The SHTF or things will be awesome, but few talk about the possibility that the world will just keep muddling on and nothing particularly spectacular happens, just the same crap day after day after year for the rest of our our lives. I saw this in the conclusion to an interview with someone who is rather negative about the world's financial future, but who acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, this same bullshit will continue on without any major discontinuity:
I think a lot of us here would agree this is one likely possibility, minor upheavals may happen but a major one may not (as in 'major' major). No reason not to stack PM's though. Just like I don't expect my house to burn down - but I still have insurance I also agree we should have a shake-up. My guess is the end of the petro-dollar will be a big deal but could be drawn-out. Just hope the US doesn't decide to take the rest of the world down with it, but I fear they will cling to and fight to retain every scrap of geopolitical power it has afforded them.
I tend to agree. Look at Japan. We "expect 'the world' to end" to relieve the boredom and escape our petty lives. There's no escape.
Well that's depressing Similarly I suspect a lot of conspiracy stuff acts to comfort people that 'if' things are f-ed up and unfair in the world, well it's the fault of all-powerful and sinister elites, it's not MY fault and in fact there's nothing I can do about it. Helplessness justifies inaction.
Excellent. We've spoken about this before. I certainly don't think TPTB who own and run the system are in anyway silly, in fact, I think they're sinister smart. Also I don't think they care much about others in terms of humanity. Basically we have known values for TPTB, evidenced by the world around us and their actions. The system of control for human populations, governments... then it filters down to medical, legal, police etc. will NEVER be redundant, ever. People in power NEVER give it up voluntarily. Right now we have facial recognition, tracking, surveillance etc. which could only be classed at psychopathic levels. Worse still is how they've convinced the populace via social engineering (mass media, false flag operations, social proof etc). Most everything is brought under the systems of control as quickly as possible. The future appears to be rather totalitarian unfortunately which ever path it seems to be guided down.
People daydream of an apocalyptic cleansing because it brings some solace to what often feels like a meaningless, unfair and painful existence for many of us. This feeling of dissatisfaction was the key observation of Gautama Buddha. This is where religion finds a willing audience. It's been exactly the same for at least 2,000 years and probably much longer.
I think the best thing to do is prepare for the worst but plan and live for the best. It's risky putting everything in gold and you could miss out on opportunities by not buying real estate and shares, need to be diversified. Have that small self sustainable country property and stack of metals? Sure, but still carry on being optimistic or at least cautiously optimistic.
This is a decades chart. A triple top. The third of the previous triple top was somewhere late 2000. 2007 was a double top. The following downtrend lasted 2 years from late 2000 and abit over 1 year from 2007. We're now last week of march. As it looks like, we now sit on the verge of the reversal of a 7 years uptrend. Starting somewhere in april/may. Projected downtrend end: 2018. Those that own stocks, well, it may be time to cash in that 7 years uptrend, or the paper profit may fail to materialize.
It is a shame people in general (not meaning you SilverPete) confuse and equate "religion" (man made dogma and organizations) with "spirituality" (for lack of a better word; that is trying to reconnect with that which we erroneously feel disconnected with on this plane of existence). One is man-made and sometimes harmful and one is what our "spirits" yearn for. In past generations there was so much to keep focused on just to survive that there wasn't as much time to sit around and feel "depressed" and such as we do today, since in many ways life has become much easier vis a vis survival (eating, shelter, less external threats to safety- nowadays depends on where you live, etc.). The reason why people turn to drugs and other "addictions" is to try to fill that void caused by the illusion of separateness from our true "source" or whatever you want to call it. Just my opinion. Jim
This is great stuff Who ever said life was supposed to have meaning anyway? Letting go of that idea has been the greatest liberation I have ever experienced.
This is not pointed directly at you Jim, but you raise a great point. Ever wondered if a frog or an ant has ever felt the same ? Searching for something that just does not exist ? Maybe all that spare time on our hands has given us the yearning for something spiritual that is just not there at all. Maybe that separateness is nothing more than "well shit what now ?, I'm fed, housed, secure etc...WTF now? " What if we just die and that's it ? Another life lived and then.... Nothing! Who remembers their great great grandparents ? Their parents, or theirs ? Do you think a Chimp or a great Ape contemplates Buddah, Christ, Mohammed, A deeper spiritual existence ? Does a Dolphin, the next so called sentient being on the planet contemplate it's place in a universe it knows really nothing about, or just think about it's next root and a feed of fish ? What exactly is a spirit, a religion, spirituality ? It's nothing more than a spark of life really, a self awareness, a personal contemplation of relative self awareness that is gone the instant the last breath of air leaves the body or the last electrical impulse leaves the brain on an individual level. Every religion on Earth is a construct, every perceived specialness ever conceived by a particular race or class of Human is also a construct, borne out of some innate need to differentiate Humans from what is seen as base Animals, those we eat or use to exist. The reality is that we are no different on a biological level, we all share the very same DNA to some degree or another and we all evolved from the same mammalian descendant, but for a quirk of survival a mere few hundred million years ago, and a damn lot of luck and drive to procreate and survive, none of us would be reading or writing all this right now. Think about it for just a minute, if it was not for the consecutive successes of our individual previous long lines of ancestors right back to a primeval swamp, none of us would exist today. They survived the natural selection process right from the start over hundreds of thousands of years, all the wars, diseases, natural disasters, plagues, past climate changes, asteroid impacts, volcanic upheavals, slavery, not to mention the previous religions that to a large extent included Human sacrifice , to the point that today most humans on earth still contain around 4% of Neanderthal genetics, and the fact that scientist's still are not sure whether we came out of Africa or evolved in a regional setting. Apocalyptic cleansing is part of our story, whole genetic lines have been wiped clean just on whims of nature in the past, as have gene pools based upon warfare and disease. Blue eyes and Blonde hair have only been around for a short while in Human history, despite their dominance of the first world today they have only been in existence for around 12-14 thousand years. Religion and Spirituality may serve a purpose in bringing together disparate groups of Humans but in reality they have their base in an ancient suspicion of death and misfortune. IE if you can't explain it, blame it on something else. Society's have always had and needed a Boogey man to blame their misfortunes on, today's society is no different, the thing is though that society's have always had an hierarchy that has controlled the lower levels through the belief in some Boogey man or another. Today the fear is the fall of society based on the need for banks to survive so as to avoid armageddon, it protects the hierarchy via the too big to fail mantra and people buy into it based on the fear of losing everything they have. Still does not change the fact we are just a hairless chimp with a big brain on a genetic level though. I doubt a chimp gives much thought to it's spirituality though.
I don't "debate" issues involving religion/spirituality- I just stated an opinion. If you think your mind can comprehend the magnitude of all that exists, I say congratulations (I am assuming you are an atheist by your post). However, there are some things that once experienced cannot be un-experienced. Unfortunately, over past centuries much ancient knowledge involving "spiritual matters" was destroyed, much of it by the early "church". There is a reason they did this. Jim
The population timebomb will upset the cart. Either through over population in the developing world or the aging population the the developed world Or both I think demographics will be the unescapable agent of change.
SHTF is not like a visitor from some unknown origin. It's a scenario that is the result of what some people do. In the economy / on markets, it's succesful evasion of a centrally planned / legalized theft. It's that "we" from the topic that brings an SHTF along better trading decisions, that do not shift the losing side towards another victim of theft but to the central planners and their parasiting gangs themselves. If the topics scenario (keeping muddling through) occurs, then it means "we" didn't show the central planners our teeths. That's why I like to paste around what I found out here and there. I welcome an SHTF.
