A Bigger Now

 

102012, Saturday morning, around 07:00

This time of the year, this is really the only time that I have the energy or desire to sit down and write something. This desire to write is complicated by my complete lack of insight regarding or details concerning the way that the world is choosing to attempt self-mutilation. I am blind to the coming storm and I can offer no persuasive insight into how to weather it.

I am progressively more and more jealous of the certainty and assuredness with which my parents and grandparents seemed to hold in their images of the future. They seemed to lead their lives with a certainty of a better future for their descendants that I can't seem to conjure out of the vapor of nuance and conflicting data that is offered me.

My forebear’s certainty of a future culture and society was birthed in a slower world, where the recognition and classification of the incoming events and technologies were performed in a setting where the moment had a longer duration. I don't have that luxury: the grossly abbreviated “now” in which I live twists under my feet like a living thing, thrashing like a large, irritated animal, seeking to dislodge my understanding.

I can't seem to come up with a clear vision for the future, the variables that I monitor give me conflicting and bizarre patterns that are resistant to useful conclusions. I can only seem to fall back into a set of poorly executed risk management strategies which have already failed me many times.

Now...upon reading this, you may think to yourself that you are witnessing an individual's descent into depression. I can't really say that this is the case. I feel fine. I am just frustrated that I am not able to make any sense of this mess. I want more than anything to be able to teach my sons how to understand the world, but I am beginning to think that they, with communal silicon memories and their comfort with instant communication are better suited than I to navigate this new world.

But that is where the main thrust of my inability to comprehend lies. To an old man such as myself, the world of Google-based knowledge and social media based communication; all mediated by an increasingly monitored and built-for-purpose internet seems a slippery and dangerous proposition. There are simply too many ways for things to become too complex and muddled. There are too many ways for too complex structures to become critical and upon their failure, Babel.

So, where do I go from here?  These are questions that have to do with the culture that I live in.  They are not questions amenable to any positive action on my part, they are questions of strategies on how to navigate a complex series of unknowable that are resistant to understanding.  Culture is always opaque, economics are contingent, luck is fickle. 

So, here I sit, an old man in a changing world, doing what all of my ilk have done for millennia, hoping that those who follow me are better at this than I, and wondering what will happen next.

$3.00 Well Spent

I just joined the "Not Safe For Work" corporation and I am very pleased.

Well written funny stuff.  They pay their writers and I think that this will go far.

This article will be available for your reading pleasure for the next two days.  I think that shit like this is more cogent to the current political discussion than anything the two morons will debate this evening.

Read it and enjoy.

Change of Season

Well, the rains started.  Right now I am kind of pleased, but up here in the NW, what this translates into is we are entering the wet tunnel that won't let up until next May.

Sorry if I haven't been keeping in touch lately, but there really isn't much to say.  It would appear that quite a few of the outlandish predictions made here in Doomerland are queuing up to make their grand entrances.  Nothing I can do about it.  The die is cast and now it is time to start developing tactics and strategies to meet the real world changes that will be heading our way.

Or, it may be just that the idea of heading into that tunnel has got me down.

Fragmentation

I am too much a history buff to believe for a moment that the United States will last forever.  It will fragment.  There will be a political entity named the United States which does not include the current, continent-wide empire that is the current political entity, but will instead be much smaller and will have neighbors who are quite adamant about their independence.

I have been keeping an eye out of late for the secessionist movements here in the US.   Overall, a pretty weak showing.  Some folks down in Texas, some folks up in Vermont, and a baby movement here in the Northwest.  The Native American tribes are getting a little restive.  Nothing of real note yet.

But I do find the noises coming out of Europe of interest.   Venice is trying for a comeback as a separate country.  Catalonia is looking pretty solid for independence.  The Basques are always trying, so me putting them in here is just padding.

Europe is in worse shape than we are.  That is why these kind of things are coming out the woodwork.  The European Union was always kind of iffy.  Now we are seeing the cracks in a pretty serious way.  I don't think that the project will survive.

We here in the US have a very defined history of dealing with secessionist movements.  We killed off 4% of the men in the country to make sure that such a thing would not happen.  I really can't see that happening again.  As the state progressively weakens over the next years, we will see if we still have the level of resolve that President Lincoln et al. displayed.

New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History"

New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History":

I got hopes for this one.  Kahoutek was a big letdown.  Hale-Bopp was pretty cool.  Keep hoping.

OK  This was found over at "Some Assembly Required"

Rationing: The health care cost problems in the US stem from two things – for profit medicine, and the tendency to lavish costly efforts on elderly Americans without considering the cost/benefit ratios in the context of the overall health of the nation. To put it a tad more clearly, we need death panels.

 Now on the same day, over at "Jesse's Cafe Americain"

"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration.  

The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and childrens hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps.

The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small.

Commemorative Tablet at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin

Now, this is the hard thing that I have been wrestling with of late.  This one has given me fits for three weeks now.  Where does the right exist to live beyond ones natural lifespan?  Does withholding expensive medical care constitute abuse?  Are the elderly more important than those in their younger years.  Where does honor thy Mother and thy Father start and end.

I can't seem to pin down the answers.  Any attempt leaves me unsatisfied.  There may not well be a right answer, just a series of unsatisfactory compromises.

Now this is funny

I really recommend reading Slashdot every day.  Oh, it is old school in internet years, and it has fallen from being the power it once was, but as a hand out for nerds with good access to ideas, you really can't beat it.

This particular story really tweaked my interest

Now, in my mind this is a grand-slam, out of the park home run.   Living in rural America among whacked out evangelicals, I think that the tenor of the original article, while brutal satire, might be uncomfortably close to the mark.