After reading yet another article on how teenagers so easily get around parental controls on their screen devices to access things worse than porn, combined with the article on how social media is part of an evil plot to stash people into emotionally manipulating echo chambers, I’m uneasy.  The thought that the social media algorithms are deliberately steering teenagers and young adults into self-harming websites, anorexia websites, predatory behavior websites, much less sexting and porn, turns my stomach.  As it should.

If you are going to control the behavior of the world, you will need to control the evil behavior too.  That’s why there’s always a bridge between the police and the gangs, protecting each other, turning them towards their competition.  I suppose that’s why there’s always a link between the powerful and the pedophiles, for the blackmail and control files material.  As long as there is hierarchy, there will be abuse, murder, rape, pillaging, and the like.

Unfortunately, hierarchy is a natural order kind of thing.  Lobsters have it.  Although, it is a shifting thing, and can be seasonal as well.  Does that mean that all the evil predatory behavior is situational and seasonal as well?  You don’t have to look far to find evidence of that sort.

So, how do we control our teenager’s web use?  We don’t.  We can filter websites, sure, but the sheer quantity of new apps out there every day which can be abused makes that a moving target.  We can filter keywords, sure, but how many misspelled and made-up slang terms come along on a daily basis?  Instead, perhaps we should guide our teenager through the worst of the stuff online, so they know how to be wary of the traps that lurk there.  Like taking your teenager to the casino at 2am to see the worst of the gambling addiction, or hanging outside a bar at 2am to see the worst of the alcohol addiction.  Knowing what is possible, and knowing that the answer is a strong community with strong communication skills, could help reduce the individual risks.

Give up perfection, and you can fight dirty.

It has become increasingly difficult for me to figure out what people are trying to accomplish these days.  I get bogged down in the glamor displays I guess.  If somebody spends their time insulting people, even if the insults are particularly witty, and the choir being preached to claps thunderously with applause, it was never their intention to change the other parties’ mind.  When Hillary calls swing voters in key states a basket of deplorables, that right there is where she loses the election.  Not just the election, mind you.  That is also where her party lost the upcoming mid-term elections as well.  See, she didn’t offer them jobs.  She insulted and dehumanized them instead.  When her followers go on to call the people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump racist bigots, they lose yet more voters.

As for me, well, I didn’t vote for either evil, but that still doesn’t keep me safe from the dehumanizing declarations of those who declare that I put Trump in office!  I can only roll my eyes with disbelief.  My State’s outcome was never in doubt, and it went to Hillary, as it would.  So much shouting!  So much anger!  Do you really think that insulting my intelligence and morality is going to get me to change my actions?

That’s not how proper arguments change people’s minds.  First, we must understand that people do in fact change their minds over time with sufficient evidence.  People actually wash their hands now between the morgue and the birthing wing of the hospital.  A great number of people in the US used to be Christian, and now are not.  They changed their mind.  Why?  Evidence.  Or the lack thereof.  Neither insults nor love-bombing worked nearly as well as evidence.

Next, people seem to think that people’s opinions are now their tribal identity.  Divided and conquered so neatly, they are ushered into their social media echo chambers, made more comfortable by being surrounded by those like-minded individuals, and yet, and yet, they’re not really like-minded at all.

You are not your opinion.  How could you be?  Let’s pretend for a moment that I’m an anti-vaxxer.  I’m not, because my views are a hell of a lot more complicated and nuanced than a mere label could ever portray, but let’s pretend that I am.  A vaxxer comes up to me, and how do you think they try to convince me to vaccinate my child?  That’s right.  They insult me.  “You stupid person who just wants millions of babies to die horrible deaths, just get your child vaccinated already!”  This is obviously NOT the way to convince somebody to do something.

You want to know how the Anti-Vaxxers convince people?  Evidence.  They bring up hundreds of published studies in scientific journals.  And I do mean hundreds.  We’re not talking about oh Wakefield got retracted.  That’s nice.  But the other 10 studies which replicated his results using entirely different populations weren’t retracted.  Now, Anti-Vaxxers could use the same methods of insults that the Vaxxers do, and some of them do because immaturity of argumentation styles exists everywhere you go, but for the most part, they have done far more research than your typical Vaxxer has.  Like Atheists who know the Bible far better than most Christians do, of course the Anti-Vaxxer has done far more medical research paper reading than the typical Vaxxer has.

If you know full well that insults don’t work to convince people to change their mind, why are they so prevalent in use these days?  My best guess is that they’re tribal signaling.  They say, I’ve already argued this, my mind is made up, and since I know that you will defend your views to the death, I’m going to dehumanize you until you die instead of building bridges to accomplish a shared vision or goal.  This is why the world needs reenchanting by the way.  People are disconnected from the soil, from the plant kingdom, and from each other.  The only way you can connect with somebody who holds different views than you do, is to be able to share their viewpoint enough to acknowledge that you do still share values.  Life is still sacred.  Nobody wants children to die.  Nobody wants babies to die.  Nobody wants them to die from gun fire, from heart disease, from cancer.  Nobody wants them to die in warfare, from bombs, from defective car parts, from virulent illnesses.  You can’t see that if all you see is the pro-gun label on somebody’s forehead.

Take the labels off, and you get a father whose child died from a vaccine, and his neighbor whose child died from the flu.  You see their utter grief, and their desperation that another father won’t have to suffer the same agony.  Can you imagine the power that would occur if these two fathers got together, and said, we BOTH don’t want children to die.  What can we do to make vaccines safer, so that more parents are willing to take them, so that less children end up dead or irreparably vaccine-damaged for life who do take them?  But no, that can’t happen right now.  Instead we are herded into groups based on opinions.  But what if we could talk, and listen, and collaborate with each other to get what we really want, less dead children?  How can that even happen if I am totally right, and you’re just too stupid to see it because you are evilly evil with an extra helping of evil sauce on top and obviously want to murder as many children as possible?  Meanwhile, the pedophiles in top echelons of the government continue their predatory ways, same as it was in Rome.  We’re so busy fighting each other, the children continue to suffer and die.  The drone bombing in the Middle East continues.  The dumping of toxic and hazardous waste in the middle of the street in African and Asian countries where the children dig through the garbage for food to eat continues.  I’m starting to think that the evilly evil with extra evil sauce on top people are the people who argue endlessly instead of doing something to stop the evil they can.

I’m the weirdo who faints and has 20 minute non-epileptic seizures from time to time.  I swear I don’t do it on purpose, and not that often.  My version’s triggers are sudden unexpected pain, menstrual cramps, prolonged standing in the hot summer sun, that one IUD insertion, and any injection containing epinephrine as a component.  My best guess as to the cause is some kind of beta receptor supersensitivity.  I can’t do caffeine, I can’t do Sudafed, and to stop anaphylaxis, one puff of albuterol will work.  To drop my resting heart rate from 150 down to 75 during pregnancy, half of the lowest possible dose of atenolol was used.

I’m also an athlete.  I’m training for a half-ironman triathlon this summer.  I’m better than the average person at body awareness.  Having spells of presyncope while standing in line at the grocery store, or standing around at my kids’ soccer games, is just something I’ve been dealing with for over 20 years now, and I thought it was normal!

To prevent fainting, I will often choose to sit instead of standing.  I will lean against a wall if it is available.  I will shift my weight from foot to foot, or gradually clench and unclench my leg muscles on a continuous and automatic basis.  I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t even think about it.  I consume more salt than the average person, but not an excessive amount.  In my reading, I’ve discovered that I needed to add potassium to my salt, so I did.  Training and races go better for me if I’ve got sufficient electrolytes.  I’m not the hypovolemic type, I just don’t want to ever be dehydrated.  I also can not stop a hard interval suddenly.  I’ll always keep moving after a hard training effort because abrupt heart rate drops suck.

I got a fitness tracker, and started watching my heart rate.  I knew it was more variable than the average person from my earlier heart rate monitor use, but I had no idea about the volatility I was experiencing.  My heart rate, just sitting at a computer, can be as low as 44 or as high as 134.  No particular reason.  A dizzy spell standing in my kitchen was caused by an abrupt drop in heart rate from 106 to 49, followed by a slow rise back up.

Unfortunately, beta-blockers are a banned substance in the races I seek to participate in.  I can see why, because they slow the response time just enough to be dangerous.  Also, my history of food allergies, asthma, and Reynaud’s phenomenon make them less than a desirable choice on a daily basis.  I did, however, manage to secure a small supply of a 24 hour version and a 3 hour version for particular high risk situations.  They really work.  I didn’t know that you’re supposed to stand up out of a chair or on the pool deck without dizziness.  They’re terrific for performance anxiety, and to keep me from trembling whenever I watch exciting TV.  Oh yeah, that’s not normal either, but I’ve been doing it for years.

I’m still not on any full-time medication, because the risks outweighed the benefits, but as I get older, that could change.  I wonder how people dealt with this 5000 years ago?  They probably didn’t do anything other than lie down when they needed to.  I’m still driving, because it never happens when I’m driving, and even if it ever did, I have sufficient warning time.  However, sympathetic nervous system hyperactivity is a risk factor for osteoporosis and heart disease.  I can see why.  It takes me longer to heal or recover from my athletic training than the average person because my sleep is sometimes interrupted by adrenaline surges.

Meditation helps a lot.  It can prevent adrenaline surges from being as big as they were in the past, and that can keep the heart rate drops from being as large, which reduces cerebral hypoperfusion issues.  Breathwork also helps a lot, although I can’t do the full Wim Hof method, because I’m not interested in raising my heart rate up to the 150s through simple hyperventilation, and then shivering for minutes afterward.  I can do a very abbreviated version.  There are more kinds of breathwork than that.  There’s the slow version, breathing in for 7 seconds and out for 11 seconds.  There’s the square breath version, breathing in, pausing, breathing out, and pausing for the same amount of time each.  There’s also breathing fire, breathing Earth, and more energy flow stuff that I don’t want to get into.

Does lightheadedness while standing around affect my life, even if I faint on average less than once a year?  Of course it does!  I can’t do the standing around thing on a regular basis, so I would never get a job involving standing on my feet all day.  No teaching, no cashiering, no acting, no military (asthma already got me out of that one), no factory assembly lines, and no baggage handling, because weightlifting is dangerous with a wonky autonomic nervous system.  I can’t think very well on my feet, because if I’m standing, I’m automatically in a low level state of lightheadedness.  Courtroom lawyer work is not my cup of tea, nor is singing in the choir, although I do love singing.  If I ever needed to do these things, I would insist on a daily beta-blocker of half the lowest possible dose, or I’d suck it up and accept fainting as a part of getting the job done.

I vastly prefer lifestyle changes to drugs.  Sometimes drugs work better, but if I can live without them, I will.

I’ve been listening to the best tinfoil ever.  It’s all about the speculation about underwater civilizations co-existing on the planet, with huge underwater metal mining operations that crawl along the ocean floor, and have tiny ships that move in excess of 250 miles per hour underwater.  My inner critic is like, yeah right, the physics of water would make that speed just a little bit unlikely.  I suppose I needed something fun about mermen and mermaids to go with all of those ancient fish religions, including the pope’s fish hat.  That would explain the UFOs.  They’d be fish people UFOs, Earth based, but not human based, and the underwater Antarctica bases would be theirs as well.  Isn’t rampant speculation fun?

What really sparked my interest, though, was the notion that space aliens are going to return and claim to own us as their slaves, and that we should be legally disputing that claim.  I suppose if we can’t be bothered to get off the planet and visit the local planning office at Alpha Centauri, we deserve the destruction of our planet?  It seems that the fish people created humans, and then the space aliens lied to us and said that they created us instead in order to assert ownership over us.  See, that’s the bit about polytheism and animism that is so much more functional than monotheism on pantheism.  The creator god may not be the sustainer god.  The creator god may have been a slave himself, and his work product owned by another god.  The creator goddess may have died, and Earth’s inheritance may have been stuck in contested interplanetary court proceedings for over 10,000 years.  Maybe the inhabitants of Earth earned their freedom from slavery thousands of years ago.  Maybe the inhabitants of Earth were never owned by others until found and possessed.  How does the interplanetary law of possession work anyway?  Is the Earth eligible for an alien court guardian ad litem?

This notion has been in the movies and TV shows.  It’s all over the place if you know what to look for.  Stargate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5.  It’s in the fiction books as well.

Remember how I said that I didn’t think there was alien contact with Earth, because their microbiology would be different than ours and cause serious life impacts?  Well, what if space is filled with space-faring microbes and fungi, continually raining down upon the planet from above, and obscuring the space-station and satellite equipment?  Poor Hubble Telescope mirrors, always getting a film of algae on them.  What if space is filled with water bubbles, containing space-faring life?  If that were true, then aliens could come and go without impacting life on Earth quite so much, because the solar wind would be like the bloodstream, bringing bacteria and other microlife from here to there throughout the galaxy.

If there are space-faring aliens, capable of stepping outside of the ever-present now, there would be more than one kind.  Would they fight over the ownership of humans?  Are humans classified as dependent, or property?  Or are they classified as sovereign and therefore have no protectors?  Ah, there’s the rub.  Not all slavery is as bad as freedom to die in poverty and filth and rot.  Sometimes, people join the Army and become slaves because it is better than the alternative.  So, this still has the elements of consent, and giving away your power.  When there is a chain of inheritance at stake, you need to make sure you’ve found all the possible heirs.  When there is a contract at stake, you need to make sure it isn’t fraudulent or void.  You also need to make sure that the property is spelled out precisely.  “Show me the paper” isn’t just for mortgages.  It is necessary for intergalactic treaties as well.  Did the signatory actually have the authority to sign away the descendants’ rights for eternity?  Was there an interruption in the chain of authority by conquest?  If stolen, can the rightful owner be found?  What about adverse possession?  Can one alien species adversely possess the Earth for the prescribed period of time while paying their taxes?  Why do I assume that there are intergalactic taxes?  What are the taxes anyway, cow adrenal glands and teenage boy testosterone in injectable form?  Or was it gold?  Nah, more likely to be copper and Moscovium.

I’ve been watching more youtube videos.  This time, they’re about narcissism and CPTSD.  There’s a lot of gaslighting and crazymaking involved.  See, I have a history.  I’d love to say that my childhood was wonderful and nothing bad happened, but, I can’t.  I can’t because I have emotional flashbacks.  Figuring out the triggers is a bit difficult.

I never feel safe.  Not ever.  The safest I ever felt, was in the vacuum chamber of a particle accelerator, all alone.  Seriously.  MRI tubes are terrifically safe places for me, because there’s nobody in the room that can hurt me.  This means I can admit that I have social anxiety.  Crowds are scary.  I can admit that I have certain kinds of performance anxiety, though not others.  For the most part, I cope by suppressing the feelings.

Why, though?  Why is feeling trapped in a social situation much more frightening than being trapped and all alone?  Why would I rather be squished in a box than be stuck on an airplane with all of those passengers?  Why would I rather write a 500 page essay than give a 5 minute speech about a topic I’m passionate about?  I don’t have good answers that are easy to find.

My parents were not narcissists.  Yet, I can recall abusive episodes in my childhood which shaped me.  I think, but I’m not sure, my first sexual experience occurred when I was four years old.  #Metoo gets old, and no, it wasn’t my parents.  I told them, and they put a stop to it, well, at least for that person.  Still, it is the sort of thing that made me want to know for sure what the moral code was, and made me thirsty to know more information in general.  I hate it when people keep secrets from me.

Ah, but that was just the beginning.  See, I have lived by the moral code I’ve developed.  It’s an unwritten rule, set up young, that I should not be a bad person, that I should not hurt others.  It is a rule which, as an adult, I have found difficulty coping with.  It needs to be broken, and rewritten.  I’m tired of living with the heartache of being a doormat all because I have to be a good person and please my parents, even after all these years.

The old crones I’m facebook friends with have shown by example, that I need to develop my inner asshole.  I need to be able to be cruel and selfish, from time to time.  I need to be a bitchy witch at times, and I need practice at it.  That’s the source of the social anxiety: I’m still trying to please other people more than myself.  That plays out in a lot of different contexts.  A simple one is how much I should weigh.  Do I please my doctors and weigh within the normal BMI?  Do I please my husband and weigh what he wants me to weigh?  Do I please myself, and weigh what I want to weigh?  Will I feel safer if I’m more muscular?  Will I feel safer if I’m skinny or invisible or ugly?

To ground myself means to feel safe and comfortable in my own skin.  I feel like fading out, like curling up into a ball, whenever I remember the times I messed up, I made a mistake, and people were counting on me.  My memory is good, and I remember the emotions well.  Yes, I did mess up, and my mistakes impacted other people.  I wanted to make sure that never happened again, so I shun all responsibility over other people’s actions.  However, looking at that now, that’s not a mature response to the pain I still feel.

Perhaps you can suggest a healthier response?

“When are you going to solve peak oil?” asks a random stranger on the internet.  I must be getting old.  The answer to this one goes like this: “I’m not quite sure what you mean by “solve peak oil.” So, I’ll make something up and attribute it wrongly to you. When you said “solve peak oil,” you really meant solve the next extinction crisis and jump start civilization 2.0 with Georgia Guidestones levels of humans on the planet. (at this point, I’m interrupted rudely by a loud “THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!”) But see, I’m female, and in the culture wars, I’m allowed to interpret anything a male says as offensively as possible, and claim dominance hierarchy points by being the most offended person in the room. Therefore, if I say that that is what you said, then that is what 1 million women will claim that you said, even if you plainly didn’t.

Since catabolic collapse of industrial civilization is a “wicked problem” with no solution possible, perhaps the best solution is to collapse first and avoid the rush by blatant and ongoing infighting amongst those who stare at the data the most. Surely bankruptcy of public services and moderate levels of civil unrest could cause the nuclear reactors to scram well in advance of the vastly increased climate disruption events such as volcanoes, fracking earthquakes, tsunamis, and major flooding. Furthermore, a modest proposal could be made that those in the fedghettos could eat, well, soylent green, while their numbers are reduced via infertility.

Then again, perhaps we should embrace positive thinking for a change. Peak oil is not a problem, so much as an opportunity. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! The breakdown of law and order on a local scale to commit all the illegal acts your soul has been pining away to perpetrate. Like, you know, collecting your own rainwater, or growing things, or (gasp) growing livestock where the city ordinances prohibit such things. Why, you could even focus on the basics of civilization: soup kitchens, hospitals, and schools. See, he who feeds you owns you. Clearly, the occupying government has no intention of feeding you, or providing adequate schooling, nor of providing adequate medical care. If you can provide these things within your community, free from taxation as much as possible, then your community will come up with the solution for the effects of peak oil on an ongoing basis, for as long as it can.”

If you caught all of the hidden references, you’re obviously corded, and need to crawl out of your apartment full of freeze-dried food stacked in the shape of a fallout bunker, and start a hiking and amateur astrology business.  Why is it that all of the conspiracy people who receive regular encrypted emails from high-ranking officials and business CEOs eventually get into astrology?  Is it because the Queen does?

See, peak oil is a wicked problem, and a single individual can not “solve” it.  You can cope with it.  You can organize your communities or go off into the woods alone.  You can protest or use direct action against oil drilling and transportation infrastructure.  You can’t stop peak oil any more than you can stop the stars from spinning up above the Earth (thanks Einstein), or the climate from changing, or Earthquakes from occurring.  You can’t stop the currency crisis, the germs from mutating and killing, the greedy from hoarding, the love and desperation in the mothers’ eyes as death walks the streets.  Whatever made you think that we should respond to our differing environments in the exact same way?  We can’t all move to isolated parts of the countryside, so therefore, don’t feel guilty if you don’t.  We can’t all grow crops and feed livestock.  We can’t all hunt, and we can’t all gather.

You can relax if you give up your dream of planetary control, and get back to the simple things, like cleaning your room and having a shiny kitchen sink, or at least that’s what the lifehack gurus say.  I can’t though.  Though the burden is great, I don’t falter, I don’t put it down.  How do I solve NTHE?  Well, first I cut myself some slack.  I know the Deep State is interested in this problem, so I know I’m not working on it alone.  Unfortunately, I think the answer involves slavery.  I don’t like it, but that’s what the probabilities show in multiple models.

My husband has decided to attend the local church’s sessions on whether or not this particular church should become a congregation that welcomes gay marriage.  There is a long and complicated history within his denomination on the subject of gay marriage, gay pastors, pastors officiating gay marriage, and similar things.  It is an issue which has been predicted to eventually split the denomination for over a decade now.  I don’t attend church, mostly because it is really hard to keep a straight face with all of that Egyptian/Roman Empire symbolism.

The story goes, that Sodom and Gomorrah were these two cities, who, when strangers appeared in their midst, decided they wanted to “know” them.  Apparently, “know” in the old language means have sex with them.  So Lot, being very righteous, offers his daughters to be raped to death instead of the strangers.  I’m sorry, but what?  You don’t offer your daughters to the neighbors to be raped and still call yourself righteous and godly!  (sigh)  I got sidetracked, didn’t I?

According to theory, the reason that you don’t rape strangers, is that hospitality to the stranger and alien among you is a very important quality for a civilization to possess.  When a civilization no longer is hospitable to aliens, it is doomed.  This is because who would want to trade with people who are going to kill you?  Just move on to the next city which decides to put you up with five star hotel accommodations and free coffee and breakfast instead.  If you don’t trade with your neighbors, then you don’t get access to the resources which your neighboring cities will come to possess, like, you know, uranium and IV bags and ecstasy.  Wait, I was talking about the ancient past.  So any city would need to trade in iron, wood, gold, medicinal plants, obsidian, copper, cloth, and the like.

You can not shut the doors of your city and expect to live.  That’s basic Derrick Jensen 101.  Cities require a constant stream of food, water, shelter, clothing, weapons, building materials, and medicine to survive.  They MUST trade, even if what they trade in is violence.  The same is true on other scales as well.  Families must trade.  Oh sure, isolated mountain men in the wilderness make it years and years on what they grow and make.  However, they really like shovels, knives, and axes.

Nations must trade or they will fail.  It takes time to fail, but fail they will.  That’s why embargoes tend to work, after all.  Nobody wants to be the neighbor of a failed nation.  It’s bad for business to take care of the stream of displaced refugees.  That is why China will step in to aid North Korea against the US’s meddling.  That is why the inflow of capital into the US, and the move towards a more isolationist military stance is not necessarily a good thing for the empire in the long run.

Ah, but did I want the empire to fall?  What kind of long game could I play?  I’m having a bit of trouble detangling isolationism from decentralization.  They’re not the same thing.

This is the time of year when all my favorite prognosticators put out their predictions for the year.  Will the markets crash this year, or will they shoot for the moon?  (shrug)  Unless you’re part of the global 5% who are capitalists in the original sense i.e. they own capital, why does it matter to you what the markets do?  Bitcoin will remain volatile.  Capital will flee from here to there.  More fraud will be uncovered, and a flock of black swans can be seen flapping their wings to the horizon.  Nope.  I don’t have a clue what the markets will do.  Other than perhaps on a global scale, housing prices go down.  But my neighborhoods’ housing prices went up again!  (dramatic sigh)  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

My doomer friends have all squinted in thought at their respective government officials, and the brilliant displays of competence, or lack thereof, and have unanimously decided that this year would be a terrific year to put in a bigger garden than usual.  Some of my friends will have to wait on that garden, as their thermometer reads in the two digits below zero.  (clears throat) Celsius, in some cases.  It seems there is some sort of solar minimum of sun spots at work, freezing oceans and rivers which haven’t frozen over in some centuries or decades.  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

You can’t have regression to the mean without variance, and variance loves to arrange itself in gyres and cycles.  Peak oil, Hubbert’s Pimple, these are simple things, following after a long history of peak stuff.  Peak wood, peak water, peak sunlight, peak obsidian, peak jade, peak gold.  It wouldn’t be so interesting if cyclical incidences didn’t co-vary.  We know that influenza and plagues co-vary with sun-spots.  This makes sense because colder people spend more time in close contact with other people and also have reduced vitamin D levels.  The US’s GDP co-varies with the number of automobile miles driven.  Empires rise and fall based upon whether they are willing and able to implement new ideas or become hide-bound sticks in the mud unwilling to see which way the wind is blowing.  If they spend their time brainwashing the youth with propaganda and squashing creativity, insisting on compelled speech, the collapse of empire is close at hand.

What can I predict then?  More police state antics, more disease, more volcanos and earthquakes, more flooding and fires, more homeless children, more Rescue Game fighting which only profits the rich more.  More indictments of those who practiced pedophilia, and those who exquisitely practiced enterprise corruption on a national scale.  More Congresscritters fleeing the country before their control files can be used against them.  What does this have to do with you?  Nothing, possibly.

The stars shine down upon us all.  The darkness falls upon us all, yet our feet remain upon the path in front of us.  No matter how far your path takes you from your home, no matter how alone your path may be, you know what you are.  You know the promise that lives within you.  When you decide to make the world a better place, to help people, to be kind and courageous, when you decide to endure your fear, to let it pass through you and see where it went, when love remains and hope doesn’t, well, the details will sort themselves out.  You can draw the water of peace from the deep well of understanding only if you’ve dug it first.  Therefore, may it be that you meditate more this year than last.  May that be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

It has been an interesting year.  Living in the USA, it has become apparent that we are not free.  It is the year when the veil has been lifted for a time, and we realize just how prevalent it is for powerful people to have inappropriate sexual contact with others.  Also, if their lips are moving, they’re lying.  It is not that hard to figure out.  You just need to read a little history.  You’ll see that blackmail and control files have been used to control the fulfillment layer of government and empire for thousands of years.

Knowing that all of our elected officials are threatened routinely with destruction if they don’t obey their masters, knowing that both horses in every election have jockeys, helps to put the choices our elected officials make into perspective.  We can see Mr. “I’ll bring the troops home from the Middle East” Obama invade and bomb Libya and Syria.  Next year, we can see “Let’s go to war in the Middle East” Trump bring the troops home.  It isn’t possible for an elected official to keep their elections promises.

We are not free.  We can’t go into the opposite gender’s bathroom, even as caregiver to a wheelchair user.  We can’t get access to the healthcare specialist we need, even with medical insurance.  We can’t get into the best schools.  We can’t just do our own electrical work on our house.  We can’t pay for our house in actual green paper cash.  We can’t even prepay our property taxes in this county.  We can’t own a pig without being in compliance with the city ordinances.  We can’t just dig our own shallow graves and dump bodies in them without complying with the state and county death laws.

Rich and powerful people can, though.  Oh, I’m not talking about the Clintons and Bushes.  I’m talking richer than that, the people who own banks.  If you can print money out of thin air, what do the laws matter to you?  You just defund the organizations which harass you, or overfund their competition.  If you want access to the latest and greatest spaceship tech, money can purchase it.  Of course the deep state is into cryptocurrencies.  Why wouldn’t it be?

If it is the best fit that the ruling class of every planet is infested with demons, because that’s just the simplest explanation for their behavior and belief systems, then that presents us with an opportunity.  Knowing history, knowing what they are likely to do when the stars are aligned just so, we can prepare.  We can prepare for even greater energy inequality.  We can prepare for a downsizing of the useless eaters one way or another, or multiple methods all at the same time.  If the US government is at the part of its lifecycle where the bureaucratic bloat is going to get downsized, then government agencies will be spread thin.  It will be easier to avoid notice and go about your business unmolested.  It will be more difficult to receive benefits from them.  They will continue to fraudulently as well as lawfully cut people off from benefits.

If you are still in debt at this point in the timeline, you are screwed.  People who are in debt are slaves, and you need to be free.  Yearning for freedom, seize every piece you can find.  That means you have to be actively looking for ways to be free.  Freedom and power isn’t handed to you on a platter.  What do you want?  If you want a clean sink, you have to actually clean it.  If you want big muscles, you have to actually lift the weights.  If you want less body fat, you have to actually eat vegetables instead of chocolate.  If you want freedom from government meddling, there are things you must actually do.

Some days are more complicated than others.  Some days, I just feel empty, and sad, and lost.  Some days, it feels as if nobody will ever help me, that I must do it all myself.  Some days, I’m ignored, and I slip through the cracks, broken and shattered.  Some days, it feels like a useless task to put one foot in front of the other, and for what, to continue to be in pain?  Pain unending, tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, never ceasing.

Some days are like that, even in Australia.  It doesn’t help to be intelligent.  Being smart just means I can find even more ways to justify my philosophical insignificance.  I can look at my contribution to the world as a whole, and find it tinier than a mustard seed, smaller than an electron.  I am just so small, so insignificant, so fragile.

Why does that fill me with such sadness, though?  Why does it disturb me to be a nobody?  There were days when I was younger, before my children showed up, when I would enjoy my shield of invisibility.  People would ignore me, whether political signature gatherers or panhandlers alike.  I know that witches tend to be able to cast glamours, to be able to shine forth with the confidence that makes things happen around them.  Well, that was not my power.  Or was it?

Perhaps I was the quiet one.  People who heard me speak tended to listen, even to my quiet sparse and well-chosen words, because I had thought it through, and usually had a very valuable perspective to add.  I did not attract attention to me by charm, but rather by force of idea.  When I had no idea to share, I blended into the background.

I think I’m lonely.  I think I’ve found people to talk to online, but I know my online friendships are fragile, and exist at the whim and mercy of those who control the electrons.  So the dark times have come again, and I’m sad.  I know that death is coming.  The slow shuffle, the rattle of bone against bone, there is no victory against it but that which has always been so.  Some things will end.  There is more than one way out of a burning house, but first you must acknowledge that it is burning, and desire to escape.  There is more than one way off of a sinking ship, but first you must acknowledge that it is sinking, and desire to leave it.  There is more than one way out of a broken life, but first you must acknowledge that it is broken, and desire to leave it behind.

Some days, pain and fear are gifts to be treasured.  Other days, pain and fear overwhelm all sense and desire.  My confidence has deserted me.  I am left troubled by what I have wrought, and I don’t know if it is even possible to make it right again.