After Such Knowledge

  The whole point of changing the teaching of economics was to make it acceptable to trash the regulations that had been put in place during the New Deal to prevent another Great Depression. And as would become readily apparent, these regulations had been put in place to address real needs. Well written and administered regulations lead to more scientifically advanced and prosperous societies because regulations protect and permit honest entrepreneurs to thrive. The more complex the society, the more of these honest people it takes to keep all the parts working. Take away the rules and the cheaters will drive out the honest operators. The only historical outcome of "deregulation" is a rise in corruption of all forms and a destruction of industrial potential. Pretty much describes the past 46 years, huh? Deregulation in all its forms has been an ongoing project. There are literally countless examples.  This is just my list. I have also created a separate category for the decri...

 A symbol of sovereign industry illuminated by stellar purpose. This started out as a convo on Twatter. I just finished discussing Ebenezer Scrooge. Pat Robertson thought Scrooge got rich by obeying the laws of God = laissez-faire. What he did with his profits was between him and God. I want to reclaim "elegance" but not as a mark of elite refinement. I liken it to a mathematical curve that intersects all necessary points, solving complex problems with minimal waste. This redefinition is central to my vision of a sustainable industrial future. Rather than associating elegance with aristocratic taste or aesthetic polish, I see it as technological and systemic coherence. Functional elegance is like a mathematical curve that passes through all required data points, elegant technology solves multiple problems simultaneously — economic, environmental, and social — without excess or contradiction. Upper-class affectations are the opposite. Always have been since the Bronze Age inva...

The psychopathologies of today are like the psychopathologies of the death of feudalism and the First Hundred Years' War (or 1A and 1B) with the Scottish Wars wedged in to please Huizinga. The reason of the shift in focus from Scotland was that glory, profit, and status could be gotten more abundantly in France than in Scotland. And the late Middle Ages was clearly a period when the ruling classes thirsted for blood and hungered for glory, profit, and status. Whuffo? To say they wanted to monopolize land strikes many as monocausal and simplistic, but the failure by students of human experience (and the poor slobs' - er historical actors - inadequate interpretations of these experiences) to explain such aberrant manifestations even now is due to the fact that the students themselves are caught up in the processes they want to explain. They lack both the perspective and objectivity to discover sufficient explanations. Now we'uns is living in a similar situation. In both cases...

  At work John Wemmick in 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 is Mr. Jaggers’ clerk and embodies the cold, rational, and skeptical demeanor of the legal world. In the office, he’s emotionally detached, pragmatic, and focused solely on business. He even advises Pip to separate his personal feelings from professional dealings. At home, in stark contrast, Wemmick transforms into a warm, whimsical, and affectionate caretaker. He lives in a miniature castle with his elderly father, the "Aged P," and delights in domestic rituals, gardening, and playful inventions. His home life is filled with kindness and eccentric charm, revealing a deeply human side that he keeps hidden from his professional world. The average American is such a double man. Thanks to his nation’s moral traditions, the American is still taught as a child the Judeo-Christian ethic of yieldingness, generosity, sympathy, altruism, tenderness. Then the morally instructed child grows into a businessman to whom aggressi...

I'm only certain that nothing is forever. No matter how carefully you design a system, it will go bad and die. The process is not steady. Rather, it shares the instability of living metabolism and dances always on the same edge of disaster. The Second Gilded Age was a pyramid built in defiance of the urges of life for change and progress. Or rather a pyramid scheme against senescence. Spengler's blood power is Boulding's society evolving like an organism. The process is not steady. Rather, it shares the instability of living metabolism and dances always on the same edge of disaster. Archaic Egypt's funerary-cult civilization was a sick sort of permanence and bid for eternity, however. They tried to stay the tide and were overwhelmed. The Muslims stripped the pyramids for their limestone. But the Muse of History does not sleep; she goes on muttering over her laptop. “The Great Grocery Squeeze” that resulted from Reagan’s decision to stop enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act...

What I babble on as "outlook" is rooted in our neurologies and endocrinologies. It's visceral. Storming forth with this evangel, I discovered that I was anticipated. "Animal spirits" refers to the emotional and psychological factors—like confidence, fear, and optimism—that influence economic decision-making, especially during times of uncertainty. The term animal spirits was popularized by British economist John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Keynes used it to describe the instincts, urges, and emotions that drive people to make economic decisions, often beyond what rational models would predict. 🧠 Key Concepts Behind "Animal Spirits" Emotional drivers of the economy: These include confidence, hope, fear, and pessimism. When confidence is high, people are more likely to invest, spend, and take risks. When it's low, even strong economic fundamentals may not prevent downturns. Departure from pur...

🪐 I used to have days like Donald Wollheim. He thought he was living in the "wrong future." So did José Ortega y Gasset. 🧠 The Lament: "¡No es esto, no es esto!" This phrase—"This is not it, this is not it!"—became Ortega's anguished refrain during the early years of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). Though he had initially supported the Republic, hoping it would modernize and revitalize Spain, he quickly grew disillusioned with its direction. The phrase expressed his despair that the Republic was failing to embody the rational, liberal, and reformist ideals he had envisioned. 📚 Context from His Works In España invertebrada (1921), Ortega diagnosed Spain’s decline as a result of its lack of a cohesive national project and leadership—a country without a "backbone." In La rebelión de las masas (1930), he warned of the rise of the "mass man" who rejects excellence and authority, leading to cultural and political decay. 💬 Phi...

  From Communion to Competition I don't know where Yeshua got his economic beliefs, but they're African. Things can get so bad in an Epochal Crisis that a moral inversion can result. Max Weber didn't use the word "heresy" for the Protestant Reformation, but evangelical hypocrisy and sadism can be traced to it. I'm trying to critique the tension between American business values and the emotional demands of family life. This means field-stripping the middle-class yada-yada. (When it's p'tit-boo, Jesus suddenly looks like a very fierce Japanese warrior. Robocop 3 rendered homage via Otomo.) • The marketplace rewards assertiveness, competition, and self-interest. • Family life, by contrast, thrives on emotional generosity and mutual sacrifice. • These “bankruptcy qualities”—yieldingness, altruism, tenderness—are economically disadvantageous but morally essential. This insight dramatizes a cultural paradox: the very traits that sustain intimate relationship...

  I'm a Curtista who is frankly surprised by the failure of the carrot. A pivot from soma to surveillance, from pleasure-drenched passivity to fear-forged conformity. It’s as if the velvet veil of indulgent distraction (Huxley) is being torn away to reveal the iron scaffolding of coercive oversight (Orwell). The crowd no longer lulled by abundance and amusement, but corralled by algorithmic scrutiny, ideological purges, and the ritualized performance of loyalty. 🧪 Huxleyan Mob Control — The Age of Soft Captivity Distraction as Dominion: Entertainment, consumerism, and dopamine loops pacify dissent. Pleasure as Pacifier: The body is indulged, the mind numbed—no need for force when desire is engineered. Information Glut: Truth drowned in trivia; the archive becomes a carnival. Consent via Comfort: The masses willingly submit, not out of fear, but out of saturation. 🕵️ Orwellian Mob Control — The Age of Hard Surveillance Fear as Framework: Control through punishment, visibility, and...

If we treat the WASP ethic as a kind of civilizational operating system, then consumerism could be seen as a symbolic overwrite: replacing the disciplined stewardship of prudence and thrift with the performative abundance of desire and display. Oh mama I gotsta riff on this a bit: 🏛️ The WASP Ethic as a Symbolic Framework Historically, the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) ethic emphasized: • Industriousness: Work as moral duty • Self-restraint: Avoidance of excess • Prudence: Careful judgment, long-term thinking • Thrift: Frugality, resource conservation These traits were tied to a Protestant cosmology of deferred gratification, moral clarity, and stewardship—what Max Weber called the “spirit of capitalism.” 🛍️ Consumerism as Ritual Inversion Consumerism doesn’t just ignore prudence and thrift—it dramatizes their negation: • Prudence becomes impulsivity: The future is collapsed into the now; judgment is outsourced to trends and algorithms. • Thrift becomes excess: Accumulation is ...

The rise of religious influence in Israeli politics is less a sudden “takeover” and more the result of a long, strategic convergence of religious Zionism, nationalist populism, and institutional vulnerability. Here’s a breakdown of how this shift unfolded: 🧱 Structural Foundations • No formal constitution: Israel’s Basic Laws offer limited checks and balances, making it easier for majoritarian coalitions to reshape institutions. • Religion-state entanglement from the start: Jewish identity was embedded in the state’s legal and civic architecture, giving religious authorities leverage over marriage, conversion, and education. 🧭 Strategic Mobilization by the Religious Right • Institution-building: Over the past decade, religious Zionist groups—especially those linked to West Bank settlements—have built schools, think tanks, and media outlets to shape public discourse and policy. • Political integration: These groups strategically aligned with Likud and other right-wing parties, gaining...

  The New Deal redistributed power across institutions. This power-sharing and how these institutions interact lies beyond formal democratic structures. The post-war boom was the context where various interest groups — labor, business, government — prevented any one bloc from gaining dominance. The competition among major economic sectors in the U.S. remains intense, though the nature of that competition has evolved since the New Deal ran its course. Here's how the jostling plays out today among the key players: --- 🏭 Heavy Industry - Status: Declining in relative size but still influential, especially in defense, energy, and infrastructure. - Power Base: Concentrated in lobbying for subsidies, tariffs (e.g., steel and aluminum), and favorable trade policies. - Current Tensions: Competes with environmental and tech sectors over regulation and investment priorities. 🧰 Light Industry - Status: More fragmented, often overshadowed by services and tech. - Power Base: Regional manufact...

All the jabberwock about the independence of central banks is a Big Lie. The last time they were independent they linked together in a feudalistic system vaster than empires and with such a choke hold that they made the Epochal Crisis flare up into the two world wars. And not because they were mustache-twirling villains. It was just for profit, and the abstract systemic necessities of their Enormity both dictated their actions and caused the wars - and the Depression - almost as a side effect. After the Great Sellout of 1975 (I'm refining my dates) they sprang back into action. (I ought to date the beginning of the Second Gilded Age to 1976, not to reference the Bicentennial or Carter's Administration, but because it makes a nice and neat thousand-year period since the take-off of the West in 976 (after a "prodromal" or embryonic era). Birchers have thrilled to the salacious details of elite hijinks - even when the banksters had been brought to heel by the New Deal an...