Wealth #Inequality Means #Democracy is a Farce

Posted: February 13, 2024 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Excess and Algorithms
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A government of the people, by the people, for the people in a world where cash rules everything around me.

We’re getting closer to the traditional national gaslighting of people to vote for the lesser of two evils. Gaslighting and voter shaming being the only options left of a corporate captured media and government.

Keep the facade going, there’s motions to go through. There’s time slots to fill, content to create, and appearances to make.

If people can barely survive after a decade which saw both political parties have control of government at one point or another, what is the point of voting? Unless voting third party. That’s where the gaslighting and voter shaming come into play. I wonder what Jill Stein will be blamed for this election season.

What a better life? GET A JOB! So then what do I need to participate in the farce of the decaying corpse of democracy for? Don’t super delegates pick who runs in the general election anyway? Doesn’t the electoral college mean that only a few swing states decide the presidential election anyway?

If voting was so important why isn’t it a national holiday? Like it is in other countries


Vote local? Well that’s where I can see one vote having some value. Probably why we never hear about local elections. Hard to make us hate our neighbors over referendums and country treasurer battles.

If the masses are doing worse than they were before, habitually, for generations
what good is government? What is the point of elections?

Political theater, divide and conquer, evoke emotions, distract, tribalism


How else can the 1% get the 99% to hate each other?

Red hates Blue

Blue hates Red

Elephant hates Donkey

Donkey hates Elephant

Blue Collar hates White Collar

White Collar hates Blue Collar

North hates South

South hates North

Half the country hates the other half

What a shame, what a waste, what a farce


In America, we don’t have a democracy, we have economic totalitarianism.

One must pay attention, and do just a baseline level of research to find this truth although it becomes more obvious every year. The economic elites find less and less need to hide it. It’s becoming more common to say the quiet part out loud, in the open, on live mics on livestreams.

Keep the masses running the rate race fueled by promises and propaganda. Coerce them to work for a living until they’re burned out, bankrupt, or dead.

Just go along to get along. Gotta make rent, gotta put the groceries on credit. Can’t attend the protest cause I’m out of PTO, can’t take my PTO cause my copay went up again, can’t afford my copay cause groceries got more expensive for the forth year in a row.

What a shame, what a waste, what a farce


#Rumination or Rut for Short

Posted: February 11, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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I came across the word rumination randomly and it immediately stood out and stayed in the forefront of my mind. I knew the word, I felt it strike a chord, but I didn’t immediately know the definition off the top of my head. So I looked up the definition online.

Rumination – a deep or considered thought about something. The action or process of thinking deeply about something.

Sounded right, looked right, made sense, then I saw a tab below with the definition from the American Psychiatric Association.

Rumination – a cycle of negative thinking. Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences.

Ouch, that one struck a chord and cut deep. It’s human nature to want to deny that we can be categorized as a type. If I was at a different stage in my personal journey, I would deny, gaslight, change the subject, and refuse to acknowledge.

But I am who I am, and I am where I am. Rumination has been a norm, a standard for me. As a creative/artistic type, it comes with the territory. Artists are sensitive. Overly sensitive compared to the average Joe/Jane. We are more sensitive to both the highs and the lows, the positives and the negatives in life at both the micro and macro levels.

You can’t spell rut without rumination.

Ruts are built on a foundation of rumination. Ruts are funded by rumination. Ruts are mentored by rumination. Rumination holds fundraisers and provides endowments for ruts. You show me a human being in a rut and I’ll show you a human being dealing with rumination.

Repetitive thoughts? Is there another kind?

Dwelling is as natural for humans as blinking. From the boomer who still talks about their glory days playing sports in school to the teenager still heartbroken a year after getting dumped. The self fulfilling prophecies of rumination are the dark side examples of the law of attraction.

I feel like rumination should be used as regularly as the words stress, fear, anxiety, and depression in regards to mental/emotional health concerns.

When we can label something, our awareness of it immediately grows exponentially. What we can’t describe due to our naivetĂ© makes us feel more alone and detrimentally unique. Like we’re the first to experience what we’re going through.

Meditation followed by affirmation practice(s) can help first break the cycle of counter productive thinking with present moment awareness, then replace them with beneficial thoughts and visualizations. Philosophy study can teach us that people have been experiencing the same mental/emotional issues that we’re dealing with for thousands of years and provide wisdom based guidance.

I also think it is not just important, but imperative, to pair these sedentary practices with physical exercise. I was doing physical exercise regularly for years before my meditation and philosophy practices. Weight training, yoga, machine based cardio, and nature trail walks/hikes (when the weather allows it) make up my regiment that I whole heartedly endorse for all humans.

But regardless of order and regardless of which one someone is already doing, it is equally important to train the body, the mind, and the spirit. All are connected. Healthier body, healthier mind, healthier spirit. Stronger body, stronger mind, stronger spirit.

Holistic approach is the best approach always.

Letting Go of Wanting Control

Posted: February 8, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Control. It’s human nature to want to control things. It makes us feel safe. It makes us feel powerful. It makes us feel better. Certainly better than feeling in danger, weak, or confused.

We seem to want more and more control as time goes on. Our institutions want more control over its citizenry. Every year there seems to be more and more attempts at censorship on social media. Always for the greater good right?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

We have so little control over what happens to us and around us, to really think about it is scary. That’s why it’s so much easier for the masses to not think about it. Not only do we not think about it, we deny it. We deny it and try to force control on the external world and ourselves. Always for the greater good right?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Trying to turn the world into an ever expanding safe space is as misguided as it is wasteful.

It is hard, if not impossible to accept how little of our lives we actually control without some kind of philosophy or spirituality practice, or in my case, both. Stoic philosophy and the spiritual teachings of Alan Watts have been tremendously helpful for me in letting go.

Focusing on what I can control, letting go of what I can’t.

Easier said than done of course, just like everything else in life.

My mind seems to drift into mental movies about possible future events and possible future outcomes that stir up my emotions with the velocity of a jet engine. I was never taught to think like that, or feel like that. Not directly, I suppose. So where does that way of thinking and feeling come from?

I’ve lived enough life, met enough people, to know that not only am I not alone in that way of thinking and feeling but that way of thinking and feeling is the norm.

I’ve also lived long enough to know that what is considered normal is insane.

Insanity wrapped in social acceptability.

Studying stoic philosophy, listening to Alan Watt’s speeches (preferably with some video playing to compliment his words) helps calm my mind with perspective, and ease my emotions with wisdom. Breaking vicious circles inherited through nature and nurture, and in a way, restoring child like ease and wonder towards life and the world
until the next challenge presents itself. And those don’t take too long to show up. If we’re alive, we’re facing challenges.

Anxiety comes about because we want to control the uncontrollable. We would prefer to not have challenges but that is not how life operates so we get anxious about it. And why wouldn’t we? Did we ask to be born? Did we ask for a series of never ending challenges sporadically spaced out from the time we are born until the time we die? Absolutely not. Who would?

At least we are fortunate enough to be alive at a time when the knowledge and wisdom of the greatest thinkers in the history of the world is so accessible with such little effort. So we have to tools to better address our so called problems.

It is natural to forget. It is natural to be anxious. Philosophy and spirituality practices help us to remember.

Presence, Present, Granted & #Gratitude

Posted: February 6, 2024 in Stimulus Space Response
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Stop and smell the roses.

Stopping and taking a deep breath is more pragmatic and less cliché.

It is human nature to dwell on the negatives and focus on the outcome/result. This tendency robs us of so much positive potential.

Things could always be worse. Modern technology emphasizes how much better things could be as a foundation for trying to sell us things. But that technology also allows us to see how worse off we could be compared to millions or in some cases, billions of other people.

Others having it worse doesn’t invalidate our problems or our feelings. Power positivity becomes toxic when it tries to make us feel bad about feeling bad. But just because we feel bad in a moment, doesn’t mean we have to make that negative feeling our dominate personality trait.

In some of my darker moments, it has been of real help and real value to look back and see how far I’ve come in my life journey. Some of the accomplishments, some of the fun times, some of the rewarding experiences, some of my day to day habits that were once long term goals.

It’s human nature to take things for granted once we get used to them. Meditation and mindfulness practice has helped me with this. Present moment awareness and gratitude go with meditation like peanut butter and jelly. Breaking the cycle of constant thinking, dis-identifying with any negative emotions, being able to be grateful for who I am and for what I have are small wins each time I meditate.

Philosophy has probably helped me more with this particular aspect of life. A study of philosophy is a study of human history. Stoicism in particular has helped me greatly when I slid into poverty. Shifting my focus from what is outside of my control to what is within my control. But also comparing the ancient world to the modern world, one can’t help but feel grateful for many of the pleasantries and technologies that were unimaginable in the from the eras of Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius to the days of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Electricity, indoor plumbing, refrigeration, clean cold drinking water, access to a variety of fresh foods year round, climate controlled shelter. Those basic amenities are still to this day foreign luxuries to many people in the world.

It is not just easy, it is natural to take things for granted when we are used to them. We face many challenges each day and night. Being human isn’t easy. But we face and handle external challenges as best we are able to. So perhaps we can internally challenge ourselves; to swap out taking some of the basics in life that we take for granted, with gratitude.

List out a few of those things to be grateful for. Either in internally, out loud, or on paper and before long, one has an affirmation practice going. Keep that affirmation practice going, keep actively being aware of all the things we have to be grateful for, and a weird thing happens
we start to have more and more to be grateful for.

Publicly Traded Private Club

Posted: February 6, 2024 in Excess and Algorithms
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What is the stock market? A central marketplace to buy and sell stock. The NYSE dates back to 1792. It was likely never explicitly stated that it’s a private club. Because of the term publicly traded company, many people probably assume the public interest is being served or that the stock exchange is a public place. It is not.

10% of the populated owns nearly 93% of the stock market. As the late, great George Carlin used to say “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”.

10% of the population
wow, and the government gave them how much bailout money in 2008?

I wonder how the public could have benefited from that money? Healthcare, pot hole repair, college debt forgiveness, homeless sheltering, food banks, community gardens, jobs programs, etc. But that’s going into fantasy land. A fantasy where the rich don’t get richer.

Is there a middle ground where the poor don’t have to get poorer?

It is something to see so much data and evidence pile up that America is living in a capitalist controlled oligarchy. The illusion of direct democracy fades for all but the heavily propagandized. Unfortunately the heavily propagandized is still the majority of the civilian population of America.

The evidence of that fact shows up every election season. Red vs blue, republicans vs democrats, neighbor vs neighbor. Tribalism weaponized to keep the unwashed masses fighting amongst themselves rather than looking upwards and their oppressors.

That third parties are still relegated to joke status because the duopoly has people convinced lock, stock, and barrel that they need to vote between the lesser of two evils OR ELSE, is also really something to behold every election season.

How many billions need to be spent on war and corporate welfare each year before something changes? Is there a number? Is there a flash point? Is there a turning point? Do we as a people have it in us?

It is easier to just get by. Take less and be lead. Settle on the sidelines and complain through small talk or comment sections.

However, it is also getting harder to deny reality. Even in a time of compounding misinformation and infinite propaganda, a study that shows that 10% own 93% of the stock market comes out. The same stock market that is used by every mainstream news source as the indicator of whether the economy is doing good or bad for the whole country.

So if 10% are doing good we’re all doing good? No. But every news anchor and every politician in America talks about how good or bad the economy is doing based on how the stock market is doing. So what does it mean if the stock market is doing good, 10% of the population are doing good, the media and politicians all in unison say we are doing good as a whole, but the vast majority are experiencing the toughest times of the past century?

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