Amerika

If someone mentions one detail, it’s easy to ignore because there’s no context.

When the data points build up, most people freak out, because the truth becomes obvious but they’re programmed not to see it.

Here’s a few points of interest:

At the most recent meeting of the Blacktown Liquor Accord, local pubs and clubs voted to erect signs at watering holes, advising patrons they must not wear colours “depicting them as being a member of any group”.

Spokesman Neil Vaughan says the move will stop local street gangs and motorcycle clubs identifying each other when they are having a drink.

Gang colours were made notorious in the 1970s by two major Los Angeles street gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, who wore red and blue respectively.

ABC

Remember when gangs were just an American problem? Now they’ve got them in Scandinavia. Is this “progress” or degeneration?

“The idea that you have too much debt, too much borrowing and too much consumption and you’re going to solve that problem with more debt, more consumption and more borrowing? These people are nuts.”

“Power is shifting now from the money shifters, the guys who trade paper and money, to people who produce real goods. What you should do is become a farmer, or start a farming network,” Rogers said.

CNBC

In his book American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips points out that the money shifters are a symptom of end-stage civilizations. When they’re young, it’s agriculture and manufacturing; as they get older, it’s desk jobs that involve reshuffling finance and inventing marketing memes that are ineffective on the populations that replace them.

Coincidentally, this jives with what Plato tells us about the end stages of democracy: everyone drifts so far from reality that they start selling each other repackaged garbage and no one notices, because they’re all so drugged on how “unique” they are, they’re oblivious to reality itself.

Finally, our infrastructure has hit the fan:

The economic decline is continuing to ravage the nation’s hospitals, with half of them operating in the red and many planning service and staffing cuts, two new reports show.

Hospitals are ailing because of a number of problems hitting in close succession. First, hospitals’ investment incomes plummeted — like everybody’s — eliminating a cushion for operating budgets and curtailing capital spending.

Then, the mix of patients began to shift: Paying admissions declined as people put off elective procedures and insurers tightened their grip on the length of hospital stays they covered. And the number of patients without insurance or the means to pay their part of the bill began to rise.

An unprecedented 50% of the nation’s hospitals appear to be losing money, according to an analysis of government and proprietary data that Thomson Reuters is set to release today.

LAT

So it’s the economic decline, is it? The reporter glibly mentions it and then follows it with a list of symptoms designed to conceal the real problem, which gets mentioned offhandedly: “the number of patients without insurance or the means to pay their part of the bill began to rise.”

This means, as in the economy as a whole, we’ve replaced the responsible and competent with the irresponsible and dissolute. Sound like a solid, shining future to you?

One angry American offers some words of sense:

President and owner of Great Bay Facility Services, Kimball’s sign now displays a message to southbound drivers reading, “Let’s all stop paying our mortgages.”

“Most of us live by the rules. We pay our mortgages, and sometimes it’s difficult, but we do it,” he said. “We, the guys who follow the rules, shouldn’t be subsidizing those who don’t.”

“We’ll be passing on all this debt to our children and grandchildren, and maybe beyond.”

“I think we have serious things coming,” said Kimball, who is adopting a survivalist mentality by adding generators at his home and planning for worst case scenarios.

“Our enemies see us as weak and they are going to test us,” he said.

SeaCoast

This populist sentiment reflects an uneasiness by the responsible about the rising tide of irresponsible people who, in keeping with their lack of responsibility, expect the responsible to pay for them.

Could this be a big source of our decline? Let’s see. The irresponsible triumphed in France, and took it from being a leading world power to a backwater of no future military victory; they also overthrew the Russian leadership and turned that nation into a third-world disaster. In Athens, they took the seat of culture and so thoroughly destroyed it that it was lost to history for centuries. In Rome, they so weakened a great republic that disorganized bands of Vandals were able to destroy it.

Might there be a pattern here? Your mainstream media says no. Your friends say no. Your large corporations say no. But you know that people speak only of what pleases them and benefits them, ignoring long-term systemic consequences. So why would you trust these people?

The United Nations warned that two-thirds of the world’s population will face a lack of water in less than 20 years if current trends in climate change, population growth, rural to urban migration and consumption continue.

Speaking at a high-level symposium on water security here on Thursday, UN Dy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro stressed that “if present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress.”

“The lack of safe water and sanitation is inextricably linked with poverty and malnutrition, particularly among the world’s poor,” Migiro said at the two-day meeting organised by the World Water Organisation (WWO).

Nuprana

Yet we’ve missed noticing big problems like water shortages, global warming, etc. How? Their root is in overpopulation. Addressing overpopulation means we need to tell some people they cannot breed. That means we in turn may be told we cannot breed, as individuals. That scares individuals so much they’d rather commit collective suicide than face individual disappointment.

How disappointing of the species.

Tags: civilization life cycle