Leiðleitatil Bindrún (The Pathfinder Bindrune)

I know that I hung
on a wind battered tree
nine long nights,
pierced by a spear and given to Óðinn,
myself to myself,
on that tree
whose roots grow in a place
no one has ever seen.

No one gave me food,
no one gave me drink.
At the end I peered down,
I took the runes - 
screaming, I took them -
and then I fell.

- Rúnatal, Hávamál, The Poetic Edda (Cōdex Rēgius)

First, as with most things necessary in this world of judgement and jumping to conclusions, a disclaimer:

This entry deals with a certain level of esoteric beliefs that, for many reasons I fully understand and acknowledge, may be completely irrational. 

I acknowledge that, when dealing with the subject of Norse Mythology, there is a modern take on the ancient Vikings and pagan beliefs that has elevated a certain level of mysticism that scholars simply have no reasonable evidence to corroborate on. 

This is primarily due to two inescapable truths:

1. Most of the surviving artifacts - items, rune stones, etc, have extremely mundane translations utilizing Elder and Younger Futhark runes. Almost always to denote some sort of factual, boring account: "So-and-so made this" or "Here I bury my son, so-and-so". 

2. The manuscripts that would go on to become things like the iconic Poetic Edda , containing all of the lore, originally come from manuscripts like the Cōdex Rēgius, translated hundreds of years after the peak Viking era, and well after those pagan cultures were converted to Christianity.  These second-hand accounts are especially confounding in their iconography, such as the popular Vegvísir (Viking Compass), and Ægishjálmur (Helm of Awe) which often appear in several variations, some of which  simultaneously invoke the divine powers of Odin, Thor, Jesus, AND Mary... all within the same spell. 

The reality of a people, concerned primarily with surviving in a harsh environment with limited resources, does lend itself to a more pragmatic view of their language. Elder futhark rune meanings likely had more mnemonic purposes rather than mystic symbolism. Bindrunes were more of a space-saving or "stylistic" way of combining runes, rather than “magic bindings”, and nearly all staves originate in manuscripts confounded with Christianity iconography which do not trace back to any truly pagan primary sources. 

End disclaimer...

Depressing. Well, despite all this very rational understanding – I still find myself in a difficult place trying to reconcile the scholarly views vs two key observations:

1) The idea, that for a set of otherwise "mundane" phonetic runes, the skálds would dedicate an entire section in the Hávamál to the excruciating trouble Odin puts himself through just to obtain them, seems odd to me. Having to sacrifice himself, to himself, at the world tree Yggdrasill and rip them screaming into knowledge gained from the Well of Urd,  and add to that, how other sections of the Edda speak to "wise men" knowing how to use the runes for more than just language - how to carve them, how to invoke them for spells, etc., it just seems a bit sus that the remainder of the culture would simply devalue the runes down to phonetic oblvision. 

I mean, not even Christianity dedicates anything significant to the discovery of language or letters - language simply exists. seemingly as a product of man..

"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words" - Genesis 11:1

A product that becomes a problem for God. when the people use this common language to try to organize and build a tower to heaven (Genesis 11:4), causing God to put an end to that nonsense quick, fast, and in a hurry:

"Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth." - Genesis 11:7-9

But, what do I know. Its hard to argue the lack of evidence. I tend to speculate that, perhaps, while the generic Æsir mythology may have been preserved by transcribing scholars, there must have been explicit instructions to leave out any details that would have accredited actual divine power.  Kind of a big deal when the conquering religion preaches the only true "Word of God" with no room for competition...

An example of this selective preservation comes at the heals of Christian Scholars transcribing the wine sacraments found in the Greek Dionysian Mysteries, which were the primary influence for the Christian Eucharist. They adopted the motions of consuming a blessed wine, but scrubbed the divine aspects like the role of psychedelics in the preparation, which was crucial to the true divine nature of the original sacrament. What survived, then, was a hollow simulacrum of the original traditions, which leaves me wondering how much of the magic of the runes were similarly scrubbed . (See: Immortality Key and the work of Brian Muraresku)

2) Second, and way more close to home, and the real point of this entire entry, is me trying to reconcile a scholarly perspective of a dead runic language, and a very real and modern inspiration I encountered on a vision quest that led me to this:

Now, this final iteration is obviously stylized – not only in terms of the graphic visuals, but also in the expression of the bindrune comprised of raidō, ansuz, and tīwaz in a repeated arrangement around the central hagalaz rune. The runes initially presented themselves in a singular alignment (more on this soon), so this particular "stave" arrangement came afterwards as reflection on my original vision, and an internal gut feeling to present the concepts as a "many roads lead out of chaos" wheel, admittedly and likely inspired by the likes of Vegvísir, and Ægishjálmur to create a symbolic, stylized representation.  

So what happened? 

Well, I quite frankly “saw” these runes presented to me in a vision. I won’t sugar coat it. 6 grams of dried psilocybe semilanceata is a sure-fire way to put oneself in an altered state of consciousness where visions like these are entirely possible. 

To this end, I’ve had a small number of rare, ego-death level sessions where I’d asked the universe to reveal some level of esoteric truth or meaning to me, to which my subconscious and whatever other entities out there in the ether flooded me with roller-coasters of emotions, feelings, and visions.  

Almost always, the visuals are geometric – fractal, too complex to remember, and never really anything religious or otherwise branded and readily identifiable in the real world as sacred geometry or the like. 

But this time… this was the first, and only, time I had ever been presented with any sort of concrete iconography I could later recall.  I cannot underscore enough how odd this was. I’m not a “rune caster”, or a self-proclaimed pagan. Hel, I’m not even Scandinavian – my lineage is almost entirely Iberian, and as such, my family is almost entirely Catholic as a result. (I managed to escape)

Growing up, I only had the top level, basic understanding of Norse mythology that the average American possesses – of Odin and Loki and Thor and Ragnarök as surface level as any Marvel movie would care to portray.  More recently, I did have basic exposure to shows like Vikings, and games like God of War, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, so I was later exposed to a few more characters and stories, like Mímir, Jörmungandr, Hel… and generally exposed to the runes visually on carvings, shields, face paint, and other related visuals pertaining to those games/movies/shows.  

Finally, I had recently discovered the "amplified history" music genre, where the likes of Wardruna, Heilung, and Danheim exposed my subconscious to deeper lore (although I had no translatable knowledge of Old Norse, Norwegian or Islandic to guide me).

The only Futhark runes I could easily identify at the time were that of Tiwaz, aka Tyr’s “victory rune”, as one of the runes I looked up because I couldn’t understand why Vikings were obsessed with painting “Up Arrows” on all their war gear, and þurisaz in reference to the "thorn" rune used in one of the early Halloween movies as the mystical mark on Michael Myers. 

So one could argue that I was, perhaps, subconsciously primed for what came next, but regardless, there I was, an hour into an ominous trip where I stood face-to-face with a chaotic, turbulent swirling portal of… black sleeting ice, for lack of better identification. (it was a cold, yet burning, black swirl of fluid and hail). 

It was difficult to stare into, but at one point I felt compelled to do so, and I could see the slanted "H" shape of Hagalaz clearly within it. I recalled the shape, but had no perceived connection to a meaning, yet. The dread, at the time, was a gut feeling that, in order for me to “progress” or “move through”, I had to face this chaotic turbulence and somehow step through it. But I was scared, not knowing what was on the other side.

 After some immeasurable amount of time,  not wanting to gaze back into it, I decided to try to lean and look around the storm to the other side. There, on the far end of a trail, I saw that familiar “Up Arrow” (Tīwaz), like a shining beacon on the other side, pointing along a path flowing out from the backside of the chaos.  Seeing this one familiar shape would be the only thing that clued me in to the idea that what I was seeing were "Viking Runes". 

While I totally understood the “victory” concept of Tīwaz, I still didn't understand how to get through the chaos safely or why I was even being presented with the situation to begin with.

It was then that I noticed something else as I peered around the chaos storm. A second, different kind of arrow was just ahead of Tīwazit, also in line with the path leading out from the back of the storm. This arrow was odd, in that both arms of the point were on the same side. This rune was Ansuz, but I had no frame of reference for this rune either. It simply... gave me comfort, and subconscious peace to see this overall arrangement.

The final rune, raidō, didn't actually manifest as a giant "R" in my vision, it simply appeared as a literal path leading from the backside of the freezing chaos portal, passing directly through the two beacon runes in a straight line.  

As I mentioned, seeing this road, with the pleasant outcome on the other side, changed my fundamental feeling towards the chaos storm. I was still apprehensive, sure, but no longer afraid to pass through with dignity and honor.  

Sadly, I can't tell you how the journey went, though, because the moment I took the step into the portal, I was immediately snapped back to reality, lying in a dark, quiet room.

Later, sober, I immediately took to looking into the runes I was presented, and reflecting on the overall experience. I first had to figure that there were in fact two different runic alphabets, Elder and Younger Futhark.  Thankfully, the presence of Ansuz helped, as it is absent from the Younger Futhark. 

From there, (Please suspend scholarly skepticism for a moment), I discovered the general consensus among those who ascribe some level of meaning to each of the Elder Futhark runes.  In these subsequent studies, the shapes I saw made a whole lot more sense:

• Hagalaz - Hail, calamity, obstacles, chaos, uncertainty, adversity, etc. To me this felt like a fair representation of the amorphous storm portal I was faced with right at the beginning, and why this rune takes it's place front-and-center in the final stave. Chaos, adversity, and uncertainty confront us at every turn in this life. It's unavoidable. 
• Raidō - The ride, the journey. This rune, I attributed to the significance of the path from my vision. I initially added it to explicitly represent the significance of the road I was shown. Much later, as I learned about the concept of Bindrunes, I thought perhaps, the "line" of the path was shown without rune imagery as a dual-purpose of binding the ansuz  and tīwaz runes together, which visually creates a bit of a "road" naturally. As such, I suppose the raidō rune is therefore optional/redundant within the stave configuration, but I still like having it explicitly called out. Finally, as far as positioning, you will notice the rune starts partially within the Hagalaz circle - this is intentional to signify that there's a road out of chaos and uncertainty. 
• Ansuz - "God/Odin", but also wisdom, knowledge, understanding, communication. This later resonated as the "how" portion of overcoming adversity. This clarified my perspective on the original juxtaposition of Hagalaz to Tīwaz. Seeing Tyr's "victory rune" and having the freezing portal initially made it all seem very physical, but it was clear after looking into Ansuz that the vision was existential, metaphorical, and mental. This is is what primarily led me to concluding that it was a metaphor for personal growth - overcoming adversity, working through problems through communication, learning, and understanding. 
• Tīwaz - God/Tyr, victory, but also honor, and sacrifice. The deeper study of this rune, also proved to be a bit of a surprise over what I thought I knew about it originally. At first, I thought I was being shown "the payoff" or reward of walking the path; the "why do it". But it's fascinating that this rune can also be interpreted as further extension of the "how" that Ansuz begins - that is, to walk the path in such a way that you conduct yourself with honor, and with the understanding that sometimes it takes great sacrifice as means to some ends, as reflected in the rune poems for Tīwaz that recount Tyr's sacrifice during the Binding of Fenrir.  It was this duality of Tiwaz being both "how" and "why" which gave me the final design idea to arrange repeating path bindrunes around the circle, in each of the cardinal and intercardinal directions. A stylistic choice, sure, but also one that represents the idea that there are often several paths of freedom out of uncertainty - but no matter the direction, we should always strive to pick a path that includes  knowledge, understanding, justice, and sacrifice to achieve honorable victory. 

And that was it - I mulled around with this vision and these concepts for months and months as they resonated with me. I took to learning more and more about the runes, about the culture, and the lore of the Old Norse. Admittedly, like most ancient beliefs and traditions, not every concept translates well to a modern audience, nor would they be considered acceptable. 

But by-and-large, the practical advice given in the texts like Hávamál resonated with me more on a deeper level than anything I can vaguely recall from Bible study as a teenager. The absolutely binding commitment of giving someone your word, even if it most certainly leads to tragedy, is of the Nobelist virtues worth subscribing to.  The other themes related to personal accountability, being wise in many things (but not too wise), and other such concepts truly captured my soul as though I was raptured back into a previous life. I mean, who knows... before all this, I *did* go on to marry a 5' 11' Valkyrie with deep Scandinavian and Germanic roots. :)

So with this, dear reader, we conclude the origin of the "Leiðleitatil Bindrún" (Pathfinder Bindrune).  If you've made it this far, and any of this resonated with you - then take the stave with you and use it in good health. 

My oath, bound here with these words, as the seer and creator of Leiðleitatil, is that it is an open gift to those who need it, and will never been copywritten, or restricted. 

Skål!

Nú eru Háva mál
kveðin Háva höllu í,
allþörf ýta sonum,
óþörf jötna sonum;
heill sá, er kvað,
heill sá, er kann,
njóti sá, er nam,
heilir, þeirs hlýddu.

 

Want to use the Leiðleitatil ? Start here: https://leidleitatil.art/

Five Things

A friend in our circle recently asked if we could come up with "five things you wished someone would've told you before you were shot from a cannon out into the real world". These were my responses:

1. Your peers will hand you everything you need to get ahead in a career; just listen to what they complain about (or fear) and act heroically. Nearly every innovation, process improvement, and subsequent promotion I've enjoyed came from running towards a fire everyone else was running away from. There's little competition in solving hard problems, and taking the initiative to even try is great material for your performance review.

 2. Finding a companion should be viewed less like handing someone a delicate egg and hoping they don't break it, and more like inviting them along for a long morning jog.  That is- there's no real bond to be formed if you immediately outpace them, or if they immediately outpace you. Piggy-back rides are cute precursors to long term resentment, while real, healthy love comes from a jogging partner that has a natural pace equal to yours. And true love? That soulmate shit everyone desires? That's when you jog beside someone who makes it feel like you aren't jogging at all and cultivates a positive feedback loop that improves your pace. (And vice-versa- You should be providing these same boosting benefits for them!)

 3. In all failures, no matter the magnitude, rip the Band-Aid off quickly and face the consequences with an explicit plan for correction. In nearly every situation, the loss felt now will always be less than the sum of the situation plus the delay in avoiding it, or worse, any extra steps taken to try to hide it. Don't be afraid of failure. Failing (with a plan to resolve) cultivates a resilient mind that embraces adaptation and suffers less the trappings of anxiety, regret, and embarrassment.

 4. The world is 95% NPCs. Your first goal should be to strive to become one of the 5% active PCs. Your second goal should be to surround yourself with the other 5%. What's an NPC? A scripted individual with no real actionable dreams, and nothing of unique intellectual or spiritual value to add to the mix. While there's nothing inherently "bad" about being an NPC, if you want the most content-rich experience moving through this reality, then seek and seek-to-be interesting, dynamic, helpful, and adventurous.

 5. Limit, to the greatest of your ability, the number of capabilities you outsource to others. Learn how to build stuff before you buy them (where feasible). Learn how to perform basic maintenance and troubleshooting on your vehicles and appliances before just sending them in. Learn how to properly cook (not just reheat). Decide what your own first response is in the event of an emergency rather than assuming 911 is the best you can do. People will say that there's just not enough time in the day to "learn all the things", and that preparedness is wasted in a modern information and consumer age. This is a myth, but assuming it’s true, the things you elect to outsource should be inversely related to the risks & consequences of that dependency being severed.  In the extreme, it’s better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.

Rich Man's Trick

A resurgence of the 2014 JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man's Trick is making rounds as more "red pills" make their way into the dark abyss that is realizing most of us have been bot and sold since before our time.

Each time a new contrived crisis arises, skeptics (like myself) will begin highlighting inconsistencies in the narrative being crafted and look for signs that a racket is being formed. Each time this process commences, it introduces a new crop of people (usually young adults) for whom this is the first time they are struck with the idea that the government and other authority agencies may not be acting as honestly as they should, and may not be acting with their best interests in mind.

Looking into the current crisis, many will ask the next logical question - "If they're lying to me about this, what else are they lying about?".  This, ironically, creates a zombie effect on all previously known conspiracies as their minds try to grasp the vast expanse of fuckery that has shaped our history.

I say it's ironic, because I imagine there are some conspiracies that are - lets say resolved as quietly as possible - decades later through released documents and lawsuits that vindicate the generation that lived through the hell first-hand. Bringing these to light again years later creates an inflation of what I call "legitimized conspiracy capital".  The old tropes of "that only happened once!" or "that was how many years ago?!"  lose power as citation after citation mounts to a rapid indictment that of course this is just "War on Terror 2.0" or "9/11 all over again"

Which brings us to Rich Man's Trick - which bubbled up on social media recent as all this quarantine free time means lots of time to watch conspiracy documentaries.

But oddly enough, for a documentary that's now 6 years old, the reaction is... not what I was expecting.  It seemed to me, that this particular documentary had the brilliant effect of duping the viewer into an ideological illusion right before their very eyes. It regularly enjoys favorable reviews pretty much all around, with only a few "JFK theory purists" arguing against the JFK segments, but almost no one calling the entire piece out for what it more than likely really was: a piece as guilty of selective revelation it was purporting to admonish.

If you haven't seen it, and have the time (and mental fortitude) to watch three-and-a-half hours of depressing Orwellian expose, it actually really is a good documentary for a slice of the perspective it presents- and to that end I recommend it for introducing the viewers to, at the very least, a short order list shady characters and organizations that were often in our blind spots over the past two centuries.

Either way - try to apply the very same rules to it that it's attempting to teach you about doctored narratives. Scrutinize the entire piece on what it may very well really be:

A cleverly written piece of Communism propaganda or worse, just another CIA controlled expose designed to give the masses "something interesting to think about" that ultimately leads to contrived and controlled reaction.

Now, if you've seen it before, you might be thinking "Wait.. Communist propaganda?" Where was Karl Marx slipped in amidst what seems to be a grand tale about the sad fate of John F. Kennedy?.

Here's few clues to consider:

1. The film only ever even mentions Communism as the "real fear" that the rich are constantly defending against, but without speaking out against it as a core belief.
2. In its deep scope of history and revealing corruption, it spends almost no time talking about the Cold War.
3. It mentions Mao for a half a second related to some kind of "get more Asians to smoke" scheme, but avoids some juicy Sidney Rittenberg ties to molding Xi Jinping?
4. The only talks about Castro are in light of his ties to the CIA and the Bay of Pigs, but avoids the Cuban Missile Crisis and how Kennedy may have had back channels into Moscow.
5. So many opportunities to implicate ties to countries with communist regimes but it instead spends all of its time throwing everyone on the Allies side under the bus for their "wealth based ideologies" 

Weird right?  But what's one of the rules? Oh yeah: Keep a low profile

See, a documentary like this doesn't have to slip in a Karl Marx quote to lure you in, that would be too obvious. It simply needs to knock down all the other rackets - monarchies, capitalism, fanaticism - and leave you peering into an uncertain, an empty space to which there is the only remaining choice...

No no, not Communism - you aren't there yet - it has to lead you to Revolution, first.

So just like that, after reinforcing that the casino is rigged at all levels because they own the police, the military, the justice system, everything, that's when they slip in that call to action, right about that 3:22:22 mark.

"The only way to change our corrupt system is through revolution. Everyone has to sign up now to our revolution website. And then the people have to march on Washington" "And they need to kick him (Obama) and every other corrupt politician out and take power, genuinely, for the people's sake!"

But wait - I thought the problem was Ford? and Dupot? and Exon Mobile? the Rockafellers? the mob bosses out on the fringe? I thought the CIA would have run dry if only the customers didn't want that sweet, sweet cocaine and heroin?

The call to revolution is clever because it sets up a perfectly logical set of dominoes:

1. Remove the politicians that have been letting the fat cats get away with murder
2. Make those fat cats pay now that they can't hide behind the government
3. Redistribute the wealth and decide capitalism is too greedy for it's own good
4. And finally - figure out NEW rules s that will stop wealth consolidation from happening ever again....

The logical chain of events leads right down the same path that many countries have walked down before - and woe onto us if whoever leads us down that path turns out to be another Castro or Mao who flips the script on us when we get to step 4, right?

It may be a straw-man the film, nor Francis, were attempting to make. But even then it's a line of unintended consequence that could fuel a Sander's Supporter type mentality into a fools gold idea that Engineering of Consent isn't still alive and well in 2020.

You want a real revolution that doesn't require trying to take on mob families or devil worshiping lizard people head on?  Just stop buying dumb shit.

Become self sufficient. If you buy things, spend a little more on things that last 10 years rather than 6 months and upkeep them rather than throwing them away.

Save your money. Demand banks give us more than a pittance of a return on our savings accounts, accounts they leverage virtually to make money off of our money, or threaten to pull out.

Do things like this, and watch the rich choke on their lack of ROI without having to lift a single freedom-fighting-finger.

And when you suddenly find a new crop of shape shifting companies pretending to be ethical and Nazi-Mob-Free? Don't give them a single dollar until we trace their financials and company heads  back all the way up the chain.

And most importantly? Be ready to walk away. Abandon them completely the moment they sell out.

Could you imagine, when Facebook started undermining our digital privacy and practicing experimental censorship, if we all just collectively said  "turn that shit off or we're going back to MySpace?" That's the attitude you have to have with these people to shackle that contrived "invisible hand of the market" to our will as the workers who actually contribute value rather than simply bet on it. 

They're Painting the Roses Red

The paper below represents two months of sleepless nights and research early in the pandemic outbreak, when instinct told me there was more to the situation than a "natural" outbreak. The paper represents my held theories and evidence as of early May 2020, and no attempts will be made to "scrub" details or stances in light of new evidence. At some point I will instead likely do a retrospect once the dust settles on SARS-COV-2.

   

A question I'm often asked is what the implications of "lab created" means, in terms of who is responsible or at least, which levels of play need to be evaluated and regulated to prevent something like this from happening in the future. To this end, below is an exerpt from a broader research paper I put together which articulates the 3 key tiers of involvement, at least to my mind-

Three Levels of Inception 

I originally visualized them as the 3 heads of a hydra but it’s better to visualize it like spheres of layered truths/realities wherein different actors participate in each tier in a compartmentalized fashion and only a handful of individuals navigate between (Extractors)

The “Inception” concept is also a convenient analogy as the goal of each tier is to give the tier(s)below it compartmentalized autonomy, planting thoughts and beliefs into them so that one does not need a “conspiracy dependent on secrets” to drive progress forward, only protocols, funding,and goals to achieve. From there, the actors simply play their parts honestly and each tier above benefits from having access to any newfound information. (Similar to the ENRON model)

This paper, using the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as a window into the realm of modern virology and immunology, only addresses a subset of 3 inception levels: 

N+2: The Government/Military Masquerading as both Science Research and Private Industry 

On this tier, the Military complex funds and peers into both the research and private industry cure manufacturers for potential strains that can be bifurcated and potentially further enhanced for bio-warfare. It would take, for example, little effort to pick up a strain like SARS-CoV-2 which is already highly communicable, and synthesize in high mortality aspects, and use them as potentially subversive “act of nature” tools to disrupt regimes rather than having to stage coups or attempt overt assassinations. The reason for playing both sides (as in helping private industry) is that should these bioweapons cause flare ups or collateral damage, it’s the private industries that come to the rescue to provide a “free market” solution to a “natural” problem that casts little suspicion on the military or government operating behind it. 

N+1: Private Industry Masquerading as Science Research 

On this tier, private companies like EcoHealth Alliance provide critical funding for scientific research on the tier below, but also leverage the research results to quickly patent potential outbreak strains and even vaccine and cure strategies to profit off of nature.This funded research is like a scouting program into the potential “futures” of the disease and cure dynamic, where strains like SARS-CoV-2, which are highly infectious, but low mortality, are viewed as gold mines for sustained vaccine profits. The problem with this,obviously, is that it incentivises treatment over permanent cure, and in more nefarious circles, incentivises engineering of similarly infectious but treatable viruses for which you already have a choice vaccine product to offer as the solution. 

N: Scientific Research

On this tier, virologists and other researchers study potential outbreaks from the wild with the genuine belief that they are helping mankind stay ahead of mother nature and prevent or control crossovers before they happen.

Other theories may [elude] to the idea that there are levels of inception above N+2 which include global elites bent on population control and other such nefarious goals, but again this body of work only seeks to focus on the 3 called out at this time as they have direct, verifiable linkage pertaining to the current epidemic and its potential origins. 

We do this to Ourselves...

Recently read an essay which attempts to warn the readers of the impending onslaught of government propaganda and consumer marketing that will barrage us into returning to the old way of life, and make us forget about any benefits we may have begun to observe about a slower paced, less environmentally impacting existence. 

Although I generally agree with the prophecies portrayed, I felt the piece lacked the culpability we have in the co-dependent relationship that is us vs them, and decided to post a follow up comment, which ended up becoming an essay in-it-of-itself, so I figured I might as well capture it here:

~

The problem is herd mentality. We The People are one giant flock of birds that have been sitting on the wire for a month now, and when the signal to fly comes, when the storm blows over and the clear skies of normalcy beckon, the moment we see that initial wave of family and friends take to the skies in a mad rush to exorcise all this nervous energy, it’s going to be next to impossible to resist the urge to join in. We do this to ourselves, and we do so willingly because the one thing we as individuals in a population fear above all else, is being left behind, becoming irrelevant. 

The great myth is that Marketing is some kind of leash that leads us down paths we never wanted to take. The reality is that we’ve always been *looking* for those paths, Marketing just tries to convince you that Coke is better than Pepsi. How often have you heard the phrase “We realize that you have a lot of choices when it comes to _______, so we thank you for choosing us!”

Yes. The gas-lighting will be real. What’s realer is trying to ignore our own internal processes. 

Don’t believe me? Let’s talk masks. Right now, n95 masks and other respirators share one thing in common — they’re basic and unattractive. They were designed to perform a medical function. So the “mask market” pre-covid, was about as influential in our lives as the table saw market, or the mop bucket market.

All of that is about to change, and it starts the moment you encounter Sandra with her triple-knit lavender mask or Tom with his Tactical, 3d printed mask shell that makes him look like a spec-op agent out of The Division. 

By this time next year, we’ll be flashing Supreme and Adidas branded masks with Bluetooth Voice Clarity Enhancing technology, and featuring Hepa brand filters that block 78.9% more virus particles than those “basic” n59 respirators. 

You DO want to block 78.9% more virus particles, don’t you? Of course you do.

And that’s my point — we do this to ourselves. WE create new market vacuums in space and time that never existed before, and that is the fertile field those “evil” corporations seek to harvest in our mind-shares. Without our own neurosis-driven need to have a 1 up on everyone around us, the corporations simply have no ACE-2 receptors to exploit in us, as it were. 

I get it. Holding up a mirror is an extremely uncomfortable thing to do. I avoid it, too, especially when there are convenient scapegoats around. But self-examination is the only true salvation from all this. The only way to beat the game is to stop playing it, even if it means a departure from the people around you who need to keep playing it to escape themselves. 

You just gotta fortify your mind and try to — hold on, sorry I gotta run, everyone’s flying off and I don’t want to get held up in traffic. 

Political Lines Amidst a Pandemic

Guess it's been a hot minute since I've posted to ye ole blog. Lots has happened over the past year, but coming back here was an idea that popped up after my wife reviewed a post I made on Facebook in response to a divisive article that was posted by a friend.

The article, 'Jared Kushner makes coronavirus briefing appearance, draws backlash for 'our stockpile' comment', was met among friends with the usual for-or-against points that attribute the sum of the federal government response to the President and whether he's #mypresident or #notmrpresident.

I was tagged in to the conversation by another friend of mine who made the assumption that I was one of his "liberal friends".  Although I have never claimed to be either, the assumption may have seemed fair as I have been calling out other hypocritical behaviors Republicans appear to be quite guilty of when it comes to the also-current Oil Industry Crisis between Saudi Arabia and Russia, where Republicans conveniently forget about letting the "invisible hand of the free market" work things out on their own.

So before I commented on the Federal Stockpiles, I wanted to clear up confusions on my political position and remind folks that the only "us vs them" team I'm concerned with is the Government vs. The People.

This was my post, with only the most minor of spelling/grammatical corrections afforded. One last bit of context, when I was tagged in, my friend was also asking if he was a "colossal shithead" for wanting to defend his position :

I’m not a liberal. Not a conservative either. You’re not a shithead either. The issue is tying oneself too closely to politicians simply because they have a D or an R next to their name and you have a D or an R next to yours.

The issue is cognitive dissonance. It’s like when the “only 2 parties allowed” sat down at the draft they purposely decided to exchange 2-3 critical positions that make absolutely zero sense for the other side to have, just so it’s always a guaranteed shit-show when the family gets together to talk.

I post, speak, and comment to point out the hypocrisy that exists on both sides of the isle. I constantly remind family and friends that the shitty things we attribute to Mr Trump are some of the same shitty things that happened on Obama’s watch as well. Doing so rarely gets met with an objective admittance from the Left. Usually just name calling and excuses.

It’s an uncomfortable fact when people look back on H1N1 and realize that National Emergency (not to be confused with Public Health Emergency, which is declared by the Secretary of Public Health, not the president) wasn’t declared until October and after 1000 Americans had already died.

It’s an uncomfortable realization when you show people clips of that October time-frame where people were in lines for hours trying to get vaccinated even though the administration had months to mobilize and prepare between the public and national emergency states. Yet we sit here and call our current situation a delayed debacle as if it was the first ever, and when in truth it only took about 40 days and 1 death to declare Covid-19 a National emergency. 

You see, I do this on both sides because I have the pipe dream that everyone I care about will one day wake up and realize they don’t have to don the Dem or Rep team jersey featuring some of the ideological brand logos they believe in but also the giant kick-me sign on the back for the things they have to pretend to agree with and rationalize to fit in. 

The only teams we should care about are: The Elected Officials and The Rest of Us (aka We the People).

That means holding everyone in office equally and objectively accountable for in their actions and behaviors regardless of what camp they originated from.

Those aren’t Democrats OR Republicans. Those are Senators and Congressmen. That guy is a President. The moment they became those things, they became job functions entrusted to keep the interests, prosperity and safety of  everyone in this nation in mind.

With that perspective, it’s fairly obvious the dude we elected is, overall, a poor choice. Not poor, perhaps, from a “make shit happen now” perspective, but one where the ramifications of his actions will be carried by generations to come. But you know what? It’s not entirely his fault, just like it wasn’t entirely Obama’s fault then.

Given the fact that the president’s ability to MSH is almost entirely dependent on all of the other committees, agencies, and branches that support him, it’s painful to watch him take sole credit for the positive outcomes, while throwing other agencies and individuals under the bus for poor outcomes and negative consequences.

In short, if you're going to grandstand and say “I did that, you’re welcome”, you’ve also gotta be ready to say “I did that, I’m sorry”.

At Dell, I don’t just get measured on my outcomes. I get measured on “How Behaviors” deigned to stop people from becoming supreme assholes in a quest to make a name for themselves hiding behind achieved target goals. We have to consider a President's "How Behaviors" and stop giving him the "Yeah he's a dick, but..." pass. 

On the Stockpile- Also a dick move by the Feds to take this position. This is tantamount to sitting at a dinner table with all of your friends, agreeing to split the check, and then lambasting the ones who can’t afford their split when the check comes and “it’s way bigger than anyone could have imagined”.

At the dinner table (i.e. in the middle of the crisis) is NOT the time nor place to throw shade, or decide you’re only really wanting to help Billy because Bob was kind of a dick to you last week.  

I’m also extremely troubled by our carelessness as we high five him when he asks these falsely-provocative “Why the hell” questions without considering the risks.

“Why are we throwing away the masks” - Well, because this is the proper, reviewed, and accepted SOP that has been in place for decades as the safest way to deal with biological waste in a hospital setting to prevent cross contamination or reinfection.  The supplies that protect us in those risky contact situations are disposable BY DESIGN to ensure our safety!

It’s why swabs, needle tips, bags, gloves, masks, gowns and alll that other shit is meant to be collected and disposed of properly. Now you got a guy saying “Hey fuck all that smart shit, why are you throwing those away let’s save on supplies.” and people are like "Yeah! Cut that red tape Mr President!!"

But notice, the smart ones have to come in later and interpret this careless behavior to say “Well, I guess we could try to sanitize and reuse.. but it’s unproven and each time you do so, the mask degrades, and you risk not getting it all”. And the part no one wants to talk about: You better hope it actually gets done properly, and no one cuts corners or forgets to sanitize between patients.

Consider this: Would you reuse a condom? Up to 20 times? Or just grab another one to be real sure? I know what I'd do. 

“Hey let’s use all the drugs and see if they work” is also a bold move that brings with it high risks. The fallout is at least less than the PPE situation. The patient rolls the dice on dying to the virus or dying from liver failure right, what’s the difference? I get it. Give them the choice to use the experimental drugs or wait for the clinical trials on the correct drugs and call it a day.

But where we should care indirectly as a taxpayers is the liability when the law suits come from groups given ineffective or adverse medicine in this knee jerk “screw clinical trials” reaction.

It’s the public and legal amnesia that will arise months and years later when no one wants to remember the bold “people are dying!” sentiment and the narrative shifts to how “irresponsible” the administration was for allowing these treatments to go out unproven.

A crisis shows people’s true colors when the chips are down- and that’s the point of this article when it comes to the Stockpiles.

The message from the Feds to the rest of the States was made quite clear...

“We are here to ensure *our* masks are on first before assisting others”.

How do I explain to you, what you are?

Disclaimer 1; This blog entry may, or may not, have stemmed from altered states of consciousness that led to posting to a chat circle of friends between midnight and 1 am.

While a few friends responded in-kind, it was after noticing various memes that one friend in particular posted that captured what I had spent the last 2 hours doing: Contemplating the relationship of man vs. nature. In particular, who runs who.

What you are privy to below is the stream of consciousness exchange that followed between myself, and "John".  

Disclaimer 2: Note that the comments below, on my end, are in some cases elaborated or formatted for reader clarification and as such, this is not an exact transcript. This is due, in part, that about 50% of the way through the editing process, I realized that I could have been using shit like [sic] to preserve the original format. This is also due, in part, to the fact that it's now 3:17 am and I still have not gone to stare at the moon as noted at the end of the chat exchange, so I'm not interested in starting over with a re-paste of the original exchange and then adding in the aforementioned "shit like [sic]" to make it all legit.