This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Tighten Those Chin Straps Folks Because Here Comes a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD)
Tighten Those Chin Straps Folks Because Here Comes a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD)
By
Cognitive Dissonance
Please stick with this piece all the way through because it does not end on the same path from which it starts.
Being a child of the 50’s and 60’s, it comes as no surprise to anyone from that era that I’m a bit of a space buff. From the moment I saw my first televised rocket launch I was hooked and have never fully recovered from my childhood obsession. Beginning with Project Mercury and the suborbital flight of Alan Shepard in 1961, followed shortly by the three orbits of John Glenn, then progressing through Project Gemini where America practiced the space skills needed to eventually land on the moon and culminating with the Apollo Program and (supposedly) several trips to the moon, one thing they all had in common was the seriousness of everyone involved. Going to space was serious business performed by serious people. There was no joking around because failure wasn’t an option.
Who can forget the early years watching stern (mostly baby faced) engineers hunched over their monitors at the Launch Control Center in Cape Canaveral (Kennedy) and Mission Control in Houston, nearly all wearing the standard dress uniform of white short-sleeve shirt with tie along with the mandatory plastic pocket protector, headsets firmly affixed to one ear while the other was left open to hear those around them.
There were always several huge loose leaf binders at their side, dog-eared and well thumbed, complete with handwritten notations and addendums. And of course, endlessly pacing the back of the room or moving from one monitoring station to another, there was the Mission Director riding herd over his minions. There was no doubt by anyone in that room who the man in charge was and where the buck stopped.
For the Apollo flights a new Houston Mission Control was constructed, complete with a huge front wall covered with screens to display various flight parameters and video, along with a special VIP viewing area in the back sealed behind glass. At that point in the space race NASA had firmly grasped the use and abuse of public relations and propaganda to mold (and hold) public opinion. NASA understood all too well its huge budget depended upon public support, so the launches had become spectator sport and the best ticket in the house was to be seated behind the rocket scientists as they lit off another Roman candle.
Yes sir, this was cutting edge rocket science where nearly everything they did had never been done before. The entire US space program was infused with a can-do attitude where anything can be done if enough brains, brawn and money were thrown at the problem. Failures, while initially expected during testing and development, were not taken lightly and most certainly not joked about. While I feasted on the machines and technology (and still do to this day) it never ceased to amaze me what type of person would willingly strap themselves atop a glorified firecracker and wait for someone else to light it for the ride of their lives.
With this in mind it was extremely refreshing to hear (read actually) Elon Musk’s quip (tweet actually) that his recent attempt to safely land an expended first stage booster (something no one has ever done before) from his SpaceX Falcon 9 International Space Station re-supply rocket ran into difficulty just before touchdown on a drone barge out in the ocean and suffered a RUD, short for a ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’. In other words, it crashed and burned before sinking beneath the waves. Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark, though apparently not much of a mark on the barge itself.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Say or believe what you want about Elon Musk (and there seems to be a huge audience out there who hate Elon Musk for various reasons) but the man is a true innovator and pioneer, someone who radically changes everything about anything he puts his mind to. What he tried, and almost succeeded in doing for the first time the other day, was to launch a rocket and then bring back to Earth (safely and completely intact) the spent first stage.
This is no small task since we are talking about a fragile empty tube (the full fuel tanks add structural rigidity which is no longer there) essentially shaped like a cigarette over 160 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter, and land it intact on its business end on a ship the size of a football field out in the middle of the ocean. And he very nearly did it on his first try. If nothing else the man has balls.
There is a shared understanding in engineering that speaks to the relationship between potential disaster and the complexity of the engineering attempted to solve a complex problem. Essentially a low tech solution has a lower propensity for disaster than high tech when applied to the same problem. While this is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation, you get the idea. Keep it simple stupid (KISS) is a perfect example of this principal.
If you examine some of the methods Elon Musk uses to solve complex problems, clearly he and his engineers understand this principal and practice it in all their endeavors. Outside the box thinking, combined with the hiring of non mainstream consensus thinking indoctrinated talent, consistently puts Elon out in front of the pack. Plus an obvious willingness, and even an affinity, to laugh at his ‘self’ in public when most other professionals would be hiding under their desk or pointing fingers in order to shed any blame for failure. There is no doubt who is in charge here and where the buck stops.
Elon clearly recognizes he is in a high risk business. Rather than fear failure or avoid it like the plague, Musk embraces it for what it truly is, inevitable and survivable if approached in the proper manner and with the correct mindset. What makes a true and consistent winner is honesty first, beginning with the self and radiating outward from there to all s/he touches.
Staying with the space theme for now, let’s briefly look at three examples of RUD within the NASA space program and see if we can find a common theme other than it being serious business. In 1967 three Apollo 1 astronauts died in a fire inside the capsule they occupied during training. While you are welcome to read the entire ‘official’ investigation, which cited all kinds of contributory factors, bottom line the capsule was pumped full of pure oxygen which tends to make nearly everything extremely flammable. While technically not a RUD, that fire was not an accident but rather a certainty just waiting to happen.
The second example; on a cold Florida morning in late January of 1986 the shuttle Challenger suffered an extremely violent and very public RUD shortly after liftoff. While nearly 30 years have done wonders to sanitize the explanation for this disaster, when the decision was being made on whether to launch or not the next morning (there had already been several delays) it was understood it was going to be very cold and the people in that meeting who were responsible for the solid fuel booster rockets (Morton-Thiokol if memory serves correct) clearly stated in the presence of the NASA decision makers there might be problems with seals because of the cold and they urged extreme caution.
They, meaning those who worked for the booster company, were overruled via conference call by those higher up in the company. The pressure to keep the schedule (and the government contracts) was a higher priority than any ‘potential’ problem. The results of that decision, and more importantly everything leading up to that point, are now very well known. The interesting thing about collective decisions and group failure is no one wants to point incriminating fingers since everyone had their fingers in the pie. Such was the case here and the investigation exposed all this in glaring detail.
It was entirely avoidable....and yet it wasn't.
Finally, space shuttle Columbia suffered a RUD upon re-entry from Earth orbit in 2003. While this was a somewhat less public spectacle than Challenger, the root (human) cause was quite similar in nature. While the official explanation was a large chunk of foam insulation detached from the main external fuel tank during the early stage of the climb to Earth orbit, with the foam punching a hole through the thermal shielding on the leading edge of the shuttle wing thereby exposing it to devastating heat during re-entry, the fact is beginning with the very first test shuttle mission chunks large and small had been coming off the external fuel tank and smashing into the orbiter.
This was a very well known and obviously not well understood problem with the space shuttle system. While there were all kinds of issues with this problem, beginning with the original design of both the external fuel tank and the fragile ceramic thermal tiles on the shuttle itself, if you read the actual report (and I did shortly after it came out) in my opinion it all came down to a passage I remember reading. One engineer interviewed by the investigating committee basically said since there had not been significant damage from foam before (Columbia was the 113th flight of the shuttle system) no one considered the real possibility there would be one in the future. It was an ‘acceptable’ risk. Besides, we’re talking about foam insulation here. How bad could it be?
Obviously very bad.
While some might call this a failure of imagination, particularly by those who wish to sanitize their own involvement or that of the institution they are/were involved with, just as it is nearly impossible to get someone to do ‘A’ if they are paid to do ‘B’, so too is it nearly impossible to get someone to critically think about adverse consequences when they are conflicted, subverted or consumed by their own dependency or greed. Which brings us full circle to the coming national, and more likely global, RUD.
Plenty has already been written about the insanity of attempting to rectify a global debt problem with even more debt. Or the stranglehold the wolves have upon the construction of the dinner menu featuring sheep as appetizer, entrée and dessert. So there is no need to repeat it all here. The global economic system is in deep trouble and getting progressively worse.
Of course this doesn’t mean the global economy is doomed to suffer a RUD simply because it is in terrible shape. There is still time to avert complete and utter disaster, though there is no denying we are headed for significant pain and suffering even if ‘they’ somehow manage to avoid the iceberg dead ahead. But of course ‘they’ aren’t trying to avoid the iceberg, just delay the collision in order for the elite to prepare for, and prosper from, the consequences.
And here is where we recognize the true commonality in all the RUD’s described above. While the immediate cause of each disaster is unique in each situation, and the circumstances of each incident are also entirely different, the commonality lay within the organizational cause of each ‘accident’. And by organizational I do not ‘just’ mean the fact NASA was involved in all the above mentioned RUDs.
Step away from the NASA examples and look at any RUD, for instance the breeching of the dikes around New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, and you will find while the trigger for each is unique, the organizational cause for the incident all follow the same basic blueprint. Greed, self interest, broad assumptions, indifference, turf battles, CYA and so on all play a role in creating the organizational circumstances that enable, and even promote, disaster rather than prevent it.
In other words with regard to organizations, particularly public organizations, the cure becomes the disease.
So obviously transparent, and yet so hard to see if you ain't looking.
Wolves Hidden in Sheep’s Clothing
Our socioeconomic system, while purported to have been created in order to benefit all (though not necessarily equally) is in fact used to subvert, exploit and enslave the general population for the benefit of those few at the top of the heap. While the vast majority of us ‘know’ this statement to be true, our conditioning as a slave to the system informs us there is (or at least was) a real chance we can buck the system and ‘prosper’, even if never reaching the highest level of the elite.
The dream of potential ‘freedom’ (ultimately meaning financial freedom for the vast majority, not self rule and determination) motivates us slaves to endure our drudgery. We work and are paid ‘money’, thereby enabling us to eat, sleep and play with a reasonable degree of comfort. The puppet masters make sure just enough crumbs are left on the floor so full scale revolt doesn’t enter the equation. Can anyone say ‘social safety net’ or ‘minimum wage’, both of which support subsistence slave existence?
As I discussed in detail in my “Perception, Inception and the Trojan Horse Money Meme” four part series, the money meme distorts our reality and corrupts the mind and soul to such an extent that for all intents and purposes we become addicted to the pursuit, generation, accumulation, growth and consumption of ‘money’ in all its forms and functions. For those who wish to control the population, the lever effectively used is to control ‘money’ and let the pursuit of the addiction enslave the population. While certainly this is another broad statement which fails to accurately describe anyone in particular, thus enabling all of us to claim ‘I’ am not one of the addicted, the sad fact is much (I would say nearly all in one form or another) of our everyday lives revolve around ‘money’.
None of these concepts are new to those who are most likely reading this and really not the point of this article other than to reiterate the basis for my thinking. While an entirely competent, and most certainly compelling, argument can be made supporting the notion those who administer the socioeconomic system are promoting, or simply enabling, a future RUD as a means to the end of consolidating power and further enslaving those they no longer wish to bestow crumbs upon, a complimentary point of view might be organizational rot and degradation is simply an additional spark to propel the approaching RUD. Houston, we have a problem……and it might just be us.
Those in power set up and/or modify political, economic and social systems to enable the elite, and those who support them, to remain in power. While the narrative we are taught, thus the stories we tell each other, are about truth, justice and the American Way, the ‘truth’ is the American Way is just another experiment in plantation farming following a long line of experiments going back thousands of years. Only ‘ours’ was brilliantly designed to leverage, while simultaneously reinforcing, the master/slave relationship. But of course that doesn’t fit the conditioning, and comforting, narrative we tell ourselves now does it?
While there is no doubt present day living conditions, along with the accompanying bread and circuses, are significantly better than found on 1st Century Roman slave labor farming villas, the Feudal social order of the Medieval Manors or the 18th Century cotton plantations, our productivity, and thereby our profitability to the elite, are also orders of magnitude greater today than the old school plantation slave. A happy self deluded slave is a massively more productive slave. “Sign me up,” begs both master and slave.
The social order never changes, only the narrative and living conditions.
This glaringly obvious ‘fact’ doesn’t alter the reality today’s ‘free’ mind is just as constrained, if not more so, as the mind of the beaten, bloodied and broken plantation slave. Just because we do not acknowledge the binds that tie us to our servitude does not invalidate their existence, but rather significantly strengthens them.
The same can be said about Socialism, Communism, dictatorships, monarchies, the police state and every other modern day plantation hierarchy. The soothing labels we choose to appease our feigned ignorance, if not outright denial, do not shield us from the effects. Rather they wonderfully illustrate our thoroughly broken minds and spirit, with our rapidly decaying bodies the last roadside sign warning of the looming bridge abutment and total systemic collapse.
The present day belief held by many in the alternative community (and increasingly in the mainstream) is ‘Capitalism’, that bastion of free market economic growth and prosperity, has been distorted and hijacked over the last several dozen years or so. This belief implies there was a period of time when ‘Capitalism’ was pure, or at least more pure than it is today.
Believing this forces us to ignore our own history (altered and distorted as it is to help support the narrative we are taught) which shows us corruption, abuse of power, self dealing, manipulation and so on are as much a staple of the American Way as apple pie and Chevrolet……and always has been. While these abuses, along with their duration and intensity, rise and fall over the decades as social awareness and outrage ebbs and flows, the wheel eventually completes its turn and we find ourselves back where we started. While ‘history’ does not repeat it most certainly does rhyme. This is not by accident.
The dog eat dog, or more accurately slave eat slave, adversarial system we are indoctrinated into, and enslaved by, all but assures its eventual organizational RUD. While common sense appears to indicate this makes no sense from the Powers That Be (PTB) point of view, after all stability would seem to be their goal, ‘they’ more than anyone else understand the flaws, intended or otherwise, which are built into this type of socioeconomic system, including its eventual RUD, and assume they will be able to handle just about any eventuality. Besides, it is always better to keep the slave population on edge and fighting among themselves over crumbs and distractions then firmly focused on their true tormentors.
While this might appear to be a huge leap of faith by the elite 1%, a long history of minority rule by generation after generation of elites informs us otherwise. While there are dozens of contributing factors to the elite’s success, their primary strength is their willingness to do ANYTHING required to maintain control, including eating their own by offering up a few sacrificial elite lambs to be burned at the stake.
This effectively serves to sate, even if only on a temporary basis, the angry hoards’ blood lust for someone (else) to be held responsible for their own willing participation in economic and social slavery, thereby enabling the vast majority of the rebellious slaves to return to the more comfortable emotional state of conditioned slavery.
Stated simply we do not cast off our deeply embodied conditioning in a few short days, weeks or even months, thereby freeing our ‘self’ from ourselves. In the ultimate expression of psychological self destruction “We the People” will do whatever it takes to dispel any lingering cognitive dissonance. Above all else, we fear the pain of knowing ourselves. We are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets and those can only be found, and confronted, deep within.
Photo Credit - Inner Demons by Christian Hopkins
This is one of the primary reasons revolutions rarely succeed. Or if they initially do, the revolution itself quickly becomes worse than what it superseded under the guise of carrying out social and political ‘reforms’. If the elite have not already co-opted the leadership of the ‘revolution’ they will soon do so while the revolution struggles to convert to civilian rule. Those who are effective revolutionaries are not necessarily well suited to confront and reform social inequality and strife or create a functioning bureaucracy from scratch.
Knowing this, let me count the number of ways the elite can (re)establish control over the ideologically blind (the revolutionaries) and the emotionally stunted (the recently ‘freed’ slaves) who have now returned to their cages trailing a revised narrative to sooth them back to sleep. It’s like red meat to a starving hyena and the elite are always ready to pounce.
If anything the elite welcome the occasional revolution because it acts as a psychological re-boot for the affected slave nation, encouraging the conditioned to return to their slave quarters while the promised change is never delivered, all while enabling a frenzy of looting by the elite and the revolutionaries while the social and financial order is being restructured. Essentially the conditioned are encouraged to endure even more suffering in the name of change, and many will willingly do so in their desperate pursuit to dispel their recently enflamed cognitive dissonance. The con game changes, but the players remain essentially the same.
While we slaves are preoccupied with local, regional or ‘national’ concerns, the elite see no substantial borders and almost always think and act globally. This is how the 0.1% rules the 1% who rules the 20% who rules the remainder. I do not fear the King as much as I fear all the King’s men, ultimately the better kept and more powerful house slaves who dole out the actual punishment you and I receive.
I am not as concerned with the approaching RUD and the devastation it will bring, for this is inevitable and beyond my ability to control. What concerns me deeply is what will follow. The most powerful opiates and sedatives in human experience do not spring from the labs of Pfizer, Merck or Johnson & Johnson, but rather are produced within the deeply conditioned and pacified minds of the Slave Nation.
The controlling narrative, combined with the need for the conditioned mind to rid itself of all outstanding cognitive dissonance, virtually assures the elite the upper hand regardless of the appearance of revolution, mindless anarchy and mob rule. Rest assured there will be blood, and plenty of it, before the re-boot is complete and the new patsies storm the stage proclaiming ‘our’ victory.
A new set of political patsies, same as the old set of political patsies.
An animal caged all its life rarely ventures outside for long regardless of the ease of egress or the pleasures that beckon beyond. The emotional discord that erupts when the familiar confines are removed is simply too powerful for the vast majority of captive minds to push through, thus the urgent need for control to be reasserted, corralled if you will, if only by a new set of accommodating elites. Power, and a recently ‘freed’ mind, abhors a vacuum.
Therefore, for the elites at least, a RUD, inevitable as it may be, is entirely useful as a reset mechanism and herding mechanism. Put a can of familiar Spam in the back of the cage and the hungry and emotionally distraught will quickly return to the familiar confines of their mental and emotional cages.
This is why time after time I always return to the same beat of the drum. The only way real change will ever be effected is if “We the Slaves” first change our selves. And this can only be accomplished by way of a fearless and thorough examination of our inner fears, triggers and conditioning. To paraphrase Bill W., half measures avail us nothing. To scratch the surface of the ‘self’ and then pull back, either out of fear or shock, only sets us up for more of the same servitude. One must dive in and go deep, returning to the surface often for air and perspective before once again submerging for another scouring of the deepest darkest reaches of the mind and soul.
The next RUD, intentionally planned or organizationally birthed, is just around the corner. Of this I am quite certain if for no other reason than history shows us the well beaten path to the next bridge abutment. Rather than scream my loudest while beating my chest in frustration at my impotence and my fellow slaves’ willingly ignorant servile prostration, I must ready myself and those who wish to join me for the coming winter.
I cannot stress enough the fear and panic which will permeate the global community when the next RUD commences. The herd’s instinct to riot, run and then retreat will be incredibly powerful and will overwhelm all of us even from a distance if we enter the next disaster unprepared mentally, emotionally and physically. And by prepare I do not just mean stacking PM’s, stocking food and strengthening the fences.
The only way to weather the coming storm is to first look deeply within, clean house, become settled with the things we cannot change and busy ourselves with those we can. It all begins with the demons within.
Cognitive Dissonance
01-27-2015
Seconds before disaster.
- advertisements -
Cougar writes some very interesting short stories about.....well, you need to just read it. I have posted a few on my blog. Here is the link.
http://twoicefloes.com/your-turn/cougar_w-articles/
We're all passengers on the same space ship - just seems like a dumb idea to fight rather than cooperate.
I always love an ominous ending.
Trust, hope and an imagined predestiny are opiates of the 80%, the 19%, the 1.0% and the 0.1%. Each expects the appearance of an uebermensch to protect them and insure their predestiny. With hope and trust, unpleasant thoughts (dissonance) are avoided.
Philosopher kings were a delusion of Plato, Socrates' pupil. A king was the delusion of Israel as instructed by Samuel. Power corrupts. So, Sparta had two simultaneous kings, while Rome had two consuls elected yearly. The error of elitism is their imagined power of correctly choosing the controllers.
The reality is no uebermensch is omniscient of all that might occur. Perhaps, any uebermensch could care less about your desires. Perhaps, the uebermenschen exist ignoring your interests.
Perhaps, you should be your own uebermensch. Take what you can.
Great pictures.
Mrs Cog wouldn't let me post porn so I went with my second choices. :-)
I have a few of Ms Cog I could send you.... mind you its just girl on girl stuff.... ;)
Nah, I've got the real thing. I don't need no stinking pictures. :-)
I think that the root of the problem is as old as the history of man, and I'm not sure that what the author suggest is feasible, however noble his ideas are. I recall reading a conversation that God had with David (I believe this was in Judges or Kings) where he (God) expressed his disappointment in the Jewish people for wanting to have a King when they had a perfectly operating system of self rule with "elected" or 'dismissable" judges that worked as mediators. Seems like ever since man has always opted to have rulers instead of opting for a system of self-government that eliminates the niches held by "the elite". The only other men who have even touched upon these ideas are the likes of Von Mises and Herman Hans Hoppe. Man has become too gullible and feeble minded to ever look past rule by dictators, kings, and oligarchs.
The people are tired of the high priests' sons abuse of privilege, theft and raping of women in the temple environs. The last Judge, Samuel is forced by the people to find an alternative to Jehovah, who is their King according to the contract (Law of Moses). Samuel is upset that the people have rejected him but Jehovah tells him "no, but they have rejected me...so, go ahead and let them have their king, but warn them that Kings will steal everything they have - and when they beg me to fix it for them, I WILL NOT LISTEN". New boss, not same as old boss.
Political Parables about Wolves and Sheeple
...and we can now use this as a verb, yes? As in don't RUD me bro? or "We RUDded some folks"?
Oh hell yeah we can.
speaking of the Challenger disaster....its launch had been aborted several times due to the cold weather-anyone else remember that Reagan eventually wound up down there to give a speech, and he decided it would be simply splendid if the Challenger were launched that same day.....simply splendid!.....now whether a launch window was closing-or if Reagan wanted a nice photo op for that day, the rocket was finally launched come hell or high water.....thanks to Reagans request.
But that was pulled from the papers the very next day.....anyone? and yes it was Morton Thiakol engineers who i believe PLEADED with NASA not to launch that day...the "O" rings on the boosters had shrunk due to the extreme (for FL) cold, allowing cracks in the rings, and thus allowing fuel to leak out and burn before its schedueled time
INteresting points about Morton etc. and yet it took an outsider, egghead college professor, of the type despised on this blog, among most others, to point out what Morton and most applicable engineers must have known about a launch system bounded by temperature dependent "O" rings...
I do remember the launch being put off due to unseasonably cold weather, more than a few times. I worked in an FAA repair station at the time, and we were in consensus that it should be a no go.
Well, they went, and we watched, and we wailed and we cursed. Because even a bunch of dumb general avionics guys knew it should have NEVER gone up.
RUD-(rapid unscheduled disassembly)....my military mind is buzzing in a warm endorphin bath brought about by your deft use of our beautiful native language...American.......... verbose in shorthand.
Thx bro
Have you heard of Elon Musk..?
My understanding is RUD is not an original Elon Musk utterance. He is repeater of the phrase, as am I.
I saw the reference and have since forgotten exactly where it comes from. Something along the lines of a computer game forum devoted to a specific game where rockets are built and fired off....and blow up.
Part of the fun is coming up with unique ways of saying 'blown up'. RUD was one of those ways.
Actually, I was trying to highlight to bitterwolf that it was obvious he hadn't even read through to the sixth paragraph... but, meh.
I do wonder however, why you replied to me and not directly to bitterwolf? ...that 'warm endorphin' buzz is contagious I guess (know what I mean Cog?)
yes.... Roman money, I have only skimmed this article..... as I did not see anything that merited deeper view...lol.....but the title.... that was deserving of attention....Elon Musk is very meritorious, on the other hand....thanks...... i did not know his mouth was familiar with the phrase.....here's endorphins in your eye....lol
Roman money? heheh ...you really do just 'skim' the titles don't you bitterwolf :-)
It's the inscription found on Roman coins through the period of 300BC. It means a restoration of better times, or simply put, 'good times are here again'. I've got some single malt handy, so I'll raise my glass and say here's mud in yours, son ;-)
The fact that any "public" organisation, even NASA, could escape the eventuality of self perpetuation for its own purposes is sociology 101. Too bad more college folk aren't interested in the "soft sciences." Great article, as usual, Cog. If possible, live rural, pay off your mortgage - FOREVER - and with a few acres of arable land, you are set. Now I don't have fences on my property in rural North Carolina; would you recommend this, Cog?
I would opt for a solution that utilizes technology unless you are trying to protect livestock. Surveillance/detection system is the way to go and can be installed in a rather discreet manner.
fences will be obsolete--use hedgerows--rough oak,maple/gum and myrtle with a little crab apple and wild blackberry/grape mix is pretty tough to get a tank through --- almost impossible for anything else-and all you have to do is be lazy and let your fence line grow over--
my advice is stop trying so hard.
I really don't know the proper answer to your question. But here is my thought on the matter.
Any time I see a fence, other than a decorative one, I think "That person has something of value they are protecting." Of course I was a liar, a cheat and a thief when I was younger so that might be distorting my point of view. :-)
Blah blah blah...long winded, bloviated piece of text that the author begs us from THE VERY BEGINNING to "please" stick with!?!? wtf. How about you learn to write concisely and or precisely?? Get over yourself author.
This is almost as bad as Marc to market.
Don't let that door hit you, it'll be hard for the first few weeks but I'm sure we'll learn to cope without a presence as constructive and uplifting as yours.
LOL
Thank God you didn't stick around the read the entire piece. If you had, you might actually have been struck deaf, dumb and blind by now.
Oh wait...........
Touche Cogster, touche...
;-D
LOL
(shit, I woke somebody up)
Good article Cog, count me in. It's the eleventh hour and it's best not to face this alone. Better to be surrounded by people who are awake and fearless in the face of tyranny.
How do we find one another?
Start in your local community. Don't try to find those who share your exact thinking or view of the world because you rarely do. But that doesn't mean you can't make allies. Show others what you have of value to offer them. They will show themselves more quickly that way.
I am not suggesting you expose your stock of food and tools. I am talking about your ability to think, fix and create. Others who are worried about the state of affairs will quickly note who you are and what you can do.
Still, it is up to you to make first contact. Speak to anybody and everybody. Always be the first to start conversations and never be the one to end it. Be proactive. You'll be surprised how effective this technique is.
Excellent CD. Lately I've been feeling...exactly what this post has described on an emotional level. I'm beginning to accept it, and not be so..angry all the time. Imagine my surprise when my 20yo son says out-of-the-blue " have you been feeling like it's all gonna end soon?"
Please give my regards to Bill W
One of the best pieces I've come across in my 25 years on this planet.
In attempting to shed light on this topic with my father (wealth advisor) has pushed us apart. Unfortunately his success is dependant on the markets, and will no longer entertain any out of the box thinking that I bring forth. He has repeatedly told me to see a shrink because of my "outlandish" thinking.
Hopefully something will go off in his head before it's too late... It may already be too late.
Anyone else come across this In some way shape or form?
There's a saying that (paraphrasing) that its hard to tell anyone anyting whose consequences adversely affect their paycheck. Just do the best you can and don't ruin the relationship over it. Financial planners/WealthManagers have to put funds 'somewhere' and the good ones do the best they can, but its amazing the number of regs they have to adhere to whether they make sense from an investment standpoint or not...... so viewpoints that don't take that into account are just a cause of frustration.
Case in point, I have my 83 year old Mother's assest largely in cash, with the balance things that throw off dividends like MO. Logic: at her age, we can't 'make it back' after a big downturn and I'd rather knowingly go backwards X% a year with inflaction than wake up one day down 30%. Her adviser is a good guy, but has been chiding me to 'put the rest to work'. I know, and you know the fed is out of bullets and the great 'reset' that should have happened in 2008 will finally occur. But in the meantime, he's getting regulator notices that my mom's account is too far 'over-weight in one asset class - that 'asset class' would be 'cash'. So I'm doing something very conservative for her and he's getting pressure to put it to work (FINRA).
So there you have it.
Good Luck.
Reasonable and prudent is almost always defined as what the herd you roam with is presently doing.
"Anyone else come across this In some way shape or form?"
Oh yes.
Most of them just want to make it to retirement and hope its all still there, you can't talk to them, you can't reason with them, its useless.
Its like an old black & white movie I saw as a kid, the ship sinks and everyone is in and around this overloaded lifeboat. The unthinkable has happened, adrift. Some slip off on their own out of nobility, others slip off from going mad, later, choices have to be made, first by voting (lol)...then finally force. And ALL the survivors have to live with what they have done in the end for their own survival, life is not without consequence, good or bad. They don't speak much to each other, they just hope no one ever asks from outside their group and look at each other as if, "Would you have done that to me?"
You probably already know deep down who is worth saving (if you can) among those around you everyday...a dark subject matter, no doubt about it.
Maybe something for Cog to touch on in a later piece ;-)
That was a dark movie. I think you mean Lifeboat - written by John Steinbeck and directed by Hitchcock.
I'm sure many others are like me and would hope they would do the "rght" thing in a seemingly impossible situation where it appears someone must choose who lives and who dies. How far have we sunk as a society if we actually find ourselves thinking about this as a possibility in our foreseeable future?
Yes it was Lifeboat.
But many advocate things now (and contemplate others) that were inexcusable & horrendous when that movie came out, things that are now viewed as somewhat "normal".
I'm told normal is a relative thing ;-)
'Normal' is a setting on a washing machine! :)
Yes. I've pretty much decided it's right up there with religion and politics.
Ideology is a powerful sedative. And the best part is it comes in various sizes, flavors and colors.
" Our socioeconomic system, while purported to have been created in order to benefit all (though not necessarily equally) is in fact used to subvert, exploit and enslave the general population for the benefit of those few at the top of the heap. "
Most humans alway want something for nothing; astute politicians and the oligarchs who own and operate them know this. The simple axiom that if you ask government for something then you will get less of it than you hoped at the price of sacrificing more of your independence than you thought, will probably forever be lost on the sheeple. When you ask government for something you pay more for less of it with your own money anyway, or at least in lost opportunity to make money and get it. And for all your trouble you get to transfer power to a small sector who gets owned and operated by men behind the veil who are most cunning and multitalented. In Jamaica we are a special kind of socialist, the what's mine is mine and what's yours is ours kind. A people who are naturally enterprising shoot themselves in the head over and over again because of this kind of thinking, so does the rest of humanity. Good luck with waking the manna from heaven sheeple up. Can your really blame a predator wolf for donning the sheepskin and dining on a little easy pickings sheeple?
"Can your really blame a predator wolf for donning the sheepskin and dining on a little easy pickings sheeple?"
To be perfectly frank, if I were a predator wolf I would consider "We the People" to be finger lickin good. :-)
After reading that i'm about ready to hit the liqour cabinet and have my own personal RUD.
I've been thinking about depression and hopelessness the last few days. My conclusion?
I chose not to be afflicted by a victim mentality, an offshoot of the slave mentality. A victim sees no hope, a victor sees no reason for 'hope'.
Understanding the nature of hope, despair, worry, guilt, anticipation, et al in the context of time is a huge part of inner discovery. It begs to the question "what is" as opposed to "what isn't". This aspect of the creativity of the human mind is what is out of control. These delusions are the strongest distractions/opiates.
RUD awakening
LOL
"Entendre in this one runs deep." - Yoda