The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Illinois, are sobering reminders of our fate.
I think I can understand your reasons for always presenting such a bleak prognosis and I often feel just as despairing but I find myself wishing that you would devote more effort to seeking out and articulating the way forward - how we might transcend our present seemingly hopeless plight. You frequently lament the tendency to resort to magical thinking and yet you are a Christian priest. Does your faith suggest a way forward? I wish you would speak more of the ways we may discover faith and hope.
I’m all for faith and hope but they cannot be about ignoring the physical laws of the universe. we ARE in overshoot and collapse IS certain. faith and hope are beautiful , important qualities but they need to be found somewhere deeper than pretending collapse isn’t real or that we will live forever.
Magical thinking and theology are different things. I have seen clergy whose magical thinking would make old shamans green of envy. Mr. Hedges is not one of those and the opportunity for redemption offered by him is to assimilate his reports. It is up to us to decide what to do with our learning. After all, we should be the only guides of our destinies
I live in Quebec. Bill21 forbids magical thinking in public. We teach Math, Darwin and evolution in school. We teach our children science is the study of evolution. Darwin is about biological life forms and prelife like viruses and sperm and eggs and blastula. After birth we become humans some things like viruses make more viruses but they are not lifeforms.
What came first the chicken or the egg?
The answer is obvious. Without chickens there are no chickens and there are no chicken eggs. You had prechickens and prechicken eggs that is the world of the Gaon of Vilna.
He had a problem with BS he never went to school to learn the art of BS. He believed in Darwin who wrote a century and a half after he was born. That is why Dr Samuel Johnson wrote in 1755 Vilnius and the Gaon were the center of the Enlightenment. Dr Johnson was a conservative philosopher and he hated the enlightenment. He called Benjamin a scoundrel and Marx credited Franklin and Voltaire as the founders of Communism. Bolshevism is antiCommunist as is American style democracy.
Communism or Commonism is what we NOW call Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy in Quebec in 2022. We have Franklin's freedoms and an independent press and government of the people by the people and for the people and the people are 100% of all our hominids.
I guess I can understand Chris Hedges. The NYT won't print my most sincerely held beliefs in its comments section. I couldn't learn how I could write in school .I imagine I could not have learned even in Cotton Mather's old school. I guess I am just a witch.
I am learning to write because of a promise I made to a friend.
My friend was a mystic and a Shaman and a Tibetan Monk I knew him as a friend and a writer and a PhD in Education and colleague of my wife. He wrote books on Shao Lin Temples and sweat lodges and his realities.
I used to think about him as another empty suit all education and no inspiration. I got to know him despite my prejudices and he urged me to write my story. He made me promise to try and write my story while on his death bed.
My wife started teaching me how to write about 20 years ago when I was about 55. We had been together for decades but we lived in societies that were still oral cultures. She knew the moment she met me I wasn't quite what she had expected in a tall Jew in a fashionable business suit. I was sleeping on friends living room floors and was working in a sheltered workshop supervised by people who were totally uneducated but well brain washed. It was a long time ago and my hair or what remained of it was not white and I could see out of both eyes.
Her colleague Peter and I somehow talked about Kabbalah and how his father followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley. My father followed the teachings of the Gaon of Vilna.
I found a kindergarten keyboard on Amazon. It has no function keys or accents to write French it is a UK keyboard almost big enough for the middle finger of my right hand. I am labelled autistic but I look only like me and I look like the BOSS is supposed to look and I talk like Noam Chomsky and I am over six foot and don't know how to whisper.
My father was a Jewish Deist he did not believe in magic. Crowley followed a Jewish Cult leader leader who believed everything was magic. I love talking about theology but theologians keep their fingers in their ears for protection against the elements like truth and they keep their eyes shut to Empirical Reality. They must; to stay in their chosen profession or as Yanis says The Poor must suffer as they must or does he mean should. He is an accomplished linguist but should and must have a profound linguistic difference we sometimes as native speakers forget.
My father understood he knew very little about the universe and taught me to explore. The followers of Crowley and the Rebbes know more than there is to know. They have magic on their side and they are brilliant lawyers and sophists. Are there lawyers and sophists or are they synonyms? Is that why yours is a nation of laws? Ours is a nation of justice our Supreme Court is made up of ETHICAL LEGAL PHILOSOPHERS not priests and tyrants.
I think Elena Kagan is brilliant but when she pleaded the fifth when deposed by Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abela I understood America was no longer a democracy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still alive and Kagan thought America might be salvaged. Kagan was wrong. She shouldn't have pleaded the fifth. She should have spoken the truth. But we can't change history and discuss what ifs.
How do we go forward. I don't like revolutions inside nuclear Empires. I don't play with fire, I leave that to my wife she was one lab over from David Suzuki and his drosophila at the University of Chicago. The damn drosophila are still in our kitchen compost and are one great annoyance but they help compost. Hopefully the compost gets into the inside before we get the maggots and spontaneous generation. I know those jokes don't resonate with the forced to be illiterate masses.
There are not two options or even three options. Despite the Reps and Dems there are millions of options possibly more than 325 million options lets get down to the business of government.
Steven Pinker is my linguistic philosopher I grew up a Montreal Jew and Pierre was also my MP.
My father also grew up in Polish/Lithuania near Krakow but my father grew up middle class and I believe in liberal democracy and my father had a Judaic and Jesuit education. He was a Basque Jew whose family fled the Inquisition not a Roman Catholic.. The workers aren't that much kinder than their masters. They are exactly the same Homo Sapien regardless of the three identities no longer valid in Quebec; Race, Gender, and Religion. None of which are divinely inspired. Darwin is responsible for all of our insanity.
Columbus didn't discover America Darwin did. We are all fish my father in law told me. He was educated at Michigan and slept in the same dorm as Arthur Miller who wrote about Harvard and America in The Crucible. My Father Law was an an Ichthyologist he understood fish.
I learn by interconnections something that is called logic. I am called a genius at logic.
I don't understand how I learn but my father taught to always question my beliefs and I always fact check. America's divide is cultural and linguistic. America has no logical philosophy.
I believe in metaphysics which is the study of the absolute basics. America has no metaphysics. It is an abstraction and Voltaire said it best.
Perception is reality.
Those are my words as a 74 year old labelled autistic in society that created a Department just for idiots like myself.
In USA I am still one of Cotton Mather's witches that is how I see America.
That is how the editorial department of the NYT has seen me for 20 years. That is how I first began to write comments to the NYT where I started reading 72 years ago.
Writing is hard for someone who can't draw maps and always finds the longest route between a and b because there are no straight lines in my philosophy only an x and y and an endless cycle of change in the universe. Every change must have its collateral changes to create a balance in the universe.
It is 2022 there is no America. That was yesterday and yesterday is gone forever. It time for 21st century liberal or some other system of governance in the Age of Big Blue, Watson and as Harari says Homo Deus.
My wife's uncle worked for Watson. He is also of blessed memory but (and) he knew where all the evidence was buried for future generations to understand history. Whether there will be future generations is up to us.
Cromwell committed a genocide against Catholics and loved Jews. We are a complex but insane species. I love Catholics ; some of my best friends were Catholic priests but I was born a Jew it says so on what was once a valid birth certificate.
Yes I heard about Der Sturmer 74 years ago my father lost a sister two nephews and a brother in law he never forgave because NYC in the 1920s was perceived by an uncle I never met as Hell on Earth.
I refer to magical thinking as the tool to coerce higher powers by means of rituals or mere whish thinking. Of course the act of thinking is magical but in the sense that science has not yet been able to explain the hard problem of consciousness where three pounds of brain mater can produce what we call consciousness. All religions are delusional.
A young scientist friend and his wife just came for a visit. He grew up in San Francisco and did his PhD at McGill in Breast Cancer Research. Incidentally Kamala Harris's Mother taught at McGill and did research into breast cancer at McGill's Jewish General Hospital still Quebec's leading cancer research hospital despite the growth of our French language institutions.. The University of Sherbrooke is our local provider of Health Education Welfare. It is a world leader in BRAIN RESEARCH and conscientiousness. We are no longer talking science fiction. I can also tell you on good authority despite appearance Kamala Harris is more sophisticated better educated than the rest of Washington. Her father and mother were public intellectuals her father still is. He is a mathematician. We are talking the world not the American shtetl. Let us talk about intelligent people and intelligent ideas. Elon Musk is a peddler of Snake Oil with a Queen's University Engineering degree. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is always the king.
I am tired Trump, he is an American Media creation like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before him
This is political correctness debated 67 years ago from four different perspectives. CBC has improved the quality I think they understood the historical importance. Robertson Davies is a major Canadian philosopher and The Holy Blossom Temple's commentary on Torah is THE LIBERAL TORAH COMMENTARY. Shylock speaks well for himself and the public intellectual is no slouch.
My high School Diploma is BS they gave up on me in grade three. I am 74 and writing and I was born to write and it took 70 years to learn how. I like what I write and write myself and anyone who needs a laugh and understand old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
Maybe Julio is a Deist. Deism is what America was supposed to be.
Franklin, Voltaire and the Gaon of Vilna were Deists. They gave birth to the Enlightenment. In 1794 the Russian Empire with the consent of the Turkish Ottomans, the Austro Hungarians, the British and the French concurred. Democracy began in America in 193 when Roosevelt said I don't care about our money and power we serve the people not ourselves. Mark Twain had long ago written the Gilded Age and left with Haley's Comet.
In 1853 Britain's best and brightest rode their own horses in a suicide attack to retrieve Turkish Munitions in Crimea. Tennyson wrote ours is not to reason why. Maybe it is time to destroy Empires and talk about REASON,
John Ralston Saul wrote Voltaire's Bastards and subtitled it the Dictatorship of reason in the West. I wish I could write like John Ralston Saul. I am said to be autistic and I know there is no Reason in the WEst. Humans are born to be insane. Saul was correct in dedicating the book to Hannah Arendt. We are the most banal of Earth's creatures.
Chris Hedges wrote the foreword to the twentieth Anniversary edition. I only read the forward I own a hardcover and have distributed the soft cover for decades. It is a classic of the Western literary canon.
I always read forewords it was my father's favourite newspaper but today's Forewards is American not really Deist and Jewish.
Close enough. I'm agnostic and don't believe in any scriptures usually from doubtful origins. Simply put, our little brains are uncapable to understand the divine nature and much less its designs. In my opinion, all the prophets who claim to know God and are carrying its message to us (usually for a small contribution) are delusional at best. I rather think of God as the authority behind all natural laws and in this sense I consider the scientists, who are trying to understand nature, the true theologians.
There you go again . I am not a lot of things. One thing I totally unsure of is if I am a Christian. They told me when I was born I was a Jew. I don't believe in Hell I don't believe Heaven I don't believe in sacred places. All places are sacred or no places are sacred in my Deism. I don't know if I am Christian . They tell me I am autistic, they say autistic is what I am and I say is that supposed to mean something to me and I am what I am. Tell me what does a Christian look like? What does he think about the universe. What does his Deity look like. Does his Deity eat? Does his Deity smoke dope. What does his Deity think about non deities. Does he think we are foolish? If yes why does he make us foolish? Can he make us foolish? Does he love fools I presume he gender identifies as male. Here in Quebec my kitchen table thinks she is a she.? Do fools make Him laugh?
You know the incense they burn on the alter in the temple. They found some burnt offerings. Sure enough dope smokers.
I remember reading The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross sounded pretty good and the corroborating evidence sounded convincing but it didn't fit the public narrative and there was no internet.
Imagine being unfamiliar with English and spelling Psilosibin Psilisybin, silly.
There are a lot of useless letter in English can't we just use letters that have a purpose? Maybe we can devolve the language to grunts, groans and squeals of delight. They say I am on the spectrum. I can grunt , groan and squeal with the best of them.
I am autistic. I have genius IQ and I am 74 and teaching myself to write. I can't use a pen or pencil I can't keep up with my brain. I can't sign my name properly and use one finger and a large multicolour keyboard.
I you don't know the names Cotton Mather and Arthur Miller you can't pretend to know American history. Chris Hedges knows those names very well. Cotton Mather is Harvard in 2022 and like my wife's University Chicago it is hard to be neutral about witchcraft.
Cromwell was a murderous tyrant and a Republican. I am a republican I don't believe in divine right but I believe in liberal democracy. Newspeak is tough. I was born in 1948 in a French speaking American Colony where the 85+ Catholic population served the Priests, lawyers and English landlords and I was was by definition NOT CATHOLIC and that alone granted privileges and English gave you a very important privilege in America's colonies.
Our George Washington served in Roosevelt's European Command.
I am a wandering Aramean with an English Protestant education and I am autistic. I think I have unique perspective. As Voltaire said. Perception creates its own reality.
I know Milton, Locke and Newton but Vilnius was the center of the Enlightenment until Russia destroyed the Enlightenment in 1794.
It is the History of Chris Hedges. It is American history before the Jews and the Catholics and the great unwashed from all over. I am tired of American history being about the landed nobility and the relationships of the landlord classes. In 1776 15% could read and write and they ruled or least the7% who gender identified as male. America got on the road to democracy in 1933. America has always been two steps forward one step back.
Democracy is a dance not a map. It is a partnership not a competition.
Your question was moot. You can't discover faith it discovers you and hope is all that is left in Pandora's mythical jar.
It doesn't get any more empirical than that.
Chris Hedges studied theology he isn't a priest he is a layman and is a philosopher like Jesus except Jesus couldn't write. Jesus was forbidden access to the sacred codes.
I talked to my brother Jesus yesterday. He didn't understand the difference between comedy and tragedy. Judaism is so Que sera, sera. There are no rewards or punishments in Judaism. No heaven no hell just Darwin, Darwin and more Darwin.
It is like a Bob Newhart comedy. We are not Romans, Maccabees or their scribes we are landless peasants begging for our daily bread. Please forgive us our trespasses.
As someone who lives in St. Louis, it’s hard not to think of the constant misfortunes that has befallen here, especially when you place the city’s decline in its proper global and national context. The comparison to Cahokia is obvious to anyone that understands history.
I recommend reading a book called The Broken Heart of America.
I spent three years living in a native encampment in the sub-Arctic. I am an Autistic Semite and my Father was a wandering Aramean. The Dogrib are Dene and Dogrib is the parent language of all the Dene. The Dene are the people and the people are Darwinian. They don't own the land the land owns them.
One upon a time in Lithuania there rose a town called Vilnius where a new understanding of the universe arose. It was called Deism and it came to fruition in Vilnius. Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were Deists. They believed as did the Dene we don't own the Gods the Gods own us. They rejected all religion and relied on Empirical observations. They understood that life was not linear it was cyclical. It wasn't circular as Harry once sang for us in Regina Saskatchewan. It was cyclical and sometimes we must adapt to the cycles not wait to complete the circle.
We are the people. We must take care of ourselves and let the gods take of themselves. The Greek and Roman gods were crazy just like us. They couldn't take care of themselves and died a tragic death.
We still debate the God of Abraham. Was he god of the Temple or the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE? The Gaon travelled the universe to find out.
The Empires destroyed Vilnius in 1794 after The Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The Czars did the work but the Kings, Presidents, Caliphs, and Kaisers approved their cousins activities. Dr Johnson mentions the Gaon in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language and gave us lots of words for liberal democracy. He called Franklin a scoundrel because he was a communist and Johnson was a conservative philosopher.
We saw ten days of liberal democracy in the 19th century in Paris it was a peasant revolt in the Paris Communes.
My forefathers were followers of the Gaon. They believed the laws of the universe were immutable and there was no magic permitted.
What is civilization? Atilla was a wise and benevolent leader . The Romans were BARBARIANS. The Romans were believers in laws not justice just like all the tyrants in History..
I am an independent author and documentary filmmaker. I grew up in Collinsville Illinois and lived on the bluffs above the mounds ( I now live in nearby St Louis). Much has been done to improve the area of this once great native city since I was a child, but I can't think of any greater symbol of our present myopic perspective and obliviousness to the past. Ignorant of the significance of the mound - or perhaps just indifferent, in the early 20th century a local doctor constructed a home on top of Monk's Mound, hence the carved driveway running up the western side. Later on in the 60's, a Grandpa Pidgeon's store was built just down the road and a separate mound was bulldozed to accommodate it. The nearby massive landfill which was started a decade prior now rises higher than the mounds themselves and can be seen in the distance. While the Cahokians toiled to build this amazing city over a century or more, my local predecessors built this giant trash mound full of tires and dirty baby diapers in less than half the time - a beautiful testament to progress.
The counties of St Clair and Madison Illinois that coalesce here are considered to be the two most corrupt counties in the state next to Cook County (Chicago) and because of this, little to nothing was done to preserve the area until the last 40 or 50 years. The contemporary history in this area is a veritable microcosm for the US's short-sighted failures of industrialization, land usage, ignorance of history, racial inequality and corruption. What happened here in East St Louis is a collapse of its own kind. The Ku Klux Klan held a rally on Monks Mound prior the race riots in East St Louis in 1917 which is just west of the site. Turf wars were fought here between gangsters and the KKK over liquor sales to migrants, blacks and Catholics. The once "model city" of ESL now looks akin to a Roman ruin falling into decay when the industry disappeared, the wealthy whites moved east or west and the poor black residents were left with the crumbling infrastructure, devalued property and severe pollution. My dad (a union electrician) worked for Monsanto there in the 70's when they made agent orange and napalm for the Vietnam War. More recent EPA reports showed that the soil around the property is so toxic that the friction from children's bicycle tires started fires in an adjacent dry creek bed. My dad recalled a fire in the 70's when the plant was evacuated. He and other workers ran to the gates as the gas from the production of the phosphorus weapons ignited in the sewers and 200lb manhole covers erupted into the air from the blasts.
I have always wanted to do a film about the region and I know a great deal about the more contemporary history, but funding such an endeavor is tough. Please contact me if you might be interested in speaking with me about this. Moreover, I have another story you might be very interested in and there are a lot of elite people who do not want this to see the light of day. Lastly I highly respect your work and have read many of your books, listened to many of your speeches and commentaries and I would really appreciate hearing from you sir. I guarantee you will appreciate the information I can share with you.
Yours most respectfully, Lou Baczewski
Author of Louch (A Simple Man's True Story of War, Survival, Life and Legacy & Director / Producer of Path of the Past (The Untold True Story of Fury)
Thank you Chris for giving me another layer to our onion of reality. I've listened to this article a few times already. The onion is big and rotting.. mind blown.
I wrote a comment a day or so ago, after reading this well crafted and informative report. I follow the comments, but could not find mine, so here I go again. My ego persists. I read the Report and waited for one ( possibly near the end ) mention of a modicum of hope. Maybe there isn't one in Mr. Hedges's mind. He has seen too much and has a clear view of the reality of where we are at and how we got there. But it is here and now that we live and to offer up such a bleak picture without offering up a small glimmer of hope, however faint, to help ease our feelings of helplessness, was for me, not helpful. Why should I bother to think about my responsibility, my darker side as well as the collective darker side of this country, if it isn't going to matter much anyhow. Why should I bother to get rid of my lawn and plant wildflowers, recycle, vote well, speak up, try to bridge this divisiveness in my own head and my own community and try to understand the emotions fueling the rage of "the other side". I spent the day staring a bit. Considered a glass of wine in the middle of the day. Ate a pint of ice cream. I lost incentive, just for a day, to participate in my community, and bring my art to the city of Asheville. I hung out, not circling the abyss, but flopping around in it. I read Joseph Campbell's work, and he speaks of the Hero's Journey. Part of that journey is spending time in despair; and it is impossible to not feel despair right now. The danger is in staying there. So maybe that will happen next, because I do see Chris Hedges as a kind of hero. A bringer of information and truth to the people. One who asks us to look in the mirror both personally and as a nation. That is a rare and important request. A report like this, however, would be more easily digested if it was balanced with the mention of the possibility of redemption, however small. Maybe that will come. And today, I am back on it. Doing my work. participating. Killing the grass and not diving into a bottle of cheap wine and looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.
I have followed Chris Hedges for years but I don't believe in Messiahs.
Chris Hedges has his perspective and I have mine.
I know history. I don't how or why I know but I couldn't do elementary school, High School or college I am an idiot who scores well on IQ tests.
My father's family is from a town near Krakow and they followed the teachings of Rabbi Judah the Gaon of Vilna. In 1794 the Czars with the approval of all the other Empires destroyed Vilnius the cradle and crown jewel of the European Enlightenment. My father was Deist, I am a Deist, Voltaire was a Deist and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were Deists.
Deists are Humanists. We don't believe in any religion. There is only one universe and we are a very small part. The gods have better things to do with their time and it is our responsibility to be both shepherds and sheep. Without sheep there are no shepherds without shepherds there are no sheep. Without sheep there are no shepherds. It is a circle without an end. It is Darwin not Idiot's Darwin.
What came first the chicken or the egg? The Gaon lived in the 18th century and Darwin lived in the 19th century.
Darwin and the Gaon answered the question thusly.
Without chickens there are no eggs, without eggs there are no chickens. The question answers itself what came first pre-chickens and and fertilized eggs and unborn chickens.
Is a Rock Cornish X egg potential texturized protein or a post chicken?
I believe the war in Ukraine began in 1794 when the Ottoman Turks, and the Empires of Europe allowed Czars to destroy the most beautiful city in world because there were no kings allowed in their Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy even ones that lived in Heavens.
In 1854 Tennyson justified a mass suicide in Crimea thusly.
Our is not to reason why, ours but to do and die.
Vilnius gave birth to Reason. That is why there is a War now in Crimea.
It is time to put an end to empires; first Russia then maybe China and America.
War is about Dominion never about freedom.
I am 74 and as much as Chris reflects my passion for peace I am a Jew and Jewish Martyrs are killed not for their zealotry but their pacifist demeanor.
There is something wrong in dying for someone else's passions. Jews talk about slavery a lot but they never talk about being master in their own land. Israel has shown us why. lord Acton another Darwin contemporary who resolved the Crimean War between Russia and the other Empires said: Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There were no Jews in England when Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice. The Jews were expelled in tribute to the Crusades and were invited back when Cromwell took power. Cromwell was a bloodthirsty tyrant but the English Civil was the bloodiest War in English History and Jews weren't Roundheads or Cavaliers they weren't citizens. They had other functions. The 18th century Liberal Philosopher Edmund Burke served in Parliament only because his Catholic parents turned into Protestants by some kind of magic.
Chris attended Witch Hunter University in Cambridge Mass and Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible about the American Witch Hunting and Harvard's founder.
Miller went to Michigan something Benjamin Franklin dreamed up; a public institution built for the betterment of all..
Franklin was commoner. He never went to school like most commoners there were no affordable schools only private academies.
Franklin gave America public schools, public libraries, public universities, a post office and a civil service. Before Franklin the East India company ran Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for its shareholders who were the members of the English House of Lords. The London Stock Market opened in 1689 -1699 after the Monarchy gave up all its power for a price in1688. Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge were stock brokers. Dickens parents and siblings enjoyed the luxury of indentured servitude in Debtor's Prison while young Charles attended school.
Things were different America. Drive around Michigan Poor House Road. Poor Farm Estate boulevard every county had a solution to the perpetual poverty. Chris talks about it it often certainly often enough during the last three decades. Sadly too few are listening.
The English Civil was bloody it made the American Civil War look a picnic. It was between Protestants and Protestants just like in America but Britain was densely populated.
I got lost in your words, but thank you for responding to my comment. Although it wasn't really a response that I felt included in? Meaning there is no reference to what you agreed with, disagreed with, were uncertain of. I am now talking in circles. Be well. These are challenging times.
I am 74 years old and I like writing. I love writing. I don't keep time I never could. In Quebec I am Autistic . I am on the spectrum. I am just learning to write. They said I was a lazy genius over 60 ago and I believed them.
I tried my hardest but there are many skills I do not possess. The language I speak, I speak in French and English yet I failed French and English in school just like I failed everything else because I cannot use a pen or pencil and can't draw a straight line with a ruler. I cannot hit a golf ball or walk a straight line. I speak the same way I spoke when I was twelve. I had a PhD vocabulary when I was twelve and I never learned to speak like other people.
I do not try to baffle anybody. I just don't understand why people lie about who and what they are. They only punish themselves.
I don't know what I can never know or was never meant to know. I only know I am alive and I write for myself and anyone who may be interest what I write. I write because I missed out on 65 years of writing because I believed what I was told. But most of all I am joyous that children like myself are taught they are autistic because that is what they are not who they are.
I am not stupoid or lazy, or fat, or tall or kind or malevolent or wise or foolish I am Moe and I like myself despite needing my wife more than ever and her needing me more than ever. Having a purpose is vital. Whether your purpose will make the world better we can never know. All we can is try to not cause pain and misery to those we love and you need a reason to love yourself not before others but to love others because we all need all the love we can get.
The only advice I give is look the mirror and if you like what you see congratulations if you don't like you see ask WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE.
Nobody knows what you see in the mirror but the face you see in the mirror.
When I walk in room everybody smiles. It was a lesson it took too long to learn. Someone has to lead and when you are uncomfortable in crowds of more than three life isn't all that easy especially for people who don't like to be alone.
Thank you. I get it now. Who you are and how you see the world - and how you have experienced the world. I appreciate your respondingi to my comment. Karen Armstrong said something that made sense to me, this may or maynot be relevant to what you said, but I think a part of it is: "Look into your own heart and discover what it is that gives you pain, and then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain upon someone else."
It as been a long time since I read Karen Armstrong's take on the Cosmos and I remember reading her commentary with great delight.
Today I listen to Yuval Noah Harari talk about Homo Deus, Eugenia Cheng talk about the Metaphysics of logic for Dummies and Steven Pinker explaining the evolution of human language and how we should should communicate with written words.
I remember hearing Chris rail against Steven Pinker and his tale of human progress and wanted to grab prof Hedges and say he didn't say what you heard. Shut up and listen. Not everyone sees the world through the eyes of Chris Hedges.
Empathy is what you feel it isn't a guide to better thinking.
Mark Twain said or implied or rather he pontificated Evolution is evolution and progress is progress. My wish is that someday the Twain shall meet.
I am Moe I do metaphysics . They tell me I am autistic and metaphysics is easy for Moe I just don't do school.
autisme Quebec says Autism is what you are not who you are. i am a human and there are about 8 billion individuals in our troop of naked apes.
I spend a lot of time in the backyard talking with my wife about things most people are not capable of talking about. Her father was named Eugene Victor after his Godfather who first brought the concept of liberal democracy to America during Mark Twain's Gilded Age. That is real American history. It was about 1953 when most Americans finally escaped poverty.
Reagan called 1933-1964 America's worst nightmare. To me it was the American Dream.
I am a human, I feel. Corporations are NOT human according to the Supreme Court of Canada they feel neither pain nor pleasure they do not share the rights of sentient beings like rats and politicians and clergy.
You can learn a lot watching birds. When they spot a cat they tell the world they see a cat. They look after each other. When I politician sees a cat he keeps his mouth shut. He sees the cat and can avoid misfortune. He delights in others being attacked after all it is a professional courtesy between predators.
Hi Moe. I am getting used to the way you write. It flows probably as you speak. I am not autistic, but I am anxious and have a learning disability. So I, too , didn't do well in school. Was making up stories., drawing pictures, and daydreaming alot. After being thrown out of secretarial school and several jobs, I made my way as a creative artist. Now I have written a series of illustrated books and am attempting to introduce my stories and characters to the city of Asheville. What I got in trouble for as a kid is now what I do. Joseph Campbell's work has inspired me to do what comes naturally, regardless of outcome. I also like his view of the word God. "A metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought." Works for me. I will continue to follow Mr. Hedges; I find him brilliant and sensitive. If bleak right now. He, in previous writings, invited us all to look in the mirror personally and collectively as a country. I admired that. Will stick with it, but will try not to put my head in the oven in despair; my oven is electric so it would only ruin my hair. Ha. Humor works at least some of the time..
An entire planets resources being destroyed by blind ambition’s greed. I’m very aware that those in power are totally blind and inept to address this problem. They do half measures to placate the population while knowing full well half measures get you nothing. It breaks my heart to see the mess we’ve left for the generation to come.
It's great that the written content is read aloud! I have low vision so reading, even on a big TV screen is difficult these days. The narrator's voice conveys the nuance of the writing beautifully. Thanks for providing this service!
In past human migrations there were always people left behind, maybe 10%, maybe 50%, maybe 99% of the population. The coming migration, after the collapse of the bubbles of the greatest technological and financial expansions in history, will leave 99.9999% of humanity behind, dying quickly from lethal wet bulb temperatures or slowly from starvation after failed grain harvests when RuBisCo activase suffers failure from heat and grain crops are unable to photosynthesize for long periods of time. When the few thousands of our oiligarchs' descendants are able to leave their strongholds in Paraguay and New Zealand they will encounter an impoverished biosphere. No doubt they will find it necessary to believe the narrative handed down from their forefathers that it was the abhorrent, dirty, innumerable masses who destroyed the wonderous biosphere. And no doubt they will find a use for us, the unwashed masses, now defunct, as their forefathers always were able to do. Perhaps they will use our bones as fertilizer, like the bones of the Plains bison in the 1800's.
I think I can understand your reasons for always presenting such a bleak prognosis and I often feel just as despairing but I find myself wishing that you would devote more effort to seeking out and articulating the way forward - how we might transcend our present seemingly hopeless plight. You frequently lament the tendency to resort to magical thinking and yet you are a Christian priest. Does your faith suggest a way forward? I wish you would speak more of the ways we may discover faith and hope.
I’m all for faith and hope but they cannot be about ignoring the physical laws of the universe. we ARE in overshoot and collapse IS certain. faith and hope are beautiful , important qualities but they need to be found somewhere deeper than pretending collapse isn’t real or that we will live forever.
I’d just like to understand how he reconciles it all. He never speaks about opportunities for redemption, etc. (I am not a Christian, BTW).
Magical thinking and theology are different things. I have seen clergy whose magical thinking would make old shamans green of envy. Mr. Hedges is not one of those and the opportunity for redemption offered by him is to assimilate his reports. It is up to us to decide what to do with our learning. After all, we should be the only guides of our destinies
Thank you Julio,
I live in Quebec. Bill21 forbids magical thinking in public. We teach Math, Darwin and evolution in school. We teach our children science is the study of evolution. Darwin is about biological life forms and prelife like viruses and sperm and eggs and blastula. After birth we become humans some things like viruses make more viruses but they are not lifeforms.
What came first the chicken or the egg?
The answer is obvious. Without chickens there are no chickens and there are no chicken eggs. You had prechickens and prechicken eggs that is the world of the Gaon of Vilna.
He had a problem with BS he never went to school to learn the art of BS. He believed in Darwin who wrote a century and a half after he was born. That is why Dr Samuel Johnson wrote in 1755 Vilnius and the Gaon were the center of the Enlightenment. Dr Johnson was a conservative philosopher and he hated the enlightenment. He called Benjamin a scoundrel and Marx credited Franklin and Voltaire as the founders of Communism. Bolshevism is antiCommunist as is American style democracy.
Communism or Commonism is what we NOW call Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy in Quebec in 2022. We have Franklin's freedoms and an independent press and government of the people by the people and for the people and the people are 100% of all our hominids.
I guess I can understand Chris Hedges. The NYT won't print my most sincerely held beliefs in its comments section. I couldn't learn how I could write in school .I imagine I could not have learned even in Cotton Mather's old school. I guess I am just a witch.
I am learning to write because of a promise I made to a friend.
My friend was a mystic and a Shaman and a Tibetan Monk I knew him as a friend and a writer and a PhD in Education and colleague of my wife. He wrote books on Shao Lin Temples and sweat lodges and his realities.
I used to think about him as another empty suit all education and no inspiration. I got to know him despite my prejudices and he urged me to write my story. He made me promise to try and write my story while on his death bed.
My wife started teaching me how to write about 20 years ago when I was about 55. We had been together for decades but we lived in societies that were still oral cultures. She knew the moment she met me I wasn't quite what she had expected in a tall Jew in a fashionable business suit. I was sleeping on friends living room floors and was working in a sheltered workshop supervised by people who were totally uneducated but well brain washed. It was a long time ago and my hair or what remained of it was not white and I could see out of both eyes.
Her colleague Peter and I somehow talked about Kabbalah and how his father followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley. My father followed the teachings of the Gaon of Vilna.
I found a kindergarten keyboard on Amazon. It has no function keys or accents to write French it is a UK keyboard almost big enough for the middle finger of my right hand. I am labelled autistic but I look only like me and I look like the BOSS is supposed to look and I talk like Noam Chomsky and I am over six foot and don't know how to whisper.
My father was a Jewish Deist he did not believe in magic. Crowley followed a Jewish Cult leader leader who believed everything was magic. I love talking about theology but theologians keep their fingers in their ears for protection against the elements like truth and they keep their eyes shut to Empirical Reality. They must; to stay in their chosen profession or as Yanis says The Poor must suffer as they must or does he mean should. He is an accomplished linguist but should and must have a profound linguistic difference we sometimes as native speakers forget.
My father understood he knew very little about the universe and taught me to explore. The followers of Crowley and the Rebbes know more than there is to know. They have magic on their side and they are brilliant lawyers and sophists. Are there lawyers and sophists or are they synonyms? Is that why yours is a nation of laws? Ours is a nation of justice our Supreme Court is made up of ETHICAL LEGAL PHILOSOPHERS not priests and tyrants.
I think Elena Kagan is brilliant but when she pleaded the fifth when deposed by Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Silberman Abela I understood America was no longer a democracy. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still alive and Kagan thought America might be salvaged. Kagan was wrong. She shouldn't have pleaded the fifth. She should have spoken the truth. But we can't change history and discuss what ifs.
How do we go forward. I don't like revolutions inside nuclear Empires. I don't play with fire, I leave that to my wife she was one lab over from David Suzuki and his drosophila at the University of Chicago. The damn drosophila are still in our kitchen compost and are one great annoyance but they help compost. Hopefully the compost gets into the inside before we get the maggots and spontaneous generation. I know those jokes don't resonate with the forced to be illiterate masses.
There are not two options or even three options. Despite the Reps and Dems there are millions of options possibly more than 325 million options lets get down to the business of government.
Steven Pinker is my linguistic philosopher I grew up a Montreal Jew and Pierre was also my MP.
My father also grew up in Polish/Lithuania near Krakow but my father grew up middle class and I believe in liberal democracy and my father had a Judaic and Jesuit education. He was a Basque Jew whose family fled the Inquisition not a Roman Catholic.. The workers aren't that much kinder than their masters. They are exactly the same Homo Sapien regardless of the three identities no longer valid in Quebec; Race, Gender, and Religion. None of which are divinely inspired. Darwin is responsible for all of our insanity.
Columbus didn't discover America Darwin did. We are all fish my father in law told me. He was educated at Michigan and slept in the same dorm as Arthur Miller who wrote about Harvard and America in The Crucible. My Father Law was an an Ichthyologist he understood fish.
I learn by interconnections something that is called logic. I am called a genius at logic.
I don't understand how I learn but my father taught to always question my beliefs and I always fact check. America's divide is cultural and linguistic. America has no logical philosophy.
I believe in metaphysics which is the study of the absolute basics. America has no metaphysics. It is an abstraction and Voltaire said it best.
Perception is reality.
Those are my words as a 74 year old labelled autistic in society that created a Department just for idiots like myself.
https://www.autisme.qc.ca/
In USA I am still one of Cotton Mather's witches that is how I see America.
That is how the editorial department of the NYT has seen me for 20 years. That is how I first began to write comments to the NYT where I started reading 72 years ago.
Writing is hard for someone who can't draw maps and always finds the longest route between a and b because there are no straight lines in my philosophy only an x and y and an endless cycle of change in the universe. Every change must have its collateral changes to create a balance in the universe.
It is 2022 there is no America. That was yesterday and yesterday is gone forever. It time for 21st century liberal or some other system of governance in the Age of Big Blue, Watson and as Harari says Homo Deus.
My wife's uncle worked for Watson. He is also of blessed memory but (and) he knew where all the evidence was buried for future generations to understand history. Whether there will be future generations is up to us.
This is political correctness in 1955.
I think you will enjoy.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1870732582
Wolcott Gibbs worked at the New Yorker.
My wife still subscribes.
Voltaire's Bastards echoes Hannah Arendt but that was the 60s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolcott_Gibbs
Cromwell committed a genocide against Catholics and loved Jews. We are a complex but insane species. I love Catholics ; some of my best friends were Catholic priests but I was born a Jew it says so on what was once a valid birth certificate.
Yes I heard about Der Sturmer 74 years ago my father lost a sister two nephews and a brother in law he never forgave because NYC in the 1920s was perceived by an uncle I never met as Hell on Earth.
I refer to magical thinking as the tool to coerce higher powers by means of rituals or mere whish thinking. Of course the act of thinking is magical but in the sense that science has not yet been able to explain the hard problem of consciousness where three pounds of brain mater can produce what we call consciousness. All religions are delusional.
A young scientist friend and his wife just came for a visit. He grew up in San Francisco and did his PhD at McGill in Breast Cancer Research. Incidentally Kamala Harris's Mother taught at McGill and did research into breast cancer at McGill's Jewish General Hospital still Quebec's leading cancer research hospital despite the growth of our French language institutions.. The University of Sherbrooke is our local provider of Health Education Welfare. It is a world leader in BRAIN RESEARCH and conscientiousness. We are no longer talking science fiction. I can also tell you on good authority despite appearance Kamala Harris is more sophisticated better educated than the rest of Washington. Her father and mother were public intellectuals her father still is. He is a mathematician. We are talking the world not the American shtetl. Let us talk about intelligent people and intelligent ideas. Elon Musk is a peddler of Snake Oil with a Queen's University Engineering degree. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is always the king.
I am tired Trump, he is an American Media creation like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton before him
This is political correctness debated 67 years ago from four different perspectives. CBC has improved the quality I think they understood the historical importance. Robertson Davies is a major Canadian philosopher and The Holy Blossom Temple's commentary on Torah is THE LIBERAL TORAH COMMENTARY. Shylock speaks well for himself and the public intellectual is no slouch.
Fighting Words
The Bard is a Bigot
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1870732582
My high School Diploma is BS they gave up on me in grade three. I am 74 and writing and I was born to write and it took 70 years to learn how. I like what I write and write myself and anyone who needs a laugh and understand old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
Maybe Julio is a Deist. Deism is what America was supposed to be.
Franklin, Voltaire and the Gaon of Vilna were Deists. They gave birth to the Enlightenment. In 1794 the Russian Empire with the consent of the Turkish Ottomans, the Austro Hungarians, the British and the French concurred. Democracy began in America in 193 when Roosevelt said I don't care about our money and power we serve the people not ourselves. Mark Twain had long ago written the Gilded Age and left with Haley's Comet.
In 1853 Britain's best and brightest rode their own horses in a suicide attack to retrieve Turkish Munitions in Crimea. Tennyson wrote ours is not to reason why. Maybe it is time to destroy Empires and talk about REASON,
John Ralston Saul wrote Voltaire's Bastards and subtitled it the Dictatorship of reason in the West. I wish I could write like John Ralston Saul. I am said to be autistic and I know there is no Reason in the WEst. Humans are born to be insane. Saul was correct in dedicating the book to Hannah Arendt. We are the most banal of Earth's creatures.
Chris Hedges wrote the foreword to the twentieth Anniversary edition. I only read the forward I own a hardcover and have distributed the soft cover for decades. It is a classic of the Western literary canon.
I always read forewords it was my father's favourite newspaper but today's Forewards is American not really Deist and Jewish.
We are all Jews getting on train in Poland in the 1940s.
Close enough. I'm agnostic and don't believe in any scriptures usually from doubtful origins. Simply put, our little brains are uncapable to understand the divine nature and much less its designs. In my opinion, all the prophets who claim to know God and are carrying its message to us (usually for a small contribution) are delusional at best. I rather think of God as the authority behind all natural laws and in this sense I consider the scientists, who are trying to understand nature, the true theologians.
There you go again . I am not a lot of things. One thing I totally unsure of is if I am a Christian. They told me when I was born I was a Jew. I don't believe in Hell I don't believe Heaven I don't believe in sacred places. All places are sacred or no places are sacred in my Deism. I don't know if I am Christian . They tell me I am autistic, they say autistic is what I am and I say is that supposed to mean something to me and I am what I am. Tell me what does a Christian look like? What does he think about the universe. What does his Deity look like. Does his Deity eat? Does his Deity smoke dope. What does his Deity think about non deities. Does he think we are foolish? If yes why does he make us foolish? Can he make us foolish? Does he love fools I presume he gender identifies as male. Here in Quebec my kitchen table thinks she is a she.? Do fools make Him laugh?
You know the incense they burn on the alter in the temple. They found some burnt offerings. Sure enough dope smokers.
I remember reading The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross sounded pretty good and the corroborating evidence sounded convincing but it didn't fit the public narrative and there was no internet.
Imagine being unfamiliar with English and spelling Psilosibin Psilisybin, silly.
There are a lot of useless letter in English can't we just use letters that have a purpose? Maybe we can devolve the language to grunts, groans and squeals of delight. They say I am on the spectrum. I can grunt , groan and squeal with the best of them.
I am autistic. I have genius IQ and I am 74 and teaching myself to write. I can't use a pen or pencil I can't keep up with my brain. I can't sign my name properly and use one finger and a large multicolour keyboard.
I you don't know the names Cotton Mather and Arthur Miller you can't pretend to know American history. Chris Hedges knows those names very well. Cotton Mather is Harvard in 2022 and like my wife's University Chicago it is hard to be neutral about witchcraft.
Cromwell was a murderous tyrant and a Republican. I am a republican I don't believe in divine right but I believe in liberal democracy. Newspeak is tough. I was born in 1948 in a French speaking American Colony where the 85+ Catholic population served the Priests, lawyers and English landlords and I was was by definition NOT CATHOLIC and that alone granted privileges and English gave you a very important privilege in America's colonies.
Our George Washington served in Roosevelt's European Command.
I am a wandering Aramean with an English Protestant education and I am autistic. I think I have unique perspective. As Voltaire said. Perception creates its own reality.
I know Milton, Locke and Newton but Vilnius was the center of the Enlightenment until Russia destroyed the Enlightenment in 1794.
Not sure what you wish to convey. I am familiar with all the names you cite. All of this has little to do with my question.
It is the History of Chris Hedges. It is American history before the Jews and the Catholics and the great unwashed from all over. I am tired of American history being about the landed nobility and the relationships of the landlord classes. In 1776 15% could read and write and they ruled or least the7% who gender identified as male. America got on the road to democracy in 1933. America has always been two steps forward one step back.
Democracy is a dance not a map. It is a partnership not a competition.
Your question was moot. You can't discover faith it discovers you and hope is all that is left in Pandora's mythical jar.
It doesn't get any more empirical than that.
Chris Hedges studied theology he isn't a priest he is a layman and is a philosopher like Jesus except Jesus couldn't write. Jesus was forbidden access to the sacred codes.
I talked to my brother Jesus yesterday. He didn't understand the difference between comedy and tragedy. Judaism is so Que sera, sera. There are no rewards or punishments in Judaism. No heaven no hell just Darwin, Darwin and more Darwin.
It is like a Bob Newhart comedy. We are not Romans, Maccabees or their scribes we are landless peasants begging for our daily bread. Please forgive us our trespasses.
As someone who lives in St. Louis, it’s hard not to think of the constant misfortunes that has befallen here, especially when you place the city’s decline in its proper global and national context. The comparison to Cahokia is obvious to anyone that understands history.
I recommend reading a book called The Broken Heart of America.
I spent three years living in a native encampment in the sub-Arctic. I am an Autistic Semite and my Father was a wandering Aramean. The Dogrib are Dene and Dogrib is the parent language of all the Dene. The Dene are the people and the people are Darwinian. They don't own the land the land owns them.
One upon a time in Lithuania there rose a town called Vilnius where a new understanding of the universe arose. It was called Deism and it came to fruition in Vilnius. Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were Deists. They believed as did the Dene we don't own the Gods the Gods own us. They rejected all religion and relied on Empirical observations. They understood that life was not linear it was cyclical. It wasn't circular as Harry once sang for us in Regina Saskatchewan. It was cyclical and sometimes we must adapt to the cycles not wait to complete the circle.
We are the people. We must take care of ourselves and let the gods take of themselves. The Greek and Roman gods were crazy just like us. They couldn't take care of themselves and died a tragic death.
We still debate the God of Abraham. Was he god of the Temple or the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE? The Gaon travelled the universe to find out.
The Empires destroyed Vilnius in 1794 after The Declarations of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The Czars did the work but the Kings, Presidents, Caliphs, and Kaisers approved their cousins activities. Dr Johnson mentions the Gaon in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language and gave us lots of words for liberal democracy. He called Franklin a scoundrel because he was a communist and Johnson was a conservative philosopher.
We saw ten days of liberal democracy in the 19th century in Paris it was a peasant revolt in the Paris Communes.
My forefathers were followers of the Gaon. They believed the laws of the universe were immutable and there was no magic permitted.
What is civilization? Atilla was a wise and benevolent leader . The Romans were BARBARIANS. The Romans were believers in laws not justice just like all the tyrants in History..
Mr. Hedges,
I am an independent author and documentary filmmaker. I grew up in Collinsville Illinois and lived on the bluffs above the mounds ( I now live in nearby St Louis). Much has been done to improve the area of this once great native city since I was a child, but I can't think of any greater symbol of our present myopic perspective and obliviousness to the past. Ignorant of the significance of the mound - or perhaps just indifferent, in the early 20th century a local doctor constructed a home on top of Monk's Mound, hence the carved driveway running up the western side. Later on in the 60's, a Grandpa Pidgeon's store was built just down the road and a separate mound was bulldozed to accommodate it. The nearby massive landfill which was started a decade prior now rises higher than the mounds themselves and can be seen in the distance. While the Cahokians toiled to build this amazing city over a century or more, my local predecessors built this giant trash mound full of tires and dirty baby diapers in less than half the time - a beautiful testament to progress.
The counties of St Clair and Madison Illinois that coalesce here are considered to be the two most corrupt counties in the state next to Cook County (Chicago) and because of this, little to nothing was done to preserve the area until the last 40 or 50 years. The contemporary history in this area is a veritable microcosm for the US's short-sighted failures of industrialization, land usage, ignorance of history, racial inequality and corruption. What happened here in East St Louis is a collapse of its own kind. The Ku Klux Klan held a rally on Monks Mound prior the race riots in East St Louis in 1917 which is just west of the site. Turf wars were fought here between gangsters and the KKK over liquor sales to migrants, blacks and Catholics. The once "model city" of ESL now looks akin to a Roman ruin falling into decay when the industry disappeared, the wealthy whites moved east or west and the poor black residents were left with the crumbling infrastructure, devalued property and severe pollution. My dad (a union electrician) worked for Monsanto there in the 70's when they made agent orange and napalm for the Vietnam War. More recent EPA reports showed that the soil around the property is so toxic that the friction from children's bicycle tires started fires in an adjacent dry creek bed. My dad recalled a fire in the 70's when the plant was evacuated. He and other workers ran to the gates as the gas from the production of the phosphorus weapons ignited in the sewers and 200lb manhole covers erupted into the air from the blasts.
I have always wanted to do a film about the region and I know a great deal about the more contemporary history, but funding such an endeavor is tough. Please contact me if you might be interested in speaking with me about this. Moreover, I have another story you might be very interested in and there are a lot of elite people who do not want this to see the light of day. Lastly I highly respect your work and have read many of your books, listened to many of your speeches and commentaries and I would really appreciate hearing from you sir. I guarantee you will appreciate the information I can share with you.
Yours most respectfully, Lou Baczewski
Author of Louch (A Simple Man's True Story of War, Survival, Life and Legacy & Director / Producer of Path of the Past (The Untold True Story of Fury)
Thank you Chris for giving me another layer to our onion of reality. I've listened to this article a few times already. The onion is big and rotting.. mind blown.
Any thoughts about this information? https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/there-is-no-variant-not-novel-no-pandemic-dr-david-martin-with-reiner-fuellmich/
I read this twice and listened to it 3 times. Wow scary reality. Thanks again Chris for keeping it real.
I wrote a comment a day or so ago, after reading this well crafted and informative report. I follow the comments, but could not find mine, so here I go again. My ego persists. I read the Report and waited for one ( possibly near the end ) mention of a modicum of hope. Maybe there isn't one in Mr. Hedges's mind. He has seen too much and has a clear view of the reality of where we are at and how we got there. But it is here and now that we live and to offer up such a bleak picture without offering up a small glimmer of hope, however faint, to help ease our feelings of helplessness, was for me, not helpful. Why should I bother to think about my responsibility, my darker side as well as the collective darker side of this country, if it isn't going to matter much anyhow. Why should I bother to get rid of my lawn and plant wildflowers, recycle, vote well, speak up, try to bridge this divisiveness in my own head and my own community and try to understand the emotions fueling the rage of "the other side". I spent the day staring a bit. Considered a glass of wine in the middle of the day. Ate a pint of ice cream. I lost incentive, just for a day, to participate in my community, and bring my art to the city of Asheville. I hung out, not circling the abyss, but flopping around in it. I read Joseph Campbell's work, and he speaks of the Hero's Journey. Part of that journey is spending time in despair; and it is impossible to not feel despair right now. The danger is in staying there. So maybe that will happen next, because I do see Chris Hedges as a kind of hero. A bringer of information and truth to the people. One who asks us to look in the mirror both personally and as a nation. That is a rare and important request. A report like this, however, would be more easily digested if it was balanced with the mention of the possibility of redemption, however small. Maybe that will come. And today, I am back on it. Doing my work. participating. Killing the grass and not diving into a bottle of cheap wine and looking forward to reading more of his work in the future.
I have followed Chris Hedges for years but I don't believe in Messiahs.
Chris Hedges has his perspective and I have mine.
I know history. I don't how or why I know but I couldn't do elementary school, High School or college I am an idiot who scores well on IQ tests.
My father's family is from a town near Krakow and they followed the teachings of Rabbi Judah the Gaon of Vilna. In 1794 the Czars with the approval of all the other Empires destroyed Vilnius the cradle and crown jewel of the European Enlightenment. My father was Deist, I am a Deist, Voltaire was a Deist and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were Deists.
Vilnius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius
Deists are Humanists. We don't believe in any religion. There is only one universe and we are a very small part. The gods have better things to do with their time and it is our responsibility to be both shepherds and sheep. Without sheep there are no shepherds without shepherds there are no sheep. Without sheep there are no shepherds. It is a circle without an end. It is Darwin not Idiot's Darwin.
What came first the chicken or the egg? The Gaon lived in the 18th century and Darwin lived in the 19th century.
Darwin and the Gaon answered the question thusly.
Without chickens there are no eggs, without eggs there are no chickens. The question answers itself what came first pre-chickens and and fertilized eggs and unborn chickens.
Is a Rock Cornish X egg potential texturized protein or a post chicken?
I believe the war in Ukraine began in 1794 when the Ottoman Turks, and the Empires of Europe allowed Czars to destroy the most beautiful city in world because there were no kings allowed in their Secular Humanist Liberal Democracy even ones that lived in Heavens.
In 1854 Tennyson justified a mass suicide in Crimea thusly.
Our is not to reason why, ours but to do and die.
Vilnius gave birth to Reason. That is why there is a War now in Crimea.
It is time to put an end to empires; first Russia then maybe China and America.
War is about Dominion never about freedom.
I am 74 and as much as Chris reflects my passion for peace I am a Jew and Jewish Martyrs are killed not for their zealotry but their pacifist demeanor.
There is something wrong in dying for someone else's passions. Jews talk about slavery a lot but they never talk about being master in their own land. Israel has shown us why. lord Acton another Darwin contemporary who resolved the Crimean War between Russia and the other Empires said: Power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely.
There were no Jews in England when Shakespeare wrote the Merchant of Venice. The Jews were expelled in tribute to the Crusades and were invited back when Cromwell took power. Cromwell was a bloodthirsty tyrant but the English Civil was the bloodiest War in English History and Jews weren't Roundheads or Cavaliers they weren't citizens. They had other functions. The 18th century Liberal Philosopher Edmund Burke served in Parliament only because his Catholic parents turned into Protestants by some kind of magic.
Chris attended Witch Hunter University in Cambridge Mass and Arthur Miller wrote the Crucible about the American Witch Hunting and Harvard's founder.
Miller went to Michigan something Benjamin Franklin dreamed up; a public institution built for the betterment of all..
Franklin was commoner. He never went to school like most commoners there were no affordable schools only private academies.
Franklin gave America public schools, public libraries, public universities, a post office and a civil service. Before Franklin the East India company ran Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for its shareholders who were the members of the English House of Lords. The London Stock Market opened in 1689 -1699 after the Monarchy gave up all its power for a price in1688. Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge were stock brokers. Dickens parents and siblings enjoyed the luxury of indentured servitude in Debtor's Prison while young Charles attended school.
Things were different America. Drive around Michigan Poor House Road. Poor Farm Estate boulevard every county had a solution to the perpetual poverty. Chris talks about it it often certainly often enough during the last three decades. Sadly too few are listening.
The English Civil was bloody it made the American Civil War look a picnic. It was between Protestants and Protestants just like in America but Britain was densely populated.
I got lost in your words, but thank you for responding to my comment. Although it wasn't really a response that I felt included in? Meaning there is no reference to what you agreed with, disagreed with, were uncertain of. I am now talking in circles. Be well. These are challenging times.
Lindy thank you.
I am 74 years old and I like writing. I love writing. I don't keep time I never could. In Quebec I am Autistic . I am on the spectrum. I am just learning to write. They said I was a lazy genius over 60 ago and I believed them.
I tried my hardest but there are many skills I do not possess. The language I speak, I speak in French and English yet I failed French and English in school just like I failed everything else because I cannot use a pen or pencil and can't draw a straight line with a ruler. I cannot hit a golf ball or walk a straight line. I speak the same way I spoke when I was twelve. I had a PhD vocabulary when I was twelve and I never learned to speak like other people.
I do not try to baffle anybody. I just don't understand why people lie about who and what they are. They only punish themselves.
I don't know what I can never know or was never meant to know. I only know I am alive and I write for myself and anyone who may be interest what I write. I write because I missed out on 65 years of writing because I believed what I was told. But most of all I am joyous that children like myself are taught they are autistic because that is what they are not who they are.
I am not stupoid or lazy, or fat, or tall or kind or malevolent or wise or foolish I am Moe and I like myself despite needing my wife more than ever and her needing me more than ever. Having a purpose is vital. Whether your purpose will make the world better we can never know. All we can is try to not cause pain and misery to those we love and you need a reason to love yourself not before others but to love others because we all need all the love we can get.
The only advice I give is look the mirror and if you like what you see congratulations if you don't like you see ask WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE.
Nobody knows what you see in the mirror but the face you see in the mirror.
There ain't no cure for love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7vULqs31Q
When I walk in room everybody smiles. It was a lesson it took too long to learn. Someone has to lead and when you are uncomfortable in crowds of more than three life isn't all that easy especially for people who don't like to be alone.
Thank you. I get it now. Who you are and how you see the world - and how you have experienced the world. I appreciate your respondingi to my comment. Karen Armstrong said something that made sense to me, this may or maynot be relevant to what you said, but I think a part of it is: "Look into your own heart and discover what it is that gives you pain, and then refuse, under any circumstances whatsoever, to inflict that pain upon someone else."
Thanks again.
It as been a long time since I read Karen Armstrong's take on the Cosmos and I remember reading her commentary with great delight.
Today I listen to Yuval Noah Harari talk about Homo Deus, Eugenia Cheng talk about the Metaphysics of logic for Dummies and Steven Pinker explaining the evolution of human language and how we should should communicate with written words.
I remember hearing Chris rail against Steven Pinker and his tale of human progress and wanted to grab prof Hedges and say he didn't say what you heard. Shut up and listen. Not everyone sees the world through the eyes of Chris Hedges.
Empathy is what you feel it isn't a guide to better thinking.
Mark Twain said or implied or rather he pontificated Evolution is evolution and progress is progress. My wish is that someday the Twain shall meet.
I am Moe I do metaphysics . They tell me I am autistic and metaphysics is easy for Moe I just don't do school.
autisme Quebec says Autism is what you are not who you are. i am a human and there are about 8 billion individuals in our troop of naked apes.
I spend a lot of time in the backyard talking with my wife about things most people are not capable of talking about. Her father was named Eugene Victor after his Godfather who first brought the concept of liberal democracy to America during Mark Twain's Gilded Age. That is real American history. It was about 1953 when most Americans finally escaped poverty.
Reagan called 1933-1964 America's worst nightmare. To me it was the American Dream.
I am a human, I feel. Corporations are NOT human according to the Supreme Court of Canada they feel neither pain nor pleasure they do not share the rights of sentient beings like rats and politicians and clergy.
You can learn a lot watching birds. When they spot a cat they tell the world they see a cat. They look after each other. When I politician sees a cat he keeps his mouth shut. He sees the cat and can avoid misfortune. He delights in others being attacked after all it is a professional courtesy between predators.
Hi Moe. I am getting used to the way you write. It flows probably as you speak. I am not autistic, but I am anxious and have a learning disability. So I, too , didn't do well in school. Was making up stories., drawing pictures, and daydreaming alot. After being thrown out of secretarial school and several jobs, I made my way as a creative artist. Now I have written a series of illustrated books and am attempting to introduce my stories and characters to the city of Asheville. What I got in trouble for as a kid is now what I do. Joseph Campbell's work has inspired me to do what comes naturally, regardless of outcome. I also like his view of the word God. "A metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought." Works for me. I will continue to follow Mr. Hedges; I find him brilliant and sensitive. If bleak right now. He, in previous writings, invited us all to look in the mirror personally and collectively as a country. I admired that. Will stick with it, but will try not to put my head in the oven in despair; my oven is electric so it would only ruin my hair. Ha. Humor works at least some of the time..
An entire planets resources being destroyed by blind ambition’s greed. I’m very aware that those in power are totally blind and inept to address this problem. They do half measures to placate the population while knowing full well half measures get you nothing. It breaks my heart to see the mess we’ve left for the generation to come.
It's great that the written content is read aloud! I have low vision so reading, even on a big TV screen is difficult these days. The narrator's voice conveys the nuance of the writing beautifully. Thanks for providing this service!
In past human migrations there were always people left behind, maybe 10%, maybe 50%, maybe 99% of the population. The coming migration, after the collapse of the bubbles of the greatest technological and financial expansions in history, will leave 99.9999% of humanity behind, dying quickly from lethal wet bulb temperatures or slowly from starvation after failed grain harvests when RuBisCo activase suffers failure from heat and grain crops are unable to photosynthesize for long periods of time. When the few thousands of our oiligarchs' descendants are able to leave their strongholds in Paraguay and New Zealand they will encounter an impoverished biosphere. No doubt they will find it necessary to believe the narrative handed down from their forefathers that it was the abhorrent, dirty, innumerable masses who destroyed the wonderous biosphere. And no doubt they will find a use for us, the unwashed masses, now defunct, as their forefathers always were able to do. Perhaps they will use our bones as fertilizer, like the bones of the Plains bison in the 1800's.
Thank you Chris. On point as always.