Month: March 2016

So is the Dharma.

These are both logically necessary conclusions, and to my eye empirically obvious ones.

I am not going to explain further.  I am trying to abstain from this particular affective leak.

Reaching out to someone who is hurting in openness is hard, particularly if the pain is deep and intractable.

It is far easier to feel anger at those you want to blame for hurting that person.

But the only person this helps is you.

I was watching a middle aged black woman downtown today scream her anger at the world.  And I thought how hard it would be to meet her where she is at.  Whatever happened to her, I can’t imagine it.  Some things, you can’t process.  She was pushed out of her self, out of her body, into some other place where the pain was less.

And I was thinking: how hard it would be to ponder that black culture has been declining for 40 or more years, to where the sheer volume of pain and suffering is beyond comprehension.  Who wants to feel that?  Who wants to see that?

Far easier to find scapegoats, and feel rage.  Rage feels much better than sorrow, even if it is to perception what a forest fire is to a lighter.  You cannot tell it where to go, and it does not stop where it was supposed to, or should have.

100 or more young black men are killed by other young black men for every one killed by a cop, and the number is probably a thousand for every one truly unjustly killed.

But this number is a source of sorrow.  Who wants to live there?  Only decent, well meaning people would want to live there.

Where are they? 

Our worst critics choose to stay here.

Corollary: we can only be criticized using our own principles.

I woke up this morning with an idea I thought I would share, that has little to do directly with me: what is the relationship between monetary inflation–which is to say, making of savings and financial prudence fiscal sins which are punished–and sense of self?

Clearly, we have a massive problem with people knowing who they are.  This is the root cause of people so desperately using sexual selves, or ethnic selves, or class selves, to define themselves.  What is the inherent benefit of defining oneself as homosexual?  Or black?  Or “disadvantaged”?  We are all unique, mutable, hopefully growing people, who may well be someone else entirely a year from now.  This is the healthy approach.

But if you are drowning, you grasp at straws, and clearly many people benefit politically–benefit in their own moral decay, hopelessness, and helplessness, as they seek power to counter-balance these unwanted emotions–from throwing straws.

Many, many things contribute to atomize people and deliver their daily quotient of anomie, but here is an idea which is new to me: what if the instability of money contributes to unstable senses of self?  There is something satisfying in controlling your own destiny by paying cash for everything, and owning what you own.  Most Americans, even though they had far less, were actually wealthier a generation or two ago, because their objects were not purchased on credit.  Those cars you see on the road: credit.  The houses you see: credit.  Most businesses depend on a line of credit.  Most Christmas shopping has considerable help from credit cards.  Whenever I go to Target it asks me if I want the whole purchase on one credit card.  It is apparently so common to use two, that every transaction offers it as an option.

Is there not a fundamental sense of who you are in the world when you own your house and car outright, and have cash in a coffee can to meet unexpected expenses, and enough money in the bank so that you don’t worry?  Is there not a different sense when you are a debtor, and exist in a web of people to whom you owe money, and likely will all or almost all of your life?

Here is an interesting article which argues that Gaddafi’s plan to reintroduce the idea of sound currency into the global marketplace was the real reason he was overthrown and killed (which made Hillary so unpleasantly and inappropriately happy): http://www.hangthebankers.com/hillary-emails-us-nato-libya-gold-backed-currency/

the great fear reported is that Libya might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with a new pan-African currency. 

French intelligence “discovered” a Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military aggression.

I have been a voice in the wilderness with my ideas on monetary policy, and its quiet subversion of and destruction of private wealth in the United States and elsewhere.  I will post my piece again.  It is imperfect.  It has manifest flaws, and I need to change some ideas, but since few read it anyway, it is difficult to justify allocating that time.  Still, today is another try: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page23.html

Simply existing in the modern world means everything you have and worked for will decline steadily in value, very, very quickly, relative to historical standards.  All this money goes to banks, governments, and elites.

I continue to wonder why the Left is so fucking stupid that they can’t grasp this, since this is the sort of thing their anger is well suited for.  I wonder less about the Right, because they have their hands full simply protecting the free markets which allow the creation of wealth in the first place.  If we lose both sound currency AND free markets, we go the route of Zimbabwe and Venezuela.