Yes, We Are In Dangerous Competitions With Other Foreign Powers

And these are not limited to just the race for the better big stick, or medium stick, or whatever else you might think of.

We compete dangerously for markets. We compete dangerously for resources. And we compete now very dangerously for influence in each other's countries, using new media manipulations like never before. And it all must stop.

To do that, though, is going to take turning the tide of a lot of built up suspicion, animosity, and hatred. And we do not make that effort any better by continuously beating a war drum that the other guy is directly poised to take advantage of supposed real, or imaginary, deficiencies of the moment; especially when we can't tell exactly if the people doing the clamoring now are doing it out of real concern, or because they have other axes to grind; like feeding a monstrous weapons production business that makes a lot of money, all over the map, when all nations keep eyeing the other guy with fear.

The real bottom line here is that the planet simply will not allow us to conduct more wars. Seeing as we have seemingly declared war on it as well, trying to kill off as many of its very delicate, and inter related, natural systems. So many in fact that in twenty years or less the temperature here will tip over a point we may never be able to recover from.

If we are to survive as a species we have to begin negotiating away from all of these dangerous competitions. All of them. And in this the United States must take the lead. And it must do that by first taking away the obsolete economic system that plays into all of the other competitions so fundamentally.

If we could do that we would be in a position to start pulling back from these destructive, and wasteful distractions that are keeping us from working together to fix all the things that just might give us a chance to pull back from the brink; but we have to begin do this now. There just isn't any more time left to be dicking around with all of the old fears as we have always done in the past. There just isn't any other choice if we want to preserve billions of years of evolution.

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DENY DENY DENY, WITH A WINK AND A SMILE

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3 diggs The New Yorker

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Another Case Of Connect The Diggs I Dug

Consider, if you will, the following:

If Google had to buy, most of what it needed, from somebody that controlled that purchase market, as much as Google controls what others are (directly or indirectly) purchasing from it, do you suppose Google would be as successful as it is right now?

This illustrates two things:

1. Capitalism has allowed it self to become comfortable with the notion that a market can be as free, or controlled, as happenstance, and supposed controlled effort, leave it; which then creates a crazy quilt of combinations of competitive, not competitive, and various blends of in between.

And 2: That this, then, provides the foundation for the declaration that everybody now wants to buy from a competitive market, but no one wants to sell there.

That this should also be seen as the insane contradiction that it is, for something that's supposed to be a self regulating system, seems to not attract nearly the notice it should, though, and that ought also be alarming.

How does one find balance in such a system when it is guided as well, and too much, by the frame of reference that sees things, in the larger perspective, as the needs of the few out weighing the needs of the many. A perspective, alas, also so adept at using Capitalism's many flaws, and contradictions, to their benefit; especially when electrified money can now command any blend of the wet ware, or synthetic ware, out there, to get what they want. Because they control the counters; making more of them, as well as maintaining what they, supposedly, mean.

Any fool can see that this will not hold with the challenges that are now upon the human race, and this still beautiful planet. Everybody has to understand. Both sides of the duality, that is our fate now, must be respected. One cannot be allowed to dominate totally over the other, it's just that simple folks.

The real bottom line here, in our current context, is that you can't marginalize people just because it suits your individual self interest. Your wealth rests upon the social inertia of an implied covenant: that shared behavioral norms would be respected as long as it made sense for all parties concerned. And that most definitely is not the case now.

And wouldn't you just know it. This also just happens to be when we absolutely have to start fixing everything Capitalism has left festering all these many, many, decades.

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If You Are Feeling Down, And Need A Pick Me Up, This Song Playlist on YouTube is a Great One

It is, unfortunately, also a great way of setting you back a peg, just in case you're feeling irrationally optimistic. That's the funny thing about this playlist; it can have both effects. In any case, though, it does have a lot of emotion, and thought in it. Worth a listen every now and then.

None Of This Makes Sense, When You Look At It In Total

One of the few things you can be sure of, in my opinion, is that the states aren't going to get any more money than what the latest, "keep the government working" deal, has granted them. As such, you are not going to get much benefit beyond that either.

And even if the Democrats come to full power some several years hence, just how much taxing power will they be able to suck out of Big Money, to try to do more good, as well as not make the deficit worse, before it takes it's money to the sidelines in punishment for their efforts; at which point they let the economy tank for a while to emphasize the point, so that, at the appointed hour, people will be willing to forget just what a rodent Speaker of the House Ryan was, and make him politically viable once again.

One of the other few things you can be sure of is that a big part of the problem here is precisely the fact that Capitalism itself is broken. That and the fact that the planet also being broken, just makes it a perfect storm for the continuing increase in the incidents of "very bad events." Which will then serve to only make things even more precarious.

And the real thing that has to stop here is that we can ever have any hope that Capitalism, or anything it controls, can fixing itself. We must be the ones who demand of our our leadership that enough is enough. We must start over and begin the negotiations of what will replace it. And we have to do that ASAP because, as I have already stated, we have a lot to do to make it possible for at least a half billion people to be off this rock, with more in the pipeline, in no more than five decades. That is, of course, if we are truly serious in wanting to save this planet.

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[Poste Note: And as long as we're talking about a system not making sense, you have to include occurances such as the following: J.V.]

THE BREAKDOWN OF DEMOCRACY

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43 diggs Politics

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NOTHING FOR MONEY

The Unbelievable Shortsightedness, Of Gushing On Again, About The Newfound Way...

And or brilliant disrupter, who wants to do the brilliant thing in a commercial manner.

Case in point: Thinking, again, that we can gain true public benefit by letting something as basic as transportation into space, or space utilization in general for that matter, to the dictates of profit, and market gain.

Especially with the notion of how we will all be able to do what needs to be done with space, and by automatic, connection, what priorities will be addressed.

What a lot of the commercialized, be they uber tech oriented, or not, don't get is that a broken planet, and way too many people already on it; all of these things dictate, as a combined priority, the following: Within the next 50 to 100 years, if we don't already have nearly a half, to a billion people, already off, or in the pipeline to be going off earth (many of which, certainly being needed to work the effort to be able to pipeline even more), we will be very unlikely to be able to save this planet. And that means that we all have to embrace public transportation like we never have before.

Plain and simple folks. Too many and making more, but, and this is essential, we will need them all. We will need them all precisely because the effort required to get this done will, eventually, have to be a very coordinated, global response. Because every player in the game has to be included, or they'll have the inescapable ability to keep the dangerous competitions going, and to only much too obvious a cataclysmic conclusion. And so we've got to start getting every group on board, as quickly as we can.

And lest we also forget, Capitalism itself is broken as well. So we simply can't use it even if it didn't end up always screwing us with past privitations of important social/economic systems.

As impressive a technical, and engineering, achievement as SpaceX's rocket launch was, it still doesn't change the fact that rockets, mid to long term, just are not going to provide the throughput capability we are going to need here; so we must leapfrog that to what I call "Accelerate In Place" approaches. And that is where an ocean born, suspended tunnel, hypertube launch system, built to real industrial standard transport norms (where we would be talking 100 ton payloads at the minimum, launched one ever hour, twenty four, seven) comes in. Structures we can build with the leverage of already wanting to build Yen Tornado Turbines at sea, so that we can create liquid hydrogen as the new, global, public fuel staple. A fuel we'll be able to provide globally because we'll have the Hybrid Dirigible Blimp train, transport system to take it wherever the need is. And thus, hopefully, we we will provide the incentive for the rest of the world to join us in this effort.

Like I've said before, it's your call. Think long and hard on it though. Not choosing wisely here is going to be a real ass biter.

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It’s making public transit worse.

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Which Is Worse, That Amtrak Is So Desperate For Track Right Of Ways, It Goes Along With Secret Contracts

Or That we, as a general public, have come to care for true, comprehensive public transport, so little anymore as to not be outraged by this disconnect of liability for quite some time now.

One thing is certainly made a good deal more apparent: We need a new, much more flexible kind of regional, public mass transit. One that is absolutely means tested, and that will transport not only people, but their belongings as well.

I of course think that Hybrid dirigible, blimp trains can be that new option. We only need the recognition of what such new kinds of logistics could do for people in general to see to it that this new infrastructure investment doesn't go the way of continued neglect. Studies have proven it, and you'll find at least one of these already posted on within my two blogs.

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"When I tell you this is the worst thing I've seen in all my life, being in the business for 30+ years, owning since I was a kid, this is a disaster."

Confronting The Mindset Of The "Communion Mode" Authority Structure And Its Easy Manipulation By Charismatic Expressives

[Post Note: You can skip this preamble if you like (and go to the See Also section below). The preamble is here only to tell you why I'm going to reference an old post. A post that I think will allow us to think more on how we should confront those who would manipulate from any position of a Charismatic personality. The old post uses my ambiguity towards Christmas to delve into thoughts about both what is the "ideal" individual, as well as the need for the big idea, during what may well be a pivotal moment in human history. J.V.]


The opinion piece, linked below, by Derek Newton asks some very insightful, and troubling, questions. I read this and, at first blush, I just couldn't think of how to approach it. Because this really does need careful thought, and consideration.

Let's first be clear that, even if a particular charismatic might not resonate with one person, the fact that they still can with another, shouldn't surprise us at all. It must necessarily be, in fact, given how varied, and unique, the manipulations that can arise from its various manifestations. No more to say then that, where one person might see Gordon Gekko, or Nathan Bateman, or whatever other, most popular, disgraced televangelist, or disgraced politician, you ever want to mention, the fact remains that they have their own lexicon of charisma, and therefore their own ways of manipulation.

Then we need to be clear on something else. It's not only the idea, and feeling, of faith, but also the resultant trust that has to be involved, in understanding that, whether you call it a higher power (resonating from the divine font of meaning, and description), or a higher purpose (resonating from the divine font of the process itself, with us involved in the creation of meaning, but never the full masters of it), there is absolutely, something that is bigger than mere thought, or feeling, alone can ever fully comprehend. It is there because Cosmology demands it, because cosmology has to include meaning processors who absolutely need that sense of larger intent.

I would like to believe that higher power, and higher purpose, are simply two sides of the same coin, arrived at precisely because we all use such different frames of reference with which to do our ever ongoing translation of experience, into a reality that demands choices.

And we finally need to be clear on this: A society that aspired to the "balance" that I have proposed with my take on Cosmology, would, I think, use ever varying blends of all of the "Authority Structures" that Andrew Gray created, and at least mentioned in Mr. Newton's opinion piece, because I can't help but think, and feel, that they could all play a part (in the right measure, appropriate to the ever changing, contextual contingencies, of course). Life, in this context, it seems to me, is lhen finding a way to live the tension of continually negotiating what that balance is, arbitrary moment, to arbitrary moment.

Unfortunately, of course, these kinds of jargon filled preambles don't help much for folks who don't have a lot of patience for jargon (something on their side of things that has to change because you can't have knowledge without jargon). So you have to do a more emotional kind of an appeal.

Oddly enough, because I've been standing here, for several hours, trying to make sense of how to approach Mr. Newton's article, I was idly bouncing around, in the way back section of old posts, to one I did on 12/19/2014. It was meant as an attempt to express some nuance to the tired old idea of one's ambiguity over Christmas. Something that's always been difficult for me because Christmas was hardly ever a heartwarming time within the emotional, and financial chaos, that was the norm for the Vale family. So what I'm going to do here is represent that post, adding the cautionary that it will be edited from the original.

What I would like you to keep in mind, however, is that you shouldn't really see this as a discussion about a particular season, or whether gift giving is involved or not. It is rather, I think, a discussion about how we try to remember the need not only for the idealized individual, but also the ideal idea itself. And that we need to do that precisely because we never know just when that moment might come when it is pivotal for human survival in both a practical, as well as a moral, sense.

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[Post Note: The following is a revised version the "Working To Consume Themselves to Death, Holly and Jolly are now divorced, as well as in and out of rehab, working harder to afford even more." post done on 12/19/2014. J.V.]

As we round the last corner of the final lap of the “We Should Take Stock Season”  I find myself caught up in another of my usual conundrums. A thing, or situation, that pulls me, simultaneously, in opposing directions. Something that's a good deal more visceral than a simple ambivalence.

There is, on the one hand, the celebration of the birth of an ideal man; where miracle, unquestioned love, forgiveness, and sacrifice, come together as a means to help us keep that one candle lit against the darkness. On the other hand, whether he was real or not, or who his father may have been, was never, in my mind, the most important aspect. That aspect resides in the fact that miracles, and love, and forgiveness, and sacrifice as well, for that matter, are all real. The mere fact that the last three items in that list occur at all proves the first. For each is, in its own way, a little miracle; especially as we grow ever more materialistic.

Most of the best popular culture surrounding any session of taking stock (few though they may be) serve to try and remind us of those few little miracles, for which, of course, we are provided an emotional foundation for continued giving. Keeping in mind that this kind of giving, is the sincere type, and done in the very personally direct manner; the very type that those previously mentioned qualities embody, and for which such giving still occurs, in spite of the increasing disconnect of commercial life.

With all of the advertising that occurs, as a matter of everyday life, saturating every part of our so called reality, ever earlier, the other side of the equation hardly needs much reiteration. Hyper consumption goes balls out for one last orgy of shopping that, even allowing for the locational, outsized spike up, or down, shoots an ever bigger wad of counters into the server streams. There are, after all, at the very least, ever more of us doing it every year.

With this do the masters of capital go to the next point of taking stock with a good deal more than tidings of good cheer. For not only has a significant portion of the material output been translated back into more than was used to create it, the wage slaves have created more debt, and with that, even more counters, for the masters, to count on for the future. The treadmill that turns by the running of those making more to consume more continues. Add in the sheer numbers of producers, and the competition thus inherent, and you get the constant acceleration of each cycle, with science and ingenuity as part of the fuel, and or, oxidizer. to make everything ever more dangerously competitive.

We witness the consequences of this process every day on the internet, and the various other media. More energy is pumped into social, and natural, systems alike; so much in fact it becomes more than they are able to adequately handle. The weakest links fly apart at every turn and there is less and less time to ponder much of anything, let alone rebuild stability, or renewing structure. We lay waste to not only previously existing stable systems, which were miracles of selection in themselves, but to the dwindling hope that more will occur.

In all of this, however, let us not forget that it is more than our need for a means of livelihood that keeps the pedal to the metal. A good portion of this outrageous make and break is there for that extra bit. That really extra bit that goes beyond reasonable return for a risk taken on. The kinds of return that make accumulations of counters to rival the numbers of stars.

I mention this because consumption is not going to go away no matter what we may do as an alternative to Capitalism. The best we can hope for is to look for ways to do it with as much moderation as we can manage. As well as to look for ways to do it thoughtfully, with generous portions of love, forgiveness, and sacrifice. Giving back as much as is possible to all of the systems, natural and otherwise, that sustain us; keeping a sense of wonder as we ponder each little miracle that a more connected life might provide. If we can find a way to do that we will truly create a gift that will truly keep on giving.