Re: Rats in a Cage

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This guy is new to me. Interesting take on things. I don't buy into the idea of Janet Yellen as the Sith Lord Emperor pulling all the strings (she is just one consigliere in the exploitation mafia), but he's right about inequity and our system of crony capitalism heading for a fall as the pitchforks get picked up. The example of rats blaming each other for their shocks is apt, up to a point (conservatives being in league with the evil scientist oligarchs) but I'd still rather see the shocks go to the conservative rat. :yikes:
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Re: Rats in a Cage

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Hi Huck,

Rats aside, Martenson hit my radar a number of years back with his series on the intersection of the "three Es" - the economy, environment, and economy energy - The Crash Course. It's in book form an in video form on Youtube. I recommend investing the time as it provides a lot of context for current (and I think future) events.

He comes at things from an interesting perspective - a PhD in Pathology/Toxicology from Duke followed by two years of post-doc research initially. Then an MBA from Cornell and 10 years at SAIC becoming one of the corporation's vice presidents. There's a full preview of the book at the Amazon link - his bio's in the introduction.

https://www.amazon.com/Crash-Course-Uns ... 47092764X/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7up38J ... A1OwAGDRdR

Interesting times. Rats chewing on each other in their DC cages is problem enough. I hope the people don't turn on each other as well.

edit...gah...three Es - Energy, environment, and economy.
Last edited by AndyH on Mon May 01, 2017 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Rats in a Cage

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I took the video to imply that We the People are being the rats in the cage. The conservative populist rats follow The Big Orange one to blame all the brown rats for the shocks. The Liberal populist rats shrill about Big Orange and his ignorant minions. All the while the folks in the white Lab Coats are being ignored.

My immediate take on this analogy is that it is apt. But I then come at the challenge as a spiritual/psychological one. How do we stop acting like rats in a cage and start being more Human? It's hard when 25% of the population are near rabid with fear and anger; pointing fingers at you ready to pounce because of their pain. Life almost necessarily becomes a walking meditation where you constantly observe your own frustrated desires for freedom while knowing the other captives are also suffering as you are; worse for their ignorance for why it is happening. Heck we can observe the same dynamics at play here in the LGC cage when the lab assistant threw the HRC/Bernie switch, the White Privilege switch, the Punching Nazi switch... We have a natural inclination to turn on each other rather than collectively turn our eyes to the lab assistant when they enter the room (thus scare the shit out of them, like the little man we see pulling levers and pushing buttons when we pull back the curtain).

This is not about walking the Buddha Path to be a nicer, more compassionate rat. It is about our collective survival as a species while personally refusing to regress to the level of a lab rat. No one ever should have implied that maturing into an Human Being was easy. Indeed growing up and choosing to be Human at all times is the hardest damned thing that any of us can do. Because being a ruthless King or Oligarch or hapless fodder for the cannons has always been a matter of chance; being born into a circumstance of wealth or poverty and accepting one's role or lot in life. Becoming Christ, the Buddha, a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi has always taken tremendous individual effort and a willingness to reach beyond the circumstances of our birth.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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