The Kids Aren’t Alright: Mental Health

“Who is Poppy Adams? After graduating Harvard Business School, Adams was briefly held for serious mental health issues before disappearing without a trace.” – Kingsman:  The Golden Circle

Every day I tell my family I’m going out for a jog and then I don’t.  It’s my longest running joke.

FYI – minimal humor and memes in today’s post due to subject matter – it just didn’t fit.

We’ve driven the kids nuts.

I don’t necessarily mean you or I, but the change in society has caused a great decline in the mental health of the kids.  It really started showing up in 2009 or so, when the emergency room visits for kids started a sharp uptrend.  The kids (ages 10-19) were going to the hospital due to self-harm spiked by over 60% in a single decade.

For girls it was worse – it spiked nearly 100% – doubling in that time period.  The rates of depression doubled in that time frame as well.

What I’ve seen when I talk to kids is that many, many of them have huge anxiety issues.  Many are on psychoactive drugs.  Many are visiting therapists regularly.

I look back to when I was that age, and I’m not sure I knew even a single Gen X kid who was seeing a shrink.  I’m sure that it wouldn’t have been something they’d have shared, but it was a school, so that would have gotten around.  Also, as far as I know, there was only one girl on any medication, and as I recall there had been some significant family tragedy.

Suicide?  Only one kid tried it in the decade I spent in that age group.  And I knew a lot of kids.  But, to be fair, something like 30% of kids with mental health issues drop out of school so I never would have seen them.  However, the numbers really do show that this is certainly the most mentally ill generation in the history of the country.

What’s changed?

Luxuries are available today that would have boggled the minds of my generation when we were growing up.  Kids today can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time.  Listen to any song.  Watch concerts of their favorite bands.  Yet, with all the information, connection, and amusement available, something is horribly wrong.

My first guess at a major factor is a simple one – the iPhone™ came out in 2007.  Given two years for smart phones to become more or less everywhere among the teen set, that correlates pretty well to the start of the increase in mental issues.

The designers of social media and games aren’t stupid – they absolutely manipulate the way the apps work to make the user addicted.  “Someone read my FaceGram© or InstaSpace® and liked it!  I’ll go check and see who it was!  I Tweeted®, er X’d™.  Did someone repost it?”  The system is designed to make sure there are small, frequent doses of dopamine kicked out by whatever is in the human brain that kicks out dopamine.

This shorter-term focus, the smaller “bite size” ideas make something that was typical decades ago, like reading a book, seem like forever.  Not being able to tune out and relax can’t be good.

Social media also has another insidious function – it is designed so people show off only the glamorous and nice things that happen to them.  Who spends a lot of time posting about their pain, and sorrow?  In the end, it makes a certain segment of the population feel that everyone is doing great except for them.  Me?  With my friends we spend as much time talking about the rough bits in our life as we do the great things.

Online friendships are also shallower, so the real bonding that kids get when they’re on adventures is lost.  Add in that porn of the vilest types is available to most any kid with a phone?  How are they not messed up in ways that no other generation has ever been?

2009 was also the dawn of Obama.  Obama started defending traditional marriage and ended in full Pride® mode.  Gender confusion wasn’t really something that was very big when I was growing up, except for Dee Snider.  Now people are talking about transitioning toddlers, and somehow these people are being taken seriously and not being strung up on telephone poles.

To be sure, not all kids are a mess, but enough are that there’s a very big problem – I’ve seen one statistic that 44% of high school students feel persistent sadness or hopelessness.   That’s a big number – I do think that, perhaps, the kids see some of the same things coming that we do – I do know they look at the economy and think, perhaps correctly, that they’ll never do as well as their parents.

I’m not sure how to fix those millions of kids that have already passed through their teens and are now in their 20s.  From the outside, the one thing I’ve seen with most psychiatrists/psychologists is that they never really cure their patients, they just keep coming back, week after week to pay for the therapist’s BMW®.  And I’m exceptionally skeptical of many psychoactive drugs.  Yes, I know that some of them work very, very well for certain conditions with a physical cause.

What now?

The solutions to preventing a lot of these issues in the first place are fairly simple, but a big step for many:

  • Religion gives life a greater meaning. I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that as church attendance declines, mental health problems increase.
  • Be involved.
  • Technology control (i.e., limit the damn phones), especially for young girls who seem to be more impacted.
  • Remove the gender confusion – homeschooling or a decent religious school would be good options.
  • Make sure they learn skills that allow them to be useful. Start small, and build up.  Don’t coddle them or walk them through every step.  Make them work for it.
  • Make sure the boys are involved in sports, especially if they don’t want to be. Get girls involved in something like 4-H or the church youth club.

The Zoomers (Gen Z) have had a tough time of it, and this will be another factor (along with their horribly messed up dating and sex lives) that is already impacting the economy.

Let’s not screw up another generation.

14 Signs Of An Unfree Country

“Keep working on the window if we’re ever going to regain our freedom.” – Star Trek TOS

The homeless voted for Obama.  They heard he’d bring change.

I hadn’t heard of Benjamin Carlson until today.  I had another post that I was planning on doing, but when the perfect content presents itself I become as flexible as a Romanian Olympic® gymnast whose parents are watching from the GULAG breakroom.

Carlson wrote about his time living in China as a journalist.  The title for his X® thread is, “What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?”  In it there are 14 lessons that he learned in China.  He’s now warning us about them, for, I guess, reasons.

All the bolded bits are Mr. Carlson’s words.  The other bits are mine, since I want to give Mr. Carlson credit, but don’t want anyone to think he endorses any of my interpretations, opinions, or bad jokes.

  1. People will adapt to oppression sooner than they will rebel.

That is true of a compliant people.  The makeup of heritage Americans is anything but compliant – to come across an ocean to hack a life from trackless wilderness is mostly the opposite of compliant.  Different people came here for different reasons, but the big takeaway is a lot of us have oppositional defiant disorder, but the good kind.

But that doesn’t get them into Congress (except for a handful) and it doesn’t get people invited into fancy parties and offered media access.  But still, many people reject petty oppression, and are willing to stand up against it.  New Mexico’s recent utter rejection of a wine-aunt governor blatantly violating all the Constitutions she said she’d uphold made me smile.

I have a guess that at least part of the desire to import the unending hordes of illegal aliens at a breakneck pace is related to the desire to have a much more compliant people – people who come here for the give-me-that’s and whose idea of America has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with a parasitical relationship where they benefit.  They’re used to oppression and okay with it, they just want to be comfortable.

What’s ET short for?  So he can fit in the spaceship.

  1. The most effective censorship is first legal, then social, then internal.

Legal censorship is difficult in the United States, though the government has several cases against Trump that rely on him having opinions they find “problematic”.  Social censorship means that certain ideas can’t really be expressed.  Ever wonder why the comment section of the online newspapers mostly disappeared?  The last thing they want is people realizing they’re not alone.  This causes social censorship to fail.  At least among people who can read.

Lastly is internal censorship, when the Truth is so obvious that everyone sees it, yet everyone is afraid to say anything.  Not that I’d mention an election or anything . . . .

  1. A repressive system makes selfish behavior rational.

Look at the looting that is pervasive across Leftist cities.  Why?  Because laws are only to be enforced against people on the Right.  Therefore?  Free Air Jordans™.

I heard he was going to take another stab at marriage.

  1. Ruining 1 person who threatens the regime sends a message that will be heard by 10,000.

People broke stuff on January 6, and some used violence.  But the vast majority were just dudes walking around the Capitol Building.  Yet the harshest penalties are being used against them, including inhumane conditions in prison.

Why?  See point 4. above.

  1. If you can limit the words people use, you can limit the thoughts they think.

Why do you think they demand that calling someone an illegal alien be banned?  Why do you think they want to call a baby a fetus?  Why do you think they want to call anything “gender affirming” care?

They want to change the dialogue, and that means making the words you use socially unacceptable.  This is never ending, and will continue until the word “bad” is replaced by “double-plus-ungood”.

What is the most macho musical instrument?  The MANdolin.

  1. Even decent people will choose to be blind if seeing injustice would hurt their interests.

Why do most cops go-along to get-along?  Yeah, this, but it’s not just cops – any location where people close ranks to avoid scrutiny is suspect.  What happens when the entire country looks that way because there are people you can’t criticize?

  1. If the government lies, many will still accept it as true because of the authority of the office.

This is becoming less true in the United States – look at the pushback on COVID.  I think the trust level has dropped.  Yet, still, 20%-40% of the citizens of the country will believe whatever they’re told by Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert.

  1. Destroying a people’s cultural & religious identity, severing them from their history, punishing their defenders, and making them ashamed of who they are, is a brutally effective way to annihilate a threat.

When Thomas Jefferson’s statue is removed by New York City, and they’re thinking of bringing down all of the George Washington statues and the people who founded the United States are being vilified?  Yeah.  It’s already in full swing

  1. The goal of an unfree system is to protect itself by transferring your distrust of the state to fellow citizens.

According to the Left, Catholics and “White Supremacist” groups are the greatest threats to the United States, despite being responsible for fewer deaths than a Chicago Labor Day weekend.

If only they would have played the national anthem, everyone at the BLM® riots would have sat down.

  1. In an unfree society, the wealth and privileges amassed by politicians become state secrets.

Elizabeth Warren makes $174,000 a year, but her total earnings were $1.36 million last year.  Bill Clinton was broke in 2000, but has at least $90 million today, excluding his Foundation.  Why don’t people know this or care?

  1. If the government shows it has your interest at heart, many are happy to trade freedoms for it.

I’m sure everyone can give plenty of examples.  One lesson I learned is that when people want to give you something, that’s generally because they want something in return.  To be clear, this doesn’t always have to be manipulative, since if after I feed Pugsley, I typically want him to take the trash out after I remind him three times to do it.  I think the three times is just because he wants me to feel like I’m part of the process.

When the government gives, it wants control.

  1. Corruption corrupts everything.

If 10% for the Big Guy is the norm, why shouldn’t everyone take a cut?  Corruption corrupts, and it takes time and relentless effort to root it out.

  1. Even politicians who fight like dogs will protect one another against the people.

The Clintons and Obamas sure look cozy with the Bush family.

My doctor told me I had a healthy prostate.  I was deeply touched.

  1. History must continually be rewritten to serve the purposes of the present.

I’ve touched on this on countless posts and touched on this above.  The history has to be changed from the glorious story of a proud people taming a continent.  The truth has to be replaced with a cursed and infected lie so that the political needs of the Left can be met.  It has to be universal – on television, movies, the Internet, YouTube®, and anywhere people go.

Orwell saw many of these and they’re in his books, 1984 and Animal Farm.  Carlson, I’m sure, has read these and also experienced them.

Just like we are beginning to experience them now.

I could have written much more, but I think I’ll leave it up to you to add in comments about Mr. Carlson’s points.  The good news is you don’t have to be a gymnast to appreciate it.  Besides, I’ve heard that the Eastern Europeans are now into Olympic® boating events.  I guess they’re in row-mania.

Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

“Nothing leaves alive.” – Dreamcatcher

stormtrooper

See, now Darth Vader® has no regrets.  Except for being in Episode III.

Repost from 2019, got to be a bit later than expected.

I’ve never written anything before that made me want to go to a hospice and slap a bunch of old dying people, but this particular post led me there.  I’ll explain.  It’s okay, it’ll all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

I have made many mistakes in my life.  Most of them I don’t remember – they were small and didn’t have any consequences, or at least any consequences I’ve seen yet.

Then there were some slightly larger mistakes – let’s call them medium size mistakes.  There have been consequences to these.  Again, medium-sized mistakes most often lead to medium-sized consequences.  A scar here (carve away from your thumb, not towards it), a stock gone to zero there (thanks a lot, Enron®) and one really bad car trade when I was 24 . . . medium-sized.  Medium-sized mistakes are big enough for a big sting, but whatever permanent impacts there might be aren’t immediately fatal.

The biggest ones – I won’t give a laundry list of those.  Most of those were where either passion, inexperience, a momentary lapse of character or judgement, or (worst of all) when all three contributed to a mistake.  Some mistakes lasted longer, some were short.  But all stung.  The biggest include a marriage that led to divorce, underestimating a sociopathic boss, and wearing that white dress to my little sister’s wedding.  I mean, I look fabulous in it, but some brides just have to be the center of attention.  Also a bit weird because she wasn’t really my sister.

whitewedding.jpg

Staaaaaart again . . . .

To put it bluntly, I am the author of almost every problem I have.  If I didn’t cause the problem, I’m probably complicit in creating the problem or not dealing with the problem.

But I don’t regret it.  None of it.  Not the victories, certainly, and not the failures.

Why?

Life is a one-shot deal.  And life is a ratchet.  It only turns one way – we can’t take anything back.

Regret isn’t a one-shot deal, though.  If there’s anything that will burn a hole in your soul, it’s regret.  Regret never comes alone – it brings guilt along for the ride.

pi.jpg

My biggest fear is having a heart attack during a game of charades.

If I were to dig more deeply into those feelings – regret and guilt are just ways that fear manifests itself.  Fear of . . . what?  Regret is a fear that the consequences of your choices or actions will impact you negatively, and cannot be changed.  Here is a list of some of the common regrets from people on their deathbed (from a former palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware, and, yes, I spelled that right – blame her parents, not me):

  1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
  3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
  5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

Even a quick look at this list tells me one simple thing:  regret is for losers.  I have never seen a whinier pack of self-serving weakness since I last watched a Democratic presidential debate.  Everything, absolutely everything on this “top five” list is just, well, sad.

tombstone.jpg

Me?  I’m still holding out hope for a pyramid.

Would you like to go to your grave worrying about any of those things?  I can’t imagine doing it.  I refuse to let regret rule me.  And I refuse to let any decision I made twenty years ago rule me.  Hell, I refuse to let any decision I made last week rule me, except for choosing that convenience store egg/muffin sandwich – I don’t need to explain why.  Deal with the consequences?  Certainly.  But regret?  No.

Let’s go down the “top five” list:

Not living a life “true to yourself”?  I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life.  I was talking with a guy the other day who quit his job because his boss asked him to do something illegal.  That’s being true to yourself – he walked away without a paycheck but with his values and beliefs intact.  If you’re not being true to yourself, you’re either weak or flighty.  The good news?  Anyone who reads this blog is neither.

Wishing you hadn’t “worked so hard”?  That’s also nonsense.  A soul thrives on doing good work that matters.  Doing good work excellently is hard.  The Mrs. teaches, and works hard at it – I can see from her talking about her students, talking about the ones who learned and improved, the ones who keep coming back to her classroom to report on their lives that her work matters.  Working hard at work that matters is what makes us the best humans we can be.  If you think you worked too hard, you weren’t doing anything worth doing.  The good news?  Change now.  You have an entire lifetime to fix that mistake.

bernie.jpg

I got fired from the calendar factory.  They get really mad when you take a day off.

Didn’t have the “courage to express my feelings”?  Wow.  This is the weakest on the list, so far.  Number one:  do you have feelings that matter?  Most feelings are stupid – and I have stupid feelings, too.  Thankfully, I’m not a five year old – I am at least twelve.  I get to examine my feelings and reject those that don’t reflect my values, my virtue, my beliefs.  I get to choose.  If I feel slighted by something silly or petty?  I get to choose to understand what a fool I’m being and ignore that feeling.  Again, if you don’t express your feelings, that’s not always a bad thing.  Your feelings are often stupid.

I’m sorry that “staying in touch with your friends” was so hard.  But it’s really not.  The people you care about, that care about you, are there.  They always have been, they always will be.  I don’t Facebook® much – why?  I call my friends, on an actual phone.  I text my friends.  Am I often the one that calls first?  Sure.  Do we develop different lives, does life pull us away for a while?  Do hundreds or thousands of miles separate us?  Maybe.  But I make quite a few phone calls.  And mostly my friends pick up. Sure, it’s true that the biggest miracle Jesus exhibited in the Bible was having 12 11 close friends (thanks, Judas) after the age of thirty – but you just need a few – a few that will have your back.  A few you can share with.

friends.jpg

Also, as a single guy it was easy to make friends.  Lots of girls I asked out wanted to be friends.

Seriously – number five on the list is a wish for “letting themselves be happier.”  Happy is easy (All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)), being significant is hard.  It requires hard work while being true to yourself.  It requires expressing those feelings that your virtue allows to exist.  Friends?  The good ones will be with you forever, and you can restart your conversations with the slightest hint of time passing, even if you haven’t talked regularly in a decade, if they’re true friends.

I’ve never thought about going to a hospice and slapping someone, but this list made me want to do it.  I know, I know, it’s too late for them.  And this is the list of people who had regrets.  People like me?  I don’t have a single regret at this moment of my life.  Not one.  In a hospice, I hope I’d be the, “Regrets?  No.  More clam chowder, please,” guy.

soupi

The Boy made me some fake ramen noodles this summer – it was an impasta.

To be clear – it’s not that I don’t care.  It’s not that I’m not blameless.  It’s not that I was always right.  Not one of those things is true.  But I have done the most important thing I can think of:  When I do something I regret, I’ve changed myself so that I won’t (Clintoncide, John Bolton’s Waifu, and October Market Crashes: Knock on Wood) do that thing again.  I cannot change the past.  But if I have learned, if I can help others not make the same mistakes while not repeating my own mistake?  Like an algebra teacher for the soul, I have taken something negative and turned it into something positive.  The bonus is I get to end the dreams of high school freshmen in the process.

And I’m not planning on having any regrets tomorrow.  If you have regrets?  Fix them now or recognize them for the dead weight they are and cut them loose.

The alternative?  Trust me, you don’t want to have me chasing you down in a hospice and slapping you silly.

BONUS SOUP MEME!  I made too much soup meme by accident.  Enjoy.

soupii.jpg

 

 

The Kids Aren’t Alright: Sex

“I don’t know much about geopolitics, but that is one cool name for a country: Chad.” – Norm Macdonald Live

Ever notice you never see Chad with Chad in Chad?  Hmmm.

Technological change has been very difficult for the kids of today – it has changed entirely the way that they relate to each other, how they spend their time, how they are rewarded, and the very nature of the male-female relationship.  Since I’m writing this post, it’s about as positive as Biden’s impact on the economy.

Of course, technology had changed the way that previous generations lived.  When I was a kid, our entertainment on a Friday night was cruising main.  We’d get in cars, and ride up and down the street, listening to loud music, revving engines.

Why?

To see each other.  To find out what was going on.  To meet girls.  The girls would go to meet guys and chatter and drink some occasional peppermint schnapps snuck into a Big Gulp® cup.  Often the girls and boys would do no more than flirt.  Sometimes, though, well, more would happen.

This was an in-person interaction that was natural.  The technology of the car and cruising Main were just minor adaptations of behavior that was certainly as old as the concept of the very first city – boys wanting to watch girls, and girls wanting to be watched.

Does mentioning cruising Main make you feel old yet?

This in-person interaction gave us the dopamine hits of the day.  And, even at the breakneck speed of 25 miles an hour, there was an absolute limit to the number of boys a girl could see in a night of cruising Main of, maybe, a few dozen.

The reality is, of course, that we all have a finite number of choices of people to date (and mate) with.  Cruising Main was a dance that was as old as time.  In this dance, the woman offered her youth and beauty in return for the commitment of a good man.  The man offered his commitment for the youth and beauty of a woman.  And, when I was much younger, if I stayed up late enough I could watch it all on Cinemax® after my parents were asleep.

Those trades are, generally, good trades.  They create a stable society, and provide a woman the chance to find, marry, have children with a man and raise them.  Women tend to try to date and mate upwards in socio-economic status.  Men?  Well, you know.

Hey, derpy girls need love, too.

Now, for many, the meeting place is Tinder©.  In Tinder™, women have infinite choices – they are the commodity to be possessed, and they swipe left or right, alternately accepting or rejecting hundreds of men in a minute.  In this new bargain, the woman now trades her youth and beauty for endless one-night stands with Chad Tinderchuck.  Example:

Chad always has a date, since girls always swipe to talk to him.  In this, Chad ruins women.  Chad’s a 10, but when it’s 2am at the bar, Chad’s fine with the average 4 or 5 or 6.  In this way, that 4 (Flora Foura) thinks that, for the rest of her life, she deserves a Chad Tinderchuck in the prime of his life.  She is a widow, forever pining for that man that she thinks she deserves.  Don’t believe me?

Wait, is that a lunch lady from 1983?  And she’s calling anyone mediocre???

The actual 5 or 6 guy Flora should be with?  Well, after Chads marry and disappear, and younger Chads start ignoring her, she’s ready to “settle” for that 5 or 6 Andy Average.  And, she’s angry about it every day that she sees Andy, since, deep down, Flora knows that she’s good enough for Chad.

But we’re seeing now that Andy Average isn’t quite so interested in Flora Foura after she’s spent her twenties on a revolving carousel of men, maybe picking up a child or two.

Let’s be fair – most of the things that most men do (especially young men) is to get quality females.  If those aren’t available, Andy Average shuts down.  Why work overtime when Xbox® is cheap?  Why pump iron when Flora puts him on ignora?

¡Jeb! is always on ignora.

Men then go NEET – Not in Employment Education or Training.  Why work hard?  Why try to get great education?  Why work at all?  One segment of men has gone beyond MGTOW – they’ve gone full NPNW.  I’ll let you sort out what NPNW means.

And who can blame men?  When I was in high school, women liked men taking charge.  Men were supposed to try, and women were supposed to put up a struggle so they didn’t feel like tramps.  To be clear, I never engaged in any behavior that the young fräulein didn’t enthusiastically support, and when she said “stop” and meant it, I did.

It was well ingrained in women that they didn’t want to look like tramps, so they had to pretend they didn’t like or want to make out.  Meat Loaf’s song trilogy Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a perfect description of a healthy sexual dynamic of the type that produced . . . me, and probably you, too.

We now live in a world of #MeToo.  Russell Brand (who I don’t know because he doesn’t return either my emails or my calls) is being accused of, hear me out, having sex with (really!) a girl who wanted to have sex with him, who was (drumroll) of legal age.  The cad!  If a multimillionaire celebrity can be accused and lose a couple of million dollar a year of income for doing legal things, well, what chance does Andy Average have, especially since the average woman don’t need no man?

This is, perhaps the biggest lie.  Women who don’t have children or a husband in their 40s are, perhaps, the unhappiest demographic on the planet.  And, as I noted earlier, women want to marry up.  The big paradox is women want to get a college degree (skip having children) and earn a lot of cash.

Women won’t marry men who make less than them, so they die childless and alone.

But, hey!  At least they got to make cool PowerPoints™ between boxes of chardonnay and the trip to the vet for Sir Buggles Von Fancypants.  I’m not exaggerating.  Check this out:

When you sold your family, soul, and children for Internet likes.

Did I mention this is ruining the economy, the family structure, and the future?

The good news (for me) is that I wrote my notes on this post, and I’ve only touched a third of them.  That means probably the next two Wednesday posts will be around this theme.

The bad news is that there are two more posts.  As much as I’d like to say the kids are alright, they’re most definitely not.  This has tremendous impacts on the near-term economy, as well as the future of the West.

But, hey, at least Biden’s still Building Back Better!

Oh.  That didn’t age as well as a cat lady.

Dunbar At The Fall Of Nations

“Dunbar, not Dumb Bear.” – Dances with Wolves

If beer makes you smarter, that didn’t work out for Budweiser®. (meme not mine)

People are funny.  And I’m not talking, “John Wilder after fourteen beers at Chili’s when someone mentions that we’ll have to give up PEZ™ to meet CliMAtE ChAnGE GoALZ” funny.  No, I’m talking about the way that we’re wired to react as people, and yet pretend we’re not.

Out of all of the aspirations of the way that we want to think about ourselves, there are some constants.  Except for Mark Zuckerberg, we all need air to breathe.  We all need food.  We all need something to drink.  I’ve heard some people drink water, but I keep wonder why they do that when mankind made civilization so we could have a nice beer.

The other thing most of us need is . . . people.  Although everyone is slightly different, there seems to be something hardwired into us as to how we deal with people.

I told the doctor I didn’t trust him to stitch me up.  He said, “Fine, suture self.”

Robin Dunbar (Grad student for Dr. Batman® Von Unterober) is a British Psychologist.  He looked at the various sizes of primate brain, specifically the neo-ocasio-cortex.  Er, just the neocortex.  Sorry.  The neocortex is the most recent delivery to the brain, and allows humans to do complicated things like talking, brewing beer, heating up frozen pizzas in the oven, giving each other chlamydia, and writing columns while drinking beer.

Dunbar sliced up a lot of primate brains, and compared the size of the neocortex to the size of the primate tribe.  There was a correlation.  Dunbar then said, “Hey, humans are primates, even though we are so very sexy, so what size would a human tribe be?”

His result based on math and brain size, and, I’m guessing a few pints of Guiness®?

Stable human tribe sizes should be about 150 based on Dunbar’s math, and this number is called Dunbar’s Number.  I wrote about this before in this post (LINK) where I have the original (as far as I can see) hypothesis that some mental illnesses might have helped small groups survive back when we were killing mammoths to survive, and I write a bit more about Dunbar’s Number in that post.

My friend’s wife is leaving him because of mental illness.  Or at least that’s what his cat told him.

This 150 person (let’s be generous and say it’s somewhere between 100 and 250) group size seems to show up wherever I look.  Huge corporations may have tens of thousands of employees, but each of the actual operational chunks is small.  Most that I’ve seen have been . . . less than 150 people.  Even operating locations I’ve been to that have 500 people or more break down into groups.  Office staff versus day shift versus night shift, or people who forgot their pants versus people who always remember them, or something similar.

Many folks might say, but Wilder, my country has hundreds of millions of people in it.  Dunbar’s Number doesn’t seem to apply.  Dunbar himself theorized that this number would only be exceeded when those groups faced extreme survival pressures, like invading Huns or women wanting to vote.

I’ll toss in a different theory here:  larger groups than Dunbar’s number can exist when there’s a great degree of wealth that requires cooperation to maintain.  My theory was (and is) that civilization was formed so we could make beer (LINK).

So why is it so big now?

How is Alexa® like my ex-wife?  She tried to listen to everything and pretended to know it all.

Wealth, technology, and order allow Dunbar’s Number to get immense.  If every small town in the United States has a McDonald’s®, then life gets simpler.  We have built around an economic “sameness”.  Similarly, people watch the same NFL™ teams or NCAA© college teams based on regions.  This economic homogeneity is based on wealth and technology.

If you’re a fan of {INSERT SPORTS TEAM HERE} then if I’m a fan of the {SAME EXACT TEAM} we’re not so different, we’ve created a commonality.  Dunbar’s Number is short-circuited, and a shallow trust is created.

But what happens when wealth (and the hope of having it) goes down?

I think we’re seeing it.  Trust shrinks.  People we once put inside our group are now put outside our group because the competition for resources increases.  An example is probably in order:  if everyone has a job and all of the PEZ™ and Hot Pockets© they want and big houses with swimming pools, having the odd illegal immigrant doesn’t bother them much.  But when times get tight and jobs are scarce and Hot Pockets® cost $10 each, the “in-group” shrinks.

The Mrs. cringes every time I call them “Squat Pockets®”.

The greater the stress on the people, the smaller the group gets.  Who do I trust?  In my circles, it’s my family first.  That number is small.  Then my close friends – those that I know, based on experience, that I can trust.  That number is bigger, but still pretty small.  Then there are those who I have strong reason to trust.  Then those in the neighborhood.  Then . . .

Well, you can see, the tougher the situation, the smaller the circle.  If we go back to our history, this is what we find – somewhere between 100 to 250 of us in a group trust each other, and can work as a group.  When times are good, technology is in place, and the NFL® is playing that number can certainly be bigger.

I tend to think we’re past the point of Peak Dunbar.  As things get tougher, you can see the friction already started as violence has escalated.  As jobs disappear, and as hope disappears, this will increase.

But at least right now, I can still have fourteen beers at Chili’s™.

Wilder’s Cures for Male Loneliness

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.” – Jaws

If you’re lonely you could buy some stocks.  Then you’d have some company.

In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court?  It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words:  “If you’re a dude, have a few friends.  The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you.  Friends make you happy.”  Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature.  In centigrade.

The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes.  The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable.  It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought.  I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.

I have so many orb memes.

Regardless, the /Internet/ reacted predictably to the picture, and created a list of memes that would make all those sages pondering orbs proud.  I saved a few of them, just for you in the hopes that you, dear reader, might find your key to cure your loneliness.  If you’re like me, you don’t have feelings other than cold, salty, and drunk, so I haven’t figured out what the whole “lonely” thing is.

Anyway, here are the memes, as found, with some annotation.

I think that drinking with Quint and killing sharks is definitely going to solve any issues with loneliness.

Curling?  Not so much. 

Now being in a Roman Legion?  That’s the stuff!  Hiking every day!  Just avoid Germany.

It’s weird that the Turks mispronounce “Constantinople” as “Istanbul”.

I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s.  It is the booze.

I’ve never tried it, but, what could it hurt?

Now this looks inviting.  I think termites like saloons, because they like the bar tender.

I wonder if he’ll be a crying-on-the-inside NPC?

Can confirm, this is fun until the cops show up.

Is the Wendigo related to the Whodigo, or the Wheredigo, or the Whatdigo?

Who can be lonely interacting with 400’ tall anime girls?

Travolta and Cage walk into a bar.  Bartender says, “Why the wrong face?”

Lovecraft walked into a bar, and the rest is too humorous to even describe.

Ever notice that you never see Walken and Buscemi in the same place?  Discuss.

Hell yeah, brother!

Well, even Hunter gets lonely.

I guess it didn’t work for Kaepernick.

But it might have worked out for Kaepernick’s dad.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things.

Or many simple things.

What’s a little psychosis between friends?

If I tried that, I’d be grounded.

Well, back to giant women . . .

And who doesn’t need another synthesizer?

Is there more to life?

Yes, yes there is.

Thankfully, my job will let me work as many hours as I want to.

There might be one other option?

The Invisible Recession

“1000 points of light . . . recession bad, recovery good . . . I think I’ve got that.” – The Naked Gun 2 ½:  The Smell of Fear

If Dodge® makes an electric car, will they sell Dodge© Chargers™?

Inflation has really started to bite here in Modern Mayberry.  I’m not sure about the Big Cities, but I’ve begun to notice it around here.  Today at lunch I made a trip to McDonald’s®.  It’s rare, most of the time (if I eat lunch at all) I eat at home.  It’s more convenient, and I really, really hate lines, but this was a late lunch and I could drive straight to the window.  But hey, for me, it’s the McChicken®.

The prices at McDonald’s® have gotten silly.  Whereas there used to be enough value in a Big Mac™ to make one of them (occasionally) worth it, it’s just not the case nowadays.  I didn’t spend too much time pondering the price on any of the burgers, since I could get nearly a pound of steak for the price of the average burger-fries-drink combos.  But again, for me, it’s the McChicken™.

What a fun, cool, happening place, if you can get 3-for-free!

Why are people not going out?

The prices are silly.

I think (and I might be wrong) that our local McDonald’s™ just has to match the prices that are (more or less) nationally set by some sweaty accountant in Chicago wearing a Grimace™ costume and questioning the life choices that led him to have to report every day to Stacy, who is forced to wear a Hamburgler© costume.  I can’t see the labor around Modern Mayberry costing nearly as much as in a bigger city.  The food, I would imagine, costs exactly the same as in the bigger cities.

The result?  I’ve noticed that the lines are much shorter at the local fast-food restaurants, even at peak hours.  One of the regional chains hasn’t raised their prices, since all of their restaurants are just scattered around Upper Lower Midwestia and they don’t have to worry about the price of a Quarter Pounder™ in Manhattan.  Their lines are the longest in town, so I follow Yogi Berra’s advice, “Nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded.”

Since COVID, my favorite local restaurant has closed.  It was a bona fide restaurant, great service, great food.  Supply chain issues coupled with labor oddities and lower business slowly torpedoed them.  They liquidated before they lost a lot of money – they saw what was coming and wanted to go out on their terms.

I’ve been told that McDonald’s™ was sued once for bugs in their food.  They won the case – no one on the jury believed they used any natural ingredients.

And our world got a little bit smaller, so we now have dinner somewhere else.  It’s cheaper, but I notice that both of the places that we normally go aren’t very busy anymore.  And the waitresses that work there aren’t changing jobs anymore – the good ones are keeping their jobs now.  Something tells me they’re a little harder to get now.

So, if you’re counting restaurants and the people who work there (and those that used to own them) Modern Mayberry definitely has fewer restaurants.  The revenue in the town might be the same, but there are (my guess) 20% fewer customers.

This is the invisible recession.

I always carry some McDonald’s® fries when I walk the dogs in winter.  Fries go great with chilly dogs.

It’s invisible because I’d imagine that, even though McDonald’s® is (visually) selling less McFood©, they’re charging more.  So, higher prices times lower volume is probably about even.  But the value created to the consumer is far, far less even though revenues might be neutral.  Unless you count eating healthier food than McDonald’s™ makes as value.  Heck, Ronald has killed more people than Pennywise.

I suspect this is going on everywhere.  Wages are certainly not keeping up with daily expenses, and those who are less fortunate haven’t had raises that have kept up with inflation.  And why should employers pay more?  In a recent month, a net 1.2 million jobs were “created” but 600,000 Americans lost their jobs.  They were replaced by immigrants (illegal or legal).

Thankfully, corporate profits were saved!

It’s better than when he ran the farm using Artificial Intelligence and had to reboot it all before the power outage – AI, AI, Oh.

Interest rates are up, and I expect they will continue to go up because there is no semblance of any fiscal adulthood in Washington, D.C. on either side of the ball.  The Democrat mantra of “spend more” is always followed by the Republican response of, “Well, okay, but not quite that much” as the dance of the destruction of the currency continues.

I hope I’m wrong, but this is based on the bet that politicians will continue to be weak and craven, and that 2024 is an election year.  What do politicians like during an election year?  A good economy with low inflation.  Failing that, politicians like distractions and spreading money out like AOC on a Saturday night.  If you can’t make a good economy, fake one.

More money floating around means . . . more inflation.  But if wages aren’t going up because there’s a massive influx of illegals?

Just more misery, especially for those at the lower end of the pay scale.  All of the typical Leftist voting blocks will be rewarded, of course.  The standard Leftie professor at the average Leftie college (but I mostly repeat myself) will get raises because the Left takes care of itself and funds itself.  The Left believes in the state and uses it as a propaganda and funding arm.  Why do drama programs get special federal funds?

Because they vote Left.

I guess the finale was shot before a live audience.

But real Americans that aren’t tied into the ecosystem of government gimmes are seeing their difficulties multiply.  Me?  I’ll still mainly skip McDonald’s© and save a few bucks and have more steaks and fewer fries.  But the invisible recession is already here, at least in Modern Mayberry.

But, hey, for me?  It’s the McChicken™.

Mechanisms of Control: Information

“He who controls information controls the world.” – Babylon 5

I was trying to finish a puzzle.  I asked The Mrs., “Can you help me finish this one?  It’s supposed to be a bird.”  The Mrs.:  “Put the Froot Loops back in the box, John.”

Last Wednesday I wanted to write about the mechanisms of financial control.  Of course, there’s always more to write – that post was less than 2,000 words, but if I took the time I could probably write another 20,000 or 80,000 words.

It’s the same with this post.  Even beyond propaganda, a big part of the game is information control.  What information do we get, and where does it come from?

For quite a long time (I haven’t put any effort into going back in time, but it’s been here a while) the control of information has been used to actually create the news that Mainstream Media® uses.  Sure, an earthquake is true and fair news.  But 90% of the news that we are presented with in any given day isn’t news.  Just like “processed cheese spread” or “buttery sauce” don’t contain anything resembling actual cheese or butter, most of the news we have is “manufactured news product” and doesn’t contain much news at all.

Have you heard of Karl’s sister, Onya?  She invented the starter pistol.

A perfect example is George Floyd.  He was a felon and junkie who died of an overdose.  He wasn’t choked.  George Floyd died because he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill Ecuador.  The “news” created by his death was used and amplified for a purpose.  In a normal world, Floyd’s death would have been ignored because “junkie dies of overdose” is another name for “Tuesday”.

Likewise, any sort of violence perpetrated by a white guy against (generally) black people is amplified, often to a national level.  But the reverse?  It’s suppressed and ignored to the point where black people think (really!) that they are the ones who are the victims, despite the fact that in 2021, 87% of violent crimes between black and whites were committed by blacks on whites.

But if black people watch TV or read the media, they’d be shocked and think that white people were the ones hurting blacks, and not the other way around.  Why?  The story that they’re selling is that white people are awful, and they’re willing to bend the language on a whim to make it so.

I bet they ADL® really hates pandas.  They’re black, white, and Asian.

Racism used to mean that someone felt a race was superior.  Now?  According to the (rapidly disintegrating) ADL® it’s an explanation of why white people are bad and can never be not-bad no matter what they do.

My thought is that the Floyd death was amplified to put out a trap for Trump.  Trump’s media coverage was uniquely and pervasively negative for a president.  Remember when it was national news that Trump got an extra scoop of ice cream?  Pepperidge Farms® remembers.  And I do, too.  Anything, and I mean anything Trump did became the big complaint of the media.

The Mainstream Media® always has an agenda.  But who feeds them news?  The Left.  The organizations on the Left are the primary news sources.  Like scriptwriters on Disney® movies, they create news stories that meet what they need for their organization’s goals regardless of reality.  Also, like scriptwriters, people doing the news don’t really have any need for the Truth if it gets in the way of what they want you to think.

Other things are not very truthful, either.  Global Warming® is one of the stories I just can’t escape when I watch the news.  But how have they twisted the truth in . . . the weather?  Here’s an example:

I enjoyed all four seasons of that weather show on Netflix®.

I’ve seen others.  In the span of only ten years, those that want to sell fear to bring viewers have taken the same temperatures and cloaked them in a dangerous red color.  Is it hot in summer?  Yes!  And that’s why the stories about Global Warming Climate Change™ all show up then.  And they will every summer, even if it gets colder.

So, news is created by Leftist organizations, which include:

  • The Media (including entertainment),
  • Most of the Fortune® 500,
  • Most Schools,
  • The ADL®,
  • The SPLC,
  • Most Colleges,
  • Military General Officer Corps,
  • Most Religions, and
  • Almost Every Government Agency.

These organizations pump out press releases daily which feed the news cycle.  Who fact checks them?  Why, a compliant media!  Snopes® is run by Leftists, and expecting the Washington Post® to correctly fact check Joe Biden?  You’d have better luck pulling out your teeth and leaving them under your pillow for the ADL® to bring you a shiny new quarter.

I’m a racist.  I just hate the 440-yard dash.  Too long for a sprint, too short for distance.  And turning it into the 400 meters didn’t help.

This news is then pumped into the heads of Leftists, nonstop.  Places like Google® and Facebook™ and YouTube© where alternative viewpoints aren’t allowed.  Think that the Vaxx® was a big mistake?  YouTube™ is still censoring that one.

Leftists, for the most part, I’m not concerned with.  If they ever stumble upon these posts, they won’t be able to read them.  They may be smelly virgins without a hope of ever having babies, but they’re not illiterate.  If I say the sky is blue, they’ll immediately ask for a source because the Right to them is worse than Satan.

When no one laughed at Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing jokes, he’d just say, “Well, I guess you had to be there.”

They don’t want to think, in fact can’t think, about some of the concepts that I write about here because their amygdala will stop them from listening.  Literally, a Leftist can’t read one of my typical posts without getting so angry that they can’t read it.

No, I write for the Right, and I write for the middle.  The Right is self-explanatory, since I’m on the Right.  The Middle have been the people the Left is targeting.  I’m sure that they believe that they can convince the Middle if they deprive them of any other viewpoint.

The Left is excellent at that.  They want to tighten down Twitter, er, X®, Facebook™, Instasnap©, MySpace©, and any other place that the Right can disagree with the Leftist narrative.  Wonder why the newspapers eliminated the comments sections?  The Right was (and is!) amazing at getting points out that countered the information goals of the Left.

Quite simply, from their standpoint, that had to be stopped.

AOC had to write an essay in college about genocides.  Took her a long time to decide if she was for or against them.

Again, remember that the “news” you get from the Mainstream Media™ is simply not news, but a product, like “buttery spread”.  It isn’t news.  Have some fun with it – count the number of stories in a day that you come across, and see how the Left is trying to manipulate you.

When you see it, you’re free to make your own opinions.  And free to wake others up.