Today’s guest essay by paqnation (aka Chris) tackles a challenging topic with deep ties to Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory which inspires un-Denial.com.
Chris discusses yet another strange behavior that is unique to our species.
And how hard it is to do the right thing in our modern world.
I have been fixating on evil lately (on an individual level). And by evil I am just limiting it to anything that degrades ecological integrity. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that 100% of my everyday actions are steeped in evil. There is nothing I do that does not involve evil towards the planet. Just typing this essay on my internet computer in my house powered by electricity with the heater on. Everything in my home used up resources and fossil fuels to get to me. And I pay for it by working at a corporation that only creates more evil in the world. Jeez! Too much evil within evil within evil, to even comprehend. Driving my car is the same story. Ditto for eating my grocery store bought food. Every action a person takes in this civilization already has loads of evil baked into it. So what is the opposite of this. Planting trees, gardening, rewilding land, composting my toilet waste? Yes, but I’m sure there is lots of evil within that, just to get to the non-evil deed. Besides, I don’t do any of those things. And even if I did, ok fine, maybe I get my 100% evil actions down to 99%.
It’s obvious that there is a threshold for an acceptable amount of evil that Mother Earth can tolerate and would even expect. Heck, just picking up a piece of deadwood and using it to make a fire is evil. So there is no way to avoid it. The ecological overshoot graphs we’ve all seen time and time again explain what this “threshold” limit looks like. Just another thing that comes down to balance, harmony, and equilibrium. Which, of course, human civilization, by default, cannot achieve.
That got me focusing on my greatest act of evil. It feels like something related to my eating habits would be the winner. The wasting of all the food throughout my lifetime. Or just the day-by-day participation in this horrendous cycle of how we eat in today’s world. But this is more about the accumulation that makes it so evil. I’m looking for a single act that can be labeled “most evil thing I’ve ever done”. Flying on a plane maybe? Prior to my awakening to reality, I was guilty of some horrible acts. On multiple occasions I have dumped trash/junk out in the desert to avoid landfill fees. When I was a teenager, I once changed my car oil and dumped the old oil on the side of the road. At least I’ve never started a forest fire, which has to take the cake for the most evil one person can do (or maybe I’m not thinking hard enough). But I believe I have a clear-cut winner that most of us will be guilty of and does not happen until we are dead.
A lot of people write about nature’s contract or the social contract. Here is a great link on the topic by Tom Murphy: In Breach of Contract.
The core of these “contracts” seems to me is the create/sustain/end part. The “end” portion is where I think our biggest act of evil may rest. We are the only species in which the dead do not return naturally to the eco-system.
Long-life coffins, clothes & decor, deep burial and embalming (which contaminates the soil and groundwater) result in the dead remaining intact for a very long time. Overall, embalming for burial uses over 800,000 gallons of toxic chemicals every year. As well as the costs thru time of mowing around your grave and re-erecting your crumbling gravestone. Not knowing much about this topic, I found out that we put coffins (wooden and metal) inside bigger cement coffins. Our fear of critters eating our corpse is laughably insane. This type of burial practice is just over a hundred years old, which makes perfect sense considering the insanity of modernity and being alive in the most abnormal moment in human history.
Cremation (which I have always preferred) is even worse and turns your body into air pollution and barren ash. Studies of emissions reveal that cremation turns people into at least 46 different pollutants. Some of these, like nitrous oxides and heavy metals, remain in the atmosphere for up to 100 years causing ozone depletion and acid rain. Cremation emits mercury, sulfur dioxide, and, in the US, about 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions into our air every year. Our bodies, on average, take three hours to burn in a crematorium, using up large quantities of fuels like electricity and natural gas. Once again, our fear of critters eating our corpse is laughably insane.
I was bouncing around the internet to get this info. And maybe my stats and figures can be debated, but I think everyone who is this far along into their collapse journey can easily understand how giving my 220 pounds of resources back to Mother Earth is much more beneficial than disintegrating my resources into ashes or keeping them preserved in a metal box inside of a concrete box. (and this is why it feels like my final act will be my most evil)
I can almost hear the absurd conversation with our “Creator/Sustainer/End” in my head. It goes something like:
Mother Earth: Ok, here’s the contract. I am going to create you using my resources, then sustain you with my resources, and when you die I will end you by consuming your resources so that I can keep creating and sustaining in this beautiful cycle of life. Deal?
Modern Humans: Ok, I’ll take you up on your offer for creating and sustaining me, but when it comes time for the end portion, I will renege on our deal and not allow you to use my resources for your benefit. In fact, I’m gonna go out with one last bang and continue harming you even though I’m dead. Deal?
Take, take, take. Never give. Just follows the normal human civilization theme of “everything we do and how we do it is wrong (evil)”.
Natural burials and green burials seem like a better way to go. A quick definition in case you’ve never heard of green burial: designed to have a minimal environmental impact and conserve natural resources. It emphasizes simplicity and sustainability. In a typical green burial, the body is not cremated, prepared with chemicals, or buried in a concrete vault. And some of the green burial sites sell it with options where you are buried with no casket and then a tree is planted on top of you. Having a tree sprout above my corpse is a beautiful idea that I would have mocked (or been grossed out by) prior to my “awakening”.
Unfortunately, the cost is high and availability is low. Average pricing (for my state) is $5,000. And for comparison, traditional burial is $8,000 and cremation is $1,500 (although, when my Dad passed away a few years ago, the cremation cost $2,500. No service or fancy urn. Just the bare minimum). And it looks like there is an even better way called human composting. Which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. But this is only available in a handful of states (mine is not one of them). And cost is $5,000 – $7,000.
I will definitely be looking into these alternatives more because I prefer my final act to not be evil if I can help it (and afford it). Might be my one and only good deed towards ecological integrity. There should be a legal, easy & inexpensive way to put our dead naked bodies into the soil for two obvious reasons. First and foremost, so that Mother Earth gets full maximum benefit. And second so that modern humans can at least honor a portion of our contract.
One last note. I came up with this topic by staring at the table below. Sounds weird, I know. I created this simple table a while back (which I’m sure can be nitpicked to death) for the sole purpose of keeping me on track. My bargaining phase gets me to waste time chasing magical solutions. Looking at this chart helps bring me back down to reality. Another positive outcome is that it gets me thinking about stuff I that I’ve never thought about.
Thanks for listening, Chris
Rob here, I can confirm Chris’ research because one of my university summer jobs was making precast concrete coffin liners.
Chris’ essay reminded me of a comedy skit on peak oil from the 2005 play by Robert Newman titled Apocalypso Now.
It’s a fun reminder of how many of us doomers thought 20 years ago.
If you’re in a hurry, skip ahead to the 6 minute mark for the relevant joke.
Indrajit Samarajiva compares the great oxidation event that killed most life with our industrial revolution.
https://indi.ca/gdp-is-just-gross/
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/15/ellen-brown-casino-capitalism-and-the-derivatives-market-time-for-another-lehman-moment/
It is interesting that she didn’t mention peak oil.
I purchased my van 20 years ago. I’ve done all the maintenance myself for the last 10 years.
This is a financial scam for sure, maybe to rescue a failing automobile industry. There is no way this is being pushed for environmental reasons.
Having read Varki’s paper, I’m not clear on what problem he’s trying to solve. It seems like it might be why there are no other species (extinct or extant) with the supposed cognitive abilities of our species. For Rob, though, it seems to be more about trying to understand why humans deny so much reality. Have I got that right?
Dr. Varki co-discovered a theory, that all of the best minds to date have missed, that explains the main reason one species dominates our planet, and why it has a collection of remarkably unique abilities and behaviors.
Dr. Varki, like myself, in the early days of the discovery, hoped that providing a scientific explanation for why our species is unable to see its obvious state of overshoot, that threatens its existence, would trigger a breakthrough in awareness and actions that might make the future less bad.
Both Dr. Varki and I no longer have that hope, but we continue to believe Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) is the most important discovery in biology since Darwin.
https://un-denial.com/denial-2/darwin-vs-varki/
Thanks. So Varki is not quite so enthusiastic as you concerning the applicability of the theory.
I’m loathe to respond to theory without more research but just let me say that I wasn’t convinced by the paper, and a talk by Varki that I watched. Not that it doesn’t have merit but he seemed to gloss over some possible criticisms and perhaps hasn’t kept up with what we’re learning about the behaviours of other species and of other, now extinct, hominid species. Varki admits that it isn’t a theory in the sense that it can be falsified and I felt he did too much of just assuming certain things. Just my opinion though.
I’m not sure what MORT explains that just being a species doesn’t. Perhaps some of the apparently unique social behaviours of our species? But, again, difficult to prove that.
Where did I say that above? Neither of us are enthusastic today about the utility of MORT. In the early days I was the most enthusiastic because I saw our agressive denial of all dimensions of obvious overshoot. Varki’s awareness of our predicament was limited to climate change and he thought all we had to do was stop denying climate change and switch to solar panels. Now, thanks to me teaching him, I think he sees more of the complete overshoot picture.
Put together your best argument for why MORT is false and I will forward it to Varki for review.
My expectation is he will demolish you.
Sorry, you didn’t say that above but in the post you linked to where you stated:
Varki may well demolish me but I think he’d have to draw on more than the paper. I’ll comment on the paper when I have more time.
The broader claims I make are that MORT explains that God is mutation to deny mortality, and that high intelligence cannot exist without MORT and therefore it is probable that humans today are the peak of what is possible in the universe.
Whistleblower doctor says he sees white fibrous clots similar to those embalmers are reporting in his living patients and 99% of those have received 1-8 vaccine shots. This clot type was never seen before 2021.
Interviewer does a good job of trying to uncover any biases in the whistleblower. Whistleblower seems to have integrity and 20 years of relevant expertise treating clots.
Our leaders are not investigating this. Perhaps because mistakes were not made.
Summary:
Full episode:
https://philipmcmillan.substack.com/p/are-the-embalmers-clots-occurring
Maybe, just maybe, the unethical medical morons are finally starting to wake up and realize they killed millions, and are continuing to harm people today with mRNA.
Do no harm. Yeh right.
https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/biden-administration-leaning-supplying-ukraine-long-range-missiles-rcna139394
Maybe instead tax incentives for more sex using birth control? That might help to preserve the family unit, which is the foundation of society, without worsening overshoot.
The Nazis did something similar during WW2
Nuclear war it is then.
Ditto if Russia puts weapons in Cuba or Mexico.
This type of action by ‘leaders’ in being deliberately provocative makes me suspect they are all very well aware of overshoot, resource constraints etc. They don’t have to think of how to explain not seeing overshoot as a problem, as a resource war will provide more resources (other people’s) or destroy enough infrastructure that new building (with what?) can happen for another generation, and it’s always the ‘other sides’ fault.
Why on earth would Europe’s NATO countries want Ukraine to join, knowing Trump is going to win the election and most likely abandon NATO altogether? Unless of course the ‘plan’ is to start the war before the election enabling Biden to invoke national state of emergency laws and pushing the election date out to the distant future. (is such a thing even allowed?)
It does seem to me the more traction Trump has over the coming election, the faster we are heading to war, possibly/probably nuclear. Perhaps this explains all the billionaire’s bunkers, they only have to survive the nuclear winter, then emerge with a much lower world population, but they have all the needed seeds etc to get everything going again, including themselves remaining important.
Just read this bit about emergency powers in the US…
https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/bolster-checks-balances/executive-power/emergency-powers
Would the fear be that a Trump victory, might see him invoke such powers when president to keep himself as president past the due date for the 2028 election, so they are prepared to use these powers themselves, but need to conjure up a legitimate emergency, like WW3??
Anything seems possible now.
In latest interview with Victoria Nuland she basically acknowledged the US has lost the conventional war and they are switching to “asymmetrical warfare” which will provide “big surprises” to Russia in 2024.
Does she really believe Russia and China are incapable of replying with their own asymmetric surprises?
Maybe our leaders have an “If I can’t have it, nobody can have it” type of attitude. Meaning that our leaders would prefer a nuclear war over the U.S. not being an unchallenged superpower.
That armchair warmongering heifer and her Jabba-the-Hutt husband, Robert Kagan, started this whole thing. Them and the whole neocon cabal, including Antony Blinken, Geoffrey Pyatt, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, etc. were following the playbook of the 2019 Rand report exploring ways to “overextend” and “unbalance” Russia. If “Toria” is trying to be cute and provide “big surprises”, Russia will open a giant can of whoopass. There is a Deep State in D.C., and it is a clown car of arrogant, unelected fatheads who rotate between the federal government and the think tanks.
Good recap today by Nate of all the evidence suggesting escalation soon.
Luckily there is a bit more to the video than the 30 second soundbite….
It’s scary thinking about how the next 10 years will unfold 🙁
Must watch presentation by Jessica Rose.
Student @ OFW nails US foreign policy:
Sabine Hossenfelder today tackles the thorny question:
“What is the reality of reality?”
Unfortunately, she ignores the much more important question:
“What is the reality of reality denial?”
But if reality is created in the mind, there is no reality denial! 🙂
Then layer panpsychism on top of that if you really don’t want to worry about overshoot.
Fun quiz for collapsniks.
Of cars and smart phones. Which one will society lose first?
a) Phones will go first: they were here last, they are so complex and expensive to build and their usefulness is only marginally better. Plus, the american nascar redneck way of life is non-negotiable!
b) Cars first: we have a liquid fuel problem before we have an energy problem. Society will transition to a distributed networks of technological villages within the global village to complete the emergence of the collective mind (at least as an intermediate phase). Plus, phones are such a great way to enforce harmony in the idyllic society our wise leaders are aiming for with the help of AI (they are my heroes).
c) Both at once with the great fireworks (answered with the background sound of a madman laugh)
d) This is all more subtle than that: we are stuck with past infrastructure, we will make less, simpler and more efficient versions of all our technological tools, we will have a caste society, each caste knowledgeable and taking care of its specific kind of machine… Collapse has been ongoing for a long time it’s a gradual transformation.
e) who needs cars and phones anyway: our bodies can perform all these functions already (you don’t know just because you haven’t been paying attention, you haven’t even tried because you don’t believe it’s possible, stop limiting yourselves)
f) some other answer…
That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure but I would guess cars and smart phones will disappear at about the same rate because it’s not about the device, it’s about the complex global infrastructure they both depend on. Our threats are systemic meaning everything is going to unravel at the same time.
Things like oil extraction, refining, transportation, spare parts, rubber, glass, litium battery miniing and manufacturing, and huge server farms paid for by advertising when consumers are too poor to buy what’s being advertized.
I would think cars would go first, as it would be lack of fuel in many countries causing collapse. Assuming no WW3, then IMHO it’s the accelerating decline in oil production that creates the real collapse. Feedback loops in supply line disruptions happening faster than governments can handle cause the breakdown. Throughout all this we will still have a mobile phone network and existing phones even if supply chains for new products fall to pieces. Once fuel supply falls rapidly in some successive time periods, months, quarters, and years, then the supply chains to drill and supply oil will also fall apart, accelerating the decline. Even with emergency powers of governments directing available fuel to farms heavy transport etc, it will be too little too late. Farm output will collapse sometime during the rapid decline of oil phase leading to starvation and riots in cities, plus those that can leave cities raiding farms.
I suspect we will still have mobile phones during collapse and even the grid during the start of collapse..
If SHTF is 24 hours away, what should you buy at Walmart?
Recommendations I disagree with:
– do not buy Twinkies, infinite shelf life but too much sugar
– do not buy Jasmine rice, too high a glycemic index
– do not buy Campbell’s Chunky soup, the no name brand at Superstore is 50% less expensive and has the old style bigger cans
– do not buy Kraft dinner, its orange powder substance has a short shelf life and goes rancid
– aluminum foil is overrated, very few recipes require it, and it’s not great for preservation
– large freezer bags are not nice to have, they are essential with many valuable uses, stock lots
– paper plates are useless space wasters
– I call bullshit on his claim that bleach has a 6 month shelf life
– portable speakers are about as essential as the 1 gazillion lumen flashlight he sells
– if you need to buy a USB flash drive to save critical survival information 24 hours before SHTF I think you are a little too late
– skip the kiddie pool for storing emergency water
– a much better and less expensive emergency toilet is a seat that snaps on to a standard 5 gallon bucket
Unusual clots started being found globally in 2021.
What change occurred globally in 2021?
Our leaders are not investigating.
If anyone is curious about the mathematics of how AI works.
Here is a series of videos that explains it.
Escalation in the wind.
Big campaign this morning across mainstream news media to persuade us that Russia has lost much more than Ukraine and why Ukraine will win against evil Russia.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a video of Mike Stasse @ Damn the Matrix.
Here he discusses his health problems and the coming food system collapse.
https://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/trying-to-make-waves-and-health-status-update/
For a carnivore diet to be ecologically viable, the human population must shrink by at least an order of magnitude, probably by two orders of magnitude.
Also I have a few evolutionary questions about the carnivore diet.
1) If humans are naturally carnivores, why are all of our closest relatives mostly herbivores?
2) If humans are naturally carnivores, why don’t we have claws and fangs like other carnivores?
3) If humans are naturally carnivores, why are we more likely to get sick from eating raw meat than carnivores are?
4) If humans are naturally carnivores, why do we get arteriosclerosis from eating (too much) fatty meat?
Good questions, maybe our resident carnivore AJ knows the answers?
The answer is that we are fire apes.
Our digestive system has the advantage that we cook food which has given us tremendous leverage.
So
– our closest relatives are mostly herbivores because they can not cook their food prior to eating. They also spend much more time chewing and have jaws far more powerful than ours.
– we don’t have claws and fangs like other carnivores because we are tool makers that supersedes all claws, fangs and teeth. This is inherited through culture which can adapt faster than genetics.
– we are more likely to get sick from eating raw meat than carnivores are becuase our digestive system has evolved enough to require cooking as a prerequisite. You will also get just as sick eating rotting food that is not meat. Other carnivores invest more energy into acidic and enzymic digestion than we do.
– why do we get arteriosclerosis from eating (too much) fatty meat? We don’t if the meat is a herbivore ruminant that is grass feed. It really depends on the fat that is entering our body. One of the biggest lies is that saturated fats are bad. Seed oils are the worst oils you can eat.
All this being said, IMO the modern industrial meat production is awful and I would say not too healthy at all.
That is why I raise my own meat.
I would generally agree with nikoB’s analysis above. We have culture that adapted to a diet that is more omnivorous than our ape relatives. However, I doubt that we have had enough time to truly evolve our digestive system to require cooked food. Cooking was a cultural invention that liberated more calories from plants or meats. Culture adapting to what was available in our environment was our advantage – one of the reasons we were so “successful”.
On a personal note I have stopped eating meat. Modern (corporate) meat consumption is not “sustainable” in any sense of the word, but I would agree that grass raised cattle on your own land is possibly (??) sustainable. The experiment with a low carb/high fat diet was a failure. I though I had followed it well by cutting my carbs way down (no sugar in anything, no grain flours, no grains whatsoever, lots of seeds/nuts, meat). Yet still my cholesterol (LDL) doubled to way over 200. My LDL to HDL ratio was still phenomenal, but doctors no longer treat the whole person and they starting talking Statins (no way I’m getting on that bandwagon). So I had some circulatory/heart tests done and my cardiac risk was very low (probably due to extensive aerobic exercise for 50 years and a vegetarian diet).
I think all diets and their proponents/research are suspect.
I now eat vegetarian again, no simple carbs, lots of complex carbs (beans, vegetables), some eggs & dairy. Just eating closer to Michael Pollan’s prescription: “Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.”
AJ
We are definitely evolved for cooked food. We come from 1 million years of food cooking, and our species has only existed for 300,000 of those million years. 1 million years is more than enough for evolution. Just as an aside, Panda bears are technically carnivore, but become so lazy just eating bamboo. how funny is nature
AJ you need to check your iron level. Older men often have iron levels that are way too high. If your iron is high, you need to give blood to get it back down.
Yes. Thank you for raising these questions.
The whole subject of diet is very confusing to me. Among others, there are the ones who think we should:
Some even say we don’t need much (only water and sun). We can live on prana.
I think I haven’t seen anybody say we should eat raw mushrooms only. I should establish my own school of thought. Mushrooms make sense, we don’t know it’s what we are supposed to eat because we have been making war on mushrooms for so long and they are such delicate organisms the environment needs to be clean…
Maybe, there is quite a diversity in human populations and it depends more on genetics. So that the right diet would depend on what your ancestors ate: asians do have difficulties with milk, people from north Africa do take weight more easily when following the western diet. At the same time, maybe that’s something which is under strong evolutionary pressure so that we would adapt quite quickly to a new regime (within 3 generations).
However, it may also depend on what we ate before and what’s living in our guts (microbiome). Or even the health of the ecosystem around us. Maybe we are versatile factories and if we eat and transform what the ecosystem needs to come back to homeostasis then we are healthy, otherwise we are poisoned. (in other terms, we don’t eat for ourselves)
Plus there are things which may seem to work, for a time and then the body reaches a threshold and it’s disastrous… Also, the internet is subject to vast campaigns of influence from economic forces. There are also poisonous things the industrial system would want us to pay for (like chewing gums are plastic, but that’s not the only disgusting thing that needs to be processed by the consumer)
Eating is now such a mental process 🙂 It has become difficult…
The answer to this is where our evolution as a species comes into it. Whatever first tribe in Africa became different to the others, one aspect was the use of fire and consumption of cooked food (all types). This obviously gave us some competitive advantage over other similar groups. I imagine there was constant interbreeding between different forms of ‘humanoids’ early on, with whatever mutations being the most advantageous leading to the survival and thriving of humans more like us.
Mutations that give some type of advantage happen in leaps, not just slowly over time. Imagine just one very fecund woman having a mutation that allowed her to thrive much more than others on cooked meat, which one particular group had an abundant supply of because someone else was great at lighting fires, and ‘game was easy to hunt in this area. Assuming most of her offspring were also able to thrive, much more than their cousins on cooked meat compared to raw or perhaps uncooked roots etc, then that branch would become dominant over time providing plenty of cooked meat was available, no claws or fangs necessary.
There is also some evidence that human species increasing animal consumption (especially fish and shellfish) aided in the evolution of our smarter brains. re-commenting here in case you missed, homo sapiens have always eaten meat and cooked food. fire use is 1 million years old for example, well pre-dating our species
5 years ago I proposed a theory that unites our unique cooking behavior with our unique extended theory of mind and unique self-domestication behaviors.
It’s called the Denial to Domesticate (DtD) Theory and is summarized by the following sentence:
Not one overshoot blogger or green activist saw the obvious brilliance of this theory and helped me to spread the awareness necessary for overshoot mitigation. 🙁
https://un-denial.com/2019/05/07/on-the-emergence-of-behaviorally-modern-humans-the-denial-to-domesticate-dtd-theory/
I can’t remember who here recommended it but tonight I watched the 2019 French language mini series The Collapse (L’Effondrement).
Each episode is a vignette of life in some dimension of a societal collapse.
It’s quite intense and portions felt realistic.
If you can’t find it I can put it on a server for you.
https://www.canalplus.com/articles/series/l-effondrement-la-nouvelle-creation-decalee-tres-attendue-sur-canal
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11248266
What Happens When Evil Wins?
Very upsetting.
Biden could stop this slaughter with one phone call.
Notice how young this journalist is.
US leadership has done huge damage to themselves in the eyes of up and coming voters.
Pigs.
Excellent speech. Andrew Bridgen is a rare ethical leader.
Let’s try a thought experiment here.
Let’s assume the 200ish MPs who did not show up for Bridgen’s speech have data that proves what Bridgen’s saying is wrong and that mRNA is safe and effective as claimed.
Would it not be in the public interest to present that data to dismiss Bridgen’s lies and to defend the integrity of the public healthcare system?
Of course it would be.
So why not present data to prove he is wrong?
Because it does not exist.
So if the MPs have no data to rebut Brigden’s claims, would it not be in the public interest for them to attend and learn about a serious threat to the constituents they represent?
Of course it would be.
So why not attend?
Because they do not want to hear the truth.
Why would they not want to know the truth about something that might have harmed the health of themselves and their children?
Because our species evolved to deny unpleasant realities, especially those realities related to mortality.
Let’s try a different explanation.
Let’s assume MPs are primarily concerned with keeping their jobs and care much less about what is true or false.
This could easily explain the behavior of government MPs who because they have no rebuttal to Bridgen think it best to ignore him.
But what about the opposition MPs?
Even if embarrassed for supporting government policies they could easily claim they were misled by government lies and now want to make amends by putting the criminals in prison and preventing any more permanent harm to children by banning mRNA.
This would guarantee them a win in the next election.
So why don’t they do it?
We’re back to genetic denial as the most probable explanation.
Unless, there is no real opposition (in that they too have been bought) and this is all only a circus to go along with the bread.
It seems to me that in Germany and France as well as in the US, the far-right are all anti-vax and anti-climate-change. Maybe not in the UK? Or maybe there are no far-right MPs?
If I understand you correctly, you think the reason opposition MPs refused to listen to Bridgen is that they have been bought off by pharma along with the government MPs. If that were true you would expect Bridgen to be aware of this and to call out their corruption but I have not heard him do that.
Yes, that’s what I believe. Either bought off directly or indirectly. In that they integrated long ago the rules of the game: if they want to acquire more prestigious positions or a nice retirement (revolving doors and the like) then do not make waves on certain topics.
Every MP knows and probably practices this at some level (consciously and some unconsciously).
In a way, it’s the baseline behaviour. And it may be most impolite (even taboo) to point this out, as it would break the implicit social agreement.
So if Bridgen were to call out their corruption, he would go outside of the accepted behaviours within his tribe. Consequently, without extremely strong evidence and a clean record and a backup of some power, he would be crushed.
I may be wrong. I have no evidence of this (except previous corruption cases and the level of servility human beings can display in the presence of power: in a way, a self-preservation strategy)
I hope I am expressing myself clearly. It is not so easy. Stated in another way, here is my mental model:
* there is the tribe of MPs
* they operate within a world basically made of two constraints: the voters and the powers
* they made a mistake when pushing for dangerous vaccines (in good faith or not)
* most of them decided their best strategy at this point would be not to recognize their errors and stay silent until society goes on with another topic. They decided this because, most of the time, honesty doesn’t pay with the voters (human beings are really harsh on the weak ones) and because they probably were either warned or rewarded by the powers not to and because that’s what the other do too (strength in numbers).
That’s how I feel how our “democracy” operates these days.
But really, I am a nobody, I don’t know. Just trying out alternative hypotheses.
There is still a form of collective blindness from MPs in that if the damage to health proves to be high enough and the link can be scientifically established, at some point this may snowball. But this is only one of the possible outcomes and not necessarily the most probable. In health scandals, it seems to me, most of the times, compensation are paid only after very long and difficult trials.
Thanks Charles. That sounds possible.
It’s one thing to make an honest mistake and harm children, but it’s another to be told about the problem and then keep doing it, even to their own children. What that says about our leaders is very disturbing.
I still find it odd that there is no opposition party anywhere in the western world making hay of this debacle and promising to expose what happened and to put their health care leaders in prison. You’d think it would be a great way to take power away from the government.
Perhaps it’s all outside the ‘Overton window’ of professional discussion. One aspect I was made acutely aware of years ago was how much the parliamentary debate we see in various parliament houses (or congress or senate) is for show. These people interact in the parliament cafeteria all the time, having normal conversations and friendships with each other, often some MPs getting on better with those from the ‘other side’, much more so than people from their own side of politics. The rigorous debate seen on TV is often as real as any fictional show.
Stopping further permanent damage to children is outside the Overton window?
What kind of intelligent species are we?
Maybe yes 🙂
To me, the human species doesn’t hold humanist values.
“My children matter, but your children are a different category altogether.”
Rob, you are probably more positive/trustful than me about human nature. Even though, I am often being told that I am a doomer with respect to the material conditions but an optimistic dreamer with respect to the human reaction. I always think we are finally going to collectively get our act together but we never seem to, only individuals 🙂
Some examples from the top of my head of the societal disregard to children:
* the age at which phones are given to children
* the kind of food served in school canteens
* asbestos: http://www.ibasecretariat.org/lka-asbestos-scandal-in-france-2023.php
* chlordecone: https://www.equaltimes.org/the-chlordecone-health-and-racism?lang=en
The human species behaviour is probably not really exceptional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_in_carnivores
Very good points.
I guess damaging children’s hearts with mRNA is not that different than damaging children with obesity and diabetes because we won’t admit the harms of sugar.
Except the former is accomplished by coersion and the latter by doing nothing.
Yes indeed.
Sen. Ron Johnson’s theory to explain covid behavior is that no one likes to admit they were wrong.
In other words, our leaders dislike admitting they were wrong so much that they’d prefer to continue to permanently harm children.
Or, maybe, their behavior is governed by an invisible powerful force to deny unpleasant realities.
I few snips from today’s economic news round-up by Panopticon.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/02/23/23rd-february-2024-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
Kunstler’s thinking about what I’m thinking about.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-dark-and-the-light/
To be honest, I sometimes feel a sense of hypocrisy when a commentator claims to know exactly what’s going on in declaring untruths everywhere. We already know that many contrarian commentators don’t exactly go along with the science on climate change, and that is a very big red flag against anything they say. I’m not saying JHK has flipped on climate change (though I think his position has weakened) but his support of Trump’s lies bordered on the obsessive and ridiculous. Trump would be an awful leader, as would Biden but being right on one of them doesn’t make them right on another. Trump deserves to go to prison (IMO) and his pleading of immunity of all criminal acts whilst president deserves ridicule from everyone. JHK is irrelevant to me now. Good fiction writer, though!
However, in general, I agree that getting at the truth is well nigh impossible these days.
JHK is a polarizing person. Some days he makes my skin crawl. Some days he speaks to my heart.
I don’t like Trump but if I were an American I would be white hot at what their doing to prevent him from running. If they want to prevent Trump from winning they should field a strong candidate instead of a vegetable.
I could not agree more. Some times JHK is just so right and other times I think he wants a Civil War in the U.S. I voted against Trump both times and think he is a dangerous Narcissist (he could morph into a despot). But, is he guilty of crimes, or were they manufactured by an anti-Russian mad dog Woke Left? Should a Deep State Pro War Obama/Clinton cabal run the world (genocide in Gaza anyone?) behind an Alzheimer’s suffering old man to nuclear annihilation? I agree the U.S. deserves better choices BUT if forced I would vote for RFK (another bad choice) rather than either Biden or Trump.
AJ
What are the main flaws in RFK Jr.?
The main one I am aware of is that he claims to want to stop those vaccines with higher risks than benefits but won’t use string theory to take down mRNA.
He’s signed on for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Obviously he doesn’t want to confront the Israeli lobby in this country.
AJ
Reminds me how the Israelis took over the company I worked for after we bought them. They are singularly focussed on the success of their country and nothing else matters.
If Trump is guilty of crimes and business fraud, he should be brought to account. If he had kept trying to delay the trials it may already be over. For me, he was certainly a driver of the insurrection and his constant attempts to overthrow elections shows that he is unfit to win an election. It’s incredible that so many Republicans just blindly accept everything he says. I agree with AJ, he’s a narcissist. I can’t imagine that he is not guilty of any crimes. I agree with Rob about Democrats fielding a strong candidate. It all goes to show how completely fucked the American system is. However, it doesn’t really matter who gets in, IMO, though Trump will be a lot more interesting than Biden. Both would be the oldest President ever.
I believe Biden and Trump hold the record for being the oldest candidates for 2 elections in a row.
My prediction is that Biden does not physically make it to the next election and Trump will be running against someone else.
You know you are in serious trouble when Alex Jones becomes a most trusted news source.
In one of the comments above on Feb 21st, I posted a video of Dr. Boz reviewing this paper COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign – PMC (nih.gov). In my view, her review was professional and appropriate.
Well, YouTube does not think so. Dr. Boz now reports that YouTube has “demonetized” that specific video. So, fewer “eyeballs” directed towards this video for advertising revenue. “The point of no return”
There is a whole essay that could be written from this small story of censorship, but sorry no time this morning. That essay would be something about how we now in a system of pseudo-democratic polity, with techno capitalism economics, where the profit motive of corporations, institutions, and individuals overrides almost all other considerations. We are locked into that system for now, and real significant change is impossible as long as there is energy to exploit for economic growth.
Speculating, but even as we fall off the oil fuel production plateau in 2025-2026 and begin a ~3% per year decline in oil production, the “built” infrastructure including power grids, computers (A.I.), roads, equipment, etc., will keep us in this system for another 5 to 10 years. (That said, War, abrupt climate changes, etc. could bring about changes in the system of governance in the western democracies.)
Amen.
Hideaway, who’s the new prolific commenter at POB named Anonymous?
Seems like he’s got a lot to say but I think it’s a bad idea to not have a unique callsign.
He/she use to post there as nony, going back a fair while. I’ve no idea, but Dennis Coyne who has access to the log in email addresses does know. Seems to be someone high up in O&G field with different interpretations of reserves and resources, always very bullish.
Thanks.
Just wanted to give an update so you dont think I offed myself (lol). Gonna rejuvenate Nate Hagens style. Can’t afford 6 weeks in India, so 2 weeks in a log cabin will have to do. Not bringing my laptop or phone (oh stop celebrating, you know you’ll miss me and my comments about white skin, evil and death).
And just to leave you with something, here’s an oldie but goodie that most of us on this website can relate to in these crazy times.
Sounds like a wonderful way to recharge and renew. Stay well.
Enjoy!
And thanks for your great post by the way: you picked a very good topic.
Maybe I have to confess a fascination for the morbid (even though I don’t experience it like that): I love watching the activity in a compost bin, on the surface of a decomposing carcass, the eery colours of mushrooms feeding off dead logs… Death doesn’t really feel like an end: there is so much activity going on, and (in good temperature and moisture conditions) recycling happens so fast one can almost witness the migration of energy.
There is another aspect I like about the decomposition/recomposition process. It outlines the absolutely forgiving nature of our reality. Don’t our existences have the consistency of dreams? Ultimately, everything will be forgotten, forgiven.
Content warning
Well, like everybody, I too have an aversion and fear of death 🙂 Mostly rooted in images of the extermination camps (dehumanizing images of pile of dead bodies, bulldozer and ditch) that we were subjected to at a very young age in history class. The damn teacher even scheduled a surprised exam just after the documentary (which I flunked)! I now wonder what the goal of such teaching was…
Thanks Charles, I appreciate that. You sound as sick and demented as me (in a good way). And I like this quote a lot:
“… the decomposition/recomposition process. It outlines the absolutely forgiving nature of our reality. Don’t our existences have the consistency of dreams? Ultimately, everything will be forgotten, forgiven.”
🙂
If you are interested in the geopolitics of the middle east, and an example of extreme unsustainability, this deep dive into Qatar is excellent.
I visited Qatar last year. Everything was twice the size as normal. For example, every toilet cubicle was twice as big as one in New Zealand. The locals speed around in expensive gigantic cars – scary to cross the road. Massive amounts of irrigation. Most of the workers are immigrants. Everything is incredibly clean, so clean. Everywhere you look there are immigrants cleaning things. The aircon is turned right down. Even the public toilets are air conditioned. Just huge big shrine to modern industrial civilization really. The culture of how to live sustainably in a dessert seems to be a distant memory.
Just started following Matt Orfalea. I like his work so far.
If you ever wanted evidence that we are easily influenced social monkeys that want to fit in with our tribe and deny unpleasant realities, this is it.
Safe & effective!
Sorry, wrong slogan…
I think one reason we seem to believe we are still in a democracy is because few of us have lived under authoritarian regimes (and told it was so).
Aren’t we now in hybrid regimes at best? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_regime)
If I may try an analogy, our societies look more and more to me like a stubborn person who knows to be in the wrong but won’t admit: there is an intense phase of denegation before a long period of silence.
I agree. We’re no different than the countries we criticize and want to go to war with.
Actually, there is another Canadian that gets into a fair amount of detail on the policies we need to prevent a total collapse. He also leads some kind of new religion that I think Gaia is familiar with. He’s made presentations to his town council on land reform policies they should make to prepare for the implications of peak oil.
https://www.youtube.com/@AndriiZ
I followed the link to Twitter.com and there is an image, the start (bottom left) is forest, which leads to “shining city on a hill” which leads to ruin and desert. That looks a lot like one of your recent quotes.
Andril Zvorygin focusses on the land and forest required to sustain a person without fossil energy. I have not seen him discuss population reduction, the debt bomb, avoiding war, rationing, etc. etc.
I initially did not like the latest Nate Hagens interview for the usual denial reasons but by the end I came to appreciate it for explaining the perspective of people like Elon Musk.
It’s not that they are unaware of or in denial of issues like thermodynamics, limits to growth, and overshoot, but rather they believe that it is impossible for our civilization to step down to a lower level of complexity without completely collapsing and our species going extinct or returning to the Paleolithic.
They believe we have no choice but to conquer space travel and to migrate to other planets. They’re not saying it’s definitely possible, but they are saying we have no choice but to try.
And I say their efforts to try are making the problem worse. In trying to succeed, the are guaranteeing we’ll fail. Society loves a good optimist though. And us pessimists are always painted as the villains in our cultural myths
I agree.
I have never come across a serious study of the policies we would require to step down to a lower level of complexity without collapsing.
The Limits to Growth study told us what to do in 1972, but today the precription would obviously be different.
It’s interesting that great intellects like David Korowicz, Tom Murphy, and Nate Hagens have not tackled or even discussed this issue despite arguing we will simplify.
I took a cut at it here:
https://un-denial.com/2016/06/27/what-would-a-wise-society-do/
This was one of the first things I read when I found your site. And its so true, nobody gets into the details like this. Why?
Ummm, let me think for a minute….
I got it!
Genetic denial of unpleasant realities. 🙂
Which is why I wish a few influential people would join me in spreading the word on why MORT awareness must be the first step towards any improvement of the human predicament.
10 years of fairly hard work and not one person has joined me. 🙁
It’s interesting that the first comment was from Nate Hagens, but in all his recent broadcasts never mentions the hard actions that must be taken.
In my humble opinion, we are too late for many of the actions you recommended to have the desired effect without collapsing the system now. If we simply stop growing, then because of the enormous debt, I think civilization will collapse anyway.
With the Robb interview by Nate, one aspect near the end with all the techno cornucopian stuff, he mentioned we just needed to get above the cost hump (or words to that effect) of getting the necessary equipment into space. This is a classic example of someone talking outside the area of their understanding. No idea of geology or mining at all. Asteroids are mostly similar to rock types we have on earth, as evidenced by meteorites compositions here on Earth from the asteroid belt.
It’s not a matter of just dragging an asteroid back to near earth then making stuff from it. We would need to search an asteroid, just like we search for minerals here on earth, by drilling, sampling, then defining a resource. Then we would need massive processing plants that separate the minerals. Should I remind people that gravity is an important part of the process? The floatation process that we use for about 90% of sulphide minerals wouldn’t work in a gravity free situation, as nothing would ‘float’. It’s hard enough here on Earth, imagine trying to do this in space, hundreds of millions of miles from Earth!! It’s total techno-utopian dreaming, with no understanding of reality.
I think the question that should be asked of every ‘we’ll get everything from asteroids’ people is; What process of mining the asteroid will be used? Then, describe the equipment we will need etc..
Once we dismiss the ludicrous mode of Elon type thinking, without understanding, we get back to Robb’s most likely scenario, collapse back to nothing…
This guest of Nate’s is the classic example of denial. He is extremely knowledgeable in the fields he’s an expert in, yet will just ‘believe’ the positive stuff from outside his area of expertise, because not believing in the ‘space’ expansion means total collapse (which he acknowledges), so he has no choice to himself but believe in the ‘fantastical’.
Good analysis.
I wonder if John Robb understood that PlanA (Space) has a 0% chance of success would he embrace PlanB (Carefully Climb Down) with a 20% chance of success?
Nate’s plan is to develop some plans and have them on the shelf ready to go for when SHTF because it’s not politically possible to execute any plans until SHTF.
Other than a couple snippets, like replace income tax with consumption tax, Nate’s never disclosed those plans. He claims to be working with powerful people. His plans appear to be top secret, just like the WHO plans, and the digital currency plans, and the immigration plans, and the war plans.
My plan has been public for 8 years.
LOL… Sometimes MORT feels like an easy cop out. Why wont we do this? … because of mort. Why wont we do that? … because of mort.
But (and this is an important but), I have a strong gut feeling that you are pursuing the correct issue. Feels like I will be supportive of this website for a long time.
Yes, it’s easy to make that criticism. Might be right. On the other hand, we are smart enough to know what to do.
I don’t think it’s possible for someone with full awareness of reality to argue against my “What would a wise society do?”
We can all agree it might not work due to the risks of financial collpase and war, but it’s an optimal response worth trying for anyone that has not given up.
I fully respect those that believe nothing can be done and we are screwed.
I am only speaking to those that have not given up and want to salvage some of our accomplishments that are worth keeping.
This was my comment over at Nates utoob channel:
Ironic that the algorithms he warns us about seem to have hypnotized him.
That said, the AI risks are legit, but only in the short term. If nation states and corporations use them to manipulate the public to maintain power, it will be a short term phenomenon, as the internet and other complex systems can’t be sustained. Tribalism will continue, but will revert to charismatic leaders convincing young men to become cannon fodder in the competition for dwindling resources.
ooda loop thinking is a tactic for the immediate. John seems weak at grasping the physical world limitations and long term strategic thinking.
As far as the topic of the strand here, your list of what a wise society should do is not going to happen for the denial reason you describe. An interesting post or two might be “what would a wise community do?”
In other words, while western culture as a whole will not react correctly to the predicament, small, local efforts may just create “lifeboat communities” that might get through the bottleneck or reduce the decline steepness. This path means that some of your list would apply, but other, more hands on and local tactics would also need exploration and implementation. Maybe that is the message to try to spread.
As deeply connected to the system as I am (and we all are), I still slowly disengage in this direction. I volunteer at a local folk school, and have been planting food trees and other perennials every year. If nothing else, my years in the matrix enabled me to buy some land and begin its restoration.
I like your idea for an essay on “What would a wise community do?”.
Maybe we could author it as a group here, capturing the best ideas of all the people that frequent un-Denial, before publishing our brilliant wisdom for the world to see?
I could setup a shared server for contributors to view and edit the essay. Maybe with Google Docs? Or some other service if anyone had a better suggestion.
scarr0w, would you be willing to write a first draft to get us started?
Maybe for privacy and security it would be better to keep our collaboration method simple?
1) Anyone that wants to participate sends a message to me using the email they wish to communicate with.
2) I forward scarr0w’s draft to the group with BCC so emails are private.
3) You email your edits back to me.
4) I consolidate the edits into a new draft.
5) Repeat for one more round of edits.
6) Publish for the millions of un-Denial readers to enjoy.
I’ll take a stab at it. While I’ve been aware and thinking about it for a long time, I’m an engineer, not an English major. Just sent contact info to you.
Got it. Excellent that you’ll take a first cut!
I’m an engineer that pissed off the arts students in my university technical writing course by getting top marks. I enjoy editing.
No rush, we need to leave paqnation’s post up for a while so it gets a proper airing.
I’ll send out a call for more contributors later after I get and edit scarr0w’s draft.
What would a wise community do is a good topic to look at, but we are clearly not a ‘wise’ community as we would have brought in all types of population reduction strategies many decades ago when ‘we’ became aware of the overshoot problem.
Our biggest problem, which proves we are not ‘wise’ is that we denied, and continue to deny, there is any overshoot problem as a community. The only ones that will ever get elected are those that claim they have the answer to our problems and promise continued ‘growth’.
IMHO we are currently so deep into overshoot that there is no way out other than collapse. Even something like Jack Alpert’s plan, introduced today, would bring on collapse of the entire system.
Firstly it would have to be imposed from above, which would mean people would dispute, scoff and resist the sudden change in direction from what people had been told all their lives.
Secondly if we started with real education about the overshoot, it would take decades to sink in for the majority of people, meaning it would not become universally acceptable until after we had collapsed. Once we have collapsed there is no returning to any semblance of modernity, we wont have the fuel to do so.
Lastly, perhaps this planet does indeed have intelligent life wise enough to not go into overshoot, being whales, dolphins and elephants. All have larger brains than humans and none have sent their natural environment into overshoot over millions of years of occupation.
I shouldn’t put words in his/her mouth but I think scarr0w agrees with you.
The idea is to complement my “What would a wise society do?”, which is not going to happen, with “What would a wise local community do?”, which might happen.
In my mind the idea with both the society and community versions is not to argue that those who believe there is nothing wise we can or will do about collapse are wrong.
Rather, the idea is to put on paper specific, affordable, technically feasible things that could be done to make the future less bad, and to retain some of our better accomplishments.
If for no other reason than to demonstrate to the universe that a few apes are capable of providing a wise alternative to ALL of their species’ current plans which are fuzzy, unaffordable, technically infeasable, and in most cases will make things worse rather than better.
I found myself nodding with most of this. But I completely disagree with the last paragraph. There is no such intelligent wise life on this planet. It’s just that ecosystem balances were reached in many ecosystems until humans eventually learnt enough about tool making to throw any temporary balance out of balance. Humans are the same as other species in their primary drives but have evolved an ability to go temporarily beyond limits, to the detriment of all life. Humans will never jettison that ability but the lack of accessible resources following collapse may eventually allow humans to fit into some ecosystems in some way. I won’t see it, though.
I agree with Hideaway’s overall take on things, but yes, Rob has explained what I was suggesting- Forget societal change- but local, independent efforts might have a somewhat less than zero chances of passing though the bottleneck. Itemizing the necessary attributes/actions would be the aim.
I totally agree with Hideaway’s view that we are “so deep into overshoot that there is no way out other than collapse”.
But still. Noah built an ark.
Acceptance of what is, does not equal to resignation.
There is absolutely no guarantee of reaping any fruit but we still have the privilege of action.
So yes for this future post 🙂
I view AI the same way as almost all non-environmental concerns and future planning in societies. Whatever the issues, they are short term and will not affect future generations (and perhaps this generation) as the polycrisis continues its relentless grind down of industrial civilisation.
I have started that video but haven’t finished. I will comment more later.
If it is impossible for our civilization to step down to a lower level of complexity without completely collapsing and our species going extinct or returning to the Paleolithic, then our species will go extinct or return to the Paleolithic.
They mentioned that AI itself is very energy and resource intensive. Those GPU clusters require huge amounts of energy to run. All of those electronic device also require lots of energy to manufacture.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/the-monster-footprint-of-digital-technology/
Note: The website solar.lowtechmagazine.com is solar powered and goes off line from time to time.
I am quite skeptical of the idea of us expanding into space. I think the future vision proposed by John Robb runs afoul of biophysical reality. I bet that Nate Hagens will do a Frankly related to this conversation.
I have heard claims like that but I never have found the arguments that we can’t simplify very convincing. That civilization is going to contract and simplify is almost certain, but the question is how to step down in a humane and orderly way. If something needs to constantly grow to remain viable, it is inherently unsustainable. In that case, I am not sure it is even a good idea to try to sustain it.
On AI, I am starting to wonder if AI is a bubble. A few posts by Cory Doctorow argue that this is the case,
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/
My bet is AI’s main contributions will be to increase the success of the porn and games industries, and to make a bigger mess of social media and a society with no shared reality-based values, before it implodes due to unsustainable energy demands.
I also think AI may also be used for purposes like dubbing movies and TV shows, and probably used for other mostly useless purposes like more targeted advertisements, but I am not sure we’ll get to the point where it will start replacing millions of jobs. However, I do think governments will try to use AI to carry out mass surveillance.
Ultimately, I agree that its energy demand is unsustainable. I think that the end of cheap energy will constrain AI before it is able to take all of our jobs away.
Tentatively linking to this article about a new study (of 99 million people) regarding COVID vaccines safety. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/23/two-very-rare-covid-vaccine-side-effects-detected-in-global-study-of-99-million
The Guardian article does not provide a link to the paper so I’m unable to check for conflicts of interest with the authors, nor the journal it was published in, but I assume you already did that before posting it here. Correct?
If you reply no I will delete it.
My recollection of the Guardian is that it also has conflicts of interest but I’d have to dig in to confirm.
The paper is here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X24001270#coi005
There are 35 authors. Only 6 declare competing interests but mainly due to work for government agencies of various countries. Only one declared a relationship, though weak and no funding, with a COVID vaccine manufacturer.
You missed the forest for the trees.
The study was funded primarily by the CDC, and the CDC is controlled and funded by pharma, so the whole thing is one big conflict of interest.
CDC: Bias and Disturbing Conflicts of Interest by Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., is editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
Click to access huntoon.pdf
Do you see the profound damage they have done to the fabric of society?
The regulators that are supposed to protect us from industry mischief are controlled by industry.
There are no institutions with integrity we can trust.
We can’t even trust our family doctors now.
It’s a rot undermining civil society and public health.
https://twitter.com/ballardsigns/status/1761244740266172455
Here is a discussion of the study you cited.
So, if you take that “discussion” at face value, are you saying the study seems sound?
At face value they are quite critical of the study however their face value is worthless because they missed the CDC conflict of interest which means there’s no need to even read the study. We know it is propaganda intended to support the pharma industry. We also know from Dr. Malcolm Kendrick all the tricks used to make data draw a desired conclusion, and how difficult it is to unravel this type of deceit. Unless you’re willing to devote years to unscrambing what they did it is best to simply discard any study with a conflict of interest.
Painful to watch. He controls the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal.
Biden is my favourite USA president because he just makes me laugh so much
In 2020, the Democrats had a field of over 20 candidates and this is who was chosen.
Trump has gaffes too, but they are generally because Trump doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
I’m sure many of you realize when we have our mass dieoff event some time in the near future they won’t be any burials. Bodies will simply decompose in their homes or out in the open. It will be a fitting end for this proud ape that tried so hard to overcome its mortality.
— Mandrake
Good point. And for us doomers who believe Guy McPherson is right…. prevents me from even planning my death (and paying in advance to some cemetery)
If he was right we’d already be DEAD … LMAO
What is Guy McPherson’s current prediction?
I’ve seen nothing from him for probably 5+ years.
I believe his current prediction is 2026. But of course, when we get there, he will change it to 2028. (I’m still rooting for him though)
His yt channel Nature bats last is worth browsing. Comments are turned off, which sucks, but for all the hate he gets, I dont blame him
I checked out Nature Bats Last. Guy’s aged a lot in 10 years, and seems to have lost his cocky arrogance. I imagine he would say the same about me if he had watched me 10 years ago, except I never did any video because I lack self confidence.
When he came to NZ in 2016 he said we’d all be dead in 10 years. That was the last time he made predictions I think. An actual climate change professor from NZ fact checked Guy and found basic maths issues. One of them was where guy but the wrong order of magnitude, which I thought was quite funny
I never hated Guy. Good chance he’ll end up being mostly correct except early by less than a hundred years.
A hundred years of error out of the 1-200,000 our species has existed is not so bad.
He should never have been so specific and dead certain about his predictions.
I loved Guy (not literally) to begin with and even had a chat with him over skype. Seemed like a good guy. However, his list of feedbacks was about half rubbish (mischaracterisation) and half reasonable. His multiplication of the feedbacks was ridiculous and I think that’s what led to his NTHE predictions. I’m pretty sure his predictions accelerated so much that we should already be extinct. I see his posts every now and again but rarely read them.
That’s all very fair to say. I think the same thing for our boy Malthus. If you dive into Guy’s “work” on climate change though, you will find it riddled with errors, lacking an understanding of the research, referring media articles rather than journal articles, etc. He used to get so pissed when people would say, “Guy, you’re not a climate scientist.” His original work was on trees and ecosystem, which of course meant he developed a good understanding of climate, as he needed to know how climate related to his field of study. He became very concerned over the years (rightly so). But then he may have lost the plot a bit, perhaps he’s not very well. I don’t know. But he says some damn stupid things that don’t pass the sniff test and sure don’t line up with what we know from the deep time of earth’s history.
Good to know. I never dug into the details of his work and only listened to a few of his talks.
h/t Panopticon
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/19/like-the-flip-of-a-switch-its-gone-has-the-ecosystem-of-the-uk-largest-lake-collapsed-aoe
I wonder what Nate Hagens would say about the current temperatures in Wisconsin?
BTW, is there a way to attach image files to word press comments?
If you copy and paste the link of an image it will usually display. Sometimes you have to fiddle with the link. If your link does not display the image I will try to fix it.
I don’t think there’s a way to attach an image file. They have to be uploaded to my account in the cloud and you don’t have the ability to do that.
[Edit]
I remember there used to be free image servers that you could upload photos to and then link to. I bet they still exist.
When I die, I want a natural burial. No Casket, No embalming, No Cremation.
Hi Rob
You are probably right that the biggest driver of all the insanity (evil?) around covid vaccines is the profit driven algorithms that are pharmaceutical companies (and highly compensated executives). Pharma and Pharma money has infiltrated into all aspects of the medical and science community, regulators, and broadcast television (through advertising).
This video, “The biggest crime in the history of medicine” provides a good high level summary of a recent paper that outlines the many problems with the vaccine “trials” and use.
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10810638/
Even if you have followed what the COVID “deniers” have been saying for the last few years, it is pretty shocking to see misconduct or willful ignorance and / or incompetence summarized in a peer reviewed paper published on the NIH Library. I suppose the mea culpas are slowly coming. ( But lets see if the paper stays up on the NIH web site. )
In addition the level of “capture” by Pharma, I still think there are other causes to this insanity. In addition to being captured, by inference from the facts, I have to assume that our regulatory agencies are incompetent. Speculation, but there also seems to be an unusual level of fear of job loss among high income earners if they go against the consensus. If you lose your six figure salary in this economy you probably will not get back to that level of income.
Cheers.
Shawn
Thanks Shawn.
The total disregard for public health is breathtaking.
These days I am most troubled that the influential dissidents are not helping Dr. Joe Lee. He’s got the best case for bringing the whole thing down in a hurry. I wish he wasn’t such as asshole. He also brings left/right politics into the discussion which is a big mistake. I’ve been trying to coach him but it’s not working.
This
“Speculation, but there also seems to be an unusual level of fear of job loss among high income earners if they go against the consensus. If you lose your six figure salary in this economy you probably will not get back to that level of income.”
Is 100% true in New Zealand – it’s almost total group think from our so-called leaders. Everyone keeps quiet about what they really think
I found this comment in a blog, and I want to believe it. Is it rubbish?
(funny how since finding this site I now notice anything denial related)
Benn (February 14, 2024 at 9:18 AM)
I recently came across the idea that the “denial of death” being a root cause of our situation only applies to delayed-return cultures. Immediate-return cultures experience a flow-like state where yesterday and tomorrow don’t matter, and there is no fear of death. Alan Urban’s article only applies to civilised people. See Dr Leonard Martin’s I-D Compensation theories. There is a constant way of thinking that assumes that because our culture thinks like this, that means everyone does.
I would not know about civilised/non-civilised people and differences of cultures. This is already too much of an extrapolation/generalisation for me.
I can just say that fear of death can not be based on reality, for death is not experienced by this body.
Something I will do is cut the plastic rings from packaging up before I put them in the bin. Just in case one day every modern human is reincarnated as an animal in the future who dies a horrific death in a plastic ring. One little way I try to minimise evil. I also rescue stranded earth worms from the concrete. I must have saved hundreds of earthworms. Today my car hit a sparrow on my way to work. I suppose it died.
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.3OcaNkuORss7bAl8PWOm4AHaDA?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain
Of regardless of reincarnation, one day the bits that make up my body will make up the bits of another creature’s body. That creature is me. And the better world I leave for it, I leave for myself.
I really enjoyed this article and I like your table a lot as a mental check note. What happens with our dead bodies is very much tied to MORT and beliefs about what happens after we die. Often the dead body rituals need to be completely properly to ensure safe passage to the afterlife.
The Tower of Silence in Mumbair is an interesting death ritual.
“Tower of Silence, is a circular, raised structure built by Zoroastrians for excarnation (that is, the exposure of human corpses to the elements for decomposition), in order to avoid contamination of the soil and other natural elements by the decomposing dead bodies. Carrion birds, usually vultures and other scavengers, consume the flesh. Skeletal remains are gathered into a central pit where further weathering and continued breakdown occurs.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
Thanks Monk. And that Tower of Silence was very interesting.
Sounds similar to Sky Burials in Tibet. The dead are fed to vultures.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial
Personally I’m hoping to be composted on my own land and a tree planted on me. A selfish reason to hope that tshtf before I die so there are no authorities to hassle my family about it.
Temperature in the Midwest right now.
https://graphical.weather.gov/sectors/uppermissvly.php
Here’s a prediction made by MORT:
The views of this essay will be below average because it discusses something our species had to evolve to deny before it could emerge with an extended theory of mind that enabled us to dominate the planet.
Let’s check if the prediction is correct in a month or so.
Hideaway will appreciate today’s post by Art Berman in which he highlights the ignorance, hopium, and denial in the renewable energy forecasts of the EIA and EIA.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-energy-transition-is-being-led-by-a-clown-car/
Art is correct, there is no overall plan other than throw a lot of money at the problem, all being new debt, plus of course the higher percentage of renewables the higher the price of electricity.
I wish people wouldn’t take Lazard’s LCOE reports as real though. They are tarnished by the assumptions they impose of every electricity generating type. The other problem with Lazard’s reports is they don’t do any comparison with what we built the system with.
This is the bit I liked most from Art’s article…
“It is ironic that many who want to save the planet from climate change disregard the damage to the ecosystem that results from the growth of the human enterprise. They don’t see that substituting one form of energy for another does nothing to limit these devastating effects.”
I don’t do left/right politics so please don’t interpret this video as a political statement. I just thought it was a funny satire of how bad our leaders are these days.
I love it hahaha
I don’t think in this case the use of the term evil is appropriate. Too much religious baggage.
I always think of it in terms of give and take. What did you take from this world in order to live and what did you give back? If we all take more than we give back then eventually there is nothing left to take.
I basically have never met anyone who thinks in these terms, well at least that thinks honestly about it.
Owning an EV is not giving but many people think it is.
US needs growth and can’t keep borrowing 9% of GDP to create 3% GDP growth.
So they let in 10 million immigrants with more on the way.
That’s a 3% increase in population, all working age, so maybe a 3% boost to taxes and GDP.
Maybe they can now reduce the deficit a little AND increase military spending to fight China & Russia.
In summary, more overshoot to prevent overshoot collapse and to fight a war that will accelerate overshoot collapse.
What a fine species we are.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/stunning-10-million-illegals-have-entered-us-under-biden-tucker-country-being-destroyed
Isn’t that basically a ponzi scheme?
Yes. Other descriptions include:
– eating your seed corn
– stealing from your grandchildren
– living beyond your means
– transfering wealth from the poor to the rich
– avoiding some pain today in exchange for much more pain in the future
– and my favorite: denying reality