“I don’t care about what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do.” – Apollo 13
Why did NASA use numbers instead of letters for the Apollo missions? No one wanted to ride on that sorry mission, Apollo G.
The evening got away from me. I’d love to tell you that I was doing something productive, but I was really just goofing around. I felt a bit blah (not sick, mind you, but blah) all week. So, I decided to goof around. If today’s thoughts are a bit shorter than usual, that should explain it.
When I was a young adult, I read Atlas Shrugged. Now, I said, I read it, but when it got to the part where John Galt hacked into the radio to give a (what seemed like to me) 700-page speech that was just reiterating every point Rand had already made in the book, but this time with crayon, I skipped it.
So, I read most of it. Except 90% of the speech.
One thing that stuck with me about the tone of the book was that it took place in a world that had moved on. Stuff just didn’t work. I seem to recall a broken clock, and broken rails, and the image of a society that had done great things but was no longer capable of them.
The mission of NASA used to be to send people and things up into space. The goal was to learn more about the Solar System, the planets, and the Universe beyond. The other part of the goal was to make man an interplanetary and, hopefully, an interstellar species.
I got my medical degree online, from a place called Google® Docs™.
NASA was doing one of the hardest things that had ever been done – inventing technology at the very edge of what humans were capable of, and then using it. It was one of the grandest adventures of the 20th Century. It was also staffed by young people. Gene Kranz, the “Failure is not an option guy” was the Flight Director for several Apollo missions, most notably Apollo 13. When Apollo 13 happened? Kranz was 36.
Our nation at that point had failures, sure. But now it seems like that’s the definition. And the things we’re failing on aren’t even new tech. East Palestine (The Mrs. told me, “It’s pronounced Palesteen, Froderick”) Ohio is suffering from one of the biggest failures of tech that is nearly 200 years old.
Then there was a fire at Oak Ridge involving uranium. Normally, one tries to avoid burning radioactive things. I mean, it’s not like this is Russia and all of us are protected from radiation via the consumption of massive amounts of vodka.
There are others, of course. The Jackson, Mississippi water plant appears to not work (sometimes) because the people running it don’t know how to run it. I could go on and on.
In one sense, it almost appears that we’re suffering a crisis of people who just don’t care or are, well, stupid. I hate to say stupid, because water treatment has been around for hundreds of years, too, and is far simpler than the Apollo project.
Good thing they didn’t use toe jam.
One symptom, perhaps, of the increasing and accelerating rate of change (notice I didn’t say improvement, I said change) in the world is increasing failures of the basic systems of life. Sure, we can have Doordash™* deliver tacos, but the justice system is failing, too. And how many readers here trust our elections? In the race to be “efficient” we’ve made it easy to cheat. Even if there wasn’t cheating, creating systems that are opaque enough so they’re not shenanigan proof is a failure in itself.
Our social systems are failing. Our infrastructure is failing, and it becomes ever more obvious the things that bind us together . . . are failing. Here in Modern Mayberry, the power has worked pretty well, but investment in power and infrastructure has made the system nearly third-world in some places.
I expect it to get worse. I don’t even think we’re close to the level of failure we’ll be seeing due to the incompetence of the leadership in the country. I see no real thoughts that our leadership will get better, since the idea of hiring smart young folks like Gene Kranz is out the window, and hiring people who share the same ideology, regardless of ability, is in.
I could never be a house painter – I would keep saying my work is on the house.
We are living in the time science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein called, “The Crazy Years” – in his words:
“Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in a mass psychoses . . .”
I believe the signs are there that we are in that “mass psychoses” and that is the end of this cycle. The mere fact that truth can no longer be spoke in public due to the offense that it might give shows that the mental bending is built deep into discourse today. To be clear, there is little of today’s society when it comes to values and morality left to conserve – the Left has taken it all. No, where we are going into our future has nothing to do with conservation, it’s going to be about restoration.
Failure is not an option.
*There is no Doordash™ in Modern Mayberry, unless it’s raining.
John, when I look at the adults today (and that includes 54 yo me) I rarely if ever glimpse anyone resembling the role models I grew up with. I see so many who just seem to be “older adolescents”, unwilling or unable to assume the mantle of leadership, doing just enough to keep on keeping on.
In my case I’m a broken person from an abused childhood that I’ve struggled to overcome, and haven’t given up yet, but I know leadership is not in me. The closest I could come was to be an SME with 20+ years experience in my field to finally reach a point where I could look around at the 20 something’s I had trained and see that I had passed on my knowledge to which gave me a sense of pride. Then Covid vaxx mandate bs came along and now I’m the old new guy in a different company and it’s humbling.
Looking for John Galt if he’d let me join up.
Anon, thank you. Gotcha. And, sadly, I think we’ll all have the chance to go Galt.
our local radio guy states that CA is actually the Haiti of the US. Sporadic power and corrupt government…. Seems about right for the times.
All that analogy proves is that your local radio guy hasn’t been to either place (let alone both), for real, once in his life.
It does take more than that . . . and things are falling apart everywhere.
The Long March to burn it all down by any means necessary.
Joseph Sobran was right about the resentment and quest to destroy.
The wipeout will be glorious as the Humpty yes men couldn’t put a disassembled Rubik’s Cube back together.
The comrades will have to figure out new victims and oppressors as we will all be equal digging in the dumpster for supper.
Forward to the golden egalitarian workers utopia, yes we can!
Umm, umm, ummm, let’s hear it for the immaculate Chicago Jesus Messiah and his BiteMe puppet.
Obama was a symptom of things getting worse. To be fair, so was W.
I was gonna write an OP reply but this said it already.
Preppers are people who have recognized the coming decline for what it is and are hoping to survive it. If you want to see our immediate future, look at South Africa.
“Preppers are people who have recognized the coming decline for what it is and are hoping to survive it.”
On the flip side, “Anti-Preppers” _also_ recognize the coming decline and their response is to deny its reality, to ridicule true Preppers.
The stress-relieving practice of believing in unicorns and eternal pasture has a great deal in common with ostrich’s and sand.
I’ve seen that discussed more than once in the last two days. They can’t even keep power on now in a reliable fashion.
No, you were correct. Stupid is the proper term. The average person today is less intelligent, not to mention less intellectually curious and creative, than the average person 50 years ago. Sure we have lots of information at our fingertips but information doesn’t translate into wisdom very often. You simply cannot replace the people who landed on the moon with people who couldn’t figure out the wheel and maintain social order.
I think a better wording would be, “More information doesn’t translate into a concomitant INCREASE in curiosity.” And we all KNOW what you mean by “people” who couldn’t figure out the wheel and maintain social order.
You said: “I don’t even think we’re close to the level of failure we’ll be seeing due to the incompetence of the leadership in the country.” I can’t quite make up my mind if what we’re seeing from the upper reaches of the leadership class is mere incompetence, or the execution of some kind of evil plan.
Strangely, if the leadership class is intent on implementing an evil plan, we can only hope they are incompetent as well as evil…
Hewlett-Packard used to have as a motto: “Where performance is measured by results.”. (yes – believe it or not, they used to actually make 2 different lines of remarkable mainframe class computers, and not just ‘commodity windows/linux servers’, crappy PC’s, and printers that use ink on a subscription model)
Alas, they no longer use this motto – and it’s no wonder why.
I say this to set the stage for this question:
How would the results we’re seeing from our leadership class be any different if indeed they were executing some kind of evil plan?
My contention is, that in the case of governance, “incompetence” vs. “evil plan” is a distinction without a difference.
Another possible way of looking at things:
In the same manner that even a blind squirrel will occasionally find a nut, an incompetent government official will *at least occasionally* do things right, even if just by accident.. This is proof enough to me that ‘Evil Plan’ is more likely.
Both.
It’s almost like the phones and internet are training them to be that way . . . and, yes, our population has changed, and there are consequences.
Its the curious and creative deficit that really struck me some years ago.
The convergence of social media, the culture of coddled snowflake generation credentialism, and insta-technology has rendered even the better-than-average mind to a swollen amygdala constantly pinging between the dopamine hit and fear. Fear of ‘existential’ threats, missing out, and their precarious, ever fleeting sense of self and status within an automated system running 24/7. The expend all of their mental energy engaged in this system or searching for distraction from the cogdis and anxiety it generates. Which are, of couse, our natural signaling of a dangerously life incongruent with reality.
This cogdis, narcissism, and totally burned-out ability to process reality leaves most people in a state where the reaction to deep work, deep thought, and idle contemplation that leads to such generative things as creativity and purposeful empathy is trapped in their avoidant response cycle. Much like any other addict will avoid not just the withdrawal of the stimuli but also his
A long comment like mine – not that different from conversations with a friend over a beer in the before times, becomes discomforting to them, they feel anxious, in a hurry to finish it and move on.
These people watch 8 second tiktoc vidyas and listen to podcasts at 1.5x and have two or three devices feeding them a constant stream of “information”, completely fabricated as units of product, curated toward a feedback loop that keeps them entrenched in their pre-conceived notions of themselves, their identity in the world – which the only real thing, and the literal badges of “thoughts” they should have on all of the current year issues. They are anxious, agitated, afraid, and full of the hubris of modernity. Curious? Whimsical? Prone to contemplation and introspection? NO.
Having had the misfortune of copywriting within the earlier iterations of dotcom and through the various streams of content delivery platforms I have seen firsthand the devolution of the consumer mind into merely an input switch among massive array. The NPC, hivemind, borg, etc. memes are spot on. The great atrophy of the human mind is well underway and nothing short of natures arbiter will alter this condition. And most will not survive. Not because they are soft, and lack basic skills or sense, which is true, but because their minds are too far gone and they will simply go insane from the fall from the cloud back to the dirt.
Grew up in Jackson, circa late 50s through the 60s. Great place back then, 70% white. Now 15% white. When the late ’60s riots started, Mayor Allan Thompson sent an armored car w/ 50 cal. machine guns to West Jackson. It was nicknamed “Thompson’s Tank”. No ‘mo riots.
Good ‘ol days are here no ‘mo.
A few years ago, the (black, Muslim) hereditary mayor of Jackson (no, really) ran on a platform of “forcing the last whites out of our city.”
And the Democratic mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, gave the order to “shoot to kill arsonists” and “shoot to maim looters.” Hard to imagine now.
I visited Jackson once, around 2007. Not impressed.
Yesterday I had an epiphany…well actually, that quiet gnawing thought finally broke through my 67 year old noggin. The thought? That things aren’t going back to what I would consider “normal”.
Ya, we had better music in the 60’s, 70’s some of the 80’s. Ya, we drove better looking muscle cars. And we all looked better in our bell bottoms. We even had better hair back then!
What we have today is what we have. Ain’t gonna go back. Ain’t nothing gonna go back to what we consider “our glorious youth”.
The spawn today, the ones that are our age when we put our stamp on this world, will continue in their “normal”. They will continue to drink their artisanal beer. Eat their food truck tacos. And listen to their hill-billy rock (gack, cough, spit) And they are happy. And will bemoan the loss of their normal when they become 67 years old.
You are right – they never will return to “normal”. We can (and will) restore virtues and values. The path will not be pleasant.
“The mere fact that truth can no longer be spoke in public due to the offense that it might give shows that the mental bending is built deep into discourse today.”
I think that the above is the hill we must choose to die on. I think you do a fine job of it. I have been trying for decades now, with little success, but have come to the realization that the only thing I can do is double down on it. Excelsior!(*)
(*)The kind you use for protecting fragile things … like liberty, rights, and freedom.
I find it the height of irony that as America slides into a future shown to us by South Africa today, that our modern version of John Galt is himself a former South African.
Godspeed, Elon Musk.
https://youtu.be/cJF9KeLSSG8
Thank you!
More to come. Some real hot-button issues will show up, probably sooner than later.
We visited the “kids” this past weekend, the memsahib and me. I put “kids” in quotes because they are all in their 30s, with the eldest pushing 40, yet they are still “kids” in a very real sense. DIL #2 continues to dye psychedelic streaks in her otherwise beginning-to-gray hair, and talks of what her next tattoo will consist of. Elder son is renting a bouncy castle for an upcoming party with all of their friends, none of whom have children. When memsahib and I were saying our goodbyes at the end of the visit, both couples were preparing to head out to play Pokemon Go for a few hours.
Okay, we did some pretty immature, foolish things, too, in early adulthood, often involving alcohol (see clever username) and motor vehicles. But it was still ‘adulthood’. And the immature foolishness ended rather early after a few hard knocks. It was not the perpetual childhood that today’s 20- 30- and 40-somethings are living. Somehow I can’t picture Gene Kranz at 36 racing out, cellphone in hand, to collect Pokemon points, or pretending to fly like Superman in a bounce house.
Atlas shrugged, alright. Far from being an option, societal failure seems inevitable, considering who is taking charge as the last of the adults age out. Not only are we never going back to the moon, today’s perpetual adolescents couldn’t find their way to Olive Garden without GPS.
Yeeaaah, pretty sure it’s called the 4th turning. (((They))) hate us and want us dead or enslaved. No one is coming to rescue us. Keep stocking beans, bullets and bandaids, and several other prepper cliches.
Hate to be “Mr. Obvious” and I certainly don’t want to hurt your feelings…..but, you raised those kids…..
What went wrong is the underlying tone of your post. Ya, I get that feeling also; each and every day.
What went wrong is _______ (fill in the blank) Not one thing or anything to point at; just a bunch of little things that finally added up and created what you have to live with now.
Last few generations have grown up Completely Enbubbled. Meaning, never did grow up. And during the past four decades somebody supervised that Enbubbling of Precious Princess and Pokeman Son.
Perfect observation: we are missing the missions that turn Pokeman-chasing kids into Gene.
We need a mission. And cohesion. More on that, later, too.
Before a mission can matter, you need strong men. Which is what the Anglo nations do not have, nor will they tolerate such for an instant.
They do try to cut them down, and ridicule them for having values, and taking action.
Point Of Order:
The problem in East Palestine weren’t with tech that’s nearly 200 years old.
It was with hardware that was nearly 200 years old.
For a similar example, there’s nothing wrong with the U.S. having a Navy that’s over 200 years old.
But even the gold-plated brassholes at the Pentagon aren’t trying to do the job with the U.S.S. Constitution as the fleet flagship.
It’s all well and good that the C. (for whatever word “C” stands for this week: Creaky, Crappy, Calamitous, Cantankerous, Capricious, Crumbling) Air Force flies around old warbirds that are pushing 100 years old.
But our actual Air Farce (always an honorable alternative to military service), doesn’t try and use B-17s and Spads to do the job any longer. (Although with the C-130 and B-52, they’re pushing that envelope.)
Now contrast this with railroads from coast to coast.
Ask around.
A lot of modern problems aren’t with people forgetting how the Roman aqueducts worked.
They’re with people trying to use Roman aqueducts, because they’re too cheapskate to build modern ones.
Cheapskate and Shoddy are always their own reward.
It’s both, really. Rail cars are regularly changed out, especially hazardous duty ones. But when the railroads were built, they were built by folks who knew how it all worked and could sketch a bridge that would serve for years the night before it was due to be installed. Now?
Not so much. It’s the people, too, which leads to intentional (and sometimes unintentional) shoddy.
I quit raving and worrying about the decline a while back, after I saw a con artist in a series say the words, “Work the problem”. That’s what I do, every day. Yeah, we got problems. They’ll be there tomorrow, just like today, unless we work the problem.
Again, my old boss said, “Breadowns lead to breakthroughs”. Doesn’t mean it will be pleasant.
I live in Jackson, it’s great! Thank you freedom riders! Tikum oleum!
Jackson or Madison/Ridgeland/Brandon? My old collitch friend Mark Jordan sure has made a bagful or three of $$$.
Indeed, they have healed the world.
I struggle with my adult-age daughters and sons-in-law… why? Very simply… they think that being able to use today’s technology makes them technologically advanced. What they don’t seem to be able to grasp is that the technology advanced people are the ones that designed, built and developed the technology. They have no concept that things have been dumbed down to the lowest common denominator so that the technology challenged can use their Obama phone. After a 40 year career as an electronics engineer, I just gave up on most of the young engineers I worked with and for. I can’t tell you how many times I was told “it can’t do that!” as I was explaining what was happening with their design. My answer was invariably, “well, it’s doing that, so let’s move on and figure out what we don’t understand.” It used to be that the older guys were respected for simply being older and more experienced… not the case anymore, generally speaking. Everyone has a masters degree now, but amazingly(sarcasm) they can’t make anything work. Such is life in America now…
And there has been a lot of basic curiosity that has disappeared – “why” seems to be a lost word for some. Are we turning into a people that wonders how we got into this wonderful futuristic place?
(hint: those movies never end well)
… and as I troubleshoot the broken controls on a riding mower with my son-in-law, he asks “what do I need to replace?” My answer… “I don’t know, we have to figure it out.” One thing for sure… educated doesn’t mean intelligent or curious, it just means educated.
And willing to experiment, try, and learn. I let my sons struggle. A lot. So they could learn. Now they know a lot of things, and they know how to learn.
With the absolute collapse of sub-Saharan African countries once whites leave or are pushed out of positions, I find myself wondering about the future of Africa – and the West.
Affirmative Action, as noted often, is a race to mediocrity in an ever-more-complex and merit-driven world. Red China is not pursuing this nonsense. The same GAE management with the hubris and ignorance to think they can, and demand to, destroy Russia is pushing ever-more-Woke, DIE, AA policies across the West with the fantasy that these will improve, rather than destroy the West.
But …
If we overthrow AA (SCOTUS, this Spring), and if we return to merit (the only way out of our current domestic and international predicaments created by the morons in charge), what do we do about BIPOC & their nations? Not that I really care, if they don’t interfere with the first world, but…
As we (if we) continue to progress along the lines we have since the Industrial Revolution, there will be less and less need, desire, room for those who can’t survive in any first world economy. The idea that they can be given a “leg-up” to join us has been, and is being, disproven globally. So – what is to happen? The global South just accepted as a cesspool unable to progress, no way to join or participate in modernity? That’s what their IQ and civilizational capability predict. How’s that work?
We likely won’t be smart enough to (will be too empathetic to) prevent a Camp of the Saints at first. But, one assumes (or would like to) that we will finally awaken – or it will be the cause of secession and WE won’t accept that… Then what?
If the fundamentally unable-to-civilize-or-advance BIPOC nations are quarantined as the first world (soon to include Red China – or at least cities within) continues our acceleration into the digital age… does an alternative exist to just seeing the global south as uncompetitive, uncivilized, unable to feed themselves… how do they not, then, become eradicable pests?
Humanity is being divided, more than ever before, by IQ. As we continue to progress, that division will become more stark – and more necessary… Our geopolitical competitor won’t worry about this. We will. Perhaps we must, I don’t know.
Perhaps global population reduction is necessary to avoid what seems to be the end of the road down which we are heading. But, if so, it needs to be the low-IQ cohort that is depopulated.
Does anyone see a way around this?
Alexander, that is, in large part, issues I’ve been wrestling with for years, and is a large theme of this blog. We are becoming Morlocks and Eloi, and diverging. Society is falling apart because of that.
Around? No. Through?
Yes.
John, have you seen this excellent report on how a near First World South Africa has turned into a 3rd world shit hole?
And before Aesop jumps in to degrade South Africa, I’ve spent time there back when it was a shining star with the beginnings of Tutsi troubles. It was right up there with San Fran before democraps made it into an open drug bazaar, “Legalized Theft” and streets full of human shit. Sadly, I’ve visited San Fran recently, never again.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2023/02/28/south-africa-has-collapsed-heres-why/
Looks like all of America is heading into California “Success Stories” one blue city at a time. How long before we collapse like South Africa?
Pretty soon if OPEC+ (House of Saud and Russia) has anything to do with our Petrodollar-World Reserve Currency status.
Smart folks fled South Africa some even to Russia. Where pray tell can we go to when Diversity Ruins the Infrastructure?
The problem is that it dies bit by bit. If people in 1988 could see SA in 2022? They’d vote to not change a thing.
John, I don’t know about you friend, but that “Bit by Bit” SEEMS awfully FAST now.
Voting seems oddly skewed to the party of Chaos; you know basement Joe with the most VOTES EVER stuff.
Almost like some folks (cough, cough deep state, WEF and?) want Americans to be killing each other off over stuff like food and energy?
You’ll own Nothing and Be Happy, eh? Techno-slavery?
The COVID “Simulations” occurred just a bit before the “Leak”. The Patented Vaxx was ready before the “leak” I hear. “White noise” movie was oddly timed for Palestine OH flaming train wreck. I notice the folks imposing “Correction Bands” on American wrists in “Day of the Dragon” were American Federal Police.
I’m wondering when Cyber Polygon goes live with cyber-economic terrorists as “Simulated” last year or so? Something about responding to a global economic crash due to “Cyber Terrorists”?
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel, Goldfinger (1959), contains a line that has been used in government, business, science and other fields: Goldfinger said,“‘Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.’”
It’s called Predictive Programming. It is a type of mockery, a ‘here it is whatcha gonna do about it’ thing. You are correct it is ubiquitous in films especially of the past couple decades. Meaning, once they were sure they were in charge of everything.
And it’s a lot more than three times now, so coincidence is right out the window.