The desire for simplicity in humans is a recurring dream, like equality and fraternity and such. It is also always bad news when it’s applied outside the individual.

“I want to simplify my life” is okay, if often misguided if not thoroughly thought through and negotiated, because “simplicity” has trade offs and most of what you’ll think will make your life very simple will actually make it massively more complicated in the details or in ways you didn’t think of.

There are two ways I can think of to truly simplify one’s life, and the results of it are not as straightforward as it might seem. And the tradeoffs, ooh, boy, the tradeoffs:

One is to become addicted to a drug, such that it’s all you think about every moment you’re awake. I have read enough biographies of former addicts to know that what they were looking for, in some ways was simplicity. They might express it as “to stop hurting” or “to escape” but the truth is that what happens is their life is massively simplified because ONLY THE DRUG matters. Acquiring it, using it, rinse, repeat.

Of course the problem with that is that drug use itself brings massive complications, from the decay of your own internal “thinker” and “feeler” to well… what you do to acquire drugs which often even in places it’s legal, as your need grows and your ability to work for it decreases, often involves very complicated and dangerous relationships to other human beings.

The other way is religious conversion, particularly if you join a monastery or convent, where life is by design simple and ordered, in the sense you don’t have to think about anything or what you’ll do next (if you pick the right order.) All those decisions are made for you.

Of course, in many ways, the convent or monastery has its own issues. Read any life of a saint whose superior hated him or her, and how difficult it was to navigate the personal relationships.

The way out of it of course is to become a saint, which makes things very, very simple. I think. Or very complicated. I wouldn’t know. I’m as far from sainthood as an earthworm is from a star.

But when the “We need to return to simple ways” is applied in the collective it’s always a danger sign, and the result is always hell on Earth. It also always ends up in tyranny.

A lot of the “communes” of the sixties and seventies were a desire for that simplicity without the spartan religious faith of religious orders. We know how many of them slid into cult of personality, madness and even complex murder plots. (Beyond Jim Jones.) Well, I know it, because I read a lot of true crime, now and then. (Usually when profoundly depressed.)

And the current simplification movement seems to consist of a lot of posturing and posing by people who grew up very wealthy indeed. So, you’ll have people who were given expensive cars for their 16th birthday talking about how you should never have more than you can take with you in a small pull-behind trailer. Or people who can actually afford mansions at 20 talking about the joy of tiny houses. (BTW tiny houses are insane. there is nothing in them you can’t get in a very basic, used RV. And when their prices start being the same as of a small NEW RV, what’s the point? Other than of course classism. Makes you think.)

The most ridiculous one is “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

There is no such thing as owning nothing and being happy, and it has absolutely nothing to do with greed. It has to do with self ownership.

If you can’t own the basics of what keeps you alive — clothes, a shelter, food — you don’t own your own life. It’s sort of like joining a monastery, of course, but one without religious faith, and run by large, foreign entities of dubious morality. They will abuse you, use you as an object, and you really won’t like what they demand of you for your daily rice-bowl.

Your ancestors knew, when they fought against tyrannical band-leaders, and often struck out with their favorite spear and the skin of the animals they, themselves had hunted and cured.

Note I’m not the person standing here saying you need to be as rich as possible, and live a massively complicated life to be happy.

I’m one of the very lucky people who had to face that and make that decision. Oh, not in a big way. I was never offered a million dollars — any of the people reading this for whom that’s pocket change who has a million dollars, I’m willing to test this in those circumstances. Come on! — or any such great amount. It’s just for about a year and a half Dan made about double what he’d made up to that point. What it required… Was a traveling job, which meant we spent a lot of that on stuff like going out to eat when he was home, so that I didn’t have to spend time away from him. Taxes were also next level. But more importantly we realized we simply weren’t willing to pay the price for increased income. (Which boiled down to about an extra 10k a year, after all the extra expenses/taxes. Nothing to sneeze at but–)

This forced us to think of exactly what price we were willing to pay, and what we could live on. So, I realized I didn’t actually want to have the sort of extreme money where all our work, all the time, would be for us to administer our wealth.

As an example, I gave up on the idea of becoming so massively successful that I could have several houses. It sounds great. Like Agatha Christie, I love the idea of houses and decorating houses, and not having to worry about selling them. … but I can think through it, as well. Agatha Christie came from a culture where you — of course — also got at least a general servant and housekeeper per house. If you have to pic administration companies for each house, keep an eye on everything, etc… You know what? I’d rather rent a hotel room when I go somewhere, even if I do it repeatedly. Not as much fun, granted, but much simpler.

Basically, my goal for simplification and a simple life is to have enough money to live on, so I don’t have to think of if I can afford this little thing I’d like, and I don’t have to think about how much I spend at the grocery store, or how much the car is going to cost to fix, etc. And to have enough time to write and pay someone to do the other tasks. (In this perfect world, it’s easy to find handymen and craftsmen to do stuff.)

There are auxiliary bits to this, of course. For a truly simple life, you should be as healthy as possible, which imposes a discipline of its own, I guess. (I’m so falling down on this.)

After that it gets murky. People try to be “simple” by giving up all attachments and worldly relationships and connections, but for a certain type of mind — mine — I’d go completely insane and massively complicate my life by going inside and analyzing everything to bits.

I’ve found that one way for me to simplify, or at least calm my emotions, is to surround myself with people and pets I love. That way I can concern myself with them, and ignore the complicated and confused crosswaves of thought and feel. (Also, it makes me happy to have people and pets I love. And yes, the kittens are coming along fine. They’ve almost completely given up on waking me up by chewing my toes, and are now learning to wake me up by lying down on my chest and purring till they’re petted.)

One final caution on simplicity, which our side of the political isle is particularly prone to: “In simpler times.”

Someone on Twitter was referring to one of the founders as a “simple” man. It made me giggle considering how complicated and well read, and well thought they were.

Past times might seem simple to you, because you know how it ended.

It is true that people, in general, had less options and fewer things, but trust me, this doesn’t make anyone’s life simpler. Because it makes you think about you know, where the next meal comes from, or it leaves you alone with your thoughts more, and those can get verah complicated indeed.

In fact, most cries for simplification in the personal — whether the example used is a future utopia “you’ll own nothing and be happy; or the simple, good old days, which weren’t — and a desire to regress to childhood, when the world seemed simple because we were taken care and failed to see the complex choices and trade offs.

And in the plural the desire to simplify “society” or “the way people live” it boils down to: “All those people doing things I disapprove of should stop it already.”

That way lies enormous complication, death, famine, and hell comes on its heels.

Choose your own level of complexity and live with it, and stop concerning yourself with how simple or complicated the life of others is.

Yesterday, by accident, at night, I read about the barbaric things done to women in Israel by the Hamass terrorist attack on 10/7. I enjoin you not to follow that link, if you don’t want my nightmares last night.

And I woke up and was thinking… well, about a lot of things.

The only thing unusual about the way Hamass treated those women (and children) is that they killed most of them. Unusual, I mean from an historical perspective.

I was thinking of the rape of the Sabines, upon which the founding of Rome rested. Bunch of young braves, (given Romulus and Remus’s origin probably expelled from some community for being outlaws) claims land, then kills all men in a neighboring tribe and kidnaps every woman: crone, pregnant mother, young woman, barely pubescent child, rapes them and sometimes — sometimes — marries them. “Marries” them.

There are certain beats to this horror throughout history. And variables. Whether old women are killed is a variable. How young the age of “women” kidnapped is another. We know for a fact Plains Indians kidnapped girls as young as 6 and subjected them to the same treatment as all women. The horrific beats of this treatment included beatings, starving and serial rapes. It might or might not include the killing of the first child born. (Why? well, because it could be the woman’s murdered husband’s.) And everyone was subjected to this, from very young to very old.

The purpose, evolutionary was to break these women, to give them what was later described as Stockholm syndrome, so that they would, by the time they were given to a single man, cling to him as a protector and give him all their loyalty. So that they became willing broodmares for those who had killed their own families in front of them.

These stories are no longer told. Not the deep past ones because women have been lied to and told of some mythical past of powerful women who could have whatever men they wanted and no one was “judged.” (Oh, and there was no property, etc.) Marina Gimbutas should take a bow for her fraudulent insane theory of pre-history here. You know, the one where all the bulls heads were interpreted as uteri and she sold the story of a great, pacifist feminist religion, which somehow — inexplicably — was destroyed by the evil patriarchy, even though every one, men and women were much happier under matriarchy. (Everyone who really, really, really wants the crazy people to stop rewriting Eden and calling it science join me. We’re going to throw plastic ducks at them till they stop. This might stop us having to buy a fleet of helicopters. In minecraft.)

And even the relatively recent incidents in American history are never mentioned, because that would be raccciiiiiis. They were neither rare nor did they use to be hidden. If you check your local library you’ll probably find some in the older local history books. But they are so taboo to even be mentioned that some young twit on twittex was talking about how there was no rape in the Americas before the white men came. White men invented rape.

In a way she’s correct, but only so far as the concept of rape demands the acceptance of women as beings who can say no and have personal agency. This was utterly unknown for most people’s throughout history until the advent of Judaic-Christian morality and it was surpassingly rare until Western Civilization became a thing. And therefore there was no “rape” because you can’t rape a table or a chair, and women were perceived as things, just as those objects are things.

I’m fairly sure this is still going on in most of the world, where tribal culture prevails, but again, it would never be mentioned, because “racism.”

(And yes, as the dog returns to his vomit and the sow to her mire, someone will come to explain to me that the poorly understood and less well known culture xyz of the deepest Amazon had in fact the deepest respect for women and– Maybe. But that’s not the way to bet. In the immense variety of the human race, it’s bound to have emerged and disappeared a few times. But for any given culture until western Civ, that’s not the way to bet.)

But it actually has zero to do with race. It’s all culture. ALL culture. And it’s baseline human, before Western civilization.

Because that’s fairly recent, insofar as the history of the world goes, you probably are descended from at least 25% of such couplings, regardless of where you’re from. Given my ancestry and the wars involved, probably more.

The fact that women are weaker, men are stronger and that women are the only ones who can bear that precious commodity: the next generation, sets us up for this dynamic. To be fair to most human cultures throughout history, aka tribal cultures, men weren’t exactly non-objects either. A few of the men, the ones who managed to rise above the others might have agency and be considered human beings, but anyone who was poor, vulnerable, or just not part of the tribe, was a thing, to be disposed of or pushed around as it suited his “betters.” (Our “betters” still think this way.) And it had nothing to do with patriarchy that women rarely (though sometimes, but very rarely) made the class of deciders and pushers-around. It had to do with physical strength, in a day and age where everything from producing food to defending yourself depended on that.)

That is the state of nature — human nature — red in tooth and claw. If you were a woman you were always, your whole life, at risk of a raid, and having your entire family and community destroyed, and being subjected to a fate literally worse than death.

We’ve risen above it in pockets of time and places here and there, by effort and civilization. Western civilization.

But we’re teaching innocent children — particularly females — the opposite of that. We’re teaching them that if they help destroy the civilization that protects them and makes their lives peaceful, and allows them the dignity and choice that humans should have is the oppressor. We’re teaching them that if they destroy it, they will revert to Eden, where everyone was free, didn’t have to work and there was no sin.

And with what glee these pampered daughters of good and plenty have set to work.

Teach the children well. Not tenderly, but well. Which includes making them aware of the horrors of the past.

Lest they come again.

Some of you seemed to think my post yesterday referred to a sort of apocalypse or disaster. That’s not what I meant. The only ominous part about it is that things we’ve learned to take for granted, like, oh, long distance travel and money enough to do it might not be for some for a while.

For the record, they weren’t when I was young. People are always puzzled that growing up in Europe, I never went to the major touristic points. Well, you know, I flew for the first time at 18 when I came to the US. And while I once had a Euro rail pass, I used it to get a summer job and travel to and from. And we were not poor, not by the time I was a teen. Oh, not rich, either, unless you were looking from very far down (say where mom started.) I once asked grandma what our “class” was because we were learning Marx, you know, and I’d had an argument with a friend whose father made about double what dad did, but spent it differently, and she said we were upper class because we had books, and we decorated our house better. So I asked. Grandma sat there for a while thinking, and then said “We’re the class that makes do.” Since then I’ve taken great pride in this. I was born the class that makes do. And we still are. (In fact, in my case, the great problem is whether I allow myself to not “make do.” Right now I’m debating whether to buy a tripod ladder to paint the front of the house. Look, I don’t want to fall. OTOH it’s expensive, and I have a ladder, and I can make do. Yeah. I know. I probably should buy it. Still cheaper than paying someone to do it. But argh. Either I’m old, or everything has gotten crazy expensive.) Anyway, that nice excursion on why class is insane aside, the truth is that we couldn’t afford to travel far or on a whim. Our big trips were train or bus, and usually for dire necessity. So, we might fall into that for a while. Which would be okay, if the country weren’t so large and my family here dispersed (let alone the ones overseas. I have not yet met great-nephews.)

The thing I’m warning about is not apocalypse, but major disruption. And a disruption neither I nor anyone can predict. In fact, the nature and size of this disruption should put paid to the notion of “rule by experts” to the extent the last three years haven’t yet.

Now will it disrupt travel? Or merely remove burdensome restrictions, so travel actually flourishes? I don’t know. Will food be scarce? Arguably, some places. If you haven’t yet and can, grow some. Or, you know, acquire some next Spring, if we get there intact, and dehydrate and store. Will electricity go away? For some time some places, probably. I mean, blackouts are always possible, and when the economy is in turmoil they’re even more possible. Will they lock us down again? Well, it depends. I think they’re going to try. If the try gets past what we had since we stopped being locked down, (Them:”There’s terrible disease X somewhere, be TERRRIFIED” Us: “Nah bra.” Them, run around in circles for a while, then “There’s terrible disease X somewhere, be TERRIFIED.”) is anyone’s guess. Some places, maybe. Will they try to inflict famine on the people? They’ve been trying, and failing that, they just keep publishing articles saying people are starving. Look, some people are very tight indeed and the rest of us are feeling a pinch. And I’ll fully believe more people are hitting the food banks. Particularly around this time, because I doubt the money for presents is high, and people will want to give the kids at least SOMETHING, so if they can get groceries for free. But we’re not Venezuela, let alone Ukraine during Holodomor. For one, if there were real hunger, not manufacture via survey hunger, the ubiquitous urban geese would be gone. And that deer who keeps nibbling your tomato plants would be in someone’s freezer.

We have a deep fund of wealth in real terms: much more clothing than we need, much more food than we need, houses that are weather-worthy (for the most part) and health better than our ancestors at the same age. We won’t be easy to topple.

Even in Ukraine, Holodomor was only possible because the army confiscated ever handful of grain people had stored. But you see…. we’re armed, and right now they’re not sure of the army. (Their attempts to enlist a foreign army is something else. Kind of like what Rome did, I guess. But even then, I betcha our veterans will eat their non-cohesive army of many pieces and indifferent literacy for breakfast and not notice.)

We really are a unique place in composition and living in a unique time. So their attempts to reduce us using historical techniques (they really only have one script) hasn’t worked and is as likely to work as their screams of “hand us all your guns now, this time we mean it.” And they don’t fully understand it. For which I shouldn’t sneer at them (oh, but I will. If nothing else, because they call themselves smart) because half on our side don’t understand it either.

Yes, history repeats, but not exactly the same, because factors are different. And the problem in accounting for every factor, and not just half a dozen cherry picked ones to support the speaker is why history is not scientific and ruled by formulas. For one, the individual human factor is, by itself, unaccountable. How many times do you think you know how someone will react — someone you know and have close association with — and they surprise you with something completely wonderful or horrible that you never even considered? Now multiply that by 300 million or so (Heaven only knows how many of us truly are.)

Look, the left is relatively easy to predict, because they have one guide book, and they adhere to it. And when not following it line by line, they follow the spirit of it and the bizarre idea that humanity are widgets, easily divided into groups, where everyone acts like everyone else in that group. So their errors of judgement and logic are easy to predict.

But reality is not leftist. In fact, since the nineties, it’s become increasingly obvious there’s a yawning chasm between what the left thinks they’re doing and what they are actually doing.

There are several bits of psy-ops floating around that amount to “Everything is proceeding the way the left wants it.”

That’s kind of easy to say, because we know — and have caught them at it — the left ultimately hates civilization, humanity, and life itself. (They’re sort of like the auditors in Terry Pratchett. Only immobile rocks would satisfy them.)

But the thing is that’s not their normal mode, or what they act from, or what they think they act from. They think they’re acting from good. They hate civilization, because the noble savage would flourish in concert with nature, and then everyone would be happy. They hate humanity because why do we refuse to be the noble savages of their dreams? They hate life itself, because why is nature red in tooth and claw? Can’t the lions be vegetarians already? And so on. Their “Hatred” is from a place of frustration because reality refuses to conform to their dreams. The problem is they really think that their crazy ideas, which they have been taught in schools since they were 3 or so will work and make everyone happy and contented in Marxist paradise.

When they say “you’ll own nothing and be happy” they really mean it, because they’ve been fed a lot of nonsense about a pre-history when there was no property and no war. (This has no relationship with real history or humans of any sort, but it is taught in schools, nonetheless. It is just really an heretical version of the Garden of Eden.) When they tell us to eat the bugs, they really really think that would work (look what they don’t know about animal husbandry, farming or nutrition could fill several blogs bigger than this one.) When they say they want to eliminate fossil fuels, it’s because they believe that there are solutions which the evil oil industry has been evilly suppressing to make money (for mustache wax, so they can twirl their mustaches, of course.)

My window into this was Occasional Cortex. And yes, I know we love to make fun of her as being very, very stupid. But I don’t think she is, in reality. I think she’s a midwit, maybe a little higher IQ than her cohort, and what most schools would call “gifted” (which means an ability to behave and kiss up to teacher, but that’s something else.) However, even if she were as dumb as we all think, her admission, buried in Green New Deal was a shock to me. What admission? She said we should maybe ask “Native Americans” how to live in harmony with and restore the environment.

This made my jaw drop. Even if you buy the whole noble savage in perfect harmony with the Earth thing — and you might, if you are completely lacking in historical knowledge at all — how on Earth did she miss that most “Native Americans” these days are mostly people living in reservations on the government dole, (not of their choice in the beginning, yeah, but inescapable now) or maybe successfully running casinos? Or you know, normal people who have some percentage of Amerindian? I mean, my husband has some (from certain issues in one of the sons), my DIL almost for sure, my prospective DIL almost for sure (they haven’t tested.) According to 23 and me I have more than Elizabeth Warren (not much, no. And probably from Brazil, since US tribes refuse to be tested, by and large. And no, no idea how or where, except my guess would be some ancestor brought a souvenir home.)

I don’t know guys, but I think the chances of “Native Americans” such as they exist in current days magically having some kind of magical ecological knowledge is fairly slim. Even if they’d ever had it.

But remember the left thinks of people as groups, and groups controlled by one characteristic, usually genetic (Lord love a duck, Hitler would adore them.) Therefore if you have Amerindian blood, you magically know how to “heal the environment.” You are in fact a Disney “Native American” singing while forests grow around you, and deer gambol with bears.

If you realize this crazy not only came from the pen of someone who is university educated, but was undoubtedly vetted by her staffers, and then embraced by her side of the isle, you realize what we’re up against.

It’s not so much that they’re at war with reality. It’s that they don’t realize what they were taught since they learned to toddle — in school, entertainment and “news” — isn’t really reality.

In other words, they know a lot of things that just ain’t so.

And that’s what’s brought us here. Because when they decided to perform a color revolution in 20, they really thought once they took over and instituted their great plans over the heads of the “idiot” populace utopia would come about, and we’d all love them and praise them.

There is a desperation in the way they keep insisting the economy is fine, or stomping their little hooves and trying to stamp out “disinformation.” It’s because they don’t understand why open borders, printing tons of money, insisting on DEI and a lot of other crazy hasn’t already ushered in extreme prosperity and improvement.

No, I’m serious. Remember for years I moved in the Science Fiction community, amid people of arguably much higher IQ than the general population and better “informed” and “read” than 98% of people.

If I had a dime for every time I heard them go on about how if only Carter had been elected and carried on with his “reforms” we’d now (circa early 2k) would be so wealthy, and the environment would be healed, and we’d already have colonies in space, I wouldn’t be at risk from even hyper inflation. I’d also have all the hair I pulled out in my hotel room while screaming in frustration at the total crazy. And yes, these were almost always people who’d lived under Carter.

… but that’s the problem.

Nothing has turned out as they expected. And things are coming apart in weird and scary ways they can’t comprehend. And their screaming and pointing at a scape goat (which in their minds is the real culprit, having hypnotized us all into not believing the wonderfulness of the economy and their rule.) isn’t working. Their importing vast numbers of people who can tan and are therefore enlightened and perfect Marxists also isn’t working. So all they can do is double down and believe twice as hard. (We haven’t reached the “offer sacrifices to the cargo cult yet.” or not widespread, yet.)

The problem is that the idiot children have hit so many things with hammers, and keep doing it as they double down, that we can’t predict it either.

I don’t pay any attention to their news and economics analysis, other than to point and laugh. Any coincidence with reality is mere … coincidence.

On the other hand, because of where and when I grew up, I speak fluent “other signs.” And because you are all spread all over the country and have more and diverse occupations than I could dream up if I tried, I get reports. And the reports are scaring me.

Now you could say — and would be right — that most of the Odds are in Odd occupations, even when they’re traditional. I think a lot of you work for yourselves, but there are also those who work for others, usually in strange, off-beat side occupations. You’d be right. And maybe we’re hit before the rest of the people, but I don’t think so. I think we just think about it.

You don’t hear of how much trouble people in tech are having finding jobs, because complaining is less likely to allow you to find a job, but I see it in my inbox, and it’s gone way beyond a blip. You don’t hear about how strained various social nets are with the influx of illegals, but I get pms and emails.

Now do I have a good picture? Oh, h*ll no. I have a lot of pieces of a vast jigsaw. But I can’t tell for sure where the pieces go. And the tail of the cat looks just like the rug. But I can still guess what’s assembling is not a beautiful, serene, fireside scene.

However, add to this that we were already headed for turmoil. Even if we had an ideal government, that left things mostly alone, we were headed for turmoil and upside down-ness.

As a lot of you pointed out in the comments, computers and the internet is a major disruption factor. One they (the broad left) didn’t see coming. (They ain’t very good at predicting.) They could tell space travel would be a majorly disruptive factor, because they have read the history of discoveries. So they’ve squatted on space travel and done everything possible to prevent it, including the ridiculous cry of “We should not go to space till we learn to take care of this planet.” BUT computers? They thought it was just something that would speed up calculations, and hey, it might help them control the people.

But it doesn’t work that way. Even with their attempts at censorship more information and reality escapes than it did when they just had to control newspapers. (Obama isn’t revered as FDR. The effort they made was arguably larger for Obama.) And much as they control the schools, kids keep escaping.

I don’t know what they thought they were going to achieve with lockdown. I have reason to believe, from their own bleatings (“the new normal”) that they thought they could keep us locked up for that, while they did as they pleased. However, I predicted then, and still am, what it actually did is bring “Telecommuting” from a wild and woolly strange way of living to “What most people who work via a computer” do. And they can scream and cry that’s only 20% of people. I’d bet these days it’s closer to 40%. But that’s not the point. it’s the knock on effects. Those people lived in cities, mostly, of necessity, and the countryside was dying. And the cities flourished with support professions: shop keepers, and restaurateurs, and various support people.

For twenty years, it’s been possible for some largish percentage of people to work from home. How many? I don’t know. Again, I suspect more than the talking heads think, but all the numbers are corrupt.

So, why weren’t we? The “normalcy” of what’s been for a long time holds sway over “what could be”. It always does. Innovation has to come as something small that slips in. Also, companies were invested in commercial real estate, and they didn’t want their offices to devalue. Also, people were used to going to work every day. I mean, it’s just the way it was.

Dan and I are weird in that, since our twenties, our ideal situation would have been to work from home. I did. He couldn’t though by 2018 he was, at least some days a week.

And then 2020.

And now most people simply don’t want to go back. This was never anticipated. The number of people that moved away from blue states, and away from large cities shocked the left.

What shocked them even more, and another number we can’t get, is how many people took kids out of the school system to homeschool. (And they should be terrified. Even people who, just before, told me they simply couldn’t, are somehow managing now. And any young couple you speak to, who is having kids, is already studying how to homeschool.) Speaking of and as a tangent, as it happens one of the things I have no visibility into is daycare. I wonder how those are doing. I realized recently, when I drove past one, that they’re far less visible than they were in the eighties, when I swear there was one in every block. Is this because we have fewer kids, or because fewer women are dropping their kids off at daycare at months old, in order to chase a great “career”? I don’t know.)

In fact, what 2020 and the crazy lockdowns did was let the potentiality for disruption of the computer revolution become fact. And now everything they try to do to recover pushes things in the other direction.

Look, most things that come out of the computer disruption will be good, I think. It’s much harder to tamp down a million voices than to simply purchase newspapers and infiltrate book publishers. And it’s harder to control — physically — a distributed country of small towns. And it’s healthier for kids to grow up with their parents than strangers.

But the way to the “eventually better” is massive Earthquake level disruption. No, Atlantis-sinking disruption. And some of those effects are already baked in. I came across some “expert” bleating that there would be a commercial real estate crisis and giggled. What, he got there now? Welcome to the party, pal.

Now pile on top of that that the people who are supposed to at the very least “shepherd” us through this kind of thing, by seeing what’s happening, and easing the fall so we don’t hurt too badly: perhaps ease regulations, so offices can become apartments; ease up on taxes while service people figure out how to position so they can serve the same population now distributed (I mean, people like repair people, doctors, nurses, retail, etc.), etc. are instead hitting things with a hammer trying to bring about utopia that can only exist in Disney movies, where people are drawn.

That is taking the chaos and taking it to the next level.

My feeling — and again, I could be wrong — is that the economy is coming apart at the seams. Things that “always worked this way” and associations that people used to listen to and things like the WHO or financial experts are coming apart.

Now add to it the demographic factor — which as BGE tells us (often) explains a lot of otherwise inexplicable phenomena — and realize that my generation (the not-boomers and not quite-x) were already massively badly taught. I mean, seriously, compared to my brother say, my training was ridiculous. We compensated for it, though, and because the boomers took so long to retire, we sure had a long apprenticeship. Now we’re…. well…. my husband has made noises about wanting to retire. Everyone our age seems to be doing that. Probably not for a while, I think, as we’re in our early sixties. Then again, some will.

And the people ten years older than us are already retiring or retired.

This would fine and dandy if there were a generation of eager 40 year olds who’ve been on the job for 20 years or so, and are more than ready to step into our shoes, no matter how bad their education was.

Except that because of the elephant-bulge of the boom, and what it did to jobs and economics, let alone what Marx did to education, kids are starting later and later. “jobs that aren’t temp by 30” is a dream for a lot of them.

So the people available to step in are poorly trained and bare beginners. Now some will take the load and do admirably. Hopefully most of our kids. But demographically? There is a huge gap in competency coming up just in the middle of all this.

Because things change as graves fill up, there is a chance for change, too. Real change, where the practical necessities force people to look at reality and not at the theory they were taught in school.

The fact that many companies are paying less attention to degrees, for instance, is one of those good things.

But what we’re looking at is not cataclysm, except to the extent that humans, let alone human societies, don’t deal well with change.

What we’re looking at is a whirlwind of bizarre things none of us can anticipate.

There used to be a poster in the eighties of a discovery ship falling off the edge of the flat Earth. I cannot find it for love or money. Never seems to have been digitized. And my attempts to get midjourney to reproduce something like have failed. (If you’re an artist and want to try it, do)

That image fully encapsulates what I see coming.

To a great extent we’ve been living on a flat Earth. It’s a lie, or at least not true, but for the purposes of our every day lives, it worked and allowed us to predict the future.

It is a construct of the early mass-industrial age, created and coddled by a take over of the mass-industrial-communication and art complex. It is infused with Marx, and doesn’t really fit reality, but it was so prevalent that even a lot of us have it in our heads. It explained the past (by lying), the present (by ignoring what didn’t fit) and the future (by lying again, but also by moving things forward continuously.) It was the “arrow of history” in which the future was always more “progressive”. It still lives in the starry eyes of the children saying “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

But reality never fit it, or felt any need to obey it, just like the Earth never became flat because people believed it was.

And our ship — metaphorical — is about to sail off the edge of the construct and into reality. Because the construct isn’t holding.

The problem is that reality is unforgiving. There’s going to be a lot of crashing and splintering.

But reality is also not like in movies “and now everyone starves.” For everyone to starve you need a high level of communist control, which they don’t have. Even in Venezuela there are people who “make do” and live reasonably okay lives. There were some at the end of the USSR too.

So, what I was trying to say with the other post: There are things you can predict, and things you can’t. There’s something heading for us at speed, and I’d guess the first impact is somewhere very close, though the biggest might be 20 years from now, that we can’t predict. Not just because we’re not smart enough, or because it’s completely out of our experience, but because we can’t predict it. Period. It’s unpredictable. It’s not written.

Factors will careen into factors, the whole thing creating chaos.

I know it’s possible to continue when currency loses value completely, because this happened well before I was born, in Portugal. But it was a very different country, and I don’t know how they managed, not in details. And it would be different with modern tech anyway. (I’ll just say, feel free to boo, I don’t think crypto is the solution. No matter how much people would like it to be.)

What’s heading for us is… fractal. It will become clearer as we’re closer on. But right now, we just can’t predict it.

Will it be better? Some places, some things, some ways. Will it be worse? Some places, some things, some ways. Will it be catastrophic? Some places, some things, some ways.

In the end we win, they lose. In the middle, all is confusion and turmoil.

So, keep your hair on. It’s impossible to prepare for this, because you don’t know what this will be like, much less in your particular place, occupation, group.

Yeah, sure, basic preparations. Same you’d do if you expected a massive storm. And sure, travel now, because long distance travel is a fragile thing, dependent on a high level of stability and civilization.

And keep your hair on. Don’t go crazy and go imagining things. Suffice onto the day, etc.

If you get really stressed, learn something new, practical or not. Keep your mind nimble.

In the end, remember grandma: Our class of people are the people who make do.

We are free because we don’t ask permission from anyone to be free. We survive because we find ways to survive. We thrive because we find ways to thrive.

We make do. Continue doing so.

First, be not alarmed. I’ve had this feeling before and it was wrong, or at least the decay and loss I feared was slow and grinding, not catastrophic and eminent.

Or it applied very personally to me. I mean to an extent 2013 WAS the last summer for our family, not due to catastrophe, but to the boys no longer being kids and things changing markedly. Also to us moving a lot over the next two years. So when I kept getting that feeling of “the last halcyon Summer” I wasn’t wrong. It was just PERSONAL.

And the feeling part of this might be personal, you know? Because, well, I’m over 60 and it’s not like Dan and I don’t have health issues. And while none of them are serious as such, people of my generation have died in their early sixties in my family (mostly of cancer. And of my generation, but older than I, of course. All were older than I, even my brother is.)

BUT–

There are places and things and gatherings we’ve all cherished, and didn’t know the last time was the last. I’m sure we all remember that. Particularly with really familiar places and people. Last visit to grandma and grandpa, for instance, not knowing it was the last, and going through the routine, and thinking of what you were doing next.

Or even with things I really enjoyed and which were a treat, like going to Denver’s Lakeside park with the boys and Dan, and following them around with a book, while they did ALL THE RIDES. (I don’t ride, because of my middle ear, but I enjoyed walking around watching them have fun more than I can say.) I didn’t know the last time was the last time.

Or midnight drives to Denver with older son, to discuss plots over a table at Pete’s. The lockdown stopped those well before he moved away. Or–

Oh, fill in your own. I’m sure you have a couple of dozen, each of you.

Part of the reason I enjoyed a trip back to CO this summer, despite the altitude issues getting worse over five days, is that I got to say goodbye, knowing it was goodbye. (Not saying there won’t be visits, again, but probably not over more than a long weekend. MAYBE.)

Honestly, I also wish I’d enjoyed my writers’ group more before the hammer fell on it on 9/11.

Anyway, I’m having that feeling again like in the summer of 13. Like…. Closing call. Last drink being served.

Only it’s not so much “this is the halcyon summer” but “Do you need to do something that involves travel/takes effort” “is there someone far away you need to hang out with a last time?”

Note this doesn’t fill me with glee, since the earliest I can get to Portugal is May, and I don’t know if that’s before or after it’s too late.

It could be wrong. It could all be wrong. During one of the last trips in our protracted move, younger son and I had rented a van that was convinced there was a slow leak on the right tire. Note it continued telling us that, and only that while the left tire was RIPPED OPEN and we were stopped waiting for AAA to come help. And after.

It could be that. The sensor is broken, and it shows something, but not what is real.

However the reports I’m getting from friends working directly with retail either on their own business or for someone else are starting to give me a sense of baffled panic. Baffled because words like “Worst ever” keep coming up. Cheap things are still selling. Like, stocking stuffer level. And honestly ebooks are still selling, though KU (and knowing how little that pays these days, it will tell you a lot) is now a major part of my earnings.

I don’t get a feeling of “the economy is in trouble.”

I get a feeling of “The wheels are coming off so fast” and “I don’t know how long the mask of normalcy will last.”

Last call. Belly up to the bar. I know the feeling when something or someone dies, and you never got to say goodbye. As I said, that last trip to CO healed something in my soul, because we moved during lockdowns and there were so many unsaid goodbyes.

So, it’s probably nothing. Probably false alarm, or intensely personal. But if you can afford it….

Go say goodbye to places and people cherished. It will give you strength through what’s to come.

Which hopefully is not as insane as I can sort of picture. Not fully picture, because I don’t have the experience for this.

We’re not going to the stone age. Or even the 19th century. But I get a feeling a lot of the “of courses” which are mostly habit, custom and institutions are about to be cast loose into the wind.

And that’s….

Some will be good. Some will be bad. But all will be a maelstrom.

My feeling is we’re approaching the point of singularity, from which there is no return. Afterwards might be better, but it will be very different. Humans don’t actually like different, you know. So that will be a shock, if nothing else.

Very different. Totally uncharted.

This is your last call.