rigorousintuition.ca

I guess we need to address the idea of the global society. An all-inclusive community, the society of societies. I'd say that by its nature as the meta-society, it is clearly an abstraction, and so to live in this global community is living in the abstract.

" I believe a connection has been established between levels of trust in a society and levels of happiness, and trust in turn grows with connection"

I'm thinking about this. I don't get happiness from society, I bring happiness to it. For me, the pursuit of happiness, and techniques for creating happiness is for unhappy people. If you're already happy, there's no need to pursue or create it. I think the idea of a "happy accumulation," a happiness surplus, is not happiness but a kind of echo of the consumer addiction to commodities. An always unsatisfying endeavor by design, since the addict of commodified happiness builds a natural tolerance, needs more and more to simply be happy at all.

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@galexybrane
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In 2020 493 people became billionaires and 150 million people fell into extreme poverty. Billionaires gained $3.9 trillion while workers lost $3.7 trillion. It’s only because of intense brainwashing that people see this blatant theft as the natural symptom of a respiratory virus.

https://twitter.com/galexybrane/status/ ... 69666?s=20

The $88 Trillion World Economy in One Chart

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-88 ... one-chart/

Could be trillions in sectors of the economy that prefer to remain unreported, as well. Total wealth of billionaires as of current estimates is thirteen trillion. Even a big piece of the pie is meagre in relation to the pie factory. And they need the pie factory, depend on it for survival. So it controls their lives. They are at the mercy of its rhythms, do whatever it demands, their wish is its command.

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Belligerent Savant » Fri Apr 16, 2021 3:11 pm wrote:.

You're relying wholly on front-facing information. It's like assessing the outward and inward appearance of a house without considering the robust network/materials within the walls: the pipes, insulation, electrical wiring [etc] involved in keeping it functional for living.
Or factoring in the architect and builders of the house.

I know the basic electrical engineering fundamentals. For insulation, I like the shredded newspaper insulation. Saves money, better than the pink stuff. Not the best plumber, but I try to fix it myself before calling a plumber. Glad to have the freedom to, I know if I had a wife she'd make me call the plumber first.

Some of my best friends are plumbers. Mario and Luigi.

dada » Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:58 pm wrote:
I'm wondering if anxiety is at root the fear that the society one has chosen to identify with is exactly the cause of planetary destruction. The old cognitive dissonance creating tension in the individual. When you don't see yourself reflected in that society, the anxiety becomes excitement. Feels nice, like the bottomless pit in the stomach is now filled with butterflies.

Exactly this. Though my gut does not feel like full of butterflies, it is full of dread for where I can see it all going as it is. Most people around me, I cannot even talk to about things that are important to me. Much of my reality does not exist for them in their present tunnel. But our fates are still intertwined, for we all co-exist in this created system, there is no separate place for any.

The source of anxiety is found in an entire generation's inability to face mortality without a single modicum of graceful acceptance.

The sentimental idea of the house and the basic fundamentals of its systems are wonderful metaphors, given the insanity of the real estate market.

Watch what happens with it by autumn. The speculation is raging again throughout the US.

Infinite growth will remain an impossibility, however.

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kelley » Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:26 am wrote:The source of anxiety is found in an entire generation's inability to face mortality without a single modicum of graceful acceptance.

Precisely. This may well be the key driver behind so many of our current ills.

This isn't "mortality". It's bungled obsolescence. Fucked up priorities of the human race led to this. How many years, decades has humanity known about potentially deadly viral outbreaks and refused to take any precautionary measures? Not economically viable. Ready for war at a moments notice. Whom has prepared for peace?

I recall mention of something once called a "peace dividend", but this seems several lifetimes ago.

This bungling can be laid directly at the feet of one generation of transnational elites, although it's too kind a description. This has been criminal, at every turn.

We must demand accountability. I fear the moment has passed, however; I'm clueless in offering how this might be done. Individual decision-making is all that's left.

Live lightly.

Go without.

Don't buy into it.

Be kind.

Pleasure is revolutionary. Seek it out, every day.

Good Luck.

On the extended metaphor of the house, I'm reminded of John Lydon.

HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE SEEN A FAC-TOR-EEEEEEEE-AAAAH

etc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxCu5FaLc8A

ahahahahaha

dada » Fri Apr 16, 2021 1:56 pm wrote:The $88 Trillion World Economy in One Chart

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-88 ... one-chart/

Could be trillions in sectors of the economy that prefer to remain unreported, as well. Total wealth of billionaires as of current estimates is thirteen trillion. Even a big piece of the pie is meagre in relation to the pie factory. And they need the pie factory, depend on it for survival. So it controls their lives. They are at the mercy of its rhythms, do whatever it demands, their wish is its command.

Corrected Title: "A Graphical Depiction of Econometric Measurements of GDP by Nation-State, 2019, in U.S. Dollars."

That would be correct and also neutral, so I left out "woefully incomplete" and "potentially misleading." (I'll see if I can get Twitter or FB to add a censorship panel to accompany postings of this graphic, with a warning and a link to a fact-checker correction written by Ivan Ilich and Michel Foucault.)

1. Many caveats apply to "GDP", how this composite stat and its "growth" are defined, instrumentalized, measured, and used, as well as to national differences in its measure, and the translation of national GDP statistics into one currency for comparison. (Though once you have them lined up in a table or on a pie it turns into a betting sheet for the world's biggest assholes, so it is a very consequential number.)

2. As for annual unreported income of all kinds in the monetized market-worlds, which you mention, a Bayesian guess may be a few trillion USD and other currencies. But you also need additional pies:

• A. One, an indeterminate bit smaller than the GDP pie, of known and hidden cash and liquid holdings, in which little islands suddenly loom larger than most countries and nationality is vague.

• B. A jumbo pie of indeterminable size, of known and hidden illiquid wealth holdings of both national-individuals and corps/institutions; as measured in currencies but not liquid; by market valuation and assessment, and thus potential, not actual.

3. And then we still have the non-monetized or unenclosed or 'externalized' or unacknowledged parts of the 'economy' as subset of culture, ecology, and biosphere-planetary base:
- commons that are both local-regional and global, and in relation to the monetized/enclosed realms serve both as inputs and as dumping grounds (one word for you Benjamin, one word: air) ;
- on the individual and group scales: gifts and non-monetary exchanges especially of services and difficult-to-pin-down emotional and abstract commodities;
- and the non-monetized parts of culture and family-household and affinity-groups-networks, which still means the majority of reproductive activity and is large in all sectors.

All this is only conditionally quantifiable, where that is even relevant and responsible to attempt. More importantly it is under-theorized. There is not, and there may never be, and perhaps there should never be, a full and valid model of flows and dynamics and energies within an overall ecology in which the non-monetized and non-monetizable exists in interconnection and interdependence and conflict with the monetized activity.

Anyway this stuff is usually ignored or held in contempt by the likes of Visual Capitalists and other economic and social-science positivists and wonks, and speaks to many of them in a completely incomprehensible, alien language. Some think they see the world, and assume what is not measured is irrelevant or does not exist, even when it surrounds them and lives inside them and IS them.

But in short, this is not the World Economy in One Chart.

PS - I have seen factories. Only tours, of live ones and dead ones. Very memorable.

PPS - I know you know all this dada and that wasn't really a response to you per se but a pretext to get this thought-map written. (For the nth time, probably, in RI posts alone.)

PPPS - Will cross-post. Why are we here, locked down in the Interminable Thread?

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Maher has been a shill for the ownership/establishment classes (naturally: his show is on HBO, after all), but his takes on COVID have been largely spot-on.

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JackRiddler » Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:36 pm wrote:

dada » Sat Apr 17, 2021 1:50 pm wrote:Very good. I was just using the 88 trillion dollars to present my overall argument.

So it was like, very expensive bunting. Anyway I don't really see anything in your map that disagrees with me, correct me if I'm wrong.

Certainly not. I was just reassuring it.

Bringing this back here, at least for the current global pressing matter at hand.

What exactly is the 'argument', and how does it explain the large-scale, global complicity involved in the Great Lies told in this most recent affront to livelihoods/lives?
Starting with allowing an utterly bullshit Imperial College 'model' -- one of the early key justifications for wide-scale lockdowns, which turned out to be GROSSLY inaccurate -- to receive FRONT PAGE coverage in the most important news outlets in the western world, even though no scientific journal published it, let alone reviewed it. How could that have happened?

Of course one can conjure any number of outwardly plausible scenarios for all the goal-post shifting that perpetuated this madness in the months that followed, and the continued lunacy to come in the months ahead (recurring vaccinations, passports, further restrictions, etc.). A fair amount of the populace will continue to justify these actions ('Capitalism taken to the inevitable extreme!' etc.). Many, today, continue to believe these unprecedented govt actions are all for the benefit of the majority: out of concern for our collective health. We are witnessing Stockholm Syndrome en masse.

Inter-connected networks are at play 'behind the scenes' [this is my primary premise, at least]. They needn't agree very often, but it's becoming increasingly apparent that, when GREAT large-scale shifts are in the works (and the current Shift/Reset may well be the most egregious in at least 2 generations, even eclipsing the scale of 911), there are multi-pronged operations, which of course involve cooperation of key global leaders and their respective govts, think tanks, [Big Tech, Global Pharma, etc.] and media arms. And yes: certain Billionaires as well, needless to say. Many, if not most, needn't know the particulars. As with intel agencies and the military, each 'tier' need only know enough to execute their respective directives.

These are not a random confluence of events.

And yet, despite the probability of the above, I'm most disappointed and frustrated by The People. Millions passively accept these RESTRICTIONS (nay, a subset are actively clamoring for MORE if it). I'm more troubled by the passivity/compliance/lack of discernment by many citizens. Whatever may be promoted by talking heads, all of this can end today if the majority simply refuse it, or call it out for what it is.

Control mechanisms can only work on a docile and compliant majority.

[How did such docility and compliance become increasingly common? Years of conditioning mechanisms, exacerbated and amplified further in recent years by the suggestive powers available via the internet and social media, though of course at least some of the 'influencer'/suggestive phenomenon are happenstance, or rather: an organic outflow inherent to the nature of the beast. Similar to the fear of AI in the years ahead, once the genie is released from its lamp, unpredictable outcomes are inevitable. But the scale and continued reach of this COVID thing is not mere happenstance.]