important things about life, health and happiness.
My guess is that the creators of money/slavers do not want happy well adjusted people populating the earth. That would be a threat to their power (why would we need the money creators/slavers if we were all happy?)... and how could they live in a world of people happier than they are?!?
Fuck Bloomberg.
Perhaps I've been too negative on America, as a reaction to what I see around me.
America's an interesting place: it's wealthy but it doesn't feel like it, it feels too sprawled out and crumbling.
I realize that I was born into this and have no choice, we are forced to fashion something, anything, from the ruins.
Really? seems like everyone has unlimited amounts of income to spend on designer clothing, the latest smartphone, dinner out every night... Of course most people are living on credit, either revolving credit cards (average credit card debt alone is over $15,000 per person) or student loans (the sky is the limit since the gov't aka taxpayer is subsidizing it ).
-From 7am to 7pm you are either A) going to work, B) at work, or C) coming back from work. Hence, the times when you can be most creative are garbage-compacted into your cubicle.
It helps to take the ADHD medication on the way to work as well as on the way home. ADHD Medication = Adderall or Ritalin. If stress is keeping you awake --- ask for a prescription for Xanax or Ambien
And don't forget all those miserable small business owners, who have nothing unless they can squeeze some net income after expenses and taxes and doing multiple jobs each day correcting errors that their frequently ungrateful and usually passive-aggressive and full of themselves employees make by the bushel. Where did people get the idea that they should live like royalty because they exist? We could do with less whining about how bad things are and more go to, deliver the goods mentality and make, not take, a nice day. And most of all, interact according to time-tested ethical principles and the concept of fair profit margins. Not this situational ethics BS and contempt towards anything that isn't easy money.
Uplifting
Yes, the US is a swirling maelstrom of angst, depression, self-loathing, laziness, conceit, narcissism, shallowness and rank materialism. And that's just the White House! Guess I'll move to that place I was clever enough to invest in and buy an apartment quite a few years ago. My plan is working to perfection. If you want me, I'll be in Cyprus.
Very well diagnosed, the cure is Jesus Christ.
A wonderful article. Thanks.
The US has also the highest ratio of lawyers/inhabitants in the world. Cause or consequence of societal misery?