By Andrew Nikiforuk: Energy Dead-Ends: Green Lies, Climate Change and Chaotic Transitions

Canadian author and journalist Andrew Nikiforuk addressed our overshoot reality on November 17, 2021 at the University of Victoria.

It’s a brilliant must watch talk that touches on every important issue, except unfortunately Ajit Varki’s MORT theory and our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities. Nikiforuk does acknowledge that denial is an important force in our predicament.

It’s refreshing to find a journalist that understands what’s going on and that speaks plainly about what we must do.

Nikiforuk introduced a new idea (for me), the “technological imperium”:

…our biggest problem is a self-augmenting, ever-expanding technosphere, which has but one rule: to grow at any cost and build technological artifacts that efficiently dominate human affairs and the biosphere. The technological imperium consumes energy and materials in order to replace all natural systems with artificial ones dependent on high energy inputs and unmanageable complexity.

Nikiforuk seems to be implying that technology is the core problem and is driving the bus. Maybe. I think more likely advanced technology emerges as a consequence of unique intelligence (explained by MORT) coupled with fortuitous buried fossil energy, driven by a desire for infinite economic growth that arises from evolved behaviors expressing the Maximum Power Principle (MPP), all enabled by our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, which causes us to ignore the costs of growth and technology. Regardless of which is the chicken and which is the egg, Nikiforuk is correct that technology has made our society very fragile, and is harming our social fabric.

An example Nikiforuk provided of the technological imperium is British Columbia’s trend of replacing sustainable natural salmon runs in rivers with fish farms that are totally dependent on non-renewable fossil energy and advanced technology. I’ve witnessed this first hand on the coast of Vancouver Island and it makes me sick to my stomach. I also witnessed how hard it is to oppose the technological imperium when a political party here was elected on a promise to close fish farms and then reneged after being elected.

As an aside, the technological imperium idea gave me a new insight into the covid mass psychosis of most rich countries and their obsession with a single high tech “solution” to covid while aggressively opposing all other less energy intensive, less risky, and lower tech responses.  

Nikiforuk began his talk with a quote I like from C.S. Lewis:

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

I observe sadly that this must watch video has only 160 views, 3 of which are mine. 😦

Here are a few other ideas and quotes I captured while watching the talk:

  • “We have all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life support system in fewer than 200 years mainly by making thermodynamic whoopee with fossil fuels.” – Kurt Vonnegut
  • “Our political class is in a complete state of denial and will not act until things get much worse. You can expect more blah blah blah.”
  • “Energy spending determines greenhouse gas emissions. We only want to talk about emissions, we need to talk about energy spending.”
  • “We must contract the global economy by at least 40%.”
  • “We can choose a managed energy decent, something few civilizations have ever achieved, or we can face collapse.”
  • “People who do not face the truth turn themselves into monsters”. – James Baldwin
  • “In sum, expect extreme volatility and political unrest in the years ahead along with atmospheric rivers, heat domes, and burning forests.”
  • “We are now at revolutionary levels of inequality everywhere.”
  • “We are being fed 5 green lies because we do not want to discuss economic growth and population:
    • dematerialize the economy;
    • direct air capture;
    • carbon capture and storage;
    • hydrogen;
    • electric cars.”
  • “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Frank Herbert
  • Conversations we avoid or deny:
    • Population
      • “There is no problem on earth that does not become easier to manage with fewer people. We don’t want to admit this, we don’t want to talk about this.”
      • We are currently using up the renewable resources of 1.7 earths and unless things change we’ll need 3 earths by 2050.
    • Energy Blindness
      • Our energy is so cheap and convenient it has blinded us to its true ecological, political, and social costs.
      • “Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be.” – Joseph Tainter
      • A single tomato today requires 10 tablespoons of diesel to grow it.
    • The Technosphere
      • An energy dissipating superorganism that destroys natural systems and replaces them with artificial systems dependent on high energy technologies.
        • Wild salmon running in rivers are replaced with fish farms.
        • Wetlands are replaced with water filtration projects.
        • Old growth forests are replaced with tree plantations.
      • Technology is to this civilization what the catholic church was to 14th century France, the dominant institution that controls every aspect of your life.
      • “A major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin.” – Jacques Ellul
      • “A low energy policy allows for a wide choice of lifestyles and cultures. If on the other hand a society opts for high energy spending its social relations must be dictated by technocracy and will be equally degrading whether labelled capitalist or socialist.” – Ivan Illich
    • Civilizations Do Collapse
      • Life is a cycle, it is not a linear path.
      • We have peaked and are now entering a phase of incredible volatility.
      • Every citizen needs to know the consequences of bad policy. Percent death on the Titanic by class was:
        • 39% first class
        • 58% second class
        • 76% steerage
  • What should you do with this awareness?
    • Withdraw from the fray of the Technosphere.
    • Do something to help preserve the natural world.
    • Get your hands dirty doing real work in nature.
    • Insist that creation has a value beyond utility.
      • “Think, less” – Wendell Berry
    • Build refuges and prepare for the storms ahead.
    • Wake each morning and ask yourself what you can give to this world rather than what you can take.
  • Comments and answers from the Q&A:
    • “The worst thing about the pandemic was that so many people and so many children were forced to spend so much time with colonizing machines.”
    • “We have to get a political conversation going about contracting the economy.” This won’t happen at the central government level but might happen within individual communities.
    • “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
    • “The only way we can get out of this mess without sacrificing millions and millions of people is to power down.”

Two weeks later, Nikiforuk reflected on his talk and responded to questions:

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/12/06/Andrew-Nikiforuk-Getting-Real-About-Our-Crises/

Two weeks ago, I gave a talk at the University of Victoria arguing that our morally bankrupt civilization is chasing dead ends when it comes to climate change and energy spending.

I argued that by focusing on emissions, we have failed to acknowledge economic and population growth as the primary driver of those emissions along with the unrestrained consumption of natural systems that support all life.

I added that people plus affluence plus technology make a deadly algorithm that is now paving our road to collective ruin.

As Ronald Wright noted in his book A Short History of Progress, civilization is a pyramid scheme that depends on cancerous rates of growth.

I also explained that many so-called green technologies including renewables, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage are not big solutions. Because they require rare earth minerals and fossil fuels for their production and maintenance, these technologies shift problems around.

In addition these green technologies cannot be scaled up in time to cut emissions or require too much energy to make any difference at all.

I also emphasized that our biggest problem is a self-augmenting, ever-expanding technosphere, which has but one rule: to grow at any cost and build technological artifacts that efficiently dominate human affairs and the biosphere. The technological imperium consumes energy and materials in order to replace all natural systems with artificial ones dependent on high energy inputs and unmanageable complexity.

This technological assault on the biosphere and our consciousness has greatly weakened our capacity to pay attention to what matters, let alone how to think. The result is a highly polarized and anxious society that can’t imagine its own collapse let alone the hazards of its own destructive thinking.

The best response to this constellation of emergencies is to actively shrink the technosphere and radically reduce economic growth and energy spending. Our political class can’t imagine such a conversation.

At the same time, communities and families must re-localize their lives, disconnect from the global machine and actively work to restore degraded ecosystems such as old-growth forests. Anyone who expects an “easy fix” or convenient set of solutions has spent too much time being conditioned by digital machines.

My cheerful talk generated scores of questions. There wasn’t time to answer them, so I selected five representative queries submitted via Zoom in the interest of keeping this heretical conversation going.

Growth in population tied to consumption is a big problem

Many listeners expressed disquiet about population growth being an essential part of the problem. “I am disappointed that once again Malthus has entered the room when the difference between per capita emissions for GHGs between the Global North and Global South are significant. Isn’t it how we live not how many of us there are?” asked one.

The real answer is uncomfortable. How we live and consume matters just as much as the growing density of our numbers combined with the proliferation of our machines that devour energy on our behalf. (Roads and cell phones all consume energy and materials too.) All three demographic issues are increasing at unsustainable rates and feed each other to propel more economic growth, more emissions and more fragility.

The world’s current population is 7.9 billion and grows by 80 million a year. It has slowed down in recent years because the affluent don’t need the energy of children as much as the poor. Even so civilization will add another billion to the planet every dozen years. Redistributing energy wealth (and emissions) from the rich to the poor will not avert disaster if human populations don’t overall decline.

Our numbers also reflect a demographic anomaly that began with fossil fuels, a cheap energy source that served as Viagra for the species. Prior to our discovery of fossil fuels, the population of the planet never exceeded one billion. Our excessive numbers are purely a temporary artifact of cheap energy spending and all that it entails — everything from fertilizer to modern medicine.

Isn’t capitalism the real threat?

Many questions revolved around the nature of capitalism. “Wouldn’t it be more accurate to denounce the capitalist organization of technology rather than technology as such for problems like polarization and fragmentation?”

No, it would not. Technology emphasizes growth and concentrates power regardless of the ideology.

Capitalism, like socialism and communism, is simply a way to use energy to create technologies that structure society in homogeneous ways. Removing capitalism from the equation would not change the totalitarian nature of technology itself. Or the ability of technologies to colonize local cultures anywhere.

Every ideology on Earth, to date, has used technologies to strengthen their grip on power by enmeshing their citizens in complexity and reducing humanity to a series of efficiencies. All have supported digital infrastructure to monitor and survey their citizens. As the sociologist Jacques Ellul noted long ago ideologies don’t count in the face of technological imperative.

What comes next?

Many listeners asked if “there is a sequel to the energy-rich market economy?” I have no crystal ball but here is my response.

There will always be some kind of sequel and it is not written. But there is no replacement for cheap fossil fuels and their density and portability. They made our complex civilization what it is. As fossil fuel resources become ever more expensive and difficult to extract (a reality the media ignores), the “rich market economy” will experience more volatility, inequality, disruptions, corruption and inflation. It is rare for any civilization to manage an energy descent without violence let alone grace.

“Can you say more about the connection between the technosphere and totalitarian societies?” asked one listener. “How do you see connections between dictatorships and the technosphere?”

This is a subject for a much longer essay. The technosphere, by definition, offers only one system of thinking and operating (triumph of technique over all endeavors) and has been eroding human freedoms for decades. It simply creates dependents or inmates. Social influencers now tell its residents what to buy and how to behave. As such the technosphere has become an all-encompassing environment for citizens whether they be so-called democracies or totalitarian societies.

The major difference between the two is simply the degree to which techniques have been applied to give the state more total control over its citizens. In both democratic societies and totalitarian ones, technical elites actively mine citizens for data so that information can be used to engineer, monitor and survey the behavior of their anxious and unhappy citizens in a technological society. (You can’t live in a technological society without becoming an abstraction.) The Chinese state does not hide its intentions; the West still clings to its illusions of freedom.

The technosphere corrupts language

One listener wanted to know “more about the empty language” employed by the technosphere as I mentioned in my talk.

Just as the technosphere has replaced bird song with digital beeps, the technological imperium has increasingly replaced meaningful language with techno-speak.

A world dominated by reductionist and mechanistic thinking has produced its own Lego-like language completely divorced from natural reality. Decades ago the German linguist Uwe Poerksen called this new evolving language “plastic words.”

They include words like environment, process, organization, structure, development, identity and care. All can be effortlessly combined to convey bullshit: “the development of the environment with care is a process.” This modular language creates its own tyranny of meaningless expression.

Experts, technicians, politicians and futurists employ this plastic language to baffle, confuse and obfuscate. Poerksen notes these words are pregnant with money, lack historical dimension and refer to no local or special place. This language, divorced from all context, does to thinking what a bulldozer does to a forest. It flattens it.

Hope is not a pill you take in the morning or a crumb left at the table

Last but not least many listeners asked how do we maintain hope in the face of so many emergencies, abuses and appalling political leadership?

“How do you get up in the morning?” typically asked one.

This frequent question confounds and puzzles me. My humble job as a journalist is not to peddle soft soap or cheerlead for ideologies and futurists. My job is not to manufacture hope let alone consent. I have achieved something small if I can help readers differentiate between what matters and what doesn’t and highlight the power implications in between.

Yet in a technological society most everyone seeks an easy, canned message pointing to a bright future. I cannot in good conscience tell anyone, let alone my own children, that the days ahead will be happy or bright ones. To everything there is a season and our civilization has now, step by step, entered a season of discord and chaos. History moves like life itself in a cycle of birth, life, death and renewal.

Jacques Ellul, who wrote prophetically about the inherent dangers of technological society, also addressed the need for authentic hope because it does not reside in the technosphere. The technosphere, a sterile prison, may promise to design your future with plastic words, but what it really offers is the antithesis of hope.

Ellul, a radical Christian, wrote deeply much about hope and freedom. He noted that hope never abandons people who care about a place and are rooted outside the technosphere for they will always know what to do by their real connection to real things. He adds that hope cannot be divorced from the virtues of faith and love. Like all virtues they must be quietly lived, not daily signalled.

For Ellul, hope was a combination of vigilant expectation, prayer and realism. “Freedom is the ethical expression of the person who hopes,” he once wrote.

Hope is living fully in a place you care about and acting against the abuse of power every day. Hope, in other words, is using every initiative “to restore the possibility of people making their own decisions.”

P.S. This talk inspired me to make my first donation to a news source, The Tyee, for which in 2010 Nikiforuk became its first writer in residence.

144 thoughts on “By Andrew Nikiforuk: Energy Dead-Ends: Green Lies, Climate Change and Chaotic Transitions”

  2. Yesterday I was going through some old files, and found a folder where I had printed out a number of essays by Jan Lundberg circa 2005. Lundberg was one of the early peak oil activists, and all the more interesting because of his lineage with the Lundberg Survey, a very noted service and family business that reports gasoline price trends. Lundberg broke from the family business and started his activism such as The Depavers, Culture Change, and the Sail Transport Network.

    One of the essays I found was called The Machine We are Part of Hums a Death Song. I’m surprised to find it still online.
    https://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=2

    Wanting to cull my printed files, I wrote a series of haikus to summarize the essay (using mostly his words). Forgive me if not every line has the exactly correct number of syllables.

    Our noisy culture
    mechanized population
    The din of the petrocity

    The city consumes
    Consumes land like a cancer
    Corporate colonialism

    Please do not deny
    Forgotten primitive dreams –
    Return to nature

    The city hums in
    A dull and smoggy roar
    Off the human charts

    As little machines
    with machine tendencies –
    addiction to hum

    Inhumane demand
    to perform as a machine –
    A tender being needing love

    Know the humming machine
    Start dismantling the structures
    A non-machine approach

    Humming its death song
    We should recognize it and
    not cover our ears

    Non-cooperation
    Monkey-wrenching the machine
    Non-participation

    Will hoist corporate
    Globalism on its own petard
    It’s own undoing.

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  4. Excellent interview of Dr. Peter McCullough by Dr. Bret Weinstein today reviewing the latest data on health risks of our covid strategy.

    I’m leaning in to the mass psychosis explanation by Mattias Desmet via Chris Martenson. Nothing else explains the wide spread insanity, including that in my friends and family.

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    1. Meanwhile, Permaculture pioneer David Holmgren gets vilified by Permies because he participated in a protest against vaccine mandates.
      View at Medium.com

      My take on Holmgren:
      Who’s my favorite “public intellectual”? David Holmgren. I find myself constantly disappointed with the public perception of permaculture as a form of gardening or horticulture. Rather, it is a design science with a valuable set of ethics and principles.

      I think I would nominate David Holmgren’s essay linked below, written late September, 2021, as the most important essay of the year. It’s long – he touches on history, science, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, economics, etc.

      In short, he creates a very large and important context within which to ultimately discuss the pandemic, and the various responses. He has a strong opinion, yet he’s able to steelman various perspectives, offers his opinions with humility, and embraces uncertainty. Options are provided for reading the essay, listening to David Holmgren read it, or both.

      I am doubly vaccinated, but I stand with Holmgren and support his “appeal to our pluralism of celebrating the diversity of action.”

      According to David Holmgren:
      “I think it is important to see the Brown Tech world as a logical unfolding of energy descent systemic forces breaking down the techno-industrial world, rather than a great battle of benign wisdom over recalcitrant and subversive resistors, or alternatively, an evil plan for world domination that must be resisted at every turn. For an increasingly alienated, perhaps minority of permies, the emergent Brown Tech world is experienced as a mad undemocratic process taking away our rights and freedoms and imposing controls over previously private lives, possibly driven by shadowy elites striving for world domination or worse. This of course leads to association with people of very different values and backgrounds.”

      “Whatever the historical significance of these times, maintaining connections across differences of understanding and action within permaculture and kindred networks will strengthen us all in dealing with the unfolding challenges and opportunities of the energy descent future.”
      https://holmgren.com.au/writing/pandemic-brooding-brown-tech-in-new-clothing/

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  6. Great find Rob.
    Going to check out a jersey cow with a bull calf tomorrow. They’re opening the borders in a week and Tassie is about to find out what living with corona is all about. The states two year corona free status is coming to an end. It’s all about the tourist dollars.
    We bought a 5ft rotary hoe for behind the tractor too. Hopefully gets here before Christmas. I really want to keep having to go to the shops to a minimum, especially next winter. Like you we’re ratcheting it up to defcon 1

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    2. what’s ‘defcon1’ please!
      btw, I’m on small farm with Lynchlineback heritage cattle: a hardy dual purpose pioneer breed suitable to grass. Love those cows!

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  7. Received some bad news yesterday. A good friend who is a retired soil scientist and university professor died in his chair while watching television. He helped many young farmers here get started and was involved in many experiments to improve the sustainability of this region.

    He was a interesting person with interesting projects. His most recent passion was to create a quality homemade scotch using only locally grown barley and locally harvested peat for smoking it. I helped him with a recent batch grinding the grain and mashing it.

    My take away was that scotch is too finicky with too many variables and complexity for my taste. If I ever take up distilling I will focus on simple vodka.

    Rest in peace friend.

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  8. Very interesting! How to restore old growth forest? But I understand what you mean. The world is full and not so easy to find land and go off-grid or power down(i used this phrase in my thesis >10 years ago). Here in Austria we have the Alpes and so many ultra rich want to life in this ‘sound of music’ setting, so it is impossible for common people to buy wood or pasture. I uploaded a podcast from Orlov about shrinking the Technosphere, maybe helpful.

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    2. I am on the fence of buying some books by Orlov for quite a long time. Most of the topics he touches in his books are very interesting (collapse, alternative models of living, influence of technology). Maybe it is time now to get a few of them.

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  9. Way too much hopium/wishium by Mr. Nikiforuk.
    The “We” he talks about as in “We” have to do this or that should refer to those who hold the power of extraction and production in this supersystem. And this “We” is the planetary fossil fuel corporate/state monolith, and it is not going to produce “degrowth,” “relocalize,” “managed energy descent” or whatever retro-engineering of spacetime fantasy gives comfort to the concerned few.
    If a couple of passengers jumped off the Titanic and rowed for home before it sailed into the Arctic, is their fate or the fate of the remaining passengers of more consequence?

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    1. Yes, the “Global We” really is a bad writing habit, but unfortunately it is very, very common. It blurs responsibilities and the roles of different actors. People should think much more carefully about who they really mean and who does what.

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      1. Good point. I brought this up in a previous comment thread and it has become another “plastic” phrase as alluded to in Andrew’s talk itself. I think its blithe usage reveals that we are pretty much now identity-less; folded in to a global monolithic abstraction. It has suffered the same abuses as the word “community”, which is now a word that refers to any grouping of people with common strategic interests irrespective of locale, habitat, territory or limits of any kind. The “investment community”, for example…and scores of others. We have become untethered space satellites and aliens in our own world.

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    2. I think it’s wrong to place all of the blame on the state and corporations. It’s true that the state and corporations are working hard to manipulate the brains of citizens so they consume more. But citizens can overpower the state and corporations if they decide to lead a lower energy lifestyle and have fewer children. But first citizens must become aware of our overshoot predicament and that requires them to breakthrough their genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities. Hence my focus on Varki’s MORT.

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      1. Citizens will never “overpower the state and corporations” based on some deeply considered moral choice about their “lower energy lifestyle.” What mechanism in social reality would impel them to discard all the fossil fuel products in their lives? That self-abnegation hasn’t happened in the last 50 years, it won’t happen in the next 50 years, primarily because it can’t happen.
        Perhaps you should get off this Varki MORT theory and focus more on our observable social reality. If you want to shift the “blame” away from corporations, who or what do you think makes the profits in our world? Who runs the machines, owns the courts, pays the politicians, makes the gargantuan profits? Surely not the masses such as you or I.

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        1. Here are the 10 most powerful companies in the world:
          https://companiesmarketcap.com/

          Notice that not one of them (with the exception of Saudi Aramco) makes non-discretionary products or services. If citizens don’t like the power and wealth of Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc. they can stop using their services and survive quite nicely without them. In fact, their mental health will probably improve.

          This site exists to spread awareness of a new scientific theory, that if correct, explains why only one species has evolved on this planet with sufficient intelligence to exploit fossil energy, and why that species despite having plenty of intelligence to know better, is driving itself off a cliff at high speed, and harming many other species in the process.

          If you are aware of evidence that slays the Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory, please present it, and I will pass it on to Dr. Ajit Varki. We are both looking for evidence that the theory is wrong. If he agrees that your evidence kills his theory, I will shut this site down.

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          1. It might be interesting to ask what kind of evidence that could be. What would we have to find, empirically, to disprove the MORT theory? That may show even more clearly how strong the theory is, and why.

            The theory also explains, I would say, what we see from the MSM. I do not think that they spread propaganda, with propaganda being carefully orchestrated messages of doctored or fabricated content coming from the top down. Rather, their journalists and writers just believe what they say and write, mostly out of denial and energy blindness and wishful thinking. I have been in contact with journalists recently and they sincerely believe in all these stories of a smooth transition to REs, energy to cheap to meter from solar panels, hydrogen as the new oil (seriously), etc. The extent of reality denial is mind-boggling, but it is not propaganda, it is genuine. Because of MORT.

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            1. Varki is much smarter than me and could provide a much better list of possible evidence that would kill MORT but here are a few candidates:
              1) Identify a single one of our thousands of religions that does not have at its core a belief in life after death.
              2) Identify another species without an extended theory of mind that believes in life after death.
              3) Identify another species with an extended theory of mind that does not believe in god.
              4) Find evidence that belief in life after death existed in hominids before the emergence of behaviorally modern humans.
              5) Find a different mechanism for denying mortality that does not result in a more general denial of all unpleasant realities.

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          2. If you want to minimize the power of the world’s transnational corporations, you can call them whatever term you wish – “non-discretionary” being one of them – but that doesn’t put a dent in their fossil-fuel based profits. I’m not on Facebook and use Duck-Duck-Go – do you think Facebook or Google loses one minute’s sleep over my “non-discretionary” moves?
            Humanity is imperiled by collective sociology that results in our fossil fueled supersystem of economic inequality, militarism, gun violence, nuclear brinksmanship, staggering poverty, over-population, top soil erosion, and countless other collective crisis, and will not be altered by inconsequential individual self-abnegation.
            The best current book about this appears to be John Gowdy’s “Ultrasocial,” though it appears that Gowdy does propose, despite the brilliant force and organization of his critique, some hopium windup about how this endemic organization of the human collective can be changed to save the day. Craig Dilworth’s “Too Smart for our Own Good” and Nicholas P. Money’s “The Selfish Ape” and Christopher Clugston’s “Blip” are far better works that Varki’s in documenting our human predicament.
            You and Varki are free to use your time and fossil fuel resources in whatever manner you wish, but that doesn’t mean that you win the intellectual argument.
            “Denial” is just one element of our social reality. So is the need to make a buck, the allure of fossil fuel energy, the desire to find entertainment, the happiness of a warm gun.

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            1. Thanks for the tip on Gowdy’s book, it looks promising and I’ll check it out.

              Most people that study the root causes of our overshoot predicament agree with you that denial is just one of many human behaviors in play. The best work I’m aware of on cataloging the dozens of these behaviors is by Nate Hagens.

              I agree with you and Nate that there are many contributing behaviors, but I believe our tendency to deny unpleasant realities is different in that it is a keystone behavior without which our other destructive behaviors could be overridden by our intelligence.

              Varki may not agree with me, but I think another way to express MORT is to say high intelligence cannot exist in the universe without denial, because otherwise intelligence could override the more primitive and powerful behaviors that result from a gene’s drive to replicate via the Maximum Power Principle (MPP).

              I think if you are an overshoot aware person that wants to try to improve our fate (like me) then addressing MORT must be front and center in any useful strategy. Without first confronting our tendency to deny unpleasant realities, nothing can or will change in any positive direction.

              If, on the other hand, you are an overshoot aware person that believes we have no collective free will over our predicament and we should just enjoy the ride, then MORT can simply be viewed as an interesting theory that explains other strange things about our species, like for example, why are humans the only species on this planet with religions?

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              1. Thanks for the highly informed note, which I agree with in most all respects.

                The dangerous role that cooperation has played in our march towards overshoot and collapse is brilliantly explained in Richard Wrangham’s 2019 book “The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution.”

                Robert Sapolsky in his fairly wide-ranging book “Behave” does a good demolition of the “free will” myth, either individual or collective form – and he of course takes aim near or around the religion target in the same book.

                As a macro-futilist, I tend to see Nate Hagens as given to excellent critiques with the unfortunate but almost obligatory need for hopium wind-up happy talk at the end of his analyses.

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                1. Thanks, I read Wrangham’s book, loved it, and wrote a tongue in cheek review explaining how Wrangham’s theory nicely complements Varki’s MORT theory here:
                  https://un-denial.com/2019/05/07/on-the-emergence-of-behaviorally-modern-humans-the-denial-to-domesticate-dtd-theory/

                  I also loved Sapolsky’s Behave and read it 3 times. Sapolsky has a great mind filled with useful data and insights about human behavior, and yet I do not recall him ever discussing the issue that matters most: human overshoot and our denial of it. I searched his book Behave and he did not once mention “climate change”, nor “overshoot”, nor “over population”, nor “resource depletion”. Sapolsky’s not yet on my list of polymaths in denial because I’ve never heard him deny these issues, but I’m also not sure he’s aware of them, which is almost as bad for someone as smart as he is.
                  https://un-denial.com/2018/09/03/on-famous-polymaths/

                  I agree with your comments about Nate Hagens. I’m a long time fan of his work, but I think he makes a huge mistake by never discussing the only thing that would definitely reduce future suffering: population reduction. I cut him a lot slack on his hopium because he makes his living from teaching young people so how could his message be otherwise?
                  https://un-denial.com/?s=nate+hagens

                  P.S. Yet another way to think about MORT is that it makes humans behave as bacteria despite having amazing intelligence.

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  10. I did not watch the talk (until now) but based on the cited passages it seems like Nikiforuk is a wise guy. As I have read recently quite a bit from Ivan Illich and Jacques Ellul , it pleases me, that their thoughts are still or again present today.

    I am still struggling how to get through this collapse. After nearly 40 years of being a consumer with strong collecting addictions, it is really hard to do a transformation, even though I have the feeling that a breakthrough is right behind the corner.

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    1. Hi SecretFace,

      Collecting:

      How about collecting and sharing heirloom seeds?
      Heirloom seeds can be re-planted year after year.
      They grow true, and, over time, can optimize themselves for local conditions.
      Here’s one of many organizations you could work with:
      https://www.seedsavers.org/

      These are really good folks:

      https://www.southernexposure.com/links/

      https://civileats.com/2020/04/21/gardening-is-important-but-seed-saving-is-crucial/

      Collect and share human-powered tools.

      Scrounge for garden, woodworking and other tools.
      Clean, lube, sharpen, repair and share them.
      Start a Tool Library.

      Thanks and good health, Weogo

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      2. Thank you for the recommendations. I will take a look at them. Seed saving first came to my view due to Vananda Shiva discussing this for India.

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    2. You might also be interested in collecting books about the ‘old’ ways of doing things. Survivor Library could be a good place to start 🙂 Useful antiques as well, e.g. a manual foot pedal singer sewing machine, so you don’t have to sew by hand without electricity

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      1. I also thought about this idea, as I have some books by John Seymour and others touching these topics on my way too long wishlist for quite some time.

        When I was younger, I often visited an open air museum with my familiy, where they had built some kind of medieval village. In each house, they showed olc methods for crafting. I was very impressed, what we were already able to do hundreds of years ago. Today, I am even more impressed, since I know, that everything was done without fossil fuels.
        A few years ago, I visited this museum again with my own familiy. In one of the buildings, I had a very interesting conversation with a blacksmith about arts and crafts. Unfortunately, I did not follow up on this and am still stuck in a caustic office job. At least, I can work from home during these crazy times.

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      1. David Cayley used to be a producer on CBC Ideas before it became the vacuous handmaiden of neo-liberal shitfuckery and a morass of approved identity politics narrative. Check out the colossal 22-part series he did back in the nineties called “How To Think About Science”.
        https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-to-think-about-science-part-1-24-1.2953274

        as well as his recent, deep musings on the Covid debacle:
        https://www.davidcayley.com/blog/category/Pandemic+2

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        1. Thanks. That’s a long essay by Cayley but I’ll try to read it.

          I listened to CBC Ideas every week for probably 20 years. It was once excellent. No more. I quit everything from the CBC many years ago when they became stupid. And I will never forgive them for cancelling The Journal.

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          1. Yes, I’ve always been impressed with Berry’s intellectual competence and moral grounding. In his Opus work – The Unsettling of America – written in 1977, he has a chapter (6) entitled “The Use Of Energy”. In it, he elucidates a rare (for the time, never mind ours!) comprehension of thermodynamic realities. To my mind, he presages all the big names we all turn to presently for understanding.

            Download or read the chapter in question (starts page 85). I’ll leave the direct link to .pdf version of the book , though I implore anyone interested to read it from a tangible book!
            http://library.lol/main/6DB4249820DA45D787B9144CA57BEB2A

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  11. Here is a modest political proposal:

    Given that one certainty for the future is that there will be more people in desperate need and less ability for any government to take care of them it seems to me that it is in everyone’s interest to encourage resiliency and self sufficiency.

    One obstacle to living off grid is the necessity to pay taxes in most areas, so I propose: (1) Any property owner living off grid and with no children in school pays no property taxes, and (2) anyone farming and selling food or timber from property following regenerative agriculture practices pays neither property, sales nor income taxes.

    If we’re still concerned with funding such measures at this juncture a few novel suggestions could be to offset these shortfalls with (1) Consumption taxes on houses above certain size thresholds, increased taxes on certain categories of foods (i.e. those transported very long distances or highly processed).

    Anything we try to improve our collapse predicament is going to leave somebody poorer, broke or homeless. I think one way to soften the blow is to subsidize those lifestyles which may be possible and advantageous in the future.

    Still doesn’t address population at all. But it would be nice to offer a way out – and this appeals to me because I think those who would take such a course as offered above are those most likely to survive or lead the way in the future. And at the very least, it removes a potential burden, offers possible food aid, and offers an ethical chance to let people out of the system.

    Instead, it seems to me the techo-system in its death throes is grabbing people ever harder.

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    1. When I have to talk about climate these days I try to stick to my area of expertise. Linked below is what HVAC engineers call heating/cooling degree days – the number of days above/below given temperatures. This is used in various kinds of load calculations to evaluate HVAC system options and life-cycle energy use.

      The broad trend is pretty clear to me. I do acknowledge it is a short time line. Much of other climate science is beyond my pain threshold to grapple with and I can neither criticize or defend much beyond relying on the consensus of experts.

      https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heating-and-cooling-degree-days

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    2. I should have been clearer: One of the reasons I like the HDD data is it is in terms of volume of total time above/below trend, not about outliers. It’s even clearer to me than talking about averages/medians. I’m as shocked as most at much of the outlying weather data, but have found it too hard to sort through those who can point to contrary outlying data (such as those who believe sunspot cycles have more to do than atmospheric carbon and we are entering a new ice age, etc.).

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      1. Thanks. It is complicated and I agree the medians are moving slowly but it is the outliers that do the damage. I believe what my eyes see and we had 2 big outliers this year in British Columbia. The news says there are also many outliers elsewhere on the planet. I think this is what we should expect when more energy is injected into the climate system.

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      1. I have recommended this film many times to people. It’s full of laughs, doesn’t dwell on anything and isn’t too long. I fear human civilisation may not quite make it to literal “garbage avalanche” stage however.

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      2. I like this movie. Based on my own experience, it seems like a realistic outlook on the future of humanity. I would only say that we could reach this level of idiocy far sooner than 2500, maybe we are already there.

        My mother was a school teacher in the 1960s and again from the 1990s until around 2010. The teaching material from the 1960s was too hard for the pupils in the same grade in the 1990s. She also told me that her classes were becoming more stupid from the 1990s onwards. In addition, the pupils were becoming much clumsier over time. They were not able to control their bodies very well and could not use simple tools like scissors.

        When I look back at my education, I was shocked at high school and university level of the education system on how stupid the teachers and pupils were. At high school level, we had some exams where the results were that bad that the teacher had to talk with the school principal. This always led to an inflation of the grades, so the pupils were rewarded for being stupid and the teacher for not getting the curriculum into the pupils.

        When I went to university, I thought that this stupid behaviour would stop, but I was totally wrong. The grade inflation just continued, if the grades were too bad. When I made my PhD, I was accompanied by incredibly stupid people doing the same, which totally devalead this acadademic degree. They made it due to pure perseverance, not any scientific talent at all.

        Maybe this is related to the fact that we can survive today without doing anything for it except eating. We don´t have to put in any effort, so why should we do it. This could be fatal in the future.

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        1. Thank you. I have observed the same in the universities here. It took 5 years and 11 very difficult mathematics courses to get my B.A.Sc. in electrical engineering. Today it’s 4 years and 3 or 4 mathematics courses. We didn’t need all of the math training but it was used to weed out the weak people.

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          1. Another example from school: my grandfather had to write dictations in Latin in school. When I started learning foreign languages it was already forbidden to do that. During my school time, it even was forbidden for my native language. Maybe writing is just not that important anymore…

            When I started my studies at the university, there were already preparatory courses offered for new students, as the universities had discovered that the students were not ready for university.

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      1. Very good thanks. I’ve always admired the Amish. I wish it was possible to have a stable community like them without a religion backing it. That’s probably a good clue why religions emerged with behaviorally modern humans.

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        1. I must admit that I shared the Hollywood view of the Amish as some kind of backward-looking hillbillies for a long time, as I did not understand why you should reject modern technology and the associated ways of living. As I became older (and hopefully wiser), I did look more and more behind the curtain of our technological society to see the massive problems coming with it. The more I looked behind the curtain, to more feasible the way of living of the Amish looked. Nowadays I would also count me as an admirer of the Amish, having at least briefly thought about joining their ranks.

          Religion is also one thing I was thinking a lot about lately, reading quite a few Christian apologetics (Chesterton, C.S. Lewis). I still think that the framework of Christianity could serve as a basis for stable communities, as the Amish are one of the best examples for it. Unfortunately, Christianity in the western countries is strongly attached to the power abuses of the church, so I am not sure whether it can or should make a comeback here.

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          1. I totally get why many people find great comfort and joy from religion, and why religions have been a powerful force for the entire duration of our species. My problem is that I have a defective brain that is unable to believe something that is not true, regardless of how pleasurable it is.

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  14. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick today on vitamin supplements.

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/12/06/vitamins-once-more-mainly-b-vitamins-and-homocysteine-with-a-special-mention-for-magnesium/

    ‘Furthermore, because of chronic diseases, medications, decreases in food crop magnesium contents, and the availability of refined and processed foods, the vast majority of people in modern societies are at risk for magnesium deficiency.’ 4

    Have you ever heard of any of this? Did you even know you had magnesium in your body – or that it did anything important? I suspect not. However, from the same paper:

    ‘…magnesium deficiency can lead to serious morbidity and mortality and has been implicated in multiple cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrhythmia, atherosclerosis, dyslipidaemia and diabetes. Unfortunately, the western diet is often low in magnesium due to the refining and processing of foods, and hypomagnesaemia is often underdiagnosed in hospitalised patients.’4

    My advice, take a supplement. Especially if you live in an area with ‘soft’ water – which generally means not many minerals. Doubly especially if you have atrial fibrillation. It might just go away. How much do you need to take? Around 400mg a day is fine.

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  15. Rob,
    Liked the talk by Nikiforuk. You are right that he hits all the right points. However, I like your summation of our predicament better.
    A great post by Ugo Bardic today (some of his posts lately have left me in a quandary). Today he discussed propaganda. Basically his premise is that Western media is all propaganda now (captured by government and corporations/tech) and has ceased to be free. He posits that citizens of the former Soviet Union are far more immune to propaganda’s effects than people in the west that still hold to the belief that our media not spewing propaganda.
    AJ

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        1. I haven’t read him for a while but I recall that one day he’d be talking about the dangers of fossil energy depletion and the next how life will be good after energy transition. Have things changed? What is the essence of his message these days?

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          1. I didn´t read any positive things about the enery transition from him, since I started reading his blog. Though, I must admit that I only encountered his blog a few months ago. He currently writes about a lot of social issues related to collapse of society/civilization (e.g. exterminating parts of the people to redistribute the remaining wealth). I find his blog posts most of the time very interesting and thought provoking. Only the guest contributions seem to be very hit or miss for me.

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    1. I found it really “interesting” that they still have a total of 55 years to release their safety data. Who will care about this issue in 55 years from now? Why does it take so long to release the data? This smells like delaying tactics.

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  17. Clever.

    For the purpose of this thread, I’ve created a new word to describe the vax zealous who want to mandate everything and jab everyone, by force if necessary: Vaxism.

    This is not to be confused with generally pro-vax or ambivalently vaccinated people.

    I think the parallels between Vaxism and Christianity are much starker and more direct than comparisons between Christianity and wokeness.

    For example…

    Vaxists believe Covid is sin leading to death, and the Vax is the savior. “There is no other name by which you may be saved.” Not ivermectin, not natural immunity, not your low risk factors up to and including the fact that you’re five years old. Vax alone = Solo Cristo.

    Any rejection of the vax is a rejection of salvation, but it’s bigger than you. Moral implications are severe. The vax was free. A gift. How can you reject the gift FREELY OFFERED for the salvation of mankind? Do you hate humanity? Are you selfish? Stupid? A fool?

    The vaxxed are going to Heaven. By Heaven, I mean Hamilton on Broadway. Unvaxxed will be cast out into the outer darkness of Manhattan where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

    Get vaccinated = Get Saved. If you’re vaxxed and you’re not evangelizing, are you REALLY pro-science? It’s dubious. Only the evangelical vaxxed are demonstrating their devotion and love for humankind. I’ve never seen you tweet “Get Vaccinated!” so I’m not sure about you.

    Until everyone is vaxxed, the Science cannot set the captives free and restore the world to its former pre-fall-of-mankind state. So if you’re not getting vaxxed, you’re holding us all back from the coming millennial utopia of our pandemic free destiny.

    Public announcements are required. It’s like baptism: you need to publicly confess with your mouth that Vax is the Lord. It’s not enough to privately believe it.

    Anti-vaxx = Antichrist. Ultimately, if you doubt or reject the vax, you’re going to get what’s coming to you. By faith you are saved: it is a gift from Science. But if you cause others to DOUBT the vax, woe to you! You’re a heretic and worthy of curses! Burn the witch!

    This entire belief system for the vax zealots is just Christianity.

    To recap: Vax = Jesus, God = Science, Virus = Sin, Vaxxed = Saved, and unvaxxed = the damned.

    Merry Vaxmas and God boost us, every one!

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  18. Excellent talk said in a no BS way. At the end when students asked questions I got the feeling that many were lost with this information, particularly when they found out this is a predicament not a problem. Victoria is a more affluent city and you can be sure young people have been well educated in the virtues of EV’s, solar panels and wind turbines. Many Victoria parents bring their kids up to believe that a university education is the key to their future. No one understands that next 50 years will look nothing like the past 50 years.

    Keep in mind this is the city that is funding shore plug in power for cruise ships as a way to reduce pollution and GHG’s. No talk about cancelling such a high emitting/consuming industry.

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  19. Umm, half is kind of a big number. What the f**k have you been doing for the last 10 years, besides denying reality?

    Half of All Global Financial Assets Need Tighter Rules, Bank of International Settlements Says

    Investment activity that takes place outside the banking system requires a new, broad-based set of global regulations to tackle inherent instability, the Bank for International Settlements said.

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2021/12/08/8th-december-2021-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/

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  20. Kurt Cobb today with an excellent review of David Hughes’ latest work, and why we should believe him.

    http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2021/12/us-shale-oil-and-gas-forecast-too-good.html

    Earth scientist David Hughes—who is out with a new skeptical report on the future of U.S. shale oil and gas—has two very important things in common with Michael Burry. Burry is the investor made famous by The Big Short, the book that was later turned into a movie of the same name about the 2008 housing crash.

    Both men made calls that contradicted an almost unanimous consensus, and both did so after dogged, painstaking research.

    First, let’s look at the latest from Hughes, an update on the U.S. shale oil and gas industry entitled “Shale Reality Check 2021.” Then, we’ll return to his previous prescient call.

    “Shale Reality Check 2021” seriously undermines rosy long-term forecasts made by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) for U.S. oil and natural gas from shale deposits. This matters because the EIA’s forecasts are counting on shale for 69 percent of all U.S. oil production from 2020 to 2050 and 77 percent of all U.S. natural gas production in the same period. And, it matters to the world because between 2008 and 2018, growth in U.S. oil production accounted for 73 percent of the entire growth in global supplies. (Oil from shale deposits is properly known as “tight oil,” a type of oil also found in other kinds of rock. Natural gas from shale deposits is typically referred to as “shale gas.”)

    Hughes’ conclusions are based on commercially available drilling and production data. Here are his overall findings:

    1) Of the 13 major plays he evaluated, Hughes rates the EIA’s production forecast for five as “moderately optimistic,” five as “highly optimistic,” and three as “extremely optimistic.” The EIA forecast for the Wolfcamp Play, the largest tight oil play, is rated as “highly optimistic.” The forecast for the Marcellus Play, the largest shale gas play, is rated as “moderately optimistic.”

    2) Future production will likely be much lower than the EIA projects—particularly in the latter part of the 2020 to 2050 period as sweet spots responsible for most of today’s production become saturated with wells.

    3) U.S. energy policy and planning in such key industries as transportation, utilities and chemicals are based on the EIA’s excessively optimistic forecasts. Since oil and gas constitute 71 percent of the current U.S. energy supply, if future oil and gas production disappoints, as Hughes expects, look for serious problems.

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  21. A continuation of the Idiocracy theme with a good comment by CTG @ OFW.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/12/03/is-it-possible-that-the-world-is-approaching-end-times/comment-page-7/#comment-331886

    The Rise of Moronism. An Evolutionary Adaptation to Energy-Abundant Living

    This is a long post. It can be an article. I will follow up with another long comment where I try to complement Desmet’s mass formation. Please read it in its entirety if you have time. If not, this is the summary:

    Imagine if you captured some non-dangerous wild animals like raccoons or some other small animals. Rear the animal and let them breed. Take the offspring away after weaning and keep them close to humans. Repeat for another generation or two. After two or three generations, the animal lost some of its ability to survive in the wild. They are very dependent on humans for everything and will think that humans are the perfect host. I am feeding stray cats around my house. Initially, they were wary but after some time, they became close and the next few generations of cats think I am their God. Domesticated. Stupid as well because they don’t have to worry about the next meal. Laze around and wait for me to feed them. Sometimes, even laying down in the middle of the road (the road has very little traffic). A few year ago, before I feed them, the cats do not sleep in the middle of the road, and they are more active and aware that they may not be able to have their next meal. The cats trusted me because I am their source of food. The second and subsequent generation of cats, I doubt they have the capability to hunt for their own food.

    Familiar? I am the “energy abundance” and they are dumbing down.

    “Moronism”, if ever there is this word is a fast-track evolutionary adaptation to energy abundance. Energy abundance leads to excessive convenience, simplification, detachment from reality which eventually leads to degeneration of critical thinking. For those who are older and know what a rotary telephone is, they knew the need to remember phone numbers, otherwise, they have to use a book to write down the phone number. There was a reason to select a phone number that is easy to remember. Right now, with an electronic phone, is there is a need to memorize phone numbers?

    We used to walk to shops and carry the bags back, cycling around the neighbourhood, chasing after small animals, have fun in the sun and making and playing with simple toys. We were not that rich, but we had a fulfilling childhood. We were not that rich because we do not have access to abundant energy and debts. We used our brains to think. We don’t rely on others. We were cheated by others, bullied by students but we learned from it. Right now, with abundant energy and debt, we drive to the shop even if it is just 1km away. Everything is freshly cleaned, packed and all we need to do is to put in into oven or cook it. We don’t need messy kitchens. With all the fanciful electronic gadgets, kitchen appliances, high tech toys, our needs and desires rise accordingly. Desire. That is the one word you need to remember. I will talk more about it in my next comment.

    As children or even college student, we need to go to the library, thumb through the encyclopaedias, books, papers, magazine, microfilm and ask the librarian for help on how to get a book from another library. Now, turn on the power and information are instantaneously available on the internet. Very easy. Too easy and too convenient. Remember that all these high-tech equipment require tremendous amount of energy and debts to manufacture and maintain. This is not the natural environment for humans.

    Dumbing down started in the 1960s when appliances and gadgets that saves effort and time were mass produced. Do we ever hear any of our grandparents going to the gym to work out and stay fit? They are already fit because of their lifestyle. They have strong bodies, better mental acuity when they were younger. They used their hands, feet and brain. There are many studies linking mental fitness to physical fitness. They can remember their bank account numbers, bus routes and at least 10 phone numbers of relatives and friends. They mark on calendars important dates, and they keep tracked of many things in their brain. Trickling down the generational ladder, comes to our parents and then our children and their children. There is a distinctive “mental and physical laziness” between generations. Some people say it is “generation gap” but as stated in my second paragraph, it is the dumbing down.

    Trust
    =====
    With each passing generation, as there is no external evolutionary stress (war, starvation, disease), the trust on the government gets higher and higher until a point where the latest generation will say “Why would the government want to harm us”? This is exactly the same as the stray cats would say “Why would I harm them since I am giving them food twice a day for 4 years”. They trusted me and they got closer and closer to me while I pour kibbles for them on the road. I have seen one “new” stray cat which came to me just recently. He was naturally suspicious as he is a new stray. After 2 months of feeding, he is now more and more comfortable with me. See the similarity?

    Laziness
    ========
    With each gadget, app or appliance, we get lazier and lazier. We used to go out to buy our food and with apps, we get them delivered. I was jokingly telling people that inside Star Trek, there is this replicator where one can ask for food or anything, the replicator can build it molecule by molecule. Isn’t this the same as a computer where you log on to buy stuff and have them delivered to you instead of building one molecule at a time.
    Laziness includes “intellectual laziness”. After 2-3 generations of easy living due to energy abundance, people do not want to think. They just want to do the easiest job with the high pay. Everything is easily available and with Google, whatever information you want, it is available on the first page and you don’t even have to click on it to see what it is. News is fed in; calculations are made for you (tell me which of the younger kids are good at mental calculations?) and so on and so forth. With a higher trust that no one is going to harm you, with everything so easy, convenient, is there even a need to use your brain anymore. Like the cats, if I were to continue feeding them twice a day, the third or fourth generation cats will not know how to hunt. They have lost their ability to do what a normal cat should do. If I am an evil person, all I need is to put poison in the food and the entire population dies.

    I believe there are studies being made that you need to use your brain so that you are mentally fit. See https://www.brainhq.com/news/use-it-or-lose-it-the-principles-of-brain-plasticity/ So, energy abundance is not helping out.

    So, how about media and television? They are brainwashing tools. Yes they are but to me, they are not the ultimate ones. I know people who don’t watch TV but are brainwashed as well on the COVID thing. I will discuss this in the next segment. The people who are strong believer of vaccines, they do know that there are harmful effects and there is cognitive dissonance but like the cats, they would like to believe that I am not evil and will not harm them.

    It is the abundance of energy and debt that caused people to lose their mental capability and thus are easily “brain washed”.

    What I have written also explains in Asia (I am not sure about the western world) where there are professionals or highly educated people falling for love scams, internet scams, Nigerian scams or get-rich-quick scams. It is like “What the f678 are they thinking?” Well, those are the same people who will line up to take the fifth booster.

    Desire – I mentioned it above. I will talk about it in the next comment which is another long comment.

    Watch out for the next long comment where I will complement what I see with Desmet’s mass formation

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    1. CTG continues on Desmet’s Mass Formation (aka mass psychosis) and I observe that many points he makes are explained by Varki’s MORT.

      https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/12/03/is-it-possible-that-the-world-is-approaching-end-times/comment-page-8/#comment-331942

      Expanding Desmet’s Mass Formation

      This is the second part of the long write up. Please read the first part – The Rise of Moronism first and then this one.

      In the first part, I touched about how abundant energy caused humans to be totally detached from reality and in the process, dumbing down. In this second part, I will expand on Desmet’s mass formation while adding in some interesting points that are hidden from the Western world.

      What happened in our society was previewed in the 1960s. Many years ago, in previous articles of OFW, Calhoun’s Rat Experiment was discussed but at that point of time, what happened in the rat experiment was not very clear cut. Now, the correlation is almost 100%. In the rat experiment, at the terminal phase, the rats do not care for the young, fight among each other, the males love grooming and did not participant in normal rat social behaviour. What is happening in the rat experiment is what we are seeing now. Left/right, vaccinated/unvaccinated, mothers enrolling babies for vaccination trials, wokeism, etc. Here is the link : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/

      This is the model for humans, and we were foretold 60 years ago. Referring to my previous writeup, the 1960s was the time when abundant energy came into our live and we just blew through the entire cache of high-density energy (petroleum) with no regards the future.
      I would like to add in something about Desmet’s “mass formation”. I agree with him, but I believe what he said is just part of a bigger picture. I see it as “developed country-centric” or “western-centric”. There are many factors that come in to play. I have experience in both Western and Eastern culture, religion, thoughts, ethics and mentality. So, let me try to add in something. Feel free to debate on this topic. It is just not possible for me, in my reality here to share this out easily to anyone. So, my virtual friends here in OFW are my only friends who have the same wavelength.

      I find that the underlying root cause for mass formation, which is true across all cultures, religions, family backgrounds, education, family background, values, etc – THEY DON’T THINK. I have covered this in my previous article and the second root cause – AFRAID OF DEATH.

      Here in Malaysia, there are illiterate people. They cannot read newspaper. They may not understand the news on TV as they know understand dialects. They are not on social media and when they are using contact-tracing apps in the phone, they barely know how to operate a smartphone. That is why it is very difficult to enforce COVID restrictions in Malaysia stringently. There are still books for people to sign in. So, the only way they can be “brain washed” is by other people (relatives, friends, neighbours). As they are illiterate, they don’t understand what is going on and thus they will TRUST whatever information provided to them. Since there were no serious natural disasters that befall them, their trust in government is high. So, when their friends/relatives asked the illiterate to take the jab, he will take the jab. However, if the TRUST is low, then he will be suspicious and may not take the jab. It is this trust that allowed them to have the thoughts that the government is not going to harm them, and it is impossible be that everyone (the thousands outside) is wrong on this and he is the only one who is right.

      Don’t mix up ignorant/illiterate and stupidity. One may be ignorant but one may not be stupid.

      There is one major ethnic group in Malaysia, let us just name it as “Ethnic X” and they are fatalistic. They believe in fate and that fate governs everything. If a child dies, even if it is due to negligence, it is fated that the child died, and he will be replaced with another child. However, the Chinese (here in Malaysia, Singapore and perhaps generally in the whole world) are the opposite. Most of them believe that they can influence fate and will try their best to do it. It is in their culture that longevity is very important and there are people seeking the elixir of immortality. The contrast could not be more glaring between Chinese and Ethnic X.

      I met with a very rich Ethic X father in a hospital. Money is nothing to him. We chatted. He told me a few years earlier that his new born was not healthy and needed surgery. The doctor said to him that the chances of survival if the surgery is done is 50% and the other option was “do nothing”. Believing in fate, the father did not do anything. The child survived and was healthy. This triggered me to think hard and I asked around the same question to the Chinese. I rephrased the question into 2 sections. One section I said that the cost of the surgery was high and could be 30% of the savings of the parents. The other section was – what if money was not a problem at all. The answer from my survey – all of them, when money is not a problem, will say “I will go for the surgery”. Even if the surgery is painful for the new born, the answer is always “I will go for the surgery”. There is only one reason – if the child dies, the parents can say “I have done my very best and could not save the child”. They are trying to beat destiny but failed. Chinese cannot stand “do nothing”. They must do something so that when bad things happen, they can console themselves that “They have done all the best” even though the success rate is exactly 50%-50%.

      So, I am not surprised that when I met up with my friends and told them that I am not vaccinated, the response, which I have come to expect – please take the jab. Taking the jab is better than not taking the jab. Even if they realize that there are side effects, the risk of dying from COVID is higher than the risk of side effects and taking the jab is better. This is similar to “beat destiny”. Doing nothing is not acceptable since you are relying on fate to swing into your favour. This type of mentality is prevalent. I have friends who slept at 2am in the morning even though the exam will start at 9am. I asked if he can understand what is in the book since the mind was tired at 2am. The response “At least I am holding the book and trying to read”. A false sense of security, no doubt at all.

      Guess which ethnic group will take the jab? The Chinese will line up and take the tenth booster. Ethnic X has a lot of vaccine-hesitant people and one of the reasons, which is now proven correct, is that the vaccine contains religion-incompatible substances.

      The AFRAID OF DEATH is general across humans regardless of geography, culture and religion. This fear is the only fear that can be used to turn humans into slaves or anything that you want them to be. There are many papers and literature on this topic but it is the combination of TRUST, FEAR OF DEATH and DEGRADED MENTAL CAPABILITY that is causing the chaos today. Unfortunately, there is NO way out of this mess because once it started, it will never end. There will be no revolt, etc. It will only end when collapse happens.

      Putting in piece of information from the first write up on abundant energy and trust, here are some points to take note

      #1
      Wokeism goes well with climate change, renewables, EV and of course vaccines. It is this same group of people who will embrace all of them. They are the most detached from reality. They enjoyed the most from the abundance of energy. They are the ones who fly and spent money on things that are perhaps not necessary for survival (energy, water, food). They are not down to earth, and they will believe in going to Mars for holidays. The Chinese are also detached from reality, thinking there is an elixir of immortality, thinking that taking the jab is better than none. There are many examples that I can put in showing their stupidity. Because of abundant energy, their thinking skills have degraded tremendously. Like Gail has mentioned before, the doctors of the olden days are so much better than the current doctors in diagnosis. I will tell you that the next generation of doctors will be totally useless and they just following instructions given by the computer. It is not because the syllabus does not encourage thinking, the syllabus was designed that way because the students cannot think anymore. Spoon feeding. Their mental capability has degraded significantly, especially after the introduction of smartphones where a thinking mind is not required to use it. Those living in poor conditions or hard life are the ones who has more thinking ability.

      #2
      How about the older people who seem to be better off with their thinking capability (watching little or no TV) but still be brainwashed? – Trust. They have seen their children grew up in a very secure and safe environment, they lead good life, abundant energy, wealth and their kids are telling them the vaccines are good and take them to save the children. So, since their cognitive skills have degraded, they do not want to think anymore.

      #3
      SARs of 2003 was worse off than COVID-19 but why did it not blow up? The very simple reason – instant communication. Internet was still not widespread and there were no Whatsapp, Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter and others. I would personally place the entire COVID-19 fiasco on them. I have met up with so many people who trusted 100% the materials they received from their friends via WhatsApp. Even if I say to them that “I can easily create one and send out”, they seem to be oblivious because they have a high TRUST. They TRUST that their friends and government will not harm them. This leads to the reason why HK and Eastern Europe has low vaccination rates. The TRUST is not there. See Denmark and Singapore, their citizens have high TRUST of their government and thus, the vaccination rate are high. Coupled with the fact that there are many Chinese in Singapore, they don’t need a lot of encouraging for people to take up the vaccines.

      #4
      It can be generalized that those who are pro jab are those who utilise the abundant energy, i.e. higher energy footprint than those who are not pro jab. They are more detached because they have many virtual energy slaves to help them to all the physical and mental work. Imagine if you have a few personal assistants to help you with your work and daily life. What kind of brain do you need? A shrunk and degenerated brain perhaps. So, do you think you can think critically about COVID?

      #5
      Desire, lust and greed. High expectations of better life in future. They just don’t want to believe there is a bad future. The basis of desire, lust and greed is abundant energy. You want more. You cannot really think straight when your mind is just full of those expectations.

      #6
      It is a known fact (do your own research) that the brain size has shrunk since measurement started hundreds of years ago. Is this something surprising?

      Conclusion
      The Calhoun rat experiment, when I first read that years ago, it was not obvious, now it is 100% correlated. People being moronic is not something that I am surprised. Abundant energy, like the stray cats I am feeding, have dumbed people down. Fossil fuel is toxic to us. From the first petroleum well in Trinidad in 1857 or 1869 in Pennsylvania till now, it is less than 200 years, but it has finally poisoned the world with physical and mental toxin.

      Desmet’s mass formation is something that cannot be reversed or slowed. It has already happened and it will only worsen in future. Even if we were to continue this way, where we find another source of abundant energy, the ending of the Calhoun Rat Experiment is final and epic. No way out. That is why it is a predicament.

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      1. I don´t have the impression that the trust in government is very high at the moment but the majority of people still has a very comfortable life. Therefore, they are not very interested in what the government is doing, as long as they are not disadvantaged too much.

        Other than that, I was also thinking quite a lot about whether the Calhoun experiments could be transferred 1:1 to our species, but my doubts are becoming less and less as our civilization proceeds further on it´s timeline.

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      2. I somehow understand the sentiment and agree that it includes worthwhile thoughts has some “old man shakes their fist at the sky” moments. Also what is with OFW and denial of climate change? Super weird.

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        1. Are you referring to OFW commenters or Gail? I don’t think Gail denies climate change but I do think she believes energy depletion and economic collapse will take us out long before we have a serious problem with climate.

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  22. Alex Smith today interviewed Richard Heinberg on energy depletion and the challenges we face due to the Energy Trap that now grasps us. Good interview despite the fact that Heinberg did not discuss the need for population reduction policies.

    https://www.ecoshock.org/2021/12/extreme-we-just-left-the-old-climate-behind.html

    I don’t know if Tom Murphy was the first to articulate the Energy Trap but his explanation is one of the best:

    By Tom Murphy: The Energy Trap (we all scream for ice cream)

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  23. I’ve been wondering how countries will fight the next big war given our high debt and emerging resource scarcity.

    Tonight I watched an excellent documentary produced in 2018 that explained how Nazi Germany, a relatively poor and highly indebted country with few natural resources, financed and built its war machine.

    There’s lots of intelligent detail here about their monetary system tricks, propaganda to control inflation despite money printing, technology used to substitute scarce materials, theft from the Jews and occupied lands, slave labor, industry shutdown/reboot to bring order to chaos, rationalization, etc., etc..

    Highly recommended.

    https://www.zed.fr/en/tv/distribution/catalogue/programme/blood-money-inside-the-nazi-economy

    June 1940: Hitler launches tanks and troops across France, Belgium and Holland. Yet Germany is impoverished, has few raw materials, and no oil or currency. How did the Nazis manage to set off the cataclysm of WWII with little money and a weak economy?

    Based on the work of a new generation of French, British and German historians, our film takes an economic, industrial and financial approach to the Third Reich, exploring the inner workings of the Nazi system through key characters who have been overshadowed by history (Hjalmar Schacht, Dr. Georg Von Schnitzler, Fritz Sauckel, Erich Müller…).

    I don’t see it on YouTube but it’s available as a torrent here:
    https://forums.mvgroup.org/index.php?showtopic=91095

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  24. El gato malo is very good today.

    Not only is covid data often incomplete, complicated, and difficult to interpret, but there appears to be a deliberate campaign to mislead people. I listened to headline news stories this morning proclaiming the good news that vaccination plus recovery is the best form of immunity. Gato shows the data says no such thing.

    Our “experts” are very effective at deception. I tried to spot the deceit by studying the first chart before reading gato’s explanation and failed. See if you can spot it.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/graphical-deception-and-a-smoking

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      1. These attempts to conceal the truth are becoming more and more embarrassing. Unfortunately, they still seem to work for the majority of people, and we are back at the Idiocracy topic…

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  25. Richard Heinberg interprets the latest analysis from David Hughes.

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-12-09/energy-reality-for-the-usa/

    But, as Hughes has noted in each of his reports, tight oil and shale gas are drilling-intensive, given the high production decline rates of new wells. In order to recover the abundance of these fuels that the EIA claims will be there for the taking, between now and 2050 the industry will need to drill something on the order of 700,000 new wells at a total cost of over $5 trillion.

    Will that happen? For purely geological reasons, it is exceedingly unlikely (see the report for details); but, even if it could, the financial hurdles and environmental impacts would be daunting and frightening. On average, each of those wells would be several thousand feet vertically and over a mile horizontally in length, would use up to 20 million gallons of water and 20 million pounds of proppant (a well in Louisiana used 50 million pounds of proppant), and would produce localized pollution as well as massive carbon emissions.

    Over all, tight oil production is down over 12% since the start of the pandemic. With continued high oil prices, lots of investment, and a ferocious pace of drilling, production levels could increase again. But to assert, as the EIA does, that the boom will continue for thirty years or more at higher production levels than today, is, to use Hughes’s carefully chosen terms, “highly optimistic.”

    Our collective choices about energy investments are, from a long-range perspective, utterly insane. We have bet the fate of our civilization—and the lives of our children and grandchildren—on energy resources that are depleting and polluting. And our public agencies, tasked with keeping track of these resources, have chosen to offer, in Greta Thunberg’s words, “fairy tales of economic growth” instead of a sober assessment of what lies in store. They have failed to prepare our society for the end of cheap fossil energy, and many people will suffer as a result.

    David Hughes, working for the last decade from a modest home on a beautiful island off the coast of British Columbia, has done what dozens of well-paid Washington agency analysts have failed to do—tell us the truth about America’s last fossil-fueled hurrah. He has put plain numbers in front of politicians and the public with no motive other than a dim hope that rationality can prevail. Hughes deserves hearty thanks from all who have benefited from his generous and expert work.

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  27. I can’t honestly say I understand what he’s saying this time, but it’s clear Geert Vanden Bossche is becoming even more concerned about the consequences of our health policies in the presence of omicron. I think he’s a good man with lots of relevant experience so we should pay attention.

    If anyone is capable of translating into simpler language I would be grateful.

    https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/will-mass-vaccination-against-omicron-give-the-final-blow

    Mass vaccination against Omicron will take away our very last opportunity to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from making a natural selection in favor of hosts who have preserved a fully functional innate immune defense.

    Many scientists believe that the multitude of mutations found in the Omicron variant constitute an evolutionary disadvantageous change that drives the virus into a mild course of disease and possibly even into endemicity or extinction altogether. Once again, predictions lose their credibility when natural evolutionary trends are countered by large-scale human intervention. In case of the current viral pandemic, the most worrisome threat is posed by the ongoing mass vaccination program that is only expanding, ignoring concerns related to the evolutionary capacity of this virus.

    In order to understand why mass vaccination with updated (i.e., ‘anti-Omicron’) C-19 vaccines is at risk of entailing a bioweapon-like disaster, one must follow the evolutionary consequences of population- level immune pressure on viral infectiousness, a phenomenon that is now widely acknowledged to be driven by mass vaccination campaigns (1). When a dramatic change in the antigenic constellation of the virus (e.g., the one represented by Omicron) occurs in the context of mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic, there should be no doubt that widespread immune pressure is involved. But how can immune pressure on viral infectiousness, for which Omicron is now even affecting its very capacity to be neutralized, lead to a more clement viral behavior? The biggest lesson learned from this pandemic is that whenever we are puzzled about its evolutionary comportment, we should invoke the rules of…innate immunity! By evolving more and more resistance to S-directed, neutralizing antibodies (Abs), SARS-CoV-2 is increasingly setting free the host’s innate Abs (as they’re no longer suppressed).

    As innate Abs clear the virus in ways that are not Ag-specific, natural selection of SARS-CoV-2 variants that could escape from innate Abs does not occur because such variants simply don’t exist. More specifically, although Omicron undeniably results from population-level immune pressure and represents a clear-cut example of how SARS-CoV-2 continues to unfold its evolutionary capacity when mass vaccination threatens its perpetuation, it cannot afford this evolutionary adaptation while continuing to outcompete relevant innate Abs. COVID-19 vaccine weekly surveillance reports (weeks 33 through 48), as published by UK Health Security Agency, strongly suggest that innate Abs, especially when thoroughly trained (such as, for example, in older age groups), can resist competition from vaccinal Abs and thereby dramatically reduce case rates in vaccinees (2). It is therefore not surprising that when the virus- neutralizing capacity of vaccinal Abs further diminishes (e.g., in Omicron), innate Abs regain their full- fledged virus-sterilizing capacity and hence dramatically diminish the incidence of disease in vaccinees.

    On the other hand, lack of immune recognition of Omicron by previously acquired short-lived Abs in unvaccinated individuals (as a result of previous mild infection with the Delta variant) will also diminish the incidence of disease in younger unvaccinated individuals (note 1).As Omicron is extremely infectious, it ishighly likely that we’ll soon start to witness spectacular waves of infection (mostly exempt from severe disease) all over the world. However, these waves will be followed by a strong decline in viral infectious pressure. This would be the very last moment for halting all mass vaccination programs in order to enable the overall population to further diminish viral infectivity while implementing a widespread antiviral chemoprophylaxis program to further prevent transmission of this highly infectious variant.

    Given the continued ignorance and lack of understanding of the pandemic & detrimental consequences of mass vaccination by public and global health authorities, the chances that the disaster I’ve previously alluded to can be prevented are slim (3). The scientifically corrupt narrative is likely to be further nurtured by more and more cases of disease that are likely to occur in vaccinees once they will have acquired short-lived Abs directed at Omicron’s spike protein as a result of previous mild infection. The latter can more easily outcompete innate Abs in vaccinees, the training of which was stalled as a result of their immune suppression by vaccinal Abs. Rapid re-exposure to the highly infectious Omicron variant could then make them much more susceptible to disease.‍

    note 1: As already reported, older unvaccinated age groups have significantly lower case rates, presumably due to thorough immune training yielding innate Abs of higher affinity (whereas all unvaccinated age groups improve on protection from disease with prolonged exposure: see data published by UK Health Security Agency https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccine-weekly-surveillance-reports)

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    1. I cannot provide comment on the science specifics. I think I can say the global vaccine campaign is a massive science experiment with multiple variables that are not under the control of the experimenters.

      Just a few of those variables: A coronavirus with a fairly fast evolutionary mutation rate; potentially 8Billion genetically different human subjects, a significant percentage of which are immunocompromised (2-4%?) and kept alive by pharmaceutical interventions, including approximately 37.6 million persons infected with HIV globally, all providing a place for virus to mutate; there are also large populations of virus “reservoirs” of wild and domestic animals (confirmed in deer, cats, dogs?, even hippos!, etc.) that we cannot influence with vaccination; and there is the application across the 8billion people of multiple brands/formulations of non-sterilizing vaccines, none of which stop the transmission of the virus. Etc. Etc.

      Hard to think this experiment will turn out as intended or hoped. And maybe not even as Boccshe is predicting. The “hope” now is maybe we got lucky, the virus “caught a cold” – specifically, picking up some DNA from one of the four coronavirus that can give us the common cold, increasing infectiousness and decreasing virulence – and we all get naturally immunized over the coming months. Then perhaps the mass vaccination campaigns stop.

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      1. Thanks. You’re probably right, too many variables for anyone to predict the specific outcome. On the other hand, if they told people to take vitamin D and to lose weight, and implemented early treatment we could accurately predict an improvement in health.

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  28. Once again, the big fish get off Scot-free — there won’t be a tax on billionaires in the Democrats’ spending plan:
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/senate-democrats-are-leaving-the-billionaires-tax-out-of-their-climate-and-spending-plan-due-to-widespread-resistance-in-their-ranks/ar-AARGQMN?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

    …but the IRS is still going after the small fry:

    https://www.koamnewsnow.com/i/the-irs-is-cracking-down-on-small-time-ebay-and-etsy-sellers/

    The IRS reporting threshold for online sales drops from $20,000 to $600 starting next year.  $600 a year — that’s lemonade-stand or garage-sale money, less than $2 a day.  They must think they can bankroll our global national-security empire by going after loose change in the sofa cushions…

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  29. UPS tracking promised delivery of a package yesterday. It did not show up. Now tracking says they don’t know when it will be delivered.

    Significant weather events across the globe are impacting the UPS network. Although your location may not be impacted by adverse weather, the movement of packages in the network may be impacted by weather conditions in other areas.

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    1. I should be so lucky as to only have to deal with UPS or FedEx. I have to deal with USPS. They routinely ship stuff to States on the other side of the country and then lose it in a distribution center for months. But it’s really not fair to criticize, they’re probably woefully underpaid and overworked. I’m just glad when anything arrives.
      AJ

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  31. Just a small rant.
    I’m used to the hypocrisy and denial of the MSM, governments, corporations and essentially most of the other 8 billion on this planet when it comes to all things to do with overshoot, collapse, extinction and utter destruction of the biosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    BUT one of the few things that just boils my blood is the utter hypocrisy and evilness of the U.S. government, U.K. government, Australian government, most European governments and the Media over the treatment of Julian Assange. https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2021/12/what-it-means-to-be-human/
    He might not be a perfect human being but he (and Wikileaks) stand for press freedom (and with it democracy) against the force of true evil and darkness. That Obama (who had the rhetoric of a new age) would turn into such an evil character (for going after Assange) just reinforces in me the concept that Power Corrupts. That Trump and Biden continued Assange’s persecution/extradition shows that they are no different. Edward Snowden was right – the security (CIA, FBI, NSA, MI5, etc.) are a direct threat to democracy. Assange was trying to do the world a favor by exposing the evilness of U.S. foreign policy (wars, coups, etc.) – that he is persecuted for it and there isn’t rebellion in the streets just shows the idealism of my flower power, baby boomer, protesting 60’s generation sold out for an easy, secure, obese life (in complete and utter denial). We don’t deserve democracy.
    Rant done.
    AJ

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    1. I saw the news on Assange and I agree with you. I would add something else that really bothers me. There used to be islands of independent ethics between countries. When one country did something bad, others would speak out. Not anymore. Thought and ethics are now synchronized regardless if they are right or wrong.

      Why is Germany who understands the importance of free speech not condemning the US and UK on Assange?

      Why is Canada who used to be so proud of it’s superior health care system not calling out the corruption and evil of Fauci and Daszak?

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      1. Your right, why isn’t Australia screaming like hell over this?
        But then Austria appears to be going all Nazi again over Covid. Didn’t they learn anything?
        As a child of German ancestry I think Germans have a soft spot for order and dictators? You’re also right, in the past some countries used to stand up to others (especially when it doesn’t “cost” them anything substantial). It just appears like group think by governments.
        AJ

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  32. I know a guy who writes articles for Junior Mining exploration companies – gold, uranium, rare earths, etc. I am not a fan of the industry at all but when he talks I just listen because its a good way to understand whats going on. From what I can see mining is in a big upswing and the industry is pushing renewables because they see huge earning potential. The industry really is saying we “have to ” dig up these minerals to save us from global warming. They have really drank the cool aid.

    When I mentioned the massive carbon pulse required to dig these up he just had a blank stare.

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    1. Blank stare is a good description of what I believe is an external manifestation of a brain denying an unpleasant reality. I sometimes refer to it as the curtain coming down over someone’s eyes. It’s not that he processed what you said, rationally concluded you are wrong, and chose to remain silent so as to be polite. Rather, the meaning and implication of your words were blocked by the denial circuit in his brain.

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  34. Thanks to Brian for posting this covid treatise by Bruce Hindmarsh on another un-Denial thread. I’m reposting here in the hope more people will see it.

    I know nothing about Hindmarsh other than he’s a professor of theology here in British Columbia, nevertheless, this may be the best document I’ve seen on covid. It’s an excellent refresher on the science and makes a persuasive case that we have lost our minds.

    https://www.brucehindmarsh.com/
    https://www.regent-college.edu/faculty/full-time/bruce-hindmarsh

    Click to access Hindmarsh-Analysis-of-Pandemic-v.22.11.2021a.pdf

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    1. Perhaps adding to this comment/article on COVID.

      In a comment above I noted the extent to which the authorities are running a massive science experiment with no control over the variables. The article below does an excellent job in explaining the extent to which this global science experiment is intervening with the naturally evolved immune system processes, and the environment in which we/our immune system operates. It also makes clear that this experiment is creating a “subscription model” for the pharm industry, where we collectively become dependent upon regular vaccinations to maintain our immune systems that are in fact designed to manage evolving respiratory viruses through periodic natural re-infection. A longer read but recommended:

      Julius Ruechel: “A Half Truth is a Whole Lie”: The Omicron Variant, Cross-Reactive Immunity, and the Manufactured Illusion of an Unprecedented Virus

      If I have understood the big picture from this article correctly, accepting this naturalistic view of how to handle this “new” respiratory virus requires us to reject the use of the use of technology created by our fossil-fueled industrial civilization to provide near-term benefits (from vaccination in this case), and it requires us to accept some level of mortality that will occur from naturally developed herd immunity for the vast majority of the herd.

      Doing nothing, or almost nothing, will be a hard sell.

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    2. Rob, so you’ve read the Hindmarsh 97 page paper in its entirety and you think ” this may be the best document I’ve seen on covid”?

      Just asking for confirmation before I invest the time to read it.

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      1. I power skimmed the whole thing and slowed down for the sections that most interested me. I like that it takes a big picture view and provides links to support all claims. Seems to be apolitical and logical seeking to understand reality and what our optimal response should be.

        I intend to read again at a slower pace. If you spot any defects in the document or disagree with my summary please correct me.

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  36. I’m still comfortable (for now) with my decision to remain vaccine free. We need a control group to determine if our leaders were wise or unwise.

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/is-original-antigenic-sin-starting

    the good news is that omicron looks mild.

    the bad news is that it increasingly looks like the variant that original antigenic sin (OAS) begot and this means that the vaccinated may be wide open for it in a way they would not have been had these programs not been rolled out. worse, they may NEVER be able to generate sound immunity because that’s what OAS does.

    let’s take it from the top:

    OAS is very real. people act like it’s some fanciful idea, but this is because they have never dug into immunology. this has been studied deeply and has been a major issue in flu for ages.

    it’s really a pretty simple idea that likely suffers unwarranted skepticism owing to a name that makes it sound like some sort of faith healing concept.

    your immune system is adaptive. it experiences pathogens and learns to recognize and respond to them. but the diversity of response is not unlimited.

    you experience a flu one year, then another the next. if they are sufficiently similar, you may just use the same antibodies you used last year (or 20 years ago). they are unlikely to work as well because they are not specific to this new virus. if they diverge sufficiently, you could be in real trouble. you’ll be spamming a response that has no effect and forgoing those that do. the virus can run rampant. (DETAIL)

    ….

    the vaccines for covid have already been failing on stopping spread. the data from the UK (which seems to be the highest quality and most thorough in the world) has been showing this for ages. the vaccinated are getting covid at far higher rates than the unvaxxed.

    (effective VE added in red by me)

    if omicron is emerging as a more OAS optimized variant more able to evade the narrowly trained spike response from the mRNA and adenovirus vaccines, then it’s going to run like wildfire through the vaxxed.

    the idea that boosters represent a solution will be shown to be exactly wrong. that’s going to provide one of the interesting acid tests here and looks to be the data you want to track to assess this hypothesis.

    if OAS is now dominating covid it implies that vaccinating kids who have not had covid could be setting them up for a lifetime of inability to generate strong, sterilizing covid immunity.

    this same logic applies to basically any healthy adult.

    vaccination post covid does not seem to carry this risk (so far) but boosters might tip that over time. (or perhaps not) in any event, the incremental absolute gain is so low that it makes vaccines look unattractive for any but the very highest risk to vaxx post infection.

    will keep tracking this as it’s going to be the thing to know in coming months and if this pans out, whether it’s omi or not, we’re going to see the OAS variants hit.

    it is, of course, still possible i’m wrong here (and frankly, i’d like to be because this is NOT good), but this sure starting to walk and quack a lot like a duck to not be a waterfowl…

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  37. “I’m still comfortable (for now) with my decision to remain vaccine free. We need a control group to determine if our leaders were wise or unwise.”

    I am currently also still vaccine free but the pressure is increasing. My supervisor has asked me multiple times now whether I want to get vaccinated, even though I could do my work 100% from home. Even worse, my wife is also increasing the pressure, not because she thinks, that the vaccination is necessary from a medical point of view, but because of all the restrictions here Germany for the unvaccinated. Losing my job wouldn´t be that hard for me, getting into serious trouble with my wife on the other hand would be a catatrophy.

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    1. From the Hindmarsh paper I introduced to this forum earlier:

      “The normal assumption with a vaccine is that the vulnerable or the frightened can protect themselves by making their own risk–benefit assessment and then choosing to get vaccinated, but this has been overtaken by the idea that anyone who does not take the vaccine is failing to protect others. The unvaccinated are selfish.

      However, if vaccines are effective and you are vaccinated, it is not clear why the person next to you needs to be vaccinated for your safety. We have not treated other vaccines this way.

      This has been summed up in a riddle: Why do the protected need to be protected from the
      unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that didn’t protect the protected in the first place? All the pressure now is to forego an individual risk–benefit calculation, and instead focus on the supposed public good of population-wide vaccine-induced immunity, notwithstanding the impossibility of achieving this goal.”

      I highly recommend going over the paper with a fine tooth comb. It is a considerable slog, but certainly a worthwhile slog! Alarm bells should be going off everywhere at this juncture. Instead, we are catatonic and stupified.

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      1. I have read around 80% of the Hindmarsh paper now. He perfectly sums up how I am feeling about the whole Covid mess. I am afraid that my wife would not want to look into the information provided by him. She is too afraid to be excluded from sociecty to even think about the evidence.

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        2. This primal fear of exclusion has been “leveraged” at scale. The trajectory we are on, and its implications, can be too much to bear, to contemplate. I can understand the defense mechanism, but I sure as shit don’t share it. I’m somewhat reassured to see that there is starting to be a coalescence of informed resistance, however small at this point. Read the first few pages of this document, for example:

          Click to access 2021-11-16-LT-Trudeau-et-al-re-Pfizer-Vaccine1.pdf

          or this:

          https://policeforfreedom.org/medical-rights.html

          Just a couple of random instances.

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          1. Thank you, very encouraging. It will be interesting to see what Trudeau does.

            I do wish people opposing our leaders would focus on what I think are the most important issues.

            If :
            1) the virus was killing or harming many healthy people; and
            2) the vaccine prevented spread; and
            3) transparent vaccine test results and honest ongoing monitoring showed it to be reasonably safe;

            Then it would be reasonable to accept some risk and require vaccination in most citizens.

            Today not one of the three criteria are true, but I’ll bet most vaccinated citizens including Trudeau think the three criteria have been met due to purposely distorted data and mass psychosis groupthink.

            We need clear thinking evidence based leaders and I see none.

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                1. M-L-A. Hmmm? Member of the Legislative Assembly?
                  Dumb jokes aside, the article is well-worth more than a skim, especially in parts 3 and 4.

                  as an example:

                  Myocarditis—inflammation of the heart tissue—is a rare but real side effect in young males (about ages 16-29) that did not show up in the two-month long trials that led to the Emergency Use Authorization, even though those studies included males as young as 16. It was not generally recognized by the scientific community or our safety report systems until four months into the vaccine rollout. We are still learning about how this manifests in vaccinated males. In general severe myocarditis can lead to scarring, and even cause death, so it must be taken seriously and followed long term. Right now, Paul Offit, professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania, says that most cases are mild and resolve on their own. The actual FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine acknowledges higher rates of myocarditis and pericarditis in males now, and states the obvious: “Information is not yet available about potential long-term health outcomes. The Comirnaty [the new name for the Pfizer vaccine] Prescribing Information includes a warning about these risks.” An Israeli study found that, in boys aged 12-15, myocarditis occurred in only 162 cases out of a million, but this rate was 4-6 times higher than their chances of being hospitalized for a severe case of COVID.

                  But, to get a sense of the complexity of the decision facing parents, in the United States the situation keeps changing, with more and more cases of children now showing up in hospitals for COVID. The decision is further complicated by the crucial fact that COVID can cause myocarditis as well. And we are just now learning that different vaccines seem to cause myocarditis at different rates. As of October, several countries— including Norway, Sweden, and Denmark—have put the Moderna vaccine (which is especially potent) on pause for younger people, and Iceland has suspended it for all ages. But these countries are not ending childhood vaccination, just recommending different vaccines. We are lucky to have options. But we could use good studies comparing the COVID-induced myocarditis rates and vaccine-induced myocarditis rates by age and sex.

                  Which is why it’s so unfortunate that the RCTs were not much larger, and that they didn’t go on longer. Had they continued, and if their data ever became transparent, it could really help us in assessing long-term safety in a more reassuring way—that’s what RCTs are good at. One can more persuasively demonstrate that a vaccine doesn’t have these effects if there is a proper vaccine-free, COVID-free control group. But if vaccines continue to be pushed as the one and only answer, we will never know if certain health problems emerge, because there will be no “normal” vaccine-free group left for comparison. It’s a development that is quite disconcerting, for it suggests a wish not to know.

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                  1. Thanks. It is very complex. There are so many dimensions of incompetence and possible poor ethics to this story that it is crazy making.

                    Take just one for example expanding on your comment. When you are embarking on vaccinating billions of people with a new drug technology, who but a moron or a criminal would terminate an RCT early? And who would pretend there is no meaningful signal in VAERS?

                    Who but a moron or a criminal would not promote vitamin D? Or investigate promising early treatments?

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                    1. There is so much wrong with this picture that it is messing with my mind in a way I have never experienced before. Does the evidence not suggest that perhaps “public health” has nothing to do with what we are experiencing?

                      Please tell me I am not becoming a nutter!

                      I came upon this close to two years ago and summarily dismissed it as wacknuttery. It is starting to look more sane with each passing day.

                      https://wrenchinthegears.com/2020/04/08/will-covid-19-certificates-trigger-biometric-digital-identity-roll-out/

                      and what of this?

                      https://wrenchinthegears.com/2018/09/08/welcome-to-your-permanent-record/

                      and this just in today, amongst all the breathless fear-mongering in the MSM:

                      ‘Circuit breaker’ measures needed to prevent Omicron from overwhelming ICUs, science table says
                      https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-dec-16-2021-science-table-modelling-omicron-1.6287900

                      Morons? Possibly. Criminals? Likely. Psychopaths? Definitely.

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                    2. It’s messing with my mind too. 🙂

                      The synchronicity of insanity between far flung regions and political systems fascinates me. We don’t agree and coordinate effectively on anything. Why suddenly covid, and in all the wrong directions?

                      With regard to the digital ID theory, I don’t buy it, but here is a thought experiment. If you were a wise and good and all powerful leader of the world and understood everything we discuss here at un-Denial, knowing that a crash and social chaos is unavoidable, you might look for a means to control the population because you know this will be required to minimize suffering. Could covid passports be yet another instinctual response by our leaders to imminent collapse?

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                    3. If you are a data and evidence kind of guy, try this: https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021.pdf

                      and the associated explanatory video:
                      https://rumble.com/vqx3kb-the-pfizer-inoculations-do-more-harm-than-good.html

                      and as for the “crazy” conspiracy theories:

                      The Great Narrative – Narrating the Future – English
                      Posted November 11, 2021
                      https://www.weforum.org/videos/the-great-narrative-narrating-the-future-english

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                    4. Thank you. It’s very encouraging to see the Canadian Covid Care Alliance stepping up with high quality arguments that we are on the wrong path. I will pay more attention to them.

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                    5. I watched The Great Narrative but did not spot anything evil. Just vacuous words about designing a better future which might be expected from elites who understand the severity of human overshoot and that do not want to panic their consumers. Did I miss something?

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    3. Sadly I got the J&J jab and now wish I had not (because of the potential for antigenic SIN). Now because the MSM is constantly harping on boosters my family (wife and daughter) are probably going to get it, and the subtle pressure is on for me to follow along. I constantly criticize the MSM and our leaders who push the boosters but get no response from the wife (who thinks I am the world’s biggest idiot for doubting authority). I had Delta, so I will take my chances – but taking all the supplements: vit D, vit C, zinc, quercetin, NAC, melatonin – plus no more alcohol, no more salt, lost 10 lbs., walking 5 miles a day and eating a whole foods (nothing processed) plant based diet. I’ll take my chances.
      AJ

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      1. Can you say a little more about melatonin? I read that it has many benefits (like vitamin D) and is totally safe so I bought some and tried it. I normally sleep well and I found it ruined my sleep with dreams etc. I also did not like the feeling before bed and in the morning. Kind of like the remnants of a marijuana high which I also don’t like.

        I only took it once. Do I need to take it longer? Or should I just avoid it since I already sleep well?

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        1. Early on I had seen somewhere about the efficacy of melatonin for Covid. Maybe Chris Martenson? I did a search on his website and there were some links to studies done in hospital to ventilator Covid patients. Those getting supplemental melatonin had better outcomes. Not sure if that is still the case. I never have trouble sleeping, but I’m taking it a bedtime nonetheless. I think I might be having more dreams now but not certain. No morning after effects for me. It probably isn’t that important. Definitely the Vit. D, Zinc, Quericetin are the biggies – with horse paste if I get Covid again.
          AJ

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  38. Sorry I can’t remember who but I believe someone here recommended this presentation by Charlie Hall whom I’m a long time fan of. I watched it today and it is very good. I did not learn anything new but I found it comforting to see that it was organized by a Club of Rome group here in Canada that I was not aware of, and that the audience understands what’s going on.

    The only thing they did not mention was Varki’s MORT which I believe answers Hall’s rant about the insanity that we don’t even discuss our predicament.

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  39. NEW RECORD: The European natural gas benchmarks closed today at a record high settlement price (intraday was higher in October). Dutch TTF closed at at €116.084 per MWh and UK NBP closed at 294.54p per therm (chart below). That’s alike ~$220 per barrel of oil equivalent

    And that is just an example of so many. Prices are going up everywhere. German whole sale prices for example gone up faster than ever before since they started to record the data in 1962.

    I’ve been wrong before but I don’t think this can last that much longer. Something will have to give and reality will rear it’s ugly head for people plain to see.

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    1. Thanks.

      I was wrong that we wouldn’t print trillions to deny limits.
      I was wrong that we wouldn’t invest in losers like fracking and bitcoin.
      I was wrong that we would apply reason and science to a pandemic.
      What will I be wrong about this time?

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    2. Even though the prices of natural gas are exploding, the Green party is trying to sabotage the commissioning of the fully built Nordstream 2 pipeline. It will be interesting to see how they will sell this to the public as the prices are rising and rising.

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  41. I’ve registered my intent to participate in a vaccine trial for covax19 a protein based vaccine developed by an Australian company Vaxine pty Ltd. I’m uncertain about the risk of OAS but feel confident it’s probably safer than the current host of vaccine on offer. .. or maybe I’m just kidding myself.

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      1. It’s looking promising in regards to sterilising immunity. Here’s a YouTube link with Prof Nicola Petrovsky talking about the vaccine. It is a bit long though so I’d understand if you give it a miss.

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    1. JP Sears is one of the few comedians who are still funny instead of just spreading propaganda. He also seems to be clever enough to not get censored by YouTube.

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  43. Fascinating. What do you do when energy is a major cost component of your consumer business, and the cost of energy is constraining your profits and growth? You financialize your business and adopt the business model of a central bank.

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  44. Joe Rogan interviewed Dr. Peter McCullough yesterday.

    Very good but I recommend you not listen because it will make you VERY angry or VERY crazy. Either way your mental health will be reduced and they’re not offering a vaccine for happiness.

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  45. Apparently this has been pulled from YouTube but is still available on Spotify. I’m only part way through as it is long, but what Nikola Petrovsky has said already really made my blood boil. I’m beginning to think that the roll out of mRna vaccines (gene therapy) around the world is a crime. So far it has been well worth the listen.

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