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A Year To Soon Be Forgotten
The ending year has been a displeasing one.
Health wise it was the worst year I have ever had. For nearly half of it I was not able to work as much as I like. Even now, as I am recuperating, the challenge remains.
More disturbing for me though was the total breakdown of 'western' concepts that were, until recently, held high.
Liberalism, as an economic and societal concept, has broken down.
Globalism is no more. Free trade has been replaced with a myriad of tariffs and sanctions. The U.S. is forcefully pressuring its 'allies', especially in Europe, to buy its goods and to do its bidding. There is, astonishingly, no noticeable resistance to this.
The fake concept of 'fighting disinformation' is being used to implement outright censorship. Political activism gets threatened whenever it challenges the current Staatsräson as decreed from the top. Insulting politicians for their lack of consistency is now lèse-majesté that needs to be punished. Making fact based arguments is no longer seen as sensible reasoning but as taking partisan sides.
Most horrifying though is the breakdown of humanitarian concepts the 'west' once claimed to hold high. Mearsheimer says it best when he decries the the moral bankruptcy of the West:
Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.
Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.
Moreover, almost all of the many human rights advocates in those countries, and in the West more generally, have stayed silent while Israel executed its genocide. The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.
One wonders what people in the West who have either supported Israel’s genocide or remained silent tell themselves to justify their behavior and sleep at night.
All the above already had started some time ago. But it culminated in 2024 in ways that were more noticeable than ever.
The mask is off. The 'West', as we knew it, is done with.
Currently my best hope for 2025 and beyond is for a more sane East to arise.
Posted by: juliania | Jan 1 2025 2:58 utc | 134
Posted by: Scorpion | Dec 31 2024 18:01 utc | 32
Scorpion!! Happy New Year! How is your bathtub?
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And Happy New Year to you too, Juliania (and all barflies)!
The bathtub, like many simple things, was a mini-saga in itself involving three incarnations of the same Platonic Form! The first one was a monstrosity made of cinderblock to start with. It might have ended up alright but one look at it turned the bathroom into a Gaza street and I got rid of it. The second one was part block part brick but, once the bones were made we realized it had way too much water capacity for my boiler, which was the biggest I could find (40 gallons?). The third time was the charm; we cut down width and length and now it is perfect not only for the tank but also for my 6′ body. I can lie down in it with feet pushing gently against the bottom end, knees slightly bent, water up to chin level without sliding down and drowning. I can also sit cross-legged sideways to watch football games, which although ghastly on many levels, I increasingly enjoy since they are NOT THE NEWS! The last coating of the bath is white cement finished by a cheap polishing machine with diamond pads making the surface slightly glossy (thanks, youtube!). When it is cold during the winter months I have to heat the room up otherwise the cement retains too much cold. If I were building another one I would thread 15 yards of heat tape in it. That said, once it warms up, it stays warm for a good long while. It is very smooth and doesn’t feel like cement at all, totally normal.
In short, it is a smashing success. Looks nice. Even doing it three times it cost considerably less than an equivalent size plastic tub without jets, which I don’t like. I always like to build things using local labour when possible even though it’s often a slightly haphazard process. (Even my wife cannot understand most of what the local people say!) The floor and shower are of the same very affordable white cement as well, and we found local white onyx sinks and orange onyx lamp shades which would probably cost a fortune in L.A. but are only a $125.00 and $30 each here respectively. The whole house is built using simple materials and we are very happy with it. Buying the land and building things has taken three years but all without any debt, which feels very sober and reasonable somehow. And no stress.
Last good news on the home front is we now get fresh milk delivered Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 3 liters each time, for about $7.00 USD a week from which we make our own yogourt and cappuccinos. The yogourt is better than anything I’ve ever bought. Such simple things are a cross between medicine and miracle. We are very happy here thus far. The man whose father used to own this land and who delivers the milk just fell down and broke his hip. His cousin called up an hour ago to see if we can pay for the ambulance to take him to town where he will probably get hospitalized for a month. He doesn’t want to go but after a week in his tiny hut with a family he now – because of intense pain – hates (!), the ambulance is more for his family than for him. So we paid the requested 1,000 pesos ($50.00), obligingly playing the part of rich gringos etc., and off Don Juan goes, probably cursing me all the way to his doctor in town who will probably force him to go into a (quite possibly horrible) local hospital. And life in a small rural community goes on! It’s an equitable balance of love and hate, danger and security. We like it.
I still follow the News etc. and read all of b’s excellent articles, but find it better to refrain from commenting here. Most of what I wrote was discursive fluff, as you well know, which irritated many, so no great loss, though I do miss our often pleasant interchanges. Every once in a while I see an article that might contribute to b’s topic – like that Mariupol piece (though I wonder who made money from all those renovations and if it’s the same oligarchs who started the war) and put it in, but won’t be re-entering the comments fray! (Much to denk’s relief; he’s the boss after all and decides who is kosher!)
And once the construction phase is all finished in about six months – garage, pottery workshop etc. – I’ll take a crack at writing a book called Layers and Levels trying to integrate Platonist, Buddhist-Daoist and post-quantum post-materialist modern stuff that’s been getting more interesting of late. I am fascinated with language, basically, and playing around with different perspectives of meaning and meaningfulness – qualia. If I understood Christianity better it would be in there more too, but sadly I never ‘grokked’ it so the language is too foreign and the imagery doesn’t work for me even though I can tell it is a fathomless source of deep, good wisdom for many. I wonder if I am an outlier that way or typical (grew up in an atheist, big city household in London where nary a word of God passed anyone’s lips my entire time there). If the West is to recover can it go back to its Christian civilizational roots or has that ship sailed? Does something new, albeit no doubt based in many of its Xtian fundamentals, need to emerge and if so how? I have no idea, but view the oncoming digital-AI-surveillance-social media world increasingly taking over the entire developed world, East and West, askance. Am in it, of course, but think I would prefer to live in a different century with more horses and less motor cars and computers!
In any case, the Hegemon versus the Multipolarists saga, neither of which side I understand or trust all that much, I leave to you chaps! All best.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jan 2 2025 16:13 utc | 213
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