text:
There Is No Such Thing As 'The Poor'
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 21:37 UTC
Knowledge is a curse. Having even a rudimentary understanding of anything is guaranteed to spoil any kind of fun and community you might have.
The current time is marked by collectivism of a particular sort. It is marked by a unity of resentment against one group or another. The ability to fall in and march to the orgy of rage is largely dependent on selective ignorance.
Even the smartest just don't want to 'go there' on something. More often than not, the 'there' they don't want to go to is basic economics. Not because they don't have the mind for math, economics isn't really about math anyway. Not because they can't find quality information, there's plenty of introductory books or youtube lectures available. Not because they don't consider it important, the most grandiose economic theories and plans are almost always espoused by people with the least education on the topic.
No. The reason people don't care to become educated is because they know education will spoil the enjoyment of everyone's secret vice: righteous anger.
There is a single piece of information, which can be found either directly or indirectly in any book on economics, or statistics, that spoils the pity party of modern welfare advocacy.
It takes an incredibly dense and imperceiving mind to overlook this basic fact. The fact is so simple, that I am going to contribute far more words to its explanation than should ever be required. I will do this simply to stress the incredible and world altering implications contained. Once you read and understand this information, you will never be able to listen to Bernie Sanders again without considering him a complete and utter numbskull.
Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama will seem like absurd fools. In fact, anyone who discusses concepts of 'income inequality' and 'The Poor' or 'The Rich' will come off as woefully uneducated schysters.
When you fully grasp this simple idea, you will understand why I am so compulsively snarky in my comments on certain articles appearing on this site.
There Is No Such "Thing" As The Poor
The Poor is not a person. The Poor does not have an address, it doesn't wear clothes, it isn't a thing. It is what is called in linguistics a "nominalisation", from 'nom' meaning to name. It is an abstraction (except in Australia where it's a rock band).
When trying to understand language, it's good to use the wheel barrow test. Ask yourself, 'can I put it in a wheel barrow and take it home with me?'
You can't put love in a wheel barrow, nor can you put economics, or The Rich, or The Poor. All of these things identify abstract categories. They have no concrete existence.
You also cannot feed The Poor. You cannot help The Poor, or save The Poor. And most importantly, you cannot cure The Poor. You cannot get rid of The Poor, or kill The Poor, or make The Poor become The Rich.
That is because The Poor is an abstraction.
How To Lie With Statistics
Now, the above bit of detail should start you on a path of thinking that will lead you to all kinds of interesting questions. If that were the long and short of it, it wouldn't be so earth shattering, but there's more.
The Poor is not just a nominalisation, not merely an abstraction, it is also what is called a Statistical Category. The following is mainly from memory, and numbers have been rounded for ease of use and understanding. This is because I'm not going to spend 3 days combing through economics texts and IRS and Census data that you won't bother to read through and verify - the picture I present is broadly accurate, give or take a few percentage points here and there.
The Poor is a population group, and because of that, it is not eternal, in fact, no constituent of the cohort can be in the category for longer than say 70-80 years, i.e. the human life span.
But The Poor, as a statistical category, has existed for thousands of years. In every era of history, some people are poor, how can this be?
The Poor as a category will always exist, and has always existed, and the people who comprise this category are born, enter the category, and die, thus leaving the category. Some will leave the category before they die, to be replaced by others who, previously, were not in the category.
While this seems like a no-brainer, you would be surprised how many people I have heard reason about The Poor as if they are immortal and immutable, like an ageless and timeless bedraggled mass that has been staring accusingly at the rest of us throughout all time.
As noted, not all people who enter the Statistical Category of The Poor stay there for their entire lives. In fact, if you follow individuals based on their tax returns, 75% of the people who start in the Statistical Category of The Poor do not finish or die in the same category. That is, 75% of all of the people who are in the bottom 25% of "wealth earners or possessors" in the United States, move above the bottom 25% by the time they retire.
75% of those people in the bottom 25% when they start, end up in the top 40% by the time they retire. 30% of the people in the bottom 25% ended up in the top 25%!
Talking about The Poor and The Rich is ultimately meaningless, because it doesn't take into account flesh and blood human beings who traverse the cohort throughout their lives, getting richer or poorer. The fact is, that most people in their lives move up and down the income inequality divide, only very rarely reaching their maximum earning potential.
These same facts are actually true about The Rich as a statistical category. Most of the people we talk about when we discuss The Rich are those like Ray Dalio, or Warren Buffet. These people are less than 1/1000 of 1% of the population. These people are essentially the material lottery winners of life. They may or may not really 'deserve' the money they've gotten in life, but they have it.
The truth is, to be in the top 1% of income earners in the United States, you only have to earn, per annum, around $450,000. To be in the top 5% of income earners in the United States you only have to earn over $250,000. To be in the top 10% you need to earn $150,000.
The problem is that very few people can sustain that earning potential. Most of the people who earn that kind of money do so from small to medium businesses, and only for a year or two in a row before competition pushes their earnings back down. So someone may be in the top 1% for 1 to 2 years, and then drop down into the top 5% or even 10%.
This is exactly what we find, over 87% of people in the top 0.1% in 1992 were no longer in the top 0.1% by 2000. People get rich, and then invest that money in some new scheme, often losing large amounts of it, and having to start again in a lower earnings bracket.
Income dips or peaks are ultimately irrelevant, because a single year does not define a person's entire life. Someone who builds a business over 10 years may only be making $50,000 a year with the business, and once it's a success, they might sell it for $500,000 jumping into the 1% and then the next year returning to their normal earning potential of $50,000.
Ideologues use their rhetorical skills to play fast and loose with abstract ideas and statistical categories. They try to get you to buy into whatever scheme they are selling, to vote for whatever candidate they are supporting, or to contribute time and energy to whatever cause they are lauding.
Don't trust them, don't believe them. I am 100% sure you are pretty much struggling just to save yourself. Remember the counsel of every airplane stewardess: put on your own oxygen mask first before trying to help anyone else.
Bezel Bub · 2018-01-10T20:51:04Z
What, exactly is *poor*? There are other metrics to use that do not necessarily involve money, or income. Someone might be poor financially, but rich in other, more meaningful areas. I have known a few 'rich' people, and with few exceptions, I would not trade places with any of them.
atreides · 2018-01-11T10:45:51Z
Bezel Bub A good point to be sure.
noneoftheabovexyz · 2018-01-12T16:20:12Z
Bezel Bub It is silently understood thst the word poor means lacking enough money to afford what someone calls basic essentials. To some this might mean a fancy car or address or college education. To others it might mean very good clothing or the ability to live independently without government aid. In the olden days ( oh no!) the term "genteel poor" was an abstract name given to those who could not live fancy but were not vulgar or bummy types, who had manners and good upbringing. Nowadays, there are so many phonies, no one knows for sure what group anyone else is.
graeme15b · 2018-01-10T21:11:15Z
Cool, i always enjoy your articles, and how they,...cough, cough,.. wattle a wabble of woudy webels. lol.
graeme15b Shit stirring is what Tiggers do best.
sid · 2018-01-11T11:02:25Z
graeme15b Hahahaha, they sure do. Good piece of writing Jason!!
LonSabbatical · 2018-01-11T13:27:37Z
sid Why thank you good sir!
Protectron · 2018-01-10T21:40:39Z
1.the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor.
The way you "dissect" the phrase The Poor can be used with pretty much any abstract word. For instance the word "abstract". You use it in a specific way, but the word itself is abstract, and lends itself to many other uses as well.
Welcome to the world of language, where the vast majority of all words in existence have several meanings and only exist because somebody sometime decided that those sounds when stringed together should mean precisely that. And then somebody else at some other time used it differently to communicate something else - and in both circumstances, the recipient of the message understood what was meant.
There is nothing clever at all about this article.
Although I do approve of the final message, since discussions these days have devolved into a mere exchange of empty slogans.
LindaMay · 2018-01-10T22:34:34Z
Misery comes from the Tower of Babel... no wonder.... interpretations... what a mess.
Empty slogans... empty words... empty meaning... lots of talk. O_o
BlackCartouche · 2018-01-10T23:13:56Z
LindaMay The words 'babble' and 'baby' come from Babel.
Oh cool didnt know BC. Makes sense. My dad s slang german has an expression.... babbeln.... blablabla-ing. Makes total sense.
LindaMay The language of Men were split up by Yahweh because of Man's 'arrogance' building the Tower of Babel to try reach God. Thats why babble - like babies. Interesting 'Bible' too comes from 'Babel'?
Super BC.... (re bible)
Oh!! And split up... like snake s tongue
illusions.can be made real
Yep BC... i prefer playing in the real
Split up...
Like in... free will (choice)
LindaMay Interesting with snake tongues representing the 'split'. The elongated serpent-tongue attribute can be found protruding from the mouths of most animal symbol representations adopted by STS European oligarchy blood-lines - upon their crests, coats-of-arms and logos: lions, eagles, bears, phoenix, unicorns wyverns et al
Protectron In a sense, that is kind of the point. It's a lot of hyperbole, but you would be surprised how often people "reason", histrionically, based on wishy-washy or poorly defined words.
Reorganizing social policy, or government policy, and arguing for revolution based on words with ambiguous semantics is a recipe for disaster on many levels. So we have a rather pedestrian truth leading to not-so-pedestrian carnage.
Take your definition. Well, that's ambiguous, because little is a relative kind of word. Little compared to what and to whom? Compared to someone in subsaharan africa? Or compared to someone in beverly hills?
I tend to define poverty on how many meals a day a person can consume, or more specifically the quality of the meals. So eating Ramen Noodles 3 times a day is more poor than someone who can afford meat/poultry 1 time per day.
I like to look at the subsistance level. Do they have clothes and shoes? Access to clean water? Access to work and so on.
The split signals ... choose wisely or... become tomorrow's food (possible quicker than needed)
Artex · 2018-01-11T19:31:32Z
Protectron Thank you for saying so. Trying to make one's point with condescending semantics about abstract language is the exact way one gets people to stop listening to what one has to say. Every place I've ever lived in the midwest has a significant amount of poor people. And all this does is say "bullshit, people aren't poor because it's an abstract concept." The amount of people struggling to make ends meet while the abstraction of "rich" siphon wealth away from "companies" (which really, is an abstract concept used to identify a collective of persons working to provide a product or service) is something we should be ashamed of...
DelamerDuverus · 2018-01-11T21:34:55Z
BlackCartouche The Tower of Babel was not to get to God/Man, but to get God, it was a Star Wars like weapon. Much of it is destroyed, but three pyramids remain. The Sphinx was carved from the center tower. The destruction is what caused the desertification of the Sahara which once were the Plains of Mamre.
Abel, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was destroyed by a similar Tower of Babel, by Cain, on another planet. The first part of the bible is allegorical.
Man confused their tongue by taking away their Triadic Language, meaning they conversed through the mind. When Man unhooked their DNA through the Speciel Mind, they could no longer speak this way and thus the "babble".
All this from understandings of Delamer Duverus.
Artex Just can't give up your narrative. You've identified the victims, you've identified the perpetrators, now all we need is some social justice!
DelamerDuverus Was keeping it 'Biblical'. I kinda roll along the C's line myself:
Q: (L) What was the event a hundred or so years after the flood of Noah that was described as the confusing of languages, or the tower of Babel?
A: Spiritual confluence.
Q: (L) What purpose did the individuals who came together to build the tower intend for said tower?
A: Electromagnetic concentration of all gravity waves.
Q: (L) And what did they intend to do with these concentrated waves?
A: Mind alteration of masses.
Q: (L) What intention did they have in altering the mind of the masses?
A: Spiritual unification of the masses.
Q: (L) Who were the "gods" that looked down on the tower of Babel, at those who were building it with the intention of unification, and decided to destroy their works?
A: Lizards.
Q: (L) Okay, so the Lizzies blew up the tower of Babel. What else did they do to the minds of mankind; did they do something causing literal disruption of their understanding of language?
A: Close.
Q: (L) What tool did they use to accomplish this divisiveness?
A: Brainwashing of masses.
Q: (L) Did they do this through implants and abduction?
A: Partly.
Q: (L) What is the true meaning, the original meaning, of the Hebrew word "shem"?
A: Purity.
Q: (L) Why was this word related to the obelisks or standing stones later called "shems" by the Hebrews?
A: Symbolic of purity: unification. Uniformity.
Q: (L) Did these stones themselves actually possess any power?
A: Residual.
Q: (L) What object were the ancients going to place in the tower of Babel to...
A: Crystal.
Q: (L) Is "shem" also synonymous with "crystal"?
Q: (L) Shem, the son of Noah, was the ancestor of the group that built the tower, is this correct?
BlackCartouche Wasn't the snake green?
DelamerDuverus The English language has so many variations, dialects and idioms including many different slang varieties, this language could be used ss an allegory for Babel. Here in the USA alone, what a variety. Pancakes are called hotcakes, flapjacks and pancakes. Cockney slang in London is completely different from slang used in USA. NYC has its own expressions, undecipherable by others. Vocabulary from the 1800s was completely different. "Cranium" meant your head, "bijou" meant movie theatre. Having an extensive working English vocabulary can lead to being labeled as knowing 5 different languages! And do not get me started on pidgin English (Tagalog, a variety, has become an officisl language with its own alphabet.)
noneoftheabovexyz Didn't you use the green crayon for the snake in your Sunday School colouring-book?
LindaMay ·
Green of envy.
· 2018-01-13T13:59:07Z
Times for the Diamond. (Attracting (to tame, conquer) the goddess). Union of god and goddess, two triangles. (St Trinity)
So many angles to go with this post, where should we begin? For starters, let's recap what we have so far. Diamond traces back to mean: diamond, magnet and adamant. The Late Latin form of diamas is essentially a compound of two words: dia + mas. In the Spanish language, dia means "day" and mas means "more". You already know more is clear variation of Moor and a day is most symbolically recognized as the time when the sun is shining, so diamas really translates to mean Sun Moor. Though, if you look a little more closely, you'll notice that mas also looks like Ma's aka Big Amma Mama, so diamas is actually Ma's Sun or Masun or Mason or Amazon/A-Ma-Son and even Amaru/A-Ma-Ru. This also reminds me of Samson and wasn't he the strongest man to ever live? Reminds me of one of the main characteristics of a diamond. Go figure.
CRYSTAL being immature state vs the Diamond.
Diamond equates perfect knowledge of oneself... mastering the self.
Also [Link]
It s the story of humanity s process in its own evolution that s all BC. EVERYthing is but a prop. The only important element is Evolution and is determined (interesting word!) by how each chooses to bring about goodness or refuses it. It becomes the guage's (engagement) LANguage of me with I (which you call STS/STO).
Details details.... nothing but buttons on a shirt.
This was in response to BC (Q n A)
LindaMay Or green of Emerald... Like my birth-month
LindaMay But buttons hold a shirt together.
Lol... buttt not only ... plus ... too many buttons can be distracting... even superfluous.... i d add even a pain in zee butt.
Funny.... just yesterday, no shit, i noticed i had lost a button.... which i never used anyway... and realizing it... still managed to bother me.... but just abit.
Lan (loan) guage (instrument)
It comes down to 'state of existence' determinable in our physical world pre-determined (ie before any alive today) and reliant on the flow and exchange of money = measurement of physical goods, ownership, access to opportunity, ease of movement etc. This pre-determined system is backed-up and enforced by force of arms if necessary = real wheel-barrow.
'Poor' and 'Rich' are universal concepts subject to real-life quantifiable universally-determinable states-of-existence measured-up via the socio-economic compatibility of any community at a given time, location and its group-conscious level allows for.
It s really just an idea, an idea that we in turn express, manifest. How we negotiate with our self is determining. What we feel is our value we demonstrate. (wow would you take a look.at that last word!)
LindaMay Demon blood runs through us all
LindaMay 'Demotic' is interesting too. It relates to simplifying language.. Or a 'cursive' form of higher language.
BlackCartouche Demos = 'common people' in Greek from whence we get 'democracy'... Demons everywhere!
BC, explain the obsession with symbolism? What gives, what brought it on?
LonSabbatical I see symbolism everywhere... I pick up threads here and there and they lead me to stumble across things... compelling things...
Blood is also an illusion. It s light BC... what we permit we promote.
Symbolism: Beyond the appearances one finds truth.
... leave us not in temptation but deliver us ....
LindaMay Illusions can be made real
LindaMay Lol. I must go to bed. Gnight Linda
LonSabbatical To follow up: Symbolism = Secrets hidden in plain sight.
I'm too literal and possibly mildly autistic to decipher symbols...
How do you know you aren't seeing gibberish?
LonSabbatical Ultimately? I don't know if what Im seeing is indeed gibberish. Its a matter of perspective I suppose - and how one sees the currents rippling through ones life's experiences in accordance to ones knowledge base. Its less about 'deciphering' and more about recognising common themes behind repeating patterns - over a period of time.
Are the symbols natural i.e. placed in nature or are people communicating with you through symbols?
LonSabbatical Overall - I hope not! I believe symbology is generally now the language of STS... Its occultic in nature of which 4D STS are currently its gatekeepers over, through, and into, our 3D realm. For the most part, they've hijacked Natures language of symbolism and made it theirs.
Okay, fair... what makes you think this?
I have 2 experiences with symbolism
1st - to do with people deliberately using symbols in their communications for whatever reason e.g. to ensure only the intended recipient gets it or maybe to try and bypass language which might change over millennia... so if I wanted to communicate something 3000 or 300,000 years into the future, might want to think of a way to do it that doesn't involve the languages we use today.
2nd - Certain dreams where the dream narrative takes on symbolic form. I only call it symbolic form as I presume it has to take on some form which usually if it does, it won't be entirely aligned to our normal waking day form of interpretation/thinking as during dreaming, you're not using the same 'mind' or parts of it as lets say what I'm using to write this message. Hopefully that made sense. With this regard I'm not sure it matters whether you can understand the meaning of dreams or not.... perhaps they just happen and its function is independent from your ability to understand it or not. Not sure on this though!!!
BlackCartouche Reminds of F. Buckminster Fuller's writings.
LonSabbatical My line of symbolism is more to do with celestial events - dates times location etc - tying in with the esoteric legends of the ancient world and the relationship with cosmic forces made manifest expressed in symbolic form, representing control/misuse of such power followed on down through the ages.
Symbolism in dreams isn't my 'specialty' if you will... Not yet anyway. Thats more 'Jungian'... I've not gotten into it. Linda is probably best to go through with that?
atreides Um... Thank you?
Why thank you Sir BC ... you re cheering me on
Btw... i sincerely enjoy reading your communication style when you heart does the writing... plus you are just so bright! (you re not the only one mind you )
LonS... lol
Dreams talk to you to wake up.... the monkeymind you know.
Wowa BC! Hi-Jacks
LonS.... he who trusts shall know.
TRUST is not 'a literal thing' ... knock knock... dont collude with depression.
BC!!
To follow up: Symbolism = Secrets hidden in plain sight.
Secrets is same as SACRED
Ha! I got the same flash BC
Damn thread mechanics!! Flash was in response to yer.... Um... thank you? (Buckminister Fuller)
LindaMay Sacrificial secretary, lol.
The article is quite abstract... no?
It tells a story but doesn't quite finish it off...
Like for example... poor and rich, why is it a hot button topic? Why do many live their whole lives trying to be rich? Where is the line between poor and rich? What is economic inequality? Is it a good thing? Is it bad? What about the massive and continually increasing gap between rich and poor? Hmm... so many questions unanswered.
But one question has been answered... poor and rich are abstract concepts.
Interesting LonS
Each is responsible to finish their own story.
LonSabbatical Right, they are abstract concepts, but then it's possible once you understand this, to answer your own questions. Where is the line between Rich and Poor? Well, that depends, and it's also variable. As I pointed out, it's actually rather rare for a person to be "Rich" their entire life, they go up and down. It's the same for Poor. These are really just statistical categories, and we move in and out of them throughout our lives. A very small percentage of people in the western world actually spend their lives permanently in these categories.
Economic Inequality is a nonsense term, which is more theme and variation on the liberal philosophy of egalitarianism, which is largely a farce.
The increasing gap between The Rich and The Poor is nonsense as well, because these are statistical categories. It doesn't matter, because flesh and blood people move in and out of these categories throughout their lives.
Atreides, you make some good points but I think your political views are leading to denial of some basic facts...
In economics, it is understood that socio-economic mobility is by large fixed and that the bracket you are born in, is the bracket you are most likely to spend your life in. Economics happened to make up 50% of my degree and even though it was a number of years back, I am pretty certain this is what we were taught and enough evidence was provided to show this as economic fact, at least in the UK.
You can call it 'liberal' but that in of itself does not disprove something. Saying that people move in and out of categories doesn't disprove anything either. I think this moving in and out of categories is quite dubious at least for the majority.
A doctor will earn £100k plus year on year until they retire, so will a surgeon, so will a director, so will a lawyer, so will a high end engineer etc... it won't just be for 1 or 2 years. Also you didn't mention the markets and property investments... jobs are not the only source of income for high bracket earners, they invest in the markets i.e. employ professionals to manage their money most of which is managed properly and also invest in property which at least in the UK knows only one direction, that is up. So people who are already earning a lot, have investments both in the financial markets and other assets and are unlikely to 'drop' in the economic sphere back to 'poor'.
Likewise, if you're coming from a place of generational poverty (which exists at least in the UK) then you are unlikely to have enough in the way of funds to invest or unlikely to do jobs which have a route to higher earning brackets.
There are many resources you can read that will highlight the above... below I post one from the british government itself
Calling it liberal or saying people move in and out of categories doesn't negate what is widely accepted, taught and experienced as true by tens of millions of people.
Britain has a deep social mobility problem which is getting worse for an entire generation of young people, the Social Mobility Commission's State of the Nation 2016 report warns today.
The impact is not just felt by the poorest in society but is also holding back whole tranches of middle- as well as low-income families - these treadmill families are running harder and harder, but are standing still.
The problem is not just social division, but a widening geographical divide between the big cities - London especially - and too many towns and counties across the country are being left behind economically and hollowed out socially.
The State of the Nation 2016 report, which was laid before Parliament this morning, lays bare the scale of the social mobility challenge facing the government. It finds fundamental barriers, including an unfair education system, a 2-tier labour market, a regionally imbalanced economy and an unaffordable housing market.
Personally, I'm trying to find a way to see what you are saying as true but I can't. I know you personally may have moved brackets from poor to rich but the circumstances that may befall you are unique and not applicable to everyone.
Honest to God this is the image i just got from reading Atreides response to LonS re: abstract... story not finished...
What you are (almost) all mentally trying to disect in this theme of RICH vs POOR... i mean... it s just like deciding to comb your hair but aiming your hand + comb thru your arsehole.
Tanuki · 2018-01-12T19:41:58Z
atreides ...but some levels of wealth are obscene thought, right..? And slavery's a no-no. Got it.
Tanuki Obscene by whose standards?
atreides Well you said it, so yours I guess. I believe in reference to the 'Globalists', whatever they are.
LonSabbatical Okay, so you know something about economics. So let's dive into some basic issues.
There are many different schools of Economics, and while many of them might agree on some terminology here and there, or some basic definitions (Marx spends pages simply defining what a "commodity" is), when we branch off into the moral philosophical underpinnings of economics, we run into a lot of core ideological assumptions.
In economics, it is understood that socio-economic mobility is by large fixed and that the bracket you are born in, is the bracket you are most likely to spend your life in.
This is not agreed upon, if you read Thomas Sowell's book Intellectuals and Society, he will discuss this thoroughly, and it is from his work that I took most of my statistics and the topic of the article.
I am saying, explicitly, that if you follow the cohort via their tax returns, you get a very different picture of income mobility (in the United States). I can't say this applies to England.
I am pretty certain this is what we were taught and enough evidence was provided to show this as economic fact, at least in the UK.
I'm pretty certain you were taught all kinds of nonsense at your university. ESPECIALLY with ECON.
You can call it 'liberal' but that in of itself does not disprove something.
It's shorthand for saying that it is based on a naive idealism that is indicative of the liberal. But yes, you are correct, it doesn't prove anything, it's just a tag.
Saying that people move in and out of categories doesn't disprove anything either. I think this moving in and out of categories is quite dubious at least for the majority
. I'm not sure how to respond to this. I listed the percentages. What percentage would you classify as "majority"? I would think by definition 51%. If I can get you 75% will you grant me majority?
A doctor will earn £100k plus year on year until they retire, so will a surgeon, so will a director, so will a lawyer, so will a high end engineer etc... it won't just be for 1 or 2 years.
Right, but these are rare jobs. In fact, even in England, there are massive shortages of Doctors (english born and trained) and engineers. Also Econ majors are not a majority. I mean, doctors are usually 1 in 1,000. [Link]
Also you didn't mention the markets and property investments...
Not explicitly, but I used an equity example of selling a business. I also think people over focus on investments as "unearned profit." They've obviously never invested.
employ professionals to manage their money most of which is managed properly and also invest in property which at least in the UK knows only one direction, that is up. So people who are already earning a lot, have investments both in the financial markets and other assets and are unlikely to 'drop' in the economic sphere back to 'poor'.
Well, the UK is pretty Islandish, so properties values can really only go up...
Most people can invest, no one is preventing you from opening a Roth IRA account, or even a regular equity account at any brokerage. And yes, if you manage your money properly, and invest it, you are unlikely to return to the bracket you started in. That is part of my point.
Anyone who saves money doesn't understand money.
I disagree with this statement on the grounds that you can always find the money. You just have to make a choice. Many people do not make that choice. You are either poor today, or poor tomorrow, but poverty is unavoidable.
It takes even less today to start investing than it did 10 years ago, but many work places have matching schemes for IRA accounts and so on. Where there is a will, there is a way.
And those would not be ideologically biased?
TBoris · 2018-01-10T23:58:22Z
Great job on this analysis.... Its the system built by those that cut off pieces of themselves to get rich, stay rich, and never stop wanting more that we need to keep the light shining on. This article heads us in the right direction instead of blaming the guy down the street that lives in a bigger house than you do.
TBoris Exactly. Envy and resentment destroy the fabric of society. Once we start to see how up and down the whole thing is, we can stop hating someone who is having a moment of success and realize our real enemy is not the entrepreneur with some excess capital, it's the elites and their ideology that causes the largest problems.
Blame ANYWHERE is BLAME!! WAKE THE FUCK UP ALREADY.
ATREIDES your following comment is the same DRAMAQUEEN shit spewed over n over again. GET OVER IT already!
TBoris... your comment included.
LindaMay Take thy beak from out my heart!
atreides "In an egocentric world, a dehumanizing and nature-foiling cultural agenda stretches from childhood to the grave. Interpersonally, other people are seen primarily as objects, as mere extras in one's own self-important, nonrelational drama or as consumers in the nation's ever-expanding GNP. How can this person meet my needs or the economy's needs? Children are trained to see themselves this way too — in other words, not in terms of their natural qualities but in terms of their social or economic worth. It is tragic enough that our society treats the non-human world — animals, forests, soils — as a collection of objects to be used , but people are also trained to do this with each other. This is the hidden agenda of the most degenerate dimension of egocentric society, and it is unutterably corrupt and heart-breaking — rewarding people for experiencing themselves as economically servicable veneers."
~ Bill Plotkin
Tanuki I tend to espouse the Nirvana school of ecology: "We can have some more, nature is a whore."
What you've quoted is largely post-modernist non-sense. It doesn't seem that way, but it actually is.
First of all it's obsessed with objectification, which is largely a word-game of the post modernists, trying to borrow semantic content from linguistics. It brings in a bit of pop psychology in talking about egocentrism, and then makes a bunch of nonsense claims.
In an egocentric world, a dehumanizing and nature-foiling cultural agenda stretches from childhood to the grave.
I don't think so. Even if one is egocentric, what else would they be? You are your point of orientation. What you are espousing here is a kind of self-effacing sklavenmoral.
On every airplane they tell you, put your mask on first. I.e. protect your life first, then help others. Egocentrism does not exclude helping other people. The first duty of a node on a network is to keep itself healthy and alive.
Interpersonally, other people are seen primarily as objects, as mere extras in one's own self-important, nonrelational drama or as consumers in the nation's ever-expanding GNP.
Depends on what you mean by object. Does one see others as more or less equal to a spatula? This is that whole "objectification" nonsense that everyone prattles on about.
Most people in life are "mere extras", the overwhelming majority of people you encounter won't even have speaking parts in the "nonrelational drama" of your life. So I don't see this as even profound, though the author obviously wants to add moral weight to what he is saying.
How can this person meet my needs or the economy's needs?
Offsides. This is category confusion, individuals are not comparable to economies. Economies are not people, or things, they are abstract mechanisms for communicating intrinsic scarcity.
Children are trained to see themselves this way too — in other words, not in terms of their natural qualities but in terms of their social or economic worth.
And that is wrong how? Or are you suggesting that they are special little snowflakes.
Let me ask you, who is worth more to society, Ted Bundy or Albert Einstein? Which one would you rather keep?
It is tragic enough that our society treats the non-human world — animals, forests, soils — as a collection of objects to be used , but people are also trained to do this with each other.
But it is not tragic that people use the world, or eat animals. I like eating animals, pigs, cows, lambs. They taste good roasted. I like chopping down trees and burning them for heat, or using wood to build houses, and I don't mind a bit of veg now and again with my ginormous steak.
I don't think that people are trained to do this with each other in any significant way.
If you go to the DMV, you want to "get something" out of the person behind the counter, and you're not willing to pay a very high price for it. There are many interactions in life between parties for which there is no love lost on the parting.
This is the hidden agenda of the most degenerate dimension of egocentric society
and it is unutterably corrupt and heart-breaking
If it were true, no actually, it would be neither.
rewarding people for experiencing themselves as economically servicable veneers.
That statement has no meaning. Sorry to pull a post-modernism out of my arse, but yeah, that's just word salad trying to come off as pith.
Atreides it s absolutely stunning how amazingly clever and intellectual you show yourself to be. What a shame you do not use it.
Eduardo · 2018-01-11T00:24:01Z
Never thought I'd see the day I'd read such BS on Sott.net. This is definitely not sott.net like. But then again, not *that* surprising considering how sott.net has been moving more and more to the right with every year.
I guess the 71% of this planet who live on less than 10 dollars a day don't exist or are just going through a phase.
This is nothing but word juggling to justify the injustifiable. I would bet the author of this article has never been to Africa or Maranhão, not even to stay at a 5 star hotel.
pinkfreud · 2018-01-11T00:40:08Z
They just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The rich don't oppress people. The fact that 68 people own more than the poorest 50% of the world population just shows how good thay were at puttin on their work boots. I'm sure all the mega wealthy know what it's like to put in 60 hour a week shifts at minimum wage. They were really good at it and now they decide the fates of nations. This could be you if you bothered to wolk harder.
Eduardo I grew up without running water or electricity. I wore the same pair of shoes to school for 2 years, and kept them together with duct tape. I've eaten plenty of Ramen Noodles and Onion sandwiches, and when I was a kid my father used to take me around to clean parking lots at $5.45 and hour. The best ones were those with restaurants because we would dumpster dive. Pizza places are the best, because they often throw away whole pizza boxes.
Let me ask you, how many dinners have you had that came from a dumpster?
I have my poverty street cred, show me yours?
Onto your point, there are plenty of places in the world where $10 a day is practically middle class. $10 in America is bad, $10 a day in the backwoods of the Philipines is practically a fortune.
I used to work for a guy who had a house built in the Philipines, and he paid the workers double the normal wages for the area, and it was still only $4 a day. This was like 20 years ago, but he could take his wife and their entire family out to a restaurant for $7.
It's relative.
pinkfreud You fail statistics man. Also, where's my Hustler subscription, or do you always make promises you don't intend to keep?
Atreides, I read your mum's book. You guys grew up rough, faced poverty for years but the circumstances that befell you to land you in a place of abundance are quite unique and for that you should be grateful rather than use it as a stick to terrorise others.
You can't take your situation and apply it to everyone.
An analogy:
If you are super healthy, you can't take your situation and use it as a stick to beat everyone suffering from illnesses and start saying stuff like 'illness doesn't exist' and it's an 'abstract' concept.... that we move in and out of good health. Some people actually have chronic problems and dispositions that put them at higher risk of remaining for pretty much all their lives in a place of turmoil with regard to health.
Joe · 2018-01-11T12:05:02Z
Eduardo Again, showing your expert skill at missing the crux of the matter. This article was, to a large extent, focused on the idea of "the poor" as it is understood in Western nations.
Niall · 2018-01-12T12:18:40Z
LonSabbatical Who is he 'terrorising'?
What you're doing, by bringing in his mother and chronic health issues, is personally attacking him, 'terrorising' I might say.
It's really low-class, irrespective of Marxist definitions of 'class'.
What is it you're trying to say anyway, that he should 'check his privilege'?
Who's health issues? I didn't bring in anything, he brought it up himself.
Calm down already!
Also, only thing I said was I read his mother's book which last I checked was not a criminal act. He was going on about dumpster diving and whatnot if you read further up and that made me remember the book which was advertised on sott.... what's wrong with that?
If anyone is ill somewhere then my deepest condolences and I hope they get better soon. Maybe I could have used a different analogy. There, I hope you feel calmer and less terrorised.
LonSabbatical I don't think you meant anything by it. But... Some friendly advise:-
Rule of thumb: However innocently meant - never mention 'mothers'. .. Unless specifically invited to do so (though even then, I'd rather not)
Joe Given that there is not such thing as the poor, then we must assume sott.net editors are not, they must therefore be rich. Readers should bear this in mind when considering donations.
Coming soon on Sott.net: There's no such thing as Palestinians, by atreides. There's no such thing as Africa, Haiti, Honduras, no such thing as favelas. Oh, Sott.net what a horrible death.
Given that there is not such thing as the poor, then we must assume sott.net editors are not, they must therefore be rich. Readers should bear this in mind when considering donations.
'We' must?
So you're just here for the free stuff eh. That figures.
Niall Assuming you are American, it's NOT free. Your country has helped destroy mine with its imperialism and several open and covered intervention, both recent and ancient. In fact, I was born under a US backed military dictatorship that rose to power via a US sponsored coup and did everything they could to boost profit of US companies and raise the standard of living of your country, your people, your family and directly or indirectly YOURSELF. I am just taking a tiny bit back.
Eduardo Wait, so you're saying Americans occupied your country, or did your own people just sell you out to American corporations?
Let's just collect some data here, how many Americans were operating your military dictatorship? How many pale faced gringos were using your torture cells? As a basic ratio, how many Americans where standing in the fucking firing line while you were slaughtering each other?
It seems to me you're just mad that your own people whored your country for nothing. The truth is, your part of the world has been a shit show from the beginning. It was a shitshow in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. And it's going to continue to be a shit show until you put down that tequila and those tortillas and get behind someone other than a socialist revolutionary with a hard-on for head shots.
So long and thanks for all the enchiladas.
atreides it is called OPERATION BROTHER SAM and it is public information. You're welcome for the history lesson. Goodbye.
Eduardo I don't deny we were the John, so long as you don't deny you were the whore.
atreides I do deny. And priceless to see a supposed libertarian relativizing US imperialism, practically a defence attorney for the American State. Will you pretend not to know about 9/11, Operation Northwoods too? If your government does that to its own people, imagine what it does to others! But you don't need to imagine, there's countless articles here on sott.net examplifying how your government backs coups, fake revolutions and dicatorships around the world to boost its own corporate, economic and geopolitical interests. But apparently, you haven't read them. It looks like you post a lot of crap here, but don't read much. And if you do and just pretend not to know, you are showing your true, cynical colours.
Eduardo At some point you'll have to take off the blinders of hatred of US imperialism if you ever hope to understand the world in the more nuanced way that it exists.
Sacrificial secretary yep BC
That was for LonS re ... Calm down Already.
Eduardo You seem to have a habit for attaching everyone to their Nation State of birth.
stranger · 2018-01-13T14:38:41Z
Joe there's nothing nuanced about the way atreides seems to enjoy poking his finger into people's wounds here on this discussion.
eduardo speaks the truth, this article is sophomoric to the extreme and it is a disappointment to see such an unoriginal simple minded libertarian screed on SOTT, the likes of which are a dime a dozen at the Wall Street Journal.
frankly, it's equally disappointing to see other writers jumping in and ganging up.
stranger exactly! When you become another corporate bootlicking footman for the billionaire class, you can no longer claim to be "alternative media", "anti-establishment" or other edgy titles, because you have effectively become like CNN, MSNBC or Fox News. We don't need Sott.net to spread neoliberal poor denying corporate propaganda, we already have well funded right-wing think-tanks like the Rand Corporation and the Mises Institute for that.
And if atreides mocking a US sponsored Coup d'Etat that destroyed democracy in the 5th largest nation in the world and led to the torture and murder of citizen who dare oppose (and that includes the torture of pregnant women), comparing it to a relation between a "John" and a "whore" doesn't tell Joe and Niall anything about hanging out with psychopaths, then I give up. For people who claim to wage a war on psychopaths, they can't spot one right below their nose.
When you become another corporate bootlicking footman for the billionaire class, you can no longer claim to be "alternative media", "anti-establishment" or other edgy titles, because you have effectively become like CNN, MSNBC or Fox News.
I like the term independent media myself.
I think the problem here is that you don't understand 'the establishment' as we do. For you it's 'the corporations'; for us it's more nuanced than that. Which corporations? And is it simply that they're doing bad stuff, or are there reciprocal behaviors in their target countries or markets? The 'establishment', ultimately, is a regime, which, if you look up the definition, means, besides 'government': "a system or ordered way of doing things."
What informs that system? Patterns of behavior. What informs those patterns of behavior? Ideas, which form overlapping ideologies. Where do those come from? Beliefs about how reality works. How do we wage a war on beliefs? Well, we don't. And if we could, would that be wise? What if those beliefs serve a purpose we don't understand and shouldn't mess with? Our philosophy is that we can turn each one over and examine them, but not scream like maniacs about 'killing' them.
In an earlier incarnation, SOTT's motto was 'The Daily Battle Against Subjectivity'. Subjectivity is everywhere, and mostly in our minds. We may all be all about 'the truth', but it's a never-ending exercise of the mind to get to or towards it. What was true yesterday, in one context, many not be true in tomorrow's. There's no room for rigid, fixed ideas here; you need the flexibility to adapt to changing contexts. Otherwise you'll be swept up in a cause and your circumstances will take a turn for the worse, if not here and now, then down the road.
atreides Glib, smug, misleading & disingenuous.
Why am I not surprised.
And why am I not surprised at the lack of historical contextual knowledge on the part of the author of such libertarian poppycock..."your part of the world has been a shit show from the beginning: 18th, 19th and 20th centuries"...pure poppycock.
Exactly how ignorant can a Randyist be, anyway? I guess there is no limit.
Some of us consider "the beginning" to be quite a while before the 18th century.
The American continents were fully inhabited before the 18th century, had developed complex civilizations, and most definitely were not a "shitshow." (BTW - channeling Trump, now, are we? the words "shithole countries" have barely left his mouth and you're already parroting him. How despicably unoriginal of you)
Ever heard of the School of the Americas, where the gringos train fellow psychopaths, who happen to be from countries where the gringos are exercising their influence (because they want to steal resources/labor), to do their bidding?
That would be torture, rape, horrific mass murder...you know, Amerikkkan values.
And now you're rubbing their noses in more gringo shit. How dare you.
If you have a conscience, it is certainly not on display. On the contrary you seem proud of your country's brazen psychopathic acts of greed and wanton disregard for human life.
In fact your ignorance is even on display when you invoke incendiary racist slurs - "tequila", "tortillas" and "enchiladas" are from Mexico, whereas Eduardo appears to be from Brazil. Mexico is part of North America, Brazil is in South America. They speak different languages, eat different food, were colonized by different countries...what a numbskull.
Seriously, dude, get an education. Preferably before you write any more divisive, hate-inciting articles.
A fool opens his mouth to say something, a wise man opens his mouth when he has something to say.
That sounds like a supposition BC... habit attaching everyone to their nation of birth
I donno... also... you, LonS, et al can mention my ma all you want
Stranger,
Also our Book of Myths... it is herein stated.
Speech is to be used for three purposes only. To say something either:
1. Intelligent
2. Truhful
3. Kind
What a slow race!
Niall Well said! If that don't sway anything, I don't know what will.
LindaMay No Linda. I have my code.
stranger "That would be torture, rape, horrific mass murder...you know, Amerikkkan values."
Psychopaths are psychopaths no-matter where they're from and Latin America has, and has had, aplenty. Psychopathy is not an export.
Sounds like a perfect mama-bear
The American continents were fully inhabited before the 18th century, had developed complex civilizations, and most definitely were not a "shitshow."
Yeah, the cutting out a person's heart everyday to make the sunrise was very orderly. Progressive even.
Ever heard of the School of the Americas
Boy did they learn fast, and surpassed their masters.
All the oldest sins in the newest ways.
Because no one else will. Every time one of these weepy eyed mexicans comes around all they do is bitch and moan about how the CIA made them do it. Yeah, well the CIA didn't hold their dicks while they were raping their own people. The CIA wasn't digging the mass graves while they were executing each other.
They want the guilty party, they can look in the fucking mirror.
In fact your ignorance is even on display when you invoke incendiary racist slurs
When did tequila become a racial slur? They're all Spanish. Eduardo doesn't sound very fucking Aztec or Incan, now does it? They took that land from the natives. They enslaved, murdered, and clipped (you know, cut off arms and legs) of the natives. Now they want to bitch and moan cause the CIA bought their blow and funded their little coup d'etats so they could do it to each other? There's a few million native slaves buried under Eduardo's feet with a message: #SorryNotSorry.
They speak different languages, eat different food, were colonized by different countries
They're the colonisers you insipid mouth breather.
Assuming you are American, it's NOT free. Your country has helped destroy mine with its imperialism and several open and covered intervention, both recent and ancient. In fact, I was born under a US backed military dictatorship that rose to power via a US sponsored coup and did everything they could to boost profit of US companies and raise the standard of living of your country, your people, your family and directly or indirectly YOURSELF. I am just taking a tiny bit back.
That right there is among the most explicit claims for 'entitlement resulting from historical injustices' one can ever come across. THIS is what we've been trying to show people is so dangerous about leftist ideology. Do you see it?
"'You all' [refers to some large, undefined group of people, but presumably, in this case, 320 million Americans] wronged me/my forebears in the past, so now 'you all'... OWE ME."
It's blackmail!
The point isn't whether or not historical injustices happened (they did); the point is that someone today is using those historical injustices to hook people into doing something for them, or giving them something. And they get you to do it by hijacking your empathy.
atreides astounding. what did they do to you, anyway?
I feel sorry for you, living with that much pent up anger and hate, and so much ignorance and lack of understanding/empathy for your fellow humans..
good luck with that, sorry if I caused you to have an attack.
Highland Fleet Lute · 2018-01-11T00:41:14Z
I'm really looking forward to reading this article and chewing on the baby barbs and incendiaries Jason has carefully set for his audience, but I'm just back from my local...[Link] and have to go to bed as doing a twelve hour shift Thur.
Highland Fleet Lute I look forward to you input bro!
Potatoes and Tomatoes · 2018-01-11T07:14:46Z
Yep, you're right Jason...you can't put 'The Poor' in a wheelbarrow...you also can't put arrogance and ego in a wheelbarrow. You can, however, put horseshit in a wheelbarrow.
LonSabbatical ·
Potatoes and Tomatoes Could put you in a wheelbarrow too.
Potatoes and Tomatoes What an astoundingly well thought out and detailed counter-argument.
What a totally imbecilic and novice and void comment Atreides to GardenHands.
I mean really?!! And you pretend to contribute some worthiness to our world's (society's) sad state of affaires????
The like was meant for GardenHands HorseShit comment.
Martina · 2018-01-11T17:37:38Z
atreides That was brilliant, I can't stop laughing
Martina Why thank you, I do try.
Potatoes and Tomatoes hahaha, you're right, his libertarian horseshit certainly passes the wheelbarrow test. The only problem is there's no wheelbarrow big enough to hold it all.
stranger Bit desperate, I'm glad I have such a profound effect on you
Rowan Cocoan · 2018-01-11T08:19:12Z
Here's a few read-between-the-lines presumptions which I'm surprised to see no comments have noted.
1. Figures don't lie; but liars figure.
2. There are Lies, Damned Lies, and (worst of all), statistics.
3. I'm pretty certain J. Martin is speaking mostly about the USA, (where his stats are coming from), or, when more general, the 'First World', in what he's discussing, and same should have been clarified as such. (E.g., See the valid point by PinkFreud of the inanity of a world where the 68 richest people in the world own more than the bottom 50%.)
4. Those objecting should have noted that J. Martin is, at times, speaking anecdotally. (I am not agreeing that such would be a valid point, and am reserving judgment, particularly with regard to my First World/US point as above.)
Anecdotality / anecdotalness? (I don't know but I'm confident neither could be carried in a wheelbarrow.) is one of the first defenses used against statistics, and can be a valid point (as possibly here in the minds of PF, Potatoes and Tomatoes, et al.); or,
It can be used invalidly (such as what J. Martin would likely reply to the points of PF, P&T).
The worst example of the inappropriate use of anecdotality (I like that word) is the medical establishment arguments regarding vaccines, which, when kids who get a shot and turn that night, get turned into spinning autistics for life, uniformly claim such are 'only anecdotal' examples not supported by large studies. The problem with that BS argument there is that the Medical Establishment / PTB / MSM have done their damnedest to ensure that no large studies are done, and/or hidden any negative results, such as they did with SSRI anti depressants.
5. Finally, although I was raised an agnostic, attending only the Church of the Atlantic, (SURFices are held every day of the week depending on swell and wind conditions), I never read a bible - except while bored at weddings or funerals - until around 2002. And yet no one provided these quotes, which I had to look up:
-'For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.' (John, 12:8, King James Bible);
-'For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.' (Mark, 14:7); nor,
-'For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.' (Matthew, 26:11.)
(It's good that there was a transcription of what he actually said so that both Matt & John say the exact same words, and that one wasn't cribbing/plagiarizing from the other. (Facetiousness.)*
(Please note that I am not claiming that by stating what he has, that J. Martin is maintaining he is the new Messiah. As to me? I'll have to think about it.*
*I find it impossible to believe that even if the whole bible is literally true, that God/Jesus couldn't enjoy a joke.
Rowan Cocoan 'Deception' has got to be PTB's favourite un-quantifiable anecdotal abstraction because its so real yet un-categorizable.
Rowan Cocoan I rather like Matthew 13:12.
I do love how triggered some people get. Warms the cockles of me black little heart.
atreides You do like to ruffle our feathers... You little rascal!
Atreides the joke is on you! You re the ONE triggered. Just look at your reactive wheelbarrow comment to PotatoesTomatoes!!
Mirror Mirror!!
atreides that would make you a troll
atreides ·
stranger and then?
atreides getting satisfaction by triggering "others"...
juvenile behavior.
The future of the human race lies in compassion, empathy and cooperation, not the libertarian BS you're parroting.
Thank You stranger. He is a troller.
The future of the human race lies in compassion, empathy and cooperation
That's original! For how long now (at least since the 60s and "make love not war") has that been the common wisdom?
You're just parroting liberal nonsense.
Pathological people hide behind empathy, compassion and cooperation. They scam the rest of us by selling sob stories that pull on your heart strings.
Cucks like you just eat that shit up with a spoon.
atreides wow, did I hit a nerve or something?
Didier · 2018-01-11T11:20:51Z
It had been quite often argued that the "social ladder" could not be climbed so easily nowadays, leading to the "reproduction of the elites". These are french concepts, very well known here. Maybe this does not apply to USA.
A "poor" can have different meanings, whether you speak of a specific person, which - by the way - cannot be called an abstraction, or of the category "poor" of the statistician. French national institute of statistics define poverty as an income inferior to 50% of the median income. This speaks of the distribution of the income, not of the real conditions of life. Second, you cannot "fight" such a poverty because by the very definition there will always be a category of incomes described as poverty.
The core of the problem is the slipping of the discussions to ever meaningless subjects. This is right-left rhetorics. The point is that poverty is NOT an abstraction, as long as you think that modern economics is a solid science and a right way to construct a society and human relationships. "Economic value" is more than an abstraction. It is a human made concept, but one that has very real consequences on human existence. What society can you build upon "money" ? What are the natural functions of money ? 1 - create a hierarchy of incomes 2 - create the "lack" of money, when abundance could be at hand and destroy the control the PTB have on us.
Didier I'm not sure I'd call economics a science. It's more like moral philosophy with the shiny veneer of statistical pseudo-science. I think some economists have tried to be more objective and empirical, but the entire field is weighed down with nonsense ideology, mainly from and on the left.
Even basing poverty on 50% of the median income, here we have some statistical playing. Because the median income is based on geographical and national regions. The median income of France is much higher than the median income of Algiers.
Poverty needs to be an objective measure of survivability. With the left it is based purely on the subjective perception of "quality of life" or "living wages".
I think society does well to have programs and policies in place to keep people from starving to death, to ensure they have access to community clean water and shelter, but aside from that, I have no intention ensuring that people have DVD players, cellphones, or the latest FUBU kit.
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
or waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
and power
it melts them like ice.
Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.
Fate is against me
and virtue,
driven on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!
LonSabbatical "It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick! "
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
" I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size ,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
The Poor is he/she who knows not how to Love.
LindaMay So, knowledge precedes love, correct?
Love IS graeme. Nothing precedes love.
LindaMay Yea, how do you know?
Cause i'm a feeling creature graeme.
LindaMay So, you assume everyone feels the way you do?
Feelings are, in the most part, highly subjective, and do not relate to the real world. Just chemical highs.
LindaMay Another point, how is it possible to truly love someone/something, if you do not know that someone/something, as it is??? That is self love, nothing more. In the sense of, you love your image of the object of your love.
Graeme, very kindly said. YOU are the one with questions. Not yours truly.
Just keep digging... i d love to take you out for Kaffee u. Kuchen ... if we d be close in physical material-plane distance, ... how much more can i possibly say on a forum?
Love is Love Graeme. In the Japanese hearts in the eskimos' in all live peoples (few americans too ) and yeah, Benor's and rocky's doggies too.
Love is not a feeling Graeme, Love is a state of Be-Ing.
And we re lucky to feel this state.
LindaMay I am only asking you to answer my questions.
1. So, you assume everyone feels the way you do?
2. Another point, how is it possible to truly love someone/something, if you do not know that someone/something, as it is??? That is self love, nothing more. In the sense of, you love your image of the object of your love.
Correct, and you give the impression of having the answer. I would like to hear it.
Graeme, i m struggling to be creative, i m doing my best and am not be-littleing the seriousness of your questioning (saying clearly before i get shit thrown in my direction)
What benefits can be reaped for putting love in a box? (Or sentence or 'words')
Love is the heart of god felt personally in the heart of man.
It s an experience of tears and/or kissing or plain careing. It is identical for everyone of course. There is nothing ... but the ONE... how can it be otherwise? I do know. I dont think i know. I dont assume i know. I ... get down n boogie
I dont know how else to describe it... other than... i put the feel on my lips when i pucker up. Sincerely said... it s enlightening for both parties. Cute
In other words... why talk about love when we can make love?
Why watch movies when we can make movies?
LindaMay What you seem to be describing, is emotional chemical highs. i.e. Drug addiction.
Another point, how is it possible to truly love someone/something, if you do not know that someone/something, as it is??? That is self love, nothing more. In the sense of, you love your image of the object of your love.
Give that some deep thought , please.
Graeme, you have no clue.
Your continued fascination with supposition clearly shows you have not taken a peek at The Four Agreements.
LindaMay Well, i tried.
graeme15b Not every nut can be cracked.
Good try dudd
Response to graeme s heartfelt... 'i tried'
Lol guys, there's also no such thing as the unemployed... it's all abstract. People move in and out of employment ALL the time...
This wizard says it better than I ever can
LonSabbatical Well, in a sense, poverty happens, in the same way crime happens. For example, crime doesn't happen, criminals happen.
LonSabbatical Right...
nedlud · 2018-01-11T13:45:36Z
ON BEING 'POOR'
I prefer to be poor. I like it. When you are poor, you are actually quite rich, because you belong to the whole earth, and the whole earth belongs to you. When you can go where you like and do what you want to do, it is wonderful. The earth is pretty damned wonderful, when that is the way.
But this is not the way, today.
Today, we live in fear and oppression. We live in a world of organized crime and the myriad devices that maintain it. And the regulations. Oh god, the devices and the regulations.
And that is the force (evil) that is now in control. Technocracy/government/organized crime.
Some of you still persist in calling it 'western civilization', as if there were some 'civilization' east, north, or south that is not evil but there is no such place, there is no such 'civilization'.
Technocracy is everywhere and it is evil everywhere that it is.
Another word for it is greed, but I would not call it 'western civilization'. I just wouldn't. You really think there is some government somewhere, that builds missiles and bombs and super computers and routinely runs every sort of scam and every possible deception, that is good? Show me.
Btw: I am wearing a pair of old boots, that are duct taped, in order to try to keep the snow and cold out. The temperature right now, is zero, and it will be around minus 20 tonight. I do not mind being poor, but I hate being robbed and disowned of what is mine. What is mine, is the earth.
The earth belongs to us and we belong to the earth.
If you are going to use technology, be sure you are not used by it.
But you are. It goes with the territory that your government claims. You belong to your government?
There is an evil, that is present.
And there is an end.
There will be an end.
To such great evil.
It will be difficult.
Meeting this 'end'.
That is certain.
ned, out
Ned! The only thing that belongs to you is your word.. which is your reputation. Wake UP! Make sure your bootlaces are tied up or you could trip and fall flat on.your face.
Guys, there's also this gem
Absolute Mayhem: British PM squirms trying to justify nurses on food stamps
Politicians the world over are known for their verbal gymnastics and rhetorical agility when facing down tough questions from reporters or members of the public. British PM Theresa May, however,...
Marr was not so easily rebuffed, however: "We have nurses going to food banks, that must be wrong?"
In her response, the PM believed the issue was more nuanced than Marr was making it out to be: "There are many complex reasons why people go to food banks, and I want to develop an economy where, yes, we have a strong economy so we can pay for the public services that people need. But also we have an economy where we're creating secure jobs, and higher paid jobs for people."
What May should have said is that nurses will not be on food stamps forever, at the max, 80 years.
LonSabbatical Which is true.
redrock12 · 2018-01-11T18:42:51Z
Jason, you're a genius. I'm a pensioner in Canada, who receives $1694/month from various federal and provincial agencies. I, like all Canadians, have world-class free medical care, more-than-adequate living accommodations, indoor plumbing, clean water, abundant and high quality food, an excellent library with free internet a block from my apartment building, well-clothed. And yet a lot of people consider me poor because I choose not to own a car, don't have cable tv or internet, don't own a cell phone or texting device. But I choose to live close to walking distance of grocery stores, a top quality health food store, a world-class physical therapist, my doctor, and on and on.
But, thanks to SOTT, I have knowledge of how the world really works, and access to incredibly accurate and well-researched articles, such as your's, and books, that help me to truly have a greater grasp on reality.
Keep up the good work my man. Your mom must be very proud of you.
What an absurd last phrase redrock.
LindaMay Why absurd?
You can't put a price on knowledge. Money is no substitute for knowledge. I have close family who are very well off financially, and, to put it bluntly, are as ignorant as a fence post.
Ergo, it's what you do with the resources you have, including your mind.
danny · 2018-01-11T20:50:11Z
It is not about envy but it is more about justice, and that are statistics about western world, and compared to world over, would statistics and social fluidity be the same? It is all right if you get rich by your hard work, but those are rarity, those who are poorer for 50.000 dollars and earned prior 200.000 or more - poor things I feel sorry for them, not really, they did not really drop so much, maybe by statistics but when it comes to life standard, not really, same is with poorer people, and cases with extreme jumping from one end to another are rare. In my country most got rich by stealing and sellling state property and getting it because being politicaly favorable, and through nepotism, connections, etc. And the most world works that way and it aint rotating around US and West that are minority geographicaly and population wise.
OMG! · 2018-01-11T22:30:27Z
Funny I didn't pay much attention to the graphics at the beginning, only the heading, and was wondering what triggered this article... duh!
Well people have differing opinions on what constitutes being poor and rich obviously, ask a millionaire if they consider themselves rich and the answer is no, it's 'comfortable,' billionaires to them are rich people, and if you have a dumpster to get food from, you're probably considered fortunate, when you don't have things called dumpsters...
Would the real question be what are people actually thinking of, when they are asked the question, would you agree that the economic gap between rich and poor is too big?
Are people really thinking that what passes as rich, just earn way too much... or are they thinking in the context of being squeezed out from affording basic accommodation, and decent food? The latter seem reasonable, and has nothing to do with rich or poor, and more so to do with governance of the economy, and that unseen dynamic that goes on behind closed doors, influencing economic policy.
This abstraction business seems a bit of a distraction, maybe some cognitive dissonance on my part... I don't know, but the author seems to mirror the hard and fast... and the conclusion is somewhat generic.
rocky · 2018-01-11T23:12:04Z
Poor Rich and let's add stupid. I can't believe people are biting into those liquid soap now on a dare Would an animal do that and do they care if they're rich or poor THE HUMAN RACE I really love my dog
whitecoast · 2018-01-12T06:07:12Z
Another article similar to the above from the Illustrious Nassim Taleb: [Link]
whitecoast I'm a huge fan of Taleb...and I admit we aren't equal
I hardly ever see the so-called poor railing against the so-called rich. What I do see a lot of, is the relatively so-called rich railing against the relatively so-called richer, using the so-called poor with which so to do.
hobnyeba · 2018-01-12T09:59:08Z
All I know is The Rich do exist because they are everything I aspire to. A mi ilusiona! I am lost in greed.
hobnyeba Greed is good. If you can have any vice, Greed is the least ruinous.
atreides Yes, I believe the punishment is being able to push boulders with the chest. Even Dante was like "yeah, I don't know, I'll go with being rich just gives you super-strength."
hobnyeba LMFAO
atreides wow, and just like a bad, bad nightmare that keeps coming back...Ayn Randian spew just won't die, it keep issuing forth from the keypads of a new generation of Rand-bots like some kind of green radioactive gelatinous blob from a cheesy 50's sci-fi flick.
Maybe that will be our downfall, a giant green radioactive gelatinous blob vaguely reminiscent of Ayn Rand's depressed slouch and complexion will engulf humanity.
Hard to imagine a more horrific end for us all.
As I counseled in another of your comments, it might be good to climb out of the libertarian bubble once & a while and broaden your horizons...the rest of the world has moved on. We've heard everything your saying, like, 50, 60, 70 years ago, it didn't work, the trickle-down didn't trickle, the rising tides only lifted a few boats....your divisive words are serving the agenda of the evil empire.
Amen stranger.
Wash Rinse Spin REPEAT O_o
First I Look At The Record Collection...[Link]
Highland Fleet Lute That is an excellent song.
hobnyeba Yeah, that's why I donated it to 'the poor'.
Highland Fleet Lute [Link]
shellycheval · 2018-01-12T10:54:03Z
Although inches is not an accurate measure of quality--
which regular writer of SOTT articles lately has the longest
list of discussion responses?
just noticing . . .
My observation and being in contact with people from different walks of life is that poverty is very much a state of mind. I think this statement has been thrown around a bit by our clueless leaders as well but this is actually true. Quick google search reveals that 70% of lottery winners go broke after about 7 years which says a lot about the mindset of the general populace. Most people have been drugged and put to sleep to lead a superficial life or chase after the excessive materialism present in the matrix. This creates imbalance as Earth does not have infinite resources. The clever ones including psychopaths work out ways to horde everything for themselves at the expense of others.
The term "Poverty" is simply a distraction to keep people from realising the ulterior motives of the underlying control system. When you truly know and understand that poverty is the biggest crime committed on this planet. it then becomes the number one goal of the overlords to keep people ignorant about it. Some will blame the people for not working hard enough to come out of poverty, some will blame the govt for their austerity measures, some will tout socioeconomic factors, wars, growing up in gettos, racial discrimination, drugs, gambling, cheating men and women who steal from their other halfs, and heaps other factors. These are all distractions to keep fools from getting wiser about the underlying mechanisms of the control system.
Poverty to me is another form of suffering. Learn from it if you can lest it will consume you and everyone else.
mean spirited word-splitting drivel from yet another apologist for the uber wealthy.
some people never learn. the horacio alger myth, these non-arguments, lost their sheen decades ago. you are so past tense.
generational poverty exists, it is created/destroyed by economic & monetary policy, which is exploited by uberwealthy psychopaths to control society and lock-in their strangle-hold on everything. They maintain their stranglehold through generations, as any student of history (clearly not the author of this article) knows.
small-minded arguments masquerading behind wheelbarrows of libertarian BS (capital letters for emphasis)..., you're merely doing the bidding of your psycho masters. you probably don't even realize it. sad & pathetic at the same time.
stranger Personally I agree with you, the author of this article is obviously a psychopathic shill and as you say, a wealth apologist. Like a typical sycophant licking at the boots of his upper class overlords, the class traitor who wrote the article is going to get his comeuppence as soon as the rich are done with people like him.
I think it's so totally obvious that most of his hyperbolic over simplifications are just compensating for a poorly developed ego and a very small penis. He's a pathetic mouth breather, a clown shoe wearing brown noser.
It's losers like him who are degrading SOTT, oozing their way around the internet with their special brand of obsequious and insipid rhetoric in favor of krypto-libertarian free market worshipping drivel.
It's obvious he has no intelligence whatsoever, has never read anything on history or economics, and has just floated through life as an entitled, vain and shallow materialistic douche nozzle.
Personally, if this a-hole keeps getting articles published on SOTT, I think I'll quit reading.
an accurate comment from atreides: not something we see everyday.
Eduardo It's bittersweet so many people are done with sott now. Political opinions make me cry.
atreides Small penises are behind all the worlds problems - ask any feminist who knows her stuff.
Sounds to me this J. Martin fellow is a ticking time-bomb... He needs psychiatric help and a padded cell.
BlackCartouche [Link]
atreides you said it.
And as I said above in answer to one of the many snide, childishly provocative, trolling jabs you seem to get so much satisfaction from posting:
The future of the human race lies in compassion, empathy and cooperation, not shallow, simple-minded libertarian BS that reads like a second-rate Ayn Rand B-movie script.
This site used to be more about serious respectful discussion of the issues, you debase it with your mean spirited churlishness.
ps - hopefully someday soon you'll be ready to climb out of your libertarian bubble, try reading something like The Spirit Level or Viking Economics
atreides No dead ni66er storage here!
Atreides is the author J Martin
That whole Agenda21 thing, the obsession with 'having a low carbon-footprint' and 'sustainable development'... it's as if the core idea is to get people (Western 'middle-class' mainly) thinking that poverty is hip, a good thing, then get them to police each other with 'hey, you have too much; stop hurting the environment, eat less meat, use less energy.'
But you need to consume certain energies in order to produce other ones, so the universe might read all those greenies 'conserving energy' as 'contractile'. Not trying to suggest people in absolute poverty are such, but those in relative situations, with options, y'all might be 'goin to hell', so to speak.
Niall I'd say that encouraging/validating a description of human beings and human well-being in terms of statistical economic analysis is pretty 'contractile'.
Niall "That whole Agenda21 thing, the obsession with 'having a low carbon-footprint' and 'sustainable development'... it's as if the core idea is to get people (Western 'middle-class' mainly) thinking that poverty is hip, a good thing, then get them to police each other with 'hey, you have too much; stop hurting the environment, eat less meat, use less energy."
The only people I know who are really like that are baby oligarchs, and grotesque "Whaassup, bro'?" ex-public schoolboys masquerading as more-street-than-thou 'street' person grotesqueries.
Reminds somewhat of....
"The historical moment when Bolshevism triumphed for itself in Russia and social democracy fought victoriously for the old world marks the inauguration of the state of affairs that is at the heart of the modern spectacle's domination: a representation of the working class rising up in opposition to the working class". - Guy Debord (translation approx. only).
Highland Fleet Lute Yep, as J Gould said; " I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half". 'That' is really [poor!]...
graeme15b Echoed again rather well through the 'William "Boss" Tweed' character of real-life Tammany fame in the film: Gangs of New York.
Regardless of any disgruntles one may have of Leonardo DiCaprio - its nevertheless a superb film! Very educational too regarding the 'Class' subject matter.
Daniel Day Lewis' finest performance IMO. In fact... I think I'm gonna have to watch it again!
"In a society which is predicated on competition and really, very often, the ruthless exploitation of one human being by another - the profiteering offother people's problems and very often the creation of problems for the purpose of profiteering - the ruling ideology, will very often justify that behaviour by appeals to some fundamental and unalterable human nature.
So the myth in our society is that people are competitive by nature and that they are individualistic and that they're selfish. The real reality is quite the opposite. We have certain human needs. The only way that you can talk about human nature concretely is by recognizing that there are certain human needs. We have a human need for companionship and for close contact, to be loved, to be attached to, to be accepted, to be seen, to be received for who we are. If those needs are met, we develop into people who are compassionate and cooperative and who have empathy for other people.
So... the opposite, that we often see in our society, is in fact, a distortion of human nature precisely because so few people have their needs met. So, yes you can talk about human nature but only in the sense of basic human needs that are instinctively evoked or I should say, certain human needs that lead to certain traits if they are met and a different set of traits if they are denied."
~ Gabor Mate
Tanuki The core issue is unhealthy needs. We are all needy to certain extent. We all fear the Abyss, don't we? Does anyone stops to ponder why? Gabor Mate knows a lot but does not have the full picture I'm afraid.
sid What do you mean by the Abyss, and why do you fear it?
"Although inches is not an accurate measure of quality-- which regular writer of SOTT articles lately has the longest list of discussion responses?"
That's 'cause, one way or another, Jason's articles stimulate thought.
Don't know about anyone else, but that does me.
Highland Fleet Lute Jasons articles attach onto the cause of the moment. Because that is a clever thing to do, and Jason does do it very well. It doesn't matter that I think some articles don't quite nail it, or others think it relevant or whatever, it's a good thing....
It's a cut throat media world out there and SOTT needs to be heard...rightly so. The best website I have ever had the good fortune to stumble across. Long live the articles.
Potatoes and Tomatoes aww, you old so-and-so. Brought a smile to my face. Sweetest thing you've ever said to me.
atreides Yeah, well....you're just really annoying an' all, but...whatever...don't matter or nuffin'.
Potatoes and Tomatoes Admit it, you love me.
atreides Yep...like rent day. The next day is slack day but I don't love you like slack day...I love you like rent day, which is one day away, so go you!
Potatoes and Tomatoes Enough of of the smooching already!... There's a world out there that needs sortin' out!
BlackCartouche Yessiree Boss!
Highland Fleet Lute "That's 'cause, one way or another, Jason's articles stimulate thought. "...faulty logic.
This article and the trolling comments by its author stimulate divisiveness & anger, the motive for many, many comments.
"In a society which is predicated on competition and really, very often, the ruthless exploitation of one human being by another".
Once again, language conspires to fail us. 'Competition', is very often 'mutual stimulation', can be, anyway.
Competition Ain't Nothing....[Link]
Highland Fleet Lute Of course competition is mutual stimulation...you can compete with yourself, but you can only take it so far. And when you reach the point, you look to others and what find out what happens there. Greedy people take it further, but then most humans are greedy and then it turns to a shit storm.
"Be the best you can be"..we've all heard it...but then what? Who lives in a vacuum like that?
Highland Fleet Lute Absolute Victory: [Link]
atreides A proper meditator is mistrustful of language.
I used to have this girlfriend Dorothy, who used to say....
"Some of my greatest victories have been my biggest defeats".
I could never work out if the tail was supposed to be wagging the dog on that, or vice versa.
Don't think she could either.
Highland Fleet Lute So-called 'mutual stimulation' can take various form though, I think... Presumably according to the 'needs' of the participants...
Sam CL · 2018-01-13T06:49:55Z
A very disappointing exhibition here, SOTT.
Such a lot of opinionated posturing - with so little of consequence or substance to show for all that ego and arrogance.
So much casual generalisation and judgementalism and negation of the real, lived experiences of billions of people.
So many one-liner comments that strive to be cutesy or pithy - and fail miserably either way.
For pity's sake, the basic premise of the whole article - "there is no such thing as the poor" - is simply wrong. And then the author goes on to indulge in mostly facile verbal aerobics which are supposed to persuade us of his rectitude.
OK, so let's not call them 'the poor'! Let's find a more accurate descriptor. One which accurately locates the causes of all the lacks....
A more accurate descriptor would run something like 'people whose societies do not provide them with adequate education, adequate employment opportunities, adequate remuneration levels, adequate worker protection, adequate social support, adequate medical care, and which routinely fail to uphold rights and entitlements for those affected by some or all of these inadequacies which cumulatively impact on their ability to earn enough regular and sustainable income to feed and house themselves and their families and to maintain a standard of living which most people in their society recognise as the minimum acceptable in that society'.
Of course there are many billions of people in this situation. Factually, tangibly, countably. It's of no consequence at all that some of these individuals may move up and down the income ladder over the course of their individual lifetimes. The reality it that when you're without enough resources the impact on your life is immediate - you need help NOW, not in 20 years when you may have managed to claw your way out of the pit.
The problem is that they these people don't actually get counted. The system instead prefers to exert far more energy in throwing up smoke screens which are designed to distract us from the reality and to set us at each others' throats, and spends quite a lot of resources in purposely inconsequentially 'studying' the 'problem' of those who dare to be poor - and to justify the system's self-awarded right to continue to vilify those who are casualties of widespread inadequacies. Many 'statistics' are produced in this effort.
All these inadequacies are, of course, fabricated, as is crystal clear to anyone who's ever had more than passing contact with any government department, not by the impoverished individual but by oligarchic, psychopathic systems which massively favor those who are not subject to these inadequacies. The harsh reality is that capitalism can only work when there are those who are exploited and/or impoverished in some or many ways by its activities - and when there aren't enough people available to shove under the bus for profit, it creates them deliberately. Unfettered capitalism, such as is rampant again now, is THE most efficient and ruthless intra-species impoverisher the world has ever seen.
Our author has failed to provide any substantive evidence to support his argument that there is 'no such thing as the poor'. Like those elites and politicians he mentions who are forever setting up tilting horses to distract us from the essential problems and set us against each other, he's made himself into one of those 'ideologues who use their rhetorical skills to play fast and loose with abstract ideas and statistical categories'. For them, it's all about managing perception and clouding the issues.
Makes me wonder if he was paid to do so.
Sam CL
I'm glad you disapprove.
For whom you're obviously a credible mouthpiece.
people whose societies do not provide them
So you're saying they're entitled? Why does or should society provide them with anything? Just for existing? Are they special snowflakes?
adequate education, adequate employment opportunities, adequate remuneration levels, adequate worker protection, adequate social support, adequate medical care
Define ' adequate .' This is always a problem with leftists. How much do they need? Where is the cutoff where we will say they have enough? That's not even taking into account what credentials you have for speaking for entire groups of people.
Of course, the truth is, this isn't about them, this is about using them to get back at the people, groups, or society to which you feel resentful. This is about power.
which routinely fail to uphold rights and entitlements
Ahh, the Cult of Human Rights, you're one of those.
to maintain a standard of living which most people in their society recognise as the minimum acceptable in that society
Here's where you assume uniformity of opinion. First you declare by fiat people's "entitlement" and then you assume we all agree on "the minimum acceptable standard of living" which again, I sincerely doubt.
You also use terms like society and government interchangeably, which reveals your socialist bent. For you, the only option for help people is probably going to be through increasing government power and control. You don't explicitly say that, just heading you off at the pass.
Of course there are many billions of people in this situation. Factually, tangibly, countably.
I didn't say otherwise. I just said they wouldn't be there forever.
It's of no consequence at all that some of these individuals may move up and down the income ladder over the course of their individual lifetimes. The reality it that when you're without enough resources the impact on your life is immediate - you need help NOW, not in 20 years when you may have managed to claw your way out of the pit.
Yes, this is generally how the con-man's pitch works. A collection of half truths and a time constraint which forces you to make a split second (and wrong) decision. Act now, WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!
The false time constraint and the implication of immediacy is common, but as you say: the poor aren't going anywhere soon.
I would like to point out that you have essentially and unthinkingly conceded my point. I don't actually argue against helping the poor, now or tomorrow, do what you like. But I do point out that flesh and blood individuals move up and down, which you concede.
The system instead prefers to exert far more energy in throwing up smoke screens which are designed to distract us from the reality and to set us at each others' throats
Pot meet kettle. This is precisely what I am claiming you are doing. But I am not suggesting we be at anyone's throat. You are the one who has identified some victims, and some perpetrators.
All these inadequacies are, of course, fabricated, as is crystal clear to anyone who's ever had more than passing contact with any government department, not by the impoverished individual but by oligarchic, psychopathic systems which massively favor those who are not subject to these inadequacies.
Thank God you found the perpetrators. Now all we need to do is collect up the pitchforks and have at 'em.
The harsh reality is that capitalism can only work when there are those who are exploited and/or impoverished in some or many ways by its activities - and when there aren't enough people available to shove under the bus for profit, it creates them deliberately.
What does capitalism have to do with exploitation? Sounds a bit Marxist to me.
Unfettered capitalism, such as is rampant again now, is THE most efficient and ruthless intra-species impoverisher the world has ever seen.
Unfettered Capitalism? You just pulled that one out of you ass. The funny thing is, the end of this conversation is where you realize that Capitalism is the ONLY system that consistently and predictably lifts people out of poverty. It is literally the cure to the problem you pretend you're trying to solve.
We don't have Capitalism today, in fact, we've rarely had "unfettered capitalism" of any kind, but when we approach that system, it always leads to quantum leaps in poverty reversal. Both China and Russia are perfect examples, the more Capitalism they employ, the more citizens they lift out of poverty (in china, daily millions of people).
It is the American and Western Fascism practiced today that had led us to where we are, and it is only the extent to which America practices Capitalism that it is able to counteract the liberal facist tendencies and maintain any kind of pseudo-wealth.
Our author has failed to provide any substantive evidence to support his argument that there is 'no such thing as the poor'.
This is a pretty standard liberal tactic. You have also provided no evidence, so you're just the pot calling the kettle black. But really, there's no evidence you would accept. You would just keep raising the bar, because it's easy to request more evidence for a position than could possibly be found.
Your tactic is to try and set yourself up as the arbiter of evidence, to be convinced, and ultimately to triumph, having fixed the game. But intellectually you're so beneath my contempt that your presumption triggers my gag reflex, the evidence is out there, you find it, or remain in your bubble and be sour and shaking your fists at the exploitative capitalists.
There is a reckoning coming for people like you, and when it comes, there will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I don't like you enough to try to save you from your destiny, so please, please, keep believing and thinking just as you do. Please, live the rest of your life in impotent resentment like some caricaturish dickensian orphan.
I wish. Just for the record, I am totally for sale and have 0 scruples. We're all whores in the end.
atreides Excellent response! Like I've said before, I look forward to your follow-up comments more so than your articles.
I love it when you finish off with fire and brimstone, lol! Makes me think of this:
"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers."
BlackCartouche One of my favorite scenes of all time actually.
atreides Here, a little treat for you.. [Link]
atreides Pulp Fiction 'triad' scene....[Link]
BlackCartouche ·
Highland Fleet Lute
atreides
Just for the record, I am totally for sale and have 0 scruples.
...and here you've made the case so concisely and precisely for what's at the core of your objectionable piece.
And, no, we're not all whores in the end.
Sam CL We are all dick-loving and pussy-worshiping whores and pilferers of the same. Its the core of existence.
Sam CL Everyone prostitutes themselves.
Better translation...
"The historical moment when Bolshevism triumphed for itself in Russia and social democracy fought victoriously for the old world marks the inauguration of the state of affairs that is at the heart of the modern spectacle's domination: an image of the working class standing in radical opposition to the working class". - Guy Debord
"In an egocentric world, a dehumanizing and nature-foiling cultural agenda stretches from childhood to the grave."
A proper meditator is mistrustful of language, mainly because it's frequently inexact, but also because much of it has been 'adjusted for political purposes.
No small thanks to CIA acid-stooge Timothy Leary, one such example is the word 'ego'.
Without an 'ego', without a 'sense-of-self', without an 'I am', you are dehumanised, you are an object, and can't help anyone much, not even yourself.
Hence...
"Better to be temporarily an egoist , than never to be just". - G.I. Gurdjieff
Highland Fleet Lute Cogito ergo sum
BlackCartouche Nah. 'Life is Real Only Then, When "I Am."'
Highland Fleet Lute Better to be a conscious egotist. The other types are all of the lower centres, lower emotional thinking. A conscious egotist knows what one is, knows what one can do, knows what the world is, but will be known by none, or few....
Highland Fleet Lute I was hoping for such a response
Highland Fleet Lute Without an 'ego', without a 'sense-of-self', without an 'I am', you are dehumanised, you are an object, and can't help anyone much, not even yourself.
Empty houses, make for unwanted guests.
graeme15b I must remember that one
BlackCartouche Better to know it dude.
BlackCartouche Look at the new age mob, for example.
Highland Fleet Lute Well said.
BlackCartouche IMO. It's only really worth reading 'Views From The Real World', "In Search of The Miraculous', etc, if you have something to do in life that requires active use of 'moving', 'emotional' and 'thinking' centres, otherwise it just becomes more worthless counterfeit tacked-on 'text knowledge' i.e. more 'noise' added onto your probably already crusty junkyard exterior.
There's no better repudiation of the René Descartes cliché, than conclusions that arise from observing someone who has read about 'self-remembering', and thinks they already are self-remembering, simply because they're read about self-remembering.
I got into all that Gurdjieff stuff when I was a proper Northern Soul dancer, for the three reasons stated above, not so strange bedfellows.
Highland Fleet Lute "Because the ideas involved in this science were new to us, we thought our reactions to them were new. Because our minds were exploring this knowledge, we assumed that our hearts were understanding it. We thought we had already outgrown those self-regarding inflations for which Gurdjieff had a oneword description: 'psychopathic'. We thought we were already well advanced on the road to self-knowledge. How far we still had to go even to make a start was, fortunately, hidden from all of us.
'Contemplation is the last note in the thinking octave, but only the first note in the octave of a higher process.'
What interests me now, as I review our evolution in the Gurdjieff teaching, is that for so long I never doubted that all our talk and 'thinking' would provide the desired self-development. Of course talk gives you almost as much new gland life as being in love does. But why, since I knew that being in love doesn't necessarily lead to anything beyond being in love, did I assume that talk inevitably leads to something beyond talk—for instance, to Being? It took me so long to find the right answer to this question that I have never since been able to look back upon my thinking past with pleasure.
Many people have investigated doctrines analagous to the Gurdjieff science. To write of them in a word, in a few words, in infinite words, is to deform them—the truth that can enter into a formula is limited. To write abstractly of Gurdjieff's conceptions in relation to other great systems of thought, belief, religion, is equally futile. I know the danger of verbalizing over abstract ideas—unless it is to repudiate them. Negations are greeted kindly, and the thinker who offers nothing but an hypothesis is always respected. An hypothesis is a life-belt for the mind; thanks to it, the mind floats a little longer before sinking.
I know, too, what the very term 'search for truth' suggests of the absurd, the pretentious, the erroneous, the hysterical. Research seems futile. It is less so, however, than to settle one's self comfortably, eyes closed, into a life of which one understands nothing."
~ Margaret Anderson
Highland Fleet Lute The moving centre probably requires more work, as this centre is fully formed at birth. The primary postures imprinted on the lower emotional, and thinking centres receive their early imprints from the moving centre. Hence, the importance of the stop exercise for example. The stop exercise is not a viable option for most, for obvious reasons. Perhaps a stop exercise in thinking, can be a suitable alternative. What do you think?
Tanuki Margaret Anderson? I don't remember bumping into her at Tony's New Empress Ballroom.
graeme15b Also, what about different methods, for different people, for example whether one is a man number 1, 2, or 3? All centres need to be worked on for sure, but should a man number 3 not work on the intellectual centre primarily, for example?
Highland Fleet Lute "more ' noise ' added onto your probably already crusty junkyard exterior " = ego (in certain applications/usage, no??)
Highland Fleet Lute "IMO"... Lol! Since when did you get so civil?
René Schmené ... sometimes it seems nothing more than getting lost within wheels within wheels within wheels... I prefer watching David Bowie's 'Labyrinth' with my 8 year old nephew tbh.
Call me lazy-minded - but l'm quite happy leaving it all to the Cassie site to pick out the juicy little titbits peppered across the annals of time for me.
graeme15b I came, I saw, I turned my back.
Tanuki No. That's something you pulled from your crusty junkyard.
Go back and read my comment on Leary.
BlackCartouche "René Schmené".
You quoted hi,. I repudiated him.
No one's asking anything of you. If you'd rather stay up playing schizophrenic ping-pong all night every night with LindaMay, why should I give a crap?
BlackCartouche Clarification please?
Highland Fleet Lute Well... not every night.
graeme15b New age mob.
Green Splittongued Snakey
lutey
I ammmmm O_o
Highland Fleet Lute Ok.
"In an egocentric world, a dehumanizing and nature-foiling cultural agenda stretches from childhood to the grave." — the author here says ego centric which can be surmised, with little difficulty really, to mean 'dominated by the false self'. At least I think so.
Without an 'ego', without a 'sense-of-self', without an 'I am'
...is something you pulled from your crusty junkyard. So ner ner ni ner ner.
In the context of Plotkin's book egocentric is contrasted with soulcentric. Another political usage adjustment nightmare, no doubt.
I go by my own compass, for better or worse
Tanuki "I think therefore I am", said the thought to itself.
Tanuki Worse, by the looks of it.
Highland Fleet Lute "You will see that you are different from what you think you are. You will see that you are two. One who is not, but takes the place and plays the role of the other. And one who is, yet so weak, so insubstantial, that he no sooner appears than he immediately disappears. He cannot endure lies. The least lie makes him faint away."
~ Jeanne de Salzmann, First Initiation
Tanuki Aw, poor little snowflake real-self...
Highland Fleet Lute wikipedia — "Nafs (نَفْس) is an Arabic word occurring in the Qur'an and means self, psyche[1] ego or soul. In the Quran, the word is used in both the individualistic (e.g. verse 2:48) and collective sense (verse 4:1), indicating that although humanity is united in possessing the qualities of a "soul/nafs/consciousness" they are individually responsible for exercising the agencies of their "free will" that it provides them.
Much of the popular literature on nafs, however, is focused on the Sufi conceptions of the term. According to the Sufi philosophies, the nafs in its unrefined state is "the ego", which they consider to be the lowest dimension of a person's inward existence - his animal and satanic nature. [2] Nafs is an important concept in the Islamic tradition, especially within Sufism and the discipline of gnosis (irfan) in Shia Islam."
Tanuki "...in order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very 'imaginative'. You see, in the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be." Juan Matus
Tanuki "I discovered that in the Being of this priest Abdil—owing to very many external circumstances, among which were also heredity and the conditions under which he had been prepared for a responsible being—the function called 'conscience' which ought to be present in every three-centered being, had not yet been quite atrophied in him, so that after he had cognized with his Reason certain cosmic truths I had explained to him, he immediately acquired in his presence towards the beings around him, similar to him, almost that attitude which should be in all normal three-brained beings of the whole Universe, that is to say, he became, as it is also said there, 'compassionate,' and 'sensitive' towards the beings surrounding him." ~ Gurdjieff, BTTHG
Tanuki As I said, worse, by the looks of it.
Lots o' junkyard i's throwing texts around here. No Tanuki.
BlackCartouche "New age mob."
I'd say someone like you, who stays up all night every night, pebble-dashing the SOTT Comments section with a lot of word-salad junk-astrology cringe would definitely fit into that category.
Highland Fleet Lute Thanks HFL... Good to have you back. For a moment there I thought you were going soft.
Tanuki Crickey, we have an enlightened troll here now. Lets get "binra" here too, where is he when you need him.
Highland Fleet Lute Well, what can I say, I knows what I knows, sniff sniff. Sniff.
But of course I bow to your evidently superior knowledge and experience, and in appreciation of the graciousness of your wit, charm and sincerity.
Tanuki Can but aspire and endeavour to accomplish through efforts ongoing as much as the potentials within do allow.
Tanuki ["The total result, however, of everything I have mentioned, was that within ten terrestrial years there had disappeared of their own accord those two chief forms of ordinary being-existence abnormally established there, from which there chiefly flow and still continue to flow, most of the maleficent causes the totality of which engenders all kinds of trifling factors which prevent the establishment of conditions there for at least a normal outer being-existence for these unfortunate favorites of yours.
"And namely, firstly their division into numerous communities with various forms of organization for external and even internal existence, or as they themselves express it, 'state-organizations,' ceased to exist, and secondly in these said numerous communities there also disappeared equally, of their own accord, those various what are called 'castes' or 'classes' which had long before been established there.
"And in my opinion, as you also will surely understand eventually, it was precisely this second of the two mentioned chief abnormally established forms of ordinary being-existence, namely, the assigning of each other to different classes or castes that had specially become there the basis for the gradual crystallization in the common presences of these unfortunate favorites of yours, of that particular psychic property which, in the whole of the Universe, is inherent exclusively only in the presences of those three-brained beings.
"This exclusively particular property was formed in them soon after the second Transapalnian perturbation there, and, gradually undergoing development and becoming strengthened in them, was passed from generation to generation by heredity, until it has now already passed to the contemporary beings as a certain lawful and inseparable part of their general psyche and this particular property of their psyche is called by themselves 'egoism'.]
Tanuki ["Furthermore, if, for some reason or other, the actions of the Divine data, crystallized in their presences for the said being-impulse {conscience}, should now begin to manifest themselves in them from their subconsciousness and should strive to participate in the functioning of their abnormally formed ordinary 'consciousness,' then no sooner are they aware of it, than they at once take measures to avoid it, because it has already become impossible in the conditions already existing there for anyone to exist with the functioning in their presences of this Divine impulse of genuine objective conscience.
"From the time when the said egoism had become completely 'inoculated' in the presences of your favorites, this particular being-property became, in its turn, the fundamental contributory factor in the gradual crystallization in their general psyche of the data for the arising of still several other quite exclusively-particular being-impulses now existing there under the names of 'cunning,' 'envy,' 'hate,' 'hypocrisy,' 'contempt,' 'haughtiness,' 'servility,' 'slyness,' 'ambition,' 'double-facedness,' and so on and so forth.
"These exclusively particular properties of their psyche which I have just named, utterly unbecoming to three-brained beings, were already fully crystallized in the presences of most of your favorites, and were the inevitable attributes of the psyche of every one of them even before the period of the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash; but when there began to be fixed and to flow automatically in the process of their being-existence the new form of existence intentionally implanted in them by Ashiata Shiemash himself, then these strange properties, previously present in their psyche, entirely disappeared from the presences of most of the three-brained beings there. Later, however, when they themselves destroyed all the results of the Very Saintly Labors of this Essence-Loving Ashiata Shiemash, these same psychic properties maleficent for themselves gradually again arose anew in all of them, and, for them the contemporary three-brained beings there, they are already the foundation of the whole of their essence.]
"Pithy" - Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief.
That'll do.
Highland Fleet Lute 'Don't be satisfied with the name of HU,
with just words about it.
Experience that breathing .
From books and words come fantasy,
and sometimes, from fantasy comes union.'
LindaMay said...
"I dont know how else to describe it... other than... i put the feel on my lips when i pucker up. Sincerely said... it s enlightening for both parties."
Q: What does LindaMay wear behind her ears to attract men?
A: Her ankles.
Highland Fleet Lute bit below the belt
Pun intended Hun?
LindaMay I rest my case.
Highland Fleet Lute Oh, that's low and a tad hypocritical...how many before/after/inbetween Dorothy, you handsome slut?
LindaMay And hung like a Hun
Potatoes and Tomatoes its 'man-whore' nowadays...
Flutey.. i told you before. You re ugly.
Levi · 2018-01-22T22:16:12Z
Is a human being entitled to life? Or can I kill that human being?