Dreamscape 2: The Silent Man

As I stood on the sidelines, I marveled at how awful the players on my team were. All that training, all those long hours of practice, all for nothing. In addition to forgetting their pads, they were kicking the ball straight into the air, fumbling left and right, and punting even on first down. At several points I wanted to jump in the game myself, but I stuck to my role as coach.

Soon the game had degenerated to such slap-stick idiocy that I decided to return inside the Rest House. But on my way back in, I saw Jason in a heated argument with a man whom I had never seen before. This I was sure of, since the man's Western garb made him stick out like a sore thumb. 

While Jason was downright belligerent, the man was menacingly silent.

I had no idea what the altercation was about, but Jason was letting the silent man have it.

"I don't know who you think you are," Jason proclaimed, "but I'll kick your ass! Just try me!"

I ignored this and continued inside; I had much more important things to do that breakup a schoolyard fight. I picked up a book once inside, but I could not focus on the words as Jason continued shouting. As far as I could tell, the other man still did not say anything. But as Jason babbled on, I heard an edge of desperation creep into his voice.

"Colonel French is an old pal of mine...and he'll kick your ass too! He used to be in the army, and he even went to college too. You wouldn't stand a chance...French!....French, come here! French and Goldsmith...come here! Help me kick this guy's ass...Help me...Goldsmith...Help me, Goldsmith..." 

Before long, Jason was openly weeping. At this I finally decided to go back outside where I found Jason in some kind of fetal position while the other man stood stock still without a word.

Jason continued to sob as I brought him inside. Heading up the stairs, he was coherent for a second, during which he told me that his sister was now arriving in Europe. I didn't want to shatter whatever fantasy world he was living in, so I did not point out that he didn't have a sister.

Glory: The Party or the Struggle?

During an early morning, Goldsmith had come to me to ask my advice in the selection of Elders for a municipal council he was attempting to establish. I had been frustrated with this project of his, not seeing the worth in the severe pains he was taking to create a government of men for apes. Setting the table for a discourse, I asked Goldsmith what his purpose in life was. But my query invited a discourse of Goldsmith's own, causing me to be silent and reflect.

"Old Man," he said, "I did not know for the longest time. As a young man I knew that I was on this Earth for a reason, but the reason was utterly lost on me. Growing older, however, I saw that my purpose was simply to extract the glory latent in things. It would be hidden so that you could not see it before, during or sometimes even after you had released it, but it would be there. You would just have to know beforehand if it was there or not."

At first I thought Goldsmith was mocking me, but the ensuing silence killed that suspicion. 
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Several years ago, I recall listening to Michael Savage one evening when a young man called in and challenged Savage on pot legalization.  "Dude, weed is all natural! How can you be against something that's totally natural!"


Savage's response, in his characteristically bombastic style, has stayed with me to this day. "GO OUT IN THE FOREST AND EAT SOME OF THOSE "ALL NATURAL" MUSHROOMS; YOU'LL BE DEAD BEFORE YOU HIT THE GROUND, YOU DUMB SCHMUCK!" 

There is certainly something to be said for things that are natural, i.e. reality. But in our world of the semi-post scarcity economy and the social construct enlightenment, it's getting increasingly difficult for the herd to tell just what is natural and what isn't. 

Nowadays, the "unnatural" behavior of yesteryear has been warped into the normal behavior of today. Don't drink alcohol? Well you're just a tightwad who doesn't know how to relax. Don't smoke weed? You probably think you're too good for that stuff. Don't have casual sex? Well, either you are too pathetic to get any or you are too closed minded and probably repressed by some outdated ideology. 

While these behaviors might make for good servants, they are always bad masters. And they've become the masters of the masses. The "natural" state of life has become abundance and an orgiastic party; "glory", if any modern sense of it still exists, can only be found at keg parties, sporting events, and your parent's basement.

A brief perusal of history shows that our current "natural" is a modern aberration. The natural state of man has been struggle; even if we count back only to the dawn of modern humans, conflict has several millennia more of predominance than does the party . And I would guess that it was that way for millennia before that as well. 

Like being Believers, human beings cannot help being glory seekers. The question is merely where we look for it, which has a big impact on if and how things get done. Struggle is the means by which we come to some of the greatest aspects we can cultivate in ourselves: discipline, fortitude, heroism. But when Soma is the greatest good that can be offered to us in life, men turn into the spineless self-haters whose lives revolve around sleeping in on Saturdays and watching cat videos on Facebook. Thanatos rules, yet all are terrified by nothing more than death.

With so little to have pride in, the modern man looks into all sorts of abysses for a glint of glory. At one time or another, we pass by during our own personal searches. Libertarians find their glory in an unfulfilled ideology; mainstream conservatives find it in the mythology of a once great nation.

We men of the Interlude must find our glory on a bridge that spans this gap. We must, for now at least, endure being Nationalists for an Undiscovered Country.

Dreamscape 1: Those Who Look Away

Predictions are easy to make, but timing is everything. I had been expecting the explosions for awhile, but when they did come, even I was surprised. 

I stood on the sidewalk with my classmates and saw the havoc before us; although buildings were collapsing and people fled for their lives, we on the sidewalk were somehow removed from the chaos. No one knew why these things were happening, but I could venture a guess as to why.

My mind raced but I could not spur myself to action. Looking at my classmates, I saw that they were in a similar, but different, situation: they were laughing. 

In between chuckles, a student turned to the rest of us and asked "Why are we even watching this?" The question struck me. He didn't ask 'Why is this happening?' or even 'What is happening?' The event unfolding was immaterial and the implied solution was to look away. His question, his entire demeanor indicated that we were not even there, that we only observed and no way participated in the world around us. I stepped off the sidewalk to see if there was a glass separater, but I moved unimpeded into the street.

A huge mass of people stampeded down the street, and my class mates and I had no choice but to run with the herd down the ruined street. To our left an elevated train rolled by, and I somehow knew it was trouble. I screamed for the people to be careful, but my voice was drowned out in the desperate footfalls. Sure enough, there was an explosion on the tracks and a car of the train theatrically arced into the air. It seemed at first that it was going to land on me, but it flew over my head and crushed people  in the crowd behind me.

Where did North Korea go?

While Goldsmith was preoccupied with the raiders or the Government, I kept reminding him of the dangers closer to home. One time I asked him why the raiders act the way they do.

"Because they are overgrown sociopathic children." he responded bluntly.

"And what of the villagers who feign friendship and pretend to follow your commands?"

Goldsmith was silent. I went on.

"When you grow to be my age, you'll understand that more often than not, it is not a child who cries wolf. It is the men who cry wolf."
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The car chase and manhunt certainly was a spectacular ending to the Tsarnaev brother saga, spectacular enough even to save the world from total nuclear war.

At least, if we go by what the mainstream news has been telling us.

For two weeks we were told that war on the Korean peninsula was "imminent", that the United States was raising its preparedness, and that this time the sabre rattling was real. It seemed like updates were coming in every fifteen minutes, dutifully reporting all sorts of relevant indicators such as what color socks Secretary Kerry had chosen to wear today or how many chili dogs Kim Jong Un was rumored to have scarfed down by noon. The world held its breath as CNN and Fox broadcasts finally seemed to finally agree: Kim Jong Un was going to blow up the world.

And then an Islamic pothead ran around Boston with a gun and the world was saved. Kim Jong Un and the Rice Cake curtain of North Korea disappeared. Another war, another victory.

In an e-mail from a Korean contact of mine, we hear something a bit different from the tale that's told in the Western media:

"The tone is totally different. CNN is saying that war can happen anytime now, but it is business as usual in the SK media...NK is threatening us as they always do. …That connotes that nothing is special, that we don’t need to worry that much and our government should go on with our economic sanctions against NK until they stop provocations on us...If a bully was threatening to beat you up for 50 years and never did anything, would you take them seriously any more?"  

If we look at the big picture here, maybe we can sort out the discrepancy. 

Who would profit from a war?

South Korea is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, and has nothing to gain by taking over one of the poorest. With totally different language and culture, the South has no sane or logical desire for "reunification." While an ally of North Korea, the Chinese certainly do not want to get dragged into a possible conflict with the U.S. over something as insignificant as Korea, especially when MEAD (mutually assured economic destruction) is in effect. Japan and the rest of Asia have nothing to gain from a war with nuclear ramifications, let alone an invite for further American penetration into the region.

North Korea? Absolutely not. While they have invested everything they have in their military, they know that they will get torched if they so much as lay a finger on South Korea. There is no country there to defend; even the greatest military can't win when there is nothing behind it to sustain it. And I would be very surprised to learn that China hasn't told Kim Jong that's he's on his own in a possible fracas against Uncle Sam.

That would leave the United States. I won't say anything about this, my point having been made that no one in Asia really wants a fight.

You see, the real threats in the global arena run on the potent fuel of ideology. The Russians can conjure up the glory of being the hegemon of yesteryear , while the Jihadists see themselves as God's foot soldiers in the epic finale of history. North Korea? Kim Jong Un has no ideological urge to conquer the world; his ideology goes just far enough to make sure he gets all the Twinkies he can eat and all the porno he can watch. And even if he is deranged enough to think he can fight a war, let alone fight the world, the generals around him aren't. At the end of the day, the North Korean oligarchy is interested in one thing, and one thing only: to keep living like playboys while all the serfs starve.

So if you've been following the "lamestream" media, we must all offer our hearty thanks to the Tsarnaev brothers for single-handedly saving the world. People can chatter about the military industrial complex and 24 hour news cycle, but I smell no conspiracy here. I smell merely the continued purification writ large of intellects and attention spans in the putatively richest country the world has ever seen.

Until next time, just remember: the true enemy is within.
 

The Interlude

I repeated myself often to Goldsmith. Yet he never pointed out to me when I did so. One such thing I found myself retelling all the time was the proverb of the Tree Branch.

"Goldsmith, reality is like a strong tree branch. A man is able to push the branch in one direction and the other, but only to a degree. If he pushes too far to one direction, he is in for a nasty surprise. You see, Goldsmith, the branch does not break. At some point the branch will go no further, and it will snap violently back to its original position. And though it lives, the branch cares not for what stands between its stressed and original positions."
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In a previous post, I made reference to an Interlude, an in between time, a time between when the branch is pushed and when it snaps back. It is the time between the rejection of reality, and the subsequent reassertion of reality. 

When I talk about my views of the world, I've been labelled with all sorts of names: Doomsday prepper, misanthrope, hyper pessimist, etc. Lamentably, only history books can offer a man of our time a glimpse at greatness. But I firmly believe that the great are not an extinct species, merely a dormant one. If my conversation partners would listen long enough, they would learn that I am in fact, probably more optimistic than they are. 

 After a book recommendation, I recently read Strauss and Howe's The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. While I've argued in the past that prophecies are a vulgar thing, I found Strauss and Howe's theory to be well reasoned, if not compelling. The thrust of it is the interplay and generations and how human nature creates a natural cycle of traits emergent in given populations. To make a long story short, the Fourth Turning envisions a crisis gripping the United States around 2020 (the book was written in 1997) and a subsequent Hero generation rising to power to deal with it.

Nowadays young people have very little in common with the GI generation, the Heros from the last cycle. Strauss and Howe predicted that Gen Y would spearhead a cultural rejuvenation, a return to societal wholesomeness, and be generally made of the stuff of greatness. Take a look around and its evident that the authors missed something; Gen Y is an aberration in the cycle (which has happened before), in which rather than being something new, they are a more cowardly and spoiled continuation of the degenerate Gen X. This does not mean, however, that Gen Y will be bereft of any and all Heros.

The Hero Generation will be the ones who survive the Crisis. 

Strauss and Howe presciently included a caveat whenever they spoke of the Crisis that inevitably appears once per cycle: the Crisis does not always necessarily end well.
But the theory is not deterministic. Generations are formed from their interactions with the world, whatever state it may be in, and the character of the preceding ones.

As the Austrians are fond of saying, the cure for the recession is the recession itself. Likewise, Gen Y has the task of facing a Crisis that has no other solution other than the Crisis itself. Sure, we know of structural reforms that fix some things on paper ; we are prepared for radical, but effective, action that really could bring some "change." But is there a panacea? What solution is there for $100 million of unfunded liabilities? What solution is there for the runaway train of a Fed balance sheet, that grows at a $85 billion  clip every month?  What solution is there for 65 million people who voted for an empty suit like our current president?

The answer is the Tree Branch of Reality snapping back with a vengeance. 

We are in the Interlude; Strauss and Howe call it the Unraveling. Without any real examples of greatness on hand, Gen Y will have a simple choice when the Crisis comes; be great or die. The Hero Generation is coming, and will come, like it or not. 

In the meantime, we men of the Interlude who wish to become the Hero Generation of tomorrow, we have a different task at hand. In the words of the Observer:

Heroes need their feet grounded in reality and their heads in the light.

We're not insane.

We're not alone.

We're finding each other.

It is a wondrous realisation. 

 

The Gold Standard Ideals

Goldsmith was an idealistic man, and I suppose it was in a way my job to keep him grounded to reality. Sometimes his ideals blinded him, but occasionally his mind would produce enough flashes of lightning to illuminate his psychic landscape. One such time he said to me:


“Old Man, is it true that the contents of our ideals matter not so much as how we obtained them?”


It was a challenge for me to add anything to this wisdom, but I eventually agreed, saying “The process is inextricably linked with the result.”

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“If only we impeached Obama.”

“If only we had a real democracy.”

“If only we had a Gold Standard.”


If only our problems were that simple.


When speaking of the gold standard, rarely does the rhetoric transcend the realm of ideals. Has history unequivocally proven that a metals based currency is superior to a fiat system? Or is the gold standard one of those things that looks great on paper but fails in reality? While both these questions are paramount in the modern gold standard debate, they were forged in an entirely idealistic framework; neither question can be answered in an absolute sense with any semblance of intellectual honesty.


Certain features of the gold standard are no doubt desirable in a currency; these elements have been promised both by theory and history. But at the end of the day, the gold standard is an institution, and institutions are ultimately only as good as the people who operate within them.


In the monetary regime of the United States 2013, it is not difficult to point out the gross incompetence in the banking system and the government. I would argue that a gold standard would not eliminate these negative influences, but even if we should grant that it would, most gold advocates do not account for the most corrupting influence of them all: the degenerate masses that constitute the users of the system. So long as our sick society actively votes (with their ballots and their dollars) for more debt, more “free” lunches, and more materialist trinkets, no institution will function effectively.


As the strings of society unwind and the Temples of yesteryear are desecrated, the modern man becomes ever more desperate for a panacea. Perhaps this is how all the “zombies” are able to sleep at night; they have convinced themselves that they have the secret knowledge that will turn things around.


Ideals, ideally, are the beacons toward which we direct the ship. They are not the destination themselves. True, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But what lies along that line? What kind of wisdom is it to unflinchingly guide the ship in the direction of the light? The fog is quite thick, and there are many rocky outcrops that jut out in our path.


Know your ideals and be present at their birth. Do not be slaves to them.

A Tale of Two Prophets

Goldsmith told me of how the military men had arrived in the town and had announced that a ruthless party of raiders were about to descend upon the village. Originally thinking that they only had hours, the men of the town took defensive positions immediately. But the day went by, and the men used the cover of night to collect and stockpile all their supplies. On the second day without a fight, the men attempted to dig trenches around the settlement. On the third day, torrential rains washed the trenches away. On the fourth day, the men disassembled several barns to make a rickety tower. On the fifth day, the wind destroyed the tower and rendered the materials useless. By the sixth day, men had realized that they had not done any work for almost a week, and returned to their labors.

The raiders never came.
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Aurini's latest video is a must watch. Do not be intimidated by the length, it's worth the time.

While the content is quite stimulating in and of itself, I am perhaps most impressed with the way Aurini goes about presenting his argument. The tone is casual, he's talking to people who get him. But most importantly, he honestly states that he's speculating.

His arguments are good, but he makes it quite clear that he's not a seer. He uses words like "scenarios", "could", and "possibility."  Quite simply, Aurini knows that prophecies are a vulgar thing; any idiot can make them (and indeed many do). That's not to say that we don't have our opinions. But spitting in the face of Time is not a generally recommended strategy for moving forward with our lives.

Let's compare this with the rhetoric coming from somebody like Peter Schiff. Full disclosure, I think the man is a genius. Having the honor to have met him in person, I'm really happy to say that seems as genuine as a pundit can be. But he often makes the mistake of talking in absolutes. He was dead right on the housing crisis, but I think he's bitten off a little more than he could chew with some of the predictions he's made in the past year. Hyperinflation still has not reared its ugly head; gold is still cheaper per ounce than it was in 2011; and the "real crash" hasn't hit yet. Personally, I think we might see these things down the road. But Schiff put dates on his predictions and uses absolutes on top of absolutes: "definitely", "has to", "impossible." Schiff has done an incredible job raising economic literacy, but his predictions have been a step back from these two steps forward; he's ostensibly tied Austrian economics to more than one busted prophecy that look laughable in hindsight.

The bottom line is this: we need to have good reasons for what we believe, but we need to be ready for anything. Let's make complete plans for the collapse, which I believe is coming. But in order to be a complete plan, it needs to take into account all possibilities. And its certainly possible that there will be no collapse during our lifetimes. At least not in the way we imagine it. 

Be prepared for anything. But please note that this doesn't necessarily mean you should invest in a 401k.